dotmeme

by Mike A. Lancaster

  Abernathy and Joe sat down. The benches were slightly less comfortable than they’d looked. There were no magazines, papers, or corporate screens.

  “Play with your smartphone,” Abernathy whispered to Joe. “Just make sure it’s on camera mode, and that you get a shot of our receptionist, and anything—or anyone—else that looks interesting.”

  Joe wanted to tell Abernathy that this wasn’t his first rodeo, but in the end did as he was told, getting his phone out of his jacket pocket and acting like any other bored teen.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t gotten a camera embedded in my brain yet,” he joked out of the side of his mouth. “It would be easier.”

  “Oh, we’re working on it.” Abernathy replied.

  Ten minutes later, a door opened to the left of Reception.

  The guy who came out was shaggy-haired with a wide, snouty face. He looked to be in his mid-forties, but was dressing a good twenty years younger, as if that was ever going to help him stay young. Joe thought it was the guy they were here to meet, but instead of coming over to them, he threw a quick quip at the receptionist—her professional demeanor didn’t slip for a second in any place but the eyes—and then made for the exit. Joe snapped a couple of photos of him, more out of hope than in expectation that he was anyone important, and then slumped back into waiting.

  It was a full five minutes before the door opened again, this time enough of a crack for someone to stick his head and shoulders through. A thirty-something executive with a slick suit, a Beverley Hills hipster hairdo, a deep-water tan, and a humorless face. He eyed Abernathy and Joe, then raised an inquiring eyebrow at the receptionist. She nodded and the guy gestured for them to follow him using only his head and neck in a textbook display of managerial economy.

  Follow him they did. Joe held his smartphone loosely in his hand, video camera running. Like the astronauts who’d first walked on the moon and taken such amazing pictures with cameras fixed to their suits, Joe had practiced this move a lot, making it look as if it was impossible that he was filming. He knew the angles of the wrist that he needed to get good footage of anyone or anything.

  On the other side of the door was the secret that the reception area was keeping mighty quiet: a vast, open plan office area spread over four floors, all high modernism, polished chrome, clinical lines, and glass. The man led them through the bustling environment and Joe started picking out discreet working zones that were only suggested because of the lack of concrete, physical demarcation zones. The nerds were the easiest to locate: their zone was filled with the kind of stuff you’d expect—computers with huge screens, action figures, a foosball table—along with a few things that made Joe feel pretty envious—a pinball table, three arcade machines, assorted beanbag chairs and soft furnishings, and what looked like a Starbucks counter.

  The man led them through the space without commenting on any of it, taking them up a couple of staircases that seemed to defy gravity, and into a glass cube with informal seating and no desk. The man gestured to a couple of chairs before taking one himself.

  “Sebastian Curtiz. Welcome to Dorian Interactive.”

  They were the first words the man had spoken since they’d met him.

  Abernathy introduced himself and Joe, using their actual names, and then launched into some tedious, but well-intentioned small talk about traffic, the building and—inevitably—the weather.

  When he was done, the man brushed at his trousers and asked, “And how can I help you today?”

  This was the moment that Joe’d been waiting for—Abernathy’s cover story. Joe was betting on an article for a too-good-to-refuse magazine, which provided an easy in, an eager-to-please interviewee, and a perfect excuse to ask questions.

  So he was surprised when Abernathy cleared his throat, reached into his pocket, took out the offending burnt-out Dorian chip, tossed it to Curtiz, and said in his driest, most penetrating voice: “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell us what this is, would you?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT

  The guard looked at her ID, squinted, held it up to the light, clicked his tongue, rotated it in his fingers, sucked his teeth, held it closer to his eyes and still couldn’t find fault with it. It wasn’t for lack of trying. It was a pretty important looking document that had been messengered over to her, accompanied by another document that the guard had given the same amount of scrutiny, and had also failed to find fault with.

