Stones (Data) (5 page)

“To a Chinese company, XinShang, right?” Matt smiles.

“That’s the one.” Matt’s dad nods with approval. “You’re good with the jax.”

“So what’s the problem? It says here that the uranium extraction continues in operation to this day, providing India with a source of safe, clean energy and unlimited fuel for its arsenal of nukes.”

“The deal was done in a very short time frame. The buyer sent us a due diligence request list, asking us to tell them everything our client knew about the uranium mine, its operations and any environmental problems. When we reviewed the client’s files, everything checked out.” Kent drinks the last of his miso and smacks his lips.

“So what’s the problem?”

“When you’re a lawyer working on a deal, you get to know your client pretty well. These guys were sneaky. I had a gut feeling they were hiding something.”

Matt leans forward. “Hiding what?”

“Three days before the deal closed, I grabbed a young associate, only a year out of law school, and sent him to India to do some checking on the ground. He showed up unannounced at the client’s headquarters. An old lawyer’s trick.” Kent finishes his rice and ends his meal with a yellow pickled radish.

“What did he find?”

“A disturbing environmental report was buried in some electronic files. Something the client never bothered to report to us or the buyer. He sent me a copy.” Matt’s dad pushes his plate away. “It was the last I ever heard from him.”

A
lexa Gianopoulus walks down the hall to Ryzaard’s office in glove leather pants. No need to rush. The plan has been worked out over the space of months, and it’s ready for execution. And she’s in the middle of everything, just where she likes it.

She wonders what her family back in the small village in northern Greece would think of her now, if they could see her clothes and luxury apartment, complete with a well-stocked wine cellar. Images of her past move through her mind. Fields of barley and onions. Endless herds of goats. Tractors and trucks snaking along dirt roads between hills. Her father’s fingers, gnarled from the hard life of a farmer. The long dusty dress her mother always wore. The pungent smell of garlic and olives in the kitchen. Cheese at every meal.

Her parents and extended family have become utterly foreign to her.

Here she is, worlds away, and never happier to have run away from home to the City where she became a student and escaped the crushing boredom of life on the farm. And then the turning point in her life. That chance meeting with Ryzaard two years ago when he came to New York University to speak at a history symposium. She exposed his ignorance by asking a question that only someone from the Greek countryside could answer. She still remembers.

What did ancient Greek farmers put on their lips to keep them from cracking in the sun?

Ryzaard couldn’t guess, so she gave the answer.

Olive oil and beeswax.

He pulled her out of the crowd and offered her a job as his personal assistant on the spot. He later mentioned something about how she reminded him of his third grade school teacher, a secret love. Now she makes more salary in a month than her father earned from forty years of backbreaking toil.

She strides through the open door and pauses in the middle of the room.

Ryzaard stands at the window, shirtless, hands behind his back, gazing off to the right at the remnants of the setting sun across the Hudson River.

The furniture in the office is just the way Ryzaard says he likes it. Sparse, but exquisite. The wide desk came with him from Oxford. Made of antique wood and custom-built to fit his height, its dark color matches the leather on the high-backed chair behind it. Among the items strewn about its surface, Alexa’s eyes focus on the foot-high bronze statue of a naked man. To her left, there is a large crystal cube big enough to sit on with an embroidered gold cushion on top. She knows it as his meditation platform. When sitting atop it in a lotus position, it gives the illusion that he’s floating in air. On the far right, a Chinese wall-hanging of a black dragon droops down above a red sofa. The ancient paper is crinkled and yellow, and the faint smell of dust lingers around it. The old grandfather clock from Ryzaard’s ancestral home in Poland stands on the opposite wall to the left.

A line of tobacco smoke drifts up from a half-burnt cigarette balanced on the edge of the desk. Old books are stacked against the grandfather clock and go halfway up its side. Piles of documents are scattered on the desk.

There are no bluescreens for video, no holo ports, no Mesh-com interfaces. The only piece of modern tech in the office is a jax. Even Ryzaard has one of those. It lies askew on the desk at the foot of the naked man.

Alexa’s eyes run up and down Ryzaard’s familiar body. In the two years they’ve worked together, she’s become more than his assistant. For all the power he wields, he’s apparently never had a confidant, someone to open his heart to.

As his companion, she has come to fill that void. Their relationship is not one of equals, but it allows her to be more honest and open with him than anyone else in his world. He tolerates her occasional criticism without exacting revenge or striking back.

She can’t help appraising his looks.

For a man supposedly in his late 60s, he is far too fit. His height allows him to look down on just about everyone, and she knows he has a distinct dislike for anyone taller. The well-muscled back, broad shoulders and arrow-straight posture contrast with a full head of gray hair. His silver mustache and goatee add an air of mystique. He wears his usual attire, a tweed jacket and bowtie reminiscent of his days at Oxford. He hasn’t been back to England since coming to MX Global three years ago.

When she clears her throat, there is still no reaction from Ryzaard. He stares out the window in the direction of the setting sun apparently oblivious to her presence.

“Dr. Ryzaard.” Alexa gently breaks the silence. “The emergency board of directors meeting has been called for 9:00 this evening. All the directors have arrived, and a quorum will be present in person. Mr. Van Pelt will conduct the meeting. It starts in half an hour.”

