Rath's Gambit (The Janus Group Book 2) (17 page)

“Fine,” Tino agreed. “You two better wait in your office.”

Debrae was still shaking, so Crollis ushered her into her office and pulled out a chair for her.

“Thanks,” she said. “I just can’t believe this is happening.”

He snapped his fingers. “Wait a second, I know what this is about,” he told her. “First the dead customer yesterday, now the drilling – someone’s trying to get that safe-deposit box.”

“You may be right,” she agreed.

“Well, we can stop them,” he said. “What was the box number, eight-two-one-zero?”

“I don’t remember, but that sounds right,” Debrae said.

Crollis handed her the datascroll on her desk: “Have the system retrieve it. That way even if the thieves get inside the vault, they won’t get the box.”

She looked at the datascroll reluctantly. “Are you sure? Don’t we need authorization to do something like that?”

Crollis made a face. “By the time Corporate responds, it will be too late.”

Debrae took the datascroll and tapped on the screen, accessing the right menu. “What was the number again?”

“Eight-two-one-zero,” Crollis repeated. “I think.”

“I’m surprised you can remember anything, especially with all this commotion,” she said. “Okay, it’s coming up in booth number one.”

Crollis got up and jogged over to the first booth, and a second later, the tray opened to reveal a gleaming metal safe-deposit box. He picked up the box, but instead of rejoining Debrae, she watched as he disappeared into his own office. Curious, she stood up, but a second later he emerged, still carrying the deposit box, but also wearing his backpack.

“Where are you …?” she started to ask.

“Just going to check on the back door,” Crollis cut in. “I want to make sure that’s locked, too. Stay here.”

He disappeared through a door into the back office.

“Where’d he go?” Tino asked, from across the lobby.

Debrae shrugged. “The back door, to make sure it’s locked.”

Tino frowned. “Of course it’s locked. I locked it from here.” Tino pointed to his security control panel. As he watched, the indicator labeled
Rear Entrance
suddenly flipped from
Locked
to
Open
.

“What was he carrying?” Tino asked Debrae.

“The safe-deposit box.”

“Oh, god,” Tino said.

* * *

Rath triggered an EMP grenade and then stepped out into the bank’s parking lot, with the deposit box tucked under his arm. He ran across to Crollis’ air car and opened the door on the driver side, revealing an unconscious Crollis handcuffed to the steering wheel. Rath pulled a small syringe of adrenaline out of his pocket, injected Crollis in the arm, and then uncuffed him, shaking him roughly.

“Wake up, buddy. Time to make your big escape.”

Crollis moaned. In the distance, Rath heard police sirens approaching.

They should be within visual range now.

“Auto-pilot on,” Rath ordered, still mimicking Crollis’ voice. The air car hummed to life. “Fly home at maximum speed, safety override.”

“Please confirm emergency mode,” the car requested.

“Confirmed,” Rath said. Crollis was waking up, but Rath shut his door and stepped back, watching the air car lift into the sky and rocket off toward Crollis’ house. Rath walked briskly out of the parking lot, the safe-deposit box tucked under his arm.

* * *

His shuttle landed back on Alberon early in the morning, so Rath took a bus into the city center and on a whim, stopped by the diner where he had first approached Beauceron. He found the detective eating breakfast in his usual booth, and smiled. Rath sat across from him, earning a confused stare from the detective.

“Oh, sorry,” Rath said. He rolled up his sleeve to show the grey counter bracelet. “It’s me. I forget what face I’m wearing sometimes.”

Beauceron shot him a look of disapproval, then went back to buttering a piece of toast. “I read a troubling report about a bank robbery on Juntland a few days ago,” he noted.

“Oh?” Rath asked innocently. “Did the report say whether anyone was hurt?”

“I believe a branch manager was drugged and kidnapped,” Beauceron said. “And he’s a possible suspect in the robbery.”

“But no one was killed,” Rath pointed out.

“No,” Beauceron allowed. “No one died. But that doesn’t make it any less of a crime.”

“Well, add it to my list, I suppose,” Rath sighed. “On a completely unrelated note, I came across this the other day.” Rath set a manila envelope on the table between them.

Beauceron ignored it for a few seconds on principle, then relented with a sigh. “Yes, that’s the death threat Mehta received. He showed it to me when we met.”

