The Genius Wars Read online

  Except, of course, that Cadel wasn’t his son after all.

  Cadel chastised himself for being such a fool. He knew Prosper. He knew what kind of a man Prosper was: practical, ruthless, manipulative. Yet deep in his heart, Cadel still couldn’t believe that Prosper had actually tried to kill him. Deep in his heart, Cadel didn’t want to believe it. Because that would mean the complete extinction of an ancient, fragile, buried spark of feeling – a tiny, glowing ember that had nourished him for a very long time.

  Prosper had been the centre of his world, once. Prosper had listened to him, and instructed him, and bought him presents. Prosper had understood him – or so Cadel had thought.

  It was difficult to accept that Prosper might now want to kill him, simply because the connection between them had proved to be a false one.

  But why wouldn’t he want to kill me? Cadel reflected. I know enough to be dangerous. I’m smart enough to be a threat. And I betrayed him. I made my choice and I walked away. If I’d been anyone else, he would have killed me long ago.

  He was so torn that he couldn’t settle. On the one hand, when he remembered Sonja’s bloody face, a vicious rage overwhelmed him; he wanted to smash Prosper’s head against a brick wall. But this mental image opened the door to childhood memories of Prosper’s commanding profile, indulgent grin and attentive gaze.

  You are my crowning achievement. Prosper had once said that, without a hint of irony. It wasn’t something that Cadel could easily forget.

  Groaning, he sat up. He threw off his blankets. He swung his feet to the floor. I’ll watch TV, he decided. Maybe a glass of hot milk would help me to relax.

  But when reached the kitchen, he found Saul already there.

  Even in the middle of the night, the kitchen was a cheerful room, full of yellow paint and burnished copper. Saul, however, looked anything but cheerful; his shoulders were hunched, and there were dark shadows under his eyes. Wrapped in his old plaid dressing gown, he was sitting at the table, with several sheets of paper spread out in front of him.

  The clock on the stove said 2:15.

  ‘Can’t sleep?’ Saul asked. When Cadel shook his head, the detective added, ‘Have I been making too much noise?’

  ‘No.’ Cadel moved towards the fridge. ‘What kind of noise have you been making?’

  ‘Oh … phone calls, mostly. And a couple of visitors.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘There’s a team parked outside, watching the house. I pulled in a few favours.’ Saul sipped from the mug that he was holding. ‘Fiona took some valerian to help her sleep. Do you want to try that?’

  ‘No.’ Cadel was nervous about drugging himself. He couldn’t afford to lose his edge. Suppose Prosper launched another attack? ‘I’m getting some hot milk,’ he explained, removing a bottle from the fridge. ‘That usually works for me.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  If Fiona had been there, she would have asked Cadel how he was feeling. Saul’s technique was different. He tended to watch and wait, his dark eyes following his foster son’s every move.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about why this happened,’ Cadel said at last, as he placed a glass of milk in the microwave. ‘To Sonja, I mean. I know she’s the one who ended up in hospital. But I still don’t think she was the main target.’ Frowning, he hit the ‘start’ button. ‘That chair was programmed to follow my phone signal,’ he announced. ‘I was supposed to get hurt as well.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Saul’s tone was very calm. ‘We don’t know enough to be sure, yet.’

  ‘I’m sure. I reckon Prosper’s found out that I’m not really his son. He’s probably trying to kill me.’

  ‘Cadel –’

  ‘It makes sense. Why wouldn’t he? I know too much about him. If he ever went to trial, I’d be the star witness. Of course he’s trying to kill me. Only he’s too smart to hire a goon with a gun, because goons with guns always end up talking. Doing it by remote control is much more secure.’ The microwave pinged; retrieving his glass of milk, Cadel moved towards the table, talking all the while. ‘He must feel like he’s been fooled all these years. He must be furious. He probably wants to wipe me off the face of the earth.’

  ‘Cadel.’ Saul leaned over to grab his wrist. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We can’t be sure. Not yet. Don’t tie yourself in knots about it.’ In a transparent attempt to change the subject, Saul added, ‘I had a call from Steve. He told me someone’s tampered with your mobile phone.’

