Fatal Error

by F. Paul Wilson

  “You recorded that?”

  “No. I didn’t think about it till later. He would tell me nothing about Barbara and Robby except that they were alive and well and were hoping I wouldn’t ‘screw up’ and not do as I was told.”

  “Which was eating the pork?”

  He nodded. “I did as I was told, then hurried home and tried to vomit it up. He called and said I’d ‘done good.’ He said he’d call me again to tell me the next trick he was going to make me do. He said he was going to ‘put me through the wringer but good.’”

  “And the next trick was . . . ?”

  “I was to steal a woman’s pocketbook in broad daylight, knock her down, and run with it. And I was not to get caught. He said the photos I had were ‘Before.’ If I was caught, he would send me ‘After.’ ”

  “So you became a purse-snatcher for a day. A successful one, I gather.”

  Habib lowered his head. “I’m so ashamed . . . that poor woman.” His features hardened. “And then he sent the other photo.”

  “Yeah? Let’s see it.”

  Habib suddenly seemed flustered. “It’s—it’s at my office.”

  He was lying. Why?

  “Bull. Let me see it.”

  “No. I’d rather you didn’t—”

  “I need to know everything if I’m going to help you.” Jack thrust out his hand. “Give.”

  With obvious reluctance, Habib reached into his coat and passed across another still. Jack immediately understood his hesitance.

  He saw the same blond woman from the first photo, only this time she was nude, tied spread-eagle on a mattress, her dark pubic triangle toward the camera, her eyes bright with tears of humiliation; an equally naked dark-haired boy crouched in terror next to her.

  And I thought she was a natural blond was written across the bottom.

  Jack’s jaw began to ache from clenching. He handed back the photo.

  “And what about yesterday?”

  “He called in the morning and said Sunday was a day of rest. That all I’d have to do was go to Saint Patrick’s and receive communion. He said he’d be watching.”

  “And did you?”

  “Of course. After that, I received no further word all day. I was going crazy. Then he called this morning and said I had to urinate—‘take a piss,’ in his words—in the street on Fifth Avenue at midafternoon.”

  “Swell,” Jack said, shaking his head. “Stop-and-go-traffic.”

  “Correct. But I would do it all again if it would free Barbara and Robby.”

  “You might have to do worse. In fact, I’m sure you’re going to have to do worse. I think this guy’s looking for your limit. He wants to see how far he can push you, wants to see how far you’ll go.”

  “But where will it end?”

  “Maybe with you killing somebody.”

  “Him? Gladly! I—”

  “No. Somebody else. A stranger. Or worse—somebody you know.”

  Habib blanched. “No. Surely you can’t be . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Why not? He’s got you by the balls. That sort of power can make a well man sick and a sick man sicker.” He watched Habib’s face, dismay tugging at his features as he stared at his desktop. “What’ll you do?”

  A pause while Habib returned from somewhere far away. “What?”

  “When the time comes. When he says you’ve got to choose between the lives of your wife and son, and the life of someone else, what’ll you do?”

  Habib didn’t flinch. “Do the killing, of course.”

  “And the next innocent victim? And the one after that, and the one after that? What if Russ is one? When do you say enough, no more, finis?”

  Habib flinched. “I . . . I don’t know.”

  Tough question. Jack wondered how he’d answer if Gia and Vicky were captives. How many innocent people would die before he stopped? What was the magic number? Jack hoped he never had to find out. The Son of Sam might end up looking like a piker.

  “Let’s hear what he sounds like.”

  Maybe listening to this creep would help him get a read on him.

  Habib slid a combo phone/answering machine across his desk and hit a button. The voice on the recording was electronically distorted. Two possible reasons for that. One: obviously to prevent voiceprint analysis. But he also could be worried that Habib would recognize him. Jack listened to the snarling southern accent. He couldn’t tell through the electronic buzz if it was authentic or not, but no question about the sincerity of the raw hate snaking through the phone line. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the voice.

  Something there . . . something off-key about this guy . . . a picture was forming . . .

  7

  “What is that?” Kewan said.

  Hank smiled to himself. He’d asked the same question yesterday when he’d first seen the thing.

  “It’s a ray gun. We’re going to try it out tonight.”

  Kewan toyed with one of his dreadlocks as he stared at the three-foot oblong box with a parabolic reflector attached to one end and a wire coming from another. “Don’t look like no ray gun I ever seen.”

  Pretty much overnight, Kewan Lyford had moved from nowhere in Kickerdom to one of Hank’s most trusted men. Sort of the new Darryl. Except Kewan was black and in better health. Looked like he’d had a tough time with acne as a teen, but he had an infectious smile and an easy way with people. He got along with almost everyone. Hank needed someone like that to deal with the everyday Kickers.

  He’d first come to Hank’s attention after the mess last July. Darryl was gone and Hank had been tasered into Jell-O by some bearded guy. He and Drexler had put together a composite drawing of the guy and started passing it around. Kewan had recognized him immediately as “Johnny,” an okay guy who’d been into Dormie bashing and always generous with his cigarettes. That had been a little embarrassing—a Kicker. Or maybe not. He’d reminded Hank of a guy who’d posed as “John Tyleski” and roughed him up and stolen a very special book from him last spring. The same? He couldn’t be sure.

