MONEY TREE

by Gordon, Ferris,

  ‘This wasn’t my idea. Anila wanted to do it. Honest.’

  ‘Girls are the same everywhere.’

  He raised his eyebrows at Anila who smiled nervously back. Anila too looked different this morning. Still dark wedges under her eyes, but the tension had dropped from her frame. She’d switched from half empty to half full.

  ‘How’s the. . .?’ he rubbed his stomach at Erin.

  ‘Much easier. I may be onto something. But just don’t ask about the restrooms, ok?’

  ‘Fine by me.’

  ‘What happened to your face?’

  He touched the bites. They already felt less sore.

  ‘It seems at least the bugs are attracted.’ Then he wished he hadn’t said that. Like a rejected teen. ‘So, what’s the plan?’ he asked Erin and Meera.

  Meera seemed more welcoming than usual.

  ‘Last night I called the police in Sagar to tell them about the theft. And then I called my father and asked him to put some pressure on them too. He said he would speak to the Inspector-General of Police for Madhya Pradesh. My father went to university with him. My father said the police would come today. We shall see.’

  ‘If they do, Meera, could we get a lift back to Bhopal first thing tomorrow morning? The world is catching up with us. We can get the train back to Delhi by ourselves. Ok with you, Erin?’

  ‘Fine by me. I was thinking about sanctuary at the British consulate or taking the first flight back to the States or running for cover in Europe. Italy’s nice this time of year. Venice. Any better ideas?’

  She was blustering and knew it. He was thinking about gondolas and her.

  ‘What we need is time and evidence. The problem with the stuff that Oscar got hold of, is that he did it illegally. Stanstead’s lawyers would have a field day with us. We’d probably end up doing ten for wire tapping and hacking.’

  Erin dropped the cooperative façade. ‘Then what was the point of getting Oscar to do all this?!’

  ‘Well for one thing it probably saved your skin. For another? Well, I’m still thinking through the other. But I’m going to let Stan Coleman have a look at what we’ve got and ask the Trib’s legal beagles to sniff around and see if there’s anything we can use.’

  ‘Sounds good to me. So, we go on the run until something turns up? Is that about it?’ The irony was softened by her eyes.

  ‘Not quite. I want you to make a personal call to Mr Stanstead when we get back to civilisation.’

  FORTY FOUR

  Oscar and Albert had been working flat out for the best part of three days, subsisting on a diet of cola, pizza and 1000mg of brain-enhancing, sleep-denying Modanifil per day.

  As well as his trusty side-kick, Oscar had rounded up a team of five others. He had never met any of them except in cyberspace. Never spoken to them. Even after he’d swapped the black hat for a white, Oscar had distanced himself from DefCon, the annual hackers convention in Las Vegas. There was something sullying about net warriors meeting in the flesh. Made them mortal. And sillier. The only contact he’d had over the last fifteen years, had been through carefully chosen direct channels on darknets.

  Darknets, or the Deep Web, was where all the main search engines couldn’t or wouldn’t operate. Oscar’s start point was to create a virtual pc within his hardware array and drop into Onionland within the TOR anonymity-protecting network. Sure, it was peopled by gun runners, drug cartels, sexual deviants, Islamist terrorists, scammers and organised crime using encryption software and constantly changing URLs. But it was also the communication method of choice for Wikileaks, freedom fighters in China, Russia, the entire Middle East and North Korea. Hell, even the establishment magazine The New Yorker had set up a Tor based Strongbox to receive secure and anonymous leaks from whistle-blowers.

  He shot his first question out to Mighty Thor, whom Oscar suspected was a girl. There was just a certain way Thor went about constructing his/her web site for heavy metal fans. But, hey, Oscar was the last boy on the street to care about such things. Thor’s sexual proclivities didn’t stop her/him from cutting some mean code. And her/his access to an impossible number of interesting web sites on a web-master basis was a valuable addition to Oscar’s team.

