by Tom Abrahams
“First, I’ll give you a hint as to your role.” Custos ran his hands through the old man’s thinning hair, raking sweat through the tendrils. “Have you ever heard of the Red Terror? Of course you have. You’re old enough, viejo. Maybe you lived through some of it.”
Barçes knew about the Red Terror, the so-called Spanish Holocaust, and the endless acts of senseless violence committed during the Spanish Civil War. Tens of thousands died as leftist reformers rebelled against politicians, the wealthy, and the church. The Catholic Church beatified four hundred and ninety-eight of the victims in 2007.
“So many men and women died for their cause,” said Custos. “They died so others could live. That is what you will do, viejo. That is your contribution and your destiny.”
CHAPTER 34
HARRIS COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE SUBSTATION
HOUSTON, TEXAS
“I’ve told you everything I know.” Dillinger Holt rubbed his eyes and yawned. “I can’t help you beyond what I’ve already volunteered.”
“You’ve said that.” The plainclothed investigator leaned forward on his elbows. He sat across from Holt in a room at the sheriff’s satellite office. “And I believe you. Given what we’re dealing with, however, I can’t just let you walk out of here.”
“Am I under arrest?” Holt had missed his deadline by two hours and ignored four calls from his editor. She’d texted him twice using all capital letters. Not good.
“No.”
“Then you can let me walk out of here,” Holt said. “You can’t detain me.”
“Actually, that’s not true,” said the investigator, rapping his fingers on the table. “You’ve watched too much Law & Order. I can hold you for a reasonable amount of time until I decide whether an arrest is warranted. Then you have to wait for the prosecutor to file charges. It can take a while.
“You’re not charging me with anything, though.”
“No. I don’t have any reason to suspect you’ve done anything wrong.”
“Then…?” Holt’s eyebrows arched expectantly.
“Then nothing. I need to make sure I’ve been thorough here. I’m gonna need your phone.”
“Why?”
“There’s evidence on the phone. You showed it to me. We need to have our IT guys look at it, break down the data. It could help us.”
“I need my phone.”
“You can get another one.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Then you’re an idiot, Mr. Holt. Your girlfriend, or whatever she was, died from either strangulation or the multiple puncture wounds in her neck and chest. She was stuffed into a freezer drawer. It was a violent death. Don’t you want to help catch whoever did it? Especially since, as you told me, you feel responsible?”
Holt slid his phone across the table. He held onto his guilt.
“Thank you.” The investigator moved the phone to the side. “Now, you think she died because she helped you with information about the suicide of that rapper, Horus?”
“Yes.”
“Why, again, would she die for that?”
“I’m not sure.” Holt exhaled as he spoke. He’d already explained his theory twice. “I believe Horus’s death was not a suicide. Using information Karen gave me, I publicly connected his death to a disgraced FBI special agent. Somebody didn’t want that connection public. It’s too coincidental.”
“And who is this somebody again?”
“I don’t know.”
Holt wasn’t about to raise his theory about a connection to Sir Spencer and maybe even the White House. He’d already made a mistake by trying to confirm Karen’s identity at the crime scene. He knew it was stupid the moment he’d opened his mouth.
Now he was out two hours and his cell phone. Neither sacrifice would bring back Karen, and neither was likely to be enough to find the killer.
“All right.” The investigator nodded. “You can go. I need some contact information so I can get in touch if I need anything. But don’t report that stuff I told you about how your friend died. We don’t want that getting out yet. Understood?”
“Got it. You know where the closest cell phone store is?”
*
Dillinger held his new phone away from his ear as his editor colorfully explained her disgust. Her bosses were angry, which made her angry. That anger, among other things, rolled downhill. She didn’t care who died or why he’d lost his phone.
“I need the five hundred words,” she demanded. “Do you have them?”
“No, but—”
“Not the right answer, Holt.”
“I’ll give you something in twenty minutes.”
“Fifteen.”
“Fine.”
Holt sat in his rental car outside of the cell phone store. He slid his seat as far back as it would go and pulled his computer onto his lap. He checked the new phone. The voicemail was set up correctly with his old number. No messages. His White House source hadn’t come through. He needed something good, something that would appease his editor and her angry uphill bosses.
Holt cracked his knuckles and started typing.
CONNECTING THE DOTS:
WHAT DOES THE WHITE HOUSE HAVE TO DO WITH HORUS?
By Dillinger Holt, Senior Correspondent
What do a dead hip-hop star, a disgraced FBI special agent, a suspected terrorist, and the White House all have in common?
That’s the question we’re asking as we uncover more disturbing details involving each of the above players in what might be a grand conspiracy of unknown intent.
—EXCLUSIVE—
The death of hip-hop star Horus in his backstage dressing room in Houston, Texas, was the first dot in a picture we still can’t quite decipher, but is slowly beginning to take form.
As we first reported, investigators have connected a DNA sample from Horus’s death chamber to one analyzed at the alleged suicide of a disgraced FBI special agent years ago in suburban Washington, DC. That agent was Erik Majors. His death is dot number two.
