by David Caris
‘I understand the scale just fine, Nix. But unless your sister also gave my father a pretty cell phone just like that one, I don’t see how one clean phone helps me. If we’re worrying about phones, I need two.’
She stood and moved to the glass at the far corner of the office. She put her forehead to it and looked directly down to the street below. She welcomed the vertigo. It turned her stomach and made her as rigid as a post, but it sharpened her mind too – almost like a drug.
She wondered about her own cyber security and immediately hit on one glaring lapse of judgment. There was a man she had been seeing. Megan had met him via one of her two disguised dating app profiles. He had been vetted by Curzon’s HR at her request, and she had braved a first date. She wasn’t sure what had driven this risk-taking, other than desperation for something in her life that was her own, something beyond the confines of Curzon and the version of her it insisted she maintain around the clock. The date had gone well. The man was called Nicholas. He was a few years older than her and very attractive. He was an artist – digital, not brush and paint. But he hadn’t been too wrapped up in himself. He had asked her about her life and taken a genuine interest in the three or four stories she had cautiously chosen to tell. He had made her laugh, too.
She kept her forehead to the window. In the street below, people came and went, oblivious to her predicament. In her mind, she flicked through the second date and then the third. No mistakes there, though the third date Nicholas had shyly confessed he knew who she really was – that she could drop the fake name and subtle avoidance of all identifying details. Megan had braced herself for fallout after that, but nothing hit the tabloids the next day.
So a fourth date, and then a fifth, where she had done something impulsive – she had invited Nicholas up into her London loft apartment for a drink. Her laptop had been on her bedside table. She had grabbed it after they made love, opened it, and entered her fingerprint – to order food. He had taken it from her and insisted on a place he knew. He had called up the restaurant’s website and shown her. A Thai place she knew and liked.
A little drunk, a little giddy – she had taken that chance to slip from the bed and into the bathroom. When she returned, the laptop had been on her pillow, shut. Nicholas was gone. She had opened the device, but everything was exactly as she had left it. The only change was the food. He had placed an order and used his own credit card to pay for it.
She had been drawn into email and work, and twenty minutes later Nicholas had knocked on her apartment door. He had returned with the food.
Was that the breach?
Surely not.
And she had seen Nicholas since. Three times, in fact. They’d made love since, too – twice more. He gave her hope that she could have a life alongside this job, but for that to happen she had to let people in, had to trust someone. That was hard for Megan. Trusting didn’t come easy. She had a very public persona and she had been betrayed by her own brother for crying out loud. But what was the alternative? Spend the rest of her life paranoid, alone? She was fine with being single if that was her choice, but not for a job. Not even this job.
‘Are you okay?’ Nix asked.
Was she okay?
No.
She had not yet stepped into her father’s role in title, but she was doing the job. She was heading a multi-billion-dollar company, and it was under attack. Worse still, she was possibly to blame for that attack.
It wasn’t just this hack, either, she reminded herself. There was a biological weapon out there somewhere, with Curzon’s fingerprints planted all over it. ‘My sphere of influence just shrank to the seventeen levels in this building,’ she said softly, her breath fogging the glass.
‘So we focus on what we can control.’
‘Exactly.’ She turned back to Nix. ‘We start with this office, and we work outward. Ring by ring, to the outer circumference of Curzon – which is Pemberton, my father.’
‘I’m not sure that’s –’
‘And hopefully every other office will do the same. We can’t help one another until we have our own houses in order.’
Nix nodded, conceding her point. ‘I guess there’s a risk of spreading it, whatever it is.’
‘It’s already spread. Or at least, we have to work on the assumption it has.’
He switched off his sister’s phone, as if maybe it was compromised now, too – just by being inside this building. ‘So what do you want me to do?’
‘Get everyone into the lecture theatre.’
