BISENTIENT, page 18
'Coyote in play' was the brief message. Carver hit the 'back' button which had the effect of forensically removing all traces of the message from the phone's internals. For some the idea that one could sit within the inner security circle of the most powerful nation on Earth while simultaneously covertly operating a high-risk mission within their territory would prove irresistibly exciting. For Carver he felt the need to drink some water and wished the air conditioning could do more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
KATHLEEN MORAN WAS no longer newsworthy in Fort Worth. For the three weeks of her trial for the kidnapping and imprisonment of her daughter pictures of her were rarely off the front page. Since the last day of the trial, she hadn't seen Erik Nordstrom. He had told her when they had embarked on their plan to rescue Dawn from the Church of the Reclamation that if they should ever be picked up by the police, they were to deny knowledge of each other. Since the cults had begun to use narcotics to accelerate the indoctrination process on new recruits it had become progressively easier to avoid implication in kidnapping or false imprisonment.
Indeed, when Dawn harmed herself and was taken to hospital, she was unaware that she was first taken to another location. The ambulance which eventually arrived would record where she had been collected from, which was another house some blocks away from the safe house. Records would show that the house had been rented to Kathleen Moran. Further records showed that Erik Nordstrom had been working at the property on the day of the incident and had helped staunch the bleeding from Dawn's wounds until help arrived. However, the Church of the Reclamation knew of Erik Nordstrom and within forty-eight hours of the incident he was arrested after a tip off and the conspiracy theorists went into overdrive.
When traces of not only cocaine but hallucinogenics were found in Dawn's blood, the Church began seeding stories that Nordstrom and Kathleen Moran were lovers and used to routinely entrap young men and women, using Dawn as bait, for wild drug-enhanced orgies and worse. Before the trial had even been scheduled a TV crew from the tabloid show Scandal had made a half-hour expose on the couple. The program featured lurid recollections from supposed former acquaintances, school friends and even one girl, speaking with her voice distorted and blacked out on screen, who claimed to have attended orgies at Kathleen Moran's house.
Once the cold light of day intruded during the actual court proceedings it soon became clear that the prosecution, even with the covert assistance of the CoR's legal team, could not supply any evidence to support the kidnap claim. Nor the false imprisonment charge. Such was the background level of narcotics and evidence of heavy usage in Dawn Moran that the jury found it reasonable that much of her evidence could be discounted, or at least diluted. Ultimately, it took less than three hours for the jury to return Not Guilty verdicts on all counts. Dawn Moran was referred for psychiatric examination and the judge advised her to seek a treatment program.
Dawn had seemed impassive throughout the trial, sitting amongst a group never numbering less than five from the CoR. For the first few days she had hardly seemed to notice the proceedings but by the end she seemed fully aware. Hardly a glance was exchanged between her and her mother, which visibly pained Kathleen Moran more than Dawn.
For Erik, this was the third time in his career as a rescuer of cult members that he had found himself in the dock. On no occasion had he been convicted but he had been concerned that this might be the first. It had been hard for him to sit each day in the sweltering courtroom and not look at Kathleen Moran. Not offer the support that he knew she needed. Never before had he appreciated the sound planning and preparation that is always so important when going up against cults as well financed as the CoR. When the verdicts were announced he barely held back from punching the chair but instead assumed his air of passive confusion at the whole experience that he had adopted from the outset.
Kathleen had returned to Seattle after the trial and found that although some of her neighbours had been dragged into the maelstrom by the media the story had not really caught there. This was a relief for Kathleen, who was able to drop back into her life and savour normality.
As she pushed open her front door and carried two bulging brown grocery bags into the hall, she could hear the phone in the kitchen ringing. She managed to slide the two bags onto the marble topped counter and grab the phone before it stopped.
“Kathleen?” said a familiar voice.
“Erik, where are you?” she asked.
“Having a break.” said Erik Nordstrom. “You okay?”
“I don't know.” said Kathleen. “I'm not sure what ok is anymore, should you be calling me?”
“We're old news.” said Erik in his comforting drawl. “Anything from Dawn?”
“No.” said Kathleen.
“This isn't the end.”
Kathleen’s eyes were drawn to a photo above the sink. Happier times when she and her ex-husband had taken Dawn to Disney World in Florida. The slightly surreal image depicted the three of them and a swollen-headed Mickey Mouse.
“When things cool down, we'll start again.” continued Erik. “They'll have moved her but we'll find her.”
“Yes.” said Kathleen. “Thank you Erik.”
The words were like a needle piercing Erik's skin. He felt a mixture of anger and compassion as he imagined the lonely figure of Kathleen Moran standing in a family home that no longer contained a family. Surrounded by reminders of what she had lost.
“Kathleen, we will find her again. Don't give up. As soon as I hear anything I'll call you.”
“Thank you Erik.”
Kathleen Moran brewed some fresh coffee and opened her laptop at the kitchen table. She had found that writing about her feelings online as someone that has lost a loved one to a fringe religion seemed to help. She had received many warm emails both from others in her position and ex-members of cults who recognised the pain and tragedy.
