“What, like a tryout?”
“No. Like, assistance. I’ve never lied to you, Steve.”
Dark processed this, quickly rewinding the past six months, crosschecking their conversations against this new and oh-so-delightful development.
“We wanted you to accept our help so that you could reach your full potential. And you have, Steve. Don’t you realize that? Consider where you were even six months ago. Still trying to figure it all out. Still struggling with what you were, and ignoring the potential of what you could become.”
“Wonderful,” Dark said. “I’ve blossomed. So where are we going? Specifically?”
“Paris,” she said.
Los Angeles Times
Still no further threats from “Labyrinth,” no clues as to identity. Police chief speculates: “We think he was a one-off.”
chapter 13
LABYRINTH
Right now everyone in the lobby of the fancy oil corporation is wondering:
A giant fish tank? Which of these overindulged, overcompensated suits ordered the giant fish tank?
Yet there it was, being wheeled into the headquarters of the Intertrust Petroleum Corporation (IPC), one of the largest such oil concerns in Dubai.
The unofficial company motto seems to be: Money Is No Object. And that ethos is reflected in every design choice throughout the building.
I watch as a confused assistant signs for the tank, assuming that one of the CEOs had ordered it.
Because, you know, CEOs did whimsical things like this.
When money is no object, you seek out increasingly bizarre toys to amuse yourself.
Well, my next package will certainly amuse them.
Two executive assistants approach the tank, peering in at the lone, ugly fish inside.
The moment the packages were signed for at the main IPC reception area, I received a small push alert on a cell phone, which prompted me to log on to the company’s own internal servers.
I eavesdrop, using the hidden cameras and microphones from IPC’s own internal security system.
With the right software, you can pretty much stand inside any room in the world, thanks to the network of security cameras that human beings have wired up to watch themselves obsessively.
It is fun to watch them try to figure out this new gift.
One assistant asks,
What kind is that inside the tank? Do you recognize that kind of fish?
The other says,
No idea. It looks . . . sick.
Why order a fish tank this big with only a single fish inside?
Like I said, no idea. Maybe it’s somebody’s idea of a joke. Maybe in a few minutes, somebody’s going to walk through the front door with a white cap and a set of knives, and this poor wee fella will end up as sushi.
They stifle their laughter. Don’t want the executives to hear them have too much fun.
But jokes helped ease the tension of working for the most high-strung, power-mad people in the known universe.
The executive assistants take their levity where they can get it.
I don’t begrudge them that.
The companion package arrives a few minutes later—a small FedEx box.
An assistant jokes,
Probably fish food.
But when the assistant tears off the cardboard strip, they are more than a little surprised to find a gold watch inside, along with a folded piece of the company’s own letterhead.
This strikes a chord.
One of the assistants says this all reminds her of something she’d just read on the Internet—about that actress and her producer boyfriend.
She says,
Didn’t the LAPD receive all kinds of weird shit in the mail, hours before a bomb went off?
The other says,
Yeah, a riddle. The nutcase sent a riddle!
I hope that it is abundantly clear by now that I am not a “nutcase.” Every action has a specific purpose and meaning.
It doesn’t matter that the world doesn’t understand right now.
Those who play the game will pick up the small nuances of what I do.
And those will be the people who help me save the world from itself.
Two detectives from the Dubai Police’s General Department of Criminal Investigation arrive at IPC within minutes.
Oil concerns receive prompt and courteous attention from the police.
The shorter of the two is also the wider, and the taller one is balding.
Cheap men, engaged in cheap business, deluding themselves into thinking they are doing something good by protecting cheap lives.
They examine my riddle in a quiet conference room, say that forensics techs are on their way.
With a company as powerful and influential as IPC, the police know to bring out the big guns.
For the time being, these cheap men only nudge the edges of my letter with gloved fingertips, talk about elimination prints from the executive assistants.
They should be poring over the riddle. It will tell them everything.
My riddle, written in English:I CAN RUN, BUT NEVER WALK,
OFTEN A MURMUR, NEVER TALK,
I HAVE A BED BUT NEVER SLEEP,
I HAVE A MOUTH BUT NEVER EAT.
WHAT AM I?
LABYRINTH
Instead, they examine the wind-up gold wristwatch—a custom-made Patek Philippe that included a perpetual calendar with the phases of the moon.
An expensive item, hand-built, with only the finest materials.
An exquisite piece of craftsmanship, handled by their sausage-link simian fingers.
The cheap cops talk about examining the timepiece for prints, falling over themselves to impress each other with their forensics knowledge, of which they possess very little.
At long last they finally notice the inscription and date on the back of the watch:To Everette
My Favorite Infidel
10/11/48
One of the detectives calls it in back at headquarters—they need to know who this “Everette” is, what the date means, and if possible, what the hell that line about the infidel means.
