Джозеф Файндер - The Switch

Cookies. She was talking, for some reason, about cookies.

He shone a path down a short hallway to a giant industrial kitchen with high ceilings. The inevitable Sub-Zero fridge and freezer, the obligatory Wolf range, a half-mile of white granite counter. The place was big and well equipped enough to service a bustling restaurant.

There, on a stretch of granite counter on his right, was a large white egg-shaped canister on a low metal stand. On the front of the egg it said COOKIES.

He lifted the lid. Inside was another white envelope. This one was fat. It was scotch-taped closed. He tore open the flap and saw a thick bundle of bank notes.

“Jesus.”

He counted out the hundreds and fifties and twenties. Three thousand five hundred dollars.

“Sarah,” he said aloud, chidingly, to no one. She must have taken out her own money, from her own, neglected account, and there sure wasn’t much. This had to be most of what she had. She shouldn’t have done it.

Still, he was relieved she had. He needed the money.

Tanner awoke early to make sure he wasn’t surprised by another Realtor. Since the house was temporarily off the market, he didn’t need to be quite as fastidious as at the last house. He bathed in an amazing glass-walled shower that produced steam and jetted water at him from all around.

He dressed in the new clothes and made a mental note to find a Walmart and buy some inexpensive ones. The shower had woken him up, but he still needed coffee, and badly. Like a lot of people, Tanner was a caffeine addict. Being in the business, he was used to having coffee throughout the day, an occupational hazard.

The walls of the front of the house were glass. He found the right button to electrically lower the blinds to provide some privacy. He peered outside through the slats, spent a good ten minutes that way, looking for watchers. Saw nothing, no one walking by. It was early, still dark out.

He left the house, locked it up and the padlock as well, and got into the stolen Mazda. Then there was another consideration: What happened when the car was reported missing? How long would it take for the police to do something about it? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to be pulled over and asked for license and registration. Yet he couldn’t imagine its owner was paying very close attention, since it had been left overnight behind a building. It wasn’t as if he’d stolen someone’s Ferrari. It was a cruddy old Mazda.

Connecting the wires to start the car took a matter of seconds. He wanted to get out of town, find another library — an analog solution to a digital problem — and figure out his next move. And call Tanner Roast to check in. Yesterday’s research had told him that you could buy bus tickets with cash, no ID. Traveling by bus was one way to stay under the radar, one of the few ways left. But he’d decided that today he would buy a used car with some of Sarah’s money, and ditch the stolen one.

In Framingham he found a diner that looked good. It was nothing like the one in Southie where he and Lanny sometimes used to meet. Didn’t have that abandoned-railroad-car look. But it already had customers, and it was before six.

It was a cash-only place, which was fine with him, because he now had lots of it. He sat at the counter. The waitress poured coffee without asking, as if she knew. It was not bad. A little watery, but freshly brewed, good beans. Everything at this diner was supersized. Pancakes were the size of dinner plates. Hash browns were heaped up high. Even the coffee mugs were unusually large.

He thought of Lanny — he couldn’t help it — and felt guilty. His mistake, picking up the wrong computer, had led directly to Lanny’s death. A good person had lost his life.

There was no way to undo what he’d done.

The counter filled up with customers. He had more coffee, ate eggs and bacon and buttered toast, with pancakes on the side. Nothing healthy. He was risking his life, being out here, on the run. Watching what he ate seemed pointless.

The guy at the counter next to him smiled, watching Tanner eat ravenously. “Good stuff, right?” the guy said.

Tanner smiled.

“Coffee’s okay too, huh?”

“Yep, it is.”

“But it doesn’t compare to yours,” the guy said.

Tanner felt jolted by a shock of electricity.

They’ve found me.

But just as quickly, he thought: Don’t freak out, maybe the guy recognizes me from a trade show, a sales call, something like that.

The man on his left was soft and middle-aged, with a round belly under a loudly patterned, acid-trippy red-and-black-and-green sweater. He wore steel-rimmed aviator glasses, had deeply inset eyes like raisins and a bristly gray mustache. He did not look like one of the members of the NSA team he’d filmed in the woods. He was professorial, physically unprepossessing.

“Do I know you?” Tanner asked.

“Seattle, wasn’t it? The coffee expo?”

Tanner stared. He slowly shook his head. “I wasn’t there.”

“Too much of a coincidence?” The man shrugged. “When something seems that way, it usually is.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you’re a man who needs help,” the man said quietly, “and I’m offering mine.”

“What?” He felt the adrenaline start to course into his bloodstream.

“You’re a hunted man, Mr. Tanner. But you need to know I’m not one of the hunters. I’m your friend. I’m an admirer.”

Tanner sat back. “Who are you?”

“Call me Gregory.” The man spoke with a barely detectable accent of some unidentifiable kind. He flattened his A ’s too much, a foreigner trying hard to mimic an American accent.

“But that’s not actually your name.”

“Close enough.”

What was the man’s real name? Gregorio, Grigor, Řehoř...? Where was he from? His American accent was extremely good. But he wasn’t American; of that much Tanner was sure.

“Mr. Tanner, you’re a man who, through no fault of his own, has made a lot of enemies. Now they’re trying to run you off the road. But I look at you and I see someone who’s incredibly brave. Someone who’s been given an extremely rare opportunity to change the world. And I want to help.”

The waitress refilled Gregory’s coffee mug and then Tanner’s, moving away quickly, discreetly. She could see the men were talking about something heavy.

“Help how?”

“You know, there’s a great tradition. Men of conscience who expose terrible abuses. Like it or not, you’ve been thrust by history into an extraordinary position.”

“To do what ?”

“All you need to do is to share your documents with my people. They’ll know what to do with it. You know the saying, ‘Sunlight is the best disinfectant,’ yes?”

“And who are ‘your people’?”

“My associates, I should say. An organization devoted to that disinfecting sunlight. We believe that secrets, especially government secrets, must be disclosed whenever it’s within our power.”

“You mean like WikiLeaks?”

He nodded, smiled. “I work with them, yes.”

“You work ‘with’ them?”

“But let’s not get caught up with prepositions. With, from, of; the filaments can get pretty tangled. The bottom line is this: we want to help you. What I want you to know is, there are people who are rooting for you. People who care about openness and transparency.”

“And then what happens to me? Do I get killed?”

Gregory shook his head slowly, soulfully. “This is what I’m here to tell you. When it comes to threats on your life, we have some powerful assets. We can give you as much protection as you need — and I’m talking about the full resources of a rather powerful state.”