Darknet

by Matthew Mather

  He and Eamon had almost gotten into a fistfight about the trip to Canada. It wouldn’t have been their first. Eamon thought he’d lost his mind for wanting to skip across the border at a time like this, that his grief over Sean had driven him crazy. Jake didn’t—couldn’t—tell him about the envelope, of course, so he understood his reaction. But while Eamon hardly approved of the trip, he brought Jake the passport within a few hours. Just like that.

  Jake had called his lawyer before he left, from a payphone at the corner of a garage down the street from the motel where he was staying. He explained that he was with family upstate. Said the lawyer should call his brother if he needed to get in touch.

  The lawyer was adamant that Jake needed to return to New York City. The cops might arrest him if they found out he’d skipped, even upstate. The lawyer added that the District Attorney’s office was all over Jake’s case—high profile—and that the Security Exchange Commission wanted to interview him.

  Right away.

  And not just for an interview.

  An interrogation.

  Jake told the lawyer to push the meeting back by a week and hung up. The call felt like a noose being drawn around his neck, but the next one was worse. He called Elle, knowing there was a good chance she’d pick up only because it wasn’t his cell number.

  She did.

  Standing in the payphone booth that stank of urine, the Plexiglas walls covered in graffiti, with traffic growling past on the interstate—Jake tried to tell his wife how much he loved her. He explained that he was going to see a friend. That it might help clear everything up.

  She said she was busy, then asked what the noise was.

  How’s Anna?

  She was fine, outside playing with her cousins.

  I love you so much.

  She needed to go.

  I didn’t do this Elle. Sean sent me a package. I have proof.

  There was a long pause. What proof?

  I can’t say right now, but I’m going to find out.

  He waited for her to hang up, his heart breaking, but then she said, Be careful, Jake. I love you, too. She started crying as she disconnected. Jake stared at the black plastic receiver in his hand for a minute before he hung it up.

  I’m going to fix this, Elle, I promise.

  Jake couldn’t help but replay the conversation repeatedly as the lush countryside slid past outside the window of the SUV.

  A week had passed since Sean’s death in London. The trail, if there was one, was going cold.

  ▲▼▲

  Cormac couldn’t be far from Jake’s position. The old man was feeding him good information.

  “The one with kale?” asked the pretty girl behind the counter. She couldn’t be more than seventeen.

  “Yes, the Green Monster,” Cormac replied.

  “Perfect, that’ll be two minutes.” The girl returned Cormac’s smile. “Do you want to pay now or later?”

  “Now is fine.” He reached for his wallet.

  Cormac drove into Albany to get some decent food. The other Special Forces guys used to make fun of his fixation with health food when they returned from missions and scarfed down burgers and fries. This town was a dump, but it was better than the interstate. One of the worst things about being on the road was the junk food, and an organic smoothie was just the thing to counteract his last fast-food-burger meal.

  His partner had lost track of Jake O’Connell in New York. Cormac’s employer had informed him that Jake was now in Schenectady, and maybe heading north. He must have slipped out the back with his brother and come upstate to visit his family. It made sense. Cormac wasn’t happy with how easily his new partner was fooled. It was yet another sign of his unworthiness.

  Pulling his wallet from the breast pocket of his suit jacket, he felt his phone vibrate. Holding up one finger, he mouthed, one second, to the girl behind the counter and then turned around, limped back a few steps, and pulled out his phone.

  The encrypted messaging app lit up: O‘Connell passed into Canada. Coordinates and details were appended.

  Cormac arched his eyebrows. He hadn’t taken Jake for a runner. This was getting more interesting.

  Then another message pinged: New target: Maxime Lefevre.

  Attached were three images of a man’s face. Also attached was a new payment. Cormac smiled. Yes, this had become a whole lot more interesting.

  His phone rang. An unlisted number. Cormac answered. “Hello.”

  “Mr. Ryker,” replied a gravelly voice. It was the old man. “I trust you received my new instructions.”

  “Yes.”

  “I need to get this cleared up as soon as possible, understood? Additional bonuses for performance.” A pause. “I can’t stress enough how important this is, Mr. Ryker.”

  “We’re clear, sir.”

  “I have terminated your partner. His performance was insufficient.”

  This day was getting better and better. “I’m happy to hear that. Do you have any more information for me at this time?”

  “More will be coming.”

  The line disconnected.

  Cormac turned to the girl. “Can I get that to go?”

  14

  Shenzhen

  China

  Jin struggled, but her legs were taped to the legs of the chair she was strapped to, her hands bound painfully behind her back. The glare of a floodlight on a tripod nearly blinded her. Squinting, she could make out a camera atop it. Behind that, people shuffled in the darkness. For hours—maybe even more than a day—they’d kept her in here in darkness, tied up. The room smelled like damp concrete, her mouth pasty and filled with dust. She coughed, tried to spit.

  All she saw clearly was the man hulking over her; the same one who’d stuck a needle into her arm. He wound up and smacked her across the face.

  Pain and shock exploded through her nervous system.

  A voice from the darkness: “Ms. Huang, how does a twenty-nine-year-old girl own condos in Shenzhen and New York and afford to vacation in Dubai?”

