The Genius Wars

  Ariel herself was another convincing element in his plan. No self-respecting police force would send a sick teenager to entrap a suspect: at least, that was Cadel’s theory. He knew that his age was a definite plus. For that reason, he adopted the fretful whine of a spoiled suburban princess – the sort of girl who would be utterly clueless when it came to any form of computer technology other than Facebook and iPhones.

  ‘All Warren did is give me this,’ he continued, coughing piteously as he produced a USB drive. ‘I’m supposed to give it to you once you pay for it. That’s all he told me. Apart from the name and address.’

  Raimo’s lip curled in a sneer. ‘Are you kidding?’ he scoffed. ‘You think ah’d hand over money for something sight unseen?’

  ‘That’s what he told me.’

  ‘Well, you kin forget it,’ said Raimo, nodding at the sliver of metal in Cadel’s palm. ‘That could be anything. Hay-ell, it could be nothing.’

  ‘But I’m supposed to get the money!’ Cadel’s voice cracked as it mounted towards a squeal. ‘Can’t you just call him?’

  ‘Why don’t you call him?’ was Raimo’s uncooperative response.

  ‘Because my phone doesn’t work over here.’

  ‘Are you from Australia too?’

  ‘Of course I am!’ Cadel was careful to sound affronted. It was easier to stay high-pitched, that way. ‘Can’t you tell?’

  Raimo shrugged. He was watching his visitor with bright, unblinking eyes, and something about the way he sat there – a dark little dot in a giant red hand – made him look like a squashed mosquito.

  ‘What about your phone?’ Cadel suggested. ‘We could use that.’

  Raimo said nothing. Instead he uncoiled his limbs and stood up. Crunch-crunch-crunch went the soles of his boots, as he strode through a sea of sweet wrappers. Cadel nervously followed him down a narrow hallway, past a room fitted out as a home cinema. The screen in this room was gigantic; it faced two rows of raked, adjustable seats, which were upholstered in plum-coloured velvet and fitted with cup holders and footrests. It seemed obvious to Cadel that Raimo had blown all his money on the most luxurious home cinema known to man.

  And then they passed the room next door.

  Confronted with rack upon rack of eye-popping computer technology, Cadel realised that he was mistaken. The greater part of Raimo’s wealth must have been poured, not into home cinema wiring, but into the kind of equipment that NASA would have envied. All at once, Raimo’s arctic air-conditioning made perfect sense. It was clearly for the benefit of his machines, which exuded a lot more heat than your average suburban family. Hovering on the threshold, Cadel saw that several holes had been punched in one wall, so that cables could be run from an adjoining room. The only trace of human occupation was the layer of wrappers on the floor.

  ‘Here,’ said Raimo, up ahead. He was standing just inside the doorway of the rear bedroom. When Cadel joined him, Raimo gestured at one of three desks that had been wedged into this rather cramped space, which was also occupied by a king-sized water bed. The bed was unmade, and its black satin sheets were littered with more sweet wrappers. The desks supported an array of computers, printers, modems, USB drives, mikes, speakers and phones. ‘You kin use the Star Trek phone,’ Raimo instructed, ‘but you gotta call collect.’

  Cadel hesitated. The Star Trek phone was on the other side of the room; to reach it, he would have to turn his back on Raimo. Had Raimo engineered this manoeuvre for the sole purpose of attacking him from behind? It seemed unlikely, but Cadel couldn’t afford to take any chances. He was all alone, in an unfamiliar environment. If he never emerged from this house again, no one in Australia would ever know what had happened to him.

  Then suddenly his gaze fell on the floor – and he realised that there was no way in the world that Raimo could launch a surprise assault. Not with so many wrappers strewn around. The crackle of plastic underfoot would be a dead giveaway.

  ‘Well … all right,’ Cadel agreed, crunching past the bed. ‘Just don’t blame me if he gets really mad at being woken up.’

