The Cornmarket Conspiracy

by Sharon Hoisager

  In a moment, he pulled up the interoffice email he’d received from Annelise on Monday, giving him Rasul’s number in Paris. Apparently, he worked in a bookshop, or owned it, or something. He and Rasul had not really stayed close through the years since college, but they’d kept in touch. There had been holiday cards, occasional Facebook posts, the usual communication between two people who wanted to stay in contact, but really didn’t want to make time for each other. He dialed the number, and wasn’t surprised when it went straight to voice mail. Even though it had been months, maybe years since they’d actually spoken directly, once the message started to play, Andrew recognized the voice of his friend from college right away.

  “Hello, this is Rasul Aziz. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.” The usual beeeeep played through the phone, and Jeffrey had two seconds to compose his thoughts.

  “Rasul — this is Jeffrey. Jeffrey Hunter. How are you? Um, yeah, I was just trying to reach you. I’m sure you’ve heard about Andrew. It’s terrible. Anyway, I know you and Andrew spent some time together while he was in Paris over the weekend, before the … the tragedy. I just wanted to talk with you about that. See what, if anything, he might have told you. Please call me back when you get this message.”

  Jeffrey punched the ‘end’ button and stood staring at the telephone. This was all so odd. What did Andrew and Rasul end up doing in Paris over the weekend anyway? Jeffrey knew he was catching up with old college friends, which no doubt included Rasul, but did anyone else show up? And why hadn’t Rasul reached out to him already? If your mutual friend is killed in a bomb blast, and you were the last to see him, wouldn’t you reach out to his family or work associates to make contact and tell them what you knew?

  And more than that, why would Rasul Aziz be working in a book shop in Paris in the first place? That seemed an odd choice for such a smart guy. The guy was brilliant, and one of the sharpest political minds he had known at school. The Rasul — or Raz — he knew would hardly be content wiling away his days in a dusty book shop on the outskirts of Paris. This was all beginning to feel very peculiar to Jeffrey, given the strange sequence of events. The people around him, the people he most trusted, were disappearing. And now with Annie gone, he had no one to turn to, no one to bounce his thoughts off of. Annie and Andrew were his friends and confidants, and now Jeffrey could not ignore the growing sick feeling in his gut.

  He picked up his phone and dialed John O’Leary. Someone else needed to know what was going on.

  O’Leary picked up on the second ring.

  Jeffrey Hunter skipped the niceties. “We need to talk.”

  “You’re damn right we do. But I must warn you, if you know anything at all about any involvement your assistant Ms. Craig, or Mr. Bolling had in this situation, you’d probably better hang up the phone right now and call a lawyer. We’re done playing games here.”

  “I’m not playing any games,” Hunter snapped back.

  “Look, I know Wellington has asked you to head up the investigation for his office, but this is my department, and this is my territory. I won’t have you getting in the way, and I won’t pull any punches regarding any of your people being linked to the investigation.…”

  “Yes, I want to work together on this. That’s why I’m calling you right now. My assistant, Ms. Craig has left town, and I have no idea where she’s gone.”

  ***

  Jennifer Hawthorne was halfway to Sloane Square Fitness when her phone dinged. Looking down at her phone, she saw that it was from O’Leary.

  Jennifer knew all along that she wouldn’t catch Annelise Craig at a workout class. That had never been her plan. But women talk, and Jennifer felt sure that Annie had befriended enough employees at the workout center that maybe someone knew something. If Jennifer talked to the right people, maybe she could pick up some gossip about her. Did Annie come there with friends? Did she have a boyfriend? Were there any rumors floating around that Jennifer could use to glean some information about Ms. Craig’s life?

  At the next red light, she glanced at the text from O’Leary: “Just got off the phone with Jeffrey Hunter at the P.M.’s office. Annelise Craig has left town. Said she had a family emergency. I think we need to put a tail on her.”

  Jennifer’s fingers were flying: “I’m on it. Do we know where she’s at or where’s she’s headed?”

  “Let me do some checking. I’ll get back to you.”

  Jennifer traveled the five minutes to her flat on Cumberland Street in Pimlico. She shared the apartment with two roommates who were almost never home. Laura and Katherine were both friends from college and were now flight attendants for British Air. They wouldn’t be back for a couple of days. She parked in front, and within ten minutes she had a small bag packed. It had been a while since she’d tailed anyone, but her tenure at MI6 had taught her a few things. On top of her jeans, skirt, and a couple of blouses, she threw in a short black wig and a pair of glasses, along with her passport. She didn’t think Annelise Craig would recognize her, but at this stage she couldn’t take any chances.

  Before she could lock the front door, her phone lit up with a phone call from O’Leary.

  “This is Jennifer.”

  “Hello, Jenn. Ok, we ran her passport, and not surprisingly, she just checked in for a flight at Lupton. She’s headed to Paris it looks like. EasyJet flight leaves in half an hour, and will land at Charles de Gaulle at 4 p.m. After that we obviously have no idea where she’s headed.”

  “I can’t believe she’s going to make it this easy for us.” Jennifer responded. “I don’t think I can make the EasyJet flight. Can you have someone check flights to Paris out of Gatwick? I’m near Victoria, and I can take the Gatwick Express and be at the airport in 30 minutes or so. Have them book me a ticket, and I’ll pick it up at check-in.”

  “Good plan. Let me know when you’re on the plane.” O’Leary clicked off the call.

  Jennifer knew better than to deal with her own car and parking near Victoria. She jogged down the block a hundred yards to Sutherland Street where dozens of London’s black cabs traversed back and forth day and night. She raised her arm, and was climbing into the back seat of a taxi within two minutes.

  Five minutes later, she exited the cab at Victoria Station. She made her way through the enormous main hall, down the tiled corridor and climbed aboard the Gatwick Express, the shuttle train that makes dozens of trips everyday between the hub at Victoria, and London’s second largest airport. She knew that within thirty minutes she would be at Gatwick and would be on a plane bound for Paris within the hour. Annelise Craig may have a one hour lead on her, but she was gaining fast. Jennifer knew that it was critical that she locate Annelise before she exited the airport at Charles de Gaulle because after that, the odds of finding her would shrink exponentially.

  John O’Leary was thinking the same thing, and wasn’t going to take any chances. Right now, the Andrew Bolling/Annelise Craig angle was his best lead, and it was getting more and more promising by the minute. He picked up the phone and punched the number for Sam Sagar, his rookie investigator who was still learning the basics of investigative work. He thought pairing Sam and Jennifer on this leg of the investigation would be a good way for Sam to learn the ropes from one of O’Leary’s best and brightest. O’Leary had high hopes for his new hire, but he knew that Jennifer wasn’t so keen on Sagar. O’Leary, in his usual brusque way of doing business, liked Sagar’s confidence and swagger, but Jennifer had said that he always seemed cocky, as if learning the basics of investigative work was beneath him. Of course, Sagar was the one who had tried to shame Jennifer during the meeting for her perceived interest in that evening’s Pilates schedule, yet O’Leary still believed in the guy. He wanted to give him every opportunity to learn and prove himself, so he forged ahead with his plan to have Sagar learn the ropes from his favorite operative.

  Sam picked up his cell on the first ring, “Yes sir?”

  “Sam, I’ve just put Jennifer on the tail of Annelise Cr
aig from the Prime Minister’s office. Jenn is on her way to Gatwick right now and plans to intercept Craig at Charles de Gaulle in the next couple of hours. We can’t lose her trail if she leaves the airport before Jennifer arrives. I need you to get one of our guys in Paris to put a post outside the EasyJet terminal and keep an eye on her until Jennifer lands. She should be on a plane landing soon after hers. You can get a picture of Craig from the file and send it to whoever you put on post so that they don’t miss her.”

  “Certainly boss, I’m on it.” Sagar punched the button hard with his finger, annoyed that he was once again one step behind the action.

  Sam immediately called Harry Jasper, a long time freelance operative in Paris and gave him the assignment to find and follow Annelise Craig when she landed at de Gaulle. Harry had worked little jobs on and off for the agency for about forty years, and word was, he was getting more than a little foggy in the brain cell department lately. Sam immediately emailed a bad photograph from the file to Harry, along with a brief description of what they knew about her travel itinerary. Happy to get the assignment, Harry Jasper left immediately for de Gaulle to find Annelise.

  After finalizing the details with Harry, Sam Sagar excused himself to the open-air balcony on the other end of the building, past the employee cafeteria and conference rooms.

  Sagar was pleased to find himself alone on the balcony. He took out a cigarette as he often did and positioned himself far away from the building, where the smoke would be carried away with the breeze, out over the Thames. A very bad habit he’d picked up years earlier, cigarettes helped him relax, but more importantly, often gave him a handy excuse to escape undesired situations. In fact, through the years, he’d found that the nasty little habit had a lot of good uses, today’s little smoke break being one of them.

  After verifying again that no one was joining him on the smoking balcony, he pulled a little burner phone out of his coat pocket and dashed out a quick text.

  “Craig headed to Paris, Charles de Gaulle, EasyJet, ETA around 4 p.m. Final destination unknown. MI6 has put Jennifer Hawthorne on her tail, she should arrive about one hour later. You take care of Craig, I’ll handle Hawthorne.” He pressed send and slid the little phone back in his coat pocket.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The bells of Tom’s Tower rang on insistently. As Rasul drifted in and out of consciousness, he could hear the persistent lament of the bells, compelling him to hang on. Around him, he could hear the muffled shrieks of the people gathered around. The crowd had immediately scattered as soon as Rasul hit the ground, but a few kind souls had made their way back to him as they realized someone had been shot, and was lying there on the pavement with blood seeping out onto the sidewalk in the cold evening air. In the distance, he could hear a lone siren as a police car was no doubt making its way toward the train station and the solitary man lying motionless on the sidewalk in front. Once again, everything went black.

  When Rasul Aziz opened his eyes again, he immediately had to squint his eyes to protect them from the bright lights glaring down on him. For a moment he thought he was dreaming, or dying, or floating somewhere in between. He instinctively thrust his left hand to his face and tried using his hand to shield his eyes from the unrelenting lights. He then realized he couldn’t move his right arm. He tried to move his body, but it would not budge.

  Light poles were positioned around his bed, with bright lights glaring down, and Rasul could hear machines emanating a low hum around his head. It took Rasul only a few moments to realize he was lying in an emergency room of some sort, although not a very large or modern one. His mind was still scrambled from the alcohol he’d consumed all the previous day, and he’d also lost a lot of blood. They had obviously given him some sort of pain killers as well, and his gut was reeling from the mixture of it all. Lying on the table underneath the unrelenting lights, he tried to remember where he was, and how he got there. The last thing he could remember was the white robes of what appeared to be a ghost wafting away from him, but he could not place where or who it could have been. Was it a hallucination? Was it an angel? Who would wear white robes like those in his dream?

  He laid there, his mind in a fog, staring at the ceiling and trying to make sense of where he was. Slowly, the previous day began to replay scene by scene in his mind. He remembered arriving in Oxford and his peculiar meeting at the Islamic Center. He remembered his glorious afternoon walking around campus, and watching sports in the pubs. He remembered his little visit to his old apartment and the Indian student who answered the door. It was all replaying in his mind like a dream. But it still didn’t make sense how it connected to where he was now.

  Slowly, the full memory of his return to the train station, the locker, and the horror of being shot outside the train station started to replay in his mind. In an instant, he realized that the man in white robes wasn’t a hallucination or even a dream, it was a real man — the ghost man from the Islamic Center. In his mind he remembered the man’s eyes staring menacingly at him as he made his getaway through the crowd. The realization that the ghost man wasn’t blind at all made him shudder. It had been a set up all along. He had been summoned to the Islamic Center not to receive some kind of reward for his work, but to be taken out by that killer. The scene at the train station wasn’t some pickpocket, it was an assassination attempt, and none of what had happened to him was a mere coincidence. It was all a set-up, and they wanted him dead.

