Dark Places

by Evans, Jon

  I told her, and added the login and password.

  "Taurus? The sign of the bull?… what is this?"

  "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," I said. "You'll have to look at it yourself. Call me back after you've had a look."

  "I'll call you back," she said, and she sounded worried.

  We said goodbyes and hung up. I thought about calling Agent Turner, she'd given us her card before we left, but decided to wait to talk to Talena. Maybe it was best not to talk to Agent Turner. If we were going to talk to anyone at this point, it should be the media. CNN and MSNBC and The New York Times and England's Guardian and France's Le Monde and all the big international papers. Let them break this story.

  But what would that do? What would that really accomplish? Probably nothing. Which of those five would be put beyond harming anyone again? Probably none of them. It might scare them a little, might make them cool down for a few months. But the media had the collective memory of a gnat. Another year and stories about The Bull would be in the Whatever Happened To… ? category.

  The harsh truth was that nobody would do anything unless I did something.

  I went back to my computer and went back to The Bull's site. I wanted to get all the data off it. I had all the text, but I wanted all the pictures, all the digital media, all the grotesque unwatchable stuff, as evidence. Thankfully cable modems are fast as hell. It only took half an hour to get the hundred or so files. I zipped them into a single file but they wouldn't fit in my Yahoo Briefcase, so I bought one year of a five-hundred meg XDrive.com partition on the spot and put it there. Pricey but I wanted offsite backup. This was critical evidence.

  I thought about registering The Bull's site with Yahoo or Google, flooding them with traffic from every headcase who searched for words like "evisceration" on the Net, but while this would be a petty form of justice it would probably just make them move to a fallback location and alert them that their cover had been at least partially blown.

  I was composing my dead-man-switch letter to the world's media organizations when Talena called me back.

  "Paul?" She was almost whispering.

  "Yeah."

  "This is some sick shit."

  "Yeah."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "What makes you think I'm going to do anything?" I asked, trying for an innocent tone.

  "Paul."

  "Okay," I said. And I told her my plan.

  She didn't seem impressed. But I was past caring. While writing my To Whom It May Concern letter, documenting down all the facts of the situation in cold impersonal prose, I had felt that cold fury well up inside me again. Twice as intense as before. It made me feel strong, and I didn't think it was going to go away this time. I promised myself it wouldn't. I promised myself there would be no repeat of that moment I had whimpered and cringed before Morgan Jackson.

  I wrote the letter as simply and clearly as possible, the way I'd written my Thorn Tree post, but this time I left nothing out. I included a pointer to the complete contents of The Bull's site on my XDrive account, and the login and password required to access those contents. I cc'd the major newspapers in as many First World countries as I could find, and added Agent Turner's contact details. No doubt she would thank me for that.

  Then I configured my Yahoo Calendar account to send that e-mail one month from today, and again two months from today. That way if even if my plan went utterly wrong, in the worst way, and even if Talena walked in front of a bus, everything I had found out would still get out. I was being unnecessarily paranoid, I knew. After all the first step in my plan was to tell every detail to several more people. But I didn't want to take any chances that might benefit those five fuckers who played at the game they called The Bull.

  Five serial killers, awarding one another style plaudits over the Internet. It was like hotornot.com for murderers. I mentally christened them The Demon Princes, after a surprisingly memorable sci-fi series I had once read about a man who hunts down the five arch-criminals who killed his parents. I wasn't going to be as obsessive and ruthless as Kirth Gersen, the protagonist of those books, who had lived for nothing else except hunting down and killing each of the five in turn. Not quite as obsessive. I was only after one of them.

  By now it was a blood oath. One way or another Morgan Jackson was going down. And now I thought I knew the way. I had a plan. It felt like a good plan. It felt right. It felt appropriate that this ended where it began.

  Africa.

