Alice glanced into the arena at the practice game, then fixed her eyes on Gene. “Can you give me a little more information on ‘all Hell breaking loose’?” she said.
“Sorry, no,” Gene said. “You’ll hear about it from elsewhere soon—I have to go. What did you need to tell me?”
“What I was trying to tell you is that an offshore bank account was opened in your name, and a lot of money is going into it.”
“I don’t want—”
Alice made a small, angry noise. “Not by us, Gene. The money is coming from the Citizen Dividend Office.”
“What? Why?”
“We can’t be sure, but we have a guess. It has to do with someone called Bennet Culkin?”
Gene had been distracted, but now all his attention turned to Alice.
“He opened the account,” Alice said. “We think he may be working for the American government.”
“That’s ...” Gene trailed off. He had been going to say that’s impossible, but in what way would it be impossible?
“Here,” Alice said. She handed him a small, pale blue slip of paper on which someone had hand-printed an account number and a bank name. “You can confirm that the account is in your name and that the deposits are being made if you want to—but if you do, they’ll record that you saw it, so don’t look unless you’re ready to have that evidence exist. Deposits are coming indirectly from the Cascadian government through a bunch of fake and defunct companies. You won’t see Culkin’s fingerprints.”
Gene stared at the account number. After a minute, he folded the paper and put it in his pocket.
“So, that’s our gift to you,” Alice continued. “If it makes you feel generous, we do have a request, but you don’t have to listen. Nobody’s expecting anything from you.”
“Then why help me? Assuming that’s what you’re really trying to do.”
“Because as far as we can tell, you’ve been chosen to be the scapegoat in some kind of plot against Cascadia. We don’t like plots against Cascadia. That’s the main reason.”
“But there are also other reasons?”
Alice just looked back at him, impassive. For Samantha’s sake? It wasn’t essential to know, but it would mean something if the Louvre was going out of its way for the family of one of its members.
“What’s the quickest version of your request?” Gene said.
“We know the Americans are planning to attack Cascadia,” Alice said. “We want to work with the government, but no one is listening to our offer. We thought if it was coming through you, someone might listen.”
“Why would people listen to me?”
“You’re trusted—for good reason, from what we can see.”
“You want me to tell people I know in the national government that I’m friendly with a high-profile criminal group, and then make a request on behalf of those criminals?”
Alice smiled. “Oh, that’s nice to hear, that we’re friendly. Sure, say that. Or say something else. We’re not trying to put words in your mouth. Or just forget we ever asked and go on about your business of trying to get out of this jam you’re in. We’d appreciate the introduction, but we’ll be fighting the Americans either way.”
Gene reached back into his pocket and felt the blue paper with the tips of his fingers. “If this turns out to be true,” he said, “then I appreciate the help.”
“If you do appreciate it,” Alice said, “then you’re welcome.”
Gene could have called a private car to get back to the agency, but the next train would arrive within minutes, so taking that would be faster. Waiting on the sparsely peopled platform, Gene told Ollie to let the office know he was on his way back in and would be there in about an hour. Meanwhile, he needed to come up to speed on all the information he was being sent about the war. Unfortunately, he had a couple of other things he needed to figure out first.
The first question was whether Samantha was really safe. She certainly seemed like it, but there had been someone with her the whole time. Could she have been a prisoner, forced to act like nothing was wrong ... ? Gene shook his head. Even at his most skeptical, he couldn’t convince himself that Samantha would have seemed perfectly at ease if she thought she was in danger. He knew her better than that. If she were in danger, she could pretend to be at ease but slip in something that would make it clear to Gene it was just an act.
That being the case, he should stop worrying about her—and he would have, if his brain worked that way. As it was, he pushed back worries about Samantha as far as he could, until they were just a faint crackling behind his other thoughts.
He couldn’t wrap his head around the story Alice had told him: that he was being framed, that it was Culkin who’d done it, and that Culkin was acting on behalf of the Americans. It made no sense. How could it possibly serve American interests to divert money to him from the Cascadian government? Why would Culkin be involved? The most likely thing was that this was some kind of mind game the Louvre was playing with him, maybe to get him to help them connect with the Cascadian government under false pretenses. If so, Gene doubted Samantha knew. They would have fed her lies, convinced her they were acting in good faith—but on the other hand, who knew? Maybe they were. Giving Gene the account number and the bank name helped make it convincing, but Alice and her associates might be counting on Gene not examining the account so as not to risk leaving evidence.
Samantha’s apparent trust these people made it rash to dismiss them as liars out of hand. Also, they’d given Gene an easy way to find out whether they were above board, at least about the existence of the account—though even if the account was real, Gene couldn’t just take their word for it that Culkin had set it up.
