Marah Chase and the Fountain of Youth

by Jay Stringer

“There’s a but…”

  “With you, there always is. But the but here is the same as any crime. People. It’s getting easier to launder on your own with so much of it being digital now, but there are still other people involved. You need to pass it through businesses that aren’t connected to you on paper. And for counterfeiting, there are so many steps. Shipping, processing, layering. At some point, no matter how good you are, how many precautions you take, you have to work with someone who knows what you’re doing. And that person, in turn, has to work with someone else who knows what they’re doing. Maybe also knows what you’re doing, or can guess. It becomes a human chain, and eventually, somewhere along that chain, somebody talks.”

  “Crime 101.”

  “Cleaners are just doing for people what money launderers do for currency. And they need to be counterfeiters, too. Take someone who’s dirty and make them clean, with new identities and documents. Even the best of them, they don’t work alone. There are so many things to be done. No one person can be an expert on all the things anymore. Passports, they’re biometric. Bank records. In the UK there’s National Insurance, HMRC, NHS records. And the larger a person’s profile, the more work it takes to clean them. Because you need to factor in their public appearances, news stories, internet, state surveillance cameras with facial recognition software. Cleaners call all of that your brand. The bigger your brand, the harder the work, the longer the chain of people involved.”

  “I need to find someone else in the chain.”

  “Right. Whoever did the cleaning, they’ll never talk. You can’t bribe them; you can’t threaten them. But if you find the right person somewhere else along the chain, they’re not a cleaner, they don’t have the same rules. And for someone with as big a brand as your journalist? For someone like that to disappear in London these days? The cleaner will have paid someone who can hack the security net, wipe facial rec.”

  “Who should I talk to?”

  “The best in the business is Grant LaFarge. Used to work for the British government before going freelance. He did my clean, wiped me off the grid completely. If your girl has really been taken off the map in London, I think the cleaner would have used Grant.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “Right here.”

  “New York?”

  “Right here. I’ll take you to him.”

  THIRTEEN

  The existence of the City Hall station was an open secret. Most people with a passing knowledge of New York history knew it was there. The real surprise was the network of rooms and passages next to the station.

  The southern end of City Hall Park was the original site of the post office and courthouse. It stood opposite the Woolworth Building from 1880 to 1939. After it was demolished, the city chose to extend the park rather than build anything new. The post office had been designed with a multilevel basement complex, full of sorting rooms, transportation tunnels, and access to the subway platform for private trains. The top level of the basement had been filled in, but the lower tiers had remained empty and were now part of the Speakeasy complex, adapted into offices, private bedrooms, meeting spaces, and a casino. The subway station was the attractive first impression—the stylish bar, with its vintage tiles, brass chandeliers, and vaulted ceilings. But the post office was where the real work was done.

  Texas led Chase down three tiled steps at the edge of the platform and along a short ledge, to a heavy-looking metal door. She pressed a buzzer, a recent addition screwed to the wall, and it was opened by a doorman in a suit almost as expensive as his boss’s. He bowed slightly as Texas walked by. Chase followed her along a wide corridor. It had been painted a deep gold, with black tiles on the floor. The doors along the wall were all dark wood, replacing whatever had been there originally.

  “LaFarge has been coming here every week for a few months,” Texas said, pushing through a double door and into a second corridor. Chase could hear soft music coming from behind the doorways as they passed. “He’s into the house for fifty grand.”

  “Is that a lot?”

  “For this place? Not really. I have three million on the street right now, but people know not to mess me around, so I don’t rush them.”

  Texas knocked a couple of times on another door, which was opened this time by a young woman wearing the same style suit as the doorman. The room was large, with a ceiling that felt as high as the subway station’s. There were roulette and blackjack tables, and another fully stocked bar along the far wall, but in the center of the room stood a circular table, where seven people were playing poker. Chase recognized two Hollywood actors among the group. Both of them were well-known for their card playing, and one was rumored to be a real asshole at the table. From the amount of chips piled in the center, Chase guessed it was a high-stakes game.

  Texas motioned for Chase to stay where she was and stepped over to the table to tap one of the men on the shoulder, whispering something in his ear. He nodded and looked across at Chase for a moment before returning his focus to the hand. He had the look of an accountant rather than a criminal, with thin, almost fine features and round glasses.

  Texas finished the hushed conversation and came back to stand beside Chase.

  “They’re taking a break after this hand.”

  Most people folded. It came down to the two actors and an overweight man in a too-tight black shirt. The Hollywood asshole won, and after a few jokes, the accountant excused himself from the table and came over to join Texas and Chase.

  “Marah Chase,” Texas said, making the introduction, “Grant LaFarge. Grant, Marah.”

  “Pleasure to meet you.” LaFarge spoke with a transatlantic accent, making it hard to place his origin. “I’ve heard so many stories.”

  Texas smiled at them both. “I’ll leave you to it. Grant, Marah is a friend; helping her is helping me.” She walked away, pausing for one last look to Chase that said, Remember the favor.

  “An introduction like that,” LaFarge said, “Texas vouching for you, carries a lot of weight here. You must need something big.”

  Chase motioned toward the bar. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Sure.”

