by Mark Davis
“I need to assimilate the data from Thor’s stick,” Ian said.
Ian clicked away as long strings of code filled a smaller screen on the side of the wall.
“There,” he said. “We’re in the dark web now.”
The code moved down the screen and resolved. The image on the large screen popped back out to a wider aperture of the Northern Hemisphere and animated a green line from Reykjavik to somewhere in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.
“Can you netstat this to the Hommelvik IP?” Thor asked.
“Just did,” Ian said. “When I run a tracer, the link to the American IP is only stronger,” Ian said. “That can be traced …”
He clicked some more.
“ … to a standard Gmail account.”
“What does that tell us?” Bowie asked.
“It tells us that after the owner of this IP address built an online relationship with his victims, he taught them basic security techniques,” Nasrin said. “Standard drop box, right?”
“Right,” Ian said. “You communicate by leaving a draft message in a Gmail draft’s folder, then delete once read. Leaves no metadata traces, no IP address behind, although we can easily—”
The officer in the back of the room ahemed again.
Ian worked some more and an address came up, “freyja.onion.”
“Dot onion?” Nasrin asked.
“A pseudo top-level domain on Tor,” Ian said.
“You might as well tell me it’s a bloody rag on Mars,” Nasrin said.
“Tor is an Internet address that works, but doesn’t register in the global domain name system,” Thor explained. “To put it simply, onion routing is hard to trace and heavily encrypted. Fortunately, all those hackers out there are oblivious to the virus that NSA—”
The lady officer gave another loud “ahem” and now it was Thor’s turn to shut up.
“Show us the IP,” Bowie said.
The Earth expanded again, this time the image swelling toward the East Coast, the Chesapeake Bay, then Washington D.C., rolling north to a large technical-looking complex with several water towers surrounded by the perfect rectangles of a suburb of row houses in straight lines.
“Cheeky bastard,” Ian said.
“Fort Meade, home of the NSA,” Thor said.
“You’re telling us that the NSA is behind this?” Nasrin asked.
“Can’t be,” Bowie said.
A few more clicks, a long string of numbers—IP address, GPS coordinate—ran across the URL bar.
“Looks like we just caught him,” Ian said.
The image reduced again to a strip mall with cars parked within diagonal lines.
Ian clicked furiously, and web images from the inside of a hipster coffee house flashed by, with candid shots from an online review site of young and middle-aged professionals with laptops, handhelds and large mugs of lattes and coffees in front of them.
“Café Mata Hari,” Ian said, reading copy off a website. “Great java from Java … Lattes, cappuccinos, iced coffees.”
He paused.
“And free WiFi.”
EIGHT
A fingertip lightly grazed Elizabeth’s cheek, stroked her jawline, caressed the side of her neck down to the hollow of her throat.
Lars smiled at her, his blue eyes studying her reactions. He had his shirt off, and she ran her fingertips over the swirl of blonde hair on his well-formed chest. His arms were powerful, heavily muscled, but his touch was gentle and solicitous.
Desire quickened her breath and her blood coursed with new power. Lars slowly undid her blouse and the latch on her bra, his fingertip running across her nipples and down her stomach, grazing and sliding and teasing. He began to sculpt her inner thigh with that finger, teasing her by rolling it under the edge of her panties, shaping her as the ancient rhythm began to roll from her center and through her hips like a tide.
Lars kissed Elizabeth, lightly at first, just a grazing of lips and tongue, then a full kiss, open and greedy. His hand went under her panties. He touched her and she began to feel the pressure build in the center of her body, a small knot squeezing itself, reducing to a quivering singularity that would continue to tighten inexorably until it exploded.
Elizabeth opened her eyes …
She said something, but the word came out as a croak and Nasrin did not stop. And Elizabeth was too far gone to stop her.
