The Hunt for Greg October
Book One of the Illuminati
By Peter Fingers
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2016 Peter Fingers
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The Illuminati Series
Book One: The Hunt for Greg October
Book Two: The Chymical Wedding of Ted Rosencruz
Book Three: The Certain & Most True Story of the Amityville Haunting
CIA Agent Chaz Nouget was maybe the greatest badass who ever lived.
He wrestled gorilla-snakes professionally in the jungles of Rwanda for 6 years; disarmed a live bio-nuclear warhead in 7 minutes; and one time at state college he banged 5 chicks in 4 days. But Chaz wasn’t a numbers guy. He was an action guy.
That was then, this was now.
Retired CIA Agent Chaz Nouget was a washed-up fatass.
Today (September 21st 2059), he wore flowery Hawaii shirt half buttoned and khaki cargo shorts. Perched atop a bamboo stool at a sort of tiki bar on Sea Cow Island, Chaz talked shop with the Polynesian bartender, Pango.
The Jimmy Buffet Jr song playing through the small radio beneath the bar was briefly interrupted by the ring of Chaz’s fliptop.
The first time he retired was 2036. Then there was 2039, 2044, and 2045. Now his blonde hair was a bright white and he looked very much at home on the beach drinking something strong from a coconut.
Chaz scrunched up his face looking down at the number. It was 2pm local time in the Chagos. That was 3am in Los Angeles. Something was wrong.
“Dad, there are some men here to see you”. It was Carmel, his daughter. Her voice was shaky. Chaz sobered up immediately. “Give me the phone” he grunted.
The voice was direct and professional. “Agent Nouget this is Secretary General Jack Robert. We need your help” the voice crackled. “What is it this time? Russian sub hijack? Color revolution in the Balkans?”
He hadn’t had one of these calls in a long time. In the early days of Cold War II if there was a crisis, you’d always find Agent Chaz Nouget close behind.
Officially he was credited for saving the world only once; the aforementioned nuclear warhead disarmament in 2033. Chaz intervened just in time before a crazed mutant-Maharaja sacrificed the entire city of Jaipur to the god of red hot radiation in an attempt to spark a world war.
Off the record his contributions to world-peace were well-rounded.
He had assassinated dictators, rigged popular television contests, lotteries, and elections; he poisoned communist athletes at the winter Olympics ensuring America would take back the doubles figure skating crown. 400 hours of taped confessions extracted from jihadi terrorists were attributed to him.
More than 10 years later and 50 pounds heavier Chaz Nouget had one last chance to save the world.
“No” Jack said, “Its’ Greg October”.
He closed the phone abruptly and pushed himself up from the bar letting out a deep sigh. “Leaving so soon Mr. Chaz?” the bartender asked with his refreshing island accent. Chaz Nouget took his sunglasses from his shirt pocket and slipped them over his steely blue eyes.
“I’m back on the shit, Pango” he spat gruffly as he put $23 creds on the bar. “Hold my seat.”
Not 10 minutes later Un-Retired Special CIA Agent Chaz Nouget was on a top-secret flight bound for New-Mozambique to catch the world’s most psychotic trans-national computer hacker.
***
Phil peered out the space between the blinds of his basement level apartment windows. There was no one out there. Even if there was he’d only be able to see just the tops of their feet. Still, he had an eerie feeling he was being watched.
It was almost pitch black in the room, save for the unnatural blue light emanating from the computer screen on his messy desk.
Phil had lost his security clearance for the shit he pulled in Nicaragua back in ’39. With no job and no identity, his wife divorced him and took everything. The United States of America was safe from nuclear-holocaust, but Phil Gates had been completely devastated.
There was a knock at the door.
Hurriedly Phil grabbed his jeans and pulled them up awkwardly on his way across the dirty apartment. Flipping on a light, he looked around for a potential weapon. He didn’t own a gun, or even a knife, he’d never need one before. He didn’t know why he needed one now.
Fresh air billowed in and rays of sunshine through the entryway momentarily blinded him as he opened the opened the door.
“Phil Fuckin’ Gates” Joe D remarked and pulled Phil into an uncomfortable embrace. “How ya been buddy?”
He hadn’t been good.
“Good, yeah real good man” Phil lied.
“We can catch up later. The United States of America is way up shit-creek this time bud. I need your help fixing it”. Phil rolled his eyes. “I don’t do that stuff; I’m not even a citizen. You-“.
Joe D cut in abruptly, placing a cloven hoof on his shoulder “I know what happened in Nicaragua… It was fucked up but this is your chance to get it all back”.
It was an exaggeration of course. His name could be cleared but not even Joe Di’Monic; the NSA trained bipedal warthog with a license to kill could bring Melinda back.
“I’m not who I used to be, Joe D. I’m old, out of step. I’m doing 419 phone scams just to feed myself. I’m not that guy anymore.”
Joe D looked sideways at the man with an obvious twinge of pity. “This is the last shot you have. I need someone who knows Lourenço Marques. You speak the language, you know the people. This is your chance to save the world again. It’s Greg October. We found him.”
