Qubit, page 17
“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.
