A Dark Place

by Keith Yocum

  “No, not yet.”

  “You said it was a big deal, and you made a fuss, but you haven’t bothered to see it?”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “Well, we’re going to see it together while I’m here, got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Arrange it with the London station.”

  “Okay.”

  “Here’s where I’m staying,” she said, writing the name of a hotel near Trafalgar Square. “When you get the burner, leave a note for me at the front desk with the number. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  ✦

  “It’s a what?” Dennis yelled.

  “Keep calm there, Dennis,” Ian said. “Why is this such a big deal?

  “A brothel?”

  “I didn’t say the building was officially a brothel. I said it was a private club — which, by the way, are numerous here and in your lovely cities like New York — that we suspect is a high-end brothel. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”

  “Why haven’t you busted it then!”

  “Hold on there, Dennis. You seem quite exercised. I said it was suspected, and I gathered this from a contact I have in the London Police, so don’t go arresting the doorman there!”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  “Is this important to you? Why are you taking such umbrage at this notion of an exclusive men’s club?”

  “Don’t pay any attention to me. Sorry, Ian. Long day for me. Thanks so much for your help. Please let me know if I can help you any time. Just call me.”

  “Perhaps you need some time off there. You seem a little strained these days.”

  ✦

  It was 10:20 p.m. when his new burner rang.

  “Louise?”

  “Yes. I just checked my messages. What’s this about an emergency?”

  “I need a gun.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A gun. A pistol. Can you help me get a gun in London? We’re not in Northern Virginia, where you can just go buy a gun, even if you’ve just been released from an insane asylum.”

  “I wasn’t worried before, but now I am. Weren’t you seeing a shrink? Did I read that in your file?”

  “You’re not listening, Louise. I think I’ve found Judy. Well, I haven’t found Judy, but I found the guy who grabbed Judy. He’s either got Judy somewhere in this building, or he’s killed her. Either way, I need a gun to get in there and to settle this.”

  Louise stopped talking, and Dennis heard the drone of a TV in the background at Louise’s hotel room.

  “Louise?’

  “Why don’t you meet me in my hotel bar in forty-five minutes. Just bring the burner. Bury the other phone. That clear?”

  “Yes, on the way.”

  Dennis hung up, rushed over to the desk and unplugged his agency iPhone from its charger. He turned it off, put it in his hotel safe and locked it.

  CHAPTER 22

  It was just a hunch, albeit a gauzy, white, indistinct hunch, but Judy felt that the small man was going to get rid of her. He had stopped the brothel training completely and only administered the injections with Agata in attendance. She guessed that he insisted on giving the injections because he suspected Agata might take some for herself.

  Even the schedule of injections had increased somewhat, which she guessed was because they no longer needed her to be sick. They were going to kill her, and the less she complained the better. The only reason they hadn’t done it already, she imagined, was because her sponsor Voorster had to be consulted.

  Dennis, where are you? she mused, staring at the crack in the ceiling. You were always the strong one, the clever one. Why haven’t you saved me? I tried to save myself. I really did fight it. But I’m too tired to continue. I’ve done bad things. I’m so ashamed. But I have one fight left. I hope you’ll understand that I did fight them. But you can’t always win. I’m not like you, Dennis. You keep pressing ahead against every obstacle. Somehow I hope you’ll know that I fought them. I really did.

  ✦

  “You followed this man to the brothel?” Louis said. “Are you sure it was him? What did you say his name was?”

  “Voorster. South African. I told you, my contact at the NSA confirmed it.”

  “Isn’t that the fellow the Aussie cops mentioned? They said he was dead.”

  “He’s alive. I saw him.”

  Louise sat at the bar wearing a pale blue blouse and jeans and nursed a sauvignon blanc. Out of her official agency uniform, she looked even younger, though no less fierce when she started to process information.

  “Okay, and your plan is what exactly?”

  “Well, you get me a weapon that I can use. And I’ll follow Voorster to this place again,” Dennis could not use the word brothel, “and I’ll just go in there and do whatever it takes to find him. Then I’ll beat the shit out of him until he tells me where she is. Or what happened to her.”

  “You’re completely delusional,” she said, shaking her head. “Number one, you won’t get past the doorman. Number two, if you did get past him, you’ll get no farther than the lobby. If this place is what you say it is, they’ll have people there that can keep the peace, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’ll kill them all,” he said. “I don’t care.”

  “You? Ha, you’re a Boy Scout. Like I said, you’ll be lucky to get past the doorman.”

  “Don’t underestimate me, Louise.”

  “Don’t you underestimate them. You’re all emotion right now, which means it’s going to end in disaster.”

  “Can’t you just get me a weapon? You must have knowledge of safe houses here and where you might get a gun.”

  “Won’t happen, Dennis. I’m sorry. I know you’re going through agony at this woman’s disappearance. I can see that, and I feel bad for you. But you’re acting crazy right now, and if I helped in any way, the blowback for me would be career-ending. Can’t you see that?”

  Dennis swirled his single malt in the small glass, raised it quickly and downed it.

  “I understand. You’re right, I am crazy. No need to take someone else with me.”

