The Unseen (9 page)

“You have to use a numeric IP?” Lucas asked.

Donavan shrugged as they watched a hybrid satellite photomap load on the screen. “Well, to activate them, you have to bind them to a specific Web address, but it doesn't have to be numeric. This is just what I like to use for extra security.”

Lucas nodded, staring at the screen and committing the numeric address to his photographic memory.

Donavan continued, pointing at three blips on the screen; two were very close to each other, while the other was at least a few miles away. “These two here are our friends from last night, Ted and Anita, at the office. They work together. Actually, all three of them work together officially, although I can't say I've ever seen Viktor at the office.” He pointed to another spot on the screen.

“Instead, Viktor seems to spend a lot of time at this bar, kind of a low-rent place. And as you might have guessed from listening last night, Anita and Ted are . . . um, more than business partners. Even though Anita is married to Viktor.” Donavan smiled. “So you see, none of them does anything without me knowing about it. I check in on 'em several times a day—lots of times, leave this running while I'm working at the office.”

“And you just stuck the geopatch on—”

“Viktor's is hidden inside his briefcase; goes with him pretty much everywhere. Anita and Ted, they do love their cell phones. So I have geopatches on them. Inside their phones' battery compartments, actually.”

“Their cell phones?” Lucas asked. “How'd you get their cell phones?”

“What do you think this is? Amateur hour?” Another big, beefy grin. “They have company-provided phones, same model. Suppose the manufacturer recalls the original batteries in their phones; suppose the manufacturer sends both of them new batteries to replace the old ones.”

Lucas nodded. “Okay, you did your homework.”

“Always. Which is how I know Viktor spends most of his days at Split Jacks. Heck, I'd say he spends about half his evenings there too. Man must know how to drink. But I can guarantee you, if Viktor's away from his house more than an hour, Ted's over there.” Donavan smiled through a fresh mouthful of ham. “Anyway, relax, man. I got it covered.”

Lucas tried to relax. But he noticed he was bouncing his leg, feeling jittery. He wasn't sure exactly what Donavan had covered.

EIGHT

THE NEXT DAY, AFTER CHECKING THE GEOPATCHES TO MAKE SURE ALL three people were still moving, Lucas attended his first Creep Club meeting. When he arrived with Donavan, the others were already there: seven of them in all. Three were sitting in chairs in front of a television, which in turn was attached to a Mac PowerBook. The others were in the back of the room, talking among themselves. One, a guy with long shaggy hair who looked like a throwback to the sixties flower generation, was drinking a latte.

All of them stopped their conversations and stared when Lucas and Donavan entered room 227.

“Hey, everybody,” Donavan said. He pointed at Lucas. “This here's . . . uh, Humpty. Met him in the steam tunnel at Howard. I think some of you saw my photos.” Donavan glanced at Lucas before he continued.

“You should see him work; he's good. Not just at creeping, but maybe free running and parkour too.” Donavan paused, as if hoping Lucas would confirm this.

Lucas stayed quiet.

Donavan, a bit flustered, continued. “Anyway, he's . . . uh, gonna help me with my current project.”

Lucas felt himself shudder a bit; Donavan spoke about it in such clinical terms, as if saving Viktor was simply something he was doing for the science fair.

Hippie Boy walked over, extended the hand that wasn't clutching the latte. “Snake,” he said, introducing himself.

Lucas took his hand and shook it.

“You want us to call you Humpty, I take it?”

Lucas shrugged. “Humpty works.”

“Sure it works. None of us here use our real names anyway.”

Snake smiled and turned around, started pointing out others. “Over there by the TV we have Hondo, Clarice, and Stocklin.” He turned the other way, indicating the three he'd been speaking with at the back of the room. “And this is Kennedy, Mya, and Dilbert.”

A few awkward moments of silence as everyone stared.

“Nice to meet you all,” Lucas finally said.

Snake pulled a chair over to him, and the others who were standing at the back of the room slid chairs in front of the TV as well.

“Have a seat,” Snake said. “I think you'll see some interesting work tonight.”