As she opened her blog site, she noticed that she had six new messages. She took a sip of her coffee and opened the first.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
ZACH DECIDED A walk might do him good. It was still rather early for him to be up and about, but he'd risen with the sun and already been served a sizeable breakfast by his Aunt before grabbing his rucksack and heading into Finbridge village. As he walked, he remembered that he'd always loved his Aunt's breakfasts when he'd spent those summers here. It was easier to get out of bed somehow in the country. Zach always slept with his window open anyway but, in the country, the early morning cacophony of birdsong seemed to remind him that a teeming life was already at work on a new day. Zach had settled on 'girl trouble' to explain his sudden appearance. His story of a highly strung girlfriend that had begun stalking him when he'd ended their relationship seemed to raise hardly a question. A few days away from 'that London' was just what he needed, his Aunt had confided.
Despite being a community of only just over two hundred, Finbridge still retained a tiny Public Library. Managed by the increasingly frail Mrs Florence Perkins, who had seemed a much more imposing figure in Zach's memory, it also boasted the only known internet connection in the entire village. Probably the only one for a few miles in any direction as well. Somehow, the relentless advances in technology seemed to have been lost on this little hamlet. But with an aging population and no likelihood of new lifeblood, it would probably cease to trouble the statisticians within thirty years.
Mrs. Perkins didn't recognise Zach but was certainly put a little off balance by such a young customer. She showed Zach the ancient PC that stood on an old school desk in the corner of the single room. The good news for Zach was that the PC, although old, (it had come from the nearby Police Station in Dunstead when they upgraded) was not so old that it wouldn't suit his needs. He thanked Mrs. Perkins and settled to his task, hoping his presence wouldn't mean that the librarian would watch his every move. After ten minutes of harmless surfing Mrs Perkins had lost interest in her only customer and was once more engaged in crocheting, her aging fingers still nimble enough to move too fast for the eye to follow precisely what she was doing.
When Zach was sure she was distracted, he leaned forwards and plugged a USB stick into one of the sockets at the back of the base unit. This particular stick contained a variety of World of Warcraft client versions, some dating back to its very early days. He selected one and installed it. After a few attempts he finally managed to get it working and connected to the online game. In the online gaming world and especially surrounding such epic games as World of Warcraft, which can consume truly huge amounts of time, enterprising people had begun offering a service to effectively 'play for you'. In this way businesses emerged, especially in parts of the world where labour is cheap, such as China and parts of India, that would run your character (on your game account) and greatly increase your wealth in the game and your status. All this for a modest investment of realworld cash. This was considered cheating by the game makers and so they did, and do, all they can to prevent and discourage such activities. Anyone caught using 'gold farmers' or 'power levelers' for cash in World of Warcraft risk having their account removed. Zach, who would never use such techniques himself, had experimented in using some of these services. But his only reason was to blog about them, criticise them and eventually put them out of business. To do his research, he had created a number of additional game accounts, which were not traceable to him in the real world. Some of the businesses he had ratted on were run by Chinese organised crime and he had no wish to make himself known to them.
These old accounts would come in handy now. Being on the run would mean your spending of money and moving around would be monitored. But if one was on the radar of the Security Services, this introduced a whole new level of sophistication and intrusiveness in the pursuit. Zach knew they would have on file details of his interests, friends and since this is the twenty-first century, extensive details of his activities on the internet. They would know about World of Warcraft and they would know that it afforded a means to communicate in a slightly unorthodox manner with 'known associates', via its in-game chat feature. Zach was hoping that they would not know about his alternate identities from his fake accounts.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ZACH WAS NO expert in the field of secret messages. His scheme used the in-game ability to send items to other characters via the postal system. Zach had devised a cipher that used the number of items, the names of the items themselves and even the titles of the messages to pass simple information.
To pass complex information usually involved a number of swaps of items and messages but this was not uncommon in the game so unlikely to draw attention. Still this was a laborious business and Zach was glad he had kept his word lists on his smartphone. He'd listed common words with their coded equivalent and used this to send his first messages. His friends were not online so he'd have to check back for any response, and he hoped they would recognise the post for what it was. He was confident they would, as if they didn't know the character name, they would soon decide the items sent seemed odd and he trusted them to do the rest.
It had been three days since his escape, but nothing had been mentioned on any media as far as he could tell. Of course, he knew that he would be sought. He knew things that his masters would not like in the public domain. Mrs. Perkins now greeted him with a warm smile and even offered him a cup of tea on his third visit.
He hoped Meek had found his note. He wondered if security had become even tighter as a result of his flight. He wondered if his friends and family had noticed the inevitable surveillance that would now have descended on them. He wondered if any other subjects had been implanted. He wondered what the range of the devices, like the one in his head, could be. He wasn't an expert on this stuff and although he knew he was pretty safe where he was, he knew he would have to visit civilisation eventually.
As he ambled back to his Aunt's cottage Zach tried to plan his next move. His Aunt was happy to have him stay but he knew he couldn't impose much longer. Anyway, he needed to sort out the mess he was in. He wanted to get the implant out of his head. He wanted to stop others being experimented on but had no idea how. He felt guilty for being involved with something like this. He missed being able to bounce his thoughts off Meek.