‘It won’t fit every –’
‘Everyone, Nix. Every last employee. And switch everything off.’ She shook her head. ‘No, you know what, find some way to cut the power to this entire building. Then get a group together and go level to level, announcing the meeting. Make it clear they’re all still on the clock and I’m still in charge. Anyone leaves, they leave for good. Anyone uses a cell phone, or talks to the media, I’ll box their shit and walk them out of here myself. Clear?’
‘Very.’
‘We stay put, Nix, and we work this problem together.’
‘I get what you’re saying, but work the problem how? There’s nothing they’ll be able to do if we cut the power. And they’ll still be able to use their devices.’
‘Not on our network. Whatever they do then, it’s not traveling through or coming from compromised Curzon equipment. It’s on them.’ She tried to conceal her impatience. ‘And anyway, right now, “nothing” is exactly what I want most people in this building doing. At least until I’ve had a chance to get them all singing from the same hymn book.’ She didn’t know where this expression came from. It wasn’t really the right expression, but she didn’t try to improve on it. She sat down and grabbed a notepad and pen, intending to map out a speech to all staff, but had another thought. ‘And as soon as I’m done speaking to staff, get everyone from IT in my office.’
‘All in here?’
‘Right down to the help desk staff. We’re on the clock, Nix. I’m depending on you. I know it’s a lot to ask, and thank you – but get it done.’
Chapter 3
3:00 p.m. saw Kovac sitting at a cafe table, head down, nursing a coffee. He had been to the gym, done his study, flirted at his Spanish class and – until this moment anyway – successfully put the gang shooting out of mind. Now he was watching shoes march by: sneakers, sandals, brogues, oxfords, derbys, chukkas, even a pair of stilettos.
So this is retirement, he thought.
A pair of ballerina flats stopped and turned to face him. He looked up and smiled. It was Anna, from his mission in Japan.
Anna was another reason Kovac had chosen London. If he was honest with himself – something he rarely was lately – she was probably the key reason he had chosen London. He had saved Anna’s life in Japan, rescuing her from a Japanese gangster’s snack bar in Tokyo. And she had in turn helped save Luther Curzon’s youngest daughter, Lottie, from smugglers up in the Japanese mountains. But he couldn’t shrug the feeling Anna knew more about Peng’s attack in Japan than she was letting on – specifically, about the exchange in the fishing boat near the lighthouse. ‘You do as I asked?’
She nodded and sat. A few men at nearby tables looked her up and down, thinking themselves subtle. Anna, a tall slender blonde from Austria, newly twenty, played her part: she pretended they didn’t exist.
Meeting Anna like this was a risk. But Curzon wouldn’t expect Kovac to reconnect with her, and Kovac had made her jump through countless hoops. Most of Kovac’s sitting drinking coffee had been time spent watching Anna. He’d put in a lot of hours before making contact, always picking cafes with a view of her new vocational training center.
‘Network admin, huh?’ he said.
‘How did you know I’d chosen that course?’
‘Stalking you.’
‘That’d be funnier if it was actually a joke, Kovac.’
He raised a single shoulder, staring out over the river towards the site of the gang shooti
ng earlier in the day. So much for switching off, he thought. It had spooked him, and he was back to carrying his Glock. He had it in a custom-made Kydex appendix holster. He was carrying it inside the waistband. It was small enough for him to get away with outside the waistband, but just as he had been limited in his choice of weapons, so too had he been limited in his access to quality holsters. There was plenty of crap available in Britain, and for whatever reason, the quality options had all been appendix carry. A new pair of jeans a size above his usual, and a loose-fitting shirt that didn’t print, and he had managed to satisfy himself stepping out of the house wouldn’t result in a trumped-up weapons charge. He had a backup knife in a Kydex holster strapped to his ankle too, and knew in Britain that would likely add a few decades to his sentence if detected. But at least he didn’t feel naked anymore.
Anna said: ‘I did think it was odd you named a cafe within walking distance of my center.’
There was still some police tape fluttering in a gentle breeze up at the bridge. A few traffic diversions and investigators, too.
