Qubit, page 14
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.
