The Never Game

by Jeffery Deaver

  “I think it’s more than that. Maddie told me the company was giving the game and the goggles away to the U.S. military. When the soldiers or sailors play, they might look at something classified—maybe a weapon, an order for deployment, information about troop movements—and the goggles could capture and upload it.”

  “Maybe audio recordings too?”

  Shaw nodded. He replaced phone with laptop and looked up Hong-Sung. “They’ve got links to the Chinese government. Anything the goggles scanned could go directly to the Chinese Ministry of Defense. Or whatever their military operation’s called.”

  Standish’s phone pinged with a text. She sent one in reply. Shaw wondered if it had to do with the case. She put the phone away. “Karen. We got good news. The last hurdle. We’re adopting. Always wanted two.”

  “Boy, girl?”

  “Girl again. Sefina. She’s four. I took her out of a hostage sit in EPA and got her into foster about eighteen months ago. Mother was brain-damaged from all the drugs and her boyfriend was warranted up his ass.”

  “Sefina,” Shaw said. “Pretty name.”

  “Samoan.”

  Shaw asked, “We tell Prescott about Hong-Sung?”

  “What would they do with it? Nothing. Remember, Shaw: simple. That’s what they like. Ransom demands, bullets and drugs and lovers running amuck.” She frowned. “Is there such a thing as ‘running muck’? Is that what you run when everything’s calm and good?”

  Shaw was taking quite the liking to Detective LaDonna Standish. He powered down his laptop and slipped it and his notebook back into the bag. “I’ll try to find a way into Hong-Sung.”

  “Could your friend Maddie help?”

  “That’s not going to happen. I’ll see Marty Avon myself.”

  Standish’s tongue tsked. “What happened to the we?”

  “Got a question,” Shaw said.

  “Which is?”

  “Who’s going to stay home with Sefina and Gem?”

  “Karen. She writes her cooking blog from home. Why?”

  “So you can’t afford to lose this job, right? That doesn’t require an answer.”

  Her lips pursed. “Shaw, you—”

  “I’ve been shot at, I’ve abseiled off a burning tree. I’ve decapitated a rattler halfway into his strike—”

  “You did not.”

  “Truth. And we can all agree that I can face down a mountain lion.”

  “I’ll give you that.”

  “I can handle myself. If that’s what you were going to say.”

  “I was.”

  “Anything I find pans out, I’ll call you. You call SWAT.”

  56.

  The Astro Base.”

  Marty Avon was speaking to Shaw but was gazing at an eighteen-inch toy on his desk. A red-and-white globe atop landing legs. His beloved gaze reminded Shaw of how his sister, Dorie, and her husband would look adoringly at their daughters.

  “Nineteen sixty-one. Plastic, motors. See the astronaut.” A little blue guy, dangling from a crane, about to be lowered to the surface of Avon’s desk. “We didn’t have space stations then. No matter. The toy companies were always a generation ahead. You could fire a ray gun. You could explore. Batteries required. Lasted about two weeks before the rush wore off. That’s the nature of toys. And chewing gum. And cocaine. You just have to make sure there’s a new supply available.

  “I don’t have much time,” Avon added, focusing on Shaw. “I’m meeting with some people about Siliconville. We’re getting some resistance from traditional real estate developers. Imagine that!” He gave a wink. “Affordable housing, subsidized by employers—not popular!”

  Like the company towns of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, which Shaw knew about from his father’s reading to the children about the Old West. Railroads and mines often built villages for their workers—who paid exorbitant prices for rent, food and necessities, often running up huge debts, which bound them forever to their employers.

  He suspected Avon’s apparent socialist bent would lead him to run Siliconville in a very different way.

  “There’s been another kidnapping. We think it’s related. We need your help again.”

  “Oh, no. Who?”

  “A woman, thirty-two. Pregnant.”

  “My God, no.”

  Shaw had to give Avon credit that the first words out of his mouth weren’t something to the effect of: more bad publicity for me and my game.

