The man reflexively saluted, then stopped in mid-salute with some embarrassment. “Good evening, Mr. Vanowen, your guest is waiting, sir.”
Vanowen nodded slightly in acknowledgment.
The guard opened the passenger door of the Escalade. Vanowen noted with satisfaction the thickness of the door. Kevlar laminate armor and inch-thick bulletproof glass. It was a discreet business tank.
Vanowen ducked inside and was unsurprised to see a man waiting for him in the plush backseat. The man was in his forties, dressed in a sports coat and black shirt. He had buzzcut hair and a firm jaw line-definite military look. They called him The Major, but that’s all Vanowen knew about him. They had never met, but both of them knew their roles well.
Vanowen settled into the empty seat. The door closed behind them with a tight thwup.
The Major did not extend his hand. “You’re seven minutes late.”
Vanowen nodded. “Yes, and so we need to hurry. I’m scheduled to make a keynote speech tonight at the convention center downtown.” Vanowen narrowed his eyes. “You’re certain you weren’t followed?”
The Major ignored the question. “Get us moving.”
Vanowen saw through the partition glass that the driver and a bodyguard were now sitting up front. He hit the intercom. “Downtown Biltmore.”
“They’re getting the bags off the plane, sir.”
“Have them catch up with us at the hotel. Just get us moving.”
“Roger that, Mr. Vanowen.”
Vanowen turned back to The Major. “My sources tell me the Feds know which companies are infected by the Daemon.”
The Major showed no reaction.
Vanowen continued. “And that only a minority of these companies are expected to survive.”
The Escalade was now moving through the hangar doors and into the night.
The Major looked out the window. “If I were in a position to confirm such information-”
“I already know it’s true. What I need from you is the list of infected companies.”
The Major didn’t blink. “Why do you think I’m here?”
Vanowen was uncharacteristically surprised. He tried to find something to say. “Oh…I see.”
“Leland Equity has friends in high places, Mr. Vanowen.”
The Major reached into his jacket pocket. “You seem to be under the impression that you have to save face. You weren’t the only one to get caught in the Daemon’s web.” The Major produced a glossy brochure from his jacket. “But as it turns out, our Mr. Sobol may have inadvertently handed us the investment opportunity of a lifetime.” He handed the brochure to a suspicious Vanowen.
“What’s this?” Vanowen read the title: Annual Children’s Hospital Golf Classic.“Is this a joke?”
The Major tapped the brochure. “Flip it open.”
Vanowen did so. Inside the tri-fold was a long list of charity sponsors-company after company. Vanowen looked up to his guest.
“I had operations print it. We’re expecting a data loss event of cataclysmic proportions within the next six months. That’s a list of public companies targeted for special protection by public and private militaries. Now you know how to restructure your portfolio. If anyone else sees it, it’s just a charity brochure.”
Vanowen smiled broadly. “And how much will Leland be donating to the Children’s Golf Classic?”
The Major turned to look out the tinted windows into the night. “It’s not for your benefit that you’re being told. Although I’m sure you’ll do very well also.”
“Perhaps I can offer you a commission for your investment advice?”
The Major looked blankly at him. “I’m just one of Leland’s investors, Mr. Vanowen. Do your job, and we’ll have no reason to speak again.”
Vanowen nodded vigorously. “Of course.” He folded the brochure and placed it in his suit pocket.
The Major pointed. “That list doesn’t get entered into a computer. It doesn’t get photocopied, and it doesn’t get reported to anyone else without the approval of my superiors. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“You know what would happen if you were to lie to me?”
Vanowen made eye contact. “Yes.”
“Good. Make sure you remember it.”
Vanowen sighed dramatically. “Well…what sort of ‘special protection’ will these companies enjoy?”
“There’s a Daemon Task Force-run by an NSA cryptologist. Young black lady. Very sharp. She’s beginning to unravel the Daemon’s design.”
“But if they figure out a way to stopthe Daemon, then our investment opportunity is…” Vanowen’s voice trailed off.
