Manon brought a tray with two bottles of expensive spring water and two crystal glasses on it and set it down on the coffee table. She returned to the kitchen and pretended to start tidying, using it as an excuse to eavesdrop. As Brett reached for his bottle, twisted the cap, broke the seal, and filled his glass until it was half-empty, Robertson complained, “Mom, you know I can’t drink water anymore.”
“I’m sorry, honey, I keep forgetting. I still want to think of you as being...,” her words trailed off and she turned away, ducking out of sight behind one of the interior walls.
“Don’t mind my mom. She’s a sweetheart. She’s mostly taken my death very well, but there are moments...”
Brett nodded, “I understand completely. Is this her townhouse?”
“Yes. I bought it for her so she could be close to New Fenway during our home games. I stay with her when I’m in town,” Robertson leaned closer, “Please keep this house a secret. I don’t want the paparazzi stalking me here or harassing my mom.”
Brett asked, “Have any reporters ever done that?” immediately thinking of how Alana had Edward Jenkins at the top of her suspect list.
Robertson shook his head, “No, not yet. Not that I know of anyway. I haven’t seen any of them around at all since I gave an interview right after I was resurrected.”
Robertson’s admission that he hadn’t been pursued by the press or by fans since his death made Brett’s mind turn even faster around his latest revelation. Perhaps the motive was to change Robertson’s career, perhaps even ruin it? But the killer would have to know that Robertson would be resurrected, and probably just go on to play in the Cyber League. If that was a missing piece of the puzzle, it was a small piece. Brett continued asking questions, with his inquiries being more like what a sports reporter might ask, prompting Robertson to ask to see his badge at one point to be sure that he hadn’t snuck in for an interview under false pretenses. Brett assured him that he was merely trying to establish a possible motive for Veedock to attack him.
After about ten minutes, Brett had exhausted all of his questions about possible professional connections with Veedock. He began asking questions about non-professional travels and travails, which eventually brought him around to asking about the anomaly Alana had pointed out in his college transcripts. No sooner than the question, “Why did you leave Boston College to attend Boston University,” had passed his lips, Manon whipped back around from her hiding space and growled, “That’s none of your business!”
Robertson appeared distressed, “Mom—”
“No! I’m sick of the harassment over that bunch of lies! I’m not going through that again!” Manon grabbed the water tray from the table and spirited it away to the kitchen. She was sobbing when she yelled, “Interview’s over! Good day!”
Brett could hear the bottle drop into a receptacle. He stood, nodding to the suddenly sheepish Phil Robertson, “Thank you very much for your cooperation.” He turned and let himself out of the home, pulling the door closed behind him. No one attempted to stop Brett as he walked down the street, not even the nosy neighbor who was still watching him like a guard-hawk. He pulled his phone out and spoke, “Send the following text message to DCI Graves. ‘Ma’am, you were right. There’s something fishy in Robertson’s educational background. I’m going to check to see if it’s a connection to Veedock. Thanks for the tip.’”
Tuesday, 11 July, 10:00
Alana stood outside the situation room door, watching her clock tick off the minutes and then the seconds until it was 10 AM sharp. She threw open the door and strode inside, letting the door close in its good time. After deftly hanging her mackintosh on the coat rack, she walked right up to the front of the room and turned to face the audience, planting her feet firmly on the carpet. She placed her hands on her hips and began, “Good morning, team. You may or may not have already heard, but we had two major breakthroughs in the case already.”
Chief Bennett was sitting at the front, right corner of the row of chairs that had been prearranged for the team. Detectives Rhys, Washington, Alvarez, and Taggart were seated from Bennett’s left to the far end of the line. Bennett started clapping, slowly but forcefully, goading the others into following suit. Alana grinned, nodding in approval.
When the applause died down, Alana continued, “I’ve read everyone’s reports from last night, and between what you found and what I found, it was enough to establish a rough timeline of what’s happened.” Turning to the whiteboard, she tapped it and started opening files and media related to the case.
