Seven Unholy Days (14 page)

We have examined the above document and the related SBG account. It is a true and accurate copy, and the banking officer who handles this account has verified that Matthew Decker, widely known as a technology magnate, is indeed the accountholder.

As you are aware, we oppose divulging information such as this and do so now only because certain transactions within the account meet the criteria for mandatory disclosure as specified in the recently adopted International Anti-Terror Treaty.

Pirmin Heinz

President, Suisse Banc Geneve

“I don’t give a rip what this says. It’s wrong.” All three of them stared at me and said nothing. I turned to Rowe and Reynolds. “P
otella obviously forged this and faxed it himself.”

“I don’t think so,” Rowe said. “In fact, that’s impossible.”

“And why is that?”

“Look at the time on the fax, Decker. At the time that fax came in, Potella was off the grounds with Sheriff Litman.”

I looked at the fax timestamp. He was right. I replayed the sequence in my mind. Potella came back with the document and said that he hadn’t mentioned anything about it to either of the other agents before. Reynolds asked to see the document, read it, then handed it to me. Rowe never saw it. But he knew the timestamp.

My mind spun and my stomach roiled as I processed the i
nformation. It was all Rowe, not Potella. Rowe was the one who signed off on the crackers. Rowe was the one who came in with an attitude on day one, then shifted gears when his boss talked to me about the case. And Rowe was the one who had set me up for a hard fall.

There was zero chance Potella would side with me if I tried to explain it now. A quick glance at Julie Reynolds confirmed that my guilt was a done deal in her mind, as well. “Look, pe
ople, I’m no traitor and when this is all over I’ll prove that. For now, I’m going back to work.”

“Not for long,” Rowe said as they walked away. Julie burned a hole in me with a stare that shone with disappoin
tment.

I sat down at my workstation and turned to Abdul, who had heard everything. “I’m innocent, Abdul.”

“Yes, I believe you, Matt Decker.”

“I appreciate that, my friend.”

“What did the last email say?”

I turned my laptop around and pushed it over to him. “Matt Decker, he is going to hurt my family?” he said, a look of sheer panic on his face.

“I know it’s tough, but what you need to do right now is keep working on that password, Abdul,” I said.

He started crying. “My family knows nothing of anything like this! My father is taxicab driver. My family are good people. I will work faster on password, Matt Decker.” He wiped his eyes and went back to pounding keys.

Seeing and hearing the news on television is one thing. Witnessing the pain up close is another. Other than my comatose father, I didn’t have a family anymore but I remembered the pain of losing him all too well. This psychopath had to be stopped.

The big grid display screen was sitting idle, so I hacked t
ogether a kludge—a small, quickly written program–to turn it into a giant computer screen for us to work from. Within three minutes I had every communication we had gotten from him displayed.

“Abdul, you see anything unusual in this last email?”

He studied the screen and said, “I don’t speak English very well, but I understand it perfectly in writing. There are mistakes in this one.”

“Exactly.” I highlighted them on the screen. “He said ‘pale it comparison’ and he had a couple of sentence fragments.

“What do you think they might mean?”

“Small errors aren’t uncommon in emails, but his first three messages were grammatically perfect. Stilted, very formal, but technically correct in every regard. Maybe he’s becoming agita
ted.”

“I hope he gets no more crazy than he already is.”

“Agreed. Something else I find interesting is the subject, ‘thy clock doth run.’  Tark may be right. This does have a biblical ring to it.”

“Yes, it is sounding to me like the King James.”

“You have those system logs handy?” He handed them to me; I took them and the printouts of all the emails and made for the lounge.

“Do you think you know something?” Abdul said as I was leaving.

I looked back over my shoulder and held up the printouts. “There’s a pattern here, and if I can manage some time without emails or catastrophic news or phone calls from the President, I intend to find it.”

23

6:18 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

HART COMPLEX

             
Jana’s suite didn’t have a clock but this new age dungeon did and she used these visits to mark the time. This was Thursday, her third day, and not even the briefest possibility of escape had come her way. She spent most of the day locked in the suite, then got hauled down here late afternoon or early evening, and stayed until around midnight, when she was escorted back to her cage.

At the moment, Hart was eavesdropping through his co
mputer. Her heart quickened when she heard Abdul Abidi’s voice. She was across the room from the speakers and had to strain to hear, but she didn’t recognize any of the other voices or names: Roe, Becker, Reynolds, Marcella? She was sure it was Great Central, but where was Brett? Or Mr. Tarkleton? And who were these other people? Hearing a voice from home was both comforting and exasperating, so close, so impossibly far.

