For Mayhem or Madness
13
The Big Secret
WHEN WE GOT OFF the plane in Manila, I was past exhausted and about to throw a temper tantrum. Char wasn’t in much better shape.
“We’ve spent three days on airplanes and in airports. Our next flight isn’t until tomorrow morning. I need a hotel,” I said after we cleared customs.
“I booked one,” Char said. “Let’s get a cab.”
Well, that took me by surprise. I didn’t know when she had made the reservation, but I went along with it. She was apparently thinking more clearly than I was. We checked in to an airport hotel and dragged our bags to our room.
Room. Singular. Bed. Also singular. I looked at Char as she stripped off her clothes and headed for the shower.
“You can join me if you want,” she said. “I don’t bite. Usually.”
It was an invitation I couldn’t resist and slipping into the shower with her was pleasant. It wasn’t like we could avoid touching each other while getting the grime of three days off our bodies. Some of that touching was distinctly pleasurable. I felt almost human again when we’d dried and eyed the bed.
“We should have some food,” I ventured. “Room service?”
“Definitely. If I don’t eat, I can’t sleep.”
An hour and a half later, we’d pushed our plates of Lumpia away. Neither of us had dressed, but had towels wrapped around us. I was ready to hit the hay. Char was only a step ahead of me. We’d been sleeping together on airplanes and in airports for three days. It didn’t take long for us to be comfortably in bed together and Char leaned into me for a kiss. We hadn’t really done much of that but the relaxed situation of being naked in bed led to a passionate embrace.
“Too tired for anything else, I’m afraid,” she said. “Goodnight, Stefan.”
I had to agree and we were both soon asleep.
While we were too tired the night before, we were too rushed in the morning. It was a pleasure to dress in clean clothes for the last two legs of our journey but I was sorry to see her body disappear beneath her clothing. We cleared customs in Bangkok and finally caught a flight to Chiang Mai. David picked us up at the airport and drove us back to the resort. I’d officially checked out but I’d paid to have the bungalow held for me until I got back. I quickly dropped my bags in my room and joined Char as we went to visit Terry. David said he was okay but seemed extra tired this morning.
Terry was still in his bed but was awake. He struggled to sit up and Char went immediately to assist him. It was obvious to see her training as a nurse kick in as she efficiently got him positioned and checked all his vitals, including blood pressure.
“Okay, okay. You should have enough information by now to know I’m alive,” he griped good-naturedly. “Give me some time to talk to your man.”
“My man? He came here for you. I just got dragged along as a distraction.”
“And did you succeed? In distracting him?”
Char looked at me and shrugged. “I think he’s as hard to distract as you are.”
“In all fairness, there wasn’t much opportunity to get very distracted when we were running from flight to flight and sleeping in airports,” I said. I was more than willing to get distracted by Char. I hoped there would be other opportunities.
“Well, let me talk to Dag for a while. Maybe you can get distracted over dinner,” Terry said. Char nodded and left the room. Terry leaned forward and pulled his laptop from beneath his pillows. “I did a big thing while you were gone. I made the decision to do it before I went on the run, and having you both out of the way let me focus on it. No one is looking for any of us in Thailand. For some reason, the records of your travels ended in Seoul.”
“We didn’t go to Seoul. We got off that plane and doubled back from Hong Kong to Manilla,” I said. “Did you tamper with records?”
“More than that. I took out the nukes.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe what he was saying. This was one of the things Jordan had warned me he thought Terry was capable of. He could start a nuclear war. I was too angry to be coherent. “They’ll be all over you. Before now, your attacks have been targeted to individuals no one liked. The search for you was sporadic and not particularly intense. This will bring every spy in the world out of his rabbit hole.”
“I don’t think so. Listen to me, Dag. There were nine countries in the world with nuclear arms. Now there are three. I didn’t touch anything in the US. And because I didn’t touch theirs, I couldn’t do anything about Russia or China. But North Korea, India, Pakistan, France, the UK, and Israel no longer have launch codes for their nuclear arsenal. They still have their weapons, but no way to deliver or detonate them.” He chuckled to himself and broke into a fit of coughing. I helped him to water and saw that what he’d coughed up in the tissue was bloody.
“They’ll just reprogram things. Load the backups,” I muttered.
“The virus is very carefully programmed,” he said after he drank a few sips. “It will replicate into any reload or new code. It will take a generation for them to rebuild—new ways of looking at it from a new generation of programmers. I can’t see into the future, but it won’t be programmers who are active today. And education and training work in our favor. New programmers get taught the existing methods. Few will come up with new methods after such brainwashing.”
I groaned into my hands. All I could see was how this would come back to bite us in the end.
“Of course, when the six powers—seven if you count the three unconfirmed nukes in Iran, which I confirmed—discover they don’t have control of their weapons, they won’t be able to say anything. They might suspect another power of tampering, but Iran isn’t going to suddenly confess they don’t have control over weapons they didn’t want anyone to know about. India isn’t going to admit to Pakistan that it has no functioning arsenal. No one can say a word about what they’ve lost because it reduces their threats to impotence,” Terry said. “And besides, those who can discover footprints—like the US and Russia—will find they all lead to Seoul, just ahead of your arrival there.”
