by SL Huang
“Desperate times, Cas,” he said lightly.
“Wait. I’m mad at you,” I remembered in a confused mumble.
“This is an intervention, Miss Russell,” said Arthur, in a more serious tone.
“Sending me to rehab, are you?”
He snorted. “Almost tempted. We’ll time how long it takes you to break out.”
“You don’t have a drug problem,” said Checker.
“Well, no, you do—” corrected Arthur.
“Not a serious one,” grumped Checker.
Arthur shot him a look. “Ex-cop here, remember? But I’m fair sure it ain’t nothing you’ll accept help with, and I ain’t think you’re no danger to yourself. Normally. Am I right?”
I sighed. I wanted them to go away. The conversation was too loud, beating in time with the pounding in my skull. “So why are you here, then?” I couldn’t speak quite as forcefully as I wanted to. My stomach was still determined to revolt, and I had to keep it calm.
“Because you’ve lost large chunks of your memory,” said Checker, “And we want to help you look into it.”
My stomach gave an extra savage twist, and I quickly tried to swallow against it. I won the battle, barely. “I said no.”
“We think something might be making you say that,” said Arthur, and I could tell they had rehearsed this. “Can you give us a good reason why not?”
“Or any reason,” put in Checker, with grim blitheness.
“Because first of all, you’re wrong, and second, it’s my life, and I say no.”
“Not good enough,” said Checker.
“Fuck off,” I shot back eloquently.
“This isn’t up for discussion,” said Checker, in his watch-me-set-my-jaw tone. “I’m going to figure out what happened to you. Whether you want to participate is the optional part.”
“That’s a violation of my privacy,” I got out, but there wasn’t all that much vitriol behind it. I was trying to feel violated and betrayed by Checker’s insistence, but it wasn’t quite coming. I was too worn out and sick. “I’m not helping you.”
“Okay,” said Checker. “Then I’ll do it myself.”
“Russell,” said Arthur, in a careful way that suggested he was bracing himself for something, “We’ve seen it before, people who can…manipulate. Who can make you say things, think things, that you wouldn’t otherwise.”
Memory sparked—a slim, Mediterranean-looking woman, features fine and birdlike and serene. Dawna Polk. Pithica. A group of people trained to be so emotionally manipulative that they were, for all intents and purposes, trained psychics. The last time I had seen Dawna, she had rendered me almost catatonic somehow while she escaped, coolly hammering me with a barrage of words and questions I could never quite recall. The memory did not help my nausea. “Nobody messed with my head,” I got out angrily.
“You idiot,” snapped Checker. “Clearly somebody did!”
“Checker—” started Arthur, a note of reproach in his voice.
“No, I’m sorry, Arthur! This is like the morons who don’t believe in evolution, even with infinite amounts of evidence thrust under their noses! Cas Russell, you are taking denial to the level of being stupid!”
“Go to hell,” I muttered. Epitome of brilliant comebacks. “And get out of my place.”
“If that’s the way you want it,” said Checker. For some reason, the tone he said it in hurt, twisting up my insides on top of the withdrawal. “Come on, Arthur.” He levered his chair around and moved to the door.
“You, too, Arthur,” I said, loudly and heartlessly, trying to stamp down savagely on that hurt feeling. For some reason I felt as if I had been the one to cause it. “Get out.”
He stood reluctantly. “I’m coming back to check on you in an hour,” he warned. “Drink some water.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said.
Arthur glanced back at me one last time, his expression worried. Checker didn’t look back at all.
I put the pillow over my face and wrapped my arms around it, half-hoping I would accidentally smother myself, and tried not to think. I considered getting up and rooting around for something to make myself feel better, but Arthur would’ve cleaned me out. Not that I couldn’t get more, but that seemed like so much effort.
He better at least have left the alcohol. I was off contract now; he had to know how fucked I’d be if he hadn’t.
My cell phone rang, the jangle loud and piercing and right by my ear.
