Authors: Unknown
"Richard Guy Fawkes?" I didn't recognize the voice. It sounded female, roughly my age, and the tone was more a statement than a question. "Do not hang up or disconnect your computer." Alarm bells were ringing in my head. Fight down panic. If whoever this was knew what I was up to then I was already busted, and a mad dash to wipe everything wasn't going to save my hide.
"I am apologizing now for mistake you aremaking," My 'little foreign man' accent was something I'd practiced after watching Andy Kaufman a few too many times. I know, he’s before my time, but the guy was brilliant in an offbeat sort of way, but I hoped a long shot here might pay off. "You are must be having called wrong number. Please to be trying again. Tenk you veddy much." I promptly hung up, hoping they'd go sniff somewhere else, or at the very least think someone might have cloned or stolen my phone.
Instead of possibly having to dance around with funny accents after a second call, I instead had to deal with a single bullet fired through a window I had left open to give the room a little fresh air. Only after I uncurled and got off the floor to take a tentative looked around did the phone ring. I stared first at the bullet hole that, had it been a few inches to the right, would have gone through my monitor and probably me. Then I stared at the phone a long moment before answering. "Alright," I sounded somewhat less scarred stiff than I felt. "You have my attention."
"Just keep doing what you've been doing." Female voice sounded smug to me. "I won't turn you in, not yet anyway. Finish what you're doing, then we'll talk."Creepy, especially since I essentially had a gun to my head. Still, they said they wanted to talk after I finished up. Fear makes people act loopy, me included, and that was the last thing I needed right now. This time a message popped up on my screen. “Look. Don't go getting the shakes on me, especially not now. I'm not going to turn you in and I'm definitely not going to kill you. I just wanted your attention. Think of me as backup if it will help you feel any better.”
Easy for her to say, She shot at me 'just to get my attention'. On the flip side had a strange message just popped up from persons unknown telling me I've been made, at least so my thinking went about how this person had to reason things through, I probably would have bolted.
Can't say that I like it, but there's a kind of logic there. I had a job to finish. Back to Australia. Now. Copy everything, delete logs, pull out to have a look-see. The addresses listed matched both the South American server and my informants. One file was an encrypted ref file and the other was a good old fashioned plain text file. Now that was naughty of them to upload key-logging software to people they were supposed to be cooperating with, but hey it gave me passwords for the Romanian and British servers I wasn’t going to complain too loudly.
"Very good." The mystery lady laughed in my ear. "Now can you tell me what possible reason they had for planting spyware in a supposed ally's computer?" I would have answered, but I still felt something of an itch between my shoulder blades where I imagined her gun was pointed. Why would police do something this blatantly illegal, especially considering the scandal that would blow up as a result, the widening mistrust between agencies. Pause. Rewind. Oh Crud. Police, not even the most rule-breaking water-boarding sort would do that in this or most any other country. Police don’t perform illegal taps, especially on each-other. That meant...
No. Really. What did that mean?
Four systems taken care of and another set of files for Gibbon to take a stab at. I should have felt happy that I'd managed to cover my tracks, but then again I shouldn't have an armed lady that looked like something out of a special forces black ops outfit poking through my fridge. I wanted to throw up.
It could, if looked at rationally be pure happenstance all this was going on and they knew nothing of me or my recent dealings. 'It's just the paranoid screaming everyone's out to get you.' Going where I didn't belong, no matter how enjoyable and rewarding amongst my chosen peers, was a risky and stressful activity. Being a little paranoid was probably natural. Even so, several of my friends had recently gone missing, and I could find few connections other than myself to all of them. So feeling a little jumpy and frightened for myself and others would be natural. Wouldn't it?
Part 3
Evasion
The rest of my time was spent wandering around here, wherever that was. They were somewhat unclear when I asked what this place had been, but my guess was a school. Lots of rooms, hallways, central cafeteria. Even run down the place didn't have the look I would have envisioned for a prison, or office, or the like. there were areas they would not let me go, and they would not let me leave 'for your own safety.' So outside of walks, chatting people up that might or might not know English, and telling my side of this sorted and tangled story was what passed for routine since I'd been brought here.
The man they'd sent in with me today was a new face, blue eyed, blonde, built like something out of a comic book. Add in the black uniform he wore, patches or no the thing looked military, and he could have been an extra a movie retelling a modernized version of the Third Reich. He had my supper with him, which was strange considering they usually let me eat when and where everyone else did.
"Your story seems hard to believe." He had an easy manner about him as he looked at me. Were this the nonexistent modern-day Nazi movie I thought he looked right for this man likely would have already resorted to beatings, or racial slurs. Twenty first century and I still had to grow up with people calling me a mutt, or half-breed, or worse. Not my fault that they couldn't deal with dad marrying a black woman. Instead, even if he didn't believe me, his overall expression and body posture seemed more concerned than assertive. Could be off on that assessment.
"That's what I've been screaming ever since I got here." It was something of a joke I used to try breaking the tension. "Yet no matter how impossible the past week has been reality refuses to cooperate so here I am."
"indeed." Couldn't place the accent. Definitely not German, might not know the language but I knew the accent. Russian? Nah. "We are sorry both for keeping you here and keeping you in the dark about things, but it is critical for us to know what brought you to our front door."
Maybe he's traveled, picked up a mishmash of accents. "Then why space it out a little at a time instead of getting it all at once? You have 'Six's records, and you could've lifted my prints and made something that would fool its biometrics if you don't believe the log files I'd kept of the events." That could explain it. Could also be that he's faking for my benefit.
"Well," My 'host' pushed the disposable plate of food my way. McDonald’s. Ick. "Let's just say we need to make sure you're mentally sound, and waiting gives you time to process everything." Sound reasoning given I'm in an unfamiliar situation after experiencing a great number of strange and stressful events. "We haven't touched your computer mostly because we want your trust and cooperation. There is, however, the matter of your computer refusing to work for us."
I gave a snort and a laugh, "You already have my password so what's the problem?"
My host seemed to consider his words before speaking, that or he was trying to figure out why I wasn't relying on sarcasm and barbs. My profile, so I was told, had that as one of my likelier reactions to stress and authority figures. "The one time we tried it let us into your desktop fine. However when we tried to use it to take a pass at one of our local systems it locked up on us, shut the program down, then wouldn't let us back in. Most peculiar."
"Damnedest thing really." Strange, it never gave me any hassles about needing a secondary login for my net warrior tools. "I'd deny any knowledge of what you might have tripped, but I don't know how believable I'd be. Give 'Six back and I'll see if there was some sort of time bomb, or if I've got the magic touch."
"Tomorrow." He straightened, "Tonight I want you to tell me how you managed to get out of the country."
Her name was Tanya and though she claimed to not be part of any formal agency she looked and moved like she was military. If her warning that people had been sent to either 'secure or neutralize' me was part of an attempt to get me to come along willingly rather than force her to use a black bag and zip-ties it was working quite effectively. Perhaps, no, it's the height of foolishness to go with her, but somehow I get the impression that if I don't come willingly then she's going to be far less friendly. Heaven and Creation help me, I think I've finally lost my mind, but I'm going.
We stop after a few hours on the road and in spite of the soreness and cramps all through my thighs and lower back I'm quite grateful for the stop. I don't see why people like motorcycles, but to each their own.. Still, I'd rather be in something with a little more protection from the wind and perhaps a bit of storage space. 'Too risky to use your car', that's what she would tell me whenever I asked during that trip. Whatever.
"Feeling better?" I shook my head wearily. My mind was still numb and my cognitive processes seemed to have gone on strike. "Too bad 'Skippy.'" She tousled my hair when she brought up the name Kate always used. "You're going to have to get us a pair of tickets to Europe."
"Wait. What? Why there? Why not just keep a low profile here?" My mind wasn't working and I wanted answers. To Tanya's credit, on the assumption I was being kidnapped instead of rescued, she was polite and when situations allowed was more than willing to explain things to me.
I saw her doing something with her phone, one of those smart do-everything-at-once numbers with a thumb-board while we were stopped. We were at a rest area populated mostly by long-haul truckers, buses, and a scattering of cars here and there. No reason to think anyone was watching us and no need to be paranoid.
"Like it or not whenever you connect to the Internet that computer dials home." She was... casual in talking about Deep Six. I'd paid dearly for it, and if I was being pursued then I was up to my eyeballs in trouble. "You've done better than me and my friends expected at keeping a low profile considering your hobbies and habits, but we can't protect you here anymore." Then it was back to doing things with her phone.
On the way here I think I saw a sign saying we were in Utah, but I'd been dozing in and out of a kind of half-sleep that kept me clinging to Tanya, but tuned out all the little details like time of day or where we were. It's not safe, and to take my mind off of visions of me turning into highway hamburger my mind instead turned to where we were headed. If we were being pressed as much as Tanya said we would need to get to the east coast then transfer over to something headed across the Atlantic.
All I'd managed to do before we left was call work to use the week of sick time I'd built up and leave a few messages explaining that I would be traveling, would keep in touch, and that everything was fine. My friends and especially my family demanded more out of me, but I'm a terrible liar and I didn't want to tell them that I was probably a wanted man.
Yea the past few days have felt a bit over the top for me too. Unfortunately my future wasn't looking any less convoluted, what with a trip to Europe to look forward to, and needing to both obtain funds for tickets, and identities to fake so we wouldn't have pasty white guys in dark suits with little badges that said FBI or CIA waiting at our destination. I'll need to contact Gibbon, possibly Miko and Sekmet as well to see if some kind of workaround, if not a proper fix on ‘Six’s tattletale habits. That was for later. Now though I had to take care of more physical concerns, food and a visit to the little boy’s room, before we tried getting a few more hours of riding in. Tonight, I told myself, I would make my run.
When we started off again my thoughts turned to my companion. Was she a savior or abductor? If she had my interests and welfare in mind why? I don't know anything about her, and she's denied working with any national government, terrorist cell, big business, or pretty much anyone that I could think of that would want the technology Deep Six represented. Fruitless speculation, and possibly destructive because I was already in her hands and unless she willingly let me go there was no real way to get away from her, but it was a big deal, so my mind chased it's own tail until we stopped for the night.
It wasn't the Ritz. In fact it wasn't even Motel Six, but even if I felt the rooms cost more than they should there weren't any problems checking in, and there was a net-cafe a few blocks down. Tanya played escort while I went in to explain my problems, in carefully chosen language, and to get all the mundane online things out of the way that didn't need the sort of muscle 'Six could flex. That and, well, I wanted some fresh coffee in me. Thankfully nobody seemed to pay us any particular attention. So, all preliminaries that I could think of were done. I'd picked an airline and a flight I wanted on that would leave in a couple days.
It would be hard going, especially with in our post-9/11 world, but I was confident. At the very least Gibbon had, in a round about way, told me the file I’d pulled from my last run pointed to the police, contrary to my thoughts on the matter, taking the cases I’d brought to them very seriously, and that they were just as frustrated as me at lack of information to work with.