Generation of Liars (27 page)

I clasped the hooks on my bra while
standing in the center of my bedroom. The space around me was filled with blue
moonlight spilling in from the thin curtains. “I still don’t see where pulling
me out of bed in the middle of the night fits into this.”

“Here’s where you come in. Motley
wants to make sure that none of the geeks are on his tail, and for you to show
up and throw them off his scent if they are, and even if they aren’t, he just
wants you to screw with the nerds. We’re too close to the finish line now to
let some geeks in glasses muck it up.”

I stood in front of the closet,
pressing hangered shirts up against my body, tossing the rejected ones onto a
pile on the floor. “Rabbit, don’t I get enough face time with nerds hanging out
with you all the time? Isn’t there some kind of quota for this?”

“Alice, quit it.”

“Alright. Where do I find these
geeks?”     

“They’re congregating at a lounge
on rue Juliette Dodu in fifteen minutes.”

I clicked Rabbit off without saying
goodbye and twisted my physique into a pair of striped mini shorts and clunky
mud-green military boots. I selected a black halter top with threads of shimmer
worked into the fabric. In the bathroom mirror, I piled on thick black eyeliner
and swiped a healthy coat of iridescent blue shadow on my eyelids.

*   
*    *

I got off at the Colonel Fabien
metro
stop and found my way to the bar on foot. It was past midnight and the streets
of Paris were clad with bohemian-looking men, starving artists starved of all
but alcohol and beautiful women. The women, all instinctively clad in scarves
and stilettos, sipped cognac from glasses the size of thumbs, as their
silhouettes shined elegantly beneath the candescent light of café windows. The
streets were serenaded with whispers of accordion music as if to a movie
soundtrack.

The doorway to the bar on Rue
Juliette Dodu was choked with people. I stepped inside, where apparitions of
smoke from clove cigarettes existed all around me. A quick sweep with my eyes
concluded that the club was filled with twenty-somethings, looking like recent
university graduates, likely travelling through Paris on the backbreaking
mattresses of cheap hostels. No sign of the nerds yet.

I bounced my shoulders along to the
techno beat that was pumping though speakers on the wall and told myself that
maybe tonight’s job wouldn’t suck. Already, it was better than playing
accountant at Cibix
World Boring Headquarters
. I settled at the bar and
asked the bartender for a cognac.

I had just taken my first sip when
a slender man in a gray suit, wearing eyeglasses held together with tape, and a
laptop case poised in the crook of his arm, dodged in through the doorway and
headed straight for the back of the club. I slinked off my stool and followed
him to a table, where five guys were already seated. They all had laptops open
in front of them. Well, actually, all but one of them. This other guy looked
like an outlier and he was using a notepad and pencil to jot down notes. He had
on an argyle sweater vest and pinstriped pants, and he had black spiky hair
that was made notable by a streak of spearmint green running through it. I told
myself that he was probably Skip Hask, the reporter Rabbit had told me about.

I strutted over to the table. “Hey,
boys? Is this a closed meeting or can anybody play?”

Five sets of eyes were now
contemplating me. The glare from laptop screens made everyone’s eyes shine
ultramarine blue. The guy with the taped glasses who I had followed to the
table cleared his throat. “This isn’t a video game convention,” he informed me.
“There is no such thing as playing here. This is serious business.”

I pulled over a spare chair and
planted it backwards-facing and straddled my legs around it. “I know all about
serious business. I’m here for the hacker’s convention.”

They all laughed. “You’re not a
hacker,” insisted the man with the taped glasses.

“Yeah, you’re not one of us,”
another one agreed, but this guy was cooler, nicely dressed with a Rolex
strapped to his wrist. “If you’re a hacker, where’s your laptop?”

I tapped a finger to my head. “It’s
all up here. I don’t need a machine to play.”

Skip finally said something, well,
the guy I had pegged as Skip. With the clichéd pencil tucked behind his ear and
ink-stained fingers, what else could this guy be but a hungry reporter? “Okay,
if you’re the real deal, then why don’t you tell us what you know?”

I cleared my throat and announced
with pomp, “What I know is that you’re all desperately looking for the dynamite
stick.” At the mere mention of the sacred object, they all locked their eyes on
me and I knew I had their attention. “Of course, you all have your individual
reasons for wanting to get your hands on the dynamite stick. Some of you think
finding it will lead to millions of dollars, Steve-Jobs-level notoriety, and
girls all up on your modems. Others among you just love the thrill of the
chase. You’re in it purely for the love of the hack.” I swore that I saw the
geek sporting the nice watch lick his lips. “But more importantly, I know that
you’re all totally off track.”

“Off track?” asked one of the
geeks. He had unwashed hair and bad skin.

The one with the taped glasses
folded his fingers into a temple. “Elaborate,” he instructed me.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said,
leaning my body into the table, “we compare notes, share what we know, and then
I’ll let you guys know just how wrong you are about everything. My name is
Alice, by the way.”

“Alright, Alice, you can stay,” the
man in the glasses ordained. “My name is Paul.”

They went around introducing
themselves and I met, Lars, the well-dressed software developer by day, hacker
by night, who had a love of designer watches. Next was Chris, he was an Art
History major studying a semester in Paris, but really he was more interested
in manipulating history with his computer than studying it. The one named Evan
was the only one polite enough to offer to buy me a drink. He was
twenty-seven-years old and lived in a skyscraper in Bon, but had acne like a
freshman.

“What about you?” I asked with my
eyes pinned on the reporter.

“I’m Skip Hask.” His figure was as
slim as a sheet of paper and the sprig of neon green cutting into his jet black
hair gave him an otherworldly appearance. “I’m here on behalf of
Zipped
Magazine.”

I shook the ice cubes in my glass
and responded, “A writer, how fascinating.”

“A journalist,” he corrected.

“I think I’ve browsed a few issues
of
Zipped
, it’s mostly a web 2.0 kind of technology magazine. You cover
topics like iPod upgrades and patches for your PC, right?”

“Yeah, we cater to a tech-minded
audience.”

“What publications did you write
for before you starting working at
Zipped
, Mr. Hask?”

“Mostly freelance.”

 “Freelance? Sounds riveting.
Have you always written for technology publications, or do you do a full
spectrum?”

“I have done features for
National
Geographic
,
TIME
, the
Atlantic
, and shamefully, even some of
the gossip rags. My most read piece was a feature for
The Daily Mail
, an
enthralling
exposé
on how much Angelina Jolie
and Brad Pitt pay their dog walker. It wasn’t exactly Pulitzer caliber, but
whatever pays the rent, right?”

Our eyes locked and neither of us
said anything. Skip sensed I didn’t trust him, and he was equally as suspicious
of me. We both stuck out like sore thumbs among the nerds
.

Paul pushed his glasses onto the
bridge of his nose. “Okay, guys,” he said, “if I wanted to chitchat I would
have logged onto a Dungeons & Dragons forum. There are important matters to
discuss tonight.” Everyone at the table nodded in agreement. I settled in my
chair, sliding back and crossing my legs. The job tonight was simple, I would
just make sure they weren’t on Motley’s trail and that they had no real lead on
the hands the dynamite stick had changed into. I would throw them off and make
them think the dynamite stick was myth. If they leaked anything that looked
like they were heading in the right direction, I would steer them away with
bogus intel. Bogus, but believable intel. I liked to think that I was
proficient enough with the dynamite stick to weave a believable lie. Definitely
I knew more about it than anyone sitting at the table, considering I had held
it in my very own hands.

I would watch the so-called reporter
closely, too, since he was American, and as a rule, I distrusted Americans. A
liar only had one reason for cooking up reporter’s credentials and using
hackers as a source for a so-called story. My guess about Skip Hask was that he
was a shill. He was after the dynamite stick for himself and probably published
dis-information in his articles to throw everyone else off and get the disk
himself.

