Genius

by Leopoldo Gout

  “Yes,” I answered. “They don’t buy it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because apparently, somehow, someone messed with my program. It’s only supposed to find things, find people. There must have been a second program that ran secretly behind WALKABOUT. I don’t know who did it and I don’t know how.”

  “Ma and I have been talking. You need a lawyer. A good one. Uncle Bobby recommended the son of a man he used to work for. He’s apparently very good, does a lot of legal stuff with technology.”

  “And very expensive,” I added. “Papa, you—”

  “Ma and I have our savings. There’s the money from—”

  “Papa, no,” I interrupted. “I won’t let you use that money. That’s for your retirement. That’s for everything you and Ma have wanted. I won’t let you. You guys can’t be here. You can’t be talking to me or a lawyer or anyone. They’re going to find out. They’re going to know about … our family. And if they do, they’re going to send you back.”

  “Rex, it’s too late to worry about that,” Papa said.

  “It’s never too late!” I shouted. “You have to go. Go now.”

  “We’re not going to leave you.”

  I felt my throat clench and I had to blink to keep the tears from spilling down my face. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

  Why had I been so stupid?

  How was I going to get us out of this?

  We were all silent for a moment. The hum of the lights was overwhelming.

  Finally, Ma wiped her eyes and took both of my hands in hers.

  “What did it say?” she asked me.

  “What, Ma?”

  “What did your program say? Did it find Teo?”

  That’s when the emotional dam broke.

  “Yes.” I let the tears flow.

  We cried together, a family, as I repeated, “Yes. I found him.”

  29. TUNDE

  The twenty-four-hour period after the end of the Game left me entirely spent.

  It was stunning to me how quickly the mood inside the safe room transformed from one of pure joy and celebration to one of darkest anxiety. Watching my best friend be handcuffed and led outside by police was the worst thing I have witnessed.

  Painted Wolf was equally stunned and horrified.

  Unlike me, however, she did not let the panic overwhelm her. Her mind is one that ramps into an even higher gear when she is under stress. It was a thing of beauty to see how she handled that situation.

  As soon as Rex had been driven away, she pulled me aside and told me to get my things. “When is your return flight to Lagos?” she asked.

  “In about forty-eight hours. Why?”

  “We don’t have much time and I’m going to need you to agree to do some things that you’re going to disagree with. Things that are not exactly legal.”

  “How not exactly legal?”

  “Very.”

  “If it helps Rex, then yes, I will do it.”

  I found myself agreeing immediately. I was not sure how I felt about agreeing to such a plan but then reflected on the fact that Rex had helped me construct the jammer without a moment of hesitation.

  I would not let him down in his time of need.

  I called General Iyabo and told him I had won the competition. I told him that I would be home soon to give him the jammer. I feigned humbleness and told him how honored I was to have won for him. He responded as I had imagined he would: “Tunde, I see you soon. Your parents will be quite pleased.”

  The following hours were a whirlwind of activity.

  I was so focused on my small portion of the plan that I did not see the larger picture coming together around me until it was finished. After yet another sleepless night of near-frantic work, our plan was in motion.

  Painted Wolf and I agreed to meet on the steps of the student center very early in the morning, just as night was rolling over to daylight. I was not a bit tired. The night had been long, but the adrenaline of winning the Game was surging through my veins.

  Though the weather was chilly, I did not have to wait long for Painted Wolf to arrive. I was quite taken aback when a black American sedan with tinted windows pulled up alongside the curb.

  Surely this vehicle was meant for someone other than us?

  When the front passenger door opened, I expected a dashing and wealthy person to emerge. It was, however, a very old woman with a face as wrinkled as a baked yam and a pile of white, stringy hair stacked upon her head. She wore a business suit, had a Bluetooth headset in her right ear, and carried a leather briefcase. As she walked over to us, I went to her aid, taking her arm, and was surprised to find it muscular, not the weakened limb I had expected.

  “Thank you,” the old woman said in a raspy voice. “You’re very kind, Tunde.”

  “Do I know you?” I asked, quite surprised.

  The voice of the old woman was suddenly different. It was youthful and had a very distinct, very familiar accent. “It’s me,” she said.

  “Painted Wolf?” I was stunned.

  Omo, na so I open mouth, ojare!

  “Tunde,” Painted Wolf asked, “are you ready?”

  I snapped out of my daze and nodded.

  Halil stepped out from behind the wheel of the car as the rear passenger-side doors opened and Rosa and Norbert emerged.

  “Good luck,” Norbert said to me. “We’re here if you need us.”

  “Thank you, omo. For everything.”

  Halil hugged me. “My parents’ place is available whenever you need a place to crash, and I’d gladly go with you to the junkyard anytime, my friend. See you.”

  Painted Wolf got behind the wheel and I climbed into the passenger seat. Rosa then leaned in the passenger-side window.

  “Painted Wolf’s awesome, isn’t she?” Rosa said.

  “She is extraordinary,” I said.

  “Did you know she and Rex almost kiss—”

  Painted Wolf revved the engine and drowned Rosa out.

  I settled into my seat, ready and excited for what was to follow.

  “Let us do this,” I said.

  29.1

  Painted Wolf drove carefully despite the pull of the powerful engine.

  “Where is this car from?” I asked her.

  Painted Wolf replied, “Halil. This is his town, remember?”

  “And you have a license to drive?”

  She pointed to an envelope on the dashboard. I opened it to find several important documents inside, including a driving license with a photo of Painted Wolf in the old-woman makeup, a badge of some sort, and three round-trip train tickets to New York City leaving that very afternoon.

  “What is all this?”

  Painted Wolf said, “How we get Rex out. Rosa forged them.”

  “Incredibly realistic. She is very talented. And the tickets?”

  “How we find his brother.”

  I worried about my return flight to Lagos. I had to bring the jammer. I could not be delayed. Painted Wolf could see my concern as clearly as if I was wearing it as a hat. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll get you back in time for your flight. Everything is going to work out.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I can’t,” she said. “But we’ve gotten this far, right?”

  I had to agree, she had a point. Still, I was very anxious.

  “By the way, we bought this for you.” Painted Wolf turned and reached into the space behind her seat. She pulled out a duffel bag and handed it to me. “You’ll need to change,” she said. “Sorry we couldn’t get it to you earlier.”

  I opened the duffel bag and looked at the clothing folded neatly inside.

  “You’re my intern.”

  “And what do I do?”

  “What most interns do,” Painted Wolf said. “Look useful.”

  As Painted Wolf navigated the city streets, I climbed into the backseat and changed into the suit. I found that it fit perfectly and, looking at myself in the mirror on the sun
visor, I found that I appeared quite debonair. Never having seen myself in a suit before, I will admit I was pleased with the results.

  When we arrived at the juvenile intake facility downtown, however, my nerves were frayed beyond all fraying. Outwardly, I remained calm and assumed my role as the assistant to Painted Wolf. Tunde Oni, intern.

  Painted Wolf parked the car in front of the building and I followed her inside. She showed her badge to the attendant security personnel and they scanned us both with handheld metal detectors. Afterward, we were escorted to an elevator bank and directed to go to the third floor, turn left, then right, and ask for Special Agent Lindell at the last door on the left.

  We followed these directions in complete silence.

  Just before we knocked on the door of the specified room, Painted Wolf turned to me and said, “Do not show any emotion, okay? The only way this will work is if you pretend you do not know the person behind this door. Okay?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She opened the door, and as soon as she crossed the threshold, she became another individual entirely. She was transmuted!

  Rex sat beside his parents at a small table. He appeared defeated, and the expression on his face was so disheartening that it nearly broke me. Though his expression did not change when he looked up and saw me, his eyes did.

  They instantly lit up. He knew. He understood.

  I kept myself focused, though I wanted to rush forward and carry him out of that place. A severe woman in a blue suit introduced herself as Special Agent Lindell. Painted Wolf shook her hand very briskly.

  “I want my client ready to leave in twenty minutes. My bona fides,” she said in her old-woman voice as she reached into the briefcase and handed Special Agent Lindell several of the papers Rosa had fabricated.

  Then Painted Wolf walked over to Rex and surveyed his condition.

  Speaking directly to Rex, she said, “I’m Marsha Osborne-Chang, with Chang, Carlson, Ryder, and Burns, and I’ve been hired as your lawyer. As of this moment, I advise you not to say anything further without consulting me.”

  She then turned to Special Agent Lindell.

  “Can you please gather my client’s belongings? We’re leaving.”

  29.2

  We waited in a staff lounge for Rex to be released.

  While we sat there, Special Agent Lindell joined us.

  Leaning over to Painted Wolf, she said, “We’re releasing Rex to his parents’ custody. He has a monitoring bracelet on and has been cited back to juvenile court in two days. Make sure he’s there. This should go fast because we’ve got your client on everything.”

  “That’s not what I understand,” Painted Wolf said calmly.

  “Let me give you a little advice. This is the work of Terminal. If Rex is willing to provide names, gives us locations, IP addresses, access to his network, then maybe we can cut a deal.”

  “What sort of deal?” Painted Wolf asked.

  “A unique one.”

  “Have your office call mine.”

  “It’s a limited-time offer. Expires at the first hearing,” Special Agent Lindell said as she headed for the door. “Tell Rex. He has to play nice. He has to give up everyone and everything.”

  After Special Agent Lindell left, Painted Wolf turned to me and winked.

  “Do you know what you are doing?” I whispered.

  “Sort of,” she replied. “I’ve done this in China a couple of times. Procedures here are a little different, but I did some research and it all sounds about right.”

  Painted Wolf followed this with a shrug and a smile.

  If anyone could do this it was her, but ko easy ra ra!

  Rex arrived fifteen agonizing minutes later. He trudged out the door with his parents, a tracking bracelet on his ankle. In the parking lot, Mr. Huerta turned to Painted Wolf and shook her hand vigorously.

  “I don’t know who hired you,” he said. “But I want to thank you. We don’t have much, but I hope that we—”

  Painted Wolf waved his words away.

  “I would not think of taking a dime,” she said. “This is pro bono. Trust me, your son is in very safe hands.”

