“That’s still Plan B!” I exclaim.
“Fine. When we find a better plan, we’ll call that one Plan A. But if that hypothetical doesn’t work, you use the drones to get you to my container. You start trying to hack into Gene while my sisters and I scatter. You hack back into Gene inside my container. Then sometime Sunday you and I meet up with Ainsley and give her Gene and the Analytical Engine. Payday!”
“As I said, we’re still not ready.”
“What’s missing?”
“A million things. Like what happens if Orrin Walker calls the police?”
“For stealing stolen goods he shouldn’t possess in the first place? Unlikely,” Lara-B says.
“Well, then here’s the big one. How do I take control of his security system? He’s not going to give me time to open a laptop and hack in.”
“You don’t need long.”
“I need long enough,” I say. “Let’s say I excuse myself to go to the bathroom—assuming he even buys it, it still might take long enough to become suspicious. And what if Keir and Gene arrive early? You know Gene will quickly take control of the house computer. I’m assuming that pretty much any computer with a circuit he can override—” I bolt up from the bench seat. “Oh my god.”
“What?” Lara-B asks. I don’t answer and she asks again.
There is a solution, I realize. It’s freaking nuts. No one would think to try it. But I have a feeling that it can work.
“Maybe there actually is a benefit to waiting for Keir to arrive,” I say.
“There is? What?” she asks.
“Yes. Because there is a computer Gene can’t take control of. Maybe the only computer on Earth that is immune to him. And Keir is the one bringing it.”
“The Analytical Engine!” Lara-B exclaims.
“Gene can’t hack into it! Because it has no circuits. He would need punch cards to reprogram it. But if we bring a program—I mean, an actual punch card program—we can use it to tap into the house computer. I’ll need an adapter, of course. Something that can connect the Analytical Engine to Ethernet. Can you work that up?”
“Designing it now. You should tell T-Six you need paper and a printer that can punch holes to create the cards for you. A lot of punch cards.”
“How many?” I say, picking up my phone again.
“I’m not sure yet. We don’t know what we need the Analytical Engine to do yet. But there’s not a lot of bytes of information per card.”
“Ok. I’ll tell him to send however many punch cards he can find.” I pause, stopping my fingers from pressing the final button to call. “Is this crazy? Could this actually work?”
“Connecting a computer from the nineteenth century to an Ethernet port so you can get around the security measures of the most sophisticated computer in the world is definitely crazy,” she tells me. “But not much crazier than anything else we’ve come up with.”
I nod in agreement. “Now I just need to teach myself how to write in whatever punch card language Ada Lovelace invented by tomorrow morning.”
Twenty-One
Overnight, T-Six delivers the printer and the punch cards. They send more than three million cards. Oops. That’s what happens when you use vague terms when you ask for things (like “however many punch cards you can find”) from a company that can you get anything. I keep forgetting that these folks don’t have limits the way normal people do.
And the delivery of three million punch cards is a needed reminder to me that even if Gene is smarter than me (and he is) it’s not the only measure. If I can imagine something that he can’t, I just might beat him. Thinking small screwed me in the tunnel. I’m hopeful I’m swinging for the fences enough with this scheme.
The T-Six crew loads the boxes of cards into Lara-B’s container while I grab a box for my program. Three million cards is overkill, but if I’d just asked for a single sleeve of cards, it wouldn’t have been enough. The cards are a few inches wide by several inches long. They are about the size of an airline boarding pass and each punch card has a place to put ten punches (or not, as the case may be). It’s the pattern of punches and blank spots that is translated by the Analytical Engine into a character. A single character per card. Which means my programming has to be tight. Tighter than it’s ever been.
Once I write as brief a code as I can, I edit and edit and edit it down, looking for any characters I can save. There’s just not much I can do, though. I’m hacking the Analytical Engine itself (it’s not designed for the program I’m trying to run through it) and so that takes characters. When I don’t think I can reduce it any further, I print my code. The cards fill two boxes, each about three feet long, and each containing about two thousand cards.
They’re unwieldy. But I think they’re going to work.
Whenever I take a break from coding, I rehearse the plan with James, Lara-B, and my dad. We are all too jumpy to sleep more than a couple hours at a time. So we run through it again and again. We come up with alternatives when different problems present themselves, we develop contingencies, and we rehearse excuses to give in different situations if we were caught.
And now we’re as ready as we’re going to be. Because, before I know it, it’s time. I keep thinking things like “It’s the morning of the heist” and then catching myself on how bizarre and terrifying that fact is. But it is a fact, no matter how implausible my former self would have found it. It’s the morning of the heist. Tonight I’m going to find out just how crazy this whole thing was. And tomorrow I’m either going to get eighty million dollars, or I’m going to be in jail (again).
We load into Lara-B’s cab while the rest of the trucks part ways. James is looking out the window. He’s pensive and his shoulders are tight. I put a hand on his knee and he almost flinches.
“It’s going to work,” I tell him.
“And if it doesn’t? What am I supposed to tell my family? I was a good student all my life. Studied hard. Never fell in with the bad kids. Then on a whim I decided to rob the richest guy in New York City because a white girl told me that was the only way I could provide for my family.” He purses his lips—no, it looks like he’s physically trying to stop himself from saying more. He looks away.
