by Eliot Peper
Javier ran a finger along his jaw. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not any of my cousins. Are you sure we haven’t met before?”
As his eyes continued to search her face, Diana’s skin went cold. Shit. She should have been more careful. Javier had seen her before, just not in person. He and Emily had spent years perusing and rearranging Dag’s feed to their hearts’ content, years in which Diana had collaborated with Dag on numerous ops. Javier would know that Diana had been the one to help Dag track Emily back to their secret island refuge. She needed to end this conversation and redirect his curiosity before any inconvenient memories surfaced in his mind.
She squinted at him, running a surreptitious feed search. “Wait.” She let excitement bleed into her tone. “Were you at the Victoria Summit in April? Yeah, I remember now, you gave that talk about using the feed to improve human rights. I volunteer there every year. It’s so stimulating!”
“Ahh,” he said, cocking his head to one side. “That must be it.”
“Is that real leather?” She peered at his jacket.
“It is,” he said, holding out his arm so she could touch his sleeve. “There’s this ranch out in Montana that does all the leatherwork in-house. They’re great.”
Diana shied away from the proffered sleeve.
“I’m vegan,” she said shortly.
“Oh,” he said. There was a moment of awkward silence in which he looked painfully at a loss. “Well, I should catch that elevator.”
“Yeah,” she said and stepped past him, losing herself among the sculptures.
She was getting rusty. That had been too close for comfort.
It took half an hour for Rachel to finish her call. Diana could only hear Rachel’s laconic side of the conversation, which Diana inferred was about a pending acquisition. Then the older woman walked out of the conference room with a steady, efficient gait. Diana circled around behind the elevator bank, timing it such that she and Rachel arrived at the same time. A few other employees milled about, and Diana followed Rachel and a portly man onto an elevator headed down.
Diana had expected Rachel to retreat to a lavish office, some miracle of engineering that used every architectural trick to create the perfect aerie for the world’s most powerful executive. Instead, after picking up some passengers on the intervening floors, the elevator deposited them at ground level.
Rachel explored the lobby until she found an unoccupied bench in a corner of the redwood grove. Sitting, she withdrew into her feed.
Being in the lobby made Diana’s job much easier. With so many people coming and going all the time, all she needed to do was wander around with just enough purpose in her stride to appear to be going somewhere.
Rachel stayed there for the rest of the afternoon. Occasionally other executives would swing by for brief, intense conversations. Otherwise she appeared content to do whatever was required of a magnate overseeing her dynasty from the safety of her feed. While Diana waited, she mapped out the space as Haruki had requested, noting doorways, pathways, trees, and countless other details that seemed hopelessly irrelevant.
Finally Rachel stood and stretched. She removed her hair tie and shook out her mane. Diana was surprised by how much this changed her appearance. Without her ponytail, Commonwealth’s fearless leader was somehow less distinctive. The silvery halo called attention away from her scarred face.
Rachel walked toward an exit. As soon as the chairwoman stepped outside the skyscraper, her four-person security team appeared, following at a discreet distance. Diana tagged Rachel on a live, high-definition satellite stream and tracked her progress via feed, staying far enough behind to remain invisible. Rachel surprised Diana again, eschewing a car and making her way north on foot to a public indoor pool where she proceeded to swim laps for an hour. One of the bodyguards stood off to the side in a largely failed attempt at discretion while the others covered the street outside. Diana had ditched the blazer and donned glasses as an extra precaution, but it was hard to imagine being recognized among the troupes of begoggled, chlorine-infused San Franciscans in various states of undress.
After a quick rinse, Rachel was out on the streets again, heading toward what Diana could guess was her home on the slopes of Telegraph Hill. Diana kept an eye on Rachel and her bodyguards via satellite feed, noting the route, distance, and time stamps. Diana herself walked one block over, speeding up as they neared their destination so she could arrive first.
