John Shirley - Watch Dogs - Dark Clouds

“Wait, Wolfe!” Seline said, snapping her fingers. “We could do a combination of option one and three! We could slice him up, get the info, then sell whatever we have left of him to Verrick!”

Bullock groaned.

“Let’s call that option four, Seline,” Wolfe said. “There you have it, Bullock—those are the cards you’ve been dealt. How you going to play them?”

“You were there that night…” Bullock looked at him doubtfully.

“Yeah. I was there. Socialism pops its ugly head up any time you don’t flush its holes out with poison. Remember when Van Ness said that, Bullock?”

Bullock swallowed, blanching.

“And you remember there was a guy on the roof. And someone knocked him out and got in. One of the Graywaters went down… but the guy escaped.”

Bullock stared. “That was you!”

“Yes it was. I know about Purity. Your only hope is to tell me how the attack is going to happen. And then I won’t call up Verrick, and sell him to you. And I won’t give you to the Justice Department. Or… her.”

“And if I tell you, you’ll let me go?”

“I’ll get you to O’Hare. You can leave town. But if you talk to Verrick… I’ll talk to the Justice Department. If you don’t… you’ll go free. If I can confirm what you tell us.”

“I don’t know…”

“Would a drink help?” Seline asked.

“A drink? You mean liquor? No. I’m diabetic.”

“Crap. We’ll have to get insulin for him, Wolfe. I mean—if we keep him alive.”

“No, no,” Bullock muttered. “You won’t have to get insulin. I have an implanted insulin injector. There’s enough concentrate in its storage unit to keep me going for months.”

“Okay then,” Wolfe said. “Coffee?”

“Yes. Yes please…”

They reheated a cup of coffee—sick of instant, Seline had gotten a coffee maker and some good roast.

She brought Bullock the cup, and he stared at it. “You didn’t poison it, did you? Or put some kind of drug in it?”

“No, no, I didn’t. Here.” She took a sip and handed it back to him.

He sipped the coffee and then said, “Purity is… pretty big. It’s supported by a small group of billionaires—and people like Verrick. He invested most of the money he stole in Somalia in Purity, after he laundered it, he socked most of it into Iceberg.”

“What is Iceberg, just a shell company?” Wolfe asked.

Bullock hesitated. Then apparently decided to go whole-hog with the facts. “No. Iceberg… it’s called that because, you know, the tip of iceberg.” He put his coffee cup down on the small table in front of the sofa. “Iceberg is more than a shell company. It’s the organizing group for Purity, the financial group, the board of directors. Purity’s been around for decades, very hush-hush and all. A group of very rich families set it up. They’ve been stashing money for Purity for a long time. Billions! Some of them were invested in top oil and tech companies—and they did make a killing. That gave them funds to divert to Purity. You know—through Iceberg.”

“What’s their long-term plan?” Wolfe asked.

“It’s in several stages but essentially it’s a ‘from the inside out’ takeover. They’ve started it by ‘astroturfing’ media. Van Ness says controlling media is controlling mind; controlling access is controlling hope. ctOS can do that, once they take control of it completely. Hell, controlling ctOS can even be controlling money flow.”

“So they start with media—and set the stage with that?” Seline asked.

“Sure. But they got impatient. They’re working up another plan. See, they feel that North America should be a bastion of purity related to western European culture—and American culture. And that means resisting this so-called ‘cultural diversity’ thing. They want to resist the liberal agenda, the gay agenda, the immigrant agenda, and above all the socialist agenda. You know, the whole ‘tax the rich’ paradigm, all the regulations and pollution controls…”

“They?” Seline broke in. “Shouldn’t you say we, Bullock? I mean—as in you?”

Bullock cleared his throat. “Ah—it was we. I’m still pretty much against a lot of that stuff but… it’s where they’re taking it. I was taking notes for Verrick at the last meeting of the Iceberg board of directors and… I guess it scared me. Could be that Verrick saw my reaction. And then when the SystemsLeak file about him and Van Ness came out he started thinking maybe I’d testify against him. Being as I knew about the… expropriation.”

“The expropriation?” Wolfe snorted. “You mean killing those soldiers in Somalia and stealing millions and millions of dollars from the US government?”

“Ah. Yes. That.” He nodded stiffly. “I knew about it. And I know about Project Iceberg. So I guess he figures I’m a liability to that as well as to him.”

Wolfe and Seline stared at him, waiting.

Bullock looked back and forth between them. “Project Iceberg… involves sending up UAVs—special drones, developed by Verrick and Starling. The drones will be transmission stations, intermediary tech that will hack into the automatic pilot systems of passenger jets. Jumbo jets preferably—the bigger the better. They’ve gotten more and more auto-pilot oriented, in the last few years. Makes them vulnerable to hacking, y’know.” He picked up his coffee cup, and put it down again. “Ultimately PURIFY plans to hack into planes coming into O’Hare airport to crash them all over the city. It will rain jet planes… including some military jets.”

Seline’s mouth dropped open. “How will that help anyone?”

Bullock sighed. “I had the same thought. But Verrick thinks it’ll provide cover for something he wants to do. He plans to take over Blume Corporation. There’s a special meeting of Blume Corporation’s top people… They’ll be meeting over several days. Most of them aren’t the kind who’ll sign on with Purity. They have some kind of qualms about the whole concept, I guess. Fairness, that kind of thing. So they’ll stand in the way of the Purity agenda. They’ll be roadblocks to Verrick and Van Ness. This way—they’ll die. Verrick figures when they’re killed, Blume’s stock value will plunge. Then —Roger Verrick himself—can buy up enough of it to put himself in control of the company. And then when he controls Blume, he’ll be able to get full control over ctOS. Right now he only has intermittent access to it. He’s worried the… the reds, the socialists, the unions, the liberals—that they’ll get control of ctOS themselves. He want to get there first. Chicago will be heavily damaged by the crashes all over town. That’ll weaken every part of the city. He can insert his own people, in the chaos. That’ll give him control of Chicago. Then he’ll push for ctOS to be established across the country—and he’ll have a special access to the system so he can control it. He’ll be able to take over the whole country… through ctOS.”

“But…” Seline shook her head in amazement. “Countless people will die in Chicago!”

“Sure. But one thing he plans to is to crash a lot of the planes into areas of Chicago heavily populated by liberals—or minorities. If they’re dead… they can’t vote. Plus—he can get rid of Pearce’s network. It’s more concentrated on the poorer sides of town. And he wants to eliminate Aiden Pearce. He’ll use the Club as his enforcers, when he’s rebuilding…”

“Wait,” Wolfe said. “The Club. Tranter. Aiden Pearce… so Verrick is definitely the guy who sent Grampus to kill Pearce?”

“Through Tranter. But… of course it was Niall Quinn who paid for it. And who demanded it get done. In exchange for services.”