The Saint Jude Rules (Cal Winter Book 3)

by Dominic Adler

  CONTACT – WAIT OUT

  The stairs led into a reception area, decorated with tropical plants and modern art. A woman in a business suit sat behind a desk, tapping at a keyboard. The windows facing the street were high and narrow, frosted for privacy. The front doors were closed.

  The receptionist glanced in our direction and coolly pulled an MP5 from under her desk. Pale-faced, her eyes bored into mine. She knew we’d got the drop, but went for it anyway. Our weapons hissed. Blood-spots appeared on her crisp white blouse and she toppled out of sight. Oz darted forward, weapon shouldered, and shot her again. It looks brutal, but the last thing you want is a wounded enemy shooter hitting a panic button. I’ve seen Fedayeen, riddled with bullets, reach for a grenade.

  We cleared the ground floor, room-by-room. We walked slowly, rubber-soled boots on thick carpet. Out of public sight, the interior windows were shuttered and sand-bagged, Kevlar shields ready to repel attackers. We found a bank of CCTV monitors in a side-office. I powered them down.

  At the top of the next flight of stairs was an annexe. Glossy magazines lay on a table, next to a water cooler. The windows were shuttered, music drifting from a door. Boxes were stacked three-high by the door. They contained brandy, vodka and whisky. The enemy were obviously hoarding mission-critical essentials.

  “Hey, Kelly, is that you?” said an American-accented voice.

  Dropping to my belly, I peered around the door. Two dark-suited killers sat watching TV, tricked-out M4s in reach. The man nearest went to get up, but we had surprise and momentum. In a gunfight, that’s more important than the weapon you’re carrying.

  I shot the first man in the throat. His oppo rolled behind a plump white sofa. Oz emptied his Beretta into it, foam stuffing clouding the air. There was a groan, blood slicking the floor. The guy on the sofa tried to get to his feet, eyes bulging as his neck pumped blood. I emptied more rounds into his chest, another hitting his shoulder. He jerked backwards onto his arse, hand claw-like on his lap. I shot him again, the bullet hitting his temple. Blood spider-webbed the wall behind his head. Two more armed figures appeared at the other end of the office. They wore dark body armour, faces covered by bug-eyed masks: NVGs and respirators.

  Something rolled across the floor, nudging my ankle.

  The dying guy had dropped a canister. I kicked it away, dirty white smoke hissing and crackling. I felt the chemical bite of CS gas on my face, suppressed bullets slicing the air around me. It was freaky, a silent gunfight. Oz returned fire, coughing as tear gas swirled around the room. My eyeballs burned like they’d been dunked in acid. I retreated into the doorway, to the stairs and fresher air. Red sighting dots bobbed along the walls.

  The lights flickered out.

  I realised the room had been prepped for this – a blackout that would work to defensive advantage. Oz spun like he was performing a frenetic ballet, hitting the ground with his shoulder. Bullets peppered the wall where he’d been standing. Coughing and spluttering, he returned fire. I heard a faint electronic whine, someone switching on night vision goggles. A blind man, I felt my way around the walls. My knee hit cardboard. Tearing open a box I felt a distinct, gourd-shape. I was an expert at bottle recognition: Courvoisier brandy.

  The gunfire stopped. I heard urgent whispering.

  I cracked open the brandy and stuffed a scrap of paper in the neck. Oz was sheltering near the doorway, eyes watering. “They’re wearing NVGs. When this goes up they’ll be blinded,” I whispered. “That’s when we go.”

  “Roger that,” Oz coughed. Another bullet bounced off the floor.

  Lighting the paper with my zippo, I hurled the home-made Molotov. Incoming shots spattered the walls. The exploding spirit burst in a flash of orange-blue flame, a crazy line of burning gobbets dotting the floor. Through NVGs it would flare like a supernova. “Go!”

  We stormed the room, weapons spitting fire. My nose was filled with the stink of gunpowder and flaming booze. A bullet chopped the air next to my face, a figure lit for a second by muzzle flash.

  Movement left…

  I body-slammed a masked figure, too close to bring my SMG to bear. We thudded to the ground. I clamped a hand over his mouth and nose, wrenching off night vision goggles. Then sharp pain - a fist smashing into my cheek, fingers snaking towards my throat. A non-suppressed weapon fired, deafening, hot brass bouncing off my shoulder. My fingertip found the oily crescent of an eye-socket. I stabbed into it, heard a scream as something wet popped. Heaving myself onto my opponent’s body, like a man mounting a bucking bronco, I hammered his face with my elbow. His nose cracked. He grunted as I smelt his breath, tobacco-sour.

  My blood ran hot. I was a machine.

  Every move had to stun, damage and ultimately kill. Three hammer-blows to his face with my elbow and he was still. I rolled away, sprung to my feet and stomped with my boot. His skull collapsed with a gelatinous crunch.

  Lights flickered on. The room was littered with dead men. Oz stood, balled fists painted with gore. The tip of a punch-dagger peeped from between his fingers. His face was a savage blood-mask, eyes streaming. “You good?”

  “I’m alive,” I gasped.

  The dead wore dark suits under body armour, suppressed carbines attached to their bodies by three-point slings. Drexler’s men. They were in their late thirties or early forties. I guessed they’d all fought their Wars on Terror as senior non-commissioned officers — seasoned squad leaders. Tables turned, they’d have killed us easily.

  “I doubt we’ll get the drop on these fuckers again,” Oz panted.

  We headed up the next flight of stairs. I heard an urgent whisper, a lock clicking shut. We entered a corridor, neatly bundled computer cables running along the floor. The door nearest us had a NO ENTRY sign on it. Oz signalled he’d cover while I entered. Eyes focussed on tritium-dotted rear-sights, I nudged the door open. The room inside was dark, lit only by softly-glowing computer monitors. Two men stood in the corner. The younger one tapped at a keyboard. The older rubbed his face, humming nervously.

  I aimed my Beretta at them. “Leave the computer alone. Identify yourselves.”

  Oz joined me. His face was a pinched death’s head, dark eyes glittering. The guy next to the computer raised his arms.

  The older guy shambled forward, slack-jawed. Fortysomething and tubby, he wore khaki shorts and a plaid shirt. His beard was grey-streaked, eyes like saucers behind horn-rimmed glasses. “I’m Bryan Hoffman,” he blurted. “Please don’t kill me.”

  “Who’s the other guy?” I growled, nodding at the second man.

  The younger man stepped from behind him: early-thirties, dour, with dark, curly hair. “Kris Pilbeam,” he snapped indignantly. “Who the hell are you?”

  Chapter sixteen

  “Where’s Erik Drexler?”

  Pilbeam’s eyes darted from screen to screen. “Fuck you.”

  “We d-don’t know,” Hoffman interrupted, voice high-pitched.

  I examined Pilbeam’s computer, hooked up to triple monitors. I found the USB port and jacked my tablet into it. “Password. Now.”

  The hacker pulled a face.

  I readied my SMG. “Password.”

  Pilbeam pulled a pencil from his pocket and scribbled a long alphanumeric code on a scrap of paper. “There,” he said sulkily.

  “If this isn’t correct…” I said.

  “It’s correct.”

  I tapped the code into the tablet. Mirroring software began uploading the drive’s contents to a drop box. Hugh and Marcus would get the data instantaneously. A few seconds later, both pinged me their receipt messages.

  “Explain yourselves,” I said. “We haven’t got long.”

  Pilbeam looked at Hoffman. Hoffman looked at Pilbeam. “This project is, uh, classified,” said Hoffman.

  An evil smile crossed Oz’s face. “Wrong answer.”

  “OK, I’ll bite. Ain’t gonna make any difference now,” said Pilbeam. “Do either of you meatheads know what a Kondratiev wave is? Or Poinc
aré recurrence theorem?” He jabbed a finger at a monitor, data streams rippling like digital rain.

  I rubbed my chin, “I’m not sure about Poincaré, but Kondratiev waves concern shifts in long-term financial cycles, right?” How those long Icelandic evenings had flown by.

  Pilbeam frowned. “That’s actually kinda correct.” He looked at his keyboard, then at the machine pistols aimed at him. “In which case, figure it out yourself.”

  “Kris, please,” said Hoffman, sweat trickling down his pudgy cheeks. “OK, I’ll keep this simple. I’m a mathematician. My speciality is chaos theory, specifically conflict dynamics and probability engineering.”

  Pilbeam’s lip curled into a sneer. “This is the part where you monkeys need to really concentrate.”

  Hoffman exhaled, eyes glued to our guns. “The global economy is approaching the end of a spiky-ol’ Kondratiev wave. Imagine economics as geology - the wave is analogous to movement through tectonic plates. We use Kondratiev as a rough gauge…”

  “Get on with it,” said Oz, “in English.”

