The Shadow File

by AC Fuller

  But they never emerged from the water. We walked for another three or four minutes before I lost sight of the bridge.

  They were dead.

  30

  Exhausted and muddy, we trudged toward La Jaiba. Though a few cars passed us without slowing, we didn't see anyone along the road. As we neared the city, traffic picked up and we got some odd stares, but no one stopped and few people even slowed long enough to get a good look at us.

  "We need a colectivo," Greta said.

  "To where?" I asked.

  "Anywhere."

  "What about our documents?"

  Greta reached into her fanny pack and pulled out our passports. "They're wet, but you can still read them," she said, flipping through them. "Our visas are soaked and muddy, but if we can get a hair dryer…"

  "Money?"

  "Wet, and a bit dirty, but money is money."

  For the first time since I'd seen Innerva shot, I thought of the USB drive. I pressed my left pocket, then my right, and felt the small bulge. Pulling it out, I handed it to Greta. "Stow this in your pack."

  "Do you think it'll still work?"

  "Probably. The connector is hidden away, and the rubber seal seems solid." I was tempted to tell her all the details of my conversation with Innerva, but that could wait.

  When we hit the commercial district, we started getting funny looks. I'd wiped the mud out of my eyes and off my face on the walk, and so had Greta. But we were still covered in a dark brown crust, and were soaked.

  After walking a few blocks, Greta stopped a young woman who was getting out of a car. "¿Dónde podemos conseguir un colectivo? ¿Un coche?"

  The only word I understood was colectivo, but I knew she was asking where we could find a ride. I expected the woman to jump back, as anyone would when approached by two mud monsters on the sidewalk. But the friendliness of the Cuban people won out even over yanquis looking like Swamp Thing.

  The woman stepped back slightly, then said, "¿Están bien? ¿Qué te ha pasado?"

  "Estamos bien," Greta said. "Nuestro coche quedó atrapado en el barro fuera de la ciudad, y caímos en el barro tratando de sacarlo." As she spoke, she gestured with her hand, making it into a car getting stuck in the mud with a loud Thlock!

  "¡Oh no! Dos cuadras allí, luego gire a la izquierda. Puedes conseguir un colectivo en la estación de tren."

  "Gracias," Greta said, taking my hand.

  "What did you tell her?"

  "Two blocks up, then a left. We can get a car at the train station."

  Walking was still a struggle and Greta was leading the way, clearly in better shape.

  "What did you tell her?" I asked again.

  "That our car got stuck in the mud, and we fell in trying to free it."

  "Good lie, but we need a better one for our driver."

  We made it to the train station and, luckily, didn't have to wait in line. Greta arranged for a ride to Havana, telling our driver we were tourists who'd gotten into a fight with our traveling companions. They'd left us by the side of the road and taken our bags, and we'd fallen in the mud running after the car. It was a crappy story, but as long as we were paying cash, he didn't seem worried about it. Greta pretended to haggle a little so as not to be too suspicious, and minutes later we were cruising west for the long drive across Cuba.

  Once we both felt sure that we weren't being followed, we dozed off.

  When I awoke, night had fallen and a bright moon lit the back of the van. I stared out at it, realizing that I really was alive. I hadn't drowned or been shot. I wondered if Greta was awake yet, and how I'd know if she was. Then she settled the question by speaking.

  "Alex, what did Innerva mean when she said to hold down command and two? Or whatever it was she said after they shot her."

  She grimaced when she said the last part, and I closed my eyes. The image of Innerva crumpling on the lawn was one I'd be stuck with for a while.

  "I don't know," I said. "But she told me more about the USB drive, about what the hack will actually do. What her plan is."

  For the next half hour, I repeated as best I could remember everything that Innerva had said to me in the house. Every time I moved any part of my body, a crust of half-dried mud cracked and scattered dust. I felt like I'd been baked in clay, and I truly wished that was the worst sensation I was feeling at that moment. Unfortunately, the guilt, fear, and dread were way ahead.

  Greta stared out the window in silence as I spoke. When I finished, she sighed deeply. "There's no good answer here."

  "I agree," I said. "I need to think."

  "Tell me again, exactly what did she say about the two versions?"

  "That's the problem. She didn't say exactly. After going on and on about destroying everything, she said that sometimes she wondered what James would want her to do. That sometimes she agreed with me and my 'few bad apples' argument. That she'd...I don't remember exactly. I've barely slept in three days and...she said something like 'One version burns the whole system to the ground, the other version does less.'"

  "So there are two versions of the hack on the USB drive?"

  "I guess...maybe...but there's no way of knowing. At least, there's no way you and I are gonna figure out in the back of this car."

  As night turned to morning, the moon disappeared and the darkness gave way to a pale pink and grey sky. We didn't speak much. We both knew what the other was thinking. Besides replaying the events of the last few days, we were thinking about the USB drive. About what we should do with it. About whether we should do what Innerva asked us to do.

  We had a decision to make, but first we needed to get out of Cuba.

  By late morning, we were twenty miles outside of Havana. "Clothes," I said to Greta. "Can you ask him for his help?"