I lean back with a sharp intake of breath. I don’t even know what to say. How he talks, and what he’s saying, makes me want to cry. But I also want to shout at him too. But I don’t know what I’d say. I feel paralyzed by my emotions in a way I haven’t before.
I notice my dad is giving me a fatherly look. It’s a look that simultaneously conveys “Shouldn’t you try talking to him?” and also “Did I really raise you to be like this?” as well as “What have I gotten us all into?” not to mention “Is this the boy you want to marry?” It’s all there.
I can’t handle a look that has so much subtext. I decide it’s best to stay quiet, at least this time. I close my eyes. “Wake me when we get there.”
At 7:35 p.m. on Saturday night—just under a half hour before Keir is due to arrive—my dad and I walk into the lobby of Elysium Towers.
We’re dressed for the part, each of us in a fancy new suit we bought in Midtown on the way here. I’m wearing glasses (because if you’re going to be in disguise, you need glasses—that’s just a rule). I’m also carrying an oversized briefcase. It has to be, otherwise I can’t fit the two boxes of cards in it.
There’s no doorman out front, but just inside the door, there’s a security desk staffed by two men in dark suits and earpieces.
“Good evening,” a guard says, standing up. “Do you have an appointment with someone in the building?”
“No appointment,” Dad says. He leans against the counter. “But I’m here to see Orrin Walker. Please tell him it’s urgent.”
The two guards aren’t obvious about it, but I can tell that they are suddenly tense.
“Name?”
“Dale Davis,” my dad says. (Oh yeah, my dad’s name is Dale. He hates it and goes by Davis wherever possible.)
; The guards are even more tense now and I realize why. They thought he might have been Keir arriving early, but now that he’s given a different name, they know we definitely shouldn’t be here.
“I’m sorry,” one guard says as he starts walking out from behind the desk. “Mr. Walker doesn’t see anyone without an appointment. Now, if you’ll come with me—”
“Listen,” Dad says, his voice a little louder. “I’ve been arrested for embezzlement and tax evasion but the Feds are trying to get me to flip on Mr. Walker. If he won’t press charges for the embezzlement, I’ll only do a year or two on the tax evasion—tops. And then I won’t have to tell the Southern District of New York what he’s been up to.”
This slows them down. They exchange glances.
“Fellas,” Dad says, now all friendly, “I got out of jail last night and I came straight here. There wasn’t time to try to make an appointment. If he doesn’t want to see me, that’s fine. I’ll call a cab and go see Central Park before they put me away for good. But don’t you think it’s worth finding out if he does want to see me?”
They exchange glances again and I know we’ve cleared at least the first hurdle. The first guard moves back behind the desk and picks up a phone. He turns his back as he calls so we can’t make out his voice too well. I hold my breath, trying not to give the game away. But Dad looks all too comfortable, like he’s willing to wait forever.
The guard turns around and looks at me. “And you are?”
“His lawyer,” I answer.
He looks me up and down. “Really? I’m not sure you’re old enough to drink.”
“I graduated from law school last year, dickhead,” I fire back. “And when you call your law firm over and over on Saturday afternoon like my client did, they don’t send the partners to go with him. They send their most junior employee. In other words—” I jut my thumb at my chest.
But he’s already convinced. I think it was when I called him a dickhead.
He gets off the phone and nods toward the elevator. “Go ahead. Get in the first car and then get out when the door opens. You’ll be there.”
We go to the elevator and get in. It whisks us up so fast I feel like I need to brace myself. There’s a speedometer on the wall. After just a few seconds we’re doing more than forty miles an hour. I look at my dad and grimace. I want to say something, but we can’t risk saying anything about our plan in here, in case there’s a microphone in the elevator.
“It’s fast” is all I can manage to come up with.
“Mm-hmm,” Dad says, the best he can come up with.
“No buttons for the floors,” I add, looking around the elevator. “They must control the elevator solely from the front desk.” Dad looks at me like I wasn’t supposed to say that and I shrug. “I’ve never been in a building as nice as this one, I’m curious.”
He smiles. Like a real dad. “Being wealthy has its merits.”
It makes me feel good—for a second. And then I realize what we’ve both done to try to get even a fraction of this much wealth and it nearly turns my stomach.
The elevator slows and then stops. The door opens to the most beautiful view of New York I’ve ever seen. The sun is almost down and the city is starting to light up. And I’m looking down on all of it. All of Manhattan is spread out beneath me. Living here means feeling like Zeus or Hera and getting to throw thunderbolts at mere mortals.
A butler gives us a moment to admire the view before he points to a small table by the elevator. “Please leave your phones here,” he says.
I hesitate because I don’t want to let it out my sight. But I can’t think of anything on it that would be compromising if they try to hack into it. I set mine on the table and Dad says, “Mine is locked up as evidence.” The butler nods as if that’s the most normal thing in the world and motions for us to follow him. As we walk along a hallway—floor-to-ceiling windows to my left, the center of the apartment to my right—I spot an open door that looks instantly familiar. It’s empty, and in the middle of it there’s a pedestal. I know what’s planned for that pedestal. And, hopefully, the walls of this room aren’t going to close in on me.
