Risk-situation security assessment: she was going to die!
This just wasn’t fair! She hadn’t done anything, yet! Got fired from her job, failed to get married! What The Fuck, Lord! She stamped in tearful frustration, vowing that if she ever lived to survive this situation, she’d do something pretty damn useful with her life.
Tendrils of mist crept up the driveway from the cottage. With the fall in temperature, the evening fog was starting to roll in again.
Somehow it intertwined with a base, primordial anger in her. All of a sudden she was on her feet in a crouching run, the Glock exploding into action. She fired in the direction of the branch-breaking crackle while trying to dart among the trees beside the track without running into any of them; Bang! Bang! Bang!
Bang! – the Glock punched back into her hand – Bang!
Counting off the rounds was a massive comfort, each new one affirming she was still alive. Glock 17 – she had seventeen rounds: six, seven, eight…
She was firing the gun sideways, everything Adam Lau had told her not to do. One disadvantage of this approach, she noted for next time, was that the ejecting copper shell casings flew rather distractingly in front of her face –
– ten, eleven –
Twenty-five yards to go, to a low wall, just ahead of the cottage, and now she felt a –
Whhuuummmpphhhhh
– as a fierce air current buffeted the back of her head.
Her lungs turned to lead. She slid down behind the wall, an excruciating pain engulfing her lower body. She’d twisted her ankle. Or broken it? Shit! – no, it was only sprained, thank God.
The boom of that last bullet hitting the empty horsebox and its report had arrived almost together. She breathed fast. Heart rate very fast, faster than she could ever recall. Alarmingly so. Star’s back door was twenty yards away, not even. The stone wall extended to the side of the cottage. She reckoned it was just tall enough to give cover, depending on how close this person really was.
Branches breaking again under foot: he or she really was close, coming for her now. She couldn’t wait to look. She crawled behind the wall, by instinct commando-style – as fast as she could with the pain shooting from her ankle, all the way up to her hip, beyond. Suddenly she was there. She was at Star’s door. Reaching up for the handle, already ajar. She rolled inside. Then she stood up, felt her ankle throb and heard herself scream. Star. Lying on her couch, with one arm aloft like she’d fallen asleep at a strange angle. Her right eye fixed Natalie with unswerving gaze. On her right temple, a small red circle. The exit wound joined with her other eye socket; a fir tree-like spatter of blood and other matter ran off into one corner of the room.
Things happened very fast, like in a dream. A car speeding down the track, smashing off the side of the Taurus, skidding to a halt broadside, driver’s side opening beside the back door – Cindy Bayley appearing in the doorframe, asking if she was OK:
“No! I’m really not OK!” She’d already ‘acquired’ her in the sighting arrangement of the Glock. “What are you doing here?” Taking no chances. Not one.
“I’m here to help you, Natalie!” Cindy yelled back, sounding unnaturally outraged. “When you said you got a text from Star Williams, I realized something was very wrong!”
She felt her arms perfectly straight, forefinger firm and steady on trigger.
Cindy shouted: “We found it almost impossible to even set an interview with her. She said she never used a cell phone, never mind text – what the hell! –”
She was having difficulty looking at the life-like corpse of Star Mary Williams.
“How did you get here so soon, Cindy?” she asked loudly.
“I was down at the County Crime Scene lab, checking on Vogel’s remains!”
“Adam said he’d be doing that! What were you really doing in this neck of the woods, Cindy?”
“Adam was called away, to make the right arrest!”
She had six rounds in hand.
Who were any of these people? Did she have any idea who this woman was? Had she ever even seen an FBI badge? As for her supposed partner – a man who’d ‘found’ her entering an online game? – An armourer? When, shit! – Yuri Malovich had been killed with a stun gun, her own life very nearly extinguished with a high-powered rifle?
And now Cindy wasn’t even answering her questions.
“Drop your service weapon and kick it towards me,” Natalie yelled.
All the while, that white notch and dot dead straight with the center of her forehead. Taking no chances.
