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Page 46.

25. Wan in Rage

"Have you found them yet?" asked the angry zillionaire to his technical lead, Nirmala, a pleasantly dowdy-looking young Indian woman, thirty years old, from Kolkata. She looked a bit plump in her sari and heavy eyeglasses. She wore her black hair in a bob over her forehead, pulled tight under a dark-plum headband above the sindoor (a dark-red spot of kumkum powder) on her brow.

"Yessir," Nirmala said. She had light caramel skin and fine white teeth. Wan, who evaluated every female for her sexual potential, found her just unattractive enough to prevent diverting his attention from the urgent business at hand. He found her nose too long and protrusive, her cheeks too round, her mouth just a little pinkish slit that looked even thinner when pursed in anxious concentration.

He had over a dozen major corporate executives waiting for him in Paris—surprised that he could not deliver the design project he had been pushing with such glowing salesmanship the past few weeks. They would not wait long. His plan had been to fly some of them to Luxembourg, as he made his speeches in a bid for presidency of the world CEOC. The IFS technology was vital to his presentation.

It was galling, to say nothing of mortifying. When Wan wanted something done, it got done. He was not used to having an American airhead run off on him with secrets and plans that could change the world balance of power, doubling his fortune in the meantime. His credibility had already taken a hit—and was totally on the line now. If he could not control his subordinates, why would anyone trust him? The Irish called it blarney. He called it positioning—the ability to project confidence and competence, whiel caring about the other person whose money he wanted.

Wan, Nirmala, and a half dozen network technicians sat in a semi-dark cool room deep in the refurbished bowels of a 19th Century building in Metz, France. He had flown here on one of his private jets to be close to the action.

"I want that package back at any cost. I don't care what it takes."

"We are narrowing it down," Nirmala said. "Look."

She pointed to a screen on the wall.

Wan looked closer.

"There they are," Wan said. "Where are they?"

"In an Econoligne convenience store near Verdun earlier today, sir."

"Can you make it color?"

"It is grayscale," she said, "but I can colorize it for you." She typed something. The image took on color, as if fresh pixels were pouring into a clear liquid. "The display is painting for us."

"Good," he said absently, focusing on the blonde with blue eyes and the tough-eyed young man with the set jaw beside her, holding a basket full of things they were about to purchase.

"What is all that stuff?"

Nirmala blew the picture up, enhancing it one push at a time, until it became too blurry. "I'd say they have some food, and some stuff to drink, and if I am not mistaken, that is hair coloring. A comb. Scissors."

"So they are going to change their appearance," he said. "That was this morning."

"I have something else," Nirmala said.

"Yes?"

"She was in a post office in Paris very early today. We managed to hack into the local surveillance feed on a commercial bypass, because the postal location is too cheap to use encryption, so they are in a local shopping network. The servers are shared around the strip mall." As she spoke, she brought into focus another image, this time of Hannah Smith alone. It was grayscale, again, what most people would mistakenly call black and white.

"What is she doing?"

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