Spider jk-1

by Michael Morley

  Tariq fully anticipated that all the news media, be it newspapers, TV or magazines, would steal screen shots of the girl from the video report he'd put together, so he'd already instructed Pan Arabia's lawyers to issue a legal copyright warning and circulate a range of digitally enhanced photographs that the press could use for free, providing of course they credited Pan Arabia. Yes, tomorrow all the hacks will be scavenging on his scoop, he was sure of that. He smiled once more, this time at the thought of them having to search for his long-forgotten phone number and wonder if he'd deign to speak to them. First though, he would have to put up with annoying meetings with the FBI and the NYPD. The tame cop he'd used to help stand up the story in the first place was now going crazy, claiming he'd been quoted out of context and threatening to bust Tariq's balls for getting him in so much trouble. Tariq wondered whether he'd also give him back the $500 he'd asked for in return for the interview. Somehow he thought not.

  After forty minutes Tariq instructed his PA to show the agents through to the executive boardroom. Then he changed his mind. He decided instead that he'd see them, along with the company lawyer, in the smallest of all the ground-floor meeting rooms, the one usually reserved for junior reporters who were sent downstairs to get rid of potential time-wasters.

  Ryan Jeffries from Legal met him in his office and they rode the elevator together. Fifty-year-old Jeffries had been round the block more times than a yellow cab and there wasn't anything about media law that he either didn't know, or couldn't find a way round.

  'Good morning, officers,' said Tariq energetically as he pushed open the glass door to the cramped room. 'I'm Tariq el Daher and this is my Head of Legal Affairs, Ryan Jeffries. Sorry to have kept you waiting.'

  Howie's first glance showed the obvious contempt that he had for both of them. 'Senior Supervisory Special Agent Howie Baumguard and Special Agent Angelita Fernandez.'

  They all settled around a cheap wooden table that was so flimsy it almost buckled when Howie thudded his meaty arms down on it. Tariq sat back in his seat while Jeffries went in to bat. 'Mr el Daher and the channel have already made a statement to the New York Police Department, who we understand have operational control. We have delivered a copy of the material we uncovered and we will continue to assist the NYPD to the very best of our ability. Mr el Daher is, as you know, an extremely busy man and we do not think it necessary to waste his time with repetitive processes.'

  Fernandez was curious to see how her boss was going to handle this. The bulging veins in his neck and the giant clenched fists hinted that he might be about to go Hulk green, shred his shirt and then pick up the lawyer and beat the smug bastard journalist to death with him.

  'Okay,' said Howie, sounding surprisingly calm and quiet. 'Agent Fernandez and I are real sorry to have troubled you. We'll be on our way now, if that's all right with you?'

  Jeffries smiled and slapped his hands on the table to help him rise from his seat.

  'Sit down, mister,' said Fernandez. 'He's jerking your string. It ain't going to play like that.'

  Howie's face displayed a cruel smile. 'I'm afraid the lady's right. Of course, we could just soak up that bullshit you came out with and leave. But if we did, then I'd only have to come back this afternoon with a court order to seize every computer and video machine in the place and then lock up our extremely busy Mr el Daher in a room even smaller than this crappy matchbox you've got us in.'

  'Ridiculous! On what grounds?' spluttered Jeffries.

  'Withholding evidence. Perverting the course of justice, impeding police investigations. We'll find the right one eventually,' said Fernandez.

  'Meantime,' added Howie, making a point of picking dirt from under a fingernail, 'every press guy in the world is going to love the story we'll be putting out, about how your station is endangering the life of a young American woman. Run that one past your CEO, board of directors and financial backers and see how supportive they are of you then.'

  'That's presuming your footage is for real,' added Fernandez. 'Because if we find out that it isn't, then a fan load of toxic shit is going to be heading your way, and we'll be fingering the power switch.'

  Tariq leant forward and put a hand on the lawyer's arm to silence him. 'What do you want, Mr Baumguard?' he asked in a voice that was so laid back it almost sounded bored.