  “We’re doing everything we can with the proxies to find you a suspect. But it’s taking more time than I’d hoped. We’ve cracked eleven. None of them are in the area.”

  “Only eleven?”

  A grimace. “I know. It’s slow. We don’t have supercomputers. And some proxies are just so righteous you can’t trace them back. That’s why they exist in the first place, of course.”

  Shaw said, “Add these times too, when he wouldn’t have been online.” He displayed his notebook and pointed to the hour Chabelle disappeared.

  Avon typed fast and, with a flourish, hit RETURN. “It’s on its way.”

  “I need something else. We have another hypothesis. Hong-Sung Entertainment.”

  The CEO corrected, “No, it’s ‘Enterprises.’ Hong Wei sets his sights high. Gaming’s just a part of his businesses. Small part, actually.”

  “You familiar with Immersion?”

  Avon laughed, his expression saying, Who isn’t?

  “So you know how it works?”

  The lanky man’s fidget fingers maneuvered the cerulean astronaut back into the Astro Base. “Here’s where you might ask: Do I wish I’d thought the game up? No. Virtual reality and motion-based game engines sound good. The fact is, of the billion-plus gamers in the world, the vast majority sit on their asses in dark rooms and pound away on a keyboard or squeeze their console controller. Because they want to sit on their asses in dark rooms and pound away on keyboards. Immersion’s a novelty. Hong-Sung’s poured hundreds of millions into Immersion. Hong’s less of a prick than some in Silicon Valley but he’s still a prick. I don’t have any problem with the game taking him to the cleaners when people get tired of hopping around like bunnies in their backyards. Which is going to happen. Why? Because it’s not . . .” His eyebrow rose.

  “Fun?” Shaw said.

  “Exactement!” Offered in a curious French accent.

  And this grinning, goofy fellow had created one of the creepiest video games in history.

  “What if Immersion’s more than a game?”

  Avon’s squinting eyes moved from the space station back to Shaw, who explained his idea about the cameras on the goggles sucking up images from players’ houses or apartments as they roamed their homes and uploading the data to Hong-Sung’s servers for later sale.

  Avon’s eyes widened. “Jesus. That is solid gold brilliant. Okay, now ask if I wish I’d thought that one up.”

  “There’s another what-if,” Shaw said. “Hong-Sung’s giving away goggles to U.S. military personnel. Presumably other government workers too.”

  “To capture classified data, you’re thinking?”

  “Maybe.”

  “My.” Avon considered this. “You’re talking a huge amount of data to process. Private companies couldn’t handle it. You know what the Chinese government has? The TC-4. Thirty-five petaflops. Most powerful supercomputer in the world. They might be able to handle the load. But, I have to ask, how does this involve my game?”

  Shaw: “The second victim? Henry Thompson? He was writing a blog about how companies steal data from gamers. Maybe Hong-Sung—or some other game company—didn’t want the story to appear and somebody mimicked a psycho gamer and killed him.”

  “How can I help?”

  “I need to talk to somebody who’s got a connection to the company. Best if he works there. Can you
make that happen?”

  The implication being that since it was, after all, his game that was the hub of the crime, even if it wasn’t Avon’s fault, a little cooperation wouldn’t be a bad idea.

  “I don’t know anybody there personally. Hong is secretive, to put it mildly. But it’s a small world, SV is. I’ll make some calls.”

  57.

  Though he was inherently restless, Colter Shaw was not necessarily impatient. Now, however, with Elizabeth Chabelle missing and in grave danger and with the Gamer prepared to play out the final act in his Whispering Man game, he wanted Eddie Linn to show up.

  Avon had made a half dozen calls and found a connection to Hong-Sung; a man named Trevor, whose further identity Avon didn’t share, would put Shaw in touch with Linn, who was an employee of HSE. This cost Avon something significant; it was clear that he would license some software to Trevor, at a discount, in exchange for setting up a rendezvous between Shaw and Linn.