Zach was asleep by the time his first message was received. The player reading the post thought it odd at first, not recognising the character name of the sender. Then she picked up a pen and jotted down some letters on a scrap of paper. The player logged out of her character and logged in as another and sure enough she had post waiting. She wrote more on her paper before logging out again and entering the game with a third character. There was a third post and a fourth. The player now had letters written on four pieces of paper and she rearranged them into the correct order. The message appeared as gibberish until you knew two additional pieces of information. The long sequence of letters was an internet domain name and the initial characters of the first words of each message were “f”, “t” and “p”. The last message began “not” which meant to ignore that part of the code. So, the letters were 'ftp' which represented the 'file transfer protocol’, a means of moving data around that predated the world wide web.
It had been more than a year since Angie had seen this code. She knew who must have written it but had no idea why he had decided to reactivate this laborious means of communication now. She had Zach's mobile number and he had hers; it would have been an awful lot easier to just call. She knew he worked on secret stuff, which she thought was kinda cool. She lifted the lid on her Macbook Pro and fired up a ftp client program. She carefully entered the string of characters and hit enter. A login prompt appeared asking for a username. Often ftp is used for letting just about anyone download files so one old convention is to use the name 'anonymous' for a username and then your email address as the password. Angie tried this but it failed. She glanced back at the four pieces of paper but there was no other information in the messages. She thought for a moment then tried the name of her favourite character “Apollonia”. The name was accepted and now a password was required. Angie tried her character name again, although she didn't expect that to work. She tried to think of what word Zach would have known she would think of. Suddenly she began to feel hot and could feel herself blushing. He hadn't chosen... She typed in the word “Heaven17” and the screen welcomed her with “You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike”. Angie almost laughed out loud. Heaven17 had been the place that Zach had taken Angie when they had their first date. It had been an awkward affair during which neither of them felt comfortable but neither wanted to be anywhere else. The evening ended with their first kiss, but neither were ready for relationships and university at opposite ends of the country cooled things off.
The welcome screen was a homage to the first popular adventure game on a computer. In this first adventure game, using only words, as computers were simple things back then, the writers used wordplay to construct puzzles and impart information in a slightly oblique fashion that certainly appealed to early geeks.
Angie entered “take message” on the screen. In this first-generation game only certain commands could be understood by the machine and they were always two-word commands (go east, take axe etc.). The words “Don't understand” appeared on the screen. Okay she thought, that was a bit obvious. She tried a few other common combinations of two words but no luck. There was probably a timer on the retrieval of whatever information Zach was pointing her to so she knew she had to hurry. She smiled as she typed the next guess, “take m3$$@g3” as it used the kind of phoney 'leet-speak' mixture of letters and numbers that were supposed to look like letters that Zach had always hated. The screen cleared and a directory listing appeared with seven files in it. Angie immediately started downloading them. However bad the trouble Zach was in at least he still had his sense of humour it seemed. She'd been right about the timer and digits began counting down in the top left corner of the download window. It looked like the counter had started at 300 and it had reached 112 by the time the files began to download.
Within two and a half minutes Angie had all the files, had disconnected from the site and was reading the first file's contents. Her act of disconnecting from the site caused the copies of the files on the server to be erased. As she read in the weak glow of the screen her expression changed and the happy, almost excited mood she had been in at getting a message from Zach became darker and she began turning a pen over in her left hand, something she tended to do when she was anxious.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
PLATER FELT TIRED as he got off the bus and walked towards his road. It was as he felt for his keys in his jacket pocket that he noticed the man standing on the corner of the cul-de-sac almost opposite his house. It was dusk and the oddly flat light made it hard to pick out his features but he was sure it was the same man who'd followed them to Suffolk. He had a short, thick-set torso and short, slightly spikey hair. Plater would normally cross the road now to approach his house, but he kept heading for the short man. As he got within thirty yards the man turned slightly and even in the dusk, Plater could make out the tattoo on the man's neck. It was him. Plater walked faster.
“Hey!” he called.
The short man immediately set off running down the cul-de-sac. Plater went after him. The road ended in a wider circular area for cars to turn around. Next to the house on each side there was an alleyway and the short man disappeared down one without breaking stride. Plater was closer to him now but still ten yards short. A clattering sound greeted Plater as he rounded the house to see the man clambering over a fence that was just too high for him to manage easily. Plater saw his chance and launched himself. He crashed against the wall but clutched the man's left leg tight. For a moment his weight dragged down before the man's grip gave way and they fell together to the floor. As they scrambled to get to their feet Plater clawed at the man's back. He thought he heard a metallic click and got a handful of the man's coat, hauling him round to face him. The man's eyes were frightened, his pupils seemed lost in a sea of white. Plater felt a sharp pain in his side and without thinking relaxed his grip and sought out the pain with both hands. His jacket was wet. The short man staggered backwards, and Plater saw the glistening blade with the dark smear. The short man suddenly rushed forwards, shoving Plater and heading back out of the alley and round the corner. Plater wanted to follow but his body seemed preoccupied and wouldn't obey. The pain from the damp patch in his side was growing. He started to walk and as he left the alley, saw the little man get in a car which hurriedly snaked off.
