Exposure (27 page)

Dolly/Hank fiddled around behind a torn, dusty curtain and opened a heavy-looking door. Helene wouldn’t have been in the least surprised if the corpse of the creature’s dead mother was rocking quietly in a chair. But she was so far wrong, it was almost laughable. Instead of a collection of homemade taxidermy featuring family members, a pool of light revealed a small, round, submarine-style hatch at her feet. She was reminded of Charlie’s bolt hole in the Highlands. Fooled again. She’d been utterly wrong-footed.

Dolly/Hank descended first and Helene climbed down the metal ladder after him. With a quick look around, Charlie followed, one hand inside his jacket. As she descended, Helene glanced up, hoping that he had a gun with him after all. They hadn’t talked about such things – not since Hawaii.

“Welcome to my Command Centre,” said Dolly/Hank in a noticeably ordinary voice, not the growling, snarling weird sister he had been upstairs.

Despite his bizarre get-up, he looked and sounded, well, nearly normal.

The pod was a wall-to-wall collection of high-tech computer equipment: most of them Helene didn’t recognise or couldn’t even begin to guess what functions they performed. Lights flashed and disks whirled and acres of cabling hung from the curved ceiling like sinister bunting.

“This place is amazing!” she breathed.

“Thanks,” said Dolly/Hank.

“Is this the headquarters for the Gene Genies?” asked Helene.

“Kinda, I guess,” said Dolly/Hank, looking at her shrewdly. “I think we’ve got some talking to do.”

“You can say that again,” said Helene with a mixture of relief and optimism.

Charlie was silent.

“Er, what do you like to be called?” said Helene delicately.

“Dolly or Hank is fine,” came the reply, “although looking at your friend I’m guessing he’d been more comfortable with Hank.”

As Charlie currently had his hands crossed stiffly across his chest and didn’t reply, Helene answered for them both: “Okay, Hank, it is.”

She took a deep breath. “Well, where do I start? At the beginning I suppose. It started…”

But Hank interrupted her. “No, honey, I’d like to hear lover-boy tell it.”

Helene looked at Charlie, whose face was carefully blank. She shrugged. Over to you, her body language told him.

Continuing to stand rigidly, Charlie gave the sit-rep as briefly and concisely as possible: explaining how they met, what they’d done, where they’d been, and why they’d landed on Hank’s doorstep. He left out nothing that was relevant, except perhaps, the execution of Bill, which Helene felt was his prerogative.

Hank listened with rapt attention, his eyes not leaving Charlie’s face. When Charlie finished, there was silence.

Eventually Hank stood up. The movement was so sudden that Helene gasped and Charlie’s hand dipped back into his jacket again.

“Tea, I think,” said Hank blandly. There was no way he could have missed their twin reactions but he didn’t refer to it. “Sasparilla okay?” he continued. “It’s good for cleansing the blood.”

“Oh, yes, lovely,” said Helene faintly. “I’ve never tried it but I’m sure it’s delicious.”

Good God! she said to herself. I sound like I’m talking to the vicar.

Hank took his time making the tea while Helene watched him. Charlie was inspecting Hank’s command centre: Helene guessed he was making a mental audit of the banks of expensive-looking equipment, assessing their potential usefulness.

When Hank had reseated himself and handed out the tea, Helene felt the tension inside her rise again.

“So, what do you want from me?” said Hank.

Which wasn’t quite the conversation opener that Helene had expected.

“Do you know what Wally Manfred found out about the link between the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the US debt at the end of the First World War?” she asked.

Hank’s eyebrows shot up and he shook his head.

“All I can tell you is that Wally said he was working on something big, but I never knew what it was. Sorry, honey, I guess that must be a big disappointment to you after all you’ve been through.”

Which was the understatement of the century.

Helene rubbed her temples.

“Do you know where they took Wally?” she said. “We know he’s not in the Warm Creek Nursing Home…”

Hank shook his head again, his expression dark.

“Nope. Could be anywhere. The NSA has got places all over where they take people. There’s a huge facility underneath Area 51 that the government denies is there: but we know.”

“Who knows?” said Charlie.

