by Storm Chase
“It’s beautiful,” Pandora breathed.
“Isn’t it?” Xavier laughed. “Now you can get fresh air without risk, Panda.”
It was sad that he saw everything in terms of security. “What about satellites?” she asked without thinking. She instantly wished she’d kept her mouth shut but Xavier wasn’t at all upset.
“Interesting you should say that. Really, the chances are very low. They take in far too much information, so much so that only a fraction can be processed. Even so, I usually wear a baseball cap, which means they can’t see my face as they’re overhead. It’s not really necessary of course because I look different. I’m just a bit paranoid.”
Xavier smoothed the hair from her face. “For you it doesn’t matter at all. They’re not even looking for you. That’s the one good thing I have managed to do for you. You have to be a bit careful when you’re out and about, but that’s all.”
Pandora knew Xavier very well now and recognised he was wondering if she was all right. He was constantly concerned that she would be afraid.
To cheer him up, she nudged him in the ribs. “It’s not the only thing you’ve done for me, Xavier. I’m alive and I love this place.” She saw his eyes light up and grinned at him. “I saw my clothes. Thanks for that too. When’s your stuff arriving?”
“It’s all here!” he said surprised. “Didn’t you see the Xbox and the gym, Panda?”
Pandora nodded. She didn’t want to let on that the lack of pictures, books, clothes and any personal touch appalled her. It really brought it home to her that Xavier had no real life. He worked, worked out and that was it.
Pandora pulled him down into one of the loungers and lay next to him. When he put an arm around her and tugged him close to her, she could feel his heart beating slowly and steadily. Looking out over the pool, she felt hers slow down. This truly was a peaceful spot.
“How often do you travel, Xav?” she asked idly.
“Two or three times a year. I prefer to work from home base but sometimes I have to be on-site. We should be here for six months though. I’ve got a nice project coming up. I think I’ve found a way past routine encryption.”
He sounded terribly pleased with his arrangements but Pandora wondered what he was plotting to steal this time.
He looked at her. “You’re frowning, Panda. We can move if you don’t like it here.”
She was instantly touched. He had gone to all this trouble to move from one country to another and find the perfect home, yet one tiny frown and he was ready to give it up.
“I do like it,” she said. “This place is beautiful.”
He smiled. “I’m glad you’re happy, Panda. I thought for a minute you didn’t like it.”
She didn’t want to lecture him about his work again. She’d save it till she could think of a way out for both of them. “Are all your homes penthouses?”
“It’s safer,” Xavier explained. “I lived in a villa a few years ago. My people surrounded it with security but someone still got through. I got shot.”
Pandora gasped. “Oh, Xavier!”
“It was just got a flesh wound but they shot up my computer too,” Xavier complained. “I lost weeks of work!”
“You rate your skin less than your work?”
“Definitely! And so now I stick to penthouses with limited entries and exits. And I’ve taken the two floors below us as well. The one directly below us is locked up tight and Paco, Ramon and the security team live in the one underneath that. It’s a good secure arrangement.”
Pandora realised that she had underestimated how different this life was. Toughening up and getting her mind around this situation was going to be harder than she thought. Still, today was a celebration. She was delighted to get outside again after weeks of being cooped up indoors. She’d think about everything else tomorrow.
“Can we go out and explore?” Pandora asked.
Xavier hesitated. “Tomorrow,” he said warily.
“Is there a civil war here too?” Pandora worried. She really had to pay more attention to the international news.
“Oh no! It’s safe.”
“But?”
“Look Panda, we can go out but it’s important that we stay under the radar. Otherwise we have to keep moving. You’ll have to take precautions. It takes a while to pick up on the routine but I’ll teach you.”
“I understand.” It really was very different.
“We settle in today and tomorrow we go to the beach and out for dinner. Promise. And while we’re here, I want you to have your own room too. A study where you can read or hang out without me disturbing you.”
“I don’t think you’d ever disturb me, Xavier,” Pandora laughed. “It’s much more like me disturbing you!”
He was smiling. “I don’t mind. I’m very happy you’re here, Panda. You know, I think I’ve been a bit lonely.”
Pandora’s heart went out to him. Squeezing him in a hug, she refrained from kissing him. She hadn’t brushed her teeth since they left the Congo. If she breathed in slowly, she could smell herself.
“I need a shower,” she murmured. On cue her stomach began growling. With all the plane swapping, she hadn’t eaten either. “What do we do for food?”
“There should be basics in the fridge if you want to cook. Or Ramon will get whatever you want.”
Images of Richard yelling at her for producing pasta that snapped, crackled and popped as you chewed instantly crossed her mind. “I’m not a very good cook,” Pandora confessed.
“We can have beans on toast,” Xavier said happily. “You always eat that when you’re tired.”
The way he casually dropped information he got from cyber stalking her didn’t freak her out anymore.
“I’ve always wanted to learn to cook properly,” Pandora admitted. “If you don’t mind, I can download some easy recipes from the Net and try to teach myself.”
“Make a list of what you need.”
“Can we go out and buy food?” she asked.
“All right. Make your list and we can go to a supermarket tomorrow too.”
