by D S Kane
* * *
Laura thought she saw her father standing in the compound’s formal dining room. But no, it was just her imagination. She blinked her eyes and he disappeared. Then, he was back, screaming that she was a murderess. She shook her head, thinking, no, I’m not! You are! You murdered my mother. The image she’d conjured smiled back and then laughed. She screamed, her entire body shaking before she fainted.
When she became conscious, she wondered yet again if it was really her and not her father who had murdered her mother.
I must speak with Daddy. Haven’t spoken with him since he was taken to prison. She walked to Frank’s office and took the landline phone from its receiver. She knew the number by heart. When the prison officials wouldn’t let her talk to him, she felt her world grow smaller, tightly crushing her. She decided to go to shopping in Asunción to take her mind off what was happening inside her,
Pedro drove her from the compound in Areguá to Asunción. She visited the art gallery on a tiny side street where she had bought her vase a few weeks ago. For a while she felt better. Once again, she made no further purchases.
As she strolled back up the alleyway toward her car and the driver, she saw a squirrely looking pawn shop and wandered inside. At first she saw nothing of interest and was about to leave when, under the glass in the counter, she saw a gun.
She’d begun studying Spanish and decided to practice her skills. In Spanish, she asked the pawnshop owner, “What’s that?” She pointed to the gun.
“Señorita, it is a Beretta nine millimeter. Very cheap. It works well.”
“How much?”
When she left the pawnshop, her purse held the handgun and a box of ammo. She had no idea how to use it, but she somehow felt safer from her hallucinations.
PART III
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
—George Bernard Shaw,
Major Barbara
Chapter 27
Daniel Strumler’s campaign headquarters,
201 East 57th Street, New York City, NY
November 6, 3:48 a.m.
Autumn was starting to turn to winter, and Election Day turned into Election Night for Daniel Strumler. He hadn’t visited his apartment in Manhattan in nearly a month. These days, his hotel room in Washington DC had turned into his temporary home when he wasn’t stomping for his campaign.
He’d eaten a light meal before arriving at his campaign headquarters. Strumler’s eyes bugged as he read the red LED news ticker. It glowed, “Strumler Wins Upset By Four Electoral Votes.” Cheers from his supporters and advisors made it impossible for him to be heard. It wouldn’t have mattered. His lips moved but he emitted no actual sound. His expression was full of simple surprise. He watched a tsunami of red balloons fall from the ceiling. What have I done? Now I’ll actually have to do this damned job. Oh fuck, fuck me!
One of his assistants tapped his shoulder. “Mr. President-Elect, you have to make a speech. The teleprompter is loaded with the speech you wrote.”
In a daze, feeling like a wounded animal, Daniel Strumler stumbled up to the microphone. He took a deep breath and tried to steady himself by gripping the edges of the lectern. The teleprompter screen rolled past, but it displayed the concession speech he’d spent two weeks writing. He’s been so sure he would never be asked to deliver the speech of a winner.
He shook himself and stopped speaking while he thought what he could say. As the teleprompter scrolled on, he edited on the fly. “Thank you, my loyal supporters. Now is the time to fix all that is wrong with America. I will hire the brightest and bring them to Washington. The clock is running and we have until January twentieth to prepare ourselves.”
* * *
Robert Randall had been in Washington working at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley. He ate leftovers in his apartment in the outskirts of Washington before settling in on Election Day.
His temper exploded as he watched America’s future unfold on television. He saw Strumler fumble his way through his victory speech.
He took his cellphone from his pocket and entered the phone number for the ass dire.
“Robert, I was expecting your call. My apologies, but you’ll have to continue your role as CIA threat advisor to the president-elect. At least until we can figure out what we want to do next. You understand?”
Randall swallowed several times to make it easier to speak. “Yes sir.” But he was sure the ass dire could hear the discomfort in his voice.
“Don’t worry, Robert. One thing is for sure: He’ll never serve a complete term. Be patient. Keep me up to date, Robert. Be a team player.”
After the ass dire terminated the call, Randall sat riveted to his apartment’s couch, watching Strumler’s election celebration. His feelings of rage caused his right hand to cramp. He worked on refining his plan to deal with Strumler. The first step would be to contact Alan Skorkin. He punched in Skorkin’s number and was routed into voicemail.
“Alan, it’s Randall. I have another task for you. You know that batch of stuff I left with you?” The word “stuff” was code, referring to a batch of one hundred Bug-Loks he’d bought on his own dime from a Chinese CSIS intelligence agent. “Please stuff the turkeys, one in each. Then see if their stuffing works and send me a file.” This was code to log each Bug-Lok’s serial number with the name of the startup CEO who was “infected” with it. From that time on, Randall could record each CEO’s every word and location where the CEO spoke.
He’d no longer need Frank Lucessi.
* * *
Glen took an unexpected left turn off University Drive onto Bryant and used the rear-view mirror to watch the car that had been following him for seven blocks. It was the same car he’d seen the last two days during his commute to and from the new offices of MindField. Glen pulled the car to the curb and watched the car in his rear view as it flew by him. Glen snapped a photo of the driver using his cell. He snapped another photo to get the license number.
