Sam Bourne - The Chosen One

She cracked open the new computer, waited for all the software to load up and then Googled the name Robert Jackson. She found an academic in Kansas and a councilman in Palo Alto, but no sign of the CIA agent. At least that meant no one else, including the legions of anonymous sleuths of the internet, was likely to have discovered his real identity – no one, that is, except the people who had driven her off the road and now had her notebook.

Next she tried Vic Forbes, bringing up reams of stories from the world’s press, including a long feature on Newsweek’s website: The short life and strange death of Vic Forbes – the anatomy of an attempt to shakedown the President.

She scanned the piece at a ferocious rate, impatient to see if the magazine had discovered that Forbes had also made a personal attempt to blackmail Stephen Baker. It had not: it was using ‘shakedown’ less than literally. Most of the article was speculation, wondering if Forbes had backers among Baker’s enemies, noting that in his Tuesday tour of the network studios Forbes had run into, and then had an apparently ‘intense and engaged’ conversation with Matt Nylind, impresario of the legendary Thursday Session, in which DC’s conservatives wargamed the week ahead. That was among a handful of interesting nuggets the piece had turned up but there was no hint of the material she had discovered. Most described him only as a New Orleans-based researcher.

She went back to the search pages, seeing a long string of video results. Clips of Forbes’s multiple TV interviews, alongside a couple of news reports on his death. She clicked on the first available interview, conducted the day he had been ‘unmasked’ as the source of MSNBC’s bombshell stories on Baker.

The sound was tinny on her machine and the video slow, but Maggie listened intently to every word.

‘Like I say, I have no hidden agenda. My only interest is transparency. The American people should know everything about the man who now rules them. They have that right.’

Was there some coded message Forbes was conveying, if only she was smart enough to hear it? Was she meant to note down the first letter of each sentence? Or perhaps the last? And of all the interviews he’d given, which was the crucial one?

A wave of aching tiredness fell over her. She slowly lay down on the bed, feeling the pain in her ribs afresh. It felt good, though, to rest her head on the pillow and close her eyes.

Hide in plain sight.

The whole point of a blanket, if she had understood Uri correctly, was that the information it contained could be retrieved easily – by others – after one’s death. If it were too deeply hidden, it would serve as no kind of deterrent. What had been buried would simply remain hidden.

Forbes had to be sure his information would break cover. And that meant there had to be some kind of timing mechanism, like a safety deposit box programmed to pop open a certain number of hours or days after his death.

Now her mind was running fast. Such a device would work only if it somehow knew its owner had died. How could that happen?

It could be a parcel, held with a lawyer, who would know to release it in the event of his client’s death. But that didn’t seem likely. Everything Forbes had done, he had done alone: would he have entrusted such a valuable secret, such a powerful secret, to a fellow human being?

Besides, what had been the motif of his assault on President Baker? Technology. He had hacked into Katie Baker’s Facebook account, sending messages via a dumb terminal. He had even contrived to hack into MSNBC’s system, using a fake online identity.

What had the school principal said about young Jackson? He was what you would call nowadays a geek , fascinated by computers at a time when everyone else thought the limits of the virtual universe were marked by a game of Space Invaders.

Of course Forbes would have hidden his blanket online. And there the timing mechanism would be simple, even Maggie could see that. You’d just create some site that you made sure to visit every day or every week. If, for whatever reason, you didn’t log in, the site would know. A technical wiz like Forbes would surely have no problem programming a site to do something crazy after it had been left untouched for a specified amount of time, like emailing his blanket out to those who would know exactly what it meant and what to do with it – a list of addresses Forbes had keyed in before his death, as his posthumous insurance policy.

Maggie felt a surge of energy run through her. She was sure she was right. But one stubborn question remained.

Where the hell was it?

Muttering the words ‘hide in plain sight, hide in plain sight’ to herself, she typed in the most obvious place she could think of.

Vicforbes.com

Nothing. Nothing for.net or.org either. Same with victorforbes and robertjackson, robertandrewjackson, andrewjackson and bobjackson.

How the hell was she meant to crack this? It was just her and a laptop in this stinking bloody motel room. What was she meant to do?

And then it came. The one person who would know the answer.

Aberdeen, Washington, Saturday March 25, 16.41 PST

She looked at the clock. The eight-hour time difference meant it was already past midnight in Dublin. She hesitated.

In the old days, she’d have happily called her sister Liz at three in the morning: she would either have just come in or been about to go out. But the arrival of her baby son Calum three years ago had put Liz’s clubbing days behind her. The drug she craved now – and which she would go to extraordinary lengths to score – was sleep. Calling her at this hour of the morning was what you’d call a high-risk operation.

She dialled the number from memory.

‘Liz? It’s Maggie.’

‘Uggh?’

Maggie whispered, as if she were right there at her sister’s bedside. ‘It’s me.’

‘Maggie? It’s the middle of the night.’

‘I know. I’m really sorry-’

‘It’s the middle of the fucking night , Maggie. Where are you? Has something happened?’

‘I’m in Washington. But not that Washington. It’s a long story.’

Maggie could hear a rustle, the sound, she guessed, of Liz sitting up in bed.

‘Are you drunk? You sound like you’ve got your head in a bucket.’ Book-it . The sheer strength of her sister’s accent made Maggie miss home immediately and intensely.

‘No, not drunk. I was in an accident.’

Instantly, Liz’s tone changed: suddenly she was a whirlwind of sisterly concern, offering help, insisting that she take the next plane, wanting to know what the doctors had said, marvelling at the fact – as Maggie had recounted it – that they had discharged her so quickly. It was simultaneously touching and stressful.

‘I don’t need anything, Liz, I promise. Nothing like that.’

‘Do you swear, Maggie? Because, seriously, I can get to wherever you are and be with you by tomorrow.’

‘Actually there are two things you can do for me.’

‘Say it.’

‘Don’t breathe a fookin’ word to our ma.’ She was hamming up the Irish to lessen the gravity of the request, the very act of which only confirmed the gravity of the request. ‘I mean it. She’ll only freak out and I don’t want her to know a thing. OK?’

‘OK. What’s the other thing?’

‘Liz!’

‘I promise.’

‘Good. The other thing is professional. I need your brainpower.’

Liz croaked out a laugh. ‘You mean you’re not calling for a recipe for courgette mash. It’s nice that someone remembers the real me.’

‘Too many coffee mornings?’

‘And playdates! There are only so many things you can say about pull-up nappies.’