But it’s tough, even for someone with his kind of mental discipline.
Zhang is coming. He’s going to finalize the purchase of the code for Downvote. And Zhang’s bosses, in whatever Chinese ministry or spy agency, want to make sure I don’t have too much of it inside my head.
“They need to make sure they’re getting an exclusive,” I say, getting it now. “They don’t want me walking away with the software they just paid you for.”
He points a finger gun at me and puts his thumb down, like he’s just shot me. “Exactly,” he says. “They want to ask you a few questions.”
“And if I can’t answer?”
“I’m sure they can motivate you to be open and honest with them.”
So I’ve got torture and death in my immediate future. Today is just getting better every minute.
“Then we’re just waiting for Zhang.”
“Are you really in such a rush for him to get here?”
“No,” I say, meaning it. “I can wait. Where are we?”
He waves his hand at the open space outside the door. He doesn’t have to speak out loud to answer, and he knows it.
“What the hell is that?” I ask.
Godwin makes a noise. “This was a resort. Gambling is illegal in China. We’re right on the border. So the Chinese allowed a casino to be built here. Thousands of Chinese poured over here every day, spent their money. Hundreds of millions changing hands. It began to get bigger and bigger. They called it ‘Laos Vegas.’ Grew like a tumor. And then, one day—”
“The Chinese shut it down,” I say, seeing it. The power and telecom lines, which snaked from the China side, were suddenly shut off. The border stations were closed. No explanation. The money stopped flowing, almost overnight.
Almost nobody local was hired. The farmers who used to work the area were moved twenty kilometers south, and thousands of Chinese workers were brought in to run and clean the hotels and cook the food and wait the tables in the restaurants. They went back over the border, along with the prostitutes who staffed the brothels. The tables were run by contractors from Ukraine and the Philippines. They vanished as well. The cooked-food vendors, the beggars, the souvenir sellers, the small-time crooks who’d begun to steal money from the drunken gamblers—they all cleared out. Ten thousand people a day used to swamp Golden Boten City. It became a ghost town in less than a week.
“Why?” I ask Godwin.
He shrugs again. “Who cares? Maybe they opened it as a pressure valve. Let off a little steam. Maybe they let off too much. Whole place is scheduled for demolition now anyway. Let the farmers have the land back.”
The building across the way was called the Kings Roman Casino. The sign is long gone but I pull the name from Godwin’s memory. I recognize the front entrance. It’s where they took Sara.
I think about that for a long moment. Then I turn to Godwin again.
“You know, Godwin, you were kind enough to offer me the chance to walk away, when all this started. Remember that?”
He smirks.
“No,” I say flatly. “I wanted you to know that no matter what happens, you are not walking away. You’re going to die here.”
That utterly fails to wipe the smirk off his face. He doesn’t even bother to reply out loud to me.
“You don’t have to believe me,” I tell him.
“Generous of you—” he snorts.
I talk right past him. “But you keep saying how you’ve studied me like nobody else. How you know me so much better than anyone ever could. Maybe you should think about this, if you know me so well: Do I seem at all nervous to you?”
That gives him pause.
Because no, I don’t look nervous. Or scared.
I know something Godwin doesn’t. Yes, there will come a day when I do not walk away from one of these situations. There will be a time when my luck runs out. When I am not fast enough or smart enough or prepared. When even my talent won’t give me an edge against the inevitable.
But it’s not today.
Godwin’s satphone buzzes to life less than an hour later. He picks it up and walks out of the open doors. He vanishes from my line of sight, and I can only barely hear him muttering quietly into the phone, but he’s still close enough for me to read him.
He ends the call and walks back into the small building, past me, and through a door in the back. I lose track of him. A moment later, a couple of his Romanians arrive. Their thoughts are neat and orderly, focused on a clear to-do list. They clear more space, put away Godin’s deck of cards, set up chairs and a table, and then break open a fridge by the wall and set out plastic bottles of water. They’re both carrying guns and knives, but they look positively domestic right now, making sure everything is just right for their guests.
I pick up Godwin’s thoughts again, a low buzz of anxiety and tension. He reappears through the door in the back a second later. Now he’s carrying a laptop. He brings it to the table and opens it and begins to boot it up.
He points, and one of the thugs goes through the door. I feel him wait there. Guarding the back.
More of the Romanians show up. The space is too small to fit them all comfortably—there are six of them, and they’re all big guys—so they arrange themselves outside, in a loose kind of formation. Relaxed, but spread out in case of trouble.
None of them even look at me. I’m just another piece of furniture in the room.
Godwin’s satphone buzzes again. He answers. “Yeah?”
Godwin hangs up and passes this along in Romanian. The thugs all turn their heads down the road, as if on a swivel.
