XGeneration 7: Dead Hand (XGeneration Series)

by Brad Magnarella

  “Now what’s this about?” he asked, his voice testy but knotted with sleep.

  She and Scott hadn’t called ahead. They had simply driven to his house, stolen around back, and knocked on his window until the curtains parted and Wayne’s mussed head appeared.

  “Mind if we sit?” Scott asked.

  Wayne looked around. “Take the bed.”

  While Janis and Scott settled onto the edge of the half-stripped mattress, Wayne hefted a pile of clothes from his computer chair and dropped it on the floor. He sat and rolled himself forward by grasping the shag carpet with his toes.

  “I was in stage four delta sleep when you knocked,” he said, “commanding the battle bridge of a galaxy-class starship against a Klingon stealth fleet—and on the verge of victory. This better be good.”

  Does he always talk like that? Janis asked.

  Pretty much.

  “Remember those accounts I had you try and hack?” Scott asked him. “The ones that sent you in circles?”

  Wayne’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah?”

  “Well, I managed to access them and—”

  “How?” Wayne cut in.

  Janis picked up the challenge in his voice and mind. Scott had warned her their meeting could turn confrontational. “You think?” she had said. “I was there during your death-match hack off in December, remember?” But at the moment Wayne appeared more envious than murderous.

  “I social engineered one of the accountants at Viper,” Scott lied.

  Wayne broke into high chopping laughter. Either his parents were deep sleepers or Wayne had little compunction about waking them. “Social engineered? You couldn’t social engineer your way out of a Mylar bag!”

  “Whatever that means,” Janis said, growing impatient. “Would you just listen to what he wants.”

  Wayne’s eyes slanted toward her. “What’s this?” he asked. “The lone cheerleader for the long-defunct Scott Spruel fan club?”

  “God, that makes even less sense,” Janis muttered. Scott must have sensed her temptation to hit him with a low-level mind blast, because he set a hand on the back of hers.

  Easy, he cautioned.

  All right, but I’m this close, she replied.

  “I got stuck,” he said to Wayne.

  Wayne sat back and stroked his mustache with evident satisfaction. That’s all he had needed: a concession that Scott had failed. “Of course you did,” he said. “And now you require my services.”

  “Well, yeah, basically,” Scott admitted.

  “I just hope you didn’t make a complete mess of things.”

  Scott shrugged as though to say, You know me.

  Janis had to bite back a laugh. The same guy who didn’t think Scott could social engineer his way out of a Mylar bag was getting a one-on-one lesson in the art and didn’t even know it.

  “What do you need?” Wayne sighed.

  Scott rehashed the fabricated scenario—Janis doing a favor for her friend Star by tracking the lobbying disbursements from the defense companies. But the account he had been led to, the one in Geneva, was defended by a major firewall, one he couldn’t crack or steal past.

  “Here are the routing and account numbers,” Scott said, holding out a piece of paper.

  Janis used the opportunity to steal into Wayne’s mind. The hope wasn’t that Wayne could hack the account—if Gabriella couldn’t, no one could—but to see whether the numbers sparked any memories from Wayne’s time in the Scale. Even if the memories weren’t conscious, Wayne might still make associations in his subconscious mind. Associations Janis could home in on.

  Wayne snatched the paper from Scott and held it an inch from his smallish eyes. An odd groaning sound emanated from the back of his throat as he looked it over. He scratched his chin.

  Anything? Scott asked.

  Just numbers to him so far, she answered. Hold on. She could feel the numbers pinging something in the deep recesses of his limbic system—there were associations.

  When Wayne lowered the slip of paper from his face, he gave a haughty grunt. “I know this account,” he said. “I must have hacked it before.”

  “Do you remember a name?” Scott asked.

  Wayne twisted his lips into a smirk, then rubbed the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand together.

  Janis sighed. He wanted to talk money. She pushed deeper into the folds of his Napoleonic mind, following the associative memories much as she imagined Scott had followed the network of accounts.

