Zero day code, p.2
Zero Day Code, page 2
part #1 of End of Days Series
Fuck Hondo. Fuck Trisha. And fuck the Florida Bar Association.
The affiliate income from sales off his website was growing impressively (although, to be honest, any growth was impressive when you were coming off a base of nothing). And downloads of his pod had exploded since The Washington Post cited it as an example of one of the newer, smarter Alt Right media plays.
Still no Squarespace or Casper Mattress ads though. And never would be, he knew. But he kept a spreadsheet of all the advertisers in the Alt Right media world, and when Jonas had grown his audience to a point where they were a viable sales channel for the purveyors of X-Treme Survival Urban Exfil Packs, Supermale Vitality Tonics and erectile dysfunction gel, he would be ready.
He might even make the leap to the real big time. A regular gig on Fox. Or his own patronage deal with some rich closet fascist who was too weak in the bladder to straight up take on the Left. Lots of guys had deals like that. Bannon. That Milo fag, until he flamed out like Jones.
No reason Jonas Murdoch couldn’t make his own deal.
He was smarter than all of them, he knew, as he stood in front of Mikey’s gaming computer, in the cramped, messy room that did for a lounge, diner and kitchen in this shithole. He checked the tape over the desktop cam.
Still there. No morning wood for the CIA.
And Jonas was sporting some hard polished wood, too, because he had a great show today.
He sat down and woke the screen, his heart quickening. This morning he’d follow up on his Guy Pendleton take-down from Monday.
That was a genuine coup. His first real scalp.
Pendleton, who had been in line to direct the first X-Men reboot for Disney, was your typical Hollywood liberal, which is to say, an egregious fucking hypocrite. Always whining about minority this and empowerment that. But Jonas had used his legal research skills, which were still razor sharp, to dig out a couple of multimillion dollar settlements Universal had very quietly paid to three actresses Pendleton had assaulted, possibly even raped, while he was directing the Duke Nukem movies.
Jonas had dropped that bomb in Monday’s ep, during a convo with Joe Rogan. (Rogan had no idea who he was talking with, but Jonas had carefully groomed the much bigger podcaster with six month’s worth of dicksuck tweets and fawning blog posts on The Centurion’s website). The shout out from WaPo had been all Rogan’s people needed to finally plug him into the pod for five minutes of burnishing his cred as a straight-talking guy who didn’t give a fuck about PC bullshit on the left or right.
It had gone well.
They’d segued from the latest Conner MacGregor arrest to the Pendleton reveal and Rogan had been every bit as surprised as Jonas had hoped for. Being a thorough professional, Rogan was cautious naturally, but five minutes in and Jonas had what he needed. A viral audio clip of YouTube famous Joe Rogan what-the-fucking his way through the opening minutes of the latest #MeToo shitstorm.
It was trending on Twitter an hour after the pod dropped.
By the end of Monday, Disney had released a statement ‘reviewing’ Pendleton’s role in any projects ‘going forward’.
Jonas set up his ‘sound booth’ – a big ass cardboard box lined with packing foam – sat at Mikey’s computer, adjusted his microphone and got ready to drop bombs all over the smoking crater he’d already made of Pendleton’s and Disney’s plans for X-Men: Emergence.
He almost didn’t get there.
First thing that happened when he logged into his account on Mikey’s computer, his notifications went apeshit.
He had thousands of hits from all over the net.
Messages from Cernovich and Rogan and…
Holy shit balls… from Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Fucking Carlson knew who he was.
Sort of.
Nobody actually knew that he was The Centurion, of course. He wasn’t ready to have his name up in lights yet. If anybody at work figured out it was him, his ass would hit the gutter at high speed about two seconds later. Which sucked. But he consoled himself that at least he had health insurance and the job itself was a solid daily workout; cardio and strength, at least a coupla thousand calories worth.
Looking at the towering inferno of his Twitter mentions, and the thousand plus emails piled up in The Centurion’s inbox, however, Jonas Murdoch started to wonder if this might be the day he finally escaped the fulfilment centre.
Which was pretty fucking ironic, when he thought about it later.
Things got so crazy after he fired up the desktop that Jonas almost missed the start of his shift. Hell, he almost didn’t record the pod.
He read the messages from Cernovich and Carlson first. Or Carlson’s producer, at least. That was a little disappointing, he’d admit. Not that Tucker had some bimbo to do his emails, but that she wasn’t writing to invite him on the show. They loved his pod, just loved it, she said, and Tucker was wondering if they could get copies of Universal’s NDA’s and settlements with the three women Pendleton had fucked over.
There was a part of Jonas that flared up at the presumption.
He’d done the fucking work, he should get the loot.
But the cooler, more rational part of his mind knew that just having Fox reach out like this, of being able to put one in the favour bank with them, that was a significant pay off all on its own.
The next time he staged a coup of this magnitude, he could go straight to them with it.
And the time after that, they might just have him on air.
He could imagine his name scrolling across the bottom of the screen already. He sent Carlson’s producer a one-time link to an untraceable file dump where she could grab the documents. But first he blurred out the actresses' names. He had need of them later and advised her to ‘stayed tuned’.
Cernovich was friendlier and less self-interested. He DM’d Jonas on Twitter to let him know he was already a fan of the pod and he just wanted to say ‘good job’ on the Pendleton call out.
That was classy, Jonas thought.
The rest of the incoming was a mix of slavering fan mail and leftist abuse. It was compelling, reading all of these strangers’ thoughts about what he’d done. Even when it was enraging, he found it difficult to stop clicking through. It was only when Mikey startled him by knocking on the improvised cardboard sound booth that Jonas realised he was running two hours late.
“Shit!” he cried out.
“Sorry, man,” Mikey Summers said, looking perplexed. He was wearing lycra. He was always wearing lycra when he wasn’t in uniform for the Supermall Burger King. “Thought you’d be gone by now,” Mikey said. “You still recording your thing?”
That’s what this asshole called The Centurion. ‘Your thing’. Or sometimes ‘your little thing’.
Jonas clamped down on his annoyance, which was mostly with himself for losing focus.
“Yeah, sorry, man,” he said. “Got caught up in fan mail.”
Mikey laughed at that. The jerk. And again, Jonas forced himself to let it slide.
“Can you gimme another ten or fifteen?” he asked. “I need to record.”
His roommate shrugged it off.
“Sure. I’m going out anyway. Gonna get some extra road miles in before work.”
“Good for you,” Jonas said, returning to his screen.
One thing he could thank his annoying roommate for, Mikey had broken the spell of mindlessly scrolling through his messages and mentions. He had to lean into this thing now, or he was going to be late for work and there were no excuses for that. None that he could give the supervisor at least.
He flew through the set-up procedure to record a new podcast.
Brought up his notes.
Chilled the fuck out, and got into character.
The thing about the Centurion? The dude was angry, but he was chill with it. Like, murderously chilled.
Jonas took a breath, composed himself and started to speak with the slow, measured, ironic detachment which had gathered over forty thousand listeners to his podcast.
“Two days into the Pendleton scandal,” he began, “and Disney are still reviewing what sort of role the rapist will play in their family-friendly business. This is the Centurion. Welcome to an imploding supermassive shitshow of desperate incompetence so violently bungle-fucked six ways from Sunday that even listing Disney’s major oh-no moments feels like shamewanking over grief porn…”
He spoke for only ten minutes, leaving himself time to upload the files, but in the last minute of the show he squeezed off the money shot. Jonas Murdoch named the three actresses Guy Pendleton had raped.
Then he went to work.
3
Threat Assessments
Michelle Nguyen frowned. Twitter was down, at least on her desktop. She picked up the iPhone next to her keyboard and tried checking her personal account. Yep, down. That was annoying. She had a few minutes before her meeting with O’Donnell and wanted to dip into one of her lists. The latest edition of Foreign Policy had just this week cited her unclassified monograph on Chinese food security and set off a pretty willing debate in her ‘Finding a Wonk for the End of the World’ list. August Cole and Pete Singer were ragging on Hugh White for his ‘aggressively naive’ insistence that Beijing was a rational actor with too much to lose from subverting the rules-based international system. White and his crew in reply were all ‘with-respect’ and ‘perhaps-I-was-not-clear-enough’; wonkspeak for ‘hey-dumbass-you-couldn’t-be-more-wrong’. Michelle agreed with White about Beijing’s power realism, up to a point, but Cole and Singer had given her a few new angles on the problem of China’s deeply stressed agricultural sector.
Her landline buzzed, the front desk telling her that Mr O’Donnell had arrived for their two o’clock meeting.
“I’ll come down and get him,” she said.
Her office on the first floor was less than a minute from reception, but she had to stop by and let Admiral Holloway know that O’Donnell had arrived.
“The newsletter guy?” he said, when Michelle put her head around his doorway to tell him. “Cool.”
“Yeah,” Michelle said. “I told him I could give him half an hour. When did you want to make your grand entrance?”
David Holloway smiled. He was three years out of the Navy, and one of those military men who had relaxed so completely into civilian life that it was difficult to ever imagine him barking orders at anybody.
“Let’s say… fifteen minutes? That enough time?”
“Sure. I’ll soften him up for you.”
Holloway thanked her and she left to pick up her guest. The Eisenhower Building was a secure facility, belying the charm of its Baroque Revival architecture. Sitting next to the White House it was, in Michelle’s opinion, the much grander of the two structures, more closely resembling a palatial French hotel or casino than a federal government building. But it was full of Feds, including her tiny part of the National Security Council, and O’Donnell wasn’t getting past the coat rack without an escort.
She found him waiting by the front desk, a plastic VISITOR card already dangling from a lanyard around his neck. A messenger bag hung by a strap from one shoulder and he’d taken off his jacket, draping it over one arm. She knew he’d driven down from Baltimore, which meant he’d had to park a few blocks away, but he didn’t look as though he was suffering from the heat. She clocked the expression on his face when he caught sight of her ink. Michelle Nguyen was a human canvas, a living tribute to the tattooist’s art. She could see this guy struggling to put his shock and awe back in the box.
