Free The Manuscript by Russell Blake

valuable; you could use the equipment to plant red herrings and false stories, or you could extract the equipment and install countermeasures – and beef up your security.
    Michael considered it. “No, I think we’re done. The client’s dead, so the contract expired with him.” He needed time to work out what the hell was going on and wanted to limit Jim’s involvement to strictly what he needed to know. Best to get him out of this now.
    “Okay, boss. I’ll send you the bill. Give me a holler when you need something else.”
    They shook hands and parted ways.
    Michael exited the building and looked at his watch. He was now in full alert mode. His eyes surreptitiously scanned the surroundings, sector by sector. Mostly pedestrian traffic, a few loiterers, and a street full of parked and moving cars, some occupied, some not. No giveaway antennas on any of them. A few cargo vans double-parked, but no way of knowing what was going on inside them.
    The hair on the nape of his neck was prickling, which generally meant he was being watched. It was like a sixth sense. Some primitive part of the brain processed all available data and concluded observation was taking place.
    All right.
    Michael walked down the block to the subway station and passed through the turnstiles. He wanted to buy time to work out what was going on. Why would Abe have this kind of surveillance focused on him? Though he hadn’t sensed anyone watching them during lunch.
    What had Abe gotten himself involved in?
    The information about the office being bugged with serious hardware changed everything. Koshi’s glib dismissal of the e-mail deletion suddenly seemed glaringly wrong. The whole situation had veered from a benign mystery to something far more ominous.
    And now Abe was dead. Telling no tales .
    Michael didn’t like where his train of thought was leading, but he’d long ago learned to trust himself on these things. What did they actually know? Abe had gotten an e-mail from an unknown source to a confidential, encrypted and highly-secure address. Attached to it was a manuscript Abe was convinced could be the most explosive and important book of his career.
    What was it he’d said? Something about bigger than anything he’d ever seen, and potentially catastrophic for powerful interests? Okay. So Abe was the only guy who’d seen it and had bought the farm within thirty hours of it disappearing without a trace, in a manner Koshi described as impossible – and Koshi was as good as it got, if you forgave his dress-sense.
    And now, it transpired, the office was infested with Star Wars-level eavesdropping gear and likely a pro team doing surveillance.
    He did the equation. It didn’t look positive.
    The document that was presumably behind all of this had only been seen by one other person; and that person’s prints were now all over the office.
    Best of all, that person also had the manuscript hanging from his key chain and in his dead client’s briefcase, still dangling from his now clammy hand.
    This wasn’t good .
    He boarded the uptown train to his apartment. The day had just gotten complicated.
     
    ********
     
    Koshi padded across his polished concrete floor, a colorfully labeled plastic bottle of liquid yogurt in one hand and a bag of rice chips in the other. He wasn’t a big eater, but he liked to nibble as he worked, and the chips were addictive. He sat down at his workstation and spread his snack out in front of him – the yogurt, chips, and a can of root beer. The quintessential geek diet.
    He went through his various e-mail accounts out of routine and responded to the comments and inquiries he’d received, fielding a few questions from prospective clients with terse, economically-worded missives. Koshi was relatively infamous in the hacking community, so he didn’t have to be diplomatic with those who required his services. That was one of the things he liked about the gig – he could be meaner than a pit viper if it suited his