The Shadow Artist

by James Grayson

  Before a full second had expired, Alex squeezed through the sliding window between the front and back seats, half expecting to be sprayed by bullets as she lunged for the gearshift and thrust it into Reverse.

  A burst of gunfire erupted from both motorcyclists as she dived back behind the bulletproof barrier, and a crunch of flesh and metal and bone sounded as the cab crushed the rear cyclist against the truck.

  Alex whirled to find the front shooter spinning his bike around and accelerating toward her, gun raised.

  Ducking, she waited two full seconds, then kicked open the door.

  The man swerved and slid on the snow-slicked cobblestones, the HK popping from his hands and skittering to the lip of a side-street stairwell.

  Alex rolled from the taxi and drove a knee into the gunman’s back as he lunged for the gun. They smacked the sidewalk together, his head striking the ground. He was shorter than Alex, but wiry and strong enough to roll atop her chest, his hands closing on her throat.

  In a strange moment of acute awareness, Alex realized that both men looked exactly like each other. Twins. An equally acute and untimely observation: she’d never seen them before in her life. His grip tightening, Alex chose a human weakness and drove her thumb into the soft flesh between his ribs. The attacker grunted but kept hold of her windpipe. Twisting, she pushed back and let her head drop over the first step of the concrete stairwell, turning it to loosen his hold.

  The man took two fistfuls of her hair and slammed her head into the concrete once, and then again. Blurry-eyed and dizzied, Alex fought to turn back over, but her bad shoulder prevented her from gaining leverage.

  Kicking up with both legs, Alex catapulted backward, taking the man with her. They tumbled down the stairwell, end over end. Curling as they flipped, she locked the man’s head between her knees. When they struck the bottom stair, she heard a double crack, like a wooden picture frame being snapped.

  The man’s body twitched and then fell limp with a dead stare.

  Alex was pushing away when she noticed a tattoo peeking from beneath the black shirt. She tore back his sleeve to reveal a forearm inked with a golden eagle holding an anchor, a pitchfork, and a gun—the lower half of a Navy SEAL tattoo. Alex pulled up his shirt on the off-chance, but…no Talonstrike mark on his ribs. Her gaze moved toward his face, but stopped on a pool of blood glistening on his chest. A ton of it. A bullet must have ricocheted and caught him just right. She rubbed at her neck with her good hand. It certainly hadn’t sapped his strength.

  Alex looked back up the stairs, noting the trail of blood snaking from to the top just as her head began to throb and her hands tingled. There were suddenly three onlookers at the top of the stairs, and one of them said something she couldn’t make out. Another pushed them aside from behind and broke through. Alex blinked, but figures began to blur. Blinking involuntarily, she tried to steady her breath, but surprised herself instead by falling to one knee.

  A burning sensation pulsed from her shoulder and neck. She hurt her collarbone on the roll down the stairs, so she pressed against it to test if it was broken, but her hand slipped against her blouse. She held it up. A woman gasped from above. Alex blinked at the woman and the blood on her own hand. She looked down at her chest and pulled at her shirt. She was soaked in blood.

  When Alex blinked again, she was on her back, staring up at the sky. London looked pretty, all gray like that in the morning. Snow was coming; she could feel it. She gulped for air and it hurt.

  Alex blinked and a man was bent over her. He had his hands pressed to her shoulder and back. You’ll ruin the scarf doing that, she thought. Blood is hard to get out of clothes. Alex tried to warn him, but her words were running together. He was telling Alex to breathe slow. It would be OK. Everything would be OK. It was the man who had stepped through the others.

  The man who had stepped through all the others.

  Alex blinked again. How did you—?

  She took a gulp to ask him. And everything went black.

  Seven

  Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

  City Center

  The drive from Tuzla up into the Dinaric Alps should have taken Lockard three hours tops, but with intermittent snow squalls and minimal road maintenance, it took almost seven. He didn’t mind, though. His pack of Datrex food-ration bars, containing thirty-six-hundred calories each, ensured enough sustenance for seven days. While the bars were a bit grainy, they didn’t require water. They gave him enough energy to carry a full rucksack up Kilimanjaro, and he liked the coconut flavor.

  The drive was child’s play.

  Slowing the Jeep, the soft top flapping against the wind shears, Lockard chose a dark backstreet for his next order of business. It was lined with single-story gray concrete buildings that had padlocked, dented metal doors, and the sole signs of life in the narrow passage were two fat brown rats crawling on top of each other. If the rats were comfortable enough to fuck out in the open back there, then it was a good enough place for him to finish this.

  He shut off the car’s engine but left the lights on dim. Three full hours until his flight back to London. Lockard could complete this leg of the mission and be changed into his business-class suit in plenty of time.

  He popped the trunk and retrieved the briefcase he’d repossessed from Josef, along with a long clear rubber hose the width of his thumb. He threaded one end of the hose into the Jeep’s gas tank and took two steps to a small steel Dumpster, briefcase in hand. Avoiding a knee-high pile of twisted metal pushed against its side, he hefted open the Dumpster. It smelled like rodent death.

  Stepping back and kneeling, Lockard unhitched the briefcase and stared for a moment at the choir of Ben Franklins, the man’s pursed lips and sad eyes.

  A million dollars.

  It was more cash than most people ever saw in their lives, but for Lockard, it was a problem. He couldn’t take the money on a commercial flight, and it wasn’t worth chartering a private one from Sarajevo, one with a traceable manifest. Tuzla airbase had been tricky enough.

  No, this pittance needed to disappear.

  Lockard slipped a single bill from the top of a stack. Then, taking one long, hard suck on the hose and holding it below the level of the tank, he allowed the flow of petrol to douse the piles of money. Lockard lifted the briefcase to the edge and spilled the contents into the Dumpster. He held the hose to keep the gas in the tube, retrieved the rest of his winter gear, and tossed it inside as well, careful to cover the cash with the jacket. He tilted the tube and poured the remaining liquid onto the jacket and around the Dumpster’s interior.

  Using an orange disposable lighter, Lockard lit the bill he’d swiped. The flaming paper ignited the fuel-sopped jacket before it even floated to the pile. He stepped back and waited. No wisps of currency floated away to end up on some eager Interpol—or worse, CIA—agent’s desk.

  Lockard settled back into the Jeep, and smiled as he drove away.

  “Not bad,” Draganic said, as he walked the perimeter of the building’s highest floor. “But you need more seating.”

  Randeep had set his lone desk, the half-circle composite piece of a Wall Street trading firm, in the center of the sprawling space. Hunkered before a dozen flat-screen monitors, he looked like the commander of a nuclear facility. There were no other seats in sight.

  “I’d rather be on a lower floor, easier access,” Randeep called from behind the screens.

  “You wouldn’t have this view.” Draganic stopped and stared out the floor-to-ceiling window.

  Located at 25 Marsh Wall in a development called Canary Wharf, the building was not restricted by the tight controls of the city, and was one of the tallest twenty buildings in all of London. The whole block sat atop the historic West India import-and-export docks, and Randeep’s windows looked out to the still operable south dock, where two British naval ships sat idle.

  “I don’t look out the windows.” Randeep waved a hand and continued staring at his monitors.
/>   “Remember, Randeep. There is more to life than just models.”

  “Perhaps we both should take this advice.”

  Draganic glared back at the boy.

  Sure, Draganic’s recent escapades had been well covered by the news rags in the UK and Italy, but the paparazzi had gotten most of the details wrong; Draganic had not actually dated any of the models they’d snapped photos of him with. He’d met them in various nightclubs, ones he knew they frequented. He lured them close with champagne and vodka, and later promises of vacations to Geneva or Seychelles, though Draganic would never follow through. He knew the moment they fucked the fat man with a scar on his face, they’d be expecting a reward—perhaps a diamond-inlaid Chanel watch, or a Van Cleef & Arpels butterfly ring. He’d been right on the mark, too. Without a gift or a trip, even the youngest of them had not bothered to call him again.

  Who cared? Those girls had a lifetime of disappointments from men ahead of them.

  Tapping the Black Shark blade tucked below his waistband, Draganic wandered back around the desk and stopped behind Randeep. “When do you sleep?”

  Randeep kept typing. “The window when Tokyo is quiet and London markets have not yet opened.”

  Four hours? “I need you alert, Randeep, a full night’s—”

  “Look. Do you see?” Randeep pointed at one screen, then the next, following a jagged line that rose then swooped and rose again, its tail littered with dots and adjacent lines. “Here.” He tapped the screen on the last dot.

  “I have no interest in this. It is why I have you.” Draganic waved a hand.

  “If you listened, you might.”

  Draganic rolled a hand in a signal for him to make it quick.

  “It is called a neural network. It learns from the market itself, using historical values and indicators, then it predicts movements and prices.”

  “How?”

  “I teach it, of course.”

  “It sounds like science fiction. Fantasy.”

  “You think?” Randeep swung his chair around and stared up at Draganic with a silly grin. “Give me your hand.”

  Draganic gave him a deadpan look.

  “Please.” Randeep held out a hand. “Shake.”

  Tempted to slice the damned thing off, Draganic shook the man’s limp hand.

  “OK.” Randeep sat back down, folding his own hands in his lap. “Now, tell me how you did that.”

  “I just did it.”

  “Yes, but how? What did your brain tell your hand to make it do that? What nerve receptors did you activate to flex and relax which muscles, and when did you tell those nerve receptors to open and close in order to time the handshake to meet mine?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Randeep grinned. “Now you understand.” He spun in the chair, typed again, and the screen changed to show a large and elongated map of sorts. Lines interconnected like a tangle of barbed wire, each point of connection labeled with terms like GDP, ten-year rate, and Libor.

  “Meet JONAH.”

  “Jonah.” Draganic frowned. Draganic leaned closer again, this time trying to understand the numbers and data. “And you created this.”

  “Well, I created the fields, the algorithms. I told it what was most important and what wasn’t, et cetera.”

  “Randeep, I ask that you begin speaking a language I understand. French, Italian, English. Pick one. But stop this algorithm nonsense. What in the fuck is this doing?”

  Randeep paused for a second and said, “It is predicting the future.”

  “Is it accurate?”

  “Highly.” He held up a hand. “But before you start getting too excited. Only for currencies. Not stock markets, commodities, or anything like that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because currencies are huge liquid instruments that take massive amounts of inertia to move one way or another. If equities are like speedboats, then currencies are like aircraft carriers. It makes them easier to predict.”

  “More science fiction.”

  “No. All the major banks use models like this on their currency trading desks. They each program their own proprietary version.”

  “So this JONAH is not special?” Draganic folded his arms above his belly.

  “No, it is not special.”

  Draganic began to shake his head and laugh, but was cut off by Randeep in a frustrated tone.

  “JONAH is one of a kind.”

  Still chuckling, Draganic asked, “Why?”

  “Because this model is three dimensional compared to theirs. All the banks know is which currency is most likely to go in what direction. They may have an idea how powerful the signal is, but not how to play it.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that JONAH can not only tell us what to buy and when, but which financial instruments to use when you do it.”

  “And what is this JONAH telling us, then?”

  Randeep banged the keys, changing the screens again. The original line came back to the center. “Swiss francs. We need to buy enough to move the currency over the tipping point, where the overall momentum cannot be halted by intraday trading.”

  This time Draganic laughed so hard that spittle flew from his mouth and caught on his beard. Wiping it away with the inside of an elbow, he said, “Randeep, I may not know as much as you about trading, but I know the Swiss franc is one of the most liquid currencies in the world. We couldn’t move it if we were the queen of England.”

