She cracked open the new computer, waited for all the software to load up and then Googled the name Robert Jackson. She found an academic in Kansas and a councilman in Palo Alto, but no sign of the CIA agent. At least that meant no one else, including the legions of anonymous sleuths of the internet, was likely to have discovered his real identity no one, that is, except the people who had driven her off the road and now had her notebook.
Next she tried Vic Forbes, bringing up reams of stories from the worlds press, including a long feature on Newsweeks website: The short life and strange death of Vic Forbes the anatomy of an attempt to shakedown the President.
She scanned the piece at a ferocious rate, impatient to see if the magazine had discovered that Forbes had also made a personal attempt to blackmail Stephen Baker. It had not: it was using shakedown less than literally. Most of the article was speculation, wondering if Forbes had backers among Bakers enemies, noting that in his Tuesday tour of the network studios Forbes had run into, and then had an apparently intense and engaged conversation with Matt Nylind, impresario of the legendary Thursday Session, in which DCs conservatives wargamed the week ahead. That was among a handful of interesting nuggets the piece had turned up but there was no hint of the material she had discovered. Most described him only as a New Orleans-based researcher.
She went back to the search pages, seeing a long string of video results. Clips of Forbess multiple TV interviews, alongside a couple of news reports on his death. She clicked on the first available interview, conducted the day he had been unmasked as the source of MSNBCs bombshell stories on Baker.
The sound was tinny on her machine and the video slow, but Maggie listened intently to every word.
Like I say, I have no hidden agenda. My only interest is transparency. The American people should know everything about the man who now rules them. They have that right.
Was there some coded message Forbes was conveying, if only she was smart enough to hear it? Was she meant to note down the first letter of each sentence? Or perhaps the last? And of all the interviews hed given, which was the crucial one?
A wave of aching tiredness fell over her. She slowly lay down on the bed, feeling the pain in her ribs afresh. It felt good, though, to rest her head on the pillow and close her eyes.
Hide in plain sight.
The whole point of a blanket, if she had understood Uri correctly, was that the information it contained could be retrieved easily by others after ones death. If it were too deeply hidden, it would serve as no kind of deterrent. What had been buried would simply remain hidden.
Forbes had to be sure his information would break cover. And that meant there had to be some kind of timing mechanism, like a safety deposit box programmed to pop open a certain number of hours or days after his death.
Now her mind was running fast. Such a device would work only if it somehow knew its owner had died. How could that happen?
It could be a parcel, held with a lawyer, who would know to release it in the event of his clients death. But that didnt seem likely. Everything Forbes had done, he had done alone: would he have entrusted such a valuable secret, such a powerful secret, to a fellow human being?
Besides, what had been the motif of his assault on President Baker? Technology. He had hacked into Katie Bakers Facebook account, sending messages via a dumb terminal. He had even contrived to hack into MSNBCs system, using a fake online identity.
What had the school principal said about young Jackson? He was what you would call nowadays a geek, fascinated by computers at a time when everyone else thought the limits of the virtual universe were marked by a game of Space Invaders.
Of course Forbes would have hidden his blanket online. And there the timing mechanism would be simple, even Maggie could see that. Youd just create some site that you made sure to visit every day or every week. If, for whatever reason, you didnt log in, the site would know. A technical wiz like Forbes would surely have no problem programming a site to do something crazy after it had been left untouched for a specified amount of time, like emailing his blanket out to those who would know exactly what it meant and what to do with it a list of addresses Forbes had keyed in before his death, as his posthumous insurance policy.
Maggie felt a surge of energy run through her. She was sure she was right. But one stubborn question remained.
Where the hell was it?
Muttering the words hide in plain sight, hide in plain sight to herself, she typed in the most obvious place she could think of.
Vicforbes.com
Nothing. Nothing for.net or.org either. Same with victorforbes and robertjackson, robertandrewjackson, andrewjackson and bobjackson.
How the hell was she meant to crack this? It was just her and a laptop in this stinking bloody motel room. What was she meant to do?
And then it came. The one person who would know the answer.
42
Aberdeen, Washington, Saturday March 25, 16.41 PST
She looked at the clock. The eight-hour time difference meant it was already past midnight in Dublin. She hesitated.
She looked at the clock. The eight-hour time difference meant it was already past midnight in Dublin. She hesitated.
In the old days, shed have happily called her sister Liz at three in the morning: she would either have just come in or been about to go out. But the arrival of her baby son Calum three years ago had put Lizs clubbing days behind her. The drug she craved now and which she would go to extraordinary lengths to score was sleep. Calling her at this hour of the morning was what youd call a high-risk operation.
She dialled the number from memory.
Liz? Its Maggie.
Uggh?
Maggie whispered, as if she were right there at her sisters bedside. Its me.
Maggie? Its the middle of the night.
I know. Im really sorry-
Its the middle of the fucking night, Maggie. Where are you? Has something happened?
Im in Washington. But not that Washington. Its a long story.
Maggie could hear a rustle, the sound, she guessed, of Liz sitting up in bed.
Are you drunk? You sound like youve got your head in a bucket. Book-it. The sheer strength of her sisters accent made Maggie miss home immediately and intensely.
No, not drunk. I was in an accident.
Instantly, Lizs tone changed: suddenly she was a whirlwind of sisterly concern, offering help, insisting that she take the next plane, wanting to know what the doctors had said, marvelling at the fact as Maggie had recounted it that they had discharged her so quickly. It was simultaneously touching and stressful.
I dont need anything, Liz, I promise. Nothing like that.
Do you swear, Maggie? Because, seriously, I can get to wherever you are and be with you by tomorrow.
Actually there are two things you can do for me.
Say it.
Dont breathe a fookin word to our ma. She was hamming up the Irish to lessen the gravity of the request, the very act of which only confirmed the gravity of the request. I mean it. Shell only freak out and I dont want her to know a thing. OK?
OK. Whats the other thing?
Liz!
I promise.
Good. The other thing is professional. I need your brainpower.
Liz croaked out a laugh. You mean youre not calling for a recipe for courgette mash. Its nice that someone remembers the real me.
Too many coffee mornings?
And playdates! There are only so many things you can say about pull-up nappies.
Poor you.
Though they are great. Pull-ups, I mean.
Liz?
Sorry. Go on.
Maggie explained, tentatively and indirectly, what she was looking for.
What kind of man was he, Maggie? What did he do?
He was retired. But he had been in intelligence. American intelligence.
When?
Eighties and nineties.
There was a pause. Good: Liz was thinking. Then she heard her sister clear her throat, as if fully waking herself up, ready for action. Now. Have we ever had the darkweb conversation?
I dont think so.
OK. When you look something up online, how do you do it?
Google.
And when you do that, you think youre searching the whole internet, right?
Right.
Thats what everyone thinks. But theyre wrong. In fact, youre searching, like, point nought three per cent of the total number of pages on the web.
I dont understand.
You know that thing they always used to say at school, about humans only using ten per cent of our brains? Well, most of us are using just three hundredths of one per cent of the entire web.
So wheres the rest?
Thats what Im talking about: the darkweb. Or the deep web. The places that are hidden. What most people see and use is the tip, but theres this massive iceberg underneath.
And whats in it?
A whole lot of it is junk, websites that have stopped working, addresses that have fallen into disuse, defunct internet companies. You gotta imagine it like this vast underwater landscape, full of old shipwrecks and derelict buildings that have fallen into the sea.
Maggie, lying on the bed in the name of convalescence, made a silent grimace as she shifted position, sending a new ache through her ribs and across her shoulders. She didnt want to break her sisters flow. Liz had been the same as a teenager: she could turn positively lyrical when exalting whatever theme had become her passion.
But its not just old stuff, Mags. Sometimes its legitimate, maybe a database thats blocked to search for copyright reasons, because it contains commercially sensitive information. And sometimes its vile. Like dirty address spaces that get taken over by crime syndicates. The Russians are big on that. They run spam or child porn from these disused sites. The darkweb is not a nice place.
And is there-
Right. I forgot. The other stuff you find kind of lying on the seabed are addresses that were set up right at the beginning, when the internet was just starting, and then abandoned. And you remember who started the internet, right?
The US military.
Yep.
Maggie pulled the covers tight and hugged herself against a sudden chill. And is there any way to probe all this stuff?
I know how you can start.