Veil (24 page)

Hunter buckled over with laughter that turned
maniacal. He menacingly rubbed his hands together before he typed
his response.

“I could do all kinds of gay shit all over
you and there’s nothing you could do to stop me.”

Brock looked at Hunter, then back at the
screen and slowly typed, “I could pee on you.” He glanced at
Hunter, down at his own crotch, back up at Hunter
,
and then raised his eyebrows a few times.

Hunter got up, tousled Brock’s hair and said
out loud, “Speaking of pissing, I’ve needed to go since we left the
airport.”

When Hunter finished and returned to Brock’s
childhood bedroom, Brock was humming and the monitor was filled
with two words.

“Tell me!”

“Oh shit! You still have no idea what is
going on, do you?”

“No, asshole.” was Brock’s response.

Neither of them could bring themselves to
leave the house until the Tsay home phone rang again the following
day. By that point Suren wanted to dismiss the call as some kind of
joke or ruse
,
but Ken argued that the
person possessed too many facts and said too many of the right
things.

“Look at the whole ‘V’ thing,” he argued.
“Obviously that was about Veil. I mean come on.”

“That doesn’t mean the person—whoever they
are—can or will help us. In fact, all it’s done is stop us. We
haven’t … you haven’t done anything since you got that call. You
haven’t even been to the lab.”

“I have everything, Suren,” he rebutted,
nearly ten hours after the first call. “I have all the research
sitting there, ready to go—ready to build. All I have left to do is
buy a few more pieces of equipment, get the mainframe set
up
,
and then make the damn thing. All I
have left to do is build it.”

“All you have left to do?” she mocked.
“Right, all you have left to do is perform some miracle magic trick
without the magician here to show you how it’s done.”

Suren and Ken managed to have four
conversations like that between the time they received the first
call and the time Suren’s phone rang that second time, exactly
twenty-four hours later. Ken thought the timing meant something. It
indicated planning. It meant there was a method to it and showed
that there was forethought.

“This is it,” Ken whispered after the first
ring. He nodded at Suren, who already had her hand on the receiver.
“This is legit.”

Suren nodded back and answered the phone.

“Hello?”

Before she finished her greeting, the
computerized voice already started.

“There is someone on the inside who was
brought in because the military could not understand your husband’s
work. This person is on your side, not the military’s. The military
doesn’t know that.”

“Our si—” Suren started to ask but the voice
interrupted her.

“Please,” the voice began but then hesitated
before it continued, that time with longer pauses between each
word, which caused it to sound more robotic, like it did during the
first call, “don’t interrupt. I can only communicate this way and
to avoid delays
,
I’ve already typed all
the information I need you to have. Ok?”

“I understand,” Suren replied.

The computerized voice continued and its pace
returned to normal.

“This person wants to get the information
back in your hands. The government stole it from your husband and
this person does not agree with what they did. This person is deep
inside and can’t risk being exposed. I’m going to get information
back and forth, but we have to do it all quickly. We can’t risk
multiple communications. It increases the risk. This person fears
for their life after what the military did to your husband. This
person would like to find a way to get the research back to you. Do
you understand?”

“Ummm … ummm, hold on please,” Suren
responded. Ken was signaling to her and trying to tell her what to
say. Suren became flustered. “Actually hold on … here … you need to
be talking to someone else.” She handed the phone to Ken.

Ken was startled.

“Uh … my name is Dr. Ken Wise, I was Jin
Tsay’s partner up until he contracted for this project. I can
understand Jin’s work. What I wanted to say—what I was trying to
have Jin’s wife tell you—is that we already have Jin’s work. We
already have a copy of it.”

There was a pause and then the voice slowly
responded, “I know who you are. You already have the research?”

“Yes, there was a copy of it. Actually, I
probably have more information than your person has. I have notes
and other details that weren’t in the official documents.” Ken knew
he was taking a big risk and placing a lot of faith in the person,
but it felt right. It felt legitimate. He believed the person.

After another pause, the voice continued,
“Ok, I will have to talk to my contact and see how we should
proceed. We were not aware you had the research already and that
there might be additional information. I’m not prepared to discuss
further until I talk to them. Do you understand?”

“I understand. Let this person know I have it
all. I’m willing to work with this person. I’ve been working on it
alone. We want to do the same thing. We want to take it back from
those murderous thieves by releasing it out into the world and
sharing Veil with everyone. They killed Jin. We know that. So we
want to do this. We’re ready to do this. All your person has to do
is let us know how.”

