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

by Christopher Lowery

  It was now after eleven, and Leo’s head was aching after the long day and the concentration needed to recreate the coding and multiple testing he’d just executed. He decided to call it a night and leave that problem for tomorrow. There must be a good explanation for it, he told himself. He rode home on the Harley, went straight to bed, and was instantly asleep.

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  Club 27 was quiet for a Wednesday night. Since DeeJai’s final show the previous Sunday, there had been a noticeable drop in customers. The club director was already talking to his management company about getting him back as soon as he’d finished his stint in New Zealand, he was the most successful act they’d ever had, and takings and profits had reflected that.

  Ed Muire and Lynne had got there at ten and had the place almost to themselves. They knew the regular DJ and sometimes dropped in for a drink and dance, when Lynne wasn’t working the evening shift at the Corner House. The disc spinner was less creative than DeeJai but he played a lot of eighties music that they both loved. Right now, they were dancing to a slightly upbeat version of Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, with Ed’s added lyrics in her ear. Ed was a genuinely funny man who fancied himself as another Jimmy Tarbuck, and what he lacked in talent he made up for in spontaneity. She liked his light-hearted approach to life and they got on well together, making life in the Emirates an enjoyable experience for them both.

  The DJ moved to a more romantic mood and they went over to sit in one of the alcoves at the back of the bar. They ordered drinks and talked for a while, Ed keeping an eye on the action in the club from his vantage point facing the dance floor. After a while, an attractive woman came in and sat in one of the side alcoves. Ed recognised her.

  ‘Don’t look now, but Angela just came into the bar, alone.’

  Lynne managed to refrain from turning to look. ‘Something happened with Leo?’

  ‘I don’t know. He said they had a date last night, but he didn’t want to talk about it today. I guess it wasn’t what he was hoping for.’

  She laughed and punched him on the arm. ‘You mean he’s just like you. What do you think he was hoping for?’

  ‘Wait, someone else has joined her, another woman. I don’t believe it.’ Angela stood up and embraced the woman fondly, kissing her on the lips. They sat down side-by-side at the back of the dim alcove, close together, holding hands and talking quietly.

  ‘Ed, if you don’t stop being so mysterious, I’ll turn around to see what’s going on. Who came in?’

  ‘It’s Shen’s partner, the Belgian woman. Looks like they were expecting to meet up.’

  ‘What’s so strange about that?’

  ‘I just didn’t know they were such good friends. Shen’s away in New York, so I suppose it’s only normal to have a girls’ night out, but…’

  ‘You know I haven’t got eyes in the back of my head. I’m going to the ladies. I can’t stand being told about something I can’t see. Get me another glass of wine please, I won’t be long.’

  Lynne walked on the other side of the room to the toilets, looking surreptitiously across at the two women. They were sitting right at the back of the alcove, invisible to most of the room, heads close together as they talked, still holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes. While the cat’s away, she said to herself. Almost as if they’re an item. Well, well, who’d have guessed?

  * * *

  Ed whispered, ‘Look, she’s stroking Angela’s thigh under the table.’

  ‘You mean like this?’ Lynne stroked her hand along the inside of his thigh. She was now sitting next to Ed on the other side of the alcove, from where she could partially see the two women.

  ‘I think it was bit higher,’ he said hopefully.

  She smiled coyly, ‘That’s turning you on isn’t it? Two women we know, being friendly in a bar. It might mean nothing. Not everyone is as unromantic as a Scouser.’

  Fascinated, they sat watching Angela and Elodie for another half hour, saying hardly a word. They were still sitting in the same pose, holding hands and looking lovingly at each other. There was a lot of kissing and stroking going on and they moved apart only when the waiter fetched their drinks, martinis for each of them, two lots. By now, Ed was convinced they were lovers.

  ‘Definitely a very involved item,’ he said to Lynne as they watched the two women walk out of the club at midnight.

  ‘Where do you think that leaves Leo?’ she asked.

  ‘Between a rock and a hard place, I’d say. It’s his boss’s partner, and it would be very nasty for him if he really falls for her and then finds out she prefers women, especially Elodie. In any case, we’d better not say a word about this to Leo, it’s not our business and he’s likely to get upset when he finds out.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Shen must know about this. I mean, if we’ve just seen them in the club together, we can’t be the only people who know.’

  ‘It depends on what his feelings really are for her. Maybe he doesn’t care, or she could be just arm candy. Shen’s a very peculiar character, cold and aloof, doesn’t show his emotions at all. You know, yesterday Leo managed to find a solution to deliver the upgrades that Sharif and I just couldn’t work out. It was the first time he’d really looked at the problem and he solved it in a few hours, just like that.’ He snapped his fingers.

  ‘Well done him. What’s that got to do with Shen?’

  Ed thought he picked up a slightly caustic tone in her remark, but went on, ‘He said absolutely nothing to Leo. No congratulations, no smile on his face, nothing. We were all like, wow! Cheering and thanking him, but Shen, nothing. Kind of like he’s jealous, or just doesn’t appreciate what other people do.’

  ‘So, you think he might know about Angela and Elodie and it doesn’t bother him?’