I peek into one of their brains and take a look through his eyes. At the edge of Golden Boten City’s main drag, where the road winds into the jungle again from between the abandoned buildings, a black Dongfeng Mengshi appears—the Chinese version of the Humvee. Same frame, same engine, a lot more armor. The name means “brave soldier.”
It rolls along toward the men and Godwin’s building. I snap out of the thug’s brain just as it pulls up outside. I can see it myself now, framed in the open doors as it rolls quietly to a halt.
The Romanians part as the doors open. A group of six Chinese soldiers, wearing fatigues without names or insignia, emerge. None of them have their hands on their weapons, but they are all carrying. They look at the Romanians without expression. I read nothing but the mental equivalent of a blank stare from them. They’re ready, but they’re not eager. They’re not about to start pulling triggers unless it’s absolutely time to do so.
Then, from the backseat, Zhang steps out.
He doesn’t look as happy to see me this time.
Zhang walks into the building and greets Godwin. They don’t shake hands or bow or engage in any other fake pleasantries. Instead, they move as efficiently as a machine.
Godwin plugs a cable from his satphone into the laptop. Zhang opens a ballistic nylon black briefcase and takes out his own computer. They both sit down behind their machines and begin typing commands.
It’s all highly anticlimactic. After all the chasing and shooting and people who have been killed and hurt, it’s done in a few keystrokes. Zhang gives Godwin an IP address, and Godwin types it into his laptop. The satphone delivers the package of code.
Then they wait. Once the code is verified by Zhang’s bosses at the other end of that connection, he will key in a payment. I can’t see the amount in Zhang’s mind, but it’s blazing in ten-foot-high numbers in Godwin’s: $1 billion.
“You got robbed, Godwin,” I tell him. “You should have held out for two billion. You co
uld have sold it to Facebook for at least that much.”
He doesn’t reply. Not out loud. He knows that’s coming soon, and he feels a warmth that’s almost like happiness.
Zhang frowns. He must sense it too. He doesn’t look up from the screen, but he speaks to me.
“I want you to know I didn’t want this. You should have gone with my men in Hong Kong. You’d be in prison, but you’d still be alive.”
I almost laugh. “Well. As much as I appreciate that, you could save yourself the guilt and let me go.”
He shakes his head. “I’m afraid that given your abilities and reputation, my current employers can’t take the risk that you have the knowledge of Downvote inside your brain.” Zhang looks up at me for the first time, staring directly into my eyes. “I am afraid it will not be pleasant for you. I am sorry for that.”
That’s about all Godwin can take. He snorts.
Zhang and I both look at him. Now I know Zhang is reading him too. He got the blast of contempt coming from Godwin.
“Is there a problem, Mr. Godwin?” he asks, in a perfectly polite tone.
Godwin does his best to throttle back his emotions. But the word
“No problem,” he says.
“He thinks we’re inhuman,” I tell Zhang helpfully.
“Shut up,” Godwin snaps at me. “It’s got nothing to do with our deal, does it? So let’s get it over with.”
“Yeah. About that,” I say. “How do you know he’s actually given you the code for Downvote? How can you be sure he hasn’t just given you a bunch of old video games or something?”
“The code is being verified and decrypted as we speak. That’s another reason we’re waiting here. We could have easily done this meeting by a remote connection if we didn’t have to retrieve you, Mr. Smith. But I find a personal meeting is good to remind people of their obligations. If Mr. Godwin has tried to cheat us, or planted a virus, then he will pay the consequences.”
“You really trust him to come through for you?” I ask.
Godwin smiles at me.
He leans back, oozing confidence.
“That and the dead-man’s switch on you,” Zhang says.
Godwin’s smile falters a bit. “Well. I believe in being prepared for all eventualities.”
“You believe that as long as you’re wired to that suicide vest, my sense of self-preservation will keep me from doing anything to you.”
“Of course. You’re a reasonable man,” Godwin says.
“I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you how much pain I can inflict without stopping your heart?” Zhang asks.
Now Godwin isn’t smiling at all. I feel a trickle of fear leak through his mind, like cold sweat.
“I don’t think you’ll do that,” he says.
“Why not? I have what I want now. Why shouldn’t I? Unlike Mr. Smith there”—Zhang nods at me—“you do not have anyone I care about as a hostage. Are you really prepared to die here, Mr. Godwin?”
Godwin’s thoughts have turned dark. I see a bloodbath coming. The Romanians might not all speak English, but they definitely get the drift of the conversation. They’ve got their arms at their sides, loose and ready to grab their weapons. I’m sure Zhang must see this too. I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to gain by antagonizing Godwin like this.
“If I have to,” Godwin says.
There’s another long pause, and then Zhang breaks into the same brilliant smile I saw back in Hong Kong. “Fortunately for both of us, it won’t come to that. It’s not up to me whether this deal goes through. I am simply doing my job and ensuring delivery of a product. So it doesn’t matter if I am inhuman or not.”
