Copyright © 2013 by Finn Mack

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-9898226-0-2

Cover image by Martin Saavedra.

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means
without the written permission of the author. All the characters in this book are
fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

You can learn more about the author at
FinnMack.com.

To Stripes—

The sun shines brighter and my heart skips a beat

And the sand feels warmer on the soles of my feet

When you're here

Qubit

A Novel by Finn Mack

Part 1
Drinks Are On Me

1

Renaissance Center (Detroit Riverfront)
Wednesday, January 17th
2:00 p.m. EST (Eastern Standard Time)

Lock hunched his shoulders and dug his hands into his pockets, a futile defense
against the whip-cold wind rushing angrily towards Jefferson Avenue from the icebound
Detroit River. Dark and soaring cylinders of glass and steel loomed over him like
implacable gods. Their very name—collectively, The Renaissance Center—was
a promise of a future that had never come, a fitting monument to a city that had
lost its way.

Perhaps parking in the garage farthest from his destination was thus a fitting,
if entirely accidental, ritual. After all, weren’t he and the city self-similar
parts of a mysterious socioeconomic fractal? Anyway, it was a costly mistake when
it was twenty degrees below freezing. At last, he approached the 200 Tower, eyeing
the revolving glass doors longingly. Beyond those doors lay warmth.

And a job interview.

Lock clenched his jaw at the familiar sensation of rusted gears grinding up his
intestines. Why did he bother with these things? Before he even finished the thought,
he knew the answer. The email inquiry had gotten his attention with those two magic
words: quantum cryptography.

Lock found himself coming up behind a small, round figure that appeared to be
wearing at least two heavy coats and three scarves, one of which secured a woolen
cap, and another of which might have been a tattered blanket. A few curly white
locks of hair had tumbled out from the top of this bundle, which Lock belatedly
realized was an old woman. He forced himself to slow down to match her gait, reaching
forward to help her push the door forward. The old woman turned back to him slowly
with something that looked at first like a sneer, but after a moment, Lock realized
she was trying to smile. Her face was moist with tears, perhaps from the cold.
Lock nodded at her and forced himself to smile back—it was probably more of a grimace—barely
restraining himself from pushing her forward towards the warmth.

With the old woman shuffling steadily forward in the wedge in front of him, Lock
pushed against the door, hearing the frustrated gasp of the wind as the door sealed
behind him. He paused for a moment to savor the relief—and to let the old woman
get clear of the door.

What was he still doing in cold, wintry Detroit? Why not move somewhere warmer?
Somewhere he could find a decent job? Of course, he knew the answer to that question,
too.

Sophie was here.

Lock made his way to an open elevator and got on, unbuttoning his coat, being
careful as always with the third button, which dangled from the jacket by a single
worn thread. And, as he always did, he reminded himself to take the coat to the
cleaners to fix the button. He felt the gears grinding again as the floor number
displayed above the door measured his ascent.

Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.

He’d never used his real name in connection with his interest in quantum cryptography,
which meant someone had gone to no small amount of trouble to find him. It wasn’t
just a matter of tracing his IP address because he anonymized all his Internet
activity using a program called Tor, for which he’d proudly submitted several patches.

He walked down a poorly lit hallway with dingy blue carpet before arriving in
front of glass doors, upon which were etched the words “Patel and Associates,”
and through which he recognized what appeared to be a reception area. Lock took
a deep breath and pushed open the door.

In stark contrast to the hallway outside, the office itself was surprisingly well-appointed,
featuring burnished wood floors, a perky ficus tree that nearly reached the twelve-foot
ceiling, and a thick Persian-style carpet that made Lock want to take his shoes
and socks off. The air smelled vaguely of…incense? Whoever these people were, they
weren’t recruiters.

He introduced himself to a caramel-skinned receptionist with a mole on her cheek
and silky black hair that was pulled back tightly into a bun. She forced her mouth
into a semblance of a smile and told him to have a seat. Lock guessed that he’d
interrupted a riveting Facebook session.

He settled his lanky frame into a comfortable brown suede couch and picked up
a copy of that morning’s Wall Street Journal. He took in the headlines
with morose-orbed blue eyes and attempted to run his fingers through what would
have been stringy blond hair, before remembering that he’d shaved his head. Kafka
had convinced him it would look sexy. He ought to have known it was a prank. It
was Kafka’s way of encouraging him to get over his breakup with Mandy. As he pretended
to read an article (“Buggy Trading Systems Put Markets At Risk,” warned the headline),
he wondered if he ought to have worn something besides a sweatshirt and jeans.
At least they were freshly laundered. And he’d worn his new bright-blue Converse
hi-tops.

Lock caught himself tapping his foot. There really was only one reason why anyone
would be interested in an ex-con with a penchant for quantum cryptography. Especially in
the wake of the announcement of the Wave Nine. Well, if the Feds were going to
pin something on him, he might as well deal with it. Maybe he could be like DJB
or Aaron Swartz and take the government head on—

“Mr. Cairnes, Mr. Patel will see you now,” chimed the secretary.

Lock looked up from his paper with an affected arching of his eyebrows. He folded
the paper back up, set it down, and stood, discretely wiping his palms on his jeans.
He walked to the office door, which was closed, and looked over to the secretary—was
he supposed to simply open the door, or knock? She nodded wordlessly. Lock opened
the door and walked in.

“Ah, Mr. Cairnes,” said a man in a shiny gray silk suit, standing up behind a
large desk made of a dark, heavy-looking wood. The muscles of his round face were
relaxed. He blinked slowly and smiled with a faint air of condescension, as though
he were amused by a child playing. He gestured toward an even larger black leather
couch across the room. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

Lock took in his surroundings, which were entirely consistent with the lobby,
and included the addition of two wall-sized pieces of art and a spectacular view
of Detroit’s west side and the snow-muted expanse of its frozen river. If he had
an office like this, maybe Sophie would look up to him more, like she did Dennis,
her stepfather. This office was even nicer than the one Dennis had in Bloomfield
Hills.

“You can call me Lock,” he offered, easing himself into the couch. “What is it
you guys do again?”

“We’ll get to that, I’m sure,” replied Kirin, strolling over to the couch. His
heels clicked on the wood floor until he reached the border of a thick intricately
patterned carpet. Lock noticed that his shoes were immaculately polished. He looked
down at his new blue Converse, which suddenly seemed tacky. Kirin reached out and
offered his hand. “Kirin Patel.”

Lock looked up and took his hand, shaking it awkwardly. Shaking hands was one
of those strange customs, like wearing ties, that seemed to be from another time
and place. He did his best, certain that his gawky handshake was unimpressive.

However, Kirin seemed unconcerned as he sat down in an expansive chair, his jacket
parting to reveal a slight paunch, his hands placed casually, palms down, on the
wide, flat armrests. Lock decided he needed a chair like that for his living room.
His vibrating recliner suddenly struck him as…juvenile.

“Mr. Cairnes—Lock—I’d like to offer you a job,” began Kirin. He reached down to
adjust his bright-blue pocket square, as though he’d suddenly noticed that it was
out of place. As he looked up, Lock thought Kirin looked like a man who felt as
if he’d gotten away with something. “It pays quite well,” continued Kirin, “and
I think you’ll find the work very interesting.” He paused and leaned forward slightly.
“How does that sound?”

“A job?” Lock heard himself echo dully. He looked out the far window at the cold
blue sky, darkened by the window’s tint, and rubbed his hands together slowly.
Perhaps this really was just a job interview. However, Kirin had skipped past the
usual pointless questions and gone right to offering him the job. And there was
still the question of how they’d known about his interest in quantum cryptography.
“Sounds good, I guess,” Lock mumbled.

Kirin leaned back, looking surprised. “Don’t you want to know what kind of job
it is?”

“Sure,” said Lock, his eyes wandering to the paintings on the wall. The one on
the left was white with what looked to him like a brightly colored whirlpool viewed
from above—various shades of reds and blues, with a smattering of yellows. Lock
decided he liked it and wondered how much it had cost.

“I’d like you to build me a quantum computer,” said Kirin, an expectant smile
on his face.

Lock laughed, partly because of the sheer absurdity of the statement and partly
out of nervousness. What the hell was this guy up to? “A quantum computer?” he
parroted, his eyes coming back to Kirin’s, his eyebrows raised.

“Yes,” said Kirin, looking mildly offended. Lock realized he must have sounded
dismissive. Kirin elaborated. “What if I told you that we had licensed the technology
from Coherence Technologies?”

Lock stopped laughing. Kirin didn’t look or act like he knew Shor’s algorithm
from a brute-force dictionary attack. And no one actually called them Coherence
Technologies. They were CoTech, or maybe Coherence. “For the Wave Nine? The NSA
locked that up.” Hadn’t they? One rumor on the message boards was that the Wave
Nine would be released once the Internet’s cryptography infrastructure had been
upgraded to use algorithms that weren’t vulnerable to quantum computing-based attacks.
Another rumor held that the NSA already had a quantum computer, and simply
didn’t want anyone infringing on their monopoly.

Kirin ignored his objection. “What I’d like to do is hire you to build a quantum
computer based on the specifications from Coherence Technologies.”

Lock’s eyes narrowed. “I can think of several folks in Ann Arbor alone who are
probably better qualified than I am for something like that.”

Kirin waved his hand. “Nonsense, Lock. We need someone with, shall we say, practical
hands-on experience, as much as we someone who understands the physics. Just like
the Chief Scientist at Coherence Technologies. There really aren’t that many people
like him. Or like you. At least not who would be interested in this job, mind you.
The private sector isn’t for everyone. And, again, we’re happy to pay you a generous
salary.”

Lock sat back and took a deep breath, his eyes wandering again to the view of
the river outside. Maybe this was for real. Maybe he was so accustomed to failure
at this point he couldn’t even trust an opportunity when it was handed to him.
He took another breath and tried to focus on the pieces that didn’t yet fit. “You
seem to know an awful lot about me.”

“Of course!” Kirin clapped his hands together as if something had been agreed
on, showing his teeth with a Cheshire-cat smile.

Lock stared down at the glass-topped coffee table, which had one of those interactive
magnet sculptures, presently featuring the outline of someone’s hand. Lock guessed
it was the receptionist’s. He pursed his lips. The heel of his foot began moving
up and down, seemingly of its own accord. He stopped breathing. “I get it,” he
intoned, looking up slowly. “You haven’t actually licensed their technology.”

Kirin’s smiled slipped away for a moment, but then he began to laugh and rub his
hands together. “Yes, you’re very clever. Not surprising, I suppose. That’s rather
the point, isn’t it? Anyway, right. We haven’t actually licensed the technology.
So we also need you to…ah, how shall I put this?”

“You need me to steal it,” interrupted Lock, his eyes closed.

“Yes, that’s it,” said Kirin, emphasizing the point with a ringed finger.

Lock slapped his hands on his thighs, preparing to get up. “Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Kirin—”

“Kirin, just Kirin is fine. My last name is—”

“—but I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“We haven’t even talked about the money—”

“It’s not the money. I just can’t help you.” Lock stood up.

Kirin quickly rose too, moving a step toward Lock. “Don’t you want to build
a quantum computer? Wouldn’t you find that exciting?”

Lock raised his hands as if to defend himself from Kirin’s advance. “Sure. It’d
be interesting. But…well, I’m going to go.” He began walking toward the door.

“How about a salary of a…a million dollars annually?” asked Kirin.

Lock was halfway across the room. He turned. Even Kirin seemed surprised by the
offer. He was apparently desperate—although Lock now understood why. He was being
offered everything he’d wanted—but he couldn’t take it. He couldn’t risk going
back to jail again. He couldn’t risk losing whatever was left of Sophie’s childhood.
And, hell, it was probably a sting by the FBI or something anyway. “The answer
is no. Got it?” He turned back toward the door and walked out of the room.

Donning his jacket in the elevator, he exhaled, his weight lifting slightly off
his feet as he descended. He glared up at the descending floor numbers displayed
above the door. “God dammit,” he cursed, slapping the burnished aluminum elevator
wall, and wondering why he’d bothered coming at all.

Sentosa Cove, Singapore • The Li Home
Thursday, January 18th
9:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Vipul Rathod felt a bit giddy as he shifted the black Acura SUV into park. Traveling
without his usual entourage was liberating. And especially so since he’d just pulled
into the ample driveway of one of his family’s chief rivals. If there was ever
a place he was supposed to have his bodyguard, this was it.

He got out and walked along a curving sidewalk toward Li Mun’s sprawling estate.
The morning sun seemed to make everything shinier, and there was a nice breeze
blowing in off the ocean. It seemed like an awfully nice day to be contemplating
murder.

He reached the porch and noticed a child’s scooter lying on its side. Did the
old fattie have grandchildren? He pressed a button next to the large double doors
and heard chimes playing a pleasant, familiar-sounding tune. He stepped back and
waited, crossing his arms and looking askance at the neighboring lot. It was just
as impressive as Li Mun’s. Perhaps I should get one of these places for myself,
he thought.

The door opened just wide enough for a tall, severe-looking man to glare at him.
“You’re Vipul Rathod?” he said with a heavy Chinese accent. Fresh off the boat.

“Yes,” replied Vipul.

The door opened a little wider. Vipul stepped into a large tiled foyer. “Raise
your arms,” said the first man. He raised them and felt two sets of hands patting
him down. They found nothing, just as he knew they wouldn’t, because he carried
no weapons. He didn’t need them.

“Right this way,” said the stockier man, leading him into a large living room
that was almost completely white, with white marble floors and patches of white
rugs, as well as a white suede couch that formed a cushioned perimeter around the
room. Light streamed in from two large sliding doors, offering a view of the ocean,
which glimmered like a vast display-case of diamonds. He made his way into the
room slowly, taking in the various details. A telescope. A large painting of a
black circle on a—what else?—white canvas. A glass table with obsidian carvings
of…something.

“Please make yourself comfortable,” said a woman’s voice behind him. Vipul turned.
The stocky man was gone. The woman before him was so beautiful his knees nearly
buckled. Waves of black hair cascaded down to her elegant neck. She had high cheekbones,
almond-shaped eyes with golden irises, and lips that made him think of fresh raspberries.
“My father will be with you shortly,” she said, and Vipul became light-headed.
She was still talking. “Can I offer you a drink? Some coffee? Orange juice? Or
mineral water, perhaps?”

“No,” Vipul managed to croak, his tongue sticking momentarily to the roof of his
mouth. “Thank you.” He tried to smile, but realized that it hadn’t quite come off.
It never did. He wasn’t much for smiling. Or women, for that matter. But this one…he
wondered if she thought he was too small, too boyish looking. Or maybe she went
for that. Women often told him he was—

“Very well, then. Like I said, my father will be in momentarily.” She turned and
walked down a hall that led out of the vast living room. Vipul’s head tilted as
he watched her hips sway with each step. She disappeared around a corner, and Vipul
was two steps into the hallway himself before realizing he’d started following
her. That was Li Mun’s daughter? To hell with my brother, he thought. I should be proposing a dynastic marriage. Maybe
his brother had the same idea. Maybe that’s why he’d never mentioned the daughter.
There was already enough bad blood between them as it was, without throwing Helen
of Troy into the mix.

The thought of his real reason for coming focused him. He turned back toward the
living room and sat down in a corner section of the expansive couch, then leaned
back and mentally rehearsed the imminent encounter. A few moments later, he heard
a shuffling sound. He turned and saw the old man entering the room; he was impressively
rotund, with dark pockets of flesh beneath heavily lidded eyes, and sported a disastrous
comb-over. Hard to believe, thought Vipul, he’s one of the most powerful men in Singapore.

Vipul stood up. Li Mun waved his hand as though to say Vipul needn’t have bothered.
He shuffled over to a large lounge chair directly opposite Vipul and fell slowly
backward into it. He stared at Vipul, raising his eyebrows and frowning slightly.
Vipul said nothing.

They stared at each other.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” asked Li Mun finally.

Vipul attempted a smile again, but this time the icy overtones were intentional.
“Nice to see you too, Li Mun.”

Li Mun glared, motionless.

Vipul found himself looking down at his brown loafers. He wasn’t accustomed to
being stared down. Usually, he was the one doing the staring. He forced his eyes
up to meet Li Mun’s gaze. “I’ll get to the point,” he said, his voice sounding
too wispy. This is it, he told himself. Get it together. “We have
a dispute, correct?” He paused, but Li Mun simply kept staring at him. “But I think
we can both agree that my brother is a stubborn man.” His tone was sounding better
now, a bit lower. “We can probably also agree that stubbornness is not a trait
of a good leader.” Ah, that’s too low. Don’t want to sound like you’re trying too hard. “Resolving
disputes like ours requires a willingness to come—”

“I’m not going to kill your fucking brother for you.”

Vipul could feel his heartbeat accelerate. Li Mun had skipped ahead of the script.
How would his father have responded? Of course, that was an absurd question. His
father was dead. And even if he’d been alive, old Bikram would have surely grabbed
Vipul by the earlobe and—focus. “Ah,” was all he managed to say.

“Anything else?”

If nothing else, the old man had taught him not to give up. And Oxford and Harvard
had taught him persuasiveness. In theory, anyway. “I understand. You’re concerned
about the cost.”

“The cost? It’s the heat. Are you a child? In this town? I gotta lay up for months
for something like that.”

“Which…costs you…money,” prompted Vipul, trying to conceal his impatience.

“Exactly,” said Li Mun.

Vipul watched the old man. He had barely moved since he’d sat down. Even his lips
barely moved. He reminded Vipul of his old Zen master, Yuan. Except that Yuan wasn’t
vain enough to bother with a comb-over and wasn’t obese. “But…if I were
running things, you and I…I think we’d get along much better.”

“You’ll concede the points if I kill your brother. No. It’s not worth it.”

Vipul suddenly realized Li was bargaining with him. For a moment, he wanted to
play just to see if he could win against such a formidable opponent. But then he
remembered why he was really here. The points meant nothing to him. Let the cranky
old bastard think he’d outwitted Bikram’s overeducated younger son. That actually
made things easier. Vipul knew that the dispute between his brother and Li Mun
was a complicated affair that came down to how they divvied up the profits from
selling whores, mostly from India and China. Li Mun wanted a larger share of the
Rathod organization’s profits because he provided most of the political protection.
“Three points, then.”

Li Mun blinked slowly and shook his head.

For God’s sake, man, Vipul wanted to yell. He took a deep breath. It’s just a game. And none of this matters anyway. “Four,”
replied Vipul. I have to at least make it look like I’m trying.

“Five.”

“Four is plenty. With all due respect.”

“With all due respect, go fuck yourself. We both know you’re a dead man without
me. You’re lucky I don’t ask for points on your whole fucking business.”

Vipul sat back. A crooked smile played across his face. Li Mun probably understood
his situation better than he did. He was a master. When this is all over, he
thought, I’m going to marry your daughter and then study everything you do. “What’s
your daughter’s name?” he asked, surprising himself.

“What? What do you care?”

“She’s very beautiful.”

“Yeah.”

“Five?”

“Give me five on the rest, and I’ll throw in my daughter.”

Vipul tried to laugh. He wasn’t good at it. He always risked sounding like a bleating
sheep. He’d need to work on that. The important thing was that Li’s joke meant
they had a deal. It was an awful deal by any ordinary standards. He’d have a hard
time selling it to Anand. But they had a deal, nonetheless. Now he just needed
to—

“How do you know your brother wasn’t here first?”

Vipul had begun standing up and so was caught half-sitting and half-standing.
He hesitated for a moment and decided to stand. Further discussion just created
unnecessary risk that the deal might go sideways. “I don’t,” he replied crisply
and began walking toward Li Mun to shake on their deal.

Of course, if Satish had already proposed a deal, either Vipul had just
made a better one, or he’d be dead momentarily. He was suddenly glad he hadn’t
played hardball—and certain that he was going to walk out of Li’s home alive.

Because there was no way his stubborn brother would have agreed to five points.

Jurong East, Singapore • Katya's Apartment

Thursday, January 18th

9:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya Brittain absentmindedly stirred her coffee with a spoon, even though she
hadn’t put any sugar or cream in it yet. Her compact figure was curled up in the
corner of an undersized yet abundantly cushioned sofa that she had selected specifically
so that she could curl up in it each morning. Her Medusean black hair was pulled
tightly back into a pony-tail, specifically so that she could feel the air-conditioning
caress her neck. She stared into the screen of her laptop with dark and curious
eyes, while balancing the laptop itself expertly across one of her thighs. She
held her World’s Greatest Daughter coffee mug with one hand and stirred nothing
into the coffee with the other. The mug had been specifically chosen to remind
her of home, since, by necessity, almost nothing else in her modest apartment could.

A grainy black-and-white video was playing on her laptop. She watched as a man
approached the entrace to a large resort home. She set the coffee mug down on the
end table next to her, which itself had been carefully selected specifically so
that it would serve as an extension to the sofa and allow her to set her coffee
mugs on it without needing to pay too much attention to what she was doing. Several
mugs’ worth of coffee had been spilled over the years because of tables that were
either too high or too low, and Katya had been determined to bring an end to that
particular tragedy.

She dragged her finger across the trackpad, effectively rewinding the video, and
then hit the spacebar on the keyboard to allow her to advance, frame by frame.
Once in a while, she would stop and fire off an exotic sequence of keystrokes and
mouse gestures that resulted in sending the captured frames to her printer, which
was on the other side of the room next to a dying fern, a plant she’d selected
specifically because it wasn’t supposed to die.

She hopped up from the easy chair and slid across the floor in her stockinged
feet, skidding in front of the printer in a practiced move. She picked up the photos
and studied them for a moment. She found their subject to be boyishly handsome. Maybe he’s dating the daughter, she
conjectured. She walked over to a bare desk in front of a window, a plastic-and-metal
affair that hadn’t been selected specifically for any reason at all because Katya
rarely used it, except to set things on it, which is what she did with the photos.
She stared out the window, which gave her a view of the rooftops of a number of
other apartment buildings and then, peeking out from behind them some distance
away, the lush green of the parks surrounding Jurong Lake. Beyond that,
she mused, where the wharfs and the Singapore Straight, and then, of course, Malaysia
and the Indian Ocean. She looked back at the grainy photo that lay on top of the
others, at a young man squinting in the sunlight, his shoulders slightly hunched.
He looked vaguely haunted. Probably just another cad chasing after Li Mun’s daughter.
Still, she’d ask Ong Goh about him, just in case.

2

Corktown, Detroit • Mad Dog's Tavern
Thursday, January 18th
11:00 p.m. EST (Eastern Standard Time)

“A million dollars?” asked Kafka incredulously, shocks of black hair emerging
at unexpected angles from the top of his oblong head.

“I could have probably gotten two,” replied Lock, finishing a sip of beer. He
looked across the bar at the old photo of “Mad Dog” Sullivan, an angry-looking
Irish gangster who was the bar’s namesake. Lock loved the antique feel of the place—the
bar had originally been a speakeasy back when Detroit was the principal port of
entry for liquor coming in from Canada. With the red brick walls and the gaslights
glowing in their frosted sconces, it was as though the bar was part of some hidden,
timeless alley.

“Two million? Are you kidding me?” Kafka stared straight at Lock through
his thick-framed glasses. They’d fallen out of fashion a few years earlier, but
Kafka hadn’t cared. He’d been wearing the same glasses since before they were in
fashion to begin with.

Lock gave him a sidelong glance and couldn’t suppress a wry smile. “Yeah, he threw
out a million when he realized I was walking out. Hell, maybe I could get him up
to three. Or five.”

“Lock, you guys need another round?” asked Vicky from farther down the bar, a
towel thrown over her shoulder. She wore her dark-brown hair back, and Lock admired
the creative ways she found to accentuate an already prominent bosom. Tonight her
strategy involved a black T-shirt, torn open at the neckline to form a ragged V-neck,
with the words “Ask me if I care” emblazoned across the front in white gothic script.

“Sure, Vicky, but when are they going to get some real Irish girls in here?” asked
Lock.

Vicky gave him an exaggerated frown but said nothing, grabbing two glasses from
beneath the bar and filling them from a tap.

“So are you going to take it?” asked Kafka.

Lock leaned sideways and sneered. “Really? You have to ask me that?”

Kafka shrugged, as if protesting his innocence. “I don’t know, man. You just get
in and get out. Also, fuck man…building a quantum computer? You’d do that for free.”

Lock shook his head vigorously. “I just can’t risk it.”

“I get that, when we were talking a few Ben Franklin’s to change someone’s grades.
But…this is the real deal, man. This is…how’d they get your name, anyway?”

“Here are you are, gentlemen,” offered Vicky, setting the two full pint glasses
in front of them.

“Vicky, does my friend Lock here look like a criminal to you?” asked Kafka.

“Nah. He just looks tragic.”

“Tragic?” asked Lock, straightening his posture. “I look tragic?”

“Yeah, you got those tragic eyes.” Vicky gave him a sly smile before wheeling
and heading back down to the other end of the bar.

Lock shook his head slightly and took a swig from his beer, marveling at the myriad
tip-maximizing tactics that Vicky had mastered.

“So how’d they get your name?” Kafka pressed.

“Don’t know. That’s a good question.”

“Message boards, maybe?”

“Maybe. The thing is…”

“Yeah?”

“You’re right. I would do it for free. Imagine having your own quantum
computer. That’d be something. I’d love to try Grover’s algorithm on something
besides a simulator. You know, for real. Actually see what kind of crazy
things I can do with it.”

“What’s the big deal with quantum computers again? I mean, I know that they have
qubits instead of bits, but I always sort of forget the details…”

Lock gazed at the back of the bar as though a movie were projected on it. “Well,
the easiest way to get it, is to think about simulating quantum mechanical interactions.
We can model them with wave functions, but, on a transistor-based computer, running
those models is relatively slow because we’re translating wave functions into a
bunch of logic operations.”

“Ones and zeroes…”

“Right. On a quantum computer, however, we aren’t using transistors, we’re using
the state of a quantum particle directly. For example, the spin—”

“Is that Black Irish playing? I think that’s Black Irish.”

“—of an electron or the polarity of a photon. Yes, that’s Black Irish.”

“I thought so.” Kafka returned his attention to Lock, with mock seriousness. “Continue,
please, professor.”

“You asked the damn question. Anyway, naturally, our simulation runs much faster,
because, in a sense, it’s not really a simulation anymore. We’re actually changing
the state of quantum particles.”

“Like if we wanted to model the effect of weed on the brain, the best way to do
it would be to actually smoke some weed.”

Lock smiled in spite of himself and sipped from his pint glass. “Sure. I guess.
The thing is, lots of things are based on wave functions, not just quantum particles.
To use your analogy of the brain, we know humans are really good at pattern recognition.
Like I can recognize you or Vicky. I’d probably recognize you even if you grew
a mustache and put on a hat.”

“Or if you were really stoned.”

“Also, yes. But…where was I? Oh, yeah. Pattern recognition is useful for other
things, too, like diagnoising medical conditions. So it’d be real useful if we
could hook up transistor-based computers to brain-based computers to do pattern
recognition. But we can’t because we don’t know how to build brains.”

“Which is too damn bad.”

“But we do know how to build quantum computers. Thanks to CoTech. It was hard
problem because quantum particles are really small, obviously, and really unstable.”

“This is all coming back to me now. Each qubit can have more information than
a bit on transistor-based computers. Because it’s a wave form? So lots of qubits
allows for really complex wave forms.”

“Exactly. It’s like an MP3 file. It’s just a big, complex wave form. But there’s
enough information there for us to hear Black Irish.”

“And then you can use a different set of algorithms, like Fourier transforms.”

“Right, because they operate directly on wave functions. Those algorithms run
blindingly fast on a quantum computer because the computer’s state already is a
wave form, not a bunch of switches that are pretending to be a wave form.”

“Ah, that’s right. And we know how to use Fourier transforms to do things like
integer factorization, which normally take exponential time—“

“Well, not exponential, but…almost, yeah.”

Kafka frowned disapprovingly. “As I was saying. Finding prime factors takes a
long time on transistor-based computers. But on a quantum computer, since we can
use Fourier transforms, we can use a different algorithm, and it runs much faster.”

“In polynomial time. For really large numbers this is a big difference. Seconds,
instead of years. Most of the cool things you can do with quantum computers are
based on that idea: algorithms that use wave functions, which we have to simulate with
bits and bytes, run much faster on qubits, because qubits are wave forms
already.”

“I remember you running those simulations. What was that language?”

“QCL. Yeah. I was always trying to show you some cool new algorithm.”

“Yeah,” said Kafka. “But I just wanted to play Super Mario.”

Lock laughed and looked down into his beer. “Yeah, and that fucking game where
you had to rescue Zelda and never did.”

Kafka chuckled. “Yeah. That game was awesome. Dodongo dislikes smoke!”

Lock shook his head. “We thought we had it all figured it out.”

“Hey, we had a good time.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Right. Sorry. I just meant—”

Lock waved his hand without looking up. “Forget it. The thing is…”

“What?”

Lock took a long draught from his pint glass. “Stealing it. That’s a different
story. And I’m not even sure I could build it, even if I had the plans. I mean,
you need diamond crystals, finely calibrated magnetic fields—”

“But that’s the whole idea of stealing the specs. All that stuff would be in there.”

“Yeah. Maybe. But if there’s one detail left out…”

“So…you’re thinking about it?”

“No, man. I mean, of course I’m thinking about it. You know, like I think
about maybe one day I’m gonna sleep with Vicky. But not really. I told
you. Too risky.”

“Two million dollars is a lotta cheddar, though.”

“Hell, for all I know, it’s an FBI sting or something.”

“A sting? Wouldn’t that be entrapment?”

Lock looked up and found himself amused by Kafka’s earnestness. “You don’t think
they’d just lie about it? I’d rather not be the martyr.”

Kafka lifted his glass. “I hear that.”

Lock sank into the aural ambience of laughter and hushed voices and another indie
band that he couldn’t quite place playing on the jukebox.

“Hey,” said Kafka. Lock felt a wiry hand on his shoulder. “Isn’t it your fucking
birthday?”

Lock shrugged.

“So what are we doing to celebrate?” demanded Kafka.

“Not much,” answered Lock. “I’m opening tomorrow.”

“Aw. Why didn’t you ask for the time off?”

“Need the hours. Every time I do that, Rich cuts my damn hours.”

“Come on, man.” Kafka sat up and looked around the bar. “We need to at least get
you laid.”

Lock frowned. “You make it sound like that only happens once a year.”

“Well, since Mandy dumped your ass…”

“I dumped her,” insisted Lock.

Kafka raised his hands in the air. “Okay, okay. I just remember you sitting on
my couch—”

“Oh, like you’ve never had a weak moment.”

Vicky seemed to appear from nowhere. “Hey, what about Sophie?” she asked.

“What about her?” asked Lock.

“Are you guys doing anything?”

Lock puzzled over Vicky’s apparent ability to participate in a dozen conversations
at once. Yet another tip-maximizing skill. “Yeah. I’m taking her and Krista snowboarding.”

“That’s so sweet.”

Lock nodded and took another sip from his beer. “If I’m lucky, she’ll come over
afterwards and we can rent a movie and order a pizza. She used to love that. But
now…”

“She’s sixteen, Lock,” counseled Vicky. “That’s all. She’s just outgrown it.”

“She’s outgrown me.”

“Nah,” said Vicky. Lock looked up just as she winked at him and scampered away
again.

“Two million dollars,” mused Kafka, cocking an eyebrow. “You could buy Sophie
her own slope.”

Lock regarded his friend warily from the corner of his eyes. “You’re such an asshole.”

“Or maybe I just work for the FBI.”

Pioneer Wharf, Singapore
Saturday, January 20th
4:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya put down the field glasses and wiped her brow. Her black Lycra tights felt
constricting in the night’s thick, damp heat. She leaned back against a large shipping
container, concealed in its shadow. After counting ten deep breaths, she peered
cautiously from around the corner, raising her field glasses to her eyes.

Li Mun was speaking to a dozen men in black suits who stood around him in a semicircle.
Behind them were four black Mercedes SUVs. Katya found Li Mun’s presence here puzzling.
The day before, she’d noticed a spike in the chatter from Li Mun’s lieutenants.
They never said much, and what they did say was nearly impossible to make sense
of, even after months of listening in. But in her years in the field, she’d learned
to infer a great deal through context. How many calls had been made? How far apart
were they? Did the speakers sound tense? She knew something was happening
tonight, even if she didn’t know what.

She’d picked up Li Mun’s cavalcade after they had crossed the bridge leaving the
Li Estate on Sentosa Island. The use of a private wharf like this one would normally
have suggested to Katya they were smuggling in young women. But there was no reason
for Li Mun to concern himself with such a routine event.

Two more black Mercedes SUVs pulled up, and more men in black suits began spilling
out of them. There was a strange tension in their movements, but Katya couldn’t
quite identify what it was. Abruptly, she recognized the man who got out of the
rearmost vehicle: Satish Rathod. Now it all started to make sense. The Rathods
were a relatively small-time crime family, not nearly as influential as the Li
Triad, and certainly not Triad. But they were players, nonetheless. Probably here
to negotiate some sordid business arrangement.

The two men shook hands, encircled by what amounted to a platoon’s worth of nervous
soldiers. In their midst, the two principals chatted easily, like old friends.
Katya hadn’t bothered setting up mikes or cameras—the place was too wide open.
She was probably too close as it was.

She leaned back against the shipping container and took another deep breath. This
was something of a letdown. She’d been hoping for a breakthrough—perhaps a meeting
with the trade minister, or at least the deputy minister. She considered just packing
up and leaving. But then she thought of Ong Goh. Another trick that nearly a decade
in the field had taught her—information was currency. Maybe she’d learn something
that would be useful to the SPF. After all, they needed a warrant to do surveillance
here. Whatever was happening, she was the only way they’d ever know about it. And
although the CIA was on friendly terms with the SPF, and she was on good terms
with her contact, Ong Goh, it never hurt to come bearing gifts.

She squatted down to fish around in a black canvas bag she’d brought with her.
She pulled out a small black camera and then slowly peered around the corner again.
She heard the rumble of a boat and then saw its outline as it approached the dock.
The running lights were off. She heard voices calling out—they were guiding the
vessel in. Everyone was now facing the shore, which meant there wasn’t much point
in taking pictures because there were no faces. Still, she held the camera in position.
They’d turn around eventually. She’d snap a few pictures proving the meeting between
Li Mun and Satish Rathod had taken place, and then she’d split.

It was girls after all. The catcalls started even before she could see them. Perhaps
they were a gift to cement some business deal? The first of them appeared at the
front of the barge, alighting unsteadily on the dock with the help of several of
the gangsters. Then a second and a third. Satish and his men were acting as though
they’d never seen women before. Li Mun’s crew had actually withdrawn slightly.
Curiously, they weren’t looking at the girls—

Gunfire flashed and cracked and the women screamed and nine men were thrown backward,
falling to the ground. Katya’s arms fell to her sides before she remembered the
camera. She brought it back up, focused, and held the button down. She took a round
of photos and put the camera down again, watching with naked eyes. Li Mun’s men
advanced, divvying up the slain and carefully firing one round into each of their
skulls.

Kill shots. Take no chances.

And leave no traces. Weapons dangled from shoulder straps or disappeared into
holsters. Keys were taken from pockets. Bodies were picked up and thrown aboard
the barge that had brought the girls, who in turn were loaded into the newly orphaned
SUVs. The motor of the barge fired up, grumbled a bit, and the ship drifted back
into the darkness. The SUVs efficiently formed a parade of tail lights leading
back out to the main highway.

Within ten minutes of the first shots, the wharf was empty.

Katya slid down behind her container and realized she wasn’t breathing. Calm down,
she told herself. It was just another gangland execution. Li Mun had, for some
reason, decided he’d had enough of Satish Rathod. No big deal, not her concern.
But still, her hands were shaking. Even though she had some military training,
spook fieldwork was mostly surveillance and relationships. She’d never witnessed
anything this violent firsthand.

She looked at the camera and began flipping through the photos she’d taken, partly
out of curiosity and partly just to calm herself. Neither Li Mun nor Satish Rathod’s
faces were identifiable in a single photo. Satish, of course, had been on the ground
by the time she’d starting taking pictures. Li Mun had quietly lumbered into the
back of one of the SUVs, never once turning toward the camera. She wondered if
perhaps he’d known she was there. She looked around nervously, but there was nothing
but looming shipping containers and shadows upon shadows. She placed the camera
back in the bag, hoisted it over her shoulder, and hurriedly disappeared into the
darkness.

Tally Bar, Singapore
Saturday, January 20th
10:30 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya worked her way through the crowd at the legendary Tally Bar and climbed
up the spiral staircase to find Ong Goh at his usual table in the far corner. She
sat down across from him and smiled. He always managed to look at her like she
was the only woman on earth. She admired the Clark Gable mustache and the confident
look in his eye and the impeccable way he dressed, with a cravat and neatly turned-out
collar, his silver hair always slicked back—and his whiskey glass never empty.
Ong Goh was truly a man from a bygone era.

“Hello, my darling,” he growled, his voice somehow cutting through the sound of
the drum solo from Sing, Sing, Sing. “Will you marry me?”

“You’re already married.” Ordinarily, Katya would have merely tolerated the harassment,
taking the high road in the name of some larger goal. She believed she had pretty
thick skin. But coming from Ong Goh, it was somehow, if not charming, at least
inoffensive.

“I’ll get divorced.”

“Ask me again when it comes through.”

“I will.”

A waiter appeared. Ong Goh ordered for her: “Whiskey sour for my beautiful companion.”

“Just a soda water with lime,” corrected Katya.

Ong Goh frowned. “How can I take advantage of you if you’re always sober.”

Katya smiled patronizingly. “I have some interesting news.”

“There are no words you can speak that would not be interesting, my darling Katya.”

“Right. Last night—well, I guess it was early this morning—Li Mun’s thugs shot
and killed Satish Rathod and…eight of his men.”

“Not seven or nine?”

“No. Eight.”

“My, my. Where?”

“There’s a private wharf they use, west of the airport. They use it mostly for
girls. But this time there was some kind of meet. Apparently, it didn’t go well.”

“Satish dead. And the little brother isn’t even in the business.”

“The little brother?”

“Vipul. Their father sent him off to Oxford. Sort of the runt of the family.”

“Hmm. So he’s like Michael Corleone.”

“A Godfather reference? Sure. Except his father’s already dead.”

“That brings me to another question.” Katya delved into her purse and pulled out
the photos she’d printed from the video capture outside Li Mun’s home. “Is this
Vipul, perhaps?”

Ong Goh put down his whiskey and examined the photos. Katya’s soda water arrived,
and she took a sip. “Could be,” said Ong Goh. “I’d have to run it by someone to
be sure. Can I keep these?”

“Sure. I have some others from the wharf last night, but they don’t show much
except a bunch of guys in suits lying on the ground.”

“I can see that in the alley beside the hotel any night of the week.”

Katya smiled.

Ong Goh leaned back and took a long draught of whiskey. He stared at Katya. “In
all seriousness, why won’t you run away with me?”

“What do you make of all this? Why is—what’s the brother’s name again?”

“Vipul. Don’t you know, I’m very unhappily married.”

“No, you’re not. Do you think Vipul made some kind of deal with Li Mun? Was it
a power play? Did he arrange to have his brother killed?”

Ong Goh leaned forward and took Katya’s hand. “You mustn’t overthink these things,
my love. The criminal mind is rarely complicated. Anyway, who cares? The Triad
is our real concern.”

Katya withdrew her hand. “I know. I just thought it might be useful intel.”

“I’ll pass it on. Thank you. Do you have anything else?”

“Not this time. You?”

“Not much. As expected, our minister is planning to support the quota proposal.”

“That’s good.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Except that I have his cell conversations with Li Mun. So it proves Li Mun is
influencing him.”

“It proves nothing. We have nothing to go after him with and nothing to show Triad
influence. You know I can’t use your surveillance.”

“Not directly, no. You know better than I, this is how it always starts. A piece
here and a piece there.”

“If it means dragging this case out so I can spend my evenings with you, I’m all
for it.”

Katya smiled wearily. “Not quite what I meant.”

Chinese Garden, Singapore
Sunday, January 21st
5:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Had anyone been surveilling Katya, they would have known that every morning she
went for a long walk, all the way down to the Chinese Garden and then back. And
every morning she’d meet with what they might guess was a retired gentleman who
had a fondness for Panama hats, guayabera shirts, and perhaps attractive young
women of ambiguous ethnicity. They would meet a little after sunrise on weekdays—perhaps
thirty-minutes later on weekends—on a bridge near the twin pagodas overlooking
Jurong Lake and have a chat. They were creatures of habit, it seemed, as they rarely
missed a day. Perhaps they’d become friends, in time, meeting each morning like
that. Maybe it was just knowing that the other was going to be there, looking forward
to saying hello and hearing the latest news.

Or maybe…

ψ

This particular morning, as on most mornings, Haruo Quartan arrived before Katya.
He leaned over the railing, appearing to stare out at the calm surface of the lake.

Katya walked to the apex of the bridge, taking her place next to him, and assuming
the same posture. “Good morning, Haruo,” she said.

“Good morning, Katya. I hear Mr. Li has been a bad boy.”

“I saw it myself.”

Haruo paused. “What tipped you off?”

“Chatter.”

“Cell phones?”

“Yes.”

“They never learn.”

Katya smiled to herself. “I’d like to think perhaps it has something to do with
listening patiently for nearly two years. Not to mention Hong Kong.”

“There’s that,” acknowledged Haruo.

Katya smiled again. “Thank you.”

“What’s he about?”

“Li Mun? I think it’s actually a coup happening in another family. Li Mun was
just the trigger man.”

“Which family?”

Katya straightened up, leaving just a hand on the railing, and turned toward Haruo,
who was still looking out over the lake. “Fairly small-time. The Rathods?”

Haruo made a slight humming sound.

Katya wondered if that meant he’d heard of them. “The younger brother, Vipul,
got rid of the older one, Satish,” she added helpfully.

“For Li Mun to intervene…”

Katya was eager to show Haruo that she had explored all the implications. “Vipul
must have conceded something.”

“A great deal, I would imagine. This is Singapore, after all.”

Katya was silent. Haruo apparently wasn’t impressed by her analysis. This is Singapore. Murder
was rare in the island city-state. Of course, that was partly because it was so
easy to get rid of the bodies. The murder of Satish and his men would very likely
never show up in the official statistics.

“The younger brother is up to something. Li must realize it too.”

Katya took a different angle. Haruo was always telling her to stay focused. She
wanted to make sure he knew that she had. “Given our mission here…”

“You’re probably right.”

They were silent for a few moments. Sometimes, there just weren’t any new developments
worth talking about. Katya prepared to say good-bye.

But apparently it was okay for Haruo to get distracted. “What do we know about
the younger brother?”

“Not much. Ong Goh is going to send me the SPF profile. Western education. Oxford.
Was not directly involved in the family business.”

“You see the problem?”

Katya did not. What had she missed? She waited for Haruo to continue.

“In medieval Europe, the nobility sent the younger sons into the clergy. Today,
gangsters send their younger sons to Oxford and Harvard.”

Katya desperately wanted to see the connection.

Haruo’s mind continued down whatever rabbit hole it had fallen into. “The father,
then, he’s passed on?”

“Yes,” confirmed Katya, recalling Ong Goh’s observation from the night before,
and wondering what had inspired Haruo’s guess.

Haruo made a low humming sound. “Let’s set up on Vipul.”

“I don’t understand.” Katya stared intently at Haruo as if she might be able to
see into his mind and learn the secrets of how it worked.

“There’s nothing to understand, Katya. That’s exactly the problem.”

She turned back toward the lake and stared at a family of turtles swimming past,
feeling stupid.

“Katya. You’re looking for connections. Sometimes you have to look for disconnections.”
Quartan paused. “I’m not talking about the whole works. Just the basics. A radio
scanner. A few cameras. Just to have it. Just in case.”

“Okay.”

“Anything else?”

“Ong Goh proposed to me again.”

“I wish you both the best.”

Katya laughed in spite of her frustration. “I didn’t accept!”

“Ah. Well, you should. He’s a fine old cadger.”

“He’s married!”

“To a fine woman, in fact. Until tomorrow?”

“Good-bye, Haruo.”

“Good-bye, Katya.”

3

Little India, Singapore
Sunday, January 21st
9:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Vipul wiped a bead of sweat from his brow as he scanned the faces of the family’s
lieutenants, seven of whom had recently been promoted. The chairs at the tables
were all occupied, and there were still another dozen men standing. They were all
packed into the back room of Desi, a restaurant whose real purpose was to launder
money and give them a place to meet discretely. It was hot and dank, and the smell
of sweat and curry made Vipul’s eyes water.

Anand’s imposing figure loomed over his own, even though Vipul was standing as
tall as he could. He never stopped being impressed by Anand’s stature. Everything
about him was oversized: his bald head, his broad shoulders, his ring-clad, claw-like
hands. His eyes always seemed to be narrowed and his jaw clenched. “Everybody’s
here,” he whispered to Vipul.

Vipul had no way of knowing. The faces looked familiar, but that was all. His
father had sometimes brought him along to meetings not much different than this
one. “Watch and learn,” he’d growl, “but say nothing.” Sometimes he would go to
the office of his brother, om shanti, to engage in another round of their
interminable arguments…and someone would interrupt, waved in by his brother, striding
into the office past him like he wasn’t there, leaning forward to whisper something
into his brother’s ear. And then there were the family gatherings, where he’d see
them lurking in the back, mere shadows consorting at the fringes of the laughter
and conversation, occassionally exchanging whispers with each other or his father
or his brother. So he had a uneasy familiarity with them, but that was all.

Thank goodness for Anand. Or, rather, for his father’s foresight in asking Anand
to take Vipul under his wing. His father had known this day would come. And Anand
had embraced the role, just as his father had known he would. Anand understood
what his father was trying to do. But the rest of the organization saw Vipul as
a threat.

Just like his brother had.

Vipul leaned over to Anand. “In the green shirt, there, that’s Paresh, right?”
he whispered.

Anand looked down at him from the corner of his eyes. “Right.”

“And the one with the scar is Sameer?”

“Yes.”

Vipul straightened up. “Good to see you again, Paresh.”

Paresh nodded respectfully. They were going to at least give him a chance, apparently.

“And you, Sameer. How have you been?”

Sameer shrugged. Vipul could see immediately that he’d made a mistake. Sameer
must have been close to one or more of the men who’d “disappeared” last night.
Vipul didn’t want to appear too cheerful. After all, his brother had just died. Om shanti.

Vipul decided it was time to begin. “Quiet please,” he said in Hindi. No one seemed
to notice.

“Quiet please!” yelled Anand. Instantly, the room went silent.

“Thank you,” said Vipul, continuing on in his normal speaking voice. “As you know,
early this morning my brother and several of our family were to meet and negotiate
terms with the Li Triad for the girls we provide to…establishments in Geylang and
other areas. They did not return.” Vipul let his words hang in the air for a moment.
He decided that his voice was wavering too much. He needed to sound more forceful.
“We were able to confirm via other sources that, as we suspected, Li Mun executed
them and dumped their bodies in the strait.” Vipul looked at the faces staring
back at him impassively. He tried to meet their eyes, each in turn, just as he’d
watched his father do. These were the kinds of nuances Satish had never grasped.
“We must obviously retaliate.”

There was a sudden burst of oaths to avenge their fallen brothers. Vipul held
up his hand. The room gradually fell quiet. Vipul was relieved he hadn’t had to
rely on Anand again to silence the men.

“But we must be patient.” He could feel the air become still. “Now I know what
you are all thinking. Believe me. What do I know about these things? What does
Bikram’s sheltered son know about anything besides books and computers? I know
you are thinking that if we do not retaliate, then where will this end? Little
by little, your business will be eaten away. This is how my brother thought too,
and I knew his mind better than you might think.”

Vipul paused again and looked down at the floor, as though considering carefully
what he was going to say next. Of course, he knew exactly what he was going to
say next. He looked up, right into Sameer’s eyes. “But wars are costly too.” He
moved his gaze to Paresh. “Li Mun chose his moment carefully. There will be no
bodies. There are no witnesses, at least none who will speak to the police. At
most, there will be a few reports of gunshots and that’s all. There will be no
heat. He will not be sending anyone home to China. But…if we choose to retaliate
now…without picking the time and the the place…without being very careful…we will
pay the price. Not Li Mun. But us.” Vipul paused again. They were considering what
he was saying. They didn’t like it, but they were thinking about it. That’s all
he needed. For now.

“That’s why I’m going to offer Li Mun a truce,” he continued. “I will give him
the terms he seeks.” The grumbling began before the words were out of his mouth.
Vipul held up his hand, and again it had the desired effect. “I will allow him
to think that he has won. He will assume, as you do—” Vipul paused for effect,
“—that I am nothing more than a schoolboy, too weak to oppose him. And he will
assume that you—” Vipul waved his arm grandly at the men, “—are without a leader,
that you will crumble, and fall apart, and then he will take you on, one at a time.”
Vipul paused. He was likely straining their capacity for strategic thinking at
this point. It was time to wrap it up—something he’d learned, not from his father,
at least not directly, but at Harvard. Leadership was about defining a mission
that everyone could identify with.

He brought his point home. “And when the time is right…when he is comfortable…we
will do to him just as he has done to us. When he least suspects it, we will set
an ambush. We will kill Li Mun—” Vipul raised his voice slightly, “—and we will
destroy the Li Triad—” and then raised it a little more, “—and avenge my brother’s
death…and those of all our fallen brothers!”

The room was silent. Vipul could hear a water heater fire up somewhere. There
were plates clinking together in the kitchen in the next room. He surveyed his
audience with his eyes. He had expected them to cheer at this point, but at least
they were rapt with attention. Some jaws were slack, others firm, but no one was
indifferent.

That would have to do. He turned to Anand, who was glaring at the men, his eyes
slitted, the muscles in his stubbled jaw working. “Let’s go,” he said quietly,
and he walked out of the room.

I am your leader now, he was saying to the family’s lieutenants. There
would be no questions, no debate. Of course, he knew the moment he left the room
they would curse him as a weakling and predict disaster for the family. But he
also knew they would do nothing about it.

“What did you think?” he asked Anand after they were settled in the backseat of
his SUV, heading back to the office.

“I think they will grow impatient quickly.”

“How quickly?”

Anand paused. “A month or two. At most.”

Vipul stared at the back of the seat in front of him and shook his head. “That’s
not enough time. We’ve only just begun to recruit the engineer.”

Anand merely turned his enormous hands palms up.

“Speaking of which, have you heard anything?”

“Kirin made contact.”

“And?”

“No luck. Yet.”

Near West Side, Detroit • Kingfisher Used and Rare Books
Sunday, January 21st
10:15 a.m. EST (Eastern Standard Time)

Lock had been lobbying Richard for years to get an espresso machine installed
in the bookstore. Maybe clear a shelf or two and add a few nice chairs. His justification
was that it would be nice for the customers, but mostly he wanted it so he could
avoid the half-mile walk to the Bean Bar. He hugged himself as he stood in line,
trying to get warm.

A few minutes later, Lock was comfortably ensconced in a pea-green easy chair
that had been abandoned by its prior inhabitant just as Lock had taken a hot mug
of cappuccino in his hands. He closed his eyes and began recounting in his mind
a recent exposition on string theory he’d given for a customer. He’d been particularly
pleased with it and was considering sharing it on a message board after work. He’d
made an analogy between the strings of a guitar making musical notes and—

“Mr. Cairnes, if I may have a word.” The voice was familiar but Lock’s mind struggled
to identify it.

He opened his eyes and saw finely woven black wool slacks, and as his gaze trailed
upward, he recognized the face of Kirin Patel. He sat up.

“I must admit,” Kirin continued, “I am surprised not to have heard from you.”
He smiled. “I thought you would reconsider.”

Lock said nothing.

Kirin grabbed an empty wooden chair from a nearby table and pulled it up in front
of Lock’s seat. He sat down and leaned forward. “I can’t imagine the money isn’t
of interest to you,” he said softly.

Lock cleared his throat and looked around to see if anyone was listening. “It’s
not that…”

“Are you worried you’ll be caught?”

“No, not exactly.”

“I can assure you that we will provide you with the very best legal counsel if
it comes to that. Not that it would. And we have places where you can—”

“I’m just not interested. And I think—”

“Think of your daughter. Think of her future.”

Lock stared down at his ratty black work shoes. At least in Kirin’s office, he’d
had his nice new Converse on. Now he just looked…broke.

“Her security,” continued Kirin. Lock looked up, and it felt like Kirin
was leaning even further forward than he had been. And had his eyes had narrowed?

“Her security?”

“Absolutely.” Kirin shifted backward almost imperceptibly and smiled again.

They sat in silence for a moment. Lock watched an attractive blond in a black
leather coat put sugar into a steaming cup. A barista called out for someone named
Kenneth.

Kirin stood up. Lock turned and looked up at him. “Young man,” he began in the
tone of a father lecturing his wayward son, “are you going to spend the rest of
your life shelving books? You have considerable talent. Perhaps you should consider
doing something useful with it.” Kirin paused and half turned toward the door.
“Or I suppose you could spend the rest of your life paying for the indiscretions
of your youth.”

Lock watched him turn and walk out the door into the cold. Kirin hadn’t been wearing
a coat. Lock replayed the conversation in his mind. Think of your daughter. Think of her future. Her security. What
did that mean, exactly? Was it a threat…or just friendly advice?

Lock took another sip of his cappuccino and then decided to get back to work.
He grabbed a to-go cup and poured his cappuccino into it, then followed the blond
in the black leather coat out the door. The icy cold wind hit him like a punch
in the nose, making his eyes water suddenly. He winced and took another sip of
his cappuccino, desperate for warmth. What kind of person didn’t wear a coat in
weather like this?

Lock watched the woman walk to her car. It was a later-model Lincoln, brown and
stained with salt along the bottom. A dreary looking car, but substantial nonetheless.
The woman disappeared behind the tinted windows. Lock imagined that the salesman
she’d bought it from had called the color taupe.

Must be nice, he thought as he trudged along West Congress, careful to
avoid the ice patches. With two million bucks, he thought, he could have a car
like that, too.

Lafayette Park, Detroit • Lock's Apartment
Sunday, January 21st
7:00 p.m. EST (Eastern Standard Time)

“Oh! I forgot!” exclaimed Sophie, her mouth stuffed with cheese pizza.

“You forgot what?” inquired Lock as he scrolled through the movie options displayed
on his thirty-five-inch flat-screen. They sat on his dilapidated blue couch, plates
on their laps, with a half pizza on the floor in front of them. A wintery darkness
had made itself at home in his apartment, with only the eerie glow of the television
serving as a post-modern fireplace.

“Guess!” demanded Sophie.

“You forgot to go to school. What about Iron Man? You want to watch that?”

“No, I hate that movie.”

“You hate it? You love that movie.”

“I used to. Guess.”

“I did guess. You forgot to go to school.”

“No, but that’s a good idea.”

“It’s a terrible idea.”

“Guess again?”

“You forgot to leave a trail of breadcrumbs so you can find your way home.”

“No. Besides, I’m going to school in the morning, not home.”

“Unless you forget?”

“Can I?”

“No. What about Blade Runner?”

“Wow. How many times can you watch that movie? Guess.”

“You forgot your real identity, and now you just think you’re a little girl growing
up in Detroit who really wants to watch Blade Runner again.”

“I’m not a little girl anymore, Dad. And I don’t want to watch Blade Runner again.
So…no. You want me to tell you?”

“Yes, I give up.”

“I’m going to Hawaii!”

Lock turned and looked at her. She was staring at the television for some reason,
even though there was nothing on it besides the movie listings. Maybe his ex-wife
was a faithless Jezebel, but he couldn’t deny they made pretty babies. Sophie’s
sandy hair tumbled in natural ringlets to her shoulders. That was from Karen. But
those blue eyes that flashed with purpose and awareness—those were from him. Her
cheeks were rosy and accented her pale Irish complexion. She got that from him,
too. She shoved what remained of the slice of pizza she was eating into her mouth
and reached for her glass of root beer. Lock was almost certain the root beer was
going to end up all over the carpet or the couch, but for the moment anyway, the
crisis was averted. “Hawaii?”

“Yeah! Over spring break! Dennis is taking us!”

“Oh.” Lock felt as though a small hole were opening up inside of him. They’d always
talked about going to Hawaii together. He forced a smile. “For how long?”

“Two weeks!” She looked at him, smiling, sauce smeared on her chin.

“Two weeks?” repeated Lock, incredulous.

“Yeah!”

Lock frowned. “Wait. How long is spring break?”

“A week, I think.”

“So you’re going to be out of school for a week?”

“Well, no. Because there’s the weekend before and the weekend after, and plus
we have the Friday before. So I’ll only miss two days!”

Lock grunted and eyed his glass of root beer.

ψ

They ended up watching Mean Girls again. Sophie never spilled her root
beer and fell asleep before the ending. Lock got up and turned off the television.
In the darkness, he pulled a blanket blindly from a closet and draped it over her
prone body, then went back for a pillow. Gently lifting her head, he placed it
underneath. He sat down on the edge of the couch, and she moaned slightly before
flipping over. He pulled the hair from her face, leaned down, and kissed her gently
on the cheek.

“Good night, Cleopatra,” he whispered, using a nickname from the old days. Sophie
would declare herself to be the great Queen Cleopatra and give him orders. “We
march on Ireland!” she’d announce, and Lock would explain that Ireland was nowhere
near Egypt. But it didn’t matter to her highness, and in the end they’d march on
Ireland. Those days were long past, before he’d gone away, and Dennis had stolen
his family from him.

He got up and, without thinking, took the three strides required to cross the
living room. He sat down at his desk and turned his laptop toward the window so
the light wouldn’t bother Sophie. Not that it mattered. Lock was certain that Sophie
could sleep through a rhinoceros charging into a drum set. He tapped a key on the
keyboard to wake the machine up, and it sprang to life with a quiet hum and a sudden
burst of light. His fingers flew across the keys and traced strange hieroglyphics
onto the trackpad. His screen flickered and soon he was staring at a Web site telling
him that the future was here.

Won’t hurt to do a simple port scan, he thought.

ψ

Sophie opened her eyes. Her mind was still in the middle of that dream, the one
where she was playing in the surf on a sun-soaked beach. She could hear her phone
ringing on shore, but she couldn’t answer it. Except…that wasn’t her ringtone,
exactly, and why couldn’t someone just answer it?

Gradually, she recognized the beeping sound—the alarm on her phone was going off.
She sat up, looked around the living room, inhaling sharply. There was her dad,
his head on his desk, three empty cans of Coke lined up to one side, two Pop-Tart
wrappers on the other, his laptop screen full of those strange windows of cryptic
text that meant he’d been programming. The alarm hadn’t even made him stir. She
found her phone in her purse, which was sitting on the beanbag next to the couch.
She reached in, turned it off, and lay back on the couch, closing her eyes, inviting
sleep to reclaim her. But that wouldn’t do any good—her next alarm would just go
off ten minutes later. She could turn that off, but she knew by the time
she managed it, she’d be awake. Dennis had given her the idea, which had seemed
silly to her at first. What if that hadn’t worked, do you set three alarms?
Four? Where does it end? But she’d tried it anyway and found that just the process
of thinking about it seemed to wake her up enough that there was no point in trying
to go back to sleep.

She stumbled over to the desk where her father slept. That can’t be comfortable for him, she
decided. It had been a long time since he’d fallen asleep like that. “All-nighters,”
he called them. As in, I’m too old to still be doing these all-nighters. “Dad?”
she whispered. “Dad? Wake up.”

Nothing. Not even the usual mumbling. She’d try again in a bit. Otherwise, she’d
be taking the bus to school—and she hated taking the bus to school. Because
it wasn’t the school bus, it was the city bus, which stank, and crazy people would
sit down next to her and start complaining about how the stock market was like
roaches in your grandmother’s bathroom, or that they knew, they knew, but
never explained what it was they knew. Hopefully, he’d wake up. She could always
shake him awake, but if he was that tired…well, maybe she should just let
him sleep. Even if it meant taking the city bus.

She ate breakfast—her dad always had Pop-Tarts, which was one of the few things
that she liked about staying over at his place. On the other hand, he did not wake
up early and hand her a steaming mug of coffee when she woke up, with a splash
of cream and lots of sugar, the way Dennis did, so that sort of canceled out. She
settled for a warm Coke instead. She showered, dressed, repacked her backpack,
slung it over her shoulder, and approached her father, considering her predicament.
“Dad?” she whispered again. “Dad?”

He was snoring lightly. She could raise her voice and see if that worked. But
she decided just to let him sleep. She’d deal with the pungent smells and the crazy
talk for twenty minutes. And she’d give him a hard time about how he made her take
the city bus to school. She smiled mischievously to herself and quietly made her
way out the front door.

ψ

Lock woke suddenly when the edge of the sun crept past the side of the window
next to his desk, dramatically increasing the brightness of the light in the living
room. He wiped the drool from his chin and blinked. Sophie was gone. He grabbed
his phone and checked the time. It was almost nine o’clock. He rubbed his face
in his hands and thought about the pleasant dream he’d been having. He couldn’t
quite remember…

Ah. That’s right. They were in Hawaii…he had a house on the ocean…and Sophie lived
with him. It was a beautiful, wandering house, with a stairway down to the beach.
They had been sipping from coconuts, and Sophie had been building a sandcastle.
She was the Sophie from the old dreams, the dreams he’d had while he was away…

Lock fixated on the laptop screen in front of him. What was going on there? All
the terminal windows, the scrolling text…he focused his eyes. The password cracker.
He was running a password cracker. Actually, many of them in parallel. He looked
closer.

Someone with the email of ccarraby had chosen a weak password. He now had
access to their email. If he was lucky, someone had emailed an SSH key. That was
unlikely—CoTech was apparently—and entirely unsurprisingly—very security conscious.
Still, it was a start. It was like untangling a ball of yarn. You just started
pulling on a stray thread to see what happened.

His mind wandered back to the dream.

For two million dollars, he could get that place in Hawaii. Or something like
it anyway. And Dennis could put that in his pipe and smoke it. The hell with a
mere two weeks. How about living there? Sophie would love that. She’d love
it so much, she’d live with her dad again.

That’s how it was supposed to have been.

That’s how it could be again.

4

Southbank, Singapore • Vipul's Apartment
Monday, January 22nd
Noon SGT (Singapore Time)

Vipul had decided to indulge himself. After all, the road trip began next week.
He sat cross-legged on an enormous couch, his red and yellow Singapore cricket
team tracksuit standing in sharp contrast to the cream-colored upholstery. He leaned
forward over the chess set in front of him and moved one of the few pieces that
remained on the board, setting it down with a solid thunk. Next to the
board was a small laptop with a picture of a chessboard on-screen. Vipul studied
it for a moment before straightening up and extending his arms to stretch. Through
the great wooden doors that led to his bedroom, he could see two of his favorite
prostitutes, still sleeping, tangled up in the sheets of his oversized bed. The
midday sunlight filtered in through the blinds behind, lending a soft glow to the
pristine Ceylon ironwood floors. A small dish of crumbs and an empty espresso cup
remained as evidence of a light breakfast, which had been served earlier by his
butler, Sunil, an aged wisp of a man who had also served his late father, and who
had somehow now become attached to Vipul.

He was in the midst of a complex endgame. His opponent, who was somewhere in Australia
apparently, had a slight advantage in material, which Vipul had exchanged for position
and tempo. The difficulty was that he hadn’t put in the time in the years since
leaving college to improve his endgame play. His game had peaked when he earned
his Master rating in a tournament in Boston. He hadn’t played in a sanctioned tournament
in two years. But the upcoming road trip would leave him plenty of idle time to
get his game back.

He decided to continue to be aggressive with his pawns, to keep the pressure on
his opponent, forcing him to react to the threat of promotion. He played the move
on the board, savoring the heavy feel of the piece. He’d have to use a smaller
board while traveling. This is why he hated traveling—so many luxuries had to be
left behind. Even the butler was too old to travel.

Vipul made the same move on the computer so his opponent could see it and respond,
and then sat back on the couch, unfolding his legs, and staring back into his bedroom.
He could bring the girls, but that involved additional complications. It was a
business trip, after all, and he needed to be sharp.

Much like a chess game, every phase of his plan was equally important. As important
as it was that they recruit an engineer to clone the Wave Nine, it was just as
important to establish a network of private partnerships with brokers throughout
Asia. The scale and reliability of that network was the limiting factor of his
entire plan. The larger the network, the more the potential for profit; but the
larger it got, the harder it was to ultimately collect—and the more likely it was
that law enforcement might catch on to its existence.

Thus, the brokers had to be trustworthy, yet also comfortable doing business with
the Rathod family. Fortunately, over the decades, the family had cultivated dozens
of partnerships, and Vipul had been able to put together a list of candidates that
they’d already worked with or came highly recommended.

The laptop beeped, and Vipul leaned forward to see his opponent’s response. Just
as he’d hoped, Black had been forced to react. The problem now was that he could
only keep tempo for three more moves. After that, he’d have to play defense. Frowning,
he leaned over the laptop to offer a stalemate.

The upcoming trip would effectively be a whirlwind tour, beginning in the Rathod
stronghold of Bihar, India, and culminating in southeast China and Hong Kong. In
each city, they would meet with candidates and attempt to establish an investment
partnership. He had three assistants back at his office scheduling appointments,
sometimes as many as six in a single day, from seven in the morning until seven
at night, including weekends if possible.

The laptop beeped again. The stalemate had been refused. Vipul pulled back away
from the laptop, mildly offended. He looked over at the chess board. What had he
missed? He knew he couldn’t win, and he’d been sure he could defend against Black’s
potential attacks. But Black apparently felt otherwise. He leaned forward, looking
down at the board. After a moment, he turned it around slowly. If Black had an
attack in mind, it would have to involve some imaginative use of his remaining
rook…

Vipul became gradually aware that one of the girls had emerged from the bedroom,
draped in a sheet. He looked up to see Liu, her severe looks softened by half-opened
eyes, tangled hair, and the filtered sunlight. She curled up next to him on the
couch and placed her head awkwardly on his shoulder. She’d broken his concentration,
and the clock on the game was running. He would definitely have to leave the girls
behind. This trip was too important to get distracted. He’d gambled everything
to redefine his family’s legacy and, ultimately, to help India take her place among
the great nations of the world.

He pushed Liu aside and refocused on the game in front of him. She whimpered before
getting up and calling irritably for Sunil. Vipul’s mind wandered as he stared
at the board, fragments of his father’s endless lectures playing in his head. He
could see the old man’s immaculately groomed salt-and-pepper beard and the mole
under his left eye. The world is changing Vipul, he would say. We must change with it. The
old man wanted to get out of narcotics, gambling, and prostitution, and into what
he called legalized crime. But even his father would not have understood
what he was doing now. He would never have approved of his deal with Li Mun — but
Satish would have killed him if he hadn’t struck first! — and he wouldn’t
have understood the implications of the Wave Nine.

There it was. Black was planning to sacrifice the rook to gain tempo. And
it was a forced move on top of that, because not taking the rook would lead to
a checkmate. In his eagerness to stay on the offensive, he’d missed it. Surely,
though, there was still a way to win, or at least gain a stalemate. His single
bishop was useless, except as something for his king to hide behind. Perhaps he
could force a stalemate that way…

His mind wandered again. Maybe his father wouldn’t have approved of his methods,
but he would certainly appreciate his objective. With the Rathod family possessed
of incalculable power and influence, he could help lead not just his family but
all of India into that new world. He looked down at the wood floors, toward the
gurgling fountain in the corner, and over into the kitchen where Sunil was making
espresso for the girls, both of whom were now awake and wearing the expensive silken
robes he’d bought for them. He’d lived a life of luxury that was literally unimaginable
to most people in India. He understood poverty viscerally because his family had
forged it like a great sledgehammer, offering a better life to those who were willing
to do whatever was asked of them. And he understood it intellectually, having studied
the work of economists like Amartya Sen and Kaushik Basu.

All his life he’d concealed his true horror at the source of his family’s power,
and of the depth and scale of India’s poverty. Even his father hadn’t known his
true feelings. He’d grown accustomed to luxury and learned to mingle with the elites
without ever forgetting the sight of the illegal shanty towns that arose near every
running factory, the open sewers, the cripples deformed by leprosy, the gangs of
bony children in rags.

The sledgehammer had served its purpose—it had produced him. And now it was time
for him to redeem his family…and make his father proud.

Vipul made a quick move to position his bishop properly and leaned back again,
spreading his arms out on the couch. He’d allow himself some more time with the
girls this afternoon, and that would be it. From that point on, for the next several
months, he would be completely focused on his mission. He would be well rested
and prepared. He was ready.

The laptop beeped. Vipul leaned forward. Black was offering a stalemate. Vipul
grinned in satisfaction and accepted. He hadn’t won, but he’d played a difficult
endgame correctly and avoided a loss. He was getting his form back from his college
days. He stood up and stretched again, this time with his entire body, getting
up on the tips of his toes. He came back down and gestured to the bedroom.

“Let’s go, girls,” he called. “Back to bed.” The girls cheered and giggled, as
they were being paid to do, and headed toward the bedroom.

“Do you need anything, sir?” asked Sunil, who was in the middle of some sort of
culinary operation in the kitchen that presumably the girls had instigated.

Vipul turned at the great doors, preparing to close them behind him. “No, Sunil.
Why don’t you…sit down for a while. Rest.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“It’s nothing,” said Vipul. He closed the doors with a satisfying whump and
eyed the girls, who were already on the bed, with their legs folded neatly underneath
them, looking up at him expectantly. “Take good care of me, girls,” he instructed.
“After this, I’ve got to go save the world.”

Lafayette Park, Detroit • Lock's Apartment
Monday, January 22nd
4:00 p.m. EST (Eastern Standard Time)

The phone was ringing again. Lock didn’t bother to check the display. He was supposed
to have been at work an hour ago. What did it matter to him now? He’d be rich soon
enough.

He’d compromised the CoTech network. In another two hours, he’d have everything.
Or at least everything that was on the network. The only question that remained
was whether that was, indeed, everything, or at least everything required
to build a quantum computer. He returned his gaze to his laptop and began typing.
An uneven column of nearly unintelligible text began forming on his screen in front
of him, like cigarette smoke.

He found himself sitting in the darkness again. It got dark so damn early this
time of year. He got up, flipped on the light in the kitchen, and grabbed another
Coke. He thought about dinner. He was out of pizza and Pop-Tarts. And nearly out
of Coke. He was getting tired of all three, but he couldn’t stop now. He’d order
another pizza and a two-liter Coke.

Half a box of pizza later, the phone was ringing again. Again, he ignored it.
The way the magnetic fields were stabilized…the specifications for the diamonds
used for their nitrogen-vacancy centers, which made it possible to isolate individual
electrons…the process of annealing the diamonds…it was all there.

The phone rang again. And again.

ψ

A loud knock at the door. Lock opened his eyes. When had he closed them? The light
from the kitchen was overpowered by the clouded daylight streaming through his
windows. He felt his stomach rumbling with hunger. He got up and went to the door
and tried to look through the peephole. His vision was still too blurry to see
who it was. “Hello?” he yelled out.

“It’s Kafka. Lock?”

Lock stepped back from the door and opened it. Kakfa stood in the hall, wearing
a familiar slate-blue parka with the hood up, and sunglasses. He was bouncing slightly
on the balls of his feet.

“What?” asked Lock.

“I…I called you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Can I…you know, come in?”

“I’m busy.”

“You need a break.”

“No, I don’t.”

“I know you. I’ve seen you when you get—”

“I’m busy. I’ll call you later.”

Kafka stopped bouncing. “You’re doing it, aren’t you?”

“Doing what?”

“You know. That thing. The two million bucks.”

“What does it matter?”

“It matters because you said you weren’t gonna do it.”

“Yeah? So I changed my mind.”

Kafka looked askance and started bouncing again. “Can I come in?”

“I told you, I’m—”

“You’re busy. Got that.”

“I’ll call you later.”

“Yep.” Kafka turned and headed back toward the elevators.

Lock closed the door and then stood there for a second. He opened it again, but
Kafka was halfway to the elevator. Lock could see him turn and look back just as
he closed the door again.

He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. Time to get back to work.

Corktown, Detroit • Mad Dog's Tavern
Wednesday, January 24th
10:00 p.m. EST (Eastern Standard Time)

Lock was exuberant. “And drinks are on me!”

Kafka was worried. “Wait. So did your quit your job? Don’t you close tonight?”

“Vicky!” yelled Lock. She waved at him from the end of the bar. “The usual!” He
turned back to Kafka. “Should we get wings?”

“Sure.”

“Vicky! Add wings to that!”

The pair settled into their bar stools. Lock looked up at the picture of old Mad
Dog. Then he turned to Kafka. “Hell yeah, I quit my job. And I’m gonna be a millionaire
soon.”

“So you took that gig…”

“Yeah. I’ve already got the specs. Kirin gave me a ten-thousand-dollar advance.
Cash. So I’m feeling pretty good right now.”

“Ten thousand dollars?” Kafka adjusted his glasses.

“Yeah.” Lock pulled an envelope from his jacket. “Right here. Going to the bank
first thing in the morning. But tonight…we’re going to celebrate!”

“That doesn’t really sound like much—”

“Man, that place—”

“—considering the value of what you’ve stolen.”

“—is locked down pretty tight.” Lock smiled. “You mean borrowed. It took
some doing, though, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah?” asked Kafka.

“It started with a public IP they had for a wiki, which came up easily enough.
After a bit of probing, it turned out to be LightWiki.”

“You were cloaked?”

“Of course. Although it got interesting because I had to run a cluster at one
point. I almost forgot to cloak the cluster machines. Anyway, LightWiki has a known
exploit in version 3.6, but you have to get a login first. They had some names
on their company Web site, so I picked a few who looked like they were doing non-technical
stuff and started composing likely email addresses and sending emails from a dummy
address to see which ones bounced. Once I had a few legitimate emails, I ran a
simple password dictionary attack against the wiki. Sure enough, I got in pretty
quickly.”

“They had everything on the wiki?”

“No, no. It was a lot harder than that.” Both men leaned back in their bar stools
a bit as Vicky showed up with their beer. “Hey, Vicky,” said Lock.

Vicky smiled. “Hey, Lock. You look like you’re in a good mood.”

“I am. You wanna go to Vegas tonight?”

“I would, but I’m working.” Vicky gave him a wink. “Your wings will be up in minute.”
She headed to the other end of the bar.

Kafka eyed Lock disapprovingly. “You know the rule.”

“I know, I know. But I’m pretty sure she likes me.”

“You’ve got plenty of other options. Anyway…you got into the wiki?”

“Right. Where was I?”

“You got into the wiki.”

“Ah. Once I was in, I was able to use the exploit in 3.6, just a simple script-injection
attack, and dumped basically the whole wiki to my laptop. That gave me more emails
and a list of internal servers. And the IP of a jump box.”

“A jump box?”

“Yeah. They use that to get into the internal engineering network.”

“Ah, right.”

“It was right there in a welcome page for new engineers. I figured all the really
useful stuff was on that network. But the only port open was SSH.”

“So you needed to get a key.”

“Right. I hacked into their wireless router—”

“How’d you do that?”

“The sysops guys had a page on the wiki that had the main router password.”

“That was stupid.”

“So was using an old version of the wiki software.”

“I thought you said it was locked down pretty tight.”

“Well, it was. Just not tight enough to keep me out. And I still
didn’t have access to the jump box yet.”

“Whatever. So you got into the router.”

“Yeah. But I wasn’t on the internal network yet. I could see traffic coming and
going, but not traffic within the network. Which is where the jump box was.”

“Okay…”

“But the wireless router itself still had the guest account enabled.”

Kafka took a sip of beer. “Beautiful.”

“So then I could monitor traffic within the network. I focused on just the engineers,
which was easy to do because they kept accessing the jump box, for which I already
had the address. I ran probes against their machines and found a couple of different
vulnerabilities. Two of them were running iTunes—”

“Oh boy.”

“Yeah. So pretty quickly I was able to gain access to their machines,
which had the SSH keys I needed. I logged into the jump box and then started watching
traffic from there. That gave me the addresses of a bunch of other machines. I
probed each to get the distros and then wrote a quick crawler to pull everything
that wasn’t standard for the distros or known packages. Which wasn’t hard because
it’s basically just piping the output of a file audit to SCP.”

“Right. So then you’d have all the files from the engineering network.”

“Indeed. I still needed to Torrent cracked versions of a couple of CAD packages,
Microsoft Office, things like that, so that I could actually read the files.
But, yeah, I got everything. I also pulled all the source code. I spent a day looking
through it all. It was fascinating. There’s a few things I don’t quite understand.
There was a long argument captured in an IRC transcript about whether a secondary
electrical field was necessary to—well, that’s a whole different discussion—anyway,
it was hard to tell what the outcome had been. I looked again through the CAD drawings.
It seemed they’d somehow avoided the need for the secondary electrical field, but
I don’t quite understand how. Either that, or the CAD drawings are out of date.”

“Wings, boys!” announced Vicky.

