Spark: A Novel (30 page)

At nine o’clock I returned to the BDG building on Maiden Lane and found Jerome Evans standing in the lobby. “You wait here,” he told me. “Your boss is upstairs, talking to the big guy.”

I sat on a bench for twenty minutes staring at X-Nemo’s huge painting on the wall. No one stopped me when I walked over to the corner and looked for the artist’s bloody handprint. Yes. It was still there.

Heels clicked on the marble floor as Miss Holquist approached me. “Good. You wore a necktie. Before we meet Mr. Serby, there are a few things I need to explain to you. Don’t tell anyone that you were in Paris. Mr. Serby realizes that Jafar Desai was killed, but he doesn’t want to know what happened.”

“I understand.”

“It goes a step further than that. Don’t mention guns or any other kind of weapon. Don’t use the words ‘neutralize’ or ‘kill.’ Never say that anyone is going to die. The language becomes more general as you move higher up the ladder. Those in power don’t want to hear the details unless you’re talking about stock options.”

“So what do I say?”

“Mr. Serby is very concerned about the coded files. He wants to know how we’re going to solve this problem.”

Jerome Evans switched off sectors of the surveillance system as Miss Holquist and I stepped into the elevator. When we reached the twenty-eighth floor, she led me through an empty reception area and down a corridor to a large office with another X-Nemo painting on the wall. If I had been alone, I would have knelt down and searched for the bloody handprint.

A man wearing a suit and tie came out of a private bathroom, drying his hands. When he saw us, he tossed the towel on the floor. Alexander Serby had a bulbous head mounted on a spindly body. He was a small man, but there was cold energy within his Shell. His eyes were sharp points and they jabbed at me as we walked across the room.

“And this is Mr. Underwood?”

“That’s right.”

Serby sat behind his desk and gestured to some chairs. He knitted his hands together and made a steeple with his forefingers. I looked over his shoulder. A picture window was directly behind the desk and I could see a red river of brake lights moving north on the FDR Drive.

“Miss Holquist tells me that you’re the person who found a copy of the stolen files.”

I nodded.

“Most of the stolen data was about money transfers and the offshore bank accounts controlled by the Pradhani Group. But, for some reason, Jafar Desai downloaded three encrypted files. The files contain highly confidential information and it’s important that we get them back. Now that Jafar is no longer a factor, our top priority is to find Emily Buchanan. Miss Holquist said that you searched her apartment and spoke to her uncle.”

“Yes. He lives alone in a place called Chestertown.”

“So who is Emily Buchanan? What can you tell me about her?”

I decided not to talk about the scent of her pillow and the kitchen photograph of her standing on a dock. “She’s intelligent. Highly organized.”

The steeple disappeared and Serby placed his hands on the desk. “I already know that. All the associates at BDG are intelligent
and organized. But what does she
want
? Is she greedy? Idealistic? I always prefer greed to idealism. It’s easier to make a deal.”

“I can’t answer those questions, Mr. Serby. I don’t have enough information.”

“Can you tell me any facts that can’t be found in her personnel file?”

“Buchanan ran away from her parents when she was thirteen years old and was raised by her uncle. She was very dependent on her Shadow, but she switched it off a few months ago. This was around the time that she acquired a boyfriend named Sean.”

“What’s his full name?”

“I don’t know, sir. But I did find some stickers in Ms. Buchanan’s dresser.”

“What kind of stickers?” Miss Holquist asked.

“They displayed antisocial slogans … the sort of thing that growlers would paint on a wall. One of them said ‘Close the EYE.’ Another said—”

“I get it. We don’t need the whole goddamn list.” Serby pushed his office chair back a few inches and exhaled. “So how are we going to find this criminal?”

“We’re going to start by analyzing her e-mails,” Miss Holquist said. “Mr. Underwood will examine all the e-mail in her BDG message file. While this is going on, a man named Hoffman will—”

“No need for names,” Serby said.

“A computer expert in Germany will run all Buchanan’s messages through a program that will establish a relationship matrix based on e-mail and Internet protocol addresses. Then a tracker program enters the relevant computers and communication devices and searches for messages with key words such as ‘Emily’ or ‘Sean.’ Once we get location data, we can access surveillance networks.”

“I don’t want anyone else finding out about this.”

“We understand that,” Miss Holquist said. “That’s why Mr. Underwood is here for this meeting.”

Serby looked at both of us, and then the steeple returned. His two forefingers were pressed together. “I want this problem solved
decisively.
”

Sitting in the green leather chair, I finally realized something about my function. Miss Holquist was right. I was near the base of the ladder and Alexander Serby was at the top. That meant he could talk about solving problems “decisively,” and now I knew what that word meant: that a contract employee would point a gun at a frightened man curled up in a bathtub, pull the trigger—and bits of blood and brain and bone would splatter against the porcelain.

