The Fourth Eye

Copyright 1999 Clinton Smith

The author asserts his moral rights in the work.

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First published by Hazard Press 1999

Second revised edition published as an eBook by Buzzword Books 2011

P.O. Box 7, Cammeray 2062

Australia

Buzzwordbooks.com

This edition published by Buzzword Books at Smashwords 2012

Original cover illustration by John Richards

The Fourth Eye

by

Clinton Smith

Other thrillers by Clinton Smith at Smashwords.com include:

The God Game

Project Thunder

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter-41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

1. SYDNEY: FRIDAY 5.50pm

There were no security guards in the foyer. It was a warning easy to ignore. Even for a man with perfect recall—a wary man who never got involved.

If he'd just backed out of the building, none of it would have happened.

He'd never have taken the lift...

...to the floor that wasn't there.

Cloud shrouded the taller city buildings, absorbed the fetid air they expelled, was polluted by fumes from ten thousand crawling cars. Soon rain would drench the streets, make them mirrors of taillights in the night, and the evening's futilities would begin. Not quite six, yet almost dark.

Blake hurried to the building, a tall man in a modish leather coat, sheltering a large envelope under his arm as he moved against the home going crowd. He disliked the city now—thrusting people violent with their lives who demanded their space on the pavement, their inner space sour with regrets. His eyes avoided, as always, number plates, faces, signs, trying to limit information that, once received, could never be erased.

The building was still open, foyer deserted, security desk unmanned. Odd, he thought. There was always someone there.

He hurried to the inner core where express lifts served floors thirty-five and up. DFK Investments was on the 40th, a floor above brokers J. L. Wain. He knew the names and floors of all firms here. Information was his plague.

A lift pinged. He entered its cocoon. Padded blankets draped its sides. It cooed, 'Welcome to the Arcon Complex.' He pressed 40, waited for the rush.

His gut was dragged toward his shoes as the lift rocketed to 39. It slowed. He waited for the recorded announcement, 'Floor 40. DFK Investments.'

The message never came. In the archive of his mind, the change jarred.

The doors slid open—to gloom. Not forty or thirty-nine. A dark landscape of computer terminals that looked like a trading floor.

The lift indicator was blank, the lights behind the buttons off. He pressed one. Another. Dead. What was happening here?

The doors slid back together. He prodded buttons.

Nothing.

Blake stabbed the OPEN DOORS button. The doors shuddered and parted again.

The floor was an expanse, undivided and unlit. Twilight from distant windows made the terminals tombstones in the dusk. He was marooned in this graveyard. He got out, annoyed at losing time. There'd be a fire-stair, but one-way handles could mean a walk to the ground.

The doors closed behind him, cutting off the reassuring light. He walked around the service core.

The door to the stairs wasn't there. The exit and surround was blocked with welded steel sheet. There were sensors attached to the metal—like the kind on safes in banks.

He hurried back to the lift, reached for the call button. Not there. Just a red square painted on the wall. He touched it. None of this made sense.

The indicator above the door showed that the lift was on the floor above. He heard it swish past down the shaft as the readout changed to 39. It continued to the ground.

He was on a floor that didn't exist!

Something moved.

His shirt felt suddenly damp. He scanned the silhouette of shapes, called, 'Hello?'

The VDUs came on as if the floor were waking up. The fluorescent strips above him pinged, flickered. The office blazed. He saw a woman near the window staring at a screen.

He walked toward her. 'I'm trying to get out of here.'

She didn't look up. She wore a black jumper, black jeans, had narrow hips, strong limbs. Her jumper, pushed back to her elbows, exposed muscles so defined they seemed barely covered by skin. He'd photographed dancers with bodies like hers.

Contact prints cascading through his vision, pensive bodies, agile limbs—images as random as a loose-paged file, dropped in his brain.

Sometimes it came like this, as a lifetime might assail a drowning man. The window that opened in his brain, presenting the past as present, came more often when he was upset. He dragged his mind back, aware the woman had glanced at him, looked away.

She had some device on the desk with a cable that connected to the terminal. Its LCD readout had become a numerical blur. An industrial backpack vacuum cleaner lay beside her on the floor, near a rag-stuffed plastic bucket with a duster projecting from one side. But she wasn't the contract cleaner. They didn't wear surgical gloves.

The screen read: ACCESS DENIED. ENTER KEY WITHIN FIFTEEN SECONDS.

He said, 'I got off on the wrong floor and I can't get the lift back.'

She just watched the numbers stream. The box seemed to be feeding in data. Abruptly the readout stopped and he heard small beeps. The screen did a razz, displayed: PRIMARY KEY INVOKED.

