Downfall (25 page)

W
E WILL SOON KNOW ENOUGH
for the fish to snap at the bait,” Mila said. “The big fish. Now let us see the little fish.” We sat in a car parked a few blocks from Lafayette Park in Pacific Heights. Glenn
Marchbanks’s
new house was two streets away.

Mila dialed the phone.

“Hello, Audrey? You do not know me, but I am a friend of Glenn’s. And I have come across disturbing information about him that might be of interest to you.” A pause. “It concerns your father.”

She held the phone up so I could hear.

“What about my father?” Audrey Marchbanks didn’t sound like she’d had a restful, peaceful night.

“About some business dealings Glenn had that contributed to your father’s downfall in business,” Mila said.

The shock in her voice was clear. “My dad…I don’t understand. Who are you?”

“My name is…Lucy,” Mila said with a glance at me. As if she’d just plucked a name out of the ether and decided to use that of my former wife. “Glenn is out of town, yes? Without a convincing explanation?”

“Yes…” she said slowly.

“I felt as his wife, as Mr. Standish’s daughter, you should know the man you married.”

“I…I do know Glenn. Is this some kind of joke?”

“I will be in Lafayette Park for the next ten minutes. I am blonde and wearing a black turtleneck. I will be sitting on a bench near the children’s playground. Come see me if you want to know the truth.”

Audrey Standish Marchbanks hung up the phone. We headed to the park.

Five minutes later, I saw Audrey leave her house, start the hike up the hill toward the park.

“I feel bad for her,” I said.

“I do not. Stupidity is not to be celebrated. Are you ready?”

Yes. I had lockpicks, I had a flash drive loaded with a decryption program.

I went my way, Mila went hers. I walked right past Audrey. She didn’t even glance at me, her face full of concern and worry and fear.

H
OLLY?”
AUDREY SOUNDED PANICKED.

“Yes, what?” Holly glanced at Belias.

“I just got a phone call…from some woman I don’t know, claiming that Glenn was involved in ruining my dad.” Her voice broke. “I want to know where Glenn is right now. You know, don’t you?”

“Audrey, I don’t. I promise you I don’t know where he is. This woman, who is she?”

“She said she would meet me in Lafayette Park, and I’m going there right now.”

“Wait, I can be there in a few minutes. Don’t go to see her without me.” Holly gestured madly at Belias for the car keys. He grabbed a gun, tucked it under his jacket, and they both hurried down the stairs.

“Wait for me,” Holly pleaded.

“You know, I don’t think I will,” Audrey said, and she hung up the phone.

Holly got into her car, Belias in the passenger seat, and she explained to him as she roared north on Valencia toward Pacific Heights. There was little traffic on a Saturday and she blasted through two red lights.

“This woman…” Belias said. “Did she mention if she had a slight Eastern European accent?”

“You think it’s the same woman who called the Rostovs?”

“We’re being played. I think maybe Sam found out more than we thought he did and maybe he’s being played, too.”

“Kill them.” The ferocity in her voice surprised her. “We have to kill them all or they’ll expose us.” She gripped the wheel.

“And by all do you include Audrey?” Belias asked.

A chill settled along Holly’s spine. “No, you don’t need to hurt her. Audrey knows nothing; she’s not a smart person.”

“This isn’t up for discussion,” he said. “You park over by
Audrey’s
house. Wait, and when she comes back, you go inside with her. I’ll call you and tell you what to do. If they’re telling her about the network…”

“You can’t want me to kill her!”

“She stole your husband, Holly, and if they tell her about us, she’ll send you to prison. I should think you’d be eager.”

“I…I won’t.”

“You and I made an agreement.”

Holly felt sweat inch down her spine, but her hands felt chilled.

G
LENN MARCHBANKS HADN’T DOWNSIZED
after he left his wife and children. Pacific Heights homes are grand, big for the second most densely populated city in America. The house he’d picked had a gate with a lock (opened in less than thirty seconds) and a rather ornate doorway. A small plaque next to the doorbell informed visitors this home had once been a diplomatic residence for a small European country.