“Thank you, Vicky,” said Kafka, looking at Lock with an arched eyebrow.

“Yes, thank you, baby,” agreed Lock, giving Vicky a wink.

Kafka rolled his eyes. “So…do you have enough to actually build the damn thing?
Because that would be really fucking cool if you did.”

“I think so.” Lock took a savage bite from a chicken wing. “I guess I’m about
to find out.”

5

East Detroit • The Lab
Thursday, January 25th
10:00 a.m. EST (Eastern Standard Time)

Kirin’s black Mercedes SUV pulled up in front of a three-story red-brick building,
the base of which was covered in half-hearted graffiti. Behind them was an overgrown
field. To one side was a parking lot, and to the other, a boarded up home that
looked like a strong wind might blow it down.

“I suppose it doesn’t look like much. But there’s lots of space, and it was cheap.
The first floor’s just about ready,” Kirin informed him.

Lock got out of the car and followed Kirin across the icy concrete toward a pair
of rusty metal doors with a chain looped through the handles, and an opened padlocked
dangling from one end. It was a bitterly cold, gloomy day. Kirin still wasn’t wearing
an overcoat, and nearly fell twice in his leather-soled Italian loafers. The chain
rattled as he opened the door. “Of course, Raj and Sanjay are already here.”

The doors creaked open. Lock walked in first, his eyes adjusting to the darkness.

“It’s the second door on the right,” said Kirin. Lock took a few tentative steps
forward. The floor was dirty and the paint had nearly peeled off the walls. Kirin
walked past him and then stopped farther up and swung open another door. “We’re
going to install a keycard system next week. But for now…it’s not like there are
other tenants or anything.”

“You bought the whole building?”

“Real estate in Detroit…” began Kirin, shrugging.

“I didn’t mean to put you out. I didn’t know you had another place already lined
up.”

“No, no, it’s fine. We should have thought to get something closer to your apartment.
Come on in.” Kirin gestured with his still-gloved hand.

Lock walked into a large room with fifteen-foot ceilings and a row of windows
spanning the outer walls. The floors had been washed and painted, and the walls
had been completely stripped down to the bare brick. Large metal columns rose up
to the ceiling every forty feet or so, like great trees in a strange brick-and-metal
garden. In one corner were three desks and a work table, along with a small stack
of routers and computers, with tiny red and green lights glowing and flickering.
A sinew of cables bound together with ties ran up and into a pipe that disappeared
into the wall.

Two men wearing dress shirts and khakis turned from their desks and stared at
him expectantly. The first had glasses and curly black hair, and the second had
very round eyes and was, unbelievably, wearing sandals.

Kirin walked toward the corner with the desks, which seemed overwhelmed by the
scale of the room. Lock decided that they could set up a nice BMX pipe without
disrupting the office area in the least. “These are your assistants,” Kirin was
saying. “Rajender and Sanjay. Rajender will help you with the more technical tasks.
Sanjay is here to help you with other things. Errands. Ordering parts. Whatever
you need.”

Lock stepped forward to shake their hands, but both men looked at him as though
he was holding a knife. Then the first one, with the glasses, relaxed and extended
his hand. “I’m Rajender,” he said. “You can call me Raj.”

The second one did the same. “I’m Sanjay.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Lock sincerely. They seemed like nice enough people.
The sandals were a bit strange, but they both looked earnest enough. When Kirin
had told him he’d have assistants, he’d been a bit worried. What if he couldn’t
trust them? What if they weren’t able to keep up with him? But between actually
seeing the office and meeting Raj and Sanjay, Lock’s mind was at ease. This was
workable. It might even be enjoyable.

“What do you think?” asked Kirin, who was obviously pleased with himself. “They’re
still working on things. Like I said, we’ll have the keycard system in place next
week. We’re upgrading to fiber for the network. We’re already rated for all the
power you asked for, so that isn’t an issue. The heating system is in need of some
maintenance but—”

“It’s fine, Kirin. It’s great, actually. The only thing…I see the servers. That’s
my new laptop, I take it? Okay. But…where is the rack?”

Kirin looked sharply toward Raj and Sanjay. Lock immediately regretted asking.

“I ordered it and it was supposed to be here today,” said Sanjay quickly. “I will
call the supplier right away and find out why it isn’t here already.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” said Lock, eyeing Kirin warily. “I was just curious…it’s
not crucial right away.” He had more questions, but he didn’t want to cause trouble
for his new assistants. He turned to Kirin. “I think we’re good.” He rubbed his
hands together. “I’m ready to get to work.”

Kirin smiled and spread his arms. “Wonderful. We are eager to see what you can
do.”

Renaissance Center (Detroit Riverfront) • Coach Insignia Restaurant
Friday, January 26th
11:00 p.m. EST (Eastern Standard Time)

Lock picked up Samantha at her apartment in Roseville at 7:30 sharp and took her
out to Coach Insignia on the seventy-second floor of the RenCen. It was the first
time in over a year he’d been on date, longer than that if you didn’t count going
out to The Firehouse or Steve’s Soul Food with Mandy. She certainly hadn’t.

He’d met Samantha two nights earlier at Mad Dog’s while celebrating his advance.
He remembered Kafka telling every one of the few people who were at the bar on
a Wednesday night that Lock was going to be rich. In hindsight, that didn’t seem
like such a good idea, but it had somehow culminated in Kafka forcing Lock to promise
to “take her” — meaning Samantha — “someplace nice.” And so here they were.

Samantha was attractive enough, thought Lock, although he wasn’t usually big on
dye-job blonds. She had chubby cheeks, but it worked for her, especially when she
smiled. The problem was that they didn’t seem to have anything to talk about, and
Lock couldn’t stop thinking about how easy it had been for him and Mandy to talk.
He’d never taken her to a nice place like this. Or anyone, really. Maybe things
would loosen up after a few glasses of wine. Or perhaps he’d splurge on a good
whiskey.

Lock ignored the first three phone calls. With the fourth, he whispered an apology
to Samantha, who was staring into her freshly delivered glass of wine as though
perhaps she might be able to dive in and swim away. Lock grabbed his phone and
turned toward the window. The city of Windsor, laced and shimmering with white
and gold electric light, beckoned from beyond the dark chasm that was the Detroit
River. There was only one reason his ex-wife would keep calling like that—if something
had happened to Sophie. “What’s up?”

“Lock,” replied Karen. “Thank God. Is Sophie with you?”

“No.”

“She isn’t?”

“No.”

“Oh God, Lock. I’m freaking out. I don’t know where she is.”

The gears in his gut begin to grind. “She’s not answering her phone?”

“No.”

“What about Krista?” asked Lock, referring to Sophie’s best friend.

“She isn’t either.”

“When did you see her last?”

“This morning. When she left for school. Krista always comes to pick her up.”

“Okay. Uh…” Lock heard a voice in the background.

“Dennis thinks I should call the police.”

“Jesus. Uh…”

“I’m freaking out here, Lock.”

“Yeah, me too. I mean, it’s probably nothing, right? She’s probably fine. But…just
in case.”

“Okay. I’m going to call the police.”

“All right.” Lock hung up the phone.

Samantha was sitting up, looking at him intently. “Is everything okay?”

Lock ran his fingers across the stubble that was forming on the top of his head.
“No. Well, probably. But…no. Sophie’s missing. Or not answering her phone.”

Samantha arched her eyebrows. “Sophie?”

“My daughter.”

“Oh. I—”

“Let me think.” Lock closed his eyes.

“Sure, sure, I’m sorry,” said Samantha hastily, shrinking back into her glass
of wine.

Lock could hear Kirin’s voice. Think of your daughter. Think of her future. Her security. He
picked up the phone and dialed. He heard Kirin’s voice answer on the other end.
It sounded unusually deep. “Hello, Lock.”

“Hey, Kirin.” Lock suddenly felt foolish.

“What can I do for you?”

“Uh…I don’t know where my daughter is.” Lock cringed.

“Your daughter? I’m sorry to hear that.”

“You don’t, uh—no, of course not. I’m sorry to bother you.”

“It’s quite all right. I’m sure she’s fine.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Good night,” said Kirin. Lock clicked off and stared out the window.

“Can I make a suggestion?” asked Samantha, after a moment.

“Sure, please,” said Lock, who began thinking about how to wrap up their date
as gracefully as possible.

“Is Krista her friend?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’ve called Krista, right?”

“Yeah,” said Lock, pursing his lips and tapping his hand lightly on the table.

“Can you call Krista’s parents?”

“No. I don’t have the number.”

“Do you know where they live?”

“Well…yeah…I’ve picked her up and dropped her off a few times.”

“Maybe you should just drive over there.”

Lock stared at her for a moment. “You’re right.”

ψ

Lock stood at the front door, feeling stupid again. It was nearly midnight. He
was probably going to wake everybody up. On the other hand, if Sophie was really
missing…he knocked on the door and shivered and waited.

Krista’s parents are doing all right, he thought. This place was almost
a big as Karen and Dennis’s new place. He looked back to his beat-up Ford truck
and saw Samantha peering out of the driver’s-side window, looking on with interest.
He turned and knocked again. He heard voices and footsteps and bolts and chains
coming undone. The door opened and a sleepy-looking man in University of Michigan
sweats opened the door, standing two heads taller than Lock. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” began Lock, realizing the stoop was lower than the
doorway. “I don’t think we’ve met…I’m Sophie’s dad.”

“Yes, Sophie.” He offered his hand and Lock shook it. “Is everything okay? Did
you need to talk to her?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Did you need to talk to Sophie?”

“Uh, she’s here?”

Krista’s father just stared at Lock for a moment. “That’s why you’re here, right?”

“We weren’t sure where she was…”

He gave a knowing smile. “My name’s Dylan,” he offered.

“Lochan. But people call me Lock.”

“I’ll get Sophie for you,” said Dylan. “Come on in.” He turned in the direction
of a stairwell behind him.

“No, no, that’s fine, Dylan. Thank you.” Lock half turned back toward the street
and then turned back again. “No need to wake them. We’ll get the full story tomorrow,
I’m sure.”

Dylan faced the door again. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” Lock began to back toward the street again.

“Well…it was nice to meet—”

“Actually, if you wouldn’t mind…” Lock had turned back yet again and taken a step
toward the door. “Can I just…I’d just like to check on her. I know it probably
sounds silly—”

“Not at all. Come on in.”

“I don’t really want to wake her or anything. I just want to…”

Dylan put his arm on Lock’s shoulder. Even on a level surface, Dylan’s height
made Lock feel like a little kid. “No problem.”

Lock stopped in the doorway and motioned to Samantha. One minute.

The two men went up the stairs where they were met by Krista’s mother, Kara, whom
Lock had met before—except her hair hadn’t been falling in her face, and she hadn’t
been wearing a faded blue bathrobe. Whispered greetings were exchanged and the
three parents made their way down a long hallway to a room with a closed door,
upon which was hung a stenciled sign that read “Krista’s Room.”

Dylan knocked at the door. “Krista?” he whispered. When there was no answer, he
cracked the door open a few inches, then motioned Lock forward.

Lock stepped into the bedroom. In the shaft of light from the hall, he could see
the shape of the girls’ bodies lying side-by-side on the bed. He recognized Sophie’s
backpack on the floor next to the bed. He took another step into the room, letting
his eyes adjust to the darkness. He felt Dylan standing beside him.

He heard Krista’s voice. “Dad?”

“Hey, sweetie. Sophie’s dad is here. He didn’t know where she was.”

Sophie’s voice was next. “Dad?”

“Heya, kiddo. Sorry to wake you. We didn’t know you were staying over here.”

“Seriously? I told Mom this morning before I left for school.”

“Well, you know…and then you didn’t answer your phone.”

Lock heard the sound of a deep sigh. “My battery died.”

“Okay. It’s fine. I just wanted…good night, Cleopatra.”

“Good night, Dad.”

Lock turned to leave the room. “Cleopatra?” he heard Krista asking, as Dylan closed
the door.

ψ

Lock got in the car and put it in drive. “She was there the whole time.”

“That’s good.”

“Her phone was dead.”

“Did you call Karen?”

“Shit. No. I’ll call her right now.” Lock fished his phone out of his pocket.
“Hey, Samantha?” he said, looking at her from the corner of his eye.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. And…sorry to end our date like this.”

Samantha smiled and placed her hand on his. “It’s okay. This is more important.”

Singapore Financial District

Monday, January 29th

10:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya looked down at Anson Road, twenty-two floors below, bristling with cabs
and commuters. She raised her gaze to the building directly across the street,
at the offices of a certain South China Finance Group, LLC, the sole officer of
which was one Vipul Rathod. The reflected morning sunlight made it difficult to
look directly at the buildings, and the windows were tinted anyway. She couldn’t
see the people working inside.

But she could hear them.

She turned to the lone desk, which had come with the office she had rented only
the day before. The office hadn’t, however, come with the laptop, radio scanner,
antenna, or telescopic camera equipment. Katya sat down in front of the laptop
and went through a few of the conversations displayed on her screen. She allowed
herself a small smile.

She was up and running on Vipul Rathod.

Of course, she still wasn’t precisely certain why. She heard Haruo’s voice
in her head, something that happened all too often. There’s nothing to understand, Katya. That’s exactly the problem. As
far as she knew, Haruo had no more background on the Rathod family than she did.
They’d never come into play in their current investigation into Triad influence
on otherwise friendly governments. Which meant, whatever clues Haruo had zeroed
in on, they were about Li Mun.

Her gaze wandered to the large radio antenna by the window where cell signals
were channeled and then sent through a radio scanner, which picked out individual
texts and conversations and fed them into her laptop. From there, the voice data
was converted so that everything was in the form of text. Then it was indexed to
make it easy to search for key words and phrases. In turn, that would help her
piece together the meanings of the various argot and codes that Vipul and his organization
used to communicate.

She wondered if Haruo appreciated her work on the Triad. She was only a small
part of a much larger investigation, but she was getting results. And she was so
much better at this than she had been when she first started, so much better than
most of the field agents out there. But it seemed all anyone noticed was how long it
took to get results. Haruo always wanted more, sooner. She appreciated the fact
that he pushed her. But a pat on the back might be nice once in a while, too.

Her gaze wandered further over to the telescopic camera, which was recording video
of everyone who came in and out of the building or the attached parking lot. The
angle wasn’t perfect, but with the cooperation of Ong Goh, it would allow her to
identify members of the Rathod organization and then correlate those with cell
phone conversations. That would help provide context. With any luck, in a few months
she’d be able to understand some crucial fraction of what they were saying to each
other at any given time.

In addition to remote cameras set up outside Vipul’s apartment and near buildings
in Little India—which, she’d noted, were frequented by known members of the Rathod
organization—she had covered all the basics. Renting this office was probably pushing
her luck, especially given the rent she was paying. Or, rather, that the Agency
was paying. But without it, she’d have no coverage of their cell phones—this was
the only place she could pick out the radio signals clearly enough. There were
no buildings close enough to Vipul’s apartment building, and setting up in Little
India would have required the cooperation of a local business. She’d work on developing
a reliable source there, but for now this would have to do.

Quartan would probably gripe about her expense reports. He always did. Well, he
didn’t gripe about them, exactly. He just asked questions. Sometimes just one question.
But he had an uncanny ability to find the one mistake she’d made. Which was why
it had gotten to the point where she was hearing his voice in her head all the
time.

Her smile faded. What was she doing here? It had been hard enough getting noticed
for her work on the Triad case. Now Haruo had her watching someone who wasn’t even
a secondary subject of any investigation. She’d checked. And these things
dragged on. She’d been on Li Mun for two years. How long would she be running on
Vipul Rathod? Her plan had always been to move to analysis after she had some experience
in the field. She hadn’t wanted to just be some poli-sci geek with lots of vague
theories about the way the world worked. But that was ten years and six investigations
ago. She had learned plenty. It was time to go home, sit behind a desk, and start
a normal life. Get a townhouse in DC, a dog, maybe even start dating.

Enough whining, Katya. They still hadn’t turned the minister. And she
could still learn plenty from Haruo. And if he thought watching Vipul would yield
results, there was surely a good reason for it. Something to do with Li Mun. Unless—

She stood up and walked to the window. Haruo did have some background on
Vipul—the background she’d given him, that she’d gotten from the SPF. Was there
something revealing enough in that to justify setting up on him? She reviewed
the salient facts in her head. Younger son. Sent off to Oxford and Harvard. Father
sets him up running a finance company of some kind. Probably handles the money-laundering,
but it’s definitely removed from the day-to-day of the family business. Father
dies. Younger son forges an alliance with the Triad and has his older brother killed,
a move that, on the face of it, could only serve to weaken the family, especially
given Vipul’s lack of experience in its principal operations.

She began to see what Haruo was seeing. Maybe it wasn’t just a power play.
Maybe Vipul had seen some larger opportunity, an opportunity big enough to justify
some short-term losses. The kind of opportunity he’d notice as the head of the
family’s money-laundering operation, the South China Finance Corporation, with
his blue-blood education in finance. An endeavor that he was actually more qualified
to lead than his brother, who’d spent his entire adult life learning the ins and
outs of organized crime. What if…?

She turned away from the window and leaned against the sill. She felt her heart
pounding in her chest. Had she spent so much time apprenticed to Haruo that she
was beginning to think like him, to put herself in the shoes of the people she
was observing? Vipul was either crazy or he’d had found an opportunity that was
bigger than whatever slice of the organized-crime pie his family presently controlled.

Either way, he was likely to become a factor in the Li Triad’s plans, for better
or worse.

Nariman Point, Mumbai • Kapoor Financial Planning Ltd
Monday, January 29th
7:00 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Swaran Kapoor rubbed his sweaty palms together as awaited his guests. His eyes
scanned the room. There was the decanter full of his best scotch, four glasses,
the soda gun, and the ice box. The fan was blowing from the back of the room, next
to the open window. All his papers were filed, the room had been swept and dusted—

“Good evening, Swaran,” said the young man striding confidently into his office.
He was younger looking than Swaran had expected. And smaller. Swaran found himself
suddenly aware that his white Oxford button-down was a size too small and that
he was sweating inappropriately. A second older, larger man followed the younger
one into the room. Swaran felt confident that the older man was capable of killing
him effortlessly and without a second thought.

“Good evening, Mr. Rathod,” said Swaran, hoping his accent wasn’t too pronounced.
He didn’t get the chance to speak English very often in Mumbai.

“Please,” said his guest, with a wave of his hand. “Call me Vipul. This is my
colleague, Anand Vaidyanathan.”

Swaran smiled and nodded. Colleague. That was a nice word for it. He gestured
to the chair in front of his desk. “Please. May I get you a drink?” He made his
way around from behind the desk toward the scotch.

“If you insist,” said Vipul.

He fixed them all drinks, taking a long draw on his while he was still behind
them. He handed them out and returned to his desk. Leaning forward, he smiled expectantly.

“Excellent scotch,” offered Vipul. Swaran smiled wider and nodded. So far, the
meeting was going well. He felt sure he was making a good impression.

“Let’s get down to business,” said Vipul, and Swaran was again relieved. He was
terrible with small talk. “I have some money that I want you to take care of for
me. Any and all transactions will be in the name of a partnership that you will
establish and, initially, be the sole partner in. The amount is modest—ten thousand
dollars—but I expect it to grow quickly based on investments you will make. You
will issue me a convertible note in exchange for the ten thousand dollars. This
note is a little unusual—are you following me so far?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Excellent. This note is a little unusual in that it has an interesting conversion
option. A second partnership, through which I will be loaning you the money, has
the option to convert it into shares of the first partnership, the one that you
will establish using the ten thousand dollars. This partnership, as I said, will
make investments. I will be providing you with, shall we say, guidance, as to your
investment strategy, which will help you ensure good results. In fact, I expect
that your results will outperform the nominal rate of the note quite easily. You
yourself will retain ten percent ownership of the corporation, after conversion.
This, in effect, represents your commission. Understand?”

Swaran swallowed hard. He was suddenly quite lost. He looked over at Anand, who
was certainly considering different ways to kill him right then and there. It sounded
like he was being asked to borrow money. Except he wasn’t being asked at all. Borrowing
money at “nominal” interest from a family like the Rathods was something you did
only when you were desperate. Swaran wasn’t desperate. He was eager to curry favor
with the Rathods, but he hadn’t expected that borrowing money from them would be
the way to do it.

“I can see you’re confused,” observed Vipul. Swaran was paralyzed. He couldn’t
read Vipul’s expression at all. And Anand simply looked like an angry stone. “Let
me try to clarify,” continued Vipul.

Swaran took another swig of his scotch, no longer bothering to hide his anxiety.

“This is a very good opportunity for you,” Vipul went on amiably. “The guidance
I will give you ensures you will be able to generate a substantial return. I have
chosen you because you have an excellent reputation here in Mumbai. This is why
you get this opportunity instead of someone else. Now—” Vipul paused to take a
sip of his scotch, “—you might reasonably wonder, if I am so certain of making
money, why am I so eager to take on a partner, even one as respected as yourself?
The reason is that I expect the sums of money involved to become too large and
too conspicuous for our family to manage. Plainly speaking, it would attract too
much attention. Instead, we will divide it up among partners like yourself. Partners
with impeccable reputations. Partners we can trust. Now do you understand?”

Swaran could see the outlines of Vipul’s plan forming in his mind, but he was
stuck on the simple fact that he was being asked to borrow and, possibly even launder,
money from gangsters. Gangsters from Bihar, no less. “I-I think so,” he heard himself
stutter.

“Relax,” said Vipul. “Pour yourself some more scotch. Anand? No? I wouldn’t mind
another glass, thank you.”

“Certainly, certainly,” said Swaran, moving quickly to pour them both another
glass. He nearly dropped Vipul’s. He could feel the warm moisture under his arms.
By the time he’d returned to his desk, Vipul had produced a contract and set it
in front of him.

“Just take a look. I think you’ll find that everything is just as I’ve told you.
Not only that, but you have an out. From the time of the initial trigger, which
is the deposit of funds in the partnership’s account, and thereafter, you can convert
the note at any time, provided you can buy us out within three business days from
the conversion, and our partnership will be concluded. I’m so confident you will
be making money from the partnership, that you will want to stay in and remain
a partner. Sound good?”

Swaran nodded reflexively, smiling nervously while flipping through the contract.
He was looking for the interest rate. Not that a contract was particularly enforceable
when dealing with a partner like this one. Nonetheless, the only interest rate
he could find was perfectly reasonable. He set the contract down and cleared this
throat. “What sort of, uh, return are you expecting?”

Vipul laughed. “You won’t believe it.”

Swaran tried to laugh, but it emerged as more of a wheeze. Here we go, he
thought. “I mean, fifteen percent annually? Twenty?”

“One thousand-fold over the first week,” said Vipul matter-of-factly.

Swaran stared at Vipul, who still had that same impenetrable expression on his
face. Was he joking? Swaran instinctively went for his glass and downed the rest
of his scotch. He looked back at Vipul. “So the ten thousand dollars that you give
me to start would become…”

“Ten million dollars.”

“After the first week?”

“Yes. Precisely.”

Swaran eyed his empty scotch glass.

“Oh, don’t look so frightened, Swaran. It’s called insider trading. The big players
do this all the time. We’re just going to join the fun, that’s all.”

Part 2
Get Back To Work

6

East Detroit • The Lab
Sunday, April 22nd
3:00 a.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Lock ran his fingers through three month’s growth of hair. A series of green dots
appearing in a halting rhythm on the oversized computer monitor were reflected
in his bloodshot eyes. Behind him Raj and Sanjay were staring fixedly at the same
monitor. Each of the trio’s skin had gone sallow, and the flesh beneath their eyes
had grown dark. But Lock wasn’t planning on going home until all those dots came
up green, and he knew from experience that Raj and Sanjay were thinking the same
way. He knew because he’d had to force them to go home and rest twice during the
past week when the stubborn appearance of yellow and red dots had gotten the better
of them. Lock would then take a nap on the couch that had been added to the décor
early on.

Lock was proud of himself and his little team. They’d replicated the results of
five years of mind-bending research and development done at CoTech in a mere three
months, just the three of them, but he worried incessantly that he’d missed some
crucial detail. They could miss one, among thousands, and still fail completely.

Another green dot appeared. Raj exhaled audibly. Sanjay rubbed his hands together.

Another green dot. “We passed the Fourier tests,” intoned Lock, glancing back
at the gleaming four-foot-high aluminum casing that housed the ion traps in a perfectly
controlled environment.

“We were already passing those,” pointed out Raj.

“Yeah, but here come the Walks,” replied Sanjay, who had learned the lingo even
though he couldn’t have explained what any of it really meant. “We’ve had trouble
with those.”

“Not this time,” said Lock defiantly. “We haven’t had any trouble since we rebuilt
her without the secondary field.”

Raj groaned. Lock knew he was remembering how time-consuming and tedious that
process had been. For nearly a month, they had tinkered with the ion traps, unable
to prevent quantum decoherence from effectively erasing the computer’s memory.
And then, inspired by a tantalizingly vague discussion thread from the CoTech wiki,
Lock had tried a simplified design. It had worked, or at least the ion traps had
delayed quantum decoherence long enough to perform relatively complex calculations.
Lock didn’t fully understand why, but, for the moment, he didn’t care. If they
could pass the tests, that was all that mattered.

“Group commutativity,” announced Raj, his breath quickening. Lock could feel Raj
leaning over him. He tolerated the invasion of his personal space because, tonight,
there was nothing else but those green dots.

“I told you,” said Lock.

“Oh my,” said Sanjay.

“BQPs,” said Lock, leaning back just as Raj leaned forward even further. Raj’s
face was now in front of him.

“This is as far as we’ve gotten, right?”

“Yes. Sort of. We’ve passed the BQPs before, but never at the same time as the
Walks. And never those two with the amplification stuff.”

“Grover’s algorithm,” added Sanjay.

Three more green dots appeared. “Those are the knot algorithms…” mumbled Lock.
He wondered if the engineers at Coherence had shared a moment like this three months
earlier.

A fourth dot appeared. Lock inhaled and gripped the desk. He had never accomplished
anything even remotely close to this. Sure, he was merely cloning the work done
at CoTech, but he’d never worked harder in his life, never pushed his mind further.
A fifth appeared. Sanjay bent his knees slightly and moaned quietly.

Now the sixth. Lock begin to bounce slightly in his chair. He’d always been the
kid with potential—until he’d gotten older and just become the guy who’d wasted
it. And in a devastated Detroit economy, there were no second acts. And certainly
not for programmers with a conviction for cyber-fraud. Maybe if he’d left Detroit—but
that would have meant leaving Sophie, and he wasn’t going to do that ever again.

“BQPs!” Raj stood and clapped.

“Yes!” cried Lock at the sight of the seventh dot.

“How close are we?” asked Sanjay.

Lock folded his arms, defending himself against getting his hopes up. “Almost
there. Grover’s is running now. Then counting. Then we rerun the diagnostics. And
that’s it.”

“Please, please, please,” said Raj.

A cheer rose up suddenly as another green dot appeared. “Relax,” cautioned Lock.
“There are several Grover’s tests.”

The green dots marched on. There were more cheers. This time Lock didn’t object.
Somehow, in spite of everything, it all had all worked out. Eight long years he’d
walked the straight and narrow. He should have realized the only opportunities
he was going to get would be criminal in nature. He’d just learned the wrong lesson.
But now here he was, perhaps a few minutes away from being a rich man. “Okay, counting…”
he declared.

Lock surveyed the equipment that made up their Wave Nine clone. The temperature-controlled
cabinet, the arrays of electromagnets, the synthesized diamonds, the annealing
equipment. Even the monitor they were looking at now—its sole purpose was to display
the 264 dots, in sixteen separate groups. Of which 260 were presently green.

“Counting!” yelled Lock as the next dot appeared, sliding back in his chair as
though he was going to spring out of it at any moment. “Holy fuck.”

“Holy fuck,” repeated Raj.

Sanjay squealed slightly.

“Come on, baby,” urged Lock. “Diagnostics one…two…”

“And three!” they all yelled in unison. Lock sprang into the air and was immediately
embraced by Raj on one side and Sanjay on the other.

“We did it!” roared Lock, his arms in the air, his legs weak with disbelief. He
couldn’t seem to decide on whether to keep hugging everyone, look at the oversized
monitors with all those beautiful green dots, or high five somebody. Eventually,
he managed to do all three.

An abrupt awkward silence followed, their enthusiasm swallowed by the cavernous
lab.

“Now what?” asked Raj.

Lock found himself staring at the green dots on the monitor. Two hundred and sixty-four
of them. He was reminded of the feeling he’d had at the hospital after Sophie had
been born.

Abruptly, he turned back toward his companions. “We celebrate!” he yelled.

He walked over to the refrigerator that Sanjay had acquired for them, having explained
first to Kirin that they had all more or less moved into the lab. Lock found it
amusing that, of all the exotic purchases he had requisitioned, the refrigerator
was the one to attract Kirin’s scrutiny. He opened the door and pulled out a bottle
of champagne.

“I couldn’t afford the good stuff,” explained Lock, “because a certain someone
wouldn’t give me another fucking advance…but, hey, it’s better than nothing.” Lock
popped the cork and poured champagne into three red plastic cups.

He raised his glass. Raj and Sanjay followed suit, each with almost comical grins
on their faces. “Here’s to you guys!” yelled Lock, his voice swallowed up by the
open space above and around them. “And to those beautiful minds at CoTech!” He
drank the whole glass at once and then chucked it into the center of the large
room, letting off a savage scream. He turned back to his coworkers with his arms
raised and then realized he had frightened them a bit. They were still smiling
but more hesitantly now.

“I’m just happy, that’s all,” he explained. “I mean, guys, c’mon. We just built
a fucking quantum computer. It’s only the second one ever built. It’s like being
the second guy to walk on the moon. We weren’t first, but it’s still pretty awesome,
right?”

Singapore Financial District • South China Finance Group
Monday, April 23rd
8:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Vipul stared out the southern-facing window of his office, admiring the lights
of the city at night and the blackness beyond them that was the South China Sea.

Anand’s voice brought him back from his reverie. “Vipul.” He was standing in the
doorway as if he were made of stone.

“Come in,” said Vipul, waving his trusted advisor into the room.

Anand sat down in one of the chairs in front of Vipul’s smoked-glass desk. “I
know I’ve said this before,” he began.

Vipul groaned. His throat was sore and his body ached. “You think we have some chuhon among
us.”

“I think they’re skimming a bit. That’s all. They think you’re weak. They don’t
fear you.”

Vipul leaned against the windowpane and pressed the side of his face to the glass.
It felt cool. “Because I haven’t retaliated for Satish’s murder.”

“Exactly. Please understand, I don’t agree with them. But I am hearing things.
They say, ‘It’s been three months.’ They say, ‘We have been patient, but there
are limits.’ And so on.”

Vipul forced himself upright and trudged to his desk before collapsing into his
chair. “We’ve discussed this before.”

“Yes. There was grumbling before. There is always grumbling. But now…”

“Now you think some of them—”

“Are taking action. They’re testing you. They don’t say that. But they don’t have
to.”

Vipul frowned and looked down at his hands on the desk. Some scotch would feel
good in his throat. “These past three months…”

“I know,” said Anand.

Vipul knew that he did. Anand had been with him at every rundown airport and every
nondescript office. He pushed himself up and stood. “Scotch?” he asked.

“Please.”

Vipul ambled to the minibar, fixing his eyes on the view of the city and black
void beyond, his footsteps silent on the thick carpet. He slowly made them both
a drink to the sounds of liquid sloshing into a glass and the clinking of half-melted
ice cubes.

He passed Anand his drink. Anand’s hands looked like something from a Michelangelo
sculpture and made the glass appear very small. “They’re testing me,” reiterated
Vipul after retaking his seat. “Stupid…and tedious. But it doesn’t really matter.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No. Not really.”

Anand took a slow sip of his scotch.

“Anand, you know what I’ve been telling our agents. About the expected returns.”

“Yes.”

“They will dwarf the revenues of our entire operation.”

“Yes. In theory.”

Vipul pursed his lips and stared into his glass.

Anand attempted to explain. “Your father—”

“Don’t,” Vipul warned, raising his eyes to meet Anand’s.

“I must. I must speak. Your father asked me to look after you. Which I have done.
But I would be failing in my duty not to speak. This is a dangerous course you
are taking.”

Vipul’s face softened. He looked down into his drink again. “You think one of
them might make a play.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it. If they think you’re weak—”

“Fine.” Vipul raised his eyes again. He took a draught of his scotch. “What do
you think I should do? Keep in mind we have to hit the road again soon.”

“Yes. I don’t know what you should do. You must assert yourself. Perhaps we could
find out who is positioning themselves to take—”

Vipul slammed his glass on his desk. “We don’t have time for this shit!”

“You’ll have all the time in the world if you’re killed, I suppose.”

Vipul slumped forward over his desk. “It’s so fucking pathetic,” he groaned.

Anand said nothing.

Vipul sat up and leaned back, swiveling his chair to face the window again with
what was left of his drink in his hand. “They’re just like dogs. All this scheming
over the table scraps. You’d think they’d be happy with what they have. Instead,
they plot against me to grab just a little bit more.”

“They think Li Mun is going to muscle you out, that’s all.”

Vipul leaned back in the chair, suddenly amused. “And I’ve been away for
three months without telling anyone why.”

“Yes.”

“For all they know, I’ve just been partying in Hong Kong.”

“Yes.”

“Okay. They’re not like dogs. They’re like children.”

Anand was silent again.

Vipul whirled around to face Anand again, clinking his glass on the table. “Don’t
they know I’m my father’s son? Why would they think for a moment that I’m weak?”

“Li Mun killed your brother. The men believed your brother was strong.”

Vipul nodded, swallowing hard. He’d forgotten that Anand didn’t know about his
deal with Li Mun. His fatigue was causing him to let his guard down too much. “All
right. Let me think about it.”

“Thank you.” Anand stood up. He looked down at his glass for a moment. Throwing
his head back, he finished the rest of his scotch and placed the glass roughly
on Vipul’s desk before turning slowly and walking out the door.

Vipul stood and walked casually back over to the minibar by the window to fix
himself another scotch. Again, he looked out past the lights into the blackness.
He turned back toward the door, wishing Anand was still in the room. He didn’t
feel like being alone.

He raised his glass to the window, as if toasting the city itself. “Here’s to
you, Pop,” he said. He took a sip and savored the liquid burning in his throat
as it went down.

East Detroit • The Lab
Monday, April 23rd
10:00 a.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

The last of the green dots appeared, and Lock wheeled around expectantly.

“Wonderful,” said Kirin.

“We did it,” Lock reiterated. “We built a clone of the Wave Nine.”

“Yes. So it would seem.”

Lock’s head tilted and his eyes narrowed slightly.

Kirin’s eyes shifted rapidly back and forth between Lock and the oversized monitor
displaying the green dots. He cleared his throat. “I think we need a more…practical…test.”

Lock’s eyes narrowed further. “Such as? These are the same tests that Coherence
ran. This was good enough for them to issue a press release and probably sell the
technology for a small fortune to the NSA. So I would think it’s good enough, you
know…for us.”

“I am not a scientist,” said Kirin. He gestured vaguely toward the monitor. “To
me, these are just so many green dots. You say ‘walk’ or ‘BPQ’ or Grover-something,
but I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what you’re showing me.”

“What I’m saying is—” Lock hesitated, not sure how to explain the nature of the
tests. “All the algorithms that a quantum computer needs to be able to run, we
can run.”

“I’m sure that’s true. But we need to prove that.”

“We just did,” said Lock, the tone of his voice rising. He could sense
that behind him Raj and Sanjay were watching them closely.

“I have a test in mind,” ventured Kirin.

“Okay,” Lock prompted, placing his hands on his hips.

“If I understand correctly, you should now be able read data on the Web, even
if it is secure.”

Lock paused and moistened his lips. “You mean traffic encrypted with SSL?”

“You see what I mean? Is that the right way to say it? I’m not technical.” Kirin
smiled.

Lock felt his insides knotting. “I’m not sure. Because I’m not sure what you’re
trying to say. So it’s hard for me to know if you’re saying what you mean.”

Kirin put his hands up, palms up. “Of course. Let me give you an example. Suppose
I have a brokerage account. With someone like, oh, say, E-Trade or Ameritrade.”

“An online brokerage account.”

“Right. When I log in and access my account, that is secure data. Right?”

“The traffic between your Web browser and the brokerage servers is encrypted.
Using SSL.”

“Exactly. Consequently, no one can make transactions on my behalf.”

“Right,” said Lock slowly. He was beginning to see where this was headed.

“But…if you were to send this traffic through your quantum computer here…”

“So you want me to decrypt SSL encrypted traffic? As a proof of our success?”
Lock’s eyes wandered for a moment, then refocused. “I guess I can do that. There’s
a relatively recent attack based on Schur transforms—”

“Yes. But it’s more than that. I’d like you to decrypt so much traffic that you
could not possibly be faking it.”

“Faking it?”

“Yes. If you were to show me, say, one password for one account, or even a thousand
accounts from the same brokerage, it’s possible that you might have gotten
those passwords some other way. Some conventional way.”

“The brokerage accounts…that’s just an example, right?”

Kirin pursed his lips. “I’d like you to show me the passwords for, say, a thousand
accounts…from each of the top ten online brokerage firms.”

Lock was silent for a moment. “That’s not what I signed up for.”

Kirin raised his arms. “A misunderstanding. I’ll be happy to give you another
ten-thousand-dollar advance against what you’re—”

“Another advance?”

“Well, yes.”

Lock was silent, staring at the floor, his lips pursed. “I did what you asked
me to do,” he insisted quietly. He looked up. “I built you a clone of the Wave
Nine.”

“Certainly, certainly.” Kirin took a step toward Lock, who stepped back. “Let’s
talk this over in my office. Privately.”

Lock’s cheeks felt warm. “What is there to discuss?”

Kirin raised and eyebrow. “Calm down.”

Lock took another step back and took a breath. “I’m fine. I just want to know
when I’m going to get paid.”

“As soon I am sure that we can use this computer for its intended purpose.”

Lock rubbed his eyes and took another deep breath. He looked up and eyed Kirin
warily. “I don’t want to have anything to do with that. It’s just like you said.
If you could have licensed the technology, you would have. Right? I don’t want
to know what you’re doing with it. That’s not my business. It’s not my problem.
What is my—”

“Lock, please. You will be paid. Believe me. We are very happy with your work.
All I—”

“And who the fuck is we anyway? I work for you. And I did my job.
You pay me. That’s how it works in this country.”

“Well now, Lock, now that you mention it…suppose I decided not to pay you? Who
would you go to, exactly? Now let’s just be reasonable.”

Lock rocked his head back and stared at the ceiling, disoriented. He’d been expecting
a pat on the back and a check for few million bucks. Or at least a down payment.
Or bearer bonds. He should have known better. Kirin was a criminal. Who else would
hire someone like him? To steal technology? That itself could be used to steal
other things?

He walked over to the closest desk and sat down. He looked up at Kirin, who was
still smiling pleasantly. “What you’re asking me is to do another job. One
I don’t want.”

“As I said, I’d be happy to give you an advance and then when—”

Lock raised his arms. “Are you going to pay me or not?”

Kirin pulled up a chair next to him, leaning forward. He appeared to be amused.
“Yes, of course we’re going to pay you. It’s just that I have to demonstrate your
work in a way that my employer can understand. Just relax.”

Lock turned away. After a moment, he got up and walked toward his own desk. He
shoved his laptop into his satchel.

“Lock—”

Lock put up his hand as he threw his satchel over his shoulder. His hands were
trembling slightly. “I’m sorry. I just can’t do this right now.”

Outside, he raised his arm to his eyes to shield them from the glare of the morning
light. He made his way over to his truck and stopped without getting in. He remembered
pulling up earlier that morning, thinking it would be last time he’d have to drive
it anywhere but to a dealer. He opened the door to the truck and got it, slamming
it shut. He put the key in the ignition and turned it several times until the engine
finally turned over.

He knew now that he’d never see more than a just a string of advances until they
had what they needed from him. The only thing for him to do now was to stay as
far away from Patel and Associates as possible.

7

Corktown, Detroit • Mad Dog's Tavern
Monday, April 23rd
10:00 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Lock gestured erratically from his bar stool. “I mean, a deal is a deal, right?”

“Right,” agreed Kafka.

“And I did my job,” emphasized Lock, making a fist.

“Right. Man, I—”

“And so I should get paid. Simple. Plain and simple. Am I right?”

“Sure, Lock.”

“I need another beer,” said Lock before emptying his pint glass.

Kafka looked forlornly at his nearly full glass. “You’re getting ahead of me here.”

“Vicky! Where’s Vicky?”

“Billie’s working tonight. I already told you that.”

“Oh, right. Billie!”

“I’m right here, Lock,” said Billie, her blond ponytail swishing behind her as
she turned.

“Billie,” began Lock, “I think you should come home with me—”

“He needs another beer,” Kafka interjected.

“I doubt that,” said Billie, one eyebrow raised. “But whatever.”

“Whatever!” yelled Lock as Billie turned to help another customer. He turned back
to Kafka. “I did my job. I’m supposed to get paid.”

“Maybe you should just, you know, do what he’s asking. And then you’ll get paid.”

“That wasn’t our deal.”

“I’m just saying.”

“That I should steal people’s passwords?”

Kafka frowned and blinked slowly. “Oh, come on, Lock. Don’t pretend to take the
high road now. I mean, how’d you get the specs for the damn thing in the first
place.”

“That was different!”

“How?”

“Well…it was for a purpose.”

“A purpose?” Kafka shook his head as though there were something inside he was
trying to get out. “Sure. But, hey, if you want to get paid…”

Lock stared into the bottom of his empty glass. “Damn it.”

“What?”

“You’re right. What else can I do?”

“Exactly.”

“It’s not like I can go to the cops.”

Kafka laughed. “No, it’s not like you can do that.”

ψ

Lock was having trouble staying upright on his barstool. Instead, he was nearly
lying across the bar. “And then I’m going to take Sophie to Hawaii. To live with
me.”

“Sounds nice,” agreed Kafka, who was only slightly more upright.

“You’d come too, man. Right?”

“Sure.”

“I mean, who doesn’t love—hey!” Lock fell forward, spilling half a glass of whiskey,
and then turned to a large square-shouldered man with bright blue eyes who’d just
elbowed his way to the bar. “Watch yourself, asshole!”

The large man turned to Lock and glowered. “Go fuck yourself,” he said nonchalantly.

Lock stood up unsteadily. “Are you sure that’s how you want this to go?”

“Back the fuck up,” said his new adversary.

Kafka placed a hand on Lock’s shoulder. “Come on, Lock, take it easy.”

Lock shrugged him off. “Nah, man. I’m sick of this. I’m sick of getting pushed
around. Go find your own fucking bar.”

The two men glared at each other. The large man with the blue eyes seemed to make
a decision and shoved Lock, who stumbled backward while taking an awkward swing
that connected with nothing and nearly spun him around. His opponent waited and
then took a very deliberate swing, his fist crunching into Lock’s nose. Lock’s
head snapped back and he nearly fell to the ground. But he kept his feet and, overcompensating
for the force of the punch, fell forward, nearly tackling his adversary, who pushed
him aside into a group of young women at a nearby table. Two of them shrieked,
and a third dropped her glass, which shattered on the floor. Lock spun around,
setting his feet in a wide stance, preparing to throw another punch. The blue-eyed
man was momentarily distracted by the shattering glass, and Lock seized the opportunity,
landing a blow right across his mouth, sending him sprawling against the bar. Lock
intended to spring forward and finish him off, but something was holding him back.

“That’ll be all, Lock,” growled a familiar voice behind him.

Lock frantically attempted to twist free before giving up and going limp. “Hey,
Clancy,” he said without looking back at the resident Mad Dog bouncer. “I haven’t
paid my bill. I have to tip Vicky,” he protested.

“Billie,” corrected Kafka. “I’ll take care of it. Let’s just get you out of here.”

“I got him good, didn’t I? Eh, Clancy? He’s bleeding.”

“Sure, Lock. Maybe look in the mirror, though.”

The trio was soon out on the sidewalk, Clancy staring down Lock for good measure.
Lock raised his hands in a gesture of innocence and Clancy went back inside. Lock
turned to Lock and started rubbing his shoulders. “It’s so cold.”

Clancy reappeared, dragging Blue Eyes by his earlobe and then pushing him down
onto the sidewalk. The bouncer turned to Lock and wagged a finger. “And don’t you
be starting anything out here, or I’ll be calling the police.”

“You’re very good at this, you know that, Clancy?” asked Lock.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You’re an extremely large man.”

“You hear me, Lock?”

“I feel like I’m in trouble.”

“Good night, Lock.”

“Am I grounded?”

Clancy turned silently to go back inside the bar.

“Good night, Clancy,” Lock yelled after him. He turned to his adversary, who’d
picked himself up off the sidewalk and was making his way down the street. “And
fuck you, Blue Eyes,” yelled Lock.

He felt Kafka leading him in the opposite direction towards his car. “It’s like
he’s my dad,” he observed, following Kafka’s lead.

Kafka chuckled. “Your dad, eh?”

“Well, how I imagine a dad would be, anyway.”

Kafka patted Lock on the back as they reached the car. “Right.”

“You know, ‘cuz mine was never around. So I don’t really know.”

“I get it,” said Kafka. “It’s a sad fucking story. Now get in the car.”

Little India, Singapore

Tuesday, April 24th

Noon SGT (Singapore Time)

“All I want to know,” Vipul said calmly, “is how much you’ve taken?”

Paresh was wearing another brightly colored shirt, lending the moment a cruel
mordancy. A bead of sweat dripped down the side of his face. The hairs on his mustache
trembled as he breathed.

They were back in the room behind the restaurant where Vipul had spoken to his
captains after his brother’s murder. Paresh was seated in a chair that Vipul had
pulled away from one of the tables. Anand stood beside and just behind him. Off
to one side was the broad-shouldered Sameer, the scar on his face twitching slightly.

“Nothing! I’ve taken nothing!” insisted Paresh, his voice becoming slightly hysterical.

Vipul took a deep breath, the scent of curry tickling his nostrils. He used his
genuine fatigue and boredom to sell his act. “Paresh. Please. All I want is honesty.”
He wanted to play to their perception that he was the weak younger brother. That
was crucial for the effect he was going for. “I understand the circumstances. My
brother, om shanti, is killed. There is talk. I know. I know how these
things go.” Vipul smiled and placed his hand on Paresh’s shoulder. “I just need
to set things right. That’s all.” He turned to Sameer. “You understand, don’t you?”

Sameer nodded eagerly. “Yes, of course.”

Vipul returned his gaze to Paresh. “Tell me. How much have you taken?”

“I’ve taken nothing! I swear to you! I swear on your father’s soul!”

Vipul winced. “Oh, don’t do that, Paresh. Don’t do that. Don’t you see? I know you’re
lying. Why else do you think you’re sitting here now?”

“Who is telling you this?” pleaded Paresh.

“How much, Paresh?”

“Nothing! I swear! Please!”

Vipul straightened up and turned around as though thinking through a difficult
situation. He caught a puzzled glance from Anand and had to hide a smirk with his
hand. He turned and faced Sameer. “Kill him.”

“What?” asked Sameer over Paresh’s anguished moan.

“I said, kill him.”

“But he…how do we know…?”

“How do we know he’s stealing?” Vipul stepped forward and raised his voice slightly.
“Is that your concern? Or are you also stealing?”

“No, no, it’s not that. It’s just—”

Vipul stepped even closer and half whispered and half spat into Sameer’s face.
“Then kill this fucking chuho, before I have you both killed.”

Sameer’s eyes were wide as he turned to face Paresh.

“No! Sameer! Please!” screamed Paresh.

“You know we’ll take care of your family,” said Sameer. “It’s going to be all
right. Just come with me.” He motioned Paresh toward the rear entrance.

“No,” said Vipul. “Here. Now.”

“Here? But we never—”

“My brother never told me you were all such a bunch of girls. Do I have to do
this myself? Just do it. Get it over with, for fuck’s sake.”

“Sameer, please—”

“Shut the fuck up and die like a man!” roared Vipul, giving himself over fully
to his imagined fury. He felt quite satisfied with the way his voice sounded. He
glanced around the room to survey the impact. They were confused. They no longer
knew who they were dealing with. Not even Anand.

Sameer stared at the floor for a moment before pulling a semiautomatic pistol
from his jacket. He chambered a round and walked behind Paresh, who stood up and
whirled around. Anand grabbed him and pushed him back into the chair. Vipul stepped
back against the wall and folded his arms, as though bored, although, at this point,
he was fascinated. Sameer placed the muzzle of the pistol against the back of his
head. Paresh looked up at Anand, his eyes watering. Anand took a step back. “You
know there’s no point in running, Paresh.”

Paresh nodded.

Sameer pulled the trigger.

The sound of the shot was deafening. Paresh fell forward onto the floor into a
mosaic of spattered blood and bits of brain and bone.

“Clean this mess up,” Vipul told Sameer, trying to sound as if he was asking him
to mop up some spilled tea. “And get rid of the body.” He turned to walk toward
the door. Anand followed.

Outside, Vipul merged into the flow of foot traffic on the busy market sidewalk.
He was relieved to see that the sound of the gunshot hadn’t attracted much, if
any, attention. Perhaps it had been muffled, coming from the back of the restaurant.
Vipul didn’t particularly care if Sameer was picked up, but that might have led
to pointless complications for him and Anand.

Anand caught up to him, coming alongside. “How did you know he was stealing?”

“You told me.”

“What? I never said Paresh was stealing.”

“You didn’t need to.”

“What?”

Vipul stopped, causing a minor traffic jam behind them. A man with a parrot cursed
him. Vipul ignored him. He turned to Anand, who had stopped also.

“Some of them were stealing. I could see it in the numbers. Like you said, they
were testing me. Perhaps Paresh was stealing, perhaps he wasn’t. But any of them
who were stealing will surely stop now, after Sameer tells them what just happened.”

Anand looked up, and his eyes seemed to focus on some distant point.

“Anand. Look at me.”

Anand’s gaze met Vipul’s. “I know. You’re thinking this is not how my father would
have done it. And that is likely true. But my father wanted me to bring this godforsaken
business into the twenty-first century. And I can’t do that wasting my time babysitting
a bunch of cheats and proving to them what a man I am. If Paresh wasn’t stealing,
then he was a necessary sacrifice. Part of the price we must pay to move forward.
It’s important you understand this.”

Anand nodded, his jaw muscles rippling. “I understand.”

“Besides. For all we know, he was taking us for all he could.”

Tally Bar, Singapore
Tuesday, April 24th
11:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya found Ong Goh at his usual table. He wore a smart blue suit this time with
a dark red carnation. “Nice suit,” said Katya as she sat down.

“I’m so pleased to see you. But I have bad news.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. We had a nice chat with the deputy minister this morning.”

Katya arched her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Well, it means our collaboration may come to an end.”

Katya smiled. She’d spent the better part of several months developing a relationship
with the deputy minister and convincing him to turn on his boss. If Ong Goh was
suggesting they no longer had a reason to meet, it meant she’d finally been successful.

“Louie, a whiskey sour for the mysterious and beautiful woman across from me,
please,” said Ong Goh to a waiter standing discretely a step away from their table.

“A soda water with lime is fine,” corrected Katya.

“Just as you said, the minister was taking payments from the Triad. Specifically
from Li Mun’s agents in exchange for influencing policy. The deputy’s testimony
will give us enough to get a warrant to tap his phones. He may even be willing
to wear a wire.”

“Wonderful,” chirped Katya, trying to keep from shouting in celebration. “So what
happens to the minister?”

“He’ll be allowed to resign. Or even better, to continue on, feeding us information
about the Triad’s agenda.” Ong paused. “Which, of course, we would pass on to Haruo.”

“That’s what this is all about,” said Katya, smiling broadly.

Ong Goh took Katya’s hands in his. She was so accustomed to this, she didn’t notice
his unusual earnestness until he began to speak. “Katya. As a man who has devoted
his life to public service and to his country, in all seriousness—thank you. No
one else will ever really know. No one else will ever be able to thank you properly.
That is the nature of our business. So thank you.”

“You’re welcome!”

“And, now—”

“No, I won’t marry you.”

“This may be your last chance to catch this fish, Katya.”

Katya’s smile faded and her eyes drifted thoughtfully. “I have a question.”

“If we run away to Malaysia, they’ll never find us.”

“Good to know. Vipul—remember Vipul?”

“The fancy hoodlum who had his brother killed?”

“That’s the one. I’ve been keeping tabs on him in addition to Li Mun. And I’ve
noticed that he’s been traveling an awful lot. Any idea what that’s about?”

“The Rathod family has its origins in Bihar, if I recall.”

“India?”

“That’s the one. Bihar is a rough place. Sicily of India, I’m told.”

“You think he might be going back to Bihar?”

“If they maintain an active presence there, why not?”

“Interesting.”

“If that’s interesting, you might be interested in a tidbit I picked up this evening.
After you told me about his little coup a few months ago, I passed it along internally.
Asked to be kept up-to-date.”

“And?”

“Rumor is, Vipul had one of his captains executed.”

“Power struggle?”

“Yes. Something tells me he’s not one to tangle with.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Those who do seem to end up dead.”

“You can say that about any gangster.”

“I suppose. But this is Singapore.” Katya noticed that Ong Goh stiffened and leaned
his head back slightly as he spoke.

“Funny. Haruo mentioned the same thing. About it being Singapore.”

“That’s right. Murder is not really how things are done here. Too risky. Too much
heat. How is old Haruo, anyway?”

“He’s well. Same as ever.”

“Give him a tip of the hat for me, will you, my dear?”

“Of course. Speaking of which, I’ve got to run.”

Ong Goh ran a finger deftly across his mustache and tilted his head. “Good-bye,
my sweet Katya.”

Katya was going to miss this feeling of being inside the world of Casablanca.
She rose, blowing Ong Goh a kiss, trying to be as stylish as he was. “Good-bye,
Ong Goh.”

She felt as though she were dancing her way out of the hotel bar and to the valet
desk. Maybe it had taken longer than some analyst in Langley had expected it to,
but in the end they had uncovered incontrovertible evidence of Triad influence
on Singapore’s trade policy, at the most senior levels of her government. It wasn’t
as big as the Canadian case, but it was significant, certainly big enough for her
to be able to take her pick of assignments.

She tipped the valet and hopped into her car. Soon she’d be stateside, looking
for an apartment, catching up with old friends from college. She wanted to celebrate,
but there was no one to call. Besides, she had to update Quartan at five thirty
in the morning. Maybe she’d pop that bottle of champagne she’d been saving and
call someone back home. It was mid-morning there, maybe someone would be able to
take a few minutes away from work just to hear the news.

Of course, she couldn’t actually tell them the news. And she didn’t actually
know for sure that she’d be coming home. Haruo still had her watching Vipul, but
nothing had really come of that. In fact, Vipul had hardly been in the office,
so there had been nothing to report. The cameras had recorded various comings and
goings, but nothing the Agency was interested in. With any luck, Haruo would seize
the opportunity to declare victory and shut down her surveillance on Vipul. Of
course, there was this new information that Vipul had killed one of his own crew.
She’d have to go back and see if she’d recorded anything interesting that could
be tied to that.

As she pulled into the parking garage of her apartment building, she decided she
would still enjoy the champagne—it would help her fall asleep, if nothing else.

8

Lafayette Park, Detroit • Lock's Apartment
Tuesday, April 24th
Noon EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

“C’mon buddy, wake up,” said a voice.

Lock opened his eyes, aware only of blinding daylight and a syncopated pounding
sensation. The pounding slowly resolved into a throbbing in his temples and something
pushing on his shoulder.

“C’mon, man. I got you a nice, tall glass of water.”

“Coffee,” croaked Lock as he identified both the voice and the source of the pushing
as Kafka.

“Coffee is for closers,” Kafka chided, quoting their favorite scene from one of
their favorite movies, Glengarry Glen Ross.

Lock sat up slowly and took the glass of water. “Coffee,” he groaned, before taking
several gulps of water.

“Maybe later.”

“My head hurts,” complained Lock.

“Liquor before beer…”

“My lip hurts.”

“Not surprised. C’mon, get up.”

Lock stood up uneasily, Kafka taking the glass of water and guiding him into the
living room, where Lock collapsed onto the couch.

Kafka returned the glass of water. “Drink up,” he coaxed.

Lock complied, covering his face with his free hand. “Ouch. I got in a fight,
didn’t I?” he mumbled from behind his hand.

“Yup,” confirmed Kafka.

ψ

Having eventually coaxed Kafka into brewing a pot of coffee, Lock sat on the couch
in his living room, sipping from a blue mug emblazoned with the old English D of
the Detroit Tigers. He watched Kafka slay a small army of zombies on his television.
“Hey, thanks for getting me home last night,” he growled.

“Sure,” intoned Kafka.

“And…for coming by this morning. I’m feeling a bit better.”

“Yeah. Well. What are friends for?”

Lock slouched, resting the back of his head on the couch. “What the fuck am I
going to do?”

Kafka was now taking advantage of a temporary lull in zombie attacks and diligently
collecting supplies. “You got two choices,” he began without taking his eyes off
the screen.

Lock looked up. “I do?”

“Either you walk away or you go back.”

“Oh. Yeah. Thanks. That really helped.”

Kafka ignored him. “If you walk, you get nothing.”

“Again, your insights are…” Lock’s voice trailed off. He couldn’t think clearly
enough to come up with a fitting conclusion to the sentence.

“If you go back, you can get another advance. So that’s something.”

Lock found himself slowly being drawn into the methodical way Kafka’s avatar was
collecting water bottles, medicine, and cans of food.

“I need ammo, dammit. Where’s the fucking ammo?”

“It’s not much of an advance, though. Another ten grand.”

“Ask for more.”

“Ask for—yeah. I suppose I could do that.”

“Ask for a hundred grand.”

“Damn.”

“If they won’t give it to you, you can still walk.”

“Yeah.”

The zombies were back. Kafka’s avatar had retreated to shelter behind a metal
fence, but it looked like it might give way any second.

“Even if they do give it to me, it’s still not two million bucks, though.”

“True. It’s not nothing, either. Besides, if they do, who knows? Maybe they’ll
eventually even give you the full amount. And if they don’t—die! die! die!—if
they don’t, then you know you’ll probably never see—Jesus, where did he come from?”

“I’ll never see another dime from them.”

“Right. God damn, they’re everywhere.” Kafka’s avatar disappeared in a pile of
zombies, and he let the game controller fall from his hands. He turned to Lock.
“Have you asked yourself whether they’ll let you walk away?”

Lock tilted his head and eyed his friend sharply. “What do you mean?”

“You know. I mean, these guys are criminals, right? And you know who they are,
what they look like…”

“I don’t know. I mean, of course, I’ve thought about it. But…they seem relatively
harmless. It’s white-collar crime, you know? Kirin doesn’t look the sort of guy
who even knows how to fire a gun.”

Kafka shrugged as the game restarted and his avatar walked through the empty streets
of a post-apocalyptic city in an alternate universe. “I’m just sayin’.”

Lock gently ran his fingers across his split lip. “I thought he was threatening
Sophie at one point, but I’m pretty sure that was all in my head.”

Renaissance Center (Detroit Riverfront) • Patel and Associates, LLC
Wednesday, April 25th
9:00 a.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Lock involuntarily stepped back as Kirin came out to greet him in the reception
area. “Lock!” he proclaimed, his arms spread wide, as though they were old friends.
“Come in! Let’s chat.” He held the door to his office open in a gesture of invitation.
As Lock walked in, he heard Kirin tell the secretary with the mole to hold all
his calls.

Lock sat down on the couch, and Kirin in his throne-like chair. Lock again felt
intimidated by the rich surroundings. He wore his typical sweatshirt-and-jeans
combo, this time with salt- and mud-stained work boots thanks to all the slush.
But he would have felt even sillier wearing slacks and dress shoes.

“Lock, I’m glad you’re here. Are you ready to get back to work?”

Lock nodded, forcing himself to sit up straight. “I have a couple of conditions.”

“Please,” said Kirin, his smile fading in a way that said he was ready to get
down to business.

“First, I want another advance. I’m broke.”

“Certainly. I can arrange—”

“Wait. I’m not done. This time…I want a hundred thousand, not ten.”

Kirin sat back and coughed. “You want an advance. Of a hundred thousand dollars.”

“That’s correct. The way I figure it, you owe me two million bucks. So an advance
of a hundred grand seems pretty reasonable.”

Kirin stared at him for a moment. Then his eyes narrowed. “I must warn you. The
people I work for…they aren’t going to take kindly to this.”

Lock felt his entire body grow tense. “The people you work for?” He suppressed
the urge to swallow. “And who is that?”

Kirin leaned back in his chair and smiled with that vague air of condescension
that seemed to come naturally to him. “That isn’t your concern. What is your
concern is that they aren’t terribly nice people. If you take my meaning.”

“You’re threatening me.”

Kirin chucked. “I’m not, not at all. I’m just explaining the situation.”

Lock decided he was bluffing. He didn’t have the money, and the only way he could
get Lock to keep working was to threaten him. “Whatever. But without at least the
hundred grand, we’re done.”

Kirin pursed his lips as though he were suppressing the urge to say something
more. Finally, he said simply, “And it isn’t you I’d be worried about.”

Lock felt his fists balling up. “What does that mean?”

“I think you know exactly what it means. You have people you care about. My client
knows this. It is the kind of thing they make sure to know. Specifically for situations
like this.”

Lock took a deep breath. “You stay away from Sophie. She’s got—”

“Lock, Lock, Lock,” objected Kirin, waving his hands. “As I keep saying, I’m not
the one you have to worry about. I’m your friend. I’m just—”

“My friend?” spat Lock. “Your trying to cheat me, and now you’re threatening my
daughter. What kind of friend—?”

“Cheat you? Lock, I just need you to demonstrate that the computer works in a
way that my client can understand. Why are you making this so difficult?”

“A hundred grand advance. That’s what I need. Okay?” Lock stood up. “And
if you come near my daughter, if anyone lays a hand on her—” Lock felt a ball of
tension rising in his throat, “—I swear to fucking Christ, I’ll kill you.”

9

Chinese Garden, Singapore
Thursday, April 26th
5:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya watched a motorized sailboat drifting by on Jurong Lake. “Ong Goh says hello.”

Quartan pretended to be reading a book of Chinese poetry. “That’s nice. How’s
he doing?”

“Same as ever.”

“Any news?”

Katya suppressed a smile. “They turned the deputy minister.”

Quartan looked up from the book. “Did they now?”

Despite her best efforts, a flicker of a smile broke through. “Said he couldn’t
have done it without me.”

“Well. That’s true enough.” Haruo seemed indifferent, but the inflection of his
words suggested something more. That was probably as close as she’d get to a pat
on the back from the old spymaster.

The pair sat in silence for a while. A small turtle crawled out of the lake and
made its way toward some leafy greenery sprouting up from the shoreline. “What
now?” asked Katya.

“I suppose you go stateside.”

Katya wanted to grab him and kiss his smoothly shaven cheek. She forced herself
to take a deep breath. “We know the Triad is close to other members of Parliament.
We could—”

“I doubt the SPF would need us for that. They have enough now to get warrants
if they want.”

“Ah. Right.”

“What about Rathod? You said he was back in town.”

“I’ve got nothing, but Ong Goh says he executed one of his captains.”

Quartan seemed to grunt.

“Does that mean something?” asked Katya.

Quartan lifted his head up from his paper. “Probably not.”

Her finely honed sense for speech patterns flagged Haruo’s denial. “It totally
means something. Doesn’t it?”

Quartan turned his head slowly and looked into Katya’s eyes. “Are you shut down
on the Li Triad?”

“No, I was—”

“Good. File your reports on the Triad investigation. But stay up on Li Mun and
Vipul. For a bit longer.”

“I knew it.” She was surprised to find she wasn’t disappointed. Maybe because
she didn’t expect to find anything. Or maybe it was just because she wasn’t going
to let anything ruin her triumph. “What does it mean?”

Haruo turned toward her, leaning on one elbow, his book dangling from the opposite
hand. “I honestly don’t know, Katya. Probably nothing. It’s a thousand little things.
Rathod’s behavior just doesn’t fit the profile of some local gangster. And since
we’re already up and running on him, we might as well wait a big longer, until
the op is officially terminated.”

“I see.” She thought back to her excitement when she’d first understood why Haruo
was interested in Vipul. “He’s taking a big gamble,” she added.

Haruo had returned to his usual pose. “Yes,” he agreed. “What else?”

Katya thought for a moment. “The travel?”

“Yes. Right after his little coup.”

Katya was silent, hoping Haruo might continue.

“Anything else?”

“No, sir.”

“Very well.”

Katya stood up and ran her hands down her hips as though smoothing a dress, even
though she was wearing track pants.

“You know, Katya,” said Quartan.

“Yes?”

“Probably nothing will come of this. But if something does, I’m sure we can get
someone new set up on Vipul Rathod. So you can go back stateside. You’ve earned
that.”

“Thank you, Haruo.”

“Like I said, probably nothing.”

“You keep saying that,” Katya laughed.

ψ

Katya sat on her couch with her laptop propped up on her knees and her World’s
Greatest Daughter coffee mug on the side table next to her. She’d drawn the blinds
to reduce the ambient light while she watched recordings from four different cameras,
hoping to find some sign of Vipul’s involvement with the rumored execution of one
his men. At the same time, she was flipping through transcripts of phone conversations.
She flagged one mentioning Detroit and kept going, wondering as she did so why
she wasn’t preparing the reports that might well be her ticket stateside. Her conversation
with Haruo had inspired her to find something more concrete that might justify
his (and now her own) intuition that Vipul was doing something that might be of
interest to the Agency. But why did she care? She’d already done her job.

Two mornings earlier, Vipul and Anand Vaidyanathan—the pair were inseparable—had
entered the back of a restaurant in Little India and exited thirty minutes later.
She went back and watched the comings and goings more closely, endlessly rewinding
and fast-forwarding. There seemed to be one less person leaving than arriving.
That could be the execution. But so what? What difference did it make? The SPF
already knew about it and there was no clear evidence on the tape—and even if there
was, they wouldn’t have been able to use it. She watched Vipul and Anand talking
outside the restaurant. It looked as though Vipul was trying to convince Anand
of something.

She paused the playback and put aside her laptop. Sighing, she popped up off the
couch and hopped over to the window to raise the blinds, turning her head away
as the sunlight burst into the room. She stood there, framed in the window, staring
glumly at her laptop. She needed to buckle down and file those reports. All this
fascination with Vipul was nothing more than procrastination. Filing reports was
boring. And maybe she and Haruo were both going a bit stir-crazy after more than
two years on a case that even she had to admit had moved more slowly than her introductory
poli-sci class at Harvard.

Let’s go home, she decided. She resumed her place on the couch, took a
sip of lukewarm coffee, and picked up her laptop. She closed down all the video
playback windows and the cell phone transcripts and fired up the special Agency
software used for case tracking. As she began typing, she found her mind wandering
back to Vipul, and to one question in particular.

What business could he possibly have had in Detroit?

Singapore Financial District • South China Finance Group
Thursday, April 26th
8:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Vipul had to fight the urge to scold Mohit for wearing such an annoying plaid
shirt. It was a minor, irrelevant detail, he knew. Yet in his head he was already
drafting a memo banning plaid shirts. Fifteen meetings in two days—and now this
little dweeb was trying to make some kind of fashion statement.

Mohit was a small, thin young man with large black-rimmed glasses. The pair sat
in Vipul’s office behind his desk, Mohit having pulled one of the guest chairs
around so that they could both look at Vipul’s laptop.

“It’s called public-key encryption,” he was explaining.

“I know what it’s called. I’m asking you what it does. Why are we
using it?” Vipul rubbed his eyes, which wanted badly to close, and sometimes did
of their own accord. For a split second, he wasn’t sure where he was.

“We can both encrypt and sign the messages you send that way,” continued Mohit.

“I don’t understand. Sign? How can I sign a message? It’s digital, virtual.
It’s not a real thing.”

“But it is a real thing. A message decrypted with your public key
must have been encrypted with your private key. Which means it must
have come from you.”

Vipul groaned. He’d studied this before. He had understood it. But now it was
just sounding like gibberish. He took a breath. The hard part—signing up all those
brokers—was nearly over. “A message. From me. To someone else.”

“Right. It’s encrypted with your private key—”

“Let me,” interrupted Vipul, raising his hand and closing his eyes again. “I have
a public key and a private key.”

“Everyone does.”

Vipul opened his eyes and rolled them back in his head. He glared at Mohit, who
shrank in his chair. He cleared his throat. “Everyone knows my public key.
That’s why it’s public.”

Mohit pursed his lips.

“Right?” urged Vipul.

Mohit nodded. “Right.” He paused. “That’s what makes it public.”

“That’s what I said. Now. I encrypt the message with my private key.
Which no one else but me knows.” It was Vipul’s turn to pause, staring hopefully
at Mohit. “Right?”

Mohit nodded again. “Right.”

“And because it’s symmetric key encryption, a message encrypted with my
private key can only be decrypted with my public key.”

“Right. Wrong. It’s because it’s asymmetric.”

“That’s what I said.” Vipul took a deep breath. “Okay. So…if someone can decrypt a
message with my public key, it must have been encrypted with my private
key.”

“Which means it must have come from you,” finished Mohit.

“Unless someone has my key.”

“Well, yes.” Mohit fidgeted slightly.

Vipul rolled his head back and forth, trying to stretch out his neck. He suddenly
remembered that he needed Mohit to do his best work. He decided to put him at ease.
“We must be careful, then, with these keys?” he prompted, carefully modulating
his voice to sound more encouraging.

“Yes. There should only really be two copies.”

“Two?”

“Yes, one on your laptop and then a backup, in case—”

Anand appeared in the doorway. “Vipul?”

“Yes?”

“Can I speak with you for a moment?”

Vipul waved his hand dismissively toward Mohit. “We’ll pick this up later.”

Mohit nodded several times as he tried to turn around, back up, and pull the chair
back around in front of Vipul’s desk all at the same time. After three tries, he
arrived upon an ordering that afforded him a way out from behind the desk. “Thank
you, sir,” he said, backing up toward the door.

Anand came in and sat down. He looked back toward the door to make sure Mohit
was gone, then turned to Vipul. “Detroit is still giving us trouble.”

Vipul frowned. He tried to imagine Mohit giving them trouble but couldn’t do it.
“How so?”

“He’s stopped working.”

“Why?”

“He wants to get paid.”

Vipul laughed incredulously. “Don’t we all.”

“Kirin wants to know if he should put the contingency plan into effect.”

Vipul rubbed his eyes again. Part of his brain was still stuck on signing digital
messages. Encrypting and then decrypting. Public and private keys. He moaned softly.
“Contingency plan,” he echoed slowly. “You mean that kid in Vancouver? But I thought—”

“No. Putting the daughter into play.”

Vipul paused, squinting from the effort to remember. “Okay. Right.”

“Yes.”

Vipul opened and closed his eyes several times, trying to get rid of the stinging
sensation. He rubbed his chin. He hated doing this to people, using their families
against them. It was…undignified. On the other hand, it was better than, say, chopping
off people’s fingers or breaking their legs. “I don’t know. It’s Kirin’s call.
I’m not on the ground.”

“Very well.”

Vipul felt himself getting irritated again. “I mean, why is he asking me?”

Anand seemed to shrug with his face. “He’s not accustomed to this sort of thing,
I would imagine.”

Vipul snorted. “And I am? Jesus. It’s called thinking. Are we sure Detroit
won’t go to the police? We’re not on our home turf over there. I’d just as soon
we bring him here.”

“As sure as we can be. Kirin’s been having him followed from the start. And of
course he did the background check.”

“You know what? Fuck it. Put the daughter in play. Then if we want to move him
back here, we can. I’ve got enough on my mind without worrying about some nerd
with an attitude.”

“Very well.” Anand stood up. “Should I send Mohit back in?”

“No. He’s given me a headache already.”

Anand headed toward the door.

“But Anand…tell him never to wear that damn shirt in here again.”

West Bloomfield (Detroit) • Sophie's House
Thursday, April 26th
7:45 a.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

It was a beautiful spring morning. Sophie thrilled in the sight of all the green
grass, even if it was actually still yellowish, and the warmth in the air, even
if it was still cold enough to require a jacket. She ran down the walkway toward
the street where Krista’s burgundy salt-stained Sebring had just pulled up. Really,
it was her parents’ car, but her mom had been promoted and bought a new car, so
they let Krista use the old one as long as she kept her grades up. It was a great
stroke of luck, promising a summer full of adventure. She reached the car and pulled
open the door, leaning in to throw her backpack in the backseat, only to discover
what appeared to be Krista’s legs in the way. “Krista, what are—”

“Get in,” said a man’s voice. “Or we’ll kill your friend.”

Sophie stood up, backpack in hand, and looked into the rear window of the car.
She could see Krista’s face, tight with fear. Something flashed in the sunlight.

Her eyes scanned down.

She saw the knife against Krista’s throat.

Sophie didn’t scream. She didn’t breathe. She looked quickly back at the house
and then back at the car. The house had never seemed so far away. Slowly, she got
in, her knees on the verge of buckling, pulling her backpack up onto her lap.

“Close the door,” said the driver.

Sophie didn’t look at him, but she could smell his cologne, see the hairy knuckles
wrapped loosely around the steering wheel, and she could sense his size. She leaned
out and pulled the door closed as the world began to tilt sideways. The car pulled
slowly away from the curb. She tried to breathe, but she’d forgotten how. She looked
up into the rearview mirror and could see the face of the man in the backseat,
or at least that part of it that wasn’t covered with sunglasses and a Tiger’s cap.
Beyond his face, she could see her home growing smaller and then disappearing around
a corner.

10

Lafayette Park, Detroit • Lock's Apartment
Thursday, April 26th
10:30 a.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Lock untangled himself from his bed covers. His T-shirt was damp, and he’d slept
badly. He ran his fingers through his hair and then grabbed his phone from the
nightstand. It was already ten thirty. And he had a missed call. Blocked number.
But there was a voice mail.

He got up and stumbled into the bathroom, rinsed his mouth with mouthwash, then
urinated sitting down because standing took too much effort. He rinsed his hands
and returned to the bedroom to put on some sweatpants. He’d walked out into the
living before realizing he’d forgotten his phone. He went back and picked it up,
looking absently at the message indicator again.

It was good they’d left a message. He never answered calls from numbers he didn’t
recognize. Opening the fridge and staring inside revealed he was out of Coke. He
was out of everything. He’d hardly spent any time in his apartment for the past
few months.

Once again, he’d had too much to drink and vaguely remembered Kafka dropping him
off. He put his hand to his mouth—his lip was healing nicely. Apparently, he hadn’t
gotten into another fight.

Grabbing his wallet and keys from a bookshelf by the door, he walked down the
hall to the elevator and pressed the down button. He hated having to go out for
coffee. It defeated the whole point, which was to wake up. By the time he’d get
to the coffee shop, he’d be already half-awake. Of course, he was effectively unemployed
again, so he didn’t have anything in particular to do.

A chime indicated the elevator had arrived, and the doors opened. Lock got in
and pressed the button for the parking garage. He could maybe contract some small
programming jobs. Web sites. Little mobile apps. As long as it was too small to
bother with a background check, he had as good a chance as anybody. He’d manage
somehow. The truth was, it was a huge relief to be done with Kirin Patel and the
Wave Nine. It had been a big mistake from the start.

The elevator chimed again, and Lock ambled out into the parking garage, humming
as he want, still trying to get that damned Hawaii Five-O theme right. He’d have
to find it on YouTube or something, otherwise it was going to drive him nuts. He
reached his truck, unlocked it, and got in. It took three tries, but the engine
turned over, and Lock backed out, absently pulling his phone out of his pocket
at the same time. The focus of his eyes alternated between the road and his phone
as he drove the truck out of the garage and onto Orleans Street. He dialed up the
message and then sat back and waited expectantly for the voice mail to play.

“You need to learn to do as you’re told,” said a deep, heavily accented voice.

Another much more familiar voice came on. “Dad?”

“Sophie?” Lock answered, forgetting for a moment that he was listening to a voice
mail.

“Dad? It’s me, Sophie. What’s going—?”

There was a rustling sound and the deep voice returned. “Get back to work.”

Lock’s truck slowed and began to veer to the right, toward a curb flanking an
abandoned field. He forced himself to focus on driving. He couldn’t remember where
he was going. Just drive straight, he decided. He picked up the phone and
dialed a number.

“Nine-one-one emergency services,” a voice answered. Lock hung up.

He found himself at Third Street and turned right because it was the easiest thing
to do. He took a sudden hard right a block later onto Fort Street and hit the gas.
“Kirin, you motherfucker,” he said aloud. He hit a red light at Cass and began
to bounce in his seat, his jaw set. He pressed the accelerator to the floor as
the light changed.

He looked up into the rearview mirror and noticed a black Mercedes SUV behind
him. Kirin always traveled in one. He was suddenly certain the man was following
him.

