Fatal Error

by F. Paul Wilson

  What was so different about her baby that no one else could know?

  3

  The phone was ringing when Munir opened the door to his apartment. He hit the RECORD button on his answering machine as he snatched up the receiver and jammed it against his ear.

  “Yes!”

  “Pretty disappointing, Mooo-neeer,” said the now familiar electronically distorted voice. “Are all you Ay-rabs such mosquito dicks?”

  “I did as you asked! Just as you asked!”

  “That wasn’t much of a pee, Mooo-neeer.”

  “It was all I could do! Please let them go now.”

  He glanced down at the caller ID. A number had formed in the LCD window. A 212 area code, just like all the previous calls. But the seven digits following were a new combination, unlike any of the others. And when Munir called it back, he was sure it would be a public phone. Just like all the rest.

  “Are they all right? Let me speak to my wife.”

  Munir didn’t know why he said that. He knew the caller couldn’t drag Barbara and Robby to a pay phone.

  “She can’t come to the phone right now. She’s, uh . . . all tied up at the moment.”

  Munir ground his teeth as the horse laugh brayed through the phone.

  “Please. I must know if she is all right.”

  “You’ll have to take my word for it, Mooo-neeer.”

  “She may be dead.” Allah forbid! “You may have killed her and Robby already.”

  “Hey. Ain’t I been sendin’ you pichers? Don’t you like my pretty pichers?”

  “No!” Munir cried, fighting a wave of nausea . . . those pictures—those horrible, sickening photos. “They aren’t enough. You could have taken all of them at once and then killed them.”

  The voice on the other end lowered to a sinister, nasty growl.

  “You callin’ me a liar, you lousy, greasy, two-bit Ay-rab? Don’t you ever doubt a word I tell you. Don’t even think about doubtin’ me. Or I’ll show you who’s alive. I’ll prove your white bitch and mongrel brat are alive by sending you a new piece of them every so often. A little bit of each, every day, by Express Mail, so it’s nice and fresh. You keep on doubtin’ me, Mooo-neeer, and pretty soon you’ll get your wife and kid back, all of them. But you’ll have to figure out which part goes where. Like the model kits say: Some assembly required.”

  Munir bit back a scream as the caller brayed again.

  “No—no. Please don’t hurt them anymore. I’ll do anything you want. What do you want me to do?”

  “There. That’s more like it. I’ll let your little faux pas pass this time. A lot more generous than you’d ever be—ain’t that right, Mooo-neeer. And sure as shit more generous than your Ay-rab buddies were when they killed my sister on nine/eleven.”

  “Yes. Yes, whatever you say. What else do you want me to do? Just tell me.”

  “I ain’t decided yet, Mooo-neeer. I’m gonna have to think on that one. But in the meantime, I’m gonna look kindly on you and bestow your request. Yessir, I’m gonna send you proof positive that your wife and kid are still alive.”

  Munir’s stomach plummeted. The man was insane, a monster. This couldn’t be good.

  “No! Please! I believe you! I believe!”

  “I reckon you do, Mooo-neeer. But believin’ just ain’t enough sometimes, is it? I mean, you believe in Allah, don’t you? Don’t you?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course I believe in Allah.”

  “And look at what you did on Friday. Just think back and meditate on what you did.”

  Munir hung his head in shame and said nothing.

  “So you can see where I’m comin’ from when I say believin’ ain’t enough. ’Cause if you believe, you can also have doubt. And I don’t want you havin’ no doubts, Mooo-neeer. I don’t want you havin’ the slightest twinge of doubt about how important it is for you to do exactly what I tell you. ’Cause if you start thinking it really don’t matter to your bitch and little rat-faced kid, that they’re probably dead already and you can tell me to shove it, that’s not gonna be good for them. So I’m gonna have to prove to you just how alive and well they are.”

  “No!” He was going to be sick. “Please don’t!”

  “Just remember. You asked for proof.”

  Munir’s voice edged toward a scream. “PLEASE!”

  The line clicked and went dead.

