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

by Christopher Lowery

  Leo made a mental note to compliment the Pakistani, he still seemed a little unhappy with all the changes that were going on around him. ‘What’s worrying you in particular?’

  ‘I think the algorithms still need tweaking, I have a feeling there’s a bug in there somewhere. But it’s mainly what I mentioned about the connectivity module and the remote implementation. If we want to upgrade all the previous models out there, we need a totally ubiquitous set of instructions, and we don’t have that. There’s so many moving parts involved, we need to have a catch-all solution to get through to all the Lee-Win pieces in the networks. Like I told you last time, that’s not really my area, I haven’t had a lot to do with the IoT.’

  They talked over Ed’s concerns, and Leo prepared a list of ideas and tests he would carry out himself the following week. ‘Right, you can forget about ACRE and get on with the last upgrades for the final Mark VII firmware. Leave the connectivity module to me as well, I’ve got it under control from now on.’ He looked at his watch, it was almost ten p.m. ‘What about a quick beer at the Corner House and then an early night? You must be shattered.’

  Ed walked to the door, ‘Sorry, no can do, I’m going straight over to pick Lynne up. Big night out. We’re going to Club 27.’

  Leo had heard a lot about the club, on the beach near the Burjal-Arab hotel. The venue was renowned for its visits by celebrity DJs, and the star of that week’s Dubai Summer BeachFest was the latest club-busting record spinner from London, Deejai D.

  ‘You’d better get moving. Have a great night and say hi to Lynne for me.’

  ‘Why don’t you come with us? It’s a fabulous gig and you’ve been working hard enough to earn a good night out.’

  ‘You know that’s not my kind of music. I’m a classics man. Metal or nothing.’

  ‘Leo, you’re never going to get a metal concert in Dubai, it just won’t happen. So does that mean you can never go out and party? You’ve been here for five weeks and you haven’t seen anything except the office, the gym and a couple of restaurants. Forget what kind of music it is, just come and see people and enjoy yourself. You never know, if we get a request in, he might play a Robert Plant track for you.’

  ‘OK, if you really want a hanger-on I’ll join you, but don’t expect me to strip off and dance to some puerile crap with no lyrics or recognisable tune.’

  ‘Cool. We’ll take the rental and pick Lynne up at home. She’ll be chuffed, she thinks you’ve been avoiding her.’

  ‘Bullshit. I don’t have time to avoid anyone, I’m too busy.’

  Leo was impressed with Club 27, more impressed than he’d like to admit to Ed. The scene wasn’t as wild as some of the parties he’d been to in San Francisco, where some kids ended up half naked and out of their minds on drugs. Here, they were loud and flashy, obviously a crowd of wealthy young people, but much more respectful and well behaved. Although there was alcohol available, and he thought he could detect the effect of drugs on some people, there was no roudiness or brawling. Being in a police state has its advantages, he realised. He also liked DeeJai D, a London-based musician turned party host who had a very esoteric taste in music. He proved to have a talent for picking out great individual tracks from otherwise unmemorable albums and produced a constant sequence of musical vignettes, each one leading into the other, even when they were totally disparate music types.

  Leo nursed a beer, enjoying the show and glad he’d let Ed twist his arm into coming. During a quieter moment, he went up to the podium and managed to have a few words with the host. To his surprise, he detected a Geordie accent.

  ‘Newcastle, Jesmond actually,’ DeeJai answered to his question.

  ‘I thought so, I lived there ‘til I was seventeen,’ he told him.

  ‘So how come the west coast accent?’

  They chatted for a few moments and Leo asked if he was a Led Zeppelin fan. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘You want “Stairway to Heaven”.’ Leo just smiled and he went on, ‘It’ll have to be my interpretation, I’m the only guy who can play that song the way it should be heard. Trust me, OK?’

  The resulting production blew Leo’s mind. DeeJai D had created a multi-tracked, multi-rhythmed and multi-danceable version of the song that twisted and turned through its full ten minutes, two minutes longer than the original. Midway through the number, a young, coffee-skinned woman came up to Leo, who was standing near the podium, lapping up the ever-changing variety of sound and rhythm.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I saw you ask for this, it’s cool isn’t it?’

