DAY 17
Vlad was wide awake. He looked at the microwave clock, which said 4:12. Marcus was on the couch with his foot on the milk crate, snoring. Samantha was asleep on the floor by the door. Cooper was in Doug’s chair. For a brief moment, Vlad felt like everything was back to normal. Then he remembered where they were.
Seth had said he would drive back down to Boulder in the night. His car was gone. Vlad hoped he had stopped in Nederland on the way and watched the road.
Vlad picked Cooper up out of the chair and put him on the couch. Cooper lay down on Marcus’s good leg. Marcus didn’t wake up.
Vlad sat in the chair with Doug’s notebook and a pencil and wrote down what he was going to say to Samantha. It took him almost an hour. When he was done it was four lines. He read them one last time, tore the page out, opened the stove, and put it on the coals. He watched until it was gone.
He wanted to say it to her before six. Before anything came down the dish.
She woke up at twenty to six. She looked at him in the chair and at the dog on Marcus.
“You moved the dog,” she said.
“It is my chair.”
“It’s Doug’s chair.”
Marcus woke up with a start. Cooper jumped off him and went to the door to be let out.
“Who put the dog on me?”
“I want to say something,” Vlad said. “Before six.”
“Is it about my foot?”
“It is not about your foot.”
Samantha looked at the microwave. “It’s ten to. Say it after.”
She went to get the case. Vlad got up and took it from her.
“I will do it.”
She let him. He carried it out to the spot on the rail and plugged it in. The air was cold enough to hurt his teeth. He watched the bars come up and pulled the messages down.
There was one from Eleanor. He read it out loud through the door.
The council would like the person who wrote the pages to brief it in closed session today at three your time. A car can come anywhere you say. Justice has put protections in writing for all three of you. I said I would pass this on. I have not said yes.
R2 has not been seen in use. Assume today.
From E. Voss.
Damnit. Eleanor had gotten to her first. He knew he should have told her when she woke up.
Samantha came out onto the porch and held her hand out for the tablet. He didn’t give it to her and shook his head. She went back inside. At four minutes he pulled the plug, put the dish in the case, and carried it inside.
Samantha was making oatmeal. Cooper had come back in and was lying on the floor where Samantha had slept. Vlad felt very jealous of Cooper all of a sudden.
“Read it again,” Samantha said.
“You heard it.”
“Read it again.”
He read it again.
“What does ‘assume today’ mean?” Marcus asked.
“Whoever’s been breaking R2 finishes today,” Samantha said. “Then they can sign for anything that never took PQ1.”
“Nobody gets it,” Vlad said. “Not the council. Not Cyber. Not anybody.”
Samantha stirred the pot. “That’s what you wanted to say before six.”
“Yes.”
“So say everything you wanted to say before we got this message.”
Vlad stayed standing. His back still hurt from Eleanor’s floor. He raised his arms over his head to try to crack his back. It didn’t work.
“Yesterday the man from Cyber asked me if I could do what you did. I said no. Then he asked if you could.”
She stopped stirring. “What did you say?”
“Nothing. He wrote the nothing down.” He pointed at her head. “Then they let me walk out of the building.”
“Eleanor isn’t Cyber,” Marcus said.
“Eleanor let me sleep on her floor. She also kept Seth in the lobby for two hours because the FBI asked her to. She is a nice woman. She has a boss.”
“Everybody has a boss.”
“That is my point.”
“A closed session has a man in the corner typing,” Vlad said. “What he types goes in a file. The file goes in a building with a thousand badges in it. One of those people owes somebody money. I knew who you talked to and where you were every night, Marcus. I never read one of your messages. I did not need to.”
Marcus took his foot off the crate. “You’re bringing that up now?”
“I am telling you what it was worth. And the people in Virginia heard about your foot from a sheriff’s radio.”
An engine came up the road below the cabin. Vlad stopped and went to the window. A white Union Pacific pickup went past the gate toward the tunnel without slowing down. He watched until he couldn’t hear it.
“That’s seven hours early,” Marcus said.
Vlad came back from the window.
“There are two others,” Samantha said. “Weeks.”
“Then two programs have it. Not two hundred. You can watch two.”
“And everything that never took PQ1?”
“Trucks fix those. Nobody needs your method to put a new box on a pole. Somebody needs it to build the next machine.”
She took the pot off the stove and looked at him.
“You hid one number for seventeen years,” she said. “How did that go?”
“It went fine for seventeen years.”
Marcus laughed, once, and stopped when nobody else did.
“I wrote it down,” Vlad said. “I was seventeen. It was three in the morning. I was in a hurry, so I posted it. Then it was in nib. Then it was in a billion machines. It took me and you and Hanne and Eleanor and the FBI three days to change one number. I could not take it back. I’m not asking you to forget it. I’m asking you not to give it to anybody.”
“So I carry it until I die,” Samantha said.
“Preferably for a long time.”
“Jesus, Vlad,” Marcus said.
Vlad knew what he was asking her. “You do not carry it alone. We watch who comes looking for it, the three of us. Seth knows it exists. That is one person too many.”
“Seth drove you up a mountain.”
“I know. I like Seth.”
Samantha spooned oatmeal into three cups and handed him one. He held it and didn’t eat it.
“You burned something this morning,” Marcus said. “I smelled it.”
“I wrote down what I was going to say.”
Samantha sat down on the floor next to Cooper with her cup. She ate two spoonfuls before she said anything.
“Could you rebuild it? If something happened to me.”
“No. You never told me enough.”
“I know.”
He guessed she had decided that the morning she came back from her night alone. He hadn’t known it was a decision.
“So you agree with me.”
“I didn’t say that.” She put her cup down. “We decide together. Before three.”
“I want to say something about Eleanor,” Marcus said.
“Tell me when I get back,” Samantha said. She got up and took her jacket off the hook. Cooper was at the door before she reached it.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going for a run.”
“Take the dog.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be a choice.”
Vlad went out on the porch. She went down the two-track through the aspens with Cooper running ahead and back. When he couldn’t see them anymore he went inside and looked at the microwave. It said 6:31.
He didn’t know what he would do if she got in that car at three.