Cantrell waits patiently while I grind through all this one more time, and then decides to take pity on me and give me the answer.
“It’s a product demo, John,” he says.
And suddenly it makes sense. Godwin has designed Downvote to show the world what his software package can do. How it can motivate people to rage and fear and even violence with only a few keystrokes. All of the victims of Downvote are nothing to him but advertising. Like any other start-up, he is building his brand.
Which means—
“He’s got a buyer lined up,” I say.
I don’t take much time with that little quiz. “You.”
He smirks.
Not just the CIA, or any other government agency, then.
Then it hits me. “China.”
He nods. “You’ve got a nation filled with people becoming unimaginably rich overnight while others are still dirt poor and starving. The whole country is accelerating into the twenty-first century at Warp Factor Ten, with a government that’s desperately trying to manage almost two billion people who could lurch in any direction at any time. So you can see how something like Godwin’s little social program would be of interest.”
He’s right. I’m embarrassed that it’s taken me this long to figure it out.
“And you can understand why the Agency might not want that sort of technology to be out there in the world, in the hands of a foreign power, without having some kind of ability to counter it,” Cantrell adds.
I give him a look, but he does his best to keep a straight face. “You mean the Agency wants it so they can use it themselves.”
“When did you get to be such a cynic, John?”
“So is that the deal? You spring me out of here, I get the software package from Godwin, and keep it away from the Chinese?”
“Saving the day for the USA and Chevrolet, Mom and apple pie,” he says. “And we’d pay you a hell of a lot of money, too.”
“How much?”
He holds up five fingers. I read the rest in his mind.
“Million?”
He shrugs. “What can I say? Some people up above are very impressed so far. You know how excited the Agency gets about all that mind-control crap. I don’t think some of those guys have ever gotten over MK-ULTRA.”
“Pretty generous offer.” Which makes me suspicious as hell. Cantrell is singing Gordon Lightfoot tunes to himself now, which doesn’t help. <“. . . ’bout a ghost from a wishing well”> “What happens if I pass?”
“John, I know you’re extra-strength tough. I trained you to handle worse than some pansy Eurotrash prison. But your new lady friend over in the women’s section. You sure she’s up for it?”
“She’s tougher than I am,” I shoot back, no hesitation. But I am glad Cantrell can’t read minds, because it feels as if someone just drove a spike into my gut.
“I’m sure she is,” Cantrell says. “Still. Is that how she really wants to fill her schedule for the next three to five years? I can’t say I know her, but I’m almost certain she’s got other plans.”
He takes a step back from the bars, as if to walk away, but we both know it’s just for show.
“Even if I agree,” I tell him, “without Stack, we don’t know where to find Godwin. We can’t track him, even with the information we’ve got now.”
Cantrell waves like that’s no big deal. “I told you where he’s going already: China.”
“Last time I checked, that was a pretty big place.”
He smirks again. He really loves this. “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I already know where he’s meeting his Chinese contact.”
Like a magician, from another pocket—I told you he loves his props—Cantrell produces a small folder. He opens it. It’s an invitation to a party. The address reads Severn Road, Hong Kong.
Cantrell folds the card away and looks me in the eye.
“So. Enough chitchat. You in or out, John?”
I nod, and Cantrell hollers for the guard. He radiates a total lack of surprise. As I said, he walked in here knowing he’d already won.
“You hungry?” he asks. “You remember that place we used to go for lunch? We should see if it’s still open.”
The guard comes and unlocks the cell. Like Cantrell said, the Agency still has a lot of influence around here.
It looks like I’ve got one more client to add to my list now.
I retrieve Sara from the jail two hours later. Cantrell and I had some further details of our arrangement to hammer out. And I didn’t want her to meet him, or even know about him. I don’t want her to know just how divided my loyalties are at the moment. I still need her help to get this job done.
So while she waited in a cell I had lunch with Cantrell at that place we used to go. I fully admit that this was a dick move.
Fortunately, she emerges from the holding area a little rumpled but otherwise fine. We’re getting our effects back from the police clerk when I break the bad news about Stack.
Fear and concern suddenly drench her thoughts, followed closely by guilt.
I take her laptop case and put it into my bag while she gets on her phone. She tries to reach someone back in the States who can give her some information about Stack. With the time difference—it’s not quite five in the morning in Seattle—it’s not easy. She finally remembers she has the home number of one of Stack’s attorneys, but he’s not much help. He says that the feds had promised him nothing would happen until the next hearing in court. Then, according to the staff on the boat, they were boarded by U.S. marshals who stepped off a Coast Guard cutter with a subpoena in hand. It was totally out of bounds, he says. But he admits there’s not a lot they can do about it.
I can hear Sara’s end of the conversation as well her thoughts. She only gets angrier.
