by Jay Stringer
“Why do they want to find it? Money? Jewels? A very big ball of string?”
There was no easy way to say this. Framing it with the Macrobian connection hadn’t helped. “They want the Fountain of Youth.”
Mason made a noise that was somewhere below a scoff. “Two years ago, I’d say that’s stupid.”
“Yeah. I know. Really. I still think it’s dumb, but…”
“I know that look,” Mason said. Then she pointed. “And I know that smile. You’re into it. You think it’s real.”
You’re not interested in the Fountain. You’re not interested in the Fountain.
“No, I don’t. I— She made a good case, is all.”
“Who?”
In any other conversation, Chase would have kept the information back, protected her client. And there was an extra layer here. Lauren had clearly been making a move. Chase hadn’t been interested, but this felt like she was telling an ex-girlfriend about a new crush. If there was no interest, what was the problem? That made Chase angry at herself, and it was enough to get over the hesitation.
“Lauren Stanford,” she said.
“Dosa Cola?” Mason’s voice rose. “That Lauren Stanford?”
“I was surprised, too.”
“Makes sense, actually. They knew each other at Oxford.”
Stanford had failed to mention that connection. But on that note, in all the conversations they’d had, Eades had never said anything about studying at Oxford. Did it go against the image she’d created?
Mason continued. “Stanford’s invested a lot over here, actually. Put her own money behind a craft brewery in Camden. The hipsters love it. She’s also been buying up a load of land in the East End, around Whitechapel.” She looked lost in thought for a moment, making connections. Then she smiled. “She’s cute. I’ve seen pictures.”
Chase looked away, shook her head. She was about to say, “I hadn’t noticed,” but nobody in the world who’d met her would buy that lie. And again, why was she even lying?
She changed the subject. “She gave me a whole story about her parents dying of cancer, her family being healers, being obsessed with finding the Fountain. But I still think they just want a PR thing. They pay me to go look for this magic water, then use it as a marketing gimmick to sell a new brand.”
Mason had been typing on her phone’s screen. She held it up to show a page full of Lauren Stanford pictures, taken from news stories. “Cute.” She smiled. “But it’s probably about the water. That’s the thing now. Oil is dying off. The next big deal, the next big war, will be water. That or minerals. China already owns most of Africa’s natural resources, and your country is playing catch up.”
“And your country?”
“Talking behind China’s and America’s backs.” A slow smile. “It’s what we do best. But how does all this lead to Eades?”
“Lauren thinks she, Eades, was working on a story linked to the Fountain when she disappeared.” Chase saw Mason purse her lips in thought and followed up with, “What’s your link to her?”
Mason paused. “Okay. So this all ties to our old friends R18.”
A small explosion went off in Chase’s mind. R18 had been involved in the London incident. The attack itself had been carried out by a cult claiming to be Atenists, an ancient Egyptian religion, and the full extent of the links between R18 and the Atenists had never been revealed. But the cult had infiltrated the British establishment and very nearly pulled off a coup. Was R18 part of the Atenist cult, or had they just been hired muscle?
“You’re working on them again?” Chase asked.
“I never stopped. When I first started working on the case that led me to you, it was because my boss and I thought someone had infiltrated the system over here. The government, the cops, the security forces. We thought a coup was coming, and we were right. But what we were seeing at first had nothing to do with Egypt or ancient technology or any of the stuff that came later. I think what we saw at first, the people we were seeing at first, was R18.”
“I’d like to say you sound paranoid…”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“R18 went quiet after the attack. But I think they were just licking their wounds. They backed the wrong play and needed to consolidate. They’re clever. They hire people to do their dirty work for them. When I say their name, you think of the kind of people we fought. Combat gear. Ex-military. But I think the real people never expose themselves.”
“You think they’re hiring again?”
“I know it. Word is they’ve bagged Lothar Caliburn. You know the name?”
Chase nodded.
“Killed a French agent a few months back. Friend of mine, one of their best.”
“I’m sorry.”
Mason nodded to acknowledge the condolences. “At least the French were doing something.”
“Meaning your own people aren’t?”
“This is still my own side project. I didn’t know who I could trust before the attacks, and I still don’t know now. I mean—” Mason leaned forward, lowered her voice. “There was a coup on my own government two years ago and everybody is acting like nothing happened. Parliament kicks the inquiry further down the road every six months, the prime minister doesn’t want to touch it, the press want to talk about different things. Why would everybody be avoiding the obvious unless they all have reasons to? This whole thing started out as my own private war, and it’s got to stay that way.”
“It’s good to see you’ve resolved your trust issues.”
Mason raised her eyebrow. “Coming from you, that means almost nothing. Anyway, I found out that Caliburn has joined R18, and they were after Ashley Eades.”
“How?”
“I tortured a guy.”
Chase put her palm up. “TMI.”
“She’d been working on a story about them, getting too close. My guy told me they were after her, but not when or how. So I contacted her straightaway. Turned out, that was the night they tried the hit, at her place. Talking to me was the reason she was late home.”
