The Deadly Lies

by David C. Dawson

  Janet Downpatrick leaned forward as Karl Michael continued.

  “They’re concerned that without the DG chip, the assault cannot be sustained and—”

  “Is that true?” interrupted Downpatrick.

  Karl Michael nodded.

  “Without the DG chip, they have a shorter window of time to modify the global history records for all the targets. There’s also a greater risk that the assault could be traced and neutralized.”

  Janet Downpatrick leaned back on the narrow bench seat and tapped the fingernails of her left hand on the tabletop in a rapid rhythm. She stared hard at Karl Michael while she did. He looked away and ran his finger around the inside of his shirt collar, which felt tight against his neck.

  Finally, Downpatrick gracefully slid along the bench seat and stood.

  “That’s good. So if we can retrieve and destroy the chip, then the threat of the assault is ended? Are you sure they don’t have all the access they need now? Couldn’t they manually rewrite certain key master history records?”

  “Yes, but only on a small scale,” replied Karl Michael. “The whole purpose of Bennie’s work on the History Writer project is to create a massive assault that’s undetectable.”

  “Ah yes, your boyfriend, Bernhardt Freude,” mused Downpatrick. “He had the only copy of a chip that would provide an undetectable link to the core of the financial networks. He steals it from his very own organization and drives all the way here to meet his onetime lover, Dominic Delingpole.” She placed her hands on the edge of the narrow tabletop and leaned down to bring her face close to Karl Michael’s.

  “What was it? A lover’s tiff between you two? Did he stop fucking you all of a sudden?”

  Karl Michael closed his eyes and breathed heavily. “That happened a long time ago.” He opened his eyes and stared at the wall in front of him, avoiding Downpatrick’s stare. “I believe he suspected Charter Ninety-Nine had been infiltrated. That’s why he was taking it to Dominic. Someone outside the group he could trust.”

  “He guessed you were the traitor, didn’t he?” said Downpatrick. “He must have been furious when he finally found out. But don’t worry,” she continued, a smile forming on her face. “He won’t ever come seeking retribution. He’s dead.”

  Karl Michael felt a chill draft from the ventilation panel above his head and shivered.

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “We followed him from the Pyrenees. He turned off the autopista just after Girona,” replied Downpatrick. “He stopped, and we had to drive past as there’s nowhere to turn off. We waited farther down the road, but he never reappeared. After a long wait, we drove back and saw a motorbike cop had discovered the wreckage of his car. It was clear Freude didn’t survive. Unfortunately, we were unable to recover the DG chip.”

  Karl Michael felt his arms tense, and he clenched and unclenched his fists. He turned slowly to glare at the look of amusement on Downpatrick’s face.

  “You’ve known all this time, haven’t you?” he said. “Yet you didn’t tell me. Just what kind of a woman are you?”

  Before Downpatrick could answer, Viktor returned to the cabin, holding a tray with three glasses on it. He placed it carefully on the table in front of Karl Michael and stepped back.

  “What kind of woman?” asked Janet Downpatrick. “I am your generous host. The woman who supplied you with an enormous sum of cash to get us access to the History Writer project.” She picked up the tallest of the glasses from the tray and set it down in front of Karl Michael.

  “And now,” she continued, “I realize you’ve had a shock, and you’re thirsty from your walk. So here, this will refresh and rejuvenate you.”

  Karl Michael picked up the glass and took a long drink from it. Janet Downpatrick took the other two glasses from the tray and handed one to Viktor.

  “And you’ve been successful, Herr Meyer,” she said, raising her glass in toast. “Well, almost. We know where the DG chip is, and I’m certain we’ll recover it and destroy it. Even better, we’ve got access to Charter Ninety-Nine meetings through your mobile phone codes.”

  “You can’t possibly have that access,” protested Karl Michael. He tried to stand, but his legs buckled, and he collapsed back on the seat.

  “Oh, but we have,” replied Downpatrick. “And thank you. You’ve helped the cause of the free world enormously. The risk to the stability of the established order presented by those do-gooders in Charter Ninety-Nine will soon be gone.”

  She watched as Karl Michael swayed, trying to keep his eyes open. Beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead. She turned to Viktor Krasov.

  “You can thank Viktor here for your boyfriend’s accident,” she said. “He implanted a software fix in the computer of Freude’s sports car. He did it when Freude stopped at the service area.” She looked back at Karl Michael. “There’s no end to what you can control remotely these days.”

  Karl Michael could no longer focus on Downpatrick’s smiling face.

  Downpatrick set her glass down on the table and leaned in close to Karl Michael.

  “Your lover is dead, Karl Michael,” she continued. “And before he died, you betrayed him. Which means you can never be trusted. How can I be sure you won’t betray me? I suspected you were also becoming too close to Delingpole. So—” She straightened up. “—all good things must come to an end.”

  Karl Michael felt the glass slip from his hand as he collapsed forward onto the table.

  Chapter 21

  STEVE HAD tried to translate his humiliation into exhibitionism by imagining he was lying back in a sling in a fetish club in London’s East End. His imagination failed him; there were far too many women present. Alejandro, the Venezuelan male nurse with the long eyelashes, had disappeared to minister to another admission. His replacement was a stern-faced female nurse, who kept commenting that she had never seen a man with his legs up in birthing stirrups before. The anesthetist was a jolly fair-haired woman from Minnesota. And the doctor who performed the procedure between his legs had announced herself as “Sandra, the slickest scalpel south of Sacramento.”

  “There you are, young man,” announced Sandra the scalpel after less than five minutes. “You either got hit by a piece of stray buckshot, or you were playing a very strange sex game last night.”

  The stern-faced nurse tutted loudly and held out a small plastic dish to the doctor. “Here you are, Doctor. I’ll dispose of it for you.”

  “No, no, let me see it first,” said Steve, trying to sit up.

  “You lie back, young man,” said the doctor. “I haven’t finished down here yet. If you move again, you’ll be walking like John Wayne for a long time to come.”

  She turned to the nurse. “Put it in a sample tube, and give it to him.” She looked up at Steve. “It sure is the weirdest souvenir of San Francisco I’ve ever seen.” Then she winked and turned back to finish closing the small incision she had made. There followed a few minutes of silence, during which Steve tried to blank the mental picture of what was happening down there from his mind.

  “You Britishers,” the doctor continued. “You’re not like Downton Abbey in real life, are you?”

  Steve lay back and closed his eyes. He imagined what he would do to Nick the next time he met him. He was furious the American had beaten him, not once, but twice. He wondered if he was being tested in some way. Steve was still not entirely sure what the hackfest was all about. When he received the invitation four months previously, he spent time researching it as thoroughly as he could. But in all the references he found, it seemed little more than an interesting ego trip for the multimillionaire dot-com success Jeff Woodfield. Steve was flattered to be invited, and he had looked forward to meeting several internet coders whose work he admired.

  “Here, take it,” said the stern-faced nurse. Steve felt something being shoved into his hand, and his fingers closed around a small plastic tube. He opened his eyes, to see the nurse bending down to whisper in his ear.

>   “Watch yourself in this God-fearing country of ours called America,” she said. “Especially beware the coastal cities. They are the Sodom and—”

  “Nurse!” the doctor called out. “Keep your preaching outta the emergency room, will you?”

  The nurse turned her head to glare at the doctor, looked back at Steve, and whispered the word “Beware” once more. With a final scowl at the doctor, she straightened up and left the room.

  Steve brought the tube close to his face to examine the object inside more closely. It was about a quarter of an inch long, muddy brown in color, and had a tiny piece of wire sticking from one end. He recognized it immediately from the work he had done monitoring the flight patterns of rare British birds. It was a micro tracking device. For the first time, Steve had found himself being the hunted instead of the hunter. And he was determined to reverse the roles as quickly as he could.

  JEFF LOOKED up as he heard the lift doors open.

  “How’s it going?” he asked as Nick stepped out of the lift and walked across the wooden floor toward the steel desk where Jeff was seated.

