by Barry Eisler
Maya nodded. “As best as I could tell from the way the interviewer described it—the size and the view. Again, there were no pictures.”
“Okay,” Rain said. “Let’s start there.”
They walked to the northern end of the residential compound, scanning as they moved, until they came to the last of the four buildings there, a rectangle about a quarter the size of a football field, the length of it running south to north along the pond. They cut in along a gravel trail among a copse of black and white pine trees and came to a wooden door halfway along the eastern length. Rain knew from schematics that, like the other doors throughout the compound, this one was more solidly constructed than it looked. Maybe they could kick it open. A breach charge would be the surer bet, albeit noisier. But . . .
Rain took hold of the handle. It turned smoothly. The door opened a crack. And why not? The guy lived on twenty-three gated acres, with multiple cameras and a private security force. Why would he bother locking doors?
His heart kicked up a notch. “Dox,” he said quietly into his lapel mic. “You still with us?”
“Of course. You didn’t hear me zeroing the HK?”
“We didn’t hear anything.”
“Hah, these OSS suppressors are the best. About the only sound is the action of the bolt. Anyway, you’re good to go. Lost you when you were on the other side of the trees, but I can see you again.”
“Okay. Let’s see if Grimble is in here.”
chapter
seventy-two
RAIN
Rain went in first, followed by Larison, with Livia bringing up the rear, all with guns drawn. Rain didn’t like leaving the rest of them, but Delilah was a competent shooter, and as for Manus, Dox wasn’t in the habit of handing out praise like “solid” and “force of nature” without good reason. It would be okay. Depending on how things went, the rest could come in after, with Manus staying behind as sentry and, if it came to that, trip wire.
He saw it immediately. It was impossible to miss—both because the space was enormous and because every inch of it was subsumed by a vast yet shrunken world. There were mountains and forests and rivers, the colors and textures utterly convincing. Grass and mud and rock. Hundreds of figurines, each perhaps three inches tall, fighting dozens—no, scores—of separate battles, with every manner of weapon: swords and spears and pikes, long bows, crossbows, and muskets. There were ashigaru foot soldiers and bajutsu mounted cavalry, battle flags, helmeted samurai in Azuchi-Momoyama armor of extraordinary detail. Bombs captured midexplosion, clouds of dirt erupting above the earth. Wounded men, the ground beneath them stained red, their bodies contorted so realistically Rain had to blink to be sure they weren’t writhing in agony. The room was quiet—in fact, so silent it hummed with a slight cavernous echo—and yet the scene was so comprehensive that he felt sure he could hear the din of muskets firing and swords clashing and shouts of rage and cries of pain. Bathed in natural light from a long wall of glass on the eastern length of the room and overlooking the pond, in no respect did it feel like a diorama, or like any other artificial thing. Instead, the overall effect was of an actual climactic day that had somehow been sliced from the distant past, to be reduced and reanimated here in this room.
And to the right, at the far end of the space, looking bizarrely like a giant who had blundered onto the edge of the scene, was Grimble. He was staring through a jeweler’s lamp, intent on something he was working on—a figurine, Rain thought, though he was too far away to be sure.
The surface of the scene was about four feet off the floor. And while there was enough space along each side for two people to pass, the interior would have been impossible to reach without portals accessible from underneath. Larison was squatting, no doubt after having the same thought, to confirm no one was lurking underneath, however unlikely that might be.
Larison stood, and the movement must have registered in Grimble’s ambient vision. He pushed away the jeweler’s lamp and looked up at them through an enormous pair of wireless eyeglasses, each lens half the size of a scuba mask. His thinning brown hair was held back in a ponytail, and his cheeks were so chubby they extended past his ears. There was no alarm in his expression, only curiosity.
“Who let you in?” he said.
“Larry,” Rain said. “The guard.” He started walking toward Grimble, the Glock low along his thigh, Livia and Larison following.
Grimble blinked. “He’s not supposed to do that. What do you want?”