  'Let's start with some civility,' said Howie. 'And right after that, you can begin at the beginning and go through that whole repetitive process of telling us how you came to have the footage in your possession.'

  'And hey, Mr Lawyerman,' said Fernandez, 'while he does that, maybe you could get us a couple of coffees and some doughnuts. We missed breakfast this morning.'

  57

  San Quirico D'Orcia, Tuscany The sun was slowly setting in San Quirico, sponging a silky mix of vermilion and gold across the darkening blue sky.

  In Terry McLeod's bathroom, the Vent-Axia panel above the toilet came off easily enough in his hands. McLeod lifted out the stuff he'd hidden inside the metal vent and carried it through to the bedroom. It contained some special photographs and some extra special equipment that he needed to keep very secret.

  Paullina the waitress had been a good companion. And, when he'd given her a generous fifty-euro tip on top of the hundred euros fee he'd insisted on her taking for her 'work' as his guide, then she'd been more than helpful. Some of the things she'd told him about the Kings would soon prove extremely valuable. She'd spoken at length about how the Americans had not known a thing about catering when they'd moved into La Casa Strada, how Carlo and Paolo had effectively run the business for the first six months, but then Mrs King began slowly to take control and seemed really passionate about the cooking and treating the guests as though they were visiting friends. McLeod had listened patiently as she'd rambled on about the food and the menus, the work that she did there and her ambitions once she had finished her studies. Eventually, with only the gentlest of hints, he was able to guide the conversation to what really interested him, former FBI agent Jack King.

  Paullina hadn't known everything that McLeod had hoped, but she'd known enough. She described in detail how depressed Jack had been when she'd first met him. How he would stay in the private family quarters of the hotel and seemed almost uninterested in the staff or the guests, never making any effort to meet them or chat with them if they bumped into him in the corridors or gardens. She mentioned that about two years earlier he used to go off on walks, usually on his own, sometimes pushing his son in a buggy, just doing laps of San Quirico. He went around so many times that shopkeepers and locals said he was fuori di testa – off his head. McLeod soaked it all up, the more bad things that were said about hero Jack King the better, as far as he was concerned. Paullina mentioned that at first Jack had really let himself go, that his weight had ballooned and Nancy had to get Paolo to come up with a special diet to help him shed the pounds. McLeod would have loved to have seen that. Lately though, she said he'd apparently slimmed down and instead of the long and lonely walks, he could be seen jogging two or three times a week and was now looking in buona salute.

  McLeod had asked where Jack was these days and she'd hesitated before saying she thought he was a long way away, maybe on the other side of Italy. What really excited McLeod though was when Paullina revealed that she thought maybe Jack's absence had something to do with the Italian police. She recalled that a plainclothes policewoman from Rome had turned up to see him. It seems there had been some kind of row between Mrs King and the policewoman, and it had ended with the policewoman ordering Mrs King to get her husband to call her because it was 'an urgent police matter'.

  The thought made McLeod smile as he looked at the photographs of Jack that he'd stolen from an album in Nancy King's bedroom. 'I've got a big surprise coming for you, Mr FBI man,' he said, putting them to one side. Then he slowly unpacked the special equipment that he'd hidden.

  The equipment he now planned to use on Nancy King.

  58

  JFK Airport
, New York Jack's flight touched down at JFK terminal 4 bang on time. Howie was waiting out front with a car, a bearhug and some back-slapping that could have hospitalized a smaller person. They drove straight to the office, catching up on the way. 'You booked in anywhere?' he asked Jack as they finally got free of the snarled traffic around the airport.

  'No, not yet. It was hard enough actually to get a flight out of Rome, so I didn't get round to it. Do you mind getting Janie or one of the other secretaries to fix a place?'

  Howie scowled at him. 'No way. Not a chance, buddy, you're staying with us, for tonight, at least.' Howie's offer was partly out of politeness but mainly reflected his concern about how Jack might react to being back on the job and forced to spend a night on his own without anyone to talk to about it.

  Jack slid the passenger seat back to stretch his legs. 'I don't want to put you and Carrie out.'