The lawyer says that Stack is in a federal holding facility somewhere on the West Coast. He promises to call her as soon as he has a meeting scheduled. But he tells her they’re dealing with Stack as a federal witness, and that means he doesn’t have the same rights as a federal prisoner. It could be a while.
In the meantime, all of Stack’s corporate accounts are frozen. There’s no charter jet waiting for us at the airport now, no line of credit to access anymore. He suggests she use her personal credit card to get home, and she’ll probably be reimbursed when this has all been cleared up.
Sara hangs up. I know better than to say anything. I take her to the Romanian version of Starbucks to get her something to drink and eat.
All she can do for the next half hour or so is read the news feeds about Stack on her phone, looking for whatever information she can find.
“Oh, this is such a load of crap. They say he wandered back into U.S. territorial waters, and there just happened to be a Coast Guard ship waiting nearby. The Nautilus is completely computer controlled. It couldn’t wander off course if everyone on board was drunk and stoned. They crossed the line and grabbed him.”
“Probably, yeah.”
It has occurred to me that Cantrell exerted some pressure behind the scenes to get Stack in custody so that I’d have more incentive to
work for him. Because that’s what spies do. They cheat, they steal, and they lie. Sara is smart enough to figure this out too, which is another reason I didn’t want them to meet.
Then we notice CNN International on one of the TV screens hanging in the background of the café. The anchor says the word, and it catches us both off guard again, though it really shouldn’t.
“The antisocial media site Downvote strikes again. Today, the head of a major investment bank was nearly shot after his name appeared at the top of the website’s hit list. Police say a lone gunman identified as James Dale Miller approached Stanley Deakins of the Coldwater Group as he left his Park Avenue apartment building. Miller opened fire with a small handgun, but Mr. Deakins’s security detail was able to wrestle him to the ground before Deakins was harmed. Deakins, you may remember, called higher taxes on the rich a form of Nazism in a speech last year, and said that the rich were a new minority who deserved civil rights protections. Four bystanders, including a seventy-six-year-old woman, were hit by stray bullets and are listed in critical condition—”
Sara turns away. “Jesus Christ. We have got to stop this.”
“We will,” I tell her.
“How?”
It is not usually in Sara’s nature to feel helpless. But it comes crashing out of her like a wave with that one word. She doesn’t have to say any of the rest out loud. I know it all, even as it scrolls in an anxious list down through her mind.
“I reached out to some old contacts,” I tell her. “I have a lead. Godwin is on his way to Hong Kong.”
She is so glad to hear this she doesn’t even question how I know it. I’ve done some fairly miraculous things already, so maybe I’ve built up some credit.
Then her mood crashes again suddenly. “How are we going to get there? I can’t access any of the money Aaric set aside for us, and my corporate Amex won’t work—”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got money. I can pay for it.”
“You’d do that?” she asks, and she’s so grateful it shames me. She is looking at me like I’m some kind of hero. No sarcasm or irony this time.
I feel something uncomfortably close to guilt as I look back at her. But then I remind myself that’s what spies do. They cheat, they steal, and they lie.
21
Chaos and Opportunity
Hong Kong Art Basel is held in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, a massive structure perched at the edge of Victoria Harbour. It looks like a spacecraft parked at the edge of the water, and the aliens simply left it there while they went shopping.
Inside, the halls are crowded with buyers from all over the world. With stock markets veering wildly and interest rates in negative territory, everyone is looking for a safe place to stash their cash. Art, at least, has some chance of going up, which is more than you can say for money in a bank account. And this way, you get something to look at for a few years while you wait for your investment to pay off. HK Art Basel has become a favorite spot for Chinese businessmen. They want to convert their new wealth to solid assets as quickly as possible.
But the real action is at the private parties held around the event. That’s where the off-the-books deals are made, where the collective wealth of the guests could finance a Mars expedition.
And it’s where Godwin is supposed to close his deal with his Chinese contact. That’s why Sara and I are headed for the highest spot on the island.
Our driver takes us up Severn Road, which twists and winds its way toward the top of Victoria Peak. If you’re looking for the most expensive real estate on earth, forget Manhattan. This is Hong Kong, where people will live in spaces as small as sixteen square feet marked out by chicken wire. The homes here go for about ten grand a square foot. So a view from the Peak means you have literally made it above eight million other people who are all packed and squirming together in the city below.
Sara looks remarkable. She’s wearing a Valentino dress that we bought off the rack at Hong Kong International Airport but seems made for her. She went pale at the price tag, but I convinced her it was the only way to fit in at this party and put it on my card. I look shabby next to her in my best suit. I feel strangely like we’re on our way to prom. As I’ve said before, I am an idiot. This is work.
Sara’s mind is churning with anxiety. Her mind keeps darting back to her Glock, which is in her clutch purse. She wishes she could have brought the S&W too.