  “How can that be?” Mrs. Huerta asked, happy but confused.

  “Payment was generously provided by the family of another contestant that Rex befriended over the course of the Game. We all know that these charges are trumped up and I will see to it that all of them are dropped. Now, we do not have much time. Are you staying somewhere in town?”

  Mr. Huerta shook his head. “We haven’t gotten a place yet.”

  “No worries,” Painted Wolf said. “You can stay with some friends. I’ll give you the number for Halil Tawfeek. His parents’ place is very close; they’ll be expecting you. I need to meet with Rex to do an in-depth interview, which might take the rest of the evening. I can have your son back to you in the morning. Does that sound okay?”

  Mr. and Mrs. Huerta took turns embracing Rex before getting into their rental car and driving off. It was not until we reached the car that I managed to take a deep breath.

  Two blocks from the police station, Rex let out a huge war whoop!

  “You people are insane!”

  We all began laughing uproariously. It was entirely nerves on my part.

  As the car roared onto the highway, Rex turned around and fist-bumped me. “You did amazing, too, Tunde. I don’t even know what to say. I can’t believe this. Do you know how much trouble we just got ourselves into? I mean, this is crazy! What are we going to do now?”

  “You’re due back in court in two days,” Painted Wolf said. “But we’re going to New York to find Teo before that. I’m sure there are already way too many CCTV cams that have captured images of us in this car. We’re going to ditch it at the station and take public transport from here on out. Train leaves in thirty minutes. We’ll have Tunde back in the morning for his flight.”

  “I can’t leave the city,” Rex said. “I’m being investigated for the largest cybercrime in history, in case you forgot.”

  Rex held up his right leg, showing us the ankle bracelet.

  “You telling me you can’t hack that thing?” Painted Wolf asked.

  “Well…,” Rex said. “There’s still a big problem with—”

  “Listen,” Painted Wolf interrupted. “Did you steal those documents?”

  “Of course not!” Rex spat.

  “Then that is what you should be worrying about. Someone set you up. The FBI doesn’t believe your story. They won’t help you. We’re going to have to break a few laws to clear your name and settle this thing. None of us want our families involved, none of us want them in trouble. If we’re going to make things right, we need to do this ourselves and figure it out as we go. With any luck, we can get to Teo by the time Tunde needs to leave. I know things are really scary right now, Rex, but you have to trust me. You have to believe that we can do this.”

  I tapped Rex on the shoulder.

  “Remember, omo, we can do anything together.”

  A solemn pause passed before Rex turned to Painted Wolf and said, “By the way, you’ve got amazing eyes.”

  30. CAI

  I changed in the bathroom at the train station.

  It must have been funny to see an elderly woman step into a stall and a young, differently dressed woman step out. I tucked all the prosthetics into my carry-on bag and mentally thanked the Boston Collective film department tech crew who had given them to me.

  We caught the train in time and had no hassles when we boarded.

  As soon as we reached our seats, I settled into mine and tried to relax for what felt like the first time in weeks. But the knot in my stomach wasn’t going to go away so easily. I had been recorded on countless video cameras. While my disguises had always been good in the past, this was the FBI.… Besides, if the people who had access to WALKABOUT wanted to find us, they could do it in a snap.

  That thought chilled me to the bone.

  I was thankful when Re
x sat down beside me and the train pulled out of the station. I needed to focus on the matters at hand, on the coming hours.

  “I just want to thank you again,” he said.

  “Of course. You would have done the same for me.”

  “You know it. Still, you took a big risk.”

  Thinking back over the events of the morning, I realized I had acted more on impulse than anything. Whereas before my drive was always to secure a new tape, capture a new confession, when we rescued Rex I was acting almost purely on emotion. I just knew that we had to get Rex out. I couldn’t stand the thought of him being locked up; I couldn’t stand the thought of not seeing him again. There was simply no other option. I risked everything for him not just because it was the right thing to do but also because I wanted to.

  What did that mean?

  Thirty miles outside of Boston, my cell phone rang.

  It was a BlackBerry I’d picked up that morning both for show (to make Tunde’s intern disguise more believable) and so we’d have Internet access not linked to any of us. No one had the phone number. I didn’t even know what the phone number was.

  “This can’t be,” I said aloud.

  It wasn’t a phone call but a video chat.

  “No one has this number,” I told Rex and Tunde.

  “Answer it,” Rex said. “But keep the camera covered.”

  I placed my thumb over the camera lens and answered the call. I was stunned at the face that suddenly appeared: It was Kiran.

  “The hell?” Rex whispered.

  “Hello, everyone,” Kiran said, staring straight ahead as though he could see us. “Nice work this morning, really inventive stuff. Fun to watch. Is Rex available?”

  Rex hesitated but then said, “I am.”

  “I told you at my apartment that you’re one of the best coders I’ve ever met. That was a lie. You’re not one of the best, you are the best. I also told you that the only thing keeping you from greatness is a push. That was true. Two days ago, the world wasn’t ready for Shiva. Now it is. And I have you to thank for that, actually. Terminal’s unprecedented cyber attack was the catalyst I’ve been looking for, the tipping point.”