  Kewan had proved useful in a lot of ways since then.

  Hank pointed to the third man in the room—Nelson Ferron, a balding Dormentalist with a Santa Claus beard and belly. They had the cellar of the Lodge to themselves for this strategy meeting.

  “It’s a portable EMP generator.”

  Kewan grinned. “I don’t need no help generating pee. I do fine all by myself.”

  Ferron didn’t smile. “E . . . M . . . P. It stands for electromagnetic pulse. An EMP is poison for microcircuitry.”

  “What’s it do to humans?”

  “Nothing, unless you’ve got a pacemaker.”

  “So it’s like a microwave?”

  Ferron shook his head. “No. Microwaves only confuse a pacemaker. An EMP will toast it.”

  “Then I guess we should make sure nobody coming along tonight has a pacemaker. How’s it work?”

  “Just plug it in—”

  “Plug it in?”

  Ferron grinned. “You wouldn’t like carrying the battery necessary to power this. That’s the beauty part of what you’re doing. You use the company’s own electric power to do the job. Plug it in, aim it at the servers and routers, and they’re toast.”

  Ferron seemed to relish that word.

  Kewan turned to Hank. “This is gonna make people unhappy.”

  “We’re not in the business of making people happy. We’re here to make it easier for them to dissimilate.”

  Hank had spent the last six months locating and casing Internet exchange points and major data centers. He’d started arranging regular Kicker protests outside them. The protests had been peaceful up till now. Because they’d all been window dressing.

  Tonight’s would be different. But even this would be misdirection. Get them looking the wrong way.

  The real targets would be hit at the end of the week. Hank and the Kickers had been ready to go for months. Now all that they needed was for Drexler
to hold up his end.

  8

  Weezy took a break from her seemingly endless study of the Compendium of Srem to gaze out her eighth-floor window. She could see the triangle where Broadway angled across Amsterdam at 72nd Street, and found the perpetual snarl of trucks, buses, and cars fascinating. Only in the wee hours of the morning did traffic flow smoothly there.

  She loved her apartment. To a decorator it might appear depressingly bare, but she had all she needed for comfort. Every material thing she’d owned had been reduced to ash last summer, and she couldn’t see the point in accumulating more stuff. Jack loved clutter. She’d lived with too much of it for too long.

  Her cell phone rang. She checked the caller ID and recognized the number.

  Eddie? How had her brother—?

  Then she remembered Jack had given her one of his TracFones and Eddie had the number.

  She didn’t want to speak to him. She’d broken all contact with him since learning he was a member of the Septimus Order. He’d finally stopped calling her—for good, she hoped. So why now, after all these months?

  Maybe it was important. Maybe something was wrong.

  She hit the talk button.

  “What is it, Eddie?”

  “Weezy? I’m so glad you answered. I wasn’t sure—”

  “Why are you calling?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I mean, face-to-face.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  She winced at how harsh that sounded. This was her younger brother. They’d never been terribly close, but still . . . he was her only living relative.

  But he’d joined the Order, damn it. The group that last summer had hunted her down and tried to abduct her, razed her house, tried to kill her. And if not for Jack, they’d have succeeded. How could he be a part of that?

  He sighed. “Okay. Well, the Order is looking for you.”

  She felt a chill in her blood.

  “How . . . how do you know?”

  “I got a fax with your face on it. If I see you or know your whereabouts, I’m to call it in.”

  “When did it come?”

  “Minutes ago.”

  Her throat felt dry.

  “Why are you telling me?”

  “Because this isn’t right. I’ve always thought you were paranoid about them, but why would they be looking for you?”

  “They were looking for me last summer. I didn’t know it was them at first, but I—”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if you might be right about them.”

  Finally! Eddie finally sees the light. Maybe he’s salvageable.

  “I am. I know I am.”

  “I’m going to look into this.”

  Weezy almost dropped the phone.

  “No! Say nothing! Do nothing!”

  “Can’t do that, Weez. They’re looking for my sister and I damn well want to know why. I’ll call you when I find out.”

  “Eddie, please! You can’t—”

  The phone went dead.

  She called him back but he didn’t pick up. The tables had turned. Now he wasn’t taking her calls.

  Was he crazy? What was he trying to prove? They’d eat him alive.

  She left voice mail begging him to leave it alone. That she was safe and they’d never find her.

  But was that true? And why the sudden renewed interest? She’d kept a low profile since the summer—no profile at all, in fact. How had she once again become a person of interest to the Order?

  9

  Munir found it difficult to focus on the recording. After all, he had listened to that hated voice over and over until he knew by heart every filthy word, every nuance of expression. So he studied this stranger across the table from him instead.