Then Glen continued home as the rush-hour traffic thinned out the setting sun.
When he had parked his car in the garage, he enlarged the photo to see the driver’s face. A male, narrow face, probably between thirty-five and forty years old. He checked the photo of the plate number. It was clearly focused.
He walked up the stairs. He could smell the aroma of cooking from the apartments in the complex. He entered his own apartment. Spaghetti sauce, possibly homemade. Ann stood at the stove. He marveled at the simple dish. I didn’t even know she knew how to cook!
Ann turned and faced Glen. “Hey, sweetie. I got ambitious. Fresh pasta from the market at the Stanford Mall and a bottle of spaghetti sauce from Safeway. Hungry?”
Glen nodded. “Can I help?”
“Nope. Just sit. It’s all done. What was your day like at MindField?”
Glen sighed. “We’re all hard at work. But I noticed something over the last two days. Someone’s been following me.” He showed her the two photos.
She pulled her own cellphone from her pocket and transferred copies of both to her own phone. “Probably nothing, but let me send a copy of these to Cassie.”
After their quiet dinner, Ann sent an email to Cassie with both photos attached, and a request to see who the person was.
Ann also formulated a plan to deal with whomever this was. First step, find out where he’s staying and follow him.
The next morning as they ate breakfast before leaving for work and school, Ann’s phone buzzed and she saw a text from Cassie:
Ann—
I got your message but was busy last night. I’ll get you some intel as soon as I have a break this morning.
—Mom
Ann did a trace on the license plate number of the stranger’s car. She loaded a TrackMe, a piece of hacker software William Wing had given her. The car was only a block away from Glen’s apartment. She took the stairs down to the lobby and walked to the car’s last registered location. She fo
und the car and approached head on. She passed by and took a turn around the corner. Ann watched from an alleyway. She saw Glen leave their apartment and watched the stranger in the car start the engine. Yes, he’s definitely following Glen.
Ann decided there was not much more she could do until Cassie told her something—anything—about who this stranger was and why he was following Glen.
Later, while she sat in class, she felt her phone buzz against her body. She read the message:
Ann—
The man whose photo you sent me turns out to be a “consultant” based in Washington. Why are you interested in him?
William Wing hacked him for me. His name is Alan Skorkin, but he also goes by many other names. Wing searched and found his identity, then read his email and text messages for the last two months. The results indicate he may have been used as a cleaner for several intelligence services. This man is very dangerous. Stay Away!
—Mom
Ann thought about this while her teachers droned on. When her class ended, she went to the next class, but by the end of the day she realized she hadn’t taken any notes.
She decided to follow Skorkin very carefully, now that she was aware he was dangerous.
She saw that he spent time around startup CEOs. She recognized several as members of her entrepreneurship class. She trailed Skorkin into the cafeteria and watched him dump something into one of the CEO’s coffee mugs. Ann remembered when she had been administered a thousand Bug-Loks in her morning coffee by the CypherGhost a year ago. Although she couldn’t be certain, she was guessing that Skorkin was administering Bug-Lok devices to the startup CEOs just as the CypherGhost had done to her. She texted her sitrep to Cassie.
* * *
It didn’t take long for Alan Skorkin to locate every one of the startup CEOs. He followed each one until they stopped at a coffee stand or went for lunch, and then, when he could do it without the CEO seeing what was happening, Skorkin dropped the liquid from the container into the CEO’s coffee or their beer or wine. When he had “taken care of” the ten Silicon Valley CEOs, he drove to San Francisco, where he dosed five more, and then he took a flight to Cleveland, Ohio, where he repeated the process for three CEOs whose addresses Randall had sent him. Next, he planned to head to south Florida, then to New York’s Tri-State Area, and finally fly to Atlanta where the final two were located. While he waited at the terminal in the Cleveland airport, he called Randall with a progress report.
Chapter 28
51st Floor, Strumler Tower Capital Hotel,
Washington, DC
November 10, 11:38 a.m.
Daniel Strumler sat in his hotel room. From his first visit long ago, he’d realized that this city was recalcitrant. Unable to conceive of a better way to do things, it would always refuse to change. He had promised to change all that. Now he was realizing that he would inevitably fail.
He realized he was totally unprepared to be president. There was too much to do, too many people to direct. It’s not like one of my corporations, where I can fire someone for their bad performance. Bad enough that I can’t fire those I appoint, because they’ll write a book about me. No, the worst are those who were elected to Congress. If they serve their own tiny group well, those slackers will continue to elect them.
These thoughts caused him to fall into a rage he couldn’t control. Worse, his inability to control his temper further enraged him. He even saw enemies where there were none.
I’m sure that CIA guy Randall bugged my office. What if he can somehow record what I’m thinking and feeling? Didn’t the CIA run experiments long ago to try doing just that? What was it called? Psychokinesis?
* * *
Robert Randall reported back to William Smythe, his ass dire. “Sir, the man’s not playing with any cards in his deck. He’s not stable. He’s a… a loon.”
