The Cornmarket Conspiracy

by Sharon Hoisager

  Charlie spoke quickly, staring at Jorge with intensity as he spelled out the situation.

  “Here’s the deal: Rasul is alive. I don’t know how, and I don’t know exactly where he’s at. Our guy was certain he had taken care of him at the train station, but he somehow survived. I’m certain he’s still in the U.K., probably still in Oxford, but I’m sure he’ll be doing everything possible to get back to Paris as soon as possible. Either way, he’s been shot, so I don’t think he can travel very far or very fast.”

  “Damn, that’s bad.” Jorge said, always good at stating the obvious. “So, what do we do now?”

  “Well, I’ve put in a call to our friend in London, but I haven’t heard back. I’ve decided we can’t afford to wait on him. He’s a fool, and it probably won’t be long before he’s got the police all over him. We can’t wait on him any longer.”

  “OK, tell me what to do.” Jorge said in his usual naïve, yet eager way.

  “You’ve got to go to Paris, immediately. If Rasul isn’t already there, he will be soon enough. Figure out what happened, where he’s at. And when you find him, you’ve got to kill him yourself.”

  “What the hell, Charlie? No way. No way in hell am I killing anybody. I’ve been with you from the start on this, but I never signed on to actually eliminate anybody myself.”

  “What the hell do you think we’ve been doing here, Jorge? You’ve already killed hundreds of people. You are a full partner in this, and we’ve all got blood on all our hands. You’re as guilty as any of us. You killed all of those innocent people on the train, you killed Andrew, and now you’re going to kill Rasul, unless someone else gets to him first. Either way, you’ve got to go to Paris and take care of this. I can’t go, I’ve got to stay here and handle the money, and make sure everybody else is doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”

  “I can’t Charlie. . . I just can’t. I can help plan, I can work the details, but I can’t kill somebody with my bare hands. It’s where I draw the line,” Jorge’s eyes were welling up with tears. For a moment, Charlie almost felt sorry for his pathetic old friend. Damn, in a minute he’d be crying.

  Charlie stiffened his back. “Jorge, shut up. You don’t have a choice in this. None of us do. We’re too far in, and we cannot afford to let this get out of control. Do you want to wind up with your face plastered all over the world on the Interpol Most Wanted lists? Do you want to wind up on Death Row?” Charlie was glaring at him, and by now, only inches from his face. And then the tears actually did begin to roll down Jorge’s face. Charlie was disgusted.

  “Look friend…,” Charlie spat out the words with disgust. “I’m onto your little drug problem. I know you’ve got a stash up there in your office right now. I know you need the stuff bad.” Jorge looked back at his friend in horror. “Unless you want your entire world to come crashing down right now, I suggest you get moving.”

  “Go upstairs, tell your assistant you’ve got to leave on a family emergency. Have her get you a ticket on the first plane to Paris. Get your passport, and get to the airport. I want to hear from you before the end of the day that you’re there, ready to move.”

  Jorge stood speechless, staring into his oldest friend’s steel blue eyes. They were hard, cold, and there were no traces of their old friendship. They had crossed a line together, and now there was no going back. They were not the same boys who had played baseball together back in Dallas. They were killers, mass murderers, terrorists. Jorge nodded at Charlie in recognition of what they had both become.

  As Jorge turned to walk out of the alley, he wiped away the tears sliding down his cheeks. He wrapped his coat tightly around his body as he made his way back to Hazelwood Tower. As he walked, he dialed his assistant from his business phone for a flight to Paris.

  He had a lot of ground to cover in the next twelve hours.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Mademoiselle, we are very near the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Exactly what address do you need?”

  Annie was jolted out of her thoughts as the threesome in the cab entered the quaint streets of Paris’s left bank. These streets held so many memories — the carefree summer she spent in college studying abroad at the Sorbonne, and then the long weekend she and Andrew had spent here a few months ago when she was able to slip away for a few days, telling Richard she was going to meet an old friend from college days. Paris had never held anything for her but wonderful memories of lazy days exploring the museums, walking the cobblestone streets of the left bank, and wiling away the hours over French coffee in sidewalk cafés. In her mind, Paris was nothing more than a series of hazy happy memories. But not anymore.

