Conspiracy Girl

by Sarah Alderson

  ‘They broke into your apartment?’ Aiden has turned away from me and is talking to Nic. His face is horror-struck.

  She nods at him. ‘You didn’t see the news?’ she asks.

  I glance across at her? The news? What news?

  ‘It’s in all the newspapers,’ she adds, giving me a quick look.

  Shit. I should have warned her that would happen.

  Aiden shakes his head. ‘No. I’ve been staying offline, lying low.’

  ‘The night after you visited Nic,’ I interrupt. ‘Did you leave something with her? Did you hide something in her apartment?’ I can’t disguise the anger in my voice.

  Aiden doesn’t seem to hear me. He’s staring around like he can’t believe what he’s hearing, clutching his head between his hands. I take a step towards him.

  ‘They were watching you the whole time,’ I say in a low voice, sounding more menacing than I mean to, but for God’s sake, is he stupid? Could he not see where this was all going to lead? ‘Two men have been following us since then. I killed one. There’s one more still out there. But even if I stop him, they will keep coming. They are not going to quit. They won’t quit until they kill you and Nic and everyone who knows anything about what you’re trying to do. What is it Vorster wants? I’m guessing it’s blueprints to some kind of synthetic diamond lab. Am I right?’

  Aiden, who’s been looking more and more horrified with every word, looks up sharply at the word Vorster.

  ‘Yes, it’s what they wanted all along,’ he says in a faraway voice. ‘I take a step backwards, exhaling loudly. Finally – confirmation that I was right. That there is much, much more to this case than everyone realises.

  ‘That’s why they killed my mum and Taylor?’ Nic asks, her voice rising.

  ‘Yes,’ Aiden admits, unable to meet Nic’s eye. ‘That. They wanted to make us stop. They threatened to do something but I thought they were bluffing. I didn’t think they’d actually do it.’

  There’s a pause. Nic is just staring at Aiden in silent shock. He turns to me, suddenly alert. ‘What if I just give it to them?’ he asks. ‘What if I just give them the plans and promise to walk away for good this time?’

  It’s only then I feel sympathy well up for Aiden. The man is completely out of his depth.

  I take a step towards him and when I speak my voice is fierce. ‘It’s too late for that. You can’t walk away,’ I tell him. ‘They won’t stop coming after you or after Nic. If you want to stop them, you need my kind of smarts, not yours.’

  NIC

  We follow Aiden back to his place. My shoulder is starting to throb again and, while Finn is busy driving, I take two Advil and wash them down with some water. I wish I could take something to clear my head. I can’t believe anything Aiden’s just told us. Why didn’t he stop? If he had, my mum would still be alive. So would Taylor. So would Hugo and Agent Ziv. How could he have started again?

  Aiden’s place is a rented chalet, buried deep in the woods. Finn parks up and then stares across at me, looking like he wants to say something, but I climb out of the truck before he can.

  ‘Who’s running your security?’ Finn asks Aiden, scanning the woods, which are rapidly dissolving into the dusk. ‘Can you trust them?’

  Aiden nods. ‘Yes. They’re a Canadian firm. Top in the world. I did my research.’

  Finn looks deeply sceptical and, as we watch Aiden input a code into a security system by the door, I almost hear him roll his eyes.

  Aiden leads us inside. The chalet is fairly modest by his normal standards. The downstairs is open, with a double-storey living area, complete with a fireplace, two large sofas and rugs on the floor. A deer’s head is mounted on the wall, but apart from that it’s quite homely. An open doorway reveals a kitchen off to the side. Aiden doesn’t offer to take our coats. He seems to have been infected by the underlying current of energy bouncing off Finn and he ushers us speedily towards the sofas. My skin prickles as I cast a glance around the room, checking the windows and doors.

  I hunch down on the sofa but my foot won’t stop tapping as I scan the room for my exit points. It looks like there’s just the front door.

  Are we safe here? If Finn found this place, how long before the people chasing us do?

  ‘How did you find me?’ Aiden asks me.

  ‘Finn found you,’ I tell him. ‘He figured out everything about Vorster, about the lab, about the synthetic diamonds.’

