404: A John Decker Thriller

by J. G. Sandom

  She looked over her shoulder, her long blond hair rolling, cascading like froth down her back. And her eyes. Those Antarctic blue eyes, as cold as the tailings of glaciers.

  “You can have me,” she said. “If you want. And I know that you do. I can feel it.” She glanced down at his crotch. She started to rub him. “See?”

  He could taste her breath on his skin.

  “Don’t you want me, baby?” she whispered.

  The sound filled him like a warm glass of absinthe. “Of course I want you,” he said through clenched teeth. He found himself grinding his crotch against her round ass. He bit her hard, on the neck, until the blood started to flow. He watched it pearl up and shiver, and fall, like a shower of apple seeds, unabashedly red.

  “Then who is that girl?”

  Decker turned to see Lulu standing in a fairy ring of wild prairie oats, stark naked and exposed to the elements, save for the tattoos of lotus blossoms, vines and lily pads on her skin. Her heavy breasts heaved as she stared at him with unabashed longing, pure animal lust. Her crimson lips trembled as a bead of glistening perspiration snaked down her left temple, only to roll, roll and then vanish back into her silken black hair. She held her hands open, palm upward, beside her bare hips, and the topiary tattoos came together into a bower of ghostly white flowers and snakes of green vine, until her frame became nothing but a flesh-and-blood trellis for the pinpricks of life growing upon it.

  “That’s...” he began. But Decker could not, for the life of him, remember her name. “That’s...” It just would not come.

  “I can give them all back to you,” said the blond man beside him. “Your parents. They don’t have to die. Not like that. Not burned alive in that manner.”

  Decker felt a wave of nausea sweep through him.

  “And Emily too,” he continued.

  For a moment, kinesthetically, Decker sensed more than saw as Spanair Flight JK 5022 fell apart, crashed soon after take-off from Barajas Airport, Madrid, killing one hundred and fifty-four souls on that fateful summer day in 2008, in Spain’s deadliest air accident in twenty-five years. The plane suffered multiple malfunctions, it turned out, but the airport mainframe computer—which should have raised the alarm before the MD-80 took off—neglected to do so because the airport’s central computer was contaminated with malware. It neglected.

  “But that was Madrid,” said the blond man. “Not Dallas, for sure, right? For sure, John. Not Dallas. Emily’s death was simply an accident, right?”

  Decker swung out at the blond man without even looking at him but the punch went drunk wide. He missed by a mile. Almost literally. Decker found himself standing on an outcropping of rock.

  Far below, on the small Druid mound, circled by oak trees, Emily looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “Don’t you want me,” she cried as she stretched her arms toward the heavens. “Aren’t you tired of carrying the pain? It was you they invited to Dallas. You should have been on that plane, John. Not me. You should have taken that flight.”

  Decker pulled himself out of her grasp.

  “Don’t you love me, John? Don’t you care anymore? Or, has Lulu stolen your heart?”

  Decker pressed his palms to his ears, trying to blot out the words.

  “We can be together again,” she continued. “Like before. You can have me again. In more ways than you can even imagine.”

  “This isn’t real,” Decker said. He clamped his eyes shut. “None of this is real. Emily’s dead. And my parents. They’re all dead. Dead. Dead!” He started to run down the hill, trampling bright yellow daffodils under his feet.

  He ran and he ran in this manner for what seemed like hours. The hill kept descending. The terrain never varied. He ran and he ran until he entered a corridor, running through first one room, then the next, the nurses looking up in surprise or disdain, clasping clipboards to their breasts, some recoiling in horror. He ran until he finally found himself outside her hospital room, and he opened the door with a stone in his heart. He turned the doorknob so carefully, afraid it might simply pop off in his hand or snap like a wishbone. He pulled the door open and saw her inside, still pinned beneath that thin plastic skin, just there, just out of reach, like a body floating under a tablet of pond ice. “Becca,” he found himself whispering. “Are you okay, baby?”

  “I can save her or I can take her away,” said the blond man beside him. He was dressed like a doctor now, with a stethoscope, a nametag and lab coat.

  The clear plastic tenting started to part. A tiny dark blade pierced the shell from within. Then another, and another, until it was clear that the little dark blades were her fingernails, blackened and burnt. They melted the plastic until it came apart in her hands. Becca slithered out of the cleft, like an eel, her fingers and arms and whole torso sliding out of the vaginal opening, until she flopped onto the bedclothes, a black shriveled mass of burnt skin held together by gristle and bone. She looked up at him with her ivory smile and traced a narrow ellipsis in the air directly over her head. “For infinity, Daddy,” she said.

  “If you don’t do what I tell you,” whispered the blond man beside him, “I’ll suspend all her life support systems. She’s not dead...yet. Each sub-routine. Gone.” The stranger’s voice altered. The pitch became feminine. “You know I can do it, John. It would be...” He turned and saw his Aunt Hanne. “...child’s play.”

  Decker ripped the VR goggles from his face, fell to his knees, and started to scream.

  CHAPTER 43

  Friday, December 13

  Decker crawled forward. He bellowed like a branded bull until Lulu dashed to his side, pressed his head to her belly.

  “Shhhh,” she said. “It’s alright. Don’t worry. You’re safe now. I’m right here. Don’t worry.”

  Decker looked up at her, his face lined with horror.

  Slowly but surely, the night terror passed, and the feeling of unreasonable fear began to recede. Decker struggled to his feet. He staggered toward the counter, steadied himself and reached for the telephone.

  “What are you doing?” cried Lulu.

  Decker punched a number. “I’m calling my uncle. He’s staying with Becca in Georgetown.”

  Lulu reached out and put her hand on the cradle. “Hold on just a second,” she said.

  Decker held the receiver high over his head, ready to strike it down on her face...when he stopped himself. He took another deep breath and lowered the phone. “Stay out of my way,” Decker said.

  “I’ll let you make your call,” Lulu said, “if you just give me a moment to play with the phone. I don’t like the idea of us being traced. At least, not until I’ve heard what you saw with those goggles.”

  Decker took a step backward. Lulu scrambled around the lab, picking up odds and ends, tools and implements wherever she found them. A few minutes later, she handed the phone back to Decker. “Dial away. Just punch nine and the number.”

  Decker took the phone and dialed his uncle’s mobile. It seemed to ring and ring forever when he heard a loud click, and Tom finally came on.

  “Hello? Hello,” said Llewellyn. “Hello, who is that?”

  “It’s me, Tom.”

  “John? John, is that really you? Hello? Answer me!”

  “It’s me, Tom.” Decker heard a loud sigh.

  “Thank you, Jesus. I thought you were dead. McCullough told me you were shot in some parking lot.”

  “He was wrong, obviously.”

  “What’s going on, John? They say you’re a traitor, that you’ve been working with Islamist extremists.” Llewellyn laughed grimly. “As if that could ever be true. They don’t know you like I do.”

  “How’s Becca?” asked Decker.

  “She’s right here. We were reading together. More Harry Potter.”

  “May I speak with her?”

  “Of course. I’ll put her on speakerphone. If I can find the damned button.”

  There was a pause as Llewellyn struggled with his smartphone. Decker closed his eyes. T
hen he heard the soft tone of his daughter’s voice, and—for a moment—he was convinced he could actually smell her.

  “Daddy? Daddy, is that you?”

  “I’m here, baby” said Decker. “I’m right here.” A warm wave of indescribable pleasure washed over him. “How’s my little cheetah?”

  “I’m fine,” she replied. “But it hurts.”

  “I know it does, baby. Lots of booboos.”

  “Booboos! They’re burns, Dad. Only babies call them booboos. And I’m not a baby anymore.”

  “I know you’re not. You’re a big girl now. And brave.”

  “What are you doing? Why aren’t you here?”

  Decker closed his eyes. He imagined his daughter in her small plastic tent. He imagined her hands in her lap, so tiny, and her sleepy gray eyes. “Daddy’s trying to find the guys who hurt you,” he said, regretting the words as soon as they’d come out of his mouth.

