Deadly Odds

by Allen Wyler

  “I’ll find out what I can, but it’s hard to get an accurate read on this. It’s possible this assignment is fake, nothing more than a test of who I’m really working for. So until I can verify the accuracy, simply warn Fisher to be extremely careful how they decide to handle this. Understand my point?”

  Davidson’s face remained blank, showing Karim nothing, if perchance he really was monitoring their conversation. “I do. And?”

  Arnold licked his lips. “I may have a chance of finding out their location. Nothing nailed down for certain, but I’m working it hard. A few more days I might just have it.”

  This time Davidson couldn’t mask concern. “Aw, Christ, Arnold, if they’re planning an attack this weekend—”

  Arnold cut him off with, “I know, I know. But I’m really getting jammed here.”

  “You mentioned a plan. What’s the story with that?”

  Again, better to say nothing. Especially not with the wheels in motion and all the preparatory work completed. No one, not even Davidson should know. “It’s off the table at the moment.”

  Davidson studied him a moment. “Why am I having a hard time believing you?”

  Because I’m a shitty liar. “Seriously. I’m not going to do anything until I can locate the main cell.”

  “If you say so.” But clearly Davidson suspected Arnold of lying.

  Rather than apologize—for that was getting really and seriously old—Arnold asked, “We done here?” Just get this over with and press on with the plan. He hated how he had to act, hated what he’d become these past few weeks; all the paranoia, the lying, mentally and physically looking over his shoulder, the constant dread gnawing away his mind and stomach. But fate had trapped him in a vise of opposing forces, slowly squeezing him to death. His only hope—at least as far as he could see—was to stay on point and play the game. Win or lose, by the first of next week he’d be free of this intolerable situation. He was taking the biggest gamble of his young life by placing that life on the line.

  33.

  The computer dinged, interrupting a daydream about life before having been sucked into this clusterfuck, about how much he wished to turn back the clock, miraculously teleporting to a time before meeting Breeze, a time when Howard lived and life was good. Had he known…

  The ding had signaled an email. From Nawzer. He moused it open.

  A request for a dialog on the secure instant messaging.

  It was at that moment he heard movement behind him. He spun around, his nerves raw from the physical and mental fatigue brought on from unremitting tension. Karim filled the doorway, a paperback in one hand, the door jamb in the other. Jesus, he’d forgotten all about him.

  “Why don’t you answer?”

  Arnold opened his mouth, thought, why bother saying anything? He knows something’s up.

  Well, for one thing, this isn’t the time for petulance. Time to appear cooperative and pliable and gain their confidence. He yawned. “Guess I fell asleep.” He clicked the instant message icon.

  The screen segued to a video of Firouz instead of Nawzer, the fisheye-webcam lens distorting his image into a cartoon-like bulbous nose on a receding forehead and jaw. Firouz leaned forward toward the camera, disfiguring his face further. Arnold could barely keep from laughing.

  “Arnold, my friend! How are you this evening?” His upbeat mood made Arnold nervous. He trying to sucker me into a false sense of security? The numerous computers for the Darknet annoyingly desynchronized the audio and video.

  Arnold could see the shoulder of another man behind Firouz. Probably Nawzer running the instant messaging app for him.

  Forcing a smile Arnold said, “Fine. And you?”

  “Good, good. Couldn’t be better. And the computer, it is running well?” Firouz changed the angle of his face as if trying for a better view, perhaps searching for Karim.

  Strange question. Why ask? Did it mean Nawzer had just penetrated his security and was now copying the system? Did they find his Trojan horse? He shifted uneasily in his chair, looked for Karim’s reflection in the screen but the light was wrong. “Why?”

  Firouz raised his hands in an empty gesture. “No, no, nothing to worry about. Just asking. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to our chief analyst.”

  Bullshit, especially considering you’re going to try to kill me.

  Arnold stared back at webcam, mouth shut. Sonofabitch is up to something, that’s for sure.

  Firouz leaned forward again. “So, this weekend is big, yes?”