  As he punched his own number into the keypad of Raimo’s Star Trek Communicator phone, Cadel surreptitiously scanned the room for traces of Niobe. But there was nothing: no photographs, no jewellery, no discarded underwear. If she was around, she was keeping a very low profile. Perhaps she had learned to do that, over the years; Cadel didn’t know. At the Axis Institute she had never been a retiring sort of person. On the contrary, she and her sister had been loud, exuberant and messy. It was possible, however, that she had changed since then. It was possible that she had learned not to leave a trail of hair accessories and feather-topped pens in her wake.

  Cadel could see no evidence that anyone had been in the house, apart from Raimo. Certainly there was no sign of Prosper English. When given the choice, Prosper had always tended to live a rather elegant life, full of silk shirts and marble bathrooms. Grotty project homes ankle-deep in rubbish weren’t his style. Had Prosper ever set foot in this place, he would have done something about the wrappers. And since there appeared to be several months’ worth of wrappers on the floor, it was unlikely that he had been a visitor for at least that amount of time.

  On the other hand, it was perfectly possible that he had been communicating with Raimo, who had an eerily familiar quality about him. Raimo was exactly the sort of employee who had always ended up on Prosper’s payroll – and not for the obvious reasons, either. Sure, Raimo looked a bit odd. Sure, he was an obsessive loner, just like so many members of the Axis Institute staff. But it was his strangely disconnected air that was so unnerving. Again and again, Cadel had encountered the same sort of thing at the Institute: a sense that the person in front of you wasn’t truly engaged with you or with anyone else. A feeling that you were being regarded as an inanimate factor within some utterly self-centred scheme, conspiracy or distorted world view. Brendan, Max, Luther, Vee … they had all shared this characteristic. They had all suffered from the same tunnel vision.

  At one stage or another, they had all studied Cadel the way Raimo was studying him now – with a gaze that was both wary and calculating, yet fundamentally dismissive.

  ‘The number you are calling is not currently available …’

  Hearing a recorded voice, Cadel was hugely relieved, though he hadn’t really expected anything else. As far as he knew, his mobile phone was sitting somewhere in the wreckage of his demolished bedroom, without a battery.

  ‘No answer,’ he informed Raimo, who seemed unimpressed.

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘I could try again. In a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Nuh-uh.’ Raimo shook his head. ‘If he ain’t picking up his phone at four a.m., he won’t be picking it up at 4:15.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘You wanna show me something? Then come back when you kin show it to me. Ah’m a busy man. Ah got work to do. You’re wasting mah time.’

  ‘But I can’t show it to you!’ Cadel lamented. ‘I don’t have a computer to put it on!’

  ‘Ah do,’ said Raimo. Despite his bored and patronising tone, there was something about the way he kept his attention fully focused on Cadel that betrayed a quickening interest. ‘You kin upload it onto one of mine. Then ah kin check out what’s on it, and pay you if it looks good.’

  Cadel had a hard time controlling himself. He was both delighted and astonished; who would have thought that his disguise would prove to be this successful? Apparently, Raimo had sized him up as complete bimbo, unable to understand that once the contents of the USB drive had been uploaded, the actual drive would lose its value. Raimo thought that Ariel was stupidly trying to sell the drive, rather than the information on it.

  And Cadel was happy to go along with this misconception.

  ‘So if you don’t want it, you’ll give it back?’ he asked plaintively.

  ‘Yeah. Like with a jacket. If ah try it on, and it don’t look good, ah’ll put it back on the rack.’

  ‘Which means it wo
uldn’t get ruined, or anything?’

  ‘Ruined?’ Raimo’s scorn was almost palpable. ‘How could it get ruined?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know!’ Cadel whimpered. He was fiddling with his handkerchief, trying to convey the agony of his indecision. ‘This is all too hard for me! I should never do favours, I always get screwed!’

  Raimo tapped his chunky gold wristwatch with one finger. ‘You got thirty seconds,’ he declared. At which point Cadel capitulated.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, thrusting the USB drive in Raimo’s direction. ‘You take it. What do I care? It’s not like I’m being paid for this.’

  The little device was promptly plucked from Cadel’s grasp. Holding his breath, he watched Raimo sit down in front of the nearest computer – which was already turned on. All Raimo had to do was shove Cadel’s USB drive into the appropriate port.

  As the connection was made, Cadel scanned his immediate vicinity for some means of defending himself. Though he could rely on Raimo’s computer to behave in a predictable way, he couldn’t tell how Raimo himself would react. At best, there would be recriminations. The worst-case scenario might involve thrown chairs, or black eyes. Cadel didn’t know Raimo well enough even to hazard a guess; the safest thing was to be prepared for anything.

  He braced himself for the coming explosion.

  ‘God day-um!’ Raimo suddenly exclaimed. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Ah cain’t get nothing off this piece of junk! Cain’t even read it!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There ain’t no scans on this here.’ Raimo turned in his seat to glare at Cadel. ‘What are you trying to pull? Huh?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘You must think ah’m some kinda dim-bulb!’

  ‘Is it broken?’ Cadel tried to sound disoriented. ‘Maybe you need a special password –’

  He broke off, dodging the USB drive. Raimo had hurled it at him.

  ‘Git!’ barked Raimo.

  ‘But –’

  ‘Ah’ll count to three. If you ain’t outta here by then, ah’ll go git mah twelve gauge.’ Rising, Raimo stood with his shoulders hunched and his teeth bared. Despite his small size, weedy build and kitsch glasses, there was something extraordinarily menacing about him. Perhaps it was because he looked so much like a wasp; there was even a waspish buzz to his voice, which grew more and more noticeable the angrier he became. ‘It’s legal to shoot burglars in these parts,’ he hissed, ‘and since you’re just a thief who’s trespassing on mah property, ah guess no one’ll blame me if you leave here with a load of pellets in your ass!’

  With a frightened yip, Cadel bolted. He ran down the hallway while Raimo shouted after him.

  ‘ONE!’

  Cadel skidded to a halt, blocked by the front door.

  ‘TWO!’

  He yanked the door open.

  ‘TWO-AND-A-HALF …’

  Pelting along the concrete driveway, Cadel risked a fleeting glance over his shoulder, just in time to see the front door bang shut behind him. But he didn’t slow down. Though he doubted very much that Raimo was about to shoot him on the street, in broad daylight, Cadel was glad of an excuse to run. He wanted to reach his cab as quickly as possible.

  ‘Quick!’ He slammed into the side of the cab, then jerked open the nearest passenger door. ‘Let’s go!’

  ‘Where to?’ the driver asked, as Cadel flung himself into the back seat.

  ‘Just go,’ said Cadel. ‘I’ll tell you when to stop.’

  The driver shrugged, but didn’t argue. Cadel began to fumble in his green bag, feverishly searching for his antenna. Only when his laptop was on and his various scanning programs were fully engaged did he look up to inspect the scenery gliding past.

  It was more of the same: stucco houses, bearded palm trees, patchy lawns. The driveways were full of vehicles – two or three per house. A parked car had its hood up, so that someone could tinker with its engine.

  ‘Stop!’ Cadel exclaimed. ‘Pull over! Right here. That’s it.’

  The cab rolled to a standstill. Cadel peered at his computer screen. He had managed to infiltrate somebody’s wireless connection, and wasn’t entirely proud of the fact. But it had to be done. He couldn’t waste time. If he didn’t act quickly, he might lose his only chance.

  The clickety-click of his fingers on the keyboard finally seemed to rouse the impassive driver, who went so far as to look around.

  ‘You gettin’ out here?’ the driver asked.

  ‘In a minute.’ Click-clickety-click. ‘In a minute I want you to take me to the nearest public phone.’

  ‘You mean this isn’t where you wanna get out?’

  ‘Not yet. Hang on. Let me finish.’ Sensing an unexpected degree of restlessness in the front seat, Cadel wondered if his driver might actually know what was going on. ‘I can’t take notes in a moving car,’ was the first excuse that popped into Cadel’s head. ‘Just let me finish this letter, would you?’

  The driver gave a grunt. And at that precise moment, Cadel found what he had been looking for.

  ‘Gotcha,’ he crowed. A few more keystrokes was all it took; soon data was gushing into his laptop, which absorbed the invisible flood silently, without pause or complaint.

  At last Cadel raised his eyes from the screen in front of him.

  ‘All right,’ he announced. ‘Five more minutes, and then we can go. Maybe to a shopping centre. There must be plenty of public phones in a big shopping centre.’

  ‘A mall, you mean? You wanna go to a mall with payphones?’

  Cadel nodded.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Take me to a mall with payphones.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Raimo’s computer files contained a scan of Rex Austin.

  Cadel sat back, staring at his laptop screen. Around him the buzz of the food court was almost deafening. Bright lights bounced off sleek plastic and shiny chrome. Dozens of people were lined up at counters, ordering fried chicken, hamburgers, tacos, sandwiches, noodles. Dozens of other people were sitting at tables, chewing away at doughnuts or sandwiches or slices of pizza. Here and there, cleaners were pushing mops around, or picking up rubbish.

  Cadel had bought himself a bag of chips with the change left over from his very expensive taxi ride – though not before getting rid of Ariel. Her skirt, shoes, jewellery, make-up and undergarments were once again stuffed away in his green bag, which lay on the floor between his feet. Changing back into his ordinary clothes hadn’t been easy. Though he had entered the ladies’ toilets with complete confidence, he’d found that walking out again – as a teenaged boy – had required a lot of nerve. But he had managed to do it (thanks to some split-second timing) and had then marched straight to the nearest payphone, trying to ignore the pounding of his heart.

  All the while he’d been conscious of the security cameras overhead, tracking his every move.

  ‘Hello?’ Kale had answered on the very first ring.

  ‘Uh – is that Kale Platz?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Cadel. Cadel Greeniaus.’

  The ensuing pause had told Cadel everything he needed to know. So had Kale’s eventual reply, which had been crisp and to the point.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Los Angeles.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Could you come and get me?’ Though he’d sensed that Kale was already aware of recent developments in Australia, Cadel had nevertheless started to sum them up. ‘Prosper’s been trying to kill me. He nearly killed my friend Sonja –’

  ‘I know. Just tell me where you are.’

  ‘I’m at the Beverley Center. I can wait for you in the food court.’

  ‘Then that’s where we’ll meet. Just stay right there, okay? Don’t go anywhere with anyone else.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Cadel had promised.

  ‘Do you have a cell phone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

 
‘Wait. Before you hang up –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How’s Saul?’

  Kale’s response had been tinged with exasperation. ‘He’ll be feeling a lot better now that he knows you’re all right.’

  Something about Kale’s tone had suggested that a lot more would be said on the subject, at the appropriate time, in the appropriate place. Not that Cadel was particularly concerned. Compared to all the other threats that hung over him, a tongue-lashing was the least of his worries.

  Anyway, when Kale sees this scan, it’ll make up for everything, Cadel decided. He himself knew that the scan of Rex Austin was incredibly important. For one thing, it meant that Raimo – or someone he knew – had been in physical contact with Rex. It also meant that Cadel might have been unfair to Lexi. Maybe she hadn’t told anyone that he was at Clearview House, after all. Maybe the leak had occurred because of Devin.

  Devin had been stealing money from Rex. According to Devin, it had been easy to siphon a few thousand dollars out of the billionaire’s electronic bank accounts without triggering any alarms. But suppose Devin had miscalculated? Suppose he had been noticed?

  As Cadel pieced together a possible scenario, he blocked out all the distractions in his immediate vicinity. There was a pattern emerging; he could feel it. Raimo Zapp had been associating with Prosper English, who in turn had helped Rex Austin to set up Genius Squad. Raimo had a scan of Rex on file. Devin had been preying on Rex’s bank accounts. And as soon as Cadel had moved in with Devin, Prosper had found out about it.

  Could Rex and Prosper still be cooperating? Cadel thought it very likely. He had never met Rex Austin, and neither had Kale Platz, or Saul Greeniaus. Rex was a hard person to get hold of; he could buy enough lawyers, security guards and personal assistants to keep the rest of the world at bay. But what if Prosper English had wriggled his way through Rex Austin’s defences? What if the two men were in cahoots?