by Jay Stringer
LaFarge mumbled something that sounded like either yes or please.
Lauren turned in a slow circle, sweeping her hand at the chamber around them. “See this? This is something money can’t buy. It’s tradition. History. It’s an idea. The right idea. Those books?” She pointed to the stacked shelves that lined the chamber. “Roots that go back into history. Before Germanenorden, before the Thule Society. Before anyone heard the word Nazi. It was the idea. And the idea has never died. It never will. I get to be part of that story. You”—she returned to stroke LaFarge’s hair again—“get to be part of that story. Imagine a world where we can control life and death. Where we get to decide who lives forever and who doesn’t. We’d need the right person in charge of those decisions, wouldn’t we?” She smiled, nodding in agreement at her own words. “We all wear a mask in public. We all pretend to be different people. My parents, like so many of their generation, let the mask become who they were. They forgot to take it off. Got too comfortable wearing it, and it killed them. But we don’t make that mistake, do we?” She knelt down to LaFarge’s eye level. “You see me.”
He whimpered the same sound again.
“The problem with torture,” Lauren said, “is that it only really works while people think there’s a chance they’re going to live. That’s when they’ll plead and beg; that’s when they’ll give up information. Once someone realizes they’re going to die, they double down. Pride gets in the way, and they think, if you’re killing me anyway, I may as well die protecting the information. And it all becomes a race to see if you can break their spirit and get what you need before they die.” She let her hand rest on his shoulder, a gentle touch. “I bet, really, if I offer you twenty million right now, into your account in seconds, you’ll tell us exactly how to make Eades reappear on the system, won’t you?”
LaFarge started to cry, nodded.
“I know,” Lauren whispered, friendly, caring. “It’s okay, let it out. Yeah, that’s it.” She stroked his hair. “Now, why don’t you just tell me what I want? How do I find Ashley Eades?”
Between the sobs, LaFarge started to talk.
* * *
“The Fountain of Youth,” Richards said, his voice high-pitched, almost approaching a squeal. He seemed to have a very low threshold for pain. “She’s obsessed with it.”
Nash stepped back, pulling away the glass. The old Nash, back when he was Lothar Caliburn, would have put some extra hurt on Richards just on principle for wasting his time with something as ridiculous as the Fountain of Youth. But he’d seen some shit since then. You don’t find the Ark of the Covenant only to draw the line at talking about the Fountain.
Richards seemed to sense this moment of reprieve. “Seriously, she’s throwing so much money at looking for it.”
“That’s why you took the job.”
“Sure. I mean, I like to talk about this shit as much as anyone else. I thought it’d be a good media career, you know? Get known for being contrarian, talk up some right-wing values, freedom of speech, then ride the train. But then Lauren comes at me with a blank check to look for the bloody Fountain of Youth?”
“You filled that blank check with a big number.”
Richards smiled, confident now that they were talking money, his native tongue. He waved at the office around him with both hands, and the bottling plant behind the glass. “Capice?”
Nash knew what was coming next. Richards was going to make an offer. But Nash still wanted to hear it, to see how it was framed.
“So.” Richards’s smile focused. He leaned forward, bringing both hands together on the desk, completely ignoring the blood running down his neck. “What kind of round figure will it take for you to work for me?”
For you?
Nash stepped forward. Richards was ready. Nash could see his hand had been under the table. Pressing an alarm? Richards pushed back in his chair, stood, and dropped into some form of fighting stance. Maybe he’d paid for expensive lessons. But Nash was too fast, too strong, and too done with this crap. He punched Richards in the gut, then followed with an uppercut. Richards smashed back against the window. The dull thud of his impact told Nash how thick the glass was. As Richards bounced forward, Nash used the momentum to lift him, and he threw him onto the desk. The glass shattered, and Richards landed in a heap on the floor, covered in the shards, lacerated in several more places. He didn’t move right away, only made a wheezing noise. Nash was willing to bet this was the first time he’d ever really been hit.
