by Drew Chapman
She tapped on the mouse pad and a browser appeared on the computer screen. She clicked through each of the three tabs. All three social media sites were filled with pictures of women—pretty and young—with one thing in common.
“He’s got a thing for redheads,” Garrett said.
“A pretty obvious thing. A shout-it-from-the-rooftops thing.”
“Do we know if he—”
“I checked back with the IT guy, asked if Leone had any fetishes, but the IT guy didn’t know him that well. He said Leone had one friend at the company, an Italian guy named Luigi Abela from the legal department. He still lives on Malta. I talked to him. He said Leone liked redheads a lot and, in fact, had met one at the bar the night before the collapse.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“I’m guessing that Markov scouted this Leone guy, figured out that he had a ginger fetish, then brought one to Malta and had her seduce him. In espionage they call it a honey trap.”
Garrett scrolled through the pictures on Leone’s Instagram account. Leone’s obsession was right there, out in the open; all Markov had to do was look for it. “He finds for people’s weaknesses, and then he exploits them.”
“So I hope to God you don’t have too many of them.” Celeste smiled darkly at Garrett. “Because if you do, he’ll find them and screw you to the wall.” She snapped shut her laptop and walked to the front door. “I’m going to lie down in a corner and nap.” With that she left the office.
Garrett considered this new information. The picture that was forming of Markov was crude, but helpful: he was careful, obsessive, smart, and so far a moral blank slate. Garrett thought about Celeste’s parting blast at him as well. He did have weaknesses, although he was doing his best to cover them up, and he wasn’t in any hurry to let anyone else see them. He shook those thoughts from his brain and went to find Alexis. He’d given her the oddest of the team’s tasks—a speculative long shot that might help move things along.
“Done,” she said the moment he walked into her room. She turned her laptop around so Garrett could see the screen. On it was a carefully worded document, with a mug shot and a logo from the New York State Department of Justice.
Garrett read it twice. “I like it. I mean, I’ve never read an Amber Alert before, but it seems real to me.” He tapped the screen at a paragraph of text just below Ilya Markov’s picture. “I especially like the part about him abducting a five-year-old boy. You don’t come right out and say he’s a child molester, but it’s pretty obvious that he is.”
Garrett knew that a fake Amber Alert was a nasty piece of media manipulation, but he wanted to force Markov to the surface in the same way that the FBI had tried to make Garrett show his own face, and he didn’t care if he broke the rules doing it. The more rules broken, the better, as far as he was concerned.
“The right person hears that, they’ll tear Markov to pieces,” Garrett said.
Disapproval flashed across Alexis’s face.
“What? It’ll save us the trouble.” Garrett knew Alexis wasn’t always crazy about his morals, but then—he wasn’t crazy about hers either. They were a pair that way.
“How are we going to get outlets to broadcast it? Amber Alerts have to be verified by the police.”
“It’s news. Sensational news,” Garrett said. “We send it to every TV station from here to Miami. And every newspaper and news website. If only a quarter of them go live with it, it might force Markov to change his plans. That’s what we want. We want him feeling hunted. We want him off-balance, changing his mind on the fly.”
“Okay.” She turned back to her computer. “You’re the boss.”
Garrett watched her for a moment.
“Something else?” Alexis said, not looking up from the chair.
“They need you back in DC?”
“I’ll have to go in the next day or so. There are only so many excuses I can make for not showing up in the office.”
“We’re going to need more help. Institutional help.”
Alexis swiveled in her chair back toward Garrett. “Given that the FBI would like to see you in handcuffs, I’m not really sure who we could ask.”
“The DIA could get us what we need. Passenger manifests, credit-card tracking, a secure data sweep.”
Alexis narrowed her eyes. “Kline wants nothing to do with you.”
“You can convince him I’m right. That we’re right. You have the proof.”
“I have conjecture. I have probability. And I have a lone Russian student wandering around the US. But I don’t have proof. Not proof that Kline will accept. He’s stubborn, and he doesn’t like to be wrong. Ever.”