He hit another light at Woodward and pounded the dashboard. “C’mon, God dammit!”
he yelled, looking back up into his rearview. He saw the SUV pull up right behind
him. He got out of his truck, marched up the SUV, and started pounding on the driver’s-side
window.

The window rolled slowly down, revealing a sneering, dark-skinned man wearing
sunglasses. “Don’t be stupid. Just get back in your truck. Talk to Kirin.”

Lock glared at him. There was another dark, burly man on the passenger side behind
another pair of sunglasses. Where had these guys come from? He turned to the driver.
“Where is she? Where the fuck is my daughter?”

A car pulled up behind them, honked, and then swerved around. The driver of the
SUV spoke slowly with a thick accent. “If you care about her, you’ll get the fuck
back in your truck and go see Kirin.”

Lock peered into the backseat of the SUV, which was empty. “Where is Kirin?” Lock
yelled.

“In his office, you fucking idiot,” said the driver as the window rolled back
up.

Lock slammed the heel of his palm into the door of the SUV. Once back inside his
truck, he floored it again, only to hit yet another light at Congress. He yelled
at the light, but then caught himself. He needed to think clearly and conserve
his energy.

The truck lurched forward again, speeding down Woodward. Lock took a hard left
at East Jefferson, tires squealing. He ran the light at Randolph and then pulled
up in front of the tall glass cylinders of the RenCen. He got out, ran up the steps
into the lobby, and walked briskly to the elevators. He punched the elevator button
repeatedly until the doors to one of the elevators opened. Two businessmen in gray
suits tried to get into the elevator with him, but Lock pushed them back out.

“Sorry, in a hurry!” he yelled, frantically slammed the palm of his fist on the
button to close the doors.

He reached Kirin’s floor and made his way down the corridor to his suite, storming
through the front doors. The prim secretary said something to him, but he ignored
her. He threw open the door to Kirin’s office so hard it bounced back and hit his
shoulder. Kirin was sitting on the couch, legs crossed, sipping from a steaming
mug.

“Where’s my daughter?” roared Lock, taking two steps into the room and stopping
at the coffee table. He stifled the urge to upend it and break the glass top over
Kirin’s head.

“She’s safe,” said Kirin, barely glancing up. “As long as you behave yourself.”

“God dammit, Kirin, I swear to God—”

“You’ll do what?” said Kirin, anticipating Lock’s threat before he could get it
out. “Sit down. And listen. Before you get you and your daughter killed.”

Lock faltered. “Where’s my daughter?” he repeated.

Kirin laughed. “Do you really think I’m going to tell you? Lock, please. Sit down.
You may not understand this, but I’m your friend. I may be the only one you’ve
got right now.”

Kirin seemed entirely unthreatened by Lock, in spite of the fact that Lock could
easily have leapt across the coffee table and tried to strangle him. If anything,
he seemed amused. Lock felt disoriented. He refocused on Sophie. “If you were my
friend, you’d tell me where my daughter is.”

Kirin frowned and gestured to his big easy chair. “Lock, sit down. Your daughter
will be fine. As long as you keep your head. I didn’t want it to come to this.
I tried to warn you. I could see where this was going. I tried to help you, but
you’re too much of hothead. And now…well, now we have to deal with this.”

Lock found himself sitting down, even as the room seemed to be getting smaller.
He perched on the edge of the chair as though he might change his mind at any moment,
unwilling to concede the initiative completely.

“That’s better. Now listen. The people I work for…they are very dangerous people.”
Lock noticed that Kirin had said the word dangerous the way most people
would say friendly. “It’s important at this juncture that you understand
that, Lock.”

Lock continued to glare from the edge of his seat. Why wasn’t he punching Kirin
in the face over and over until he told him where Sophie was?

“They will kill you and your daughter without a second thought. Even if
I tell you—”

“They? Who’s they?” Lock thought back to the two men in the SUV that had been
following him.

“I can’t get into that. All you need to know is that they’re rather…ruthless.”

Lock shifted his stony gaze to the glass surface and saw himself staring back.
The two men in the SUV. That’s why he wasn’t beating Kirin senseless. He
looked up at the door, half expecting them to walk through it.

“Here’s what you’re going to do,” Kirin was saying, very pleasantly, as though
they were planning a company picnic. “Your going to go home and let this all sink
in. Then tomorrow you’re going to come into the lab and you’re going to write some
software for me, starting with harvesting those broker accounts. That’s all. That’s
what comes next. If you do your job, as I have no doubt you will, as you always
have, you’ll see Sophie again alive and well, and everything will be fine. It’s
very simple. Don’t make it complicated. Understood?”

Lock found himself nodding his head.

Kirin took a sip from his mug and leaned back on the couch. Lock picked up the
powerful scent of chai. He waved his hand dismissively. “Now go home, Lock. Go
home and think this through. Calmly.”

Lock looked up, his eyes vacant, and stared at Kirin. He felt as though something
had been drained out of him. Something that had left him alive only in a purely
physiological sense. He stood up, because he couldn’t think of anything else to
do, and walked toward the door. He heard Kirin saying something as he left the
office. Something about feeling better in the morning. He walked out through the
lobby and past the two large men he’d seen in the SUV, who were just arriving.
One of them said something that might have been a threat, but Lock ignored them.

He took the elevator down to the building lobby, sharing it with two women in
knee-length skirts. Their perfume gave him a headache. He wandered out the glass
doors and down on the steps, where a traffic cop was placing a ticket on his windshield.

A cop. He could tell the police. Tell them everything. What happened to him didn’t
matter any more. All that matter was getting Sophie back.

But if he talked to the police, they’d just kill Sophie.

A wave of nausea hit him. He stumbled around to the driver’s side and got in,
ignoring the ticket and the blaring horn of cars zooming past. He closed the door
and stared at the steering wheel. He leaned back in his seat and tried to breathe,
but he couldn’t seem to get the air into his lungs. A knock on the window startled
him. It was the cop again.

Lock rolled down the window reflexively. “Anything wrong?” asked the cop. Lock
stared at him, feeling as though he’d been paralyzed. “Well…you can’t stay here,”
the cop scolded. Lock noticed his skin was pockmarked. Probably had really bad
acne as a teenager. He handed him the ticket he’d left on the windshield. “And
don’t forget this. Now get a move on. You’re blocking traffic.”

Lock took the ticket and nodded absently. He watched the cop step back, then pulled
his truck out, ignoring another blaring horn, and begin rolling with the flow of
traffic. Cold air blasted the left side of his face, but Lock didn’t bother to
roll up the window. He drove up East Jefferson and past the Chrysler Freeway. In
the next lane over, cars zoomed past, and Lock considered simply swerving in front
of one. But that wasn’t reliable—he might survive. He drove past the strip mall
with Jet’s Pizza, its brightly lit sign reminding him of how he used to take Sophie
there on the way home from the lake.

The lake. He could go to the lake. He took a hard right across a lane of traffic
and sped down toward the River Walk. He pulled into a circular drive and stopped,
with a vague idea of drowning himself. He ignored the walkways, cutting across
the grass until he reached the edge of the water where a small seawall had been
constructed from broken blocks of concrete. He fell onto his knees to the ground.

He heard Karen’s voice from the night after his conviction had been handed down. We’re not going to come see you, Lock. I want her to forget all about you. I want her to forget how you let her down.

He should have killed himself long ago. Or at least stayed out of Sophie’s life.
Just like Karen had asked him to after he’d gotten out. But it was too late now.

The logic of it was cruel and unyielding. They will kill you and your daughter without a second thought,
Kirin had said. If he killed himself now, Kirin or his thugs would simply kill
Sophie. Kill her and dispose of the body. That would be their most expedient, least
risky course of action. So he couldn’t kill himself. He couldn’t run from this.

This time…this time had to be different. Somehow.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and stared at it. Was it possible that he
really did have a voice-mail message from the kidnappers with Sophie’s voice on
it? Had Kirin really just told him his daughter’s life was in his hands?

The wind whispered in its blustery way and gave him the answer. He remembered
sitting in a parking lot in a strip mall on a rainy afternoon, just outside his
father’s dental practice. He’d met his father exactly twice before, and one of
those times he had been a newborn. He remembered sitting in the parking lot for
an hour. And then he’d driven away before his father had closed up for the day.
He could remember swearing to Kafka afterwards, through tears that shamed him so
deeply he’d never thought of that day since, swearing that he’d never be like his
father.

And when Karen became pregnant with Sophie, Lock was the one who’d wanted to get
married and have the baby. He’d been the one to convince Karen that they could
manage it. He remembered smoking cigars with Kafka outside his and Karen’s rundown
little apartment in East Detroit and getting dizzy because they had never smoked
cigars before. He wasn’t going to be like his father. He was going to be there
for Sophie.

Except that somehow, he hadn’t been. She was four when he’d gone away and eight
when he returned and twelve before she had begun to trust him again. And now, he’d
betrayed her—again.

He stared out at the lake, pleading with it, hoping for some long-forgotten magic
that would let him correct this one horrible mistake. Just this one. That
was all he asked.

But the lake’s magic would not be summoned for him, and Lock knew why. From almost
the very start, Kirin had let him know his daughter was in danger. Her security. Lock
had known what he meant. That’s why Kirin was the first person he called when he’d
thought Sophie was missing, the night she’d only been staying at Krista’s, with
a dead cell phone battery.

How long had he been sitting there on the grass? His legs were numb. He unfolded
them and was greeted by the sensation of stepping into a mound of tiny burrs. He
hobbled over to a nearby overlook and leaned back against the railing, facing away
from the lake, shivering.

His jumbled thoughts began arranging themselves into a series of questions that
all had the same answer, asked again and again and again, like an unholy prayer.
The police? Nope, they’d kill Sophie. Kill Kirin? Nope, they’d kill Sophie. Kill
himself? Nope, they’d kill Sophie.

He walked slowly back to his truck, which mercifully hadn’t been towed. He opened
the door and got inside. He fumbled for the keys in the pocket of his sweatpants
and started the car. His thoughts faded away gradually, replaced with a still and
suffocating certainty.

He was Sophie’s only chance to come back home alive.

Part 3
Hopeful

11

Twenty thousand feet above the Midwestern United States
Thursday, April 26th
1:00 p.m. EST (Eastern Standard Time)

Sophie felt the burlap sliding up against her skin and was momentarily blinded,
blinking rapidly as her eyes adjusted to the light. She sucked in a deep lungful
of recirculated air, free of the suffocating warmth and heavy scent of potatoes
coming from the sack that had covered her head. Blotches of color filtered through
rapidly blinking eyes. She had already guessed from the sounds of nearby airplanes
taking off and landing that she had been taken aboard an airplane of some kind;
with her hood removed, she could see that it was a small jet. The two dark-skinned
men in suits and a cowed, olive-skinned flight attendant were aboard. They spoke
in short, unintelligible bursts, and one of the men slapped the flight attendant
on the rear. Both men laughed.

Sophie turned around and looked behind her, but she was at the back of the plane.
There was no sign of Krista. She remembered the car had made a stop before arriving
at the airport. She’d heard the door open. Had they simply let Krista go? Sophie
shuddered, thinking about the alternatives.

The flight attendant brought her a Coke. “Thank you,” she stuttered as she took
the plastic cup. The ice rattled slightly as Sophie tried to steady her hand. Any
fleeting thought of appealing to the attendant for help vanished when she saw the
woman’s face. Sophie could tell she’d been crying—her eyes were red and swollen,
and her mascara was smeared faintly down one cheek. The attendant walked back to
the front of the plane, and Sophie tried to sip her Coke, but she was hyperventilating,
which made it impossible to drink.

One of the men got up from his seat and took two long strides toward her. Sophie
flinched involuntarily and gagged on the reek of cologne. The man reached out with
one hand, palm up, uttering incomprehensible syllables. She saw that there was
a small blue pill in his hand. After a moment, she realized he was saying, “Go
on, take this, take this now” in heavily accented English. She reached out with
a trembling hand and took the pill, then put it in her mouth. She inhaled sharply
so that she could take a sip of Coke and swallow the pill. She looked up and saw
the man staring at her intently. Sophie looked away, fighting an urge to scream
or cry, she wasn’t sure which. Apparently satisfied, he returned to his seat.

She wondered where they were going. Had that really been her dad on the phone?
What had they done with Krista? She felt her lungs filling with air and her eyes
were closing. She couldn’t keep her head up. The flight attendant was there, reaching
down, then cradling her. She was lying on her side, there was a blanket, she was
thirsty, men were speaking but not saying anything, she was at the beach, Krista
was there, she was being pulled out by the current…

Lafayette Park, Detroit • Lock's Apartment
Thursday, April 26th
8:00 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Lock sat at his kitchen table, staring mournfully at a half-empty bottle of Jack
Daniels and a box of pizza with two slices missing. He’d called Kafka, but Kafka
was at work and hadn’t answered the phone. At least the whiskey had calmed him
down enough so that he could breathe normally.

His cell phone rang, and he pulled it from his jacket, expecting it be Kafka.
When he saw the caller, he winced and then answered. “Hi Karen,” he said. He cringed
at the sound of his voice, which had broken slightly.

“Lock,” said Karen breathlessly. “I know I keep doing this…but I’m really worried
about Sophie. I’m certain this time she said she’d be home. But she’s not here.
I called her cell and I called Krista and Krista’s parents. They don’t know where
Krista is either. Lock, I’m really worried. I don’t know where she is.”

Lock cleared his throat. He hadn’t thought at all about what he might tell Karen.
Why had he answered the damn phone? The obvious question came to his lips unbidden.
“Did you call the police?”

“No, not yet. I thought I’d call you. I thought maybe you knew.”

Lock winced again. He could always tell her the truth later, after he’d had time
to think it through properly. For now, the best course of action was not to do
anything that might endanger Sophie. For all he knew, his lines were tapped. “No.
I don’t know where she is either,” he said finally.

“Oh God.”

Neither spoke. Finally, Karen said, “I’m going to call the police.”

No, don’t, Lock wanted to say. But that would just arouse Karen’s suspicions.
Surely, Kirin couldn’t blame him for Sophie’s mother calling the police after she’d
gone missing? Surely they would have expected that?

“Okay,” said Lock after another long pause and waited for the line to go dead.
He set the phone down next to his whiskey and stared at it. He picked up his glass
and drained it and then poured himself another.

ψ

Kafka arrived before sunset, waking Lock from a drunken slumber. He sat down in
the massaging recliner as Lock collapsed back onto the couch, rubbing his eyes.

“What the fuck is wrong?” pressed Kafka, leaning forward slightly.

Lock struggled to form words, not simply because his tongue was sticking to the
roof of his mouth, but because saying them threatened to extinguish the slim hope
he still held that, somehow, none of this was really happening.

He looked up at Kafka and could see the worry in his friend’s face. “They took
Sophie,” he croaked, his voice nearly as quiet as a whisper.

“What? Who? When?” Kafka shook his head. “Start at the beginning.”

Lock took a breath and stared at his feet. “This morning,” he began. “I get this
fucking voice mail. ‘Get back to work,’ you know, and then I heard Sophie’s voice.
I freak out. I go see Kirin. Sure enough, he tells me they’ve got her—”

“Who’s they?”

“I don’t fucking know. Somebody Kirin works for or something. Kirin tells me,
as long as I go back to work, you know, everything will be fine.”

Kafka sat back in the recliner, his face going pale. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Lock leaned back, watching Kafka’s reaction. His gazed trailed over to
the dining room window. The light outside was scarlet. He ran his fingers through
his hair. “Karen called me a little while ago wondering if I knew where she was.
I guess she called the police.”

“Maybe you should too,” suggested Kafka. “Tell them everything.”

“Seriously? And then what happens to Sophie? Kirin made no bones about it. They’ll
kill her.”

“Not to mention…”

“I don’t even care about that at this point, man. I’d do life if I thought it
would get her back.”

“What do they want you to do?”

“Same shit as before, I guess. Just help them steal passwords or something.” Lock
leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees. He looked at Kafka intently. “What
the fuck am I going to do?”

Kafka shook his head slowly. His eyes narrowed, and he cocked his head so they
met Lock’s. “Do you remember Ray? Works with me at the farm?”

“Ray?”

“Yeah. He does security. I think he used to be Special Forces or some shit.”

“Okay,” encouraged Lock.

“Yeah. Maybe he’ll have some ideas. I mean, if you can’t go to the police, maybe
it’s time you had some muscle of your own.”

Lock raised his eyebrows, considering the possibilities. “Yeah.”

“In the meantime…”

“In the meantime, I need them to think I’m their boy.”

“Looks that way.”

Kafka leaned back, glancing over at the kitchen table. The room was beginning
to grow dark. “You need to sober the fuck up.”

Lock sat up, his hands on his knees. “I know…I just…I couldn’t breathe.”

The corners of Kafka’s mouth turned down disapprovingly.

Lock looked down. “I know,” he said quietly.

Lock’s phone rang again. “Karen?” he answered as Kafka got up to turn on a light.
He heard crying and sniffling. He sat up, rigid, feeling nauseous. “What’s happened?”

“I-I-I…”

“Jesus, Karen,” pleaded Lock, his voice growing louder. “What the fuck happened?”

Lock heard a sharp intake of breath. “I called the police. They found Krista.
In Ypsilanti. She said…she said…”

“God dammit, Karen, tell me!”

“She said two men took her and Sophie, and they dropped her off but still had
Sophie,” said Karen, her words coming out all at once.

“Does she know where they were going?”

“No, and they put bags over their heads, and she couldn’t remember what they looked
like except that they had dark skin and wore sunglasses. Oh my God, Lock.”

Lock could hear her crying and Dennis’s voice in the background. Then Dennis came
on. He had a way of always sounding reasonable, which usually infuriated Lock.
In this case, though, it was a welcome relief. “Hi, Lock.”

“Hi, Dennis.”

“She’s pretty hysterical, obviously. Understandably. All we know right now is
that Sophie was definitely kidnapped. They apparently tricked Krista somehow and
took the car and then used her to lure Sophie in as well. They let Krista out in
Ypsilanti, so unless they were intentionally trying to throw the police off their
trail, they were heading west. The police have put out an APB on the car and for
men fitting what description Krista was able to give them, which, unfortunately,
is pretty minimal. Unfortunately, this all happened nearly twelve hours ago now,
so the police aren’t real optimistic. Bottom line is that we know Sophie has been
taken, but that’s about it.”

Lock took in a deep breath. “I thought the way Karen was talking that maybe they’d
found her…you know…”

“No, thank God. Nothing like that. With any luck, she’s unharmed. The good news
is that Krista was basically okay as far as we can tell. No bruises or anything
that indicated violence.” Dennis paused. “Listen, Lock, I’m sorry, but I gotta
go. Karen…”

“Sure.”

“We’ll talk later.”

“Yeah.” Lock hung up the phone.

“What happened?” asked Kafka, who hadn’t sat back down.

Lock looked up. “Well, the police know she was kidnapped. That’s about it.”

“Oh,” said Kafka, sitting down limply. “Do they have any clues?”

“Didn’t sound like it.”

“Oh,” said Kafka again, his voice dropping.

Lock turned and faced Kafka. “I need to talk to this guy Ray.”

Singapore Financial District • South China Finance Group
Friday, April 27th
9:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Vipul slouched in his chair, tapping his foot. He was in a darkened conference
room at one end of a long conference table, seated across from Mohit, who wore
a simple button-down dress shirt. That was better than the annoying plaid shirt.
Except that it was orange. It reminded Vipul of his late lieutenant, Paresh, whom
he’d ordered Sameer to kill, just to make a point. He wondered if perhaps, subconsciously,
he’d chosen Paresh because of his penchant for brightly colored shirts.

A projector sat on the table between him and the orange shirt, projecting a simple
diagram onto the far wall. Vipul stared at it as though willing it to divulge its
secrets.

On the far left of the diagram was a small box labeled “V. Rathod.” In the middle
was another, slightly larger box with a thicker outline and placed within a cloud.
That one was labeled “Deputy Agent.” On the right were lots of tiny boxes, collectively
labeled “recipients.” At the bottom were the letters “SCS” in large, bold type—Secure
Communications System.

Mohit was trying once again to explain the details. “You, and only you, can communicate
with the deputy agent. You send—”

“And this agent…” interrupted Vipul. “It’s a piece of software, not a
person?”

“Right.”

“So there’s no additional person involved. I’m the only one.”

“Technically, I could take control of the agent because I have access to the server.
But besides that, yes. The agent only relays messages that are digitally signed
by you.”

“Well, obviously you,” agreed Vipul, irritated by the pointless correction.
He waved his hand. “Continue.”

“Each recipient, meanwhile, will only act on messages that are digitally signed
by the deputy. That way you can send one message to the deputy, and it will be
sent to all the agents, while still being completely encrypted.”

Vipul frowned. This stuff was complicated as it was, but he also needed sleep
badly. He’d nearly canceled this morning’s presentation. But he was about to hit
the road again, and he needed to make sure this part of the project was on track.
Four espressos hadn’t even made a dent in his exhaustion—at this point, even the
floor looked inviting—and now, to make matters worse, his skin itched.

“And the same is true in—”

“Wait,” interrupted Vipul, waving his hand as though he were flagging down a cab.
“Say that last part again.”

“About you sending messages via the deputy?”

“Yeah. Why can’t I just send messages to them directly?”

“Well, you could, but you couldn’t encrypt them. Well, you could encrypt them,
but you’d have to have a shared key for all the recipients. And I figured—”

Vipul’s palm slapped the table. “Speak English!”

Mohit jumped back in his seat, his eyes growing wide. The room was silent except
for the humming of the fan on the projector.

“Look,” continued Vipul, softening his voice. “I just want to know why we need
this deputy system at all. In plain English.”

Mohit furrowed his brow and began speaking very deliberately. “We want the messages
to be encrypted. So that no one besides the recipients can read them. Right?”

“Yes, obviously.”

“Okay. And further, if we decide a single recipient is untrustworthy, we want
to make it easy to ensure this person can no longer read the messages. Right?”

“Why can’t I just take them off the list of bro—er, recipients?” Vipul cringed
inwardly. He didn’t want Mohit to understand the purpose of the system. This was
the problem with pushing himself so hard—fatigue led to stupid mistakes.

“You could,” agreed Mohit. “But if they somehow intercepted a message,
they’d still have the key to read it. You could change the key, but then you’d
have to somehow give the new key to all the recipients in a secure fashion.”

Vipul squeezed his eyes shut and focused his mind. “Okay, I think I see,” he said,
his eyes still shut. “It’s a catch-22. It’s kinda paranoid. But that’s the whole
point.”

Mohit exhaled audibly. “Yes. We have to assume someone might intercept the messages.
Otherwise, it isn’t really a secure system.”

“Yeah, okay. So each recipient has their own key.”

“And so you’d have to send a message individually to each one. Which is basically
what the deputy system does for you. And since it’s on a secured server in the
cloud, we don’t have to worry too much if, say, your laptop is stolen. We can simply
give you a new key-pair and update the agent. What’s also nice is that…”

Vipul could sense the pride in Mohit’s voice. The kid had been a prodigy back
in India. Vipul had heard about him through his contacts there. After he’d graduated
from ITT, Vipul offered him a job. It was not the sort of offer you refused, especially
if you hailed from the same neighborhoods as one of the Rathod gangs. “Don’t worry,”
Vipul had told him, “if you do good work for me, you and your family will be well
taken care of.” He didn’t have to explain to him what would happen if he didn’t do
good work. And although Vipul was still struggling to understand the details, the
SCS seemed well thought-out.

Meanwhile, the broker partnerships were coming together—they’d inked several hundred
so far. With the communication system in place, all that remained was to put the
Wave Nine clone into action. The engineer had apparently caused some trouble, but
now his daughter was en route to Bihar, so that would hopefully keep him in line
the rest of the way. If not, they could always rough him up, or maybe maim the
daughter, until he got the message. But that was so…distasteful. So inelegant.

“…with SSH, so it can’t be compromised without access to the key for the server
itself, and I’m the only one with a copy…”

Christ, the kid was still talking. And wearing that ridiculous shirt. Didn’t he
have a wife to help him dress? He couldn’t recall. Engineers were a funny bunch,
Vipul decided. Completely lacking in common sense. It was a little disconcerting
when you realized they were the ones effectively deciding the future of the human
race.

12

East Detroit • The Lab
Friday, April 27th
8:00 a.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Lock’s truck rattled to a stop in front of the dilapidated brick building that
housed the lab. The early morning sunlight brought out unfamiliar hues in the red
bricks. Lock got out squinting and trudged to the door. He ran his keycard through
the scanner and waited for the click. He’d barely slept, and his eyeballs were
burning. He tried to massage them as he entered the building.

He walked down the hallway and turned at what was now the first door on the right—the
original door had been covered over. He absently scanned his keycard again and
entered the lab, surprised to find that the lights were already on.

“Good morning, Lock,” said Raj cheerfully. Sanjay echoed the greeting.

Lock wondered if they knew about Sophie. Didn’t look like it. “Morning,” he grunted.
“How early do you guys get here every morning, anyway?”

“Mr. Patel told us to be here every morning by 8 a.m.,” said Sanjay.

“Wait. So all this time, you guys have been coming in at eight?”

“Yes,” agreed Raj. “Except of course when we were still here from the night before.”

Lock frowned. “You should have told me.”

“I am sorry,” said Sanjay.

Lock waved his hand and grunted again. He collapsed into his chair and slapped
the keyboard of his laptop to wake the machine up. “All right. So I guess the first
thing I’m supposed to do—we’re supposed to do—is steal all these brokerage
accounts?”

“Yes,” said Raj. “Mr. Patel gave me very specific instructions.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing.” Lock wheeled around in his chair. “Anything else?”

“We are to write a program that will take selected stocks, log in to the brokerage
accounts, and sell shares in those stocks until the stock reaches a certain price.”

Lock nodded. “Now we’re getting down to brass tacks.”

“Pardon me?”

“Nothing. Never mind. Okay. Do we have a list of the brokerages we’re supposed
to target?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. The most reliable thing to do is just find vulnerable routers that are
sending traffic to IPs for those brokerages. Then we can record all the SSL traffic
and decrypt it with the help of the Wave Nine. I can handle that part. We’re also
going to need to spoof each of the brokerage Web sites. Unless they have APIs.
Raj, can you take a look at the brokerage sites to see if they have APIs we can
use? Actually, never mind. It will be easier just to write scrapers. You ever written
a scraper, Raj?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“All right. We’ll pair on the first few and then hopefully you can take it from
there.”

“Excellent.”

Lock began typing and clicking. Several terminal windows appeared on the oversized
monitor, followed by a large, empty screen that slowly began filling with characters.
“Sanjay,” barked Lock.

“Yes.”

“Get us some fucking cappuccinos.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, Raj. Pay attention. So what I’m doing here is making a ‘get’ request
to the E-Trade log-in page. We’ll do the same with all the brokerage sites—”

“Before we do that, sir, do you mind if I ask you something?”

“I suppose.”

“Was this the entire purpose of building the Wave Nine?”

Lock sighed and turned to face Raj, who’d pulled up his chair behind him. “Probably.”

“You use Shor’s algorithm to find the keys?”

“Yes. Maybe. Well, no. Probably not. Not for AES anyway. That would take too long.
But there’s another, newer attack based on Schur transforms.”

Raj was silent for a moment, eyeing the aluminum housing against the far wall.
Lock’s eyebrows arched. He suddenly realized Raj had been as much in the dark as
he had. “How will you get the accounts?” Raj asked plaintively.

“Like I said, we’ll hack into the routers.”

“No, I mean, specifically.”

Lock understood that Raj wanted to be a part of actually making use of the Wave
Nine and rocked back in his chair. Anything to keep his mind off Sophie. “Let’s
see. Where to begin? The first thing is running traceroutes to all the brokerages.”

“Yes.”

“I probe the routers to find those that are vulnerable.”

“Vulnerable?”

“Yeah. Where I can actually log in to the router. From there, I run more traceroutes.
Basically, I’m trying to find all the ways to reach a given brokerage server.”

“I see. But how do you log in to the routers? Aren’t they protected?”

“Some of them. Some, not so much. Sometimes they have backdoors from the vendors.
It’s actually ridiculously easy.”

“I never realized.”

“Yeah. It’s convenient for tech support people, I guess. Once I have a bunch of
routers, I simply run N-grep to filter out brokerage traffic and then net-cat that
back to our servers, which are cloaked, so even if someone finds the monitor, they
can’t trace it back to us.”

“Very devious. From there, you can run the traffic through the Wave Nine and,
using Shor’s algorithm—”

“The quantum Schur transform, actually.”

“—you can extract the encryption key—”

“So I can decrypt the traffic—”

“And extract the passwords.”

“Right.” Lock paused. “You want to work with me on that first? Then we can just
do the spoofing together?”

“Sure.” Although Raj was trying to act indifferent, Lock thought he’d seen the
flicker of a smile. It made sense. All other things being equal, using the Wave
Nine was cooler than spoofing Web sites.

Raj rolled a chair next to Lock’s as Lock began typing. He paused and looked at
Raj. “It’s funny,” he observed.

Raj raised an eyebrow. “What’s funny?”

“You don’t know any more about this whole operation than I do.”

Raj gave him a twisted smile. “I always thought you knew what was going
on.”

Lock shook his head woefully and stared at his monitor.

“We work for criminals, Mr. Cairnes. That’s about all I know.”

Patna Airport (Bihar, India)
Friday, April 27th
11:00 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Sophie awoke with a start, unsure of whether she was falling or rolling. Her mouth
was dry, and she struggled to keep her eyes open. She discovered she was lying
on her side, one leg sprawling. She placed her foot on the floor and pushed herself
up.

She was still on the jet, but she could feel that they were on the ground again,
coming to a stop. She’d woken up like this before. They’d given her another Coke
and another pill and she’d gone back to sleep. A man came over to her seat, and
she thought he might offer her yet another pill. She didn’t want to take them anymore.
Instead, however, he produced a burlap bag.

“No…” she heard herself whine quietly. The bag was slipped over her head before
she could move, and she was yanked up on her feet.

She was led out of the plane, down a short stairwell, and into another car. Her
head jerked back as the car pulled forward, and she began to feel dizzy. She felt
herself falling forward and then over, but rough hands pushed her back up again.
Leaning the other way, against what was presumably the car door, she drifted off,
her head rocking gently with the vibrations of the car. She hardly noticed when
the car came to a stop until the door opened and she nearly fell out. Her right
leg began to tingle. She realized it had fallen asleep. She was pulled, limping,
for twenty, perhaps thirty, steps, then heard a door open and voices, but nothing
they said made sense. She was led into a house, and her face itched from the burlap
rubbing against her skin, but she couldn’t scratch because her arms were held in
place. Someone led her to another stairway, which she ascended clumsily. She heard
sharp words that she thought might be directed at her, but she wasn’t sure, and
she couldn’t understand them anyway. She stumbled forward and then heard another
door. She was shoved and felt the burlap being pulled from her head.

For a moment, everything was a white blur. Blinking rapidly, her eyes adjusted
gradually to the light. She was inside a small, lamp-lit room with dirty beige
carpeting. A cot sat in one corner and a table and chair in another. In the corner
directly opposite the cot was a big easy chair. She heard a door shut behind her
and turned around. She had been left alone.

She walked over to the window, gazing out into the darkness. The window was open,
and a warm breeze blew into the room through a screen. She could see another building,
about three stories high, across a brief, grassy expanse. Some of the windows had
lights on. Were there other girls there, like her? Someone walked between the buildings
down below. She wondered if she should try to call for help, but she was afraid.
For the moment, the best thing to do would be to get her bearings.

Sitting down on the cot, she noticed a ceiling fan spinning lazily above her.
She reached up and pulled a cord and was plunged into darkness. She pulled the
cord again, and the ceiling lamp came back on. There was a second cord and she
pulled that one. The ceiling fan spun faster, but it didn’t seem to cool the room
down much.

She walked to the door and tried the handle. To her surprise, it opened. Stepping
out cautiously into a darkened, empty hallway, she crept slowly forward until she
reached the stairs. She heard men’s voices speaking a strange language. Someone
laughed. She took a step down the stairs, but then she heard footsteps approaching.
Turning around and walking quickly back down the hall, she slipped once more into
her room, closing the door softly behind her.

Almost immediately afterward, the door opened and a large man stepped into the
room holding a glass of water in one hand and something in his fist with the other.
She was again overwhelmed by stench of cologne. The man held a magazine under his
arm and spat words at her as he set the glass of water on the table by the bed.
Next to it, he placed another of the blue pills, then sat down in the easy chair
and opened the magazine. Sophie saw there was a nearly naked woman on the cover.
The man grunted and grabbed his crotch, ignoring her. She turned away and sat down
on the cot again, staring at the water and pill.

The man abruptly spoke to her. Sophie looked up and saw he’d lowered the magazine
to his lap and was pointing at the table. She put the pill in her mouth and took
several swallows of water to wash it down. The man raised his magazine again, and
she looked down at her feet. She was wearing her favorite red Converse. She remembered
being excited about her outfit when she’d left the house to meet Krista because
her red Keep Calm T-shirt matched her shoes and belt. She wondered how much time
had passed since then.

Feeling drowsy, she lay down on her side, facing the wall, and curled up. She
felt hot tears on her cheeks. Her eyes closed. She was playing in the surf on the
beach again. A cloud was blocking the sun. A big swell was approaching. She called
out to Krista…

Jurong East, Singapore • Katya's Apartment
Saturday, April 28th
8:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya ran down the two-lane, tree-lined avenue, parallel to the train. She wore
black tights and a loose tank top, already damp with sweat. The sun was still beginning
its ascent in the morning sky, and a light breeze cooled the beads of sweat on
her skin. It was nice to be out when the sky was blue instead of pink or purple.
Haruo had sent her a message telling her to forgo their usual meetings until further
notice—with the Triad investigation wrapping up and Vipul’s refusal to do anything
interesting enough to justify opening up a new one, there was nothing to talk about.

She ran past a big open field beneath the flyover, thinking about the future.
She’d filed her reports on the Triad case Thursday. Quartan had put her in for
a move to Langley as an analyst on Friday. All that was left to do now was wait
for the official responses to both. She’d event sent an email to her parents and
told them she might be coming home.

She turned onto Jurong East and ran past the soccer field. She was going to miss
Singapore, with its broad lanes, beautiful parks, and all the tea shops and wonderful
restaurants. Maybe that was why she kept checking the surveillance video and cell
phone transcripts. She’d kept an eye out for any further mention of Detroit and
tracked Vipul’s movements, but he’d done nothing but go back and forth between
his apartment and the office. And now he appeared to be traveling again.

She ran past an elderly Chinese couple dressed in matching tennis outfits and
then past the resort condos. She wondered whether there was more to her fascination
with Vipul than just a reluctance to leave Singapore. Wasn’t the Triad case a big
enough feather in her cap? Was she worried that she might miss out on something
big if she left? Was she just overreacting to Haruo’s apparent hunch? Even Haruo
wasn’t trying to open a new case—at this point, it was just a hunch.

She ran past the train station and down the path that led to the bridge where
she had met Haruo all those many mornings. Of course, the hunch of an Agency legend
like Haruo was not a thing to be taken lightly. So perhaps that was it.
She’d had a successful career in the field, enough to give her some cache as an
analyst, enough to have some influence over her assignments. She had been a good,
reliable field agent. Nothing wrong with that, she reminded herself.

She crossed the bridge, looking out across the water as she had done so many times
with Haruo. It looked so different by mid-morning. Instead of the purple-hued mirror
she was accustomed to, silvery ripples ran along its surface. Would she regret
going to Langley if it turned out that Haruo was right? Perhaps. But on the other
hand, ten years in the field was enough. It was time to move on. Settle down a
bit. Make a home for herself. And maybe someone else, too?

She followed the path around the perimeter of the garden, waving off a dense phalanx
of insects. She had decided to go ahead and cross the far bridge and then come
back through the Japanese Garden. The truth was, being in the field wasn’t nearly
as romantic or exciting as she’d thought it would be. And it went without saying
that it could get lonely.

She crossed the bridge and made her way past a parking lot, heading toward the
Japanese Garden. She reminded herself that, even if she wanted to stay in the field,
there was no guarantee that her assignment would be Vipul—or even in Singapore.
Besides, it would still be a few days before she got word from Langley about her
next assignment. Perhaps Vipul would make a move before then. If not, she’d go
home and begin the next chapter in her life. But if he did, perhaps Haruo
would open up another case. And since she was already set up on Vipul, he’d naturally
offer it to her.

She crossed the next bridge into the Japanese Garden. She felt a tingle of excitement
when she thought about checking the surveillance from yesterday. Maybe today would
bring some new development and—she caught herself before finishing the thought.
Even if the surveillance showed enough to open a new case, and even if Haruo assigned
her to it, it probably wouldn’t be worth hanging around for.

After all, the Rathod crime family was relatively inconsequential. It wasn’t as
if the fate of the world would be hanging in the balance or something.

13

Corktown, Detroit • Mad Dog's Tavern
Friday, April 27th
9:00 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

By the time Lock arrived at Mad Dog’s, Ray and Kafka had already taken the back
corner booth and ordered a round of drinks. Lock went straight back, skipping his
usual ritual of greeting the bartender and the regulars. He noticed Kafka had ordered
him a beer, while he and Ray had whiskeys. He grunted as he sat down next to Kafka.

Kafka made the barest of introductions. “Lock, Ray. Ray, Lock.”

The two men nodded at each other. Lock could tell Ray was tall even though he
was sitting down. His posture was erect and his well-worn leather flight jacket
was stretched taut by his broad shoulders. His head was shaved, and his round face
sported a day’s growth of stubble. His skin was leathery like his jacket, and Lock
figured him for a healthy fifty, maybe even older. He had a steady gaze, squinting
from the left eye.

“I told him about Sophie,” began Kafka.

Lock nodded.

“How can I help?” asked Ray in voice aged by what Lock guessed was years of smoking.
He did work at a grow farm, after all.

Lock tilted his head in thought. “Honestly? I’m at a loss. I don’t know where
to start. I was hoping maybe you—”

“Go to the police,” said Ray.

Kafka jumped in. “He can’t. He’s afraid they’ll kill her.”

“It’s really your best shot,” insisted Ray. “If you go to them, right now, you
tell ’em everything you know, they can round up anyone who might be involved and
question them. But every hour you wait makes it less and less likely they’ll be
able to find her.”

Lock shook his head. “I can’t risk it. The moment the cops start sniffing around,
they’ll kill my daughter. The thing is, I don’t think…I don’t even know who’s really
behind this.”

“Sure. But maybe somebody’ll talk.”

“Look, I already know I can go to the police. I’ve decided against that. That’s
why we came to you. So if all you can do is tell me to—”

“All right, fine,” frowned Ray, holding up his hand. “Can’t hurt to understand
your options.” He paused and took a sip of whiskey. “The first thing I’d be thinking
is that I’m being followed. Being watched.”

Lock thought back to the SUV following him after he’d learned about Sophie’s kidnapping.

Ray continued: “They probably know you’re here right now. Hell, maybe they’ve
got someone in here watching us.”

Kafka looked over his shoulder.

“I don’t think anyone’s in here. They’re all Indian guys.”

“What about that guy?” asked Ray, gesturing to Carl, one of the regulars, who
had dark wrinkly skin, white hair, and, as he’d told Lock many times, was fully
one-quarter Chippewa and another quarter Wyandot.

“Not that kind of Indian. From India.”

Ray grunted. “Then I’d say that’s your other problem.”

“That they’re Indian?”

“Well, no. But where is she? I mean, if you know where she is, maybe then you
can start thinking about how to get her out. Do an extraction. But…I mean, what
if she’s in India?”

Naubatpur (Bihar, India) • Rathod Apartment Building
Saturday, April 28th
10:30 a.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Sophie retreated into the corner of her cot. The small room had turned out to
be dirtier and more confining in the light of day. A thin man with a thick mustache
and greasy hair sat in the easy chair, watching her and licking his lower lip.
He pointed at the table next to the cot, upon which was a bowl, a glass of water,
and another blue pill.

She crawled to the cot’s edge and eyed the thin man. He hadn’t moved. She stood
up, teetering, her knees trembling, then collapsed warily into the chair next to
the table. The bowl was full of some sort of gruel. She looked again at the thin
man. He continued glowering at her but still hadn’t moved. She picked up a spoon
that was next to the bowl and began poking at it. Upon closer inspection, she realized
it was rice mixed with some other grain. Fragrant, unfamiliar spices assaulted
her senses. A wave of nausea engulfed her and then passed as suddenly as it had
come.

She put down the spoon and turned to the man in the chair, who still watched her
intently. She pointed to the door. He shook his head.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said slowly. Perhaps he spoke English? He
said something back to her that sounded angry. She hesitated and then pointed down
between her legs. The man smiled and grunted and began making thrusting gestures
with his hips.

Sophie choked down a sob and, after considering the possibility of urinating in
her chair, pointed again at the door. The man shook his head again, but he was
smiling now. Sophie pointed her toes together, crossed her hands over her groin,
and pointed at the door yet again. The man laughed and pointed. Sophie made a face,
as though she’d just eaten something sour, and pointed once more at the door. Finally
the man relented. He got up and opened the door.

She stood up uneasily. The thin man motioned to her to come forward, but Sophie
hesitated. She didn’t want to get any closer to him than she had to. The man motioned
again and snapped at her. She took a few wobbly steps forward, walking past him
as quickly as she could. Once in the hallway, she reached out to steady herself.
She sensed the man following behind her. He walked past her and opened a door opposite
her room. Sophie walked unsteadily into the bathroom and turned to close the door.
The man held it open and shook his head. Placing a hand on a nearby countertop,
Sophie walked slowly to the toilet. She turned and looked back at the man. He was
grinning and nodding. He pointed at the toilet and began speaking to her. It was
clear to Sophie that he intended to watch her. She turned back toward the toilet
and stood there, staring at her shoes.

Afterward back in her room, hot tears burned on her cheeks. The man encouraged
her to eat, but she had no appetite. He pointed at the water and the blue pill
and began yelling. She shook her head, crying again. He grabbed the back of her
head in one hand and the pill in another and shoved the pill into her mouth. His
fingers smelled like dirt and urine. He held the glass to her lips, and she swallowed
the dribbles of water. He shoved her down on the cot, and she quickly retreated
into the corner. She could feel him standing there, watching her.

She closed her eyes hard. Another wave of nausea hit. She had a vague realization
that it wasn’t nausea, it was hunger. She thought about the gruel on the table.
Her mom would be angry at her for wasting food. She wanted to get up to eat, but
she was so heavy, something was pulling her down. Tomorrow, they’d go to the beach.
She and her mom and Dennis. She felt the warm sand between her toes and squinted
at the sun-speckled surf…

Lafayette Park, Detroit • Lock's Apartment
Saturday, April 28th
8:00 a.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Lock stood in the kitchen in a T-shirt and sweats making his morning coffee. Since
Sophie’s kidnapping, he’d hardly slept. But he was eager to get back to work, to
make sure she wasn’t harmed, and maybe even convince Kirin to let her come home.

He was startled by a loud pounding on the door, his first thought that Kirin’s
thugs were there to rough him up. He stood in the kitchen, staring at his French
press, unsure of what to do. Why would they want to do that?

The pounding resumed, startling him again. He walked to the door, wiped the sleep
from his eyes, and looked through the peephole. “Fuck,” he whispered to himself,
leaning his forehead against the door. As the pounding started again, he relented
and opened it.

Two cops stared back at him. “Are you Lochan Cairnes?” asked the shorter, older-looking
cop.

“Yes,” said Lock, cursing himself for not considering how he might handle being
questioned by the police. He’d been so preoccupied with whether or not to go to them,
he’d forgotten that they would eventually have to come to him.

“We’d like to ask you a few questions about your daughter’s disappearance.”

“Of course,” he said, stepping aside and pointing toward the couch. As a grieving
parent, he’d see the police as allies. He’d have no reason to be difficult. “Come
in, please.”

“Thank you,” said the second cop. He was taller, with hollow-looking cheeks, and
he pulled out something that looked like a phone from his front pocket. He pressed
a button, and Lock heard the device beep.

Lock closed the door behind them and followed them into the living room. Stepping
past the two cops and turning to face them, he tried not to look at the device
the tall cop was holding, instead glancing toward the coffee in the kitchen. “Can
I get—?”

“Mr. Cairnes, when did you first learn about Sophie’s disappearance?” asked the
older cop.

Lock spoke slowly. “I guess when my wife called me?” Why had he phrased that as
a question? He was sounding guilty already.

“And when was that?”

“I don’t know exactly. In the evening. Thursday evening.”

“And when was the last time you saw or heard from your daughter?”

Lock thought about the voice mail the kidnappers had left him. “Last weekend.
I take her sometimes on the weekends. Otherwise, I don’t see her much.”

“Sophie’s friend Krista was also abducted Thursday morning. She’s given us an
eye-witness account of the abduction itself. She mentioned that Sophie spoke to
you on the phone. Can you tell us anything about that?”

Lock scratched the back of his head. “No. I’m afraid she’s mistaken.”

“The kidnappers did not try to reach you?”

Could they check his voice mail? Did they need a warrant for that? Had they already
heard it? Were they just setting him up?

“Mr. Cairnes?”

“I’m sorry. This whole thing is…is Krista okay?”

“As okay as a young girl who goes through something like that can be. Mr. Cairnes.
You’re certain the kidnappers haven’t tried to contact you. A voice mail, email,
anything.”

“No,” said Lock. Was his voice quavering? “Nothing I’ve noticed.”

“Mr. Cairnes, please forgive this next question. I have to ask. You’d be surprised
in situations like this how often one of the parents is involved. Can you tell
me, please, what you were doing Thursday, the morning of and day of your daughter’s
abduction?”

Lock thought back to his frantic drive to see Kirin, going to the lake afterward,
and then waiting at his apartment for Kafka. It was the last time he’d had any
hard liquor. “Let’s see. I had the day off. I slept in. I went out to the lake.
And then…I came home.”

“Is there anyone who could corroborate your itinerary for the day? Friend, girlfriend?”

“My friend Kafka.”

“Kafka?”

“It’s short for something,” explained Lock, feeling stupid. “I’m not sure—”

“And what do you do for a living, Mr. Cairnes?”

Lock cleared his throat. “I’m, uh, I’m a consultant, I guess.”

“What kind of consultant?”

“Software. Contract programming.”

“And you said you had the day off Thursday. Why was that?”

Lock felt the hairs on his arms standing up. “I…I just took the day off. Vacation
day.” He forced a laugh. “Mental health day. Didn’t really work out.”

The older cop seemed to assess him. Lock prepared himself to be cuffed. Maybe
this was for the best. Maybe Ray had been right. He’d tell them everything.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Cairnes. Obviously, let us know if you hear from the
kidnappers. Other than that, I want you to know we’re doing all we can to find
her.”

Lock had to fight the urge to exhale suddenly. “Of course. Thank you.”

After Lock had closed the door behind the departing policemen, he turned and leaned
against it, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. He heard his phone ringing
in his bedroom. He walked quickly across the apartment and grabbed the phone, nearly
dropping it in the process. The number was blocked. He answered anyway. “Hello?”

“Kirin needs to see you right away.”

Lock spun around and looked toward his front door. “Who is this?” The line had
gone dead.

He walked quickly to his living-room window and looked down onto the street below.
He watched as a police cruiser rolled slowly past a black SUV parked at the curb.

ψ

“I didn’t say a word, I swear,” said Lock as he closed the door to Kirin’s office
behind him.

“I believe you,” said Kirin, rising from his desk, his arms out in front of him
in a calm down gesture. “I just needed to make sure, that’s all. How is
the progress on the market-making? Sit down, Lock. Everything is just fine.”

“I—uh—it’s going well, I guess. You know, I think they suspect something. I thought
they were going to take me in. If that happens…I don’t want you to think…”

“What makes you think that?”

“Think what?”

“That they suspect something.”

“Oh. Right. I don’t know. They asked me what I did for a living. It’s more that
I—”

“And what did you say?”

“I said I was a consultant. Software consultant.”

“Well, that would make sense. Did they ask for your employer’s number or anything?”

“No.”

“If they come back, and they want more details, don’t hesitate to send them to
me. We have detailed records.” Kirin smiled mischievously. When Lock didn’t smile
in return, he became serious again. “Lock, you need to relax. Everything is going
to be fine. There are so many things that separate you from…all of this. There
is no possible way for the police to tie it all together. And even if they do,
we have a plan for that too.”

14

East Detroit • The Lab
Monday, April 30th
10:15 a.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

“So now, here,” Lock explained to Kirin, Raj and Sanjay looking on. “I’m going
to simulate that the broker has discovered that his account’s been hacked, so he
changes his password. As you can see, we’ve automatically detected that and switched
to a new account.”

“I see,” said Kirin, his arms folded and his brow furrowed in intense concentration.

The trio had worked intently all weekend, quickly falling back into the groove
that had allowed them to clone the Wave Nine in a mere three months. Lock hadn’t
left the lab since he’d arrived Saturday morning after having been questioned by
the police. Raj and Sanjay had left for a few hours each night, but that was it.
Saturday, they’d hacked into various routers and begun siphoning off brokerage
traffic. By Sunday morning, they had access to several thousand brokerage accounts.
By late Sunday, Raj had put the finishes touches on the code that allowed Lock
to programmatically control any account he had the log-in and password for. Meanwhile,
Lock had written the logic to “make” the markets, using the accounts to buy and
sell large volumes of stocks. Lock had then stayed up all night testing the system
and working out the glitches.

For a while, it was as though nothing else existed. Sophie was asleep at home.
The police hadn’t questioned him about her disappearance. There was just code,
logical sequences of events that had to be controlled, channeled, manipulated,
and reasoned about. For most of the past sixty hours, everything had made sense
again. Until Lock had satisfied himself that the system worked and remembered what
it did and for whom. Until Raj had called Kirin and told him they were ready for
a demo. Lock found he could hardly look at Kirin without becoming sick to his stomach.

Still, he found himself hoping Kirin would be impressed. Kirin was his only link
back to Sophie. Kirin’s happiness was the only hope he had for Sophie’s survival.
If nothing else, he had to at least placate Kirin until he could work out a rescue
plan. And maybe he could even convince Kirin that he wasn’t going to be any more
trouble, and Sophie could come back home.

Lock was “steering,” sitting in front of the laptop that controlled what was displayed
on the monitor. He leaned toward Raj. “Raj, go ahead and drop the stock price…say,
five points.”

“Okay,” said Raj, who quickly stepped over to his desk and began typing on his
laptop.

On the monitor, the number next to the words “Share Price” changed from “75” to
“74.” After a few more seconds, it changed to “73.”

“The share price is dropping, so now—”

“This is a simulation, right?” interrupted Kirin.

“Yes. Sorry. Didn’t I mention that? Anyway, what the system will do—”

“How do you know it will work for real?”

Lock took a deep breath. “Because it will. What the system will do is slow down
as we near our target price. We do this because we don’t want to overdo it. Once
the price starts dropping, we assume real actors will begin selling their shares
as well.”

“Actors?”

“Sorry, brokers. Actors is sort of a—never mind. Investors.”

“Right, then.”

“Investors will start selling shares on their own once they see that the stock
is dropping, so we slow down. The system will automatically check the differential
of the share price and adjust its transaction rate accordingly.”

“I think I get it,” said Kirin.

“Now all we need is to add a feature that automatically plays the market with
our own accounts so we can all get rich,” said Sanjay with a smile.

Kirin turned, his eyes narrowing. “No, don’t do that,” he said, and Sanjay’s smiled
faded. “We don’t want anything tied to your identities.” Kirin’s gaze wandered
over to Raj and then to Lock. “You all understand that, right? Under no circumstances
should you play the market yourselves.”

“I’m very sorry, sir,” said Sanjay.

“It’s understood,” snapped Lock.

Kirin’s voice softened. “It’s just…you’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to ensure
that these transactions cannot be traced back to us.”

“It was actually pretty straightforward—” corrected Lock.

“You understand my point.”

Lock pursed his lips. “It does make me wonder, though. I mean, somebody is
making money off this, right?”

“You just do your job,” replied Kirin. “Don’t worry about anything else.”

Easy for you to say, thought Lock. Still, Kirin seemed pleased. Lock wanted to
ask about Sophie, but he didn’t want to risk angering Kirin. Besides which, he
didn’t trust himself in his current state. He was dizzy with fatigue and feverish
from…he wasn’t even sure what. He need to consider his approach to Kirin carefully.
Perhaps there was a way to get him to reveal Sophie’s location. Or at least whether
she was local or not.

Lock realized that Kirin was addressing him. “…ready to go tomorrow?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Will this system be ready to go tomorrow?”

“It’s ready to go now.”

“For real? Not as a simulation.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, it’s ready now?”

Lock was seeing spots. “Yes.”

“All right. Get some rest. You look terrible. All of you. Rest up.” Lock saw a
strange gleam in Kirin’s eye that he’d never seen before. “Tomorrow, we’re going
to put a nice little scare into some folks on Wall Street.”

After Kirin had gone, Lock found himself staring at the big monitor. The big numbers
read “71.” A nice little scare. What did that mean? Up until now,
he’d figured the whole point was to manipulate the markets and make a nice little
trading profit without being noticed. But, clearly, there was more to it than that.

He sat up with a start, still staring at the numbers on the monitor. They weren’t
just going to play the market, he realized.

They were going to hold it hostage.

Singapore Financial District • South China Finance Group
Tuesday, May 1st
8:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Mohit wore a white Oxford button-down as he leaned over and pointed at a button
display on the screen of Vipul’s laptop. “If you hit that button, the message
will be encrypted by the deputy’s public key. And if you hit that one—”

“Vipul,” said Anand, appearing in the office doorway without warning. “I don’t
mean to interrupt, but I just heard from Kirin. He says—”

“Go,” said Vipul. He didn’t even look at Mohit, but there was no question the
command was addressed to him. The programmer quickly grabbed his own laptop off
the desk and slid nervously past Anand on his way out the door. “I don’t know why,”
said Vipul as Anand sat down in front of Vipul’s desk, “but he just annoys me.
I thought it was the shirts.”

“Kirin says—”

“Before you get started on that. Please don’t talk about Detroit in front of anyone.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“If these two geniuses get together—”

“I understand. It won’t happen again.”

“Fine. Go on. Good news?”

“Yes. Kirin says the market-making software is ready.”

“Already?”

“Yes. He saw a demo today. Well, yesterday for us. I had a message as soon as
I came in.”

“Detroit works fast.”

“Yes.”

“This is perfect. Mohit has the communication network ready as well.”

“Good news.”

“Which means…” Vipul sat back and rubbed his hands together.

“We start Phase 2?”

“We start Phase 2. Tomorrow. Technically, we still need to wrap up a few more
partnerships, but we don’t really need those until Phase 3.”

“I’ll tell Kirin.”

“Thank you. And please send Mohit back in. And tell him…just have him dress down
a little or something. He looks so…” Vipul wrinkled his nose. “Uncomfortable.”

Naubatpur (Bihar, India) • Rathod Apartment Building

Tuesday, May 1st

Noon IST (India Standard Time)

Sophie was dreaming. She was climbing a craggy mountain underneath a sky filled
with purple-hued storm clouds. There were demons inside the mountain, and she could
hear them casting wicked spells in some whispered demonic tongue. There was gravel
in her mouth and the air stung her eyes…

She became aware of something soft and damp beneath her and the fact that everything
was a gauzy white color and her lips were stuck together. The voices…were behind
her. She remembered. Her eyes fluttered open, and her lips peeled apart. She sat
up.

There were three of them this time. Staring at her. One of them started rocking
his hips back and forth and grunting. The other two men laughed.

On the table was a bowl, a spoon, a glass of water, and the blue pill, just like
before. She sat up slowly on the bed, eyeing the glass of water. She swung her
feet onto the floor and, ignoring the men, leaned forward and took the glass of
water. She drained the entire glass and then set it back down on the table.

She felt as though her head were filled with heavy rocks. She lifted her arm and
pointed toward the door. This time she was understood immediately. One of the men,
the one who’d been there each of the previous two mornings, quickly opened the
door, and bowed mockingly as she passed by. She could barely walk, stopping to
lean against the wall several times, but no one tried to help her. The three men
followed her into the hallway and watched her pee, whistling and moaning and laughing.
Two days ago, she’d found it humiliating. Now she was too tired to care.

As she finished, another voice came from down the hall, yelling. The three men
quickly dispersed, one of them turning back to wink at her before he left.

She stumbled back to her room while a fourth man yelled at the man who apparently
had been assigned to guard her. She stared for a moment at the empty glass. She
needed to remember something, something to do with the glass. She picked it up
and sat down heavily on the cot. One of the men came back into the room. She held
up the empty water glass, remembering suddenly why it was important.

“More,” she croaked. The man looked at her angrily for a moment before grabbing
the glass and marching down the hall.

Alone in the room, Sophie wondered if perhaps she could make a run for it, but
she felt too sluggish, too weak to run. She eyed the bowl on the table. She needed
to eat. Her eyes wandered to the blue pill next to the porridge. She needed to
stop taking those pills.

She managed to sit down at the table, waves of hunger swallowing her senses. A
full glass of water was set down next to her. She took hold of the glass with both
hands and drank down huge gulps until the glass was empty again. She turned to
her jailer. “More,” she croaked again.

Sophie ate a few spoonfuls of porridge. It actually wasn’t awful. The man returned
again with more water and she drank most of the third glass as well. She took the
blue pill in her hand and made a point of showing it to her jailer before popping
it into her mouth. She slipped it underneath her tongue and then drank a gulp of
water. She desperately wanted more—she couldn’t ever remember being so thirsty—but
she didn’t want the pill to dissolve in her mouth. She lay down on the cot, facing
the wall, and then spit the pill out, slipping it into the pillow case.

First chance I get, she promised herself.

15

Nariman Point, Mumbai • Kapoor Financial Planning Ltd
Tuesday, May 1st
8:30 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Swaran Kapoor poured himself a scotch, wiping his forehead with a white handkerchief
he kept in his back pocket, wishing he’d spent more time practicing his English.
Doing it while giving instructions to his broker was bound to end in a tragic misunderstanding
one day. He sat down behind his desk and picked up his cell phone, staring at an
email on his monitor.

“Please, I would like to buy five hundred dollars in put options for Google at
eight hundred and ten, Facebook at eighteen, and Apple at four hundred,” he said,
looking at the options pricing displayed on his computer monitor.

“Really?”

“Yes, please.”

“Five hundred total, or each one?”

“Each one.”

“Expiration?”

“Tomorrow.”

“You sure? Those puts are way out of the money.”

“Yes.”

“You expecting some kind of high-tech Armageddon?”

“It’s only one thousand five hundred dollars.”

“Sure. It’s your money. Should I round up or down?”

“What?”

“You gotta buy ‘em in blocks of one hundred. Five hundred bucks of Google at eight-ten
is…one thousand three hundred and fifty-one options. So you can either buy one
thousand three hundred—“

“Ah, yes. Round up.”

“Okay. So that’s one thousand four hundred for Google, an even fifty thousand
for Facebook, and…for Apple…two thousand seven hundred.”

“Thank you,” said Swaran. The email had specifically said at least a 10
percent decline. At which point, all those options would be in the money. If those
stocks actually declined by, say, 11 percent, he’d net nearly $30,000 from $1,500.
In fact, each percentage point decline represented another $30,000. If the stocks
actually declined by 15 percent, he’d net nearly 150 grand, or 100 times
his original investment.

Of course, that was a big if. He mopped his brow again. At least he hadn’t
risked all ten grand. Perhaps Vipul had inside information, but there was no sense
getting carried away. Things didn’t always go as planned and this way, he would
still have capital even if this particular tip didn’t pan out. Vipul had told him
that the Rathod family had chosen to work with him because he was reliable and
trustworthy. He would show Vipul his faith hadn’t been misplaced.

East Detroit • The Lab
Tuesday, May 1st
5:00 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Kirin beamed while looking up at the monitor, his hands on his hips. Raj had set
it up to display the share prices of their real targets. “All right. The floor
is closed. We have Apple down twenty-four and a quarter, Google down twenty-two
five, and Facebook down…nineteen. Not bad. Not bad at all.”

Lock couldn’t suppress a small smile. Their software had worked flawlessly. Of
course, Wall Street was in a panic. But if Lock was choosing between Sophie’s well-being
and Wall Street… “Nice job, Raj,” he said.

“You too.”

“I brought a little something to celebrate,” announced Kirin, walking over to
a briefcase that was sitting next to the couch. He pulled out a caramel-colored
bottle and held it up. “Talisker 30-year,” he announced.

Sanjay began to applaud. Raj joined him and Lock followed, even though he could
have cared less about fine scotch at that particular moment. There was no sense
spoiling the mood, especially not before he had a chance to talk to Kirin about
Sophie.

Kirin produced four glasses, set them out on Sanjay’s desk, and began to pour
two fingers’ worth of scotch in each. “Drink up, my friends,” he said, raising
his glass.

Each of the men took a glass, raised it, and drank. Lock swished the scotch around
in his mouth, but it was impossible to enjoy it. His mind was on Sophie. He’d carefully
planned his approach. The first step was to reinforce his bond with Kirin.

“By my calculations,” Lock announced, “we erased nearly fifty billion dollars
of value in the market today. And that’s only counting the stocks we targeted.
The entire tech NASDAQ took a dive. Which makes this the greatest heist in history,
I would imagine. And we never even had to leave this lab. I only wish…”

All three men waited for him to finish the thought. He faced Kirin. “I only wish
we had some idea of what the real play was.”

Kirin’s smile was sly. “I’m afraid you’ll have to content yourself with knowing
that, indeed, you are taking part in, as you say, the biggest heist in history.
And it isn’t over yet. Tomorrow, we strike again. Only this time, we will hit the
energy sector.”

Lock smiled to hide his disappointment. He’d hoped Kirin would share a small detail
of the plan, begin to include them as co-conspirators. Swallowing the last of the
scotch along with his disappointment, Lock pressed on to the next phase of his
plan.

He pulled Kirin aside as he was heading for the door. “Can I talk to you privately
for a moment?”

“Of course,” said Kirin, and the pair walked away from the door and the desks
into the relative darkness surrounding them.

“It’s about Sophie.”

Kirin made a sympathetic humming sound.

“I’ve done everything you’ve asked.”

“Yes.”

“So…please. Can you let her come home?”

Kirin frowned. “I wish I could, Lock. I do.”

“Please. I promise, I won’t cause any further trouble.”

“I’m afraid until this is all over…” Kirin shrugged, as though it was out of his
hands.

“Honestly, Kirin, you don’t even need me. The system is built, it works—”

“Lock,” counseled Kirin, placing his hand on Lock’s shoulder, “try not to think
about it.”

“Perhaps I could—you could take me to visit her. You could blindfold me so I—”

“I can’t do that, Lock.”

Lock studied Kirin’s face closely but saw only the same vaguely condescending
expression. “Or…is she back in India? You could fly me there?”

“Lock, please.”

Lock pursed his lips, no longer attempting to hide his frustration. He hadn’t
fooled Kirin for a moment. He thought about how good it would feel to put his hands
around Kirin’s throat and squeeze. But that wouldn’t help Sophie.

He took a breath and played his last card. “Okay, okay. Can I at least talk to
her? Over the phone. Or video chat. See for myself, you know, as you said, that
she’s in good hands?”

Kirin squeezed Lock’s shoulder. “That’s reasonable. Let me see what I can do.”

Lock had to resist pulling away. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Lock. See you tomorrow?”

Lock forced himself to smile. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

The Federal Reserve, Washington DC
Wednesday, May 2nd
7:45 a.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Michael Ryan’s black sedan pulled up to the guard station at the Twentieth Street
entrance of the Federal Reserve building at precisely 7:15 in the morning, as it
did nearly every weekday. The gate opened after a slight delay, and the sedan pulled
up in the circular drive in front of the building. Ryan’s driver got out and came
around the passenger side to open the back door. Ryan, a trim man who didn’t stand
much higher than the sedan, mumbled a thank-you as he got out, briefcase in hand.
He walked quickly to the smoked-glass doors, which, as always, struck him as distastefully
out of place in the austere and regal setting. Once inside, he made his way around
the scanners with a slight nod to a security guard. He started up the grand marble
staircase in the center of the building, running with small, precise steps, the
sound of his hard-soled shoes striking the stairs echoing in his wake. He walked
down a marble hallway to a large and heavy wooden door, which had a brass-plated
sign affixed to it that read “Chairman’s Office.” He pushed open the doors and
made his way past two empty desks, which, presuming neither was sick or on vacation,
his secretary and executive assistant would occupy by seven thirty. Finally, he
reached the doors to his inner sanctum.

Ryan’s office was larger than a typical DC apartment, with walls of dark wood
and marble along the back. Had he stopped at the window to enjoy the view, he would
have been able to see the Lincoln Memorial to one side and the Washington Monument
to the other. Instead, he sat down at an elegant wooden desk, pulling several folders
from his briefcase and setting them on the burnished top. He patted his salt-and-pepper
hair briefly, as though to make sure it was where he expected it to be, and logged
in to this computer.

It was seven forty-five when Allen Lane, Ryan’s executive assistant, arrived,
accompanied by Susan Court, the inspector general. They apologetically sat down
and handed him yet another folder.

“Normally, Mr. Chairman…” Allen began before faltering.

“We wouldn’t bring something like this to you, Michael,” continued Susan. “Obviously.”

Ryan put on a of pair spectacles and began reading the contents of the folder.

“But given what happened yesterday…” added Allen.

“He’s either very lucky or…” mumbled Ryan, scanning the paper he held. The trio
sat in silence while Ryan read through a second and third page. He looked up. “He’s
predicting another sell-off today.”

“Yes. In the energy sector.”

He rolled his chair back from the desk and placing the folder against his chin.
“All right. Let’s keep a close eye on the early action.” He paused, his eyes roving
the expanse of his desk. “Susan,” he continued, looking up and removing his spectacles.
“If this looks like it’s even close to accurate, set up an emergency teleconference
with the G8 bankers. Bankers. Nobody else. Wait. Maybe it should be in
person.” He paused again, his eyes searching. “In person. Not a call. Zurich is
probably best. Damn it. I’ll have to fly out tonight.” Another pause. “Then set
a cabinet meeting and make sure Honour is there.”

“And Brackenridge?” asked Susan.

“Good point. Financial terrorism. Honour and Brack can argue jurisdiction. Not
my problem.”

“I’m assuming this is need-to-know,” said Susan.

“Obviously, yes.”

“So…your cover story? For Zurich?”

Michael raised his eyes to meet Susan’s. “Well, if this prediction turns out to
be the least bit accurate, we’re staring at a complete meltdown. We’d be having
a meeting anyway, just to deal with that.”

16

Nariman Point, Mumbai • Kapoor Financial Planning Ltd
Wednesday, May 2nd
8:30 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Swaran froze when he saw the name on his cell phone. “Good evening, Mr. Rathod,”
he said, fumbling around for his handkerchief.

“It’s not a good evening at all.”

Swaran suddenly felt as though he’d swallowed a hummingbird. “But, sir. All the
options I bought are in the money, are they not? In my message—”

“Of course, they’re in the money! These aren’t hunches, you idiot!”

“Of course, you’re right. What I meant was only—”

“What is the point of giving you ten grand if you’re not going to use it? You
should be looking at a million dollars right now, not a measly one fifty!”

“I-I thought it was more prudent to start modestly.” Swaran felt like he needed
to scratch itches on half his body at once.

“Prudence isn’t prudence when the game is rigged; it’s just stupid. You should
not only be investing what is in the note but borrowing against the capital.”

“Oh, I don’t know if—”

“I do know, Swaran, that is the entire point! Leverage, man! I make
more money and you make more money. Why wouldn’t you want that?”

“Of course, sir, I want to make more money. But there is no sure thing, isn’t
that also true?”

“You’re not listening, Swaran. Perhaps you don’t have the stomach for this, after
all. I’m about to send you another email. I want you to put the entire one fifty
and change into play. If you do that, you should be sitting on fifteen million
dollars worth of options by this time tomorrow. Your take on that is roughly one
point five million dollars based on the terms in the note. Can you do that? Because
if not, let’s just stop right here.”

Swaran gave up on finding his handkerchief and simply wiped his brow with his
sleeve. Had he said one point five million dollars? Maybe he was looking
at this all wrong. “I can do that, yes.”

“Very good. Because the stakes only go up from here. We’re just getting warmed
up, Swaran. I’d hate for you to drop out before we even start making the real money.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Swaran, but the line was dead.

East Detroit • The Lab
Wednesday, May 2nd
5:00 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Lock marveled as he watched a crisply dressed, attractive Asian woman assess the
damage he’d wrought. She was an anchor for CNN, and Sanjay had queued up the video
on the large monitor.

“—in disarray as the energy sector was hit hard, with Exxon, Chevron, and Shell
alone losing nearly five percent of their value. Today’s losses followed hard on
the heels of yesterday’s massive collapse of the tech sector, which had begun to
stabilize when today’s selling began. Analysts are scrambling to explain the cause
of what is rapidly developing into a panic—”

Lock took a sip of his scotch and stepped up to Kirin’s side. He needed to keep
the pressure on. If he could talk to Sophie, maybe he could extract some clue as
to where she was being held. “Any word?” he said, speaking softly.

“Any word about what?” asked Kirin.

“About, you know, what we discussed. Last night.”

“Oh. Right. No. Not yet.”

Lock blinked slowly. “Are you even doing anything?” He regretted the aggressive
tone immediately. He had to stay on Kirin’s good side.

“What do you mean?”

“Just…you said you’d set something up.”

“I said I’d look into it.”

Lock took another sip of his scotch, trying to buy himself a little time to think.
He decided to try a different tact. “How much money do you think we just made?”

“We? None.”

Lock rolled his eyes. “C’mon, Kirin.” He patted Kirin on the back. “Don’t be difficult.
You know what I mean.”

Kirin frowned and looked at him askance. “Stop prying, Lock. I can’t tell you
anything more than I already have.”

Lock felt his insides going dead. He was getting nowhere. Kirin and he weren’t
going to be buddies. He heard himself speaking. “Here’s something I don’t know.
I don’t know whether my fucking daughter is alive.”

“Keep your voice down.” Kirin guided Lock away from the desks where Raj and Sanjay
were rapt in attention to the newscast. “I think you should not lose sight of your
situation.”

Lock was committed now. There was no longer any plan. He felt his nerves twitching
and took another swig of scotch. “Let me put it to you this way, Kirin.” He paused
and took a deep breath.

“Be careful, Lock.”

With another deep breath, he forged on: “I haven’t forgotten about my situation,
not for one second. But if I don’t get some assurances that she’s alive, I’m going
to have to assume she’s dead. And then, all bets are off. Do you think I’m afraid
of you? Or your thugs? Or going back to jail? None of that matters to me, Kirin.
Not anymore. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Kirin stared at him for a moment. He spoke slowly. “I said I’m working on it.
Until then, you’ll have to take my word for it.”

Lock stepped closer to Kirin, so that they were nearly touching. Kirin frowned,
but didn’t move. “You’ve lied to me from the start, Kirin. Why—”

“Have I?”

“—should I believe anything you say?”

“Because you can’t afford not to.”

“No, Kirin. That’s not good enough. I’ve done my job. I’ve done what you asked.
I need something from you. Clear evidence that she’s alive. Which, by the
way, you’ve already agreed to provide me.”

Kirin took a step back. “Fine, Lock.” He smiled. “You’re right. It’s not too much
to ask. We’ll set something up.”

“Tomorrow. I want to see her tomorrow.”

“I’ll do my best. But it will have to be video chat. Best I can do.”

Lock felt his fists balling up and his jaw clench. “Don’t test me, Kirin. I’ll
bring this whole operation down.”

Kirin laughed again. “Lock, please. You’re being melodramatic. Give me till Friday.”

Lock shook his head but looked away into the gloom of the far corners of the warehouse.
He looked back at Kirin. “Friday, then. Video chat.”

Kirin nodded and headed toward the exit, extending a hand casually in the air.
“Good night. See you tomorrow, bright and early.”

After the door had closed behind him, Raj approached him, holding the nearly empty
bottle of scotch. Without a word, he took Lock’s glass and refilled it.

Lock met Raj’s eyes. “Thanks,” he said and, tilting back his head, drained the
glass.

Chinese Garden, Singapore
Thursday, May 3rd
5:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya took her usual place on the bridge next to Haruo. It was another cool morning,
and she wore a black workout top and sipped water from her Camelback. “Good morning,
Haruo.”

Haruo wore a cream-colored button-down sweater and stared impassively out at the
lake. He was the retiree going for a morning stroll to her yuppie jogger. “Good
morning, Katya.”

Haruo had sent her a message yesterday instructing her to resume their usual meetings.
She wondered if perhaps he had some news from Langley. She hadn’t heard anything,
and there was no reason why administrative information couldn’t just be sent via
email.

She looked out at the pink sky and shadowy wisps of clouds that were reflected
on the placid surface of the lake. It calmed her down.

“Have you been watching the stock markets?” asked Haruo.

“The stock markets? Not really. Just that they’re down, I guess.”

“Ryan believes it’s financial terrorism.”

“Ryan?”

“Michael Ryan. Chairman of the Fed.”

“Oh. That Ryan. Of course.” She paused, feeling foolish.

Haruo continued: “Ryan asked Brack for a list of possible suspects. Brack asked
Tan. Tan asked me. I considered the matter, and, among other names, Vipul Rathod
came to mind. What’s Vipul been up to?”

Katya was eager to know if her diligence in surveilling Vipul might be about to
pay off. “I did pick up fragments of a cell conversation last night that mentioned
insider trading. And there was another call earlier that mentioned Detroit again.”

“That’s it?” asked Haruo.

“Other than that…nothing.”

Haruo was silent.

“What sort of financial terrorism are we talking about?” inquired Katya.

“Ryan receives daily emails predicting very specific events. The drops in the
prices of specific stocks. The predictions so far have been extremely accurate.
Apparently, too accurate to be attributable to chance.”

“How is that financial terrorism? If he’s just predicting things?”

“The emailer claims he’s able to manipulate the market, not just predict it.”

“Oh.” Katya thought for a moment. “So he’s threatening…what? To crash the market?”

“Exactly.”

“Unless?”

“That part’s need-to-know. And, no, I don’t know.”

“I love it when they do that.”

Haruo was silent. “I’m tempted to include Rathod on the initial list of possibles,”
he said at last.

Katya nodded. “Economics at Oxford. Business at Harvard, which included some finance.
He ran the investment arm for the family business.”

“Before having his brother killed.”

“Yes.”

“And he apparently indulged recently in some insider trading?”

“Yes,” confirmed Katya. “I can’t really think of a reason not to include
him. You sort of had a hunch about him from the beginning.”

“He seemed to be up to something, that’s all. But this…well, it seems a bit ambitious.
You mentioned something about Detroit?”

Katya realized, with a tightening in her stomach, that she wanted very badly to
convince Haruo that Vipul should be considered a suspect. “Unfortunately, the reception
on those calls was a bit sketchy, so I only have fragments. But as best as I can
tell there is an operation in Detroit that was causing them some problems but is
now going smoothly.”

“Hmm.”

Why not just tell Haruo that she didn’t think Vipul was a suspect? Was she trying
to avoid going home? Or did she really believe that perhaps Vipul could do something
like this? “There’s all the traveling,” she pointed out.

“Refresh my memory.”

“He’s been traveling almost nonstop for the past…I guess it’s been three months.”

“I’m not sure how that would be connected to this. Besides, isn’t that an Indian
name? Rathod?”

“Yeah. They have ties back to Bihar. But he was traveling all over the place.
Malaysia. Hong Kong. Southern China. Indonesia. There was even a trip to Australia.”

“So…he’s leading some kind of pan-Asian trading bloc?”

Katya bit her lip. “Perhaps…”

Haruo went quiet again. Katya found that her nails were digging into the wood
of the railing. “Okay,” he said finally. “I’m going to keep him on the list…for
now.”

Katya had to remind herself to breathe.

Haruo continued. “This is a top-priority investigation. Unless we decide to drop
Vipul, I’m going to need someone to stay up on him.”

Katya nodded.

Haruo turned to face her. “Do you want that person to be you, Katya? It would
mean delaying your transfer. Presuming it would be approved, which I think is very
likely.”

“I’d like the assignment.”

“You sure?”

Katya closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. She could practically
feel her bones vibrating. She opened her eyes, meeting Haruo’s easy gaze. “Yes,
I’m sure.”

17

Naubatpur (Bihar, India) • Rathod Apartment Building
Thursday, May 3rd
9:00 a.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Sophie lay awake, staring up in the darkness at the ceiling fan, faintly illuminated
by the moonlight streaming in through the window.

On the first night without sedatives, she’d lost her nerve and simply lain there
all night. On the second night, she’d been so tired from staying up all night that
she accidentally fell asleep and didn’t wake until it was light outside.

Tonight was the night.

She sat up slowly, keeping her eyes fixed on the figure snoring in the easy chair,
and swung her legs over the edge of her cot. Reaching down and picking up her red
Converse, she stood up. She held still for a few seconds, watching her sleeping
guard closely for any sign of waking.

He didn’t move when she took a step toward the door, so she took another one.
Six more and she reached the door. The shadowy outline of his chest rose and fell
steadily. She reached out and grabbed the door handle, turning it slowly. It made
a clicking sound that might as well have been symbols crashing together, and Sophie
froze. But her derelict jailor simply snorted and then resumed snoring.

Next came opening the door. She decided to open it quickly rather than slowly.
There was a slight squeaking sound. She eyed the slumbering lump in the easy chair
one last time and then stepped quickly through the door, not closing it behind
her. The door might squeak again if she closed it, and besides, she might need
to make a quick retreat.

She crept down the hallway to the stairwell until she could hear voices coming
from downstairs. At least two different men, speaking softly. Perhaps, though,
she could sneak past them. She tested the first step to see if it would creak,
and winced when it did. But the voices kept talking, unabated. Deciding to take
the steps more quickly, she stepped lightly on each until she reached the bottom
step. She leaned around a corner and saw three men seated around a table playing
a card game. One of them had an almost direct line of sight in her direction. She
quickly withdrew and exhaled slowly, deafened by even the sound of her own heartbeat.

Immediately to the left of the bottom of the staircase was a back door. But she
would be in full view of the man at the table for however long it took her to reach
the door and open it. If she made a sound, it would surely alert her captors. And
what if it was locked?

She stared longingly at the door. What would they do if they caught her? She had
to assume that, at the very least, they would take more precautions. Perhaps they
would restrain her somehow, or play cards right there in her room. Perhaps they
would realize she wasn’t taking the little blue pill and find a way to force it
down her throat.

And perhaps they would hurt her.

Swallowing the lump in her throat and turning, she looked back up toward the top
of the stairs. Maybe there was another way.

She quickly ascended the stairs on the balls of her feet and then paused at the
top to listen. The men playing cards were still chatting. There was no sign of
anyone at the end of the hall. She walked quickly to the bathroom. She set her
shoes on the floor, and walked to the bathroom window. It was open, but there was
a screen, just like in her room. She pressed her face to the screen and looked
down, feeling weightless for a moment. She couldn’t see the ground in the darkness.

She sat down on the edge of the bathtub. She couldn’t risk being away from her
room much longer. Her jailer was bound to wake at some point and notice she was
gone. Standing, she pressed her face to the screen again and looked down. It was
too far. Surely she’d break her leg or something in the fall. She walked back out
into the hallway, picking up her shoes along the way, and peered into her room.
She was comforted by the sound of snoring.

Stepping into her room, she turned and swung the door until just before the point
of closing. It squeaked loudly. The figure in the chair sat up. Sophie closed the
door and faced him.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said softly, pointing toward the bathroom
and dropping her shoes behind her. The figure rose and Sophie stepped back toward
the wall, a cry catching in her throat. The man leaned forward and then opened
the door, moving into the hallway and mumbling indecipherably. She followed him
into the hallway.

“Thank you,” she said.

She went to the bathroom with the door open as the man waited outside. The ritual
was no longer embarrassing for her nor interesting to him. Back in the room, she
climbed into her cot. Maybe tomorrow night there’d be no one in the kitchen.

Swiss National Bank, Zurich

Thursday, May 3rd

9:00 a.m. CEST (Central European Summer Time)

Ryan couldn’t help but notice that the room was far too large for just the eight
of them. The meeting began with a resolution for everyone to move to one end of
the giant conference table. Seven of the eight of them were there; Laura Underhall,
the governor of the Bank of Canada, had already privately agreed to support whatever
position Ryan took, at least for this initial meeting.

“Everyone have their briefing notes?” asked Ryan. There was a general mumbling
of agreement and shuffling of papers. “We are dealing with financial terrorism,
or greenmailing, depending on your flair for the dramatic, on an unprecedented
scale. Our analysts don’t have any doubt at this point that the cause of the sell-offs
these past two days was fraud. There is no external event that can explain it.
We basically had meltdowns in two completely unrelated sectors and a third—banking,
as it says in your briefings—is targeted for today. There were no significant earnings
announcements, no interest changes, nothing that could explain the extremely focused
selling. Further analysis revealed also that the transactions could not have been
organic. That is, they were orchestrated, not spontaneous. I’m not prepared to
get into the math at this meeting—frankly, I don’t fully understand it—but the
takeaway is that our analysis gives us a high degree of confidence that the integrity
of our financial trading systems has been compromised. We believe the threat that
the greenmailer is making—to crash the market—is, in short, a credible threat.
Highly credible.”

Ryan waited for some response. He looked around the room. Winslow Tyneby, the
governor of the Bank of England, his face seemingly compressed into a permanent
scowl, glared back at him but said nothing. Angelo Porcello, the playboy governor
of Banca d’Italia, eased his rotund frame back in his chair, which squeaked in
protest. He shrugged when Ryan caught his eye.

Finally, a pale, white-haired, bespectacled figure on the opposite side of the
table leaned forward over the papers spread in front of him and cleared his throat.
Everyone in the room turned to hear what the President of Deutsche Bundesbank,
Horst Kögler, had to say.

“While I understand your concern, Chairman, we cannot be cowed by a threat like
this. The greater risk is conceding to these demands. The damage that could be
wrought…with this kind of information…rivals that of the prospect…that the American
stock market…would crash.” The old man paused to catch his breath or gather his
thoughts. “A market crash would obviously be undesirable. But it could perhaps
be contained…”

“How would it be contained?” asked Yukihiro Ko, Governor of the Bank of Japan.
He was relatively young, neatly coiffed, with a round, fleshy face. “With all due
respect, Mr. Kögler, isn’t that wishful thinking? Where New York goes, the Nikkei
will surely follow. We risk a worldwide panic and retreat of capital from the markets
into less volatile assets. I think we would have a recession on our hands very
quickly, one that, given our recent economic malaise, we cannot afford.”

“What do you suggest, Chairman?” ask Viktor Vitaly, Chairman of the Central Bank
of Russia. Up until he’d spoken, Ryan had assumed he was falling asleep.

“I agree with both Mr. Kögler and Mr. Ko,” answered Ryan. “Concessions must be
a last resort. But we cannot underestimate the danger of this threat. We are considering
closing the US markets tomorrow. I would encourage you all to follow suit. That
will give us the weekend to consider the matter more thoroughly and give our law
enforcement agencies more time to, hopefully, figure out what’s going on. However,
if we are unable to…prevent further sell-offs…uh, I believe…we will have no choice
but to concede to the greenmailer’s demands at that time.”

The room fell silent until Kögler spoke. “What time is that?”

“I’m sorry, President Kögler?”

“You’re saying we shut the markets down tomorrow. But then what do we do on Monday?”

“We would begin providing the greenmailer with the information he desires. Provided
that we aren’t able to shut him down by then.”

“So…you’re saying we would give ourselves three days? We have basically three
days to avoid becoming complicit in this?”

Ryan cleared his throat. “I’m not sure, uh, I’d say complicit. But…well,
yes, generally speaking, that’s, I guess, what I’m saying.”

“You understand the value of this information, Mr. Chairman?”

“Yes, I believe I do.”

“If someone knew what they were doing—” Kögler turned and addressed the other
central bankers, “—and I think we have to believe that these people do…” He paused.
“That information is worth…well, it’s almost incalculable.”

“I agree, President Kögler,” said Ryan. “It’s worth billions.”

“Billions? I think more than that!”

“A worldwide recession is nothing to sneeze at,” Ryan said, nodding in Ko’s direction.
“At any rate, that is my suggestion. I recommend we meet again tomorrow and Monday
before the markets open to make a final decision.”

“I’ve been saying this for years,” grumbled Tyneby. “All these computers, all
the automatic trading, with the fancy algorithms—we’ve lost control of the markets.
It was just a matter of time before someone found a hole somewhere. Some hacker.
Some hacker has just hijacked the entire bleeding global economy.”

FBI Regional Headquarters, New Orleans
Thursday, May 3rd
7:00 a.m. CDT (Central Daylight Time)

“Hackers,” announced Clinton Honour to the overcrowded conference room. He wore
a blue suit with a blue shirt and a blue tie with green stripes. He was freshly
shaven, and his gray hair was combed back, which had the effect of emphasizing
his already beak-like nose. “We need to start with hackers. Anyone with a record
of computer fraud. Even indictments. Anything that would suggest someone
capable of fraud at this scale.”

The room was filled with special agents, many of them holding Styrofoam cups of
coffee and squinting under the harsh fluorescent lights. Honour had summoned every
available agent to the FBI headquarters in New Orleans—more central than the DC
office—for an emergency 7:00 a.m. meeting.

“I can’t stress enough how high the stakes are on this. I can’t share the details,
but let’s put it this way—imagine that every bank in the country was being robbed.
Now multiply that by ten. That’s the scale of fraud this guy, or gal, or group,
or whatever they are…that’s how big this is. That’s why you are all here.”

“Question,” said a man with full red cheeks wearing a blue T-shirt. “Does this
have anything to do with what’s happening with the stock market lately? I’ve lost
a fuck load of dough.” There was some laughter and general assent.

“I can’t really get into that. We are keeping a tight lid on this; we don’t want
to cause a panic. What we want to do is find the bad guys. And like I said, our
number-one priorities are folks with computer fraud in their backgrounds. What
I want each of you to do is go through the likely candidates in your backyard.
Speaking of which, some of you are being temporarily reassigned. You should have
an email about that. So read your email and go find your section chief.”

“Sir, isn’t this more of a cyber-services thing? I mean, some of us are in the
middle of other cases. Not to—”

“Normally, yes, that would be the case. The scale of this is so enormous that
we felt it was prudent to pool our resources together. We have a lot of potential
suspects we need to evaluate in a very short time. And we will be putting just
about anyone that fits the bill under surveillance. So that means lots of personnel.
With any luck, we’ll run this guy down in short order, and you can all get back
to what you’re supposed to be doing.”

“Have we put away that many hackers?” asked a woman with short blond hair. “I
mean, it seems like there couldn’t be that many out there.”

“Good question. All I’m saying is that they would be the priority. We want to
look at anyone, anyone, who might be capable of this. The odds are that
they are probably on our radar in some way or another…but they might not be.”

The red-cheeked man attempted to summarize. “So basically we’re supposed to go
chase down every hacker in the country.”

“Basically, yes,” agreed Honour.

18

The White House, Washington DC
Thursday, May 3rd
7:00 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

“Michael, the president’s all for shutting the markets down tomorrow. I think
we all agree that, at this point, it’s the prudent thing to do. If nothing else,
we need to see if we can just calm everyone down. But what he’s asking is, what
happens Monday? And what can he tell the American people tomorrow that will set
expectations and avoid a panic when the markets do finally open?”

Michael Ryan rubbed his eyes and looked over at Weintraub, the secretary of the
treasury, and then back to Louis Moya, one of the president’s closest advisors.
The trio sat in an otherwise empty conference room in the bowels of the White House.
“What makes you think I have the answers? You know everything I know. We’ve got
the FBI and CIA chasing down leads. We’re working closely with the G8 central bankers.”
Ryan waved his hand. “I’m rambling. I’m sorry. I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept since
this thing started.”

“Understandable,” said Weintraub.

Ryan wondered what he thought was understandable. That he was exhausted, or that
he hadn’t slept. Weintraub looked awfully refreshed under the circumstances. He
had white hair but a young-looking face and a smirk that gave the impression he’d
just dashed over from a cocktail party and was planning to return.

Moya was unrelenting. “So, what? I just tell the president to tell the American
people that we’re doing our best? Is that all we’ve got? Do you have any idea what
is going on?”

Ryan cocked an eyebrow. No one will remember your name, he said to himself.
Moya had that look that all gatekeepers in this world had; a look of smug precision,
in his case accented by salt-and-pepper hair and horn-rimmed glasses.

“For now, all I need to know is that the president is onboard with closing the
markets,” he said. “Robbie and I will draft a memo that you can use to brief the
president tomorrow morning. Robbie, I can give you everything I’ve got so far,
if you can actually write the memo. Will that work?”

“You might as well just draft the memo, Mike. I don’t have any information you
don’t have. I can give it the once-over and send it on.”

“Sure,” agreed Ryan, not caring that Weintraub was effectively proposing that
he take credit for Ryan’s work. It didn’t matter. There was money and there was
politics. Ryan was money. Weintraub was merely politics.

FBI Regional Headquarters, New Orleans
Thursday, May 3rd
9:00 p.m. CDT (Central Daylight Time)

Honour flipped through the stack of papers in front of him. “Okay. So priority
three. Who’s next?”

Special Agent Lawrence Thorton, erect, compact, wearing a knit short-sleeved shirt
that revealed large, muscular forearms, looked down at a similar stack facing him.
“Lochan Cairnes,” he said, pronouncing the first name with a soft “ch” and the
last like “carnies.”

They sat at a table ringed with agents and filled with papers that competed for
space with a dozen Styrofoam cups half-filled with cold, burnt coffee. Honour’s
haggard features gave the time almost as clearly as the clock on the wall, which
showed a few minutes past nine.

“Lochan Cairnes,” corrected Honour, pronouncing the name correctly. “Two convictions.”

“One for possession with intent and one for computer fraud. Did four years Federal,
seven years suspended.”

“Looks promising.”

“Yeah, uh, we have him in our priority two list, I think. Saunders?”

A hunched, trim man with glasses spoke without looking up. “Priority two. Right.”

“He’s got the two convictions.”

Thorton continued: “Yeah. But he’s been clean for…eight years? Out on good behavior,
yada, yada, yada. He wasn’t even working in the computer industry last we checked.”

“Last we checked…three years ago?”

“Sure, but…possession with intent? In Detroit? Really? Who gives a fuck? And the
fraud case—he was fixing his friend’s grades at Michigan State. Small-time stuff.”

Honour grimaced.

“Sir, we’ve only got so many priority-one slots. I’ve still got thirty more of
these.”

Honour placed the page he’d been looking at in one of the piles in front of him.
“Okay. Fine. Priority two. Who’s next?”

Lafayette Park, Detroit • Lock's Apartment
Friday, May 4th
4:00 a.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Lock sat at his kitchen table in the darkness. He’d given up trying to sleep.
It never took long before his thoughts returned to Sophie. Was she even alive?
If so, was she suffering? How badly? He felt like his insides wanted to expel something
that was too big to come up. He lay down each night in the hope that his exhaustion
would force his body to shut down, at least for a few hours. He knew that he needed
to be rested and alert if he was going to be of any use to his daughter. What sleep
did come didn’t last, though, and even then it was fitful.

Tomorrow was the fateful day. If Kirin couldn’t produce any evidence that Sophie
was alive, Lock was prepared to accept that she was dead, and that Kirin was just
stringing him along. He’d asked Kafka to set up a meeting with Ray later that night.
And he had a bottle of Jack Daniels sitting on the kitchen counter. His plan was
to kill Kirin, blow up the lab, go to the police, tell them everything, and then
kill himself.

On the other hand, if Kirin kept his word and Lock was able to talk to his daughter,
he’d try to find out where she was being held. She wouldn’t be able to tell him
directly, so Lock had been planning the conversation to yield clues. For example,
he could say “good morning,” or “good evening,” and see whether she responded in
kind. Or he could ask her if she had just woken up. Or if she had eaten dinner.
Anything to reveal whether or not she was in the same time zone.

But his planning was always interrupted by tidal waves of despair. The thought
of hearing her voice, let alone seeing her, seized him by the throat and
squeezed until he was forced to think of something else. He craved an escape—he
could practically feel the bottle of Jack sitting there in the darkness—but
he deserved no release. He needed to be sharp—maybe Sophie was still alive. Maybe
today he’d have a chance to talk to her. He couldn’t afford to have his judgment
clouded any more than it already was. And if he wasn’t going to sleep, he needed
to keep planning out their conversation, no matter how difficult it was to think
about.

He reached across the kitchen table, almost involuntarily, his hand stopping halfway.
How many times had she sat across from him at this very table? It had usually been
at breakfast—they almost always had dinner in the living room, watching movies.
She’d eat Pop-Tarts or some sugary cereal, and he’d ask her what she was going
to do that day. “Are you excited about school?” he’d ask, knowing that she was
never excited about school. Except that she’d get excited once she started talking
about it.

Lock’s head bowed, and his hand slid back toward his body. He closed his eyes.
He needed to be stronger than this. He needed to stop mourning her. She could very
well be alive. She needed him. And he had no right to mourn her anyway—he was the
reason she was gone in the first place. Whatever he was going through, she was
going through worse.

He looked up, feeling slightly dizzy, and stared into the darkness. Sitting up,
he sucked in a lungful of air, then shut his eyes and roared until his lungs were
empty again. He sat for an equally long time in silence. And to help focus himself,
he began aloud: “Time zone questions. Questions about her well-being. Questions
about her situation. Personnel, environment, terrain. Questions about the weather…”

Naubatpur (Bihar, India) • Rathod Apartment Building

Friday, May 4th

3:30 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Sophie’s back was sore from pretending to sleep on the unyielding cot. She stank
and her skin itched and her thoughts ran in circles, repeating themselves, like
the jokes in a TV marathon for a bad sitcom. She wished she hadn’t flushed the
blue pills down the toilet earlier.

Keeping her eyes closed and pretending to sleep, she heard a voice—a new voice,
different somehow. She realized it was a woman’s. Talon-like fingers clutched her
shoulders, and a strong, ugly odor shocked her senses. She opened her eyes and
saw the wrinkled, sagging skin of an old woman, her gray hair tumbling like so
much dry straw down the sides of her face. She was speaking their strange language—why
did they all seem to think she understood them? She seemed to be urging her to
get up, and so she did.

The crone led her out of the room and into the bathroom, speaking incessantly,
perhaps more to herself than to Sophie, and started running a bath. She turned
and gestured to Sophie with her hands, waving them up and down over Sophie’s body
as though she were casting a spell. Somehow, Sophie realized she was being told
to get undressed. The idea of a hot bath, even in this nightmare, was irresistible.
But she wasn’t going to undress in front of anyone, not even the old woman. She
pointed to the door and the old woman walked over and shut it. Sophie shook her
head and then pointed at the old woman emphatically and then the door. The old
woman, in turn, shook her head and folded her arms.

The pair regarded each other for a moment, then the old woman turned around and
opened the door, calling out into the hallway. Two men appeared, and the woman
pointed at Sophie, giving orders.

“Okay, okay, okay,” said Sophie, putting up her hands. “I’ll do it.” She made
another shooing motion toward the two men. The woman said something, and the men
left. The woman closed the door behind them.

Once Sophie was in the bath, the old woman surprised her by scrubbing her down
from head to toe. Any pleasure she’d anticipated from the hot water was negated
by a feverish sense of humiliation, as the woman’s fingers seemed to find every
crevice in her body. After the bath, the old woman rubbed her skin raw with a thread-worn
towel and inspected her genitals with a series of pokes and grunts. She left the
bathroom, leaving Sophie standing there, her arms wrapped around her torso and
her head down. The afternoon heat mingled with the lingering heat of the hot water
and her own shame, and she could feel herself begin to sweat.

The woman returned with a stained white dress and tattered sandals. She threw
the dress over Sophie’s head, grabbing her arms and pulling them through the shoulder
straps, then put the sandals on Sophie’s feet. She brushed Sophie’s tangled, wet
hair with an improbable vigor and applied blush and lipstick. Sophie could feel
small rivulets of sweat forming in her armpits. Finally, her straw-headed governess
led Sophie out of the bathroom and down the stairs into the dining area. She passed
the table where, the night before, she’d watched the three men playing cards. The
woman seemed to remand her over to another pair of men, who produced a burlap sack
and slipped it over her head. Blinded, she was led forward, feeling a slight breeze
on her skin. She was half pushed, half guided into a car of some kind. She could
hear the engine and the sound of the door closing. The vinyl-covered seat stuck
to her thighs.

ψ

Sophie blinked frantically as the hood was removed. She was in a well-lit room,
complete with several potted plants along the walls and a nice couch. She was seated
at a table facing a laptop. On the screen, she could see herself. A man sat down
next to her, and she instinctively flinched. He had wary eyes and sharp edges to
his face. His thatched, curly hair was short and clean. He wore a black T-shirt
underneath a gray jacket.

“Sophie,” he said. “My name is Pradeep. I want you to listen to me.”

The sounds of English confused her for a moment, as though the part of her brain
that processed spoken language had been temporarily turned off.

“Sophie?” said Pradeep.

Sophie coughed slightly. “Yes,” she whispered.

“I want you to listen to me very carefully. I want you to do precisely as I say.
If you do that, everything will be fine. If you don’t…” Pradeep’s face seemed to
transform into an baleful storm of grimaces and tics. “You will wish you were dead.”

19

Singapore Financial District • South China Finance Group
Friday, May 4th
7:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Vipul sat at his desk, his computer monitor pushed aside to make room for a large
stack of documents. He grabbed one from the pile and flipped through the pages,
occasionally scribbling his signature on one. He’d signed on nearly eight hundred
partners so far, each able to handle hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars’
worth of forex transactions without attracting the attention of regulatory or intelligence
services.

Vipul heard a familiar voice calling his name. He looked up to find Anand standing
in his doorway. He was so large he made the office look like some sort of children’s
playhouse. Vipul half expected him to tear down a wall by accident.

“Yes?” he prompted.

“They’re shutting down the markets.”

“The NYSE?” he asked, pronouncing it “nice.”

“Yes. And the NASDAQ.”

Vipul leaned back in his chair. “Really?”

“Yes. It’s on CNN’s Web site.”

Vipul didn’t move. “This is good. I was beginning to think they were just going
to let the market crash and burn.”

“They’re already calling it a crash,” Anand pointed out.

Vipul looked up. “No messages?”

“From the Fed? No.”

“They’re still trying to figure out what to do.” Vipul pressed his palms together
thoughtfully. “It’s politics. I should have expected this to take a few days. But
in the end…” He paused. “Well, let me know if you hear anything.”

“I will.”

“There’s no way they’ll let the whole thing crash and burn.”

Anand pursed his lips.

“Did you ever see Caddyshack, Anand?”

“No.”

“You should watch it. Rodney Dangerfield plays a wealthy man who buys his way
into a prestigious country club.”

“I see.”

“The older members don’t like it.”

Anand nodded again.

“The Fed doesn’t want us elbowing into their little club.”

Anand nodded.

“That’s all we’re doing. Forcing our way into their little country club. We just
want access to the same information they have access to.”

“Yes.”

Vipul sat up and eyed the pile of contracts. “I suppose I’d better get back to
signing these. I still have to update the spreadsheet, too.”

Anand turned wordlessly and left the room. Vipul sat quietly for a moment and
stared at the contract in front of him. It was for a small investment fund in Jakarta.
Osman Investama. One more tiny stream to channel the flood of capital he was about
to unleash.

Renaissance Center (Detroit Riverfront) • Patel and Associates, LLC
Friday, May 4th
8:15 a.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Lock sat down on the couch in front of the laptop on the glass coffee table. He
felt as though he was trembling, except that, outwardly anyway, he wasn’t. Kirin
sat next to him, one hand on his shoulder. A clean-cut Indian man with curly hair
filled the laptop’s screen. He was looking off to one side.

“Sophie,” he said gently. “Would you like to talk to your father?”

Lock heard her voice. “Yes, please.” He felt the room go sideways.

At first, the screen showed only a ficus tree and a couch in the background. Lock
leaned forward. There was a blur of white, and Sophie’s face suddenly filled the
screen. She was a caricature of herself; Lock almost didn’t recognize her. Her
painted face was drawn and tight, and her eyes were dull and welling.

“Sophie?” he said incredulously, his hand reaching out involuntarily toward the
screen.

“Hi, Dad,” she said, her voice flat.

“Oh, Sophie,” said Lock. He quivered and clenched his jaw.

“I am fine,” Sophie said. “Everyone here is very nice.”

Lock felt himself slide forward off the couch and onto his knees. He tried to
speak, to say her name, but the words would not come. He had to regain his composure,
reassure her, and ask her questions. He had never imagined it would be so hard.

“I get three meals a day, and…I have a comfortable bed…to sleep in.”

Lock began to slow his breathing. “Sophie,” he said, finally.

Sophie’s lip quivered. Her eyes spilled over, and tears began to streak the blush
on her cheeks. “I can’t…”

Lock swallowed hard. The laptop blurred again and the clean-cut man reappeared.
“Obviously, she’s a little homesick,” he said, looking away from the camera.

Lock could hear her crying. Wait! he wanted to yell, but again found he
couldn’t speak.

“Okay,” said the man. “That’s all for now. Thank you.”

The screen went black.

Lock placed his head in his hands. He felt as though a tangle of barbed wire were
lodged in his throat. He couldn’t sob or breathe or speak. He only knew he had
utterly failed, he had let her down—again. He hadn’t even managed to ask a single
question.

Kirin patted his shoulder. “You wanted to know she was alive. Now you know.”

Naubatpur (Bihar, India) • Rathod Apartment Building

Saturday, May 5th

Midnight IST (India Standard Time)

Sophie was back in her room, laying on her cot in the darkness, pretending to
sleep. She was still wearing the dress. At least it was relatively clean. Her thoughts
kept returning inevitably to her father. All the roads of her mind came back to
those jumpy video images. She had meant to lie, like she was told, but the words
hadn’t come out right. She thought at first Pradeep would be angry, would see how
upset she’d made her father. But Pradeep seemed satisfied, and maybe nobody was
going to die because of her after all.

She realized with a start that three men had gathered at the door, whispering
in Hindi. She sat up slowly, drawing her knees to her chest. One of the men came
into the room, a looming silhouette. She tried to withdraw farther into the corner,
but there was no more room. A second man moved next to the cot and the third moved
to its foot. They stared at her, talking quietly and laughing. One of them grabbed
his crotch. The first man eased himself down on the cot. It creaked from the strain
of bearing his weight. He slid closer to her.

She glanced up at him. “No,” she heard herself moan.

In the dim ambient light coming in through the window and through the door from
the hall, she could see his face. There was something in his narrow eyes. He had
a scar running from his forehead down to his cheek, and his nose was crooked. He
was hunched over on the bed, and his hands were slowly moving toward her like wolves
stalking prey.

“No,” she said again, but it was a whimper now, as though the breath was leaving
her body, evaporating through her midsection.

When the man next to her reached out and touched her hair, she sprang forward
off the cot and staggered toward the door. The three men quickly surrounded her,
and a hand slapped onto the door. She stared into the slitted eyes of the man who’d
been at the foot of the bed. His nostrils flared, and his thinly-mustached lip
curled. She felt a hand grab her breasts and another grabbed her chin. In a moment,
it was going to be too late.

She screamed.

The man with the scar slapped her and yelled something. She fell away from the
door and scrambled on her knees to hide behind the easy chair. The men approached
her, half-smiling, half-sneering. Angry, ugly words were being spoken. She couldn’t
understand them, but she had no doubt about their import. Her eyes darted around
the room, but there was no place else to go. One man made a grab for her and then
another pushed the chair aside and pulled up her dress. She tried to scream again,
but a hand grabbed her jaw and pushed it closed. She got an arm loose for a moment
and struck out wildly, but the men just laughed.

In a blinding flash, the lights came on, the laughing stopped, and she was released.
She fell backward into the corner, her hands over her eyes. She heard yelling and
looked up, squinting toward the door where a fourth man filled the frame. Two of
the men went to the door. The man doing the yelling grabbed them each in turn and
threw them out into the hallway. The man with the thin mustache remained, his head
bowed. Sophie fell to the ground, her whole body trembling uncontrollably. The
fourth man, who was obviously in charge, came over to the corner and Sophie hid
her head in her arms. She felt a powerful grip on her arm, pulling her to her feet
and dragging her to the cot.

She fell onto the cot and quickly gathered herself into the corner again. The
man was still yelling, and something hit her in the face, bringing with it a dank,
familiar smell. Her old clothes. She looked up at the man, who was scolding her,
then back at her clothes. She gathered them up, confused. The man in charge grabbed
the ear of the man with the mustache, who was still cowering by the displaced easy
chair, and led him out of the room, closing the door behind them.

Sophie frantically pulled the dress over her head and put on her old, smelly clothes.
Kicking the dress away from her, she began furiously rubbing her head, tangling
her hair into an unruly mess. A voice called out from the hallway and the door
opened. The man with the mustache re-entered the room and closed the door behind
him. He moved the easy chair back into position and then walked over and turned
off the light. In the shadows, Sophie could see him sit down while she hugged her
knees on the cot. She felt his stare and shivered.

She remembered her father’s face on the video feed, the images coming through
like stop-motion. She couldn’t remember what he’d said. All she could remember
was the way he’d looked at her, and she felt something ripping in her gut when
she did. She could no longer identify distinct emotions—anger, sadness, fear. Her
insides were just a doughy mess.

But there were two things that were abundantly clear. First, her father couldn’t
save her.

Second, she had to leave this place.

Tonight.

20

FBI Regional Headquarters, New Orleans
Friday, May 4th
7:00 p.m. CDT (Central Daylight Time)

“Director?”

Honour looked up from his piles of papers and his Styrofoam cups. He pushed a
wayward lock of hair from his eyes, his hair-gel having lost its potency some hours
past. The clock on the wall read seven, and light streaming in from the windows
meant it was a new day. He was alone in the room now, just here to make sure the
next phase of the dragnet got underway smoothly.

A pair of hands holding a red folder appeared in the doorway, followed by muscled
forearms and, finally, the burly figure of one of his agents. Forearms…that’s Thorton, thought
Honour.

“Yes, Agent Thorton.”

“Special Agent, sir,” corrected Thorton.

You’d think it would be enough that I remembered your name at all, thought
Honour. “What is it?”

“We have an interesting development.”

“Good,” said Honour, the corners of his mouth turned down. “What is it now?”

“This, I think…uh, I think this might be—”

“Just tell me.”

“So Lochan Cairnes, remember that one?”

“God, no. Do you know how many of these I’ve looked at?”

Thorton looked at a folder. “Priority two. Two priors. Possession with intent.
Computer fraud. Fixed his friend’s grades. From Detroit.”

“Actually, I do remember him. Borderline.”

“Yeah, I think he’s priority one now.”

“Why?”

“Maybe even higher than that.”

“For God’s sake, Thorton. Get to the fucking point.”

“We’re getting back cross-checks from local PD, right? Turns out, this guy’s daughter
was abducted last Friday. Still missing.”

Honour sat up and stared in front of him as though he were going to open a portal
that would allow him to begin surveillance on Lochan Cairnes right there in the
conference room. He turned back to Thorton. “That’s a helluva coincidence.”

“You think it’s a coincidence?”

“No, Thorton, that’s the point.”

“Oh. Well…there’s more.”

“Oh?”

“Detroit PD says he’s suspected of being an accessory. And he gave his
occupation as a computer programmer. Which means he’s still active. As a hacker.”

“He’s a suspect? In the kidnapping?”

“As an accessory.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t matter for now. Bump him to one. Put some surveillance on him. And find
out why he’s a suspect. Could just be some petty custody thing.”

“Yes, sir. Maybe we should just pick him up?”

Honour paused and placed his forefinger to his lips. “No, not yet. The markets
aren’t going to be open again until Monday. So we’ve got a little time. Let’s see
where he leads us.”

Lafayette Park, Detroit • Lock's Apartment
Friday, May 4th
9:00 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Lock slumped forlornly on his couch. Kafka sat on the edge of the recliner, elbows
on his knees, holding a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels.

“At least you know she’s alive,” Kafka reminded him.

“I couldn’t even speak,” groaned Lock.

“I’m not surprised.”

“And she was crying…”

“Of course she was.”

“It all happened so fast.”

“Look, you at least established—”

There was a loud pounding on the door. Lock sat up abruptly. “The fuck?”

“Lock! Open the door!” yelled a voice from behind the door.

Lock stood up. Was that Kirin? He went to the door and looked through the
peephole. Sure enough, he could see Kirin’s face, his nose nearly pressed against
the door.

Lock flung it opened and stepped back as Kirin made a blustery entrance, flanked
by two large men wearing suits and sunglasses. Lock guessed that they were the
same men who’d been following him. Kirin looked uncharacteristically dour. The
trio were all wearing wool overcoats even though it was actually a mild evening.

“What’s going on?” asked Lock.

“You’re being followed,” said Kirin.

Lock glanced at the two men with Kirin. “Yeah, no kidding.”

Kirin shook his head. “No, I mean, by someone else.”

Lock’s insides fluttered. “Like who?”

“Who’s this?” demanded Kirin, pointing at Kafka.

Kakfa stood up and extended his hand. “I’m Kafka.”

Kirin ignored Kafka’s proffered hand and turned to Lock. “Get him out of here.”

“He’s my friend. Who’s following me?”

“We don’t know. But there are only so many candidates. I need you to pack a bag.
Don’t bring your cell phone or your—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Lock, holding up his hand. “What the fuck are you talking
about?”

“Lock, please. This is no time for your—you need to keep your head this time.”

“Listen, I’m not—”

“Lock!” yelled Kirin.

The two men regarded each other in silence. Kirin stepped closer to Lock and spoke
barely above a whisper. “I’ve tried to warn you before. These people, the people
I work for, are dangerous. When are you going to get that? What has to
happen for you to understand? The only prayer you have of seeing your daughter
again is to do exactly as I tell you. What’s more, from here on out, I won’t
be here to protect you, Lock. You will be dealing with them directly. And, believe
me—”

“Protect me?” asked Lock, his outrage dying on his lips.

“Yes, Lock. I’ve been the buffer. But that’s over now. You’re going to Singapore.”

“Singapore?”

“Lock, please. Just listen.”

“I’m listening. It’s just—Singapore? Is that where Sophie is?”

Kirin closed his eyes and exhaled. “You pack a bag. Pack light. Don’t bring anything
that could be even remotely considered a weapon. Don’t bring your cell phone or
your laptop or anything like that. We’ll clean out your apartment after you leave.
Just a few changes of clothes. Your passport. These men will drive you to the airport.
You’ll board my jet, which will take you, as I said, to Singapore.”

Lock’s eyes wandered vacantly around his apartment for a moment. He looked at
Kafka, who gave a slight shrug, and then at the two men waiting impassively behind
Kirin.

“Now,” insisted Kirin.

Naubatpur (Bihar, India) • Rathod Apartment Building
Saturday, May 5th
3:00 a.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Sophie sat up abruptly in the darkness. She had nearly fallen asleep. She swung
her legs slowly over the edge of the cot, her bare feet coming to rest on the carpet.

Don’t think about it, she reminded herself.

She looked over at the figure in the chair. He was asleep again. Standing up and
walking to the door, she realized she didn’t know where the sandals or her shoes
had gone. She would have to go barefoot. The knob of the door handle rattled obstinately
instead of turning. She held her breath and looked over at the sleeping silhouette.
He didn’t stir.

Someone had locked the door, but it locked from the inside. Maybe the idea was
to keep the men away from her. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to stay here
any longer.

Unlocking the door and opening it produced a squeak, but she didn’t bother looking
back. She stepped on the balls of her feet, moving quickly across the hall and
into the bathroom. Without hesitation, she walked to the window and pushed with
both hands on the screen. It popped out and fell away from the window. The sound
was sharp but brief. She listened for a moment, hearing only the familiar murmuring
of the voices coming from downstairs, playing at cards.

She pulled herself up onto the windowsill. Its frame dug into her flesh as she
folded herself up and managed to rotate and swing her legs outside. She looked
down briefly and regretted it immediately. It was too far to jump. She forced herself
to think about what it felt like, trapped in that corner with those hands on her.
She recalled the pixelated, halting images of her father’s impotent misery.

No one was coming to save her.

And so she jumped.

She landed hard, an icy jolt running up her right ankle, followed by a wave of
nausea that nearly knocked her down again when she tried to stand. It passed and
resolved into a woozy ache, coming from the ankle. Reflexively, she shifted her
weight to her left foot and took in her surroundings. She was between two buildings
separated by a patch of dead grass. Walking directly away from the building she’d
jumped from, she was immediately blinded by bright bursts of electric light. Her
right knee folded and she fell to the ground.

She lay still, taking several deep and deliberate breaths. She found herself alone
in the darkness, lying in the grass. She tried moving her right ankle and gasped
in pain. Standing awkwardly, she moved her left foot forward quickly and then brought
the right one even. There was pain, but it was manageable. She would simply limp.

Moving as quickly as she could through the moonlit darkness, she passed the building
across from the one she’d fled, and then another. She came to an empty road and
crossed it, passing more buildings and small, flat homes until coming to a half-collapsed
fence, overgrown with weeds. She walked along the fence for a while until she found
an opening.

Soon she was surrounded by trees and shrubs. She could hear water flowing nearby.
The foliage overhead hid the moon, and the darkness was nearly complete. She followed
the sound of the water and came to a small brook. She made her way alongside the
brook, falling into a regular rhythm. The pain coming from her right ankle made
her dizzy with each step. The muscles in her left thigh burned. And her mouth was
dry.

As the sky turned violet, she decided to stop and rest. She knelt down next to
the brook and scooped some water into her mouth. The smell and the taste were unpleasant,
but she forced herself to drink it. She wouldn’t last long if she became dehydrated.
She sat up and leaned against a rock, looking around. She could see a road and
some houses across a meadow. She was too exposed here, she decided, and forced
herself to her feet and continued on.

The brook led her into a small ravine. The sky was pink when she came to a cluster
of three abandoned houses overlooking each side of the brook. She stepped inside
the first one and looked around. She could hide here for the day. She found a corner
facing the entrance and sat down. Leaves and moss covered the ground and formed
something of a mattress. It’s at least as comfortable as that awful cot,
she thought as she lay down. Listening to the brook making its way past, she thought
about the people that once lived there and listened to that same sound. Slowly,
the pain in her ankle began to ebb, and her body began to reclaim itself from her
mind.

She closed her eyes and fell fast asleep.

ψ

When she finally awoke, she’d been aware of the burning sensation for some time.
She sat up and then gasped in pain, clutching at the ground as though she might
fall off the surface of the earth. Slowly regaining her senses, she could feel
the burn on her face and arms and the nauseating pain surging up into her body
from her ankle. She looked down toward her feet and realized that it had swollen
up to the size of a volleyball.

Her forearms were bright red. She’d been laying there for hours in the bright
sunlight. On the other side of the crumbling ruin was shade, and she slowly crawled
across the ground until she reached the opposite wall. With even the slightest
jarring, her ankle fired warning shots of pain through her spine that exploded
in her brain. Reaching the shade felt like plunging into a cool pond. She leaned
against the stone wall, and her body slowly relaxed.

Stomach cramps and fever came on as the shade crept across the floor. The slight
pang in her side seemed incidental at first, and her sunburn and heat of the day
masked the warmth of her body. But as the sky grew dusky and the air grew cool,
beads of sweat still formed on Sophie’s forehead, and the pain in her side moved
deeper inside until it rivaled the pain in her ankle. She felt as if she was aching
from the inside out, everywhere at once. She curled up and lay on one side and
then the other, but her movement could only briefly distract her from her aches
and pains. Arching blades of grass and spidery weeds grew monstrous as another
night’s darkness closed in on her. Even the wind, whistling softly through the
brick ruins, sounded like unholy ghosts hunting unknowable prey. And the sound
of water flowing so freely nearby became a taunting chorus.

Water. Her tongue felt like leather in her mouth. The brook was calling to her,
but the brook was poison. What will it be like to die of thirst? she wondered.

ψ

She could see the half-moon overhead through a break in what was left of the roof
as she lay on her side, shivering. Her clothes were damp. She was struck hard with
mind-rending icicles of pain. After a moment, she remembered her ankle. Gingerly,
she sat up and examined it, wondered if perhaps the swelling had gone down. She
wrapped her arms around her legs like bailing wire around sticks. The thought came
to her that she was supposed keep moving under the cover of night, but she wondered
if that was going to be possible. Maybe it was better to stay another day, hidden.

Eventually, she decided to at least try to put more distance between herself and
her kidnappers. With one arm standing in for her bad leg, she slowly raised herself
up. So far, so good. She moved her hand to the wall and then twisted her body so
that she could place both palms along the bricks. She felt another blinding shiver
of pain, but she was braced for it, and it passed quickly. She walked herself up
the side of the wall with her hands until she was standing on one leg, leaning
against the it. Catching her breath, she decided to try hopping. She closed her
eyes, ready to yield to the pain, and then pushed herself forward a few inches.
It hurt, badly. But the pain ebbed again and she became more ambitious. Several
hops later she stood in the doorway to the ruin. She eyed the brook through the
shadows of the trees and decided to continue following it. With any luck, it was
leading in a straight line away from where she’d come from.

The trunks of trees became her milestones. Leaning against one, she’d eye the
next one, take a few breaths, relax her body, and begin hopping until she could
lean against the new trunk. After five trunks, she had reached the end of the ruin.
After ten, she felt tremors in the back of her good leg, but they stopped when
she rested. After twenty, the tremors had become knots binding her, and she fell
halfway between trunks. She crawled to the next one and bowed her head. She had
accomplished nothing. She was still in sight of the abandoned homes where she’d
been hidden, but the idea of hopping back to them was overwhelming. Perhaps she
could crawl back? On the other hand, if she could crawl back, why not crawl forward?

Her elbows were beginning to bleed when she found three trees close together and
intertwined to form a modest enclosure. She’d be hidden here…and there’d be shade.
She looked up. The moon was gone, but the sky was not yet changing color. She could
continue…but she was tired. Her ankle hurt. Her elbows hurt. Her bones ached. She
could feel her lips cracking. And she might not find a better hiding place than
this by dawn. She slid forward into the cradle formed by the three trees and shifted
around until she found a comfortable position.

Resting her head against one of the trunks, she felt the cool bark on her skin
and closed her eyes. All her aches and pains began to ebb. Her clothes were drying
out—her fever had broken. Her stomach cramps were gone.

She reminded herself to wake up in a few hours to make sure she wasn’t exposed
to direct sunlight. She’d still need to find a source of fresh water soon. She
hadn’t put enough distance between herself and her kidnappers. She still had no
idea even where she was or where she might flee.

But, as she drifted off to sleep, a strange yet familiar feeling draped over her
like a soft blanket.

She was hopeful.

Part 4
That's All I Got

21

Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore
Sunday, May 6th
6:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock gazed out the window of his hotel room. For most of the past twenty-four
hours, he’d been forty-thousand feet above the ground. Now, he was perhaps a mere
hundred. Spread out before him in the blue-gray light of dawn were swimming pools,
the silhouettes of luxuriant verdure, and various other hints of paradise. After
all, he reflected, the name of the hotel was Shangri-La. Farther on, he could make
out the hulking outlines of business and industry, and beyond that, a dark-blue
horizon.

So this is Singapore, he thought.

He turned away from the vista and sat down on an inviting king-sized bed. Sleep
beckoned. But so did the nightmares. He’d fallen asleep on the plane only to see
Sophie, the Sophie from the video chat, not the one he’d known all her life. He’d
expected her to be scared. He’d expected her to be emotional. But whatever that
was he’d seen on the video, it was neither of those things. Or it was those
things, only they had turned out to be worse beyond his imagining.

Everyone here is very nice. They’d simply given her a script and made
her memorize it. They’d probably threatened to hurt her if she didn’t recite it
exactly. Or maybe they’d already hurt her? He hadn’t seen any visible cuts or bruises,
but perhaps they’d been concealed, or were internal. And, of course, there were
other ways to hurt someone.

I get three meals a day, and I have a comfortable bed to sleep in. He
had to stop thinking about it somehow. He had to keep it together until he could…do
what? He had no plan. He didn’t even know where she was. Having suddenly found
himself in Singapore, the idea Sophie might not be in southeastern Michigan suddenly
felt a whole lot more credible. Kirin, or whomever he really worked for, had won.
Lock was a mere marionette. He was no one’s hero.

He looked at the digital clock by the bed. Six thirteen. He had three hours to
kill before someone named Anand was coming to pick him up. He was going to set
up a new lab, apparently, so he could continue with the Wall Street edition of
the running of the bulls. He picked up the phone and ordered a pot of coffee from
room service.

He got up and began to unpack his bag. They’d taken his wallet and his passport
without a word. They even had one of the keycards to his room.

The coffee arrived, and the bellhop handed Lock the bill to sign. He signed it
and was about to hand it over when he stopped. He quickly added an extra twenty
dollars to the tip, charged to the room.

“Thank you, sir,” said the bellhop without smiling.

“Don’t thank me,” said Lock.

Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore
Sunday, May 6th
9:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya looked up at the giant chandelier-like lights hanging from the thirty-foot
ceilings and wondered how heavy they were. She leaned back in her chair and tried
to pretend she was a businesswoman reading the paper before an important meeting.
She wore a white blazer with an onyx broach, a black blouse, and a skirt with black-and-white
checkers. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, something that had required
abundant use of relaxer and thirty minutes with a flatiron. She took a sip from
her thermos of green tea and looked around—the lobby was full of family vacationers,
not business-types. She could have come wearing safari shorts and boat shoes. Then
again, she was obviously alone, not with family, so perhaps the effort that had
gone into looking corporate was worth it.

Vipul wasn’t cutting any corners, she thought. Whoever the American was,
he was worth putting up at a luxury hotel. Perhaps they were making so much money
it didn’t matter.

A tall, slow-moving figure in a black jacket caught her eye. Was that Anand? She
opened up her newspaper to reveal a small stack of printed photos. She flipped
to the second one in the pile. It was the best still of Anand she had in her ever-growing
collection. She looked back at the man she thought might be him. She looked again
at the photo. She was certain it was Anand. He was at the elevator now. Picking
up the American no doubt.

When she’d first seen the transcripts of the cell-phone conversation the day before,
she’d been concerned that perhaps the American was simply code. Li Mun’s crew would
never have been so explicit. But here was Anand, just as she’d hoped.

She rearranged her paper again to hide the photos and pretended to read. She took
another sip from the thermos, then fiddled with her broach to make sure she was
ready to turn on the camera hidden within it. She tried to look bored.

Anand reappeared, exiting one of the elevators. For a moment, Katya thought she
must have made a mistake because he appeared to be alone. But the American was
just trailing behind. He wasn’t quite as tall as Anand, nor as bulky. He had round,
curious blue eyes that took in everything as he walked. His hair was long enough
(and straight enough) for him to sweep his bangs behind his ears. He wore an Atari
T-shirt, torn blue jeans, and skater shoes.

The American was a geek.

He seemed completely oblivious to Anand, who had by now stopped to wait for him
to catch up. Kata was electrified. She knew he was their man. He and Vipul
were partners. Vipul handled the finance. The American handled the technology.
Perhaps they’d met at Harvard. Maybe the American was from MIT. They’d have met
at some interdisciplinary seminar, on chaos theory or the Singularity.

She nearly forgot about the camera. She fumbled with her broach and turned it
on, then realized she wasn’t going to get a good view of the American’s face from
that angle. She hurriedly got up and began walking toward them. Reaching the front
of the lobby, she then turned around as though she’d forgotten something. She kept
her head down as she passed him but looked up at the last second.

The American was looking right at her. Right into her eyes.

She cursed her carelessness. Why had she looked up? For nearly two years she’d
watched the criminal underworld of Singapore unseen. She cringed at the thought
of having to tell Haruo that she’d been made. She’d probably have to hand over
the case to someone else. Just when it was getting interesting.

She returned to her chair in the lobby and discretely turned off the camera. At
least she’d got a clear shot of him. If he’d been looking right at her, he’d been
looking right at the camera, too.

Singapore Financial District • The (New) Lab
Sunday, May 6th
9:15 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock followed Anand into the new lab. It was nothing like the old one. They were
on the seventh floor of a downtown office building in a large, open area ringed
with small offices, with a couple work tables and numerous crates and boxes. There
was a false ceiling with fluorescent lights. It was exactly the kind of place Lock
had always hoped to avoid.

“I’m very sorry,” Raj told him, walking to greet him. “I’m not sure I was able
to properly disassemble everything before we left. We were in a great hurry.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” said Lock absently as he began exploring the office.

“Regardless,” said Anand, who still stood at the entrance next to what must have
been intended as a reception desk, “everything must be ready for Monday.”

Lock was startled. Anand had barely spoken since arriving at his hotel room earlier.
He thought back to Kirin’s warnings. These people, the people I work for, are dangerous. Anand
certainly fit the description. Lock’s eyes met his, and Anand simply glared at
him until Lock looked away.

“Be ready by Monday,” repeated Anand. “Sanjay will take you back to the hotel.”

“Is my daughter here?” Lock heard himself blurting out as Anand turned to leave.
“Here, in Singapore?”

Anand looked back over his shoulder, glared at Lock again, and continued on.

Lock watched as the door closed, frowning at Anand’s stone-like indifference.
He faced Raj and Sanjay, who seemed to be watching him. “Well, here we are again.”
Starting toward one of the boxes, he asked, “Do we have box cutters or something?”
As he looked around him, he was relieved to have an immediate problem to solve,
something he could do something about. His cooperation, so far, had at least kept
Sophie alive.

And getting the Wave Nine back online in less than a day was no slam dunk. The
equipment was extremely sensitive, to say the least. In fact, it was entirely possible
that something had been damaged during shipping. “Let’s start with the ion traps
and make sure none of them were damaged. From there, we can re-assemble the housing
and re-calibrate the temperature controls—”

“They have your daughter,” stated Raj.

Lock looked up at him. Raj was expressionless. “Yes.”

“I have a wife and son.”

Lock wasn’t sure how to respond. He’d never been one to bond with other parents,
chatting about their kids, showing off pictures of them. And, given the circumstances,
he was hardly in the mood to appreciate someone else’s family.

“Good for you,” he said, regretting it immediately. Feeling awkward, he returned
his attention to looking for box cutters.

Raj continued: “Sanjay has brothers and sisters. And his parents.”

Lock looked up a Raj. And then at Sanjay, who was looking at him with the same
vacant expression. He had a vague sense of recognition.

“We fear every day for their lives,” said Sanjay.

“This is what they do,” explained Raj.

“We didn’t realize that you…” continued Sanjay, his voice trailing off.

Raj elaborated. “We thought it was only in India that they could do these things.
We thought you…”

“We thought you were in it for the money,” added Sanjay.

I was, thought Lock.

“But you are just like us, Mr. Cairnes,” said Sanjay with a tentative smile.

“In that case,” said Lock, “I guess we’d better make damn sure this thing is working
again by Monday.”

Naubatpur (Bihar, India)
Sunday, May 6th
7:30 a.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Sophie opened her eyes, wide awake and alert. It was daylight. She was in the
shade. Careful to stay still and not move her ankle until she was ready, she exhaled
heavily.

And then she heard the crunching sound.

She sat up, getting to one knee as adrenalin began pumping into her veins. The
shouts of pain from her ankle were momentarily muffled. She looked around but saw
nothing but trees and the brook. But there was a pathway she hadn’t seen in the
darkness that passed no more than two strides from where she hid.

No sooner had she noticed the path than a hunchbacked old man appeared on it,
walking slowly. He looked at her before she could react and she froze, staring
back at him. He said something she couldn’t understand and then pointed back the
way he’d come. He turned in his tracks and gestured with his hand. Follow me.
She pointed at her ankle and shook her head. The man took a step from the path
in her direction and looked at her ankle. He shook his head and held up one finger
and smiled. He spoke and then turned back the way he’d come.

Sophie leaned back against a tree trunk. He was going to get help. Was that a
good thing? What if he was with the men who’d kidnapped her? He’d been traveling
in the opposite direction. But that didn’t mean anything. She looked up at a clouded
sky, wishing she had done more hiking in her life. The brook could have easily
circled around in such a way that the old man had come from the same area she was
trying leave. She had no way to know for sure.

On the other hand, she wasn’t going far in her condition anyway. She needed fresh
water, her ankle was either broken or badly sprained—and, she realized suddenly,
her stomach cramps were back. She was eventually going to have to find help. When
she did, she almost certainly wouldn’t be very far from where she was right now.

And so she decided to wait.

22

Naubatpur (Bihar, India)
Sunday, May 6th
8:30 a.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Arbind followed his elderly uncle down the path that led from their village to
the next one. He was surprised when they found the girl; his uncle was prone to
forgetting things and remembering things that never happened. When he’d starting
talking about a fair-skinned girl in the forest, Arbind was nearly certain he’d
gotten confused by some Vedic hymn.

But…there she was. Her uncle had already explained that the girl didn’t speak
Hindi. What was a fair-skinned girl who didn’t speak Hindi doing hiding in the
woods?

“Hello?” he ventured, in case she spoke English.

“Oh, thank God,” said the girl, her voice scratchy and hoarse. “You speak English.”

“Yes. You’re from America?”

“Yes,” she said. “Detroit.”

“I’m from Rochester. New York. I’m visiting family. What—how did you get here?”

The girl looked lost for a moment. Arbind noticed that she was sunburned on one
side of her face, barefoot, and her right ankle was badly discolored and swollen.
He began to feel anxious. Something was very wrong here.

Finally, she seemed to gather her wits. “Where am I?” she asked.

Arbind’s brow furrowed. “Well, we’re from Amarpura,” he said, pointing back toward
his family’s home. The girl still looked confused. “Patna is to the north, maybe
two miles.” That hadn’t clarified anything either. Maybe a different tact would
help. “Where did you come from?”

“I don’t know,” said the girl. She seemed to be struggling for words. “I was kidnapped.”

Arbind felt a jolt of fear. “So you have…no idea where you are?”

“India?”

“Yes. Bihar, India.”

The girl looked thoughtful.

“Can you walk?”

“Not really.”

“What if I help you? It’s not far.”

“I can try.”

Arbind walked to her and helped her up, leaning down slightly so she could get
her arm around his shoulders for support.

“Sorry about the smell,” she said.

“It’s fine,” said Arbind. “Let’s just get you to my uncle’s house. We’ll get this
sorted out.”

“Thank you,” said the girl.

“What’s your name?”

“Sophie. Sophie Cavelle-Cairnes.”

“Nice to meet you, Sophie,” said Arbind as they began to fall into a rhythm behind
his uncle down the path back toward his village. “My name is Arbind Thakur. Just
call me Arbind.”

Swiss National Bank, Zurich
Sunday, May 6th
10:00 p.m. CEST (Central European Summer Time)

“I think we must take a hard line,” said Kögler. “We cannot allow our financial
systems to be hijacked. Where will it end?”

Ryan clasped his hands together tightly and tried to collect his thoughts. The
White House had signed off on giving in to the greenmailer’s demands. In fact,
the only real question had been whether or not they would go it alone or have the
support of the other nations. “It isn’t their stock markets that are being
threatened,” Moya had quoted the president as saying. It was probably more accurate
that a complete collapse of the NYSE and the NASDAQ would be ultimately blamed
on the president, whereas the greenmailer’s demands could be met without the public
even being aware of it. That was part of the genius of the entire scheme. Of course,
Kögler and others among the G8’s central bankers were well aware of this.

Thus, after almost five days of working nearly around the clock, he’d flown back
out to Zurich with the unenviable task of convincing the guardians of the global
economy that conceding to the greenmailer’s demands wasn’t merely a question of
presidential politics. Ryan could barely keep his eyes open, let alone form coherent,
persuasive sentences. Yet he had to persevere or risk creating a deep wedge between
the wealthy nations.

“I think we must look past the damage that might be done to the markets themselves—”

“My point exactly,” interrupted Kögler.

“I understand you perfectly, President Kögler,” asserted Ryan.

“Do you?”

“Yes, I believe I do. We have to consider the flow of information. Information
that our financial systems are vulnerable is a form of market intelligence. We
have to assume that this information will find its way to interested parties. Who,
in turn, will redirect their efforts to exploit these vulnerabilities. I appreciate
your perspective on this, President Kögler.”

“Please, Michael, let us not be so formal. We are all friends here.”

“Certainly, Horst,” said Ryan, forcing a smile. “As I said, I do appreciate your
insight. But…if we allow our markets to crash, how long before this information
gets out anyway? We are now getting multiple reports from a—” Ryan hesitated, as
though he were making an embarrassing admission, “—a dozen online brokerages
that thousands of their customers’ brokerage accounts were hacked.” He was
exaggerating, but it seemed warranted, considering his fatigue level and the stakes.

Ryan shook his head and put his hands out in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t
believe we can contain this kind of thing. Word will get out. So, rather than this
event being seen as an isolated and inexplicable crisis, it will be merely the
first step in a crisis of confidence.”

Ryan was attempting to redefine the problem in theoretical terms, hoping that
would appeal to the economist in Kögler. It had nothing to do with politics, he
was saying, it’s a question of the market transmitting signals. They weren’t capitulating
to the demands of a greenmailer, they were dampening those signals, which, in principle,
was no different than raising interest rates or increasing the money supply, things
they did routinely.

Winslow Tyneby jumped in, thank Keynes. They’d reached an understanding prior
to the meeting, but Tyneby wasn’t always reliable. “I don’t see that it makes much
difference, Horst, under which particular circumstances the less
civilized among our little global village become acquainted with our Babbage-esque folly,
our delusions of technological grandeur. What is more to the point,
is how much this foray into the land of bits and bytes and unknowable consequences
is going to cost, as it were.”

“You’re making an elementary mistake,” lectured Kögler. “Measurement bias. The
value of the information we’d be providing is incalculable. That value will be
extracted indirectly through the markets, but it will be extracted, nonetheless.
Just because it will be difficult to see or measure doesn’t mean it does not exist.”

“Yes,” agreed Ryan, before any of Kögler’s bloc of supporters could sidetrack
the discussion. “That’s exactly my point. The real cost is proportional
to the flow of information to the market. It’s really an argument based on information
economics.”

“I’m familiar with the theory,” huffed Kögler. “But I see no concrete way to prove
such a thesis. And all other things being equal, appeasement is intrinsically undesirable.
It’s a signal, if you will, that I don’t want to send. We can either signal the
markets, honest citizens with a right to know if their money is safe, or criminals.”

“May I remind you,” snapped Yukihiro Ko, “that the collapse of the American markets
does not affect the United States alone. London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and—dare I say—Frankfurt,
will all be affected. The losses on the American exchanges alone are already approaching
not a few billion, but a trillion dollars. We’ll see that across
the board if we don’t do something about it.”

Ryan leaned back slightly in his chair. At least he’d succeeded in moving the
discussion away from the political implications for the White House. That was a
start.

“So then do something about it,” spat Viktor Vitaly. “Catch the greenmailer.”

“That’s a great point,” said Ryan, continuing his agree-and-spin strategy. “And
I’m confident we’ll do just that,” he continued, trying to sound confident. “Given time.
And that’s just the thing. Do we really believe the markets are all that vulnerable?
What if this is an anomaly? Do we really want to scare everyone into hoarding gold
or real estate?”

“Or vodka?” added Vitaly, and everyone laughed harder than the joke warranted.

Chinese Garden, Singapore

Monday, May 7th

5:45 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

“Good morning, Katya,” said Haruo without breaking his gaze from the lake.

“Good morning, Haruo,” said Katya, leaning on the railing of the bridge alongside
him.

“Nice photo you took.”

“Oh?”

“Did you get my email?”

“I woke up a bit late. I haven’t checked it this morning.”

“Ah. Well…”

“Did you ID him?”

“Yes, actually. Or someone did. Turns out, he was on the Fibbies short list.”

“Ah.”

“He has a record. Computer fraud, no less. Did four years. And…”

“Yes?”

“His daughter was kidnapped. A few days before the greenmailing started. By two
men that might well be described as Indian. He disappeared right after they put
him under surveillance.”

Katya turned around and braced herself on the railing with her elbows. “Surveillance.
Wait. So he was a suspect in the greenmailing case?”

Haruo looked at her and arched an eyebrow. “Is. Yes. That’s what I said.”

“Oh. I thought you meant—never mind.”

“Is he…looking at you in those pictures?”

Katya bit one of her knuckles. “Yes,” she admitted. “I’m afraid so. I had the
camera in my broach.”

“So, he saw you.”

“Yes.”

“Anand didn’t seem to notice you.”

“I’m not sure.”

“He never looked at the camera.”

“True…”

“Maybe you can turn Mr. Cairnes.”

“Cairnes?”

“Lochan Cairnes.”

Katya was silent. She turned back toward the lake, her eyes flickering.

“We don’t have time to set someone new up,” continued Haruo.

Was Haruo saying what she thought he was saying? Was Vipul now a confirmed suspect
in the greenmailing case? It made sense—two suspects under surveillance for entirely
different reasons, by entirely different entities, had turned out to be collaborating.
Not only that, but the new suspect fit into the picture they were forming. Vipul
was a finance guy. The new guy—Cairnes—had been busted for computer fraud, which
presumably meant that he had some expertise in computer systems. Like the ones
that had apparently been hacked as a part of the greenmailing campaign.

It didn’t prove anything, of course. But surely Cairnes’s arrival had pushed
them both considerably higher on the list of suspects. Katya could even imagine
that, given the nature of intelligence work, which was almost always somewhat speculative
in the early stages, that Cairnes and the Rathod family were now at the top of
that list.

In typical Agency fashion, Katya’s transfer request had been accepted Friday despite
the fact that Haruo had canceled the request until they dropped Vipul as a suspect.
She’d been happy to continue her surveillance. But even after the arrival of the
American the possibility that Vipul was somehow connected to a major Agency investigation
seemed increasingly remote. She’d even begun considering the case as a sort of
extended good-bye to the only life she’d ever known as an adult. Now, within the
space of a thirty-second exchange with Haruo, everything had been turned upside
down. Instead of a long good-bye, this had become the case that could make—or break—her
career.

“…terminate them both,” Haruo was saying.

Terminate? Katya pursed her lips. But that would require—

“Think about how you might accomplish that.”

Katya tensed. If Haruo was suggesting that she, Katya, carry out termination
orders, that meant that not only was Vipul now a prime suspect, but there was some
urgency about the case. Typically, a special operations team—personnel with extensive
military training and experience—would be brought in for something like that, with
Katya advising.

Katya realized that she’d stopped listening. Haruo was still talking. “I’m sorry,
sir. Can you repeat that last sentence?”

“I said, in the meantime, try to turn him.”

Katya exhaled. “Yes, sir.” She began reviewing in her mind what Haruo had told
her, from the beginning. “Did you say Cairnes’s daughter was kidnapped?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Do we know anything about the daughter?”

“You mean her whereabouts?”

“Right.”

“I don’t think so. I’ll look into it.”

“I assume I have everything we have on him.”

“In your email, right.”

“Very well, then.”

“See you tomorrow, Katya.” Haruo straightened as if to leave, but paused. “Oh,
one more thing…”

“Yes?”

“You need to work fast. Much faster than usual.”

“I understand.”

“A week is too long.”

“A week?”

“Yes.”

“You want me to turn him in a week?”

“Katya,” said Quartan, turning toward her and leaning on one elbow. “You’ve seen
what’s happened to the stock markets these past few days. Imagine if this were
to go on for another week. Let alone another month.”

Katya faced Quartan and held his gaze.

Haruo seemed to hesitate for a moment, then straightened himself up. Katya mirrored
him. “Now, off the record…”

“Yes?”

“You know how these things go. It all comes down to politics at some point. Terrorists
blow up a building, some two-bit tyrant starts executing dissidents, that’s one
thing. But you take on the bankers? Wall Street? Paternoster Square? That’s something
else entirely.”

Katya nodded.

“So they’re turning up the heat very high on this. As high as I’ve ever seen it.
Which means…”

Katya waited patiently for Haruo to finish. His mind seemed to have wandered.

“You’ve got a week,” he resumed. “If that. After that, we need to have termination
options ready. On the ground. You can’t count on special ops.”

Katya swallowed hard. “Okay.”

“Tomorrow, then?” asked Haruo, standing up.

“Yes, sir.”

Katya turned back to the lake as Haruo walked away. She listened to the call of
a nearby crane and stared out at the water, studying the rain clouds reflected
on its surface. She thought of those round blue eyes looking right at her. And
she wondered if she might have to kill Lochan Cairnes.

Naubatpur (Bihar, India)
Monday, May 7th
9:00 a.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Arbind sat down at the kitchen table and let the warmth of the sunlight that streamed
in through the open window soak into his skin. He took a sip of chai that his aunt
had prepared for him and stretched his legs. His aunt was a stolid and practical
woman who was always bustling. In the mornings, when it was still cool enough to
have fires lit, it was all pots and ovens and luxuriously thrilling scents.

“How is the girl?” he asked in Hindi.

“She is sleeping,” she replied, pulling some freshly baked aloo paratha from
an oven.

The girl had been ill most of the day. But by dinnertime, she was hungry and very
much in the right place. His aunt plied her with dahl and samosas until
she grew sleepy, and she hadn’t stirred since. She’d taken his spot in the sewing
room so she could sleep undisturbed, and he’d put out a bedroll in the main room
with his nephews.

The front door opened and his uncle appeared, and for the second consecutive morning,
his sleepy disposition had been supplanted with alarm. “Arbind, dear nephew, I
am hearing some very bad things about this girl.”

Arbind smiled faintly. The village gossip had apparently already started. The
men were worse than the women. “She is cursed?”

“Yes,” said his uncle, sitting down across from him and leaning forward on his
elbows. “One of these damned gangs is looking for her.”

Arbind remembered the girl saying she’d been kidnapped. “They can look all day.”

“Yes, but they know she’s here.”

Arbind winced. “How?”

“I told my friends. Yesterday.”

Arbind realized that he’d never mentioned to his uncle that the girl had been
kidnapped. That conversation had taken place entirely in English, a language his
uncle didn’t speak. “Surely, they won’t say anything to the gangs.”

“Surely they will. No one wants any trouble.”

“Who can blame them?” his aunt chimed in, dropping a samosa into a pot of sizzling
oil.

“You remember what happened last time you were here,” added his uncle earnestly.

Arbind rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “Yes, I remember.” The gangs
in Bihar were known for their extremely violent nature. And the local gangs were
among the worst. Two years earlier, during his last visit, one of them had drawn
and quartered an entire family. “And the police won’t help?”

“Yes, of course they’ll help.”

“Well, then, we go to the police.”

“No, I mean they’ll help the gangs look for the girl.”

“We must go to them and hand her over,” said his aunt matter-of-factly, dropping
another samosa into the oil.

“We cannot do that,” objected Arbind.

“We must,” said his uncle. “Otherwise they will come here and kill us and take
her anyway.”

Arbind shook his head in frustration. He realized that was actually a possibility.
“Can we take her somewhere?”

“No, no, nephew, we cannot! They will know to come here. Someone will surely tell
them she was here. And when they come here, and the girl is not here, they will
be very angry.”

Arbind couldn’t risk the lives of his family just to save the girl. “Can you ask
your friends not to say anything?”

His uncle shook his head. “No. They are too afraid. If not for themselves, for
their families.”

“Fuck. But if nobody says anything…”

“Someone will, nephew. Someone always does.”

“Maybe they won’t come.”

“Of course they will come. We must go to them now to make sure they understand
we don’t want any trouble.”

“We can tell them that we did not know they were looking for her.”

“But we do know!”

“Uncle, it is one thing if they come here. But we cannot go to them. You know
what they will do to her. Maybe they won’t come.”

“They will come.”

23

Singapore Financial District • The (New) Lab
Monday, May 7th
6:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Anand arrived at the new lab at six sharp. The markets in America were opening
in three hours. What he found alarmed him.

Detroit was in a darkened office asleep. There was no sign of his assistants.
Anand turned on the lights.

“Detroit,” he called out to wake him up. The man was weak and pale and had no
pride. “Are we ready? The markets open in two hours.” He found it useful to always
make things sound worse than they really were. It focused people.

Detroit sat up, blinking his eyes. “Uh, no, not really. We had a few problems.”

Anand did not care that the troublesome American was sleeping in the lab. But
he was sleeping when there was still work to be done. “What problems? And where
are your assistants?”

Detroit began to talk in a language Anand did not understand. There was talk about
magnets and—was the word “capacitors”?—and calibration and “cad” drawings and something
called—had he said “breadboards”?—which apparently had been left back in America.
“Never mind, all that,” said Anand finally. “When are you going to be ready?”

Detroit began babbling again—yes, he did say “breadboard”—and Anand fought the
impulse to punch Detroit in his womanly mouth. “I am concerned that you do not
understand English. When? As in a date and time, you see? When are you—”
he pointed at Detroit, “—going to be ready? Meaning that this device—”
he pointed at the large, aluminum rectangle near the wall, “—will be working properly.”

Anand could see Detroit’s jaw working as though he was going to say something,
but quickly thought better of it. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Perhaps another
twenty-four hours.”

“Perhaps?” spat Anand. “And why aren’t your assistants here?”

“I sent them home,” said Detroit.

Anand balled his fists. Once Detroit had served his purpose, Anand was going to
personally snap his scrawny neck. “You do not have that authority,” said Anand.
“And if the system is not ready, why would you do that?”

“There was nothing they could do here. They were tired. I am tired.”

He stepped forward and slapped Detroit across the face. He fell back, cringing
and cowering like the little baby he was. Anand grabbed him by the throat and drove
him backward into one of the flimsy office walls. He was disappointed not to have
cracked the plaster with the man’s head.

“Kirin has spoiled you. Perhaps you’d like another video chat with your daughter.
You can watch while we take out her eyes, one at a time. Or maybe we’ll just slice
up her pretty face. Would you like that, Detroit? Is that what you want? Are you
that sick and twisted? Because it seems like that is what you want. Is that what
you want?”

“No,” sputtered Detroit, slobbering slightly.

Anand let him loose and walked toward the lobby area. He turned back to face Detroit,
who was crumpled on the ground, coughing and holding his throat. “Get your breadboards
or your capacit-whatevers that you need, and get this machine running. Every day
you don’t have it running, we’ll remove one of your little girl’s fingers. That
seems reasonable. One per day.” Anand turned again to leave. “Oh, and one more
thing,” he said over his shoulder, softening his tone with mock politeness. “You
have a very beautiful daughter.”

Naubatpur (Bihar, India)
Monday, May 7th
5:00 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Sophie understood what was happening even though she did not understand a word
anyone had said. Two men stood at the door. One of them looked more like a boy,
really. They wore sunglasses and white T-shirts and jeans and work boots. Automatic
rifles were slung carelessly over their shoulders. The older and larger one had
a knife in his belt.

They were here for her. She’d limped out of her room when she heard the yelling.
Arbind and his aunt and uncle stood in a semicircle around the two men. Three children
stood behind them, the tallest one holding an infant, who was squalling.

One of the men in sunglasses pointed at her, and everyone turned around and looked
at her for a moment before resuming their discussion. The conversation abruptly
stopped and the two men came toward her.

“No, no, no…” she whimpered, limping back into her room. Before she’d taken a
second step, she felt her arms being gripped, and she was being pulled backward
toward the entrance of the house. She could hear herself crying.

“Sophie Cavelle-Cairnes,” a voice said. She looked up and saw Arbind looking at
her. “Sophie Cavelle-Cairnes,” he said again. “That’s your name, right?”

“Yes,” said Sophie, through tears.

“Sophie Cavelle-Cairnes,” she heard him saying again as she was dragged out into
the street. The last thing she saw before she was thrown into the car and the hood
placed over her head was Arbind, framed in the doorway, repeating her name.

Southbank, Singapore • Vipul's Apartment

Monday, May 7th

8:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Vipul sat in his home theater, his black leather-upholstered recliner fully extended,
one arm dangling over the armrest, holding a glass of scotch with his fingertips.
There were four such recliners, arranged in a neat row with an L-shaped sectional
behind them, but Vipul was the only one in the room. On the screen, Steve McQueen
was telling Robert Vaughn that life as a gunslinger wasn’t all it was cracked up
to be. “Home, none. Wife, none. Kids…none. Prospects, zero.” He’d thought about
having some girls over, but he needed to stay focused. The movie was just to take
his mind off things while he waited for the Chairman of the Federal reserve to
realize he had a new boss.

His cell rang, and for a moment Vipul irrationally felt embarrassed for not turning
it off before the movie started—the movie theater had been one of his favorite
escapes at Harvard. It was Anand’s ring, a series of ominous beeps. He sat up awkwardly
in the recliner, looking around in the darkness for the remote. Finally, he found
it on the floor and, after pausing the movie, answered the phone.

“Is it ready?”

“No, but that’s not why I’m calling.”

“Oh?” Vipul tried to sit on the edge of the still fully extended recliner and
then decided just to stand up, squinting his left eye as the light of the projector
illuminated the side of his face.

“The Fed is giving in to your demands,” Anand informed him. “You’ve won.”

Vipul was torn between wanting to yell for joy and being unable to make a sound,
as though a large air bubble was blocking his lungs. “Well…we don’t know for sure yet.
It could be a honey pot. What…did they provide any specific information?”

“Yes. Something about the Turkish lira. I’ve sent you the email.”

“Via the SCS?” asked Vipul, referring to the communication system that Mohit had
built.

“Yes. Of course. I don’t think they would try anything at this point. Wall Street’s
in a panic as it is.”

“They’re going to open the markets?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll play it safe anyway. I’ll put this out to a few dozen brokers, and we’ll
see how it goes.”

“Whatever you say.”

Vipul wished that, just for a moment, Anand could appreciate what he’d accomplished.
He felt—

“About Detroit,” said Anand abruptly.

“Yes?”

“I don’t trust him.”

“Well, of course not.”

“No, I mean, I really don’t trust him.”

“I’m not sure what you—”

“Do we still need him?”

“Yes. What if our friend Michael Ryan is playing games with us? I’d rather just
keep him around for a while. Just in case.”

“We should watch him very closely then.”

“Sure. Put somebody on him.”

“That’s…difficult at this point.”

Vipul stared up at the movie screen where Robert Vaughn was staring past him. Enemies, zero,
he was just about to say. Why couldn’t Anand just let him enjoy the moment? “Why is
it difficult?”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. You just haven’t had time. But my
sources tell me that Sameer is forming his own organization. Anil as well.”

“What?”

“You can’t be that surprised.”

Vipul stalked irritably to the door of the theater, out of the way of the projector.
“I am that surprised.”

“I told you the men were getting frustrated. And then you had Sameer kill Paresh.
Which scared them for a while, but now…”

“Ah, it’s fine,” concluded Vipul, waving his hand as though a bee were buzzing
his face. “You’re right. I’m not surprised. I bought some time, just not enough
of it. Except…wait. Aren’t they going to come for me?”

“I don’t think it’s come to that—yet. But, at the same time, nobody’s going to
concede any manpower to you. If you ask for it, you’ll force their hands.”

“I just want one guy to watch Detroit. You’re telling me I don’t have one guy?”

“It’s not that. You have your bodyguard. And Kirin’s men.”

“Kirin’s loyal?”

“Of course. But they’re still in Detroit. And there will be others, I’m just not
sure who yet. It’s a delicate situation.”

“Well…fuck.”

“What I was going to suggest is that we fly Kirin’s boys back. No one has to know.
We can put them on Detroit. Keep it quiet.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Separately we can talk about the others. Whenever you’re ready. You still have
a bit of time before anybody commits themselves.”

“How much time?”

“Well, it’s really up to you. Our earnings will just stop coming in. This week
was already a bit light, but I suspect it will get much lighter next week. At which
point, you can’t really pretend anymore not to have noticed.”

“I haven’t actually noticed. Because we made more last week than probably
all our combined earnings ever. What they bring me is a rounding error at this
point.”

“Our cash position is actually a bit low.”

“For the moment. That’s really all we need them for—short-term cash flow.”

Vipul interpreted Anand’s silence as skepticism.

“All right, Anand,” Vipul allowed. “Let me think about it. But definitely bring
back Kirin’s guys and put them on Detroit.”

“I will.”

“And I’ll take a look at the email from my buddy Ryan and see if we can’t make
some real money.”

Singapore Financial District • The (New) Lab
Monday, May 7th
8:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

When Raj and Sanjay returned to the lab, they looked pale despite their brown
skin. “Guys, I’m sorry—” began Lock.

“We are to blame,” said Raj. “We should have known better. We left you alone here.”

“Well, there was nothing…” Lock’s voice trailed off. “Anyway. Whatever. Fuck them.”

“What can we do?” asked Raj. Lock could see he and Sanjay just wanted to get the
quantum computer working again. After his own confrontation with Anand, Lock couldn’t
have agreed more.

Lock turned toward the burnished aluminum rectangle, placing his hands on his
hips and letting his mind go to work. “I think if we breadboard this we can just
create an adapter, using higher-farad capacitors,” explained Lock. “It’ll look
ugly, but it will work.”

“So we need breadboards.”

“Basically, yes. And the capacitors.”

“Right. Where can we get breadboards and capacitors at this hour?”

“Please, what’s a breadboard?” asked Sanjay.

ψ

When Anand arrived, they had everything ready, except they still needed the adapters
to deal with the voltage of Singapore’s electrical system. Sanjay had even managed
to mount the large monitor on the wall, which presently displayed rows of red and
yellow dots. All the tests were failing. But once they had the adapters built,
they could rerun them, and with any luck, all the red and yellow would go green.
Lock prepared himself to explain the situation.

“We no longer need to have the machine operational for the market opening,” announced
Anand brusquely. He looked at the monitor on the wall, the laptops, and the large
silver-colored cube that was the quantum computer itself. “Is it working?”