  So the man gave her a long look, comparing her actual, physical self to the tiny photographic reproduction of her laminated on her ID, then handed it back to her with a click of his tongue and a bewildered shake of his head.

  “S’pose that’s you,” he said in a grudging tone that suggested he’d far rather it hadn’t been. “You’re a bit young for this, aren’t you? Does your mum know you’re out?”

  Ani bristled. In her experience, patronizing was never a good conversational maneuver.

  “Two things,” she said. “First up, too young? Is that what you take away from a person presenting you with ID that puts her on the same level of intelligence clearing as James-bloody-Bond? Her age? And, secondly, my mum? Really? Do spies really tell their mums when they’re on missions? Doesn’t that kind of negate the whole ‘security’ bit of ‘security services’? I suggest you work on your interpersonal skills, especially with regards to being patronizing to young women, and I’ll keep your attitude out of my report. Deal?”

  The guard looked nonplussed, which Ani suspected was pretty much his default setting. She sat down without another word and waited for her name to be called.

  When it was, she felt a moment of self-doubt, which was quickly followed by a wave of fear. She rose above the first feeling, squashed the second down, and was shown into the interview room. A small, perfunctory space with no concessions to comfort, just a graffiti-scarred table and two institutional-looking chairs. On the other side of the table, she faced a man dressed in a prison jumpsuit

  The man looked up as she entered.

  He did an ugly thing with his mouth that was based upon the concept of the smile, but seemed to have a few more levels of meaning.

  “Ani Lee,” Victor Palgrave said. “How delightful. You must really be in trouble to come to see me.”

  Abernathy had been out of the country, so Ani was put through to someone named Minaxi Desai. She’d seen the woman around YETI HQ: tall, elegant, aloof. They’d never actually spoken, but you’d never have known that from the warmth of Ms. Desai’s greeting.

  “Ani, how lovely to hear from you,” she said. “Minaxi Desai, but you simply must call me Mina.”

  “Okay, Mina,” Ani said, grimly. “Are you up to date on the victorious case?”

  “I believe so,” Mina replied. “As up to date I can be with Abernathy, anyway. He can forget to keep people in the loop when he gets focused …”

  “Or when he just forgets,” Ani joked. “Look, the case just took a disturbing twist, and I need to talk to someone about it.”

  “Try me.”

  “Okay.”

  Ani took in a breath to calm the panic she was experiencing. That she’d been experiencing ever since Ms. Hacker pulled the mask from the 3-D printer.

  “victorious,” Ani said. “They just revealed the face they’re going to hide behind. Literally. It’s a 3-D-printed mask. The face of Victor Palgrave.”

  “Palgrave?”

  “Yeah, they’re calling him the new Guy Fawkes. Using his face as the symbol of the next phase of their operations.”

  “And do you what know what that next phase is?”

  “Not yet. It was my first day at a victorious cell, more like corporate orientation with a side order of menial hacking. We were told that the targets are big and that the world is going to change when we are done. It’s either an exaggeration or a mission statement. I figure the latter, but then I’m paranoid.”

  “Is it a coincidence that ‘victor’ features so predominantly in ‘vict
orious’?”

  “I don’t think so. Everything about this seems … purposeful. Strategized. And the tech is extraordinary. The 3-D printer I saw was tiny and lightning fast, like nothing on the market. I suspect that the organization is bigger, and better bankrolled, than anyone previously thought. And I’m worried that there’s something more behind it than simple mischief. Something much scarier.”

  “What?”

  “An ideology,” Ani said. “A bunch of hacking geniuses is one thing, but they’re disparate. Contrary. They don’t play well with others. They fall out over the most trivial things, and they all have different ideas about what to hack and why they’re doing it. Having them band together under a single flag, not a loose consensus like Anonymous, makes me uneasy.”

  “So how can we help?” Mina asked.