She cried out and latched onto Nasrin, her face cradled in the starched white fabric of the other woman’s shirt as she came to a ragged finish. Elizabeth clung to Nasrin like a child gripping its mother. Then she pulled back, pulled up her panties, quickly snapped her bra in place, sat upright and buttoned her shirt.
“I thought—” Elizabeth caught a breath.
“I thought—” she caught another.
“You were—”
“Going to stop?” Nasrin said. “No dear, not when you’re like that.”
“Someone.”
“I am certainly someone.”
“Someone else.”
“Someone else? Why would you think that? Sorry, dear, but you really did seem to be in the moment with me.”
The pilot had dialed the cabin lights down for sleeping. Nasrin’s face was barely visible in the twilight gloom. Elizabeth glanced at the wooden door that separated the cabin of the small jet from the cockpit. She wondered if the pilots had cameras that watched the cabin and if they could see anything. Not likely, but if they did, they had just seen quite a show.
Elizabeth grasped the aluminum armrest.
Nasrin had touched me while I had been asleep.
“I did not ask you to do that,” she said. “Not any of that.”
“You didn’t stop me,” Nasrin said.
“I was asleep. How could I ask you anything?”
“Could have fooled me from the way you were responding.”
“That’s why I thought you were someone else.”
“One of your dreamboats, perhaps?”
Elizabeth slapped her, hard enough to make Nasrin turn completely away.
She brushed past Nasrin and bolted for the lavatory. Elizabeth locked herself inside. A stab of brightness from the automatic lights came up.
She splashed water on her face, rubbed the sleep from her eyes and studied herself in a steel mirror. Her breaths were fast and shallow, pulse still elevated.
What the fuck?
Nasrin’s jasmine perfume was all over her.
Elizabeth washed it off along with makeup she had applied just two hours before, at 4 a.m. in a hotel room in Kemble, England.
Elizabeth could make a federal case out of this. She could do nothing. The truth is, the residue of pleasure still tingled throughout her body. She had not felt release like this in a long time. It had been more than nine months since she had been with someone, a lawyer she had met in Georgetown, and he could not bring her to the edge like that. But she was still angry. She had been manipulated in the most literal sense of that word.
Like a puppet on a string.
Elizabeth felt a crying jag coming on, and she gave into it. It was not a long cry, not a hard one, just good enough to vent her conflicting emotions and let her regain herself.
She dabbed mascara from the corners of her eyes, redid her lipstick and powder and went out. Elizabeth knelt to look out a window. It was still pitch black outside, another early morning run before dawn, this time back to Norway. Back in the cabin, she could see Nasrin in silhouette, still as a statue. Elizabeth stood over her, her head bent under the small bulkhead.
The pilot upped the light. Landing couldn’t be more than forty-five minutes away. Elizabeth continued to stand over Nasrin.
Nasrin looked up at her. A ruddy hand-sized imprint was fading on her right check. Her eyes brimmed with tears, threatening to overrun her mascara and make a mess of her face.
“The last thing Elizabeth that I wanted was for you to feel overpower
ed by me. I thought I was being gentle.”
“Gentle?”
“Truly, you seemed to be in the moment with me.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes. Intake for four seconds, hold for seven, out in eight.
“I guess I can believe that.”
“Can you forgive me?”
A large tear rolled over the lid of Nasrin’s right eye, tracing a blob of ink down a cheek.
“It wasn’t what you thought, Nasrin.”
“It is a grief to me to think that I’ve made you uncomfortable.”
Elizabeth stared at her. She let the silence grow for a moment.
“I know it’s almost dawn, but after all that I need a drink,” Elizabeth said. “You?”
Nasrin making a puffing noise, a gesture of relief, and dabbed her face.
“Scotch dear,” Nasrin’s voice was thick and scratchy.
Elizabeth found glasses of cut crystal in the back. There was a very British choice of a fine single malt and gin. Elizabeth made two scotches, neat.
She handed one to Nasrin, which she took gratefully.
“You can sit next to me again. I won’t bite,” she gave a congested laugh. “At least, not this time.”
