404: A John Decker Thriller

by J. G. Sandom

  “All gone,” he had said, gesturing toward the brilliant blue sky. “All the clouds, Becca, look. Blown away.”

  “No they’re not,” she had answered, most seriously, as she pointed at the snow at their feet. “There they are, Daddy, see! They fell down. And now we can walk on them.”

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  This was the sound now that measured her breathing. No longer the panting rush of her laughter, the white condensation of her breath as she looked up at the sky, with her sparkling gray eyes, as she started to slide down the side of that mountain of snow.

  Decker fidgeted in his white plastic seat.

  Beep. Beep.

  He sat there and tried not to remember.

  It was around six-thirty or so when his uncle finally arrived. Tom Llewellyn was married to his Aunt Hanne, Decker’s mother’s sister. It was Tom and Aunt Hanne who’d raised him after his parents had been killed in the car accident.

  Of Welsh extract, Tom was a big, affable man, large of heart, though not particularly tall. In reality, he was only five eight, on a good day. Short and stocky. But he exuded a kind of strong, avuncular charm—like the aroma of pipe tobacco, though he no longer smoked—which made him seem larger than life. And he had competent hands. Hands you could trust.

  He owned a small hardware store in Davenport, Iowa, and as a boy Decker had wondered how his uncle could pull apart any machine in the house and, with uncanny precision, determine exactly what ailed it. He was also a man of deep faith, a deacon in the local Episcopal church. Married to a fanatical Lutheran. That had kept things pretty lively in the Llewellyn household.

  Decker and his Aunt Hanne had never gotten along. She had always been jealous of her sister Bitten, Decker’s mother, and when both of his parents had died in that car crash, she had only reluctantly agreed to take Decker in. Indeed, it had been Tom who had finally persuaded her to “do the Christian thing” with her nephew. The Christian thing, Decker thought.

  Llewellyn’s voice made its entrance before him. Decker could hear him just outside in the hall, charming some nurse. “You seem like a nice girl,” he boomed with conviction. “Have you met my nephew, John? Good looking boy. Works for the government.”

  Just then he appeared at the door. Decker got up to greet him.

  “There he is. Good looking, isn’t he? Told you.”

  “You sound like a Jewish grandmother,” said Decker, giving Llewellyn a hug. He looked at the nurse. She was a heavyset African-American woman, about two hundred pounds, with a dark complexion and high cheekbones. Pretty eyes.

  Eventually, Llewellyn released him.

  “I told him it was after visiting hours, Special Agent Decker,” the nurse said. “But he just insisted and the other agent said it was fine. I’ll be back in a little while for your lesson. Try not to disturb her.” She looked pointedly at Llewellyn. “That means keep your voice down, if that’s possible.” Then she stepped from the room.

  Decker stared at his uncle. “You look great, Tom,” he said. “How was your flight?” His uncle was wearing a short brown wool coat, black plastic-rimmed glasses, and a small porkpie hat with a red feather in it. Although almost seventy, he looked spryer than most men twenty years younger.

  “Painless,” he said, moving off toward the bed. He looked down at Becca. At the tubes coming out of her body. At the humming machinery. After a moment he added, “Can’t complain.” He turned back toward Decker. “And you?”

  Decker shrugged. “You know. Holding up, I guess. I’m glad she’s not awake for all this. I wish someone would put me in a coma.”

  “You’ve been in a coma for two years, John. Ever since Emily’s accident.”

  Decker sighed. “Is that meant to make me feel better? Oh, which reminds me. Thanks for coming.”

  “You’re welcome. Besides, with the economy so lousy these days, the store’s not that busy. Certainly nothing your Aunt Hanne can’t handle.”

  “I’m sure,” Decker said.

  “Almost time for the church bazaar, which means I won’t be seeing her for at least a couple of months. Might as well catch a slow boat to Rangoon. By the time she’s figured out that I’m gone, I’ll be halfway to Singapore. Ah, Singapore.”

  Llewelyn had done three tours in Vietnam. Most G.I.s had been anxious to go home when the war was over, but not Tom. He had stayed behind in Thailand for another four years.

