Invisible Armies (17 page)

    They go out the same way she came in, through the window smashed by a black-bloc man with a huge pipe wrench. Danielle shivers at the thought of the encounter. Clad in all black over body armour, wearing a gas mask, the man looked like an alien from a sci-fi movie. Danielle asked him in desperate English to break the window, then mimed it, since he clearly didn't understand a word. Danielle isn't sure if that's because he never learned English or he was too far gone in primal rage to understand anything other than his mother tongue. His snarls as he smashed the glass were pure animal. When he finished he turned to Danielle, wrench held high, and she is sure for a moment, drunk on bloodlust, he had thought of smashing her face as well. Instead the man had let out a yodelling howl and raced back into the crowd, looking for something or somebody else to destroy.
    In the ten minutes since, the riot seems to have cooled into a kind of standoff. The police are arrayed on the northern edge of the Esplanade, the rioters to the south by the Tour EDF. Smoke- and gas-obscured no-man's-land lies between them, strewn with overturned barricades. About a hundred protestors, most of them black bloc, are chained to metal fences behind the police with plastic ziptie handcuffs. Windows have been shattered along both sides of the Esplanade. The protestors shout and chant. The remaining black bloc members are in the front of the crowd, snarling fury visible on the faces of those without gas masks.
   It occurs to Danielle that somehow, incredibly, she is the architect of all this.
   Everyone who intended to flee has gotten away by now. But despite the tear gas, clubs, and rubber bullets, at least a thousand, probably more, have remained. When Danielle, Angus, and Laurent emerge from the Tour EDF, the people around them, civilian protestors all, dressed in tie-dyed hemp or sober business wear, turn to stare at the two newcomers in police uniforms with expressions of shock and rage.
    "We need to go," Laurent says. "By now even the pacifists must have their blood up."
    He leads the way. Angus and Danielle follow. The people around them watch with angry expressions, not sure how to react to their sudden appearance. The crowd thins out as they approach the fringe, populated by bystanders keeping their distance from the action. Danielle thinks they have gotten away. Then two twentysomething goateed men, dressed in jeans and black T-shirts, eyes red with tear gas, step into Laurent's path.
   Without breaking stride, Laurent spins on one leg, kicks high with the other, and his foot comes around in a wide arc and knocks one of them senseless. Before the first man even hits the ground, Laurent punches the other in the stomach so hard he topples over and falls sideways, clutching his gut, his mouth open in a stunned O. A shocked gasp comes from all around around them, followed by furious, dismayed shouting. Laurent grabs Danielle's hand and pulls her after him, running hard, pushing people out of their way, shoving between them or spinning around them like an NFL running back. Angus has to sprint to follow. The vengeful muttering around them intensifies, and Danielle is sure they will be chased and beaten, they are outnumbered a hundred to one.
   Then the voices around them falter, become doubtful and afraid, as does the roar of the crowd in the distance. Danielle looks up. They have almost detached themselves from the protest now, they are right on its eastern edge, next to little sculptures of gnomelike heads set in banks of terraced plants. Ahead and to her left, she sees a tide of uniformed police with riot shields and gas masks emerge from the parking-lot entrances on the northern side of the Esplanade, rank after rank of them, heading towards the crowd with a slow, unanimous, unstoppable gait. Danielle is crazily reminded of Star Wars storm troopers. Then she hears chunking noises from the police ranks, sees metal canisters fly overhead, land in the crowd. More tear gas.
   The first man this marching wall of police encounters shouts at them desperately in French. They club him to his knees and handcuff him. The wall of gendarmes swirls and reforms around the small knot formed by this event. They don't even slow down. They march straight into the demonstrators, squeezing the crowd against the buildings on the south side of the Esplanade, the Tour EDF and the Quatre Temps shopping centre. As the gendarmes force the last dregs of the crowd to disperse, Danielle, Angus and Laurent flee south towards the Sheraton. All she feels is relief.
* * *
    Keiran opens the door. Danielle, bruised and battered, stands there, leaning on Laurent, who like Angus beside him is apparently untouched by the riot.
    "No offense," Keiran says to Danielle, "but they let you in looking like that? This is a five-star hotel. Their standards are clearly slipping."
    "Don't," she warns him, her voice dangerous. "I'm not in the mood."
    He nods apologetically. "Come in."
    They enter. Danielle sags onto the couch, and Laurent sits next to her. Angus remains standing. "Where's Estelle?" he demands.
    Keiran says, "She's fine. A little bruised, is all. I just talked to her. She's trying to find her way here. The police have shut down the demonstration zone, she's on the other side, by the Grande Arche."
    Relieved, Angus sits.
    "You did good work, all of you," Keiran says. "Excellent work."