  Arnold rechecked Karim’s reflection and got the light right. Yep, still there, arms folded across his massive chest, legs spread, almost filling up the doorway between kitchen and dinning room. Why is he listening in this time? Never has before. Probably because he knew the topic of conversation and was anxious to finish his job and get out of the States.

  Arnold rubbed his fatigued eyes. “Yes, it’s big.” So what?

  Firouz’s entire face became one large toothy smile. “Your system, it is doing very well, very well indeed.”

  And your point is? Arnold stifled another yawn by protruding his lower jaw and popping his ears. “Yeah, so?”

  Firouz checked his wrist watch. “So, you should have no problem completing the analysis by six o’clock p.m. Yes?”

  “Tonight?”

  Still had things to do, arrangements. Rachael, I need to talk to her.

  “No way,” said Arnold. “That’s not the agreement.” A glance at his Movado: 4:30. Giving him ninety minutes to finish Phase II. “Why the rush?” Arnold suddenly realized the problem: Nawzer had made more progress than anticipated. Meaning they planned to kill him tonight. They never intended to use his analysis because the assignment was nothing more than a diversion to keep his guard down. Fuckers!

  He sensed Karim’s body mass shift and checked his reflection off the screen. No longer holding the book, he was dry-washing his hands, permeating the room with his sour body odor. Arnold sucked a deep breath and nodded at the webcam. “Yeah, no problem. Six it is.”

  34.

  Arnold cut the connection and settled into in the chair, his mind frantically scrambling for traction, a sense of primitive self-preservation making him keenly aware of Karim’s nearby mass. Probably wringing his hands like the smelly village idiot he is.

  What exactly were the fat bastard’s instructions? Would Firouz call again to order the kill, or it already been planned? But then, why wait? Why not try to kill him now? And why the urgency to transfer his analysis to Nawzer by six p.m.? Did that mean they’d keep him alive then?

  No way to know for sure. Meaning he had to finish the job now. Ignoring Karim, Arnold carefully inspected his system’s security measures, checking tripwires to determine exactly how far Nawzer had penetrated. Not that it made a hell of a lot of difference at this point.

  Well, that’s not entirely true. He’d be damned if he’d allow that bastard to steal his intellectual property. Then he realized, No, of course Nawzer doesn’t have it. Not yet. Because, if he did, I’d be dead. But every indication suggested that Nawzer was closer than Arnold had thought.

  After ten minutes of intense concentration Arnold slumped back in the chair, massaging his neck muscles, relieving the ache from his unconscious habit of hunching both shoulders when working. Apparently Nawzer had made progress. Significant progress. Grudgingly he had to hand it to the bastard for expertly avoiding the two most apparent tripwires. He pictured Nawzer rolling around in front of his desk, laughing and fist-bumping or high-fiving his second in command, ridiculing Arnold Gold, security rookie, for being so naive as to actually rely on such an obvious trap.

  Yeah. Right.

  Arnold’s turn to laugh. What Nawzer didn’t realize was that by skirting those tripwires he’d unwittingly turned loose a virus that, two seconds earlier, had unzipped itself into ten bots that were presently scouring the terrorist’s silicon, gathering information. The infection had deployed beautifully and was now dutifully sending back cru
cial data. Armed with this information Arnold could launch the final phase of his plan.

  That was the good news.

  The bad news was that sooner or later Nawzer would find one of the bots and decode it. The moment that happened there would be no question that Karim would be given the green light.

  Arnold increased his pace of work yet again, racing against the inevitable phone call, one ear constantly cocked for the ring of Karim’s cell in the other room. He routinely kept his entire system backed up on cloud drives scattered across the globe. Now it was time to destroy every bit of software on every computer in the house. Broke his heart to issue the command, but he saw no other option. He called up the program that would begin his digital scorched earth policy.

  His finger was poised over the enter key when the email beep sounded. Not just the regular email, but one indicating the return of a bot from the Iranians’ computer. He hesitated. Read it, or go ahead and destroy everything?

  It’ll only take a few seconds, go ahead, read it.

  A quick glance over his shoulder. Nope, Karim wasn’t there.

  He double clicked the message, opening it. Three lines of information scrolled down the screen.

