Having died once, Michael has no doubt that he can die again. Although he was reanimated, the next death will be final because it will be so violent that it will put him beyond all possibility of resurrection. His enemies will see to that. He is the Singularity, but the merging of man and machine does not provide immortality; a machine reduced to radioactive melt and scattered scraps of metal cannot be repaired.
From his previous invasion of ISA’s computer system, Michael has imprinted in memory everything in Durand Calaphas’s agency file, including his iPhone number. As he leaves the library, navigates the living room, and takes the stairs to the top floor, he also goes online, into a bottomless sea of microwaves carrying data. Because he already knows the number and GPS signal of Calaphas’s phone, he instantly finds the agent in a Beverly Hills restaurant. He quickly enters that phone, speeds through the list of contacts, and locates the number for Grantworth. By the time he reaches the foyer, he is in the deputy director’s phone, where he accesses CONTACTS and grabs the number for the ISA director, Katherine Ormond-Wattley.
Crossing the foyer into the hall that leads to the garage, he mentally enters Ormond-Wattley’s phone as she’s in the middle of an encrypted discussion with the president’s national security adviser, Pierce Leyton. Michael hears what Katherine Ormond-Wattley says and also hears what she hears after Leyton’s encrypted transmissions are translated into normal English, or into English that’s as normal as Leyton is able to speak it. They’re talking about a cable-network prime-time host whom they would like to destroy professionally if they could do so without seeming to be behind whatever lie about him they might concoct and document with manufactured evidence.
As Michael enters the garage and turns on the lights, he drops through the contacts on Director Kathy’s phone and finds Carter Woodbine’s number. He slides into the agency’s audio archives and listens to the attorney’s initial conversation with the director.
He had taken the half million from Woodbine shortly after three o’clock in the morning, but the attorney hadn’t placed his call to Ormond-Wattley until 1:35 in the afternoon, approximately ten hours later. Strange. On the phone call, Woodbine seeks the assistance of the ISA, not only to recover the money but also to find Michael and determine how the five-story fortress that houses the law offices of Woodbine, Kravitz, Benedetto, and Spackman was penetrated. Stranger still, during the conversation, he never mentions that his Bentley has been stolen, which he must have known hours earlier.
The attorney wants them to find Michael and the money, wants them to grill the thief until all secrets are spilled, but he doesn’t want them looking for the Bentley.
Michael walks around to the back of the sedan. The name of the Bentley dealership and the city in which it’s located are on the complimentary license-plate frame.
He settles in the front passenger seat and pulls the door shut. He pops open the glove box, sorts through the contents, and extracts an envelope containing the validated registration card issued by the DMV.
This is one of those occasions when he is seeking a complex chain of information and doesn’t know exactly where to find all he needs. He must go exploring. Instead of conjuring a self-driving Tesla in his mind’s eye, he imagines the Bentley is able to navigate the microwave connections and data flows of the internet symbolized by labyrinthine layers of superhighways, streets, and alleyways. He doesn’t need to start the engine or put on the seat belt, for neither the car nor he will leave this property. The garage fades. Michael accelerates into the virtual reality of the World Wide Web. In a few seconds, the sedan takes an exit ramp and comes to a halt inside the computer of the car dealership, figuratively speaking.
Michael summons Woodbine’s file from the customer records, and it appears on the windshield as though on a screen. Over the past sixteen years, the attorney has purchased two Rolls-Royces and three Bentleys from this dealership. He paid cash for the third Bentley fourteen months earlier. He didn’t take delivery himself, but had the car shipped directly to a high-end customizer, Classic Wheels, in Oxnard, California.
A Bentley is not a car that anyone would chop, channel, sparkle out with cool details, and convert into a street rod. Besides, this most recent of Woodbine’s Bentleys looks as it did on the showroom floor.
Seconds later, Michael is in the computer of Classic Wheels, in Oxnard. The data display on the windshield isn’t as slick as that of the Rolls-and-Bentley dealership, but he finds what he needs.
In every vehicle with a GPS navigation system, the transponder that communicates with the satellites issues a unique signal. That signal is the car’s—and therefore the owner’s—ID, which is known to the DMV. Law-enforcement agencies may seek to obtain your car’s navigational ID to review the archived history of its travels or to track you relentlessly in real time. State and local police mostly take the trouble of obtaining a court order, though there have been cases in which certain federal agencies have in recent years been of the mindset that the protections of the Constitution do not apply to everyone. Carter Woodbine has had the Bentley’s navigation system reworked so that he can leave it functional for convenience when he is out and about on honest business or can, by flipping a switch, kill the transponder and eliminate satellite tracking of the vehicle. At the moment, it is off the grid and can’t be tracked.
Another alteration involves the clever restructuring of the rear passenger compartment and the trunk. Michael studies the work order and mechanical drawings until he’s certain he understands the changes that have been made.
Because they materially affect the operation of the car and might raise safety issues, these are changes that are required by law to be reported to the DMV. This is the responsibility of the owner, not of the customizer. From Classic Wheels in Oxnard, Michael takes a quick spin to the DMV computer in Sacramento and consults the records there, using the seventeen letters and numbers of the vehicle’s validated registration card, confirming that Woodbine failed to comply with that requirement.
The Bentley has been altered to serve as the attorney’s getaway car if he needs one. Considering his connections to the country’s power structure, it seems unlikely that he will ever be on the run from the law, but his preparation for every eventuality is why he’s prospered in a dangerous business.
The virtual, eerily lighted highways swooping through infinite darkness now fade, and the reality of the garage coalesces around Michael. He returns the Bentley’s registration to the glove box and gets out of the car and goes around to the driver’s side. He settles behind the wheel and starts the engine.
He powers down the window in his door, powers down the window in the front passenger door, raises the lid on the console box, powers up the window in the passenger’s door, powers up the window in the driver’s door, and shuts the lid on the console box, with no delay between each action. As he learned from the records of Classic Wheels, this six-step combination activates the customized feature in the rear passenger compartment; the motorized bench portion of the back seat recedes into the trunk with a soft purr.
Michael gets out of the sedan and opens the rear door. The backrest remains in place, but where the richly upholstered bench had been, there is now revealed a secret six-inch-deep compartment that runs nearly the width of the vehicle and measures about eighteen inches front to back. This contains an AR-15 rifle with four spare magazines and plastic-wrapped packets of hundred-dollar bills. He isn’t prepared to count this sky-is-falling stash, but it’s no less than two million dollars.