Exponential

by JM Addison

  *

  Her heart racing, she slowly turned toward the direction of the voice and was actually astonished to see her brother, Chris, standing there alone in the stubborn wind. He had a stupid, crooked grin on his face and his hands in his pockets. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to kick him or hug him. Probably hug first, then kick.

  “Chris! Where the hell have you been? I’ve been worried sick about you! Why haven’t you called?” Then after a brief pause in her questioning, added with a raised eyebrow: “How did you get up here?”

  “It’s a bit of a long story…” They both had to raise their voices to compete with the shouts of the gusting wind. “I like your new hair, it probably threw them off for a while.”

  “Threw them off? Do you know what I’ve been going through!?”

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

  “Can you explain to me what’s going on? Why are people trying to kill me? Why haven’t you been around to help me out?”

  “Like I said, it’s a long story.”

  “It’s not like we’re going anywhere, I don’t even have a car!”

  “Mara, I’m sorry about all that’s happened. I certainly didn’t want you to get pulled into this.” She didn’t like the sound of that at all. He was dropping a lot of hint that were starting to make her fell much more uncomfortable.. What kind of plot did he get himself into this time?

  “Don’t tell me you are somehow involved in all this?”

  “I made a discovery one day. Sort of stumbled onto it. Partly through some stuff I found at work, partly through some logical reasoning and good mathematics. It turns out that there is a way, obscure and difficult though it may be, but a way nonetheless, to decode top secret and scrambled information from both corporations and government alike.”

  “I know, it’s called the ‘Tomb of Rivest’.”

  He gave a brief pause of surprise that she knew that much. “At first, I didn’t know it had a name. I would never have discovered it myself if it weren’t for some critical evidence – the missing link, so to speak – at the office. I suspected that Viiradium may have known a lot more about this technique and as I investigated, I discovered that my suspicions were true.”

  “Yes, I know, Viiradium has been exploiting this discovery to their advantage. There is another partner company called ‘I-Data’ that is the front for their little data auction operation.”

  “Yes, well the bad thing is that I got caught looking around an ‘off-limits’ area of the lab one night.”

  “What do you mean, ‘got caught’?”

  “I was discovered, surprised by someone who gave me an injection. When I woke up I found myself in some sort of makeshift private prison. My last ditch effort before they got to me was to send you that e-mail message. Now I wish that I didn’t send it.”

  “Well, if you ‘got caught’, how is it you came to be here?” she asked, rather nervously looking around.

  “Let’s say they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse…”

  “You mean money?”

  “That and my life. Then they sweetened the deal by throwing in your life too”

  She stood there as the anger boiled up inside of her. She even began to shake. She was so mad she could hardly look at him – her eyes refused to stay focused. In one swift spontaneous movement, she stepped up to him and swung. Chris wasn’t a man of big stature, but Mara’s blow was not able to inflict any serious damage. She stood on her tip-toes and shrieked, “They killed our Mother you stupid, selfish moron!”

  Another voice, one she couldn’t quite place, came from behind and surprised her again.

  “That’s enough of that, now.”

  She spun around, her face still a mask of rage to face the unwelcome visitor. He was vaguely familiar. She struggled to recognize him, but became quickly frustrated. “Who are you and what do you want!” She demanded.

  “Oh, I don’t think you’re in a position to be calling the shots here. Sorry if you were hoping for a happy family reunion, but sadly, your brother is one of us.”

  The realization simply dumbfounded her. She had expected to meet the enemy, but not for the enemy to be Chris. She felt like she was losing her balance and had to take a step to regain her composure. She turned back to Chris, “How could you!” she hissed.

  The unidentified man spoke again, “You have caused us a great deal of pain, young lady. A lot of money too I might add. A real threat to the business.”

  She realized the man was indeed the same man that was recorded earlier in their little botched surveillance escapade. It was his voice on the recording she had in her possession. It was Damian Sanders, apparently Mr. Danver’s chief partner.

  Chris spoke again, “Listen, Mara. The only way out of this is to come with us. Join us. At first, I was reluctant, but then it turned out to be the only way.”

  “Oh, I don’t think she’ll be joining us. Not with this high spirited attitude of hers,” Damian said before Mara could reply. Another man stepped out from behind the gray transmitter building. Another one of Damian’s ‘security’ force steadily holding a gun aimed directly at Mara. ‘Good grief, how did all these people get here?’ she wondered.

  Chris began to plead with Damian, “No, wait, you have to give her a chance! You said you would!”

  “Sorry, she already knows too much. Who knows who else she might have told. We need to end this little charade before even more people get involved. We don’t need to get the police to start looking where they ought not again.”

  Mara wondered, ‘what did he mean by “again”’. The only police that she got involved was Dell. Is that who he was referring to?

  “What did you do with him?” Mara insisted.

  “You mean that cop friend of yours? He’ll recover, that is unless he sticks his nose where it doesn’t belong again.”

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Dell was not on their side, but Chris was?

