Dire Means

by Geoffrey Neil

  She tugged at Mark’s suit jacket, telling him to take it off. He was reluctant because it was part of his disguise, but he did. She pulled his shirt out from under his belt and began to unbutton it. When Mark tried to help her pull the shirt off, she grabbed his hand and wagged her finger in his face. She grabbed his collar and Mark raised his arms up so she could pull the shirt off in one smooth motion. She draped his shirt over the empty chair in front of them.

  Morana turned to Mark and, again, hushed him with her finger. Morana’s sudden, bizarre behavior, made him realize that he didn’t know much about her at all, except that she was physically fit, incredibly intelligent, beautiful and a cold-blooded killer.

  The light from the screen bathed them during a long well-lit scene and steadied enough for Mark to appreciate Morana’s perfect body. She leaned close to him, examining his shirtless chest. She drew her hand behind his neck, then down to his stomach. Her touch wasn’t gentle; it was firm and not very sensual. She moved her hands to his sides and he winced in a moment of ticklishness. She stopped immediately.

  Mark felt a rush of excitement from being half naked in the back of a theater with a gorgeous woman. Morana had stripped, then pulled his shirt off and began caressing his chest, neck and shoulders all before the first preview finished. Mark knew nothing of Morana’s relationship status. Until now he had been too focused on survival and learning the Trail Bladers methods to ask. Perhaps Morana’s esteem for his heroism had translated to romantic feelings. In the privacy of this dark theater amidst the stress of his circumstances, the thought aroused him.

  He leaned to kiss her. At the same time he reached out and gently cupped her right breast. Morana grabbed three of his fingers and wrenched them back. She clapped her other hand over his mouth to muffle his shriek of pain. The handclap against Mark’s mouth was loud enough to make another patron turn around, but the preview screen mercifully went dark. Morana turned Mark’s head toward her and glared at him, inches from his face. She slowly removed her hand from his mouth. When he tried to push her hand away she clapped it back on—adamant that Mark remain totally quiet. Her fingers were powerful and Mark was glad she didn’t have her Taser.

  She reached under her seat, fumbled through her bag, and pulled out two t-shirts. She tossed one onto Mark’s lap and put on the other. After Mark put his on, she motioned for them to leave. Mark shook his head, not wanting to be recognized. She yanked his arm hard and he complied.

  Before they entered the theater hallway, she said, “Wait.” She leaned out and looked down the hall in the direction of the concession stand and theater entrance. Satisfied that it was clear she said, “Follow me,” and dragged Mark by the hand across the hallway and into a movie theater across the hall.

  “Do you want to tell me what the hell you’re doing?” Mark said.

  “Wait. In a minute.”

  The next theater showed a comedy already in progress. The screen’s light was bright enough for them to catch a glimpse of the audience. No more than ten silhouettes protruded above the seats. Morana guided Mark to the same seat in the back row that she had chosen in the first theater.

  She sat and pinched the front of her t-shirt with her fingers and pumped it to fan herself. “I’m sweaty. Don’t you ever shut up?” she said in a hushed tone.

  “What’s going on?” he said, no longer whispering.

  “Shhh! Keep it down.”

  “Why the big tease?” Mark asked as he rubbed his fingers.

  “I wasn’t teasing, I was frisking you, but you’re too quick with the hands. Did I break any fingers?”

  Mark shook his head. “What’s with the stripping, wardrobe changes, and theater hopping?” he asked.

  Morana held her wrist up and tilted it toward the movie screen to check the time. She pulled Mark’s head to her and whispered, “Listen, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. We are now having the first private conversation we have ever had. Every word I utter, every step I take is monitored and recorded by Aldred, the man you’ve been calling Pop and we call Papa.”

  “Monitored by our shirts?”

  “Yes, the uniform shirts we wear and the complete wardrobe of shirts that we provided you are all collar-lined with flexible lithium polymer batteries with voice and GPS recording. Combined, the transmitters and battery are the size of a six-inch length of angel hair pasta. They are embedded in every shirt collar that leaves the Nest. Right now, Aldred can press a button and hear the audio track from the movie we are watching across the hall. He can do this through the shirts that we left there—do you understand?”

