Life Sentence (Forlani Saga Book 1)
Page 6
It seemed for some reason important to act casual for the next few days, so Klein went through the motions at work, rode the bus home, went back to his apartment and had dinner, but he felt too nervous to watch TV or really take a rest. Finally he decided to take a twilight walk on the Rhein.
Klein looked at the orange setting sun slipping below the horizon as he walked down the riverfront, passing by cafes, electronics shops, and stores selling novelty gifts to tourists. As he walked down the riverfront, he thought he could hear the sound of footsteps close behind him; turning his head, he saw a man in a thick coat with reddish hair following him on foot. Klein nervously turned into an alley and began to walk quicker. The red-haired man picked up his pace and followed him. Klein looked over his shoulder again and saw the man reaching into the pocket of his coat. He could see the man clutching the butt of a gun in his hand.
Klein had only a few seconds to respond. He drew his own pistol from his coat pocket and shot the man directly in the heart. He examined the man’s body, looking for ID cards or dog tags, and found a police badge. Oh shit. Whoever is after me must be either rich, or in a position of real authority if they can use cops as assassins. I’d better not stay here too long if someone else in the force is out here searching for me. Touching the body would incriminate me via DNA evidence, so I’d better leave it lying here and get back to my apartment. I’ll be safer in the confines of my apartment than out here, where I’m sniper bait if I’m out in the open too long, Klein reasoned in his mind.
Klein briskly jogged back to his apartment, his heart pounding in his chest. He opened the door and slowly began to become more relaxed, but was too nervous to think straight. Thinking about his would-be assassin, Klein reasoned that, if the men sent after him were policemen, they would try to avoid killing him in such a way that would incriminate themselves, which meant the preferred tactics would likely be another sniper attack like at the bus stop, or a kill in a darkened alley with no witnesses. Finally able to relax, Klein took a Somega and fell asleep.
There was no word from Achenbach or anyone else at the office about Kinderaugen during the remainder of the work week. Klein had decided to take a trip away from the city, to a forested area along the banks of the Ruhr, to clear his head and give him some time to think of how to proceed with his search for Kinderaugen information. He hoped that a good, long walk through the woods would relax his mind enough that he could come up with an effective means of obtaining the Kinderaugen information. Pondering his potential future after blowing the whistle on Kinderaugen, he stared out over the river valley, taking time to savor the details of the landscape in the setting sun.
Klein heard a rustling noise in the bushes behind him. He turned and saw the barrel of a rifle pointed at him. Immediately he rolled for cover, anticipating the shot. At least it’s not a sniper rifle, Klein briefly thought as he charged through the trees in search of a defensible position where he could get the rifleman in range of his pistol. He crouched behind a fallen tree and lined up a shot at his pursuer, only to see another rifle poking through the leaves of the trees above him. Klein scuttled through the underbrush as the shooter opened fire. He heard a snap behind him as he crawled through the thorny branches of a bush, but he felt no pain or difficulty moving, and reasoned that the shot must have hit a branch rather than his body. He knew that if he was trapped in the bush for too long, the sniper would hit him eventually, so he had to quickly improvise a counterattack. He turned his body through the bush, feeling the thorns slash through his face and hands, and fired his pistol into the clump of leaves the rifle was protruding from. He heard a yell of agony and saw the shooter fall to the ground with a sickening thud. Klein shot the fallen gunman in the head and killed him instantly, only taking a few seconds to glance at the blood oozing from the man’s still corpse. He heard the noisy chatting of a hiking group coming from further up the trail and knew he had to get clear of the bush and away from the area before they arrived. He finally tore his way free of the bush and bolted in the direction of the parking lot to escape the woods and evade his remaining pursuer. As he ran for his car, he could hear accusatory yelling from behind him; it sounded like the remaining gunman had been blamed for his partner’s murder by the hikers. Klein breathed a sigh of relief as he sat down in his car and turned the key, knowing that if the second assassin was arrested and accused of the shooting, he would be temporarily safe.