  Greta leaned forward and made conversation with the driver for a few minutes, asking finally, "¿Podemos parar por un poco de ropa?"

  The man smiled and took an exit, stopping at a small clothes store where we found shorts and colorful shirts that fit well enough to be a major upgrade from the mud-caked clothes we'd been wearing. Greta found a nice pair of walking flats, and I settled for a pair of basketball shoes that were a size too big.

  After a stop in the restroom, where we washed our faces and tried to comb the remaining mud out of our hair with our fingers, we could pass for typical grubby tourists.

  Next, we stopped by our casa, but only long enough to retrieve our bags and Greta's phone. We left a stack of bills on the counter and snuck out without seeing Maria.

  By noon, we were standing at the ticket counter at the Havana airport.

  Part 3

  31

  Buying tickets was easier than I expected. We had the equivalent of $2,000 left, and we spent two-thirds of it on two one-way tickets leaving that evening, stopping at JFK, then connecting via a flight to Seattle at seven the next morning.

  We spent about thirty bucks on a couple large bottles of duty-free rum, and boarded the plane feeling as close as we could to regular American tourists returning from an action-packed vacation.

  My phone was still in the chicken graveyard in Bosque de la Habana, but Greta's was out and plugged into the charger between the seats by the time I sat down. Besides doing news for a living, I'm a news junkie, and I couldn't relax until I knew what was going on in the world.

  By the time the plane took off, the magical glowing apple appeared as her phone powered on, but with no cell reception and no Wi-Fi, it was nothing more than a fancy calculator and paperweight.

  As we took off, I leaned in close to Greta. "We need to talk about Innerva. About the USB drive."

  "Hang on," she said. "Wait'll they turn off the seat belt sign."

  I sat and fidgeted for several minutes until we got that soft ding, at which point Greta undid her seatbelt and said, "Follow my lead."

  I followed her back to the rearmost row of the plane, where she approached an older couple who had the two seats on the left.

  "Um… excuse me,
" she said, in a tone much softer and more vulnerable than her normal voice, "I hate to bother you, but do you think you could switch seats with my husband and me? We're in the middle of the plane, and I kind of think I need to be right next to the, ah, lavatory. In my… condition." She cupped a hand protectively over her lower belly, and the older woman's face lit up like a slot machine.

  They couldn't give us their seats fast enough.

  As we settled into our new seats, before I could even ask, Greta said, "There. Now you know nobody's behind us listening, and if they had anyone beside or in front to eavesdrop on us, they're ten rows away with no excuse to get closer."

  I stared at her in dumbfounded amazement. It occurred to me to wonder how I ever got through these situations without her.

  "Anyway," Greta said, "what exactly is on your mind?"

  "Innerva's instructions about the drive. I'm thinking we have a decision to make, and fast. Have you thought any more about it?"

  "Since we talked in the car, I keep coming to a dead end. We don't know what she meant when she said to hold down command and two. Tell me again what she said to do."

  "Just plug it into any Wi-Fi-connected computer and double click the file. Everything would run from there. That's what she said initially. I—"

  I paused for a moment as a tall man made his way down the aisle toward the back of the plane. He stared at me for a moment, but I got the sense that it was the kind of blank stare one adopts in small spaces like airplanes, not the menacing stare of one of Amand's men.

  When he shut the door to the lavatory, I continued, "Initially, she just said to double click it and everything would run. So—"

  "So she was definitely giving you new directions after she got shot, based on changing circumstances."

  "I guess," I said, "but the only thing that had changed was that she'd been shot." I sighed deeply. "Neither of us know anything about computers or hacking. We're not going to figure this out. We can assume that holding down 'command two' will give us an alternate version of the program, but we're not going to be sure. When we get back to Seattle we—"

  "If we get back to Seattle," Greta interrupted. "Amand may be there to greet us at JFK. And, if he's not, you can bet he'll have people watching The Barker, watching our apartment. Maybe even at the Seattle airport. He probably doesn't know about the USB drive, but it doesn't seem like his style to leave any loose ends."

  I knew where she was headed with this. "You're saying that if we're going to plug in the USB drive, we need to do it at JFK."

  Greta nodded. "Or before. But I'm still not sure we should do it."

  The man came out of the bathroom and wandered slowly up the aisle, not glancing back. When he reached his seat, a woman kissed him on the cheek and handed a baby to him, convincing me that he was a tourist. Few babies work in black ops.

  When we hit cruising altitude, I said, "Lemme use your phone. I have a few ideas."

  Greta handed me her phone, and I entered my credit card to log into the plane's Wi-Fi.

  A few dozen texts arrived first, but I ignored them and opened a browser. I ran a quick search for Greyson Systems and found a new article on Tech Triune, the blog that had broken the news of the ransomware attack.

  I scanned it and my eyes quickly landed on the important paragraph.

  Since the initial revelation of the ransomware attack against Greyson Systems four days ago, Tech Triune has learned that the attack is much broader in scope. Though the full extent isn't yet known, a source with knowledge of the hack indicates that many more companies may be involved. At this time it's unclear whether all of them have been threatened with similar consequences.