  After a second of quick thinking, Mara spoke up again, “Wait just a minute. Already too many people know about your little operation. We made a recording last night of you talking with Bob Danvers. We know he is involved and probably is the foundation of your venture. Plus the one with the deep bank account no doubt. We went to the media and documented your information auction “business” along with the murder and kidnapping activities. When this hits the news, there’s not much you can do. You’ll go down – eventually. The public will want to know if their data is open for compromise.”

  “The public will want to know…” he whined in imitation of her. “I don’t believe there’s a recording!” He spat. “We were there remember? We confiscated your little van of goodies and gadgets. No recording! You don’t have squat!”

  “But you didn’t get me and I had the recording.”

  Damian nodded to the man with the gun and he approached from behind and jerked the purse off her shoulder. He rudely emptied the contents in the dust and kicked them around a bit. There wasn’t much. Including no media card with a recording on it.

  “There doesn’t seem to be a recording, now does there?”

  “Do you think I would be stupid enough to bring it here? The story and the recording are safe for now. The only way they will stay safe is to release me and leave me alone. I don’t care about your stupid greedy money making! Just leave me alone!”

  “Sorry, it’s too late for that.”

  Mara became terrified. Standing next to her own brother, she figured this was it. She couldn’t believe that he betrayed her. She was so mad and so scared at the same time. Chris spoke up, “You can’t just shoot her here!”

  “Why not?” Damian replied.

  “Let me talk with her a minute.” Without waiting, he went on, “Mara, you’ve got to listen to me, these guys mean business. If you don’t cooperate, there’s nothing I can do.”

  “You’re a good one to talk about cooperation. Look what you’ve done. First you own mother, now me, you rotten, good for nothing… Pig!”r />
  Damian interrupted their debate. “Please, children, I can’t have you going on like this.” He again made a motion toward the man covering them with the gun. He raised the weapon to fire at Mara’s small defenseless figure.

  Chris screamed “NO!” and attempted to jump in between the shooter and Mara as the gun shot penetrated the howl of the wind. The force of the shot flipped Chris around and propelled him backward a bit and he landed hard among the low rocks below the driveway. He lay there desperately clutching his shoulder and moaning through clenched teeth, obviously in a lot of pain. Everyone stood riveted to the scene, momentarily captured by the sudden brutality and seriousness of the occasion. Now that he had a clear view of Mara, the shooter raised his gun once more.

  Mara thought she was going to wet herself. Another shot rang out and she let out a little involuntary squeak of fear. It was the shooter that went down. It was all happening so fast, Mara was confused. ‘What just happened’ she thought. She stood unharmed. She looked around trying to make sense of it and saw Dell Taylor standing there, still smoking gun in hand raised and aimed at Damian.

  “Well, well, the warrior returns,” sneered Damian. How was your hospital stay, officer Taylor? Or should I say Inspector?”

  “Not as long as yours will be,” huffed Dell. He appeared to be quite winded and realized the sound of the first shot probably brought him running and now he was out of breath trying to regain his wind. “You seem awful confident for a man with a gun pointed at your head.”

  “I have every reason to be,” Damian replied loudly enough to be heard over a particularly strong gust of wind.

  Just then, automatic gunfire erupted from the woods above and to the right of Dell. “Get DOWN!” he screamed to Mara. She landed hard and rolled to the right among some low, painful rock outcroppings beyond the edge of the stone driveway. They didn’t offer her much protection and the bullets spayed in her direction chipped painful bits of stone against her.

  There was more gunfire and then Dell landed in sort of an awkward, acrobatic roll practically on top of her. He came up tight alongside and wrapped his arm around her mid-section. He yanked her firmly toward him and together they slid down-slope a bit more among some bigger rocks. She felt the sharp stone tear into her hands and legs. Eventually they found temporary cover and he used the opportunity to help her scurry forward toward the gray metal transmitter building.

  Finally, they had the building between them and the woods above and were safe for the moment.

  Gasping for breath with her heart beating its’ way out of her chest she exclaimed, “I… I thought you were one of them!”

  “Shhh, I know. I know,” he soothed.

  “I thought…” she began, but found her lips covered with his. Momentarily shocked, but then… she began to feel weeks of tension drain away to be replaced with… relief. She responded eagerly by wrapping her arms tightly around him… which made him wrench in an involuntary spasm of pain. She immediately released him and looked puzzled.

  “You’re hit!”

  “No, no.. it’s from the other day. A stab wound. Your friends tried doing me in and I spent a bit of time in the hospital.”

  More relief. She realized for certain that he had been on her side all along. The release brought tears of delight. She felt sorry for him. She felt sorry for herself. The tears came in buckets.

  “We’re not quite out of this yet.” He soothed. “We still have to make it back to the road.”

  “What about Damian Sanders?”

  “Forget him for now. We know who he is. We have to get out of here and get help. Then we will bring Mr. Sanders and his group down – including even… Mr. Danvers.”

  “You know about him?”

  “I ran into a nice Lady that runs the local newspaper. At first, she was convinced I was one of the bad guys. If I hadn’t been the police, she would have called them. Once I persuaded her to believe the idea that I wasn’t one of the bad guys, she told be where to find you and about Bob Danvers.”

  They sat huddled and looked at each other in the gray wind. Suddenly Mara’s hand flew to her mouth as she said, “Omigosh! Chris! We have to get him down off this hill!”