“One week ago tonight, I received an anonymous tip about a cyber chop shop at the Port of Los Angeles, right at the waterfront. We busted it up, and seized a large number of cybernetic brains, twenty-eight hundred total. We also took two live captives, but before we could interrogate them, Security Division stepped in and spirited them away. Sunday afternoon, DI MacGruder’s team located a warehouse outside of the port where additional suspects were holed up. One was captured during the raid, but he’s still in the ICU from his injuries. Yesterday, Detective Taggart was able to trace the origin of the anonymous call, which, owing to some fortuitous timing allowed us to capture two other perpetrators. Late last night, one of them sang. Here’s what we know...”
Alana tapped a folder on the whiteboard, and a series of windows opened. Six of the windows displayed photos of men who were familiar to the team. Three windows were black with a large, white question mark in the center. Alana said, “In April of this year, a team of foreign mercenaries comprised of nine men was hired by an as yet unidentified agent. They arrived at Los Angeles via a Singapore-flagged freighter, the Xi Xīng. Their mission was to oversee the collection and transfer of a large number of cyborg brains onto their ship and then provide security for it as it sailed back to Hong Kong.”
Alana started with the leftmost photo, “This man is named Rémy Tremblay. He is our source for the information. He was unable to identify the other men except by their nicknames. Apparently, mercenaries don’t share their names with each other in case they are caught. Tremblay’s code name was ‘Furet Noir.’ He was a former counter-terror operative in the Madagascar Army until he was, according to him, framed for heroin trafficking, along with his friend...”
Alana went down the list, pointing to each picture in turn as she identified them, “Suspect two, who was identified by Tremblay as Raymond Parris. ‘Furet Blanc’ was his nickname. He was in the same Army unit with Tremblay and hired him for this job. He is also the man we caught on Sunday and he’s currently laying in a bed in the ICU in Long Beach.”
The third portrait was of the same man Alana provoked into assaulting her the previous evening. “This one is code named ‘Mamba.’ He’s currently in a cell downstairs next to Tremblay.”
“The next five are the men we identified from the waterfront raid. My memory was damaged in the battle, but Detective Rhys still had images in his video cache, so we were able to make mug shots of three. Perp seven took a head shot from the SWAT team during the firefight, and he’s unrecognizable. Perp eight was inside a suit of military battle armor when Rhys ran him over with a ram vehicle. We never got a look at his face, dead or alive. None of them are in the mug shot database.”
Detective Washington raised his hand, “What about the ninth man?”
Alana pointed at the last question mark, “According to Tremblay, he was still on the ship. He was the team leader, code named, ‘Móguǐ.’ Tremblay said he was north Asian, probably Chinese. I don’t know if he’s on the lam still or not. If Security Division has him in custody, they’re keeping it secret.”
Alana pulled up a real-time satellite image of the port and zoomed in to one of the ships docked there, “The Xi Xīng is still docked, so I’m guessing SD has it locked down, or else the captain and Móguǐ would have fled already. If I learn more about that, I’ll share it.”
Detective Alvarez raised his hand, “Do we have any clues as to who paid for all this?”
Alana sai
d, “I did some tracing on that early this morning. The warehouse was rented by a shell company set up in Hong Kong, which was the same company that leased the ship. The docking fees at LA are not nominal, so whoever is bankrolling this has very deep pockets. They also paid for setting up another shell company, which I’ll get to later. There’s more background to cover.”
Alana opened a series of photos of the waterfront warehouse, “The ship bearing the mercenaries arrived in LA the last week in May. They spent the next week moving their prefabricated cargo containers, made to hold and keep cyborg brains alive for a long period, into the warehouse. They then spent considerable effort proofing it against external surveillance. Three of the men infiltrated past customs. On June 1, they sent an all clear message to their employer via email. I have no idea who the recipient was or how the message was sent, so that’s currently a dead end.”
Detective Taggart raised his hand, “How did they get through customs?”
Alana closed all the open windows on the whiteboard, which was getting cluttered. She then opened a series of time-stamped photos from a security camera overlooking a large gate complex. She pointed out a common element in all the photos, which was a black limousine with opaquely tinted windows, “Starting on June Third, this car began making regular trips through customs. I can’t be sure of the number of times it transited the gates, but it was at least two-hundred. The car was supposedly stolen from the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles, but we haven’t ruled out the possibility that the Chinese government is somehow complicit in this.”
Washington let out a long, “Whewwwwww....”
“The kidnapped cyborgs were brought to their second warehouse base, where they were transferred to the Chinese limo for transport to the chop shop. The car was able to pass freely because of diplomatic immunity. The gate it used to transit customs was fully automated, so there was no human operator to question the frequency of the visits to the port. This is how the suspects were able to deliver the kidnapped cyborgs to the port without being detected.”
Alana had not yet told Rhys about the taxi company she had discovered before they drove up to visit Gabriel the previous evening, something that she had been too preoccupied with personal discussions to broach while they were en route. Rhys had to ask, “How did they get the retirees to the transfer point in the first place?”
Alana traded the image set again, this time displaying the series of surveillance photos and blueprints regarding the Flash-Drive Taxi Company. She said, “Thanks to some preliminary work by Detective Rhys, we found out about the mercenaries’ hideout. Building on that work, and with some additional assistance from Srinu, I was able to make another major breakthrough. The same company that rented the Xi Xīng and leased the dock and the warehouses also provided the funding to open this taxi company. Robotic vehicles collected the victims from all over the Southwest Region and delivered them to Long Beach. There may have been other means of transport, but all of the transponder tracks I reviewed overlapped with these taxis.”
Chief Bennett didn’t bother to raise his hand, “How did they get the victims into the taxis? Didn’t anyone object to being kidnapped? Or report their loved ones or employees as missing? Anything? We’re talking about almost three-thousand cyborgs here.”
Alana nodded, “That’s a damned good question, and the biggest mystery. I’m going to hand the briefing over to DI Alvarez, who may have some insight into that.” Alana walked to the side of the whiteboard and motioned for Alvarez to take her place.
Alvarez stood, and with greater subtlety than Alana had displayed upon her entrance, began, “Thank you, Chief Inspector. My team and I spent all day yesterday tracking missing persons, trying to identify them, and trying to pin down the date of their kidnapping along with any details. It’s very slow going. We still only got twenty-two done by the end of the shift, and that counts some overtime for my team. With only four of us on the job, it’s going to take a year at this pace.” He looked at Chief Bennett, as if to impress upon him just how understaffed he was for the task he was assigned. Bennett nodded slightly, as if to convey understanding, but he didn’t proffer any further aid.
Alvarez continued, “One trend jumped out. The cyborgs—people—who had been kidnapped. None of them had relatives. Not a single one. They were all loners. Well, not ‘loners’ in the traditional sense. They were alone in the world. About half were unemployed. The half who had jobs called their bosses the day they were picked up and quit.”
The entire audience stirred, even Rhys, who said, “Hang on. They quit their jobs and climbed into a taxi to LA the day they were kidnapped?”
Alvarez threw up his arms, “So it seems!”
Chief Bennett said, “That’s...,” but could not find the right word to describe his thoughts. He said, “Could they have been hacked?”
Alana had been assuming that the kidnapped cyborgs had been taken by disabling them, perhaps through an EMP gun or a stun gun. This was proving to be a shock for her. “Srinu says, ‘No,’ vehemently, and I agree with him. It’s impossible to take over a cyborg remotely.”
Washington snarked, his baritone voice booming without him even trying, “It was impossible to do away with Miranda too, but the Republic did it.”
Rhys added, raising an eyebrow, “‘Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.’ Sherlock Holmes. The Sign of the Four.”
