by Tony Batton
"And the toxin?"
"I’ve not been able to run an analysis yet. I’ve been focussing on staying dead – at least from their perspective. I thought it might give us an advantage."
"Good thinking. But I disagree with you on one thing: the pure luck part. Nothing at the moment is happening by chance. Someone has a grand plan, we’re just not seeing who yet. There are a number of things I need you to—"
An alarm sounded. They turned to the screens. Someone had knocked at the front door. External cameras flicked on showing five armed response officers standing outside along with a Chief Inspector.
"They’re here for me?" Kelly asked. "I’d swear I wasn’t seen."
Saxton shook his head. "They’re here for me. I was told this would happen. Without doubt they’ll find evidence hidden in this house backing up whatever crime I’m supposed to have committed." He walked over to a picture on the wall and unhooked it, revealing a large safe. Quickly he typed in a long code then pulled the door open. "Again? How are they doing this?"
"What is it?"
"Proof of my ‘guilt’ for the police to find."
"I need to get you out of here."
He shook his head. "It’s the wrong play. If they don’t get me here they’ll just keep looking."
"So you’re giving up?"
"No more than you were when you decided to stay dead. I need to go where they put me, so they don’t grasp what I’m really doing." He gave her a grim smile. "It’s going to mean you warming to the task and showing a bit of zest." He pulled a tablet computer from a shelf. "This is hard-encrypted to your bio signs. Remember this conversation: in case of trouble it’ll tell you what you need to know."
Sixty-Nine
Millie followed Craig across the road and past the main building loading bay to a small service door. Craig held a small device up to the key panel. It blinked three times and the door opened. No alarm sounded. No guards came rushing.
"See? Have a little faith." He handed Millie a balaclava, then pulled one on himself.
She covered her face. "Couldn’t shut the cameras off then?"
"I shut off the analysis software, so we won’t be flagged, but the cameras themselves run on a completely separate system. And I’d rather not have our faces there for later analysis." Craig led them along a corridor then through an unmarked door onto a fire-escape staircase. They climbed without incident to level 8. From there they proceeded through a series of doors until they came to a large metal hatch. "This area houses the research rooms: the main facilities where they build new tech. This access door is a completely new system." He ran a hand over the metal. "Pretty serious stuff. It must weigh a couple of tonnes." He walked over to a computer terminal and started typing.
"Is there no end to your talents?"
"You need to raise your threshold for being impressed."
"And also your hands," said a loud voice from behind them.
Millie glanced at Craig. "So much for your plan." She turned around, and whistled.
Standing behind them was Gregory Jenson. He was holding what looked like an automatic rifle.
"You carry weapons in your office?" she asked.
"We make weapons in this office," Jenson replied. "Now show your faces. Slowly."
Millie pulled off her mask.
"Do I know you?" Jenson asked.
"I’m sure you know of me."
Craig uncovered his face, puffing out his cheeks. "It’s been a while, Greg."
"Holy crap," Jenson said, lowering the weapon. "I don’t believe it. You’re…"
"…dead? Yes, that was the look I was going for."
"You faked your death? Why?"
"To stop Darwin. Except apparently I failed. So here I am to try again."
Jenson raised the rifle, pointing it at Craig’s chest. "Before we get to that, we’re going to start by clearing a few things up."
Five minutes later Jenson had locked Craig and Millie in what he described as a temporary holding facility.
"You have a prison cell in your office?" Craig asked, looking at the bars.
"Didn’t think we’d ever actually get to use it," Jenson replied from where he sat opposite them, the rifle across his knees. "Why are you here, Craig?"
"To stop you."
Millie frowned. "So you really had no plan at all. Why the heck did you drag me in here?"
Jenson cleared his throat. "Why have you teamed up with Rose?"
"Who is Rose?" Craig asked.
"You’re a funny guy. And why did you want to kill Parallel? Do you have a competing product coming to market?"
"What? You think this is about money? I came here to shut down Darwin, or Parallel, or whatever you’re calling it now. Which I have every right to do, given that you stole it from me."
Jenson raised an eyebrow. "Darwin never worked. You left us with a dud."
"I know you’ve had it running for some time."
"Nonsense. And for your information, Parallel is something completely new and it’s not even functional yet."
"Prove it. Show me your designs."
Jenson blinked. "Why on earth would I do that?"
"Because if that’s true then we have a much bigger problem."
"We do, do we? You should worry about your own situation."
"This is everyone’s problem, if I’m even half right. If you haven’t re-built Darwin, then someone else has. And they’ve been using it for years now."
"Impossible."
"Until the last few hours I would have agreed." Craig stood up and held the bars. "I came here tonight to prove it. Now, are you going to call the police or see if I’m right?"
Jenson laid the blueprints out on the lab table, overlapping the three sheets of A1 paper. "This is the core processor," he said. "I’ll get the diagrams for the subsidiary systems next."
"No need," said Craig. "I’ve seen enough. This is built on fundamentally different principles." He scratched his head. "It’s nothing like Darwin. A very elegant solution."
