Killfile (29 page)

Preston screams in shock and horror. He clutches his own leg, as if he can't believe that it's still there.

“OmniVore,” I say. “It eats everything. You thought that was clever.”

“What?” he says again. But his pride is wired deeper than that. He goes right back to those memories. Adapting the algorithm. Watching it peel apart data, finding the hidden secrets, the stuff people didn't even know they were revealing. I see strings of code in his mind, lined up in neat and orderly rows.

I send him another memory. This is what it feels like when your foster father stops using the belt and starts hitting you with a bottle.

He ducks like he's feeling the blows himself, curling inward from both the betrayal and the hurt.

“OmniVore,” I say again.

He thinks of his company, his computers, his programs.

This is what it feels like when a four-inch piece of jagged metal from a mortar blast buries itself in your abdomen.

He hisses in pain and wets his pants.

“OmniVore.”

This is what it feels like when someone holds your head down in four inches of water and your lungs fill and you pray to God he'll let go, but he doesn't let go.

Preston's eyes go wide and he goes deathly pale and he gasps for breath.

“OmniVore.”

This is what it feels like to have someone choke you to death with the lapels of your own jacket.

He begins crying.

I release him and he collapses onto the deep-pile carpet. He's got no fight left in him.

I decide to test my work.

“OmniVore,” I say.

Preston's mind explodes with pain. He yells out, and he shakes like he's in the grip of an epileptic seizure.

It won't last forever. But he's going to have a hell of a time ever touching a computer again without PTSD.

Then, just out of curiosity, I probe around, looking for the answer to the one question that's still nagging me. It's not in his memories of Sloan, which is why I had such a hard time finding it before.

And there it is. It seems so obvious in hindsight. Once I dig it out, everything else falls into place.

Now I know what started this whole mess.

I'm almost finished here. But I've got one last thing to tell him before I go.

I kneel down next to him and say a single word, loud enough to be heard over his crying:

“Kelsey.”

And at the same time, I let him know what it feels like to have a 9mm slug of copper-jacketed lead tear through your chest, your lung, and your shoulder.

Just like she felt.

He begins screaming, and he doesn't stop. I'm glad the walls are thick.

“Don't even think about her. Ever again,” I tell him.

That's where I leave him.

We are back where
we started, in the office in Sioux Falls. Sloan sits behind the desk this time. I'm in the chair facing him.

I flew out of Dubai on Schaffer's passport. Nobody looked at it too closely, and I dumped it in a trash can at LAX as soon as I got back. His memories were harder to lose. I spent the past week in a cabin at Big Sur, letting my body heal and sweating out a dead man's nightmares. Now my bruises have almost faded, even if my tie still irritates the places on my neck where he left handprints.

It's just me and Sloan in the room. His bodyguards are nowhere I can sense them. Gaines picked me up at the airport himself, and he's waiting on the other side of the door.

Sloan has the good sense to look embarrassed, even if he's not particularly feeling it.

“I wanted to tell you, in person, that I had no idea any of this would happen,” he says.

“Do you think we'd be having this conversation if I didn't already know that?”

I can't keep the scorn out of my voice. He might be the world's smartest man, for all I know. But he can't read minds.

He looks down at the desk, upset at being scolded. Here's how I
know he's scared: he's practically transparent, compared to our first meeting. There's no ice wall, no high barrier of equations and lofty thoughts. He's focused on me. And what I might do.

“I just want you to know I am sorry,” he said.

“I know,” I tell him. I open the bag by my feet and take out Preston's hard drive, then place it on the desk. This is more ceremonial than anything else. OmniVore is already going down in flames. There's only been a short press release, saying the company's IPO has been postponed indefinitely. Preston hasn't been seen in public since last week in Dubai. Bloomberg News ran a piece saying he's in a high-dollar psychiatric care center, where the doctors have him on a steady diet of tranquilizers. Top talent is already running for the exits. Within three months—six at the most—OmniVore will be a memory.

“There's just the matter of my bill,” I tell Sloan. This is why I'm here.

He nods, and I feel the relief like a cool breeze.

“Of course,” he says out loud. “I will honor our agreement.”

“I know you will,” I say. “I expect the contract for Ward Island and the residence to be signed and delivered to my attorney before end of business today. But I've added something to my fee. For the inconvenience.”

The thought escapes him before he can lock it down. “I'm sure we can come to an arrangement. I know this job took some turns neither of us expected, and we can compensate you for that.”