Ten minutes later, Miss Holquist and I were sitting in the backseat of her town car as the driver headed north to my loft on Catherine Street. I was expecting new instructions, but Miss Holquist gazed out the window and watched the buildings glide past us.

“What do you like to do, Underwood?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t believe that. Everyone enjoys some kind of activity. I happen to like certain aspects of my job. Alex Serby is one of the most powerful men in the world, but he needs my help with this problem. I find that very gratifying. So what makes you happy, Underwood? I know there’s
something
.”

“I like to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and look up at the cables.”

“All right. That’s an acceptable answer. Please understand that you will no longer be able to walk across that bridge and have that pleasurable experience if I tell Lorcan Tate to slash your throat.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

“Not at all. But I’ve learned that my employees are best motivated by a mixture of earned rewards and possible punishments. You’ve been paid a fair amount of money during the last three years. That’s your reward. But you’ve never been punished. It’s difficult to motivate a man who has no fear.”

“I can’t change that.”

“I’m not saying that you lied about what happened in Paris, but I have the feeling that you’ve left out some details. All right. That’s
past. What I want at this moment is for you to dedicate all your time and energy to finding Emily Buchanan.”

“I’ll start looking through her company message file,” I said. “If I get any useful information, I’ll send it to you immediately.”

“Good. If it relates to names and e-mail addresses, I’ll forward it on to Mr. Hoffman in Germany. Right now we’re thin on the ground here in New York, but I’ve sent messages to Europe and South America. Two or three enforcers should be flying in during the next few days and they can back you up if you get a specific location. Whatever you do … don’t mention Buchanan’s name or connect her to Alexander Serby. I want to keep this information circle as small as possible.”

The car stopped in front of my building, and I put my hand on the door handle.

“One minute …” Miss Holquist opened up her attaché case and took out a cardboard box sealed with packing tape. “Here. I’m returning your two handguns. You might need them if our search is successful.”

“I understand.”

“Is there anything else we need to discuss, Mr. Underwood? I don’t want any more confusion.”

“Bosons and fermions. Mass and energy.”

“Correct. Now do your job.”

The next morning, I began reading through the business e-mails that were stored in Emily’s mailbox. During the last two years, she had sent thousands of messages about financial reports and meeting prospective clients. I couldn’t find any messages from Sean, but two years ago she had forwarded a list of discount clothing stores from her personal e-mail address. I sent the information to Miss Holquist and, two hours later, the German computer expert working for Special Services sent me Emily’s password.

Now I had access to my target’s personal e-mail. I discovered that Emily had a mother living in New Hampshire.

Emily also kept in touch with a few college friends from the University of Vermont, and one of them was getting married. I spent five hours reading e-mail but didn’t find any messages from Jafar Desai—or from a boyfriend named Sean.

In a day or so, we would have a personal relationship matrix based on Emily’s e-mails, but that didn’t mean that we could find her. People who wanted to protect their privacy could buy a used
computer that couldn’t be linked to their name. They’d clean out the computer’s hard drive, download a browser bundle that didn’t use IP addresses, and set up an e-mail account with one of the encrypted sites run by growler collectives. They could stay completely anonymous if their messages never contained identity information.

Thinking about the problem, I hammered a nail into the floor, attached the cord, and began to pace out a perfect circle. Emily’s personal e-mail address had given me the name of her mother and her friends. But it would also show what kind of advertisements were sent to her because of her search activity.

I opened Emily’s spam file and found e-mails from online companies selling fake Freedom IDs and card shields that blocked the sensors for the EYE system. I also discovered several weekly announcements of a Dice Night at Crawley’s—a bar in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. Now that most human behavior could be predicted by the Norm-All program, some of the growlers tried to defy the algorithms by deliberately performing random activity. Wandering around New York and London at night, I had noticed signs outside bars and clubs advertising Dice Nights. This was a one-time event when the price of alcohol and the behavior of the customers were determined by a throw of the dice or the spin of a carnival wheel. You could meet a stranger for a Dice Date or even win a Dice Vacation to an unknown destination.

At some moment during her time in the city, Emily had given her e-mail address to the person who ran the Web site for Crawley’s bar. I found an e-mail with today’s date from someone named “CROWBAR” that said, “Dice Night 2Night! Meet you at Crawley’s. Full bar. Freedom is Uncertainty.”

I clicked the link to Crawley’s Web site and confirmed that a Dice Night event was being held at the bar that evening. “Acts of Deliberate Randomness” would begin at 11 p.m. After resting for a few hours, I cleaned and loaded the .38 Special, then slipped it into the ankle holster. Lorcan’s handcuffs were stuffed into a nylon pouch that I had once used to carry bullets. The pouch was attached to my belt and slipped inside my waistband.