London

by A. C. Fuller

Cole wriggled in her chair. "I don't remember."

  "Yes, you do."

  "I worked, okay? I took a month off and things just kept getting worse. Then I went back to work. I got promoted. I broke stories. I beat the Times and the Post on story after story. Unhealthy?" She shrugged. "Healthier than sitting alone in my apartment and talking to Matt's mom and my therapist."

  "And the drinking?"

  "One time thing. I don't like flying and I overdid it." She drank her whole glass of water, avoiding Warren's stare. She knew he wasn't convinced. Neither was she.

  "Before, did the work keep you from drinking?" He spoke slowly, and his voice conveyed a warmth she wasn't used to.

  "Yes."

  "So that's the answer."

  "What?"

  "You need to break this story. You need to do the work."

  Cole put her hands flat on the table. "And how do you suggest I do that?"

  "You're a reporter. Figure it out." He stood.

  "What are you gonna do?"

  "You're a reporter. I'm a cop—almost a detective—until you came along and screwed me." He said it playfully. It was now an unfortunate running joke.

  She smiled weakly.

  "I have no chance," he continued, "but I'm going back to the site. I'm going to investigate. Talk to cops, or people at the buildings across the street. Tonight I'll see the professor I mentioned. He may have insight into the political motive of this thing, but I doubt it." He stared down at her long and hard, then frowned and nodded. "Do whatever you need to do to pull yourself together and find out what the hell is going on here."

  Alone at the table, Cole called Gabby. Straight to voicemail, just like when she'd called her from the Las Vegas airport. "Gabby, it's Jane. Did you get my last message? I really need to hear from you. I'm in London with Warren and… well… I don't know what I need but I need something. A starting point. A thread to pull on bin Muqrin. Something." She paused, looking around the restaurant. Her heart wasn't in it, and it was coming through in her weary tone. "To be honest, Gabby, what I really want to know is whether you can tell me anything about a man named Julio Lopez. One child born recently—a daughter. Truck driver based in Houston."

  Cole paid and walked outside where a cold wind bit her cheeks. Sun peeked through the clouds and she squinted into the glare. She pulled up her collar and wandered down the street.

  She'd told Warren the truth about how she'd gotten back to herself after Matt died. After a month off, she'd worked harder and longer than ever before because she had nothing to go home to but an empty bed and a Monkey Puzzle Tree wilting in the corner. Her therapist had said a hundred versions of "Take time to grieve," and "You can't just press through it. Emotions need time to surface." She'd tried that and had only gotten sadder and sadder. So she worked. Reporting, and the occasional glass of tequila—that's what got her through it.

  She stopped at the window of a pharmacy, studying a display of stocking-stuffers. Candy canes, Christmas-themed toothbrushes, miniature figurines from children's movies. Pens and pencils poked out from decorative gift bags.

  Warren was right. She'd never been good at masking her feelings, and he'd seen right through her. If she couldn't overcome her grief, she could work her way through it.

  She walked in and found the school supplies. The section was only a couple racks at the end of a long aisle filled with greeting cards. She grabbed a pack of notecards, a cork board, some thumbtacks, five highlighters in different colors, and a pack of the ballpoint pens she'd seen in the window. Finally, she found a spool of white string.

  At the register, a woman gave her a wry smile. "You're either a teacher or you're purchasing the conspiracy-theorists starter pack. I'm guessing you're not a teacher on account of you're not buying the #2 pencils we have on sale."

  Cole smiled. "You're right. Not a teacher."

  "Gonna solve the nine murders or something?"

  Cole slid her card into the reader. "Why? You got a theory?"

  "Read in The Guardian this morning that MI6 thinks it's the Russians. Get that? The Russians killing people on our soil. Bastards."

  "The Russians? Mohammad bin Muqrin?"

  "That's what it said." She shrugged like she wasn't truly interested in the story.

