Redback (34 page)

'Games like the Australian Defence Force's
AttackSub
and
WarP
and the UK's new
bomb-fest,
United Knights
, are specifically designed to recruit a new generation of killers -
I mean, of course, soldiers.'

Hiroshi looked shocked. 'Governments are doing this?'

'That's nothing new, Oshi,' Ari said. 'Governments always ban, legislate or commandeer what they
have not created themselves. It saves time, and makes money.'

'You got that right,' Scott continued. 'What's more, these blatant recruiting tools are actually
competing in the global market place with real games, as in the 'games you play for fun'.
America's Army
, for instance, has over eight million registered players.

'Anyway I started travelling around the world talking to Israeli pilots, British and Aussie SAS
dudes, as well as Marines and SEALs back home and various contacts at the Pentagon.

'Up here,' Scott tapped his head, 'my series was about how the virtual world has been hijacked by
real-world warmongers
- on both sides of the terror divide. And, specifically, how the leaders of the so-called free world
had ironically followed their stateless and hated enemies into cyberspace to compete - in a sense
- for the hearts, minds and lives of the world's youth.

'Then, on my way to Melbourne to meet with the
WarP
designers, I met a Kiwi with a
strangely dodgy Firebolt game. It was on that flight that I discovered the absolute truth in the
expression: 'what goes around comes around'. You see the bad guys have travelled full circle, and
are now following the recruiting innovations of the good guys.' 'Do you understand what he's saying
Ari?' Hiroshi asked.

'I'm getting there Oshi, and it's giving me a bad feeling.'

Scott reached into his satchel and pulled out the pirated Firebolt game.

'Let me guess,' Ari said. 'Your dodgy game is
GlobalWarTek
.'

Scott frowned and handed him the disk. 'You mean you do know about this.'

'I'm not exactly sure what I know,' Ari said, and then called out to their houseboy. 'Pippa,
could you bring me out the TekBox please. And don't forget to turn the power switch on this time
when you plug it in.'

'One time, one time only I forget,' Pippa grumbled a moment later, as he placed the Firebolt
TekBox on the coffee table. 'And the time after that too,' he added trailing the power cord after
him as he wandered back inside.

'So what do you think you might know, Ari?' Scott asked.

'The first part of his message was: "the game has been altered". When Hiro came to
visit us early last year he mentioned, in passing, how he had rejigged
WarTek
for a special
customer.'

'No, no,' Scott shook his head. 'This is not something Hiro Kaga would have done to his own game.
Not unless he was seduced by the dark side.'

Ari stood and walked around the patio furniture to lean thoughtfully against the back of
Hiroshi's chair. 'Would 15 million dollars qualify as seduction?' he asked.

Scott laughed, 'Only if it was offered by Mr Vader himself.'

'Well I don't know who it was exactly, or if Hiro even told me their name, but I do recall it was
some American company. Hiro did like a Director's Cut of
WarTek
for their in-house staff
development and team-building program or some such. He basically just made the game specific to
them.'

'Well, that is so not what this is. In fact this isn't even a Firebolt disk,' Scott explained.
'It's a pirate, and a dud one at that - I think. I got it from the Kiwi, who bought it in
Cairo.'

'Well now I'm really confused,' Ari said.

Hiroshi nodded. 'Me, I'm bamboozled.'

'I don't get it. If this is about a pirate disk, why were you meeting Hiro?'

'Because, the
WarP
guys I spoke to in Melbourne,' Scott began.

'Now they're a couple of shit-hot game designers,' Ari interjected.

'Yeah, and they said that whoever did what was done to
Global
WarTek
, must have had
access to the original,' Scott waved his hand, 'stuff.'

'Stuff?' Ari echoed. 'Is that what I was doing all those years? So, I tell you Hiro rejigged
WarTek
, but you say he wouldn't have done this to his own game, but that whoever did, needed
the programming protocols.'

'In a word, yes.'

'I'm starting to feel like we're playing ping pong here, Scott. If you don't think Hiro was
responsible for whatever the hell this is, then what? Did you think Firebolt had a saboteur?'

'Yeah, I guess that was what I was thinking,' Scott said. 'Which would explain why he was
murdered, well, better than anything else explains it; unless of course his death was always part of
the plot, the one with a capital P.'