“Ms Nguyen,” O’Donnell said, smiling nervously and stepping forward to offer his hand. His handshake was firm and his hand was dry, even cool.
Must have caught an Uber, she thought.
Aloud, she introduced herself, “Mister O’Donnell, thank you for coming down.”
She directed him through the metal detectors, which occasioned a brief delay as he had to empty the bag. Out came his laptop, a phone, a couple of smaller devices she didn’t recognise and a snarled ball of dongles.
“Thank you for giving me the time,” O’Donnell said as he collected all of his stuff together on the through-side of the security barrier.
“My office isn’t far from here,” Michelle said. “Just follow me.”
The young man, who was unremarkably good looking in a sort of wholesome, corn-fed kind of way, hurried to keep up with her. He dropped a couple of dongles and nearly tripped over his own feet, picking them up.
“Do you mind me asking why?” O’Donnell said, as he stood up again.
She made a face. “So you don’t get lost?”
His responded with a confused expression.
“Oh no,” he said suddenly, getting her joke. “No, I meant why did you agree to meet with me? I didn’t really expect you to say yes when I emailed.”
Michelle smiled. It was a genuine smile and her eyes twinkled with it.
“Oh we’re big fans here, James. We have a subscription to your newsletter.”
He frowned.
“You do?”
“Yes. We subscribe to quite a few private bulletins, but we don’t do so as the NSC. I understand that we used to, but a couple of the analysts started touting themselves as ‘consultants’—” she sketched air quotes on either side of her head “—to the National Security Council. So instead, somebody came up with the idea of subscribing using the names of nineteenth century Congressmen.”
“Huh,” he said, “You really do learn something every day.”
Michelle could almost see him filing the little factoid away in his head. He seemed the sort of guy who might just sit up late tonight reviewing every name on his subscriber list.
They reached her office and she showed him in, gesturing for James to take the chair in front of her desk, which was clear of papers. Her computer screen was similarly blank.
“I was happy to talk with you because I found that piece you did on the problems with milk formula for babies in China to be very helpful in framing my own paper a month later. You were well ahead of the curve in identifying the issue with toxic melamine contamination of Chinese baby formula. And I must admit, I was curious to know how.”
James O’Donnell shrugged as if embarrassed to be asked.
“I was looking at the business case for the German supermarket chain Aldi moving into Australia,” he said. “Their operations down there can be seen as a proving ground for pushing further into the US market, where they’re already significant disruptors. I found a couple of stories in the local retail trade press about sudden, unexplained shortages of milk formula.”
He paused, as though something had just occurred to him. When O’Donnell spoke again, the words came out in a bizarrely, flat nasal accent.
“A dingo took my baby formula.”
Michelle snorted at the unexpected pivot.
“Is that your best Meryl Streep?”
“Yeah, sorry. My Sean Connery is better. Anyway,” he said, returning to his explanation, “Turned out Chinese students were making a lot of money, like hundreds of millions of dollars all up, mailing home as much Australian baby formula as they could buy. It was a tenth the price of the Chinese brands and it didn’t poison anybody.”
“Nice,” she said. “Your work, I mean, not the poison baby formula. Or your terrible Meryl Streep bit.”
James fumbled with his messenger bag. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions and take some notes?”
“As long you don’t mind that I might not be able to answer freely. NSC has access to classified sources I can’t talk about.”
“That’s cool,” James said. “People underestimate the value of publicly available information, even more than they overstate the value of information from, you know, other sources.”
“They do,” Michelle agreed.
James interviewed her about her research into China’s food security problems, dialling in on the aspect of most interest to his subscribers; the money angle. She could tell he was circling in on the question of tariffs and the American farm sector when David Holloway rapped on the door.
“Sorry for interrupting,” he said, with impressive artlessness, “But I heard that Mister O’Donnell was in the building and I just wanted to say hello. I’m a fan.”
James blushed and looked a little uncomfortable. Michelle found herself liking him even more. In this town most of the guys she met were convinced of their own brilliance, but he had the grace to be slightly embarrassed by his. It was a pity this was a job interview and not a Tinder date.
Not that O’Donnell knew that.
James had an awkward moment when Nguyen’s boss interrupted them. He started to stand up, to shake the man’s hand, when he remembered the open messenger bag on his lap and all of the crap that would come spilling out if he jumped to his feet. He fussed about for a few seconds, moving everything around before finally clearing the chair and taking Holloway’s hand.
He knew who this guy was. Head of Threat Assessment for NSC. Retired US Navy admiral. Opted to continue in public service rather than farm his CV out to one of the K Street lobbying firms or big arms and aerospace companies, who’d have been more than happy to have him. But that was all he knew. Just a one par bio he’d mashed up from a Google search as part of his preparation for the meeting with Michelle Nguyen. He hadn’t really expected to run into Holloway.
Hell, he hadn’t expected to set foot in this building at all.
“Sit down, please,” Holloway said. He pulled a spare chair out of the corner and spun it around to face the desk. “Michelle told me you wanted to speak to her about China.”
“I did, and she’s been very helpful.” He quickly raised his hands. “But not too helpful. All your secrets are still secret.”