  This man was most unimpressive. True, he was taller than Munir, perhaps five-eleven, with a slim, wiry physique. Nothing at all special about his appearance. Brown hair, and such mild brown eyes; out on the street he would be almost invisible. Munir had expected a heroic figure—if not physically prepossessing, at least sharp, swift, and viper deadly. This man had none of those qualities. How was he going to wrest Barbara and Robby from their tormentor’s grasp? It hardly seemed possible.

  And yet, as he watched him listening to the recording with his eyes closed, stopping it here and there to rewind and hear again a sentence or phrase, he became aware of the man’s quiet confidence, of a hint of furnace-hot intensity roaring beneath his ordinary surface. And Munir began to see that perhaps there was a purpose behind Jack’s manner of dress, his whole demeanor being slanted toward unobtrusiveness. He realized that this man could dog your steps all day and you would never notice him.

  Munir’s thoughts wandered to the question that had dogged him for days: Why me?

  He wasn’t rich. He wasn’t important. He kept to himself. He did not write insulting blogs. He had no public or online identity. Because Arabs and Islam were viewed with suspicion in America, he kept a low profile. He was almost as invisible as Jack.

  Why me?

  Unless it was Allah’s doing. Munir admitted that he had not been an observant Muslim. Worse, he, Barbara, and Robby celebrated Christmas these past few years. Not because of Barbara, who was an infidel as far as any religion was concerned, but because of Robby. They celebrated the secular aspects of Christmas, with the tree and the gifts and the Santa Claus fantasy. They were all Americans, and Christmas was an American holiday.

  Had that drawn Allah’s wrath? The Koran said that any man who renounces Islam must be killed. He had not renounced his faith, but he had certainly ignored it for many years. Was that why he was being tortured rather than killed?

  The recording ended then. Jack pressed the stop button and stared at the phone.

  “Something screwy here,” he said finally.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He hates you.”

  “Yes, I know. He hates all Arabs. He’s said so, many times.”

  “No. He hates you.”

  “Of course. I’m an Arab.”

  What was he getting at?

  “But this almost seems personal. I get a feeling there’s more going on here than just nine/eleven or you being an Arab or any of the bullshit he’s been handing you.”

  Personal? No. It wasn’t possible. He had never met anyone, had never been even remotely acquainted with a person who would do this to him and his family.

  “I do not believe it.” His voice sounded hoarse. “It cannot be.”

  Jack leaned forward, his voice low. “Think about it. In the space of a few days this guy has made you offend your God, offend other people, humiliate yourself, and who knows what next? There’s real nastiness here, Munir. Cold, calculated malice. Especially this business of making you eat pork and drink beer at noon on Friday when a good Muslim is supposed to be at the mosque. I didn’t know you had to pray on Fridays at noon, but he did. That tells me he knows more than a little about your religion—studying up on it, most likely. He’s not playing this by ear. He’s got a plan. He’s not putting you through this ‘wringer’ of his just for the hell of it.”

  “What can he possibly gain from tormenting me?”

  “Torment, hell. This guy’s out to destroy you. And as for gain, I’m guessing on revenge.”

  “For what?” This was so maddening. “I fear you are getting off course with this idea that somehow I know this insane man.”

  “Maybe. But something he said during your last conversation doesn’t sit right. He said he was being ‘a lot more generous than you’d ever be.’ That’s not a remark a stranger would make. And then he said ‘faux pas’ a little while after. He’s trying to sound like a redneck but I don’t know too many rednecks with faux pas in their vocabulary.”

  “But that doesn’t necessarily mean he knows me personally.”

  “You said you run a department in this oil company.”

  “Yes. Saud Petrol. I told you: I’m head of IT.”

 
; “Which means you’ve got to hire and fire, I imagine.”

  “Of course.” Munir felt a chill. “A Saud employee?”

  “That’s my guess,” Jack said. “Look in your personnel records. That’s where you’ll find this kook. He’s the proverbial Disgruntled Employee. Or Former Employee. Or Almost Employee. Someone you fired, someone you didn’t hire, or someone you passed over for promotion. I’d go with the first—some people get very personal about being fired.”

  Munir searched his past for any confrontations with members of his department. He could think of only one and that was so minor—

  Jack was pushing the phone across the desk.

  “Call the cops,” he said.

  Fear wrapped thick fingers around Munir’s throat and squeezed. “No! He’ll find out! He’ll —”

  “I’d like to help you, pal, but it wouldn’t be fair. You need more than I can give you. You need officialdom. You need a squad of paper shufflers doing background checks on the people past and present in your department. I’m a one-man shop. No staff, no access to fingerprint files. You need all of that and more if you’re going to get your family through this. The FBI’s good at this stuff. They can stay out of sight, work in the background while you deal with this guy up front.”

  “But—”

  He rose and clapped a hand on Munir’s shoulder.

  “I’d like to catch this guy for you, really I would, because he sounds like scum. I’d like to tie him up in a room and leave you alone with him. But I sense time growing short and I’m not the guy to find him before he does something really nasty to you, your wife, or boy. You need help with staff. That’s not me. So I’m going to do you a favor.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to walk out that door and let you call the feds. They’re what you need, not me.”