Make Me

“Everything else now. Got some stress.”

“Just remember, speed kills. That’s what they told us, back in the day.”

“I won’t go public. You understand what that means?”

Reacher nodded. “There won’t be a trial.”

“Was it you with Merchenko?”

“Admit nothing, even on your deathbed. You might suddenly get better.”

“One night only,” the guy said. “No coming back to check on things. I need space of my own.”

“When can you do it?”

“Now, if you like.”

“Where?”

“At my house. You’re all invited.”

Chapter 45

The guy from Palo Alto had a thing on his phone that summoned cars to the curb within minutes. Riding four to a car was deemed unseemly, so he pressed twice and got two. He rode with Westwood, to catch up on old times, and Reacher and Chang followed, in a Town Car all their own. The guy’s house was a 1950s box remodeled in the 1970s to look like the 1930s. Reacher figured it had a triple layer of ironic authenticity all its own, and was therefore worth more than all the money he had made in his life.

Inside it was clean and all silver and black. Reacher had been expecting a tangled riot of computer gear, like they had seen in McCann’s apartment in Chicago, but in the den there was nothing but a small glass table and a lone no-brand desktop. There was a tower unit, and a screen, and a keyboard, and a trackball, none of which matched. There were only five wires, all cut to the right length, none tangled, all neatly placed.

The guy said, “I built it myself. There are various technical hurdles and some serious data incompatibilities to overcome. It’s like visiting a foreign country. You have to learn their language. And their customs, more importantly. I wrote some browser software. Based on Tor, which is what they all use. Which was written by the United States Naval Research Laboratory, ironically. To provide a safe haven for political dissidents and whistleblowers, all around the world. Which is the law of unintended consequences, right there, biting the world in the ass. Tor stands for The Onion Router. Because that’s what we’re dealing with here. Layers upon layers upon layers, like the layers of an onion, in the Deep Web itself, and inside all of its separate sites.”

He sat down and fired up his machine. There was no fancy stuff on the screen. No pictures of outer space, no icons. Just short lines of green writing on a black field. All business, like an airline check-in desk, or a car rental counter.

The guy said, “What’s the missing individual’s name?”

Chang said, “Michael McCann.”

“Social Security Number?”

“Don’t know.”

“Home address?”

“Don’t know.”

“Not good,” the guy said. “There are preliminary steps to be taken. I need what I call his internet fingerprint. It’s an algorithm I wrote. Some of this, some of that. The precise minimum required to be definitive. Elegant, really. We can start with something as simple as his cable bill. But there are other ways. Do we know his next of kin?”

“That would be his father, Peter McCann. His mother is long dead.”

“Do we have an address for Peter McCann?”

Chang told him. The undistinguished brownstone, on the undistinguished street. Lincoln Park, Chicago. Apartment 32. The guy typed a command and what looked like a portal appeared, into the Social Security Administration’s mainframe. The real government deal. Reacher glanced at Chang, and she nodded, as if to say it’s OK, I have one too. The guy entered Peter McCann’s data and found his Social Security Number instantly, which instantly led to Michael’s, because they were nominated for each other’s survivor benefits. Next of kin. Michael’s Social Security Number led to his address, which was also in Lincoln Park, Chicago.

Then the guy came out of Social Security, and went into some other complex database. He entered Michael McCann’s Social Security Number, and his address, and the screen re-drew into a long list of alphanumeric codes. The internet fingerprint. Michael McCann, and no one else.

The guy typed a new command, and the screen came up with a title page, crudely formatted out of plain green writing on a black background, but with tabs and spaces and centering, so that it looked vaguely like a commercial product. Or a prototype. Which it was, Reacher supposed. In a way. Potentially. It looked inviting enough. Like bright emeralds on velvet. The most prominent word on the page was Bathyscaphe.

“Get it?” the guy said.

“A submarine,” Chang said. “Capable of going all the way to the ocean bed.”

“Originally I called it Nemo. After the guy in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. He commands a submarine named Nautilus. I liked him because nemo is Latin for nobody. Which seemed appropriate. But then they made a movie about a fish. Which ruined it.”

He typed another command, and a search box came up.

He said, “OK, start your engines. Thirty-two seconds is the wager.”