She stiffened and keyed in numbers from a pad. The screen flashed through a series of plans. It continued until 130 plans, filled with words, figures, insets, had been through. He knew how many there were, even at that subliminal speed. It stopped and text came up: INDIVIDUAL SCANNING DENIED then PRINTOUT/DOWNLOAD REQUIRES SECONDARY KEY. ENTER WITHIN 30 SECONDS.

Her fingers attacked the keyboard. The screen scrolled figures in a blur. His eyes didn't waver until the four columns had gone through.

The message repeated: PRINTOUT/DOWNLOAD REQUIRES SECONDARY KEY. 30 MINUS 10 SEC ELAPSED.

A countdown to the time lock? Her eyes were fixed on the screen.

30 MINUS 20 SEC.

It wasn't going to work.

She lifted the cleaner, shrugged into the harness, took the hose in her left hand, stared back at the screen without hope.

30 MINUS 30 SEC. KEY-IN TIME EXCEEDED. ACCESS DENIED. SECURITY ALERTED. MANDATORY SYSTEM SHUTDOWN. Beeps went off across the room and he heard a distant alarm.

He said, 'No banana?'

She didn't blink.

She pulled one hose extension from the cleaner. From the centre of the remaining pipe, a metal probe projected, like the tongue of a mechanical snake. She felt behind her and opened a panel on what appeared to be the cleaner barrel, exposing a toggle switch and LED light that were clearly not factory installed. She flicked the switch. The light came on. He heard the faintest hum.

For the first time she looked directly at him. She had the eyes of a war-conditioned youth. They dismissed him as irrelevant. 'Stay behind me if you want to reproduce.'

She moved along an aisle, directing the probe at the equipment in the room. He kept his distance, not wanting to cook. 'What about the security alert?'

'Security's not alert. It's unconscious.' Slight accent. Hard to pick.

He followed her, absorbing everything—the positioning of pencils in a mug, the unusual phones with their extended displays, the pattern and tones of the carpet, the high tread on her black rubber heels, the ballet of her every movement indelibly recorded—turns, bends, steps...

She scanned the entire floor systematically, making sweeps with the cleaner wand. The alarm stopped when they reached half way. Again silence and the dead, muffled air.

She swung the pipe to each side like an acolyte with incense. He watched her. 'What is this place?'

She didn't answer for some time. 'They can read your life off those screens.' A toneless statement from some private hell.

'So you're slaying Big Brother?'

Again, the chasm between the answer and the question. 'This floor's a terminal with a dedicated line.'

'So why not do it to the mainframe?'

'Me and what battalion?'

The workstations blinked out in sections until all screens were blank, as if blown. When they'd circled the core, she switched the contraption off and replaced the decoy fittings.

'If you can't wipe stuff, why wreck a terminal?'

'Down-time.'

She uncoupled the box-like device, placed it in the bucket, covered it with rags. She removed her gloves with a snap and stuffed them in her jeans. She lifted the bucket, adjusted her harness, became a cleaner, someone to disregard.

He followed her to the lift. 'Can you let me out of here now?' He was still clutching the trannies—the ones he'd promised his client for tonight.

She reached into the bucket and pulled out something dirty-green—an automatic scratched around the barrel. She pointed it at his thigh.

'Bloody hell.' His lunch turned to liquid.

'Back up—or I drill your leg.'

He reversed two steps from the lift door. 'Look, I'm nothing to do with this.'

She pulled a blank smartcard from her pocket, touched it to the square on the wall. Far off, he heard a lift start up. Blood pounding in his chest, he held up the stiffened envelope. 'I was just delivering this upstairs. The lift dumped me and I couldn't get it back.'

Her eyes moved to his face but the gun still pointed directly at his thigh. 'You don't have to convince me. Hard men don't yell out, Hello.'

His became acutely aware of his leg as if it were pleading for protection. 'So why can't I go down?'

'If they've run a desk check you'll get zapped.'

'I could get zapped here.'

'Down there, you'll stop a burst.'

He couldn't take his eyes off the gun. The hole in the end looked like a tunnel. 'So how do I get out?' Sweat ran down the back of his shirt.

'You weren't supposed to get in.' she shrugged. 'Ring the police.'

'On wrecked phones?'

'I won't have got them all. Wait ten minutes before you ring.'

'Why?'

'I like to breathe.'

'And I'll get lumbered for what you've done.'

'They'll know you're a stray. You'll survive.'

'So I'm supposed to help you get away?'

'If you want to know how to use the phones...'

'I've used a phone before.'

'Not like these.'

'Okay.' He flashed his palms at her—submissive body language. 'Ten minutes.' Despite his fright, his photographer's eye, from long habit, registered her pose—legs slightly apart, the gun an extension of her hand, the rough canvas of the shrouded lift behind...

She said, 'They're digital vocorders. To switch to duplex crypto mode you insert a smart card, enter a PIN. Or they could be network keyed. They're designed for use on ISDN—but these don't use that network so you'll get out.'

The padded box opened behind her. She lifted the bucket, backed into the lift. 'There are five modes. Clear speech, authentication, speech encrypted, clear data, data encrypted. Find one that's up, then fiddle with the buttons. When you get clear speech mode you can use it on a normal line.' The gun pointed at his thigh until the closing doors severed the threat.

He slumped into the nearest chair, wet with sweat beneath the leather coat. Jeez. She could have shot him. Now she'd fed him to the wolves.

He waited like a threatened animal. Four minutes. Five.

Finally he searched for a phone. The first fifty were dead. He wondered what kind of device could do so much damage so fast. High-intensity radio frequency? It had to be classified equipment.

He lifted handsets, pressed buttons until he found a phone he could use. A button prompted the words: CLEAR SPEECH. He dialled 000 and asked for police.

He told them what had happened without mentioning the woman. The thing was confusing enough. The operator transferred him to a detective and he repeated the story again. The detective said, 'Your name is Blake?'

'Colin Blake.'

'Driver's licence number?'

'Why do you want my...'

'Verification. Licence number please?'

He gave it.

'All right, Mr Blake. Be there soon.'

'I haven't told you where I am yet.'

'We know where you are.' It was a threat.

It took them thirteen and a half minutes. It was nothing like he'd expected.

He'd expected uniformed cops with the standard intimidating swagger cooked up by academy instructors, seasoned by arrogance developed on the job—thick waisted bovine men, belts heavy with the functional black Glocks, two 15-round clips, Bendix-King walkie-talkies, baton, handcuff pouch...

As the lift opened, the dogs came first. Their growls deafened him as they leapt. One, all eyes and teeth, dragged him down by his right arm. He felt raw pain as the other clamped his ankle, bit.

On his way down, he saw men diving from the lift. Sub-machine-guns—fat, dirty black. Red beams of laser sights. They hit the carpet. Rolled apart. A yell. More leapt out covering their flanks.

The next pair stayed behind the doorframes, cross-angled weapons trained on each quadrant.

They wore black coveralls, balaclavas—eyes and noses white blobs. Packages on left shoulders strapped to slug-stopping woven mesh.

As he hit the floor, a command. Dogs pulled back. A boot on his spine. His face was flat against carpet, his arm twisted back.

The team had spread into the room. Clinks of equipment as they moved. Dogs panting around the floor.

He tried to reach his savaged ankle. 'Oh, Jeez.'

'Shut your face.' The man pinning him almost dislocated his arm.

He lay there for perhaps a minute until someone yelled, 'Secure.'

His arm was released. He sat up. Assault rifle flash-guards in his face. This wasn't the Armed Hold-up Squad. Who were they?

He grasped his ankle, rocked. Blood on his hand. His coat sleeve was ripped but had saved his arm. His other arm felt torn off. The dogs, leashed now, panted hot breath, cocked their heads, ears high.

'Stand up.'

He painfully got up.

'Arms spread on the desk. Do it.'

He did it. They kicked his feet apart—kicked the injured leg. He winced.

They frisked him, took his wallet, felt inside his pockets, taking everything. He tried to turn, was shoved back.

'Maintain the position.'

He obeyed.

A pause.

He didn't move.

Someone drawled, 'You're lucky to be alive.'

2. SYDNEY: FRIDAY 6.55pm

Their van was in the basement, a 12-wheeler with twin-steer. On the side was the escutcheon of the NSW Police. In the back, under benches, were wire baskets for gas canisters, grenades. Aft of the cabin was a communications booth with full rack and visual displays.

He rode jammed between his captors. He felt sure they weren't police. All still wore balaclavas. He never saw a face. No one spoke during the journey except once, when he glanced at the roof, at a bazooka spring-clipped above him. One man said menacingly, 'Try it.'

They drove into another basement, prodded him up bare concrete stairs. The place was empty—just partitions, closed louvers on the windows, phone connections sprouting from the sub-floor as if desks had only recently been moved.

In the end wall was a metal door with a sliding bolt on the outside.

He looked at the nearest face—blank eyes framed by cloth. 'So what's the charge? You can't...'

They opened the door and shoved him in. Behind him, the bolt rattled home.