  Stunned, he sat staring at the blinking words. Jesus, this for real?

  Working quickly now, he transferred the GPS coordinates to Google Earth, and voila, he was looking at the location of the terrorists’ communications center, pinpointed to within a hundred yards, the limits of his non-military technology. Immediately, he copied the coordinates onto two thumb drives and forwarded a third copy to one of his cloud storage addresses. With the information now secure and in his pocket, he issued the command to destroy his system.

  For one gut-wrenching, regret-filled moment, he listened to the soft hum of hard drives destroying billions of bytes of software and databanks, the culmination of and refinement from years of hard, diligent labor. This was not the pseudo-deletion that occurs if an email or file is dumped into the Windows recycle bin. Instead, it was the total reformatting and blanking of each disk sector. He attempted to assuage his regrets by assuring himself the system could, with time, be reconstructed to exactly the same state it was in the day before. Sure, the artificial intelligence system would have to relearn the refinements of the past few months, but he could still get it up and running. If he lived past the next few hours.

  His watch now showed 4:45 p.m. How long before Nawzer found a bot? Unfortunately, he hadn’t had time to devise a self-destruct program for them. In a perfect world, that’s what he would do to wipe out all evidence of their existence.

  Get moving!

  He found Karim on the living room couch reading and picking his nose. The bastard had the disgusting habit—an unconscious one, Arnold hoped—of wiping the snot on the underside of the coffee table. Even after Arnold had complained about it several times, the bastard wouldn’t stop. Arnold turned to go the basement door when Karim looked up. “What you doing?”

  Arnold stopped. Success of this phase relied on Karim not bothering to follow him downstairs. For a moment he was at a loss for words but quickly recovered with, “Just need to check the computer,” and mimed lifting the hood of a car, which was probably something Karim could relate to.

  Karim studied his face. Looking for? What? A lie? Shit.

  After what seemed like a millennium, Karim made a grunting sound, which Arnold took as permission. Without waiting a second longer, he was on his way downstairs, heart beating wildly, mouth dry, hands running along the wood railing. Hit the concrete floor and in three long quick steps was in the computer room, door closed.

  He faced the two side-by-side five-foot-high racks of shelves stocked with computers and support electronics, saw the glowing LEDs on the scrubber used to remove surges from the 110 volt supply, the battery backup to maintain functionality during a power outage, the special cooling system designed to prevent the room from overheating. He listened to the muted hum of the power supply fans, the sound more soothing to him than a lullaby. He loved this room almost as much as the memories of building it.

  Wasting time, dude. Get on with it.

  He tested the stove igniter, confirmed it worked exactly as planned. Now squatting on his haunches, he switched off the HVAC, turned the T-valve on the gas line to shunt the natural gas into the room instead of to the HVAC unit. He stood and listened to the hiss of escaping gas, his nose already detecting the unmistakable odor of the chemical used to tag it. Similar to dill pickle juice, he thought. Very soon the entire room would be filled with the foul-smelling explosive gas. The computer hard disks were now silent, having completely destroyed all content, allowing him to finally throw the main power switch to power down all the equipment. The room went strangely silent except for the faint hiss of escaping gas.

  He double-checked the high narrow window—ground level outside, shoulder level down here—making certain it remained tightly sealed with the duct tape. Then he was out the door. He closed and double-checked the latch, engaged the dead bolt.

  Back upstairs he went directly to his one remaining functioning machine, the laptop, signed onto his Twitter account, tweeted: Happy Birthday Palmer, the code to convene an emergency meeting ASAP.

  His heart refused to stop galloping, amping up the anxiety freezing his gut almost to the point of becoming mercifully numb. He blew a long, deep breath through pursed lips, rubbed both palms against his thighs. CALM THE FUCK DOWN!

  Fingers tingling—probably from hyperventilation, he realized—he headed for the front door, yelled, “Going for a walk.”

  Jesus, what if Karim insists on coming?

  Well, figure something out. Shit, don’t want to have to deal with that right now. Not now.

  As if he were dreaming a nightmare, Karim yelled, “Wait.”

