Genius Squad (42 page)

‘Come on,’ said Alias. ‘Your stuff’s over here.’ He conducted Cadel into the bathroom, which was pink like the carpet (where it wasn’t black with mould). There was no shower curtain. The bone-dry bath was full of clothes.

When Cadel saw all the cosmetics and prosthetics laid out on the fake-marble vanity, he recognised many of them from his days at the Axis Institute. The moustache kit, for example. The collection of fake fingernails.

Cadel had always liked Alias. While most of the Institute staff had behaved in a way that was both disturbed and disturbing, Alias had been consistently cheerful, supportive and matter-of-fact. For all his clandestine talents, he’d never quite fitted in. He was simply too pleasant.

‘Why are you doing this?’ asked Cadel, studying the face that was almost – but not quite – the face of Saul Greeniaus. ‘Why are you helping Prosper English?’

Alias shrugged. To his credit, he looked slightly embarrassed.

‘Money,’ he replied. ‘I’m on the run. It’s hard to find work.’

‘Were you the guard who helped him to escape? The guard at the Coroner’s Court?’ Cadel wanted to know, and Alias nodded.

‘I was his lawyer, too. Some of the time.’ Alias began to paw through the pile of clothes in the bath. ‘I acted as the go-between, though he did set up a
Reader’s Digest
sweepstake code. He’d get some of his information through fake junk mail. Ah.’ With a flourish, Alias produced a long, filmy skirt and padded bra. ‘Here you go.’

‘I’m supposed to be a girl, am I?’

‘That’s the idea. Just put those on, and I’ll do your make-up.’

‘Whose idea was the junk-mail code?’ Cadel inquired, and Alias scratched his neck, grimacing.

‘I dunno if I should tell you that. Prosper hasn’t given me clearance.’

‘Was it Vee? Did Vee get into the prison network?’ Kicking off his shoes, Cadel continued to pepper Alias with questions. ‘Did he change the protocols, and let you walk out of the Coroner’s Court? Did he set up the Genius Squad War Room?’

‘Hell, no!’ Alias seemed quite shocked. ‘Vee’s had nothing to do with Genius Squad. Now what do you think – should we shave your legs? They’re getting a bit shaggy down there, but I’ve seen worse on many a hippie chick. And they’ll be hidden by the skirt.’ He tapped his chin thoughtfully. ‘Maybe we’ll risk it. You’re still pretty enough to carry it off, though I think you should wear a turtleneck. And I might give your mo a bit of a tweak. Thirty seconds with the tweezers should sort it out.’

‘Alias.’ Cadel took a deep breath. ‘Did Prosper hurt Saul Greeniaus?’

Alias blinked. Then he sighed. Then he pulled a wry face, his expression half sheepish, half impatient. ‘You know me, kid,’ he retorted. ‘If I were a violent man, I wouldn’t be a master of disguise, would I? Do you see any blood on this shirt?’ He plucked at one pin-striped sleeve. ‘We used chloroform. We didn’t even use a gag. He’ll be fine.’

‘Truly? Please tell me the truth.’

‘It’s the truth, Cadel.’ Alias was certainly convincing – perhaps because he looked so much like Saul. ‘We were on a tight schedule, remember? We honestly didn’t have time to rough him up.’

Cadel nodded. He pulled on his skirt as Alias reached into the bath for a sweater.

‘A word in your ear, though,’ Alias added. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t keep talking about that cop. He’s a bit of a sore point, for some reason.’ Seeing Cadel’s brow crease, he made haste to offer reassurance. ‘Not that Prosper’s a man who’ll lose his temper. I’m not saying that. It’s just – well, we want him to keep a clear head. We don’t want things getting too personal, do we?’

‘No,’ said Cadel. ‘You’re right. We don’t.’

THIRTY-SEVEN

When Cadel emerged from the bathroom about thirty minutes later, he was sporting a plum-coloured rinse in his hair. He was also wearing a pair of pink trainers, a mauve angora jumper, a long black skirt with an elasticised waist, and masses of expensive make-up.

At the sight of him, Prosper froze in his tracks.

‘What do you think?’ said Alias. ‘Not a bad job, is it?’

There was no immediate reply. Studying Prosper from between mascara-caked, kohl-encircled eyelashes, Cadel was at first confused to see nothing but a blank look. It wasn’t until Prosper’s gaze slid uneasily away from his own that Cadel realised.

Of course.

‘Do I remind you of my mother?’ Cadel asked maliciously.

Prosper narrowed his eyes, but directed his next remark at Alias.

‘You don’t think he’s too . . . memorable?’

Alias frowned.

‘Too much of a stunner, you mean? Not really.’ He scanned Cadel from top to toe. ‘If he was taller, perhaps. Or blonde. But personally I think he’s less noticeable when he’s dressed as a girl. There are lots of pretty girls, after all. You just don’t see too many boys with features like that.’

‘Where’s Sonja?’ said Cadel. He had realised that she wasn’t in the living room. ‘Where have you put her?’

‘In there.’ Prosper waved his hand. ‘Where the mattress is.’ Watching Cadel hurry away, he added, ‘She’s under sedation.’

Cadel whirled around.

‘What?’

‘She’s sedated. For the trip. It’ll be a long one, and I don’t want her braining somebody.’ As Cadel charged out of the room, Prosper raised his voice to insist that there was no need to panic. ‘Barbiturates won’t do her any harm! Not in the correct dosage!’

But Cadel wasn’t listening. He had already reached Sonja, and had dropped to his knees beside her motionless body. She was sprawled across a soiled, queen-sized mattress, which lay directly on the carpet. Her eyes were closed and her mouth hung open.

She still wore her pyjamas.

‘Sonja?’ said Cadel.

There was no reply.

‘Sonja?’ When Cadel shook her, she grunted and moved her head. But she didn’t wake up.

He checked her pulse and was relieved to find it reassuringly strong.

‘She must have been pretty tired,’ Prosper remarked from the threshold. ‘She had an empty stomach too, I daresay. Makes for rapid absorption.’

Cadel didn’t raise his eyes. He kept them lowered while he stroked Sonja’s arm, trying desperately to control his jagged breathing.

‘She’ll be all right,’ Prosper continued. He strolled over to where Cadel knelt. ‘Look at her colour. It’s perfectly healthy. Look at her fingernails – pink as your shoes.’ Receiving no answer, he tried again. ‘What’s wrong? Are you sulking?’ He bent down, to get a better view of Cadel’s expression. ‘Don’t cry, or your mascara will run.’

‘I’m not crying!’ Cadel exclaimed fiercely. And he wasn’t. He was enraged. ‘I’m
sick
, if you want to know! Sick to my stomach! You make me want to
throw up
!’

‘Ah.’ Prosper straightened. ‘Well, if you could throw up into the toilet before we leave, I’d be grateful. Because I don’t want you being sick while we’re on the road.’

‘What road?’ Cadel still wouldn’t look up. ‘Where are we going?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘Will Judith be there?’ Cadel almost hoped that she would be. He almost hoped that she
was
employed by Prosper English. Because she was the only person – besides Cadel himself – who could be trusted to take care of Sonja.

‘My dear boy.’ Prosper tugged playfully at Cadel’s ponytail. ‘You seem to be labouring under a misapprehension. I told you, I hired Dot, not Judith. I had nothing to do with the creation of Genius Squad. It was already up and running by the time Trader approached me – or rather, by the time he approached his old mate Alias, and made inquiries about me. I gather Rex Austin asked Trader to sound me out, just in case I had any dirt on GenoME. So Alias passed on the message, and I agreed to supply Rex with information. In exchange for which, of course, I made a few requests of my own.’ When Cadel lifted his gaze at long last, startled into reacting, Prosper smirked down at him. ‘I requested that Trader expand his team to include you, Dot, and your crippled friend. He wasn’t too happy about Sonja, but I couldn’t be sure that you’d agree to sign up unless she came with you. We had to provide a little extra motivation – I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist living in the same house. And it’s not as if she isn’t useful, in her own way.’

Cadel’s swallowed. A great weight seemed to settle onto his shoulders, like a heavy iron chain. He suddenly realised that he had been living a life of illusion – that, despite appearances, he had never really escaped from Prosper English.

Prosper’s peculiar genius was to create misleading scenarios. Cadel had thought that, in joining Genius Squad, he was securing for himself a certain amount of freedom, away from the restrictions imposed by Hazel Donkin and the police.

But he had actually been walking into a trap.

‘So – I mean – who else knows about this deal of yours? On the squad?’ Cadel stammered. (Had
everyone
been lying?) ‘Trader and who else?’

‘Dot,’ Prosper replied. ‘I told you. As it happens, she was in my debt. Because I helped her brother to skip the country.’

Cadel’s heart sank. ‘What?’ he spluttered, followed by: ‘When? When did you help him?’

‘Oh, before my arrest. When the Institute started to collapse.’ Prosper went on to explain that, although ‘dispensing with’ Com might have expunged a potential witness, it was never a wise policy to throw away really useful and intelligent tools like Com. ‘Waste not, want not,’ Prosper said with a smile. ‘If I’d got rid of Com, I would never have secured Dot’s services. Though needless to say, she’s not immune to the lure of a big pay-off. Not since her stockmarket reverse.’

‘But I don’t understand.’ Cadel’s was almost reeling with shock; he couldn’t get things straight in his head. ‘Why would Trader even
want
to break into the GenoME system? Why bother with Genius Squad when
you
were around to dish up all the dirt on Earl Toffany?’

‘Because I didn’t have much dirt to dish,’ Prosper admitted. ‘To be honest, I’ve never been terribly well informed about Earl’s activities. He was always a bit of a problem. A bit of a maverick. I used to say as much to Phineas, but he wouldn’t listen.’ Something about Prosper’s flattened tone suggested that this hadn’t been an unusual state of affairs. ‘At any rate, keeping tabs on GenoME was difficult. Earl is rather paranoid about me – that’s one reason why his security is so tight. He seems to think I’m a
threat
.’

As Prosper’s lip curled, Cadel felt a chill run down his back like a trickle of cold water. For someone who frequently (and without difficulty) passed himself off as a mild-mannered professor with cultivated habits, Prosper could be remarkably menacing when he let his guard drop.

‘So what kind of information
did
you give to Rex, then?’ Cadel inquired, and Prosper shrugged.

‘Oh, a few choice titbits. Naturally I spaced them out, so that Trader wouldn’t be tempted to renege on our deal.’ Prosper’s sneer became more pronounced. ‘Let’s see. What did I tell him? I told him that Fountain Pharmaceuticals is just NanTex under a different name. I told him about the faulty brain implants – ’

‘I knew it!’ Cadel cried. ‘I knew Trader never worked that out for himself!’

‘I was half afraid he wouldn’t believe me,’ Prosper confessed. ‘The brain-implant project was a joke. A fiasco. I could hardly believe it myself, when I first heard about it.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘Needless to say, it was one of Darkkon’s little pet projects. Darkkon’s and Chester Cramp’s. It had something to do with mind control, but I can’t be more specific because they didn’t choose to pass on the details. Not to me, at least. No doubt they were anticipating . . . shall we say . . . an unfavourable response, from this quarter?’ And he laughed.

Cadel frowned. He rubbed his forehead. ‘So you made a deal with Rex and Trader,’ he said. ‘And you hired Dot to keep an eye on me, as a condition of the deal.’

‘In a nutshell. Yes.’

‘And they’re the only ones who know about it? Trader and Dot and Rex Austin?’

‘The only ones.’

‘But how did you find me in the first place? Was it Trader who told you where I was?’

Prosper’s disappointment showed in his exasperated air. ‘Give me a little credit, Cadel. I’ve always known where you were,’ he said. ‘Since the day you arrived in Australia, I’ve been monitoring the Department of Community Services. Or Vee has, anyway. He set up the department firewalls, so it wasn’t hard for him to get in.’

‘You mean – ’

‘Originally, when you were much younger, I had to make sure that your status wasn’t being questioned by the authorities. I had to stamp out any fires. Then, when I was arrested . . .’ Prosper shrugged. ‘Let’s just say I didn’t want to lose track of where the Department had put you. ’

‘So you knew about the Donkins? From the very beginning?’ Cadel croaked.

‘Yes. And I’m sorry I didn’t get you away from them sooner.’ Prosper sounded genuinely apologetic. ‘There was a communication problem. It was lucky that Trader and Alias had worked together, once, or I might never have heard about Rex Austin’s plans at all. Because no one on Genius Squad could ever have risked approaching me directly. Not in gaol. As I said, it had to be done through Alias.’

Cadel wasn’t listening. He was thinking about Sonja, and how he had led her straight into a lion’s den. Saul, too: by making friends with Saul, Cadel had effectively painted a target on the detective’s back. And Gazo . . .

‘Gazo’s all right, isn’t he?’ Cadel cried, aghast at his own stupidity and negligence. Thanks to him, Gazo was in serious danger, because Prosper was now free to eliminate anyone who might testify against him. ‘Gazo’s no threat to you. Not now you’re out of prison,’ Cadel insisted breathlessly. ‘He can’t be a witness if you never go on trial!’

Cadel was prepared to defend this position with the full force of his considerable intellect. He owed it to his friend. But he wasn’t given the opportunity; Prosper interrupted, sighing and shaking his head in an irritable manner, as if Cadel was being deliberately perverse.

‘I’ve never understood your attachment to that noxious, dim-witted freak,’ Prosper complained. ‘Why do you have such a taste for the company of all-round
losers
? First Gazo Kovacs. Then Sonja Pirovic. Then Saul Greeniaus, who strikes me as being sadly deficient in brains – ’