Jonathan Franzen - Purity

Out in the parking lot, under a roasting sun, he called his former girlfriend Claudia, in whose family’s beach house the Sunlight Project was currently conducting operations. The family’s patience with being denied access to their own vacation place, and with being billed for the Project’s expenses, was wearing perilously thin, but Claudia’s loyalty was still solid and cost him nothing but submission to her teasing. It was only midnight in Berlin. She was at a Spree-side club when he reached her and directed her to cover the photographer’s medical expenses. “I’ll text you the number,” he said.

Claudia laughed. “Do you want me to hop on a plane and bring you a latte while I’m at it?”

“Low-fat milk, half caffeinated.”

“It wasn’t like I was sitting down to dinner with my friends or something.”

Andreas knew very well that the only thing that could make her shine brighter in her friends’ eyes than taking a midnight call from him was leaving the club to do important business for him. They knew she’d been his girl for six months, back in the middle of the sweet decade that now was over, the decade when fame was all good and no bad. He’d received interesting sex from Claudia, along with other considerations worth at least two hundred thousand euros, and yet she was the one who felt more grateful, because he was the famous outlaw hero. How sweet it all had been.

The photographer, whose name was Dan Tierney, emerged from the clinic an hour later. His shaved head made him seem older than he probably was. The bandages on his arm and leg didn’t look too serious. “Somebody in Berlin seems to have taken care of my bill,” he said.

“A friend of mine,” Andreas said. “How are you feeling?”

“The benchmark for me is getting stung on the eyelid by a scorpion. I’m maybe at four out of ten on that scale.”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“No. I’m going back to my hotel room and taking a Percocet.”

“Rum goes well with Percocet.”

“So you’re my friend now? I wonder where you were when Insane Person was pointing a gun at me.”

“Hiding behind a sport-utility vehicle.”

“Rain check on the rum drink. Sorry.”

“Do you mind if I ask who you work for?”

Tierney limped toward his minivan. “It varies. The Times is doing another Milliken story. The macaw thing, the local police. Tech world’s biggest creepizoid, et cetera. It’s hard to see how my image of him pointing a gun at me changes anyone’s opinion.”

“I don’t suppose I can persuade you to delete the images of me and not tell anyone you saw me at his place.”

“Why would I do that?”

“To help the Sunlight Project.”

Tierney laughed. “You want me not to shed sunlight on your being pals with Insane Person. Is this irony, hypocrisy, or a contradiction? I’m never sure which term is appropriate.”

“Call it all three if you want,” Andreas said.

“Chutzpah. That’s a fourth term.”

“The thing is, I’m not Tad’s pal. You’d be shedding false light.”

“Really. I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

“The Internet is radiant with it.”

“I’m surprised to hear you say that.” Tierney unlocked his vehicle and got in. “Or half surprised. It’s not that I don’t like what you do. Your batting average is pretty good in terms of going after the right people. But I have to admit I always sort of figured you for an asshole.”

Hearing this, the Killer stirred again in Andreas. If Tierney had figured him for an asshole, it was likely that many other people had, too. He felt a sudden strong anxious need to get to a computer and find out who they were and what exactly they were saying.

“I have nothing to offer you,” he said to Tierney, “except the truth. Can I buy you a drink and tell you the truth?”

It was his best line, the line he’d used over and over in the past decade. He used it even when he didn’t have to, because even when a woman had already signaled availability he loved to see the effect the line had. Everybody wanted to hear the truth from him. He watched Tierney think it over.

“I admit you’re not a man I ever expected to meet in person,” Tierney said. “There’s a bar at my hotel.”

At the bar, Andreas began with his boilerplate TSP speech, the list of governments he’d embarrassed and the longer list of corporations and power-abusing individuals. He hurried through the latter because Tierney seemed impatient. “So the truth has two parts,” he said. “The first is that the Project lives or dies on the public’s perception of me personally. The reason we’re still thriving and WikiLeaks is going under is that people think Assange is an autistic megalomaniac sex creep. His tech capabilities haven’t changed. What’s changed is that people with dirt won’t go to someone dirty. People who expose dirt do it because they’re hungering for clean. If you don’t help me out, we’re in danger of going the way of WikiLeaks.”

“Oh, come on,” Tierney said. “It’s one picture of two Internet titans inside a gated compound. Unless you’re telling me this is just the tip of an iceberg—”

“That’s the second part of the truth. This is where you really have to believe me. There is no iceberg. I lead a clean life. I was wild in my twenties, but I was living in a sick country and I was young. Given the level of scrutiny I’ve been under since then, do you think that if anyone had any dirt on me it wouldn’t be all over the Internet?”

“I think if someone did, your hackers would be especially good at getting it buried.”

“Seriously?”

“OK, so you’re clean. Whatever. It only proves my point. One photograph is not a big deal.”

“My being seen with Milliken is a disaster for the Project. It’s like having one red sock in a load of white laundry. One red sock, and nothing is ever white again.”

Tierney shifted in his chair and grimaced. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this. But you are one strange dude. Who cares if your sheets are a little pink? Everybody’s sheets are a little pink. People still go to Hugh Grant movies. People like Bill Clinton more than ever.”

“Their business isn’t being clean. Mine is.”

“What were you doing at Milliken’s anyway?”

“I was begging for money.”

“Then I really don’t see how you have anyone but yourself to blame for this.”

“You’re right, I don’t. I was desperate and I had shit luck. You have total power over me.”

“Is this the point where you offer me money?”

“If I had money, I wouldn’t have been at Milliken’s. And I’m less hypocritical than you think. I wouldn’t offer money even if I had it. That would be a true betrayal of Project principles.”

Tierney shook his head as if confounded by Andreas’s strangeness. “I can probably get a couple thousand dollars for a picture of you two. I was also attacked by Rottweilers.”

“If it’s a matter of simple compensation, not hush money, my friend in Berlin can pay you a fair market rate.”

“Nice friend.”

“She believes in the Project.”

“No matter what you say, you want me to not do to you the thing you do to other people.”

“That’s the truth.”

“So you are an asshole.”

“Sure. But I’m not Tad Milliken. I own nothing. I live out of a suitcase. Repressive governments hate me. There are only about ten countries in the world I can safely travel to.”

This sounded good, came out well, and Tierney sighed. “Get me five thousand dollars,” he said. “I’d be suing your pal Tad if I thought I could win a lawsuit in Belize. I’m still going to report him to the police. They’ll ask who else was there. Do you want me to lie?”