There was silence, that time longer than the
last, and then, “I will let the person know. Please stand by and
don’t do anything. I will contact you again in twenty-four
hours.”

The call ended abruptly. Ken put the phone
back on its base and walked to the kitchen. Another twenty-four
hours was going to be torture. He needed some wine.

“Well?” Suren asked and raised her voice.
“Hello?”

“Oh,” Ken jumped. He forgot Suren couldn’t
hear the voice from the other end of the call since Ken held the
receiver up to his ear, unlike Suren who held it away from her head
some to ensure Ken could hear the call as well. “They’re going to
call back in twenty-four hours. They didn’t know we had the
research. They have to talk to their ummm … ummm … person. They’re
going to talk to their person and then call us back. So another
twenty-four hours.”

“Great,” she sighed.

“I know, right?” he agreed. “I need a drink.
At least now we know when this person is going to call. So we don’t
have to sit by the phone and wait. We can do other stuff.”

Suren tilted her head forward, rolled her
eyes up and looked at Ken.

Ken snickered and acknowledged Suren’s
incredulousness.

“Not that we’re going to be able to do
anything else,” he added in response to her expression. “I just
meant at least this time now we know how long we’re going to have
to wait. That’s got to count for something.”

“That counts for crap,” she quipped and
circled around him to beat him to the wine.

After a few glasses, they did agree on one
thing: at least they knew how long they had before they needed to
sober up.

Eleven days after that second call to Ken and
Suren, Hunter explained the Veil technique to Brock within
approximately forty minutes. Afterwards
,
Brock sat quietly and blankly stared straight ahead. It wasn’t that
he didn’t understand what Veil was; it was that he was trying to
understand what it meant. The whole trip went from James Bond to
Total Recall
in forty minutes. Brock thought about all the
possibilities such a technology would open up.

“Do you realize what all this could change?”
he typed.

“Actually, I haven’t thought that much about
it,” Hunter admitted. “All I’ve been able to think about is how to
get out of this alive. The way I look at it, especially after what
they did to Tsay, I could be dead either way. Help them, dead.
Don’t help them, dead. Seems the only way not to end up dead is by
totally screwing them over and somehow getting away with it.
Running away and never looking back.”

“Somehow…” Brock echoed on the screen with an
uneasy look. The thought of ever losing Hunter never occurred to
him.

“I know, I know. Don’t think I haven’t
thought about it. It’s all I think about. There are so many risks
and that’s why I’ve done everything exactly how I’ve done, and why
I’m putting other safeties into place,” Hunter assured him. Brock
started to type but Hunter already knew what his friend was going
to say
,
so he interrupted. “And don’t
worry about what those safeties are. The less you
,
know the better. I will have to move quickly and
once I make my move, that has to be it. Once I start this in
motion
,
we have to go from point A and not
stop until we reach Tsay’s wife and partner at point B with Veil in
our hands.”

“When?” Brock asked.

“Tomorrow—and that’s why I needed you here. I
can’t do it without using you.”

Hunter placed his hand on Brock’s thigh.

“So why?” Brock typed but then erased it and
retyped his question, “So how?”

The third call came precisely twenty-four
hours after the second, precisely when the person said it
would.

“Hello?”

Based on his last conversation with Hunter
over the Terminal, after that second call with Suren and Ken, Brock
prepared a script for the third call.

“Does the additional research you possess
change the basic function of the technology in any way, or is it
only additional programming?”

“I’d say additional programming.”

There was a slight pause and then, “In that
case, the prototype will be designed before we attempt to obtain
the research from you. When the design is complete, we will have to
obtain that research to incorporate the additional programming. The
person would like to do as much work as possible while still on the
inside
,
in order to use the military’s
resources and to decrease delay in distributing it once they make
their move. Any delay would increase the risk of the military
tracking down this person, you
,
and the
technology before there is a chance to distribute it. Do you
understand?”

“Yes.”

“This person believes the development of a
prototype on their end is about two weeks from basic functionality.
You will be contacted again within two weeks. Contact will always
be at this precise time of the day. If the device is not ready by
then, you will still be contacted exactly two weeks from today to
reschedule. What you need to do within those two weeks is prepare a
lab that can support the immediate development of the device based
on the prototype schematics we will provide when the time comes, in
case the device can’t be safely removed from the military lab. Can
you do that?”