“It takes time to organise a trip to the supermarket?” Pandora asked appalled. “I thought you had a team?”
“I do but they’re busy setting up. Give them a day to get organised, Panda, okay?”
She was dying to go out but she knew this was a time to shut up. Security was Xavier’s bugbear. “Okay.”
While she made beans on toast, Ramon appeared. She was relieved to hear Xavier tell him to take a day off. Ramon promptly disappeared but Paco stayed around. From the way he and Xavier were talking Pandora understood that while Ramon took care of Xavier’s house, Paco took care of business and security details. Eventually Paco left too.
Pandora found Xavier in the living room, tapping away in front of his computer.
“I thought you were taking time off?”
“I’m playing Dungeons & Dragons with Huan.”
“Who’s Huan?”
“He’s a hacker like me. Only not so good.”
“Yeah, right.” She enjoyed the way Xavier was so confident about his skills. It was also interesting that he did have friends, even if it was only online.
“Where’s he from?”
“Beijing originally but he’s in a silo somewhere. His people aren’t like mine. They don’t work hard at keeping him happy.”
“You mean he’s in prison?”
“Might as well be,” Xavier shrugged. “Huan didn’t see his family for ten years. I explained how he could negotiate. He sees his sister every month now.”
“Lucky Huan.”
“Not really.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“Oh. Right.” He looked at her. “You’re not going to lecture me again, are you?”
“Nope. As it doesn’t work, I’m thinking up a new strategy.”
He grinned. “Good idea!”
“How did you get to know Huan then?” Pandora asked.
“There’s
a big international gaming community but you soon get to know people who play at your own level,” Xavier explained. “There’s a couple of dozen of us who hang out in the same places. Avatars and handles change, but you can usually tell who’s who.”
“Isn’t that a security risk?” Pandora ventured.
“I encrypt everything,” Xavier smiled. “At the moment anyone tracing me thinks I’m in Washington.”
“In America?”
“Yes. If anyone’s looking, they’ll think I’m in the United States Congress library.”
Pandora laughed. The way Xavier talked about his work fascinated her. “What does Huan do?”
“He hacks for his government. Mostly attacking media, banks and universities in North America and Europe.” Xavier glanced up at her, his quick brain predicting her disapproval. “Yes, I know. It’s terrible.”
“Well, it is!”
“Hmm. We do it to them too, you know.”
“That doesn’t make it any better!” Pandora thought for a moment. “Do the Committee know you talk to Huan?”
“Of course not!” Xavier said surprised. “They’d have a fit!”
“And you talk to other hackers too? Apart from Huan, I mean?”
“Yes. But don’t tell anyone, Panda. I don’t want anyone getting nervous.”
“I won’t.” Pandora said hastily. She knew that nervous meant shooting nervous. She watched Xavier play his game. She couldn’t figure out what was going on, but it certainly involved a lot of screens opening and closing as well as flurries of typing.
Pandora decided she would do her own thing. “I’m going for a swim.”
“Terrific, Panda. See you at sundown?”
“Sure.”
When she staggered downstairs hours later, drenched in sunlight and deliciously tired from swimming endless laps, Xavier was still stuck in front of his computer.
“D&D going all right?”
“Actually, I’m playing chess with Sig.”
“Who’s Sig? Another hacker?”
“Sig’s a strategist.” Xavier explained. He grinned and motioned her to come and take a look at the screen. “Sig always beats me but this time I’ve hacked into Viswanathan Anand’s computer. Sig thinks this is me playing!”
“Who’s Viswan-? Vivan-? Who’s that?”
“He’s an international chess champion.”
Pandora knew the basic moves but never mastered the game. This one looked fiendishly complicated. She watched a piece slide over the board.
“Brilliant,” Xavier remarked. “I would never have thought of that.”
Three seconds later a row of text flashed up and the screen dissolved into an image of a manga girl giving Xav two fingers.
“Busted!” Xavier crowed with laughter. He hugged Pandora. “Sig’s never fooled for long.”
“Where is Sig?” Pandora asked curiously.
“Not a clue!” he shrugged. “We don’t talk much. It’s too dangerous. Sig can take two hints and figure out what you’re working on. We mostly play chess.”
Xavier was smiling at her as always but she could see a little telltale strain around his mouth. “Is something wrong, Xav?” she asked gently.
He shrugged. “Huan’s upset. His sister died in a car accident last week and they didn’t tell him. He missed the funeral.”
“Oh Xavier! I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” Xavier ran his hand through his hair. “It really sucks.”
“If only he could get out,” Pandora said. “Even if they are government, his people sound like real criminal types. Maybe he should get out and go work for MI5.” She let a pregnant silence build.
Xavier looked at her. “Don’t start that again, Pandora. I’m not leaving my people.”
She had to let it drop. “What happens next?” she asked. “Do you work all day like in the Congo?”
“I have a project on,” Xav admitted.
“Hacking?”
“No, I’m writing a programme.”
“What sort of programme?”
“It’s a sniffer,” Xavier said. “It can analyse huge streams of data, and capture everything that looks good. Like passwords or mentions of a particular project, or everything one person or one department is working on.”