The longer I listened to the geeks
drone on, it only confirmed that the hackers were all off track. Lars was building
a complicated bug that traced library books with any mention of the Social
Security Administration, in order to trace back to people with a high level of
interest in the topic in the days leading to the November Hit. He thought it
possible that the hackers who created the virus might be the same people who
created the dynamite stick. The best Evan had going was a theory that the data
contained on the stick wasn’t in the English language at all, but was possibly
Russian. He built this huge translation application that was devastatingly
useless.

Skip got up from the table and
announced he needed a drink. I followed him. I wedged into him as closely as I
could at the crowded bar. “So, I bet your editor back home is chomping at the
bit for this stuff?” I asked him over the chatter of the bar.

He gave me a look usually reserved
for pesky house flies. “Not really. The dynamite stick is fringe theory. It’s
like a digital Big Foot. Sure it has an audience, but mostly it’s the lure of
the lore. People love legends, you know what I mean?”

“Well, I’m a believer in the
dynamite stick, and while I think it’s legendary, I don’t think it’s a legend.”
Skip handed the bartender money and scooped up his vodka tonic and started
heading back to the table. I placed myself in front of him. “Hey, you don’t
offer to buy a lady a drink too? Where are your manners, Mr. Reporter?”

He rolled his eyes and turned his
heels back to the bar. “What are you having?”

“Rum and coke.” I put my elbows
down on the bar and leaned into him. “
Mmm
, good old American Coca Cola.
I miss it like I miss apple pie and football games. Hey, you’re American,
right, Skip?”

“Obviously, Alice.” He gave me a
nasty sidelong glance and relayed my order to the bartender. The bartender
handed it to him and he turned around and handed it to me. I took one fast sip
and then fell forward, quite intentionally, over a barstool and splashed the
drink all over Skip’s argyle sweater vest.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”
hollered Skip.

I bit my lip, projecting a Bambi-like
shyness in my eyes. “I’m so sorry,” I lied.

Skip looked down at his dripping
shirt, an inglorious snarl taking shape on his lips, and began scanning the
corners of the club for the men’s restroom. Spotting it, he started digging his
way through the crowded bar, and I aggressively, yet discreetly, crept behind
him. I let him go into the bathroom first and waited a minute before swinging
open the door and charging inside.

Skip was curled over the sink,
vigorously blotting the spots on his sweater with a paper towel when he watched
me burst into the bathroom. The bathroom was dank and it probably contained a
case of hepatitis waiting to happen. I grabbed a frayed janitor’s broom that
was propped up against one of the urinals and slid it across the door jamb to
prevent the door from being opened from the other side.

“What are you doing in here, Alice?
This is a men’s bathroom. Why are you fudging the door like that?”

I coolly swayed over to him and
noticed that we were the same height, about
five
feet and five inches.
Not that height mattered, since I
had the distinct advantage of powerhouse training by David Xad.
“Because
I need to talk to you in private,” I replied. “You aren’t who say you are,
Skippy.” I noticed that his face went a little pale and I didn’t think it was
the ghoulish lighting in the bathroom. I pushed my face into his, and let my
fingers play with his shirt buttons. “You’re not a reporter. So tell me who you
really are and what you want with those nerds?”

“I am a reporter,” he said, shooing
my hands away from his buttons. “Well, at least I
was
a reporter, until
my editor caught me plagiarizing.”

I hoisted my butt up onto the sink
and lit a cigarette. I offered one to Skip. “Tell me what happened.”

He slid the cigarette from my
fingers and bit it between his teeth. “I just did, that’s pretty much all there
is to the story.”

“Okay, so you got caught
plagiarizing, which means it was a good thing when your Social Security number
got smashed by the November Hit, right? Without a tainted reputation to follow
you, you can write under a different name. Freedom of the press for sure.”

“Yeah, except it’s not easy like
that. I didn’t really plagiarize anything. I think my editor got scared into
accusing me of it by some government goons.”

“What did government goons want
with a hipster reporter?”

Skip laughed. It was a despondent
laugh, a traumatized laugh, and he shook his head like he was still in
disbelief over whatever it was that happened to him. “I guess I got a little
too close for comfort on a particular story. It wasn’t bad enough that I got
unfairly canned for plagiarizing, but then I got a call from the feds, you
know, the spooks.”