The Never Game

by Jeffery Deaver

  “Great,” said the man. “What’re they into?”

  “Doom. Assassin’s Creed. Soldier of Fortune.” Maddie Poole had briefed him.

  “Classic. Hmm, girls? How old are they?”

  “Five and eight.”

  This gave the man pause.

  “I’ve heard about Conundrum.” He nodded at the screen.

  “I was going to say, it’s a bit old for them. But if they play Doom . . .”

  “The eight-year-old’s favorite. What about your game Prime Mission? They like The Whispering Man.”

  “I’ve heard of that one. Never played it. Sorry.”

  “Prime Mission’s good, right?”

  “Oh, a big winner at The Game Awards.”

  “I’ll take them both. Conundrum and Prime Mission.” Shaw looked around. “Where do I buy the discs?”

  The employee said, “Discs? Well, we’re download only. And it’s free.”

  “Free?”

  “All our software is.”

  “Well, that’s a deal.” He glanced at the impressive monitor overhead. “I’ve heard that the head of the company’s a genius.”

  Reverence dusted the kid’s face. “Oh, there’s nobody in the business like Mr. Knight. He’s one of a kind.”

  Shaw looked up at the screen. “That’s the new installment? Conundrum VI?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Looks good. How’s it different from the current one?”

  “The basic structure is the same, ARG.”

  “ARG?”

  “Alternative reality game. In Installment 6 we’re upping the galaxies to explore to five quadrillion and the total planets to fifteen quadrillion.”

  “Quadrillion? You mean, a player can visit that many planets?”

  With geek pride, the man said, “Theoretically, if you spent just one minute per planet, it would take you—I’m rounding—twenty-eight billion years to finish the game. So . . .”

  “Pick your planet carefully.”

  The employee nodded.

  “It’s been delayed, right? The new installment?”

  He grew defensive. “Just a little. Mr. Knight has to make sure it’s perfect. He won’t release anything before its time.”

  “Should I wait for that one, for VI?” Another nod at the screen.

  “No, I’d get V. Here.” He handed Shaw a card:

  CONUNDRUM

  KNIGHT TIME GAMING

  EVER FREE . . .

  On the back was a link for downloads. Into Shaw’s back jeans pocket.

  He thanked the employee and walked slowly past the players. He posed similar questions to a couple of other employees in the booth and got many of the same answers. Nobody seemed to know anything about The Whispering Man. He tried too to find out where Knight was presently and some things about his personal life. Nobody answered the specific questions, though the same message was often repeated: Tony Knight was a visionary, the paternal god atop the Olympus of high technology.

  Smacked of cult, to Shaw.

  He’d done all he could do here, so he headed to the booth’s exit, walking past a curtained wall. He was halfway along it when he startled as a hundred lasers and spotlights positioned around the twenty-foot monitors towering over the booth shot fiery beams toward the ceiling. Amid a deafening blare of electronic music, a booming voice cried, “Conundrum VI, the future of gaming . . . Ever free . . .” And on the screen, a death beam blew to pieces one of the fifteen quadrillion planets.

  Everyone nearby turned to the display and the light show.

  Which is why not a single person noticed when a flap in the curtains opened and two fiercely strong men yanked Colter Shaw into the darkness on the other side.

  35.

  As he stood in a dim alcove, being expertly frisked in silence, he reflected on the flaw in his plan. Which had otherwise been a good one, he believed.

  After a half hour of playing the role of naïve attendee, asking seemingly pointless yet probing questions, he’d assumed the Knight Time employees would realize he surely had to be here for some purpose other than buying children video games that were utterly inappropriate.

  And so he would head outside the convention center to see if Knight’s minders would take the bait: Shaw himself. As soon as he was in the parking lot, headed for the deserted corner where he’d left the Malibu, he would hit Mack’s phone number and open a line. His PI would hear who and how many, if any, of Knight’s men had come after him. If that happened and it sounded like he was endangered, the PI would call the JMCTF and the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office. Shaw had also slipped his Glock into the glove compartment of the Malibu, just in case.

