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47.
And so I began.

As I worked I thought about Cassie. Really in the next room? Would she try to escape? Could she do it?

And I thought about what secret trick I could pull to make a mess of things again. I was an expert programmer. But CM, at least, thought the same of David Epoc. If that were the case, then he’d certainly catch me.

I could have made the change in a few seconds and recompiled the file and be done with it. I didn’t want that. So I fooled around in realistic enough ways to make David think I was actually doing serious things as I worked. A play had formed in the back of my mind. Rough. Still incomplete. But at least something.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He looked like he was keeping up with me. But that couldn’t really be. For certainly if he actually knew what I was doing, he’d have already told CM I wasn’t doing what he’d asked.

I thought then about all the experiences I’d had I this mess. Especially about the so-called competitors that Masters had spoken about. The four stooges. The constant incompetence I’d discovered along the way. Mostly attributable to these competitors. What if there were no competitors at all. That these idiots were actually his men. After all, as easy as it had been for me to escape, I had only his word that he made it that way. Maybe everyone, including the scientists, were really dups. Idiots ready to follow anyone for Allah. I’d simply fallen for their stories. Not scientists at all. Really just innocent and eager douche bags following their only hope for getting someplace in the world. Or so they thought. Of course, I could be really wrong. Maybe the competition was the government. Maybe the FBI, CIA, and the rest of the alphabet soups that run around pretending to protect us were the culprits. And I should be protecting them rather than lumping them in with CM? Sometimes difficult to distinguish government types from douche bags? But that hadn’t been my experience. The last time I’d been involved in this kind of mess, they’d saved my life and been more on top of it than I. My first thought was probably correct.

What to do? First, keep David on his toes. Document everything wrong. Might keep him off track. Assume he’s not as sharp as CM thinks he is. In fact, that may be Masters’ Achilles Heel. He liked sycophants. Made him feel good. That certainly the case with most megalomaniacs. A simple narcissistic nut with a Napoleon complex. Was it that simple?

Yes.

I quickly wrote some code that would’ve taken me two hours to unravel and once I saw David get lost in it at the other terminal, I got up slowly and headed for the apartment door.

I moved to the main door of the lab. Opened it. Nothing. Nobody there. All lies. Everything a sham.

Retracing my steps I walked over the David and grabbed him by his shirt. No contest. The guy was a wimp.

“Where is she?” I yelled.

“Who?”

“Cassie. You know who.”

I dropped him back in the chair and headed out to the hallway. The dining room? I quickly checked there. Nobody home. Like everyone suddenly disappeared.

Moving down the hallway as fast as I could, I checked every room I came upon. Not only no people, no desks, chairs, or anything. Except for the supercomputer and its chairs, everything on the thirteenth floor seemed to have disappeared. Had he cleaned out the place? Taken everything with him to blow up the capital? And taken Cassie with him?

One down. Thirty floors yet to cover. Take a long time. All the while he might be gone and I wasting my time.

What was I missing? Had he lied again? Had he just agreed with me to get me working again? Another lie? On top of other lies?

I headed to the elevator. Pushed the button. Nothing. He’d turned off the juice to them. Why? He knew I’d figure it out? But I hadn’t. Only part of it.

Down the hall to the stairwell. What was I missing?

When I got to the stairs, I stopped. Up or down. He’d fooled me at every turn. Down was obvious. Up was what? But what the hell. I took off up the stairs. What difference did it make? If he was already gone, up was as good as down. He’d probably taken the car I’d borrowed. I had no identification. Where could I go once out of the building anyway?

At each floor level I stepped out and listened as carefully as possible. For any sound at all. I didn’t have the time to check each room on each floor. Had to trust my ears.

When I arrived at the twentieth floor and herd no sounds, I stopped, sat down in the middle of the floor, put my head in my hands on my knees and tried to think. As well as breathe. Harder going up the stairs than down.

What did I know about this building? It was mostly empty. The roof had a radio tower on it and a blinking light. It had two basements. One was a small room, just large enough to hold CM’s entire staff and little group of security men. The other smelled of mothballs. Lost of room. A heater. A duct for electrical lines to supply the building with power. Thirty-one floors in between. Almost all empty. Except for the thirteenth floor and parts of the twelfth and maybe the fourteenth. I’d not been up there yet.

