Evil Genius (32 page)

Cadel fumbled for his Axis security pass. On it were printed his name and address. "I'm Cadel," he insisted. "Truly. Look—see? 'Cadel Piggott.'"

"Then who's Tom Carter?"

"I don't know. Maybe they've made a mistake."

"
I-bet-they-have,
" said Sonja. "
Small-one-was-weird.
"

"Oh, god yeah." Kay-Lee snorted. "With the nose spray. What a creep. Giggled all the time."

It was as if a gear in Cadel's brain suddenly ground to a halt, then started up again.

"He
what
?" Cadel gasped. "
He giggled
?"

"All the time."

"What did he look like? Was he fat?"

"Oh, yeah," Kay-Lee drawled.

"
Other-one-fatter,
" Sonja added.

"What color were his eyes?" said Cadel. "The giggling one?"

Sonja and Kay-Lee exchanged glances. There was a long pause, broken only by Sonja's noisy breathing. At last the Dynavox slowly ground out: "
Hard-to-say. All-screwed-up. Small.
"

"He had a sty," Kay-Lee remarked, and Cadel sat down on the bed.

"Oh my god," he breathed.

"What? Do you know him?"

"What about his hair? What was that like?"

"Gray."

"
Disgusting.
"

"Sort of floppy. Lank."

"
He-smelled-of-eucalyptus.
"

The Virus,
Cadel thought. It had to be the Virus. The sty. The giggling. The eucalyptus. Had to be.

But why?
Why?

"
What's-wrong?
"said Sonja, through her Dynavox. Cadel, however, needed more information.

"What about the other guy?" he wanted to know. "You said he was fat?"

"Huge." Kay-Lee was watching Cadel carefully. "Enormous. Red in the face."

"
No-hair.
"

No hair? That ruled out Maestro Max. Though Max wasn't all that fat, anyway. Just a little plump.

"He did most of the talking," Kay-Lee revealed. "What else, Son?"

"
Pompous.
"

"Yeah, he was that all right."

"
Lewis. Detective-Sergeant-Lewis.
"

"Old," said Kay-Lee. "Late fifties?"

"
Big-mole-sticking-out-of-left-nostril,
" said Sonja, and Cadel blinked.

He stared at her, his mind balking.

The Virus, yes. That wasn't beyond the realms of possibility. He'd believe anything of Axis. But
Stuart Piggott?
How could that be?

"You know them, don't you?" Kay-Lee inquired. "I can tell from your face."

"Did you see any identification?" Cadel asked her, ignoring the question. "Did they show you anything?"

"Sure did. Bloody everything."

"
Photo-ID,
" said Sonja.

"Did they come in a car? Did you see it?"

Sonja's head rolled back and forth. Kay-Lee replied: "I did. Very flashy. Silver Commodore."

Stuart's car was a silver Commodore. Cadel felt suddenly as if he was going to be sick.

Dr. Vee and Stuart Piggott?

"What's going on?" Kay-Lee demanded. "Don't tell me they weren't real coppers. They had to be."

"I don't think so," Cadel whispered.

"You telling more of your porkies, little man?"

"
Don't.
" The Dynavox voice was fairly flat, but Sonja was obviously disturbed. Her movements had become more erratic. "
He's-scared.
"

"Why? What's wrong? Who were they, if they weren't coppers?"

"I think..." Cadel took a deep breath. "I think one was my—was the man who adopted me."

His two companions stared.

"Bull," Kay-Lee said at last.

"
Are-you-an-orphan?
"

"He's a liar, Son, remember? How can we believe anything he says?"

"
I-was-fostered,
" Sonja continued, ignoring Kay-Lee. "
Didn't-take. Ended-up-here. Mother-insane. What-about-you?
"

Cadel looked at Sonja. The grin on her face had nothing to do with what she was feeling, he reminded himself. It was something over which she had no control.

"My mother's dead," he replied. "My father—my father's in jail."

"Chip off the old block," said Kay-Lee. "
You
should be in jail, mate."

But Cadel wasn't listening. He was trying to work out what had happened. If Dr. Vee had come with Stuart Piggott, to tell Sonja (alias Kay-Lee) that Eiran Dempster didn't exist—what did that mean? Surely they weren't
undercover
cops? It seemed unlikely, especially if they had given Kay-Lee a false name. Tom Carter. Why would they call Cadel "Tom Carter" if they were real policemen?

