The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich

by Lars Emmerich

  So Archive had used his mammoth wealth and even more impressive influence to slowly assemble the right people to perform a surgical strike at the heart of the beast. And they had won.

  Whether society could survive the victory was another matter entirely.

  Protégé entered, coffee in hand, wearing a flannel shirt and cargo pants. Archive was most accustomed to seeing the young executive in a hand-sewn suit and power tie, but the casual attire served to underscore the fact that the world had changed. Profoundly, in fact.

  “Do you have any figures for me?” Archive queried, surprised by how tired he sounded even to himself.

  Protégé nodded, exuding the kind of calm, confident competence that had propelled him to the helm of the General Electronics Corporation’s Government Services Division at the tender young age of forty. At least, that’s the position he used to hold, before he stole the GE technology that hobbled the backbone of the global monetary system.

  “I’m not sure how reliable these numbers will be,” Protégé said, “given that only half the police officers in any given city have reported for duty. The National Guard has the same problem. Most people ignored their orders and stayed home to defend their families from looters and thugs.”

  The old man winced at the mention of hooliganism. Atavistic behavior was unavoidable in a time of chaos, but the reality of it was hard for him to watch. He’d set them loose, and he was impatient for the chaos to run its course, eager for people to realize that the only change brought about by the dollar’s implosion was a change in the agreement between them. Crops still grew, machines still functioned, bridges still spanned rivers, technology still worked, people’s homes still sheltered them from the elements, and, most importantly, the talent and genius of humanity remained as powerful a force as ever.

  A smile crossed Protégé’s face. “But honestly, I’m encouraged by the figures,” he said. “Maybe three thousand serious injuries. Far fewer deaths.”

  Archive didn’t share Protégé’s optimism. “The first death was one too many.”

  “But you knew it was highly probable, and maybe even inevitable. And you — we — all of us… We chose to move ahead. ‘The mantle of responsibility,’ and all of that.”

  The old man nodded. “Far less egregious in theory, but I’m finding it hard to stomach the losses.”

  Protégé nodded. “There have been some horrible scenes. But we need to put those episodes in perspective. It’s a numbers game. There are three hundred million US citizens, and probably another thirty million illegals. At least a third of a billion of us. If one half of one percent of the population are complete bastards, and the chaos removed the social restraints keeping them in check, it means that just over a million and a half assholes broke loose to channel their inner caveman.”

  Archive’s visage darkened further. “That’s supposed to be consolation?”

  “It certainly should be, when you consider that the remaining three hundred-some-odd million of us will eventually subdue them,” Protégé said. “And it’s already happening. The crime rate appears to be dropping. Ad-hoc citizens’ groups are springing up all over the place, and they’re restoring order. It looks like the neighborhoods are starting to recover from the initial shock of the dollar crash, and people are starting to work together again. We’re not out of the woods yet, but things appear to have taken a turn for the better.”

  “I certainly got a different impression from the news channels,” the old man said.

  Protégé sneered. “Those bastions of objectivity and truth? I’m shocked.”

  Archive allowed himself a tired smile. “I suppose I should place less stock in what remains of our journalistic enterprise.”

  “Come downstairs with me,” Protégé said. “You need to see something.”

  The journey to the underground portion of the Lost Man Lake Lodge took less than a minute, but it was like crossing into a different dimension. Protégé typed his PIN into a wall-mounted keypad in the rustically-apportioned basement lounge, and an entire section of wall retreated into the foundation to reveal the entrance to a spacious bunker dug into the side of the mountain.

  Another keypad-activated door led to the computer center, where an athletic man named Vaneesh, whose pseudo-quantum decryption program had made child’s play out of the Federal Reserve’s state-of-the-art firewall, leaving the entire banking system utterly exposed and vulnerable to the subsequent cyber attack, sat perched in front of a wall of monitors.

  “Our fearless leader has been watching too much propaganda,” Protégé announced. “So I’ve brought him down for a dose of the unvarnished truth.”

  “I think you’ll like the news, honestly,” Vaneesh said. “I’ve gained access to all of the street corner video cameras,” he began.

  “Where?” Archive asked.

  Protégé and Vaneesh shared a knowing smile. “Everywhere,” the computer scientist said, unable to hide the hint of pride seeping into his voice.

  “What in heaven’s name will you do with all of that data?” the old man asked.

  “I’ve written a script to categorize, sort, and prioritize the video feeds based on some key criteria. Turns out that understanding the mood of the populace really boils down to categorizing the number, size, and entropy level of the crowds that the video cameras detect.”

  Archive looked puzzled.

  “You can think of a crowd’s entropy level as its degree of agitation,” Vaneesh explained. “The randomness of movement within a crowd, and the energy of that movement, is a good indicator of violence. So good, in fact, that we can consider entropy a proxy for unrest.”

  “And your script does this automatically for all of the video feeds from all of the street corners in America?”

  “Pretty much,” Vaneesh said. “I still have a few kinks to work out, but we have enough data over the last day or so to draw some pretty solid conclusions.”

  “Which are?” Archive asked.

  “Protégé and I have seen a steady drop in both the number and agitation level of the crowds in all major metropolitan areas, with a similar trend in the smaller population centers,” Vaneesh said. “The upshot is that people are settling down.”

  Protégé smiled. “It turns out that most of us are pretty rational people.”

  “There’s more,” Vaneesh said, expanding the view from a particular video feed to encompass the entire wall of video displays in front of them. “What does this look like?”

  Archive studied the feed for a moment. “Is that… barter?”

  “It is,” Protégé said. “An impromptu open-air market. People meeting each others’ needs through trade and enterprise,” he said, his voice a little giddy. “What we hoped would happen, is actually happening.”

  “Not everywhere,” cautioned Vaneesh, “but we’re seeing more and more of this kind of thing. It’s a low-entropy, low-density, long-duration crowd as far as the computer script is concerned, and examples are cropping up all over the place.”

  Relief was evident on Archive’s face. “Thank God. I had hoped that people would get it figured out sooner rather than later, but I was beginning to have my doubts.”

  “I’m going to unplug your televisions upstairs,” Protégé said with a chuckle. “You don’t want to become like my dad. He spends his days self-radicalizing with the right-wing news.”

  Archive smiled, but his mirth was short-lived. “What about the Bitcoin problem?”

  A pained look crossed Vaneesh’s face. He shook his head. “Catastrophic, I’m afraid.”

  “Now that we know the digital signature of the virtual theft op,” Protégé said, “it’s become painfully obvious that we’re watching the greatest plunder since Hitler.”

  A worried expression clouded Archive’s features.

  “And the stolen virtual currency becomes more and more valuable as dollar-infected fiat currencies continue to lose value,” Vaneesh added.

  “So the rate of theft hasn’t subsided,�
� Archive said, “and the value of the stolen money continues to rise.”

  “Worse,” Protégé said. “The rate of theft has increased. There’s now another theft operation underway.”

  “The same thieves?” Archive asked.

  “Very similar methodology,” Vaneesh said. “It’s possible that someone else came up with the same process — hacking into Bitcoin repositories, finding user passwords, and skimming from all of the accounts — but I think it’s more probable that the second operation is a clone of the first.”

  “The second thief is in New Jersey, right?” Archive recalled.

  “Not exactly,” Protégé answered. “We — Trojan, really — discovered theft activity centered around Seattle, and another locus around a server farm in rural New Jersey. That means that the servers used to carry out the thefts are in Seattle and New Jersey. The thieves could be anywhere.”

  “Any report from Trojan and the feds?” Archive asked.

  Protégé nodded. “They’re actually en route to Central America right now. They think they have a line on the guy who built the first theft operation. He might have also built the second one, though that’s not yet clear.”

  “It’s also not yet clear if the guy was working alone,” Vaneesh added.

  Archive shook his head, a grave look on his face. “I hadn’t foreseen anything like this. Our aim was to end the global oligarchy, not set the stage for an even more consolidated economic power. If we can’t reverse the thefts or corral the thieves, all of this effort and sacrifice will have been for nothing. We’ll have killed the demon, only to see him replaced by the devil himself.”

  7

  Domingo Mondragon, known as Sabot in the small, insular world of computer hackers, was a world away from his element. And he was in a world of shit.

  Another vicious deluge of frigid water showered over him, and he felt his teeth rattle as he shivered violently in the cold. His wrist was still chained to the wall. The chain reached low enough to allow him to slump in a heap on the floor, but not so low to allow him to drop his arm below his head. He couldn’t feel his hand, and his wrist ached horribly from the shackle digging into his skin and sinew. A trickle of blood snaked its way toward his elbow. But he couldn’t stand up to relieve the pain in his arm, because his exhausted legs would not support his weight.

  A wave of panic washed over him as his thoughts turned to Angie, what she might be enduring. They hadn’t touched him, other than to shackle him beneath the water spigot, but had they shown the same restraint with her?

  Or had they taken advantage of her, taken by force the gift of herself that he relished as his alone?

  His stomach turned with fear and anger. And something else. Something much, much worse.

  Guilt.

  Angie was at their mercy, whoever the hell they were, because of him. Any harm that came to her was forever on his conscience. His greed, his recklessness, and his naïveté had brought this down on them.

  All of them. Connie, too. Angie’s mother wasn’t strong or healthy, and if she was being treated in a remotely similar fashion to him, Sabot feared she wouldn’t survive the ordeal for more than a few days.

  Days? Could it really last that long? Could he survive much more of this? He felt himself starting to unravel. Hunger gnawed at his stomach, his muscles ached from the violent, hypothermic shivering, and despair began to overtake his mind. We’re screwed, the voice inside his head kept saying. And it’s all my fault.

  The pipes rumbled yet again, and the faucet above his head spewed another blast of ice-cold water over his battered body. The water seemed to pour down on him for an eternity. The tears came involuntarily. His torso spasmed, wracked with anguished sobs and shivering uncontrollably. I’m so screwed, Sabot thought again.

