by Julian Folk
He vents his frustration in laughter.
“Sounds like fun,” Jimmy says. “Maybe I’ll go myself.”
“You’ll ride your boogie board in the ocean, Jimmy,” Jan says. “That’s all the fun you get at your age. Shit. Your carotid, your bypass. Gimme a break.”
“I bet Nikki would be good, you know, fighting poachers,” Melody says.
Connor’s family has spoken. The proposition is ridiculous. But Connor owes a debt to E.J.—technically speaking. And he should keep his word. If Connor must be anything these days, he must be ethical.
Annoyed, frustrated, disappointed, he says, “I’m in, man. Count me in. When do we leave?”
Chapter 42
Tehran
Noland eats, sleeps and works 250 feet underground.
They used to let him out once a day, for an hour, in the courtyard. That ended in a month. Rumors about Noland gained steam. For his protection, they decided to keep him indoors.
Nobody likes him.
Particularly his minder, Farshid.
Farshid hangs with Noland, in the bunker, as the defector works. Fourteen hours a day, Noland fights back, for Iran, against round-the-clock cyberattacks originating in the U.S., Israel and God Knows Where.
Jasper’s team, the replacements for Vincent and Maisie, hack Noland’s computer and communicate on a secure channel.
They offer a deal:
The U.S. negotiates Noland’s repatriation on the condition he repudiates his outlandish claims. Specifically, he must say, “There is no such as No Touch Kill.’ At home, he accepts a long prison sentence in a white collar facility. Good behavior earns him an early release. After he agrees to serve the United States government in a counterterrorism capacity for the rest of his life.
Jasper’s team dangles an enticing revision to the official story:
The blast launched Noland against the wall. He suffered a severe head injury. In a daze, he did what he liked: he dove from the submarine bay; he went scuba diving. But the bomb’s neurotoxic chemicals sickened him. He grew disoriented underwater. He lapsed into a fugue state. He called Iranian operatives on whom it had been his job to Watch Assess and Report. Clearly not himself, Noland asked for asylum. Iran forged evidence of his treason as part of a Psy Op against the United States government.
Noland was injured. He was sick. He committed treason in an altered state. And yet, Noland insists on taking responsibility for it. He’s the Traitor America Feels Pity For.
Deep in his soul, he knows this won’t happen. No one rewrites the Official Story. Not even Jasper.
Months ago, Noland laughed at the pitch. Today he dreams of living his life in an American prison. Lately, Farshid surveils him with greater vigilance.
Jasper’s team is running the Program on him, even here, in an enemy state.
Farshid tells him of the worsening rumors: Noland’s defection was fake; he never quit NSA; he pretends to work for Iran but really works against it; he sabotages Iran’s nuclear program; he plots the deaths of the Ayatollahs; he weakens Iran’s defenses in advance of an Israeli attack; he steals private information about the Ayatollahs and gives it to the CIA for blackmail; he carries on cyber seductions of Iranian female celebrities; he coordinates a CIA program to hook Iranians on heroin; he converts the youth to atheism.
Farshid says he believes these rumors. “How do I know what you’re really doing on the computer?” Farshid also believes the X-rated ones he won’t deign to share.
Some days Noland hopes to be shot.
His colleagues in Hawaii were murdered. Jasper is responsible for that. No Touch Kill currently eliminates hundreds, if not thousands, of people worldwide, with no oversight or accountability. This is lawless madness. The Program drives innocent people to suicide, or incites mobs to kill them. These killings are assassinations without assassins.
That’s why it’s so fucking hard to identify.
That’s why it’s so successful.
That’s why Jasper went to such great lengths to create it.
Noland’s captors spy on him all night. They rigged his room with cameras he sees and doesn’t see. Same thing with microphones. He practices mouthing the words under the covers, “There is no such thing as No Touch Kill.”
The words become his mantra. He mouths the mantra hundreds of times and falls asleep. It boosts his serotonin levels. He feels nice.
More and more, Farshid hates seeing Noland. Instead of peeing in the bathroom, Farshid pees in a cup in front of Noland. “I am not sure how long I can hold them off,” he says.
“Who?”
“Everyone.”
They want to hang Noland from a crane.
Noland mouths the mantra until it has no meaning. “There is no such thing as No Touch Kill.” He mouths the entire backstory. Saying it becomes easy. The easiest thing he has done. As Farshid watches, Jasper’s people hack Noland’s computer, and Jasper speaks:
“Hi, Noland.”
“I have a confession to make.”