“Natalie, what the hell are you doing, it’s me!” she yelled back.
“Disarm, NOW!” she roared. Some reptilian part of her brain caught the shadow now entering the still-open doorframe behind.
Cindy dropped to the wooden floorboards like a magician’s cape – unblocking the view:
Nguyen.
With the rifle.
Sighting between her eyes.
His boot now pressing Cindy’s face into the floor. Cindy squirming, writhing for something at her ankle, the barrel of the rifle skating left, right –
Impulse travelled down her trigger finger before further thought could intrude. Where Nguyen’s left shoulder deltoid muscle had been, there was now a cloud of red droplets. He wheeled. She saw dust particles lift off the cottage’s timber beams as a booming wave rolled through her, a bang so loud it made her ears drone, the blood humming deep.
The bitter-singed smell of cordite filled her sinuses.
He’d discharged his rifle into the open roof space.
With his good arm, Nguyen was mechanically chambering another, massive round of the hunting ammo, staggering back through the still-open doorway.
In a split second everything replayed, including the voicemail she’d listened in to: The boring and recalibrating work is all done: tell ya, packs a helluva punch… Cindy was scrambling for her Glock – getting unsteadily to her feet, a boot mark visible down one side of her face.
She disappeared too, out into the mist. Savage, fast footsteps. A terrible crack; a hole blown straight through the top of the wall, admitting pale evening light. Then three pops in rapid succession, and silence.
Had they killed each other?
“Man down,” a voice finally said.
The voice was Cindy’s. There was a surprised radio crackle in response.
Nguyen lay like a wounded animal. Presently more cars and people arrived.
CHAPTER 32
The FBI office in San Jose shared a building with a financial services company, according to the digital lobby directory challenging Natalie’s entry. Architecturally, it was a study in institutional facelessness – just a satellite of the San Francisco Bureau, one of several hundred such ‘resident agencies’ around the country. But Natalie knew that its proximity to the heat and heart of the Valley made it special. After all, someone from law enforcement had to keep tabs on what these kids with their deca-billion dollar companies were trying to do to the world. The San Jose office covered four counties – including Monterey, and came equipped with a full complement of agents and state-of-the-art interview suites.
Tom Nguyen had been shot in the left shoulder, the left thigh, and the left thigh again. With the first shot, she’d recounted, Cindy had missed Nguyen’s body altogether. She then regained composure, realizing Nguyen was out of ammo again, and brought him down with two precise wounds to the man’s nearside hamstring.
After five days in Monterey County Hospital under armed guard, Nguyen was on crutches and painkillers. His new home was an interview suite here – just a few doors down from where Natalie now sat, at Adam Lau’s desk.
She slid the Glock 17C across the shiny desk surface. He met it with out-stretched fingers. They looked at each other. Natalie was just aware of some deeper understanding, some threshold crossed.
“Keep it,” he said finally. “Which reminds me,” and he reached down into a drawer, his hand re-emerging with some special gun re-registratio
n form, for her to sign.
“Adam,” and her eyes became moist. She shook her head.
“You can stop apologizing Natalie,” he said softly. “It’s me who should apologize to you, for giving you such a bum steer. For saying that the coast was clear, when it manifestly was not.”
He won. She dried her eyes and withdrew the weapon, wrapping it in an oilcloth. From the recesses of her bag, she found a pen and signed the form. Adam was about to say something when Cindy blustered in and gave a good-natured salute: “At your service M’am,” she said. “That was some shot.” Through sheer luck or otherwise – Natalie still wasn’t sure – she’d prevented Tom Nguyen from ever aiming a rifle again. And yet kept him alive.
Cindy set her clipboard down. “He’s cooperating. Trying to move up the snitch chain. But there’s only one place to go.”
“To the person really pulling the strings,” Adam said, eyebrow arching.
“Yeah, but I was thinking about the recommended sentencing: all we can do is try an’ knock it down to life, without.”
