Perfect Dark: Initial Vector Read online

  “Daniel,” she said.

  He moved his eyes slowly up her body until they met her own, then smiled slightly, reminding her, “You kept me waiting.”

  “Because I didn’t want to be followed. Anita Velez is in town, she’s auditing DataFlow. Apparently there was a shoot-out at pharmaDyne Vancouver last week, so now the whole corporation’s being forced to re-evaluate security across the board.”

  “Was there?”

  “You didn’t happen to have anything to do with it, did you, Daniel?”

  “Not personally, no.” He motioned toward the tea service with a hand. “Pour yourself a cup, we’ll talk.”

  “I don’t have the time, Daniel, this is what I’m trying to tell you.” It was a lie, but it was easier than telling him the truth, which was that she found being in his presence acutely painful, nothing but a reminder of what they had each decided to deny themselves. “Please, can we get to the point?”

  Carrington sighed heavily, as if disappointed, and Cassandra found herself hoping he was, that this was as difficult for him as it was for her. He sighed a second time, then reached inside his tweed jacket and removed a narrow envelope. She thought he would hand it over, but instead he kept it in hand, tapping its edge against the back of his wrist.

  “There are two things, actually,” he said at length. “Both of worth to you, but in different fashions. The first is a personnel question, and no matter how hard my people try, they can’t answer it.”

  “We’re talking about dataDyne personnel?”

  “We think so.”

  “Anything more specific? There are quite a few of us, Daniel.”

  “pharmaDyne specifically. We’re looking for an employee by the name of Rose.”

  “First name, last name?”

  “We don’t know. We’re sure he or she doesn’t work for pharmaDyne now, but was definitely employed by them as of five years ago, say 2015. We can’t get through our security.”

  “Meaning your resident hackers can’t access them.”

  “I just need confirmation, Cass. Anyone with the name of Rose, first name, last name, anyone you find. Can you get that for me?”

  “Why, Daniel?”

  “I can’t tell you, not yet.”

  “This is risky for me, snooping around like that. Especially now.”

  Carrington snorted. “It’s not risky for you, Cass. You’re already in the system, and you’ve yet to meet a computer you couldn’t make sing and dance for you.”

  “Why?” Cassandra asked again.

  Carrington used the envelope in his hand to indicate her briefcase, resting on the floor. “You have your laptop, you could do it now.”

  “I could, but I want to know why.”

  “You’re an infuriating woman,” Daniel Carrington told her. She smiled at him. “And that’s one of the things you adore about me.”

  “Ah, and now you’re taunting the old man.”

  “I just want an answer. Why are you looking for this ‘Rose’?”

  Carrington sucked a breath through his teeth, then blew it out, relenting, finally. “Because I think this person is someone that Doctor Friedrich Murray doesn’t want found. It’s potentially bad for him, and thus potentially very good for you.”

  She considered that, thinking for a moment. He truly wasn’t asking for much, she decided; it was something she could do for him here and now. There was an appeal in hurting Murray, as well. Cassandra was positive that his son hadn’t been acting of his own accord, that he wouldn’t have dared. It had to have been his father who had told Hayes to go snooping through her rooms back at the resort. She wouldn’t mind hitting him back for that particular insult.

  “Pour me a cup of tea, then,” she said, then bent to retrieve her laptop from her briefcase. As Carrington prepared her a cup, she snapped the machine open, brushing her thumb across the power stud. The machine came to life, but the monitor remained dark.

  “DeVries,” she said to the laptop. “Arthur William.”

  The screen came to life, verifying the voice ID, and Cassandra glanced over the top of the machine to see that Carrington had paused in his preparations, was watching her.

  “My brother,” she explained.

  “I see,” Carrington said.

  Cassandra was at the first login screen now, and she quickly began tapping in her password, eighteen digits and letters in no particular order that had been committed to memory—and which she diligently changed every thirty days. The first and second security checks on her machine were standard for all dataDyne laptops, a voiceprint and an alphanumeric code. Cassandra used them not because she had faith in their ability to deter invasion, but because it was what she was required to do.

  That didn’t keep her from modifying her own laptop with a third check, one she’d developed of her own accord. The idea had come to her while perusing status sheets on other dataDyne company projects, upon reading about an Ellison Electronic Security, Inc. proof of concept for a close-rangeonly Identify-Friend-or-Foe chip to be sold to intelligence agencies around the world. The idea was to insert a tiny microchip transmitter into an agent’s body, and then to plant appropriate receivers into the agent’s equipment. Without the IFF chip, the equipment would simply fail to turn on.

  The project had been abandoned, mostly because the targeted intelligence agencies feared—perhaps correctly—what would happen to their agents once word of the security measure spread, as it undoubtedly would. Images of spies missing fingers or even whole hands had been enough to kill the plan.

  Cassandra, however, had thought it a risk worth taking, at least for herself, and had contacted one of the project specialists at EESI, a man named Ed Ventura, asking if she could get a copy of the prototype. Doctor Ventura, happy to please the CEO of DataFlow, had done just that, and it had been a small matter then for her to install the receiver in her own laptop, and an only slightly more painful one to install the transmitter chip into herself. For the latter, she’d needed several ounces of whiskey for courage, and a very sharp scalpel.

