John Shirley - Watch Dogs - Dark Clouds

General Van Ness had “turned me in”. He claimed there was evidence that I’d sold classified data to Al Qaeda operatives.

During the preliminary hearing I demanded to know what evidence he had against me. He produced a doctored clip from the disk I’d given him.

They rushed me into military court as fast as they could. Major Verrick came in and perjured himself with about ten large lies, cool as a cucumber the whole time.

My legal rep wanted to bring Captain Callahan in. Rafe Callahan apparently had been drunk ever since the incident, maybe having an attack of conscience.

They couldn’t find him for a while. Then they found him in pieces.

He’d gotten killed in a handy terrorist bomb attack while he was on leave. Something arranged by Verrick, I figure.

A handy explosion would’ve taken care of me too if I hadn’t gone to the CIA attaché. But after that it’d look too suspicious if they arranged for me to die like Callahan.

The CIA attaché was on my side. But the attaché couldn’t save me from prison and a dishonorable discharge and a ruined reputation. Van Ness and Verrick put it around that I had some connection with the “terrorists” who’d stolen the cash. They couldn’t prove it but a lot of people believed it.

I had a pretty good military lawyer. But in the end it was a Master Sergeant’s word against a General’s. The General’s version of my disk didn’t seem authentic to any of the I.T. people looking at it, and it was thrown out as evidence against me.

Verrick called me an accomplice to murder, in the hearing. I lost it and slugged Verrick, right then and there, knocked him on his keister. I said he was the murderer; he got up and hit me back and then the MPs moved in.

I was convicted of that attack on a superior officer, mitigated by circumstances, and perjury for supposedly lying about what I’d seen, and they gave me a year in military prison. I think I’d have gotten more time, maybe life, but the CIA attaché pulled some strings for me.

So that’s it. Roger Verrick’s a murderer—killed some good American soldiers. And one bad one—Callahan.

And Verrick hoisted more than a hundred million dollars in cash. Somehow laundered it.

I heard he bought a lot of shares in Blume after his discharge, amongst other things. His family already owned a lot of shares. Now Verrick owns a lot more. He doesn’t control the company—but he’s powerful there. So he got himself shoehorned into the security boss job.

That makes him more powerful still. A hard man to bring down.

“You see what I mean about having a conscience?” Wolfe said. “It’ll get you.”

“I see what you mean, Wolfe,” said Pearce, from the television screen. “But… I ran from my own conscience, for most of my life…”

“Didn’t seem like that to me, when I was a kid.”

“I tried to be decent. But not hard enough. And when I buried my conscience away people got hurt, Wolfe. People I loved—they got caught in the crossfire of my life. They died and it was my fault. Way I look at it now, in the long run, conscience is pretty much all we’ve got. Otherwise we all turn into Roger Verrick.”

Wolfe snorted. “Verrick!” He winced, remembering the gunfight in the Four Clubs. “I don’t know what I was thinking, confronting him at a mob casino. It was like I was wound up tight by a year in ‘Disciplinary’. The spring all of a sudden… uncoiled. And there I was in the Four Clubs, waving a gun around.”

“Maybe it’s not such a bad thing,” Pearce mused. “You’ve got him off balance now. Worried. A man off-balance makes mistakes. It might force him to show his hand. What we need is to prove he’s hooked in with the Club.” After a moment’s silence, he added, “There are rumors about something else. Something called Purity.”

“Which is what?”

“I don’t know. Some secret organization moving in on Chicago. Doing a search on Verrick, I found a sketchy piece by an investigating journalist, trying to find out just what Purity is. The journalist disappeared—and next time I went online to look at the article again, it was gone too. The journalist claimed Purity is a secret political organization using a front company called Iceberg Investments. And Roger Verrick is one of the names from Iceberg’s board of directors. There’s not much information about Iceberg out there, though. We look into that, maybe we can find out what Verrick had against me—and find some evidence that helps you clear your name.”

“Starting where? Seems like the dirt on Purity’s been cleaned up.”

“Starting with the guy who tried to shoot me. Identify him, maybe we’ll work from there back to Verrick and Iceberg. See what you can do with that image I got from the train station. You’re the expert on long range image enhancement. We get a face, we’ll run it through ctOS facial recognition, see if we come up with something.”

Wolfe figured he was committed now. He’d been looking for Pearce anyway. He shouldn’t let his paranoia put him off his only ally. “Okay. You got it, Pearce. I’ll do it.”

“I’m gonna do some more checking on you. Could be I’ll have that special tool I mentioned for you, pretty soon.”

“When do I see you in person?”

“The time will come. I’ve got to keep my head down now. I don’t know if you heard—but someone recently tried to blow it off my shoulders.”

Then Aiden Pearce’s head and shoulders vanished—from the TV screen. It was replaced by a pink cartoon bear in a toilet paper commercial.

Wolfe sighed and turned off the TV.

Roger Verrick was playing videogames that killed things for real.

He loved that idea.

He was in a sprawling, well protected rural house, about a hundred miles southwest of Chicago. But it wasn’t an old house—it was the latest in Smart Houses, a home-automation prototype owned by Blume and sometimes used by Blume executives. Verrick was just out there for the weekend, to mix work and play—and to throw his enemies off, if they were setting up an attack on him in town.

The “hunting exercise”, as he called it, was in a comfortable basement, what used to be called a rumpus room, with carpets on the floor, sofas, a refrigerator full of beer—and a wide desk with several monitors set up. Verrick was sitting at the desk, operating the system through a simple mouse, like a PC videogame. Only it wasn’t a videogame really—it was a set up for controlling a hunting drone.

The hunting drone was illegal, of course. That was part of the fun. Since the laws were enforced by an Order that Verrick despised, he enjoyed breaking them when he could get away with it. He needed the recreation right now, too. It took his mind off Wolfe—and that ache in his lower spine. Verrick managed not to think about taking the pills when he was hunting—at least, hunting in this comfy way. He had made up his mind to cut back on the Oxycodone. Had to focus on getting all the pieces in places, all the dominoes that would fall over in a long row, triggering the Iceberg Project…

Standing behind Verrick, humming annoyingly to himself and rocking on his heels, was the project’s chief technician, Geoff Starling, a former Unmanned Aerial Vehicle designer for the USAF. Post Air Force, Geoff Starling was getting flabby and sloppy. He almost always wore the same one-piece AF mechanic’s coveralls. And Starling didn’t bathe enough. Verrick could smell him.

“Starling,” Verrick said, guiding the drone not far over the treetops of the woods near the farm, “do step back from me, won’t you please? At least a yard back.”

“Sir, certainly, yes sir,” said Starling, in that obsessive-compulsive way he had. He washed his hands every thirty minutes but rarely washed his clothing or his person.