I opened the door. There was an alarm pad near the front but no warning chime. Which meant Audrey, just walking up to Lafayette Park, hadn’t bothered to set the alarm. Excellent.

I knew he’d keep any secrets about Belias and the network away from Audrey’s eyes, no matter how incurious her gaze might be.

I hurried upstairs, found guest rooms for Peter and Emma (decorated too cheerfully with photos of the unsmiling kids and their smiling stepmother, Audrey might have been trying too hard) and a master bedroom. No safe like the one at the Marchbankses’ house in Tiburon. I tried the other door.

Study, hello.

Glenn’s desk was a Victorian affair with locks on the drawers and a roll top that locked as well. The view looked out over the hills and the sweep of San Francisco Bay, gray and blue in the bright Saturday sun.

I pulled a lockpick and worked the top drawer. Fast. If Mila couldn’t keep Audrey in her flytrap and she returned, I’d just have to run, bolt, and hope that my description never crossed the desk of Detective DeSoto.

Inside was a Glock with an attached silencer and three prepaid phones. And a laptop.

I powered up the laptop, slipped in a flash drive that would assault the log-in password until it broke.

While I tried to crack the laptop, I started checking the prepaid phones.

Nothing on the first two phones. On the third, a text discussion sent to a number with a Las Vegas area code:

There was no final reply.

The same deal.
I tucked the phone into my jacket. I waited on the laptop. Mila buzzed me to say Audrey was in the park, waiting anxiously for her mysterious caller, alone.

Ten minutes later, the laptop cracked. I searched the files rapidly. There is an art to scanning a computer and not leaving a trace that you were there. If Glenn Marchbanks was dead, sooner or later this would come out and the police would be here, searching for the truth about his disappearance and demise. There would be media attention. And I had no interest in tying myself to that attention.

I found the e-mails between him and Rostov, but I already knew about those. I deleted them.

No list of people in Belias’s network. And no reference to Belias.

No, if he was planning a rebellion, then there had to be something. Some trace of his actions. He was trying to reach out to a scattered network of the powerful and influential, only united and linked by one man…

One man. Belias was the hub, much like Mila was for the Round Table.

What had Belias said in the dark of Diana’s friend’s house:
I hack human lives
. It was an odd, grandiose boast to make, and it stuck in my mind because at least with Glenn and Holly Marchbanks it seemed true. I did a search for
hack
.

The result was a file called
HACKERS
. A list of hacker names, people who had not been caught by the authorities. CyberPeasant. Dragon44. Venjanz. Newspaper clippings, profiles in technology magazines, speeches at hacker conventions about these unknowns. They were suspected of being responsible for powerful computer worms, destructive viruses, and more. CyberPeasant was dead, thought to be a suicide in Kazakhstan or murdered by someone who’d found out who he was and didn’t like him. Dragon44 and Venjanz—vengeance, was that what it was supposed to sound like?—remained at large. Authorities suspected Dragon44 was based in Russia, given the IP addresses of where he had launched a serious attack against Swiss banking servers.

Venjanz’s file only listed a name: Vasili Andreivich Borodin.

I thought again about Belias saying he didn’t like Russians. This was a Russian name.

Was Belias one of these hackers? If he was, then I was dealing with probably the smartest adversary I’d yet encountered. One with very grand ambitions. Who’d moved from taking control of computers to taking control of people and perhaps more.

L
AFAYETTE PARK STOOD
on the crest of a hill. The “sides” of the park were a gentle rise from the surrounding streets. A playground, a large grove of majestic trees, people giving their dogs a bit of sport on the grass.

Mila watched Audrey sit down on a bench near the playground, glancing around. Clutching her phone.

“Sam, are you in?” she said into her own phone.

“Yes. You’re not with Audrey?”

“I am making her wait so you have more time. She looks upset. I think she’s about to run.”

“Then talk to her.”

Mila hurried up the incline of the hill toward the park. She waved at Audrey; Audrey caught her eye and stopped a few feet away from the bench.

“Hello, Mrs. Marchbanks,” Mila said. “Thank you for meeting me. I’m sorry I was late. It is so hard to find a parking spot in this city.”

“Who are you?” Audrey asked.

