A Fire in the Night

by Christopher Swann

  Julia tilted her head and frowned. “It looks like a really bad map,” she said. “Like somebody drew all the roads squiggly.”

  Nick nodded. “That’s what I thought too.”

  Julia’s eyes got big. In a husky whisper, she said, “Is it a treasure map?”

  “Maybe.” The desktop screen had gone to sleep, and he clicked the mouse to wake it up and get back to his Google search. “So now I’m looking up this word that was written on the map.”

  “Julia,” her mother said faintly from her chair. Nick looked over his shoulder. She hadn’t even looked up from her book. “Don’t bother the man.”

  “I’m helping him, Mommy,” Julia announced.

  “Mm-hmm,” her mother said.

  Nick pulled up the first entry, a definition from Oxford Languages. Anticline, Nick read. NOUN (GEOLOGY) A ridge-shaped fold of stratified rock in which the strata slope downward from the crest.

  “What does that mean?” Julia asked.

  The next link was to Wikipedia. Nick clicked on it and scanned the article. “Well,” he said, pointing to a picture on the screen, “it’s a fold in the rock. Like a fold in a blanket, only a big one, like on the side of a hill.”

  “Like a valley!” Julia said.

  “This kind only goes up,” Nick said. “The point where it bends is at the top.”

  “Ohhh,” Julia said. She looked at the screen for a moment, then turned to Nick. “Did you know blue whales are the biggest creatures on earth?”

  Nick glanced at Julia’s mother, who was still engrossed in her novel. He wondered if this was what parents did during the summer months, use strangers in libraries to babysit their children.

  “I did know that about blue whales,” Nick said to Julia. “Did you know most whales don’t have teeth?”

  “Sperm whales do,” Julia said proudly.

  “That’s right. And killer whales.”

  “They’re called orcas,” Julia said.

  “Like in Free Willy.”

  Julia frowned. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a movie.” Maybe Free Willy was too old for this girl to have seen. It hadn’t come out that long ago, had it? Not that he’d seen it—he just remembered the trailer. “Tell you what,” he said, “go look it up online. It’s about a killer wh—I mean, an orca who gets trapped in a theme park and wants to go back to the ocean.”

  “Okay,” said Julia. She went back to her computer and started typing. In her armchair, her mother continued to read her novel, oblivious to anything else.

  Nick returned his attention to the sheet of paper. So he was looking at a map or plat that contained geological information. The vertical line running just a few degrees east of true north was marked as an anticline. Why would that be information people were willing to kill for?

  He went back to the Wikipedia entry and read it more carefully, then stopped at the following line: “Anticlines, structural domes, fault zones and stratigraphic traps are very favorable locations for oil and natural gas drilling.”

  Oil and natural gas.

  Nick double-checked the sheet, even though he knew the word he was looking for, and he found it again, written by hand in the upper-right-hand corner: ABQAIQ. Now he remembered what it meant, but he Googled the word to confirm. Abqaiq was the biggest oil-processing facility in Saudi Arabia. It was owned by Saudi Aramco, a national petroleum and natural gas company, one of the most profitable companies in the world.

  Nick knew that Abqaiq was located just northeast of the Ghawar oil field, the largest oil field on the planet. That must be what the GH on the right-hand edge of the page meant—GHAWAR had been cropped out. And CALIFO in the bottom right-hand corner was most likely CALIFORNIA. Before the Saudis named their petroleum company Aramco, it had been California Arabian Standard Oil. They had changed the name in the 1940s.

  The sheet wasn’t a surface-level map with elevations. It was a field survey, an old one, of the northern part of the Ghawar oil field.

  Nick sat back in his chair for a moment, thinking. His brother had sent Annalise to him with a picture of an old field survey. And the notes on the back had led them to Lapidus and the flash drive. He leaned forward and did some more searching online, and within a few minutes, on the website of an association of petroleum geologists, he found a nearly identical image of the same field survey. This was public knowledge, in other words. Rather technical knowledge, true, with no context provided, no other information. Just a field survey.