The sun was setting behind the Golden Gate, bathing the hill in amber light. Diana sought cover in one of the narrow bamboo-shaded stairways that led up to where Coit Tower stood on the summit. Pretending to be on the lookout for one of the neighborhood’s famous feral parrots, she found an angle that gave her a direct view down onto Rachel’s home. While no houses in San Francisco were inexpensive, Rachel’s was far from ostentatious. Nestled between a small apartment building and a pedestrian byway, the narrow two-story Edwardian looked out over the Bay Bridge and downtown skyscrapers.
Rachel climbed the stairs and went inside. Using her feed to zoom in, Diana could see through the bay windows and into the first floor. The kitchen, dining room, and living room were all connected in an open plan. Two men were chopping vegetables in the kitchen: Omar, her husband, and Leon, their lover. Rachel greeted them each with a kiss, grabbed a chef’s knife, and began dicing tomatoes.
Outside, Diana suppressed a shiver. The temperature was dropping fast, and she now regretted abandoning her jacket. Sighing, she created an approximate blueprint of the house’s internal layout based on what she could see and what she could deduce from the roofline, window placement, and internal stairwells.
What was she really doing here? Watching the trio cook, eat, gossip, laugh, drink a bottle of wine, and wander up to bed together, Diana felt like little more than a voyeur. If this had been the twentieth century with its puritanical gender and sexuality norms, maybe a sex tape of a senior-citizen threesome would be scandal-worthy. But in today’s world, it wouldn’t cause so much as a hiccup in the feed’s media maelstrom. Rachel was openly polyamorous anyway. It wasn’t even a revelation.
Adding a thermal filter to the satellite footage now that darkness had fallen, Diana prompted her feed to notify her if anyone entered or exited Rachel’s house. Then she stood, stretched cramped muscles, and began climbing the steep stairway. Bamboo leaves whispered above her head, and she had to focus to keep her footing on the cracked concrete stairs. Her calves burned, and her breath formed little puffs of condensation.
When they find a company with a dirty secret, they bet against the company’s stock and drag the skeleton out of the closet. It made sense that a hedge fund like Leviathan, and by proxy a cutout like Haruki, would covet covert recordings of a Commonwealth board meeting. Mapping out the alliances among major shareholders and seeing what strategies were being discussed would make it easier to predict key decisions before the rest of Wall Street knew what was happening. There was clearly tension between Hsu and Javier, and between both of them and Rachel. That was good intel. Even better was that the board viewed the company’s push to bring the Prideful Seven under Commonwealth’s wing as a straw man. Leaking that juicy tidbit could create havoc all by itself.
But a full take? Physical layouts of Rachel’s environs? A schedule of her daily routine? Those quotidian details hardly seemed worth the effort or expense.
As she climbed, Diana summoned her feed and pulled up Leviathan’s portfolio and trading history. Kendrick had mentioned the biotech firm DysoTech that Leviathan had bet against and then exposed for conducting illegal drug trials. But there were at least a dozen others. Scanning through the outraged news reports and lucrative financial windfalls each scandal had provoked, she saw that a number of them had focused on key executives. A banking CEO who had personally approved initiatives that violated international law. A CFO who had been making insider trades on his own account. A VP who had sexually harassed a dozen employees. It was plausible that they had her shadowing Ra
chel as a fishing expedition for some unknown personal wrongdoing.
But plausible didn’t cut it, not when it came to espionage.
She reached the park at the top of the hill. Coit Tower thrust into the darkness above. It smelled of brine and honeysuckle. The fog had cleared, and stars glittered in the night sky like a reflection of the thousands of lights in the city below.
This hill had once housed a semaphore, which was why the neighborhood was called Telegraph Hill. When sailboats and steamships crossed from the ocean into the bay, a crew would adjust the mechanical arms of the semaphore into shapes that merchants down in the streets of San Francisco could interpret. Each shape referred to a particular kind of ship with a particular kind of cargo. Armed with foreknowledge of what the incoming vessel carried, shopkeepers could adjust their prices in advance to arbitrage the influx of new supplies about to hit the docks.
