Beating Ruby

by Camilla Monk

  Once the young hacker was done, I placed a hand on his shoulder. “There’s one last thing I need to do. Can I use your laptop?”

  Truth be told, there was no need to ask politely, because, had our victim refused, March would have asked. And we no longer needed that right hand. But I thought even the criminal underworld needs a little humanity. The guy nodded and left me his chair. I sat down and reveled in the simple luxury of a soft cushion under my butt and an untouched can of Cacolac waiting in a USB fridge. Heaven.

  My eyes started scanning the endless stack of code lines in front of me. Sahar had told the truth—this guy had been performing various tests on his copy of Ruby in order to verify March’s claim. I browsed through the files and opened the coreLaunch class. Time to test Thom’s last trick.

  “What are you doing?” Alex asked, moving closer to check the screen, while behind us, I could hear March’s low voice admonishing the young hacker about the risks of working for a criminal organization.

  “I’m connecting to Ricardo to retrieve Thom’s code, and I’m updating this version of Ruby with it. We’ll see what it does.”

  “Is it working yet?” March asked, simultaneously babysitting the young hacker and Sahar’s prone body.

  “Wait a second, I’m committing. You’re worse than some of our clients.”

  As soon as the code had been updated, I relaunched Ruby. The laptops’ screens turned black, before an animated ruby appeared, glowing and spinning to signal the application’s imminent launch.

  Alex’s fingers curled around the back of my chair. March held his breath.

  Frankly, after everything we had been through, when the first notes rose in the air I thought Alex and March wouldn’t take the joke well. But next to me, I heard Alex’s nervous chuckle, which turned into a genuine laugh as the laptop’s speaker blared Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” while files started disappearing from the young hacker’s servers at a surprising speed.

  March tilted his head, blue eyes full of boyish wonderment. “It’s a very nice song, but what is that machine doing?”

  “It’s . . . It’s destroying our entire install of Ruby,” chubby boy sniffed.

  “No,” I corrected. “I think it’s also getting me fired.”

  Alex cocked an eyebrow; March frowned.

  “It’s . . . um . . . It’s also destroying what was left of Ruby on EMT’s servers,” I clarified.

  March abandoned his wards to look at the screen. “It’s destroying it all?”

  I shrugged in confirmation. “I thought Thom would have created this code to help us retrieve the money or something like that. But now that I think about it, that just wasn’t the way he functioned. He figured that what was happening to him would happen again to someone else, because you simply shouldn’t create a weapon like Ruby, even if it’s just for testing purposes and you think you’ve secured it perfectly. He meant to kill his chef d’œuvre; he just wasn’t given enough time to do so.”

  March seemed thoughtful. “He was a wise man. And it takes courage to wipe out everything you’ve built without looking back.”

  His words lingered in my mind. Did March feel the same? That he had, as Rudyard Kipling would say, watched the things he had given his life to being broken, and that he was now building a new life back up?

  I bobbed my head to the rhythm of the music. Ellingham would fire me for this, no doubt. And if word got out—although I couldn’t imagine who might gossip about me destroying the entire Ruby program with Thom’s help—my career in IT at large was over, nipped in the bud. Would I have to find a new purpose in life as well?

  The three of us stared at the screens for a while, allowing Rick’s mantra to slowly brainwash us, until all loading bars had reached 100 percent. The screens went black. I scrunched my nose at the smell of burned plastic, which I connected with the sparks and white smoke coming from the laptops.

  March pulled me back.

  Hacker boy wailed. “Oh shit! It’s killing all my stuff.”

  “Don’t be sad. It’s a glorious death,” I told him, even though I knew he couldn’t understand.

  Outside, the sky had turned a dark blue against which the gray clouds looked almost black. Dawn was coming. I heard the hum of a helicopter in the distance. Alex’s colleagues were finally here.

  He moved to one of the windows to watch the aircraft approach. “Shit! It’s not ours!”

  His gun was armed and ready in his right hand before he had even finished speaking the words, and my heart rate was speeding up again, the flutter in my temples increasing to a painful pounding.