Accessing the account would leave evidence that he knew it existed, so if the account existed and really was what Alice said it was, then Gene would have to report it to law enforcement as soon as he’d viewed it. If it didn’t exist, then his next step would be to decide what to do about the Louvre. If they’d lied about the account, then he couldn’t trust them, and that would mean Samantha wasn’t safe no matter what she thought.
The train slid into the station with a rush of air. He boarded and took a seat by himself against the front wall of the car, facing back. As the train boosted up to speed, bending him forward with the momentum, he brought up a keyboard on his lenses and, after a moment of glancing around at the other passengers, most of whom were absorbed in reading or watching or writing on their own lenses, he scrambled the keyboard so that no one could see what he was typing. It made the process of entering information painfully slow, as he had to search for each letter and number, but it would be fairly secure from prying eyes, and he wouldn’t need to type much.
He took out the blue paper and unfolded it. “Lantzendörffer Bank,” it said, followed by a long string of numbers and letters. He typed the name into an open prompt box.
The bank was real, headquartered in Luxembourg. Its interface had an ornate, bas relief logo that was animated to look as though there was sunlight moving over it. He selected the account access option and filled in the account number by using his lenses to scan it from the paper.
The bank must have verified his identity via his lenses, because he was immediately admitted to the site, which showed him a pale gold rectangle containing a summary of his account. The account did exist. It was in his name. The current balance was nearly thirty-two million Cascadian thuns.
The balance went up even as he watched. When he tapped an icon to bring up account detail, he was presented with a long list of deposits in mostly the range of twenty to a few hundred Cascadian dollars, each from a different company Gene had never heard of. He looked up the first one on the list: it turned out to be a handkerchief manufacturer that had been closed for about eight months. It was listed as a sponsored business in the national directory. The second company had no network presence at all, but it was also listed in the registry.
Gene hadn’t really believed Alice could be telling the truth, he realized now. He thought he’d been withholding judgment, but seeing the bank account was the kind of shock you only get when you’re sure you’ve been lied to, but you haven’t.
He did a quick search for information about the bank, which was well-known and had been established in 1926. He couldn’t rule out the possibility that what he thought was a legitimate bank interface might be a complicated hoax set up by the Louvre, but he didn’t think that was what it was. Still, he had to verify.
“Ollie,” he subvocalized, phrasing his request carefully, wary of the other passengers, “can you please contact a human being at this institution and confirm the information I’m looking at is real?”
“Sure,” Ollie replied. “That should take a few minutes.”
Clearly Gene was being framed for something, and possibly it was exactly as Alice had said, that it was Bennet Culkin who’d made him the target. Gene realized just then that he did have a way to see whether that was true. He’d take care of that as soon as he got back.
Since the account really existed, he now had no sane choice but to contact the authorities. Neither delaying nor trying to pretend he didn’t know about the money would do him any good. He needed to be on the record as trying to stop whatever this was as soon as possible.
At the same time, he wasn’t eager to be taken into custody or held for questioning: he had a job to do, as well as a question he needed to get answered in person. Between those limitations and having no law enforcement contacts, he ended up accessing the contact portal for the Cascadian Bureau of Investigation. One of the options in the portal was to leave information on a crime or suspected crime. He used that, briefly describing what he knew: the bank, the account number, the current balance, and the fact that he’d had no inkling of the account’s existence until that hour. He left out any mention of his source. He’d have to decide later if he could share anything about that.
He reviewed his letter at least three times before he was satisfied, making small changes with each pass. By then Ollie had gotten back to confirm: the bank account was real, confirmed through several types of AI inquiries and a short conversation with a bank official at Lantzendörffer.
Gene took a deep breath and sent the message.
A part of Gene expected something to happen that instant. After all, AIs would be screening those incoming messages and prioritizing them. At the same time, Gene wondered if his note might not get lost in the shuffle for a little while, given that war had just begun. He hoped it would.
Back at the Agency, Gene took the stairs at the back of the building instead of the elevator at the front, even though he knew it would cost him precious time. At the top of the stairs, instead of going down the main hallway to the right, he turned left to go around the far side of the building. This brought him past Bennet Culkin’s office.
Unfortunately, it was empty. Gene stopped to think for a moment, disappointed. He’d have to go to his own office and message Culkin, asking to come by. He’d been trying to avoid that. He had just begun planning the message in his head when he saw Culkin turn the corner, walking toward him. Culkin slowed when he saw Gene, but Gene smiled and strode forward.
“Bennet!” he said. “How are you holding up? All right?”
