Is your smart phone spying on you?

If so, just who is receiving the information?

A power grab of this size and scope must surely have been done in alliance with elements inside the U.S. government.

Beneath a Steel Sky: When fiction becomes fact.

LINK

Beneath a Steel Sky

(Out Now)

In the never-ending War on Terror everyone has become a suspect: all are digitally tracked; many are constantly watched; none are ever trusted. In the decade since 9/11, homeland security has therefore been a bonanza for high tech firms and defense contractors. For the few the profits have been counted in dollars; for the many the losses have been measured in lives.

October 2012: After discovering the lifeless body of a Congressional researcher, D.C. Detective Nick Bosco is thrust into a looking-glass world where the power of the state is turned against those it is supposed to protect. In a race against time, Bosco must risk everything to expose a conspiracy that aims to use American anti-terror systems to power China’s anti-democratic surveillance grid.

In the pursuit of corporate happiness, life and liberty are just two more commodities to be traded with the enemy.

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'Beneath a Steel Sky' fictionalises many of the issues surrounding Peaceful Chongqing, Stephen Wolfram and Wolfram Alpha, Thomas Drake, the NSA's Trailblazer project, Folsom Street Room 641a and Total Information Awareness. It is a story about how technology, designed by the state to supposedly keep ordinary Americans safe from terrorists, has been perverted and turned into a weapon to be used by the state to terrorise ordinary Chinese.

In Chongqing, the plan is to network 500,000 CCTV cameras with other technologies (RFID, GPS, ID Cards), to create an inescapable surveillance grid that will know not only where someone is and what they are doing, but also when they did it and who they did it with. By linking such occurrences over time, a complete and invasive record of the lives of every individual citizen can be obtained and indefinitely stored.

In such a society 'privacy' will be a non-word.

___________________________________________________________

Please click the links below to purchase the full novel:

Amazon UK Amazon DE

Amazon US Amazon FR

'Beneath a Steel Sky' is available for Kindle, PC,

Mac, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, and Android phones.

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Sample chapters are also available to read below,

or in either PDF or Microsoft Word formats:

Prologue - Beneath a Steel Sky

It was as Joseph Goddard replaced the phone in its cradle that the table lamp and computer monitor both blinked off, plunging the lounge into almost total darkness and sending him rushing to the window. Inside the room the cat watched him through narrow yellow eyes as he peered through the blinds to the street below. Outside, the fog coiled around the houses and writhed beneath the parked cars; above it the leaden clouds hung low over the skyline, threatening rain with a rumble of thunder. Engulfed in the murk, the sodium glare of the distant streetlights was drained to a candle’s flicker, yet out on the sidewalk not a single bulb was lit.

From the ground floor there was a sudden crack of wood followed by the splintered crunch of breaking glass. Flinging his apartment door wide Goddard raced to the stairwell and peered over, his blood running cold. Through the frosted panes shadows jostled for position as the front door was barged open six inches, slamming twice against the brass restrictor before the tip of a bolt cutter was thrust forward. As the jaws clamped onto the brass bars there was a brief screech of metal on metal before the device surrendered to its attackers and allowed the door to burst open, the handle gouging the plaster as it slammed into the wall.

A babbled prayer poured frantically from his lips - ‘Holy Saint Jude! Apostle and Martyr, great in virtue and rich in miracles’ - and in the same moment that he registered two men charging in Goddard sprang towards the nearest bookcase, worked his hand behind it and heaved.

Slowly, gracefully, the cabinet toppled forward. Spilling books and dust in equal measure, it smashed through the rail and the supporting balusters before plummeting to the ground floor where it disintegrated, flinging shards of timber and hardbacks through the air.

Goddard did not wait to see what it had done to the men.

From within the apartment the cat screeched in fright as he charged through towards the rear fire escape, words tumbling from his trembling lips, smearing together into a train of noise as his mind and body united in a desperate act of self-preservation.

‘Near kinsman of Jesus Christ, faithfulintercessorfor-’

In the spare bedroom he elbowed storage boxes out the way to get to the window, levering it open with difficulty and thrusting his head out. From below came the cough of a suppressed pistol, but buoyed by adrenaline Goddard managed to lurch back just as a puff of plasterboard erupted from the ceiling with a muffled thump, inches away from where he had stood.

A ghostly sheen of sweat and dust glazed his skin as he whirled like a dervish.

He was trapped!

Flashing from side to side his eyes sought an exit, then they rose upwards to the newly burrowed hole, his mind whirring.

The roof!

‘Allwhoinvokeyou, specialpatronintimeofneed-’

Rushing back to the doorway and onto the landing, he glanced quickly down the stairs to see the two men advancing warily, picking their way through the debris.

‘There!’, shouted the first as Goddard darted up the final stairwell, ducking through a volley of silenced gunfire, bullets hammering into the walls around him.

Hitting the top floor at a sprint he threw himself through the plastic sheeting left by the long-departed builders and into the half-renovated apartment. Bereft of fixtures he dashed directly through the large, open-plan space before arriving at the solid back door. Furiously he twisted and rattled the handle.

Locked!