  A good plan on paper, flushing Knight or his people as potential suspects.

  But a plan based on the assumption that they wouldn’t dare move on him at the convention center itself.

  Got that one wrong.

  He was now quick-marched a good thirty feet into the black heart of the Knight Time booth, through more shrouds of soundproof cloth. He’d heard the distant bass of the Conundrum VI ad. Then, once it had served its distractive purpose, the speaker volume dropped.

  Shaw didn’t bother to say anything. His bald minders wouldn’t have answered anyway. He knew they were pros. Was the shorter one Person X? Sophie had said her kidnapper was not tall.

  Size nine and a half shoes . . .

  When they arrived at a proper door—not a fabric flap—they halted, then put everything Shaw had in his pockets into a plastic box, including, of course, the phone on which Mack’s number was front and center but as yet undialed.

  The box was handed off to someone else and the two men holding his arms escorted Shaw through the door and dropped him into a comfortable black chair, one of eight surrounding an ebony table. The walls had been constructed with baffles, the ceiling acoustical tile. All these surfaces were painted black or made from matte-black substances. The space was deathly silent. The only illumination came from a tiny dot at the bottom of one wall, like a night-light. Just enough to make out a few details: the chamber—the word came to mind automatically—was about twenty feet square, the ceiling about eight feet high. No telephones, no screens, no laptops. Just a room and furniture. Private, and secure from the outside world.

  His father would have appreciated it.

  The shorter guard left, the other remaining at the door. Shaw could see some features of his captor. No jewelry. The earpiece of the Secret Service and TV commentators. Dark suit, white shirt, striped tie that seemed to be clip-on—an old trick—so that it couldn’t be used as a garrote in a fight. His face in the shadows so Shaw couldn’t see any expressions. He guessed there’d be none. He knew men like this.

  Shaw debated next steps.

  Ninety percent odds that he’d come to no harm here because of the inconvenience of dealing with the aftermath—smuggling his damaged or dead body out of the convention center. He supposed that logic didn’t mean much to abusive and temperamental Tony Knight, who, if he was behind the kidnappings, was risking everything over a vindictive whim to destroy a competitor who’d wronged him.

  Suddenly a ceiling light came on, a downward-pointing spot. Cold. The door opened. Shaw squinted against the flare of illumination.

  Tony Knight entered. The CEO was leaner and shorter than he’d appeared in the pictures Shaw had found online, though he was still a substantial man. And it occurred to Shaw: Why assume he’d farmed out the kidnapping job, if he was in fact behind it? With his temper and vengeful nature, he might very well have enjoyed snatching Sophie Mulliner and Henry Thompson himself.

  The man’s dark eyes were fixed and didn’t waver as they met Shaw’s blue. The shadows from the light above made his gaze all the more sinister. The executive wore expensive-looking black slacks and a white dress shirt, two buttons undone at the top revealing thick c
hest hair, which added to his animal intensity. His hands were large and kept flexing in and out of fists. Shaw was gauging where to roll to minimize the damage from the first blow.

  Knight sat at the head of the table. Shaw, at the opposite end, noted that the chair he himself had been deposited in, and six of the others, were about two inches shorter than the eighth, Knight’s. This room would be used for sensitive negotiations and the short CEO would want to be at eye level with, not looking up at, the others.

  Knight withdrew his phone, plugged a bud into his ear and stared at the screen.

  Survival, Ashton Shaw taught Russell, Colter and Dorion, is about planning.

  Never be caught off guard.

  Plan how you’re going to avoid or eliminate a threat. Shaw’d assume the guard was armed and that Knight was not. While Shaw knew little about boxing or martial arts, his father had taught all the children grappling skills . . . And there were all those wrestling trophies from his Ann Arbor days.