Alana said, “We haven’t eliminated all other factors yet. But we can’t ignore that possibility. Inspector Crabtree is currently working on a curiously similar case where some third party android software was involved; however, cyberforensics hasn’t said anything that would support malware in either case. Has Srinu gotten with you about the kidnapped brains?”
Alvarez answered, “Not yet, ma’am. We just handed the first batch over to his department last night. To Wendy. They’re still technically persons, so we’re jumping through flaming bureaucratic hoops.”
Alana nodded, “Press them on that point. If there’s any way that the perps hacked their victims, I have a personal stake in finding out about it.”
Rhys nodded in agreement, “You, me, and thirty-plus million other retirees.”
Detective Taggart asked a very pertinent question, “Did you learn anything more about the anonymous tip?”
Chief Bennett shook his head in agreement, “Yes, what happened with that?”
Alana said, returning to the front of the class, displacing Alvarez who returned to his seat, “The mercenaries got greedy. They were sitting on a warehouse full of cyborg bodies that had their brains removed, and most of them were late models.” She opened another folder, which contained photos of a pudgy, bearded, middle-aged man, a medium shot of a fishing boat about twenty-five meters in length, and a nighttime satellite photo of the same boat sitting in the north part of the harbor with an inflatable skiff tied up at its stern. She said, “They made a deal with a local black marketer, Sal Kaloyanov. He bought the bodies, transferred them to this boat, and then moved them to another warehouse in Northern LA. But Kaloyanov had trouble selling them all. He collected a big stockpile, and wanted to unload the extras quickly. So he tried to contact an old customer of his, a man some of you may remember, Aaron Stone.”
Alvarez asked, “The terrorist leader?”
Alana nodded, “The same. However, Aaron was already dead. But before he died, one of the things he was involved in was doing charity work to help damaged cyborgs, and in pursuit of that goal, he would occasionally buy spare parts from Kaloyanov. Kaloyanov spoke with Aaron’s son, Gabriel Stone. We don’t know exactly how their exchange went, but Gabriel apparently milked enough information out of the black marketer to act on it. He used a pre-paid card from his collection plate to purchase a phone and then called me with the tip on the chop shop.”
Taggart asked, “Why did he go all the way down to Hollywood to do that? That’s a long trip.”
Alana said, “I don’t know yet. We might never learn why. Gabriel is s
till in the hospital in a coma. After they were chased away from their hideout by DI MacGruder, Tremblay and ‘Mamba’ took it upon themselves to extract vengeance upon the men who had disrupted their operation, stranded them in LA as fugitives, and bereft them of what, according to Tremblay, was going to be a hundred-and-fifty-thousand credit payout for each of them. They tracked down Kaloyanov, robbed him, tortured a confession out of him, and left him with a bullet in his head somewhere up along the Pacific Coast Highway, north of LA. I don’t know where exactly. The body hasn’t been found yet.”
Alana once again cleared the wall of images and opened another set of still photos that Rhys immediately recognized as having been taken from his internal camera at the scene of the crime. She continued, “Then they drove up to Camarillo and gunned down Gabriel Stone. In his church. In front of a bunch of kids.”
Rhys had been present during Tremblay’s interrogation, and he had no reaction as there was no surprise for him. Taggart’s jaw dropped. Alvarez made the sign of the cross over his chest and bowed his head. Washington said, as softly as his voice would allow, “Sons-of-bitches.”
Alana was suddenly struck by a tsunami of anger over her decision to strike a plea bargain with Tremblay. The possibility that Gabriel was her original self’s biological son did not fuel the outrage; that news had yet to affect her in any substantial way. It was the naked brutality of Tremblay’s actions. He was an actor from what was still, in 2090, considered the third world, bringing what to him was probably a normal course of action to the first. The rational part of her mind wanted to understand the man for who he was; the Irish part wanted to watch Special Agent Jack Derringer or one of his SD spooks slowly dissect him while simultaneously waterboarding him.
Chief Bennett asked, “What was their escape plan?”
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