  “How much?” she heard Scott asking Wayne.

  “Twenty-five hundred up front, another twenty-five on delivery.”

  “Five thousand?” Scott exclaimed.

  “Hey, I’ve got a computer that needs upgrading.”

  Janis stopped and unpackaged a memory. The name of a business appeared, one that set off a string of associations in her own mind. The final association—a revelation—detonated with a bang. She withdrew from Wayne and sat still for a moment, letting everything settle.

  Holy crap, she whispered to herself.

  Scott angled his head toward her in question.

  Janis stood from the bed. “Those computer upgrades are going to have to wait,” she told Wayne. She tugged on Scott’s arm. “C’mon.”

  “Excuse me,” Wayne said testily. “Your lover boy and I were in the middle of a business transaction. You can whisper your little sweet nothings when we’re all finished here.”

  Janis ignored him and drew open the window. She couldn’t wait to get Scott outside to tell him what she’d found. As she pulled Scott to his feet and began pushing him over the sill, Wayne sputtered at their backs.

  “Th-th-this is an outrage!” he cried.

  “Good luck with the Klingons,” Janis said over her shoulder as she slipped out after Scott. When they had made it to the side yard and were out of view of the window, Janis clutched his arm.

  “We’ve got our kingpin,” she said.

  Scott stopped and stared at her. “We do?”

  Janis nodded. “And we know the creep.”

  27

  Arlington, Virginia

  Two days later

  8:00 a.m.

  The armored black Jeep Cherokee left the heavy morning traffic for a semicircular driveway, pulling to a stop in front of the headquarters for Viper Industries. In the backseat, a man smoothed his dark tie and the gray lapels of his jacket. As he waited for his security team, four strong, to get in position, he lowered his head to peer up at the glass and steel skyscraper. It had been more than twenty years since his last meeting here, having since moved onto more lucrative enterprises, but the kind of deal Viper was talking was too big a boon.

  His back door opened and the security team ushered him out. A full head shorter than the members of his detail, he moved amid a wall of broad backs and black suits to the building’s front doors. The company’s CEO, Fred Friedman, was awaiting them in the expansive lobby.

  “There you are!” he said. “Thank you so much for coming.”

  The visitor affected his most disarming smile and pumped the CEO’s outstretched hand. “Any excuse to fly, I take,” he said. “I do love my Sonic II. Fast, but feels like bird, like your American eagle. I will take you up sometime.”

  Friedman chuckled. “I’d like that.”

  The visitor straightened his polarized sunglasses and kept smiling. He had learned that playing the cheery, charming foreigner, with awkward turns of phrases, had its advantages. For one, it caused the person with whom he was dealing to relax, underestimate him.

  “Shall we?” Friedman asked, motioning to the elevators. “My CFO is upstairs. We’re very excited at the prospect of partnering with you again.”

  Now the visitor smiled inwardly as well—at the thought this man had no idea he was speaking to Viper’s entire lobbying arm. He touched his fingertips to his own chest. “And Prince Khoggi is excited to—how you say?—be in talks.”

  Director Kilmer followed Prince Khoggi’s movements on a ban
k of monitors from a special room on the top floor of Viper Industries. The operation had come together quickly, beginning with Janis’s revelation.

  “When Wayne was looking over the account number,” she had told him two nights ago, her words tumbling out. “I sensed him making associations. He had dealt with that account before, likely when he set up the transaction to the Soviet Union. The one Scott stopped. He booby-trapped it to prevent Scott from backtracking up the chain and finding the business to which it was connected: Khaybar Construction and Contracting.”

  “Khaybar?” Kilmer repeated.

  “I don’t expect you to recognize it,” Janis went on. “In fact, I wouldn’t have recognized it but for an outing I happened to go on back in November, when we were in Saudi Arabia. Do you remember our host? Prince Khoggi? He asked Margaret out for coffee and dessert that first night. I tagged along as a chaperone. I know, dumb. We snuck out through a secret passage. Anyway, thanks to Margaret’s abilities, she got him talking—largely about his drive for wealth and power. Though he didn’t go into specifics about his businesses, Khoggi talked about the richest opportunities existing where there was tension between two opposing sides. ‘And not only in Saudi Arabia,’ he said—those were his exact words. Images came off him as he talked. The names of his business entities among them. Khaybar Construction and Contracting was one of them.”