“We don’t intend to stop the Daemon. It’s too valuable. The goal is to control it. The task force has made progress in just that area.”
“Control it?” Vanowen considered this. “Then we would still get our opportunity-”
“But with greater precision and total deniability. The Daemon could become a powerful economic weapon-particularly against the ascendant economies of Asia.”
Vanowen thought of the possibilities. “So the Daemon is not invincible, after all…” He gestured to the nearby wet bar. “A scotch to celebrate?”
The Major shook his head. “It’s a bit premature to be celebrating. In any event, I’ll be leaving you in a moment.” He clicked on his own intercom button. “Roberts, leave me off at the next crossroads.”
“Affirmative, sir.”
Vanowen raised his eyebrows, surprised that The Major knew his driver’s name.
“Nothing has been left to chance, Mr. Vanowen. You have important work to do for us. See that you achieve your objectives.”
In a moment the Escalade slowed at a rural intersection-two county roads meeting in the middle of nowhere beneath a lamp swirling with moths. The Major turned to Vanowen. “We never met.” He was gone before Vanowen could say a word. The doors locked immediately after him. Vanowen watched a sedan emerge from the shadows to meet The Major. In a moment, Vanowen’s Escalade was moving on, back into the darkness on the other side of the intersection and down the country road, toward a smudge of light on the horizon. Distant suburban sprawl.
Vanowen exhaled in relief. That had gone extraordinarily well. Better than he could have imagined. So the wise men weren’t holding him responsible? The Daemon was widespread. He found it strangely reassuring-especially since the powers that be weren’t even fazed. Matthew Sobol had underestimated them, and they were already taking steps to turn this situation to their advantage. In fact, he was going to have that celebratory scotch, after all.
Vanowen pulled a bottle of thirty-year-old Macallan from the mini-bar and poured three fingers, neat. He lifted the glass and sighed again in satisfaction, appreciating the caramel color against the backdrop of the headlights. Not only was he going to free himself of the Daemon, but he stood to make billions doing it. This was the very essence of capitalism: thriving on chaos. True, there would be a temporary economic meltdown, but like pruning a tree, it would grow back fuller and healthier than before. But thoroughly under their control. He raised his glass and toasted. “Here’s to you, Mr. Sobol.”
Beyond his scotch glass, Vanowen glimpsed a dark shadow growing ahead. Half a second later it came screaming out of the blackness. It was a car with its headlights off. Vanowen’s driver screamed.
*
A Lincoln Town Car nailed the Escalade dead-center in the front grill at a combined speed of over 150 mph-instantly pancaking the sedan up to its rear passenger seat with a powerful BOOM and flattening the armored Escalade up to its front windshield. This sent the Escalade’s V10 engine plowing into the front seat and blasted the inch-thick windshield out of its mountings, where it tumbled crazily hundreds of yards down the road.
After the initial impact, the wreckage of the Escalade sheared away from the Town Car and went into a wild roll, sending pieces of metal and armored doors flying. What remained of the SUV landed upside down in the
opposite lane nearly a hundred yards farther on. Smoke and steam billowed from the wreck.
After a few moments of dead silence, headlights appeared in the distance, back the way the Escalade had come. They grew rapidly brighter, accompanied by the growling of a powerful engine. Soon, a black convertible Mercedes SL Sports Coupe arrived and rolled to a stop near the start of the debris field. Its xenon headlights were aimed at the wreckage of the overturned Escalade, bathing it in white light.
Twin black Lincoln Town Cars, with their headlights off, pulled up behind the Mercedes like guardians. The throbbing engine of the coupe cut off, but the headlights stayed on.
In a few moments the door opened, and the dark form of the driver strode calmly into the light of his own headlights.
Brian Gragg gazed intently at the wreckage.
He was reborn. Gone without a trace were the tattoos and the piercings and the unkempt hair. In their place was a perfectly groomed and successful-looking young man. Dressed as Sobol might dress, all in black with tailored slacks, silk shirt, and sports coat. Except for the black synthex gloves and sports glasses he wore, he looked like any other Austin tech entrepreneur. He was now invisible to authority. A man of substance.
