The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(110)

Livia walked up. She checked her watch, then looked at the laptop. “Do you know what’s on those videos?”

Grimble’s head moved in a circle, as though he were nodding and shaking simultaneously. “Andrew’s girlie movies. He asked me.”

“They’re on the laptop?” Livia said.

Grimble shook his head.

“Then where?” Livia said.

“Somewhere,” Grimble said. “Everywhere. Nowhere.”

Livia took a step closer. “We don’t have time for riddles. And I promise, if you don’t help us, the people who tortured and killed Andrew aren’t going to have time, either. They’ll pour kerosene on your sacred Sekigahara, light a match, and tell you to give them what they want or else.”

Grimble actually moaned at that. Maybe it was too much, but Livia did have a way of knowing what buttons to press.

“Multitudes,” Grimble said. “Attitudes. Gratitudes. Too many to defuse.”

Livia’s jaw clamped, and Diaz realized she might lose it. “Constantine,” she said, before Livia could say anything more. “May I call you that?”

He looked at her chest. “What’s your name? Fame? Blame? Shame?”

“Alondra.”

“Alondra. Alhambra. Abracadabra.”

Diaz had no baseline behavior to compare it to, but she sensed Grimble was decompensating, probably due to the notion that people he’d never even heard of might want to torture and kill him, or set fire to his prized Sekigahara.

She thought about what he had said. Maybe it was the first word that was relevant, with the subsequent ones being riffs based on sound.

“Multitudes,” she said. “Are you saying there are multiple copies?”

“Not copies,” he said, still staring at her chest. “Originals.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know . . . Hundreds? Thousands? There’s no way to count.”

Diaz had no idea what to do with that. She looked at Evie and Maya.

“Constantine,” Evie said. “Are you saying the videos are distributed?”

Grimble turned to Evie and looked at her chest. “I know you.”

“Yes,” she said. “We spoke after your presentation at NSA. Are the videos distributed?”

He nodded. “Andrew said people might want to destroy them. He wanted them safe, safe as the sky.”

Evie glanced at Maya, then back to Grimble. “They’re in the cloud?”

“Yes,” Grimble said. “Multiple servers. Multiple instances. Multiple multiples.”

He seemed a little less agitated. Diaz couldn’t be sure, but she sensed that compared to Livia, at least, Evie was having a calming effect.

“What does this mean?” Livia said. “There are thousands of copies? They’re impossible to destroy?”

“Impossible to destroy,” Maya said. “But . . . Constantine. Can we render them unreadable or inaccessible?”

Grimble rolled his head around as though trying to work out a kink in his neck. “If the videos are inaccessible, no one will hurt the world?”

“You mean Sekigahara?” Rain said.

Grimble nodded.

“That’s right,” Rain said. “If we can destroy them or make them inaccessible, no one will have any reason to hurt anyone else.”

“But how?” Diaz said. “If there are so many copies distributed in the cloud.”

“The file format,” Grimble said.

Maya looked at him. “Nonstandard?”

Grimble smiled at the ceiling. “My own design.”

Maya glanced at the safe. “On the laptop?”

Grimble nodded vigorously.

Rain glanced at Evie and Maya. “What do we do?”

Evie looked at Grimble. “Constantine. Can you give us your credentials so we can log in?”

Grimble nodded.

Diaz realized the man was extremely literal. Evie must have realized it, too, because she said, “Will you tell me your credentials? Please.”

Grimble walked to the safe. He opened the laptop. The screen was dark, with a white rectangular box in the center, a cursor blinking on the left of it.

“If you don’t mind,” Evie said. “Let me.”

Grimble stepped aside.

“Username?” Evie said.

“Matsudaira Takechiyo,” Grimble said.

Evie looked at him. “I might need you to spell that. Could you?”

Grimble spelled it. Rain said, “Better known by the name he took later—Tokugawa Ieyasu. The victor in the Battle of Sekigahara, and subsequently shogun.”

“Okay,” Evie said. “And the passcode?”

Grimble went over to the wall and removed the horned demon mask. He looked inside it and began to drone a set of numbers.

“Hold on,” Evie said. “Slower, please.”

Maya walked to Grimble’s desk and set down the laptop she was using to monitor the cameras. “Tom. You have a burner?”

Kanezaki reached into a pocket and tossed her a unit.

“Hang on,” Rain said. “Make sure the—”

“The cellphone reception is off,” Maya said. “I know.” She powered up the phone and tapped the screen a few times. “Constantine, can you turn the mask around?”