Klein had difficulty concentrating and thinking about the mundane duties of his job during the next week. His evaluations were slower, his analytical mind disoriented, and his attention fractured as he remained preoccupied with trying to find information on Kinderaugen. Luckily for Klein, this was the last week before the office would close to allow its employees two weeks of summer vacation, and Achenbach and the higher-ranking staff seemed just as mentally preoccupied with their coming vacation plans as he was with possible conspiracies. Klein could see the other employees staring at images of beaches, concerts, and mountains on their computer monitors as he struggled to finish his daily assignments. He overheard Achenbach having a conversation with Erich, one of his coworkers.
“Achenbach, I think I may have filled out some of the figures wrong on the forms for SRI. Is there anything I can do to correct them?” Erich was not normally the type to admit a mistake, but seemed more honest and straightforward than usual, as if he anticipated that Achenbach would be more forgiving than usual prior to vacation time.
“Go to the Data Reclamation Department and get the codes to fix it there,” Achenbach said. “Get it fixed up before the end of the day, so we can include it with the other forms we submit for this quarter. Prioritize fixing that over the assignments you haven’t started on yet.”
As Erich briskly walked out and left for Data Reclamation, Klein seized the opportunity and followed him into the elevator. Erich was a rather shy person and rarely talked to Klein, or anyone else at the office, when he didn’t have to, and he wasn’t any more talkative the day before his vacation than on any other day at the office. Erich and Klein walked together into Data Reclamation, and saw why the supervisors tried to keep the staff from using the room as much as possible. The place was filled with a dizzying array of printed forms and files, and computer screens packed with spreadsheets and lines of text. It was such a flood of information that it seemed impossible to make sense of it, yet there was only one employee there to help organize it all: Fritz, Director of Data Recovery. Fritz was a rail-thin man with horn-rimmed glasses and spiky red hair. He rarely left the confines of Data Recovery during the workdays, and this was the first time Klein had ever seen him. After ten interminable minutes of looking at his watch and tapping his finger while Fritz helped Erich find the necessary forms and correct his mistake, Klein was called in.
“So, you in here to correct some accounting mistakes too?” Fritz asked. “Seems like a lot of people from Achenbach’s division have been having problems today. You guys are going on vacation before we even let out!”
“You know how it is,” Klein said. “For my vacation this time, I’m going down to the Reeperbahn to check out the…nightlife. I’ve rarely been there before, and I’m feeling especially curious this time.”
“That’s a pretty rough place for a vacation. If I was ever in a place like that, I’d be so worried that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy myself.”
“Couldn’t be any worse than most of the places I went on furlough while I was still in the military. Now, about this problem…I made a critical error on accounting for something called Project Kinderaugen a couple of weeks ago, and Achenbach told me I’d better fix it before we go on vacation at the end of this quarter. Could you please bring up the Kinderaugen files for me?”
“Seems a little late to be fixing something from a couple of weeks ago, but I guess it’s okay if your supervisor insists. Just a minute while I search the files to bring it up for you...sorry if this takes a little longer than usual, I usually don’t get requests from this far back…”
Klein walked over to the computer terminal and began to study the Kinderaugen file…
PROJECT KINDERAUGEN
LEAD RESEARCHER- S. Dorfman
DATE 2152 11/7
RESEARCH BEGINS. HAVE SUCCESSFULLY PERSUADED OFFICIALS IN DUESSELDORF TO PROVIDE FINANCIAL SUPPORT INTO “KINDERAUGEN.” PROJECT WILL UTILIZE NEURAL IMPLANTS INTO CHILDREN AGES 5-14 TO MONITOR MENTAL ACTIVITY AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT DURING CRUCIAL DEVELOPMENTAL PERIOD
DATE 2153 4/1
NEURAL IMPLANTS IN INITIAL TEST SUBJECTS NOT SUCCESSFUL IN TRANSMITTING ADEQUATE DATA AMOUNTS. REQUIRE NEW TEST GROUP AND MORE EXTENSIVE NEURAL IMPLANT ARRAY. TEST SUBJECTS WILL BE DISMISSED TO THEIR FAMILIES AND GIVEN COMPENSATION
DATE 2153 15/4
SECOND NEURAL IMPLANT DESIGN HAS BEEN FINALIZED. ALLOWS FOR MORE MONITORING OF ENDORPHIN AND SERATONIN LEVELS IN TEST SUBJECTS, AND EMOTIONAL TRACKING PROTOCOLS (I.E. MONITORING TRANSITIONS TOWARDS INTENSE ANGER, PLEASURE, ETC.) CHANGES TO KINDERAUGEN REQUIRE RE-SUBMITTING FINANCIAL APPROVAL FORMS THROUGH DUESSELDORF TREASURY DEPARTMENT-V2 KINDERAUGEN WILL BE MORE EXPENSIVE THAN V1.