'The one you have yet to explain,' Ari pointed out.

'Sorry, but you'll see what I'm raving about when the game fires up. That's if you ever get any
power to your TekBox. Doesn't it have a battery?'

'Pippa,' Ari shouted, then added, 'The battery is dead.'

'Plugging in now, Ari man, and switching the switch,' Pippa called from somewhere far away.

'I swear that boy is mad,' Ari smiled. He inserted the disk and flipped up the TekBox screen.

'Okay, get ready,' Scott said. 'Because this version of
WarTek
, as far as I can get into
it, appears to contain an elaborate plot to assassinate real-world figures and overthrow actual
governments.'

'But that's what
WarTek
is about.'

'No Ari. I'm not talking about assassinating the fictitious President of a country that kind of
resembles the whole of North America, or the President of an imaginary United Europe. This version
of the game seems to be a training manual for the assassination of, say, the actual President of the
USA, the Prime Minister of England, the King of Denmark.'

'The King of Denmark?' Ari exclaimed. 'Who has anything against the King of bloody Denmark?'

Scott smiled. 'Ditto the French Foreign Minister, the Swiss President, the entire House of
Saud.'

'Bloody hell, you mean it's not even a Muslim versus Christian plot with a capital P?'

'I honestly don't know what kind of plot it is. It still might just be a huge hoax, a conspiracy
theory, a bored-university-student prank - but I kinda doubt it.'

The three men sat so they all had a view of the screen but, as Scott didn't need to see the
game's epic movie prologue for a nineteenth time, he watched Ari instead and waited for his
reaction.

The man simply frowned and said, 'Oh. Bugger.'

Scott laughed. 'Man, you Aussies are masters of understatement.'

'Yeah, well I'm Jewish too; so inside I'm also throwing up my hands and shouting:
oi vay
,
what the fuck is going on here?'

Hiroshi, leaning in from the other side, asked, 'What is that strange three-eyed wizard man with
the beard doing in this not-wizardy game?'

'That, my love, is the question,' Ari said. 'Isn't it Scott?'

'Oh yes. That and exactly
what
the wizardy man is holding.'

'The globe or the book?' Hiroshi asked.

'The book,' said Scott.

'And does the word on his obviously magical tome have significance beyond this game?' Ari
queried. He clicked on the book, which in turn opened up the next screen.

'Oh it has significance all right,' Scott declared. 'It was actually 'the word' that drew my
attention to the wizard and his book because, as you know, none of them should be in a kosher
version of
GlobalWarTek
. And in my opinion, none of them should be in any mass-market
game.

'What's also weird is that even the
WarP
guys in Melbourne couldn't get beyond Level 2 of
the game within the game. In fact they were unable to figure out if that's all there is to it; or it
needs a password to go further.'

'
Rashmana
,' Hiroshi read, as Ari guided the misplaced magician through a level of
WarTek
that by rights should also not exist. 'What is this
Rashmana
?'

'The
Rashmana
is the manifesto, the skewed Koranic-Bible, the guiding principle…'
Scott waved his hands around. 'I'm not really sure about its politically correct designation, but
basically the
Rashmana
or 'Words of Kúrus' are the teachings of a long-ago Middle
Eastern mystic dude. This Kúrus converted to Islam by way of Christianity picked up in Tibet.
I mean it's that much of a mish-mash apparently. It's kind of an extension or -
depending on your point of view - a subversion of Islam; a
bit like the Moorish Science Temple of America or the Nation of Islam in the States, but with a bit
of the East thrown in for good measure.

'The latest exponent of the
Rashmana
is a man, actual identity unknown, who calls himself
Dárayavaus, son of Kúrus. The 'son' thing is interesting given Kúrus has been
dead several centuries longer than Elvis; that's if you believe all those rumours about his passing.
Anyway Dárayavaus, in turn, has some kind of holy Emissary as his front man. Rumour has it
that this Emissary is the 'reborn' terrorist and arms dealer, Jamal Zahkri al Khudri, but that's
never really been confirmed.

'The really big worry about all of this, especially given what this version of
GlobalWarTek
seems to be about, is that the
Rashmana
is also the party platform of
Atarsa Kára - one of the world's budding and nasty new terrorist groups.'

'Can I say 'bugger' again?' Ari asked.

'Be my guest,' Scott laughed. 'Hiro said we had to 'check source'. Any idea what that means, now?
And please don't say soy or ketchup, like Kaisha did.'

Ari laughed then shook his head slowly, until he caught Scott's look of disappointment. 'I'm not
saying 'no'. I'm thinking. I'll work on the disk tonight and check the subroutines. I'll also play
this part of the game and see if I can get further into it than your genius
WarP
boys.'

'Excellent,' Scott said. 'Level 2 is embedded with quotes from the
Rashmana
, some in
Arabic, some transliterated into English or French. I lost track of the ones we tried as possible
passwords.'

'And globes,' Hiroshi said. 'Everyone has globes.'

'What?' Scott asked.

'Look,' Hiroshi pointed, 'there and there, him and him. Why does this bother me?'

Ari smiled, 'Because you are easily bothered, Oshi.' He flexed his fingers. 'If I can't find any
clues that answer your source question, then first thing in the morning I'll call an old friend at
Firebolt and see if she knows who Hiro's special client was. Because it's my guess that this pirate
disk is a perversion of the game Hiro did for that British-American company; and that they are the
source - intentional or not. Although, given the content of this disk, I'd say not.'

Scott felt incredibly relieved. 'Thanks so much for helping me out with this guys.'

Hiroshi clasped Scott's hand. 'My friend, how could we not when you are seeking my brother's
murderer?'

Scott smiled. 'Well, don't get your hopes up on that, as it's unlikely I'll be able to point the
finger at the guilty person. But I will do my damnedest to find out why Hiro was killed.'

'Then Oshi and I are at your disposal,' Ari said.

'Thank you. Now, depending on what you find tonight, I plan to leave tomorrow to fly home to the
States. When Kaisha and I got here on Friday I sent what I already knew to one of my contacts at the
CIA, to see what the Agency knew about this; if anything.'

Ari sat back and crossed his arms. 'You have CIA contacts and yet you've come to us for
help?'

Scott laughed. 'The last time I went to the CIA with info - as in, you know, offered them stuff
before I wrote my story - they pretty much told me to get lost until I had concrete facts rather
than a journalist's gut feeling. So now I just use my contacts
- and I have a few at the Agency, and in the FBI - to get, as well as give information.

'The contact I gave some info to this time, also happens to be my ex-girlfriend. Laura rang me
this morning and asked me to meet with her in Texas, where she's apparently been seconded to a
Homeland Security investigation into the bombings there.'

Chiang Mai, Thailand
Sunday 11 pm

Gideon returned to the street table with four bottles of Singha and placed them all
in the centre of the table. The Picot Bar, which 'Steve' Rawley had no reason to believe hadn't been
chosen at random for their debrief, was in a side street off Ratchmankha Road inside the old city
walls. As it happened, the establishment was directly beneath the first-floor residence permanently
leased by Back Door and often used as a Redback hangout in Chiang Mai. This was a detail that hadn't
even been revealed to Jana Rossi, yet.

As for Alan Wagner, Triko had volunteered to take him back to his hotel, help him pack, and run
him out of town - for his own safety. At the very least he was going to strongly suggest that Alan
and his cameraman Bob change hotels until they could get the next stagecoach out of Dodge.

'Righto Rawley,' Gideon said, 'who are you really and what the hell were you lunatics doing on
Laui Island?'

'You first,' Rawley said. Gideon just handed him a beer and waited, so he shrugged, 'You did say
this was a two-way gig.'

'Fine,' Gideon said and smiled in mock defeat. 'We are an Australian Retrieval Agency. Basically
we get people back from places they don't want to be. We rescue captives from hostage situations -
hence we were on Laui.

'We retrieve corporate executives from ransom situations, we re-abduct kids taken abroad by
foreign spouses. Basically we go where regular law enforcement types can't, in order to bring
Aussies home. You?'

Rawley sighed. 'My team and I were on Laui to liberate the hostages and, you know, generally save
the day.'

'You fucked up,' Coop noted.

'On both counts,' Gideon added.