London

by A. C. Fuller

  After Warren called back, she'd gone down to the hotel bar, done a shot of tequila, and regretted it immediately. Sipping a cup of black coffee as penance, she watched the video again on her phone. Then she had another shot of tequila.

  When Warren walked in, she ran into his arms.

  He squeezed her tight. "What is it?"

  "Watch the video on my laptop."

  He let her go and she fell onto the bed. She listened, eyes shut tight, as he watched.

  "Damn," was all he said. He walked to the bed.

  She sensed him standing over her, but he didn't say anything and she didn't open her eyes. The moment seemed to go on for minutes, and all she wanted was for him to say something to make it better. But he couldn't. She heard movement, sensed warmth in front of her face, like he was leaning in to kiss her.

  She opened her eyes just as he inhaled deeply.

  "Been drinking?" he asked.

  "Two shots of tequila."

  He took her hand and pulled her gently to her feet.

  "What the hell?

  "We need to get some air."

  A walk wasn't what she had in mind, but she let Warren lead the way.

  The sun had set and the air felt solid, like thin ice on her warm cheeks. Christmas lights decorated storefronts and happy Londoners stuffed packages in taxis and spilled in and out of pubs. As they walked a few laps around the hotel in silence, the bustling city heightened Cole's sense of unreality and panic.

  Sometimes the content of the Internet felt more real than the flesh, blood, and stone of a living city. And when that content was a fake video, implicating her in murder, it was even more surreal that the everyday world went on around her as though nothing had changed.

  "Why?" Warren asked. "Who gains from that video?"

  "Confusion, most likely. First rule of propaganda. You don't have to convince people of a particular truth. If you can confuse them, convince them there are a dozen stories out there and any one of them could be true, they won't take action." She raised the collar of her jacket, shielding her face from a woman she was sure was staring at her. "But go back for a second. I'm still stuck on the how."

  "Someone got the footage from Jersey and Miami."

  "I know that! I'm talking about me, my voice. How did they do that?"

  "You serious?"

  Cole stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing a group of shoppers to part around her. "What do you mean? How the hell did they do that? I've never said those words in my life."

  "Deepfake."

  The word sounded familiar, but carried no meaning. Cole raised her eyebrows impatiently. Warren put a hand on her shoulder. "Breathe, Cole. You look like me when I'm about to explode." He pulled her forward and they crossed the street, sitting on a bench at a bus stop.

  "Deepfakes are video or audio created using AI. Someone took real recordings of your voice from interviews, podcast appearances—whatever—and fed it into their program. The program then predicts how you'd say certain words and phrases, using your real voice. Then they told it the words it wanted you to say. Takes minutes. It's expensive now, but the technology will soon be an app on every phone. The video ones are a little harder to do. Remember a few years back, NPR released one with Obama saying a bunch of stuff he never said. It was a little computerized and glitchy, but still convincing to people who wanted it to be true."

  Cole pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs, shivering. "And this is legal?"

  Warren shrugged. "Remember your precious First Amendment?"

  It was clear where he was headed. Whoever created the video might have broken the law in the process, and it was bad journalism to repost it, but it wasn't illegal. It was the same with leaked or stolen documents. If a government official stole documents, that was against the law. Handing the documents to a reporter, also against the law. But once the reporter has the documents, the law can't stop her from publishing them, except under the rarest circumstances.

  And Crush Cycle wasn't known for having the highest journalistic standards.

  Cole leapt from the bench, fists clenched. Her cheeks stung from the cold wind, but her chest was hot. She walked a lap around the bench. Then another. "I'm just so mad."

  She stood before Warren. He touched her hand, which was balled up so tightly her knuckles were white. The slightest touch made her collapse onto the bench, as though all her energy had drained at once.

  "I'm gonna say something now," Warren said, "and you're not gonna like it."

  Cole opened an eye. The window of a pub behind him framed Warren's head. She felt outside her body, as though she was drifting out of herself into the pub.

  "You need to sleep. I saw your empty bottle of Ambien in the hotel in D.C. You've been sleeping, what, three or four hours. Running on caffeine. Coming down with tequila. You're starting to worry me."

  A sudden rush of energy caused her to leap up. "Worry you? Someone is trying to frame me, or us—"

  "Wait. Maybe they are, or maybe they're just sowing confusion. A lot of people could have made that video."

  She leaned in, almost shouting. "And I haven't even told you about Frias, Ana Diaz, Martin Price, Ibo Kane. I haven't even… even…" She sat heavily on the bench. "I'm not making any sense. I can tell by how you're looking at me." She sighed. "And you didn't even tell me what happened with your old professor." She squinted, curiosity painted on her anxious face.

  He put a hand on her forearm, but didn't reply.

  Cole put her head on his shoulder. "China," she added. "There may be a China angle." She closed her eyes and everything around her faded into a dull buzz. "The video already has half a million retweets." Her voice sounded like someone else's, the words appearing in her mind as though from outside. "When an online story grows that fast, the national news has to talk about it or they look like they're in on a coverup. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, BBC. Right now producers all over the world are figuring out how to present it, even though it's clearly fake. Doesn't matter."

  "That's messed up."

  "Do you ever sit back and look at the world and just think it's gone batshit crazy?"

  "I do," Warren said. "But not because of that. That shit isn't the world. Out there is where things are really crazy." She felt him gesture with his free arm, but didn't open her eyes. "Twitter. Facebook. The internet. That's not the real world."

  "It's getting harder and harder to tell the difference."

  He let out a long, slow breath. She immediately regretted what she'd said. He was thinking about the bombing, and she felt like a fool. "I'm sorry. You almost got blown up today—five people did get blown up—and here I'm worrying about a fake video and retweets."

  "London police announced three arrests already, people connected to the bombing. It's official—it had nothing to do with the nine murders. A totally different group of nutjobs blowing people up. I don't need to go online to learn that the world is crazy."

  They sat in silence for a long time, Cole's head on his shoulder. For the first time in days, she felt how tired she was. "You're right," she said softly. "I need to sleep."

  "Your brain is the best tool we have at this point. It's not functioning. I've been there. I used to use coke to stay up, run on twenty hours of sleep a week. And I always thought I was doing well, the decisions I made in the moment seemed right. Looking back, I wasn't making good decisions. I was just high. You're high on caffeine and sugar, maybe on trauma. I mean, you found out about Matt two days ago. That must have been… I don't know. C'mon."

  Warren pulled her from the bench and led her around the corner to a small pharmacy. They walked straight to the back and Warren approached a pharmacist, who was on his way out for the evening. "What's the strongest over-the-counter sleeping pill you sell?"

  14

  Wednesday

  The sound of running water woke her. How long had she slept? An hour? A day? The sky was dark through the open curtains. She rolled over toward the bathroom, where steam escap
ed through a crack in the door. Instinctively, she reached for her phone and scanned the breaking news alerts. Always in her mind was one question: Has anyone else been killed?

  No one had. There were a hundred new theories on Twitter, and every major publication in the world covered the killings from every angle. The murder of the Deputy Crown Prince had escalated the story, especially in international circles. He was the first active politician or government official to be killed. That meant presidents and prime ministers, senators, kings and queens—all were potential targets. Judging by the coverage, that didn't sit well with the governments of the world.

  Foreign Affairs and the Washington Post ran articles citing anonymous sources making remarkable claims: the intelligence agencies of the world—even those of rivals—were sharing information. That America and the UK shared intelligence was nothing new. The same went for Japan and South Korea. But if the reporting was right, hastily devised backchannels now conveyed intelligence between the U.S. and China, between Japan and China, and between Russia and the U.S. Most surprising of all were reports that Saudi Arabia was coordinating intelligence with its biggest rival, Iran. If true, it signaled unprecedented cooperation and coordination between usually distrustful nations. Had these nations suspected one other, they'd never cooperate. Ironically, the attacks fostered exactly the sort of global cooperation the manifesto had railed against.

  On the desk, her laptop sat open. Warren had reviewed her notes after tucking her into bed the previous night. She stumbled to the chair. The screen glowed, open to an article from the New York Post: NYPD Lieutenant Joey Mazzalano Arrested; Charged with Corruption, Sexual Assault

  Head foggy, but feeling stronger than she had in days, Cole stared at the headline. An odd jumble of feelings hit her all at once. Happiness, guilt, shame, then satisfaction. He was a scumbag; she'd always known that. But she'd never known just how bad he was. Staying ignorant had better served her because he'd been her best source.

  But of course he belonged behind bars. Before reading the story, she texted Gabby.

  Cole: You have anything to do with Mazz going down?

  She hoped this might tempt her out of hiding.

  She found a huge paper cup and tasted the contents. Vanilla latte, and still hot. Warren knew her well.

  As Warren continued to shower, she read the Mazzalano story, then searched the web for more information.

  It had broken in The New York Times, but every other newspaper in New York followed up within hours. A spokesman for the NYPD appeared on a local radio show, then a local TV show. CNN picked up the story, then Fox News.

  There were few specifics about the sexual assault allegations against Mazzalano. Cole had her own to add to the mix, but doubted it would be necessary. There were nine allegations against him, ranging from lewd groping to rape. Six allegations came from members of the NYPD. The usual stance of the NYPD was "Protect Our Own." Not this time. According to the reports, Internal Affairs had been investigating Mazzalano for months. Recently, an anonymous tip had helped them uncover his role protecting dropgangs in New York City. She combed through every article, but none made the connection between Michael Wragg's purchase of the nine rifles and Mazzalano's racket.

  She added a paragraph to her notes, explaining the connection.

  By the time Warren turned off the shower, Cole was high. Partially on the vanilla latte, which had been especially strong and sugary, but mostly on the fact that her research was flooding back into her brain and connecting in ways she hadn't seen the previous day.

  Most days, reporting was a tedious slog. A job with lots of slammed doors, unreturned voicemails, texts, and dead ends. Progress was incremental. A source would mention something tiny. Chasing it down took days—sometimes weeks—of painstaking work.

