Chapter 19: and your enemies closer; Olawale
Rome, Italy, January, 2015
In dim early morning light Harold leaned forward over his open laptop, fingers clicking rapidly over the keys. Open boxes of documents and the hard drives from the raid on Greer's Rome headquarters surrounded him – on the table, on the floor around the desk, and spread across his bed. The work had kept Harold and the Machine buried for days, poring through stacks of paper, analyzing data files downloaded off the hard drives. And now, the skeleton of Greer's plan had begun to emerge.
Greer was on the verge of something big – something complicated and far-reaching, cutting across agencies inside the U.S. Government, but also sites in Europe, Australia, and Japan. And just as the timeline was beginning to converge on a single date, Harold had sprung his trap – the computer game he'd designed with Root and Logan Pierce.
Its purpose had been to generate a man-made flood, a tsunami of data so immense that it would overwhelm Samaritan. The game had pushed so much traffic to its networks that Samaritan had drowned in it, and every counter-measure that Greer's people had tried, each had ended in failure. Samaritan was currently blind and deaf, sitting there, mumbling to itself.
Harold had Arthur Claypool to thank for that. Before Arthur had succumbed to his cancer, he'd given Harold the key to the back door into Samaritan's code. Every good programmer knows to leave a back door, just in case – a kind of fail-safe to use if things started to run amok. It was hard to believe that Arthur was really gone. Harold had known him since their college days – the three of them: Nathan, Arthur and Harold had met there, and become lifelong friends.
Harold sat back for a moment at his laptop, remembering those last days, before Arthur had slipped away into a coma. A smile, with just half of his face working, had come over him as he whispered of a few rainy-day features he'd programmed into Samaritan, ones that Harold could exploit now to keep pressure on Samaritan. Arthur was brilliant, and even playful sometimes with his coding. The two had laughed together as Arthur revealed one of his favorite keys to get access to Samaritan's code. It was a musical phrase, the five tones from a movie they'd all watched a hundred times in college, the five tones François Truffaut had played to the alien mothership in Close Encounters.
Harold smiled as he remembered the two of them trying to hum the five tones, just like in the movie, laughing out loud, like they'd drunk too much scotch, at their tone-deaf results.
That evening had been the last day that Harold had seen Arthur alive. Hard to believe he was really gone. Harold looked up at the window. Morning was here, and he should work a little longer on the data. Arthur hadn't lived long enough to see them stop Greer. But the most important thing was that he had given them access to the beating heart of Samaritan.
Using Arthur's secrets, the three of them, Harold, Root, and Logan had designed and launched the first of their attack strategies, the computer game – created to attract a following among university-student and computer geek circles. It was an overwhelming success. The game launch week in Manhattan had filled a warehouse with gamers, programmers, media, and geeks of every genre. Harold was pleased to see ever-increasing numbers of new users, even now, finding the game and signing on to play.
And it hadn't hurt that Logan Pierce was seen splashing prize money around to those who'd excelled at the game. Competition among teams and individuals vying for prize money was intense – and publicly well-rewarded thanks to Logan, stimulating even stronger interest in the game.
As designed, the more people who played, the more network traffic the game generated, and this was at the heart of their strategy. As long as people continued to play, the network would rapidly swell with data, which the game's programming then aimed at Samaritan, swamping its systems again and again. Data from playing the game bounced like ping pong balls among sites all over the earth, each one acting like a mirror, reflecting the traffic back to Samaritan – every second of every day.
Harold knew, though, that it was only a matter of time before Greer's people found a way to break it. And he suspected that this was the reason for Greer and Kara Stanton's trip to Abuja, in Nigeria.
The Machine had tracked them down once they'd left the hospital ship, Argos. It had picked up their trail in Senegal, and made the connection with their new identities.
Coded transmissions sent to the consulate in Dakar from Washington had piqued Harold's interest, and the Machine had intercepted a series of them: that Greer and his companions were in-bound and that they would be needing identity services on arrival.
Harold had rightly suspected that this meant new identities would be provided for the three, and the Machine had easily tagged the new names when they passed through Customs in Dakar. Fortunately for Harold, government infrastructure, including IT, in West Africa was lax and leaky, and that had made Harold's job tracking Greer almost child's play.