  ‘I found the files on the server to the non-profit,’ Finn clarifies.

  ‘But I wiped the disc,’ Aiden says.

  Finn shrugs at him. ‘You need to dissolve hard drives in acid if you truly want to wipe them. There are always ways to recover the data otherwise. I wrote a program that can recover fragments of documents and then make intelligent guesses at the missing parts.’

  Aiden blinks at Finn and then he turns to me and I see his eyes are red-rimmed and watery. ‘I thought it was safe,’ he tells me. ‘I thought after two years they’d stopped watching. I worked so hard to cover my tracks. I thought I could keep it secret until I had everything in place. And then I thought if I went public with it it would be OK. It would be too late for them to do anything.’

  I see the pleading look in his eye. He doesn’t want me to blame him, but how can I not?

  ‘Why didn’t you tell the police when Vorster started threatening you?’ Finn asks.

  Aiden stares down at his steepled fingertips for a few seconds. Finally he speaks. ‘They said not to tell anyone. They told me they had people working for them in the FBI and in law enforcement, that if I went to the police about the threats they’d know and they’d hurt my family.’

  They hurt his family anyway.

  Aiden glances at me. ‘Your mom hated the company,’ he says to me. ‘You remember she refused the diamond engagement ring I gave her?’

  I nod. Yes. It was the size of a golf ball.

  ‘It wasn’t because it was too big. It was because she hated diamonds. She thought that it was ridiculous that wars were being fought and land destroyed over pieces of rock dug out the ground. We started talking about this new synthetic process that was being developed. It was big news, still is.’ He darts a look Finn’s way. ‘And I started looking into what purposes synthetics could serve.’

  I close my eyes, remembering Mum lecturing me about blood diamonds. It went with the territory. I swear the first word I learned as a baby was boycott. And the first thing I learned to do once I could read was check the backs of packets in the supermarket for deal-breaker words like palm oil.

  ‘What purposes did you have in mind?’ Finn asks Aiden, who has tailed off and is staring at the deer’s head on the wall. I hope he’s starting to figure out that might soon be us, unless he starts telling us everything there is to know.

  ‘We wanted to change the status quo,’ Aiden says tiredly.

  ‘I’m not interesting in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.’ I repeat this favourite phrase of Mum’s.

  ‘Machiavelli,’ Finn murmurs.

  ‘Do you know what diamond technology could do for the world?’ Aiden says, his voice filled with a kind of wonder. ‘And I’m not talking about cheap diamond rings for the masses.’

  ‘Military applications, you mean?’ Finn asks and there’s no mistaking the hard edge to his voice.

  Aiden shakes his head angrily. ‘No. That’s not it at all. Yes, there are some labs working with the military, developing scanners and new hardware, but we were thinking beyond that. We were thinking about doing something that would potentially have enormous environmental benefits.’

  ‘What?’ Finn asks, confused.

  ‘Diamonds are the best thermal conductors on earth,’ says Aiden, his gaze taking on the look of a slightly mad professor. He starts gesticulating excitedly. ‘We wanted to make microchips out of synthetic diamonds rather than silicon. Because of the way they conduct heat,’ he explains, ‘they won’t need cooling systems. It would save huge amounts of energy. The
environmental benefits are unquantifiable.’

  Just like that, it all starts to make sense. Of course my mum would want to be involved. I can just picture her plotting with Aiden, getting excited about the whole venture, the shine in her eyes as she envisaged saving the world.

  ‘But they can’t do that yet. The technology doesn’t exist,’ Finn interrupts. He’s on his feet, striding back and forth in front of the mirror. ‘I read up on it.’

  I shoot him a glance sideways. When did he read up on it?

  ‘I can,’ Aiden says, a small smile on his lips. ‘I found the way. That’s what they want. The blueprint for the system I built.’

  ‘That’s what they were looking for when they broke into Nic’s apartment?’

  Aiden nods. ‘They want it so they can patent it themselves and thereby stop anyone else from developing the technology. They want to control the diamond trade in all its forms.’

  ‘Where is the blueprint?’ Finn asks before I can. ‘And why did they wait so long before they came for it?’

