Michael Ledwidge - Alert

“I don’t know,” I said as we rolled in past the twelve-foot-high fencing, topped with razor wire. “The guy isn’t your regular perp, is he? I never interviewed a killer who went to Harvard at sixteen or was a Berkeley math professor at twenty-five. Why do you think he wants to talk to us now? He’s never offered his help before.”

Emily shrugged.

“I guess we’re about to find out.”

The assistant warden was a tough, matronly Native American woman named Marjorie Greene. She met us at the administration building’s sally port and helped us get through processing, where we handed over our service weapons.

The inside of the prison was like no facility I’d ever been to. Everything was made of smooth poured concrete — the floors, the walls, the ceiling. There wasn’t a window in sight. Prisons are usually loud, with slamming gates and people yelling, but here it was quiet and almost bizarrely serene.

“Like walking into a spaceship or something, isn’t it?” Marjorie Greene said as she led us with four guards down a meandering corridor to the interview room. “They designed it that way on purpose, so the prisoners don’t know where they are in relation to the outside. I don’t even know myself half the time, and I’ve been here seven years.”

“Seems like overkill, no?” said Emily. “Aren’t they locked down in their cells twenty-three hours a day at a supermax?”

“Well, it’s not so much that the inmates will escape from in here per se,” Marjorie explained as we walked. “It’s that some of these guys are heads of the kinds of organizations that actually might try to break them out from the outside.”

“What’s Kaczynski like as a prisoner?” I said.

“Tidy cell. Nice rapport with staff. Reads a lot. Figures, his being a genius and all. Never caused any kind of trouble. Quiet as a church mouse, really. He’s... different. You’ll see.”

We came down some steps into another concrete corridor with a lower ceiling and a frosted, probably bulletproof, Plexiglas door at the far end. One of the four guards slipped a long tubelike key into a metal box beside the door as Marjorie Greene spoke into her radio. A moment later, there was an electric buzz and the crack of a lock snapping open.

I took a deep breath as the guard opened the door.

And then I was standing there looking at the Unabomber in the flesh.

He didn’t look like the famous crazy-mountain-man picture of him taken when he was arrested. He was clean-shaven and just looked sort of oldish, with age spots on his forehead and skin drooping off the sharp bones of his face. You wouldn’t know who he was — just some sickly-looking man in a baggy orange jumpsuit.

It was actually bordering on ridiculous that this scarecrow of a man, who looked as threatening as a kitten, was cuffed to a concrete desk behind a set of thick steel bars that divided the room.

“Thank you for coming,” he said, smiling weakly, as one of the guards slammed the door closed and locked us in. “I didn’t think you’d take me up on my offer. I’m surprised, not to mention hopeful.”

“I’m agent Parker. This is Detective Bennett. We don’t have a lot of time here, so why don’t we get to it?” Emily said, clicking her phone to record the conversation as we sat in the two folding chairs in front of the bars. “Why did you want to talk to us today, Mr. Kaczynski?”

He looked at us with his lips pursed for a second, like he was mulling something over.

“They’re going to destroy New York City — you know that, right?” he finally said. “That’s going to be next. The next step. The entire city will be destroyed.”

Emily and I exchanged a glance.

“Um, how do you know that?” I said. “Do you know the people who are doing this?”

“It isn’t people,” Kaczynski said. “There is one person behind this. One genius, and he’s good. And he’s toying with you. Punishing you. Unless you get a bead on this person in the next few days, I would recommend evacuating New York City. Because the loss of life will be like nothing ever seen.”

We stared at him. What was disturbing was the dead certainty in his tone. He seemed incredibly sure of what he was saying.

“You didn’t answer our question. Do you know these people?” Emily repeated.

“No. I don’t know them personally, of course,” Kaczynski said, “but I know what they’re like. I used to be this person. Technically gifted, highly intelligent, dedicated, and very, very angry. You should be looking for someone like me. Someone who knows advanced math and computer science, maybe a chess master or a think-tank guy. Whoever it is, he is highly analytical and lives alone, most likely in a messy place. Look for a hoarder, probably someone on the autistic spectrum, a man who lives exclusively inside the expansive confines of his own head.”

“What do you think will happen to the city?”

“Something huge and unexpected — something biological, perhaps. Or who knows? Even something to do with nanotechnology. Schopenhauer said that a smart man can hit a target that others can’t reach, but a genius can hit a target that others can’t see.

“I think you’re up against a genius here, unfortunately. God help all of us if this guy knows nanotech. He could come up with an artificial virus that destroys the world’s vegetation or oxygen or water supply. You really have to catch this guy!”

“Why do you think total destruction will be next?” I asked.

“Because it’s the next logical step,” Kaczynski continued. “The last and final upping of the ante. The perpetrator hasn’t asked for money, has he? He hasn’t claimed credit for some cause. That’s because the man behind this doesn’t have any ulterior motive. He just wants to destroy New York City — or who knows? All of humanity, maybe.”

“Why do you care about all this, Mr. Kaczynski?” I said. “I mean, three people were killed and many others maimed, and the entire country was terrorized by your campaign. You even tried to blow up an airliner. I’d think if anything you’d be rooting for the destruction of New York City.”

He took a deep breath and looked down at the floor. His bony fingers began to drum loudly on the concrete desk.

“How many times do I have to explain this? In the beginning, all I wanted to do was to live freely by myself in Montana. I didn’t want a damn thing from anyone. Just to be left alone. But one day I went for a hike, and I saw that industrial society would never leave me alone. I’ll admit I was angry and motivated by revenge against the system. But quite quickly, I began to see my bombing campaign as a way to wake people up to the existential threat posed by technology, which I detailed in my Times article.

“The fact that someone is now blowing up New York with advanced technology is the very outcome I was trying to warn everyone about. Your bomber wants to destroy New York City and maybe the world. I never wanted that! Don’t you see? I wanted to stop humanity from killing itself. I wanted to stop things so a guy like the one you’re dealing with here would never have the power to do what he’s doing. My campaign was to see the world saved.”

He was referring to his antitechnology manifesto, which the New York Times and Washington Post had agreed to publish in 1995 in order to stop him from sending mail bombs. I’d read it on the plane, and though it was definitely bonkers in parts, I found it surprisingly well written.

“So you still think technology is going to destroy the world?” Emily said.

“Going to?” he said, wide-eyed. “It’s happening right before our very eyes! How much time do you spend with your smartphone? A lot, I bet. More than you spend with your spouse. Than with your children. Even the guards here. I see them. They’re good men set to keep watch and protect the world from some of the worst criminals on earth, and here they are sneaking little peeks at the screen. It’s here. We’re already dependent on the machines.”