  Most people didn't process the news the way Cole did. This lady had read a story—probably a factually-challenged opinion piece—and now repeated it to anyone who would listen.

  Cole made a mental note to look up the article when she got back to the hotel, then stowed the cork board under her arm, took the bag, and walked out in the direction of the hotel.

  3

  Back in the hotel room, Cole flicked off the lights, closed the curtains, and turned on a desk lamp. She set the cork board on the desk, leaning it against the wall so it faced her. Next to it she set the highlighters, pens, notecards, and string. She closed her eyes and let her mind go blank.

  Walking back from the restaurant, the cold air had helped clear her head. She'd scanned the article the clerk at the drugstore had mentioned—a wildly irresponsible piece of journalism that cited one anonymous source "close to British intelligence." Full of speculation and innuendo, and terribly written, the only significant claim came in the third paragraph. "According to the source, multiple Russian operatives (former KGB) are known to have been in and around London in the days before the attack on Mohammad bin Muqrin." The source didn't even claim to know that the Russians were involved. Only that "Russian operatives" were "in and around London." Stories like this were out there, being repeated by people all over the city along with a hundred other poorly-sourced theories. No wonder everyone was confused. And that's exactly how the people behind the killings wanted it.

  She needed to shut out the theories and speculation, the noise of the 24/7-media shouting every story in every direction. She needed to blot out the world, descend into darkness, and see if she could drag out a sliver of light.

  For over a week, she'd seen the murders the same way the world saw them. A group of extremists were killing world leaders, business leaders, and politicians in service of an extreme political ideology. It was hard not to see things that way; she'd caught Michael Wragg and this had clearly been his motive. The manifesto sealed the deal.

  She tried to set all that aside. What if something else was going on, as Gabby had suggested in Vegas? The rogue JTTF officer had said, "Someone is organizing this thing. Someone smart. Someone powerful. But ask yourself this: What if a ragtag group of extremists didn't simply band together on the Internet under the leadership of the mysterious General Ki? What if the folks doing the killings and releasing the manifesto weren't capable of carrying out the most complex terrorist attack since 9/11? What if the stated aims of the terrorists, the mission they articulated in the manifesto, is just a sideshow? A diversion?"

  Cole made notecards for each person involved in the killings, along with each major question she needed to answer.

  Martin Price

  In New York, she'd figured out that the reclusive businessman owned the townhouse Michael Wragg used to shoot Raj Ambani. Though owned by Martin, it was inhabited by his estranged wife Maggie Price, a socialite, Instagram star, and product endorser known in the NYC tabloids for her numerous trysts with younger men. At the time of the shooting, Maggie had been out of town, shopping in Paris. Cole learned she'd left town at the request of her husband, who'd known in advance about the shooting.

  Martin Price had arranged for the townhouse to be available, but he'd also been unreachable since Ambani's murder. She and Warren used computer experts at JTTF to steal his bank records, showing his payments for Michael Wragg's rifles. But she'd never printed this information. As far as the world knew, Price had nothing to do with the murders.

  She'd called every number she could find and emailed the public relations contacts listed on the websites of his businesses. No replies.

  She'd combed through his history and found no record of political activity, no extreme views posted onl
ine, and no evidence he agreed with the content of the manifesto. Besides that, if he was the mastermind, why pay for the weapons himself? Why leave that kind of trail?

  She texted two business reporters she knew back in New York, asking for notes or links to stories about Price. Few reporters had gotten him on record, and the stories were boring interviews about New York real estate and his first love, the Yankees. Maggie was famous for searching out the spotlight. Martin Price avoided it.

  She added two questions on a notecard under his name:

  Mastermind, patsy, or something in between?

  Can I confirm he knew the sniper would use his roof?

  She stuck the notecard into the cork board.