  “Mademoiselle?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, um, please take me to the intersection of Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue Bonaparte.”

  “Very well,” the cab driver said, and pressed on the accelerator.

  Annie knew she needed a plan, because right now she was just aimlessly calling out directions to one of the only points in Paris where she felt at home: her favorite local haunt, Les Deux Magots. The little café was gorgeous, historic, and in many ways a tourist trap, but it was also a place she could gather her thoughts, order coffee and perhaps something to eat, and figure out a game plan. So far today she had been questioned in a terrorism investigation, blurted out her private life to her stunned boss, almost been shot on the street in London, made an ill-advised escape from work, jumped on a plane, and was now trolling the streets of Paris with no master plan. She desperately needed to stop and think.

  “And sir, where would you like to be dropped off?” The cab driver had turned his attention to Akeem. Annie had all but forgotten about the handsome businessman sharing the back seat beside her. He had been strangely quiet the last half hour from the airport, allowing Annie to get lost in her thoughts.

  “Oh, the Madison Hotel please,” said Akeem. The fact that he was referencing a location just a few hundred yards past her own stop did not appear to catch Annie’s attention. Once again, she was lost in thought.

  As the cab pulled to the curb at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue Bonaparte, Annie gave a quick glance toward the meter and pulled out 25 Euros and handed it to Akeem. For the first time since they left the airport, she turned and looked directly into Akeem’s eyes and was struck again at how handsome he was. “It was so nice to meet you Mr. . . . , oh I am so sorry, I don’t think I ever got your name.”

  “Oh I apologize, it is Tom. Tom Khan.”

  “Well, it’s been very nice to meet you Mr. Khan. My name is Annelise Craig. Perhaps we will run into each other around the Sorbonne,” Annie said with a smile as she stepped out of the cab.

  “Yes, it has been a pleasure Ms. Craig,” Akeem smiled back. Annie slammed the cab door shut and turned back toward Les Deux Magots. Akeem watched her walk quickly away from the vehicle, and the cab slowly pulled away from the curb and back into traffic.

  As soon as Annie disappeared into the crowd around the front doors of the café, Akeem called to the cab driver, “Oh excuse me, I think I’ve decided to go ahead and get out here. Please pull over.”

  The cab driver gave him a quizzical look in the rearview, and weaved the car over to the curb. Akeem added another 30 Euros to the money Annie had handed him, and dropped it over the seat, with a quick “Thanks.” In an instant, he was out on the street and headed back through the crowd, headed for the small café on the corner. Annie should just be finding a table, he thought. She’s making this very easy. He allowed himself a little smile as he dodged the crowd on the sidewalk.

  Akeem stopped outside the cafe and pulled out his phone. Pulling up Sam Sagar’s message thread, he typed out a quick update: “At Les Deux Magot, AC is inside. Will wait here until she exits. I’ll keep you updated.”

  Akeem scanned the crowded tables along the sidewalk. No sign of his cab companion. He found a small table among those on the sidewalk, still covered with empty cups, glasses and dirty plates from the previous occupants. The tabl
e was pushed back in the shadows of some large potted palms, and looked like it had been neglected by the wait staff for a while. Taking a seat, he positioned his chair so that he could eye every person entering and exiting the small restaurant. He picked up a newspaper from an adjacent vacant table, and popped it open to give him partial cover. Picking up the small cup of espresso still sitting on the table, he took a gulp of the cold liquid. He needed to blend in, and didn’t want the added attention of the wait staff, so adopting the leftover food and drink on his abandoned table seemed the smart thing to do. He settled in for a long wait, not knowing how long his new friend would loiter inside the restaurant. He could wait all evening if need-be. Darkness would serve him and his plans better anyway.

