The Genius Wars

by Catherine Jinks

  ‘Okay,’ said Richard, addressing his other students as Saul followed Cadel out of the room. ‘So those integers – they take up how many bytes?’

  Then the door creaked shut, muffling Richard’s voice.

  ‘Wait.’ Saul grabbed at Cadel’s shoulder, lengthening his stride in an effort to catch up. ‘I’m sorry. I tried to call, but you weren’t answering.’

  ‘I always put my phone on mute before a lecture.’ Struck by an awful possibility, Cadel stopped in his tracks. ‘Is it Fiona?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘Is she – is she all right?’

  It was a measure of Saul’s preoccupation that for a moment he stood blank-eyed, as if he didn’t recognise his own wife’s name. Then he blinked, tightening his grip on Cadel.

  ‘What? Oh, yeah. She’s fine. At the moment, she’s …’ Saul checked his watch. ‘She’s on her way home from work.’

  ‘Why?’ Cadel demanded, searching the pallid, fine-drawn face that hung over him. He knew that his foster mother wouldn’t have cancelled her appointments for any minor reason. She was a social worker, with an overwhelming case-load and very little support. Only a real emergency would have prompted her to drop everything.

  Saul didn’t answer immediately. Instead he surveyed the wide, empty hallway in which they stood. At last he said, ‘It’s Prosper English. He’s been seen.’

  Cadel swallowed.

  ‘We can’t talk about it here,’ Saul went on. ‘We should get in the car first.’

  He guided Cadel out of the building, which opened onto a terraced plaza decorated with a giant ball of matted, rusty wire. Cadel had always wondered if this sculpture was somehow connected with the nearby Electrical Engineering department. He couldn’t see the point of it, otherwise.

  Saul headed straight across the plaza.

  ‘I’m parked on the road,’ he explained, scanning his immediate vicinity for signs of trouble. All at once Cadel realised how exposed they were, out on the brick-paved pedestrian concourse. They must have been visible from at least half a dozen multi-storeyed structures, each sporting hundreds of windows.

  But he can’t be here now, Cadel decided. Prosper can’t be here now, or the place would be crawling with police.

  He wondered if Saul had a gun. It was hard to tell; no bulge was discernible beneath the detective’s neatly buttoned jacket.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Cadel mumbled, as they passed the computer labs.

  ‘We’re going home,’ Saul replied. ‘You have to pack your things.’

  ‘I have to what?’

  ‘Fiona will help you.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Just wait. Not yet. Wait till we’re in my car.’

  So Cadel waited. He numbly allowed himself to be removed from the campus, shuffling through a side gate and into the tree-lined street beyond. Saul’s grey sedan was sitting just across the road, in front of a picket fence. The car was empty. Like an eager pet, it chirped when Saul waved his keys to unlock it. Cadel, however, wasn’t allowed to open the front passenger door.

  ‘Back seat,’ Saul instructed.

  ‘Oh, but –’

  ‘In the back, please.’

  Cadel complied, mutely. He remained silent as Saul slipped behind the wheel, started the engine and pulled away from the kerb. Only when they were heading down Barker Street did Cadel finally remark, ‘You’re not sending me to a safe house, are you?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Saul’s voice was tight. ‘I have to. Prosper’s in Sydney.’

  ‘In Sydney?’

  This news was like a punch. It was hard to absorb.

  ‘He turned up yesterday, in a multi-storeyed car park,’ Saul revealed. ‘And again last night, at a railway station. But I didn’t hear about it till this morning, when he was spotted in the foyer of a downtown office block.’ Glancing up into the rear-view mirror, Saul added, ‘It’s all close-circuit TV footage. That’s how he was identified – through a security company. They reported today’s sighting, and we sent out an alert. There might be other footage that we don’t know about, yet.’

  Cadel cleared his throat.

  ‘Have – have you seen the pictures?’ he squawked. And Saul heaved a sigh.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Are you sure it’s Prosper?’ Cadel was stunned. The whole thing didn’t make sense. ‘Close-circuit footage can be really rough …’

  ‘I know. You’re right,’ Saul agreed. ‘But we can’t afford to take chances. And if it isn’t Prosper English, it’s his identical twin. With Prosper’s taste in clothes.’