His breath coming in ragged gasps he swivelled round in desperation, grabbing a large screwdriver from an abandoned toolbox and ramming it with all his might between the strike plate and the latch.

‘ToyouIhaverecourse... fromthedepthofmyheart... andhumblybegyou... towhomGod... hasgivensuchgreatpower-’

Frantically he jemmied the handle towards him whilst leaning on the door with all his weight, the heavy footfalls of his pursuers getting ever closer.

Briefly the door groaned before a final desperate shove forced it open, Goddard tumbling through to find himself on the lower of two rooftop levels. Scrabbling forwards and upwards, blood oozing from a slash on his hand, he neared the gaping mouth of the rubbish chute which was anchored to the side of the building by a pair of two-inch-wide steel bolts.

‘Tocometomyassistance,helpmenowinmyurgentneedandgrantmyearnestpetition!’

Panting in the frigid air he paused and gripped the rim.

Three.

Both legs disappeared into the blackness.

Two.

Behind him the clatter of boots.

One.

With a reflex gasp that leapt from his throat he closed his eyes and thrust himself forwards - sliding, screaming, plunging – straight into the unknown.

Chapter 1 - Beneath a Steel Sky

Monday 1st October 2012

Knowledge is power - U.S. Office of Information Awareness

D.C.’s Third Police District, though geographically the smallest, actually covers the densely populated centre of the capital. Headquartered in an unassuming three-storey concrete-and-redbrick complex, its officers are responsible for law and order between Connecticut Avenue in the west all the way out to the Macmillan Reservoir, the city’s main source of drinking water, in the east. No other district in the city handles more crime.

In his shared office on the first floor, sipping a cup of steaming coffee – black, no sugar – and staring out at the jostling umbrellas and mid-morning traffic, stood Detective Nick Bosco.

Forty years old, slim with olive skin and hazel eyes, he had spent a decade working his way through the ranks after serving 12 years in the Marine Corps’ Explosive Ordnance Division. Although SWAT or the bomb disposal unit had been the obvious choices, he had deemed sixty-four long walks to be enough for one lifetime and had opted for the detective squad instead. Along the way he had collected a silver star, an ex-wife and a teenage daughter he barely managed to see. He had the scars to prove it all, too.

The weekend’s fog had given way to a miserable day of blustery squalls that intermittently pawed and slashed at the window, rattling the glass in its frame. Futilely, Bosco twisted the thermostat like the dial on a safe – 80 round to 50 then back to 80 – yet from its wall perch the radiator maintained its frigid silence. Savouring the ache in his hands as the mug bled heat and colour back into them, he was prised from his reverie by the ringing of his phone. With a sigh, he thumped down into his seat.

‘Bosco here.’

‘Hey, Bos. And how’s my fav’rite de-tective?’

It was Nadine Brown, the detective squad’s ever cheerful duty officer. Bosco smiled despite his mood.

‘Hey, hon.’

‘You busy?’

Bosco surveyed the room. From the opposite wall a picture of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, portrayed in mid-scream, stared accusingly at him. Sentence first - verdict afterwards, read a crudely drawn speech bubble. To his right sat a colour laser printer, the newest piece of kit in the room; to his left stood a half dozen filing cabinets and the loosely hung smoked-glass door, which, if the uninitiated tried to close it without lifting, gave a shuddering groan as it shaved another layer off the dull floor tiles. That left three desks, including his, each of which sagged beneath stacks of case files. Busy?

He sighed again. ‘Yeah, but go on.’

‘Okay. A couple of uniforms are reporting a possible missing person with suspicious circumstances. Procedure calls for a detective. Johnson and Burrell are both at court, while the Park’, she said, referring to the District’s secondary station, ‘is dealing with a multiple stabbing out on Georgia Avenue. So that,’ she added with a resigned intake of breath, ‘kinda makes you it.’

He glanced at the two empty desks, the dark computer screens and the bundles of paperwork. As a rookie detective an odd-numbered intake had meant he had not been assigned a permanent partner, and after 10 years of largely working on his own he had grown used to relying on himself. Not a team player, whatever that meant, had been an accusation levelled at him in more than one annual review, but it was water off a duck’s back. What mattered in the end was doing the job well, and as he did it better than most, even on his own, after a while they had just left him to do it his own way. Despite all that he had still wound up sharing an office with two other detectives, both of whom were testifying in a long-running kidnapping trial. Jeff Johnson was a good guy with a Halle Berry obsession, whilst Ric Burrell was a pain in the ass. Nadine had quipped once that he only spelt his name R-I-C because the K was missing from his keyboard. And the P.

Pinning the phone between his head and shoulder Bosco reached for a pencil and his ring-bound pocketbook.

‘Where do you want me?’

Chapter 2 - Beneath a Steel Sky

Clipping his pistol and detective’s badge to his belt, Bosco took the stairs down past the custody centre – known as the nutcracker suite - and strode out into the parking where he climbed into his unmarked black Crown Vic. Even though the statistics were down, the violent crime rate in D.C. was still three times higher than the national average. Murders, rapes, robberies, assaults and missing persons were the staples of his working life.

