Day One

talk.”

Hawke considered explaining, but what could he say? I didn’t drop it; I swear—it just blew up in my hand? When Weller stepped away from the open door, Hawke saw the copier repairman standing with his arms crossed, smirking at him.

The hacker journalist can’t figure out how to work the coffee machine. It would surely become office legend. Thank God nobody else had seen it, or things might have been far worse.

CHAPTER SIX

9:47 A.M.

HAWKE FOLLOWED WELLER INTO HIS OFFICE, where the man closed the door and motioned to the simple rigid wooden chair that faced his uncluttered desk. A black hard-shelled laptop case with a security lock sat against the wall next to a glass-door cabinet crammed with networking gear. The case was large enough for two laptops. There was very little else in the room.

Weller was lithe, slightly over six feet, and tended to wear dark jeans and Oxford shirts every day. Both the way he dressed and his office reflected his affection for minimalism and order. His round glasses would have seemed delicate and feminine on most men, but they served to soften what would have otherwise been a harshly angular face. He bristled with a coiled energy that kept him in constant motion, and even as he sat behind the desk he bounced slightly in his chair, hands fiddling with a pen, tapping and flicking it against the wood. “You okay?”

Hawke nodded, touched the brown spatters on his shirt. His wrist throbbed. “Just a little wounded pride.”

Weller put the pen down, then seemed to dismiss the incident entirely. When Hawke pulled out his digital recorder, Weller shook his head. “No record of this,” he said. “Not yet.”

Hawke put it away. An object slightly larger than a pack of gum sat on a corner of the desk. Weller picked it up. “The most advanced in government hardware,” he said. “Highly secure communications device, developed by Eclipse as part of their deal with the NSA. It has its own advanced operating system, powered by an all-new adaptive intelligence in the cloud. Nearly impossible to lock on to, uses its own satellites and encrypted five ways to Sunday. Big power comes in small packages.” He handed the phone to Hawke. “I thought you’d appreciate this. Communication is everything in your line of work.”

Still smarting from the encounter with the coffee machine, this was the last thing Hawke had expected. He turned the object in his hands. It appeared seamless, with an edgeless, glossy screen and nothing else. There was no immediate way to tell how it might operate. He resisted the urge to play with it; now was not the time. He had to get Weller talking. “Does it make calls?” he said.

Weller smiled. “Borrow it for a while,” he said. “I have another. Might come in handy.”

The code of ethics for journalists was clear on accepting any kind of gift. Then again, Hawke had never cared much for rules. This tiny phone was part of the story. It would make a great sideline to the main piece; the Network lab could dissect it, piece by piece, break it down for the audience, show them its guts ahead of release. That alone was nearly big enough to satisfy Brady.

Hawke tried to keep his building excitement from showing, shoved the tiny device in his left pocket and kept his other phone in his right. “I didn’t think Eclipse would be inclined to share with you these days.”

“I liberated it,” Weller said. “It’s not in commercial development yet.”

“I’ll keep that part out of the profile.”

Weller’s smile faded. “They stole something from me; I stole something back. It’s not quite quid pro quo, but it’s a start.”

“You’re talking about the energy-sharing project?”

“Something much more important than that. Energy sharing was just the evolution of an old idea. Use the processing power of the cloud to spread out the work. When a device is running low, it borrows another networked device’s chip to crunch data and serve it back.” He stuck the pen in the middle drawer, so the desk’s surface was completely clean, then folded his hands in front of him. “Now let’s get down to business,” he said. “You want to know about my former employer. What happened when I left, and what they’re doing now.”

Of course Weller knew that the Network angle wasn’t a simple profile or a feature about his new business, but neither of them had ever been this blunt about it. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Jonathan C. Hawke, born to a schoolteacher and a writer and political activist in eastern Massachusetts. Test scores show a boy who would excel at making the connections between things most people miss, a creative mind that would regularly reject those in authority who didn’t question the status quo. An outside-the-box thinker. Predictable behavior problems coupled with flashes of genius, an early tendency toward computer programming and storytelling that would lead to your associations with both the hacker subculture and journalism, but things didn’t start to go downhill until your father’s drinking led to his early death and you dropped out of college and got involved with Anonymous—”

“So you’ve investigated me,” Hawke interrupted. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“I had to know who you were,” Weller said. “Your strengths and weaknesses, your convictions. Some people like you start companies. I’m one of those. Others go underground, become part of the fringe, end up in jail or disappear.”

“And the rest of us?”

“A few cross back and forth. Hacker journalism is a respectable way to make a living doing what you love.”

“This isn’t about me, though. It’s about you.”

Weller’s eyes were glittering behind the glasses, and Hawke couldn’t tell if he was feverish or furious or both. “I let you in here for a reason. Your abilities have everything to do with this. Your work at the Times was brilliant, regardless of how they treated you. I think we can take this far beyond Network in ways that are going to become obvious to you very soon.”

Hawke crossed his legs, attempted to look at ease although he had started to sweat. Normally he loved when he began to see pieces of the story hanging there like low fruit on the vine, the combinations still forming themselves in his mind, leading to the alpha moment when things really came together. But it wasn’t good when the person you were supposed to interview gained the upper hand. It was all about control over the story and the delivery; without that, the entire thing dissolved into a muddled, incomprehensible mess.

“Tell me more,” Hawke said. “Let’s talk about the profile. Maybe you could start with why you chose network security as your next big move.”

“Don’t bullshit me, John, not anymore,” Weller said. “You know that’s not the real story here.” His eyes were so bright and sharp Hawke wondered if he might be on something. He leaned forward and placed both palms on the desk. “Your investigative skills and instincts are first-rate, as I suspected. What did you discover about your old friends out there on your laptop?”

Hawke cleared his throat as Weller waited. “You’re monitoring the network,” he said finally.

“Of course I am, but that’s not the point. They’ve been busy. We may need their help soon, but this is causing quite a mess. I’d like you to ask them to stop.” Weller leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest. “Can you do that?”

Hawke considered how to answer, finally decided to just go with the truth. “They say they’re not responsible. And they wouldn’t listen to me anyway.”

“I doubt that. You were part of one of the most infamous hacks in history, isn’t that right? Stealing top- secret files on undercover moles from the CIA?”

Hawke became very still. A trickle of sweat made its way down his neck, between his shoulder blades. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure, it wasn’t just you. In fact, from what I was able to dig up, you were a fringe player. But the others went to prison for it, while you barely even got a second look. Why is that?” Weller studied him for a long moment.