The Cornmarket Conspiracy

by Sharon Hoisager

  As the meeting droned on, Jeffrey began to review in his mind the meeting he’d already had with MI5 — Britain’s domestic counter-intelligence agency — a couple of hours ago. Immediately upon returning to the office this morning, Jeffrey had already met with the country’s top investigators to brief them on the cryptic phone call he had received this morning, and to turn over his phone for analysis. Although the call had shaken him up a bit, Jeffrey didn’t really give it much credence. There were crackpots all over London. Hell, there were loonies all over Great Britain, eager to jump on the opportunity for notoriety that a terrorist attack offered. The London police would no doubt have at least one or two crazies show up today and claim responsibility. Real terrorists do not call up the office of the Prime Minister and announce themselves. He was sure it was a hoax. The biggest pain was that he would now be without his phone for a few days. They had given him a temporary, but without his private phone with all of his personalized apps and contact list, he would have to limp along on one of the most critical days of his tenure in office.

  The meeting mercifully was brought to a full stop when Wellington announced he needed to leave and handle critical phone conversations with some other European heads of state. Calls had been coming in all morning from Asia, Germany, and Japan, even Russian President Putin had made a courtesy phone call. This wasn’t just Britain’s problem… it was a full out global crisis, and somebody had to start work on coordinating the global support.

  As soon as the meeting ended, Hunter bolted out of the room and down the hall toward his office. Fletcher LaForge, the Deputy National Security Advisor, was trailing him, calling out to him as Hunter disappeared down the hall.

  “Hunter . . . Let me know anything that comes across your desk about the investigation . . . it’s important that we coordinate any new information you’re receiving with our office. . . .”

  Jeffrey grunted a response without bothering to turn around. LaForge was a nice enough guy, and it was obvious to everyone on the staff that he had a brilliant mind, but Jeffrey privately found him to be annoying and more than a little unexceptional in his job performance. What’s more, Hunter had known LaForge for more than twenty years, going all the way back to his days at Oxford, so their shared history provided a foundation for a true friendship, albeit often requiring more patience than Hunter could afford at the moment.

  LaForge persisted down the hall behind Jeffrey, calling out behind him…

  “Hunter, I’d like to meet with you to discuss the investigation at your earliest convenience . . . .”

  Before Hunter even entered his office, he could tell there were people waiting for him.

  “What the hell is it now?” he called out as he entered the room.

  Standing directly in front of his desk, Hunter immediately recognized John O’Leary, one of the top investigators with MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service’s Foreign Intelligence division. He’d brought along several members of his entourage, half a dozen other investigators whose principle job it was obviously to do whatever he told them.

  O’Leary was a big man, six foot one, in his late fifties, and easily 250 pounds. He hailed from Glasgow, and with a mop of thick reddish hair and a reddish-gray moustache, he looked like someone straight out of central casting and every bit the part of the Scottish Gentleman. He still wore a hounds tooth jacket that should have made its way into a charity donation bag twenty years ago. His Scottish brogue was gruff and all-business, but legend had it that his investigative instincts were unparalleled, having virtually single-handedly detected and prevented more than a dozen lesser terrorist attacks on London in the past fifteen years. O’Leary was a man who didn’t waste time with niceties.

  “I’ve got some questions, Hunter. We’ve run the source on that phone call you received this morning. Appears to be coming from a laundry business in Marseille.”

  “What?” Hunter was incredulous. O’Leary stared steadily at him. Fletcher LaForge trailed Hunter into the room, and stopped short when he saw O’Leary and his team in front of the desk.

  O’Leary did not appreciate the interruption and glared at LaForge. The two went way back, and their mutual contempt was apparent. They hailed from two different divisions within the Foreign Intelligence wing of the British Government, where they had both worked a dozen years ago. Like quarreling siblings, the two departments were constantly feuding over territory and power. O’Leary turned back toward Jeffrey without acknowledging LaForge. Jeffrey was fully aware of the infighting, but didn’t have time to deal with petty political rivalries at the moment.