As on every call-out a twinge of apprehension fluttered within him, though department procedure was simple enough: for missing adults a standard notification usually sufficed, as most folks turned up by themselves within 72 hours. If, however, foul play was suspected or the absence could not be readily explained, the officers on the scene could immediately request the presence of a senior investigator to determine whether a case needed to be prioritised. That was why he had been assigned.

The radio came on with the ignition but Bosco immediately flicked it off. For weeks the airwaves had been dominated by nothing but the opinion polls and, of course, the usual bullshit and lies spread by the candidates and their paid mouthpieces. He could not wait for it to all be over.

Pulling out of the station he drove west onto Florida Avenue then doubled back northwards to 16th Street, the windscreen wipers beating time like a sullen metronome.

Just past Irving Street a truck-mounted LED display urged drivers to “report suspicious activity”, and as he flashed by Bosco recognised the logo of the Department of Homeland Security. He shook his head ruefully. Every time these things were put up, Metro was plagued with crank calls from every tattle tale and wingnut in the city.

Five minutes later he flipped the indicator on, zigzagged left then right, and finally arrived on Brown Street.

‘Thirty-four fourteen, Apartment C.’

Through the relentless drizzle he moved slowly forwards, repeating the address to himself until he spotted a parked police cruiser. Flashing his lights once he spun the wheel and pulled in behind it. On a flight of metal steps opposite, huddled beneath an awning, a bedraggled officer raised a hand in acknowledgement.

Bosco checked the road, threw up the collar of his grey overcoat and walked towards the building. It was a refurbished terrace of what appeared to be five large, red townhouses, but which from experience he knew were likely subdivided into 15 or more tiny, yet no doubt ruinously expensive, apartments.

‘Detective Bosco?’ The officer offered her hand which he accepted. She was short with brown hair and nice eyes. No ring, he noticed. ‘I’m Patrol Officer Petzel. Come in and I’ll show you what we’ve got.’

She opened the door and Bosco followed her up the stairs, shaking the water from his coat onto the well-trodden carpet.

She spoke over her shoulder as she led the way.

‘We got a call about 30 minutes ago from a lady called Pamela King – she’s upstairs now – that a colleague of hers, Jo-Anne Butler, had not reported in for work. Said she tried calling but there was no reply, so she comes round here but no one’s answering the door.’

Bosco looked at his watch. It was just shy of 11 a.m. ‘What time did she first come round?’

‘A little before 10 o’clock she says.’ Petzel paused on the first landing and lowered her voice. ‘She was concerned because this had never happened before. Claims the missing woman is a stickler for punctuality. Anyway, she gets here, gets no answer from the buzzer so goes to one of the neighbours and gets the landlord’s out of bed...’ She looked down at her notebook. ‘A Stuart Latimer. Lives in the basement apartment. She calls him and he surfaces about twenty after ten and opens up, but there’s still no sign of her friend so she phones us.’

‘And you requested a detective..?’ Bosco let the question hang in the air.

Petzel ticked the points off on her fingers as she spoke. ‘Well, her car’s gone, but King says she made no mention of going away over the weekend. She’s never gone missing before and the bed’s unmade but the rest of the apartment is spotless.’

Bosco rolled his eyes. Dragged from the office on a wet Monday morning for this. An unmade bed!

‘Hell, Officer...’

‘Petzel’, she said, blushing.

‘Petzel. Over a million people go missing in this country every year-’

‘Sir, I know’ – Bosco noted the delicacy of her hands as she held them up in placation - ‘believe me, I know, but you should see the rest of the place. It’s like a show home. So maybe it’s a sign that she left in a hurry. There’s also no indication – no paperwork, no receipts, no notes on her calendar – that she was going on a planned trip, and the last sighting we have is from King herself who saw her Saturday evening, so it’s possible she’s been missing more than 24 hours. And she’s got some kind of political job.’

Bosco tried not to look sceptical. But not that hard. ‘You’ve spoken to the neighbours?’

She nodded. ‘Only one set’s in. Top floor, a retired couple. They say they don’t really know her.’

Typical, thought Bosco.

‘They also said someone buzzed their intercom asking for her, a woman, earlier today, but that was probably King. Neither of them’ve seen her since last week anyhow. The saving grace might be the CCTV though.’

‘What? Where?’

‘There, beneath the lever arm.’ Petzel pointed back down the stairs. To the right of the door sat a one-inch diameter black dome, recessed into the brickwork. If she had not pointed it out, Bosco doubted he would have spotted it.

‘That’s a camera?’

‘Yeah, the landlord mentioned it. He’s gone with my partner to the basement. Says it records to a set-up down there.’

Bosco scratched pensively at his jaw line. ‘Okay, we’ll check that out afterwards, but first let’s go talk to this friend.’

* * *

The door to the apartment was slightly ajar and from inside Bosco could hear a lone voice talking quietly. The hallway itself was complete with coat hooks, alarm panel and a neat shoe-stand. Beyond it lay a small, sparsely furnished lounge with a large patterned rug in the centre, TV in the corner and two doors leading off from it. A pang of guilt stabbed through him as it reminded him of his daughter’s college rooms. The previous month he had somehow managed to send her birthday present a week late. They were still not on normal speaking terms.

