The Dark Web: The stunning new thriller from the author of The Angolan Clan (African Diamonds Book 3)

by Christopher Lowery

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘I’ll just have a beer, General. Thanks.’

  Chillicott ordered from the waiter, then said, ‘If we’re going to be talking all night, it’ll be easier if you call me Billy. I’m not in the forces now.’

  ‘What was the problem with the questions and answers, Billy?’

  ‘We’ll order first, I don’t want to ruin my appetite.’ He called the waiter back and asked for a burger, well done, with everything and double fries. Leo ordered the same, medium.

  He took a sip of whisky. ‘It’s always the same problem. Same like we’ve got with those schmucks at the UNSC. Nobody’s paying attention. All we’re asking for is a sensible and well-funded programme to implement some proper security around the Internet and the Cloud, and it’s like we’re asking for funding to go on a trip to Saturn. The world’s facing the biggest threat we’ve ever known, and nobody gives a crap. Hugh Middleton and me, we’ve done everything bar organise a street demonstration, but we can’t get the message through.

  ‘And those techies in that conference room. Nothing personal, Leo, but talk about vested interests. They’ve got their salaries, expense accounts, bonuses, stock options, and they all depend on one thing: making a shitty situation even worse. Because that’s exactly what they’re doing, and either they’re not aware of it or they’re just turning a blind eye. The evidence is there, right in front of them, but it’s being ignored. You know what one of those “goody two-shoes” leftist pricks said after you’d gone? He stood up and he said, “Snowden and Assange have the same right as anyone to make public any knowledge that they possess, if they feel it’s in the public interest.” Fucking idiot. We’re talking about national security here.’

  Leo hid his smile. The general was clearly irritated. ‘What did you say?’

  Chillicott laughed loudly again. ‘I said, suppose I was having an affair with your wife. I’m aware of it, she’s aware of it, but no one else is. How would you like it if I told all the folks here then went on national TV and social media to announce it? How does that help anyone, especially you, the injured party?’

  This time, Leo joined his uproarious guffaw. ‘I hope it’s nobody I know. Don’t tell me. I might not be able to resist a dig next time I meet him.’

  ‘Seriously, Leo, this is not a laughing matter. Middleton and me, and a few people like us, we’re busting our balls to try to get something done by the UNSC, and it’s a totally futile exercise. How many government secrets leaked, or banks or gullible people screwed out of their money, or harmless folk blown up, or innocent children trafficked need to happen for them to see what lack of Internet security is doing to the world? They just don’t get it.’

  He finished his whisky and sat back in the chair as the food arrived. Neither said much while eating. Chillicott was nursing his wounds from the conference, and Leo was sifting through that afternoon’s presentation. He knew he was included in the ‘techies’, but it didn’t bother him. Chillicott needed to vent his frustration and he happened to be the one listening. Leo had his own way of analysing, understanding and rationalising complex matters. His experiences in South Africa years ago had helped him to mature quickly, and later helped him in his studies in foreign countries, competing with other students, often years older than him.

  He waited until they’d finished eating, then asked, ‘Billy, d’you mind if I say something?’

  ‘Fire away. I’ve been taking a beating all day. No need to stop now.’

  ‘Sometimes people don’t want to notice, they don’t want to see what’s happening, to be confronted by the truth, however bad it is. Most times they don’t react until something really terrible happens, or until it’s too late. My mother was an aid worker in Rwanda after the genocide in 1994. She told me that for one hundred days, while a million people were being slaughtered, the whole world – the governments, the UN, everybody – just refused to acknowledge what was going on. They had a few people on the ground witnessing the atrocities, but they couldn’t act, wouldn’t act. Why? Because no one wanted to use the word “genocide” or the Genocide Convention would kick in, and would involve sending in troops. After the “Black Hawk Down” disaster in Somalia, the US wouldn’t risk their soldiers on the ground. Then the UN was too late and too weak and so nothing was done until it was too late.

  ‘Maybe it’s like that this time. The Internet is such a powerful innovation for good that they don’t want to face up to the bad side of it and create the security measures that you and Dr Middleton are asking for. If you’re right, it’s going to take something really bad to happen before something gets done. Meanwhile, all you can do is to prepare for it, and I’m sure that’s what you’re doing. But I wouldn’t hold out too much hope of intervention from the UN or other organisations. They’ve been wrong before, and they’ll certainly be wrong again.’

  ‘Nice speech, Leo. Were you personally involved in that Rwandan tragedy?’

  ‘I was just a baby, but my mum has told me a lot about it.’

  Chillicott replied, ‘Well, unfortunately I agree with you. I’ve done a lot of arm wrestling in my career, and you can’t wrestle committees. They have to learn the hard way and it’s usually a very expensive and destructive experience. Let’s talk about the XPC offer. Can you do the job?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure, but I’m doing a similar job at M2M without the title, so I guess if I was able to do this job a year ago, I can do that one now.’

  ‘But you’re reticent. Why?’

  ‘I guess a few things worry me. It’s a fairly new company and it’s owned by the Chinese. I don’t know how dedicated they are to the business; they can afford to make it really successful, or they can retreat to Shanghai if it doesn’t fly. Then, it’s in a place I know nothing about, the Middle East. I’ve heard Dubai is a great place to vacation, but I don’t know what it’s like to live and work there. And then there’s all the hurry-up because of the poisoning accident. This guy Connor comes out of nowhere and I’m supposed to run after him to solve his problems. What about me? I’ve got my own agenda, and he wants me to change it.’

  ‘What do you think you’d do in his position? He’s lost a key man, he’s got a problem to solve with a tight deadline, he thinks you’re the solution and he wants to meet you to be sure. It’s a natural reaction from him and a terrific compliment to you.’

  ‘So you think I should go to meet him on Monday?’

  ‘That’s the only way you’ll find out what it’s all about.’

  ‘OK, you’re right. I’ve got more to gain by going than by refusing, it’s only a flight and they’re paying the ticket. Thanks for the good advice, Billy, it’s been a pleasure and a privilege to spend the evening with you.’

  ‘Promise me one thing, Leo. If you take the job, keep in touch with me and Hugh Middleton. OK?’

  Leo laughed. ‘You trying to enlist me to the CIA now?’

  ‘Just offering a lifeline if you need it. Here’s to a good decision and a great future.’

  ‘And here’s to you somehow winning your arm wrestling contest.’

  TEN

  Malaga, Spain

  May 2017

  ‘There he is! Hi, Leo!’ Emma Stewart called out and waved at the young man exiting the door of the arrivals hall at Malaga airport. At six foot four, he was easy to spot amongst the holidaymakers arriving for a shot of Spanish sunshine. Leo waved back, struggling to push his overloaded trolley through the crowded hall towards them.

  ‘Hello Mum, Aunt Jenny, you both look great. You’ve got suntans already.’ He embraced the two women and shook hands with Juan, Jenny’s gardener-cum-chauffeur-cum-handyman. He mumbled a reply, then took the trolley and pushed it away towards the car park.

  ‘It’s been beautiful every day here since I came down,’ said Emma. ‘Nothing to do but sit and chat with my sister and sunbathe.’

  ‘Get me warmed up for Dubai,’ he laughed. ‘How are you, Jenny?’

  ‘All the better for seeing you bac
k in Spain. How long can you stay?’

  ‘I’ve got to be there for Saturday, to start at XPC on Sunday. Seems weird, their Sunday’s our Monday.’

  ‘Well, you’re here for three days which is marvellous. In fact, the whole Stewart-Bishop family is together again for the first time in quite a while. We’ll make the most of it.’

  ‘How’s the old man?’ Leo asked with a cheeky grin.

  ‘Alan’s fine, thank you. And if he’s an old man, that’s not saying much for me.’ Emma looked put out.

  ‘Sorry. Just joking, Mum, is he down here?’

  ‘He’s in Edinburgh, busy signing up a new author. Jenny and I are having a sisters reunion week and you’d better not spoil it.’ Two years ago, when it was clear that Leo would be settling in the US, Emma had married her publisher and long-term on-off boyfriend, Alan Bridges. They bought a house in Durham on the riverside, near the cathedral, and she gave up the cherished flat in Newcastle where Leo had been brought up. She knew that he had never warmed to Alan, so the 12,000-kilometre transatlantic separation helped to avoid any family disruptions.

  ‘Great. I’m happy if you’re happy. You know I never liked you living alone.’ As soon as the words came out, he cringed inwardly. That’s going to upset Aunt Jenny.

  Jenny didn’t seem to notice the remark and a few minutes later they were sitting in her Bentley, cruising smoothly along the A7 towards Marbella. The car had belonged to Charlie Bishop and was ten years old now, but thanks to Juan’s devoted care and attention, still like brand new.

  Juan stored Leo’s three suitcases in the garage while he took his wheelie bag upstairs to a room overlooking the golf course and the Mediterranean. Encarni, Leticia’s mother and Jenny’s housekeeper, was nursing a cold at home, and knowing Leo would be hungry as always, Jenny and Emma went to prepare something to eat in the kitchen.

  Emma took her sister’s hand. ‘Leo didn’t mean what he said about being alone. It was just a thoughtless way of saying he was happy I married Alan.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Emma, it didn’t upset me at all. I’m not exactly pining away from lack of attention. You know how busy I am with the private equity business. I travel a lot and mix with some interesting people, including eligible bachelors – well, divorcees more often – so I haven’t given up hope.’

  ‘Is it my imagination or did I hear a sous-entendre in that reply?’

  Jenny laughed. ‘Let’s just say that I’ve had a few dates which might develop into something more.’

  ‘Well don’t leave me hanging out like the washing. Who is it?’

  ‘Here. Bring the tray out and I’ll tell you, but promise you won’t say a word to anyone.’

  Emma poured the tea. ‘Right. I’m all ears.’

  ‘You remember the bankers I work with in London, Fletcher, Rice? Well, one of the partners, Bill Redman, has a house on the beach at Los Monteros. It’s just a few kilometres from here, along the A7 towards the airport. He’s in the middle of a divorce and comes and goes from London by himself, the same as I do. We’ve seen each other there and here in Marbella. He’s a lovely guy, clever and very funny.’

  ‘And here I am, writing blogs for TWM and seeing you every month and you haven’t breathed a word about him.’

  ‘There’s not a lot to say, except that,’ she paused dramatically, ‘last month I slept with him, for the first time in about a hundred years, and we’ve managed to get together a few times since then. Apart from that, nothing’s happened. He hasn’t gone down on one knee or anything like that, but I really do like him.’

  ‘Wow, wow, wow. My sister’s having sex again!’ She grabbed Jenny in a tight embrace. ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘It’s marvellous, actually. But I don’t want to make you jealous. And I don’t want you to say a word to anyone. Promise?’

  ‘Not a word, guide’s honour. I hope you’re on the pill? You don’t want any accidents.’

  Jenny frowned, ‘I thought you knew. After Ron and I lost our baby, the doctors told me I wouldn’t be able to have another. That’s why we were thinking of adoption.’

  Emma felt like biting her tongue off. ‘I’m sorry, Jenny, how stupid, I wasn’t thinking. Of course I remember.’ She tried to hide her embarrassment. ‘Does Bill have any children?’

  ‘Two, a boy and girl. They live with their mother, although they’ve been down here and we had lunch together at the beach. They’re nice, normal kids. I think it’s a very civilised divorce from what I can tell, but it’s taking a long time to get sorted.’

  ‘Do you know what brought it about?’

  ‘He hasn’t said much about it and I don’t pry, but from what little I know it sounds like she met someone else. He was travelling a lot until a couple of years ago and I think she just got lonely. It happens.’

  ‘Well, I want regular reports in London when we have our publication meetings. If I have to buy a new wedding outfit, I’ll need plenty of warning.’

  ‘Don’t rush out and spend your money yet. Never forget I’ve been married before, and I know it’s not all milk and honey. Men are just overgrown little boys and they take a lot of looking after. At the moment, I’ve got the perks without the problems, so we’ll just wait and see what happens.’

  After a quick shower, Leo pulled on a T-shirt and shorts and went down to the terrace. It was now four in the afternoon and the sun cast a warm, friendly sheen across the sea.

  ‘Back to paradise,’ he said, sitting on a rattan chair beside the women. He took a sandwich from a plate on the glass-topped table, biting hungrily into it. ‘I haven’t had anything to eat since this morning. Slept all the way to London and again on the Malaga flight.’