Nash knelt over him and picked up one of the new sharp weapons. He pulled Richards’s head back by the hair. “I’m not going to work for you. You don’t get to just use my name like one of your brands.”
There was sound outside; then the door burst inward. Danny was framed in the doorway, holding a gun loaded with a compressor. He took a step into the room but hesitated when Nash pressed the glass to Richards’s throat.
“Phkin ger ’im,” Richards tried to shout, but his mouth wasn’t working right.
Nash nodded at the gun, then met Danny’s stare. “You hate this guy,” he said calmly. “You know he’s a phony.”
Danny looked from Nash to Richards and back again. “Yes.”
“You tried to hire me, so you know I’m good for whatever I say.”
Danny nodded.
Nash pictured the Ark. He started putting a number next to it. All the money he could make on the market from selling the relic. The figure was big. Larger than anything he’d ever dreamed, until the moment the Ark slipped through his fingers and he realized how close he’d come. But that was nothing compared to having the private resources of a billionaire just one conversation away.
He pressed the glass into Richards’s neck and slashed across. As Richards lay beneath him, twitching and dying, Nash nodded at Danny again. “Get your real boss on the phone.”
* * *
Lauren shot LaFarge in the head. The sound bounced around the chamber. It had been the only decent thing to do, in the end. He’d been in so much pain, if the pleading and begging was anything to go by. And he’d seen her face. Her real face. No amount of money could cover for that, and you don’t get to be as rich as a Stanford by handing out twenty million when you can just torture a guy.
But it had been a productive meeting. She felt good about it. A whole lot of progress had been made, and LaFarge had been happy to help as much as he could, once the flames touched his genitals.
She put down the gun on a table at the side of the room and pulled some Wet Wipes out of a pack, cleaning her fingers. Their jet was ready to leave. Ted would get rid of the mess before they went. Ted pulled out his cell and announced it was ringing. Lauren watched as he answered, started to speak, and stopped. His mouth dropped open. His eyes bulged. He put down the receiver and covered it with his other hand.
“It’s… Lothar Caliburn?”
“Are you asking me or telling me.”
“Telling. This guy says he’s the real Lothar Caliburn. He wants to speak to you. Mentioned your name.”
Lauren knew she should be scared. A part of her was, maybe. Somewhere far off. If the real Caliburn knew her name, that could be trouble. But she was in the zone. After killing LaFarge, she’d gone to the fun place in her head. The shit-doesn’t-matter place. The watch-things-burn place.
She took the phone and said, “This is Lauren.”
“You have a job vacancy.” It was an American accent. Somewhere like Louisiana, maybe? New Orleans? “We should talk.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The other option was a sexy blue sports car,” Chase said, as they headed north in the yellow Mini Cooper. She smiled at Hass hunched in the front passenger seat. “But this one suits you better.”
They’d stayed mostly silent as she navigated out of the city, taking a few detours, both accidental and deliberate. They didn’t have any obvious tails. Mason had said Chase wasn’t enough of a target to warrant facial recognition at traffic lights. But all that had been before the libr
ary, and Chase was half convinced there must be people on her, even if she couldn’t see them.
She traded information with Hass, each bringing the other up to speed on everything they’d done so far. Ahead was a sign that never failed to make her laugh, a big black arrow pointing upward that simply read, The North.
“Where we going?” Hass asked the one question Chase hadn’t answered. In all the information they’d traded, she’d somehow neglected to mention where Eades was.
“Glasgow.”
Hass snorted. “Of course.”
To anyone who didn’t know the UK, it would feel shortsighted to change identity and only move four hundred miles to Glasgow. But to many people in the south of England, Scotland was a whole other world. Socially. Politically. Financially. You could hide from London more effectively north of Hadrian’s Wall than you could by crossing the Channel.