Behind Mila, Belias got out of Holly’s car. He watched Mila and Audrey begin to speak, and the car that had let him out pulled away and turned onto Pacific Avenue, heading toward the Marchbankses’ house.

He knew Audrey Marchbanks; he’d posed as a guest at her wedding, claiming to be a former coworker of Glenn’s, but he’d made sure not to meet Audrey. It had been a rather large affair for a second wedding; the bride had gotten what she wanted. He’d felt sorry for Holly the entire time, who would no doubt hear of the affair’s grandeur, and even worse for Peter and Emma, who looked like they’d rather be anywhere else than feting the woman who’d helped shatter their family. Audrey, from his observations, struck him as not very bright, and he wondered why Glenn had taken such a step down from Holly, who approached perfection.

The other woman. Petite. And almost as if she sensed danger, she turned as he approached them, a smile wide on his face. He wished he could shoot her in the head. She had been the one that forced him to kill Roger. He hadn’t gotten a clear look at her face in the darkened room, but he was sure it was her.

“Hello, Audrey.” He nodded at the other woman. “Is this woman bothering you?”

“Who are you?” Audrey asked.

“I work with Glenn. Security consultant.” He slipped her a business card; being a security consultant was a steady cover for him. He nodded toward the smaller woman. “This woman has been attempting to blackmail various executives at Vallon Marchbanks. Go home, Audrey, I’ll deal with her.”

The smaller woman looked like she was about to speak, but instead she smiled. “I would be very careful with this man, Audrey. Don’t be alone with him. He turns on those he’s supposed to help.”

He felt a tickle of rage at her words.
You made me kill Roger
, he thought.
You made me kill my first real friend.

“I’m going to call the police now.” Audrey pulled her phone from her jacket pocket.

“Do that and you’ll never learn what your husband did to your father,” the woman said.

Audrey froze.

“You suspected, didn’t you? That he somehow had a hand in your father’s ruination? Yet you married him. People are so complicated. At least the selfish ones are.” Her voice was a knife.

“It’s not true, what you’re saying; it’s not true.” Audrey turned and ran away from both of them. The moment she was out of the picture it was as if she had never been in it, the first pawn taken off the chessboard.

“I bet she doesn’t call the police,” the woman said. “She’s worried about him but she’s more worried she’ll lose her golden life.”

Belias thought,
Her voice. She called the Russians in New York. She’s betraying Sam Capra. And saying she can give me to the
Rostovs
.

“I think you’re right.” A ball rolled between them, rescued by a toddler who picked it up and held it close to his chest, blinking up brightly at the two of them. His apologetic mother pulled him out of the narrow gap between them, smiling, cooing, saying she was sorry, he was just so fast.

Neither spoke until the mother was ten feet away.

“Nice touch to have the business card handy,” the woman said.

“What do you want?” Belias said.

“You, walking away. Leaving Sam alone.”

“Ah. Me away from him. Not offering him a job.”

“You killed your last partner. Odd you’d want to offer Sam work.”

“I didn’t want to kill Roger,” Belias said. “You forced me.”

“Are you going to try to kill me?” The woman looked almost amused.

“In a crowded park? No. Plus, I find revenge to be quite overrated. If I kill you, it will be for a better reason.”

“Then perhaps we walk away from each other, and neither endures further losses. I stay away from Audrey, you stay away from Sam. He has a job.”

He could not help but smile. He was going to enjoy destroying her. “And you are what? A charity?”

“No.”

“Hired muscle?”

“You could say.”

“Sam is useful to you, isn’t he?” Belias said, a knife in the tone that the woman couldn’t miss.

Mila could see Belias wanted to kill her. He could try. She thought she could kill him with a single blow to the voice box—deliver the punch and run. He’d stumble, clawing at his throat, choking, and people wouldn’t think it was murder. They’d think he was having a seizure. She could walk away very quickly, vanish.

But she needed him alive right now. If he was dead, then the network was lost. And there were too many people around. Everyone had a camera these days. So annoying.

Belias almost smiled at her. And then he turned and walked away.

Mila’s earpiece crackled into life. “Umm, she’s trying to kill me,” Sam said evenly.