“I’d love to hear it.”
“I lied. There’s no such thing as No Touch Kill.”
Noland sobs but feels liberated.
Jasper definitely recorded it. He’ll play the video when Noland’s dead. Hundreds of millions of people are sure to see a snippet on their phones.
“You’re an American hero,” Jasper says. “I’ll make the arrangements.”
The Iranians hang Noland from a crane.
State media reports Mr. Bridgewater admitted to American hackers that the No Touch Kill program doesn’t exist. He made the Program up to gain entry to the country and the trust of its leaders. Tehran knew he was lying all along. They used him to learn about NSA practices.
The intelligence officer who brokered Noland’s asylum is hanged beside him. So is Farshid.
Author’s Note
On the first day of a weeklong stay at my parents’ house, I fired up my laptop at nine or so in the morning and got to work. Minutes later, a shrill ring drilled through my ears. It sounded like a fire alarm in an apartment building. Other than my parents, I didn’t know anyone who still used a landline, so it took me a couple seconds to realize that the awful sounds came from their phone. Although the discomfort in my ears lingered, my shock had subsided by the fourth ring, when I answered, raring to lash out like a madman at the caller who had shattered my concentration like a glass house.
But there was no one on the other line.
The call was automated, and the robot voice had hesitated, so I hung up. Wanting to avoid another interruption, I tried to mute the ringer, but couldn’t, so I adjusted the volume to the lowest setting. The same ritual, less disturbing than the first time, was repeated several times per hour. The commercial calls tapered off just before my parents came home from work. Mom and Dad had no idea how frequent the calls were, although they often wondered why the answering machine accumulated so many hang-ups while they were gone.
I entered my parents on the Do Not Call Registry, and it made no appreciable difference. I would be there a week and the law gave telemarketers thirty additional days to harass and annoy. Since some of our elderly relatives in shaky health only call the landline, I couldn’t disconnect the phone. As the week progressed, I blasted music to drown out the incessant ringing. Soon I found myself answering the commercial calls as a means to procrastinate. One of the callers impressed me. I’ll refer to him as Craig. And I’ll refer to his employer as Unnamed Bank.
Unnamed Bank had called many, many times that week. Talking fast, Craig introduced himself. Assuming that I was the homeowner, he immediately pitched a refinancing plan, or some such thing, over my protestations that I was not the person that he was looking for. The guy just wouldn’t listen. I told Craig where to shove it and hung up. Of course, he refused to shove it. The phone rang again. This time it wasn’t the Unnamed Bank’s number displayed on the caller ID. It was Craig’s personal cell phone number. He was calling from the same Charleston, S.C. area code, 843, a
s the bank. I pictured him sitting there at his desk and answered the phone by asking him if he was crazy. Craig ignored the question and lectured me about civility. The man was angry, he was clearly frustrated, but he was also plaintive. Still, he was bothering me. The guy shouldn’t have escalated. So I hung up.
Hours passed. The phone continued to ring like a drunk bird trilling for a mate, and the Unnamed Bank called back. This time the caller was a woman named Joanna. She launched into the same pitch about refinancing. I told her, profanity-free, that she was not helping herself or making money for her employer by calling this house. She ignored me and recited her script. The whole thing felt wildly unprofessional. I hung up and searched for reviews of Unnamed Bank and found only complaints, many of which featured the word “scam.”
Mercifully, I didn’t hear from Craig and Joanna and Co. for the rest of the week. But the seed of the story that became Do Not Call was planted…and watered and fertilized. What if Craig, who called on his office phone, and then his cell phone, hadn’t been just a random frustrated dude at a shady enterprise but a truly loose cannon? And what if he hadn’t been just a loose cannon but someone who used to know me? And what if that disturbed person, by dint of ability and skills, had reached a position of power he never should have been able to reach and was out to settle a score?
I bought my parents a phone with a gentler ring and got started on this story.
About the Author
Julian Folk’s mission is to give you a heart-attack and make you ask for another. In the upcoming year, Julian plans to burst-open his self-imposed limits with two new sci-fi thriller series: one tells the story of a a gritty woman’s fight against the extinction of the human race and the other follows the assimilation of a battle-hardened presidential aide in a darkly enchanted town inspired by Twin Peaks.
Julian lives in New York with Buddy, his mercurial cockapoo, but plans to head west. His hobbies include running, hiking, traveling and being introverted in public.
Reader reviews are essential to the marketing of indie books, and authors benefit immensely from hearing what readers like. Please take a minute to leave a review.