Ghostman
Record details
- ISBN: 9780307959966
- ISBN: 0307959961
-
Physical Description:
print
321 pages ; 25 cm - Edition: 1st ed.
- Publisher: New York, NY : Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.
Content descriptions
General Note: | "This is a Borzoi book." |
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Subject: | Criminals New Jersey Fiction Outlaws Fiction Atlantic City (N.J.) Fiction |
Genre: | Thrillers (Fiction) |
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- 16 of 17 copies available at Evergreen Indiana. (Show)
- 0 of 0 copies available at Waterloo-Grant Township Public Library.
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Ghostman
By Roger Hobbs
Knopf
Copyright © 2013 Roger HobbsAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780307959966
1
Seattle, Washington
The shrill, high-Âpitched chirp of an incoming e-Âmail was like a bell ringing in my head. I woke with a start and immediately put a hand on my gun. I took gasping breaths as my eyes adjusted to the light coming off my security screens. I looked over to the windowsill where Iâd set my watch. The sky was still as black as ink.
I took the gun out from under my pillow and put it on my nightstand. Breathe.
When I regained my composure I scanned the monitors. There was no one in the hallway or the elevator. Nobody in the stairs or the lobby. The only person awake was the night watchman, who looked too engrossed in a book to notice anything. My building was an old ten-Âstory, and I was on the eighth floor. It was a seasonal sort of place, so there were year-Âround occupants in only about half the rooms and none of them ever got up early. Everyone was still asleep, or away for the summer.
My computer chirped again.
Iâve been an armed robber for close to twenty years. Paranoia comes with the territory, as well as the stack of fake passports and hundred-Âdollar bills under the bottom drawer of my dresser. I started in this business in my teens. I did a few banks because I thought Iâd like the thrill of it. I wasnât the luckiest and Iâm probably not the smartest, but Iâve never been caught, questioned or fingerprinted. Iâm very good at what I do. Iâve survived because Iâm extremely careful. I live alone, I sleep alone, I eat alone. I trust no one.
There are maybe thirty people on earth who know I exist, and I am not sure if all of them believe Iâm still alive. I am a very private person out of necessity. I donât have a phone number and I donât get letters. I donât have a bank account and I donât have debts. I pay for everything in cash, if possible, and when I canât, I use a series of black Visa corporate credit cards, each attached to a different offshore corporation. Sending me an e-Âmail is the only way to contact me, though it doesnât guarantee Iâll respond. I change the address whenever I move to a different city. When I start getting messages from people I donât know, or if the messages stop bearing important information, I microwave the hard drive, pack my things into a duffel and start all over.
My computer chirped again.
I ran my fingers over my face and picked up the laptop from the desk next to my bed. There was one new message in my in-Âbox. All of my e-Âmails get redirected through several anonymous forwarding services before they reach me. The data goes through servers in Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Thailand before it gets chopped up and sent to accounts all over the world. Anybody tracing the IP wouldnât know which was the real one. This e-Âmail had arrived at my first offshore address in Reykjavik some two minutes ago, where the server had encrypted it with my private-Âkey 128-Âbit cipher. From there it had been forwarded to another address registered under a different name. Then another address, then another. Oslo, Stockholm, Bangkok, Caracas, São Paulo. It was daisy-Âchained down the line ten times with a copy in each in-Âbox. Cape Town, London, New York, L.A., Tokyo. Now it was undetectable, untraceable, private and anonymous. The information had circled the world almost twice before it got to me. It was in all these in-Âboxes, but my cipher key could unlock only one. I entered my pass code and waited for the message to decrypt. I could hear the hard drive doing a spin-Âup and the CPU beginning to work. Five in the morning.
Outside the sky was empty, except for a few lights on in the skyscrapers, which looked like foggy constellations. Iâve never liked July. Where Iâm from the whole summer is intolerably hot. The security monitors had browned out for a few seconds the night before, and I had to spend two hours checking them. I opened a window and put my fan next to it. I could smell the shipping yard outsideâÂold cargo, garbage and salt water. Across the train tracks the bay stretched out like a giant oil slick. That early in the morning, only a half dozen or so headlights cut through the darkness. The fishing boats cast rigger beams over the nets, and the early ferries were setting off from the harbor. The fog rolled in from Bainbridge Island and through the city, where the rain stopped and the cargo express cast a shadow from the track going east. I took my watch off the windowsill and put it on. I wear a Patek Philippe. It doesnât look like much, but it will tell the correct time until long after everyone Iâve ever known is dead and buried, the trains stop running and the bay erodes into the ocean.
My encryption program made a noise. Done.
I clicked on the message.
The senderâs address had been obscured by all the redirects, but I knew instantly who it was from. Of the possibly thirty people who know how to contact me, only two knew the name in the subject line, and only one I knew for sure was alive.
Jack Delton.
My name isnât really Jack. My name isnât John, George, Robert, Michael or Steven, either. It isnât any of the names that appear on my driverâs licenses, and it isnât on my passports or credit cards. My real name isnât anywhere, except maybe on a college diploma and a couple of school records in my safety-Âdeposit box. Jack Delton was just an alias, and it was long since retired. Iâd used it for a job five years ago and never again since. The words blinked on the screen with a little yellow tag next to them to show that the message was urgent.
I clicked it.
The e-Âmail was short. It read: Please call immediately.
Then there was a phone number with a local area code.
I stared at it for a moment. Normally, when I got a message like this, I wouldnât even consider dialing the number. The area code was the same as mine. I thought about this for a second and came up with two conclusions. Either the sender had been extraordinarily lucky or he knew where I was. Considering the sender, it was probably the latter. There were a few ways he couldâve done it, sure, but none of them wouldâve been easy or cheap. Just the possibility that Iâd been found should have been enough to send me running. I have a policy never to call numbers I donât know. Phones are dangerous. It is hard to track an encrypted e-Âmail through a series of anonymous servers. Tracking someone by their cell phone is easy, however. Even regular police can trace a phone, and regular police donât deal with guys like me. Guys like me get the full treatment. FBI, Interpol, Secret Service. They have rooms full of officers for that sort of thing.
I looked at the blinking name long and hard. Jack.
If the e-Âmail were from anyone else, I wouldâve deleted it by now. If the e-Âmail were from anyone else, Iâd be closing the account and deleting all my messages. If the e-Âmail were from anyone else, Iâd be frying the computers, packing my duffel and buying a ticket for the next flight to Russia. Iâd be gone in twenty minutes.
But it wasnât from anyone else.
Only two people in the world knew that name.
I stood up and went to the dresser by my window. I pushed aside a pile of money and a yellow legal pad full of notes. When Iâm not on a job, I translate the classics. I pulled a white shirt out of the drawer, a gray two-Âpiece suit from the closet and a leather shoulder holster from my dresser. I fished a little chrome revolver from the box on top: a Detective Special with the trigger guard and hammer spur filed off. I filled it with a handful of .38 hollow points. When I was dressed and ready, I took out an old prepaid international phone, powered it up and punched in the numbers.
The phone didnât even ring. It just went right to connection.
âItâs me,â I said.
âYouâre a hard man to find, Jack.â
âWhat do you want?â
âI want you to come to my clubhouse,â Marcus said. âBefore you ask, you still owe me.â
Continues...
Excerpted from Ghostman by Roger Hobbs Copyright © 2013 by Roger Hobbs. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
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