  Near hacker boy, March stood perfectly calm. “Calm down, Mr. Morgan. Everything will be all right.”

  My gaze caught his. I saw the fleeting shadow in his eyes, the hint of a sad smile. I understood.

  Alex didn’t. He pointed his gun at March, causing hacker boy to fall to his knees and resume his whimpering.

  “What the fuck did you do? Who did you call?”

  I shook my head in a silent plea. “Alex, it’s for Sahar.”

  Anger darkened his eyes. “You knew?”

  I shook my head, fighting the stinging in my eyes. How could Alex understand? How could he fathom the reasons March had decided to free Sahar? Ten years. Thirty-six thousand and five hundred and thirty days. Almost a third of his life. That’s how long March had killed for the Board. Killed for the Queen. It had earned him his deepest scars, but also made him who he was. Even now that he had decided to tread a new path, this bond, he could never put behind him. I wondered how I had missed this—in a twisted, unconventional way, March and Guita were friends.

  And so he had called the Board, to spare Guita the humiliation and the inextricable mess of seeing her sister fall into the CIA’s hands.

  My lips parted to say something, to find the words to explain the situation to Alex, but March spoke first. “Call Mr. Erwin if you want—he would have done the same.” He said, looking at Alex wearily. “You and I know that the Board’s business with the Agency won’t allow otherwise. Sahar is a diplomatic asset.”

  Alex lowered his gun, while through the window I watched the black helicopter blow leaves and dirt away as it landed softly on the lawn.

  “What if I refuse?”

  March’s eyes closed for an instant; Alex’s resistance was testing his patience. “Then it will merely be our collective loss. Yours. Erwin’s. Mine. Your colleagues’, a handful of whom will have to pay a hefty price for such an affront to Sahar’s sister.”

  At last, Alex’s posture relaxed, and his lips quirked. “You really think I’m an idiot, don’t you?”

  One of March’s eyelids twitched.

  Alex tucked the gun back in his waistline. “You could have just shown a minimum of courtesy and warned me of your decision, Mr. November.”

  My eyes traveled back and forth between the two of them. A game. Alex had feigned outrage to test March. To prove what? Probably that March’s loyalty still went to the Board and the CIA would always come second.

  March walked to the bed to pick up Sahar, and we all left the bedroom, Alex escorting the young hacker with a firm hand on his shoulder. On our way out of the manor, I couldn’t help stealing a glance at Alex, searching his tranquil expression for answers. I felt so stupid for having bought into his little indignation act. It was all he had been doing since the very first day, I realized. Testing, stirring, prodding, studying. Me, March, the inextricable knot tying us together with the Board, the Lions, Erwin. Because gathering intel was his job? Of course. But I was now certain it went deeper than that. Alex wanted something from us. I thought of my conversation with him back in the plane.

  “Do you know who they were, the people who killed your parents?”

  “No, but I’m close.”

  I still didn’t believe March to be the one. There had been countless opportunities for Alex to try to get rid of him since their first encounter, but he hadn’t acted on any of those. One could even say Alex ha
d teamed up with his nemesis with surprisingly good grace, given the tension between the three of us, going so far as to play along and cover for March after the tram incident, when he could have leaked Struthio’s name to the press and forced March back into the shadows.

  No, much like me, March was just a means to an end for Agent Morgan, nothing more. Alex apparently knew the Board well, and I gathered he understood the depth and complexity of March’s ties to Guita, more than I had given him credit for. Was this why he had first gotten angry upon realizing March had arranged for Sahar to be extracted? Maybe Alex had been hoping that the “diplomatic asset” would remain his to use as he pleased. Against Guita?

  When we reached the gardens, the helicopter had stopped, the rotor blades slowing down to a lazy spin while several men dressed in dark coveralls jumped out. For now, it seemed the Board had won.

  As usual.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The Start

  “Standing alone in the ashes of his compound, Ramirez picked up the torn lace panties from the blackened ground and pressed them to his nose, inhaling deeply. ‘It’s not over, Rica! You can run, but you can never hide from your destiny . . . Our destiny!’”

  —Kerry-Lee Storm, The Cost of Rica II: Ramirez Strikes Back

  I snuggled in the cashmere coat while two paramedics carried Sahar on a stretcher toward the Board’s black helicopter, escorted by heavily armed men. They left as they had come, without a word, and once the long blades had all but disappeared into the mountains, swallowed by dawn’s mist, I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding.

  The CIA cleaners from Geneva showed up twenty minutes later, in a white-and-gray aircraft, indeed. I’m not sure what became of hacker boy. I never heard of any sort of public trial after the Ruby affair. Alex seemed confident that the cleaning team would take him to “safety,” where they’d take the time to assess what kind of services they could squeeze out of him in exchange for some relative freedom and a chance at a longer life.

  I have to admit that I did entertain some level of morbid curiosity, because I had never seen an actual cleaning team in action before. When I saw guys in dark coveralls bring out bottles of chemicals and body bags, however, I decided I could live without this particular bit of knowledge. I allowed March to take me away in one of the cars Sahar’s goons had brought us in. I think it was better this way.

  March had unlocked the doors to a black SUV, and I was about to get into it when I saw him stiffen and glare past my shoulder. I turned to find Alex standing a few feet away from us. Seeing him like this, in his wrinkled shirt and tux pants, covered with cuts and bruises, exhausted but alive, and radiating that peaceful warmth I now knew to be only a small part of the puzzle of his true self, a pang of nostalgia tugged at my heart. Ours was a story that couldn’t have worked in the long run, shouldn’t have been written in the first place, but I had felt something for the gentle guy who had talked to me on Yaycupid and taken me to the Museum of Natural History. I wished Alex would find him again, someday, and let him take the wheel.

  Behind me, March was already walking around the car and closer to me; I signaled to him that things were okay with a jerk of my hand.

  When Alex spoke, there was a rueful tenderness in his eyes. “You’re leaving.”

  “Yes. I think it’s time.”

  He took a few steps forward under March’s tense gaze, until he was standing inches from me. His hand rose to touch my hair. I fought the reflex to flinch. This was good-bye; no need to make things any worse between us. I steeled myself when he lowered his head to whisper in my ear. If Alex wanted to apologize, I wouldn’t ruin those last moments.

  “I told you I’ll be the one to decide when we’re done,” he began. Ice crackled down my spine as he went on. “So you tell Dries this for me: We’re not done. We’re only getting started.”

  I stood stunned, willing my heart to slow down. Behind me, I heard rapid footsteps crushing the gravel as March moved toward us. The cleaning team had interrupted their work and several men were now staring at us, ready to intervene.

  Alex’s lips tugged to the side in a strange grimace that I couldn’t reconcile with a smile; an adolescent laugh burst out of him. “We’re good,” he said out loud for his colleagues to hear as he walked away, his hands up in mock surrender.

  Once the adrenaline rush had receded, I realized that there were very few parts of my body that didn’t hurt. I was covered in scrapes and bruises, my scalp still throbbed where Sahar’s henchman had pulled my hair, and I prayed that the slight headache wouldn’t turn into a migraine . . .

  Even so, I was grateful for the way March held me for a while afterward. He didn’t say anything, didn’t ask; he just got me into the car, welcomed me in his arms, and enveloped me in a warm, protective bubble. He was just as battered as Alex, smelled of smoke, gunpowder, and sweat, but I didn’t care; the way he rocked us tenderly and kept kissing the top of my hair was worth a thousand showers.

  After a few minutes, I felt the rise of his chest as he sighed. I knew he wouldn’t force me to talk if I didn’t want to, but his words back at the Sonnenhof echoed in my ears. Rule number one: from now on, you’ll be honest with me. I would. I snuggled even closer, as if I could merge my body into his and forget all this. “It was about Dries. I think Alex is after him . . . because of what happened to his parents.”