Hart abruptly switched the speakers off, stood, and walked into a restroom off the main room. Jana saw an opportunity. If caught she might be killed, but she deemed it worth the risk. She strode quickly across the carpeted floor to the computer and scanned the screen for a way to send a message. There it was, a window already opened to Hotmail. She listened carefully for sounds coming from the restroom. Nothing. She clicked CO
MPOSE, then filled in the recipient. She heard the toilet flush as she was typing the message: KIDNAPPED, SOMEWHERE IN NEBRASKA. ABRAHAM HART. HELP. DON’T REPLY TO THIS! JANA. The faucet in the lavatory was running now. She clicked SEND and stepped away from the computer just as the restroom door began to open. She stopped in place halfway between the computer and the sofa, and was stretching when Hart stepped out. He stopped, a brief moment of curiosity registered on his face, and then he smiled back.

“Got kind of stiff sitting there,” she said, her pulse pounding her eardrums, sweat covering her palms. She took the remai
ning steps to the sofa and sat back down.

Hart walked over and stood in front of her. “I apologize for neglecting you today, my lovely. An evil man taunts me, cau
sing me much tribulation.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Oh, how she’d love to cause the freak some tribulation.

“Thank you, but that is quite enough of that for now. I have some exhilarating news to share with you.”

Maybe some more eyeballs in a jar. “Oh?”

“Yes, I have decided to make you my queen. We will marry tomorrow, consummate our holy union, and you will reign at my side.”

She drew a deep breath. “Wow.”

“I knew you would be pleased.”

She smiled at him and fought back the lump in her throat. “May I ask a question?”

“Certainly, my dear.”

“What exactly are you, I mean we, going to reign over?”

“The world, of course.”

“How?”

“Strictly. Fairly, of course, but strictly.”

“But how are we going to, you know, do that? What about the leaders who are already in place?”

His face darkened. “Ah, you fear resistance?”

“Yes.”

“After Monday next, there will be no resistance, only compliance.”

“What happens Monday?”

“Si fort de terre trembler,” he said, his head tilted back like a king issuing a proclamation.

“I don’t understand that.”

“It is French, my dear. Very old French. It means ‘the earth will tremble very mightily.’

“Who wrote it?”

“It is from Quatrain nine by Nostradamus, a prophecy.”

“About what?”

He took Jana’s hands in his, gently kissed her on the cheek, and said, “About me.”

She prayed that Brett would check his email soon.

6:30 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

YELLOW CREEK

“Decker,” Rowe said, motioning with the telephone handset. “The director wants to talk to you.”

“This is Decker.”

We had a bad connection, making his voice sound weird. “Mr. Decker, given the information Agent Rowe has just relayed to me, I’m ordering you to withdraw yourself from any involvement in this situation. Your security clearance has been immediately revoked and as soon as all this is over, I’m certain formal charges will be filed. This—”

“You can’t be serious. I designed these systems. You have no shot at getting to the bottom of this without me!”

“Oh, I’m serious, Decker. You designed the systems all right, and look where they’ve gotten us. Considering what’s come to light about you, for all I know you may be involved in this whole thing. You could’ve easily tampered with the system yourself and no one would be the wiser.”

“That’s ludicrous, Brandon. We’re facing a deadline a few hours away to break a password or this guy is going to kill more people. Don’t you understand that for whatever reason he’s turned part of this into a personal game between me and him?”

“I think I understand the situation perfectly. Leave the facility at once and consider yourself fortunate that I’m not having you arrested right now. Oh, and don’t leave the country, Mr. Decker.”

“And what if I refuse to go? What if I say that I’m not going to leave and let this guy win?”

“Then I’ll issue orders for Agent Rowe to forcibly remove you.”

“Agent Rowe will need help,” I said as I shot a steely look toward the low-life.

“Rest assured help is available if needed, Decker.”

I slammed the phone down and bagged up my laptop. Rowe watched me like a smirking hawk. Potella outright laughed and Julie Reynolds looked at me with disgust. “Where are you g
oing, Matt Decker?” Abdul said with even wider eyes than normal.

“I’ve been ordered off the grounds. The world’s falling apart and we’ve got a crew of crooks and pinheads running the show. You find that password. I’ll be in touch.” Abdul nodded and turned back to his machine.