“So you saved her.”
“Funny thing was, she didn’t believe me. Or didn’t trust me. And I don’t blame her. A stranger turns up out the blue and starts warning you off a story about Nazis? You’re going to want to walk away from that person.”
“I’ve been on the other end of that meeting.”
Chase and Mason had met in a jail cell when the spy hired the relic runner for a secret mission, telling stories of Nazis, ancient weapons, and a religious cult.
Mason smiled. “Right. Well, the time she took saying no to me turned out to be the time that saved her life. By the time she got home, late, her boyfriend was dead. And I guess I’d touched something in her, because I’d given her my card—same one I gave you—and the first thing she did when she saw the blood was call me.”
“Her family?”
“Doesn’t have any. Only child, and both her parents passed away when she was younger.”
“And she was the one to find him? The boyfriend?”
“Yeah. Blood everywhere. She was in shock by the time I got there.”
“I’d heard the neighbors found him.”
“It was written up in the press as neighbors. Someone called in an anonymous tip to the cops, said there was a domestic disturbance in the building. They turned up and went door to door, found Eades’s door kicked in, went inside. I hadn’t managed to arrange a cleanup in time, but I managed to calm the story down afterward and keep the boyfriend’s name out of it, too.”
“And you’d already gotten her out of there before the cops turned up?”
“By a matter of seconds. I didn’t want her going into the system, not with my trust issues. I didn’t want to risk handing her over, so I helped her disappear. Gave her money and introduced her to a cleaner.”
“Who did you go with?”
“Old friend of mine, Fergus Fletcher.”
Chase didn’t know the name, but if M
ason vouched…
Hang on. Back up.
Now that Chase thought about it, it was true, the boyfriend’s name hadn’t been in any of the news stories she’d found online or in any of the files Lauren Stanford had given her. It hadn’t even occurred to her as a gap, because she’d been so focused on Eades.
“Wait. Why would you need to keep his name out of it? The boyfriend?”
Mason nodded. Right question. “I didn’t know when I contacted her, otherwise I would have handled it differently, but she was shacked up with Roberto Conte.”
“As in…?”
“His son.”
A second explosion went off in Chase’s mind. From the smile on Mason’s face, she could tell the spy knew it, too. Francisco Conte’s son. How had Eades and Roberto met? And what impact had it had on Cisco? How the hell was Chase coming out of this conversation with more questions than when they’d started?
She tried to find a solid footing to get back on track, asking, “Are we sure Eades was the target?”
“It was definitely her name I was given. But that’s not to say they weren’t both targets.”
“And nobody knows who Caliburn is?”
“Right. He could be anyone. We could’ve walked past him today and not known.”
“Did Eades know?”
“She swore she didn’t. Said she hadn’t gotten close enough.”
“I found you through Grant LaFarge, the guy who wiped her facial rec off the network. Would there be other ways for Caliburn to trace her?”
Mason smiled, raising an eyebrow as she sipped her coffee.
Of course. “You’ve known where she is the whole time, haven’t you?” Chase said.
“Like you said, trust issues. Plus, I figured Caliburn would try to find her at some point, so I’ve been keeping watch.”
Chase nodded. She sipped her coffee. “This is terrible.”
“You’ve seen what I’m working with here.”
“Blaming your tools? I like ’em.”
Mason smiled. “I can’t believe you can find the flirt in making an instant coffee.”
“You’ve met me?”
Mason let the same smile linger for a while, and Chase sat in silence, drinking the terrible coffee. Knowing R18 was involved made it all feel personal. And knowing Cisco Conte’s son had been killed added an additional jagged edge. Cisco wasn’t exactly what Chase would call a friend, but she’d known him a long time, and this was a complication she hadn’t expected.
“I need to get to her,” Chase said. “I need to get to Eades.”
Mason stood and crossed to the kitchen counter. She pulled open a drawer and lifted out a set of car keys, tossing them to Chase. “I can’t go with you. It would ruin my cover. But I can help you get there.”
TWENTY-TWO
Hass wasn’t sure which was more unsettling, the physical instability in Addis Ababa or the political one he could feel in London. True enough, everyone in Ethiopia seemed to be tenser lately. The minor tremors. The increased activity of Erta Ale. But London felt different. Something had changed in the time since he’d first started coming here. He felt more defensive as he walked up Tottenham Court Road. He drew more looks. More stares. There was an anger and a coldness, coexisting at the same time. In a city as diverse and multicultural as London, Hass still felt like he needed to watch his back. There had been a political earthquake here, and the fear lingered.
A news alert on his phone told him there had been another earthquake back home. This one seemed to have originated beneath Abaya Lake, which was farther south along the rift. He texted Freema to check in but got no response. He stopped off at a mosque on his way across London, feeling the need to say a prayer.
His old field instincts kicked back in near the top of Tottenham Court Road. He was being followed. He slowed down and turned off the busy road, heading east along the quieter Store Street. How could someone learn to spot a tail without seeing them? If pressed, Hass wouldn’t be able to explain it. For relic runners, this wasn’t a life they’d trained for. It didn’t come after graduating from an academy. You jumped into it feetfirst, and you either died or you learned.
