Deeper Secrets

By Bowen Greenwood

A string of terrorist bombings rocks America’s capital. Congressional aide Ben Wiles interrupts a murder in a grimy Washington alley. A mysterious, unstoppable computer virus upends the race for the White House, and the government unleashes an artificially intelligent surveillance technology in response to the chaos. But this system has power beyond anyone’s nightmares, and Wiles finds himself on the run from a nameless conspiracy whose players are always one step ahead. If he can’t find them and bring them down, the White House, the country, and the whole world will discover just how deep secrets can run.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bowen Greenwood
• Release date: May 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370559367

Bowen Greenwood

Bowen Greenwood is an Amazon charts bestselling author of thrillers and science fiction. His experience as a police beat reporter and as a court clerk inform his thrillers. His lifelong love of science fiction and fantasy led to the Exile War series.

Book preview

Shouting. A push. A push back. The two young men – boys, really – traded shoves while shouting profanities. Both dressed like they had handed a copy of GQ to their valets and told them to go buy it all. The wild punches and sloppy movements showed that neither of them knew how to fight.

The DJ kept pumping out the bass-heavy rhythm of something electronic. Around the skirmishers on the dance floor, though, a ring formed where the clubgoers stood clear and watched.

One of them shoved. The other slipped on some spilled beer and went down to the floor. The one still standing stepped in for a kick.

A hand came down on his shoulder.

Hard. Strong. Grip like a father.

The brawler whipped around at the unexpected contact from behind him and saw sunglasses, despite the dark interior of the club. Dark hair in a crew cut but not too short topped an angular face with a clean-shaven, strong jaw. But smack in the middle of that intimidating visage was a broad smile. And under it? A black T-shirt with the word SECURITY in giant yellow letters pulled tight around a strong, muscular chest.

You won, friend. Take it and walk away.

The boy who’d just pushed the other down stood with his mouth open for a second, not appearing to take the advice. Corded, phython-esque arms crossed over that broad chest, biceps flexing and straining the shirt.

The advice was repeated. Although the smile remained in place, the voice got a little colder.

Bank your win and go home. You wouldn’t want anything to ruin the night.

The brawler got the message. He looked back at his foe on the floor, then back at the bouncer confronting him. He took a second look at the bouncer. Now his arms weren’t crossed anymore. They hung loose, flexible at his sides. Suddenly, the fighter had no doubt that his time for deciding was nearly up. Without another word, he headed for the door.

The boy on the floor struggled to get back up.

Now wait just a—

Let me help you up, friend.

The bouncer’s big hand reached out, and the boy took it, letting himself be pulled to his feet. But the club’s security man didn’t stop there. He pulled the fallen combatant into a one-armed man-hug and put his mouth close to the loser’s ear.

Look over my shoulder. You see those three guys in Washington Nationals shirts? They’re his friends. They were eyeing you the whole time, waiting to jump you if their guy didn’t win. Listen to me, and you might get out of this unhurt.

It was true. Three drunken young men in fan sweaters all eyed him suspiciously.

Come on, let’s get you to your ride, buddy, the bouncer said, this time loud enough to be heard by the crowd. Next time, easier on the booze.

The boy who’d been shoved to the floor allowed himself to be led away, looking back once at the other three guys. As they walked out the front door of the club, the guy manning the velvet rope gave the one under the bouncer’s arm a thorough looking over. Once the fighter was seated in a taxi, the bouncer turned to return inside. As he passed the door warden he said, He fights. Don’t let him in again.

Violence prevented. Order maintained. All in a night’s work for Ben Wiles. He dialed the tough guy image down a couple notches and walked back to the dance floor, where he went back to patrolling the edges looking for trouble.

Packed with people only a few years younger than him, the Neon Nightclub was popular with college kids and politicians who liked to pretend they were still young. It was also a farmers’ market for drug dealers, a hunting ground for pimps, and a danger zone for sexual assault. Keeping all those evils at bay? That’s how Wiles made his checkbook balance.