  Mighty Thor, we have need of your thunderbolt. The forces of darkness are riding again. I need a team of heroes to defend the little people against a global menace. Fancy some fun? - Lone Ranger-

  The reply was instant. Thor was 24/7. Oscar also wondered if Thor was a gang.

  hammer ready and at your disposal. Say who when how - Mighty Thor-

  Oscar rounded up the other four over the next 24 hours. There was Slick Willy, an old cracker like himself, who’d switched sides after the turmoil of the late 90’s when hacking had gone from a demonstration of teenage rebellion and power, to criminal acts. Slick Willy was out of Mexico and once took over the entire cable network of CNN via their own web sites to advertise the plight of the ‘wetback’ hackers. Kids who’d been imprisoned both sides of the border for repeated crashing of the surveillance systems.

  There was Switchblade. Now retired from hacking at the age of 22 and working as a ‘fireman’ for the Seventh Day Adventists out of Utah. Switchblade was using his remarkable gift for slicing through the best software defences in corporate America to maintain and protect the computer systems of his church. Oscar appealed to Switchblade’s new found saintliness by offering him a crusade.

  Then came an enthusiastic confirmation from Magus, a new script-kid Oscar had seen in action recently. Magus had splashed on the scene with some of the most vibrant new music delivered over the net. He’d composited tracks from some of the finest musicians in the last fifty years – anyone from Buddy Holly through to Hard Wired Brush. But instead of producing a simple mish-mash of sliced up tracks, Magus had created something entirely new. It was as though he’d stripped the music right back to the base notes and then built it up again into haunting and compulsive sounds. It was the music of the Internet itself. The big music companies had posted offers of mega-millions on the net to buy Magus’s stuff. But he wasn’t for sale. He did it for the sheer spiritual beauty of it. He gave the same reason for throwing in his lot with Oscar.

  Oscar had one last handle to secure to make up the seven. It had to be seven because that’s how Karma worked. It guaranteed they’d be magnificent. And it had to be Worm though there was a high chance he was in jail somewhere. It was a risk. Worm wore a black hat and a white one when it suited him. He was just as likely to be breaking into NASA as helping track down the clowns who’d knocked over half the ISP’s in the Southern Hemisphere with a killer virus. The job needed to interest him and to suit his very finely nuanced moral code.

  Worm. We’ve got an A team up to do something mighty. Its small people war against big biz. Better than dragons or kill-zone. This is Thermopylae! Interested? - Lone Ranger-

  is there money? - Worm-

  only glory-

  how do you spend glory?-

  you trade it. This will shake the net. Legends will be made -

  I’m already a name -

  that’s why we need you. You’re the best. This is the A+ team. This is Gunfight at the OK Corral, the Alamo, Butch and Sundance, Apocalypse Now! -

  whos the team? -

  Mighty Thor, Slick Willy, Switchblade, Magus, Tonto, me -

  a harsh crew! But it’s not enough -

  How clean is your line? Just you and me…

  A while later Oscar set up a web conference with the whole team in a particularly dark and secure corner of the TOR network. He described the work of the People’s Bank and told them about the trial and what could happen if the bank was closed. Then he told them of the dark dealings of Global American and the mass attacks on the Delhi hub. He set up a private chat room to bring his team together with Vikram Vajpayee and Shivani Jaffrey. He let them fire questions at each other until one by one he was receiving private emails from each of his band offering total commitment to the cause.

  Osc
ar wound up the discussions,

  I have it on best that another attack is due in 48 hours. this is the biggie, the full rush. timed with the start of the trial on Monday. Global America’s going for broke to bring down the house. Here’s the plan…-

  FORTY FIVE

  Joey Kutzov hated the heat. He hated being out of New York. He hated flying. He hated Warwick Stanstead for sending him to this hellhole. But most of all he hated Erin Wishart and Ted Saddler for being the cause of his misery and discomfort. They would surely pay.

  Joey was getting the treatment. No-one had told him about taxis that didn’t have air con. Or suspension. No-one had thought to mention that the place stank and there were goddamn fucking elephants and camels in the fucking main street! This place was a 3-ring circus! His perfect English-cut suit - 5,000 bucks, hand tailored by Quinn’s of New York – was a wringing mess of limp cloth and sweat. He cut no chic figure now.

