But then he wondered if Brown might not actually have the DEA connections he’d imagined he might have. Maybe he borrowed the plane from the people he got the Rize from? They seized things from serious dealers, didn’t they? Boats. Planes. You read about that.
That would explain the shag carpeting, too.
58. ALPHABET TALK
T he pilot followed highways.
Tito could see this now, sitting up in the front with him, the fear having somehow absented itself with the takeoff from Illinois and the pilot’s offer of the seat beside his.
Like a stranger beside you on a bus, he thought now, fear, then unexpectedly getting up, getting off. Keep your mother and the flight from Cuba in its own separate drawer. This was much better.
Gratitude to Ellegua; may the ways be opened.
The flat country through which they followed the thin straight lines of highway was called Nebraska, the pilot had told him, pressing a button on his headset that allowed Tito to hear him with his own headset.
Tito ate one of the turkey sandwiches the man with the cowboy hat and refueling truck had given them in Illinois, careful with the crumbs, while he watched Nebraska unroll beneath them. When he finished the sandwich, he folded the brown paper bag it had come in, propped his elbow against the padded ledge at the top of the door, where the window started, rested his head on his cupped hand. His headset made a clicking sound. “Information Exploitation Office,” he heard the old man say.
“It’s a DARPA program, though,” Garreth said.
“DARPA R and D, but always intended for IXO.”
“And he’s gotten into a beta version?”
“The Sixth Fleet has been using something called Fast-C2AP,” the old man said. “Makes locating some ships as easy as checking an online stock price. But it’s not PANDA, not by a long shot. Predictive analysis for naval deployment activities. If it doesn’t get dumbed down, PANDA will comprehend behavioral patterns of commercial vessels, local to global; their routes, routine detours for fuel or paperwork. If a ship that always travels between Malaysia and Japan turns up in the Indian Ocean, PANDA notices. It’s a remarkable system, not least because it actually would contribute to making the country safer. But, yes, he does seem to have accessed some sort of beta version, and cross-referenced a vessel on it with the box’s most recent signal.”
“Earning his wage in that case,” said Garreth.
“But I ask myself,” the old man said, “who is it we’re dealing with, here? Is he a genius of some kind or, really, at the end of the day, just a talented and audacious burglar?”
“And the difference would be?” asked Garreth, after a pause.
“Predictability. Are we inadvertently creating a monster, assigning him these things, facilitating him?”
Tito looked over at the pilot, deciding he seemed most unlikely to be listening to this conversation. He was steering the plane with his knees, and filling in blanks on a white paper form, on a battered, boxlike aluminum clipboard, with a hinged lid. Tito wondered if there would be a telltale of some kind, a light perhaps, that could indicate to Garreth and the old man that his headset was on.
“Seems an abstract concern, to me,” said Garreth.
“Not to me,” said the old man, “although it certainly isn’t that immediate. One immediate concern today is whether our positioning arrangement is reliable. If our box gets put down in the wrong spot, things will get complicated. Very complicated.”
“I know,” said Garreth, “but they’re Teamsters, those two. Old hands. At one time they would’ve been ‘losing’ boxes like this. Driving them straight out of there. Now, with an upgraded security regime, they’re not even thinking about that sort of thing. But good money for putting one down where we most need it, that’s something else.”
“For that matter,” said the old man, “if that box isn’t wearing the same owner code, product code, six-digit registration number, and check digit it was wearing when last seen, our Teamsters won’t find it for us, will they?”
“It is,” Garreth said. “The same ISO markings are encrypted in every transmission.”
“Not necessarily. That piece of equipment was programmed when the box had those markings. We can’t be certain that it still does. I just don’t want you to forget that we have other options.”
“I don’t.”
Tito removed the headset.
Without touching any of its buttons, he hung it from its hook above the door, put his head back, and pretended to be asleep.
Alphabet talk. He didn’t like it.
59. BLACK ZODIAC
B rown rented a remarkably ugly and uncomfortable black boat called a Zodiac. A pair of huge inflated black rubber tubes, joined at the front in a crude point, a hard black floor down between these, four high-backed bucket seats mounted on posts, and the largest outboard motor, black, that Milgrim had ever seen. The rental operation, in the marina where the thing was docked, provided each of them with a semirigid flotation jacket, a red nylon garment apparently lined with sheets of only barely flexible foam. Milgrim’s smelled of fish, and chaffed his neck.
Milgrim couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a boat, and he certainly hadn’t expected to find himself in one today, very nearly the first thing in the morning.
Brown had come in through the door that connected their rooms, that now familiar arrangement, and shaken him awake, though not very forcefully. The gray boxes weren’t on the doors, here, and Milgrim had to assume that Brown had left them in Washington, along with the gun, the large folding knife, and perhaps the flashlight and handcuffs as well. But Brown was wearing his black nylon jacket, today, over a black T-shirt, and Milgrim thought he looked much more at home in it than he did in his suit.
After a silent breakfast of coffee and eggs in the hotel’s restaurant, they’d gone to the underground garage and retrieved the car, a Ford Taurus with a Budget sticker beside the rear license plate. Milgrim had come to prefer a Corolla.
Cities, in Milgrim’s experience, had a way of revealing themselves in the faces of their inhabitants, and particularly on their way to work in the morning. There was a sort of basic fuckedness index to be read, then, in faces that hadn’t yet encountered the reality of whatever they were on their way to do. By this standard, Milgrim thought, scanning faces and body language as Brown drove, this place had an oddly low fuckedness index. Closer to Costa Mesa than San Bernardino, say, at least in this part of town. It did remind him more of California than he would have expected it to, though maybe that was this sunshine, more San Francisco than Los Angeles.
Then he became aware of Brown whistling, under his breath, as he drove. Tunelessly, he thought, but with something akin to cheerfulness, or at any rate a degree of positive excitement. Was he picking up the vibe from this sunny but mildly overcast morning’s crowds? Milgrim doubted that, but it was weird nonetheless.
Twenty minutes later, having had some difficulty finding the place, they were in a parking lot beside a marina. Water, distant mountains, greenish glass towers looking as though they’d been built the night before, boats with white masts, seagulls doing seagull things. Brown was feeding a ticketing machine with large silver-and-gold tokens of some kind.
“What are those?” Milgrim asked.
“Two-dollar coins,” said Brown, whom Milgrim knew to avoid the use of credit cards whenever possible.
“Aren’t twos unlucky?” Milgrim asked, remembering something about racetrack money.
“Lucky they aren’t fucking threes,” said Brown.
Now, the huge outboard roaring, marina and city were both behind them. The Zodiac went pancaking along over very cold-looking gray-green water, a glassy shade not unlike that of the towers overlooking the marina. The flotation jacket, stiff and odorous as it was, was agreeably windproof. The cuffs of Milgrim’s Jos. A. Banks back-to-school trousers were flapping like pennants around his ankles. Brown drove the boat on his feet, leaning forward, only loosely strapped to his seat, the wind pressing unexpected angles into his face. Milgrim doubted Brown was still whistling, but he still seemed to be enjoying this too much. And he hadn’t actually seemed all that familiar with the business of casting off, if that was what it was called. They’d needed help from the rental guy.