Black List (4 page)

Three days.

That’s how long I held out. Three days of going through the motions of my daily life, waiting with growing concern for Arran to contact me. Three days of turning over all kinds of possibilities in my mind. Three days of nervous anticipation that found no relief.

The memory stick felt like a lead weight in my pocket, kept with me at all times just in case someone broke into my flat while I was out.

Dixon’s threatened meeting with Human Resources came and went. I sat through it more or less in silence, hardly even aware of what was happening around me. All I could hear were words like ‘poor performance’, ‘unreliable’ and ‘questionable future’.

In truth, part of me was hoping they’d just fire me and save us all the aggravation, but I suppose they had to go through the motions. We all had to.

By the evening of the third day, Alex had finally made up his mind. There had been no word from Sinclair, and no indication that his friend would come to relieve him of the unwanted burden of the memory stick. One way or another, he needed to know what was going on.

Returning home from another unfulfilling day at work, Alex discarded his shirt and trousers, slipping on a pair of faded jeans and a Metallica t-shirt he’d owned since he was a teenager. Though not normally superstitious, he’d always worn it back in the day when undertaking a new hacking attempt, as if it somehow conveyed an element of protection or luck. Pulling it on felt like stepping back in time.

‘Well, Arran, I hope you’re fucking happy now,’ he mumbled as he zipped up a black hoodie over the t-shirt. ‘I’m about to break my parole, just like you wanted. Wanker.’

Shuddering in the unseasonably cold evening breeze, he left his apartment block and headed east, following the main drag towards Brentford tube station. With his hood up, head down and hands in his pockets, he was about as anonymous as it was possible to be in a place like this. People walked right by him, not paying the slightest notice.

But unknown to Alex, one person did notice him. One person’s sole focus was directed at him in fact as they followed him about thirty yards back, sometimes coming closer, sometimes allowing the gap to widen. Once or twice they even appeared to stop and allow him to wander off, but always they stayed with him.

A pair of cold, intense blue eyes followed his every move.

Oblivious to his silent pursuer, Alex continued on his way, passing sad-looking charity shops, boarded-up retail units waiting to be leased and houses festooned with For Sale signs. The global financial crisis was still hammering the UK hard, and an air of gloom and doom seemed to have descended on the entire country. Even the stray cats lurking near takeaway bins looked more grim than usual.

What he was looking for was about a hundred yards distant 
–
 he could already see the neon sign above the door, fashioned in the shape of a giant @ symbol.

Internet cafes were by now a thing of the past 
–
 throwbacks to the 1990s, when only rich people could afford online access at home. But even in the twenty-first century there were still a few such places dotted around, kept going partly by nostalgia and partly by tourists with no other means of accessing their emails.

Coffee@Once was one such place. Alex had never felt the need to venture inside, particularly with his parole terms hanging over him, but he’d passed by enough times to know the layout well enough. Coffee house at the front, computer terminals lined up in a series of discreet booths at the back.

The decor was like something out of an episode of 
Friends
; all domestic couches, mismatching furniture and shabby-chic exposed floorboards. A typical hangout for people with thick-framed glasses they didn’t need and hair meticulously styled to look like they didn’t care about it, all trying so hard to be unique that they ended up looking like they’d rolled off a hipster assembly line. Still, they had what he needed, and they stayed open until 10 p.m.

Making his way inside, he was immediately assailed by the strong, sickly-sweet aroma of coffee beans. Whatever they brewed there must have been like rocket fuel.

Doing his best to ignore the tinge of nausea that the smell of coffee shops always brought out in him, he caught the eye of one of the staff members and walked over to talk with him.

He was a tall, sparsely built young man with a row of piercings in one eyebrow, and blonde hair shaved at the sides and gelled into a ridiculous quiff on top. Still, at least it made Alex’s teenage photos look a little better.

‘Evening. What can I get for you?’ he asked, eyeing up Alex’s appearance with casual disapproval. Apparently branded t-shirts and scruffy hoodies weren’t in keeping with the standards expected here.

‘I need one of your machines.’

A heavily pierced brow rose with some difficulty. ‘No coffee, or food? We’re doing a special offer on blueberry and coconut muffins today.’

Alex tried not to make a face. Food was the last thing on his mind, and he was hardly swimming in cash as it was. This place would no doubt happily relieve him of what little he had left. ‘No, I just want to check a few things online.’

‘It’s up to you,’ he remarked, not looking as if he cared much either way. ‘How long?’

‘Half an hour should be enough.’

‘Cool beans,’ the young man said, inputting some commands into a master terminal that controlled access to the other computers in the room. ‘That’ll be ten pounds.’

It was Alex’s turn to raise an eyebrow. That would have been extortionate even back when places like this were cutting-edge. A cursory tally of the money in his wallet plus whatever loose change he could dig out of his pockets wasn’t looking good.

‘I’ve got… seven fifty?’

The young man looked at him like he’d just scraped Alex from the sole of his designer shoe. ‘We take card payments.’

A couple of minutes later, Alex was ensconced in one of the booths near the corner of the room, with a glowing computer monitor staring back at him and a cup of overpriced coffee steaming away by his side.

