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CHAPTER FOUR

Wednesday, October 14

Eddie Druller was scared. Actually, one could say he was terrified. He had made a big mistake but it was only now, when it was too late, that he realized that. And all because of the Chink. He had given him the idea. “Why not help Clyde yourself, offering him the Whellers’ heads on a plate?” The Chink was gone now and Druller suspected Thanatos had something to do with his disappearance. Had he done him in? He shuddered. When Clyde had called him saying they had to meet immediately he sounded kind, friendly even. But the young computer specialist was a smart guy, he had detected a shade of threat at the other end of the line. Anyway, he couldn’t help it, he had to go to the meeting. But why had Thanatos insisted he bring his own car? Druller, who was a bad driver, rarely used it. And then the clothes. Why should he bring an extra set of clothes? He shuddered at the thought that Thanatos might be mad at him. For he knew he could make a man regret even the day he was born.

Maybe the good news he would bring him would make up for the blunder. Two days before he had managed a unique performance. He had gathered all the data on Sedin and Nevisky. Thanatos had been asking for them for a long time. How he had managed to do it was the result of three weeks’ work. He had managed to break into one of Langley’s data banks. He had broken passwords, bypassed areas where the user’s retina was scanned and had finally succeeded. Bad luck, though. On his way back he had touched a cyberbuoy and the alarm had gone off. He had even burst out laughing when a message had appeared on the screen:

You have entered a top secret data base. Leave your computer on and report to the nearest police station.

He hadn’t worried too much, though. He had quickly planted several ‘worms’ in different files, a ‘Trojan,’ and even a few ‘nukers’ just to keep the CIA specialists busy. Apart from that, he had broken in by getting on Pipeline Internet and returned on Colorado Supernet. It was setting the route back that had taken him three weeks. He had browsed from server to server completing a complicated route of over fifty hosts. No way they could trace him!

Besides the information on the two CIA agents he would also bring the tapes with Daniel’s voice that Thanatos had asked for. He had made them easily by slightly modifying an HASP-SIAP program. Then the work on the ‘Island’ was progressing. It would be ready in three or four weeks. He was hoping the news would gladden Thanatos.

Edward Druller had been working for the Daschner brothers since 1990. He had never been a member of their organization, ‘Rebels of the Light,’ he had been just a very well paid associate. At first he had organized for them a complicated network of banking transfers by means of which the money went from Thanatos to his brother. Then they had used him to gather information on their potential victims. Gradually he had managed to bring the organization into the twentieth century. And he had been paid royally for that, which helped him finance some projects of his own.

In the world of computer science Eddie Druller was regarded as one of the masters of the fifth generation of computers. He was on friendly terms with Steve Chen and Jobs. Chen had even tried to put him on his team. Great Bill’s emissaries from Redmond hadn’t kept him waiting either. But Druller was a loner; he didn’t like having to deal with other people’s ideas too often.

‘Rebels of the Light’ had purchased two Cray-Y-MPs and a graphic station and put them at his disposal. One of the Crays and the Silicon Graphics ordinator were in a villa in Cedarhurst, the hiding place of the organization. The Crays had been purchased for the benefit of a medical society and it had taken a lot of skill to make them lose their tracks.

Eddie didn’t like working in the same place for too long. He had been an Internet system administrator several times. A few years before he had even worked for NASA on the ‘Dante’ project. In 1996, Thanatos, his own master now, had decided to start working on the ‘Island.’ And, for one year and a half, Druller had taken on a job with New Leaf Technology, a company in Silicon Valley specialized in creating virtual reality. He had even managed to create his own virtual software, much improved, derived from the 3-D Studio. Now the work on the ‘Island’ took most of his time making him want to outdo himself. He was hoping hard Thanatos wouldn’t harm him, at least not before he finished that work of art.

These were the thoughts crossing his mind while he was sitting in his Ford Escort, waiting for younger Daschner. He could hardly hear the right door open.

