Freedom Incorporated

by Peter Tylee

  “If you don’t hear from me by noon on Monday, and if Simon’s Superintendentwon’t endorse your entrance into the protection program-”

  “Not a chance,” Simon said unequivocally without emotion. “I’m not due back at work until Tuesday so I can stall until then, but by midmorning Tuesday my boss will reject the petition and a fistful of cops will override the lock on the portal to evict you.”

  “I don’t need that long,” Dan said. “Either you’ll hear from me on Monday or you’ll never hear from me again. So I want you ready to leave by noon on the twentieth.”

  “Fair enough,” Cookie answered. “Good luck, man.”

  “Thanks.” Dan didn’t often permit himself to reflect on the danger of his plans, but it dawned on him there was a decent chance he’d be dead before sunrise Monday. It was a chilling thought and he demanded it leave his mind, whereupon it slunk back to the depths of his psyche.

  Simon fished a small pad from his pocket and patted himself down for a pen. “This is my private number.” He didn’t need to add that he only gave it out in exceptional circumstances. “If you need anything, ring once and then hang up. I don’t want you talking on that phone.” He pointed at the telephone on the lamp table. “Echelon andthe New South Wales Police Department both monitor it.” He’d already ensured they weren’t carrying cellular phones; they were too easy to pinpoint.

  “I’m gonna want that number too.” Dan scratched Simon’s mobile number onto a leaf of paper, and then added the number engraved into the plastic on the safe-house telephone.

  “This place is always well stocked; it should have enough food to last a month. You’ll find dozens of tinned tomatoes, baked beans and tinned corn in the pantry.” A malevolent smile played on Simon’slips. “You might even find a cookbook in the drawer, but I wouldn’t bother with it, you won’t find the ingredients for any of the recipes.”

  “All right, we’re off.” Dan headed for the door.

  “Dan?” Samantha stopped him with a delicate hand on his shoulder. “Please bring Jen back.” She’d sealed her emotions in order to cope with the trauma of losing her best friend to kidnap and the threat of murder. But she couldn’t control them indefinitely. Fear, anger, hurt, regret… they’d all begun to resurface. She’d pinned all her hopes on Dan.

  “I will,” Dan promised, though to whom he’d made the promise wasn’t clear. It was partly a promise to himself, partly a promise to Samantha, and partly a promise to Jen. I just hope she’s alive when I find her.

  Simon and Dan left, lingering at the door for long enough to hear the bolts sliding home.

  “What now?” Simon asked, willing to play chauffeur.

  “How about some more coffee?” Dan still had a lot on his mind and couldn’t think of a more appropriate setting to ask his friend for another favour.

  “Only if I get to choose the café this time.” Simon grimaced.

  “Deal.” But Dan was too agitated to wait for the café; he opened up in the car. “They’re good people you know.”

  “I didn’t doubt it,” Simon replied. “Not all criminals are bad; they’re just breaking the law. It’s my job to stop that.”

  “Oh, come on, you’ve applied the law selectively in the past. We both have.” Dan looked at him incredulously. Has less than a year changed him that much?“They’re activists, not rapists or murderers. They’re just fighting for the opportunity to be heard. Why shouldn’t they have that right?”

  “Hey, it’s not that I don’t agree with you,” Simon said, defending his position. “But that’s why we’re cops, we uphold the law no matter how unfair or ridiculous it seems. It’s not our job to change things, we’re here to maintain order and keep the peace.” It all sat straight in his mind and he didn’t appreciate anybody upsetting the balance – his beliefs were too fragile to withstand much punishment. It had taken him a long time to justify arresting people for things that society had considered natural half a centaury ago.

  Dan was deathly quiet.

  “Okay, you’re right. I apply the law selectively, everyone does. If we have a choice between going after a murderer and a jaywalker, we’re going to pick the murderer. It’s simple to justify, the murderer does more harm to society-”

  Dan cut him off. “Then by that same philosophy we should focus on the people who killed Katherine,” – and maybe Jen too– “instead of busting people for activism.”