We’ve uncovered that Majors, as a high school student, received a prestigious Grove Scholarship. The man who awarded Majors the scholarship? Sir Spencer Thomas. That Sir Spencer Thomas, the suspected terrorist accused of blowing up the United States Capitol.
The same Sir Spencer Thomas the White House contends was killed in an ambush this week, but who two sources now contend is, in fact, alive.
Sir Spencer is dot number three.
Why would the White House report the alleged terrorist’s death if it were not true?
Why would an FBI agent with at least a tertiary connection to Sir Spencer die under murky circumstances?
Why would DNA found at his death match a sample found at the death of a famous musician?
Horus, known for his dark lyrics, often wrote of a “New World Order” and of a powerful, shadowy puppet master of an organization manipulating our collective consciousness.
Was he silenced for it? Was Erik Majors?
We cannot draw the lines between said dots just yet. But the longer the White House denies what sources are telling us is true, the easier it is to put crayon to paper.
Holt cut and pasted the post into his email and sent it to his editor. Then he called her.
“It’s in your inbox. It’s explosive. I’m not sure you should publish it.”
“Give me a second,” she said. “I’m opening it.” She read the piece aloud and then turned off the speakerphone. “You’re right. It’s explosive. I love it.”
“You’re posting it?” Holt couldn’t hide his surprise.
“Yes, I’m posting it. We’re not The New York Times, Holt. Heck, The New York Times isn’t The New York Times anymore. I’ll run it by the lawyers. But everything you wrote is posed as a question. You’re not accusing anyone of anything. Brilliant.”
“I’m forgiven, then?”
“For what?” She laughed and hung up just as another call came into his line. The number was blocked. He figured it was the Sheriff�
�s Office.
“This is Dillinger Holt.”
“Dillinger?” It was a woman’s voice. “My name is Matti Harrold. I’m the one who emailed you.”
CHAPTER 35
WORLD TRADE CENTER
BARCELONA, SPAIN
“Are you there, Mr. Holt?” Matti cursed herself as her name slipped out. So much for being a good spy. In her drug-induced haze, she shrugged it off.
“I’m here,” he said. “Are you the same Matti Harrold who testified before Congress?”
“That’s me.” She looked at her hand and flexed it. No tremors.
“And you’re the one who’s been sending me emails?” he asked. “You’ve seen Sir Spencer Thomas alive.”
“Yes.” She could hear tapping on the other end of the line. “You’re taking notes already? I haven’t really told you anything.”
“You’ve told me enough already.” The typing stopped. “Everything from here on out is a bonus.”
Matti’s mind flashed to nine months earlier and her conversations with the source who ratted out the Capitol conspiracy, Bill Davidson’s prostitute girlfriend. She considered how the tables had turned. Now she was the rat.
“Ask me questions.” Matti was standing in the hotel room bathroom, staring at herself in the wall-sized mirror. “I’ll answer what I can. Then I’ll ask you questions.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” Matti leaned in as she spoke, studying the darkness under her eyes. It spread from either side of her nose to the outer edge of her lashes.
“Why are you talking to me?”
“Something bad is about to happen,” she said. The whites of her eyes were webbed with red. Her pupils were blown. She leaned forward, trying to see through them. “I need help figuring out what it is before it happens.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No.”
“You sound drunk. You sound high.”
“No.”
“How do I know you are who you say you are?”
“You don’t.”
“I don’t have time for games.”
“Neither do I.” Matti squinted and leaned closer to the glass, looking deeper into her own eyes than perhaps anyone ever had. “I’m in a hotel in Barcelona. The president is here. She’s meeting with a small circle of advisors ahead of dinner tonight.”
“Send me a picture with your phone.”
“Your line isn’t secure.”
“So?” He laughed. “You’ve already told me your name and where you are. If I’m on the NSA’s list, it’s already too late.”
“Good point.” Matti held up her phone and snapped a selfie. It was similar to the countless mirrored, narcissistic snaps that cluttered social media and the Internet. Matti sent the photo and waited.
“Wow,” Holt said. “That is you.”
“I told you.” Matti deleted the selfie.
“What is going to happen?” he asked against the snapping of computer keys. “Is it related to Sir Spencer?”
“Yes. I think so. He’s planning another attack. It’ll be at the summit, and I’m certain the president is involved.”
“President Jackson?”
“Yes.”
Matti detailed what she’d seen at Camp David and the president’s subsequent denial and veiled threats. She told Holt about the hotel murder and the suspect’s long connection to Sir Spencer. She spilled what she’d learned about Bohemian Grove and its membership. By the time she was finished, her phone’s battery was close to empty. Matti moved from the bathroom to her bed and plugged in the phone.
She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, focusing on the small waves of textured plaster coating the entirety of it. The waves were designed to hide the imperfections, the weaknesses in the ceiling. Matti admired how even the waves were, how they expertly masked the ugliness of cracks and bumps.
“Everything you’re telling me,” Holt said, “I understand it. I get how it fits together.”
