Day 91 - Darwin's Game - Chapter 40 (2583 words)

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DARWIN'S GAME

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 40

It was the calm before the storm, the end that everyone knew was coming, there were only three players left and there was a strong contender who had survived every round up until now, and odds on him were highest to walk away the winner, more rightly limp away that was. John Vargas had survived certain death by knife, drowning, fire and even avoided a sniper's bullet and still managed to make it to the final three contenders.

There was no official betting allowed on the Game, it was not ever going to be a legally recognised sporting event of course, but quiet off the books and especially between friends the wagers were being placed and everyone wanted to see how it ended. There were still plenty of panel discussions about the episodes as they came along but the focus had drifted away from the media commentators and came back around to the man on the street view. There was no movement that was obvious from the government on catching the culprit, the mastermind behind the Game, and the reward offered was regarded as a 'going through the motions' effort, no one really thought that the reward would be claimed, there was just nothing to go on.

Agent Levy knew by now that Jacob Edgerton was out of the country and in Italy of all places, he had spoken to the Deputy Director for permission to go to Italy and follow up the second site there, but he was not hopeful that it would eventuate. They had words with the State Departments and the Italian Ambassador but while this 'diversion' was a high profile case, there was A) very little to go on and B) no crime committed in Italy. They sympathised but the problem was an American one, there was nothing at the site that was of any use, just a cave with a door in it, back filled with concrete. They were not going to dig through their state forest into a site that may not be anything except a red-herring for a number of escaped prisoners and criminals who frankly were probably all dead by now and the world a better place for it.

This was not a national security issue, there was no sympathy for any of the victims and the case to be argued was weak at best, embarrassing at worst. There was no lead to go on except the printed screen picture of the View that Jacob had taken from the site. Levy suspected that Jacob would have sampled and tested the fabric first, undoubtedly he would have looked for more clues before calling in to say he had 'commandeered' the item he had found before calling Agent Levy. It was only after that the local authorities were notified and the AISI were sent to sweep through the area and dig around, finding nothing.

They did not find Jacob, Alessandro or even Leon who had taken a trip to Pisa to visit his youngest sister and her family for a week to a month, on Jacob's suggestion after they left the site with the screen in the back of the car. Alessandro and Jacob drove back to Florence, and Jacob took the train to Rome where he took a sample from the screen, took digital pictures of the stitching, the picture of the cars and the fastenings to send in the highest resolution possible to a lab in America that would follow it up for them discretely.

Blake got the call and between them they arranged the transfer of the screen image to the FBI, they got a secure courier to take it on a private flight that was leaving Italy that night to go to Washington, and sent the courier along for the ride watching it the whole way to America and hand it personally to Agent Levy. He in turn did everything that Jacob had arranged in Rome, just without the thirty six hour head start that the Facts Alone team had.

Levy was under pressure again but it was perfunctory, the powers that be had accepted that there was going to be a bloody end to the game no matter what now, the three final contestants, if you could call them that, were probably dead already or at least two of them were. Who knew if the game had not been played all the way through already? Only Darwin presumably and whomever worked for him.

They upped the reward for information leading to the arrest of Darwin, it was one of the biggest ever posted for an unknown subject in the history of the FBI, but the leads it was bringing in were hardly of a quality that lead them anywhere. Levy was still demoted to be in charge of following up the tips that were coming in, he had a brief respite away from that when the alpha site was discovered but the frustrated Agent was not producing any results. There were things that they could discover, the Stone Mastic Asphalt used to pave the 'street' in the town for instance had a stone in it that came from a company in Texas, but the Edwards Limestone was common, and the order was attached to the company that lead them here on another item they already knew about.

The Darwin Town was being pulled apart piece by piece, but there was not a footprint, fingerprints or clue to be found anywhere within the buildings of the exterior. There were traces of bleach, cleanser and more caustic substances on every surface. No effort was spared to remove all evidence of origin, construction or involvement other than the list of companies that Levy already knew about and got nowhere with. All the companies were registered online and in some cases had records going back years that mixed real orders with fake ones. They had a cover history of piggy backing onto other building projects, calling in the orders, paying for them using foreign banks and then re-routing deliveries elsewhere.

It was a few days before the Italian connection was known, so while they had little else to go on they were unsurprised to find that Jacob had got there first, he obviously had the head start and the ability to ignore things like jurisdiction to go and find what he needed to. He was an amateur with a large amount of cash behind him and they were now making money hand over fist. Levy started looking into the new found largesse that had been reported to them. Big payments to staffers and interns, expensive security contracts and hotels, overseas trips and money to burn on paying people off. He was warned off it by the Deputy Director, who in turn was getting heat from capitol hill who were being told of the targeting of the Facts Alone team by Dragon Ridge Security. There was no need to drag them further into it, Darwin was not a profit centre, the angle would not lead them to arrest Jacob or Blake as Darwin and their success was due to the continued focus on the next episodes and the Bureaus inability to catch the perpetrator.

Levy was reassigned to follow up the tips again, the lead agent on the case was a revolving door now and no one wanted to take the responsibility for the case that was looking to be beyond the capability of anyone bound by law. When screen came in Levy organised the follow up and the analysis but then was straight back to managing the fifty people sorting through thousands of eager tipsters all trying to claim the six figure prize.

