The Committee to Nuke Elysium

Here’s what we know (or what we’re told) about Twelve Hawks:

“He” is probably a man, although his agent, Joe Regal, says Twelve Hawks uses a synthesizer to disguise or filter his voice. “When he calls, I know it’s him,” Regal says, “because nothing comes up, not ‘out of area’ – nothing.”

He’s older than 30 and could be in his 40s or 50s. Clues: In a brief question-and-answer piece e-mailed to USA TODAY by Doubleday, his publisher, Twelve Hawks precedes the answer to a question about religion with: “When I was in my twenties ” And when an editor asked him whether his book’s “realm of hell” could be compared to current conditions in Iraq, Twelve Hawks said it’s more like Beirut in the ’70s, a remark that could mean he was then old enough to read newspaper accounts of war-torn Lebanon. But then again, he could have gotten the information from old news clippings or a library.

He lives in New York, Los Angeles and London, according to Regal, though the literary agent has never met him face-to-face.

He is a first-time author, not an established author who is writing under a pseudonym, his agent says.

He doesn’t own a TV, he likes wine, and he drives a 15-year-old car, says Jason Kaufman, his editor at Doubleday, who says he has picked up those details in their numerous conversations.

“This is not something that Twelve Hawks dreamed up because it would make headlines,” Kaufman says. “Twelve Hawks is someone who lives his life and values his privacy in the exact same way as the characters he writes about. … It’s not a game to him.”

Though Twelve Hawks won’t talk to the media, his publisher supplied USA TODAY with an e-mailed quote from him about why he lives the way he does: “The Vast Machine is the very powerful — and very real — computerized information system that monitors all aspects of our lives. I live off the Grid by choice.”

But is it really possible to live that way in 2005?

“It is possible,” says Lisa Pankau, a white-collar-crime investigator in Chandler, Okla. She adds quickly, however, that it would be “very difficult” and would take “a very devoted person.”

Pankau guesses Twelve Hawks could have credit cards with an offshore bank — if he even uses credit cards. She says he could have a passport from one of the Third World countries that sells citizenship, and he could have his agent send his money to a dummy corporation or an offshore account that is listed under an assumed name.

She guesses he could have registered a car under a pseudonym. As for a driver’s license, you can buy a book from Amazon.com on how to create that and other forms of identification on your home computer.

Most important, she says, Twelve Hawks, in all probability, would have needed his secret life in place before the 9/11 attacks tightened worldwide ID requirements.

His agent, Joe Regal, won’t discuss financial arrangements. “But I’m not sending wire transfers to a bank in Dubai”