  His sweat-darkened shirt gaped at the neck and the tie weighed him down like a noose. His chubby, child-like body felt inflated like a Michelin man. He had hardly been able to get his $800 shoes on when they landed, and now, as the taxi bucked and jerked its way into New Delhi, they pinched and rubbed on his sweat-encased feet.

  By the time he arrived at the Hilton and checked in, his fine blond hair was plastered to his reddened scalp, and his blood pressure was off the dial. He shook off the attention of the bell hop who pleaded to carry his case up to his room. He didn’t need help and sure as hell didn’t intend to pay for it. When he took the wrong turning and missed the elevator bank, Joey could be seen on the hotel security screens - had anyone been watching - kicking plant pots and screaming. He stormed back to the lobby and demanded directions before finally shouldering his way through his bedroom door.

  Joey peeled off his ruined suit, showered, and made a large dent in the minibar collection before he was ready to make the first call. A couple of lines of coke and he’d bounced back. His call resulted, half an hour later, in a knock on his door. Joey answered it wearing a white Hilton towelling robe and bathroom slippers. His manic eyes still registered persecution. Two young Indian men in smart dark suits stood nervously on the threshold. One had a scar from nose to right cheek. The other carried a briefcase. They introduced themselves as Akash and Pratik. Joey made them sit so he wasn’t shorter than them.

  ‘So what the fuck happened? Tell me in your own words. From the time you picked them up.’

  ‘You mean the Americans?’ gulped Akash, unsure of this milk-white man with the baby face and the unkind eyes. Akash was a hard man, out of the back streets of Old Delhi, and he had used a knife and a gun on more than one occasion. But he was rocked by the mad fury and impatience of this little man. He fingered his scar nervously.

  ‘What the fuck else do you think I’m talking about? Don’t you guys speak English for chrissake?!’ Joey’s temper hadn’t cooled. It was just capped.

  The two men looked at each other. Pratik took over. ‘Everything was perfect. It was all beautiful, sir. We were waiting and ready. But the taxi driver did not do his job. He says the big American had a gun and was going to shoot him unless he stopped. So he stopped too soon.’

  ‘A gun? Are you sure? For chrissake what’s a fucking reporter doing with a gun? Are you sure?!’

  Pratik knew there was no gun, but somehow it seemed better if there had been one. Indeed there might have been one, which was just as good. The event had already happened. Nothing could be done about it now except explain it in a way that made the white man less unhappy and less angry.

  ‘Absolutely, sir. In fact he shot at one of our men. That was when they got away. You see we did not think there would be a gun. Just like you. So we did not bring any ourselves. Guns are so noisy, you see. So when we threw ourselves on the taxi and tried to stop it we were most surprised.’

  Joey squinted at them. ‘So the big guy starts popping away and then drives off in the fucking taxi, calm as you like? That’s what you’re telling me? This guy is some kind of special fucking agent or something? Special forces. Like the guys who got Bin Laden?’

  ‘That may be right, sir.’ Akash thought that this would be a helpful thing to say as well. The more impossible the odds, the better and braver they sounded. ‘Indeed it may well be that this American is not a reporter but is from the FBI or CIA.’ This was good. This was making the story much better. Akash began to believe this version.

  Joey got up and began to pace. The white robe was too big for him and he looked like a pampered toddler. With a similar tendency to tantrums. The two men watched him, fascinated by the virginal white of his legs.

  ‘Maybe you’re right. It kinda figures. What kind of gun?’

  Akash had the quicker imagination. ‘It was an automatic. Big calibre. You could tell by the noise and by the hole in the glass of the taxi. A big gun.’ Pratik nodded gravely in confirmation.

  ‘Shit. Shit! Ok, let’s do some planning. Do we know where they’ve gone?’

  ‘No, sir. They checked out and went to the train station. That is all we know. I have a sister who works at the Hyatt Regency and this is all she could find out. She is very friendly with the doorman. They gave the doorman a big tip and told him to tell the driver to take them to the station.’

  ‘Just the two of them?’

