Evil Genius

by Catherine Jinks

  Cadel breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Then Dr Vee waddled through the door and announced that it was time to ‘extrapolate, gentlemen’.

  For the time being, Cadel knew, he would have to abandon his spy work.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  From his Infiltration class, Cadel went straight to Dr Deal’s, where he informed Gazo that Abraham was dead. (Gazo didn’t say much. What, after all, was there to say?) They parted at five, after collecting their buff-coloured envelopes. Gazo wandered off to the dormitories in his increasingly hapless way, while Cadel jumped into a cab. His usual session with Thaddeus was scheduled for half-past five. It wouldn’t do to run late. He had to appear as keen as he always had been, despite his true feelings.

  When he arrived at the psychologist’s office, he was allowed to go straight up. Thaddeus was waiting at his desk, reading a newspaper.

  ‘Ah, Cadel,’ he said. ‘You’re here. I take it this means you’re feeling better?’

  Cadel nodded.

  ‘No more nausea? No headaches?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it must have been some kind of twenty-four hour bug, then?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Good, good.’ Thaddeus rose and stretched. The way he did this made Cadel think of a panther. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t have been running around so much if you hadn’t been feeling better,’ Thaddeus added, with a glint in his eye. Cadel met the challenge head-on.

  ‘Oh, you mean the hospital, and that,’ he said.

  ‘The hospital. Your old school. Number 16 Waterloo Street . . .’

  ‘I had to go and see Abraham,’ Cadel insisted, allowing a touch of impatience to enter his voice. ‘He asked me to go and pick up his stuff. Said I was the only one he trusted.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Abraham. What a pity.’

  ‘And now I’ve got his stuff, and I don’t know what to do with it.’ Cadel grimaced. (Don’t overact, he thought. Keep it natural.) ‘Underpants and things.’

  ‘Underpants? Dear me.’

  ‘What should I do with it?’ Cadel gazed up at Thaddeus in a guileless fashion. ‘Should I take it back to his house, or what?’

  ‘My dear boy,’ Thaddeus replied, his expression unreadable. ‘Why should you feel it necessary to ask?’

  Cadel blinked.

  ‘You mean –’

  ‘I mean that if there’s any reason not to throw it in the nearest garbage bin, I should like to hear what that reason might be.’ In the pause that followed, Cadel flushed. Thaddeus seemed to register this. ‘It amazes me that you went to visit that pathetic creature in the first place,’ he continued. ‘Were you hoping to gain anything from it? Anything specific?’

  ‘I – I don’t know.’ Cadel thought back. Why had he been moved to answer Abraham’s summons? Because Gazo had asked him to? Because he was searching for a way out? Because it seemed like the right thing to do? None of these reasons, he knew perfectly well, would be acceptable to Thaddeus. ‘I suppose I thought it might be interesting,’ he said. ‘In case he had something useful to say.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘Not really,’ Cadel lied.

  ‘So it was a complete waste of time.’

  Cadel scratched his arm.

  ‘Instilling loyalty is all very well, Cadel,’ Thaddeus went on, propping himself against the desk, ‘but only if the subject is worth the effort. I have to tell you, your father is not pleased. Abraham should never have called that ambulance. He should never have gone to hospital. Now there’s talk of bringing the Coroner in, and you, Cadel, have been identified as Abraham’s friend. You gave your name to the medical staff. How could you have been so stupid?’

  Cadel swallowed.

  ‘Perhaps you’re still not quite well,’ Thaddeus suggested slowly, his gaze locked on Cadel’s face. ‘You seem to be behaving in a very heedless manner – one might almost say an impulsive manner. That isn’t like you.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Cadel murmured, and Thaddeus shrugged.

  ‘It’s done now,’ he said. ‘We must simply make sure that you don’t become further involved in Abraham’s mess. You say you collected some of his possessions?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Right here. His address book and his dressing gown –’

  ‘Give them to me. I’ll have someone return them. I don’t want you approaching that house, or that hospital, again.’

  Obediently, Cadel surrendered everything in his backpack that had belonged to Abraham. He did so without disturbing the precious computer disk concealed in one of its pockets.

  In a way, he was glad that he had blundered around and upset his father. If Thaddeus and Dr Darkkon were fretting about his public involvement in Abraham’s death, they were less likely to be interested in other aspects of Cadel’s recent conduct.

