by A. G. Riddle
Richards clicked the mouse again, and a map of Somalia and Kenya appeared. Areas with terrorist activity were highlighted.
“In March of 2016, we received intel that al-Shabaab was planning a large-scale attack on US and African Union forces in the region. The Air Force launched a strike in which manned aircraft and unmanned MQ-9 reaper drones hit an al-Shabaab training camp in northern Somalia. We killed about 150 of their fighters, including their number two. You can have no doubt that al-Shabaab is looking for any opportunity to retaliate. American personnel, of any kind, operating in Kenya will be pursued. For that reason, US embassy personnel must get express permission when traveling outside Nairobi, and in some neighborhoods in the city.
“Your status as non-combatants is likely to have no effect on al-Shabaab. In April 2015 they attacked students at Garissa University. They singled out Christians and shot them. They killed 147 people in the attack.
“Finally, I would like to present the recent decisions of medical and humanitarian organizations I know you respect.”
Richards flipped through his papers; he apparently hadn’t memorized this part of his presentation.
“In May of 2015, Doctors Without Borders evacuated personnel from the Dadaab refugee camp because of security concerns. In total, they evacuated forty-two staff members to Nairobi and closed two of their four health posts.
“In July of 2014, the Peace Corps suspended all activities in Kenya and evacuated all of its personnel because of the security situation.”
Richards looked up from the papers and focused on Elliott. His tone was firm, bordering on aggressive.
“At State, we realize this is a serious outbreak with the potential to spread. Our official recommendation is that American personnel remain in Nairobi, offering support and coordination from there. The Kenyans and WHO personnel will be at far less risk in the field, and, in fact, the presence of American personnel may endanger them.
“If you decide to venture outside Nairobi, we recommend only doing so with Kenyan military forces that include units with combat experience and heavy artillery at their disposal. We would also advise you to wait until the NRO can position a satellite in geosynchronous orbit with the area you’ll be operating in. And we strongly recommend you wait until the Navy can position a vessel with a rapid deployment force within striking distance of your theater of operations.”
Peyton chewed her lip. She knew the recommendations were prudent but also that they would take time—especially the request to the National Reconnaissance Office, where bureaucratic red tape was a fact of life.
“How long would all that take?” Elliott asked.
“Unknown. DOD would have to advise on the RDF and vessel alignment; we’re not privy to their fleet positioning, but it’s safe to assume there are suitable vessels in the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean. NRO would have to feed in on the sat requisition.”
“Can you guess?”
“Maybe seventy-two hours,” Richards said, “but I would again urge you not to go to Mandera at all, and if you do, to wait. Somalia is a failed state. We haven’t had an embassy there since ’91. It closed two years before the Battle of Mogadishu—that’s when the Black Hawk Down incidents took place. Frankly, that’s what you’ll be looking at if al-Shabaab militants find you and engage the Kenyan army. We’ve got a couple hundred US troops at the Mogadishu airport, but I can’t comment on whether they’d be able to assist in an emergency. I know CIA has special operators in Somalia. Also status unknown.”
Elliott looked over at Peyton. They had worked together so long, knew each other so well, that she could sense what he was thinking. She confirmed it with a short nod that silently said, We both know what we have to do.
“All right,” Elliott said, “we’d like to put in the requests to the NRO and DOD and expedite them as much as possible. I’ll have the director make calls.”
“You’re going to wait?” Richards asked.
“No. We’re going to deploy to Mandera with all possible haste.”
Richards shook his head in disbelief.
Elliott held up his hands. “Look, if we don’t stop this outbreak in Mandera, we’ll be fighting it in Nairobi and Mombasa and then in Cairo and Johannesburg and Casablanca. If we can’t stop it in Africa, we’ll be dealing with it here at home, in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Seventy-two hours could mean the difference between a local outbreak and a global pandemic, between a dozen deaths and millions. Right now, infected individuals could be boarding buses, trains, and airplanes. We don’t know who they are or where they’re going. They may well be on their way to infect cities anywhere in the world—cities that aren’t on alert, that have no idea that a deadly pathogen has just touched down within its borders. Our only chance of stopping this outbreak is containing it. That has to happen now, not three days from now. Our people are among the best trained in the world. They need to be there—right now. We’re the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We can’t control this disease over the phone.”
When the conference broke, Peyton spoke privately to the EIS officers she’d selected for deployment.
“You heard the security situation. If any of you feel uncomfortable, I need to know now. I’m not going to put anything in your file. I’ll select an alternate and never say a word about it.”
At one p.m., Peyton made her way downstairs and walked nervously through the lobby, unsure how many of the officers she’d find waiting for her.
Outside, it took her eyes a few seconds to adjust to the sun.
When the scene came into focus, she saw every one of the EIS officers she had selected standing in front of the vans, their duffel bags beside them. She nodded at them, and they loaded up and drove to Dobbins Air Reserve Base.
Less than an hour later, they were on their way to Nairobi.