  Munir dropped the phone and buried his face in his hands. The caller was mad, crazy, brutally insane, and for some reason he hated Munir with a depth and breadth Munir found incomprehensible and profoundly horrifying. Whoever he was, he seemed capable of anything, and he had Barbara and Robby hidden away somewhere in the city.

  Helplessness overwhelmed him and he broke down. Only a few sobs had escaped when he heard a pounding on his door.

  “Hey. What’s going on in there? Munir, you okay?”

  Munir stiffened as he recognized Russ’s voice. He straightened in his chair but said nothing. Monday. He’d forgotten about Russ coming over for their weekly brainstorming session. He should have called and canceled, but Russ had been the last thing on his mind. He couldn’t let him know anything was wrong.

  “Hey!” Russ said, banging on the door again. “I know someone’s in there. You don’t open up I’m gonna assume something’s wrong and call the emergency squad.”

  The last thing Munir needed was a bunch of EMTs swarming around his apartment. The police would be with them and only Allah knew what that crazy man would do if he saw them.

  He cleared his throat. “I’m all right, Russ.”

  “The hell you are.” He rattled the doorknob. “You didn’t sound all right when you screamed a moment ago and you don’t sound all right now. Just open up so I can—”

  The door swung open, revealing Russ Tuit—a pear-shaped guy dressed in a beat-up Starter jacket and faded jeans—looking as shocked as Munir felt.

  In his haste to answer the phone, Munir had forgotten to latch the door behind him. Quickly, he wiped his eyes and rose.

  “Jesus, Munir, you look like hell. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Hey, don’t shit me. I heard you. Sounded like someone was stepping on your soul.”

  “I’m okay. Really.”

  “Yeah, right. You in trouble? Anything I can do? Can’t help you much with money, but anything else . . .”

  Munir was touched by the offer. If only he could help. But no one could help him.

  “No. It’s okay.”

  “Is it Barbara or Robby? Something happen to—?” Munir realized it must have shown on his face. Russ stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Hey, what’s going on? Are they all right?”

  “Please, Russ. I can’t talk about it. And you mustn’t talk about it either. Just let it be. I’m handling it.”

  “Is it a police thing?”

  “No! Not the police! Please don’t say anything to the police. I was warned”—in sickeningly graphic detail—“about going to the police.”

  Russ leaned back against the door and stared at him.

  “Jesus . . . is this as bad as I think it is?”

  Munir could do no more than nod.

  Russ jabbed a finger at him. “I know somebody who might be able to help.”

  “No one can help me.”

  “This guy’s good people. I’ve done some work for him—he’s a real four-oh-four when it comes to computers, but he’s got a solid rep when it comes to fixing things.”

  What was Russ talking about?

  “Fixing?”

  “Situations. He solves problems, know what I’m saying?”

  “I . . . I can’t risk it.”

  “Yeah, you can. He’s a guy you go to when you run out of options. He deals with stuff that nobody wants anybody knowing about. That’s his specialty. He’s not a detective, he’s not a cop—in fact, if the cops are involved, this guy’s smoke, because he doesn’t get along with cops. He’s just a guy. But I’ll warn you up front, he
’s expensive.”

  No police . . . that was good. And money? What did money matter where Barbara and Robby were concerned? Maybe a man like this was what he needed, an ally who could deal with the monster that had invaded his life.

  “This man . . . he’s fierce?”

  Russ nodded. “Never seen it, and you’d never know it to look at him, but I hear when the going gets ugly, he gets uglier.”

  “How do I contact him?”

  “I’ll give you a number. Just leave a message. If he doesn’t get back to you, let me know. Jack’s gotten kind of distracted these days and picky about what he takes on. I’ll talk to him for you if necessary.”

  “Give me the number.”

  Perhaps this was what he needed: a fierce man.

  4

  I’m running out of space, Jack thought as he stood in the front room of his apartment and looked for an empty spot to display his latest treasure.