Soon after, two of the three new names appeared on a roster for a charter jet flying out of Dakar to Abuja. The Machine had alerted Harold, who was certain that this was Greer and one of the women – looking for an answer to their problem.
Nigeria had a reputation for a thriving hacker community. For years, members of these gangs had perpetrated scams across the internet. People and businesses were harmed, and calls came from around the world, pressuring the government to do something to stop it. A few very public arrests were made in Abuja and Lagos. A few gangs of young men were hauled off to jail. But the entrepreneurial spirit persisted, and more always came to take their places. In a city where there were no jobs for young people, they'd created their own.
Harold had followed all these stories through the years with interest, aware that these hackers would become more sophisticated over time. He had even extended personal invitations to several of the best-known hackers from Nigeria. He wanted them to be there for the launch of the computer game in New York. Harold smiled, as the line from another favorite movie came to mind: keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
In another room down the hall the morning light was hidden behind heavy blackout shades that blocked the light. It was dark and cool in the room, and the two of them slept while Harold worked a few feet away.
In her dream, Shaw was answering the phone and she could hear his voice, stronger and clear now that the hoarseness had gone away. Her eyes smiled when she heard Marco speaking. Something about the slow, deep tones in his voice made her feel like she was down-shifting, smoothing out at a lower rpm, where she could run like that all day.
Before she'd left for Italy with Reese, she'd been able to get one visit in at the house in Glen Cove, his father's house, where Marco had gone to recuperate after the run-in with Greer. The sprawling house had become a fortress, with security systems, police and high-tech surveillance everywhere. Most of the family were kept away for now, but Marco's mother, who had been in Italy when everything had happened, insisted on returning to care for him. Shaw had managed to miss that reunion. Her own flight to Italy had been hastily organized, and there was no time to wait around to meet her. She wasn't in any hurry to meet another one of Marco's family – there were already way too many of them. Marco's father was fine, and maybe his little sister, but the rest were too much to deal with.
She'd gone to see Marco the morning after the scene in the shower with Root. Better to put that behind her now. There was no good way to make things right with Root. Things were more than likely going to get ugly before they came to some kind of understanding. Damn. People were just so complicated. Why couldn't they just stay away?
Except for Marco. He could stay. She thought about how bad he'd looked in the hospital. Kicked and stomped by Greer's bodyguards, he'd looked like he wasn't going to make it at first. Reese had stayed there in the waiting room with her, outside the SICU. She nodded to herself when she thought of it. Shaw knew he was there to keep her from jumping up, interfering, and telling off the doctors taking care of Marco. Sometimes, she thought, Reese could be – useful. But most of the time he was just in the way.
She thought of the visit with Marco, before she'd left on the trip. When she'd walked into his room, she could see how thin he was from the hospital. He was up out of bed in a chair, and he'd pushed himself up out of it when she'd appeared. But after a few steps toward her, he was getting shaky on his feet, and she'd stepped in quickly to catch him as he was starting to lean.
She smiled to herself as she remembered his long black hair sliding down over her skin as she brought him back to the chair. It reminded her of that first night, in his apartment, in Manhattan.
She and Reese had gone there to interview Marco about the woman who'd tried to shoot him in the park that evening. Shaw had already been there, casing his apartment after the Machine assigned him as her new POI. And she remembered thinking the place was nothing like what she was expecting from his appearance: long black hair, a bandanna, and a motorcycle.
She was expecting something more like a biker bar when she broke in, but what she found was more like a professor's house – stacks of books, and music, a fancy kitchen with all the frills. And in his bedroom, this old carved wooden headboard on his bed, a family heirloom from Europe. Shaw was intrigued – and that didn't happen very often.
The longer their interview went on, the more she found that she couldn't stop looking at him. She was feeling things she shouldn't be feeling, for a POI.
Marco was an assignment, her POI, she kept telling herself – but it hadn't mattered.
