I march down the entryway. Most of the building is empty space, divided by the same kind of cubicles you see in every open-plan office in the world. There are sheets hung over each one, forming little tents. The only real room is a small, built-out kitchen that has a large picture window to watch the cube farm. Along one wall is a row of server racks, more computing power than this place possibly needs, even with every lonely and horny guy in the world jacking in to watch the shows.
I can hear sounds. Stilted English. Breathy, theatrical moans. Bad Europop from cheap speakers.
In my head, I pick up nothing but the same boredom and fear and anxiety I sensed outside, only worse now. I feel like crawling out of my own skin.
I pass one of the cubes on my way to the kitchen, moving fast. I catch a glimpse of one of the girls. She cannot be more than fifteen in her star-spangled bikini. She looks up at me, her eyes rimmed with enough eyeshadow to look like a raccoon.
The last two keepers rush from the kitchen area, where they were sitting. The first one doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t ask stupid questions. Just launches himself at me.
It doesn’t help him. He gets about halfway across the concrete floor to me and drops like he’s just been shot in the back.
Which he thinks he has. That was my own memory. Up close and personal. I hope he appreciates it.
That leaves the last one, the keeper named Miron, the one who was thinking about the new girl. He, at least, remembered his gun. He almost gets it centered on me before he sees—impossible as it is—eight metric tons of Mercedes Atego truck bearing down on him, horn blaring, about to turn him into roadkill.
He screams and throws up his arms, waiting for the impact.
I hit him instead. First in the gut, right under the sternum, knocking all the air out of him. Then I punch him in the head as he folds up. He remains on his feet, so I do it again. And again. And again.
He’s down on the floor with his friends after a few more hits. I kick him once. Just to be sure. Then again, just to be cruel. The truck, if it had been real, would have hit him only once.
I sense Sara behind me before I hear her.
“Jesus Christ, John,” she says. She is looking around at the whole setup, the men on the ground, the bloody wreck of Miron at my feet.
“They were . . .” I search for the right words.
She shakes her head, and I know she gets it. She’s not angry or frightened by my actions. If anything, she’s only stunned by the sudden ferocity.
I suck down a deep, calming breath. It helps. Not much, but it helps.
“Not part of the job, I know,” I say.
“You were pretty quick,” she says. “I think we can spare the time.”
She takes her laptop bag and the cables over to the servers. She has this down to a practiced routine now. A few moments, and she’s got Godwin’s data humming into her machine, Stack’s programs hunting for every trace of him in the system.
That has the side effect of shutting down the cameras and the network. A few of the women—and the girls—have emerged from their cubes, watching us carefully.
They see the mess I’ve made of their keepers. I get a lot of mixed feelings.
One woman, a little older than the rest, a veteran at nineteen or twenty, comes tottering out in her high heels, a cheap silk wrap tied hastily around her.
“What have you done?” she demands.
“This place is closed,” I tell her simply. “We’ve shut it down.”
She looks shocked. She glances over at the men on the ground, who are starting to moan and move around. She has no sympathy for them.
But it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve just come in and upset the entire order of the little universe in this building.
“Where the fuck are we supposed to go now?” she asks, spitting the words out in her thick accent.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Then what good are you?” she snaps back.
I don’t have an answer for her. I don’t pretend that this was a rescue mission. That I’ve made anything that much better.
But there are some things you simply cannot let happen. No matter what. Looking at the woman, I try to find a way to say that out loud, to bridge the gap.
“Smith,” Sara says, rescuing me from saying something stupid. She points at the screen of her machine. “I think we’ve got something here.”
I come over to her and peer over her shoulder. It’s mostly gibberish to me, but I recognize a few of the names on the files as they are loaded into her laptop. They’re labeled with downvote.
“This is Godwin’s source code?” I ask, just to make sure.
She makes an impatient noise. “This is his everything. Pretty sure we’ve found all his backups here. He didn’t expect anyone to get to these servers.”
“Can we shut down the site from here?”
She shakes her head. “No. It will just kick over to another server, like it did last time.”
Not what I wanted to hear. I need to hurt Godwin. Do some damage. This doesn’t seem like a weapon. This seems like clerical work.
“Can we at least find him from this?”
Sara shrugs. “Maybe,” she says. “Maybe not. But if we get this to Aaric, he can start undoing some of the damage. He can figure out a way to start counteracting the code that’s out there already. He might even be able to get some evidence against Godwin that he can give to the FBI, if Godwin left any financial information or documents on here.”
Sara is a lot more excited about this than I am, reminding me once again that we have different goals here. She wants to save Stack. The main problem with that is I just want Godwin to pay. And if things get difficult, then it’s going to be a lot easier to kill him than capture him.
I shove the thought away. It doesn’t matter unless we can find him.
“What about Godwin?” I ask. “He was supposed to be here.”
She shrugs. “He probably was. This seems to be his main data center. But we’ll have to give everything to Aaric before we can be sure.”