‘You hear about it?’ Anna asked following his gaze.
‘Hear about what?’
‘A boy got killed.’
‘How?’
‘They’re saying gang stuff. He died en route to the hospital.’
Kovac recalled the gunshots. The first had been a headshot. The kid hadn’t died en route to anything but the ground.
He looked back at Anna. He reminded himself she was sitting here because of him. Seeing her healthy and happy like this gave him a small boost, countering the ennui of the past few weeks. He only wished he didn’t need to intrude on Anna’s life again now. ‘I asked you here because I need some answers, Anna – and the truth this time, not the crap you and Bishop fed me in Japan.’
She smoothed her skirt above her knees and her mouth twitched at the edge. When she looked up again, he could see fear in her eyes.
‘Were you involved?’ he asked.
‘In what?’
‘Japan. The lighthouse setup. Were the explosives real? They had blasting caps. I keep thinking back, and I’m sure there were blasting caps. If the explosives were fake, why blasting caps?’
‘What are blasting caps?’
Kovac ignored the question. ‘Was Bishop planning to kill me?’
‘No.’
‘I need to know, Anna. It’s important. Did he call it off when he realized the girl wasn’t Lottie? Were you involved in any way?’
She nodded to where the boy had been shot. ‘I should be asking you the same question.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Were you involved in that?’ She pointed.
‘The shooting this morning? How do you figure?’
‘They’re looking for a man who fits your description. He was out jogging.’
‘A lot of men fit my description.’
‘But how many of them are professional killers, Kovac?’
He forced a laugh and shook his head, glancing at those around them. Everyone was talking, smiling, nodding… no one appeared to be listening. But it was possible to talk and listen. With enough practice, just about anything was possible. ‘That’s what you think I am – some kind of movie hitman?’
‘For Curzon International, right? And by the way, I never said it was a shooting this morning. You added that.’
Kovac had been a professional killer. And he had worked for Curzon International. All that was true. They had recruited him as a teenager. They had trained him, facilitated his career as a Navy SEAL, then helped him fake his death in Egypt and begin a new career as John Kovac. His first private sector killing had been a young man in Arusha, Tanzania. Kovac couldn’t remember the man’s face, just his clothes – the kitchen, the mother who had been standing in the dark, on plastic sheeting, the machete. There had been others that mission, and more than he cared to count since. Curzon had been all he knew, and he had trusted them when they told him he was killing evil people.
Or was that true?
Maybe he had just been happy to outsource his own moral code…
Kovac signaled to a waitress, as he said: ‘You’re grasping, Anna.’
He ordered another coffee and asked Anna what she wanted.
‘Just water.’
‘A coffee and a water, please.’
Whatever the case, he reminded himself now, he had sworn off killing since the mess in Japan. He had made a solemn promise to himself: so long as he lived, he would never take another human life.
The problem was, he couldn’t get past Japan. It was gnawing at his conscience.
As soon as the waitress peeled away, entering the order into some kind of handheld device, Kovac resumed his interrogation. ‘If Bishop tried to kill me, I’m willing to pay for any credible information you can provide.’
‘That’s what this is? You already gave me money, Kovac. What do you think set me up here in London?’
‘Not loose change, Anna. I’m talking the sort of money that changes a person’s life. You don’t need to spend your days logging internet faults and braiding Ethernet cables. I can –’
‘I’m done with easy money, because in the end it’s never easy. And have you considered maybe it happened just like I said, just like Bishop said?’
Kovac blinked. He was momentarily stuck for a reply.
Only every Goddamn night, he thought.
If Bishop and Anna were telling the truth, Kovac had murdered a woman in cold blood. A good woman. He wasn’t sure how he was meant to live with that.
‘I don’t know Bishop well. But I know he cares about you.’ Anna sighed. ‘And maybe you do some good. Maybe a lot of your targets are human scum, and you can tell yourself you’re cleaning the world up. But Bennett was a nice person. She was just trying to help.’