  ‘Oh no, sir.’ Akash was proud of this information. ‘They went with an Indian woman. And an Indian man was with them but he stayed behind, then got another taxi.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘Back to the People’s Bank. In the old city. We know his name.’ Akash paraded his detective work. ‘He is the manager of the bank here. He is Mr CJ Kapoor. And we think the woman who went with the white people was the daughter of the chief of the bank.’

  ‘His daughter? Ramesh Banerjee’s daughter?! Where were they going with his daughter for chrissake?’

  ‘They took the train. A Shatabdi Express.’

  ‘Great! Where does that go?’

  The two men looked at each other unwilling to disappoint the very white man now, but unable to come up with a suitable answer. Then Akash made an effort. ‘There are many such trains. But this one stops at Agra.’ Pratik brightened at this. ‘Ah yes, Agra,’ he said meaningfully.

  ‘What the fuck’s at Agra?!’

  ‘It is the Taj Mahal, sir.’

  ‘You’re telling me they went fucking sight-seeing?’

  Akash was offended that his imagination was being challenged. ‘It is very normal is it not? All visitors want to see the Taj Mahal. Especially men and women. It is very romantic.’

  Joey looked at his colleagues as though they’d just grown another head each. Was this likely, he asked himself? What the hell would this pair be going sight-seeing for? Or having some sort of fucking rom-com excursion? They get attacked by a bunch of idiots with knives one day and the next they go and play at tourists. Oh yeah!

  ‘How many men have we got?’

  ‘Many, many. How many do you want sir?’

  ‘We need to cover every train station, every airport – local and international – and every five star hotel in Delhi. Got it? I want the alarm bells to be ringing the moment this pair is sighted. Got it? But nobody goes near, you hear? You just get on the phone to me and don’t lose them this time! Got it?! And I need a gun. Did you bring it like you were told?’

  Pratik proudly unclipped his cheap, pseudo-leather briefcase and took out a bulky object wrapped in cloth. He undid the cloth and held out a dull grey handgun. Joey took it and hefted it and checked it was the Browning M1935 Hi-Power that he’d specified. It looked too big in his hands, but he’d always been lucky with this model. He pulled out the clip and checked it had its full fourteen rounds of 9 mm shells. Satisfied, he slammed it back into place and sat back with the gun in his lap.

  ‘Ok, now beat it till you’ve got something to tell me.’ He waved the gun at them and motioned them to leave. ‘The money’ll go into your account.’

  They left the very w
hite man sitting in his bathrobe, sliding the clip in and out with a loud click, and aiming at the mirror.

  FORTY SIX

  The police truck rolled up to the village square trailing a dust cloud that had heralded its approach for three miles. The sandy particles shimmered listlessly in the intense afternoon light. Two police constables in creased khaki leapt out of the canvas-covered back and a lanky sub-inspector and his driver stepped down from the front cab. The sub-inspector smoothed his thin hair back and placed his black cap squarely on his head. He hitched up his gun-belt on his scrawny hips, and tucked a swagger-stick under his arm. His face lost some of its frown. He walked round to the side of his truck and inspected a large dent. They had collided with the wall of a house on the way in through the narrow street. This would need a report. The thought irritated him, like the whole wretched business of being here.

  Though it was the time for sitting indoors out of the sun, the village elders were summoned and a noisy crowd quickly enveloped the small group of police. Emotions were running high over the robbery. Nothing as exciting had happened in the village since the officials had come to tell them about the dam and why their river would have to be moved.

  The sub inspector faced them, thwacking his stick into his left hand for emphasis. He bawled at them, his voice surprisingly deep for his thin chest.

  ‘How can I learn what is happening if there is so much shouting going on?! I must have a sufficiency of quiet!’

  He was shouting in English. He couldn’t or wouldn’t speak the local dialect of these rustics. English was still the language of the governors, no matter their colour. He was sweating under the brim of his polished peaked hat. He was wondering why the commissioner had taken him off the lucrative drugs busting unit and sent him out into the countryside among these barbarians. One constable on a motor bike would have done.