Perfect Dark: Initial Vector Page 16

  Just Jo, with a Fairchild of her own, one she’d presumably lifted from the first Trooper Steinberg had taken out. She stood amongst the wreckage by the bar, surrounded by smoke and fluttering bits of paper, unclaimed bills and cocktail napkins, lit by the strobing lights. As he watched, Steinberg saw one of the downed Troopers struggling to pull himself onto his side, trying to index his side arm. Jo saw it, too, and almost casually fired a pair of rounds in quick succession into the fallen Shock Trooper, a classic double-tap.

  She raised her head, meeting Steinberg’s gaze, and what he saw in her expression threatened to break his heart again.

  He’d never in his life seen someone who had so clearly won a fight look like she’d lost it.

  CHAPTER 18

  DataFlow Corporate Headquarters—Office of Chief Executive Officeer and Director Cassandra DeVries—#7 Rue de la Baume, Paris, France October 7th, 2020

  “First of all,” Anita Velez told Cassandra DeVries, “Phoebe Charlotte is not her real name.”

  She dropped a computer-printed five-by-seven on the desk in front of Cassandra, nearly toppling the slender vase of flowers positioned beside her laptop station. The five-by-seven was a grainy surveillance black-and-white of the same woman in the photograph Carrington had provided. The shot was at an odd angle, skewed, and the young woman who wasn’t Phoebe Charlotte was apparently pointing a submachine gun of some kind at the photographer, or, perhaps more accurately, at the camera.

  “Nor is she named Amanda Thiesen.” Velez dropped a second five-by-seven atop the first, this one in color. The same young woman, but now wearing business attire, a cream-colored blouse and a black skirt. She was standing in an office of some sort, or perhaps a conference room somewhere.

  “In fact, we don’t know who she is,” Velez concluded, and dropped a final photograph, this one an eight-by-ten grainy black-and-white, like the first, and apparently taken not long after the first, because this woman was wearing the same outfit. This time, however, she wasn’t alone in the photograph.

  The man with her looked to be in his late twenties perhaps, and wore full tactical dress, with a submachine gun identical to the one the woman had held in the first photograph. His other arm was around the young woman’s shoulders, and apparently he was trying to guide her into the passenger compartment of some kind of anti-gravity vehicle.

  “His name, however, is Jonathan Steinberg,” Velez told Cassandra. “Do you know him?”

  Cassandra pushed the photographs around on her desk, spreading them out so they lay side by side. She looked up into Velez’s almost hostile scowl. “Should I?”

  “You told me all of your … assignations”—and here, Velez’s mouth twisted as if she’d been forced to swallow something sour—“ … occurred here in Paris, at various hotels. That you’ve never been to the main campus of the Carrington Institute outside of London, that you’ve never met with Carrington himself anywhere but here, in France.”

  “And I told you the truth.” Cassandra didn’t bother hiding her annoyance. It was one thing to be caught, and she’d had the grace and poise to admit it. It was another thing to be accused of continuing the deception, and Cassandra knew that Velez still wasn’t satisfied.

  “Then no, you wouldn’t know him.” Velez took one of the chrome-and-leather chairs opposite Cassandra’s desk, unbuttoning her coat as she sat to keep from breaking the line of her clothing. Cassandra saw the strap of a shoulder holster, the glint of metal from the butt of Velez’s gun. “But you should, Doctor DeVries.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because Jonathan Steinberg is Daniel Carrington’s top operative, the head of his Covert Action Staff. Because in the last three years alone, Jonathan Steinberg has either directly or indirectly participated in operations directed against dataDyne and its subsidiaries costing in excess of seven and a half billion dollars in matériel and personnel. For lack of a better phrase, Doctor, Jonathan Steinberg is to the Carrington Institute what I am to dataDyne.”

