Arch Enemy

by Leo J. Maloney

  “Now let’s have a little talk with Quinn,” said Mick, among the fallen bodies.

  Morgan climbed halfway up the stairs and called out to him. “Quinn!”

  “Stay down there!” He threw down a glass ornament, which shattered against the wall at the turn of the staircase.

  Well, he didn’t have a gun. Morgan could be sure of that. He moved ahead, dodging a book, which sailed above his head.

  “I’m here to save you, you goddamn idiot!” Morgan yelled.

  Quinn retreated into a bedroom and swung the door shut, but Morgan put his foot down before it closed. His quarry, pudgy and redheaded, retreated into the room. When Morgan opened the door and stepped inside, Quinn, screaming a battle cry, came at Morgan with a letter opener.

  Morgan stepped aside to avoid the attack and grabbed the hand holding the tiny blunt knife. With a twist of Morgan’s wrist, the letter opener dropped to the floor, bouncing against the carpet.

  He then turned Quinn around in a choke hold.

  “Would you stop? I’m not here to kill you.”

  “I won’t believe your lies!” he exclaimed. “You’re here to kill me like you did the others.”

  “If I wanted to kill you, don’t you think I’d have done it already?”

  “You just want to make it look like an accident!”

  “I just saved your ass, you ungrateful clown. I’m going to release you, and we’re going to have a conversation, okay?”

  Quinn grunted in assent.

  Morgan let him go. He sprung away and grabbed a statuette from the bookshelf. Quinn swung it against Morgan’s head at a sloth’s pace. Morgan dodged the blow and swept his foot against Quinn’s legs.

  He grabbed Quinn’s lapel when his head was inches from smashing into the sharp edge of the wooden bed frame. Damn, the son of a bitch was heavy. The statuette hit the floor with a thunk. “There’s your accidental death,” said Morgan. “Would’ve been that easy. Now do you believe me?”

  Morgan pulled him to his feet. Quinn backed away, trying to un-rumple his shirt. “Fine, ye don’t wanna kill me. That’s a pretty low bar to clear. Doesn’t mean I should go with ye.”

  “Morgan, we got company!”

  Morgan looked out the window to the front of the house. A car had just pulled up, and the driver’s and passenger’s side doors swung open.

  “What do you say? Are you getting out of here with me or do you want to go with those guys?”

  Quinn peered out the window. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.” He led the way down the stairs. Mick already had the back door open for them.

  “Move your arses!”

  They ran out into the yard. Mick ran on ahead, but Morgan had to slow down to keep pace with Quinn. Mick leapt over the back wall as if it were three feet tall. Quinn needed help. Morgan gave him a boost. He heard the back door open and pushed Quinn over the edge. With one impulse, Morgan cleared the wall and landed catlike on the snow, next to a prone Quinn. Morgan extended a hand and helped him up.

  They ran together along the wall by the moonlight. Morgan looked back to see the beams of two flashlights going over the wall. They were far away. Even at Quinn’s pace, the three of them would make it to the car with time to spare.

  Mick arrived first at the car and opened the driver’s side door.

  “No,” said Morgan, grabbing the keys from Mick. “I’m driving.”

  Mick didn’t argue. He ushered Quinn into the backseat and got in next to Morgan.

  Morgan hit the gas.

  “You!” he barked at Quinn. “Start talking. Who are those people trying to kill you?”

  “Who are you?”

  Morgan kept his eyes on the rearview mirror as he made a tight curve on the narrow road, tires squealing. “Your only friend in the world right now. So you’d better start talking. I know your group found a vulnerability.”

  “Blackrot. And someone was using it to spy on everything from user e-mail accounts to government communication.”

  “I know that,” said Morgan. “Now tell me something I don’t.”

  “The people who first discovered it. The people who have been exploiting it for months. The people who killed my friends. Who tried to kill me.”

  “Those men back there?”

