Darknet

by Matthew Mather

  Eamon had apologized profusely. Barbara had insisted that he and Jake already had a deal going, that he and his guys just wanted to talk. And who was Eamon to refuse someone like Barbara? Jake wasn’t mad at him, not anymore. After all, he’d dragged his brother into this situation.

  Eamon still only half-believed Jake’s explanation that some machine was behind it. Jake had spent the afternoon going over it with him, explaining the memory key from Donovan with the banking algorithms, the copy of the Bluebridge core Sean gave him.

  Eamon was most interested in the banking algorithms, especially when Jake mentioned they might be able to use them to steal millions. He suggested it could be a way to pay back Barbara. It wasn’t a bad idea, but it wasn’t quite so simple. They’d need to hack into the trading offices of some of the world’s largest banks. It wasn’t something Jake or Dean had any idea how to do.

  Still, it had felt good to fight back. At least Jake had been able to channel some rage into hitting that mafia goon.

  “So whose fault was it?” Elle asked. “Was it these Bluebridge guys who framed you?” She got up from the table and walked over to the bathroom.

  At least Elle finally believed it was all a set-up. That was a huge relief.

  Anna’s tiny snores echoed in the next room, the adjoining door between the two rooms left ajar, the sound a balm to his soul.

  Two weeks ago his life had revolved around some imaginary number, some amount of money he needed in the bank before he could change his career, his life. It had taken this craziness to make him realize how wrong he’d been, what was really important.

  All Jake cared about was in this motel—his family, his wife and his baby girl. “We’re going to get that place in Virginia, sweetheart, when this is all over, I swear.”

  “That doesn’t matter now.” Elle touched his arm, her fingers gentle. “Who hit you, baby? Tell me.”

  Splashing water onto his face, Jake leaned his elbows onto the sides of the sink and hung his head. “It’s complicated.” He felt like a rat at the bottom of a sinking ship. “It was some mafia guys. Danny Donovan was mixed up with them, they want me to get their money back.”

  “What does that have to do with you?”

  “They think I’m the one who brokered their deal,” Jake replied. “I told you, the guys at Bluebridge have technology that can impersonate people. They made these mafia guys think they were dealing with me.” He still hadn’t told Elle how powerful Bluebridge itself was…that they thought it was operating on its own.

  “Isn’t that fraud?” Elle frowned. “I mean, can’t you explain it to them?”

  “They weren’t in much of an explaining mood yesterday, honey.”

  Elle put her arm around his shoulders and he turned his head to kiss her arm. They’d barely touched each other the past month.

  “We’re going to figure this out, Jake.” Elle rubbed his neck. “Eamon really cares about you. He’s sweet. He came with sandwiches for Anna and me.”

  “You be careful, you don’t know him like I do.” He might not blame his brother for the showdown yesterday, but that didn’t mean he was feeling warm and fuzzy about him. He’d decided to trust Eamon, yes, but there were limitations. “He was here? When?”

  “When you were sleeping. Said he wanted to apologize.”

  Something started ringing. Jake leaned out of the bathroom doorway. It was the encrypted VOIP phone Dean gave him. Only Dean and Eamon knew the number. He stepped into the room and looked at the number displayed. It was his brother. “Hello?”

  “How you doing, Jake? Feeling any better?”

  “Good.” Jake hesitated. “What’s up?”

  “Can you come out?”

  “What for?” Jake looked at Elle and mouthed, “Eamon.” She nodded. “Elle said you came by.”

  “I wanted to apologize again. And I have something to show you, might be important.”

  “Can you tell me on the phone?”

  “Don’t trust these things. I need to show you. I’m three blocks down at my buddy’s office. If I leave I won’t be able to get back in. Seriously, I need to show you something.”

  It sounded like his brother, and Dean had said these phones were secure. Still, it was better to be cautious. “Want me to bring the leftovers from this morning?”

  “Bagels and lox?” Pause. “Naw, not day-old salmon. Gross. Just come on over.”

  Jake glanced at the plastic boxes in the garbage. “Sure, where?”

