The King of Fear: A Garrett Reilly Thriller

by Drew Chapman

  The elevator stopped, Alexis checked the hallway, then hurried Bingo and Celeste to the last office before the stairs. She knocked twice, and the door opened.

  “Hey.” A young woman with thick black hair smiled briefly at Celeste. “Mitty. Nice to meet you.”

  “Yeah.” Celeste shook Mitty’s hand. “Sure.” Celeste had never actually met Mitty in person, but she’d heard a lot about her from the rest of the team.

  Mitty turned from Celeste and stared long and hard at Bingo. “Hey, Bingo. Long time. Really long time.”

  Bingo hung his head determinedly toward the floor. Celeste figured the two of them must have had some kind of relationship in the past, although if that was true, then they would go down in the odd-couple hall of fame. From Mitty’s glare, Celeste guessed that Mitty held a grudge against Bingo, and he seemed terrified of her. Not that Celeste blamed him: from what she’d gathered, Mitty was a piece of work. Still, Celeste was glad to see her; she seemed eccentric and full of life. Celeste needed people who were full of life.

  Alexis showed them into the offices. They were large—five separate executive offices, a meeting area, a kitchen, and a conference room—and mostly barren, with the walls freshly painted white and Sheetrock showing in one section of the reception area. A few pieces of random furniture were strewn around the large central room—some chairs, couches, desks, and a few computers—and little else. A bank of windows looked out onto what Celeste assumed was the New Jersey Turnpike; the glittering towers of Manhattan lay far in the distance, thick blocks of yellow light in the night air. Celeste let out a short, mirthless laugh; she had traveled across the country, and instead of settling in Manhattan, and hopping from fabulous restaurants to exclusive nightclubs, she was stuck in Newark, New Jersey, in a half-empty office tower, surrounded by a cohort of semiautistic geeks.

  Story of her life.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a marine, tall and handsome, but with a hint of wildness in his eyes. He was wearing green-and-brown fatigues, and his hair was buzz-cut short. He grinned broadly at Celeste and saluted her. “Private John Patmore, ma’am. We met briefly in DC last year. You might not remember me.”

  “Sure.” Celeste nodded. But she didn’t remember him. All military guys looked the same to her, and Patmore certainly fit the mold: he looked more like a G.I. Joe doll than a human being. But a slightly crazy G.I. Joe doll—one you wouldn’t let your kids play with. Not by themselves, at least. “Good to see you again.”

  “Hey, Celeste.”

  She turned to the sound of that voice, her pulse quickening. Garrett Reilly stood in the doorway of the main room. He looked different: older, for sure, and a little beat-up, as if life had not been kind to him in the intervening twelve months. He was thinner than he had been when they’d been together in DC, and not as swaggering either; that sheen of arrogance was missing. He didn’t seem like a shark hunting for his next meal anymore. No, Celeste got the distinct impression that sharks were out there hunting for him. Still, she was furious at him. She balled up her hands into fists and felt herself, involuntarily, start across the room toward him, to beat him on his head and chest, to make him feel her pain. But Garrett stepped forward as well, meeting her halfway.

  “So glad you came,” Garrett said quickly, putting his hands gently on her shoulders. “I really need you here.”

  That set Celeste back a step. She started to respond, to tell him not to count on her staying for long, that he was a sorry-ass son of a bitch.

  But he wrapped his arms around her in a firm hug, pulling her close, and whispered in her ear, “I’m so sorry about China. What happened. How hard it must have been for you. I thought about you every day. I tried to track you down. I was so worried.” He released her and stared into her eyes. “I was heartsick with guilt. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  Celeste stood there, stunned. That had not gone according to plan. She grunted a nonresponse, her head swimming, then staggered to a dusty desk in the corner of the room and planted herself on its edge. Rage rushed from her body like infected pus leaving a wound. She wanted to gag from the power of it.

  Was that really all it took to heal her? A few words of contrition? The knowledge that Garrett cared and felt guilty about what had transpired? Am I that fucking fragile? No. She was still pissed—it would take more than a hug and some sweet nothings to make up for six months underground in mainland China—but she had to admit that those few sentences hadn’t hurt.

