by David Archer
Brave New World
Copyright © 2018 by David Archer.
All right reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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Published by: David Archer
PROLOGUE
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EPILOGUE
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PROLOGUE
The car turned into the alley and cut its headlights, then moved slowly in the dim light that came from the windows in the buildings. A lighter flashed once, then again, the light coming from just behind a large dumpster, and the driver continued until he was parked alongside it.
A man stood in the shadows, and he leaned down as the passenger in the back seat rolled down the window. “Did you get it?” the man asked, and the passenger nodded nervously.
“Yes. Everything you asked for, it’s all here.” He held up a briefcase. “What about my money?”
“Money is easy,” the man outside the car said. “Come with me.” He opened the back door and waited as the passenger slowly slid out and got onto his feet. The passenger was a portly man, and going bald far earlier than he probably had expected to, but the thinner man who closed the door didn’t care about that. He was just a facilitator, here to deliver a payment and ensure that the package was handed over. As soon as he brought the man and his package inside and the deal went down, he could walk away and the fat man would be forgotten.
As long as everything went the way it was planned. There was that niggling sensation at the back of his mind, that feeling that something about this job wasn't what it seemed to be. If the feeling was correct, there was always the possibility that he would never make it out of there alive, but he had faced that risk more than once. When you wanted the rewards his work offered, you had to accept them as part of the business.
“I’m Doctor Williamson,” the fat man said. He clutched the briefcase tightly, but he also had a small notebook computer under his arm. He kept it clamped there as he watched the facilitator. “Where...” That was as far as he got, before a door opened and light spilled out. He swallowed, fighting back the mental image of a giant shark’s mouth that had opened and was waiting to swallow him whole, and followed the other man inside.
There were three other people, all of whom appeared to be Chinese, inside the room, all sitting on stools around a high table. They were all facing the door, watching Williamson as he carried the briefcase in and held it in front of himself like some kind of shield. The facilitator reached out and took hold of it, but it was a couple of seconds before the doctor could make his fingers let go.
The facilitator set it on the table. “He says it’s all here. If you can verify that, I can pay him and he can be on his way. Then we can get on to the other matters.”
One of the three at the table took hold of the case and snapped it open. “It was not locked,” he commented. The doctor only shrugged, as if it hadn’t occurred to him to try to secure the case.
The man who had opened it looked inside. There was an external drive that connected to a computer by USB, a large ring binder stuffed with pages, and a small plastic box. Everything else was ignored as the box was lifted out and set before the only woman in the group. “Mrs. Ping,” said the man who passed it to her. “I believe we need your expertise.” He then took out the ring binder and began looking at the tabs that identified sections of the contents.
Mrs. Ping, who looked to be in her sixties, stared at the little box for a long moment and then reached out to open it. There was a snap, and the lid swung up and out of the way, revealing a small, rectangular-shaped item that appeared to be the center of a spider web of fine wires, each strand tipped by a tiny ball. It was sitting on a bed of silicone rubber, to protect it from shock. She took a jeweler’s loupe out of a pocket and screwed it to her eye, then used a pair of tweezers to pick up the chip and hold it in front of her face.
Through the lens, she saw a series of letters and numbers: RTI-446-BCI11658-5. A slow smile spread across her face as she replaced the chip into its bedding and closed the box again. She removed the loupe and put it back into her pocket, then turned to the man who had spoken to her.
He continued looking at the binder for a few more seconds, then passed it to Mrs. Ping. She looked through the papers inside, then took out the auxilliary hard drive and pulled a laptop computer toward her. She connected the auxilliary drive and waited a moment for it to be read, then began looking through the files on it.
A few minutes passed as she examined several images that appeared on the screen, and then she removed the drive and replaced it and the binder back into the briefcase before looking at the man again. A single nod from each was all that passed between them.
“Pay the doctor,” she said without turning her head. “It's genuine.”
The facilitator took an envelope from a pocket and handed it to Doctor Williamson, who instantly opened it and looked inside.
“It's all there. Your new identity and the documents to back it up, as well as the deeds to your new home in Argentina and the money you asked for, in six different accounts. One hundred million U.S. dollars that you can access from anywhere in the world. You have all of the account information and passwords, which you can change at any time, and there are debit cards for each account. The money has passed through several countries and a half dozen cryptocurrency accounts, so it’s absolutely untraceable. The accounts are all in the names of special trusts executed by men who exist only on paper, so there should be no way for it to ever be traced to you.”
