Maggie listened, taking detailed notes, as Liz gave her a step-by-step guide. She would follow the instructions and they would speak again in the morning, Dublin time. Liz estimated that she had four hours and forty-five minutes sleep left to her before Calum woke up. Every one of those minutes is precious, Maggie. Dont call me before six. Night and good luck.
Maggie hauled herself upright and, with the sheet of paper at her side and the computer on her lap, followed Lizs first instruction and Googled Freenet.
Two clicks later she was at a site that looked like any one of those places you occasionally had to visit to download or update computer software: grey and basic. Once she read the welcome paragraph, however, she got the first inkling that she was about to enter a different realm.
It declared that Freenet was free software allowing people to browse anonymously, to publish freesites that would be accessible only via Freenet and, tellingly, Maggie thought, to chat on forums, without fear of censorship. Liz had warned her that for every free-thinking libertarian or Iranian dissident she might encounter here, there would be half a dozen users drawn to a place where those whose sexual tastes ran to the illegal could gather unimpeded.
She read on: Freenetis decentralized to make it less vulnerable to attack, and if used in darkweb mode, where users only connect to their friends, is very difficult to detect.
Maggie followed the prompts, downloading and installing the Freenet software then answering the questions it asked her. How much security do you need? There was a guide, ranging from NORMAL: I live in a relatively free country to MAXIMUM: I intend to access information that could get me arrested, imprisoned or worse.
Maggie swallowed, then opted for maximum. Even though she was sitting in a motel bed, her back supported by three pillows, she felt as if, at that moment, she had plunged into a pool of deep, dark water, the depth of which could not be fathomed.
She came to an index, much starker and more basic than anything youd find on the regular web. It listed freesites, those that would remain utterly hidden to anyone above the surface.
Before long she had found Arson Around with Auntie, a beginners guide aimed at animal rights activists, teaching them how to firebomb laboratories. Close behind, and no surprise, was the Anarchists Cookbook, the book spoken about in whispers even when Maggie was a student. More of a shock was The Terrorists Handbook: A practical guide to explosives and other things of interest to terrorists.
Maggie rapidly concluded that the darkweb she had just entered was bound to be home to fifty-seven varieties of radical, but also to those charged with hunting them down. Both fringe militants and intelligence agents would jump at the chance to drop into the dodgiest websites without leaving any footprints. She felt as if she had stumbled into a labyrinth that was the natural habitat of both cat and mouse. Everything she knew about Vic Forbes told her he would have felt right at home.
She did a search for Vic Forbes and was rewarded with an instant result. She was taken to a URL that didnt look like any she had seen before. She clicked on it, closing her eyes in a moment of superstitious prayer.
The page took a while to load up, the screen showing nothing more than blank whiteness as the loading data message promised more. And then, three or four seconds later, it was there. Maggie recoiled, astonished by what she saw. Not that it was such an arresting image. Just the mere fact of what it represented. For there, in front of her, was confirmation that Vic Forbes had contemplated and prepared for his own death by hiding his most precious secret in the deepest recesses of the internets underworld.
She looked again at the website address, so simple and so obvious. She had only to think of her own email which, when she was in the White House at least, ended.gov. All she had had to do was type in victorforbes.gov and there it was.
Doubtless, he had been one of those pioneers who had been in on the internet from the start, able to create a personal domain when next to nobody knew what such a thing was. Perhaps he had left it abandoned, lying on the virtual seabed as Liz had said. Maybe he had picked it up just recently, decades later, pressing it into service as his blanket. But here it was, Forbess own personal website. That it was his was unmistakable. The front page consisted of nothing more than a single, full-face photograph of him. Not the Vic Forbes who had been on television in the hours before his death, nor the young, moustached Robert Jackson in the foothills of his career and full of hope, his photo still there on the first page of his CIA dossier. This was Forbes seven or eight years ago, just turned forty: that was Maggies guess.
It was not posed the way the CIA picture was posed with that high-school yearbook gaze into the middle distance and just to the left of the lens. Instead Forbes was staring at the camera, face-on and unsmiling. The visual grammar was that of a passport photo, even a police mugshot. But the way it filled the entire screen made it more sinister, as if Forbes was Big Brother watching Winston Smith through the telescreen. Instantly Maggie knew that Forbes had taken the picture himself. Everything about this portrait, starting with the eyes, screamed solitude.
She clicked on it, expecting it to link her through to other pages, but nothing happened. There were no other links around the side or at the bottom. Indeed, there was no text at all.
She clicked again, then again, as if that might coax it into life. There was something missing. Yet, that this was the hiding place, the locker into which Forbes foreseeing his own murder had stashed his blanket, she was more certain than ever.
There was only one way to break in and, though it would hurt, she was ready to do it.
43
Aberdeen, Washington, Saturday March 25, 19.00 PST
For the eleventh time in eight minutes, she looked at the clock. 7pm on a Saturday night in Aberdeen, three oclock on Sunday morning in Dublin. She had promised her sister faithfully that she would leave her in peace. And she had already disturbed her once.
Maggie put aside the empty pizza carton, still decorated by congealed and processed cheese, that had represented her dial-up supper, delivered to the motel-room door. She badly wanted to call Nick du Caines he might well know how to get out of this hole but that was one of the thousands of numbers she had lost along with her phone.
She clicked on the TV, lighting upon C-Spans replay in full of the Presidents weekend radio address, which in a nod to the twenty-first century was now on camera too.
She found the remote and increased the volume.
For too long, these weapons have cast a shadow over our world, Baker was saying. I am of the generation that grew up looking at a clock that stood, permanently, at five minutes to midnight. We were always on the brink of catastrophe. And as long as nuclear bombs exist, we still are.
Despite her bruises and her aching ribs, she couldnt repress a smile of disbelief and admiration that verged on wonder. She had drafted a policy statement about this during the campaign, assuming it would never get anywhere. How could it? After all, they lived in the real world. The world of politics.
But here he was, the President of the United States under fire as never before, fighting a triple scandal and facing an army of enemies determined to eject him from the White House in the fastest-ever time building towards the climax of a speech that she never thought she would hear.
Thats why Im glad to tell you that I have just come off the phone with my Russian counterpart and he and I have agreed to meet in the coming weeks to take the first steps towards ridding the world of these weapons altogether. I will be sending a proposal to Congress
She looked over at her computer, still displaying the webpage of Vic Forbes. That man had set out to destroy the presidency of Stephen Baker. Forbes had started this entire chain of events that had left the man she believed in and everything he, and she, stood for hanging by the frailest of threads. There, on that screen, was the landmine he had buried deep and out of view and it was still ticking.
She loved her sister, she really did. But some things were more important than Lizs unbroken sleep. She dialled the number.
The phone rang twice. Then a croak remarkable for its coherence and hostility: This better be good.
Liz, Im really sorry-
No, I mean this better be good. As in, my-life-is-aboutto end-Liz-and-these-are-my-dying-words good.
OK, its not quite that good.
Maggie, you stupid bloody cow, its gone three in the morning!
I know, but-
You know? So you cant even blame the accident! Id have forgiven you if you were confused from the accident!
Oh right. Well, maybe I am a bit confused-
Too sodding late. Maggie could hear the sound of a duvet, furiously thrown aside. Id only got back to sleep about ten bloody minutes ago. Jesus, Maggie, I could strangle you.
Im really sorry, Liz. But I am desperate. She wouldnt mention Baker, and the need for the sake of the world to keep him in office. She would make it personal, an appeal to sisterly compassion. Can I remind you that somebody did try to kill me last night? I think theres something theyre trying to find out. My only chance is if I can work it out first. If I do that-
You see, this is what I dont get about you, Maggie. You seem to think that if you just know whatever it is youre not meant to know, then youll be OK. Whereas the exact bloody opposite is the truth. Youre only in this fucking mess because you know too much!
You see, this is what I dont get about you, Maggie. You seem to think that if you just know whatever it is youre not meant to know, then youll be OK. Whereas the exact bloody opposite is the truth. Youre only in this fucking mess because you know too much!
I dont think thats true.
It bloody is! I dont know anything and no ones after me, are they? Bloody Mrs ONeill on Limerick Street, she doesnt know fuck all and shes sound asleep right now. You see how it works? If you stay a million miles away from all this crap, then nothing happens. Simple.
Its not quite as simple as that-
No, I can well believe that. Lizs voice dipped, whether to avoid waking Calum or because she was going into one of her quiet and therefore more terrifying rages, Maggie could not yet tell. I can see its way more complicated than that. This is about you needing adrenalin in your life, isnt it to convince you your life is worthwhile?