James Grippando - Afraid of the Dark

Sorry, Jack.

Andie still wasn’t convinced that it was safe to return to Vortex. She’d left the company heliport on Sunday with the definite impression that Bahena was having doubts about his trainee. But it wasn’t Bahena who had called to insist that she return tonight to discuss her “immediate activation.” The call had come from the top. From the CEO of Vortex’s parent company. From Sid Littleton himself.

“You’re close,” Harley had told her. “You have to go back.”

Andie knew her supervisor was right.

An inch of new snow blanketed the sidewalk, and it squeaked beneath each step. Commuters had been heading home since lunchtime in anticipation of the coming storm. Even so, a long line of glowing orange taillights streamed up the street toward the on-ramp to the expressway. There were few pedestrians-just Andie and a lone lunatic jogger. A woman, Andie noted as she trudged by her. A pregnant woman. Now that was dedication: In her sixth month, easily, and superwoman was out jogging in a snowstorm. She probably worked sixty hours a week at a major law firm, too. Dropped off her three older children at three different private schools on her way to work. Hit the gym every morning at five A.M., even if it meant getting up at four to put the cookies in the oven for the Cub Scout bake sale. Teleconferenced with teachers over lunch, organized charity events on weekends, sang the barking puppy to sleep at two A.M., always had her highlights done before her hair hit “scare alert,” and made love to her husband four times a week whether they wanted it or not.

Is that who Jack thought he was engaged to marry?

Andie hurried up the granite steps to the building’s after-hours entrance. The adrenaline was kicking in. From the very beginning, Black Ice had been an exhilarating mission: uncover the truth about the interrogation tactics used at black sites operated by Black Ice through its highly secretive subsidiary, Vortex Inc. The plan was to place an FBI agent in the role of an interrogator in training. And now the reason was clear why it had to be a female agent: Black Ice used female interrogators to berate and humiliate Muslim men in the name of “enhanced interrogation.”

Still, there was the question: Why her? Of all the female FBI agents who worked undercover, why did the bureau choose Miami agent Andie Henning? True, she was an experienced undercover agent who, over the years, had fooled everyone from cult leaders to Wall Street investment bankers. But she was no expert in counterterrorism. And that was beginning to bother her. Really bother her.

She stopped at the top of the steps before entering the building and dialed her supervisory agent.

“Harley, it’s me.”

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Fine. Before I go back in, there’s just something I need to get off my chest.”

“What is it?”

Andie stepped closer to the building, away from the falling snow. “I’m in this role, and it’s my duty to see it through. But I’m not naive about why I was chosen.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This is a broad investigation into private security firms. I don’t see it as coincidence that I’m investigating Black Ice.”

“Of course it’s no coincidence. There is a key role for a woman.”

The cold air made her sniffle. “Or is it a key role for Jack Swyteck’s fiancee?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know for sure yet. But my instinct tells me that I’m about to find out that I’m investigating the same black site in Prague that was at the heart of Jack’s alibi defense in the murder case against Jamal Wakefield.”

There was silence on the line. Andie took it the only way she could.

“I knew all along that Jack and I were playing on the same field,” she said. “But I can’t believe the bureau would put me in a position where my job would intersect with Jack’s like this.”

She heard his sigh on the line. “I’m sorry,” said Harley.

“It’s sleazy, at best,” she said.

“I agree,” said Harley. “I want you to know that I was just as surprised as you are.”

Andie paused. Something about the way he said it-something about Harley-made her believe him. “I’m still going to raise hell about it when this is all over.”

“Okay. But there’s something else I want you to know,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ll help you.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Andie ended the call and tucked her phone away. She brushed the snow off her shoulders, then slid her passkey through the electronic reader at the main entrance.

The door to Vortex Inc. opened. The security guard greeted her in the lobby.

“Welcome back, Ms. Horne.”

“What do you think, Leon?” she said as she shook the snow from her scarf. “Do we get extra points for working the night shift in a blizzard?”

“No, ma’am. But at least we’re not alone. Mr. Littleton still hasn’t gone home yet.”

“That’s good to know,” she said-and she meant it.

Jamal’s video was short. Jack’s recovery time would be much longer. It was amazing how high a naked man could be made to jump from the table with a well-placed cattle prod. More than the image, however, it was the sound of Jamal’s screams that would stay with Jack.

“Okay,” said Jack, collecting himself. “If being Jamal Wakefield from Miami gets you this kind of treatment, I now have a better understanding of why he went to Gitmo pretending to be a Somali peasant who didn’t speak English.”

“Not to mention the fact that being Jamal Wakefield could land you on death row for a murder you didn’t commit,” said Chuck, who was still on speaker.

Shada shook her head. She hadn’t watched, but Jack’s summary gave her the flavor. “I don’t understand why they would record this kind of conduct on video.”

“This came up at Gitmo,” said Jack. “It’s a matter of interrogation expedience. If I’m questioning you, it may be that all I have to do is show you the video of what I did to Jamal. You’ll probably start talking before I do the same thing to you.”

“Let me make sure I understand,” said Shada. “All those videos that I copied from Habib’s computer-those are all men who were tortured at the same black site Jamal was at?”

“It looks that way,” said Chuck. “The interesting thing is that we would never have made that connection if you had not brought us the Jamal video.”

“Explain that to me,” said Jack.

“I mentioned to you before that one of the functions of Project Round Up is to trace video files all the way back to the camera that created them. My computers confirm that all these files-Jamal’s included-were created with the same camera. Without Jamal’s file, you might think that all the other files were just more sick pornography traded on the P2P network. Jamal’s was the only one not traded on P2P. His video is the missing piece in the puzzle that links all of this activity to torture at a black site.”

“There’s something that still doesn’t add up for me,” said Shada.

“Tell me,” said Chuck.

“I understand what Jack said about interrogation expedience as a reason to create these videos. But creating them is one thing. Somebody took these files and put them on the P2P network. Why?”

“That’s a good question,” said Jack.

“I can answer that in two words,” said Chuck. “Trade value.”

“What does that mean?” asked Shada.

Jack was with him. “It means that the way to get content on a P2P network is to trade something in return.”

“You got it,” said Chuck. “In plain English, if I’m a sick son of a bitch who wants to watch movies of a preteen girl having sex with her mommy’s boyfriend, the easiest way for me to get it is to trade something for it.”