“But if people make shit happen,” Meadows said, “others can stop them doing it.”
“Ha! You and what army?”
Tom became aware of shapes seeming to swim around them. His eyes couldn’t resolve them as anything more than vaguely human-shaped blurs of color: grey; an orange that flickered like the reflections of flames; a disc half moon-silver and half black, with S-curved demarcation; a black infinitely deep, shot through with tiny parti-color points of light that did not illuminate the darkness.
“You forget whose friends they were to start with,” Mark said.
“They’re mine now. You got nothing, you weak, lame puke. You are nothing. And I’m tired of your shit.” With a force of will Tom drove himself upward and out.
Abruptly he was sitting upright in a bed, cold air pricking his skin where sheets and layers of heavy blankets had fallen away. A faint smoke smell and heat of banked coals emanated from the fireplace. Big snowflakes beat like giant moths against the window of the cabin in the Arctic pine forests of Mackenzie District in Canada’s Northwest Territory, almost as remote as the mid-Pacific.
He had come alone. He needed to try to get his head straight. Sun Heilian was starting to look at him funny. She was too damned smart, that woman. She’s just a woman, a voice told him. The world’s half full of them.
Tom shook his head and rubbed his face, where for some reason beard bristles never grew. “She loves Sprout,” he said, “she loves me .” And he thought, Who’s laughing? Who’s that I hear? And inside him was colder than outside the log walls of the cabin.
19
Monday,
December 14
Helsinki, Finland
“I don’t really want to be crawling through a computer screen in the security office,” Jaako Kuusi, aka Broadcast, mumbled around a mouthful of creamed herring.
Noel placed a spoonful of caviar, some chopped egg, and chopped onion on a cracker. “Well, how else can we do it?” He took a bite and the sharp taste of fish and salt brought an explosion of saliva to the back of his mouth.
“There’s a guy in the States. I kept track of computer aces for our service.”
Noel nodded. Jaako did occasional freelance work for the Finnish secret service, and he and Noel had crossed paths a few times. “And what does he do?”
A gull appeared out of the fog and snow, and dove past the window of the Helsinki restaurant. Its raucous cries grated like rusty hinges. “The Signal on Port 950.”
“That’s nice, what the hell does that mean?”
Jaako shook his head. “That’s his name, his handle, not his power. But it suggests his power.”
“Would you get to the point?”
“You sound just like Niemi,” Jaako complained, referring to the head of the Finnish secret service.
“You don’t have to be insulting. Niemi is a nasty piece of work.” Noel dished up more caviar.
“And Flint was such an angel?” Jaako asked. “I think you have to be a perfect shit to run one of these agencies.”
“I’d agree with that,” Noel said.
“So, why pull this heist on the Nshombos? Why not get them hauled up in front of the Hague? Rumor has it you put Flint there.” Noel just smiled, and Jaako looked disappointed. “Oh, come on, give me something?”
“No.” Noel paused for a sip of vodka. “Now tell me about the Signal. What’s his power and why do we need it?”
“The guy can project his consciousness into any computer on the Internet that is listening on Port 950. When he’s inhabiting a computer, he can use it like any user-copy files, send jobs to a printer, connect to another computer. But here’s what’s useful for us. He can also use any peripheral devices as if he were the interface software.”
Noel slowly set down his glass. “He can control the security devices in the vault.”
Jaako formed a gun with his fingers, pointed it at Noel, and pretended to pull the trigger. “Bingo.”
“Yes, we definitely need him,” Noel said.
“Which brings us back to me avoiding that whole security office issue. If you can find the guy-he’s a total recluse-you need to convince him to let me into his space so I can enter the vault from his computer screen in the United States.”
“And if I can’t find him or convince him?”
“I won’t join your party.”
“I’ll find him.” Noel paused for a moment, then added softly, “Do I need to remind you not to mention this little endeavor to anyone?”
“I won’t. A chance for a couple of mil. Mum’s the word.” He made a zipping motion across his lips.
“Yes, and just to assure your silence…” Noel slid an eight-by-ten envelope across the table.
Jaako opened it, pulled out the photos, blanched, and quickly shoved them back into the envelope.
Noel knew what they contained. A particularly horrible variety of child pornography, and he’d downloaded them from Jaako’s computer.
“How did you get these?” Jaako demanded. He tried to sound threatening, but it came out breathless.
“I stole your computer. And I’ll deliver it to Niemi if you don’t play nice.”
“You’re a bastard. Talk about Niemi or Flint. You could be running one of these agencies.”
“And you’re a pervert, but I’m going to make you a rich pervert.” Noel stood, threw down money, and walked out into the Finnish blizzard.
Saigon, Vietnam
Bugsy pressed the cell phone against his ear. The rumble of traffic was almost enough to drown out Barbara Baden’s voice.
“No,” Bugsy said. “I’m in the middle of this thing for Lohengrin.”
“You’ll need to take a break from it,” Babel said. “Jayewardene wants as many members of the Committee as possible to be at the conference for security detail. I’ve arranged a private flight for you. How soon can you be at Ho Chi Minh Airport?”
Bugsy pressed the phone to his chest, leaned forward, and asked Billy the same question. Around them, the highway was buzzing with traffic following no recognizable traffic laws Bugsy had ever seen. Semis screamed past them at a hundred kilometers an hour. Granted that wasn’t so bad when you put it in miles per hour, but three digits still made him nervous.
“Five hours,” the joker said with a shrug of his desiccated shoulders. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
Babel must have heard, because as soon as Bugsy put the phone back to his ear, she was speaking.
“I’ll have the flight ready for you. It will be official UN business, so you can skip all the customs and airport security.”
The line went dead. Bugsy closed the phone. Nick, sitting beside him, raised Cameo’s eyebrows. The guy still hadn’t forgiven Bugsy for knocking the hat off on the plane into Vietnam. “Change of plans?” Nick said.
“How would you feel about a lovely few days in Paris watching the Caliphate stall for time? Turns out there’s a peace conference that they want us to be at.”
Billy shouted something that sounded obscene and swerved violently. The tires squealed, and the car fishtailed for a few heart-stopping seconds before shifting back into a recognizable lane. Nick looked a little pale.
“Sounds fine, assuming we get there.”
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
There was another blizzard in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Noel peered through the windshield of the rented car. The wipers were in a losing battle with the snow. He’d tried to teleport to the Steunenberg farm, but Google Earth had failed him. This place was so remote and the shot from the satellites so cursory that Noel had found himself standing in ankle-deep mud with a bitter wind slicing through his topcoat, surrounded by fallow fields.
So he’d teleported to Barcelona and warmer climes, used an Internet cafe to check a location for a Hertz in Coeur d’Alene. He then teleported back to Idaho and rented a car. While he waited for a young pimple-plagued boy to bring up the car he perused through the file on his iPhone about Mollie Steunenberg, aka Tesseract.
He skipped past the downloads of season two of American Hero. It had been painful to watch. Mollie hadn’t had a good run. Her power was formidable. Her tolerance for backstabbing limited. She’d been voted off in the fifth week, and her final confessional had been filled with anger, confusion, and a desire to get even with “the Heathers.” Noel had to do a bit of research to understand that reference, but once he did, it was just another angle to use with Ms. Steunenberg. That and her age. At seventeen she’d either be idealistic or a completely self-absorbed teenager.