TWENTY-EIGHT

"All right," said Trader. "Let's consider our current status here."

It was Saturday afternoon, and Genius Squad had gathered around the kitchen table. No one was absent, because no one was on eavesdropping duty. With Amy's computer turned off for the weekend, the bug inside it couldn't be used.

"Cliff and I have discussed the situation," Trader announced, "and we think that measures will have to be taken vis-à-vis this kidnapping attempt. It's going to cause a bit of a problem for us, unless we move fast." He glanced over to where Cliff was sitting. "Care to expand on that, Cliff?"

"Uh, yeah," Cliff rumbled, leaning forward. He looked very tired—and he wasn't the only one. Cadel could hardly keep his eyes open, having been awake since 3 A.M. He had risen early to give himself extra time for trawling through the American systems, which were now shut down for the night.

Cadel worried that he might fall asleep where he sat.

"Okay," said Cliff. "First off, for those who haven't been told, the police are aware of GenoME's plans because Gazo Kovacs has alerted them."

"I think he's alerted them," Cadel amended, stifling a yawn. "I'm not sure yet. When Saul rang me this morning, he didn't go into specifics. He just wanted to know if he could come round at four o'clock. He said it was very important, and it had to do with Prosper English." Cadel shrugged, in a resigned manner. "Maybe he's just going to bawl me out for visiting Gazo yesterday."

"Well, let's assume he wants to tell you about the proposed breakout," said Trader. "We can't be sure about that, because there's no mention of it on the police systems—"

"Which is a good thing," Judith interjected.

"Which is, as you say, a good thing," Trader agreed. "But if Gazo has told the police about GenoME's plan to abduct Prosper, we have to ask ourselves: What happens if the cops now decide to raid the Australian branch? Or arrest Carolina? You can bet Jerry Reinhard has a contingency plan in place."

"He does," Cliff gloomily confirmed. "He has a whole policy document."

"As well as a red button," added Hamish, who was chewing on a piece of Lexi's bubble gum. This gum kept sticking to his braces, but he refused to spit it out. "You know," he said, when he saw Trader frown. "I mean a self-destruct program. To trash all their computer files and slam the door to America."

"Then we have to tackle that program ASAP." Cliff thumped a fist on the tabletop. "God forbid Jerry gets nervous and destroys valuable data."

"You can sabotage a self-destruct program, can't you, Dot?" Trader inquired. "There must be a virus you can install, or something?"

"Oh, sure," Hamish butted in airily. "I can do it myself." As he picked bits of gray goo off the metal in his mouth, Cliff regarded him without expression. Dot sniffed.

Trader turned to Cadel, who was rubbing his eyes.

"Cadel, I need you to find out what the coppers are up to. Since they won't be discussing their plans online, you'll be our only conduit. And we have to know what to expect."

Cadel grunted. It was bad enough lying to Saul Greeniaus about Genius Squad. Pumping the detective for information would be even worse.

"Now what about Carolina's e-mails?" Trader continued, throwing the question at Dot. "Have any more come through?"

Dot was the only squad member who didn't look tired. Her smooth, round, small-featured face was as implacable as ever. She sat like a carved Buddha, calm and solid in her neatly pressed clothes, not a hair out of place.

"There's been nothing in the past few hours," she said. "What came through earlier is still being decoded. But the arrangements for Monday seem to have been finalized."

"With Earl Toffany's input?" Trader sounded hopeful. Dot, however, shook her head.

"Not so far."

"You know, me and Sonja are really overworked," Lexi suddenly complained. Like Hamish, she was chewing gum; her bare feet were propped against the edge of the table, and she was playing fretfully with a rubber band. "There's heaps and heaps of decoding to do—I don't know why Devin or Tony can't take over some of the basic stuff." She directed her next comment at Tony Cheung. "You can decrypt Vigenère ciphers, can't you?" she whined. "It's just a lot of frequency analysis: Anyone can manage that." As he opened his mouth to reply, she plowed on, addressing Trader. "Anyway, I won't be working the whole weekend, that's for sure. I wanna go to the movies, like Devin did."

"You can go to the movies all you want, after Monday," Cliff growled. "Until then, we need to milk those systems as dry as we can." Without waiting for Lexi's protest, he shifted his attention to Sonja. "Anything more on that encrypted American link?" he demanded, and Judith said, "What encrypted American link?"

Cliff had been referring to the mysterious, heavily protected GenoME database discovered the previous day. When reminded of this, and of the ten client names linked to it, Judith smacked her forehead. "Oh, right," she mumbled. "Of course."

"It's-a-challenge," Sonja remarked, using her DynaVox with some difficulty. "It 's-going-to-take-time, getting-in."

"How long, do you think?" Trader queried.

"I-don't-know." There was an extended pause as Sonja struggled with her uncooperative right hand. At last Cadel had to put his own hand over hers and apply a comforting pressure.

"Don't hound her," he said crossly. "She gets really tired."

"I'm not hounding her," Trader said.

"She has to work extra hard, you know. Harder than anyone else. Just sittingthere takes it out of her."

"I'm aware of that, Cadel."

"Anyway, she's been doing stuff for Judith this morning."

Trader blinked, and peered at Judith. "What stuff?" he inquired.

Judith began to chuckle.

"Oh, you'll love this," she said. There followed a ten-minute digression on the subject of Cadel's latest discovery. A series of payments had been made to Fountain Pharmaceuticals by a company in the Cayman Islands. Though this company wasn't the same one receiving money from GenoME's Australian branch, Judith was convinced that the two organizations were closely connected. "They've got a couple of directors in common," she explained. "I'm still working out the exact relationship."

"Well, you'd better hurry up, then." Cliff's tone startled everyone; it was harsh and abrupt. Even Trader stared at him in surprise, prompting Cliff to thump the table again. "If the police decide to raid the Australian branch on Monday, we'll be left high and dry!" he barked, swinging his head from side to side like a bull in a ring. "Rex Austin wants to know what happened to his son, people! That's why we're here! And we might only have a day or so left to find out!"

A chill ran down Cadel's spine. The words "only a day or so left" sounded distinctly ominous to him. He sat up straight, and saw that other people were doing the same. Sonja lurched in her wheelchair, her hand writhing beneath Cadel's.

Trader shot his second-in-command a fierce, narrow-eyed look.

"For god's sake," he hissed, but wasn't allowed to finish. Lexi prevented him.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked Cliff, her chair tipping forward, her feet hitting the floor. "Why do we only have a day or so left? No one told me about any deadlines!"

"You said we'd be working on this project for months," Devin added. And Hamish said, "You're not planning to close Clearview House, are you?"

"No, of course not," Trader hastened to assure them. "What Cliff's trying to say is that we'll find it much harder to complete our mission if the Australian branch shuts down and we don't have access to the American system anymore." His gleaming smile flashed out yet again. Wielding it, he made a solemn promise. "Believe me when I tell you that Genius Squad will continue to exist," he declared, "just as long as GenoME is a going concern."

"Which won't be for much longer," Cadel remarked flatly. "Not if Sonja cracks that database."

He was feeling unsettled, and anxious, and guilty about Sonja—who had dark circles under her eyes. He was also sluggish with fatigue. His early awakening had been preceded by a restless night full of ominous dreams involving poison, jailbreaks, and Prosper English. He didn't want to interrogate Saul. He didn't appreciate being treated like an idiot. And he was beginning to wonder if he'd made a big mistake, coming to Clearview House.

More and more, as the days passed, he sensed that he was being manipulated.

"Haven't you been researching those ten client names I gave you?" he continued, irritated that his last observation had elicited from Trader only a puzzled look. "Jimmy Austin? Jenny Jarvis? Michele Sapone? It's easy enough to run an Internet check. I did it this morning and found six of them. Six names. In about two dozen newspapers." He glanced around the table. "You know why? Because they were all found dead, with severe head injuries—Jimmy Austin included. Though of course they didn't all die in the same place, or at the same time." Something occurred to him. "Which might explain why no one's made the connection before now," he mused.

"Oh my god," said Hamish. Blinking rapidly, he pounced on this tidbit like a kitten on a cockroach. If he'd had any fears about being evicted, Cadel's news had driven them straight out of his head. "So you think those six people might have been murderedby GenoME?"

"Yes," Cadel replied.

"What about the other four? The ones who aren't dead? How are they connected?"

"I don't know," Cadel admitted. "But the database might tell us why, when we finally get into it."

"Cool," said Devin. He, too, had been momentarily distracted from the problem of his own uncertain future. Even Lexi had brightened up.

It was amazing, Cadel thought sourly, how a little blood and gore always raised their spirits.

"Well, this is more like it," said Cliff. "If we can prove that Earl Toffany is a murderer, our job's done."

"Our job's also done if we can prove that Earl Toffany is behind the plan to abduct Prosper English," Trader retorted. "Trouble is, Earl's watching his back. He's delegating his decisions." Dragging his fingers through his hair, Trader let his smile slip sideways. "All we need is evidence of one illegal act that he's been directly involved in. Otherwise he can start blaming subordinates."

"And-that's-not-good-enough-for-Rex-Austin?" Sonja piped up. Whereupon Trader shook his head.

"There's a history between Rex and Earl," he divulged. "Rex is looking for a trophy. He wants Earl's head on a platter. It's personal."

Personal? Cadel sucked air through his teeth at the sound of that word. Destroying a dangerous corporation was one thing; personal vendettas were another. Cadel knew that when things got personal, they got obsessive. And vindictive. And blinkered.

"You told me that Rex Austin wanted to bring down GenoME," he objected, breaking into the discussion. "You didn't say he wanted to bring it down on top of Earl."

Trader's eyebrows climbed his smooth, tanned forehead. Then he made a dismissive gesture.

"Well," he began carelessly, "since we can't really accomplish the first objective without achieving the second—"

"But we can!" Cadel's tone was sharp. "Of course we can! We could almost do it now, with what we've already got." Cadel scanned the faces around him, frustrated that most of them wore bored or puzzled expressions. Only Sonja seemed uncomfortable—but then, Sonja always seemed uncomfortable. (She was continuously fighting with her own limbs, after all.) "If we crack that database, and it shows that those six dead people were murdered by GenoME, what's our plan if Earl isn't implicated? Keep digging?" As Trader opened his mouth to reply, Cadel added, "Suppose GenoME kills somebody else in the meantime?"

"Listen, son." All at once Cliff took over. He held up a hand, to stop Trader from muscling in. "It's not a matter of what we decide to do. It's a matter of what Rex Austin wants us to do. He's the one paying us, so he calls the shots. Understand?"

The implication hanging in the air was that if Cadel didn't like it, he could always leave. Trader must have sensed this, because he intervened quickly.

"Not that we don't value your input," Trader insisted, crinkling his crow's-feet at Cadel in a reassuring display of advocacy. "God knows, we wouldn't have come this far without you. And of course, if we uncover any indications that GenoME's going to commit murder, then the police will be told about it."

"Yes, but—"

"We're not going to let GenoME get away with anything, believe me." Trader's indulgent little laugh grated on Cadel's nerves. "That's the whole point of this operation."

"Yes, but what about us?" Cadel snapped. "You said that Rex Austin has a personal grudge against Earl Toffany. Well, that's his business. But is it ours?" Ignoring Sonja's garbled attempt to intervene (her DynaVox squawked "cat," for some reason), Cadel clutched the edge of the table with white-knuckled fingers. "I mean, exactly how far would Rex Austin be willing to go to get his revenge? And how far would you be willing to go to satisfy him? Because it might be a lot further than I'm comfortable with."

The silence that followed was so taut—so tense—that everyone jumped like rabbits when the alarm sounded. Trader glanced at his watch. Cadel cursed under his breath.

"Four o'clock, on the dot," Trader said dryly. "That copper of yours is certainly reliable."

Reliable. It was another loaded word, and it snagged Cadel's attention. He sat for a moment, lost in thought.

Saul was reliable, all right. He was a man to be relied on.

Unlike Trader Lynch.

"Well, go on." Trader was unusually abrupt, as if slightly disconcerted by Cadel's absentminded air. "You'd better talk to him, don't you think? Before he calls in a SWAT team?"

"Yeah." Cadel stood up. "Yeah, I'll go and talk to him."