by Jon Evans
“You said exactly that last year,” the bald man observes, amused. “I think I have a recording. But yes, I don’t think we’ll see LoTek this year. He won’t risk jail just to defend the Lockpick Challenge title. He doesn’t come to learn, no one here but the CDC, the Legion, and maybe you and Klaupactus can teach him anything. He comes for the parties, and if he can’t show his face, why risk attendance?”
“You say maybe me?” the Eastern European man demanded. “LoTek is very good, yes. Overall better than me, I concede this. But George, I assure you, there are fields in which my knowledge far outstrips his. And your knowledge as well. As you well know. I hate your kind of false humility.”
“Of course you do. You hate everything.”
“Not true. It only seems that way because the world is so detestable. Is there some reason you feel the need to eavesdrop?” the Eastern European man demands of Danielle and Jayalitha, who have slowly approached.
“It’s just, we’re looking for a man named Klaupactus,” Danielle says.
“We heard you speak his name,” Jayalitha clarifies.
The dark-haired man snorts. “Spot the feds,” he says contemptuously.
The bald man looks at Jayalitha. “No, I don’t think so. They don’t hire foreign nationals. And that’s a real Indian accent, yes?”
“Yes,” Jayalitha says.
The bald man nods. “I did a year of research in Bombay. What do you want with Klaupactus?”
“Him and Trurl,” Danielle says. “We, we have a message for them.”
“This is Trurl,” the bald man says, pointing to his companion.
Trurl sighs. “Tell me your message,” he says, his tone of voice indicating that he would like to get this interaction over with as quickly as possible.
“I am afraid the message is for your ears only,” Jayalitha says, and looks apologetically at the much friendlier bald man.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Trurl snaps. “This man is one of the three people in this world I trust, and I will tell him your message the moment you give it to me. Please do not insult my intelligence by insinuating unnecessary inefficiency into this conversation.”
Danielle hesitates, and decides to take the risk; from what they heard, the bald man too is a friend. “LoTek would like to talk to you.”
“Please,” Trurl says scornfully. “Do not waste my time.”
“I’m not.”
Trurl and the bald man search their expressions for a moment. Then, his voice much less hostile, Trurl says, “You must be joking.”
“You see anybody laughing?” Danielle asks.
“He’s really here?”
“Come,” Jayalitha says. “We will show you.”
* * *
“You have balls like bronze basketballs, my friend,” Trurl says as he shakes Keiran’s hand. “You know they are here looking for you.”
Keiran shrugs. “Never mind the federal agents. We have bigger problems.”
“Oh? What problems?”
“People who play by no rules at all. Details are need-to-know. But I could use your help.”
“Klaupactus and I are at your service.”
“The handle P2 mean anything to you?”
Trurl frowns. “I think so. Some script kiddie. Years ago. Hung out in chat rooms.”
“He’s no longer a script kiddie. He’s very, very good, he has access to tools like none of us have ever seen, and he’s working for the bad guys.”
“I thought we were the bad guys.”
“No such luck,” Keiran says.
“That is a problem.”
“If you two could just start some social engineering. Mention his name a lot, see who seems interested. Try and lure him someplace tomorrow night. Then I’ll ring his number, I’ve got that, and we’ll see who answers the call of the vibrating pocket.”
“Then what?” Trurl asks.
“Then we buy a Taser from the back of some vendor’s van.”
Trurl’s eyebrows shoot up. “You understand, when I say I will help, this does not include committing physical violence.”
“That’s what Charlie has his angels for,” Keiran says, nodding to Danielle and Jayalitha.
“Charlie doesn’t watch it,” Danielle says sourly, “his angels will test his Taser on him first.”
“I will bring Klaupactus,” Trurl says. “I’m sure he will be happy to see you. Anything makes that fool happy.”
* * *
Klaupactus is a tall, athletic man in his thirties who looks like he’d be more at home in a kayak or climbing a sheer rock wall than in front of a computer. Long dark hair and 80s-style stubble surround a perpetual smile. His accent is a weird combination of Romanian and Australian.
“This is bloody ridiculous!” he exclaims. “As if you would build a bomb. You shouldn’t hide from the government. You should attack them with a lawsuit. For tens of millions. Harrassment, false arrest, libel, character assassination. I have lawyer friends who would be gagging to represent you.”
Keiran nods. “I’ll be happy to, once this situation is resolved.”
“Have you finished with the triangulation?”
“Almost. I have to write a couple new utilities to map it onto the local GIS in real time. But I’ve already established the phone’s location somewhere on the hotel grounds. Our friend P2 is definitely here. And he took a ten-minute phone call within the last hour.”
“Did you intercept the call?”
“Of course. But it was encrypted.”
Trurl raises his eyebrows. “A secure anonymous phone?”
“Our opponents have enough money to buy this whole hotel and everyone in it.”
“Money,” Klaupactus says dismissively. “You know what I say about money. Happiness can never be bought. It can only be stolen.”
“Very pithy. Now go find my archenemy for me, will you?”
“It will be a pleasure,” Klaupactus says.
“Pleasure,” Trurl mutters. “I suppose at least it is a welcome distraction from the rest of these idiots.”
* * *
Danielle and Jayalitha steer clear of Trurl and Klaupactus when they venture out into DefCon once more: those two are trying to attract P2’s attention, but Danielle, fearful of being recognized behind her mask of blonde hair and makeup, wants to avoid just that.
At about midnight, tired from the long drive and the overload of sensory stimulation, they return to the hotel room. Keiran is already asleep in a cot by his improvised near-science-fiction control center. The three largest screens show top, side, and front architectural plans of the Alexis Park grounds, with a reddish cloud that Danielle takes to indicate the possible location of P2’s phone.
After a moment she realizes that the edge of this cloud intersects this very room. Their quarry is somewhere within two hundred feet of them right now. Unfortunately some four thousand other DefCon attendees are as well. As she watches, the cloud shifts slightly; P2 is on the move. Maybe going to some party. Maybe hunting them just as they are seeking him. If he has overheard Trurl and Klaupactus talking about him, it is not a great logical jump to the conclusion that Keiran – LoTek – is here.
But she can’t worry about that now. Danielle has too much to worry about, and she has to put it all away every night, or she will never be able to sleep. It isn’t easy. She has learned she has to exhaust herself every day, or she will be up for hours, sweating and tense, brooding about her possible futures, all of which are bad. But tonight she is too tired to worry. She closes her eyes gratefully and allows sleep to carry her away.
Keiran shakes her awake at four in the morning.
“Come on,” he says urgently. “I’ve got a fix. I know where P2 is. You have to go get him right now.”
Chapter 35
“He moved,” Keiran explains. “I set the scanner to wake me up if the phone left the hotel grounds. He’s just down the street. Get up, come on, go!”
Ninety seconds later Danielle and Jayalitha, clad in sanda
ls and pyjamas, are jogging down the hallway to the elevator bank. Danielle holds one of their anonymous cell phones. She does not quite believe that she is really awake. Except that dreams are never this uncomfortable; being shaken awake this early was almost physically painful.
“Remind me again why you can’t come with us,” she says into the phone, annoyed. “Just in case someone sees your precious face?”
“Believe me, I want to be there. But I have to stay here to monitor his activity and make the finger call. Let me know when.”
There is more activity on the street outside the Alexis Park than Danielle would have expected at four in the morning, even in Las Vegas. At least fifty people cluster, smoking and talking, around the 24-hour 7-11 store down the street, at the corner of Harmon and Paradise. A group of a half-dozen passes them on the way to the store. From their chatter Danielle gathers that a big party has just ended; from their giggles, shining eyes, and the way they gape at street lights, it’s clear hallucinogens were involved. Two other groups pass them going back into the hotel. Their members seem very young. Danielle supposes old fogeys like herself, even those who took drugs, are mostly in bed by now. As she would very much like to be. She doesn’t know if she can pick out a single person answering a phone in this noisy, milling crowd, but she doesn’t know if they’ll get a better chance, either. She decides to go for it and opens her mouth to tell Keiran so.