“Hi, Eddie!”

“Hello, Clyde,” Eddie answered in a stifled voice.

“Any news?” Thanatos asked in a robot-like voice, lacking in inflections, which didn’t allow for any doubt.

“Plenty of good news, Clyde!” Druller said, livening up a bit. “For instance, I’ve managed to get all the data on Sedin and Nevisky. Video recordings, the works.”

“Where did you get them from?” Thanatos sounded interested.

“I can assure you it wasn’t from a website,” Eddie grinned. “I broke into one of Langley’s data bases.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Thanatos panicked. “Now, when the FBI computer crime department has just started the Cyber Strike program? What if they find you?”

“They won’t. I’ve secured a complicated retreat through a lot of servers. Besides, I’ve left markers and a few ‘toys’ in files other than Nevisky’s and Sedin’s.”

“What was in the marked files?”

“Information on the Groom Dry Lake base.”

“The one in Area 51?”

“That’s right. And some more about the research at the Papoose Dry Lake base, an even more secret area known under the code name S4. They’ll think some internaut’s managed to break into their system to enrich his own file on Dreamland.”

“What if they manage to track you down anyway?” Thanatos insisted.

“Then they’ll get to a Net Café in Chicago where they’ll find a false signature file and a logo: a fist with the middle finger up,” Druller answered, giggling.

“Anything else?”

Eddie handed him two packages wrapped in white paper. “That’s a DAT, a digital recorder,” he explained pointing to the smaller pack. “Inside there’s a micro tape with the messages you requested, recorded in Daniel’s voice. In the bigger package there’s the DVD-ROM unit. You’ll be getting the disks in a month or so.”

“How are things going with the ‘Island’?”

“Pretty good. The CGI is complete. I’ve made it together with a disciple of Brumbaer’s, the king of digital painting. Most of the residents are also finished. I can assure you nothing this advanced has ever been created before.”

“Anything else, Eddie?”

“What else?” Druller asked as his heart shrank.

“Well, I see I don’t have to worry about your hacking at all. They can’t track you down, can they?” Thanatos smiled sweetly and went on, “Haven’t you done anything else these days by any chance? Yesterday, for instance. Something that might give you away for good; something that’s out of your range. Something you shouldn’t have done anything about.”

Thanatos took out his Beretta and gave it a shine with the hem of his coat. Druller’s heart dropped down straight to his shoes.

“Please, believe me, Clyde! It wasn’t my fault. It was the Chink’s. He suggested I hire hit men for the senator and his niece. So I hired two guys from the Genovese clan to do it.”

“A wicked whisper lies in the fool’s ear,” Thanatos whispered to himself. The Chink, then. So he hadn’t been wrong about it. The trace of regret he had felt for killing him disappeared. “You’ve made a big mistake, Eddie. You’re finished. They’ll start looking for you in no time. They’ve got all the chances in the world to find you. And I can’t stand that. I’m about to start hunting and I do want to have my back covered.”

“But I meant well, Clyde,” Druller said imploringly.

Thanatos took a deep breath. He could smell Eddie’s fear. He could almost hear the cold drops of sweat coming out of his pores.

“I’m sorry, Eddie, but I can’t take any chances,” the terrorist said as he kept playing with his gun. “Edward Druller must die!”

“You can’t kill me! No, of course not!” Eddie said trying to muster some courage. “The work on the ‘Island’ won’t be finished. Without me the ‘Island’ dies, Clyde, believe me!”

“No, of course I couldn’t do that, Eddie. First of all because you’re my only friend and I’d miss you a lot.”

Druller felt grateful for that last sentence even if he realized it was only a lie. “Then why did you mention death?” he asked.

“Because I had to. I didn’t say I was going to kill you. Only that I have to stage your death. Meanwhile you’ll lock yourself up in the Cedarhurst house and you’ll keep at it until you’ve finished the DVD-ROMs and sent them to me. How long did you say it was before I get them?”

“Three or four weeks,” Druller promised solemnly.

“You’ve got ten days, Eddie! That’s all. Not a minute longer,” the other man ordered.

“You can’t ask me to work that fast! I’d only get a constant headache and mess up the Cray too.”

“I don’t care! Take an aspirin, give one to your computer, and step on it, get everything done on time,” Thanatos cut his lamentation short. “Let’s talk about something else now. Tell me, have you spent any time in hospital in the past few years? Have you had any injures, anything that might ask for a bone X-ray?”

“No!” the computer specialist said, not knowing what the other was getting at. “I’m in perfect shape. The only doctor I see from time to time is my dentist.”

“Give me his address,” Thanatos ordered. He wrote it down and went on asking Eddie some more questions. “How close are you and your dentist?”

“I don’t think he’d recognize me if he saw me outside his office.”

“What did he do to you?”

“Well, he pulled out one of my teeth, dressed a bicuspid, that’s about all.”

“Right. Now, tell me. Have you e-mailed the instructions to the others?”

“Yes, I did that yesterday.”

“Have you got the acknowledgment?”

“Yes,” Druller lied a little.

“Have you destroyed the CD-ROM with the instructions?”

“Yes.” This time Druller lied through his teeth. Actually, it was only half a lie for no one could use that disk except him.

“OK, then. Now you’ll have to give me the keys to the Ford and the extra set of clothes you’ve brought. Go hide in Cedarhurst! Don’t leave the place under any circumstances. You’ll be officially dead. And remember: I want the first version of the ‘Island’ within ten days!”

* * * * * * *

He succeeded, without much effort, in breaking into the dentist’s office. It didn’t have any security system. But then again, why should it? To his satisfaction, Druller’s dentist was a fastidious old man who didn’t trust computer technology very much. The computer on the receptionist’s desk was the first thing Thanatos checked. He found they only used it for making appointments. The files, the dental X-rays, and the other data on his patients were in another room whose walls were covered by ring-books. There Thanatos began his meticulous search. First he found Druller’s file which he browsed. It contained the personal data of the patient, his dental work and two X-rays.

“Let’s see,” Thanatos whispered. “An extraction of tooth 17, a metal filling of the left premolar and periodic detartration.”

He also saw a small X-ray of tooth 17 and a big one of the mandible. He put down the Druller file and started looking through the others. That took him more than three-quarters of an hour. He chose three files and carried them to the waiting room. It was a small room with comfortable sofas that reminded him of the shrink’s office he had seen for some time. The ‘big confrontation’ was drawing near and that was his way of horsewhipping his cautiousness. He had brought his mind to Dr. McGerr’s office and offered it to him, “Come on, doc. Dissect it! Let me see what you can do!”

He had seen McGerr on a television show. He seemed a smart guy, a worthy opponent. This thing had started out as a battle of the wits and ended in a bluff. McGerr wasn’t nearly as bright as he had thought him to be. A regular shrink who, whenever a patient came to him with a problem, he helped him picture a worse one so as to keep him busy and make him forget what he’d come there for. He would go and defy him one more time. For the last time.

He forgot McGerr and focused on the three files he was holding in his hand. All of them contained the same dental work as Eddie’s. He looked through them again.Dan Levery, fifty-five. Too bad. He was sorry to give up his file. He was old and Thanatos knew very well that forensics could tell age by the bones.

There were two left: Phil Drumond, thirty-six, and Buck Dole, thirty-two. Both of them fit. Both their files mentioned the word ‘Single.’ So much the better. “Let’s see. Phil or Buck?” He closed his eyes and then decided. Phil would go to the ‘Island.’ He would keep Buck alive, just in case. He wrote down their addresses. Drumond lived in Yorkville, on 77th Street. He took his X-rays and replaced them with Druller’s. He then put all four files back. The only thing left for him now was to take a trip to Yorkville.