The events of the last few minutes began to seem unreal, dissipating Elizabeth’s anger. But she still didn’t want Nasrin to touch her, not even a handshake. She continued to stand in the aisle and took a sip of her scotch.
After an awkward moment, Nasrin spoke.
“Let me voice the obvious,” she said. “Again, I am truly sorry. If we are going to work together, I know that there must be boundaries.”
“If we are going to be friends, Nasrin—and I believe we are becoming friends—we have to have those boundaries.”
Nasrin took another sip, tilted her head down and gazed upward directly into Elizabeth’s eyes.
“I accept boundaries. But tell me dear that you are not the least bit attracted to me.”
Elizabeth felt heat rising up from her body, up her neck.
“Tell me that you haven’t thought about it, fantasized about us together …”
The red light on a phone installed on the wall of the cabin illuminated and began to blink.
Nasrin pulled the wireless handset and answered it.
“Detective Inspector Jones.”
She relaxed and settled back into her seat.
“Hello Lars,” she said, glancing at Elizabeth. “Sorry about GCHQ, but I kept up my end of the bargain. Please don’t tell me you want to have another come-to-Jesus?”
Nasrin’s dark eyes darted back and forth as she listened.
“When? How? Any notes? Yes, yes, we will, I will ask the pilots, but I see no reason why we cannot, we are still a good ways out. Yes. Hold on.”
Nasrin rose, slid around Elizabeth and knocked on the cabin door. After a cautious moment, the co-pilot stuck his head out the door. They conversed in voices too low to be heard above the drone of the engines.
The door shut and by the time Nasrin retook her seat, the jet tilted, already veering toward a new course.
Nasrin retook the phone.
“The pilot says we will be there in an hour and fifteen. Right, we will meet you there. Thank you Lars.”
Nasrin rested the phone into its cradle and turned to Elizabeth.
“We are going to land in Trondheim and go straight to Hommelvik. We need to draw once again on your suicide expertise, Elizabeth. So it is especially good that you are with us.”
“Another high-profile jumper?”
“No. Everett Walleen.”
Elizabeth took a seat behind Nasrin and they didn’t say a word to one another for the rest of the flight.
___________
A chill wind swept in from the fjord, brushing up water drops from the wet pavement of the tarmac.
Lars stood in a dark, blue raincoat in front of a cluster of police cars and SUVs, looking as grim as the gray blanket of low clouds over Trondheim. Behind him Bowie, Agent Norris and Harold Korber of the PST milled about sipping coffee and trading jibes.
After a perfunctory greeting, they rushed down the Hommelvik road to arrive at the gravel strip that led to Walleen’s cabin. Police cars and an ambulance were parked at some distance, while technicians in white, hooded clean suits went about their business. Every now and then, the cabin’s windows exploded with the flash of a camera.
They waited down the gravel path for a good forty-five minutes, until the white-suited technicians finished carrying their black cases and white plastic tubs to a van.
Charles Bowie ambled over to Elizabeth and leaned into her ear.
“You should have flown back with me,” he said. “Not as a guest of the British government.”
Elizabeth shrugged. She didn’t tell him that as things turned out, she wished she had.
They stepped aside to let the caravan depart. Inspector Dahl came out of the cabin door, slipped covers off her polished shoes and removed a plastic cover from her head that hardly seemed necessary for blonde hair pulled back into such a tight ponytail.
“What do we have?” Lars asked.
“If he left a suicide note, it would have to be an email,” Dahl said. “We’re taking his laptop back to Thor to check it out. His fingers were not on the grip of the shotgun, but that is to be expected from recoil.”
“Were any his fingers broken?” Agent Norris asked.
“This appears not to be the case,” Dahl said. “But your instincts are correct. This could actually be a homicide.”
“Any signs of coercion?” Lars asked.
“No, but then there wouldn’t be if an intruder surprised him, keeping a gun on him at all times,” Dahl said.