A woman sat in one of a pair of armchairs speaking on a cell phone, her left hand massaging her forehead, her blonde hair falling in flowing curls over the shoulders of her elegant, knee-length office dress. A belted fawn raincoat lay over the side of the chair and as he approached she looked up, ended her call and stood.

‘Ms. King?’ Petzel hung back by the door as Bosco flashed his I.D. ‘I’m Detective Nick Bosco. Please.’ He indicated the seat with his hand and they both sat.

Hope and fear fought for supremacy in King’s expression.

‘Have you found Jo-Anne yet?’

‘There’s no word yet, ma’am.’

‘I’m so worried Detective. I tried Howard University Hospital and GWU - even Walter Reed - but she's not been admitted to any of them and she’s not answering her phone. This is so out of character.’

‘I appreciate that ma’am and we’re going to do everything we can to help...’ Bosco tried to speak reassuringly. He had handled scores of these cases over the years and had learned early on not to make any promises. As he talked he took his pocketbook from inside his jacket and uncapped a pen.

‘There may be an entirely innocent explanation as to where Jo-Anne is, but nevertheless time may well be crucial. So before we do anything else I just need to ask you a few questions, is that okay?’

She inhaled deeply, one foot tapping anxiously. ‘Okay.’

‘Right. Is that Miss Butler there?’

She followed Bosco’s eye-line to a small photo frame on the coffee table between them. It showed King herself laughing and embracing a petite, light-skinned black woman wearing a pair of rounded, slightly owlish glasses. She had slim features and long, dark hair; pretty enough in a plain Jane sort of way. Both wore neon pink antlers on their heads.

‘Yes. That was at my bachelorette party in April.’ Despite herself, as she lifted up the picture she briefly managed a smile.

‘Has her appearance changed recently in any way?’

‘No, no, she’s still the same old Jo.’

‘Could you describe her, physically I mean?’

‘Well... she’s about five foot two, five three at most, and I know for a fact she’s 125 pounds as she’s always saying how she can’t get an ounce below that.’

‘Does she have any obvious tattoos or distinguishing marks that aren’t shown in that photo?’

King frowned as she replaced the frame. ‘No, not that I know of.’

‘Okay. How old is Miss Butler, please?’

She thought for a moment. ‘She’s three years younger than me, so 25.’

‘Okay, and when was the last time you saw her?’

‘Saturday evening after we left work... about six p.m.’

‘And where’s that?’

‘We both work in the House of Representatives. For Congressman Bob Sinclair.’

Sinclair? Bosco’s brow furrowed. Sinclair? The name seemed familiar but he could not remember why.

‘Is he from Virginia?’

‘Yes.’ King’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘You must know your politics.’

Bosco pinched the bridge of his nose. He had voted once when he was 19, but had never made the mistake again. He had heard someone once call politicians envy-coddling tax lice and he could not have put it better himself.

‘I might have read about him somewhere.’

‘Possibly, though he doesn’t get as many interviews as he used to.’ She glanced across at Petzel, at the bedroom door, then back again.

He stopped writing and raised his eyes. ‘So you’re both federal employees then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just what is it you both do?’

‘Well, in truth I manage the Congressman’s event planning and the press office. Jo does more detailed stuff. Bob, uh Congressman Sinclair, is vice-chairman of the Congressional Homeland Security Commission. Jo researches and writes briefings for him. She looks into the behaviour of U.S. agencies and companies, things like that. We’re all based in the Cannon House Building, just off New Jersey Avenue.’

Bosco tapped his pen on the underside of his chin. He vaguely knew where the location.

‘So Miss Butler has security clearance then?’

‘Oh yes, we both do’, she said, flapping her hands on her lap. ‘It’s not as dramatic as it sounds though. Over four million people have clearances these days, twice as many as during the Cold War.’

Bosco pursed his lips in thought and looked round, surveying the apartment’s mostly empty walls. There was one framed six-by-four of a middle aged couple plus a pair of enlarged prints: a panoramic shot of the Great Wall of China and a nightscape of a city that he thought was probably Rome. There was no hint of a second occupant or any kind of relationship.

‘Presumably Miss Butler’s not married.’

‘No.’

‘Boyfriend?’

King looked down at her feet. ‘No.’

‘She ever meet guys in bars?’

‘God, no.’

‘Family? Other friends?’

‘Jo’s parents have both passed away, but she’s got an aunt in Virginia. Near Richmond, I think. She’s a small-town girl at heart. City life can be tough, you know? Millions of people but everyone a stranger.’

The picture was clear enough.

‘When did she come to D.C.?’

‘Less than two years ago. This was her first job after her master’s degree. I met her when we started working together last year.’

‘Do you normally both work Saturdays?

‘No, no. We don’t normally work weekends but the committee’s annual report is being published this week, so I was in organising the media packs for the press conference this Friday.’

‘You expecting many journalists to show up?’

‘Four weeks before the elections? You’ve got to be kidding. They’re all out chasing each other’s tails. I didn’t realise Jo was in the office, though, until I bumped into her.’

