Daemon (22 page)

Nothing had prepared Sebeck for this. A seed of pity took root in him. Sobol had endured the tortures of the damned. Surely Sebeck wanted Sobol to burn in Hell—but he’d never considered Sobol had been living in Hell for some time already.

Ross croaked, “Jesus.”

A woman spoke from behind them. “What did you expect to find, Mr. Ross?”

Ross and Sebeck spun around to regard a young black woman sitting in the first pew. She was neither beautiful nor unattractive. She wore an immaculate dark blue pantsuit, but she did not have the telltale earphone of the Feds. A white guy sat in the pew behind her, leaning forward to join her symbolically. He had buzz-cut blond hair and wore a dark plaid sports jacket and a black sweater. He didn’t look uncomfortable in the jacket, but somehow the jacket appeared uncomfortable with him.

Ross looked to Sebeck and then back to the woman. “Do I know you?”

“No. But I know you. You’re Jon Frederick Ross, son of Harold and Ivana. Graduated with honors 1999 from the University of Illinois at Urbana with a master’s in computer science. President and CEO of Cyberon Systems, Inc., a one-man Delaware Service Corporation founded in 2003.” She reached into her jacket pocket and produced a badge folder. “Natalie Philips. National Security Agency.”

“Oh shit.” Ross looked to the nearby Jesus for mercy.

Sebeck stepped in. “I’m trying to keep Jon’s name out of the news. He’s worried that Sobol will come after him.”

“Interesting.” She stood up and approached the dais. “Egotistical, but interesting.”

She was lean and fit—probably about thirty years old. Sebeck couldn’t help but notice her body and cursed his libido.

She gestured to the coffin. “I’m surprised you’d come
here
if you thought Sobol was after you. He might have packed the coffin with C-four.”

Ross stepped away from the casket warily.

She laughed. “Relax. We T-rayed it and swept the whole chapel for computers and wireless transmitters. Came up empty.” She walked up and stood looking over Sobol’s remains. “Apparently Sobol anticipated his unpopularity and left behind a program to carry out his funeral arrangements.”

Sebeck frowned. “The Daemon did this?”

“It ordered the deluxe package from the funeral home’s Web page—but it never had direct control over these objects. Just-in-time inventory; the coffin was built by Bates Corporation yesterday and shipped overnight by truck. We tailed it the whole way. The lilies arrived this morning. This is the mortuary equivalent of a number two combo.”

Ross extended his hand. “Agent Philips.” She shook it.

Sebeck extended his hand, too. “Detective—“

“—Sergeant Peter Sebeck,” she finished for him. “My condolences on the deaths of your colleagues. It must be very hard to see this psycho in the flesh.”

Sebeck nodded. “What’s left of him.” He looked down at the body. “I didn’t expect him to look so…”

“Pitiful?”

“Yeah.”

Philips viewed Sobol’s remains, too. She gestured to the cross. “They say he found religion in the end.”

A cold laugh came out of Sebeck. “I thought crosses burned vampires.”

Ross changed the subject. “What’s the NSA doing up here, Agent Philips? Isn’t the big investigation down in Thousand Oaks?”

“I’m not a field agent. I’m a steganalyst.”

Ross nodded, then answered Sebeck’s quizzical look. “She finds hidden messages. Terrorists and drug traffickers sometimes hide data inside JPEGs and other computer files.”

“I won’t ask why you know that. My own parents don’t understand what I do.”

“So, what brings a steganalyst to Sobol’s funeral?”

“Symbolism. Sobol’s games are packed with symbols—and I’m not convinced all of them are harmless.”

“What’s that got to do with his funeral?”

“What’s a funeral but a symbolic ritual? He’s sending a message. Maybe to us, maybe to someone else.”

“Perhaps. One thing’s for sure, it got us all here.”

She nodded grimly. “Yes, but it looks like the Feds have scared off anyone else.”

Ross leaned in close. “You’re trying to identify the Daemon’s components, aren’t you?”

The buzz-cut guy bristled in the pews. “Dr. Philips, remember your directive.”

Ross stepped back. “Who’s he?”

“Hard to say. I just call him The Major.”

The Major didn’t respond. He just stared.

