Open Chains

by D. F. Bailey

  He shook his head and stared out the passenger window. “He knows everything. Who we are. What happened on Mayne Island. Everything.”

  “No surprise. One of his security team spotted me parked at the foot of the driveway.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Six-two. White. Short, black curly hair. Brown eyes. Built like a tackle. If I had to guess, I’d say he was Russian.”

  He was impressed. Once again her training in the police academy had kicked into play. “Russian. Did he speak to you?”

  “No. But he walked right around the car. Slowly.”

  Finch stared at her as she passed a line of cars. “Then he got the plate numbers. It won’t take long for Brodie to determine who rented the car.”

  “So what? Today I’m Alice Shaw.” She smiled as if she’d already outwitted Brodie and his security team.

  “We booked the car and the Holiday Inn under Alice Shaw’s name, right?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I booked everything on Alice’s credit card. Including the Alaska Air tickets.”

  Finch’s eyes followed a bus down an offramp as he tried to calculate the probabilities confronting them. “Likely Brodie already has a hitman at the hotel waiting for us.”

  “You think he can hack into the Master Card data base?”

  Who could say? But going up against Brodie anything seemed possible. Once again, he felt the hand of paranoia casting a shadow over his eyes. “I think he’s the smartest, most devious criminal I’ve met. So, yes — he can hack into anything out there.”

  Her cell phone chimed and she began to rummage through her purse with one hand. “Get it for me, will you?”

  Finch found the phone and checked the call display. “It’s Fiona. Her number at The Post.” He was about to answer it, then realized the peril he could face if he spoke to her. “We can’t talk to her,” he said and turned the phone off.

  “Why not?”

  “Brodie got his lawyers to file a court injunction against us. They’ve blocked any story we can publish about his war activities.”

  “What? Bugger that. We’ve got first amendment rights. I’ll get Lou Levine to file an appeal.”

  “No, no. That could take days. Maybe longer.” Finch paused to think it through. “Despite Brodie’s warning to me, technically, I haven’t been served with a court injunction.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “Until I get a formal court order, I have time to start a whisper campaign.”

  Now Finch’s phone rang. He checked the call display. “Fiona again. She couldn’t get you, so now she’s on to me.” Rather than answer, he opened the passenger window and threw his phone onto the highway.”

  Eve glanced at him with a look of surprise. “What’re you doing?”

  “Brodie took my phone. He had it for at least half an hour.” He shook his head. How could he have been so foolish? “I’m certain he can track us.”

  “This’s crazy.” She shook her head as her fingers knotted around the steering wheel. “And by the way, if we’re not going to the Holiday Inn, where the hell are we going?”

  Finch closed his eyes and tried to clear his head. Only one alternative came to mind. “Back to Sea-Tac Airport. We’ve got to fight this thing on our home turf.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “I’ll book a late-night flight on Joel Griffin’s card. Unlikely that Brodie will track that. Not yet, anyway. Then, we return the car. It’d be too messy for Brodie's men to confront us in the airport.”

  “You think they’re following us?”

  “Almost certain of it.”

  He scanned the cars surrounding them. As Eve pulled into the lane that merged with the I-5, they were still fighting the dregs of the rush hour traffic. Thousands of cars crawled north and south along the web of freeways. One of them likely carried a predator.

  As Eve pushed on, Finch found the extra phone he’d purchased in San Francisco and booked two seats on the last flight to San Francisco. Then he ran a search for the reporters working at BuzzFeed. Within a few seconds he found who he was looking for and placed a call to Olivia Simmons. The phone rang three times before she answered.

  “Olivia, it’s Will Finch.”

  “Will Finch,” she exclaimed in a voice stirred with a mix of surprise and affection. “Do you know the flipping time? It might be eight thirty in Frisco, but it’s pushing midnight here in DC!”

  “Yeah, sorry. I guess your office number’s on call forward to your home, huh?”

  “Of course. And your’s isn’t?”

  Finch chuckled, happy to hear her voice again. Over the past five years Olivia had covered the political beat for BuzzFeed. She’d been his mentor when he started at The Post back in 2007. Now that he heard her voice again, he realized that both Olivia and J.R. had guided him on the five knives story. His first big break. “Gee, I guess I forgot about the timezone thing.”

  “Ha-ha. That’s cuz you always see the world revolving around your ego,” she said. “What’s that noise?”

  “An eighteen wheeler semi. I’m on the I-5 in Seattle.”

  “Oh.” He could hear her walking across a hardwood floor. Then she sighed as if she’d settled on a sofa.

  “You got a minute?”

  “For you? More than. What’s up?”

  He was distracted by a string of motorcycles whizzing past them on the left. “It’s complicated.”

  “Always is.” She laughed with the comforting giggle that he fondly remembered. “You can either tell me the whole thing now, or just tell me what you need me to do.”

  “Okay. Let’s go for the thing I need you to do.”

  “All right, let me make some notes.”

  He could hear her rummaging for her laptop.

  “Okay, ready?” He paused. “You need to start asking Deacon Brodie about reports that he killed fifteen Iraqi fighters on the night of February 6, 2004. He pushed them out of a helicopter on a flight from Mosul to Baghdad.”

  “What?” She let out a gasp. “The Deacon Brodie? Our next secretary of state?”

  “One and the same.”

  “He’s going up for his senate confirmation hearings soon.”

  “I know. That’s why you have to strike first.”

  “Wow.” She paused. Finch could almost hear her thinking. “So what’s this really all about?”

  Finch wondered how much to reveal. He couldn’t tell her about the court order muzzling his reports on the case. Technically, he didn’t know about them. Not yet. And if he told her, she might be in jeopardy for breaking the order herself. “Listen, we need to hit him with denial questions. You know, something like — ‘Do you deny that you threw fifteen Iraqis to their deaths from a helicopter in 2004?’ ‘Does the president know about the murders you committed in Iraq?’ That kind of thing.”