That’s what Leviathan should want, a hot tip that they could arbitrage ahead of the market. They weren’t going to find that by having Diana report back on Rachel’s office furniture, how many laps she swam, or the ingredients of the salad she’d prepared for dinner.
A shiver ran down Diana’s spine that had nothing to do with the cold.
If you suspected you were being played, the only move was to raise the stakes.
CHAPTER 9
“Cream, extra sugar for Gerald, and black for Sam.” Diana handed a steaming cup to each muscled bouncer. “Let no one say I don’t take care of my own.”
Gerald inhaled the scent of his fresh coffee, and an ecstatic smile spread across his wide face.
“You’re an angel, D,” said Sam.
“You better believe it,” said Diana as she pushed through the heavy oak doors. “Just wait till you see me spread my wings and bring justice to the unworthy with a big-ass flaming sword.”
Nell looked up from the podium, radiant as ever.
“You again.” A dimple ruined her deadpan expression.
“Hardly the way to greet an old friend,” said Diana. “I am shocked and appalled by your impropriety. Call the guards.”
Nell grunted. “Good to have you back,” she said. “Your booth is empty at the moment.”
“You’re a dear,” said Diana, stepping past her but stopping with her hand on the red satin curtains. “Oh, silly me, I almost forgot. I’ve got something for you. Actually, it’s for Jorani.”
Diana placed a brown paper bag on the podium, and Nell opened it curiously. She pulled out a collection of comic books sealed in thin layers of protective plastic.
“Original English-language Akira reprints from the early 1990s,” said Diana. “It’s a masterpiece. A sci-fi epic from the golden age of manga. Jorani will love it.”
Nell bit the tip of her tongue as she flipped through the collection.
“This is too much, Diana,” she said. “These are collector’s items.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Diana. “Akira was foundational for me when I was Jorani’s age. It’s about this kid growing up in Tokyo after World War III destroys the city. He discovers this secret that everyone’s trying to cover up. There’s action, violence, supernatural powers, weird philosophy, and bad influences galore for a growing girl.” She nudged Nell. “Seriously though, it would mean a lot to me to give them to someone who’ll appreciate it.”
Nell hesitated, and Diana put a reassuring hand on hers. “Take them. Just promise me that you won’t lecture her on how she needs to keep them pristine. They’re comic books. They’re meant to be read and loved. I’ll be disappointed if they don’t end up a tattered mess.”
Nell shook her head. “Okay, then,” she said. “Well, thank you.” She met Diana’s eyes. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” said Diana with a devilish grin. “Now you’re never going to be able to pull her away from manga.”
Nell gave an exasperated sigh. “Oh, I know,” she said. “I keep offering to take her up and give her some flight training, but she’ll have none of it. Parents always wish their children shared their hobbies.” She shrugged. “All right, off with you.” Shooing Diana inside, she said, “Get out of my sight before you cause more trouble.”
After slipping through the satin folds, Diana gave herself the requisite moment to adjust. The ambient-beats playlist she’d had running on low volume was gone, as were the bulleted notes she’d taken on Leviathan’s trading history. The collated report on the mission’s progress that she’d submitted to the cache this morning vanished from her peripheral vision.
No notifications.
No connections.
No feed.
Rubbing her eyes with her knuckles, Diana wove through the crowded tables to the back corner of the club. Virginia waved at her from behind the bar and got to work preparing a Caesar. An oil lamp guttered. A young woman in an outfit of finely patterned white lace played wild folk tunes on an accordion.
Analog was in fine form.
“How are you three holding up?” As always, Diana knelt beside the vizslas curled up in front of the enormous fire and slipped each dog a piece of jerky. They thanked her with rough licks, and she scratched them each under the chin before retreating to her nearby booth.
A brooding darkness welled up inside her as she waited. The silence left in the wake of her absent feed forced uncomfortable reflection. Without the information mainline, nothing stood between her and the disturbing truth that there was more going on here than she understood.
