The Shadow File (An Alex Vane Media Thriller, Book 4)

by A. C. Fuller

  "You're right about that. Other than her partnership with James, she's the definition of a loner. So?"

  "So don't you see what I'm getting at? Innerva may not have been in trouble before, when Amand sent those tickets. But she is in trouble now."

  17

  Bosque de la Habana was a four-mile walk southeast from Casa Remedios in Old Town. We entered the park at the northern tip, then walked south along the east side, looking for the bridge.

  The night was cool, the first comfortable temperature we'd experienced outside of the hotel room. The park smelled like rich greenery, and less like urine than some of the more crowded streets, but it didn't look as inviting and lush as it had in the pictures in the guidebook.

  We walked past closed tourist offices and maps of park facilities that were too ill-lit to read, the sounds of the city gradually fading as we moved deeper into the park. There were no lampposts on the road we were on, and the moonlight dimmed as the trees rose up around us.

  After a few minutes, we entered a section of the path where a stand of trees completely blocked out the moonlight and the path went black. I pulled out my cellphone, which was down to ten percent battery, and turned on the flashlight.

  The light illuminated our feet and the path for about five feet in front of us, but the brightness in almost total darkness made me nervous. "I know we're not exactly sneaking up on anyone," I said to Greta, taking her hand, "but—"

  "But somehow you feel more vulnerable with the light on?"

  "Exactly."

  "Same here.

  "Well, we may not have that problem much longer. I forgot to charge my phone. It's almost dead."

  "Are you feeling any less sure that that letter was from Innerva?"

  "I'm sure. Unless they got those details out of her under torture, or James is actually alive and he's been turned by Amand, the letter was from her."

  This seemed to satisfy Greta, and we walked in silence for another couple minutes. Suddenly, the path in front of us went black. My phone was dead, and Greta and I both stopped walking. I blinked rapidly, waiting for my eyes to adjust.

  "Stay calm," Greta said. "The moon is slicing through the trees a little. We'll be able to see in a minute."

  I let my eyes go soft and scanned around me, studying the shades of darkness and wondering whether I was seeing forms, or if my mind was playing tricks on me.

  I squeezed Greta's hand. "You know how, at home, your phone dies and you feel cut off from the world, like a piece of you has died?"

  "Well, I don't usually feel that way," she said, "but I've worked hard not to let myself get too addicted to the thing. But yeah, I know what you mean. Like you might be missing something. A kind of subtle anxiety."

  "For me, it's more like unsubtle dread. At least it is usually. But here, your phone dies and…nothing. Nothing changes. I mean, I guess you lose your flashlight and calculator, but you have exactly as much contact with the outside world as before. Exactly as much access to information as before."

  "So why is your hand more hot and sweaty than it was ten minutes ago?"

  "It must be hard-wired into me. Even though there was no Wi-Fi or cell service, the apps still opened and closed, the screen was still bright and shiny. It still glowed. Now, nothing."

  The world around me was slowly coming into focus, but not enough to move.

  Greta said, "Did you ever read that short story I told you about? Can You Hear Me Now?"

  "Sorry, baby, I remember you mentioned it in the context of wanting me off my phone."

  "It's about a guy who loses his cell phone and goes crazy because he thinks someone stole it. It's a metaphor for how some people rely on their phones the way others rely on whatever God they believe in. The story ends with him looking up to the heavens, thanking God for returning his phone to him."

  "And?"

  "To you, God has died."

  My eyes had adjusted, and I was picking up an occasional twinkle to my left. "That's the moonlight, hitting the water." I pointed, but I knew Greta couldn't see my hand. I turned her head toward what I now knew was the river.

  "I can hear it," she said. "It's faint, almost like wind, but I hear it."

  About twenty feet away, I saw the corner of a bridge, an old stone construction. As we approached, I could see that it had been paved in asphalt that looked to be ten years overdue for replacement. I didn't know if it was midnight, and reflexively, I started to pull out my phone to check the time. I heard Greta suppress a giggle.

  The soft murmur of the river and the distant cries of birds were all we could hear. The forest ate up the sounds from the city, and we might as well have been in the wilderness.

  After a couple minutes, I began to wonder how long it would take until we started feeling foolish and tried to find our way back to the casa. Then a light flashed from the solid darkness of the forest and I jumped.

  The light quickly dimmed, and we took a few steps toward it.

  "Do you think it was a signal?" Greta asked.

  "Maybe, where did it—"

  "Alex!" It was a loud whisper, coming from the direction where the light had flashed.

  But it wasn't Innerva's voice.

  The light flashed again, and because I was already looking toward it, I could see that it was coming from between the trees, about twenty yards into the forest. There seemed to be a little footpath off the road in that direction. The shadows were impenetrable, but the light flashed in a way that suggested someone was holding it about waist level.

  I squeezed Greta's hand and inched forward. "You sure we should do this?"

  She squeezed mine. "We're already doing it."

  Just then, a softer light came on from the same location. It was bright enough so that we could follow the path into the woods. Whoever was holding this new light knew to illuminate the path so we could find our footing.

  Six feet off the road, I almost stepped on a chicken skull, a couple feathers and a withered cockscomb still clinging to the long-dried blood on it. A few feet past that was another skull, probably a goat's. Then something that still had some fur left on it, and might once have been a rabbit. Or a cat.

  I felt Greta squeezing my arm tightly, her breathing measured.

  As we approached the light, I saw there were two figures there, standing in a small clearing. They'd been completely invisible from the road, and even now I couldn't make out anything about them. When we reached conversational distance, I tried to take charge right away. "I'm Alex Vane. This is Greta. Who are you and where's Innerva?"

  A figure stepped forward far enough that I could make out a face in the dim light. He was a boy, no more than fourteen years old, slightly built but nearly as tall as me. "I'm Delfino," he said in a voice that made me think he might be closer to twelve. It was a soft, high voice, the kind of voice that makes you think it comes from a person incapable of yelling.

  I shook Delfino's hand, which was soft and cold.

  As he pulled it away into the shadows, he said, "This is Seleste. She doesn't speak English." Seleste didn't reach forward, but she tilted the flashlight up enough so I could make out a pretty round face and black hair. She was perhaps in her early twenties, but nothing was sure in this light.

  "We thought we'd be meeting Innerva," I said.

  "She never said she'd be here," Delfino said softly. "Only that you should be here."

  "And here we are," I said. "Now what?"

  Seleste tilted the flashlight up slightly so it illuminated my face without quite hitting me in the eyes. Then she did the same to Greta, who held up her hand to shield her face. Greta hated lights in her eyes. Flashlights, overhead lights, headlights while driving. Every time we watched a movie together I had to get up and turn off every light in the house. It was one of her pet peeves, and I knew it would annoy her even more than usual because we were in a dark forest.

  "Get that out of my eyes," Greta said. "How come you get to see us but we can't see you?"

  "Apologies," Delfi
no said. "That's the way Innerva wanted it. In case you were not who you were supposed to be." Delfino spoke so softly I could barely hear him, but his accent was slight and his English perfect. "I'm supposed to ask you," he continued, "what movie actor did you always say James looked like?"

  "Phillip Seymour Hoffman," I said, unable to keep from smiling. I hadn't thought of it in years, but I used to kid James about that.

  Delfino patted me on the arm lightly, so lightly it was like a butterfly flapping its wings against my shirt. "Yes, good."

  "And how do you know Innerva?" I asked.

  "We are family," Delfino said.

  "Innerva doesn't have any family, at least not here."

  "I am her cousin in-law."

  "She's not married."

  "Yes, she married my uncle."

  "She was married to...what? I…" I looked to Greta for help, but she didn't seem as shocked as I was.

  "I promise that she will explain everything," Delfino said. "But, for now, you must believe that I am who I say I am and that I'm not here to harm you. I'm the one who delivered the letter this afternoon."

  "Un niño," Greta said, reminding me of what Maria had told us when she brought the letter. But her annoyance from the light was still there. "Why are we here?"

  "Innerva sent us. We are friends and colleagues of hers. We will take you to her."

  "No you won't," Greta said. "Not unless you tell us exactly where we're going, and what she wants."

  "I cannot tell you exactly, but I can say this. Are you aware of what she has been trying to do here?"

  "Not the details," I said, "but we know there's a huge ransomware attack."

  "Her plan was disrupted about a week ago, and has recently been disrupted again. She needs your help now to get her plan back on track."

  It was close to what Greta and I had guessed, and I got the sense that Delfino wasn't going to be any more specific. I was considering threatening to leave if he didn't go into more detail when Greta asked, "Is she in danger?"

  "Like I said, her plan is in danger of faltering."

  Greta stepped forward. "Not her plan. Is she in danger?"

  "Of course," Delfino said. "But she didn't expect to live through this anyway."

  Everything around us was still, except for the river, which seemed to grow louder as I pondered what he meant.

  "We'll go with you," Greta said.

  "Good," Delfino replied. "But first we must visit the graveyard."

  18

  Delfino handed Greta a small flashlight, probably sensing how annoyed she'd become by the light in her eyes.

  "Good idea to give her the light," I said, following him across the bridge and onto the opposite bank of the river.

  Seleste had fallen a couple yards behind, and Greta was walking beside her.

  A few minutes later, we entered a dense stand of trees. Everything around us grew darker, and I heard a crunching under my feet. Delfino turned up his flashlight and I noticed what I thought were bones beneath my feet.

  "Chicken bones," Delfino said. "This is where the Santería practitioners come." He paused a moment, and added, "Mostly chickens."

  Following Delfino's lead, Greta turned up her flashlight, moving it in a circle around the area.

  More skulls were scattered between the trees, along with miscellaneous other bones, feathers, and postmortem detritus. With the better light, I could see that some of them were lying next to charred patches of ground, which looked like they might have been small campfires.

  "You know why they have chicken skulls?" Delfino asked.

  All I knew about Santería I'd learned from the Sublime song by that name, and I assumed that was not a fair representation. "No," I said.

  "It developed from the ancient religion called Yoruba," Delfino said. "Starting in the 1500s, enslaved people of Cuba began merging their religion with Catholicism in order to survive. They didn't want anyone to know that they were still practicing outlawed rituals. The word 'sanatoria' is actually a pejorative term that Catholics gave it, to accuse us of deviant forms of worshiping their saints."

