Black

by Sophie Lark

  But, as usual, Holly seemed to read his mind.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, smiling. “Last night was great. But it was just for fun. It doesn’t have to make things weird between us.”

  “Right,” Black said, grinning back. “We’re friends. That happen to fit well together naked.”

  “Extremely well,” Holly said.

  She leaned over and kissed him softly on the mouth.

  “I’m off to work,” she said. “Lucky I keep a spare suit in the office.”

  “Text me when I should meet Morris,” Black said.

  “I will,” she promised.

  She shimmied into her skirt, dropped her empty mug into the sink, and headed out of the apartment.

  It seemed very dull once the door had closed behind her.

  The silence pressed in on him, and Black had a ridiculous urge to run up to the window, to get one more look at Holly striding off down the street.

  But that was stupid—he had work to do.

  So he pulled out his laptop instead.

  Sitting up in bed, he started searching for new information released by the Citizen’s Group.

  Sixteen years ago, when their movement had been at its peak, he’d read everything they released. Unlike most extremist groups, their online materials weren’t rambling and riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. The things they had written, particularly the manifestos penned by John Walker Wright, otherwise known as Citizen One, had been intricate, well-reasoned, even convincing at times.

  After O’Brien had shot Wright, it had been no surprise when the Metropolitan Police learned that Wright had been a mechanical engineer, with a minor in Philosophy. He had received top marks at Cambridge, until he dropped out to work as a welder, when he worked at all.

  When they tried to learn more, they came up against a brick wall. Wright had been secretive and cautious in the extreme. He had no bank accounts, no fixed address. All his transactions were in cash, including his under-the-table welding work.

  Though they’d ultimately arrested six members of his group, with four more killed in the bombing, they had only cut the head off the hydra. The Citizens had gone underground but not been eradicated.

  The police extracted only limited intelligence from the men they captured. Wright had been careful—he’d kept the group’s operations isolated, so no single member had all the information, all the names, or all the plans.

  Wright himself remained an enigma. His men had been devoted to the cult of his personality and ideals, but they didn’t know him on an intimate level. Even some of the intel they swore to be true later proved false, probably planted deliberately by Wright himself.

  Back then, Black had only been able to find information about the Citizens that had been deliberately released by the group. But in the intervening time, he’d drastically improved his web-sleuthing skills. Now he knew how to dig down through the mire of the deep web to find the breadcrumbs left by conspirators and would-be revolutionaries, who only wanted to be found by their own kind.

  After a few hours searching, his stomach was rolling and his heart racing. It was so much worse than he’d feared. The Citizens were back, and stronger than ever. They were active, recruiting, and making plans.

  Though what those plans might be, he had no idea.

  He found posts scattered across various message boards and private servers. And he found numerous coded references that he was quite sure referred to Tom Morris.

  Beyond that, he could penetrate no further. The forums where the real planning occurred were invite-only and impossible to find, let alone join.

  Without a personal invitation, he was stuck.

  His phone buzzed with a message from Holly.

  If you can be here at 1:30, Tom’s got a 30-minute break.

  He checked his watch. Somehow it was already noon.

  I’ll be there, he typed back.

  6

  I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Black went for a quick run around his neighborhood, just to get a light sweat, then headed back to his apartment to shower. He dressed in his customary plain suit and tie—black on black. His sisters always teased him that he looked like a hitman, but he found it struck the perfect balance between professionalism and simplicity, so he attracted the least amount of attention possible for a man his height and breadth.

  While working, he didn’t want to belong to any particular class or group. A detective had to earn the trust of every kind of person. They couldn’t be “other,” either by being too posh or too poor in appearance.

  For the same reason, he only shaved every couple of days. When he was clean-shaven, he looked too much like the cop he used to be.

  Walking up to the Houses of Parliament once more, Black thought he was already becoming too familiar with this place. He had the feeling he’d be seeing it a lot more in the days to come.

  He went through the tedious security process, wondering how Holly had the patience to do this every single day. He disliked the suspicious glances of the security guards and the way they pawed over the items in his pockets.

  Holly didn’t come out to meet him this time, trusting him to find his way back to Morris’s office. He did find it eventually, after only one wrong turn.

  The atmosphere in the building was decidedly more relaxed than it had been the day before. He could still see the police tape around the receptionist’s desk, but no officers present. The politicians and their staff were bustling around, busy as ever. They had too much going on to focus on the bombing of an entire twenty-four hours earlier.

  Morris’s office door stood open. Black went on inside, nodding to Davis and Cara at their desks. Daniel Clark glanced up, but only stared at Black stone-faced.

  Holly came out of Morris’s private office, carrying a stack of papers.

  “There you are!” she said to Black. “1:29—very punctual. I’ll let you speak to Tom alone—I’ve got to take these down to the treasurer’s office.”