  Yes, it’s just a pity they’re so far beyond our jurisdiction.Police had a love-hate relationship with portals. The technology had introduced a problem that nobody had foreseen and nobody had bothered fixing with legislation. It was too easy for criminals to commit crimes bridging multiple countries, effectively hamstringing law enforcement communities that were still squabbling about jurisdiction and spheres of control, concepts that hadn’t changed for a centaury. Simon could see they needed more international co-operation to tackle increasingly sophisticated criminals, but lawmakers were content with things the way they were, possibly because the lawmakers were committing the grandest crimes. And it’s worse in America.Australians couldn’t touch Jen’s abduction case because part of the crime had happened in America,but the Americans would consider it an Australian problem.

  So that left Jen with Dan as her only champion.

  Simon inhaled deeply as he turned a corner. “Okay, so what’re you planning?”

  “Simple. I’m going to find them and kill them.”

  A chill shuddered through Simon’s body, but even more disturbing than Dan’s calm was his own willingness to help. “Are you doing this for Jennifer? Or for Katherine?”

  The two were inseparable in his mind. He knew he couldn’t leave Jen. If his wife were still alive, he still would’ve done everything in his power to save Jen. But, for the same reason, he would have sought Esteban’s death if he’d never met Jen. Revenge was a primal desire and Dan had no inclination to rein in his feral instincts. He fed from rage; it kept him from collapsing due to grief. “Both,” Dan finally replied, flaring his nostrils. “They’re living on borrowed time.”

  “I know.” He remembered how close Dan had come to insanity while weeping over his wife’s body, and how savagely he’d searched for her killers. He remembered the anguish Dan had suffered when he found nobody to blame, and how he’d thrown away a promising career by repeatedly disobeying orders to leave the case alone. Simon felt a twin’s sorrow for his friend, empathising with him deeply. He’d seen the determination in Dan’s eyes then, and he saw it again now, as fresh as ever. Most of all, Simon knew his friend. He knew what Dan was capable of and thinking about it paled his dark skin. He didn’t question whether Dan would succeed, not when he looked at the stony mask of death chiselled on his face. He reminded Simon of a coiled spring that was ready to disgorge its energy in one furious explosion. Simon just hoped Dan could control himself when it happened.

  “How long since her kidnapping?”

  Dan didn’t take his eyes off the road. “She’s alive. They’ll toy with her first.” But even if they start now, she’ll be blind in four hours.He fervently hoped they’d wait before beginning their satanic ritual of torture and abuse.

  Simon sighed. “I know I’m going to regret this, but… what can I do to help?”

  “What?” Dan peeled his eyes from the road and stared at his ex-partner.

  “I can’t let you do this alone.” Simon’s soul wouldn’t allow it. Lord, if I’m to be proud of one thing when I’m an old man, let it be this.“You need my help.”

  Dan felt a wave of gratitude and didn’t know how to put it to words. “Slime… I…”

  “Yeah, I know mate.” Simon turned another corner. Their friendship had survived the interlude in fine form. Simon felt just as close to Dan now as he had before Katherine’s death. It was almost as if they were working a case together. And in a way, they were. A quick catch-up conversation and it was as though they’d never been apart. But Simon was stoic by nature and didn’t feel comfortable being that close
to emotion; he twisted the conversation back to business. “So this Valdez guy, any idea which rock he crawled under?”

  “No, but I know where to find out. Look, if you’re going to help then protect Samantha and Cookie no matter what happens to me.”

  Simon nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “And poke around the Department’s database to see what you can find on Esteban. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve kept more accurate records than anyone else.” Dan pointed at a portal station they were passing. “Can you let me out here?”

  Simon pulled to the curb. “We’re not getting coffee?”

  He shook his head. “Not this time. How about when I get back?”

  “Yeah, okay. Just make sure you bring your carcass back alive. Where’re you going anyway?”

  Dan’s steely eyes burned. “The belly of the beast.”