  ‘You mean he wasn’t disguised?’ Cadel didn’t wait for an answer. ‘This is crazy! Why would Prosper come back now? I haven’t done anything! Why isn’t he laying low?’

  Saul shrugged. ‘Maybe he didn’t come back from anywhere. Maybe he never left the country.’ Before Cadel could protest, Saul ploughed on. ‘He could have been in Sydney for the last nine months. We’ve got guys going through old CCTV footage, looking for him. Maybe he’s surfaced before, and no one recognised his face.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be that stupid.’

  ‘Cadel –’

  ‘He’s been leaving me alone on purpose! I know it! Because he doesn’t want me trying to track him down!’ Cadel leaned forward, gripping the headrest in front of him. ‘This is a stupid thing to do. It’s stupid. And Prosper’s smart.’

  ‘Not that smart,’ the detective retorted. ‘Smart people don’t end up as fugitives. They don’t break the law.’ He changed lanes smoothly, weaving his way through the traffic with quiet confidence. ‘Smart people don’t slap their wanted faces all over CCTV networks,’ he finished.

  ‘Exactly! Which is why he must have a reason for doing it!’

  ‘Other than the fact that he’s on his own, with no one else to buy his groceries for him?’ An undercurrent of savage scorn marred the detective’s otherwise measured delivery; he hated Prosper English with a vengeance, and couldn’t conceal it no matter how hard he tried. ‘There could be a million reasons, Cadel. He could be getting careless. He could be trying to freak you out. He could be going senile. What matters right now is that we find him before he finds you.’

  ‘If he was looking for me, he’d have found me already. It’s not like I’ve been keeping my head down.’

  ‘No. You haven’t.’ Saul sounded regretful. ‘But that’s gonna change. It has to change. I’m sorry, Cadel,’ he murmured, once more lifting his solemn gaze to the rear-view mirror. ‘You’ll have to go back into hiding, until we work out what the hell is going on.’

  THREE

  It was the same old room in the usual safe house. Cadel couldn’t believe that he was back.

  Nothing had changed. The room was still a bleak, white box full of plain white furnishings: white desk, white chair, white cupboard and bedspread. There was even a white plastic litter bin, tucked away in one corner. The only touch of colour was the beige of the carpet.

  Of course, this carpet was also strewn with Cadel’s belongings – but they weren’t very colourful, either. Even the book jackets were bleached and grubby. Whatever wasn’t black or grey seemed to be either brown or olive; now that he really looked at his wardrobe, spread out across the floor in tangled heaps, Cadel could see why Fiona was constantly complaining about the way he dressed.

  ‘Anyone would think you were in some kind of guerrilla army,’ she’d grumbled on one occasion. ‘These aren’t clothes, they’re camouflage.’ And she was right, to some extent – Cadel knew he wasn’t the only teenager in the world who chose outfits that were designed to repel interest. Nevertheless, as he contemplated the lack of variety in his pants and t-shirts, he wished that he’d had the sense to bring his doona with him.

  A bright red doona might have done something to alleviate the sheer dullness of his surroundings.

  I should have given it more thought, he glumly reflected. But then again, there hadn’t been much time. Saul had been anxious to get him into a secure environment, and the little weatherboard c
ottage that they shared wasn’t particularly secure. ‘You could find our place in the phone book,’ had been Saul’s reasoning, when his wife had objected to the whole notion of a safe house. ‘There isn’t enough protection; not against someone like Prosper English. He wouldn’t need to trip any motion sensors. He could throw a molotov cocktail through the kitchen window without setting foot in the yard. It’s just not an option, Fi – I’m sorry. Cadel can’t stay here.’

  So Cadel had been moved. After packing a rather haphazard selection of clothes, books and computer equipment, he’d been whisked off to Roseville, where he’d been installed in a two-storeyed house behind a screen of rhododendrons. This house stood in a large, flat, featureless garden; there was a sweeping view of every approach from its top floor, and full CCTV coverage of every single entry point. The bedrooms were numerous enough to sleep four bodyguards, working twelve-hour shifts. The security system included automatic gates and isometric locks.