“So now I’m going to be a suspect.”
“No. You are the hound on the scent that leads the hunters. Before long, you’ll lead them to wherever it is you plan to go next—or to some place you don’t plan to go at all.”
“Terry, this has gone too far. You might think no one can discover what you did, but they’ll figure it out. You can’t continue playing God to solve the world’s problems. They aren’t solved unless people’s attitudes are changed and you can’t program that.” I was hot. Messing with the world’s nuclear arsenal was more than I could handle. If he’d touched the US or Russian arsenal, there would be a war on right now, even without nukes.
“I’m done,” he wheezed and sank back into his pillows. “Here.” He held out the laptop to me. “It’s coded with your biometrics. Any attempt to open the program without your facial recognition, ocular key, and fingerprints will fail. When you open the program, you will have access to all the attacks I planned and never carried out because I wasn’t sure it was right. My mind is fading with my body. You are of strong mind and body. The decisions are yours. If I’ve missed something, you can figure out how to create new targets. This is all you need.” He pushed the laptop toward me again and I took it. I realized I’d just put my fingerprints on the murder weapon.
“If you decide none of it should be kept, there is a failsafe. You should use it if the computer is under threat of being captured by an enemy. The SSD drive has been coated with a water-activated compound that will eat through the drive in thirty seconds. Don’t spill your coffee on the keyboard. If the liquid touches the drive it will activate and be destroyed. On the other hand, immerse the computer and whether it is running or not, the water will reach the drive coating and activate. There are other self-destruct mechanisms in the firmware if someone attempts to break the security. Only you, Dag. Only you can make the decisions required to activate the attacks.”
“I don’t want that responsibility.”
“I don’t have time to find someone else. I’ve been tracking you for five years. I saw how you trapped the embezzler at EFT, how you fought the gamer who killed your fiancé, how you brought down his empire. You’re the only one I can trust with this. You might not be honest, but you’re ethical.” He let go of the computer in my hands and fell back on his pillows, exhausted. His face looked like he’d just released a great burden and could relax again. I was sure my face bore the marks of having received that burden.
I saw Char in the pool when I left Terry’s bungalow. She wasn’t skinny dipping. I waved.
“Come on in. It’s a hundred degrees out,” she called.
“Be there in a minute,” I answered and hurried to my bungalow to change. I set the computer on the little table in the bungalow and carefully wiped it down. I carry little packets of alcohol wipes to clean screens and glasses with. I scrubbed it thoroughly to get any sign of my fingerprints off of it. I wasn’t going to turn it on anytime soon and I didn’t want it marked with my DNA. When it was wiped clean, I wrapped it in a blanket and put it under my bed. Then I quickly got changed and went to join Char.
By the time I got to the pool, half a dozen other guests were in the water, too. They were bouncing a beach ball among them and I joined the game. Bouncing up and down and in and out of the water did nice things for the four pairs of breasts bouncing with the action. Compared with the bikinis I saw in Fort Meyers Beach, these weren’t the most fashionable bikinis. But to a one, it looked like any lining or support had been stripped out of them. They clung in the water revealing every detail of what was hidden beneath. We stayed in the water until I felt I’d be burned to a crisp and I dragged myself to one of the cabanas to watch. Char soon joined me and leaned against me until we both decided it was too hot. Others came to sit around the table beneath the leafy shelter. It was a convivial group who brought out games and we played until someone suggested we should have food. Several had already opened bottles of Sing Tao or Hong Thong. I didn’t imbibe but I tossed in some baht to contribute to someone who volunteered to make a run for noodles.
By dusk, we were all pretty mellow and still sitting around in our now-dry swimwear. Char worked her way out of the cabana and said she was ‘going to check things’ in her bungalow. Most of the group that had been at the resort when we left five days ago had gone and I didn’t really know any of the new people more than what we’d learned sitting around. I assumed most of them were unaware that Char had another guest in her bungalow so she wasn’t saying anything.
It was less than ten minutes before Char came running out of the bungalow. She’d changed clothes, or slipped on shorts and T-shirt over her bikini and frantically ran around the pool to David’s bungalow. The host followed her out of his cabin and around the pool to hers. He had a phone pressed to his ear.
I wondered if I should go check on her, but figured Terry might have wanted a word with him. After about fifteen minutes, though, an ambulance arrived at the resort and David ran out to wave them to the bungalow. We all stood in a natural move to see what was going on but David held us back. A few minutes later, the emergency team rolled Terry out on a gurney with Char beside it, holding his hand.
David returned and came over to the quiet group at the cabana.
“Most of you don’t know, but Char has been caring for her ailing father. He took a turn for the worse and we needed to get him to the hospital. I’m sure he’ll be okay. Thai medical care is among the best in the world. Let’s all have a drink to Greg’s health.” He brought a fresh bottle of Hong Thong and more glasses. I joined in raising a glass of the burning Thai bourbon and swallowed.
It didn’t take too long before people started moving on to other activities. Some were heading into town for the nightlife or the market. A couple had eaten lightly and were headed out to dinner. The rest just disappeared back to their bungalows. Like me.
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