  ▲▼▲

  It looked like some kind of lab. Refrigeration units lined one wall, while rack-mounted servers lined the other. In between was a row of wooden benches, and Eamon was sitting at the one in the center. Eamon waved and nodded, walking over to the door to buzz him in through the glass doors.

  It was a Wednesday, but nobody else was there.

  They were alone.

  The door clicked shut behind Jake.

  “So what’s up that’s so important?” Jake asked.

  He’d seen this building a hundred times before as a kid—a squat red brick building with no exterior signage. Sean had told him it was a command center for nuclear submarines. If it had been true back then, it wasn’t anymore. It looked like a research center. Eamon had texted him the external key codes to get into the building. Jake wondered what this place had to do with his brother.

  “I’m really sorry about Joey Barbara,” Eamon said straight away.

  Jake hadn’t ever heard his brother say he was sorry about anything before, but he must have apologized a dozen times already. It wasn’t like it was the first time he’d been subjected to a beating because of his brother. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I don’t think Tomasz’s ever been hit by anybody,” Eamon laughed. “At least, not anybody alive.”

  “Tomasz?”

  “The big guy you punched. You still got balls, little brother.” Eamon ruffled Jake’s hair. “Tell me that didn’t feel good.”

  “Okay, enough.” Jake backed away. He wasn’t in the mood for this. “So what did you want to tell me that was so important?”

  Taking a deep breath, Eamon exhaled slowly, rubbing his eyes. He sat at one of the benches and leaned on the table. “I know how you see me. Trouble. You don’t trust me—”

  “You have to earn trust.” Jake slumped onto the bench across from Eamon. “Stuff like today—”

  “Doesn’t help. I know. There was a lot of time to think on the inside. I’m trying to change, Jake, I just don’t know how. Growing up, you had your Auntie Anna, your foster care worker. Sure, she tried to help me when she could, but it wasn’t the same…”

  Was there some angle to this? Jake shrugged. “You can’t go blaming other people for the things you do. You have to take responsibility for your own actions.”

  “I am!” Eamon slammed the table. “I did. I just spent five years in jail. Five years. You don’t think I paid for what I did? I paid my debt.”

  Jake held his hands up. “Okay, so you paid your debt.”

  “That five years you’ve been out here, having a family, a baby girl, a beautiful wife...” Eamon buried his head in his hands. “You know what I’d give to have your life? I have nobody. Nobody, Jake. What have I been doing with my life?”

  Jake wanted to say they had each other, that family was still important to him, but he held back. “You made your choices,” he said.

  “I did, but I don’t want that old life anymore.” Tears glimmered in Eamon’s eyes.

  Jake had never seen his older brother cry. “You don’t have to go back to it. You can change, Eamon.”

  “Oh yeah?” Eamon looked Jake in the eyes. “I get out, and wham, this Joseph Barbara guy is breathing down my neck. The head of the Genovese mafia family, threatening my family. Of course I stuck up for you, but they threatened my boys…”

  “Your boys?”

  “Mick and Fumbles, my guys, you know.” Eamon wiped his eyes. “I wanted to get out, fly straight, but here I am stuck right back in it
. Aiding and abetting a fugitive…that’s what I’m doing by helping you. You know that, right? There’s a warrant out for me now, too.”

  Jake leaned back and closed his eyes. He’d been so wrapped up in his own head, he hadn’t spared a moment to think about his brother’s situation. “You’re right.” He opened his eyes. Eamon was staring at him.

  “You know how long I’ll go to jail?” Eamon asked. “Third strike. They’ll put me in a deep dark hole until I’m an old man. And that’ll be my life.”

  For perhaps the first time, Jake saw pain in his brother’s eyes. “You don’t have to help me, Eamon. I appreciate it, but maybe it would be better—”

  “No way.” Eamon shook his head. “No way I’m giving up on my little brother.” He pointed his index finger at Jake. “I’m sorry for everything, but you’re still my brother. And this time, I’m going to do right by you. We’re going to fix this, Jake.” He pointed his finger at the table. “But when we’re done, I’m leaving all of this behind.”

