Amid the Shadows

by Michael C. Grumley

  He looked at his watch and pulled out a small phone he had purchased in Dubai. He powered it on and waited until he could turn on the GPS feature. After a few minutes, it finally reported them flying just south of Shanghai.

  Zahn typed a short text message on the phone and sent it. He then turned to Sarat, who had intentionally cleared his throat after reading a message off his own phone.

  “We’ve received communication from Rose. We’re working on their exact location now,” Sarat reported.

  “Well, that wasn’t too difficult.” Zahn said, leaning his chair back a little.

  “It was a good idea.”

  “It’s time to reign them in. Send everyone in the area. I don’t want another hole for them to slip through.”

  Sarat nodded.

  Zahn looked down when the phone in his hand made a chirping sound, indicating the receipt of a new message. He opened the small window and read it.

  Systems locked and loaded. Virus in place and verified. Bots waiting for command.

  Zahn pursed his lips and nodded approvingly. He remembered finding Ron Tran. Finding someone who wanted to change the world was difficult enough, but finding someone who also had the skills to do it, and was a world class hacker, was far more difficult. So much so that it caused him to consider whether perhaps fate had somehow intervened.

  Zahn was surprised at how smart Tran had turned out to be after their first meeting. A little young, but he had a firm grip on what made the world tick, who benefited, and how the elites would do almost anything to keep it that way.

  Zahn typed a message back.

  How many bots?

  Tran’s reply was short.

  Almost 7,000,000.

  Zahn smiled. He was not as tech savvy as he would have liked to be. Having to immerse himself deep within the political system in order to pull this off was hard enough, but Tran made up for it and then some.

  In fact, knowing what was involved, Zahn was a little surprised Tran was able to actually deliver. Seven million compromised computers, more than he had promised, waiting for the command to do his bidding. He was impressed. Seven million, all standing at the ready to carry out what was going to be the largest ‘head fake’ in human history. It was enough to make Zahn grin from ear to ear.

  Sarat watched Zahn’s exchange with Tran with interest. Sarat had never liked Tran. He was a young kid, or bache, amongst an entire generation addicted to self-servitude. But he also knew that Tran was an integral part of the plan.

  Sarat thought of how he and Tran could not have come from more different experiences. Tran was raised in a world of gluttonous technological wonder, while Sarat was raised in the deserts of Afghanistan trying to survive. He wondered how Tran would have turned out after being told since the day he was born, as Sarat and his friends were, that the Russians had killed their fathers. To be born and bred for hatred and revenge, and dream of the day they could strike deep into the heart of the very beast that had robbed them of ever knowing their own fathers.

  In the end though, it was not just hatred that drove him. It was also desire. Desire to rise from his humble, even desperate beginnings, to greatness. He wanted to destroy the monster that had consumed the world and to become a king in the process.

  Zahn ended the text exchange with a single word and closed the phone.

  Begin.

  Zahn turned his attention back to Sarat. “Continue.”

  “Argentina is ready.”

  “Excellent.” It was getting close, he thought.

  “Another thing,” Sarat said. “Your boss sent you an email congratulating you on the progress in Dubai.”

  Zahn almost laughed. He wondered how many trips and “talks” he’d made representing the country in the last several years. The State Department was the perfect organization to use. They had tremendous clout in Washington, although he always found that rather laughable. They thought as highly of themselves as almost anyone else in government, and that was really saying something. In the end, Zahn likened the department to an old guard dog that couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, had no teeth, and just barely could find his food bowl.

  Yes, the State Department was the perfect place from which to justify his many trips to the Mideast and forge the relationships he needed. In fact, he doubted that when it was all over they would even be able to put enough together to realize the sheer depth of that irony.

  “Send him my standard, humble reply.” It was virtually too late to stop anything now, but being thorough, right up until the last minute, was the smart thing to do.

  The television caught their attention. They both turned to listen to another newscaster talk about the Pope’s arrival to New York in two short days. The city was working to quickly put together a reception worthy of the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church.

  The news channels spoke at length about the support the Pope’s visit would provide, but Zahn and Sarat knew the real reason was to prevent a nationwide panic.

  Uninterested, Sarat turned back to Zahn. “So, what are we doing when we get the girl?”

  Zahn thought about the question. What was so special about that Baxter girl? She’d spotted him in front of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral just moments after the bomb went off. Why was she staring at him? There were hundreds of people running in every direction; smoke and debris were everywhere, and she was staring at him. Did she know who he was, or was she just wondering why he was the only person not running? Did someone tell her? The mother admitted nothing before her death, but someone had to know. How else would the girl have known? He had to find out. Until now, his planning and execution had been perfect, without anyone suspecting a thing.

  The easy solution from the beginning was to just kill the girl. He wanted to get rid of her quickly before she could tell anyone else, but now it had been too long. She must have told someone by now, which meant things could still unravel quickly. The frustration over not knowing how she saw him was gradually turning into anger. He had to know.