  He Googled Halliwell Energy and quickly read through several news stories about Halliwell’s rise in the crowded field of energy companies, its early forays into shale oil production in North America, and its efforts to modernize and improve production at various oil fields around the world. He then Googled Halliwell Energy and Ghawar and found a single mention of Halliwell Energy in a list of energy companies working with Saudi Arabia to ramp up the kingdom’s oil and natural gas production in Ghawar.

  Which left the flash drive.

  He inserted it into the older USB port on the desktop computer, then opened the Finder window to display the contents of the drive. After a moment, the flash drive appeared as UNTITLED. There was a single file listed, a string of alphanumerics without an extension at the end to indicate what kind of file it was. Nick stared at it for a moment. He would bet anything the file was encrypted and that it had something to do with the Ghawar oil field. What he needed was a team of technicians who could open an encrypted file. What he had was a ten-year-old desktop computer at the public library.

  Suspecting he would regret it, Nick clicked on the file.

  A Loading message appeared on the screen, and then a message box popped up. The computer was unable to locate the correct program to open the file.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Boss,” Zhang said, his tone urgent.

  “You find that second tower?” Cole said, close behind a Mini Cooper as they hugged a turn. If only they could hit a straight piece of road so he could pass.

  “Someone just tried to access the file on that flash drive,” Zhang said.

  Kobayashi had set them up to receive alerts from the file on the flash drive. Anytime someone tried to open the file on a computer connected to the internet, the file would generate an alert without notifying whoever was opening the file. The alert would be sent via email to designated users.

  “Can you tell where she is?” Cole said.

  “Getting the IP address now,” Zhang said.

  They hit a straightaway, and Cole blasted past the Mini Cooper. “Time,” he called out.

  “Ten minutes,” Poncho said.

  “Got it,” Zhang said from the back seat. “IP belongs to a computer owned by the Fontana Regional Library system.”

  Poncho looked up from navigating on his phone. “There’s no town named Fontana around here. I see a Fontana Lake, but”—he tapped on the phone—“it’s like an hour and a half away.”

  “It’s just the name of the library system,” Zhang said. “Covers three counties, including this one. But I can’t trace the IP on a map to a specific computer.”

  “The girl’s phone is here,” Cole barked, gripping the steering wheel so hard it looked like he was about to bend it. “So look for a local library.” He flew over a short hill and took a curve fast enough to make the tires squeal.

  “Already got one,” Zhang said. “Hudson Library.”

  “Poncho?” Cole asked.

  “It’s in Highlands,” Poncho said, reading off his phone. “Eight minutes.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Nick spent another minute or two trying to figure out how to open the file, then gave it up. Someone else with experience in decryption would need to take a look at this. But he knew he had exhausted his own meager resources. He needed to make a phone call.

  Nick closed all the windows he had opened and ejected the flash drive, then stood and put it in his pocket.

  “Are you leaving?” Julia said from her computer.
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  “For now,” Nick said. He folded the land survey and put it in his pocket with the flash drive, then unplugged Annalise’s cell phone and grabbed the phone charger as well. “Did you find the movie?”

  “It’s sad!” Julia said. “They take the whale from his family, and there’s a boy who doesn’t have a family either!”

  Julia’s mother stirred and looked over her novel at them. “What movie?” she said.

  “Free Willy,” Julia said.

  “I mentioned it because of whales,” Nick said. “I’m sorry if I upset her.”

  The mother looked anxiously at Julia, then relaxed. “She’s not upset,” she said.

  “Can I watch it, Mommy? Please?” Julia said.

  Nick tipped a wave at them both and headed to the front door. What he needed was in his car.