  On another card, she wrote:

  Marty Goldberg

  The powerful K-Street lobbyist had been found dead the day after meeting with them in D.C. Cole doubted that was a coincidence. She posted the card on the board and, beneath it, tacked a series of cards—one for each company he'd lobbied on behalf of—Systems Key, Inc., Brown and Gunderson, LLC, Trulidia Systems Tech, Kane, Inc. Fifteen companies; fifteen notecards. Next, she made a card for each federal agency he'd lobbied, which was a list of five—USDA, FTC, DOD, ITA, and the BILA. She had to look up the last two—the International Trade Administration and the Bureau of International Labor Affairs. She didn't know anything about either, but the word "international" caught her interest. She pinned the cards to the board.

  This thread alone could take days of research to unravel, and she didn't have that kind of time.

  Where's Gabby?

  Gabby had been leaking them information since the beginning. It turned out she'd been a mole within the NYPD and JTTF, leaking to reporters for years. She was a one-woman wrecking ball, bringing down corrupt cops, government employees, and the criminals they protected. She'd handed them plane tickets and passports, then disappeared. Warren wasn't concerned, but Cole feared the worst. After all, Goldberg had died the day after meeting them.

  Next, she created a card for each victim, listing a few key facts about each, looking for connections.

  Raj Ambani

  Alvin Meyers

  Ana Diaz

  Mohammad bin Muqrin

  She made a card for every connection between the victims, pinning them to the corkboard between the names and connecting them with string. Ambani was connected to Meyers through political donations. Bin Muqrin and Meyers were linked via the Saudi relationship to the U.S. government. And so on.

  Stories in the Press

  Multiple stories had appeared linking her and Warren to the murders. Someone planted them. Who and why? In her mind there were two options. The first: someone was after them specifically because they were investigating the murders. The second: someone realized they were on the case and simply wanted more misinformation floating around the Internet to confuse people.

  The Money

  "If you want to understand any problem in America, you need to focus on who profits from the problem, not who suffers from it." Years earlier, Cole had worked as a business reporter for six months, and her boss had taped this quote to her computer.

  What Gabby said in Vegas opened up a new view of the killings, and it brought this quote to mind. People were capable of purely ideological killings and terrorist attacks. Recent history had shown that. But the more she thought about it, the less she believed the nine murders were purely ideological, as the manifesto claimed. She needed to get back to the oldest journalism maxim:

  Follow. The. Money.

  It's what had led her to Martin Price and Michael Wragg in New York. And it's what she needed to do now. A crime this big would almost certainly lead to business interests on the same scale.

  She sat back and examined the large cork board, now pinned with dozens of cards connected by bits of string. She smiled briefly. Alone in the dark room, along with empty coffee cups and an unmade bed, she’d proven the drugstore clerk right. The place looked like the hideaway of a deranged conspiracy theorist.

  Standing, she leaned over the desk and wrote one more card.

  What Happened to Matt?

  In Vegas, Gabby had said something that still resonated. "Honestly, if you figure out who's really behind this, it'll answer all kinds of questions." Gabby had a tendency of being direct most of the time, but maddeningly vague at other times. Had she meant that solving the nine murders would unearth the truth of what happened to Matt? Or something else?

  Cole wasn't sure and, staring at the card, she felt herself float away. Lopez's Facebook page. Houston. Morgan in Southern California making millions on high-end real estate.

  She tore up the card and threw it in the trash. The thought of Matt wrecked her. She wouldn't allow herself to be wrecked.

  4

  Warren used his phone to navigate the half-mile back to the hotel where Mohammad bin Muqrin had been shot. Something had bugged him since he and Cole stopped by on their way to breakfast. No video had emerged of the shooting, only its immediate aftermath. Investigators hadn't identified where the assassin was when they made the fatal shot. It should have been easy to figure out by this point. After all, bin Muqrin had died forty-eight hours ago.