  “We’re going to need more than that,” Kilmer said.

  “Oh, it’s coming,” Scott assured him, the pupils beyond his glasses large with excitement.

  “Later that night,” Janis went on, “when I tapped into Prince Khoggi’s mind, I saw an expanse of oilfields, which transformed into a chess board. I thought I was peeking in on a game he enjoyed, but he wasn’t thinking about a board game. He was contemplating the balance of world powers, how he could manipulate the pieces into moves and countermoves.”

  “An endless stalemate,” Kilmer said, starting to nod a little.

  “Right,” Janis said, her words coming even faster. “After consulting with the Witch and deciding the takeover of the Al Karak oil facility would tilt the balance too sharply in favor of the Soviet Union, he didn’t want to take that chance. He had a group of Russians, clients of his brother who had leaked news of the takeover, assassinated in his restaurant. He then turned his sights to Al Karak itself. He knew the Champions were planning an operation—we were guests in his compound, after all, no doubt so he could keep tabs on us—but he summoned his own team, the Scale, to help. Again, he didn’t want to chance it.”

  “But he was concerned about our powers,” Scott jumped in. “It’s why Reginald was ordered to take one of us out. After we thwarted the Soviet Union at the German Reserve Bank, the mandate expanded to include all of us. The tilt toward the United States had gone too far. If he had any chance of restoring the old détente, he was going to have to get rid of the Champions.”

  “Like he did with the last generation,” Janis finished.

  Kilmer sat a moment, sifting through the information. Prince Khoggi would have the money, means, and motive. And with Janis and Scott having unearthed the link between the Swiss account and one of the man’s businesses…

  “So, it’s just a matter of shutting down the account, right?” Scott asked. “Denying Prince Khoggi access to his money.”

  “If it were that easy,” Kilmer said. “I made a few calls while you were out, first to the Swiss bank you found, and when I got no cooperation there, to the Swiss government. I posed as an Interpol agent, but didn’t get far. Without proof of illegal activity, they’re impotent to act under Swiss law. I contacted the White House next, but got the same response.”

  “But now that we know who’s behind the account…,” Janis said.

  “I’m afraid that puts us in an even weaker position,” Kilmer replied. “Prince Khoggi’s diplomatic skills are bar none. Our intelligence agencies consider him an asset. It’s how we ended up in his palace compound, if you remember.”

  “An asset?” Scott said.

  “He shares information on the illicit global arms trade, a one-time dealer himself.” Kilmer snorted. “Allegedly. Instead of getting out of the game, it looks like he took it to another level, stoking history’s biggest arms race and racking up a staggering fortune in the process. In any case, he’s made himself an indispensible ally to several of our agencies.”

  “But he’s abetting the Soviet Union!” Janis cried.

  “And hidden that fact well,” Kilmer said. “Until now. Unfortunately, the best proof I can give would be whatever’s inside the Swiss account. But no one’s willing to touch the account until they have proof of wrongdoing. A classic catch twenty-two.”

  “What does that leave?” Scott asked.

  “President Reagan didn’t authorize us to pursue the matter,” Kilmer said. “But he didn’t call us off, either. If I read between the lines correctly, he’s going to give us a little rope. But if we hang ourselves, he’ll disavow our organization. We’ll have no protection from whatever follows.”

  Janis arched a brow. “Sounds like you have a plan.”

  “The key is gaining access to that account,” he said, “bringing it under our control. Unfortunately, due to the enormous sums Prince Khoggi stores and transacts, any fundamental change to the account must be done in person, by the account holder. This is according to the bank. The identification process includes a fingerprint scan, a face scan…”

  “Reginald could pull that off,” Scott said.