    They nod. Keiran bites back a sigh at their lack of reciprocation. He just ad-libbed a feat of near-superhuman hacking, saving them from certain incarceration, and they take it as no more than their due.
    "Did it work?" Laurent asks.
    "Seems to have done. The network is alive and reporting, all our little listeners accounted for. We won't get any actual information from it until tonight's update though."
    Angus says, "Once we clean up we should go back to the apartment."
   "We can't stay here?" Keiran asks, looking around at the luxury hotel suite. "This is
proper
."
    "Sorry," Angus says. "The foundation's pockets are not bottomless. Even if they were, I'm sure they could find better things to spend money on than your outrageous room service bill."
    "Name one."
    "World peace," Laurent suggests.
    "I'll take the room service."
    "Sometimes, Keiran, I think you are not a true believer," Laurent says, amused.
    "I'll believe anything you like for five hundred a day plus expenses. Now give me a hand packing my gear. And be gentle. It's very sensitive. Like me."
    "What's the plan for tomorrow?" Danielle asks.
    "With any luck," Keiran says, "tomorrow we crack Kishkinda open like a walnut."/p>

Chapter  
20 

<    "So, in short," Angus summarizes, "we have nothing."
    "We have quite a lot," Keiran says. He looks around the dining-room table at the others. It is very quiet, as if the whole 11th
arrondissement
is listening to his report. "We have access to their internal corporate network. That's not nothing."
    "But it gives us nothing."
    "We have home addresses and phone numbers galore. You wanted to go after the suits? Now we know where they live."
    "But nothing
culpable
," Angus says angrily, as if it is Keiran's fault. "No evidence that Kishkinda is knowingly dumping toxic chemicals."
    "I found plenty of documents which seem to indicate that they're not. I mean, half of them are in French, maybe you can correct me, I've only got an A-level and two years of uni," Keiran is being sarcastic, "but these seem to claim that as far as Kishkinda knows, they're not dumping anything, and the soil and groundwater samples they take have chemical levels well within international standards."
    "Don't be an idiot. Of course they have documents like that. You think they make the real ones available to everyone in the company? No. Only a very small group know the truth."
    "Like who?"
    "Like the CEO," Angus says. "Gendrault. What do the files on his machine say?"
    "I told you. We don't know. We only have his password. Which is 'chevalier' incidentally. Think he fancies himself a knight? Or he's hoping for a gong? He's got a British passport too if I recall."
    "If you have his password, why can't you read his files?" Estelle asks.
    "Because they're paranoid bastards, aren't they? They use SecurID tags. Little keychain things that generate a new six-digit number every minute. In sync with their server doing the same thing. You have to enter both his password and his current SecurID number to log in as him. Or any of the other top management."
    "Fucking hell," Angus shakes his head. "We break into their office and plant bugs and we still don't have their passwords?"
    "We've got their home addresses," Estelle says. "That's a start. But we wanted their details, schedules, security plans."
    "What I wanted was culpable evidence," Angus says. "Not that I expect the police would actually arrest anyone from a major company. But if we could create litigation risk for them, that would weigh heavily on their share price."
    "You sound like you're planning a takeover," Danielle says.
    Angus nods. "If we had the money we would. Take it over and shut it down. Easiest solution. But driving them bankrupt works just as well."
    "Listen," Keiran says, "I did find something interesting."
    They look at him.
    "There's a stack of encrypted documents on their network server, in a directory called 'Project Cinnamon'. And not your standard shite Microsoft password protection. Serious public-key encryption."
    "Can you crack the codes?" Danielle asks.
    Keiran half-laughs. "No way. Your National Security Agency couldn't decrypt this if you gave them a decade. These files are
secure
. That is, until someone on one of our bugged computers reads them. When they enter the pass phrase, our lovely little bugs will remember every word they type."
    "It could be weeks before anyone reads those files," Angus says. "Months."
    Keiran nods. "A lot of hacking is waiting."
    "We don't have that kind of time. What about their email? That's what we wanted most. Can we read that?"
    Keiran sighs. He doesn't like being the bearer of bad news. "Sorry. The Exchange database file is encrypted. Not like Project Cinnamon, but we'd need a SecurID code, again, to read a given person's mail. Or root access to read everyone's."
    "Root access," Laurent repeats. "Who has that?"
    "Gendrault, presumably. The CIO, definitely."
    "CIO?" Estelle asks.
    "Chief Information Officer," Keiran says. "Or CTO, Chief Technical Officer. I don't know the French equivalent. Geek in chief, essentially. We have his password too. And he must be easier to get to than Gendrault. If we can get our hands on the CTO's SecurID for a minute…" Keiran lets his voice trail off into pregnant space.
