by A P Bateman
When Stone opened the door the two dogs came in cautiously and stood in front of him. They both stared. He looked them in the eyes and held out his hand slowly. One of the dogs sniffed him, then sat down. The other looked indifferently at him. Both were in his way. He pushed the door closed and headed for the kitchen to where he could hear Kathy frothing the coffee. Neither dog moved and as he tried to get past them, the nearest dog bared its teeth.
“Just push them out the way!” Kathy shouted. “They’re trying to assert their dominance.”
“You push them out the way,” Stone murmured under his breath. He covered his crotch with his hands and slowly eased past them, his thigh nudging the dog in the head. He managed to get past both dogs, but as he looked back, both were staring at him. It was not unlike his prom date. Both of the young lady’s brothers had done the same thing. They looked just as mean and ugly too.
“You got past my boys then?”
“Just.”
“Here, a cappuccino.”
“Thanks. They’re interesting companions.”
“They were smaller when they were pups.”
“They generally are.”
She smiled. “As pups they were tiny. My partner and I bought them when we first moved in.” She sipped some coffee, then added, “We split up and I bought him out.”
“Of the dogs?”
“No, the house.”
Stone smiled. “I figured that, just messing.” He sipped the cappuccino. It was frothy and sweet and made with half a shot of espresso. He was pleased, he wanted to sleep at some point tonight. “How about you show me what you’ve got.”
“Sorry?”
“The work the computer guy started on.”
“Oh right, of course,” she seemed flustered.
“I presume you have a file or something? That’s why we’re here.”
“I’ll take you through to my office.”
The office was off the hallway and Stone could see the living area as he passed by the entrance. It had a sunken lounge with a big screen television about as thick as Stone’s forefinger. The furnishings looked expensive. Kathy lived well, or had a lot of credit. Either way Stone thought to afford the house and interior, the BMW parked out front and use a dog walker when she was busy, she was over and above a senior reporter’s salary. But he knew nothing about her, and face value usually had no value at all.
The office was a shrine to awards and achievements in journalism. Kathy’s picture appeared in various magazine and newspaper articles, commendations and accolades. From a brief glance Stone could tell by the photographs that this was earlier in her career. She had achieved a lot, but as he cast his eyes over the walls without appearing too obvious, it would appear that she had either not catalogued recent successes, or had been devoid of them entirely. Social affairs, whatever that was, did not have the same career highs.
“My ego walls,” she said. But she looked at the walls as if she was a third party. It was the first time Stone had seen a flaw in her, something he did not like. Vanity. She seemed to realize this and shrugged. “I don’t frame so much now.”
“No?” Stone ventured casually.
“No. Bread and butter gets in the way now. I have a lot of outgoings since Mark left. He saddled me with the mortgage. It was in my name, we used his inheritance as a deposit. I found out after he left that he’d re-mortgaged the deposit figure. He got all his funds out and I’m financed up to my neck.”
“Nice guy.”
“No. He wasn’t. During my early years in journalism I worked freelance. I aim to do it again, but for now… Well, my work with National Geographic and a host of other magazines took me all around the world. I was away a lot, building my career. Jobs on news desks in TV writing reports for broadcasts brought me back. And then with the Washington Post, I put down some proper roots. We bought this place. Both thought it would be a great idea to get the dogs. Mark, my boyfriend, pushed for them, then left and never looked back. He said I should drive them to the pound.”
“He sounds special,” Stone sipped the coffee. It was milky and tepid, so he finished it quickly and placed it down on a coaster on the leather-topped desk.
“We seemed to get on better when I was away on assignment. Turned out he had a couple of other women on the go. We split a year and a half ago. I’ve no idea where he is, so I’m stuck with too big a mortgage and the car he financed in my name as well. It’s depreciated like throwing a rock off a cliff, so I can’t even sell it and pay the finance company back or hand it back and walk away.” She held up her hands. “Anyway, you don’t want to hear all that.”
“Too late,” Stone smiled wryly.
She laughed. “Okay, well I promise not to drain out on you anymore.” She pulled out a drawer and retrieved a manila folder. Inside were papers and a USB drive. “This is most of what Peter Edwards, the computer specialist, found. He had more for me, but I haven’t heard from him for nearly a week.”
“And you called the police?”
“Washington police aren’t interested. Murder capital of the US. They’re only interested in crime statistics and until there’s a crime, they won’t do anything.”
“But you lodged a concern?”
“Yes.”
“Well that will be on file. I’ll check up on it, get a second concern lodged. I’ll need his details.”
“Sure. I’m not sure if the missing person concern will have been filed though. The desk sergeant didn’t seem to take me seriously.”
“Which precinct?”
“Fourth district. It’s the nearest to where the guy lived.”
“On Indiana Avenue?”
She shrugged. “I guess,” she paused. “No, that’s police headquarters this was on Georgia Avenue.”
“I’ll take it straight to headquarters. I know the police chief.”
“Friends in high places,” she smiled. She opened the file, brushed against him with her shoulder as she took out the papers and spread them on the desk. “That’s why I’m hoping you can find Edwards for me. You have the Secret Service resources behind you. Will you help?”