  “Mr. O’Leary, I’m sure you’ve met Fletcher LaForge, Deputy NSA. He and I and the P.M. go way back. LaForge taught economics and public policy at Oxford while we were all students there.”

  “Yes, I believe we have.” O’Leary’s tone indicated his lack of regard for LaForge, and his disdain at having another politician in the room. He continued in his same matter of fact tone: “Let me clarify; the call is clearly not coming from a laundry in Marseille. While the phone number that we traced from the call registers to that address, the caller is obviously using a line encryption device that displays a random number as the source of the call — even cloaking the true origin of the call from the telephone company and from our tracking surveillance programs. Forget Marseille . . . The call could have been coming from anywhere… Paris, Munich, Istanbul, or next door. We’re working on it, but it will take more time to more exactly pinpoint the origin of the call. It was probably a burner phone anyway, so at this point, the value of that information is negligible.”

  “So, what do we do now?”

  O’Leary took a seat, leaving everyone else in the room standing, hanging on his next words. “What do you know about Bolling’s past? I need to know everything you know about him.”

  “Andrew? There’s not that much to know. He’s from Surrey, studied at Oxford with me and the Prime Minister. He was a great guy, a good friend, and an indispensable aid to the P.M. He will be missed.”

  “Tell me more about his personal life. I want details. Why was he on that train last night? Where exactly was he in Paris, and who exactly was he meeting with? Why was he in Paris in the first place?”

  “He was planning to see some old friends of ours from university. Andrew had invited me to go along too, but as usual, I was just too tied up with work. Andrew was always good at making time for old friends. I’m not sure who all showed up in Paris for the weekend… just some of our old drinking buddies from Oxford getting together to have some pints, tell stories, and catch up.”

  “I’ll need a list of everyone you know of that might have seen him over the weekend. We’ve already got contact information for his parents, and will be in contact with them soon enough, although I don’t expect to learn a lot from them. And one more thing, did he have a girlfriend… someone he was seeing?”

  Jeffrey Hunter flinched at the question. He knew Bolling was seeing someone, he just didn’t know who exactly it was. He’d tried to jokingly pry it out of his old pal several times, but Bolling wouldn’t budge. He was keeping it discreet for some reason, but why? Maybe she was from the opposition party, or maybe she would be a political liability for someone in his position and he just didn’t want to go public. Whatever the reason, Bolling had held his cards very close to his vest on this one, and Jeffrey Hunter didn’t have the foggiest idea why. But for now, he was going to stay true to his old friend.

  “No. No one that I know of at least, hasn’t been anyone for a while.” His friend was dead. He wasn’t going to stain his reputation right now for no good reason.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Rasul Aziz unlocked the front door of the book shop and flipped on the lights. The smell of old, dusty books mixed with the faint smell of mold from the pre-war pipes filled the room, just as it did every morning when he entered. He flipped the dangling ‘Closed’ sign to ‘Open,’ and threw his black leather jacket on the back of a stool behind the counter.

  Mov
ing to the back room, he turned on the radio to 106.7, ‘BEUR FM’, Paris’ Muslim community radio station. A reporter was interviewing the Mayor of London about the Chunnel explosion. Turning the dial to a classical music station, he filled his teapot to the brim with cold water from the small dingy sink in the corner, and turned his hotplate onto high as he waited for the water to boil. Taking out two green teabags, he placed them into his largest mug. It was going to be a long day.

  Back on his stool behind the counter, Rasul flipped open his laptop; 47 emails from overnight filled the screen. Skimming the junk emails in quick succession, he deleted all but the last one, from a Gmail account that he didn’t recognize, subject line blank.