  The pit of Arnold’s stomach fell through the floor. He stopped, one hand already on the doorknob. Karim’s hulk appeared in the living room. For a moment the two men were silently facing each other, Arnold willing him to stay.

  “Where you going?” Karim asked with a distinct edge of suspicion. Sunlight angling in from behind the Iranian made his face appear shadowed and impossible to read, not that the ape ever showed a speck of emotion….

  “Greenlake. Need a walk, just too tense right now, need to loosen up, clear my head.” Don’t overdo it, dude.

  Karim stepped close, his eyes boring straight through Arnold’s on into his brain, a primitive feral sense reading his thoughts. They remained this way for what seemed to be an eternity. Karim asked, “Finished your work?”

  Jesus!

  “What are you, my mom?” Arnold suppressed the urge to wave away the nauseating halitosis.

  Karim obviously didn’t find his sarcasm amusing and Arnold immediately regretted having said it, so quickly added, “Sorry. Yes, almost done. I just need a break, is all.”

  Besides, Nawzer’s about to figure out I sabotaged him.

  Arnold made a show of checking his wristwatch. “I’ll be back in, what, thirty minutes?”

  Or so. Depending on how long it takes Davidson to show up.

  He decided to gamble on a touch of reverse psychology by adding, “Hey, feel free to join me, you want,” with a glance at Karim’s belly. Looks like you need the exercise, asshole.

  Karim grunted, shot him one last heavy-lidded dose of feral-eye before lumbering back into the television room.

  35.

  Arnold had almost reached the Evan’s Pool building when he saw Davidson’s Mercedes nose into what had to be the one remaining empty parking space in the lot. He headed straight toward the coupe, wanting this encounter to be brief as possible so he could start back before Karim became suspicious and decided to see what he’d been up to in the basement. And just in case the bastard was following, he turned to check but saw no sign of him.

  What are you worried about? He knows you meet Davidson.

  Yeah, but if he catches me in a lie… Can’t afford to risk it.

  Davidson climbed
out, stood by the car door, looking toward the front of the big rectangular Evan’s Pool building when Arnold yelled, “Davidson,” because for some reason addressing him as Palmer just didn’t feel right.

  Davidson turned, nodded, shut the door, glanced from side to side, obviously being cautious, too. Of what, Arnold wasn’t sure. FBI?

  Their paths intersected at the curb, so they moved onto the lawn and away from vehicular traffic, the air traced with scents of lake water, pollen, and athlete sweat. Davidson offered his hand and Arnold shook it, expertly palming him a flash drive. His lawyer’s eye flashed a half-second of surprise. Then, not missing a beat, discreetly slipped the device into his pocket. “What’s up? You look fried. Everything okay?”

  Arnold absentmindedly began massaging the base of his neck, working out the kinks. “That goes to Fisher ASAP. It’s the GPS coordinates of the main group’s communications center. Where that is in relation to the group’s leader, I have no idea, but at least that fulfills my side of the bargain.” He glanced nervously around, relieved to no longer have the evidence on his person. “And there’s one other thing. Do me a favor, okay?”

  Davidson flashed a questioning look. “Anything. What?”

  “Howard has a sister, Rachael. Call her. Say I’ll try to contact her sometime in the future but I have no idea when that might be. And that if things don’t work out, tell her… ah, tell her… ah man, I don’t know… I gotta go.”

  “What the hell are you up to, Arnold?”

  The information transfer complete, he needed to return home to complete the final phase. He was already turning when Davidson took hold of his arm.

  “Wait! The hell’s going on, Arnold?”

  Stomach aching like hell, Arnold paused to look at the clouds in an azure sky. He inhaled a long, savoring breath of lake air in an attempt to dampen the ten thousand watts arcing through his nerves. His brain seemed on the verge of exploding. Would telling Davidson lessen the anxiety? Part of him knew his best action was to say nothing, not even to Davidson. But didn’t he owe this man—who had perhaps literally saved his life—an explanation? After all, he’d sheltered and protected him through his most vulnerable hours. With another nervous glance at his surroundings, he said, “I set a bomb in their computer.”