Phil stared off into the distance for a long minute letting out a deep sigh. “Greg October” The name seemed reverberate an extra minute off the dark concrete walls, although he hadn’t spoken it aloud.
“When do we leave?” he grumbled still not sure of what he was getting into. “Now” Joe D remarked as he turned and started back out towards the parking lot “Car’s running, just leave your stuff we got cleaners on their way to get everything packed up. Two minutes. I’ll be waiting.”
The giant pig, sauntered off and out of sight leaving Phil standing in the doorway chasing his thoughts.
The city of Maputo was alive. Bright lights stretched across the landscape. Cabs could be seen darting around the city streets as the ancient 747 eyed the airport.
There was no first class on the 16 hour flight from Paris. No drink service either. “There’s no budget for top-secret missions any more” Chaz muttered under his breath, annoyed and bored from the long flight. Everything would have to be done cheap and sleazy. Luckily, that’s exactly how Chaz Nouget liked it.
His contact in Maputo should have a car ready for him at the airport and if he was lucky some entertainment and a decent room for the night, but he doubted it.
The United States position in the world had been slowly eroding since the beginning of Cold War II. In the 40’s the military build-up was in full swing. Funding new hyper-weapons to counter Chino-Russian Bloc while at the same time dealing with tech-crazed mad-bombers and suicide artists at home put a massive strain on the economy.
Although few knew it, The United States and indeed the whole of western society in 2059 was on the precipice of total collapse. Manufacturing employed almost no people. The transportation, education, foo
d-service, hospitality, education and financial industries had all initially been outsourced to other nations around the turn of the century. When the Worldwide Agreement on Regulation began to break apart in the 30’s service and manufacturing came back; but employed only robots and geo-synced drones now. The rules were being re-written and the arthritic empires of the last millennia were finding it hard to keep up.
Africa on the other hand was on the upswing. Life expectancies were rising fast across the continent. Music, art and culture in cities from Antananarivo to Zazzau flourished and were now exported across the world. These new democracies were agile, driven and rich in natural resources. Successful investment in infrastructure improvements and a conglomerate friendly laissez faire environment had propelled the GDP of many African nations into rivalry with western powers.
What was important about Africa, and Maputo specifically was that it was free. Free from the prying eyes of the western governments. Still unwired in the modern sense, there was no central intelligence to share. No facial recognition, no international-ID’s; all the witnesses here were made of meat and could be grilled, as Chaz would say.
Chaz read up on his target during the long flight. Greg October had been making a fool of the US Government for years. Every month like clockwork, a new high-profile hack embarrassing leaders in government or industry. Photographs of people in compromising positions would be released. Meeting minutes, travel and credit card records, birth certificates. All of it swiped from everywhere and nowhere and plastered across every media outlet in the world.
On Saturday he would expose members of the Senate Armed Service Committee as Satanic Cultists, the next he would leak the blueprints of Hung-Wang’s latest chip device.
No nation and no group were spared by Greg. He sought to tear down everything through petty scandals and the release of trade secrets. No state claimed responsibility, and no state could be said to be lying. This was the work of a small but dedicated terrorist cell by all accounts.
Chaz didn’t know how they had tracked the hackers to this corner of the earth, but one thing in his mind was crystal was clear: Chaz Nouget was going to kick their ass.
***
Phil Gates arrived in in New-Mozambique a week early to begin to build the setup he’d need. He secured a mile of hi-optic cable, 12 micro-laser transceivers, a fleet of invasive Nano smart-drones and about 50 local credentials to operate with. He was set up with a penthouse suite in The Maputo Royale Hotel near the top.
The room had panoramic view of the bustling metropolis that enveloped nearly half the space. A huge monitor covered the north wall, and there was a bathroom with a circular tub and a fully stocked mini-bar on the other side.
Phil had hastily arranged the room for work.
It had been transformed from penthouse to hacker den. Wires sprung up and out from mysterious black boxes and were drawn up into the ceiling taking on a spider-web appearance. The AC ran full tilt but couldn’t keep up. Along with the wiry webs and smell of overripe bananas sitting in the trash gave the room a humid jungle like atmosphere.
He had of course heard of Greg October, world famous hacker and international man of mystery; A worm so invasive and elusive that nobody had been able to track it. Until now he supposed.
The job was not simple. Joe D’s goons sent him a brief rundown of the locations of laser networks he could tap into and a credit card. He was to wait for his new found handler to fly into town before he made another move.
He thought about Nicaragua. It had been twenty years. Two decades of pitifully scraping by and laying low. He had watched his entire life vanish in the blink of an eye. “Treason” the Justice Department called it. Phil never called it anything. It was just something that had to be done.
In an upscale flat in downtown Maputo, Ritzy Trite carried out her usual morning routine. She woke up each day at precisely 2:30 am. She then showered, dressed and had a bowl of cut fruit. The last bite was always a halved strawberry between 3:08 and 3:09.
Her progenitors had gifted her with an intense beauty. Her tall slender frame was embraced by rich dark skin. The swooping, long curves of her body terminated at sharp points that would glint in the light. On top she wore an austere bun that was barely noticeable in the presence of her sublime, biting brown eyes.
She was driven. Ritzy had ideas about her future.