Holt reciprocated with everything he’d pieced together. He told Matti about the information and suppositions he couldn’t include in his online postings. He suggested that Horus and FBI Special Agent Majors were killed to keep them quiet. He wondered aloud if President Blackmon was murdered too, despite not having any evidence to support his suspicion.
He believed the shadowy Brethren was behind all of it, a concern solidified by Matti’s story of Bohemian Grove. There was something at hand. His finger pecked away at the keys. Matti could hear it on her end of the conversation.
“So what’s coming?” Matti asked. “And what do they want?”
“You’re right,” Holt told her. The typing stopped. “The G12 summit is the perfect place to follow up the Capitol attack. And I know why. I can’t believe it. It’s been staring me in the face, and I’m just now seeing it. I know what they want. I know their endgame.”
“You do?”
“Yes. I just don’t know if we can do anything to stop them.”
CHAPTER 36
CASA FUSTER HOTEL
BARCELONA, SPAIN
The assassin stepped from the car into the comfortable warmth of the Mediterranean air. She ran her fingers through the short brown pixie wig atop her head. Her Paris Hilton sunglasses slipped on her nose and she pushed them up as she slung her bag over her shoulder.
She waved off the valet at the curb and marched past him into the hotel. A rush of cool air replaced the heat, populating goose bumps along her arms and neck. She would have preferred to meet outside, along an avenue, sipping coffee or drinking a Spanish beer. Or even better, a park bench hidden amongst the shade of artwork and trees. That would have been best of all.
Instead, this was her instruction, to take a car to the highest point of Paseo de Gracia and to the Casa Fuster Hotel. She was to find a seat at the Café Vienés bar and wait. Her connection would find her. The instructions came as a surprise, an addendum to the job for which she was sent to Barcelona.
After having passed on killing the reporter, she was anxious to find her next mark, the political aide Matti Harrold. But duty called. She found a seat in the lounge and checked her phone. This was the right spot.
The space was an odd, garish collection of colors, shapes, and materials. The golden ceiling was arches and framed parallel rows of pink marble pillars. The floors were polished obsidian black granite.
The assassin was sitting on one end of a large curved salmon sofa. She sank into the plush, sunshine yellow pillow in the small of her back. Surrounding her were clusters of café tables and high-backed fabric chairs.
“May I help you?” a waiter appeared from seemingly nowhere. “You speak English, no?”
The assassin nodded. “Espresso.”
The waiter scurried off. A minute later he was back with the cup and saucer. She took it black.
She sipped the coffee. Her lips pursed, her face sour as much from the bitterness of the drink as the offensive surroundings.
“You don’t like it?” The voice came from behind her head. She swiveled quickly, sinking further into her seat as she did. “Your face betrays your distaste.”
Standing behind her was a tall, large-framed man. He held his shoulders back, his chest forward, despite leaning on a cane. His hair was white more than gray, and his smile gave away that he was British.
“I know you,” she said, turning her back to him to take another sip of coffee. “You’re the terrorist. And my distaste is for this room. It tries to be too many things.”
“So many of us try to be too many things, don’t we?” Sir Spencer eased his way around the sofa to find a seat in a chair directly across from the assassin.
“Aren’t you dead?”
“I am,” he moaned, adjusting his girth in the chair.
She sipped the last drop of the coffee.
“You are the one they call Mariposa.” Sir Spencer leaned his cane next to the chair, taking care to balance it so it wouldn’t fall. His eyes moved from the cane to her legs. “I’m her
e to give you some intelligence that will help with your task. There are some new tidbits as well.” He pulled an envelope from the interior breast pocket of his jacket and reached out to hand it to her.
“Who is they?” She snatched it before sinking back into the overstuffed sofa. She crossed her legs and rested her elbow on the sidearm.
“They is…they.” Sir Spencer winked.
“I’m not interested in coyness,” she hissed, slipping the envelope into the bag without opening it. “I’d prefer we get on with whatever business we have. Is the envelope all you have?”
“I’d heard you were direct, if not a bit rude.” Sir Spencer waved off the waiter.
“I have a job to do.” She leaned forward in the seat, struggling against its depth. “I’d like to do it.”
“I’ve only met a handful of you.” Sir Spencer’s eyes swam across her body. “I’ve always been impressed. They do stellar work.”
The assassin studied the terrorist’s face. He wasn’t joking, wasn’t teasing her. He was serious.
“How many others?”
“Including the musicians, singers, and actors? Or are we focusing solely on the formerly downtrodden addicts and malevolents like you?”
A wave of heat coursed through the assassin. She rolled her hands into tight fists, digging her manicured, thickly shellacked fingernails into her palms, and bit the inside of her cheek. Now was not the time.
“Didn’t like that characterization?” Sir Spencer licked his wormy lips and rubbed the white scruff on his chin.
“How many others?” She spoke through clenched teeth. Her knees were pressed together.
“I don’t know, really.” Sir Spencer flicked his tongue back and forth between his teeth. “Dozens at any given time. As some grow up or melt down, we add new ones. One Britney dies, and another Britney grows in social influence. Heath pops his clogs, and Zac sees a resurgence of opportunity. Those are the influencers, mind you. As for the malevolents…”