Culkin hesitated, then shrugged. “I’m fine. I’m worried, obviously. The war ...”
Gene nodded. “Me too—very much so. We’ll just have to do our jobs and hope it’s enough. Oh, hey, do you have a minute for a question?”
“Sure,” Culkin said.
“By any chance, did you open an offshore bank account in my name to frame me in, I guess, some kind of fraud scheme?”
Several emotions crossed Culkin’s face before he settled on shock. “What?”
Gene waited.
“No!” Culkin elaborated. “God, no!”
Gene shook his head, laughing. “I’m sorry, that was a crazy question. But you should have seen your face! Somebody’s definitely trying to prank me, though ... and you know, I shouldn’t take it so lightly at a time like this, but it’s pretty ridiculous, isn’t it? I mean, my God!”
Culkin laughed weakly. “That’s ... crazy,” he said.
“I know!” said Gene. “Honestly, I’m sorry, Bennet. This war has me on edge, and my daughter was sick the other day—she’s fine now, don’t worry. I don’t know why seemed so funny. It doesn’t seem funny now. Anyway, we should both get back to what we were doing. I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”
“Sounds good,” Culkin said, and with a fixed smile, he continued past Gene to his office.
Gene strode on to his own office, not hurrying, but keeping his head down to discourage interaction. A member of his emergency operations center team tried to stop him, but he waved her back. “Sorry, it’s going to have to wait,” he said.
When he reached his office, he sat down at his desk and brought back up the message he’d sent to the CBI. “Ollie, add an update to this,” he said. The update would be filed with the original message, and anyone who might have already read the original would be alerted that there was more information. Rather than dictating, Gene opened a keyboard and typed his addition:
It appears that the person responsible for opening the account is Bennet Culkin, who works with me at the Agency of Resilience and Disaster Relief as my acting Chief of Staff. I’m about as certain of that as I can be, but I don’t have direct evidence.
“OK Ollie,” he said. “What can we assign Bennet to do that will keep him away from sensitive information without spooking him any more than he already is?”
Back in his office, Gene trampled some painstakingly orchestrated personnel assignments so that he could detail Culkin to coordinate communications and support from Cascadia’s allies. Unfortunately, most of Cascadia’s allies were also allied with the United States, and it was unlikely that any other large nation would be interested in interfering beyond perhaps a toothless condemnation of the initial U.S. attack. Even so, there was enough work in that area to keep Culkin busy indefinitely, and it would keep him away from most of the classified information. It was also an important role, which Gene hoped might reassure Culkin that he hadn’t been found out after all.
With that done, Gene went down to the ARDR Emergency Operations Center, a circular conference room in the basement that was set up for managing crises and had encrypted and redundant communications connections to other agencies and bureaus.
He stepped out of the elevator at the basement level and entered the command center through an identity-controlled steel door. The dozens of people inside were so intent on the chaotic situation that his arrival went more or less unnoticed. He had a ridiculous urge to act like he was in an old-time movie and shout “OK people, what’ve we got?” Instead, he claimed the first open station he saw and began reviewing the projections both at the station and around the room.
There were no screens or holographic models in the command center, but a lens program made it look as though there were, projecting two-dimensional displays as though they were on walls and showing a sprawling, three-dimensional model of the entire country at table height in the middle of the room. All of the projections were keyed to appear in the same location via everyone’s lenses, though you could easily pull any of them closer for a better view. If you kept your display on the default, though, and if you looked around you at everything in its designated location, you could coordinate with others who were physically or virtually in the room. You could point at things, display data on shared monitor panels, and otherwise work as though you were physically together, surrounded by physical screens. To add to the personnel who were physically present, many dozens more were there virtually, but none of them would be displayed in Gene’s lenses unless Gene connected to talk with them, or unless they sought him out. Similarly, all of Gene’s staff were virtually available in the designated command centers at other agencies, where the same displays were being shown.
The news panels at Gene’s station and the information being shown around the room told a rapidly evolving story. Cascadia had formally declared war. The flotilla had entered Puget Sound and was only minutes from the Seattle sea wall, and the Americans had simultaneously launched attacks on several other fronts. Cyberattacks and satellite jamming systems had taken down the lens network in locations throughout northwest Washington, and further cyberattacks had compromised electric micro-grids, banks, transportation systems, and other key targets. Multiple types of American drones had been spotted in locations as far south as Portland and as far north as Sumas, at the Canadian border. There had been a rash of confirmed laser attacks from U.S. military satellites, silent and invisible weapons that heated their targets to the point of catastrophic explosion in a fraction of a second. Gene was surprised to see, however, that each of the U.S. space-based laser weapons that could reach Cascadia had quickly been disabled. However, he apparently wasn’t on the list of people cleared to know how Cascadia had managed that. His guess was space-based anti-satellite systems with focused microwave weapons, or something similar. Cascadia’s satellites were often touted as the most sophisticated in the world, though the Americans disputed it. Based on how things were playing out in orbit, it seemed the Americans might be mistaken.