  *

  Saturday, September 18, 2066

  19:00 Sydney, Australia

  Cookie busily set up his computer and got comfortable for a long stint at the keyboard while Samantha pottered around the kitchen, trying to fix something tasty from the unimaginative range of tinned vegetables stocked in the pantry. He didn’t feel safe in the safe house despite Detective West’s reassurances. It reminded him of a tomb. Police contractors had spent a lot of energy making the house secure, but had neglected the finer touches. I guess there was no money in the budget for fixtures.Tile patterned linoleum covered half the house and a coarse, synthetic-fibre carpet covered the remainder. And they both looked as if an amateur had laid them. The seams were rough and visible, and the carpet was fraying at the edges. Tasteless wallpaper, which was fading in some places and sagging in others, covered the concrete walls. Two layers of bullet-resistant glass protected the windows. Manufacturers could no longer call it bullet-proofbecause, disgruntled, arms manufacturers had developed munitions capable of puncturing it. But two sheets would stop most projectiles that weren’t anti-tank calibre.

  The neighbourhood was simply frightening. Where Cookie had expected it to be raucous, it was ghostly silent. He couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was stalking them and it gave him the creeps.

  He focussed on his computer to force the uneasiness into a corner of his mind. The jack hooked directly into the New South Wales Police Department’s network. Well that’s stupid of them.Cookie couldn’t understand why a network administrator would authorise something like that. No protection at all…He wasted no time burrowing from the Department’s uninteresting network and gaining access to the mainstream nano-net. From there he linked up with his pipeline and entered the heart of UniForce’s network, feeling torn between his hammer-type attack on Echelon and digging for information that might help Dan recover Jen. In the end, he settled for both.

  He had to be careful not to trigger electronic traps. Now they were everywhere, not just near Echelon, and they slowed his progress. His adversaries had planted them like mines around every major system. Like bear-traps, they would clamp around his paws the instant he came within range and alert UniForce personnel of his whereabouts. It understandably made Cookie nervous.

  Echelon, he determined, was impenetrable. Somebody had run an impassable ring around it during the interlude. Damn.Cookie swore luridly in his mind. Still, he had to admire the beautiful simplicity of the solution. They knew he was on their network and that repairing the UG7 barriers would take time, so they’d erected a rigid blockadearound Echelon, their most prized possession. He couldn’t reach it, not anymore.A heavy feeling settled in his chest.All that work for nothing.

  Samantha felt his sorrowful vibrations from the kitchen and took a break from her frustrating culinary exercise to see what was wrong. “What is it?”

  “We were away too long,” Cookie explained. “They’ve tucked Echelon into a steel box and buried it in their backyard.”

  “So? You can cut through steel, can’t you?”

  He slowly shook his head, feeling defeated. “Not this time. Whoever did this is good enough to know what he’s doing.” He grudgingly admired it. Cookie would complement even a hated enemy if he or she did something particularly clever. “There’s no way through this. They’verestricted network traffic to the bare minimum Echelon needs to do its job. And I can’t slip in pretending to be genuine data because it scans those streams for executables. Fuck me, but they’ve even locked themselvesout, so I don’t know how they intend to do maintenance.” He mused over that for a moment. “They must have a key, but they’ve buried the lock. So only they know where to find the door.”

  “Oh,” Samantha said, mirroring his sorrow for deeper reasons than mourning over Echelon. “Well don’t worry about it. What’s the point now Jen’s gone anyway?”

  Cookie pulled her to sit on his lap, wrapped his arms around her, and drew her close for the hug he knew she needed. “Hey, it’s going to be okay.”

  “Oh yeah?” She snorted indelicately. “How’s that? Jen’s probably dead already.”

  “Don’t say that.” Cookie was desperately clutching tohope and was finding the straws harder to hold onto than he’d imagined. “There’s a chance she’s still alive and I’m sure she wouldn’t want you talking about her like she’s already dead. She’d want you to keep hoping for her, wouldn’t she?”

  Samantha smeared silent tears across her cheeks. “I guess.”