Adam brooded. “After all, we’re talking three first degree homicides, and at least one attempted murder.” He tilted his head from side to side. “The only person round here who’s gonna work the snitch chain to any effect is one Salvatore Polanco: turning state’s evidence in exchange for dropping charges of breaking, entering and stealing $370 from the cash register of the Silicon Bean café.”
“Our local P.D. friend William Horatio Pulver. God bless ’im,” Cindy said.
Natalie said nothing about Sal Polanco, Bill Pulver nor indeed Nguyen’s attempts to shoot her. She was thinking mostly of the man she’d known for seven years at her old company. The man she’d maintained contact with ever since.
Do we ever really know anyone?
It was also Nguyen who’d brought her into this situation in the first place. Why?
“He thought he could control you. At least, better than he could control Malovich,” Cindy said. “And guys like that have to exercise control – in highly specific ways.”
“Like how?” Natalie said.
“Like making you feel vulnerable. Like, faking a profile page on Clamor, and even faking the faker’s identity. Perhaps hoping for a lil’ ole girl-on-girl rivalry between you and Nancy Wu.”
“Right,” Natalie said glumly. It was the same principle used by traffickers, pimps and pornographers the world over: make them feel vulnerable. Make them afraid.
“Seems he got good at faking stuff,” Adam said. “A master of misinformation, you might say.”
“How so? What else?” Natalie said.
“Dwayne Wisnold’s MultiQuest account,” Adam said.
“Nguyen was Rage, in the game?”
“Actually, as determined by Clamor’s own Multi-Identity Engine, Nguyen was a beastmaster.”
“Oh, did our profiler love that one!” said Cindy. “The beasts out there, or the ones inside?” and she patted her stomach. “Which ones was he really trying to quell?”
“I need to hear more about this,” Natalie said.
“See, Tom Nguyen had a certain early-life experience, we’ve pieced together,” Cindy said. “How much do you know about his family history?”
“I worked out that Jon Vogel was his dad.”
He’d killed his own father.
Cindy said: “Vogel met his mom in Saigon, in ’74. By all accounts, Jonny was in a bad way back then. Lotta drugs. He and Ms Nguyen spent a few days together, a week at most. She got pregnant, and had Tom in a Thai refugee camp. Mom kept hold of dad’s ID pendant.
“Tom Nguyen was a ‘trick baby,’ as they’re known. The refugee camp he grew up in was adjacent to a military R&R quarter, where servicemen went for I&I.”
“That’s not an acronym I’m familiar with,” Natalie said.
“Intoxication and intercourse,” Adam said.
“Just one of several notorious acronyms from that era,” Cindy added. “Like LBFM. – Ms Nguyen being one.”
Natalie shook her head.
“Little Brown Fucking Machine. One night, she was passed round the camp guards – and not heard from again. Spoils of war, I guess you could say.” Cindy paused. “Tom eventually made it out to the US, under the Orderly Departure Program.”
It seemed consistent with what Star had mentioned.
“Of course, he was a very badly damaged young man, perhaps sexually abused too at that camp. He suffers from a condition known as crypto-amnesia: he has trouble remembering important aspects of his past.”
Natalie recalled his attire for the Sunday strategy session: the T-shirt with the gold elephant saying ‘I don’t remember’, the pendant round his neck…
Cindy: “Our profiler managed to pull his school and university reports. Through grade school, he made a tremendous effort. He managed to have an almost normal time in high school. But there were problems, of course. Several women filed complaints against him at university. He had a habit of sneaking up on them in dorm halls, late at night. He picked different women, reducing the risk of being caught, but one time he threatened a senior with a knife, his come-on line being: ‘Wanna go blading?’”
The room temperature dropped. He’d used the very same line on Natalie at their brunch that day in the Marina district –
“For whatever reason, the University administration let it go.”
Cindy pulled a copy of Malovich’s drawing from her clipboard.
