A Dark Place

by Keith Yocum

  “Besides the lesson that it’s cold in London in November, what other lesson were you thinking of?”

  “Technology has made it possible to deliver death and destruction completely out of the blue. These people killed here years ago were just having tea around the table or reading a newspaper, and this missile comes in at 2,300 miles per hour and takes out the whole block. No warning siren. When the first missile hit in London, they had no idea what happened and thought it was a gas explosion.”

  Dennis looked at the buildings, stamped his feet to stay warm, and said, “Can we go now?”

  “Sure, just thought you’d be interested in this bit of history,” Fred said.

  “I find it a little depressing, actually.”

  “Governments at work doing what they do best.”

  “Which is what?” Dennis said.

  “Faster, cheaper, more efficient ways to kill their enemies. The machinery of war, honed to a knife’s edge.”

  “And this from a guy who works for the NSA.”

  “Yeah, and that should tell you something.”

  “It tells me you ate something bad for breakfast.”

  CHAPTER 7

  There is no need for you to see the actual content Arnold read,” Chandler said. Dennis, Fred, Chandler and a small, rail-thin, gray-haired woman named Cecilia Francis sat at a round table in an interior room in the London station.

  “Why not?” Dennis said.

  “Because it’s simply a disjointed, hardly intelligible transcript of a phone conversation,” the woman said. “Arnold was part of an interagency group tracking and identifying high-priority targets in the Middle East.”

  “Targets for what?” Dennis said.

  “Neutralizing,” the woman said.

  “Drone strikes, you mean,” Fred said.

  “In most cases, correct. In rare cases, we need boots on the ground to grab the target.”

  “So was this particular intercept that Arnold read critical?”

  “No, not really,” Chandler interjected. “Sally here and the rest of the team have been tracking this target for seven months or so. It was not important what the target was saying, but it was vital to know the location of the person he was talking to. He was talking to someone in Mosul. Caught us a little by surprise. But the contents of the message were not so important; it was the location.”

  Dennis looked down at the transcript summary, which was a bunch of salutations and odd phrases about friendship and family.

  “Is this what you folks do all day, listen in to this stuff?” Dennis said to Fred.

  “Don’t look at me, I’m not an analyst.”

  “Mr. Cunningham,” the woman said, “we did analyze this conversation, and you have to understand that in many cases these men know they’re being listened to, and they talk in a kind of code that we don’t completely understand. This conversation lasted for about four minutes and appears to be about confirming a meeting or an exchange of money. We’re not sure, but that’s our guess.”

  “But as I look at this,” Dennis said, tapping the sheet of paper, “I can’t understand why Arnold sat for ten minutes reading a more detailed version of this. I timed myself when you let us in here thirty minutes ago. It took me about a minute to read the summary. What am I missing? Why did he spend this much time reading a nonsensical transcript?”

  “We’re not sure,” Chandler said.

  “That’s all? You’re not sure?” Dennis said.

  “Afraid so,” he said. “We’ve checked with the folks at Menwith Hill, and Cecilia here works extensively with the same material. It’s not clear why he sat staring at this material for so long.”

  “Is there something special in the transcript that you noticed?” Fred asked.

  “Not that we’re aware of,” she said. “I mean, there’s always a possibility that we’re missing something, but there’s not a lot of conversation, period. Little bit of a mystery why Arnold sat there for so long looking at it. You’d be interested to know that we had our crypto team look at it, and they drew a blank.”

  “Crypto team?” Dennis said.

  “Cryptologists,” Fred said. “Code breakers — those folks.”

  “Oh. And they saw nothing?” Dennis said.

  “Zip,” Cecilia said. “Sorry.”

  Dennis tapped the table absently with his right forefinger. What am I missing? he thought. What the hell was Arnold doing for ten minutes? Daydreaming? Plotting?

  “So what’s the story on the target?” Fred said. “What happened to the guy on the other end of the intercept? Did we get him?”

  “No. He’s still roaming around somewhere. His voice hasn’t been found on an intercept since.”

  “Is this unusual?” Dennis asked.

  “No, not unless the target completely disappears. And we won’t know that for a while yet. But if you’re asking if we’ve heard from him since this intercept, the answer is no, we haven’t.”

  ✦

  A text pinged on his phone.

  “u won’t believe it. get down here now”

  Dennis did not prefer texting, but Fred had insisted on staying in contact using this channel, and the government’s encrypted messaging system was considered safe and reliable.

  “why?”

  “hottest woman ever seen. loves my accent. can u believe it? at bar downstairs. come now”

  “can’t, waiting for call from judy”

  “she can wait. not kidding. gorgeous!!!”

  “behave yourself”

  “she wants to go to club and wants me to bring friend”

  “can’t go!”

  “your loss kemosabe”

  ✦

  “My God, I can’t believe how exhausting these long flights are,” Judy said. “I should have flown business class.”

  “I told you I’d pay for a business class ticket, but you wouldn’t let me,” Dennis said.

  “I know, I know. Bloody silly of me to turn it down. Feel like a sardine.”