  ***

  Inside Les Deux, Annie stood just inside the door, using the heavy burgundy velvet curtains as a shield while she peeked out at the intersection in front of the restaurant. Tom Khan — bullshit, she thought. Surely he could come up with a better name than that.

  Although she had no clue who he was or what he wanted, Annie realized instinctively that Tom Khan was a fraud, almost from the moment she met him. The events of the last few days had served to sharpen her mind even further than it already was, her discernment earned from years of working in a world with imminent terror threats on a daily basis. While she had to admit she wasn’t on to him at first, they hadn’t been in the cab more than five minutes before she realized that Tom Khan was a fraud and that she was in danger.

  What tipped her off? Perhaps it was his shoes. No educated, professional man in Paris would be caught dead wearing shoes as scruffy as his. His clothes were expensive and looked brand new. His shoes, however, were cheap, faux-leather, and there was a visible hole wearing on the outside panel where they were worn to a thin covering. Or perhaps it was the way he struck up a conversation and claimed to need to get to Paris immediately for a “late meeting.” What meeting would be going on at the Sorbonne after 6 p.m. in mid-December, when the campus would be deserted for winter break? His story had seemed fishy from the beginning.

  Watching intently from behind the velvet drapes, Annie’s heart jumped as she saw the man appear in the crowd, and look clearly in her direction as he stepped off the curb and headed precisely for her location. She did not wait another second. Turning quickly, she almost ran through the restaurant, and came within inches of running directly into a waiter carrying a large tray of entrees. She swerved to miss the tray, but ran headlong into one of the large white columns positioned throughout the beautiful dining room. The column hit her square in the middle of her forehead, right above her eyes, and almost knocked her flat on her back. Stunned, she mumbled her apologies, and made a beeline for the back door. This place hadn’t changed in almost a hundred years, let alone the twenty years since she’d been a regular. She knew where every table and door was, and where she could make her quickest escape.

  Out the back door and headed toward a rear sidewalk, Annie moved quickly down the Rue Bonaparte toward the Seine. Her head still throbbing from her run in with the pole, she knew she needed somewhere to stop and think now more than ever. More than that, she wanted to get off the street, where she felt vulnerable and in full view of whoever could be watching for her. At that point, she had no clue where she could go, or who she could trust. She only knew that someone — or some group — was after her.

  Andrew’s death had only been a small piece of a much larger and much more sinister puzzle. She realized that now. She understood now that all of it —the terrorist hit on the Eurostar, Andrew’s death, the break-in at her home, the man chasing her through the streets in London — all of it was connected. Andrew had somehow been involved, and now she was involved too. What’s more, someone knew of her connection to Andrew, and someone was trying to come after her too. They no doubt wanted her eliminated, just as they had killed Andrew. Most frightening, whoever they were, they had detailed inside information about her location and her movements. Someone was hunting her, and they weren’t likely to stop until she was dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  7:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, and Jeffrey Hunter had already been at his desk at #10 Downing for over an hour. Where in the hell was Annie? he thought again to himself for the one thousandth time. Torn between a desire to protect whatever secret she and Andrew shared, and a dread that he was increasingly becoming suspicious that they may have somehow been involved in the train explosion, Jeffrey was furious that he had been put in this situation. Annie had been gone for almost twenty-four hours, and yet he had not heard one word or text from her since she abruptly disappeared. He was sick with worry for where she might be and what might have happened to her, but at the same time, he was livid that she and Andrew’s irresponsible behavior had put them in the middle of all in this mess. Whatever happened, it would be a huge scandal for the administration, and could easily cost him his job as well, in light of his close relationship to two people who somehow were tied to the biggest terrorist tragedy in British history.

