Marah Chase and the Fountain of Youth

by Jay Stringer

  “The shooting range is for debate prep?”

  The smirk stayed in place. “We’re pro-gun. Big picture, I want our teams desensitized to what’s going on out there. Most of our recruits don’t come from here. Our highest engagement comes from more isolated areas, or suburbs, places that are mostly white. This is a way for them to get used to being around the enemy, so they can blend in, not be scared of the other when the time comes to act.”

  “You’re not worried your guys will fall in love with the food or music, get laid, change their minds?”

  The humor dropped from Richards’s face. “Nobody here is changing their mind.” The smile came back. “You’re making the same mistake as the liberal media. You want to call my guys stupid. Ignorant. You want to say they’re scared, acting out of fear. But the truth is, we’re the ones who are thinking straight. The people out there?” He pointed at the window. “They’re walking round with stresses and worries. So many concerns. And they don’t know why. They know the world has gone to shit, but not the reason. Nobody tells them the truth. The minute you see it”—he turned the pointed finger to his own temple—“everything becomes clear. Easy. They all have a million problems. We only have one.”

  “How often you practiced that?”

  For a second, Richards’s mask slipped, and Nash saw the genuine reaction in his eyes. He’d been called on his act. The speech had been good—too good. Either Richards had delivered it too many times to find the real belief, or he had never believed it in the first place. Nash looked again at their surroundings. How much money was there to be made in playing this role? And could that be the source of Danny’s frustration? A real believer being led by a poseur. Or worse, being led by a sellout.

  “Just so we’re on the same page.” Richards pressed a few keys on his laptop and turned it around to give Nash a view of the screen. A video showed the room he’d just been in, and Danny garroting Lenny with a wire. “A man with your reputation will always get to meet with us. But people who cross us don’t get the benefit of regretting it.”

  “And you don’t give them the benefit of keeping your word.”

  “I’d been told you could be difficult,” Richards said.

  “Danny?”

  “No, actually. The Eighteens had a file on you for years, and I know Danny tried to recruit you before my time. But we have a friend in common. Ashley Eades.”

  That took Nash by surprise. He knew the name and her reputation with the black-market types, but he wouldn’t have called Eades a friend. She’d had drinks with Nash on more than one occasion, but he’d never been willing to go on the record with her. And she’d been too busy turning Marah Chase into a star to really listen to him. Still, he’d thought about her a lot since then, wondering if the TV and book money could have been his if he’d played nice.

  “She’s not into all this?” Nash said.

  “No, but she was into writing about it.” Richards gave a new variety of smirk, a dirty one. “We fooled around a lot at university. The speech that didn’t work on you was like chum in the water to her. She wanted to debate me.” Richards looked lost in a happy memory for a moment, sipping the beer. “She got in touch a while back, now into writing about cults and subcultures, figured I might know some alt-right people she could talk to. Told me all about relic runners, all about you.”

  “Does she know you’re leading R18?”

  Richards stuck his lips out. Made a tutting sound. “She was close. It was a shame. And she was shacked up with some greasy Italian. I had to send my team after her.”

  Nash wasn’t stupid. There were no coincidences. Had Eades been dating someone Francisco Conte cared about? Whoever it was, Conte was close enough to them that he’d been afraid that giving Nash the information up front would give him too much power.

  “You send Lothar Caliburn?” he asked Richards.

  The phone buzzed. Richards didn’t even pause to apologize, picking up the receiver and saying, “Go.” He paused, listening, then responded only with sounds. “Uh-huh. Mmm. Ah. Uh-huh.” He nodded a couple of times, as if the person on the other side of the call could see, then covered his face with one hand, sighing loud enough for the caller to hear. “Fix it.” He put the receiver back in the cradle. He rubbed his face, before settling his eyes on Nash, holding a stare. “Why are you after Caliburn?”

