Black Swan

by Chris Knopf

  After the rescue team left, Kinuei wasted little time hooking up the generator, turning on lights and radios, and firing up his desktop computer. Once everything checked out he sat back and sighed with satisfaction.

  "Civilization, baby," he said. "Can't live without it."

  "That's debatable," said Anika.

  Kinuei turned in his chair to look at her.

  "You ready to take a ride, Miss Fey?" he asked.

  "Back to the Swan?"

  "Yup."

  "I've got nowhere else to go," she said.

  "You could stay here," he said, "but I can't protect you if I'm somewhere else."

  "What's your plan?" I asked.

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  "We go to the Swan. People could be injured. I have a responsibility to assess the situation."

  I rode shotgun, literally, carrying the Remington in my lap. Anika and Fey sat in back behind a metal grill. For the first time since arriving on the island I felt completely safe. I didn't know if it was the shotgun or the grill. Kinuei took a southerly route, avoiding the washed-out section of road. It took us past Gwyneth's place, which still stood, though the front yard was full of tree debris and a branch had smashed down through a section of fence.

  The sun was now fully aloft and the sky gleamed blue, the leaves still clinging to the trees looking as if washed by divinity. A breeze blew, still out of the north, but now an emasculated thing that could barely stir the hem of a skirt.

  The first thing we saw of the Swan approaching from this direction was the ruined SUV, and then the Town Car, not surprisingly where they'd been left behind the low hedge. Then we saw the façade of the hotel. Half the roof shingles were peeled away, and most of the shutters were gone, but otherwise the hotel looked straight and sure, provoking a "Thank God" from Christian Fey.

  Kinuei drove his cruiser into the parking lot and stopped next to the dead Fords. He asked me for the shotgun, which I promptly handed over.

  "You don't want to wait for reinforcements?" I asked.

  He looked at me with a mix of anger and resolve.

  "Would you?"

  "At least leave the Feys in the car. Doors locked, engine running. It'll be one less distraction."

  He did me one better, telling them to drive back up the hill and park somewhere out of the way. He switched on the two-way radio and synchronized the channel with his handheld.

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  "If I say run, run," he said to Anika as she took the driver's seat. Fey got in next to her. "If you see anything remotely funny, call."

  She nodded and drove off. We stood at the end of the walkway to the front door and looked up at the hotel.

  "What're the odds these people are stupid enough to fire on a state trooper?" he asked me.

  "Anything's possible. This is the Black Swan, home to rampant anomalies."

  "You got that little peashooter handy?" he asked.

  "I do."

  "Okay, I don't know about that. Officially."

  "Okay."

  He led us down the path and through the door into the lobby, calling out, "Police. Come out with your hands where I can see them." He checked the office behind the registration counter, repeating the same line. Which he did several more times as we worked our way through the first floor, finally arriving at the hallway that once connected the kitchen and bar with the restaurant, which had mostly disappeared.

  There were a few sticks of lumber, a small pile of bricks, some broken bottles and a tangled mess of sodden draperies. And that was about it. Beyond the wreckage the narrow patio lay intact, and beyond that stood the docks. Two heavy wooden lounge chairs, apparently salvaged from the storage shed, were on the first dock off the central passageway. Sitting there, facing the Inner Harbor, were Del Rey and Bernard 't Hooft.

  I guided Kinuei back through the hotel and around the west side along the brick path and out to the docks. The Harbor Yacht Club was also still standing, though what looked like a piece of wall from the restaurant lay over one of their floating docks.

  "Good morning," said Trooper Kinuei as we approached the sitting couple. "How're you folks doing?"

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  Del Rey shaded her eyes when she looked up at him.

  "Pretty good shape for the shape we're in," she said.

  't Hooft looked at Kinuei's shotgun, then up at Kinuei.

  "You won't be needing that," he said.

  "Where are the others?" Kinuei asked.

  "Where exactly? I have no idea. The last I saw Derrick he was sliding with a piece of wreckage across the patio toward the water and Pierre was sliding along with him, trying to catch Derrick before they reached the water's edge. I lost track of them as my focus was on Del Rey, who I was able to carry to the relative safety of the hotel."

  "He's not kidding when he says carry," said Del Rey. "The man's a bull."

  't Hooft enjoyed that, celebrating with a show of clenched fists and bunched-up shoulder muscles. Del Rey swatted at him as if embarrassed.

  "What about Jock?" I asked.

  't Hooft shook his head.

