Джозеф Файндер - The Switch

“Isn’t flying faster?”

“I have a problem with flying.”

“Well, I don’t mind the Acela,” Tanner said.

A moment of silence passed while Will turned onto Route 301 heading north to DC. Tanner was looking at something on the right of the road. Then he turned back to him and said, “So how’d you convince them?”

Will smiled. “I speak with the authority of a powerful US senator. The higher-ups listen. They get it. Isn’t that why you called me?”

“Partly.”

“As long as we’re clear.”

“I’m clear. I give you the laptop and we never have to see each other again.” Tanner said it in a not unfriendly way, though.

“You also have agreed not to talk about whose laptop it is and what’s on it. In return I ensure the NSA leaves you alone.”

“Okay. As agreed.”

“From now on you’re protected. But no more passing documents on to reporters. You go back to your life. And don’t look back. Don’t turn into a pillar of salt.”

“Got it. So why are you so desperate to get this laptop back?”

“Desperate? I’m not desperate. This is Washington, man. I can’t let them own me.”

“Own you?”

But Will just shook his head. Because I don’t want the NSA to make Senator Robbins their bitch; that’s why. Because that’s how the game is played here. Once they own us, the NSA will basically be able to ram through Congress whatever program they want . Senator Robbins was the most powerful, most respected member of the committee. Of course they’d want to own her.

He could feel his throat start to pulse. “So let me ask you something,” he said. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why didn’t you tell them how we know each other?”

A long silence passed, and Will began to worry about what Tanner might say.

“Because I think we have a common interest,” Tanner said. “You don’t want the NSA to get the laptop, and I want to stay alive. And out of prison.”

Will nodded.

“I knew if I told them everything I’d never get out of that damned prison,” Tanner said.

He looked like he meant it.

“So did you look at the documents?” Will asked.

“Yes.”

“You read them?”

Tanner nodded.

“Understand now you’ve picked up a hornet’s nest?”

“Yes,” Tanner said.

“You understand, I hope, that if you leak any information regarding CHRYSALIS, you’ll be arrested. That’s not a threat. That’s just— That’s what would happen, and you should know it.”

“Is this a program that’s already in existence? Or is it... being debated?”

Will hesitated, looked like he was about to say something, then shook his head.

“You don’t know, but you won’t tell me?”

Will didn’t respond.

“Holy shit,” Tanner said.

The train ride to Boston took six hours and forty minutes. The two men sat across from each other, a table between them.

Will Abbott spent most of the first hour busily tapping away at a laptop and complaining about the agonizingly slow Wi-Fi, drinking Amtrak coffee, eating mini-pretzels, and talking on his cell phone. At one point he seemed to be talking to his wife, about a baby. Abbott’s wife was apparently upset that he wasn’t coming home tonight.

Tanner, who missed having an iPhone, used one of his new disposable phones to check in first with Sarah, and then with Lucy at the office. When he’d finished, he sat and watched the scenery race past. And he thought.

He was sitting across from a man who’d tried to have him killed.

It was sort of like enemy spies being traded on the Glienicke Bridge, the Bridge of Spies, in Berlin. It had that weight. A kind of mutual wariness. He was sitting close enough to smell the man’s Drakkar Noir. Very high school.

Will Abbott was a balding man around Tanner’s age who looked as if he spent all of his time hunched over a computer, like so many other people these days. But at the same time there was something about him, a red thread of desperation, that could make him a dangerous adversary.

He thought about what Abbott had said.

So how’d you convince them? Tanner had asked.

I speak with the authority of a powerful US senator. The higher-ups listen ...

“So I’m getting some pressure to release you,” Earle had said to him. “From your friend on Capitol Hill.”

“Pressure?”

Earle smiled. Deep vertical gullies creased his cheeks. “We’re going to make a deal, you and me.”

“What kind of a deal?” Tanner had said.

“I believe William Abbott is the owner of the laptop you accidentally grabbed. That’s why he’s calling in his chips.”

“Just to be clear, I didn’t say whose laptop I have.”

“No, you didn’t have to. But that’s fine. I’m letting you go. And here’s what you’re going to do. If you want your troubles to go away permanently, anyway. You’re going to hand the laptop back to its rightful owner. And if we’re able to grab him with the laptop, why, then, you and me, we’re good. Vaya con Dios. ”

It was strange: Tanner’s instincts told him to trust this guy Earle. Even though he’d had him abducted, had threatened him — at the same time, he’d never offered false assurances or fake comfort. He was basically a straight shooter.

“Deal,” Tanner had said.

Earle offered his hand, and the two men shook.

Finally, Tanner had thought, a way out.

After they’d been in the train for an hour, Abbott put down his phone, and the two started to talk. Tanner was too social a man to let the entire journey pass in silence. He said, “So you have a baby? I couldn’t help but overhear.”

“Uh, yeah. Eight weeks.”

“Tough gig, being chief of staff to a senator and having a newborn.”

“It is.”

Tanner kept mulling over Abbott’s cryptic words.

This is Washington, man. I can’t let them own me.

No wonder Abbott was so desperate.

“Boy or girl?” Tanner asked.

In the late afternoon, the train pulled into Back Bay station in Boston. The two men got off. The station stank of diesel. The platform was crowded with people who were just getting back to Boston from meetings in New York or maybe Washington. Like a herd of cattle, they all migrated in close pack formation toward the exit doors, the escalator up to the station’s main level, and then the inevitable Darwinian struggle to hail a cab outside on Dartmouth Street, where there seemed to be no cab stand, just the occasional passing taxi.

Tanner wanted to go home and collapse and be done with the insanity of the last two weeks. But he had just one more stop to make.

After five minutes of trying to flag down a cab, Tanner gave up. He turned to Abbott, pointing down the street toward the South End. “Just a couple of blocks that way and then to the left.”

They set off for Tremont Street, Tanner with his dirt-flecked knapsack and Abbott with his briefcase. They walked in silence. That spot on his lower back, the wound that had been bandaged, was throbbing again. It was probably infected. He’d have to take care of it when he had a little time.

In about ten minutes they’d reached the great granite-and-glass insurance company skyscraper that had the SportsClub Boston occupying the northwest corner of its street level with its familiar blue-and-red logo. On the way in Tanner glanced over at the fruit stand, saw Ganesh, and exchanged greetings.

He pulled open a glass door for Will Abbott and followed him into the gym. At the front desk, where members had to swipe their bar-coded card or key fob to gain entry, Will said, “I’m going in with you. Swipe me in as your guest.”