    After a moment Laurent smiles. "My friend, you are thinking far too small."
    Keiran looks at him quizzically. "Not something I'm often accused of. How so?"
    "The CTO's little security device would maybe be useful. But not as useful as the CTO himself. It will be he who set up their security, no? He will know where all the encrypted bodies are buried. He must. It's his job to keep them safe."
    "Sure," Keiran says, "but even root access won't let us decrypt those files, and I don't think he's likely to up and tell us the pass phrases."
    "That,
mon ami
," Laurent says, "is where I disagree."
* * *
    "What do you think?" Estelle asks Danielle.
    Danielle doesn't know what to think. On the one hand, it's Laurent's idea, she doesn't want to say anything against it, but on the other – "It seems so…drastic. Breaking into their office is one thing, but this…"
    Estelle nods. "Keiran?"
    Keiran shrugs. "It's the logical extreme of social engineering. I'm sure it will be very effective. I want nothing to do with it."
    "We won't know what you need to know," Angus says. "You'll need to be there."
    "Angus. Mate. I agreed to help you, and you agreed –"
    "I know what I agreed. We need you to be there. You won't have to do anything but ask questions."
    Keiran shakes his head. "I don't like it."
    "I'm not asking you to like it. I'm asking you to be there."
    Keiran doesn't say anything.
    "Angus didn't want to be in that parking garage," Estelle says quietly.
    "Fuck," Keiran says. "What are you two, a double act? All right. But this is the end. No more. I use whatever you get from this, find whatever I can, and then I'm done, I go home, and, no offense, but as far as I'm concerned, we never see each other again except maybe to hoist a few pints and talk football. Am I being perfectly clear?"
    Angus nods. "Transparent."
    The apartment falls silent for a moment.
    "I don't like it either," Angus says. "But it's effective. And this is war. And this man's not bloody innocent. Not with his job. At best he's wilfully ignorant."
    Estelle says, "This is extreme."
    Angus looks at her, taken aback. "Are you saying we shouldn't do it?"
    "No. I'm saying this is extreme. What if something goes wrong?"
    "If you actually do this," Keiran says darkly, "and something goes wrong, we're all behind bars till our teeth fall out."
    Estelle nods her acknowledgment of this truth, and pauses, visibly deliberating. Danielle looks at her, hoping that she will say she is opposed to Laurent's suggestion. Then Danielle won't have to decide whether she wants to fight the idea or not. Estelle's opposition will effectively be a veto. And surely gentle Estelle will say no to something this extreme.
    "This is war," she says. "Think about Jayalitha. Not just that they murdered her, and murdered her family, but remember why. She knew something. She found out something important, something that scared them so much they had to kill her. We have to find it too. We can't afford the luxury of being squeamish. We're the only hope of thousands of dying children. I wish there was some other way, but there isn't. We have to do this."
* * *
   Their Paris apartment is near the eastern edge of the 11th
arrondissement
, working-class Paris, half blue-collar whites, half African immigrants, both maintaining an uneasy truce that consists largely of staying out of one another's way. Danielle loves it fiercely. She loves the smell of
boulangeries
, the buzzing Wednesday and Saturday markets held along the wide median of Boulevard Charonne, the galleries and statues and architectural treasures around every corner, the quiet rubber-wheeled Metro and the glorious Art Deco signs that indicate its stations, the effortless style of French women, even though they always make her feel frumpy. She even speaks a little of the language, thanks to America's East Coast upper-class quirk of studying French rather than far-more-useful Spanish in high school.
   She had been to Paris before, as a backpacker, and liked it well enough but was frustrated by crowded hostels, rude French service, long lines at the tourist-soaked Louvre and Eiffel Tower and other obligatory tourist stops. She thought it overhyped and overcrowded. But here, away from the theme-park city center, she understands that living in Paris, more than anywhere else in the world, means living surrounded by beauty. It already feels almost like home.
    Two days after the La Défense protest, Danielle and Laurent leave their apartment for what starts as a short walk and turns into an epic journey. To the vast roundabout of the Bastille, then along Rue Rivoli, past chocolatiers and creperies and music stores and smoky little bars, until they reach the Gothic majesty of Hotel de Ville. There they cross the Seine onto Ile de la Cité, pass Notre Dame, and continue into the Latin Quarter, Danielle's favourite district, between the Seine and the Sorbonne, full of students, artists, bookstores and cinemas. After a long walk through the Jardins du Luxembourg they continue west along the Seine. Danielle feels like she is walking in a movie set, surrounded as she is by vast architectural wonders: the Eiffel Tower perching spiderlike ahead, the Musee d'Orsay and Les Invalides to her left, the Louvre and the Tuileries to her right, and the dark Seine coursing between them as it has for centuries. Since setting out she and Laurent have hardly talked, only walked companionably, sometimes hand in hand, in a silence which she knows she must eventually break.
   Danielle takes a deep breath and says, "Laurent?"
   Laurent looks at her.
   "Your plan? I don't know about it. I just don't know."
   He nods, slowly. "I could sense your hesitation."
   "It's not that I don't think it will work. I don't know if it's the right thing to do."
   "It's the wrong thing," he says. "But less wrong than doing nothing."
   "There has to be some other way."
   "There probably is. But the alternatives are slow. Children are dying, Danielle. We don't have the luxury of time."
   "Then…" She hesitates, knowing she is about to take the most cowardly road. But she can't abide any of the alternatives. "Then I don't want to be there. I'm sorry. I just, I can't, I don't have the stomach for it. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I don't want to be involved."
   Laurent nods again, thoughtfully, as they walk past the gleaming dome of Les Invalides, Napoleon's tomb. "Let's take a little detour," he suggests.
   He leads her halfway to Les Invalides, then veers left, to the Musee Rodin. The museum itself is expensive, but entry to the gardens is only one euro. Near the entrance, above a field of gravel, a vast iron sculpture looms. Danielle recognizes it. Rodin's masterpiece, the Gates of Hell. Two iron gates, in which tortured human forms lie half-suspended. Above them, a man sits with his head resting on his fist, contemplating the world. The Thinker. The larger, more famous version of that statue is some fifty feet behind them, but that piece was only a study for this masterwork.
    "You have to come," Laurent says.
    "What?" Danielle asks.
    "You have to join us for this. I'm sorry. I don't want to demand. But I have to. You're…" He hesitates.
    "What?"
    "I don't yet really believe in your commitment," he says finally, not meeting her gaze, his voice low and rasping. "To us or to me. There. I've said it. I feel like you might drop us, drop me, and go back to New York at any moment. I 'm not sure you want to be here. I'm not sure you want to be with me. I need you to be present for this so I know I can believe in you."
    "I –" Danielle stares at him. She is appalled by his demand, but she also feels horribly guilty, that she has been so distant, allowed Laurent to grow insecure, to doubt her. She wants to rush to comfort him.
    "I love you," she says. "I'm not going anywhere. You understand that?" She grabs him, pulls his head down to her, kisses him roughly. "You can believe in me."
    He smiles, but wanly. "And I love you. But can I believe in your commitment? Not just to us, but our cause? Fighting for a better world, whatever the cost, whatever the consequences for ourselves? Because if you can't believe in that –"
    He leaves it unsaid.
    "I do believe," she says.
    "Whatever the cost? Whatever the consequences?"
    "What you're talking about makes us no better than them."
    "I know. That's what I mean. We disgrace ourselves by even talking about it. Part of the cost I'm talking about isn't capture or jail. The cost is having to do awful things." He gestures at the Gates of Hell. "We don't have the luxury of only sitting and thinking. We have to go through those gates. And if you believe what we're doing is right, you have to join me."
    She looks at him, realizes she is softly shaking her head, makes herself stop.
    "You're willing to let it happen, as long as you're not there," Laurent says. "You just said so. But I'm sorry. That's not good enough."
    Danielle closes her eyes. She thinks of the children with warped faces and deformed limbs in that village near Kishkinda, of their bright eyes. She thinks of her hopes for the protest, how she thought it might change the world, and of her sickened relief when it ended.
   "All right," she decides.
    "You're sure? You're certain?"
    She nods slowly. She feels his fingers on his chin, turning it up towards him. He kisses her. She realizes she is crying, and she presses herself into Laurent's iron arms, leaning against his unyielding solidity, trying to melt into him, letting his kisses take her doubt away.
* * *
    Jack Campbell, Chief Technical Officer at Kishkinda SNC, is surprisingly easy to kidnap. His modern, minimalist fourth-floor apartment is in a building with security cameras and electronic locks; but he is single, and drinks heavily on weekends, and is all too eager to join a tiny but very pretty American girl with purple-streaked hair and black velvet gloves for a nightcap at her home. He is too drunk to be suspicious when his new friend 'accidentally' gives the taxi the wrong address, then leads him on a five-minute walk through the dark alleys with which the 11th arrondissement is replete.
   Campbell is so drunk he sways and staggers as he walks. His first hint that all is not well comes when a masked and gloved Laurent appears out of a shadowed nook and knocks him dazed and sprawling with a single punch to the solar plexus. By the time Campbell has any idea that this is more than a simple mugging, he is handcuffed, blindfolded, gagged, and in the back of a rental Citroen, seated between Estelle and Laurent.