The Never Game

by Jeffery Deaver

  “Thank you, Ms. Towne.”

  Shaw noted something odd. The man’s desk contained no computer, other electronic device or telephone, either mobile or landline.

  Hong opened the file and read studiously for a moment.

  Linn was close to whimpering. Shaw had decided that while there might be consequences to his furtive meeting with Eddie Linn, dismemberment and being fed to the aquatic life in San Francisco Bay probably was not going to be one of them. Largely because it would have happened already.

  Which meant his hypothesis of Hong’s involvement shrank a few percentage points.

  Hong read. Very slowly. And he seemed not to move a muscle. Shaw didn’t even see him blink.

  To Hong’s right, lined up side by side like logs at the lumber camp where Shaw had worked summers during college, were a number of yellow wooden pencils and, to his left, a half dozen more. Those on the right had needle-sharp points. The ones on the left were duller. Did the CEO appreciate the dangers of digital communication so much that he relied on paper and carbon?

  Hong read without any acknowledgment of the two men in front of him.

  Linn took a breath to say something. Then apparently thought the better of it.

  Waste of time . . .

  Shaw waited. What else was there to do?

  Finally Hong finished reading and looked at Shaw. “Mr. Shaw, you are here because you were trespassing on private property. This park where you were sitting is owned by Hong-Sung Enterprises. There are signs.”

  “Conveniently invisible.”

  “You had a reasonable expectation that this was private property.”

  “Because the landscaping outside the fence matches the landscaping inside?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’d be a tough one for a jury to buy.”

  “And since we were able to hear your conversation we had a reasonable expectation that Mr. Linn here was in the process of divulging trade secrets to you and—”

  “My God, no, I wasn’t!” The high voice rose even higher yet. “I was just helping—”

  “Which justified our taking you into custody, as if you were shoplifters at a grocery store.”

  Shaw glanced at Ms. Towne. Her face was calm and confident and he bet she’d be a loving and huggy mother when off the clock. She continued to stand, despite a nearby empty chair.

  Hong tapped the folder. “You make your living with these rewards, do you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What do you call yourselves? Rewardists?”

  “I’ve heard that. I don’t call myself anything.”

  “And I understand you are not a private investigator; nor are you a bond enforcement agent. You assist in finding missing persons and escaped fugitives, and suspects who have not yet been identified or located, for rewards, traveling around the country from, say, Indiana to Berkeley, in your recreational vehicle.”

  Shaw had some public presence but Hong had assembled that information in record time. And how the CEO knew that his most recent job was in Indianapolis and Muncie, and that he was at the university on his personal mission, was an utter mystery. “That’s all correct.”

  Hong’s face brightened, only just slightly. “Then like PIs and like the police and like bounty hunters, which you would prefer not to be called, you solve puzzles for a living. You analyze situations and make decisions and to do this you must prioritize. And sometimes you need to do all of those at once and do them very quickly. Lives might be hanging in the balance.”

  Shaw had no idea where this steamship of thought was bound for, though he was struck by the word prioritize, which was the reason his percentage technique existed. He said, “True.”

  “Mr. Shaw, do you play video games?”

  Aside from once? Resulting in his stabbing death by a beautiful woman he would never see again? “No.”

  “I ask because playing games would enhance those very skills you need in your job.”

  He reached into his desk.

  Shaw didn’t bother to tense. He wasn’t fishing for a gun or knife.

  Hong retrieved a magazine and set it before Shaw, American Scientist, a layperson monthly he was familiar with. Ashton, as an amateur physicist, had read it religiously. Hong opened it to the page marked with a Post-it note. He pushed it forward.

  “No need to read it. I’ll tell you. This article, from several years ago, was the inspiration for my Minerva Project.”

  Shaw glanced down at the title: “Can Video Games Be Good for You?”

  Hong: “It’s a report from several prestigious universities about the physical and mental benefits of video gaming. Since we are about to announce it to the world, there is no longer the need for secrecy regarding the Minerva Project. It’s the code name for our Therapeutic Gaming Division.” He tapped the article. “These studies show that video games can create vast improvement in patients with attention deficit disorder, autism, Asperger’s and physiological conditions like vertigo and vision issues. Older patients in the trials report significantly improved memory and concentration.

  “And even individuals with no disease can benefit. I’m thinking of your career, Mr. Shaw, as I said a moment ago. Game playing results in improved cognition, faster response times, the ability to switch between various tasks quickly, assess spatial relationships, visualization, many other skills.”

  Prioritizing . . .

  “That’s the mysterious room, Mr. Linn. Minerva, the Roman Goddess of Wisdom. Or, I prefer to say, the Goddess of Cognitive Functioning. Now, I run a business and as the CEO I’m charged with making HSE money. The engine for Therapeutic Gaming, I decided, could easily be used for lucrative action-adventure and first-person shooter games. Hence, Immersion.

  “Now, let me dispose of your concern—the reason you recruited Mr. Linn. About Immersion. Which I note that you’ve played, Mr. Shaw, despite what you told me earlier.”

  Shaw tried not to register surprise. He would just assume, from now on, that Hong Wei knew everything about him.