Any other day at exactly 3:33 she would be catching an autocab down to the English language LMTV studio building where she worked as a weather reporter. It was a job she’d held for the last 3 years fresh out of broadcast school.
Today however she was held up.
The message was cryptic and short:
To: Ms. Ritzy Trite
From: Anonymous
Subject: Five day forecast
Warm
She was accustomed to strange messages coming in at all hours and really this wasn’t much different. Most were vulgar, perverse or mean. Whenever she would forecast a storm, dozens of useless angry messages would come in complaining, begging her to change it. She snapped the fliptop shut.
***
Thousands of pedestrians, rickety old jalopies, and modern autocars shuffled hurriedly down Mabote Avenue.
Agent Chaz Nouget, dressed in his now-trademark cargo-short, Hawaiian shirt, sunglass combo gnawed on the end of an unlit cigar. He’d been waiting patiently, baking under the hot afternoon sun on the bustling street corner. 45 minutes had elapsed, him casually eyeing a newspaper and peering suspiciously at every one of the passersby.
He arrived last night and met up with Phil. The guy had turned their shared hotel suite into a mess of wires and blinking lights.
A thought crossed his mind. He had no idea what or who he was looking for.
It didn’t matter, because just then a red autocar wheezed to a halt in front of him. The window came down a crack and a deep guttural voice began speaking. “Hop in, Nouget.” The car door popped open and Chaz ducked inside without a second thought. The car whined and started off as soon as he was in.
Next to him sat a 7 ½ foot tall monster. Its body was completely covered in coarse dark fur. Its head, the size of 5 men’s was that of a boar, complete with massive 10 inch tusks jutting out from the bottom of its’ slobbering jowls. Perhaps as curiously as anything else the pig was wearing a 3 piece suit, no tie and had a large gold Rolex cinched tight above its’ left hoof. He smelled like straw and aftershave.
Chaz smiled big. “Joe D! I haven’t seen you since the extraction in Moldoveanu, thought you were dead.” Joe snorted, “I was dead.”
He was a high level NSA guy; A product of mutant gamma radiation and sketchy medical practice. The half-man half-pig was an expert gum-shoe. If they were trying to catch the world’s most notorious hacker, of course he’d be involved.
Chaz was handed a stack of papers. He thumbed through them quickly, not really taking anything in. “You mind telling me what this says?” Chaz asked.
“Nothing. All a bunch of horse-shit. The idiots back in D.C. have gutted the project to the bone. Told us to find a needle in a haystack and turned out the lights. This is basically our only shot. We know he-“ Joe D paused briefly wiping the spit from his jowls. “-or they, are somewhere in the city. We’ve analyzed the signals we could get our hams on. Unless they’re using some faster than light technology they’re within ten miles of us right now.”
“So where do I come in then?” Chaz asked, already knowing the answer.
“I need you on the streets. You’ll collaborate with Phil Gates, your partner back at the Royale. He’ll be working to trace the signals; you’ll be tearing the guy a new asshole when he finds him.”
“Air support? SHOCK team?” Chaz asked. Joe D shook his head “We can’t risk Greg getting wind of us even being here. He’s got ears eyes and arms all over the world. We had to set you up a ‘weekend-at-bernies’ before we even made contact.”
Chaz knew what he meant; his death was ready to be staged at any moment. Within hours of
Joe D giving the word Ex CIA Agent Chaz Nouget, American Hero would be dead. The obit was drafted and a doppelganger secured. On Tuesday morning one flip-flop sandal and a severed arm could wash up beside Chaz’s Boogie Board on St. Kitts and nobody would be the wiser.
Chaz had a lead. Phil had been up all night honing in on some intelligence. He pinpointed the location of an internet café running an illicit laser array.
He had a local with him. A middle-aged Tswa-Rongan operator named Goto he’d met the day before.
Goto knew everyone in the Pearl, or so he claimed. He’d at least heard of the shithole they were headed to and that was good enough for Chaz.
“Stop it here, stop here on the right” Goto burst out, pointing insistently at a nondescript communist-era apartment building out the heavily scratched plastic window.
Chaz hit the big red button on the dash. The cab lurched to a halt.
Painted next to the curtain covered doorway was simply “Café” in red-orange. “You wait here, I’ll get us a table and you come in 5 minutes, ok?” Goto said holding up his right hand. “No way blanko-ninyo; Chaz Nouget doesn’t hide from anyone” Chaz said and handed him a handful of sweaty creds. Chaz started for the doorway.
He was unarmed, uninformed, unkempt, and unwelcome. He was aware of these 3 of these crucial facts before pulling the curtain aside and entering the dark smoky den.
A man in the back of the café shouted something in Bantu. Chaz heard a small whistling sound and then felt something sharp pierce his neck like a steel bee sting. He was unconscious by the time he hit the cold concrete floor.
Chaz Nouget had been whipped.
***
Phil Gates had been alone in the 14th floor suite of the Maputo Royale for 14 hours now. The off-grid laser transceiver he’d discovered last night went dark at around 4pm; Chaz said he’d return in time for happy hour at the Royale’s bar.
The Hunt for Greg October: Book One of the Illuminati Page 1