The Schwarzschild Radius (37 page)

Joules was on file-decrypting duty tonight and she hoped he could find something by tomorrow. He was her only ally in the world. Everything Rachel had done might come out in court one day. Her parents would die of shame, and Rachel just hoped they would understand why she had done it. But she couldn’t think of that now. One of her sisters was coming home.

Rachel entered the airport and looked for Cathay Pacific Airlines on each sign she passed. She had to hit the high beams every time she approached a sign to quickly scan the dozen or so airlines listed on each. She thought she’d missed it when she spotted it. Terminal Seven.

She took the turn for short-term parking and stopped at the booth to get her parking stub. The machine dispensed a ticket which she put behind the sun visor.

There was plenty of parking, as expected, and she pulled up to a light pole a hundred yards from the Arrivals Building. Her watch said 2:15 a.m. She exited the car and walked briskly toward the crossing that led to Arrivals. She felt a bitter-sweet joy at the prospect of actually seeing Achara, of having had a hand in bringing her home. She was so close now.

Rachel hardly noticed the white van that pulled up next to her as she entered the shadow of the overpass. The driver opened the door and shot her with a Taser. Rachel collapsed to the ground convulsing, her body curling up like a burning leaf. In a flash, a man exited the vehicle and tossed the girl into the back seat, then sped away.

t was time for her to carry out the plan. If caught, Tong would cut off her nose and ears, and lock her in a room with mirrors. He had done this before and some of the girls committed suicide. Those who didn’t kill themselves had to work with a burlap bag over their heads like prisoners condemned to hang and charge only twenty-five baht because they had no faces.

Her sister had explained how to search for a flight on Expedia.com and Travelocity.com. Once she decided on a flight, she would have to go to a travel agent and buy the ticket with cash. Achara had considered doing all that after she escaped, but there would be so little time. The less she had to do, the better were her chances of escaping.

The e-ticket would be waiting for her at the airport, so there would be no chance of Tong finding it. It was almost 2:00 p.m. and time to go fetch beer. Yesterday she had exchanged some dollars, so she would have cab fare to get to the travel agency quickly. It was nine kilometers away, so eighteen round trip, twenty minutes each way through traffic.

Tong appeared at her door and made a drinking motion with his hand. She got up and extended her hand for the money.

The beverage warehouse was in the opposite direction of the travel agency and she had to be seen walking in the direction of the warehouse. She went to the end of the block and took a cab to pick up the beer, then took another cab to the travel agency. She had called the agency the day before and was told she had to bring her passport and any required visa. She told them she was an American citizen. First there was a silence on the other end. Okay, then just the passport.

In the cab with two cases of beer and dressed like a street urchin, she resolved to act like an American.

She unloaded the cases on the curb and paid the driver, then hauled the beer into the doorway of the agency, so no one would steal them.

“I called yesterday. I’m here to buy my plane ticket to America. I am an American,” she announced. She was instructed to sit.

“You speak perfect Thai,” said the lady.

“I just received my citizenship and was here to visit poor relatives. Here are two flights I am interested in.” She pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket. The lady glanced briefly at it, then looked at her.

Achara felt she wasn’t being received like an American.

“I want an e-ticket.”

“Passport?”

She slid it across the desk.

The lady looked it over, feeling the paper, inspecting the photo.

“This is completely blank. It has no entry stamp.”

Achara had forgotten about that.

“I lost my passport and they gave me a new one.”

“You have the police report and the consulate certification of the new passport?”

Achara’s mind raced.

“I… I don’t have that with me now.”

“It’s a problem when the passport is not in order.”

The pretenses were falling away quickly.

“How can we solve it?”

“Two-hundred.”

“Fifty.”

“One-fifty.”

“Seventy.”

She slid the passport back to Achara.

“Eighty-five or I go to another agency. There are many agencies here.”

The lady nodded and extended her hand. Achara counted out the money twice and handed it over, then selected a flight.

“Aisle or window?” asked the agent.

“Which is cheaper?”

“It’s the same price.”

“So what difference does it make?”

“Wait. Let me see something. Neither is available. Very short notice. So you get a middle seat.”

“That’s fine if the price is the same.”

“Sixteen-hundred-twenty-nine USD.”

The girl counted out the money three times.

“This is your receipt. The e-ticket will be waiting for you at the airport.”

Achara took a cab to the Internet café and, for the second day in a row, there was no sign of her sister. She didn’t want to waste money again calling the cell phone number she’d been given. She purchased a card and entered one of the phone booths.

“Hi, this is Rachel. Please leave a message at the beep and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks.”

The girl looked at the number and dialed again. Same message. How could she have given her the wrong number? What would happen if she arrived at the airport and there was no one to pick her up? The police would arrest her and send her to Guantanamo. She resumed her vigil by the PC. A working cam was available today, too.

She looked at the clock. They would notice her gone this long. She wrote an offline message and also sent it as an email.

Dear Sis,

I received everything you sent me. Thanks from the bottom of my heart.

Here is the flight. Singapore Airlines Flight 3244 to New York. Arrives at JFK Airport September 17 at 5:30 p.m. New York time. God bless you.

Achara

oules unscrambled an image of an Asian girl, about seven years old, having sex with a fat, white guy who was covering his face with a towel. The other pictures were along the same lines. Group sex with three girls, bondage, suspension. There were also .avi files. One was a video of the same man having sex with the girls in the stills. From the sounds the girls made, they were definitely in a foreign country.

Next, he decrypted a text file that was layered in a picture of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. It read like an autopsy. In clinical language, it described the dismemberment of Kirsten Schrodinger, along with photos taken at various stages of the process. There were horrific expressions on the victim’s face, so she was still living while this was being done to her. Then he found the video of her killing.

Usually impassive, Joules felt nausea creeping over him, along with the realization that Rachel had been in the home of this monster. He didn’t have McKenna’s number, but he knew from Rachel that the detective worked out of the 20
^th
precinct. He minimized the SubSeven program to google
NYPD 20
^th
Precinct
. It was then that he noticed the Norton Internet Security red alert.
No, can’t be
. But it was. He opened the Norton Security program and saw that Rachel’s firewall was disabled. He held on to the last hope that she was using IP anonymizing software, but of course, she wasn’t. It was her real IP address, traceable in seconds. He quickly opened Event Viewer Security and confirmed what he had already guessed. Her laptop had been successfully attacked. Joules shook his head at the enormity of Rachel’s blunder.

He tried Rachel’s cell and left a voicemail. Then he went to her house and was told by her father that she was there last night, but had left sometime later and taken her car. They had tried calling her all morning, but she wasn’t answering her dorm number.

His mind, so wired to see patterns and relationships between numbers, couldn’t escape the conclusion that Rachel was now in the hands of the man who had butchered Kirsten Schrodinger.