Ingrams & Assoc 6: Downfall Ch. 03

April softened her tone and said, "Okay then. Your show. Not like I have a choice."

"You can walk out any time you want, April," was the flat response.

"Chris!" chirped Beatrice.

"What? We are going to have to move regardless. They may have tracked us anyway thanks to her," he nodded at April. "We can't take the risk. If we have to move anyway, then her heading back and telling them where we are isn't going to matter. I'm not about to kidnap anyone, Bea. That's their gig. If she wants to go, let her."

He nodded at the man by the door, who stepped aside, making it obvious he wouldn't stop her.

"But you aren't going to go, are you, April? Not a go-getter like you. You want to know, don't you? What this is all about? Try and control the situation? Oh yeah, I know you. You may think I don't, but I do. I've seen you before, your type. Very under control. Wanting to know the lay of the land, so you can manipulate it, if need be."

Chris delivered the whole statement as though bored, inspecting a nail while he did it. It was a masterful performance, April had to admit. And what was more galling, he was right.

She didn't move.

"Like I said, your show," she said, smiling lopsidedly at him, acknowledging his point.

"Okay, so, there's this 'group'," he did the whole fingers in the air thing while saying "group".

"They are loosely affiliated, as best we can tell. Some real movers and shakers in the world. Connected like you wouldn't believe. Monied up the ass. And, we think, old money for the most part. And like a lot of old money, perverse as all hell. Entitled up the wazzo, life owes them a living, and the little people are just that. Pawns to be played with. That sort of thing."

Chris looked around at the others, looking for something in their faces, before going on.

"They have this whole club situation they've set up around the world. Locations in most major cities. A standalone gentleman's club. Well, I say gentlemen, but none of the people involved in this are gentleman. Assholes of the first order. And some are women too. All with power delusions. They take what they want to play with, and leave nothing to chance. Laws don't matter to these people, they just take whatever it is that takes their fancy."

April was puzzled. This was the way of the world and had been for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The haves and the have nots, - nothing new about that.

"So what?"

"So what, my dear April, is that now they have the technology to take whatever they want and make it their prey's decision. You go to dinner and like the waitress? She's yours. Doesn't matter who she is, who she might be married to, whose daughter she is. Doesn't even matter if she's gay, or has kids. She can be yours."

"Well, money has always been able to do that."

"Sure. But this is beyond that. She can be made to leave everything behind, no matter what it is. You know any mother that can walk away from their kids? I don't. But these guys make it happen. And what's worse, they are made to order. Don't like women who answer back, but this waitress does? They can sort that out for you. Make it so she doesn't do that. They can remake her in anyway. We don't know how, but we've seen it happen."

Chris gestured around the room. "Every person here has lost someone. That's why we are working together. To find those people, get them out if we can. Find out what happened. Make it stop. Whatever we can do."

"Burn down buildings?" suggested April, more scornfully than she intended.

"April," sighed Chris. "When we do that, we ensure that everyone gets out. The whole point of the exercise is to draw attention to them. To get the authorities there, to expose what's going on."

"And has it worked?"

"Obviously not. We think they usually have some local connections. This is one well-oiled and well financed machine. Either the story is squashed, or the media is kept well away."

"So you burn down buildings hoping to get attention. That's it?" April was a little incredulous. This was disappointing.

"Of course not. The burning buildings, well, most of the time, that's to guarantee we get away. Hard to shoot people when the authorities are there. Not that it stopped them the last time we tried."

"What were you trying to do?"

"They are well organized, this lot. They are computer savvy, - no computers inside are connected to any external system. No internet, no modems, no way to hack them from the outside. From what we can gather, they do all communicating using USB sticks. They literally use these little USB stick computers, and plug them into a PC, boot from the USB stick and voila, instant network. They do whatever they need, then out comes the stick and it's either sent carried by one of the officers, or, we assume via courier. We've never found any though, and we've been looking. Part of why we are in these places is to get our hands on one of these USB sticks. We figure everything we need to bust this whole thing open is on one of those."

"I see," said April, nodding. "You aim to go all deepthroat on them?"

"If we can, yes. Figure out how they are doing what they are doing, how it works, who is involved up top. Expose it to the world."