  “So you’ll be here at around 2:00 p.m. tomorrow?”

  “Yes, unless we’re late.”

  Judy sat in Singapore’s Changi Airport, waiting for the next leg of her flight. She wondered what she was doing flying all the way to London in order to break up. Was it her immature hope that Dennis would change his mind? Or was she just punishing herself in order to get over this Yank once and for all?

  “Listen, Dennis, I need to get down to my gate. I’ve got a room at the Clarendon, two blocks from your hotel. I’ll call you when I get to the hotel.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bye.”

  ✦

  Dennis lay on the bed and felt a strange loneliness seeping through the pores of his skin. It was an early warning sign of depression, and he recognized it well enough. Dr. Forrester had trained him in self-observation, but she wasn’t able to stop it from starting in the first place.

  He felt he had no choice but to end the relationship with Judy. It was not fair to try to maintain a relationship across two continents and a very big ocean. She was energetic, tough, smart, very attractive and a great lover. But she was too far away. Why prolong the misery? She deserves better, he thought. God, I’m going to miss her.

  where r u? Dennis texted Fred. changed mind

  But Fred never answered, and after watching a rugby match on television that he could not comprehend, he went to bed sullen and depressed.

  He dreamed that night of the Australian outback. In the dream he was standing on a small rock formation looking out over acres of arid red soil and sparse vegetation. In the distance he could see a small cloud rising from the ground. A large truck was barreling through the desert toward him, throwing off sand and dust. At first he was confused about the truck, but as it grew closer he began to feel menaced, the kind of fear th
at made his palms sweat and his stomach flip. In the dream Dennis turned and ran as fast as he could, but as in so many of these dreams, his legs did not work and he could hear the truck bearing down on him from behind like a force of nature.

  ✦

  “You look like shit,” Dennis said, scooping his scrambled eggs onto his fork. “What time did you get in?”

  “I think it was around two; yeah, something like that. You wouldn’t believe the time we had. Wish you would have come. She kept asking if I had another American friend, but I told her you couldn’t make it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “She took me to some kind of dance club.”

  “You? A dance club?”

  “Dennis, I’m not kidding, she is a model. From either Bulgaria, Lithuania or Slovenia. I could barely understand her, the accent was so strong. She would dance and rub up against me. I mean, for a guy like me, you can’t even pay for that kind of attention.”

  “Well, you could pay for it, actually.”

  “Oh, shut up. You’re jealous.”

  “Well, I am kind of. I talked to Judy last night, and she didn’t want to talk much. I actually texted you to see where you were, but you never answered.”

  “I think I was a little drunk. Damn, she could drink vodka.”

  “Well, you should get some sleep. We’ll catch up later.”

  “Oh, before I forget,” Fred said, “I got a message last night from the same guy who pulled out the geolocation connection between Pavlychko and Arnold. He thinks — mind you, he just thinks — that he might have found out that Arnold regularly used another cell phone.”

  “How would he know that?”

  “Voiceprint and textprint; everyone has a distinct audible voice, but they also have a distinct way of texting and emailing. The machine learning tools we have allow us to detect an individual’s digital communications fingerprint. The texting piece is not an approved tool, or a completed product, but my friend ran it anyway. He created a profile for Arnold and then ran it against something like eleven petabytes of data we have stored.

  “So?”

  “So he thinks that someone matching Arnold’s textprint used a cell phone that we didn’t have registered. Once he found the phone number, you know, he worked backward and then ran a report on that cell phone’s activity.”

  “Wouldn’t Arnold know that as well? That he’d be profiled like this?”

  “No, not texting. He wouldn’t know that because the software is still in beta trial here. Again, this is just a tip from a friend who’s snooping around. Probably nothing. Thought I’d mention it to you. Damn, I’m tired. And hungover. I’m going to lie down. I sent you my buddy’s report by email. See if anything jumps out at you. Otherwise trash it. He’s breaking the rules by letting me see it.”

  ✦

  At first Dennis could not understand how to read the report; there were strings of numbers intertwined with what he took to be text messages. After a few minutes he determined that the numbers were phone numbers, and next to them was a date stamp, followed by the text message itself.

  In the forwarded email, Fred pointed out which phone number his friend suspected was Arnold’s. Dennis followed what looked like minimalist interchanges — even by text messaging standards — to another number. Both appeared to be UK telephone numbers.

  It started out the prior December from the phone they suspected was Arnold’s.

  “hey” the maybe Arnold started.

  “bored?” mystery person responded.

  “yes, u?” from the maybe Arnold.

  “drink?” from mystery person.

  “8:30?” maybe Arnold.

  “OK” mystery person.

  Dennis rubbed his forehead. He felt a headache coming on but was unsure whether it was from trying to decipher all of the numbers and texts on the laptop screen or whether it was due to Judy’s expected arrival that afternoon.

  He quickly scanned the rest of the report and found the text exchanges grew more intimate, or at least it seemed so.