From a chain link fence that ringed Dobbins ARB, the man who had been following Peyton watched the Air Force transport lift off. When it was out of sight, he typed a message to his superiors:
Subject is en route to target zone.
Chapter 9
In the small flat in Berlin’s Wedding neighborhood, Desmond carefully cut the stitches that held the patch inside the suit jacket. The Savile Row label fell away, revealing the contents of the secret pocket: two prepaid Visa credit cards.
The cards were timely—Desmond was almost out of cash—but he had hoped for more. In particular, he had hoped for some clue about who he was, why he was in Berlin, and most of all, what had happened to him before he’d woken up that morning in the Concord hotel with no memories.
Something about the cards struck him as odd: each had a small vertical scratch after the tenth number. To the common eye, it might look random, but the fact that both cards had the mark raised his suspicion. Beside the mark on the first card were four smaller scratches. The second card had two small scratches to the right of the vertical line, just above the card numbers.
Was it another code? If so, it likely followed the pattern on the dry cleaning coupon—a simple substitution cipher. Add four to each of the first ten digits on the first card and two to the first ten digits on the second card. Ten numbers formed an American phone number.
Desmond drew out the prepaid smartphone and dialed, doing the math for each digit in his head. He listened anxiously as the first droning beep sounded. Another. A third. Then voicemail picked up. To his surprise, he heard his own voice.
“If you’ve reached this number, you know what to do. If you don’t, you’d better figure it out fast.”
When the beep sounded, Desmond paused, his mind racing. Was the voicemail box a sort of digital dead drop for messages to someone else? Or was he supposed to try to access the voicemail? He decided to do both.
“It’s Desmond. I need help.” He almost said his phone number, but stopped. The voicemail could have been hacked by whoever had sent Gunter Thorne to his hotel room, or the police could have found it by now. Revealing his new number might pa
int a target on his back; the police could trace the number to the nearest cell tower and triangulate his approximate location. He needed a digital dead drop of his own—something public and easy to access.
Thinking quickly, he said, “Leave a message on the Berlin Craigslist under Help Wanted—an ad for a tour guide. Use the words ‘highway man’ in your ad. Hurry.”
The call had left him with more questions than answers. Hoping for those answers, he dialed the phone number from the second credit card, and again heard his own voice.
“You’ve reached Labyrinth Reality. If you know us, you know we think talking is the least interesting thing to do with your phone. I mean, come on, you’re holding a location-aware computer in your hand. Do something cool with it.”
At the beep, Desmond ignored his own words, leaving the same message he’d left on the first number.
Labyrinth Reality. He did an internet search for the name and found a website for a startup. The contact page listed an address in San Francisco and a number that was different from the one he had just called. He clicked the Team page, but he didn’t recognize any of the dozen faces. They were all in their twenties or early thirties, several wearing Warby Parker glasses, a few with tattoos. All the pictures were candids: taken during a Ping-Pong game, at their desks, partially covering their faces in the hall. The titles were quirky, and so were the bios.
Desmond clicked the Investors page and read the firms listed: Seven Bridges Investments, Icarus Capital, Pax-Humana Fund, Invisible Sun Securities, and Singularity Consortium. The names seemed familiar, but no concrete memories emerged.
Labyrinth Reality’s product was a mobile app that was location-aware and could be used for augmented reality. Users held their phones up at certain locations, and the app would reveal a digital layer with pictures and virtual items not visible to the naked eye. The app would also supplement the experience with videos and text related to the location. It was used for corporate scavenger hunts and games as well as geocaching. City tour groups were using it in Chicago and San Francisco. The app was positioned as a platform, enabling game developers, corporations, conference organizers, and individuals to create Labyrinth Realities to enhance whatever they were doing.
A banner at the top of the web page urged him to download the Labyrinth Reality app. He clicked the link and waited while the app downloaded. When he launched it, a dialog asked if he wanted to join a private labyrinth or the public space. He clicked private, and it prompted him for a passcode. He thought for a moment, then typed in the second phone number he had called—the one that referenced Labyrinth Reality.
A message flashed on the screen: Welcome to the Hall of Shadows Private Labyrinth. Two icons appeared. To the left was a beast with the head of a bull and the body of a man; to the right was a warrior wearing armor and holding a shield and a sword. The text under it asked:
Declare yourself: Minotaur or Hero
Desmond pondered the question. In some form it had haunted him since he had woken up: what was he? Was he a monster who had killed in that hotel room? He had assaulted the police officers and hotel security guard without hesitation. And he had been good at it; it probably wasn’t the first time he had fought for his life and freedom. His scar-ridden body supported that idea. And in the recesses of his mind, somewhere, he knew that he had done bad things, though he couldn’t remember them.
Yet deep down he still felt that he was a good person. Or maybe that was just what he wanted to be.
The thought brought clarity: he would enter the labyrinth as he wanted himself to be, not as he was or had been.
He clicked the hero icon. The screen faded, and a box popped up: Searching for entrance…
A minute later, the text turned to red and flashed a new message: No entrance found. Continue searching, Theseus. Never give up.
