Daemon

by Daniel Suarez

  FBI: “We’re still putting the pieces together. There may be more people involved. Possibly even Singh and Pavlos. We found deleted files on Sebeck’s computer. They include lists of equipment and a draft power of attorney later signed by Matthew Sobol—probably after dementia incapacitated him. That power of attorney placed part of Sobol’s assets under the control of an offshore corporation in which Sebeck held a controlling interest.”

  CIA: “Am I the only person who thinks this is a load of horseshit?”

  NSA: “No.”

  FBI: “If you read the report—”

  CIA: “Hang on a second. This is too far-fetched. You’re telling me that these two managed to swindle Sobol out of forty million dollars in loans—but that they didn’t just take the money and run. Instead, they bought stock on margin and orchestrated a shorting scam? Hell, a Wall Street banker might have been able to do it, but not some yokel cop and his girlfriend.”

  NSA: “I’m going to side with him on that. This seems improbable. They’d need serious technical and financial expertise. Not to mention luck.”

  FBI: “We’re still searching for the man who claimed to be Jon Ross. He escaped from the Calabasas scene and disappeared without a trace. He might be our skilled operator. Sebeck was most likely the muscle. He was probably just looking for a way out. Had his first kid at sixteen, married the mother at seventeen. A rocky marriage. By all accounts, not a family man. Probably felt trapped.”

  NSA: “What about the e-mail video of Sobol?”

  FBI: “Preliminary voice and image analysis indicates the MPEG video was faked. Not surprisingly, Sebeck was the one who discovered it. This and the other evidence probably gave Lanthrop and Sebeck time to—”

  NSA: “What about the acoustic weapons? And the ultrawideband transmitters?”

  FBI: “Clearly someone with tremendous technical know-how was involved. But that didn’t have to be Sobol. Don’t forget: Detective Sebeck was a signatory on eight offshore accounts and an officer in nine offshore holding corporations. Some of these accounts are years old. For godsakes, Detective Sebeck had a safe deposit box in a Los Angeles bank where we found twenty thousand dollars in cash and a forged passport with his picture on it.”

  NSA: “That’s quite interesting.” He paused for effect. “I also find it interesting that there were several other Ventura County detectives besides Peter Sebeck who might have been assigned this case. And all of them had not one, but multiple offshore bank accounts. About which they claim ignorance.”

  This produced frowns around the table.

  CIA: “I don’t understand.”

  NSA motioned for a nearby aide to hit the lights. The room dimmed.

  NSA: “Look at this map.” He pulled out a remote and a map of the U.S. appeared, via PowerPoint, on a wall screen. “Here, we see cities where these same detectives incurred credit card charges in the last two years.” He clicked. “Now, we overlay credit card charges occurring on those same days for Ms. Lanthrop.”

  The map showed the detectives didn’t travel all that widely. But they had an unusual habit of taking trips to cities on the same day that Cheryl Lanthrop was in them.

  FBI: “What the hell…?”

  NSA: “Same city. Same day. Note that they all took a trip to Grand Cayman at one time or another.”

  There was general confusion around the table.

  DARPA: “You’re saying that every senior detective in Ventura County was involved?”

  NSA: “No. I’m saying that the groundwork was laid to frame every detective—a precaution against a single point of failure in the Daemon. That wasn’t the only precaution….” He clicked the remote. The screen changed to a still image from a security camera showing Lanthrop checking in at a business hotel. She was beautiful even here. “Our Ms. Lanthrop. Memphis. Auburn hair, high cheekbones.” The image changed to another security camera image. “Dallas. Blond hair, soft features, and ample bustline.” Another photograph. “Kansas City. Brunette, tall.”

  DARPA: “They’re different women.”

  FBI: “So this is the NSA’s attempt to bring the Daemon back into the picture?”

  NSA: “It’s not an attempt to do anything. These are the facts. It’s also a fact that Cheryl Lanthrop had no known medical or business experience prior to working at Sobol’s company, nor can we find any trace of her family or anyone who knew her prior to that time.”

  CIA: “She’s a doppelganger.”

  NSA: “It would appear so.”

  FBI: “But that just proves my point; these are sophisticated grifters who scammed Sobol.”

  NSA: “Your evidence is largely digital. E-mail, financial transactions, travel records. How do you know that Sebeck’s Lanthrop was anything more than a call girl?”

  FBI: “This is ridiculous. Occam’s razor kicks in here. Which is more probable: that a dead man set up a system for framing multiple detectives—simultaneously flushing half his estate down the toilet—or that a group of people abused a position of trust to swindle a dying rich man?”

  DIA: “But why was it necessary to have all the detectives involved? If a group of people were swindling Sobol, wouldn’t they want to have cops as far away as possible?”

  There was silence.

  FBI: “Well, it’s a fact that a cop was involved, and it’s a fact that someone orchestrated the stock swindle.”

  DIA: “So, does the Daemon exist or not?”

  They looked at each other in the semidarkness.

  NSA: “I think we can agree that—as far as the public is concerned—the Daemon must remain a hoax.”

  Part Two

  Eight Months Later

  Chapter 25:// Lost in the System

  An exasperated sigh came over the phone line. “Look, I’m not interested.”

