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

by A. C. Fuller

  "I hope so, but I doubt it will happen that fast. If anything happens at all."

  I blinked a few times, trying to adjust to our new reality. "Looks like we've got to go to a different terminal. Gate A26 for our flight to Seattle."

  Because I'm tall, I could see over most of the crowd that was moving in a wave toward the baggage claim. I saw Lance's wide back, shuffling along with them, and smiled.

  But the smile didn't last because the next thing I saw were two young airport security guards walking straight toward me. As they approached, one stepped in front of the other. He had a severe look on his face, but he couldn't have been more than twenty-five and his face was covered in acne scars. "Are you Alex Vane?" he asked in a thick, New York accent that brought me right back to the decade I'd lived here.

  Greta spun around and I gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "I am."

  "You need to come with us."

  35

  I didn't say a word, just followed the acne-scarred kid out of the terminal, past the security checkpoint, and through an unmarked door between a TGI Friday's and a bookstore. It seemed odd, walking past a restaurant full of weary travelers munching on chicken wings and drinking beer, going obediently through a door, not knowing what was on the other side.

  But I didn't see any other option.

  Escaping from an airport is nearly impossible under the best of circumstances. Exhausted and a bit tipsy, Greta and I had no chance. Tensions run high at airports, armed men are everywhere, and police are always present outside. If we'd tried to run, we could have been shot.

  The kid pointed at two chairs along one side of a beige, laminate desk. "I'm Michael Bagnoli. Port Authority Security. Take a seat."

  "Are we under arrest?" Greta asked testily.

  Bagnoli scowled at her.

  The other officer, whose face reminded me of a pumpkin, was much friendlier. "You're being temporarily detained, ma'am. And I'll need to search your bag."

  Greta scowled as he took her phone and searched through our bags. "No phone?" he asked me.

  I offered up a sarcastic smile. "If you ask me, cell phones are a scourge. Digital addiction and all that."

  Greta wasn't in a joking mood. "What's the difference between being detained and being under arrest?"

  Bagnoli glared at her, trying to look tough. "Quiet," he said. "It'll all be explained soon."

  I got the sense that he wasn't in charge of anything, not at the airport and not in his life in general. But he was enjoying his little power trip.

  Greta and I sat and exchanged glances. I could tell that she was still feeling the effects of the beers because she gets feisty when she drinks. "Either you tell us what is going on, or we'll walk right out that door!" she said loudly.

  "You don't want to do that," the Bagnoli man said.

  I'd always hated airports, and my experience ending up on the No Fly List a while back hadn't done much to change my opinion. But I didn't get mad like Greta. I just went kind of numb, knowing I couldn't do anything to change the situation and not wanting to get so angry that I did something I'd regret.

  Greta and Bagnoli glared at each other for a minute that felt like ten, then there was a knock at the door and another man entered. He looked to be in his fifties, with tan, almost orange skin like he'd spent too long in a tanning bed. His hair was blond, slicked back exposing a widow's peak, and he wore a shiny black suit. Without even looking at us, he handed a piece of paper to the pumpkin-faced officer, who handed it to Bagnoli without reading it.

  "You're going to speak with this gentleman," Bagnoli said.

  "Under what authority?" I asked, turning to the man in the suit, who reminded me of a villain from an eighties movie about Wall Street.

  "No need to get touchy," he said. His voice was soothing and much friendlier than I expected. "I'm Detective Byron Ruffalo with the NYPD. This is nothing serious, Mr. Vane, but we do need to question you about a murder that occurred in Manhattan two days ago."

  "I…what? We were in Cuba two days ago."

  Ruffalo looked at Greta and smiled, then looked back at me. "Oh you're not a suspect, Mr. Vane. God, no. And I do apologize for scaring you." He let out a laugh and patted me on the back. "But the murder happened in your old apartment and your name came up during the investigation. It's a long story, but I need to ask you a few questions, then we'll have you on the next flight back to…I'm sorry, where were you headed?"

