Evil Genius (41 page)

There had been only a few changes overnight, and those had mostly occurred because of activity on Adolf's computer. Surveillance reports told Cadel that Terry's trip, the previous day, had been to Abraham's house. It appeared that Terry had found the spare key (after a short search) and had let himself in. An hour later he had emerged again and driven to the hospital—looking for Abraham's "important information," no doubt. Cadel thought of Abraham's post-office-box key, which was sitting snugly in his own wallet. He wondered if Abraham might have left the box number and location carelessly scrawled somewhere. He hoped not. It was easy enough to get into a post-office box, even without a key. If Terry should find the box in question and pry it open, he might stumble upon a letter from Sonja. That would be very bad indeed.

But according to the surveillance reports, Terry had gone nowhere near Strathfield post office the previous day. Instead, he had returned from the hospital to the institute, where he had stayed until one in the morning. Then he had spent the rest of the night at Tracey Lane's house. According to the surveillance team, he was still there. So was Tracey.

Tracey herself had recently been promoted to "double-code-red" status. This was because she had been looking for love outside the institute. Despite the fact that she was seeing both Terry
and
Dr. Deal, the Fiihrer's report to Luther described how a pair of Grunts, sent to tail Tracey, had seen her kissing another lawyer in his car.
Owing to this gentleman's well-known crusade against prominent underworld figures, we should be treating her activities with the utmost seriousness,
Adolf had written.
I would suggest placing the entire institute under yellow alert until we get to the bottom of what looks to be some sort of conspiracy.
Apparently annoyed by Luther's careless response (
Tracey Lane is notorious, we all know that—she would kiss a prize ferret if she felt it would help her career),
the Fiihrer had notified Thaddeus. In a security-coded e-mail, he had informed Thaddeus that he entertained grave concerns about the safety of the institute. Certain members of the staff seemed to be conspiring together, he warned, but Luther Lasco had refused to authorize a yellow alert. Adolf therefore wanted to discuss his concerns with Thaddeus in private.

Cadel knew Thaddeus. He knew the way Thaddeus talked and wrote. He could tell from Thaddeus's reply that the psychologist was weary of Adolf's paranoia. Nevertheless, it was impossible to ignore Adolf entirely. What if the Fiihrer was right for once? So Thaddeus had agreed to meet him at two o'clock on Friday, an hour before his scheduled meeting with Luther, Adolf, and Tracey Lane.

We'll use the armory,
wrote Thaddeus,
if that's private enough for you.

Bingo! Suddenly Cadel had a mental vision of pieces falling into place, like the mechanism of a complicated lock when the key is inserted. He saw Adolf's empty office, Gazo's class schedule, the CD, the buff-colored envelope in Gazo's gloved hand, Abraham's car ... a perfect plan, knitting itself together.

He felt quite breathless, and tried to slow his breathing. In the hushed atmosphere of Hardware Heaven, noisy breathing would certainly have been noticed.

If only he could have got up and paced the floor!

As it was, he had to fix his eyes on his computer screen and think without moving. Staring at a computer screen didn't look suspicious. Even Com used to slip into a trance now and then, as if hypnotized by the glowing pixels in front of him. Cadel stared so hard at his own screen that he could almost
see
the three-dimensional structure of his plan erecting itself on its luminous surface...

"
Oi!
" said Richard sharply. "Shut up, will you?"

Cadel blinked. He turned his head.

"What?"

"Stop making that noise!" Richard snapped. Then, seeing Cadel's puzzled look, he added, "You were drumming your fingers! Drives me mad, that!"

"Oh," said Cadel. "Sorry."

"Don't you have anything better to do with 'em?"

"I do, as a matter of fact," said Cadel. He focused on the spy sweep again, jumping off when it hit Max's database. The Maestro, he had discovered, was a man obsessed with his own money—a man who liked to know exactly how his investments were doing all the time. For this reason, he had been unable to resist computer banking. Of course, he had made a brave attempt to protect his account details. Most people would have found them utterly inaccessible behind a wall of passwords and access keys. But thanks to the Fuhrer's background files—and his own excursions on the Net—Cadel knew Max rather well by now. He had been able to isolate the Maestro's passwords without too much trouble.