He heard nothing for nearly thirty seconds from Ass Dire Smythe. Then finally, in his most soothing tone of voice, Smythe told him, “There’s always the twenty-fifth amendment if he is truly bonkers. But, his staff will have to initiate it. Why don’t you gather evidence of Strumler’s instability? If you find enough material to convince me, I might be able to find a way to route it to the appropriate parties.”
And Randall thought, I’ll have to find some way to collect evidence.
* * *
Cassie had decided to follow the man who’d been feeding CEOs what appeared to her to be Bug-Loks.
It had been nearly a decade since she had last used her countersurveillance techniques. She knew her skills were rusty. She knew that following a suspect was best done using a team of at least three. She would need to try without any other operative, so she would have to be more diligent.
She stayed nearly a full block behind her target, using tricks like the reflections off storefront windows to offer brief snatches of her target’s image. When he drove to SFO, she followed, always at least sixty feet behind. When he bought a ticket at the counter, she watched, then told the ticket counter agent, “My husband just bought a ticket right here. I’m sure he’s cheating on me. I want to follow him. Can you sell me a ticket to his destination? On his flight?”
She bought a last-minute ticket to Atlanta and stopped by a clothing store in the terminal. She bought a suitcase and several hats and light jackets, and dropped them in the suitcase.
She donned a different jacket and hat, and then boarded the same flight. She sat, six rows in front of him. When the flight landed, she followed him to his hotel.
She saw him park his car at a cheap motel and stayed in her car in the parking lot, across from his. When she heard him start the car engine, she woke instantly and followed him to an office park. She changed hats and jackets.
There, her target met with one startup CEO. She followed him and watched him drop something into the CEO’s coffee during their meeting. Cassie knew that Bug-Lok nanodevices were stored in small clear semipermeable containers that would dissolve in any liquid.
Remembering her own experience of being infected with a Bug-Lok, her fears were exacerbated. She waited until the man left his hotel room. Once more, she changed her hat and jacket.
Cassie approached the door to his now-empty room. She pulled her 9mm Beretta from her jacket holster, loaded a round into its chamber, and flicked the safety off. She grabbed her electronic keycard from her pocket and fit it into the door’s key panel. The lock gave a satisfying click and the door popped open. She searched the room thoroughly and found a stash of what she identified as Bug-Loks in their dissolvable packaging. The labeling of the packets was in Mandarin, a language Cassie could speak and write.
Cassie searched the room for something that would identify her target. In one of the drawers she found a paperback. The book, DS Kane’s Bloodridge, had a business card that was being used as a bookmark. The business card had Alan Skorkin’s name engraved on it, along with his phone number and a Washington DC address. No email address and no internet address. She photographed the business card with her cellphone’s camera.
Casssie took one of the liquid tubes with her to have it analyzed. She left the room as quickly as she could and called Michael Drapoff of the Ness Ziona as soon as she was out of the hotel.
Drapoff told her to ship the package to him.
Cassie took the first flight back to SFO.
Chapter 29
51st Floor, Strumler Tower Capital Hotel,
Washington, DC
November 11, 7:03 a.m.
This time, Robert Randall wasn’t kept waiting to brief President-Elect Strumler. He wondered why he was being permitted to see the man after such a short wait. Is he taking his election seriously?
Even more surprising was Strumler’s attitude. The man literally beamed at Randall, and asked if he’d like coffee while they spoke.
Randall nodded, but as Strumler placed two cups on the coffee table between the two couches in his hotel room, Randall found the opening he’d prayed for. Before Strumler could sit, Randall asked St
rumler, “Do you still have the manila folder I gave you at our first meeting?”
Strumler nodded.
Randall said, “Good. May I see it, please?”
Strumler rose from his seat and walked to the desk in the hotel room. He began opening drawers and searching for the folder. By the time he returned to the coffee table, Randall dropped the contents of a tiny clear plastic bag into Strumler’s coffee.
“Please read the note at the top of the first page. I’ll wait until you have.”
After scanning the first page of the threat assessment guidelines, Strumler asked, “So?”
Randall tried so hard to keep from smiling that his face hurt. “Done correctly, the meetings we have only last ten minutes unless something drastic has changed in the world. I’d like us to meet every day at the same time, at a time of your choosing. We’ll meet wherever you are, and if you are out of the country, I will travel with you. Can you agree to that guideline, as it is printed on the first page?”
Strumler appeared to think for a few seconds. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Good.”
Randall left this meeting knowing that he’d have a digital record of everything the president-elect said or heard for the next six weeks, until the nanodevice passed out of his body.
* * *
Frank Lucessi’s flight debarked at Silvio Pettirossi International Airport just west of Asunción. It was a warm, humid day with a clear blue sky. Frank took a deep breath and was welcomed by the astringent odor of jet fuel. It’s good to be home.
He walked through the terminal to the exit and waved to his driver. The limo stopped. Pedro emerged and stuffed Frank’s suitcase into its trunk. Frank saw that the driver was alone. “Where is Laura?”
Pedro shrugged. “I’m not sure. I haven’t seen her inside the house or anywhere on the grounds of the compound today.”
Frank felt his stomach lurch. Hope she hasn’t just wandered into the woods outside the compound. It was where he’d gone hunting for wild game, much of it quite dangerous.