‘Did she give any hint that something was bothering her?’

‘She might have looked a bit under the weather, but we’ve all been pretty stressed lately.’

‘You saw her leave work then, in her car?’

‘Yes, we said goodbye in the parking lot.’

‘So it’s possible she never came back here at all.’

‘Oh no.’ King shook her head and twisted in her seat to point behind her. ‘The paperwork she had with her is in the kitchen. She had offered to give me a hand this week, because of everything I’ve got on my plate. That was why I came round this morning. She’s meant to be helping me out.’

‘No problems at work that you’re aware of?’

King picked at the cuticles on her left hand. ‘No.’

‘Okay, what kind of car does she drive?’

‘Oh, I’m not really sure. A silver Honda thing, a hatchback. Newish model.’

‘Not to worry. It’ll be on record.’

Bosco finished writing and closed his pocketbook, drumming his fingers on the cover. Very deliberately he looked King in the eye, deliberating how to phrase the next question just right.

‘Ma’am, this is very important. Do you have any idea where Miss Butler might have gone?’

King’s mouth popped open. She appeared on the verge of giving a blustering response, as if she thought Bosco was accusing her of something, but then the worry overwhelmed her and she just clasped her hands to her knees and shook her head.

‘No’, she said with quiet anguish, ‘but I wish to God I did.’

Chapter 3 - Beneath a Steel Sky

Bosco swapped details with King and made a note of Butler’s cell number. As Petzel escorted her from the apartment he listened to the retreating footsteps while removing a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and quickly snapping them on. He hoped he had not upset her, but in the end he had a job to do. Sentimentality was a luxury he could not afford.

Reaching down he popped the back off the photo frame and carefully removed the shot of Butler. It wasn’t the best but it would do. As he wandered into the kitchen, opening and closing the cupboards, he reflected somewhat bitterly that people thought they knew their friends, their family, even their spouses, but deep down few people really knew anyone, often not even themselves.

Jo-Anne Butler, aged 25. Young, black and apparently gifted. Missing, if the bed was any indicator, possibly since Saturday, which meant the best part of two days might have already been lost. It was not much to go on, but there was no need to hit the panic button just yet. In fact, where there was no obvious involvement with crime and drugs you could not even use an individual’s personal history as a gauge of likely intentions, as by definition going missing was a one-off event, completely out of character.

He leaned back against the worktop. To the left a well-stocked fridge freezer stood beside a collapsible table with two chairs - Ikea by the look of it. Clean crockery nestled in the drying rack, with the image of domestic bliss completed by an overflowing fruit bowl. Beside the latter were the notes King had mentioned: a quarter inch stack of paper in a plain brown, unaddressed envelope.

The Homeland Security Commission.

The big time for sure, but there were no blueprints or TOP SECRET notes here. Instead, Bosco found himself leafing through seating plans for journalists, part of a draft version of the committee’s annual report, and, tucked in at the back, some printed Google searches and a couple of newspaper articles, including two on China. He folded the whole lot widthways and thrust them into his inside coat pocket. He would have another look at them later.

Fewer than a dozen strides took him back through the lounge and into the centre of the bedroom where he stood, one hand on his hip, the other scratching the back of his head. On the dressing table the jars and tubes were arranged in size order beside a gilt-edged mirror set, and as he opened the top drawer a mix of scents, hairspray and Chanel No. 5, wafted past him. The perfume had been his wife’s favourite. Just for an instant he could hear her laugh as they danced at a police ball, feel her touch as he nuzzled her neck on a summer holiday, and finally, as always, he could see her cold, hard stare across the law firm’s table as they signed the divorce papers. Bosco slammed the drawer so hard the mirror wobbled, and with that the spell was broken.

He took a step back and forced himself to focus. Petzel was right. Except for the unmade bed the entire place was spotless. At most crime scenes he knew when something was amiss – he lifted the pillows and checked both under the bed and its built-in cabinets – and he could often sense when an attempt had been made to conceal something. Here though the opposite was true. Cleanliness was the dominant theme, verging almost on the obsessive. He almost felt like he ought to have taken his shoes off at the door.

‘Detective?’

Bosco popped his head round the bedroom door.

‘Yes?’

‘Detective?’

With a sigh Bosco stripped off his gloves, walked out onto the landing and peered over the banister to the hallway two floors below. Petzel was looking upwards.

‘Yes?’, he repeated.

‘Sir, we’ve got something down here.’

His heels clattering on the varnished wood, Bosco rounded the bottom step to find Petzel standing beneath the CCTV camera, watching him. He raised an eyebrow.

‘Well?’

‘I think you’ll like this, sir.’

She held up a finger then pushed gently on the wall panel behind the front door. As Bosco watched it sprang open with a click, revealing a matte, cinder-block interior.

He stepped forward to run his hand over the wood. ‘Nice.’ Only a small brass keyhole half way down would ever give it away.

Removing her cap, Petzel ducked her head and he followed her down a flight of concrete steps. Above them hung a maze of pipes and several fluorescent strip lights protected by steel mesh cages. From somewhere close by a draught whistled softly.