Lucas took the indicated seat. Snake walked to the front of the room, waited for everyone to settle in, and turned on the television.

The computer's desktop illuminated the TV monitor.

“Okay,” Snake said. “I think Dilbert has something for us tonight.”

Dilbert stood and approached the computer. He slipped a disc into the slot on the front of the laptop, opened a movie file.

It was easy to see how he got his name; he had close-shaved hair and round glasses, like the hapless cubicle-dweller from the daily comic strip.

“Okay,” Dilbert began. “I've spliced this together from about four weeks of footage, and I have to say, this is probably my most interesting project since that Iranian diplomat in Georgetown.”

“Yeah, that was a good one,” chimed Mya. She was thin and pretty with dark eyes. Lucas thought she looked faintly Asian.

“Thanks. Anyway, I like to call this ‘Symphony of Violence.' ”

“Oooh,” someone said. Lucas didn't catch who it was.

Dilbert pressed the Play button on the movie file, and a title screen appeared:
S
ymphony in
V
iolence
| Music by Johann Strauss |
Subjects: Kleiderman and Leila Delgado, 4815 Suncrest, Alexandria, VA.

The opening strains of “The Blue Danube” started on the screen, mellow violins. On the screen, a quiet suburban home, which dissolved to a couple sharing a kiss, then cooking together in the kitchen, and then the same couple hosting another couple at dinner, all of them laughing.

Suddenly the music dropped and a horrible scene filled the screen: the husband yelling at the wife and then backhanding her.

The music cued again, and the scenes of tranquility were back. The two of them heading out the door for an evening jog, the woman curled up on the couch with a book.

Another pause in the music, and more scenes of destruction: the man throwing a bottle of something at his wife, tipping over the dining table in an uncontrollable rage.

Lucas shifted uncomfortably in his seat and looked around. Everyone was rapt, their attention focused on the screen. Donavan had that goofy grin on his face.

After a few more seconds, Lucas couldn't watch anymore. He let his gaze drop to the floor, waiting for the video to end. Mercifully, after three minutes, it did.

When he finally looked up again, as applause rang around the room, he saw Snake staring at him over his shoulder.

Snake stood. “Wonderful, wonderful work, Dilbert. Very artistic, as usual.”

Kennedy had his hand in the air. He was thin, very thin, and pasty-faced. He wore a flannel shirt, jeans, and boots. A cowboy wannabe in DC.

Dilbert acknowledged Kennedy's hand. “Yeah, Kennedy.”

“I loved your edit points. I mean, you can feel the tension between those two worlds. You did all that in Final Cut?”

Dilbert grinned sheepishly. “Yeah.”

Kennedy whistled. “Lot of work.”

Now Clarice wanted to speak. She was also very thin, with white, wispy hair and very angular, almost masculine features. “You done with this couple now?” she asked.

“I don't know. I mean, seems like on the surface there's really only one story to tell there. But I feel like there's something else waiting to happen. So I'm still shooting some footage. We'll see.”

Dilbert sat down, and the applause started again. Lucas felt a sick ball of revulsion in his stomach, and he couldn't control himself.

He stood.

Snake leveled a gaze at him, and the others turned to stare as well.

“Something to say so soon . . . Humpty?” Snake asked.

“Yeah. I . . . is she okay?” he asked Dilbert.

Dilbert shifted in his seat. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“The woman—in the video. Who was getting beaten. I mean . . . how did you get her out of there?”

Dilbert seemed puzzled. “I . . . didn't.”

Lucas was dumbfounded. “He's gonna kill her. You can't just let that happen. You can't just . . . watch that and do nothing.”

Snake spoke. “Dilbert didn't just do ‘nothing,' as you put it. I bet he has a hundred hours of editing alone in that piece.”

“The video? So you just do it all for your own kicks?”

Silence.

“No,” Snake said coolly. “He did it for us.”

“I don't understand—” Lucas stammered.

“Obviously not.”

“You mean, this is just about . . . watching? You don't try to help these people?” Lucas, horrified, thought of the ATM company; he spun and looked at Donavan. “The ATM people—are you just going to let them kill the husband? That's what they're going to do, you know.”