  'You're not. Listen, I could do with a friend around the house right at the moment. And shit, man, I might not get to see you again until God knows when.'

  'That's kind, thanks.' Jack took in the familiar buildings as the city started to roll up to the windshield. 'You know, this is the first time I've been back to New York since the breakdown. Hell, when Nancy and I caught our flights out to Italy, what, three years ago now, I would never have thought I'd be coming back here, and certainly not to work.'

  Howie blared his horn at some idiot tourist trying to drive and read a map atthe same time. 'Get afriggin' cab next time, you friggin' moron!' he shouted.

  Jack laughed. 'Nothing's changed then?'

  Howie laughed too. 'Nothing at all, buddy. As you can see, it's the New York you always loved.'

  The drive was good for Jack. It helped acclimatize him and sharpen him up for what lay ahead. 'I caught the footage just before I took off,' he said. 'Grim stuff. You got anything new on it?'

  'A little something,' said Howie. 'Fernandez and I went to see this jerk Tariq. He was a gold-plated asshole to start with but we scared him about a bit and then he coughed more than a cancer ward.'

  'He briefed up?'

  'Yeah, some smart Alec, but he was no problem. Seemed BRK posted Tariq a mail with a website hyperlink and a password, and that's how he got the footage they've been putting on air.'

  'We're running webmaster traces?'

  'Of course, but both you and I already know a twelve-year-old can build sites this simple. BRK will have used a false identity when he spoke to the hosting service. He's sure to have uplifted only the most innocuous of video during the testing phase. He will have waited and only made the real stuff available on the day he sent that electronic mail out to Pan Arabia. Tech boys think it's dongle encrypted.'

  'Say what?' said Jack. 'Is that like catching your dick in your zipper?'

  Howie laughed. 'It's a computer coding trick that makes the footage available only for a short period of time. The dongle is like a timer fuse on a bomb; it ticks away and then boom! It blows it up and you can't work it any more.'

  'So it is like getting your dick caught in your zipper,' said Jack.

  Howie's cell phone rang as they turned into Federal Plaza. 'Yeah, hello,' he managed as he spun the wheel.

  'Boss, it's Fernandez. The boys in Myrtle have found a body. They think it's Stan Mossman, our delivery boy.'

  59

  FBI Field Office, New York It took Jack King ten minutes to shake everyone's hand and another twenty to hug, kiss and say hi to all his female ex-colleagues.

  'Man, you really should go to the Men's room and get brushed up,' said Howie. 'I've seen dudes come back from stag weekends with less lipstick on their collars.'

  'It's a small price to pay for popularity,' joked Jack, deciding to take his advice. 'I'll see you in the briefing room.'

  The pow-wow was a big one.

  It was chaired by FBI Field Office director Joe Marsh, a small, thin man in his early forties with hair greying at the temples and a natural smile that most politicians would pay half their campaign funds for. To his right was NYPD deputy commissioner of operations Steven Flintoff, a barrel-chested oxofa guy with short-cut ginger hair and his trademark rolled-up sleeves. Behavioural scientists Howie Baumguard and Angelita Fernandez came next around the circular table, followed by Elizabeth Laing, a Roseanne Barr lookalike employed as press information officer for the NYPD, and Julian Hopkins, the FBI's local press guy. They were still pouring each other coffee and water when Jack walked in and greeted them with a confident, 'Good morning everybody!'

  A spontaneous ripple of applause erupted and Marsh rose to shake his hand. 'Good to see you back, Jack. Come and sit here right next to me.'

  'Good to be back,' said Jack. 'Though I must say it actually feels like I've never been away. Same case, same room, just a few changed faces.'

  'Angelita Fernandez,' said the profiler, leaning over the table to shake his hand. 'We kind of met by video conference.'

  'We did indeed. Nice to meet you for real,' said Jack.

  The rest of the room took it in turns to table-stretch and introduce themselves, then Marsh got down to business. 'For the sake of the press officers, Jack King is with us as a consultant. Ideally, we don't want his name mentioned at all, but let's be realistic, this ugly old mug of his is so well known that once he's been around a few days, you can be sure the papers will all be asking you what the hell he's doing back on the scene. No interviews with Jack, no comments from Jack, let's say he's over here just catching up with old friends. You got it?'