The new problem they had were the tribute videos, shot and cut together with footage of the players from previous instalments they looked just like they were part of the next round to be shown. Usually they only lasted one or two minutes, you could tell from the file size that the Darwin Videos clocking in at five minutes were obviously fakes, usually laden with spyware and viruses in an effort to scam the unwary and the over eager viewer trying to get the spoilers ahead of everyone else. The Cyber security unit were inundated with links and executables that lead nowhere, like the Darwin leads they were plentiful, anonymous and ran agents in circles, tying up resources chasing down mystery proxies and false firewalls.

Common enough also were the people to claim that they themselves were Darwin, they got a dozen calls like that every day, people wanting to claim that they were the person at the centre of the seven week manhunt, and it was not unusual to get the crazies come out of the woodwork at all. It was just time consuming, they had to be followed up even though Levy was sure that Darwin was never going to throw such and obvious bone to the Bureau after all the effort gone to conceal his identity and the real location of the game. Now they knew that at least during the seventh episode that they were out of the country, all indications were that Italy was the actual location, even without any incontrovertible proof. That didn't help matters, there were two more episodes to go, at least two and possibly three.

They had discussed the potential endings to the show, the series of gruesome servings of Darwinian justice in action and it was anyone's guess. Vargas was the public favourite of course because he looked like the underdog, injured and already luckier than everyone to date. With Suarez the general population could let the casual racism towards his Mexican heritage inform the decision that he was not likely to win, though no one specifically said it that way. Simpson was the dark horse, not getting a lot of focus in the media as his gang associations were not talking to anyone and the code of silence extended to family, friends and anyone stupid enough to cross that code, learned to keep it quiet very quickly.

The feeling in the Bureau was that no one would survive, that it would all end in some bloody confrontation, that the justice that Darwin obviously desired for these recidivist and unrepentant criminals would not be served by even one of them walking away. On one hand that was truly Darwinian in that the quality and morality of the survivor were not at all relevant to the outcome, it was truly the most adaptive and fittest that would walk away. There was something in the choice of players that screamed a need to punish and exact vengeance, not directly as they were made to compete to the death, in a game designed to make them risk everything, but none the less it the consensus that Darwin was driven by this desire to balance the books. Why else pick such deserving players, why parade their crimes, why push them into the fighting for their lives? Would normal people be like that?

Levy was tired and over the office for the day now, it was late and the darkness outside his window just reminded him of how little he had seen his family in the preceding days this week. He was staring down the throat of another gaping maw of a weekend spent in the office chasing his tail on a ghost, one that did not want to be caught. He checked his email one more time to see if there was any follow up from the lab, saw that there was another dozen closed tip files in his inbox, he was copied in on the results being collated by the project assistant that was doing all the admin tasks around managing the big view for him.

Sighing he looked at the clock and decided that nine o'clock was late enough, and it was time to go home and face another disappointed look from his wife who just wanted the whole thing to be done and dusted, and would not be upset if Levy left the agency altogether and took that job with the security consultants she had suggested he look into. It was a cushy job and Levy had been at it for far too long to not see the writing was on the wall for him now, the time was right for him to move on before he was relegated to the basement, Agent Mulder style. When it was all over, the last episode was in the can and all ten players were dead, accounted for or captured then he would hand in his papers and take the leap of faith and take the private sector money. At least he'd get to see more of his family, have to work less hours get paid more and not have to put up with.... the more he thought about it the more he wondered what he was waiting for.

His car was in the parking garage and he was the last one left in his section, the echo of his heels in the empty concrete space around his car was eerie and louder than he liked. The place was well lit and covered by camera's at the compass points throughout, so he was not really worried. He thought for a moment that if this were a movie, this would be where the assassin would jump out suddenly and clock him from behind, a paranoid thought which made him think he needed more sleep.

His hand went to his gun and he pulled it as he approached the car, he could see over the roof to the wall that the camera on the far side was hanging on a wire and obviously damaged and non functional. He took cover behind a pillar and was breathing heavily, his heart pounded in his chest and beat a rhythm in his ears that drowned out any noise around him. He checked the other three cameras quickly glancing in their direction to realise that all four were down, shot down by the look of the score marks on the walls near two of them.

Panic was a cold spike in his mouth and he fumbled his phone to call for back up and was scanning around the pillar when he realised that the passenger side door to his car was open. He crept up to it, spinning about madly at times to make sure he was not being followed or watched, crouching he made his way to the car as the lift pinged and a couple of armed agents poured out of the doors, taking up positions near the elevator bay and stairwell door to the north.

Levy waved a signal to them to cover him, watch his back as he came to his car, checked the door for wires and opened it slightly to see that there was a CD in a jewel case on the passengers seat. He stood up and swung the door open, suddenly uncautious as he knew what was going on and that no one would be nearby. He waved over the agents and picked up the CD case, slamming the door shut.

Friday night and two days early, episode eight was in his hands. He called Blake and asked when they would be putting the instalment on the web, but to his shock and surprise, Facts Alone did not have a copy, or at least not yet. The only copy so far was in his hands.