  “I need to find a handle on the whole Palgrave connection,” Ani said. “It seems too coincidental that they have adopted him as their figurehead. And I hate coincidences. I think … I think someone needs to interview Victor Palgrave. See if he knows anything.”

  “Okay,” Mina said. “Good idea. I’ll get you a visiting order. Whether he chooses to see you or not is, I guess, up to him.”

  “Me?” Ani was dumbfounded. She was just trying to get YETI to follow another lead. She hadn’t been expecting to be the person to actually interview Victor Palgrave. “There has to be someone with more experience with these things.”

  “Maybe,” Mina said, “but I’ve been reading your training reports and you are already an exceptional operative. Most of our agents require vast amounts of training and resources, and they still won’t achieve the level of tradecraft that you possess pretty much intuitively. I read Joe’s reports about the way you handled yourself on the original Palgrave case, and I find it incredible that you haven’t been in the field for years. Add to that, Abernathy thinks you have the potential to become the greatest asset we’ve ever had. Of course, he’d never tell you that.

  “I think you’re the best person for the job. And I’m in operational control while the boss is out of the country, so I’d like you to visit Palgrave and see what you can find out.”

  “When?”

  “No time like the present. It shouldn’t take more than an hour to organize everything. I’ll messenger you over everything you’ll need.”

  “So what have I done to deserve this visit?” Palgrave asked as Ani sat down opposite him.

  “‘Deserve’ is overdoing it,” Ani said. “Why do I suddenly feel like Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs?”

  “Weird that you see me as Hannibal Lector, don’t you think?”

  “Guy with a huge ego who’s committed multiple murders, and is now incarcerated? I don’t know, seems pretty spot-on.”

  “You have missed me,” Palgrave said, folding his arms on the table in front of him. “So, tell me, what provoked Abernathy into sending you to see me? Joe too busy? Or your masters thought that your ethnicity would unsettle me?”

  “I had a day off,” Ani said. “What do you know about victorious?”

  “I would have thought you’d had enough of music festivals,” Palgrave taunted.

  “Not the festival. The hacking collective.”

  “Ah. Then the answer would be, nothing.”

  “Fair enough.” Ani got up from her seat. “I guess that’s all I wanted to know.”

  She started toward the door, but Palgrave obviously changed his mind about being unhelpful. “I’ve heard of them. Enough to know they’re dangerous.”

  Ani stopped, turned around, and waited. It wasn’t enough information to get her back in her seat, but it was a start. Just as she’d hoped. Palgrave’s ego wouldn’t let him allow her to just walk out. Maybe Mina Desai was right. Maybe she was good at this.

  “Dangerous, how?” she coaxed.

  “Dangerous, because they think I’m a hero,” he said, motioning to the empty seat.

  She sat down.

  “And how would you know that?”

  Palgrave laughed.

  “This is a British prison,” he said. “Not Guantanamo. People can contact me here, you know. They do, all the time. Some just want to know the truth about what happened in Hyde Park. Others want me to know that they support my views. victorious wanted to know if they could use my face. The request was kind of hard to resist.”

  “So does victorious have a racist agenda like you did, then?”

  “Tut tut tut, Ms. Lee. My agenda wasn’t racist, it was nationalist, and I still find it amazing that having pride in your country can be transformed into racism through the bizarre alchemy of political correctness. Control of language sounds the frontline weapon of a totalitarian state to me.”

  “Political correctness is just an attempt to render language less discriminatory,” Ani said. “It’s basically saying ‘try not to be a dick.’ A sentiment I agree with.”

  “Of course you do. Never mind that it’s become suspect to fly a St. George’s Cross flag, but you can fly an ISIS one with out impunity …”

  “In the dreams of Daily Mail readers, maybe. I still can’t believe that you tried to take over the country using a sound from outer space, but your motive came from the lowest common denominator ravings of the far-right press, the stuff they print that even they don’t believe, just because it sells copies of their papers.” She shook her head in exasperation. “What else do you know about victorious? And if you say, ‘quid pro quo’ I’m out of here.”