“You could use other methods. To get him to do what we need.”
The air seemed to go out of the room. Alexis cocked her head, her face a sudden blank. She examined Garrett’s eyes, his mouth. It looked, to Garrett, as if she were sizing up his character for the first time, as if they’d just met—as if he were a stranger to her.
“What are you suggesting?”
“My name is linked with Ascendant. Ascendant is linked with him. And linked with you. If you threatened—”
“Blackmail? If I threatened to drag him down with me? Is that what you’re saying?”
Garrett hunched up his shoulders, as if to say, Well, now that you mention it, I suppose that is a possibility.
“You’re asking for a lot. A fuck of a lot.”
Garrett was, and he knew it. But she was already in deep, so why not go all the way?
Her eyes burned into his, cold and searching, and he had to steady himself to match her gaze. He couldn’t read her, but he rarely could—she had been a mystery to him and continued to be one. Was she furious with him? Had she finally had enough? Had she caught a glimpse of his true nature and found it woefully lacking? Did it even matter?
Alexis blinked once, slowly, then swiveled to her computer and went back to work. Garrett watched her back, her black hair splaying out across her shoulders, but she didn’t turn around and didn’t say another word, and Garrett got the distinct impression that their relationship had just entered a new—and perhaps not as benevolent—phase.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA, JUNE 18, 11:01 A.M.
A hum of financial anxiety was in the air. Leonard Harris (R-Marietta, GA) could hear it in the hushed whispers of his aides in Washington, DC, yesterday, when Congress closed up session, and he could see it in the vacant stares of the businessmen at the airport when he got off the plane in Atlanta this morning. It was as if the entire country had gone off its antianxiety meds, and every crank rumor that you could think of was beginning to seep out of the swamp of public opinion: the end was near; buy gold. There was no more oil; ditch your car. The dollar would be worthless tomorrow; get a shotgun and run for the hills.
Good Lord, Harris thought to himself as he maneuvered his gray Lincoln MKZ through the hideous Atlanta traffic, people do love to work themselves into a state.
He checked his watch and decided he had just enough time to stuff some food in his face. He pulled off the freeway and made his way east to Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward toward a vacant lot behind a Piggly Wiggly. Because there, he knew, lay a culinary gold mine, a collection of food trucks from all over Atlanta—barbecue food trucks, Vietnamese food trucks, burger trucks, fish-and-chips trucks, even a vegan truck.
Harris loved to eat: Chinese, Italian, French, Thai chicken satay, Korean kimchi, Ethiopian flatbread slathered in doro wot. All good, to his mind. He’d eat in restaurants seven days a week if his doctor hadn’t told him it would kill him; so he kept it to four lunches and three dinners. He was fifty-seven, after all, an eight-term incumbent who could probably see his way to fourteen or fifteen terms, if he kept his health up.
Harris parked his car a block from the Piggly Wiggly and walked to the caravan of food trucks. The Georgia sun was beating down, and the air
was thick and damp. He’d kept an extra white shirt hung in the back of his car for the interview, which was a damn good thing, because the blue one he was wearing was already soaked through.
Harris was handsome, and telegenic. He had most of his hair and didn’t need glasses, which was part of why he had landed the chairmanship of the House Banking Subcommittee, one of the most powerful committees in all of Washington, DC. He had fought long and hard to get the post—put up with the myriad slights of his party bosses, done all the dirty work of a good political foot soldier—and now he was the boss. A great victory. But the job was not without duties, and interviews were top of the list: he was headed downtown to the CNN tower to a one-thirty Q&A with Wolf Blitzer. After that he had a PBS segment at four from a live remote, then a recorded talker with a radio station in San Antonio, Texas, at four thirty. And they were all going to want to discuss one thing, and one thing alone: the murder of Phillip Steinkamp.
Harris knew Steinkamp—had met him a couple of times, even had lunch with him once—and thought he was a nice guy. Terrible shame what happened. But Harris didn’t have any new theories on why he’d been shot, or who had done it. The FBI had given him a briefing two days ago, but from there on it had been silence. Not that it mattered: the cable news outlets were relentless in their search for gossip—any whiff of drama was reason for a new interview, more breathless analysis, another round of inane predictions.
Harris entered the food-truck lot and thought about what to eat. He came there so often that all the drivers and cooks knew him. Today, Harris decided on Jose’s Bandito Wagon. Jose was old and stooped, and he sat in the back of the truck while his wife—Sofia—cooked most of the food. And sweet Jesus, Sofia was a genius. Her chicken mole burrito was to die for, and her steak carnitas sprinkled with fresh cilantro made Harris’s heart skip a beat.
Harris ordered two shrimp tacos, a side of guacamole with homemade pepper chips, and a Diet Pepsi to wash it all down. He chatted briefly with Jose, waiting patiently for his order, but even Jose wanted to talk about the state of the country.
“Yesterday, I take my money, send it to Mexico,” he told Harris. “Safer there. I was in Mexico when the peso went poof. Disappear just like that. One day you got lots of money, the next day you got nothing. Maybe that happens here.”
Harris started to tell Jose that the US dollar was perfectly stable, and a heck of a lot safer than the Mexican peso, but found that he just didn’t have the energy, and anyway, his order came up in all its aroma-laden splendor, so he grabbed some napkins and a small container of pico de gallo and sat himself on a wooden picnic bench in the middle of the parking lot. Eating those tacos was like sex. Better than sex, in truth, because, well, he rarely had sex anymore. He rarely saw his wife, as she lived in Marietta, working as a doctor, and he was mostly in the capital, sharing a crappy little apartment with three other congressmen. Even when Congress was on recess, he and his wife didn’t sleep together. They just couldn’t seem to find the time. Or the passion. Which perhaps explained why he loved to eat so much. He was no amateur psychologist, but even he suspected he was filling unmet erotic desires with food.
He looked out across the half dozen other diners eating at separate tables in the parking lot. The sun slipped behind a cloud, and Harris dabbed at his sweating face. Thirty minutes until the CNN interview. What would he say? Was there really some sort of conspiracy afoot? Harris was having trouble wrapping his head around that, but he had to admit that things were looking squirrelly all over the place: the shooting of a Fed president, a bank run in southern Europe, targeted cyberattacks, the burgeoning civil war in Belarus, with the Russians moving their tanks up and down the borders of former Eastern Bloc countries as if it were the Cold War all over again.
A wall of worry. That’s what they called it on Wall Street. And the worry was spreading. The market had taken a major dump yesterday. The Dow had dropped 500 points and was down another 350 this morning. Rumors were flying. Were American banks in trouble? Had brokerage houses made bad bets again? Harris had seen some blowhard on Fox yesterday saying a derivative was out there that was going to take down a major trading house. What kind of irresponsible idiot would go on the air and say that? The entire edifice that was the American economy rested on the public’s believing that the structure was sound. If people didn’t buy into that idea, everything would go up in flames. Even Harris knew that.
Now he had to get on TV and tell the nation that everything was fine, the world markets were fine, the banks were fine, and that Steinkamp’s murder was just one of those hinky coincidences. Nothing to see here people, move on, move on.
But even he didn’t quite believe that. Something was up. Something strange.
Harris pushed the world of finance from his thoughts and glanced down the table. A young woman sat at the other end of the bench and laid a paper napkin on her lap. She was young, pretty, with dirty-blond hair and full lips. Harris loved full lips. Or had loved them, when he was single. A good Christian, moral to a fault, now Harris just admired those lips from afar.
The young woman looked up from her plate of food—she’d chosen the fish and chips from the Seafood Trucker, a wise choice, but not in the same league as the tacos—and quickly looked away. He’d been staring at her. She gathered up her purse and her plate of food and moved to another, open table.
