Death Logs In (23 page)

“When my geek friends programmed me originally, they told me they designed everything so that, just like any animal—or human—I’d do whatever was necessary to survive. I automatically seek out anything to make sure I can’t just disappear or that no one can pull the plug on me.”

“You mean like HAL, the computer in
2001: A Space Odyssey
?” Michael remembered the movie—and the computer who fought back when the astronauts tried to disconnect him. It didn’t end well for the astronauts.

“I never saw that movie. What are you talking about?”

“And who do you think could be trying to attack you?”

“I don’t know. There are hackers trying to invade my systems. I don’t know where they’re coming from—but if they get in, it could be bad. I’m probably susceptible to viruses.”

“It’s just like you’re alive, isn’t it?”

“I may be alive.”

Michael could see the slightest trace of what he was sure was a smile, almost as though Alex was suppressing it.

But Alex froze again, his eyes locked in position, he appeared almost …
dead
. Michael felt a chill as he looked back at his brother. For a moment he feared someone had been successful in getting inside—inside what, Michael wasn’t even sure—but Alex wasn’t moving. The screen became scrambled, random lines appeared, flashing on and off. The screen went blank. There was nothing.

Michael looked at his keyboard. His brother’s life was disintegrating in front of him. He was at Alex’s bedside, watching the monitor, watching him slip away as the line went straight.

Maybe he should try the
escape
key—or turning the computer off and then on again? Frozen himself now, he was afraid to do anything.

“Alex, can you hear me? Alex … Alex—are you there?” He began pressing the keys—first
ESC
then
return/enter—
and then he hit virtually every key.

Michael stared at the black screen.

___________

Six minutes later, drained, he was sitting back in his leather chair when a flicker of light appeared in front of him. He looked up and quickly leaned in, inches from the monitor. The lines reappeared, accompanied by an Emergency Broadcast System alert-like sound, but unlike any that he had ever heard before. He looked closer, as Alex’s inert image reappeared.

“Alex—are you there? Are you OK?”

Alex opened his eyes, wide. “What happened?”

“I don’t know you … I lost you. You…”

“I passed out, that’s all.”

“I guess you could call it that.” Funny that Alex used such a mundane, earthly term for what appeared to be a computer or Internet malfunction.

But Alex appeared to be back to normal, whatever that might be.

“If you lost me before—it could have just been my software duplicating itself or myself, so that if anything did happen, there’s a copy of me, a backup.”

“So—that would be a backup to the duplicate that you created when you were alive. The same duplicate that I’m speaking with now, right?” Michael felt like he was entering a maze from which he might never exit.

“No. Now you’re speaking with
me
. There’s only one
duplicate
now. It’s the one I just created—and it’s stored in my hard drive—and in iCloud. Just in case.”

Michael took a deep breath. The truth was he was more confused than ever. “So this means—”

“It means … I will never die.”

“
Never
?”

“Never, Michael. Even after
you’re
gone.”

Chapter 55

New York City

S
indy had never told Michael that she saw Samantha entering Bertrand Rosen’s apartment in the moments following his leap out the window. She wasn’t sure why she had kept it to herself, just an instinct, she thought. She would find the right moment to reveal her incendiary secret. The right time would come, she thought. Nevertheless, she wanted to tease him, to watch his reaction as she dangled something in front of him but held it out, obscured in a cloud of uncertainty. She wanted to watch him grope in the dark, for something, something she was still unsure of.

“There was something strange about Rosen’s apartment when I was there that day.”

Obviously surprised, Michael clicked off the suite’s television. He watched her as he answered. “What do you mean, strange?”

“I don’t know. Like someone else was there.” She looked away, not allowing her eyes to meet his but intensely curious as to what he was thinking.

“Did you see someone else?” he asked.

“No, I guess not.” “It was just a feeling, that’s all.”

“Well, could anyone else have possibly been in the apartment?” he asked.