  The blood and pain had been minor, and, in her eyes, a very small price to pay for the security it granted. No one in the world knew what she had done, and thus, no one in the world could access her laptop without her permission.

  Carrington offered her the cup of tea, and she indicated for him to set it on the coffee table. “I’m logging into the server now.”

  “How long will this take?”

  “A few minutes. I’m not truly certain. pharmaDyne has employed a lot of people in the last five years.”

  Carrington grunted, failing to hide his impatience.

  Cassandra connected with her office, logging in a second time, then dropped out of the graphic interface to the code line, where she could work faster and with more comfort. Her fingers began to fly.

  “Rose,” she said. “Nothing else? Traditional spelling?”

  “Traditional spelling.”

  “And you’re certain it’s a name?”

  “Reasonably certain.”

  “Not, for instance, a passion that Doctor Murray has for flowers, then?”

  “Don’t joke, Cass. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how many florists’ receipts my people have looked at in the past few days.”

  She finished typing with a gentle press of the ENTER key, then moved the laptop to the coffee table, leaving it to rest there while it pursued its search. She took the prepared cup of tea, tasted it, then waited until Carrington had fixed one for himself.

  “Right, then,” she said. “What’s the second thing?”

  “We’re not finished with the first.”

  “It’ll take a few minutes. Let’s be efficient, Daniel.”

  Carrington drained his tea in a single gulp, then set the cup back down and picked up the envelope from where it lay beside his saucer. He offered it to Cassandra.

  “Open it.”

  Cassandra used a fingernail to tear the flap, then blew into the opening, causing the envel
ope to inflate slightly. She reached in, then came out with a small photograph, almost wallet-sized. She looked at the portrait, a headshot, the kind of thing she’d have expected to find in a police lineup or on a passport. It was a picture of a girl, or perhaps, more correctly, of a young woman. Caucasian, fine boned, with delicate features and large, blue eyes. Her hair was almost crimson, except where it fell over her forehead. There, the hair was light blonde, perhaps even white, it was hard to tell in the picture.

  She looked at Carrington, unable to hide her curiosity. “Who is she?”

  “Her name, we believe, is Phoebe Charlotte. She was in London as of the twenty-eighth of last month.”

  “And why do I care about the whereabouts of a girl named Phoebe Charlotte?”

  “Because we have reason to believe she had contact with Zhang Li just prior to his disappearance, Cass. She may very well know where he is, and where Mai-Hem is, as well.”

  “Are you saying they’re still alive?”

  Carrington shrugged. “We’ve been trying to bring her in for a talk, but she won’t stay in one place long enough. Last we heard, she was in Melbourne.”

  “What do you expect me to do with this information?”

  “I expect you to hand it over to Ms. Velez and CORPSEC, Cass. They’ll want to locate Ms. Charlotte and bring her in for questioning, at the very least.” Carrington moved to refill his cup of tea. “You understand, I’m giving this to you because it’s beyond my resources to handle it within the Institute. I’m as curious as you are as to Zhang Li’s whereabouts.”

  “I’d begun to think he was dead,” Cassandra admitted. “If he isn’t, if we find him …”

  “Yes, the hunt for a new CEO will be called off, on account of the return of the old one. But if his return comes about as a result of your efforts, surely that’ll raise your standing in the eyes of the Board?”

  Cassandra nodded, looking again at the picture, surprised by the apprehension she felt at the thought of Zhang Li’s return. In the last week, she’d become so focused on being named the new CEO, she’d pushed the possibility out of her mind.

  Her laptop beeped, indicating that it had completed its search of the pharmaDyne employee records. Cassandra tucked the photograph of Phoebe Charlotte into her coat pocket, finished her tea, then lifted the computer back onto her lap.

  “You have a PDA?” she asked Carrington.

  He tapped his forehead. “It all goes in here, Cassandra.”

  “Then listen closely. In the last five years, there have been thirty-six employees of pharmaDyne with the word ‘rose’ in their name.”

  “Thirty-six of them?”

  “I’m including all Rosenbergs, names like that.”

  “Ignore those. I’m looking for the discrete word.”

  “That cuts the number to eleven, first and last names.”

  “And last names alone?”

  “Three,” Cassandra said.

  “Give them to me.”

  “Alicia J. Rose, security officer at pharmaDyne Toronto. Doctor George A. Rose, team leader of cognitive pharma research, pharmaDyne Vancouver. And Doctor Thaddeus K. Rose.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Doesn’t say,” Cassandra told him, tapping again at her keyboard. “He left the company in 2016.”

  Carrington frowned in disappointment.

  “Not what you were hoping for?” she asked him.

  “No. But better than nothing.” Carrington reached for his walking stick, using both it and the arm of the couch to get to his feet. “Thank you, Cass.”

  “You’ll keep me posted?”

  “If there’s anything to post you about, of course.”

  She began to slip the laptop back onto the coffee table, but he shook his head.

  “Don’t bother,” Carrington told her. “I’ll head out first, you can follow in a few minutes, keep everything nice and discreet.”