  Chapter 22 Dark Continent Dreaming

  There were twenty of us in Africa. Hallam Chevalier, our laconic and casually competent Zimbabwean driver. His gregarious Kiwi wife, Nicole Seams, radiator of good cheer. Steven McPhee, a St. Bernard of a man, a brilliant mechanic, a big friendly Aussie a lot smarter than he looked. Those three were in theory the official representatives of Truck Africa, the company that owned the truck and sent it across the continent every so often. But after a couple of weeks there was no distinction between them and us.

  The passengers came from around the world. Claude, a French teenager who had come on the truck barely speaking any English, a wildlife expert, a proudly lazy good-for-nothing loved by everyone. Mischtel, a lanky Namibian/German girl with an inimitable deadpan sense of humour. Jose, a phlegmatic Mexican with a razor-sharp mind, easily the smartest of us. Lawrence, a hard-drinking, hard-nosed Kiwi who somehow always got his mitts on the last beer. Aoife, an Irishwoman who could cook like Julia Child and find music anywhere in the world. Carmel, a garrulous Australian computer guru who liked everything about Africa except the chocolate deprivation. Melanie, a Scottish chiropractor and oceangoing sailor who simply refused to be fazed by anything.

  And a crowd of Brits. Chong, nicknamed "Chong the Indestructible," a ferociously fit marathon man, the most British person on the truck despite his name. Emma, aristocratic and model-pretty, who was ready for absolutely anything so long as her moisturizer supplies were adequate. Her "slightly less evil twin" Kristin, a movie producer back in Real Life, who had the rare gift of making people who assisted her with anything feel afterwards as if they were the ones who had been done a favour. Michael, the most charming man alive, taking every disaster in stride as if it was the day's entertainment, with an amazing knack for finding hashish in even the most remote corners of the globe. Robbie, a good-natured London club kid with a first-rate mind on the rare occasions that he chose to use it. Rick, a social animal armed with sandpaper wit that stripped the slightest hint of pomposity from anyone within twenty paces, and a heart of gold beneath. Michelle, everyone's little sister, a slightly dazed and comic-book-pretty little blonde girl who seemed incredibly out of place in Africa but handled it with surprising aplomb.

  And Laura Mason, everyone's sweetheart. And Morgan Jackson, the Great White Hunter. And me.

  Aside from Hallam and Nicole none of us knew each other before the day we met. From a certain perspective the whole trip sounds like either a Survivor-esque reality show or some kind of ethically questionable psychological experiment: take a large group of perfect strangers, force them together nearly 24 hours a day and 7 days a week for four months, give them an extreme task such as driving across West Africa, make them work for the bare necessities of life such as food and shelter, and see how they cope. We coped all right. It turns out that people are good at coping when they have no other choice.

  In chemistry, when chemicals are brought together in conditions of extreme heat and pressure, certain combinations are apt to violently explode. Other combinations repel one another and simply will not mix under any circumstances. However there are some rare chemicals which will only bond under those conditions — and will form stronger bonds than those found anywhere else in nature.

  I think people are the same way. I think groups of people in intense situations will explode, fragment, or gel. Our truck group didn't go to war together, we didn't survive a plane crash together, but compared to the plastic existences led by most people in the First World at the e
nd of the twentieth century our time together was unspeakably raw and intense. And we had the right combination. There were other overland trucks who attempted to cross the continent at roughly the same time, and we heard of some that fragmented, where the driver and passengers battled daily, where half the group fled the truck for weeks on end to travel independently and returned only reluctantly if at all. But we had just the right combination.

  In chemistry they call it sublimation when a substance moves from a gas to a solid without ever becoming a liquid. Something similar happened to us. We started as strangers and somehow became a tightly-knit tribe without ever really passing through the stages of acquaintancehood and friendship. Many of us would never have become friends. It wasn't in us. But members of your tribe do not have to be friends. Sometimes it is better that they are not. That was the most important lesson that Africa taught me.

  This was my plan:

  I wanted Morgan Jackson dead. I was willing to kill him myself. I was sure of that now. I wanted to turn the tables on him, track him down in some desolate corner of the Third World and do unto him as he had intended to do unto me.

