29
IN VINO VERITA’S
Nicholas had never been allowed freedom of movement in the main house, so they explored together. They found the kitchen off to the right of the main hall at the rear, with a view of what Nicholas had called the operations centre wing on the left. To the right, into the distance, beautiful, rolling vineyards were taking form in the dawn light.
Millie and Nicholas sat at the table while Worse sorted out the facilities, getting the kettle started and putting out some mugs. As he searched for loose leaf tea, he phoned Spoiling. The line sounded odd and he guessed the reason.
‘You’re in flight, Victor?’
‘Worse, what choice did I have? I keep getting reports of extraordinary things. You tell me about a burnt-out car that turns out to have assault weapons in the ashes. Then an explosion rocks half the South-West, then a giant inferno on your coordinates—’
‘I saw that too, Victor,’ interrupted Worse.
‘And now some poor devil of a volunteer fire chief has just found a body in the car park.’
‘How unfortunate. That would be Fiendisch. I’ll keep the other body hidden in the house. What’s your ETA?’
‘Fifteen. What other body?’
‘Seriously though, Victor, you might want to secure the Humboldt premises in Fremantle, and freeze all assets and transactions involving the bank, Verita’s Wines, and Providence Portfolio. Also, there’s a Charles Finistere in the picture. He needs to be interviewed, with respect.’
‘Yes, yes. What do you mean, seriously? And what other body?’
‘I’ll have tea ready for you in the kitchen. Out.’
Worse had found only teabags, and was agitating them in a pot. Placing it on the table, he excused himself. He walked through to the front of the house and across to the Range Rover. Two fire volunteers stood nearby, staring at Fiendisch’s body.
‘Make sure no one interferes with this,’ he said, gesturing as he approached.
Ignoring his own injunction, he bent down and secured a wallet and mobile from Fiendisch’s clothes. Then he reached inside the back of the vehicle, and after removing his tracking device, pulled out one of the rugs, flicking it free of broken window glass. Before he covered Fiendisch, Worse spoke quietly, almost kindly, to his face. ‘It was every tread and turn, Karl.’ Without a glance at the others, he returned to the house.
In the hallway, he stopped to scan the call history of the mobile. The most recent contact, the call Fiendisch had made just after the explosion, was to a non-standard number. Worse recognized the ID prefix of a satellite phone. He returned to the kitchen and sat down opposite the others.
‘What was going on here, Nicholas?’
‘As far as I have managed to work out, they’ve set up a secret trading platform, a kind of stock exchange for criminal assets. People trade shares in illicit drug transfers, money laundering operations, internet scams, arms deals, banned exports, that sort of thing. I think they also buy and sell illicit software like skimming programs. The most frightening thing I saw was ignition code for a nuclear trigger. I recognized it because their clock subroutines have a super-criticality architecture with characteristic cross-links. They’re known as loopstraps; the Soviets called them Manhattan Transfers and the Americans, Kremlin Ties. They’re not mentioned in programming textbooks. A kid from Belarus told me about it years ago at a junior maths camp.’
Nicholas caught the instant concern on the others’ faces, and hastened to add, ‘Naturally, I corrupted it. It wouldn’t switch on a light bulb now.’
‘I miss the simple, gloomy humour of the Cold War,’ said Worse, relieved. ‘So, you are saying that an individual could have beneficial ownership without identifiable culpability?’
‘And without getting their hands dirty, as it were. It took me a while to figure it out but I’m sure that was the idea. As well, of course, there’s potential for an options market. On top of it all, the bank gets commissions and broking fees, loan interest, business introduction fees, currency trades and arbitrage margins.’
‘Yes. I’m sure no avenue of usury was unexplored,’ said Worse.