  Cadel’s eyes widened.

  ‘One of the wires has been snipped,’ Saul continued. ‘To stop that Bluetooth symbol from popping up on the screen.’ Releasing Cadel’s arm, the detective was quick to offer reassurance. ‘Steve says it wasn’t necessarily a recent job. In fact it could have been done last year. At Clearview House.’

  Cadel began to gnaw at his thumb. He had always been very careful with his mobile, carrying it either in his pocket or in the bag that contained his precious computer. The only time he ever let the phone out of his sight was when he came home. Then he might dump it on a benchtop or a bookshelf, along with his wallet and sunglasses.

  At Clearview House, he’d always followed much the same pattern.

  If the damage was done there, he pondered, then who could have been responsible? He cast his mind back to the day on which he had first received his phone from Saul Greeniaus. At the time, Cadel had been living with another set of foster parents – and since the device had merely been loaned to him, he’d taken very good care of it. But when he was kidnapped by Prosper English, it had been left behind at Clearview House. For a good twenty-four hours it had sat on his bedside table, unattended.

  Could that have been when the sabotage occurred? Or could the wire have been snipped some time earlier, during his two-week stay in a house full of spies?

  The head of Genius Squad, Trader Lynch, had been secretly working for Prosper English. So had Dorothy Daniels, also known as ‘Dot’. Cadel thought about Dot, whose enigmatic presence at Clearview House had always troubled him. Her younger brother, Com, had been one of Cadel’s classmates at the Axis Institute; Com had vanished after the institute’s collapse, just as Dot had disappeared after Genius Squad disbanded. Both Dot and Com had shared the same squat build, waxy white skin, and taste for hacking into computer systems. Both had been distinguished by a strangely robotic demeanour, and both had somehow managed to avoid arrest – with the help of Prosper English. Cadel knew that Com had always been a favourite of Dr Vee’s. Could Vee and Com now be working together, on Prosper’s behalf?

  If Dot had snipped the wire back at Clearview House, then her brother might very well know about it. Especially if Dot herself was still on Prosper’s payroll.

  ‘It could have been Dot,’ Cadel said aloud. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her. She could have done it so she could track my movements somehow, back when she was being paid to keep tabs on me.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Saul agreed. ‘I’m gonna be asking Trader about it, in the morning.’ Unlike Dot, Trader was now in gaol, and likely to remain there for some time. ‘If it was Dot, then she was involved in this whole thing somehow. Even if she didn’t hijack your phone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We need to find out if Bev and Dot are the same person. I’ve asked for a trace to be put on that call, but the results might not be back for a day or so.’

  Cadel sighed as he dropped into one of the kitchen chairs. ‘I doubt you’ll find out much,’ he said glumly. ‘Whoever Bev really was, she would have stolen the SIM card. I would have stolen it. And then I would have destroyed it.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You might get a rough idea of where she was calling from –’ Cadel began, then stopped in mid-sentence. An idea was stirring at the back of his mind.

  ‘– but she could have been on the move,’ Saul finished. ‘I realise that. Still, it’s worth pursuing.’ All at once, he noticed Cadel’s fixed stare and arrested expression. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’


  ‘She wouldn’t have been on the move.’ Cadel was thinking aloud. ‘That call wasn’t made from a train or a bus. Bev knew exactly where I was. Exactly. Which means she must have been plugged into the campus CCTV network while she was on the phone.’ Lifting his gaze from the steaming surface of his milk, he turned to the detective. ‘You wouldn’t be doing a hack like that in public. Not if you had any sense.’

  ‘So –’

  ‘You’d need somewhere private. With a stable Internet connection. Maybe not your own house, but a friend’s place. Or a hotel room. Or maybe even a parked car with a stolen wireless connection, though I doubt it.’

  Saul nodded, chewing at his bottom lip.