  On the way over to the bar, Chase tried a little small talk to figure out how he worked, and the best way to approach him. “Big game?”

  He nodded, looking across at the empty table. “Best in town. Used to be one in Brooklyn. And we had one going with the Russians who live in Trump Tower, but that got shut down when the press started sniffing.”

  Chase glanced at the Hollywood guy. “I hear he’s tough.”

  “Real alpha, gets off on control, wants to destroy people’s lives.”

  “Didn’t he play a superhero?”

  “Yeah. Kind of ironic.”

  “How you doing?”

  “Not well. I have enough for one more hand, then I’m out.”

  The more he talked, the more Chase detected a slight Welsh roundness to his words. It only showed up occasionally, stretching a few syllables, rolling others. At the bar he ordered a vodka and cranberry juice. Chase asked for water. She paid and tipped heavily.

  LaFarge leaned on the bar and raised a wordless toast before sipping from the drink.

  Chase decided it was time to get straight to it. “You worked for GCHQ?”

  “I was a geek, yeah. Got out when I could see the way things were going.”

  Chase had no idea what he was referring to but nodded as if she did, wanting to play to his ego and confirm his opinions. “Now you help clean people.”

  “Sometimes. That’s just a sideline. I like the idea of it. I used to get paid to watch people all the time; now sometimes I get paid to make it so people can’t be watched. It’s fun.”

  Chase figured him out right there. It was about control. He’d gotten into his original line of work to control people’s information, and he was still doing it, just for a different side. He played poker because, like all control freaks, he kidded himself that he could master the game rat
her than be mastered by it. But if he owed the house fifty grand, he wasn’t as in control as he liked to tell himself.

  “I need help finding someone,” Chase said. “Someone you might have wiped.”

  “I can’t just give out—”

  “Look, the intro from Texas—she wants you to help me. We both know how she works. You owe her money, but if you help me, you’re helping her. She’ll owe you a favor, and maybe it’s worth fifty K?”

  Chase left it there, giving him time to build whatever narrative protected his ego and allowed him to pretend to be in control. LaFarge looked down at his polished shoes. Chase watched in silence as he scrunched his face in thought, licked his lips, then nodded.

  “As I was saying, I can’t give you anything,” he said, loud enough that others might have heard him refusing to help. Then, in a quieter voice, “But maybe you should talk to your ex in London.”

  He smiled and walked away, shifting quickly to a loud conversation with the other players, making it clear he was done with Chase. But that was fine. He’d managed to thread the needle, giving her information that would help without being seen to sell out a client.

  Your ex in London.

  Chase knew exactly who he was referring to: Joanna Mason, an MI6 spook and the last person to really count as a girlfriend. Dani the Dominican hadn’t reached that level. With Mason, Chase had been through several rounds of the on-and-off game, but they’d both known the score going in. It had never been a long-term investment. Mason was one of the best intelligence agents in the business. If LaFarge was sending Chase her way, it meant she knew something.

  Chase rode the subway back uptown and was so deep in thought that she missed her stop, getting off at Eighty-Sixth Street instead. Rather than heading toward Columbus Avenue and walking down that way, which felt quicker, she stayed on Central Park West. Turning right on West Eighty-Third, Chase paused beside a large Romanesque building and realized none of this had been an accident. Her feet, or her deepest thoughts, had played a trick on her.

  She was standing outside a large synagogue. The temple was tall and angular, with high arches around the windows and columns on either side of the entrance. The door was open, and Chase could see lights coming from inside. Would people be worshipping at this time of night, or was it some social function? Chase wasn’t sure and, not for the first time, felt embarrassed about that. She was raised Jewish but never gave much thought to it beyond the traditions and a sense of responsibility to history. There was a spirit there, a long line of people who’d been kicked around from place to place and still kept finding space of their own. Chase liked that, and somehow, even without planning it, whenever she moved to a new place, she always managed to know where the nearest synagogue was. There was another one that she found more visually interesting, with a grander archway, but it was too far over on West Eighty-Eighth for her feet to have casually led her there tonight.

  She looked up again at the windows, and the star carved into the wall, near the apex of the roof. Then at the door, with the columns that looked so similar to the temple she’d found in Ethiopia. In that moment, Chase felt something she hadn’t expected. A deep connection. Almost a pulling sensation in her gut, asking her to step inside. She had no frame of reference for this feeling. Was it faith? She had stood in the Holy of Holies. She had lifted the Ark. The Ark. It was real. There was a golden chest, carried by people. No matter whatever else that meant, she could feel a link to those people. Thousands of them, thousands of years, too. A history that she was part of.

  Or guilt. Was this guilt? The history had always been there, waiting for her. Had she been ignoring all those people? She was the one who’d seen the relic, the one who’d touched it and let it slip away. She thought of her parents and felt each of the years back to the last time she saw them. Her mother, Chase’s own connection to Jewish history.

  Loss washed in over everything else. This was an emotion she was used to. Something she could use. For just a moment, Chase thought about stepping inside. Finding someone to talk to or something to touch. Just to touch. But her own legs didn’t want to. She didn’t want to.