  ‘God help us,’ Thaddeus remarked, as he gingerly plucked the crumpled dressing gown and greyish underpants from Cadel’s grasp. Screwing up his nose, he transferred them to one of his in-trays. ‘What on earth possessed you, Cadel? You could have caught something, lugging these things around.’ With a shudder, he carried the in-tray to a remote corner of the room. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘there’s a transmission scheduled in three minutes. You’ll have to face the music, I’m afraid – your father’s not at all happy.’ Seeing Cadel’s expression, Thaddeus suddenly smiled. ‘Don’t look like that, dear boy, he’s not going to eat you. Just sit tight and take it like a man. Everything he says will be for your own good – you can’t go galumphing around the world like an ordinary person, dropping your name here, there and everywhere. It’s not the sort of mistake you should be making at your age.’

  Cadel stared at the floor. He had been overwhelmed by a sudden, fierce rush of hatred, and was doing his best to hide it. His eyelids drooped. He pressed his lips together.

  When Dr Darkkon finally addressed him, from a gaol cell thousands of kilometres away, Cadel was able to absorb each harsh word impassively. Dr Darkkon was disappointed. More than that – he was disgusted. What had Cadel been thinking of? Not much, by the look of it. There were two categories of people in the world: enemies and tools. Abraham hadn’t even had the makings of a useful tool. And yet Cadel had missed half of the Maestro’s class, just for the purpose of picking up that wretched maniac’s old clothes! Like a valet!

  ‘That isn’t what you’re here for, son,’ Dr Darkkon growled. ‘Do something like that and your only reward will be a whole mess of trouble. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘It’s you I’m worried about, Cadel. I don’t want to see you cast adrift again, lost in a world of morons. It could happen, if they find out who you are. What you’re capable of. They might put you in a reform school – a juvenile detention centre. With all the little drug addicts and antisocial personalities. Isn’t that right, Thaddeus?’

  Thaddeus inclined his head. Cadel said nothing. He was so filled with cold disdain that he couldn’t risk uttering a word. Having recognised this cascade of lies for exactly what it was – an exercise in manipulation – he was finding it hard to control the rush of colour to his cheeks. He could only pray that Thaddeus, if he saw it, would identify this colour as a blush of shame.

  ‘Some people are just a waste of space,’ Dr Darkkon was saying. ‘On a microbiological level, they’d be viruses. Parasites. They can’t support themselves, so they feed off the time and energy of those who should be focusing on more important and worthwhile things. They want this, they want that, yet they’re inherently useless. More useless than a paralysed athlete.’

  Cadel suddenly thought of Sonja, in her wheelchair. The image was so strong that tears rose in his eyes.

  Thaddeus saw them, and leaned forward to press Cadel’s shoulder.

  ‘You won’t make the same mistake again, will you Cadel?’ he said, before addressing Dr Darkkon. ‘He’s not been well, remember. He’s not been himself.’

  You can say that again, Cadel thought. But he remained silent, folding up his mouth and fixing his wet, stricken g
aze on the transmission screen.

  As always, this trick was effective. Dr Darkkon couldn’t help softening.

  ‘Well, we’ll drop the subject, now,’ he said, with an indulgent grin. ‘Dammit, boy, I wish I had your face. I wouldn’t be in here if I did. Just one word of advice, though. Don’t think a hangdog look is always going to solve any problems you might have got yourself in. Because it won’t. And remember – just because you look friendly, doesn’t mean you have to be friendly. Understand?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Cadel.

  He thought: I understand, all right. You just watch me.

  THIRTY-NINE

  That evening, Cadel decided to listen to some music.

  Long ago, Mrs Piggott had given him his own stereo system, which was kept in his bedroom. ‘I don’t want you hogging ours all the time,’ she had said. In fact, Cadel only used this system about once a week, because he wasn’t a music addict. He didn’t follow the pop charts, or borrow the Piggotts’ CDs, or record late-night music programs. Unlike most other kids, his preference was for complex vocal harmonies or pieces played by large orchestras (which were systems of an unusual kind). As a result, his small collection of CDs was dominated by classical and choral music, though it included the odd flamenco guitar and rap recording.