  He was a good man, he thought to himself. He knew that sometimes he had to do bad things, and he felt a little bit bad about that. But in a war, sometimes people have to die. And often in war, some smart people invariably get rich. At least for those who know how to profit from the conflict.

  Lying on the table, realizing for the first time that some of his own people now wanted him dead, Rasul recognized that he had never really harbored a lot of radical or self-styled noble motivations for his actions. He had never been a true believer in any extremist causes like some others in his neighborhood who believed they were in a war against the West. He certainly harbored his share of anger toward Americans, Brits, and others who he believed had mistreated his countrymen and brothers. But for him, it had never really been about any cause or political agenda. He had simply reasoned to himself that he might as well get rich anyway from the natural consequences of that war. He didn’t really care for lofty causes or motivations, but he did like money. For him, it had always been about the money. That, at least, was crystal clear in his own mind.

  Rasul also realized that no matter what motivations or justifications for his actions he made to himself, he was now a hunted man. What happened to him on the steps of the train station wasn’t mere attempted murder — it was a hit by a trained assassin. The people who he thought were his friends, his co-conspirators, his comrades — the very same ones who had been a part of the plot that had spawned his actions that resulted in a trainload of innocent people being killed — these were now the very people wanting him dead. Rasul knew the full extent of the plan, he knew all the players, and he had been the one who carried out the biggest component of the plan. And now, they were going to kill him because of it. As the principal agent who had executed the most important part of the plan, his continued existence made them all more vulnerable to capture. They obviously wanted him eliminated.

  And now they very likely knew he wasn’t dead. They would be back for him. They weren’t going to take any chances at this stage, especially after they had tried and failed to eliminate him. He knew these people… they didn’t take chances, and they didn’t leave loose ends unattended. If they wanted him dead, they would stop at nothing to make sure it happened — there was too much at stake. If he was to survive, he would have to take extraordinary measures to escape. He had to get the hell out of there, and out of Oxford. Now.

  As he attempted to swing his legs off the bed, a piercing pain ripped through his mid-section, reminding him that he’d been shot. He threw back the covers and examined his
abdomen, which was now securely wrapped in a large surgical dressing. A light wrapping covered the dressing from just below his collar bone to a few inches above his navel. He looked a little bit like a mummy he thought to himself. His right arm was numb as well and was of little use.

  On cue, a short overweight woman in light blue scrubs came in, holding a clipboard.

  “Oh good! You’re awake!” she said in a chipper voice.

  “I am. What happened to me?” Rasul tried to make his voice sound polite.

  “Well goodness, you were shot! Witnesses said someone was trying to rob you, and then they shot you! Left you for dead right there on the sidewalk. Thank goodness some kind people called the police, and an ambulance brought you here straightaway. Otherwise, well . . . ,” and she let her voice trail off. The nurse went back to studying her clipboard, while taking glances at her patient to ascertain his current status.

  “But am I going to be OK?”

  “Oh yes sir, I believe you are! But you gave us quite a scare. You lost a lot of blood, but the surgeon was able to remove the bullet and patch you right up. You’re a very lucky man.”

  “Um, yeah. Thank you. How bad is it? I mean, any permanent damage?” Rasul couldn’t believe he was talking this casually and calmly with this strange woman about an assassination attempt on his life.

  “That’s why you are so lucky.” The nurse gave a little laugh and smiled at him as she patted his arm and then went back to her clipboard. “I’m Melissa, by the way. The bullet entered your body near your right shoulder, and just missed your heart by a few centimeters,” she said while making an exaggerated grimace on her face.

  “Dr. Mason was able to extract the bullet without doing further damage. You’ve lost a lot of blood, but you’re a very fortunate man. Well that and you had an excellent doctor. And nurse, I might add.” With that, she gave another little high-pitched laugh.