I stepped outside, fifteen miles from my motel, without a car. Tark’s wife was feeling ill and he’d gone to check on her. He probably wouldn’t be back for a couple of hours. I suppose Abdul could have given me a ride, but the game clock was ticking and he needed to be working on that password. I had no intention of asking Rowe or the others for anything and doubt they would have agreed anyway.

The sun beat down on me from a late-afternoon angle as I walked along the shoulder of the road, while the black asphalt blasted me from below with heat it had saved up all for my to
rture. It was so hot my shoes stuck to it as I walked. The roadsides were a foot tall in weeds, no doubt teeming with all manner of biting insects and who knows what else, so I stayed on the hot road, step-peel, step-peel, step-peel.

My shirt was drenched and stuck to me within five minutes. By the time I’d covered a mile I could feel my underwear bunching up in a hot, wet, mess. The laptop weighed four pounds and felt like forty as I shifted it from shoulder to shou
lder. After four nights of very little sleep, I had been exhausted when this day began. The adrenaline produced by my anger at Rowe helped me cope with the first couple of miles, but it faded quickly after that.

I was probably into the fifth mile when I saw a truck coming. Walking in the sweaty socks had rubbed blisters on the bottoms of my toes, making each step painful. I stopped walking and for the first time in my life, stuck my thumb out for a ride. The truck slowed and pulled over, and it was a beauty. Late seve
nties Ford F150 in a lovely shade of rust. He was heading away from the Iuka Country Inn, but I didn’t care. I wanted off the road and into something with a motor. I had no doubt that wherever he took me would be an improvement.

“What’s your name?” he said as he eased back onto the road. The truck had no muffler and the sound was deafening. “Matt Decker,” I shouted. The truck reeked of beer and my feet rested on an aluminum mountain of Milwaukee’s Best empties.

“Henry Roberts here,” he said. I couldn’t swear to it, but I’m pretty sure either Henry or a twin brother was in the movie Deliverance. A bag of bones with a week of stubble and a stench to match.

“Where you heading, Henry?”

“I’m going to the light plant.”

“Great Central?” Surely I hadn’t crawled into this rolling hunk of rust only to be taken back there.

“Yup. And you know what? If they get smart with me, I’m just liable to whoop some ass.”

Great. I’d just been thrown out by the director of the FBI and now I was about to drive back up with an incestuous hick with three teeth in his head who was “just liable to whoop some ass.” My day kept getting better.

“What’d you say your name was?” he said.

“Decker.”

“Well Dicker, I’ll tell you right now that it ain’t nothing for me to whoop a man’s ass. You might’ve heard of me.”

“Could be, Henry. Why’d you say you’re going to the ele
ctric company?”

He spit a hefty stream of snuff juice out the window. “They got some lines run across my land. Only reason I let ‘em stay there is because of the lights in the box that I like to go out there at night and look at.”

“Lights in a box?” It was becoming more obvious by the moment that Henry was an intellectual giant.

“Yup. There’s a box on a pole, got a running ton of lights in it that flash. I like to go out there at night and watch the lights while I drink beer. Say, you want a beer, Dicker? I got some left.” He popped the top on a hot can of beer from the floo
rboard.

“No thanks.”

“Anyways, them lights ain’t blinking right no more and I aim to tell somebody about it. Bad enough that I got to drink damn hot beer all week long. Now my blinking lights ain’t right. They either ain’t blinking at all or they’re flashing like a bat out of hell. It’s pissing me off, Dicker. You know what I’m talking about.”

“How big is this box on the pole?”

“She’s about two foot square, black on the outside with lights inside ... ”

He was describing a field-accessible diagnostic checkpoint. Power was of course transmitted through high tension wires like it had been for a century, some underground and some on poles. The circuitry that made it all run, though, was pure fiber optics. These bundles of glass lines fanned out from the control center in every direction, providing communication links from the control computers to the grid switches at substations and other distribution points throughout the region. It never o
ccurred to me that there were people on this earth who spent their nights watching the lights blink inside a junction box in what I presume was the middle of nowhere, as was often the case with this particular type of module.

“ ... and that’s what I’m talking about, Dicker. You sure you don’t want a beer?” he said as he tossed one can out the wi
ndow and promptly popped the top on another. He’d been babbling nonstop and I’d stopped listening.

“I’m sure. Say Henry, I don’t suppose I could hire you to run me back up to Iuka before you go whooping ass, could I?”

“What you paying?”

“Twenty bucks.”

He nearly slung me out the window as he spun the truck around and headed back toward Iuka. Fifteen minutes later, we pulled up to the Iuka Country Inn, where I paid Henry and said goodbye amid the thunder of his departure.