  Farther down the list, Dennis saw exchanges like miss u that suggested something was going on between the two. One of the last texts came from the mystery person: hungry for u; the maybe Arnold responded: yummy.

  Dennis reread Fred’s email; it appeared that there was no other activity on these two cell phones other than the texting between them. Interestingly, Fred noted in his email, the activity stopped completely two weeks before Arnold disappeared. Lastly, there was almost no important geolocation data on the two cell phones that Fred’s friend could find. Typically, a phone pings cell towers nearby while it’s turned on, and that can be recorded and tracked after the fact, but these two cell phones were nearly always turned off after an interchange. And when they were turned on, the locations were in crowded venues like Paddington Station or a street corner at rush hour.

  Dennis picked up his phone and called Fred. “Hey,” Dennis said, “how you feeling, party hound?”

  “Like crap,” Fred said. “I’ll never drink vodka again.”

  “Would have paid money to see you grinding against that woman.”

  “You could have come, and she was mightily disappointed that I didn’t have another friend with me. She even offered to use my phone and call you.”

  “Well, like I said, I texted you later, but you were having too much fun.”

  “Fun that comes at a cost, my friend. Next time I’ll stick to light beer.”

  “Got a question for you,” Dennis said. “I looked at those texts that your friend pulled out of the atmosphere. Wondered whether you thought we should pursue this or not?”

  “Been thinking about that. Sent him an email asking if he could give some percentage of confidence that Arnold was one of the people texting, and he replied that he couldn’t offer an opinion.”

  “Meaning what?” Dennis said.

  “Meaning that he has no idea how to evaluate the accuracy of this software.”

  “Is that enough to go on for us? I mean, I have no idea how to attach importance to this stuff. What do you think?”

  “I’d say perhaps,” Fred said.

  “That’s it? Perhaps?”

  “Yep. I mean these matching algorithms are new, and as I told you, the textprint project is in beta, and that’s just for the English-language version. God knows how long it will take them to come up with a Farsi version.”

  “Okay, let me ask you this then: do you think Arnold — if this was even Arnold — had a girlfriend? Some of these exchanges are a little romantic, if you get my drift.”

  “That was my thought, to be honest. But I was waiting for you to put your two cents in. Yeah, I think there was some boy-girl stuff going on here.”

  “Strange that the exchanges end two weeks before Arnold goes missing,” Dennis said. “Could just be coincidence.”

  “Yeah. Odd coincidence. My friend says the phones have gone dark. Either turned off or thrown away.”

  “Can we get authorization to ping those phones?” Dennis asked.

  “Well, that’s a possibility. But we’ll need to make a request through the Brits, and they’re a real pain in the ass on these things. Let me think about that.”

  “All right. Meanwhile, feel better. I’m seeing Judy this afternoon. She gets in around 2:00 p.m. Kind of nervous.”

  “Oh, stop that silliness,” Fred said, coughing. “I can tell you’re nuts about this woman.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “You think I’m dumb and blind? Maybe dumb, but not blind.”

  “You can’t see shit.”

  “I’m telling you, she’s got you hooked. The word is ‘smitten,’ I think.”

  “The word is: ‘leave me alone.’”

  “That’s three words.”

  “Go to bed.”

  “Roger th
at.”

  ✦

  She was not going to be overly emotional, Judy told herself. Nor was she going be standoffish. She was just going to give Dennis a hug and a peck on the cheek, something neutral and preserving of dignity.

  When she stepped into the lobby of the Clarendon, he was reading a newspaper.

  Damn, he’s handsome, she thought. Hold it together. This is the beginning of the end of the relationship; don’t make it worse. Weakness will only lead to more pain.

  Dennis dropped the newspaper when he saw her and bolted to his feet. He nearly knocked the porter sideways getting to her. He engulfed her in a bear hug then held her briefly at arm’s length before pulling her face into his in a furious kiss.

  “God, you look great,” he said after they parted. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  She had trouble fashioning the correct facial expression as her heart beat a little too fast and the freshness of his kiss lingered. She tried to muster a dispassionate but friendly face, but she found the corners of her mouth twisting into a smile that she could not hide.

  “Dennis, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “You caught me by surprise. I, I—” she stumbled “—wasn’t prepared for that.”

  The porter stood awkwardly by as they looked at each other.

  “Dennis, let me check in, please, and I’ll be right down,” she said.

  “I can carry your bags,” he said.

  “No Dennis. You sit right here. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes or so. Go sit.”

  She could see his disappointment, but she was glad to wrestle back control of the situation.

  After she disappeared up the elevator, Dennis sat down and struggled to understand what had just happened. He had practiced a somber, break-up monologue that was mature and sensible.

  But the moment she’d whisked through the hotel door, his insides had fluttered. She was beautiful in that girlish way: the slightly upturned nose, the tan, the confident stride. And suddenly all of the good times they’d experienced seemed magnified, the loneliness and distance between them evaporated.

  Dennis stood up and then sat down in confusion.

  What the hell is going on with me? I feel so stupid thinking that I could rid myself of this woman. Damnit, damnit.