‘I became too curious when they had me modelling insurance pricing for transactions that were non-existent in commodities that were undefined for risk scenarios that were more to do with discovery and interception and confiscation than acts of God. Naturally, they disguised the terminology, but it didn’t take a lot to decipher the language. Given I had been told that I was developing financial instruments for the local wine industry, the whole enterprise started to look suspicious.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ observed Worse. ‘Why did they isolate you? What happened that drove them to bring you here by force?’
‘Well, I suppose I started to question some of the material I was asked to work with, model design, parameter settings, basic things. I’ve always seen discussion and debate to be part of the process of research and development and refinement.’
‘Rightly so,’ said Worse. Millie nodded in agreement. She had a hand on Nicholas’s arm.
‘Anyway, it wasn’t well received by Fiendisch. He said things like: just write the software and make sure it works. It all soured quite quickly, actually.’ Nicholas’s words slowed, and he stared reflectively into his tea. Worse and Millie gave him time to continue.
‘Naturally, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about things. The day his thugs tied me up and bundled me into the back of an off-roader—that very day, I had received an email from Paulo in the Ferendes.’
‘The Ferendes?’ questioned Worse.
‘That’s where I had been working before coming to Perth. Paulo is in charge of the language research station there. It’s run from Cambridge by Edvard Tøssentern. Ferent languages are very special historically.’
‘Tøssentern of inductive graphs?’ asked Worse.
‘The same. He knows Rodney Thwistle, and it was RT who emailed you and me setting up an introduction. I regret I did not meet you earlier.’
‘I suspect that email was what brought their villain Zheng in my direction,’ said Worse.
‘Anyway, I’ve figured out there’s a special connection between the Humboldt and Banco Ferende. Paulo’s message about the extent of Chinese logging in the north set off some kind of alarm.’
‘Can you explain to us the Chinese connection?’ said Worse.
‘I wish I could. Fiendisch was definitely not the top person. He took orders from someone called Feng. I’m sure he’s the one they also call the Admiral. I don’t know where he’s situated. They had me setting up Société Générale accounts and after a while I realized it was nothing to do with that reputable French bank, but a rather facile camouflage for the gang of generals who seem to be involved in international crime. Their financial centre seems to be the Banco Ferende in Madregalo. I think all the development was being done here, using Fiendisch’s expertise, and mine for that matter, with a view to operating out of Madregalo, and probably the Humboldt as well. There’s another thing: I need to let Paulo and Edvard know that there’s more than rapacious logging happening on the northern plain. The commodity signatures point more to mining, and I suspect they’re helping themselves to mineral sands and rare earths.’
Worse leaned back in his chair, looking at Nicholas. He was calculating the size of their problem.
‘Do you think the criminal operations are sanctioned by the Chinese government?’ he asked.
‘I think that’s very unlikely, as Beijing periodically orders exhibition trials and harsh punishments to discourage official corruption. But the People’s Liberation Army is a law unto itself, and there were certainly PLA assets deployed in the Ferendes. There could well be a blind-eye factor in play, of course, but when I was there our belief was that the logging scam was run by a cadre of senior and probably retired officers abusing their privileges.’
‘In which case, if the whole enterprise were exposed, Beijing is likely to prosecute on the side of good rather than be disgraced.
Excuse me.’ Worse stood up. He had heard, before the others, an approaching helicopter.
The pilot chose to put down behind the house, and Nicholas and Millie had a view through the kitchen window of a short, middle-aged man wearing a green anorak step to the ground and walk across to Worse. They shook hands, embraced briefly, and spoke for a minute, before Worse led the way around into the house. As they entered the kitchen, Worse made introductions.
‘This is our missing person, Nicholas Misgivingston, and Nicholas’s sister Millie from the UK. This is Inspector Victor Spoiling, abbreviated in the ranks, though not within his hearing, to Spectre Spoiling. Tea, Victor?’
‘I’m fine for now, thank you,’ Victor answered as he shook hands with the others, before sitting at a chair offered by Worse.
Before resuming his own seat, Worse removed items from his pockets and backpack, placing them on the table in front of Spoiling, and naming them as he did so.