  Mark nodded. “So what are we doing here?” he said.

  Morana took Mark’s hand and clasped it between hers. Her face looked excited, but her hands trembled as she leaned close. Mark turned his ear to her and she put her lips close.

  “You’ve got to help me. I want out,” she said.

  §

  Mark was stunned. He strained to see Morana’s eyes to gauge her sincerity, but the darkness and occasional flashes of brightness on her face interfered. His gut reaction was suspicion. He suspected that Pop had ordered Morana to test Mark’s loyalty. If Mark failed the test, there was no doubt that Morana would drop him into an oubliette upon their return to the Nest.

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “I want out of Trail Bladers, the mission, the Nest, the murders—all of it—I know you can help, and I know you want to help.”

  Mark decided to test her. “If you think I’m going to abandon Pop’s mission then you can forget about it,” he said.

  “You don’t fool me, Mark,” she whispered. “You hate killing because it isn’t part of your nature. We wheel in a man who destroyed your identity, bound and gagged in front of you, and you don’t even want any private time with him? You throw your body onto Papa to save his life after knowing him for less than five minutes? Your hands trembled and you almost threw up when we closed the chef into his oubliette—and you want to convince me that you buy into our mission wholeheartedly?”

  “I don’t care if you believe me, I’ve made a decision to support this mission and my word is my bond.”

  Morana lowered her chin and shook her head at Mark. “Oh please with the nobility, Mr. Denny.” Her whisper had grown louder. “You won’t be winning any Oscars for your performance this week.”

  Mark didn’t answer.

  “Our mission has taken on a life of its own and we have gone way too far. I once hoped that Papa’s plan would succeed, but now I see that success is impossible and we are sacrificing people for a doomed mission.”

  Mark adjusted himself in his seat, feeling his first twinge of hope. He felt a twinge of excitement, but couldn’t embrace it yet. If Morana’s treasonous request was a test that he failed, he could be certain of either an abrupt death or one drawn out for up to two weeks. Mark looked at the movie screen and took a moment to consider Morana’s revelation. She waited for him to respond, and did not take her eyes off him.

  Mark sighed. Morana leaned in and delivered her next words with perfect timing, right into Mark’s ear. “His name is Aldred Hurd and I hate him. Your act is not convincing. And if you don’t help me, then you and the people you hope to save will be dead by week’s end.”

  A bright scene on the movie screen lingered, lighting Morana’s face. Mark saw that her eyes had welled up. Mark trusted no one in the bunker, but if this was an act, Morana’s performance was brilliant.

  “Will you help me?” she said. She reached out and clasped Mark’s hands. Her hands were cold and clammy. She was actually nervous.

  “Please,” she whispered. “You’ll get no better opportunity and I know you are looking for one.”

  Mark felt a bead of sweat trickle down his neck. The back of his t-shirt had already begun to soak through, and when he sat forward in his seat the air against it felt cold. He took a deep breath, sighed, and offered her a slight nod.

  He waited for Morana to press a button on her phone and order a t
ruck from around the block to transport him as their newest fodder.

  Instead, she gasped and threw her arms around Mark. “Thank you!” she said as she wept through a long exhale. The few heads in the audience turned back toward the sound.

  Mark put his arm around her and immediately felt the awkwardness of consoling a killer. He felt more pity than hope for her, but neither of these feelings surpassed the fear he still felt for himself and the people who occupied oubliettes in the Nest.

  Morana said, “I want to shut down the Nest. And there is no way to do so without attacking its technology. No one has physical access to do it except me, and before you came along, no one has been qualified to understand the technology Pop has built into it.”

  “What is your plan?” Mark asked.

