Zero Sum, Book One, Kotov Syndrome (14 page)

Steven’s next stop was a nearby hotel
to use the business center. He paid $10 for fifteen minutes, doing
a double take at the price. He asked what the fee would have been
if he was checked in as a guest.

“Let me look it up. Hmm. Hmmm. Oh, here
it is: $10.”

They really said fuck you with style in
Carlsbad.

“Things are kind of expensive in
Carlsbad,” Steven remarked with a blank expression.

“Try La Costa. It’s $20.”

He moved to an available computer and
logged on. The stock was up thirty cents from the open. He checked
his S_Jordan e-mails, to discover dozens of complaint e-mails from
the boards advising that the site was down.

Huh. He tried the site. Nothing. Just a
screen that said cannot locate site.

Dammit. Another hacking attack? Maybe
the server was down? The first e-mail was at 4 a.m. California
time. He tried the Lone Star homepage. That was down too. So it was
probably a server or connection issue, not a site-specific
takedown.

The only message in his normal e-mail
was from Jennifer. Short and to the point.

[Hi. Will drop off the bags and keys
today. Hope you got some rest. J]

No response necessary that he could
think of.

He checked in with the Group, and asked
if they could figure out why his site was down. They pinged it, got
nothing. Probably a power outage or a truck plowed into a
pole.

Steven signed off, his $10 about up,
and asked the young lady at the guest desk if there was an Internet
café or computer superstore anywhere close by. She gave him
directions up the street.

With the valet charge the whole episode
cost him $16 for fifteen minutes. He wasn’t sure he could afford
much more Carlsbad.

Steven drove to the office supply chain
store and got back online. He spent the rest of the afternoon
researching the SEC’s regulations for offshore investment funds,
and surfing the boards to catch up on any news. There was a lot of
commentary on the sections Steven had uploaded before the site went
dark. He’d really stirred up a hornet’s nest.

Checking his inbox, he saw Spyder had
sent him an article. Steven’s arm hair stood on end as he read. The
author was a name he didn’t recognize, but the content was
alarming. One part of his psyche told him it sounded like
conspiracy junk, while another part of him got a sinking feeling in
the pit of his stomach.

The article centered around the stock
action in the airlines and insurance companies immediately
preceding the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and
documented the brokerage firm that placed most of the winning
trades that went through the roof when the value of the stocks fell
off a cliff after the terrorist strike – a firm run by a fellow who
later became the head of the CIA.

The implications of the article were
staggering. Were the connections between Washington and Wall Street
such that there could be collusion at that level? It seemed
impossible, but then again, so did much he’d seen lately. He’d
always wondered why the government turned a blind eye to Wall
Street. Spyder’s wry message was short and to the point:

[Ya think the reason there’s no
appetite to clamp down on the bad guys is because they’re running
money through some of them? Ugly world we live in, huh? Watch your
ass, Bowman. Spyder]

Spyder pointed out the same sort of
thing was still going on – witness the massive put options (which
increase in value as a stock price goes down) traded right before
the ‘unexpected’ crash of Bear Stearns in 2008, and the
government’s odd reluctance to investigate that obvious smoking
gun. The more he read, the more corrupt it appeared to
be.

Steven called it a day at 3:00, his
head whirling from the ramifications. He paid for his time and
began the drive back to the boat. When he dialed the Lone Star
number from his disposable cell, it just rang.

No answer.

It took him almost two hours to make it
to San Clemente, and by that time he’d talked himself down. He had
immediate problems to deal with, in the real world, and didn’t
currently have bandwidth for CIA conspiracy theories. A big rig had
blown a tire, and most of I-5 North was a parking lot past
Oceanside, making any further driving a nightmare for at least
another hour.

Steven pulled over and hit a restaurant
for an early dinner, figuring he could wait it out. He really
wished he’d brought his laptop, instead of forgetting it on the
boat – that PDA was going to be worth its weight in gold to him.
After eating, he stopped by at an Internet cafe to check in with
the Group. One of them immediately posted:

[Check your mailbox.
Trouble?!]

He went to his S_Jordan box, where a
blind re-mailer had sent him a message with an attachment. He
opened the attachment, and it was an article from that day’s Austin
newspaper describing a massive fire at the strip mall that housed,
among other things, Lone Star.

Steven’s gut tightened
again.

This just couldn’t be a coincidence or
conspiracy nonsense. Whoever was after him was clearly serious, and
ruthless. But part of it made no sense – Homeland Security and the
Justice Department didn’t go around burning buildings to shut down
websites. If they had grounds to shut it down, which they didn’t,
they’d just get an injunction and seize the server.

In spite of his recent run-in with
Homeland, maybe it was exactly what it appeared to be – an
accidental fire. They did happen all the time. The whole world
didn’t revolve around his website.

Here he was again; wavering in a
never-never land between feeling sheepish and paranoid – imagining
assailants behind every tree, and reconciling all the coincidences
before taking prudent precautions.

Accident or not, from a practical
standpoint, he now had no site and no server. Finding another ISP
wouldn’t be that big a deal – he could sign one up over the web in
minutes. The problem was the only copy of his site was on the boat.
At least he’d backed it up on the laptop.

He sent a post to the Group:

[Weird coincidences, huh?] and got an
immediate response:

[Check six. There are no coincidences.
I’ll be on late if you need anything. Gordo]

He signed off and left the café to go
and retrieve the laptop, fatigued from the stress of it all. He
felt like he’d been starved of sleep for weeks.

* * * *

As Steven crested the hill to the
marina he saw emergency vehicles everywhere and a plume of black
smoke rising from the water. He couldn’t get his car anywhere near
the entry because the lot was glutted with fire trucks. He drove to
the next lot over and parked up, then hurried to his dock’s gate,
only to find it closed off with yellow crime scene tape and a
police barricade. He approached one of the park security men
standing around the barricade. “Wow. What a mess. What happened
here?”

“Some guy’s boat blew up. Took out half
the dock.”

“You’re kidding! Which boat? What
caused it?” Steven asked.

“Don’t know. Sailboat, down at the end
of A dock.” He pointed nonchalantly towards the area where
Serendipity was berthed. “A bunch of other boats were damaged, too.
They think it was a fuel leak – filled the bilge with
fumes.”

Inside Steven was thinking, God, no,
say it isn’t Serendipity. It had to be an accident – somebody
else’s boat, not mine, not mine, not mine.

“The divers are pulling up debris and
looking through what’s left of the hull right now. Doesn’t help
that visibility’s down to nothing with all the oil in the water.”
The kid seemed as interested as Steven was – probably the biggest
thing that had happened since he’d started working for a living.
“The owner was on board. They found some parts of him. Pretty
gross.”

Steven felt like he’d been hit in the
face with a hammer. He squinted as he peered down the dock, and it
looked a lot like his slip was now gone.

He needed to know. Had to get by the
kid. Stay calm. Think.

“My buddy sent me down to check on his
boat. He saw the smoke over the hill and called the marina. Can I
take a quick look? Check on the lines, make sure it’s
secure?”

“No one’s supposed to go down there.
It’s a crime scene right now. Give me the slip number and I’ll have
someone on the dock check.” At least the guard was willing to
try.

Steven’s slip was A-32. He didn’t
hesitate. “A-20.”

The security guard spoke into his
walky-talky. “Guy wants to make sure his boat’s okay. Slip A-20.
Can someone look at it? Over.” The radio crackled for a
minute.

Then through the static came the
fateful words Steven dreaded hearing. “It’s fine. Boat that blew
was A-32. Over.”

Steven smiled at the guy and croaked
out a ‘thank you’.

His head spun and his heart
trip-hammered from the sudden jolt of adrenalin as he walked away,
registering there were plenty of other spectators perusing the
dreadful scene.

He started processing automatically.
Todd was dead – it had to be him. So this wasn’t all in his head.
Someone blew up the boat. Someone set the web building on fire.
Someone was willing to kill to stop him, to silence him.

And they could still be here.
Watching.

He needed to blend in. Couldn’t draw
attention to himself. He walked in the opposite direction from his
car, and stopped to ask a couple walking their dog what had
happened, doing a slow scan of the parking lot as he listened to
them.

Nothing suspicious, but it was hard to
tell.

He thanked them and continued walking
along the perimeter of the marina. A man with binoculars was
studying the aftermath of the carnage; could be innocent, but maybe
not.

Steven kept moving past him, quickly
glancing at his watch – for all appearances a man on his way home
for dinner. He made it to the main access street and walked slowly
up the hill to the town, never looking back.

His laptop was now either melted at the
bottom of the harbor or in the hands of whoever blew up the
boat.

There could be no doubt it wasn’t an
accident. Diesel fuel hardly ever caught fire, and was incapable of
generating huge explosions like the one that had taken out the
dock. They’d probably rigged it that afternoon, with some sort of
trigger set to go off when he opened the hatch. Poor Todd had
probably taken his suggestion to wash the boat later; in
retrospect, likely a fatal recommendation. Or they could have been
watching the boat to ensure the job got done right, by triggering
the explosion remotely. Watched for a male in his late thirties
going onto the boat, and then pushed a button. Simple, no mistakes.
Kaboom. Problem over.

The laptop was the least of his
problems. If they knew his boat, then they knew his car – had to
have the license plates. Then again, if they believed him to be
dead, they wouldn’t be looking for it other than to confirm it was
in the vicinity. That was a small advantage.

He needed to get his duffel out sooner
rather than later.

Steven walked into town and waited for
the sun to set. The forensic team would undoubtedly figure out it
wasn’t him on the boat, but that could take days, or even weeks. As
long as he didn’t post anything on the boards, or call anyone who
couldn’t be trusted, he was safe, for now. But what to do? He
couldn’t go to the police; they’d just turn him over to Homeland
Security. He’d read about HS detainees held without access to their
attorneys for years. No thanks.

He fought down the urge to panic. He
needed to stay clear-headed if he was going to come out of this
alive.

Once it was dark, he walked down the
bike trail into the harbor park – the back way. The cops were still
at the scene, and they now had large spotlights mounted on stands
shining into the water. He looked around the lot his car was in,
and saw no one. Plenty of other cars there. Good. Cover.

Steven sat by a tree across from the
lot for ten minutes, watching for any movement. Nothing. He got up,
walked across to the lot, kept going past his car, and entered the
restroom at the far end of the lot.

He quickly scanned the confined area,
moving from stall to stall as though deciding which to use.
Satisfied he was alone, he moved to the sink and ran some water
through his hair, then considered his reflection.

Steven, you’re in the eye of a
shit-storm
, he concluded.
No room for
mistakes
.

He listened for sounds around the
building. Nothing. Just radio chatter from the docks, and the whine
of a winch motor.

Okay. Showtime. He moved out of the
building, seemingly preoccupied with getting the last of the
moisture off his hands with a paper towel. Tossing it into a trash
can, he did one last visual sweep of the lot. Still empty. He
allowed some time for his eyes to re-adjust before walking towards
the Porsche.

There was a sudden flurry of motion by
his legs.