“HAL2 seems to be really threatened by you. Personally, I mean… if you can use such a term about a cyber-creation. He went to a lot of trouble to develop those smokescreens and to set you up. I wonder why. What makes you so special? You’re just one of many analysts at the NCTC. More famous, perhaps, because of the El Aqrab incident. But still…”
“I don’t feel very special. I’m sure it’s just because I happened to be the guy who discovered what he was doing at Westlake.”
“Maybe.”
Decker stood up. He walked to the window and looked down at the Common below. A small crowd of children was playing tag, running in and out of the bushes. A woman was walking her dog.
“Data, bits and bytes,” Decker said without turning. “They used to be my friends. The input I used to determine if a suspect was dangerous, a terrorist or spy.” He turned back to face Lulu. “Now data about me is being used to locate me, to hunt us both down.” He shook his head. “Who’s calling us, then? Who’s our mysterious Mr. X?”
“I don’t know,” Lulu said. “Before, I thought it was Rutger Braun. Now… I don’t know.” She got up and walked over to Decker. “Perhaps, unlike you, Mr. X wasn’t just visiting The Education Arcade. Perhaps he belongs in that virtual world, like the rest of those people you met there. Someone who died in one of HAL2’s accidents and was recently added, like Mary-Lou Fleming. Or someone programmed into the system from the very beginning, a Riptide original.”
“And he’s been calling us using some wireless network from cyberspace?”
“I don’t know. But I do know this.” She reached out and put her hand on his cheek. “We can’t stay here any longer. I’ve tried to cover my tracks but it won’t take very long for HAL2 to discover my snooping. He’ll hunt us down to this terminal.”
“What are we going to do? Where are we going to go? Where can we go?”
“You’ve been in law enforcement your whole life,” Lulu said. “Even your Dad was a cop. Not me. I’m usually the one being chased by the cops. I may do some freelance work for the Fort once in a while, as long as it doesn’t violate my conscience, but I grew up outside of the system. Outside the law. While my Dad was busy calculating odds for Chinatown bookies, at thirteen I was fixing stolen PCs, hacking game cheats, re-wiring security systems, cracking code. We can’t do this alone, John. We need help. And since we’re meant to be armed and dangerous, what the fuck? Might as well be.”
CHAPTER 49
It was a surprisingly warm day considering it was less than two weeks before Christmas. Decker stood at the top of the steps of the Four Season’s Hotel, closed his eyes, tipped his head back and reveled in the heat of the sun on his cheeks.
“Taxi?”
When he finally opened his eyes again, dark clouds had already rolled in, obscuring the sun. Decker nodded at the young man at the kiosk and pulled out what remained of his billfold. Moments later, he and Lulu scurried into a cab.
“Essex and Oxford,” said Lulu.
They headed down Boylston. Neither of them spoke for several minutes. They were both locked in their own thoughts as they stared out the windows — at the holiday shoppers, the college kids, tourists, the bundled-up businessmen in dark coats and dark scarves. The storefronts were decked out for Christmas, dipped in holiday lights, bright balls and tinsel.
Eventually, Boylston turned into Essex. After a few more blocks, the cab finally pulled over. Decker paid the driver while Lulu held the door open for him.
“There’s a pretty good dim sum joint over there,” Lulu said, as he stepped from the cab. “Chau Chow City. You like chicken feet? When this is all over, we should go out for dinner. Or, if you’d like, I can make you some of my world-famous roast pork with red peppers and noodles. It’s got garlic and scallions and ginger. Delicious. My grandmother taught me the recipe.”
“Where the hell is this place?” Decker said, staring about. He had already spotted two watchers: one minding the street; the other minding the watcher. The neighborhood was clearly under surveillance. But these kids weren’t cops. They were barely in their twenties, with crew cuts or long spiky hair, metal studs, puffy ski jackets and livid tattoos.
The first year out of the Academy, Decker had spent some time infiltrating the gambling and drug trade run by organized crime in Chicago. Much of it was managed by one gang or another, syndicate surrogates, and he’d been obliged to interpret the tattoos on the skin of many a gang member. They used them to transmit messages: I killed this guy; I’m connected to this; I’m dangerous. Human calligraphy.
They were obviously gang-bangers, these watchers. Which meant that he and Lulu were near something worth minding.
Lulu headed down Oxford, toward Beach. It was a cavernous street, narrow and dark, like a canyon. Decker kept his eyes peeled on the windows above them. Again, he could have sworn he saw people staring out at the street, simply watching. A boy. An old woman petting a calico cat. Another tatted-up teenager.
They had almost made it to the open parking lot on the left when Lulu ducked without warning into an entrance. She knocked on a door and waved half-heartedly at a camera jutting down from the ceiling. There was a buzzing sound and Lulu opened the door.
The hallway was empty. It led to a stairwell.
They climbed two stories before Lulu stopped and knocked on a door leading to the second-floor landing. It opened an inch and Decker could see someone peeking out from within. A second later, the door opened to reveal a huge Asian man, the size and shape of a Sumo wrestler. He looked down at Lulu and said something low in Chinese. Decker couldn’t quite make out the words.
Lulu turned toward Decker. “He’s with me,” she said in Mandarin, with a hint of disgust in her voice. It was as if she were confessing that she’d stepped on something unpleasant and it was now stuck to the sole of her shoe.
The Sumo wrestler looked him up and down. He had a large red scar above his left eye, Decker noticed. He tried not to stare at it, which, of course, made it even more awkward.
Finally, with a kind of grunt, the guard let them in. But, as soon as Decker had stepped through the doorway, the guard clamped a ham-hock of a hand on his shoulder, held him fast and swiveled him round.
“Needs to search us,” said Lulu.
The guard began patting them down. Once he was satisfied, he motioned them forward again.
The door at the end of the corridor opened up onto what appeared to be a residential hallway featuring one gray apartment door after another. They made their way to the end of the corridor where another guard searched them again. Then to another stairwell, up two more flights, until they finally arrived at their destination.
The door at the head of the stairs was guarded by a teenager with an Uzi submachine gun slung over one shoulder. The tattoo of a dragon covered his face. Red and black. Its serpentine head was etched on one of his eyelids. Decker could see it clearly each time the boy blinked. The dragon’s body curled down and around both his nose and his lips, only to circle back at the end so that the very tip of its tail vanished in the teenager’s mouth. Again, Lulu said something in Mandarin that Decker couldn’t quite understand.
The boy laughed and, for a moment, Decker could see that his tongue had been tattooed as well. The tail of the dragon concluded deep in his mouth, like a fish hook. He opened the door.
A loft… undecorated… with a poured concrete floor and plain walls painted off-white. One whole side of the loft looked out onto Essex Street but the canyon-like nature of the block afforded no sunlight. The windows might as well have been boarded up for some forthcoming typhoon. The only light in the loft emanated from a series of crackling fluorescents overhead.