  “And then there’s her book club, the shut-ins and the gym,” he continued. “But I guess it’s good to keep busy. Are you keeping busy, John? I mean, you must be. You’ve canceled every holiday, every get-together, every social Hanne and I have tried to arrange in, hmmm...let me see now. About a year and a half. What the hell’s going on, John?”

  “I’ve been kind of—” Decker cut himself short. His uncle hardly ever used curse-words. It just wasn’t like him. He was a Deacon and looked upon himself and his behavior as a model to others. “What did you say?”

  “You don’t call me when some Islamist fundamentalist nut job blows up your house, sets my angel on fire, like an animal. You don’t call me when you’re almost dismembered in another explosion. No. Now, you call me. So I ask you again. What’s going on?”

  “I may have to go out of town for a few days on business. I just wanted someone to be here with Becca. Someone I know. Someone I trust.”

  “What about the guy with the gun down the hall?”

  “Special Agent Pierce? As of tomorrow, he’ll no longer be here. They’re reassigning all of Becca’s watchers. As far as the Bureau’s concerned, she’s no longer in danger.”

  “Why would she be? I thought you told me that the guys who attacked you were dead. I thought they died in that explosion in Brooklyn.”

  “They did. It’s just that...”

  “Just what?”

  “I don’t know. Something’s going on, Tom, I can feel it. Those particular guys may be dead. Ali Hammel and his cell. But there’s more to this, I...I can’t explain it. It’s just a bad feeling.”

  “A matter of faith, huh?” he said with a smile. “There’s hope for you yet, John.” He put a hand on Decker’s right shoulder, drew him close. “Don’t worry. Do what you gotta do. I’m here now. I won’t let anything happen to Becca.”

  The nurse reappeared and ushered them down the hall to another room where she instructed them in how to change Becca’s bandages, and how to keep the wounds free of germs. “With luck, she’ll be back home for Christmas,” the nurse said. “You’ve got to stay positive. Trust in something higher than yourself. You’ll need to be ready.”

  They practiced on oversized dolls, faceless mannequins. Llewellyn was particularly good at the task but Decker fumbled, growing more and more frustrated. The bandages always came apart in his hands.

  He found himself drifting, seeing flashbacks of Emily. Most were wonderful moments but they always concluded the same way: her bursting into brilliant white flames as the plane plowed into that field outside Dallas. Then, he shut off his mind, closed his heart. It was as if he were seeing it all through the eyes of somebody else, some stranger, observing his own life from a distance. Or looking up through the eyes of the doll in his hands.

  You’ve been in a coma for two years, John.

  Decker’s phone started ringing and he breathed a sigh of relief. “Got to take this,” he said, slipping out to the hallway.

  It was Xin Liu, the computer expert McCullough had told him about.

  “Special Agent John Decker, Jr.?”

  “Speaking. Thanks for getting back to me so promptly. I—”

  “Where are you?”

  “In Washington.”

  “Can you come up to Boston? I got the package you sent me.”

  There was a note of urgency in her voice, Decker thought, although she was trying to suppress it. She was trying very hard to sound calm. “Tonight?”

  “Yes, tonight. I’m having a going-away party for a friend of mine. But it should be over by ten or so. You’re welcome to jo
in us.”

  “Can’t this wait ’til tomorrow? I don’t want to intrude.”

  Decker found himself pacing back and forth in the corridor, just a few yards from Becca’s room. Xin Liu didn’t respond. He could hear her breathing at the other end of the phone but she didn’t say anything.

  Finally, after what seemed like forever, she replied, “I’m afraid this can’t wait. It could be important. I’m at ninety-eight Erie, between Brookline and Sydney. The old Central Pipe and Supply Company warehouse.”

  Decker slipped back into Becca’s room. His daughter seemed to stir for a moment as he glided to the foot of her bed, but it was probably just his imagination. He took a step closer.

  “Special Agent Decker?”

  “Yes, I’m here.” He stared down at his daughter.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “I’ll take the next flight.”

  Decker hung up. He slipped the phone into the holster on his belt. Then he pointed at his chest, made the shape of a heart, and pointed back down at Becca. With the tip of his finger, he traced an elliptical sign on the clear plastic sheet of the nursing unit.

