2

A basso profundo rumble assaulted Con’s ear. He jerked the receiver away slightly, no desire to inflict Vlad’s full baritone barrage on himself quite so early in the afternoon.

 “Feeling happy about yourself? Pleased with your crass, unfeeling, scum sucking drudge robot existence? Aah, but you too can change. Enlightenment and riches like mine can be yours,” Vlad’s machine told Con in after-smoking-three-packs-of-Camels mode, “and you too can become a warm, kind, caring human being like me. Yes, if you want to know my secret, send me a nice crisp C-note stuffed in an envelope — I don’t take credit, I’m a cash kinda guy...”

 Beeep.

 Con’s turn:

 Softly, softly, catchee Cossack.

 “Hello Vlad...? Anyone there...? Speak now or for ever hold your piece...”

 Vladimir Myshkin.

 Vlad the Impaler.

 Come on old friend, confound the universe for once, pick the sucker up...

 “Okay Vlad, you’re not home yet. Either that or you’re playing The Hunt for Red October in the bath again. Now put your sorely abused periscope down and listen up — we’re back; drove up from Bakersfield this morning. God, what a twenty-four karat Triple-A rated dump that hole is. We came the long way around, always did want to see Taos, New Mexico. The news is good Vlad, very very good. We’re still on for five-thirty and I’m already here.”

 He sneaked a glance at his UTC watch: four thirty-one; that gave him fifty-nine minutes.

 “I’m staying at the Ho Fat Hotel, up on the left toward the Broadway tunnel. Same latitude as the Cop Shop, give or take. The number’s five six two and four fat matrioshkas, just the way you like ‘em; eighty-eight eighty-eight, a most auspicious number for a Chinese hotel Vlad, and a very good omen for us too. So get your arse in gear my son, we have business to discuss. Call me here or leave a message at the Fat Ho’s. I’m in Kelly’s eye and leg’s eleven — room one-eleven — got it? Nostrovya!”

 Vlad had gotten into the habit of never picking up. At this point in Vlad’s life it had become both a matter of principle and of survival on his part. He changed his telephone greetings every other month.

 Over the years they’d always made Con smile, but he’d long ceased commenting whenever he called, which had only been once during the past year. Essential to keep everything face to face or vanilla: telephones, faxes, the internet, even the US Postal Service — none could be trusted. Nothing was safe any more, no such thing as privacy, and he’d promised himself no trails, no more unnecessary risks.

 The interference greetings served Vlad well, this latest not nearly as bad as his previous incantations. At least the ‘motherfucking’ and ‘goddam motherfucking’ pleasantries had gone.

 Jesus, the old bugger must be going soft, he thought.

 Con had called Vlad to remind him of their meet from a payphone at the back of Vesuvios, an old beatnik hangout and one of Con’s regular haunts at Broadway and Columbus, right opposite Toscas. Which would be his next port of call for one of their moreish brandy and chocolate-spiked cappuccinos if Vlad failed to show in the next two hours.

 There, or maybe Mr. Bing’s, a few doors down the hill toward the Transamerica Pyramid, a no frills Chinese dive he could be sure to lose himself in among the manic mah jong and dice players.

 The night was young, after all.

 He’d been away far too long and he wanted to check out the action in the Beach. He felt, knew, he deserved a little R ’n’ R.

 Con thought of San Francisco as a town.

 In essence, it was — just ask anyone who’s ever lived there awhile. Forty-nine square miles and a core population of eight hundred thousand, uncanny how often you bump into faces (in Vlad’s case, faeces) you might know.

 Especially those you are trying to avoid.

 Always those you are trying to avoid.

 Just ask Vlad.

 If you can find him.

 But Con was convinced Vlad would show; that was a given. His old friend now had little choice in the matter.

¥ ¥ ¥ ¥

 Vlad didn’t know it, but he was soon about to meet the other half of the human tesseract Con had assembled for the job destined to go down in modern criminal history as the grandmother of all robberies. Vlad wasn’t committed yet, and he couldn’t read Con’s intentions. But Con was confident of his last conscript, cornered into playing an inevitable forced hand.

 The definitive walk-through of the plan was set up for noon the following day. Decision time fast approached for them all. Only one chance opened in Con’s timeline and he wasn’t about to let any of them miss their predestined window.

 Not now.

 Not ever.

 His orchestrated attack was designed to destroy neXus ability to process its half a billion and growing daily currency transactions.

 Like a slow burn China Syndrome, a fastpath global corewalker, once he initiated the first strike the viral meltdown would be unstoppable.

 No bank would be safe.

 No system would be immune.

 It would be a fait accompli over the course of exactly four hours; a cascading worldwide financial seismic wave engulfing the tiniest of small town ATMs and stores right on up to the largest multinational banks, monetary institutions and u-commerce sites.

 And while crippling neXus alone would have been more than enough for Con, his own repeated computer modelling had reinforced his conviction that success in this endeavour might gift him that most ironic of prizes — the chance to observe at first hand a mechanism so mysterious and exquisite that he believed it embodied within itself the very hand of the Divine:

 Chaos Theory.

 Con had no doubt.

 neXus AWOL from the world economy would have unpredictable, perhaps catastrophic, consequences for the remaining still-functioning global card payments systems.

 Certainly, some of the major players would initially prosper; but most would be swamped with dormant customers, their capacity designs largely unable to cope with random demand spikes generated by over a billion and a half angry cardholders defecting en masse from the vacuum that neXus would become.

 If his luck held, if the divine comedy played out as it was capable of doing, like a self replicating AI neurospyder one step short of sentience, the destruction would gather strength and momentum in unpredictable ways.

 Con wanted to create a financial tsunami, the gigantic wave’s ever advancing undertow a precursor to the reality touching every single monetary entity on all seven continents of the earth, its post mortem raging waters and ever churning binary backwash just as devastating as the initial pounding onslaught, the worldwide interlocking system of systems at best suffering severe degradation, at worst, for some, implosion, stagnation, the deadly embrace of terminal gridlock.