"Assuming the world cares," murmured April. She was very aware of how the world worked.

"They will. Once we show them how these guys operate. What they do. This isn't some third world country that no one cares about. This is happening at home. In Ohio and North Carolina. It could be your daughter or son or wife or husband who suddenly goes missing. People will care."

April gave that face given when you aren't convinced, but aren't going to argue the point.

"So, who is this mystery cabal? You mentioned they have establishment's all over the world?"

"They call themselves the Storm Clouds Gentleman's club. Don't know why, - they are about as far from gentlemen as you can get. It's all set up to mimic some turn of the nineteenth century London club, as best we can tell. Lots of waiters in jumped up suits, lots of plush leather chairs, fire places, glasses of cognac, that sort thing."

"Oh, I know," agreed April. "I've been in one."

Everyone stopped and stared.

"Seriously?" asked Chris, after a beat.

"Yeah. First case. Eight or so years ago, I pulled a girl out of there. Girl with submissive tendencies. She was billeted there, and wasn't happy. Now, I guess I know why."

"And they let you in?" persisted Morgan.

"Well, they weren't happy about it, obviously. I was watched the whole time I was in there, waiting for my girl. Come to think of it, yeah, she was quite desperate to get out. She didn't hang around at all. Straight out. I remember wondering about that at the time."

"Well, yeah. That's them. Sounds like your friend got out just in time."

"So what's the MO here?" asked April, a sinking feeling in her chest. Several nasty suspicions were starting to come together in her stomach, and it wasn't a pleasant feeling.

"Well, and again, I need to point out that we've only confirmed some of this, some of what I'm going to say is heresy, and stuff we've deduced."

"Yeah, get that, go on," replied April, now very interested, and leaning forward in her chair, soaking up every word said.

"So we think they started out your normal club, with some sidelines into Dom and sub fantasies. You know, the rich and well-to-do get a little sub on the side to dominate and boss around. Most of the clientele is extremely well heeled, - there are a lot of deals that get made in there. But then it started to expand. The well-to-do could meet someone in the real world, so to speak, and then talk to the people at Stormy Clouds, and somehow these people would be made available to them. Sometimes it was money, sometimes blackmail, sometimes just pure drugging them up. And then something else happened, and now they can grab just about anyone and make them compliant. We don't know how they are doing it, but we do know that it's a mix of people who are there somewhat willingly, and those who are not, at least not initially."

This was all too familiar to April. Thinking back to Lee Hicks, her last case, it was almost completely on the nose. The same as that which had been perpetrated on her.

"I think I know," said April, simply.

There was an electric silence.

"What?" was said by almost everyone in the room simultaneously. To say April had the floor would be an understatement. She had the walls, the windows, the ceiling, the doors, and in fact the cellar, if the building had one.

April, took a deep breath, and started to speak.

"My last case, it was a guy who was a man's man. He was part of the group who guards the queen of England, for god's sake. Doesn't get much manlier than that. He and his wife were in love, one of those matches that is just perfect. Then, he suddenly drops out of sight for six months, and then sends her divorce papers. She, being somewhat wealthy, sends out some PIs, and finds him as a submissive for some couple in the west country. I mean, serious submissive stuff, - in cage, gimp outfit, the whole nine yards. From a man who's never displayed any of those tendencies in the past at all.

"Well, the wife is not satisfied with this state of affairs, and employs us to get into the situation to figure out what is going on. I mean, this guy, when we got to him, couldn't leave the room without his owner's permission. And if you started asking him how he came to this state, he'd start having full-on epileptic fits. Shaking, foaming at the mouth, the whole bit. He'd be utterly out of it for the next few days, too. There was something seriously rotten in the state of Denmark.

"So we got him to a shrink who specialized in hypno therapy, to figure out what was going on. This guy had been programmed. The way it was explained to me, his low-level personality was completely re-written. It wasn't dumped over the top of his existing one, it was literally hard wired into his existing one. Took a hell of a lot of therapy to get him over it, if they ever really did."

There was silence for a moment, as everyone digested this.

"Sounds like science fiction," dismissed Beatrice.

"Yes, it does, I agree," answered April, nodding. "But I was there. And they tried to do the same to me."

