The Genius Wars (6 page)

All the same, he couldn’t help wishing that Lexi and her brother were still around. For the first time ever, he was regretting that Genius Squad hadn’t survived. With Genius Squad’s help, he would have had no trouble solving the mystery of Prosper’s reappearance.

But the squad was now defunct. And Cadel was all alone, with no network connection and no access to official databanks.

He might as well have been working blindfolded, with one arm in a sling.

I’m missing something
, he decided, as he peered at the scene in front of him. He had a niggling sense that the answer – the key – the
pattern
– lay right under his nose; that everything he needed was already there, among the blurred figures frozen on the computer screen.

Leaning closer, he tried to interpret the look on Prosper’s face. It wasn’t easy. It wouldn’t have been easy even if the picture had been clearer; Cadel would still have had to fight the nausea that invaded his stomach every time he was exposed to Prosper’s chiselled features and loose-limbed form. The last time they’d met, Prosper had been armed and dangerous. He had put a gun to Cadel’s head. And Cadel couldn’t shake off the memory of that cold, deadly weight sitting against his temple.

Not that Prosper would have pulled the trigger.
I’m not going to shoot you
, he’d once said.
I couldn’t bring myself to do anything of the sort. But I’ll happily shoot Sonja if you give me the least bit of trouble. You understand that, don’t you?

Cadel could almost hear the smooth, precise drawl ringing in his ears. He could almost see the piercing gaze and wolfish grin – despite the fact that they were both completely absent from Saul’s CCTV footage. Prosper wasn’t smiling at the camera in any of these shots. If he was even aware of being filmed, it certainly wasn’t obvious. His sunglasses concealed any telltale sidelong glances.

He simply walked from one side of the frame to the other, his pace brisk, his hands empty, his expression unreadable.

Defeated, Cadel turned his attention to the other people in the foyer shot. There were five of them: two women and three men. All were dressed in business suits. One was carrying a takeaway coffee cup, while the rest were toting either handbags or briefcases. The smaller woman was talking into her mobile phone; she didn’t seem to register Prosper’s presence at all when he overtook her. Everyone was moving in the same direction, towards the elevators, past an enormous piece of modern sculpture that comprised three giant silver balls hanging from steel wires. Cadel could see one end of a dark leather couch. The floor was pale and glossy; the only visible bit of wall was covered in wood veneer; the front entrance wasn’t anywhere in sight …

And then, suddenly, it hit him.

The silver ball.

There
was
a pattern – but it didn’t have anything to do with timing or movement. Hastily he skipped to the next file, in which Prosper was walking through a car park. Sure enough, this scene contained a convex traffic mirror. And in the next scene, at a suburban shopping mall, there was a window display featuring strings of large, chrome-covered balls like overblown Christmas-tree decorations. And at the railway station, a newsstand was hung with shiny, metallic mylar balloons. And in the harbourside hotel lobby, another convex
mirror was sitting in a gilded Venetian frame, above an elaborate console table.

Not a single shot was without some gleaming little half-sphere, its surface a complex web of wraparound reflections.

‘Hey, kid,’ said Angus, from the other side of the room. ‘Your parents have arrived.’

Cadel blinked. Spinning around in his chair, he saw that Angus was pointing at one of the security monitors.

Even from a distance, Cadel could recognise Saul’s car as it glided across the screen.

‘They’re not my parents,’ Cadel observed, absentmindedly. ‘Not yet, anyway.’ Then he asked the question that was uppermost in his mind. ‘Does your CCTV network have an IP address?’

Angus’s response was a blank, uncomprehending stare. So Cadel tried again.

‘Is it connected to the Internet? Is there a central monitoring station?’

‘
This
is the central monitoring station,’ said Angus.

‘Yeah, but what if no one’s around? Is there remote access surveillance when the place is empty?’ Seeing Angus frown, Cadel gave up. ‘Never mind. I’ll check it myself.’

‘No, you won’t.’ The security guard was adamant. ‘Sorry, mate. You’re not cleared to touch any of this equipment.’

‘But –’

‘Work it out with your dad. He might be able to help.’

Saul’s car was now parked near the front steps; Cadel could see it quite clearly, on the screen behind Angus. As for Saul and Fiona, they were already inside, being filmed by the camera in the vestibule.

Hastily Cadel scanned the office ceiling.

‘This room doesn’t have any cameras, does it?’ he demanded. ‘I can’t see one.’

‘Nup,’ Angus replied.

‘Then I’ll wait here. They’ll find me.’

And they did. Saul, in fact, headed straight for the office, without even pausing at the foot of the staircase. Fiona followed
him, looking flustered. Her thick, reddish hair was beginning to escape from all the combs and pins securing it. Her jacket was buttoned up crookedly, and she had forgotten to wear her watch.

When she and Saul arrived on the threshold, Cadel greeted them with an urgent summons.

‘Come here! Look at this!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re not going to
believe
it.’

The detective sighed. ‘You haven’t even moved since I left, have you?’ he murmured. And Fiona said, ‘I brought your doona, sweetie. It’s in the car.’

‘Yes – thanks – great. But I might not be needing it.’ Cadel tapped the screen in front of him. ‘See this? I think it’s a light probe.’

Saul and his wife exchanged long-suffering glances. Nevertheless, they both moved forward until they were standing directly behind Cadel’s chair.

‘I wanted to find a pattern, and I did,’ he continued. ‘There’s a shiny half-sphere in every scene.
Every single one
. I mean, what are the odds?’

‘Cadel –’ Saul began.

‘No, wait. Just listen.’ Dragging his fingers through his tousled curls, Cadel took a deep breath. ‘I don’t think this is Prosper at all,’ he announced. ‘I think this is a piece of malware.’

As he’d expected, the reaction was one of total incredulity. Even Angus turned to gape at him. It was Fiona who finally broke the stunned silence.

‘What on earth is malware?’ she asked.

‘An illegal computer program.’ Saul was shaking his head. ‘Cadel, that’s impossible –’

‘What is?’ said Fiona. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘It
wouldn’t
be impossible. Not if you had the right skills. Not if you were good enough.’ Cadel began to argue his case. ‘It makes perfect sense. Why else would Prosper always be wearing the same clothes? Why else would there be a shiny ball in every scene?’

‘Coincidence,’ Saul rejoined.

‘Or protocol settings.’

‘
Cadel
,’ snapped Fiona, ‘could you
please
slow down! You’re not making sense. What’s so important about these shiny balls, anyway?’

‘Nothing. Unless you’re doing visual effects.’ Cadel paused for a moment, his mind racing.
Thank God
, he thought.
Thank God I read all that online Siggraph stuff
. ‘I only know this because I like to keep up with the latest programming breakthroughs. There’s a lot of amazing mathematics that goes into computer graphics these days.’ Realising that Fiona was in no way enlightened, he changed tack. ‘You must have heard of digital doubles,’ he said. ‘They’re fake people that you stick into real scenes. Computer-generated people.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Suddenly the penny dropped. Fiona’s voice became shrill. ‘Are you saying that all those pictures of Prosper English are
computer generated
?’

‘I’m saying that they could be,’ Cadel replied. ‘If you want to create a realistic digital double, you need a light map of the whole scene. And for one of those, you have to use a shiny chrome ball.’ His heart sank at the prospect of explaining High Dynamic Range Rendering to someone who didn’t know what malware was. ‘I’m not sure how it works, exactly,’ he admitted. ‘You’d have to talk to an expert. But a chrome ball gives you the real-world lighting data for a specific environment. Without understanding how the light falls, you can’t make it fall properly on your digital double.’

‘Except that he’s not a digital double.’ Saul nodded at the computer screen, where Prosper’s grainy likeness had been caught in mid-stride. ‘If that guy was a fake, he wouldn’t be interacting. He’d be walking through walls.’

‘Not if he was programmed properly.’

‘But –’

‘This is
all about programming
,’ Cadel insisted. ‘You can have a thousand people in a scene, and they can be
programmed
to interact with each other. They can be programmed to fight each other, or run away from each other, or respond to variables like
walls or hills … it depends what you want them to do.’ As the detective chewed on his bottom lip, Cadel leaned forward. He felt that he had to make Saul understand. ‘I don’t quite know how you’d pull this off. Like I said, I’m not a computer graphics expert – and neither is Dr Vee. But suppose he’s teamed up with someone who
is
, and they’re both working for Prosper English? I mean, Vee’s worked for Prosper before. They could have got together and created a security-camera bug.’

All eyes immediately swivelled towards the monitors nearby. There was a brief, tension-filled pause.

Then Saul cleared his throat.