  Taking down the minder by the door would be relatively easy. Knight—and his ego—would have instructed the muscle to expect threats to their boss’s life, not their own.

  Shaw planted his feet on the floor and casually put a hand on the edge of the table. From the corner of his eye, he saw that the minder had missed the maneuver. Shaw’s legs—strong from hiking and rock climbing—tensed and he adjusted his balance. Ten feet to the guard. Lunge and, at the same time, shove the table toward Knight. Body-slam the minder, maybe a palm to the jaw, an elbow to the solar plexus. Get the weapon, pull the slide to make sure a round was chambered, even if it meant ejecting one. Control the two men in the room. Get a phone, go out the way he came in, call LaDonna Standish.

  Grim-faced, Knight now rose angrily.

  Revise slightly. When he got close, grab his lapels and drive him back into the guard, get the weapon.

  One . . .

  The CEO strode to Shaw and leaned down, close, hands continuing to flex and unflex.

  Two . . .

  Shaw readied himself, judging distances. Apparently no video cameras here. Good.

  It was then that Tony Knight, at an ear-ringing decibel, raged, “Conundrum VI is not vaporware. Can’t you get that through your fucking skulls?”

  He returned to his chair and sat down, crossing his arms and fixing Shaw with a petulant glare.

  36.

  Colter Shaw had been accused of committing any number of offenses in his life, real and imagined.

  The word vaporware had never figured in any of them.

  There were many arrows of reply available in Shaw’s quiver. He chose the most accurate: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Knight licked his lip, just the tip of his tongue. The flick wasn’t exactly serpentine but wasn’t far off.

  “I heard it all.” The accent placed his roots in Ontario. He tapped his phone. “The questions you were asking my people . . . You’re not a gamer. We tagged your face and went back to the video, checked you out from the minute you entered the convention center. No interest in any other booths but mine. And asking bullshit questions, playing dumb, just to get information. You think this hasn’t happened before? Trying to get somebody to turn? An employee? Turning against me? Do you really think that would ever fucking happen?”

  Knight gestured in the general direction of the front of the booth. “You saw the promo outside. Did it look like vaporware to you? Did it?”

  The door opened again and the other minder, the bigger one, stepped inside. He bent down to Knight and whispered. Knight’s eyes remained on Shaw. When the guard stood up, his boss asked, “Verified?”

  The muscle nodded. When Knight waved his hand, the man left. The other remained where he’d been, in Tower of London Beefeater mode.

  Knight’s anger had morphed to confusion. “You’re like a private eye?”

  “No. Not a PI. I make my living collecting rewards.”

  “You were the one who found that girl’d been kidnapped?”

  A nod.

  “You don’t have any tech background.”

  “No.”

  “So nobody hired you to play corporate spy.”

  “I don’t even know what vaporware is.”

  It would be dawning on Knight that Shaw wasn’t a threat. It was dawning on Shaw that his hypothesis about Knight plotting to destroy a competitor might have a few holes.

  “Vaporware’s when a software company announces a new product that’s either fake or won’t be ready for a while. It’s a tactic to gin up excitement, get some press. And keep the hordes at bay when you need more time to tweak the install. Because your fans can also be your biggest enemies if you don’t deliver what you promised when you first promised it.”

  Shaw said, “That’s the rumor about Conundrum VI? Vaporware?”

  “Yeah.” Knight’s voice was sardonic. “It’s just taken a little longer than I’d planned.”

  Fifteen quadrillion planets would understandably require some time.

  Knight gazed at Shaw closely. “So, what’s going on here?”

  Sometimes you don’t play the odds. Sometimes your gut gives you direction.

  “Can we get out of here?” Shaw asked.

  Knight debated. He nodded and the guard opened the door. The three of them stepped into a larger, brighter room, the inner sanctum of the booth. Two young women and a young man, wearing the corporate T-shirt and jeans uniform, labored away furiously at computer terminals. They shot wary looks toward their boss when he emerged and then their attention snapped back to their clattering tasks.