There’s an immediate sense of relief flooding into the room.
He doesn’t care that Zhang and I can both read him.
They look at their screens.
I look at Zhang. His face is placid. No way to know if Godwin is just impatient. Zhang seems prepared to wait all day.
The sun is high in the sky by now, and the heat has gone from intense to blinding.
And then a bad thought occurs to me. I’ve got a naturally suspicious mind, but this idea borders on paranoia.
Still. Paranoia has kept me alive this far. Something Godwin said earlier has been bouncing around in the back of my head: “The whole place is scheduled for demolition anyway.”
If Zhang’s bosses want to make sure that Godwin never sells Downvote to anyone else, why would they let him walk away?
And if they don’t want to take the risk of me using my talent to suck the secrets of Downvote out of Godwin’s head, why wouldn’t they have that same fear about Zhang?
I speak up again. “You ever heard of the prisoner’s dilemma, Zhang?”
He turns to me, looking slightly amused. Of course he has. He’s probably twenty times as educated as I am. He was tutored from an early age by the best his society had to offer. I read whatever was available in underfunded public school libraries while the teachers ignored me.
But he answers me anyway. A real conversation is still such a novelty to both of us. “The prisoner’s dilemma. Two men are held prisoner. If one betrays the other, he receives a reduced sentence. But if they both stay silent, then they both spend a shorter time in prison. The dilemma is whether they can trust each other.”
“Right. I only mention it because it’s relevant to our situation here.”
“I only see one prisoner,” Zhang says. “So really, it doesn’t apply.”
“You sure about that?”
He pauses. I can’t say I really know Zhang. I’ve spent only a few minutes with him, and I cannot get inside his mind at all.
But I do know some of what he’s done and how he’s been trained. I know how he operates, and I can guess at the world he’s been living in since childhood. I know because I have lived it. In some ways, I know him like I know myself.
And I know the only way I would walk into a trap is if I was arrogant enough to assume that I had already figured everything out.
“Let me ask you another question. How would you get rid of one of us? If you really wanted to be sure?”
He has to think for only a second. I’m sure he’s spent time, as I have, lying awake at night thinking about how someone could kill or ambush him despite our talents. You can throw a mob at us, or a unit of highly trained soldiers, or put a sniper on a roof, but we’ve got ways to deal with all of that. That’s what we were built to handle. You might get lucky, but there’s a good chance we’re walking away and leaving a lot of bodies behind.
If you’re looking for a guarantee, you’ve got to remove the human element. Like a timed explosive. We can’t read the mind of a clock. Or some other kind of booby trap, a doorway rigged with C-4 or a land mine under a step. But those methods still require some kind of verification after the fact. You have to send someone around to ID the body, or at least scrape up some DNA.
The best method would be a real-time camera focused on us as a target, followed by a threat we can’t fight or outrun.
“Drone strike,” Zhang says.
“I’m surprised they haven’t done it already,” I tell him.
He can’t read my mind. I can’t read his. But I can tell he’s annoyed. He leans over in his chair so that we’re almost face-to-face.
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying we’re all going to be dead pretty soon if we don’t get the hell out of here.”
“What?” Godwin says. “He’s full of shit. He’s trying to save his own ass.”
“Think about it,
” I say to both of them. “Why should they let any of us leave? Why would they allow anyone else to know what they’ve just bought?”
Zhang frowns. “You think they would kill us all?”
“You don’t?”
“You? Definitely,” he says. “But they need me. I’m still an asset.”
“I hate to deliver a crushing blow to your ego, but are you more valuable than a program that can steer entire masses of people? More importantly, are you more valuable than the need to keep that program secret?”
Zhang’s frown only deepens. I can read the thoughts of some of his men, the ones who speak English.
“Are you worth more than a billion dollars, Zhang?”
There’s a spike of anger and frustration. I feel murder headed my way.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Godwin says, and takes a pistol from one of his Romanians. He walks over to me, jacking a round into the chamber as he does.
Zhang looks torn. He’s really got no reason to defend me, and there’s still the matter of the suicide vest Godwin is wearing.
“Wait,” he says.
“For what?” Godwin snaps. “You want to be sure he doesn’t tell anyone about Downvote? You want to empty his brain? Let’s do it right here.”
He puts the gun to my eye.
Fortunately, that’s when the first missile hits.
25
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
The Chinese-made AR-1 has about the same range and firepower as the American Hellfire missile. Like the Hellfire, it weighs about a hundred pounds and finds its targets by laser guidance or satellite navigation.
And like the Hellfire, it can pierce forty inches of tank armor before it unleashes an explosion that’s lethal to everything in a fifty-foot radius.
So the one that hits Zhang’s Dongfeng out front blows it to pieces, and also removes the nearest wall, most of the roof, and half of Zhang’s soldiers and Godwin’s Romanians.
Flashmob Page 29