  ‘I think the real problem is he’s Chinese and they’re trained to hide their emotions. She’s a great looking woman and when we met her, she seemed smart and likeable, but to him, she might just be someone to show off with.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re smart and good to show off with. Take me home and you might find out how much you’re appreciated.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  Thursday, 8 July 2017

  Leo went down to the lab at ten a.m. After a good night’s sleep and breakfast at the Corner House, he had examined page five of Sharif’s test log again. The last three lines of code sent a single instruction thousands of times within the space of a few seconds to cell S470C887,999: Sector 470, Cell number 887,999. A single cell among almost a billion components on the circuit card, all measuring less than a thousandth of the width of a human hair, impossible to identify without a complete diagram of the circuits and cells. Only Sharif, who managed the design of the physical unit, could explain why it was there and what its function was.

  I need to know what that instruction actually does, if anything. It could be just some kind of additional testing procedure that Sharif has designed and hasn’t mentioned to me.

  He tagged the last three lines of Sharif’s code onto the test programme he’d run the previous evening on the Leo 1 network in his laptop and sent it to his mini-hub. A sense of relief flooded over him when he saw the network was running just as before. Maybe it’s some kind of redundancy test he was running, to ensure the network wouldn’t break down under a barrage of commands to the same cell, he reasoned. He was about to close the test environment when he sat back in shock.

  Within a minute, every device incorporating a Lee-Win processor, eighty per cent of the network, had shut down. Not simultaneously and not in sequence, but sporadically here and there until nothing in the network was functioning, since those few pieces of non-Lee-Win equipment which were still running had no data to send because the transmission had been blocked further up the line.

  His heart started racing, and he realised he was sweating and breathing deeply. Hang on, he told himself. I must have screwed up somewhere. Let’s h
ave another go. He changed the configuration to set up Leo 2, the second set of equipment, then sent the modified instruction to the hub again. He watched in horror as exactly the same thing occurred. All the Lee-Win supported devices closed down and the others were sending no data at all. He followed the flow of data in his mind. I must have messed up the hub somehow. There’s no data coming from it, so it’s not acting on the instructions from my laptop.

  Leo went to get himself a coffee in the canteen. He sat for a while, sipping the hot sweet liquid, thinking and rethinking the situation, going over every connection, every link in his network, trying to find the flaw, but he couldn’t. The network had worked perfectly until he’d introduced Sharif’s additional codes. But why?

  ‘Hi, Leo. How are things going with the final testing?’ Daniel Oberhart brought his coffee over and sat at his table.

  Leo was astonished. It was the first time the operations director had ever approached him in a friendly manner. ‘Morning, Daniel. I’m still working through the last clean-ups from Sharif and Ed. Still a few bugs to sort out.’

  ‘Anything I can do? I’ve helped manage a shitload of projects through the final stages, I know how tricky it can get.’

  Leo thought for a moment, Why not? He might know something about Sharif’s test routines that I don’t, he’s worked with him longer than me. ‘Do you know anything about a special redundancy test that Sharif uses to test a programme’s resilience? He’s off on a few days’ holiday with his brother and I’d rather not disturb him.’

  ‘You’d have to tell me exactly what you’re referring to, he uses a lot of techniques to test resilience.’

  ‘Something to do with a specific cell instruction?’

  ‘Do you know the cell he’s testing?’ The Swiss man took a pen and a paper napkin.

  ‘It’s in sector 470, cell number 887,999. Ring a bell?’

  Oberhart looked thoughtfully at the scribbled number and said nothing for a moment. ‘It means nothing to me, but I can look up his recent tests on the network if you like. That might tell us something.’

  ‘Don’t bother, Daniel, it’ll be easier if I just call him and sort it out. Thanks.’

  Oberhart left him and Leo went back down to the lab, racking his brains to work out how to find the reason for the extra code. Finally, he decided to recreate the tests he’d carried out successfully the previous night on Leo 1, with his original code. That’ll tell me if the hub is down or it’s due to these changes.

  He loaded his own instructions again, sent them to his hub and crossed his fingers. He hardly dared look, but once again, as if by a miracle, the Leo 1 network was up and working perfectly. A cold shiver ran up his spine. It’s not the hub and it’s not an error on my part. It can only be Sharif’s instructions to cell S470C887,999. What the hell is going on? Why did he change the test codes and run them at night without informing me?

  Leo was trying to push aside a word that kept entering his mind. Sabotage. Is it possible that Sharif is trying to sabotage the project? We’re two months away from launching the new products and he’s testing some kind of Doomsday function behind my back. Then another chilling thought came to him, even more far-fetched and sinister than the first. Is that what happened to Scotty? Did he discover too much? His experiences in South Africa six years ago had taught him there were many evil people in the world, especially where large sums of money were involved. Had he somehow become embroiled again in some kind of illegal activity?

