“Pussy,” Santana agrees.
“You walked right in,” Woodbine says.
Michael shrugs. “You should complain to your security company.”
“Fucker won’t walk right out,” Harris promises.
Santana looks puzzled. “Say what? Security company?”
“Stall it. Cut the roo-rah,” Woodbine tells them, resorting to their vernacular. “Rudy, find out if he’s righteous when he says he’s alone.”
Rudy Santana gives Michael the red eye. He’s furious but in control of himself. He leaves the kitchen, on the hunt.
Harris is jumpy. He wants Michael to look down the barrel of his pistol and think about it. His gun hand twitches a little. His breathing is too fast and shallow.
Woodbine is calm, and he’s not faking it. He stands with his hands in the pockets of his robe, studying his uninvited guest. He doesn’t look concerned. Because nothing truly bad has ever happened to him, he assumes that nothing ever will. The world that is being remade by the greatest concentration of power in history is becoming a world that breeds narcissists with delusions of immortality, the like of which humanity has never seen and is not likely to survive.
Santana’s absence makes Harris nervous, as if he thinks his partner might not come back. “You dumb prick, comin’ in here, sayin’ peel me off half a mil. How much snow you put up your nose?”
“Wait for Rudy,” Woodbine says.
Three minutes pass in silence. Santana returns. “Everything is everything. Apartment and office clear. Elevators locked. If this shithead came with others, they won’t be hangin’ out downstairs, waitin’ for an invitation.”
“Pat him down,” Woodbine says.
Santana warns Michael, “Give me a reason.”
“I didn’t come here to hurt anyone,” Michael reminds him, and he submits to Santana’s quick but thorough search for a weapon.
“Clean,” Santana tells Woodbine. “And no ID.”
Having remained just inside the door, Michael now moves to the island. “Mr. Harris, I’d be more relaxed if you would lower the gun. Your tremor makes me nervous.”
“What’ll be more nervous makin’，” Harris says, “is a forty-five full metal jacket point-blank in your face.”
Woodbine motions for Harris to lower the weapon and says to Michael, “This conversation is between you and me.”
“Seems best.”
“Who are you?”
“I said.”
“Nobody.”
“That’s right.”
“I can ink your hands and have your prints run.”
“Won’t do you any good.”
“I’m serious. I can get a report from the FBI in an hour. No one but my contact there will know I asked for it or that it was ever sent to me.”
“I know you can do that. There’s a lot of rot in the system, and you have a nose for rot. But nobody has my prints.”
“You’ve got a past.”
“Erased.”
“Not possible.”
“Not for you maybe.”
“There will be photographs and files you missed.”
“None.”
“We can hold you here while we search.”
“Only if you kill me.”
“Why wouldn’t we do that?”
“I won’t let you.”
Harris mutters a curse, and Santana makes a noise of derision.
Woodbine appears more amused than concerned. He is a supremely confident guy. “What’re you angling for?”
“I already said.”
“Half a million dollars.”
“Glad to see Alzheimer’s hasn’t gotten you.”
“Why would I give you half a million?”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“To keep you from hurting me.”
“Exactly.”
“Do you realize how you sound?”
“Insane?”
“Totally.”
“Just put my money in the duffel bag and keep the rest.”
“Your money?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t really need it.”
Santana and Harris are restless. They want to commit a little violence to settle their nerves.
When Woodbine takes his hands out of the pockets of his robe, they are neither work-worn nor marked by age spots. His nails are manicured and finished with a clear polish.
“How did you learn the truth?” he asks.
“About you? I’m a research wizard.”
“I’m discreet. I take every precaution.”
“May I explain with a metaphor? Let’s say the internet is a dense jungle of information, with trillions of clues to billions of secrets. Each of you leaves a trail whether you try to cover your tracks or not. I’m right out of Kipling.”
“Rudyard Kipling.”
“So you learned something at Harvard. See, I know the internet jungle better than Mowgli knows the real one. To my eye, you left a trail as wide as a herd of elephants.”
“Drop the metaphor. Give me an example.”
Indicating Santana and Harris, Michael says, “You use burner phones with these two feebs and others.”
“I go through a couple hundred disposables a year. I destroy them all. And I don’t buy them myself.”
“I know. Mr. Santana’s uncle Ignacio, the priest, buys them for him, and Santana gives your share to you.”
Santana is incensed. “My uncle is a holy man of God. Don’t screw with Tio Ignacio, you piece of shit.”
Quieting Santana with a gesture, Woodbine asks Michael, “How could you know this?”
“You use your limited-function burner phones when you talk to one another. But you use your smartphones for text messaging.”
“Our texts are encrypted. Profoundly encrypted.”
“Yeah. I know. The best encryption in the world, developed in Moscow, used by the Russian prime minister. Even the CIA hasn’t broken it.”
“But you have?”
“Let’s say I built a back door into the computer system of the Russian equivalent of the CIA and planted a rootkit so I can come and go undetected.”
“Rootkit?”
“Hacker talk. That’s not really how I work. I’m not a hacker, but I wanted to put it in terms you might understand.”
“So somehow you tap our phones and read through the encryption of our text messages. That’s how you knew we’d be here now.”
Michael shrugs. “So sue me.”
“You want me to believe you’ve left incriminating evidence with some friend of yours, and if you don’t come back, he’ll turn it over to the authorities, like in the movies.”
“No, not at all. What good would that do me, considering how you can buy politicians, judges, honchos in the attorney general’s office, and key journalists?”
Woodbine stares at him for a long beat. At last he says, “You fascinate me.”
“Thank you. But that’s not my life’s purpose.” He pulls the empty duffel bag in front of him and begins to scoop packets of hundred-dollar bills into it.
Seeking guidance, Santana says, “Carter, what the hell?”
Harris’s smartphone is in an interior pocket of his sport coat, and Santana’s smartphone is in the left back pocket of his jeans, and Woodbine’s smartphone is in a pocket of his robe. Although none of those devices is set on vibrate, they begin to shake three times more violently than ever before. Simultaneously, an eerie keening issues from the phones at three times the volume they previously produced, a ululant shrillness suggesting the angry shriek of an ungodly monstrous insect. The batteries instantly overheat. The three men are so startled that they fall into momentary confusion. Santana cries out—“What, what, what?”—and Harris curses, and Woodbine steps out of his slippers as he staggers back from the island, and they claw at themselves to get rid of whatever threat has manifested in their clothing. In the first three seconds, as Rudy Santana plucks the phone from his back pocket, scorching his fingers—“Shit, shit, shit!”—Michael punches his face, breaking his nose, and Santana falls, and Michael stomps on the wrist of the gun hand, and Santana’s fingers spasm open, allowing Michael to stoop and take the pistol by the barrel. In the following three seconds, Michael pivots to Harris, who has put his .45 on the island and is frantically shrugging out of his coat, which has begun to smoke, and Michael clubs him with the butt of Santana’s pistol, just hard enough to put him out for a few minutes.