Authors: Duane Swierczynski,Anthony E. Zuiker

Dark Revelations (15 page)

BOOK: Dark Revelations

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Dubai, United Arab Emirates

D
ark had been taunted before. Sqweegel—his longtime nemesis, and a so-called forensic-proof killer—had been dispatched over five years ago, but was still partly alive in a secret corner of Dark’s mind. Sqweegel had fixated on Steve Dark himself, forcing Dark out of his cocoon, leading him around the country on a blood-soaked trail of savagery and leaving fresh corpses in his wake until a final showdown. A confrontation that took
everything
from Dark. So if there was one thing Dark had grown to loathe, it was the taunts from killers who thought they were stronger, faster, smarter than the cops who chased them.

But Dark had Labyrinth’s game now.

The riddle gave the
method
of murder. With the actress and the producer, it had been literal: shot, hung, drowned, just as in the riddle. With the oil executive, he had been destroyed by an artificial river.

The artifact pointed to
who
. The nude sketch. The extinct fish from California.

And finally, the timepiece revealed
when
. But it also lent insight to the who and the method. Everything was symbolic. Everything carefully thought out in advance.

Taunting
them.

But that, Dark realized, would work to his advantage. Labyrinth’s inflexibility was his vulnerability. He was like a madman setting up an overly elaborate Rube Goldberg–style trap. All Dark had to do was remove one piece in advance, and watch it come crashing down around him. It was familiar, in a sick way. If Dark had been sharper, he could have sensed the pattern with Sqweegel a lot earlier. This felt like karma handing him a cosmic do-over.

Still, that didn’t explain Blair’s—and Global Alliance’s—interest in this case.

“I want to talk to Blair,” Dark told Natasha Garcon.

“You’ve got a phone.”

“A number would be great.”

Natasha sighed. She’d spent the past few hours trying to coax every possible second of surveillance footage from the resort owners, and was weary from the effort. The fact that they obviously had trouble dealing with a
woman
didn’t help, either. She made a big show of pulling her cell phone out of her pocket, thumbing through her contacts, pressing the screen, then handing the phone to Dark.

“Thanks,” he said, then held the phone to his ear. Blair answered after the first ring.

“What’s the latest, Natasha?”

Dark didn’t bother with an explanation. Instead he asked, “Something’s bugging me.”

“Ah, Dark,” Blair said. “What is it?”

“From all that you’ve told me, Global Alliance operates in the shadow world, neutralizing threats before they surface. This has already surfaced. The whole world is beginning to talk about this. What do we bring to the table that no other law enforcement agency isn’t already doing? I feel like we’re batting cleanup here.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Focus our efforts on thinking a step ahead. Forget Dubai for now. It’s over, and he’s received the impact he wanted. We’ve lost this round of his game. Let’s start thinking about this like chess, and outthink his next move.”

There was silence on the line, and for a moment, Dark suspected that he may have pushed back too hard.

But instead Blair told him,

“You’re right. Let me talk to Natasha.”

chapter 25

LABYRINTH

N
ow the world is finally rousing from its slumber and starting to pay attention.

I read it all, the headlines

Tweets

status updates

push notifications

blog posts

comments

And yes, people are starting to pay attention.

Make one bold statement, they can still write you off as an eccentric—the act could be a one-off. The media said as much. People understood, and could deal with, aberrations. Even shock wears off. Consider the lessons of 9/11. Normalcy returns quickly. People want to be normal. They crave it, because it is safe and reassuring.

To truly make a global change you have to follow it up with another statement.

One that shows the depth of your message.

One that shows you are serious.

This is the way you save the world.

One shock at a time.

Not long after landing in Johannesburg I take a taxi to my rented workstation in a nondescript skyscraper and begin preparing my next gift. They know me here. They smile and nod because I am polite and nice and handsome and well-groomed and not in their presence long enough to make any other kind of impression. They may have seen me once, somewhere, on TV perhaps.... But they don’t comment or gawk—that would be rude.

They say,

Hello.

