by Lee Goldberg
“Now everyone has truly seen the real story with Dwight Edney,” Ian Ludlow said.
Edney took a seat in the director’s chair. “Where am I?”
“You’re at Air Hollywood, a studio that specializes in airplane set interiors,” Ian said. “It’s three blocks from the Fashion Square Mall, in case you’d like to walk back to your car. Or you can just wait where you are for the FBI or your Russian comrades or CNN to show up. I’m sure someone is on the way. The feed isn’t hard to track.”
It didn’t matter to Edney who showed up. He was finished regardless. His eyes teared up. “Why did you do this to me?”
“Because you were rude to us on your show.”
“You’re lying. There has to be more to it than that,” Edney said. “Who are you working for?”
“I’m just a writer who likes to tell a good story,” Ian said and ended the call.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Warner Center Office Park. Woodland Hills, California. November 14. 11:08 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.
Ian removed the SIM card from the burner phone, tossed the phone out the window of the Toyota, and turned to Margo, who was driving the four of them back to Ronnie’s place.
“This is exactly how each episode of Mission: Impossible ended,” Ian said. “All that’s missing is the closing theme.”
“You’re obviously Jim Phelps, which makes me Rollin Hand, master of disguise,” Ronnie said from the back seat, peeling off his fake nose and eyebrows. He turned to Mei, who sat beside him. “Which makes you Cinnamon Carter.”
“I have no idea who she is,” Mei said.
“Neither do I,” Margo said to her. “But you were terrific. It was your best performance ever.”
“Thank you,” Mei said. “That means a lot coming from you.”
Mainly because it was the first genuinely nice thing Margo had ever said to her.
Ronnie took off his curly-haired wig and tapped Margo on the shoulder. “You’re Willy.”
“Isn’t that a man?” she said.
“He was the muscle and you’re a really tough broad.”
“Nobody says ‘broad’ anymore.”
“Because it’s been a long time since any woman deserved the compliment,” Ronnie said. “You do.”
“It’s not a compliment,” she said.
“I still can’t believe Dwight was a traitor.” Ronnie settled back into his seat and looked at Ian. “I was hoping right up until the end you were wrong about him. Is there nobody left we can trust?”
“Not on TV,” Ian said, tossing the SIM card out the window. “The world has changed. Truth is fiction and fiction is fact.”
“If you’re right, then you’re at the leading edge of our new reality,” Ronnie said. “You’ve proven that you’re a master at combining the two. That’s a superpower, buddy. What are you going to do with it?”
“Write another Straker book,” Ian said.
“That’s a waste,” Ronnie said.
“It’s what I do,” Ian said.
“It’s what you did. You’re Straker now,” Ronnie said. “You’re an actor who has become the part that he plays. Just like me.”
Margo looked at Ronnie in the rearview mirror. “You’re half-plant?”
“I attract bees and I weep uncontrollably whenever I see firewood,” he said. “What does that tell you?”
“That you’re off your meds,” Margo said.
“What happens now?” Mei asked Ian.
“You go back home with Ronnie tonight and shoot your episode of Hollywood & the Vine next week,” Ian said. “What you do after that is up to you. It’s about time that you wrote your own story.”
“What about us?” Margo asked him.
It was the question Ian expected Mei to ask, and he was relieved that she didn’t because he didn’t have an answer for her. But the question had an entirely different meaning coming from Margo and he knew exactly what to tell her.
“We’re going to pretend that we’ve just returned to Los Angeles after being away for weeks on a research trip to Madagascar,” Ian said, knowing that the CIA could easily, and quickly, create a data trail with airlines and hotels that would support his story and hold up to any scrutiny.
“Why are we doing that?” Margo asked.
Ian smiled. “So we can make the shocking discovery that we’re dead.”
Top Chef Catering. Khimki, Moscow Oblast. November 15. 9:05 a.m. Moscow Standard Time.
There was a long, crushing silence in the tenth-floor conference room after Kirk Cannon, Leonid Morzeny, and the six generals, all sitting around the table, watched Dwight Edney walk out of the airplane set and the livestream broadcast ended.
It felt to Cannon like they’d just watched an episode of Mission: Impossible. All that was missing was the shot of the IMF team driving away, leaving behind the African dictator they’d toppled, or the Eastern Bloc spy network they’d destroyed, or the Asian king they’d deposed with their clever con.
Which was why Cannon was certain a writer like him was behind the scheme. It had to be Ludlow, even though the author was dead. The novelist must have cooked up the plot before he was killed.
“I’ve never seen anything go viral so fast.” Viktor scrolled through some numbers on his laptop screen. “The number of times the captured video is being reposted globally on social networks is increasing exponentially every sixty seconds. It’s going to be the most-watched, most-shared video ever made.”
“How did this go so wrong?” asked Evgeny, picking at the scabs on his chewed fingers.
Cannon turned to Morzeny. “Because you were right about Ian Ludlow. What we just saw was scripted. Ludlow must have been working with the CIA all along.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Morzeny said. “What’s more likely is that the CIA was already suspicious of Edney and, thanks to your damn script, we exposed him to the enemy. We gave him too many damaging scoops, and that intensified the CIA’s scrutiny. But giving that fake recording of the president to Edney, rather than to an objective journalist we didn’t control, was your big mistake. It confirmed their suspicions about Edney. They didn’t have time to actually prove their case, so they mounted this con as a desperate, last resort to prevent the president from starting a war.”
That made sense to Cannon, who believed they were both right, not that it made any difference at this point.
“What happens now?” asked Petrov, raising one of his gargantuan arms, as if he were waiting to be called on in class.
“A catastrophe for Russia,” Cannon said. It was easy for him to see how the story would play out.
