Afraid of the Dark (23 page)

Chapter Forty-eight

C
huck 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.

Chapter Forty-nine

J
ack 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:

“Call from: Chuck . . . Mays.”

“That’s weird,” said Vince.

Jack wondered how much of a coincidence it was, never underestimating Chuck’s technological ability to know that they were talking about him. He continued to unpack as Vince took the call.

At first, Vince did nothing to prevent Jack from overhearing his end of the conversation, but about three minutes into the call he noticeably lowered his voice. Another minute later he went into the bathroom, taking extra care to maneuver around that dreaded bedpost.

What’s the big secret?

Jack was tucking socks and underwear into the dresser drawer when he heard the toilet flush. If Vince was trying to make him think that he had really needed to use the bathroom, Jack wasn’t buying it. Vince’s cell was clipped to his belt, the phone conversation over, when he returned to the room.

“Chuck wants me to meet someone,” Vince said.

“Who?”

“He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Cut the bullshit.”

“I know, it’s annoying. But Chuck was up all night in some kind of paranoid mood. I had to flush the toilet to convince him that I was in the bathroom, away from where you could overhear. Even then, he wouldn’t tell me who he wants me to meet.”

Jack was skeptical, but he wanted to believe that Vince was being straight with him. “Who do you think it is?”

“Probably a local private detective.”

“When is the meeting?”

“One o’clock.”

“Where?”

“A pub called the Carpenter’s Arms, up on Cheshire Street. Chuck says it’s about a ten-minute cab ride from here.”

Jack checked his watch. “We’d better leave now.”

“Well, like I said: He wants
me
to meet someone.”

“You’re saying I can’t go?”

“For whatever reason, Chuck doesn’t want you there. Don’t take it personally.”

Jack blew out a mirthless chuckle. “What did I come all the way from Florida for, the beaches?”

“There will be plenty for you to do. Just let me get this first meeting out of the way, and then I’ll straighten things out with Chuck.”

“Call him back and straighten him out now.”

“Jack, come on. You of all people should understand the kind of hoops you have to jump through when your best friend is also a royal pain in the ass.”

Jack wasn’t totally cool with it, but Vince did have a point. Jack already had a half-dozen text messages from Theo listing all the crap he wanted Jack to buy for him in the duty-free shops.

“All right, you go,” said Jack. “But are you able to get there on your own?”

“My cell has GPS navigation. If you can get me down to the taxi stand, I’m good.”

Jack grabbed his coat and followed Vince out of the room. His walking cane and his memory seemed to be all the assistance Vince needed to find the elevator at the end of the hall. The lobby was bustling with conventioneers at check-in, however, which required some assisted maneuvering. With Vince at his side, Jack gained a whole new take on revolving doors. It was almost like something out of the Tower of London, and Vince seemed to be on the same wavelength.

“Is that the wheel of death I hear at the end of the gauntlet?” asked Vince.

A bellboy steered them toward a handicapped exit. Outside in the covered motor court was more chaos, and Jack led the way through a logjam of cars and buses to the taxi stand. Even with space heaters glowing overhead, the damp air was chilly enough for Jack to see his breath as they waited. Finally, a couple of tourists in front of them stopped arguing about whether or not they could walk to the Tower, and it was Vince’s turn. Jack held the door open as Vince climbed in the backseat and told the driver the destination.

“Do you need me to meet you here on the way back?” asked Jack.

“No, I should be able to find my way upstairs.”

Jack wished him luck, closed the door, and watched the black taxi pull away. Immediately, a feeling of complete and utter uselessness fell over him. The next cab pulled up, and the porter opened the rear door. Jack stood there. The driver called to him.

“You want a cab or not?”

Jack was about to step aside, but then he caught a glimpse of Vince’s taxi at the stoplight, less than a half block away. He hadn’t flown across an ocean to hang out in the hotel room. The whole exchange upstairs was gnawing at him, particularly the part that Vince had told him not to take personally: “
For whatever reason, Chuck doesn’t want you there.”

To hell with Chuck.
Jack hopped into the cab and pulled the door shut.

“Where to?” asked the driver.

It suddenly amused Jack that this was his chance to say something Bond-like to a London cabbie—except that it sounded too goofy to actually say it.

“Do you see the taxi that just pulled out ahead of us?” Jack asked. “The one waiting at the red light?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Well . . . just do whatever he does.”

The driver glanced over his shoulder and shot him a curious look. “You want me to follow that cab?”

Jack sighed, resigning himself to it. “Fine, if you must: Follow that cab.”

Chapter Fifty

V
ince was halfway to the Carpenter’s Arms pub when his phone chimed. Again it was Chuck Mays.

“Swtyeck is following you.”

“How do you know?” asked Vince.

“I’m watching it right here on my computer screen.”

“You have a GPS tracking chip on Jack?”

“It’s a remote installation through his cell phone. I put one on you, too.”

Vince bit his lip to stem the eruption. “Chuck, you need to stop doing things like that without telling people. It’s a violation of privacy.”

“People need to stop telling themselves that there is such a thing as privacy.”

Spoken like a true data miner, but that was another debate. “Do you want me to go back to the hotel?”

“I don’t know,” said Chuck. “Let me think this through. You didn’t tell Swyeck who you’re meeting with, did you?”

“I lied and said it was probably a detective.”

“Good, then just lose him.”

“What do you expect me to do, roll down the window and throw a box of roofing tacks on the road?”

“Just give the driver an extra twenty pounds to ditch him.”

“That won’t work,” said Vince. “I told Jack the meeting was at Carpenter’s Arms at one o’clock.”

“Damn it! Why’d you do that?”

“Probably because I’m not at all comfortable lying to him. The three of us made a deal. This was supposed to be a team approach.”

“Fuck the team! Just call Swyteck and tell him that the meeting was canceled.”

The cab stopped, and Vince heard the meter register. “Seven pounds,” said the driver.”

Vince checked his wallet for a ten—tens were folded in half, twenties in thirds—and he told him to keep the change.

“Would you mind directing me to the pub’s entrance?” he asked the driver.

Chuck overheard. “Vince, don’t get out of the cab.”

“Sorry, I’m going in.”

“It took a lot of coaxing to arrange this. I promised it would be just you. You can’t go in with Swyteck on your tail. Let me reschedule.”

“I’ve waited long enough for answers.”

“You know how skittish she is. All I did was look at her and she ran from me.”

Vince climbed out of the cab. A cool mist greeted his skin, and he heard the Cockney accents of passing pedestrians—the nuances of northeast London in his perpetual world of darkness.

“I can’t look at her,” he said as he stepped onto the sidewalk, “which is why Shada won’t run from me.”