  “Get her.” He finally replied to Sarat.

  Sarat’s eyes opened showing his surprise. “You mean take her alive?”

  “If at all possible. If not, kill her and the woman.” Zahn’s tone was matter of fact. He could not take the chance of being exposed. Not now. Not this close.

  Sarat nodded without objection. What Zahn didn’t know was that his man Sarat was beginning to have thoughts of his own regarding little Sarah Baxter.

  At that moment, twenty-five thousand feet below Zahn and in downtown Shanghai, Ron Tran exited another internet café and walked south toward the Huangpu River. It had been four days since his visit to the café in Beijing where he had begun compromising machine after machine and adding them to his bot network. The process had gone viral and was now secretly inserting itself into nearly 50,000 computers per hour and accelerating.

  The afternoon was warm and overcast with an unusually thick curtain of dark pollution. Sadly, every year China was experiencing more and more days declared unsafe by their government and was advising citizens to stay inside.

  On that day, many people who needed to be outside, including Tran, wore a thin surgical mask over their nose and mouth as they quickly walked from building to building.

  Tran could taste the smog through his white mask, and it made him nauseous. It was a shining example of how another government was in the process of killing its own people, as they struggled to maintain an iron grip on their power base.

  Tran covered the last few blocks and crossed over the large street. He waited for a long line of cars to pass, then walked along the paved sidewalk running beside the river. He finally stopped at one spot near a restaurant where the water met the pier just a few feet away. Tran walked to the edge and looked down into the small swells lapping at the wooden pillars. The color of the water was a dull gray. He shook his head and looked around casually. A few people wandered by, but no one seemed to pay him any attention.

  Tran reached into his pocket and pulled
out the phone he had just used to exchange messages with Zahn. With one quick motion, he tossed it up and over the rail, watching it splash into the polluted river. He smirked to himself, realizing that his sudden act of polluting had just made him part of the problem.

  What the hell, he thought. Soon it won’t even matter.

  33

  As the spiritual leader of over one billion Catholics worldwide, Pope Pius XIV was arguably the most recognized and influential person on the planet. As the latest in a line of successors to Saint Peter, to whom Jesus gave the keys of Heaven, the Pope was also one of the most protected individuals on that planet.

  The level of security required to ensure his protection at all times was an enormous challenge, one that fell on the shoulders of Dario Burk, the head of the Pontifical Swiss Guard, the sole military arm in charge of protecting the Pope since the 15th century. Their efforts to protect a leader who liked to maintain a level of human touch at every turn made their job far more difficult to deal with than any other security team, anywhere. And a sudden public appearance of the Pope in another country was Burk’s worst kind of problem.

  He hung up the phone with Carolina Flores, the Director of the Secret Service, and leaned back in his chair. This was going to be a nightmare.

  Being surrounded by thousands of people, outdoors in an open area, was bad enough. But adding several other high ranking political figures, including the U.S. President, was like pouring fuel on a fire.

  On top of it all was the crisis emerging from the church bombings and the mass hysteria spreading across the United States. God forbid should an attack happen in another country; the panic could go global. They had to get the Pope in front of this, but the danger was significant. The only possibility was to revert back to more conservative and, frankly, older tactics. No one within a twenty meter perimeter, no touching, and no one within two hundred meters who had not been patted down.

  But even those precautions barely relieved his anxiety. Flores assured him there would be spotters and sharp shooters on almost every rooftop in a six block radius and every item larger than an apple would be physically examined by weapons inspection teams. Then there were the Popemobiles with their bullet-proof Plexiglas and reinforced, armored side panels. Frankly, to put him into anything less visible would just add to the fear and nervousness of the public.

  Burk looked at the phone. It had been his twenty-eighth call to Flores in just two days. Everything he and his team could think of had been addressed as well as it could be, given the compressed timeline. But Burk knew it wasn’t the things he could think of that worried him. It was the things he couldn’t foresee that kept him up at night.

  They had less than twenty-four hours before they were due to be in the air. He knew he would not be able to sleep through any of them.

  34

  Kim Darlington stood at the window in her office, looking slightly pale. Never before had she opened a case for a missing officer, let alone three. She felt sick to her stomach. Griffin and Buckley had now been missing for four days, and Cheryl Roberts for three. And so far, they had no leads.

  She looked down at the dark street a few floors below, and watched the cars and people passing back and forth. It had to have something to do with that social worker and the little girl they were protecting. But how? They both disappeared shortly after the attack at the safe house, which meant they could be anywhere. There was no word from any of them. No phone records, no credit card activity, and no eye witnesses. In the end, she hated doing it, but nothing got people’s attention like an abducted child.

  Darlington turned from the window and stood over her desk. Her eyes had just wandered to her laptop screen which had her email program open, when she noticed a new email had arrived from her FBI friend in Boston. The one from which the chaplain had asked for help.

