Dark Revelations (12 page)

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Authors: Duane Swierczynski,Anthony E. Zuiker

BOOK: Dark Revelations
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“The riddles aren’t exactly complex, are they?”
“You’re right,” Blair said. “They seem to be the first part of a message with a deeper meaning. With the attacks in Los Angeles last week, the riddle seemed to point to the murder method—the hanging, the shooting, the drowning. But there was no real revelation as to the who or why. The real meaning is hidden within the other items.”
Dark nodded. “Right. The riddle isn’t the point. They’re solved easily enough. He wants us to look beyond them.”
“So what do you make of the golden wristwatch?” Blair said. “Or the fish? What do they signify?”
“The watch tells us when,” Dark said. “The alarm clock in L.A. went off just as Elizabeth and Loeb were being forced to kill each other. This is Labyrinth’s way of giving us a deadline.”
“How much time do we have left?” Graysmith asked.
Dark turned to face her. “You said one of the detectives in Dubai noticed that the watch seemed slow. Whenever it stops completely, that will be when he strikes again. I’d send a watchmaker to police headquarters immediately to give us his best guess. Someone like Labyrinth would have it timed to the exact second.”
Blair smiled. “So this means you’ll join us, Mr. Dark?”
“Let’s call it a trial run. Get me to Dubai, and let’s see if we can stop this maniac from killing somebody else.”
“Fair enough,” Blair said. “Wheels up in thirty minutes. The rest of the team is on their way to the plane.”
 
Graysmith held out a hand. “Well, this is good-bye.”
“This is it, huh? Moving on to your next assignment already?”
“I work freelance. I always have. Not really a team player, though I am extraordinarily good at helping build teams.”
“What’s your real name?”
Graysmith—or whoever was behind her face—smiled. “Maybe I’ll tell you someday. If you’re lucky.”
“Right.”
“And Steve, take care of that little girl of yours. She’s special. Dads sometimes forget how much their daughters look up to them.”
Dark tried to read her eyes. He couldn’t tell if she was finally opening up to him, and speaking from personal experience—or if she was still on the job, and trying to plant a seed in his mind that could be exploited later. Didn’t matter though. Dark reached out, took her hand, then pulled her close to him.
“I’ll see you again,” he said.
“Not if I see you first,” Graysmith said.
 
[To enter the Labyrinth, please go to
Level26.com
and enter the code: oil]
chapter 18
 
LABYRINTH
 
I
hang up the phone.
Now that wasn’t too difficult at all.
In record time, Charles Murtha is reborn, rehabilitated, and ready for the next step.
I think about how he shrieked when he first heard my voice in his ear. Maybe he thought God was speaking to him? So-called captains of industry could be so easily spooked.
And true, my voice was distorted electronically. Which can sound frightening. But I needed him to take me seriously—and we’ve all been raised with the expectation that people who abduct other people speak to you in electronically distorted voices.
It’s all about expectations.
 
So I focused on sounding as reassuring as possible. Hope is a powerful analgesic. If you have even an ounce of hope, you can survive virtually any experience, no matter how traumatic.
I told him not to worry, that people were coming to save him right now.
I told him, This really is out of your hands, so don’t waste time focusing on that. What you
should
focus on is slowing down your breathing. There’s not a lot of air down there. You’ll use it all up.
Oh fuck . . . Oh God . . .
No.
No time for panic.
Instead, I told him to focus on the lesson.
 
It’s not long before Charles Murtha, one of the richest oil executives in this region, has it right and can recite it from memory. He seems absurdly grateful to appreciate the chance to actually
do
something after hanging in that pipe for so long. Like so many executives he is eager to please, to prove his worth in some kind of arena, even one as dingy and desperate as this.
So before long he is saying it with true gusto, as if he believes the words coming out of his mouth.
Oh, from your lips to the world’s ears, Charles.
 