Chris stepped forward and put a hand on April's shoulder.

"Are you okay with this? Talking about all this, I mean?"

"Oh, I'm a tough bird, as they say in the UK. It's a little cathartic, to be honest," she said, smiling up at him, and putting her hand on his. It was the first time they'd touched since the bomb had gone off, and she felt immeasurably better feeling the warmth of his hand.

"But thanks for asking."

Morgan just smiled back at her. April looked around the room. She had their undivided attention.

"Whatever they do to you, it's to hypnosis what a fighter jet is to a scooter. It's invasive. They divorce you from reality entirely. I was raped, repeatedly. Beaten, then given something that wiped my memory, and then the cycle began again."

She stopped and took a sip of the water. The memories were harrowing, even though they'd be dulled by the therapy she'd been through since.

"However, I had some preparation, and luckily, it came out at just the right time. I managed to escape, and while I was doing it, unbeknown to me, my crew was breaking in to the facility where they held me.

"It was a pretty heavy few minutes. It ended with me blowing the brains out of the guy running the operation.'

There was even more flat silence at that last statement.

"You killed this guy? You sure?"

"Oh yes. A .45 to the head doesn't leave that much behind."

She saw Morgan wince. He had obviously been party to similar events.

"No. No, it doesn't," he agreed.

"What is strange is that we never found out who was funding this guy, - who he was working with, if anyone. When he went out of the picture, all the places he was working at quietly shut down. We were never able to trace it back. I mean, don't get me wrong, we are good, but we aren't some secret agent agency. We aren't the FBI or the NSA."

"Well, this would explain a lot, if this guy was financed or employed by our cabal."

"OH! MY! GOD!" April suddenly exclaimed, sitting up straight in the chair, as that which had been nibbling at the back of her brain broke into it.

"What?" exclaimed almost everyone in the room, simultaneously. Tensions suddenly rose five notches.

"Gene! Gene something! Storm. Rain. Rainer! Gene Rainer! Holy shit!" she said, looking around at everyone present, but seeing no one, lost in her own memories.

"Who is Gene Rainer, when he's at home?" asked Beatrice.

"He was a slime ball on the very first mission I had with Ingrams. I was working with a diplomat in the US State department, and one of his little gang of buddies had this new, - and particularly slimy, - PA. Gene Rainer. It was Gene Rainer who planted that bomb! I didn't recognize him. Last time I saw him he had cropped hair, at the restaurant, in all the leathers and with the long shaggy hair, and copper tan, I just didn't recognize him. Or, I did, sort of. I thought he looked vaguely familiar, but, well, we were talking. I wasn't paying that much attention. It was him though, I'm sure of it."

"Well, that puts a different complexion on it," answered Morgan. "Do you know if this guy works for that group?"

"No clue. I only ever met him once, probably why I didn't click immediately when I saw him. He was quite a weird dude. Very intense. Black eyes with nothing in them, you know?"

"Yes," replied Morgan, simply. "Well I think we can assume he's working for that group."

"Yeah, I think so," answered April, thinking hard. "That would explain that other thing."

"What other thing?"

"Well, once the mission was concluded, I got this message, a note, stuck on my car. Warning me that 'they knew who I was, and they'd let me get away with what I'd done this one time'. We had no idea at the time what that was about. I'll put money that this Rainer character was working for the Storm Clouds people, for some reason, and it was he who watched what I did, how I resolved it, using that girl from the Club, and it was him warning me." She looked up, "It all makes sense now."

Morgan glanced around at everyone, meaningfully.

"Yes. It sounds like it does all fit together."

April sighed. Nothing was what it seemed. Then she noticed everyone was just staring at her.

After another pregnant silence, April broke it, trying to change the subject, saying, "So this is what you do, is it? Run around with your little band, looking for a way in, looking for some way to expose this crowd? What's the pay off? I mean, it's pretty horrible, sure, but what's it to you? Why are you doing this? Why are all of you doing this?" She asked, turning and looking at everyone.