He copied the account details to Brendan's exposed database. There, he knew, Art was bound to find them because Art made a habit of poking around in Brendan's system, as Cadel had already discovered.

It was a mean trick, in some ways. Though Art and Brendan weren't exactly the nicest people in the world, they had never done anything to Cadel. They didn't really deserve to have Maestro Max thrown at them.

Cadel felt bad, but there was nothing else he could do. He simply had no choice.

Cadel's Thursday schedule was undemanding. He had one basic-lying class, one infiltration class, and one embezzlement class to attend. For the rest of the day, he was free to pursue his own interests.

The trouble was, his own interests preoccupied him so much that he found it hard to tear his thoughts away from them.

Thaddeus noticed this. He could hardly fail to, since there were now only two students in his first-year class. During his lecture on polygraph lie detectors, he paused once to address Cadel, who was staring out the window. "Something in the parking lot that I should know about, Mr. Darkkon?" he inquired.

Cadel knew better than to apologize. Thaddeus would have regarded this as a very feeble response, especially in a basic-lying class. Instead, he replied, with an innocent look, "I'm just a bit concerned, Dr. Roth. Two men have been sitting in a car out there ever since we arrived. You don't think they're undercover cops or anything?"

Cadel knew full well that these two men were Grunts assigned to tail either himself or Terry. Perhaps Thaddeus knew that he knew it; Cadel couldn't be sure. He could only fold up his mouth, pucker his brow, and wait to see if Thaddeus found him convincing.

The psychologist narrowed his eyes. He glanced out the window, registered the two Grunts, then turned back to Cadel, poker-faced.

"I wouldn't worry about
them,
Mr. Darkkon," he said mildly. "You concentrate on what's happening in here and I'll worry about what's happening outside. It's my job."

Cadel did his best to obey. But during Brendan's class, he was again distracted. He couldn't be sure about Brendan—not until he received Sonja's mathematical mind-bender. Unless Brendan was occupied with a really challenging puzzle, he might notice that his database had been tampered with. This, above all, was what Cadel feared. So he was jumpy and inattentive, less interested in foreign currency loans than he was in Brendan's computer. Even Brendan, who rarely noticed anything about his students, noticed this. "What's happened to your head?" he asked, fixing Cadel with his vacant, pale-blue gaze. "Isn't it working?"

Fortunately, the homework he gave to Cadel was an incomplete money-laundering chart: something that Cadel could finish without much effort. He took it back to Hardware Heaven and tackled it there. For the rest of the day he kept his eye on the Axis network. (Terry, he noticed, had been promoted to double-code-red status. There was no indication that Art had infiltrated Brendan's computer again. The reports on Cadel remained terse and uninteresting.) He also researched Yarramundi's complicated security system, which protected dangerous areas like the armory, the magazine, and the "fission lab." Access to these "code-one" areas was restricted.

Fortunately, security in the rest of the complex was far less strict.

Cadel couldn't afford to store all this information on his hard drive—or even on a disk. He had to commit it to memory and hope that it would stay there. Sometimes he wished that his mind was more like a computer. It was so easy to access a computer's memory.

At five o'clock he packed up and departed, leaving Com in charge of Hardware Heaven. On his way out, he chanced upon a strange figure in blue tights, who appeared to be glued to the ceiling. As Cadel stopped and stared, the figure slowly extended one arm, clamped his hand against a light fixture, and dragged himself forward. It was like watching a fly on a wall.

Cadel wondered if he should risk passing underneath.

"Go on!" the figure snapped irritably. Cadel obeyed. He had just reached the front entrance when he heard an exclamation, then an almighty
thud.

Turning, he saw that the human fly had hit the floor.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Piss off," came the reply.

"But—"

"
Piss off.
"

Cadel shrugged and withdrew. It did no good at all, offering to help people at the Axis Institute. Everyone thought you were simply pulling a scam.

He caught a train back home, where he ate a whole packet of corn chips in front of his computer. There was nothing much he could do just yet, except wait. Outside, the Grunts were probably circling his house, their eyes peeled. Inside, the refrigerator hummed and the clocks ticked. Cadel skimmed through his Partner Post files. He did some research into Mrs. Brezeck's background, just to be convincing. He looked for Abraham's name, dipping into a coroner's database, but found nothing.

