Qubit, page 27
“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.”