I pulled the same invisibility trick with the customs inspectors who searched us at the airport, even though they were much more thorough than the ones in Romania. I had to mentally steer their eyes past the pieces of the guns, which I’d broken down into their parts and hidden in various places in our luggage. The Chinese authorities are fairly strict about that sort of thing, especially here.
Since taking Hong Kong back almost twenty years ago, China has been slowly tightening the reins on the city, reminding everyone who lives here who’s in charge. Critics of the government have been disappeared, only to turn up on the mainland, pleading for forgiveness in videotaped confessions. The police have been cracking down, throwing people in jail without charges, starting with the lawyers who would ordinarily work against this kind of tactic. That hasn’t gone over very well with the people still laboring under the belief that Hong Kong should be a democracy. There have been protests with thousands of people in the streets, hunger strikes, and calls for international action.
Complicating matters is the fact that Hong Kong is still a capitalist’s wet dream, producing billions of dollars from the sheer ambition and sweat of its inhabitants. Nobody wants to interrupt that flow of wealth, or risk their access to China and its money.
We arrive at a modernist cube that seems to emerge from the hillside straight into the sky. There is a garage at the base of the house, where the valets take keys as Mercedes and Ferraris and Lamborghinis line up, their engines growling impatiently.
As we pull up, all I can feel is a surge of anticipation in the minds of the guests. It’s almost like a cocaine high, or the predatory anticipation I feel when I’ve visited stock markets and investment banks on the day of a big deal. There’s a potential in the air, like the gathering of static before a lightning strike.
An older man with a head of beautiful white hair is arguing with the valet trying to move his classic Bentley. “No, no,” he says firmly, as if training a dog. “It stays right here. I’m only going to be a moment, and I am terribly sorry to say I absolutely do not trust you to take it down the hill and back—”
Sara and I step out and make our way to the entrance. There are security guards, but no one is checking invitations or IDs. If you don’t belong, these people will know almost instantly. And it is a long drop down the hill.
We walk up a staircase to the main floor of the house. The wood is all dark paneling, thickly lacquered, creating deep pools of mirrored light on the walls and floors. There are some tasteful pieces scattered here and there, mostly antiques from Hong Kong’s colonial period, at odds with the home’s exterior design.
But the main attraction is the view. There is a magnificent plate-glass window that displays the entire harbor and city below. From this point, it seems as if the house is floating on thin air above the entire island. As Sara and I get closer, peering down, we can see that it’s not far from the truth. This section of the house is cantilevered out over a sheer face of the peak, with nothing between us and the next house built onto the hill, what looks like a thousand feet down.
Sara walks away from me to search for Godwin. I promise to keep track of her in case she sees him. With any luck, we can take him by surprise and get him out of here before he knows what’s happening.
Servants with trays of champagne and insanely expensive food cut around me. I wander through the crowd, picking up the usual delights and complaints of the true global elite.
The room is the same as so many others I’ve been in, all over the globe, with crow
ds just like this one. Perfectly chilled, filtered air, the same subtle mix of cleansers and polish and expensive soaps. The only thing that really changes are the outfits.
These are people who are almost never uncomfortable, who have entire systems devoted to moving them from place to place with the least amount of friction possible. They are transferred from cushioned seats in town cars to folding beds in the airplane, escorted by polite handlers with discreet weaponry hidden under custom-tailored jackets. They are fed before they are hungry, given wraps and jackets before they get cold, and tucked into thousand-thread-count sheets at the end of their days. I wonder if anyone here has actually felt his stomach grumble in years.
But if something happens to upset the careful equilibrium of their lives, then stand well back. They get volcanically pissed, and no one in a hundred-foot radius is safe from the explosion. The reaction is almost always the same, springing from their minds with the outraged squeal of a toddler badly in need of a snack and a nap: “I am not paying for this.”
When I’m feeling generous, I understand the frustration, because I know where it comes from. I have worked at this level, around these people, for enough time to know that they are simply adapting to their circumstances. Almost everyone here isn’t just a person anymore; he or she is a machine for moving money around the globe. They make it and they spend it in amounts that would be obscene to anyone who still has to balance her own checkbook at the end of the month. They power entire companies—hell, in some cases, entire economies—with their decisions in rooms like this one.
But they’re not machines. They’re still people, and people are fragile and fallible. On some level it must be terrifying to wake up in a different country every few days, even if it is in a luxury suite with a view. We are not that far removed from people who lived their entire lives within thirty miles of the place they were born, who never saw different stars in the sky at night. The new global elite may have private jets to shoot them all over the planet, but they can’t outrun the basics of biology and history. Human beings haven’t evolved substantially for about two hundred thousand years. That means we haven’t had a real upgrade to our software or our hardware since before we learned how to plant crops.
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