The Inner Circle (26 page)

“Kid?”
 

He sighed. “I have a bad feeling about it.”
 

“Pardon me for saying so, but right now I don’t give a shit about your feelings. Carver obviously wanted us to find this and do something about it, so let’s do it.”
 

The Kid’s hand hovered over his mouse, motionless. He said, “Aren’t you going to talk about it?”
 

For some reason I thought he meant his mother.
 

“What do you want me to say?”
 

The Kid glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “You read it, didn’t you? I saw you on the plane. You went through every document and news article. You pieced it together just like I did.”
 

“So?”
 

“What do you think?”
 

“I think there’s more to the story than you’re letting on.”
 

The Kid’s hand finally settled on the mouse. He moved the cursor around the screen in a wide circle.
 

I said, “What aren’t you telling me?”
 

“Nothing.”
 

“Don’t make me kick your ass in your own house.”
 

He stopped moving the cursor around, leaned back in his chair. “Did anyone ever tell you you would make the perfect dinner guest?”
 

“Kid.”
 

He took a deep breath, crossed his arms. “Once Carver graduated high school he went to West Point. After he graduated he went straight into the FBI. Started working in the Crimes Against Children program but was reassigned two years later.”
 

“Why was he reassigned?”
 

“Carver never told me, but from what I can tell he got too involved in the investigations. Wouldn’t let certain cases go. The FBI doesn’t like to live in the past, and it certainly doesn’t want to waste time on cases they don’t think they’re going to break. So they move on. Carver wouldn’t.”
 

“So they put him on the terrorist stuff.”
 

“No, they put him in cyber investigations. Online scams, child pornography, all that clean and fun stuff. Put him in a room with a computer, got him away from doing what he really cared about. Then they moved him to the terrorist stuff. And after a year or two ... well, he forever became known to the Inner Circle as the Man of Honor.”
 

“That’s it?”
 

“Not completely. You remember Carver talking about his supervisor, the one he thought turned him in to Simon?”
 

“What about him?”
 

“Did Carver ever tell you his name?”
 

“No,” I said. “But what—” I stopped, sat up straighter in my seat. “You don’t think ...”
 

“His supervisor’s name was Edward Stark. I completely forgot about it until I saw the other people on this list.”
 

“Stark as in snark?”
 

“Only one way to find out.”
 

The Kid clicked the mouse and the folder labeled Boojum opened. And there, inside the file, were several email correspondences from the Man of Honor to FBI Assistant Director Edward Stark.
 

“I told you I had a bad feeling about this,” the Kid said. “Say hello to our boojum.”

37

According to the time stamp on the first email Carver had sent—to Dominic Kilford of the FBI, aka Bellman—nearly an entire year had passed. This was a year after Carver and his people saved me from my game, when he first became aware that there was an almighty Caesar pulling strings. We had been able to learn nothing about this Caesar—we hadn’t been able to learn much at all about anything—so Carver had decided to make his own furtive inquires. Had he known these people in his past life? Possibly. But even if he had known them, there was no guarantee they weren’t in Caesar’s pocket.
 

A year ago he contacted Dominic Kilford. When there was no response, he went to the next person. How many people he had planned to contact in all was impossible to say, but clearly, based on the way he had labeled the folders, he had intended on ten. Then, when those ten fell through, he contacted an eleventh person, his old supervisor at the FBI. The first form of contact had been only five months ago, with Carver’s opening salvo:
 

I’m currently on the hunt for a snark named Caesar
.

That had been sent, according to the time stamp, at 10:17 PM. I wondered where I had been at the exact moment Carver typed out those ten words and hit the send button. Certainly I had been at the house, probably downstairs in the living room with Maya and Jesse. Maybe we had been watching a movie to unwind. Carver usually went to bed early and shut his door and didn’t reappear until early in the morning. In the back of my mind I had probably wondered what he was up to, but knew that if he wanted any of us to know, he would have said so.
 

Edward Stark’s reply came at 9:48 the next morning:
 

You aren’t the only one. I’m sorry about what happened
.
 

Nearly an entire week passed before there was another email. I could almost picture Carver hesitantly typing the few words, maybe deleting and retyping them several times. After trying ten others, here he finally had a lead. But just how solid was it? As far as Carver knew, the man on the other end of this email had been the one who turned him into Simon. In the end, Carver asked the most important question as simply as he could:
 

Who is he?
 

Later that day, Edward Stark replied:
 

No clue
.
 

For several weeks, there was no interaction—at least, none that hadn’t been deleted. Whether Carver had contacted Stark another way, it was impossible to know, but nearly a month passed before Carver wrote:
 

How high does this go?
 

For two days there was no reply. Then:
 

To the top. We should meet
.
 

Again, several weeks passed without any correspondence. This had been during the spring, and I tried remembering what Carver’s mood had been like. In the past year he had become withdrawn, but it had been gradual, so much so that those close to him, who talked to him every day, might not have noticed it. I certainly hadn’t.
 

Carver finally responded:
 

Who turned me in?
 

Stark replied only a few hours later:
 

No clue. We should meet
.
 