She remembered Reese watching her, trying to get her back into the interview again, then finally realizing where this was going. He could see it in her eyes, and the way she kept looking at Marco. He'd made up a way to leave the two of them alone, and then backed his way out of it, with a final, serious nod to Shaw. He knew she could take care of herself, and God help him if Marco turned out to be the bad guy after all. Shaw would handle it, and Marco would never surface again.
But that's not how things had gone. Marco had taken her to his kitchen, made espresso for her, offered cake from the part of Italy where his family kept their home. And then, he'd looked up at her, with those eyes, finally asking her if she was the one who'd saved his life that night.
One thing had led to another, and she remembered pulling the band that had kept his long dark hair at the back. And as the band fell away, so did the hair. Falling forward – as he leaned over her, the tips of his hair brushing her skin. She remembered his delight that she was that ticklish, and he tortured her, deliciously, dragging the ends over her skin until she had to take action to make him stop. Shaw smiled, lost in her dream of that first night together.
Abuja, Nigeria, January, 2015
Greer and Kara Stanton climbed from the back seat of the car, their driver pointing the way down a narrow street. Ramshackle buildings with tin roofs lined the street, and overhead they could see wires running in impossible tangles to the buildings. On the ground and in the street, paper, trash, lay baking in the sun. It was hot already, and on its way up to nearly a hundred degrees again today. Sweat beaded on their driver's face.
Kara was uneasy. This street would be a trap for anyone on foot. High sides with too many sites to observe them, unseen. And no place to take cover if something started. She glanced at Greer, who was reading her expression.
"Which building is it?" she said to the driver, her words rapid, like a burst of gunfire. Their driver stood up a little taller, staring down the street, and raised his arm, wagging the back of his hand toward the end of the street.
"There," he said, "you go there."
"No. Not there," Kara said, and she stepped in front of Greer, blocking his body with hers like a bodyguard. Her hand went under her jacket, resting her palm on the handle of her weapon. Then:
"Sir, hello – this way," a man's soft voice called from their right side. Kara swung right, ready with her weapon, but a thin, smiling older man was walking toward them, followed by a small group of young Nigerian men. Kara glanced at Greer, who stepped forward pressing with his hand on her arm, signaling that she wouldn't be needing her gun. He patted her arm, as he looked up with a smile at the approaching men.
"Miss Hansen, these are the friends I've been telling you about." Greer moved past Kara and walked forward toward the smiling man, reaching out to shake hands.
"A long time since you wah here," the older man said, shaking hands and smiling broadly.
"Too long," Greer crooned, his face smiling, but those blue eyes icy. The older man still had a strong grip, and a certain youthfulness in his eyes, Greer noticed. The years had been kind to him.
"Come," the older man said, turning, walking behind the small group of young men toward one of the shops. Greer and Kara followed along. A pole near the front of the entrance held a tangle of thin, black wires overhead, and they could see an old faded sign on the wall, something about a technical academy. The young men stopped at the door, one opening it for the older man and his guests to pass in first, and then the rest of the group slowly filing in after them.
It was cooler inside, the light glaring from harsh blue-white panels above them, and blades of a ceiling fan swinging over their heads. They didn't stop there, but moved on to another door into a large room, cooler still, dimmer, with desks neatly arranged around the perimeter, facing the walls. On each desk, a computer monitor, with the same photo on each screen: an enormous rock face, jutting straight up from the ground, and near the middle another smaller face, a human face, made from the shadows in the rock. The older man noticed their eyes on the screens.
"Ah, yes, have you seen it? This is a famous rock, right here, outside of the city." Greer shook his head.
"No, we've had no time for sightseeing." The older man's eyes narrowed, and he bowed forward a bit, turning to another door at the far end of the large room. He led the way, and Greer and Kara followed, but the young men took seats at the desks in the larger room, resuming their work at the computers.
In this last room, their host pointed to two chairs near an old wooden desk. He reached over and held his hand out to Kara.
"I am Olawale, Miss," he said, bowing forward slightly toward her.
"Ulla Hansen," Kara said, leaning forward, too. The three sat down together and there was silence for a few moments as Olawale waited for them to start.
"We have come to do some business here, my friend." Greer looked up, smiling with his face, his eyes clear and cold, like Arctic ice.