  Cassandra ran a hand up the back of her neck, through her short hair, staring at the pictures. She felt heat creeping through her skin and up her cheeks, and the knowledge that she was blushing made her angrier, which, she knew, made the flush deepen. That Carrington had used her wasn’t a surprise; she had used him, it had been a tacit component of their relationship. But there had always been boundaries, she’d believed, lines they had struggled to avoid crossing. She never had given him anything that could hurt DataFlow specifically, or dataDyne generally, not to her knowledge. He had never offered any details about CI projects, or operations.

  She had believed their relationship to be one of mutual respect.

  Somehow, she couldn’t believe in that respect any longer. Not while she looked at a photograph of Daniel Carrington’s top agent apparently escorting the mystery woman—the woman that Carrington, she realized, had used Cassandra to locate—to safety. It made her feel like a fool, and above all things, that was a feeling Cassandra DeVries couldn’t stand. Like all brilliant minds, she suffered from the selfawareness that she was brilliant. And like all brilliant minds, when she realized she’d been outwitted or outplayed, she took it badly.

  More, she took it personally.

  “That son of a bitch,” Cassandra said softly.

  “Whether or not the woman knows anything about Zhang Li’s disappearance, I don’t know.” Velez cocked her head, examining the flowers in their vase, then reached out and plucked one of the wilting petals off a fading violet, crumpling it in her fingers. She raised her gaze to meet Cassandra’s eyes. “I highly doubt it. My suspicion is that Carrington wanted the young woman found, and lacked the resources to accomplish the task in a timely fashion. Much more efficient to manipulate you into doing it for him.”

  “Us,” Cassandra corrected, her voice sharpening. “We were manipulated, Anita. I gave the information to you, but you acted upon it. So let’s stop with the delicate positioning of blame, shall we?”

  “I’m not the woman who’s been sleeping with the enemy,” Velez said calmly. Her eyes had the warmth and color of a glacier.

  Cassandra started to retort with something about Velez’s own rumored habits, but stopped herself, instead relaxing back in her chair. Velez’s digs had been nearly constant since she’d caught Cassandra, but that had been all. She’d remained in Paris, staying at Cassandra’s side almost constantly, and it had raised a question that, until now, Cassandra had found herself unable to answer: If Velez was so appalled at her behavior, why hadn’t she taken the logical next step and brought it to the Board? For that matter, why hadn’t she taken it to Waterberg, Sato, Sexton, or Murray? Accusing Cassandra of the affair with Carrington would have been enough to destroy her career, regardless of proof.

  Yet she hadn’t, to Cassandra’s knowledge, done any of these things.

  It was possible that she was just taking her time, Cassandra mused—trying to determine the extent of what, if any, damage the affair had done to DataFlow and dataDyne. It was possible that Velez had been waiting to see if Carrington’s information about the fake Phoebe Charlotte would turn into something more, if it would answer the questions that lingered about Zhang Li.

  All were possibilities, but now, as they sat in her office, the CORPSEC Director staring back at Cassandra with those expressionless eyes, Cassandra wondered if it wasn’t something else entirely. She wondered if Anita Velez hadn’t decided to play kingmaker.

  “Was there anything else?” Cassandra asked.

  The question, Cassandra saw with some satisfaction, seemed to catch Velez momentarily off guard. “Else?”

  “Yes, was there anything else you had to say to me, Anita?”

  “I’m still looking into the names you gave Carrington.”

  “Oh?”

  “One of them, Doctor Thaddeus Killington Rose, has presented an anomaly.”

  Cassandra shifted in her chair, leaning forward just enough to indicate her interest, inviting Anita to continue. She even went s
o far as to offer the older woman a slight smile of encouragement.

  Velez paused, her mouth drawing tight, and Cassandra thought for a second that she had misread the woman, and the situation. But then Velez’s expression relaxed, and Cassandra knew she was correct in her read, that she had the woman.

  “dataDyne policy to all subsidiaries is to maintain personnel records for seventy-five years after termination of employment,” Velez said. “But the only information pharmaDyne has in its system about Doctor Rose is that he was employed as of 2015, and unemployed by the end of 2016.”

  “Who could have removed the information?”

  “Any number of people. The system is nowhere near as secure as it should be.”

  “But likely suspects would include who?”

  “The most obvious one is CEO Murray,” Velez said. “Or someone acting under his direct orders.”

  “I’d like to know more about this Doctor Rose, wouldn’t you, Anita?” When Velez didn’t answer, Cassandra’s smile grew a fraction. “Certainly, we should try to discover why the information is so important to Carrington, don’t you agree? It seems clear that this was the man he was looking for, despite his performance to the contrary. And it seems clear to me now that whatever information Daniel Carrington was after, he intended to use it against us.”

  “I didn’t say I would help you,” Velez said suddenly. “I have not offered either the assistance of my person or my Division.”

  “But you have, Anita, because you haven’t walked away from me. You haven’t turned me in to the Board, nor have you sold me out to any of the other Directors in consideration for the Chairmanship.”

  Velez went silent again.

  “Would you like to know what I think, Anita?” Cassandra DeVries asked, rising from behind her desk and, for the first time since being caught leaving the suite at the InterContinental, feeling in control once more. “Shall I tell you?”

  “I’m listening, Doctor.”

  Cassandra came around the side of the desk, moved to the windows along the south side of her corner office. She saw Velez reflected in the glass, watching her, and she focused past the apparition to the street beyond. It was mid-morning, the traffic on the boulevard light. Null-grav sedans and sport coupes floated past, and Cassandra saw a family of four, a mother and father and toddler walking together as they pushed a pram down the pavement. An AirFlow.Net relay station was visible across the street, mounted on the side of the opposite building, feeding traffic patterns to the central computer housed in the sub-levels of this very building. According to that morning’s operations report, DataFlow had reached a record forty-six days without a recorded null-grav vehicle accident.

  Cassandra pulled her focus back to Velez’s reflection in the window, choosing her words carefully, laboring to keep any sense of admonition or indictment from her voice. “I think you’re a follower, not a leader, Anita. I think you’re looking to follow someone you respect, someone you believe in.”

  Velez continued to stare at her. “And you think I respect you?”

  “Not as much as you did four days ago, perhaps, but yes, I do.” Cassandra turned from the reflection, still smiling gently. “Perhaps you don’t respect me much at all. But however much, or however little, it’s still more than what you think of Mister Sexton and Mister Sato. It’s more than you have for Ms. Waterberg. It’s more than you have for Doctor Murray.”

  “You think highly of yourself, Doctor DeVries.”

  “I do, and with reason. But we’re not talking about me now, we’re talking about you. And you want me to be the next head of dataDyne.”

  Velez again kept her silence.

  This time, Cassandra waited her out.

  “The others,” Velez said finally. “The others, they’re too myopic, their vision is too narrow. They want the power and the glory and the position, not the job itself.”

  “A broad condemnation.”

  “I know more about them than they could ever imagine, Doctor. I know their wives, husbands, lovers, and children. I know where they went to school and the names of the men and women who took their virginities. They have few secrets, few dreams, of which I am unaware. I know them. All of them share the same trait of personality, and while you, Doctor DeVries, are very much like them in very many ways, it is one trait that you do not have.”

  “Which is?”

  “They are uniformly selfish.” Disgust crept into Velez’s voice. “dataDyne has the capacity to remake the world, the entire planet. We enter every aspect of public, personal, and professional life. We are leading revolutions in transportation, power, information, health, and quality-of-life technologies. We are changing the world every day, little by little, and I believe we are doing it for the better.

  “But those others, Sexton, Murray … they only see what it can do for them. When they stand in front of their windows, they don’t look out of them, Doctor. They just look at their own reflections.”

  Velez went silent once more, her expression unapologetic, almost flat. Cassandra digested what she had said, glancing again toward the window, then moved back to her desk, to the same side where Velez was seated. She took the chair beside the older woman, sitting on the edge of its seat so she could lean in close and keep her voice low.

  “If I have lost your respect, Anita, I would very much like the opportunity to regain it. Let me prove to you that your faith in me is warranted, that your dreams of dataDyne’s future are my own.”

  Velez met her eyes and held the gaze, as if trying to evaluate the truth of Cassandra’s words.

  “Where should we start?” she asked.

  “Where Carrington has started,” Cassandra DeVries said. “With Doctor Thaddeus Killington Rose.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Carrington Institute—Grounds—London, England October 7th, 2020

  Carrington awaited her at the edge of the lake as the sun was setting, the collar of his tweed coat turned against the breeze, the ever-present walking stick in his right hand planted firmly in the mud. He heard her coming only because Jo didn’t bother to try to come silently, and when he turned to her, she could see his face lit by the gold and red falling in the west. He looked as serious as she had ever seen him, and more than a little sad.

  She slapped him anyway, and she didn’t hold much back when she did it. Her palm struck him across the cheek, the smack made louder by its echo off the surface of the placid lake. Carrington kept his feet, not moving except for his head.

  “Who in the hell do you think you are?” Jo shouted at him. “How dare you play with my life like this?”

  Jo glared at him, let the echo of her voice fade across the water. Her heart was racing in her chest, her breathing too fast, and it struck her as odd that she could stay so cool and controlled whenever bullets flew around her, but that when the weapons being used were emotional rather than physical, she found herself desperately out of her depth. It wasn’t that Carrington himself frightened her, though she supposed that he well should; it was that she was terrible at this, that she was not equipped for emotional honesty, and she knew it.

  Another legacy of her father’s, she suspected, from a man who’d found it easier to say “nice shot” than to say “I love you.”

  Carrington brought one hand to his cheek, using his thick fingers to gently palpate the skin where she’d struck him. He brought his head around slowly to face her, and she saw his tongue probing the inside of his mouth. He coughed once, lowered his face, and spat out a mixture of blood and saliva onto the muddy shore.

  “I’m trying to save the world from itself, Joanna,” Carrington said softly, bringing his eyes up again to meet her own. In the fading daylight, the only thing she could read in them was sincerity. “Sometimes it makes me lose perspective.”

  “You put dataDyne onto me, you bastard! You sent them after me!”

  “Yes, I did. You’d left me no other choice.”

  Jo gaped at him, brought her hands up to her temples as if to check th
at her head was still attached, that it was, indeed, processing the incoming information properly.

  “You could have left me alone!” she said.

  Carrington squinted at her, the corners of his mouth dipping for an instant. “There are times I wonder if your naivete is truly a product of your youth, or rather your education.”

  “I am not naive!”

  “Then stop acting as if you are!” he shouted back, and then, before Jo could respond, added much more calmly, “You and I both know it was only a matter of time before dataDyne began searching for you, and not because of your actions at pharmaDyne Vancouver. I don’t dispute that I pushed them in the proper direction—of course I did, I needed their help to find you. But they were going to find you, and sooner not later. When that happened, there would be no backup for you when the Shock Troopers came calling.”

  “I could’ve stayed hidden, I could’ve stayed out of their sight—”

  “Come now, Joanna. You’d been away from the Institute less than forty-eight hours before you’d taken a hunt, and the moment you did, you left a trail for dataDyne to follow.”

  “They weren’t looking for me until you told them to.”

  “That’s entirely beside the point. I couldn’t risk losing you to dataDyne, Joanna. Using their resources to find you was the most expedient, the most efficient solution.”

  “I could have died,” Jo said.

  “I had faith that together, you and Mister Steinberg would keep that from coming to pass.”

  Jo felt the pressure of frustration inside her, as if it were trying to push its way out of her chest. She put the heel of her palm to her forehead, trying to massage the emotion back down, felt herself suddenly tired, her muscles suddenly sore.

  “It mattered that much?” she asked softly. “It mattered that much that I come back?”

  “More than you can possibly imagine, Joanna.”

  She heard the squelch of the mud as the old man moved, the sound of his walking stick coming down again.