London

by A. C. Fuller

  First she recounted—step by step—how the story had taken her from New York to D.C. to Miami to Las Vegas, and now to London. Fighting every instinct to leave herself out of the story, she told her part, and Warren's. It would make her theory credible, make her harder to smear. Next, she carefully laid out her theory, piece by piece.

  She cut and pasted paragraphs, wrote transitions, rearranged, and re-read. The goal was to weave her personal narrative into the theory so—taken as a whole—the piece would read like a mystery, she and Warren the protagonists, with the final revelations appearing at the end.

  She lay on the floor. "Will you read it? I need to stare at the ceiling for a bit. Clear my head. There's something missing, but I don't know what."

  Cole traced a small crack in the ceiling with her eyes, glancing at Warren every few seconds to make sure he was still reading. When he reached the end, he leaned back and laced his fingers together behind his head. "Motive."

  "I've got a motive. Business."

  "But not an ultimate motive. Like, where does Kane want to be in ten years?" He walked past her on the floor, taking a spot at the window.

  She sat cross-legged and stared at the back of his head. "What are you thinking?"

  "Odd conversation with my professor. Used to be a wild-eyed liberal, twenty years ago. Now, well I don't know what he is exactly, but he's sympathetic with the views in the manifesto. He's pro-Brexit, anti-globalization, and so on."

  "There are a lot of off-ramps between those views and condoning international terrorism and murder."

  He turned, holding up both hands defensively. "You don't have to convince me. Lemme finish. He had this whole spiel about China. Single party system. Extreme economic growth. Anyone who's operating at the top of the business world would know all this, know all the dirty secrets about U.S.-China relations, know the way the businesses interact. Kane is an American citizen, but of Chinese descent. He has business in China, that's public record. He—"

  "Where are you going with this?"

  "I don't know," Warren said. "It's like he was trying to tell me something without telling me. Or no, not that. It's like he himself didn't even know, but was trying to talk it out. Some way that the political ideology of the terrorists relates to China. Their growth, and the future they might well dominate."

  Cole stood, walked a lap around the room, then sat at her laptop. "I hear you, but that's not anything I can put in my story."

  "I know."

  She scrolled to the top of her article. "How about you get us food while I take one more pass?"

  15

  Warren came back an hour later with a bag of food. "Fish and chips."

  "I can smell the fries." She grabbed her phone from the nightstand. "Don't tell me you're stressed enough to eat empty carbs."

  He opened the bag and held up a plastic container. A huge salad topped with grilled fish.

  "Oh." She swiped open her phone, grabbed a couple soggy fries from the bag, and popped them in her mouth. She had a notification in her Signal app.

  "What is it?" Warren asked.

  She stopped chewing, eyes wide. "What in the hell?"

  "Cole, what?"

  She waved him over and he joined her. The message contained no text, only a one-page PDF attachment. The subject line read Ibo Kane.

  In the near future, wars will begin not with airstrikes or naval blockades. Wars will begin when someone decides to unplug a country.

  Communications systems. Power grids. Food and water supplies. Nuclear power.

  By 2025, 5G networks will run all of these. Whoever controls them will control the world. Right now, China leads the world in 5G. Companies in Europe and the U.S. are trying to keep up, but the centralized government/business planning in China has given them the lead.

  A war rages behind the scenes, a war that will decide the future. A future Kane, Inc. must win.

  If China is allowed to dominate the hardware industry—to create the devices on which the entire world's food supply, water supply, weaponry, and communications runs—they'll never need another gun. If they can flip a switch and turn off the lights and air conditioning in every major U.S. city, the future is bleak. They'll be able to dictate the terms of trade, free speech, or of any law they choose. The unspoken threat would be enough to change everything.

  The deadliest atomic bomb ever created can kill maybe half a million people at a time, assuming you drop it directly on Manhattan, Tokyo, or London. The networks of the future will be much more powerful. We must control them.

  But the United States and Europe are too slow-moving, too beholden to laborious democratic processes and norms. They're already too far behind to do anything about it. That's why Kane, Inc. must do something about it. Why we will do something about it.

  They read the document, then Warren sat on the bed and dug into his salad as Cole read it again. She hadn't asked anyone for help. Only five or six of her closest colleagues and sources had her contact information on Signal. No one but Warren knew she'd been researching Kane. And yet, someone did.

  "How could someone… someone hacked my laptop or phone. Someone figured out where my research was headed."

  "You didn't tell anyone about Kane?"

  She shook her head. "You know what's crazy? My very first instinct was to guard my scoop. If we're on to something, whoever has access to my computer can now leak it. Gotta get this out fast."

  "But they didn't leak it."

  "They did the opposite." She turned back to the document. She hadn't even noticed the stamp on the top-right corner, and she read it out loud. "Kane, Inc., Internal Memo, Executive Committee Only."

  "If it's real," Warren said, "that might be the motive you were looking for."

  Cole nodded slowly. Sitting at her computer, she said, "You know more about tech than I do. Explain 5G."

  She typed notes as he spoke. "5G can support ten times more devices than the current 4G networks. That means more connected devices and more devices connected to one another. For regular cellphone users, it means faster and more reliable service to do all the things we do everyday. Then there's URLLC—Ultra-Reliable-Low-Latency Communications. It's for more-critical devices that require constant, uninterrupted communications. Sharing data between devices constantly."

  "Can you explain it in a way regular people—my potential readers—would understand?"

  "Imagine your house. Let's say you're a kinda fancy lady. Your smartphone controls your garage door opener, your fridge and microwave, your alarm system, heating and cooling, lights, and so on. Let's also say you use a CPAP, and your smartphone controls that. Or maybe a different, even more important medical device. What happens if the network goes down?"

  "I guess it'd be bad, but wouldn't they have analog backups? Like, if the smartphone goes out, your fridge won't stop working, will it? And couldn't you just press the on/off switch on your CPAP?"

  "Yes, but think about three years, five years down the road. How connected will everything be? Then think about not your house, but your country. Your food supply system, water, nuclear reactors. 5G networks are going to lead to huge efficiency gains, but also leave them staggeringly vulnerable. Right now, the U.S. and China are in a Cold War as companies fight for 5G supremacy. China is winning. If your theory is right, Ibo Kane is trying to consolidate business—all business—under one umbrella—to take out competitors in all key sectors. And if this document is right, his ultimate plan is total dominance in 5G and all networks that come after. Think about it, business dominance, political dominance, economic and financial dominance, combined with literal control of the hardware—the technology—that will soon run the world."

  Cole swallowed hard and her voice was barely a whisper. "Total world domination."

  In journalism, "the lede" is the opening paragraph, or "graf." It's where reporters stuff the news, the thing that's new.

  Neil Armstrong Walks on Moon.

  President Kennedy Shot in Dallas.

  Sh
e always wrote the lede last. Armed with the new information about Kane, Cole wrote hers.

  It was 1 AM on Christmas Eve by the time she was ready to send the story to Alex Vane at The Barker. She attached the file and added a short note.

  Dear Alex,

  I've got a story for you. It's not "reporting" and it's not "guesswork." It's somewhere in between. It's 7,000 words. Get your art department going. You'll need photos of all the victims, plus Ibo Kane.

  If you have my direct deposit information still on file, send payment.

  -Jane Cole

  She sent the email and sat on her bed. "I'm about to become the most famous reporter on the planet, or a laughingstock."

  Warren laughed, then his face grew serious. He opened his mouth, but said nothing. Instead, he detached his prosthetic leg.

  Cole watched his face eagerly. She was out on a ledge, and needed him to join her there. "This thing is dangerous. For me, for you. Our careers. Everything." She sighed. "And I'm way too close to it. I know that."

  "You sent it, right?"

  She nodded.

  "Then take a sleeping pill. When will the story go live?"

  "It's late afternoon in Seattle. Probably the end of the night—ten or eleven, their time."

  "Grab six hours of sleep while you can. Like you said, you're about to be the most famous reporter or a laughingstock, right? But I think you're missing something, and I'm surprised. Something about the way the news works now."

  Cole squinted. What was he implying? The intensity of the day was still with her. The energy, the focus, and the drive to get at the truth. She had to slow her mind to see the bigger picture. Then it hit her. "Both." She laughed bitterly. "I'm going to be both."

  "Exactly. Even if the story is right, the propaganda machines will kick in hard, discrediting you, making you into a joke. Ain't like the FBI will read the story and bust down Kane's door fifteen minutes later. Dude lives on a seastead half the time anyway. Private island country off the coast of French Polynesia."

  Cole had been holding her breath, and she let it out in a long breath. He was right. The media ecosystem had changed in the last ten years. Part of her still believed the truth would rule the day. But that was rarely how things worked anymore. Most people got their news online, where echo chambers and curated news allowed them to hear what they wanted, or what someone else wanted them to hear. If Ibo Kane was as powerful as he appeared, he'd use that power to confuse, discredit, and lie.

  They slipped under the covers in their separate beds, each staring at the ceiling. Cole said, "In the newsroom at the Sun, I used to tell my editors to keep pushing me until my lede made their face look like that one emoji—the shocked-face one—eyes wide open. Ya know that look?"

  Warren nodded, rustling the bed linens.

  "That's what your face looked like when you read my lede."

  "I thought I'd masked it."

  She chuckled. "You didn't. It was good?"

  "Very."

  "We're screwed, right?"

  Warren laughed. "Yup. We are absolutely screwed."

  She closed her eyes and the world went blank. Her mind buzzed with gray static, the caffeine battling the extreme fatigue. She played her lede over and over in her head, anticipating how it would land in the world.

  The sleeping pill slowly overpowered the caffeine. Her thoughts slowed. The story faded.

  Before she knew it, she fell asleep.

  16

  Thursday

  Cole took a bite of a blueberry muffin and, for the hundredth time that morning, refreshed the homepage of The Barker. Her story wasn't live yet.

  The restaurant was decorated in greens and reds, white paper snowflakes taped the wall. "Today is Christmas Eve," Cole said.

  "Easy to forget when you're in something like this."