“That’s not all,” Rath told him. “He left you a data drive.”

Beauceron put his toast down. “Did you access it?”

Rath smiled. “I spent the flight back reading it over, twice. It’s got everything he collected – notes from interviews with a brothel owner, video footage of the mobile kitchens, a rough draft of his article … lots of stuff.”

“With your testimony, it would certainly bolster our case. Except that you stole it, so none of it will be admissible in court … which is why I argued that you shouldn’t go in the first place.”

“We needed information,” Rath said.

“The ends don’t justify the means. In a criminal case, the means are everything.”

“There was something else on the drive,” Rath said, changing the subject. “Did Mehta tell you he posted on a public forum, asking for additional sources to come forward?”

“Yes, he did,” Beauceron said.

“Did he tell you he got a response?” Rath asked. “A real contractor, and I think it was Paisen.”

“Do you know it was Paisen, or do you just hope it was her?” Beauceron asked.

Rath frowned. “I’m pretty sure it was her. The user claimed to have completed their fifty kills, and then survived an attempted assassination. And they used the same exact phrase she said to me when we met on Lakeworld. ‘I’m going to make them pay.’ ”

“That’s compelling,” Beauceron admitted. “Not a certainty, but … likely, I’ll admit.”

“But it still doesn’t tell us where she is,” Rath said.

“No. But ….” Beauceron scratched at his bald patch contemplatively.

“But what?”

“The Interstellar Police Cyber Division could probably locate her. They have quite sophisticated methods for tracking locations, even of anonymous web users. Most of them used to be hackers,” Beauceron said.

“Any friends of yours?”

“No,” Beauceron sighed. “And Rozhkov won’t be able to assist here, either.”

“I know a hacker,” Rath said. 

16

“Is that it, Inuye?” Senator Lizelle asked, looking over the staffers at the conference table.

The Chief of Staff skimmed his notes. “That’s all I had to cover.”

“Great. Thanks, everyone,” Lizelle told them. Around the table, members of the staff stood and collected their datascrolls and drinks. “Oh, Dasi, would you mind sticking around?” Lizelle asked.

“Yes, sir,” Dasi said. She shot a glance at Inuye, but the veteran merely gazed back as he held the door open for the rest of the team.

Note to self: don’t play poker with Inuye.

Then the door closed, and she felt her pulse quicken.

“I haven’t seen much of you these past few weeks,” Lizelle noted. “How are you?”

Dasi sighed. “Wondering if I should hand in my resignation,” she blurted.

Lizelle smiled sympathetically. “No, of course not,” he replied softly. “I know we never really discussed what happened, or what it meant ….”

Dasi looked away. When she didn’t answer, Lizelle cleared his throat. “I have another trip coming up,” he said. “I was hoping—”

“I don’t think so,” Dasi interrupted. “I mean, I don’t think I should. I feel pretty terrible about it.”

“I see.” For the first time since meeting him, Dasi saw genuine pain on the senator’s face. But he smiled through it. “I’ve hurt you, and I’m sorry,” he told her. “I was hoping that there might be something between us.”

“There was,” she said. “That’s what I’m afraid of. But I love Khyron,” she said. “And I don’t want to lose that.”

“I understand,” Lizelle said. “Have you told him?”

Dasi pursed her lips and shook her head. “I tried. He’s been very busy, too. But I’m going to tell him tonight.”

“Oh,” Lizelle said. He took a deep breath. “Well, you should know that I care deeply for you. And I want you in my life, in whatever form that might be – just professional, or … whatever. But don’t resign, please.”

She nodded. “I have to go.”

“Sure,” he said. “Take some time off if you need to.”

* * *

Khyron was already home, sitting at the kitchen counter with a half-finished plate of noodle soup next to him, typing on his datascroll.

“Hey,” he said, looking up briefly. “How was your day?”

“Okay,” she said, trying to smile. “You?”

“Umm … interesting,” he said, distracted.

She set her purse down on the stand in the front hall, and hung her jacket in the closet. “Khyron, can you set that aside for a minute?” she asked. “I’d like to talk about something.”