“Bollocks,” Keiran says. “He’s back inside. He must have walked right past you.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell us?” Danielle demands, turning around.
“It’s not a real-time scan. Every thirty seconds.”
The two groups who passed them looked college-age, if that. Danielle wonders if their fearsome nemesis P2 will turn out to be a pimply monomaniacal teenager. Both groups continue, their pace leisurely, through the main building and down the long outdoor walkway that winds past the Alexis Park’s three swimming pools. Danielle and Jayalitha follow.
“He stopped,” Keiran reports, a minute later.
Danielle shakes her head. “The people who passed us are still moving.”
“Then he’s not with them. Or not any more. Where are you?”
“By the main pool.”
“Go back. Check the lobby.”
They return indoors. There are eleven people on the lobby chairs and couches; one group of four teenage boys, two couples, and three lone men, one reading a newspaper and two more working on their laptops. She reports this to Keiran.
“All right,” Keiran says. She hears him take a deep breath. “He has to be there. The phone might be silent. Keep a sharp eye. I’m going to connect.”
“He’s doing it,” Danielle whispers to Jayalitha, who nods.
“Well?” Keiran asks, fifteen seconds later.
“Did you do it?”
“Yes. It rang. Someone answered. They didn’t speak. I started talking and they hung up, they must have some code-word system. You didn’t fucking see anything?” The frustration in his voice is palpable.
“No. They’re not here.”
“Danielle,” Jayalitha says. “The lavatories.”
Danielle turns and looks at the two doors, marked with the universal man and woman symbols, set in wood panelling. Of course. P2 stopped in to take a leak on his way to the pools.
“Come on,” she says, and she and Jayalitha barge into the men’s room.
There is a man standing by the sink, young and pot-bellied, with wide Elvis sideburns. He looks at them with surprise and alarm.
“P2, I presume?” Danielle asks.
His surprise and alarm intensify. “Huh?”
Jayalitha pushes past Danielle, grabs the man by his lapels, and pulls him down to her height. “Are you P2? Do you work for Shadbold? For Justice International?” Her voice is low but throbbing. “Answer me.”
“What the fuck you on, lady?” The man tries to separate Jayalitha’s hands from his clothing. The attempt earns him a kneecap hard in the crotch. He doubles over, hands folded over his battered genitals. Soft gagging noises come from his mouth.
“If you move,” Jayalitha warns him, “I will end your miserable life.” She crouches to the collapsed form. “And if you are the one I seek I swear to you, you will burn just as my family burned.” She pulls a cell phone from his pocket and gives it to Danielle.
Danielle stares at Jayalitha for a moment. It is like seeing a kitten turn into a wolverine. Then, as the man writhes in gasping agony, and Jayalitha searches him thoroughly for any other, hidden phone, she turns her attention to his phone. It is a Nokia, she knows its interface well. She quickly establishes that it last received a call more than an hour ago.
“No,” Danielle says. “Not this one.”
Jayalitha looks up, past the urinals, to the stalls. One of the doors is closed.
“It is occupied,” she says. “You must knock down the door. I will keep this man from leaving.”
Danielle swallows. The situation is both absurd and appalling. But they have done too much to back out now. And besides, she reminds herself, she is already wanted by the FBI. She walks up to the stall. She hears fast, shallow breathing from behind it. Its occupant is afraid.
“Open the door,” she says.
“What the fuck is this?” A frightened, teenage voice.
Danielle considers kicking the door, but decides that sandal-clad feet are not right for this. There is enough space beneath the stall door and walls that she could wriggle in, but she would leave herself vulnerable to physical repulsion, and it would be somehow undignified. There are no tools in sight; she will have to do it herself. She feels blood pounding in her temples.