Evie had been right—the man was looking in their direction, but his gaze was off to the side. The effect was of talking to a sightless person relying only on sound to gauge their position.
“We need your help,” Rain said.
Grimble blinked again, his eyes magnified in the giant lenses, and looked at the ceiling. He was wearing a white turtleneck, Rain saw, and what looked like a red, pleated robe.
“Are you with a startup?” Grimble said. “You can’t just come to my house. There’s a whole investing team; they handle that kind of thing.”
Rain kept walking. “We had to talk to you directly.”
“Directly, directly, directly. Everybody always says directly. It’s not fair to interrupt me. To intrude on my privacy.”
Rain stopped about ten feet away and holstered the Glock. Grimble must have seen it, at least in his peripheral vision, but the fact that Rain was armed seemed to mean nothing to him. Maybe he was used to having armed guards. Maybe he didn’t understand guns the way people who used them did.
“If that’s the Fuji River,” Rain said, pointing, “I’m guessing that figurine you’re working on is Fukushima Masanori.”
Grimble looked out the window.
“I’ve always had him holding his sword in his right hand,” Grimble said. “But recently, some of my people alerted me to scholarship suggesting Masanori was left-handed. One of my first pieces, and it was wrong, wrong, wrong. Is that a gun you have?”
Rain acted as though he hadn’t heard. He looked at the area in front of Grimble. “Then that must be Shimazu Yoshihiro. Who refused Ishida’s order to reinforce Ishida’s right flank.”
Grimble glanced at the scene before him. “How do you know so much about Sekigahara?”
“The books I used to read,” Rain said. “When I was a boy. I wanted to be Musashi. But I wound up something else.”
Grimble glanced past Rain at Larison and Livia, then at the wall behind Rain, then at the figurine he was holding. “I . . . Who are you?”
“We’re almost out of time,” Livia said.
Rain knew exactly how much time they had before Schrader’s dead-man switch released a tranche of videos, and for a moment he understood how his own micromanaging might grate.
“Andrew Schrader was helping us,” Rain said. “And some people killed him for it.”
Grimble blinked. “People killed him? Killed, killed, killed him? What people?”
“Bad people.”
Grimble shuddered and looked at the ceiling. The tics and echolalia were obviously aggravated by distress, and probably alleviated by concentration on close tasks. The entire room was likely the expression of a desperate urge to scratch a never-ending itch.
“The news,” Grimble bleated. “News, pews, views. Said he escaped from prison. Escaped, escaped, escaped.”
“He didn’t escape,” Rain said. “Someone spirited him out. And then tortured him.” He paused, then added, “To access his videos.”
Grimble blinked and rolled his head. “Oh no,” he said. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.”
“And if we know you helped Schrader architect his system,” Rain went on, “then the people who tortured and killed him know it, too. Do you understand what that means?”
Grimble went pale and shuddered violently.
“It means,” Livia said from behind Rain, “you can either help us defuse those videos, or you can wind up like your friend.” Her tone was ice.
Grimble blinked and furiously scratched his arms. Aft
er a moment, he said, “Office. In my office, office, office. It’s okay in my office. And then you have to go. Go, go, go. Masanori has his sword in the wrong hand. I have to fix, fix, fix it.”
Rain turned. Larison was looking at Livia.
“You know what?” Larison said quietly. “You’re a pretty good bad cop.”
Livia was staring at Grimble. “You have no idea.”
chapter
seventy-three
DIAZ
Diaz didn’t know what Livia, Rain, and Larison had said to Grimble, but when the four of them came out, Grimble was pale and his face was twitching. He kept muttering, “Office, office, office,” and he barely even glanced at any of them, as though it meant nothing to him that his property had suddenly been invaded by nearly a dozen people.
Rain said to Maya, “No problems on the perimeter?”
Maya glanced at the laptop she was holding. “I’m looking at multiple feeds from all the cameras. All quiet.”
Rain held up a hand to Manus to get his attention. “Manus,” he said. “Delilah. Can you two see if there’s a route off the property other than a driveway or the way we came in? This is taking longer than I’d hoped.”
Delilah smiled. “I had the same thought.”
“I know,” Rain said. “I’m micromanaging. Ideally something that leads to Sand Hill and avoids Manzanita and Mountain Home. Satellite imagery looked promising, but we’ll want to be sure. Especially with the Porsche, which is going to be limited off-road.”
Manus nodded, and he and Delilah peeled off. A moment later, the rest of them came to another building in the cluster that comprised the primary residence. Grimble opened a door and they followed him in.
Diaz was surprised—the outside looked like photos she’d seen of old Japanese temples and castles. But the inside was nothing remarkable. The materials were obviously high-end, the walls all of light wood paneling, the ceiling high and with recessed lights, the carpeting plush wall-to-wall that seemed to soak up the sound of their entry. But it was sparsely furnished—just a desk and chair, a row of cabinets, and a couch. Other than a set of what she recognized as Noh masks hung from one of the walls—a smiling woman, a scowling man, and a horned demon—there was nothing Japanese about it.
Grimble went to the cabinets and pressed a button. There was a low mechanical hum and the cabinets swung slowly away from the wall. Behind them, built into the wall, was an enormous gray safe, probably four feet wide and six feet tall. Diaz noticed that the moment Grimble’s back was to them Livia and Rain moved to the sides, presumably to make sure Grimble wasn’t accessing a weapon, and also to be standing in a different place in case Grimble turned around holding something dangerous.
Grimble pressed his left index finger onto a fingerprint reader and inputted a code into a digital keypad. A red light on the keypad turned green and there was a loud beep. Grimble grabbed the wheel on the door with both hands and spun it, then pulled. The door was obviously heavy—Grimble had to lean back and put some weight into it to get it open.
Diaz wasn’t sure what she was expecting to see inside—gold bricks, jewelry, something like that. But it was nothing of the kind. The shelves inside were nearly empty. On one of the middle ones, all alone, was a simple laptop, with wires plugged into it from a panel at the back of the safe.
“Defuse, defuse, defuse,” Grimble muttered. He turned and looked at the ceiling, seeming to address all of them and none of them at the same time. “Defuse what? And how?”
Livia walked up. She checked her watch, then looked at the laptop. “Do you know what’s on those videos?”
Grimble’s head moved in a circle, as though he were nodding and shaking simultaneously. “Andrew’s girlie movies. He asked me.”
“They’re on the laptop?” Livia said.
Grimble shook his head.
“Then where?” Livia said.
“Somewhere,” Grimble said. “Everywhere. Nowhere.”
Livia took a step closer. “We don’t have time for riddles. And I promise, if you don’t help us, the people who tortured and killed Andrew aren’t going to have time, either. They’ll pour kerosene on your sacred Sekigahara, light a match, and tell you to give them what they want or else.”
Grimble actually moaned at that. Maybe it was too much, but Livia did have a way of knowing what buttons to press.
“Multitudes,” Grimble said. “Attitudes. Gratitudes. Too many to defuse.”
Livia’s jaw clamped, and Diaz realized she might lose it. “Constantine,” she said, before Livia could say anything more. “May I call you that?”
He looked at her chest. “What’s your name? Fame? Blame? Shame?”
“Alondra.”
“Alondra. Alhambra. Abracadabra.”
Diaz had no baseline behavior to compare it to, but she sensed Grimble was decompensating, probably due to the notion that people he’d never even heard of might want to torture and kill him, or set fire to his prized Sekigahara.
She thought about what he had said. Maybe it was the first word that was relevant, with the subsequent ones being riffs based on sound.
“Multitudes,” she said. “Are you saying there are multiple copies?”
“Not copies,” he said, still staring at her chest. “Originals.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know . . . Hundreds? Thousands? There’s no way to count.”
Diaz had no idea what to do with that. She looked at Evie and Maya.
“Constantine,” Evie said. “Are you saying the videos are distributed?”
Grimble turned to Evie and looked at her chest. “I know you.”
“Yes,” she said. “We spoke after your presentation at NSA. Are the videos distributed?”
He nodded. “Andrew said people might want to destroy them. He wanted them safe, safe as the sky.”
Evie glanced at Maya, then back to Grimble. “They’re in the cloud?”
“Yes,” Grimble said. “Multiple servers. Multiple instances. Multiple multiples.”
He seemed a little less agitated. Diaz couldn’t be sure, but she sensed that compared to Livia, at least, Evie was having a calming effect.
“What does this mean?” Livia said. “There are thousands of copies? They’re impossible to destroy?”
“Impossible to destroy,” Maya said. “But . . . Constantine. Can we render them unreadable or inaccessible?”
Grimble rolled his head around as though trying to work out a kink in his neck. “If the videos are inaccessible, no one will hurt the world?”
“You mean Sekigahara?” Rain said.
Grimble nodded.
“That’s right,” Rain said. “If we can destroy them or make them inaccessible, no one will have any reason to hurt anyone else.”
“But how?” Diaz said. “If there are so many copies distributed in the cloud.”
“The file format,” Grimble said.
Maya looked at him. “Nonstandard?”
Grimble smiled at the ceiling. “My own design.”
Maya glanced at the safe. “On the laptop?”
Grimble nodded vigorously.
Rain glanced at Evie and Maya. “What do we do?”
Evie looked at Grimble. “Constantine. Can you give us your credentials so we can log in?”
Grimble nodded.
Diaz realized the man was extremely literal. Evie must have realized it, too, because she said, “Will you tell me your credentials? Please.”
Grimble walked to the safe. He opened the laptop. The screen was dark, with a white rectangular box in the center, a cursor blinking on the left of it.
“If you don’t mind,” Evie said. “Let me.”
Grimble stepped aside.
“Username?” Evie said.
“Matsudaira Takechiyo,” Grimble said.
Evie looked at him. “I might need you to spell that. Could you?”
Grimble spelled it. Rain said, “Better known by the name he took later—Tokugawa Ieyasu. The vict
or in the Battle of Sekigahara, and subsequently shogun.”
“Okay,” Evie said. “And the passcode?”
Grimble went over to the wall and removed the horned demon mask. He looked inside it and began to drone a set of numbers.
“Hold on,” Evie said. “Slower, please.”
Maya walked to Grimble’s desk and set down the laptop she was using to monitor the cameras. “Tom. You have a burner?”
Kanezaki reached into a pocket and tossed her a unit.
“Hang on,” Rain said. “Make sure the—”
“The cellphone reception is off,” Maya said. “I know.” She powered up the phone and tapped the screen a few times. “Constantine, can you turn the mask around?”
Grimble did as she asked. Diaz could see numbers and letters stenciled on the inside—a lot of them.
Maya held up the phone. “Okay, go ahead and read them. Thanks.”
Grimble said the numbers again—numbers and letters, a long, seemingly random stream of them. Evie typed them in. A moment later, the screen changed. Diaz came closer to see. It was a series of boxes, with choices like Transcode and Upload and Reset. The Reset box had a clock next to it—zero hours, two minutes, and seconds counting down.
“Reset it,” Livia said. “We only have two minutes.”
Evie worked the trackpad.
Maya said, “And . . . video of the passcode inside the mask, Constantine reading it, and Evie inputting it is uploaded to the secure site. So we have backup.”
The clock on the screen flashed, and the numbers changed to 168 hours. “It’s reset,” Evie said. “We have another week.”
Livia nodded with relief. But Diaz thought Evie looked troubled.
Kanezaki looked at Maya. “Are we limited to just his laptop? Or can we access his system through any computer?”
Grimble looked at him. “You’re smarter than Andrew?”
“Yes,” Kanezaki said.
“Smarter,” Grimble said. “Barter. Farter. Andrew thought he was smarter. Everyone thinks they’re smarter than everyone. But that can’t be true.”