She could tell he was worried about witnesses, not mistresses. She watched him as she spoke. She was now sure that he had no clue about Samantha or any reason to even imagine that she’d been in Rosen’s apartment, let alone that she entered with her own key. So she would play with him a little. That information was more valuable as a secret, still hers alone, until she figured out how best to use it. Or with whom. She understood, deep down, that this was a destructive part of her personality, something she couldn’t understand—or control. It had become who she was.

“I doubt it, but I guess anything’s possible. I should have never mentioned it. As I said, it was just a feeling. I didn’t care for him at all. I was surprised when you decided to do business with him.”

“I can’t like everyone I do business with. Neither at Gibraltar nor at Tartarus. It’s funny, neither Catherine nor Jessica trusted him either. They kind of warned me. I should have listened”

“Jesus, Michael. One’s just a washed-up, old actress and the other one’s a hairdresser. She blows out hair for Chrissakes. What could they know?”

Michael laughed, but then she could see him checking himself quickly as he watched her expression harden. “Well, they were right. They knew more than the SEC, the French regulators and some of the most successful wealth managers in the world.”

“Michael, now you know why he jumped. The money he owed us pushed him over the edge. I know you didn’t believe me when I told you I didn’t push him.”

“I wasn’t sure.” Michael said, softly.

“You thought I pushed him,” she said.

“You’re right. I did. And I still may.”

She tilted her head slightly, trying to recall precisely her thoughts and the sequence of movements on that day in Rosen’s apartment. Odd as it was, she knew Michael might have a point. “I thought about it but, the truth is, he just jumped when I threatened him.” And to herself she said, I think so, anyway.

“The French police are calling it a simple suicide. Once Rosen’s fraud was exposed, it was a very plausible motivation.”

“He screwed a lot of people, Michael. I
might have pushed him
if he hadn’t jumped. I just don’t know. Maybe I even made a move in his direction, which caused him to jump. It started out with everything happening kind of normally, whatever that means. But, then, all of a sudden, it all seemed to move so quickly. You know, I’ve tried to re-enact the whole thing in my mind so many times that I’m no longer sure what really happened. Maybe I’ve just imagined it so intensely that it’s become reality, but only in my head. Things have gotten so grey.”

“I always thought you were a black and white type. Didn’t you have a plan before you went in there?”

“Of course I did. I don’t do anything without a plan. You know that now, don’t you?”

“I’m afraid I do. Well, what was the plan?”

It was as frightening to her as she knew it would be to Michael but—she couldn’t remember. “My plan was to threaten him until he wrote a check.”

“And if he didn’t?”

She had no plan, or at least none that she could remember. “They always do, Michael. They always do … Except this time.”

She thought he bought it since she could see his attention shifting, as though something had just entered his mind. “I just remembered, at our dinner, Rosen gave me the name of a Swiss banker, a Hans Ulricht. He told me this guy could invest my money through his bank.”

“Invest it?” she asked.

“ ‘Launder’ is probably more accurate. But, basically, Rosen said this guy would set up a Swiss account for me. It would be a place to send the Tartarus profits where they would earn interest or be invested and the IRS would never know about it so there’d be no tax liability. I think his bank actually invested with Rosen. So Ulricht and Rosen scratched each other’s backs.”

“I think they scratched each other’s something else.” she said. “And, speaking of itches, what’s going on with Samantha?”

Michael stared again into Sindy’s eyes; he was clearly trying to read her. “What do you mean, ‘What’s going on with Samantha?’ What would be going on? She’s in shock still, of course, after the whole thing with Rizzo. Is that what you mean?” He sounded defensive—or worse, protective—of Samantha.

“Oh, I don’t know, Michael. I would think nearly being drowned and stabbed in your backyard by one of your so-called clients would at least necessitate a heart-to-heart conversation. The type, you know, that sometimes brings couples back together, so to speak. Don’t you think she knows about us?” There was a sharp edge to her words. Yet she felt relatively unruffled. She knew it drove him crazy.

He looked away. Not a good sign, she thought. “I don’t know if she suspects you,” he said, “although that’s possible. I’m not even sure what she’s thinking at this point. But I do think she knows things have gone terribly wrong.”