It would take them over eight hours with pit stops. Driving in the UK always felt more tiring than back home. There, the roads were long and straight and Chase could drive for hours without thinking about it. British roads were built to exhaust and confuse.
Chase asked, “Did you know about Conte’s son?”
Hass didn’t answer. It was a very deliberate lack of a denial.
“Doc?”
He turned to her, then looked away again. “He trusts me for the same reason you do. I keep people’s personal lives personal.”
“Think he’ll talk to me about it?”
A shrug. “You can try.”
Chase pulled out her cell, keeping one hand on the wheel, and passed it to Hass. “Call him, on speaker.”
Hass loaded up Talaria and clicked on Conte’s name. He started a call, and the Italian answered right away.
“Salve, Marah, it’s so good to hear from you. Are you not still in town?”
He would know for a fact she wasn’t. This was just the game he played, a subtle way of asking where she was. Chase was happy to play along.
“Salve, Cisco. No, I’m in London for a rest. I was sorry to miss you.”
“London?” He paused, banking that information. “Say hello to the city for me—it’s been too long. I haven’t been since before the attack. It would break my heart to see London without Big Ben or Buckingham Palace.”
“I’ll mention it. They might rebuild them quicker.”
Conte chuckled, a rumble like a big cat. “Please do. Oh, I’m so sorry to have missed you, bella. I heard about your unfortunate experience. The Ark. That’s a hell of a find. A hell of a find. My heart broke to hear of the way it was taken away from you.”
Two broken hearts in one conversation? He was laying on the charm a bit too heavily. Chase decided to be wary. Every conversation with Conte was a transaction.
“It is what it is, Cisco. That’s the game.”
“I should tell you, there was a pool, on you and Mr. Nash. I oversaw the betting, naturally.”
“If you’d told me that in advance, I could’ve won some money.”
“Confidence. I like that. You can’t achieve anything without it, isn’t that right? If you don’t back yourself to succeed, why should anybody else? You know, I could ask around for you. I’m sure I’d be able to find out where it’s being stored, and if I could get you that…”
Here was the point of his charm offensive. If Conte was floating the idea of finding out where the Ark was, that meant he already had the intel or knew someone who did. Offering to ask around was merely him making it sound like he would be doing more work especially for her, which would add to the price he would ask in return.
But even knowing she was being played, Chase couldn’t stop the Ark from swimming into view in her mind. It was right there, just out of reach, attainable if she played the game.
It was time to show some of her cards and take control. “The Ark can wait. I’m sure they had their reasons. I want to talk about your son.”
Conte drew in a breath quietly. Chase had seen proof of an unknown ancient civilization. She’d witnessed Big Ben being destroyed by a weapon that controlled lightning. Two years ago, she’d hung on the outside of a plane as it flew over the Alps. But until now, she’d never witnessed Francisco Conte lose control.
“I’ve known you for ten years,” he said. “I should be beyond surprise by now.”
“Tell me about him.”
“Bobby… Baggio, I should say. He always wanted to be called Baggio. After the footballer. Bobby was too young to have ever seen him play, but somehow he’d come to idolize him.”
Chase could hear Conte smile, his control slipping for a second time.
“I think he chose Juventus just to annoy me.”
“Was he in the family business?”
“Well, that depends how you mean. I’m the exception. Our family has always been a mix of journalists and politicians. I’m the one who took a different route. Bobby, Baggio, he was a journalist. One of the new generation, social media, activism, clicks.”
“Is that how he met Ashley Eades?”
He laughed again. Chase could hear he was back in control now, once again the calm player. “So it is. You are working.”
“I am,” Chase confirmed. “I’m here on a job, looking for Eades. She’s an old friend of mine, and I found out she was dating your son. But for real here, Cisco, I just want to say, all work aside? I’m truly sorry to hear what happened. I can’t imagine how it feels.”
“Thank you.” His voice cracked. He was off-balance again. A shared moment. “But I think you do understand loss. You’ve felt it enough.”