  Hoffman rolled his eyes. “We use an algorithmic model that predicts economic trends, then we add conflict variables and extrapolate outcomes. With the right triggers, it allows us to, you know, nudge stuff…”

  “…our nudges work eighty-nine per cent of the time,” Pilbeam added proudly. “Man, we’re the fuckin’ Nudge Brothers. Or, we can work it backwards and predict shit.”

  “Well, actually, it’s nearer ninety-four but we’ll never agree,” Hoffman replied. “And Kris isn’t a mathematician.”

  Pilbeam snorted. “It might be your algorithm, but it’s still my virus, Hoffman.”

  “I prefer to use the term executable,” the mathematician sniffed, “Virus is so…”

  “Accurate?” said Pilbeam.

  I tried to translate their babble into English. “It’s like you’ve worked out how to predict Black Swan events?”

  Pilbeam nodded. “Give the gorilla a banana, Professor Hoffman. We’ve even given it a name. The Hoffman Curve.”

  Hoffman blushed. “I suggested The Pilbeam Parabola…”

  Oz scratched his head. “Fucking intellectuals.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said.

  “This is math – nothing’s impossible,” Hoffman replied. “We reverse the theorem - a Black Swan event isn’t a surprise to the person who initiated it. Mohamed Atta boarding American Airlines Flight 11 on the 11th September 2001? It wasn’t a Black Swan for him. If you were inside the World Trade Centre, on the other hand, it most certainly was.”

  “Yep,” said Pilbeam, pacing the room, “but Atta couldn’t predict the invasion of Iraq. If we’d been up and running in 2001 we could of. We might even have created scenarios to stop it happening. So, because we can figure out what’ll happen after a Black Swan, it allows us to gauge the optimum moment to create one. Event ‘a’ triggers reaction ‘b’ leading to event ‘y.’ We’ve got a crystal ball. A fucking oracle.”

  “Quite,” Hoffman nodded, “although I wouldn’t be quite so hyperbolic.”

  “It is what it is,” Pilbeam shrugged. “You designed the airframe, Hoff, I strapped the fucking engines on it. Whoosh!”

  I knew what a Black Swan was. I’d even read the book. It’s an unpredictable occurrence that changes the status quo, unforeseen but then erroneously ‘explained’ via hindsight. It was the theory of a brilliant economist called Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an infuriating genius who was right even when he should have been wrong. According to Taleb, humans can’t help but come to the wrong conclusion about why stuff happens.

  “Drexler is gonna do some economic carpet-bombing. You two are like the forward observer team,” I said, a lightbulb pinging above my head. “You’re identifying targets for maximum impact.”

  “Apart from swapping out maximum for optimal, I guess that’s fair,” said Hoffman uneasily. “The algorithm identifies systemic risk in key financial institutions. We create contagion vectors to exacerbate the risk, creating extreme economic disruption events.”

  Pilbeam’s eyes shone, “imagine Ebola with dollar signs. You don’t need death rays or wonder weapons, just half-decent math and a few good operators to do some nudging.”

  I hefted my SMG. “So, you’re terrorists?”

  For the first time, Pilbeam looked baffled. “Dude, really? Terrorist is possibly the most meaningless noun of the 21st Century.”

  Oz one-finger tapped at a keyboard. “Cal, I’ve Googled this bloke. Bryan Hoffman: Kolmogorov Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, applied Mathematics, Probability and Statistics. Former head of financial risk at Credit Suisse. Senior research consultant, US Department of Defence.”

  I walked closer to the two technicians. Hoffman flinched. “The Defence stuff was presumably on the Special Access Program called Obsidian Futures,” I said.

  Pilbeam smiled. “The US Government didn’t believe it could work. Erik Drexler did.”

  “Who’s paying Drexler?” I said. “Are you part of The Firm?”

  “The what?” Pilbeam’s face was a mixture of incredulity and disgust. “How are we meant to know? It’s a compartmentalised operation. All I know is I trust Erik’s vision. Fuck it, man, we’re the good guys. Don’t you asshats get it?”

  “What’s the target?” I asked.

  Hoffman hopped from foot-to-foot. “Seriously, we can’t discuss operational specifics…”

  Oz slapped the arming lever on his Beretta. “Right, now’s the part where I shoot you.”

