“Bollocks! Why, I’m more likely to have given the game away than the computer’s DS. It’s programmed to self-destruct before anyone can tamper with it” “Then what if someone hacked into it and re-programmed it?” DeVore gave a laugh of disbelief. “No. They’d have to be some kind of super-genius to do that!” “Right! The kind of super-genius who’d not worry about losing thirty billion in an hour just to stop you.”
“And the rest? Are you saying that he’s behind it all? The bungled assassinations? The mistimed bombs?” Wyatt smiled. “Thaf d be my guess.” “Then who the fuck is he? And why don’t we know him?” “Maybe we do. Maybe he was one of those guys you killed in the apartment building.”
“No. They were just messengers. Hackers. Else they’d have covered their tracks a damn sight better than they did.”
“You should have kept one of them alive. Then you could have tortured him. Found out what he knew.” “Maybe. But I didn’t have time.” “Thaf s not like you, Howard.”
DeVore shrugged, then said casually, “No ...” But he was thinking, No. But I won’t make the same mistake twice. I’tt make sure I take my time over you, my erstwhile friend. Ill make sure I rack you well and good. He laughed. “Do you recall that fat Chink I introduced you to ... Wang Sau Leyan?”
Wyatt turned, a faint amusement in his eyes. “The one who liked fucking Western women two at a time?”
“Thafs him. I had him tortured. He owed me money. Arrogant bastard wouldn’t pay me. Said I’d have to wring it from him. So I did. His brothers were furious - wanted me dead. So I racked them, too. All four of the fuckers in one room. Sang like a choir.” “And the money?”
“Oh, fuck the money. I had more fun than I’d had for a long time. Had to dump them when I’d finished, mind. Couldn’t let them loose to tell the tale, could P” “No,” Wyatt said, looking away thoughtfully. “No.” There was a knock on the partition between them and the driver’s seat. DeVore opaqued it “News from the tower, sir. It seems the shuttle’s due down any moment.”
They felt the rumble. As DeVore opaqued the outer windows of the glide, they saw - far off to their right, almost a mile away - the shuttle descending on a point of flame.
“There,” DeVore said, grinning suddenly. “There he is.”
“Who?” Wyatt asked, intrigued.
But DeVore merely smiled. “Just wait and see.”
THE MARRIAGE OF THE LIVING DARK
Joseph stepped out from the lobby of the Tung Chan Building and stepped into his glide, which hovered five centimetres above the surface of the transit pad. It was a fairly modest machine; enough to confirm his status as a top financier, but not grand enough to mark him as a player.
Which was exactly how he wanted it, for the idea was to blend in, not to stand out That was how he’d evaded notice all these years. As the glide lifted and he relaxed back into his seat, Joseph recalled his first sight of DeVore.
He had not gone there to see DeVore, but to get a glimpse of his genetic father, Wyatt To try and discover just what kind of man Wyatt was. And there, standing right next to Wyatt, talking to a group of leading businessmen, was DeVore. He had sensed at once that there was something wrong. The man was charming - he went out of his way to be charming - but Joseph could see the brutality that lay beneath every gesture.
Certain that he was imagining it, he had wandered away. But later in the evening he had come across DeVore in one of the corridors leading off the central hall, speaking quietly to one of his minions, such casual threat in his voice that Joseph had felt a small ripple of fear run up his spine. He had said nothing. He had not even let on that he’d seen a thing. But that brief glimpse of DeVore had intrigued him enough to want to know a little more about this man who was his father’s constant companion. Alarm bells had rung almost instantly. One could not make a computer query without triggering counter-queries of the “Who wants to know?” variety. Which was when he began to get devious, and to use those skills he had been born with: the ability to take a system - any system - and turn it inside out DeVore had never known. He hadn’t even guessed. Until tonight But now he would be looking for him.
The thought of that ought to have chilled him, for he knew exactly what DeVore was capable of, but sitting there he felt a strange confidence in his own abilities. Besides, he had his “coat”.”Daniel. .. turn on the news for me, will you? Channel 96.” At once the wavering light of the screen filled the back of the glide.
First up was the latest on the business at the Eight Dragons Hotel. The Americans, it seemed, were vigorously denying reports that President Newell had been shot, but the President himself hadn’t been seen now for almost four hours. The dead woman had now been identified as Susan Callaghan, an “escort”, while reports from Washington revealed intense activity there, with Vice President Wetton arriving at the White House for an unscheduled meeting with senior aides. Bad, Joseph thought, yet without his intervention it could have been so much worse. Wetton would have been dead, yes, and half his cabinet. And then the Generals would have been in charge and war would have been a certainty. A war that, on top of the economic collapse DeVore had triggered, would have wiped out ninety-five per cent of humanity.
It was hard to imagine any man wanting that. Which was why Joseph had developed his pet theory. That DeVore was not, in fact, a man. A fact he could not prove, yet which seemed to be borne out by the record. For he could find no trace that DeVore had ever been born. Oh, there were strong indications that the man was in his forties, but no specific date was given for his birth. Not only that, but the man seemed to have been in his forties now for well on forty years.
Stranger yet was something he had stumbled upon one rainy afternoon three years back.
Idly trawling the web for new information, Joseph had come upon the file of a man - one of DeVore’s employees - who seemed familiar to him. It was some facial characteristic that had made him sit forward and frown at the screen. It wasn’t, of course, who he thought it was, but the idea that one might perhaps trawl the historical record for a specific face -DeVore’s face - occurred to him in that instant Over the following week he had written a programme that would do just that And then he’d let it run.
The results were astonishing. Not one or two, but hundreds of sightings, going back over not eighty years, but close on eight hundred, the oldest of them a figure in Piero della Francesca’s painting, The Recognition of the True Cross, which was painted no later than 1460.
It was possible, of course, that these faces were simply similar. Were the natural result of genetics. Until one started to place them side by side and saw the unchanging nature of them. They were never young, never old. And always - always - there was that look in the eyes: that cold brutality that contradicted the smiling lips.
Which raised the question: could a man live eight hundred years and never age? On the screen the news ran on. Joseph blinked then sat forward slightly, suddenly attentive again.
“... have confirmed that the starship is of human construction and manned by a human crew, but as yet no one has claimed ownership of the craft...” Joseph cut in, speaking to his AI. “When did this happen?” “An hour back,” the computer answered him. “If s currently in geostationary orbit immediately above Beijing. A shuttle from the craft touched down at Tientsin spaceport two minutes back” Joseph nodded thoughtfully. “When you know anything more, let me know.” He raised a hand. At once the sound from the news screen began again.