“You do not move except to breathe!” she hears Jayalitha warn the man on the floor, her voice still harsh, as if he might yet turn into P2. He whimpers an understanding.
Danielle steps back to the wall, crouches, tenses her abdominal muscles, and charges the stall shoulder-first. It pops open with surprising ease. She very nearly falls into the gangly teenager sitting on the toilet within, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Something metal, the stall lock, rattles on the floor.
“Are you P2?” she asks, feeling ridiculous. At least he has already drawn up his shorts in anticipation of her invasion.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice quavers.
“Give me your phone.”
He pauses for a moment. Then another thump and groan of pain from near the door. The other man must have tried to make a move. The teenager quickly draws his phone out and passes it over. It too has not been used within the last hour. He can’t be hiding any other phone in his shorts, unless –
“Stand up and drop your pants,” Danielle orders. When she hears the words leave her mouth she very nearly starts giggling like a madwoman, and stops this only by biting her lip so hard she tastes blood.
The teenager stares at her. Then, slowly, he stands up and lowers his shorts. There is no cell phone concealed within. Perhaps it was flushed away? – but no, a quick glance reveals that the toilet has not been flushed, and no phone gleams within.
“Stay where you are,” Danielle commands. She drops the phone, kicks it to the far corner of the bathroom, walks back to the doorway, takes Jayalitha by the wrist, and leads her out into the lobby, just as a teenage blonde girl comes out of the women’s room, babbling at high speed into her cell phone: “And then she was all, like, Christina’s a totally better singer than Britney, and I was like, duh, totally, everyone knows that, but it’s not about the voice, it’s about, like, the style.” She stops and looks at Danielle and Jayalitha. “Uh, excuse me, ladies, I think you want this door, unless you’re, like, totally desperate for male companionship.” She points at the women’s room and smiles archly.
“We’re fine,” Danielle says shortly, humiliated enough already without this bubbleheaded ditz adding to it, and marches out of the main building, towards the pools and their room, before the men they have left behind come to their senses a
nd raise a furor. Her face is red, and she feels weak, from confrontation comedown, embarrassment, and a sick sense of disaster. They should have found him. They failed. And now he must know he is being traced.
They are just past the main swimming pool when Jayalitha grabs Danielle’s arm from behind and pulls her her to a stop.
“What is it?” Danielle asks.
“The other room. The ladies’ room.” Jayalitha turns and rushes back to the lobby.
“That ladies’ room? But why would he…” Danielle says, following, and then she understands.
He. That has always been their assumption. But they have no reason other than demographics to believe P2 a man. And P2 is, by all accounts, a truly exceptional hacker; and true exceptions are beyond statistics.
The men’s room opens as they approach. The two men they terrorized look out nervously, blanch at the approach of Danielle and Jayalitha, and quickly shut the door again. They proceed into the women’s room. It is empty.
“The girl,” Danielle says. She can’t believe it. The teenage blonde girl with her overdone white-trash-pop-culture spiel. She rushes out into the lobby. She is nowhere to be seen. But Danielle is sure. Dead certain. Something in the look the blonde girl gave them when she pointed at the women’s room. A hint of triumph.
P2 is a teenage girl. And she knows their faces. And knows she is being chased.
* * *
“Well,” Keiran says. “This is not good.”
“We know that,” Danielle says grimly.
“But it’s not a total catastrophe. We had one piece of information. It’s now useless, that phone’s been switched off. And they’ll be looking for us here now. That’s bad too. But you did add to our store of knowledge.”
“How?” Jayalitha asks.
“You know what she looks like.”
That is true. Danielle tries to remember. Short, dirty blonde hair, probably natural, cut a little above her shoulders. Upturned nose, wide mouth, good skin, no jewellery. Maybe ten pounds over her optimum weight. She was wearing hiphugger jeans, a tank top, and sandals.