  ‘I realise you probably won’t be able to pinpoint the exact spot,’ Cadel went on, ‘but if you could narrow it down to just a few streets –’

  ‘We could canvass them.’ Saul didn’t sound very enthusiastic, and Cadel wondered if it would be worth offering to hack a few customer databases. Probably not. Even if Saul gave him permission to conduct such a hack – even if they managed to secure some kind of official clearance for the procedure – Cadel suspected that ‘Bev’ would be paying her power and broadband bills under an assumed name.

  Nevertheless, if she was living in the area, and she did have an Internet connection …

  ‘You shouldn’t be worrying about this now,’ Saul was saying. ‘You must be tired. Fiona will give me an earful if she finds out I’ve been keeping you up, talking about phone traces –’

  ‘You know what might work?’ Cadel interrupted. ‘Wireless mapping.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘If you can get a rough location, and Bev’s still somewhere in the vicinity, we might be able to catch her by wardriving the whole area.’ Cadel sipped at his milk, considering all the possible scenarios. ‘We’d need to ask Richard for help,’ was his final conclusion. ‘He might agree to do it as a kind of class project. I figure if we could get four or five cars full of wardrivers, scanning for access point IDs –’

  ‘Woah.’ Saul lifted his hand. ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘I’m not saying we’d hack into anybody’s wireless network,’ Cadel assured him. ‘But if it’s Dot who’s done this, or Com, or Vee, I might be able to suss them out.’ They could be using old ID signatures, he thought. You never know. ‘I need to talk to Richard,’ he said. ‘Is there some way I could do that? Without using a phone?’

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ Saul promised. And before Cadel could object, the detective ploughed on. ‘I don’t want you talking to anyone right now.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do it right now.’ Cadel couldn’t keep the impatience out of his voice. ‘It’s the middle of the night! I mean in the morning.’

  ‘In the morning you’ll be going to a safe house,’ Saul quietly insisted. And Cadel gasped.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Not the one in Roseville. Another one. It doesn’t have a networked security system, but it’s easy to patrol.’

  ‘No.’ Cadel shook his head. ‘You’re not going to lock me away again.’

  ‘Listen –’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Cadel. This is serious.’ The detective spoke gravely and forcefully. ‘I know how you feel about Prosper English. Deep down, you don’t think that he’ll ever hurt you. But you’re wrong.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Cadel couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Are you deaf? I just said that he was trying to kill me!’

  ‘You can say a lot of things without really meaning them.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Prosper got at you once before, and I was to blame. That’s not gonna happen a second time. Do you understand?’

  Cadel swallowed. As he stared into the detective’s taut face, images flashed into his mind: images of a drive through deserted scrubland, with Saul at the wheel of a borrowed car, and Prosper in the back. It had been a hijacking, of sorts; the detective had been lucky to escape with his life. And he hadn’t been to blame. Of course he hadn’t. Prosper had simply out-witted them all.

  And that, of course, was the point. That was why Cadel couldn’t just sit back and let other people take over. He understood how Saul was feeling. They had both been traumatised by the hijacking incident – Saul, perhaps, even more so than Cadel, who had learned to expect the unexpected after years of living in the shadow of Prosper English. But for that very reason, Cadel was better placed to pass judgement.

  He took a deep breath.

  ‘Without my help,’ he bluntly informed the detective, ‘you’re not going to catch him.’

  Saul’s answering smile was little more than a grimace. ‘It might take us a bit longer,’ he conceded.

  ‘How long? Six weeks? Six months?’ Cadel’s voice grew shrill. ‘You expect me to live in a safe house for six months? Doing what? Playing Trivial Pursuit? While Prosper rampages around online, trying to kill people?’

  There was a long pause. The detective seemed to be mustering his strength – or perhaps considering his options. It was hard to tell from the pensive look on his face. At last he said, quite gently, ‘I think you’re underestimating us.’

  ‘And I think you’re underestimating me,’ Cadel rejoined. Then, summoning up all his strength, he fired off his biggest, nastiest shot. ‘Which isn’t something that Prosper would do any more,’ he snapped. ‘Prosper knows not to treat me like a kid. He learned it the hard way. He knows what can happen when people forget how smart I am.’

  The detective stiffened. Cadel felt awful, but he refused to back down. Because he was telling the truth, and the truth could hurt.