  “Do it,” I said, shouldering my SMG.

  “No!” Hoffman took a deep breath, almost cross-eyed. His broad forehead shone with sweat. “W-we have a matrix of targets. Kris’s… virus is the first weapon.”

  “Viruses. There ain’t one virus to-rule-them-all. You need a swarm.” Pilbeam nodded, “De Soto Augur is a hedge fund, right? We’ve squirted a virus into every institution we’ve transacted with. Most are unique polymorphic worms, totally weaponised…”

  “The triggers are designed to activate during critical transactions,” Hoffman stuttered. “Many of these transactions are illegal. Fraud. Money-laundering. Epic tax evasion structures. The institutions can’t report them, you see? It buys time, to allow the virus to spread.”

  “The world’s gonna go pretty crazy,” Pilbeam grinned, “especially London. Man, London’s gonna get screwed like a San Diego hooker on Navy Day.”

  “Approximately 48 hours, from the lights going out to complete anarchy,” said Hoffman. “We’ve modelled that too. It’s going to be brutal, I’m afraid.”

  “Be more specific,” I said.

  “We’re pretty sure the contagion will crash the e-euro,” said Hoffman, “which wasn’t exactly difficult. BREXIT tremors are part of the Kondratiev Wave. And the President of the United States, who the hell saw that coming?”

  “We did!” said Pilbeam. “And the euro? It’s gonna make Greece look like a convenience store closure. It’s OK, we’re gonna apply emergency CPR immediately afterwards.”

  “Exactly,” added Hoffman. “Our model indicates those conditions are ideal for kick-starting a benign Kondratiev. Anyhow, this leads to a return to relative global stability. In the long-term, it’s probably the least-worst outcome for us all.”

  “Creative destruction. That’s the end of the Hoffman Curve.” Pilbeam tapped a screen. Financial transactions pinged back and forth, prices and dividends soaring and swooping. “It’s also completely contrary to conventional economic opinion, which is why it’s probably correct. Those wrinkled fucks at Davos and Bilderberg could never engineer this. It’s an end to austerity, the beginnings of a fairer society...”

  “Bullshit,” said Oz. “You can’t do a bloody equation to work this stuff out.”

  The Americans both shrugged a yes we can shrug.

  “And what if this doesn’t happen?” I asked.

  “There’s a slim chance, mebbe ten per cent, the world continues on its fucked-up trajectory,” said
Pilbeam. “The way I see it, that’s actually worse than our version.”

  “I calculate less than a five per cent probability,” said Hoffman testily.

  “Where’s Drexler?” I said. “I want to meet Robin Hood myself.”

  Hoffman looked at the floor. “We’d be dead if I told you that.”

  “Damn straight,” said Pilbeam, “it’s too late anyhow. We’ll see critical infrastructure failure very soon. Like, in the next 24 hours. It’s why we’re locked down with a guard force.”

  “How does this critical failure work?” I asked.

  Pilbeam smirked. “The viruses are kinda smart. They make decisions based on content recognition and sentiment analysis. Hey, we also gave the code to the hacking collectives. They’ll play with it and attack their favourite targets. So mebbe someone will shut down your national grid, or screw with air traffic. Or hospitals. They decide, not me.”

  “They’ll probably fuck the PlayStation network too,” said Oz.

  Pilbeam laughed at that, eyes glittering. “The first wave is running free, right now, and there ain’t a damn thing any of us can do about it.”

  Hoffman gulped. “Except Erik. He’s got the kill switch. The source code to roll back the virus. You see? We thought of everything, even a failsafe…”

  Pilbeam pushed the tubby professor. “Hoffman, shut your damn mouth!”

  Oz fired a round into the floor, an inch from Pilbeam’s foot. It bounced off raw concrete and shattered a computer monitor. “Where’s Drexler?”

  “Okay,” shrieked Hoffman, “Drexler runs with a guy called Monty. He’s a Brit, organises stuff over here. I swear, Monty will know.”

  “Yeah,” said Pilbeam, “he’s Drexler’s bitch. But honestly, man, we don’t know where Erik is.”

  Monty. Of course he’d thrown his hand in with the new guard. “I think we’re done,” I said, looking at Oz.

  Hoffman put his hand up, like a schoolkid asking permission to go for a piss. “What about us?”

  “You come with us,” I replied. “Play ball and you might even get out of this alive.”