  Kilmer held up a finger. “…and a ten-digit code, known only to the account holder.”

  “Oh,” Scott said.

  “For that, we’ll need to capture the prince,” Kilmer finished.

  “Capture?” Janis asked. “You mean, go back to Saudi Arabia?”

  “Or have him come to us.”

  Viper’s chief executive made conversation as they ascended in the elevator, but Khoggi heard little. From behind his sunglasses and grinning façade, he was studying the man’s facial expressions. Viper had sold large arms packages to the Saudi government in the past, but the company’s request to meet—and specifically to meet with him—had come out of the blue and on short notice.

  Once more, Khoggi considered the possibility of a trap. And once more, he dismissed it. His ties with the U.S. government were as solid as ever. Though it was true the Champions Program remained a thorn in his side, he was fairly certain he had biased Viper against them. When his informant alerted him to the planned hack of the special accounts days earlier, Khoggi had seen to it that Viper was tipped off. A confrontation had followed, he understood.

  Unfortunately, Khoggi had been unable to reach his informant since. The idea that she had been discovered crossed his mind. He did not believe she would talk—she had ways of protecting her psyche—but she had been so very helpful. Perhaps it was as it should be. With his plans proceeding apace, Khoggi wasn’t sure he would need her any longer.

  It was a matter now of receiving the disbursements. The tens of billions he had been counting on was more than two days late. The defense companies had assured his lobbying firms the money would come, but the timing of the delay made Khoggi suspicious. Another reason he had wanted to visit Viper Industries in person. He couldn’t confront their officers on the matter—they had no knowledge of his connection to those firms—but he could look for inconsistencies.

  “I imagine it gets rather hot this time of year,” Friedman was saying. “I’ve only been to Saudi Ar—”

  “How is your security?” Khoggi cut in. “Now that there are the computers everywhere, I imagine you must have dedicated team to combat the, how do you call them, the hackers?”

  “We do,” Friedman said with a frown. “In fact, we had a bold breach here just last week. Or attempted breach, I should say. We stopped it, but our software was corrupted in the process.”

  Khoggi studied the man’s eyes. His frustration appeared sincere.

  At the top floor, the elevator door slid open. They ex
ited into a lobby with glass walls and a grand view of the National Mall across the river. Friedman nodded at a pair of security guards stationed behind a curved marble counter and led Khoggi and his team down a corridor to a conference room. A sharp-faced man in a blue suit awaited them.

  “Prince Khoggi, this is my CFO, Ned Schwartz.”

  “Very pleased,” the prince said, studying the man’s narrow eyes as he seized his hand. Something was different about this one. For one reason or another, he didn’t want to be meeting. Was it because of the commission Friedman had already promised Khoggi—an amount that would make anyone whose business was conserving costs bristle—or was it something else?

  Schwartz’s hand squirmed in his prolonged grasp.

  “Ah, very sorry,” Khoggi said, releasing him. “My men are always reminding me: different countries, different customs. But Khoggi, he does not learn. At least he does not try to kiss cheeks.”

  Friedman laughed along with him, but Schwartz only tightened his lips into a pale line and sat.

  “Please,” Friedman said, gesturing for Khoggi to sit as well.

  Khoggi’s private security team took up positions around him, two behind him and two beside the doors to the conference room. Khoggi had modeled his team after the U.S. presidential secret service, with their black suits, aviator sunglasses, and earpieces. If he had a weakness, it was for all things American.

  “And help yourself,” Friedman added. The conference table had been set with trays of bagels and mixed fruit. Small plates and silverware were arranged at each place. A moment later, a staff member entered with a tray holding large goblets of orange juice. She set them around and left.

  Friedman took a sip from his. “Mm, freshly squeezed,” he commented before sorting through the folders in front of him.

  Khoggi, who was still feeling the dehydrating effects of his trans-Atlantic flight, decided he could trust these men and the meeting. He drank down half of his orange juice in one tilt.

  It was freshly squeezed. And very refreshing.