  Cadel found rap very soothing to listen to, if the rhymes were perfect. It had the same effect on him as the sight of a beautifully wired circuit board, or the smoothly functioning mechanism of a watch. It didn’t matter to him what was being said, as long as the words clicked together in a pleasing way.

  When Cadel arrived home, he pulled all his compact discs out of their cases, dumped them on his bedroom floor, and sat listening to one of them with his eyes closed and an enormous pair of headphones clamped over his ears. Although this ruse gave him time to think without making anyone suspicious, its main purpose was to allow him to switch CDs. In the confusion that he had created, he was able to insert his CD recording of Terry’s phone message secretly into a rap compilation CD case. Then he slipped the compilation case into his backpack, along with one more CD, just to make things look convincing.

  After all, lending people CDs wasn’t an unusual activity for a fourteen year old.

  He didn’t eat much that night. Nor did he get much sleep. His mind, like a computer, would simply not turn itself off; it kept grinding through various calculations while he tossed and turned and missed Sonja. He was used to exchanging emails with Sonja when he was upset or disturbed. Now he had no one to talk to. He certainly couldn’t talk to Thaddeus.

  His only other friend in the world was probably Gazo. He felt that Gazo could be trusted, because he, like Cadel, was all alone. The trouble was that Gazo had a pretty low IQ. Though trustworthy, he perhaps wasn’t entirely reliable.

  Still, he was better than nothing. Choose your tools. If Cadel had had a choice, he might have looked elsewhere. But he didn’t have a choice. Besides, poor Gazo – Cadel felt sorry for him. It was impossible not to. If Gazo wanted to drop out of the institute, why shouldn’t he?

  There had to be something that Cadel could do for Gazo. If Gazo, in turn, would do something for him.

  The next morning, Cadel headed for the institute as early as possible, arriving at nine-fifteen. He went straight to Hardware Heaven where he found Com and Richard toiling over their machines. He didn’t bother to greet them.

  He just sat down and hitched a ride on Dr Vee’s spy sweep.

  There had been only a few changes overnight, and those had mostly occurred because of activity on Adolf’s computer. Surveillance reports told Cadel that Terry’s trip, the previous day, had been to Abraham’s house. It appeared that Terry had found the spare key (after a short search) and had let himself in. An hour later he had emerged again and driven to the hospital – looking for Abraham’s ‘important information’, no doubt. Cadel thought of Abraham’s post-office box key, which was sitting snugly in his own wallet. He wondered if Abraham might have left the box number and location carelessly scrawled somewhere. He hoped not. It was easy enough to get into a post-office box, even without a key. If Terry should find the box in question and prise it open, he might stumble upon a letter from Sonja. That would be very bad indeed.

  But according to the surveillance reports, Terry had gone nowhere near Strathfield post office the previous day. Instead, he had returned from the hospital to the institute, where he had stayed until one in the morning. Then he had spent the rest of the night at Tracey Lane’s house. According to the surveillance team, he was still there. So was Tracey.

  Tracey herself had recently been promoted to ‘double red’ status. This was because she had been looking for love outside the institute. Despite the fact that she was seeing both Terry and Dr Deal, the Fuhrer’s report to Luther described how a pair of Grunts, sent to tail Tracey, had seen her kissing another lawyer in his car. ‘Owing to this gentleman’s well-known crusade against prominent underworld figures, we should be treating her activities with the utmost seriousness,’ Adolf had written. ‘I would suggest placing the entire institute under yellow alert until we get to the bottom of what looks to be some sort of conspiracy.’ Apparently annoyed by Luther’s careless response (‘Tracey Lane is notorious, we all know that – she would kiss a prize ferret if she felt it would help her career’), the Fuhrer had notified Thaddeus. In a security-coded email, he had informed Thaddeus that he entertained grave concerns about the safety of the institute. Certain members of the staff seemed to be conspiring together, he warned, but Luther Lasco had refused to authorise a yellow alert. Adolf therefore wanted to discuss his concerns with Thaddeus in private.

  Cadel knew Thaddeus. He knew the way Thaddeus talked and wrote. He could tell from Thaddeus’s reply that the psychologist was weary of Adolf’s paranoia. Nevertheless, it was impossible to ignore Adolf entirely. What if the Fuhrer was right for once? So Thaddeus had agreed to meet him at two o’clock on Friday, an hour before his scheduled meeting with Luther, Adolf and Tracey Lane.