  Shaw was presently in the appointed place at the appointed time: a park, carefully planned and maintained. Serpentine sidewalks of pebbled concrete, bordered by tall, wafting grasses and reeds, flower beds, trees. The grass as bright as an alien’s skin in a C3 game. A tranquil pond was populated with sizable fish, red and black and white.

  The grounds were balanced in color, laser-cut trim, perfectly symmetrical.

  Setting Colter Shaw on edge. He liked his landscapes designed by the foliage and water and dirt and rocks themselves.

  As he walked along the path he caught a small glimpse of Hong-Sung Enterprises’ U.S. headquarters. The building was a glistening mirrored copper doughnut. To the side were four huge transmission antennas.

  Presumably, just what was needed to beam stolen data into the ether.

  Linn had told him to sit on a particular bench, in front of a weeping willow, or one nearby if this one was occupied. Shaw noted why: it was out of sight of the company’s offices. The preferred bench was free. Behind it was a stand of thick boxwood, a plant that smelled of ammonia.

  Now the impatience factor was cresting and Shaw, thinking of Elizabeth Chabelle on a sinking ship, was glancing at his phone for the time when he heard a man’s tense, tenor voice. “Mr. Shaw.”

  Eddie Linn was a tall, narrow man of about thirty. Asian features. He wore a polo shirt with an HSE logo on the left chest and dark gray slacks that were slightly baggy.

  He sat down next to Shaw, whom Trevor would have described to Linn. The man didn’t offer his hand. Shaw had the ridiculous thought that Linn didn’t want to transfer DNA, which might be used for evidentiary purposes.

  “I just have a few minutes.” He frowned. “I have to get back to my office. I’m only doing this because . . .” His voice was fading.

  Because Trevor had something on Linn. Extortion is a distasteful yet often very effective tool.

  “Did you hear about the kidnappings?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. All over the news. Terrible. And one victim killed.” Speaking high and quickly.

  Shaw continued: “That man was working on an article about stealing data from gamers. We’re speculating that he was looking into Immersion.”

  “Oh God. You don’t think Mr. Hong had anything to do with it?”

  “We don’t know, but a woman’s life’s at risk. We’re following up every lead. This is one of them.”

  Linn fiddled with his collar. “Who are you? Mr. Trevor said you were like a private eye.”

  “I’m working with the police.”

  He wasn’t listening; he stiffened instantly as footsteps sounded, the faint grit of soles on sidewalk. Shaw had heard it only after Linn’s reaction.

  Linn put his hands on the seat of the bench and Shaw believed he was about to sprint away.

  The threat, however, turned out to be two women, one pregnant and pushing a baby carriage that held a tiny sleeping child. They chatted and sipped iced-drink concoctions. The friend was younger and Shaw caught her glancing into the carriage with hints of envy in her eyes. The two women—one an accountant, he gathered, the other the mother—sat down on the neighboring bench and talked about how few hours of sleep they each got.

  Linn, visibly calming, continued, though whispering now: “Hong is a tough man. Ruthless. But killing someone?”

  “You write code,” Shaw said. “That’s what Marty Avon told me.”

  “Yes.”

  “For Immersion?”

  His eyes scanned the park. Seeing no threat, he leaned closer to Shaw and said, “A while ago. For an expansion pack.”

  “I want your impression of an idea we’re looking at.”

  Linn swallowed. Shaw realized he’d been doing that a lot since he sat down. “Okay.”

  He gave Linn his hypothesis about stealing data via the Immersion goggles. “Could that be done?” Shaw asked.

  Linn seemed stunned as he digested this. His first reaction was to shake his head. “The cameras on the goggles are high-resolution. It would be too much data . . . unless . . .” A near smile crescented his thin lips. “Unless they didn’t upload video, but screenshots, JPEGs, compressed some more into an RAR archive. Yes, yes, it could work! Then up it goes along with the other information to the mainframe here. It could then be processed and sold or used by the company itself. We have divisions that do advertising, marketing, consulting.”

  “I think there’s also a risk that Hong is stealing sensitive government information,” Shaw said. “He’s giving away thousands of copies of Immersion to soldiers.”

