This is the next #SaturdayScenes installment for my in-work Ghost Writer, book 6 of the Our Cyber World series. You may access the story summary and other sample excerpts through the table of contents.
Let me know what you think!
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Vivian and Andre arrive in San Jose, where she will meet and interview Cynthia Spencer, and he will photograph her for Cynthia’s upcoming memoir. Vivian notices that Andre has stashed something in her carry-on suitcase when…
Unsure as to why I act with such urgency, I rush to unpack my suitcase once I check into my hotel room. I access the contents of my bag’s front compartment last. Along with my new cellphone, Andre included a wired earpiece. Per instructions embedded in a readme file that pops up when I turn on the phone, I must use this earpiece whenever I make or answer a voice call, or when I access video or audio files using this phone.
I now own “a secured cellphone capable of untraceable and scrambled communications,” the note says. I suppose all this should make me feel more confident, but even though the note may try to convey such reassurance, the instruction to delete the message once I’ve read it suggests I shouldn’t stake my fullest confidence on the device’s secured status.
Andre knocks on my room’s door a few minutes later. As we agreed, we plan to stay in and use the hotel’s restaurant, a small, quiet establishment whose menu we checked out upon our arrival.
Before we go, I ask him to come in. “We need to talk,” I say. “Unless we shouldn’t.”
He takes out his phone. It looks much like the one he gave me. With it held at shoulder height, he taps on the screen, waits, then starts walking around the room. A minute later he flashes a thumbs-up and shows me his phone’s screen, which alternates between green and blue.
“You have the same app on your phone,” he says. He comes over, taps on the screen, and shows me which app he means and how to use it.
“I guess this helps us find exceptions to the always listening rule,” I say.
His lips draw a faint, fleeting smile. “Yeah.”
“Are these phones like the ones we used when—” I halt, my voice cracking, my throat constricting into the strangle hold that precedes tears. But I won’t allow it. No, my tears will stay behind my eyes, where only I can see them.
“Somewhat. They also have the teleconference app,” he says. He’s putting his phone away, coming over to me, reaching for me.
I pull away. “Why all the hocus pocus?”
“Just play it straight. You’re here to do a job, write some nice prose. Nothing more.”
“Is that how you’re playing it? Pretty pictures, in, out, nothing to see here?”
He points at my phone. “Just a precaution, OK? Don’t use it unless you have to. This might be nothing.”
“You sure, Andre? Because from where I’m standing this looks like an avalanche of coincidences. Or is it providence?”
“It’s not coincidence, but I wouldn’t blame the almighty for it either.”
“This is Erin’s doing, then? This alleged AI that can transform information to make you think you’re facing a different reality?”
“It’s probably more involved than that.”
“Probably? Am I to take that to mean you have no idea why you’re here?”
“Oh, I know why I’m here. To take pictures for Cynthia Spencer’s publisher and the upcoming book campaign. And to collect my check. Always that.”
“Well, I’m under the impression that dear Cynthia asked for me by name. How about you?”
“Ditto.”
“And how would she know you, exactly?”
“Previous life. We may have crossed paths.”
I glare at him, and he gets my meaning. I’m getting tired of the nuanced, furtive speak.
“Her husband and I used to work on related projects,” Andre says. “Back when I was more interested in chasing a career than in finding beauty.”
“Would this have anything to do with your ability to clear a LAX terminal of terrorists and Mrs. Spencer’s ability to do likewise at a shopping mall’s parking lot?”
He walks to the hotel’s window, draws the curtains, turns around to face me and sits at the small desk next to the TV. I approach him and sit on the corner of the bed.
“There’s a reason I’m talking around things,” Andre says. He leans forward to prop his elbows on his knees so that now he’s looking up at me. “Erin, too. We’re under constraints to not divulge secret and sensitive information.”
“Or you’ll have to shoot me?”
He shoots me a bitter smile. “If I only had a dollar every time someone tosses me that cliché. I thought you writers avoid them like the plague.” His smile turns into one of playful mocking.
I respond with another of my glares.
His face goes blank. “When you work the types of projects I’ve worked, you sign stuff. You make a lifetime promise to protect information you create or are entrusted with. People bend or break that all the time. I don’t see it so much as a duty or legal obligation. I gave my word, and that’s the Alpha and Omega of it for me.”
“I suppose I should find that admirable,” I shoot back, feeling a tad guilty for belittling his integrity.
“People’s lives depend on it. We may not like all that goes on, some of us may voice legitimate concerns, but in the end, this stuff—” He stops to wave at the room, at the world, perhaps. “This stuff matters. It does protect us from the bad guys, who by the way have no qualms doing much worse to us.”