  She gulped two mouthfuls of air, steadied herself. “I’m a data scientist.” She coughed from the back of her throat.

  “Data scientist?”

  “For banks,” she whispered.

  “And what do you do for these”—the voice paused—“banks?”

  “Fraud detection.” Jin tried to focus on something other than her throbbing face. She tasted blood. “Counter-party risk management.” She wasn’t sure they understood, but they demanded no explanation.

  “And who else do you work for?”

  “The State Ministries.”

  Silence for a few seconds, and then the hulking man wound up and slapped her again. Harder this time. Nearly knocked her and the chair over.

  “We don’t believe you, Ms. Huang. Why were you logged into the Assassin Market?”

  White and black spots swam in Jin’s vision. She was stunned, but kept her wits. “I…I wasn’t,” she stammered. That was true. She hadn’t ever logged into it. Maybe Shen Shi had from one of their shared laptops.

  “I don’t know what that is,” she added. Lied. Admitting anything could be deadly. She didn’t know who she was dealing with, didn’t know what they knew, but it didn’t seem like they wanted to kill her. Not yet, anyway.

  “You expect us to believe that?” The hulking man grabbed her torn shirt and pulled her close, until her face was inches from his. “Who are you working with?”

  So far they hadn’t mentioned any groups associated with the Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army—the PLA—or its cyber divisions.

  Jin felt her face swelling.

  Ears ringing.

  But she kept a part of herself removed. Watching. Analyzing.

  Anybody attached to any of the Security Ministries would have been able to track down her work for the PLA, so in an error by omission, these goons had to be PLA, either that or criminals. If they were criminals, she had a feeling she wouldn’t be getting this kind of friendly treat
ment. It would be much worse. By their accents, she was certain they were from Beijing, and that meant, one way or the other, that they were upset about money.

  The PLA groups she’d worked with were a bunch of nerds, lunch-boxers who tinkered with code. This group of goons was a whole different part of the animal. China’s cyberworld network was so arcane that senior Chinese officials had no idea what was going on with it. It was like trying to explain using a cellphone to a fish, but whoever was interrogating her was listing off agencies with alarming precision.

  She’d gotten in touch with China’s patriotic “red hackers” network after her return to China. A few of her friends freelanced for them. She even attended a law enforcement trade show in Guangzhou to meet people.

  There she’d met commercial software vendors bragging that if someone named a target—any individual, anywhere—they could break into their computer, download their hard drive, record keystrokes, get into bank accounts, even monitor cellphone conversations anywhere in the world.

  The Chinese bureaucracy encouraged the culture of hacking. It was more of a state-sponsored kleptocracy, from hacking competitions to companies and government corporations employing networks of shared hackers. The force behind it all was the government insistence on maintaining surveillance on everyone and everything. You could criticize it, but at least it was out in the open, even if it was about the only thing out in the open.

  The man looming over Jin pulled his arm back, his hand in a fist. “I’m going to ask you one more time…”

  She tensed up, tears streaming down her face, her breath coming in labored gasps. A part of her mind distanced itself from the beating, but she was terrified. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you want.” She closed her eyes and cringed.

  “That’s enough,” said the voice from the darkness. “We have what we need for now. We’re going to need her.”

  Jin opened her eyes. Shaking. The floodlight clicked off and another light, a bare incandescent one that hung from a wire above her head, came on. It illuminated a rough concrete room with blacked-out windows. Four other people stood by the door. It wasn’t a bunker, though, and it didn’t have the feeling of a government office. There was what appeared to be a kitchen in one corner. The room looked like it could be in any one of the thousands of unfinished building projects on the outskirts of Guangzhou.

  The man who called off Jin’s aggressor wore a business suit. He motioned at an improvised wooden platform in the corner of the room. On it were the twisted remains of a laptop and her backpack.

  “We’re going to need your help getting into that,” the businessman said evenly as he saw her staring at the laptop. Walking forward he tapped the large man still looming over Jin. “Let’s go.”

  The door to the room opened, and the other men filtered out until the one with the business suit was left. He made to leave but then stopped and looked at Jin. “You’re lucky that we found you before they did, Ms. Huang.” He walked out and closed the door without bothering to explain who we or they were.

  The light bulb above Jin’s head flickered. Taking deep breaths, she tried to calm herself. They needed something. She had to convince them that she was the only one who could access and decode what was on that laptop.

  That made her valuable, which probably made her alive, but getting out of here would be even better.

  Closing her eyes, she rolled her shoulders back and forth, seeing if there was any wiggle room in the bindings holding her hands. They might be goons, but they were diligent with their rope work. The chair, on the other hand, was a different story. She’d been working to loosen its joints for hours.

  Rocking back and forth, she felt the old wood creaking. Stopping, she listened. No voices in the corridor. Totally quiet, except for her own labored breathing. She tensed her entire body, and with a jolt propelled every ounce of her weight forward.

  The chair rocked, lifting its weight off the back legs.

  With a grunt, she swayed her momentum backward, this time raising the front legs of the chair off the ground as she swung back. Her heart skipped a beat when the chair almost tipped over, but then it dropped back the other way. She swung all of her weight in that direction, straining her head forward.

  As the chair balanced on its front legs, she pushed downward with the balls of her feet, balancing the chair and herself onto her toes. With all her strength, she pushed upward and sprang off her toes, jacking herself into the air with her calf muscles. The chair spun backward and sideways, and as its first leg hit the ground, Jin leaned back with all the force she could muster.

  The back leg splintered.

  Cracked.

  Then she crashed to the ground, pain shooting through her arms and shoulders.

  Her face impacted the concrete floor.

  Hard.

  Gasping for air, Jin lay still on her side, electric jolts of agony lancing through her shoulders. Still no voices outside. She pulled on her arms, trying to be quiet, but weeping from the pain. She felt like she’d broken something. With a final pull, the wooden chair cracked apart, its legs and supports disintegrating from each other.

  Wriggling around on the floor, she separated herself from the bits of the chair and then, bending in half at the waist, pulled her bound hands underneath her feet. Using her hands, she propped herself up onto her knees and then stood unsteadily.

  Her hands were bound together around a strut of the chair, a splinter of which was still embedded in the knots around her wrists. She pulled this out with her teeth, and the bindings loosened. She wriggled one hand and then the other free, then leaned over and untied her feet.

  Panting.

  Sweat streaming down her face.

  She held her breath. Any noises in the hallway?

  Nothing yet.

  Got to hurry.

  She glanced around the room, looking for a weapon, but realized it was futile. Even with a baseball bat, she doubted she could make a dent in the gorilla who’d attacked her, and she didn’t have any idea how to use a gun. Stealth was her only weapon. She crept to the door, her stomach in her throat, the only sound her heart banging in her ears.

  She turned the handle. Inched the door open.

  No voices. No sound of footsteps.

  She opened the door another inch with one trembling hand. Peered into the hallway.

  Dark.

  Empty.

  Slowly, slowly, she swung the door open far enough so she could squeeze out. She had heard them turn down the hallway to her right, so she crept to the left and then started running, her feet scuffling across the dust on the unfinished concrete.

  At the end of the hallway was a stairwell, the doors not yet installed. She turned into it and jumped down two steps at a time. In a blur she reached one landing, and then the next, one after another until she reached ground level. Stopping to catch her breath, her whole body shaking, she leaned against the bar of the door leading outside, opening it a crack.

  Sunlight streamed in.

  Birds chirped outside.

  But what if they were outside, too?

  Jin pushed the door open—wide—ready to sprint, to fight, but she stopped cold.

  “Wutang?” she stuttered.

  Wutang stood in front of her, on a sheet of plywood balanced between the street curb and the emergency exit. “Jin!” He looked as surprised as she was.

  “Are you with these bastards?” Jin half-whispered, half-yelled, trying to make sense of it. She looked around. Her intuition had been right. It was one of the abandoned, half-built high-rises between Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

  “What?” Wutang took a step toward her. “My God, what happened, your face—”

  Jin recoiled. “Stay back.”

  Down the street was a beat-up green Chery QQ hatchback, fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror. Chen appeared on the driver’s side of the vehicle. “Come on, let’s go,” he called out.

  “Chen followed them here,” Wutang explained, urging her toward him, holding his
hand out.

  Jin edged forward. “Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?” If the goons upstairs found them here, they could all be killed.

  Wutang held an arm out. “Why do you think?”

  The way he looked at her melted Jin’s heart.

  High above in the building, voices started shouting, echoing down the stairwell behind Jin.

  “We have to hurry!” Chen yelled from the car.

  More voices, outside the windows, louder this time.

  Jin jumped across the plywood platform and grabbed Wutang’s hand. They ran down the street and she jumped into the backseat of the car, Wutang jumping into the front. Shouts erupted above their heads. Chen already had the car in gear and he stomped on the accelerator, peeling out in a haze of blue smoke.

  15

  Kahnawake Mohawk Reserve

  Southern Quebec

  “We’re twenty-first century Mohawk cyber warriors, check it out!” Dean Albany beamed at Jake, spreading his arms wide. “Not bad for a bunch of redskins, huh?”

  Around them, thousands of servers hummed inside sleek black cabinets. Air from the cooling fans blew a breeze into Jake’s face. Fat packets of blue wiring snaked overhead. Everything was perfectly squared away, state-of-the-art. They stood in Server Room D of MIT—the Mohawk Institute of Technology—in the Kahnawake Indian reserve, on the other side of the St. Lawrence River south of Montreal Island, about an hour north of the US border.

  Jake smiled. “Not bad. Kahnawake”—he pronounced it kah-na-wog-eh—“is a lot different from the last time I saw it.” He looked down at the blue slip-on booties he’d put on at the entrance. To protect the machines from dust and dirt, according to the guard.

  Jake hadn’t seen his old friend in two decades. He was glad Dean was smiling. They hadn’t parted on good terms—an understatement—and Jake hadn’t called ahead.

  Jake drove the long way up from the small border crossing, passing through farmlands swaying with corn ready for harvest, letting the smell of the air work its way into his brain to twist out half-forgotten memories of another life. Jake and Sean used to come up here as often as they could when they were teenagers.