Hass had come into the job with certain hard-earned advantages. The color of his skin. His gender identity. Long before he’d taken to working on the black market, he’d already been forced to develop and hone his instincts. Hass couldn’t rationalize how it was he could tell it was going to rain five minutes before it did, and he didn’t know how he’d developed a radar for being followed. But he had one, and it was telling him someone was following him as he turned north, off Store Street onto Gower Street. He veered west, heading back toward Tottenham Court Road. It was the opposite direction from his destination, but he found it easier to lose a tail in a crowd, and the busier street would give him more opportunity to spot his tail.
Or… wait. You know what? No.
This wasn’t Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. He wasn’t playing games.
Hass spun around on his heels. At the end of the street, just turning the corner to follow him, was a man with close-cropped hair, dressed all in black with a long-sleeved T-shirt. He made eye contact briefly, then looked away, grabbing for a cell in his pocket and glancing around as if confirming the street signs.
Hass smiled. “You a ninja?”
The man, angry at Hass or himself or both, gave up the charade, growled, and charged. Hass had a size advantage, in both height and bulk. He stood his ground, planting his feet. The man crashed into him and winded himself. The force was enough to stagger Hass backward but not take him to the ground. He swung his fist into the side of the attacker’s bald head. There was a grunt. Hass swung again, connecting with the ear. He felt the weight against him sag a little and stepped back. The shorter man was blinking, looking dazed.
“Why are you following me?”
The attacker didn’t answer. Hass pushed him farther back, trying to get a better look. Was he a professional or an amateur? A pro probably wouldn’t have been spotted or caught so easily. And the way he’d charged, the anger and frustration, spoke of someone who hadn’t been thinking clearly. Hass felt his own flash of anger and swallowed it back.
Hass asked the next obvious question. “Who else is with you?”
The attacker blinked again. Hass had hit him harder than he’d intended. He let the hand brake off his anger and punched the shorter man in the face, sending him to the ground. He looked around and couldn’t see anyone else. Amazingly, in the center of London, they’d founded a deserted stretch of road for this confrontation.
Hass looked down at the fallen man again. A rival relic runner? A random racist?
It didn’t matter. Hass turned and walked west, back onto Tottenham Court Road and across into a narrow lane next to an old church. On the other side, on Whitfield Street, he turned to head north again, confident now that he wasn’t being followed. The adrenaline was washing out. Another old, familiar feeling was left in its place. The low-level trauma of feeling chased and hated. Another person in another city throwing aggression at him. His breathing was coming in fast, ragged bursts. Hass leaned against a wall and forced himself to calm down, letting the feeling pass, then continued on to his destination.
The British Library was a large, angular, redbrick building. With smooth surfaces and layered, sloping roofs, it looked to have been built from LEGO. Hass passed through the light security check. He’d left his tools and weapons back at the hotel, so the only thing in his messenger bag that could be counted as hazardous was the spare underwear he always carried.
The large foyer area never failed to impress. It was very Logan’s Run, a wide-open space full of smooth white surfaces, all well-lit from the skylight above. Directly ahead of Hass was the centerpiece of the building’s design, a tower of glass containing the books from King George III’s library. Each floor of the building was wrapped around the tower, with walkways and balconies facing out onto the collection at every level.
Hass headed straight
for the information desk. He’d just started explaining what he needed to the Frenchwoman there when his burner started to ring. He stared at it for a few seconds. It was a gamble, of course. How did he know this number was Chase? But then, who else would have the number?
He answered, “Dal’s Porn Emporium, how can I help?”
“Nice.” It was Chase. “You had to improvise and that’s where your mind went?”
“My mind never left.”
“Where are you right now?”
“British Library.”
“In the library?”
“Inside, yes.”
“On the phone?”
“You know that part.”
“How many dirty looks are you getting right now?”
“Just the one.”
“You following a lead?”
“Not one you’ll want me to say over the phone.”
“I’ll come to you. I got a car and we’re taking a trip.”
Hass pocketed the phone and turned back to the woman at the desk with an apologetic nod. He gave the name and author of the book he was after. She typed it into her system, then directed Hass to the manuscript department on the second floor, where a secured room at the back of the collection had been given over to books salvaged from Buckingham Palace. Hass needed to show ID at the door and sign in. He asked the woman on duty if his underwear counted, getting a smile from her, then showed his passport. Today he was Henri Soussa, a French Algerian. Hass had grown to resent using fake IDs, having worked so hard to be himself, but understood why it was necessary.
He was escorted up to the private room by a security guard, who did a second bag check and unlocked the door with an electronic pass, letting Hass step in alone before shutting the door after him. The collection was free to view, but its origins had led some trophy hunters to try to steal from it. One of the darker corners of the black market involved the trade of crime memorabilia. Items from a destroyed building, relics of a terror attack, fit the bill.