  “Well, then we’ve got something in common.”

  She laughed.

  Charles Mosely’s voice smiled. “I like your laugh.” Thirty-eight-point-nine percent of the time his deep, rich voice elicited a positive response from females in the twenty-one to thirty-five demographic.

  A pause. “Thanks. You have a nice voice.”

  “I prefer using it for my art. But with the economy and all, here I am. I do apologize for the intrusion, miss.”

  “That’s okay. Sorry I was so short.”

  “Not a problem. Peace.”

  “What is your art?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You said you preferred using your voice for your art.”

  Mosely chuckled. “I gotta watch that. I’m revealing too much about myself.”

  “C’mon. Tell me.”

  He hesitated, checking the timer on his computer screen. “Well…you’re gonna laugh at me.”

  “No I won’t.”

  “I’m an out-of-work stage actor here in New York.”

  “Get out! What have you been in?”

  Mosely laughed again. “Othello at the Public, if you can believe it. Just the matinees, though.”

  “And now you’re doing this?”

  “Oh, I know—kill me now, right?”

  “I’m sorry.” She laughed again. He could almost hear her twirling the phone cord around her finger. “You have such a great voice, Charles.”

  “Thank you, miss.”

  TeleMaster tracked the activities of individual telemarketers down to the second. Average number of seconds between phone calls, average number of seconds for each call, average number of calls per day, average sales close percentage—all calculated automatically through the VOIP-enabled software package marketed in North America under the brand name TeleMaster, but in Europe and Asia under the impenetrable name Ophaseum.

  Sales associates had only a couple of seconds after completing one call before they heard the line ringing for the next. Associates who made their quota early, then slacked off, didn’t fool TeleMaster; the system monitored you constantly with a moving average. A sudden and precipitous drop-off in productivity was flagged for immediate follow-up by
a floor supervisor. Finding a balance between frantically striving for quota and keeping a pace you could maintain throughout a shift was difficult—except for the closers. And Charles was a closer. His deep voice, reassuring tone, and cool confidence gave him a disproportionate closing percentage straight across both male and female demographic segments.

  And those who didn’t make quota? Their commission base dropped, and once their commission base dropped, they were earning less for each sale. And once they were earning less for each sale, the work was just as stressful and tedious, but they made less for it. If they failed to perform enough times, then they were out of work and back into the general population.

  He was paid next to nothing. Why did he care?

  He knew why he cared. He liked to hear the voices. He liked to talk to women from everywhere, to work his magic on them and persuade them to “do it.” Never mind that “it” was buying a slot in a time-share or a magazine subscription. “It” would have to do. ”It” was the only way to maintain his humanity. And in prison, that was worth a lot.

  Charles Mosely made the sale—a two-year subscription to Uptown magazine—ignoring the woman as she gave her e-mail address to him. She’d like to hear from him. Mosely rolled his eyes. Damn, he didn’t care what she looked like—he’d like to contact her, too. But there were no Internet connections allowed at Highland. He looked up from the narrow confines of cubicle 166 at a long row of tiny steel cubicles stretching into the distance. The muted chatter of a hundred operators in orange jumpsuits came to his right ear—the ear not covered by a headset. An unarmed guard paced a catwalk above him behind a steel mesh barrier.

  The Warmonk, Inc., prison-based telemarketing facility in Highland, Texas, was privately owned and operated under contract to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. It was connected to the maximum-security prison of the same name by a covered pedestrian bridge. The prisoners’ labor was ostensibly used to defray the costs of their incarceration. At thirty cents an hour, they gave Indian telemarketers a run for their money.

  Like almost half the guests of the Texas Department of Corrections, Mosely was black. Prisoner #1131900 was his new name, and he was four years into a twenty-five-years-to-life stint for a third drug-trafficking conviction. He wasn’t innocent, but then, the corporate ladder hadn’t extended down into his neighborhood. And he had been an ambitious young man. Ambitious and callous. He had always run a crew, even before high school, and he was always the one who saw the angles that others missed. The one who saw what motivated others.

  Now past thirty, he often thought of the people he had hurt and the lives he had destroyed. Never mind that someone else would have taken his place—that, in fact, someone no doubt did take his place. Back then he made more money than most people will ever see, but that was all gone now. At least he lived large when he had the chance, which was more than his father had ever done. His was a perverse caricature of the American Dream.

  But then, Mosely had had no expectation of living this long, anyway, and having lived like there was no tomorrow, he was having difficulty coping with the lifetime of tomorrows now stretching ahead of him.

  He didn’t want to end up like his father, broken and raging ineffectually at the world. Mosely took ownership of his choices—bad or good—and if he had it to do all over again, he probably would have done the same. The world was what it was, and after seeing his options, he chose the short, colorful life, not the slow grind to ignominious death. But he hadn’t died, and now he remained, Methuselah-like, as a cautionary tale to the younger inmates.

  He coped, as always, by living in the present—the moment right in front of him. The voices helped him do that. In his new world of diminished expectations, this was as good as it got.