  She checked her email. There was a message from a fact-checker at The Barker, a final question about her source for the details of the Ana Diaz murder. Cole explained that she was the source, that it was an eyewitness account. She'd already had two phone calls with Alex Vane, the owner of The Barker. He'd peppered her with a hundred questions, trying to ensure both the veracity of the story and the clarity with which it was communicated. It wasn't just Cole's reputation on the line, it was his as well.

  She placed her phone face down on the table.

  For better or worse, the story would break the internet. The kids at The Barker would make sure it did. That's what they did best. Her phone would blow-up. Text messages. Emails. Calls. She'd be swarmed, digitally surrounded. The fake video would go even more viral.

  She'd written big stories before, but they were big locally. They got her a few congratulatory texts from peers and—once or twice—five-minute hits on cable news when a story happened to have national appeal.

  This was different. If her theory was wrong, it would be twenty-four hours of activity, followed by silence.

  If it was right…

  Warren pushed his empty plate aside. "Things are about to get weird."

  "They've been weird. Things are about to… there's not a word for it. But you read my mind. One time, when Matt and I almost decided to have kids, must have been five years ago, I asked his mom about it. What's it like? That kind of thing. She told me it's not describable, there's literally nothing that can prepare you. She said if you knew how much work and time and money and effort it took, you'd never have kids. Not that she regretted it, of course. Just that, until it really hits you, your brain can't project the future and imagine it. As she told me this, I got a feeling of being a small, fragile creature, fundamentally vulnerable and limited. Like there was a huge life-force outside me, coming toward me. Like when you arrive at the beach late at night and you can't see it but you can hear it and feel it. The immensity is there and you know it."

  "I know the feeling. I didn't know I knew it until I got sober and realized one of the reasons I drank was to escape that immensity. Marina. She changed everything and I regret every day how I responded to it."

  "You can still fix it."

  He put his hand on hers. "Maybe."

  She looked at him and, for the first time in days, smiled. She was exhausted, but she'd done it. "I have that feeling now. Like I'm a tiny piece of driftwood on the beach, the enormity of the ocean nearby."

  "Ready to wash you away?"

  She squeezed his hand. "It's going to wash us away. You're in the videos. You're in the article. You ready for this?"

  Warren squeezed her hand, then pulled away and sipped his coffee. "I'm not. I'm really not. Too late now."

  "You warned Sarah?"

  "Sent her an email earlier, yeah. I really don't think it's gonna be as bad as you think."

  Cole let out a weak laugh, almost a whimper. "What's about to happen has never happened before."

  "I've always wondered, when a story actually goes live, or is published or whatever, do they tell you? Do you get a notification or anything?"

  "Nah, I just have to keep checking the homepage." She swiped open her phone. "Not up yet."

  They sat in silence for a long minute, the downtime allowing another issue to move from the back to the front of her mind. "I created a fake Facebook profile. I'm going to reach out to Lopez." She acknowledged Warren's questioning look. "The guy Frankie told us about." She paused, but kept her eyes down. She didn't want to see the look of pinched disapproval she assumed Warren would be wearing. "Just need to build out the profile with a few more friends and posts, then I'll contact him. He's single, desperate, and I think he's ready to break. If I can get him to confess, I'll take him down, and Morgan too. If they killed Matt, I'll drag them into the desert, bury them to their necks in the sand, and stone them to death." She paused again, letting out a long sigh. "Just... thought you should know."

  When she finally looked up, Warren wasn't frowning as she'd expected. She couldn't read his look. "That's cold. And probably not smart." He nodded. "But it's what I'd do."

  She checked her phone.
The headline on the homepage of The Barker was two levels tall, taking up her entire screen.

  NINE MURDERS SOLVED

  EXCLUSIVE REPORT FROM THE BARKER

  December 24, 2019

  By Jane Cole

  She flashed the phone to Warren, who smiled and took it. "Things are about to get real."

  "They are," she said. "Read me the lede graf. I want to hear it from outside myself, the way the whole world will hear it."

  "Want me to use a fancy newscaster voice? Dan Rather or Brian Williams?"

  "Just read it," she said.

  Warren cleared his throat. "Eleven days ago, Raj Ambani was shot at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Three days later, Alvin Meyers fell, assassinated on the roof of The Watergate Hotel. Three days after that, Ana Diaz was killed in Miami. Later that day, the world found out why: a band of extremists had set out to terrorize the world, eliminating anyone who stood in the way of their political aims. Three days ago, Mohammad bin Muqrin became their fourth victim. Now the world waits for victim number five, unsure who will be next, but certain of the motivations of the killers. The world is wrong. One man is behind the killings: Ibo Kane. He's the mastermind of a plot so wide it will stretch your imagination, a plan so sinister it will shock your conscience. We don't yet know the full extent of his diabolical plot, but we now know it's outline. In the following pages, you'll learn how he did it, and why."

  —The End--

  Pre-order Episode 6 Here

  The Crime Beat: Complete Series List

  Click the image to reach the series page, or find individual titles below. Prior to the spring of 2020, later episodes may be on pre-order.

  Episode 1: New York

  Episode 2: Washington, D.C

  Episode 3: Miami

  Episode 4: Las Vegas

  Episode 5: London