The Genius Wars

  When he’d finished, he turned to Cadel.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ he said. ‘We can pick up a burger, if you like.’

  ‘No, thanks.’ Cadel’s stomach was screwed into a tight little knot; the prospect of forcing food into it made him feel queasy. ‘Does Rex Austin have a wife?’ he asked. ‘Or children?’

  ‘Not any more,’ Kale replied. ‘The wife divorced him about twenty years ago. She lives in the Bahamas now. And his heir apparent’s dead, of course.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Cadel remembered something he’d learned back in Genius Squad – something about Rex’s murdered son. ‘There weren’t any other kids? Just the one?’

  ‘Just the one,’ said Kale.

  ‘So no one’s been living with him?’ Cadel wanted to get things straight in his head. ‘Not even a girlfriend?’

  ‘Only the faithful butler. Who got sacked.’ Kale suddenly began to reel off facts and figures, as if Cadel had hit some kind of command button. ‘Austin owns three domestic properties: an apartment in Texas, a cabin in Oregon, and the house at Laguna Beach. The beach house is his biggest expense. It was built three years ago, at a cost of eleven million dollars. A gardening service takes care of the grounds and the pool. A maid service comes in once a week –’

  ‘Why does he need a maid service?’ Cadel interrupted. ‘What about the cleaning robots?’

  ‘Maybe they don’t do windows or baths,’ Kale said drily, before continuing with his report. ‘Austin also owns a lot of commercial property in LA, New York, Dallas and Seattle. He leases a couple of private jets. He doesn’t belong to any social clubs, but he’s associated with a lot of business bodies. He owns four cars, and one’s an old pick-up. He smokes, drinks, and takes several prescription drugs for cholesterol and high blood pressure.’ As Cadel’s jaw dropped, Kale offered up a slightly crooked grin. ‘Like I said before, we’ve been monitoring his activities.’

  Cadel was impressed. But then something occurred to him. ‘Has Rex filled any of his prescriptions, lately?’

  This question elicited a honk of laughter from Feliz. Kale’s grin twisted sideways.

  ‘You’re really something,’ he said obscurely. ‘No. Rex Austin has not filled any of his prescriptions, lately. Not as far as we know. But you don’t really need a prescription to get drugs – not if you have enough cash. And he might be wanting to keep a low profile.’

  ‘I guess.’ Cadel wasn’t convinced. ‘All the same …’

  ‘All the same, it’s a red flag,’ Kale agreed. At which point his phone buzzed, and he had to answer it.

  Once more, Cadel gazed out the window. They were still cruising along an enormous freeway, past endless housing estates. The sea was nowhere in sight, though signs kept pointing off towards a series of invisible beaches: Hermosa Beach, Newport Beach, Hurlington Beach. Cracking towers and heavy industry were giving way to houses clustered along scrubby ridgelines. A lowering sky made Cadel wonder how bad the thunderstorms could get in California. Would they be worse than the ones in Sydney?

  For a moment, his thoughts turned to Sydney, as he wondered if he was still officially dead back there. Probably not. It was fifty hours at least since he’d altered the hospital records; any discrepancies would surely have been identified and corrected. By now, in fact, Dr Vee would almost certainly have discovered the truth.

  But Cadel didn’t want to dwell on Dr Vee, or the hospital records, or Sydney in general. Such gloomy reflections would only trigger feelings of guilt and loss, which Cadel couldn’t afford to entertain. Not if he wanted to keep his wits about him. So he banished all traumatic memories from his mind, focussing instead on the passing landscape.

  As the road turned west, it hit a collection of yellow, sunbaked hills. Signage informed Cadel that he was travelling through the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park. A toll had to be paid, at one point; when Cadel spotted the Dix Nature Center, he experienced a fleeting sense that if he’d come here on vacation, he might have had quite a lot of fun.

  And still they kept going, until a wooded valley closed in on them, shady and verdant and sprinkled with evidence of genteel tourism: art galleries, glass blowers, even something called the ‘Plectrum Dulcimer Company’.

  ‘There’s a taco wagon,’ Kale finally announced, breaking the extended silence. ‘You wanna taco?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ Cadel had spotted a crowd of men in a car park. ‘“Day Labourer Hiring Area”,’ he read aloud, as they zipped past an official-looking sign. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that if you pay a buck, and stand there all day, someone might come along and ask you to trim the beards on their palm trees,’ said Kale. ‘Or not.’

  ‘Round our place, they hang out at the Home Depot parking lot,’ Chuck suddenly remarked, in a surprisingly high-pitched voice.

  Feliz said nothing.

  As Laguna Canyon opened onto Laguna Beach, Cadel began to sense money in the air. The canyon had puzzled him. With its quirky businesses and untamed growth, it had seemed like the sort of place that might be inhabited by ageing hippies – and Rex Austin wasn’t an ageing hippy. Laguna Beach, on the other hand, was all glamorous shops, lush trees and clipped lawns. Cadel could easily imagine a bunch of billionaires hanging out at Laguna Beach. Not billionaires like Rex, perhaps, but the other kind; billionaires with yachts and miniature poodles and bikini-wearing girlfriends.

  ‘Does Rex have a dog?’ Cadel wanted to know. Again, it was Kale who answered.

  ‘Nup.’

  ‘Not even a guard dog?’

  ‘He’s got a couple of horses in Oregon,’ Kale revealed. ‘That’s about it.’

  He glanced up from his phone to scrutinise Cadel. ‘We haven’t noticed any suspicious dog deaths, if that’s what you’re wondering. And no one’s cancelled any subscriptions, either. But his private jet hasn’t left the ground in two months.’

  By this time they were heading south, along a cliff-top road. To the left rose a line of steep hills, looming over terraced suburban sprawl. To the right, lots of high-density coastal architecture blocked out most of the ocean view – though here and there Cadel caught a glimpse of white caps on dark and restless waters. Palm trees whipped about in a gusty wind.

  ‘Normally you can see Catalina Island from here,’ Kale remarked. ‘But not with all this low cloud and sea-spray.’ He leaned forward suddenly. ‘Take the next right,’ he told Feliz.

  The next right was a short road lined with impressive dwellings: Spanish-style adobe villas, glass-and-concrete boxes, overblown half-timber cottages with river-pebble chimneys. All were oriented towards the sea, and all looked slightly too big for their gardens. The street itself ended at the edge of a sandy cliff, but Feliz didn’t go that far. Instead he turned left into a narrow lane, which ran between high fences until it reached a lofty, steel-barred gate hung with CCTV equipment.

  This gate was set in a stone wall, and protected by a car like the one in which Cadel was sitting. After a brief consultation with Kale, the driver on guard duty moved his vehicle, allowing Feliz to guide his own car through the gate and into the grounds of Rex Austin’s beach house. By this time, Cadel had grasped that ‘beach house’ was hardly an adequate description of the home that Rex had built for himself. To begin with, it wasn’t on the beach. It was a cliff-top mansion, surrounded by several acres of ecologically sensitive landscaping. Patches of grass and low scrub alternated with spiky palms and paved areas. Reflected in the serene surface of a tiled swimming pool, the main building was a beautifully integrated expanse of tinted glass, bleached wood and grey stone.

  Around it were huddled a flock of smaller structures, including a pool house, a six-car garage, an elaborate toolshed. They seemed to be bracing themselves against the wind.

  ‘Oh, man,’ said Feliz, his tongue loosened by surprise. ‘I sure could live in this place.’

  ‘Just park over there by the door,’ Kale instructed. He then turned to Cadel, who was eyeing Rex Austin’s luxurious spread with ill-conce
aled misgivings. ‘It’s got a familiar sorta feel to it, don’tcha think?’

  Cadel swallowed. It was as if Kale had been reading his mind. The Austin estate did, indeed, bear a striking resemblance to the house that Prosper had once inhabited on Australia’s east coast, along with his strangely fishlike man-servant, Vadi, and his black-toothed secretary, Wilfreda. Of course, Prosper’s house hadn’t been quite so big or so carefully tended. It hadn’t boasted a pool, a rooftop viewing platform, or a floor-cleaning robot. Instead of being shoehorned into a popular and expensive suburb, Prosper’s residence had been perched on a bushy headland, at least ten minutes’ drive from his nearest neighbour.

  All the same, there were enough similarities to make Cadel’s heart sink. Even the FBI’s presence struck a chord, because the last time he’d seen Prosper’s cliff-top hideaway, it had been surrounded by a heavily armed squad of police.

  ‘Takes me back,’ said Kale, who had been a member of that very squad. ‘One thing you can say about Prosper English, he has a good eye for real estate.’

  ‘You think he’s been here?’ Cadel asked.

  Kale shrugged.

  ‘I think it’s the sorta place he likes, put it that way.’ Unbuckling his seat belt, he pushed open the nearest door. ‘Anyway, we’ll have a better idea when we look around.’

  There was a CCTV camera mounted outside the main entrance, and another one in the vestibule. Cadel winced as he passed them. He could no longer spot a networked camera without wishing he was in disguise. ‘Have you disabled the security system?’ he queried, in a hushed voice that nevertheless echoed around the cavernous, galleried space just inside the front door.

  ‘Yup,’ said Kale. He put his hands on his hips as he surveyed the giant white pillar at the other end of the room. A staircase was wrapped around this pillar, and a lift was tucked deep inside it. ‘I see we got a real artistic layout, here,’ he declared sarcastically. ‘Some architect musta been stoned off his face on peyote buttons when he designed this place.’

  ‘It feels like the ceiling’s going to fall in on us,’ Cadel agreed. The ceiling, in fact, seemed to be tumbling towards them, swooping down from the top of the two-storeyed pillar to a low spot just above the front door, its surface all jagged and broken up. Cadel couldn’t help thinking that the whole interior had a weird, distorted quality to it, with walls that were stepped and textured like the soundproofed walls of a recording studio, and parquet floors set in patterns that played tricks with his eyes. Corners jumped out unexpectedly. Skylights were scattered overhead in careless clumps, as if jagged bits of glass had become embedded in the roof after a terrible explosion. There didn’t appear to be a single right angle in the entire house.

  ‘I’d get seasick if I had to live here,’ Kale remarked. ‘What’s the point of it all?’

  ‘Maybe it’s eco-friendly,’ said Cadel.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe it’s meant to make you feel seasick. Because the sea’s outside.’

  ‘Whatever.’ Kale shook his head. ‘I thought Austin was a hardline conservative. I never thought he’d hole up in a carnival ride like this.’

  Cadel wondered how Prosper might feel about holing up in a carnival ride. Pretty happy, no doubt, since Prosper’s entire life had been one big hall of mirrors.

  ‘Right,’ said Kale. ‘Let’s get started.’

  Their first stop was a colossal open-plan room that wrapped around three sides of the ground floor, rather like a horseshoe. The outer wall of this room was made of glass, affording panoramic views of the Californian coast. Though it was hard to ignore these views, Cadel tried to concentrate on the room’s contents. The couches were huge leather blocks. The dining table was big enough to seat eighteen people. The rugs on the floor had been peeled off the carcasses of endangered wildlife.

  Casting his mind back to Prosper’s Australian cliff-top hide-away, Cadel recalled bronze sculptures and wing chairs, wrought-iron lamps and tapestry wall-hangings. Although there had been a fur rug, it had been made of kangaroo hides.

  Rex Austin seemed to favour zebra skins.

  ‘According to the insurance records, this stuff is all Austin’s,’ Kale observed. He was peering at the screen of his mobile phone, scrolling down some kind of text message. ‘Barcelona chair,’ he read out. ‘Swarovski crystal chandeliers (two). Untitled by Mark Rothko …’

  ‘None of it looks like the stuff at Prosper’s house,’ Cadel volunteered.

  ‘Let’s try the kitchen.’

  The kitchen and butler’s pantry were located well away from any panoramic vistas. No expense had been spared in fitting out these rooms, which contained – among other things – an eight-burner stove, two ovens, a commercial-grade dishwasher, and a wall-mounted television screen. Many of the appliances were Bluetooth-enabled.

  When Kale pulled open the Bluetooth-enabled fridge, he found it almost empty except for a couple of condiment jars and a six-pack of imported beer.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said.

  ‘This fridge is the type that tells you what needs ordering,’ Cadel pointed out. ‘We can check when the last order was filled.’

  ‘Not now. We’ll get to that later.’ Kale moved past one of the other FBI agents into the pantry, which was well stocked with long-life food in packets and tins. ‘You once told me that Prosper drinks his coffee black,’ he remarked. ‘Do you know what brand he likes?’

  ‘No,’ Cadel admitted. He picked up a box of cherry-flavoured pop-tarts. Once, to distract Prosper, he had set some curtains on fire with a cherry-flavoured pop-tart.

  The memory made his blood run cold.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Kale.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Does Prosper eat pop-tarts?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Cadel returned the box to its shelf. ‘When I saw him last time, he didn’t know much about them.’

  ‘This must be the wine cellar,’ Kale deduced. He was standing over a hatch in the floor. ‘Is it all clear underground?’ he wanted to know, raising his voice to address the agent in the kitchen.

  ‘Yes, sir. We’ve been through there.’

  ‘Nothing to report?’

  ‘Nothing except some real nice champagne.’

  From the hatch, a circular staircase led down to a subterranean room; movement-activated lights flicked on as Kale descended into a long, low basement lined from floor to ceiling with wine racks and glass-fronted refrigerators.

  ‘Wow,’ Kale muttered. He turned to Cadel, who was bringing up the rear. ‘Do you know what Prosper drinks?’

  Cadel shook his head.

  ‘Pity,’ said Kale. ‘If Austin’s wine merchant has started supplying something different, it might be another red flag.’

  ‘I don’t know if Prosper does drink,’ Cadel had to confess.

  ‘Oh, he drinks, all right. He was a sommelier when he was young. Before he figured out there wasn’t any money in it.’ Seeing Cadel’s puzzled expression, Kale translated. ‘A sommelier’s a wine waiter.’

  ‘A wine waiter?’ Cadel couldn’t believe his ears.

  ‘He was straight out of school, training up. Had some kind of apprenticeship in a fancy London restaurant. But it was one of those places where all the major crooks used to hang out, so he got in with some bad company.’ Kale frowned, scanning row upon row of dusty bottles. ‘Maybe we should check with Austin’s wine merchant,’ he said. ‘If the orders have got classier, lately, Prosper could be responsible.’

  ‘What else do you know about Prosper?’ Cadel demanded. Somehow he couldn’t picture a young Prosper English in an apron, wielding a corkscrew. The whole image was too surreal. ‘Do you know where he went to school?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Cadel, we’ve got a file on the guy that’s about a billion gigabytes.’ Kale glanced at him curiously. ‘I figured Saul would have shown you most of it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well … maybe when we get back to headquarters, I can let y
ou see the unclassified stuff. Meanwhile, I want you to concentrate. Is there anything here that makes you wonder?’

  ‘Not really.’ Cadel did wonder why one man would need so much wine, but understood that such a question was irrelevant.

  ‘All right. We’ll keep trying, then.’ Kale checked his watch. ‘I don’t know when this lawyer of yours is gonna show. She’s taking her sweet time getting here.’

  Cadel followed him back up the stairs and into a library, which was furnished with a generous supply of leather-bound books, a massive wooden desk, and all the very latest computer technology. The home theatre next door was almost as lavish as Raimo’s had been; leading off it was a marble bathroom with a spa bath. There was also a games room (containing a full-size pool table) and a small gymnasium where Rex stored his fishing rods and other sports equipment. A utilities cupboard contained his floor-cleaning robot, which looked a bit like a giant hub cap. The toilet-cleaning robot was nowhere to be seen. ‘Must be upstairs,’ Kale hazarded.

  Cadel was amazed at the sheer size of the house, which seemed monstrously big for one person. But he wouldn’t have wanted to live there himself. For a start, he didn’t like all the cameras and sensors and Bluetooth-enabled devices, which made him feel incredibly exposed. And as he moved through the house, its odd proportions began to disturb him more and more.

  He couldn’t put his finger on exactly why they were so troubling. It wasn’t as if they were affecting his sense of balance. Despite Kale’s earlier complaint about seasickness, Cadel wasn’t sick or dizzy. He was simply conscious of a nagging discomfort that was mental, rather than physical.

  ‘Where’s the panic room?’ he finally asked. Maybe that was the problem: an unaccountable absence. ‘If Rex is paranoid, there should be a panic room.’

  ‘There is. Somewhere,’ said Kale. After making a few inquiries, he discovered that the panic room was on the floor above – so he and Cadel headed upstairs. By this time the sky was slate grey, and the choppy sea beneath it even darker; Cadel could see this quite clearly when he reached the main bedroom, which had a sweeping coastal view. But he wasn’t interested in the view. He was interested in the panic room, and the contents of the walk-in wardrobe, and the book that was perched on a bedside cabinet.