  “On the drive out here, I called in some local reinforcements. We should have help soon. We will need to call for an ambulance, but when I raced from the car to get up here, I left the cell phone plugged into the charger in the car down on the road.”

  Mara sat worried about Chris’ condition. It was hard to believe that moments ago, he stood trying to talk her into betraying everything – her very integrity – and now she hoped that he would be OK. That he didn’t get hit again during the burst of automatic gunfire. Then she remembered the phone Rae had made her put into her pocket. She pulled it out and handed it over to Dell who was stealing a glance around the corner of the building to see if it were safe to emerge and go to Chris’ aid.

  He started to dial emergency when he thought he heard snatches of voices amid the gusts of wind. Then he unmistakably saw the occasional sweep of a carried flashlight as a couple of local police appeared over the final rise of the driveway. His call went through and he gave directions for the ambulance.

  When he was through, he and Mara joined the two officers who were surveying the scene with guns drawn when they saw the bodies down. After some initial confusion and Dell showed his Bedford Police identification, Dell explained that he was the one who had called them and that he had already called for an ambulance.

  Dell turned to Mara and said, “Rae at the newspaper office said you had some sort of evidence. What did you do with it?”

  “The quickest thing I could think of to keep it safe and in control. I mailed it.”

  “Mailed it? To who?”

  “My mother. Or at least her address anyway. It should be there in a couple of days. I didn’t want to carry it around and I didn’t know where to stash it, so, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

 

  Epilogue

  There was a lot to do. As they rode in the silence back to Ashbury again it gave Mara a little time to do nothing for a while. Everybody wanted the digital recording. Only She and Dell knew where it was and neither of them would say exactly except that Mara did indeed have evidence.

  Chris ended up getting transported to a Boston hospital that had better orthopedic specialist to reconstruct his damaged shoulder. He was expected to eventually make a full recovery.

  He denied all wrongdoing and responsibility for any of the events that had happened during the past couple of weeks. He claimed that he acted in the only way he could to survive and that his attempt to coerce Mara was the only way he felt he could insure her survival. Mara figured that the courts and the investigators would figure it all out eventually.

  She had to handle the arrangements for her mother’s funeral. With so much happening, she didn’t really have time to let it sink in yet that her mother was gone. It seemed like once this was all over, she would be able to go to mom and talk about the whole bad business like it was an old story. But in reality, that was never going to happen.

  The story did hit the paper as Rae had promised, and, yes, the Washington Post no less. Mara was not only wanted by just about every major investigative body in law enforcement, she was also an instant celebrity. It was not fun at all. She was even approached face to face by a personal injury attorney that promised her millions of dollars in settlement from Viiradium for the wrongful death of her mother and violent treatment of Mara. There would be time for all that soon enough, but not right now.

  Through the strain of it all, Dell was there. He supported her, stood by her and helped her face the issues. They even got to go back to her apartment where she actually got a real shower and a good change of clothes. Her own winter jacket, little things that she had been denied. A good tooth brushing in her own bathroom. She still didn’t have a car though. Dell offered her his little sports car, but it’s tangibility was too unpleasant to deal wi
th at the moment. The thought of the car actually made her feel anxious.

  They pulled into the gravel driveway and Mara go out of the car. In a moment, she returned with a small pile of envelopes and sat down heavily as she swung the door of the car shut.

  “Did you get it?” asked Dell.

  She pulled a small, padded manila envelope from the stack and held it up so he could see. “Yep, right here.”

  He turned the car around and drove toward town for something to eat before returning to the city. Practically everybody wanted to get hold of that little envelope. Dell planned to copy the data into his computer at the Bedford station before handing it over to government authorities. He didn’t want anything to happen to the conversation contained in that little memory card.

  Once they had turned it in, Dell and Mara planned to go out to the cape for a couple of days. Dell had already made arrangements for them to stay at a friend’s place with an ocean view that was vacant during the winter.

  As they drove off, Dell switched on the radio, scanned to a station and caught the news broadcast already in progress.

  “Technologists and government authorities from 14 countries around the world along with the international Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) are planning an emergency meeting in Washington later this week to address concern over the recent discovery of what some analysts are calling the worst computer nightmare ever. A story that first appeared two days ago in the Washington Post claims that Viiradium corporation, a long time trusted manufacturer of computer encryption and security software, has been secretly exploiting a method to steal and later decode information made secure by standard encryption techniques used by ninety percent of the world’s secure electronic transactions. Yesterday on Wall Street, Viiradium’s stock plunge sent trading rumbles through the major stock indices with most technology stocks ending sharply lower. It is expected that Viiradium stock trading will be suspended pending the outcome of the investigation. Dr. Herbert Robyns of CERT says that other encryption techniques do exist, however…”

  Mara and Dell glanced at each other and with a cynical grin, Mara reached up and switched off the radio.

  ###

  About the author:

  JM Addison is a practiced technology consultant specializing in information security. He writes part time, but dreams of quitting the computer industry and devoting full attention to writing.

  Connect with Me Online:

  https://www.untamedserenity.com