  Yesterday had been a tsunami of revelation. Wave after wave of new information and miraculous connections. Now that she'd gotten enough sleep and caffeine, she saw the whole thing clearly. The entire story was in her head, in her bones, and every part of her tingled. She had something the whole world wanted to know.

  Not even Warren knew. Not yet.

  She sat on the bed, waiting for him to walk out of the bathroom. She wiggled her toes, just to remind herself not to float away. She needed to stay grounded because she still had a lot of work to do.

  He walked out, already dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt. "I have it," she said. "I have the story. At least, kinda. I think so."

  He smiled. "You seem better." He nodded at the computer. "See the Mazzalano news?"

  "Must feel good to you, right? Crooked cop goes down. I feel more… conflicted."

  Warren frowned. "Wasn't your job to take him down. When the NYPD turns on one of their own, they turn hard. He'll do real time."

  She nodded. "Want me to tell you what I know?"

  He stared at her. "No. I want to read what you know."

  "Can I offer you the role of research assistant? There's a lot of work left to do."

  He sat on the bed and his eyes widened in anticipation. "Just tell me what to do."

  She started by researching connections between Ibo Kane and Ana Diaz. There was only one, but it was easy to find now that she knew what to look for.

  Diaz's efforts to create a unified digital currency for drug deals and other high-level criminals directly conflicted with Kane's own digital currency ambitions. Kane got into the game earlier and came from a tech background, but there was no doubt her currency could have derailed his.

  Once the Diaz connection was clear, other pieces fell into place, slowly at first, then rapidly. The entire story had been hiding in plain sight.

  Combing over search results, reading interviews, and poring over financial disclosures for businesses and nonprofits, she put together the pieces of the puzzle. Often, she had a podcast interview playing on her phone while reading on her computer.

  Ibo Kane was connected to everyone killed so far.

  When he was shot, Raj Ambani's company had been on the verge of merging with X-Rev International, a firm specializing in high-frequency, computer-based stock trading. Cole struck herself in the forehead when she found this because she'd already found it once. Sitting in Warren's apartment, she'd found the article when she'd Googled "Ambani" and "business rivals." Ibo Kane had been quoted in the piece, arguing that Ambani shouldn't be allowed to merge with X-Rev.

  Cole found three connections to Alvin Meyers, the former Vice President. The key was focusing on the present day, not on his two VP terms. Meyers sat on the boards of two companies that rivaled Kane's, but killing Meyers probably wouldn't change much because another board member would simply replace him. It was the third connection that sealed the deal in Cole's mind.

  Alvin Meyers had twin sons, Jacob and Michael. Twenty years ago, they'd graduated from the Wharton School of Business and moved to China, working in a series of firms, all related to the energy sector. No doubt they were bright and accomplished, but their rise in Chinese business had coincided with their father's time as Vice President. Cole found numerous articles from the time questioning the appropriateness of their international business dealings, but no crimes had ever been discovered. Two years ago, they formed a company in China, along with two Chinese men, to create solar technology for farms. The solar panels, they claimed, would eventually cut the carbon emissions of the world's food production by seventy-five percent.

  Using Google translate, Cole found articles in which Kane had been quoted about their company. In short, he hated it. And he'd played two distinct cards in the media. "China allowing this company to exist is shameful. If a Vice President can get his spoiled, unqualified sons into business in China, what's next? Making Meyers himself the President of China?"

  When that attack hadn't worked, he tried again in an article in the Financial Times. "Why should China allow privileged Americans to profit from Chinese labor and technology, when Americans of Chinese descent are blocked?" He'd played the race card, but that hadn't worked either
. Of course, Kane didn't mention that he had a competing solar company and hoped his ancestry would convince the Chinese government to give him a leg up.

  The Deputy Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia was in charge of his country's sovereign wealth fund, which made him directly responsible for investing over $100 billion worldwide. His focus had been the United States, Europe, and China. And when you invest that much money, you can move markets, make or break industries, and pick winners and losers within an industry. And that's what Mohammad bin Muqrin had done. A year ago, he'd gone against his family's wishes and invested $25 billion in a company called Above All. On the company's website, Cole learned that they were a player in 5G technology, and their plan was to compete with the Chinese companies already leading the way in this field. Companies in which Ibo Kane was a primary investor. She didn't know much about 5G, but the connection was clear: Mohammad bin Muqrin had put an obscene amount of money into a company fighting Kane for dominance in a key market in China.

  Some billionaires give lots of interviews, appear on TV frequently, or make spectacles of themselves on the sidelines of the professional sports teams they own. Some become famous because the products they create affect people's daily lives. Ibo Kane was one of the most-powerful and least-known billionaires on the planet. He had his tentacles in every business that mattered, and every business that would matter over the next twenty years.

  If Cole was right, he'd somehow gotten an online extremist group to begin systematically killing the people in a position to slow his ascent. It was impossible to believe, even as the evidence piled up before her.

  Warren watched over her shoulder as she turned the research into notes, the notes into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs.