‘That is such heresy. And that’s why he’s a fugitive.’
Fagin fidgeted. ‘Um, no, he was really good at hacking copiers.’
‘Copiers?’ I raised an eyebrow.
‘Yes. Office copiers. Most of them have microchips now, and they have internet capability. They can connect to the web if they have a repair that needs to be made. They can either self-download a fix if it’s a software problem or tell the repairman exactly what parts to bring.’
‘And Jack Ming would hack… copiers?’
‘Yes. He would rewrite the software in the copier.’ Fagin tented his cheek with his tongue.
‘To do what?’
‘Well, you could rewrite software on the chip to overheat the copier, damage it or destroy it. He set a copier on fire at a firm where his mother worked as a consultant. The sprinklers came out, caused several thousand dollars’ worth of damage.’
‘Big deal. Is his mommy ignoring him?’
‘Or,’ and Fagin gave his throat a polite clearing, ‘you could program the copier to save an image of everything it scanned and email it to you.’
‘Wow.’ Okay, that was huge. Consider what a compromised copier could give you: business proposals, legal filings before they were given over to the court, product plans, confidential memos. Even with email now, paper copies of critical documents were still used. You could learn a lot about a company, a project, sifting through every image that came across the copier. ‘Corporate espionage, Fagin?’
‘Maybe, just a touch.’
‘Is that why Jack Ming had to leave New York?’
Fagin gave a slow nod. ‘He stole secrets from companies, and he must have tried to sell them. Or somehow they backtracked the hacking to him. I think if he could make copiers spy for him, he could write other software to do the same.’
I considered. Maybe he had, maybe this was how he’d stolen Novem Soles’s secrets.
Fagin shrugged. ‘Um, I don’t think he’d come back here to see family.’
‘Why?’
Fagin cracked his first smile. ‘Well, the rumor was, he caused his dad’s death.’
23
Midtown Manhattan, New York City
His mother’s apartment was several blocks north of the United Nations Plaza, on East 59th Street. It was convenient, and his mother had always treasured a smooth road in life. She was not a woman who cared for bumps along the ride.
Jack Ming didn’t recognize the doorman, and he didn’t have a key, so he sat in a small, elegant tea shop across the street, sipping a strong cup of Earl Grey, staving off jet lag, waiting for her to come home. The sky rumbled, louder than the traffic. The clouds began to smother the hard, bright morning light. A warm, gusty rain began to fall fitfully. He watched an umbrella salesman suddenly appear on the street corner; it was almost as if the rain had conjured the man out of thin air. It was unusually warm in New York after the unseasonable chill of Amsterdam.
He thought he would never be back here. He had expected a tidal wave of emotion; but instead, worse, he felt a slow, rising flood of remorse and sorrow. The kind that drowned you by inches.
He tasted the risk, like wet steel on his tongue. Novem Soles might send a hired troll, like the one he’d killed in Amsterdam, to watch his mother and kill him if he turned up. Or maybe the CIA had figured out who he was after he made his offer. Of all the moves he’d made since being shot, coming home felt like the most dangerous one. He glanced around. If her apartment was being watched then the watchers should have grabbed him the moment he appeared across the street. He tucked an earphone bud into place but he kept the iPod silenced. He had called the house using a prepaid phone he had bought when he arrived in Manhattan. As he got his mother’s answering machine, he had hung up and decided simply to go to her apartment. His father had been wealthy and the Mings had invested carefully from their days in Hong Kong and she still worked as a consultant from her home when she pleased.
Mom, come home, he thought. He tried her home phone again. No answer. She could be traveling for work, which could mean she was anywhere from South America to Hong Kong to Canada. She could be screening her calls. He could try and hack into her laptop; she wasn’t very security conscious. But that felt like rifling through her clothing drawers, or love letters from her teenage years. You didn’t hack your mom.
He waited, watching the warm, intermittent rain streak the glass, his heart pounding. She might spit in his face. She might scream for the police. She might call him his father’s murderer again and he wasn’t sure he could take that pain.
24
Fagin’s Nest, Chelsea, New York City
Fagin poured himself coffee. He didn’t offer me any.
‘Sandra Ming is former State Department. Now she consults. Very well connected in both business and government. She sits on boards of directors for two Fortune 1000 companies. American-born but related to a prominent Hong Kong family. The husband’s name was Russell Ming. Real-estate developer, he died about the time that Jack vanished. Owned properties around New York and New Jersey. Heart attack about the time Jack lit out.’
For a moment Fagin’s eyes went merry.
‘Heart attack over his son’s crimes?’ I asked.
‘The rumor mill suggested,’ Fagin said.
‘That’s a hard cross for a kid to bear,’ I said.
Fagin made a noise. He’d seen as many damaged kids as a social worker. ‘Life is full of hard crosses. If I could have recruited him I could have shielded him. The Oliver Twists have never, ever been caught.’
‘Connected to government and business,’ I said, repeating Fagin’s own words. Could his mother shield him, or help him reach the CIA without me finding him? I had one choice: I had to go to the mother’s house. I glanced up at Fagin.
‘Would Jack contact hackers here in town? Did he know any of your Twists?’
‘Not if he wants to keep his head low. If there’s a price on him, I might be tempted to collect it.’
‘At least you’re consistent, Fagin.’
‘And what a joy that makes me.’
‘But you, you’re not likely to turn him into the police. You don’t like talking to the police, Fagin.’
‘In my defense, they don’t much like talking to me, either.’
‘Where does Mrs Ming live?’
Fagin consulted a computer database. I looked at the photo of his mother we’d loaded into a browser: it showed an elegant woman touching her chin in that weird author-photo pose. She was pretty, but in a cold, cubic way.
He gave me Mrs Ming’s address.
‘Thank you.’
‘That’s it? Thank you?’
‘You’re not going to tell anyone that I’m here, Fagin.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘Because I will tell the people who are looking for Jack Ming that you might know where he is. And if I do that, they will order me to force information from you, and then to kill you.’