He sniffed the night air. It was thick with moisture and the aroma of field grass. The din of crickets filled his ears. He was never more alive than now. Never more happy. And never before could he see with such clarity. He could feel the world for miles around. Law enforcement GPS units, Faction members, and AutoM8 packs networked in the surrounding countryside-feeding their discoveries to him, like a wizard’s familiars.
Gragg felt the tingling of the Third Eye on his stomach and back. The Third Eye was another of the miracles that Sobol had bestowed upon him. It was a form-fitting conductive shirt worn next to the skin-but it wasn’t a garment. It was a haptic device that helped him use his body’s largest organ-his skin-as another, all-seeing eye. An eye that never blinked, and an eye that could see around him in 360 degrees or halfway around the world, if he wished.
It worked by sending tiny electrical impulses to excite the nerve endings in his skin, much like a computer monitor projected pixels onto a screen. The microscopic electrical impulses represented data-from blips on a radar screen to full-blown visual displays. But what amazed Gragg was how the brain learned to accept input from this new source as if it were just another organ. Just another eye.
He feltthe networks around him, but he could do more than just feel them.
Gragg motioned with his gloved hands. Suddenly the headlights of the twin Town Cars flicked on. The cars roared forward and deployed on either side of the road at his command, illuminating the entire crash scene. Gragg halted them with a wave of his hand.
Glittering pieces of metal and plastic littered the roadway. Now he could see the pancaked wreckage of the AutoM8 he’d used in the attack. It was lying backward in a ditch along the road about fifty feet ahead. Smoking like a distillery. Only the rear half remained.
Gragg relaxed his arms and then cracked his knuckles. He strode toward the wreckage of the Escalade.
Both the driver and the front passenger were clearly dead. Someone’s intestines spilled out over the twisted frame and looped along the ground. The smell of butyric acid and bile was mercifully masked by the odor of antifreeze and burning plastic.
Gragg heard whimpering. He moved to the rear passenger compartment and peered through the empty, twisted door frame. Inside, he saw only a jumble of spent airbags, white packing powder, and shattered glass.
Gragg listened intently, following the sound around to the other side of the wreck, where he soon saw the bloody and quivering form of Russell Vanowen lying twisted on his back on the pavement nearby.
Gragg took measured steps to look down on him, careful to avoid the pool of blood forming on one side.
Vanowen’s head and face were covered in blood. His right arm was mangled-splintered bones sticking through his torn sleeve. A long, slow groan came out of his toothless mouth and formless, swollen face. His nose was almost completely flat.
Gragg regarded him icily.
He leaned down and with his gloved hands pulled back Vanowen’s blood-soaked suit jacket.
The wounded man’s chest heaved, and his eyes stared in stark terror as Gragg lifted out the bloody brochure for the Children’s Golf Classic. Gragg shook some of the blood off it and flipped it open. He held it to the light.
It was still legible.
Gragg took out his cell phone and clicked a digital picture of it. Then he folded the brochure and slipped it back into Vanowen’s chest pocket.
Gragg stood and turned to leave.
Vanowen’s groan ascended to a wail as he reached out toward Gragg with his good arm.
Gragg stopped. He paused a moment before turning around, then kneeled down and grabbed Vanowen’s swollen face with his gloved hand, causing the man to scream in agony. “Shhh…I’ll go up a level for this. Maybe I should thank you, Russell.” He searched Vanowen’s bloody eyes for something worthwhile. “But then again, fuck you, you worthless piece of shit.”
Tears streamed down Vanowen’s cheeks. He was insane with fear and pain.
There wasn’t an ounce of pity in Gragg’s eyes. “If you see Matthew Sobol, be sure to tell him Loki said hello.”
Gragg stood, straightened his jacket, and walked toward his Mercedes. He motioned with a gloved hand, and one of the Lincoln Town Cars screeched forward.
The headlights flashed in Vanowen’s eyes as he shrieked.