  Shaw and Knight sat at the only table that didn’t have an impressive computer perched upon it. A young woman with a crew cut brought Shaw the box containing his personal effects. He slipped them where they belonged.

  Knight barked, “So?”

  “You sued Marty Avon a few years ago.”

  Knight digested this with a frown. “Avon? Oh, Destiny Entertainment? Did I? Probably. When somebody tries to fuck me over, I sue them. You’re not answering my question.”

  “That young woman who was kidnapped the other day, Sophie Mulliner? The kidnapper was re-creating The Whispering Man.”

  Not a flicker of reaction, other than the appropriate confusion. Which effectively deflated Shaw’s hypothesis about Knight to low single digits. “Destiny’s flagship game . . . What do you mean ‘re-creating’?”

  Shaw explained about the room in the factory, the five objects, the chance to survive.

  “That’s one sick fuck. Why?”

  “Maybe a disturbed gamer . . . I have another idea.” He explained that the crime was intended to get even with Marty Avon or bring down Destiny. “When word gets out that a kidnapper was inspired by the game, the company would be sued and boycotted by the anti–violent video game crowd. It goes out of business. Destiny’s already been through this before.”

  Shaw told him about the two teenagers who’d kidnapped their classmate and nearly killed her.

  “I remember that. Sad story.” Then he scoffed. “And you thought I was behind it? Because I had some grudge against Marty Avon for stealing code? Or I wanted him closed down because The Whispering Man competes against Prime Mission?”

  “We need to explore every option. There’s been another kidnapping.”

  “Another one? Shit.” Knight asked, “When was that first incident? The boys who hurt that girl?”

  Shaw told him.

  Knight stood and walked to a terminal where one of the uniformed employees sat. She glanced up with wide eyes and, when Knight lifted his palm abruptly, leapt up and held the chair for him. He sat and spent a few minutes keyboarding. Behind Shaw came humming and ca-shhh from a printer. Knight rose and collected several sheets of paper, which he placed before Shaw. Knight withdrew a pen from his pocket. It was a ballpoint, but an extremely expensive on
e—made from platinum, Shaw believed.

  “We subscribe to a marketing data service that tracks the sales of products and services all over the world. Did Cheerios outsell Frosted Flakes in March of last year? In what regions? In the places where Cheerios won, what was the average household income? What are the ages of the schoolchildren in those homes? On and on and on. You get the idea.” He tapped the top sheet before Shaw with the pen. “This chart tracks Destiny Entertainment’s sales of The Whispering Man.”

  Knight circled a flat line. “That period was the two months following the Ohio girl’s attack, when, we can assume, the protests were the loudest, the press was the worst. Somebody tries to murder a girl because of the game and what happens? No effect on sales whatsoever. People don’t care. If there’s a game they like, they’ll buy it, and they don’t give a shit if it inspires psychos or terrorists.”

  Shaw noted that the data confirmed what Knight was telling him. He didn’t ask if he could keep the sales stats; he folded the pages and slipped them in his pocket to verify them later, though he didn’t doubt the figures were accurate.

  The CEO said, “What happened with Destiny is, the suit? I think they might’ve tried to poach some retailers I had an exclusive with. Penny-ante stuff. But I had to come down hard. You can’t let people get away with anything. And Marty Avon? He’s no threat. He’s the mom-and-pop corner store of the gaming world.” Knight looked him over. “So. We cool with everything? My guys got too rough?”

  “Not a worry.” Shaw rose and looked for the door.

  “There.” Knight was pointing.

  Shaw was almost to the exit when Knight said, “Hold up.”

  Shaw turned.

  “There’s somebody you should talk to.” He sent a text and then nodded to the table and the two men sat once more. “I want some coffee. You want coffee? I fly the beans in directly from Central America.”

  “El Salvador?”

  “No way. It’s my own farm in Costa Rica. Better than Salvadoran, hands down.”

  Shaw said, “Why not?”