  Aiden glances up at him. ‘Because they thought they already had it. After they . . . killed Carol and Taylor, I gave them designs. For the prototype. They weren’t really much better than the tech already being used, but I let them believe they were what they were after, so they’d stop threatening us.’ He glances at me when he says that.

  ‘You gave people who’ve shown they will kill without mercy fake designs?’ I ask, my mind reeling at the stupidity.

  ‘Nic,’ Aiden says, his lip trembling, his expression stricken, ‘your mother made me promise I wouldn’t give them the real ones. She was the one who hid them in the first place. She’s the reason I’m building the lab again. She made me promise not to let them win. And I wasn’t just going to give them the technology. Especially not after what they did.’ He suddenly sobs, his whole face collapsing and his body slumping.

  I stare at him, speechless. Suddenly it all makes much more sense. I can imagine my mum, so fervent in her convictions, so anti corporations, only growing more defiant in the face of threats. I can imagine the conversations she had with Aiden, making him promise not to be bullied. But did she ever imagine this? Surely if she knew my life was at risk, that she and so many others would end up dead, she would have given in? I hear her screaming at me not to come out of the bathroom. There’s no way she would have wanted this.

  ‘So, you gave them the wrong designs and they figured it out?’ Finn asks. He’s pinching the skin between his eyes in tired disbelief.

  ‘They must have. Everyone is using HPHT or CVD technology. But the system I invented can create flawless diamonds up to twelve carats in size within three weeks. A naturally occurring diamond that size would take millions of years to form, and cost millions to buy.’

  ‘You?’ Finn asks in a deeply sceptical voice, ‘You invented it?’

  Aiden gives him a cool look. ’Yes. I’ve got a PhD in Geoscience and Engineering from MIT. And an MBA from Harvard.’

  Finn nods, his scepticism giving way to admiration.

  ‘So where is it?’ I ask. ‘Where are the plans?’

  Aiden looks at me. ‘You’re currently using them as a bookend.’

  FINN

  I look at Nic. Bookends? What is he talking about? But she seems to know. Confusion and emotion swim in her eyes. ‘The ballet shoes.’ She looks back at Aiden. ‘In my bedroom?’

  He nods, quickly. ‘There’s a data card encased in the silver.’ He has the decency to look somewhat sheepish about the fact that he hid life-threatening information in his own stepdaughter’s bedroom. The guy is not endearing himself to me. He couldn’t have kept it in his own room?

  ‘Why the hell did you hide it in Nic’s apartment?’ I shout.

  Aiden draws back, looking pleadingly at Nic ‘I . . . I . . . it was your mother’s idea to hide it in the mould for the shoe. And then when you moved to New York, you took them with you. I couldn’t ask for them back. They were yours. When I came to the apartment I just wanted to check you were OK and make sure you still had the bookends. But I swear I had no idea anyone was following me. If I had, I would never have left you there unprotected. I had you under surveillance for weeks. I was told you were safe – that’s why I proceeded. I didn’t want to drag you away from your life, just as you were getting settled and starting to move on with things.’

  Nic glares at him for a few moments before turning to me. ‘What do we do now?’ she asks.

  ‘I need to get my cube back up and running.’

  ‘Your what?’ Aiden asks.

  ‘His computers,’ Nic tells him. There’s a defiant note in her voice. She turns to look at me and something passes between us, a little buzz of understanding.

  ‘I have some ideas for how we can start holding Vorster off,’ I say, already figuring my next move.

  ‘You mean blackmailing them?’ Nic asks dubiously.

  I shrug. ‘We need to fight fire with fire.’

  ‘But how? What are you going to do?’

  ‘Have some fun,’ I tell her, smiling automatically. I’ve been wanting to hit a corporate hard for some time but haven’t, telling myself that I needed to stay above board and leave the dirty stuff to the Chinese and the Latvian hackers. But at the thought of the trouble I can wreak on an organisation as corrupt as Vorster, all in the name of justice and a worthy cause, I have to admit I’m feeling a wicked spurt of adrenaline.

  ‘How, exactly?’ I don’t have time to answer before the door flies open.