  “Okay,” Jake whispered. He wasn’t used to having his brother stick up for him. It was a new feeling. He liked it. And Jake believed Eamon, believed the sincerity in his eyes. “Okay, thank you. Now”—he glanced around the office—“what is this place?”

  “What’s what place?”

  Jake fished in his pocket for the VOIP cellphone to call Dean. “This place, why did you ask me to come here?”

  “I didn’t ask you to come here.” Eamon frowned. “You asked me.”

  The hair pricked on Jake’s arms. “No, you asked me.” But even as he said it, he knew the truth.

  It was the machine.

  Bluebridge.

  Why hadn’t he asked more personal questions? Used the one-time pad Dean had sent? A part of him hadn’t really believed that this thing could fool him, successfully masquerade as someone he knew.

  Now he believed.

  But now might be too late.

  The realization dawned on Eamon at the same time. He swore under his breath, his eyes wide.

  Jake ran to the door, pulled on it. Locked. He hit the door buzzer, but it was no good. Started banging against the glass, grabbing a chair and pounding with it. The Plexiglas was at least two inches thick. Unbreakable. What kind of lab was this?

  As if answering his question, an electronic voice said, “Please exit the building. A level 3 biological outbreak has been detected. You have sixty seconds before decontamination.”

  The lights dimmed and klaxons sounded.

  “Warning. The doors will lock in sixty seconds and biological sanitation will begin. This is lethal to all life forms. Please vacate the premises.”

  Jake stared at the strobing orange lights overhead.

  “Oh God.”

  30

  GenTec Offices

  Schenectady

  “Yes, the doors are locked, Jake,” Cormac chuckled.

  He settled into the leather of his Buick rental and glanced out the tinted windows at the GenTec Life Sciences building. He tried to find a comfortable angle. His back itched and burned. Cradling his hardened and rubberized laptop on the steering wheel, he got ready for the end of the show. Sirens wailed from the building. One of Eamon O’Connell’s guys—the one who’d dropped him off—exited his car, gun out, clearly wondering what the heck was going on. In ten minutes, the place would be swarming with police and fire engines.

  But in one minute, Jake O’Connell and his brother would be dead.

  On the laptop’s screen, Cormac watched as Jake and Eamon stared dumbfounded at the alarms and flashing lights above and around them. It was a grainy black-and-white surveillance camera feed from inside. Cormac smiled. “What now, Jake?” he whispered.

  On cue, Jake picked up a chair and started bashing it against the Plexiglas wall.

  “Nope, that’s not going to work,” Cormac sniggered, munching on a handful of freeze-dried green beans. “Fifty seconds, Jake.”

  Beside Jake, Eamon pulled out his gun.

  Cormac watched, smiling. “Bullet resistant.”

  Then Jake did something Cormac hadn’t expected. Jake turned away from the Plexiglas walls, toward the server racks on the other side of the room. Shaking his head, he took the gun from Eamon and pointed it in the other direction. They walked off camera. Cormac tried to swivel the camera around, but he could only catch the edge of them.

  Cormac put down the green beans. “What are you up to?”

  The gun discharged six times. Jake fired at the ceiling, and then the brothers started pulling on something. Cormac sat upright. “Twenty seconds, Mr. O’Connell.”

  Jake and Eamon disappeared from the screen.

  Right on time, the image on-screen hazed over with the biological decontaminant, as the room was flooded with a lethal dose of toxins. Cormac flipped his laptop closed and looked at the building.

  Was it over?

  Cormac watched the seconds and minutes tick by. Next to the building, Eamon O’Connell’s guy stared at the door. A distant whine of fire engines. Cormac started his engine, and was putting the car in gear when two figures staggered out of the building’s fire exit.

  “I don’t believe it,” muttered Cormac.

  It was Jake and Eamon. Cormac watched wide-eyed as they jogged to the waiting car and got inside. Finishing putting his car into gear, Cormac put his foot down and started off.

  They must have climbed out through the ventilation. It was the only way.

