No Living Soul

by Julie Moffett

  A glance at Gwen indicated she wasn’t doing so well. Her momentary surge of strength was now being tested by seemingly endless waiting.

  She’d left her laptop open on the table and perched on the edge of the couch, pressing her hands together in her lap. She was clearly trying to hold it together, but I doubted she had ever been in a situation like this. The strain was showing. I imagined the same scenarios of torture that were playing through my head were playing through her head, too. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do to alleviate that.

  Slash’s impatience was showing, as well. He drummed his fingers on the table next to the keyboard. Waiting was agony for all of us, even worse than watching the latest Microsoft patches download. I was becoming increasingly terrified that the kidnappers wouldn’t connect to a network and we would be helpless.

  After ten minutes and no sign of activity, Slash pushed back from his computer, picked up the hotel phone and ordered two carafes of coffee, a plate of sandwiches and some basbousa, which Zizi informed us was an Egyptian pastry. I didn’t feel like eating and I’m not sure anyone else did either, but at least it might temporarily break the monotony of waiting.

  In twenty minutes the coffee arrived, as did the food.

  We all sipped on coffee, mine with a lot of extra cream, but no one touched the food. Not one bite.

  Sixty-seven minutes after we’d arrived at the hotel, my laptop dinged.

  I rolled the chair over my toe as I pulled it up to the table and my laptop, but the pain barely registered. “Thank God. They finally connected. Let’s see where they are.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Slash loomed behind my chair, peering over my shoulder. Gwen and Zizi maneuvered beside him to look at the screen, too. I was absolutely certain they’d have no idea what I was doing.

  “What’s going on? What do you see? Where are they?” Zizi demanded.

  “Give me a freaking minute, people.” I pinpointed the network signal and in a separate window pulled up Google Maps. From what I could see the location looked like a tall apartment complex. “Mostafa Ragab. It’s a street near Al Qubbaah Palace.”

  “Where’s that?” Gwen sounded excited.

  “That’s not too far from here,” Zizi answered. “Ten, fifteen minutes away.”

  “So, let’s go.” Gwen grabbed her purse. “What are we waiting for?”

  “Whoa, Madame SWAT Commander.” I held up a hand. “First of all, we have one gun and one guy who knows how to use it. Not to mention we have no idea how many of them there are. We aren’t even sure Elvis and Arthur are in the same location as the laptop. We need a lot more information before we go anywhere.”

  “Let us do our work, Gwen,” Slash said gently. “I promise you, we’ll get them back.”

  I didn’t know how he could make such a promise, but that he did made me love him even more.

  Gwen clutched her purse, her hands trembling. “You promise?”

  “I do.” He turned his attention to my screen and put a hand on my shoulder. “Do we know anything else?”

  My fingers flew across the keyboard, my brain processing and compartmentalizing the information as the data flew past. “Yes. You want the good news or bad news?”

  “Good first.”

  “Okay, it appears our kidnappers are not cybersecurity experts. They haven’t found any of my security measures yet, haven’t bothered to run a single diagnostic, and have no idea that we know their location.”

  “That is good. What’s the bad news?”

  “They’re in the system. They got into it legitimately and went straight for Gwen’s document.”

  “What? How did they get in legitimately?” Zizi said.

  Slash and I exchanged a glance. “Arthur,” I said.

  “Arthur?” Gwen looked at me with stricken eyes. “What does that mean?”

  Slash straightened, sighed. “It means Arthur talked. He gave them the password to open the computer.”

  “Just like that?” Gwen said.

  “Just like that.”

  “We can’t blame him.” My heart squeezed. “We don’t know what’s happening over there.”

  “Do you think they’re still a-a-live?” Gwen could barely speak the word, her teeth were chattering so badly.

  “Yes.” I spoke reassuringly, partly because I was trying to convince myself. “They may be in the computer, but they’ll have a harder time getting into the document. I encrypted it. Plus, if they do get in, they’ll need Arthur to explain the technical details.” I just hoped whoever had kidnapped them was smart enough to know that. I wasn’t getting a good feeling about which end of the IQ bell curve these guys might reside on.

  “What about Elvis?”

  “He’ll be okay, too.” I didn’t add that he would be useful alive as an incentive in case Arthur refused to talk, which is why I suspected they took Elvis in the first place. There was no telling how fast he’d tell them the decryption password to open the document. That being said, I hadn’t placed all my eggs in one basket.

  “What do we do now?” Zizi asked. She was visibly anxious.

  “Let’s see what we’re up against.” I zoomed in through the back door and activated the camera. “Stand by, everyone.”

  A photo of a dark-haired man sitting in front of the computer suddenly filled my screen. He was leaning close to the keyboard, typing, his dark eyebrows scrunched together tightly.

  Zizi gasped.

  I looked over my shoulder at her. “Have you ever seen this guy before?”

  She peered at the screen, then shook her head. “No. I’ve never seen him before. But how did you do that? Just bring him up on your screen.”

  “It’s pretty easy, actually.” I opened a log of his keystrokes in one corner of my screen and studied it. He was trying to open the document. Thank God, he wasn’t having any success. Yet.