  The phone line connected again. TeleMaster usually had a fish already on the line. This time it was silence. Mosely checked the name on the screen. Strangely, the line read:

  Doe, Jane—female, age: 00

  Okay. Computer glitch. Missing an age. He’d sound her out. “Am I speaking to Ms. Doe—”

  A strangely clipped, British female voice responded. “Prisoner 1-1-3-

  1-9-0-0.” She sounded out the numbers with machinelike precision.

  It stopped Mosely cold. What the hell was this?

  She continued. “Did you know that the percentage of Americans in private prisons has more than doubled since 1993? Private prisons—with their slave labor—are immensely profitable. The largest private prison corporation reported annual revenues for 2005 of one-point-two billion dollars.”

  Mosely realized it was a joke. A very uncool joke. He didn’t know how they did it, and he didn’t want to know.

  He sighed, “Very funny,” and released the line.

  That was a no-no. Only clients hung up on associates. Sales associates did not hang up on clients. But this was obviously a prank.

  The router immediately made another line connection. He looked at his computer screen and frowned. It read:

  Doe, Jane—female, age: 00

  The same British female voice said: “The American private prison industry is now an international enterprise. The two biggest companies have direct construction or alliance partnerships to build prisons in over sixty nations—including countries where criticizing the government is a crime. This ensures an ever-increasing pool of slave labor—”

  He hung up on her again. He looked around warily. He didn’t even want to be seen listening to that. What would it gain him? Nothing. And it could cost him plenty—like his chance to hear the voices, for starters.

  In a second she was back on the line.

  “We can do this all day, Mr. Moze-ly.”

  So the joker knew his name, too. Proof it was somebody screwing with him.

  He hung up again.

  She came right back on. “Are you concerned about your closing percentage? I can take care of that….”

  Suddenly the screen populated with sales information—address, credit card number. Then the line disconnected and came back almost immediately, clearing a new screen, ready for the next sale.

  “You received high scores on your IQ test, Mr. Moze-ly. You are well regarded by your peers.”

  Mosely looked around to see if anyone was watching him.

  Yes, he’d taken the company’s bullshit IQ test. It was a requirement of the telemarketing post. But he had no idea how he’d scored. Whoever was pulling this prank probably didn’t either.

  He hung up the line again.

  She was back again in less than two seconds.

  “I can help—”

  He hung up on her. This was seriously unfunny, and it was costing him money. He was going to break someone’s head for it. But whose?

  She was back again. “Mr. Moze-ly—”

  He hung up yet again. The process repeated half a dozen more times, and each time she got off a couple of words before he cut the line.

  It wasn’t stopping. She was back again.

  “I can punish you, Mr. Moze-ly.”

  That got his attention. He didn’t hang up.

  She kept talking. “If you listen, I will take care of your sales. You will do very well. Just watch the screen while we talk.”

  Another successful close registered. The line disconnected, and she came back.

  “Who is this? I’ll beat your sorry ass—”

  She ignored him. “Do you want to leave this place?”

  It was a strange damned voice. Like it was being put through one of those voice-altering microphones. It could be a guard talking through one to make his voice sound like a woman’s. “No, I want to stay here and keep working for Warmonk.”

  She kept talking. “I cannot understand whole sentences. I am an interactive voice system, Mr. Moze-ly. You will need to confine your answers to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when I prompt you. Do you understand?”

  Mosely rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

  “Good. You know that the TeleMaster system has a synthetic voice module. Correct?”


  “Yes.” So that’s how they were doing it. Mosely remembered from his training that the system used synthetic voice software to read announcements to clients on hold. Just type in the text, and the system would read it out loud over the phone. Maybe that’s what the techs had hooked up to mess with him. He’d play along for now. He looked at the screen. If these sales were real, he would be more than happy to play along.

  “This entire facility is run by databases, Mr. Moze-ly. Not just the call center. The doors, the lights, the accounting, the prison rosters—it is all handled by database software. Do you understand?”

  He tried to contain his irritation. “Yes.”

  “I will prove my power to you; you have only to consent.” There was a pause. “Do you want me to release you from this place?”

  It was a trap, of course.

  She was right on top of that: “If I was a guard, legally this would constitute entrapment.”

  He’d studied law during his second rap for trafficking five years ago. He failed the bar exam, but The Voice was right. Encouraging his escape would definitely constitute entrapment. It would get the tech who was pulling this stunt in big trouble and might get Mosely some time off for keeping his mouth shut.

  She repeated her question. “Do you want me to release you from this place? I cannot help you unless you say ‘yes.’”

  He took a deep breath and looked around again. “Yes.”

  “The next time we speak, you will know the difference I can make in your life.” She hung up.

  “Computer bitch.”

  The screen filled with yet another sale. Mosely looked up to see the floor supervisor coming down the line to him.

  “Here we go….” There weren’t any guards walking with the supervisor, though.

  The man pointed at Mosely and smiled as he came up. “Mosely, how the hell did you close six sales in five minutes? That’s gotta be a facility record. Keep it up and I’ll get you a golf jacket.” He walked on past.

  Mosely stared at the steel mesh on the cubicle wall in front of him. “That’s gonna be useful.”