Desmond wondered what it all meant. He did a series of web searches, trying to connect the dots. The labyrinth had first appeared in Greek mythology. Daedalus and his son Icarus had built the labyrinth to hold the half-man, half-beast Minotaur that dwelled at its center. Daedalus was a brilliant craftsman and artist, and his design was so ingenious that he himself had almost gotten trapped within his own labyrinth.
At that moment, Desmond realized what he had suspected ever since he’d heard his own voice on the voicemail recording: like Daedalus, he was trapped in a labyrinth that he himself had constructed. But why? Did he have a proverbial Minotaur—a beast or secret he wished to hide from the world, or to protect the world from? Was he the monster he feared?
And he realized something else. If he had built this labyrinth, he must have known that at some point he would enter it, that he would lose his memories—either by his own choosing or by someone else’s actions. Was the labyrinth an elaborate backup plan? Would it lead him to whatever it was he needed? Would it somehow allow him to get his memories back?
He eased himself up and folded the Murphy bed into the wall. That gave him room to pace in the tiny flat, which was no larger than twelve by twenty feet. The wall opposite the bed held a simple kitchen: a counter with a sink, small refrigerator, stove, microwave, and a TV. The bathroom was a wet room without a single square inch to spare.
Desmond walked to the window and looked down. It was six p.m., and the streets were packed. A layer of cigarette smoke mixed with car, bus, and motorcycle exhaust. The toxic brew drifted up, casting the scene in haze. The sun was low in the late November sky, and it would set soon.
He turned around. The flat’s owner had attached a large mirror to the underside of the bed frame, and with the Murphy bed folded into the wall, the mirror made the space seem larger. Desmond stared at himself: at his toned, muscular face, at his blond, eyebrow-length hair, at the image of a man who was a complete mystery to him. His appearance wasn’t overly remarkable in Berlin—as a fugitive, he would have been far more noticeable in Shanghai or Egypt—but still, he would have to alter his appearance. When night fell, that would be his first task.
At the moment, however, he had to unravel what was happening. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something he needed to be doing.
He focused on what he knew: he had set up the phone numbers and left the voicemail greeting, knowing, or perhaps merely hoping, he would find them. The second voicemail greeting had led him to his own private labyrinth. What did the first phone number lead to? His words in the message had taunted him, saying he’d know what to do. What did he know?
He figured he must have purchased the prepaid credit cards first, then set up the phone numbers to match the credit card numbers. He did a series of internet searches and discovered that the first three digits of the phone numbers corresponded to Google Voice lines. The service was free and included an online control panel where users could access voicemail, forward the number to other phone lines, and more.
That was it: he could access the voicemail from the Google Voice app. He downloaded it to his cell and tried a few password combinations with no luck.
What am I missing?
He searched the suit again, but there were no other hidden pockets, nothing of note. He sat on a small wooden chair by the window to think. The plastic dry cleaning bag lay wadded up in the corner of the room. Through the clear layers, Desmond spotted a pink piece of paper stapled to the top.
He jumped up, ripped the plastic apart, and examined the small slip. It was a carbon copy of the dry-cleaning receipt. The name on the tag was Jacob Lawrence.
Desmond grabbed his phone and entered the name as the password on the Google Voice app. To his relief, it worked.
The application opened and displayed the voicemail mailbox, which contained three messages, all from the same phone number. The first was dated two days before. He clicked it and read the transcript:
I think someone’s following me. Not sure. Don’t call back. Meet me where we met the first time. Tomorrow. 10 a.m.
Desmond clicked the second message, which had been left yesterday at noon.
Where were you? They searched my flat. I’m sure of it. I’m going to the police if you don’t call me.
The last message was from today—at eleven a.m.
You’re all over the news. Did you kill him? Call me or I’m going to the police—I’m serious. I’ll tell them everything you told me and everything I know about you. I’ve given a colleague a folder with all my notes. If something happens to me, it will be in the police’s hands within an hour.
Desmond’s mind raced. Was the person who left these messages an ally or an enemy? One thing was certain: that person knew who he was.
He set his phone up to use the Google Voice number and verified that he was connected to the flat’s WiFi; he wanted his next call to be routed through Google’s servers. The number that had left the voicemails had a Berlin extension. He clicked it from the app and listened as it rang.
A man’s voice answered, speaking in German-accented English. “What happened?”
“We need to meet,” Desmond said.
“No. I want answers—right now. Did you kill that man?”
“No,” Desmond said automatically, still unsure if it was true or not.
“Is this connected to the Looking Glass?”
The Looking Glass. The words instantly struck a chord. The Looking Glass—it meant something to him, but he couldn’t remember what.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes,” Desmond said. “I’ll explain when we meet.”
Silence for a long moment, then, “Someone’s following me. I’m staying with a friend, and I’ve told her everything. She’s got the recordings of our previous conversations. If it’s you—if you searched my flat and if something happens to me, she’s going to the authorities.”