Ryzaard slowly turns his body around to look at her. “Is the presentation set up and ready to go in the boardroom?” His voice is clear, a subtle mix of German and British accents.

She knows better than to ask him if he’s from Germany. He always reacts with horror when that question comes up.

“Yes, all ready to go,” Alexa says. “Will you need anything else prior to the meeting?”

“How is the progress on the location algorithm?” Ryzaard clears his throat. “I assume it’s proceeding according to the most recent simulation exercises.”

“Yes, within fifteen minutes of getting the signal from the new Stone, we initiated an HDD linkup with the beta site in Japan and pulled another XUNIL cluster system from MX Scientific to run the algorithm. It’s been working for just over two hours. We should have definitive GPS coordinates by this time tomorrow.” Alexa becomes conscious of Ryzaard’s gaze. “I feel sorry for whoever found that rock. They’ll be nothing but a corpse in a few hours.”

“That’s the idea.” Ryzaard runs the tip of his index finger back and forth along his silver mustache and closes his eyes as if in deep contemplation. “Let Scientific know we’ll require use of the cluster system for an indefinite period of time. We need the computing power. They shouldn’t expect to get it back.” Ryzaard opens his eyes. “If they object, let them know it’s being done on the authority of Van Pelt.” His eyes seem to go right through Alexa. “It won’t matter after tonight anyway. Assuming the vote goes our way—and I’m sure it will—we’ll have all of Scientific and their computing power at our disposal in a couple of hours.”

“Understood,” Alexa says. “Anything else?”

“It’s imperative that we push the location algorithm without pause. I want to find that Stone and its Holder. Everything depends on it.”

Ryzaard walks to his desk and picks up the small figure of the naked man. He turns it around in his hands, and then tosses it to Alexa. She catches it gently in her fingers.

“I recovered this from a dig at Vergina, a small town in northern Greece, your home country, over forty years ago. I’ve carried it with me ever since.” He takes a step closer to her. “Any idea who it is?”

“Of course.” Alexa squeezes her fingers around the little man’s legs. “Every schoolgirl knows it’s Zeus, the greatest of the Greek gods.”

“Very good.” The stench of tobacco on Ryzaard’s breath is overpowering. “Not much to look at, really, except for the fact that this very statue was carried around by Alexander the Great. You can see where his fingers wore it down.” He looks squarely at Alexa. “He never lost a battle. Have you ever wondered why?”

She stands in silence and looks up at Ryzaard through long eyelashes. It’s coming. Another one of his lectures on history.

“They say he had an uncanny ability to anticipate his enemy’s moves, almost like he could see the future.” Ryzaard puts his other hand in his pocket and pulls out a translucent rock, resembling the rough shape of a large claw.

Alexa has seen it many times. It’s been the focus of a massive amount of study and experimentation during the last three years.

Ryzaard grips the rock with white knuckles. “Beginning tonight, Alexa, we follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. Don’t ever forget that.”

“How could I? My parents named me after him.” She hands the statue back to Ryzaard. “I’m sure the board of directors will vote in favor of your proposal. Is there anything else I can do before the meeting begins?”

Ryzaard turns and drops the statue on the desk behind him. “Make sure we have the Xerxes Diviner in the room. We may find it useful to demonstrate its power in case there are any skeptics among the directors.”

She turns to leave.

“One more thing, Alexa.” A slight smile plays across Ryzaard’s lips. “Have several bottles of the ‘21 Chardonnay from the special collection brought up to my office. We’ll have much to celebrate tonight when the meeting is over.”

“Yes, of course.” Alexa walks to the door. The sound of movement behind her draws one final backward glance.

Ryzaard stares down at Zeus on his desk and leans forward, as if talking to the bronze piece.

“This is where it all begins.”

T
ime to go.

Ryzaard steps down from the meditation platform and walks out of his office to the elevator in the middle of the steel corridor. In his mind, he draws a picture of the MX Global Corporation boardroom.

Located on the eighty-eighth floor, the boardroom is in the exact vertical center of the corporation’s world headquarters. Round and windowless, identical dark wood paneling covers the ceiling and floor. A circular wall of flawless black glass wraps around it, broken only by a single door to the room.

Some of the old hands at the corporation might remember how the boardroom had originally been furnished with a round table large enough for twenty directors to engage in lively discussion and debate.

But during the past year, both the round table and the directors had been replaced.

The room now resembles a university lecture hall, with the chairman of the corporation seated behind a desk at the front and the directors in theater chairs on an elevated floor. Extra chairs for visitors line the wall to the right of the chairman.

Everything has been arranged for the meeting of the directors. A bare majority, ten directors in all and just sufficient for a quorum, will be seated and waiting for the meeting to begin.

Ryzaard steps out of the elevator. Mr. Rudyard Van Pelt, chairman of the board, is waiting for him. They walk shoulder to shoulder in silence down a long hall.

Low chatter leaks out of the entrance to the boardroom at the other end.

At 9:05 in the evening, New York time, Ryzaard and Van Pelt move through the open door of the boardroom. Alexa is waiting near the entrance in a short skirt and matching suit coat, all made of the same black leather. Without so much as a glance, Van Pelt walks past her and two security guards in dark blue uniforms with the MX Global logo splashed across their chests. He goes straight to his desk.