James Grippando - Afraid of the Dark

“Please, sir,” the nurse said, “wait in the hall.”

“I’m staying,” said Jack.

“But-”

“No buts,” said Jack, and then he reached for the little bit of Yiddish he’d learned from his friend Neil. “I’m here for my zeyde.”

Chuck Mays spent Monday evening alone at his computer, surfing the Internet. The dark side of the Internet.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) file trading was nothing new in the digital world. For years, software has allowed complete strangers to connect online to search for shared files on the computers of others. Any content that can be distributed digitally can be downloaded directly from “peers” on the same network. Most people shared music or video, which grabbed the attention of the music industry in a big way. Lawsuits over illegal trading of copyright-protected material shut down Napster in 2001, but the battle continued. Of greater interest to guys like Chuck Mays was the fact that, on the most popular peer-to-peer networks, roughly two-thirds of downloadable responses with archival and executable file extensions (especially responses to movie requests) contain malware-viruses, worms, Trojan horses-that turn personal information on a home computer into the cyberspace equivalent of an unlocked and unattended vehicle with the keys in the ignition and the motor running. P2P was a virtual smorgasbord for identity thieves.

And for all kinds of criminals.

Mays tried another P2P program and entered his password. The usual self-serving disclaimer popped up:

This program enables access to the Gnutella file-sharing network, which is comprised of the computers of its many users. There is no central server for the files that populate Gnutella. We cannot and do not review material, and we cannot control what content may exist in the Gnutella.

Mays scrolled through the legal mumbo jumbo, then stopped at the italicized words at the bottom of the page: “Be advised that we have a zero-tolerance policy for content that exploits children.”

It almost made him laugh. Yeah, and Big Tobacco has zero tolerance for sales of cigarettes to minors.

His sardonic smile faded. It was time to get down to business. Mays was no stranger to the darkest doors in P2P, and with just a few choice keystrokes-abbreviations for words that should never be linked together in the English language-he was knocking on an old standby. With a click of the mouse, a menu popped up on his screen. A list of files followed, digital content that network peers were offering for trade. Bloody Hairbrush Spanking caught his eye, but he’d seen that one before, and it was tame compared to what he was trying to find. He typed in a query-AV/IF/IB-and waited.

A P2P chat room was a lively marketplace, and for the next several minutes, Mays stared at his screen and watched this trader link up with that trader right before his eyes. It took a little imagination, but for him, the bartering harkened back to the Roman forum. Much of it was legal. An unknown quantity was patently illegal, but no one seemed to worry about getting caught. The typical trader who flouted copyright laws was basically of the mind-set that there was no reason to pay for something that could be downloaded for free. Traders in this chat room came from a different place entirely. No matter how much money was in your bank account, you couldn’t go on Amazon and buy this kind of content. You couldn’t even buy it at pornstars. com. These weren’t girls gone wild. These were girls gone missing.

Mays’ computer chimed. His query of AV/IF/IB-Asian virgin in the front or in the back-had drawn a quick response. It was from someone who called himself Mustang.

What are you trading?

That was always the question. Mays took his time to formulate the right response. In a world where mere possession of illegal files meant prison time, only undercover cops posing as traders answered quickly. Sixty seconds passed. Long enough.

FMLTWIA, he typed, waiting another sixty seconds before adding the all-important number, the girl’s age: 16.

Then he drew a long drag on his cigarette, and he waited for Mustang’s reply.

Jack did all the right things to avoid jet lag. His wristwatch was set to London time before boarding. Plenty of water, no alcohol on the flight. He even managed to sleep a few winks before landing. Still, as they settled into their hotel room, he was having a hard time accepting that it was lunchtime Tuesday.

“You have to force yourself to stay awake until bedtime,” said Vince. “Napping is the worst thing you can do on day one.”

Jack was curious: When it came to international travel, was it an advantage to be blind-no disorienting change from night and day? But he didn’t know Vince well enough to ask the kind of questions that sighted people were always embarrassed to ask.

Chuck Mays had put them up at the Tower, a business hotel and convention center north of the Thames and a couple miles south of Somaal Town. They had a junior suite on the eleventh floor with two double beds. The feather pillows looked tempting, but Jack resisted. He went to the window and opened the blinds.

“Wow, check out the view.”

It was his first gaffe, but Andie’s words of worry popped into his head: Vince is blind, and you’re… well, you’re Jack. “Sorry,” he said.

Vince just smiled. “No need to apologize. Tell me what you see.”

Their room faced the Tower of London, and Jack tried not to sound like a tour guide as he described the historic buildings and concentric stone walls on the bank of the river, the oldest of which dated back almost a millennium. But he was suddenly philosophical.

“It’s kind of ironic,” said Jack. “This whole nightmare started when Neil asked me to represent a Gitmo detainee. Now I’m on the other side of the ocean trying to find his killer, just a few blocks away from one of the most notorious torture chambers on earth.”

“I seriously hope you’re not comparing Gitmo to the Tower of London. Because if you are, that makes you the blind guy in the room.”

Jack thought about it. “You’re right. No comparison. The weather is much better in Cuba.”

“That was a joke, right?”

Vince was still learning Jack’s intonations, and Jack was still adjusting to a roommate who couldn’t see his smirks and half smiles. “Yes,” said Jack. “That was a joke.”

Jack unpacked in silence-not because of any tension in the air, but because Vince was orienting himself to the floor plan, silently pacing off steps from the bed to the dresser, from the closet to the bathroom, from the desk to the minibar. Jack pretended not to notice when he banged his leg into the bedpost.

“I bet you’re wondering how I’m supposed to find a killer,” Vince said as he rubbed the pain out of his shin.

It was meant as a joke, but Jack picked up a hint of frustration in his voice. He imagined that if Vince were to roll up his pant leg, there would be plenty of black-and-blue badges of persistence.

“We’ll figure it out,” said Jack. “But on the subject of finding people, I am still curious to know how Chuck was able to track Shada back to London.”

“I guess I can tell you now that you’re on board. It was simple, really, once Chuck knew that she was disguising herself as a Muslim woman.”

“What do you mean?”

“You won’t find many women dressed in hijab who travel by themselves. It’s not allowed under Muslim law. Chuck checked the flight manifests to and from Miami, looking for women with Muslim-sounding names who were traveling alone. His supercomputers narrowed things down pretty quickly.”

Vince’s cell phone chimed, and a mechanical voice told him who it was: