John Shirley - Watch Dogs - Dark Clouds

Wolfe wondered how long it would be before the smoke drifted up onto the freeway, attracting the cops. He’d better get his mission done here, and leave.

He worked his way carefully through debris, over a puddle of piss and between sleeping people, till he spotted Blank, who was squatting on the farther side of the fire. Wolfe couldn’t see what passed for Blank’s face, but he could see the familiar dented broad-brimmed hat and that heavy black overcoat.

Wolfe made his way to where Blank was hunkered; a ragged man in shapeless layers of clothes was hunkered beside him wearing a watch cap, his deeply lined face lean as a hatchet.

“I’ll tell you what, Blank,” said the man in the black watch cap, “they’re closin’ this encampment, and soon. Too close to downtown. Too many people, breakin’ too many rules. There’s rules to living in a place like this if you want the fucking cops to leave you alone.”

“I expect you’re right,” said Blank, in his gurgling rumble.

He looked up at Wolfe, as Wolfe coughed from the drifting smoke.

“Who this?” asked the man in the watch cap. He glared at Wolfe, showing eyes gone yellow, around their black irises—yellow as nicotine stains. “Might be the cops, his own self, undercover.”

“Not guilty of being a cop, your honor,” Wolfe told him.

The tramp didn’t think Wolfe’s attempt at humor was funny. “You better back off here, sonny boy.”

“Yeah, better go, Wolfe,” Blank said, standing up. He walked past Wolfe, discreetly sticking a piece of paper in Wolfe’s coat pocket as he went.

Wolfe turned to follow Blank. But Blank turned to him after a few steps, and growled, “Don’t follow me.”

“So that’s it, that’s what I’m here for?” Wolfe patted his pocket.

“Yeah. It’s enough.”

Wolfe nodded, turned, and quickly left the encampment.

Wolfe walked along a wet street where cars whooshed by from time to time. As he got to each corner, he put his hand in his pocket and used the ctOS camera scrambler Pearce had given. When he was two and a half blocks from the camp, he stepped into the recessed doorway of a locked emergency-exit, and read the message.

The note Blank had slipped into Wolfe’s pocket was just two handwritten lines in capital letters. One line said,

THIS WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING.

The second line was a nearby street address and the words

UNDER D, BEHIND B. MEMORIZE. DESTROY THIS.

“If you say so,” Wolfe muttered.

He memorized the note and tore it up into tiny pieces and then started along the street. As he walked he scattered little pieces of paper into the chilly wind bit by bit.

He trudged down the street toward the address he’d been given and fifteen minutes later he was there. The address was for a big, rectangular building on the corner, the building fronted by white stone. A fancy restaurant occupied its lowest floor. The restaurant was closed but he could see workers inside prepping it for a 12:30 opening time. Under D, behind B…

The restaurant was called Fern Gulley. Not a B or a D.

Wolfe walked around to the side of the building where he found a parking lot with only two cars in it. He saw nothing that prompted him to look under it. He walked around the next corner of the building, looked behind it.

An alley. A pretty nasty alley it was, with old filthy gray snow edging its darker parts.

To the left was a large white metal dumpster, still brimming with old garbage from the restaurant.

Under D. Did that mean under the dumpster? He hoped it didn’t mean he was supposed to climb in and look under the garbage inside it.

Then he noticed that the back wall of the building was all brick. Was behind B… behind a brick?

He glanced around, saw no one around, and hurried over to the dumpster. Then he flattened, crawled forward. It stank under here. There was a movement, close to his right hand—and saw two beady black eyes staring at him. It was a large, humped over brown rat.

The puzzled rat wriggled its snout toward Wolfe’s hand, as if it were wondering if any part of him was good to eat.

“Get outta here!” Wolfe told it, swiping at the rodent.

The rat scurried off, and Wolfe crawled forward to the brick wall. He didn’t see any obviously loose bricks. Maybe this was all a trick, a gag, to make a fool out of him…

But he noticed a brick to the right that seemed just faintly lighter than the rest. He reached out to it, tugged—and it came neatly away from the wall. He crawled closer, looked inside. There was a hole back there, behind the brick. And in it was a parcel wrapped in black plastic. He reached in, pulled the parcel out, and slowly wormed his way back out from under the dumpster.

He was glad to be out in the cold, bracing air. He stuck the package in his pocket, looked around, saw a drunk weaving down the alley down on his left.

Wolfe turned right, and headed for the nearest train station.

He decided to wait till he was back at home base to look in the package. Waiting wasn’t easily. He badly wanted to look…

This will change everything…

Seline Garnera walked out of O’Hare airport, looking for a taxi to her hotel. She still had her duffel bag for luggage, but she wasn’t wearing a uniform. She had a long white Armani coat on over a charcoal-colored suit, things she’d bought on her layover in London.

There was a line for taxis. She got in the line, and waited, trying to get clear in her mind the reason she had come to Chicago at all.

She was relieved to be out of the Marine Corps, in comfortable walking shoes, in civilian clothes, with her long black hair on her shoulders just the way she liked it. Sure, she was proud of serving in the Marines. But the military had some toxic seams deep down in it, like something deadly you’d find in a mine.

Probably she used the mine analogy, thinking about it, because her dad was a retired mining engineer. He’d worked in tin and copper and gold mines all over the world. After she’d gotten that nerve-wracking meeting in Chicago over, she planned to fly to Northern Georgia to see her dad. He was going to be relieved she wasn’t on that aircraft carrier anymore. He’d always been afraid terrorists would hit it when it was in port.

She hadn’t seen much action—except off the coast of Libya during the overthrow of Gaddafi—but she’d done her part. She’d advanced to Chief Computer Security Specialist, and she’d found it interesting. But she had the misfortune, at least a misfortune in the military, of being a pretty good looking woman, and she’d had to fend off a lot of knuckleheads on that flattop. Carriers were mostly crewed by Navy men with some Marines on board, almost all of them men. Rough, lonely men. The worst that had happened was one groping, and some inappropriate talk. But she’d put a stop to it.

Her C.O. had been sympathetic, and he’d put the groper in the brig for a month. The Commander in Chief, the President of the USA himself, had pledged zero tolerance for sexual harassment and it had been working in the last year. The knuckleheads were starting to leave her alone. She’d even dated a naval lieutenant, when she was on leave, a nice guy who’d treated her in a gentlemanly way. Seline had been thinking about “re-upping”, signing up for another four years…

But then she’d come across the “Van Ness files”. And the military had soured for her. She didn’t blame the whole military. She still believed in military service. But she had to get out, if she was to get any justice for Ruth Medina.

General Van Ness was Army, not Marines, but there were Marines involved in this too. And one Central Intelligence Agency attaché who’d disappeared… right after transmitting the Van Ness files to Seline.