me, of course. No names, no pack drill. Fronts and cover companies, like a CIA operation, dude. Heh.”
Zack jabbed out his cigarette in the pizza. There was a smell like plastic cooking over an uncleaned toilet. “You want a beer? Robbie, get us a couple of beers. Get beers for everybody. The cooler’s full, right? So I co-locate this stuff all over the world. So when the Russian cops come for the front company in Moscow, the pictures of Mafiya paying off Duma members that have been captured by ordinary people on the street aren’t on the servers in Moscow, you with me? They’re in Tuvalu or South Africa or some fucking place. And this here”—Zack gestured broadly at his Mission Control—“this tells me where all my information is, all over the world. Cell phones and Internet-connected computers, dude. It’s incredibly fucking simple. A support system for citizen journalism. News with no filters. And when we get something good, out it goes into the world. PyrE, see? I’ve given people all over the world the ability to fight power.”
Beer came. I hoisted my cold dewed bottle to Zack Pickles, mad scientist and the first genuinely decent guy I’d met in what seemed like forever.
Chapter 46
The clock ticked around a couple of hours, and I figured it was time to call it a day. Or at least lunch. My mood was much improved. I had no idea how to get back to the place, but, with the little information I had, Zack did some Internet wizardry and got a printer to spit out a map with X marking the spot. He gave me back my phone—“my email, phone number, a few other bits, gimme a call, this was fun”—and had Robbie drive me back to the house.
There was a big, black, shiny car in the driveway. The door was unlocked. As I pushed it open, I heard the unmistakable sound of Trix having an orgasm.
And, a few seconds later, the new sound of a complete stranger, quite definitely male, having his own orgasm.
Chapter 47
I decided to stay outside for a little while, and have a cigarette and concentrate hard on not killing anyone. I think I finished the first one in two minutes, just dragging the life out of it, the last minute of which I spent watching a black limousine creeping down the street toward me. As it pulled up outside the house, I dug my hands into my pockets and waited. The sleek dark curve of the car opened up like a boiled mussel, and the chief of staff slid out, blinking in the sun.
“California’s not fit for humans,” he said, squinting at the bright sky. “Whole goddamn state should be sawed off the mainland and floated out into the Pacific. We’ll get to that, mark my words. Except for Disneyland. I like Disneyland. We’ll keep Disneyland. Staple it onto the end of Arizona or something. I always thought Disneyland should be its own state. Disneyland, the fifty-first state of America. Has a ring to it. California? Point the whole state toward Japan and kick it in the ass, that’s what I say.”
I felt like needling the old bastard. “What, the state that gave Ronald Reagan to politics?”
“Ronnie Reagan was no goddamned good to anyone,” he snapped, surprising me. “Everyone knew he had Alzheimer’s while he was president. He was only ever useful as a patsy. ‘Ever met Ollie North, Mr. President?’ ‘I have no recollection of that because my brain is turning into a pile of scabs, Your Honor.’ All he was ever good for. Everybody knows. Those episodes of The West Wing where the president has multiple sclerosis brain-farts? What do you think he was alluding to?”
I laughed. “So you did watch that show.”
He found a pair of black shades in his jacket and fumbled them on. “CIA’s been running Aaron Sorkin for years. He leaks this stuff out under cover of fiction to test the waters. Every time he gets too cute we plant crack on him in airports. Or make him write Studio 60.”
“You’re full of shit.”
He gave that creepy split-skull grin. “Want to know how much we paid Jim Nabors to shoot Reagan with a sniper rifle? Nothing. It was all done for the love of Rock Hudson.”
“Can you do anything but lie? I mean, seriously?”
“I’m a politician, boy. I haven’t told the truth since I was seven.”
“What did you do when you were seven?”
“Chopped down a cherry tree. She betrayed you, didn’t she?”
“What?”
“The