In some ways more disturbing than the outright attacks were reports of a rash of wildfires south and west of Seattle. It was early August, the peak of the wildfire season, but there had been no lightning in the affected areas recently, and for that many fires to spring up all at the same time suggested the cause might not be natural. It would be easy to ignite blazes like that with drones or, until they were disabled, with satellite-based lasers, Gene reflected uneasily.
When he’d caught up with the most important of the latest developments, Gene shifted his attention to the model of Cascadia, gesturing to bring it closer. Staff between him and the map were edited out of his field of view to make room for the magnification. He could turn layers of the model on and off to view cyberattacks, wildfires, drones, and other elements of the American attack, as well as some of Cascadia’s military capabilities.
Many of Cascadia’s defenses, however, wouldn’t appear on a map. Unlike the United States, Cascadia had no offensive objective in this war, and as a result it could concentrate solely on undermining the Americans’ capabilities. Cascadia’s physical military forces—humans, robots, planes, autonomous weapons and vehicles, drones, and more—had already scrambled to protect Seattle from the invading flotilla, and more such forces, especially drones, were being deployed to repel some of the American drone attacks.
Much of Cascadia’s response, however, would be invisible: Cascadian military AIs, with some guidance from human cyberwarfare experts, would strike everything from American communications channels to drone controls to financial systems.
The American attack dominated the displays at first, and Gene spent several hours following developments, fielding requests, coordinating with fire departments and other local resources to evacuate threatened areas, deploying emergency equipment, and answering a steady stream of questions from his direct reports, starting with the backlog that had accrued while he was meeting with Alice and sounding out Bennet.
He let his emotional responses stay distant and unresolved. Displaced families, missing children, communities wrecked ... Now was not the time to empathize, not if he was going to stay focused on his job.
Within the first forty minutes after Gene arrived, Cascadian defenses and counterattacks began to change the picture of the war. First, tens of thousands of American drones went suddenly dead when a Cascadian zero-day exploit—a type of hack—began rewriting their operating systems and communications controls en masse. Not five minutes later, operations maps of U.S. financial and communications systems took over several of the wall displays, disruptive icons appearing across them like a time lapse video of wildflowers blooming. To Gene’s surprise, even the flotilla of American ships sprouted graphics that, when Gene zoomed in to read them, turned out to symbolize sudden electrical fires and engine failures.
He took a moment to understand what had happened there, and it turned out the problems on the American ships were not the work of the Cascadian government. Some independent group of hackers was probably responsible—maybe the Louvre. If so, Samantha might even have been involved. Gene didn’t know how he should feel about that, if it turned out to be true. Proud? Horrified? Worried for her safety again, in case the Louvre attracted special attention from the American military?
Over the next hour, component by component, the American blitz fell apart. Reprogrammed American drones flew back to attack their places of origin. American satellite lasers remained offline. The flotilla threatening Seattle had still not reached the city and seemed to be at a standstill while the ships that were still functioning repositioned themselves to aid their disabled fellows. American soldiers and robotic troops had penetrated well into Cascadian territory, especially in Washington, but they were experiencing communication and systems problems from Cascadian cyberattacks and radio frequency pulse disruptions, and for the most part, their advances had stopped.
Gene hoped no one was reading too much into these encouraging developments. The Americans were still extremely dangerous, and it seemed likely that as they learned more about Cascadian defenses, they would either find ways around them or shift to less vulnerable or more devastating attacks. Even so, most of the direct fighting had ceased for the moment. In just a few hours, Cascadian cyberdefenses had turned an overwhelming offensive into a partial rout.
Apparently the Americans had decided not to immediately use their air power, which was good for Cascadia since air power was one of America’s clear areas of advantage. The Americans were probably holding off because that kind of attack tended to cause a great deal of collateral damage, which was politically problematic, both in America and in terms of encouraging Cascadia to escalate as well. Either country could cause huge devastation to the other if that’s all they were trying to do. Gene was thankful it hadn’t come to that yet.
Gene had wondered more than once how a modern war would operate in the real world, and now he and everyone else were finding out. It had been decades since major technological powers had engaged each other in combat, and over those decades, everything had changed. In the past, wars had been fought mainly with forces that were physically moved from one place to the next. Physical weapons had been used in a way that could be seen in the physical world. Even missiles, one of the fastest ways to attack in historical wars, took time to travel to their targets.