  He forced himself to think calmly. All I know right now is that Sharif was testing something that knocked out the Lee-Win supported equipment. It could have simply been a resilience test. Then another thought occurred to him. Or it could be something that Shen asked him to do. Some new idea they might have come up with in Shanghai. He knew that despite the new reporting structure, the two men often talked over a coffee or had lunch together in the canteen. He sympathised with Sharif’s predicament; if Shen had asked him to do something, he couldn’t refuse, so he might have worked on it at night to avoid creating a difficult situation between them. I have to have a session with them to find out what’s going on. If there’s another item on the agenda, we can all work together to achieve it.

  Whatever the truth of the matter, he needed to get to the bottom of it immediately. Tom and Shen were coming back from New York that night and he had to bring them up to speed on the status tomorrow morning. If there was a problem, he had to get it resolved before meeting them. To do so, he had to get Sharif into the office and ask him some difficult questions face-to-face, see the Pakistani’s reaction when he realised his subterfuge had been discovered. It would either be an innocent reaction or a guilty one. He hoped and prayed it would be the former, and there was some rational and convincing reason for the coded instructions that knocked over a wireless network in less than a minute.

  Leo went to his office and pressed Sharif’s number on his contact list. A woman’s voice told him the phone couldn’t be reached for the moment. He kept trying.

  In the network centre, Daniel Oberhart was searching for Sharif’s tests from Tuesday night, but he could find them nowhere. It looked as if the Pakistani had erased the files after running his programmes. He ran a trace through the Pakistani’s previous test procedures, then through the whole network database, and failed to find any record of cell S470C887,999 in the XPC system at all. The test codes would be in Leo’s mini-network, but the lab was locked and he didn’t want to ask him any further questions. It wasn’t his area of responsibility and might only serve to arouse his suspicions.

  Why would Sharif be testing a cell that Leo doesn’t know about and then erase the files? How come there’s no record of that cell anywhere in the system? If there’s something going on here, I need to know about it, and fast.

  He called a Zurich number. ‘Hi Dad, how’s things?’ He listened for a while, then said, ‘Great, I love those numbers. If you can keep it up for another few months, this deal’s a no-brainer. But listen, I think there might be something weird going on here.’ He related his conversation with Leo and his search for the apparently non-existent cell. ‘Leo’s smart and he’s worried about Sharif’s testing. If the guy’s hiding that cell, it has to be for a reason. We can’t afford the risk that there’s something funny going on that could screw up three years of planning. I didn’t agree to come to live in this dump for the fun of it. What do you think I should do?’

  Oberhart listened again for several minutes. ‘OK, I guess you’re right. I’ll play it cool and get closer to Sharif, he might let something drop. And I’m going to try to find his log sheets, either in his office or on his laptop.’

  He rang off and went up to the Pakistani’s office. It was locked, and he knew he couldn’t get a key card without it looking suspicious. Back in the network centre he forced himself to concentrate on the week’s scheduling. Sharif would be back in a couple of days, it would just have to wait.

  London, England

  ‘I think we’re going to have to come in over the weekend, otherwise we’ll never catch up on things,’ Ilona Tymoshenko said to Dr Hugh Middleton. She was looking at her list of outstanding tasks. Business at the Institute for Global Internet Security was growing faster than they’d anticipated, and there never seemed to be time to plan ahead for staff and accommodation requirements. ‘If we’re not careful, we’ll bite off more than we can chew,’ she added worriedly.

  ‘I have time on Saturday afternoon. Will that suffice?’

  ‘Well, it’s a start. We’ll see what we can get through and if necessary, arrange another session. We can’t afford to fall behind.’

  ‘Very well, just as you say, Ilona.’ Middleton was happy to let her manage his time for him, she was better at it than he. ‘Meanwhile,’ he added, ‘I think it may be time to communicate our suspicions about Lee-Win to General Chillicott.’

  Ilona looked at him sceptically. ‘Yesterday, you said we should keep them to ourselves, and now you want to share our findings with Homela
nd Security. Any particular reason for your change of mind?’

  ‘I still believe that we should refrain from mentioning the deaths of Shen Fu Liáng’s family in the plane crash, and the possible financial consequences. However, the other facts about him and Oberhart are highly relevant to his investigation into the mysterious person, Tsunami, and to the ownership of Lee-Win and possible nefarious activities which he should be aware of. Between you and I, Ilona, of the two alternative theories I feel more inclined to favour the Chinese version.’

  ‘Alright, let’s talk to him. He’ll be in his office in a couple of hours, I’ll get hold of him then.’

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  Sharif called back after a half hour, to say he was in Sharjah for the day with his brother and was about to get on a boat to go out to look for dolphins. The rest of their day was similarly booked up. ‘Is it something I can sort on the phone? I’ve still got a few minutes before we set off.’

  ‘No, I was doing some more testing and I had a question about your last logs, but it’ll keep ‘til tomorrow. Enjoy Sharjah.’

  Leo was about to put the phone away when it rang in his hand. ‘Hi, Leo, it’s Tom. I’m just about to leave for JFK. How’s everything going over there? Still on target?’

  Leo thought for a moment before replying. He now had a dilemma on his hands. His boss was asking how things were; he couldn’t pretend everything was hunky-dory after what he’d discovered that morning, he had to say something, but carefully.