  “It’s physically impossible for anyone to enter quickly enough to save the people in the oubliettes. Emotionally, the Trail Bladers are indoctrinated to Aldred’s cause and they will gladly die for him. The only way to control Pop is to gain control of his security system.” Morana spoke quickly, as if she had rehearsed this briefing for Mark.

  “What about Bracks?”

  “He’s only part of the equation. If he becomes an obstacle, I’ll kill him,” Morana said coolly.

  “I thought you were tired of killing.”

  “My mission, in this case, has a chance to succeed. Aldred claims to kill for a greater good. He justifies killing a few to benefit many. I’m already damned to hell for killing, so what additional penalty can I get for killing those who designed this nightmare?”

  Mark watched the movie screen in silence. The audience suddenly laughed at a punch line for a joke he hadn’t heard.

  “How much time do we have?” he asked.

  “Unless you can improve your performance for Aldred, then I’d say you have two more days—max—before he excises you from the mission. And he’ll do the same to me if he suspects that we’re working together.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “A few days before Aldred brought you to us, he brought us another hero. Quenton Bareis saved Aldred less than ten seconds before a Metroliner train would have killed him. I was there to take the photo. If you strip off the enormous photograph of you that hangs in our foyer, you’ll find an equally impressive autographed photo of Quenton Bareis, feet in the air in a full-body tackle over railroad tracks, risking his own life to save Aldred.”

  “Where is Quenton now?”

  Morana answered by closing her eyes for a moment. “When we first brought him to the Nest, he claimed to buy into our mission—just as you have. Within two days, we took him on his first obtainment. Afterward, we went to the food court for lunch. When we left the building, Quenton excused himself to go back and use the restroom. Teddy escorted him. Quenton went into a stall and scribbled a note on a toilet seat-cover, fingering Trail Bladers for all the abductions, and he hung it on the stall’s door hook.”

  “How did you find out?” Mark asked.

  “Bracks watched him from a hidden camera mounted in the restroom and sent Teddy back in to get it before anyone saw it.” When we returned to our floor after lunch, we obtained Quenton.

  “Is Quenton in an oubliette?” Mark asked.

  “No. When we unloaded him, strapped to a hand truck, Aldred came into the garage to express his disappointment in Quenton. Aldred called all Trail Bladers to the Mulching Room that houses our largest shredder, nicknamed Gullet. They hoisted Quenton above its mouth by release cables. I’ve seen and become callous to many things, that wasn’t easy to see—or hear.”

  Mark felt faint.

  “You are his favorite, and therefore, safe for now. I strongly encourage you to keep him excited about you. Aldred is a logistical genius, but he has a poor sense of other people’s motives if those people are telling him what he wants to hear. But if he loses faith in you, he’ll give you no indication of his displeasure until you are strapped to a hand truck, or worse, dangling over the mouth of Gullet.”

  Mark leaned to within an inch of her ear. “Are you sure that shirts are the only clothing that carry transmitters?” he asked. He and Morana still wore Trail Bladers pants belt and shoes.

  “I checked all your clothing in your suite. You have seams re-sewn for transmitters only in your shirts. But even if we are still tracked, theater hopping across the hall would barely nudge our GPS position and we’d still appear as inside the theater. As for sound, the microphones in belts and shoes are too weak to hear whispers.”

  Mark sat back, ninety-nine percent relieved. “If you want out, why don’t you just disappear? You could leave now,” he said, pointing to an exit sign by the screen.

  “Aldred is more ruthless than you’ve seen. He is a research junkie. He was an intelligence officer in the Marines, and has compiled a ridiculous amount of information on each of us—including you. He has more about us than the government does, and he knows how to use it. If I flee, he will systematically obtain and starve my loved ones until I return. He keeps a grip on each of his critical players this way. If you run, the people closest to you will find themselves in an oubliette, or dead wherever he finds them. And he’ll find a way to inform you of their suffering.”

  Morana tilted her wrist to see her watch against the movie screen’s light. “We have exactly an hour to plan. Not a second longer,” she said.

  “How do you expect me to help?”