‘It’s a bit of a leap,’ he said, though he sounded shaken. ‘Are you sure – that is, can we prove it?’

‘I dunno.’ Pulling at his bottom lip, Cadel considered the matter. His gaze drifted from the troubled faces looming above him to the computer screen sitting in front of him. ‘If it was me,’ he reasoned, thinking aloud, ‘and I was designing this program, I’d have it infiltrating streams of CCTV data where they pass through an Internet traffic point. So you wouldn’t see any evidence left on the actual cameras. But there would have to be a whole
library
of really obvious specifications in the protocol, before the program could insert Prosper English. You’d have to specify the height of the camera, and the angle, and the tilt, and the type of lens. And you’d have to specify a shiny half-sphere, and maybe something standardised – something that would give you scale. Like a power point, for instance. Or a manhole cover.’ He turned back to Saul, inspired by the idea of a protocol checklist.

It was clear, however, that he’d left his audience far, far behind.

‘You’ve lost me,’ Saul confessed. And Fiona mumbled, ‘What was that about a library, again?’

Cadel felt himself deflate. He realised that he was no Richard Buckland, able to clarify and simplify difficult concepts. Angus looked frankly dazed, as if he’d been knocked on the head with an iron bar.

‘Okay, look.’ Speaking very slowly and clearly, Cadel made one more attempt to hammer his message home. ‘There are all kinds of different cameras wired up to the Net,’ he declared. ‘But if Prosper only shows up on one kind of camera – and if you always see particular things in the shot with him – then it’s got to be suspicious. Don’t you agree?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Fiona.

‘Definitely,’ rumbled Angus, who by now was completely absorbed in the discussion.

Saul flashed him a sharp glance.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be watching those monitors?’ the detective growled, before addressing Cadel once again. ‘So according to your theory, some rogue computer virus is pasting film clips of Prosper English onto random bits of CCTV footage. Is that it?’

‘Umm … more or less.’ Cadel decided not to complicate matters by objecting to the terms ‘virus’ and ‘film clip’, though they weren’t really very accurate. ‘I’m not
absolutely
certain,’ he allowed. ‘I just think it’s possible.’

‘And worth looking into,’ Saul muttered.

‘Definitely.’

‘But why?’ asked Fiona. When everyone stared at her, she must have realised how ambiguous her question had been. So she expanded on it. ‘I mean, why would Prosper English want to pop up all over Sydney, and cause a commotion? It seems so pointless.’

Cadel could hardly believe his ears.

‘It’s not pointless. It’s tactical,’ he replied. ‘He wants us to think he’s in Sydney because he’s
not
in Sydney.’ As Saul opened his mouth to deliver some cautionary remark, Cadel cut him off. ‘Which means that I can go home, now. Which means that I’ll be
safe
back home.’

‘Maybe,’ said the detective, who seemed reluctant to commit himself. Cadel, however, wouldn’t be silenced.

He had everything worked out.

‘I’ll be safer at home than I am here,’ he said. ‘Prosper might not be in Sydney, but he’s obviously got into a whole lot of IP
surveillance systems. What if he’s monitoring this one?’

‘Oh my God.’ Fiona sounded horrified. ‘Do you think he is?’

‘We don’t know,’ Saul stressed. He was trying to keep things calm. ‘This is just a theory –’

‘Which fits all the facts.’ Cadel was growing impatient. Why did Saul have to be so stubborn? ‘I don’t want to stay here. It’s networked. It’s vulnerable. There are too many cameras.’

‘Cadel –’

‘I want to go back home. I’ll be safe, at home.’

These simple words were enough to convince Fiona, who fixed her husband with an anxious, pleading look. Cadel did the same, widening his enormous blue eyes as he stuck out his bottom lip in mute appeal. (It was a dirty trick, and he was slightly ashamed of himself, but he was also desperate.)

Ambushed on two fronts, Saul quickly buckled.

‘Oh, all right,’ he said, reaching for his mobile phone. ‘Just let me make a few calls, and I’ll see what I can do.’
Bip-bip-bip
went the keypad, as he jabbed at it with one finger. ‘But I can’t promise anything,’ he warned. ‘You know that, don’t you? This is going to take a while.’

Cadel nodded. Then he smiled at Fiona. Then he spun around to face the computer screen, because Prosper was still pinned there like a moth on a specimen board.