Was that where headquarters was? The fourteenth floor. One up from the thirteenth? Was it worth a chance? Better than starting from scratch. Plus it was down from where I was. I got up, retraced my steps to the stairwell and started down. Nineteen. Eighteen. Seventeen, Sixteen, Fifteen. Fourteen. I opened the door and the noise deafened me. From every direction. People passed by me doing every which way. No clear order to their actions, yet they all seemed destined for somewhere. I’d found it.

I assumed the same floor layout and headed towards the dining room. The largest room I could remember on the thirteenth floor.

No one paid me any mind at all. Like I didn’t exist. Or that they expected me for some reason. Had CM already figured out what I’d do and told them I’d soon find the headquarters? Probably. I didn’t care.

When I got to the dining room floor, I stepped to one side and tried the doorknob. Open. I timed my entrance, pushed the door open wide and rushed inside. Ready to tackle an army if need be. Nothing there. No army. No people at all. Just another mistake in a long line of them. Always one step behind Francis. My nickname from now on.

I turned, ran out of the room, and headed for the next biggest location I could remember on the thirteenth floor. The supercomputer room. I found it, right where it should be if all the floor plans were identical. Something most likely common in government buildings.

This time I opened the door without planning to find anyone or anything. Wrong again.

The room was clearly a headquarters of some kind. I couldn’t find Masters, but the number of people in the room surrounding the big supercomputer duplicate of the one down below had many more monitors, all manned by people who at least looked like they knew what they were doing. No Cassie number one or number two either. And David hadn’t come up here to join the rest. Just me, who everyone seemed to know and not care about, and a large number of people, many more than had jammed into the basement those weeks ago when the so-called competitors had set off the alarm. Where had these folks come from? Or had the whole episode been yet another lie?

I turned toward my apartment door. Or rather the one one story up from my apartment door. Two floors up from the chef’s quarters. I went to the door, not know what to expect but guess that this was Christopher’s residence. The man himself. I pushed open the door and this time, finally, I’d been right.

He stood in the center of the room holding a cell phone and barking out orders to others as he did. In a language I didn’t understand. More like German than middle eastern though. That, I least, I could ascertain.

I looked for Cassie. No luck. Not here either. No one paid any more attention here than anywhere else in the building.

Then I noticed something more than peculiar. In the middle of the moving mass of people. Someone I knew and couldn’t believe was here. Talking on a cell phone and apparently barking out orders. Just like Masters.

Patton. The wounded brother of the great love of my life. Looking like he was as well as he’d ever been. Not relaxed, but doing what he liked to do. Working a case. And standing right next to Masters. I shook my head making sure I wasn’t imagining the whole thing. But it stayed in place. Not a look alike. Patton himself. For real. Not being held captive. What the hell had I missed?

I walked through the mass of moving people as quickly as I could and up to stand beside him. And tried to get his attention. Clearly he saw me. Yet he put up his had to tell me to wait. No sign of surprise on his face. As if we were back in North Dakota all the time. That everything was as it should be.

Waiting, I tried to figure out the language. And then I had it. Right this time. Not German. Police speak. All acronyms, strange numerical codes I’d never understood, hardly a Webster word in there.

He finally put the phone back in his pocket and looked at me.

“You look like hell, Francis,” he said. As if everything was completely normal.

“So do you, Patton. And by the way, what the hell are you doing here? I thought you were almost dead back in North Dakota.”

“Nope. I’m here.”

“I see that. But what are you doing here? And where’s Cassie?”

“I’m working a case. She’s down the hall helping out.”

“But the man you want is standing almost right beside you. Masters. He’s the one you want.”

“I’ll explain it later, Francis. No time right now. Why don’t you find a nice quiet room and take it easy for a while. You look a little beat.”

“What?” I screamed at him. “What the hell’s going on?”

The people in the room should have all stopped running this way and that and stared at me. My voice had been that loud. But they didn’t. They just kept running this way and that, shuffling papers and, like Masters and Patton, talking on their precious cell phones.

Patton didn’t respond then. He turned away from me and was already beck on his cell listening and then yelling at some one to stop talking a listen for a chance. That much was in English.

I left the room then. Looking for Cassie. Maybe she’d be more inclined to speak to me than her brother. ‘Down the hall,’ of course, meant two different directions. I’d come from the stairwell, so I turned in the other directions and began opening doors on my left and right to see if I could find the action.

I found it on my third try.

Cassie finally noticed me and came over to talk.

“Sorry,” she said, “it’s been a bit busy here.”

“What’s been a bit busy?”

“You don’t know?”

“I don't know shit,” I told her.

“Let’s go across the hall, and I’ll try to explain it.”

“Try and explain it?”

“You’ll understand. Just keep your shirt on.”

And so she led me across the hall to a nice quiet room. Nobody else there. Talking on the phones, delivering papers, or talking back and forth in police code. And there were two chairs. Sitting across from one another. At a table. Perfect.

And we sat down.

“Where to begin?” she began.

“The beginning would be nice,” I said.

“Okay. Let’s start there.”

She cleared her throat as if this might take a while.

“It all started before you got involved. In fact probably about a month before you got involved. I didn't know anything about it at that point. Nor did Patton. We didn’t know until the day you did. But we weren’t allowed to tell you.”

“For God’s sake, Cassie, can you get to it. Not sure I care about the when part, so much as the who and what parts.”

“Okay then.” And she took a deep breath.

“Homeland Security got a credible tip that a particular terrorist group intended to infiltrate the computers at the Pentagon. Knowing our strength in protecting those systems, the story went that they didn’t intend to take them down, only to slow them up. Weaken our defenses for a period of time during which we’d be vulnerable.”

“Sound familiar. And the guy that’s trying is right there I the other room with Patton.”

“No. He’s not. Just let me finish.” And she crossed my lips with her index finger indicating I should shut up until she finished.

“So, you now know that plan. But you and we didn’t at the time. The tip HS got was credible enough that they really worried it might be possible. And they immediately thought of you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You. You have a reputation. Remember the other case? The one where some nasty folks tried to use you to bring down the Internet?”

“It was natural enough to consider you at least as a target for them. But also, they don’t know you as well as Patton and I do, so you were also a suspect.”

“Suspect? Hell, I was the perfect person to help them the last time.”

“It’s the government, Francis. They’re trained not to trust anyone. Not even themselves. No less you.”

“Got it.”

“But they do come up with something creative. Give them credit for that. They’re concerned about three fronts. One, that you’re in on it. You’re the man the terrorists have in their pocket. Or two, you’re the one they want in their pocket but haven’t quite got you yet. Or three, they’ve got somebody else as good as you. I think this worried them the most.”

“So they kidnap me?”

“They did. This takes care of front one and two right away. If they’ve got you, the terrorists don’t and can’t get you. Two thirds of the battle out of the way right there.”

“Good thinking. Got to give them that. But why not tell me what’s going on?”

“Not sure about that. I think it’s just their style. Need to know basis only. You’ve heard that before.”

“I have.”

“On the other hand. They could also have figured that if they told you to try and create a virus of the type they think the terrorists are going to use and you know about it, you might not treat it with the same kind of energy you might otherwise. On the other hand, if they scare you to death, playing the bad guys themselves, they could really get the lay of the land. How long it might take. What the thing might look and act like. Those kinds of things.”

“So they set up Masters in his building as a money-hungry megalomaniac and force you to create something, you might help them a lot. Which is exactly what you did.”

“You mean that I was a mouse in a maze for them. The routes I took and the time I took to get there would tell them a lot about what they might be facing?”

“Exactly.”

“But what about all the hoopla?”

“Hoopla?”

“Letting me escape. Find the mothball smell. Using Cassie the programmer on me.”

“What do you mean ‘using Cassie the programmer on you?’”

“Helping me escape, and so on?”

“They needed someone to watch you.”

“But she’s a meth addict.”

“Try again, Francis. Even the dealer was fake.”

“And the gang?”

“That was real. A collateral gift as it were.”

“Glad to hear I was some help.”

“To hear them tell it, you were the savior of the whole defense plan. I’m not sure how they worked it out. You’ll have to ask them about it. But they think you saved the US government from a disaster at least as bad if not far worse than 9/11.”

“What? How can that be?”

“I know. Sounds fishy to me as well. But so they say.”

“So Masters is actually . . .”

“A government agent. Big time.”

“And Cassie number two.”

“She as well.”

“And Cassie number three?”