She looks at me, and must see the frustration on my face.
“It’s another piece,” she says, in a consoling tone. “We’re putting it all together. We’re going to get the data we need to take him down. We will.”
Right, right. And they got Al Capone on tax evasion.
I cross the room, away from her, back to Miron, who is groaning on the floor.
I bend over and pull him into a sitting position. “Unde este Bogdan?” I demand in bad Romanian. (I can also ask where the bathroom is and order a beer. Everything else, I need my talent to translate.)
Miron looks at me, dazed and concussed. “Nu stiu,” he mumbles through a split lip.
I scan what passes for his thoughts. He’s not lying. He’s got no idea.
I see in his memories that Godwin was here yesterday. Using his computer, transferring data much the same way Sara is now. But he left. And he didn’t tell Miron or anyone else where he was going.
Dammit.
I hit Miron again, and he flops over like a fish. It doesn’t make me feel a whole lot better.
“Smith!” Sara says. I look up.
She’s glaring at me as she gathers up the laptop and our cables.
That irritates me, both for Sara’s passing judgment on me and for the fact that she’s probably right. I step away from Miron, leaving him to bleed.
We’re at a dead end. There’s nothing more we can do here. So Sara and I head out the front door.
The cam girls are crowding out alongside us with whatever possessions they’ve got gathered under their arms. I give all the cash I have on me to the one
s who are closest, shove it at them, really. We offer them a ride in the SUV, but they walk away without looking back.
Despite my frustration, I try to take some satisfaction in shutting the place down.
This is not an unqualified win. I know that. But these were bad guys doing bad things. And sometimes, when you get the chance to stop people like that, you take it.
Maybe we’re no closer to Godwin, but at least we managed to do that.
That feeling of accomplishment lasts all the way to the end of the road. Then we see the police cars waiting for us, lights and sirens flashing.
20
The Only Bait in Town
There’s not a lot to say about a Romanian jail cell. I try to imagine giving it a review on hotels.com or something like that, and all I’ve got so far is: “Relatively clean. Toilet works. Smells of bleach rather than urine, blood, or vomit.”
Compared to some of the other cells I’ve seen, I’d have to give it five stars.
As soon as the Romanian police brought me and Sara to this substation, they split us apart. Sara was swiftly and politely taken away by a pair of female guards, while I was escorted by a group of five men down a separate corridor.
They were all edgy around me, giving me plenty of space as they walked me through the booking procedure. I scraped what I could from their brains, but they hadn’t been told very much by their superiors. Just that I had interfered with a local business and assaulted its employees. They weren’t stupid men, however, and they knew which business and which employees. So they were aware of who I’d taken down already, and they were treating me with caution.
I wasn’t about to make any trouble. I didn’t see the point yet. So far, everything was being handled properly. Nobody had any thoughts about taking me into a back room and pulling out the batons to teach me a lesson, or any crap like that. Whatever deal the cops had with the local Mafia, it didn’t extend to beatings and torture.
At least, not yet.
So I decided to wait it out. I figured that eventually someone was going to have to figure out what to do with us. If they were smart, they would let us go, because we presented far too big a problem if they tried to deal with us through official channels. I’m not sure what the charge would be for breaking up a human-trafficking ring, and it might be a little difficult to find witnesses willing to testify against us.
Besides, as soon as Sara gets on the phone to Stack, I suspect this is all going to vanish in a sudden flurry of lawyers and money. Then we’re back to tracking Godwin. I know we hurt him today. I have a sense that we’ve got some vital intel on Sara’s laptop now.
I lean back on the thin foam mattress that covers the steel bench in the corner (review edited to add: “They really worked to add comfort, even on a budget”) and try to relax. My only other companion in this wing of the jail is a young man who is trying to sleep off a beating and a truly impressive amount of alcohol. From the brief flashes of memory, I can see that his evening in the bars last night ended with a challenge to fight any man in the place. It didn’t end well. But he’s a few cells away, so his pain doesn’t intrude on me too much.
We’re going to be here for a night at the most. I figure I may as well get some sleep.
It’s only when I sense a familiar mind walking down the corridor toward the cells that I realize something has gone wrong.
There are a couple of guards with him. They roust the hungover kid out of his cell with a few shouts and curses, because of course he doesn’t want anyone overhearing our conversation. Then they leave us alone.
I take a few deep, calming breaths without opening my eyes. I want to be cool and centered for this conversation. Because it is always a test with him. It’s like playing chess and poker at the same time.
He stands at the bars of the cell. I can feel him there, waiting. Let him. He can make the first move.
I don’t even have to wait that long before I hear Cantrell’s shitkicker drawl calling my name.
“Come on, John,” he says. “I know you’re awake.”
I open my eyes, and there he is. Looking like he’s barely aged a day since we first met. Considering the number of people who spend their waking hours plotting against him, you’d think he would have a few more wrinkles.
But no. All I see are a couple more laugh lines around the eyes. Cantrell really does enjoy his work.
He is wearing a suit today, not a uniform. It’s a standard, forgettable off-the-rack number, nothing flashy. He blends in, just one more American businessman doing business in the New Europe.
But wherever he is, and whatever it says on his ID, Cantrell is always a spy. He may not be on the official payroll anymore, but he is always connected to the Agency, or, as he likes to put it, “the full might and majesty of the all-highest.” He could pull out his phone and order a drone strike or get a direct line to the White House.
I take a pass at his mind, but Cantrell was the founder and director of the top-secret psychic-soldier project that trained me. He spent years learning how to guard his thoughts from operatives like me.
So all I get is a repeated loop of an Eagles song. <“You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes”>
I stand up to face him. It’s only polite. He gives me his used-car salesman’s smile, and I know that I’m already screwed.
“So. Did you put me in here?” I ask.
He laughs to buy time, but he drops his guard enough for me to see the truth.
“I admit, I was following you after your phone call.”
“You know I hate that.”
“Toughen up, buttercup. You can’t drop intel like that and expect me to stay home and watch Monday Night Football. We’ve still got very good relations with SRI”—the Serviciul Român de Informații, the Romanian intelligence service—“so when you filed your flight plan out of Iceland, I was on my way. But I was only planning to keep an eye on you. You were the one who decided to start kicking mobsters in the teeth.”
I don’t like his tone. “You know what they were doing to those girls?”
A little wisp of frustration escapes him.
I let that pass, and he continues.
“Turns out the local cops have a deal with the owners of that warehouse you hit,” he says. “An alarm goes off, they’re supposed to come a-running. There have been some recruitment and retention issues with their employees.”
Which means that occasionally the women make a run for it, or other Mafia clans try to push their way in and take over.
“Frankly, they don’t know what to do with you,” Cantrell says. “You’re not hooked into the local power structure, you’re not working for anyone they know, and they haven’t got a clue why you’re here.”
“I’m surprised Godwin hasn’t told them yet.”
“There’s a lot of things Godwin doesn’t tell people. He works on a need-to-know basis, it seems.”
“Yeah, I had a boss like that once.”
“Sounds like a smart man.”
“Kind of a pain in the ass, actually.”
Cantrell laughs, crinkling the lines around his eyes some more. It’s genuine. I don’t get any more annoyance or irritation off him. Which means he’s really certain that he’s so far ahead of me I can never catch up.
“Well, thanks for visiting,” I say, and sit back down. “I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than hang around here.”
Cantrell keeps smiling. “John,” he says, “cut the shit. You are looking at a long stretch in a Romanian prison, which makes this place look like the Royal Hawaiian. It’s time for us to talk.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve got a client back in the States with a couple billion dollars. Once he hears about this, we’re out of here and back to work.”
Cantrell waits. Lets me read his thoughts.
“Oh bullshit,�
� I say, not believing it.
He reaches inside his jacket pocket and pulls out a folded section of newspaper. The Wall Street Journal, international edition. An actual paper newspaper. He’s old-school like that, and he does love his props.
He hands me the article through the bars. I only have to skim the headlines, because I got the news right from his brain.
software developer arrested on mega-yacht
And, below that: Gov’t Claims He Is Key to Millions of Criminal Transactions on the Web.
Well. Looks like Sara and I aren’t going to be rescued by Stack anytime soon.
I briefly wonder if she knows about this, and how she’s taking it.
Then I focus on Cantrell again. Now he’s playing Jimmy Buffett in his head. <“. . . and you’re the only bait in town”> But his sense of victory is like a soft glow all around him.
“Nobody else is coming to bail you out, son,” he says. “So it’s probably in your interest for us to talk.”
“What do you want?” I ask, even though I don’t have to be a telepath to know the answer. Still, it never hurts to observe the formalities.
Cantrell looks slightly wounded. “It’s not about what I want, John. It’s about what Godwin wants. I am not sure you’ve really considered the bigger questions here. Why do you think he’s doing this? Why run a site like Downvote at all? What does he get out of it?”
I have to admit, that’s been bugging me from the start. I do not know what motivates Godwin. It’s easy to throw around terms like “sociopath” when discussing people like him. But it’s not often very accurate. We’ve all seen the same movies, so we all like to think that we can diagnose an antisocial personality disorder from a few scraps of information. In truth, a classic sociopath is really rare, and not usually someone you’d call a great success. A person who can think only of himself, who cannot empathize with others, who lacks any real sense of consequences—that’s not someone who makes a good supervillain. More often than not, those are the guys doing time for aggravated assault or stealing a couple hundred bucks from a convenience store.
So it doesn’t make sense that Godwin would go to all the trouble of setting up Downvote just to hurt random people. Especially when you consider that his entire career up until now has been all about the careful accumulation of illegal wealth, far away from the attention of the wider world.
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