Zero 22, p.32
Zero 22, page 32
part #8 of Danny Black Series
‘I guess I should tell you where the memory stick is,’ the General said.
‘Damn right,’ Danny said.
‘It’s taped to the underside of a unit in the kitchen.’
‘You’ll find it quicker than me,’ Danny said. ‘Get up as quickly as you can when I give you the all-clear sign. What are the access codes for the flat?’
The General told Danny the codes. ‘Apartment three,’ he said.
Danny nodded. ‘Ten minutes,’ he reminded them. ‘No longer.’
He stepped out into the rain again. Looked left and right. There were no pedestrians. Still no sign of surveillance. He crossed the road quickly and approached the front door of the General’s house. He was weirdly reminded, by the black paint, the brass fittings and the ornate detailing above the frame, of the door of Number 10 Downing Street, which he’d only ever seen on television. To the right there was a keypad. He entered the numeric code the General had given him. The door clicked. He gently opened it, just an inch, drawing his Sig at the same time.
He waited. Listened through the torrential rain. Tried to discern any other sound behind the door. There was nothing. He kicked the door open, gripping his weapon two-handed. Entered.
He was in a tiny hallway. To his left, four locked cubby holes for mail. Straight ahead, a door with a brass ‘1’ plaque. Ahead and to the right, a carpeted staircase winding steeply into gloom.
He closed the door. Allowed himself a few seconds for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. Water dripped from his clothes on to the stone floor. Not ideal. It meant his presence could be detected. But as long as he was aware of that, he could take steps to mitigate the risk.
He moved across the hallway to the staircase. Aimed the Sig up and at an angle. Searched the gloom for shadows and movement. Nothing. He advanced.
The stairs were steep, the treads shallow. He trod lightly but couldn’t help them creaking as he walked. His hyper-acute senses amplified each creak. He stopped at the first landing. Breathed. Scanned. Tried to listen beyond the thumping of his heart. Kept his weapon raised, his finger on the trigger. Noted the door on his right with a brass number 2. Advanced again.
The next set of stairs creaked louder than the first. Every sound seemed exaggerated in the silence of the stairwell. He paused after each step, checking ahead of him and behind him. There was no sign of anything, or anyone.
The second landing was almost identical to the first. The only noticeable difference was the number on the door of the apartment.
3.
He approached the door. Listened hard. Heard nothing. He removed his shoes to keep his footfall silent. Felt for the keypad with his left hand, gripping the Sig with his right. Keyed in the code. Opened the door just a couple of inches. Listened. Stepped inside. He closed the door behind him and stood for a moment in the darkness. He was in a square entrance hall. Three doors leading left, right and straight ahead. All shut. A posh, high-backed armchair in one corner. An occasional table with an internet router, two green lights glowing, and a vase of tall flowers that emitted a pungent, floral odour. He couldn’t make out the flower heads in the darkness, but the smell suggested they were past their best. Evidence that nobody had been here for a couple of days. There was something else on the table, but he couldn’t quite make it out.
No sign of any break-in. Absolute stillness.
Danny raised his Sig. Breathed slowly and deeply to control his pulse. Somewhere at the edge of his senses he could hear distant traffic. But nothing else.
He stepped towards the table, his feet making no sound. The other object on the table was an antique mahogany letter-writing set. Next to it was a silver letter-opening knife, blunt but pointed.
And there was something else.
On the edge of the table was a circular mark where somebody had placed a glass – or more likely a bottle – of water. Danny touched it. The ring was wet. Fresh.
Someone was in here. He was certain of it.
And he would be waiting for Danny behind one of three doors.
Question was: which one?
Thunder cracked outside, so loud that the house seemed to shake with it. Danny analysed the layout. The window looking out on to the street where Bethany and the General were waiting would be through the door to his left. That meant the room with the rear fire exit would be to his right. Perhaps the door opposite the main entrance led do a bedroom or bathroom. If Danny was lying in wait for someone, he would definitely choose the room with an extra exit. Basic tradecraft. But would his guy think the same way?
The sound of a toilet flushing answered that question for him. It came from the room Danny had identified as the bedroom and he knew the door would open any moment. He didn’t want to fire his weapon. Not if he could help it. It was not suppressed, and the sound could bring people running. He grabbed the silver paper knife in his right hand and moved over to the door. He stood to the right of the door frame, back to the wall, Sig now in his pocket.
There was another crack of thunder.
He waited.
Five seconds passed. The door opened. A figure appeared. He was taller and broader than Danny, which was unusual. He had a handgun in his belt, but was still doing up his fly. He didn’t see Danny until it was too late. Danny’s strategy was to hit him hard and fast. Not too much of a swing, because that would waste precious seconds and he knew he could achieve the power and momentum he wanted without it. He grabbed the man’s neck with his left hand and drove the tip of the paper knife into the bottom of his skull. The knife sank halfway up to the hilt before the tip hit something hard and gristly. He gave it a good wriggle and felt the man’s legs collapse beneath him. Danny eased him down on to the ground, one hand still on the hilt of the knife. There wasn’t much blood. Each time the knife moved position, the guy’s legs flickered uncontrollably. Once he was on the ground, Danny kept wriggling the knife until the nerve movement stopped and the dead man was completely still.
Silence.
Danny straightened up and drew his Sig. He checked the flat. The bedroom had a lingering smell of perfume and a neatly made double bed with lots of cushions. An en-suite bathroom was filled with cosmetics, but nobody was hiding there. The door to the right of the main entrance was a sitting room. Sofa and more armchairs. A TV. Various cabinets. A wide window with a sturdy locking mechanism. No people. The third room off the hallway, overlooking the road, was a large eat-in kitchen. And empty. He switched on the lights for five seconds, then returned to the hallway. He retrieved his shoes, put them on and waited by the slumped corpse of the man he’d killed, weapon raised.
Thunder cracked. The lights flickered off and back on again. Danny shivered. His wet clothes were bringing down his body temperature. He ignored it.
It took them two minutes to arrive. The General’s face went pale when he saw the dead man on the floor. Bethany barely seemed to notice him. She calmly closed the door behind them as the General led them into the kitchen. There were no curtains and Danny didn’t like being illuminated. He took up position to the side of the window and half watched the road, half watched the General as he removed the kick board below a line of kitchen units and felt underneath. A moment later, he heard the rip of tape. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Danny said.
‘You kidding me? We’ve got to broadcast this stuff now.’
‘This place is under surveillance.’
‘It’ll only take a minute,’ the General said. ‘I keep a Chromebook in the other room. Come on, let’s get this done.’
Danny hesitated. He felt uneasy. But maybe the General was right. The sooner he could broadcast the deepfakes, the better their chance of stopping the hit. He nodded.
‘I need to use the bathroom while you gentlemen save the world,’ Bethany said. Danny understood that she was seeking his permission, and he nodded. She left the room, then Danny and the General crossed the hallway, past the dead body with the knife still protruding from the back of its neck, and into the room opposite. The General switched on the light and moved over to a desk against the far wall. There was a mirror over the desk. As the General located a laptop in one of the drawers, Danny looked at his own reflection. Several days’ stubble. Black bags under his eyes. He looked like he needed to sleep for a week. The General opened up his computer and sat in front of it at the desk. Switched it on. Inserted the memory stick. ‘You got to see this,’ he said.
There were two video files on the memory stick. The General clicked on the first. Footage ran. Danny crouched down to watch it.
The footage was completely unremarkable. It appeared to have been taken by a surveillance camera in a busy street. Danny could tell from the US registration plates on the passing cars that it was an American street, but Danny didn’t know the registrations well enough to identify which state it was in. The surveillance camera pointed across the road to a stretch of sidewalk where there was a fast-food joint, a thrift store and a massage parlour. Clearly not the best part of town. A man stood outside the massage parlour: a white guy, perhaps in his mid-thirties. He stood there for twenty seconds or so as other pedestrians passed by without looking at him. Then somebody approached. A woman. Also white. Dark shoulder-length hair. They spoke for perhaps thirty seconds, then shook hands. The woman walked away. The man remained outside the massage parlour for a few more seconds then walked off in the opposite direction.
The footage stopped. The General clicked on the second file. The same piece of footage ran. The same street. The same cars. The same angle onto the same shops. But the man was different. At least, his face was. Brown skin. An Arab-style beard. And a peculiar, distinctive feature: a scar that started above his right eye and extended vertically, over the eyelid and down on to his cheek. Danny knew that he was watching a deepfake. He knew to expect authenticity. But he was astonished at how lifelike it was. If he hadn’t seen the original footage, there was simply no way he would have guessed that this had been doctored. It was completely convincing.
The woman approached. The same woman, only not. This face was also different. Older, with highlighted hair. Danny thought he perhaps recognised her. From TV maybe? Then he had to remind himself that he was not watching a real person. He was watching a lie. Whoever it was that he was supposed to recognise, she had not walked up to this man with the strange scar on his eye. She had not spoken to him. She had not shaken his hand before walking away. The event unfolding on the screen simply had not happened.
But nobody watching it would believe that, if they hadn’t seen the original first.
The footage stopped running. There was silence.
‘The woman on the deepfake is Madeline Doherty, or at least that’s what we’re supposed to believe,’ the General said. ‘Democratic congresswoman, chair of various select committees, frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. She has a strong following among the Black and Hispanic communities. Makes her the President’s biggest threat, come election time.’
‘What about the bloke with the huge scar on his eye?’ Danny said.
‘I haven’t been able to find out. But whoever he is, he’s being set up. By the CIA, probably. Or at least a faction within it. They have a unit, you know? Its sole purpose is to target jihadist sympathisers who wouldn’t ordinarily be a credible threat and encourage them to cross the line and plot actual terror attacks. They let them get ninety per cent of the way, then they pass the intel on to the Feds to make the arrest and everybody’s happy.’
‘You think that’s what’s happening to him? You think he’s been encouraged to carry out an attack?’