  Nash downed the last of the beer and set the empty bottle on the desk in front of him. He noticed with satisfaction the look of annoyance that crossed Richards’s face at the desk being used as a trash can. Nash stood and helped himself to another beer, showing off his strength by popping the cap using his thumb. He took a swig, then settled back into his seat.

  “You know, I was sent after Caliburn once,” he said. “Long time ago. I was still in the public sector. My bosses wanted Caliburn gone. He’d just taken out two British agents, and rumors were he’d been hired to target an American diplomat, so it was time for me to go get him.”

  Richards leaned forward, rested his head on his hand. “This stuff is so cool.”

  “I figured out someone who fit the profile. Someone who’d been in a bunch of the same places at the same time as Caliburn hits, someone who was known to have some anti-authority views, the whole thing. He was a Canadian freelancer named Ryan Preston. I tracked him to Iraq, where he was working private security. Dragged him out into the desert. He begged for his life. Pissed his pants. It wasn’t a heroic end.”

  “You killed him?”

  Nash sipped again and shrugged. “My job. But I had a problem. See, I figured that the whole thing had come about because Caliburn was becoming too big a name. You carry that around, it gets to be like a target on your head. I was lucky enough to have found someone who I could pass off to my bosses as Caliburn, but next time I might not be so lucky.”

  Richards’s mouth opened. He closed it, then opened it again. Shook his head. “I don’t…”

  Nash threw his half-empty bottle directly at Richards. It connected with his nose, jolting him backward. Nash grabbed the empty bottle by the neck and smashed it on the edge of the desk, once, twice, before the bottom cracked off, leaving a jagged edge. He was around the desk in three quick strides, grabbing Richards by the hair and slamming him face-first into the desk, then pulling him back up and pressing the broken glass to his throat.

  “Now,” Nash hissed into Richards’s ear, “your second mistake was letting me see that Danny is downstairs. I have you to myself. But your first mistake is the real problem. I’m Lothar Caliburn. You’ve got someone running around using my name, and I want to know who.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Lauren Stanford looked down at her suitcases. Three of them, full to bursting. She was thinking about a fourth. This bunch would see her through a trip to London, but who knew where things would go after that? Once Chase led them to Eades, they might need to head straight off to another country, and how could Lauren plan for that?

  She looked through the doorway to where her mother’s portrait was judging her. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m doing this for you. I mean, maybe if you’d read the files you could have an opinion. The Fountain could be in either India or Africa.” She pointed to one pile of clothes on her bed. “That means hot. I need to pack for hot. But Africa is huge. There are different kinds of hot.” She pointed to a second large pile. “And then there’s humidity. That affects every single… pocket. What do I do about pockets? I might need an outfit with pockets. That means layers.”

  She was overthinking. And with only an hour before the private jet was due to leave, she didn’t have time for this.

  “You’re right.” She laughed. “You’re right. Two more bags, it’s easy.”

  This was all a distraction, trying to take her mind off the thing that wasn’t happening. Ted. She looked up at her parents again. “This would be easier if your wonder boy was calling me. What’s taking him so long?”

  And now she was being let down by the London office too. Letting Greg run the
show had been a mistake, but she couldn’t say that out loud because her parents had never liked him. She couldn’t be the face—she was too well-known—but Ted could handle meetings on this side of the Atlantic, and Greg, Greg with the ass, Greg with the smile, he could hold things down in England.

  Or so she’d thought.

  But now both of them were late checking in.

  Her phone buzzed.

  “Finally.” She didn’t bother with the usual power play of letting it ring. “What have you got?”

  Ted said, “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “He’s not talking. And I think we have a problem in London.”

  Lauren sighed. She pressed the phone to her chest to cover the mic while insulting Ted under her breath, then put it back to her face. “I’m on my way.”

  She took the spiral staircase down to the main floor of her apartment, then called for the elevator. When it arrived, she stepped in and pressed the button for the secured basement. This was the part of the building that had always been known only to the family, and now Ted.