  “And do you know what is happening in Zurich?” Randeep asked, frowning.

  “I am certain you are to tell me.”

  “It has been revealed that the finance minister has been selling their own francs. Hundreds of millions of them.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because of the problems with European countries. People have been fleeing the euro to buy Swiss francs for safety. The currency’s rise has made Swiss products too expensive for foreigners to buy, so the government is manipulating the currency to keep it artificially low. It is just like the UK did to sterling, remember?”

  Of course Draganic remembered. Black Wednesday. When a hedge-fund titan named George Soros took on the British Empire and won. Draganic laughed again. “We can’t compete with the Swiss government. That is ridiculous. We have one billion, not a hundred.”

  Randeep said, “Interventions do not work.”

  Draganic studied Randeep for a moment. The little man was dead serious. “Go on.”

  “JONAH’s signal is so powerful, it suggests that we should not only buy the francs, but we should use offsetting options to pay for it. We could borrow unlimited amounts of money.”

  “Leverage.”

  “A hundred times.”

  Draganic turned and walked to the windows again. “And what does JONAH calculate as the likelihood of this trade’s success?”

  “Ninety-nine-point-nine-five percent.”

  Draganic stood tall and gazed at the view. Beyond the docks, the Isle of Dogs—once a stretch of marshlands known as the killing fields, where cows were slaughtered daily back in the mid-seventeen hundreds—was bordered on three sides by the meandering River Thames. A fact he’d read on the placard in the lobby.

  A different kind of slaughtering goes on around here now, thought Draganic, tapping the Sea Shark again as he peered across the south dock at the Morgan Stanley and Citibank buildings. And why shouldn’t he share the same successes? His partners would be livid if they found out, but they wouldn’t. They would have their share of the original capital, and Draganic would keep the rest. He deserved it.

  Draganic turned, met Randeep’s eager eyes, and said, “Do it.”

  Eight

  Blinking her eyes open then squeezing them closed, Alex tried to clear her vision. It was like looking at a dampened watercolor, everything blurry and distorted. A person stood above her, but a bright light high above prevented her from staring too long, so she closed her eyes again. Alex slipped back into the darknes
s.

  The next time, Alex woke for good. The person standing over her was an older woman. With silvery black hair pulled into a low ponytail, she wore pink scrubs and blue latex gloves.

  “Who are you?” Alex managed. “Where am I?” The room was the size of a typical hospital room, though the walls were painted a gentle gray, and trimmed in crown molding. The furniture, contemporary and expensive looking, also didn’t fit a hospital setting. A Company safehouse?

  “You...are lucky to be alive.” She tapped a tube, then removed a piece of thick tape and a needle from Alex’s arm. An IV. “But I bet you’re well aware of that, aren’t you?”

  “You didn’t answer either of my questions.”

  “Let’s be sure all your faculties are in order first, shall we?”

  “I’m guessing you insist.”

  “I do.” She stared at a machine by the bed as she said, “Do you know your name, what day it is, the year?”

  “Sarah Connor. The year is 1985, and a cyborg Terminator from the future just tried to kill me.”

  “Still have your sense of humor, I see.”

  “OK, so it’s not 1985.” Alex moved to sit up.

  “And your wit.”

  Perhaps, but Alex still had no idea what the hell was going on. Navy SEALs. As good as she’d like to think she was, they didn’t miss their targets. So, how the hell had Alex gotten out of there, and who the hell were they? She’d need to make a discreet inquiry from contacts on this side of the pond. Her head throbbed with questions, and her shoulder screamed. Alex grimaced as the woman helped her up.

  “That shoulder will be a bit sore for a spell, but you’re quite fortunate. The bullet passed between the scalenus medius and levator scapulae, missing all major arteries and both the clavicle and the spinal column.” She reached up and pinched the soft flesh between her shoulder and neck. “Right through here.”