‘Tea?’ she asked.
I nodded, and Battleboi turned to me. ‘This is Rachel-san.’ She glanced my way and gave the thinnest of smiles.
Battleboi? Rachel-san? Old Japan above Walgreens? No matter what the FBI said about his abilities, I didn’t hold out much hope. It looked to me like I was dealing with a pair of care-in-the-community cases.
Three hours later, I was forced to revise my opinion drastically. Not only had Lorenzo – at least that’s what Rachel had called him once – deleted all references to me from the alumni-association records, he said he could do the same to the far more complex files held by Caulfield Academy and Harvard themselves.
‘You can get rid of an entire academic and attendance record?’ I asked. ‘Make it look like Scott Murdoch never even went to Caulfield or Harvard?’
‘Why not?’ He laughed. ‘There are so many people on the fucking planet now, that’s all we are – lines of code on a hard drive. Take the lines away and we don’t exist; add to it and we’re really somebody. Want a full professorship – tell me the faculty. Need a hundred million large? Wait while I manipulate some binary code. By the way, you can call me God if you like.’
‘Thanks, but I’ve kinda come to like Battleboi.’ I smiled.
Late that night, I watched as he consigned the last of Dr Murdoch’s academic achievements to the electronic void. ‘It’s a shame – all that study, and now it’s gone,’ he said.
There was little I could say, too awash with memories, especially of Bill – he’d driven up in his old Ferrari to Boston, the only person who had come to see me graduate.
Once Lorenzo was satisfied that he hadn’t left behind any sign that he had accessed the data, I told him about the next item on my list: the information that had to be excised from government computers and job announcements.
‘How many entries?’ he asked.
‘A couple of hundred, probably more.’
From the look on his face you would think I had invited him to commit seppuku.
‘Let me guess – this is urgent, neh?’ But he didn’t wait for a reply; he knew the answer. ‘You got copies of these announcements, or do we have to dig ’em out ourselves?’
I hesitated. Ben Bradley and his wife had all the information, but they were the last people I wanted to ask. ‘I’d have to think about that,’ I replied.
‘If we’ve gotta start from scratch, it could take months. Let me know what you decide,’ he said, and started closing down his racks of hard drives.
As he walked me to the door, he’d become relaxed enough for a little small talk. ‘I’ve been studying Japanese for three years – bitch of a language, huh? Where’d you learn it?’
‘Shōgun,’ I said simply and, after he had overcome his shock, I have to say he took it with enormous good grace. The mountain of flesh shook as he laughed at his gullibility and, with his eyes dancing and that great generosity of spirit, I glimpsed what Rachel must have first seen in him.
‘Shit,’ he said, wiping the tears from his eyes, ‘and I’ve spent the last six hours feeling inadequate – just like being in high school again.’
As I put my boots back on, emboldened by our laughter, he asked: ‘What exactly do you do at the FBI?’
‘I don’t … It’s complicated. I suppose you could say I used to be a fellow traveller with them, that’s all.’
‘Are you Scott Murdoch?’
I laughed again. ‘You think if I had those qualifications I’d be sitting on my ass talking to you?’ I hit just the right tone of bitterness and humour – I’m a helluva good liar when I need to be.
‘Whoever you are, you must be tight with the twenty-third floor.’
‘Not really. Why?’
‘I was hoping you could put a word in with the deputy director, ask him to go easy on the charges.’
‘My understanding is, if you keep cooperating, there may not be any charges.’
‘Sure,’ he laughed bitterly. ‘That’s why they’ve set up a special division for cybercrime. It’s their brave new world – I figure they’ll bleed me for everything I’ve got then double-cross me. You know, just to make an example.’
I shook my head, telling him he was paranoid, they didn’t operate like that. But of course he was right. Some months later they hit him with every charge they could find, then offered him a plea deal that was no deal at all. In the end, unable to afford any more lawyers – he had even sold his treasured Mount Fuji screen – he was forced to sign it. Fifteen years in Leavenworth was what he got.