  The hotel was one of the grandest in London, occupying an entire city block and combining elements of classic and modern architecture. White and gray stone made up most of the lower floors, but shimmering towers of silver and black reached for the sky, like a crystal that had grown from igneous rock. The hotel had reopened, but the front entrance remained cordoned off by blue and white police tape, not the yellow and black stuff he was used to. He loved the film Pulp Fiction, and a scene popped into his mind—John Travolta explaining to Samuel L. Jackson that, in Paris, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese is called a Royale with Cheese, because of the metric system. The little differences between Europe and America, he thought. They had a different name for the greasy sandwich pressed between a bun of empty carbs. But the damage to your body was the same on either side of the Atlantic.

  Across from the hotel rose three tall buildings with smaller buildings filling the gaps between. The tallest building was a hotel, the other two were drab office buildings, the sort found in any modern city. Judging by the signs out front, the office buildings had many tenants, providing a possible reason for the delay in locating the origin of the sniper's shot. In a hotel, there would be a list of every registered guest, plus surveillance footage of everyone who'd come in and out. But that wouldn't be true of an office building. There would be some surveillance footage—London was the sixth most surveilled city in the world—but likely not as much. And instead of checking with the front desk for a list of comings and goings, investigators would have to check with each individual company. That could take days, even weeks.

  Warren approached the police line, getting as close as he could to the entrance of the hotel where bin Muqrin had been killed. The OPEC meeting had been moved to a more secure location across town, but hotel guests streamed in and out, showing IDs to a pair of officers on the other side of the police tape. At the entrance fifty yards away, the red carpet had been removed, revealing bare cement that was out of keeping with the posh hotel and conference center. Two uniformed officers milled about chatting, looking at phones, and taking notes. Three men in dark suits examined the scene as well. Government investigators, he thought.

  Turning back to the tall buildings across the street, he tried to judge the angles. For the shooting in Miami, The Truffle Pig had figured out the only angle from which he could hit Diaz over the wall of the beachfront compound. Warren had to assume bin Muqrin's shooter had planned similarly. The shooter would have known security would be tight, and that the Deputy Crown Prince would be visible for only a few seconds.

  The angles from the balconies and windows of the hotel wouldn't allow for the shot. That meant the shooter had been in a window of one of the two office buildings. Both were possibilities, and the choice would have come down to which the shooter had easier access to and which had the
better escape route.

  A tour bus had stopped across the street and two dozen people streamed out to gawk at the scene. Terrorism tourism. The nine murders story had become an international phenomenon, and everyone was cashing in.

  A family of four stopped beside Warren, posing in front of the police tape, their backs to the hotel. The dad pulled out a phone and shoved it in Warren's face. "Take a picture, mate?"

  It was more an order than a question, but Warren had a soft spot for Australian accents, and he was in no mood for conflict. "You want a family portrait in front of a crime scene?"

  A teenage girl sneered at him. "This is the new 9/11. It'll be huge on Instagram."

  Warren took the phone reluctantly. If these jackasses wanted a picture, fine. He held up the phone.

  "Wait." The boy, maybe eight years old, brushed floppy blond hair out of his eyes. "Let's get on the other side of the police tape so it'll look cooler."

  Warren began to object. "I don't think that's…"

  The family was already slipping under the police tape.

  They posed, smiling, as Warren snapped pictures. The perfect Australian family on vacation in London, posing for Instagram photos in front of a murder scene.

  As the mom, dad, and sister slipped back under the police tape, the boy walked toward the entrance, where the officers and investigators spoke in hushed voices.

  "Hey!" It was an officer, Warren thought, shouting at the boy to get back. But all five people at the hotel entrance were looking away from the boy.

  A man wearing a dark trench coat and sporting a shaved head was running toward the entryway. Everything around Warren slowed. Sound faded. His peripheral vision dropped away and his eyes focused like lasers on the man, who had bolted past the officer checking IDs. He wasn't fast, but he ran with purpose, straight for the entrance.

  "Stop!" An officer's voice. "Stop!"

  The boy entered Warren's view. Oblivious, he continued walking toward the entrance, calling for his sister to take a picture of him close to the hotel entrance.