The Bancroft Strategy (52 page)

“You don't say.”

“The runaway trolley car. You know this one, don't you? Activate the switch, and it detours to kill a single person instead of five.”

“I remember,” Andrea replied testily.

“And that would be the right thing to do. Obviously. But now, Dr. Bancroft said, imagine that you're a transplant surgeon. By taking
the life of one stranger and using his organs, you could save the lives of five of your patients. What's the difference between the two situations, logically speaking? Why, none at all.
None at all,
Andrea.”

“None that you can see, anyway.”

“The logic is crystal-clear. And once you take it to heart, it changes everything. The old prejudices fall by the wayside. Dr. Bancroft was the greatest, noblest savant I'd ever come across. His philosophy has meant that I really could devote my life to the greater good. It gave me an algorithm that could replace this missing thing—but it was better than what it replaced, like some kind of bionic eye. He showed that ethical choices were to be settled by intellect, not by emotion. Doing the right thing, he told me, isn't always easy—for anybody. It takes work. And Todd should have told you that I'm a
fiend
for work.”

“Paul told me—” Andrea broke off. “He told me that every life matters. What about mine? What about
mine
, goddammit?”

“Oh, Andrea. Obviously, given all that you know about our operations, appropriate measures must be taken. But your life will matter in
so
many ways, as will your death.” Rinehart sounded almost tender.

“My death,” she echoed dully.

“Everyone on this green Earth is on death row,” Rinehart said. “You know this. People talk about killing as if it's some mystical abomination rather than what it is—essentially a scheduling matter.”

“A scheduling matter.”

“Speaking of which, you're blood type O, correct?”

She nodded numbly.

“Excellent,” said Rinehart. “The universal donor. Any exposure to hepatitis, HIV, syphilis, malaria, papilloma, or other blood-borne diseases?” His basilisk eyes drilled into her.

“No,” she whispered.

“I hope you've been eating. Important to keep your organs healthy, maintain your iron levels, all that. I think you know why you're not being sedated—we don't want your organs suffused with
CNS depressants. That's not good for the recipients. I mean, I'm looking at a young woman in excellent condition. You've got resources that could save half a dozen lives. In addition to the blood, I'm looking at a liver, a heart, two kidneys, two corneas, a pancreas, two fine lungs, and no doubt a great array of vascular grafts as well.
So
glad you're not a smoker.”

It was all Andrea could do to keep from doubling over and retching.

“Take care of yourself,” Rinehart said as he turned to leave.

“
You
take care yourself, you twisted bastard,” Andrea croaked. It was rage and rage alone that stopped her from falling apart. “Didn't you say that Todd Belknap could find anyone if he had a mind to?”

“Well, exactly.” Rinehart smiled as he rapped on the steel-plated door. “That's what I'm counting on.”

The Commonwealth of Dominica, a wrinkled oval of land located between Martinique and Guadeloupe, was a former British colony, and had a cuisine that suffered for it. There were, however, other compensations. A relative newcomer to the tax-haven industry—it passed the International Business Companies Act No. 10 only in 1996—it had swiftly earned a reputation for efficiency and discretion. As a sovereign nation, it was unaffected by American and European regulations, and the Act made it a criminal offense to reveal personal information, expressly including information about criminality. There were no exchange controls on fund movements, no statutory oversight of businesses operating in its bailiwick. Thirty miles long, half as wide, the island boasted dense forests, valleys, and waterfalls, along with a rugged shoreline. Though it had only seventy thousand inhabitants, many of whom lived in the capital city of Roseau, its electrical and communications infrastructure was of an unusually high standard. Ecologists regularly complained about the various antennae placed on top of mountains in the major forest preserves. Elsewhere, indicator lights annoyed scuba divers. For them, such signs of modernity violated a cherished illusion of Edenic isolation.

Belknap had no such illusions. Nor was he in any mood to admire the tropical luxuriance of the place. Immediately upon arriving, he and Walt Sachs made their way to a shacklike structure that was about three hundred yards from Melville Hall, the main airport. A bright yellow logo identified the outfit as Island Rent-a-Car.

“My name is Henry Giles,” said Belknap. “I reserved a four-wheel-drive.” He had removed the dental appliances, but his mouth still ached.

“The four-by-four got wrecked, mon,” the man behind the counter said in a melodious lilt. “Got wrecked in Carnaval last January. Never quite worked since then.”

“Do you often let people reserve cars that don't work?” Sachs spoke up. The long trip had not put him in a good mood.

“Musta been a mix-up. Sometime my wife answer the phone, you know. And she ain't been right herself since the 1976 hurricane.” Belknap gave the man a closer look and realized he was considerably older than he seemed at first glance. His head was smooth-shaven and gleamed in the tropical heat, his skin tarry black, almost viscous-looking.

“What can you give me, my friend?”

“I got a Mazda. Two-wheel-drive, I'd guess you'd say, though I'm not sure it's always so many as two.”

“What do you drive?”

“Me, mon? I drive that old Jeep over there.” He pronounced “over there” as “ober der.”

“How much to rent?”

The man made a whistling sound of disapproval and deliberation, sucking air through his gapped front teeth. “But those are my wheels.”

“How much to make them mine?”

The rent-a-car man made him part with two hundred dollars, U.S., before handing over the keys to his Jeep.

“So where you going, mon?” the man asked as he pocketed the cash. “What you come to see in dis island paradise?”

Belknap shrugged. “I've always wanted to see the Boiling Lake.” The Boiling Lake—a geothermal oddity, the result of a flooded fumarole—was one of the island's better-known attractions.

“You in luck, then. It don't always boil, see. Most of last year, it just steamed, mon. But this year it's mighty hot. You best watch yourself around it.”

“I'll bear that in mind.”

Once they were on the road, headed south toward Roseau, Walt's already sour mood grew worse. “You're gonna get me killed with this goddamn G.I. Joe business,” he whined. “At least you can defend yourself.”

Belknap gave him a look but didn't respond.

Fruited branches—limes, bananas, guava fruit peeping through thick waxy leaves—brushed by them as they drove, the suspensionless Jeep amplifying every bump in the road. The landscape was as verdant as any Belknap had ever seen.

“Know what?” Walt pouted. “I'm beginning to think your boot ROM has a bad checksum.”

“I'm guessing that, where you come from, them's fightin' words,” Belknap replied heavily.

“Where are we headed, exactly?”

“The Valley of Desolation,” replied Belknap.

“You're kidding,” Walt said

“Look at a map.”

“You're
not
kidding,” Sachs said, and sighed. The ten-hour trip—they had changed at San Juan to a small prop plane—left them both feeling soiled and weary.

“Privex is in Roseau,” Walt said primly.

“Wrong. That's just a P.O. box. The actual facility is just above the village of Morne Prosper.”

“How do you even know that?”

“Walt, my friend. This is what I do. I'm a finder. Privex is on the lee side of that mountain, because it's not just dependent on the island's generous fiber-optic supply. It also has a cluster of satellite dishes sucking up Internet transmissions from the sky.”

“But how—”

“Because deliveries must be made. These routers and servers and hubs and switches—all the bits and pieces of the whole information architecture—need to be replaced on some schedule. They don't last forever.”

“Got it. So when EMC delivers parts for the Connectrix, someone has to get those parts to the facility. What telecom folks call the last-mile problem.”

“Cisco, actually. They're using something called the Catalyst 6500 Series Supervisor Engine.”

“But how—”

“Did I know they'd order one? I didn't. So I ordered one for them. Phoned the top network hardware companies, said I was calling from Dominica, gave them the P.O. box, and tried to place an order for half a million dollars' worth of application servers and such. Got a hit at Cisco. Long story short, I found out that they'd hired a helicopter company to do the delivery to Dominica. So I called the copter company.”

“And that's how you got location.”

“Long story short,” Belknap repeated.

“Incredible.”

“Like I said, this is what I do.”

“So where's this place again?”

“Perched up high above the Roseau Valley.”

“Hence the Jeep,” Walt said. “To drive up that mountain.”

“We're hiking. It's safer. A Jeep in the village is likely to attract scrutiny. Make it harder to arrive at the facility unnoticed.”

“I guess that means going by helicopter is out of the question. Jeepers creepers. This trip is
not
as advertised.”

“No cruise, either,” Belknap snapped. “Sorry. You can apply for a refund afterward.”

“Oh, crap. Look, I'll be in a better mood after I've eaten and showered.”

“Not on,” Belknap said. “No time to stop.”

“You're kidding,” Walt said, running a hand through his brown-and-gray hair. His eyes looked even more irritated than usual as he shot Belknap a look. “You're…not kidding.”

Twenty minutes later, Belknap hid the Jeep in a copse of soursop
trees, their dense evergreen leaves effectively camouflaging the vehicle. “We hike now.” They got out onto spongy ground, and the warm humidity seemed to wash over them like bathwater.

Belknap glanced at his watch again. Time was indeed running short: Andrea's life was in the balance. Genesis could have her killed at any moment.

If she hadn't been killed already.

Belknap's stomach clenched; he could not allow himself even to consider the possibility. He had to hold himself together.

Why had Genesis grabbed her? Perhaps there was something she knew, some detail that she didn't even know was significant—but that he might. Or perhaps—possibly a more hopeful thought—it was evidence of desperation on the part of Belknap's shadowy adversary. Yet where was she now? What had Genesis planned for her? He refused to think about the nightmarish scenarios for which Genesis was notorious. He had to force himself to remain in the present. Simply getting through the next few hours would be difficult enough.

One foot in front of the other.

The ground was boggy in places, slick and mucky in others, and the ascent grew only steeper the farther they traveled. A sulfurous smell seeped from volcanic fissures. Ropelike vines dangled across the paths. Hundred-foot-tall gommier trees towered overhead, their intertwined branches forming a canopy that filtered out most of the sunlight. The two hiked with their heads down. At one point, Walt yelped. Belknap whirled around to see a gigantic frog, perched on a stump with a pelt of fluorescent green moss.

“They call that ‘mountain chicken,'” Belknap explained. “It's a delicacy.”

“If I ever see that in a bucket of Popeye's, I'm suing.” They were only a third of the way up and Walt was already gasping for breath. “I still don't see why we're not driving up this way,” he grumbled.

“Want to have a trumpeteer announce our arrival while you're at
it? I told you, the idea is to get there unnoticed. We drive a Jeep up the road, there'll be a dozen electronic sentries marking our progress.”

Ten minutes later, Sachs begged for a rest. Belknap agreed to a three-minute break, but for a reason of his own. For the past several hundred yards, he had a nagging sense that they were being followed. In all likelihood it was simply the sound of forest fauna disturbed by their presence. Yet if there were human footfalls in the distance, he would be able to hear better if they kept still for a few minutes.

He heard nothing—yet that was not entirely reassuring. If someone were following them, a skilled pursuer would try to match footfalls with them and remain motionless while they were motionless.
No, dammit, you're imagining things.

“Keep an eye out for snakes,” Belknap warned Sachs as they resumed their hike.

“All I see are lizards and mayflies,” Sachs said, panting. “And not enough lizards to deal with the mayflies.”

“A good deal for both the lizards and the mayflies, when you think about it.”

“So it's just people who get the short end of the stick,” the tech huffed. After a while, he said. “I've been thinking more about what you've told me about Genesis.”

“I should hope so.”

“Nah, I mean, just the way that nobody's ever seen the fellow, the way he-she-it communicates only electronically. It's like we're dealing with an avatar.”

“An avatar? That's something Indian, right?”

“Well, originally, yeah. Like, Krishnu is an avatar of Vishnu, an advanced soul who takes on a physical incarnation to teach less-advanced souls. But nowadays, people who play computer games use it to talk about their online alter egos.”

“Their
what
?”

“There are these multiuser computer games people play, and some
of them are incredibly complex. All kinds of people around the world can log in to the system and play with, or against, one another. So they develop an online character that they're in charge of. It's kind of their virtual self.”

“Like a screen name?”

“Well, that's just the start. Because these characters can be very textured, very complicated, with a whole history and reputation that affects the strategies that other players are going to use with them. You'd be surprised how sophisticated online computer games can be these days.”

“I'll bear that in mind,” Belknap said, “if I ever become a quadriplegic shut-in. Otherwise, I gotta say I find the real world pretty damn challenging enough.”

“Reality's overrated,” Sachs said, still trying to catch his breath.

“Maybe. But it'll burn you if you don't watch out for it.”

“You trying to tell me that the Boiling Lake is on the way?”

“Not far, actually,” Belknap said. “But it's no joke. People have gotten severely scalded there, even died. The temperature can really soar. It's no goddamn hot tub.”

“And I was so looking forward to taking a cooling dip there,” Sachs replied sourly.

It was past midnight by the time they heard wind chimes and realized that they had reached the village. From a distance, they saw a chute of white water, a narrow, nearly three-hundred-foot-high waterfall. A breeze cooled them a little. Then they sat together on a flat mesa-like rise. Glinting in the moonlight, a cluster of large satellite dishes looked like a floral bouquet from another planet.

“So they've set up a satellite-based counter-net,” Sachs said, marvelingly. “A virtual private network. That's top-of-the-line equipment from Hughes Network Systems.”

The building itself was a low-slung structure of cinderblock and concrete, painted a dull green that made it blend into the forest when viewed from a distance. Up close, though, it was like a gas station
perched on a mountain. A paved parking area, edged with nursery-planted shrubs that looked spindly compared to the vegetation that grew wild. Power and telephone lines that snaked up the mountain converged on a utility annex that must have housed a transformer. There was clearly a backup diesel generator in the ground beneath it.

“What kind of security, do you know?” Sachs couldn't quite keep a tremble from his voice.

“I've got a pretty good idea, from my researches,” said Belknap.

“An electric fence?”

“Not in a jungle like this. Too much wildlife. Everything from manicou to iguanas to feral dogs—you wouldn't get a security barrier, you'd get a goddamn barbecue. Same reason a perimeter alarm's no good. It would be triggered three times an hour.”

“So there's, what, a gunman inside?”

“Nope. The guys who run this place believe in technology. They're going to have a state-of-the-art motion detector, that sort of thing—which you can't have if you've got some night watchman in the place. Trouble is, the night watchman might get drunk, or fall asleep, or take a bribe—all problems that don't afflict the technological solution. That's how they think.”

“That's how
I'd
think,” Sachs said. “I'd wire up a detect-and-delete heuristic. How do we deal with that?”