‘Fiendisch’s gun. Stronk’s gun; he’s through there,’ Worse pointed to the rear wing. ‘Fiendisch, you saw out front. Here’s his wallet, keys, and mobile.’ Worse held on to the last item. ‘I was hoping I could look at this.’
Spoiling nodded. ‘Twenty-four hours, and I learn what you learn.’ He knew he had a better deal than if he sent it to his own IT squad.
‘Now reassure me, Victor, you have kept up your fluency in Mandarin,’ said Worse brightly as he repocketed Fiendisch’s mobile.
‘I feel a headache coming on.’
‘What Nicholas has learned,’ Worse continued, ‘is that whatever was going on between here and the Humboldt, and he thinks it was some kind of virtual proceeds-of-crime stock exchange, the Chinese were in charge. Do you know of an Admiral Feng?’
‘No,’ replied Spoiling, ‘but we were tracking a Chinese party called Zheng with connections to Fiendisch. We lost him two days ago, near your place, actually. You couldn’t help us with our enquiries in that matter, could you, Worse?’
Spoiling spoke as if it were an afterthought, but in professional matters he was a master dissembler. Worse supposed that he had been connected with Zheng many hours before.
‘He did drop in, but missed me and quickly left, I believe.’ Suitably parsed, it was all true.
‘Mm.’ Spoiling looked at Worse with subtle suspicion. He was filing it away verbatim for re-examination.
‘Nicholas was about to show us the operations centre. Will you join us?’ Worse suggested innocently. ‘We’ll need those,’ he added, pointing to Fiendisch’s keys.
They all stood up, chairs scraping on the tiled floor. Millie had been looking tired, but the idea seemed to energize her. She was keen to see where her brother had been kept prisoner, to understand better his experience, and to cleanse her mind of imagery that had haunted her over the weeks of not knowing.
As they walked through the first office, Spoiling turned to study the lifeless portrait that was Stronk’s face, neatly punctuated by a bloodless full stop on the forehead.
‘Your work, I see.’ Something held his interest, and he added, ‘What was the last thing he saw, Worse?’
‘He didn’t share that confidence. Inconsiderate to the end, I thought.’ Worse was disinclined to give an account of his flight across the room.
He became aware of Millie looking at him, but avoided her eye. Four men dead in the one night; for a mathematics don, that was unusual. She must have very mixed feelings about him. He knew he had mixed feelings about himself. Spoiling evidently sensed the tension, and understood it; he addressed Millie with a sort of emphatic kindness.
‘Well done, you and Worse. You saved your brother’s life.’ He continued looking at her.
Millie looked at him, then back at Worse. She stepped across to Worse and put her arms around him.
‘I can’t thank you enough.’
She started crying softly. Worse was feeling emotional himself. It didn’t help to have had no sleep. He put his arms around Millie’s shoulders, closing his eyes against the start of his own tears. Now he could feel her shaking. Nicholas came up to them and placed his arms around both, remaining silent. Spoiling was looking away.
It was Worse who ended the embrace; there was someone he wanted to talk to. ‘You three go ahead. I’ll catch up.’
He took his mobile from a pocket and called Sigrid Blitt.
* * *
The loopstrap code in super-critical clock routines is still officially classified from the Cold War era. (In some quarters, Nicholas would be deemed a security risk for knowing its design.) Modern refinements built on solid-state laser hardware are used in top-secret military-precision (as opposed to commercial access) GPS software, in real-time missile interception platforms and, of course, in nuclear weaponry. Recent advances in clock design supporting cross-border superfast algorithmic stock trading do not use loopstrap techniques, but should be a cause of strategic concern: though protected by high order banking encryption, technical performance in this application is now dangerously close to military specification.
