“Confessions” Serial, Tech Wars 5
His lady Sandy was back. Brett drove out to Kennedy to meet her. As he approached the airport, he wondered what she would say when he took her to his new apartment two blocks off Central Park. His previous place was now unsafe. He had come to the conclusion that it was time to admit to the woman he was determined to marry that he had not been exactly truthful about his life. Now, with the increasing involvement of the Hungarians, he figured it was only a matter of time before Sandy realized that he was not just the dreamy wanderer through life that he appeared to be.
As far as Sandy was concerned, he was self-employed and seemed to earn enough to live comfortably without having to overextend himself. He dabbled with painting and was surprisingly good at it but did not make any effort to sell his work. Sandy, on the other hand, was a hard-working IT programmer, but her recent tragedy over the death of her father had set her off on a mission to try to clean up the growing number of frauds and computer crimes she was uncovering.
Her father Ed O’Reilly had been the victim of a scam which had resulted in his Pennsylvania farm being repossessed by the bank. Ed, an honorable man who was a third-generation farmer, had been refused a further loan to cover the costs of harvesting his wheat crop which promised to be the best in years. The bank had uncovered a document that pointed to an initial fraud carried out by his father forty years previously, which had allowed the same bank to grant a loan to buy an additional five hundred acres of land. This had formed the basis of the family’s success which Ed had taken over from his dad, Aaron, some twenty years later. In fact, the fraud had been committed by his neighbor, Dirk de Groet, jealous of the O’Reilly family. Now, years later, the neighbor’s grandson had run into financial difficulties and had cleverly managed to forge documents showing that Aaron O’Reilly had “stolen” fifty acres of de Groet land included in the parcel of five hundred acres.
Even though Sandy had made it clear to her father that she never wanted to take over the farm, he had been determined to leave the land to her as an investment. When the bank was about to kick him off the farm, Ed had fallen in front of the harvester and had died a gory death. Unfortunately for him, the bank had commissioned a videographer to survey the land from a drone that same day. It had revealed Ed deliberately stepping in front of the harvester. The insurance had refused to pay Sandy the two million dollars of the policy.
Sandy was devastated. She was forced to accept that her dad had deliberately killed himself in order to leave her the insurance, but she was equally certain that the “stolen” land had been falsified by the de Groet grandson. In the process of trying to prove this, she had discovered further frauds committed on other families, usually with the aid of some “creative” computing. As she explained to Brett, it wasn’t the money she was concerned about. She earned a very good salary and would not be badly affected by the loss of the farm and the insurance payout. It was the level of dishonesty that outraged her, plus the way that her father had been driven to a desperate act through the misdeeds of others.
All of which made it increasingly difficult for Brett to come clean about his own life. Not that he was doing anything dishonest. He felt that she would probably forgive him for his subterfuge over work as a private investigator. In fact, he would be happy to help her restore her family’s reputation. However, the other thing he had withheld from her was that he had inherited a massive fortune. Sandy had been passionate about her dislike and distrust of the very rich. She believed that the wealthy were determined to suppress anyone who could possibly endanger their comfortable lifestyles. He wondered what she would have thought of her own father, had he succeeded with the last harvest which would have made him not just prosperous but put him into the “wealthy” bracket.
Brett pulled up outside the Delta Airlines terminal and immediately saw Sandy waving at him excitedly. She was wearing denim trousers, a colorful cerise silk shirt and sandals, with a rucksack over one shoulder. She had just flown in from Tampa Florida, where she had interviewed a husband and wife, whose family business had been destroyed by a series of devastating articles and scurrilous Twitter comments concerning the way in which they were selling goods under false brand names. It was completely untrue, but it had killed their business and had forced them to open a burger joint where they worked long hours and struggled to cope with their four lively children.
Sandy dashed over to Brett’s SUV, piled her rucksack on the back seat and leapt in front with her man. They kissed for a long moment until, out of the corner his eye, Brett saw an airport official approach their vehicle. He reluctantly pulled away from Sandy and set off for their new apartment.
Sandy chatted away, telling Brett about her adventures in Florida. As they drove into the city center, Sandy became aware that they were not heading towards Treadwell. “Hey! Where’re we going? I need to take a shower if you wanna go out.”
“OK … I’ve got some things to tell you, but I’ve booked for a show and dinner afterwards. Right now, we’re heading for a new apartment I took while you were away …”
“… but …”
Brett held up his hand. “I’ll explain over dinner. You take your shower in the new place. I had all your things moved across, so please contain yourself, get changed and enjoy the show. Then all will be revealed.”