  “For infinity,” he whispered. “You sleep now. Grandpa’s here to protect you. You’ll be safe, little Cheetah.” He balled his hands into fists, stuffed them deep in his pockets.

  Time for Daddy to wake up and go hunting.

  CHAPTER 15

  Friday, December 6

  After landing at Logan Airport, Decker stopped off for a snack at the Grab and Go Café before heading out by taxi to Cambridge. It was a particularly cold evening. Traffic was light and he made good time through the Sumner. Thanksgiving was barely a memory but the streets were already twinkling with Christmas lights. He had seen them from the air, through his porthole, like a carpet of electrical fireworks, each pinpoint a promise, a flicker of faith, courtesy of the lighting departments of Costco and Wal-Mart, stretching out to the distant horizon.

  Xin Liu’s condo was located near the MIT campus. Decker was freezing by the time he paid the driver and made his way down the long walk to the lobby. The building was a renovated brick warehouse. Although fairly sizeable, there were fewer than two dozen names on the wall. Xin Liu wasn’t one of them. So he called her again on his droid. Sixteen, she informed him, over rock and roll music. Under Macintosh. He pressed the button and she buzzed him in.

  Decker made his way down the brightly lit hallway toward the music. As he neared apartment 16, the door suddenly opened, music blared and Xin Liu stepped out into the hallway. At least Decker guessed it was her. He couldn’t tell. The tiny woman before him was wearing a mask—some kind of cat, with long whiskers—and a black PVC bodysuit.

  “Special Agent Decker?” she asked him.

  And high heels, with pointy black tips. “Xin Liu?”

  She laughed. It was a deep-throated laugh, far deeper and richer than he would have expected from someone her size.

  “Call me Lulu,” she said. “Everyone else does. Xin Liu’s too hard for most gweilo. Although your accent’s surprisingly good.”

  Decker hesitated in the doorway. “Perhaps I should come back later,” he started. “When your guests are no longer—”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, dragging him in.

  The loft was absolutely packed. The door opened up onto a corridor swimming with people. They were all wearing masks and Decker felt suddenly naked. A walrus. An ostrich. A lemur. Venetian Carnival masks. Ex-Presidents. Mayan gods.

  Beyond the short corridor, the loft opened up onto a large sitting area—except no one was sitting. There were dozens and dozens of people milling about, drinking, laughing, smoking cigarettes. Or, at least they appeared to be cigarettes. Now that Decker got closer, he wasn’t so sure. The air was cloying with pot smoke.

  “Follow me,” she said, dragging him in.

  They wiggled their way through the jostling crowd. Every once in a while, someone would stop Lulu and ask her a question. Bodies pressed all about them. Someone almost spilled her glass of red wine onto Decker. She was wearing the mask of a fish. A cod, it appeared. He could tell the fish was a she from the tight, squamulose corset she wore, covered in shimmering emerald-green scales. Her breasts were practically spilling out of her bustier.

  “Who’s your friend?” the cod said in Mandarin, spying Lulu.

  “A computer salesman from Belgium,” she said.

  “What’s your name?” the girl added in French, turning toward Decker.

  “John.”

  “Hi, John,” the cod said. She held out a hand.

  “Hi...”

  “Amy,” she appended for him, shaking his hand. “He’s delicious,” she continued in Mandarin. “Where’d you find him?”

  “At a puzzler convention in Antwerp. Didn’t you already come with two boys, Amy?”

  “What’s your point?”

  “That’s not enough for one evening?”

  “You can never have enough tongues on your body at one time.”

  Lulu laughed. Then she turned back toward Decker and said, “You’re lucky you don’t speak Chinese.”

  “Right,” Decker said.

  “Come on,” Lulu added, reaching out for his hand. “We need to find you a mask.”

  They wormed their way through the crowd toward a black spiral staircase at the side of the loft, adjacent to a fifteen-foot Christmas tree. As they climbed the cast-iron steps, Decker got a good view of the party.