We keep going and I avoid the temptation to look significantly at my dad. The hallway opens onto a beautiful modern living room in the corner of the unit. More floor-to-ceiling windows on both sides. To the south is the skyline. To the east, as I approach the window, I can see down into Central Park, which is partly darkened by the slim shadow of the tower I’m in, plus others like it.
“You shouldn’t have come here, Davis,” a voice says.
I turn from the view and get my first look at Orrin Walker in person. His photos don’t do him justice. Jet-black hair. Chiseled jaw. Looks like he was born in a suit and tie. He’s the Alpha Wolf of Wall Street.
“I had to, Mr. Walker,” Dad says, humble now. And I don’t think he’s faking it. “I just couldn’t handle you thinking that—”
“—thinking that you’ve been stealing from me?” Orrin Walker finishes.
Dad gulps and Walker seems satisfied. He sits in the middle of the leather couch and spreads his arms out across the back of it. Then his eyes catch me.
“Penelope Dugan,” I say. I walk toward him, my hand extended, but by the time I get across the room to actually shake hands my arm is tired, and he hasn’t moved a muscle.
I stop. “I have some papers for you to look over,” I tell him, and jostle my briefcase.
“You could be a Bible salesman with that thing,” he says. I’m not invited to answer him (thankfully). “Put them on the table. But summarize them for me.”
As I go to the table, I see Walker check his wrist, where an enormous silver watch rests. I do the same thing when I get to the table. Just fifteen minutes before Keir arrives. I open my briefcase facing away from him and pull out the legal documents inside. (Actually, these are pretty solid documents. Lara-B taught herself law on the way here and came up with them to represent Dad.)
Dad sits on another couch and leans forward. “There are a few documents. But the important one is an affidavit that says that the money…the money I took was part of my compensation. Bonuses.”
“Bonuses,” Walker deadpans.
“For exemplary performance. That removes the worst of the sentence. The kind of thing they’re trying to pressure me to flip on you for. So that gets rid of that problem. And then I do a couple of years in a minimum-security prison for nonpayment of federal income tax on that income. I come out the other side without spilling any beans about the work I did for the company.”
Walker studies him. “Did you know you were scanned in the elevator?” he asks. “Where the thirteenth floor should be—before you’re going too fast for the sensors—I had some custom work done. It senses all technology going up and down the elevator shaft. All you had between you was one phone, which you left on the other side of the building, so I’m reasonably confident I’m not being recorded right now. But on the off chance I am, let me just say that I don’t think the Feds would be able to pin anything on us because we never asked you to do anything illegal for the company.”
“My lawyer disagrees,” Dad says.
I’m not expecting Dad to say that and I have no idea what my argument is. So I’m thankful that Walker does nothing more than look at me coolly before he looks back to Dad.
“Out of curiosity, if we go down this route, how much did I pay you in these so-called bonuses?” Walker asks.
“Eight or so,” dad answers. “Million,” he clarifies unnecessarily.
My eyes bug out a bit and I realize I haven’t actually heard the number until just now. My dad has been sitting on all that while I was trying to scrape together loose change? I’m newly furious.
“Eight point five is more like it, right? That’s what’s in the report I got yesterday,” Walker says, with acid on his tongue.
Dad nods glumly. “I guess it was getting close to that, yeah.”
“Where is it now?” Walker asks.
&
nbsp; Dad hesitates.
“Seriously? All of it?” Walker asks.
Dad nods.
“I could blow eight point five million in a second, but that’s a lot of money for someone like you. Where’d it go?” Walker asks.
“It’s not entirely gone,” Dad says, almost whining. “There’s the house and the chalet up at Stowe Mountain. Some stocks, some bonds. Maybe ninety thousand in cash left.”
“Add it all up,” Walker says. It’s menacing the way he says it and Dad almost flinches.
“It’s all worth probably two million. Maybe two point five.”
“And the rest?”
Dad winces. “The normal things.”
Walker nods, almost understandingly. Only a billionaire can understand how quickly more than six million can slip through one’s fingers. “Ok, so the Feds are going to seize the chalet and probably the house because of the tax evasion charge. So what you’re really telling me is that I get nothing back. You stole it, and it’s gone. What you’re proposing is just…damage control.”
Neither of us say anything.
Walker checks his watch again and so do I. Seven minutes until eight. “I’m not promising anything but I’ll have my lawyers look at the papers,” Walker says, getting up from the couch. That’s Dad’s cue as well. As Dad leans forward to get up, though, Walker’s hands dart forward with the speed of a cobra. He grabs the knot of Dad’s tie and violently pulls him toward him. “If we do this…you are mine for the rest of your life, do you understand? If I want to pay you minimum wage, you’ll say ‘Thank you, Mr. Walker.’ If I want to pay you less than minimum wage, you’ll say ‘Thank you, Mr. Walker.’ And if I want to fire your ass at any moment and make sure you never work in this city again, what are you going to say?”
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