David Shafer - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Mark looked at the screen.

He felt he was taking in an enormous breath…and then it was over. He was just sitting at a table again. Wait, again? Wow. It could have been a night and a day, but all the evidence — everyone else in exactly the same place — indicated that it had been about a second. Like that hallway craze back in junior high where you hyperventilated and then got hit hard in the chest and fainted. He tried a check-in: he was in some Cascadian Brigadoon with a band of hackers and spies. He still wanted another drink and a hot shower; he still thought that command economies were a bad idea. Excellent, no pinwheels.

Constance read out to him his number. Even as she read it to him he was anticipating it. There were three- and four-digit sequences inside it that made images for him that were components of the larger image that the whole number made. He knew his number forward and backward; knew it like he knew his own name.

“Can I have a drink?”

Trip Hazards poured some whiskey in a jam jar for him.

“So that’s it?” he said to Constance and Roman. “I’m a Diarist now?”

“With all the rights and responsibilities thereof,” said Roman.

“The benefit and the burden both,” said Constance.

He thought he was going to say, I get to choose a stupid code name now, but in the event, he left out the stupid part, because he already knew what he wanted to be called. He wanted to be called Dixon Ticonderoga.

Roman started to explain to Mark exactly what Dear Diary wanted him to do. The eye test had deffo shifted something in him, but he couldn’t yet say what, and he didn’t know how long the effect might last. Mark had had years of practice studying drug reactions through his body and mind, so that’s what he did in this case. He was feeling articulate and rapid-fire-y, as if under the influence of a stimulant. But there was none of that fake-bulletproof, ignore-everyone-else thing that coke does. He was listening and seeing clearly, and not as if through the too-clean windowpane of amphetamines. What it felt like, physically, was like he had access to some new, shared channel. Like he was just putting his hand in a swift cold stream.

They wanted him to mule a pathogen; they wanted Mark to be a disease vector.

“But a computer virus?” he said skeptically. “Is that really going to be enough? I mean, I imagine these guys have pretty good antivirus software.”

“They actually don’t,” said Roman. “What they have is a closed system. There are only six servers, six entry points. Two subterranean, two orbiting, one on an offshore derrick in the South China Sea. The master drive is on Straw’s yacht, Sine Wave . That’s where you come in.”

Wait. “You mean Sine Wave, the two-hundred-eighty-foot Italian sloop with the five decks, carbon fiber sails, surgical theater, and herbarium?” asked Mark.

Constance and Roman nodded. They must have read the same article in Superyachts Monthly . “That’s where your asset said you would find this master drive?” Constance and Roman nodded again. “And the digital pathogen I’m to deliver to there — that wouldn’t happen to have, like, any Dear Diary technology that could perhaps be reverse-engineered?”

Constance stopped him. “You’re wrong, Mark. The asset is ours. She’s been eye-tested. She’s one of Straw’s close counselors. She’s in real danger, by the way, doing what she’s doing.”

She? “Oh, you really do need me,” said Mark, and he tipped a splish of whiskey from the jam jar down his throat. “There are no females close to Straw. Well, a few secretaries and stewardesses; the girl who pushes the sandwich cart around the executive lounge. He generally refers to women as ‘conniving cunts.’ Sounds to me like you got an eye-test cheater sending you the wrong way.”

“No,” said Constance, but Mark could see she was wavering. “Straw has something on that yacht that he considers very valuable. We keep Sine Wave under near-constant surveillance. It’s in the North Sea now. That’s where we’ll need to get you.”

“The valuable thing on Sine Wave is probably Straw’s collection of erotic statuary,” said Mark. “And while you were keeping Sine Wave under near-constant surveillance, was anyone keeping an eye on Sine Wave Two ?”

Constance and Roman and Trip each leaned forward five degrees.

“You want to get these guys, I’ll help you do it,” Mark said. “But I won’t help you walk into a trap.”

It was Constance who asked, after a few seconds, “What’s Sine Wave Two ?”

“A seven-hundred-thousand-ton tanker? Death Star of the high seas? Floating cage for a computer they call the Beast, clamps on to undersea data cables and glugs until it’s engorged with our stuff and then ejaculates solid-state atomic drives into deep ocean trenches? I guess it’s the computer you were just telling me is planning our annihilation. You sure you people were totally unaware of this?”

Neither Roman nor Constance nor Trip had an answer.

“So I’ll get this pathogen of yours onto Sine Wave Two . But I hope Dear Diary has submarines. Because we’ll need to take care of their backup drives, to be safe. Hazards, do we have submarines?”

“A few. We’ll need to make them offensive, though.”

“Well, put some people on that. And reverse direction on that asset of yours. She’s feeding you misinformation and probably providing the Committee with target lists. Forget about Sine Wave . I need to get back to Sine Wave Two. That’s where I’ll upload this pathogen of yours,” said Mark, “the one with the silly name.”

“It’s not a silly name,” said Leila, who had been quiet since Mark had come back in. “My sister named it, and she made it for us. It’s called Prodigium Two: This Time It’s Personal.” Now she showed Mark a Node, his Node. “It’s loaded onto your phone. Just get it close to that computer. It may require some sleight of hand, Mark. You’re good at that.” Then she said, “Where’d Leo go?”

“He was headed toward the barn,” said Mark.

Leila excused herself.

“But listen,” said Mark to the three left. “I fucked up in Portland. At Nike. Apparently, I was on thin ice already, with Pope, at least. He and I don’t get along.”

“Yeah,” said Hazards. “We know. His guys have been on you like stink on shit. They were on you last night at the strip clubs, and then at that lingerie-modeling place on Columbia.”

Lingerie-modeling place on Columbia? Eww, gross. He was disgusting. He was glad Leila hadn’t heard that.

“They still are, actually.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“We doppeled you guys in Radio Cab. And the doppels are still live — two of them, anyway. There are Bluebirds sitting on your hotel and on Leo’s house. Bluebirds never made Lola, so her doppel slipped them again. But there was something else. Very strange. There was someone else following you.”

“Yeah. You,” said Mark.

“No. Someone else else,” said Hazards. “That’s why we had to do the Olympia beneath the Burnside Bridge.”

“It’s gotta be the mailman,” said Roman to Constance and Trip.

“The mailman?” said Mark.

“There’s said to be an uncorrupted U.S. government intelligence agency inside the U.S. Post Office,” said Roman.

“It’s the fucking tooth fairy,” said Constance.

“Constance is a doubter,” said Roman.

“This has happened before, though,” she said. “An allegedly uncorrupted police front or intelligence agency gets near us, sends a signal that they’re after the Committee also, that we have common cause. They pretend to be soliciting our help. In every case, it’s been a ruse. Pope has hollowed out every agency he turns; he takes the best pieces back to the Committee and leaves behind the stationery and all the dim lifers. This mailman guy will turn out to be the same. You watch.”