  “I thought so.”

  My head shot up, and I escaped his hold. “You knew?”

  “Not exactly. After I discovered he worked for Erwin I made some calls, because I was—”

  “Jealous.”

  “I was concerned. I wanted to understand who I was dealing with. I found out about the attack in Egypt, the plane crash. I knew for a fact that the Lions had been hired for that particular job, so I started to suspect something like this.”

  “Is it true? Did Dries murder Alex’s parents?”

  March shook his head sadly as he started the engine. “I don’t know. But even if he didn’t carry out the operation himself, he’s the vice commander—he’s responsible all the same.”

  I thought of my mother’s assassination. Dries’s confession, back in Tokyo, that one of his men had shot her against his orders had come as a bittersweet relief, making the disfigured family portrait I had been painted into a bit brighter. My biological father hadn’t killed my mother, after all.

  I knew her death had affected Dries more than he let on, but only now that I listened to March did I understand the extent of my father’s grief. He had been forced to take responsibility for that man’s actions. Because that’s what bosses do. He may have executed the guy, but that didn’t absolve him. I was struck by the realization that Dries hadn’t returned my mother’s letter to me because he no longer had any use for it—as he claimed—but because ten years later, he still couldn’t shake off his guilt. I wondered whether he felt the same about Alex’s parents. How many ghosts did men like Dries and March sleep with?

  I curled in my seat, watching pine trees fly past us down the mountain road. “Do you think Alex can find Dries?”

  “Possibly. What Mr. Morgan did—” March’s fingers drummed on the wheel. “What he did to you speaks of his determination.”

  A cold sweat made the silk dress stick to my back. My biological father was no choirboy, but I certainly didn’t want anyone killing him. “Will you warn Dries?” I asked.

  “No.” He sighed. “I refuse to stand in the middle of these two. There’s no good side.”

  March cast me an anxious look as he drove. I squeezed his forearm as a silent reassurance that I understood what he meant. I remembered my last conversation with Dries in Tokyo. Back then, he had suspected March of having slept with me, and expressed clear disapproval. Like I said earlier, even supervillains are actually regular parents under the three-piece suits and the big guns. I didn’t want to imagine what Dries might do if he heard that Alex had tried to seduce me to get to him. I thought of Poppy; Alex was all she had left. Bringing Dries�
��s attention to Alex would endanger her as well.

  “Thank you,” I murmured.

  “It’s only a temporary reprieve. If Mr. Morgan chooses to pursue his vendetta, the price will be high.”

  I slumped in my seat. What could I do? Warn Alex that Dries was dangerous and revenge was a bad idea? He’d laugh in my face, like he had minutes ago. As for Dries . . . He just wasn’t the sort of man with whom you could have a conversation that would start with “I have to tell you something, but please don’t get mad.”

  March glanced at me while he drove. “I’m sure we’ll find a solution, but before that, we need a little rest. How about I kidnap you again, Miss Chaptal?”

  I stretched with a smile. “Dammit, am I going in the trunk again?”

  That earned one of his rare grins. “I can think of a trunk-free special offer for returning clients.”

  “So where are we going?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that. Rule number one of a successful kidnapping.”

  We passed a road sign; we’d be at the Sonnenhof in a few minutes. “Can I at least call Joy and my dad to tell them I’ve decided to run off with my fortysomething dom again?”

  His lips pressed together; his cheeks were trembling. I could tell he was trying hard not to laugh. “Thirty-three, please.”

  I almost missed that detail, but as the SUV stopped in front of the hotel’s entrance, I realized that sometime between October 28 of last year and today, March had celebrated his birthday.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  H.

  “IMPORTANT: If you checked items #7 (he’s in his thirties and still on the market) and #13 (he suffers from either psychiatric and/or cognitive troubles), we must advise you to reconsider your choice. Unless you’ve also checked #2, #5, and #17, in which case your insane boyfriend is rich, good-looking, and capable of sustaining an erection without medical help. Keep him.”