  “Well, it’s nearly midday, and no one’s picked a fight yet,” replied Nick, as he perched on the edge of the desk and rested his leather rigger boot on the arm of Jeff’s chair.

  “But here’s some real news for you,” Nick continued. “Our young British friend is on the move again.” He handed a tablet computer to Jeff. The screen displayed a map of the northeastern area of San Francisco. A small red circle flashed close to Coit Tower.

  “Is he coming here?” asked Jeff, looking closely at the screen.

  “Nope. He left the hospital about a half hour ago.”

  “What was he doing at the hospital, I wonder?” Jeff mused. “Do you think it’s to do with the tracker?”

  Nick looked affronted. “I was damn careful when I installed it. Anyway, it’s still working. You can see he’s back at the place I dropped him last night.”

  As he spoke, the red circle started to move slowly across the map.

  “Not anymore,” said Jeff. “Looks like he’s heading south.”

  The two men tracked the small red circle as it moved along the streets of San Francisco. After a few minutes, it headed north onto Highway 80.

  “Shit. He’s going across to Oakland,” said Nick. “What the fuck’s he up to?”

  Jeff handed the tablet computer back to Nick. “You’d better go after him. Take the Dodge. He’ll recognize the Tesla after you picked him up last night. He’s less likely to spot you in the Dodge. I’ll take over the hackfest for now. Follow him, and let me know where the hell he’s going. We want to recruit him, but we need to know we can trust him.”

  NICK WAITED impatiently for the automatic garage doors of 101 Grain Street to open. As soon as they slid far enough apart, he stamped his foot down on the gas pedal. Tires squealed as the large Dodge van shot backward out of the garage. A horn sounded, and a man’s voice shouted angrily as a UPS delivery driver swerved to avoid the truck. Nick slammed the Dodge into drive, accelerated to the corner of Battery Street, and hung a right, hardly lifting his foot off the gas pedal.

  The traffic got heavier as he neared the busy intersection with Market Street. Nick saw the approaching traffic lights turn amber, and he stepped hard on the accelerator and swerved around a dawdling powder-blue Ford Fiesta in front of him. He ignored a chorus of car horns and swerved in and out of the slow-moving traffic. Nick glanced at the dashboard map display, which showed a flashing red circle. Steve’s tracker had reached the naval training station, midway along the Oakland Bay Bridge.

  As Nick looked up, he slammed his foot down on the brake pedal and narrowly avoided crashing into a garbage truck stopped in front of him. He pulled the Dodge out from behind the truck and accelerated down First Street to the intersection with Route 80. As the Dodge accelerated up the entry ramp to the Bay Bridge, Nick looked again at the dashboard display. It showed Steve was approaching the end of the bridge and entering Oakland. Nick reckoned he would catch up with him in just a few minutes. In his head, he thanked the city planners for putting the bridge tollbooths on the approach to San Francisco and not on the lanes he was taking that led out of the city.

  The midday sunlight was bright, and the waters of the bay glowed an intense azure, matching the clear blue of the sky. Nick took one hand off the steering wheel to reach up and take a pair of mirrored sunglasses from the compartment above his head. Not only did they shield his eyes from the glare of the reflected sunlight, but the glasses would help disguise him, hopefully buying him time when he finally caught up with Steve.

  The traffic was light on the bridge, and Nick weaved the Dodge van in and out of it with ease as he closed in on his target. All the while, he went over in his mind what he was going to do when he got close to the runaway British skinhead. His aim was to keep a low profile and find out who Steve was contacting.

  By the time Nick reached the end of the Bay Bridge, the map on the dashboard display showed Steve’s tracker was heading along the Aquatic Park toward the Berkeley Marina. Nick was now less than half a mile behind him. He reached forward to the glove box, pulled out a Giants baseball cap, and placed it on his head with the peak forward and low over his eyes. He scanned the road ahead of him, trying to work out which vehicle Steve might be traveling in.

  Nick looked back at the map on the display screen and could see the red marker turning off the freeway, headed down to Berkeley and University Avenue. He looked up at the road again and moved the Dodge into the right-hand lane. There were only a handful of vehicles directly ahead of him. The fourth car in front was a yellow San Francisco taxi. Nick was certain Steve had to be in it.