  “Can he see us?” she asked.

  “No. He doesn’t even know the camera is on. I prevented the red light on the camera from coming on.”

  Zizi peered closer. “He’s wearing a policeman’s shirt, just like Gwen said.”

  I nodded. “He sure is. Stand by and let me turn the audio on.” A few keystrokes later, I heard a voice. I adjusted the volume and we all leaned closer to listen as the guy at the keyboard said something in Arabic.

  Zizi leaned even closer. I could smell her perfume and her dark, thick hair spilled onto my keyboard. I carefully pushed it aside and used my keystroke logger to watch what he was doing on the keyboard in real time. He was still trying to open the document. His expression was pissed and he was yelling something to someone behind him. I strained to hear Elvis’s or Arthur’s voices, but I heard only the tap of his fingers on the keyboard.

  “He’s mad,” Zizi confirmed. “He’s said the document won’t open.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Can you hear Elvis?” Gwen asked. “Is he there? What about Arthur? Are they hurting them?”

  “Ssssssh.” Zizi waved her hand at Gwen in annoyance and we all remained quiet.

  After a couple of minutes, the guy at the keyboard stood and disappeared from view, so we had a better view of the room. Now I could hear men talking. People were walking back and forth. I couldn’t see either Elvis or Arthur so I couldn’t confirm if they were there.

  After a few minutes had passed, Slash glanced at Zizi. “Can you make out anything they are saying?”

  She straightened and pushed her hair off her shoulders, arching her back in an attempt to stretch it. “They are walking around, so I can’t hear them clearly. But from what I can hear, they’re talking about how to get the document open.”

  “No sound of Arthur or Elvis?” I asked.

  “Sorry. Not yet.”

  “I’ve seen three me
n so far,” Slash said.

  “Yes,” Zizi confirmed. “There are three different voices.”

  “Wait.” I lowered my head closer to the screen. “I hear Elvis now. Oh, thank goodness. He’s talking loudly, which means he’s probably hoping we’ve hijacked their computer and is trying to give us some clues to his whereabouts. Since he suspects we might be monitoring them, we need to listen carefully for any clues he may drop.”

  “He’s alive? Oh, that’s wonderful.” Gwen looked ready to cry, which didn’t make sense since I’d just confirmed Elvis was alive, but I didn’t have time to ponder that at the moment.

  “What about Arthur?” she asked. “Do you hear him, too?”

  “I don’t hear him yet. Zizi, do you?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Well, if Elvis is aware we’re listening, he’ll be ready,” Slash said.

  Zizi lifted her head to look at Slash. “Ready for what?”

  Slash didn’t answer. He was staring intently at the screen as the same guy who’d been there earlier came back into view and sat down. I watched his keystrokes as he started typing. As he was typing, he started talking right into the microphone, so we got clear audio.

  After a minute of talking with someone, he fell quiet.

  “What just happened?” Slash asked Zizi.

  I already knew. The guy had just typed in the password to decrypt the document.

  Zizi paled. “Arthur...he told them the password to unlock the document. They...” She paused, pressed her hand against her chest as she listened to a voice holler from the back of the room. “They’re now going to upload Gwen’s notes on the plague to a website and hope someone can figure out how to create it. They want to broadcast the plague as a jihad on the Western world.”

  My mouth dropped open. “What?”

  Before I could say another word, the guy opened the content management system for a website. I scrambled to pull up the website in another window. I angled the computer so Slash could see.

  As soon as Slash saw who ran the website, he swore. “This is bad. Really bad. We’ve got to stop them. We can’t let them upload the document contents.”

  “Don’t worry. They can’t.” I tapped on a few keys and then clarified. “Not yet anyway. I just activated my basic security program I installed with my encryption program. It will prevent them from uploading or downloading anything on that laptop. It also disables the USB ports and blocks the Bluetooth and all the ports used by email protocols. So they can’t copy, transfer, mail or broadcast the details of the document to any devices or even to the cloud so long as my program is in place. That means, for the time being, that document is being held hostage on that laptop. Neither Arthur nor Elvis knows anything about this or how to disable it, so, we may have a little bit of breathing room. But as I wasn’t anticipating this scenario, I used my basic program. It’s good enough to hold against a novice or even a power user, but it won’t last long if they find someone with legitimate hacking skills.”

  “That’s what they’re doing.” Zizi turned her green eyes on me. They were filled with concern. “They were arguing with Elvis, but he said he didn’t know anything about this and they seem to believe him. So, two of the men are leaving now to bring over a friend who has some skill at hacking into computers and networks.”

  That was not a good development.

  “What’s happening with Elvis and his father?” Gwen asked. She had unknowingly crumbled a pastry to bits as she walked around, leaving a trail of little crumbs. “Are they okay?”

  Before I could respond, I heard yelling in the background.

  “That sounds like Arthur.” Slash leaned closer to the screen. The guy at the keyboard stood and disappeared from view again. The shouting stopped, but the guy didn’t return.

  “Oh. My. God. What just happened?” Gwen asked.

  Honestly, I had no idea. I hadn’t heard a gunshot or screams of terror, though, so that was something positive.

  “Don’t we have to do something?” Gwen spoke in a rush, clearly terrified.

  I exchanged a glance with Slash. “Yes, we’ve got to do something. If they’re going to get hacker-level help, we’re in big trouble. What I planted on the computer isn’t going to stop anyone who knows what they’re doing. They’ll break through it in a matter of hours, maybe sooner, depending on how good they are. If they are any good at all, it won’t take them long to find my camera and audio hacks.”

  “What can we do?” Gwen’s voice became shrill. “We don’t have weapons. We can’t go to the police. How are we supposed to save them?”

  Slash stood, his expression grim. “We save them ourselves.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Gwen leaped to her feet. “Thank God. We’re finally going to do something. Let’s go.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “What are you going to do?”

  “Whatever it takes. I’m not totally useless. I have a purple belt in karate, you know.”

  Despite the gravity of the situation, a smile touched Slash’s lips. “I appreciate your offer of backup, Gwen. But I need you monitoring events from the camera right here. If something happens to us, I want you to go the American Embassy and tell them everything you know, okay?”

  “Wait, who is us?” I interrupted.

  “You, me...and Zizi.” He turned to face her. “If she’s willing.”

  Zizi stood looking at Slash in disbelief. “You can’t possibly be serious. You’re just going to rush over there and take on a guy with a gun and two hostages with no backup other than two women?”

  “Si. But we need your help. You’re the only one of us who can speak Arabic. If I’m able to capture the guy, I may require your assistance...asking him questions.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Just a guy with a desire to help two of my friends. I’m also more than interested in making sure that the specifications for that plague don’t get loaded onto a jihadist site. Are you in?”

  She hesitated. I could see her weighing her options. Her career, her position at the museum, her future—all of that would be in jeopardy. On the other hand, she knew better than most, better than me, what it would mean to the world if Gwen’s notes and structural analysis on the plague were uploaded to the website.

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t like this, but we’ve got to get that laptop back. And Arthur is in danger, too. Fine. I’m in.”

  I felt the knot in my stomach lessen a little.

  “Thank you, Zizi.” Slash handed me his laptop. “Then let’s go. We’re operating on borrowed time.”

  He gave Gwen quick instructions on how to monitor the laptop and made sure his number was programmed into her cell before we left.

  As we were leaving, Gwen gave me a hug. To my surprise, I didn’t shrink away. One thing I’d learned so far about Gwen during this trip was that she was genuine. A little excitable and impressionable, but—despite the fangirling—she was smart and surprisingly resilient. Seeing as how she’d held up under difficult circumstances, I felt that warranted a hug.

  When we got to the front of the hotel, the bellman secured us a cab and we climbed in. We swung by the hostel to pick up the gun and then headed toward the apartment building. I sat in the back with my laptop balanced precariously on my lap. I say precariously because the driver was racing like Dale Earnhardt Jr. on steroids. We were sliding around in the backseat as he swerved and screeched around corners. I inserted a SIM card that gave me Wi-Fi access, and, after some quick maneuvering, I managed to pull up the apartment complex layout. Thank God it was publicly available so I didn’t have to spend time on a hack.

  The driver let us out about two blocks from the complex. We walked one block and found an outdoor café with an empty table. I sat down and resumed my work on the laptop, while Zizi and Slash watched to keep pryi
ng eyes from seeing what I was doing. I quickly reviewed the GPS location data and eyeballed the apartment layout.

  “The GPS elevation data is not as accurate as the coordinates, but my guess is that they are on either the second or third floors.” I switched windows. “My best guess is the third floor. The coordinates peg the third window from the right. That would be apartment 304. I guess if I’m wrong, we’re going to need Zizi to explain to the surprised occupants of 304 that we are looking for a jilted lover.”

  I returned to the window with the apartment building website. “I think it’s a one-bedroom place. The layout is such that you walk right into the main living room. The kitchen is to the right, the bedroom to the left side of the living room. There is one bathroom adjacent to the bedroom.”

  Slash nodded. “That’s all I need. I want you two to follow me, but wait out in the hall. If it sounds like I am in trouble, I’m going to need you to make sounds while you are there, so he thinks I have backup. He might be more susceptible to surrendering without incident if he thinks he’s outnumbered. If we can resolve this peacefully, that’s the way to go. Okay?”

  Zizi looked at Slash, more than a little afraid. “Do I even want to know how you guys know how to do all this?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Zizi looked extremely nervous. I was nervous, too, but compared to some of the past situations I’d been in, this wasn’t nearly as intimidating.

  There was no security on the entrance to the complex, which was a stroke of luck for us. We strolled right in. There were no elevators, so we took the stairs. The third floor hallway was empty as we approached the apartment.

  Zizi and I pressed back against the wall as Slash withdrew his gun. He wasn’t going to announce his arrival and ruin the element of surprise—he’d go in hard and fast. He nodded at us and paced a step back from the door. Moving forward—by my estimation exactly six inches—he hovered his foot slightly above the floor and then, with an explosive, precise kick just left of the lock, he smashed the door open.