‘Maybe. There’s another possibility though. The attacker could be somebody else. They might be making sure this guy is on the scene when it happens. They’ll want a scapegoat, and a living whipping boy’s better than a dead one, right? This guy sure looks the part, with the beard and the eye and all. The President’s base? They’ll be a pack of wolves over a hunk of raw steak if they think a guy like that is involved in a terror attack. And if they think the liberals have been fraternising with him? He’ll be able to spin whatever the hell he wants. We’ll never be rid of the guy.’
‘So let’s stop him,’ Danny said. He felt faintly sick.
‘I’ve already set up a YouTube account,’ the General said. ‘And a mailing list with the news chiefs of all the major networks. I’ll distribute the footage, then make some calls. There should be time to get me on to the late bulletins. The White House machine will get straight into motion. The story will lead the news cycle in the morning, I’ll be discredited by lunchtime. But by then, the Oval Office and the Kremlin will be sufficiently spooked not to try this line of attack again.’
His fingers hesitated over the keyboard. Danny felt a moment of profound respect for him. For all his faults and foolishness, he was a good man doing the right thing, despite the personal consequences.
Thunder rolled overhead. The lights in the apartment flickered off then on. There was a flash of lightning.
‘Let’s do it now,’ the General muttered, and he opened up a web browser.
It was the last thing he ever did.
TWENTY-FOUR
If he hadn’t crouched down to watch the footage on the General’s laptop, perhaps Danny would have seen Bethany earlier. As it was, he stood up just in time to see her reflection in the mirror. She was standing just a couple of metres behind them. Both her arms were extended. She held a pistol – a Glock 17 – two-handed, right forefinger on the trigger. She must have taken it from the belt of the dead man in the hallway. It was aimed directly at the back of the General’s head and she was close enough for an accurate pistol shot.
Everything happened in an instant. Bethany released a single round. It slammed into the General’s skull. The General slumped heavily on to his laptop as a spatter of blood and scorched hair spat from the entry wound. Danny reached for his own weapon, but he saw in the mirror that Bethany had immediately turned her Glock on him, and he half expected to hear the shot that would kill him.
Instead he heard her voice. ‘Hands up, Danny. Let’s not make a mistake.’
He raised his hands.
The General’s laptop was quietly beeping due to his face pressing down on the keys. Blood seeped from the wound. It dripped down the side of his head and on to the desk. Danny watched Bethany in the mirror. She was completely in control. Her arm didn’t shake. Her expression didn’t change. She spoke calmly. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen,’ she said. ‘You’re going to very slowly take your firearm and place it on the table. Then you’re going to put your hands on the back of your head, and you’re going to walk over to the window. You do anything else, any sudden movements, you get what the General got. Understood?’
‘Bethany—’
‘Understood?’
Danny didn’t reply. He considered his options. Could he draw his weapon, turn and fire on Bethany before she had a chance to shoot? No way. Could he dive out of the way and hope to get the better of her in the confusion? Perhaps, but he wouldn’t bet his life on it. And that was exactly what he’d have to do. Bet his life. He had no option but to do as he was told.
Very slowly he lowered his hands, removed his weapon and placed it on the table. The computer stopped beeping. Maybe the General’s blood had seeped into the mechanism. He walked over to the window. Bethany kept the Glock trained directly at him. ‘You think I’m stupid?’ she said as he moved.
‘You know I don’t think that,’ Danny said.
‘Then why do you behave like it?’
‘I don’t know what you mean?’ He glanced over at the General’s body. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘That’s my job, isn’t it? That’s why I’m here. Oh no, plans have changed, haven’t they? You don’t need the crazy psycho-bitch to do your dirty work for you any more. So why am I here, Danny? What possible reason could your people have for sending me into the US with you and –’ she inclined her head distastefully in the direction of the dead general – ‘him?’
Danny said nothing. He could feel his heart beating. He cursed himself silently. For leaving the dead man’s Glock in his belt where Bethany could swipe it. For taking his eye off her at the critical moment. And for underestimating her. For failing to realise that she would work out the real reason she had been told to accompany him on this part of the mission.
‘When were you going to do it, Danny?’ she whispered. ‘When you’d finished saving the world? Put a bullet in the head of the stupid woman, then have a good laugh about it with your new friend the General?’
‘You’ve got it wrong,’ Danny said. ‘Put the pistol down. We need to get out of here. Someone will have heard the gunshot. They’ll have called the police.’
‘Shut up,’ she hissed. ‘Don’t patronise me.’ She edged towards the laptop. She released one of her hands and pulled the memory stick from the side of the computer. Put it in her pocket.
‘What are you doing?’ Danny said.
‘What does it look like?’
‘It looks like you’re taking the evidence. Bethany, there’s going to be a hit. You know that. We can stop it . . .’
‘I’m not taking evidence,’ Bethany said. ‘I’m ensuring my son continues to have a mother. Your people want this footage, they’ll need to deliver my son and guarantee our safety.’
‘Bethany—’
‘Don’t insult me!’ she snapped. ‘Don’t tell me you had no plans to kill me when this was over. Don’t tell me that’s not what they told you to do. I know how they work. I know how you work.’
She moved her free hand back up to the weapon. Danny judged the distance between them. Five metres. An unskilled shooter could easily miss at that range, but he knew she’d had weapons training. She was likely to hit him.