  Maybe Bingo was right. Maybe she did need to get back in the game.

  • • •

  Garrett had planned an entire speech, rehearsed it over and over, but when he saw Celeste standing in the office, looking exhausted and scared, his brain went blank and he told her how he really felt: he was happy she was there, plain and simple. If she was still angry at him, so be it; if she wanted to berate him for his past transgressions, that was fine as well. He had sent her to China, where she had almost lost her life. He would keep his mouth shut, take any abuse she wanted to spew at him, and not lose his temper. That was the new Garrett Reilly, or at least the Garrett Reilly to which he aspired.

  He moved to the middle of the large central room and told the reassembled team everything he knew about Ilya Markov, which he admitted from the start wasn’t much. He told them about Markov’s multiple passports and aliases, his background in tech, his employment in the United States, his fluency in English. He projected a picture of Markov on a white wall, and the young Russian stared at the team with flat-faced indifference.

  “Kinda cute. But my standards aren’t very high.” Mitty looked directly at Bingo when she said this, and Bingo turned away quickly to look out the window.

  Garrett made a mental note to himself: tell Mitty to cut the lovesick bullshit. Enough is enough.

  He filled them in on Markov’s latest movements, his arrival at the Miami airport, his trip to Fort Lauderdale, and his disappearance from his motel room. Garrett told them whom he thought Markov might hire—social engineers, hackers, and garden-variety criminals—and about the money he suspected Markov had at his disposal.

  Then he told them what he believed Markov was trying to accomplish: sow chaos. Reap anarchy. Blow up the US financial system. Bring down the economy.

  “Is that even possible?” Celeste asked.

  “I don’t know,” Garrett said. “But he’s going to try.”

  “Why’s he doing it?” Bingo asked.

  “That’s part of what we have to figure out,” Garrett said. “A large part.”

  He told them about his suspicions about Russia, and the events in Belarus. As the room fell into a collective silence, Garrett surveyed the reassembled Ascendant team. Both Bingo and Celeste looked tired and travel-worn. Celeste still appeared angry, but she seemed to have set her rage to a low boil; if Garrett could keep her focused on the task at hand, maybe the rage would leak out of her system. And Bingo—well, Bingo just seemed lost and a bit scared. But as Garrett remembered him, Bingo always seemed lost and a bit scared.

  Mitty, sitting next to the two of them, was calm, a Diet Coke clutched in one hand. Garrett took that as proof that she was still working on her half-baked diet cleanse; he’d already found two containers of fat-free cottage cheese in the minifridge in the kitchen. She’d spent the day winding her way to Newark, trying to make sure no one followed her: subway, bus, taxi, on foot. Garrett knew he’d have to put up with her endless eccentricities, but he was thankful she was there nonetheless. She’d put up with plenty of his, after all.

  Standing in a corner, Private Patmore was smiling, bright eyed and broad shouldered. Garrett could see the grip of a sidearm protruding from his belt. As much as Garrett didn’t like guns—he thought they might just be the root of all evil—he was glad to know Patmore had one. And that he could use it. Garrett also had a specific plan in store for Patmore, and it had nothing to do with catching Ilya Markov.<
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  He turned finally to Alexis. She seemed tense. Garrett knew she was deeply out of her element; she had gone far off the DIA reservation, and the sad thing, for her at least, was that she probably wasn’t done breaking the rules. She didn’t know it yet, but Garrett did. She would have to go even deeper into uncharted waters before this whole thing was over, and she would be doing it on Garrett’s say-so. This operation was no longer some government-sponsored project that he’d been sucked into—this time he was in charge. If it was crazy, it was his crazy.

  “Any criminal record?” Celeste asked from the corner of the room.

  “None,” Alexis said. “And if he had, he’d have been deported immediately. But Customs did run a check on him two days ago, and there were faint points of intersection between Markov and the Russian mob. But he’s never been arrested for anything, or charged.”