  He had to hand it to him. This Jake kid was resourceful. Kept a cool head. Even after Cormac killed those pilots back at Bear Mountain—even emptied the fuel from the airplanes—Jake had found a way to escape. He was determined, never gave up, so Cormac wasn’t really that surprised he found a way out this time as well.

  But it wasn’t Cormac’s idea.

  Cormac had warned his employer that a stunt like this would create too many loose ends, but the old man wanted it to look like an accident. Cormac’s employer had wanted it to look like Jake was breaking into GenTec when something went wrong. The fact that it was a company owned by Bluebridge wasn’t lost on Cormac.

  Cormac scratched his neck and grimaced, his fingers testing underneath the bandage.

  This whole thing was getting a little too odd. Cormac had never worked for an employer like this one. The old man would call him at all hours with questions and asking opinions. Sometimes the questions were complex, but often they were banal. Obvious.

  What did it mean, the old man had asked the day before, when a reporter said the President’s policy on the Middle East was designed to split Islamists into dozens of splinter groups? Cormac had explained that it was a joke. Sarcasm. That they were making fun of a policy that seemed designed to make the situation worse.

  But the old man didn’t get sarcasm, seemed crippled by a literal mind.

  An old baby.

  It sounded odd, but that’s the image that formed in his head when he talked to the old man. Like he was talking to a seventy-year-old baby—and that’s how it felt, like somehow he was babysitting.

  Strange.

  But as long as it paid well, strange didn’t bother Cormac.

  One thing that did bother him was that his client was getting more desperate. When he started out with him a year ago, the jobs had been surgical in their precision, but things were getting messy. Cormac had seen it before. Knew when it was time to get out. The old man on the phone never sounded the least bit desperate though, which meant it was time to get out, but not quite yet.

  Cormac was happy Jake wormed his way out of this one. It wasn’t often, but sometimes a job got personal. It cost a huge amount of money to keep what had happened in Canada quiet. Cormac’s own money. He rubbed the bandage on his neck again, the topmost plaster on the second degree burns covering half his back.

  His skin was literally in this game.

  It would feel satisfying to put a bullet between Jake’s eyes. Or maybe something more personal. In any case, it was time for Plan B.

  �
�▼▲

  Jake slammed the door to the motel room shut behind him and Eamon.

  Elle was sitting on the bed waiting for them. “Shh, Anna’s asleep,” she scolded, pointing to the door to the adjoining room.

  Outside the windows, fire engines wailed over the warble of police sirens. Looking at Eamon and Jake with their backs to the wall, she added, “Is that for us?”

  Jake pulled his VOIP phone out of his pocket and started dialing Dean’s number. “No.”

  Eamon pushed the blinds open an inch. Peered out. “We gotta get out of here, though, and fast.”

  “Can we trust them?” Jake motioned at Eamon’s buddies, who stood outside on the balcony.

  “Of course,” Eamon replied. “You know Mick and Fumbles, they’re my guys from the neighborhood. We’re family. You can trust them with your life.”

  Jake nodded. “You'd better be sure of that.” Dean picked up on the first ring. Jake hit the speakerphone button. In front of him he had the one-time pad Dean gave him. “Six-two-one,” he said aloud.

  A pause on the other end. “Eight-nine-eight,” Dean’s voice responded.

  Jake checked his pad. Eight-nine-eight was the correct sequence.

  “Jake?” Dean said over the phone. “Everything okay?”

  A police siren howled outside, so close it sounded like it was in the parking lot. Jake tensed, his hand gripping the phone. The siren deepened in tone and grew softer, the police cruiser moving away.

  “Why did we get into a fight when we met?” Jake asked, still cautious.

  Pause. “Because my name was Albany. You hated Albany. Still hate Albany.”

  Eamon looked at Jake, who shrugged. “And what’s the only thing I hated more?”

  There was no pause this time. “Your dad.”

  Satisfied it was Dean, Jake growled, “I thought you said these phones were secure. I was almost killed again, my brother too this time.”

  Elle put one hand to her mouth. “You didn’t tell me that.”