“Confessions” Serial, Tech Wars 10
Johansen was growing increasingly frustrated. Once they had established that the O’Reilly girl was looking into the affairs of his bosses, he had gotten his operatives to probe into her private life. They established she was living with a man called Brett Gibson in a Greenwich Village apartment. Johansen’s team had carefully broken into the apartment. Despite his network of contacts and hackers, he could not find any real details about Gibson. Either the man had brilliantly covered his tracks, or he was exactly what he appeared to be – a wealthy bum!
The other thing that worried him was that one of his men had reported seeing what he believed to be another surveillance team watching the young couple. Did it mean that Gibson was also working an investigation? If so, was it connected to the project that Johansen was working on or was it completely unrelated?
He decided to concentrate on the O’Reilly woman for the moment, but he had told another operative to watch their apartment and let him know if someone else was watching them. He also wanted to know when O’Reilly came home and whether Gibson was with her.
They had already copied everything from O’Reilly’s personal laptop that she left at home, but she was savvy enough not to leave any confidential material on the system. No doubt she transferred everything important directly onto a memory stick or external hard drive.
Johansen glanced at his watch. It was getting late. There was no good reason why O’Reilly and Gibson should not be out late together, but he had a growing feeling that it was not that simple. He sighed, reached for the phone and dialed his long-suffering IT guru who answered, “Hey Boss, it’s after midnight. What gives?”
“I want you to track the cell phones of this woman, Sandy O’Reilly, as well as a Brett Gibson. See if they’re together and gimme a location.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
Johansen’s men watched in vain all night. Brett had already moved his and Sandy’s possessions to their new apartment, but they had also left the new place behind.
• • •
Brett ordered room service. It was too late to go down to any of the restaurants, but Brett knew from previous experience that the room service would still be excellent. He chose a medium-rare ribeye steak. Sandy settled for escalopes of veal. Even though the seafood was always fresh and superbly prepared, they both felt the need for some meat and a really good red wine.
Only once the meal was finished did Sandy sigh contentedly, finish the last of the wine in her glass and look intently at Brett. “Much as I’d love to curl up in bed with you right now, my discovery can’t wait. If I’m right we’re gonna have to work out what to do about it … and do it fast.”
Sandy went over to the percolator machine and poured them both some strong black coffee. She settled back into her chair and began, “As you know, I’ve been finding out about these growing numbers of unfair and malicious happenings on the Internet that are ruining the lives of decent, hard-working people. While I was searching the web for all these injustices, I started to come across something even more disturbing. I won’t bother you with the technical details right now, but a frightening new pattern has emerged.…” Sandy paused to gather her thoughts. “More and more relatively young men and women in key positions in commerce, industry and even government are disappearing or dying unexpectedly.”
Brett frowned. “You sure it’s not just the natural attrition of people in high-powered, high-stress positions?”
“Nope. I’ve run the statistics on executives in the 30- to 50-year-old range. The curve’s gone right off the chart!”
“OK, so what are you saying?”
Sandy looked uncomfortable. “This is where you’re gonna think I’m becoming paranoid or maybe just buying into one of the latest conspiracy theories.”
Brett reached across and took her hand, squeezing it gently. “My darling, I have too much respect for your intelligence and also your integrity to think that you’re talking some kinda baloney.”
Sandy smiled at him. “Thanks. I’ve begun to doubt my own sanity over the past few weeks. Could there really be a well-organized plan to destroy the lives of ordinary people and instill the feeling of helplessness that I’m picking up from overhearing conversations and reading Facebook or Twitter?”
“What you’re suggesting now goes way beyond that. In a word, I’d say ‘Control’.”
Sandy nodded. “Makes sense I guess … tell me is this any part of what you and this mysterious guy from college are looking into?”
“No comment.”
“Hey, that’s not fair. I’m giving you everything…”
“True but no doubt you’ve heard of the phrase, ‘need to know’?”
Sandy sighed. “Brett, are we getting into another area of mistrust here?”
Brett shook his head, frustrated. “The only reason that I’m holding back is that if these guys who’ve been following you were to ever get hold of you, the less you know about me the better.”
Sandy looked at him with growing alarm. She was verging on tears again. “A few weeks ago, I felt I was leading a fairly normal life. Then my dad died, and it’s all gone downhill from there.”
Brett got out of his chair, pulled Sandy up and into his arms, holding her tightly. “My precious darling. They’ll have to get past me first to get to you. You may not think so but that won’t be as easy as you … or they … think!”
She looked up into his eyes, seeking reassurance. “If you’re as rich as you say, can’t we just … disappear? Go and live in some remote country?”
“Sadly, there aren’t any really remote places left on this planet. Maybe we can book a seat on Elon Musk’s next space trip and get off on Mars!”
“Funny man,” Sandy chuckled.
Brett looked at her and for a few delicious moments fantasized over the idea of the two of them running hand in hand along the glorious golden sands of some remote beach. They would laugh at the crash of the breakers reaching out towards them but falling back as the water licked their bare toes. They would watch in awe as some brilliantly hued tropical bird flitted in and out of the palm trees that flowed down to the edges of the sand … all of this while the rest of the world went to hell!
Sandy looked at him curiously. She could see that he was mentally in some far-off place. “Come back, all is forgiven!”
Brett laughed. “Sorry I was just …” he shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. So, to sum up you think that some unknown group is systematically driving the general population into a state of apathy … and just to be certain, they’re picking off talented individuals in key positions?”
She nodded. “Sounds wild but I’m afraid that’s also my conclusion.”
“And you see the Internet and all its spin-offs as key to this operation?”
“I don’t think they could organize something as vast as this seems to be without the Internet.”
Brett sighed, moved away and did some brief stretching motions. He stopped and looked at her intently. “OK, let’s say you’re right. You’ve identified a problem. D’you have a solution?”
“Oh sure … find ’em and kill ’em!” She laughed at Brett’s horrified expression. “Only kidding, although that’s probably what they deserve!”
Brett was silent for a while. He had to reach a decision. The only possible solution he could come up with was to enlist the help of his friend, the one he had named to Sandy as “Joe.” What he hadn’t told Sandy was that Joe was a kind of modern-day Robin Hood.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Sandy and Joe were doing very similar things. The difference being that Sandy wanted to expose the villains and see them punished whereas Joe had little faith in the existing legal and policing systems. He had taken it on himself to punish the baddies and, in some way, restore what he could of the victims’ lost assets. Brett had bought into it for a while but eventually he began to worry that the methods Joe used were so perilously close to being criminal, possibly even stepping over the line, that he feared that they would both end up unable to differentiate between right and wrong. He had told Joe about his fears. They had argued and finally Brett had withdrawn. Joe had been disappointed with Brett but could understand the other man’s point of view.
Brett’s dilemma now was whether putting Sandy in touch with “Joe” would result in her becoming even more involved in her mission than she already was. If he was being totally honest, an even greater fear was that he could lose her in the process. In the balance, he decided to hold off for a while and see if they could find some solutions without the seductive appeal of Joe’s wild but successful games.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.