30
FAMILLE OBLIGE
When Worse joined the others, Nicholas was talking excitedly about the computing system and the trading platform that he was made to design, relating his discoveries and hypotheses regarding its criminality and disguise. The small space to which he had been confined only hours before was now presented with a slightly incongruous pride.
Millie was listening attentively, and proudly. Spoiling was listening attentively, and analytically. He had called in a software forensics team, but was not one to abnegate informed leadership of any investigation.
Worse looked around. You deserve to be proud, Nicholas, he thought, surviving this. And you, Millie, you should be proud, coming to find your brother.
Spoiling was quiet. Worse had seen it before. He would miss nothing that was said, but reserve questions until after the narrative had run its course. Worse himself was less restrained.
‘Apart from Fiendisch and Stronk, did you see anyone else in the time you were here?’
‘Only Vex, who came each day to cook and clean. I tried to get him to help me, get a message out, but he was even more scared of Stronk than I was.’
‘No one else?’
‘No. But I did hear someone. He was talking to Fiendisch. I could hear the voices, but not what was said. Stronk told me he was called Zheng, and that I wouldn’t want to meet him. He just kept saying, “You don’t want to meet Zheng.” I suspect he was speaking for himself as well.’
‘You never saw Charles Finistere?’
‘No.’
‘So there was no internet connection into this workspace?’
‘No. If I needed outside sources, Fiendisch provided the information, and occasionally gave me supervised access.’
Spoiling had separated a little from the group, and was shuffling through stacks of papers, appearing not to be listening. He interrupted, without looking up.
‘Where did that occur, the access?’
‘Fiendisch would bring in his own laptop with wireless. None of the machines in here was enabled.’
Spoiling turned to face them. ‘I think it would be fine if you all got away from here now. Go back to Perth. We will need statements in a few days. Thank you for your help, Nicholas. What caused the winery to explode, Worse?’
‘There was some kind of spill. Gas leak. Bad electrics. A rogue spark. Who knows?’
‘Mm. The fortuitous accompanies you closely, Worse, much as effect does cause, I always think. I trust the fire investigation will confirm your speculation. Are you fixed for transport?’
‘If Nicholas can drive, we’ll take my car. Millie and I need sleep.’
Spoiling walked out with them, locking the operations centre as they left. At the front door, he stopped to take in the scene. A fire team was still training hoses on the winery. Local police were guarding Fiendisch’s body. A television news van was driving into the clearing.
Worse nodded as he and Spoiling shook hands. Spoiling turned to shake hands with Nicholas, and then with Millie. He had positioned himself so the others couldn’t hear, and leaned forward to speak to her.
‘Sometimes, events determine our lives. Then necessity determines sufficiency. You have found a good friend.’
He didn’t wait for her response, but set off briskly toward the news crew. Millie, Nicholas and Worse walked around the destroyed winery to the access road, and along to Worse’s car. Worse and Millie slept for most of the drive home, while Nicholas found his way using the in-car navigation. When they reached the Grosvenor, Worse was awake, and gave instructions about where to park. He noted that Zheng’s vehicle was no longer there.
He had invited Nicholas to stay with Millie in the spare apartment. Nicholas’s own rental in Fremantle would be searched by police, in view of the break-ins, after which they would have clearance to return and collect personal possessions.
Nicholas was also given the use of a computer, and one of his first acts was to transfer his considerable account balances from Banco Ferende to one of the global majors with branches in the Ferendes. He also contacted his family, Rodney Thwistle, Edvard Tøssentern, and Paulo, and reconnected with his international software clients to explain his disappearance.
While he was doing this, Worse was in his workshop analysing Fiendisch’s phone. He found numbers he recognized: Zheng, Ritchie, the winery fixed line and so on. But what was of most interest were two satellite numbers linked to devices both of which were currently located in the Ferendes. Worse was not immediately able to identify their account holders, but he logged the call history and set up a program to track their geographical movement. He wrote a short report of his findings for Spoiling.
The Weaver Fish Page 22