Dr. Vee and Stuart Piggott. It was a crazy combination. As far as Cadel was aware, they had met each other only once, during the Piggotts' tour of the Axis Institute. Yet they had been working together closely. Imitating policemen. Using false names. For what reason?

To warn Sonja?

Maybe Dr. Vee had tapped into Cadel's computer, found the Partner Post stuff, and gone to Stuart. Maybe Stuart had decided to put a stop to Partner Post before it
did
come to the attention of the police. But that didn't make sense. Stuart could simply have told Cadel to shut up shop—he didn't have to go to all the trouble of impersonating a policeman. Especially not when it was against the law. Stuart was a lawyer. Why would he want to break the law and risk his career?

Perhaps because he didn't have a career to risk. Perhaps because he wasn't a lawyer after all. It occurred to Cadel that Stuart didn't appear to have approached anyone else on the Partner Post client list. Most of them had been sending e-mails quite happily for days, as if nothing had happened. They would have reacted like Sonja if they'd been told. They would have taken their business elsewhere. And if Stuart's main purpose had been to shut down Partner Post, he would certainly have made a clean sweep of all the clients.

So why Kay-Lee—why Sonja, that is—and no one else?

Because Sonja's important, Cadel decided. Because Sonja is my friend. Because I confided in Sonja. Dr. Vee would know that if he'd hacked into my computer. What's more, Dr. Vee wouldn't have gone to Mr. Piggott with information about Cadel. Dr. Vee knew who Cadel's real father was. If Dr. Vee had been concerned, he would have gone to Thaddeus. With a message for Dr. Darkkon.

There were really only two possibilities. Either Stuart and Dr. Vee were working together as government agents, planted within Dr. Darkkon's organization to keep an eye on him, or they were both working for Dr. Darkkon.
Both
of them.

Whatever the case, Cadel's whole upbringing had been one big lie.

"Cadel. Hey!" Kay-Lee was shaking his arm. "Wake up! You can't stay here!"

"
You-haven't-told-us-the-whole-story.
" Sonja had moved her wheelchair around. Her intent brown gaze was fixed on Cadel. "
Is-Lewis-police-or-not?
"

"No," said Cadel, tugging at strands of his own loose hair. "I don't know what he is. He's been tricking me. All my life. His wife—god!" Cadel felt like pounding the wall. Could it all have been a
front?
Absolutely
everything?
If so, how on earth had he missed it? "I don't even know who they are! Either of them!"

"You're not making any sense," Kay-Lee said dryly.

"I know. It's hard to explain. My dad—my
real
dad..." He trailed off, but Sonja had missed nothing, despite her involuntary jerks and twitches.

"
This-has-something-to-do-with-your-real-dad? The-one-in-jail?
" she asked, and Cadel caught his breath.

He had remembered. The sequence of events: bang, bang, bang. On Wednesday, Dr. Deal had beaten him up. On Thursday, the two phoney policemen had visited Kay-Lee. On Friday, Sonja, masquerading as Kay-Lee, had given Cadel the old heave-ho.

Right afterward, Dr. Darkkon had started talking about Cadel's mother.
You can't trust 'em—not the best of 'em,
he had said. Really drumming it in.
They just drop you and walk away.
As if trying to undermine Cadel's faith in his female friend, without mentioning any names.

Was it truly a coincidence?

"It can't be," Cadel said aloud. But if Dr. Darkkon had decided that Sonja (alias Kay-Lee) was dangerous, what better way to get rid of her than tell her the truth? She was bound to drop Cadel like a hot brick—just as his mother had done. Talking about Cadel's faithless mother was simply one way of driving the lesson home.

"God." Cadel started slamming his fists against his temples. "God, how did I miss it? How could I be so
stupid?
"

"Don't do that; you'll hurt yourself," Kay-Lee exclaimed, and Sonja said, "
What? Tell-me-what?
"

"It's my dad," Cadel croaked, in amazement. "It's got to be."

"What about your dad?"

"This is all him." Cadel looked from one to the other, from Sonja's tense face to Kay-Lee's puzzled scowl and back again. "It's hard to believe, but this is all his doing. I know it. I can feel it. He doesn't want me talking to you."

"
Why-not?
" Sonja questioned. She struggled with her Dynavox, but seemed to have trouble pointing. Kay-Lee, watching her uneasily, said, "It's nothing to do with you, Son. No one knows about you. The police talked to me."

