Cyber Genius (27 page)

If his fix didn’t work, he’d have to call his mother and
take a helicopter to Africa and hide. Or Thailand, maybe. He heard there were
lots of pretty girls in Thailand, and beaches. He needed to research
extradition treaties.

The worms play
pinochle on your snout . . .

The D.C. MacroWare office wasn’t far from the newspaper
office. Accustomed to the London tube, Tudor easily located the Metro he needed
to get there.

He’d done his research and knew that even at a low-level
sales center, MacroWare had multiple stages of safeguards. He’d dug through
Graham’s security files until he’d located the emergency back door code, along
with multiple warnings from Graham to the office wankers about not changing the
code frequently enough. He’d have to hope this latest one hadn’t been changed.

Tudor knew not to carry in thumb drives or other bits that
security screens would spot. He also knew he was asking for trouble, but Graham
and Ana were more interested in catching bad guys than fixing what was wrong. He
admired what they did. He couldn’t do it, but he was good with other things. His
task was clear.

He had the patch to stop his monster. He had to see if it
worked, and he couldn’t do it without MacroWare’s servers.

He repeated that mantra as he donned a plasticized ID card
he’d nicked while rummaging inside Graham’s console. The photo didn’t look like
him, but he wore it flipped over as if blown by the wind as he walked through
the back door. The guard at the desk didn’t notice. The bar code got him past a
card check. If they had eye or thumbprint checks, he was screwed.

But this wasn’t MacroWare’s main operating headquarters,
just a small sales office. Apparently the prats didn’t realize how easy it was
to access the national main frame from the D.C. server or they’d think twice
about their security.

Well, Graham had warned them. Tudor had seen it in the
files. Someone hadn’t wanted to pay the extra expense of securing every
employee and door in the D.C. office.

He pondered that as he stalked past offices in shambles and
milling, worried twits.
Why hadn’t
management wanted real security?

With a shiver of apprehension, he prayed that the passwords
he’d copied inside his jacket pocket would get him straight into the company’s
servers. He had to be able to access his cloud account where he kept the patch
code, and he didn’t need potential killers breathing down his neck.

First, he needed a computer.

He had no clue where to go once inside. This ground floor
had carpeted hallways, real offices, and names on the doors. He knew MacroWare
only occupied the first two floors, and he assumed he’d blend in better with
cubicle dwellers. Hoping he’d find them on the next level, he took the fire
stairs up. He could always pretend he was maintenance if everyone else wore
suits and ties.

The predictable cubicle farm on the next floor hummed with
unhappiness. Khakis and long-sleeve tees seemed to be appropriate office
attire. His grungy sweater and corduroys weren’t entirely out of place. He
rubbed his shorn head and hoped he wasn’t on wanted posters on every cubicle
divider and screen saver.

He eased toward a darker corner, away from the water cooler
crowd. The wonks in the cubicles he passed looked grim and appeared to be juggling
phones and not computers. Sales, right. He bet they were being hit by a
butt-load of grievances.

Swallowing his guilt, Tudor chose a cubicle with no photos
adorning the dividers and no papers on the desk. The dual monitor was a beaut.
He powered up the drive and got the expected password demand.

Biting his bottom lip, he checked the list in his coat
pocket and began typing. If none of these were general override passwords...

He was in. Not feeling any relief yet, he started digging
into the computer’s security.

Before he could get past the first level, he had a yahoo
leaning over his shoulder.

***

Ana goes mad

Adolph stood me up.

Well, that was to be expected, after all. Maybe he hadn’t
checked his voice mail. Maybe he wasn’t ordering his hard-working staff around
today. Maybe he’d scarpered after I’d tackled Wilhelm.

At least I’d been fed.

The newspaper office wasn’t far away. I had time.

I wasn’t moving on until I knew the chef wasn’t on the
premises. I needed better confirmation of my nebulous theories before bearding
any lions, and Adolph had been right there, front and center, while the
poisoning was happening. He’d also been in the room when Hilda had been shot. I
needed face time.

I took the elevator to the lowest level and wandered ugly
concrete block corridors until I heard the kitchen.

“She’s up there now!” I heard Adolph roar. “I don’t know who
the hell she thinks she is, but she’s dangerous. Get your silly ass out of my
kitchen until she disappears.”

Oh, were they talking about little ol’ me? How exciting! Did
I eavesdrop to see what they had to say, or just present myself and grin?

I
sooo
preferred
eavesdropping. Old habits were hard to break. I leaned against the cold block
wall and listened. At least I wasn’t hiding in a closet, my former modus operandi.

“But we are guilty of nothing,” Wilhelm whined. “What can
she do? My sauce, it is almost done. I cannot leave it.”

“She can have you deported,” Adolph said nastily. “Now get
out. I’ll watch the sauce.”

That didn’t precisely sound like a lover’s spat. Curious, I
waited for Wilhelm to depart.

He didn’t, not through this door. I knew there was more than
one.

Well, blast. Now I’d have to enter hell’s kitchen, where
they kept all the long knives. I rang Adolph’s number and parked myself against
the door jamb to watch the kitchen. I hoped I had enough distance to get a head
start if he came after me with one of those hatchets I’d seen Mallard wield.

From this angle I could see Adolph in his chef’s whites on
the far side of the kitchen, whisking something on the burners. He pulled out
his phone, then shoved it back in his pocket without looking up. So much for
the importance of my call.

Since I hadn’t come up with a better plan, I leaned against
the door jamb, crossed my arms, and whistled. The nearest slavey heard me and
glanced over. He poked the person next to him. The din in the kitchen slowly
silenced sufficiently for Adolph to notice and look up. I waved.

“You!” he shouted, grabbing one of those knives I feared.
“Get out of my kitchen! Get out of my life! You are to leave my people alone!”

I shrugged, pretending insouciance. “I’m not your problem,
honey-pie. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, the rich honchos you’re hanging
with are killers. Money doesn’t grow on trees without a little bloodshed to
fertilize it.”

Adolph was not a small man. Nor was he a weak one, like
Wilhelm. He had a few extra pounds, but they didn’t slow him down. He shoved
past kitchen workers, bearing down on me, knife in hand.

I really didn’t think he’d gut me in front of witnesses, so
I didn’t run. But defensive tactics were called for if I wanted to pry
information out of him. I dodged to the other side of the complicated maze of
tables and burners.

“You want to discuss it here, with everyone listening?” I
taunted from behind a massive steel stove and an array of saucepans. “I’m good
with that.”

Really, I wasn’t. I just wanted to hide in my basement and
play safely on my computers. But he had information I needed, and I wasn’t
letting Tudor and Graham down because I was terrified of knives.

What didn’t kill me, made me stronger, right?

“I know nothing!” he shouted, edging around an aisle of
appliances to get at me. “I told the police all I know!”

The kitchen staff obligingly got out of my way as I ducked
under a worktable and came out in a different aisle. There are advantages to
being small. Adolph couldn’t manage that maneuver without cracking his head or
a few ribs.

“You didn’t tell them about the salt shaker, did you?” I
demanded. “Where is that now? Who dried the fish guts?”

In a moment of brilliant insight, prompted by holy terror, I
concluded, “
You did
! You dried all
those poison livers that Kita was throwing out! No one else would know how to
do that. Did Kita confront you? Is that why he’s dead?”

“I wish that I had never heard of Kita!” he cried, waving
his knife and bringing down a hanging pan with the force of his swing. It
clattered to the stainless worktable with a resounding bang he didn’t appear to
notice. “Fish soup is disgusting! If those imperialist pigs must eat poisonous
fish, they deserve to die!”

“Tell me what you really think,” I said dryly, darting
around a stove bubbling with lunch specials. “But you’ll do what the hot shots
ask because they return the favor, right? Tray wants you to serve puffer fish. You
need a new restaurant. Quid pro quo... am I getting close?”

“Yes, Tray wanted me to hire the little Kink ferret, but
I... did... not... kill... Kita.” He whacked his knife against a chopping block
to punctuate his words. He was starting to look pretty fiery-eyed. “I did not
kill
anybody
! Dried
fugu
is nothing.” He swung the knife and
decapitated a string of garlic.

“And what did you get in trade for hiring Kita and drying
fish guts?” I reached the refrigerator section and decided that wasn’t a good
direction. I ducked under another table while the kitchen sheep just watched us
as if we were a TV movie.

“So, I do a favor for a friend who wants an aphrodisiac!”
Adolph shouted. “That is stupid thinking but not poison!” He made as if he was
coming at me from one direction, then darted the other when I tried to avoid
him.

Trapped by refrigerators, I skidded to a halt and looked for
a weapon. A nearly empty giant sack of flour was all I could find. I flung it
in Adolph’s direction, then ducked behind stacked shelves of dessert trays.
“Hogswallow!” I called back.

He stabbed the sack in mid-air, showering himself, lunch,
and half the kitchen in a white powdery blizzard. The desserts were deluged in
a white film. Shame to waste them. I ran my finger through a particularly
sumptuous icing. If I was about to die, I wanted chocolate first.

“Kita’s soup wasn’t poisoned. He was too honest for that,” I
declared, making up the scenario as I dodged Adolph. “But you needed imperialist
pig mouths numbed so they couldn’t taste your rotten tomatoes,” I called while
Adolph angrily shook out his chef’s hat, spraying more flour. “You’re not so
dumb that you wouldn’t have looked up the results of dried puffer fish liver.”

“They do not eat anything that tastes good!” he cried,
diving for the dessert shelves as if to reach through them and strangle me. He
succeeded in knocking a fat carrot cake slice in my direction. I caught it and
nibbled as we danced back and forth on either side of the trays.

“One asshole doesn’t want gluten,” he roared. “Another
doesn’t eat meat but fish is okay. Another wants no dairy! They don’t use their
taste buds anyway!”

“Who asked you for the dried guts?” The cake was dry. Dry
carrot cake is a sin. I threw the rest of it in a sink and wiped my hands on a
towel as I skirted around the frozen dessert chef—as in, the chef seemed
paralyzed, not her desserts. She didn’t even smack my hand when I swiped a
handful of chocolate morsels.

Adolph flung a bowl of draining pasta at me. I ducked, and
spaghetti strands stuck to shelves and counters. Perfectly al dente, nice.

“Ask Mr. Livingston,” a voice called from behind me. “Euan said
she overheard him talking to Adolph about aphrodisiacs.”

“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere, thank you!” I called to
the snitch over my shoulder. The hotel manager who knew Tray and Paul Rose and
knew about old wiring that could be shorted with pennies was another nice
connection.

My expertise seemed to be in seeing the big cynical picture,
then finding the puzzle pieces that fit. The picture was slowly coming together.

“Wonder what happens to all the underwater mortgages you’re
all holding if Goldrich gets indicted for fraud?” I asked, hitting him where it
hurt to see what happened. “Do you worry about that, Adolph? Huh? Will imminent
foreclosure persuade you to talk?”

Adolph stabbed his knife into a chopping block with a blow
so vicious, I thought the heavy wood would crack. Without a single look back,
he stalked out of the kitchen.

Score one to the harpy.

Grimacing, I followed. I borrowed a loose knife, just in
case he had more hidden in his coat.

Tudor’s Take:

Relieved that the gormless bloke who thought Tudor was IT
maintenance had only wanted him to fix his computer, Tudor sat in the prat’s
fancy office, patiently attempting to explain computers.

“Look, all you need to do is clear your caches and run a
defrag before you go home tonight,” Tudor repeated in frustration. He pushed
out of the posh office chair and tried to get around the big wanker in a
pin-stripe suit blocking his exit. The guy had dragged him down to the office
level, away from the program he’d almost broken into. “I have to update the system
before I can leave tonight. If your defrag doesn’t work, I’ll look at it again
tomorrow.”

Only in another
dimension
, he thought, but he had to escape the tosser in the expensive
Rolex. Lying seemed expedient. He should never have followed him down to the
first floor, but he’d been nervous about refusing someone who had to be
management.

“Look, we’re in the middle of a crisis here,” Rolex argued.
“We have to know if there are any security breaches causing the servers to
crawl. You guys can check for that kind of thing, can’t you?”

“It would be easier for me to go through an unused computer
to check that,” Tudor assured him, not as comfortable with lying as Ana was.
“That’s one of the reasons I’m here.” He tried to ease toward the office door.