  Once the road straightened out into University Avenue, it continued on to the heart of the city of Berkeley. Nick eased past the few remaining vehicles that separated him from the taxi and settled the Dodge close behind it. A glance across at the red circle flashing on the map confirmed he was now trailing Steve and the tracker.

  After ten blocks, the yellow cab slowed and indicated right. It pulled to the curb outside a boarded-up restaurant called the Santa Fe. Nick pulled the Dodge van over into a parking space two cars behind the taxi. He watched as the man in the back of the cab leaned forward and spoke to the driver. The curbside door opened, and the passenger stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  Nick took off his sunglasses and stared. The passenger was not Steve. He was a big bear of a man with long white hair tied in a ponytail and a white beard. The man turned and looked straight at the Dodge van. Nick hurriedly put his sunglasses back on as the man walked toward him and stood alongside the vehicle. He tapped on Nick’s window.

  “Hey, are you Nick Poole?”

  Nick lowered his window. “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Anders,” said the man, speaking with a Scandinavian accent. He leaned on the doorframe and reached in to place his large bearlike hand on Nick’s shoulder.

  “If you’re Nick Poole,” Anders continued, “then I have a message for you. It’s from Steve. He asked me to give you this.”

  Anders reached into his pocket, pulled out a folded sheet of paper, and handed it to Nick. It was a hospital leaflet, inviting him to give blood. Scrawled across the middle were two words.

  Fuck you.

  STEVE TURNED to Sinon with a triumphant smile on his face.

  “Looks pretty pissed, doesn’t he?” he said. They were in the back seat of a taxi parked across the street from the boarded-up Santa Fe restaurant. They watched as Anders strode away from the Dodge van and back to his taxi. The taxi headed off down University Avenue and turned right at the intersection with Sacramento Street. Steve looked down at the screen of his mobile phone. A red dot flashed on a map of Berkeley.

  “It’s not moving,” said Steve. “Looks like Anders delivered the tracker. The hunter has become the hunted. We’ll know for sure if the tracker starts moving when nob-head over there drives off.”

  There was a screech of tires, followe
d by the sound of car horns, as the Dodge van lurched into the traffic on University Avenue. The red dot began moving across the map on Steve’s phone.

  “Perfect,” he said. “Anders probably only managed to drop the tracker into the car, but at least I’ve got one over on that bastard now.” He turned to Sinon. “How come you know Anders, anyway?”

  Sinon smiled. “Oh, you know. First trip to San Francisco, when I came to Folsom Street Fair, ten years ago. Anders liked twinks in leather. I obliged. We sort of keep in touch. Didn’t know he was doing GayBnB now. Otherwise I’d have stayed at his place.”

  Steve slipped his phone back into the pocket of his MA-1 jacket and turned to Sinon. “You okay about me staying at yours temporarily? I mean, I can’t go back to Anders’s place for the moment.” Steve looked out the window. “That shithead Nick knows I stayed there, and he’s going to be gunning for me now.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” said Sinon. “After our session onboard the plane, we can carry on where we left off.” He reached his hand down between Steve’s thighs. Steve gave a yell of pain.

  “Shit, sorry, mate.” Sinon withdrew his hand hastily. “I forgot about your injury.”

  Steve looked around at Sinon and smiled wanly. “Yeah, mate. It’s going to be strictly above the waist for the next couple of days. Anyway, I’ve got stuff to do. I need to work out what the fuck’s going on.”

  “Well, I can help there.” Sinon pulled an earpiece out of his pocket and plugged it into his phone. “My name’s Sinon, remember? The Greek left behind with the wooden horse of Troy? I’ll go back to the hackfest like nothing’s happened and report back to you what they’re up to. Plus, you can listen to this.” He took a few moments to adjust an app on the phone, then handed the earpiece to Steve, who shoved it into his ear. He heard Nick talking on the phone in his van.

  “Shit, mate,” said Steve, looking wide-eyed at Sinon. “How the fuck did you manage that?”