"Praise indeed."
"If it works. For starters you never really grasped natural language understanding like I did."
"As I recall you just uploaded your Darwin prototype with hundreds of popular movie scripts. Not exactly Shakespeare."
"It worked, so don’t knock it. Now I want to see this new system."
Jenson gave a sniff. "It’s still in development: a process not without its complications. I’ve had to shift work to another site."
"Then we need to go there."
"Maybe. First you talk. What’s your story with Darwin? How can it be operational? If you didn’t build it, that is."
"I don’t know. I scuppered all the hardware and software before I ‘died’. Yet I’ve detected traces of the prediction engine. It’s more than possible it’s been sending out spiders, crawling the web, for the last fifteen years. Who knows what it’s capable of now?"
Jenson frowned. "What could possibly have made you fake your death?"
"I was afraid of what my system would become, and what would happen to me and my family when others learned what it could do. I did try to tell you fifteen years ago."
"I recall you had some doubts."
"They were more than doubts. Darwin was going to be too powerful. It knew things. It could predict things. Too much knowledge, too much power. Too open to abuse."
Jenson’s phone rang. He answered it quickly, frowned, then put it back in his pocket. "That was one of my assistants. He said I should turn on the news."
They moved to the next room and flicked on a smart-screen, navigating to BBC News. There was one story running: coverage of Warwick Saxton’s arrest.
Jenson gave a half-smile. "I should feel pleased. That man has caused me no end of problems."
"Yeah, but experience shows," Millie said, "that he’ll be replaced by someone who will cause you the same problems. Don’t expect any policy reversals."
"You may be right. And the truth is that, while I might not have
cared for Saxton, if there was ever a straighter shooter then he certainly didn’t go into the civil service."
"I’ve always found him rather brusque."
The men both look at her and spoke as one: "You know him?"
Millie blushed. "Well, he… tried to get me to do some work for him. A consulting gig."
Jenson’s brow furrowed. "Just who exactly are you?"
Craig sighed. "Greg, allow me to introduce the creator of Millie.On.Truths. In the flesh."
"The blogger who has been hacking me? This just gets better and better. Perhaps I should put you back in the cell after all."
Millie folded her arms. "I strongly suggest you don’t."
"And you’ve worked for Saxton? He hires criminals now?"
"A: I object to that classification. B: he hires the best."
Jenson shrugged and turned back to the screen. "Is that why he’s been arrested?"
Craig ran a hand through his hair. "They’re saying he was withholding evidence."
"I’m guessing that’s connected with the kidnapping of my daughter. And it all connects to Parallel. Who is doing this?"
"Someone with an operational Darwin system would have this level of knowledge."
Millie reached into her bag and placed the secure hard drive on the table. "I’m beginning to think I might know how to find out who that might be."
Jenson stared at the device. "Explain."
"Saxton wanted me to help research what was on it. And, as I said, I’m good at what I do."
"And, what? He just looked you up on yellow pages?"
"We have… a history. I’ve worked for him before."
"Don’t MI5 have people in-house to do that type of thing?"
"Apparently there are sensitivities around the work. Presumably the same sensitivities that led to his arrest."
"So what is on it?" Jenson asked.
"Information about a company called Kinek Consulting. They provide ‘private intelligence’. Saxton has been using them for off-books investigations: analysis too sensitive to run through M15’s official systems."
"Kinek? I’ve heard rumours, but never actually met any of them."
"Interesting. Because Saxton used them to prepare a personal audit on you when they restarted Parallel. Don’t worry – they reported you were a good sort." She raised an eyebrow. "Of course, given recent events, perhaps we should wonder if they were right."
Jenson gave a noncommittal grunt. "So you just agreed to help him? Why?"
"Well he broke into my apartment, so I said no to begin with. But he asked me to think about it and left me the drive."
"The Director of MI5 broke into your apartment?"
Craig slapped his hand down on the table. "Never mind that. Did you make progress with the research?"
"Very little. Whoever Kinek are, they’ve left almost no digital exhaust. Given how large their organisation is thought to be, it’s improbable at the least. You just can’t work off the grid like they appear to do, not these days. So I asked myself if there’s another explanation. What if their capabilities are more… inorganic."
"You’re saying they—"
"—could be the ones that built Darwin." She pointed at Craig. "His scan of the web revealed that Darwin is operational. It’s a pretty good guess they have it."
"How did they get it?" Jenson asked. "What we had didn’t work. It never worked."
"Yeah," Craig said. "What you had. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t work." He sighed. "I made Darwin operational. Briefly."
"And you didn’t tell me? We were partners!"
"Things moved quickly. I had to make a call and I—"
Jenson snapped his fingers. "Then someone stole it from you! Not from me."
"No. I destroyed it."
"What? You were all about the possibilities, not the risks."
Craig hesitated. "To start with. Then I realized we were about to cross a line that shouldn’t be crossed. If we’re right, Darwin’s been running for fifteen years. Heaven knows what they’ve been doing with it. We need to find it – but I designed it not to be found. In fact the only thing that could find it is Darwin itself."