  But. I doubted I could find him when next he traveled, and he certainly wasn't going to respond to any invitation I sent him. Also he was still bigger, stronger, faster, more dangerous. Even if I could find him again I didn't have a chance. Not alone.

  And who would help me? Certainly not Talena, and I couldn't fault her for that, not for a second. It wasn't a blood oath for her. It wasn't personal.

  Morgan Jackson was a psychopath, a murderer, a serial killer; he had violated the laws of God and man; but he had found a loophole, he performed his atrocities outside the range of those who steadfastly enforce those laws. He would never be brought to justice by them. Nor by the ruthless, impersonal law of the jungle. But there is another kind of justice, and another kind of law. When he killed Laura Mason he had killed one of his own tribe. Nations and governments might be powerless, hamstrung by their own rules, but tribes have no such limitations. They do not do what is written; they do what they think is right.

  I flew to London.

  Part 5

  The Old World

  Chapter 23 Tribal Council

  When the plane lifted off my plan consisted of a vague image of myself and the sixteen other truckers sitting around a green baize table, where I told them what had happened and gave a fiery speech in Laura's memory, and we got up and went en masse to the door, shoulder to shoulder, ready to revenge ourselves on Morgan. Fortunately by the time I landed in Heathrow I had thought things through with greater clarity. For one thing some of us did not live in London. For another I remembered well how impossible it was to get the group of us to agree on something as small as a lunch hour. We were a tribe, not a hive mind. And when you want a tribe to take military action, you don't convene a meeting of every single member. You talk to the hunters.

  I decided on Hallam, Nicole, Steve, and Lawrence. I knew that Hallam and Nicole, as the driver-and-courier couple, had felt responsible for Laura's death. They wouldn't want to be left out. They were also two of the most all-around capable people I knew. Steve was a lovable Australian, but he had a very checkered background: he'd learned his mechanics in prison. He was big and tough and useful, and no stranger to violence, and he and Laura had been great pals. As for Lawrence — well, we'd never been the best of friends, but that was primarily because he and Laura had had that fling early on in the trip. It had ended amicably enough, but I think inside he had taken it hard, and I think that like me he had felt a piece of his heart die with her. And while a great guy he could be a mean, intimidating sonofabitch when it suited him. We had called him "The Terminator" on the truck. Just the man you want on your side.

  None of them got any advance warning. I was in sporadic e-mail contact with all of them, I knew they were all working in London, but I didn't call them in advance to tell them what was going on, or even to tell them that I was coming. It would have felt inappropriate. Something like this had to be told face-to-face. And I didn't want to make up some reason for visiting when the truth was that I wanted to recruit them into hunting down Morgan.

  I got to Heathrow at 9 AM. I'd slept just enough to be dazed and confused and irritable. I took the Tube in to Earl's Court, and read the Guardian on the way. Thankfully it was Saturday and therefore not too crowded. After checking into the nearest hostel I called Hallam and Nicole. It took me three tries as London had once again changed its entire telephone numbering system.

  "Hello," Nicole answered.

  "Nicole," I said. "Hi. It's Paul Wood."

  "Paul! How are you! Where are you? It must be five in the morning over there."

  "I'm in London. Earl's Court tube."

  "Oh, fabulous! When did you get in?"

  "An hour ago."

  "What are you doing here?" She must have heard something in my voice, her tone had dropped from excited to worried.

  "I need to talk to you and Hallam. I was hoping I could come over."

  "Of course. When?"

  "Now. And I'd like you to call Steve and Lawrence and have them come over to your flat today too. Tell them it's important."

  "Steve and Lawrence. All right, I'll sort them out. Can you tell me what this about over the phone?"

  That was Nicole; no surprise, no demurral, just calm acceptance moving straight into action. It was her husband as well. They were one of those perfect couples who must never break up because they give hope to the rest of us in this imperfect world.

  "It's about Laura," I said.

  "Laura," she repeated. "I see. I'll see to it that they're here as soon as they're able. Do you have our address?"

  "I do. I'll be there soon."