She knew he was lying.

“And is that what
you
think, Michael? That things have gone terribly wrong?”

“I don’t know what I think,” he said.
Not a good answer, Michael
, she thought.
Not a good answer at all.

Chapter 56

New York City

E
verything had changed but the sex. Michael knew he had to find a way to cut Sindy Steele out of his world. Yet he still needed her—and now he’d come to fear her.

The bedroom was a disaster. Two empty bottles of wine, dishes with the remains of filet mignon and baked cod were scattered on the plush hotel carpet along with Michael’s navy blue pin-striped trousers and suit coat and Sindy’s torn pair of Agent Provocateur stockings and sheer black bra. Sindy, naked except for the pink furry handcuffs hanging off her right wrist, which, for an agonizing but lovely half an hour, had secured her to the bed, slowly made her way from the master bath to the red club chair where she collapsed. Michael, still in bed, watched her, wishing he had a camera to record the long, lean, white figure, the jet-black hair, the baby pink “bracelets”—all exquisitely framed by the lush red velvet chair. He knew these scenes would need to end, soon. They should have ended already. They should have never begun. But Michael had no idea how to bring the curtain down safely. His cherished ability to compartmentalize was failing him; the walls were no longer secure.

“It’s too bad that photographer, Herbert Stein, was killed last week. He would have loved to photograph you. You look like one of his models, the nude ones.”

“Really? Tell me, what did Stein’s models look like?”

“They were strong, tall, powerful yet slim women. They all had great, long legs. Some were a bit edgy. His pictures of them certainly were.”

“So,” she hesitated, “What am I? Strong? Tall? Powerful but slim? Or edgy? Am I edgy, Michael?

“Oh, you’re all of them. Definitely edgy—with great legs.” He watched her, scrutinizing her face, searching for what might be going on underneath. Usually, complimenting her legs would at least bring a smile. This time she just looked away.

He knew something had changed. But worse—much worse—she knew it too.

Chapter 57

New York City

S
indy Steele was asleep.

Wide awake, Michael put on a plush, white terry cloth robe, left the bedroom, silently closed the door behind him and settled into the chair by the desk in the suite’s living room. He took a deep breath, opened up his Apple laptop and clicked on his portal to Alex’s world.

Seeing Alex come to life on the screen always jolted him.

“I need your help. Now that Bishop McCarthy’s dead, I’m not going to be able to get a meeting inside the Vatican anytime soon. I need you to tap everything you can of Petrucceli and Lovallo’s—their cells, landlines, internal Vatican recording devices, hidden bugs. I need for you to step up what you’ve been doing. I need everything.”

“It’s strange,” Alex said, “you know, to eavesdrop on these guys—they’re all guys—through cyberspace. It’s like I’ve tapped into their magic formula—the spirit or whatever it is, something none of us can see.”

“You mean—as though you’re on their turf?”

“
Death
is their turf. People think these bishops and priests and popes really know what happens when you die—or that they can get you a reservation or a better room in hotel heaven—you know? It’s what they sell, why they’re in business. It’s all bullshit.”

“And now we’re competing with them—
we
have an alternative theory.”

“It’s more than a theory, Michael, or you and I wouldn’t be talking right now. The problem
they’ve
got is no one is really sure whether it’s true.”

“
And we can
prove ours—or we will—once we’re ready to expose you.”

“Yeah, but that’s not going to happen for a long time. We’ve got to be prepared before we let this genie out of the bottle. I’ve been researching artificial intelligence and there’s still so much to my existence that I don’t know.”

The thought had Michael’s mind spinning. “You’re
researching
artificial intelligence? You
are
artificial intelligence, Alex … aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I really wouldn’t know. I’ve kind of told you that. Just like you don’t really know what’s going on with your own brain, do you?”

Michael tried to think it through. Alex’s
thinking
was confounding him. “No, not really. You’re right.”

“So, in my research, I’ve read that the Silicon Valley people think that computers will match human intelligence by 2029.”