“Hackers: people like me,” said Hank proudly. “That’s why we do what we do: to keep the government honest; to show up the lies they tell us which are designed to keep us all in our little boxes and paying our taxes. My family has been searching for the truth since Roswell. We’re from New Mexico,” he added by way of explanation. “There have been aliens visiting this planet for millennia, but will the government admit it? No, siree!”

Charlie glanced at Helene. They’d landed in the asylum.

“What do you think they’re doing with him?” said Helene, trying to keep the conversation vaguely on track. “What do you think happened to Wally?”

Hank looked sad.

“It’s my belief that they killed him,” he said. “Probably dug a deep pit and threw him in it. I just hope he was dead first: I have nightmares about being buried alive. Of course, it don’t help living in this hole.”

Helene took a deep intake of breath. This was not what she’d wanted to hear. Since she’d first heard about Wally’s disappearance she’d imagined herself finding some way to get him released, of saving him. This wasn’t how she wanted his story to end.

“But why would they have killed him?” said Charlie. “He was your top hacker: the NSA can always use people like him.”

“Well, yes and no,” said Hank mysteriously, looking from Helene to Charlie and back again. “Have you ever wondered why the US government can’t shut down people like me for good?”

Helene assumed it was a rhetorical question because Hank showed no signs of waiting for an answer.

“Because we’re better than their best,” said Hank. “And I’ll tell you why: all the Feds get their trainees straight from college. And I mean straight: straight A students with not so much as a ‘didn’t inhale’ on their records. So these kids are all trained to think in the same way: logical, clinical. And that’s why folks like me will always have ‘em licked. Because most hackers aren’t college educated: we’re the drop-outs, the freaks, the weirdos, the ones no-one bothered to talk to at school – and believe me I know what I’m talking about. But the thing is with guys like me, our brains are programmed different. We’re mostly self-educated: we’ve taught ourselves so we don’t follow the same path as the college guys. They go in straight lines – logical; we go in circles, in loops, in crazy paving patterns, in double-helix swirls and who can say where our ideas come from. We’re creative, imaginative, off-the chart, freakin’ geniuses!”

Helene found herself smiling at Hank’s colourful, grandiose description of himself.

“And Wally?” pursued Charlie impatiently.

“Wally wasn’t really one of us,” said Hank. “You see, what you’ve got to know about Wally is that he wasn’t that great of a hacker. He was good, but not that good.”

“But I don’t understand,” said Helene. “I thought he was the founder of the Gene Genies: I thought he was the one who wrote the software that Wikileaks uses?”

Hank shook his head, a lopsided smile across his face.

“Nope. It just suited him that everyone thought that. To put it another way, ole Wally knew that by taking the credit, it would protect someone else… and make him a target instead of…”

“Oh!”

Helene let out a soft sigh as the penny dropped.

“You mean it was Barbara all along?” she said.

Hank smiled.

“Got it in one, honey!”

“But how did she do it?” said Helene. “She really had us fooled.”

It was hard to imagine that the broken young woman Helene and Charlie had seen was really a hacker mastermind.

“Well, that’s the clever bit,” said Hank. “The Feds never thought she was a threat cuz they didn’t know about her – thanks to Wally – so they just gave her some second rate security: an ankle tag and trip laser in the garden. It took her about two minutes to get around
that
! She pretended to be a recluse but really she’d come and go as she pleased. She sent you to me which means she’s probably gone like the wind by now.”

Hank looked pleased.

“What do you mean?” said Helene, suddenly disconcerted. “What do you mean ‘gone like the wind’? Where has she gone?”

“Honey,” said Hank, “she’s been planning this ever since they took her old man. She’s done some jobs, saved up the pennies – not that she wasn’t pretty freakin’ rich before – and now she’s decided it’s time to start her new life. So she’s gone.”

“But why now?” she persisted.

“Aw, honey. Don’t you get it? Because she’d found you!”

Helene was so discombobulated that she paid no attention to Hank’s odd phrasing.

“But you can contact her?” said Helene.

“No, honey. I always knew that when she was gone, that would be it.”

“But she must have left you something!” croaked Helene.

Hank shook his head, still smiling.

Helene felt like ramming the smile down his face with the toe of her boot – or somewhere darker and less accessible.

“But you know what, honey,” said Hank, “she left
you
something.”

“What do you mean?” said Helene looking from Hank to Charlie and back again.

“She left you a trail of breadcrumbs,” said Hank. “She told you where to look.”

Helene tried to squeeze some sense from her battered brain. At last an idea popped in: preposterous, impossible – but maybe not for the Gene Genies.

Chapter 19

Hank invited them to stay the night. He showed Charlie a place where their car could be hidden: parked in a thicket and covered by a piece of tarpaulin, camouflaged with branches and leaves. Perfect: unless they needed to leave in a hurry.

“This place is totally secure,” said Hank when they were back inside, patting the curving side of the pod. “I’ve got stored enough food and bottled water for two years. I could survive nuclear fallout here. Of course, if the San Andreas Fault blows or Yellowstone decides to yawn, we’re all history anyway.”

Helene nodded, feeling it was more politic to say nothing that might stoke Hank’s wilder conspiracy/end-of-the-world theories, although she no longer doubted that the most extraordinary conspiracies were turning out to be true. It did make one wonder about Roswell: weather balloon or alien car crash? On the other hand, everyone needed a hobby.

Although Hank’s hobby turned out to be needlepoint, or to be more specific, petit point. He showed them into a small side room of the pod that seemed to have been decorated like an old fashioned parlour. He even had a set of matching antimacassars.

There was a pair of neat occasional tables, decorated with lace cloths and matching brocade lampshades. A chaise longue was covered with examples of Hank’s extraordinary handiwork, butterflies chasing a ray of sunshine. Quite beautiful. Totally unexpected. And at odds with the Gibson guitar, displayed on its own stand: an expression of the ‘Howlin’ part of his multifaceted (or possibly split) personality.

An old fashioned Victorian bedstead stood in the corner. Helene had no idea how Hank had managed to get that enormous piece of furniture into the pod: piece by piece was her best guess; followed by a bit of spot-welding after the event.

An embroidered counterpane covered the bed and Hank proudly showed her a delicate bargello stitch in the traditional Florentine flame pattern. It really was exquisite work.

“You guys can sleep in here,” said Hank. “I assume you’re together…”

“No!” said Helene quickly. “We’re not.”

Charlie gave her an unidentifiable look as he leaned against the door frame, listening, watching.

“Oh really?” said Hank. “That’s a pity: you make a cute couple. Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to share anyway, space being what it is. And I wouldn’t recommend camping in the shack: I just keep that to scare away door-to-door salesmen but I think some racoons are nesting up there and being nocturnal, they like to mosey around at night.”

Helene was feeling impatient. It was certainly true what Hank had said about his brain working in a random pattern: it was very hard to keep him focused.

She sat down in a diminutive armchair and looked up at the man-mountain in front of her.

“Hank, can we talk about the Gene Genies?” said Helene.

“Sure, honey, whaddya want to know?”

Hank squeezed his massive frame onto a frail looking rocking chair opposite her and hooked one giant thigh over the other.

“Well,” said Helene. “Who are they, for a start?”

“I couldn’t tell you, honey, although I could make some guesses. We’ve never met face to face because we’re an online community. It’s safer for all of us if we don’t know who everyone else is. They could be school kids or truck drivers or… well, just about anyone, anywhere in the world. Plus, most of them use voice disguisers and some will only type messages. But even so you can get a pretty good idea of whether or not English is their mother tongue, or whether they’re from Britain or Australia or India cuz their English is usually better.”

“I see,” said Helene. “But do you trust them?”

“Those boys and girls know more about me and more about each other than anyone else,” said Hank. “Even though we don’t use first names or nothing, I trust them all.”

And now for the prize question, thought Helene.

“Will they help us?” she said.

“Depends on what you’re planning on doing?” he replied.

Helene looked up to meet his gaze and shook her head wearily.

“I don’t even know myself,” she admitted. “But this whole thing comes down to money; Wally told us as much. Right?”

“It sure seems that way,” said Hank cheerfully.

“And you said that Wally thought he was on to something. And I think that ‘something’ must have been a file that he hacked. From what you’ve said, it would be pretty easy for any of the Gene Genies to hack the same file.”