This war was different: AIs on opposing sides could grapple and resolve conflicts within seconds or fractions of a second, with the outcome leading to nearly instantaneous repercussions for whatever military or civilian area an AI was attacking or protecting. Space-based weapons could strike anywhere without warning. Vehicles and weapons could be disabled, sabotaged, or hijacked from anywhere. Gene had been bracing himself for a raging, clearly observable war that would start at the Cascadian border and possibly drive well into the interior. Would it instead be only a sudden clash of technologies, where whichever side wrecked or disabled the most of its opponent’s systems and equipment would quickly win? Or was this just the opening sally in something that would become bloody and entrenched?
If it was a question of technology, there was reason for Cascadia to hope. Cascadia had been home to many of the world’s largest tech companies and most innovative technology research facilities at the time of the split, and while some of those organizations had left the country in reaction to Cascadia passing laws that restricted marketing and hugely limiting the ability of corporations to act for profit against the public interest, others had flourished in an environment that attracted the brightest and most innovative workers and eliminated the need for massive spending on health insurance and domestic advertising.
Cascadians took it as a given that Cascadia was the most technologically empowered country in the world, an attitude that Gene had always been concerned might be exaggerated by pride. Maybe, though, it was no exaggeration.
After Gene was up to date, he moved around the room, checking in with each person or group, prioritizing work and resources, sometimes coming back to his station to focus on new information. He was not paying close attention to the time as hours went by. At some point, a bot brought him a nutritional shake, which he took sips of as he went from station to station before putting it down somewhere. By evening, new developments had slowed to a trickle, and he took the opportunity to retreat to his office and regroup.
He’d half expected some kind of law enforcement to be waiting for him in his office, but he reached it undisturbed. He unlocked the door, locked it again behind him, and sat at his desk to think through his remaining major decision: should he bring the Louvre’s offer to President Muñoz’s office or leave the situation be?
Gene knew how woefully ignorant he was of the Louvre’s capabilities and for that matter, the government’s cyberwarfare organization. He was no judge of whether they should work together or not. He also didn’t pretend to himself that he knew whether the Louvre was trustworthy. However, he reflected, he did have reason to suspect that they were trying to act in Cascadia’s best interests and that they were driven by what they, at least, felt were ethical motives.
At the same time, he worried what the Louvre would do if the government wouldn’t partner with them. Their actions so far, motivations aside, might well have contributed to starting the war in the first place. American president Jimenez’s public reason for the invasion was nothing more than a weak excuse, but at the same time, it was true that a powerful organization in Cascadia, the Louvre, was illegally targeting Americans with cyberattacks, for instance when they publicly exposed billionaire Terence Palmer’s private data.
Now that the two nations were formally at war, Gene couldn’t guess how far the Louvre might go. If the hackers were in constructive dialog with the Cascadian war department, he reflected, it might be possible to convince them not to disrupt efforts for peace.
Gene would have liked to invest much more thought and research before acting, but realistically, a new emergency could come up at any minute, and then who know when he might have a chance to consider the topic again? If he was going to do something, now was the time.
“Ollie, can you see if it’s possible for me to talk to Rosie Furch in President Muñoz’s office?”
“Certainly,” Ollie said. “Today?”
“Right now, if possible. It’s urgent.”
“Checking ... All right, her AI reports she can be free within a few minutes.”
Gene spent those few minutes uncharacteristically idle. There was no point looking at reports or rehashing his decision. He simply waited, tapping a stylus restlessly against his desk. It seemed like at least fifteen minutes before the communications icon appeared for Rosie’s call, though the clock told him only four minutes had gone by. He gave the icon a long gaze, and Rosie appeared.
“I don’t have much time right now, Gene—sorry. I can probably get back to you in about ninety minutes if this is going to take long. Assuming you’re available then.”
Did she mean, assuming he wasn’t tied up with his official responsibilities ... or something else?
“It won’t take long, because I don’t know much,” Gene said. “I was contacted by the Louvre.”
“The Louvre?” Rosie said, startled. Until this point, Gene had wondered if the government had somehow been watching the whole time he was in communication with Alice. Apparently not.
“They offered me some information,” Gene said. “They said there was a secret offshore account piling up millions of dollars in my name. I checked that out, and it looks like it’s true. They also said the money was coming from the Citizen Dividend Office, which it seems to be, and that the person responsible was my acting Chief of Staff, Bennet Culkin. I have reason to believe that’s true, too. They said this was part of a fraud scheme, and that the Americans are behind it. I have no way of knowing if that’s true or not.”