At seven o'clock, he heard the doorbell ring.

The Piggotts weren't around. No doubt they were with their
real
families. Cautiously, Cadel shuffled to the front door and peered through the peephole. In the glow of the porch light, he could see a young woman waiting on the doorstep. There was a badge pinned to her jacket lapel, but Cadel couldn't read it.

No one else appeared to be with her. In fact, she looked a little scared.

Cadel fastened the security chain and opened the door a fraction. He saw the young woman start, then relax visibly when she caught sight of Cadel's face. She had frizzy brown hair and freckles.

"Hello," she said. "I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm collecting for the Cerebral Palsy Center." She jangled her tin, which had a printed label pasted on it. "Would you like to contribute? Donations over two dollars are tax deductible."

Cadel hesitated. Beyond the figure on the doorstep, somewhere in the thickening darkness, the surveillance team was lurking. He couldn't see it, of course. He couldn't see anything except the faint shine of glossy camellia leaves, and the pool of light cast by a nearby garden lamp, and—

Hang on,
he thought.

The Cerebral Palsy Center?

"The Cerebral Palsy Center supports people with cerebral palsy and their families in the community," the young woman continued, with a pleading smile. There was something strained about the way she kept her eyes fixed on Cadel. The name on her badge was
EMMA
. "I can give you a receipt. We
always
give receipts. I have my receipt book."

"Wait," said Cadel. He fished around for his wallet, which was well supplied with cash. As he did so, he saw a wash of color mount across Emma's freckled cheeks.

His own heartbeat began to speed up.

"Here," he said, thrusting a fifty-dollar bill at her. "And give me a receipt," he added.

"Yes, of course."

"It's for my parents. You can put their names down—Lanna and Stuart Piggott." While the young woman fumbled with a large and unwieldy receipt book, Cadel was trying to think up an explanation that would satisfy Thaddeus. The Piggotts never donated anything to charities. They even turned the Salvation Army away from their door during the Red Shield Appeal. So Cadel intended to "wave the receipt under their noses," just to "irritate them." That, at least, was what he proposed to tell Thaddeus. "Fifty dollars!" he would say. "It practically gave them a heart attack! And I made 'em pay me back, too."

Emma suddenly extended her hand. "Your receipt," she said, with a fixed smile. "Thank you
very
much. We really appreciate it."

Cadel took the receipt, crumpling it in his palm. He knew that he couldn't linger. So he stepped back inside, closing the door firmly behind him. He dared not even check the peephole again, because such curiosity would look suspicious to anyone who might be monitoring his movements. His only option was to stuff the receipt into his pocket and appear to forget its very existence.

Even though he was desperate—
desperate
—to look at it.

Returning to his computer, he made a pretense of surfing the Net to satisfy any cameras that might be trained on him. His fingers moved automatically, while his mind was elsewhere. What on earth did Sonja think she was doing? The Cerebral Palsy Center? Couldn't she see how
risky
that was? Suppose news of this little incident got back to Thaddeus somehow? It would certainly get back to the Führer. He had probably told his Grunts to keep a close eye on innocent-looking door-to-door pollsters and charity collectors, who could so easily be assassins in disguise. And what about that girl—Emma? Was she a nurse? A friend? Had Sonja told her the whole story? He certainly hoped not. The fewer people who knew about him the better.

And how had Sonja tracked him down, anyway? The Piggotts' telephone number was unlisted. Had she used the Internet? It seemed unlikely. Her expertise was with numbers, not computers.

Cadel realized that he was sweating like someone who had run a marathon. Then it occurred to him that a shower might be useful. It might be exactly the cover he needed.

Needless to say, he choreographed the whole activity very carefully in his head before he even left his seat. The secret was to make it all look natural: dropping his jeans, checking the pockets, finding a few candy wrappers and the Cerebral Palsy Center receipt, casting a puzzled glance over the same receipt (front and back)...It had to be done swiftly, casually, efficiently. Just in case.