Джозеф Файндер - The Switch

He checked his regular e-mail and found a few messages he could deal with — “Got it” and “OK.” He looked back at the ProtonMail account, and still nothing. But everything took a while in the dark web, encrypting and decrypting and so on, and the Problem Solver probably didn’t live on his e-mail the way Will did.

There was a knock on his door. “Come on in,” Will said. It was his legislative director, Samantha, with a budget requisition. Senator Robbins’s default answer on budget requests was usually no. She was, as she liked to say on the campaign trail, “tightfisted with the people’s money.”

“What’s up?” he said, and he tried to sound interested.

Later he went through the whole ritual again, opening the Tor browser, signing in to ProtonMail... decrypting... and there was still nothing new there.

He had two phone numbers for the Problem Solver. The first was the one Senator Sullivan had scrawled on a napkin. But the Problem Solver had told him never to use it. The second was the number on Mumble.com. The Problem Solver had never told him not to use that number.

So he signed into Mumble.com, and twenty seconds later he clicked on the phone number and he waited for that robot voice.

And waited.

And there was no answer. That left the number the Problem Solver had told him never to call. The number on the napkin. He pulled out the cheapo burner phone and looked at it for a moment. What would happen if he called it? He’d risk angering the high-tech hit man known as the Problem Solver? So what, at this point?

He bit his tongue and thought about it another moment, and then his desk phone rang.

He picked it up.

“This Abbott?” a man’s voice said.

“It is.”

“It’s Owen Sullivan.”

“Oh, Senator. Nice to hear from you.”

“Listen to me,” the senator said angrily. “When I was a kid I had a G.I. Joe I was totally obsessed with, and one day I lent it to a classmate. Know what happened?”

“Uh, no.”

“The kid twisted its head off. And that was the last time I ever let anyone borrow an action figure.”

“Okay...?”

“What the hell did you do, Abbott? No — don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. Just don’t ever ask me for any more favors, you get it?”

There was a click, and the line went dead.

Will sat there for a moment, his heart hammering. What was Senator Sullivan so furious about? A G.I. Joe whose head was twisted off? The point being...?

Will had a bad feeling. Something unfortunate had happened.

He Googled “Boston police blotter” and pulled up the Boston Police Department’s public website. This was much fancier than the old “police blotters” in newspapers that just listed local crimes. There were headlines and photos. The lead story concerned a drug arrest, a suspect in custody after a search warrant led to the recovery of large quantities of ammunition, drugs, and cash in Mattapan. He scrolled down through the photos of hundred-dollar-bills and guns and bullets and Ziploc bags of some white substance. Next item was a statement from the police commissioner regarding community policing. Then an item about body-worn cameras.

Then there was a small item headlined DEATH INVESTIGATION IN THE DISTRICT D-14 AREA OF BRIGHTON.

At about 4:05 AM, officers assigned to District D-14 responded to a call for a person injured in the area of Mayfield

Street in Brighton. On arrival, officers located a male victim suffering from injuries apparently sustained in a motor vehicle accident. The victim was pronounced deceased. The victim has since been identified as Dennis Hurley, 52, of Charlestown.

The Boston Police Department is actively reviewing the facts and circumstances surrounding this incident. Anyone with information is asked to call the Homicide Unit at (617) 343-4470.

Charlestown.

He swallowed. His throat was parched. He entered “Dennis Hurley” and “Charlestown MA” into Google, and he pulled up an article.

POLICE INVESTIGATING DEATH OF CHARLESTOWN MAN, the headline said.

There was a photograph of an odd-looking bald man, vacant blue-gray eyes spaced widely apart, sunken cheeks, tattoos visible on his neck.

Boston area police are investigating the motor-vehicle-related death of a Charlestown man well known to law enforcement. Dennis Hurley, 52, of Charlestown, was a person of interest in connection with at least a dozen homicides. A veteran of the US Marine Corps, dishonorably discharged, Hurley was believed to be associated with the Charlestown Mob. In 2014, Hurley was arrested and charged with cruelty to animals in a particularly gruesome incident in which he sprayed lighter fluid on a neighbor’s dog and set it afire.

Will read the article over twice. Hurley had to be the Problem Solver. A bad guy from Charlestown with a dishonorable discharge, an ex-Marine associated with the mob: this was the guy. He had a sinking feeling.

Dead. How could that be?

Holy shit.

Who the hell is Michael Tanner?

Will was suffused with dread, almost paralyzed with it. He kept staring at the text on the screen, his stomach queasy and tight and roiling with acid.

Michael Tanner — who else could it be? — had killed a man named Dennis Hurley, the thug known as the Problem Solver. And not just a thug, but a hard man, a tough guy, a Marine. How was it possible that Tanner had killed him?

He went through it all again in his mind, as if he were replaying the videotape.

First, Tanner had flatly denied that he had the senator’s laptop, and then he’d killed the man Will had hired to retrieve it.

Which meant Tanner was not who he appeared to be, not just some businessman, some entrepreneur.

And that in turn raised the terrible question: Was it possible that Tanner had deliberately taken the laptop — that the switch was in fact no accident?

Will’s head swam, trying to make sense of all the countervailing facts. No, it just didn’t seem possible. Whoever Tanner was really, there was no way he could have deliberately ended up in line right behind the senator at the Los Angeles airport, or right in front of her... That theory just required too many coincidences. It strained credibility.

But what if... What if Tanner had come to realize that he’d ended up with the laptop belonging to a US senator, that on it were some of the nation’s — the world’s — most precious, most explosive secrets, and what if he had done something with it ?

Say he’d recognized its value and he’d sold it to someone, to a ring. To any of a number of willing buyers. Spies from China or Russia or somewhere else, maybe even ISIS or al-Qaeda. Terrorists.

That would explain why all of his attempts, and the Russian’s, had failed. He was in over his head.

And as much as he dreaded it, he had to tell the boss.

The senator was wearing her navy-blue suit, which concerned Will. The somber blue outfit meant she was in one of her all-business, no-breaks, work-late-hours moods. It meant she was grouchy, impatient, peevish. She would not welcome a private talk, especially one that threatened to derail everything in her carefully ordered life.

Will had to be careful in what he told her. She knew nothing about the Problem Solver, and that was how it had to stay. She knew nothing about his efforts to retrieve the laptop. She had to be kept innocent of the operational details.

Senator Susan Robbins gave him the death-ray stare over her reading glasses, and Will felt his guts churning. “I’m not sure I understand,” she said, her voice quiet.

“I think there’s more going on than we thought originally. Without going into details, we took some serious measures, and we keep coming up with nothing.”