  "No clases de historia," Seleste said.

  Greta laughed. "She said 'no history lessons'."

  But Delfino, who was clearly in charge despite his age, seemed off in his own world. "The Supreme God is Olofi," he said. "Chickens are offered as a gift to Olofi, an offering to answer prayers. Usually for healing or the well being of others, but sometimes for more superficial requests."

  "Why are we here?" I asked.

  Delfino sounded suddenly serious. "Do you have cell phones on you?"

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket. "Here's mine. Greta's is in the room."

  "You won't be returning there," he said, taking my phone from me and trying to power it on. When he saw that it was dead, he smiled slightly. "Good."

  Next, he took the case off my phone and pulled a small screwdriver out of his pocket. Before I could stop him, he'd pried the back panel off my phone, extracted the SIM card, and scattered the pieces among the chicken bones.

  With that, Delfino and Seleste moved briskly out of the park.

  Greta and I followed, exchanging glances as we hurried to keep up.

  I wanted to be mad at him for destroying my phone, but as I thought about it, it started to feel right. It was dead anyway, and if I was going to venture into the unknown, I might as well do it without a security blanket.

  But I was curious about one thing. "Why didn't you throw it in the river?" I asked, catching up to him as we exited the park.

  Delfino was opening the passenger door to a 1970s Peugot that looked nothing like the beautifully maintained classic cars we'd seen by the water in Old Havana. It was a large model, with two rows of seats crammed into a space that used to hold one, and a small hole in the floorboard in the center of the car.

  Delfino opened the back door and gestured for Greta and me to get in. "Even us techies believe in rituals. Let's hope your phone has pleased the saints."

  Before we'd left Seattle two days earlier, I'd done another search for anything related to The Freedom Collective, Greyson Systems, and a few other terms that might bring up something related to the hack. At the time, there hadn't been anything new, but as Seleste navigated the car through the narrow streets of Havana, I realized that the deadline Amand had told me about was drawing near.

  By my calculation, it had been four days since I'd met with Amand, who'd told me that Innerva had given them four and a half days to shut down their companies. I leaned forward and put my hand on Delfino's shoulder. "So it's true that Innerva is behind the ransomware attack?"

  He didn't respond. Seleste shot me a look in the rearview mirror.

  Greta patted my leg, her nice way of saying, "Shut up, Alex."

  But when I'm wondering something, I'm like a dog with a bone, so I decided to try another approach. "In the chicken graveyard, you mentioned that you're a techy," I said to Delfino. "Do you work in computers, too?"

  Still, nothing.

  Greta rested her cheek on my shoulder and I felt her head grow heavy. "Let it go, Alex," she yawned. "Soon we'll be with Innerva and she'll explain everything."

  Within a few minutes she was asleep, and we entered a part of Havana I hadn't seen. As tired as I was, I wanted to stay awake to figure out where we might be going.

  But after about fifteen minutes, I realized that Seleste wasn't heading anywhere in particular. She was driving a complicated and repetitive loop through an especially poor section of the city, a section with few lights on in the homes and even fewer streetlights.

  "Do you think we're being followed?" I asked.

  "We're always careful," Delfino said.

  Just then, I saw the sign for the Carretera Central, a two-lane highway that runs east-west across Cuba. And since Havana is located at the west end of the island, I assumed we'd be heading east, since that's where most of Cuba lay.

  Instead, Seleste took the entrance for Carretera Central west. I reached for
my phone, thinking I'd look up the highway and see what cities lay along it. Half a second later, when I realized that it was in pieces in the Bosque de la Habana, I asked, "Where are we headed?"

  "Around," was all Delfino would say.

  I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere with him so, as Seleste merged onto the highway and the car groaned up to forty miles an hour, I closed my eyes and let the acceleration carry me back into the seat.

  Greta adjusted her head on my shoulder and I wrapped my arms around her, quickly losing my fight to stay awake.

  19

  When I woke up, Greta was still on my arm, and a man was speaking angrily outside the car. The sky was gray, but the first hints of soft dawn light filled the car.

  We appeared to be parked on the shoulder a couple yards off the highway. Seleste was leaning on the window, speaking to the man, who was wearing a grey police uniform like the officers in Havana. "Te lo dije. Esto es un colectivo."

  "Nuevo?"

  "Sí, pero tengo papeles." Seleste passed papers to the officer, and I glanced out both sides of the car. Two police cars and a matching motorcycle sat to the side of the road and, to my surprise, I could see what I thought was the city of Havana in the rearview mirror. I'd slept for at least four hours because it couldn't have been later than two in the morning when I fell asleep, and I knew that first light was around six.

  It slowly dawned on me that we were at some kind of police checkpoint not far from the city of Havana, and I wondered why we hadn't made more progress while I'd been sleeping.

  The officer inspected the papers, then said, "Uno momento" and walked to his police car.

  Greta stirred and sat up, blinking sleepily as I clenched my fist to clear the pins and needles in my arm. "What's going on?" I asked.