Spark: A Novel
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.
A young man was working in one of the cubicles while two men and two women were shredding paper and wrapping computer equipment. The staff of We Speak for Freedom were all in their twenties. They wore jeans, ratty sweaters, or flannel shirts and looked like graduate students on a ski holiday.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” Thomas said. “As you can see … Bobby’s plan worked perfectly. This is Emily Buchanan, the young woman who contacted me. And the gentleman tied up in the wheelchair is the employee from the BDG investment bank who was trying to take back the liberated information.”
Thomas handed the flash drive to a dark-haired young woman wearing an ankle-length skirt. “Lidia, open this up on the quarantine computer, then run the Ghost Killer program. For all we know, this could be a clever plan to infect our system with spyware.…”
Lidia took the flash drive and inserted it in the data port of a laptop computer covered with skull-and-crossbones stickers. A piece of masking tape ran across the top of the computer screen with the word QUARANTINE in black letters.
“And Emily … would you please explain to the group what they’re supposed to be looking for?”
“Most of the data is about the black money transactions of an Indian company called the Pradhani Group. But there are three coded files that I couldn’t read. A man named Jafar Desai was killed in Paris a few days ago. The coded files might explain why.”
“Don’t do this,” I said. “The people I work for—”
“Won’t be happy?” Thomas smiled. “Good. I like that possibility. That’s the goal of our Web site … to defend the weak and challenge the powerful.”
“It’s not worth it.”
“That’s Emily’s choice.”
“I’m connected to what happened to Jafar and his family,” Emily said. “I have to do something.”
“Action requires courage,” Thomas said. “Inaction only requires excuses. Bobby, please take Mr. Underwood to the cottage and wait there. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
Bobby wheeled me back outside and pushed me down another pathway past a stone-lined sluice gate that fed into a pond. The concrete frame of the gate was stained and the water in the pond had a dark red color.
“What’s wrong with the water?”
“Looks like blood, don’t it? There’s iron in the dirt around here.”
Patches of shadow and light. The smell of evergreen trees. Looking up, I saw a hawk tracing a slow ellipse in the sky. The path followed the logging ditch to a one-room shack with a porch in front. The shack was set back in the forest, concealed by tall weeds and an overhanging spruce tree. It had a stone chimney and a tar-paper roof covered with dead pine needles. Bobby yanked the wheelchair up onto the porch. Hinges squeaked as he pulled back shutters and opened the door, then he pushed me into the building.
Sunlight streamed in through the windows and illuminated a single room filled with rusty bicycles with flat tires and cardboard boxes filled with junk. A worktable was in the middle of the room and was covered with strips of sheet metal, gear wheels, and a half-dozen cans of paint. Artist’s paintbrushes were scattered across the table; each brush displayed a dry blob of color. At the center of the table was a wind toy: a sheet-metal silhouette of a man sitting in a chair while he held a book with two hands. A drive shaft was attached to his head.
Bobby searched the dusty room and found a wooden toolbox. He opened it up and began searching through each drawer. “Bet you think you’re smart.”
“I’m functional.”
“Maybe that’s true in the city, but you’re not functioning real good today. I’ve seen you lookin’ around, trying to figure out a way to break free. Well, that’s not gonna happen.”
Bobby found some more cable ties in the tool chest and used them to attach my legs to the wheelchair footplates. When the lower part of my body was secure, he fastened both of my arms to the armrests and used three ties linked together to restrain my chest and shoulders.
I heard nails clicking on the concrete floor and turned my head toward the doorway. The two dogs entered the cottage and began sniffing around, searching for food. Thump of shoes on the porch, and then the screen door squeaked open and Thomas Slater stood in front of me.
“There’s water in that blue jerry can, Bobby. Pour some into those old hubcaps. I think our canine friends are thirsty.”
Newton and Hildy lapped up the water, making loud slurping sounds while Thomas inspected the wheelchair. “Mr. Underwood looks very secure.”
Bobby spat into the corner. “He ain’t going nowhere.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to him alone.”
“Well, I do mind, Mr. Slater. I don’t think you’ll be safe with him.”
“Put some more ties on if you wish, but it looks like there’s more than enough.” Thomas stepped forward and checked my arm restraints. “He can’t even scratch himself.”
“He’s dangerous, Mr. Slater. Don’t forget, he was carrying two handguns.”
“Dangerous in potential, but not in actuality.” Thomas reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small radio transmitter. “I’ve got my two-way radio, Bobby. I promise to contact you right away if Mr. Underwood causes any trouble.”
Bobby considered this idea for a few seconds, then nodded and opened the screen door. “I’m keeping my radio on.”
“Thank you. That’s a good plan.”
The door slapped shut and Bobby marched back to the bunker. Thomas scratched behind Hildy’s ears and then began sorting through his tools.
“This is where I make my whirligigs. Maybe you’ve seen some of them scattered around the compound. Helen thinks it’s amusing that I’ve spent most of my life designing computers and software programs, but … up until now … I’ve never really made anything.” He picked up a small fan. “The windmill propellers are salvaged from discarded air conditioners. The chains and sprockets come from old bicycles. Bobby sorts through the junk at the local dump and brings some of it back in his pickup.” Thomas scooped up a handful of bolts and dumped them into a plastic tray. “I’ve decided to leave them all here when we abandon this outpost. It might be childish, but I hope they’re not thrown away. Who knows? The so-called Slater Gates I invented thirty years ago are obsolete. The
y aren’t being used by the new generation of computers. Perhaps I’ll only be remembered for my whirligigs.”
“You’re leaving this place?”
“Yes. Definitely. Helen said that you lay down on the backseat of the car, but that’s not going to help us. Now that you know our general location, a drone could find this place in a few hours. I see myself as an amiable sort of person, but a surprising amount of people want to kill me. Tonight Bobby will dump you into the trunk of a car and take you to another part of the forest. He’ll leave you there, unharmed, and you’ll have to find your way back to civilization. By the time you return with your associates, we’ll be working at another safe location.”
Thomas poured some turpentine into a glass jar and pushed in the old paintbrushes. “But you and I still have enough time for a conversation. You’ve sparked my curiosity, Mr. Underwood. I have a dozen questions that only you can answer.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Who hired you to find Emily? Do you know their names? Did they give you written instructions?”
“I’m not going to tell you anything.”
“There’s no reason to be loyal to those bastards. They’d sell you out in a second.”
“I’m not loyal to anyone. I do my job and get paid. We see the world in different ways. You believe in something.”
Thomas shook his head. “I wouldn’t put a label on my beliefs, and I’m definitely not a member of some political party. Nowadays true ideology has vanished, replaced by fear and fantasy. The right wing wants corporate control and a return to a past that never existed. The left wing wants government control and a future that will never exist. Both groups lose sight of the essential question: How can the individual speak and think and create freely? New ideas are the only evolutionary force that will save us from destruction.”
“Say whatever you want. I’m not telling you who hired me.”
“Of course, Mr. Underwood. So why don’t we go outside? It’s a better view.”
Thomas propped the screen door open with a brick, then pushed me out onto the porch. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was touching the tops of the trees. All the colors that surrounded us—the forest ferns with their curling tips, the dead leaves lying on the wet ground, the blue sails of a whirligig windmill—looked darker, heavier, as the day fell toward night.