  “Yes. It’s the Legion. The Legion of Erebus.” He said it in what Morgan figured was the most portentous tone he could muster.

  Mick snickered. “Sounds like something out of one of those Dangers and Dragons things.”

  “It’s mythology,” Quinn snipped. “Erebus. God of chaos. Father of Nemesis. Revenge.”

  “Who are these people?” Morgan said before Mick could derail the conversation with his hysterics.

  “Nobody knows. None of them have ever been caught or identified. They’re master hackers—they can do things most of us didn’t even think was possible.”

  Morgan took a right to avoid the town. There was no sign of the pursuing car. “What do they want?”

  “They call themselves freedom fighters. They style themselves as a kind of resistance against corruption in government and corporations.”

  “I’ve heard of that kind of thing before,” said Morgan. “I thought that was all bluster. Nerds playing make-believe. No offense.”

  “There is a lot of that going on, it’s true. I always assumed that was it myself, except a handful of groups of white hat hackers who went around looking for vulnerabilities. But clearly it’s not.”

  “How do you know it’s them?”

  “Because I found them,” said Quinn. “I know how they communicate.”

  “You think you can show my people?”

  “I want protection,” he said. “These people are powerful. They want to kill me.”

  “I can get you all the protection you need,” said Morgan. He sped forward through the dark country. “The sooner you show us how to find them, the sooner—”

  The car came out of nowhere. It slammed into the back of Mick’s Focus, sending it into a spin to slam against a low stone wall that bordered the road. The wall gave way and the car plunged down, though the night air, into the Castle River.

  Chapter 64

  Andrea worked through her lunch hour trying to track down the rogue program. She had to go through the entire registry, correlating the running processes from elements until she isolated the odd one out. It had changed its name to srvdsktpefr.exe, which had enough cogent letter combinations to be plausible but as far as she could tell was gibberish.

  She was more careful this time. Last time, she had probed the program head-on, and it had slipped between her fingers. This time, she looked for other programs that were interacting with it.

  And then she got worried.

  It was accessing things even she couldn’t. Encrypted databases. Financial, operational, personnel data. That little program was going wherever it wanted to, and none of the usual defenses seemed to be able to do anything to stop it.

  This was beyond strange. It was getting uncanny.

  Get out while you still can. Those words made her shudder now.

  Something was very wrong. She couldn’t get the idea out of her head that this program had something to do with Dom’s death.

  She decided she wasn’t going to wait around to find out if she was next.

  Wiping sweat from her forehead, Andrea looked around the office. Everyone was busy at their cubicles, no one paying her any attention. She pulled out the yellow sheet and dialed the number on her phone’s call function. It occurred to her that it might not be the best idea to make this call out in the open, so she got up from her desk and ducked into the disabled bathroom, locking the door behind her.

  Leaning against the white tiles, hand shaking, she hit Send. The phone rang. Someone picked up, but all Andrea heard was the background hiss of the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Who is this?” A woman’s voice. Tough, professional, self-assured.

  “My name is Andrea Nyhan. I work at Acevedo Internation
al. IT division.”

  “Where did you get this number?”

  “I, uh . . .” She felt stupid. “I work—used to work—with Dominic Watson. He, uh, left this number for me. Something about getting out.” The explanation sounded ludicrous to her now. What had she expected?

  “Are you scared for your life?”

  Well, if she hadn’t been before, she certainly was now. “Yes. I am. You can help?”

  “Meet me somewhere so we can talk,” the woman said. “Do you know where Java Jack’s is?”

  “Two blocks down on Congress.”

  “That’s the one. Fifteen minutes. Can you do that?”

  She checked the time. A quarter to three, but she hadn’t taken her lunch break. “Ok. Yes. I can make it.”

  Java Jack’s held a contrasting mixture of professional types reading e-mails on their phones and hipsters typing away on their Macs, working on their novels or Twitter feeds or whatever these people did with their time.