  “Yes, it is a goal to get young people around the world off their behinds and exercise. I myself am a black belt in karate and tae kwon do and I practice Afro-Brazilian capoeira. I engage in those sports because I enjoy them. You cannot talk someone into exercising if they don’t want to. But you can encourage them to pursue their passion. And if exercise is a necessary consequence, then they will exercise. That is Immersion.

  “I have two recordings of conversations you’ve had about your concern we are stealing confidential data and giving it to the Chinese government. Military data in particular.”

  Two? Shaw wondered.

  “To address that concern, which is not unreasonable, considering you’re trying to save the life of a young woman, let me say this: from the moment I envisioned Immersion and the forward-facing cameras we were developing, I knew that privacy would be a concern. I personally supervised the algorithms to make certain that every written word, every letter, every chart or graph, every photograph that the cameras scanned would be pixelated beyond recognition. The same with human figures in the slightest stage of undress. No toilets, no personal hygiene products. Dogs urinating, much less mating, would not make it into the Immersion system. Obscene language is filtered out.

  “We’ve worked with law enforcement, military and government regulators around the country to guarantee that no one’s privacy has been invaded. You can confirm this.” His eyes flicked to Ms. Towne. The glance was fast as a viper’s bite. She stepped forward and gave Shaw a piece of paper with four names on it, along with their law enforcement affiliation and phone number. The first was FBI, the second Department of Defense.

  Shaw folded the paper and put it away.

  Hong turned to Eddie Linn. In a voice just as calm and flat as that with which he’d addressed Shaw, Hong said, “Mr. Linn. At first, when Ms
. Towne told me about your conversation with Mr. Trevor today, about insisting you meet with Mr. Shaw . . . Oh, no need to look confused. Your contract with us allows us to intercept all your communications.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “You didn’t read that. Which is on you. I was saying when Ms. Towne first told me about your disloyalty—”

  “It wasn’t—”

  The marble gaze from Hong silenced him.

  “I believed you would be doing what you’d done at Andrew Trevor’s company: selling code you’d written based on his copyrights to third parties.”

  So that was Trevor’s leverage over Linn: this theft.

  “It was nothing,” Linn said. “Really. It was code that was just easier for me to write. Anybody could have done it.”

  “But anybody didn’t. You did. I’ve always been aware that you might be willing to sell me up the river.” Hong frowned. “Is it ‘up the river’ or ‘down the river’?”

  “Down the river,” Shaw said. “From the slave trade. New Orleans. Up the river is something else.”

  “Ah.” A look of satisfaction from learning a new fact. “Today, your transgression wasn’t theft of copyrighted material. But it was a betrayal. So your career with HSE is now terminated.”

  “No!”

  “Since there was the blush of good cause in this whole matter, I will not do what I first thought: to make certain you never work in the tech world again.”

  Linn’s eyes widened. Tears glistened. “Will you give me a month? Just to give me a chance to find something new. Please?”

  Hong’s steadfast face registered a splinter of disbelief. He glanced at Ms. Towne, who had a hand on her burgeoning stomach. She nodded. Hong continued: “Your office has already been cleaned out and your personal effects are in a van on the way to your house in Sunnyvale. They’ll be left on your back porch, so you’ll want to get there straightaway. After you leave my office, you’ll be escorted to your car and shown off the grounds.”

  “My mortgage . . . I’m already overdue.”

  Shaw began to speak. Hong lowered his head and said, “Please, Mr. Shaw. You knew this was a possibility, didn’t you?”

  He’d put it about twenty percent.

  “Since this incident has had a happy ending and I have lost no secrets or been the victim of sabotage, I’m inclined to help you out, Mr. Shaw. Thinking that this Mr. Thompson, your blogger, was going to expose some secret in the data-mining world, a secret worth killing for? That’s infinitely unlikely. Stealing one’s data? Everyone these days soaks up your data as if using a sponge. The boy making your submarine sandwich at the local franchise, your car repair garage, your coffee shop, your pharmacy, your internet browser—and I’m not even up to credit rating companies, insurers and your doctors. Data is the new oxygen. It’s everywhere. And what happens with an abundance of any product? Its value diminishes. No one would murder for it. You should look elsewhere for your kidnapper. Now, good day.”

  He picked up a pencil, examined the tip with approval and pulled an overturned document toward him. He said to himself, “Up the river, down the river.” Another nod.

  Hong waited until Shaw and Linn were at the door and could not read the words before turning the sheet faceup.

  59.

  Shaw and Standish were in Joint Major Crimes Task Force Annex No. 1.

  The Quick Byte Café.

  Standish hung up her phone. “Hong. And the company. Clean as a whistle. Homeland Security, the Bureau, DoD.”

  “The Santa Clara County Middle School Board of Supervisors too.”

  “The . . .” Frowning, Standish cast a quick glance. “Oh. A joke. You don’t joke much, Shaw. Well, no. You do. You just don’t smile, so it’s hard to tell.”

  She tossed down her pen, with which she’d been recording the results of her calls—doodling, really. She toyed with the heart-shaped earring. “I’ve got to say, we’ve struck out a few times here. Knight. Hong-Sung. You don’t seem as upset as I thought you’d be.”

  “Struck out?” Shaw was confused. “Knight got us to Avon. Hong Wei gave us the idea that Thompson probably wasn’t killed because of the data-mining story.”

  Her phone hummed. And from the timbre of her voice when she spoke, he knew it was her partner, Karen.

  Shaw pulled out his laptop, logged on and ran through the local news feeds once more. His notebook was ready. Of the stories he skimmed, none were relevant to Elizabeth Chabelle’s kidnapping.

  There is a little-discussed aspect of survivalism that some people call destiny and some call fate and some, the more earthbound, call coincidence. You’re in a bad way. There is no solution to the crisis you face, one that seems certain to kill you or de-toe you, say, thanks to frostbite.

  But then? You survive. With your ten little appendages intact.

  Because someone or something intervenes.

  Colter Shaw himself learned of this concept when he was on a survival run, alone, in December. Fourteen years old. His father had driven him to a remote corner of the Compound and let him out of the truck, to make his way back over the course of two days. He had everything he needed: food, matches, maps, compass, sleeping bag, weapon. The sky was blue, the weather cold yet above freezing, the trek that lay ahead unchallenging and through spectacular scenery.

  An hour later, he was crossing a fast-moving stream on a fallen oak that would have been a solid bridge had it not been a host to termites and carpenter bees, who’d been dining on its insides for years. In he went.

  Gasping from the cold, Colter scrabbled up the stream bank, shivering fiercely.

  He didn’t panic; he assessed. The matches, in a waterproof container, and the knife were on him. He’d had to jettison the backpack when it dragged deep below the surface. He gathered leaves and cut pine boughs and soon had a fire going. In forty minutes or so his core temperature was stable. But he was ten miles from the Compound, now without his compass or map or pistol, and by the time he was safely warm and his clothes and boots dry it would be too late to hike. He needed to spend the time until nightfall building a lean-to big enough to take the fire inside; the air smelled like rain.

  This he did. And while it was still light enough to see, Colter watched squirrels as they searched for nuts they’d hoarded. He followed only the gray squirrels; the reds don’t bury. He found several stashes in abandoned burrows and collected walnuts; acorns are edible yet too bitter to eat without boiling to remove the tannins. He drank stream water and ate and fell asleep confident the trails he’d spotted before the dunking would lead him in the general direction of the Compound.

  He woke up about six hours later to the blizzard. Two feet of snow was on the ground.

  Colter’s head had sunk with despair. The snow covered the trails he’d noted yesterday. He had four walnuts left.

  Would he die here?

  As he surveyed the rolling white landscape, he noticed something beside the lean-to: a large orange backpack. He yanked it inside and, with trembling fingers, opened the zipper. It contained energy bars, a wire saw, extra matches, a map and a compass, a thermal sleeping bag. Also: a weapon—the Colt Python .357 that he carried still. The gun that was his father’s pride.

  Ashton Shaw had not returned to the cabin after dropping Colter off. He’d been following the boy all along.

  Intervention . . .

  Which is what happened now.

  Shaw’s phone hummed. It was the toy man, Marty Avon.

  “We still have a way to go with the proxies. For what it’s worth, one of the subscribers logged on a few hours ago without turning on his VPN—his proxy, you know. His real IP address popped up. He fit our criteria about being an obsessive player but had been offline when the crimes occurred. We traced him to a house in Mountain View.”

  “May have something,” he told the detective. “It’s Marty.” />
  Standish disconnected her personal call and took the phone and had a brief conversation, at the conclusion of which she gave Avon her email address. It was only a moment after they disconnected that the detective’s phone chimed. She read: “I’ll DMV him and see what our databases have to say.” She typed: “Okay. Forwarded.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Shaw looked around the café, focusing on the computer history wall. Mario the plumber and Sonic the hedgehog. Hewlett and Packard. ENIAC, an ancient computer as big as a semitruck. Then his eyes took in the front door of the café and he recalled seeing Maddie Poole for the first time as she walked inside, twining her red hair around a finger.

  So. You’re wondering, what’s up with stalker chick . . .

  Standish’s phone sang out once more.

  The detective read quickly. “His name is Brad Hendricks. No warrants, no arrests. He was detained frequently in high school. Bullying incidents. Don’t know which end of it he was on. No charges filed. Here he is.”

  He glanced down and must have stiffened.

  “What is it, Shaw?”

  “I’ve seen him.”

  It was the boy in the red-and-black-checked shirt who’d been so harshly rejected by the pretty girl right here in the Quick Byte Café, two tables away from where Shaw and Standish now sat.

  60.

  Brad Hendricks, nineteen, was attending community college part-time and lived with his parents in a lower-income area of Mountain View. He also worked in a computer repair shop about fifteen hours a week. In the high school fights Brad had been the one bullied and had then ambushed several of his tormenters. Bones had not been broken and noses were only slightly bloodied. All parties being in the wrong, the parents had chosen to let the matters go without police intervention. Brad played The Whispering Man and other Destiny Entertainment games forty or so hours a week—and presumably spent many hours at other companies’ games too. He had minimal social media presence, apparently preferring gaming to posting on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.