  But the décor inside was abysmal: all blank walls and featureless space. Cadel had never liked it in the past, and now – having lived in a proper home for six months – he loathed every single white door, white tile and white cornice that currently imprisoned him. After his brief taste of freedom, the blandness of the safe house was even harder to take.

  And his name was still scrawled under the window ledge!

  It was eighteen months since he’d written it there, during his first Roseville sojourn. At the time, he’d been glad enough to find a safe haven, free of Prosper English. After living most of his life in something that resembled a stage set peopled with frauds, he’d found the safe house oddly restful; at least it wasn’t pretending to be cosy or welcoming. At least it was honest. Then he’d moved into a foster home, which (because of the people he’d shared it with) had been far, far worse than the gilded cage in which he’d spent his childhood. From the foster home he’d escaped to Clearview House, where various members of Genius Squad were residing in a curious establishment, half bunker and half boarding school. This address had been a facade too, with a lie at its very core. Nevertheless, he’d preferred it to the safe house, which had received him yet again after Prosper’s escape from prison.

  The second visit to Roseville had lasted three months. Three whole months! It had seemed like three years. Yet he hadn’t really understood how bad it was, back then. Not in his heart of hearts.

  Now that he had a real home, he understood only too well.

  Home, he thought. I want to go home.

  Shutting his eyes, he tried to pretend that he was sitting in his own bedroom. He conjured up a mental image of its silver walls, its blue ceiling, and its chequerboard floor; he remembered carefully filling in those black-and-white squares, one by one, after Fiona had traced their outlines. Together she and Cadel had painted the whole room, working side by side for three consecutive weekends – and it was Cadel who had been allowed to choose the colour scheme. ‘You’re the one who has to sleep in here,’ Fiona had said, cheerfully acceding to his request for a room that felt like ‘the inside of a computer’. She had also bought him a giant plastic chess piece for Christmas (to match the floor), and had helped him to cover the top of his desk with binary-code contact paper, which she had sealed with several coats of clear polyurethane.

  Cadel had been impressed by her home-decorating skills. Thanks to Fiona, their humble two-bedroomed cottage had been transformed into a warm and colourful nest, full of refinished furniture and recycled objects. Saul hadn’t contributed much; he was interested in the house only because it contained his family. If Fiona wanted a cowrie-shell curtain, and Cadel wanted a shiny silver bedroom, that was fine by Saul – who didn’t feel the need to project his own personality onto the fixtures and fittings. To Saul, the zebra-striped hooked rug and driftwood chandelier were just an extension of Fiona; therefore they met with his complete approval.

  He was a quiet sort of person to live with, very neat and restrained. Yet he managed to make his presence felt, despite the fact that he didn’t talk much. He would mow lawns, string up fairy lights and visit garden centres without a word of protest. He would wash dishes and vacuum rugs in the most thorough and painstaking fashion, deriving a peculiar sort of pleasure from every routine chore. Upon walking into the kitchen after a hard day’s work, he would immediately put out the garbage or unstack the dishwasher, his tensed shoulders visibly relaxing as he did so.

  Though the detective rarely discussed his job, Cadel knew that it couldn’t be easy. This much was clear from the look on Saul’s face sometimes, late in the evening, when he was carefully unloading his pistol and returning it to his gun safe. There could be no doubt that he savoured even the mundane side of married life, simply because it wasn’t dangerous or distressing.

  And now that his tranquil domestic existence was under threat, the strain of it was already carving new lines around his mouth. Fiona’s reaction might have been louder and more explosive than Saul’s, on being told that she couldn’t join Cadel in the safe house. But it was Saul who, in one short day, had aged a good ten years.

  Cadel couldn’t help worrying about him.

  ‘You should be staying here too,’ was Cadel’s opinion, offered up to Saul the previous night. ‘Prosper hates you. You’re in just as much danger as I am. More, probably.’

  ‘No.’ With a shake of his head, Saul had dismissed Cadel’s suggestion. ‘Prosper wouldn’t break cover just to blow a hole in me. He’s a practical sort of guy – you know that. I’d have to be standing in front of something he wanted.’

  ‘Like me?’