The date seems to wedge itself in the fat detective’s mind.
He muses out loud,
Nineteen forty-eight.
A significant, controversial, and turbulent time in the Middle East, and something about it bothers him . . .
As it should.
The taller one notices that the watch seems to be running . . . slow.
The fat one times it against his own digital watch—the wind-up is losing seconds here and there.
He asks,
What does that mean?
I want to tell him,
Go on, keep playing, you’re doing fine.
I listen as they call and ask for the area’s top watchmaker to be brought down to headquarters immediately, and they’re about to transfer the letter and watch back to the lab at headquarters when one of the assistants stops them, says,
Don’t you want the fish?
The detectives stop, look at each other.
Fish?
The police are adamant: no details to be leaked to the media.
Not.
A.
Single.
Thing.
The expectations of the Dubai Police are as unreasonable as they are unlikely.
Just as I anticipated.
They are guilty of forgetting that many employees of the Intertrust Petroleum Corporation are expatriate Americans, and Americans are a nation of loud people who tend to overshare.
The assistants who’d received the fish tank and the package?
No exception.
Even their iron-clad nondisclosure agreements are not enough to dissuade them from bursting at the seams to share what they had experienced. As if events in real life didn’t actually happen unless they were noted and “liked” in the virtual world.
IPC executive assistant Lauren Sandovsky is the first to leak information about an hour and twenty-three min
utes after the arrival of the packages.
My information virus begins with her, in a short, private direct message to a former boyfriend:Hey. You’re probably asleep but you will never guess what happened to me at work today.
3 hours ago
No, beautiful, I’m up. I’m always up. So okay, I’ll bite. What happened to you at work today? Did a sheik invite you to join his harem?
3 hours ago
Racist. NO. I think I opened a package sent by a serial killer!!!
3 hours ago
WHAT?
2 hours ago
You know that Labyrinth thing—the Bethany Millar murder? Well we got this weird package today, and the police think it’s the same guy.
2 hours ago
That is insane. Did you take a photo of the package? Can I use it?
2 hours ago
Um, yeah . . . but NO you cannot use it. Do you want to get me fired?
2 hours ago
Come onnnnnnn . . . I’ll be your best friend. . . . : )
43 minutes ago
Seriously, Lauren, how can you NOT share this with me? I live for this stuff!
40 minutes ago
Don’t make me get down on my knees and beg.
19 minutes ago
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. Understand, tough guy? [PIX ATTACHMENT: 43728.23.jpg.]
7 minutes ago
Oh . . . wow. And yeah, I promise.
1 minute ago
Brad Rayner works as a content manager on an alternative news Website based in Chicago, Illinois.
The photo appears on that site approximately seventeen minutes after Brad received it.
I am surprised it takes that long.
chapter 14
DARK
Over the Atlantic Ocean
Dark was drifting off in a semi-dazed state when the laptop on the table next to him went ping. He blinked, looked around, and instantly remembered—oh yeah, I’m inside the plush belly of a Gulfstream G650, racing at Mach 0.9 to meet a man who’s been secretly recruiting me.
The laptop ping meant that the DNA sample of the homeless man matched with an identity. Again, Graysmith’s clandestine databases had come in handy. This man did indeed exist. Dark spun the ultrathin laptop so that he could see the screen, then tapped a few keys.
“So who is it?” Graysmith asked from the other side of the plane.
“Coming up now.”
This short, seven-word exchange was the only conversation they’d had since boarding the Gulfstream. She pointed Dark in the direction of the laptop and perched herself on a seat opposite with a cup of herbal tea, earphones, and a tablet computer.
Dark waited for the results.
And their mystery homeless man turned out to be . . .
. . . nobody.
Not literally. The man had a life, a background. Just not a terribly distinguished background—certainly not one that would cause his fingerprints and identity to be stripped from every known law enforcement database worldwide. His name was Aldi Kutishi, and he was an Albanian shopkeeper who was thought to have been killed during a looting spree in the early 1990s. Only Graysmith’s underground resources revealed this tiny piece of biographical data. His whereabouts for the past two decades?
Unknown.
It was as if the man had stepped into a pocket alternate universe, contracted an untraceable disease, then manifested in L.A. on a balmy fall day, living long enough to deliver a strange package to the police.
So this . . . “Labyrinth.”
For starters, he’d given himself that moniker. That was significant. Most killers were branded by the media or law enforcement, but Labyrinth had identified himself from the beginning. Did Labyrinth see himself as the master at the center of a dizzying and hopelessly confusing maze? Or was he trapped inside as well, and killing people was his only way out?
He was careful to use a courier who had no background. Therefore, Labyrinth must have some kind of access to law enforcement databases around the world to ensure that his man was a proper, untraceable nobody.
