by P. R. Adams
He looked away. “You…were you two getting along? She seems kind of pretty.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been thinking.” He looked up again. “Maybe it’s not worth it. This money. This operation. What they did to you. Everything that’s going on, it just…” He closed his eyes and sighed. “I know this is going to sound stupid, but it feels dirty.”
“And full of shit. These people are hiding behind a whole lot of shit. They’ve got their own thing going on, and other people are running a different operation, and we’re right in the middle.”
“So walk away. We can recover. You’ve still got money set aside, right?”
“Not as much as when this all started.” And it wasn’t just about the money now. If I walked away, someone else would come along and kill Gillian. Unless I could convince her to get the hell out of the area. She wasn’t about to abandon her mother. I don’t think there was any abandoning the election, either. Gillian really wanted to change things. I could feel that. “I’ve got to know what Stovall’s role is in all this, Danny. Someone gave the order to pull me out of Korea to run this operation. Why? Why not leave me there to rot? Why not kill me? Stovall’s game nearly got everyone killed. I want him to tell me what he did and why. I have to know this was him and not the Agency.”
Danny scratched the back of his neck. “You stay in, I stay in. But I’m telling you, we should walk. Just walk.” He let himself back into his room.
I opened my door as quietly as I could. Pointless. Ichi was there, sleeping on my bed. A chair was braced against the adjoining door. A bare shoulder was visible above the covers. Relaxed, it had a feminine curve and softness, marred though it was by a healing bruise. The guilt returned; I was already putting her through so much. She suddenly sat upright, sliding a wakizashi from beneath the covers.
I eased a little closer. “Is that your father’s?”
“It was.” Her face took on a hard set as she kicked the sheets off and rolled off the bed, the blade already sheathed. “You have been gone the entire day.”
“It was an interesting time. Weaver came out of her coma. The assassins attacked shortly afterward.” Coincidence?
That stopped her as she pulled the chair from the adjoining door, although she didn’t turn. “Did they succeed?”
“No. And one of them won’t be bothering us again.”
“Which?”
“Jose. Ravi’s people put a half dozen rounds into him—high-powered, armor-piercing.” I fingered the bullet in my coat pocket. “I’m going to have Abhishek order us some. The android finally went down with a couple shots to the head. There was actual brain matter inside.”
She spun around and pressed her hands against the chair she’d pulled away. “And the woman?”
“Damaged, but she got away. And the attack seems to have put Weaver into a coma again.”
“So if she dies, we still collect? It is not assassination.”
A hand clenched into a fist at the memory of Birthmark’s sneer. “They want our hands bloodied. We have two days to be sure she’s dead.” I threw my coat on top of the bed. “And they want her daughter dead, too.”
Ichi’s hopefulness went into full bloom, sprouting into a smile. “I can do both. Now. Poison for the one, for the other…” She held up the sheath.
My guts churned. “You don’t want her to be your first kill.”
“I will start with the old one. Diabetic. Inject a small amount of venom into her IV drip, and it will appear to be insulin shock.”
“You don’t have to prove to anyone that you’re cold-blooded, Ichi. It’s a job.”
The enthusiastic grin warped into a petulant pout. “It is a job you cannot do.”
“I don’t want to argue about this. Heidi’s sleeping off enough to put a sailor under. When she’s awake, we—”
Ichi’s shoulders slumped.
“What?”
“Chan is no better. Drugs. What happened to you two, it has not been good for Chan.”
“Yeah, well, that’s going to have to change.” I headed for the outer door, face flush.
Ichi blocked me. “Do not start a fight.”
“I told Chan we needed data and solutions. No drugs. Head in the game.” I tried to move her out of the way; she didn’t budge easily.
“Stefan-san, please. Why is it you cannot understand what is happening? You are angry at Chan, but you continue to delay what we must do. You will not let me finish this job when you know I can. Before long, we will have no more time.”
I backed off. “It’s too hot right now. Everyone’s on alert. They’ll be increasing staff, have her under more surveillance. You’ll never get in. It’s going to have to be me. But I need Chan’s help. I need to know what’s going on. There’s still too much we don’t know.” Like the device Lyndsey had given me. I pulled it out. “This was on one of Ravi’s men. Ever see anything like it before?”
Ichi squinted at it as she turned it slowly around. “No.”
“I was going to have Chan give it a look, but I have a better idea now that you told me the situation.”
“Your dirty old friend?”
I pulled out the data device and sent a text to Abhishek, asking to meet in thirty minutes, then grabbed my coat. “He’s the best there is with oddball hardware.”
She strode to the adjoining door. “I will come with you.”
“No. I need you to get Chan cleaned up. We’ve got less than two days, and Chan owes me an update on those digitized records you made at the Weaver mansion. And now that I’ve seen an image from the missing Ming Dynasty video, I think we have to find that video.”
“Chan knows this?”
“That’s what I need you to convey. Just keep Chan clean.”
“I will.”
That was enough for me. Time was running out, and I needed Chan to pull off what I had in mind. I hired a car and headed to Abhishek’s, tumbling the device around in my hand. I had a sense of what it might be, but I had to be sure. There were simply too many gaps in what we knew to toss another bit of speculation in. Ten minutes out, Abhishek accepted my request to meet.
I put the device in my coat pocket and closed my eyes, hoping for a moment of calm to think through my alternatives. Instead, I woke to the chime of the car’s alert that it had arrived.
It was a strange feeling, the loss of time and sudden sense of a change of place. The idea that had been rolling around in my head now felt distant and foolish. It was full of gaps and obvious flaws.
I attacked the problems as I walked through the alley. Maribel seemed the key to me, especially now that she was alone. If Jacinto was controlling her, whether through broad direction or—as I suspected—through more direct orders, then she had a real limitation built in: she needed a reliable, high-speed Grid connection. That was fine in most areas, but it gave us an avenue to pursue. Break that reliable, speedy connection, and she would be left to run off whatever limited programming Jacinto had put into her head, plus whatever resided in the brain still connected to her.
We needed to find Maribel. Knock out her Grid connection, and take Stovall out of the picture. That would leave the Weaver assassination to easier planning.
Amber lights once again glowed behind the grimy windows of Abhishek’s shop. I pulled the door and shook off the cold. Cigarette smoke scratched my throat and sinuses. He’d been soldering again, filling the air with the resin stench. He came from the back, glasses lenses glowing cigarette ember red. He took a puff, then jabbed the cigarette at me. “It’s a thousand just to meet with you now.”
“So I’m paying money to say hello?”
The cigarette went into a freshly cleaned ashtray and he shifted the junk around on his countertop. “One thousand dollars. What else do you want?”
“Things are getting tight.” I held the device out. “Two days to get a job done that makes me sick to my stomach, and I’m no closer to figuring out who’s behind all this insanity than I was at the start.”
Abhishek pushed his glasses up to the top of his head and ran stained fingers over the slick black plastic curves. “American design. This is very dense. No external interfaces. You see the way these screw heads are flush? Robotics, precision engineering. Not mass produced. Not something that comes out of Asia. Definitely not South American or African. A few boutique shops. Maybe Singapore, but it would be American design, even so. Where did you find this?”
“It was taken off a corpse. I think it contains something extremely valuable.”
“Diamonds? No, no. They hold no intrinsic value. Too small for gold of any worth.”
I smirked at his nonsense. “Data.”
“Ah!”
He fished around beneath the counter and set a black plastic case next to the ashtray. He popped a fine clasp on the case side and studied a few of the screwdrivers within before selecting one and muttering to himself. Soon, he had the screws undone and one of the panels removed. Circuit boards were packed tight within.
He pulled a large magnifying glass from beneath the counter and made an impatient, grumbly sound. “Very intricate design. Very.”
I tried to get a look when he inspected the interior. Everything inside the case was larger and distorted by the lens curvature, but it was still nothing more than circuitry to me.
More tools came up from beneath, each set taking space on the cluttered countertop.
When Abhishek paused in his search for tools for a second, I asked, “What do you know about androids?”
“Many advances in the last few decades. You want to buy one? The intelligence is still rudimentary if you know what to look for, but to the uninformed it can be quite convincing. The sophistication that can be achieved is remarkable.” He glanced up, eyes screwed up in confusion. “This is from an android?”
“No. A different problem. Possibly related. The person this device came from was killed by an android.”
Abhishek straightened and he rested clasped hands on thighs.
“A very specialized android,” I said. “And it wasn’t after the device.”
“Ah. Specialized how, if I could ask?”
“An assassin. Or it was when it was alive.”
“Androids are just robots. They are not—”
“This was a human, killed in an automobile accident and placed inside a robotic shell that matched its human body. They kept the human brain, but there’s remote control to it, too.”
“Ah. Ah!” The lights seemed to come on for him. “Not autonomous, so not a real android!”
“No, but I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t operate independently. Then again, the thing running it is a computer that doesn’t really act like a computer.”
He was intrigued; I could tell by the tension in his hands and the way his lips twitched. “A computer running an android. External?”
“Over the Grid.”
He shook his head. “No, no. Too risky. A private network within the Grid, maybe, but the Grid itself? Too risky, too easy to hack.”
“All right. But it could work that way, right? A network within the Grid?”
“Dedicated connection, sure, yes.” He glanced down at the countertop and seemed to suddenly remember what he had been doing. He popped cases open and renewed his search for the perfect tool. “Encrypted, certainly.”
“But it still runs over the Grid?”
He examined a tool and gave a satisfied nod. “No other communications would be as reliable, not without dedicated equipment. This android has a vehicle? Helicopter or something?”
“No. Not that we’ve seen. If it’s running off the Grid, that means knocking out Grid connectivity in the area would cripple it, right? The remote control aspect?”
Abhishek set the tool down and pulled out a circuit card the size of a pinky on a static-free strip. “Yes.” Distracted sounding.
“I’m going to need something that can do that.”
“Do what?” He connected the circuit card to a device with a small display and began turning knobs and flipping switches.
“Knock the Grid down. Maybe in a fifty-yard area.”
He blinked rapidly and looked up. “That is very illegal.”