  “Your package is scheduled to arrive today. Please notify us if you fail to receive it.” Closing his laptop, he returned to the teapot. Filling his mug, he watched the water turn a light shade of greenish brown. He added one packet of raw sugar and watched it slowly dissolve in the hot water. After letting the tea steep for a few minutes, he raised the cup and took in the musky aroma. Taking a sip, he let the hot liquid glide down his throat. Taking his tea was the best part of his day, he thought.

  Raz looked out the front window at the people passing by. Muslim businessmen, some wearing business suits, and a few wearing the traditional thobe tunic, bustled down the sidewalk. There were a large number of students in faded t-shirts, and a few women passed by in their bright colored hijabs. He felt anonymous in this world. Just another shopkeeper. Just another Muslim guy in this backwater neighborhood. The same old feelings that he felt most days rushed over him. He was invisible here, anonymous. Rasul wasn’t looking for the limelight. He just wanted out.

  Rasul thought about the job he had executed last night. He thought about the look on Andrew’s face when he handed him his “gift,” all wrapped up in red and green paper with a big fat red bow on top. He’d told Andrew it was a holiday present, a memento for old time’s sake. The funny look on Andrew’s face was probably guilt that he hadn’t bought anything for Rasul. Poor Andy, if only he’d known that the box he carried was no gift at all, but a custom made IED, set with an automatic timer and scheduled to detonate at an exact moment to guarantee maximum damage inside the tunnel. The fact that the initial explosion was designed to set off a chain reaction secondary explosion and fire, causing catastrophic damage to both the east- and west-bound passenger tunnels, as well as the maintenance tunnel would just be icing on the cake. The explosion and fire were calculated to be a terrorist attack of historical proportions, and Rasul smiled to himself at the thought of a job well done.

  Maybe that’s why he did it. Sure, he had his other ulterior motives, his increasingly considerable off-shore bank account being the main one, but Rasul rather enjoyed the idea that his life was having an impact. He was making a difference, even if it meant others had to pay the price. He thought about it for another moment, and then as he always did, he put the thoughts of Andrew far out of his mind. When he thought of Andrew, it was painful to think he had ended his friend’s life. Unfortunately, it had been the only way. And now, it was too painful to dwell on.

  At 2 p.m., the little bell over the door jingled lightly and the DHL delivery man dropped a 10-inch square box inside the front door. Rasul gave him a little wave and Arnold, the regular delivery guy, was out the door and already gone. Opening the box, Rasul noticed that it was lighter than usual. Normally he opened it to find cash or handwritten pages with instructions. He briefly wondered if the box might be empty.

  Pulling off the packaging tape, he pulled back the flaps of the small box. There taped to the bottom of the box was a simple silver key. Too small to be a door key, it appeared to fit a lock or a box. He turned it over, and very small, etched on the other side were three letters: CMH. Reaching into his pocket he took out a small white handkerchief, the kind he’d carried everyday his entire adult life, a habit he picked up from his British friends at university. Folding the key up in the cloth, he replaced it and patted it to make sure it was securely positioned deep in his pocket.

  He went back to his green tea, his third large mug today. Now he would wait.

  CHAPTER TEN

  High up on the 83rd floor of Hazelwood Tower in Lower Manhattan, Charlie Turner turned on his silver personal phone and carefully typed in his username and password, logging into his account with Merckel & Moss Financial Services, Geneva, Switzerland. After a minute as the information on the screen updated, his eyes widened at the feast of numbers before him. Smiling to himself, he gazed at the glowing numbers, like some ridiculous dream come true: $43,645,081.31. He read the numbers again, studying each digit to confirm they were all there. He checked the deposit details, 8:48 a.m. Source: Cornmarket Holdings, Grand Cayman.