“They don't seem to know anything about her. They lost you for a time. Maybe she was with the other side. Or just liked you. Who knows? Whatever. They’ve not found her, or to hear them tell it, they’re not likely to find her anytime soon.”

“But she helped me.”

“They know that. They know just about everything. Except her.”

“The bomb smell in the basement?”

“A lucky accident. They’ve been trying to figure out why that’s there. All they can figure out is that the previous occupants had stored some kind of cloth there that they didn’t want the moths to find. Used mothballs.”

“So all my hypotheses were complete failures.”

“Yes. But given what you knew at the tie, they all made sense.”

“And it was you who came with me to steal the car.”

“It was.”

“I didn’t thin anyone could fake that.”

“What?”

“You know.”

“That’s it,” I asked her.

“The big picture, at least.”

“So what’s happening now?”

“David Epoc has beaten the virus. And the world’s computers, most importantly the government’s computers, are back running normally now. Defenses back up in full. The area around the capital has been searched and they’ve found nearly a ton of explosives nearby that fit your description.”

“My description?”

“Yes. The one you told the other Cassie about in the car. Part of one of your hypotheses. But the actual explosives don’t have mothballs in them. Or anything that smells like it.”

“And what about the guys who got me involved in the first place. The ones in front of my apartment building that first night?”

“Nobody knows anything about them. Possibly they were from the terrorists. There were trying to enlist you. Same with the four stooges as you call them. Not ours.”

“Jesus, what a mess.”

“It was. But isn’t anymore. Thanks to you.”

49.
I woke up from a dead sleep to all hell breaking out. The alarm had sounded creating that incredibly terrible sound I’d hoped I’d never hear again. The sounds of people running up and down outside the door. The lights were out. I reached over to Cassie, but she wasn’t there. I called out for her. No answer.

Not again. Damn.

I pulled the door open and the hall was crowded with people going this way and that. No one seeming to know what to do. Some had dim flashlights. Otherwise all I could see was churning bodies.

“What’s going on?” I called out. But no one answered.

Then someone bumped into me and began grabbing me by the neck. I couldn’t tell if it was a good guy just manic from some kind of attack, or a bad guy trying to kill me. Didn’t matter really. I whacked with my forehead and felt his head bobble slightly and then he fell unconscious. Of course, I almost did, too. Head’s good for some things, but not as a weapon. No matter what fictional accounts tell you.

Another body slipped in. It, too, wrangled with me. Then the damn burst. Several people, sensing I’d opened the door, considered me the enemy, or just thought it might be a way out of the building. I couldn’t tell which. And I felt arms thrashing this way and that. Many catching me by my clothes, arms, legs, even my throat. I was being smothered by bodies, insanely grasping for a handhold on something real.

No longer worried about what they thought, I broke a few fingers, slammed a few knees so they faced the wrong way, and rammed a few elbows into soft flesh. The place had gone nuts. We’d been attacked. Clearly. In the north of Queens. How could this be possible? Where were the police? The army, navy, marines, air force, homeland security, whatever?

Then I heard Cassie calling me. From far away.

And I woke up a second time.

Yes. A dream. But it could have happened. At least as far as my life had been going.

The bed was a mass of tangled sheets. I was clutching a pillow that I’d wrenched most of the stuffing from. Sleeping sure makes me tired, I thought.

“Some kind of nightmare,” she said.

“I’m not sure which is the nightmare. Reality of dreaming,” I said.

She looked at me.

“Except for you, of course.”

She smiled.
At breakfast that morning, I asked her a few more questions.

“What about my being a serial killer.”

“Just a story they made up.”

“But I was it in the papers.”

“Oh, they let the public think it. Even the city cops. But that’s been straightened out. No one was killed in the first place. And they’ve given you back your wallet and identification.”

“So all the misery. For nothing.”

“They say you deserved it. For trying to escape all the time. Made their life miserable too.”

“So we’re free to go?”

“Haven’t asked that explicitly, but I assume so.”

“Assume?”

“No one’s told me we can’t. They may want to question us some more, but I doubt that’ll take long.”

“So we can return to North Dakota.”

“Homeward bound. Today, I hope.”

I thought about spring and summer in the high prairies near the geographical center of North America. Heat. Storms. Tornados. Wind. Great stuff. I missed it already. Had to get back.