“Almost,” said Lock. He’d learned to keep things simple with Anand. “We have to
go get some parts. But then it will work.”

“I will get them as soon as the electronics store opens tomorrow,” offered Sanjay.

“Fortunately,” resumed Anand, “as it turns out, we do not need it working just
now. You may return to your hotel. However, you should return first thing in the
morning, get the parts you need, and get it working.” With that, Anand wheeled
around and left the office.

“I guess they are closing the markets again?” asked Lock, breaking the confused
silence Anand had left in his wake.

“Let me see,” said Sanjay, who quickly brought up CNN’s Web site on the large
monitor. With a few clicks, they were watching the financial news segment, albeit
without sound.

“They’re saying the markets are open,” said Raj, reading the ticker.

Lock’s eyes narrowed. “Well that’s strange. What are these guys up to,
then?”

“I think it’s best not to ask those kinds of questions,” said Raj.

“You’re probably right,” said Lock, who looked as though he’d fallen into a trance.

“I concur,” chirped Sanjay. “Mr. Cairnes, shall I call us a taxi?”

Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore
Monday, May 7th
8:45 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock, Raj, and Sanjay filed into the hotel elevator. Lock was trying to recall
which floor his room was on when a woman’s voice called out. “Hold the door, please.”

Sanjay hit the door-open button on the elevator panel to ensure it didn’t close.
An attractive woman in business attire appeared in the doorway, her curly black
hair pulled back into a ponytail.

“Thank you,” she said as she joined the three men. She smiled at Sanjay with what
seemed to Lock to be undue enthusiasm.

“Eight, please,” Lock requested, and Sanjay hit the button. Lock had seen the
woman the day before when Anand had come to pick him up. They’d nearly bumped into
each other. He guessed that she was staying at the hotel. He surreptitiously sized
her up as the doors closed, his eyes lingering involuntarily. She looked over at
him and smiled nervously. Locked quickly looked up at the floor number displayed
above the doors.

“This is us,” said Sanjay, after the elevator stopped on the fourth floor. “Good
night, Mr. Cairnes.”

Raj echoed his farewell and the pair exited the elevator. As the elevator began
to rise, Lock noticed that eight was the only remaining stop.

“We’re both on eight,” said the woman.

“Yes,” said Lock, stealing another glance. She seemed to find something amusing
about the coincidence. The door opened, and Lock put out his hand in an after you gesture.
She got out of the elevator and began walking confidently down the hall. Lock stepped
out after her and took a moment to remember where his room was. He was in the opposite
direction. He watched the woman walking down the hallway for a moment and then
turned and began walking toward his room.

He’d just unlocked his room with his keycard when he noticed the woman approaching
him.

“Went the wrong way,” she huffed as she passed him. She had that same half-nervous,
half-mischievous smile.

Lock smiled, in spite of himself, and went into his room. In any other circumstances,
he knew he’d have said something, maybe even asked her for a drink. There was something
very appealing about her, although he wasn’t quite sure what. She was pretty, but
it was more than that. It was her entire demeanor, the way she spoke, with a distinct
yet subtle accent.

He frowned and put the woman out of his mind. He needed a plan to find Sophie
and get her home, especially if, as it seemed, they were no longer making the market.
What would happen once he was no longer of use to them? Again, the logic was unyielding:
the simplest thing to do would be to simply kill Sophie. He was running out of
time.

He fell backward onto the bed and kicked his shoes off. Getting the quantum computer
up and running had consumed his attention for the past day and a half, effectively
taking his mind off the fact that he was he a fugitive working in a foreign country
for criminals who’d kidnapped his daughter. The reality of it had started ebbing
back into his consciousness on the cab ride over. Now, alone in his hotel room,
it began to overcome him.

He needed to sleep. That much he knew. He couldn’t keep going like this. Not if
he was going to be any use to anyone. He sat up and eyed the minibar. They probably
had those little bottles of Jack Daniels. He just needed one or two, at most, to
help him go to sleep.

He was about to get up when he heard a knock at the door. After a pause, he decided
it was probably Raj or Sanjay. He walked to the door and opened it.

He was surprised to see the woman from the elevator. “Turn down service, sir,”
she said, almost before he’d recognized her. She handed him a piece of paper and
then shook her head and mouthed the word “no.”

Lock was utterly confused. “No, thanks?”

The woman gave him the A-okay sign and winked, then walked away in the
general direction of the elevators. Lock let the door close and then stood there
for a moment with his mouth open.

“What the…” he mumbled as he raised the paper to eye level.

It was folded up. He unfolded it and discovered that it contained a handwritten
note on hotel stationary. He walked toward his bed to get better light and read
it.

Mr. Lochan Cairnes,

My name is Katya Brittain. I believe we can help each other. Please meet me as soon as you can at the Starbucks down the street from the hotel. It is safe to talk there.

The hand holding the note dropped to his side. He walked over to the window and
stared down at the glowing cyan of the swimming pools below. I believe we can help each other. What
the hell did that mean? Was she hitting on him? That wasn’t it—she’d addressed
him by name. Was she with Anand? That didn’t make sense either. He thought back
to his sudden extraction to Singapore. Someone had been following him, according
to Kirin. No one had said who, exactly, but Lock presumed it must have
been the police. Was this woman a cop?

Scratching his head, he walked over to the minibar, grabbed a tiny bottle of Jack
Daniels, and drank it in one long gulp. He chucked the bottle into the wastebasket
in the corner and stared down at the note without reading it. If she was a
cop, he might be putting Sophie in danger by meeting with her. On the other hand,
what kind of cop passes you a note while pretending to be—Lock suddenly realized
she must have been worried the room was bugged.

The woman—what had she said her name was? He scanned the note. Katya, that was
it—Katya had said she could help him. And he was running out of time to come up
with a plan to rescue Sophie. Lock put the note in his pocket and strode decisively
to the door of his room. If there was a chance that Katya could help him save his
daughter, it was worth taking a risk to find out.

24

Orchard Road, Singapore • Starbucks
Monday, May 7th
9:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya sat alone at a table by the wall and smiled at Lochan Cairnes when he walked
in the door. He was wide-eyed and disoriented, even after he’d spotted her. He
sat down across from her as though he thought someone might pull his chair out
from under him. Then he held up the note.

Katya leaned back, holding up her to-go cup. “You know, the coffee drinks at the
Starbucks here are much better than the ones back in the States. You ought to give
them a chance.”

“I shouldn’t even be here.”

Katya regarded him silently for a moment. This one isn’t much for banter, she
thought. He was not a professional criminal either. He was acting like a civilian.
Which meant step one was to reassure him, let him know he was in good hands.

“No one followed you in. The outdoor tables obscure the view from the street.
And I swept the place earlier for transmitters. The worst that anyone can say is
that you walked into a Starbucks. Which, for an American, would seem to be a pretty
typical thing to do, right? So just take it easy. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

Cairnes licked his lips. Katya knew he was making the first small leap in trusting
her. Finally, he looked at her intently and held up the note again. “What do you
mean, you can help me?”

“Help each other. You can help me stop the world’s most ambitious greenmailing
campaign, and I can help you end up not dead. Which I personally think works out
well for you.”

He sat back and stared at the wall, then gave her a sidelong glance. “Who are
you?”

“Katya. I work for the CIA.”

His eyelids closed slowly, fluttered, and opened again. “The CIA,” he repeated.

She needed to keep the initiative. “Why did Vipul take your daughter?”

His eyes focused into a glare. “Who? What do you know about my daughter?”

“Just that she was abducted on April 27. What’s that…about ten days ago now?”

“Do you know where she is?”

“No. I don’t. But maybe I can find out.”

She watched him rub his hands together, pressing them to his lips. She’d seen
this before. He was trying to decide what to do. It was best to help it along,
so she decided to bluff a little. The trick was to start with the known and then
progress to speculation, without going too far as to be unbelievable.

“Look, we already know you work for Vipul Rathod. We already know you hacked into
thousands of brokerage accounts. We know—” She paused. Something was wrong. She’d
already overplayed her hand somehow. She cocked her head slightly and narrowed
her eyes. No, that wasn’t it. “You don’t even know who Vipul Rathod is,
do you?”

Cairnes frowned. He looked toward the counter.

This was going to be easier than she’d expected. “You really are in over
your head. You don’t even know who you’re working for.”

“This isn’t really helping,” he sneered.

Katya’s eyes widened. “Really? I’m pretty sure I just told you something you didn’t
know.”

“I think I know who I’m working for. His name isn’t Vipul.”

“Oh, you mean Anand?” She had to suppress a smile—she’d stopped him short with
that one. Placing her palms on the table, she looked at him intently. Finally,
he raised his eyes to hers. Which she found unexpectedly distracting. Cairnes was
handsome, smart, a father…how’d he gotten mixed up with someone like Vipul Rathod?
“Listen, Lochan—do you mind if I call you Lochan?”

“Lock is fine.”

“Lock,” she repeated. “I guess your two friends in the elevator are Stock and
Barrel.” She smiled. The humorous banter was a technique she’d learned years ago
from Haruo, back in Hong Kong. The idea was to make sure the target understood
that you weren’t worried. The rookie mistake was to act like you were taking things
as seriously as the target was, but that only served to make them more anxious.
Katya had further personalized it to help her relax. After all, her targets
were usually scared with good reason.

When Lock didn’t react, she pressed on. “Anyway, Lock, I’m not your enemy
here. And my—”

“All right, listen. The reason I didn’t talk to the FBI or the cops or whatever
is because of my daughter. But since you’re here anyway…all I give a fuck about
at this point is getting my daughter back. If you can help me do that, I’m all
yours.”

Katya nodded. “Well, that sounds reasonable.” She’d been afraid of this. She’d
used the daughter to get his attention. The downside was that getting his daughter
back at this point was extremely unlikely. “I’ll tell you what. I will see what
information we may have about her.”

Lock pursed his lips.

Katya went for the close. This was a rush job—normally, she’d have been more patient.
She didn’t expect it to work, but then again, the first close rarely did. It merely
planted the seed, helped the target understand how the process worked. “In exchange,
why don’t you tell me a little bit about what’s going on. For example, how did
you hack into all those brokerage accounts?”

“I’ll be happy to.”

Too easy. “Great.”

“When you get me that information about my daughter.”

Katya frowned. Strike one. She decided to reframe the problem. She needed him
to focus on something she could actually help him with. In this case, that wasn’t
much—leniency in sentencing, mostly. “Lock…I’m sure you realize you’ve pissed off
some very powerful people. And you’re stealing a lot—”

“I haven’t stolen a damn thing. I haven’t made a dime from any of this.”

“Aren’t you kinda splitting hairs a bit, Lock?” Always important to keep using
a familiar tone. “What I’m saying is, we don’t have a lot of time here. Right now,
you’re probably the most wanted man on the planet. You and Vipul.” Katya shrugged.
“If I was you, I might—”

“If you already know everything, what do you need me for?”

A buying signal! “Don’t misunderstand, Lock. I could shoot you in the head right
now, and they’d give me a medal. But when you weed a garden, you have to make sure
you pull the weeds up by the roots. The more we know, the better.”

Lock nodded. “All right. Since we’re being honest. I got one card to play. Which
is that I know a lot. Obviously not everything. But a lot. I could tell you shit
that would blow your mind. So that’s my card. But I gotta play it carefully. And
maybe if I play it right, I can get my daughter the fuck home.” Katya noticed that
he swallowed hard before looking away from her.

Katya smiled. Inwardly, she felt something seize up. She was empathizing with
him. Boundaries, Katya. “You don’t have to tell me everything at once, Lock.
Let’s start with something small. Something I can take back to my superiors and
say, ‘Look, he’s cooperating. Let’s not kill him.’”

“What I ought to do is go find Anand. Or…what’s the other guy’s name?”

“You are so bad at this,” teased Katya, subtly reminding him that he was out of
his depth. “Vipul Rathod.”

Lock didn’t flinch. “What I ought to do,” he blustered, “is go find Vipul Whatever-the-fuck
and give him the heads up.”

“Because you think he’s going to help you get your daughter back?” Katya let the
rebuke hang in the air between them.

Lock leaned forward with a sudden, hostile intensity. “Do you have any idea the
risk I’m already taking, just talking to you? I’m gambling with my daughter’s life!
Can you understand that? So, no, maybe they aren’t going to help me get her back.
But right now, my cooperation is the thing that’s keeping her alive. I don’t have
time to play your little spy games, Katya. Either you can help me, or you
can’t.” Lock paused. Took a breath. Situated himself in his seat. Katya found herself
increasingly fascinated by him. He seemed taken aback by his own outburst. He continued,
more quietly: “Maybe if you could tell me where she is, I’d start to believe you
can help. But…”

Katya nodded, realizing with a start that she was going to need to raise her game.
They were going to need to do something about the situation with his daughter.
She’d pushed hard, and he’d pushed back. “All right, Lock,” she agreed,
mocking his intensity, trying to regain the initiative. “Tomorrow evening, meet
me back here.”

Lock didn’t miss a beat. “What time?”

“Whenever you can.” She stood up. “With any luck, I’ll have something on your
daughter. Sophia, that’s her name, right?” She knew her name, but wanted him to
acknowledge it.

“Sophie. Yeah.” Lock’s gaze seemed to drift into another dimension. Katya’s throat
tightened. Boundaries! In spite of herself, she placed her hand on his shoulder.
He looked up at her.

“We’ll figure something out,” she said gently.

Later, as she walked down the street, taking several turns to be sure she hadn’t
been followed, she couldn’t decide if she was just trying to reassure a target
or if she was becoming one.

Naubatpur (Bihar, India) • Rathod Apartment Building
Monday, May 7th
5:30 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Sophie was thrown back onto her cot, knocking it over in the process. Her face
was damp with tears, and her ankle was screaming incessantly at her to stop moving.
The man and the boy with the white T-shirt were gone now. The man facing her was
the thin-mustached one. He stepped toward her and leaned down, shouting at her.
She reflexively put her hands up in front of her face, but he slapped them away.
He grabbed her chin and produced a black handgun and shoved it into her mouth.
It was cold, and it tasted acrid. She could hear her own muffled screams and felt
the spit from his mouth landing on her face. She saw the cut on his cheek. She
saw the swelling around his eye. He blinked, and she saw the blood vessels that
had burst in his eyeball.

Strangely, she felt the fear and the pain leave her body, her screams fell silent,
and her arms went limp. Her mind emptied, save for one simple thought. I’m going to die. She
blinked slowly, taking in air through her nose. She let her vision blur. This was
not the escape she’d imagined, but it was an escape all the same.

Except the thin-mustached man did not pull the trigger. His fury spent, he shoved
her backward into the cot, which now lay on its side, the sheets and blankets on
the floor. He came at her again, only this time he was holding something else in
his hand.

Ah, it was her old friend, the blue pill.

She refused to open her mouth. He slapped her across the face and things went
sideways, sprinkled with little bursts of light. She felt his fingers pushing into
her mouth, felt the pill lodge in her throat. She bit down, clenching her jaws,
clamping down on his fingers like a vise. She tasted his blood just before she
saw the palm of his hand from the corner of her eyes, and there was a flash of
lightning, and everything went black.

Nariman Point, Mumbai • Kapoor Financial Planning Ltd
Monday, May 7th
7:00 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Swaran poured both himself and Brij, his new junior partner, refills of scotch.
“I’m running low. All this big money is causing me to drink more.” He sat down
heavily behind his desk

“At least it’s good scotch,” said Brij. He was trim and clean shaven and wore
a pressed white dress shirt that was too large for him. “And you’ve plenty of money
to buy more.”

“First, the markets were closed. Then there were no instructions this morning.
Then I finally get instructions, but it’s all about a drop in the Turkish lira.”

“What happened to buying put options? That seemed to be working well.”

Swaran’s chest swelled. “I thought so! We made eleven million dollars in two days’
trading!”

Brij’s eyes widened. “So much?”

“But now I’m supposed to buy something called a forward contract.”

“Forex?”

“Yes. If I understand it correctly, it allows me to convert a billion dollars’
worth of Turkish lira into dollars in a week’s time.”

“And why would you want to do that?”

“I suppose because the Turkish lira is going to drop in value.”

“And you lock in the current exchange rate. But where are you going to get the
money to buy a billion dollar contract?”

“A short-term billion dollar contract doesn’t typically move more than a few million
dollars.”

“So you can buy a billion contract with eleven million dollars?”

Swaran shrugged. “It seems so.”

“But if the rate goes the wrong way before the contract is settled—”

“We’d lose everything.” Swaran took a large swallow of scotch. “But that’s the
whole point of having access to this information. Leverage. This is what
the big boys do.”

“Perhaps you should cash out now.”

“Yes. I’d make a million dollars, more or less.”

“How much do you stand to make with this Turkish lira deal?”

“He says he expects us to make a hundred million dollars.”

“And you would make?”

“Another ten million.”

“I suppose that makes it difficult to walk away.”

Swaran stared forlornly at the bottom of his now empty scotch glass. “I suppose
it does.”

Singapore Financial District • The (New) Lab
Tuesday, May 8th
Noon SGT (Singapore Time)

“Now what?” asked Lock, staring up the green dots on the monitor. “Do we just
wait here until the end of the day?”

“Yes,” said Sanjay. “Those are our instructions.”

“Anand wants us to be available at all hours,” explained Raj. “In the lab during
business hours and in our hotel rooms otherwise.”

“This is stupid,” concluded Lock.

The three men sat in silence. “I am going to play chess online,” announced Raj,
turning toward his laptop.

“Too bad we don’t have any video games,” said Sanjay.

“What are they up to?” asked Lock, who hadn’t taken his eyes off the monitor.
Why exactly did they need him around if they weren’t making use of the Wave Nine?
For that matter, at this point Raj was becoming pretty familiar with the intimate
details of the machine himself. There were still a few things that Raj didn’t understand—Lock
had been careful to be sure of that. But Raj had been very persistent in having
Lock explain things. Was that just Raj’s natural curiosity or part of some larger
plan?

Regardless, Lock had to assume the worst. Either they no longer needed the Wave
Nine, or they were grooming Raj to replace him. Which meant that he was almost
out of time. Assuming the worst, they would simply kill both him and Sophie once
he was no longer useful to them. For all he knew, Anand was on his way over to
kill him now.

The new wrinkle, obviously, was the CIA agent. He was skeptical that she was going
to turn up anything on Sophie. But she had given him a name—Vipul Rathod—which
he’d promptly googled on a computer at the hotel’s business center after their
meeting. Unfortunately, there were apparently several Vipul Rathods, and none of
them seemed particularly likely to be the one he was interested in.

Lock’s eyes wandered over to Raj, calmly playing chess on his laptop. Even from
several feet away, Lock could see the correct move. It was a Classical Sicilian
opening, with Black, Raj’s opponent, having just developed his king’s pawn. The
continuation for White was to move to the queen to prepare for a queenside castle,
but Raj seemed stuck. Lock forced himself to look away. He needed to keep working
on the problem, no matter how hopeless it seemed.

What if Katya did turn up something on Sophie? Then he could bring Ray into play.
He wouldn’t know anything until his meeting with Katya that night. But was there
anything between now and then he could do to prepare?

Money. Wouldn’t Ray need money? He’d want to be paid. Maybe he’d have men he’d
have to pay. And what if Sophie turned out to be in India? Or in Singapore? They’d
have to travel and transport whatever weapons or other equipment they wanted to
bring. And that would require chartering a jet or something, right?

At least this was a problem he could solve. He was sitting at the controls of
the world’s most efficient money-making machine. Which, thanks to Anand’s threats,
they’d just spent the better part of the last seventy-two hours bringing back online.
Wall Street didn’t open for another nine hours. They’d only be stuck in the lab
for another five. So the first thing to do was to create a backdoor into the system
that he could access from the hotel business center.

He looked at Raj, who had managed to get to the queenside castle but then misplayed
what Black had intended to be an exchange of queens. The game was over, but Raj
didn’t realize it yet. In another ten minutes, he’d figure it out and would be
looking for a new distraction. And Sanjay was just looking at YouTube videos. He
needed a better way to keep them distracted while he created the backdoor. The
last thing he needed was Raj poking his head in to see what Lock was doing.

“I know how we can kill some time,” Lock announced. Raj looked up, forlorn. Sanjay
tore himself away from a video of what appeared to be someone falling off a riding
lawn mower. “We’ve got this awesome video display and a nice, fat Internet connection—let’s
watch some movies.”

ψ

The trio sat in the darkened lab. On the monitor, the Joker was recounting the
tale of his scars to his would-be assassins. Why so serious? Lock looked
over at Raj and Sanjay and decided that his plan was working—they weren’t paying
any attention to him. Lock slid over to his laptop and opened a terminal screen.
He looked back up at the others, double checking. He returned his gaze to the monitor
and rubbed his chin before placing his hands above the keyboard. His fingers hit
the keys in furious bursts. On the monitor in front of him, windows came and went.
He stopped and looked up again. Raj looked over with a curious expression on his
face.

Lock finished up and rolled his chair off to the side, pretending to watch the
movie. Raj rolled over next to him. “What are you doing?” he whispered.

Lock whispered back. “Oh, I just want to automate the Torrents a bit. So you can
just type the name of the movie you want to watch into IRC, and it will start downloading
it for you.”

“Oh. Good idea!”

Lock smiled and looked back up at the monitor. The Joker was now asking the commissioner
if it depressed him to know how alone he really was. Lock’s smiled faded. He thought
of Sophie, who was truly alone.

But for the first time since she’d been taken, Lock had a plan.

25

Naubatpur (Bihar, India) • Rathod Apartment Building
Tuesday, May 8th
11:00 a.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Sophie’s mouth felt as though it was full of sandpaper. The glass of water was
there on the table, along with her morning gruel. But there were three men between
her and the table. She was on the cot, hugging her knees.

“Water,” she croaked, pointing to the table. She tried to swallow but simply gagged.

One of the men understood her and picked up the glass, mockingly offering it to
her. She scooted forward and reached for it, but he pulled it away. He raised it
to his lips and began to drink, making loud slurping noises and moaning with pleasure.
The other men laughed.

Sophie reached for the glass again, and two of the men grabbed her while the third
moved behind them. She felt their hands on her breasts and buttocks, and she tried
to pull away. The laughing was gradually turning into grunted Hindi words. Occasionally,
Sophie could hear the word pussy. The man who’d taken her water glass set
it down on the table. He unzipped his jeans and pulled them down, exposing himself
to her, which ignited another round of laughter.

Sophie looked away, trying to pull free from the men and their probing hands.
Finally, she broke away and tumbled into the cot. She found herself between the
wall and the cot, and she quickly repositioned herself so she could use the cot
as a barrier. She grabbed one of the supports and raised the cot up in front of
her. The men kept laughing.

The man who’d exposed himself came forward, his jeans pulled back up, offering
her the glass of water. She put down the cot and reached for it and was suddenly
drenched. Water dripped down her face and hair onto her shoulders and neck and
onto the floor. She wiped it away from her eyes, and her tongue darted from her
mouth, desperate to catch droplets as they cascaded down her face. The laughter
reached a crescendo. She realized there was a fourth man now. She slid backward
to the floor, holding up the cot that separated them from her.

One of the men left, followed by another, and then a third. The fourth returned
to the easy chair. Sophie set the cot down and stared at the empty glass on the
table. She looked at the man in the easy chair.

“Water,” she croaked. The man grabbed his crotch and cursed at her.

Sophie began licking the water off her arms. She looked at the puddles on the
floor around her, then leaned down to the floor and began gingerly lapping the
water off. When she had moistened her mouth and could swallow again, she sat up.
She looked up at the window, which had been boarded up. She got up, righted the
cot, and sat on it to get out of the water. Her mouth was already dry again. She
lay down on her side, rolling over to face the wall, wondering how long it took
to die of thirst. She thought she remembered hearing—maybe it had been on the Discovery
Channel?—that it took a mere three days.

US Consulate, Kolkota
Tuesday, May 8th
1:00 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

“Your name?” asked the woman behind the desk. Her graying hair was tied back in
an untidy bun, her face long and expressionless. She wore a sleeveless blue dress
with a floral print.

“Arbind Thakur,” said Arbind. He sat in a small chair in front of the desk in
a small office that also seemed to double as file storage. There was an American
flag wedged behind the woman and the wall. He shifted uncomfortably in the wooden
chair. He’d driven for hours to get to Kolkota. And then there had been the wait
to see someone at the consulate. And he was nervous that it would turn out that
he was in the wrong place or had remembered the name wrong, in spite of having
repeated it hundreds of times. The last thing he’d wanted to do was sit down again.

“You are a US citizen?”

“Yes.”

“Passport, please.”

Arbind handed her his passport. The woman looked it over disapprovingly and handed
it back. Arbind looked at it himself, as though he wasn’t quite sure if he’d handed
her the right thing.

“How can I help you, Mr. Thakur?”

“I would like to report the kidnapping of a young woman, an American citizen,
I believe. Her name is Sophie Cavelle-Cairnes.”

“Did you say a kidnapping?” asked the woman, looking at Arbind for the first time.

“Yes.”

She turned and bent down behind the desk for a moment. Arbind heard a drawer open
and close and the woman reappeared with a form. She picked up a pen and moistened
the tip with her tongue, then began writing. “What was the name again?”

“Sophie Cavelle-Cairnes.”

Orchard Road, Singapore • Starbucks
Tuesday, May 8th
7:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock made his way past a trio of high school students as he entered the Starbucks.
He saw Katya sitting demurely at the same table they’d used the night before. She
didn’t seem to be watching him, and he wondered if she could really tell if he’d
been followed, or if she’d just made that up to impress him. As Lock approached
the table, she caught his eye and smiled. He looked over at a barista taking the
order of an elderly woman with a pink flower pinned in her hair.

“I have good news,” said Katya as Lock sat down.

“Yeah?” he prompted, looking out the window at the spinning reflectors on the
wheels of a passing bicycle.

“We got a report. Actually just a few hours ago. From the US consulate in Kolkota.
We believe Sophie is in Bihar just south of a little town called Patna.”

Lock looked up and met Katya’s eyes, a jolt of awareness running up his spine.
“India?”

“Yes.” Katya put up a finger. “And this makes sense. The Rathod family has deep
ties back to Bihar. That’s where they started out. That’s where they get their
muscle.”

Lock leaned back in his chair and stared at the table. Bihar, India. Even
though he’d known that it was possible that Kirin—or Vipul—had taken her
far from home, hearing it stated as a fact caused the air to leave his lungs all
at once. The tree of possible actions and outcomes reshaped themselves in front
of him, some branches blossoming, others shrinking away to nothing. The natural
reaction to Sophie’s being taken was to go to her, to take her back, but
he hadn’t known where to find her. Now, suddenly, he did. Lock looked up. Katya
seemed to be studying him closely.

“So…what happens now?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, are you guys going in to get her? Can I go? Or…I mean, how does this
work?”

Katya shook her head. “I can’t make any guarantees about getting her out.”

“I know that, I just want to know how it works. Will the—” he leaned forward and
lowered his voice, “—government, the CIA, whoever, go in to get her?” Or do I need to hire Ray to do it?

“Lock, we just got this intel today. I don’t know what the plan is.”

“Wh—I—but it’s an emergency, right? I mean, she’s…am I just supposed to wait?”

“I think, for now, yes.”

“Why? We know where she is. She’s an American citizen, right? Don’t I pay taxes
for this? Isn’t that what pays your salary? What are we waiting for?”

“Take it easy, Lock. For one thing, we don’t know exactly where she is.
Patna is a full-sized city. For another, even if we did know, you can’t just conjure
up special ops for an extraction like this overnight. And that’s assuming we’ll
even get it approved.”

Lock’s voice broke as he rose in his chair. “Get it approved?”

Katya held up her hands. “I’m not saying it won’t get approved. And I’ll
do all I can to make sure it does get approved.” She lowered her hands as Lock
settled back into his seat. Katya looked around, her eyes sweeping the store behind
Lock, then focusing back on him. “I’m just saying that you should take it one step
at a time.”

“Every second we sit here and talk about it—”

“Lock, we don’t even know where she is. We could fly out there right now—”

“Exactly! We could. Isn’t that the first step?”

“I understand what your saying, Lock. I do. But let the professionals do their
job. Let them pin down her location. Let them come up with an extraction plan.”
She reached out and grabbed Lock’s hand. Her hand felt warm. He noticed her nails
were trimmed short and precisely and had a coat of clear polish on them. “And,
with any luck, they’ll go over there and get your daughter back.”

Lock sighed. He pulled his hands back and folded them together in front of his
face. “I can’t wait,” he said simply. Wasn’t that obvious?

Katya sat back and folded her arms. “Okay, so suppose you somehow fly over there
right now. Do you think you can find her before someone here notices that you’re
gone? And then what?”

Lock stared at her for a moment and then broke off and gazed out the window. A
young couple passed by, holding hands and laughing. He considered simply telling
her about Ray, but thought better of it. He’d talk to Ray first and understand
his options. In the meantime, it couldn’t hurt to keep pushing Katya to get the
CIA to do something.

He turned back to face her. “So I just wait and hope you can get me more information
about her exact location?”

“Yes. That’s the best course of action. For now. I know it’s hard to be patient.
I can’t really imagine how hard this is…”

Lock pursed his lips and let his eyes wander again.

“Now, I’ve given you something, Lock. What can you give me?”

Lock snapped his back and glared at Katya. “What?”

“That’s how this works, Lock. I can’t go to bat for you if I can’t show that you’re
cooperating.” She stared back.

“Unbelievable,” he sputtered, finding it difficult to speak. How could he explain
why helping Sophie had nothing to do with whether he cooperated or not? He felt
like he was trying to explain to a child why it was good to share with other children.
It was such a self-evident proposition that he was wholly unprepared to articulate
its merits. Was Katya just bluffing? Surely, the US government would help rescue
Sophie regardless of what he did?

Katya began trying to explain. “From the point of view of the US government, Lock, you’re the
criminal. You’re the bad guy. You’re the one who got involved with
these characters to begin with. You’re the one who got your daughter kidnapped.
And you’re the one who just caused billions of dollars of damage on Wall
Street. Now…I want to help you get Sophia back. And, honestly, I’ll do
that regardless of what you do or don’t tell me. I will. Because none of this is
her fault. And she’s in real trouble, Lock, believe me. These people don’t play.
But you can make it easier for me to help her. Or you can do what you’re
doing, what you’ve been doing, and make the wrong decision.”

Lock felt his insides freezing up. He sat up. He’d had enough. It was time to
go talk to Ray. “What kind of person barters for a child’s life?” he snapped. He
could see her blink away the rebuke. She had to be bluffing. Lock decided to employ
a bluff of his own. “Billions of dollars in damages? Isn’t that what you said?
That’s the tip of the iceberg, Miss Spy Lady. So go back to your people and tell
them that if they want this shit to stop, get my daughter—” Lock leaned forward
to within inches of Katya’s face, lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper, “—the fuck out
of that place.” He pushed his chair back noisily, stood up, and walked out.

He heard Katya call out, “You know where to find me.”

The humid night air seemed to instantly coat him in a thin film of moisture. He
realized he was trembling slightly. He needed to calm his nerves. Another scotch
at the bar would do the trick. He wondered what they’d do when they saw his room
tab. Of course, given that he was actively negotiating with the CIA, that was the
least of his sins.

Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore
Tuesday, May 8th
8:15 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Drink in hand, Lock stood at a row of pay phones near the lobby. “Hey, Kafka.
Good to hear your voice,” he said weakly.

“Sure. You too. What’s happening? Where’d you go?”

“Never mind that right now. Listen. I know where Sophie is.”

“Awesome! Where?”

“She’s in some place called Bihar. In fucking India.”

“Woah.”

“Yeah. I was thinking it was time to talk to your friend Ray again.”

“Right. Okay. You want his number?”

“I don’t have any way to call him. Except collect, like I did you. And I can’t
use my room phone because they’ll see that I was making calls. Plus, I think the
room is bugged.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “What about one of those calling cards?”

“I don’t have one.”

“No, I mean, I could get you one. You just need the number, right?”

“I guess.”

“Call me back in an hour. I’m going to get you a calling card.”

“There’s something else.”

“Sure, man.”

“Do you have any cash?”

“Like…on me?”

“No. In the bank.”

Kafka paused. “I think I have like fifteen hundred bucks in my checking account.”

“Can you wire, say, a grand into my account?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll pay you back.”

“It’s no problem, Lock. I’ll get the calling card, transfer the money, and call
you back.”

Lock shifted his focus to making the market. After setting up the backdoor, he’d
spent the afternoon researching the best way to use his control of the market into
ready cash. The best strategy appeared to be options trading. Even a thousand dollars,
under the right circumstances, could be turned into tens of thousands within a
day or two. Those returns, invested again, could be turned into millions. He used
his room card to get into the hotel’s business center and sat down at one of the
computers.

The markets had been open for two hours and Lock was on his fourth scotch by the
time Kafka called back on the pay phone with the numbers for his calling card and
Ray’s cell phone. He dialed Ray’s number but got a terse voice mail greeting and
hung up the phone. He was on his fifth scotch when he decided the markets were
too volatile to reliably make the market. The bottom had dropped out during the
first half of the day’s trading, but was storming back as the second half began.
He’d have to start tomorrow. Lock called Ray again as he started on his sixth scotch,
but to no avail. He ordered one more “for the road,” as he told the bartender,
and staggered up to his room.

“Hold on, Sophie,” he slurred as his head hit the pillow.

Tally Bar, Singapore
Tuesday, May 8th
9:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya watched as Ong Goh dismissed the three well-dressed people with whom he’d
been enjoying dessert. “Katya, what an unexpected pleasure,” he purred as she approached
his table. “The blackberry tarts are delicious here,” he observed, taking a final
bite of what Katya presumed had once been a blackberry tart. “Shall I order you
one? And some brandy?”

“No, thank you.” She sat down primly. “I won’t keep you from your friends long.”

“Them?” Ong Goh waved a manicured hand. “Tedious bureaucrats. I much prefer your
company.”

Katya smiled, thinking of Lock. What kind of person barters for a child’s life? The
same kind of person who arranges for a man’s death, apparently. “Suppose you wanted
to get rid of Vipul Rathod,” Katya began. “How would you go about it?”

Ong Goh chuckled, wiping his mouth with a white cloth napkin. “So soon? You only
just met.”

“Hypothetically,” emphasized Katya. “Of course.”

“Of course. We are just dreamers, you and I.”

She arched an eyebrow.

“Well, let’s see,” mused Ong Goh, looking off into the distance. “How was his
brother killed?”

“Li Mun,” answered Katya, admiring how quickly Ong Goh’s mind worked.

“For a price, I’m sure he’d complete the set.”

“Yes,” confirmed Katya thoughtfully. “How would you approach Li Mun?”

“Ask our minister of trade.”

Katya laughed in spite of herself.

“You’d need an introduction. We have a couple of contacts.”

“And they can broker a meeting?”

“Possibly. Or…they can pass along an offer.”

“For something like this…”

“It would need to be face to face?”

“Don’t you think? The fewer people involved…”

Ong Goh nodded and took a sip of brandy. “Right.” He lifted his glass. “You sure
you don’t want a glass? It’s exquisite.”

Katya shook her head. “So?”

“Why don’t I introduce you to Zhong Xin?”

“I’d love to meet him,” encouraged Katya, finding herself slipping back into Ong
Goh’s easy style of banter.

“He’s right over there,” observed Ong Goh with a quick feint of his eyes toward
the bar.

Katya was startled. “Here? Now?”

“Why, yes. He’s a regular here.”

Katya looked over at the bar. It wasn’t difficult to guess who Zhong Xin was.
There were several tourists and an elegantly dressed older couple. And then two
men huddled together at the far end of the bar, one a lanky figure with a crooked
nose who wore his hair samurai-style, the other a fat bald man with a bulge in
his jacket. Katya knew the former as a bookie who went by the name Tay. Which meant
Zhong Xin was the latter.

“Please excuse me,” said Ong Goh, rising from his side of the booth. “I’ll bring
him by. I need to talk to him about subtlety anyway.”

Katya guessed that Ong Goh was referring to the poorly concealed firearm. Carrying
was strictly forbidden in Singapore, the penalties harsh. Even if Ong Goh wasn’t
going to arrest him, there was only so much he could overlook, and only so much
he could do if another member of the SPF happened to notice.

Katya glance sideways and saw Ong Goh leaning over the bar, speaking into Zhong
Xin’s ear. Zhong Xin sat up and seemed to become very self-conscious. He got up
and left the room as Ong Goh made his way back over to their booth. A jazz band
had assembled on the stage, producing little bursts of saxophone and guitar as
they went through their sound check.

“He’ll be right over,” Ong Goh informed her as he slid into his booth.

By the time Zhong Xin joined them, so had three fresh brandies, and the band was
into the second stanza of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.

“Katya wants to meet with your boss,” Ong Goh began, speaking loudly over the
music.

Zhong Xin nodded. Katya felt like his nature was too gentle to have made it as
a gangster. He looked like an overgrown child.

“I have a business proposition I think he’ll be interested in,” Katya elaborated.

Zhong Xin leaned forward, cupping a hand over one ear. Katya repeated herself,
a bit more loudly. Zhong Xin nodded and leaned back. He looked at Ong Goh, who
also nodded. He seem to think for a moment and said something to Ong Goh, but she
couldn’t make it out. Then he got up and went back to the bar. Katya noticed the
bulge in his jacket was gone.

Ong Goh leaned forward. “Go to the bunker tomorrow at 2 p.m.”

It was Katya’s turn to nod. The bunker was something of a mystery to her. It appeared
from the outside to be a warehouse on the fringe of one of the wharfs. However,
Ong Goh had it on good authority that it was merely the entrance to an underground—or,
really, undersea—bunker built into the wharf itself, from which Li Mun ran his
day-to-day operations. She’d had it under surveillance for years but had never
been inside.

“Be careful, Katya,” Ong Goh yelled over the music.

Katya nodded again. She leaned over table. “I should let you get back to your
guests.”

“Nonsense,” objected Ong Goh, waving his hand. “They’ve left anyway.”

Katya looked around the bar.

“Stay awhile,” coaxed Ong Goh. “Enjoy some good music and some brandy.”

Katya studied the glass of brandy she hadn’t asked for. She shrugged and took
a sip, feeling its warmth spreading through her throat and chest. She closed her
eyes, listening to the music.

She could see Lock’s face, the judgment in his sad blue eyes. What kind of person barters for a child’s life? She
wondered what he’d think of her if he knew that, tomorrow, she was going to propose
a partnership with Singapore’s leading gangster. She would offer him money to kill
someone.

All to protect Wall Street’s billions. She took another sip of brandy and wondered
what her father would have thought of all this. She thought back to growing up
in Cairo and admiring the bearded, world-weary man who somehow always had a smile
for her. He’d taken her into work at the embassy one day, and she’d sat behind
what she now remembered as an enormous oak desk. She’d been nine years old at the
time. It would be three more years before they’d move to the United States. She’d
watched through his office door as people from seemingly all over the world, in
all manner of dress, came and went. She’d admired him in his olive-colored linen
suit and obsessed about what went on behind the closed doors of the conference
room down the hall.

There were many moments like that—by the time she’d reached college, she felt
as if she’d known all her life what she wanted to do with it. “We all have to learn
to work together,” her father had explained to her with characteristic simplicity
when she’d asked him what it was, exactly, he had been doing all day. “Different
races, different cultures…we all face the same problems. And we have to get better
at working together to solve them.” In her eyes, her father was the most noble
of men, an unsung hero, quietly oiling the gears of the world’s political machinery.
But as she’d grown older, she’d seen her father worn down and frustrated, forced
to react to crisis after crisis, never able to get out in front and prevent them.

Katya took another sip of brandy. Ong Goh caught her eye and smiled before returning
his attention to the stage. Perhaps that was why Ong Goh’s constant flirting never
bothered her—he was a man from another era, her father’s era. There was something
reassuring about that, a sense that she’d get through this, just like they had.
Of course, her father had never been a part of the “clandestine services.” In fact,
he had counseled her against joining. For her part, she’d seen it merely as the
perfect way to balance her years at Princeton and Columbia, studying abstract geopolitical
theories and the influence of singular individuals.

Field work for the CIA put her on the front lines, as it were, in the battle to
keep the human race from destroying itself. It wasn’t always pretty, but if you
wanted to change the world, you first had to understand how it really worked, without
sweeping the ugly parts off the back porch. Her father’s great flaw, as far she’d
been able to discern, was that he had never been willing to see the world as it
really was. He saw the best in people. And Katya did, too. But she could also see
the worst. She could appreciate that Lock wanted to find his daughter. But she
also understood he represented a clear and present danger to the global economy.

She finished off her brandy, bored with her own morose reflections. It was time
to go home. After all, she had to be up bright and early to try and convince Haruo
that they should run an extraction to get the girl. And then she was going to march
right into the den of Li Mun himself and propose that he kill Vipul Rathod.

26

Chinese Garden, Singapore
Wednesday, May 9th
5:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

“I spoke with Goh about termination scenarios,” said Katya. She was on the bridge
again, side-by-side with Haruo. A small fleet of turtles passed beneath her, disappearing
under the bridge.

“Oh?” prompted Haruo.

“He reminded me that Vipul went to Li Mun when he wanted to take out his brother.”

“Yes. Excellent. Expedient and efficient.”

“And probably expensive.”

“Under the circumstances…”

“I have a meeting set up for this afternoon.”

“With Li Mun?”

“Yes.”

“Good. No time to waste.”

“You told me to work fast.”

“What about Mr. Cairnes?”

Katya waited a moment for an old woman to pass out of earshot. “The key to him
is the daughter. We need to get her out of there.”

“An extraction? From Bihar?”

“Yes.”

“That’ll take too much time. But you can assure him that we’ll get her.”

“That’s what I did. He won’t talk unless he gets his daughter first.”

“Tell him we have her.”

Katya turned her head toward the old man and cocked an eyebrow. He hadn’t even
hesitated.

Quartan was thinking aloud. “He’d want proof.”

“Not only that, but I’d be flat out lying to him.”

“You have a confused conscience, Katya.”

“I suppose. Is there some way to expedite the extraction?”

“It’s quicker and cheaper for us to simply kill him.”

“Sure. But then we lose the intel.”

“We’re not getting it anyway.” Haruo paused, his eye on a passing jogger. “And
don’t forget, State will want to process the girl. Just winning that argument will
take time. And the logistics of setting up a special op will take time. I’ll have
the discussions. But I don’t think today is realistic. Or tomorrow. And probably
not Friday, either. In other words, it isn’t something you should be planning on.”

Katya frowned. “Had to ask. What about intel about her situation?”

“All we know is that consulate report.”

“But we could find out more. We know where to look, right? We can check sat intel,
right? If we wanted to, we could tell him exactly where she is, the terrain, disposition
and size of forces, attitudes—”

“Yes, we could get that. No guarantee we’ll be able to pin down the girl’s whereabouts.”

“Can we get it today?”

“I can get an analyst on it today, sure. What are you thinking?”

“I just want to show Lock that we’re making progress.”

“Lock?”

“Lochan. Cairnes. He calls himself Lock.”

Haruo frowned.

“So?” prompted Katya.

“There’s one problem,” resumed Haruo.

“What’s that?”

“Getting clearance to give that kind of intel to a civilian.”

“Or to me, for that matter.”

“I can authorize giving it to you. I can’t authorize you giving it to a civilian.
Let alone a target.”

“You don’t need to know about it.”

“I don’t want you to expose yourself like that, Katya.”

Katya was silent for a moment. “Are there any other suspects? Besides Cairnes
and Rathod.”

Now it was Haruo’s turn to be silent.

“If I can turn Cairnes, no one will care how I did it.”

“No. But if you don’t…you’re already set up to be the first candidate for mission
scapegoat.”

“By that logic, I’ve got nothing to lose.”

Haruo turned and looked at her. Katya saw fatherly concern in his eyes. “I’ll
get you what I can,” he conceded after a brief staring contest.

“Also?”

Quartan arched his eyebrows, incredulous. “Yes?”

“I need a new sat phone.”

Haruo returned his gaze to the lake. “Oh. Okay. I’ll get—wait.” He gave her a
sidelong glance. “Oh no.”

“I checked my hotel surveillance this morning. Lock—Cairnes—is making calls on
pay phones. This is something tangible to prove I’m on his side.”

Haruo sighed. “You had such a promising career ahead of you.”

Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore
Wednesday, May 9th
9:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock heard the phone ringing and unplugged it from the wall. He heard the knocking
at the door and put his head underneath several pillows. He was dreaming that he
was on a yacht with Sophie, cutting through a crystalline blue ocean underneath
a nearly cloudless sky, the wind, infused with ocean spray, in their faces—

He landed hard on his tailbone and opened his eyes to find himself at the foot
of the bed. Black shoes, perfectly tailored slacks, long legs, black jacket…

“Get up!” snarled Anand. “Before I break your fucking legs.”

Lock scrambled to his feet, wincing at the knifing pain in the front of his head.

“I have to fucking come down here to get you out of bed?” asked Anand. “That’s
worth at least a finger or two, don’t you think, Sanjay?”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Sanjay. Locked hadn’t realized he was even there. He was standing
near the door, his head bowed.

“Let me just—I just overslept,” Lock stuttered. “I’m sorry—”

“You disgust me,” continued Anand. “You are a man who does not care about his
own daughter. A man who does not care about his family is not a man at all.”

“You’re absolutely right,” said Lock as he pulled on a pair of jeans. “Please
don’t hurt Sophie, though, it isn’t—”

“Why would you take such chances when you know the consequences? I think today
we will have a little video chat with Sophie. We will remove a thumb. Perhaps then—”

Lock spun around, his shirt half-on and half-off. “Anand, please. I swear to you.
I will not be late again. Please don’t hurt her. There’s no need. It won’t happen
again. It’s just with the time change and working all night and—”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Yes, sir.”

Anand stepped forward and leaned into Lock’s face. “This is your last chance,
Detroit. If you piss me off one more time, if you even irritate me, I swear to
you, you will watch your little Sophie suffer. You will watch her scream and cry
for help, and you will be able to do nothing, like the useless dog that you are.
Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said Lock, blinking slowly.

Shipyard Road, Singapore • Friendly Winds Shipping Ltd
Wednesday, May 9th
2:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya was led a through a maze of narrow corridors into what appeared from the
outside to be some kind of refrigeration unit featuring a large steel door. Inside
she discovered a spartan office with wooden floors and a leather couch with dirty
white stuffing coming out of the arms. She sat down stiffly on the couch and wondered
if perhaps she’d made a mistake, after all, by coming down here. She imagined they
had a way to simply flush the bodies out to sea.

According to the crookedly hung clock on the far wall, she’d been waiting thirty
minutes when Li Mun finally shuffled in. He took two steps into the room and turned
to her. “Who are you?”

Katya stood up. “I represent someone who would like to remain anonymous.”

“Are you here to suck my dick? Because you were supposed to—”

Katya cleared her throat. “Um, no. I have a business proposal.”

“You got five seconds.”

“Okay. I’ll get right to the point, then.” Katya cleared her throat again. “My
associates would like you to terminate Vipul Rathod. And we are willing to pay
you generously.”

“Such a pretty girl for such dirty work.”

Katya wondered if he was being intentionally ironic.

Li Mun shuffled over to his desk. “I’m not interested.”

Yet he hadn’t thrown her out. Or had her killed. She said nothing.

Li Mun sat down, leaning on the desk to support his bulk as he did so. “Who do
you represent?”

“Someone who would like to remain anonymous.”

Li Mun nodded. “I like to know who I’m doing business with.”

“I understand. Unfortunately, in this case, that isn’t possible.”

“You with the SPF?”

“No. We are not local.”

“The CIA?”

“Mr. Li, please.”

“Why Vipul?”

“He stepped on the wrong toes.”

Li Mun stared at her. She forced herself to hold his gaze. “Cash, up front,” he
said finally.

“Of course.”

“How much?”

“I wouldn’t presume to know your needs.”

“Okay, then. Ten million. US dollars.”

“Very well.”

“You’ll pay me ten million dollars to get rid of Vipul for you.”

“I’ll take it back to my associates. For that price, I assume you can permanently
cripple the Rathod organization.”

“Sure. I wouldn’t worry about that. But the price is twenty million.”

“Ten is fine, I think.”

“Ten up front. Ten after.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“What did Vipul do that makes it worth twenty million to kill him?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really. Come back with the cash and maybe we can do business.”

Katya stood up. “Can someone show me out? I’m not sure I can find the way.”

“Yeah, that’s the idea. Wait here.”

Katya stared at the floor awkwardly as the fat old man waddled out the door. Was
it really going to be that easy? Haruo would be upset that she hadn’t bargained.
But what was ten or even twenty million dollars when billions hung in the balance?

Orchard Road, Singapore • Starbucks

Wednesday, May 9th

7:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya was at a different table this time, in the back corner. Lock nearly knocked
over an old Asian woman, and just when he’d finished apologizing to her, he bumped
into a student, who started cursing in Chinese. Or maybe it was Japanese, Lock
wasn’t sure.

He had spent the day planning his assault on the stock market, while Raj and Sanjay
had enjoyed a marathon of superhero movies. Back at the hotel, he’d gone straight
to his room to rest for a few hours until the markets opened and he could call
Ray. Just as he’d fallen asleep, Katya had knocked on his door, passing him another
note.

He’d already made it clear to her that he wasn’t going to give her anything unless
she could actually produce his daughter. So he was not only tired but impatient.
He sat down breathlessly. “What?” he prompted.

“I have a gift for you,” Katya said, smiling. She reached down into a bag under
the table and pulled out something that looked like an old cell phone. She handed
it to him.

“What’s this?” he asked as he accepted it.

“It’s a cell phone.”

“I can see that.”

“Secure. My number is preprogrammed in. Also, that way, you can call your friends.”

Lock looked up.

“You know, the Polish guy and Ray.”

“How…?”

“I’m a spy. This is what I do. Anyway, it also has detailed intel on where
your daughter is being held. Terrain, disposition of forces, and so forth. Everything
your friend Ray will need.”

Lock was dumbfounded. “How…?” he said again.

Katya paused, as though hesitant to share the secrets of her craft. “Okay. I have
surveillance set up at the hotel. I was able to check the numbers you called by
calling in a favor with the SPF. I cross-referenced those with our internal database.
Ray is a pretty interesting character, by the way.”

Lock gradually recovered from his surprise at the extent to which Katya had been
watching him. She apparently was, in fact, a real life spy. He began to process
the rest of what she’d told him. Everything your friend Ray will need. “So
you can’t help me?”

“I think I just did. But, no, I—meaning the CIA and the US government—can’t arrange
for your daughter’s rescue, not yet. It will take time to put everything in motion.
But—” she motioned at the phone Lock was still holding in his hand, “—that’s everything
we have.”

Lock stared at the phone. “Well, thanks. I guess.” He got up to leave.

“Lock. I’m doing everything I can.”

“Like I said, thanks.”

Walking out of Starbucks back toward the hotel, he fished into his pocket until
he found the piece of hotel stationary with the calling card number and Ray’s cell
number, which he began to dial and then stopped. He experimented pressing different
buttons until he figured out how to view the files Katya had told him were on the
phone. Detailed intel? There were photos, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds. They
looked as though they’d been taken from just two or three stories up, straight
down. He saw a girl in a black hood being led into an apartment building. In another
photo, there were just a half-dozen men, armed with semiautomatics, scattered around
the front and sides of the same building. There were photos from higher up showing
the layout of the apartment complex and the streets surrounding it, and diagrams
showing the altitude of various landmarks.

He reached the bar and nodded at the bartender, who by now knew to bring him the
twenty-year Laphroaig, neat. He took a sip to settle his nerves and pulled up the
photos of Sophie being led into the apartment building. He recognized the Keep
Calm T-shirt and the curls of her hair. She’d been trapped in that very apartment
building for nearly two weeks.

It felt like his whole body was trembling. He took another sip of scotch, but
it made no difference. He looked at the stationary again and dialed Ray’s number.

ψ

Even with Kafka’s help, it took nearly two hours to work out the kinks involved
in sending emails with attachments from the phone Katya had given him. To begin
with, the phone’s email system used an obscure public-key encryption scheme neither
of them were familiar with. Lock had managed to find the public key—remarkably,
there were instructions for jailbreaking the phone on Google—which he gave to Kafka
so he could decrypt the files. Kafka sent them on to Ray, who was now, in theory,
studying them on his laptop.

Meanwhile, the markets had been open for an hour, but showed no signs of stabilizing—in
just an hour of trading on record volume, the DOW had lost another 10 percent of
its value, reaching a ten-year low. It looked as though he’d have to wait another
day to start raising funds.

At least they could begin making concrete plans for rescuing Sophie. Lock commandeered
an empty corner of the hotel lounge as a makeshift war room and called Ray again.

“Did you get the emails I sent you? With the zip file attached?”

“Yeah,” said Ray.

Lock gathered himself. They could finally get down to business. “If you unzip
those, you’ll find a bunch of intel about Sophie’s location. Terrain, disposition,
whatever. There’s even an analysis there of various options for taking the area
by force.”

“Yeah, I saw all that. But…Lock. This isn’t going to work.”

Lock’s heart thumped hard. “Why not?”

“I mean, she’s in India.”

“So?” Lock caught himself, realizing he was sounding angry already. “We specifically
talked about that possibility.”

“I never claimed I could get her out of India. That’s halfway around the world.”

Lock choked on his frustration. “But you’re Special Forces, right? You’re trained
for this kind of thing.”

“Sure. That was a long time ago. And we had the resources of the US Army behind
us. Where did you get this stuff, anyway? This looks pretty legit.”

“Never mind about that. It’s definitely legit. What resources do you need?”

“Men. Planes. Jeeps. Supplies. I’d need updated intel. There’s no way for us do
surveillance there, I can see that already. We’d be too noticeable. So we’d be
going in blind, just off the intel. It’s too risky.”

“I thought you had guys…”

“I do, Lock. Like four or five. Maybe six. But I was thinking she was in
a cabin in Petosky or something. Maybe then we’d have had a shot. For something
like this, fuck, Lock, they have…I don’t know. In some of the photos it looks like
there might be a couple dozen guys guarding that building. Even more in the streets
around it. It’s like a fucking compound. And on top of that, you’ve got a bunch
of civvies walking around—”

“Ray, please. I—” Lock found himself at a loss for words. “I’m running out of
options here. Actually, no, I’m out of options. I’ve got no way to—”

“I’m really sorry, man. But I don’t see how this can work.”

Lock thought for a moment. “If you had the money, can you get the supplies and
stuff? You know, like a plane, jeeps, whatever.”

“If we had the money? Probably. I would imagine. We could lease the cargo plane…Dunbar’s
got a pilot’s license, although I don’t know if it qualifies him for that. But
that’s not really the problem.”

“Just bear with me here, man.”

“All right, all right.”

“Now…did you read the analyst’s report? About the options for taking the area
by force?”

“Well, no, I haven’t actually read it yet.”

“One of the options there is a night raid. There’s a small rise to the east of
the building. You could engage via sniper fire from there and use the secondary
entrance to go in and get her. According to that, you could do it with six to eight
men.”

“I’ve got six. Maybe. And that’s extremely risky.”

“I’ll go. Maybe I could—”

“You’d be more of a liability than a help, Lock. Believe me, you don’t have the
kind of training this requires.”

“I could be one of the snipers, maybe. The whole idea is to draw attention to
the front entrance. I can do that. Hell, I’ll run up to the building with my pants
on fire if that’s what it takes—”

“Lock, I hear ya, man, but…we’d still be really pushing it.”

“I’ll pay you well. Double what you would normally make. Triple. I don’t even
care. Name your price. You guys could all retire for the rest of your lives.”

“We might not come back to have the rest of our lives, Lock. You do understand
that, right? There’s no guarantee we get her out of there, even if we do this.”

“I do understand that, Ray. I do. But…I gotta get her out of there.”

Lock could hear something that sounded like paper crumpling on the other end.
It was probably Ray sighing. He couldn’t tell if the former soldier was considering
the matter or just exasperated. “Man, they’ve even identified possible landing
sites.”

Lock nearly stood up with excitement. “So…you’ll do it?”

“Huh? No, no…sorry. I just meant…Lock, I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t. I would if
I could. Hell, I could probably get the guys to do it for free. Well, I mean, we’d
need the money for the plane and stuff…but that isn’t the thing. It’s not the money.
It’s manpower. I don’t care if some pencil neck thinks you can do that with six
men. You’d have to secure that whole fucking building. We’d have to secure our
retreat. I’d want…maybe twelve. Minimum.”

Lock closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “Fuck,” he said, his voice
thick with emotion.

“Besides, Lock, you know how long it would take to set this up? We’d have to get
the plane, the jeeps, we’d need…”

Ray’s voice drifted into the background as the phone slid away from Lock’s ear.
He finally pulled it away and stared at it for a moment before hanging up and dropping
the phone on the desk. He put his head down, as though he was going to take a nap.

The phone buzzed and Lock lethargically reached out to pick it up. It was Kafka.
He brought the phone to his ear. “Hey,” he said.

“Ray just called me. Told me what happened.”

“Yeah.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“And the spy lady can’t help you?”

“They say maybe they can do something, but it’ll take a while.”

“Man.”

“What the fuck have I done, Kafka?”

“Well, you got two options.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m just going through the decision tree. Either you rescue her, or you make
a trade.”

Lock sat up. “A trade?”

“Rescue-wise, you’re down to cooperating with the CIA and then hoping they can
get her out. Ray’s out of the picture.”

Lock winced. Ray had been the ace up his sleeve, almost since Sophie had first
been taken. And now, just like that, it had been played.

“Even if the CIA does something, that could take who knows how long,” Kafka went
on.

“You’re not helping.”

“That leaves option two. You make a trade.”

“I don’t have anything to trade.”

“Maybe you gotta take something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, man. Again, I’m just following the decision tree here. They have
something you want. Namely, Sophie, of course. There’s only two ways to get her.
Either force or leverage. Force, at this point, pretty much means the CIA. Leverage
means…well, you gotta somehow create it.”

“I gotta take something.”

“Yeah. Something they value as much as you value Sophie.”

“I mean…there’s the quantum computer.”

“Okay. That’s what I’m talking about.”

“But they’ll just kill her. Or worse.”

“Well, then. Take something bigger. What do they value?”

“Money?”

“Makes sense to me.”

“I just steal money from them? That’s your idea?”

“Like I said, Lock, I’m just following the fucking decision tree. This whole operation
is about money, right?”

“Whatever I do, they’ll just hurt Sophie.”

“Not if you can hurt them worse.”

“How would I do that?”

“Jesus, Lock, you’re like the world’s most badass hacker. You built a Wave Nine
clone. So hack these motherfuckers into oblivion.”

“You sound like one of these idiots on the fucking news. Like hacking is some
sort of magical spell I cast on people. I don’t even know who the fuck I really
work for.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “I’m sorry, man,” said
Kafka. “That’s all I got.”

The White House, Washington DC
Wednesday, May 9th
7:00 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

“What are we hearing out of Singapore?” asked Ryan. He was in yet another meeting
room in the White House. The usual suspects were there, the suave white-haired
Weintraub and the annoyingly smug Moya. They were joined by the angular, beak-nosed
FBI chief, Clinton Honour, and his confused and disheveled-looking CIA counterpart,
Reynold Brackenridge.

“My station chief in Singapore is telling me we’re working on the hacker,” said
Brackenridge. “But we don’t have confirmation of anything yet.”

Ryan guessed that Brackenridge wasn’t going to last long as Director. He didn’t
have the right look. His glasses were too small for his face. His forehead seemed
gigantic. And he never seemed to make direct eye contact. How in the world had
he made it this far? It was as though some backroom analyst had been accidentally
promoted.

“That’s pretty much what you’ve been telling us for two days now,” said Moya icily.

“Well, we’re making progress. We’ve engaged him as a source. He’s still engaged.
That’s a very good sign. He hasn’t disengaged. That may not sound like
much—”

“You’re right, it doesn’t,” said Moya.

“Do we have any reason to think this is even the right guy?” asked Ryan. “I mean,
I know he’s our strongest suspect at this point.” Ryan glanced down at the thick
file in front of him, which had descriptions of the various efforts underway to
find the greenmailer. “But what do we really have? Some guy who hacked into a university
and changed his grades? Who happens to be in cahoots with some gangster in Singapore?
I mean, basically, that’s what we’ve got, right?”

“Which is why we’re engaging Cairnes,” explained Brackenridge as Moya twisted
his mouth into a curlicue. “To get confirmation. And, ideally, some concrete evidence
so that we can put an operational plan into action…with confidence.”

“In the meantime,” Ryan reminded everyone, “we’re giving the greenmailer information
that could be worth billions. On a daily basis. I’m talking about things known
only to maybe a dozen people in the whole world. Interest rate changes. Current
accounts deficits. Ratings agency announcements. He’s getting this stuff sometimes
before presidents and prime ministers. I’ve got the president of the Bundesbank
trying to convince everyone to shut down Wall Street. I can’t emphasize to you
gentleman how bad this really is. The amount of money this guy could potentially
be accumulating—I mean, at this rate, he could buy Google. Or Apple. Or maybe a
small country. When we talk about the money, sometimes it’s abstract. But what
we’re really talking about is power. This guy is accumulating real, actionable,
dangerous power. Not to mention the risk he poses to our economic institutions.”

“And there’s no way we can do some kind of forensics on the trades he might be
making?” asked Brackenridge.

“No. As I explained—we went over this the other day with Clint, but Brack wasn’t
here, so I’ll just say this again briefly—he’s very likely using the foreign exchange
market. These are private, virtually unregulated contracts—in a market doing trillions
of dollars’ worth of trades every day. We’ve worked with the FBI and SEC, and the
other members of the G8 have done similar things, to set up alerts for obvious
red flags. But I think we have to assume that this guy is sophisticated enough
not to make any of these kinds of mistakes. The very fact that he’s operating in
the foreign exchange market, that the whole stock market thing was just the setup,
suggests he’s not going to make a stupid mistake and red flag himself.”

“So it looks like it comes down to your Singapore operation,” concluded Moya.
“And our grade-changing dope dealer from Detroit.”

27

Singapore Financial District • The (New) Lab
Thursday, May 10th
9:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock was wide awake before his alarm even went off. He got up, showered, got dressed,
and was in the lobby by eight thirty, before either Raj or Sanjay. By eight forty-five,
the trio were in a cab, heading to the office. By nine o’clock, when Anand arrived,
they were seated in front of their desks. Anand glared at Lock for a moment and
then instructed them to harvest more brokerage accounts.

“All I need to do is to set up the traffic filters,” announced Lock after Anand
left. “The old ones were routing the traffic to the original lab. But once that’s
in place, we can just let it run for a while. So, you know, queue up a movie, Sanjay.”

“Will do,” confirmed Sanjay.

“Such a beautiful machine,” said Raj, staring wistfully at the aluminum box in
the corner. “And this is what we use it for?”

Lock put his finger to his lips, reminding Raj that the room was probably bugged.
He leaned forward. “What else are we supposed to do?” he whispered, genuinely hoping
that Raj had a suggestion.

But Raj merely shrugged, looking forlorn.

“What’s going on, guys?” asked Sanjay, wheeling his chair over.

“Do you know what that machine can do?” Raj asked him.

“Harvest brokerage accounts.”

“Yes. But it can do so much more than that. Imagine being able to predict the
weather, to predict floods or hurricanes. Or earthquakes. Imagine being able to
unravel the human genome and cure incurable diseases.”

“And there’s the whole machine learning aspect,” added Lock. “Being able to process
huge volumes of data quickly, and find the patterns. For things like speech recognition
and machine vision.”

“Wow,” said Sanjay. “That’s when the robots will take over.”

“Like in Terminator,” agreed Raj.

Lock felt the impulse to laugh, but it died in his throat.

Naubatpur (Bihar, India) • Rathod Apartment Building
Thursday, May 10th
9:00 a.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Sophie was having another nightmare. She had been kidnapped by some strange men
who spoke a strange language. She was their prisoner. They kept her in a small
room with no light. They gave her a little blue pill that made her tired and fed
her gruel and water every day to keep her alive. She had a small cot to sleep on
with a few old, worn blankets. Sometimes they grabbed her and touched her and cursed
her.

One day, one of the men removed her clothes in the darkness while she slept and
climbed on top of her. He pressed his body against hers and moaned like an animal.
She wanted to awaken from the nightmare to stop it, but she could not. He forced
her legs apart and she tried to scream, but her throat was so dry she could barely
even whisper. She felt him enter her, and she tried to wake up again and again,
but she could not.

When he was finished, she lay there in the darkness. The man covered her with
a blanket. She tried again to wake up, but she could not.

In the morning, she drank only enough water to swallow the blue pill. She did
not eat. She lay down and waited for the blue pill to take effect, waited to wake
up from the nightmare.

M Hotel, Singapore
Thursday, May 10th
2:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Anand appeared at the hotel entrance and nodded. Another of his men opened the
door, and Vipul hopped out of the back seat of the SUV. He walked toward Anand
and entered the hotel, ignoring the bellhops asking him if he had any bags. With
Anand leading the way, he took the stairs to the mezzanine and walked down a long
hallway until he reached the conference room. A square-shouldered man in a jacket
was posted outside the room; Anand took a post on the opposite side of the entrance.
Vipul walked into the room.

Li Mun sat alone at a large table. Vipul took the chair next to him.

“I’ve received an interesting offer,” began Li Mun in his inimitable, direct yet
lugubrious fashion.

“Offer for what?”

“To kill you.”

“Oh, is that all?” Vipul didn’t have to feign his lack of surprise. Just arranging
this meeting with Li Mun had been fraught with security considerations. All of
which centered around the idea that Li Mun might try to kill him. Which was especially
plausible to Vipul, since he had effectively paid Li Mun to kill his own brother.

“The offer was quite generous. In fact, so much so that I’d be a fool not to accept
it.”

“Why tell me about it, then?” Vipul thought back to the last time they’d met,
at Li Mun’s house. Now that he was the head of the family, things were more complicated.

“It was a little too generous. From an outsider. Sent me a mere woman to make
the offer.”

“Ah.” Vipul knew enough about organized crime as a business to know that you could
only do business with people you knew and trusted. And who shared your values.
That was really the whole point of sticking with family in the first place.

“You’re the devil I know, Vipul. Except…”

“Yes?”

“You’re not. Your father, yes. Your brother, maybe. You…maybe not.”

“I am not so different from my father.”

“Perhaps. But no one ever offered us a small fortune to kill your father and cripple
the Rathod family. Even the price you paid us to kill your brother doesn’t compare.”

Vipul realized through his smile that the G8, or one of its various chapters of
secret police, must have discovered his identity somehow. He pushed the thought
out of his mind. What had Yuan told him? Something about empty minds having no
secrets. He said nothing. Li Mun said nothing. Vipul was beginning to wonder if
they might sit there all day like that.

At last, Li Mun spoke. “Unknowns put my business at risk. And I’m not sure which
is the greater unknown. You or whoever wants you dead.”

“Ah, Li Mun. Perhaps it was only me, taking your measure.”

Li Mun smiled. It was a slow-breaking smile. Vipul marveled at his self-control.
Reading him was like trying to read the sunset for clues about what tomorrow would
bring.

Vipul tried to consider the matter from Li Mun’s perspective. Li Mun knew that
someone was willing to pay him a great deal of money to get rid of Vipul. Which
could only mean that Vipul was costing them even more money. Which quite possibly
meant that Vipul was taking it. Which meant, finally, that Li Mun might
be better off as Vipul’s partner rather than his executioner. That would be far
less hassle than killing Vipul and leaving the Rathod family without a leader.
Eventually, Li Mun would benefit from the disintegration of the family into two
or three small organizations, but in the short term, it would just disrupt business.

Vipul had considered bringing Li Mun on as a partner from the start but had decided
against it. There was nothing Li Mun could bring to the partnership that would
be worth what he’d earn from it. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t use Li Mun’s curiosity against
him.

“Why don’t I bring you in as a partner?”

“A partner.”

“Obviously you have guessed by now that what I’m doing is very lucrative. That’s
why we’re talking right now, why you came to me. Meanwhile, I am clearly making
some formidable enemies. Under such circumstances, I could do worse than have you
as a friend.” Vipul decided to really lay it on, a risk given Li Mun’s perceptiveness,
not to mention that Vipul was making things up as he went along. But the worst
that could happen was that they ended up at war, which was going to happen anyway,
one way or another. It was just a question of whether his men would have the element
of surprise.

He began his pitch. “And, if I may, Li Mun…I admire you. I have much to learn
from you. I see in you what, perhaps, my brother was blind to. You are much like
my father in some ways. Only he was taken from me before I had a chance—”

“Enough,” commanded Li Mun. For a moment, Vipul thought Li Mun had already figured
him out. “What kind of partnership? In what business?”

Vipul was almost disappointed. “Please, Li Mun. Let me finish. This is about more
than business. This is about the future. This is about bringing investment savvy
to your business.”

“Investment savvy.”

“Yes. This, my brother could never understand. But I suspect that you can, Li
Mun. The world is changing. Families like ours are becoming vulnerable. We are
too local. Our power depends too much on guns and costly manpower. You and I are
alike in this way. Your family came here from China, mine from India. We are in
a unique position to understand—power depends on projection. We came here with
muscle, and that was how it used to be. If you had muscle, you could do whatever
you wanted. But now? Are we not forced to hide in the shadows? Singapore is a wealthy
place, and yet we exist off the table scraps of the truly rich and powerful. We
get them their girls and their drugs and give them places to indulge their vices.
We are like their valets, the eager bellhops at the hotel. We don’t have real money,
Li Mun. We don’t build skyscrapers, and we can’t even buy the police or politicians
any more.

“Let me give you an example of how we can change this. Over the past few months,
I have been buying up drilling and mining companies all over India. I have used
every last cent of my family’s capital to do so. In fact, I’ve even borrowed large
sums of money. Why? So that I can raise the prices of such operations ever so modestly.
This upsets the men who run the Indian Oil Company…”

Vipul rambled on for a while, inventing an entire business plan off the top of
his head as though he was writing a term paper at Harvard the morning before it
was due. He concluded with a suggestion that the Li Triad and the Rathods might
best cement their nascent alliance by Vipul proposing marriage to Li Mun’s beautiful
daughter.

Later, as he looked out the window of his SUV, watching the greenery of a local
park rush past, he found himself saddened. Li Mun was not the worthy opponent he’d
imagined. He was just another old fool. Vipul was quite certain that he’d left
him at the hotel utterly confused and quite possibly seriously considering a previously
unthinkable alliance with the Rathod family, with his own daughter serving as collateral.
He would never see the attack coming. It was almost too bad; Li Mun’s daughter
was a worthy prize. Maybe after he killed Li Mun, he’d take her as a mistress.

Nariman Point, Mumbai • Kapoor Financial Planning Ltd

Thursday, May 10th

6:00 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Swaran opened a new bottle of scotch and poured a glass for him and his junior
partner. Brij was still wearing shirts that were too big for him. Swaran glanced
down at his own belly, where one of the buttons of his striped brown shirt held
on for dear life. And I’m still wearing shirts that are too small for me, he
thought.

“I have to hand it to that little devil,” Swaran began, sauntering over to his
desk. “Today I calculated that our contract for Turkish lira is now worth over
a hundred million dollars. Can you believe that? Little, old Swaran Kapoor. Playing
with the big dogs.”

“Congratulations, boss,” offered Brij, raising his glass.

Swaran waved his hand. “It’s still all on paper. That said, I’m now sitting
on similar contracts for yen and rands. The rand contract is a bit trickier—it
converts into euros, for some reason. But once those convert, we should
clear half a billion. You know you’ve arrived, Brij, when you have to start talking
in terms of billions. Well, billions of dollars, I mean.”

“And your share is ten percent.”

“Yes. So I’ll be at a cool fifty million dollars. So, I suppose, in rupees, I’m
already a billionaire…”

“Impressive, boss. When do I get my raise?”

Swaran took a breath. “Well, I mean, as I said, all this is still on paper, which
means—”

“I’m kidding, boss, I’m kidding.”

“Oh.” Swaran laughed nervously.

“Sort of.”

“Yes, well. We shall see. For now, drink up! To Vipul Rathod, who apparently knew
what he was about, after all!”

“To Vipul Rathod!” cheered Brij.

Southbank, Singapore • Vipul's Apartment
Thursday, May 10th
9:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Vipul emerged from his quarters wearing a gold-colored linen jacket with brass
buttons and sat down on his couch, smiling broadly. Anand, wearing a black suit
with a white button-down shirt, the top button undone, was already seated in a
large easy chair across from him, looking uncomfortable.

“I’ve never had you over,” remarked Vipul.

“No,” agreed Anand.

“Well, tonight is a special occasion.” Vipul put his glass out, and his elderly
butler, Sunil, seemed to materialize from the shadows of the kitchen to refill
it. “Please pour Anand a glass as well,” Vipul instructed.

Anand raised a hand. “I still have to drive home.”

“A glass won’t hurt you.”

Anand frowned but dropped his objection.

“Everything is coming together exactly as planned. The information we’re getting
from the Fed is proving to be very accurate. We’re now sitting on the better part
of a trillion dollars in foreign exchange contracts. And we’re on the right side
of all of them.”

Anand arched his eyebrows. “A trillion dollars?”

“Why do you think I insisted you have a drink? We’ve worked hard for this day,
Anand.”

“Indeed,” agreed Anand, turning slightly to accept the proffered glass from Sunil.

Vipul leaned forward on the couch, his eyes gleaming. “Do you realize what we
can do with that kind of money?”

A wistful smile formed at the corners of Anand’s mouth. “It’s beyond imagining.”

“We can change the world, Anand. The family business can go legitimate. We can
invest, through our partnerships, in India’s largest firms. We can influence their
direction and thus India’s policy decisions. We can help elect Parliament and prime
ministers. We can help lead India into the twenty-first century.”

“That would be something,” allowed Anand, taking a sip of his scotch.

Vipul knew it was about as much of celebration as he’d see from Anand. Anand was
useful exactly for the same reasons that he couldn’t really comprehend what Vipul
was doing. Saving the world was not something Anand thought about.

But he was loyal and he was here. Vipul raised his glass. Anand responded in kind.
“To you, my friend. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“To buying more expensive politicians,” toasted Anand.

Vipul laughed. Both drank.

“And so we begin Phase 4,” continued Vipul, leaning back on the couch.

“Phase 4?” asked Anand.

“Yes. I just made it up.”

“Oh.” Anand eased back into his chair a bit and crossed his legs.

“Phase 4 is…we go to war against the Li Triad.”

Anand coughed and sat up. “I’m sorry?”

Vipul chuckled. “Well, it’s perfect, isn’t it? Rather than deal with a petty civil
war and the possibility that my own men decide to take me out—”

“I really don’t think—”

“Let me finish. I’m not trying to be dramatic. I just mean, I’ve sort of lost
the men. You were the one that told me that.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to get the captains together. I’m going to get everyone back on track.
Tonight. I’m going to announce that we’re going to war to avenge my brother.”

“You want to—”

“Please, Anand. Let me finish. We’re going to take out Li Mun himself.” Vipul
relished the fact that Anand had visibly tensed. “We’re going to assassinate him.
He thinks I’m taking him on as a partner. He’ll have no idea it’s coming.”

Anand’s eyes wandered for a moment before refocusing on Vipul’s. “You want to
gather the captains tonight?”

“Yes. I want to strike tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow? That’s too soon. We need time to plan everything.”

“Attack where your enemy is unprepared…appear where you are not expected,” replied
Vipul. When Anand said nothing, he smiled. “Sun Tzu,” he explained. “Right now,
Li Mun is confused. If we attack quickly, we will surprise him. If we give him
time to think, he will become wary. I would rather attack haphazardly with the
advantage of surprise, than prudently without it.”

Anand’s jaw clenched, and he shifted in his chair. “We need a day, at least.”

Vipul frowned. “A day. No more.”

“Thank you,” said Anand stiffly.

“Relax,” admonished Vipul. “Finish your scotch. Celebrate with me.”

Anand stared forlornly into his glass. “Where do you want to have this meeting?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking one of the warehouses. We must be certain no one
sees us coming and going.”

“Out there? They’re going to think you want to kill them. They may not even come.”

Vipul spread his arms out, resting them on the back of the couch. “So reassure
them.”

Anand grunted.

“Seriously, Anand. Tell them I’m not angry. Tell them they are among friends.” That will probably scare them more than a threat, mused
Vipul.

“You’ll need to search them,” warned Anand.

“No one will make a move, my friend.”

“Probably not. But you have to be sure.”

“Do I? Everything will be fine.”

Anand took a quick slug from his drink and stood up.

“You’ll need more protection. After we hit Li Mun, I mean.”

“Of course. We’ll talk more about that after.” Vipul took a sip, staring past
Anand. “It’s not just the Triad we have to worry about.”

“Wonderful.” Anand sat back down.

“I think somehow the Feds know who I am.”

“What makes you say that?”