  ‘Sure is, I love Led Zeppelin. Are you a fan?’

  ‘My father was, so I was brought up with it. I’m Angela.’

  He noticed an accent, Sounds Spanish or Portuguese, he thought. ‘I’m Leo, Leo Stewart, nice to meet you.’

  ‘Do you dance?’

  ‘Only when I’m asked.’

  ‘Come on then, I’m asking.’ He let her pull him onto the crowded floor and they gyrated for a while. They made a good-looking but incongruous pair; at five-eight she was shorter than him by eight inches, but she didn’t seem to notice. Leo wasn’t a bad dancer but he felt a little subdued, he’d never been comfortable with pushy women, although it wasn’t unusual for him to be targetted in clubs. He managed to find out that she was from Sao Paulo and had been in Dubai for six months, before DeeJai’s gradual increase in volume prevented any further conversation. Angela was like a contortionist, seemingly moving in every direction at the same time, and after a while he began to mimic her moves. She was wearing a close-fitting dress with shoulder straps and a short skirt which showed off her beautifully lithe, dark-skinned limbs. He realised it was the first time he’d let himself free his mind up and forget his work since he’d arrived at XPC, and he gave himself up to the enjoyment of the moment. Now DeeJai was piling on the sound and the mood, with a reverberating effect on Jimmy Page’s final guitar solo, building up the pace until the whole room was a mass of cavorting bodies.

  As the last chord faded away, Angela collapsed into his arms. ‘Deos, that was awesome, thanks Leo.’ She brushed his cheek with her lips then walked away. He watched her sway across the floor. She’s beautiful, he decided.

  ‘Who was that?’ Ed and Lynne had come over to him.

  ‘That was Angela, and that’s all I know about her, she just picked me up.’

  ‘You looked great together, she loved every minute,’ Lynne said. ‘Everybody was watching you, what a mover. Who would have known?’

  ‘It’s my African blood,’ Leo laughed. ‘Come on, I need a beer.’

  Leo looked around the club for the rest of the evening, trying to spot the woman again, but she seemed to have disappeared. Disappointed, he left with the others at two in the morning, wondering who she was, what she did, where she lived, and why she’d walked away like that.

  SEVENTEEN

  Ipswich, England

  Sunday, 4 July 2017

  Jenny Bishop was on a ship at sea, not far from the shore. She could see sand dunes and a huge expanse of desert leading off to mountains in the distance. Leo and Emma and an attractive coffee-skinned, brown-haired woman she didn’t know were sitting at a table with her. There was a white cloth and cutlery on the table and she realised it was a restaurant ship sailing off the North African coast. Leo and the woman were holding hands and murmuring to each other in a romantic way. In the centre of the table was a laptop, the screen showing an old-fashioned water boiler with a pressure gauge on the front like an antique clock, with two hands and pressure measurements in Roman numerals around the face. The heading at the top of the screen was ‘INTERNET PRESSURE POINTS’ and she knew it was Leo’s computer. The hour hand was moving to twelve and the other was at quarter past, showing 250lbs of pressure. At 600lbs, two-thirds of the way around the face, was a red line, with the word ‘DANGER’ written in large red capitals.

  Jenny looked around her and saw there was only one other table, occupied by a couple on the other side of the deck, although eve
ry table had a ‘Reserved’ sign on it. They had their backs to her, but Jenny thought there was something familiar about the woman. A large golden cage stood in the middle of the deck with a green and red monkey in it. An old Arab man in a turban was turning the handle of a music box and she recognised the tune, it sounded like the first part of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, with the acoustic guitar and recorders. The monkey was dancing around inside the cage, juggling plates in the air.