Jenson frowned. "What about Parallel?"
"It’s operational?" Millie asked.
"It’s still undergoing final testing off-site, like I said."
Millie frowned. "Why isn’t it here?"
Jenson shook his head. "I have the government trying to shut the project down. It was the only way to keep going while I sorted the situation out. Anyway, it’s only an hour’s drive away." He looked at his watch. "It’s already late and we’re going to need help from technicians on site, who won’t be clocking on until the morning. Why don’t we grab some sleep and I’ll drive us out there first thing. There are some business beds on level fifteen we can use in the meantime."
Craig raised an eyebrow. "Are we your guests or your prisoners?"
"I’ll let you know when I decide. I just don’t want any more surprises."
Millie beamed. "With that in mind, I’d better get one out of the way. You know your new lawyer, the one you sent to threaten me? Remember his name?"
Jenson frowned. "Michael… Adams." His gaze snapped to Craig. "That’s your son? Is he spying for you?"
Craig shook his head. "He doesn’t even know I’m alive."
"How could I have missed the family resemblance?"
Millie spread her hands. "It’s obvious now you look, but it’s not something you were watching for. You didn’t even consider the possibility. If you want to avoid any more surprises that approach has to change."
Seventy
It was late Friday evening and the bar was packed, the air filled with conversation, alcohol and sweat. Michael squeezed between the crowds, past polished tables and padded stools, to a familiar booth at the back.
He hadn’t been in this bar since the night CWP had fired him: the night he had met Kara.
Now, as he sipped from a bottled beer, he saw the various TV-screens were showing Warwick Saxton’s arrest. He felt like a fly in a spider’s web, but he clearly wasn’t the only one trapped.
It had been an inexplicable day. Infinity had failed in challenging the Project Parallel decision. They rarely fought fairly to ensure they didn’t lose, so what had happened today? Could there conceivably be some benefit to Infinity in the decision going against their client? It made no sense: as little sense as his getting summarily fired by CWP.
What if Kara really had known somehow? It would be entirely consistent with how Infinity operated. Had it all been a set up? He was distracted by the sound of a familiar voice.
Behind him, at a corner table, was Gordon Freeman, CWP’s Managing Partner. He sat alone, finishing a phonecall, his shirt collar undone and a large glass of red wine in front of him.
Michael stood up and moved over. Freeman’s expression became one of alarm, though in a snap it was replaced with a smile.
"Mr Adams. How are you doing?"
Michael sat next to him, his face even. "Just waiting for someone."
"Same." Freeman cleared his throat. "You come to gloat about that stunt you pulled the other day? How did you know about the Hadwell Site?"
"Actually, I want to know what the hell was happening that day you asked me to leave the firm."
"Isn’t it just water under the bridge now? You seem happy with your new role."
"That’s the thing with Infinity: you only see what they want you to see."
"I’m not sure I follow—"
"My point is, you know I didn’t disclose CWP client information. So you couldn’t have had any proof."
"I knew all I needed to know."
Michael leaned forward in his chair. "What are you talking about?"
"If you think these people will…" Freeman shook his head. "Really. I can’t discuss it—"
"Someone made you do it. There must have been a lot of money involved", he paused, "or something else. Did they threaten you? Did they blackmail you? Was it y
ou who really wanted me fired, or was it Infinity?"
Freeman stood up. "You really don’t know anything, do you?" He turned and walked away.
Freeman walked out of the bar and signalled for his car. In seconds the long wheel-base Audi A8 was pulling up alongside him. Not having to travel in some random black cab was one of the advantages of Freeman’s position. Having a private driver available 24-7 meant always travelling with a certain level of privacy. He certainly needed it now.
He climbed into the backseat and moved to close the partition of darkly tinted glass, but it was already shut. That was odd, because he preferred to greet his driver face-to-face when he got in. Turning to look around, he realised there was another thing wrong. There was someone else in the rear compartment with him: a woman in a tight-fitting black outfit and plastic-rimmed glasses. As she leaned forwards, her face came into the soft internal light.
He frowned. "What are you doing here?"
"I thought we’d have a chat."
"Then call my office for an appointment."
The woman shook her head. "I’m not here to discuss legal matters, Mr Freeman. I’m not who you think I am."
"Then who the hell are you?"
"Marcia sent me."
"You work for…" He swallowed. "If that’s true, why not follow protocol? How am I supposed to validate the orders?"
"There’s no need." She reached forward and placed a finger on his lips. "You talk too much. And that is not something that can be permitted."
"I would never talk about Kinek. Surely that’s obvious—"
She produced a digital recorder and Freeman’s conversation with Michael began replaying.
Freeman hesitated. "I said very little."
"You said enough for us to doubt you."
He shook his head. "You knew I’d be here. You knew I’d speak to Michael. Why not stop me?"
"Because that wasn’t part of the prediction. The plan is moving forwards, and you are a loose end."
"So, what? They’re going to send someone after me?"
She leant forward, reaching to her ankle, and removed a silenced pistol from a holster. "They sent me."