“They knew enough to try and pay Li Mun to kill me.”

Vipul watched as Anand proecessed that revelation. “How do you know it’s the Feds?”
Anand asked, after a moment.

“Well, actually, it’s probably the CIA or MI6, or someone like that. Anyway, I
can’t think of anyone else with both the means and motivation to pay Li Mun an
amount he’d consider interesting. Besides, it sort of doesn’t matter who it is.
The point is, I’m going to need a lot more protection.”

“How did they find out?”

“I don’t know.”

“We have a leak.”

“Not necessarily,” reasoned Vipul. “We may have overlooked something. Given them
a trail. Remember, someone had already put a tail on Detroit back in America.”

“Speaking of which, Manesh and Ravi arrived yesterday. Kirin’s men. To keep an
eye on Detroit. I was going to send Manesh to the hotel this evening. Under the
circumstances, perhaps I should reassign them as part of your detail.”

“Fine,” agreed Vipul, waving his hand dismissively.

“But what if Detroit is the leak?” insisted Anand.

“Unlikely,” countered Vipul.

“Why is that unlikely?”

“Because he knows we’ll kill his daughter if he talks. Besides which, do we really
need muscle like Manny just to keep an eye on him?”

“I’ll have Sanjay room with him instead,” suggested Anand.

“Perfect.” Vipul looked past Anand, trying to get Sunil’s attention. His glass
was empty.

“You’re certain you want to hit Li Mun at the very moment you’re being targeted
by the CIA, possibly as the result of an internal leak?”

Vipul refocused on Anand. “You don’t see the genius of it?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” confessed Anand.

Vipul shifted in his chair. “To begin with, I eliminate one threat in Li Mun.”

“But…didn’t you say, he thinks you’re taking him on as a partner?”

“Yes, but he’ll eventually see the ruse. He knows there’s a lot of money being
made and that he’s not the one making it.”

“But…how does he know there’s a lot of money being made?”

Vipul exchanged his empty glass for a fresh one from Sunil. “Because someone is
offering him a lot of money to kill me.”

Anand nodded slowly.

“In the process, by rallying the men to avenge my brother, I turn a weakness—morale—into
a strength.”

“Okay.”

“Which is important, because—as I’ve said, and I’m sure you’ll agree with this—I’m
going to need a lot more protection. And the family are the only ones I can really
trust to provide it.”

Anand nodded again.

Vipul continued. “And because soon we will no longer be in the business of organized
crime.”

“We won’t?”

“No. Remember?” Vipul smiled and took a swig. “We’re upgrading to more expensive
politicians.”

Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore
Thursday, May 10th
9:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya sat down on the bar stool next to Lock. “Hi,” she said softly, eyeing his
scotch glass.

“Hi,” said Lock breathily, blinking slowly.

Katya waved her hand in front of her face. “My gosh, you smell like a distillery.” Not surprising, she
thought. She’d been watching the bar from her apartment. Since she’d given him
the phone, she figured he’d call if he wanted to talk. But he’d been sitting here
for hours.

“Sorry. Buyyadrink?”

“No. No thank you.” Katya’s brow furrowed. “How goes the rescue mission?”

“Whuhthefuggyoucare?”

“Was Ray able to use all the intel I gave you?”

“Fuggray.”

“I guess that’s a no?”

Lock grunted and emptied his glass, tilting precariously on his bar stool. He
slammed the glass down on the counter when he finished. “’Nother,” he called to
the bartender.

“Steve,” Katya countered, “maybe you should cut him off?” The bartender, a fleshy-faced
man with large pores and an easy manner, nodded conspiratorially. Katya had made
a point of being on a first-name basis with half the employees at the hotel since
the day she’d discovered Lock was staying there.

“Let’s get you up to your room, okay?” Katya stood up, laced her arm around him,
and began guiding him toward the elevators.

“Notdonedringing,” complained Lock.

“We can order a bottle for your room, if you like.”

“Imaddictedtothatgoodshtuffnow.”

“That’s good.”

“Nomorejackfurme.”

“That’s nice.” She reached out and pressed the button for the elevators.

“Ifuckedup,” said Lock, as a chime signalled the elevator’s arrival. They got
in and Katya pressed the button for Lock’s floor. “Ifuckedupsobad,” repeated Lock.

“Yes, I suppose you did,” said Katya. She listened to Lock’s abbreviated, drunken
gasps and moans, in stark contrast to the efficient whir of the elevator. She heard
another chime, indicating that they’d reached their floor. The doors opened and
Katya dragged Lock down the hallway.

“Ifuckedup,” he repeated. “Ifuckedup.”

“Give me your keycard,” directed Katya.

Lock untangled himself from her and leaned on the wall with one hand while he
fished out the keycard with the other. “Here,” he said.

Katya opened the door and led Lock to his bed. She marveled at how messy he’d
managed to make his room in just a few days. He careened over and fell facedown
on the mattress, his face pressed against the rumpled bedclothes. She placed her
hands on her hips and regarded him critically.

He mumbled something. She leaned closer. “What?”

“Gottatakesomethingfromhim,” he said.

“Take something?”

“Somethinghevaluesh.”

“You have to take something who values?”

“Whushizname? Viwhateverthefugg.”

“Ah.” Katya put a finger to her lips. Mindful of the possibility of bugs in the
room, she turned her head and raised her voice. “No, I don’t think you’re getting
lucky tonight.”

“Youhelpmeallhelpyou,” whispered Lock.

“Okay,” she whispered back. She wondered how much of this he’d remember in the
morning. “I’m sure you will.”

He forced himself up on his elbows. “Ahmsherious. Deadlysherious.”

“I’m sure you are. Lie down and go to sleep.”

“Katcha,” he said slowly. “Katcha. Themoney. Thatzwhathevalues.”

“Okay. Go to sleep, Lock.”

“Help me…take the…money…”

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she whispered, arranging a pillow under his head. His eyes
closed and began to snore lightly.

She brushed his hair from his face and frowned. The bad guys were winning. The
markets had crashed. Lock’s daughter was still in Bihar. Katya had learned virtually
nothing about Vipul’s operation. All she’d really accomplished was to offer an
outrageous bribe to Li Mun. The biggest opportunity of her career was rapidly turning
into her most spectacular failure.

She turned off the lights and quietly left the room. Her job was to turn Lock,
not to save his daughter. And, failing that, to terminate—no, kill was the
right word—the criminals—because they were criminals, no matter how much one of
them might drink to forget that fact—behind an act of financial terrorism that
was threatening the foundations of the global economy.

It was an important job, even a noble one.

There were a million tragedies in the world. She couldn’t prevent them all.

Just this one.

Naubatpur (Bihar, India) • Rathod Apartment Building
Thursday, May 10th
9:00 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Sophie let her mind drift as the man yelled at her. She had decided to leave this
place, to leave these bastards with nothing but an emaciated husk.

She felt his hands grab a handful of her hair and pull her forward. She staggered,
letting the bloody sheet fall away from her body. Even the pain from her groin
and ankle was muted by the silence in her mind. She saw the man pointing at the
plate of gruel on the table. She sat down obediently and took a sip of water. She
exhaled until her lungs were empty, letting go of her need to keep drinking. She
took the blue pill and placed it on a leathery tongue that felt like it belonged
to someone else. She took a second sip of water, savoring it.

That would be enough to ease her suffering a little. After all, she wasn’t suffering
for the mere sake of it. She was living her life as fully as she knew how. They
could board up the windows and lock the doors and watch her night and day. And
still, she would escape.

When the man had resumed his seat in the easy chair, she picked up the bowl of
gruel. It was heavy in her hands, and she swooned from the effort. She took a deep
breath, gathering her strength. She felt the coolness of the clay vessel in her
hand.

And then she threw the bowl with all her might against the wall.

It shattered and shards of clay clattered to the floor as the gruel ran slowly
down the wall. The man was up in a second and struck her across the face with the
back of his hand, sending her tumbling like so many rags to the floor. She tasted
blood in her mouth, and saw drops of it fall to the floor. She looked up at the
man and saw his chest heaving with his rage. He looked at the gruel on the wall
and then back at her. She brushed the hair from her face. She understood that the
man was only angry because he was afraid. He was scared and lonely, just like her.

She sat there on the floor, staring at him. Finally, he left the room, and after
a while, Sophie climbed back up and lay down. Her eyes closed, and she awoke from
her nightmare once again. She was at the beach, as she had always been. Her friend
Krista was laughing with her as the surf washed over them and nearly knocked them
down. She turned toward the shore and saw Dennis and her mother lying on their
beach towels, watching them. Her mother smiled and waved and she waved back. Farther
down the beach, she saw her father. He was standing, fully dressed, by himself.
He wasn’t smiling or waving. She felt a vague sense of disapproval. She tried to
remember what she’d done wrong.

Part 5
When You Forgot

28

CBI Headquarters, New Delhi
Thursday, May 10th
4:00 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Director Salman Wazir of the Central Bureau of Investigation stroked the hairs
of his great beard, which elegantly blended white, gray, and black strands into
a single mass. He rose slowly from behind his trusty, old wooden desk. He hated
the black plastic of the keyboard and monitor—these new things lacked the refined
power of the old things. But one couldn’t do without email these days.

He left his small office and walked down a poorly lit hallway. He stopped in front
of one of the doors and knocked. He heard a muffled voice, presumably telling him
to come in.

There were three desks crowded into the office, which smaller than his own, along
with a printer, a large wall-to-wall bookcase full of waterlogged procedural manuals
that were rarely opened, and in the middle of the floor (because there was no place
else to put it), a wastebasket. In one stride, he had reached the desk of Constable
Dinsha Kumar. Dinsha’s forelocks barely avoided his graying eyebrows, and the pleated
skin underneath his watery eyes suggested a life filled with great sadness, even
as the brown eyes themselves seemed to sparkle with merriment. His smile-worn face
was covered in ambitious whiskers. He wore a white cotton kurta, which suggested
a certain casual disregard for rules and regulations.

It was precisely this quality that brought Salman to his desk. “Please, Dinsha,
I have a matter of some urgency to discuss. Will you return with me to my office?”

Wordlessly, Dinsha stood and made his way out from behind his desk, demonstrating
a surprising agility as he did so, and the pair made their way back down the dingy
hall and into Salman’s office.

After they were seated and Salman had stroked his beard three times, he spoke.
“My friend, a few days ago a visiting American, came upon a young American girl
who claimed to have been kidnapped. He reported this to the United States consulate
in Kolkota. In turn, they reported it, dutifully, to their State Department. Of
course, such a thing is usually forwarded to local police. But for reasons unknown
to me, our ambassador to the United States was asked to look into it. Eventually,
this request came to me, and I would like you to go investigate the matter.”

“I see.”

“I think you should take Rao. He could learn a great deal watching you.”

“Rao is difficult and does not want to learn.”

“And you could learn a great deal from him.”

“Oh? And what would that be?”

“How to inspire his curiosity. These young men today are a different breed. But
they are all we have, Dinsha.”

“And thus I have long since abandoned hope, Salman. But I will take Rao, and we
will fly out to—was the girl actually in Kolkota.”

“No. Patna.”

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

“Well, well. In any case, we will fly out on the first available flight. And we
will find this girl if she is there to be found.”

Chinese Garden, Singapore
Friday, May 11th
5:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

“It’s been nearly a week, Katya,” said Quartan. “I told you we’d have to turn
him quickly.”

“I’m very close. I think.” It was already warm. It would be hot today.

“I’ve been given the green light, you know.”

Her face pinched into a half wince. “I see.”

“Give me the argument for waiting.”

“Well…I already have Li Mun ready to go on Vipul.”

“Like I said, I’ve got the green light.”

“Then I need the cash.”

“Working on it.”

“Also, I don’t think Lock is in the driver’s seat anyway. Taking him out won’t
stop Rathod, and we lose our only source.”

They stood in the silence, looking at a blue sky reflected on the lake. “Katya,
please answer me honestly.” Quartan stood up and faced her in his cream-colored
guayabera shirt.

“What?” asked Katya, her glance traveling sideways.

“Are you getting too close to this guy?”

Katya turned to face him, her head tilting back slightly. “Why would you ask me
that?”

Quartan said nothing.

“The answer is no,” said Katya. “I’m just not a big advocate of having him killed.”

“Fair enough. Just…be careful.” Quartan went back to leaning against the bridge.

“What about his daughter? Any word on that?”

“No, not really. It’s with State.”

“Oh. I thought you were going to argue against that.”

“I did. But I lost. It’s a hard argument to win. For something like that, for
a friendly.”

“So this could take weeks.”

“Probably.”

“You know, for a project that’s such a high priority…”

“Stopping the greenmailer is the high priority.”

“He’d turn like that if I could deliver his daughter,” Katya said, snapping
her fingers.

“Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d just disappear. We don’t really know.”

Katya groaned. “He would. I’m telling you. I haven’t been doing nothing, you know.”

“I know, Katya. And that’s what I told Brack. It’s just that there are a lot of
moving parts. It has nothing to do with the priority.”

Katya turned to her boss. “It’s just…if I’m too close to anything, it’s his daughter.
I think of her over there, you know. I saw the photos. I mean, she may not be alive
in a week.”

“You’ve got till Monday. We won’t have special ops ready until then anyway. Questions?”

“No, sir,” answered Katya, her voice catching in her throat. She felt foolish
for having shared her emotional connection to Lock’s daughter. She felt they were
missing something, something about the daughter, but Haruo wasn’t the type to engage
in a brainstorming session. Still, it was frustrating. Why wasn’t she allowed to
have hunches? She had ten years of experience now. Maybe not as much Haruo, but
it was something, wasn’t it?

As she walked away from the bridge, she tried to quiet her mind, to listen to
what her intuition was trying to tell her. But all she could hear was Haruo’s quietly
commanding monotone. You’ve got till Monday.

Singapore Financial District • The (New) Lab
Friday, May 11th
10:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

By now, they’d progressed to what Lock considered to be the secondary pantheon
of superheroes. Lock was at his laptop, typing discretely in the darkness, fighting
through waves of nausea by intermittently watching scenes of the film. Timing was
tricky because the action scenes sometimes made things worse.

When the lights suddenly came on, Lock thought he might throw up. He slid back
from his desk and placed his head in his hands.

Anand strode to the front of the room. Sanjay scrambled to stop the movie.

Anand glared at Lock. “Do you have the new brokerage accounts ready?” he asked.

Lock looked up. “Yes,” he said, although he wasn’t entirely certain they did.

Raj jumped in. “I checked them this morning. Everything looks in order.”

“Good. Detroit, come with me.”

Lock stood up slowly, squinting, and followed Anand to the desk in the lobby.

Anand turned to face him, his scowl more severe than usual. “Who have you been
talking to?”

“What?”

“Who have you been talking to?”

“No, I mean…I heard you. I just don’t…talking to about what?”

“You’re a pathetic drunk.”

“Yes. But I swear, I was here on time. Sanjay will—”

“I don’t care. I know you’ve been talking to someone. The CIA?”

Lock suddenly felt like a wildcat was trying to jump out of his chest. He hoped
his hangover masked his panic. “I don’t—what? The CIA?”

“What have you told them?”

“I haven’t said shit to anybody.” His hangover was dissipating rapidly. Adrenalin
was apparently unaffected by blood-alcohol levels.

“Your daughter will pay the price for your lack of loyalty.”

Lock swallowed hard. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be allowed to
happen. “What lack of loyalty? I told you, I haven’t said shit.”

Anand glared at him. Lock glared back. His whole body was sweating. Some instinct
emerged from the back of his mind to go on the offensive. “And by the way, at this
point, I don’t even know if my daughter’s alive. It’s been over a week since our
last video chat. I don’t want her thumbs cut off or anything, I just want to talk
to her and make sure she’s…well, alive would be a start.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” said Anand. “Sanjay!” he yelled, without taking his
eyes of Lock.

Lock turned away and closed his eyes, bracing himself.

Sanjay seemed to appear instantly alongside Lock. “Yes, sir.”

“You will accompany Detroit at all times from now on. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Detroit will stay in your room. Raj will take Detroit’s room.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If he gives you any trouble, Sanjay, I mean, if he is out of your sight
even for a second, you tell me immediately. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I find out later that Detroit has been running around causing trouble when
you were supposed to be watching him…”

“He will never leave my sight, Mr. Vaidyanathan.”

“In fact, I want you to bring him into the office during the weekend. Raj, you
too. All of you. Every day, you come in here just like on a business day.”

“Yes, sir.”

Anand returned his withering gaze to Lock. His lip curled with contempt. Lock
pursed his lips and raised his hands in a gesture of innocence.

After Anand left, the three returned to their seats. “At least we have plenty
of movies queued up,” said Raj darkly.

29

Naubatpur (Bihar, India) • Rathod Apartment Building
Friday, May 11th
9:00 a.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Sophie slipped back into her nightmare. Her throat felt raw but her mouth felt
less like sandpaper or leather and more like cotton. She was a little dizzy, but
otherwise relaxed and awake. She sat up slowly and felt something tug on her arm.
Looking at it, she saw a tube that appeared to be running down into her arm. She
followed the tube and discovered that it connected to a bag suspended from a metal
pole. She turned her arm so she could examine the underside of her elbow, where
the tube was attached to her via a butterfly catheter.

The man sitting in the easy chair was looking at his dirty magazines. He hadn’t
realized she was awake. She played with the catheter with trembling fingers until
she could figure out how to unhook it, pulled it from her arm, and let it fall
away. She watched it swinging like a pendulum from the IV bag. Tick, tock, she
thought. When it had stopped, she raised her eyes back to the ceiling where the
ceiling fan never stopped spinning.

They’d just reattach the IV when she was sleeping, she realized. She’d need a
better plan if she was ever going to leave this place. Or perhaps…she felt a yawning
hole opening up inside of her, right in the middle of her body, and she could feel
herself falling into it, plummeting yet sinking at the same time. Her body was
reminding her that it needed food. She, however, did not, and so she ignored it.
She had learned that the body was a greedy thing. Always complaining about something,
like a newborn. You just had to tune it out or you’d never get anywhere. She watched
the ceiling fan for a while. What had she been thinking about again?

Ah, yes. Perhaps she’d starve to death. It would take longer than dying of thirst.
But what did that matter? Could they feed her through a tube as well? She thought
about it for a long time and decided that they could. That would never do.

She was struck by the fact that she was forcing them to take care of her. She
wanted to laugh, but all she could muster was the trace of smile and a slight wheeze.
She began to find it very curious. From their perspective, they were trying to
keep her alive. It had nothing to do with escaping. Why did they want her alive
so badly?

She knew all at once: they were using her to control her father. They didn’t care
about keeping her alive, they cared only about controlling him. All the more reason
to pour herself from her current vessel, she thought. She would free not only herself,
but him as well!

Her thoughts returned to the IV. She could feel herself waking from the nightmare.
No, no, no, this time she didn’t want to wake up. She wanted to solve this problem,
the problem of…

She was at the beach again. She and Krista. They were laughing as a wave crashed
over them. Everything was so familiar. She looked farther down the beach. Her father
was still there, standing alone, wearing ratty jeans and that old white Detroit
Tigers T-shirt. She was always on him to buy new clothes, but he never did. There
was something she was supposed to do. She began wading toward him, trying to remember
what it was.

Naubatpur (Bihar, India)
Friday, May 11th
10:00 a.m. IST (India Standard Time)

“What a waste of time!” exclaimed Rao.

Dinsha regarded his charge with a raised eyebrow. Rao was tall and angular, with
high cheekbones and a jutting jaw, and he spoke in loud and hasty bursts, as though
he might be interrupted at any moment. He was at the wheel of their little rental,
a powder-blue Tata, as they wound their way under a threatening sky into the tiny
village that Salman had told Dinsha was the girl’s last known location.

“Some senator’s daughter backpacks into the wrong neighborhood, and we have to
drop everything—”

“Turn right here,” said Dinsha, pointing with one hand while bracing himself against
the dashboard with the other.

“If the local police are so corrupt, shouldn’t we be investigating that,
rather than falling even further behind thanks to some privileged hussy who lost
her cell phone?”

“Dog,” said Dinsha laconically. “Don’t hit the—”

“I saw it, don’t worry. Do you know, I’m twenty-seven? I don’t want to hit thirty
and still have no commendations to show for all my effort! Here we are, driving
into this godforsaken village, knowing full well these thugs will just send us
on our way because we have no warrant.”

“Park here,” said Dinsha.

“This is a fool’s errand and a total waste of time,” continued Rao, pulling off
the paved road and onto a gravel berm.

“I’m sure you’re right,” said Dinsha as he got out of the car and walked around
to the other side to meet Rao. “Now follow me and keep your mouth shut, or you
won’t make it to thirty, period.”

ψ

Abhishek Rathod, a distant cousin of the Big Man of the family in Singapore, stepped
out onto the porch of the apartment building where, for nearly two mind-numbing
weeks, he’d been stuck babysitting the brat upstairs. He was a lean man with an
air of dangerous agility, wearing a black T-shirt with blue jeans and black dress
shoes. He eyed the two men approaching the building with keen interest. It was
the most excitement he’d had since the stupid bitch had run away.

They were obviously cops. They had that disheveled, tired air. And the shitty
rental. They weren’t local, or he’d have been told they were coming and he’d probably
have recognized them. One looked like a tall, skinny girl and the other like he
didn’t care. He’d have to toy with them a bit to make it interesting. Or maybe
he’d just have them killed; that would make things interesting. He could
tell Pradeep that they had pulled their weapons or—

“Good day, young man. My name is Dinsha Kumar, Ministry of Law Enforcement. Are
you the manager of this apartment building?”

He hadn’t bothered to introduce his girlish companion, Abhishek thought bemusedly.
“I could be,” he replied.

“My superiors, in their infinite wisdom, have somehow come to believe that there
is a young American girl being held in this very building against her will.”

Abhishek laughed. He was disappointed, though. These kind of cops took all the
fun out of being a bad guy. They just didn’t care and would just as soon leave
you to your business, however illegal that might be. “You have a warrant?”

“No, no,” said Dinsha, wearily. “I was hoping not to have to bother with that.
I’d have to file all the paperwork. And say we were refused entry. Next thing you
know, my boss will really start to believe his own bullshit, and we’ll end up with
an entire unit out here. Bad enough that my young friend Rao had to call his mother
and tell her he’d be late for dinner.”

Abhishek glowered, playing along. “All right. Let’s get this over with, then.”

ψ

By the third apartment building, Abhishek was bored. This wasn’t going to be exciting
at all, he decided. The two cops were barely even making a show of it. They’d step
into a flat, walk through the living room and kitchen, peer up the stairs, and
then move on. The girly cop did seem to be getting hot and bothered about something,
and kept whispering to the other one. Maybe it was her period, he chuckled to himself.

Still, Abhishek found himself growing tense as they entered the fourth building.
As with the first three apartments, the two cops took a cursory look around. The
lazy cop surprised him by deciding to go upstairs. Of course, he would
pick this apartment to look upstairs. Abhishek turned to two men standing in the
front entrance—they’d been discretely shadowing his little tour—and nodded. They
both came inside and followed Abhishek up the stairs. By now, the pair of cops
were looking around the first bedroom. The girly cop opened the closet and Abhishek
found himself licking his lips with anticipation. This was going to get interesting
after all.

The cops made their way into the bathroom. The lazy cop turned and asked him why
the window was boarded up. Abhishek told him that the window had broken and with
the dust storms and all… He was a bit disappointed to discover that his mouth had
gone dry and his heart was racing. This was what happened when you sat around doing
nothing for two weeks, Abhishek chided himself. Even a couple of deadbeat cops
could give you scare.

They went into the second bedroom. Abhishek waited for the girly cop to go for
the closet. He stepped back and motioned the two men behind him forward. He started
thinking ahead to the next step—they’d need to relocate quickly and get rid of
the bodies. Abruptly, the lazy cop awkwardly circled around so that he was facing
the girly cop and announced they were done with that room. The girly cop began
to whine about the closet, but the lazy cop kept pushing him out of the room. As
he passed Abhishek, he gave him a knowing look.

Abhishek gnashed his teeth. The lazy cop knew. He’d known all along. Did he want
some kind of bribe, was that it? Maybe he should just kill them both anyway. They
barely glanced at the master bedroom and then made the same cursory show of it
in the last two apartments. Finally, the lazy cop sidled up to him and began talking
about how expensive things were these days and didn’t he agree. Abhishek did agree
and invited him back tomorrow so they could become better acquainted. The lazy
cop said he’d much rather come on personal business than police business, and Abhishek
laughed and embraced his new friend. As they left the apartment building, he turned
to the two men, who stood just behind him at the entrance, and shook his head.

And that was that. Just another cop with his hand out. They’d move the girl as
soon as they were gone, and then, when the cops came back tomorrow, Pradeep would
put them on the payroll. Not nearly as exciting as having to kill them, but then
one could only expect so much.

ψ

Back in the car, Rao was beside himself. “I’m going to report you, you know. I
know what happened back there. It’s no wonder—”

“Drive,” growled Dinsha. “Now.”

Rao was suddenly quiet.

“Turn here,” said Dinsha.

“The highway is back that way,” protested Rao. “I should—”

“We’re not going back to the highway.”

“We’re not?”

“No. Now pull in here…drive the car up behind this building…no, the next one…here
is good.” Dinsha reached back and grabbed a pair of field binoculars and got out
of the car. They walked past several children playing and Dinsha cursed quietly.
He led the way up a staircase to a row of second-floor motel-style apartments.
He went from one to the next, looking in the windows. “Here’s good,” he said and,
after trying the doorknob and finding it locked, stepped back and casually kicked
open the door. He waved Rao forward and followed him inside, closing the door behind
him.

The apartment was dark and empty. Dinsha walked quickly to the kitchen window
and squatted down beside it, bringing the binoculars to his face. “Perfect,” he
said.

“What are we doing?” asked Rao, the confidence gone from his voice.

“What does it look like we’re doing?”

“A stakeout?”

“Obviously. Get down.”

Rao squatted next to Dinsha, facing him on the opposite side of the window. He
said nothing for a while. “They were going to kill us, weren’t they?”

“Oh, yes.”

“The girl is there?”

“Oh, yes.”

“She was in that closet.”

“Yes.”

“The boarded windows.”

“Yes.”

“And the kitchen…it was messier than the others.”

“Very good.”

Rao paused. “What else? Did I miss anything?”

Dinsha spoke slowly in a low, rumbling voice, as though in a trance. “There was
no furniture in the other bedrooms, and the closet doors were not shut. In that
bedroom, the closet door was firmly shut, and there was a folded cot leaning up
against it. The cot was stained with blood. There were also bloodstains on the
floor opposite the closet. There was a table with a single chair. There was dried
food on the wall. There was a well-worn easy chair, possibly for a guard. In the
corner, there was a white dress. In the bathroom, in the bathtub, there was long
brown hair in the drain clog. In the trash, there was an empty box labeled ‘butterfly
catheters’ and an empty plastic bag. Finally, there were the two men who followed
us upstairs, each armed with a handgun.”

Rao eased himself to the ground and pushed himself back up against the wall. “I
didn’t see their guns,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Question,” he said
after a moment.

“Yes.”

“What do the catheters have to do with anything?”

“The girl is trying to starve herself,” explained Dinsha simply.

Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore
Friday, May 11th
6:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock and Sanjay watched as Katya took a seat at the far end of the bar. Lock casually
took a sip of scotch and stared ahead, pretending not to notice her.

“That chick is checking you out,” said Sanjay, staring at Katya.

Lock was relieved—for a moment, he’d thought Sanjay had recognized her somehow.
He glanced over at Katya, who was twirling the straw of her drink and smiling flirtatiously.
Lock turned to Sanjay. “You think so?” he asked, trying to sound incredulous.

“Yeah. You should go talk to her.”

“Maybe she was looking at you.”

“I don’t think so.”

Lock pretended to sneak a look. Katya smiled and tossed her hair back.

Sanjay’s eyes widened. “You see?”

Lock found that he was happy to see her, eager to be near her. He looked away
and took a deep breath. “Maybe you’re right,” he conceded, struggling to sound
indifferent.

“Just remember. If you do anything, I have to watch.”

“That’s weird.”

ψ

Lock sat down next to Katya. “Sanjay thinks you’re flirting with me.”

“I saw you had company. Figured maybe you needed an excuse to get away.”

“Good call.”

“About last night…”

Lock closed his eyes and groaned. He remembered Katya bringing him up to his room.
He’d been embarrassingly drunk. “I’m sorry.”

“You told me you were going to tell me everything.”

“Did I?”

“Yup.”

“Maybe you’re just saying that.”

“Nope.”

“The thing is…there’s been a development.”

“Oh?”

Lock glanced over at Sanjay. “You sure it’s safe to talk here?”

“Relatively sure.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“Well, you can never really be sure. Just lean in a bit so it looks like we’re
having an intimate conversation. Which we are, actually, so it’s not much of a
stretch.”

Lock leaned in slightly. He could feel the heat radiating from her body.

“Perfect.”

“They know something,” Lock said, his voice just above a whisper. “They were asking
me if I was talking to anybody. That’s why I have a chaperone now.”

“What did you say?”

Lock caught some delicious combinations of scents that he didn’t have words for.
It wasn’t exactly a perfume. Maybe it was her shampoo or soap? Whatever it was,
it was…distracting. “I said no. Obviously. But it has me worried.”

“Do you think they’ve made me?”

Lock forced himself to focus. “Made…what?”

“Identified. Do you think they’ve identified me? Do they know who I am?”

“Ah. No, I don’t think so. They didn’t seem to know specifically…they were just
asking a lot of questions.”

Katya was thoughtful. “What about your friend there? Is he going to tell on you?”

Lock resisted the urge to look over at Sanjay. “You mean that I met a girl at
the hotel bar?”

“Right.”

“I don’t think so. If push came to shove, though…”

They sat in silence for a while, Lock swirling his drink by moving his glass in
small circles in the air with his hand, Katya stirring her soda water with a straw. What am I doing? wondered
Lock.

“I’m going to laugh here in a second,” whispered Katya, forcing Lock to lean closer
to hear. “Like you said something funny. Your friend’s looking over here, and I
just don’t want it to look too serious.”

“Okay.”

Katya leaned back in her bar stool and laughed out loud.

Lock looked up and watched her laugh. He smiled in spite of himself. Their eyes
met as she leaned forward again. “You should have been an actress,” he said.

“I kinda am.”

“I see that.” Lock’s smile faded. “Any word? About a rescue mission?”

Katya’s smile faded too. “Not yet.”

Lock considered taking a swig of scotch, but put the glass down instead.

“Take the money,” he heard Katya say.

Lock looked at her. “What?”

“That’s what you were saying last night.”

“Oh. That.”

“Tell me.”

Lock scratched his head. She’s not really flirting with you, he reminded
himself. She’s not even your friend. She’s a CIA agent who is using you to get
information about Vipul. She hasn’t been able or willing to get a rescue mission
organized.

“Why haven’t you just arrested me?” he asked finally. “Why haven’t you just taken
me back to CIA Headquarters or Guantanamo Bay or wherever and tortured me until
I told you everything?”

Katya laughed musically. “I can’t really. You’d have to come voluntarily. Or I’d
have to arrange for the SPF to arrest you and then extradite you.”

“The SPF?”

“The Singapore police.”

“Oh.” Lock slowly pushed the glass of scotch away from him. He eyed Katya critically.
She had produced that sat phone with all the intel on it, he thought. Just
because he hadn’t been able to make use of it wasn’t her fault.

Steve the bartender came by to ask if something was wrong with his drink. Lock
asked for a club soda. As Steve worked, engaging both he and Katya in small talk,
Lock found himself quietly admiring Katya. He couldn’t remember ever meeting anyone
who seemed so genuinely happy. Steve handed Lock his club soda and refreshed
Katya’s before discretely withdrawing to the other end of the bar.

“So…take the money?” prompted Katya.

“Right.” Lock paused. “Before we get to that…what did you mean by greenmailing,
exactly?”

“What?”

“Greenmailing. When we first met, you used the word greenmailing. Something about
the world’s largest greenmailing campaign.”

Katya put her finger to her lips. She leaned forward, and Lock did the same. He
caught that crazy scent again. Katya began whispering. “Someone—we suspect Vipul,
obviously—threatened to crash the stock markets unless we met their demands. It’s
like blackmailing, only since it’s finance related, I guess it’s called greenmailing.”

Lock thought back to something Kirin had said, a lifetime ago. We’re going to put a nice little scare into some folks on Wall Street.

“What?” asked Katya.

Lock raised his head and looked at her. “What were his demands?”

Katya frowned. “I don’t know. It’s classified.”

Lock grunted and then began rubbing his chin. He looked at Katya intently. “Do
you have information about Vipul’s IPs? Home? Work? Anywhere?”

“IPs?”

“Internet addresses.”

“No. But we can probably get them.”

“What about street addresses?”

“Yeah. All that background info is on the phone I gave you.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. I think I put it in a folder named ‘Vipul.’ Why?”

Lock paused and ran his fingers through his hair. “Because I’m an idiot, that’s
why.”

“Don’t look now, but here comes your friend,” warned Katya.

“Ah.” Lock raised his voice without looking up. “Personally, I think it was Michael’s
sense of obligation to his family, to his father, mostly—”

“Hey, Lock,” said Sanjay.

“Oh hi, Sanjay,” said Lock, turning away from Katya. “We were just talking about The Godfather.
Which is in the queue for tomorrow, I think.”

“It’s getting late,” observed Sanjay. Lock could hear the apprehension in his
voice. “We should get some dinner and go back to the room.”

Lock forced a smile. “I’m gonna stay here.”

“Yes, okay, but…you know what Anand said,” protested Sanjay, lowering his voice.

Lock stood up and put his arm around Sanjay, guiding him away from Katya. “C’mon,
man. Give me a break here. She’s really into me.”

“I know. I am sorry. But what can I do?”

“I mean, look at her. Would you want to go back to our room and hang out with
me?”

“No. No offense.”

“None taken. Look, how is Anand ever going to know? It’s just between you and
me. I’ll come back to the room later.”

Sanjay stared at his shoes.

Lock pressed on. “I mean, fuck Anand, right?”

“Yeah, but…”

“They’ve got my daughter. And your family.”

Sanjay looked up and seemed to stare into the distance. Lock followed his gaze
into the vast marbled lobby. “Motherfuckers.”

“Exactly. So…fuck Anand.”

Sanjay smiled. “All right. Fuck Anand.”

Lock gave Sanjay a squeeze. “I owe you one, man.”

Sanjay laughed.

Lock watched as Sanjay headed toward the elevators. He came back to Katya, signaling
the bartender for his check.

“What’s going on?” asked Katya.

Lock turned and looked into Katya’s eyes, unsmiling. “We’re going back to your
place.”

“We are?”

“You have a laptop I can use, right?”

“Yes.”

He leaned in close to her again and noticed a small mole beneath her earlobe,
near the rise of her cheekbone. “I set up a backdoor to the lab back when I thought
I might to raise money to pay Ray and his team. So I can add some filters to the
monitoring based on your information on Vipul.”

“Great! I have no idea what that means. But you can tell me everything you know
about this whole business. Right?”

Lock signed the check, absently adding a hundred-dollar tip, charging it to his
room. He looked up at Katya and took a deep breath. “You help me, I’ll help you.”

ψ

In the cab on the way to Katya’s apartment, Lock began to explain. “Have you ever
heard of a company called Coherence Technologies?”

“No.”

“The Wave Nine?”

“No.”

“Quantum computing?”

Katya scrunched her face up. “I think so…”

Lock gave a brief lecture on the technology. “And then the NSA came in and put
it all under lock and key.”

Katya arched an eyebrow. “Let me guess what happened next. You stole it.”

ψ

Lock found Katya’s apartment compact, tidy, and impersonal. Her desk and the accompanying
chair were too small and there was a glare from the window. He stared at the compact
laptop in front of him, his hands poised above the keyboard like a concert pianist
about to begin performing. “Where’s your control key—oh, there it is.”

Katya was looking over his shoulder. “It’s supposed to have lots of good hacker
stuff on it. We got a training class and everything, but I’ve never ended up using
any of it.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve got a bunch of cloud servers set up with everything I
need already. As long as my credit card isn’t declined, we’re good. All I need
is a terminal window…there we go.” Lock heard Katya laughing behind him. He turned
to face her. “What?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just ironic that’s all. About the credit cards.”

Locked smiled. “Yeah, I suppose it is.”

30

Pioneer Wharf, Singapore
Saturday, May 12th
Midnight SGT (Singapore Time)

Organized crime is so inelegant, thought Vipul, his eyes roaming around
the sweltering half-filled warehouse. In front of him were gathered his captains,
some leaning on stacks of four-foot-high boxes, others against the far wall, still
others simply standing with their arms folded. Everyone was sweating through their
clothes. Vipul could sense their hostility. Anand hadn’t warned him it would be
like this. Morale was low, and, adding insult to injury, he’d pulled them from
their homes or their favorite watering holes and brought them out to the wharf
in the middle of night.

He glanced over at Anand, who stood like a golem animated by some malevolent spirit,
glaring at the men. Vipul chuckled to himself. If it weren’t for Anand, they’d
jump him right here, just out of sheer paranoia. He reminded himself that while
they had been out selling coke and underage hookers to fat, arrogant, second-rate
executives, he’d been quietly robbing the world’s largest banks from behind his
desk.

“Three-and-a-half months ago,” began Vipul, summoning his most imperious tone
and silencing several mumbled conversations, “Li Mun murdered my brother.” My brother. He
wanted to remind them of that.

He began to stroll in front of the men as if he were one of his Harvard professors
beginning an economics lecture. “At that time, I asked you to be patient, to wait,
to check your desire for revenge. I wanted to have the element of surprise on our
side.” He paused to let them remember, reversing direction as he did so.

He stopped front and center and looked at the men. “The time has come for us to
take our revenge.” He paused there, looking into the eyes of his audience, one
man at a time. He began to lay out his plan, not giving them an opportunity to
disagree or comment. He paced back and forth, gesturing passionately, his shirt
slowly becoming soaked in sweat. Every captain had a job to do. He approached each
in turn, putting a hand on their shoulders, shaking their hands, and declaring
his faith in them to honor the memory of his brother.

Later, on the way back to his apartment, bathed in the soothing air conditioning
of the SUV, he knew all talk of defection was past, at least for now. He knew,
further, that the family’s earnings would magically return to their expected levels.
He’d seen in it their eyes. They had merely wanted their leader back. And even
more so, to know they were needed.

It was basic organizational behavior theory, straight out of the text books they’d
made him read at Harvard. With perhaps a bit of acting mixed in. He smiled to himself
as he gazed out through the tinted windows at a group of teenage girls playing
soccer. In less than an hour, he’d transformed one threat into a weapon to wield
against another. By tomorrow, Li Mun would be dead, and who would remain?

Just him, astride the world.

Naubatpur (Bihar, India)
Saturday, May 12th
4:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Dinsha woke up quickly, a skill he’d developed over two decades of on-the-job
catnaps. Sure enough, Rao was asleep, binoculars in hand. He leaned over and took
the binoculars and raised them to the window.

What sixth sense had alerted him? he wondered. Because there they were, loading
up two SUVs, one of which had a large dent in the front fender and was pockmarked
with bullet holes; the other looked to be brand new. A third car, a rusty compact,
pulled up behind them. Two men approached the battle-scarred SUV. One man carried
the scaffolding for the IV and the other carried a bundle in a white sheet over
one shoulder.

That must be the girl, thought Dinsha. Another man circled around the
new SUV and got into the passenger’s side. Perhaps that’s Abhishek.

The night was dark, what moonlight there might have been was obscured by a thick
cloud cover. The SUVs drove away. The entire process had taken less than a minute.

“I’m awake, you know,” said Rao. “I was just taking a break.”

Dinsha said nothing, ducking his head and making his way back toward the front
door of the apartment. As he reached it, he stood up to his full height and opened
the door quietly.

“Hey!” protested Rao. “Where are you going?”

Dinsha turned back toward Rao, who had stood up. “Quiet!” he snapped in a harsh
whisper. “And get away from the window.”

Rao followed him out of the apartment and back down to the car. “Don’t slam your
door,” cautioned Dinsha before getting in.

Once inside, he reached back into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone,
careful to angle the display toward the floor. The device turned on and began to
glow and flicker as Dinsha’s fingers manipulated it. His hand came to rest and
he waited, staring intently at the display.

“What are you doing?” asked Rao after a few moments.

“Finding out whether our friend Abhishek ever noticed the LoJack I dropped into
his jacket pocket when we embraced.”

After a few seconds longer, Dinsha turned off the phone and replaced it in his
jacket. He leaned back and closed his eyes.

“Well?” asked Rao, his eyes widening.

“He did not,” said Dinsha, without opening his eyes.

“He did not…you mean, he still has the LoJack on him?”

“Yes.”

“Are we…aren’t we going to follow him?”

“Eventually.”

Rao sat in the darkness for a moment. “Why not now?”

Dinsha opened his eyes, frowning. “Have you ever heard of a trailer?”

Rao’s eyes shifted back and forth. “Like in soccer?”

“I suppose it’s like that. Except we’re not playing soccer. Ask me later. I’m
going to get some sleep. You should too. That may be all the sleep we get for a
while.”

“Okay…I mean, okay, so they have the LoJack. But what if—”

“Shut up,” growled Dinsha.

Jurong East, Singapore • Katya's Apartment
Saturday, May 12th
5:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya awoke and stumbled sleepily out into her kitchen. She saw her laptop but
no Lock, so she wandered out into the living room and checked the couch. No Lock
there either. Then she saw a note next to the laptop.

Borrowed some money. Took a cab home. See you tonight at the bar.

She stared at the laptop, which seemed to have a dozen windows open, each containing
text scrolling past, some in little bursts, others in a dizzying flood. Next to
it, she saw her wallet, which she must have left out when she went to bed. She
smiled to herself. That was even more ridiculous than Lock worrying about his credit
card balance.

Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore
Saturday, May 12th
5:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock tiptoed into his hotel room. It was still dark out. With any luck, he could
grab a couple of hours of sleep before heading into the—

“Got lucky, eh?” asked a sleepy voice.

Lock turned and saw Sanjay looking up, his eyelids still heavy, a leering smile
on his face.

“Yeah, something like that.” Lock gave him a wink and then lay down on the bed.

“Was she a hot number?” asked Sanjay.

“A hot num—who talks like that? Just go back to sleep.” Lock closed his eyes.

“All right. Way to go, Lock.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll try not to wake you up until we have to go.”

“That’d be great.”

“You should take a shower, though, man.”

“All right.”

“You smell like sex.”

Lock smiled in the darkness.

“Must have been pretty nasty.”

“All right already. Go back to sleep.”

Chinese Garden, Singapore
Saturday, May 12th
5:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

“Let’s start from the beginning,” said Quartan, irritably.

Katya took a deep breath and focus on the tranquility of the lake. Where were
the turtles when she needed them?

Quartan continued. “Lock steals the quantum computing technology. He then use
it to steal thousands of passwords for online brokerage accounts. He uses those passwords
to manipulate the New York stock markets. Meanwhile, Vipul emails the G8 bankers,
predicting the losses, and threatening to crash the markets entirely if his demands
aren’t met.”

“Correct,” said Katya.

“And Cairnes admits to all this?”

“Yes. He’s very cooperative.”

Quartan paused and seemed to gaze off into the horizon. Katya began stretching
her calfs. Finally, Quartan spoke. “Do you have any concrete evidence? Or just
his version of the story?”

Katya took another deep breath, trying to contain her own frustration. In less
than a week, she not only had turned Lock into a source, but they were now working
together to sabotage Vipul. Yet that wasn’t enough for Haruo. “Like I said, he’s
trying to hack into Vipul’s email account. At which point, we’d have his emails
as evidence.”

“But we don’t actually know what’s in them? You’re just hoping for something.”

Katya gripped the railing. “Yes. That’s all I’m doing — hoping.”

“You’re taking this too personally.” Quartan stroked his chin with two fingers.
“You say Cairnes is cooperative?”

“Yes.”

“Cooperative enough to, perhaps, stall if we stop feeding Vipul information?”

“Not if it would endanger his daughter. Any word on that?”

“Nothing new.”

“Well, then, there are going to be limits to Lock’s cooperation.”

“Can Cairnes help facilitate a meeting?”

“With Vipul? To set him up? He’s never even met him.”

“I see. Vipul is big believer in the separation of church and state, I see.”

“Yes.”

“Savvy, I guess. Oh, that reminds me. We’ve got a special op approved. I don’t
think the higher-ups like the idea of forking over ten mil to the Triad. So we’re
going to do the job in-house. We’re on schedule for Monday. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Okay.”

“But don’t let up. We’d still prefer to have hard evidence.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sentosa Cove, Singapore
Saturday, May 12th
6:45 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Li Mun settled into the spacious back seat of his customized SUV. He thought back
to the day when a man of his station in life would have simply taken a limo. His
advisor, a thin, agitated little man named Kang, sat across from him, facing backwards.
His daughter sat next to him. Li Mun thought her dress was too short, although
she insisted that, by today’s standards, it was, if anything, too long.

Maybe Vipul was right. Times had changed.

He felt the vehicle pull out of his driveway, part of what would be a small rolling
armada by the time they reached Allanbrooke, heading towards the bridge. He opened
his newspaper and scanned the headlines, more out of habit than interest. He’d
taken a beating in the stock market lately. All on investments his accountants
had told him were safe. What was wrong with this world? Google has a bad quarter
and the stock of a bank in China plummets? Vipul, on the other hand, was buying
drilling contractors so that he could extort bigger contracts from cash-rich state
oil companies. Why hadn’t his accountants thought of something like that? The more
he thought about it, the more a partnership with a young up-and-comer like Vipul
made sense. He was not the sort of man Li Mun would have considered in the past.
He was too effete, too precocious, too ambitious. But he was also at home in this
new world.

ψ

The screeching sound came first. The unholy groan of twisting and shearing sheet
metal followed. Li Mun looked up from his paper, instinctively bracing himself.
What he saw through the front window seemed dreamlike, impossible. One SUV was
coming sideways directly at them. Behind it was a jack-knifing eighteen-wheeler.
The view shifted forty-five degrees to Li Mun’s right before the view was erased
entirely by the shattering of glass and the fact that Li Mun was turned upside
down and slammed against something hard. Everything was a spinning mass of limbs
and tiny shards of glass, a gale of screeching and thumping, an overdose of sinking
fear and shocking pain.

And then, the most frightening thing of all: silence.

Li Mun tried to oriented himself. Up was sideways and the sideways was up. He
tried to stand but something seemed to knock him down. Something was in his eyes
and he tried to push it away, but it was soft and wet and warm and relentless.
He looked down at his hands to see what it was. Blood. His own. Slowly,
gradually, his body seemed to be heating up, but he could see no fire. He heard
a cascade of high-pitched staccato sounds and saw something moving. His daughter.
She crawled to him. Her nose was bleeding and she seemed to be holding one arm
with the other. “Daddy?”

An arhythmic symphony of snare drums and the sound of puncturing metal compressed
the air around them. His daughter fell into his body with a screech, his mind catching
fire with understanding at the same time. He pushed her aside and slid towards
the back of the car. The rear window seemed to have shattered — there were shards
of glass everywhere — but also remained intact somehow. Bullet-proof glass, he
realized — it wasn’t glass, but plastic covered in glass. The plastic was still
in place. So perhaps they were safe in the car. Police and ambulances would be
here soon and his attackers would flee.

Li Mun began to reconstruct the attack so he could formulate a defense. They’d
been ambushed crossing the bridge. The truck had cut off the way forward and thrown
his phalanx of SUVs into disarray. Then the attackers had come up from behind with
automatic rifles. He could see them coming. He flattened himself against the side
of the car and reached back to make sure his daughter did the same. He saw Kang
emerge from the front seat. Before Li Mun could say anything — he wasn’t certain
he could say anything — Kang was torn apart by bullets. Li Mun stared at
the window and the row of tiny holes. Another row appeared and then another. Li
Mun was mystified. He’d watched the tests of the glass himself.

He felt the bullets, one lodging in his chest and one in his left leg. His daughter
was pressed up against what had been the roof of the SUV, behind him, making herself
small. Li Mun’s bulk and her own wits had protected her and Li Mun was glad. He
was probably dying, but maybe she would live. If only he’d been able to find her
a husband.

They were kicking in what was left of the window now. From the outside, the SUVs
all looked identical. They were probably doing this to all of them. He reached
over to put his arm around his daughter, but she had moved. She was crawling to
the other side of the SUV, what would have been the floor if they’d been right
side up. She was completely exposed to gunfire from outside. He called her name
just as she seemed to roll back towards him, pointing at the window. He heard several
rapid explosions.

She had a gun — she was firing back!

Where had she got the gun from? He didn’t even carry a gun. It looked like
a nice one, too, one of those automatics. She’d fired a half-dozen rounds in a
heartbeat-and-a-half and she’d killed the man who’d kicked in the window. The snare
drums started again, but she was using the back of the seat for cover. Li Mun didn’t
think was advisable — surely, bullets could penetrate the back of the seat? — but
it was all happening too fast for him to say anything. She returned fire again,
though, so, apparently, she hadn’t been hit.

He heard the sirens. She was trying to buy time. He knew by now he was dying.
He could feel it happening. His nervous system had shut down, leaving him only
with a vague sensation of cold. His vision was becoming blurry. He was surprised
to find that dying didn’t bother him. He was more interested in watching his daughter.
She was his little girl, for him to protect and look after, to find a husband for,
so she could raise a family away from all the blood and grit and ugliness of the
world. And here she was … she thought she was going to save his life. It
was beautiful and sad and …

Li Mun closed his eyes. His felt a crowding in his mind, a thousand memories forming
into a line to be reconsidered, reevaluated, reclassified. Except there wasn’t
going to be time. He would never know his daughter, not this woman who’d just stared
death in the face and then shot at it. As Li Mun’s last breath emerged from his
lungs and rose up into his throat, his mind was radiantly clear, filled only with
one thought.

My lovely Li Shan.

31

Outskirts of Bihar Sharif (Bihar, India)
Saturday, May 12th
1:30 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

“Yes, we’re about two miles out,” said Dinsha. He wore headphones with a mike
in the cord. He and Rao sat in the little blue Tata on the side of a dirt road,
flanked on either side by trees and scrub, beyond which lay rice and lentil fields.

“Well, here’s the problem,” replied Salman. Dinsha imagined him in his robe at
his breakfast table back in New Delhi. He knew Salman’s home well, having visited
it many times over the years. “I never got a case number assigned.”

Dinsha closed his eyes and frowned slightly. “I understand. The only trouble is,
I worry her life is in danger. They have her on an IV.”

“Is she sick?”

“Or starving herself.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It’s just a theory, that’s all.”

Salman paused. Dinsha imagined him scratching his beard. “I can use the weekend
as an excuse…”

“Yes. Explain Monday that you had to move quickly.”

“But I don’t know about getting a team out there. They’re going to direct me to
the locals.”

“Ah, of course. I was thinking of Varma’s team. But Varma—”

“Won’t commit his team without Pawar’s go ahead,” Salman finished.

“Do we know anyone local we can rely on?”

“Perhaps. But will they be willing to help with something like this, that’s the
question.” There was a pause. “How many?” asked Salman.

“Eight, I think. But I don’t know how many might have already been there…or joined
them since. So figure eight minimum.”

“And you with Rao. I don’t think it’s very likely we can pull together a force
like that. No, I think you’d better come back in. On Monday, I’ll tell Pawar what
I’ve found. It’s up to them from there. You’ve done all I asked you to, my friend.”

“What if she’s dead by Monday?”

“Pawar will just say we weren’t able to find her.”

“Can you live with that?”

“I’m not the one saying it.”

“I don’t like this,” said Dinsha. “Cash in a favor with Varma. We’ll go and get
the girl. Pawar will look like a hero.”

“Ah, Dinsha. I’m not sure you understand. The entire thing is a bit of an embarrassment.”

“Well, never mind Pawar, then. He’s a rat anyway. Talk to Varma. Work something
out. We can’t just leave this girl.”

He heard Salman sigh deeply on the other end. “I don’t have so many favors with
Varma, you know. There are many crimes in this world.”

“Yes, I know, Salman. But this is the one you assigned to me.”

“All right. But don’t get your hopes up, Dinsha.”

“And don’t forget to tell him to keep the locals out of it.”

“I’ll do what I can. Any other demands, Constable?”

“That’s all for now, Inspector.”

Singapore Financial District • The (New) Lab
Saturday, May 12th
2:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

On the big monitor on the wall, Don Corleone was explaining his plan to Tom Hagen.
“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” Simultaneously, windows appeared
on Lock’s laptop, disappeared, and then reappeared, filled with arcane rivers of
text, and accompanied by the soft clatter of keystrokes, as Lock’s fingers danced
across the keyboard.

“Whatchya doin’?” asked Raj in whisper as he rolled his chair up next to Lock.

“Uh…watch the movie,” Lock whispered back, realizing he’d become so absorbed in
what he was doing, he’d forgotten to keep an eye on Raj and Sanjay.

“I’m not really in the mood for gangster movies,” said Raj.

“I’m just doing some code clean up, that’s all,” explained Lock.

“What was in all those windows?”

“What windows?”

“The ones you just minimized so that I wouldn’t see them.”

Lock began editing a screen full of code—adding comments and splitting one-line
code into two to make it easier to read. “Nothing.”

“Hey, you guys,” whispered Sanjay, rolling his chair over as well. “What’s going
on?”

“Lock’s up to something,” whispered Raj.

“I’m not up to anything.”

“Why are we whispering?” whispered Sanjay.

“We didn’t want to bother you,” whispered Raj. “But also, the room is probably
bugged.”

“Oh,” said Sanjay thoughtfully.

Raj turned back to Lock. “Seriously, though. What are you up to?”

“Nothing. Just some clean up.”

“Are you fixing the markets again? A little action on the side?”

“No.”

“C’mon, Lock. Let us in on it, too.”

Lock slid his chair back and glared at the two eager faces staring at him expectantly
in the darkness. Behind him, Don Corleone was telling Tom Hagen to go to California.
He pursed his lips and took a deep breath. He considered the fact that he needed
Sanjay not to tell Anand that he’d spent the night with Katya. He considered the
fact that he needed Raj not to tell Anand that he suspected Lock of making the
markets for his own gain.

“We’re all friends, right?”

“Right,” said Raj.

“Of course,” said Sanjay.

“You guys aren’t going to say anything to Anand?”

“Never,” said Raj, and Sanjay echoed him.

When Lock hesitated further, Raj continued: “Why do you think we would ever say
anything to Anand? We aren’t loyal to him. We are like you, Lock. We are hostages.”

Lock realized he’d made the same argument to Sanjay just the night before. He
made a decision. “All right, then. What I’m doing is not fixing the markets. It’s
much, much worse. And the less you know about it, the better it is for you.”

“Nonsense,” said Raj. “They will assume we knew all along. Whatever risks you
take, you bring us along with you. Believe me.”

Lock realized Raj was right. He’d made the same mistake with his daughter. He’d
assumed when he defied Kirin, he was acting on his own behalf. And then they’d
taken Sophie.

“That’s true, Raj. So I guess…the truth is, I’m looking out for myself. The less
you know, the better it is for me. Because they can’t get it out of you, no matter
what they do to you or your family if you don’t know what’s going on. But it isn’t
because I don’t trust you. I know that if you were up to something and it was between
you and Sophie, I’d talk. Just like you’d talk if it was—” Lock turned to Sanjay.
“What are your brothers and sisters’ names?”

“All of them?”

Lock blinked. “Well, any one of them.”

“Swati. She’s my favorite.”

“Okay. Suppose it came down to turning me in or protecting Swati?”

“I would turn you in,” said Sanjay, apologetically.

Lock turned to Raj. “And your wife’s name?”

“Amrita.”

“If it came down to turning me in or protecting Amrita?”

“I’d choose Amrita.”

“Exactly. And I don’t blame you. But Raj, you’re also right to say I’m involving
you guys, whether you like it or not. So here’s what I’m going to say. I can’t
just sit here and do nothing. I can’t. Not so long as they have my daughter. But
I don’t want to get caught any more than you guys do. Because God knows what they’ll
do to Sophie if I do.”

The three men sat in silence. Behind them, a film producer awakened to find the
severed head of his prized race horse in his bed with him and began to scream.

“Well, good luck then, Lock,” said Raj, when the scene was over. Sanjay nodded
in agreement.

Lock placed his hand on Raj’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

Raj wheeled his chair away and raised his gaze above Lock to the big monitor behind
him. “Sanjay, maybe we should watch a different movie,” he said.

Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore
Saturday, May 12th
6:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

“Mind if I steal him away from you?” asked Katya. She was facing Sanjay but batting
her eyes in Lock’s direction. He’d been nursing the same club soda for thirty minutes,
waiting for her.

Sanjay smiled. “I’ll live.” Pausing expectantly, as though allowing time for a
laugh track, he elbowed Lock. “You lucky dog.”

Lock put out his hands in his best what-can-I-say gesture. “See ya on the
flip side.”

“The two of you are a pair of walking clichés,” remarked Katya as they removed
themselves, arm-in-arm, to the far end of the bar.

Lock could almost feel a slight current passing between them where they touched.
“He sort of wears off on you,” Lock explained.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” said Katya. “To sell this a little bit.”

“Okay—mmph!” Katya’s lips felt warm and soft against his own, tasting faintly
of mint and lime. He felt himself falling into her just as she broke off the kiss,
pushing him discretely away. He began to pull back but felt her arms hold him in
place. He looked into her eyes, which were locked on his.

“Get a room!” he heard Sanjay call out from the other end of the bar. He exhaled.

Katya released him and sat down on a bar stool. “I’ll have whatever he’s having,”
she said to the bartender. “And make sure you put it on his tab.”

“I’m just drinking a club soda.”

She glanced down at Lock’s drink, which he held loosely in his hand. “Oh. Right.”
She looked back up at him and smiled. “Never mind,” she said softly.

Lock reminded himself again that Katya was only using him to get to Vipul. They
had a common enemy, that was all. He sat, peering down the bar. Sanjay was signing
his check. Locked leaned over and whispered, “So, while we watched the entire Aliens trilogy,
I did a little checking on things from the lab.”

“And?”

“I got access to Vipul’s email.”

“Oh!”

“But…”

“Oh.”

“It’s all encrypted. Or at least, none of the emails that aren’t encrypted
are very interesting. In fact, they’re mostly spam. Everything else, which
is almost all of it, is encrypted.”

“Okay. But…wait. I’m confused. Can’t you break the encryption? That’s how you
got into his email in the first place, right?”

“No. Well, yes. I can break some encryption. Not all encryption. Not this encryption.”
Lock paused. He felt flushed and shifted slightly on his bar stool. “You know,
that was a helluva kiss.”

“You’re welcome. About the encryption…”

“Sure, I’m just saying.” He paused again, rocking his head back for a moment to
stretch out his neck muscles. “So the email is basically a dead end.”

“Maybe our InfoSec people can crack the encryption.”

“I doubt it. If I can’t crack it…”

Katya frowned disapprovingly. “Don’t be cocky.”

“I’m not really being cocky.”

“Why do you—ah, right. Because you stole the state-of-the-art technology for cracking
encryption.”

“I stole the plans. I still had to build the damn computer. Anyway, I
need to come over again tonight.”

“Oh?”

“I figure I can go back through the day’s traffic and see if there’s anything
I missed. Maybe he backed up his key-pair on Dropbox or something stupid.”

Katya stood up to leave. “And here I thought it was the kiss.”

Outskirts of Bihar Sharif (Bihar, India) • Rathod Farmhouse
Saturday, May 12th
7:00 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

Constable Dinsha Kumar took a good look at the man sitting across from him in
the crowded van. His name was Ankur Lakhani and he was Deputy Constable in the
Patna Zone Special Crimes combat unit that had been assigned to rescue the American
girl. He stood a full two meters in height with his boots and combat helmet, and
in combination with his other gear, including a bulletproof vest and body armor,
he was formidable. He spoke in a deep rumbling voice with the assurance of a man
accustomed to command as he outlined the tactical plan for storming the old farmhouse
where Dinsha believed the girl was being held.

Dinsha was pleased. He’d been worried that Varma was going to send him a second-rate
unit. Maybe some recent grads from Ghaziabad. Looking at the no-nonsense DC in
front of him, he wondered how big a favor Salman had cashed in.

The team left the van, emerging into a warm, inky darkness. Dinsha looked up—the
sky was still blanketed with clouds. That was good. It would allow them to get
very close to the farmhouse without being seen. He pulled Lakhani aside as the
men checked their weapons, body armor, and radios.

“Deputy Constable, I want to be reassured on a point that I didn’t want to mention
in front of your men.”

Lakhani stared down at him.

Dinsha decided this was the man’s way of prompting him to continue. “When I made
the request for combat troops, I made it clear to Inspector Wazir, my immediate
supervisor, that we could under no circumstances notify the state or metropolitan
police, even though that would be the normal procedure.”

Lakhani nodded. “Those were precisely my orders, sir.”

“Good. So we have not notified anyone of this operation, outside the CBI itself?
Because if we have, there’s a very good chance that we’re walking into an ambush—”

“I can assure you, Constable, no one has been given advance notice of this operation.
When we’re through, my superior, Inspector Bhagat, will contact the metropolitan
police. We have operated this way before. They don’t like it…but they don’t have
much choice.”

“One more thing, Deputy Constable. I’m sure you’re aware of what we’re walking
into here. I was impressed by your command, and I think the plan you outlined was
excellent. However—” Dinsha paused, gathering his thoughts, “—I must ask if you
are completely confident in your men.”

Lakhani gave him a slight grin and patted him on the shoulder. “This is as good
a team as you can ask for, Constable.” He then turned and motioned his men forward.

Dinsha stood and watched as the unit disappeared into the darkness. Lakhani hadn’t
actually answered his question. He took a deep breath, checked the fittings of
his vest, put on his headset, and broke into a trot to catch up.

ψ

Sophie was sucked back into her nightmare—why did it keep coming back?—by a violent
crackling sound. She raised her head and sensed immediately she was in an unfamiliar
environment. It was darker and the air was warmer. There was a musty smell of leather
and rotting wood. The crackling was relentless. She could hear men shouting to
be heard above the din. While she was trying to make sense of that, she felt a
rush of cooler air, and the smell of urine and sweat invaded her nostrils. Her
body tensed involuntarily. Someone was nearby.

She heard something that sounded like a car door closing and then the sound of
keys jangling. Another car door closing. Her eyes grew wide with alarm. She was in the
vehicle. She tried to ease herself up to get a better look around, but the engine
started and her body jerked backward.

The terrain they were driving over was apparently very bumpy. Sophie put out her
arms for stability. After a moment, she managed to get up on one elbow again. She
could see two silhouettes in the seat in front of her. Behind her, out the rear
window of the vehicle, she could see…a large house, framed by bursts of light coming
from within.

ψ

Dinsha crouched behind Lakhani and tried to assess the tactical situation. They’d
breached both the front and back entrances. After a brief firefight, they’d taken
control of the first floor, with Abhishek’s men retreating upstairs. After ensuring
that the floor was secure, Lakhani’s team had regrouped in the main entryway at
the foot of the stairs. So far, they had not been able to find an angle for suppressing
fire that would allow an approach to the stairs. They’d tried three times, and
all three times they’d been driven back, with one casualty.

Dinsha heard a crackling on his headset. “A vehicle, black SUV—make, model, and
license uncertain—just exited the barn, heading west-by-south.” Lakhani had dispatched
two of his team to secure the barn, which was about a quarter-mile north of the
farmhouse. He could hear Lakhani reply, “Proceed to barn as planned. Rover, prepare
to intercept vehicle.”

“Rao, that’s you,” prompted Dinsha, who’d assigned Rao to watch and pursue unfamiliar
vehicles coming back down the road from the farmhouse. Rao had predictably complained
that it was an unreasonable request because the only pursuit vehicle available
was the tiny Tata rental. Dinsha had figured on pursuit being an unlikely possibility,
or he would have asked Lakhani to put someone else on it. “Rao?”

“I see them coming.”

“Will you pursue?” He could something in his headset that sounded like someone
was rubbing sandpaper against their mic. “Rao, will you pursue?”

“I’m almost to the car.”

Dinsha rolled his eyes and gritted his teeth. “Why weren’t you—?”

“They just went past.”

Dinsha heard the car door shut and the engine turn. In front of him, a fourth
attempt to secure the base of the stairs failed. Abhishek’s defensive plan was
excellent.

“I lost them,” he heard Rao saying. “Wait, no. There they are. They just turned
on their lights. I’m on it.”

The sandpaper noise continued. “AC Rao, please turn off your mike,” Dinsha said.

“Oh. Right. Okay. Lemmee see—” Rao’s mike went silent.

There was a sudden, acrid, smoke-filled silence as Lakhani and his team regrouped.
Lakhani leaned over to Dinsha, speaking off the mike in a low voice. “I think we’re
going to need to come in from above. What do you think?”

“I think somehow they knew we were coming. I think the girl is in the SUV.”

“I don’t know how they could have known. I made no report to the state or metro
police.”

“Oh, don’t worry, DC,” said one of Lakhani’s men, who had taken a position next
to Dinsha and had apparently overheard their conversation. “I took care of that.”

“Took care of what?” asked Lakhani.

“I called it in to Metro when you forgot.”

ψ

Sophie sat up. The two men in the front seat spoke in low voices, looking behind
them, past her, and out the back window every few seconds. She figured they were
discussing the little blue car that was following them about a hundred yards behind.
In any event, they weren’t paying any attention to her, which was the important
thing.

This was going to hurt, she knew, but she might not get a chance like it again.
She had slowly eased herself over so that she was pressed against the door. She
had also managed to unlock it. No one had noticed. All she had to do was open the
door and push herself out.

It was the last part she was worried about. She was so weak, she wasn’t sure she
could push hard enough to clear the SUV. She pressed against the floor to test
herself and hardly moved.

Of course, she could simply wait and hope that the rescue attempt, if that’s what
this was, was successful. But the little blue car behind them wasn’t gaining any
ground, and they’d left the farmhouse far behind. If she could jump out of the
car, they’d have to either leave her, or go back and get her, and then they’d have
to deal with whoever was in the blue car. Maybe they’d just decide to leave her.
Even if she was retaken, she’d be badly hurt—and maybe she’d simply die from her
injuries.

She pressed her feet against the floorboard again and managed to lift herself
away from the seat. Was that good enough? She wasn’t sure. There really was only
one way to know. She took a deep breath and grabbed the door handle. She began
to pull but then lost her nerve. The man in the front passenger seat had turned
back again to check on the progress of the blue car. His eyes darted to the door
handle. He began yelling.

It was now or never.

Sophie pulled the handle and leaned against the door. She’d forgotten about the
wind resistance. Planting her feet and pushing with all her might, she fell into
a blue hurricane. Then something hit her entire being so hard her molars buzzed
and she was sure she would bounce miles into the sky. She was flying and her mind
crackled like a high-voltage wire.

And then everything went gloriously, spectacularly white.

ψ

Rao hit the brakes hard, and the car slid off the concrete onto the gravelly berm.
He hadn’t seen exactly where the girl had landed. He opened the car door and began
to get out when he saw the SUV turning around. They would kill him, he was sure
of it.

He got out of the car and looked across the road. The girl was over there somewhere.
He looked back at the SUV, rolling slowly right toward him. He reached into the
car and pulled his gun, fumbling with the safety. He looked up again and saw that
the SUV had stopped not ten feet in front him, its headlights blinding him.

Rao ducked, turned, and ran into the blackness behind the road. He heard several
shots fired behind him before he fell into a tangle of leafy stalks. He looked
back and saw two figures illuminated by the headlights. Getting up, he stumbled
forward, praying that the darkness gave him cover. He fell again and turned. One
of the men aimed at something on the ground with an automatic rifle. He saw the
flash of the muzzle and heard the rapid percussion punctuate the still night air.

Rao exhaled in relief. The man was merely shooting out the tires of his car. He
saw them assess their work and then walk across the road, away from him. They weren’t
coming after him. He lay on his back, catching his breath.

ψ

Dinsha jumped out of the combat unit van as it pulled up to where he saw Rao standing
next to the blue Tata, which featured a row of bullet holes along the bottom of
the car. “I thought you said it was a shootout?” he asked Rao, still eyeing the
bullet holes.

“It was,” stuttered Rao. Dinsha looked up at him. Even in the darkness, Dinsha
could see his face was flushed of blood. “I got close, but they took out my tires.”

Dinsha kicked the car door, narrowly missing Rao, and leaving a large dent. He
could tell just by looking at him—let alone the ballistics evidence—that Rao was
lying. The AC was too frightened to even think clearly, otherwise he’d have realized
very quickly that his lie wouldn’t pass muster with Dinsha.

Dinsha turned and gazed into the darkness where the road ahead disappeared.

“I guess you two will be needing a ride back to Patna?” asked Lakhani from behind
him.

Dinsha glanced contemptuously at Rao. “No, it’ll just be me, thanks.”

Jurong East, Singapore • Katya's Apartment
Saturday, May 12th
9:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

“I think I found something.” Lock pushed the undersized office chair back from
the desk and angled his body toward Katya. “You know, this is quite literally the
most uncomfortable chair I’ve ever sat in. I mean, it’s like they designed it
to be uncomfortable. Why else would they have this dip in the back?”

Katya was curled up on her sofa, tablet in hand. She’d been doing some background
reading on the Federal Reserve Bank, hoping to gain some insight into Vipul’s greenmailing
scheme. “I’m afraid it’s the only one I have.”

Lock grunted, glaring disapprovingly at the back of the chair. “Anyway. I think I
found something. Actually, it’s been sitting there the whole time.”

Katya rearranged herself so she was facing him. She found herself fascinated by
the rapid, almost microscopic, changes in his facial expressions. She imagined
hundreds of gears and wheels and pulleys inside his head, controlled by his facial
muscles. “Sounds promising.”

“Well, there are a bunch of servers being accessed via SSH.”

“SSH?”

“Secure shell. Basically, if you’re going to lock down a server, you use SSH to
access it. That way, the only way to get into it is if you have a key.”

“A key is like a password?”

“Uh, sort of. Except it’s computer generated to be unguessable. And it uses public-key
encryption, which, again, I can’t crack.”

“Even with the quantum computer.”

“Right. Initially, I had ignored the SSH traffic because I was just trying to
get access to Vipul’s email. Which, as you know, I did, but the emails were all
encrypted with GPG.”

“Which you also can’t crack.”

“Right again. Anyway, we had set up traffic filters on some routers to harvest
fresh brokerage accounts, and so I checked our logs for that traffic to see if
any of it originated from these SSH boxes. And one of them was creating lots of
SMTP traffic.”

Katya was silent for a moment. Lock was clearly expecting her to react. “SMTP?”
she prompted.

“Email. One of them is being used for email.” Lock paused again before realizing
that Katya needed further explanation. “Which is odd because Vipul doesn’t run
his own email servers—they use Gmail for everything.”

“Okay…”

“I thought back to Vipul’s emails. He has a whole bunch of email from addresses
that look like random strings. Like they were generated by a computer.”

“The computer that’s being used for email?”

“That was what I wondered. I started looking more closely at the email headers
and I noticed—”

“Headers?”

“The to and the from, basically. And there’s some other stuff in there, too, that
can help you track down where an email originates from.”

“Okay.”

“I realized Vipul is sending these encrypted emails to a single address, a user
named deputy. But he’s receiving them from hundreds of these computer-generated
addresses.”

“Interesting…”

“So I looked at the SMTP traffic coming from the one server, and guess what?”

“I have no idea.”

“It was doing the reverse! Sending to the computer-generated addresses
and getting email from the deputy address!”

Again, Lock had paused expectantly, but Katya wasn’t sure what he was getting
at. She felt her face growing warm with embarrassment. “Which means?”

Lock stood up and began pacing. “Okay. Imagine that you needed to communicate
with a lot of people at once. In a secure fashion. One way to do that is you just
send them all individual email messages. But if there were a lot of people, that
would take too long.”

Katya was eager to show that she knew something about email. “You just
put them on a mailing list, right?”

“Except you can’t do that securely because everyone would be sharing keys.”

Apparently, however, she didn’t. “Keys?”

“To encrypt the messages. So instead you write a program that works kind of like
a mailing list, with the additional feature that it sends a separate email to each
person on the list, using their individual key to encrypt the message.”

Katya found herself paying more attention to Lock’s passionate manner than what
he was saying. She’d never seen him like this. “You’re losing me…”

“So there’s no need to share keys. Now…you could put the program on Vipul’s
laptop, but then what if the laptop is stolen or the drive crashes or something?
So you put it in the cloud, where you can be sure to lock down everything but SSH
access, and you can have redundant images of the machine, which would include the
public key directories—”

“And you lost me.”

“Sorry. I’m thinking aloud. I guess what I’m saying is…” Lock’s eyes began moving
quickly back and forth, as if he were trying to follow the movements of a firefly.

Katya bit her lip.

He sat down at the laptop and slid his chair forward. “Yeah…just…I need to…”

“You can explain it to me later,” she suggested as the laptop’s keyboard began
clattering, but Lock didn’t seem to hear her.

ψ

Katya sat up in her bed, suddenly awake. She thought she’d heard voices. She looked
at the alarm clock next to her bed. One minute until the alarm would go off. Maybe
her body clock had just woken her up.

Except that she heard voices again.

Or was it just a single voice? She turned off the alarm and stumbled out of her
bedroom into the living room, wearing a dark-blue T-shirt that said “Princeton”
across the front and gray sweatpants. She found Lock still at her desk, and he
appeared to be talking to her laptop.

She heard him say “SSH” and “hijack” several times as she made coffee. As she
brought him a cup, she saw video of a man’s face projected on the screen. He had
thick, unruly black hair and several days’ worth of stubble on his face.

Lock turned to take the cup of coffee. “Thanks,” he said, his voice wearing thin.
Katya noticed he was blinking rapidly and kept squeezing his eyes shut at intervals.
“Katya, this is Kafka,” he said, pointing at the face on the laptop screen. “Kafka,
this is Katya.”

Katya curled up on the couch. “Nice to meet you, Kafka.”

“You too,” said the tinny-sounding voice coming from the laptop.

“You look tired,” she said to Lock.

“I guess…I haven’t really slept…”

“How’s it going? Any luck?”

Lock rubbed his eyes. “Well…”

She took a sip of her coffee and waited for Lock to elaborate.

He guzzled his coffee and seemed to relax a little. “We worked out a way to hijack
the deputy server. Which, in theory, would let us read Vipul’s email.”

“Fantastic!”

Kafka jumped in from half a world away. “We’ve been working on it all day. Well,
all night for Lock. Lock wrote a modified SSH client that, given the session key,
can hijack an existing SSH session.”

Katya scratched her head. “I thought SSH was—”

Lock explained, “We can’t crack it during the initial authentication phase. But
after the authentication is finished SSH uses AES, which we can crack, using
the Wave Nine.”

“Oh.”

Kafka continued: “And I wrote a script we place on a router that monitors
the SSH traffic and then redirects it after the hijacking.”

Katya nodded absently, sipping her coffee. Lock didn’t seem very enthusiastic—he
was probably just too tired. “This is good, right?” she asked.

Rubbing the back of his neck, Lock answered, “The problem is what happens after
we hijack the session. Whoever initiated the session will assume at first that
something went wrong with the network. But if they’re paranoid, and we have to
assume that they are, they will check for active sessions and check the logs. That
could tip them off that the server’s been compromised. So basically, even though
we might be able to get in and out undetected…”

Kafka elaborated, “We have to assume that we can’t. And Lock would be the
most logical suspect, because he knows how to make use of the Wave Nine.”

“Which means we have to further assume that I’m putting Sophie in danger by doing
this. Anand made it pretty clear to me that if I got out of line, they’d…anyway.
And we don’t actually even know for sure what we’re going to find on this box.”

Katya nodded, wishing she was a bit more awake. “So let me see if I understand
the situation. We can break into this server, but not without attracting Vipul’s
notice. He would logically suspect Lock and use Sophie to punish him.”

Lock stared into space.

“That’s about it,” said Kafka.

Katya frowned and felt herself becoming hollow. She hadn’t mentioned Haruo’s Monday
deadline to Lock. She hadn’t particularly been trying to keep it from him, but
it wasn’t like he could have been pushing himself any harder. And she hadn’t wanted
to scare him off just when they were getting somewhere. She cleared her throat.

“Lock, please don’t get angry…”

Lock’s eyebrows arched in slow motion. “What?”

Katya sat up. “I want you to know this has nothing to do with me. I argued
for more time, but it’s—”

“What is it?” snapped Lock.

“Well…I was given a deadline. Of Monday. Basically, tomorrow morning…”

“A deadline for what?”

“I’m trying to tell you. My boss has been working to put a special ops team in
place here in Singapore. Meaning, basically, people with military training. Their
job will be to terminate Vipul…and possibly you, too. If they do that—”

“So let me get this straight,” interrupted Lock. “The CIA won’t lift a finger
to rescue my daughter. But they can put a team in place here to do the one
thing that will pretty much guarantee she’ll be killed.”