  ‘We’ll use the armoury,’ said Thaddeus, ‘if that’s private enough for you.’

  Bingo! Suddenly Cadel had a mental vision of pieces falling into place, like the mechanism of a complicated lock when the key is inserted. He saw Adolf’s empty office, Gazo’s class schedule, the CD, the buff-coloured envelope in Gazo’s gloved hand, Abraham’s car . . . a perfect plan, knitting itself together.

  He felt quite breathless, and tried to slow his breathing. In the hushed atmosphere of Hardware Heaven, noisy breathing would certainly have been noticed.

  If only he could have got up and paced the floor!

  As it was, he had to fix his eyes on his computer screen, and think without moving. Staring at a computer screen didn’t look suspicious. Even Com used to slip into a trance now and then, as if hypnotised by the glowing pixels in front of him. Cadel stared so hard at his own screen that he could almost see the three-dimensional structure of his plan erecting itself on its luminous surface . . .

  ‘Oi!’ said Richard sharply. ‘Shut up, will you?’

  Cadel blinked. He turned his head.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stop making that noise!’ Richard snapped. Then, seeing Cadel’s puzzled look, he added: ‘You were drumming your fingers! Drives me mad, that!’

  ‘Oh,’ said Cadel. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t you have anything better to do with ’em?’

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact,’ said Cadel. He focused on the spy sweep again, jumping off when it hit Max’s database. The Maestro, he had discovered, was a man obsessed with his own money – a man who liked to know exactly how his investments were doing all the time. For this reason, he had been unable to resist computer banking. Of course, he had made a brave attempt to protect his account details. Most people would have found them utterly inaccessible behind a wall of passwords and access keys. But thanks to the Fuhrer’s background files – and his own excursions on the Net – Cadel knew Max rather well by now. He had been able to isolate the Maest
ro’s passwords without too much trouble.

  He copied the account details onto Brendan’s exposed database. There, he knew, Art was bound to find them.

  It was a mean trick, in some ways. Though Art and Brendan weren’t exactly the nicest people in the world, they had never done anything to Cadel. They didn’t really deserve to have Maestro Max thrown at them.

  Cadel felt bad, but there was nothing else he could do. He simply had no choice.

  Cadel’s Thursday schedule was undemanding. He had one Basic Lying class, one Infiltration class and one Embezzlement class to attend. For the rest of the day, he was free to pursue his own interests.

  The trouble was, his own interests preoccupied him so much that he found it hard to tear his thoughts away from them.

  Thaddeus noticed this. He could hardly fail to, since there were now only two students in his first-year class. During his lecture on polygraph lie-detectors, he paused once to address Cadel, who was staring out the window. ‘Something in the car park that I should know about, Mr Darkkon?’ he inquired.

  Cadel knew better than to apologise. Thaddeus would have regarded this as a very feeble response, especially in a Basic Lying class. Instead he replied, with an innocent look: ‘I’m just a bit concerned, Dr Roth. Two men have been sitting in a car out there ever since we arrived. You don’t think they’re undercover cops or anything?’

  Cadel knew full well that these two men were Grunts assigned to tail either himself or Terry. Perhaps Thaddeus knew that he knew it; Cadel couldn’t be sure. He could only fold up his mouth, pucker his brow, and wait to see if Thaddeus found him convincing.

  The psychologist narrowed his eyes. He glanced out the window, registered the two Grunts, then turned back to Cadel, poker-faced.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about them, Mr Darkkon,’ he said mildly. ‘You concentrate on what’s happening in here and I’ll worry about what’s happening outside. It’s my job.’

  Cadel did his best to obey. But during Brendan’s class, he was again distracted. He couldn’t be sure about Brendan – not until he received Sonja’s mathematical mind-bender. Unless Brendan was occupied with a really challenging puzzle, he might notice that his database had been tampered with. This, above all, was what Cadel feared. So he was jumpy and inattentive, less interested in foreign currency loans than he was in Brendan’s computer. Even Brendan, who rarely noticed anything about his students, noticed this. ‘What’s happened to your head?’ he asked, fixing Cadel with his vacant, pale-blue gaze. ‘Isn’t it working?’