DATE 2153 20/5
FINANCIAL APPROVAL PENDING FOR PROJECT IN DUESSELDORF TREASURY DEPARTMENT. TEST SUBJECTS CURRENTLY BEING SELECTED FROM PROSPECTIVE RECRUIT POOL. EXPECT TO COMMENCE KINDERAUGEN IN FALL.
DATE 2153 25/5
MANAGER AT TREASURY DEPARTMENT REPORTS UNNECCESSARY INTEREST IN KINDERAUGEN BY LOW-LEVEL TREASURY EMPLOYEE DURING APPROVAL PROCESS. PROJECT IS OTHERWISE PROCEEDING AS PLANNED.
DATE 2153 30/5
KINDERAUGEN APPROVED BY DUESSELDORF TREASURY DEPARTMENT. NEURAL IMPLANT V2 PASSED ALL PRELIMINARY TESTS AND IS USABLE AS OF THIS DATE. START DATE OF KINDERAUGEN CURRENTLY BEING FINALIZED.
Klein inserted a memcard, an inch-long portable flash memory device, into the computer so he could store the Kinderaugen information that was not encrypted. It only took half a minute for Klein to discreetly put the memcard into the computer’s port, copy the information onto it, and shove it back into his pocket. Fritz was playing with a paper clip and looking impatiently at the clock on the wall while Klein copied the Kinderaugen data. He typed in a few meaningless lines of numbers to give the impression he was actually working on editing the accounting on Kinderaugen. Then, he deleted the superfluous lines and told Fritz he was finished.
“Well, that was pretty quick,” Fritz observed. “I wish everyone here was able to fix their mistakes as fast as you, Klein. You really have an eye for detail.”
Sometimes I wish I didn’t, thought Klein as he left the room. There was little time left before the end of the workday and Klein needed to complete as much as he could to give the illusion to Achenbach that he was still preoccupied with finishing his assignments. Luckily, none of the remaining assignments were very difficult, and Achenbach was too preoccupied with reading emails from his superiors to have paid much notice to Klein’s brief trip to Data Reclamation. The remaining work session passed quickly and before long, the office closed for the day, sending Klein and his fellow employees off to their two-week vacations.
In his apartment, Klein considered which steps he should take next. He needed a suitably credible newspaper or magazine that he could leak the Kinderaugen information to, and decided on Der Spiegel, which was still one of the most credible magazines in Germany, long after it had lost its print component over a century ago. He emailed the Kinderaugen data to one of its news editors, a fellow he had briefly known during his studies, then began to plan the second phase of his scheme to expose the Kinderaugen project. Even with the information in the hands of Der Spiegel, he had to do something radical and dangerous to convince the public that Kinderaugen was truly a threat to public safety. He needed to show that the hitmen sent to kill those who sought the truth about Kinderaugen not only existed, but were a true threat to public safety. To do that, he needed to stop hiding in the shadows and seeking safety from the assassins, and to expose them in a method as scandalous and newsworthy as possible to catch the public’s eye.