  When I arrived Nicole kissed me hello and sat me down in their living room with a cup of tea and a plate of toast and scrambled eggs. She was petite but ferociously fit, with a runner's build and one of the world's warmest smiles.

  "Get you anything else?" she asked.

  "That's good, Nic, thanks."

  "Good flight?"

  "All right."

  She nodded, sat down across from me, and scanned through the morning's Times as I ate and drank. Hallam was in the shower. I looked around their apartment. Decorated with attractive bric-a-brac from around the world, and postered with countless shots of The World's Most Beautiful Places, many of which had Hallam or Nicole or both in the foreground. I recognized some of the backdrops. Hallam playing Spiderman halfway up an overhanging karst spire that jutted from the ocean somewhere near Krabi on the west coast of Thailand. Hallam and Nicole at Tilicho Tal, the world's highest lake, a side trip from the Annapurna Circuit. Nicole in front of the grave of Cecil Rhodes, in Zimbabwe's Matopos Park.

  Hallam came out of the shower with a towel wrapped around him, a bulldog of a man, and he grinned ear-to-ear when he saw me. "Paul mate. Been too long." We shook hands, our tribe's secret handshake, ending with a fingersnap the way the Ghanaians do it.

  "I rang Steve and Lawrence," Nicole said. "they should be here in about an hour. Do you want to wait until we're all assembled?"

  "Probably easier that way," I said.

  "Fair enough," Hallam said. "Watch the telly then? Should be some Champions League highlights from last night."

  I turned on the television as he disappeared into their bedroom to get dressed. Nic and I made small talk to pass the time. I told her about my layoff and she made sympathetic noises. She was working as a travel agent and enjoying it, and they were planning their next trip already, rock climbing in Tunisia. Hallam's contract ended in a couple of months. He had served two years in the Paratroopers before a medical discharge for a detached retina that couldn't be trusted to take the shock of another opened parachute, and now he made a good living as a contract security consultant.

  One of the strong impressions Africa had made on me was that I was completely useless. As were most of the people I knew. Computer programmers, lawyers, accountants, publicists, graphic des
igners, copywriters — these abstract jobs counted for absolutely nothing in a place where you actually had to fight for your existence. Hallam was quite the opposite. Driver, soldier, mechanic, carpenter, welder, ditch digger, bridge builder, expert rock climber, you name it, he was Mr. Useful. Nicole was more of an abstract thinker and people person, but I remembered days she'd spent covered with grease, helping Steve and Hallam fix the old, fragile truck engine for the umpteenth time.

  We watched Man United rout Anderlecht until finally the doorbell rang and Steve and Lawrence came in together.

  "Bastard found me on the Tube," Lawrence explained. "I'm standing next to this drop-dead blonde, just about to chat her up, and all of a sudden there's this great human mountain in front of me, saying," and he gave us a sarcastic rendition of Steve's thick country Australian accent, "'Lawrence you bloody auld cunt, how are yae?' She couldn't get away from us fast enough."

  Human mountain was a pretty good description. Big, blond, and thickly muscled, with a cheerful grin perpetually spraypainted on his face, Steve McPhee looked like the walking model for some neo-Nazi definition of The Master Race. He was the lead mechanic for some type of car racing team a few notches below Formula One. Lawrence, thin and wiry, with twitchy mannerisms, disapprovingly pursed lips, and the look of a bird of prey, seemed a scrawny refugee next to Steve. He was a loans officer for a bank and claimed to take great pleasure in turning down mortgage applications.

  "And how are you, you bloody old cunt?" Steve asked, shaking my hand, Ghana-style. He kissed Nicole on the cheek and waved hello to Hallam and sat down. Lawrence followed, performing the same greetings.

  "Now what's this all about, a reunion of the Old Colonials Brigade?" Lawrence asked, sitting down. "This room is like a bad joke. Two Kiwis, an Aussie, a Zimbabwean and a Canadian walk into a pub… "

  "It's about Laura," Nicole said quietly, and all the good cheer and bonhomie fled from the room like somebody had turned off a light. They all turned to me.