  It was too early to contact John O’Leary’s office for an update. He doubted they would tell him much anyway at this point. In spite of the fact that he was one of the top ranked people in the British government, as it stood now, because of his close relationship with both Andrew and Annelise, he was probably on their list of persons of interest. He doubted they suspected him of any nefarious behavior, but his close link with both of them had no doubt cast doubt on his story, and his possible connection to the tragedy. Jeffrey realized that he needed to be very careful from here on out who he said what to. The circle of people he believed he could trust had always been small, but it was growing smaller by the hour.

  Distractedly tapping his pen on his desk, he tried to think of someone he could talk to. Someone who knew all the people involved in the escalating situation, who might have some good advice on how to proceed. Of course, it had to be someone with security clearance, and someone he could trust. Checking the interoffice communications system, he could tell who had checked in for the morning, and who hadn’t come in yet. As expected, one of his most trusted colleague’s light was already on.

  Jeffrey punched out a quick interoffice email, which would go straight to his computer screen. “Hey Fletch, got a minute? There is something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Sure, come on back,” came the immediate response.

  Fletcher LaForge’s office was in the back of the building near Andrew’s office, where all the Prime Minister’s top Advisors, number crunchers, and support staff had their offices and cubicles. Jeffrey’s office was up near the front, near the P.M.’s office suite, where all the action took place. Fletcher LaForge didn’t come up front much. As Deputy National Security Advisor, his job consisted mostly of communicating with his counterparts in Western Europe and the United States, researching potential threats, and advising the National Security Advisor and the Prime Minister on impending situations and preemptive action that needed to be taken to keep the country safe. He liked to keep a low profile, and most of the press didn’t even know who he was. He was expert at flying below the radar, which suited his job well.

  Along with the others, Jeffrey had also known Fletch since Oxford as well. A few years older than Jeffrey and his friends, he had never run in their circles at university. He was Professor LaForge back then, Adjunct Professor of Economics and Public Policy. Fletcher had worked at his London Investment office during the day and took the train out to Oxford two afternoons a week to teach a couple of upper division classes. Jeffrey and the Prime Minister had both taken his classes, where they both scored A’s, and the P.M. had been LaForge’s Teaching Assistant their final semester before graduation.

  LaForge was the fourth member of ‘The Oxford Crew’ as Jeffrey, Prime Minister Wellington, and Andrew were mockingly referred to around the office. Their upper-crust education, and now their high government positions, always gave them the trump card in any office argument or in any intellectual debate. While Jeffrey Hunter,
Andrew, and P.M. Wellington usually downplayed their elite education with humility and self-deprecating humor, LaForge was regarded by most on the P.M.’s staff as a bit of a jerk — pompous and arrogant by most of the people around the office. Regardless of the common perception, Jeffrey Hunter still respected LaForge. Even though Hunter thought LaForge’s actual job performance was mediocre at best, Hunter and most everyone on the P.M.’s staff regarded him as a brilliant analyst, and his razor sharp mind afforded him a decent measure of respect. Yes, he could be difficult at times, but he seemed to be decent at his job, and could usually be counted on to help out during a crisis. Regardless, the P.M. trusted him, and that had cemented his position on Downing Street. Hunter still sought out his advice from time to time, and their common history was enough to provide for a nostalgic conversation over an occasional pint after work, even if he still found him to be a little obnoxious at times. In politics, half the people he knew were obnoxious on occasion anyway.

  “Come in…,” LaForge sounded like he was already distracted by work at 7:35 a.m. when Hunter knocked on his door. The back section of the P.M.’s office complex was already abuzz with work on this early morning, as it had been almost around the clock since the attack.

  Jeffrey stuck his head in the door, and LaForge waved him in.

  “Come in, Jeffrey… have a seat.” LaForge rose to clear the stacks of notebooks and files off of the only two chairs available for visitors. Jeffrey, ignoring the chairs, paced the floor in front of the desk, unsure how to broach a subject that was so sensitive and potentially explosive.

  “Fletch… I’ve got a situation. I’m not sure how to deal with it. I need your advice.”

  “Sure, Jeffrey… I’m happy to help with whatever,” he said with his usual air of condescension.