  "We found him in the bar sewing up a wound in his arm. I offered to help but he told me he was fine. He said it like he was changing a tire or shining his shoes. Jock is one tough son-of-a-bitch, but a little this," he said, twirling a finger around his ear in the universal sign language for nuts.

  Kinuei had more questions to ask, so I excused myself and walked back on to solid ground, over to the pathway that connected the Black Swan with the yacht club.

  The blocky little club building looked mostly undamaged, with windows unbroken and roofing only slightly scarred. But for an overturned picnic table and ravaged message board, the club had come out nearly unscathed. I looked around the grounds for a few moments, then went out on the docks.

  With no boats to be hurtled through the air, or into each other, there was little evidence of the storm, except for the huge slab of devastated building from the restaurant next

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  door, lying like a stricken whale astride one of the docks. I walked out there, mindful of the awkward pitch underfoot, with the dock bent under the weight of the rubble.

  I didn't know why I knew he'd be there, but I did. Face up, arm trapped inside a tangle of framing materials, his head shifting with the gentle wave action, Derrick Hammon looked less like a titan of high technology than the tragic recipient of random bad luck. Tragic but for his role in putting himself there.

  I went back to the Swan to break the news.

  chapter

  25

  T he electricity came back on in the early afternoon. I stayed with Del Rey and the Feys while Kinuei and 't Hooft, later joined by Anderson Track, extricated Hammon's body and wrapped him up in plastic. They finished just in time to greet an ambulance sent over from the mainland, the ferry now up and running again.

  The distant sound of generators was replaced by chain saws and the roads were filled with service vans and pickups stuffed with fresh firewood.

  Two more state troopers came over to relieve Kinuei, who did little to hide his pleasure at their arrival. We gave them descriptions of Jock and Pierre, though it was a little difficult to come up with an offense for which they could be apprehended. By any objective reckoning, the only provable violations of the law since I hit the island were all committed by me. I'd broken into a house, assaulted Derrick Hammon and two security guards, stolen a boat and a revolver, and vandalized two motor vehicles. And shot Jock in the arm, though for that I had a decent defense.

  There was also the matter of Trooper Poole's attack, and Myron Sanderfreud's death, though both had occurred

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  before the mercenaries arrived. They were probably the ones who locked Kinuei up in his own jail, but proving that would be next to impossible. Anyway, the odds were good that Jock and Pierre were already off the island, if not out of the country. Kinuei put out an alert to hospitals within a hund
red miles of the island for a young male Caucasian with a bullet wound to the elbow, but had little hope that anything would come of it.

  The Feys had spent the morning assessing the damage to the Swan, most of which was concentrated along the rear wall facing the docks as a result of the restaurant blowing off. This came as no surprise to me, since I'd seen where the sill was heavily reinforced back in the thirties when the Swan got a new foundation. The restaurant, added much later when the hurricane of '38 was a distant memory, was built of far weaker stuff. It was a rough calculation that included wind speed and direction, shoddy joinery and the effects of the wind pressure pushing up under the crawl space, but I had the hope that at least a big diversion had been in the offing.

  What I got was a bit more than that.

  It wasn't until the power was back on and the cops had left that I found myself alone again with Anika. She asked me to help her roll up a carpet in one of the back bedrooms that had seen some water damage. Her father had left to buy lumber and other building materials to begin repairs. After some more questioning by Trooper Kinuei, Del Rey and 't Hooft had left with Hammon's body. Kinuei hadn't asked my opinion, but if he had, I would have told him that 't Hooft wasn't in the game for Hammon, he was in it for Del Rey. That he might be a thug, but he wasn't the one who beat up Trooper Poole. It was Hammon himself, a man whose

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  ambition and self-regard had leached out whatever meager humanity he might have once possessed.

  Anika and I brought the carpet out to the docks where we hung it over a clothesline strung between the piers.

  "I haven't been up to the attic yet," she said. We both looked up at the roof, which had lost a lot of shingles, though the old tongue and grove roofers were all still attached. "I'd like it if you came with me."

  "I'd like that, too," I said.

  I followed her back inside and up to the second floor. She opened the door to the attic and I let her hold my hand as we walked up the steep stairwell. She snapped on the lights and we walked over to the painting. It was dry to the touch, unaffected by the water that had seeped in between the roofers. Anika nearly cooed with relief. I was glad the thing had survived, and told her so.

  "That's 'cause you're an art lover," she said. "Or is it because you love me?" she added, turning toward me.

  "I admit you've made an impression," I said.

  "I got to you. I knew I would." She took my hand again and led me over to the bed. "Don't you wonder what it would be like?"