  If you want something done right…

  * * *

  Richards’s head was pressed to the glass desk, his cheek on the cold surface. Nash had already sliced a fine line across the back of his neck, the blood running down into his collar.

  “What’re you talking about?” he said.

  “I’m Caliburn,” Nash said. “I made up a cover so I could do whatever I wanted, charge whatever I wanted, and my government bosses would never know. Until they sent me to catch me, and I knew it was time to get out.”

  “I swear, we didn’t know.”

  “That much I’ve worked out, genius.” Nash pressed the broken glass again, not breaking the skin but causing pain. “But now you’re running around using my name, linking it to terrorist shit.”

  “Look, dude, dude, chill. Come on. We can work this out.”

  Nash grabbed a handful of Richards’s hair, feeling the greasy crap he used to style it, and pulled his head back. The front of the neck was the most vulnerable spot on everyone. It was often the quickest way to get to the point. Nash gently pressed the broken glass into the flesh around Richards’s Adam’s apple.

  “Who is using my name?”

  “No-nobody.”

  Nash eased off. “Explain.”

  “Look, we wanted to hire you. Caliburn. We wanted to hire Caliburn. But everyone said he was dead. Killed—well, by you, I guess. So I thought, Why not just use the name? It’s branding, innit? So we don’t, it’s not—” Richards gulped. “It’s not a person. We’ve just been using the name. Whoever we send on a mission is Lothar Caliburn. It scares people.”

  Nash pulled the bottle away and let Richards calm down. “You’re not for real. I’ve met real Nazis. Danny is real. You’re faking it.”

  Richards met his eyes, then looked away. “The money’s good, okay?”

  “Whose money?”

  Richards smiled. He even laughed. He thought he was back in control. “They’d kill me.”

  Nash smashed more of the bottle and grabbed Richards by the hair again, pressing the jagged glass into his neck, drawing blood. “How do you think this ends?”

  “St-Stanford. Lauren Stanford.”

  “I know that name?”

  “Dosa.”

  Shit, yes. Nash knew that name. The Stanfords were rich. Proper American dynasty–level rich. They owned media. They owned airlines. They owned pharmaceuticals. Nash could see what Richards had meant about the money being good. Someone like Lauren Stanford could change your life on a whim and wouldn’t even miss the money she threw at you.

  “And she hired you?”

  “She knows me. Uni. We d-dated.”

  “She’s into this?”

  “She’s insane. Her whole family, total Nazis. I mean, really, going all the way back. There’s so many of them, man, all over the place. London. America. Paris. Rome. They’re in so many positions. And after London, Lauren took over R18, and she knew my views from university, so she put me in charge.”

  “And then this journalist, Ashley Eades, she was close to figuring it all out.”

  “She knew both of us. Me and Lauren. And she was asking questions. Lauren thought it was only a matter of time.”

  “You sent your team in?”

  “Just one. Just Danny.”

  So Danny was the one Conte wanted. The Lothar Caliburn who killed whoever it was Conte cared so much about. A friend? Family member?

  “And what’s the plan? What did she hire you to do?”

  * * *

  The elevator doors opened. Lauren stepped out into a narrow corridor with deep red carpet. Immediately to her right was a metal hatch. The hall had once led to a private jetty and a tunnel that opened out onto the East River. The water inlet had been dug when the building work was first carried out, with the Dosa plant as cover. Very few people had ever known about this level. It was from here, in 1916, that the attack on Black Tom Island had been launched. The tunnel had long since been closed up, to avoid any questions from the authorities.

  She walked along the corridor. The walls were covered with drapes and family heirlooms imported from Europe, along with more recent memorabilia. She paused, as she always did, at a metal sheet that bore an etching of the logo Harrold Stanford had originally intended for his product. Purity Cola. Harrold had intended his concoction to keep the underclass and the immigrants drugged and unhealthy, but he’d realized long before he took his venture public that he would need a different name. Something a little less loaded. But he’d kept this etching, and it had passed into family legend.