As they came to the bottom Bosco saw a thin rectangle of light in front of him, seeping in around the edge of a garage door. From the front the houses were at street level, but at the rear he now realised they were a whole storey lower. Looking round he could see that the walls held a couple of mud spattered bicycles, whilst in and on a series of shelves and mismatched drawers sat the usual junk - jars of nails and screws, old tins of paint, and garden tools rusted shut from lack of use.

Beneath an unshaded bulb in the far left corner, a male officer stood over a small man with receding grey hair wearing jeans and a sweater, the sleeves rolled to the elbows. Both were engrossed by a tiny laptop that the latter had propped open on a dust-streaked card table. As they approached, Bosco noted a thick yellow cable running from the PC to a junction box housed in a wall-mounted metal case.

The officer looked up and moved towards him.

‘Detective Bosco? I’m Patrol Officer Murphy. This is the landlord, Mr Latimer.’

The man stayed seated but gave a brief, nervous smile as Bosco spoke directly to him.

‘I’m Nick Bosco. Thank you for your cooperation, sir.’

‘It’s the least I can do.’

‘Have you owned the building long?’

‘Since it was built. Going on three years now.’

‘I understand from Officer Petzel that there’s CCTV footage of the front door?’

‘Yes, this is it’, said Latimer, swivelling the laptop so Bosco could see more easily.

The bulk of the screen was split into two images showing a steep-angled view of the inside of the hallway. One was static, whilst printed in red on the other’s top left corner was DORGEM LIVE. Beneath it a counter was ticking off the time in hours, minutes and seconds.

‘It’s all legal, you know?’ Latimer wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘I was just showing it to Officer Murphy how it works a bit like TiVo. You know TiVo?’

Bosco nodded. ‘My daughter has it.’

‘Right, well, instead of recording TV shows, this system’ - he gestured to where the yellow cable entered the wall - ‘records the signal from the camera.’

‘You’ve constant footage of the front door then?’

‘Oh, no. I was just recording now to show Officer Murphy. To do that constantly would take up way too much memory. It’d fill this hard disk in a day or two.’

‘So how does it know when to record?’

‘Motion detection.’

‘On a home system?’

Latimer shrugged. ‘Yeah. Full-colour but there’s no mic, so no sound. The software’s all open-source, totally free.’

Bosco swept his hand over the laptop. ‘Must be expensive.’

‘No, not really. The laptop’s mine from home. The rest... about two hundred bucks.’

Bosco briefly paused to watch motes of dust swim aimlessly through the air. ‘Did your tenants know about this?’

‘Uh, no.’ Latimer pulled at the neck of his sweater. ‘Under the law, as the ground floor apartment is still a private residence of mine, I’m permitted to install a camera.’

Bosco folded his arms. ‘Uh huh.’

‘Look it’s really only in case of tenant-to-tenant disputes. I’ve had some bad experiences in the past and... well, I learned the hard way you could say.’

Bosco eyed him warily. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, uh... as soon as it senses movement it begins recording.’ A sheen of sweat glistened on Latimer’s top lip. ‘While there’s something active in its field of vision it keeps going, but after 10 seconds of nothing happening it’ll shut off automatically.’

Bosco pointed his thumb over his shoulder towards the garage door.

‘You got any cameras out back?’

‘No.’

‘Any more inside?’

‘No.’

Bosco fixed him with a stare. ‘You sure?’

‘Yes, yes, that’s the only one. All the apartments can buzz the front door to let visitors in. It’s the main entry point. That’s why I put it there.’

Bosco watched him fidget in his chair. ‘Okay, let’s cut to the chase. You got something to show me?’

‘Yes.’ Latimer clicked play on the static image, grateful for a respite from the questions. ‘The sensor sees further than the lens, so you have to give it a sec.’

Bosco peered closer as the empty hall filled the screen. A moment later Butler moved swiftly into shot wearing a dark padded jacket and blue jeans. In her right hand she appeared to be carrying a small bag, but her body partially blocked the line of sight.

As she got closer she rubbed her eyes and grasped the handle but then stopped, leant on the doorframe, stooped slightly and instead reached towards her ankle. A section of patterned pink cloth protruded from her trouser leg, which she tucked it into her boot before opening the door and passing through it.

Latimer clicked the mouse and the footage stopped.

‘She was wearing her pyjamas under her clothes’, said Petzel.

‘Yeah, looks like it.’ Bosco rubbed his palm over his chin. ‘When was that?’

Latimer peered towards the screen. ‘Sunday, 12:17 a.m.’

‘Sunday?’

‘Yes.’

‘That time accurate?’

‘Yeah, it’s spot on.’

Shit.

Jo-Anne Butler, aged 25. In bed, asleep, the safest place in the world. It’s gone midnight, then what? Phone goes off? Possibly. Yada, yada. Something urgent. She can’t be bothered to change or doesn’t have time to. Then she willingly goes out into the night. Why?

‘Sir?’ It was Petzel. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Hmm? Yeah...’ He cleared his throat. ‘What was that she was carrying?’

Latimer clicked on the slider beneath the image and dragged it left to rewind the footage. ‘Clutch bag?’

Petzel was shaking her head. ‘It’s too big.’

Bosco addressed Latimer directly. ‘I’m gonna need a copy of that footage.’

‘It’s yours.’

‘And that’s definitely the last time she appears?’

This time Murphy straightened and spoke. ‘Yes, sir. Mr. Latimer and I checked it through to the end... She doesn’t come back.’

Bosco took out his pocketbook and began to write rapidly. ‘You know Miss Butler well, Mr. Latimer?’

‘Only by sight really. She’s just another tenant.’

‘Any problems?’

‘No, nothing. No complaints, always pays on time.’

‘Know of any regular guests?’

‘No, I’m not a snooper you know. This-’

‘It’s okay, thanks.’ Bosco flipped the book closed with a slap and pulled out his cell. ‘You’ve been a great help. I’ll have a tech come and recover that disk. Murphy, Petzel, come with me.’

* * *

Once back up the steps and in the hall Bosco pressed speed dial, issuing his instructions while he waited for the call to connect.

‘Okay, I want you two going door-to-door in this set of apartments and the houses directly across the street. Ask if anyone remembers seeing anything unusual recently or saw a woman driving off in a silver hatchback around midnight on Saturday.’

‘Got it’, said Murphy.

As the door clicked shut behind them Bosco began to walk back up to Butler’s apartment. On the final landing he paused to study his complexion in a wall mirror, running his hand through his thinning fringe and widening his eyes to inspect the yolky whites and the dark bags beneath them. He was not sleeping well and it showed.

‘You have reached the offices of the District of Columbia Police Depar...’

Christ.

‘Your call is in a queue...’

That was when he heard it.

Clicking his phone shut he darted up the final flight of stairs. Butler’s landline was still ringing as he entered the living room and yanked the cordless handset from its cradle.

‘Hello?’

‘Jo-Anne?’ A man’s voice, frightened, on edge. In the background he could hear children laughing. ‘Jo? Who is this?’

Bosco managed to say, ‘This is Det–’, before there was a click and the line was cut. For several seconds afterwards he stared helplessly at the mouthpiece before slowly replacing it.

Well, that did it. Pulling out his cell again he redialled. This time his call went straight through.

‘Dispatch.’

‘Hey, Nadine? It’s Bosco. I’m over on Brown working the missing person.’

He checked his watch as she replied.

‘Yeah, I’ve got sufficient suspicion to warrant the elevation of this case. Can you do me a favour? Call the Watch Commander’s office for me please and tell them I’m requesting a critical status declaration, then call Greene at S.I.D. and ask her to get over here ASAP. Got that? Oh’ - he clicked his fingers before she could interrupt - ‘and get the Records Department on the teletype and cross-check the name Jo-Anne Butler, against arrest records and hospital admissions anytime from, say, midnight Saturday. That’s B-U-T-L-E-R.’ He added King’s physical description then paused as Nadine repeated the details and his instructions.

‘What?’, he said, then grinned. ‘Yeah, that’s three favours, I know. I owe you. Yes, three. Thanks, hon.’

Bosco had pocketed the phone and started towards the door when he had a second thought, checked himself and turned on his heel. Picking the cordless handset back up he pressed the dial button. For a few seconds he stood just listening to the tone, before he once more shut it off and walked slowly back down the stairs.

Why I Write

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell - Confucius

A state of war is not a blank cheque for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens - Justice Sandra Day O’Connor

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you - Friedrich Nietzsche

Despite the fact that every president since FDR has authorised illegal surveillance of the American people, the expansion of the military and paramilitary offices of state that has occurred during the last decade is unprecedented in the USA’s history. In fact, under the guise of saving us from terrorism, the growth of mass surveillance and universal suspicion, allied with the abuse of both secrecy and executive power, have cumulatively distorted the United States beyond recognition, transforming it without question into a fear-mongering security state.

As cryptographer Bruce Schneier has eloquently pointed out, however, not only is it literally impossible for terrorism to threaten our survival, but equally most of the steps taken in the name of homeland security have actually made us no safer. Instead, the single biggest danger that America really faces is the deceitful overreaction of its elite, who have used fear as a tactic in an insatiable drive to enrich and empower themselves, heedless of the cost to the country and its citizenry. The reality is that even as they have squandered trillions of dollars and sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives, these enemies of freedom have been allowed to falsely wrap themselves in the flag, exaggerate the dangers faced, and label any and all dissent as unpatriotic. Whilst at the same time fetishising the Constitution, they have betrayed everything it has ever stood for.

Misgoverned by this self-perpetuating and unaccountable ruling class, itself drawn from both parties and utterly divorced from the people, the divide within the United States is no longer between left and right, but between the few at the top and the rest of us at the bottom. In truth the multinational corporations, the mass media and the two-party system have been deliberately fused into one obnoxious mass, and having rigged the political process inexorably in their favour, they have cemented their ill-gotten position atop the ziggurat of power.

In accepting that, ‘the prejudice for action in public affairs is a constant. And a constant disappointment’, one perverse result of this situation is that government spending on counter-terrorism has become utterly disconnected from any realistic analysis of the threat posed. Indeed, if terrorism really were a danger on the scale alleged by the government and its media marionettes, the sane, logical and cost-effective response would be to target specifics and allocate money to where it was needed most. Demonstrably though this is not what has happened.