Katya decided she’d just have to let him process it. “That’s about it.”

Lock stood up and kicked the desk chair over. “Fuck!” he yelled. He buried
his face in his hands before sliding them back and into his hair. He turned on
Katya. “When the fuck were you going to mention this?”

“I’m sorry, Lock,” she said softly.

“How can you work for people like that?” he spat, his face compressed into an
ugly sneer.

She heard Kafka’s voice over the laptop’s speakers. “Lock, take it easy, man.
We can debate ethics later. Right now, we need to focus.”

Lock began pacing. Katya wanted to tell him that she was pretty much breaking
every rule in the book to help him, to make him understand that she was on his
side. Instead, she decided the best thing for the moment was to be quiet.

Kafka spoke up again. “Unless we have another plan, it seems to me we have to
push forward, regardless of the risk to Sophie. Because, based on what Katya just
told us—”

“What Katya just told us! Katya!” He pointed accusingly at her.
“How can I even trust her? How do I know she’s even telling the truth? For all
I know, she’s just making that up because she wants those fucking emails so bad.”
He turned to face her. “Isn’t that right, Katya? That’s all you want from me. You’ll
say anything. You’ll bat your eyes and kiss me and tell me I’m doing the right
thing—so long as it suits your purpose! Isn’t that right?”

Katya blinked away tears that she hadn’t even realized were there. She took a
breath. “You’re right, Lock. That’s exactly what I’m supposed to do.” She paused.
Lock was hovering over her like a guillotine, his chest heaving. “In fact,” she
said, her voice going cold, “I have to get ready to go. I have to go meet with
my boss. I’m going to tell him that I have you right where I want you.”

Part 6
A Bold Choice

32

Chinese Garden, Singapore
Sunday, May 13th
6:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

“I think we’re close to getting the emails,” began Katya, leaning over the railing
of the bridge, slightly winded. She’d run over to release some of her frustration,
knowing things were about to get even worse.

“You said that yesterday,” objected Haruo, staring impassively at the lake.

Katya leaned against the railing to the bridge, stretching her calf muscles. “We got the
emails. But they’re encrypted.”

“So we still have no evidence of Vipul’s involvement, correct?”

“We have Lock’s testimony.”

“I know that.”

“We also got a break. I got a voice mail last night from Ong Goh. Vipul apparently
decided to launch a pre-emptive strike against Li Mun. Li Mun reportedly died of
gunshot wounds after an attack yesterday morning. Ong Goh believes the Li Triad
is sure to go after Vipul now. So we don’t need special ops for that.”

“An attack? What kind of attack?”

“Apparently, they ambushed Li’s crew crossing a bridge.”

“What, they just came out, guns blazing?”

“That’s the impression I got from Ong Goh.”

“In Singapore? Against the Triad? That’s pretty brazen.”

“Yes.”

“And we’re sure Li Mun is dead?”

“Yes.”

Haruo shook his head. “Great. Two years of work setting up the trade minister,
and now we may have to start all over again.”

“At least we don’t need special ops.”

“I’m not banking everything on a gang war, Katya. Who takes over for Li Mun?”

“I’m not sure. Ong Goh thinks it might be the nephew, Li Sun. But there’s also
a daughter, Li Shan. The SPF doesn’t have much on either of them.” After a moment,
Katya decided to press on. “It would really help if I could report some progress
about Lock’s daughter.”

“Oh, right. The Indian government is denying that she’s there.”

Katya shut her eyes, suppressing a yell of frustration. “But we have the sat intel.”

“They aren’t denying that she might have been there, at one time.”

“Any chance of a special op then?”

“Not much.”

“You know, if we do take out Vipul, they’ll kill her.”

“I realize that, Katya.”

“Do you?”

Quartan cocked his head in Katya’s direction, then stared back out at the horizon.
“Katya, Lock was part of a conspiracy that crashed the stock market. I’m sending
updates to Brack that are sent to the president and our allies on the hour. We
have no termination options in place, and even if we did, I can’t guarantee that
we even have the right targets. I can understand your concern for the daughter,
but I sometimes wonder if you’ve lost sight of what’s at stake here, and who you’re
dealing with.”

Katya leaned back over the railing, staring out at the lake. She felt like she
might throw up. She hadn’t even told him that Lock was working all-nighters out
of her apartment. Using a CIA-issued laptop, no less. Or, if she was being honest
with herself, that she had gotten too close to him, and that, yeah, she
had probably lost sight of the stakes, because somehow it made sense to her that
maybe, just maybe, the way you saved the world was to save Sophie.

“So I’ve still got twenty-four hours?” she asked finally.

“Yes,” answered Haruo pleasantly.

“See you tomorrow then.”

“See you tomorrow, Katya.”

Singapore Financial District • South China Finance Group
Sunday, May 13th
9:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Mohit Kandhari placed his briefcase on the floor next to his desk, as he did every
morning. He went to the safe in the corner and punched in a long sequence of numbers.
After waiting a moment, he opened the door to the safe and removed a laptop. He
carried it over to his desk, sat down, and opened it up.

It was a Sunday, but Mohit didn’t mind coming into the office. He was well paid,
and besides, Anand frightened him. And somehow, despite his small stature, Vipul
frightened him even more. He ran his fingers unconsciously down the front of his
silk V-neck. He owned a half dozen, all in muted colors, and never wore anything
else into the office.

His fingers tapped away on the keyboard, windows materializing on the screen and
slowly filling with text that would have been gibberish to most people. But Mohit
knew he wasn’t like most people. He’d always been singled out. He liked to think
that perhaps he was one of the best hackers in India. Maybe even the world.

This was just a routine check. Three times a day he checked the deputy machine
and ran audit reports to make sure everything was in order. This was tedious, but
it was also secure. And if there was one thing that Vipul had stressed, it was
to make absolutely certain there was no possible way to compromise the security
of his communications network. Mohit didn’t know what it was for, only that it
had to be absolutely secure and couldn’t rely on anything that was vulnerable to
quantum algorithms. And he had done what he was asked.

The deputy server had only one port open: SSH. And the only key was on this laptop,
which he stored in a safe and on a thumb drive, which Vipul kept in another location
that not even Mohit knew. The only other network connections that were ever opened
were to make SMTP requests to send email, and the responses were parsed with code
Mohit had written himself, merely to verify whether a given email had actually
been sent or not.

He logged in and ran his audit script and then sat back and watched. As usual,
nothing had come up. The SCS was impregnable.

Poletown, Detroit • Kafka's Apartment
Saturday, May 12th
9:15 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Kafka sat in the darkness, staring up at a large monitor on his desk. He was trying
to maneuver a tank over to the protection of an outcropping of rock. He spoke into
his headset, furiously manipulating his game controller. “Okay, Delilah 97, you
beautiful bitch you, I got you covered—”

“SSH session in progress; hijacking it now,” interrupted a clinical-sounding female
voice.

“Oh shit. Delilah 97, honey, I love you, but I gotta step away.” Kafka slid his
chair up to his desk and set aside the game controller so he could use the keyboard
and trackpad. He pulled up a terminal window that was running a chat session on
a private IRC server he and Lock had set up years ago.

Lock: He’s on. What do you want to do?

Singapore Financial District • The (New) Lab
Sunday, May 13th
9:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

The morning at the lab had been entirely uneventful. Lock had thought about catching
up on his sleep, but he was too anxious. Raj and Sanjay were conducting a Battlestar Galatica marathon,
willfully ignoring him. He was blinking in slow motion, half dreaming and half
watching the crew of the Galactica cope with faster-than-light jumps every
thirty-three minutes. He looked down at his laptop, as he’d already done a hundred
times that morning, checking to see if Kafka had sent him a message. He had already
resumed watching the big monitor when he realized there was a notification in the
corner of his screen.

He opened a terminal window, connected the IRC server, and opened the chat room.

Lock: He’s on. What do you want to do?

Lock stared at the message. After Katya’s revelation earlier that morning that
the CIA was planning on assassinating Vipul—and probably him, too—and thus signing
his daughter’s death sentence, he’d been too upset to make a decision. Besides
which, he needed to get back to the hotel, both to maintain the fiction with Sanjay
that he was having a simple affair, and to make sure he was there in case Anand
decided to check in on him. He still hadn’t come to a conclusion one way or another
when Kafka’s message came through.

On the one hand, he’d been taking a risk just by talking to Katya in the first
place. On the other, hijacking the SSH session was no different in principle than
just going back to Detroit. It was basically an open act of confrontation, assuming
that someone checked the logs on the server.

If Katya was to be believed, none of that mattered, because he was out of time
to save Sophie anyway. In which case, any chance of saving her was better
than none. But would Katya just say that to spur him into action? Everything came
down to that. Could Katya be trusted?

Kafka sent him another message.

Lock: you there?

Kafka: Yeah. Just trying to decide what to do.

Lock: Hurry up. The sessions don’t usually last too long.

Lock stared at the terminal window. He thought about the night he’d learned that
Ray wasn’t going to be able to put together a rescue mission. He’d gotten hammered
on thirty-dollars-a-glass scotch, trying to drink himself into oblivion. Katya
had dragged him up to his hotel room and made sure he’d gone to sleep. He’d overslept
the next morning anyway, but at least he’d been in his hotel room, where Anand
eventually rousted him.

Why had she done that? Was it just a matter of making sure her source didn’t drink
himself to death? Did it really matter? Since they’d first met, Katya had been
the only one to offer him real hope. And that was still true, regardless of her
motivations.

If he couldn’t trust her, he was lost. And if he was lost, Sophie was lost.

He narrowed his eyes, his fingers slapping the keys decisively:

Kafka: Go for it.

Singapore Financial District • South China Finance Group
Sunday, May 13th
9:15 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Mohit frowned as he interrupted the hung SSH session. Damn network, he
thought. He retried the login command. Permission denied. That was strange—he’d
logged in earlier with that same command. He felt himself becoming hollow inside.
His hands grabbed onto the edge of his desk as though he expected the room to tilt.

This couldn’t be happening. It was impossible.

He retried the command again and again. Permission denied. There was
no reason to think he would get a different result, but his mind failed to suggest
any other course of action.

Finally, he stopped and simply stared at the screen, both hands covering his mouth.

He could shut down the box and bring up a clone. Vipul would never be the wiser.
On the other hand, if the deputy box had been compromised…Vipul was bound to find
out eventually. He closed his eyes. Please, he thought, this can’t be right.

He opened them again. He tried again to log in. Permission denied.

He sat up and looked around the office through the glass wall. Anand had just
come in and was on the phone. No one else was in. He got up from his desk, leaving
the laptop where it was, and walked casually out of the office and to the elevator.
He took the elevator down, smiling nervously at a janitor. He got out when the
elevator reached the lobby and began walking toward the front entrance. He pulled
out his phone and dialed a number.

“Hello, father,” he said as he pushed through the front door. He looked up at
the sun, which seemed to stare down at him like a giant eye. “Actually, I’m not—listen,
please, listen very carefully, this is very important. You and mother and sister
must pack up and leave… it doesn’t matter where, as far away as you can … you must
go right away …”

Singapore Financial District • The (New) Lab
Sunday, May 13th
9:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock was on the verge of asking Sanjay to take a break from the Battlestar Galactica marathon.
His metabolism seemed to have slowed to a halt.

The terminal window flashed.

Lock: Deputy machine pwned. Looking for the keys.

Lock sat up, blinking with increasing speed, and leaned toward his laptop, his
leg beginning to bounce up and down. Finally, another message came through.

Lock: Found the keys. Definitely an email deputy. Copying everything.

Lock had to suppress the urge to do a fist pump.

Kafka: w007!

This time, Kafka replied right away.

Lock: And also. This SSH hijacking shit is awesome.

Lock began typing commands frantically, closing all his windows and network connections.
He sensed Raj looking over at him. When he was finished, Lock pushed his chair
back and stood up.

“Raj, Sanjay,” he half whispered, only loud enough to be heard over Battlestar Galactica, motioning
them to his desk. They took seats on either side of his laptop. Lock leaned forward
conspiratorially, and Raj and Sanjay did the same.

“I don’t think I’m going to see either of you again,” he began.

Sanjay’s eyes widened, while Raj’s narrowed. “And why is that?” he asked.

“I can’t really go into it,” Lock said. “But you should contact Anand and ask
him to meet with you. Right after I leave. Tell him I’ve been up to something.
Sanjay, whatever you do, don’t mention the woman I’ve been seeing.”

“What woman?” asked Raj.

“Lock has a way with women,” explained Sanjay with a knowing look.

“Raj, you tell Anand that you’ve seen me working on something, but that I told
you I was just fixing some bugs. But eventually you became suspicious. Sanjay,
all you need to do is back up Raj’s story. Okay?”

“I don’t understand,” said Raj. “You want us to…tell Anand that you’re…”

“Tell Anand I wouldn’t tell you anything, and that’s why you’re getting suspicious.
And again, Sanjay, I never left your sight. Okay? There was never a woman.
I was with you the whole time.”

“Our secret,” said Sanjay.

“Trust me, Sanjay, it’s for your own good. Got it?”

Sanjay nodded somberly.

“Lock, what have you done?” pressed Raj.

Lock regarded Raj for a moment. “You don’t want to know. But it’s something that
will probably upset Vipul a great deal.”

“Did you say Vipul?” asked Raj.

“Yes. Anand works for a man named Vipul Rathod.”

“Yes, I know,” said Raj irritably. “He’s the boss of the family. Lock, are you crazy?
You’re going to get us all killed. Not to mention what will happen to our families.”

“That’s why I want you guys to go to Anand now. Tell him I left very suddenly—which
will be true, by the way. When he gets here, you tell him I’ve been acting suspiciously.”

“He might not believe that we’re not in on it,” protested Raj.

Lock took a deep breath. “Raj, I don’t have any choice. This is the best I can
do. Besides, it’s done now.” He paused and looked at Raj, whose face was contorted
into a hostile sneer, and Sanjay, whose expression was a mix of confusion, disappointment,
and fear. “I’m sorry, guys. I’m going to get my daughter back. You need to turn
me in. That’s how it is. And I may never see you again. So…good-bye.”

Lock reached out his hand to Raj, who turned away angrily, his hands on top of
his head. He turned to Sanjay, who embraced him awkwardly.

“Good-bye, Lock,” he choked.

33

Southbank, Singapore • Vipul's Apartment
Sunday, May 13th
10:45 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Vipul watched Anand’s golem-like figure stride into his living room. He was reclining
on his couch, wearing an oversized white robe, holding a glass of Sunil’s extra
spicy Bloody Mary in the palm of his hand. A warm breeze blew into the spacious
apartment from an open sliding-glass door, which revealed a still-waking city.

“Should you have that open?” asked Anand, who’d walked directly to the balcony.

“I’m thirty floors up, Anand,” said Vipul drily. “Bloody Mary?”

“No,” said Anand as he sat down in a large brown recliner. “Vipul, we have a problem.”

Vipul retreated back to the couch. “I gathered from your phone call. How do you
manage to look so uncomfortable in a chair whose entire purpose is to make you
comfortable?”

“Mohit has disappeared. I saw him this morning in the office and then he left
and never came back. And he left the laptop open on the desk.”

“How do you know he disappeared? Maybe he just left suddenly.”

“Because I called him and he didn’t answer. And he hasn’t called back.”

“Well, it’s only been—”

“And also because Detroit has also disappeared.”

Vipul sat down. He blinked twice. “What?”

“Detroit has disappeared. I got a call from Raj that he needed to meet with me.
I went to the lab, and he and Sanjay told me that Detroit had been acting strangely.
They tried to get him to tell them what he was up to, but he wouldn’t. This morning,
he went into the lab with them, but then he left. I checked his room at the hotel.
He’s packed his things and gone.”

“So Mohit and Detroit have disappeared. At the same time?”

“Yes.”

Vipul stared out at the ocean, framed by the door to his balcony. “Fuck,” he said,
taking a large swig of scotch.

“This is what you had always been afraid of,” said Anand.

Vipul’s eyes narrowed. “This is Detroit.” He pointed his drink toward Anand. “Mohit
doesn’t have the nerve. But Detroit…he’s been a stubborn SOB from the start. Most
people, you offer to make them rich and they’ll do anything. But this guy…why?
Why do I have to find the one nerd in the world who thinks it’s a good idea to
piss me off?”

Anand frowned and stared at the floor.

“Everything was going perfectly, too. Now…fuck. With Mohit’s cooperation, Detroit
can take control of the SCS. He must have—he probably—but how’d he even figure
out who we were? Maybe Li Mun?”

“It doesn’t matter right now,” said Anand. “What are we going to do?”

“You’re right, of course,” said Vipul. “I’m just frustrated. This was the whole
idea of keeping everything separated, having Lock handle the market-making and
Mohit handle the SCS.” He sighed deeply. “One option is…we hit the kill switch.
But the opportunity cost for that…it would take us months to distribute new keys
to everyone.” Vipul fell silent. He stood and walked toward the balcony, standing
just in front of the threshold.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” said Anand. “They could have snipers in
a nearby building or something.”

“They don’t even know which apartment I’m in.”

“Just like Detroit didn’t know Mohit.”

Vipul grimaced and stepped away from the sliding-glass door. “Point taken.” He
circled around behind Anand, walking slowly, swirling the scotch in his glass.
“We have to assume the worst. That the network is compromised. According to Mohit,
if that ever happened, someone could impersonate me and send instructions to the
agents. So Detroit could, for example, send instructions to move money into a numbered
account or something. But Detroit has never asked for more money, has he?”

“Not to me. And Kirin never mentioned it, if he did.”

“Would he go to the CIA?”

“That seems unlikely. He’s as implicated as you are.”

“So it’s purely a leverage play. What does Detroit want?”

“His daughter,” answered Anand.

“Right. It’s simple, really.”

“We give him his daughter. He gives you back control of the SCS. But there’s something
I don’t understand.” Anand paused until Vipul nodded. “Why not just send him a
nice video clip of his daughter losing a few fingers?”

“That’s wonderfully old school, Anand. The thing is, until we hit the kill switch
on the SCS, he’s in a position to hurt us.”

“Hurt us? Detroit?”

“Yes. Our partnerships are borrowing money against our existing positions to finance
new ones. Normally, we would be much more conservative about this, but since we
know that we’re guaranteed to be in the money, we’ve been very aggressive. As aggressive
as possible. So we’re leveraged to the hilt. If I’m assuming the worst, I have
to assume that Detroit understands this. He could intentionally make a bad bet
and wipe us out.”

Anand crinkled his craggy nose. “I never liked this finance game.” He rubbed his
chin. “So why not just shut down the SCS? That way, he can’t hurt you.”

“Because, as I said, it will take months to start up again. Someone has go to
each partner and give them updated keys. By the time we’re up again, who knows?
Maybe the major brokerages will have upgraded their encryption by then. Even if
they haven’t, we lose several months’ worth of gains. Which could easily be several
trillion dollars.”

“But you’ve already made so much.”

“We’ve made, Anand. And, yes, we’re rich already. Technically, in fact,
I think we’re the richest men in the world. At least on paper. But for what I have
in mind, that’s not enough. It’s not about being rich. It’s about changing the
world.”

Anand turned down one corner of his mouth in an expression that Vipul had learned
meant that he was resigning himself to the situation. “So you’d rather negotiate
with him to see if you can keep the SCS up and running…”

“Something like that. But I need to do more than that. There’s no point keeping
all this separated anymore. It didn’t work, anyway. And I need Detroit, because
Detroit’s the only one who really understands how to use the Wave Nine. And that’s
the source of all my leverage. I need to secure Detroit’s cooperation. But without
his daughter as leverage…”

“Money?”

“Yes. Money. But he doesn’t really understand money. No, it has to be more than
that.”

“What?”

“I need to make him a partner.”

“A partner?”

Vipul smiled. “Yes. At least until we don’t need him any more.”

Jurong East, Singapore • Katya's Apartment
Sunday, May 13th
11:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock stood in a well-lit hallway, his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, and
pressed the doorbell outside Katya’s apartment. He heard a bolt clicking and the
door swung open.

“Hi!” chirped Katya, seeming to bounce slightly as she spoke. Lock was surprised
she wasn’t angry with him. He’d also never seen her without her hair pulled back.
She stepped away from the door and waved Lock inside. “Come in!”

He walked directly to the computer, dropping his duffel bag on the couch.

“So?” asked Katya, bouncing again as she trailed Lock into the apartment. “Ever
since I got your text, I’ve been—” She looked down at the duffel bag. “Planning
to stay awhile?”

“I can’t stay at the hotel anymore,” explained Lock absently as he looked at a
video playing on Katya’s laptop. “What’s this? Can I—I was going to—”

“Oh, I was just reviewing surveillance video,” explained Katya, hurrying over
to her laptop. After closing various windows and restoring the screen to the state
that Lock had left it, she turned around to find Lock standing very close. Suddenly
they were pressed against each other. “Sorry,” she said.

He pushed past her, sat down at the desk, and began typing. “We’ve got some reading
to do,” he said, almost speaking to himself.

Katya sat down on the end of the couch closest to Lock. “We do? Did we get the
emails? Ever since I got your text, I’ve been dying to know what happened. But
first I have to ask—did you follow my instructions for getting here? I mean, exactly?”

Lock slid the chair back slightly and turned to Katya. “Of course.”

“Okay. I just figured you have a lot on your mind…”

“It’s fine,” said Lock brusquely, turning back to the laptop.

“Well? What happened?”

Lock turned back to face her again. “Kafka was able to hijack the SSH session.
Sure enough, it was a deputy topology. Kafka took control of the server and changed
the password to the deputy email account. He then pulled off all the email to and
from the deputy and used the deputy’s private key, which was on the server itself,
to decrypt it all. So now, we’re—”

“Wait. The deputy’s email? I thought you were going to be able to decrypt
Vipul’s email.”

“Remember, Vipul is communicating with his network of agents via the deputy. So,
although we can’t actually read Vipul’s email per se—because we don’t have his private
key—we can read the deputy’s, which amounts to the same thing.”

“Oh,” said Katya, looking troubled.

“It makes no difference, Katya,” explained Lock, trying to reassure her. “Neither
email really has anything to personally identify Vipul. It’s all just the content.
It’s like finding them all printed out somewhere. It’s what’s in the emails
that’s important.”

“It would be nice if we could prove that he sent them, though.”

“Even if we had access to his email account, it’s an anonymous account.”

“How do you know it’s actually his, then?”

Lock paused. “I guess I don’t, for sure. I just know that someone accessed it
from his office.”

“That’s close enough!”

“And I can tie the deputy account to that account.”

“And you can read the email in the deputy account?”

“Right. Kafka’s decrypting it all as we speak. So we can start going through them.”

ψ

Half-empty boxes of takeout were sitting on the countertop alongside scattered
sheets of paper. Lock and Katya sat on bar stools, facing each other.

“If I understand this right,” said Lock, “Vipul gets what must be inside information
the night before that he can use in the next day’s trading.”

“That must be the point of the greenmailing,” added Katya.

“Ah. So he held the stock markets hostage to get the inside information.”

“Right.”

“Okay. So, then Vipul takes this information and sends out detailed instructions
to his agents. Most of it seems to involve these forward contracts to buy and sell
currency.”

Katya jumped in. “At the end of the day, they send him reports back on how it’s
going.”

Lock’s brow furrowed. “Here’s the thing. I’ve been doing the math on this. Based
on the reports coming back—including the value of the forward contracts themselves—each
agent now has a few hundred million dollars in assets.”

“And there are nearly a thousand agents…”

“Which means,” concluded Lock, “Vipul is sitting on several hundred billion dollars
in assets right now.”

“No wonder Quartan is under so much pressure.”

“Quartan? I don’t…”

“He’s the station chief—my boss.”

Lock frowned.

“I don’t even think he knew it was this bad.”

“And that was just in two weeks. As long as he keeps getting this kind
of inside information, he can generate close to that every week or two.”

“Except that now you have the keys to his money machine.”

Lock ran his fingers through his hair. “Right. So either—”

Katya’s laptop beeped at them from across the room. Lock sprang up from his stool
and dashed to the desk.

“It’s from Vipul,” he announced. He felt his insides seizing up, imagining he
was about to see a video of Sophie’s fingers being cut off. Or worse.

Dear Mr. Cairnes,

I am afraid we’ve started on the wrong foot, and further, that I’ve, rather tragically,
underestimated you. I’d like to start again. Why don’t you come to my apartment
tomorrow morning so we can get better acquainted? Say, 8 a.m.? I am sure we can
work out our differences.

Regards,

v/r

Lock sank into the desk chair.

Katya was already reading over his shoulder. “Well, you got his attention.”

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” said Lock. “But that wasn’t it.”

Katya placed her hand on his shoulder. “It’s actually written perfectly.” When
Lock didn’t respond, she elaborated. “This could mean anything. It could just be
a setup, or it could be sincere. It’s reassuring, yet assertive.”

Lock looked up at her, arching an eyebrow.

“Sorry. I notice these things. And you’re going to be glad that I do.”

“I am?”

“Yup. When I help you with your reply.”

“You think it’s a setup?”

“Maybe. It’s easy enough to find out.”

“It is?”

“Counter with Tally Bar. It’ll make perfect sense to him. And if he’s really trying
to set you up, he’d never agree to it. Too many cops.”

Lock pulled up the chair and began composing a response:

How about we _

“Don’t say that,” corrected Katya. “Just say when and where. Nothing else.”

Lock began typing again.

Tally’s Bar. _

“It’s just Tally Bar. Not Tally’s. You want to sound like you know what you’re
about.”

Tally Bar. 8 a_

“Change the time, too. Say…noon. There’ll be more people around then.”

Tally Bar. Noon.

“Is that good?” asked Lock.

“Oh. Add ‘ask for Ong Goh.’”

Tally Bar. Noon. Ask for Ong Goh.

“Good.”

“Who’s Ong Goh? And why is Vipul asking for him?”

“A friend. A cop. If Vipul is trying to set you up…”

“I see. Shouldn’t I say something about Sophie?”

“No. He won’t be able to respond to that. Not via email.”

“Okay. So that’s it?”

“Yup.”

Lock clicked send. He exhaled and leaned back in his chair. “Am I actually
going to do this? Am I actually going to meet him at this Tally Bar?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on his reply.”

The laptop beeped again.

Lock leaned forward, Katya’s hand on his shoulder.

Confirmed. v/r

“I feel like I’m going throw up,” groaned Lock.

Katya leaned down next to him. “Lock, listen. We’ll have you covered. Ong Goh
doesn’t want to see—”

“I’m not worried about me, Katya,” he said, jerking upright. “I’m worried
about what I’ve done to Sophie.”

Jahanabad (Bihar, India) • Rathod Compound
Sunday, May 13th
8:00 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

“The doctor says she’s not as bad as she looks,” Abhishek pleaded. He sat across
a splintery old work table from Pradeep. The room was poorly lit, but Abhishek
could see cracks in the drably painted walls, and the scent of ammonia assaulted
his nostrils.

Pradeep was glaring at him. “A broken arm, bruised ribs, a torn ligament, a concussion,
not to mention dozens of—”

“She already had the sprained ankle. That was from when she—”

“And that’s not even the worst part. According to the doctor, she was raped. Can
you explain that, Abhishek?”

Abhishek shrugged. “You put a pretty girl around a bunch of thugs for—”

Pradeep reached over and slapped Abhishek across the top of his head. “You idiot!
Do you even understand the concept of taking a hostage?”

“Usually we end up killing them…”

Pradeep shook his head. “Do you know that Anand called me a little while ago?
He wanted to make sure the girl was in good health.”

Abhishek’s complexion blanched. “What did you tell him?”

“What do you think I told him, you idiot! I told him she was fine. But
can you imagine what would happen to us if he were to see her like that?”
Pradeep pointed toward the half-opened door across the room where the girl lay
in a hospital bed, bandages around her head and face, an IV in her arm, and her
ankle in a cast, raised up on several pillows.

“Well, he’s not going to. Watch, you’ll see, we’ll get the order to get rid of
her.”

“That isn’t the point, Abhishek. Remember when we had to put her on video chat?”

Abhishek looked into the girl’s room and pursed his lips. “You know, Pradeep,
you’d think maybe you’d focus more on the positive. I managed to keep her out of
the hands of the CBI, didn’t I? At least we still have her, don’t we?”

“That’s your job.”

“I’m doing my job. How was I supposed to know she’d jump out of the car?”

Pradeep took a deep breath. “You’d better just pray that Anand never sees her
like this.”

“You know what, Pradeep? That’s the wrong mindset. We’ll do whatever it takes.
Put some makeup on her. Dress her up real nice. Give her some happy pills. The
point is that we still have her, and she’s alive and well. Everything is going
to be fine. You worry too much.”

Jurong East, Singapore • Katya's Apartment
Monday, May 14th
2:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock stared at the water streaking down the windowpane, blurring the remaining
spots of brightness that broke up the night beyond.

Katya’s voice came from behind him softly over the soft tapping of the rain. “Can’t
sleep?”

He turned and saw her silhouette in the darkness. “No. Which is kind of amazing
because I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired in my life.”

“It’s the adrenalin. You have to learn to control your fight-or-flight response.”

“I can’t help but notice you’re not asleep, either.”

Even in the darkness, he somehow knew she was smiling. “Yeah. Well, I’m not the
one who hasn’t slept in three days or whatever it’s been.”

“Feels like a month.”

“Come here and have a seat,” said Katya. He could make out her hand patting the
cushion next to her on the couch as she sat down.

Lock walked to the couch and joined her, his frame too stiff to lean back into
the cushions.

Katya curled up in the corner. “Tell me about Sophie,” she said gently.

“Sophie?” echoed Lock.

“Yeah. She means a great deal to you.” He was silent for a while, but Katya sat
patiently.

Finally, he spoke. “When I think about what I’ve put her through…”

“Don’t think about that. That won’t help. Think about the positive things. Think
about what makes her special to you.”

“I can’t not think about that,” said Lock. “It’s in the back of my mind
every moment. Sometimes, when I’m focused on something else, like trying to figure
out all the angles on this meeting with Vipul, it’s like everything is normal,
everything is okay. But the moment I stop thinking about whatever that is…and I
remember…she’s somewhere out there, scared and alone.” He leaned forward and put
his elbows on his knees.

Katya placed her hand on Lock’s shoulder. “You’re going to get her back. Soon.”
She leaned in close and whispered in his ear, “Tell me your favorite thing about
her.”

Lock slowly reclined into the sofa cushions, Katya neatly moving backward to give
him room. He placed his arms on the back of the sofa. “My favorite thing?”

“Or things,” she prodded.

“Her laugh for one.” Lock smiled wistfully. “When she laughs, she’s not messing
around. She laughs from her belly. Sometimes she laughs so hard and so loud, I
think she’s going to rupture something. I love the fact that she doesn’t hold back,
you know?”

“That’s nice.”

“And she’s bold. Courageous. She’s not afraid of anything.” Lock’s head fell slowly
to his chest. “She’s probably afraid now, though.”

“But you know she’s going to get through it. Tell me about a time she was courageous,
Lock.”

He made a half-laugh, half-sob sound. “I remember once,” he said, sniffling, “right
before I went away…she must have been four. Our neighbors came by to ask if we’d
seen their little boy. We said, ‘sorry, we haven’t.’ They said, ‘okay, can you
please let us know if you see him and tell him to come home?’ Before I know what’s
going on, Sophie has her little bike out—you know, one of those little girl’s bikes
with the training wheels. She’d just graduated from a tricycle. I remember, we
got it for her fourth birthday. Anyway, I see her rolling down the sidewalk on
this little purple bicycle—her favorite color for years was purple—and she’s calling
out his name. I mean, as soon as she heard that he’d gone missing…”

“She wanted to help.”

Lock inhaled deeply and then seemed to hold his breath. “She’s good like that,
you know.”

Katya reached over and grabbed a box of tissues from her coffee table. She handed
him one. “Why don’t you lie down now?” She got up and patted the pillows at the
opposite end of the sofa. Lock slowly lay down on his side, still wiping his eyes
with the tissue, while Katya moved to the desk chair next to the couch.

“After I came home, you know, from prison…Karen wouldn’t let me see her. She never
brought her to visit me in jail. She didn’t want Sophie to see me like that. And
I was glad, you know? Because I didn’t want her to see me like that either. But…I
missed her.” Lock buried his face in a pillow and let out a muffled moan.

Katya got up and knelt in front of him. She wrapped her arms around his head and
shoulders and gently shushed him. “You’re going to get her back,” she whispered
in his ear, running her fingers through his hair. “She’s going to be just fine,
Lock. And you’re going to rest now, okay? Because you need to be strong for her,
right? So you need to sleep now. I get up every morning bright and early, and I’ll
make sure you’re up. But right now, you need to sleep. You need to rest, to be
strong for your daughter.”

34

Chinese Garden, Singapore
Monday, May 14th
5:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

On the bridge, Katya was too excited to lean over the railing and watch the lake.
“I have proof,” she told Haruo, who had assumed his usual posture.

“Proof? Of what?”

“The whole deal. Lock and his friend managed to—”

“His friend?”

“He calls him Kafka. I think I might have mentioned him before. He has a complicated
Polish name.”

“He knows about the greenmailing scheme?”

“Yes. No. I don’t—”

“That’s a potential leak.”

“I know. Listen, you told me to work fast. I’m working fast.”

“Fair enough,” conceded Quartan.

“Anyway, they decrypted all these emails that we can tie back to Vipul. I went
through them yesterday. It’s all there. The whole scheme. Between Lock’s own statements
and these emails, there isn’t a shadow of a doubt that we have the right guy.”

“Why don’t I have these emails?”

“You’ll get them. Along with my analysis. There’s one catch.”

“What?”

Katya watched a flock birds cross low over the lake. “We have to wait a day before
we take any action.”

“Why would we do that?”

“Because…well, Lock doesn’t have his daughter back.”

“Katya, we’ve been through this.”

Katya stood up and faced Quartan. “Haruo, he’s given us Vipul on a silver platter.
You can go back to Brack or whomever and tell them we’ve got the right guy. The
least we can do is give him a day to try and bargain with Vipul to get his daughter
back. Especially since we can’t seem to do anything to help him.”

“Katya, suppose Vipul somehow realizes that we’re on to him.”

“And he slips through our fingers.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Well, if you’re worried about that…”

Haruo turned to face her. “Katya…” he said, reprovingly.

Katya stared out at Jurong Lake. A jogger crossed the bridge behind them, his
footfalls sounding heavily on the wooden planks. “What is the readiness of our
special ops team?”

“On standby. The diplomats are still dancing. Apparently, no one thought to let
the prime minister know what was going on in his own country. But with the emails,
we can just go straight to—” Haruo paused, his eyes narrowing. “Wait. Why?”

“Lock is meeting Vipul at Tally Bar. At noon.”

“Seriously?”

“He’s our star witness, Haruo.”

“But we can just bring him in. We can bring them both in. We just need
the emails.”

Katya faced Haruo. “One more day. Vipul isn’t going anywhere. Neither is Lock.
I’ve got them both on a string. We can wrap this thing up in a bow and maybe
get his daughter back safely. Shouldn’t we at least try to do that?”

Haruo frowned. “What if they make a deal?”

“First, Lock isn’t going to make any deal until his daughter is safe. Second,
Vipul is the last guy he’s going to make a deal with anyway, not after what’s happened.”

Haruo arched an eyebrow and raised himself up on his elbow. “Don’t be naive, Katya.
You should know better. Compared to jail time…a deal with the devil can look pretty
good.”

She’d overplayed her hand. “Okay. You’re right. But that doesn’t change the fact
that he’s not going to make a deal until he knows his daughter is safe.”

Haruo pursed his lips. “All right. One more day, Katya. But that’s it. Then we
bring ’em both in.”

With a deep breath, she said, “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. We bag these guys and you’re on the fast track. But they
slip through our fingers—you’ll never see the inside of Langley again. You sure
you want to risk all that? On the off chance that this guy, Cairnes, is going to
work a deal to get his daughter back—that doesn’t somehow involve them both leaving
the country for one of the thousand different islands in the South China Sea? You’re
sure that’s a bet you want to take?”

Katya felt as if she’d swallowed a rock. “Yes, I’m sure.”

Tally Bar, Singapore
Monday, May 14th
Noon SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock walked into the nearly empty bar, momentarily purblind as his eyes adjusted
to the lack of sunlight. He could make out the counter to his right and rows of
tables to his left. There were several severe-looking men at the bar wearing dark
suits, along with an anxious bartender who was explaining to a pair of sunburnt
tourists that the bar was closed for a private event.

At a far corner table was a wiry, hunched older man, with a thin mustache, who
reminded Lock vaguely of Clark Gable. The man rose and began walking toward Lock,
holding a drink casually in one hand. “You must be Mr. Cairnes,” he said pleasantly.
“My name is Ong Go. Katya told me you’d be coming.”

“Yes,” agreed Lock, choking slightly.

“Something to drink?” offered Ong Goh.

“Please.”

Ong Goh gave an order to the bartender. Lock thought it sounded vaguely Japanese.
He watched the bartender grab a bottle from a row of scotches. One of the men in
suits stood up and took a step toward Lock. “I’ve got to search you,” he explained.
Lock nodded.

As he was being patted down, his gaze wandered towards the other men at the bar.
With a jolt, he recognized Anand, glaring back at him. He could hear Anand’s voice
in his head. Why would you take such chances when you know the consequences? Katya
had assured him he’d be safe, that Ong Goh and the SPF were there to make sure
things didn’t get out of hand. He wondered if perhaps she’d misjudged the situation.

The bartender handed a glass to Ong Goh, who handed it to Lock. “Follow me,” said
Ong Goh. Lock followed the old cop up a winding stairwell, placing his free hand
on the railing to steady himself.

Ong Goh half-turned as they ascended. “Katya explained my role here, I trust?”

“To make sure I come out of this alive?”

“To make sure everyone comes out of this alive,” corrected Ong Goh. They
reached the second floor, which was furnished with another row of tables and, towards
the back, booths. A glowing exit sign beckoned at the far end. “It’s just the two
of you up here. No one in the bar is armed. I’ve frisked Mr. Rathod and his men.
One of my deputies is out back. And I’ll be right downstairs.”

As they approached the last booth, Lock saw that there was someone sitting in
it, a slight young man, who looked up expectantly.

“Mr. Rathod, Mr. Cairnes,” noted Ong Goh.

The slight man stood up and offered his hand. “Hello, Mr. Cairnes.”

Lock shook his hand, too surprised by Vipul’s appearance to be self-conscious. This was
the man Anand worked for?

“I’ll leave you two to talk,” said Ong Goh, turning back toward the stairs.

“Thank you, Ong Goh,” Vipul called out. He turned his attention to Lock and smiled
blandly. “I’m glad we could meet,” he said as they sat down opposite one another.

Lock forced a smile in return and then averted his gaze. This was the man responsible
for kidnapping Sophie. It felt more natural to strangle him than to trade smiles.
He checked to make sure his hands weren’t actually shaking and then took a quick
swig from his glass—it was, in fact, a scotch, and a good one—grateful that Ong
Goh had thought to offer it to him.

“The first thing I’d like to get out of the way,” continued Vipul, leaning back
a bit in the booth, “is that we’re making arrangements for the return of your daughter.
Tonight.”

“Good,” said Lock, taking another sip of his scotch. His entire goal for the meeting
had been to try and coax Vipul into returning Sophie to him, which Vipul had conceded
before Lock had even said a word. Now what?

“I think you’ll find that your daughter is in good health,” Vipul continued. “That
said, I want to apologize, of course. Things should never have come to this, and
it’s entirely my fault. I’m eager to correct that mistake.”

Lock nodded. “I just want my daughter back,” he heard himself saying.

“Tonight. I promise you that.”

Lock pressed one of his palms on the table. “So how do we do this?”

Vipul waved his hand dismissively. “Simple. You’ll met her at a private dock I
own.”

“How do I know you’re not setting me up?”

Vipul shrugged. “How did you arrange for protection from the SPF?”

Lock blinked slowly.

Vipul shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, bring someone along. Preferably
not a cop, though. They’ll feel obligated to roll my guys. Mohit, perhaps.”

Mohit? Lock fought the urge to ask. He had what he’d come for. There was
no sense jeopardizing that just because he didn’t understand why.

“Anyway, I’ll send you the address via email.”

Lock nursed his scotch. Vipul took a sip of his own drink, the glass thunking
heavily when he set it back on the table. He leaned forward. Lock eyed him warily.

“Mr. Cairnes, the real reason I wanted to speak with you is that…well, I’d like
you to become a partner in our little venture.”

Lock had been waiting for the catch. Here it comes, he thought.

Vipul leaned back and laughed. “You’re understandably surprised. You see us as
enemies. But we’re natural allies, Mr. Cairnes.”

“Maybe,” allowed Lock, deciding it was best to humor him.

Vipul’s eyes narrowed. “What are you going to do once you have your daughter back?”

“Right now, that’s all I care about.”

“Of course. But then what? You’re a wanted man.”

Lock twirled his glass with his fingertips.

Vipul continued. “They’re going to put you in jail, Mr. Cairnes. For a long, long
time.”

Lock’s gaze wandered to the exit sign. He drank the last of his scotch. “I suppose
that’s true,” he said, looking back at Vipul.

“By the time you get out, your daughter will be grown. She’ll have married. Have
had kids of her own. And you’ll miss that. All of that.”

Lock stared down into his now-empty glass, wishing he could get a refill. “At
least she’ll be alive.”

“That’s not good enough, Mr. Cairnes.”

Lock’s eyes flashed.

Vipul held up his hands. “I’m just telling you what you already know. Why did
you come to work for me to begin with? Wasn’t it to provide for your daughter?”

Lock’s lip curled in frustration. This wasn’t the conversation he’d been expecting
to have.

Vipul leaned forward. “It was my misjudgment that got us here, Mr. Cairnes. Mine.
Why should you pay the price for it? Let me make it up to you. I can offer you
a future. A future where you can take care of your family. Instead of letting another
man do it for you.”

Lock bristled. “You have a funny way of trying to make friends.”

“Friends are honest with each other, Mr. Cairnes.”

“Is that what this is? You being honest with me?”

Vipul’s eyes widened in an expression of innocence. “You tell me. What have I
said that isn’t true?”

Lock regrouped. “Listen. Let’s just take this one step at a time. Once I have
my daughter back—”

“I understand, Mr. Cairnes. I’m just giving you something to think about.” Vipul
seemed to cradle an imaginary gift in his hands, as though offering it to Lock.
“I want to cut you in as a partner. Ten percent. No, fifteen percent. Why not?
You can live here, in Singapore. We’ll set you up with a new identity so your government
can’t find you. Or even if they do, it’ll complicate extradition. And there are
a million islands here to disappear on. You can fly your daughter out to see you
whenever you’d like—instead of hoping she’ll visit you in a jail cell.”

“I get it. Are we done?”

“There’s one more thing I’d like you to consider.”

Lock stared again into his empty glass. He looked up. “Sure.”

“You think I’m a criminal, don’t you, Mr. Cairnes?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“You probably think of yourself that way, too.” When Lock didn’t say anything,
Vipul continued. “Have you ever been to India, Mr. Cairnes?”

Look shook his head.

“The poverty would shock you. I mean, really shock you. When I was younger,
we’d sometimes travel with my father.” Vipul smiled wistfully. “You would have
liked my father, I think. You sort of remind me of him. Anyway…I remember being
at a construction site. I was nine years old, if I recall. Just wandering around,
getting into trouble, like young boys do. I saw this abandoned section of sewer
pipe, you know, and I thought it might be fun to play inside it.”

“Is this going somewhere?” objected Lock.

Vipul held out his hands. “You see? Just like my father! Please bear with me,
Mr. Cairnes.”

Lock frowned, but said nothing.

“So what do you think I found, inside that sewer pipe, Mr. Cairnes?”

“I have no idea.”

“A family. A family of nine. They were living in that sewer pipe.” Vipul
shook his head, staring down into his glass. He looked up at Lock. “Can you imagine
that, Mr. Cairnes? A family of nine. There was a small brazier in the middle, for
cooking. They hung their washing on the outside. And they were naturally bunched
together, which, I imagine, kept them warm at night.”

Lock pursed his lips.

“That’s just one story. I could tell you dozens. And there’s nothing exceptional
about them, Mr. Cairnes. That’s just…India.”

“India is a poor country. I get—”

Vipul pounded his fist on the table. “But that’s just it! It isn’t a poor
country! India should be one of wealthiest nations on earth!”

Lock sat back. Humor him. “I’m just agreeing with you.”

Vipul took a breath. He smiled. “I know. I’m sorry.” He paused, seeming to collect
himself. “My point is…we aren’t men who care particularly about money,
Mr. Cairnes. We care about what we can do with it. You want to provide for your
daughter. And I…I want to help my countrymen.”

“So you’re not a criminal because…what? You feel bad about poverty?”

“No. Because I’m going to do something about it, Mr. Cairnes. I presume
you reviewed the updates from our brokers, did you not?”

Lock nodded.

“So you have an idea of how much wealth we’ve reallocated?”

Lock grudgingly admired the way Vipul avoided the word stealing. He shrugged.
“Yeah, give or take a hundred billion.”

Vipul laughed. “Have you ever thought about what you can do with that kind of
money, Mr. Cairnes? Because I have. I’ve thought about it a lot.”

Lock smiled ruefully. “Well, considering I could never even get you to pay me,
no, I can’t say that I’ve thought about it much.”

Vipul frowned. “Touché. We’ll be sure to remedy that, too.” He paused,
looking intently at Lock. “I’m afraid I’m still learning how to lead, Mr. Cairnes.
A man with your singular talents, your resourcefulness…I should have made you a
partner from the start.”

Lock had to repress an absurd urge to reassure Vipul and acknowledge his flattery.
Instead, he merely forced another feeble smile.

Vipul didn’t seem to notice. “At any rate, suffice to say, that kind of money
can change the world, Mr. Cairnes. It can buy you board seats. It can buy you parliamentary
seats. It buys you influence over corporate governance. It buys you influence over
policy decisions. I’ve watched India’s ruling elite parcel out her natural resources
like so many party favors. When I’m finished, Mr. Cairnes, when we’re finished
with this little reallocation scheme of ours, those days will be over.
Once and for all.”

“Well, good for you,” said Lock.

Vipul smiled again. He looked down at his glass. “You don’t believe me, I suppose.”
He looked up at Lock. “I can’t blame you. If I were you, I wouldn’t believe me,
either.” He gathered himself. “Like you said, one step at a time. First, we get
you your daughter back.”

“That sounds good.”

Vipul stood up, looking down at Lock. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Cairnes.”

Lock stood up, unsure of what to say. The two men began walking in awkward silence
towards the spiral staircase.

“Nice choice of venue, by the way,” offered Vipul.

“Sure.”

“You know,” continued Vipul, as they descended the stairs. “The kind of insider
trading we’re doing—it’s done all the time by the elite. We’re merely asking for
the—”

A loud bang cleaved the air. Lock recognized the sound instantly—gunfire!—and
fell flat against the stairs. He looked through the railing down into the bar,
where Anand was grappling with second man, who held a gun in one hand.

The gunman broke free and took aim at the stairwell. Anand leapt forward, knocking
him backwards as he fired. Anand and the gunman fell to the floor. Plaster rained
from the ceiling. Lock heard a third shot and saw Anand roll onto his back, a red
circle blooming like a target on his white dress shirt.

The killer rose to his feet. Ong Goh yelled from the corner for him to drop his
weapon. The gunman ignored him, firing again at the staircase. Ong Goh fired at
the gunman. Bottles shattered behind the bar. The assassin got off one more round
at the staircase before turning and running out of the bar.

Lock turned to find Vipul and saw him at the foot of the stairs, making his way
calmly toward Anand, whose body now lay in a creeping pool of blood.

Lock was momentarily fascinated. Vipul had apparently never taken cover.

Katya entered the bar, her eyes scanning the room. Lock caught her eye, smiling
weakly. He steadied himself on the railing as he made his way down the stairs.
Katya and Ong Goh met him at the bottom, guns still drawn.

“Are you okay?” asked Katya.

Lock’s hands were trembling. He shoved them into his pockets, hoping Katya hadn’t
noticed. “Well, I wasn’t shot,” he replied.

Katya looked significantly at Ong Goh. “Triad?” she asked.

Ong Goh frowned. “Possible. He pretended to be a business man trying to book a
party. When Vipul came down the stairs…” Ong Goh shrugged.

Katya nodded. She grabbed Lock’s arm and led him past Vipul’s bodyguard, who were
crowding around Anand’s limp form. He saw Vipul in the middle, sitting cross-legged,
cradling Anand’s body. He looked up at Lock, clear-eyed but somber.

“Was this you?” he asked.

Lock stopped. “What?”

Vipul looked significantly at Katya, standing next to him, before returning his
gaze to Lock. “Did you tip them off?”

“No,” stammered Lock, fearful that the assassination attempt was going to jeopardize
his daughter’s return.

Vipul didn’t say anything. Lock heard sirens approaching. He looked at Anand,
still fearsome even in repose. “Is he…?”

Vipul looked down at Anand. “He’s dead.” He looked back up at Lock. “Tonight,
then.”

Lock nodded, relief flooding his senses.

He felt Katya nudging him forward. “What’s happening tonight?” she whispered.

“Apparently,” said Lock, his mind scrambling to make sense of what he’d just witnessed,
“Sophie’s coming home.”

Southbank, Singapore • Vipul's Apartment
Monday, May 14th
1:00 p.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Vipul tore into his apartment, ripped off his blood-soaked clothes, and rapidly
downed two glasses of thirty-year-old scotch while standing naked in the middle
of his living room. Three large men in suits, who had followed him in, waited near
the front door for instructions. He opened the sliding-glass balcony door, gazing
out at the sunlight harbor, letting a burst of warm, humid air rush over him. He
stepped away from the door and relaxed his facial muscles, taking slow, deep breaths
in through his nose. After a moment, he adjusted his posture, straightening his
back, and opening up his hands.

His father had meditated every morning. Yoga is our most successful export,
he’d tell Vipul. And it is our greatest weapon. His brother had never taken
to it, but Vipul had heeded his father’s advice. He was discovering its value firsthand,
particularly in combination with some excellent scotch.

Anil appeared by his side, carrying his oversized white robe. Vipul traded his
scotch glass for the robe. His glass was promptly refilled as he donned the robe.
He turned to face his men, taking the refreshed tumbler back from Anil without
otherwise acknowledging his presence.

He began collecting his thoughts. The first order of business was to bring Detroit
around. Get his broker network back. He felt like he’d made an impact at the bar.
Upon briefly considering the possibility that Cairnes had somehow been involved
in the ambush, he decided it didn’t make any sense. He’d just promised to return
Detroit’s daughter to him. At the very least, he would have waited until after
her return to try something.

But the young woman was a different story.

She was hardly a damsel in distress, either. She’d run straight into a firefight,
gun drawn. To protect Detroit? Clearly, Cairnes was working with the SPF. Or perhaps
the CIA. Maybe both. But what could they really offer him? Vipul could offer him
his freedom, wealth—a real future. All the authorities could grant was maybe a
bit less jail time.

Unless…was it possible he’d negotiated some kind of immunity? That seemed far-fetched.
He was an accomplice to the theft of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Besides, Vipul wasn’t going to throw away the opportunity to bilk the capitalist
whores out of another few trillion bucks. He’d take one more shot at selling Detroit—after
he returned his daughter to him. Maybe that would be enough to tip the scales in
his favor. If not, he’d hit the kill switch before Detroit could do any damage.

The kill switch. Vipul had disregarded the whole idea when Mohit had explained
it. In fact, he wasn’t entirely sure Mohit had put it in place. It was a simple
unencrypted email sent out to all the brokers with a passphrase that Vipul had
chosen. In theory, each broker had been instructed to stop making any further investments
once they got an email with the passphrase. His men would also call each broker
to confirm—someone was sure to have missed the email—repeating the passphrase verbally.

To get back in business, he’d need to schedule face-to-face meetings to “reboot”
the network with new keys. He’d also need to find a team to replace Lock and Mohit—perhaps
Lock’s assistant, Rajender, would do? He dreaded the idea of starting over with
a new team and traveling all over the hemisphere again to distribute new keys.

Sameer was still waiting for instructions. Vipul remembered ordering him to kill
Paresh, one of his peers, months before. Likely, Sameer was toying with the idea
of doing the same to Vipul, right then and there.

Keep your enemies close… “Sameer,” commanded Vipul without looking up.
“You’re my deputy, taking Anand’s place. Right now, what I need you to do is arrange
for the return of a girl we’ve been keeping under wraps back in Bihar.”

Vipul recalled Anand’s warnings. He hadn’t wanted Vipul to go to Tally Bar. In
fact, he hadn’t wanted him to leave his apartment. Vipul had ignored him—Anand
was full of warnings, and he’d get nothing done if he listened to every one of
them. But this time, he’d been right, and Anand had paid for Vipul’s overconfidence
with his life.

Vipul looked up and saw that Sameer was paying close attention. He resents me, decided
Vipul, but he’s going to put that aside because he just got promoted. “We
can use the small dock to make the exchange. But it’s important it be done discretely.
No police.”

“Will you be there?” asked Sameer.

Vipul found himself distracted by the scar that ran across Sameer’s face. Anand
was probably smarter and certainly commanded more respect, but Sameer…there was
a toughness about him that even Anand had lacked. Sameer would do quite well in
his stead, Vipul decided. “Yes. I…well, maybe not. I guess that’s not really necessary.
Good thinking, Sameer. Okay. So…” Vipul paused. “Make sure we have a heavy guard
posted here at the apartment. Street, door, hallway, the whole works. And make
sure the Malaccan safe house is ready, in case Detroit really does plan to flip.”

“Detroit?” asked Sameer.

Vipul cocked an eyebrow at his new field general. “There’s a lot to catch you
up on, Sameer. Maybe you should sit down.”

35

Jahanabad (Bihar, India) • Rathod Compound
Monday, May 14th
Noon IST (India Standard Time)

The old crone was back, this time with a wheelchair. She hauled Sophie out of
bed and into the chair and then wheeled her down the hall into a communal shower.
She stood her up again, removed her matted hospital gown, and pushed her into a
stall. Sophie could barely feel the lukewarm water on her skin and in her hair,
nor the old woman’s hands scrubbing her down as though she were a dirty floor.

Sophie couldn’t remember how she’d gotten here in this new place that looked more
like a prison but felt less like one. She couldn’t remember how she’d gotten the
cast on her ankle or why her insides hurt so much. She hadn’t even noticed the
bandages on her face until the old woman had removed them.

She stood naked, leaning against the wall, while the woman toweled her dry. She
dressed Sophie in an orange sari and then sat her back in the wheelchair and wheeled
her to her hospital room. Sophie struggled to keep her head from tilting while
the woman spent a great deal of time drawing something on her face.

Finally, she was wheeled back out of the room and down a hallway to an elevator.
She felt herself falling asleep, relieved to wake again from her nightmare, but
was quickly yanked back into it, finding herself in a room filled with white light.
She blinked until it was bearable and realized it was merely sunlight, filtering
in through large windows. The crone was having a conversation with a well-groomed
young man.

The man stepped forward and leaned down until Sophie could smell onions. He kept
jabbering, and Sophie noticed that his teeth were crooked in all kinds of ways.
The man finally leaned back and then the woman was drawing on her again. Sophie
wanted to sleep, but the woman was holding up her head by gripping her chin and
it hurt.

Soon she was in the backseat of some kind of vehicle with men on either side of
her, drowning her senses with the smell of aftershave. She remembered being in
the backseat of a car, unlocking it, opening the door…she raised her hand to her
face, but that made one of the men in the front seat angry. He spoke harshly, and
the man next to her grabbed her arm. She began to feel perhaps she could slip out
of the nightmare again, but something kept bringing her back into it. Gradually,
she realized it was pain. Everything was beginning to hurt. Her face, her ankle,
her groin, and places within her that she couldn’t clearly identify.

Then came the jet. She remembered being on one before, long ago. Or was that a
dream? A scared-looking woman with small eyes and skin sagging from her neck gave
her a drink, and one of the men helped her drink it and take a pill. They were
always giving her pills. But this time, she was grateful. Almost before she had
finished her drink, she could feel the pain seeping out of her and into some other
world. Her ears popped, and she remembered that being significant. She was going
up…or down. She couldn’t quite remember which.

She was on the beach again. Only she was alone. No one was there. Her mom and
Dennis were gone, the beach blankets and the cooler gone with them. Krista was
gone. She scanned the beach for her father, but he was nowhere to be found. Even
the sun was gone—she could see only dark clouds above her. And the water was gray
and opaque. She didn’t feel safe, she had to get to shore. She waded for a while,
but she never got any closer. The water was getting colder. She began to shiver
and cry. She knew she had to get to shore, but she couldn’t seem to make any progress.
She tried to think. Was it the current that was holding her?

She felt something grabbing her, lifting her up, dragging her…she opened her eyes
and found she was being carried down a stairway. There was another black car waiting
below. The sky was a dusky pink with great, foamy blue and purple clouds. She was
loaded into the car and again nestled between the two men and their suffocating
aftershave. She wanted to wake up, but now she was afraid to go back to the gray
water and the current that she couldn’t escape.

“Sleepy,” she mumbled for no reason at all, and was surprised to hear the sound
of her own voice.

It was dark by the time she was carried onto a boat, and the pain was coming back.
She was set down inside a hot, stuffy cabin in the darkness. She lay down and curled
up into a ball, groaning slightly at the surprising ways her body ached, before
she began to dream again.

She was sitting at the kitchen table in the old apartment. It was raining outside.
Her mother was there. She was so young! And her hair was so long! Sophie began
to realize she wasn’t dreaming, she was remembering. Why this moment? She
knew what must happen now, and she could feel her throat tighten and an abyss open
up beneath her, leaving her suspended there, in her kitchen on that dreary afternoon.
She could hear her mother explaining, but she didn’t have to listen to the words.
She knew every one of them. That Daddy was going to be gone for a long time. She
knew that she would begin to cry and that her mother would hold her, and that for
the rest of her life she would feel sick whenever it rained quietly like that…

The boat came to a stop, the motor died, and everything seemed deathly quiet,
with only the sound of water sloshing against the sides and the sound of men speaking
quietly. She felt arms beneath her, and she was lifted again and carried. She was
crying, and not just in her dream, and not because her father was going away, but
because the pain had come back. They gave her another pill but nothing to drink,
and she swallowed it gratefully even though her mouth was dry. She could feel the
pill slowly moving down her throat. Someone wiped her face with a rag and then
she was picked up and carried again.

Then she was standing on solid ground, surrounded by men in jackets with guns.
A warm breeze blew through her hair. She heard the boat motor start up again and
then slowly fade away. She felt herself swaying, and an arm reached out to steady
her. She saw a man in blue jeans and a white T-shirt coming toward her. He looked
like her father, except…something was wrong. He was calling out and staring at
her, and she realized he was crying and saying her name over and over again.

She fell into his arms somehow and closed her eyes, and she couldn’t tell anymore
what was the nightmare and what was real.

Pioneer Wharf, Singapore
Tuesday, May 15th
2:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock carried Sophie through a light rain to Katya’s waiting Honda. Katya got out
and opened the rear door, and he eased his way cautiously into the car. He slid
down into the seat, holding onto his daughter as though he were still supporting
her weight. The strain of carrying her and getting into the car had focused him,
but now he felt like someone had punched him in the throat. Katya closed the rear
door and climbed into driver’s seat.

Lock felt the car accelerating and allowed himself to lean backwards into the
seat. He was afraid to look at his daughter again. As long as he held her, he could
feel her breathing and know she was alive. But he didn’t want to see the garish
makeup that couldn’t hide the gashes in her forehead and cheek, the heavy-lidded,
soulless look in her eyes, the drool running down her chin from her open mouth
and cracked lips.

Katya was saying something to him as blurry lights zoomed past. Lock bounced and
leaned in the back seat, trying to absorb the motion of the car. They stopped and
the engine died. Lock looked around, startled. They’d already arrived at Katya’s
apartment building. Katya got out and opened the rear door and Lock, still carrying
Sophie’s wraith-like figure, carefully got out of the car. Katya closed the door
behind him and then hurried ahead to get the door to the building.

Back up in the apartment, Lock carefully lay Sophie down on the sofa, while Katya
placed a pillow beneath her head. Lock found himself on his knees, whether from
the strain of carrying his daughter or from weathering the emotional tsunami he
was experiencing, he wasn’t sure. He forced himself to look again at Sophie, at
her face.

What had they done to her? What had he done to her?

Katya was speaking again. “…a friend who can check her in under her name. Tomorrow,
the Agency can arrange for her transportation back to the States. Lock? Are you
hearing me?”

Lock heard himself speak in monotone. “I need to wash her face.”

Katya snapped her fingers. “Lock! Focus. She doesn’t need to wake up and see you
having a nervous breakdown.”

He leaned backward, bumping into the coffee table without noticing it, and placed
his arms behind him to prop himself up. “You’re right,” he whispered hoarsely.
He climbed up into the desk chair. “I need to wash her face.”

Katya spoke slowly and loudly. “Lock? Are you listening to me?”

Lock looked up in the darkness. “Please. A bowl of warm water.”

Katya sighed. He watched as she walked crisply into the kitchen and began running
water from the tap. She’d been trying to tell him something. “The hospital,” he
remembered.

“Yes. The hospital. We have to take Sophie to the hospital. I don’t want to register
her under her own name though, in case Vipul changes his mind.”

“Okay.”

“So I have a friend who will help us. Ong Goh’s wife, actually. She’ll check Sophie
into the hospital as her visiting niece. She’s on her way now.”

“Okay.”

“I am going to arrange for her to be taken back to the States, provided the hospital
says it’s okay to release her. We’ll make sure she gets the best treatment.”

“I just have to…” Lock looked up, his eyes pleading.

Katya placed the bowl under the tap and walked into the bathroom, returning with
a hand towel, then placed them both on the floor in front of Lock.

Lock slid forward out of his chair and back onto his knees. He soaked the towel,
wringing it to rid it of the excess water, and leaned over his daughter. Katya
brushed the damp hair from Sophie’s face, who moaned softly in the darkness. Lock
pressed the wet towel to her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth. He wanted to wipe
away the makeup, but he was afraid to touch the scars.

ψ

Ong Goh’s wife, Misha, came by Katya’s apartment, wearing a big blue raincoat,
and Lock carried Sophie down to her waiting BMW. He held her in the back seat on
the way to the hospital, with Katya following in her Honda.

At the hospital’s emergency entrance, Misha retrieved a pair of orderlies and
a gurney. The orderlies helped Lock settle his daughter onto the gurney while Misha
explained the situation. He followed them as they wheeled her into the hospital,
through a pair of double doors, and then someone was yelling and grabbing hold
of him, pulling him backwards.

And Sophie was gone again.

Lock swallowed a chestful of tears. Misha was talking to someone behind a big
round counter. Katya was there and she led him back down the hallway, back through
the double doors, and out into the parking lot, to her car.

As they drove, Lock thought to call Karen, but he couldn’t remember her phone
number. The satphone had a Web browser and he occupied himself with the task of
bringing up his address book so he could look it up. He dialed and heard himself
saying that Sophie was alive and would be home soon. He didn’t say she was well.
The woman on the other end broke down and cried and Lock gripped the armrest in
the car door until his hand cramped. When he heard a man’s voice trying to thank
him, he hung up the phone.

The car had stopped again. They were back at Katya’s apartment. How long had they
been sitting there? Why had they left the hospital? “Turn around,” he said. “We
need to go back to the hospital.”

Katya moved next to him in the dark and patted his knee reassuringly. “She’s in
good hands, Lock. Misha and Haruo will take care of everything.”

“We need to go back to the hospital,” Lock repeated.

“There’s no reason to risk her safety, any more than we already have. You weren’t
supposed to go into the hospital in the first place.” When Lock didn’t respond,
Katya kept going. “Lock, there’s nothing you can do for her there. Except put her
in danger. You’ll see her soon.”

“I suppose,” said Lock.

They sat in silence, listening to the rain tapping on the windows. “You should
get some sleep,” she said.

Lock inhaled. He looked over at Katya, her eyes shining in the darkness. “Thank
you,” he managed to whisper. “Thank you for saving her life.”

Esplanade Park, Singapore
Tuesday, May 15th
5:45 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

“You’re too close to him,” snapped Haruo, his tan complexion taking on hints of
red. He and Katya were sitting in the bleachers overlooking an empty soccer field.
Behind them and across the street was Esplanade Park. After the second shootout
inside of a week, Haruo had decided it was prudent to vary their meeting place.
“You could have been killed yesterday!”

Katya’s eyes burned with fatigue as she surveyed a gloomy sky. “I heard shots.
What was I supposed to do, Haruo? He’s our primary source.” Her voice sounded plaintive
and scratchy.

“It wasn’t worth the risk!”

Katya heard a horn beep behind them and started. She turned back to Haruo and
shrugged her shoulders. “It was a judgment call.”

Haruo frowned. They were agreeing to disagree, apparently. “I couldn’t help but
notice I still didn’t have those emails this morning.”

From the frying pan into the fire. Katya decided to delay the inevitable.
Maybe she’d be able to clear her head before they had that discussion. “It
was a long night. Don’t you even want to know about the daughter?”

“I’m sure I don’t have a choice.”

Katya frowned. “We got her back. She’s in the hospital. Misha took her there last
night.”

“The hospital?”

“She’s in bad shape. Misha called me this morning while Lock…” Katya caught herself.
“Severe dehydration. Signs of rape.”

“While Lock what?”

Katya winced. She took a deep breath, exhaling audibly. “You don’t miss a thing,
do you? I was going to say, while Lock was asleep. He slept on my couch…last night.”

Haruo rolled his eyes. “Oh, Katya.”

She braced herself, but Haruo said nothing more. Perhaps he was simply too exasperated
with her to bother. Well, she could live with that. All she wanted was to get through
this meeting. Live to fight another day. Besides, the worst was yet to come.

“Well, at least she’s safe,” said Haruo. “Can I get the emails now?”

And there it was. Katya grew still. A plump older man jogged past and then began
a stretching routine at the opposite end of the bleachers. Katya searched for a
reason that would justify further delays, even though she knew she wouldn’t find
one.

“I wasn’t actually asking, Katya,” Haruo warned.

Her voice sounded small. “I know.”

“I’ll expect them in my inbox, then.”

Sensing he was preparing to leave, she made a decision. “Haruo?”

“Yes.”

“You’re right,” she admitted. She took a deep breath. “I’m too close.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t…” Katya leaned forward and put her head in her hands.

She felt Haruo’s hand on her shoulder. “Katya, you’ve done your job, collected
the evidence. Admirably. Now you need to let other people do their jobs.
Cairnes and Rathod need to answer for what they’ve done.”

She looked up, pleading with her eyes. “Cairnes was under duress,” she protested.

“And he can make that argument in a court of law.”

She looked away for a moment before returning her gaze to meet Haruo’s dispassionate
stare. “And he was a cooperative source. Do you think…will they be lenient?”

“Like I said, you’ve done your job. Let other people do theirs.” He looked away,
appearing to survey the soccer field in front of them. “I’m sure his cooperation
will be considered. But we don’t even know what the charges will be yet.”

She looked down at her running shoes. “I need time to think, Haruo. I’m tired.
We were up all night—”

“Katya, my advice to you is not to think about it. Just send me what you have.”
She felt his hand on her shoulder again, squeezing it this time. “I’ll take it
from there. I’ve been there. I’ve been where you are. It’s an occupational hazard.
You send me what you have, and we’ll get you back stateside. You can take a little
time off. You’ve earned it.”

Katya felt as if her chest were filling with bricks. She heard herself agreeing,
her voice thin. “I’ll send them when I get home. They’re on my laptop.”

Haruo stood and began making his way awkwardly to the bottom of the bleachers.
Katya followed. Their footsteps made an incongruous clattering noise. He turned
and faced her as she reached the bottom. “One thing you should know. If I don’t get
those emails from you—and I have no reason to think that I won’t—from the
Agency’s point of view, you’ll be aiding and abetting. You understand what I’m
saying.”

Katya looked up and then away. “Yes, sir.”

“Furthermore, I’ll be forced to activate the special ops we have on standby, once
we get diplomatic clearance, which should be soon. So you won’t be protecting Cairnes—you’ll
be endangering him. Is that perfectly clear…Agent Brittain?”

“Yes, sir.” Katya felt his eyes on her. He thinks I’m lying, she thought.

“Good-bye, Katya,” he said finally.

“Good-bye, Haruo,” she said without looking up.

Jurong East, Singapore • Katya's Apartment
Tuesday, May 15th
9:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

It was daylight when Lock awoke. He remembered the wharf, carrying Sophie in his
arms, her scarred and painted face. He sat up and remembered that he’d taken her
to the hospital. Why wasn’t he there with her? A sharp pang rose in his chest.
He threw aside the blanket that had covered him and stood up, turning in a complete
circle.

“Katya?” he called out.

She appeared in the hallway outside her bedroom. “Oh, good. You’re up.”

Lock rubbed his eyes. “I need to see Sophie,” he croaked.

Katya had made her way into the kitchen and began pouring a cup of coffee. “Misha
took her to the hospital, remember?”

“I need to go see her.”

She finished pouring. “We’ve talked about this, Lock. She’s not going to be in
any shape to talk to you. She’s on sedatives, among other things. And you’re putting
her at risk by trying to visit her.”

“We’ll be careful. We can make sure we’re not followed. Besides, why would they
give her to me and then take her back?”

“Why take unnecessary risks? The important thing now is to just get her home safely
as soon as possible.”

Lock looked away and sat back down on the couch.

She circled around in front of him and handed him the cup of coffee. “Besides,
we need to talk.”

He took the cup and looked up at her. “Talk?”

Katya sat down and turned sideways, facing Lock. She looked as though she might
say something, then took a deep breath and looked askance.

“What?” Lock thought about it. “Is it something about Sophie?”

Katya looked up sharply. “No, no, it’s not that.”

He settled back into the couch and took a sip of coffee. “You’re supposed to arrest
me now, aren’t you?”

He could tell from the way she looked at him that he was right before she even
spoke. “It doesn’t quite work like that,” she began. “But yeah, basically.”

“Ah.” Lock leaned back and took another sip of coffee, studying her. He felt oddly
at ease. Sophie was safe. That was all that mattered. And he’d always be grateful
to Katya for that. “I feel like you’re breaking up with me,” he joked.

Katya laughed, but her smile immediately seemed to evaporate from her face.

“So how does it work?” prompted Lock.

She raised her hands in an I don’t make the rules gesture. “The way it
works is, I tell the SPF about the whole greenmailing scheme. I give them the emails
you obtained to corroborate my story. That gives them just cause to arrest you
and Vipul and get search warrants, which in turn allows them to seize the Wave
Nine and whatever other evidence they find. You get extradited to the US and stand
trial for whatever the government decides to charge you with.”

“I see.”

Katya bit her lip.

Lock smiled wanly. He felt bad—Katya clearly wasn’t relishing the idea of having
to turn him in. He decided to try some gallows humor. “I guess I shouldn’t have
given you those emails.”

Katya didn’t get the joke. He’d probably sounded too serious. “Well, if you hadn’t,”
she argued, “it would be even worse. You’d have trained special operatives looking
for you to, at best, coerce you into turning yourself in.”

“At worst?”

“They’d just kill you.”

“That’s what I figured.” He took another sip. “Why are you telling me this? So
I can make a run for it? I’ve got no passport, no money…”

“Honestly?”

“Sure, why not?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t want to just have the cops show up and then tell
you.”

Lock laughed. “Very considerate of you.”

“You’re not exactly a flight risk. But…just in case you were thinking about it…I
should remind you about the special ops detachment.”

Lock nodded slowly, spinning the cup around in his hands. He wanted to make this
easier for her. Unfortunately, he could see the chess board too clearly for that.
He was going to have to walk her through the moves. “I’m probably dead either way,”
he began.

Katya began nodding but then stopped abruptly. “Wait. What? What do you mean?”

“Just that Vipul is going to do whatever he can to shut me up.”

He watched as Katya visualized her own version of the chess board. “Because he’ll
know you were the source of the emails?”

“Right.”

“But he’ll be in jail, too.”

“Sure, presuming he hasn’t already fled. But he’s the head of a crime family,
right? And he now has access to more capital than most small countries.”

Katya pursed her lips. “Okay. But you’d be in protective custody, Lock. I mean,
you’d be the—”

“I’m not really worried about me, Katya.”

“Oh.”

Lock let the implication sink in. Now he simply had to walk her through the alternatives.
“Couldn’t you just leave me out of it?”

Her brow furrowed. “You mean, because you’re not mentioned in the emails?”

“Exactly.”

She looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook her head. “Unfortunately, that
won’t work. First of all, you were already a suspect before you even showed
up in Singapore. Second, I’ve filed reports to the effect that you were a co-conspirator.
Third, Haruo figures I’ve gone native. He won’t buy any revision to the story that
exonerates you.”

Lock frowned. “I see.” He took another sip of coffee, his gaze wandering to the
far window. That left just one move. “I suppose…”

“What?”

“I could take Vipul up on his offer to become partners.”

“Would you really—?”

“Of course not.” He paused. “I’d be lying through my teeth.” Lock refocused on
Katya. “But if there’s a way to make sure he can’t come back later—”

“Which you can’t do—”

“If I’m in jail.”

She looked at him, her eyes narrowed in concentration. “What would you do? I mean,
you play along, pretend to be partners…then what?”

“I haven’t quite figured that out yet. I’m still trying to understand what happened.
What’s his angle? I could see that he might have been willing to trade Sophie
for me. That would have allowed him to keep operating. But this partnership thing…it
doesn’t add up.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Katya, standing up and walking to the desk. “Speaking of which,
I forgot to tell you—you have an email.” She retrieved her laptop and sat back
down, opening up the email message. Lock leaned in, looking over her shoulder.

Mr. Cairnes,

I apologize for the rather violent postscript to our initial meeting.

I trust you’ve been reunited with your daughter?

We should talk again soon. Let’s meet this afternoon at my apartment. Obviously,
I can’t really risk venturing out.

v/r

Lock scratched his head. “Jesus. He doesn’t know.”

“Doesn’t know what?”

“About Sophie. The shape she was in…” Lock’s throat caught. “He doesn’t know.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because he really believes we can be partners. Unless this is all just a really
elaborate setup.”

“Well, just like before, it’s easy to test the theory. Just agree to meet somewhere
else. Someplace safe for you.”

“The last place was supposed to be safe.”

“And it should have been. It was actually. He’s still alive.”

“So…Katya?”

“Yes.”

“Are you considering this then? Letting me play this out.”

She paused. “Let’s just say we’re looking at the options.”

Lock pursed his lips and nodded. That was a start anyway.

“But I still don’t understand your angle. Suppose you propose another location.
Suppose he agrees. What then?”

Lock’s gaze drifted. “At one point, he mentioned someone named Mohar.”

“Mohit?” she asked.

“Mohit,” repeated Lock. “Yes.”

“Mohit is their IT guy,” she explained, pulling up a window on her laptop. “I
have him on surveillance several times over the past few months calling their Internet
provider and complaining about the connection speed. He came up again after you
hijacked the server.”

Lock leaned over and studied the laptop screen.

“These are transcripts from that morning. First, Anand calls Mohit’s phone and
leaves a message, telling him he left his laptop out. He calls a couple more times
and then calls a few other people, asking them if they’ve seen him.”

Lock stood up and stared out the window. He looked sharply down at Katya. “Wait.
What time did Anand start calling his phone?”

“Nine thirty.”

Lock smiled. Checkmate.

“What?” asked Katya.

“Mohit isn’t their IT guy. He’s—he was—Vipul’s chief programmer. He must
be the guy whose SSH session we hijacked. He must have been in charge of making
sure the deputy server was secure. When we took control of it…he split.”

“Do you think that’s why…?”

“Vipul thinks Mohit is working for me. He relied on Mohit to run the deputy
server for him, just like he relied on me to build the market-making system. Without
Mohit, he can’t keep running his greenmailing operation. Which means I now have
control of his broker network. That explains everything.”

“And, on top of that, he thinks you actually recruited Mohit—”

“So he thinks I’ve intentionally taken control of his network.” Lock sat down
slowly, as though he were sleepwalking, and eased himself back on the couch, spreading
his arms out along the back.

“Which is why he’s been so accommodating.”

He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, looking at Katya.

“What?” she prompted. “What are you thinking?”

“Once you send the emails or whatever to the cops…how long before they show up
to arrest Vipul?”

“And you, don’t forget.”

“I haven’t.”

“Not long. This is Singapore. The warrants are a formality.”

“Specifically, though.”

“I would think…this afternoon. No later than this evening.”

“Perfect.”

“I’m not following.”

“I want you to turn me in. What’s the time on that email from Vipul?”

“What? I don’t under—”

“What’s the time on the email from Vipul?”

“Seven thirty this morning. Why?”