  I step in front of Nic automatically, my gun somehow already in my hand, pulled on instinct. Aiden stays seated. His security guard – the unsmiling one who looks like the mutant lovechild of a linebacker and the Rock – stands in the doorway, but something’s wrong with his face. He’s not wearing his shades and his irises are dull and fixed, his skin sagging like melted latex. As we watch, he topples forwards and lands face flat on the ground. A knife is sticking out of his back. I take a step back, my finger on the trigger. A man appears in the doorway. He has two guns – one in each hand, one pointed at me, the other at Aiden.

  ‘It’s him,’ I hear Nic whisper behind me.

  It’s Wise. Agent Wise. I recognise him from the video feed of her apartment. So he’s the FBI mole on the inside.

  Wise steps over the dead security guy and walks towards us, jerking his head towards my gun, indicating I drop it. I do a rapid calculation but see that he’s not messing around. He has less emotion in his eyes than the dead deer hammered to the wall behind me.

  I place the gun on the ground and kick it towards him – but at an angle, so it goes sliding under the table by the door. My hand moves slowly behind my back, trying to draw Nic closer.

  ‘A-a-ah,’ Wise says, making me freeze. He’s holding the guns trained on us. He nods us over to the sofa.

  As soon as we sit, Nic beside Aiden and me on the end, Wise comes to stand in front of us. I slide my hand a fraction towards Nic so my fingers are just touching hers, hoping she understands that I’m warning her not to do or say anything rash.

  Footsteps sound out behind us and I jerk around. Another man has walked into the room – he’s beefy-necked with reddish freckled skin and blond hair. At once I know that this is the other guy that’s been chasing us.

  The smug idiot can’t wipe the smile off his face – until his eyes fall on me and darken with hatred. Guess the other guy must have been his buddy. I scan both of them, checking for weapons, estimating their strengths and weaknesses. The South African is left-handed. He looks like he’s been in a few fights but I doubt he’s martial-arts trained. Wise has been through the academy, which makes it easier to estimate his moves.

  My bag is just by my feet, but as soon as I register this, Wise grabs for it and tosses it into the corner, smiling. I keep my face blank, aware of Nic beside me, the tension in her body, her fingers gripping the sofa cushions tightly.

  The beefy one is staring at her. The cool state I’d dropped into immediately vanishes. It’s
everything I can do to stay seated and not leap to my feet and plant my fist in his face. He must feel the heat of my glare because he turns to me and the smile that creeps across his face when he sees the anger on mine makes the rage brewing in my veins turn white-hot.

  ‘Thanks for leading us here,’ Wise says to me.

  I frown at him. How did we lead them here?

  ‘This is what we’re going to do,’ he says, before I have time to figure it out. He turns to Aiden. ‘You’re going to give us what we want and, if you do, then we’ll only kill you and not her.’ He jerks the gun in Nic’s direction and I flinch as though he’s waving it at me, though Nic stays ramrod stiff, staring at Wise.

  ‘It’s not here,’ Aiden says, in a husky voice.

  ‘Where is it?’ Wise demands.

  ‘It’s in New York. In Nic’s apartment,’ I interrupt.

  ‘We turned that place upside down,’ Wise says frowning.

  ‘It’s hidden.’

  Wise thinks on it for a few seconds, staring between Nic, Aiden and I. The other guy starts picking his teeth, never once taking his eyes off Nic. I glance at my bag, now over by the door. I could take Wise, but the other one will go straight for Nic if I do.

  ‘You,’ Wise says, pointing in my direction. ‘You’re coming with me.’ He looks at Aiden. ‘You and the girl are staying here.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask. It feels like a hand is gripping my insides, twisting them. I’m not leaving Nic. No way.

  ‘Because,’ Wise says, ‘I know that you’re not going to do anything stupid if it might put her at risk.’ He nods at Nic. I frown. This guy is good.

  ‘If you hand over the goods in New York then these two will be released,’ he says. ‘My friend here will stay and keep watch over them until we get back.’

  Nic glances at me and our eyes catch. I see the fear blazing bright in them and try to give her a reassuring look, but I don’t think she’s buying it. My mind is whirring. I’ve got to figure a way out of this.

  Wise tosses something to me – handcuffs. I catch them.