  “All right.”

  He turned, began limping his way back down the hall, to the door of the suite.

  “Daniel,” she called.

  He looked back.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “There are many things I’m not telling you, Cass,” Carrington answered. “None of them should worry you.”

  He left her alone in the suite, wondering if she should believe him.

  Cassandra gave him twenty minutes’ lead, time she spent on a second cup of tea and sorting through the emails that had arrived since she’d left the office. When she felt enough time had passed, she shut down her computer, tucking it away once more in her briefcase, then rose and donned her overcoat. She gave the suite a last survey, thinking that it was a very nice room, and that it was a pity she hadn’t been able to enjoy it more. She headed to the exit, opened the door, and then stopped short.

  Anita Velez, in one of her perfectly tailored suits, was standing in front of her.

  “Doctor DeVries,” Anita Velez said. “Would you mind telling me how long you’ve been having an affair with Daniel Carrington?”

  CHAPTER 16

  Club Lisboa—48 Rua Praria Antonio, Macau, People’s Republic of China October 6th, 2020

  The hunt for Leung Cha-wei began in Tokyo, but he’d been twitched already, the first hunter blowing the capture and tipping the quarry, and the man had run. Jo had tracked him to Osaka with little difficulty, and then from there to Hong Kong. But Hong Kong was as it always had been, a maze and a mess, and like Tokyo, a place that was easy for someone to get lost in. And Hong Kong brought back memories of her father, and that had made things harder, too.

  She’d lost Leung for a while in Hong Kong, and had wasted a day haunting the gambling dens and LoveMatch bordellos along Kowloon Harbor in search of a lead. She showed Leung’s picture to hookers and pushers and beggars, to cops and robbers and bums, and she’d known she was being indiscreet, that if she wanted to remain hidden herself, this wasn’t the way to do it. But she’d taken the job, and she was going to see it through, hell or high water.

  Then a fence working out of the back of a club in the night market on Shanghai Street offered to make a deal with Jo. He’d cashed Leung’s chips, he told her, turned his credit to cash, and he knew where Leung had gone to lay low until the heat was off. The fence told her he was happy to share that information with Jo, for a small price. Jo listened while he described the payment he had in mind, a service both intimate and personal, and she had smiled at him, nodded once, and then reached across the table and taken hold of the back of his head.

  She was about to bounce the fence’s head off the tabletop a fifth time when he suddenly volunteered that Mister Leung had relocated to the Macau Free Sector, and could most likely be found at the Lisboa, where he was fond of the games that were played there. Jo thanked the fence and left the club, then went about the process of arming herself, because she knew that while she was doing that, the fence was more than likely screaming his head off to the aforementioned Mister Leung, and in all probability asking him to put an extra bullet in the bitch for his sake when Leung found the time.

  Jo procured a pistol in short order, a Maas P9P chambered in .45 ACP, as well as a set of handcuffs. Then she caught one of the old motorized junks across the water to Macau. Once ashore, she went straight for her target.

  She thought the Lisboa was a cliché in almost every possible way. The music played so loud that it was next to impossible to hear anyone saying anything, and then only if they chose to shout it in your ear; the lighting was dimmed generally, but pulsed irregularly over the gambling tables and the raised dancer’s stage; the cigarette smoke was so thick, Jo was relatively certain people could get lung cancer simply walking by outside.

  And it was packed, full of tourists from the mainland and further afield, the majority of them Chinese, but she caught words in Portuguese, Japanese, and even English, accents from American to South African, with Australian as a stop in between. Games of pai gow, bou, and blackjack raged at crammed tables al
ong the center of the main floor, all the way up to the stage. The stage itself had once been used for dancing, but now it offered shows of a different sort, as women wearing hacked DeathMatch headsets and body sensors and not much else writhed on its surface in pantomime ecstasy. Above them, hung from the ceiling, were suspended windowglass monitors, broadcasting their virtual reality for all to see. Somewhere in the back, clients paid for the privilege of picking their fantasy and participating.

  Jo had seen such unsavory diversions before, and they always turned her stomach. Sometimes she wondered if dataDyne had even tried making the task of hacking DeathMatch VR a challenge. She doubted that they had. Like all new technologies, the first question that had been asked of DeathMatch VR wasn’t How does this work or Will this make my life better, but rather, Can I use this to get myself off? The answer, unsurprisingly, had been yes, and thus a black-market cottage industry had exploded into existence overnight. Polite society called the modified system “LoveMatch VR.” The users called it something else entirely.

  She edged her way past the tables, avoiding groping hands and pleas in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English for her company. A sweating, short, bald-headed Caucasian held out a wad of bills to her, pleading for her to take a turn on the stage. She took the money and ignored the request, leaving him cursing after her.

  Near the back of the stage on the left-hand side was a flight of stairs guarded by a bouncer who either had spent all of his allowance on augments, or spent all of his time in the gym. She weaved her way toward him, plucking Leung’s photo from her pocket.

  “Seen this man?” she shouted in Mandarin.

  The bouncer had a twelve-year-old’s face, and when he scowled at her, the expression was less threatening than comical.