It was probably this second suggestion that they should meet which caused there to be another gap in their communication, this time nearly two months. There was a very strong chance that Edward Stark had been in league with Simon and Caesar from the beginning. Carver had probably contacted him on a lark, not expecting anything. Now a shadow of doubt had formed. If Stark was in fact clean, meeting might not be a terrible idea. But if Stark was in fact dirty, then Carver would be walking into a trap.
 

“He never said anything to you about any of this?” I asked.
 

The Kid shook his head, staring at the computer screen. “Not one word.”
 

The next email, dated only a month and a half ago, was from Carver:
 

How do I know I can trust you?
 

Stark replied the next day:
 

You don’t. But you can
.
 

Four hours later, Carver wrote:
 

How much do you even know?
 

The next morning, Stark replied:
 

More than most people, but not nearly enough
.
 

Four weeks passed. Carver wrote:
 

I would rather talk first. Where can I reach out?
 

Two days later, Stark replied with a phone number and said:
 

It’s a burner. Call any time
.
 

The Kid said, “Son of a bitch.”
 

“What?”
 

“Two weeks ago Carver called me. Said he wanted to fly out here for something.”
 

“He didn’t say what?”
 

“No. But now I think it was to call this guy.”
 

There was one email left, dated just last week. Thursday, Carver wrote:
 

New game has started. Will call once it’s over
.
 

“Fuck,” the Kid said.
 

I shook my head slowly, my eyes fixed on those two sentences. “Why would he let him know that? He fucking led us into a trap.”
 

“Maybe he was testing the guy.”
 

“Yeah? Well it got him killed.”
 

The Kid closed out the folder. He went to reach for more popcorn, hesitated, and then sat back in his chair, crossed his arms. We were silent for a long time. Above us, the sound of a television had come on in the living room, what sounded like
Wheel of Fortune
.
 

I said, “We need to kill this motherfucker.”
 

“If only it were that simple.”
 

“I would give anything to hear this guy’s voice. Just to talk to him for a minute.”
 

The Kid looked at me, a thoughtful expression on his face.
 

“What?”
 

He smiled. “I have an idea.”

38

One thing about the Kid, he always had a trick up his sleeve.
 

This time he had three.
 

The first was not only did he have a secure phone line, but it was so secure that if anyone tried tracing it, the signal would bounce all over the globe before eventually landing up somewhere in New York City’s Penn Station.
 

The second was a program that could analyze the other speaker’s voice. Any traces of uncertainty, doubt, even bullshit, the program would detect immediately and would represent via different colored lines bouncing across the screen. The program was, the Kid admitted, 90% accurate.
 

“Seriously?”
 

He shrugged. “Okay, maybe eighty percent.”
 

I just looked at him.
 

“Fine,” he said. “Seventy-five percent.”
 

I kept looking at him.
 

He sighed. “Okay, maybe sixty percent. Fifty at the very least.”
 

“Why don’t we just use a Magic Eight Ball while we’re at it?”
 

“Listen, dude, it works. Granted, it would be best if we could monitor the guy’s vitals, too, but this is what we have to work with right now.”
 

“Wonderful. What else do you got?”
 

The third was the thing that really took the cake. Not that the Kid had recorded every conversation he’d had with Carver and me and everyone else who had been taken from Simon’s game, but he’d managed to save enough to download those conversations into a special program on his computer. This program was then able to take the different tones and pitches and inflections of each of our voices so that they could be perfectly copied under someone else’s voice.
 

So in theory, if I wanted to talk to someone—like an assistant director of the FBI, for instance—I could speak as clearly and simply as normal. Only the voice Edward Stark heard wouldn’t be mine. It would be Carver’s.
 

“Ready?” the Kid asked. He sat in front of his main computer, headphones hanging around his neck.
 

I sat beside him, staring at the monitor. Trying to think. Trying to get myself prepped for what I had finally decided was a terrible idea.
 

I nodded. “Let’s do it.”
 

The burner’s number from Stark’s email was already triggered into the computer. There was no guarantee it would still even be in service, or that if it was, Stark would answer. Still, the Kid placed the headphones over his ears and clicked his mouse. The number connected and began to ring.
 

It rang four times before a voice answered.
 

“This is Stark.”
 

For an instant—a split second—I didn’t know what to say, or do, or even think. I just sat there frozen. Then I said, “Hey, Ed.”
 

Silence. Then, incredulous, “Carver? Is that you?”
 

The white lines on the computer screen bounced with the cadence of the man’s voice.
 

“Yeah, it’s me. How are you doing?”
 

“I’m fine. I’m just ... surprised to hear from you.”
 

The white bouncing lines turned green, and the Kid nodded. This meant Stark was telling the truth.
 

Stark asked, “How are you doing?”
 

“I’m great. I wanted to follow up on our email. Do you have time to talk?”
 

“Yes.”
 

The lines turned red.
 

“Are you sure?”
 

“Of course I’m sure.”
 

The lines stayed red.
 

“I understand you’re hesitant to meet,” Stark said. “I would be too after what happened. But I can assure you, I’m on your side.”
 

Still the lines stayed red.
 

I asked, “Who is Caesar?”
 

“I told you. I don’t know.”