  His Sky King Magni-Glow Writing Ring had just arrived from his connection in southeast Missouri. It contained a Mysterious Glo-signaler (“Gives a strange green light! You can send blinker signals with it!”). The plastic ruby unfolded into three sections, revealing a Secret Compartment that contained a Flying Crown Brand (“For sealing messages!”); the middle section was a Detecto-Scope Magnifying Glass (“For detecting fingerprints or decoding messages!”); and the outermost section was a Secret Stratospheric Pen (“Writes at any altitude, or under water, in red ink!”).

  Neat. Incredibly neat. The neatest ring in Jack’s collection. Far more complex than his Buck Rogers Ring of Saturn, or his Shadow ring, or even his Kix Atomic Bomb Ring. It deserved auspicious display. But where? His front room was already jammed with radio premiums, cereal giveaways, comic strip tie-ins—crassly commercial tchotchkes from a time before he was born. He wasn’t sure why he collected them, but knew when and where the addiction had started: in his teens when he’d worked at a store that specialized in junk. But he didn’t know why. After years of accumulating his hoard, Jack still hadn’t found the answer. So he kept buying. And buying.

  Old goodies and oddities littered every flat surface on the mismatched array of Victorian golden oak furniture crowding the room. Certificates proclaiming him an official member of The Shadow Society, the Doc Savage Club, the Nick Carter Club, Friends of the Phantom, the Green Hornet GJM Club, and other august organizations papered the walls.

  At least the place was his again. Weezy had moved out after Thanksgiving. She’d finally accepted that no one was looking for her anymore, and had found a sublet a few blocks away in a new high-rise. Still, she’d insisted on renting it under an assumed name.

  Jack glanced at the Shmoo clock on the wall above the hutch. Time for a brew or two. He placed the Sky King Magni-Glo Writing Ring next to his Captain Midnight radio decoder, pulled a worn red Lands’ End Windbreaker over his flannel shirt, and headed for the door.

  Outside in the frigid darkness, he hurried through the Upper West Side, feeling kind of bummed that Gia and Vicky were leaving for Iowa tomorrow. Out of the blue she’d come up with this idea to visit her folks back home. She went back a couple of times a year to keep Vicky in touch with her grandparents—the little girl’s paternal family, the Westphalens, had been scoured from the face of the Earth—but usually in warmer weather. If it was this cold in Manhattan, what the hell was it like in Ottumwa, Iowa?

  Didn’t make sense, but since when did family need to make sense?

  He passed trendy boutiques and eateries that catered to the local yuppies and dinks. The economic downturn that started back in ’09 had caused a few to close, but the effect here had been mere decimation rather than the holocaust elsewhere. They were coming back already.

  No recession at Julio’s. Even on a Monday night, the drinkers stood three deep around the bar, two-hundred-dollar shirts and three-hundred-dollar sweaters wedged next to grease-monkey overalls. Julio’s had somehow managed to hang on to its old clientele despite the invasion of the Ralph Lauren, Armani, and Donna Karan set. The yups and dinks had discovered Julio’s a while back. Thought it had “rugged charm,” found the bar food “authentic,” and loved its “unpretentious atmosphere.”

  They drove Julio up the wall.

  Julio stood behind the bar, under the FREE BEER TOMORROW . . . sign. Jack waved to let him know he was here. As Jack wandered the length of the bar he passed a blond dink in a gray Armani cashmere sweater that had to cost north of a grand. He must have been here before because he was pointing out the dead succulents and asparagus ferns hanging in the windows to a couple who were apparently newcomers.

  “Aren’t they just fabulous?” he said between quaffs from a mug of draft beer.

  “Why doesn’t he just get fresh ones?” the woman beside him asked.

  She was sipping white wine from a smudged tumbler. She grimaced as she swallowed. Julio made a point of stocking the sourest Chardonnay on the market.

  “I think he’s making a statement,” the guy said.

  “About what?”

  “I haven’t the faintest. But don’t you just love them?”

  Jack knew what the statement was: Callusless people go home. But they didn’t see it. Julio was purposely rude to them, and he’d instructed his help to follow his lead, but it didn’t work. The dinks thought it was a put-on, part of the ambience. They ate it up.