  Finally, the water stopped, and Sabot became aware of another presence in the cell with him. Black boots, green pants, khaki shirt tucked loosely into a black belt. Jet-black Central American hair, dark skin, youngish. The man was sneering at him.

  Sabot used his free shoulder to wipe the tears from his face, a useless enterprise given that his entire face was dripping wet from the latest blast of frigid water. The gesture served only to highlight that he’d been crying like a broken man just seconds earlier.

  The visitor’s sneer turned into a derisive laugh, and Sabot added abject embarrassment to his list of debilitating emotions. I’ve got to get my shit together.

  A second man entered the cell, big-boned, muscular, also dressed in khakis, and carrying two wooden chairs. He walked slowly, purposefully toward Sabot, hard eyes boring through Sabot’s own, and slammed one of the two chairs down just inches from Sabot’s feet. Sabot jumped involuntarily.

  “Sit,” the large man growled, slamming the second chair across from the first as he strode out of the room, the first guard in tow.

  Sabot needed much of his remaining strength to heft himself up from the floor. He sat in the hard wooden chair, his body still shaking uncontrollably. He placed his numb hand in his lap, wincing as the blood began to circulate. He doubled over for warmth, and stared at what appeared to be a blood stain on the grimy concrete floor. The slack chain rattled mockingly with his shivers.

  Completely screwed, the voice said again.

  He heard boots in the hallway, the clank of a key in his cell door, and the groan of the ancient, rusted hinges as the cell door gave way to a small, slight, severe-looking man with close-cropped white hair, dead eyes, and half a dozen scars on his face.

  The man regarded Sabot silently for a long moment, then walked slowly to the chair opposite Sabot’s, seated himself, and resumed his dead-eyed stare. Sabot felt himself wither under the hardness of the stranger’s gaze. The man looked like death in jack-boots, and Sabot couldn’t help but notice a bullwhip curled up and fastened to the man’s belt. He shivered involuntarily, but not because of the cold.

  After a brief eternity, the man spoke. “Domingo Mondragon.” His voice was improbably deep and gravelly. “I am Terencio Manuel Zelaya. I tell you my name so that later, as you endure the atrocities that you are about to suffer, you will know precisely whom to loathe and fear. And, if you are like many other guests before you, you will know whom to beg for your life.”

  Sabot felt the blood drain from his face. He feared he might faint.

  Zelaya studied Sabot for a long moment, as if placing bets inside his head about when and how Sabot would crumble before him, then rose and walked slowly toward the door, extinguishing the light on his way out.

  “There are many ways to break a man,” Zelaya said, pausing in the dim light of the doorway. He turned to regard Sabot, a small smile creeping onto the corners of his mouth. “But every man breaks.”

  The door slammed behind Zelaya, leaving Sabot to shiver in the darkness. He heard the pipes rumble, and he braced himself for another frigid onslaught.

  Sabot had no idea how much time had passed since the visit from the diminutive devil when he heard footfalls in the hallway outside his cell. These footfalls were different. Lighter. Feminine. Even a little furtive. The cell door creaked open just enough to emit a shaft of dim light from the dank hallway, illuminating motes of detritus floating in the thick jungle air.

  A slight, graceful figure stepped inside the cell. A woman. Dark hair pulled back into a bun, high Central American cheekbones, dark skin. Pretty. The woman peeked back into the hallway before easing the door shut, as if checking whether she’d been spotted or followed.

  She padded quietly toward Sabot. He heard her pull the chain attached to the overhead light, and the lonely bulb in the center of his cell came to life, barely filling the dank chamber with feeble light.

  Sabot noticed her hands for the first time. They were cradling a tea cup. Steam snaked upward in the gloom. “Drink,” she said, sotto voce. “For your strength.” Her voice was kind, her manner sympathetic.

  Exhausted, freezing, and starving, Sabot accepted her kindness without a second thought, brought the tea to his lips w
ith two shaky hands, and sipped greedily. He burned his tongue.

  “Careful,” the woman said. “It is still hot.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Do not talk. Listen carefully. Soon, they will offer you food. You must not eat it.”

  Sabot felt his stomach grind with hunger. “That will be tough.”

  “They will put a drug in your food. Then all will be lost.”

  “All of what will be lost?”

  “Everything,” the woman said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Señor Mondragon, you have stumbled into something much bigger than you realize. Not all of Zelaya’s prisoners are chained to a wall.”

  “There were two women with me…” Sabot started to ask.

  The woman shook her head gravely. “There is not much time.”

  “Have they done something to them?”

  She looked at him, appearing as if she were weighing something in her mind. A tired, pained expression settled on her face. She nodded slowly.

  “What have they done?” Sabot tried to stand up.

  The woman put her hands on his shoulders and pressed him firmly back into the chair. “Listen to me,” she whispered. “There is still time, but not much. They are alive. But everything depends on you keeping your wits about you.”

  “Where are they?”

  “You cannot help them now.”

  “Get me out of here! I won’t be chained up like a dog while…”

  “Lower your voice, Domingo,” she hissed. “The guards are armed. You are weak and exhausted. If I unchained you, it would be the end of both of us. You must stay here until the time is right.”