  “Will, this is crazy. I, I don’t —”

  “I know. I know. It seems impossible. But you need to trust me on this. What I can tell you is that since his nomination, most of the seven US troops who witnessed the murders on that flight in oh-four have died.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Totally serious.”

  As Olivia absorbed the impact of Finch’s accusations, he knew she was deciding to commit to him — or to let it all go. He also knew she was too good a reporter to allow such serious charges to slip past her without testing the possibility that he might be right.

  “Will, Brodie is a big fish.”

  “A whale.”

  He waited for her decision.

  “All right.” Her voice revealed that she was preparing for the fight. “We need to stay in touch on this.”

  “Every day if possible.”

  “And I’m going to want a shared byline on this when your exclusive comes out.”

  “Goes without saying.”

  “Okay then. Is Fiona still working there?”

  “Yeah. She’s the managing editor. Took over from Wally Gimbel.”

  “Say hi
to them for me, okay.”

  “Will do. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  ※ — TWELVE — ※

  WALLY GIMBEL SERVED as the managing editor of The San Francisco Post for decades until his retirement in December, 2017. In his long career, he thought he’d seen it all. After completing his military service during the Vietnam War he’d reported on Watergate, the Iran-Contra scandal, the failed Clinton Impeachment, 9-11. But nothing shook his confidence in the American century more than the unrelenting erosion of the newspaper industry that began sometime around 2005. To Wally, it was a form of Chinese water torture. He could almost hear the steady drip-drip-drip as paper after paper drowned in the digital ocean. Soon Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and dozens of other social media channels began to flood the information void. Within five years, gossip had replaced verified news. And now, as the president said in one of his more articulate insights, the American mind was swamped by fake news.

  Beyond the crisis in print media, one other trend frightened Wally. The global attacks on journalists of every stripe. TV, print, radio, internet. They were all vulnerable. Last year ninety-nine had been murdered. Almost three hundred and fifty detained, and eighty taken hostage by non-state groups. By people who simply didn’t like the news. Or the truth. No, it’s a bad omen, he whispered to himself. But while he missed the newspaper game, he knew he no longer had the stamina for it.

  Wally poured three ounces of Canadian Club into the crystal tumbler he kept at the ready in the kitchen. Then he wandered to the picture window overlooking the city. Each step of the way he was followed by Ella, the aging yellow lab that his wife Ginny had brought into their home following her mother’s death. Now that Ginny was gone too, the two of them, Wally and Ella, were left to stand watch. His view from Russian Hill took in the expanse from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Transamerica Pyramid. Wally stared through the window in a quiet meditation.

  “Looks better tonight than last night, Ella. No fog.” He reached down and waggled the loose scruff under the dog’s neck. She gave a sleepy yelp of delight and licked his hand.

  When the phone rang, Wally looked up in surprise. He checked the clock on the fireplace mantle. Almost eleven o’clock. He released the dog and picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Wally, it’s Will Finch. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  Wally slumped onto the sofa and propped a pillow under his left arm, then adjusted the phone against his ear. “No. Not at all. Good to hear your voice. I haven’t heard from you in at least a year.”

  “That long? Geez, I guess you’re right.”

  Wally heard the tension in Finch’s voice. Something was wrong. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Perfect.” A pause. “But I need some help.”

  “Anything you want. Say the word.”

  “Okay. Eve and I just flew in from Seattle. We’ve got a bit of heat trailing after us on a story that’s brewing. The thing is, we can’t go back to our house. So, yeah … we need a place to stay. Two nights, maybe three.”

  “All right, get here whenever you can.” Wally could feel his heartbeat quicken. The old chase. He could sense it coming back his way. “There’s just Ella and me here. You can stay a week if you like.”

  “You sure?”

  “Hell, yes.” Then a new thought came to him. “But only if you cut me in on the action.”

  Finch laughed at that. “Not sure you want to touch this one, Wally. It’s a smoldering ember about to burst into flames.”

  “Good. So far this is the coldest November since nineteen-thirty-two. I could use a little extra heat up here.”

  ※

  Eve and Finch sat in separate chairs next to the gas fireplace in Wally’s living room while Wally settled on the sofa. Ella climbed up beside him and nudged her nose next to Wally’s arm. From time to time the dog would ply her snout under her master’s hand and he’d caress the top of her head and tug the length of her ears.

  “So that’s how things stand,” Finch said and rolled his shoulders to suggest there was little more that he could reveal in the long and complicated story. The only episode he’d omitted was the midnight chase on the island cliff where Nine fell to his death. A story that would never be told. But as he tried to press the thought from his mind, he imagined Nine’s body cast onto the shore of Campbell Bay. The waves lapping at his feet. His chest wrapped in thick, green bands of stinking seaweed. The eye sockets abuzz with flies, his eyeballs long ago devoured by sea lice. And at the water’s edge, two cops kneeling to examine the corpse. Could it happen? Maybe right now, a thousand miles up the coast, it was real. Finch brushed a hand over his face and forced himself to stare at the dog’s tail flapping lazily against Wally’s thigh.

  Wally shook his head and gazed into his empty whisky glass. As he looked up, his forehead creased into a dozen lines. “My god. This goes very deep. It doesn’t directly implicate the president, but if Brodie moves into the secretary’s office, then all bets are off.” He looked away and then turned back to Finch. “Who else have you told?”

  “Fiona. She’s ready to publish when I bring the story to her.”

  “I thought you said there’s an injunction.”

  Finch held a finger in the air to suggest that wasn’t a problem. Not yet. “But in the strict legal sense, I don’t know about it.”

  “But she does.” