Redback (45 page)

It had taken them two hours, there and back from Islamabad airport to retrieve Jason, Simon and
Dwayne; or, as they seemed to prefer: Mudge, Spud and Kennedy. The American had apparently not taken
to the nickname the Aussies had given him.

Jana realised
all
the boys were now squabbling about something. She ignored the stupid
notion that everyone gathering at the front of a small jet might just tip it forward on its nose and
decided to join them.

Triko had plugged the TekBox Kennedy had lifted from the terrorists' hotel room into the plasma
screen on the cockpit wall. An already-loaded game sprang to life and for some reason, known only to
boys and other nerds, they all cheered. Jana and Ruth exchanged mystified glances. Gideon was
obviously used to it.

'Oh cool,
GlobalWarTek
,' Triko said.

Brody looked disappointed. 'What? I can't believe this is what those murdering bastards were
doing all that time. Are you sure it was the only disk in the room, Bamm-Bamm?'

'Far as I could tell,' Kennedy said. He was the only passenger still reclining, as he had to keep
his injured legs elevated. 'Mind you, it was only during my last visit to their den of evil that it
was actually playing. And I didn't exactly have long to search the room before, you know, it wasn't
one anymore.'

'Hang on, this is wrong,' Coop said, prising the control pad from Triko's hand. 'Look at this
guys; this is not
WarTek
proper.'

'Weird,' Triko said. 'And who's the dude with the beard?'

'And why is he doing a Moses, and lecturing those troops in,' Mudge began.

'In not English?' Coop finished.

'How can you even know all this after only two minutes?' Ruth asked.

Coop turned side on, so he could talk to her while also pointing to things on the screen.
'
GlobalWarTek
is a battle game with a contemporary, almost futuristic setting. So first up,
there shouldn't be a long-haired wizard wandering around the war zone at all - let alone one
directing the armies; and especially not one giving those orders in Arabic or Urdu or Klingon or
whatever he's speaking.'

'It could just be foreign translation of the game, Coop,' Gideon suggested. 'After all it was
that Ashraf guy who was playing.'

'Yeah, but it still wouldn't come with Moses-Merlin here.'

'Or all that graffiti and, wait,' Triko said. 'Go left, go left, there. What the hell?'

Brody frowned. 'Oh boy.'

'Shit,' said Coop.

'Far out,' Kennedy added.

'What? What?' Ruth and Jana asked.

'The game map is India and Pakistan, not the subcontinent,' Gideon said.

'That statement doesn't make sense, Bryn,' Ruth said.

'Even if it did, so what?' Jana asked.

'So the fair dinkum
GlobalWarTek
game is played in computer-generated environments that
resemble the real world only in terms of the shape and size of continents and landmasses,' Coop
said. 'It has recognisable seas, oceans and major rivers, and
looks
like a map of our world,
but isn't at all.'

Jana must have continued to look blank.

'The
WarTek
world isn't a copy of ours,' Triko said, 'at least not in terms of political
divisions. It uses the landscape but not the human divisions we've placed on it. It doesn't,
correction, it shouldn't feature real-world borders, recognisable countries, 21st century
geo-political entities.'

Gideon gestured to the screen. 'In other words, it's okay for that to be a map of the
subcontinent. It's not right that it shows the borders between India, Pakistan, Kashmir and
Afghanistan; and it certainly shouldn't have real cities.'

Coop used the keypad to scroll through game. 'Iran, Saudi Arabia, over to Italy; oh, it only goes
as far as the UK. It seems to be a wedge, north of the equator and between Ireland and the Bering
Strait.'

'Anyone dare to guess what the multi-coloured glowing spots might mean?' Mudge asked.

'There's a red one near the French border,' Ruth said. 'And I gather that too is a border that
should not be marked.'

'You got that right, Ruth,' Triko said.

Coop panned back towards Pakistan. Peshawar had a matching red dot; as did Istanbul, Rabat and
Khartoum. 'Real real-bad things happened in all those places in the last year.'

'I'm afraid to point out the blue dots,' Ruth said.

Gideon itemised as Coop panned across the map. 'London, Paris, Riyadh, Tokyo.'

'Can you um retreat?' Ruth asked.

Coop smiled. 'Where to Ruth?'

'The place where the wizard was wizarding,' she said. 'Not everything there was in Arabic.'

'
Rashmana
? What's that? It's everywhere,' Jana said.

"Bugger,' said Gideon.

'The
Rashmana
is the bible, Koran, bloody field guide of Atarsa Kára,' Brody said.
'And Atarsa Kára is the new al-Qaeda, except it's like a hybrid terror group whose members
follow a kind of radical New-Age Islam.

'Jamal Zahkri, the guy we just watched walk in and out of the café that day, is like the
woo-woo Emissary of the Mystery Man who heads Atarsa Kára. Since we're pretty sure it was AK
who got Ashraf and Kali to blow the guts out of Pesh, then obviously Atarsa Kára is running -
or even forming - groups like Bashir Kali's Groh Sitaarah. Oh,' Brody stopped abruptly. 'Was there a
red dot on New Delhi?'

When three people said yes, Brody shook his head and continued. 'Groh Sitaarah claimed the
attempt on the three Prime Ministers at CHOGM in New Delhi last year.'

'Where does this
Rashmana
guide book come from?' Jana asked.

Gideon noticed the Doc was frowning as if she was trying to remember something long-lost. Either
that or she had indigestion.

Brody continued. 'It was written by some 15th century Persian or Turkish mystic called
Kúrus. He now has a 21st century wannabe prophet-messiah called Davvay… no
Dárayavaus, amping up a horde of terrorists who want to kill, but not die for the cause.'

'Spud, again I ask: where do you get all this shit from?'

'And Mudge, again I say: try reading instead of playing.'

Gideon was directing Coop where to move on the screen. 'There's no way this text is 15th century
anything,' she said.

'Some of it
is
Persian, but more like the 520s BC. And other parts of it are - well, just
weird. Although, if the new Pretender, and leader of Atarsa Kára, has taken the name
Dárayavaus then that would make sense in terms of the text; but no sense at all in terms of
the message.'

Triko biffed his brother up the back of the head, before Mudge could ask.

Gideon laughed. 'Yes, Mudge, I
can
read bits of it.'

Coop leant over to Jana when he noticed her surprise. 'Doctor of History, remember?'

'I thought you were joking,' Jana said.

'And Master of a language or four,' Ruth said.

'Mostly bad,' Triko added.

Gideon snapped her fingers. 'You lot will get more than my bad language in a second.'

'Guys, what the fu…' Kennedy glanced at Ruth, 'hell difference does it make whether this
Rashmana
is ancient Persian or recent mystic Fibberish? Atarsa Kára still gets the
same results. Buildings still go boom.'

'Well for one,' Gideon said, 'it means AK recruits are following something that's more than a
thousand years older than Islam. And while I know Spud said Atarsa Kára follow a radical
New-Age Islam, this is more like a throwback.

'The ancient Achaemenid King, Dárayavaus, worshipped Ahura Mazda. This was Persia in the
6th century BC. Ahura Mazda was the entity, or idea, proclaimed by the Persian poet-prophet
Zarathustra as:
the one uncreated Creator of all
.' Gideon looked at her friends faces and
shrugged. 'Also known as god; capital 'g' optional. But, while Ahura Mazda might be a precursor, he
is neither Allah nor the Judaeo-Christian God; who, ironically, happens to be one-two-three and the
same. But we're not going there today, class.'

Jana couldn't believe what she was hearing. But it was the lecturer, not the content that she
couldn't get her head around.

'The other weirdness,' Gideon said, running her hand over the plasma screen, 'is this, and this
and this. The whole game is riddled with these alleged
Rashmana
quotes.'

'I can make out that some might be in English Bryn, but I can't read them,' Ruth said.

Gideon nodded and read: 'In battle, there are only two methods of attack - the direct and the
indirect. Yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of manoeuvres.'

She glanced at Triko and continued: 'The General who is skilful in attack, is the one whose
opponent does not know what to defend; and he who is skilful in defence, has an opponent who does
not know what to attack.'

Gideon raised an eyebrow at Brody: 'If we do not wish to engage the enemy, all we need to do is
throw something odd and unaccountable in his way.'

Brody grinned, and raised his hand to take over: 'Clever fighters put themselves beyond the
possibility of defeat, and never miss the moment for taking out the enemy.'

Gideon nodded. 'Ladies and gentlemen, Spud and I present:
The Art
of War
, a
25,000-year-old text written by the Chinese strategist and general, Sun Tzu.'

'Which, we stress,' Brody said, 'is completely unrelated to Islam, long-gone Persian gods, any
bloke past or present called Dárayavaus, or the true-and-correct version of
GlobalWarTek
.'

Gideon spread her arms. 'It seems the
Rashmana
is not at all what it claims to be. And
what it
is
seems to be a fraud, a fake, a bogus manifesto.'

'You're not saying Atarsa Kára doesn't really exist are you?' Kennedy asked. 'Because we
were right in the middle of what they just did.'

'Of course not, Dwayne,' Gideon said. 'I'm merely saying that the
Rashmana
on which Atarsa
Kára operates seems to be a con.'

'Just like this
WarTek
game isn't really
GlobalWarTek;
but is, quite obviously, a
mission-specific instruction manual for terrorists,' Coop said. He began trawling the landscape
again.

'Oh dear,' Jana said, pointing. 'I've seen that before.'

'
You
have?' Gideon said, looking at the in-game room Coop had just entered. 'Where?'

'On Laui Island.'

'What?'

Jana locked eyes with Gideon. 'Remember, when we were on the submarine, I told you what I'd seen
in Mila Ifran's super-high-tech command centre?' She didn't wait for a response. 'I thought one of
the laptops was connected to elsewhere with a webcam because the screen was showing a room. Well, it
wasn't an empty room somewhere else. It was that room.'

Jana flipped her hands out. '
Now
tell me you don't believe in coincidences, Bryn
Gideon.'

Gideon pulled a face. There was little else to do really.

'And that's not all,' Jana said, 'because if this game really is a training thing for terrorists,
then I might know about that too.'

'Don't be ridiculous.' Gideon couldn't help herself.

Jana raised her eyebrows. 'When we were in Chiang Mai, I met an American who was really a
journalist but who told me he was a thriller writer and who wasn't trying to pick me up but just
wanted to talk to someone who spoke English so he bought me a drink and started…'

'Jana,' Gideon snapped. 'Take a breath.'

Jana slowed her explanation to walking speed. 'This guy, Scott, was telling me about the problems
he was having ironing out the bugs in the plot for his next book. This plot,' Jana waved at the
plasma screen, and repeated, '
this
plot to use dodgy versions of real games to train people
to commit acts of terror and target people for assassination.'

Everyone stared at her.

Jana shrugged. 'He gave me his business card.'

Dallas Texas
Tuesday 7pm

Scott and Laura dashed out of the downpour that had started the moment they stepped
from the diner two blocks down Justice Way, and shook themselves off before re-entering the FBI
Field Office. They'd already spent three hours debriefing with the Operation Nighthawk team, going
over what they'd turned up in Mexico, and then digging through photos, footage, and files looking
for the connections that they were convinced were already there; somewhere.

Laura Serrano, one of five CIA officers seconded to the Dallas 'Nighthawk' op-centre for the
joint agency investigation into the Dallas bombings, had personally vouched for Scott. Mr Dreher was
apparently already a known entity, but had been given special Homeland Security clearance
regardless.

Laura had phoned ahead from Laredo Airport, where they'd ditched the hire car, to organise her
own little research team - or rather her own geeky sidekick. She'd asked that any one of the
40-year-old teenagers who'd been trying to crack the
Atlantes
version of the
WarTek
game be seconded to her. She wanted someone to concentrate instead on seeking and sorting
anything from the intel gathered so far from the wider investigation that included certain keywords.
The reward would be the chance to crack Scott's
Rashmana
disk.

By the time they arrived in Dallas, the FBI's Nerd No. 27 had collated every nanobyte of
computer-held info, as well as physical evidence in the form of hard copy files and photos that
fitted within the parameters Laura had requested.

Laura's forte was analysing intel and recognising patterns. Scott's best stories always came from
unearthing the existing links and following them to the truth, or at least someone's idea of it. So,
in a bizarre way, they'd been having a great time wading through a mountain of possibilities looking
for a key. In two hours, they had excavated a skerrick of the ton of intel, facts and leads that
Nerd 27 had already triple cross-referenced in his search for anything that contained, in any
combination, the names or words: Carthage Thunder Militia, war games, pirated games, pirate
software,
GlobalWarTek
,
Rashmana
, Atarsa Kára, Jamal Zahkri, Dárayavaus,
Atlantes
, McTeal, Jake Collins, Celia Bridle, Wendell Burke, Jesse, Mike, Micah O'Brien,
Assad bin 'Something', Saudi Arabia, Hiro Kaga, Nayazuki Firebolt or Blue Atlantico.