  The woman with Leo took her hand away from his, snapped her fingers, and a waiter rushed over, dressed in jodhpurs, an old-fashioned pleated linen jacket and a riding helmet. She barked out an order and he ran off to the kitchen. Taking the mouthpiece of a hookah standing by the table, she sucked in a deep breath, blowing some of the smoke into Leo’s face. Jenny recognised the waft that blew past her: it was cannabis, something she hadn’t smelled since her days teaching difficult students at Sunderland Secondary School. She looked disapprovingly at the woman, who drew another deep swallow and blew it out across the table at her. Before she could say anything, the waiter came back, carrying a polo stick and pushing a trolley loaded with dishes of curried meat and vegetables, which he placed on the table. The woman put aside the hookah and served the food onto their plates, while the waiter poured red wine from a decanter into large crystal glasses for each of them. Jenny looked at the pressure gauge on the computer screen, the minute hand had moved further round the face and was sitting over the red ‘DANGER’ line.

  ‘Bon appétit,’ said Leo, raising his glass. As the others responded, a tall man walked across the deck to the table. Incongruously, he looked Chinese, but was dressed as an Arab sheikh, in a long flowing cape and robes. The woman stood up and he kissed her passionately.

  ‘Do you have the money?’ she asked him.

  ‘Here it is.’ He took his hand out from the robes and showed her a wad of $100 bills.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Let’s go, I’ve had enough of these stupid people.’ He picked up the wine decanter and they walked towards the entrance. At the same moment, the old man stopped playing the music box. The monkey dropped the plates, which shattered all over the deck. Jenny glanced across at the table on the other side of the deck. The couple had disappeared. She looked back at the laptop just in time to see the minute hand reach twelve and the water boiler explode into smithereens.

  Jenny awoke with a start, trembling and sweating. This was the first dream of this kind she’d had for several years, since the time of Leo’s abduction. She had inherited a sixth sense from her mother and come to dread the moments when strange and disturbing images came to her in the night, heralding some unknown event, future, past or present. On several occasions, the gift had helped to discover hidden secrets or provided clues in the problems she had been faced with, but the experience wasn’t a pleasant one and it always left her feeling worried and vulnerable.

  Jenny had spent Friday night with Bill in London, and after dinner in Covent Garden they went back to his flat. He was still furious about the bank Internet fraud and the evening wasn’t a huge success, he was obviously having difficulty in putting the matter behind him and making the most of their time together. On Saturday, she took the train back to her house in Ipswich, had a quiet day and evening on her own, then watched some TV and went to bed at eleven. Bill’s story was still on her mind and it had taken her a while to fall asleep, only to be woken by the dream. She knew this particular dream was a warning, a warning about the Internet and about Leo. Something had happened or was going to happen to him, but as always, she didn’t know what it was, and Jenny didn’t like not knowing things. She got up, drew the curtains back and shivered. It was a grey, miserable rainy day. Going into the kitchen to make her morning cup of tea, she checked the clock. It was six-thirty, ten-thirty in Dubai. She put the kettle on, then picked up her phone.

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  ‘Hi, Aunt Jenny. It’s great to hear from you. I was just thinking of calling you, great minds, you know. How are things? Where are you right now?’

  ‘Hello Leo. I’m at home in Ipswich and it’s raining and cold, so please don’t tell me how lovely it is there or in Marbella.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be going down there soon. You lead a charmed life between the UK and Spain, lucky lady.’

  They talked for a while about his job, Emma and Jenny’s business interests until she asked, innocently, ‘So, how’s your love life down there? I hope it’s not all work and no play.’

  Leo was immediately suspicious. ‘Is that you or Mum speaking?’

  ‘I haven’t talked to your mother for over a week. Can’t I take an interest in my favourite nephew without being accused of conspiring with her?’

  ‘OK, sorry Jenny. It’s getting frenetic here. We’ve got an impossible deadline to meet and we’re already a week late, so I guess I’m a bit on edge. Anyway, I haven’t had time to check out the local talent yet, so no news is bad news on that subject. Give me time and I’ll be scoring like my new guy, Ed.’

  ‘Ed? Who’s he?’

  Leo brought her up-to-date on Ed’s talent for picking up girls. ‘He’s a Scouser, so I guess he was born with the gift of the gab.’

  ‘Well, watch out he doesn’t talk his way into trouble and take you with him.’

  ‘OK. What exactly does that mean?’ Leo knew his aunt’s reputation for thinking outside the box, but she had never tried to influence anything he did, or if so, he’d never been aware of it.