  There must have been two hundred people packed into the space. The main room was large, at least sixty feet long, twenty wide, with a twenty-foot ceiling striped with black metal girders. It had clearly been an industrial space at one point. Music was pumping from a Bose sound system at the foot of the stairs. The Ramones, Decker thought, but he couldn’t remember the song. Old school. There was a bar on the far side of the loft, near the kitchen area, a long marble-top counter space with a nativity scene, and a table set up with all manner of food—sushi and sides of smoked salmon, dumplings, puffed pastries and towers of fruit.

  The table was surrounded by a whole flock of penguins. The bartender was a rust-colored octopus, pouring shots with each of his tentacles. People were dancing near a glass door at the other end of the loft, some out on the wrap-around balcony, notwithstanding the intemperate weather.

  When they got to the top of the stairs, Lulu led Decker down a long narrow corridor lit by sconces of smoky lavender glass toward a bedroom at the end of the hall. The bed was piled high with coats. Black-and-white photographs peppered the walls, most featuring images of some tropical countryside—flickering palm trees, white cresting waves, hillsides of shimmering rice paddies. Could have been anywhere. Cambodia. China. Sumatra. But no people, he noticed. Just the odd water buffalo.

  Lulu slipped in around him. She squatted down at the foot of the bed by a large metal trunk, flipped it open, and started to rummage about. “Let’s see now,” she said. “You need...” Then she paused. She stared up at him thoughtfully. “Not an animal. More like...” She plucked out a mask and handed it to him.

  “Is this really necessary?” he inquired. The mask looked like the face of a ghost—white, twisted and drawn, the mouth open in agony. Like some prop from a bad slasher movie. Munch’s Scream.

  “It’s a costume party, Special Agent Decker. And besides, that’s perfect for you. You know what gweilo means, don’t you?”

  “A not-very-flattering Chinese term for people of the Caucasian persuasion.”

  “‘Of the Caucasian persuasion!’” Lulu laughed. “That’s about as gweilo a term as I’ve ever heard. It means white ghost man. Go ahead. Put it on.”

  Decker slipped on the mask. She’s right, he considered, examining himself in a mirror. It fits perfectly.

  They made their way back to the party. As Lulu started down the stairs, Decker could see she was wearing a long velvet tail, with strands of midnight black silk at the end, and he resisted the urge to reach out and pull it.

  The music was loude
r now. They were playing Blondie’s Heart of Glass. More people were dancing. He could see them cavorting in the flashing red lights. No, they were blue now. Including Amy, the cod. She was grinding against a bear and what looked like a wolverine. Or was he a badger? Hard to tell.

  “Get yourself a drink,” Lulu said. “Things will start to wind down pretty soon now.”

  “You think?” Decker laughed. “Go ahead. Tend to your guests. I’ll be fine.”

  Lulu hesitated for a moment. Then she slipped down the stairs and disappeared into the wavering throng.

  Decker spent the next couple of hours making small talk and mingling. The crowd was an eclectic mix of academics and students from MIT and Harvard University nearby, plus painters and sculptors, mathematicians and writers, photographers, even some chefs. More than a few were Lulu’s students, or had been at some point. Unprompted, they began singing her praises. Of course, they were also drinking her liquor.

  Panem et circenses, Decker thought. Who was going to complain?

  One girl, in her twenties, with the face of a spider, hairy fangs and eight eyes, turned out to be a tattoo artist from East Cambridge. Did some work on Lulu some years ago and they’d become friends, she explained. They were examining the nativity scene, featuring Barbie, G.I. Joe, and a purple-haired troll as the Christ child.

  “What kind of work?” Decker asked, shouting over the music.

  “Ask her yourself,” she said cryptically, moving off.

  Cream replaced The Clash just as Decker came upon two men in the corner doing shooters of Cuervo. One had the head of a duck, the other a lobster. It turned out the duck was a professor of information technology at Rensselaer in Troy. Each time he took a shot, most of the liquor cascaded down his long furry beak. He and the lobster were discussing how all the major search engines had cut deals with China restricting access and compromising privacy. “Even Google capitulated,” the duck mumbled somberly. “Don’t be evil.” It was like a personal affront to him. And, despite recent hacking attempts by the Communist government, he continued, they would probably stay.