  Alarmed, the HSE employee flicked his fingers together. He’d just fallen down the rabbit hole of government intrigue.

  “What is it?” Shaw said. He’d noticed the man’s eyes faintly squint.

  After a moment: “There’s a facility in the basement of the building. In the back. No regular employees are allowed in there. It’s got a whole separate staff. Visitors show up by helicopter, go in, do whatever they do and leave. We heard it’s called the Minerva Project. But no one knows what it’s about.”

  “I need you to help me,” Shaw said.

  Before Linn could respond, though, Shaw was aware of a rustling sound behind them.

  No, no, Shaw realized suddenly: a woman four, five months pregnant isn’t going to have a newborn. She’s pushing a doll in the carriage. He stood and gripped Linn’s arm and said, “Get out of here now!”

  Linn gasped.

  But it was too late.

  The pregnant woman was pushing aside the carriage and rising. Her “friend” was speaking into a microphone on her wrist and the source of the noise behind them turned out to be two minders, bursting from the boxwoods. The large Asian men’s motions were perfectly choreographed. One held a Glock on Linn and Shaw and the other emptied their pockets.

  Chill-eyed momma-to-be took the items. When she opened her Coach bag, Shaw saw that she too was armed. It was a Glock, nine-millimeter. The same brand of weapon that had killed Kyle Butler and, presumably, been used to pistol-whip and murder Henry Thompson.

  A black SUV screeched to a stop on the wide sidewalk, feet away from them. One of the security men gripped Shaw by the arm and the other grabbed Linn. Both were shoved into the back, the middle-row seats, which were separated from the front by a Plexiglas divider. There were no door handles.

  “Look, I can explain,” Linn cried. “You don’t understand!”

  A second vehicle pulled up, a black sedan. The two women got inside, the one who was not pregnant held the door for the other, who, Shaw deduced, was the mastermind of the admittedly brilliant takedown operation.

  The driver got out, folded up the baby carriage and placed it in the trunk, tossing the doll in afterward.

  58.

  Where are you taking me?” Eddie Linn asked, his voice vibrating like an off-balance washing machine. The SUV paused at an elaborate security gate, which then opened, and the vehi
cle sped through.

  Shaw had two reactions to the question. First, the man’s concern was solely about himself. Shaw supposed Linn would happily throw him to the wolves. Second, it was pointless to ask. Even if the guards in the front seat had been able to hear it through the Plexiglas, they wouldn’t have answered.

  When the Suburban stopped at the back door of Hong-Sung’s futuristic headquarters, the guards nodded them out and directed them inside, where the group descended a flight of stairs. Shaw looked back, wondering if the pregnant woman’s limo was behind them. It wasn’t.

  “Don’t look around. Walk.” This from the bigger guard, who took Shaw’s arm. Gripping tighter than even Tony Knight’s men, who really knew how to grip.

  “Don’t push it,” Shaw said.

  And was rewarded with a crushing squeeze.

  Linn didn’t need a jerk of the leash. He walked passively beside the smaller guard.

  They were taking the prisoners down a lengthy, dim corridor. It might have been in the basement but it was spotless. The walls were bare. Somewhere, not far away, machinery hummed.

  A two-minute trek took them to an elevator, in which they ascended to the fifth—and top—floor. It opened into a small, plain office. The receptionist, a woman of about forty, sitting at a wooden desk, nodded to the guards. Shaw and Linn were led through the wide double doors behind her. This room was larger yet just as austere as the receptionist’s, hardly the place for the CEO of a multibillion-dollar conglomerate to work.

  For that’s who they were looking at: Hong Wei, whom Shaw recognized from the internet stories he’d downloaded. The dark-haired Asian was about fifty. He wore a suit, white shirt and blue shimmery tie. The jacket was buttoned. Shaw and Linn were deposited in chairs facing him. The guards stood a respectful distance back but also close enough to step forward and break necks in a fraction of a second.

  The doors through which they’d entered opened again and the pregnant woman walked in. She carried a file folder and handed it to the man behind the desk. “Mr. Hong.”