The Last Network - Chapter 64
Decipher
They worked out of the canyon house in Malibu. Four stations were set, but only Paolo and Monica were present. Paolo didn’t know if the two of them could handle it, but he liked the cadence of their prior job. Downtown LA had gone crisply; there was an easy interplay back and forth. No questioning, just a commitment to the task at hand, and a willingness to get it done. Still, this was a lot more people and a completely different protocol. He kept Malcolm and Kendra on standby with orders to be at the ready.
Karachi was like nowhere he’d ever worked before. He had spent the last couple days peering into it from God Mode. A ghost in the shell, hitching rides behind unsuspecting Eyes. It was big like Los Angeles, busy like Hong Kong, and armed like Johannesburg. It was raw, on edge, but quite comfortably bursting at the seams. No one could thrive here without giving way to the unceasing current that drove the city.
It was a place that recognized higher power.
Paolo was told to not connect to anyone too close to the Rangers, the military presence in the city. Like everywhere in Pakistan, the army had the ultimate say in what went on. They were posted around the city, never moving unless necessary, but visible and undisputed. They would not act unless the city was about to spin out of control, and Karachi had a very liberal definition of control.
Malik’s office was upstairs in a shopping arcade off Khayaban-e-Iqbal road. They were marching two and a half miles south to Zamzama Park where ten thousand would meet them. Hundreds had gathered outside, filling the parking lot, squeezed between cars. A brightly decorated bus would lead the march, and another would bring up the rear. Drumwallas pounded out a driving rhythm, then the candidate descended into the lobby, and the crowd erupted. They were a confident group, Paolo didn’t see why outsiders were needed, but he didn’t know the place, the people, or the politics.
He simply knew his protocol.
Paolo stopped watching the scene and went to work. Malik’s body man was wearing a pair of AR glasses. He would not leave his boss’s side and would be the center of the moving perimeter. Paolo flagged him in God Mode and placed a one-mile connection quarantine zone around him. That safety feature meant no Eyes could connect with anyone in the zone unless they were whitelisted. It also meant that any pair which wandered into the zone would have their connection dropped.
He looked over at Monica and nodded. Each had a stack of papers from the dossier in front of them. They began pulling up Peared usernames, whitelisting one after another and allowing them to connect in the zone. These were their clients, the outside supporters who had bought network exclusivity from Malcolm. He looked at the map. Forty red dots indicated their people. Two hundred yellow dots indicated available Hands. Ten dimmed out dots indicated blocked Eyes.
They began pulling profiles and connecting Pairs together. He listened in to them.
“This man is our brother,” they shouted. “Our time is here.”
The front bus started forward and the people spilled out of the parking lot into the main thoroughfare. His pairs had switched to Urdu and he lost the conversation except for occasional snippets of “bhai” or brother, the only word Paolo knew. For the rest of the march, the job was to keep rotating their Eyes through the pool of Hands.
Paolo managed the connections, while Monica kept watch through the feeds of multiple Hands. As the parade made its way across town, Pairs would break away from the marchers and pull people into the crowd. Malik’s marchers swelled, doubling, then tripling in size. No one stood in their way, no one opposed them. Paolo kept his eyes on the map in God Mode. If the PQP tried to get into the network, the number of dimmed-out dots would increase. The dots grew, but only in proportion to the size of the overall crowd.
The march turned the corner, and there was the reason they’d been hired. The street was blocked with truck containers, arranged across the length of the road, making it impassable. The marchers, now over a thousand strong, slowed down, then came to a stop. Eyes sprang into action, exhorting the crowd. Pushing glamour effects and Malik’s campaign song into their Hands’ ears.
“There’s another way.”
“We will be heard. We will be seen. We will continue.”
“We cannot stop. The people await us in the park.”
The Eyes were now rapidly connecting, then dropping, working their way through the crowd. They were like border collies directing the crowd down a side road in an attempt to cut parallel to Zamzama Blvd. Slowly the people got in gear, squeezing down the narrower street. Paolo watched Malik being pressed to the front. Pairs concentrated on the sides and rear, herding people in.
“I don’t like this, Paolo. Too many people, too small a space,” Monica said.
“The body man just turned, he’s moving away from the crowd.”
“Find someone on the other side. Connect into them. See what these people are walking into.”
Paolo didn’t want to risk exposing himself. He lifted the quarantine and waited for someone—anyone nearby—to pair up so he could watch through their connection.
“Paolo, all our Eyes just went offline.”
“I dropped the quarantine. Do you think it spooked them?”
“How would I know?”
“I’m connecting in now.”
They looked up at the monitor. The crowd, with Imran Malik at the front, pushed their way down the side street. Their early singing had given way to defiance. They marched forward, chanting, shaking their fists. Banners spanning the length of the narrow block waved and rocked with pictures of Malik. Then the screen went white. All connections dropped from the map.
“Please tell me the government cut internet,” Paolo muttered and stared helplessly.
Twenty minutes later, their worst fears were confirmed. A bomb planted behind a wall in the street had exploded, killing Malik, and dozens more. It had been a hit job. The People’s Lion would roar no more.
Monica sat stoically, staring out into space, glassy-eyed.
“Did you know about this?” Paolo asked.
“How dare you.”
“Did you know about this?”
“No.”
“Call Malcolm. Get him up here.”
“You do it, you shit.”
“I don’t have his number.”
She threw her phone at him and walked out to the deck. His unsteady hands dialed Malcolm as hers tried to light a cigarette.
It had all gone wrong.