He was right, she’d known her share of grief. She’d carried some of it around for decades, and others were more recent losses. She was still learning how to process it.
“I think we can help each other,” she said, “if you’re willing to put the usual game aside. We just talk to each other straight. I think we can both get what we need.”
Conte paused a long time before answering. “I agree.” He breathed out. “As to your question, I’m how they met. My boy and Eades. She kept trying to do stories on me, wanted me to sit down and talk her through our world, how it all works. I think she had the affliction that everything needed to make sense. The whole world needed to fit into a narrative she could explain.”
Chase remembered conversations like that with Eades. She could never get out of the way of her ideas.
“So, from me,” Conte continued, “she found my son. And they influenced each other. One always pushing the other, taking more risks.”
“Were they working together on a story?”
“Perhaps. I never knew the details. I haven’t found much since… what happened. I had taught Baggio how to protect his data. He used the same packages we do. I’ve never been able to recover all of his files.”
“Some of them?”
“Some, yes. Some of his. Some of hers, stored in the same place.”
“Could you send them to me?”
“What are you working on?”
Chase thought it over. Giving Conte the truth still felt like a risk, even after they’d agreed to play it straight. But she felt like they’d made a connection on the call. He’d revealed a new side of himself. She could meet him partway.
“How about I lay it all out?”
“No games.”
“I was contacted by someone who wants me to find the Fountain of Youth.” Chase noted no laugh, no negative reaction. He was taking that as a reasonable thing for someone to do. “And they felt Ashley Eades might know something about it. I know Ashley, so they used that connection to get me involved. And then, in looking for Eades, I found out about… what happened to your son. And a—” Chase paused. “A source in MI6 thinks it might be the work of Lothar Caliburn.”
“I see. Are you willing to tell me who hired you?”
“Not right now.” Chase was open to it. She had questions about the Stanford connection, and Conte might have the answers. But one thing at a time.
“I understand,” he replie
d. “I don’t know that I have anything new to add. Maybe just clarity. This is not the first I’ve heard of the Fountain of Youth. Bobby asked about it. He wanted to know if I knew anyone like you who was looking for it. I laughed it off, of course. But then he told me that it was an obsession of Lothar Caliburn and R18. I laughed that off at first, too. Because R18 hadn’t been active since your London adventure, and Caliburn had been dead for ten years.”
“Did he say any more about it?”
“Nothing. Not directly. The last time we spoke, it was an argument.”
“What about?”
“Everything. Nothing. All of the things we were unhappy about. You know how families are. We store our complaints up, wait until something unimportant happens, then fight like war. I didn’t like that he was with Eades. And we argued over football and about how infrequently he was calling his mother. And…”
Chase could hear his emotions were bubbling up again. She waited, letting him speak in his own time.
“He didn’t mention the Fountain, or R18. But before things got heated, he mentioned Lothar Caliburn, that he was close to finding his identity.”
“You argued over football and not that he was sniffing around an assassin?”
Conte laughed. “Familia.”
“You heard the same thing I did about Caliburn. You already know he was behind it.”
“I have people hunting for him right now.”
“And when they find him?”
Conte didn’t answer right away. He didn’t need to reply at all; they both knew what was going unsaid. “I suppose you will try to talk me out of it.”
Chase shook her head. “I guess I was born without the Nazi empathy gene. He killed your son; do whatever you want to him.”
Between Hass, Conte, and Mason, Chase had things pretty straight in her mind. For whatever reason, R18 had developed an interest in the Fountain of Youth. This was suddenly a thing people cared about. Eades and Roberto had stumbled on this information, either because they were working on a story about the Fountain that lead to R18, or vice versa. Eades may well have found a solid lead on the location from the old soldier, James Gilmore. Somewhere along the way, they got close to the identity of Lothar Caliburn. Caliburn had gotten to Roberto, but Mason’s intervention had saved Eades.