  "Seattle."

  "Right, Seattle."

  "Can I see that paper?" I asked Bagnoli.

  "No," he said. "But I can tell you that we do have the legal authority to detain you."

  "Is it a judge's order?" I asked.

  "It's legal authorization."

  "Please, Mr. Vane," Ruffalo said. "You seem like a smart man. You must know that you're not getting on a plane until this is all ironed out. You must have already come to that conclusion, right?"

  I didn't want to admit it, but he was right.

  "Go to hell!" Greta said.

  "Greta, it'll be alright," I said. "There's no point."

  Ruffalo opened the door and gave Bagnoli and Pumpkin-Face a look. "Thanks, men. That'll be all."

  Pumpkin-Face couldn't get out of the room fast enough, but Bagnoli lingered. "Sure you don't want me to stay for the interrogation? In case they make a move or something."

  Ruffalo smirked at him. "I think I can handle it."

  I don't know what Greta was thinking, but I was staring at the open door, weighing my options. Other than staying in the room, the only thing I could think of was to make a run for it, scream something like, "We're being unlawfully detained," and hope that a bunch of people whipped out their camera phones and started live streaming the scene. If enough people started recording, maybe Ruffalo would fear being seen and let us go. Maybe an officer who wasn't in on it would run up and help us.

  More likely, we'd get shot. Maybe by Ruffalo, maybe by another airport security guard who thought we'd gone mad. It still might have been worth it if not for Lance.

  He was only about five minutes ahead of us, and I didn't want to risk causing any kind of scene while he was still in the airport, one of the airport parking lots, or anywhere near the airport. As much as I didn't want to believe it, our only hope was Lance sticking that USB drive into a computer.

  The sound of the door closing ended my thought process.

  "Who are you, really?" Greta asked.

  Ruffalo didn't say anything. Instead, he spent a full five minutes searching us. He ran his hands down every crease of our clothing, made Greta rustle her hair around, checked our shoes. Then he checked our bags in a similarly meticulous fashion. All he found was a surprising amount of mud and dust that we'd managed to miss in our hasty cleanup.

  Finally, he sat in a chair across from us. "Where is it?"

  "Can I see your ID?" I countered.

  Ruffalo smiled and handed me an ID and a badge, which identified him as a detective from the 30th precinct in Manhattan. Of course, I'd known right away that his story about a murder in my old apartment was a lie. He probably only said it so Bagnoli and Pumpkin-Face would think they were helping a legitimate investigation. But it was a plausible lie because the 30th precinct was my old neighborhood in Manhattan.

  When I returned his badge and ID, he asked again. "Where is it?"

  "How's Amand?" I countered.

  He smiled again.

  "I'm surprised you're not hauling us out of here in the back of a van," I said. "It's not Amand's style to question people at a table."

  Ruffalo's phone vibrated. "Yes," he said, answering it.

  He listened for a few seconds, then hung up.

  "Listen," I said. "You know we're not going to answer any of your questions. And my guess is that you're not going to answer any of ours."

  "That's right," he said.

  "So what now?" Greta interjected.

  He swung his feet up on the table, resting his heels just a couple feet from our faces. "Now, we wa
it."

  36

  As afternoon turned to evening, and evening to night, I was strangely calm. I guess it was because there was nothing I could do. No cell phone, no contact with the outside world. I didn't even know whether Lance had made it out of the airport.

  Once or twice, I tried to ask Ruffalo questions I knew he wouldn't answer. Once or twice, he tried to ask me questions he knew I wouldn't answer. And, once or twice, Ruffalo answered his phone and spoke a few words into it. My sense was that he was waiting for something, but I didn't know what.

  Mostly, I just thought.

  I still didn't know what the USB drive was going to do. I didn't know whether it would take minutes, hours, or days to do whatever it was going to do. The truth was, I didn't know whether it would do anything at all.

  But I imagined all sorts of scenarios.