“Oh!” Pandora wasn’t sure why that was good but Xavier seemed very keen.
“There are other programmes that do this but mine acts like a security programme so that if it’s detected, people think it’s okay.”
“Like a false flag?”
“Yes, exactly. The difficulty is getting it to recognise who has noticed it so it can mimic the right programme.”
“Is it very difficult?”
“Well, normally this is what I do so I know the rules I work by, but getting the programme to think like me isn’t easy. There’s a whole load of stuff I do without knowing why; writing this programme is making me think things through, analysing how I think.”
“You’re making a robot you? A machine that thinks like you?”
“Exactly.”
“I shouldn’t encourage you,” Pandora said slowly, “because they will use it to steal but couldn’t you use your sniffer to look for terrorists and drug dealers and stuff?”
“Oh yes. Rover will look for anything.”
“Rover?”
“Because it sniffs stuff out.”
Pandora sat and thought for a while. “Once you finish Rover, won’t it mean you’re not valuable anymore?”
“No. It will always need me to run it. I make it sound like Google but it really is much more complicated to operate. And it will need adjustments every time there are security updates. This isn’t a business where things stay the same: its constantly evolving. Rover will just make me more efficient. It will make me more valuable.”
“I think that our government would love something like that,” Pandora said. “Maybe if you offered them Rover, they’d pardon you. I mean, they don’t talk about it but I bet you could do a deal.”
Xavier shrugged. “I doubt it. I offered them information on how to fix that missile system and they didn’t like that. I’m not going near them again, Panda. I’ve learned my lesson.”
And no matter how much she cajoled him, he wouldn’t listen.
Chapter Twelve
The next morning Xavier announced that he was taking a week’s holiday. They explored the island, went snorkelling and explored the local cuisine. By the end of the week, Pandora was beginning to acquire the same bronzed look as Xavier. Her hair was turning so pale that it was almost white.
At first she found it a strange feeling to have security following them everywhere. But they were so discreet that Pandora quickly became used to them. She took to wearing a baseball cap and glasses, just like everyone else, not as a disguise but to save her face from becoming too brown.
Remaining aloof from people they met casually in pubs and clubs became easy when she pretended they were on their honeymoon and disinterested in speaking to anyone except for each other.
“I think you’ve got it, Panda,” Xavier said as they came home from a supermarket trip. “The way you brushed off that baker who wanted to know if we were living here or just on a long holiday was perfect.”
“I wish this chicken and leek pie was perfect,” Pandora said gloomily as she took it out of the fridge. “It was supposed to be all tall and fluffy. This looks like an elephant has trod on it.”
“It will taste fine,” Xavier shrugged.
Pandora sighed. Xavier ate anything she turned out with gusto - whether it was a flat quiche or a slightly burned coq-au-vin.
“I’m not fussy,” he admitted. “There have been too many times when I’ve had to eat food so rotten I’ve had to pinch my nose to eat it. So if it’s edible, I’m happy.”
Pandora laughed. “Oh well, you’re not exactly setting a high bar but it’s better than being yelled at! I guess I’ll just have to keep working at it.”
“Now we’ve settled, I’ve got to g
o back to work tomorrow,” Xavier announced.
Pandora nodded. She’d been expecting it. “Will there be loads of people going in and out?” she asked.
“Nope. It’s too distracting. Just a few here and there.”
At least that was a relief. No matter how hard she tried, she’d get a knot of fear when she came across Xavier’s people in the apartment. They were hard-looking men, and all of them were armed. Pandora worried constantly that they’d have a gun battle. Although she didn’t tell Xavier, she still had horrible dreams where she relived the two killings she’d seen.
Ramon and Paco were around all day. Ramon pretended she didn’t exist and Paco kept to a cool nod every now and again but she was convinced they were just waiting for Xavier to go off her. She knew they didn’t want her around.
Much to her surprise, she was enjoying Xavier’s programming work. She didn’t understand exactly what he was doing, but they had long discussions about the mechanics of building trust and when spotting inconsistencies would raise doubts and concerns.
For Pandora this sort of esoteric thinking was a delight, prompting her to read voraciously in the fields of psychology, sociology and anthropology. She also found that Xavier’s lack of knowledge of emotion meant he took an intellectual approach that made for intriguing discussion.
Her plan to get Xavier away from his people on the other hand was getting nowhere. As days dragged into weeks, she still had no clue how to go about it. Sometimes she was afraid she was sinking slowly into acceptance. Two months after they arrived in the Seychelles, she gave herself a pep-talk and then went to talk to Xavier.
As usual he was in the living room, working away at his computer. But the second he saw her, he stopped and pulled her onto his lap for a hug. “Your forehead is wrinkled,” he said. “Are you worried, Panda?”
“If only you weren’t working for criminals, I’d be happy,” she said. “It’s horrible to think of what they might ask you to do.”
“Give it up, Panda,” he said calmly. “I’m happy where I am.”
“But you are damaging people’s lives, Xavier.”
Pandora talked and talked until even Xavier’s usually sweet temper snapped, “I said no, Pandora! Give it up for God’s sake!”