by Jake Needham
“Are all the locations in the ocean near each other or spread around?” he asked as he lit up.
“They’re all over the place, sir. The South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand, the Bay of Bengal, the Andaman Sea.”
“Then they’re all in Southeast Asia, too.”
“Yes, but they’re not—”
“Four cities in Southeast Asia and a bunch of locations in the ocean surrounding Southeast Asia. Do I have that right?”
“Yes, sir. That’s right.”
“Have you checked all the coordinates?”
“No, sir. It’s slow going with my phone. If you had Wi-Fi maybe—”
“Yes, I get it, Sergeant. I’m an old fart who doesn’t even have Wi-Fi in his house and that’s slowing you down. Give it a rest.”
Tay pulled the laptop toward him and clicked through the first four files Julie had decrypted for what felt like at least the thousandth time. They all still looked pretty much the same to him. Four lines of numbers that Kang was now calling GPS coordinates, some lines of gibberish, and then more lines of GPS coordinates. Were these directions to various locations with instructions to be executed at the end of each sequence of stops? But that didn’t make any sense. No one made a series of stops in the middle of the ocean.
“What about the numbers in the other files, Robbie?”
“I did a couple on each page of Decrypted File 2, Decrypted File 3, and Decrypted File 4, sir. I’m pretty sure they’re all GPS locations, too, but they’re all over the place. Some on land, some in the ocean.”
“But they’re all in Southeast Asia?”
Kang nodded.
Tay smoked quietly and thought about that.
“What do GPS coordinates around Asia have to do with designing software for driverless cars for in Singapore?” he asked after a few minutes had passed in silence.
Tay wasn’t directing the question to Kang. He was talking to himself as much as anything. But Kang answered anyway.
“Nothing that I can see, sir. Maybe you could say that the locations in cities had something to do with designing software for other countries, but what about the locations in the ocean?”
“Maybe they’re also designing software to sail ships automatically without the need for crews,” Tay mused.
“That might explain the locations at sea, sir, but it wouldn’t explain the locations in cities.”
“Could the city locations be ports?”
“They could be, sir, but they aren’t. The locations I’ve checked were all in the business districts.”
Tay nodded and stubbed out his cigarette. This was getting them absolutely nowhere. He got up from the table and went to the bathroom.
When he came back, he started clicking through the third and fourth batches of documents Julie had decrypted, not because he had any real hope of finding something in them, but mostly because he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
“What about these other documents, Robbie?”
“I didn’t find any GPS coordinates in them at all, sir. I’m pretty sure those documents are computer code, but I have no idea what any of it is code for.”
“Can’t you just decode it or something and figure out what it does?”
“It doesn’t work like that, sir. Programmers call what they’re doing writing code, but code comes in a lot of forms. Code that a programmer writes is usually called source code, but after it’s been compiled it’s called object code. Code that’s ready to run is called executable code or machine code, and code that is—”
“Never mind, Sergeant. Just speak English. Can you work out what this gibberish is supposed to do, or not?”
“No, sir. Not without knowing what it was written to do.”
“That’s what Julie said, too.”
“There you go then,” Kang shrugged. “If Julie and the Wangster can’t figure it out, I’ve got no chance, sir.”
Tay clicked randomly through the documents, skimming them, looking for something recognizable. Anything, really, but all he found was line after line of letters, numbers, and symbols that meant nothing to him.
C GENERATE CR, CC, AND SC ARRAYS
DO 30 J=1,NROW
DO 29 I=1,NCOL
SC(J,I)=SS(J)*AREA(I)*DELZ(J)
IF(I.EQ.NCOL) THEN
CR(J,I)=0.0
ELSE
CR(J,I)=2.*PI*KR(J)*DELZ(J)/ALOG(ALPHA)
END
Tay stopped skimming and reached for a cigarette, but just as he did something caught his eye. He dropped the pack of Marlboros back on the table and leaned toward the screen.
Buried in the middle of yet another sequence of letters, numbers, and symbols were a few English language words.
The one that jumped out at him was China.
China 345, Compton 3 Foxtrot, squawk 6244
Tay pulled the laptop closer and continued skimming through the document that mentioned China. Now that he had something specific to look for, he started seeing other similar combinations of words intersperse throughout the gibberish.
China 345, clear to FL 360
And…
China 345, amendment to clearance, T3F departure
And then…
China 345, contact 132.6
Tay leaned back in his chair and chewed at a knuckle on his left hand.
“China 345, Compton 3 Foxtrot, squawk 6244,” Tay read. “What the hell does China 345 refer to?”
He wasn’t even aware he had spoken out loud until Kang answered.
“No idea, sir. Could be anything. But I think I know what squawk 6244 means.”
Tay lifted his eyes from the laptop screen and looked at Kang.
“It’s an aviation term, isn’t it, sir? Those are the numbers an aircraft is told to dial into that little radio that sends out a signal so the airplane can be identified on radar.”
Tay said nothing. He just looked at Kang.
“And contact 132.6?” Kang went on, pointing at the laptop’s screen. “Isn’t that an instruction to an airplane about what frequency they should use to talk to the ground somewhere?”
GPS coordinates for Southeast Asian cities?
GPS coordinates for positions in the ocean between Southeast Asian cities?
Computer code that has embedded instructions for navigating an airplane.
“They’re not designing software for driverless cars,” Tay said. “They’re designing software to fly airplanes. That’s what they’re really doing.”
“Fly airplanes? You mean fly them from the ground rather than with pilots onboard?”
Tay nodded.
“I don’t understand, sir. There’s nothing new in that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The American military has used drones for years. For surveillance, even for combat. A guy sits at a computer in California, flies a plane around over Iraq, and blows the hell out of some terrorist’s truck like he’s playing a video game. Happens all the time.”
Tay rubbed at his chin. He was missing something. It was hanging there just out of reach.
What was it Emma had told him about why The Future wanted Tyler badly enough to hire him away from Google and move him all the way to Singapore?
“Tyler specialized in security protocols,” she had said.
“Are you telling me they were worried about somebody hijacking one of these driverless cars by hacking into the computer that runs it? And Tyler knew how to hijack driverless cars?”
“Yes, and what if Tyler had discovered the security protocols he was working on had other applications beyond their application to driverless cars?”
“Such as what?”
“What if similar security issues were present in something else other than driverless cars? What if the protocols Tyler wrote could be used for hacking into something other than driverless cars? What if those protocols could take over something else and make it do what you want it to do?”
Tay was reaching for his cigarettes again when his hand fro
ze in midair.
Right before his eyes, all the seemingly unrelated and frustratingly incomplete pieces of the puzzle began to move, and they quickly arranged themselves into a clear and unmistakable picture.
Tay didn’t believe what he was seeing, not at first. But then he did.
And, just like that, he knew.
“When was Tyler Bartlett killed?” he asked Kang.
“He was found on March 16, but he was probably killed on March 15.”
“And when did he quit his job?”
“A few days before that. March 12, I think it was.”
“He told his girlfriend he had discovered something that frightened him. That was why he quit.”
“But you said she didn’t know what it was.”
“She didn’t.”
“And so you don’t either.”
“I do now,” Tay said.
It usually happened just like that for him. He worked along doggedly day after day, collecting bits of information like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, having no idea how big the puzzle was or where its edges lay. Now and then he would spread the pieces he had collected out on a table and move them around to see if he could make a picture out of them. Usually he couldn’t. The pieces stayed pieces. And he would put away the ones he had and go back to looking for more pieces.
But occasionally, for no reason he ever really understood, the pieces began moving all on their own, goaded into motion by something he had all of a sudden remembered or something someone had said to him.
It happened exactly that way this time. What Kang said clicked together with something Emma had told him about Tyler. All at once, the pieces he had moved around and arranged themselves into a recognizable picture. There were holes here and there, of course, even chunks missing, but he could see the picture. And he knew what it was. One moment everything had been a blank, and the next moment it wasn’t.
“I see now,” Tay said.
“See what, sir?”
“Why Tyler and Emma were killed. And who killed them.”
Kang looked expectantly at Tay, but Tay shook his head.
“Not yet, Robbie. I’ve got to think about it a little more.”
But he didn’t have to think about it a little more.
He knew.
He knew what Tyler had discovered. He knew what had frightened Tyler so badly. He knew why Tyler was killed. He knew why Emma was killed.
He knew everything.
Or almost everything.
The only thing he didn’t know was what to do now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
THE NEXT MORNING, Tay still hadn’t decided what to do. He sat in his garden like he did most mornings, drank coffee, and smoked a couple of Marlboros. That generally helped him think. This time it didn’t.
He’d had a small headache when he got up and now it was a big headache so he went upstairs to see if he had any aspirin. He rummaged through the drawer in his bedside table and found a half-empty bottle of Bayer. When he picked up the bottle, he saw the crumpled white card underneath it. It still looked more or less the way it had when he had tossed it in the drawer after Philip Goh had given it to him that afternoon at New Phoenix Park. Tay smoothed the card out between his fingers and looked at the telephone number Goh had written on it. His private cell number, Goh had said. Tay dropped the card back into the drawer and closed it.
He took the bottle of Bayer into the bathroom and poured three aspirin into his hand. Filling a glass from the tap, he popped the aspirin into his mouth one by one and methodically swallowed each of them. Somewhere between the second and the third aspirin, he felt the stirrings of an idea so, when he was done, he went back to his bedside table and took out the little white card again. He sat on the edge of the bed, held it in his hands, and looked at it for a long time.
Tay didn’t like Philip Goh very much, and he didn’t like the Internal Security Department at all. He thought the air of mystery ISD cultivated was childish, but he realized that knowing what they were really up to out there behind the walls at New Phoenix Park could well be even worse. When they had that strange conversation, Goh had warned him away from The Future and Zachery Goodnight-Jones, but it was clear that Goh was very interested in knowing what Goodnight-Jones and his people were really up to.