I am glad Charles Murtha learned his lesson.
For soon we would be past the point of no return. Even if any member of local law enforcement were to figure out my riddle, there wouldn’t be enough time to get a maintenance crew down to the bowels of the resort to free poor Mr. Charles Murtha before . . .
Well, I didn’t want to tell him any of that. Especially considering what would be happening to his body.
He was pretty touchy as it was.
chapter 19
 
DARK
 
A
burly driver raced Dark away from the abandoned movie palace and back to the airport, pausing only to flash his cell phone at a security checkpoint before being allowed to drive directly onto the tarmac. Seems that Blair really got off on those things, because he apparently passed them out like party favors.
There was no question as to which plane he’d be boarding. A Gulfstream was finishing up its fueling sequence. Dark stepped out of the car and saw another man approaching the stairway at the same time. His thin frame was wrapped in a dingy wool Irish Garda coat. Even though he had a youthful face, his skull was topped with unruly white hair, like a Q-tip that had been sent to the electric chair. The man slowed his pace when he saw Dark, and switched the duffel bag to the opposite hand.
“At long last, Steve Dark, in the flesh,” the man said, extending his hand. “I’m Deckland O’Brian.”
Dark nodded, shook the man’s bony, rough hand.
“Hey, didn’t you bring any luggage from L.A.?”
“I travel light.”
“Not even a book for the flight? I can’t go anywhere without a good read. Anyway, after you, my friend.”
Dark ascended the stairs and stepped into the wildly expensive Gulfstream jet. All luxury details, however, had been stripped away in favor of utility: workstations outfitted with touch-screen computers, racks of weapons and uniforms, and even a small forensics lab.
Standing in front of a weapons bay was a tall, broad man with a head that looked like it could be used as a battering ram. Instead of hair, an elaborate gothic tattoo ran over his bony pate and down the back of his neck, disappearing behind his flack jacket. He was assembling a Heckler & Koch MP5A3 with a tactical tri-rail.
“Dark, this is Hans Roeding. He speaks some English, but not much. Even if he did, he wouldn’t say much at all.”
Roeding nodded, then went back to what he was doing.
“That’s just his way of saying, ‘Charmed, I’m sure.’”
“Right,” Dark said.
“Far more sociable, and able to speak in
many
tongues,” O’Brian continued, “is the lovely Natasha Garcon.”
As Garcon spun around in her chair to face them, Dark realized that O’Brian hadn’t been joking. She was beautiful. Blue-gray eyes, lips that looked like they were forever on the verge of blowing you a kiss. Even with her hair pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail and no trace of makeup, Garcon would step into any social situation and be the most stunning woman in the room.
“Are we ready to go, then? I’ll inform the pilot and get us cleared.” And with that, Garcon spun back around, placed a bud inside her left ear, then began to speak in crisp yet hurried French. She’d barely glanced at Dark, which struck him as a little unusual. Was he being dismissed as a member of this team even before he formally joined it?
O’Brian slapped his back, gestured to the workstation. “All yours, buddy. Make yourself at home. Next stop, the Middle East.”
So this was Global Alliance.
The “best of the best.”
How had Blair put it?
Manhunters of your caliber, and in some cases, even more seasoned.
And whose prey is much more fearsome than your garden-variety serial killer....
These people, however, were not former cops. Their specialties lay elsewhere. They were also virtual ciphers—and for the past decade, had existed off the grid.
Before Dark had left for the airport, Blair had transmitted brief dossiers on each team member to Dark’s smartphone. Deckland O’Brian was former IRA and a tech freak. On the surface, he appeared to be nothing more than a software engineer from one of the larger computer companies that had roared during the days of the Celtic Tiger. Beneath that cover, he was renowned as an expert on extracting pieces of electronic information from essentially anything with a memory chip, online or otherwise.
Hans Roeding was a former member of German Special Forces Command—Kommando Spezialkräfte, or KSK, for short. Top-of-the-line soldiers trained in insurgency, counterterrorism, black ops, and a host of other unofficial activities that never end up in the history books. Roeding was the best KSK had produced since the fall of the Berlin Wall, having led secret operations in Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, China, and Libya.

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