  "I do," I said. "I admit that, too."

  "We've got the place to ourselves," she said.

  "I noticed." She started to pull me down toward the bed, but I stopped her and had her stand in front of me. I put my arms on her shoulders, dug my hands into her luxuriant black hair and drew her face close to mine. "I just want to know one thing."

  "What?" she whispered.

  "Why did you ditch your father the first time I tried to get you out of the Swan?" I whispered back.

  She pulled her face back, and I pulled away my arms, bringing with me the flash drive that had been hung around

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  her neck, having snipped the string with my miniature Swiss Army knife.

  She clutched at her throat, as if the gesture would restore the drive to its former place.

  "What are you talking about?" she asked.

  "I can put everything else together, but I can't figure out why you'd abandon him like that."

  "Maybe it wasn't about him. Maybe it was about you," she said.

  "Maybe."

  She put out her hand.

  "Please give me that back."

  "No. You've got the original. This belongs to Grace Sanderfreud, assuming she now controls Subversive Technologies."

  "You're speaking like a crazy person," she said.

  "I probably am crazy, but that comes in handy around you people."

  She backed further away from me, her eyes narrowing with unease. I sat down on the desk chair and dangled the flash drive from the end of the severed tether.

  "Axel's not the only savant in the family, is he? Only your genius comes in a much more colorful package."

  "I think you're about to disappoint me," she said.

  "Synesthesia. Your brain perceives numbers and letters as colors. That isn't a painting, it's a formula."

  She sat down on the bed and crossed her arms, looking equal parts frightened and defiant.

  "That's the silliest thing I've ever heard," she said.

  "Your brother called you color head, which was a confirmation of sorts, but I suspected it since you told Amanda and me that you assigned numbers to the flowers in your garden. And then there's your tattoo."

  "Even if something like that is true," said Anika, "you can't prove it."

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  "I can't prove anything," I said. "I bet your brother is the only person who knows. Synesthetes often don't reveal their abilities, and considering your gift for conspiracy, you'd never give up such a powerful advantage."

  "Gift for conspiracy? Now that's insulting."

  "You didn't drop programming to take up painting. You took up painting to help you code. It was better and safer than backing up on storage media. Plus, what a hoot for you. Your cleverness out there for all to see, yet no one had a clue what they were looking at."

  "A secret's not a conspiracy," she said.

  "No. A conspiracy takes at least two. During the day, while your brother worked on N-Spock inside Subversive, you took over your father's computer in the basement. You'd trained Axel and worked together as a team since childhood, so your development style, your signatures, are so similar they're indistinguishable. But naturally, the attention was all on Axel. And that's how you wanted it, what you reinforced at every opportunity, even distorting the facts to portray him as more fragile and dissociated than he truly is. It was your shield. Always keep the focus on Axel and away from you."

  "Axel loves me," she said.

  "Yes he does. Not like your mother, who abandoned you, who so hurt you that you killed her off in your mind. Or your father, who neglected you when you needed him the most."

  "You must know a lot about neglect," she said. "You're good at it."

  "I was. I'm trying to reform."

  "Not with me you aren't."

  "I've been paying a lot more attention to you than you think. Just not the kind you want. That work of art is a synesthete representation of the algorithms that cause N-Spock 5.0 to crash itself during data transfers. You wrote the original code, and have kept it alive from here, continually changing

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  its characteristics and thwarting all efforts to save the application. Why?"

  A bolt of sunlight came in through one of the gable windows and tossed a splotch of yellow on the dark wooden floor. The air inside the attic felt clean, freshened by the cracks between the roofers and the hurricane-washed atmosphere beyond. Anika flopped down on the bed, rolled over on her back and stared up at the ceiling.

  "I'm not going to tell you anything about anything," she said. "You know that."

  "Fair enough. So I'll tell you. You wanted to bring down your father's company. It was a hated thing, an obsession so consuming that he lost all sense of boundaries between work and home. Programming was the only game his kids knew how to play, his software colleagues their only playmates. But revenge isn't only better served cold, it's best cooked over decades. You kept your synesthesia and coding skills secret from your father, and held your brother completely in your thrall. Not hard to do when you're his surrogate mother. You and Axel have had the run of Subversive's servers and enterprise systems since you were kids. You've got back doors and secret passageways all over the place. When Subversive made the big gamble on 5.0, you were ready. A golden opportunity to both destroy the company and have your father all to yourself on the equivalent of a deserted island."

  She rolled back up to a sitting position and waved a finger at
me.