  Andrea’s eyes cast nervously about the café until they landed on an incongruous pair—a serious-looking woman, about fortyish, wearing a stylish white suit jacket, sitting next to a tall professorial type, maybe a little in too good a shape to be an actual professor, in a denim and a flannel shirt. The woman kept her gaze fixed on Andrea, and seemed satisfied when she moved toward their table.

  The woman stood and extended a hand. “Miss Nyhan, thank you for coming. My name is Diana Bloch, and this is my colleague Peter Conley.”

  Andrea was in no mood to mince words.

  “I want to know what’s going on,” she said as she sat down. “And I want to know who the heck you are.”

  The man Conley looked at Bloch, who gave him a tacit go-ahead with a curt nod.

  “We represent an organization,” he said. “An . . . NGO of sorts. We do security and intelligence. We’ve had our eye on Acevedo International for years.”

  Andrea’s heart sank into her gut. “Had your eye how?”

  “We have long known that Acevedo International has engaged in serious criminal activity. Primarily international smuggling of arms and drugs.”

  “I know about the scandal a few years ago,” she said. “I wasn’t with the company then. I thought it was just a few bad apples that had been picked out. Over and done with.”

  “Fall guys,” said Conley. “The whole of upper management is rotten, through and through. Our investigations found that they resumed illegal operations almost immediately.”

  Andrea’s head was swimming. It seemed like a reckoning long in the making. Something that had always nagged at the edge of her mind came rushing to the fore. “I’m not surprised at all,” she said. “To be honest, I sort of think that’s the reason I got the job. People weren’t exactly clawing at each other to work at Ace at that moment.” She bit her lower lip and looked down at the table. “So what does that have to do with Dom? Dominic. Watson. What does he have to do with anything? Why did he leave me your number?”

  “Watson was aiding us in our investigation,” said Bloch.

  Huh. Dom was a mole. He was the last guy she’d expect would do something like this. He didn’t have a political bone in his body.

  “On the day he died,” Bloch continued, “he installed a backdoor in the security system for us that would allow us to conduct electronic surveillance on Acevedo’s servers. We were going to build a case against Acevedo based on the information we got through this opening. Airtight, targeting the entire Board of Directors and all major executives. Take the whole organization down in one swoop.”

  “It had to be all at once,” Conley said. “Anything less, and the rest would just hide the evidence again and we’d be back at square one.”

  Andrea rubbed her temples. “So the elevator . . . thing was not an accident.”

  “It wasn’t,” he said.

  “So Ace upper management killed him? Is that it?” The two shared a meaningful glance. “What?”

  “We don’t believe it was,” said Conley.

  “There’s more to this than just Acevedo,” said Bloch.

  “Does this have anything to do with the note he left me then?” she asked. “Get out while there’s still time. If all he was doing was spying for you, why does it seem that he knew he wasn’t coming back?”

  “Dominic was afraid of something. He wanted out—protection. He never told us from what, but we thought it was from Acevedo itself. Now we’re sure it was something else.”

  She shuddered and looked around the coffee shop, as if to look for spies. It occurred to her that she would have no idea how to spot one. “I found a program,” she said. “In our security subroutines. It’s not supposed to be there. Is that your back door?”

  “It could be,” said Bloch. “The truth is, we lost control of it.”

  “Not to us, you didn’t.” Andrea narrowed her eyes. “Just who the hell is out there?”

  “I think,” Bloch said haltingly, “that it’s better for you not to know.”

  “And I’m supposed to help you?”

  “We can offer you protection,” she said. “From criminal prosecution and . . . other things.”

  “Like you protected Dom?” she said, with stinging indictment.

  “We weren’t aware of that danger then,” Bloch said. “We are now.”

  “This is not making me feel any more confident in you or the situation.”

  “It’s delicate,” Bloch said. “I admit that. A risk remains. But it might be the best option for you. Because before long, the feds are going to roll into Acevedo and scrutinize every dark little corner of that company. Are you sure you want to be there when it happens?”