“We eventually got hold of the Clamor cap table from the bankers. You were right: the 39% was Vogel’s. And you were right about the 5% too: it wasn’t Malovich’s.
“It was Paul Towse’s.”
Cindy and Adam explained how the real driver was indeed Paul Towse’s quest to take control of Clamor and grow the Farther Frontier Fund into a new media phenomenon worth hundreds of billions of dollars:
“For Towse, a broken down man like Nguyen was a godsend. Multiworld was the stake-building vehicle Towse had set up to take control of Clamor.”
“And the 1% was Nguyen’s.”
“Yup,” Cindy said.
“And so Malovich was killed because he found out about the stake building scheme.”
“Nguyen already confessed to it. Our amigo Sal Polanco has good eyesight. Could even tell us what Nguyen was wearing that night Malovich died out back a’ the Silicon Bean.”
“But how did they think they could get their hands on the 39% stake, when Vogel had already willed it to his trust?”
But Natalie answered her own question: “If Vogel died without a will, an inheritance claim could successfully be brought under Californian Law by his biological son, legitimate or not. And for that, two things needed to happen…”
“Forensics found the remains of Vogel’s will in Star’s fireplace,” Cindy said. “Vogel’s assistant, Mysty Summers, was already dead; Star was the last person with living knowledge of his affairs.
“Until you entered the frame, that is.”
Still Natalie struggled with it. Her left-brain could accept the logic but her right, intuitive brain had a very hard time seeing Tom in this new light. The man who’d left to become Chief Scientist of one of the hottest start-ups in the Valley. Perhaps she had her disputing hemispheres mixed up. Perhaps it was the right side accepting it and the left one not? She frowned.
“I get why Nguyen was a very useful instrument in helping Paul Towse take control of Clamor. But, OK: why would Tom ever go along with Towse’s plan? When he already held one percent of a company worth fifteen billion dollars!”
How much is enough?
“That’s the persuasive power of a man like Paul Towse,” Cindy said. “He did promise Nguyen a slice of a vastly bigger pie. But crucially, he promised Nguyen the CEO spot. Of course, it was ‘Interim’. Towse would never have allowed Nguyen to become a permanent CEO, after folding Clamor into Further Online Gaming. But for Nguyen, it was always about control.”
There was a long pause.
Cindy went on: “I guess we all ne
ed a leadership figure in our lives. God, a mentor, call it what you want. But our profiler stressed how this particularly applies to people who’ve grown up without having had a father figure around. A dad who’s strong, present and appreciated. And daddy certainly wasn’t present in this case.”
Natalie ground down on that one.
“ ‘A vortex of darkness’,” she mumbled, “is how Vogel described Paul Towse.”
She looked again at the Malovich sketch. Specifically, the right hand side of it: ‘SureFar Enjoy’, ‘Sayonara’, ‘LLA’…
“Don’t worry,” Cindy said, “we’ll bring Paul Towse in. Just as soon as we’ve got enough from Nguyen; we’ll get ‘im.”
CHAPTER 33
But that wasn’t how it went. By the time they swooped on Paul Towse’s Pacific Heights mansion, he’d ghosted on them, Adam informed Natalie the very next day.
“Gone where?”
“We don’t know.”
“Right,” Natalie said uncertainly. “So what now?”
“Biggest source of traffic to SureFar Enjoy remains MultiQuest, via the Clamor site. Rage has lived on. Has now turned into a Non-Player Character, like some dark deity ascended into hell.”
“God in heaven.”
“We need to get back in the game.”
They all got together at the Silicon Bean café.
Josie, the owner, made it available to them after hours. Natalie was pleasantly surprised to find Winston Ma there. He sat in a big brown armchair: a diminutive figure with spiky hair and sharp-angled glasses, engrossed in his laptop. Natalie had only spoken with him on the phone, and recognized him first by his voice: “Oh there you go, you little bitch!” he was saying into his headset. “Yeah! That’s what I’m talkin’ about! Who’s daddy now?”
The Woman Who Stopped Traffic Page 23