  Black headed into Morris’s office, closing the door behind him.

  Morris was sitting at his desk, eating his box lunch. He had an apple, a sandwich, and a metal thermos laid out precisely in front of him, in a way that made Black think he probably brought the same items every day and ate them in the same order.

  “Black!” Morris said, greeting him as warmly as he had done the day before. “Please, take a seat.”

  Black sat on the threadbare chair on the other side of Morris’s desk.

  Black took out a small notebook and pen, though he didn’t actually need to write down his notes. The point was to have something to draw his gaze at crucial moments, so he didn’t have to stare directly at the interviewee. He found that people would talk and talk if you weren’t looking directly at them the whole time.

  “Thanks for coming over lunch. We don’t take any real breaks around here—and lunchtime is the best time to ambush other people that you want to talk to, who are dodging your calls,” Morris laughed.

  “Do a lot of people dodge your calls?” Black asked.

  “They certainly do,” Morris said, taking a large bite out of his apple. “That’s the joy of being an independent. When they want your vote on something, you’re the most popular person in the room. But the rest of the time…”

  “I get the feeling you’re pretty powerful in the house,” Black said. “You’re the head of the Green Group, aren’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t call myself the head,” Morris said, “but I’m a member, yes.”

  “Seems like you’re getting a lot of traction. The Guardian is calling you the most crucial voting bloc in Parliament.”

  “If only that were true,” Morris said, shaking his head. “We have this summit coming up—Holly told you. It will be a miracle if we can get everyone to commit to our agreement.”


  “Do you think the package bomb yesterday had anything to do with the summit?” Black asked.

  “Absolutely,” Morris said. He had put down the apple and started on his sandwich. “The Citizens have made direct threats related to the summit.”

  “What’s their problem with solar and wind power?” Black asked.

  “It’s not the renewable energy so much. I think they’re more annoyed with the government subsidies for research and development of green technology.”

  “You think that’s all it is?”

  “What are you thinking?” Morris asked, putting down his sandwich.

  “I was just wondering…if it had something to do with your mother.”

  He hadn’t wanted to mention her in front of Holly the day before.

  Morris went very still at the mention of Gemma. His face was stiff, his eyes dark.

  “What about her?” he asked, quietly.

  “Why did they grab her that day and tie her to the chair? Out of all the hostages?”

  “Well,” Morris said, his lips white and barely moving, “I was only ten at the time. And terrified out of my mind. So I can’t say that I saw everything clearly. But it seemed to me that they grabbed her because she was standing closest to the door when they came in. She wasn’t anyone important. She’d only worked there a year, doing data entry. She was so proud to bring me to work with her, though. It was the best paying job she’d had, in that gorgeous new building. She thought it was the start of a whole new life for us.”

  Morris laughed bitterly.

  “And it was. Just not together.”

  “Tom…” Black said. “I’m so sorry about your mother. I wish—”

  Morris cut him off with a wave of his hand.

  “Don’t apologize,” he said. “What could you have done?”

  Still, Gemma’s face flashed through Black’s mind again—pale, tear-stained, terrified.

  “The Citizens have to know you were there,” Black said. “Do you think that’s partly why they’re targeting you?”

  “Rather cruel if it is,” Morris said. “But I don’t think compassion ranks high on their list of values.”

  Black nodded slowly. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something. A connection, floating tantalizingly close, but too tenuous for him to see just yet.

  Morris took a sip from a white and green Starbucks cup.

  “They have one of those in the building?” Black asked.

  “No.” Morris shook his head. “Holly brings it in for me whenever she’s getting one for herself. She takes a skinny vanilla latte, if you ever want to surprise her.” He winked at Black.

  Black doubted that Holly had said anything to Morris about their relationship turning romantic, but Morris seemed to intuit it.

  Politicians had to be perceptive, especially politicians as successful as Morris. He had risen through the ranks at an astronomical rate, especially for someone lacking money and family connections.

  Black saw himself in Morris in many ways, or at least his old self. Black had once been a rising star too, trying to get along in an old boy’s club populated by the wealthy and privileged. Like Black, Morris hadn’t read classics at Oxford. He’d never skied in the Alps. He had adapted, learned, thrived, when no one wanted him to except himself.

  “Well,” Black said, standing up, “thanks for taking the time to talk with me.”

  “Thanks for coming in,” Morris said. “Sorry I had to eat at the same time.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Let Holly know if you have any more questions.”

  “I will.”

  Black ran into Holly as he exited the office. She was carrying a completely different stack of papers and looking harassed. But she smiled at Black anyway.

  “Got what you needed?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She pulled him a little to the side, away from the other three desks. Black could see Clark watching them from behind his computer screen.