  Lauren made a ritual of touching the cool metal every time she walked past, honoring the history. Her parents had both avoided this place, letting it grow dusty. Lauren took pride in the legacy.

  At the end of the hall she passed a metal doorway. She touched the cool surface, paused but didn’t go in. Instead, she continued along to the main chamber, a large round space with a high ceiling and long curved walls. It was far grander than the City Hall station. Lauren always laughed privately at how Carina Texas liked to lord that place over people. Lauren’s place felt more like a church. And, with its drapes and statues, she decided that it was, a church to something old and pure. The walls were lined with bookshelves, full of ancient knowledge from centuries previous, all the way through the German experiment. Her parents had tried to keep her away from all of this. It was her grandmother, sweet old Nana, who had brought her down here at every chance, let her read the books, opened her up to their traditions, their future. It was here that Lauren had learned about the Fountain of Youth and started to build her database, the pet project that now defined her life. The version she’d given Chase was only a sample, just enough information to get the explorer interested. The real treasure trove of data—all the expeditions, the legends, the failures—was in the version Lauren had on her laptop.

  Ted stood at attention as Lauren walked in. He was wearing overalls and gloves, holding a butane blowtorch. The smell of burned pork in the air was coming from the naked man strapped to the chair beside Ted. Grant LaFarge. He wasn’t unconscious, but he wasn’t fully conscious, either. His head lolled on his chest. His eyes flickered toward Lauren as she entered, but they were slow, distant. There were welts growing on his forearm and fingers, spots where Ted had applied the flame. The rest of him looked clear.

  “Ted, what are you doing?” As Lauren got closer, she could smell other things. LaFarge had emptied himself out. Idiot Ted had used one of the family’s old wooden chairs, brought over on the boat from England. It was ruined.

  “You said…” He waved at LaFarge and didn’t finish the sentence.

  Lauren sighed. One problem at a time. “Carrie?”

  He shrugged. “Couldn’t find her. At the Speakeasy, they said she’s taking a vacation.”

  So Carina Texas had figured out what was coming next. She knew she was a loose end. Obviously, that was the reason she’d
turned Lauren down. “Clever girl. Hiding until it’s over.”

  “I know someone there could tell us where she is.”

  “No, you’re right. We can’t bring everyone in New York down here. What’s the London situation?”

  “I contacted our friends there, like you said. But…”

  “But what?”

  “Greg ordered his team to follow the tablet, like we said. But they got spotted, or they attacked, I’m not sure. I was watching their chat group, and I think some of them have been arrested.”

  Lauren pinched the bridge of her nose. She could feel a stress headache coming on. “I’m starting to think we need to set a higher bar for entrance to the master race.”

  She stepped closer and stroked LaFarge’s hair. His head rolled to the side, and he looked up at her.

  “Grant. Baby,” she whispered to him gently. “I’m sorry for this. We just need to know everything you do, that’s all. We don’t want to do it this way.”

  “Fff tol you effrin.” LaFarge talked as if the pain had swollen his tongue. The words were slow and lazy.

  Lauren looked to Ted. He took the cue and explained, “Everything we already knew. He was paid to wipe Eades’s records from the surveillance systems. He says a British agent set it all up.”

  “The one who helped stop the London attack and keeps sniffing around our friends in the UK?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s a plan for her when the time is right. Has Grant given you the name of the cleaner?”

  “No.”

  “And he hasn’t suggested that, as the person who took her profile off the security grid, he can probably also put it back on? Lead us all right to her?”

  “No. But he did say he thinks she’s in Scotland somewhere.”

  “Oh, well.” Lauren smiled encouragingly at LaFarge, took his uninjured hand in hers. “That narrows it down to around five million people.” She leaned in. “This is all a bit too cruel, isn’t it? Maybe this could’ve been handled another way? I’ve got more money than you could even count. Is there an amount of zeroes that would make you give up the information?”