  Chase laughed at herself.

  She rolled her eyes, come on, and continued along the street. She turned left onto Columbus, then six blocks down, onto West Eightieth. She didn’t pause to check her mail in the lobby. Her head was full enough; anything else could wait. She felt each and every step on her way up the fourth floor. The flight to London still needed to be booked, and Chase already had the sinking feeling there wouldn’t be enough time for a full night’s sleep. There was no real reason she couldn’t wait a day, get rested up before going. But she knew, really, that the next available flight would be the one she took. What if Eades was in urgent trouble and Chase delayed too long?

  She stopped in her tracks. Her door was open. For the second time in one night, someone had made it up here without a key.

  When choosing her apartment, Chase had narrowed it down to a choice of two. One with a doorman in the lobby but an overly aggressive co-op board, and one with no doorman but a very keen board. Chase had gone for the second option but now, once again, that seemed like a stupid idea.

  She should call the cops. She should turn around and get to safety. Like a normal person. But living in the dark trades changed you. The rules were different.

  Chase inched toward the door, going up on the balls of her feet, ready for movement. She pressed flat to the wall beside the doorframe and listened to the shuffling from inside. Chase’s neglect in unpacking had given her an excellent warning system, because she could hear someone moving around, rummaging through the boxes, digging down for whatever they were after. She waited as the intruder finished up in the box nearest the window, which Chase could tell from the sound of cables and tools she had left in the bottom. As the sounds shifted to documents, she knew he was closer to her, rummaging through her old research papers. She sucked in a deep breath, then sprung around and through the door, aiming straight for him.

  The lights were off. The only illumination came from the flashlight on the intruder’s cell phone and the light that slipped in from the hall. Chase could make out a thin shape, around the same height as her, bundled up in a dark hoodie. The shape spun to face her but was too late. Chased connected at speed, throwing all her weight into the impact. They both hit the floor. The cell phone skidded away, taking the light with it. Chase reacted fast enough to get on top of the intruder, straddling him—she was sure it was a man—and punching down, toward the hood. His face was obscured by one of those cycling masks with a skull pattern.

  She grabbed at his hoodie, demanded answers. “What are you—”

  He rolled, and he was strong enough to throw her off. While she was off-balance, he grabbed a handful of her hair and threw her over, face-first into the floor. The side of her face was numb with shock, but she started to push back up. He kicked her arms out, flattening her again, then aimed a hard kick at her side. Chase yelped in pain and rolled away.

  The attacker took a step closer. “Where is it?”

  “Where’s what?” Chase shouted the two words out between pained breaths.

  He was backlit by the hall light. Chase saw him aim for another kick. She curled into a protective ball, but the blow never came. When Chase opened her eyes again, she saw that he was still poised, making the point that he could do it.

  “The Fountain is not for you,” he said.

  Chase’s vision dimmed. Then she realized it wasn’t her vision, it was the light. Something had blocked it for a second. Or someone. A large shape in the doorway, and an angry growl. Someone big grabbed the attacker from behind. They joined into one shape for a brief skirmish, hidden mostly in shadow with the occasional flash of light around the edges. Then there was a howl, a real sound of pain, and the guy in the hoodie broke away and bolted out through the door. The larger person followed.

  Chase took a few more breaths, then climbed to her feet and found the light switch. She hear
d movement out in the hall as heavy feet came back toward her apartment. Chase moved deeper into the room, looking for a weapon.

  Ted stepped into the doorway, still dressed in the chauffeur outfit.

  “Sorry, he got away,” he said.

  “No, uh, no need to…” Chase shrugged. What the hell had just happened? “Thanks.”

  Ted stepped into the apartment and smiled. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, just shaken up a bit.”

  “What was that… Do you know what that was about?”

  Chase shook her head but said yes. “He mentioned the Fountain. But I don’t—” She paused. “Wait, what are you doing here?”

  “Yeah, so, you left without this.” He held up the tablet Lauren had been using. “All the files we have on the Fountain. Lauren’s built a database of all the legends and documents.” He smiled, rolled his eyes, conspiratorial. “It was kind of her pet project for a while. It’ll make my life easier if you use it.”

  “I told you, I’m not interested. I’m looking for my friend, not the Fountain.”

  “Lauren thought you might be interested. Better to have the information than not, right?”

  He hovered for a moment, shifting weight from foot to foot, uncertain of what to do. He nodded to himself and set the device on top of the nearest box.

  “You need me to do anything? I mean, you wanna call someone, or, are you hurt, or…?”

  “No, really. I’m good.” Chase was going to leave it at that, but she was hit with a wave of actual humanity. “Thanks for the save.”

  He grinned and bobbed his head before leaving. Chase shut the door after him and bolted it, thinking, When this is over, I’m moving to the place with the doorman. She paused to stare at the tablet on the way past. She picked it up and headed toward the bedroom, kidding herself that she wasn’t going to read it.

  FOURTEEN

  The fire alarm started right on time. Ringing through the halls of the hotel and out into the predawn Cairo air. From his perch on the roof, Nash could see people leaving the building, huddling together at the meeting points to stand in the cold, crack jokes, and talk nervously.