A recent graduate of Georgetown University in Washington D.C., Ben had a day job on Capitol Hill working for a prominent member of Congress. But low-level staffers on The Hill were famously underpaid, and Wiles needed a second job just to keep afloat financially, so he parlayed some martial arts training and a lot of attitude into an entry level job as one of the security staff at the Neon Nightclub.

Now, he watched as the club’s patrons danced wildly. Young men and women strutted and tried to attract each other. They wore clothing designed to draw the eye. They winked. They smiled. Maybe they danced. Maybe more.

He scanned the crowd for danger. In his mind, he rehearsed the techniques he might need: how to break a one-handed grab, how to break a two-handed grab, how to counter a right punch, how to counter a left. From the first day he tied on a belt and tried the martial arts, his old teacher told him that if he ever used the skills to always take it seriously. The Neon might be just a night job to earn extra income, but Ben never stopped following that advice.

Around him, the dancers swirled like dandelion seeds on the breeze. The music sounded more like gale force winds, though. Hard, loud, with bass that rattled his teeth, and more beats per minute than he expected to have dollars in his paycheck, the DJ’s current selection drove a frenzy where there had once been a ring around the fighters.

The back door to his right slammed hard in its frame. Hard. This wasn’t caused by some drunk stumbling down the alley and bumping it. The metal door clanged as if someone had driven a battering ram into it.

Ben eased out of his leaning position on the wall, standing up straight. Brows furrowed, neck craning forward slightly, he peered at the door, then eyed it warily. Whatever made that noise was big enough and strong enough to rattle a steel door in a brick wall. It wasn’t something he felt any great eagerness to face.

Then he heard a cry. Not even one word, just most of one:

Hel—

Help. Someone out there was shouting for help. Or at least they had been. Something cut it off.

Praying he’d find nothing more than a delivery truck that had missed the loading dock, Ben flipped the hidden switch that would stop the fire alarm from sounding when he cracked the door open. He eased it open.

It didn’t want to move.

Surprised, Ben stared at the door for a moment, wondering whether he really wanted to look outside.

He pressed down the handle and gave a firmer shove. This time it yielded.

As he opened the door and stepped out, a heavy thump barely made itself heard over the music from inside. Poking his head around the door, Ben saw the cause of the sound.

Bloody, messy, dead, a man sprawled in the alley. He had, apparently, been leaning up against the door before Ben opened it and knocked him down. Possibly, him collapsing up against the door in the first place had been the cause of the sound that had drawn Ben outside.

Snow covered the grime of the alley, now stained with blood. A biting wind hurried between the buildings. Ben’s T-shirt felt woefully insufficient even before he finished opening the door, let alone once he stepped outside.

A very definitely live man stood next to the dead one. Ben stared at him for half a second, taking in close-cropped hair shorter than his own and an unshaven jawline in the glare of the club’s exterior lighting. He wore a baseball cap and a leather jacket.

Then the man lunged at him.

Ben’s right arm delivered a downward block, but it wasn’t enough. The stranger hit him hard in the gut. He grabbed Ben’s black T-shirt and pulled him out into the alley. All of Ben’s techniques for breaking a one-handed grab started from a standing position. Halfway laying on the ground, being held up by the scruff of his shirt, wasn’t an ideal way to execute them.

He curled his fingers into a claw-shape and raked them as hard as he could over his attacker’s shin. The man cried out and dropped Ben, who scrambled to his feet.

When he did, he saw a pistol aimed right at his nose.

Where before Ben had picked out many details of the man’s face, now he could see nothing but the weapon. He felt his skin tingle as a tide of adrenaline rose in his system. He found that his limbs would not respond to mental commands to move. The barrel of the gun looked wider than the gates of Hell. He realized, at that moment, that he had never before known the meaning of terror. Now, as he saw a gun pointed right between his eyes, he learned what fear really was.

Yet, from somewhere deep in the depths of his psyche, a lesson from his college self-defense classes bubbled to the surface. He swore he was hearing the instructor’s voice right in his ear.