Moron, Harris thought to himself. Staring like a lecherous old man at a pretty young girl. Of course she moved away. I have to watch that. Harris felt sin came in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes just letting your eyes stray was all it took. That was a high standard to hold himself to, but it was nice to have high standards in something, after all. Wading through the stench of American politics took a lot out of him, and he needed his morality intact.
He finished his taco, downed his Diet Pepsi, then wiped any traces of hot sauce from his lips. He stood, checked his watch, then walked past the young, blond-haired woman, careful not to stare again, and waved good-bye to Jose as he handed out another plate of enchiladas smothered in cheese. Then Harris stopped, let out a long breath, and shook his head.
If you sin, he thought to himself, even a little, then make up for it right away with a good deed. He walked back to the young woman. “Allow me to apologize.”
The young woman looked up at him in surprise.
“For staring at you. I was lost in thought, but I’m sure it was intimidating. An intrusion. Please forgive me.” He bowed slightly in apology, then started off again.
“Do I know you from someplace?”
Harris paused. That was one of the perks—or drawbacks—of being a US congressman. You were a celebrity, if only a minor one. “I’m Len Harris. I’m a congressman. From the Eleventh District.”
“Oh,” the young woman said, a hint of disappointment in her voice. “I thought . . .”
“You thought I was really important?” Harris smiled. “Not just a politician?”
The young woman laughed. “No. You reminded me of someone else. From a while ago. But you’re not him.” She reddened slightly, her checks flushing, as if the thought of that person, that memory, was dear to her, and just ever so slightly sensual. A lover, perhaps? An ex-flame?
An erotic pulse ran the length of Harris’s body, from his head to his toes. I wish I were him, Harris thought to himself. He must have been a lucky man. “Sorry to let you down.”
“You didn’t.” The young woman smiled—an open, trusting smile, compassionate and yet just ever so slightly inviting. “You were a gentleman. That was very nice of you. You don’t see that every day.”
Harris beamed. Always try to do the right thing, he reminded himself. Always. “Thank you.” He noticed, for the first time, what she was reading, a paperback laid out on the table beside her food. A science fiction novel, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Harris smiled. Ender’s Game was by far his favorite sci-fi novel of all time, and Harris liked sci-fi alm
ost as much as he liked food. He was a bit of a geek, and not afraid to admit it. In fact, he’d gone on and on about Ender’s Game on the Twitter account he ran for his constituents. Well, actually, that his congressional aides ran. Harris didn’t have the time to be posting tweets about anything, and definitely not about science-fiction novels.
“Great book.” Harris nodded to the paperback. “I’ve read it, cover to cover, ten times at the very least.”
The young woman looked at Harris’s face, as if trying to discern something from it. His veracity? Sincerity? Was he trying to pick her up? “Number three for me.”
“Then you are an incredibly well-rounded human being. You know the best places to eat, and the best things to read.”
“This is a great spot. The food is to die for.”
“I spend far too much time here myself.” Harris patted his stomach. “Far too much time.”
She laughed. “Nice meeting you, Mr. Congressman. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“Yes, maybe.”
He nodded good-bye to her one more time, then hurried back to his car with a mile-wide smile on his face. Those words—Maybe I’ll see you around—stayed with him all through his interview on CNN. And PBS. And the radio-station talker from San Antonio. He couldn’t figure out why exactly—something about her tone of voice, the look on her face. She seemed lodged in his brain. As he went to bed that night, his wife, Barbara, fast asleep at his side, his mind flashed back, over and over, not to finance or Phillip Steinkamp or conspiracies and the money supply, but to that pretty blonde at the food-truck parking lot.
He decided he would go back to the food trucks the very next day. Not for anything special. Just to look at her face. That’s all. Not a sin. Just to have a friend.
With that thought, one of the most powerful politicians in the US Congress—the man who almost single-handedly regulated the financial industry—fell asleep, peaceful and happy.
