Genius Squad (44 page)

‘Vee was the hacker, wasn’t he?’ Cadel demanded. ‘Vee’s still around.’

‘As far as I know, Dr Vee is somewhere in the northern hemisphere,’ was Prosper’s oblique response.

‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything. Not if he’s got a modem.’ Cadel leaned forward, grabbing at Prosper’s headrest. ‘Who else is still around? What happened to Dr Deal? I know he escaped from prison the day you were arrested – did
you
organise that? Do you have him stashed somewhere?’ Another, even more staggering thought occurred to Cadel. ‘Did Luther Lasco
really
die in that explosion? Or did you manage to save him?’

In the front passenger seat, Alias snorted. ‘Jesus,’ he said, without opening his eyes. Prosper sucked in his breath, before letting it out again very slowly. When at last he spoke, his voice trembled with suppressed amusement.

‘I’m pleased to know that you’ve retained enough respect for your poor old dad to credit him with an almost
superhuman
level of ingenuity,’ he drawled. ‘Makes me feel a lot better about the way I bought you up.’

‘But – ’

‘Go to sleep, Cadel. You’re over-tired. You’re losing it.’ Prosper reached back and squeezed Cadel’s hand, which was still gripping the driver’s-side headrest. ‘I’ll wake you when we get there.’

‘Get
where
?’ asked Cadel.

‘You’ll see when we arrive,’ said Prosper.

But Cadel soon realised that they wouldn’t be arriving anywhere in a hurry. They drove and drove, along a freeway dotted with gigantic road trains. They drove past Blacktown, through the outskirts of Sydney, and over the Nepean River. They were in the lower reaches of the Blue Mountains when Cadel finally fell asleep, lulled into a restless doze by a very dull, late-night radio discussion about fishing quotas.

He woke more than an hour later, bleary and confused, as they hit a pot-hole. Around him, dawn had begun to creep across towering crags and rolling, bushy slopes. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

‘What – how – where are we?’ he mumbled.

‘Ah.’ Prosper was still driving. ‘You’re awake, at last.’

‘We’re in the country!’

‘A brilliant deduction.’

‘I need a drink.’ Squinting down at Sonja’s pale face, just visible above the folds of the sleeping bag, he saw that her mouth and jaw muscles were starting to quiver. ‘Sonja needs to get out of here.’

‘Not long now,’ Prosper said, and turned to Alias. ‘Are you sure this is the road?’

‘Positive,’ Alias replied.

‘Bit rough, isn’t it?’

‘That’s the whole point,’ said Alias. ‘It’s a weekender. A track like this keeps people away. So no one’ll rob the place.’

Prosper sighed. ‘I just hope there’s an inside toilet,’ he remarked, sounding unimpressed, and Alias stared at him in amazement.

‘Are you kidding?’ said Alias. ‘There’s a bloody
spa bath
!’

By this time Cadel’s head had cleared, somewhat – and he realised, with a sinking heart, that he had no idea where they were. Peering out from behind the shirt, which flapped and swayed on its hanger as they bumped along, he could see only thick, scrubby forest beside the road. Sometimes there would be a flash of smoke-blue ridge beyond a smudge of distant grassland. But for the most part his view was of tumbling rocks and twisted white tree-trunks.

‘Left up ahead,’ said Alias, whereupon the car slowed. Craning his neck, Cadel spied a mailbox. It marked the beginning of a precipitous track that plunged headfirst into the nearest gully.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Prosper.

‘It’s better than it looks,’ Alias assured him.

‘Why would anyone in their right mind want to spend a weekend out here?’ Prosper demanded, and Alias shrugged.

‘I don’t know. Trout-fishing, perhaps.’

‘Do they have winged trout, in this neck of the woods?’ Prosper grimaced, nosing his way down the track towards a half-concealed roof that appeared to be positioned directly underneath them. ‘We’ll have to abseil in a minute!’

‘Bird-watching, then.’ Alias pointed. ‘See that? It’s the garage. You can hide the car in there.’

Cadel had already noticed a power line, which had been strung perilously between clawing branches and across rocky clefts. It was attached to the eaves of what looked like a superior kind of cedar cabin. As Prosper rolled to a standstill, Cadel ran a calculating eye over the building’s wood-pile, chimney, and outside fuse-box, all dimly visible in the murky light. A security sticker had been placed in one of the windows, warning that the house was equipped with a monitored alarm system.

‘Hang on,’ said Alias, and jumped out of the car to push open the garage doors. Prosper then eased their vehicle into the space beyond, which was dim and generously proportioned.

Cadel unbuckled his seatbelt.

‘No silly tricks, now,’ Prosper warned, watching him in the rear-view mirror. ‘Sonja’s not really portable for someone your size. You wouldn’t want to be dragging her through the bush, in some fruitless attempt to escape.’

‘I know,’ said Cadel.

‘Don’t try to lift her. You’ll only hurt yourself.’ Having satisfied himself that Cadel was making no move to disobey, Prosper slipped from behind the steering wheel, raising his voice to address Alias. ‘Where’s Vadi’s car?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Alias replied, pitching his own voice very low. ‘It should be here.’

‘What if the alarm’s on? Can you actually get inside this place?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Alias nodded. ‘Trader gave me his code.’

‘
Trader?
’ gasped Cadel. ‘This is
Trader’s
house?’ He would have said more if Sonja hadn’t groaned suddenly. Concern for her wellbeing drove every other thought straight out of his head; he had to be dragged from his seat.

‘Wait! Stop! She’s waking up!’ he protested, but to no avail. Prosper kept a firm grip on his arm, and Cadel soon found himself being nudged towards Alias, who was still stationed at the garage door, all drooping hems and sagging bulges.

‘I’ll bring Sonja,’ Prosper said firmly. ‘Cadel, you get into the house.’

‘But – ’

‘Don’t annoy me, please. It’s been a long night.’ Prosper then gave Alias
his
instructions, clearly and crisply. ‘Don’t let this child out of your sight for one instant,’ he advised. ‘And don’t let him near any phones. Is there a computer in the house?’

‘Uh – yes – ’

‘Don’t let him anywhere near that, either.’ Prosper pinched Cadel’s earlobe. ‘I’ve already paid a very high price for underestimating my son. Rest assured, I won’t be doing it again.’

Cadel wanted to hang back and satisfy himself that Sonja was being properly treated. But he wasn’t given the chance. Alias immediately hustled him across a brick walkway towards the cabin’s main entrance, where Cadel committed to memory the key-code that Alias punched into the alarm panel. Being a six-digit code, it occupied Alias for just long enough to give Cadel time for a quick look at the system’s fire-alarm component, which remained operative even after the burglar alarm had been turned off.

He filed this fact away in his head, for future reference.

‘
Hello? Vadi? Are you here?
’ Alias called, upon entering the house. There was no reply. Cadel glimpsed a pair of grubby women’s sandals lying in the entrance hall, but was quickly guided past them into a lofty and spacious living room, containing – among other things – a cathedral ceiling, a slow combustion stove, and a whole wall of windows.

The rose-tinted view from these windows was spectacular.

‘Nice, isn’t it?’ Alias flicked on some halogen lights. ‘I like the built-in couch, especially.’

‘This isn’t Trader’s.’ Cadel had observed a pile of well-thumbed financial reports on the coffee table. Together with the dirty old sandals – and a framed newspaper article about corporate fraud – they told him all he needed to know. ‘This house belongs to Judith Bashford, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘Trader managed to get the alarm code off her, somehow.’

Alias smiled, and shook his head in amazement.

‘You’re really something else,’ he remarked.

‘She doesn’t know that you’re here, though. Does she?’

‘Look!’ said Alias, attempting to change the subject. ‘There’s a wide-screen TV! Do you want to watch it?’

‘I think he’d be better off taking a nap,’ Prosper submitted from behind them. But Cadel didn’t turn around. He had just seen something that interested him far more than Prosper’s whereabouts.

On a shelf beneath the TV, directly beside the DVD player, sat a video-game console.

THIRTY-NINE

Cadel had never been much interested in computer games. They had always seemed to him rather restrictive and futile; he preferred to manipulate reality, not a computer-generated facsimile of the world.

Nevertheless, he was by now fully acquainted with every characteristic of every console in the known universe, thanks to Hamish. In Hamish’s opinion, there were few topics as interesting as the relative merits of Sony, Microsoft and Apple gaming products; he had lectured Cadel on the subject more than once, over breakfast. So Cadel was able to tell, literally at a glance, that the console beneath the television had online gaming capability. In other words, it could be connected to the Internet.

The question was: had Judith availed herself of this feature?

‘What about nappies?’ he demanded, wrenching his gaze from the console and fixing it on Prosper’s flushed face. ‘Sonja needs nappies.’

Knowing that this remark would irritate Prosper, Cadel had used it to distract him. Because the last thing Cadel wanted was to advertise his keen interest in Judith’s console. If he did, someone might realise how important it was.

If he didn’t, on the other hand, he might get lucky.

Cadel knew that people of Prosper’s generation weren’t accustomed to regarding computer games as portals to the internet. To such people, the world was a place where each piece of technology had a single, defined function: where phones and computers were communication devices, while gaming consoles were for pitting yourself against the machine in front of you. There was a good chance that Prosper had never heard of multi-player gaming – that he might view the console as essentially harmless.

But his suspicions would be aroused if Cadel demonstrated more interest in the console than in Sonja’s wellbeing. So Cadel began to fret about nappies. He was convinced that such fretting would annoy Prosper, who would see it as a sign of weakness. And if Prosper became annoyed, he was less likely to concentrate on the bits of equipment scattered throughout the house.

Sure enough, Prosper’s flush deepened.

‘First things first,’ he said through his teeth, adjusting his grip on Sonja, who was beginning to grow restless. ‘Where are the bedrooms? Through there?’

‘Through there,’ Alias agreed. ‘The main’s got a bathroom off it.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Cadel was thinking furiously. ‘Couldn’t we just put her in here? I mean, we
are
going to give her some breakfast, aren’t we? And let her watch television? It’s bad enough that she doesn’t have her Dynavox – ’

‘Fine,’ Prosper snapped. He crossed the room in three long strides and dropped his burden onto the sofa. ‘Now where are all the phones?’

‘There’s one in the kitchen,’ said Alias, ‘and one in the study, and one in the main bedroom – ’

‘Go and get them,’ Prosper ordered. ‘Every phone and every modem. Now.’

Obediently, Alias scurried off. Meanwhile Cadel had crouched beside Sonja, who was restless but not fully awake. Her eyes were half-closed, and didn’t focus properly when Cadel murmured in her ear.

‘Sonja? Can you hear me? It’s all right. Don’t worry – I’m with you.’ He looked up. ‘How much of that drug did you give her?’

‘She’ll be fine,’ said Prosper – and stiffened suddenly, lifting his chin.

Then Cadel heard it. The purr of a distant engine.

‘Damn,’ Prosper breathed, grabbing Cadel’s arm. Caught in a grip like a tourniquet, Cadel was hauled upright and out of the living room almost before he knew what was happening. He nearly tripped on the hem of his skirt.

‘Wait!’ he gasped. ‘Sonja – ’

‘Shh!’ Prosper had once again produced his hand-gun. He dragged Cadel over to a small window near the main entrance of the house, from which vantage point they both had a clear view of the almost perpendicular driveway.

The noise of the engine was growing louder.

‘
Prosper?
’ Alias called, from somewhere out of sight. ‘
Is that Vadi?
’

‘I don’t know!’ Prosper replied, disengaging the safety catch on his gun. It was clear that if the driver of the approaching vehicle wasn’t Vadi, he or she was in grave danger of being shot.

This thought had barely crossed Cadel’s mind when a familiar green hatchback bounced into view.

‘Oh no!’ he gasped, having recognised Judith’s car. Before he could scream a warning, however, two unexpected things happened. He heard Prosper re-engaging the pistol’s safety catch, and he saw who was driving the green hatchback.

Not Judith, that was for certain.

‘It’s Vadi!’ Prosper loudly informed Alias, and moved towards the front door. Cadel was compelled to stumble after him.

‘You – you stole Judith’s car?’ Cadel stammered, astonished that anyone could be so stupid. A stolen car would be reported, after all. A stolen car was bound to attract attention.

But Prosper clicked his tongue.

‘For goodness sake,’ he said, sliding his gun into his coat pocket, and pulling open the front door, ‘do you think I’m a fool? Of course it isn’t Judith’s.’

‘The number plate – ’

‘Is a forgery. So is the car. And not a bad effort, either.’ Prosper addressed the man who was climbing out of the hatchback. ‘Good job, Vadi. Well done. Any trouble?’

Vadi shook his head. He was slim and young, with dark, oily skin and sleek black hair. At first glance he seemed to be quite normal; it was only after a few moments that his webbed hands, pinched nostrils and slightly odd blink became evident to the casual onlooker.

Cadel, who had always found Vadi’s presence deeply disturbing, refused to acknowledge it with a nod or a glance, staring down at the floor instead.