James Grippando - Afraid of the Dark

Shada selected one and inserted it in the USB port.

“I don’t like being kept in the dark,” Jack said.

“You’re seeing the files the same time I’m seeing them,” Chuck said. “How is that being kept in the dark?”

“I’m talking about Vince. You don’t sound very happy with Shada, and I have this feeling that you’ve pressured her into creating this complete diversion to keep me from finding out what Vince is really up to.”

“The files are encrypted,” said Chuck.

Jack was being ignored.

“Can’t you break the code?” asked Shada.

Ignored by both of them.

Jack’s cell rang. He checked the number but didn’t recognize it. He answered on the third ring, and the urgent voice on the line was strangely familiar.

“Mr. Swyteck? Is this Jack Swyteck?”

“Yes, who is-”

Jack stopped himself, suddenly recognizing the voice. It was the teenage girl who’d called him from Bethnal Green, who’d talked to Jamal right before he was killed, who’d claimed to know McKenna’s killer-and who was too frightened to call the police. Jack drew a breath and tried not to spook her this time.

“I was hoping you’d call again,” said Jack in a calm voice. “Are you doing okay?”

“No-I don’t know,” she said, straining with confusion.

Jack wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to say, but he said it anyway: “You may not know this, but I’m in London right now. Probably not too far from where you are.”

“How do you know where I am?” She sounded more than a little paranoid.

“Don’t worry, I’m not following you. But I would like to meet with you, if-”

“No! I’m not meeting with anybody!”

Jack glanced at Shada, who was suddenly more interested in Jack’s phone call than in Chuck’s work on the computer screen.

“That’s okay,” Jack said into the phone. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“Is he dead?” she asked.

“Is who dead?” asked Jack.

“The man who killed McKenna Mays.”

“We don’t know who killed McKenna. Do you?”

“Yes! I told you before, and I told Jamal, too. He’s creepy and scary and showed me pictures on his computer, and he said if I ever tried to escape I’d end up just like McKenna Mays.”

Jack glanced at his computer, wondering if those pictures were among the files that Shada had copied onto the flash drive.

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“When did you see him last?” asked Jack.

“A couple of hours ago,” she said, her voice cracking. “He came to the cellar and…”

“And what?” asked Jack.

She didn’t answer, and the crack in her voice had mushroomed into outright sobbing. Jack wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep her on the line.

“Listen to me, please,” said Jack. “It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me where you are, but can you tell me where that cellar is?”

“No! Not if he’s not dead. I saw the pictures. He showed me what he’d do to me if I ever told anyone!”

“He doesn’t have to find out you told me anything.”

“He knows everything! This sucks so bad. Why couldn’t he die? He looked dead. ”

Jack did a double take. “He looked dead when?”

“When we left.”

“We?” said Jack. “Someone was with you in the cellar?”

“There was a big fight, and he just laid there as I cut off the ankle bracelet. Then we ran.”

“Ankle-” he started to say, but the bracelet was secondary. “Who was with you?”

She didn’t answer.

Jack tried again. “Please, I need to know who was with you.”

He heard her talking away from the phone. A few seconds later, she was back on the line. “I don’t know his name. And he’s not answering me.”

“What do you mean he doesn’t answer?”

Her voice was suddenly racing. “It was really a bad fight. They both got hurt, and he seemed okay when we ran. But I’m not so sure now. I’m taking care of him, and if he has to go to the hospital I’ll call an ambulance. But right now I don’t want to go anywhere until you tell me that I’m not going to end up like McKenna.”

“I promise that is not going to happen.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know that I can help you.”

“No one can. Not until the Dark is dead!”

The Dark? “Did you just call him the Dark?”

“That’s what he told me to call him-what he told me to be afraid of.”

“Please, you have to tell me where you-”

Jack stopped. The line had gone silent, and he could tell she was gone. Jack immediately dialed back, but she didn’t answer. It went straight to voice mail.

“Hello, this is Hassan, I can’t come to the phone right now…”

Jack knew the voice, and it gave him chills. It was Maryam Wakefield’s brother-in-law.

Jamal’s uncle.

It was almost six P.M. in Arlington, and Sid Littleton was working through dinner. The offices of Black Ice Security were on the Virginia side of the Potomac, and at sunset the shadows on the partially frozen river looked like black ice. It was on a winter day like this one, six years earlier, that Littleton had named his private military firm.

Littleton was meeting with his Washington lawyers when his cell phone rang. He checked the number. It was from London. He excused himself from the conference room so that he could return the call in private on a more secure line.

Congressional hearings into the possible existence of black sites in Eastern Europe had started on Monday. The highly politicized inquiry was making little headway, but at least one member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was chomping at the bit to grill the arrogant CEO of Black Ice Security. Littleton’s testimony would begin at nine A.M., and his lawyers’ job was to make him the most prepared witness from the handful of private military firms summoned to the Hill. Littleton wasn’t worried. He assured his counsel that it would be over his dead body that the committee would get to the bottom of any privately run black sites. He didn’t mention the other dead bodies-most recently, Neil Goderich.

Littleton stepped into his corner office, where floor-to-ceiling windows offered power views of the Pentagon and the upscale area known as Pentagon City. Seated behind the two-hundred-year-old walnut desk that his father had used as director of the CIA, Littleton picked up the phone and dialed the number. He never took a call from his chief special operations man directly. They needed to account for the possibility that Habib might be calling with a gun to his head. The protocol was for Littleton to return the call using Diffie-Hellman top-military-level cell-encryption methods. If Habib answered with the correct greeting, Littleton knew that he was talking under his own free will.

“F-M-L-T-W-I-A,” said Habib.

It was the correct greeting. The men could talk freely.

“Go ahead,” said Littleton.

“Major problem. I have reason to believe that some files from my computer may have been copied.”

“Which files?”

“The ones Chang had.”

Littleton sank in his chair. The elimination of Ethan Chang had been an easy decision. Chang had transported several detainees to the Black Ice site in the Czech Republic, and he’d even created videos of what went on there-including a few videos of Jamal Wakefield. It was brazen enough that Chang demanded serious money from Littleton to keep quiet about it. When he threatened to give the images to Jack Swyteck if Black Ice didn’t pay up, he’d left Littleton no choice. The CEO did, however, have issues with the Bond-like assassination technique that Habib had chosen.