  ‘Just that Dubai isn’t Newcastle, or even California. There’s an awful lot of get-rich-quick scam artists and dubious characters, and they’re not trustworthy. I’ve met a few in my investment business and I haven’t yet known one I would trust with my money, never mind my nephew.’

  ‘Got it, message received and understood. Leo is not to speak to or accept sweets from strangers without consulting Aunt Jenny. That right?’

  Jenny laughed. ‘Let’s just say your mother and I worry for you. You happen to be our entire next generation and you’re in a new, foreign country surrounded by all kinds of risks and strangers, so I’m just saying please be careful. Promise me?’

  ‘Fair enough, Jenny. I know you and Mum are concerned about me, and I’m a very lucky guy. But believe me, I’m fine, and I’ll make sure I stay fine. Is that OK?’

  They said goodbye and Leo put away his phone, wondering, Now what the hell was all that about?

  Ipswich, England

  Jenny sat thinking for a few minutes, then she went through her old handwritten phone book, looking for the name of someone she hadn’t called in a long while. The number was still valid, and after exchanging some catch-up small talk, she said, ‘I can’t explain why, but I have a feeling we may be needing some help in the not too distant future. Can I count on your assistance if it turns out that way?’

  ‘No need to ask, Jenny. Just call when you need me, tell me where I should go and I’ll be on the next plane.’

  Jenny saved the number in her Contacts list. She knew she would need it before too long.

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  It was eleven on Sunday evening and Leo was back at Club 27. He’d left Ed in the lab, still wrestling with the Mark VII testing, but after a fourteen-hour day he needed a break. He had two other motives, the first being DeeJai D. It was the disc jockey’s last performance and Leo yearned for another dose of his Led Zeppelin mix; it was unique, genius and mind-blowing, and he might never again have the chance to enjoy it. Then, of course, there was Angela. He was intrigued by the woman and definitely attracted to her. A potentially dangerous combination, he knew, but it beat reading, checking and rewriting code until his eyes were crossed. Ed had come in the afternoon, so his punishment was to take over for the night shift. Time was getting short and there was a seemingly inexhaustible list of things to get done.

  The club was much quieter than it had been on Friday, and he got himself a beer then hung around DeeJai’s stand until the Englishman recognised him. ‘Hey, Leo. How you doing
? Where’s your girlfriend? I guess you want another dose of Jimmy Page?’

  ‘Cool, if you can get round to it. Last session before you go home?’

  ‘Not yet, not for a while. Got a few gigs in Asia en route for Oz and New Zealand. No time to rest.’

  Leo laughed. ‘Sounds really tough, how’d you like to swap jobs? I hope you have a great trip. It’s great to see yet another Geordie making good music. I’ll sit it out until you press the button.’

  ‘Let me get them in the mood, it won’t take too long.’

  ‘Thanks, DeeJai.’ Leo went and sat at the bar. He was lost in thought, thinking about Angela, wondering if she would come in tonight, when he heard a voice.

  ‘Hi, Leo. I didn’t know you hung out here.’

  He looked up to see his boss, Shen Fu Liáng, standing there alongside Daniel Oberhart and a young woman. ‘Shen, what a surprise. Nice to see you out of the office. Hi Daniel,’ he said, as pleasantly as he could.

  The Chinaman turned to the woman. ‘Elodie Delacroix, meet Leo Stewart, he’s my new resident prodigy at XPC.’

  Leo noted the ‘my’ ownership claim, but just smiled at Elodie and shook hands. She was a very attractive woman, dark hair, thirtyish, with a voluptuous figure clad in a red and gold silk shirt hanging over black stretch trousers, and a diamond bracelet on her wrist that looked to Leo to be worth a million dollars.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Leo. I hope you don’t mind me saying you don’t look or sound very Scottish. Where do you come from?’

  The comment didn’t bother Leo. He was used to this reaction when he met people for the first time. ‘I was born in Rwanda, but I’ve lived in the UK and US all my life, so that may explain my appearance.’

  ‘Rwanda, eh? How exotic.’ She gave him a seductive smile and toasted him with her glass. He had an uncomfortable feeling she was toying with him.