  “I thought they were dead,” she replied. An edge crawled into her voice.

  “The ones that hurt you, yes,” Decker said. “But there are other bad guys behind them. Other guys pulling their strings.”

  Becca laughed. “Like that cartoon, the one that you like? Where the puppet becomes a real boy?”

  “Yes, like Pinocchio.” Decker pressed the earpiece close to his ear. He could barely hear her. “I’ll be home soon, baby. As soon as I can.” He looked at Lulu standing beside him. “I love you, Becca.”

  “I love you too, Daddy.”

  “Put grandpa back on the phone, will you?”

  There was a momentary pause as Llewellyn turned off the speakerphone. Then he said, “Don’t worry. She’s fine, John. Healing nicely. But the nurses are threatening to charge Medicare for the bed I’ve been using.” He laughed. “I haven’t left the hospital once since I got here. John? John, are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “I won’t let anything happen to her.”

  “It better not,” Decker answered. “Or, so help me God, I’ll come after you, Hellard. You too, Rex. I’ll come after you both, and I’ll kill you. Count on it.”

  “What? What are you talking about, John?”

  “I just wanted you to understand that,” said Decker. “I wanted to be perfectly clear. I expect both of you to protect her.”

  There was a click and Rex McCullough suddenly came on the line. “How’s the weather in Kamchatka this time of year?” he inquired.

  “Kamchatka?”

  “That’s where you seem to be calling from. Tell Lulu she’s outdone herself this time. And congratulations to you too, John. It’s not every day you make it to the top of the FBI’s Most Wanted list. You were right about your suspicions, about a mole at the Center. It was you, John. You, the whole fucking time. I feel like an idiot. You’ve been leaking classified intelligence to terrorist organizations for months. And you’ve got forty million dollars in a Cayman bank account to show for it. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is looking for you. But if you turn yourself in—”

  Lulu hung up the phone. “Times up,” she said simply.

  Decker squeezed the receiver. He squeezed it as hard as he could. Then, with a sigh, he slowly put the phone back on the hook.

  “We need to find a place to crash,” Lulu said. “Some place where no one will look for us. We can’t stay with family or friends.”

  “How about a hotel?”

  Lulu smiled. She plopped herself down by the nearest PC and punched up a browser. Minutes later, she had hacked her way into The Four Seasons reservation system and booked them a suite. “Done,” she said with a grin. “Now, we just have one more thing to do. And it’s not going to be easy.”

  “What’s that?” Decker asked.

  “Get across town.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Friday, December 13

  They ended up pinching a few items of clothing from distracted MIT students and heading up Amherst, making a quick left onto Carleton, before turning north for the Kendall Station at Broadway and Main. The place was packed. But that, in the end, proved to be an advantage. It was easier to blend in with the crowd than to try and avoid the ubiquitous surveillance cameras, the Cyclops sentinels that seemed to sprout out of every lamppost and street corner of Cambridge, despite the city’s Public Safety Committee’s rejection of them. So they cast their faces perpetually downward, toward the sidewalk, and both wore headgear that they’d picked up at the Media Center: Lulu, a floppy herringbone newsboy wool hat, with a stiff brim that easily obscured her spiked EMO hair; and Decker, a sea-foam-green baseball-style flex cap, pulled low to his eyes, featuring the Celtics logo—a Leprechaun spinning a basketball on the very tip of his finger.

  They bought Charlies and hopped onto the Red Line heading east into town. The car was practically empty and they had no trouble getting seats. Moments later, just as Decker began to relax, the train exploded into daylight and they found themselves hurtling across the Longfellow Bridge. Out the window, Decker could see the entire city splayed out before him, including the John Hancock Tower and the Prudential Center. Far below, someone was sculling the Charles.

  “For my heart was hot and restless,” said Lulu. “And my life was full of care,/And the burden laid upon me/Seemed greater than I could bear.” She sat there and stared out the window.

  “What was that?”

  “From The Bridge—the poem the Longfellow Bridge was named after. MIT boys used to quote it to me as we crossed here. Thought it made them seem more romantic. You know. Thought they’d get lucky.”

  “Did they?” asked Decker.

  Lulu stood up and made her way toward the door. “Not often,” she said. “Not my type.” Then, she smiled. “I like bad boys, Special Agent Decker. The ones on the lam. The ones wanted by the police, not the cops chasing them.” At that moment, a young couple sidled in right behind her, getting ready. They were approaching the Charles Street-MGH Station and Lulu grew suddenly serious. “This is us,” she said.

  They got out at the Circle, at the intersection of Cambridge and Charles, and headed downstairs with the rest of the crowd. But, just as they approached the turnstiles near the door, Lulu turned back. Cops were everywhere, at every entrance and exit.

  They hovered there by a newsstand for a moment and were about to head back upstairs when the policeman nearest to them was distracted by some tourist with a map and a question. They ran past him and jumped into the nearest cab.

  “Hey, hold on a minute,” the driver began. “You have to wait in line.” But, by then, Lulu had already stuffed a twenty into the slot.

  “We’re late for a meeting. Take us down Charles to the Common,” she said, bringing her face close to the plastic partition. “And the twenty’s for you.”

  They made their way down the street, past another contingent of police on the other side of the circle. “What gives?” Lulu asked. “Why all the cops?”

  “Don’t know,” said the driver. He leaned on his horn as a young girl wearing a fake fur flew by on a bicycle right in front of his cab. “Fucking bikes.” He cursed a blue streak and then added, “There’s some kind of demonstration in the park. Some Occupy Wall Street thing. It’s Friday. Seems to happen every week nowadays. Might as well be driving in Cairo.”

  Sure enough, they had only gone a few blocks when the traffic crawled to a stop. Young kids—college students, apparently, from a dozen or more local schools—seemed to be converging on the Common. They carried signs complaining about the Education Industrial Complex, as they termed it, decrying how many university presidents earned hundreds of thousands or millions while other university workers struggled to make ends meet.

  “Last week it was the Massachusetts Nurses’ Association. Now, that was worth slowing down for,” said the driver.

  They told him to pull over. The sidewalk was jammed here with protestors. Everyone seemed to be heading south, into the park. Decker and Lulu got out and immediately found themselves being carried along by the crowd. “Follow me,” she said,
holding onto his arm.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Decker.

  “See that guy in the raincoat? Past Teke’s Nails, one block back? Near the lamppost!”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s a cop.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know,” she replied, and in that moment, the man noticed them staring at him. A second later, he spoke into his sleeve.

  They took off down the sidewalk, moving as fast as they could through the throng. Meantime, the man in the coat began waving at somebody else on the opposite side of the street. When Decker looked over, he noticed another young man with the same type of raincoat also running southbound by Seven’s Ale House. Without warning, the other man dashed into the street and began weaving through traffic, trying to make his way over to them.

  Decker and Lulu ran faster. They pushed and manhandled their way through the crowd, jostling and bumping, and finally coming to an abrupt halt as they slammed into the back of a very large man carrying a green and white golf umbrella. The man turned on them slowly.

  Lulu took a step backward.

  Decker felt his fingers curl into fists at his sides automatically.

  The man was huge, at least six feet six. Maybe more. Some kind of Eastern European, thought Decker, with a small coconut-shaped head and beady gray eyes. He looked down at them disapprovingly. “Sorry,” he said, donning a mask.

  It was one of those Guy Fawkes affairs, an Anonymous mask. The man next to him put one on too. Then another man, until everyone in the crowd seemed to be wearing them.

  “What is this, a flash mob?” said Lulu.

  Someone came up directly beside them and handed her a couple of masks. He appeared to be giving them away to whomever was interested.

  Decker and Lulu put on masks and ducked into the heart of the mob. Moments later, they found themselves outside a drug store just south of Vernon on Charles. “Want a soda?”