  He stood up off his stool, reached out, grabbed her right hand and shook it. “I’d give you a peck on the cheek,” he said, “but my guess is you’d think that was silly. So thank you for all you’ve done. If I come out of the other end of this thing with Voorster, I’ll help you get the Arnold case resolved. If I don’t, then keep looking at the video. Freddie said we missed something.”

  She held on to his hand and would not release it. Dennis felt her tiny, pale fingers clamping. He frowned and looked down at his captured hand.

  “You’re a dead man, Dennis. They’ll find your body in a dumpster somewhere. You understand that, right?”

  He put his left hand on top of Louise’s and gently pried away her fingers.

  “Well, I hope it’s a nice dumpster.”

  ✦

  Dennis spent the next twenty-four hours observing the brothel, waiting for Voorster to return. He had purchased a telescoping metal baton and two knives, a three-inch folding blade and six-inch fixed blade. They didn’t sell firearms in London, but he’d noticed you could buy a blade of any length, even a sword, if needed.

  He periodically moved his car around to avoid being spotted, he hoped, and managed a few hours of sleep in the early morning hours. Dennis was surprised at the discreet but constant traffic to the building. Men came and went at all hours; he saw several women visit as well. But no Voorster.

  The morning of his second day, his burner rang.

  “You still on your mission of mercy?” Louise asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “About your mission.”

  “I told you: don’t worry abo
ut it. Doesn’t involve you.”

  “If I lose you, I lose the Arnold case. You’re the only one who can figure it out. I haven’t the faintest idea how to proceed or what to look for in the video. With Barkley involved, I think it’s a bigger deal than anyone realizes.”

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  “No. I need you alive.”

  “I don’t intend to die.”

  “With your stupid plan, it’s almost certain you’ll never come out of that building alive.”

  “Thought we’ve been through this. Not your problem.”

  “You’re my problem. I don’t want to lose the Arnold case.”

  Dennis sighed. “Louise, you’re a very smart person. Please. I’ve got to get going.”

  “So here’s my plan,” she said quickly. “We’ll go in together the moment Voorster goes in. We’ll get Voorster and Judy, if she’s even in there. It’ll be a professional operation, not a chicken-shit pretend operation. You can’t kill Voorster or do anything to loosen his tongue, if you get my drift. We’ll turn him in regardless of whether Judy is there or not.”

  “Stop it, Louise! Now you’re acting crazy. And for the record, you have no idea where this place is or where I am, and I have no intention of telling you. Go for a walk. And stay out of this.”

  “You dope, I’m parked two cars behind you.”

  Dennis reached up and adjusted he rear-view mirror.

  “Christ, Louise. What the hell are you doing?”

  ✦

  The push-ups were very hard on her shoulders and vein-damaged arms, but she persisted. The cold cement floor was almost painful on her ravaged nervous system, but Judy kept at it. She had managed to put on a few pounds of extra weight, but she was still almost skeletal.

  Agata’s attitude toward Judy had altered considerably in the past two days.

  Judy was certain she had heard the small man and Voorster arguing several days ago. She knew what the argument was about; the small man wanted Judy gone, and Voorster was not quite ready to give in on his plan to convert her to his personal concubine.

  “She is no good,” she heard the small man yell. “No good. No good.”

  Judy could not hear what Voorster yelled back, but his voice sounded less emphatic. Her time there was coming to an end.

  She had one more scene to act out in this strange tragic play, and she was ready.

  ✦

  Dennis sat in the front seat of Louise’s rental van. She was dressed in loose-fitting gray slacks and an equally loose-fitting black wool jacket. Her hair was pulled back into a stubby ponytail, and she wore wraparound sunglasses.

  “You’re pissing me off,” he said. “I mean really pissing me off. I have enough guilt on my goddamn head right now for Freddie and Judy, and now you! Not going to happen. Get the fuck out of here right now.”

  Dennis closed his eyes and put both hands on top of his head, as if he could keep it from exploding. He took several deep breaths and finally opened his eyes. He spoke quietly, as if explaining something important to a child.

  “Louise, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I have a lot of baggage I’m carrying around in my stupid head, and I have no more room for additional luggage.”

  Louise said nothing for a long time, and Dennis finally turned to look at her. She stared out through the windshield into the glare of the cold December morning. She did not turn to look at him but spoke with an alarming fury.

  “You know, they said I was one of the best trainees they’d ever run through Camp Peary in Virginia. They said I was smart, agile and intuitive. I bested all the guys in the group, and the two other women as well. Top of class. They started me in Ankara, then briefly in Israel, where I killed for the first time.

  “Then it was on to Iraq, where I led a small team of men — a hulking Seal Team of assholes — reporting to me. We ran fourteen targeted killings — fourteen! All successful. Only lost one man, and that was because he was a fucking idiot. The men stopped hitting on me, or making fun of me, and treated me like a leader.

  “Then Beirut. The bomb brought the building right down on top of us. My partner had his chest crushed and died the most painful death imaginable. I couldn’t move or help him. I thought about cutting off my own foot that was trapped and withering, but I didn’t have a knife or anything sharp.

  “So they pull apart the rubble and nearly crushed me to death doing it. Sure enough, my foot needs to be amputated. I’m the only survivor, of course. And guess what? They give me a medal, a new prosthetic foot and say my days in the field are over. I’m like, ‘What? How can they keep me out of the field? What the hell does a foot have to do with it? I was great out in the field. They convert me to an analyst, and there I am in Langley, calling in drone strikes in Afghanistan operated by flyboys in Nevada using joysticks. Everyone is so complimentary. ‘Nice job, Louise. You’re fantastic. Such a leader.’ And each time I ask for reassignment to the field, I’m told that I’m not eligible because of my disability.

  “My husband Phil — he’s an analyst at the National Security Council — is begging me to take it down a notch, but I’m getting madder and madder. Finally I blow up at my supervisor — a real condescending prick from Utah — and next thing I know I’m detailed to OIG with a little pat on the shoulder. ‘You’ll be better suited here, Louise.’”

  Dennis watched her closely, though he felt disadvantaged by her sunglasses. The eyes are the real windows into a person, not the fingers or facial expressions — the eyes. And he could not see Louise’s eyes.

  She turned to look at him. Dennis could see his distorted, wide-angle reflection in her sunglasses.

  “So here’s the deal, Dennis. This operation is what I was trained to do. This is what I loved doing, if that’s possible. And I’m not going to turn down the chance to do some heavy lifting in the field. You want revenge and hopefully to find your Judy, and I want to mix it up like the warrior they trained me to be. Simple as that. I’m running this operation, and you’ll do what I say. You have a problem with that?”

  “No ma’am,” he said softly. “It’s your call. I’m in.”

  “Then listen closely, and keep an eye on the building.”

  “Okay.”

  “In the back you’ll find a standard skinny Kevlar vest; that goes on under your jacket. There are two pistols, one 9 mm, one 32-caliber, both with stubby silencers, and two extra clips. They’re for you; the larger one goes tucked into your belt at the back under your jacket. The smaller one goes in the right-hand pocket of your jacket.”

  Dennis listened dutifully as Louise detailed the weapons, the plan of attack, the primary goal, the secondary goal and the exit plan. She had apparently already scouted the back of the building and the fire escape.

  Then she made Dennis repeat everything back to her. Several times she stopped and berated him for missing some detail. Oddly, he did not feel angry or frustrated. Louise had a commanding air about her that he found comforting in the circumstances.

  When they had finished the second go-around and he had satisfied her, Dennis could not resist.

  “What’s the palm pump you keep talking about? I have no idea what it is. And where did you get all of this stuff?”

  She turned, leaned toward him and used the tip of her right forefinger to tug down her sunglasses. “Don’t worry about the equipment or where it came from. Got it?”

  “Not a problem. Just thought I’d ask.”

  “You know, you have some weird-colored blue eyes, do you know that?” she said, squinting. “That’s not a come-on, Dennis, just an observation. Anyone say that to you before?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard it mentioned before. It means I have the power to see through bullshit.”

  She smirked and pushed the sunglasses up again.

  “You think I’m full of shit?”

  “No, not you. E
specially not you. Chandler here at the London Station, absolutely full of crap. But not you.”

  “Mmm,” she said.

  “You didn’t answer about the palm pump.”

  “There’s an agency weapon that is very useful in situations like this. I’ve used it once before, long time ago. It fits in the palm of my hand under my glove and has a small barrel that sits snugly behind my extended right forefinger.” Louise closed her right fist loosely and pointed her forefinger at Dennis like it was a gun.

  “Once we start shooting, even with silencers, all bets are off. So we’ll avoid guns as long as possible. The palm pump is in my hand, and when I point my finger nonchalantly at someone, I squeeze the disk in my palm with my closed fingers and it shoots a tiny glass pellet that can penetrate most clothing. It injects a substance into the skin of the person and initially creates cognitive confusion, then quickly unconsciousness. Please don’t ask what the friggin’ substance is; they won’t tell us and I don’t give a shit. It works, and we can make our way forward without killing people or announcing our presence. Got it?”

  “Yes, got it.”

  Dennis’s phone rang.

  Louise frowned. “Don’t answer it,” she said.

  “I have to,” he said. “Hello?”

  “It’s Ian, Dennis. Have some news I thought I’d share.”

  “What do you have?”

  “Well, I don’t know how you’re going to take this, and I don’t mean to alarm you unnecessarily, but thought I’d tell you regardless, old man.”

  “Well, tell me then.”

  “Ah, yes then. The police found some bodies north of London. In a public forest. Some fellow was walking his dogs and found them.”

  “What bodies?”

  “Bodies of women. A tad grisly, I’m afraid.”

  “Jesus, Ian. Can you please cut to the chase?”

  “It appears that there are three bodies, but not in the same grave. Each buried separately. Two of the graves are older, perhaps a year old. But the third one is recent. Perhaps a week or two old.”

  Dennis felt like a shade had been pulled down in a sunny room, casting everything in a dark, gray lifeless sheen.