“We know about the fraud,” Rosie said. “Who exactly spoke to you?”
Gene went cold at the matter-of-fact way Rosie confirmed the fraud, though he noticed she hadn’t said anything about Gene being implicated.
“They didn’t share much about who they were,” Gene said. “But they asked me to contact you.”
“To contact me?”
“Not you specifically: they said they want to work with the Cascadian government to repel the Americans. They asked me to bring that offer forward for them, because they said it might be taken more seriously coming from me. I’m not sure that’s true, but I thought about it, and it seemed to me that I should at least pass along the message.”
“How can you be sure it’s really them?”
Gene had to be careful. The biggest reason he believed them was because Sammi was there, but he couldn’t say that.
“I can’t,” he said. “You probably have people who could do that better than I can—but for what it’s worth, my gut feeling is that they’re who they say.”
“And you’re recommending we ally ourselves with them?” Rosie said.
“No,” said Gene. “I’m telling you they say they’re willing to collaborate, and I’m suggesting you have someone who understands the situation a lot better than I do come up with a recommendation. For what it’s worth, they did seem to demonstrate they cared about this from an ethical and patriotic point of view. They acted in good faith, as far as I could tell, when they talked to me.”
“All right,” Rosie said. “I’ll speak to the President soon. I don’t know what she’ll do with it.”
“Thank you,” Gene said. “That’s all I’ve got.”
“Well, thank you,” Rosie said. Then she hesitated, and it seemed to Gene that her attitude had shifted compared to the beginning of the call.
“Gene,” she said, “Don’t worry too much about anything that happens over the next little while. It might not be a lost cause.”
“You mean the war?” he said.
“No,” Rosie said. “I don’t mean the war.” Then she disconnected.
Gene had a belated dinner brought in—quinoa with vegetables and grilled tilapia—but he barely tasted it. As he ate, he drafted a priority message to his permanent chief of staff, Daniela, who was on parental leave. It seemed likely he’d be forced away to deal with the fraud problem soon, and he told her he might have to attend to other matters soon, asked her if that happened to come in and run the agency a temporary basis.
Next, he turned his attention to the wildfires. Firefighting drones and autonomous water cannons had been deployed, but the war efforts meant fewer units could be mobilized, and lens-controlled units couldn’t be used in that area due to the outage, and the fires were fierce. If they had been set purposely, based on where they were, it seemed likely they were meant to trap people or troops in the Seattle area, and they hugely complicated evacuations. Fortunately, routes north into Canada were clear, and despite U.S. disapproval, Canadian officials were welcoming Cascadian refugees.
Gene’s locked, AI-guarded door opened suddenly. Three people in blandly-colored suits entered, while Gene glimpsed an Agency security guard behind them, just outside the door, facing away.
The woman in the lead had short, dark hair that flared out around her head. The other two were an alert white woman with long, incongruously vibrant red hair and a white man who looked like a brick wall with a haircut.
“Gene Ajou?” the woman in the lead said. “I’m A.S.A.C. Kimball of the Cascadian Bureau of Investigation.” Gene’s lenses elaborated automatically: ASAC=Assistant Special Agent in Charge.
“This is Special Agent Owen and Senior Special Agent Graves,” ASAC Kimball continued. “Would you come with us, please?”
Gene got up resignedly. “I see you got my message,” he said.
“This isn’t the best place to talk,” ASAC Kimball said, tilting her head to indicate the door. “After you?”
Gene nodded and walked out. A number of his staff members outside the office stopped to stare.
Gene turned his head around to look at ASAC Kimball. “Am I under arrest, or am I helping with an investigation?” he said.
“Are you coming voluntarily?” Kimball said.
“Of course.”
“Then let’s say you’re helping with an investigation.”
Gene felt strangely light, free of care. He’d made his choices. He’d taken action where he could. Samantha seemed to be with people who could protect her, and if Daniela Vargas came in to take over, the agency would be in good hands. Gene would have much preferred to stay at his post, but he’d have to take what he could get. Owen and Graves flanked him as they went to the elevators, descended to the ground floor, and exited through the starry evening toward a dark-windowed car.
The CBI agents’ car, it turned out, was not designed for conversation. On getting in and sitting down, Gene found himself in a dim, one-seat cell with no windows to the outside and no connection to the rest of the passenger compartment. The interior of the door was blank, and when it shut, his lenses abruptly flashed a No connection error. The seat was comfortable enough, but there was a warning buzzer sound, and every muscle in his body seemed to lock in panic when automatic seat belts snaked out to restrain his waist and chest.
