Anarchy of the Mice

Chapter Forty-Five

Quaid watched flight crews prepping choppers from the helipad lobby. He wore a suit like the other men, and helped himself to coffee from an urn and scones and sculpted melon balls off the adjacent platter. He ambled back to a plush chair in the corner, watching his phone for texts from Durwood.

He feigned indifference to the frizz-haired older man reading Le Monde.

There was no "safe" air travel, the kernel having rendered public air traffic control ineffective, airspaces governed by a byzantine patchwork of private parties whose protocols made the Massachusetts tax code look simple. Helicopters could skirt these nuisances, and had become the preferred transport for executives whose companies could afford it.

A message arrived from Durwood.

Rivard helo gassed up, any sec now.

Quaid thumbed away the message and glanced across the pad. He couldn't tell which of the blue-gray maintenance uniforms was Durwood's.

The man reading Le Monde flipped the page with his right hand.

Yves Pomeroy's left hand rested against the leg of a female companion. The hand palsied constantly, two fingers skittered over the brunette's thigh, coming to rest in what might've been a squeeze before skittering back.

They were accompanied by two obvious security personnel, brawny men wearing guns and sunglasses.

Durwood wrote, still just the two guards?

Quaid left a heavy roller bag at his seat to refill his coffee at the urns—though he would've preferred a nip from the flask, given what they were about to attempt.

Three other groups were waiting to board. Nobody was floating about the lobby or lingering in the restrooms, everyone clearly associated with a departing team.

still two, he tapped back.

Durwood did not respond. Quaid didn't need eyes on his partner to know the ex-solider's lips were pressed dubiously.

Why was he being such a ninny? They had chosen this chopper flight specifically because it was the weakest link in Rivard's security chain. Over ground, Pomeroy traveled by bulletproof convoy. In satellite offices, he enjoyed a phalanx of muscle. (At Roche Rivard, of course, he and everyone else were untouchable as goblin's gold.) For transcontinental flights, he took one of Fabienne Rivard's custom-built personal jets—which married luxury with countermeasures equivalent to those of a B1 stealth bomber.

So what if Yves Pomeroy only had two guards? Quaid believed you didn't look gift horses in the mouth.

Piper's "French dude" must work for Yves Pomeroy, whoever he was. Rivard's Enterprise Software division was the single largest supplier of business software in the world. Something like 80 percent of all offices used its antivirus software—U.S. and European officials were regularly bribed to ignore antitrust concerns—and Piper's descriptions of how easily the kernel had slithered into systems guarded by Rivard's CyberSafe suite strongly suggested it'd originated from Yves' group.

The fact that he'd been at Fabienne Rivard's side in Davos, in the firing line of technical questions, further proved his importance.

Quaid found "M McGill" in his contacts and texted, Piper close to the phone in case?

Molly took a while answering, and Quaid wondered whether she and Sue-Ann were having trouble keeping the natives in line at the hotel.

Finally her response came.

yep, she's here and we are ready!

Quaid wrote, everyone behaving?

mostly.