The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(90)

Rain wondered whether to say anything, then decided Dox would be hearing about it soon enough regardless. “We saw a news report. Unnamed senior intelligence officials talking about deep-fake Russian disinformation campaigns. Obviously laying the groundwork for dismissing any videos that get released as fake news, a Kremlin kompromat plot . . . That kind of thing.”

Dox laughed harshly. “Almost can’t blame them. It works every time.”

Rain tried to think of something comforting to say, and couldn’t.

“You talk to Tom?” Dox said. “Maybe he’s got something new.”

“I left him a message.”

“Well, I doubt even old Kanezaki could pull a rabbit out of this hat. I’d like to think I’m missing something, but right now, I figure the best we can hope for is a stalemate. And eventually, when that system is done automatically spitting out every last video, hopefully no one will think there’s any benefit to be derived from killing any of us. Toothpaste being out of the tube and all that.”

“Do we even know what that time frame is?”

“Schrader said every other day, with yesterday being the first release and tomorrow at three o’clock West Coast time being the second. But we don’t know how many overall. Might have to hunker down for a while.”

Rain had never heard the big sniper sound so down. “Dox. It’s not your fault.”

Dox gave another harsh laugh. “Is this like that scene in Good Will Hunting? ’Cause we can’t hug it out over the phone.”

“You know I don’t get your movie references.”

“Never mind. I appreciate the thought.”

“It’s not just a thought. It’s true. If you want to blame someone, blame Kanezaki. But come on, nobody could have foreseen this. It’s just one of those things that went sideways.”

“You foresaw it. You’re the one with the good sense to retire. Or at least to try, despite all my interference.”

“Listen, you know the only reason I keep you around is because you’re funny, right? If you’re going to get maudlin on me, it’s over.”

Dox laughed again, a little less harshly this time. “Thanks, partner. All right, let me get with the team here and figure out our next move. And tell me if you hear from Tom.”

Dox clicked off and Rain briefed the rest of them. The atmosphere in the room was bleak.

When he was done, Maya said, “It’s weird. I was wondering how Schrader was going to access the videos. Now we won’t know.”

Rain looked at her. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “I’d just be surprised if the underlying material were localized or easily accessible. That would risk it being compromised. Which, okay, fine, maybe Schrader could be that thoughtless or sloppy. But he wasn’t. Someone put a lot of thought into this—integral biometric and encryption safeguards, the dead-man switch, the escalating series of warnings . . . Evie, what do you think?”

Rain had heard the two women talking earlier. Apparently when she had been with NSA, Evie had been involved in the creation of what was then called God’s Eye, now known as Guardian Angel. And the two of them had used the program together to track down where Rispel was having Schrader held.

“Agreed,” Evie said. “We’re talking about a complex, robust, redundant system.”

Rain wasn’t sure where they were going. “Regardless of where the underlying material is kept, why wouldn’t Schrader have access? He’s the one who created the videos, right?”

“Sure,” Maya said, “but that’s like . . . Look, you know how to shoot cellphone video, right?”

The way she was dumbing it down gave Rain an odd, slightly out-of-body feeling. He realized that to someone as young as Maya, he must have seemed like a creature from prehistory. And maybe she wasn’t completely wrong. Would this be what it felt like when people talked to you and assumed you were slightly senile? Christ, no wonder he’d been trying so hard to retire.

But all he said was “Everyone does.”

“Right. But then if I asked you to make sure the footage was both set to automatically release if certain conditions weren’t met and also unstoppable by any foreseeable opposition, what would you do then?”

“I’d ask someone like you. But I thought Schrader was some kind of technology genius.”

“That’s his reputation,” Maya said. “Or was. But did you ever see that movie Being There, or read the Jerzy Kosinski book?”

Rain shook his head. “But I know the story.”

“Then you get the idea,” Maya said. “Sometimes a simpleton is so pristinely simple that people think it must be something else. I mean, Schrader would go to conferences and ask things like ‘What do we mean really when we say down? Or up?’ And attendees would treat it like it was some galaxy-brain insight into something everyone else takes for granted.”

“It’s true,” Evie said. “People act like he’s a genius, but so much of that is because of money. I once talked to him at a conference on facial-recognition technology. Everyone was fawning over him and I thought I was missing something. There was no there there.”

“Did you read the paper he submitted?” Maya said.

Evie nodded. “Of course. It was after talking to him that I realized someone else must have written it. He got all this obsequious coverage in the press. But probably he bought that, too.”