I flailed against the couch cushions and yanked out the phone, prepared to let it fly against the nearest hard surface at exactly the right angle so it would shatter into at least five pieces. As I drew back my arm to throw, I caught the number on the caller ID.
Halliday.
Shit.
I hesitated, the phone still drilling its high-pitched urgency into my hungover brain. I didn’t have to answer. I wasn’t working for her anymore, technically. The job was over.
Unless, for some reason, it wasn’t.
I stabbed at the button to connect the call. “This better be important.”
“Xiaohu—when we—he didn’t—” Her words crashed against each other.
“Spit it out, Professor. Did Zhang come pick up the proof?”
“Yes, he was just here, but—he wasn’t supposed to take it!” she burst out. “He hadn’t even notified the NSA that we’d finished. He told me they’d cleared him to take custody, but I just talked to one of the agents and they say they never would have done it that way.”
I sat up far too fast; my stomach and head both wanted to burst and blister. The room yawed sideways and I felt so sick I lost sense of reality for a moment. I fought savagely for coherence. “What are you talking about?”
“Xiaohu was supposed to be keeping his superiors updated, but he didn’t tell them we completed the proof. And they say they never would have cleared him to be the one to take it. Now he’s not returning anyone’s calls; they can’t find him—”
“Maybe he got stuck in traffic,” I said.
“No, are you listening? The other agents, they said they had very specific protocols for this. We should have realized, shouldn’t we? We were too naïve—”
“You think Zhang’s working for the Lancer?” I rubbed my eyes, trying to sync myself with reality.
“No. I know him. He wouldn’t.”
She had far too much faith in people. Zhang was out for himself, just like everyone else. Halliday was right about one thing: I’d been a fool to let us trust him.
I staggered up and looked for my boots. My mouth felt like it was filled with moss. Rotting moss. “When did this all go down? How long ago did they find out?”
“It’s only been a few minutes—I called as soon as I could get away. I think they’re sending people now.”
Geography splayed out in my brain. If Zhang was at his office, the NSA had him surrounded already. But my current location was only minutes from his home address—and considering Los Angeles congestion, that gave me a massive advantage.
Of course, if he was smart he wouldn’t be in either place, but his home might give us evidence of what he was really up to.
“Call Arthur,” I said. “Tell him I’m on the way to Zhang’s house.” Agents were probably listening in on this call, but we’d have to come up with a story for them anyway. Right now I just wanted to get to Zhang first.
I hung up, dragged my sleeve across my tongue—it didn’t help—and slammed out of the apartment.
Dr. Zhang lived in a very nice two-story colonial in suburbia—or, well, Burbank, which was as close as LA got to suburbia. Well-groomed rose bushes lined the walk, and a few kids’ toys were scattered on the lawn. The place even had a freaking white picket fence.
I skidded askew against the curb and raced up to pound on his door. When nobody answered, I kicked it in.
The back door was just closing as I burst into the kitchen. Zhang stood next to the table, the same dotty look of absent-minded professor about him he had
always had, his sweater vest and bow tie slightly askew.
“What did you do!” I demanded.
“This is too important,” he said. “The world has to know.”
I dashed to the back door and pulled it open. The acrid scents of smoke and lighter fluid hit my nostrils immediately.
“What!” Zhang sprang to life and pushed past me out into the backyard, where flames were whooshing up from a small fire on the patio. The wind whipped the heat against our faces. An empty silver briefcase was open next to the fire, the lining already charring.
“No!” cried Zhang. “She told me—no!”
He elbowed me aside to run back into the kitchen, then bulldozed back through a moment later with a fire extinguisher. He pulled the chain and let it loose, white powder dousing the flames and blowing back onto his disarrayed academic look.
I stood watching.
Zhang was digging through the powdered remains like a crazed man. He came up with a blackened bit of paper in trembling fingers; it crumbled into ash in his hand. “No…no…” he cried, and started to weep.