Sandy looked at her man anxiously. This was completely out of character for him. She sensed that something serious had occurred and he was trying to relax her before revealing what it was. For a moment she thought about putting her foot down and insisting that he spill the beans right away but decided against it. He had obviously put a lot of thought into the sequence of events. She respected and loved him too much to rock the boat. She would just have to be patient.
She grinned at him. “You realize that if your surprise announcement doesn’t match up to the mystery … I’ll have to kill you!”
He shrugged. “I’ll take my chances.”
The show was great. Sandy relaxed for the first time in weeks. She had a number a deep belly laughs for the first time in … forever it seemed. Brett enjoyed himself too. In fact, most of his satisfaction came from watching Sandy unwind and undoubtedly recharge her batteries to some degree.
As they got into a cab to take them to the restaurant, Brett instinctively looked up and saw a man a few yards further down the sidewalk staring at him intently. As their eyes met, the man quickly turned away and strolled further down the road. He felt a chill down his spine. He didn’t know the man and there was no reason why he should be discomforted but somehow he got the feeling that he was being watched. He sat down beside Sandy in the back of the cab and gave instructions to the driver. As they pulled off, he looked out of the window. The man was a few yards further down the road. He was talking into his cell phone. He didn’t look up as the cab drove past him. Brett tried to get a good look at the man’s face in case he popped up again somewhere. The fact that he didn’t look up seemed to indicate that Brett was just being paranoid but, then again, if the guy was following them, he could be part of a team. He was therefore calling one of them to give the cab’s registration number. Stop it, you goddam idiot! He put his arm around Sandy, who snuggled up close to him and whispered in his ear.
“Best idea you’ve had for a while. Hope your surprise announcement’s not going to upset me too much.” Hope not, he thought fervently.
“Just a great meal, sweetheart … and of course, who knows what may happen later!” She giggled and he left it at that, trying to recapture his good mood of only a few minutes ago.
Brett had booked them into the Amali at 115 East 60th Street where he was well known. “Good to see you, Mr. Gibson. This way, please.”
The maitre d’ led them to a table to the side of the main action. He was now reluctant to bring up either his own concerns or Sandy’s research into the Internet’s shortcomings. He decided that he’d leave it up to Sandy as to whether or not she still wanted to talk about it or would rather leave it until the morning.
Brett ordered his usual favorite seafood which went by the name of Dayboat Scallops. Sandy went for the Lobster fra Diavolo. After chatting about the show and rekindling some of the laughs, Brett sensed that Sandy was drifting into her own thoughts.
“How was your food?”
“Great. Nice and spicy. The pasta was divine.” She looked at him anxiously. “Sorry, I’ve managed to avoid the elephant in the room for a few hours now … but it’s back. D’you mind?” Brett nodded encouragingly. “I’m seriously beginning to wonder if there isn’t some kind of organized effort to stop successful people from succeeding.”
He chuckled. “Are we entering into the realm of conspiracy theories?”
She considered his comment seriously. “The thing with conspiracy theories as I see it is that there are two ways of looking at them…”
“Which are?”
“It may be a collective term for people’s fertile imaginations … or it could be that we’re tugging at the edges of some horrible truths that the perpetrators try to hide by mocking anyone who stumbles on elements of the truth.”
Brett nodded. “I’ll buy into the latter!”
“Sadly, so do I. Not to say that there aren’t some totally nutty ideas out there too.”
“So, what makes you feel that we’ve stumbled on something serious here? Why should it not be pure bad luck?”
“Too many similar occurrences.”
“OK, but what would be the motive?”
“In a word, control. If you can drive a population down into sufficient despair and apathy, they simply become too weak to fight the system.”
Brett nodded somberly and called for the check.
“My darling, for a beautiful, vibrant woman, you sure have a dark side. Sadly, I’m inclined to agree with you. The trouble is that one’s natural reaction is to say, ‘what in the hell can I do about it?'”
Sandy grabbed his hand and squeezed hard. “That’s exactly the point. If they can get you to the stage where you feel helpless, they’ve won!”
The smiling waitress brought the check. Brett pulled out some bills and paid with cash, including a substantial tip for the young lady. Sandy shook her head.
“I’m all for saving mankind, but at the rate you’re going, someone’s gonna have to save you.”
Brett laughed. “It’s only money. Besides, if your theory’s correct, she’s going to need it more than me.”
As they stepped outside the door, Brett failed to notice a large, black SUV parked across the road from Amali. The two men inside it watched intently as he and Sandy emerged from the restaurant and entered a cab ordered for them by the maitre d’.
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.