“The United States, the United Nations, and the entire international community will condemn us in the strongest possible terms. Russian diplomats and citizens will be expelled by the thousands from countries all over the globe,” he continued. “NATO will immediately accept all the remaining former Russian republics into their alliance and vastly increase the number of missiles aimed at us. Russian assets in the West will be frozen or seized, brutal economic sanctions will be levied against us worldwide, and our economy will be crippled, creating poverty and social unrest throughout our society that could provoke another revolution.”
“I think you’re right.” Morzeny sighed and stood up. “And all of it will be a result of our epic failure. How do we live with that?”
He looked at each man in the room, his sad gaze lingering on Cannon for a long moment, and then he walked out.
Viktor turned to his mentor and idol. “What do you think will happen to us?”
Cannon thought the answer was obvious. “We’re done.”
“Yes, but what does that actually mean?” Evgeny asked, taking a break from chewing off the tip of his left pinkie, drops of fresh blood on his chin. “Will we be fired? Exiled? Killed?”
Those were good questions.
Cannon looked out the window to ponder the answer and saw Leonid Morzeny’s graceful swan dive off the roof, the laces of his untied Air Jordans
fluttering like streamers in his wake.
POSTSCRIPT
In the days immediately following the livestreamed outing of Dwight Edney as a Russian spy, the following occurred:
Dwight Edney was arrested by the FBI and charged with treason. He agreed to cooperate with authorities to avoid a death sentence.
Cloris Edney was arrested while attempting to board a flight to Qatar, which has no extradition treaty with the United States. She refused to cooperate with authorities.
The president of the United States declared that the “secret recording” that Edney had aired was a fraud and that the deaths of two American tourists in Porto and the killings in San Diego and Dunn, Texas, were the work of Russian spies trying to provoke a war with Mexico. He congratulated the Justice Department’s “innovative use of social media” to expose Edney’s treason.
Top Chef Catering’s covert activities came to an immediate end so they could focus their full attention on making cheap, inedible meals for Russian schoolchildren, hospital patients, and the military. Morzeny’s former “generals” were retained as full-time dishwashers.
Kirk Cannon took a new position as creative director of the Chernobyl community theater.
The entirety of Dwight Edney’s testimony was classified for national security, so nobody was aware that Ian Ludlow, Margo French, and Wang Mei were involved in his downfall. The secrecy also allowed CIA director Healy to give Vice President Penny fake intel to feed to his Chinese masters that falsely exposed several hard-line party members as Russian spies, leading to their summary executions.
Vibora leader Arturo Giron and Mateo, the Golden Devil, were murdered by the villagers they’d brought into their compound as human shields against a US attack that never came. The villagers pillaged the house and pulled out Mateo’s teeth for the gold caps.
Jim-Bob Sanderson got his own nightly talk show on Fox in the time slot formerly occupied by The Real Story.
“The Bad Seed” aired and became the highest-rated episode in the history of Hollywood & the Vine. Wang Mei was promptly signed as a recurring character and began a torrid affair with Ronnie Mancuso. Their affair became public when an explicit sex tape of the two of them was “stolen” and a portion was “mysteriously released” on the internet, making Wang Mei a household name in America.
Margo French returned to Camp Peary in Williamsburg, Virginia, for additional training in weapons, self-defense, and spy craft.
Ian Ludlow moved into the Oakwood apartments in Universal City while his house, which had been burned down by assassins for a second time, was being rebuilt again. He started writing a new Straker novel and began a desperate search for affordable homeowners insurance.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Gracie Doyle, Megha Parekh, Kevin Smith, Dennelle Catlett, Kyla Pigoni, Sarah Shaw, Gabrielle Guarnero, and Megan Beatie for their enthusiasm, creativity, and hard work. Their efforts are a big reason why Ian Ludlow’s adventures didn’t begin and end with True Fiction.
The blurring line between fiction and reality was a very real problem for me while I was writing Fake Truth. It seemed like every day I was forced to decide whether to re-plot my story so my fiction would still be fiction or just keep going, reality be damned. I decided to keep writing and ignore the news, or I’d never finish the book.
I don’t know how much of this book has become reality in the time between when I finished writing it and when it ended up in your hands. My fear is that a lot of it has . . . and you’re thinking that either I am too unimaginative to come up with original ideas or my novel was intentionally “ripped from the headlines” like a Law & Order episode. Neither is the case. I really made this stuff up.
However, the community of Dunn, Texas, is fictional and named after my friend author Robert E. Dunn, who created the fictional Texas town of Lansdale, named after author Joe R. Lansdale, in his book Dead Man’s Badge. I tried to use fictional Lansdale as my setting, too, but couldn’t make it work geographically. So I created Dunn instead.
Fake Truth was written in many places, from Billings, Montana, to Porto, Portugal; from Bois-le-Roi, France, to Green Bay, Wisconsin; from Calabasas, California, to Birmingham, Alabama . . . and in the skies in between. Ian and Margo were my constant travel companions for six hectic months in my life. I hope you’ve enjoyed their company as much as I have.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2013 Ron Scarpa
Lee Goldberg is a two-time Edgar Award and two-time Shamus Award nominee and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than fifty novels, including the Ian Ludlow series (Killer Thriller and True Fiction), the Eve Ronin series (Lost Hills), fifteen Adrian Monk mysteries, and the first five books in the internationally bestselling Fox & O’Hare series (The Heist, The Chase, The Job, The Scam, and The Pursuit) cowritten with Janet Evanovich. He has also written and/or produced dozens of TV shows, including Diagnosis Murder, SeaQuest, The Glades, and Monk, and cocreated the hit Hallmark movie series Mystery 101. As an international television consultant, he has advised networks and studios in Canada, France, Germany, Spain, China, Sweden, and the Netherlands on the creation, writing, and production of episodic television series. You can find more information about Lee and his work at www.leegoldberg.com.