  NICK HAD NO reliable cellular service at the cabin and had gotten rid of his landline after Ellie’s death. But he had not cut himself off from the outside world completely. He walked out the library’s front door and headed straight to his car. From his glove compartment he retrieved what looked like a cell phone clipped into a thick case with a fat, stubby antenna the width of a child’s pencil. He made sure the phone was charged, then enabled an app to allow him to use the SatSleeve, which turned his cell phone into a functioning satellite phone. There was good cell service in Highlands, but the SatSleeve made his phone a bit more secure. He had never used it, had kept it only for emergencies. He figured this qualified. He dug in his memory for the phone number he wanted, then dialed it. Overhead a hawk circled lazily on the thermals.

  The phone was picked up on the second ring. “DDA’s office, Danvers speaking,” a woman said.

  “I need to speak with DDA Bhandari, please,” Nick said.

  “The DDA is unavailable right now—”

  “Bottlecap,” Nick said.

  He felt as much as heard the woman’s pause. “Did you say Bottlecap?”

  “Yes,” Nick said. “Give her that word. I’ll wait.”

  Another, much briefer pause, and then the woman said, “Hold, please.” The hold music was Beethoven, he was pretty sure, although he didn’t know the name of the piece.

  Less than three minutes later, the Beethoven was cut off. Then Nick heard a woman’s angry, rasping voice. “You stupid, ball-scratching goat fucker.”

  “Thanks for taking my call,” Nick said.

  “I’m not taking anything, you son of a bitch. And how dare you use that word to get access to me.”

  “It was the only way I knew for certain you would get on the phone.”

  “Tell me you’re in a Turkish prison. No, a Russian prison.”

  “I need your help, Rita.”

  She laughed, a raucous sound that made him think of macaws. “Definitely a Russian prison, then.”

  “My brother was murdered,” Nick said. He hadn’t planned on starting out with that fact, but it was the central issue, wasn’t it?

  Silence on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry, Nick,” Bhandari said.

  Nick was momentarily taken aback. Chitrita Bhandari acting human? He shook it off. “I need to know how he found me,” he said. “How he knew where I live.”

  “He’s your brother.”

  “We hadn’t spoken in twenty years.”

  “Jesus, Nick, what the fuck?”

  “Was he working for you?” Nick said. “Or the military? I know he was a contractor.”

  “How should I know?”

  “I’m off the grid,” Nick said. “Unlisted address. But he found me. Which means whoever killed him can find me too.”

  “Why do you think someone would want to find you?”

  “Jay sent me something,” Nick said. “A field survey of the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia. There’s a flash drive too. It’s encrypted—I can’t open it.”

  “Sent it how?”

  “With his daughter. My niece. She brought it to me.” He realized he was tightening his grip on the phone, forced himself to relax his hand. “She says a small group of men killed her parents and set their house on fire. In Tampa, four days ago. I need help.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In Highlands, North Carolina. I’m at the Hudson Library on Main Street.”

  “Stay there. Don’t fucking move.” The line went dead.

  Nick hung up, closed the SatSleeve app, powered down the phone, and put it back into his car’s glove compartment. He put Annalise’s phone and the charger in there as well. As he was bent down into his car, he heard a large vehicle, a truck or maybe an SUV, pull into the library parking lot. When he straightened up, he saw the vehicle, a black Suburban, pull up to the front door of the library.

  Two men got out of the Suburban—both average height, medium build, short-cropped hair, one white, the other Latino. They wore light jackets that weren’t completely unnecessary at this altitude, although by now the day had warmed into the low seventies. It was more the way both men carried themselves, a certain squared-away military bearing, that caught Nick’s eye. He noted Georgia plates on the Suburban as it drove down the other side of the parking lot, then looked back toward the two men. They were approaching the library doors. The Latino man opened one door, keeping his right hand free. The other man walked in, head sweeping left and right, and the Latino man gave him half a beat and then followed him through the door.

  The easiest thing to do would be to stay out here. It’s what Bhandari had told him to do—ordered, actually. It was that order as much as anything else that led him to instead follow the two men inside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  As soon as he walked back into the library, Nick saw the two men by the computer station, one of them crouched next to Julia. His first instinct was to tell the men to get away from the girl. His second was to turn and walk back outside. But before he could do anything, Julia looked over and recognized him. “There he is,” she said, pointing at Nick. The man crouched next to Julia turned to look at him. So did the Latino man standing near Julia’s mother.

