Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

Silence.

Danny straightened up and drew his Sig. He checked the flat. The bedroom had a lingering smell of perfume and a neatly made double bed with lots of cushions. An en-suite bathroom was filled with cosmetics, but nobody was hiding there. The door to the right of the main entrance was a sitting room. Sofa and more armchairs. A TV. Various cabinets. A wide window with a sturdy locking mechanism. No people. The third room off the hallway, overlooking the road, was a large eat-in kitchen. And empty. He switched on the lights for five seconds, then returned to the hallway. He retrieved his shoes, put them on and waited by the slumped corpse of the man he’d killed, weapon raised.

Thunder cracked. The lights flickered off and back on again. Danny shivered. His wet clothes were bringing down his body temperature. He ignored it.

It took them two minutes to arrive. The General’s face went pale when he saw the dead man on the floor. Bethany barely seemed to notice him. She calmly closed the door behind them as the General led them into the kitchen. There were no curtains and Danny didn’t like being illuminated. He took up position to the side of the window and half watched the road, half watched the General as he removed the kick board below a line of kitchen units and felt underneath. A moment later, he heard the rip of tape. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Danny said.

‘You kidding me? We’ve got to broadcast this stuff now.’

‘This place is under surveillance.’

‘It’ll only take a minute,’ the General said. ‘I keep a Chromebook in the other room. Come on, let’s get this done.’

Danny hesitated. He felt uneasy. But maybe the General was right. The sooner he could broadcast the deepfakes, the better their chance of stopping the hit. He nodded.

‘I need to use the bathroom while you gentlemen save the world,’ Bethany said. Danny understood that she was seeking his permission, and he nodded. She left the room, then Danny and the General crossed the hallway, past the dead body with the knife still protruding from the back of its neck, and into the room opposite. The General switched on the light and moved over to a desk against the far wall. There was a mirror over the desk. As the General located a laptop in one of the drawers, Danny looked at his own reflection. Several days’ stubble. Black bags under his eyes. He looked like he needed to sleep for a week. The General opened up his computer and sat in front of it at the desk. Switched it on. Inserted the memory stick. ‘You got to see this,’ he said.

There were two video files on the memory stick. The General clicked on the first. Footage ran. Danny crouched down to watch it.

The footage was completely unremarkable. It appeared to have been taken by a surveillance camera in a busy street. Danny could tell from the US registration plates on the passing cars that it was an American street, but Danny didn’t know the registrations well enough to identify which state it was in. The surveillance camera pointed across the road to a stretch of sidewalk where there was a fast-food joint, a thrift store and a massage parlour. Clearly not the best part of town. A man stood outside the massage parlour: a white guy, perhaps in his mid-thirties. He stood there for twenty seconds or so as other pedestrians passed by without looking at him. Then somebody approached. A woman. Also white. Dark shoulder-length hair. They spoke for perhaps thirty seconds, then shook hands. The woman walked away. The man remained outside the massage parlour for a few more seconds then walked off in the opposite direction.

The footage stopped. The General clicked on the second file. The same piece of footage ran. The same street. The same cars. The same angle onto the same shops. But the man was different. At least, his face was. Brown skin. An Arab-style beard. And a peculiar, distinctive feature: a scar that started above his right eye and extended vertically, over the eyelid and down on to his cheek. Danny knew that he was watching a deepfake. He knew to expect authenticity. But he was astonished at how lifelike it was. If he hadn’t seen the original footage, there was simply no way he would have guessed that this had been doctored. It was completely convincing.

The woman approached. The same woman, only not. This face was also different. Older, with highlighted hair. Danny thought he perhaps recognised her. From TV maybe? Then he had to remind himself that he was not watching a real person. He was watching a lie. Whoever it was that he was supposed to recognise, she had not walked up to this man with the strange scar on his eye. She had not spoken to him. She had not shaken his hand before walking away. The event unfolding on the screen simply had not happened.

But nobody watching it would believe that, if they hadn’t seen the original first.

The footage stopped running. There was silence.

‘The woman on the deepfake is Madeline Doherty, or at least that’s what we’re supposed to believe,’ the General said. ‘Democratic congresswoman, chair of various select committees, frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. She has a strong following among the Black and Hispanic communities. Makes her the President’s biggest threat, come election time.’

‘What about the bloke with the huge scar on his eye?’ Danny said.

‘I haven’t been able to find out. But whoever he is, he’s being set up. By the CIA, probably. Or at least a faction within it. They have a unit, you know? Its sole purpose is to target jihadist sympathisers who wouldn’t ordinarily be a credible threat and encourage them to cross the line and plot actual terror attacks. They let them get ninety per cent of the way, then they pass the intel on to the Feds to make the arrest and everybody’s happy.’

‘You think that’s what’s happening to him? You think he’s been encouraged to carry out an attack?’

‘Maybe. There’s another possibility though. The attacker could be somebody else. They might be making sure this guy is on the scene when it happens. They’ll want a scapegoat, and a living whipping boy’s better than a dead one, right? This guy sure looks the part, with the beard and the eye and all. The President’s base? They’ll be a pack of wolves over a hunk of raw steak if they think a guy like that is involved in a terror attack. And if they think the liberals have been fraternising with him? He’ll be able to spin whatever the hell he wants. We’ll never be rid of the guy.’

‘So let’s stop him,’ Danny said. He felt faintly sick.

‘I’ve already set up a YouTube account,’ the General said. ‘And a mailing list with the news chiefs of all the major networks. I’ll distribute the footage, then make some calls. There should be time to get me on to the late bulletins. The White House machine will get straight into motion. The story will lead the news cycle in the morning, I’ll be discredited by lunchtime. But by then, the Oval Office and the Kremlin will be sufficiently spooked not to try this line of attack again.’

His fingers hesitated over the keyboard. Danny felt a moment of profound respect for him. For all his faults and foolishness, he was a good man doing the right thing, despite the personal consequences.

Thunder rolled overhead. The lights in the apartment flickered off then on. There was a flash of lightning.

‘Let’s do it now,’ the General muttered, and he opened up a web browser.

It was the last thing he ever did.

TWENTY-FOUR

If he hadn’t crouched down to watch the footage on the General’s laptop, perhaps Danny would have seen Bethany earlier. As it was, he stood up just in time to see her reflection in the mirror. She was standing just a couple of metres behind them. Both her arms were extended. She held a pistol – a Glock 17 – two-handed, right forefinger on the trigger. She must have taken it from the belt of the dead man in the hallway. It was aimed directly at the back of the General’s head and she was close enough for an accurate pistol shot.