Ben leaned back from the plate of sandwiches they’d been demolishing and poured himself more coffee.
‘What now?’ he asked.
‘I’m at a loss,’ Ethan replied. ‘Payne’s cut me off at the pass and checked her out of the hotel. He must have got a message to her somehow making it appear to have come from me. Apart from that, I haven’t a clue where she is,’ he added, looking at Ben pointedly.
Ben held his hand up in a gesture of surrender.
‘You’ve been straight with us Ethan, and it’s time we really got our heads together. From what you say, something very bad’s going down with Payne and this book. Once it gets to the printing and online stage, we know we can’t stop it coming out. We have to find out how Payne intends to introduce the sub-messaging and sabotage it somehow.’
‘Any suggestions?’ Ethan asked.
Ben laughed unexpectedly.
‘OK, OK, as I said, it’s time to work together. You’re waiting for me to tell you that we not only spent last evening with Sarah, we were also seen leaving with her this morning. That’s if your covert surveillance systems are as good as I think they are.’
‘It would help if we knew where you’d taken her,’ Ethan smiled. ‘We also know you dropped a tracker into her purse last night.’
‘Ah,’ Sam said, ‘the tracker hasn’t responded to our pings. The place she went into has a secure electronic shield, so we have to assume she’s still there.’
‘Sarah got an appointment message on her smartcom while she was with us last night. She seemed perfectly relaxed about it—even told us about the location. In fact, she appeared to be keen to get on with the job.’
‘She told you about the job?’ Ethan asked. ‘That surprises me.’
‘No, she told us nothing really,’ Sam said. ‘In fact, she was very cagey about it. We just drew her into conversation about writing and she mentioned that she was in Australia to write for a client.’
‘I might have known you two would have worked on her,’ Ethan said.
‘Nicely though Ethan, nicely,’ Ben grinned. ‘We both like her a lot. Anyway, she’s holed up in an office building in Paddington, not far from here. We haven’t got full surveillance there yet—it’s too exposed right now, but we have eyes in the street.’
‘Has anyone else been in or out since she got there?’ Ethan asked.
Sarah slid a photo over to him.
‘Know him?’ she asked.
‘That’s Mark Payne,’ Ethan replied, feeling his pulse quicken. ‘In or out?’
‘He went in about three hours ago—just appeared in the street from they don’t know where. He walked right up to the door and hit the entry keypad,’ Sam told him. ‘There was no car and he hasn’t come out. The only other movement has been a bit of coming and going by a couple of delivery people from a restaurant up the road. Our guy said it looked like a whole bunch of salad stuff.’
‘Healthy people,’ Ben remarked.
‘I think we should go in,’ Sam announced.
‘So do I,’ Ben agreed, looking directly at Ethan. ‘Would you rather keep out of any planning on this? It will involve a tactical assault and if you’re feeling edgy about Sarah’s safety …’
‘I’m thinking that it’s the best time to move too, and that’s not just for Sarah’s benefit. I have her well-being very much at heart, believe me, but the stakes are also very high for everyone here. I’m in.’
‘Right,’ Sam said, ‘let’s get to it—boots and all. Whether Payne reappears or not, we can’t afford to wait for dark. And we’ll have to be careful with timing. The traffic around the city centre and inner suburbs has got messy. The riots are spreading and the frontline cops are stretched but at least they’ve got the Tactical Operations Unit on standby. With any luck we can grab them for a quick mission.’
*
She was trying to run. At the end of her wooden legs, her feet were great clods of gluey clay, propelling her forward at a snail’s pace. She’d had the dream before but it had never seemed so real. Never had she seen such bright neon colors and amazing shop fronts as she oozed past them. Nor had she ever tasted her own salty sweat, dripping from her matted hair and streaming down her face.
29.
Never trust a mad dog
‘You should have left it to me,’ Zack’s minder said, stroking his
scarred cheek. It was one thing he couldn’t help doing when he was irritated and he was now extremely so. ‘I’ve been banged up here doing nothing but watch that verbal robot spewing out crap for weeks and you get a fucking amateur to try and do my job.’