  Nick turned to his left and passed the front desk, heading for a short hallway that led to the periodicals room. As he went by the front desk, he saw a red stainless-steel water bottle standing on the counter, and without pausing he reached out and grabbed it before walking down the hallway. At the end of the hall he stepped into the periodicals room, where magazines and newspapers sat on shelves, covers facing out, and two couches and a few chairs were scattered about the room for readers. There were metal folding chairs leaning up against a couple of walls. No one else was in the room. Good. There was a closed door to the right that Nick knew led to a storage room and, through that, to a long community room at the back of the library. Nick walked to the closed door and opened it a few inches. Then he retreated behind a nearby shelf of National Geographics and crouched low, gripping the water bottle upside down by its neck. He breathed through his open mouth to make as little noise as possible and tried to will his heart to slow down.

  He heard the soft scuffing of shoes on carpet. Someone was coming down the hall, more than one person. A bitter taste flooded his mouth as if he had a penny on his tongue—that was the adrenaline. One of his knees ached from crouching. He ignored it and gripped the water bottle tighter.

  The two men Nick had followed into the library stepped out of the hall, eyes sweeping the periodicals room. Nick’s nerves were taut, yet a familiar calm settled over him, everything reduced to this room and the two other men in it. The taller man saw the door that Nick had left ajar and snapped his fingers at his Latino partner, then pointed at the door. His partner nodded and both men advanced toward the door, passing Nick’s hiding place behind the shelves. The taller man opened the door with his left hand, his right hand reaching underneath his jacket as he stepped through the doorway.

  As soon as the taller man had entered the storage room, Nick rushed the second man. The man’s reflexes were good—he either heard Nick or saw him move out of the corner of his eye and began to
turn toward him, just as Nick swung the stainless-steel water bottle, clubbing the man on the skull with a hollow thok. The man staggered back into another shelf, then fell to the floor, stunned.

  Nick dropped the bottle he had just used as a billy club and grabbed a nearby folding chair. He placed the chair up and under the doorknob of the door leading to the storage room, effectively jamming the door shut. The man on the other side shouted something, then hit the door. The chair held it shut. The man hit it again, but the door held.

  The sound of magazines sliding and falling to the floor gave Nick enough warning to turn and see the Latino man sit up against the shelf and reach into his jacket. Nick took two quick steps and kicked out just as the man pulled a pistol. Nick’s foot connected with the man’s hand and sent the pistol flying, but Nick was off-balance enough for the other man to lash out with his own foot. He kicked Nick in the hip and sent him reeling back against another rack of shelves.

  The man pulled himself to his feet. He had a large purple welt on his forehead from where Nick had hit him with the bottle. In his hand he held a knife. The long blade had a black oxide coating—so it wouldn’t reflect light, Nick knew. Nick had a similar knife, locked in a trunk in his attic.

  The man slashed at Nick’s face, forcing him back. Nick’s hip was a bright-red flare of pain—he couldn’t trust that leg. He grabbed a magazine off a shelf and rapidly rolled it into a tube. The man advanced, jabbing the knife at Nick, who used the rolled-up magazine to smack it away. Then Nick bumped up against a wall—no more room to retreat. The man smiled just before Nick whacked him across the face with his magazine, then stepped in to jab a hand at his throat. The man ducked, and Nick dropped the magazine and grabbed the man’s knife arm.

  They struggled for the knife, caroming off more library shelves, magazines falling to the floor like leaves in a storm. “Hey!” someone shouted. It was the librarian from the front desk, standing in the hallway, hands on her hips. Her look of disapproval vanished and she gaped at the two men fighting over the knife. The man used the distraction to head-butt Nick, the impact sending Nick staggering to the center of the room. The librarian squawked and vanished.