BCM: “This is extortion. The Daemon will destroy their data if they don’t comply. RICO statutes cover this. And I see several firms on this list that some of our clients hold significant stock positions in.”
NSA: “But not a controlling interest?”
BCM: “It doesn’t matter. The management of these firms has no right to defend the Daemon.”
NSA: “They cite their right as ‘artificial persons’ granted in an 1886 Supreme Court ruling on the fourteenth amendment . . .” (he flipped through documents) ”. . . Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. You’re a lawyer. You tell me if the courts will throw it out.”
EndoCorp: “These attorneys are agents of the Daemon—a known terrorist organization.”
NSA: “Maybe. Or maybe the attorneys are just following instructions from the corner office. We don’t know yet. Either way, we should be able to get the courts to close a nineteenth-century loop-hole that has unanticipated twenty-first-century consequences.”
BCM: “Wait. Let’s just wait a second. There are complex considerations relating to an entire body of legal precedents on corporate personhood, and the rights of free speech to corporate interests have a necessary and guiding effect on policy. Let’s not do anything rash. We should let these cases run their course. We’ll have neutralized the Daemon before they get their day in court, and then these companies will be back in the fold.”
CIA: “Is there something about that 1886 ruling we should know?”
BCM: “We don’t want to rehash established precedents. This is part of the Daemon’s effort to sow chaos.”
CIA (writing notes): “What was the name of that case again?”
BCM: “This is a perfect example of why government isn’t nimble enough to deal with the Daemon. It’s using our own laws and government institutions against us. To divide us. We should be helping one another.”
NSA: “Wait a minute. Nobody’s dividing anyone. Does corporate personhood expose us to danger?”
BCM: “That’s not the point. What I’m saying is that we can’t follow legal niceties in dealing with this thing. We cannot demonstrate weakness. Ever.”
FBI: “Our laws demonstrate weakness?”
The corporate side of the table conferred for a moment, and then the lobbyist turned to face the intelligence directors again. He took a calmer tone.
BCM: “Look, the current economic crisis has crippled state governments. States have begun to sell off assets to balance their budgets. They’re outsourcing services and selling their highways, bridges, prisons.”
NSA: “And?”
BCM: “We are buying them. We’re investing in America. We—and the chairmen of intelligence funding committees in the House and Senate—hope you will defend our legitimate interests while we help America through this difficult period.”
NSA: “Of course, you know that we will.”
BCM: “We need wide latitude to deal with these dangers. I think you’ll agree that it’s in the best interests of the nation to make all tools available to us.”
The two sides viewed each other across the table.
BCM: “I hope we can count on your support, Mr. Director. . . .”
Chapter 3: // Going Viral
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What makes Roy Merritt’s legend so powerful is that it was unintentional. He was a mere artifact on the surveillance tapes at the Sobol mansion siege, but his successful struggle against the impossible is what immortalized him as the Burning Man.
PanGeo**** / 2,194 12th-level Journalist
“Roy Merritt represented all that was best in us. That’s what makes the loss of him so hard to bear.” Standing before a flag-draped casket, the minister raised his voice to carry above a cold, Kansas wind. “I knew Roy from the time he was a child. I knew his father and his mother. I saw him grow to become a loving husband, a caring father, and a respected citizen. He dedicated his life to public service and never gave up hope for anyone. In fact, Roy mentored some of the same troubled youth he faced in his law enforcement work. Blessed with a calm, physical courage Roy was often sent in harm’s way to protect us, and it was on such a mission that he gave his life. Although we may find it hard to carry on without him, I think it is precisely because of Roy that we will be able to carry on.”
A frigid wind whipped Natalie Philips’s coat as she contemplated the minister’s words. She stared at the coffin in front of her. Lost in thought, she didn’t feel the cold.
FBI Special Agent Roy Merritt and seventy-three others were dead because of her—killed on a top-secret operation she had led. An operation that had culminated in a disaster at a place she’d rather not remember: Building Twenty-Nine. Building Twenty-Nine was gone now, vaporized. But she would never stop reliving what had happened there. It was an operation no one else at this funeral knew anything about.
At some point in her reverie the minister had stopped talking and uniformed men had begun ceremonially folding the American flag. They extended it to a Marine Corps major general who in turn presented the flag to Merritt’s young widow.
“Ma’am, on behalf of the president of the United States, the director of the FBI, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your husband’s service to his country.”
Merritt’s widow received the flag stoically, tears streaming down her face, as her two small daughters clung to her.
The bureau had presented his widow with a Memorial Star and posthumously bestowed on Merritt the Medal of Valor. Philips wondered if anyone else thought it strange that a Marine Corps general was presenting a flag to an FBI agent’s widow. The truth was that Roy Merritt was more of a hero than his family or his countrymen would ever know.
He shouldn’t even be dead, but then everyone who had served under Philips was dead or missing—all their work destroyed. It was the biggest clandestine service disaster in forty years, and Philips owned that failure. She might as well have perished with the rest of her team.
Philips took a deep breath and looked up at the massive crowd that had gathered for Merritt’s service. More than two thousand people stood among the headstones of Jackson County Cemetery north of Topeka, hats off and heads lowered. Two hundred and fourteen police cruisers and FBI sedans lined the cemetery road behind them, extending out onto the county highway.
She knew the number precisely. It was her curse to know. Her mind gathered everything she saw, and it forgot nothing. That had been her claim to fame in the NSA’s Crypto division, but it was increasingly a cross she had to bear as well. This day and the days leading up to it ran like an IMAX film in her head each night as she tried in vain to sleep.
Nearby, Merritt’s widow held her daughters close. The eldest child hid her face in her mother’s coat, but the youngest, only four, was looking around at the other adults, trying to figure out what was happening. When their gazes met, even from behind tinted, wraparound medical glasses, Philips felt her own eyes well with tears.
Philips had failed everyone.
She couldn’t withstand the little girl’s eyes. Instead she turned away and moved back through the headstones and the mourners, tears coming freely now. Philips wept as she moved among the living and the dead, wondering if her mind was capable of forgetting.
An honor guard fired three salvoes, startling Philips and provoking recollections of the desperate gunfire at Building Twenty-Nine. She felt panic rising and kept moving through the crowd. People made way for her. Kansas State Troopers in dress uniform, military men and women, local townspeople, children—people whose lives Merritt had touched. Some had traveled thousands of miles to be here. At the memorial service the night before, a hundred people stood up to tell heartwarming stories of Roy’s courage, compassion, and humor.