The chances of this working are fifty-fifty at best. Never do this. Never, never, never try this. Unless your life really is on the line. If you’re about to die, only then should you try this.

Well, his life really was on the line.

Ben put his hands up in the universal surrender position but down a little bit closer to his head rather than fully extended into the air. The difference might have been attributed to an understandable fear of moving with a gun pointed at his head.

I surrender, he said. Please don’t kill me.

Sorry, the man with the gun said. Nothing personal. It’s just that you can identify m–

Before he finished speaking, Ben slapped both his hands inward and across in front of his face, as fast and as hard as he could.

His left hand hit the barrel of the gun, shoving it away from his head and off to his right.

His right hand slapped the inside wrist of his attacker, intended to sting the nerves in his hand and make it almost impossible for him to keep a firm grip.

Between the two, the gun pointed wide of his right ear when it went off.

The gunshot sledgehammered Ben’s hearing into powder. Nothing went through his ears to his brain except a painful ringing. It scared him so badly that he failed to follow through on the rest of the technique. He should have grabbed the grip of the pistol, stripped it out of his attacker’s weakened hand, broken his finger in the process, and shot the man, according to his old teacher. But even if Ben had the nerve to shoot someone, he had lost all voluntary control of his muscles in the panic from the gunshot. The gun fell to the ground, fortunately not going off again.

Behind him, the door to the club opened.

What’s going on out here?

The baritone voice of one of the other bouncers was a lifeline thrown to Ben. It was a whiff of bright clean hope to nostrils awash in the scent of the grave.

The man with the gun moved only his eyes. He glanced at the newcomer, then back at Ben, then back at the newcomer. Confronted by yet another witness, he scooped up his gun, turned, and sprinted down the alley. The attacker disappeared into the night.

Chapter Two

Ben stood up from the ground to greet his coworker. The older man came down the steps to offer him a steadying hand. His deep, dark skin nearly blended into the night. His clean-shaven head reflected the little bit of light that came from the building’s signage.

John Lincoln’s formal title was director of security, but no one ever thought of him like that. He was just the boss of the bouncers. Even he spoke of himself that way. Ben’s boss was a bit scary, although Ben was in no hurry to admit it. The man had played pro football once, had been on the wrong side of the law more than once, and, on several occasions, had to fight for his life. Or so the rumor mill said, anyway. John didn’t speak about his own past much and didn’t encourage it in others.

What happened out here?

I don’t know. I heard something hit the door and a cry for help. I come out here, and there’s a…

He paused for a glance down at the corpse.

Wow!

Ben stopped trying to speak, shook his head to clear it, nodded down at the body, and then went on.

So I saw him, and someone next to him who really looked like he must have just killed the first guy. The second guy came at me. I fought; it’s all pretty blurry. He almost shot me.

You did the right thing. When someone calls for help, you come if you can. That’s what the club hires us for.

I just wish I knew what just happened.

Not our job. I’ll call the cops. You go inside and take my place near the front door for now. But don’t leave. There’s a dead body here. The law’s going to want to talk to you for sure.

***

Distant sirens howled. He hoped he was far enough away from the scene of the crime that he wouldn’t be caught by the responding officers. He’d just committed murder and attempted murder. Normally, the District of Columbia did not have the death penalty. But in his case, an ambitious federal prosecutor – was there any other kind? – could make a case that the murder was committed in the course of either terrorism or espionage. Those were federal crimes, and the federal government could indeed invoke the death penalty for them.

So when he heard the sirens in the distance, it was with the knowledge that he’d wagered his life and his freedom on nothing more than his skill and experience.

It was a bet he’d only lost once before. His freedom, not his life.

Once his name had been Fred Harris. Once he’d been an elite, specialized private investigator with a wealthy and powerful clientele. But he had started taking jobs that had stretched the boundaries of the law, then jobs that had snapped the boundaries of the law. Prison, failure, and years later, he had a new life and a new name but the same old work: getting the things done that wealthy people were too clean to do themselves.

Legally speaking, his name now was Calvin Weston. He liked it, as he should, since he’d picked it out.