Mark Payne shrugged.
‘You’ve no idea how important this is to me. I needed someone here I could trust totally. This crap as you keep calling Corsfield’s stuff is about to change the world. I don’t really care about Cross. Apart from being a red herring, that hit was a bit of self-indulgence. I’ll get even with the traitorous prick in good time.’
Payne looked through the one-way mirror at Zack. The writer was lying across his flexi-pad, head resting on his folded arms.
‘How’s he doing?’
‘He reckons he’s finished and wants to do a rewrite.’
A slow smile started at the corner of Payne’s mouth and spread quickly into a wolfish grin.
‘Does he? Well, isn’t that lovely of him?’ Payne said, opening the door to Zack’s cell. ‘I’ll go and have a chat while you transfer the rest of his stuff onto this.’
Payne handed his man a flexi-pad and walked into the space Corsfield had occupied for the last few weeks, scowling at the stench of stale sweat and urine that battered his nostrils. Maintaining a frenetic non-stop pace over the last few days, Corsfield had refused even to shower.
Corsfield lifted his head and looked around at the door. His eyes, sodden from lack of sleep, brightened when he saw Payne.
‘Aah, the great God of Argon, here in the flesh,’ he said with a weary smile. ‘Have you been looking after my wife?’
Payne ignored the dirty hand that had been extended to him in greeting. He was about to lean against a wall, but the unidentifiable smears on it made him think twice.
‘Your wife is dead, my friend,’ Payne said without expression, although he was enjoying watching the look of horror appearing on Corsfield’s face immensely. ‘She was dead before you started,’ he added, rubbing it in.
‘You promised,’ Zack said, tears springing from his eyes. ‘You said that if I wrote the book, you would let us both go.’
Payne stared at him, feeling nothing but contempt.
‘I lied, you pompous fucking ass,’ he sneered. ‘Even as you wrote, I’ll bet you were trying to work out how I put the messaging into your first two books and what would be in the third. And don’t tell me you wouldn’t have sabotaged it if you could have.’
Payne watched Corsfield’s eyes slide away from his accusing glare.
‘As I thought, but as it won’t make any difference, I’ll tell you. You’ve actually exceeded my expectations with what you’ve done here and made my job a lot easier. See this ring?’ he asked, holding his hand out to Zack.
Zack nodded. He was sitting on the edge of his chair, twisting his long unkempt hair into knots.
‘That common-looking diamond hides a micro-chip,’ Payne said, holding his hand out at arm’s length to admire the simple yet elegant piece of jewelry on his wedding finger. ‘It’s thinner than a strand of hair and can be read once, and only by a special laser light-reader. It will transfer the algorithm it contains and insert it through your text once we’ve knocked some sense into it.’
Zack was staring at him in fascination.
How did you do the text thing in my first books without me knowing?’
‘Remember your editor? Hamish Gould, wasn’t it?’ Payne asked.
Zack nodded.
‘He was killed in a car smash.’
‘Yes,’ Payne said. ‘We had to see him off. He was asking for too much money and threatened to expose
me.’
Zach felt his hands becoming chilled and clammy.
‘He did something to my manuscript?’
‘He certainly did, sir,’ Payne chuckled. ‘In fact he fucked it right over. While you were worrying about his editing some of the juicy violent bits, he was doing a quiet bit of trance-induction.’
‘Trance fucking what?’
‘Trance-induction,’ Payne repeated. ‘It’s a way to gradually introduce a semi-hypnotic state using certain, seemingly innocuous repeated words and phrases in a set order. After that, a subliminal message can be introduced, along with a trigger. The trigger will activate the subliminal message when the readers are going about their normal lives. Suddenly they become anxious, angry, and irrational—right on cue.’
‘What’s the cue—the trigger?’
‘Aha! Now I’ve really got to kill you.’ Payne said, smiling at his own joke. ‘It was easy, Zack,’ he continued. ‘Simply opening a fucking door did it. It’s something most of us do every day. Every time a reader opens a door—any door—the message to be pissed about something kicks in.’
Payne watched Zach trying to take it in.