In a simple analogy, if you buy weed-killer you spray it only on the weeds. You do not spread it wantonly across your lawn, because to do so would kill the very thing you are trying to protect. In the manner of Ben Tre in Vietnam though, in the name of saving America the government is actively destroying it. In statistical terms, Americans face far greater risks from bees and bathtubs than they do terrorists, yet for those within the iron triangle the phantom of terrorism has, without a shadow of a doubt, become their new Soviet Union. It is the answer to their profit-gouging prayers. Unlike the monolithic USSR though, with its defined homeland and conventional forces, terrorists are a nebulous, shadowy foe who defy simple classification. Rather than gauging the matter objectively, we have therefore been thrust into a looking-glass world where realism is scorned, worst-case-scenarios are the norm, and where breathless warnings from unnamed sources are spun from thin air into fact in the blink of an eye. To the lobbyist, the contractor and the jobsworth bureaucrat then, there is nowhere that terrorists might not strike, no one who is above suspicion and, best of all, no way of ever knowing when the fight is won. Theirs is the forever war, a black altar on which, in the name of greed and profit, they will gleefully sacrifice the civil rights and economic wellbeing of their fellow Americans.

Moreover, at the same time as the United States is betraying its very essence – how else to explain a nation that defiles a founding heritage of liberty in favour of secret prisons and torture by proxy, detention without trial and warrantless spying - it has so weakened itself that it is gradually surrendering to China its superpower crown. Crippled by a $15 trillion national debt (of which China owns one-third), and hindered by a $560 billion annual trade deficit (of which China accounts for two-thirds), the effects of these phenomena can already be witnessed. In politics for example, because of the risks it carries, few western representatives dare to criticise China directly. In popular culture meanwhile, due principally to financial concerns, Hollywood films now routinely portray the Chinese in a positive light. Lastly in business, projects such as Peaceful Chungking prove beyond doubt that fickle American companies have likewise begun to dance to Beijing’s tune. In fact in that particular case a few have, without a hint of shame, openly begun to assist in networking half a million cameras which will be used to spy on the public en masse. Polite words are not enough to describe those who will happily sell their services to the world’s biggest dictatorship, in the full knowledge that they are helping to suppress the freedoms of hundreds of millions of their fellow human beings. As profit-maximising entities however, such companies pay U.S. taxes and employ U.S. workers, with their shares owned by U.S. pension funds to which they issue U.S. dividends. The question we must ask ourselves is therefore one of ethics not economics: is it acceptable that our pursuit of happiness should come at the expense of the misery of others? God help us all if the answer turns out to be yes.

Thanks then to this poisoned creed of opportunity through anxiety, wholesale surveillance of all communication, travel and association, both foreign and domestic, has become the rule. The computerisation of this task furthermore enables the state to plot individual movements, elicit political leanings, and determine personal relationships. In such a society privacy is a non-word, with the fig leaf of legal oversight revealed to be entirely worthless against the hidden and unaccountable security services, aided by a complicit executive and abetted by a parasite class of rent-seeking legislators, lobbyists and contractors.

Today we are hence looking down the barrel of a permanent legacy of illiberal and intrusive power, deliberately crafted to be both unbalanced and unchecked. Cowering before the CCTV lenses, the fingerprint scanners and the automatic licence plate readers, privacy as we knew it – the right to be anonymous; the right to simply be left alone – has ceased to exist. Here, the Obama administration has actually done us a service, proving to anyone with eyes in their head that the two major parties are nothing but opposing sides of the very same coin. On the stump the talk was all about ‘change’, yet after four years in office there has been no disassembling of the security superstructure commenced during the disastrous Bush era – in fact it has been expanded – such that the authoritarianism looks and tastes exactly the same.

In this world turned upside down there has come to be an inverse relation between the volume of information the government holds on each of us, and the amount of insight we are permitted into its own inner workings. One must hence marvel at the ovine willingness of ordinary people to keep voting for those who have betrayed them, and to submit to this intolerable state of affairs, even as they themselves pay the price through austerity, the loss of their civil liberties, and the spilling of the blood of their service relatives and friends. There must, ‘certainly be a vast fund of stupidity in human nature, else men would not be caught as they are, a thousand times over, by the same snare; and while they yet remember their past misfortunes, go on to court and encourage the causes to which they were owing, and which will again produce them.’

With barely a whimper, in one short decade the public has been shepherded into surrendering rights that took centuries to obtain, yet where the People’s Republic leads, the republic of the people need not follow. Indeed, in the past we were able to draw a line between ourselves and those who openly subverted human liberty. We may not have agreed on what we stood for, but we were certain about what we stood against. They, the enemy, spied on their own citizens. They routinely permitted torture. They held people without trial and they intimidated whistleblowers and dissidents with spurious criminal charges. That today the federal government does all of these and more, whilst skulking behind the canard of national security, surely proves beyond doubt that it, not terrorism, poses the greater threat, as only it has the power to truly destroy that which it claims to defend.