  “Why don’t we just pass this whole thing on to the FBI? Let them find him,” Patmore asked.

  Garrett shot a look to Alexis, who put her hands up in front of her, as if to ask for patience. “Interagency cooperation will be limited on this one. I have a small discretionary fund, but the truth is, even DIA doesn’t know about this mission.”

  “Okay, that,” Mitty said, “is seriously fucked-up.”

  The room fell silent. Celeste stood, walked to the wall where Markov’s picture was projected, studied it for a moment, then turned to face the team. “Can we talk about the white elephant in the room here? When I turned on my TV two nights ago, your face was on it.” She pointed to Garrett. “Wanted in connection with the murder of the president of the New York Fed. You want to enlighten us?”

  “Someone is trying to frame me.”

  Celeste cocked her head slightly to the left, a bemused smile on her face. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say? You’re wanted for fucking murder.”

  “The shooting is linked to Markov, and what he’s planning,” Garrett said. “They want me—they want us—out of the way. Having me hunted by the FBI is the best way to achieve that.”

  “Well, before you called, they had me out of the way,” Celeste said. “I was sitting on my couch drinking Boodles and eating fried pork rinds. So I’d say that the person they want out of the way is you. From my way of thinking, you hauled all of us out here to help you clear your name. Am I wrong?”

  “No. You’re not wrong. I need to clear my name, and I need your help doing it. But finding Markov is part of a larger problem. Way bigger than whether I go to jail or not.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. You’re asking us to believe that you are thinking about the welfare of the country? Before your own safety?” Celeste asked. “Because my memory of Garrett Reilly is of a guy who didn’t give a shit about anybody else. Who wanted to make a killing on the market, get rich and get laid, and that was it. Everyone else could go to hell. You telling me that you’re different now? That you’ve changed?”

  Garrett started to defend himself, but then lapsed into silence. He tried to frame the argument in his mind—that while he wasn’t a different person, per se, his values had changed. Maybe not wholesale, but they had inched slightly toward a broader worldview. He wasn’t trying to fool anybody; he hadn’t turned into Mother Teresa overnight, but he did feel a need to become more involved in the world. And anyway, keeping the American financial system safe made it possible for him to make more money in the long term, so what was good for the country was good for Garrett as well. He was about to make that exact argument when Mitty broke in.

  “He has changed. He doesn’t party anywhere near as much. I don’t think he’s slept with even one chica since you last saw him. At least he hasn’t told me about it. I don’t know if he’s interested in saving the world or anything, but I’d say he’s more concerned about other people.” She hesitated for a moment. “A little more.”

  “Thank you, Mitty,” Garrett said, unsure if what she’d said was a compliment.

  “He still takes a lot of drugs, though,” Mitty added.

  “Let’s move on,” Garrett said.

  “Lotta people have addiction issues,” she said. “But he’s got serious ones.”

  “They get it,” Garrett said forcefully.

  Patmore broke into a laugh. Garrett glared at him.

  “Kind of ironic, right?” Celeste began to pace the room. “I mean, last time, Ascendant sucked you in against your will, and all you wanted to do was get out. This time, you’re bringing us in, we’re hesitant, and you’re the white knight, gonna save the country.”

  “If that’s how you want to define irony, then sure, I guess it’s ironic,” Garrett said. Celeste was still clearly looking to pick a fight with him; she stopped by the door and put her hand on the doorknob. She looked, to Garrett, as if she was about to bolt. “Listen, this will not be easy, and yes, there are risks involved. I am wanted in connection with a murder. I’m a fugitive, and you being here makes all of you accomplices in hiding me. But I am entirely innocent, and that will come clear to the police eventually.” Garrett gazed squarely at Celeste. “That’s scary—I get it. And dangerous. So if anyone wants out, okay—no problem. Tell me now and we’ll get you a ticket home.”

  Celeste’s hand played with the doorknob. Open, closed, open, closed; the door seemed to mimic her state of mind.

  “But just know, I want you here.” Garrett still stared at her. “Every one of you. What we’re trying to do is important. Not just to me.”