  ‘Right,’ Emma said, ‘if you’re not too exhausted, let’s have an update on why, when and how you decided to take the job.’

  ‘Hmm. Good tea, Jenny, you still can’t get a decent cup over in the States. Do I really have to undergo a cross-examination so soon after arriving?’

  ‘We’ve heard nothing since your email about coming here, so we’re bound to be inquisitive. Anyway, it’s to show we care about you. We’re waiting.’

  ‘OK, Mum. Where to start? You remember I hadn’t decided to go down for the interview when I called you right after speaking to Tom Connor in San Diego. Well, I had dinner that night with a retired US Air Force General, called Billy Chillicott. He’s a big wheel at the Homeland Security Agency and he’s sure lack of Internet security will bring the end of the world. I was actually in San Diego attending a lecture given by him and an English guy called Dr Hugh Middleton when Tom called. Billy talked me into going down for the interview, and I’m glad he did. The XPC people are working on some really cool stuff and I want to be a part of it.’

  ‘Is it the same work you explained to me? Building billions of microprocessors to manage machines all over the world?’

  Emma looked querulously at her sister. ‘You’ll have to explain it to me when you have time. I haven’t a clue what he does.’

  ‘It’s similar. Except I’ll be responsible for the whole process: development and design.’ He gave them a simplified explanation of the job. ‘And they’ve also got a really neat encryption-transmission technology, called ACRE, that could revolutionise the whole Internet industry. Tom wants me to oversee that project as well. He’s appointed me as a Senior VP, to give me seniority over the other VP of product development.’

  ‘You mean you’ll be helping to make the Internet safer?’

  ‘I’m gonna try my best. Chillicott and Middleton made a very convincing job of putting the frighteners on everyone at the conference. The whole Internet and Cloud computing scenario is an accident waiting to happen, according to them.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Emma. ‘We know lots of people who’ve been defrauded online. It makes you afraid to use a credit card.’

  ‘They’re not talking about just credit cards. They think it’s a lot more dangerous, that there’s a big disaster brewing, ready to explode. The stakes ar
e very high. That’s why this job is a really good opportunity to make a difference, to create technology that helps to make things safer.’

  His mother went quiet. ‘What’re you thinking?’ Leo asked.

  Emma replied, ‘Did you hear what happened to the other man, the one who died?’ Jenny looked at her in surprise. She hadn’t been aware of the death.

  ‘I asked Connor about that. It was just a fluke accident, the guy, Scotty Fitzgerald, got food poisoning from a curry dinner and it was very virulent and killed him.’

  Jenny suddenly had a vision of a young man lying on his bed with his mouth open, trying in vain to scream for help. A cold shiver went up her back, but she hid the feeling and asked, ‘I suppose there was an inquest?’

  ‘Of course, Aunt Jenny. It’s not a tin-pot dictatorship or a Third World country, you know. The verdict was accidental death by poisoning. I heard he’d had a lot to drink and they think that was part of the reason. Anyway, I don’t like curry and I hardly drink at all, so I doubt it’ll happen to me.’

  She tried to lighten the conversation. ‘Where will you live when you get there?’

  ‘They’ve got a really cool apartment for me, I went to see it. Brand new, fully furnished with everything you can imagine, including a great sound system.’ Leo was a heavy metal fan, starting with Led Zeppelin and moving on to Metallica, whose gig at San Francisco’s AT&T Park he’d attended in May the previous year. Emma, a classical music lover, didn’t understand his passion, even when he had played her their 2014 version of ‘One’ with Lang Lang on piano, but Jenny had fond memories of the music. Ron, her husband, had played guitar quite badly and spent hours practising Jimmy Page’s legendary solo on ‘Stairway to Heaven’.

  ‘It’s right by Jumeirah Beach,’ he continued enthusiastically, ‘very posh, a concierge and cleaning lady. A bit like Aunt Jenny’s lifestyle.’ He avoided her attempt to slap his face. ‘I’ll get a motorbike so I can get through the traffic and to the office easily. There’s a great gym with a fight ring, squash, badminton, everything you could want.’