  “We have to see how Aldred uses his computer. If I can get you a window of private time on Aldred’s computer, can you find out how he controls suite access and how he overrides consoles?”

  The thought unnerved Mark. But then nothing about gaining control of the Nest would be easy or without risk. “I don’t know how much time it would take. It depends on how tight his computer security is.”

  “None of us have seen his screen—except Bracks. There are no other desktop computers in the Nest that you can access without drawing suspicion.”

  “I know. I don’t trust my laptop’s security anymore.”

  “Nor should you. Bracks scoured it on your first visit to the Nest. Your laptop is configured to log and transmit keystrokes and mouse movement to him.”

  “So you want me to hack into Pop’s computer, without using my computer, nor any other computer in the Nest and without Bracks knowing?”

  “Can you?”

  Mark laughed. He leaned back and looked up into the darkness of the movie theater. In all his computer security work, he had mastered the art of thwarting hacks, breaches, and unauthorized surveillance, but had never moved to the “dark side,” using his tools to hack. Gaining control of Aldred’s computer from within the bunker was impossible, and Morana had to know it. Aldred’s ultimate control over the Nest’s technology explained his lack of concern with Mark’s technical ability. Isolate a hacker physically and electronically from your computer and you’ve eliminated any threat.

  His thoughts went to Carlos’s TellTale device. It was a completely passive receiver that could record the electromagnetic signals emanating from monitors and keyboards. While the data it collected wasn’t “live,” a TellTale would be the best option for capturing information about Aldred’s computer activities. The biggest stumbling block was the size of the TellTale. There was no way Mark could smuggle a book into Aldred’s office. There were no books in Aldred’s office. Without a way to re-engineer the TellTale, it would be useless. There was only one person Mark knew who could perform such a feat. The opportunity would no doubt thrill Jim Kourokina.

  “Tell me what you know about Pop’s use of the computer,” Mark whispered.

  Morana told Mark all she knew, which wasn’t much. He had a desktop to which he had installed a touch screen monitor. He had a keyboard that Morana never saw him type on. Aldred received regular messages on his phone—Morana did not know what they were, but they happened all day, every day.

  Morana suspected there was more than one use for the handheld. Aldred had confessed to his inner circle that he had the wall
s of the Nest embedded with C-4 explosives. He touted it as the ultimate act of keeping his clients’ confidentiality, but the knowledge of the wall-packed explosives was another tool of fear that kept Morana, Teddy, Raphael, Nannette, Bracks and the rest of the Trail Bladers staff on edge. Bracks had arranged with one of Aldred’s secret contacts to purchase 185 pounds of C-4. Originally purchased under the guise of materials used for additional excavation of the bunker, the sale succeeded. But instead of using the explosives for their intended use, Aldred himself embedded the C-4 along with electronically controlled blasting caps near every weight-supporting beam in the Nest. It contained enough explosive material to annihilate the bunker beyond recognition.

  “Can you get more of the lithium polymer batteries used in the shirts?” Mark asked.

  Morana thought for a few moments as she nibbled her lower lip. “That depends on how many are in supply. Why?”

  “I have no choice but to trust you at this point. Now you need to trust me to handle this and it will save us time. Get me a couple of the batteries ... and I need to visit a friend.”

  “What friend?”

  “Jim Kourokina. I’m sure you’ve seen us talk,” Mark said.

  “Your radio-freak friend…”

  “Yes, he’s the electronics genius you already know about and he’s precisely who we need.”

  “I know, but you can’t just go visit him.”

  “Look, if you want my help you will have to accommodate what I need to succeed.”

  “How much time do you need with him?”

  “Five minutes.”

  “We’ll obtain him for you.”

  “No!” Mark blurted.

  A person in front of them said, “Shhh!”

  “Do not touch him,” Mark whispered as loud as he could. “You would stick him in an oubliette? How do you expect him to help if he’s terrified? I’m not risking anyone else. Period,” he said.

  Morana leaned back in her seat. Mark did the same and they watched the movie screen, losing five precious minutes in silent scheming.