“Hepple? This bunch of enforcers tried to wreck my plant because of that useless idiot?”
“No. Or, rather, yes: because of what Hepple did. In a way you were right. It’s about market share.”
“I’m trying very hard,” she said, “but I don’t see what Hepple’s got to do with it.”
I started again. “My… the van de Oests originally made their money by genetically tailoring bacteria and then patenting them. Every time their bugs were used, they got a cut. Then they retailored the bugs so that they don’t work unless they’re supplied with special proprietary bug food—which is where they make their real profit these days. Treatment plants need the bugs, the bugs need the food. The van de Oests license people to supply both and earn a lot of money for doing nothing. They have a monopoly. When Hepple canceled the food order in favor of generics, he was breaking that monopoly. Someone stepped in to protect it.”
“They would risk all this, thousands of lives, to protect a monopoly?”
“They didn’t intend anyone to get hurt. Except in the pocket.” They wouldn’t risk another Caracas. “And even if people died, the van de Oests would have come out of it smelling of roses. It’s happened before. After all, they would say, if their instructions had been carried out and the proper food used, nothing would have gone wrong. The finger will point at Hepple, and the people who were stupid enough to hire him.”
“Which is what’s happened.”
“Yes.”
“So,” Magyar said slowly, “this group, Jerome’s Boys or whatever they’re called now, is responsible. But they’re illegal. They’re not supposed to exist. So where do they get their money?”
The lubricant behind all corporate machinery is money, Oster had said. No funds, no operation.
Ridiculously, I felt too ashamed to tell her. It’s not your fault, I told myself, but they were my family. I shared the same genes, the same upbringing. I might have had the same values. “It… They…” I looked down at the floor, then back up again. “Kidnap is a great source of income.”
“Kidnap is…?” She stared at me. “Tell me if I’ve got this right. Someone assembles a group to protect the company. But they don’t have access to legitimate corporate funds. So they kidnap the heir, you, and get—how much, ten million?”
“Tax free.”
“-ten million tax free, to fund them. Their purpose is to insure corporate market share by doing things like illegal information gathering and plant sabotage. The point of insuring market share is to keep up van de Oest family income…” She shook her head.
“I know, it doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t make any kind of sense! Whoever’s in charge of these people has to have a mind like a corkscrew.”
“And access to everything that goes on.” Corporate records and strategy. Marketing. Research and development. Personal family records.
“They had to know I was going to be in Uruguay. They had to know I was allergic to spray hypos. They had to have an organization. Just like the organization that sabotaged the plant. And look at who’s been kidnapped now: Lucas Chen, heir to another bioremediation family. The kind of person the dirty-work group would be collecting information on. Don’t you see? It makes perfect sense.” Someone in my family had had me kidnapped. Had put me through all that humiliation and fear and guilt. Had put me in a place where I might have killed somebody. Someone in my family. “Have you heard any more from your friend in county records?”
“More of the same: nothing, nothing, and nothing. She’ll keep checking, but either you didn’t kill him, or someone doesn’t want anyone to know that you did.”
She didn’t say: which is the same thing. It wasn’t.
She stood up, looked at her watch. It was almost time for the shift change. I had a sudden picture of Magyar in my kitchen, making coffee, talking about nothing in particular. I wondered if it would ever happen.
“So, what are you going to do now?” she asked.
“Help you watch Meisener.”
She made an impatient gesture. “Don’t you think you should tell someone what you know? You should take it to the police. You haven’t done anything wrong. Or at least call your father. The poor man thinks you’re dead.”
“I want it to stay that way for a while.”
“You’re punishing him for something you once thought he did. But he hasn’t done anything wrong, either.”
“He’s done plenty. Ignoring problems isn’t that far from creating them.”
“Yes, it is. Especially if he’s trying to fix things now.”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand will not fix anything! And all it would have taken three years ago—three years ago!—was a single sentence. One sentence: ‘I won’t let your mother hurt you again.’ But he didn’t.”
“I don’t know whether he truly tried then or not. But I think he’s trying now. He’s trying to find you.”
“Well, I don’t want to be found.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m ashamed!” Because kittens should be round. Because still sometimes I felt as though I might cast three shadows in a bright light.
From down the corridor came the sound of voices. Some laughter. The sudden slush of a shower.
Magyar gave me a quick, hard hug. It was so fast I hardly realized what she was doing until she let go. “Just think about it. You can always phone in some anonymous information to the police. But you have to do something.”
“We’ll watch Meisener.”
The garden lay fallow. Lore only left the flat when Spanner forced her out to make money. Instead, every time a charity commercial came on the net, Lore downloaded it. After discarding the big, established organizations, she had twenty-three examples. She began to compare: the pitch, the age of the live spokesperson in relation to the charity, the vocabulary used, the background scenery.
She was sure she could create a short commercial at least as good as any of the ones she had seen. But she had no idea which were the most effective in terms of bringing in money.
After some thought, she accessed net archives, downloading charity commercials that were two or three years old. She analyzed them for the same trends she had spotted in the later adverts, then brought up the tax records of those organizations that were still alive enough to be filing.
“It will work,” Lore said, but Spanner was putting on her jacket. “It will,” she went on more calmly. “We have a few minutes before we have to be there. Just sit down and listen.” Spanner zipped up the jacket. She was pulling gloves out of the pockets while Lore talked fast. “Look, you’ve seen what I can do. And you’ve seen the commercials. They can’t afford anything more expensive than library shots with maybe one live head. No interactives. Nothing I can’t handle. True?”
“True.”
“Then all we need is a false account, and maybe twenty seconds break-in time.”
Spanner shook her head. “We can’t even replace our own PIDAs in this climate.”
“We can get an account set up by getting Ruth’s help. She works at the morgue, remember.”
“I hadn’t forgotten. But she’s not likely to help us, not after the film.”
Lore swallowed. “Maybe if we explained…” And there was always that film, with the right head attached to the right body: there was always blackmail.
“And what about breaking into the net transmission? Ruth can’t help us there.”
“No.” Lore tried to smile. “Actually, I was hoping you would be able to think of a way to manage that.”
Spanner frowned. “I suppose… No. The equipment would be too expensive. It wouldn’t be cost-effective.”
“How expensive?”