Philips stepped into Ross’s line of sight. “Mr. Ross, you played three hundred forty-seven hours of
The Gate
in the last year. That makes you the only CyberStorm game expert cleared by the FBI. You’re on my list of people to talk to. As long as you’re here, I’ve got a lot of questions about the MMORPG subculture.”

“Three hundred forty-seven hours? That’s embarrassing.”

Sebeck smirked. “You need to get a life, Jon.”

Philips pressed on. “What’s your level of knowledge concerning the Ego AI and CyberStorm 3-D graphics engines?”

“You think Sobol’s hidden components of the Daemon in his games?”

“Think texture maps—“

“Ahh…there’ll be thousands of them.”

“There are. That’s not including custom maps created by individual users with the map editor.”

“But why would Sobol bother? He could just as easily hide scripting files on some forgotten server. There’s no reason to hide anything inside his games.”

“Sobol’s AI engine and CyberStorm’s graphics codecs power a dozen popular games. You can understand why I’m pursuing this angle. They encompass tens of millions of installs worldwide.”

“Have you interviewed the CyberStorm programmers?”

“We polygraphed them all. None knew anything about Sobol’s plan—although plenty of them wrote code for purposes they didn’t understand.”

“That’s no surprise. It’s project management.”

“Proximity card reader logs showed that Pavlos and Singh were in and out of Sobol’s office wing all during the last year. Their workstations were physically replaced last month, and their hard-drive images contained nothing unusual.”

“The lack of incriminating evidence is suspicious?”

“I’m saying they were working long hours on something together—something that’s missing. And they were game developers. Some of the best in the business.”

Ross considered this. “So that’s why you think his games contain hidden data?”

She nodded. “The MMORPG world is a male-dominated subculture. I need a guide.”

“A guide?”

“I need to see these games as a skilled player sees them—and I can’t trust some twelve-year-old kid or a CyberStorm employee. I need secrecy.”

“You don’t want the Daemon to know what you’re doing.”

“Look, you’re an IT professional. You know how dangerous this situation is. We don’t know what the Daemon’s up to, and we don’t know how big it is.”

The Major stood up. “Dr. Philips.”

She turned and stabbed a finger in his direction. “If you’re going to censor my conversations this entire damned trip, Major, then I’m heading back to Maryland. I, of all people, am acutely aware of the national security implications of this discussion, and I am having it because it is
necessary.
Do you read me?”

“I have my orders, Doctor.”

“Well, then we have a situation—because my orders are to stop the Daemon, and apparently your orders are to stop
me
.”

The Major stood impassively. She eyed him a bit longer, then turned back to Ross. “I need to derive the Daemon’s topology in order to assess the threat.”

It took Ross a moment to recover from her sudden outburst toward The Major. “You need its master plan.“

“Yes. I’m developing a timeline of its creation so that we can correlate it with Sobol’s real-world financial and travel activities. If I can reconstruct the development timeline, I might be able to infer its topology.”

Sebeck interjected. “Topology?”

They both looked at him.

Philips sighed. “The physical or logical layout of a networked system.”

Philips then looked back at Ross and continued. “But there are bigger worries.” She cast an eye toward The Major, then pulled Ross aside, conferring with him privately. This close, Agent Philips had a slight flowery scent that was surprisingly feminine. Ross saw the sharp intellect in her eyes, the intensity. A slight hot flash spread over his skin as he relished this intimacy.

Philips was oblivious. “Huge amounts of money flowed from Sobol’s bank accounts immediately after his death. ACH wire transfers totaling tens of millions of dollars went offshore. He also took out large lines of credit in the months before his death. This money, too, went overseas the day he died. The Feds are still tracing it. Picture the combination of a widely distributed, compartmentalized application with high failover tolerance—perhaps thousands of copies of each component, able to reconstitute itself if any x-percentage of its components are destroyed.”

Ross was nodding as she talked. God, this woman was razor sharp. He found his normal resistance to all thoughts not his own falling away.

She continued, “Now combine an application like that—a widely distributed entity that never dies—with tens of millions of dollars and the ability to purchase goods and services. It’s answerable to no one and has no fear of punishment.”

“My God. It’s a corporation.”

“Bingo.”

Sebeck’s cell phone twittered. He welcomed the intrusion. He was just holding hats in this conversation. “Excuse me.” Sebeck turned and walked away as he pulled his phone out. He glanced at the number on the LCD panel. The caller was unknown. He answered it. “Sebeck.”

A familiar, rasping voice came to his ear.
“Forgive my appearance, Sergeant.”

Sebeck sucked in a breath and gazed at Sobol’s corpse lying in state six feet away. He glanced at the FBI and NSA agents standing around the chapel. Ross and Agent Philips were still locked in an animated technobabble conversation nearby.

Sebeck moved right up to the coffin and stared down at Sobol’s corpse. “Is hell a toll call for you, Sobol?”

Sebeck stood waiting. There was a moment’s delay.

The voice returned, weak and wavering.
“Detective Sebeck. It’s too late.”
The sound of labored breathing and wheezing came over the line.
“There is no stopping my Daemon now.”

Sebeck looked again toward Philips and Ross, but Sobol was already talking.

“I’m sorry, but I must destroy you. They will require a sacrifice, Sergeant.”
Sobol wheezed.
“It’s necessary. Maybe before it’s over, you’ll understand. I don’t know if I’m right. I don’t know anymore.”

Sebeck looked down at Sobol’s tortured remains. The insane eye matched the voice of madness.

Sobol’s voice hissed urgently.
“Before you die…invoke the Daemon. Do it in the months before your death. Say this…exactly this: ‘I, Peter Sebeck, accept the Daemon.’”
Sobol gasped for air.
“Either way…you must die.”

The line went dead.

Sebeck folded his phone and stared hard at Sobol’s corpse for a few moments. Then he spoke loudly. “Agent Philips.”

Philips and Ross stopped talking.

Sebeck turned to face them. “That call I just received. It was Sobol.”

Ross and Philips exchanged looks. He had their attention now.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I was
listening
carefully.”

“What did he say?” Philips motioned to The Major, who came sprinting up. He took the dais steps in a leap. They all converged on Sebeck’s location at the coffin.

“He sounded just like that.” Sebeck pointed at the corpse. “He was wheezing and semi-coherent. He kept telling me that I was going to die. That it was
necessary
that I die.”

“What else did he say? Try to remember it, word-for-word.”

Sebeck thought on it. “He said I needed to ‘invoke’ the Daemon. That I needed to ‘accept’ it. He said I had to speak directly to it in the months before my death. But that either way I was going to die.”

Philips looked grim.

Sebeck pondered the situation. “You think it’s more mind games?”

She turned to The Major. “Find out if those wiretaps on Detective Sebeck’s phone and computer lines have gone through. If they haven’t, fast-track them.”

The Major nodded and immediately bolted down the center aisle and out the front doors with a bang.

Sebeck watched the man leave, then turned to Philips. “You think Sobol will call again?”

“Maybe. He’s most likely manipulating you.”

“He definitely wants me to do something.”

Philips stared. “Don’t. In fact, we’ll prevent the press from communicating with you or any members of your family.”

Ross raised his eyebrows at that. “That’s to prevent him from inadvertently triggering a new Daemon event?”

“Precisely. There’s no doubt it’s reading the news. So you’d be advised to stay out of the headlines.”

“You’re quarantining me?”

“Only for a little while. At least until we can reliably monitor Sobol’s communications. You’ll be very useful in that regard, Sergeant.”

Two suited agents double-timed it up the dais steps. One whispered in Philips’s ear. Her face displayed momentary shock before she regained her composure. She glanced at Sebeck and Ross. “I have to go, gentlemen. Sobol is up to something.” She and the agents scurried down the steps of the dais. Several other darkly suited men converged on her from far-flung corners of the chapel.

Ross called after her. “Do you still need a guide, Agent Philips?”

She didn’t turn around. “I’ll contact you soon.” She and the other agents banged through the doors and out of the chapel.

Ross gestured to the door swinging closed in her wake. “Doctorate in mathematics from Stanford, and she’s a graduate of the Cryptologic School at Fort Meade. That woman is sharp as hell. I think I’m in love.”

Sebeck chuckled to himself.

“What?”

“Good luck with that.” He started for the front doors.

T
he Republic of Nauru was the smallest, most remote republic in the world. A spit of coral in the South Pacific, it was barely ten kilometers long and half as wide and had all the topographical complexity of a soccer field. Nauru was basically a phosphate mine that convinced the U.N. it was a country.

Dominated first by the Germans and after World War II by the Australians, the Nauruans had come to accept the fact that their chief industry was selling off the ground they stood on. With their phosphate deposits nearly exhausted by the turn of the millennium, the interior of the island—what the locals called “topside”—was now a ravaged, strip-mined wasteland carved down to the coral bedrock. Fully 90 percent of Nauru was a lifeless expanse swept by choking, talcumlike dust. The place had been so systematically scoured of life by mining equipment that the Nauruans considered buying a new island and physically relocating their entire country—leaving a forwarding address with the U.N. However, after most of the tiny nation’s wealth evaporated in investment scandals, the Nauruans had to face a grim reality: they were here to stay.

The entire population of ten thousand South Sea, islanders now lived on a narrow band of sand and palm trees ringing the island—a quarter of which was taken up by an airfield—and tried to ignore the ecological nightmare of the interior.

Anji Anderson had never toured an entire country in twenty minutes before. Afterward she realized there were only three things to do on Nauru: drink heavily, lament the past, or engage in international money laundering. Judging from the private jets at the airport and the forest of satellite dishes, the latter was Nauru’s future.

The community of nations officially took a dim view of money-laundering centers with lax banking and incorporation laws and powerful privacy regulations—but then again, at some point every government had need of such things. The Daemon had directed Anderson to an informative Web page prior to her whirlwind tour of offshore tax havens, and it opened her eyes. Tax havens were tolerated—and in some cases facilitated—by powerful nations and global corporations. Intelligence agencies needed to wire untraceable money to informants or to fund operations in various troubled or soon-to-be-troubled regions. Corporations needed to incentivize key people without interference from investment groups and regulators. All of this was possible in areas far from the public eye. At twelve hundred miles from the nearest neighboring island, Nauru was both incredibly remote and, due to decades of mining, physically unsightly. And tourists and journalists weren’t allowed: Nauru issued only business visas. No rebels could take to the hills here, either, because the Nauruans had sold the hills years ago.

Anderson smiled as she lay soaking in the sun, poolside at the Hotel Menon—one of only two hotels on the island. If she kept her chaise lounge pointed in this exact direction, she could avoid seeing rusted derricks as she looked out over the ocean.

Evenings were the best time. The sunsets here were huge pyrotechnic displays with towering clouds that melted into the distant horizon. It almost made up for the rusted ruin of the place and the fact that the air was so humid that standing in the ocean breeze was like taking a shower. But in the time she’d been employed by the Daemon, her world had taken on a dimension of true adventure, and this was part of it. Forget Machu Picchu or Prince Patrick Island—that was soo bourgeois. She was in a country probably none of her well-traveled and educated friends had ever heard of, much less been to. One that was not on any commonly used map. She laughed to herself from behind her Lemon Drop martini. She had just left the Isle of Man two days ago—the Nevada of the British Isles—and she had no idea where she’d be going tomorrow. She didn’t care. She didn’t have to. She felt oddly secure for the first time in her life. A kept woman. As a well-paid consultant on retainer to Daedalus Research, Inc.—no doubt owned by the Daemon—she was making more money then she’d ever made in her life. All her travel expenses were being paid on an apparently bottomless company credit card. Her airline tickets were all first class, and she had a chartered private jet for this little jaunt out to Nauru. She was bewildered and excited. Every day was filled with surprises. What a change from the network affiliate. Her new boss was an undead automaton from hell, true, but no job was perfect.

Anderson listened to chatter in a dozen languages at the poolside tables around her. She felt eyes upon her in her relatively modest bikini. There were few other women about, but no one was making a move—unsure of which underworld figure she belonged to. She smiled to herself. Her man was about as underworld as you could get….