  He logged off of his account and sat for a moment staring down Broadway and across Battery Park. As usual, he could barely make out the tourists standing in the almost perpetual line waiting to catch the ferry out to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. In the distance he could make out the grand lady herself, now wearing green stained copper and staring out to sea, as she had every day for the last twelve years he’d worked in this office. It was a gorgeous view, one coveted by just about anybody working in New York City. But he was sick of it. He was tired of the city, tired of the crowds, tired of skyscrapers, and tired of the constant stress of dealing with other people’s money. He wanted out, and he was getting closer to his exit by the day.

  Today he had made much progress toward that goal. The last twenty-four hours had been very lucrative, but he would have to wait until later to enjoy the thoughts of his windfall. With the terrorism hit in London, it was going to be a rollercoaster day. The markets were diving. Many would lose the shirts off their backs today, but others would make a fortune. Charlie knew the game well. He — and his most valued clients — would not be among the financial casualties today. There was money to be made, even in a tragedy like this. It was unfortunate that hundreds of people had died, but sitting around and moping about it wasn’t going to help anyone. He would be among those who profited from this tragic situation, as would his loyal clients. He had work to do.

  Charlie took out his personal phone again — this one silver so as never to be confused with the black business phone he also carried — and punched the icon for text messages and typed out a quick text to his buddy Jorge down the hall. “Lunch — Metro Deli, 12:30.” He punched the lock button on top of his phone and slid it into his pocket. Picking up his work phone, he dialed the number of Jasper Jenkins, CEO and founder of Jenkins Enterprises, the third largest real estate developer in New York State. After four rings, Jasper picked up.

  “Good morning, Mr. Jenkins. I hope you are well this morning.”

  “Well, yes. Good morning. Awful news about that train in London.”

  “Yes it is, Mr. Jenkins. Just terrible. I pray they will find some survivors.”

  “Yes, yes. Certainly. I hope so. What can I do for you this morning, Charles?”

  “Mr. Jenkins, I’m sorry to be calling you so early on such a terrible morning, but we have some situations that should be considered. As you know, last month we shorted some European currencies, including the British Pound, in view of the country’s vulnerable position given its BREXIT vote and the instability of the British economy. This terrorist event, however tragic, has of course had disastrous ramifications on the British pound. It’s down by almost 33% this morning on the recognition of the damage that will be sustained by the British economy. I think we should exercise our option immediately and get out of the British market for now. Do you understand my recommendation?”

  “Yes, Charlie, I do. Let’s do it. I feel like a jerk for making money off of such a terrible situation, but we had no way of knowing. We just need to get out now and let them find a way to fix their own economy in the wake of this horrific situation. We’ll take profits now and then revisit a decision to reinvest when they’re looking to start rebuilding.”

  “Excellent decision, Mr
. Jenkins. Again, I’m so sorry to bother you this morning. Have a good day.”

  Charlie clicked the phone off and smiled as he stared back down Broadway again. He loved Mr. Jenkins. Or rather, he loved how easy it was to make money with Jenkins’s billions. Charlie thought about the old adage, “It takes money to make money.” True, Charlie thought, but better yet, it’s so much easier to get rich using other people’s money.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  By late morning, Annelise Craig was in a full-blown panic. Andrew Bolling was nowhere to be found. He hadn’t responded to a single phone call or text message since she first started trying to reach him at 12:15 a.m.

  No, no, no, it’s impossible. Her thoughts denying the possibility were on repeat in her brain. He cannot have been on that train last night!

  She rose from her desk and knocked quietly on Jeffrey Hunter’s office door, which had been closed for much of the last hour as he worked the phones, talking to the heads of Britain’s various first responders’ divisions.

  “Come in, come in,” came his rushed and curt response from the other side of the closed door.

  “Jeffrey, I’m so sorry to bother you. I know you’re terribly busy.”

  “It’s OK Annie. What’s up?”

  “It’s Andrew, Jeffrey. I know he wasn’t on that train last night. We were working on some projects over the weekend, and he texted me just yesterday afternoon, letting me know that he was catching a 7:30 flight out of Paris on BritAir. He should have been home long before that late Eurostar train even left Paris.”