I came up behind him and crossed my arms. “I think you need to start talking.”
“It’s gone,” he sniffed, wiping a sleeve across his face. White powder stuck to his glasses, coated his collar and hair. “It’s gone…”
“The proof?” I said.
He nodded.
“And what the hell were you trying to do with it? Sell it to the highest bidder?”
Shock exploded on his features. “Never!”
“Then what?”
“Do you not understand what this is? This is—the magnitude of this result—I couldn’t keep it for us. And the way she did it—this could lead to such advancements; the mathematical world—”
Arthur raced out through the back door. “What’s going on?”
“Dr. Zhang was trying to be altruistic,” I said. “He wanted to share the proof with the world, but apparently someone didn’t agree. Who double-crossed you?”
He crumpled, head in his hands. “She said she was a friend of Sonya’s. She said she’d keep the proof safe until encryption protocols were all adjusted, told me my name could be kept out of it—that she’d talk to Sonya and we’d all say it had been stolen—she burned it; why would she burn it? She wanted the result out there as much as I did. More. She believed as I did. She believed.”
A horrible certainty was flooding me. “She who?”
“Rita Martinez. She’s a theoretician—she’s quite well-known—why would she, why would she tell me…?”
“Shit, the Lancer didn’t steal Professor Halliday’s work,” I said. “Martinez did. It was her all along.”
“But why?” Arthur sounded lost.
I was, too, to be honest. “I have no idea, but I think we need to find out.”
“We need to find Sonya,” said Arthur, pulling out his phone.
“What am I going to do?” Zhang raised his powder-coated face to us, his voice barely above a whisper. “What have I done?”
Arthur considered. “Your bosses, where they think you at?”
“At work—I left myself swiped in—”
“Oh, I’m sure they’re on their way,” I said. “We just happened to be closer. I’m guessing this place will be overrun with federal agents in about, oh, three minutes or so.”
Zhang blinked rapidly, and a few more tears squeezed out of his eyes behind his glasses. “I thought I was—I was trying to do a good thing—the best thing—”
“Shit,” Arthur said softly. I knew what he was thinking: Zhang would be ruined for this. Not just fired—arrested. Thrown in prison for a long, long time.
I wasn’t sure that should bother us, frankly.
Except…I knew it would bother Halliday. And the way Arthur was looking down at Zhang with an intense, arresting sort of expression said he was about to go into full-on savior mode.
Fuck me.
“Whatever we’re doing, it’s got to be now,” I said.
Arthur nodded decisively and grabbed Zhang’s elbow, hurrying him back toward the house. “You’re coming with us until we get this sorted. You might still go down for it, you follow? But we gotta figure this out.”
“I—I don’t understand—”
Arthur stopped and stared him in the eyes. “You’re a dad, right?”
“Yes—my oldest is thirteen—”
“Then we ain’t letting the Feds bury you before we get to the bottom of this thing first, and maybe not even then, you hear? You did a boneheaded stupid thing while trying to do right, and that ain’t enough for me to leave three kids without their father.”
“Arthur, now meant now,” I said.
“I—uh—thank you?” managed Zhang. His expression was more hapless fear than gratitude, but Arthur just pressed his lips together and hustled the man off with us.
Chapter 24
We drove together; I took the wheel in Arthur’s rental car. He didn’t bring up his and Checker’s conversation with me, for which I was grateful. I’d shoved all of it—my discoveries, Checker’s stupid accusations, our fight, everything—into a box in the back of my head to deal with later, neatly compartmentalizing. I was back on the job, and I had to be able to focus.
I swallowed back against my hangover and drove.
The first thing we did was button up Dr. Zhang in one of my bolt holes with Pilar watching him. Then we drove to the safe house.
Arthur hadn’t given Halliday any details over the phone—our assumption that the NSA was a third party to her calls meant any details about Martinez would have sent them after her in a heartbeat. Arthur probably wanted to sort everything out first, make sure he was giving the right target to the right people. If we could sort it out.
Halliday was waiting for us, practically vibrating with tension. A few DHS agents I didn’t know were in the house with her. “Let’s take a walk,” Arthur said shortly.
One of the agents stood up. “Mr. Tresting. The situation is—”
“Handled,” said Arthur. “The proof’s contained. I’ll give you a full debriefing, but I want to speak to my friend in private first. It won’t take long.”
“Anything you want to say to her—”
“I’m sorry,” said Arthur. “I really ain’t going to speak to you until I break a few things to Sonya privately first. Faster we do that, faster I tell you everything.”
They looked at each other, clearly disapproving, but then nodded and let us go. Fucking Arthur and his good relationships with people. If I’d tried to say something that aggressively authoritative to them, they would have brought out the handcuffs.
We walked out the back of the house, down through the woods where they surrounded a lake. The Feds’ perimeter wasn’t visible yet, and the house just barely so, through the trees behind us.
“We found out what happened,” said Arthur, when we’d reached the lake. “Most of it.”
“What’s going on?” Halliday’s words had the sound of someone who was back to controlling herself very tightly—and on the edge of not being able to manage it. “Is Xiaohu all right?”
“He’s fine,” Arthur answered. “Well, till the Feds catch him. Don’t think he understands the magnitude of what he did here, stealing a proof from them.”
Halliday stopped walking. “So he did…he stole…” She didn’t seem able to finish.
“Think he thought he was doing something good,” Arthur said gently. “Wanted to release it to the public. Something about the math world needing to know.” He exchanged a glance with me, clearly uneasy about how to bring up Martinez. “Went wrong, though.”
“What happened? Is he all right?”
“Till his bosses catch on, yeah,” said Arthur.
Halliday pressed a hand to her mouth. “He has a family,” she said softly.
“Well, he should’ve thought of that before he stole from the freakin’ NSA,” I said. “Or at least planned his theft a little better.” Bad tradecraft. I didn’t have any symp
athy for that.
Arthur shot me a look.
“Do they know?” Halliday asked. “The government, do they know yet?”
“Don’t know what they know,” said Arthur. “But they gonna find out. What did you tell them so far?”
“Not much—just that he took it to give them. But when they said he wasn’t supposed to be the courier, I stopped talking immediately. Arthur, we must be able to do something. Tell them he never made the pick up after all, or that someone stole it from us—I don’t know. But we have to. Arthur, I know his children.”
I’d predicted this would be her reaction, but it was still aggravating. “Why on earth do you want to protect him?” I said. “He betrayed you.”
“He’s such an idealist.” Something like hollow laughter threaded Halliday’s voice. “In retrospect, it makes so much sense, what you say about him wanting to release it. Wanting to do a good thing. Whatever they’ll do to him for this, he doesn’t deserve it.”
“Most people don’t deserve the bad things that happen to them,” I said. “So what? At least in this case he actually did what he’ll be punished for.”
Halliday turned to me with an expression so profoundly tragic I felt like a heel.
“Sonya,” said Arthur. “There’s something else. Might not be able to worry about Zhang right now.”
“Why not? What happened?”
“He tried to give it to someone else. Someone who was gonna release it, she said, after a little time for the crypto geeks to put safeguards in place. That person burned it instead.”
Halliday wasn’t quick on the uptake—or maybe she knew, deep down, but didn’t want to believe. “Who?” she said. “Who did he give it to?”
Arthur rolled his lips together, hesitating. “Your friend. Rita Martinez. She’s in the wind now.”
One of Halliday’s knees buckled. She reached out and caught herself against a tree.
“We think she’s the one stole your work in the first place,” said Arthur, very gently.
“No,” said Halliday. Not as if she was in denial, simply as if she was stating a fact. “It’s not true.”
“Maybe Zhang’s lying,” Arthur allowed.