Labyrinth also had access to, or could forge, LAPD stationery, as well as a rare sketch of a Hollywood starlet. He was either an expert thief, or employed one, or several of them. Not unusual for someone to parcel out a job.
Why would he pick this courier, though? What about Aldi Kutishi made him the ideal human bomb?
“Does the name mean anything to you?” Dark asked.
Graysmith shook her head. “Not a thing. But the people you’re about to meet may have some ideas.”
“How long have you worked for them? Or are you just a freelancer who goes around worming your way into people’s lives?”
“I’ve worked for Damien for a long time. By the way, I understand what you’re doing. You’ve felt like you’ve been betrayed or abandoned by most of the people in your life. Naturally, you’re taking some of this hostility out on me. I not only understand it, but I expected it. Because I used this sense of betrayal and abandonment to enter your life. But this was carefully considered, and we saw no other way. You had just left Special Circs. You were not about to join another organization, no matter how appealing it may have sounded. I had to lead you to it, which is all I’ve done. If you hate me for it, I’m prepared to accept that.”
“I don’t hate you,” Dark said. “How can you hate someone you don’t even know?”
Graysmith said, “Oh, I don’t think you really believe that, Steve.”
Dark turned his attention back to the laptop. How he got here didn’t matter; the fact remained that there was another monster out there. And Graysmith had touched on the truth. The idea of an organization with unlimited resources and access—and no red tape—did appeal to him now. As long as he got to take this monster out.
When they deplaned it was night, and very cold. A wind from the north picked up a chill from the ocean and slammed it into their bodies. Dark tried to compute the time difference, and wondered what his daughter was doing right now. Getting ready for school?
As they walked down to the tarmac a black limousine rushed toward them, intent on arriving at the bottom of the staircase the very moment they’d reached it. Graysmith rummaged through her bag and pulled out a fabric hood. Wordlessly she held it out for Dark to take. He just stared at it.
“You’re fucking kidding.”
“Sorry, it’s a requirement. I told you, Blair values his privacy. Unless you want to turn around and fly back home?”
“This is insane.”
“Blair insists. He operates in total secret, and the existence of his organization depends on it. There’s always the chance, however slim, that you’re a wildly brilliant sociopath who’s seen through my cover all along, and in fact have been hunting me to get to them.”
“Gee, you’ve figured me out.”
“I thought as much. Now please, indulge me? It won’t be for long. You’ll hardly know you’re wearing it.”
But he took the hood anyway. The fabric was soft and breathable, at least. He slipped it over his head.
The hood turned out to be a diversion. For the moment he slipped the hood over his head Dark felt a sting in the side of his neck, and then his vision went black for real.
AP News
Breaking: Norman Wycoff under indictment, accused of abusing Defense Department powers.
chapter 15
RIGGINS
Quantico, Virginia
The restaurant was quiet, dim, empty. Just the way Riggins liked it.
“Come on,” he said. “It’s me. Don’t you think I could find out anyway?”
Constance Brielle smiled. “Well, I could tell you . . .”
“But you’d have to kill me, right?” Riggins smiled, swirled the ice around in his drink. “Well, sweetheart, many have tried, and somehow I’m still walking around.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Me, too.”
Riggins had spent a lot of time with Constance in the hospital in the aftermath of the Tarot Card Killer case. She had go
ne head-to-head with a psychotic ex–Navy Seal in a fire tower of the largest building in San Francisco—the Niantic Tower. She had barely survived the encounter. Her arm had been broken in two places. She had been choked and then finally driven headfirst into a concrete wall, giving her a concussion. The fact that she had survived meant that Constance was tougher than any of them realized—including Constance. But it was Riggins who had carried her out of the burning Niantic Tower. Riggins who had stayed with her, holding her hand, telling her how tough she was. How if it had been him, he would have been curled up into the fetal position crying for his mommy. Constance had smiled, even through the morphine-drip haze, and Riggins knew she’d be all right.
Riggins turned out to be wrong about that. Constance was not okay.
And now, just six months later, Constance was quitting Special Circs.
“Guess we’re born survivors,” Riggins said.
They’d met up at a joint not far from Quantico—a dark, old-school chophouse with huge wooden booths and white tablecloths. Riggins liked it because it was quiet. It was also a good place for drinking. Constance ordered a bourbon, Black Maple Hill, neat, her first alcoholic beverage since getting out of the hospital. Riggins ordered a crème de menthe with pineapple juice on the rocks. Which was absolutely disgusting. And, which was the point. Riggins needed a drink, but he figured that sipping something disgusting would keep him from getting too drunk. He didn’t want to go bad on himself now, of all times. He eyed Constance’s bourbon, though.
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