  I pictured Lance fumbling around with the USB drive at some Internet cafe, asking a young woman how the thing worked. I imagined him heading back to The Standard to ask an old colleague to help him.

  I also imagined the worst-case scenario. A man following him out of the airport, waiting until he was in the parking lot, then throwing him in the trunk of a car. Or maybe following him home, waiting until he were sure Lance had the USB drive, then shooting him on the spot.

  None of it was doing me any good, but I couldn't stop speculating.

  I also thought about Innerva.

  I wondered whether I should have gotten in touch with the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, or possibly the Indian Embassy. Even though I'd known her for nearly fifteen years, I didn't know whether she was a U.S. Citizen, an Indian citizen, or whether her marriage to Juan Martinez made her a Cuban citizen.

  I told myself I'd have my lawyer work on locating her if and when we made it home, but I didn't think it would do much good. Amand had her, and there was no reason to believe he'd let her go. If she wasn't dead already, she probably would be soon. And if by some miracle she got away from Amand alive, she'd probably disappear. For good this time.

  Assuming she was tortured, and assuming she didn't make it out of Amand's clutches alive, I wondered whether she'd think it had been worth it. In a sense, the ransomware attack was the culmination of her life's work. Before James, she hacked for money and fun. Once she met James, she followed the straight and narrow for a while. Well, not the straight and narrow, but the more straight, and slightly more narrow. Then, when James died, it was like all her pent-up aggression had to go somewhere, and she finally had some really bad guys to go after.

  My guess was that she'd smile at the fact that it was Lance who ended up with the task of actually putting the USB drive into the computer. Lance, a technophobic newspaperman who would be at home in a nineteenth-century print shop, pressing play on a hack that would go down in history.

  If it worked.

  I also thought about how absurd my situation was. Twenty-four hours earlier I'd been in Cuba, where resources were tight and stores often didn't even have the basics. I'd been in a land with sketchy Internet access, talking to one of the most notorious hackers on earth. A woman who'd managed to create her own private internet within Cuba.

  Now I was sitting in a terminal packed with restaurants, clothing stores, coffee shops, and gift stores. They even had vending machines that sold iPods and portable DVD players. We were surrounded by the epitome of international free-trade capitalism, and the Wi-Fi signals were bouncing off the walls around us.

  But I was cut off from all information, sitting beside the woman I loved in a blank room, staring at a man who smiled like he'd just swindled a fortune from a lonely widow. All the while, my cellphone collected dust next to a chicken skull in a forest.

  I wish I could tell you I found some deeper meaning in the whole thing, some perfect metaphor. But I didn't.

  Around ten o'clock, though, something happened.

  When Ruffalo's cell phone rang for the third or fourth time, he listened for a minute, then walked to the door. "Stay here," he said, as though we had a choice.

  Outside the room, we could hear him speaking softly.

  "What do you think's going on?" I asked Greta.

  She'd fallen asleep while sitting up—a combination of fatigue and beer—and seemed only semi-conscious. Before she could answer, Ruffalo was back.

  "Care to fill us in?" I asked, offering up a sarcastic grin.

  But he was already dialing a number on his phone. It rang for a while, then he ended the call and tried again. Could have been the same number, could have been a different one. I didn't know, and I guess it didn't really matter.

  He waited a few minutes, then dialed more numbers, each time letting it ring for a while before hanging up.

  Finally, he stood up, placed Greta's cell phone and our papers on the table, and walked out of the room.

  After a moment of stunned silence, I said, "What in hell was that?"

  Greta's eyes were clearing. "I think he left."

  "What should we—"

  I stopped myself when I noticed that Greta was already dialing Lance. "Put it on speakerphone," I said, barely able to contain myself.

  He sounded half asleep when he answered. "Well, hello Greta. You got the washed-up boyband in human form with you?"

  Greta turned to me. "I think he means you."

  "I'm here," I said. "It's on speaker. We're still in the airport."

  "What happened?" Lance asked.

  "Doesn't matter," I practically shouted. "What happened with you? Did you do it?"