I have to marvel at his cool. It's like he's reading from a script a lawyer prepared for him. “I'm glad to hear that,” I say. “Would you call Mr. Gaines in here, please?”

Sloan's a little surprised by that, but he does it anyway. Gaines has been eavesdropping the entire time. I can sense the anxiety coming off his thoughts like sweat. He enters immediately when Sloan says his name.

“Mr. Smith,” he says, not waiting for anything. “I want you to know how deeply sorry we all are—how sorry I am—that things got so, well, fucked up, pardon my French. Obviously, I didn't know or understand the depth of the issues here—”

“No,” I cut him off. “You didn't.”

“I want you to know that we've had Kelsey moved to a top-flight facility. And of course we're taking care of all her bills. She'll receive only the best of care.”

“I didn't ask.” That sits there for a long moment.

I focus on Gaines. “How much are you worth?

That catches him off guard, and I get a nice shot of his financial status. A guy like this, his portfolio is never far from his thoughts anyway. Assets versus liabilities all tallied up in big black letters; the total at the bottom when he adds up all his bank accounts and stock holdings and even the cash in his wallet.

Plus one more big debt, as of right now.

“About three-point-two million,” I say. “That's fine. We'll round it off.”

He's baffled.

I turn to Sloan again. “Here's my last condition. Three-point-two million.”

“Now just a moment. There was some unpleasantness, yes, but you're paid to assume certain risks—”

“I'm not finished.” I point at Gaines. “I want
his
three-point-two million. Everything he has. All of it. He writes you a check, you write me a check.”

The blood drains out of Gaines's face. “What?”

“What?” Sloan echoes.

“Your employee's incompetence nearly cost me my life. Several times. All of this could have been avoided if he had fulfilled your obligations to me. Or even made a simple phone call to you.”

Gaines is squealing inside.

“Yes, it is, Lawrence,” I say. “You think I really believed that there was no way to get hold of Sloan? There's always a phone number. Kelsey didn't know it. You did. But you got scared. You thought it would be better to cut us off.”

“I don't care,” I say. “You had an obligation. You failed. This is how you pay for it.”

Sloan snaps his fingers so I look at him. He's able to hear only one part of this exchange, and he hates being out of the loop.

“What makes you think I'll bankrupt one of my most loyal employees for you? You're asking too much.”

“I don't particularly care if you keep employing him. I'm not asking you to fire him. I simply want everything he's got. Because he cost me everything I have. Or do I have to remind you that everything I owned is now the property of OmniVore? We both know that I'm not going to be on the list of creditors when they go into bankruptcy.”

“That is unfortunate, but there are other ways to make you whole,” Sloan says. “We can reimburse you.”

“No,” and I let him know with a sharp prod that I am not budging on this. I point at Gaines again. “He pays.”

Gaines looks to his boss.

“No,” Sloan says, shaking his head. “I will not do that. You can't bully me. I realize this must seem foreign to someone like you, Mr. Smith, but I have principles.”

Cheap shot. That makes it a little easier to pull out the big gun.

“That is, of course, your choice,” I say. “And, of course, I can always go back to the NSA and let them know you've been using classified software for private gain.”

That hits him like a heart attack. His blood pressure jumps so fast I'm afraid I did some real damage there.

One thought echoes in the sudden stillness in his mind:

“Preston never stole anything from you. He was given your algorithm by the CIA. Who got it from the NSA. The ones you made it for. The ones who paid for it.”

He doesn't say anything. He's waiting to see how much I know. Which is not smart, because I'm psychic, remember? I know it all.

“All those years ago, the NSA hired you to make something that could break Soviet codes. That's when you found your algorithm. Then you realized you could make more money with it in the private sector. You gave them an early version of your work; then you resigned, waited a decent interval, and began trading with it. You turned it into Spike. And your old bosses at the NSA, they never knew it was the same program. Back then, nobody understood algorithmic trading. You were so much smarter than they were. You thought they'd never catch on. And you were right. Since then, there's been so much turnover, so many changes of administration, nobody even remembers where the original software came from. Who would put code breaking and stock trading together? Only a genius like you, right?”

Sloan's face is slate gray, but he's recovering. He's glaring at me, letting me spin this out as far as I want to go while he desperately tries to come up with an answer. It's not going well.

So I keep telling the story.

“Then Preston came along. He's not as smart as you are, granted, but he's still pretty smart. Or he was, anyway. Once he saw how you'd used
algorithms to find patterns, he figured out another business model. He knew he couldn't get your code, though. It was locked down too tight. And he didn't have time to build something so brilliant from scratch. That kind of research takes years. It's for the losers in academia. He wanted to get rich quick. Fortunately, he knew just where to find some really serious, brain-busting algorithms. He used to do code breaking too. It was one reason you hired him. So he went to the CIA and offered them a deal: give him some code-breaking software, and he'd turn it into a Trojan horse and smuggle it inside every big corporation in America. It was sort of brilliant, really. So the CIA gave him your original work, and he turned it into Cutter, his data-mining engine. They had no idea you'd think he stole it from you. Because they didn't know you'd stolen it from them in the first place.”

Everything I'm saying is true. For Sloan, hearing it out loud is like seeing his own name on a tombstone. He's churning inside, trying to manage the sudden rush of fear. He never thought anyone would figure it out. It's been years.

Sloan musters some dignity. “I did not steal it. I created it. You can't steal your own property.”

“I'm sure your attorneys will say that. Still, I don't think the government will agree. You were being paid by the feds when you wrote the original source code for Spike. I'll bet you even signed something that said anything you made was their intellectual property. They're probably going to want a cut of every dollar you've earned since then.”

Sloan recovers from the shock fast. He opens his mouth to argue with me. Dozens of excuses and reasons fly through his head. But none of them masks the truth as we know it. If I take this knowledge to our perpetually cash-hungry government, Sloan is going to find himself on the receiving end of a very big bill from Uncle Sam.

He could fight it out in court, spend years and millions of dollars,
and still lose. Or he could give me what I want for a fraction of the cost. Sloan's decision is easy. He really is a smart guy.

He closes his mouth. Swallows. Then he smiles at me.

“I thought you said you didn't believe in blackmail,” he says.

I shrug. “I make an exception, every now and then.”

Sloan uses some words in his head that he'd never say out loud, and then turns to Gaines. “Lawrence,” he says. “Please leave the room. We'll work this out.”

“What?”

“It's not the end of the world, Lawrence. You'll still have a job.”

Gaines hears it. He just can't believe it. He thought he'd do anything for Sloan. He was willing to throw himself on his sword for his king.

He didn't realize that loyalty went only one way.

“You can't,” Gaines says. “You can't make me. That's my money. I earned it. I've given you years, given your company the very best I have—”

Now Sloan has a place to focus his anger: an employee who won't do as he's told. The blast furnace opens. “I gave you that money,” he shouts, voice suddenly huge, echoing off the walls. “I have all of your assets in my fund, under my control, and I can do whatever the hell I want with them. Now, if you want there to be a company for you to work for, you will listen to me and leave the goddamn room!”

Gaines trembles. He considers rebellion. He could screw this up for Sloan in a dozen ways. He could go public and fuck up Sloan's life considerably. He's got better secrets about the company than the ones I know.

But in the end, he folds. He goes out the door, his mind hollow. He'll do what he's told. He doesn't know anything else.

As he closes the door—carefully, trying very hard not to slam it—he wonders what he's going to tell his wife.

At least he doesn't have kids. I wouldn't have done this if he had.

Sloan watches him go. He turns back to me. “There,” he says. “You have a deal.”

“Happy now?”

“Getting there,” I tell him. I take the lease drawn up by my lawyer from my suit jacket and place it next to the hard drive. “Close of business today,” I remind him.

He snorts. He's not bothering to hide his contempt or anger anymore. That's good. Starts the healing process.

I stand up. “I'll skip lunch and head straight back to the airport, if that's all right with you.”

“Why did you do that?” Sloan asks when I'm at the door. The intellectual in him is already taking over, rebuilding the ice wall. He looks at what just happened like a math problem. “Why would you ruin a man like that?”

I could say something about accountability. Or Kelsey. Or the carelessness with which people like Sloan and Gaines make decisions, and the costs they never see. Instead, I opt for the truth.

“I really, really, really hate being shot at,” I say.

That raises a small smile. “Be serious,” he says.

“Oh, I am. But you already know the real reason. Somebody always has to pay. Always. Would you rather it was you?”

He shakes his head. “You've made an enemy out of Lawrence, you know.”

“But not you.”

“No,” he admits. “Not me. Just business.”

“Just business,” I agree.

I close the door behind me.