  Jack stepped over the length of rope that closed off the back half of the seating area and dropped into his usual booth in the darkened rear. As Julio came out from behind the bar, the blond dink flagged him down.

  “Can we get a table back there?”

  “No,” Julio said.

  The muscular little man brushed by him and nodded to Jack on his way to bus the empty glasses. Jack signaled for a Yuengling.

  “Hey, Jack.”

  Jack looked up to see Russ Tuit stepping over the cord and approaching.

  “Russ,” he said, shaking his hand. “A little far from home, aren’t you?” He lived over on Second Avenue.

  “Need to talk to you.”

  Jack had his back against the wall and indicated a chair opposite him.

  “Looking for work?”

  Russ was Jack’s go-to guy for all things cyber–legal or not so legal. He’d done time for hacking a bank and was still on probation.

  He smiled. “Believe it or not, I’m gainfully employed. Full time too. And you’ll never guess by who.”

  “The feds.”

  Russ’s face fell. “How . . . how . . . ?”

  Jack had to laugh. “Well, you said I’d never guess, so I figured the least likely people to hire a federal felon would be the feds. What’ve they got you doing—hacking citizens?”

  “Close. This branch of the NRO hired—”

  “What’s NRO?”

  “National Reconnaissance Office. They run all the satellites. Their research wing put me together with a bunch of other hackers to help tighten up their security. Seems their computers are under constant attack, especially from the Chinese. So what we do is pretty cool. One team sets up a security system, and the other team tries to break through it. If we get through, then we switch sides, shore up the breach, and now it’s their turn to try to break through. We keep going back and forth, switching sides, and let me tell you, it’s working. We’ve been building firewalls that are higher, wider, and smarter than anything else out there.”

  Jack’s mind wandered as Russ went on about viruses and worms and trojans. He noticed the blond guy in the sweater stopping Julio again as he returned to the bar. He pointed toward Jack and Russ.

  “How come they get to sit over there and we don’t?”

  Julio swung on him and got in his face. He was a good head shorter than the blond guy but he was thickly muscled and had that air of barely restrained violence. He went into his Soup Nazi act.

  “You ask me one more time about those tables, meng, and you outta here. You hear me? You out and you never come back!”

  Julio loved to use “meng”
whenever he could, especially with the yups and dinks.

  As Julio strutted away, the blond guy turned to his companions, grinning.

  “I just love this place.”

  “So all in all,” Russ was saying, “a pretty cool gig.”

  “Sounds utterly fascinating.”

  Russ grinned. “I can tell you’d rather stick pins in your eyes.”

  “Not pins. Nails. Glowing, red-hot nails.”

  “Hey, it’s not bad being a white hat. It pays and they may go to bat for me and get me back on the Net.” One of the terms of Russ’s probation was banishment from the Internet, cruel and unusual for a guy like him. Of course, he’d found numerous ways around that. “But that’s not why I’m here. Got a friend in trouble.”

  “This ‘friend’ wouldn’t be named Russ, would he?”

  “No. This is a buddy. We’ve been working on an MMO game hack—”

  “NRO . . . MMO . . . I don’t speak acronymese.”

  “Sorry. A massively multiplayer online game.”

  “Sounds like bad English.”

  “It’s a big deal these days. WoW—I mean, Warcraft—has eleven million players, Habbo’s got eight, and people average between twenty and thirty hours a week at it.”

  Jack shook his head. He got game playing, but didn’t get Russ. “And you want to hack it? Don’t you ever learn?”

  He laughed. “Hack’s an umbrella term. Me and Munir are working on a way to make MMOs play faster. If it works out the way we hope it will, we’ll patent it and be sitting pretty.”

  “And this Munir’s got trouble? What kind?”

  Russ shrugged. “Don’t know. Won’t tell me. I think it involves his wife and kid.”

  Jack remembered a voice mail that said, Jack, please save my family! He’d decided not to call back.

  “And he can’t go to the cops,” Russ added. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  A kidnap, most likely. One of Jack’s rules was to avoid kidnappings. They were the latest crime fad these days, usually over drugs. They attracted feds and Jack had less use for feds than he had for local cops.