  Victor Palgrave seemed to weigh the negligible difference between her staying and leaving.

  “Ah, what the hell?” he said. “When I was a member of the Aeolus group, I heard intel about a well-funded computer collective with a series of very specific targets and a deep strategy for hitting them. But here’s the thing: they were leaving me alone, so I returned the courtesy.”

  Ani studied Palgrave’s face. He seemed to have aged a couple of years in the few months of his incarceration. His face was stubbled in a way that it wouldn’t have been on the outside. There were lines around his eyes and bags beneath them. And it was in those eyes that she saw that although he was telling her the truth, he wasn’t telling her the whole truth.

  “So let me get this straight,” Ani said. “It will just make the whole report-writing thing a lot easier. You became aware of a parallel threat to national security, and you didn’t use your powers as head of the Aeolus Group …”

  “Consultant to, not head of,” Palgrave interrupted. “My leadership has not been sufficiently established.”

  Ani rolled her eyes.

  “Okay, as de facto head of a private security firm,” she said. “You didn’t deploy any resources on the investigation of that threat?”

  Palgrave laughed. “I was very cruel about you the last time we met,” he said. “I can see that I underestimated you, and let my prejudices get in the way of seeing you for what you really are. You’d have made a fine addition to Aeolus, and I can guarantee it would have paid a lot better than Abernathy’s ragtag band of misfits …”

  “A band of misfits who did, I don’t know, bring you to your knees.”

  “Okay,” Palgrave said, holding up his hands in mock-surrender. “So let’s say I did reach out to a few … acquaintances for some background information on the hacker group who have obviously raised YETI’s hackles to the extent that they’d send you here to talk to me. Why would I share that information with you? I guess what I am saying is, ‘quid pro quo.’”

  “I have no authority to offer you anything,” Ani said.

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s true.” Palgrave leaned back in his chair, hands laced behind his head, and gave her a predatory look. “When the case is done, the dust has settled, your report filed, and the bad guys put behind bars, I want you to come back and tell me all about it. Not a detail left out. Do we have a deal?”

  Ani thought about it. Her loathing for the man, his lunatic plan, and the things he’d put his own son through for his own political agenda made her an
gry beyond reason. It had then, and it still did now. She thought about him standing there in Hyde Park, pressing the button that turned a crowd of kids into a living weapon, and wanted to slam out of the room and get as far away from him as possible.

  Six months ago, she probably would have.

  But she was a different person now. She was learning a whole new set of core skills, and one of them was that there was nothing more important than the mission. Even personal safety had to take a passenger seat, which wasn’t to say that she was going to take any unnecessary risks, but if the mission demanded something of you, then you needed to try your best to satisfy it.

  So although visiting Victor Palgrave in prison again was far from the top of her list of things that she wanted to do, if he gave her some useful intelligence, then it was worth the discomfort.

  “Sure,” she said. “It’s a deal.”

  Palgrave smiled. In his mind, he had won a personal victory.

  Fine. Let him think that.

  “Do you have a pen, Ms. Lee?” he asked. “I have an FTP server address for you, a username, and a password.”

  “I have a pretty good memory.”

  “You get one shot at logging on. Make a single, tiny mistake and it will lock you out. Anything you want to know will be gone. Forever. I suggest you give me that pen.”

  “As I said, I have a pretty good memory, and no pen.”

  It might have sounded vain, but it really wasn’t. Gretchen had been helping her turn her memory into a useful tool and, although she was still leagues below Gretchen’s near-super-human memory skills, she was certainly more than capable of remembering an FTP address, login, and password.

  She listened to Palgrave as he gave her the details she needed, then she thanked him, promised she’d be back, and left.

  Just to be on the safe side, she borrowed a pen and paper from the guard and jotted the information down.

  She had a good memory, sure, but she wasn’t stupid.

  CHAPTER EIGHT