  "Sure I did it. I'm still in the airport, too."

  "Just tell us what happened," Greta shouted.

  "Okay, okay, cool your jets." Lance paused and I pictured him running a fat cigar under his nose and inhaling deeply. "But if I'm gonna tell you, how about you buy me a cognac?"

  "We'll be at the sports bar in five minutes," I said. "At least I hope we will."

  37

  We left the room without incident, made our way past the TGI Friday's and into the long corridor that led to the sports bar. Every few seconds, I glanced at Greta, who looked as astonished as I felt that we were being allowed to leave.

  The more time I spent around cops and members of the private security system, the more I realized that things didn't work the way they did on TV. The world isn't split into good cops and bad cops, and the line between "cop" and "not cop" isn't as clear as most people think.

  I found out later that Ruffalo was a real detective, well respected and, according to my lawyer, not especially corrupt. Most likely, he'd owed Amand a favor, and had agreed to detain us with a BS story. But we had no idea why he'd let us walk after a few hours.

  "What do you think happened?" Greta asked as we approached the sports bar.

  "Can't be sure, but maybe he was waiting on instructions from Amand. And maybe Lance succeeded and something happened. I don't know."

  We didn't have to wait long to find out because Lance was there, at the same table we'd shared a few days earlier. He had a half-full glass of cognac and a couple balled-up napkins on the table, like he'd been there a while.

  "Well, I did what you told me to do," he said as we sat down.

  I glanced behind us, still paranoid that we were being followed or set up.

  "I stuck the thing in my pocket and took it to the Apple Store in north terminal four. I figured I could take it to the one back in Brooklyn, but the sooner I did it, the better. And I wasn't eager to have that thing on me any longer than needed. Side note, don't ever make me go to an Apple Store again. You ask me, the place should be one of the circles of hell. Buncha low tables covered in goddamn silver computers and phones. Everyone running around with earbuds dangling down their necks. I know I'm getting off topic, but whatever happened to boomboxes?"

  Greta smiled at me and, for the first time in a long time, I smiled as well.

  "Anyway," Lance continued, "I asked one of the teenagers who seemed to be running the place whether I could test out one of their devices. A MacBook, or something like tha
t. Asked him if it was fully functional and connected to the internet. He started to go off about how it had some state of the art wireless thingamajig, and a 1.9 kilo-hertz whatever the hell. Long story short, I made it clear I needed some time alone with the thing, to try it out and I guess he believed I wasn't just a creepy old dude trying to look at porn, 'cause he left me alone.

  "Just like you said in the text, I plugged the thing in. Took me a couple minutes to figure out how to open it, but I plugged it in. Held down Command and the number two, like you said, and clicked the file."

  "Then what happened?" I asked breathlessly.

  Just then, a waiter appeared. Greta ordered water and I ordered cognac and a refill for Lance.

  "So what happened?" I asked again when the waiter left.

  "Nothing."

  "What?" Greta and I said at the same time.

  "Well, nothing at first, nothing as far as I could tell. You didn't tell me what to do after I plugged it in, so I just stood there, waiting. Five minutes, ten. The kid was looking my way every now and then, so I took off my jacket and set it next to the computer, just close enough to cover the little doohickey I'd stuck in the slot. Waited an hour, I think, pretending to check out the machine. Even pulled up one of those little red rolling chairs they've got. Comfortable as you can imagine."

  "And?" Greta asked.

  "That's it. After an hour I pulled out the thing, put on my jacket, and walked out."

  "Wait, so why are you still in the airport?" I asked.

  "Saw those two security guards take you. I was on my way out and saw them walking toward the gate. Saw them approach you and was only about twenty feet from the door when you went in. Waited for a while to see what was going to happen. When you didn't come out, I figured I ought to find a computer and do what you said."

  "I told you to do it right away, no matter what happened to us."

  "Damnit I know," Lance said, "but there was no way in hell I was gonna believe that sticking a little piece of plastic in a slot was more important than you two."