Lock’s eyes looked up at an imaginary clock. He shrugged. “Close enough, I think.
You turn me in, then send the emails. Include the one from Vipul. Tell the cops
I’ve fled, and you show ’em that email. Tell ’em you think I’m with Vipul.”

Katya blanched. Lock realized he’d been moving too quickly. She still hadn’t decided
whether she should help him. “Lock, the thing is, I’d be aiding and—”

“I just need a little more time, Katya. Just enough to give me a chance to make
sure that Vipul can’t come after me or Sophie ever again.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of this…”

Lock leaned forward and took Katya’s hands. “Katya. Without you I would have never
gotten her back. But I need your help now to keep her safe. I just need…one day.
By this time tomorrow, if you want, I’ll turn myself in. Can you do that? Can you
give me this one day?”

Katya smiled with the corners of her mouth and squeezed his hands. “Yes, Lock.
I can do that.” He could see a trace of something flickering behind her large,
dark eyes. “What are you planning to do?” she asked.

Lock fought the impulse to lean forward and kiss her. Instead, he released her
hands and leaned back on the couch again. “You ever see one of those vampire movies?”

She looked even more confused. “Yeah…”

“You know how the way to kill a vampire is you have to put a stake through its
heart, then cut off the head and burn the body?”

“I guess.”

Lock grinned. “That’s the plan.”

36

Southbank, Singapore • Vipul's Apartment
Tuesday, May 15th
10:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Vipul untangled himself from the silk sheets of his bed, which still claimed the
two girls he’d called over the night before. One of them rolled over as he attempted
to climb over her. He grabbed the robe he’d hung on the door and slipped it on
as he pushed open the large wooden doors that led out of his bedroom. He squinted
as the room was momentarily flooded with light, then he closed the great doors
behind him and made his way into the kitchen. Where was Anil? He needed more espresso.

He’d indulged the night before to try and relax. He’d awakened early, out of habit,
and checked his messages. Detroit’s daughter had been successfully handed over.
Vipul had sent a message to Detroit and then gone back to bed.

He made his way to the opposite side of the apartment where his study was. Anil
was playing Mahjong solitaire at the large meeting table, which irritated Vipul
for reasons he didn’t bother examining. “Get me some espresso,” Vipul commanded
without looking over at him.

He sat down at his desk and tapped the keyboard, waking the display. He had a
message from Detroit.

Vipul,

The Regiment Teahouse, tomorrow, 8 AM.

Lock

p.s. SPF issuing warrants for our arrests.

Preferable to CIA assassins.

Vipul stiffened. He wasn’t surprised to find that Detroit—Lock—had been working
with the SPF or the CIA. Nor was he concerned about the arrest warrant, since those
were a routine hazard for an organized crime family. Even the realization that
the CIA might be willing to make an attempt on his life didn’t bother him; he was
far more concerned about the Li Triad, who’d already managed to kill Anand. But
there was something about seeing it spelled out like that, about knowing that Detroit—Lock—was
playing both sides against each other. He’d underestimated him from the start.

He thought about Lock’s proposed meeting place. The Regiment Teahouse. Vipul knew
it well. He’d always found it relaxing and enjoyed the irony: The Regiment had
once been a military headquarters building.

It was a reasonable proposal. He’d have to run it by Sameer. Ah, to have Anand back! he
thought, trying to imagine what Anand would say. Anand would tell him that it was
too risky, that he was playing with fire, that it was best to hit the kill switch
and head to Malacca. That taking on the CIA and the Li Triad was a war on
two fronts.

Vipul leaned back in his chair and noticed a cup sitting on the desk in front
of him. He looked over and saw Anil playing Mahjong. When had he delivered the
espresso?

He focused again on the screen of his laptop. SPF issuing warrants for our arrests. What
Anand didn’t understand—or Vipul’s imaginary version of him, anyway—was that Lock
had far more to gain by joining forces with Vipul than by cooperating with the
authorities.

He heard his phone ringing in the foyer. He turned and saw Anil already on his
feet. The old butler was surprisingly spry when he wanted to be. Vipul got up and
walked toward the foyer, meeting Anil halfway. He took the phone. “Sameer,” he
said, flatly.

“We just got a tip from one of our sources within the SPF,” gushed Sameer.

“Let me guess. They have a warrant out for my arrest.”

“They—yes. How’d you know?”

“Thanks.” Vipul clicked the phone shut and stared at a framed sketch on the wall
at the end of the hallway. It was an exploded view of a ship by Brunelleschi. He
remembered his father talking to an oily art dealer about it when Vipul was still
in grade school.

Vipul shook his head. Lock had told the truth. There really was a warrant
out for Vipul’s arrest—and presumably Lock’s as well. He walked back to his desk
and stared at the email displayed on the screen. It always came back to the same
thing. Lock had everything to gain from their partnership. There was no reason
to think the email was a setup. And even if it was a setup—perhaps the email
wasn’t really even from Lock—his men would secure the location, and if there was
anything suspicious, he’d call it off, hit the kill switch, and head to Malacca
to retrench.

In all likelihood, Lock just needed some reassurance that his interests would
be looked after. That’s why he didn’t want to meet at Vipul’s apartment. He was
probably still worried that Vipul might be planning to have him killed.

Vipul smiled. Of course, he was planning to have him killed—once he’d served
his purpose. He’d never really be able to trust an outsider. But that would come
later. For now, as far as Vipul was concerned, they were the best of friends.

Sentosa Cove, Singapore • The Li Home

Wednesday, May 16th

2:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya drove her nondescript silver Honda Civic into the Li’s cul-de-sac, her headlights
redundant given the light from the elegant street lamps in front of each of the
street’s luxurious homes. Circling around, she pulled up in front of the one she
hoped belonged to Li Shan. She knew from her surveillance tapes that, after her
father’s death, Li Shan had continued living in her late father’s estate. She knew
from Ong Goh that Li Shan was rumored to be winning the power struggle between
herself and her cousin for control of the Li Triad. But she also knew it didn’t
particularly matter. She would still know what to do with the information that
Katya planned to give her.

Katya was counting on the presence of twenty-four-hour security, and sure enough,
as she pulled up, two bodyguards emerged from the house, waving her away. Instead
of doing that, she got out of the car with her hands in the air. She was quite
certain at least one gunman lay hidden in the shadows or within the house, aiming
at her skull.

“Ma’am, we’re going to need you to park somewhere else,” said one of the men with
a heavy Chinese accent.

“I was a friend of Li Mun, may his soul rest in heaven, and I have a message for
Li Shan.”

This seemed to confuse the bodyguard who’d spoken to her. The second stepped forward,
speaking in less accented English. “We can deliver your message.”

“I’m afraid I must give it to her personally. It’s quite urgent.”

“That isn’t possible.”

Katya walked a few steps toward the front of the car.

“Ma’am, please stay where you are.”

She stopped, hands still in the air. “I have a warning. Of a plot on her life.
For obvious reasons, I cannot give this information to anyone besides herself.”

“How do you know…Li Shan?” The bodyguard seemed reluctant to even speak his boss’s
name.

Katya decided to take a gamble. “I will allow you to search me,” she said imperiously.
“I am coming around the car now.” She walked forward without dropping her hands
and stood in front of the bodyguard.

The bodyguard took a step backward. “Ma’am, I have to ask you—”

“You idiot!” hissed Katya. “Do you think the plot to kill her is for an unarmed
woman to arrive in the middle of the night and attack her while she’s surrounded
by her bodyguards? Now search me, take me inside, and wake up your boss!”

The bodyguard hesitated and then motioned to his partner, who stepped forward
and gave Katya a thorough pat down. “Are you having a good time?” she asked disdainfully
when he reached her upper thighs.

A few minutes later she was seated on a large white couch. Two lamps lent the
room an almost romantic atmosphere—except for the four bodyguards posted around
her. Katya told one of them to fix her a brandy. He ignored her, and she glared
at him. Ong Goh would be proud of me, she thought. In the ensuing silence,
she gazed through the large sliding-glass doors at the Singapore Strait shimmering
in the lamplight of a long pier. She studied the luxury yachts and sailboats. No old fishing boats here, she
thought.

She sensed Li Shan’s presence before she turned and saw her enter the room. Long
black hair, the wisps of which fell across her face like the remnants of a dream,
a black silk kimono, and a bone structure that was both strong and gentle at the
same time. Katya felt a pang of envy followed by a surge of embarrassment. She
was arranging for a man to be killed, and here she was, feeling insecure about
her looks.

“Do I know you?” asked Li Shan as she sat down in a large easy chair.

No, but I know you, thought Katya. “No. I knew your father, may his soul
rest in heaven,” she said.

Li Shan frowned, brushing her hair from her face. Her eyes shone like embers in
the soft light from the lamps. “I was told you know of a threat on my life?”

“Do you have absolute trust in these men?” Katya asked, her eyes shifting to indicate
the bodyguards around them. “And I mean absolute trust.”

“I trust them with my life, as you can see.”

Katya took a deep breath. “Betrayal only takes one weak soul.”

Li Shan leaned back slightly in the easy chair. Katya had no doubt now as to who
would win the power struggle. Li Shan could have easily been a movie star, and
her eyes sparkled with intelligence.

Katya was silent. Finally, Li Shan stood up, walked across the the plush carpet,
and sat down next to Katya, the silk of her kimono rustling softly. Katya inhaled
the scent of peach blossoms. “Whisper your secret to me.”

Katya leaned forward, feeling a little dizzy. Li Shan tilted her head down and
brushed her hair back so that Katya’s lips were near her ear. “Vipul Rathod will
be at The Regiment Teahouse this morning at eight.”

Li Shan moved her head back abruptly and looked sharply at Katya, one eyebrow
cocked. “Why would you tell me that?”

Katya stuttered momentarily and then paused. She had a ready answer, she reminded
herself. There was no need to panic. “Vipul has stolen a great deal of money,”
she managed to stammer, “from the people I represent.”

Li Shan nodded almost imperceptibly. “This was your business with my father, then.”

“Yes.”

“In a way, this war started with your…proposal.”

Katya cocked her head to one side, and her brow furrowed slightly. “Well…”

“Perhaps you’re working with Vipul. Probing our security measures.”

“I think you’ll find my information is accurate.”

“Perhaps we should keep you here until we know.”

Katya tensed slightly and pursed her lips, her mind racing. She sat up and took
another deep breath. “Might I let a friend know I’m staying for a while?”

Jurong East, Singapore • Katya's Apartment

Wednesday, May 16th

3:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock sat on the couch in the near-darkness of Katya’s living room, Katya’s laptop
propped up with his knees. The laptop screen displayed an article entitled “Payoffs
On Forward Contracts For Currency Exchange.” The secure cell phone that Katya had
given him beeped softly. Lock set the laptop on the couch next to him and rubbed
his eyes. He stood up and walked back around the couch to the kitchen, where the
phone lay glowing on the counter. He picked it up and read the text, then rubbed
his eyes again and reread it.

“Fuck,” he said.

He walked to the desk by the window and looked outside into the darkness. Vipul
had confirmed their meeting, and Katya had volunteered to meet with the Li Triad
so that he could pull an all-nighter studying how foreign exchange contracts worked.
He hadn’t meant to put her in danger. But apparently he had.

Just like he’d done with Sophie. And Raj and Sanjay.

He should go to her. But what was he going to do? He didn’t have a gun, and even
if he did, what were the odds of him successfully taking on a Triad gang at DEFCON
1? He didn’t even know for sure if she was still at Li Shan’s. Besides, Katya’s
message hadn’t asked him to do anything.

Still, it was distracting. Giving himself a crash-course in currency trading was
difficult enough as it was.

Focus.

Resuming his original position on the couch, he placed the laptop back on his
knees and did a search with his Web browser. After scanning the results, he pulled
up an article entitled “Albania Mulls Restructuring; Analysts Doubtful.” The words
began to swim, and he felt himself drifting into sleep.

“Jesus, I need some coffee.”

The sound of his own voice reassured him somehow. He was awake, this was all really
happening. He set the laptop aside, got up, and walked back into the kitchen. After
opening and closing several cupboards, he realized he ought to turn on the kitchen
light. Eventually, he found Katya’s French press, a grinder, and a bag of coffee.

According to Vipul’s source, the Albanian lek was expected to fall. The market
was anticipating it, but Lock had learned, partly from studying Vipul’s earlier
emails to his broker network, that the difference between anticipating something
and knowing it could be worth several hundred billion dollars.

The sound of the beans grinding seemed deafening in contrast to the silence that
had preceded it. Lock let up on the button and heard the blades slowing, clicking
against partially ground beans. He looked inside the grinder. Almost done. He pressed
the button again.

He thought about Katya’s text message. “Vipul, you motherfucker,” he growled as
though Vipul was inside the grinder. “You’d better show.”

Jalan Rasok Drive, Singapore • Haruo's House
Wednesday, May 16th
5:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Haruo Quartan awoke at one minute before five, as he did every morning. He sat
up and stared at his alarm clock, as he did every morning. He waited for the digits
to flip, as he did every morning, and then, as soon as they did, he hit the button
to shut off the alarm. Sometimes he could hit it before it started beeping. This
particular morning, he was about a half beep too slow.

He got up, threw on an old, ratty green bathrobe, and walked down a flight of
stairs, complete with an ornate wooden bannister, into a spacious tiled kitchen,
where he began boiling some hot water in a large red tea pot. As it heated, he
walked down a long hallway into a large room that featured a six-foot-wide wooden
desk stacked with books, newspapers, and notebooks. Behind it all sat a computer
monitor. Quartan came around the desk, picked up his cell phone, and disconnected
the charger. He was about to sit down, but stopped short, reading a text on his
phone.

“Oh, Katya,” he lamented quietly, still standing next to his desk.

Opening the desk drawer, he removed pieces of plastic and metal one at a time,
placing each in turn on the desk’s surface. He assembled them with stolid efficiency
into a Glock 22, which he then placed on his desk, staring at it for a moment in
the muted morning light.

He walked back into his bedroom and opened the door to his closet. Today he’d
play the part of a confused tourist. That way, he could wear a jacket, which would
hide the shoulder holster. He’d done it before. Worked like a charm, especially
with a camera hanging from his neck. He’d have his tea and biscuits on the way
over. Oh, and he’d have to check the file for the address.

He cursed himself for not simply pulling Katya from the field. Her judgment was
shot. He thought she was out of the woods when she’d finally sent him the emails.
And they’d been worth the wait, a veritable gold mine of evidence. Cairnes had
fled, but he didn’t figure to elude the SPF for long. Katya would go home, they’d
bring in Cairnes—and Vipul Rathod, with any luck—and everyone would live happily
ever after.

Except that Katya had somehow ended up in the hands of the Li Triad. Haruo could
only hope she wasn’t somehow still involved with Cairnes. Rogue or not, Katya was
his agent, and he could hardly leave her to the wolves. It was his fault she’d
snapped anyway. He’d seen the signs—he should have sent her home a week ago. Or,
at the very least, on the jet the previous morning, along with the daughter.

The teapot on the stove began to whistle. Fully dressed now in a white linen suit,
he poured the boiling water into a thermos and then dropped in a tea bag. He walked
back into his study and placed the Glock into the shoulder holster under his jacket.
He grabbed a camera that was dangling by a strap from a hat rack and looped the
strap around his neck. With any luck, he wouldn’t be needing the gun any more than
he needed the camera.

Queenstown, Singapore • The Regiment Tea House
Wednesday, May 16th
6:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Tan Xui slid the stack of trays of ceramic teacups into the rectangular heating
bin and slid the door shut. A dozen different aromas toyed with his senses as he
wiped his brow, momentarily pushing aside the stringy bangs that framed his forehead.

“Tan Xui,” a coworker called out. “Someone is here for you. Around back.”

Tan Xui made his way through the small kitchen and out the back door into a small
alley, where another coworker was stacking empty wooden crates alongside the brick
wall. He looked down the alley in the other direction and saw them. His inhaled
sharply and pressed his fingers into his palms, just shy of making fists. He inhaled
sharply, straightened his posture, and began to walk toward them, as though a visit
from his cousins at the teahouse was routine.

They were both lanky like he was, but they had filled out by now. Bo was the older
one, with a thin yet imposing mustache. Tan Xui absently stroked his own feeble
imitation with his fingertips. Jun had decided against a mustache entirely, preferring
a disdainful sneer and designer sunglasses. Dawn has scarcely broken, thought
Tan Xui, *but Jun still has his glasses on. *

“Hey,” he said, trying to sound indifferent, while suddenly wishing he had removed
his white apron before coming outside.

Bo motioned him closer. “We have a job for you,” he said evenly, looking past
Tan Xui.

“A job?” asked Tan Xui, swallowing hard.

“Yeah,” said Jun. “A big one, too.”

“Lots of guys would kill for a job like this,” said Bo. “But you got lucky.”

Tan Xui moistened his suddenly dry lips with his tongue.

Bo produced a plastic bag containing some gray powder. “Take this and don’t let
anyone see it.”

Tan Xui took the bag and slipped his hand beneath his apron, stuffing the packet
into the pocket of his blue jeans. He wondered if they were going to ask him to
sell drugs. But that didn’t make any sense. That couldn’t be the big job they were
referring to.

Bo pulled a piece of folded paper from a pocket and unfolded it, revealing a grainy
photograph. “You see this guy?”

Tan Xui leaned forward. “Yeah.”

“Memorize that face.”

“Okay.”

“You got it?”

“I think so.”

Bo shook his head. “That’s not good enough.”

Tan Xui stared hard at the photograph. It was a profile view of a young man in
a white dress shirt with a high, stiff collar. It looked as though it might originally
have been part of a larger photograph and then blown up. Tan Xui stared until he
began to see individual black and white dots instead of a man’s face.

“Okay.”

Bo folded the paper up and shoved it into his back pocket. “That guy is going
to come here to have tea this morning. At eight. You look for him. When you see
him, keep an eye out for his order. Mix the stuff in that little bag I gave you
into his drink.” Bo looked into Tan Xui’s eyes. “Got it?”

“Mix the stuff in the bag into the—is it poison?”

“What do you think?”

Tan Xui realized it was more a statement than a question. He felt the blood draining
from his face. His palms grew cold and damp. “Will it…?”

Bo cackled at him. “Will it kill him? Yes, that’s the point.”

“This is a very big fish, cousin,” added Jun. “You’ll be a real gangster, for
sure.”

Bo patted his shoulder. “Just don’t fuck it up.”

37

Sentosa Cove, Singapore • The Li Home
Wednesday, May 16th
7:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Li Shan had gone back to bed, leaving Katya with two quiet and immobile keepers.
She tried to lay down on the couch but was unable to sleep. Eventually, the darkness
outside gave way to a gray fog of light and then to ambitious shafts of sunlight.
She got a text from Haruo, letting her know he was nearby, along with the special
ops detachment, and nodded slightly to herself. She looked up at the bodyguards
and texted him to stand by. Then she typed a second message, but didn’t send it.

She smelled bacon and coffee coming from some unseen kitchen. A bit later, she
caught a glimpse of Li Shan gliding past, wearing her black kimono, a towel wrapped
around her neck, her hair damp and stringy. No one offered Katya breakfast or even
a glass of a water, and her stomach complained furiously.

The shafts of sunlight grew and blended into one another. Li Shan swept past again,
retreating into the recesses of the house. Katya caught herself biting her lip.
Was it past eight yet? Had Vipul decided not to show? She felt the cell phone in
her pocket. All she had to do was hit the send button and Haruo would come for
her. She looked again at the bodyguards. They’d probably kill her before Haruo
and his team could get in. There were at least a half-dozen men guarding this place.

But Li Shan wouldn’t have her killed. Not right away. She’d want information.
Who did Katya work for? Katya could stall, buy some time. Maybe even tell Li Shan
that she was CIA. Maybe that would scare her. That could be good or bad. Katya
tried to put herself in Li Shan’s place, but the reality was there were too many
unknowns. It was an unforeseen situation and consequently unpredictable. It was
exactly the kind of situation, in fact, that she’d been trained to avoid. She’d
abandoned her training and relied on instinct, so she’d ended up here. She deserved
whatever fate had in store for her.

Of course, that didn’t mean she didn’t have a say in it. She kept working the
problem. She eyed the sliding-glass door across the living room. She could grab
a cushion from the sofa to shield her from the breaking glass. But she’d never
make it across the back lawn before she was shot down by one of the hulking monoliths
standing guard, who she assumed, erring on the side of caution, were armed with
semiautomatics.

Okay, next plan. She could attack one of the guards directly, hoping to
take him by surprise and disarm him…

Queenstown, Singapore • The Regiment Tea House
Wednesday, May 16th
7:45 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

“It’s all clear, boss,” said Sameer, leaning into the half-opened rear window
of the black SUV that had pulled up in front of The Regiment.

Vipul could see eight of his men ranged along the sidewalk and on the steps. There
were four others inside the teahouse and four more in the alley behind the building.

“And you’ve checked the kitchen staff?”

“Yes, yes.”

Vipul found his response to Anand’s death curious. He had yet to experience anything
emotionally. But practically speaking, he missed Anand a great deal. He’d had such
faith in Anand’s abilities that he’d pushed them too far. Meanwhile, he had no
such faith in Sameer. He felt he had to double check everything, which in turn
was obviously annoying Sameer. Annoying the man who was charged with protecting
you was obviously bad policy, but Vipul couldn’t help himself.

“I haven’t seen Cairnes,” observed Vipul.

“He’s not here,” confirmed Sameer.

“At this point, I suppose I’m probably more vulnerable out here than I am in there.”

“Should we bring our team back out?”

Vipul shook his head. Anand would have understood what he meant. “I’m coming in,”
he explained.

Sameer turned and signaled to the men on the sidewalk and steps. These signals
were relayed all the way out to the men in the back alley and then back to Sameer.
Sameer nodded and open Vipul’s door.

“All clear.”

Vipul wore a black silk suit chosen specifically to impress Lock—to demonstrate
how unconcerned he was by the warrant. He walked nonchalantly up the steps and
into the teahouse. He was escorted by one of his men to a table in the back, where
he saw another one of his men posted at the rear exit. The teahouse had the feel
of a greenhouse once you were inside, with lots of plants, black and white tile
flooring, and large windows. There was a good crowd: small groups of old ladies,
young mothers comparing notes, a couple of business meetings that were already
underway, and a couple of old loners who probably came every morning as part of
their routine.

Vipul sat down, and a smartly dressed and very smug-looking middle-aged man with
an oily comb-over came to take his order. Vipul looked to his bodyguard, who nodded,
letting him know that they’d already searched the waiter for weapons. Vipul ordered
an oolong tea, very strong, no cream or sugar. He checked his phone—it was almost
eight—and took a deep breath. If Cairnes didn’t show, he’d enjoy his tea and hit
the kill switch.

It was a moot point. Cairnes was going to show. Vipul was sure of it. The same
impulse that had led him to accept Kirin’s initial proposal in Detroit would lead
him back to Vipul. A decade, or more, of jail time was even worse than working
in a bookstore. Wasn’t it? And not only that, Vipul was offering to make Detroit
rich beyond imagining. He’d be able to provide his daughter with the best of everything.
He had to at least be thinking about it. And he hadn’t sent any instructions
to his brokers. Vipul had called a few of them to make sure.

He looked around nervously. He reminded himself that he was well protected. Outside
of someone firing a missile at the teahouse, he was untouchable. Even the SPF would
know better than to try and arrest him with his body guard. He had a dozen dead-eyed
killers watching his back everywhere he went. And they were the only ones—besides,
of course, Lock—who knew his itinerary.

Vipul checked his phone again. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. He was fretting
over nothing. Take a deep breath. Given the stakes, it was certainly worth
giving Detroit a few more minutes before calling the match.

Jurong East, Singapore • Katya's Apartment
Wednesday, May 16th
8:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock had shifted ends of the couch several times and was now back where he’d first
started, the laptop propped up on his knees. As dawn broke, he’d begun checking
either the clock on the computer or the message indicator of his phone nearly on
the minute. He’d done all the research he could retain, consumed an entire pot
of coffee, and drafted the email.

He switched to another window. It was some sort of confidential report on the
Li Triad. Katya had zoomed into the address of the Li Estate. Lock selected the
address information and captured it as an image file, which he then opened and
printed. When the printer finished, he took the page, then folded it in half twice.
He walked back to the desk and pulled his duffel from beneath it, stuffing the
folded paper into the bottom of the bag.

Queenstown, Singapore • The Regiment Tea House
Wednesday, May 16th
8:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Tan Xui fought the urge to simply run. He could go home, pack a bag, and take
the bus out of Singapore, never to be seen again. He peered out of the kitchen,
staring at the young clean-cut face. Was he sure that was the right guy? He wished
he had the photo with him. But all the bodyguards had arrived first, right? One
of them had even escorted him in. That had to be him, right? And that would
explain why they needed Tan Xui to get to him.

He withdrew back into the kitchen and saw the customer’s tea sitting on the counter,
an order ticket sitting next to it on the tray. In a moment, Lucha would remove
the tea bag from the cup, place a mint cookie on the tray, and place the tray on
the counter where Johnny would pick it up and take it to the young man. Tan Xui
had to act now, otherwise it would be too late. He walked quickly, digging the
plastic bag from his pocket. Someone bumped him as he attempted to position himself
in front of the tray. Someone else was calling for more cups, which was part of
his job. He didn’t have much reason to be out near the counter like this.

He stared down at the tray. Was he sure this was the right one? He looked at the
cryptic scribbles on the ticket. Oolong tea. Strong. Table 42. Johnny had
called it out, and Lucha had called it back, and there was the ticket. The man
he was supposed to poison was sitting at table forty-two. Tan Xui fought the urge
to double check. There’s no time, he reminded himself. He held the plastic
bag with trembling fingers. He either needed to do this or—

“What are you doing?” Tan Xui turned and saw Lucha staring at him with those wide-set
eyes. She brushed a lock of hair from her forehead, which was lightly beaded with
sweat.

“Johnny said to add cinnamon,” he stuttered. He discretely grabbed a pinch of
the gray poison from the bag and started sprinkling it into the cup.

Lucha crinkled her flat nose. “Not like that, you idiot. Use the sprinkler.”
She turned away to grab the cinnamon sprinkler.

Tan Xui quickly dumped in the rest of the gray powder. By the time Lucha was ready
with the sprinkler, Tan Xui was removing the tea bag and stirring the tea with
the spoon. He raised his hand up. “Don’t,” he said to Lucha. “It will be too much
then.”

“But you shouldn’t use your fingers like that,” complained Lucha. “We should just
make him another cup.”

“Forty-two!” yelled Johnny behind them. Tan Xui turned and saw Johnny waiting
impatiently at the counter, his hands reflexively checking his comb-over.

Lucha frowned at Tan Xui. “Next time, use the sprinkler,” she scolded.

Sentosa Cove, Singapore • The Li Home

Wednesday, May 16th

8:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Li Shan emerged, adorned in a cream-colored dress, her hair dry and held back
with a gold barrette. Katya was suddenly desperate for a shower. She sat up, placed
the balls of her feet evenly on the floor, and casually fingered the keypad of
the phone in her pocket.

Li Shan smiled at Katya as she approached. Katya smiled back, trying to appear
relaxed. Her host wound her away around the far end of the enormous couch and sat
down next to her. She placed her hand on Katya’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said. “Please accept my apology.” She stared at Katya with large,
unblinking eyes.

“It’s fine,” stammered Katya, trying not to exhale all at once.

“I had to be sure.”

“I understand.” She tried to swallow, but her throat was dry.

“Can I offer you some breakfast?”

Katya shook her head. “No, thank you. I should…go.”

“Certainly.” Li Shan turned and motioned to one of the bodyguards. “Please escort—”
She turned back to Katya, her cheeks flushing red. “I’m sorry. I don’t recall your
name.”

“I never gave it to you.”

“Ah.” She waited for a moment, as though expecting Katya to say something, then
smiled primly and turned back to the bodyguard. “Please see that our friend here
gets to her car.”

Katya stood up to leave, and Li Shan mirrored her movements. “I think you will
find that my family is very grateful for your…assistance. Please call on me any
time.”

Katya nodded and began to make her way around the couch and toward the foyer.
She turned abruptly and saw that Li Shan was talking to one of the bodyguards.

“One question,” she said. “Did you…get him?”

Li Shan flashed another prim smile. “I have no doubt that we will.”

Queenstown, Singapore • The Regiment Tea House
Wednesday, May 16th
8:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Vipul took the cup and inhaled the rich scent of the tea. “Imagine,” he said,
loud enough for the nearest bodyguard to hear him, “having nothing else to do but
curate tea leaves.”

“Sir?” said his bodyguard.

Taking a tentative sip, he continued: “Such a person has no worries in life. Except,
of course, to make sure he selects the right leaves.” He took another sip. “This
one, for example…it’s a bold choice. After a while, your palette changes. What
is bold to me…” He took another sip, his eyes shifting furtively as he tried to
identify the flavors in the tea.

He waved the nearest bodyguard over. “Did Sameer make arrangements to…?” He set
the cup of tea down in front of him, staring at it wide-eyed.

“Sir?”

Vipul suddenly couldn’t catch his breath. He inhaled deeply, but it felt as though
he had a leak in his lungs. “Did Sameer…?” he rasped. He began to feel dizzy.

“Sir, are you all right?”

Vipul shut his eyes and forced air out of his lungs so he could speak. “Did Sameer
arrange…for the…of the…” Vipul felt himself falling, felt his body hit the floor.
Everything was sideways. He heard voices around him but couldn’t make sense of
the sounds.

ψ

Tan Xui watched from the door as the young man fell off his chair, as though in
slow motion. He felt his knees buckle and thought he might fall over, too, but
he placed his hand on the doorway and regained his balance. Someone was calling
for him to warm more cups.

He realized with a start that he was acting very strangely and that this might
come up later when the police were questioning people. He fought the urge to vomit
and then quickly walked back into the kitchen against the general tide of people
coming out to catch a glimpse of what was happening on the floor.

The kitchen had emptied, except for him. He knew he should go out to the dining
area and act as though he didn’t know what had happened. But another instinct told
him that it was time for him to leave. Before he’d taken another breath, that same
instinct told him that he should already have left. He straightened and tore off
his apron. He walked quickly toward the rear exit of the kitchen, which was propped
open by someone who had been in the middle of restocking the pantry. A large trailer
truck was in the alley. A man in dark, dirty coveralls asked him a question. He
turned one way, saw several large, dangerous-looking characters patrolling the
alley in that direction, and decided to go the opposite way.

He heard yelling. Run, he told himself. When he looked behind him, two
of the men were running after him. He reached the end of the alley and pitched
out onto a sidewalk. Why hadn’t someone told him how to get out of there?
Shouldn’t there have been a getaway car or something? He wondered if Bo and Jun
had expected him he to be killed. They wouldn’t do that to him? Would they?

He realized his mistake had been running. He’d panicked. His lungs were burning
as he turned right again at the next corner. There was too much traffic to cross
the street. He looked behind him and saw that he was momentarily out of sight of
his pursuers. Ducking into a parking garage, he ran up to the second floor and
then hid behind a green sedan. He snuck a peek over at the stairway to see if anyone
had followed him, then dialed a number on his phone.

“Mom? Hi. No, I’m okay. I was just…running up some stairs. Hey, can you give me
a ride?”

Sentosa Cove, Singapore
Wednesday, May 16th
8:05 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Haruo Quartan sat in his sky-blue Mercedes convertible with the white leather
interior, wearing sunglasses, a large map unfolded in front of him, looking for
all the world like a lost tourist. Half a block away was a cul-de-sac encircled
by large, architecturally confused homes, one of which had until recently belonged
to the late Li Mun.

He stared between two houses at the marina and the blue sun-dappled sea. When
his cell phone beeped on the seat next to him, he started and brought it quickly
to his ear. “Katya?”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?” He could see her leaving the Li home, flanked by two large men.

“Yes. How quickly can you get to The Regiment Teahouse?”

“I don’t know…ten, fifteen minutes. Why?”

“I believe the Li Triad has attempted another hit on Vipul. I don’t want to go
there myself. I’m afraid Vipul or one of his thugs will recognize me.”

Haruo watched as one of the men held the door to Katya’s Civic as she got in.

“I’m on my way.”

Queenstown, Singapore • The Regiment Tea House
Wednesday, May 16th
8:05 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Vipul lay on the ground, trying to keep his head. If he could somehow just inhale
deeply enough. A tremor of spasms exploded from his midsection. He tried to get
his hands and feet under control, but his mind and body were suddenly at war. He
saw people’s shoes; a pair of black tennis shoes; a pair of red high heels; a pair
of brown leather sandals. Where was his waiter? And where was Detroit? He was tired
of waiting! Breathe! Ah, he’d get through this, just like he’d survived
the attack at Tally Bar and Anand’s death. If only he could breathe! Just
one lungful and he’d get through this. That’s all that mattered now.

One deep breath.

ψ

Haruo watched from his car in the parking lot outside a grocery store that was
across the lane from The Regiment. An ambulance was already parked outside and
a crowd had gathered around. Haruo got out of his car and walked toward the crowd.
Two police cars pulled up, and he hurried his pace. He wanted to be inside before
the police cordoned off the area.

Elbowing his way in, he saw another crowd of people standing in a circle. Looking
around, he could see no bullet holes, nor could he smell any traces of gunfire.
The cafe’s patrons seemed more curious than afraid. A couple of men that looked
like they might have been part of either Vipul’s crew or the Triad stood nearby.

He walked to the edge of the crowd, removing his sunglasses and adjusting the
camera to make sure his jacket didn’t open unexpectedly. Pushing his way forward,
he finally got where he could see emergency medical technicians performing CPR
on a prone figure. The procedure seemed to work momentarily, but then one of the
technicians yelled out that the subject’s pulse was flat again. Haruo craned his
neck until he could confirm that the body on the ground was Vipul.

The police stormed in, and Haruo gave a statement that echoed those he’d heard
others give. He watched as they placed Vipul on a gurney, where a medical examiner
pronounced him dead. He saw them bringing out one of the black body bags, and he
asked the police officer who’d taken his statement if it was all right for him
to leave. After the policeman verified that he had Haruo’s contact information,
all of which was, of course, fabricated, Haruo walked calmly and quietly down the
front steps of the usually tranquil teahouse.

He continued past the crowd of police and medical personnel and Vipul’s thugs
until he reached the sidewalk. He made his way around the next corner, and soon
he was just another tourist going for a walk in the great city of Singapore. He
pulled his phone from his pocket again, pressed a button, and held it to his ear.
“Katya?” he said.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

“Quite.”

He could hear her exhale.

“Which means it’s all the more important,” he reminded her, “that we find your
friend, Mr. Cairnes.”

38

Jurong East, Singapore • Katya's Apartment
Wednesday, May 16th
8:30 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock sat hunched over the desk, staring at the satphone. He heard someone opening
the front door and swiveled around to look.

Katya burst into her apartment, keys in hand. Their eyes met.

Lock stood up and began walking toward her. “You’re alive,” he said.

“Yes.” She stood in the hall for a second before turning to close and lock the
door behind her. When she came back into the living room, Lock met her halfway
to the couch. They stopped a pace apart.

“And Vipul?” prompted Lock.

“I don’t know yet. I’m waiting for Haruo to call.”

They sat down on the couch together. Katya produced her phone and stared at it.

“I’ve written the email,” said Lock, with a nod to the desk.

Katya glanced at the laptop. “That’s good.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, staring at the phone.

Lock looked up. “So…what happened?”

“Oh, that,” said Katya. She looked up. “Li Shan eventually got word that Vipul
showed up at The Regiment.”

“But not…”

“But she still didn’t know if they’d got him.”

Lock nodded and resumed staring at the phone.

“Any minute now,” said Katya.

Lock watched as the minute digits incremented on the phone’s display.

“Soon,” said Katya.

Lock got up to splash water on his face. Katya made a fresh pot of coffee. Lock
wandered into the kitchen. She poured him a cup and handed it to him, then poured
herself one.

Her phone beeped.

Lock hovered over her as she answered. “Is he dead?” she asked. Her eyes closed.
“Yes, I know.” She opened her eyes and hung up the phone.

“Well?” asked Lock.

“He’s dead.”

“He’s dead?”

“Dead.”

Lock ran his fingers through his hair and spun around slowly. Katya walked past
him and back into the living room.

Lock followed her. “All that’s left now is to burn the body.”

“What?”

Lock walked over to the desk and sat down, staring at the terminal window where
he’d composed the email containing his instructions for the brokers. Kafka had
modified the deputy program so that he could just send email directly from the
deputy server, and it would take care of encrypting and signing it and sending
it out to the network. All he had to do was hit return to send the message.

He looked over at Katya. “Here goes nothing.” He hit return, and a prompt was
displayed.

Are you sure you want to send this message? (Y/N)

Lock allowed himself a small smile at Kafka’s thoroughness. He hit return again.

Signing message…done.

Encrypting and sending message to [1/839] brokers…

The number 1 became 2 and then 3. Lock’s gaze wandered to the window and saw Katya’s
reflection, staring at him. She was safe. He was glad of that. But their time together
was running out.

“Did you send it?” asked Katya.

Lock turned to face. “It’s sending. It has to send to all the brokers individually.”

“And then you have to go,” she announced.

“Oh,” said Lock. He returned his attention to the terminal window.

Encrypting and sending message to [347/839] brokers…

“It’s not safe for you here,” she explained.

“I told you. I’ll turn myself in.” Lock turned to face her. “Just as soon as this
finishes…”

“Lock, maybe that’s not—”

The laptop beeped. Lock turned back to the laptop screen.

Encrypting and sending message to [839/839]…done.

“Done!” He whirled back around to face Katya, his arms spread. “I’m all yours.”

ψ

Katya had to suppress the urge to reach out and touch Lock’s cheek. Instead, she
pointed to the duffel bag beneath the desk. “But you’re all packed.”

Lock looked down and seemed to study the bag for a moment. “That was the contingency
plan.”

“Contingency for what?”

“I’m not sure, exactly.”

“You really want to turn yourself in?”

“I’m not sure I’d put it quite that way. But I will, yes.”

“Why…why would you do that?”

Lock came over and sat next to her, Katya sliding over slightly so that they could
face each other. ““I owe you that, Katya. You’ve given Sophie—”

There was a knock on the door.

Katya reached out and grabbed Lock’s arm, her eyes wide. She pointed to the bedroom.
“Hide,” she whispered.

Lock grabbed the duffel bag from under the desk and walked quickly to the bedroom.
Katya stood and faced the door.

She heard Haruo’s voice calling to her from the other side. “Katya!”

Katya strode to the door, then took a deep breath and opened it. “Haruo. I wasn’t—”
Haruo entered brusquely, placing himself halfway between the kitchen and living
room. “Please come in,” Katya deadpanned.

“What exactly happened this morning?” Haruo demanded, whirling to face
her.

Katya walked past him into the kitchen. “Coffee? Tea?”

Positioning himself across the counter, he replied, “No. And where is Cairnes?”

“I don’t know.”

Haruo winced. “Katya, don’t do this. What the hell are you up to?”

She leaned on the counter. “Haruo, please calm down.”

He straightened. “I am calm. Where’s Cairnes?”

“I’ll call Ong Goh. They put out the warrant for his arrest, right?”

“He’s here, isn’t he?”

Katya mirrored Haruo, her hands still on the counter. “How can you ask me that?”

Haruo glared. “Because you’re not giving me any answers.”

“I went to see Li Shan because I suspected that Lock was meeting Vipul at The
Regiment.”

“And why wouldn’t you go to the police with that information?”

“Because Vipul would have vetted the meet. Any sign of the SPF would have scared
him off.”

“You could have consulted me.”

“There wasn’t time.” Katya came around the counter and faced Haruo. “I didn’t
think to check Lock’s email until last night. So I had to make a decision. I figured
the SPF could take weeks to find Vipul. He could have disappeared to Bihar or God
knows where else. I saw an opportunity, and I took it.”

“Where’s Cairnes?”

“How should I know?” She frowned, spreading her arms wide. “Want to search the
house?”

Haruo stared at her. Neither of them moved. Katya kept her mind clear, meeting
Haruo’s gaze, studying his irises. “Pack your things,” he said finally. “I’m shutting
you down. You’re going home. Now.”

“Haruo, it’s going to take me time to pack. And you’d need to charter a jet.”

“We’ll use the Agency jet. They can have it ready in an hour. I’ll wait.”

Katya stepped forward and placed her hand on Haruo’s shoulder. “Haruo, you’ve
forgotten. The jet won’t be available until tomorrow because Misha took Sophie
home.”

Haruo was stone-faced. But he wasn’t arguing.

“I promise. I’ll pack up and go as soon as I can. And I’m sorry to worry you.
I didn’t realize Li Shan would keep me there all night. You sure you don’t want
some tea?”

ψ

After Haruo had gone, Lock emerged from the bedroom, his legs unsteady. He gathered
himself and then pulled Katya to him and kissed her hard. He was surprised to find
there was nothing at all awkward about it. Their bodies seemed to fit together
like pieces of a puzzle.

He pulled back slightly, breathless. “Why did you do that? Cover for me like that?”
he asked.

She looked up, those dark, curious eyes drawing him in. Like they had from the
start. “That’s a stupid question.”

Lock smiled wistfully. Katya embraced him again, burying her face into his chest.
“You’re welcome,” she purred.

Lock bowed his head to hers. “Run away with me,” he whispered.

Katya looked up again. “What?”

“Run away with me.”

Katya’s lips parted, but she didn’t speak.

“I know. I shouldn’t have even asked.”

She smiled with half of her mouth. “I’m glad you did.”

Lock reached out to her, letting his fingers get tangled in the curls of her hair.
“You’re smart to decline.”

Katya laughed. “Am I? You’ve pretty much ruined my career.”

“You’re in awfully good spirits about that.”

She tilted her head back as though she were sizing him up. “The way I figure it,
you’ve got about twenty-four hours to make it up to me.”

Lock tried to smile, but it didn’t quite take. Twenty-four hours wasn’t nearly
enough. He leaned in and kissed her again, gently this time.

“One other thing,” whispered Katya.

“Anything.”

“You can’t fall for Li Shan.”

Thirty thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean
Wednesday, May 16th
10:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Sophie opened her eyes, suddenly awake, tension surging up through her chest.
The earth seemed to be moving beneath her, and she could hear a dull, steady roar.
She realized she was lying down with a blanket over her and another IV drip next
to her. But the walls of her room were curved, and there were too many windows.
Sitting up, she felt a deep, welling ache in her left side and lay back down reflexively.

“You’re awake,” said a woman’s voice.

Sophie turned her head and saw an older woman with a tan complexion, white hair,
red lipstick, and large gold earrings. She smiled at Sophie. Sophie stared back.

After a while, it occurred to her that the woman’s tone and body language were…motherly.
“You speak English?” Sophie asked her.

“Yes, dear.”

She considered this. “Why am I on an airplane?”

“You’re going home.”

She remembered arriving at the wharf. It had been dark. She remembered seeing
her father, bright lights and— “You were at the hospital.”

“Yes. My name is Misha.”

Misha. Sophie remembered someone saying that name. Before the hospital.
There had been another woman, too, with curly black hair. She had been there with
her father.

“Where’s my dad?”

“He’ll join you later. We felt it was safer for you this way.”

“Safer?”

Misha smiled. “Just a precaution. You’re safe now. We’ll be landing in Los Angeles
in a few hours, then we’re going to Washington. And your mother will meet you there.”

You’re safe now. Could that be true? If her father had to stay behind
for her safety, there was still danger. If not for her, for him.

“You must have many questions,” observed Misha. “The first thing you should know
is that you’re safe. The second thing is that you’re going to be fine. You have
some bumps and bruises—well, a bit more than that—but they’ll all heal in time.
The hardest thing will be dealing with what happened. But you have time for that.
Right now, you need to rest.”

“I’m not tired,” protested Sophie.

“You’re getting better already,” laughed Misha. “I think you’ll find that if you
close your eyes, you’ll go right back to sleep.”

“No,” said Sophie. She tried to sit up again, wincing with the pain from her ribs.
But this time she persisted, with a helping hand from Misha. She realized she was
on a sofa that ran lengthwise down the fuselage of a small private jet.

Misha moved the IV drip to the side and then sat down next to Sophie accommodatingly.
She rested her arm maternally on Sophie’s shoulder.

“I can’t remember…”

“That’s okay. That’s understandable. You have time.”

“It’s just that…I don’t want to sleep anymore.” Sophie remembered lying on a dark
road at night, the silhouettes of two men walking toward her, wanting to run, but
being unable to move. She looked away from the vision, back at the floor. Was this
real? Or was this just another dream? Would she wake up in a moment? There was
a room. A boarded up window. She shook her head and was back in the plane.

She turned to Misha and saw that the woman wasn’t smiling and that her eyes were
sad. They drooped slightly at the corners, rows of wrinkles forming half-moons
beneath them.

“I understand,” she said, her hand slowly caressing Sophie’s back and shoulders.
“You know, we have a wonderful selection of films to watch on this plane. Perhaps
you’d like to watch a nice comedy together. And maybe we can even whip up some
popcorn or something. Would you like that?”

Sophie felt her facial muscles moving in an unfamiliar way. Then she realized
she was smiling. Well, perhaps not smiling, not yet; but there was a quiver at
the corner of her mouth that could become one, in time. “Yes, that sounds nice,”
she replied.

Nariman Point, Mumbai • Kapoor Financial Planning Ltd
Wednesday, May 16th
6:00 p.m. IST (India Standard Time)

“C’mon, Vipul, answer your damn phone,” Swaran pleaded, wiping beads of sweat
from his brow with an already damp white handkerchief. He heard Vipul’s voice mail
pick up. “Vipul, we have a…situation…here. The lek has lost value, and I
don’t see…anyway, call me back.” Swaran clicked off, tossed the phone on his desk,
and stared dejectedly at the computer monitor, which displayed a jagged green line
on a black background that begin in the top left corner of the screen and ended
in the bottom right.

Brij appeared in the doorway, wearing his usual oversized Oxford button-down.
“Hey, boss, I wanted—”

“Not now, Brij.”

“Sorry,” said Brij, and turned to go.

“Wait. Wait.” Swaran pointed to the bar on the other side of the room. “Fix me
a scotch.”

Brij turned back into the room and wordlessly walked to the bar and picked up
a glass. “The good stuff?” he asked, staring at several decanters half-full of
amber-colored liquid.

“Might as well,” directed Swaran, mopping his brow again.

“What’s wrong, boss?” asked Brij as he poured them both two fingers’ worth of
a thirty-year-old scotch that Swaran had recently purchased.

“We’re ruined, that’s what.”

Brij handed Swaran a glass, but Swaran didn’t reach for it, so Brij simply set
it on his desk in front of him and sat down. “Ruined?” he echoed, taking a sip.
“But I thought—”

“I kept borrowing against these damn contracts. I knew that was a bad idea.
I knew it! But I didn’t follow my own instincts. Vipul is so damned…”

“But I thought—”

“You see, it only takes one mistake,” explained Swaran, finally reaching
for his glass. “Just one. He got greedy. We could have stayed with billion-dollar
contracts and been content to make five or ten million. Then, if we lost once,
we just lose ten million dollars.” Swaran drained the scotch in one frantic gulp.
“But we kept borrowing the money.”

“I remember you saying that. I remember you saying—”

“Vipul called me an idiot. He questioned my manhood. He threatened to cut me out
of the deal. I should have said, fine, fine, leave me out of it. But I am an
idiot because I didn’t say that. And this last email…be as aggressive as
possible. As aggressive. As possible. So I actually went to two banks at
the same time.”

“So what actually—?”

“Now I’m holding contracts for forty billion dollars in Albanian
leks that are presently worth several hundred million dollars less than
that. Everyone was saying that the Albanians were expected to reject that debt
restructuring. Everyone. Except Vipul. Vipul wanted me to borrow as much as possible to
buy forward contracts exchanging dollars for leks. The currency has been dropping
against the dollar all day, and it’s expected to be months before another
proposal is on the table. But my contract pays off next week. Next week! At
which point, I will be obligated to pay forty billion dollars for Albanian
leks that may only be worth thirty-nine billion dollars. And we are fully
leveraged!”

“I’m not sure I follow,” said Brij, his eyebrows furrowed. “What’s the bottom—?”

“The bottom line,” spat Swaran elliptically, finishing off the rest of his scotch.
“Come Wednesday morning, we’re going to be several hundred million dollars in debt,
one way or another.”

Brij followed his employer’s example, finishing his own scotch. He stared off
into a suddenly uncertain future. “I…I suppose this means—”

“What it means is that you need to pour us another round, young man. That’s what
it means. Then tonight, I shall put on my favorite jazz record, think of a young
woman I met long ago on a vacation in Vasco, draw a hot bath, and slit my wrists.”

“It isn’t so bad, is it?” asked Brij, who’d frozen in place in front of the bar.

“Pour! Pour! Life is too short not to drink it away!”

Brij poured quickly, spilling a bit as he did so.

“They’ll come after the Rathods, too, those crazy bastards! And rightfully so.
Technically, they’re creditors. But the banks will see right through that. Because
of that conversion option. They’ll go after them because there’s money there. Every
single business owned by some distant cousin’s wife, they’ll send an army of lawyers
to Singapore and argue…what’s that word?”

Brij handed Swaran another glass of scotch. “Boss, hey, were you serious about—?”

“Look through. Reach through. Something like that. They’ll tell the courts it’s
all just money laundering. Everybody with any connection to that family will be
running for cover. Serves him right.” Swaran took another long swig. “We’re all
just rats running for cover now.”

“Maybe the lek will—”

“I’ve still got some bonds,” Swaran said thoughtfully. “And the CDs. There’s the
petty cash, too. All together, it might be enough to get by on. I could liquidate
everything and then transfer the funds to a numbered account…”

“Wait, boss. Are you thinking of—?”

“But I’d need a new identity. And I’d have to leave my grandchildren.” Swaran
sighed and finished off his second glass of scotch. “Ah, that girl from Vasco.
I tell you, Brij, she was something else. Pour us another round, eh?”

39

Jurong East, Singapore • Katya's Apartment
Thursday, May 17th
5:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Katya awoke and shut off the alarm on her phone to avoid waking Lock. She had
to reach over him to do so, and she carefully unwound herself so that she was sitting
up, facing sideways, and watching Lock to be sure she hadn’t disturbed him. It
was still dark out, but her eyes had adjusted enough that she could plainly see
him, lying on his side, his chest rising and falling. She slid backward slowly,
dropping one leg behind her and placing her foot on the cool wooden floor. Balancing
with one arm, she slipped the other leg out and then stood up, carefully replacing
the sheets and comforters. Lock never moved.

She stood naked in the darkness for a few moments, just watching him, then tiptoed
around to her closet on the opposite side of the room and opened the door. After
pulling on a T-shirt and panties from her dresser drawers and putting them on,
she leaned over the bed and kissed Lock gently on the cheek. She went into the
bathroom and shut the door, turning on the light. Opening her medicine cabinet,
she reached for the mouthwash and rinsed and spit before looking at her reflection
in the mirror. She ran her fingers through her hair, which had become more unruly
than usual during their romp the night before, and smiled knowingly at her reflection.
It was no wonder Lock hadn’t woken. She herself was dizzy with fatigue.

She made her way into the living room, still tinted with the night’s darkness,
and sat down at her desk. A window with Lock’s email was still displayed. There
were another half-dozen panicked emails from brokers. She opened a new window and
checked her secure CIA email. After she’d satisfied herself that there was nothing
that couldn’t wait, she got up and headed back to the bedroom. She eased her way
back into bed and snuggled up next to Lock’s warm body.

Lock stirred. “What time is it?” he croaked.

“A little past five.”

“Christ.”

“You still have time. Go back to sleep.”

He rolled over, pulling Katya close. “I can sleep when I’m dead.”

ψ

Lock awoke to a midmorning sun shining in through a part in the curtains of the
bedroom’s sole window. He sat up. Katya was still asleep, recuperating from their
last round of lovemaking. He slipped quietly out from under the comforter and,
finding his clothes in a pile at the foot of the bed, got dressed. He walked to
the edge of the bed and kissed Katya on the cheek, lingering to stare at her, savoring
the moment. Finally, he straightened and picked up his duffel bag, which he’d left
next to the closet. He remembered listening to Katya argue with Haruo the day before,
while he’d sat, breathless, on her bed. He took one last look at Katya’s figure,
the white sheets tracing the outline of her hips, memories of the night before
flashing into his mind, a blurred montage of curves and shadowy recesses and dizzying
scents and trembling aches and secret, guttural sounds…he shut his eyes. He turned
away. He opened his eyes.

Maybe someday. He walked down the hallway, quickly opened the door, and
left the apartment.

ψ

Katya opened her eyes when she heard his footsteps moving away from her. She heard
the door close.

He was gone.

She inhaled deeply, hoping to catch his scent still lingering in her bed. Warm
dampness dotted her cheeks, and she cursed herself for being a child. “Damn it,
Katya,” she mumbled, wiping her cheeks and sitting up.

She looked through the open bedroom door, into the hallway. If she went after
him now, she could maybe catch him before his cab arrived. They’d live a life on
the edge, fugitives, living the kind of love story you only saw in the movies.

But this wasn’t the movies. The reality was that Lock had almost no chance of
making it, even with Li Shan’s help. And the two of them together, even less. Career
suicide was bad enough. Spending the next decade in prison was too much to ask.
It’s not like they’d end up together anyway.

By now, Haruo had likely pulled every string he had with the SPF. Every cop in
the city would have Lock’s photo. Possibly hers, too. She’d be surprised if he
made it even a day out there. But at least she’d given him a chance. That was something,
wasn’t it?

Jurong East, Singapore • Katya's Apartment
Thursday, May 17th
7:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

Lock had come and gone from Katya’s apartment enough to know how to find the nearest
busy intersection while making things difficult for anyone who was following him.
It was still early enough and cool enough that he could get away with wearing a
hooded sweatshirt, hood up. He tossed the secure cell Katya had given him in an
alley and made his way out to the intersection of Boon Lay Way and Jurong Town
Hall Road and flagged down a cab.

He told the driver to head to the Starbucks on Orchard Road, near the Shangri-La
hotel. When they arrived, Lock asked the driver to wait for him. He went in and
sat in a corner, looking out the tinted window, facing away from the door or the
counter. And waited. After counting a dozen orders being called out, he got up
and left. Back in the cab, he dug out the paper with Li Mun’s address on it and
showed it to the driver.

Lock watched out the rear window. There didn’t seem to be anyone following as
they made their way down a highway and then over a bridge. If someone was following
him, they were remarkably discreet about it. They passed something that looked
like it might have been Disneyland—Lock felt like he had drifted into a dream.

The roads became drives, and apartment buildings became condos and then houses.
The cab pulled around in a cul-de-sac and stopped. Lock looked out the window at
a rambling two-story home with a winding walkway leading to a porch.

“This is it,” announced the driver.

“Wait here,” instructed Lock. “Keep the meter running.” He got out of the cab
and had barely begun to take in his surroundings when he was confronted by two
large figures wearing black T-shirts and sunglasses.

“You’re going to have leave here, sir,” said one of the men.

“I’m here to see Li Shan,” said Lock.

The two men looked at each other knowingly. “Beat it,” said the second man, advancing
toward him.

Lock stepped back against the cab. “Can you just give her a message for me?”

“Maybe.”

“Tell her…” Lock realized he hadn’t actually thought out what he might say. He
decided he might as well be bold. “Tell her I’m the one who handed her Vipul Rathod’s
head on a silver platter.”

“Fuck you.”

“The woman who was here the night before last? I was the one who sent her.”

The second man stepped forward and placed his hand on the first man’s shoulder.
“Wait in the cab,” he instructed Lock. He turned to the first man. “Keep an eye
on him.”

Lock got back into the cab and waited.

“Where to now?” asked the driver.

“Nowhere. Just wait.”

“Your dollar.”

Not really, thought Lock, who didn’t even have a credit card.

A few minutes later, the second man reappeared and said something to the first.
In turn, he knocked on Lock’s window, motioning him to get out.

They frisked him, walked him through a darkened foyer, and gestured for him to
enter into the living room. Lock was struck by all the white and then struck again
when he saw a beautiful young woman seemingly materialize out of thin air. She
had long black hair pulled back in a silver barrette and a model’s face with classic
cheekbones and ripe lips. Images of Katya from the night before flashed into his
mind.

The woman looked at him through narrowed eyelids. “I’m told you had something
to do with…the information I was given.”

“I was the one who set the meet.”

“How can I know that?”

“My name is Lock.” He held out his hand. “Presumably you’re Li Shan.”

She ignored his hand.

Lock disregarded the slight and walked past her into the living room. Might as well be bold. “Nice
place,” he said, helping himself to a seat on the couch. “Let’s see. Regiment at
eight. I think my friend arrived here around, oh, say, 3 a.m. Must have woken you
up. You kept her here until you could verify that Vipul had arrived. She probably
left here a little after eight.”

Li Shan approached him cautiously but didn’t sit down. “Why did you send your
friend? Why not come yourself?”

“I was busy.”

“Why did you decide to give us that information?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

Lock smiled ruefully. “Let’s see. He killed your father. And he nearly did the
same to my daughter. Now he’s dead. How’s that?”

“That’s not what your friend told me.”

“Ah. Uh…let me guess. She told you that Vipul had stolen a bunch of money from
some people. Which is true…but I had my own reasons. We had our own reasons.”

Li Shan blinked slowly but said nothing for a few moments. “Why are you here?”
she asked.

“I need a new identity. And then I need to disappear.”

She smiled for the first time. Lock decided she was beautiful, the way a cobra
is beautiful. Something to be admired for its sleek perfection—from a safe distance.
“Is that all?” she asked.

“And also, I need to hide a great deal of money,” said Lock.

The White House, Washington DC
Monday, May 21st
9:00 a.m. SGT (Singapore Time)

“Let me see if I understand this,” Michael Ryan said, slumping in his chair. He
felt as though he’d spent the last two weeks inside this same damned White House
meeting room. Of course, it had been several different rooms, but they all looked
alike to him.

“All right,” said Haruo Quartan, who sat next to Brackenridge.

Ryan thought Quartan looked small, out of place, and uncomfortable in a suit.
It was difficult to believe he was a station chief. No wonder it had taken them
two fucking weeks to track down a small-time mobster. Brackenridge, meanwhile,
removed his glasses with his fat fingers and wiped his oversized brow on the sleeve
of his jacket. Ryan knew Brackenridge looked uncomfortable for a different reason.
It was his head on the chopping block. “This thug from Singapore—”

“He was hardly a thug,” interrupted Quartan with surprising and crisp assurance.
“He studied economics at Oxford and got a master’s degree in finance from Harvard.”

“Whatever. He’s still from a crime family, right? I mean, basically, that’s what
we’re talking about here, right? The Singapore Mafia?”

“Yes,” agreed Quartan.

“So this guy hires a hacker from Detroit to steal this technology. Which, by the
way, renders all the encryption that safeguards our financial systems obsolete. So
that’s my first question: How the fuck is that even allowed to happen? One nerd
from Detroit?”

Much to Ryan’s irritation, Moya agreed, in his nasal-toned I-told-you-so way.
“The president is also upset about this aspect of the case.”

Brackenridge was polishing his glasses for what seemed like the fifth time in
as many minutes. “That’s not us. That’s the NSA.”

“Whatever,” said Ryan, waving his hand. “He then uses this technology, this quantum computer,
to unleash all kinds of hell on Wall Street, until we’re forced to start giving
him advance notice of decisions from central banks to avoid a complete fucking
meltdown.”

“In rough terms, yes,” agreed Quartan.

Ryan nodded. “Thank you. So then this guy enlists a thousand other guys
as business partners in these little investment firms and starts sending them investment
tips. Based on the information we’re giving him.”

“Correct.”

“So he’s basically splitting up his investments into a thousand pieces so that
we can’t detect any large bets based on that information. Which fucking worked,
by the way, because, God knows, we tried to find something.”

“The volume of the currency markets is several trillion dollars a day,” volunteered
Brackenridge. “It’s very—”

“Don’t you think I fucking know that? I’m the chairman of the God damn Fed, you—”
Ryan cut himself off. He took a deep breath. “So he breaks his bets up into a thousand
pieces with forward contracts, which are private anyway. There’s nothing obviously
tied back to him. Or any one person, for that matter. Nothing we could go on. Then
you guys turn the hacker—” Ryan gestured to Quartan, “—who hands over his email,
exposing the whole thing.”

“Basically, yes,” confirmed Quartan.

“Okay, so here’s a question. Why the hell did it take so long?”

“We infiltrated his operation, turned a key operative, and then obtained incriminating
evidence, in a mere ten days,” said Quartan.

“A mere ten days. This guy moved almost a trillion dollars in that time.”

“On the tenth day, we terminated the principal target, and our mole reversed the
bank’s paper losses, giving them legal recourse to collect their losses from the
various partnerships.”

“Legal recourse. That makes it all okay, I guess.” Ryan shook his head,
as if the implications of that were unspeakable.

“The president is extremely concerned,” added Moya.

Ryan frowned. “Another question. The mole. He’s just gone?”

“We lost him, yes,” said Quartan.

“We didn’t lose him,” corrected Brackenridge. “We know he—”

“Let him answer the question. At least he gives me straight answers.” Ryan turned
to Quartan. “So what you’re saying is…the guy who, you know, was the linchpin of
this whole fucking thing, the guy who knows how to use the technology that basically
gives him complete control of our stock markets…this guy is still out there?”

Epilogue

The State Department, Washington DC
Friday, August 17th
9:00 a.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Katya made her way through the corridors of the State Department, saying hello
to a few now-familiar faces as she passed. She wore a burgundy jacket and black
slacks and walked deliberately, still getting accustomed to wearing heels on a
daily basis. She reached her cubicle, pausing to study the curious site of her
name on the black plastic tag next to the entrance.

She sat down at her desk, wishing, as she did almost every morning, that she had
some kind of view. This was a good job, she reminded herself, and she was lucky
to have it. She knew she’d never be at home in an office like this, but it would
do for now.

She studied the list of messages in her inbox. She’d been out late last night—learning
how to be social again—and she hadn’t checked her email since yesterday evening.

When she saw the subject of her first email—Hello Again—she stopped breathing.
She clicked open the message before she could tell herself that she didn’t particularly
care, that it had just been a mistake in judgment, made under duress—

Dear Katya,

How are you? I hope you’re okay. I wanted to let you know, I’m alive and well.
And to let you know Sophie’s recovery is going well. She is alive because of you.
I’ll always be grateful for that. And for the time we had together.

Love always,

Lock

Katya leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath. Standing, she paced around
her office three times and then sat back down. After clicking the email forward
button, she began to type:

To: CIA InfoSec

From: Katya Brittain

Subject: FWD: Hello Again

The email I’m forwarding is from Lochan Cairnes, who is on our _

She stopped typing for a moment, then hit the backspace four times and resumed:

your priority target list. As you will note from his profile, he is an expert
hacker, so presumably he’s masked the IP from which this email was sent. However,
I’m forwarding it to you as per procedure. Please advise if anything comes of it.

Of course, there was a good chance InfoSec had already read it. Haruo had pulled
what strings he could to keep her from facing charges, but he also wasn’t about
to take the fall for her. Which was only fair. Yet it meant that the CIA and NSA
were likely watching her every move. And reading her every email.

And for the time we had together. That wasn’t going to help her cause
any, especially since she’d insisted she had no influence over Lock, that he’d
be too paranoid to agree to meet with her. She’d reminded them that he’d used the
same trick himself to set up Vipul. But thanks to Lock’s careless remark, she’d
probably have to rehash the whole argument.

She certainly wasn’t going to make things worse by concealing the fact that he’d
contacted her. She stared up at the harsh fluorescent light emanating from behind
a semitransparent ceiling tile. He was out there somewhere, while she was stuck
in here. Why didn’t she try to bring him in? It probably wouldn’t get her
out of purgatory, but it had to be worth something. Just because she’d
made a stupid mistake didn’t mean she had to keep paying for it. The thing was,
even if she could get him to come out of hiding, she knew she’d never be able to
go through with it. She couldn’t do that to him.

She exhaled sharply. He was, in point of fact, a criminal. The kind of man she’d
built an entire career fighting against. Why she’d thrown away that career, why
she still wanted to protect him—that was an argument she was tired of having with
herself.

Besides, her boss was expecting a brief on the state of oil production in Tanzania
before lunch. Which would get compiled into a bunch of other similar reports on
the socioeconomic influences of sub-Saharan Africa, which, in turn, would be condensed
into a summary and included in another report, and so on, until, if she was lucky,
her work would survive as part of a bullet point in a briefing to an assistant
to the secretary of state on her upcoming meeting with the deputy president of
South Africa.

You’re welcome, Lock, she thought as she pulled up the document on her
monitor. Her fingers began clicking methodically on the keyboard. “Offshore oil
and natural gas reserves continue to attract foreign investment…”

Hainan, China • Overlooking Yalong Bay
Saturday, August 18th
7:00 p.m. CST (China) (China Standard Time)

Lock leaned back in the oversized wicker chair, staring out at the bright blue
waters of Yalong Bay. He was barefoot and wearing Ray-Bans, a white tank top, and
mesh track pants. He took a sip of the Barbancourt fifteen-year he’d had shipped
in from Haiti. Ever since his run-in with the Rathod crime family, he’d been unable
to enjoy scotch. In fact, for the first month or so, while he’d been forging his
new life, he hadn’t wanted a drink, period. Now that he was beginning to settle
in a bit, he’d been surprised to discover that a fine rum was agreeable to him.
It seemed to go with the tropical climate—and the fact that he wasn’t looking over
his shoulder as often.

Lock glanced over at Kafka, sitting in an identical chair next to him. As always,
sheaves of black hair stuck out at random angles from his head. Lock was still
getting used to seeing his best friend in such a different locale. Or maybe it
was just that he was starting to tan.

Lock took a sip of rum. “We have the call with Global Witness tomorrow, right?”

“Right.”

“Remember to use my alias on the call. Last time—”

“I know. John Lee. I got it. It’s just such an easy name to forget.”

“That’s the whole point. And then we have Ray in the afternoon?”

“They’ve got the cameras in place,” explained Kafka. “But Ray wants to work through
something he calls a protocol. Basically, when are his guys supposed to take action?”

Lock arched an eyebrow. “Whenever it looks like Sophie might be in danger.”

“Yeah, but specifically. Like, if a friend picks her up, do they follow the car?
That kind of thing.”

“Of course they follow the car. What’s the point, otherwise?”

“It’s just an example. Don’t blame the guy for wanting to be thorough.”

Lock rubbed his chin. “Good point.” He was silent again for a moment, overwhelmed
by the beauty of the bay. Li Shan had set him up with a helluva hideout. Of course,
it hadn’t come cheaply. In the distance, he could hear strains of music from a
hotel farther down the beach. Weekend tourists from the mainland. “What’s for—?”

He was interrupted by the little chime that meant he’d received a text message.
He shifted in his seat so he could pull the phone from his track pants. There were
only so many people it could be from because only so many people had that particular
number. It was a “burner” number, acquired via an Internet service. His phone could
only get local service so that he could call Kafka or someone on his staff. Outside
of that, he relied entirely on anonymous Internet services and the wireless Internet
access on the phone. Since he almost never left this little compound overlooking
the bay, except to go down to the beach, it worked out fine. More importantly,
it made it virtually impossible for the CIA to trace him via his phone.

He read the message:

Cleopatra is live.

Symbols crashed in Lock’s chest. He sat up. “It’s her!” he exclaimed. He looked
over at Kafka, as though seeking his blessing.

“Well, go,” said Kafka, waving a hand at him.

Lock stood up and walked quickly across the veranda and through the French doors
that led into the main living room. He hadn’t actually expected her to try and
reach him. She had to have figured out that her kidnapping was his fault. And,
if she hadn’t, Karen had surely clarified the matter. Karen had been abundantly
clear about not wanting Lock to have anything to do with Sophie. If it hadn’t been
for Dennis, he’d never have even been able to set up the trust fund for her. He’d
offered to provide a twenty-four-hour bodyguard for her, too, but Karen had insisted
it would only scare her.

Lock made his way through the living room and down a broad stairwell into what
looked like it had been intended as a library, except there were almost no books
on the teak shelves. He burst through another pair of doors into a windowless room
with a large wooden desk at one end and an elaborately patterned Turkish carpet
covering most of the floor. He turned on a light and walked around behind the desk.
The desk chair creaked as he sat down and opened up his laptop.

Lock clicked through on a link he’d bookmarked in his browser specifically for
this eventuality and brought up an encrypted video chat service. The image of Sophie’s
face appeared suddenly on the screen, her eyes focused slightly to one side. She’d
probably started doing something else while she’d waited for Lock to get her text
and join her.

“Sophie,” he prompted, his voice catching slightly as he studied her face. He’d
been concerned that seeing her via video chat would bring back bad memories…for
both of them. Maybe it was the fact that she looked like the Sophie he remembered,
the Sophie from Before, but the only thing he felt was gratitude.

Her great big blue eyes focused on the camera. “Hi, Dad,” she began flatly.

“How are you?” asked Lock, knowing there was no simple answer to that question.

“Fine,” she replied. “You?”

“I miss you.”

Sophie looked to one side. “I’m supposed to tell Mom and Dennis if you try to
contact me.”

“You should tell them.”

“Won’t they track you down if I do?”

Lock felt his throat tighten. He coughed lightly. “No, sweetie. But they probably
wouldn’t let you talk to me.”

“There’s no probably about it,” confirmed Sophie, a hint of sarcasm in
her voice.

Lock smiled. “So I’m glad you didn’t tell them yet.”

“I suppose you can’t tell me where you are.”

“That’s probably best.”

“Is it somewhere nice?”

“Yes. Except that you’re not here.” Lock paused. He thought back to the email
Katya had sent him shortly after he’d fled. “How’s therapy?”

“It’s good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. There’s this other girl in group who’s been to Hawaii too, and we’re BFFs
now.”

“That’s nice. What’s her name?”

“Mallory. She’s really funny.”

Lock felt his chest swelling. Thank you, Mallory, whoever you are. “Friends
that make you laugh are the best.”

“Yeah.” Sophie’s eyes wandered again. “Is it true what everyone says about you?”

Lock braced himself. “What are they saying about me?”

“That you’re a criminal. You’re not, though, right? Not really.”

Lock took a breath. She’d been through enough without her carrying that around.
“I made some mistakes,” he admitted softly. “But I’m not a criminal.”

“Mom says you stole a lot of money.”

Lock thought back to the instructions he’d given Vipul’s broker network, which
among other things had included a request to divert a million dollars apiece into
a numbered account in Bermuda. “That’s not exactly what happened.”

“What did happen? Why are you hiding?”

“I got involved with some very bad people, Sophie.”

“Obviously,” she snapped.

“And I’m sorry you were ever mixed up in it.” Lock silently cursed himself. It
sounded as if he was apologizing for being late to pick her up. There was no apology
that could make up for what he’d put her through.

Sophie was silent. Her eyes drifted to the left. “I should go.”

“I made some mistakes. Do you remember when we talked about—?”

“Mom and Dennis will be home soon. I should go.”

Lock slumped slightly in his chair. “Okay.”

“I’ll text you again soon. Bye, Dad.”

“Bye, Sophie. I love—” The video went abruptly black. Lock leaned back in the
chair, listening to it creak. “—you,” he finished.

Back out on the veranda, Kafka eyed him critically. “How’d it go?”

“Not so good,” Lock lamented.

“I’ll fix you a drink,” offered Kafka, rising up in his chair. “Rum?”

Lock waved his hand. “That’s fine. I don’t want a drink.”

Kafka sat back down wordlessly.

“They’re telling her I’m a criminal.”

Kafka laughed, gesturing out to the bay. “You are a criminal.”

“I know. But…that can mean a lot of things at that age. I don’t want her to be
frightened or think I’m going to hurt her.”

“She’s probably just curious. I mean, Karen basically hates you, and Dennis just
stays out of it.” Kafka had tried to act as Lock’s intermediary before joining
him in Hainan.

“What’s worse is that I did hurt her. I just don’t want her looking over
her shoulder for the rest of her life. And when the time comes, I don’t want her
to think she can’t take advantage of the trust fund.”

“It’s going to take time, Lock.”

He sighed. “You’re right. I guess it was a start.”

“Exactly. I mean, she did contact you. That’s something.”

Lock stared out at the bay, bisected by a bright ray of reflected sunlight. The
sun would be setting soon. “What’s for dinner tonight?”

“Grilled prawns, I think.”

Lock felt his stomach growl and grunted happily. “Too bad Sophie can’t just come
live with me. This is the life.”

“Eh, maybe she can one day. Never say never and all that.”

“Maybe.”

“I mean, look at us. Who’d ever have thought we’d be here?”

“Sure would be nice to have Sophie here, though,” insisted Lock. “That’s the only
thing missing.” Which wasn’t quite accurate. But he hadn’t told his old friend
about Katya yet. Besides, she’d never replied to his last email.

“Maybe someday, Lock.”

“Yeah. Maybe someday.”

Afterward

The science, finance, economics, and politics behind this story are real.

Practical quantum computers like the Wave Nine don’t yet exist, but active research is booming. Estimates for overcoming the technical challenges range from a decade on out, but the theory is well understood. (In fact, at least one firm claims to have already developed a quantum computer, though this is widely disputed.)

It’s also true that our cryptographic infrastructure was never designed to withstand attacks from quantum computers. Although the bulwark of this infrastructure, the Advanced Encryption Standard, has yet to be broken (at least not in a practical way), new quantum algorithms are being discovered rapidly. There is no guarantee that AES will hold up in the face of powerful quantum computers.

Fortunately, there are very smart people who recognize this and are working diligently to ensure something like the scenario in this novel never happens. The first post-quantum cryptography conference was held in Belgium in 2006, and has been repeated every year or two since.

Still, we have a long way to go before this work can be standardized and integrated into our global computing infrastructure. The process that culminated in the adoption of AES took three years, and it was more than another decade before AES was fully integrated into standard network protocols and fully debugged. The good news is that we’re far better prepared now for the adoption of new encryption standards. The bad news is that even a small window of vulnerability could be disastrous.

Our financial systems are increasingly dependent on the integrity of our cryptographic infrastructure. We also now live in a truly global economy: no crisis is strictly local. Thus, it’s not terribly far-fetched to think that major advances in computing could ultimately threaten a worldwide economic collapse.

The idea that the potential for such a collapse could be used to greenmail wealthy nations into sharing confidential information is speculative. But the value of that information is most certainly not. The daily volume of trades in the foreign exchange market is estimated to be nearly four trillion dollars. The volume in forward contracts alone is estimated to be nearly half a trillion dollars of that, and these are relatively unregulated. Not only that, but forward contracts offer tremendous leverage. With a relatively modest amount of capital and advance notice of the actions of central banks, a savvy investor could quickly and discretely earn a tenfold return. It’s certainly possible that such information could be leaked via email. In fact, that actually happened while I was writing this novel.

All that said, this is still a work of fiction. There are enough doomsayers out there predicting the collapse of the global economy without adding any fuel to the fire. In all likelihood, we’ll upgrade our cryptographic infrastructure in lockstep with our computing capabilities. And, hopefully, we’ll improve the controls over the dissemination of extraordinarily valuable information like central-banking policy changes. My point here is not that something like the premise of this novel will happen.

It’s just that it could.

Acknowledgements

I have a lot of people to thank. Before I do, please understand that any mistakes or faults in this novel are entirely my own responsibility.

If you enjoyed this novel, my editor, Tammy Salyer, is a big part of the reason why. I was very lucky to be able to work with her. She understood what I was trying to do from the start, and her critique improved the story a great deal. In addition, she helped tighten up my prose and curb my copious infractions of the accepted rules of grammar and style. Finally, my first attempt at a novel having ended, more or less, in failure, her enthusiasm for the project gave me a much-needed boost of confidence.

Jeremy Foster provided keen insights into the workings of high finance. In particular, he was the one who suggested greenmailing the G8 for inside information from the central banks. He also suggested the use of the foreign exchange markets as the way to turn that information into money. He corrected numerous mistakes in technical details and jargon. Finally, he ultimately helped me develop one of the themes of the book—the fragility and corruptibility of our financial institutions.

James LaBranche read and critiqued the first draft of the novel and patiently answered all my annoying follow-up questions. The story is better for it.

Russ Galen was kind enough to give me detailed critiques of my early attempts at a novel, from which I learned a great deal. The fact that he took me at all seriously as a novelist also helped to validate my aspirations of becoming one.

Jason Rush, Laura Weidman-Powers, Lynne-Marie Eatwell, Gert Basson, and Matthew King all read various drafts or installments of my prose and helped me grow as a writer. They believed in me and encouraged me for no good reason.

Janet Joseph, my personal assistant, is the one who made it possible for me to work crazy hours by eliminating so many tedious and unpleasant distractions from my life. One day, her dream of becoming a chef is going to happen and I’ll be lost.

A Favor

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As a new indie author, reviews make all the difference. Please take a moment to go to Amazon and leave a quick review like, “I really enjoyed Qubit!”

Thank you!