And make a comment about the weather or inquire about my flight. So I humor them and say,

Did you know they charge for pillows now? Isn’t that the craziest thing? I like comfort just like the next guy, but for nine euro I’ll stay a little uncomfortable.

They laugh and smile along with me, even though what I am saying isn’t very funny.

I look at them and continue,

I hope you’ll forgive the wrinkles in my jacket. Turns out it works just as well as a pillow—of course, you have to remember to take the pens out of your pocket!

More laughs, more enthusiastic now, because that’s how they’re trained.

I could draw them into a corner and say a few words and within an hour they’d be slicing their own throats and drawing pentagrams on the walls with their own blood.

Just by talking to them.

But no.

There is another package to prepare.

I take the elevator upstairs to my private office where my guest is already waiting for me.

All told this is relatively easy; I had the materials shipped here months ago through a series of cutouts and drop boxes, none of it traceable back to me.

Even if someone were clever enough to trace the movements of the boxes, seizing and opening them would reveal essentially meaningless objects:

A book.

A sculpted piece of stone.

But if you understood the game . . .

It would mean everything.

And soon they will.

chapter 26

DARK

Airspace over Europe

B
y the time the team was flown back to France, everyone was exhausted. For all of that effort, the suspect known as Labyrinth had left no fingerprint, digital or otherwise. No equipment, no gear, no reservations, no shipping orders, no human contact whatsoever. It was as if a ghost had sent the tank of fish and the gold watch and scrawled the riddle on company letterhead.

Now it was time to head back to the real Global Alliance headquarters to plot their counterattack.

“I just realized,” Dark said, “that I have no idea where we’re going. Where is the Global Alliance HQ?”

O’Brian smirked. “He didn’t tell you about it? Oh, you’re going to love it.”

Paris, France

Almost two hundred years ago, Paris began pulling the limestone from beneath its feet to construct its magnificent buildings. What remained were a series of underground quarries that were later put to use by mushroom fighters, French resistance fighters, Nazi invaders, and more recently—urban explorers who routinely broke into the web of tunnels and pits for parties or just the sheer thrill of it. The French made it illegal to wander through this tunnel back in the 1950s, but that didn’t stop the
cataphiles
.

It also didn’t stop Damien Blair when it came time to choose a headquarters for his burgeoning Global Alliance.

Access to GA HQ was difficult unless you were Blair or a member of his team. Armed guards staked out the three entrances: a hidden elevator in a skyscraper above, a subterranean loading dock on a secret level of a parking garage (large enough to accommodate vehicles)—and, as an emergency failsafe, a sewage junction a few blocks away. Even if you were to blast your way past the armed guards—many of them as skilled at combat as Hans Roeding, since he’d trained them—the only way to access the tunnels was through a complex series of biometric devices. And once again, unless you were Blair or one of his handpicked team members, the shape of your iris and the curve of your earlobes and the whorl of the skin on your nose and the structure of the veins on the backs of your hands would give you away. Lockdown. Alarms. Entrapment. After that, you would need an extremely good lawyer.

The main complex was six stories beneath street level, which included a briefing room, weapons room, state-of-the-art forensics laboratory, library, gym, and quarters for the team members.

As the newest member, Dark had been given a spartan room along with some basics: clothes (his size, and a perfect fit), a grooming kit, a new smartphone, tablet computer. Blair told him that he could order whatever he needed on the tablet computer; the goods would be delivered to the guards by the loading dock within six hours. If he needed something in a rush, simply mark it as urgent and it would arrive by courier within thirty minutes.
Just like pizza
, Dark thought.

But what Dark wanted most was to call his daughter, Sibby, hear her voice. It was three A.M. at home, however. He couldn’t wake her on a school day.

So instead he crawled into the stiff double bed he’d been given and told himself it would be good to grab a few hours’ sleep, at the very least. Dark hadn’t slept in days, now that he thought about it. Not since hearing about the first Labyrinth package.

And he could not sleep, now, either.

His brain refused to turn off.

Not until he figured out the killer’s next move.