“So is assassination. Can it be done?”
“Yes.” He tapped the display. “A video file. Heavily encrypted. Not hardware encryption. Not for me. That person I worked with, the purple eyes?”
“Chan. Yeah. Can you transfer the file? Send it to Chan, say that I told you we need this as a priority.” He nodded. “Thanks. What do I owe you?”
“For the file? Twenty-five.”
“You’re killing me. What about for the Grid-breaker?”
He shuffled into the back room. Rattles and crashes boomed, and after a few minutes, he returned with a gray plastic box, about palm width and length but about a half inch thick. “That’s good for twenty, twenty-five yards. For a minute, maybe. It’s highly illegal. And another twenty-five.”
There was no hint of budging in his dark eyes. “Fifty for the whole package. You’re robbing me blind.”
“You have cybernetic eyes.” He put the device in my palm.
Frost had crusted puddles in the alley while I was inside. Mist that had condensed on the car had frozen in glistening streaks. The Canyon was a ghost town, all but abandoned in the chilly, late hours.
The car took the streets cautiously, and I quickly found my mind running back to the question of whether there was a connection between Stovall and the Chamber of Commerce. Lyndsey’s insinuation that the Chinese corporations were behind the contract made sense, but at the exact same time as the Agency tested out their El Salvadoran twins? And did her “less Chinese” comment include the possibility of a connection between the Chinese corporations and the Koreans? I just couldn’t see Ravi as Stovall’s inside guy. Weaver would already be dead if that were the case, whether because of intentionally sloppy security or Ravi doing the work himself. He had unlimited access to Weaver.
And then there was the question no one seemed to have the answer to. Why hire me? I was damaged goods, with an unreliable memory and body parts I was still trying to adapt to. I barely qualified as a risky prototype.
Weaver’s harsh words about Gillian seeped into my thoughts. Was it jealousy that she had stolen me from her mother’s claws, or was there real hostility under the surface?
I pulled my data device out and swore to myself this was a call about figuring things out, nothing more. Gillian answered on the second ring. She was in her apartment living room, curled up on the large chair. She wore an oversized sweater and jeans; her hair was pinned up. Puffy-eyed, without makeup; she looked frumpy.
Good. I tried to appear nonchalant. “You holding up okay?”
“I nodded off. Do you realize what time it is?”
“I’m sorry. I’ve just been trying to piece everything together.”
She yawned and arched her back. “Piece what together?”
“This assassination attempt. The crazy mess of your mother’s life. In case you want to hire me, but also just for my own sanity.”
“Don’t put too much thought into it. She’s probably not coming back out of…” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “It looks like an aneurism. They’ll be more sure after some deeper tests.”
“I’m sorry. That could explain some of her behavior, I guess.”
“Like what?”
“She said some things when I talked to her. Mean things. About you.”
Gillian’s head tilted, and she ran her fingers through her hair. Almost absently. Almost. She pulled the clips out and shook her head until the thick waves spilled over her shoulders. “She was mad. Did she tell you she was interested in you? She thought I just wanted to take you from her to punish her. Is that what she said?”
“Along with saying I was a new thing for you.”
“I experimented a lot in college. She thought that was embarrassing. Not everyone has hush-hush money.”
“S
he resented your grandmother, I take it? Said she spoiled you?”
Gillian snorted and stood, carrying the computing device into the dining room and setting it down on the table. She pulled the sweater off, revealing a loose pink T-shirt beneath. “Spoiled? We lived in a three-bedroom house closer to Pittsburgh than Philadelphia. I went to a small private school, not an academy. Sounding spoiled to you?”
My Idaho school with its faulty Grid connection and obsolete data devices shared among four students at a time certainly seemed sad by comparison. I wanted to ask about her New York address, the criminal rap sheet. It could wait. “Why didn’t you live with your parents?”
She bent over and leaned in close to the camera. “I told you. They divorced before I was even born. He was a terrible man. He didn’t want me, but he fought for custody so my mother couldn’t have me. Honestly, Stefan, he soured me on men, and she wasn’t much better. That’s why I tried women out. I’m really tired now, and this sort of discussion is best handled in person. If you want to talk about it more, come see me. I’ll leave everything unlocked.”
The connection died.
I sorted through what she’d said: the divorce, the terrible parents, the tough upbringing. It all made sense, but there were the same sort of holes as everything else about the operation.
I connected to Chan. The connection took longer to get through. When Chan’s magenta eyes filled the display, there was the sort of sluggish, faraway look that said I’d interrupted real sleep, not a drugged stupor.
Chan leaned back from the display, still smothered by the hoodie. “What?”
“You got the package from Abhishek?”
A pause. “Video file?”
“Encryption he can’t really deal with. It’s lower priority than the things I told Ichi to have you look at, but they’re all high priority.”
“Sleep is too.” Chan rubbed sleep from those strange eyes.
“When you get a chance, I’m looking for any more background data you can find in the digital files we took from the Weaver mansion.”
“Okay.” Chan closed the connection.
I watched the mist hanging in the sky and thought I might be able to fall asleep once I got back to the hotel.