He decided on a showdown at the Reeperbahn, the infamous “sinful mile” of Hamburg.
The Reeperbahn was a hallucinatory, intoxicating place, a strange stretch of cheap and not-so-cheap bars, discos with blaring neon lights, and gilt-edged strip clubs with innuendo-laden names. It had taken over 50 years since the 2007 ban on weapons in the Reeperbahn for authorities to finally become convinced that the ban could be relaxed. Even in the middle of the 22nd Century, certain aspects of the old ban had been retained -- the prohibition of assault weapons, rifles, and “any type of explosive” (effectively even large firecrackers!) was still in force along the Reeperbahn. Klein’s plan was to exploit this law to his advantage, since the weapons restrictions made another sniper attack less likely, and he would have a better chance against an assassin armed only with a pistol than one armed with heavy weaponry.
He stopped in front of a bar with a flashing violet electric sign that read “Cathay.” The sign was written in a strangely elegant script that was reminiscent of ancient Chinese calligraphy, which contrasted sharply with the harsh, blaring electronic music echoing from within. Klein felt a sense of tension and anxiety that reminded him of how he had felt before the prior assassination attempts. He saw a short man with black hair standing close to him, and the man was reaching into his pockets, as if he was trying to grab a gun. Sweat poured down Klein’s face as he rushed into the bar.
The main Asian influence in the Cathay bar, other than two stylized lions on each side of the entrance, were some scantily clad baristas wearing little more than the thinnest possible bikinis and panties. They all seemed to have perpetual smiles fixed on their faces as they walked around taking drink orders. One of the baristas came over to Klein.
“Welcome to Cathay. What is your pleasure?”
“One Heineken, please,” Klein answered.
“Two drink minimum.”
Klein gave a sigh of frustration. He always hated having to spend more money than he absolutely had to, and he had only gone into the bar to avoid a possible assassin anyway. “Okay, two Heinekens please,” he requested.
“Thank you,” the barista said and walked off to get his beer.
Klein took a look around him and saw a huskily built man laughing loudly from across the bar at a table. He had deep brown hair and a thin beard, and seemed to be having a great time as he laughed and joked with the other customers and the staff. At the speed of a striking viper, the man threw his table down and pulled out a pistol, firing at Klein.
Klein crashed his own table to the ground and began firing at the assassin in retaliation. The blaring of the music was drowned out by the screams of the customers as they began to bolt for the exit. The bar’s bouncer started yelling at them from behind the cover of a desk near the tap. “Take this shit outside or I’ll shoot you dead!” Both Klein and the assassin ignored the bouncer, firing at each other and ducking behind their capsized tables, until the bouncer brought out his own pistol and started shooting.
Squatting close to the ground to minimize his target area, Klein ran behind a booth that he hoped would offer better cover from the two men shooting at him. He felt a sharp pain in his left leg as he ran, and fell onto his belly, writhing in pain as the assassin walked over to him. He frantically tried to reload his pistol, but the assassin stamped down on his hand, forcing him to drop the gun. Klein could see the assassin’s gun pointed at him and heard his voice…
“Yo
u’re under arrest!”
“So the last guy that was after me wasn’t an assassin at all,” Klein said as he finished explaining how he had come to Domremy. “He was just a regular cop sent out to get me. The Düsseldorf police had been monitoring my internet usage and saw all the things I had been looking up on the Reeperbahn, and alerted the Hamburg police. The one assassin I didn’t kill -- the one I thought had been accused of killing the rifleman -- identified me as the killer of the other cops, and the two departments had been working together to get me. If I hadn’t run into the cop in Cathay, I probably would’ve run into a different cop at another bar or nightclub on the Reeperbahn. They had the whole place staked out.”
“Pretty lucky to get away with your life after killing three cops, even if they were dirty,” Cashman said. “What happened to the reports you sent to Der Spiegel? The media would have reacted differently to the trial if they knew that those cops were assassins sent to kill you.”