Once upon a time, the process of creating a fake identity had been relatively easy, if time-consuming and risky. One located the name of an infant who had died very shortly after being born, so there was a birth certificate for that person but no other paperwork. Then, one paid for a copy of that birth certificate, used it to apply for a social security number with the feds, and used that to create a life.

In the modern era of RealID and other responses to terrorism, creating a fake identity was much harder. Fortunately, Weston had been created back in the good old days.

He flipped open the burner phone he’d bought that morning. As dumb a phone as one could find in the modern world, it had no touchscreen, no apps, and no social media. It also had no name attached to the account, not even Weston’s, since he’d bought it with cash then loaded it up with minutes via a pre-paid credit card bought the same way.

He dialed a number and waited. The voice that answered sounded just a little too smooth. It gave no hint at the age of the speaker; it simply said, Our agreement makes only one allowance for you to contact me, rather than the reverse. In the eventuality of an emergency.

Yeah, well, that eventuality is here, Weston shot back.

Did you fail to execute the target?

Of course not.

What, then, can possibly qualify as an emergency?

I was seen! One of the bouncers heard me and came out to the alley.

I must point out, Mr. Weston, that this is not technically an emergency for me. If you are arrested, it will inconvenience me somewhat but not enough to unhinge the plan.

It’s an emergency for me!

Do you require assistance from me? Is that it? I suppose I can do so if you wish although whatever it costs me, I will deduct from your next payment.

Those payments were awfully, awfully generous. Weston actually didn’t know who his client was. He just knew the man had awe-inspiring amounts of money to throw around, enough bureaucratic muscle to buffalo a whole platoon of prison guards, and technical skills beyond compare.

The last was only relevant insofar as it affected the tasks Weston was given. The second item had been highly relevant to him once when he was escaping from prison but hadn’t mattered since. The first, though – the money – that mattered a lot. Weston liked being as well-paid as he was, and he didn’t want to lose that.

No, no. I just thought you ought to know before I kill him.

There was a moment of silence on the phone, and Weston could almost picture his employer shrugging.

Do as you will, came the reply. I have drawn too near the objective to care if additional lives must end.

***

Dealing with the cops took him until four in the morning. All the while, Ben’s mood sunk like a boat taking on water. He had a day job, too, and staying at the club until dawn basically meant he would get no sleep. At a bare minimum, he needed an hour to get home and an hour to get to work so if everything went perfectly, that might leave two other hours for sleep. However, somewhere in there, he’d have to get a shower and put on his suit and tie for his day job, so the best case for his sleep was more like an hour and a half. If he fell asleep instantly, that is, which seemed unlikely on a night he’d already seen someone murdered and been attacked himself.

At this hour of the night, even the streetlights were off. Walking down the sidewalk toward the parking garage, Ben turned the incident over and over in his head. So preoccupied was he that he never noticed a shadowy figure fall in behind him as he left the club.

Even though the other bouncer said he did the right thing, Ben found himself wishing he had never opened the back door to look out. He hadn’t prevented the murder, after all. The man had been dead before he got there. Thus, the only result of his decision was that he’d had to stay hours past his usual departure time and would get no sleep tonight.

As might be suspected for a young man with a Bachelor’s degree, bouncing wasn’t his long-term career path. Benton Wiles wanted to work in politics. Right now, he had a bare start on that. As a policy researcher for a member of the House of Representatives, he had climbed far enough up the ladder to no longer be considered entry level but not far enough up the ladder to make a living wage.

While Ben grumbled about his job and his wages, the man behind him slipped something out of his leather jacket. Had Ben seen it, he might have recognized it.

Staffers at this career stage and below pulled in so little money it was impossible to live in Washington D.C. on that income alone. Ben still shared the same house he’d lived in while a senior at college, and he still had five roommates. This long after he’d graduated, he was beginning to feel like a loser for still living in a college house, but he had the rent there worked out in a way that was manageable, so he didn’t want to make a change until he won that all-important promotion to analyst instead