The momentary peace had passed. Gene couldn’t slow the frantic pace of his breathing or the drumming of his heart, which was running like a motor with a loose part. He felt dizzy, and he had a sudden and vivid memory of his father swearing, which Philip Ajou had hardly ever done when Gene was a child.
It took him a moment to place the memory. He’d been 8, so it must have been around 2018, and he was walking home from dinner at his grandparents’ in Sacramento with his father and his Aunt Michelle, who was going to stay over to visit Gene’s mom, her sister. He didn’t remember why his mom wasn’t with them.
As they walked, Philip loudly offered his opinion on why Michelle’s new boyfriend was trouble. Abruptly, there’d been a flash of blue light and the choked whoop of a police siren. Two white policemen passed them, pulled over, and stepped out of the vehicle. They played the glare of their flashlights over Gene and his aunt and dad.
“Sir, can I see some ID?” one of the policemen said.
Gene’s dad took out his driver’s license. Michelle protested, but Gene’s dad said, “It’s all right. There’s no problem.”
Gene couldn’t remember all of what the police and his dad said, but he remembered his father getting more and more frustrated. Apparently he “fit the description” of someone who had done something—Gene never heard what. Philip didn’t get angry, though, until they had handcuffed him and were pushing him into the back seat of the police car, at which point he shouted “I’m not that fucking person!”
One of the policemen pushed down on the back of Philip’s head while the other forced him into the back of the cruiser. They slammed the door shut, got back in themselves, and drove off, not saying another word to Gene or Aunt Michelle.
Gene had spent most of that night in bed, awake and terrified, while his mother and Aunt Michelle spoke in low voices in the next room. Sometime in the wee hours, Gene heard the front door, and he ran out into the dark hallway, stopping in the shadows. He saw his dad walking in, a strained expression on his face. Gene’s mom and Aunt Michelle ran over and wrapped their arms around him.
“It’s all right,” Philip told them, several times. “They figured out I wasn’t the guy. They let me go. Where’s Gene?”
“He’s asleep,” Gene heard his mom say. “We’ll leave the bedroom door open. He can come see you when he wakes up.”
Michelle started to say something about the policemen, but Philip cut her off.
“It’s over now,” he’d said. “Let me just get to bed and end this day.”
Gene had seen the police change since then. They weren’t allowed to carry guns for most duties anymore. They’d been barred from some of the more violent responses that used to be common, and they’d been held responsible for more kinds of mistreatment. Police departments had been scaled down and social workers brought in to fill some of the gaps.
Prisons too had been closed, in Cascadia and many other countries—though not in the U.S.—and Cascadian sentences were based on supporting communities and restorative justice. The CBI weren’t the police, though, and Gene wasn’t being accused of a break-in or an assault. How would justice work with the impersonal, seditious crime Gene had been framed for?
Gene felt himself pushed back in the seat as the car moved out to join traffic, and his weight shifted gently as it slowed and accelerated, changed lanes and turned. For several minutes, those shifts were all the connection he had to the world. He made himself breathe mindfully, just concentrating on the air coursing into his lungs, filling them, streaming out of his lungs, the pause at the end of the exhale ... then breathing again.
About ten minutes into the ride, ASAC Kimball’s voice sounded from speakers. “Dr. Ajou, we’re experiencing trouble with the car’s navigation,” she said. “We may be delayed.”
Gene was in custody, no longer in charge of his own life, so he wasn’t sure how that information was supposed to help him. Also, what did “trouble with the car’s navigation” mean? Kimball’s voice had been steady and professional, but Gene thought he’d heard an undercurrent of tension.
The next few minutes went much like the first few, with no information from the outside world except for the forces that leaned him in one direction or another. Then Gene felt the car shift to the right and rapidly decelerate. The moment they came to a complete stop, everything went dark except for the faint glow of emergency lighting.
“There has been a vehicle malfunction,” said a calm, synthesized voice. “For your safety, please exit the car immediately.”
“I can’t—” Gene began, but his seat belts released, and the door beside him popped open. Hesitantly, he stepped out.
The street lights were blinding for the first moment, but a familiar voice said “Get in, please!”
It took him a second to place that voice, but it clicked when he saw her in a car pulled up next to the CBI vehicle: inside it was Alice, from the Louvre. Sitting across from her was Samantha, her expression desperate.
Gene turned to look at the car he’d gotten out of. The windows were tinted full black now. From inside, he thought he heard thumping.
“Gene!” Alice said urgently. “They’re going to kill you. Please get in the car.”
Kill him? Why would CBI agents kill him? Gene looked back again at the car he’d just exited.