“Funny,” he said, finishing a line of code. He tapped on a final key, and data from the datascroll appeared on the living room viewscreen behind him. “I need to tell you something, too.”

Dasi frowned. “What?” she asked.

“Me first? Okay,” Khyron shrugged. “Uh, you’re going to want to sit down, I think.”

Dasi’s stomach flipped.

Oh god, did he cheat on me, too? Am I actually relieved to think that?

She sat on the couch, pressing her skirt around her legs. Khyron walked over to the viewscreen, and tapped on the data – a line chart with several spikes.

“Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath. “This is going to sound crazy, like tinfoil hat crazy. So bear with me.”

Dasi nodded. “Okay.”

“Senator Lizelle asked me to see if FiveSight could predict voting, remember? Not just overall outcome, but votes at the individual level – who’s leaning what way, who might swing, right?”

“Sure,” Dasi agreed. “Can you do it?”

“Yes,” Khyron said. “It’s taken me longer than I anticipated to set up the model with the new data and objectives, but I let FiveSight loose a few days ago. Usually, FiveSight starts by just exploring correlations between anything and everything. And usually, it finds normal stuff – the sponsors of a bill nearly always vote for it, for instance. Those two variables would have a perfect linear relationship. But it found a few other very high correlations that made no sense at all when I looked closer at them.”

“So, what does that mean?” Dasi asked, confused.

“Ummm. So correlation doesn’t mean causation, right? Things can be related, but one thing doesn’t necessarily cause the other. But in this case, I’m starting to think it probably does.” He pointed to the graph. “One of the datasets I have access to contains individual senator schedules – who meets with who, when, and where. And FiveSight still has access to the stock market data I started off with, which is what you’re looking at, here – the stock market’s performance over time. What FiveSight found is that when three specific senators meet, the market is extremely likely to have volatility about a week later – actually, a single planetary market is likely to get volatile, on a big enough scale that it registers on the galactic exchange.”

“They’re manipulating the markets?” Dasi asked.

“Not directly, no. FiveSight found that correlation, but it’s always trying to improve on predictive ability, so it started digging deeper – what are the precise conditions that led to that volatility. These three senators meet quarterly, but they also have ad hoc meetings. Those regular meetings rarely have an impact on the market, but the unscheduled ones – the last-minute ones – in the vast majority of cases they result in a pronounced market swing, generally localized to a single planet. Sometimes the planet’s market goes up, sometimes it goes down, but it always reacts.”

“So the three senators are making a decision that impacts that planet?”

“That’s what I figured, yes.” Khyron shook his head. “But FiveSight went deeper. One of the first sources I added back in the day was news feeds and web search trends, so FiveSight looked there, and found … something concerning.” Khyron switched to a different chart. “Here, I plotted it out, because I think it makes more sense when you see it visually. This is a timeline for the last five years. This group of senators had eight last-minute meetings in that period – the red pins on the timeline. Following so far?”

“Yes. Each pin represents an emergency meeting.”

“Right. Now I’m going to overlay the galactic stock exchange chart. Six to nine days after each meeting, we see a two to three percent market gain or loss. That’s a big deal. With me so far?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Now I’m going to add the significant events variable that FiveSight created. These are the events that happened right before the planet’s market activity, which likely caused that activity, or played a large part in it. Point number one is the disappearance of the CEO at a multi-billion dollar company on Beta Praxis. He actually disappeared a few days prior, but it went public on this date, and then the market reacted, negatively in this case. He’s still gone, by the way – police investigated for a while, but found no evidence of his whereabouts. No one knows where he is.”

Dasi opened her mouth with a question, but Khyron held up his hand. “Event number two: a city supervisor is killed in a motor vehicle accident on a different planet. The market actually goes up at that news, but again, her death came within two weeks of a meeting of these three senators. And the story stays the same for all of their meetings.” Khyron strode over, and tapped each of the red pins on the screen in turn. “Disappeared without a trace, died of unexpected heart complications, suicide, another accidental death, another disappearance, and a murder, where the investigation turned up no suspects. They met nine times in five years, and someone important died or disappeared less than two weeks later eight of those times. After this meeting, nothing happened, or at least, FiveSight didn’t find any significant events and the market didn’t shift.” He stopped, checking himself. “You’re quiet. Did I lose you?”