Now Tay not only knew what they were up to, he knew what they had actually done.
Maybe, just this once, he and Goh were on the same side.
Tay found his phone and called the number Goh had written on the card before he could think about it and change his mind.
When Goh said he would meet Tay in Fort Canning Park in two hours, Tay’s first thought was that dramatics like that were typical of ISD. He would have preferred an air-conditioned coffee shop, but Goh hadn’t asked him where he wanted to meet and Tay didn’t argue. At least, in Fort Canning Park he would be able to smoke. God moved in mysterious ways.
Fort Canning Park was one of Singapore’s landmarks. It had been everything from a palatial resort for the Malay kingdoms in the fourteenth century, to the location for the residences of the colonial governors, to the place where the British surrendered Singapore to the Japanese in World War Two. Now it was a lush, green area in the center of the city surrounding Fort Canning Hill, one of the highest points in Singapore. Of course, Fort Canning Hill was only a little over a hundred feet high so Tay thought that calling it a hill was laughably ambitious, but the park was a pleasant enough place, and it had witnessed much of what passed for history in Singapore.
Tay got out of the taxi at the Hill Street entrance to the park and took a winding, brick-paved walkway westward between two rows of broad-leafed mahogany trees. It was hot, and he was glad of the shade.
Goh wanted to meet at a bench behind the old Hill Street Police Station. Tay wondered if the choice of meeting places was meant to showcase Goh’s finely tuned sense of irony or if it was just a coincidence.
The British had built the Hill Street Police Station in the thirties, although for some reason the six-story building had a distinct Italian air to it. Tay had always thought its balconies and arcades and courtyards were lovely. What was less lovely was the history of the building.
For the British, it had been the heart of their fight against the anti-colonialists trying to drive them from the Malaysian Peninsula in the thirties. When the Japanese defeated the British in World War Two and took Singapore, they turned the building into an interrogation center for prisoners. And in the sixties, Singapore’s fledgling government dominated by ethnic Chinese had made the building the heart of its bloody battle against the Malaysia guerilla forces they claimed were communists.
The Hill Street Station had been abandoned as a police facility in the eighties and then, in the nineties, the building was converted into something the government called an arts center in another of those doomed efforts by the men who ran Singapore to sanitize its past. Tay figured they could call the building whatever they wanted. It didn’t really matter what they said the building was now. Most Singaporeans knew what it had been before.
A lot of people thought the building was haunted and they avoided being anywhere near it, even averting their eyes if they had to drive past it on Hill Street. Some said late at night you could hear screams coming from the basement where prisoners had been tortured by first one conqueror and then the next. Tay himself had never heard the screams, but he could imagine them easily enough.
There are some cities that are suspended between their past and their future. Singapore thought it was all future. Tay thought it was mostly the past.
Tay found the bench Goh had described. Like everything else in Singapore, it was neat and tidy. Green-painted wooden slats supported on black iron legs in the shade of a giant lychee tree. The first thing Tay noticed was that it faced directly into the back of the old Hill Street Police Station. Tay was still working on whether that was irony or coincidence when he saw Goh walking up the path toward him from the opposite direction. Tay lit a cigarette, sho
ok out the match, and dropped it on the ground.
“That’s littering,” Goh said when he sat down next to Tay. “I could bust you for that.”
Tay just looked at Goh and said nothing.
Goh folded his arms across his chest and crossed his legs. He sat for a moment looking at the Hill Street Police Station.
“I’ve always liked the view from here,” he said.
Irony then, Tay thought to himself, not coincidence. Maybe he wasn’t giving Goh enough credit for subtlety.
“I don’t,” Tay said.
“Didn’t think you would.”
“So that’s why you chose it as the place for us to meet?”
Goh nodded and cleared his throat.
“Okay, Tay, you called this meeting. What have you got for me?”
What do I have? Tay thought. A few snatches of text from Tyler’s backup drive, a few dates that might somehow be related, and a bunch of wild-ass suppositions.
But he was right. He knew he was right.
“Do you still think Goodnight-Jones is hiding something about The Future?” Tay asked. “That they’re really doing something there other than writing software for driverless cars?”
Goh nodded, but he said nothing.
“Do you have any idea what it is?”
Goh slumped back on the bench and laced his fingers together behind his head.
“A few theories,” he said. “None worth repeating. But no hard information. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re just what they appear to be.”
“They’re not,” Tay said.
“And this you know exactly how?” Goh asked.
So Tay told him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
WHEN TAY FINISHED his story about Tyler Bartlett’s disk drive and what they had found on it, Goh went back to staring at the rear of the Hill Street Police Station. Tay watched the scar on Goh’s cheek gain color. He could see that Goh was heating up in spite of his effort to look only mildly interested.