  “I know you said you didn’t want to be a bodyguard,” Holly said in a low tone, “but I wondered if you wanted to come with us to a fundraiser tomorrow night. If not as security, then maybe just as my date.”

  She smiled at him hopefully.

  Black somewhat hated the idea of attending a fundraiser. But it would be a good opportunity to keep an eye on the circle of people around Morris. And the idea of going pretty much anywhere with Holly sent a little arrow of warmth into his heart.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’d love to.”

  “Great!” she said.

  They were standing very close to each other. Black could see the smoky limbal ring around her vivid green irises. He could feel the slightest hint of warmth from her breath on his skin.

  He had an overwhelming urge to kiss her, here, in front of everyone.

  But he didn’t want to embarrass her at work.

  So instead he just said, in his deep voice, “I’m looking forward to it.”

  Holly blushed.

  “Me too,” she said.

  7

  Black spent the rest of his afternoon trying to track down people who had been present at the NSC bombing. It should have been an easy task, with thirty-seven other employees in the room, besides Gemma Morris. However, most of those people had been contacted again and again by reporters in the months after they’d been taken hostage. Many had been harassed by the kooks drawn by any major news story, or feared retaliation from the remaining Citizens.

  So even all this time later, many of the former hostages were absent from social media, making them difficult to track down.

  The National Surveillance Center had never regrouped after the bombing. In that, at least, the Citizens had been successful—they’d scrubbed the databases and initiated so much damage that the company had renamed, rebranded, and moved to the opposite side of the city, shedding many of its original employees.

  Of the employees Black did manage to locate, some refused to speak to him, and others claimed to remember nothing from that day.

  Looking through old employee profiles from an archived version of NSC website, he found a woman named Pamela Harris who had worked in data entry, like Gemma. He tracked her down on LinkedIn. Apparently, she was now employed as an office manager for a dentist.

  She replied promptly to his message, agreeing to meet with him the following morning.

  At 10:00 a.m., Black took the tube out to Brixton, in North London. He followed his google map to a tiny brick house on a shaded lane, across from a park full of happy, noisy children.

  Pamela said she had Wednesdays and Fridays off, so Black could come by at his convenience.

  “If I don’t answer the door, come around back,” she said. “I might be gardening.”

  Sure enough, when his tap on the door went unanswered, Black found her kneeling among the azaleas, wearing thick green gloves and a visor to keep the sun out of her eyes.

  She was a short, plump woman, with pleasant blue eyes and a florid complexion. She had gotten quite sweaty in the morning sunshine and kept a dishtowel close by to mop her face.

  She sat up, shading her eyes with her gloved hand so she could get a good look at Black.

  “There you are,” she said. “Found the place alright?”

  “Yes,” Black said, “I took the tube.”

  She nodded with satisfaction. “Only thirty minutes into the city,” she said. “Not that I go there often. All my children are in Brixton or Sutton.”

  “How many children do you have?”

  “Three,” she said. “The youngest, Nora, was with me at the NSC that day. She was just six—my little surprise baby. Red hair, freckles. Pigtails, back then. She works as a teacher’s aide now.”

  Black nodded, though he didn’t actually remember seeing a little girl of that description, or Pamela either. There had been too many hostages, too much chaos.

  It made him feel so strange to think that if things had gone differently, there would be no Nor
a the teacher’s aide, no Pamela tending azaleas. No Black either, most likely. Someone else would live in this little brick house, and someone else might have been with Holly the night before last.

  “So,” Pamela said, yanking up a rogue weed, “what did you want to know?”

  “I wondered if you knew Gemma Morris? Personally?”

  “Gemma,” Pamela shook her head, sadly. “What a tragedy. I knew her fairly well—we were in the same department. We ate lunch together sometimes. She had only been there a year.”

  “So you were friends?”

  “We were friendly. She was a quiet girl—not shy exactly, but reserved. I think that’s why she liked sitting by me. She wasn’t as high-spirited as some of the people closer to her age. Plus, she had her son so young. Most of the rest of the young people were single. It’s a different lifestyle, you know. You can’t be going for after-work drinks when you’re a single mother with a child waiting at home.”

  “Did she ever talk to you about her family?” Black asked.

  “Barely ever. I think they were estranged. She said they were extremely religious. They lived in, hmm, I want to say Kettering? Most families might be upset by a teen pregnancy, but usually they pull together, at least for the sake of the baby. I don’t think that happened for her. You know they didn’t even take her son, after the…the accident.”

  Black wondered if she called it an accident to spare his feelings, or simply because the memory was still painful in her own mind.

  “I felt so bad for that boy. I might have taken him myself, but I was going through a divorce at the time.” Pamela shook her head, her face still flushing at the memory. “It was a terrible year for me, all around. I kept this house, but just barely. Anyway, it turned out alright for him in the end. You know he went into politics?”