Spark: A Novel (38 page)

Trucks in the left lane roared past us. In the distance, a church steeple jabbed at the sky. About four hours after leaving the city, we saw the signs for Westerly and Laura guided me to the train-station parking lot.

I parked the car facing the arrival platform and, a few minutes later, a train clattered into the station and let out several people carrying shopping bags or pushing wheeled suitcases. It took only a few minutes for them to get into cars and taxis, and then we were left alone.

One o’clock came and passed. Nothing happened. But around one-thirty a mud-splattered Toyota Land Cruiser pulled into the lot and a middle-aged woman got out. Helen McClatchy’s photograph could still be found on the Internet and I recognized her right away. She was a stocky, solid-looking woman with a broad face and frizzy hair. Perhaps she had been stylish and slender as a young journalist, but now she looked like an Irish farmer who slaughtered pigs.

“That’s Slater’s girlfriend,” I said. “Let’s go talk to her.”

We got out of the car and Helen approached Emily. “Are you the young lady I’m looking for?”

“Yes, I’m Emily Buchanan.”

“Helen McClatchy.” Helen shook Emily’s hand, then turned to me. “And you must be the little ferret from the bank.”

“All I want is—”

“I know what you want … the files. So shut your mouth and follow directions.” Helen turned to Emily. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“I guess so.”

“Once you walk down this road, it’s hard to go back.”

“I’ve made my choice.”

“Good. That’s the right answer. I’m in love with a man who worships free choice.” Helen slapped her hands together and headed toward the Land Cruiser. “All right. That’s enough chatter. Leave your car here. You’re both coming with me.”

She led us across the parking lot and I saw two black dogs sitting in the storage area of the Land Cruiser. Both had massive heads, cropped ears, and powerful legs and shoulders. I remembered reading about the car bomb that had almost killed Helen. This breed was a large enough guard dog to take on any intruder.

Emily smiled at the dogs. “Mastiffs?”

“Yes. They’re Cane Corsos … Italian mastiffs. We named the
male Newton, after Isaac Newton. The bitch is called Hildy—which is short for Saint Hildegard of Bingen. She’s one of my heroes.” Helen reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out two bandanas, and offered one to me. “You need to put this over your eyes.”

“No.”

“It’s just temporary. You’re going to meet the man no one gets to meet. I don’t want either of you to find out where we live.”

“I don’t care who he is. I’m not going to wear a blindfold.”

Emily took one of the bandanas and began to fold it into a strip. “This is no big deal, Jacob. I’ll put on a blindfold. You can just lie flat on the backseat so you can’t look out the windows. Is that okay, Helen?”

“I’ll be glancing into the rearview mirror,” Helen told me. “If you look at anything other than your nose, I’m turning around and we’re returning to the train station.”

“That sounds reasonable, Jacob. Don’t you agree? You’ll still have your guns.”

Helen raised her eyebrows. “He’s got more than one?”

Emily placed the blindfold over her eyes and sat beside Helen. I got into the back of the car and lay on the seat. Helen started the engine and the Land Cruiser splashed through puddles on the way out of the parking lot. Newton and Hildy gazed down at me with their massive heads and black muzzles. These dogs weren’t like Baxter, and my right hand touched the weapons concealed beneath my clothing. The nine-millimeter automatic was held in a paddle holster that was clipped inside my waistband. I carried the .38 Special in the ankle holster.

We traveled on paved roads for a while. Helen made a few quick turns, then we were on a dirt road dotted with ruts and potholes. The car moved slowly—in first or second gear—and a pine smell came in through the windows. Another turn and gravel rattled up into the wheel wells. Then the car stopped completely and Helen switched off the engine.

“We’re here.”

I sat up immediately. Emily pulled off her blindfold and everyone
got out of the car. We had arrived in a clearing surrounded by oak and beech trees. A New England–style house with a wraparound porch was about a hundred yards in front of me. The steep roof was covered with solar panels that glimmered in the sun. Pathways wandered off through the forest and one of them led to a barn-sized building with a gambrel roof that was also covered with solar panels. A redbrick chimney—something designed for industrial purposes—was attached to this structure.