  “What do you think of Dan?”

  She shrugged. “He’s already saved Jen once, so I guess he’s all right.”

  “‘All right’ enough to save her again?” Cookie asked, wondering whether it was smart to pin all their hopes on one man. And a bounty hunter at that… not the most dependable profession.

  “I hope so.” The fragile quiver in Samantha’s voice spoke volumes about how little hope she actually had, she was just trying to project the appearance of hope for Cookie’s sake. Bubbly and cheerful much of the time, she was also a realist. She knew Jen’s chances were slim.

  “Well, Echelon’s out of the question, so I can dedicate my time to digging up helpful information.” Cookie squeezed Samantha tight, trying to impart some of his feigned strength.

  “And I have some more sacrificing to do in the kitchen.” Samantha kissed him on the forehead before scooting away and Cookie felt her lips on his skin long after she’d removed them, leaving him warm and fuzzy to offset the desolation within.

  A datamining program returned some interesting results and enveloped his train of thought. He’d set the application to work mining for information about Esteban’s history, cross-referenced with Dan. There were five records and he examined each in chronological order.

  The first was a memorandum from the previous assassination co-ordinator. Interesting…Cookie wondered how damaging that single record could be; UniForce spent much time and advertising money denying the existence of their assassination branch while simultaneously promoting it in the corporate underworld. He suspected he had access to enough information to indict the entire management team and sink the company for good, so he began caching all the records he inspected, just in case. It was tempting to replicate the whole database but he knew that would create enough network traffic to alert even the sleepiest system administrator. He or she would simply have to follow the torrent of data back to the Department’s network and from there it would only take minutes to pinpoint his location. Tempting, but too dangerous.

  Irritation oozed through the memorandum in which the co-ordinator outlined the problem: a lowly Australian detective based in Parramatta wasn’t dropping the UniForce-tagged case. It finished by recommending UniForce apply pressure on the Australian Government to control the rogue officer.

  The second record detailed how political pressure had been unsuccessful in dissuadingthe determined detective, Dan Sutherland. Furthermore, the situation was becoming dire: Sutherland was sniffing at the assassin’s heels. The co-ordinator said he had reprimanded the operative, Esteban Garcia Valdez, for his slovenly procedures, which had enabled Sutherland to
track him. He’d used the record to reinforceUniForce’s work ethos and warn active assassinsto act professionally at all times – UniForce would not tolerate sloppy killings.

  Cookie, totally hooked, devoured the third record. It depicted the horrors UniForce had inflicted upon Dan to persuade him to drop the case. They’d slaughtered his cat and scattered its entrails across his property, phoned him every night to deliver death threats, and offered staggering sums of money as a bribe. Jesus H Christ,Cookie thought. Who the hell is this guy?He couldn’t think of anyone stubborn enough to withstand the brunt of UniForce’s shit. The list of atrocities scrolled for three pages, a catalogue of horror that chilled Cookie’s blood. But the record made it clear that UniForce had been meticulously careful to veil their hand in the matter. As far as Dan was concerned, Esteban had orchestrated everything alone.

  He was almost afraid to open the fourth record. When he did, the words assaulted him with a dark portrayal of Esteban’s arrest. Whoever had updated the database had been furious that someone had poached one of UniForce’s top assassins. It listed serious justifications for declaring company emergency. Esteban had been one of the few assassins with detailed knowledge about UniForce’s assassination branch. The co-ordinator was worried he might use the information as currency to buy himself a lenient sentence. UniForce therefore applied the full weight of their political muscle and the fifth record was a glowing report of their success; Esteban was off the hook. Yeah, but only thanks to a dubious judicial decision.Cookie wasn’t impressed. So much for judges being impervious to bribes.But UniForce had stripped Esteban of his field status, planting him in management instead.

  How could he start working for such an evil company? It didn’t make sense. Even if he didn’t know they were the ones who killed his cat, he knew they were behind the assassination. Didn’t he put two and two together?Cookie was puzzling over it when the datamining application dredged up two more records.