"Everyone here has lost someone to these people, April. Beatrice, her significant other just walked out one day, and the next time she saw her, two years later, she was married to a Canadian Senator. Six months later, she was fished out of the Ontario river, beaten to almost death. She'd actually died from an overdose of sleeping pills. Beatrice, who is an ex insurance investigator, back tracked her to being at Storm Clouds for six months prior to the marriage."

"Well that sounds... oh wait..." interjected April.

"Right. Anne was one hundred percent gay. She had a less than zero interest in some guy. And she was definitely not some rich guy's sex toy. If you knew her for less than five minutes, you'd know that about her," answered Beatrice, bitterly.

"In her investigations, I came across Beatrice, and well, we've been at it together ever since. Everyone else has lost people too. Lindsey lost her sister. We've not found any trace of her, yet. Darrel over there lost his wife. And Mike lost his daughter. We've all lost someone." Morgan said, taking back control of the conversation.

"And you? Was that happened with your wife?" challenged April.

"We can talk about that later. Would you recognize the equipment used for this if you saw it again?" Morgan said, emphatically changing the subject.

April shuddered. "I'd rather not, but yeah, I'm sure I would."

Significant glances were had between all members of Morgan's crew.

"Wait, Chris, are you...?" said the man named Darrel, speaking for the first time.

Morgan rounded on him, a dangerous grin on his face, and a glint in his eyes.

"Can you think of a better time?"

"Any time would be better. They know we are here. They'll be waiting for us."

"No, they won't. Look, right now, they probably think I'm dead anyway. They won't know for sure we aren't until at least tomorrow. And even if they did think that, they'd think the very first thing we'd do is fold up our tents and get the hell out of dodge, right? The last thing they'd believe we'd do is hit their place tonight."

There was a shocked silence.

"And we'll take April. She can see what we are talking about, make it clear what we are fighting here. And she can let us know if her experiences are connected with Stormy Clouds or not."

He looked around at the row of faces, none of whom looked convinced.

"Wait, what? What are you talking about?" asked April, a little concerned that her involvement was being taken for granted.

"April. So what did you think we were doing here? We were preparing to take a look at the local installation. There's one just outside the city limits, to the south west."

April was seriously shocked into silence, before replaying, astounded.

"And you think it's a good idea to follow through on this plan, they now knowing you are in town? Now they are ready for you?"

"That's just the point. They won't be ready for us. They'll think we are either dead or hightailed it. Wouldn't you think that? Put yourself in their place."

There was another silence, before Beatrice broke it with, "You're insane."

Morgan laughed. "Yep, probably. But you know it'll work. Strike now. They absolutely will not be expecting that."

"And you think I'll just go along with it, yes?" asked April, quizzically. She was deeply worried that Morgan might be completely right, down to her going along.

"I know you will. You've already talked about your experiences with these people. If you are who you say you are, you won't walk away from this. And I need you to see how these people live, - what their victims' lives are like. This is modern sex slavery, April. If you are the 'field agent' you say you are, then you won't walk away without trying to help. Your morality and your professional side won't let you."

'Damn, he's persuasive,' worried April. And what was worse, he was absolutely right. She was going to go along. She had to see for herself. And she had to see if there was a connection to her experiences in London with what Chris was talking about. Of course, there was always the chance that these people were delusional, or tragically misinterpreting what they had seen or experienced, and in that case, she'd be able to point that out. A sort of disinterested observer. Of course she wasn't, but she was compromised in an entirely different way to this group. She had her eyes about as wide open as it was possible to have them.

"Okay. Fine. I'll go. How dangerous is this going to be?"

Beatrice spluttered, "Now wait one damn minute here, Chris. I'm still not convinced this one isn't a plant," she gestured at April, "but the idea of doing this tonight, of all nights. That's insane. You're insane," she repeated.

Darrel was nodding, and Lindsey looked troubled.

Only Mike was nodding.

"Look, do we have the outfits?" Morgan's question was directed at Lindsey. She nodded.

"We have the plans, we have the intercepts in place, we already dropped those at the local telephone pole. We are actually ready here, - you guys all know it. We had scheduled it next week anyway. We are ready to go. We just bring it forward a bit, while they still don't know if they got us or not. Come on, this could be the one. Lindsey, don't you want to find your sister? Darrel, your wife? Let's do this."