  Laing and Hopkins both nodded.

  'Good,' said Marsh. 'In a minute or two we're going to dial-in Malcolm Thompson on a line from Quantico and agree our strategy for the next few days. Jack, Malcolm is the new head of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. He's still at the ballbuster stage at the moment but he'll be fine when he's settled in.' Marsh slapped both hands lightly on the table. 'Okay, Howie, Angelita, before we call Mal, what's the latest?'

  Howie kicked off. 'We've interviewed the journalist Tariq el Daher. After what we might call a reluctant beginning, he's come round to our way of thinking.' He nodded towards the NYPD's deputy commissioner of operations. 'Stevie's guys are fixing his office right now with full A and V recording and tracking equipment, phones, computers, the lot. This time we should be able to get into any new video feed from the perp practically the second it happens.'

  'And he was fine with that?' checked Marsh.

  'Absolutely. A total model of cooperation,' said Howie grinning in a way that everyone around the table understood.

  'Is the material still out there in hyper-space?' asked Jack.

  'No,' said Fernandez. 'Tariq called us about ten minutes ago and said his access code didn't work any more.'

  Jack thought for a second about dongles and bomb fuses and zipper disasters. 'Is the code itself of any significance?' he asked. 'Does 898989 mean anything to anyone? Is it the Pan Arabia office number, have we tried it as a phone number, have we run the number itself through the Internet?'

  'I Googled it,' said Fernandez.

  'And?' asked Marsh.

  'A hundred and sixteen thousand entries. I've been through about twenty.'

  The whole room laughed.

  'The domain name 898989 is already registered with someone. They're quite legit, no connection at all. It also gets you a gardening centre in England and a strange website called "Just Curious".' Fernandez paused for effect, then added, 'Sorry folks, that's also legit. I got excited as well because it has a motto on the front: "Strangers Helping Strangers".'

  'What the hell is it?' asked Flintoff.

  'You just ask a question anonymously and the whole world answers it and gives you advice,' explained Fernandez.

  'Sounds great,' said Howie. 'Stick one on from us, and tell the whole world out there that we're just curious as hell to know where BRK is, someone should have seen him.' They all laughed again.

  'Not a bad idea,' said Jack. 'Knowing what an egotistical son of a bitch BRK is, there's just
a chance he might visit the site and respond. Unfortunately, I suspect a million other fruitcakes will as well.'

  'What else?' said Marsh. 'We have to move things along.'

  Howie picked up the ball again. 'The bad news for the day is that it looks like one of our possible witnesses, a guy who could ID our perp, got stiffed. The guys over in Myrtle had been following up on a delivery boy from UMail2Anywhere called Stanley Mossman. Best Fernandez tells you the rest; she just got off the phone to Myrtle.'

  Fernandez took up the story. 'Stan the Man turned up in the trunk of his own car at the long-stay out at Myrtle International. I don't know all the details but from what Gene Saunders said, it looks like BRK arranged to meet him there and wasted him. The kid seems to have had his throat cut while standing around the back of his own vehicle, then the killer popped the trunk and bundled him in there.'

  'Surveillance cameras, forensics?' asked Marsh.

  Fernandez nodded. 'Yes, sir, all underway. The doc's doing the post-mortem tomorrow but he saw the body in situ. Says it's a single-bladed, short and razor-sharp knife. Cut was made from behind. Done real quick and hard.' She ran a finger across her throat and made the slashing sound shweep!

  'It's a pro kill,' said Howie. 'He probably got the kid to put something in the trunk of his car, weaseled up behind him, then out comes some kind of flick blade and in a flash he takes out Stan's jugular.'

  'Is it too much to hope that this was all captured on camera?' asked Marsh.

  Fernandez smiled. 'I think you're a mind-reader, boss. The parking lot wasn't one of the regular approved ones; it was on an old building lot a couple of blocks behind Jetport Road. No cameras.'