The car crushed him under its wheels and dragged his corpse some ways down the road before it fell free. The black AutoM8 raced off into the night.
Gragg curled a finger at his Mercedes, and the car rolled forward to meet him. The driver’s door swung open as it came alongside him.
Gragg concentrated on his Third Eye. He felt his distant AutoM8s following the car of the mysterious man whom Vanowen had met at the municipal airfield. Gragg brought the dashboard video of a trailing AutoM8 up onto his heads-up display-projecting onto one lens of his glasses. The infrared camera miles away showed the man’s car heading south toward the interstate. There were two occupants. Gragg scanned the target car’s license plate and retrieved its DMV records.
Federal Fleet Vehicle-no data
Gragg smiled to himself. The Daemon Task Force, eh?
He was closing in on them. He was mapping the topology of the plutocrats’ elusive network-The Money Power. They were up to something. This man would help Gragg find out what.
These plutocrats were men of limited vision who needed to be swept aside. Men from a previous age. An age of oil and heavy industry. But the distributed technocracy would soon rise, and Gragg would be there at Sobol’s side for the dawn of a new age. An age of immortals. A second Age of Reason.
Gragg’s eyes narrowed at the video image of the man’s car.
There would be no mercy for those who stood in the way.
Chapter 37:// Cogs in the Machine
The Haas mini mill was a miracle of modern engineering-a computer-controlled metal lathe, drill press, and router all rolled into one. The Haas could download a 3-D computer model into memory and from it produce a custom metal or plastic part cut and shaped to exacting specifications. It was essentially a self-enclosed, water-cooled machine-parts factory packed into a housing the size of a hot dog cart.
Linked to the Web, it almost became a 3-D fax machine-plans sent in digitally at one end emerged at the other as finished parts. The input could originate from any corner of the world via Internet or phone. All that was required was a human being to serve the Haas. To feed it the raw materials the plans required. To protect and maintain it. Man serving machine.
But Kurt Voelker and his crew loved their machines. The machines gave them entre into the Daemon network. The Daemon network gave them a future.
They had progressed significantly since their first AutoM8. Their Sacramento machine shop now boasted three half-million-dollar com
puter-controlled milling machines, running full-time off dual cable and satellite Internet connections. They were producing parts at an accelerating pace-but the Daemon had forbidden their company from growing larger. Three machines were the maximum they were permitted to possess. True, they’d generated three million in revenue last year and taken home hundreds of thousands of dollars each-but Voelker chafed against the prohibition to stay small.
Still, he knew better than to protest to Sobol’s Daemon. It had grown phenomenally in power. Better to give thanks for their good fortune.
Voelker lifted his safety goggles and glanced around the cluttered shop. It was thirty thousand square feet of 1930s factory floor. Brick walls, twenty-foot ceilings, skylights, and concrete floors. The smell of oil, burnt metal, and ozone from arc welding filled the air. Parts littered workbenches, and a dozen brand-new vehicles stood in varying stages of completion. Voelker’s company was officially a fleet vehicle customization business-licensed to operate by the AQMD. A legitimate California corporation. Their close ties to major car leasing companies, on-time tax payments, and contributions to civic causes put them above reproach. They had friends in high places now. High-powered attorneys would slide down the fire pole in their defense if anyone so much as looked at them cross-eyed. God help anyone who tried to shake them down or impede their business. There was a Daemon work request for just such contingencies. Their future was secure.
Voelker saw Tingit Khan and Rob McCruder struggling with the steering column of a new AutoM8 variant-a 400-horsepower Mustang interceptor. They were bitching at each other like brothers, as always. Voelker smiled to himself. They were like a family. A family with a stern authority figure that would flay the flesh from their bones if they stepped out of line for even an instant.
Still. The rules were clear, the work always changing, and the rewards enormous. Barely in their mid-twenties, they were all millionaires on paper. They would receive five weeks’ vacation every year. Retirement with benefits in twenty years. They received financial advice money couldn’t buy. Their medical plan, too, was top-notch. The Daemon took care of its own.
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