Haruki appeared shortly after Diana’s Caesar. She had to suppress a smirk when he ordered a gin and tonic instead of a martini. Baby steps.
She briefed him on her findings. Sofia had helped Diana map out the political hierarchy within Commonwealth and given her details on specific internal priorities and operations. Kendrick had shared what his auditors and analysts had found as well as insights that they suspected but could not prove. The board meeting footage had illuminated leadership’s key strategies, lines in the sand between high-level factions, and the pressure Rachel faced from her directors.
The overall picture was consistent with what Diana had expected. Commonwealth was a large organization that was as powerful and as conflicted as other major institutions. They weren’t, and couldn’t be, squeaky clean, but neither were they sitting on a ticking time bomb. Diana’s snooping on Rachel’s personal life added color to the narrative, but little else. There was enough material for a hedge fund like Leviathan to make a bet, but nothing that would yield a slam dunk. Emily and Javier’s hack was just the kind of explosive secret they were after, but one that Diana would never reveal.
“This is fantastic,” said Haruki. “Great work.”
“You bet your ass it is,” said Diana. “Great is the only work worth doing.”
Haruki grinned and leaned in across the table conspiratorially. Diana lifted an eyebrow, and he sat back up, chastened, before speaking in a hushed voice.
“Your file on Rachel’s relationships and routines was particularly useful,” he said. “We want to really differentiate this white paper from other market intelligence reports. Our clients are looking for insights that they can’t get anywhere else. This is unique intel, and we want more. Expand Rachel’s personal file, and open files on the other top executives and key personnel. That’s what we’d like you to focus on during the next phase of the project.”
White paper. What a crock of shit. She wanted to reach across the table and slap Haruki across the face. Or yank him close by his fancy tie and whisper the truth in his ear, You’re only here because you’re expendable. Did he really think that someone who could deliver this kind of material couldn’t see through his paper-thin facade? Was she falling for a long con? Could he be such a savvy operator that he could pull off playing a baby spy and beat her at her own game?
She threw a sidewise glance at the dogs. They napped peacefully in front of the fire, pink tongues lolling. She tried to douse her growing anxiety with some of their tranquility. Haruki was no mastermind in disguise. Pa
ranoia was a spy’s best friend. You kept it close, confided in it, watched it grow and mature with a certain measure of pride. But like a best friend, you couldn’t let paranoia get the better of you.
Haruki was a rookie. He was so mesmerized by the thrill of his first cloak-and-dagger assignment that he thought cover stories should be relished. Diana could identify with that. She had been a rookie once.
That’s why he drove her crazy. She could see herself in him. She could see that thrill holding him in its thrall. How it bled all other experiences of their vitality. Intrigue was an addiction, and Haruki was riding his first high.
She considered smashing her cup on the edge of the table, holding a shard to his neck, and demanding answers. She could call for Gerald and Sam, claim Haruki had groped her, and oversee them beating him in the back alley. She could even kick off a shoe, run her foot up the inside of his thigh, and turn his libido against him. Perhaps the most elegant play would be to deploy her knowledge of what he thought was hidden, destroy his eager confidence blow-by-blow until he stood naked before her, the ashes of his ego scattered to the wind and his mind opened up to her like a steamed oyster.
But she would do none of those things. Not because it wouldn’t be fun but because there was no pearl inside this particular oyster. Cutouts didn’t know the real reasons for anything. That’s what made them good cutouts. If her hypothesis was wrong and Leviathan wasn’t hoping to short Commonwealth after all, then Haruki couldn’t help her.
The accordion held an oscillating high note before plunging into consonant resolution.
That wasn’t entirely true. Haruki could help her, even if he didn’t realize it. Cutouts shuttled information back and forth. He was her messenger as much as his boss’s. And as long as she played nice, Haruki would deliver her A++ report to his betters. That report would eventually reach a principal, one way or another.