  After a look at the homepages of CNN, Fox News, and The New York Times, I concluded that the story of the ransomware attack still hadn't broken in a significant way. Any news organization that learned its scope would have led with the news, which meant that they didn't know about it.

  Somehow, Tech Triune was getting snippets of information, likely from a source at one of the affected companies. But the big news outlets read the smaller ones, often piggybacking on their stories and throwing time, money, and reporters at the stories to flesh them out.

  This was probably happening now, in newsrooms across the country.

  I showed Greta the article from the Tech Triune. "If they have this, it will break nationally within twenty-four hours. All the big papers read them and—"

  "We can't control any of that. We need to decide about the USB drive."

  "We will, but first I need to check a few more things."

  I checked our homepage at The Barker, more out of habit than anything else. Besides being a little embarrassed by the triviality of most of the articles on our homepage, the site seemed to be in order.

  Then Greta and I scrolled through her texts together to see if anyone had tried to reach me using her number. Most of the messages were for Greta, and work related, but Bird and Mia had both sent messages asking me to check in.

  There was also a text from my lawyer, who'd been in Nevada helping Quinn Rivers with her legal issues.

  Hey there, Greta. Been trying to get hold of Alex. Called his office, tried his cell. Left three messages. Where is he? Need to talk to him about Quinn. Have him call me ASAP.

  Quinn's legal issues weren't high on my priority list at that moment, but just seeing her name gave me an idea.

  I opened Greta's Facebook app, found the profile of Smedley Vegas, then composed a private message.

  I've got an old friend from Bangalore. I'm helping her with some computer stuff and she gave me a USB drive that she said will fix my machine. But she said to hold down "Command" and "Two" when plugging it into the USB port. Can you tell me how that will change the program that will run from the USB drive?

  -Alex

  Smedley Vegas had no profile picture and only one post—a long Facebook live video that captured a woman dressed a little like Han Solo running from, and eventually surrendering to, the Nevada Highway Patrol.

  Of course, Smedley Vegas was actually Quinn Rivers, the woman who'd helped me with the hard drive that got James killed, the hard drive that had started this whole mess. She'd killed the women who pulled the trigger on James, and I knew that, if she ever had the chance, she'd help me.

  But it was a long shot. More than a long shot, actually.

  It was almost certain that Quinn wouldn't get the message. Although she was a hardware expert, she distrusted social media. She had only set up the Facebook account to livestream her arrest and to message me a single time.

  She wasn't the kind of person who browsed Facebook for cute videos of cats or school pictures of her extended family. In fact, she'd probably never speak to me again if she even knew that I was using an airplane Wi-Fi connection to message her through a cell phone that might well be compromised, and was using the world's largest social network to do it.

  Plus, there was the fact that she was still in jail. My lawyer was working like mad to get her better conditions while she was incarcerated, and to spring her as soon as possible. But I doubted she had been able to get Quinn computer access. And, even if she had, I doubted Quinn was using it to check Facebook.

  I let Greta read the message before sending it. "Doubt she'll get it," I said.

  "But worth a shot. If she does get it, do you think she'll know what you're talking about?"

  "She'll know I mean Innerva, and, if she has any Internet access in jail, she'll have heard about the attack."

  "Maybe she can explain something about it that will make things click."

  I was about to open up the browser again to do a deeper search into the ransomware attack when a new text arrived. It was from a number that wasn't in Greta's contacts.

  When I saw the picture, I froze.

  Greta must have seen the look on my face. "Alex? What?"

  I handed her the phone and followed her eyes.

  The text contained a single picture of Innerva, tied to a board. Her eyes were closed
but her head was lifted slightly off the board, making me think she was alive. She wore the same clothes she'd been wearing when she walked out of Grandma Martinez's house in Cuba. The only difference was that her shirt was tattered and covered in blood.

  A second text arrived, this time only the words "She's alive."

  "She's alive," I whispered.

  "That's great...I mean…" Greta let out a long sigh. "But that means..."

  She trailed off, and my thinking caught up with hers a second later. "Who sent the picture, and why?"

  We stared at each other for a long moment, then her phone dinged with another text.

  The message had no content other than a single picture of a giant wood-burning stove. I compared the numbers the texts had come from. Of course, they were the same, and I knew exactly what that meant.

  Amand's story from our chat in Pioneer Square.

  I zoomed in on the image, scanning for marks on the stove, for any detail that might tell me something about it. But there was nothing. I swiped back at the picture of Innerva, studying the background of the image. When I saw a corner of the stove behind her, I knew.

  Amand was threatening to torture her.

  32

  "Oh God, no." I handed Greta the phone.

  "I don't get it. Is this some kind of joke?"

  I hadn't lied to Greta about my meeting in Occidental Park with Amand, but I hadn't told her about his threatening story about the wood stove. I'd left it out. Maybe I hadn't wanted to scare her, or maybe I hadn't wanted to scare myself.

  But now I told her about it.

  When I was finished, she looked pissed. "I'm sorry," I said. "I should have told you about that sooner. If I had, maybe you never would have let me come on this ridiculous trip, or maybe—"

  "I'm not mad at you. It's not like we didn't know how diabolical these guys are. They tortured you. I just want to stab Amand through the face with an ice pick."