  At that moment, something occurred to her. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She quickly leaned down and scanned the email before picking up the phone. The chaplain!

  The phone rang several times before Chaplain Wilcox answered. “Hello? This is Douglas speaking.”

  “Hi Chaplain, this is Kim Darlington.”

  “Oh, hi Kim,” he replied. “I’m glad you called. I’m on my way back to the hotel and was getting ready to call you.” He sighed on the other end of the phone. “I heard about the investigation. I’m very distraught. Do you have any more information?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Darlington said, pulling her handset cord with her as she stepped back to the window. “We’ve got over a hundred officers on it now though. We’ll find them.”

  “Good.” The chaplain’s voice was low and didn’t sound very confident. He had seen enough missing person’s cases to know if they didn’t have any leads after the first three days, the odds were not good. “What can I do?”

  “Well, it’s funny you should ask. I called for two reasons. First, when was the last time you talked to Cheryl?”

  “Let’s see.” The chaplain stopped to consider. “I believe it was Tuesday evening. We met at the library. She wanted to talk about the bombing at Saint Patrick’s.”

  Darlington frowned. “Why did she want to talk about Saint Patrick’s?”

  “She said she thought there may have been a connection with one of her cases, the one with the little girl.”

  Darlington froze. The Baxter girl! “What did she say?”

  “Mmm…we didn’t really get that far. She said they had a girl and her social worker in protective custody and someone was chasing them,” Wilcox said. “We were supposed to talk again the next day.”

  Darlington sat down in her chair and rested an elbow on her desk. “How was her case connected to the explosion?”

  “That I’m afraid I don’t know,” the chaplain replied. “And I don’t think she knew either.”

  Darlington remained still, listening and thinking. She twirled a strand of her thick, curly hair and leaned back. If Roberts thought the bombing was related, and she was working the Baxter case with Griffin and Buckley, then the bombing may very well be a link to their disappearance. But what was it? What had Roberts learned?

  Darlington frowned. She just didn’t have enough yet. She took a deep breath and changed the subject. “Okay, well listen, I just got some information back from my friend in Boston. Are you ready?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Darlington looked back at her computer screen and the email. “She didn’t have much, but what she did have may leave you with more questions than answers. The man’s name is Aaron Bazes. He’s from Israel and, you’re right, he has one serious security clearance. In fact, he’s got an ambassador level passport which means he pretty much comes and goes as he pleases.”

  “Wow,” the chaplain replied through the phone’s earpiece.

  “That’s not all. My friend says his passport has a special flag on it. She says that if it’s scanned by anyone, it says ‘not to be delayed or detained.’”

  “Delayed or detained,” Wilcox repeated. “I’ve never heard of that before.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “So what else did she find on him?” he asked.

  “That’s it.”

  “That’s it? What do you mean?”

  Darlington shook her head. “I mean that’s it. That’s all she could get. A name, picture, his country and clearance. She has a physical description, but you already know what he looks like.”

  “Wow,” the chaplain said again. “That’s not a lot. He’s from Israel and can go wherever he wants.” His voice disappeared for a moment while he mulled it over. “So, what was he doing poking around the bomb sites?”

  “You got me,” Darlington said.

  “Hmm…” He realized that Kim was right. He did have more questions than answers. “Okay, I’ll have to think on this a bit. I was hoping for more.”

  “Sorry Padre.” Another light on her phone lit up, and she looked at the number. “I’m sorry Padre, I’m getting another call. I’ll call you when I h
ave more.”

  “Okay, no problem.”

  Darlington clicked over to the other line. “This is Kim.”

  “Hi Kim, I have a call coming in. From a Mike Ramirez.”

  Darlington recognized the name of the computer forensics expert that had come to see her. “Okay, put him through please.” She waited for the line to transfer before answering. “Kim Darlington speaking.”

  “Hello Ms. Darlington, this is Mike Ramirez. We met a couple days ago when I came in.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  Mike cleared his voice. “I wanted to call and tell you about something.”

  “Okay,” Darlington said.

  “So, I was telling you that I hadn’t heard from Detectives Griffin or Buckley.”

  Darlington leaned forward on her desk. “Correct.”

  “Right, well I saw your announcement tonight on the news, about your investigation, and I think there’s something odd here,” Ramirez explained.

  She raised an eyebrow. “What is that?”

  “So,” Ramirez continued, “the other day when I got back to my office, after speaking with you, I wrote a small program. I was thinking I could create an app that would periodically parse through the server logs and search against their phone numbers and, if it found anything, to email me.”

  Darlington perked up. “Did you find something?”

  “I believe so,” Ramirez answered. “I got an email not too long ago.”

  “What did it say?” asked Darlington, now eagerly leaning into the phone.

  “It shows Detective Griffin’s phone connected briefly to a cell tower, which means if it was turned off before, then it was just turned on.”

  Darlington suddenly stood up. “You’re kidding.”