“Erin seemed to have no problem voicing legitimate concerns and pushing a bit beyond, did she?”
He shrugs. “She got her point across.”
“And then she shut up. Because her concerns were heard, because she made a deal, because she didn’t want to cause damage to national security.”
“I can’t get into details, but let’s say you have the general gist.”
“What is she, anyway? Is she really—”
He sits back and raises his hand. “I can’t go there.”
“But it’s public information,” I object. “It’s on Wikipedia.”
“Unfortunately that doesn’t relieve me of responsibility.”
“Can’t confirm or deny.”
“Yet, you’re doing this scanner stuff,” I point out. “You have these supposedly secured phones. Last time I checked, you can’t get these at the local cellphone store.”
“Technically you’re right,” he replies. “But note how I haven’t given away any sensitive information.” He leaves it there, letting a raised eyebrow fill in the rest.
“Ah. A convenient rationalization.”
“A precaution. One that will raise suspicions if they find out, but which they will probably find understandable in the grand scheme of things.”
I bite my upper lip, then say, “Erin told me to be cautious, to be careful with the people I’d be dealing with. She did that through a wide open Internet connection.”
He shrugs. I’m guessing that could mean he doesn’t care, or he’s sure she didn’t cross the line—which in retrospect, I suppose she did not given the vague and veiled things she said—or maybe he’s sure Erin would exercise better care.
“That wasn’t an open connection, was it?” I ask.
He gives me another shrug. “I wouldn’t have any way of knowing.”
I point at my laptop. It sits on the desk, inches away from his elbow. “Maybe you can take a look.”
He twists his lips and sighs.
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“I really would just like to take pictures.” He’s staring at the laptop with an expression that suggests if he were to touch it, he’ll descend into some flavor of hell he’s experienced before. “I really, really would just like for people to leave me the hell alone and just let me be a starving photographer.”
“So who brought you into this, Andre?” I ask. “It’s her, isn’t it? Dear Erin.”
“You can say I owed her a favor,” he replies, still staring at the laptop. He taps on the cover, runs his index finger along the edge of it, then finally pushes it open.
The laptop comes out of sleep mode. Over the next few minutes, he opens and closes windows, looking at this, that and the other thing. I come over and look over his shoulder. He goes about his examination in silence, with a sullen air about him, like a bored teenager that would much rather devote his time to cooler things. When he finds it, he stops and taps on the screen.
“You have a non-standard proxy handling your Internet transactions,” he says in a soft, low tone.
“Translation, please?”
He doesn’t reply. In another second he’s connecting my laptop to the hotel’s Wi-Fi network, accessing a freeware download site, and selecting an application with “HexDump” in its name. Once downloaded and installed, he uses it to access a file he tells me runs the proxy.
A screen with computer code gibberish comes up. He scrolls through it, again with the same sullen, bored demeanor. He scrolls almost to the bottom of the content and stops. I lean in to see the data he’s pointing out.
I feel my hair brushing against the side of his face as I register the clear text. A. Esperanza, Chief Developer.
I back away and sit on the corner of the bed.
With elbows on the desk, he brings his eye sockets to rest on clenched fists. He stays like that for a minute or so. Only his shoulders move up and down as he takes and releases a series of deep breaths. Eventually he turns to face me.
“Voila!” he says. “Voila, voila, voila!”
“That’s your app?” I ask. “You hacked into my computer and installed it?”
“No, I didn’t install it.”
“Erin?”
“Possibly.”
“But you wrote it.”
He responds with yet one more shrug.
“Right. Can’t confirm or deny,” I say, with a cutting edge to my voice. “And your immense modesty, let’s not forget that.”
One more shrug, and then he closes his eyes. He stays there, elbow propped on the desk, face resting on his fist.
“That proxy app,” I say, knowing I’m calling it an app because to me everything’s an app, and that’s the grand total of my computer science knowledge. “It protected my conversation with Erin?”
Eyes still closed, he nods.
“So I can use the secured phone, but I can also use the laptop to talk to her?”
He straightens out and opens his eyes. “Use the phone. Always the phone. If you need a secured connection to the Internet, use the phone as a hot spot. Yes, there’s an app in there for that. With the secured proxy, you’ll be double-covered. Belt and suspenders. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
Over the next minute or so he shows me how to use my new cellphone as a hot spot. He makes me do it myself, and I succeed on the first try. When we’re done with that, I return to the edge of the bed, and we stay like this, seated and staring at each other.
“Are we really going to be OK, Andre?” I ask.
He responds with the last shrug he will give me this night. Then he stands up and says something to the effect that he’s going to dinner. I can come or stay, my call, but no more shop talk the rest of the night.
I follow him out of the room without objection because that sounds fine to me. That, and I’m hungry.
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