‘Don’t worry about the psycho details. That’s as much as I needed to know. It works, that’s all I care about. And now we’re about to launch your last book.’
‘To do what?’ Zack asked. ‘Create more social discontent?’
Payne laughed, his eyes dancing merrily.
‘No, my friend, that’s already been well and truly done. This is a compounding subliminal suggestion. It’s done the same way but this time it’s designed to convince readers that a particular brand of cigarette will alleviate the feelings of frustration, discontent, anger, or whatever negative feeling they’re experiencing due to the successful suggestions we put in your first two books. By the time they reach the end of the book, they will have smoked around three packs,’ he added chortling.
Zack looked at his tormentor, clearly thinking he was crazy.
‘Smoking? Fucking smoking?’ Zack yelled. ‘Is this what it’s all been about? I’ve lost my wife, my home—everything because you want people to start smoking?’
‘Not quite, my friend,’ Payne said. ‘You see in the last three years, Argon have lost billions because of the international restrictions on smoking. As you well know, cigarette smoking has been almost stamped out completely. Worldwide, nations have put the squeeze on smokers, creating smoke-free townships and making the poor bastards into social pariahs. They’ve hit them with smoking related medical costs, and taxed them through the roof. I just want my money back.’
‘That’s crazy,’ Zack said. ‘They’ll give up again when the governments put a new bite on them. The laws will become tougher—you’re insane.’
‘Think so?’ Payne said, grinning evilly. ‘How about if all the cigarettes we make available contain a new, undetectable and highly addictive narcotic? And what if we discount the hell out of the smokes, putting them into the poorest person’s reach? Hell, we’ll give them away for free wherever we have to. Schoolchildren, developing countries, we’ll go everywhere with the fuckers.’
Zack stared at Payne in horror and disgust.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Tell me why?’
Payne’s eyes glazed as he looked out somewhere into the future.
‘It’s not about smoking Zack—that’s merely a means to an end. We need some order in our world, Zachary,’ he said. ‘In global government we have either people who are outright dictators or soft, screaming liberals. There’s no backbone, no organization and no direction. Argon can give that to the world—we just need them to listen. And a little dependency will always make people take notice.’
Payne leaned forward and turned his gaze back on Zack.
‘Thanks for all the fish, famous author. I have to leave now, the dogs are snapping at my heels.’
As Payne turned to go, Zack summoned every ounce of his remaining strength to snap his right arm forward. The man heard the rattle of Zack’s chains and whirled to one side, fending off the attack with his left hand. It was what Zack had hoped for. He grabbed Payne’s hand, snatching it up to his mouth. Biting down on Payne’s ring finger with insane strength, Zack felt blood well into his mouth and heard the gratifying crunch of his teeth on bone.
In immense agony, Payne shrieked. The door burst open and there was a flurry of movement before a baseball bat arced through the air. Zack’s shattered head smacked against the wall as Payne staggered back gripping his hand.
‘Get rid of him now,’ he hissed. ‘And make sure it’s permanent.’
*
Instructing his man to follow him after he dealt with Corsfield, Payne, gritting his teeth in pain and rage, soaked his throbbing hand in bowl of near-scalding disinfectant and took some pain-killers.
Calming down as the fast-acting medication hit, he began to appreciate how well everything had gone. He had more than a full manuscript to take away and his team of writers were ready and waiting to do the complex editing that would make sense of it. Well, sense enough to publish as a Corsfield book. How good it would be didn’t actually matter that much. As far as he was concerned, mass hysteria would transcend quality anytime.
He dried his hand, roughly bandaging it before swallowing four more pain tablets and taking the stairs to the basement. Entering the dimly lit parking area, he smiled. A year ago, he’d purchased the two adjoining properties in Paddington, connecting them by a silent, auto-opening garage door. He could pass undetected from one to the other, totally confusing any possible watchers. He was sure the team of bozos that had somehow managed to stumble along closely behind him hadn’t made it this far. He knew it would only be a matter of time but, why worry, by then he’d be long gone.
Payne stopped by a plain silver Toyota Texio. It was the most common small car on Australian roads, but it had one very uncommon feature. Parked in readiness for over a week, it had been fitted with a revolving electronic license plate, allowing for five changes of license number on the go.
Responding to his fingerprint, the car unlocked and Payne swung the door open wide enough to slip the flexi-pad containing the manuscript file onto the back seat. For a brief instant he felt something he was unaccustomed to—a twinge of nervousness.
This was the most delicate time for his planning. His ring, now almost completely hidden by a mass of lacerated and swollen flesh, and the manuscript draft were in the same proximity. There were no longer any backups. Except for the file in his flexi, all Corsfeild’s working files had been deleted. There was only one algorithm in existence and it was a one-time use. He was so close. Nothing could be allowed to get in his way now.
Payne went up a short flight of concrete stairs and stopped at the top where a door, another he’d had installed, would take him into the office. He opened a fire extinguisher cabinet and reached inside. Pulling out a small semi-automatic pistol, he checked it was fully loaded before slipping it into his pocket.
He found Suzie looking at something on her flexi-pad. She jumped up from her chair as he moved cat-like into the room, almost at her feet by the time she noticed him. He stared at her.
‘She writing at her desk,’ Suzie stammered, smoothing down her short skirt. ‘She’s been there for a couple of hours.’
Payne looked pointedly at her long legs.
‘How do you expect to be able to deal with her dressed like that?’ he asked.
Suzie’s face colored.
‘Go and change into something more suitable,’ he growled. ‘I know you’re an expert in twenty types of martial arts, but this doesn’t make me feel confident at all.’
‘Two,’ Suzie said, staring back at him.
‘What?’ Payne hissed.
‘Two types, I’m an expert in two forms of martial arts,’ she said, turning abruptly and heading for the second bedroom.
‘And wipe that gunk off your face too,’ Payne said to her retreating back.
‘Yes …sir,’ Payne heard as the bathroom doo
r slammed.
Payne picked up Suzie’s flexi-pad and laughed out loud. Against his express instructions, she was reading Corsfield’s first book. That’s why she’d answered him back. No matter, her time was almost up too.
Swinging the fridge door open, Payne looked inside for water. The pain-killers were making him thirsty.
‘Shit,’ he grumbled, pushing bowls of what looked like salad aside, eventually discovering a pack of Evian jammed into the back.
‘Fucking slack bitch,’ he muttered as his thickly bandaged fingers fumbled around the confined space. As one hand closed around the Evian, the other nudged one of the bowls, sending it spinning out of the fridge to land upside down on the tiled floor. A blob of off-white salad dressing dribbled down his trouser leg.
‘Fuck!’ Payne cursed, looking around for a dish towel.
He heard Suzie calling.
‘Boss, boss!’
‘What?’ he yelled, feeling the gooey dressing spreading onto his fingers.
‘Look!’
Payne stood up. After she cleaned this shit up, he’d be killing her personally, he thought, kicking the bowl across the kitchen floor. It skidded into the wall, scattering its remaining contents as he turned his malevolent gaze on Suzie.
‘What the fuck now?’
She was standing by the bathroom door, dressed in long pants and a skimpy bra that didn’t even hide her nipples. Her feet were bare and she was holding a towel out towards him. With difficulty, Payne tore his eyes from her near-naked breasts and looked at the towel.
‘Any clues before I start guessing what this is about, Suzie?’ Payne asked, making no effort to hide his sarcasm.
‘There’s blood all over this towel,’ Suzie said.
Payne frowned. The woman was shaking—a far cry from the arrogant bitch’s exit a few minutes back.
‘Sooo?’ he asked.
‘It wasn’t like this four hours ago and nobody’s been injured.
Payne felt a worm crawling around in his stomach.
‘You said that you’d injected a slow-release tranquilizer under her skin,’ Suzie moaned, but Payne was already ahead of her. He slammed a finger onto one of the button controls on Suzie’s flexi-pad and stared intently at the image that appeared. Shaking his head, he prodded more buttons, taking split seconds to examine each. Finally he looked at Suzie.
The Last Book. A Thriller Page 23