  Everyone in the room turned to watch Celeste. She fiddled with the doorknob some more, then let go of it and sat back down on a desk. “Whatever. Fuck it. Fuck him. Fuck all of you.” She folded her feet up underneath her and stared angrily down at the carpet. “Let’s just catch the guy and go home.”

  Bingo raised his hand like a shy student at the back of class. Garrett nodded in his direction. “You don’t have to raise your hand, Bingo.”

  “So how do we catch him?”

  “Simple,” Garrett said with all the confidence he could bring to his voice. “We catch him with data.”

  NEWARK, NEW JERSEY, JUNE 18, 6:00 A.M.

  They spent the night sleeping on couches, covering themselves in cheap fleece blankets Alexis had bought at a dollar store, and when Garrett woke them at six so they could call Europe during business hours, they seemed more like cranky middle schoolers than a crack intelligence team. He made them cups of instant coffee, sent Patmore out to buy breakfast rolls, then assigned them each a task.

  He gave Celeste the hardest job: figure out how Markov had pulled off the Malta bank collapse. Garrett had her use voice-over IP software, so the phone calls were harder to trace, and she started by calling Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France. She told the Interpol agent that she was from the Ascendant project, an offshoot of the Defense Intelligence Agency, but the agent immediately transferred her to a different department, where a keenly interested American wanted to know her location before anything else, so Garrett told her to hang up. Immediately.

  “We’re on a watch list,” Garrett said, cursing under his breath. “Ascendant has been tagged. We can’t mention it again.”

  “Okay. I guess we’re done then, huh?” Celeste said. “We can all go home now, get back to watching Wheel of Fortune?”

  Garrett tried to stay patient, then had her call the IT department at the now-defunct bank in Malta. He watched over her shoulder as she tracked down ten different names and numbers, most of them on the island of Malta, with a few in Italy and one in France. She called each one and told them that she was from an American cybersecurity firm—Reilly Pattern Insight, she called it, which made Garrett smile—looking to patch vulnerabilities in their operating systems. Garrett gave her a word-by-word script to use, because the truth was, Celeste knew next to nothing about computers. A pair of employees hung up on her right away, two said their lawyers had told them not to speak to anyone, one claimed not to speak English, and n
o one answered at the other four numbers. But with the last call, she hit pay dirt. The IT employee—now ex-employee—was angry at the firm, and at regulators, and basically at the world at large. He said the IT department hadn’t had anything to do with the penetration, but they all suspected that the British moron Leone in HR had infected the system by putting a thumb drive into a network computer, which then emptied bank accounts, companywide.

  Celeste thanked him, and then she and Garrett spent the next two hours trying to hunt down Matthew Leone, assistant VP of human resources at the First European Bank of Malta. Celeste finally found him on his cell, in a hotel room in Bern, Switzerland, and he’d clearly been drinking. She put him on speakerphone so Garrett could listen, because he was slurring his words and repeating himself, but as soon as she asked him about the bank in Malta, he hung up on her. She called back three times, but he never answered again.

  “Dead end; we’re done,” Celeste said with just a hint of satisfaction in her voice.

  Garrett took a deep breath and asked her to start researching Leone. “He was the entryway into the bank. Markov used him. Think like a con man. That’s how we crack this.”

  She stared at Garrett without saying a word.

  “Is there a problem?” Garrett asked.

  “I still hate you.”

  “Then I guess the marriage is off.” Garrett moved on to find Bingo.

  Bingo had spent the morning calling tech firms in Silicon Valley, even though it was three hours earlier there. He knew a couple of employees at Planetary Software, the company that Markov had worked for in 2010. Some had moved on, but one still worked in the engineering department and remembered Markov.

  The engineer described him as quiet, hardworking, a bit of a drinker in his off hours. Not a ladies’ man, but not gay either. At least he didn’t think he was gay. Kind of hard to pin down.

  Garrett pushed Bingo to ask for more details. Religious beliefs? Coding quirks? Sexual fetishes? Was he political?