  ‘When it comes to Prosper English, I’m the expert,’ Cadel insisted, pressing home his advantage. This is the best thing for everyone, he told himself. I can’t afford to get sidelined. ‘Believe me, I understand why you’re worried,’ he said. ‘But a safe house isn’t going to keep me safe. It really isn’t.’ And by way of a final broadside, he added, ‘Do you honestly think you could force me to stay anywhere? Do you honestly think that I couldn’t get out?’

  Saul didn’t respond immediately. He didn’t even move. His gaze had dropped to the papers in front of him; for a while he just sat there, pale and rigid.

  At last he glanced up.

  ‘So what do you want to do, then?’ he asked, without expression.

  ‘I want to stay here. I want to talk to Richard Buckland.’ Cadel found himself quailing beneath the detective’s blank-eyed regard. ‘Don’t be angry. Please? Just give me a chance to help.’

  ‘I’m not angry.’ And indeed, Saul didn’t sound the least bit angry – just immeasurably tired. ‘I’m scared,’ he admitted. ‘I’m scared you’ll end up like Sonja. You’re my son now. Protecting you isn’t just a job, any more.’

  Cadel’s eyes began to smart. I need my sleep, he thought, trying to control himself. There’s nothing to cry about.

  ‘Would you at least agree to stay inside?’ Saul begged. ‘Away from any CCTV cameras?’

  Unable to speak, Cadel nodded.

  ‘Just until I can arrange an escort,’ the detective continued. Then he frowned. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  Cadel cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ was all that he could say.

  It was enough, though. And as Saul stretched across the table to ruffle his hair, Cadel saw a holstered pistol tucked beneath the detective’s dressing-gown.

  NINE

  When Cadel woke up the next morning, it was after nine. Saul had already left for work. But the kitchen was still full of people.

  Fiona was there, shuffling around in a pair of ugg boots. With her was Gazo Kovacs, who had once again donned his bodyguard outfit: long sleeves, shiny shoes, musky aftershave. Unfortunately, the scrap of toilet paper adhering to a razor cut on his right cheek tended to spoil the overall effect. And he was further diminished by the presence of Angus McNair – a recent arrival from the safe house.

  Angus seemed to fill the room. He gave the impression that his scal
p was brushing against its ceiling, and that the floor-boards were sagging under his weight. His partner, on the other hand, was a nuggetty little man like a short-haired terrier, with hard, flat, poker-chip eyes that scoured the scene in front of him as if they were made of steel wool. ‘I’m Officer Reggie Bristow,’ this man informed Cadel, in a voice like the squeak of a rusty gate. ‘And I’m here to watch your back.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Cadel, who was still on the threshold.

  ‘But I’ll be needing your cooperation,’ Reggie continued. ‘Which means that you can’t leave the premises, you can’t answer the phone, and you can’t open any blinds or curtains.’

  Cadel sighed. As he sat down to eat his warmed-up pancakes, the two policemen resumed their ‘sector patrol’, repeatedly checking every access point in the building. What with the steady creak-creak-creak of their footsteps, and the accumulation of dirty coffee cups on the kitchen table, and the locked doors, and the screened phone calls, and the stale, bored, muted atmosphere, Cadel couldn’t help thinking that his cosy little home had started to feel like a safe house. In other words, it was becoming a prison rather than a sanctuary.

  Prosper could be blamed for that, too.

  ‘If I can’t leave here,’ Cadel said to Fiona, as calmly as he could, ‘then how am I supposed to visit Sonja?’

  ‘Oh, we’ll work something out,’ she assured him. ‘We won’t be able to see her until tonight, anyway. That’s when she’ll be moving out of the Surgical High Dependency Unit.’

  ‘Have you heard from Judith?’

  ‘Judith says it’s going pretty well. She took Sonja’s old Dynavox machine to the hospital, which should make things easier for everyone.’ The chiming of the doorbell briefly silenced Fiona; she set down her cup of tea as Angus’s heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway. ‘Shall I get that?’ she asked Reggie, who shook his head.