Twelve-foot poles were scattered around the compound, and each one displayed a handmade wind toy. The wind toy closest to the Toyota was a sheet-metal cutout of a three-piece band; a little propeller made one musician strum his guitar while another pounded a drum and a third plucked a bass fiddle. Everything moved a little faster when there was a gust of wind.

All this was scenery. My Spark was focused on a young man standing near a woodpile about twenty yards away from the car. He had long greasy hair and an angular face, and he wore an open flannel shirt over a T-shirt with the words
MASTER THE MACHINE
. Using a sledgehammer and wedges, he was splitting chunks of firewood.

“Hey, Bobby!” Helen said. “Have you seen his nibs?”

Bobby lowered the hammer and jerked his head at the house. “He was in the bunker with the Turks. Now he’s back in the kitchen.”

“He better not eat the blueberry crumble. That’s for tea.”

Helen circled the Land Cruiser, yanked open the driver’s door, and honked the horn. Noises in the woods had a hollow sound; I felt like I was trapped in a canyon. A shadow moved behind a screen, then the front door creaked open and a man stepped onto the porch.

I had seen the scanned image of Thomas Slater’s book-jacket photo. This older version had sloping shoulders, a potbelly, and a peninsula of white hair in the center of a bald head. The stained corduroy pants and rumpled sweater made Slater look like a retired professor who drank early in the day.

“Hello, Emily! Welcome to our little hideaway!” Moving like his knees hurt, Thomas stepped off the porch. The mastiffs bounded
over to their master and he flipped dog biscuits in their direction. “Everything okay, Bobby?” he asked the young man. “Did you meet our two visitors?”

“I can see ’em.”

Slater approached Emily and shook her hand. “A pleasure to meet you in the flesh, Emily. So many of the people I know are just pixels on a monitor screen. And you must be Mr. Underwood.…”

“He’s got a gun,” Helen said. “More than one.”

“Well, of course he does. And I’m sure those weapons make him feel better about himself.” Slater smiled at me. “Let me explain what’s going to happen. We’re going to walk over to the bunker and meet the Turks. Then Emily will be given her flash drive with the information. And you, Mr. Underwood, will be given a downloaded statement from our official spokesman. Gregor was just about to go on a hike, but we caught him before he left the house.”

“What kind of statement?”

“Gregor will reaffirm our Web site policy. We Speak for Freedom uses information freely given to us by witnesses or the participants in illegal activity. Emily changed her mind, so we’re giving the files back. Is everything clear, Underwood?”

I nodded.

“Good. I realize that you’re working for someone and that they don’t want their secrets exposed, but there’s nothing new about that. The goal of those in power is to defend and increase their power.”

“Bastards …” Helen muttered.

“In this case, it looks like the powerful have won a temporary victory,” Thomas said. “Now let’s go see the Turks.”

Everyone headed toward the building with the redbrick chimney. I followed them. “You have Turkish people working for you?” Emily asked.

“When the first group of helpers arrived, Helen began calling them the ‘Young Turks.’ That became the nickname for anyone who works for the Web site. Right now we have five people on our support team. There’s a Canadian, a German, a Spaniard, a Polish woman whose family lives in Australia, and a Brazilian with a Mexican passport.”

Thomas reached the woodpile and nodded at the young man. “Did you see the leaky pipe attached to the well pump, Bobby?”

“That’s next on my list, Mr. Slater.”

“Good. You’re ten times more organized than I am.”

Thomas continued walking. “After we finish our business, I want you two to stay for tea. Helen made a blueberry dessert. I’ve been a responsible adult for once and haven’t eaten a crumb.”

I was parallel to the woodpile as Bobby hammered a wedge into a chunk of wood. Then he reached beneath his shirt, pulled out a Taser, and fired it at my stomach. It felt as if my Shell had been transformed into a rigid frame, and then the shock ended and I collapsed onto the ground.