He was alone in a bare room that smelt of linoleum and bleach. On the far wall, above a chair, was a streak that looked like blood.

Here, he couldn't even hear traffic. He stared around. Dual strip lights with the plastic cover gone, a flickering tube, end dark. Chilled air blowing from a duct. And the single chair.

He sat on the chair, peeled down his blood-soaked sock, bound his mauled ankle with a handkerchief, pulled the sock back to hold it in place. He drew his coat close around him, leaned his head against the wall. He shut his eyes, shivered with the cold. She'd said they'd know he was a stray.

An hour passed. The scrape of the bolt, loud in the empty room. The man who entered wore a tracksuit and expensive running shoes. He was short, perhaps fifty, almost bald with darting eyes and his patchy grey close-cropped beard looked moth-eaten. He said, 'Colin Blake?'

'You've got my wallet.'

'And licence number. Gets you by the balls. And the smartcard. Informative. You claim you were caught in a lift?'

'It dumped me and wouldn't come back.'

'It doesn't stop at that floor.'

'So how come I was there?'

'It was hot-wired by someone clever. Are you clever, Mr Blake?' The man's clipped voice seemed linked to an even faster brain.

'Who are you?' Blake said. 'You're not police.'

The man watched him but said nothing, using silence as a tool, as if this were a routine for which he'd developed effective techniques.

Blake said, 'Who do you work for?' Text of an empowerment manual chattered through him:

Do not be diverted. Parry all arguments or refusals and continue to repeat the question.

'You have an interesting family, Mr Blake. I refer to your brother.'

Christ, he thought. 'It's nothing to do with my brother.'

'That's what we need to establish.'

Two of the troopers came in carrying a trestle bed with rolled-up bedding. They dumped it in the corner.

The little man smiled at Blake's look of dismay. 'Get his watch.'

While one man stood in front of him, ready to shove him back if he moved, the other grabbed his right arm and slid the bracelet of the Tag over his hand

'Routine measure. You'll get it back.' The small man's hand moved to the top of his head, checking the teased strands of hair were equidistant. 'If it's any consolation, you've forced me to work over the weekend. But you won't enjoy it either. It's a cold room.'

'I'm entitled to make a phone call.'

'Life isn't like TV.'

'Cut the crap. I'm freezing and you've buggered my leg.'

The other's deadpan stare. 'I don't trust coincidences, Blake. I'd say you know a lot more than you're telling us.' He left and locked the metal door behind him.

Blake limped to the door and listened, could hear people moving around outside. He went back to the bed and swathed his body in the blankets. His brother? Christ? Now he'd involved Alan too.

The light stayed on. He had no idea of the time. Soon he was huddled on the thin mattress, trying to keep warm. Then he needed to urinate. There was no-where to go. He'd barely limped to the far wall and unzipped before a trooper entered with a metal bucket containing a roll of toilet paper. He clanged it down and left. Blake removed the roll and relieved himself. He could see no cameras but they were watching him. How?

He must have slept, was woken by movement in the room and found a tray on the floor beside him. It held a mug of unsweetened tea and a plate with scrambled eggs on toast. He gulped the food down. After he'd eaten he yelled at the door, then, muttering, crawled back beneath the covers. His clothes were sticky with cold sweat and his ankle felt infected. How long had he been in here?

The indeterminable hours were marked by more trays of nondescript food before the little man reappeared. This time he wore a turtle-necked sweater and slacks, carried a chair with a writing arm and had papers in a plastic-covered file.

'Good evening.' He placed the chair down as if he felt it might damage the floor.

Blake sat up on the bed, eyes bleary, feeling drugged.

The other perched on the school chair and thumbed his papers. Two sheets stuck but he didn't lick his finger, persevering until they parted. He was that most dangerous of men, a patient one.

'Here we are.' His finger marked the spot. 'Colin Blake. Thirty-four. Unmarried. Photographer with assets close to $500,000. No detectable outside funding. No record with the Covert Tax Branch.' He peered up, sharp eyed. 'You're either an early success or seriously unofficial.'

Blake said nothing, cold right through him.

The man glanced down again and a strand of his hair slipped forward. He coaxed it back with practised fingers. 'Left $200,000 in shares by your late father. Well regarded in your profession but choosy about assignments. Two exhibitions. Artistic pretensions, have we?'

'Who are you?'

He smiled without humour and returned his attention to the file. 'Subject to left ear infections. Otherwise, health excellent. Heart, cholesterol, liver function, platelets normal. Perfect eyesight. A fortunate man.'

Blake struggled to be alert. 'Now you. Name and position?'

'Name's Doyle. Just a public servant.' It sounded like the standard evasion technique for diverting curiosity to resentment. The man shuffled papers, one leg jiggling. '...Studio at Glebe. Mixed share portfolio covered by... deep out-of-the-money put options?' A quizzical grin. 'A cautious investor indeed.'

'Jeez...'

'Dumped by a lift, you say? A spiked lift in a classified area. Two guards knocked out by stun darts. A security system down...' He stared at Blake with cold eyes, then addressed the side wall. 'He's good.' He looked back. 'Got your ducks in a row.'

'Cut the crap.' Blake squinted at the man. There was no easy way out of this. Antagonism didn't work. Perhaps cooperating would.

'The night you were in that building, there was an attempt to get into a mainframe. Not some dictionary-based password program. Not random data. A structured attempt to access files—with selective information fed at speed from an electronic source.'

'I'm no computer freak. I use an old forty meg for invoices.'

A dry smile. 'The first line of defence is the hardest. Crack that and other links think you're authorised.' He stood up and rocked on his toes as if maintaining what height he could, a man with big intentions hating his small frame. 'But you weren't dealing with a bucket-shop beige toaster. You struck something with the equivalent of a DSNET line, alphanumerics changed daily, encryption messages, link analysis, biometric confirmations. It checks all log-ins after hours and all acceptance failures, transferring abnormals to disk with source-detection appended.' He smoothed the strands on his scalp, confirming he was miserable about his hair. 'And if you'd cracked it, you'd still be stuffed. Because there are secondary sinks—parameter mazes, loops... As for top classifications—there's not just a multiple firewall but an air gap.'

'Talk English.'

'Crack the lot, you get so far. It's safer than the trillions of bytes in those two floors of mainframes at Langley.'

'Are you through?'

Doyle raised his brows.

'I still use Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS. The only thing I hack is wood.'

'We're aware of your 386. I'd call it ornamental. Question marks stick to Teflon people.'

'I told you it was an accident.'

'What did you do in there?' Doyle rocked again.

'Nothing. This woman was there when I got there. She did it.'

The rocking stopped. 'Describe her.'

'Dark hair. Olive skin. Fit.'

The keen eyes flickered with interest. He strolled to the door, turned around. 'And what was this... woman doing?'

He described the box she connected to the terminal.

'So this woman hacked the system then used an EMP?'

'A what?'

Doyle placed his head on one side as if disbelieving a small child. 'An electro-magnetic pulse.' He walked to the door and back again. The strategic pause. Calculated. 'Your brother, Alan Blake, is an investigative journalist with a passion for civil liberties. Curious that we find his younger brother in a classified area where there's an attempt to corrupt a database.'

'There's no fucking connection, you arsehole.'

'When did you see your brother last?'

'You know so damn much. You tell me.'

Doyle consulted his file. 'You saw him at home in Canberra on the 23rd of December. Since then—three phone calls on family matters.'

'You... recorded our calls?' A stab of shock. 'That's illegal.'

'Thought to be. The Australian Telecommunications Act makes it illegal to have a device that law enforcement authorities can't immediately scan or tap. Telstra vets millions of calls each year. And tapes some to test its lines and to ensure, as they put it, the integrity of the system.'

'Like hell...'

'Read the papers. Little stories on page five. Bit of fuss and it dies down. Your calls were computer checked for key words and code groups. Nothing positive so far.'

'Bastard.' Blake lurched up, took a step toward the man, towering over him.

The other didn't flinch. 'This room looks normal but it's wired for picture and sound. Technology's improved since one-way windows.' He pointed behind him to the door. 'There's a squad out there. Don't grandstand.'

'You shits are paranoid.'

'Exactly. We're selected for our pathology and trained to turn it into a lifestyle.'

'I was just delivering some prints, you...'

Sit down.' It was a command.

'Fucking hell.' But he went back and sat.

'Nicely done. Right degree of frustration. Now tell me about your brother. What was he working on?'

'How the hell do I know?' Blake rubbed his throbbing ankle. 'Said he was writing a book. That's all I know.'

'About what?'

'Didn't say.' He hunched his shoulders against the cold.

The little man returned to his student's perch and moved his finger down the file with the slowness of a threat.

Blake watched from his disoriented haze, his mind recording everything—the shadow of feet in the gap below the door, the man's rapid blink rate, his jiggling leg. The window opened in his mind, brought on, he knew, by the stress, intruding the living past.

The long shore at Ulladulla, an endless ribbon of beach. Seagulls braced against the wind.

His voice half lost in thundering surf. Thumping