  No. That wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be that screwed. She hadn’t done anything wrong—except work for a company she suspected was criminal. And she was supposed to put her life in danger for this?

  But maybe there was something she could do. Maybe she could pivot this to her advantage. “Maybe you just help me, and in exchange I don’t tell anyone about you.”

  Bloch seemed more amused than anything. “Do not threaten us. We keep our word if we promise to help you. But threaten us, and you lose the last friends you have in this dangerous game.”

  She wrung her hands. This whole situation was beyond her ken. “All right. Duly chastened,” she said. “I guess that’s the choice that I have. I’d kind of rather survive, so I guess I’m your girl. Remember, my purpose here is not to die. Keeping that in mind, what do I need to do to be part of the team?”

  Chapter 65

  Morgan walked down the hospital hallway with its dreary fluorescent light carrying a cup of hot coffee. He ran his tongue along where one of his lower left incisors had chipped and had cut into his lip. He nodded a greeting to the armed man standing guard at Quinn’s hospital room, one of Mick’s ERU buddies from the Garda Síochána, and walked in.

  Quinn was lying in bed, his heart rate monitor emitting its intermittent beeps, a heart rate reflecting his deep unconsciousness. They had gotten him to a private hospital, courtesy of Zeta—they weren’t going to risk leaving their sole witness in the hands of the public health system. Morgan had gotten off scot-free but for a broken rib and an assortment of bruises, but Quinn hadn’t been wearing a seat belt and caught the worst of the accident. He was rushed into surgery for internal bleeding and a collapsed lung. Now he was stable, and they were only waiting for him to wake up to debrief him. They weren’t about to take any more chances.

  Mick, broken arm in a sling, reclined like a zombie in an uncomfortable chair set against the wall.

  “Hey, asshole. I’m here to relieve your shift. Get out of here. Get some sleep.”

  Mick mumbled something, bleary-eyed, and stood up and shuffled out of the room. Morgan took his seat, still warm, and leafed through the intelligence report he’d received from Zeta, peeking at Quinn from time to time and perking up at any sound. The attackers had failed to kill Quinn before, but they were competent and determined. He questioned whether the a
rmed guards posted in the hospital would be enough to keep them out.

  Quinn stirred. Morgan set down his coffee and reading materials and approached the bed. The patient yawned and moved his jaw. His eyes fluttered open. He tried to sit up and groaned in pain.

  “Easy there. You shouldn’t be exerting yourself.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Hospital,” said Morgan. “We were driven off the road. You took it a little harder than Mick and I did. The nurse will give you all the gory details later. But I can tell you the doctors say that the prognosis is good.”

  “Am I—”

  “You’re safe. We’re paying for your treatment, and we have you protected.” I hope. “How do you feel?”

  “Thirstier than a camel’s arse.”

  Morgan poured him a cup of water from a pitcher by the bed. “Quinn, I know this is sudden, but I need you to tell us what you know as soon as you can. The faster you do, the sooner we can go after the people who are after you.”

  He polished off the cup with a smack of the lips. “Think I can get a cigarette?”

  “No. But I can get you a nicotine patch if you need one.”

  “I’m good,” he said, with a weak wave of his hand. “We can talk. Being that I’d prefer not to die, maybe sooner rather than later might be best.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  “It was after we stopped talking to each other, the group. They all wanted to leave it alone. I kept digging. And I found a pattern in the data. In the way they were using Blackrot. It allowed me to track their usage.”

  “Did you find them?”

  “I got close. But with a little more time, I know . . . I . . . can . . .”

  Quinn trailed off and his eyes rolled up into his eyelids.

  “Quinn?” He’d fallen asleep midsentence. Morgan patted his cheek. “Quinn?” No, something was wrong. Morgan hit the nurse call button.

  The intervals on Quinn’s heart monitor grew longer. He was unconscious, going into a state of deep relaxation.

  And then it went beyond relaxation. Morgan knew a dangerously low heartbeat when he heard one.