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ Saul had insisted, without specifying how. Then he’d gone off to reassure Sonja and Judith.

  Prosper English loathed Sonja. He blamed her for turning Cadel against him. So it was likely that Sonja was also in danger – more so, perhaps, than Cadel. Yet he could understand why the police weren’t too concerned about her. Judith’s seaside mansion was fully automated, with a wiring system that controlled lights, blinds, sprinklers, TV, air-conditioning, security cameras and motion sensor alarms. If an intruder was detected in the house while it was empty, the building’s central computer was capable of alerting Judith via an email or text message. Furthermore, this computer occupied an air-conditioned closet that doubled as a kind of panic room; Judith could lock herself in there, behind an impregnable door, if she ever felt threatened. ‘I only wish our safe houses were this safe,’ Saul had remarked, upon first being introduced to what Judith liked to call her ‘intelligent infrastructure’.

  The police had therefore decided not to move either Sonja or Judith. Only Saul and Fiona had been forced to camp at a friend’s place for the night. ‘Just until we find Prosper English,’ Saul had promised, with grim determination. ‘Now that we know he’s in town, he won’t be at large for long.’

  Cadel wasn’t convinced of this. But he hadn’t said anything, because Saul already had enough to worry about.

  Tap-tap-tap. The sound of a hesitant knock caused Cadel’s eyes to snap open.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s me.’

  Recognising Saul’s voice, Cadel checked his watch. Ten past two seemed pretty early for an afternoon visit. Saul had promised to return around five.

  ‘Come in,’ said Cadel, wondering what could have brought the detective back to Roseville so soon.

  Nothing good, probably.

  ‘I see you’ve unpacked,’ Saul remarked, as he crossed the threshold. He was surveying the sludge-coloured tangle of books and clothes and insulated wiring at his feet.

  ‘Oh. Ah – yeah,’ Cadel replied. ‘I’m putting things away.’

  Saul lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. Instead he quietly closed the door behind him. ‘Did you forget anything?’ he asked. ‘Because I can always go back home and get it.’

  ‘I’m okay.’ Cadel flapped an impatient hand. ‘Just tell me what’s wrong.’

  A lopsided smile tugged at the corner of Saul’s mouth. ‘Y
ou’re jumping to conclusions,’ he said, pulling a computer disc from his breast pocket. ‘I just want you to have a look at this.’

  ‘The footage, you mean?’ Cadel’s heart sank. ‘Is that the CCTV download?’

  ‘It is, yes.’

  ‘All three sightings?’

  ‘All seven. We found some more.’ Seeing Cadel wince, Saul apologised. ‘I’m sorry. This must be hard. But we need confirmation. You know Prosper better than anyone. You’ve seen him disguised as other people. We want to be sure we haven’t made a mistake.’

  Cadel gave a nod.

  ‘This isn’t what we agreed to. I realise that.’ Saul was referring to the decision they’d both made, months previously, about Cadel’s role in the ongoing hunt for Prosper English. ‘And I’m not asking you to participate – far from it. You’ve got to stay offline, and keep your head down. All I need is a positive ID. It’s not something that Prosper will ever find out about. I’ll make a verbal report.’

  But would that verbal report find its way into an email? Or a phone call? Cadel didn’t entirely trust the police – not all of them. He felt that they often underestimated the sheer depth of Prosper’s cunning.

  For this reason, Cadel failed to respond immediately. He sat for a moment, turning things over in his mind. Then he looked up at Saul, and their gazes locked.

  ‘This might be some sort of test,’ Cadel said slowly. He was talking about Prosper’s reappearance. ‘Have you thought of that? He might have done this specifically to see how I’d react. To see if I’d go after him.’

  Saul frowned.

  ‘I’ve got to be careful. Really careful,’ Cadel went on. ‘He might be trying to flush me out, or something.’

  ‘But why?’ Saul couldn’t conceal his anxiety, though he was trying very hard to sound calm. ‘You haven’t so much as googled his name for the last nine months. You’ve been as quiet as a mouse. Haven’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Cadel had been taking no chances. He’d been roundly ignoring Prosper, in the hope that Prosper would extend him the same courtesy.