Donavan's eyes twinkled. “Of course I know,” he said.

“You've obviously misunderstood Creep Club,” Snake said, with a sideways glance at Donavan. “It's not just about infiltrating the homes. You'll find lots of punks out there who get their kicks from doing that kind of thing. We're more than that.” Another glance at Donavan.

“It's about . . . art. Art focused on depravity, yes, I suppose. But that helps us understand more about ourselves, doesn't it?”

A few nods and murmurs of agreement in the room.

Lucas scanned their faces, their smiling upturned faces. And suddenly, he found himself turning to leave the room, running down the long hallway toward the granite stairs. He wanted to get out of the Stranahan Building as fast as he could.

LUCAS DIDN'T STOP RUNNING UNTIL HE'D WORKED HIS WAY THROUGH A sewer tunnel and onto the platform for the nearest Metro station.

When the doors whisked open, he rushed into the car and sat.

The car was only about half-full, which is why he was surprised when a bald man in a black suit sat right next to him.

The man turned and nodded, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, offered one to Lucas.

“You can't smoke on here,” Lucas said, pointing to a sign at the front of the car.

The man smiled, pulled out a cigarette with his lips, and lit it. He stared straight ahead. “I often find,” he said, “that I most want to do the things I'm told I shouldn't.”

He blew a haze of smoke out the side of his mouth. A woman sitting with her son gave him a glare, then stood, grabbed her son's hand, and moved to the back of the car.

The man in the dark suit took no notice and tried another deep drag. After a few moments he spoke again. “Now you know why they call themselves the Creep Club.”

Lucas felt his breath leave his lungs, almost as if it were leaking directly out of his skin.

“What?” he asked weakly.

“I have a proposition for you,” Dark Suit said, still staring straight ahead as the train rolled to a stop at the next station. He stood and left the train without saying anything; after a few seconds of shock, Lucas scrambled out behind him.

The man walked to a garbage can several feet away, stopped, and turned. Now he did look at Lucas. “Are you interested?” he asked.

“Interested in what?”

“My proposition.”

“I haven't heard it yet. I've only heard you say something about the Creep Club.” Lucas was getting his feet under him a bit now. “That got my attention.”

“I want you to help me bring it down.”

A pause stretched out between them. Dark Suit spoke again.

“You're not one of them. You know it.”

“No, I'm not.” Lucas said it a little more forcefully than he'd intended.

“You see, then? And really, how could they? Just stand there, just record all that and do nothing?”

Lucas waited. He'd noticed that the man had a tendency to look anywhere but his face while he was talking; he only looked at Lucas's eyes when he was listening. Even then, he blinked too often, as if he was constantly trying to clear his vision.

Dark Suit threw his cigarette into the garbage can without crushing it first, right beneath the sign that had a cigarette with a large red slash through it.

“First off, how'd you even find me?” Lucas asked.

The man smiled. “I followed you.”

“From the meeting? Through the tunnels and everything?”

Another smile. “For starters.”

“And now you want me to help you.”

“Not just me,” Dark Suit continued. “You could help those people.

Use the Creep Club's work against itself.” He was staring at the wall as he said this.

“How?”

“By saying yes.”

“But I have to sell my soul to make it happen. Something like that, huh?”

Dark Suit laughed. “Tell me, do you really think you're dealing with the devil here? Or did you see something of the devil back there?”

Lucas shivered, even though it was hot and muggy. Late August in DC.

“But what would I need to do? Testify or something?”

“Eventually. But what I'm asking you to do now is: creep the creeps.”

Lucas stared. “What's that mean?”

“That means you document everyone there. You follow them, find out their real names, bring them to me.”

“You mean you don't know their names?”

“Some of them. But not all.”

“But you obviously knew what was happening in the meeting tonight.”

“Oh, the meetings and such. Yes, I know all about those. I know all the people involved—more than just the ones who were there tonight, by the way.”

“You obviously have people, resources, whatever. Why don't you call up a couple of your James Bonds, have them track the Creep Club?”