For The Win (59 page)

"Yasmin?" he said.

She bit her lip. "Mala is gone," she said. "No one's seen her for hours. Twelve, maybe fourteen."

He started to say something but then Big Sister Nor spoke on the phone, "Ashok, sorry to keep you waiting."

He looked to Yasmin, then back at his screen. "One second," he said to the phone.

"Yasmin, she's probably gone home to sleep --"

Yasmin shook her head once, emphatically. He felt a jolt of fear.

"Ashok?" Big Sister Nor's voice in his ear.

"Come in," he said to Yasmin, "come here. Close the door."

He stood up and held his chair out to Yasmin and dropped into a squat beside her, heels on the ground. He pressed the speaker button on the phone.

"Nor," he said. He always felt faintly ridiculous calling this woman "Big Sister," though the Webblies seemed to relish it in the same way they loved saying
General Robotwallah
. "I have Yasmin with me here. She tells me that Mala is missing, has been missing for some hours."

There was a momentary pause. "Ashok," Nor said, "that's terrible news. But I thought you were calling about the other thing --"

He looked at Yasmin, whose eyes were steady on him. He never talked about the work he did for Big Sister Nor, but everyone knew he was up to something back here.

"Yes," he said. "The other thing. I need to talk to you about that. But Yasmin is here and she tells me that Mala is missing."

Big Sister Nor seemed to hear the gravity in his voice. She took a deep breath, spoke in a patient voice: "You know Dharavi better than I do. What do you think has happened?"

He nodded to Yasmin. "I think that Bannerjee has her," she said. "I think that he will hurt her, if he hasn't already."

From the phone, The Mighty Krang's voice broke in. "I have Bannerjee's phone number," he said. "From one of our people in Guzhen. He emailed us a list of everyone in his boss's address book."

Ashok found his hands were in fists. He'd only met Bannerjee once, but that was enough. The man looked like he was capable of anything, one of those aliens who could look at a fellow human being as nothing more than an opportunity to make money. Yasmin's eyes were wide.

"You want to phone him?"

"Sure," The Mighty Krang sounded calm, even flippant, just as he did in the inspirational videos he posted to the Webbly boards and YouTube. "It's worth a try. Maybe he wants to ransom her."

"Are you joking?"

The light tone left his voice. "No, Yasmin, I'm not joking. Look, the Webblies are powerful. Men like Bannerjee understand that. Once I got Bannerjee's number, I used it to get a full workup on him. We have some leverage over him. It's possible that we can make him see reason. And if we can't --" He trailed off.

"We're no worse off than before," Big Sister Nor finished.

"When will we call him?"

"Oh, now would be good. Negotiations are always best in the small hours. Hang on, I'll get the number." The Mighty Krang typed some. "OK, let's do this."

"OK," Yasmin said in a tiny voice.

"OK," Ashok said.

"I'll keep you two muted for him, but live for me. Remember that -- if you talk over him, I'll hear both, which might confuse me."

"We'll mute our end," Ashok said. He saw that his battery was low and fished around on his desk for a power-cable and plugged it in. Then he muted the phone. He and Yasmin unconsciously leaned their heads together over it, so that he could smell his sour breath and hers, which smelled of vomit. She had been sick. He closed his eyes and it felt as though there was sandpaper on the insides of his eyelids.

After a few rings, a sleepy voice mumbled "Victory to Rama," in Hindi, the traditional phone salutation. It made Ashok snort derisively. A man like Bannerjee was about as pious as a turnip. As a jackal.

"Mr Bannerjee," Big Sister Nor said in accented Hindi. "Good morning."

"Who is it?" He had switched to English.

"The Webblies," Big Sister Nor said.

"For a Webbly," Bannerjee grunted, still sounding half-asleep, "you sound an awful lot like an underage Chinese whore. Where are you calling from, China-Doll? A brother in Hong Kong?"

"2,500 kilometers from HK, actually. And I'm Indonesian."

Bannerjee grunted again. "But you
are
a whore, aren't you?"

"Mr Bannerjee, I am a busy woman --"

"A
popular
whore!"

Yasmin hissed at the phone and Ashok double-checked that the mute was on. It was.

"-- a busy woman. I've called to make you an offer."

"I have all the whores I need," he said. "Goodbye."

"Mr Bannerjee! I'm calling to arrange for the release of Mala," Big Sister Nor spoke quickly. "And I'm sure if you think about it for just a moment, you'll realize that there's plenty I can offer you for her safe return."

Bannerjee said, "Mala is missing?" in a tone that could have won a medal in the unconvincing Olympics.

"Stop playing games, please. You know that we're not the police. We're not going to have you arrested. We just want her back."

"I'm sure you do. She's a delightful girl."

Yasmin was grasping her opposite elbows so hard her knuckles were white. Ashok had his fists bunched in the fabric of his trouser-legs. He made himself loosen them. But Big Sister Nor just continued on, as though she hadn't heard.

"I'm sure you've seen what's happened to the gold markets. Prices are on fire. No one can get any gold out of the gold farms, thanks to my Webblies. If you could promise a farmer access to one spot, without harassment, just think of what you could charge."

Bannerjee chuckled. "And all I have to do is find Mala for you and give her to you and you will guarantee this to me, is that right?"

"That's the shape and size of it."

"You will, of course, honor your end of the bargain once I've found her for you."

"Of course."

There was a long silence. Finally, Big Sister Nor spoke again.

"I understand your scepticism. I can give you my word of honor."

Bannerjee made a rude sound, like a wet fart. "How about this: I get the gold out of the game, then I find Mala for you."

Ashok hated this game he was playing, pretending that he didn't have Mala, but he could somehow find her. He wanted to crawl through the phone and strangle the man.

"How about if we just get you some gold?" It was The Mighty Krang speaking.

"Oh, there's more of you? Are you also an Indonesian whore 2500 kilometers from Hong Kong, or are you dialled in from some other exotic locale?"

"We can get the gold out of the game faster than anyone who'd hire you. All the best gold farmers are in the union. The scabs they've got working in the shops right now are so crap they'll probably screw up and get themselves banned." Ashok loved that Krang wasn't playing Bannerjee's taunting game either.

Bannerjee snorted. "That's not bad," he said.

"We could use an escrow service, one we both agree on." The gold-markets ran on escrow services, trustworthy parties that would hold gold and cash while a deal was closing, working for a small percentage.

"And you would return Mala to us?"

"I would do everything I could to find the poor girl and get her into your hands." Gold, silver and bronze medals in the 100-yard slime.

They dickered over price and timing -- Mala ended up promising him a 300,000 Svartalfaheim runestones -- and Krang disconnected Bannerjee.

"Brilliant," Ashok said, trying to force some enthusiasm into his voice, while inside he was quavering at the thought of Mala in the hands of Bannerjee.

"Very good," Yasmin said.

"Yes, yes," Big Sister Nor said. "And your team will get the runestones for us, and I'm sure you'll do it quickly and well because she is your general. All our problems should be that easy to solve. Now, Ashok, how have you done with your complicated problem?"

Ashok looked at Yasmin, who showed no signs of leaving.

"I think we're there. The trick was to create a situation where they
can't
put things back together without our help. Our accounts control the gold underneath so many of these securities that if they kick us all off, they'll create a massive crash, both in-game and out-of-game. At the same time, they can't afford to leave us running around freely, because there's a hundred ways we could crash the system, too, from resigning in a huge group all at once to repeating the Mushroom Kingdom job." Crashing the Mushroom Kingdom securities had been easy -- Mushroom Kingdom was already riddled with scams that had been flying under the radar of Nintendo's incompetent economist and security teams. Ashok had used Webblies and some of the Mechanical Turks that Big Sister Nor had supplied through her mysterious contact on the inside, building up a catalog of all the other scams and then giving them a nudge here and a shove there, using Webblies to produce gold on demand when necessary.

He'd gone into it thinking that he'd never manage to take on the Mushroom Kingdom economy, believing that the security would be all-knowing and all-powerful. But in truth, it had all been held together with twine and wishful thinking, straining at the seams, and it had only taken a little pushing and pulling to first make it swell to unheard-of heights, and then to explode gloriously.

"But we couldn't afford to repeat the Mushroom Kingdom job. There was no way we could have pulled that one out of the nosedive, once it started. It was doomed from the start. With Coca-Cola's games, we have to be able to promise to put it all back together again if they play cricket with us." Talking about his work made him forget momentarily about Mala, let the iron bands around his chest loosen, just a little.

"If we had kept things on schedule, it would have been much easier. But you know, with things all chaotic, I had to rush things. I've been dumping our gold reserves on the market for hours now, which has sent the market absolutely crazy, especially after they had that crash. How on Earth did you manage that?"

Big Sister Nor snorted. "It wasn't me. We're not sure if they got hacked, or some kind of big crash. It
was
well-timed, though."

"Would you tell me if you
had
caused it?"

Yasmin looked faintly shocked.

"Ashok," BSN said, with mock sternness, "I tell everyone anything I think they need to know, and I usually tell them anything
they
think they need to know. We're not in the secrets business around here."

That made Ashok pause. He'd always thought of the operation as being shrouded in secrecy. Certainly Big Sister Nor had never volunteered any details about her contact with the Mechanical Turks -- but then, he'd never asked, had he? Nor had he ever asked if he could discuss his project with Mala's army. He shook his head. What if the secrecy had been all in his mind?

"OK," he said. "Fine. The problem is this: if I had enough time -- if I had the time we'd planned on -- I'd be in a position to take Svartalfaheim right up to the brink of collapse and then either save it or let it collapse. It all comes down to how much gold we had in our reserves, and how much of the trading we controlled.

"But I've had to rush the schedule, which means that I can't give you both. I can bring the economy to the brink of ruin, but when I do, I need to know in advance whether we're going to let it blow up, or whether we're going to let it recover. I can't decide later." He swallowed. "I think that means we have to destroy it. I still have Zombie Mecha and Clankers underway. We can show them our force by taking out Svartalfaheim and then threaten to take out the other two."

"Why do you want to do it that way?"

He shook his head, realized she couldn't see him. "Listen, they're not going to give in to you. You're going to go in there and start giving them orders and they're going to assume you're some ridiculous third-world crook. They're going to tell you to get lost. If you make a threat and you can't make good on it, that'll be the last time you hear from them. They'll never take you seriously after that."

Big Sister Nor clucked her tongue. "Are we so easy to dismiss?"

"Yes," Ashok said. "
I
know what the Webblies can do. But they don't. And they won't, until we show them."

"We have Mushroom Kingdom for that."

That stopped him. "Yes, that's true of course. But that was so
easy
--"

"They don't know that. They don't know anything about us, as you point out. So yes, maybe they'll assume we're weak and maybe they'll assume we're strong. But one thing I know is, if they give us what we want and
then
we destroy their game, they'll never trust us again."

"So you're saying you want me to set this all up so that we can't make good on our threat?"

"If we have to choose --"

"We do."

"Then yes, that's just what I want, Ashok. I'll just have to be sure that whatever happens, we don't need to carry out our threat."

"OK," Ashok said. "I can do that."

"Good. And Ashok?"

"Yes?"

"I need you to speak with them," she said. "With who ever they get to talk to us. I'll be on the call, too, of course. But you need to talk to them, to explain to them what we've done and what we can do."

Ashok swallowed. "I'm not good at that sort of talk --"

Yasmin made a rude noise. "Don't listen to him," she said. "You talked the steelworkers and the garment-workers into coming to Dharavi!"

"I did," he said. "I didn't think it would work -- they'd never listened before. But once I explained what kind of situation you were all in, the thugs, the violence, told them that all of Dharavi would know if they came down --"

"Once you really believed in it," Big Sister Nor said. "That's the difference. I've heard you talk about the things you love, Ashok. You are very convincing when it comes to that. The difference between all the conversations you had with them before and the last one is that you came to them as a Webbly last time, not as someone who was playing a game to make himself feel like he was doing something important." The criticism took him off guard and pierced him. He
had
been playing a game at first, taken with his own cleverness at the vision of kids all over the world running circles around the tired old unions he'd hung around with all his life. But now, it wasn't a game anymore. Or rather, it
was
a game, but it was one that he took deadly serious.