He reached out to place his hands on the keyboard, then hesitated. This was the point of no return. He could still walk away without having technically done anything wrong. He could throw the memory stick and its mysterious contents into the nearest bin, forever consigning it to his past, and live out the rest of his life in ignorance.

The moment of indecision came and, like the passing of a shadow at dawn, it was gone. Taking a breath, Alex reached out and logged into the terminal with the username he’d been given by the none-too-helpful staff member.

It was done. He was committed now. There was no choice but to see it through.

Strangely, he felt less fear now that the decision was made. The knowledge that there was no going back somehow freed him to move forward, there being little to lose.

And as much as he hated to admit it, there was a thrill in finally being connected again. He was online. This was his world. This was what had once given his life meaning.

His first port of call was the message board used by the members of Valhalla 7. If anyone could shed light on what had happened to Sinclair, they could.

The group’s five remaining members were physically separated by hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of miles, therefore they needed a place online to meet and plan their activities. And they had yet to find anything better than a good old-fashioned bulletin board.

At least not when he’d been amongst their ranks.

The board was invisible to Google or any other internet search engine. It was safe, anonymous and above all, discreet. To access it, Alex was forced to manually input the IP address from memory 
–
 a daunting task for most people, but not for him. Remembering such things had always been frighteningly easy for Alex.

It was forgetting that was the hard part.

Presented with the basic login page, he inputted his old username and password, then held his breath as he hit Enter. Sinclair had once told him that he was welcome to re-join them any time he wanted, and that the door would always be open, but there was still a chance his identity had been revoked rather than risk compromising the group.

Mercifully however his identity was accepted. The login page vanished, and just like that he was once again back in the hub of Valhalla 7’s activity. He hadn’t laid eyes on this site in over two years. Two years of camaraderie, arguments, jokes, ideas and debates that he’d missed out on.

Straight away he saw the familiar usernames associated with various conversation threads – Loki, Baldr, Vali, Njord and Freyja – and couldn’t help but smile.

The names had been Sinclair’s idea. Always fascinated by Norse mythology, he had chosen each username, as well as the name of the group itself, to fit with this ideal. It had seemed a little over the top at the time, yet each of them had settled into their new identities surprisingly quickly. Needless to say, Alex’s own identity of Odin wasn’t present in any of the active threads, and apparently none of the other users was online at that moment.

Seeing the once-familiar message board and the usernames he used to interact with every single day brought with it a wave of nostalgia and melancholy. For a moment Alex almost felt as if he was back in that period of his life again, launching online forays across the digital battleground of cyberspace.

But he wasn’t, and the crash of a dropped coffee cup on the far side of the room was enough to remind him of his surroundings.

Forcing his mind back to the task at hand, he quickly scanned through the list of recent discussion threads in search of leads. There was nothing specifically relating to the job Sinclair had referenced, though the frequency of postings had dropped off considerably over the past couple of weeks, suggesting the group was preoccupied with more pressing tasks.

And then, two days ago, it stopped. No more posts of any kind. It was as if communication amongst the group had simply ceased.

With growing unease, he brought up each user’s profile one by one, only to meet with the same result each time.

Finally he came to Sinclair’s profile, though by now he knew exactly what to expect.

Alex leaned back in his seat, unsure of what to make of this discovery. It was possible that whatever the group were collaborating on had required them to cease all other online activity, or perhaps even to come together and work in the same physical location. It had never happened before, but given what Sinclair was suggesting, it wouldn’t be unreasonable.

And yet, Alex’s mind wasn’t eased by these thoughts. There was another, far more sinister explanation behind this.

Leaving the message board for now, he navigated to Google and inputted Sinclair’s full name, bracing himself before hitting the Search button.

‘Oh fuck,’ he gasped, seeing the top news article:

Alex could barely believe what he was seeing as his eyes eagerly devoured the brief article, written for a local paper in Arran’s home city of Stirling. The words seemed to leap out of the screen at him yet made no impact on his shocked mind.

Alex swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, his heart pounding as he imagined his friend’s car being forced off the road, imagined shadowy men gunning him down as he tried to escape the wreck, imagined them dragging his lifeless body into a waiting van to be disposed of where no one would ever find it.

He imagined it all in the blink of an eye. And he knew he’d never forget it.

Arran Sinclair; his friend, the man who had inspired him to do things he’d once thought impossible, who had opened his eyes to a world of possibilities, was gone.

With trembling hand he reached for the coffee by his side, wishing it was something a lot stronger at that moment. Instead he missed his mark, and gasped as scalding hot coffee slopped over the edge of the cup and onto his hand.

The pain was sudden and intense, but it was enough to bring him back to reality with a start. He was after all in a public place, and anyone who happened to be watching at that moment would have known from his expression that something terrible had happened.

Gritting his teeth and wiping his wet hand on his jeans, he did his best to compose himself and push aside the grief and anger that now raged within him. He had to be rational about this. He had to think.

That crash had been no accident; there was no doubt of that in Alex’s mind. Whatever his friend had been looking for within the CIA’s secure network, his efforts had been discovered and shut down with brutal efficiency. And judging by the lack of activity online, there was a good chance they had even got to the rest of Valhalla 7.

Were they all dead? Had it really come to that?

Stop, stop, stop, he told himself angrily. You’re making wild assumptions without knowing all the facts.