"It's not you, Sonja." Cadel was thinking hard. Sonja had been his friend since his days at Crampton. But on Wednesday, for the first time ever, he had struck out on his own. He had kept something from Thaddeus: Dr. Deal's name.

And that had set off someone's inner alarm.

"It's me," he abruptly declared. "They think we're too close—I bet that's it. They think I'm getting too independent, so they want to separate us because they think you're a bad influence. They don't want me to have friends of my own. They're frightened."

"Who are?" asked Kay-Lee.

"My dad." Cadel was aware of a burning sensation inside his chest. He was almost gasping with rage. But such rage, he knew, was counterproductive. If you were too angry, you stopped thinking straight. You made mistakes. You were foolish.

Don't get mad,
he told himself. Calm down.
Calm down.

"Listen," he said, turning to Sonja, "if I sent you a couple of photos, could you tell me if you recognized the people in them?"

Sonja uttered a forced noise that was almost certainly a yes. As Cadel waited, she made one—two—three stabs at the Dynavox before finally connecting.

"
By-e-mail?
"
she.
slowly inquired.

"No." Cadel shook his head. "No more e-mail. We can't use e-mail; they're plugged in somehow. I'll have to snail-mail the photos. I'll do it tomorrow. And then you can ... you can..." What? They couldn't use their old code; someone had broken it. The Virus, probably.

"
More-Jorge?
"

"No. At least—no. I don't think so."

"
I
sent that last message," Kay-Lee pointed out. It was her first contribution for some time. "I went to an Internet cafe. Sonja was scared that they had her computer tapped somehow. She didn't want the police to know she was warning you."

"That's good," said Cadel absently. "That's really good. But we can't be too careful. Swear to god, I know what I'm talking about. That guy with the giggles? He's a computer genius. I bet you he's been monitoring us the whole time."

"
Why?
" Sonja queried.

"Because my dad probably put him up to it." Cadel couldn't imagine where to start. He gnawed frantically at his fingernails. "It's so hard to explain. My dad isn't normal. He's got plans for me. Everything has to be the way he wants it. He's got a whole network of people helping him on the outside."

"But—"

"I should never have come here." Now Cadel was beginning to panic. "I might have been followed. The disguise might not have worked. Where am I going to say I've been? Suppose he broke the Jorge code? It wasn't too hard—"

"Hey. Calm down," Kay-Lee urged, with a degree of sympathy in her voice that Cadel found suspicious. "Just don't get upset, okay? There's nothing to worry about."

Cadel looked at her sharply. "I'm not a loony," he snapped. "I'm not paranoid."

"No, of course not."

"
I'm not!
"

"
Show-me-the-pholos,
" Sonja interjected. "
Then-I'II-know-for-sure.
"

"Yes, but how can we talk?" said Cadel. "You can't send me mail—the Piggotts might spot it before I do. You can't call me at home—"

"Why not?"

"Because it's
dangerous.
" Cadel was getting annoyed with Kay-Lee. "He doesn't want me talking to Sonja—"

"Your dad, you mean?"

"Yes!" How many more times did he need to say it?

"
Who-is-your-dad?
" Sonja asked.

Cadel hesitated. The secret of Dr. Darkkon's identity was worth killing for. He didn't want to spread the risk around.

"I'd better not tell you," he said reluctantly. "The less you know, the better." Seeing the skeptical look on Kay-Lee's face, he struggled to control his temper. "Look," he added, "you're entitled to think I'm off my head. I know what this looks like. But if you recognize the people in the photos I send you, then you'll have to agree I'm not the only one who's acting crazy." An idea struck him. "Did they tell you where they were from? What station they were attached to? Because if they did, you should call up. I bet no one will have heard of them there."

Kay-Lee shot a sidelong glance at Sonja. "Well, maybe we will," she said.

"Meanwhile, how can we talk?" said Cadel. "Maybe I can call you. On a public phone."

"You're sure
our
line won't be tapped?" Kay-Lee asked with delicate sarcasm.

"I hope not." Cadel, in contrast, was quite serious. "God, you might be right. What if the phone's tapped? It might be. They might be afraid I'll try to contact you."

"Cadel—"

"And I'm probably being followed, too, so we can't meet. Unless I disguise myself. But I don't know if that'll work. I don't know if it
has
worked. God—" He was beginning to panic again. "What if they've bugged this place? What if they're listening now?"