Kovac didn’t want to hear this, let alone accept it. ‘Then why didn’t she just help? Why the secrecy?’
‘Because you’re scary. Even Bishop said it. You’re not like the rest of us. You can go places most of us can’t. Mentally, I mean, without shattering into a million tiny pieces. Think about it from Bennett’s perspective. Would you want to attack you?’
Kovac was almost relieved when he felt his phone vibrate. He took it out. It was a text from his one emergency contact, the woman who helped him move his money. The message was two words long.
“Curzon hacked.”
Kovac checked The Guardian site and saw there was already an article speculating as to the seriousness of the breach. It claimed the London office was on lockdown. He scanned his surroundings for threats, then stood. He turned his phone off.
‘You’re going?’
‘Yeah.’
The waitress was returning with the coffee and water. Her cocked head and confused expression echoed Anna’s question.
Kovac put twenty pounds on the table to cover the drinks. ‘Last chance, Anna.’
Anna squinted up at him. ‘You’re not thinking straight. Even if Bishop was planning to blow you up – which he wasn’t – do you think he would’ve told me? I was on that fishing boat with you, Kovac. I would’ve died too. I don’t know anything more than I told you in Japan. You killed her, okay.’ People were looking at her now, and not because she was attractive. She was speaking loudly, making a scene.
She lowered her voice and composed herself a little. ‘Look, I’m really grateful for what you did for me. I know you didn’t have to. I’m here because of you. And that’s something you need to think about too. But that doesn’t change what happened to Bennett. There’s good you can do, and harm. I don’t know how you resolve that, but both matter.’
Kovac dismissed this at once. She was imagining the good. The reality of his past was far less rosy. Maybe he had helped her, maybe he had actually saved her life. But she was the anomaly, not the rule.
‘Walk away, Kovac, and stay away. I don’t know how to say this nicely, so I’m just going to say it – I’m grateful to you, but I never want to see you again.’
‘Understood.’ He nodded. ‘But you have my number. Use it if you need to.’
‘Bishop said the same. And like I told him, I don’t –’
‘No.’ Kovac cut her off, shaking his head. ‘Call me if Bishop comes anywhere near you. And if you can’t get me, contact Megan.’
‘Megan Curzon? I’ve never even met Megan Curzon. Why would the CEO of Curzon International take a call from me?’
‘Call it a hunch. Good luck with the course, Anna. I mean it – it’s a great thing to be doing.’ He put his hand to her shoulder, as gently as he could, an apology of sorts for putting her through this conversation. It wasn’t something she could help him with. She didn’t know him or his world, and truth be told he no longer needed her anyway. He just hoped no harm came to her.
Head down, hands deep in his pockets, Kovac turned and started at a brisk pace towards Putney Bridge. Curzon International was on the ropes, and Kovac had a chance to get all the answers he needed. He figured he had somewhere between 12 and 24 hours to capitalize, and capitalize he would.
Chapter 4
Megan got up on stage in front of a packed lecture theatre. She couldn’t see a single face. It was too dark.
Raising her voice to a near shout, she reassured all present that the power outage was a precaution. Then she reiterated the threat she had asked Nix to propagate. Anyone leaving the building before 5 p.m. was leaving permanently.
There was grumbling, but no one challenged her on this. She moved on quickly, counterbalancing laying down the law with an explanation. She wanted staff here in case IT could restore systems quickly. And she wanted to be ready to help staff if the hack somehow jumped into their personal lives. ‘There is no evidence at this point that staff information has been compromised, or that our staff are being targeted at an individual level, but let me just say here and now – any costs you incur as a result of working for Curzon during this attack will be covered, providing of course you stick with us throughout.’ She explained that she wanted to protect staff, protect jobs, protect Curzon as a whole, and she admitted that she felt distinctly uncomfortable being authoritarian. She promised there would be a return to normality as soon as the situation was resolved – or at 5 p.m., whichever came first. She was asking for less than two hours of unquestioning cooperation.