The Hotel Menon looked like an upscale Motel 6. Casa Blanca in stucco and plywood. Most of the people conducting business here never had to physically set foot on the island, so appearances didn’t matter much. Those who did make the journey typically came to the edge of the world just to exchange briefcases. Most of these transactions were
technically
legal, but they weren’t the sort of thing participants wanted on the evening news back home.

Pale-faced, tubby Russians in impeccable Armani suits sat with Arabs in robes so white it hurt to look at them. Ruddy-cheeked Australians and Nipponese in silk suits looked down through their sunglasses to examine the spotty glasses before drinking to the health of their business partners. Most tables sported two or three expressionless Terminator types scanning the patio for trouble and thumbing the handles of metallic briefcases. Anderson was finally doing serious journalism. If only her friends knew.

Of course, she wasn’t here as a journalist. She was undercover as CFO of a Hong Kong fiber optic concern. She smiled. Her business card was spectacular, with a holographic cross-section of a bundle of fiber, glittering with light.

Her new satellite phone emitted a melodic ringtone. She lifted up her sunglasses and pulled a small encryption chip from its location, clipped invisibly in her hair. She grabbed the phone from a nearby end table and fitted the chip into a slot on the side. Then she answered it. No need to say anything. She knew who it was.

It was The Voice with her clipped British accent. “Can you get to a satellite news channel? Yes or no.”

Anderson glanced around. She saw a television mounted over the hotel bar beyond tinted glass. It was always tuned to business news. “Yes.”

“Go to it. CyberStorm Entertainment.” The line clicked off.

Synthetic bitch. She liked Sobol’s voice better. Anderson yanked the chip and stowed it, as though fixing her hair. She saw a Ukrainian enforcer staring at her longingly. She pointedly ignored him and wondered what sort of dental hygiene was prevalent in the former Eastern Bloc nations. She also wondered what physical security the Daemon could offer her.

She gathered her things and clicked across the tiled patio to the refrigerated air of the bar. An Australian satellite news feed was already on, but muted. Anderson smiled brightly at Oto, the Tahitian bartender, in his starched collar and black vest. She wondered what horrific thing he did to deserve exile on Nauru. Probably hacked someone to death with a machete. “Oto, can you turn the volume up?”

“Yes, Ms. Vindmar.”

Her cover name—a deliberately amateurish attempt at privacy, since she was traveling under her real passport.

The crawl at the bottom of the cluttered TV screen flashed “CyberStorm Entertainment.” The newscaster’s Aussie accent came up, “…from the American NASDAQ. CyberStorm Entertainment’s share price has plummeted 97 percent in the four hours following a press release by the
deceased
CTO Matthew Sobol, in which he claims to have placed a back door in the company’s Ego AI engine. Share prices of third-party game companies using CyberStorm’s software have also been punished since the news—and lawsuits are already in the works as products are yanked from store shelves worldwide. Analysts expect a cloud will be hanging over the entire PC gaming sector until the full extent of the problem is known.”

Oto smiled in that good-natured way South Seas islanders have when noticing how fucked up the mainland is. “The dead are punishing the living, eh?”

Strangely, Anderson swelled with pride.
That’s my boss for you.

But why had the Daemon phoned her about it? Something was up, and it had everything to do with Tremark Holdings, IBC. She was sure of it. She was also glad she didn’t have to figure any of it out—since the Daemon was handing her both the clues and the answers in its own sweet time.

“May I join you?”

Anderson jerked her head to see a handsome, square-jawed American in a floral print shirt and khakis standing over her. He was in his mid-thirties, but he had a trim waist, broad shoulders, and rugged good looks that made Anderson imagine a string of broken-hearted women stretching from Minnesota to Sumatra. He had that cool, self-assured air that effective people have.

Anderson acted cool right back. “Can’t you see I’m catching the business report?”

He straddled a bar stool next to her. “There are more convenient places than Nauru to do that. So what brings you way out here?”

“An intense desire to be left alone.”

He laughed. Then he leaned close and spoke sotto voce, “The better question is: what is Anji Anderson, previously of KTLZ TV, doing in Nauru?” He laid his FBI credentials on the bar in front of her.

Anderson’s eyes widened for a moment as she nearly panicked. She should tell him. But what would that do? The Daemon was taking care of her. It wasn’t her enemy. This was leading somewhere. Betraying it could ruin everything.

She got ahold of herself. The Daemon had sent her here, and it knew everything. “I should have figured you for a spook.”

He collected his badge and grabbed her by the hand as he pulled her over to a red vinyl booth in the corner of the deserted bar. He was a man of action. Pseudo-romantic scenes from a dozen cable soft-porn films entered her mind. She tried to concentrate on the real situation.

“Oto, another drink for the lady.”

Oto nodded and got busy.

The FBI agent slid into the booth, pulling her in alongside him. She couldn’t help but see the bulge of a pistol holster in the small of his back as he slid across the bench seat. He smiled and extended his hand. “Call me Barry.”

She shook his hand warily. “All right,
Barry,
what’s this all about?”

“I want answers.”

“Such as?”

“What’s a lifestyles reporter recently let go from a San Francisco affiliate doing asking questions about Tremark Holdings, IBC, in far-flung Nauru?”

“What’s a big corn-fed frat boy like you doing so far from a Hooters?”

“I asked first.”

She acted coy. “Okay. I’m trying to launch a career as an investigative journalist. I’m tired of being the stewardess of the evening news.”

“Not an answer.”

“You mean, why am I so interested in the names of the officers of Tremark Holdings?”

“Yeah. That’s exactly what I mean. You know, of course, that asking questions around here is a good way to wind up missing.”

“Then why are you asking so many questions?”

He pointed a finger at her and let out a slow laugh. “I think I like you, Anji. Are you going to help me?”

“Help you how?”

“What does Tremark Holdings have to do with the Daemon?”

“What makes you think it has anything to do with the Daemon?”

“Because Matthew Sobol moved money into Tremark Holdings on the day he died.”

A wave of shock sent goose bumps over Anderson’s skin. God, this was fun. She couldn’t have faked that surprise. “Really? That answers a lot of questions.”

“How did you get wind of Tremark Holdings?”

“Let’s just say I have my sources.”

“Are they the same sources bankrolling your trip? The same sources helping you encrypt your satphone conversations?”

“Oh, please,
Barry.
” She emphasized his name with contempt. “Don’t be childish. Espionage isn’t the only reason for privacy. I’m working on possibly the biggest story of the year. Sobol had bankers, and some of those bankers are fond of a certain blond reporter—who at present is unemployed.”

“What did you learn on the Isle of Man?”

“That a Manx/Celtic fusion restaurant is a bad idea.”

He gave her a look. “Anji.”

“Okay. I learned that Sobol moved money into three different accounts there—all held by various international business corporations. But I also learned the money was moved out seconds after it arrived.”

He looked surprised. “How the hell did you get them to tell you that?”

She wasn’t about to tell him that the Daemon told her. No, the new Anderson was a resourceful investigative journalist. She smiled. “If you’re an overweight, balding Welsh banker, and I start coming on to you in a tavern, what would you do?”

He considered this. “I’d do anything to keep you talking to me.”

“Of course, I don’t do just anything, Barry. I’m not that kind of woman.”

“What else?”

“I’m not telling you anything you don’t know already—or at least won’t learn soon.”

“Did you find out anything else?”

She toyed with him, smiling and ticking up her eyebrows as Oto arrived with her drink. “Thanks, Oto.”

“No problem, Ms. Vindmar.” He retreated to the bar again.

Barry looked at her incredulously. “Where’d you come up with
Ms. Vindmar
?”

“It’s better than
Barry
.” She hammed it up, acting like a dope. “Hey, I’m Barry—not an FBI agent.”

“All right, stop. What if my name’s actually Barry? Did you ever think of that?”

She burst out laughing.

He looked intently at her. “Did you learn anything else?”

She sipped her Lemon Drop and then rolled the twist sensuously over her lips. God, this espionage stuff was fun! Especially when you held all the cards, and handsome tough guys had to wait on your every word. “Yes, I did, Barry. Have you noticed the short positions on the CyberStorm stock?”

She may as well have cracked a two-by-four over his head. He apparently hadn’t expected a sexy, fluff-piece reporter to actually come up with something. “Tell me more.”