Stone turned the file around and slid it across the desk. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“What will your fee be?”
Stone looked up at her. “I’m not for hire. I’ll help get you pointed in the right direction, that’s all.”
“For Isobel?”
He shrugged, turned his eyes back to the contents of the folder. “So tell me how far your guy got.”
Kathy was stroking her ear absentmindedly. She smiled at Stone, perched herself back on the desk. “If not for Isobel, an old flame, then why? You won’t discuss your fee. You don’t owe anything to an ex-girlfriend, although you agreed to meet me when I dropped her name.” She smiled at him, and for a moment he was lost in her eyes. They were like dark pools in the light, framed by the brightest whites Stone had seen. “I think I know why. Isobel said you were born in the wrong century. She said you should either have been the sheriff of a wild west town, or an English knight. You need to help, and you live for a challenge. The bigger the challenge, the more you feel alive.”
“That must be it then.”
“I’m upsetting you?”
“It’s getting late. Do you want me to look at the file or not?”
“I have upset you…” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Stone wanted to tell her that her telephone conversation with him yesterday had intrigued him. He also wanted to tell her that from the second he set eyes on her he was reeled in, hook line and sinker. He wanted to tell her how his chest pounded, his stomach fluttered and he felt giddy and adolescent all over again. That he couldn’t remember seeing a more beautiful woman; that he already knew he’d do anything for her.
“Let’s just take a look at what you’ve got,” he said coolly. “How about another coffee?”
“Sure,” she said. She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. Her lips were soft, warm and moist. Her hair smelled of
jasmine. Or maybe it was her perfume, he was unsure. But it was a smell which fuelled the senses, awakened desires. “And I didn’t mean to offend you,” she added, walking through the doorway.
Stone watched her leave; found himself staring at the open doorway sometime after she had left the room. He shook his head, willing himself to concentrate.
The sheaf of paper in front of him was a type-written report. He was unsure of much of the terminology but Peter Edwards had written an overview. He explained the internet as an onion. The top layer being social media, commerce and public services. Layered below this was websites with less detail given to the big search engines. Simply put, you pay for what you get and websites created without enough metatags built in, or with poorly thought out domain names – the search criteria to enable a search engine to find it – were in this technological no-man’s-land. This was the surface web. And it accounted for only 0.03% of the internet. Then below these layers, purposefully made difficult to find by encryption and codes were institutions like government agencies, investment banks, stocks and shares linkage and military information. Designed as a secure internet, a mainframe that people with privacy and security at the forefront of their operations, only accessed by those authorised to do so. This was called the Deep Web. Under these layers rested the Dark Web, because things can get a whole lot darker here. The earth’s core. Only highly technical encryption decoding search programs could break these layers, and the technology was changing daily. This was where the lowest levels of society’s veneer rested. This was where international criminal networks could hire an assassin, where babies could be sold, sex slaves traded, child pornography made, used and bought and sold. This was where evil lurked, lived and bred. Where it thrived.
Stone skimmed across most of this. He recognised the Tor system, short for The Onion Router. He had read documents on the dark web before. As a senior Secret Service agent, he had been involved in operations using the dark web to find transcripts from people intent on carrying out attempts to assassinate the President and senior congressmen. There was a department of techs working on the dark web around the clock. Stone had been on the heavy end, a pistol in hand and his foot against the door. He had no real affinity with the tech world, but he crossed paths with it often enough. Once Stone could find where Edwards was going with his searches, he may be able to pull a few strings and have the techs spend a few hours routing out the searches in the Secret Service headquarters on H Street and 8th.
Kathy walked in carrying two coffees. “Here, cappuccino with a full espresso and not so much milk. You might need the caffeine because you won’t want to put the files down.”
“No?” Stone took the coffee from her, sipped it too quickly, pursed his lips to expel the heat.
“No. But it kind of depends where you read up to.” She put down her coffee, spun the laptop around, put in one of the USBs and opened a file. “Edwards got this information from the Veteran’s Association. It’s a list of names of missing soldiers of Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“MIA? There are none.”
“Sorry, I mean missing veterans. Men who are out of the military but have dropped off the grid in civilian life.”
“They do that. Some will be working security, contracting in the middle east. Others will be holed up in Montana shooting prairie dogs with an AR15 and living off the grid. Some will be homeless and will filter back into society, hopefully, at some point.”
“And plenty commit suicide as well,” she added. “But what that list represents are men who have simply disappeared.”
Stone stood over her shoulder and looked at the screen. Again he smelled jasmine, and felt her warmth. He moved away slightly. “Quite a few.”
She nodded. “Now, I’ll let you read the files and scroll through the USB, but the next file is a list of missing veterans over the past five years. Programmed into the algorithm Edwards used, he has entered combat veterans only, not those who merely served in Iraq or Afghanistan in support roles, but walking patrol, weapon in their hands soldiers.”
“Well, it will be a hell of a lot shorter,” Stone paused, watched the file open on the screen.
Next to the name was rank, unit and service history.
“See anything?”
Stone studied the list.
“Yes. It’s very short now.”
“A pattern is forming.” Kathy held up a hand and then opened the next file. “Now, the algorithm listed missing veterans over two theatres of conflict and two tours of service.”
“I get it,” Stone said impatiently. “But the more criteria he put into those algorithms, the shorter the list will get. Unless he used something more general to open it up again.”
“Of course,” she said. She glanced up at him, she was leaning across the desk and her hips were close to him. “When Edwards put in a search of decorations, commendations and notable achievements it changed.”
“It would.”
“Edwards was looking for veterans who had killed multiple times. Soldiers who had contacted the enemy and had claimed and verified enemy kills against their names.”
“Why?”
“A culmination from an unrelated search,” she paused. “I’ll get to that later.” She opened up the file and it filled the screen. “Now look at the names and details. See anything similar?” She opened another file and stood back. “Here are details of the last month’s bank transactions before each of the veterans went missing.”
Stone stared at the file in silence.
Kathy opened another file and ran the curser over another list. She highlighted it and looked at Stone. “Edwards changed tack and went for transaction beneficiaries of the account that deposited into the veteran’s accounts,” she paused. “Look at the occupations.”
“And Edwards checked to see if these people are missing also?”
“He did, and they are.”
Stone looked again at the names on the list, their occupations and the information taken from their bank statements. He did not need to look for long before making up his mind. He raised his eyes to Kathy. “Who else have you told about this?”
8
The sun was beyond its highest point, but the heat had intensified incredibly. Stone had a rough idea where north was, assuming that he was in fact still in the northern hemisphere. He could have known exactly had he still had his wristwatch. Placing the twelve hour on the sun would have enabled him to draw a median line from east to west. All he had now was dead reckoning, but as the afternoon wore on he could be more precise.
The loss of the watch saddened him. It had belonged to his father. His mother had bought her husband the Rolex upon his retirement. Stone’s father, an accountant and frugal man had long coveted the watch, but would never have spent the money on such an unnecessary purchase. Stone’s mother had bought the previously owned watch on finance, and the shop had sent it away for refurbishment before she had taken delivery. Stone’s father had been delighted, but had died two weeks later. The watch had gone to Stone’s older brother, an FBI agent who had later been killed in the line of duty. Stone had been given the watch at his brother’s wake and had worn it ever since.
He looked down on the bay, shaking the thought away. He needed to remain focused. He was still naked, still had no idea where he was, he had no idea who had just tried to kill him or why. He needed answers and he needed to formulate a plan.
He stood up decisively and headed down the headland to the beach. He would check on the warrior and take it from there. Part of him hoped the man was dead. He could not afford to release a man who had tried to kill him. The emotion triggered a childhood memory. Stone could picture a farm in a lush and tranquil landscape. Rolling green hills, trees heavy with summer leaves and a slow moving river meandering through fields of waist-high grass ready to be cut for hay. His grandparent’s farm in Connecticut. He had left the poultry pen open. A fox had savaged a goose and was at death’s door. His grandfather cleaned the wounds and had given the goose the ni
ght in a separate pen with food of stale bread soaked in beaten egg and milk to see if it would start to recover. The morning had come and it was down to Stone, no more than twelve-years old to put the goose out of its misery if it had made no progress. You started it, so you finish it, his grandfather had said. Stone had prayed on his way down to the pen that the goose had succumbed to its injuries. It hadn’t and it had been the first time Stone had killed. And the old goose hadn’t given up easily.
Stone hesitated, wondered if he should simply cut his losses and walk the other way. You started it, so you finish it, rang in his ears. Well, he hadn’t technically started it, but he had left the man injured and tethered. He would have to see it through. If the man could be saved, and it seemed he would not pose further threat to him, then he would try to help him. And if he couldn’t… Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, or the worse thing he had done. Afterwards, he would keep moving around the beach and see what he could find to help him. There had to be flotsam and jetsam on the tideline somewhere. There would be more scallops and mussels on other stretches of exposed reef and as long as he ate enough he would last a few days without water. If that time came, Stone was sure he would find more water. He would head into the jungle. The trees could only grow with water to sustain them. And rain water would pool at the base of the hill he had seen from the top of the headland.
Stone walked across the beach with more purpose. It was important to set plans, keep focus. A survival situation was overcome by maintaining a positive mental attitude. That was what Stone had been lacking. He knew he had been drugged and he had woken into a nightmare. Hot, dehydrated, confused, scared and disoriented. His muscles near paralysed, atrophic. Well, he was up and moving now, and his senses were sharper. He could recall more from his past, and was confident he would continue to do so. He could picture military training. Twice, no, three times. Strange, but as he tried harder to remember he recalled army basic training. Manning a large artillery piece. Unloading hell onto the enemy in a hot and dusty land. There is a flash memory, he is tethered, dragged on his knees into a line. Tough, merciless men wearing rags and robes and ammunition pouches across their chests are beheading people in front of him. A weathered man, toothless and scarred, holds the sword up to Stone and grins. He will be next, the soldiers kneeling alongside him will be next…