Bobby leaned over me, unzipped my jacket, and pulled the automatic from its holster. Then he patted down my legs and found the revolver. When I tried to kick him in the face, he grinned and stepped back.

“Think you’re smart?” Bobby asked. “You’re not smart.” He pulled a handheld stun device out of his back pocket, pressed it against my neck, and gave me a second jolt of electricity. My mouth jerked open, my legs contracted, and it felt as if my Shell was cracked open and shattered into bits.

Bobby pulled some plastic cable ties out of his pocket and fastened my ankles and wrists together. The jolt of electricity had frozen my Shell, but now I began to recover. When I opened my eyes, I saw that everyone was looking down at me.

“Incredible. One of our plans actually worked.” Thomas glanced at Emily. “I assume this is what you wanted.”

“I didn’t know what you were going to do.”

“After our conversation, I talked to the group and Bobby came up with this idea. You told me that Mr. Underwood was carrying a gun. That meant we had to disarm him.”

“Is he all right?”

Helen prodded me with the tip of her boot. “I wouldn’t worry. He’s a donkey that deserves every kick.”

“Bobby, get the wheelchair in the front hallway,” Thomas said. “We can’t leave Mr. Underwood lying on the dirt for the rest of the day.”

Bobby handed my revolver to Helen. He walked back to the house while Newton sniffed the top of my head, and then began panting with his lips covering his teeth. It looked as if he was smiling at me.

I took a deep breath and words came out of my mouth. “You need to give back the files or Emily is going to get killed.”

Thomas shoved his hands into his pockets. “I can’t return something
I don’t possess. Emily was worried about Internet tracking, so she never actually sent us the data. She was going to meet someone from our group in a week or so, but your presence changed the situation. We always try to protect the people who give us information.”

“So where
are
the files?” Helen asked. “Are they hidden on a computer somewhere?”

“I stored them on a flash drive,” Emily said. “Does anyone have scissors or a knife?”

Using Helen’s pocketknife, Emily cut the lining of her shoulder bag. She pulled out a flash drive and handed the device to Thomas. “Here you go. I’ve been thinking about these files ever since I walked out of the bank. It’s a relief to get rid of them.”

Hildy barked when Bobby came out of the house with an old wheelchair. He pushed it down an asphalt pathway and stopped about ten feet away from me.

“Load him up,” Thomas said. “And let’s go to the bunker.”

Bobby crouched down a few inches away from my feet. He grabbed my jacket with both hands and pulled me forward until I fell over his left shoulder. Using the strength of his legs, he carried me over to the wheelchair like a sack of potatoes.

“So what are we going to do with him?” Helen asked.

“Let Mr. Underwood stay with us for a short time.” Thomas stood in front of the wheelchair and smiled at me. “I want you to see what we’re doing here and report back to your employers. You can tell them that we’re not an army of growlers and Luddites … just a small group of computer specialists with muddy shoes.”

Feeling like a broken piece of machinery, I sat in the wheelchair with my wrists and ankles held together by the cable ties. Bobby pushed me down the path as Thomas led Emily over to the large building with the brick chimney.

“Our first computer room was in a basement office in Stockholm. Someone started calling it the ‘war bunker’ and we kept that term for each new location. This particular building used to be a sawmill powered by a wood-fired steam engine.”

First we entered an anteroom constructed out of plywood and
sheets from a plastic ground cloth. There was a bench on one side and a row of mud-covered clogs and rubber boots. Then Thomas pushed open a sliding door and everyone followed him into the bunker.

The sawmill had been converted into a long, carpeted room with light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. The steam engine that had once powered the saw remained at one end of the room. It had pistons and gear wheels and a shiny brass boiler. The rest of the bunker resembled the workroom of a start-up software company. There was a long table surrounded by chairs, four cubicles, and a kitchen area with an espresso machine. Two large paper shredders were in the middle of the room, along with a dozen shipping boxes. It looked as if the entire operation was being packed up for an immediate departure.