“Dad! Just get in!” Samantha shouted, and when he turned, she was getting out of the car, reaching for him. Uncertainly, he took her hand and let her pull him in. He sat next to her, facing Alice. Alice slammed the door closed, and the car shot off down the street.
Gene fastened his seat belt, his hands shaking. “Are you telling me those weren’t CBI agents?” he said.
Alice shook her head. “No, they were,” she said.
“And you’re saying they were going to kill me? That’s not how the CBI works.”
“Probably not them personally. There’s a CBI agent working for the Americans—we don’t know who yet.”
Gene was getting angry now. “Why would the Americans—”
“There’s a man in the American Government,” Alice said. “Tyler Godbout. We think that back in May, he gave the order for you to be killed as soon as you were in CBI custody.”
“Three months ago?” Gene said in disbelief.
“They didn’t know who you’d be, just that they’d have someone like you set up. It looks like they’ve been planning it for a long time. Frame someone with a good reputation for the fraud, then kill them while they’re in CBI custody and make it look like a suicide.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Gene said. “How can they make me their scapegoat if I’m dead?”
Samantha put her hand on his arm. “Dad, think about it. You didn’t have anything to do with this, and you’re pretty believable in person. You might have made people at least look a lot closer at the whole thing. Somebody might have believed you, and maybe they’d figure out the truth. It could backfire on the Americans.”
“But killing me?” Gene protested weakly.
“Picture it the way they planned it,” said Alice. “A supposedly trustworthy, highly-placed government official whom most of the population has never heard of is found to have diverted millions in CitDiv money into an offshore account as part of a much bigger fraud. They’re taken into custody, but they commit suicide in their cell before they can be questioned. That person sounds guilty. It’s a simple story. Simple stories are easy to believe.”
“That’s terrible,” Gene said. Alice nodded. Samantha reached over and took his hand.
The narrative Alice had laid out made sense to him in the abstract, but as literal truth, as something that would happen to him, out of the blue, for no reason—?
If the Louvre needed something from him, Gene thought, then this might all be a hoax they’d put together. Maybe they didn’t know he’d already done the favor they’d asked for. Samantha was no fool, but Gene felt sure the Louvre could create details to convince her they were on her side, if they needed to. Yet to do all that, and to somehow find out when he was being taken into custody and by whom, and to find a way to hack the CBI agents’ car, and to physically appear there to rescue him ... It strained his imagination to dream that there was something they needed from him so badly that they’d go to all that trouble, especially since, if they understood him at all, they would know he’d find the story hard to swallow.
There was irony in that: the fact that their story was so hard to believe made it more likely to be true.
They were going to a Louvre location, Gene was told. While that didn’t appeal to him, he couldn’t think of any better option, and Samantha seemed reassured.
“I’m sending you an app to run on your lenses,” Alice said as they drove on. “It will prevent them from tracing or tracking you through your electronics.” Gene saw the icon appear a moment later: it was animated in the form of a disappearing cat. He hesitated, then tapped on it. Nothing seemed to happen, but a moment later the icon turned into a green check mark, and then that faded away.
Something on Alice’s lenses attracted her attention soon after, because she excused herself to type and subvocalize as the car raced on through the night.
Gene looked out the window, too exhausted to make any progress in processing it all, too worried to fall asleep. Samantha was propped against him, dozing, and he wrapped his arm around her and left it there for most of the ride, even when it began to ache.
Outside, the world was mostly dark, and Gene guessed the car was taking smaller, less frequented routes to its destination. They turned down a road that followed a river for a time, and there they passed a huge hill, in and out of which Gene could see the lights of robots moving, as if it were some kind of fairy mound. Gene recognized it as a decommissioned landfill, the kind of place they dumped garbage in days when recycling was much less common. The robots would be excavating it for recyclable materials—some plastic and glass, but metal especially—to be used in manufacturing or 3D printing.
It was nearly ten when they rolled to a stop outside a dark building somewhere far from Sacramento.
They stepped out into moonlight, and by that light Gene could make out an unlit sign over the building that read “Sakura Grill,” with a picture of a magenta flower. A young man waited for them there, the same young man Gene had seen with Sammi at the arena. When she got groggily out of the car, he strode forward, and she let him enfold her in his arms and give her a short kiss on the lips. So apparently, this was “Lan.”
Only then did the young man seemed to notice Gene. When Sammi disengaged, he cleared his throat and offered his hand. “Sir, I’m Lawrence,” he said. “Welcome to the Louvre.”
“This is the Louvre?” said Gene.
Alice stepped up beside Gene, putting her hand on his back and guiding him forward. “It’s temporary headquarters for one cell of the Louvre,” she said. “One small cloud in a stormy sky. Come on, let’s go in.”