Doctor Williamson glanced into the envelope, and then took the notebook out from under his arm. He set it on top of a barrel that stood close to him and entered some of the information on the paper he had taken from the envelope. The screen lit up wit
h banking information, and he smiled before closing that window and starting another. Each time, he entered a new password at the prompt, always using the same one. It was his birthdate, but he only wanted to change it temporarily. He would make it something more complex when he got home.
Finished, he looked up at the facilitator again. “Excellent,” he said. “It's all there, as you say. And we’re done, then? I won’t be seeing you again after this?”
“We’re done, Doctor. I can assure you I won’t be bothering you any further. You’ve done all I asked of you. I hope this money brings you everything you want for your life from now on.”
Williamson looked at him for a moment longer, glanced at the others in the room, and then turned and walked out the door. The car was waiting where he had left it, and began driving away as soon as he got into the back seat again. He waited until they had left the alley, then took out his cell phone and dialed a number from memory.
“It’s me,” he said. “It’s all done and I got the money. When do you want to meet up?”
He listened for a moment, then nodded to the phone. “Okay, I’ll be waiting for you there.” He hung up the phone and slipped it into his pocket.
Back in the room where he had left the case, the little plastic box was being placed gently inside it once more. The two men and the woman sitting around the table were smiling at one another, and then they all turned to the facilitator. “You have done well,” said the old Chinese man. “We thank you for making this transaction possible.”
The facilitator smiled, shrugging his shoulders. “It's my job,” he said. “It's what I do.”
“And your fee? It's satisfactory?”
“I’m happy with it. Are you?”
“Yes,” said the old man. He turned to the man beside him and said something in Mandarin. The younger Chinese man took a small pistol from his pocket and aimed it at the facilitator. Before his target’s eyes could register surprise, he had fired once, shooting the facilitator through the forehead.
“What about the fat one?” asked the woman.
“He is already dead,” said the old man. “His body just hasn’t noticed, yet.”
A mile away, the fat man took one of the debit cards out of the envelope and looked closely at it. It had a cheerful photo of a beach on it, but the plastic seemed greasy, as if something had been spilled on it. He ran his thumb over the first two fingers, feeling the slick, oily something that seemed to be on all of the cards, and then sniffed at them. He didn’t smell anything, but it was annoying to have something greasy on his hand.
He absently wiped his fingers on his pants, and then leaned his head back. He was tired, suddenly, but that wasn't all that surprising. They had been working on this for weeks and he had often gone days on very little sleep, but at last it was over. He had another hour’s ride before he got home, so he figured he might as well catch a little shut eye.
The driver was shocked when he got to the fat man’s place and found that his passenger was dead. He knew that whatever they had done that night was supposed to be a big secret, however, and that it would be very bad if anyone ever knew about it, so he dragged the body out and left it in the alley behind the doctor’s house.
As he got back into the car, he wiped some greasy stuff from the dead man’s hands onto his slacks. Dammit, he thought, fat old bastard died, I get cheated out of the fifty grand he promised me and messed up my dress pants, to boot!
A few minutes later, once the limousine was well out of sight, a small car pulled up beside the body of Doctor Williamson. A young woman stepped out of its driver’s door and knelt down to pat the body, checking all of his pockets. In hands that were covered in two layers of industrial-grade nitrile gloves, she retrieved an envelope and dropped it into a large, sealable plastic bag. She peeled off one layer of the gloves, turning them inside out and dropping them carefully into the bag, as well, before running her fingers along the zipper-like seal to close it up tight.
She opened the door of the car and put the bag into a plastic cooler on the passenger seat and closed it, then started the car and drove away. She left the alley, relieved that no one had seen her, and took out her phone to call her husband. He would be thrilled that it went off without a hitch.
He didn’t answer. She left him a short, nervous voicemail, saying, “I got it. Call me.” She dropped the phone back into her purse and drove on home. When she got there, she carried the cooler inside and put on another pair of clean nitrile gloves as she carefully removed the envelope and took out the six debit cards, the identification documents, and the sheets of paper with the information on how to access the accounts. She laid all of the papers in the bottom of a plastic tray, put the driver’s license, passport and debit cards in another one, and then took off the outer layer of gloves again. These she dropped into the open cooler.
Next, she picked up a gallon bottle of bleach and opened it. She poured some into the cooler so that it covered the plastic bag and the gloves, then poured more into the trays with the paper and cards. She recapped the bottle and then sloshed the bleach around in all three containers, dipping her single-gloved hands into the liquid before stripping off the last pair. Those also went into the cooler, just for good measure, and then the rest of the bleach was poured into it. She closed the cooler tightly, shook it so that the bleach would thoroughly soak everything inside, and then it went into the sink and was rinsed out.
The debit cards were allowed to soak just a minute more before she took them out of the bleach and rinsed them at the sink, then laid them onto a paper towel to dry. The sheets of paper she only lifted out carefully so the ink wouldn’t smudge, then laid them on another paper towel without rinsing them.
It was done. She took her phone out of her purse again and dialed her husband’s number, but once more it went to voicemail. She furrowed her brow, but she knew that any number of things could be keeping him busy. It was too soon to worry, but it was also getting late. She went to the bathroom and showered, then crawled into bed. Mac would wake her when he came in, she was sure. They had a lot to celebrate.
As she lay there waiting for sleep to come, she wondered again whether what they were doing was terribly wrong. Mac had explained that the people he was dealing with were going to kill that fat doctor and there was nothing he could do to stop it, but once he verified the accounts and changed the passwords, the hundred million dollars they were giving him would be lost in limbo. The way the lawyer had routed the money, so that it could never be traced back to any of them, pretty much guaranteed that that they would never be able to recover it, but Mac was only making fifty thousand on the deal. Since his clients were willing to let a hundred million dollars vanish into the ether, he couldn't see anything wrong with picking it up. All they would have to do would be to figure out the new passwords, and Mac didn’t think the doctor was smart enough to make that very difficult. He was confident he could do it, and he knew other people he could call on who certainly could.
He had explained to her about the deadly poison they had used on the contents of the envelope, and that getting even the tiniest amount of it on his skin would mean doom for the doctor, but then he had shown her that plain old chlorine bleach would neutralize it. He had told her about wearing multiple nitrile gloves, so that one pair would remain uncontaminated while she took off the other. That would allow her to handle the stuff safely, and once the bleach touched it, the danger was over.
And then, when they had moved the money into other untraceable accounts, Mac would never have to do any of this kind of work again. They could move money into their own accounts periodically so that it appeared he was still taking clients, but the truth would be that they could retire and travel the world, just like they’d wanted to do.
Sleep came at last, and she didn’t wake until the sun came through the window. She looked around, but Mac was still not there, so she reached for her phone to call him again.
The phone was lit up, telling her that she had an email.
She didn’t recognize the email address, but the subject line got her attention instantly.
It said, “If you get this email, I’m dead.”
1
“It's your turn,” Indie said sleepily. “He needs changed, and he wants his bottle.”
Sam rolled over and looked at her. “How do you always know? I mean, I hear him crying, too, but I can’t tell from that whether he needs changed or wants somebody to come and talk to him.”
“It's a mom thing,” she said. “Dads never get it. Go take care of him and let me sleep.”
Sam chuckled and threw off the covers, then got slowly to his feet. He balanced on his good leg for a moment, testing the other one to be sure it wasn't going to collapse on him, then limped toward the small room they had set up as a nursery.
“Hey, Buddy Bo,” he said as he looked down at his son. Bo was almost five months old, now, and was already showing signs of a developing personality. The smile he gave Sam, one that seemed to be filled with love and delight, never failed to make Sam’s heart race just a bit. “Mommy says you’re poopy, let’s find out.”
He lifted Bo onto the changing table beside the crib and unbuttoned the onesie, then waved a hand in front of his nose. “Whew, she was right. What did she feed you last night, skunk?” The front of the diaper came loose quickly and was folded down under Bo’s bottom while Sam used half a dozen baby wipes to clean him up, then he pulled it away and dropped it and the used wipes into a ziploc bag. Once it was sealed, Sam tossed it into the garbage can Indie had set up for that purpose, and then started the process of installing a new diaper.
When he was finished and had rebuttoned the onesie, which had miraculously survived the poop-from-nightmare-land, Sam scooped up his son and grabbed his bottle, then carried both of them down to the kitchen. A small bouncer baby seat was on the table and Sam lowered Bo into it, setting the bottle down as he clipped the safety strap into place. He kept an eye on the baby while he rinsed out the bottle, then made a fresh one by adding formula and purified water and shaking it thoroughly.