“Footprints or track marks?” Nasrin asked.
“Not on this gravel,” Dahl said.
“But how do you get a man to stick a shotgun in his mouth and pull the trigger?” Bowie asked. “Threaten to shoot him?”
“All you need to do is to surprise the victim,” Agent Norris said, “holding him at gunpoint with his own loaded shotgun, thrust it in his mouth as he starts to scream or say something, and pull the trigger. Then pose the body. Voilà, apparent suicide.”
“What do you think?” Lars asked Elizabeth.
“The man I met presented no suicidal affect,” she said. “He seemed resilient and wary, preparing to extricate himself from a legal situation he wanted no part of.”
“So we could have a murder here,” Lars said.
They walked down the path. Ambulance attendants stood around a stretcher, waiting for Lars and his crew to finish the inspection.
They stepped inside.
The air was thick with the scent of cordite and the iron tang of congealing blood.
Elizabeth closed her eyes, did her 4-7-8 breath and took a moment to orient herself before looking. With preparation, she could force herself to see but not feel, just as she had done at the Oslo morgue.
There is always a preternatural stillness about the dead that makes one imagine they are about to move.
Walleen had the posture of a man resting comfortably, sitting in a slouch with his back against the vertical logs that made up the back wall. Two thick lines of dried blood ran from his nostrils to the sides of his chin. The top of his head looked like the remnant of an exploded volcano. Far above him, a crimson spray of blood and brain covered the wall, tendrils of gray and white tissue clinging to the wood. Walleen’s eyes, half open and dilated, stared at nothing.
“This is not right,” Norris said. “The spray is high, where you would expect it to be if Walleen had been standing further from the wall when the trigger was pulled.”
“You are correct,” Dahl said. “Then there is this.”
The inspector pulled out her smartphone and brought up a crime scene photo. It was a photo of Walleen’s right hand, opened, holding a tab torn from the top of the box of chocolate-covered raisins.
“I cannot sh
ow you the torn paper now, it has been removed for testing,” Dahl said.
“Think it means something?” Norris asked.
“Possibly a clue, or some statement,” Dahl said.
“Or maybe the guy just thought raisins with chocolate were to die for,” Bowie said.
Elizabeth scoured the cabin with her eyes. The boxes of snack food that had been on the kitchen table were gone.
“Was there a box of chocolate-covered raisins when you arrived?” she asked Inspector Dahl.
“Yes, the one Walleen had torn, and a box of children’s cereal. But we checked, there was nothing inside them. They went to the lab just the same.”
“May I look in the pantry?” Elizabeth asked.
“I didn’t know you were a forensic investigator,” Dahl said.
“I want to see if I can read Walleen’s thinking, that’s all,” she said.
Dahl handed Elizabeth a pair of Latex gloves.
“Look all you want. There’s nothing there.”
Elizabeth opened one cabinet door after another. Tuna cans by the pack. Warm beer and cigarettes. An unopened box of chocolate cereal and an unopened box of chocolate-covered raisins.
“Did you look in these?” she asked.
“No, they have not been opened,” Dahl said.
“So let’s open them,” Elizabeth said.
“It hardly seems necessary,” Dahl replied.
“Do it,” Lars said.
Dahl retrieved a small knife like a letter opener from a kit. She removed the boxes and began to probe the seams at the top of the cereal box.
“It should not be this difficult,” Dahl said, then looked surprised by something. “I believe this item has been re-glued.”
Inspector Dahl worked the tab, gave up, and finally tore it open with her gloved hands.
“Hand me a bowl,” she said.
Elizabeth found a large plastic bowl in the lower cabinet.
Dahl poured out crisp puffs of cereal in a chocolate waterfall. An object fell in the stream, making a plopping sound, then another.
“Oh goody,” Bowie said. “A decoder ring.”
Dahl fished out the objects and inspected them with the intensity of a jeweler evaluating an uncut diamond.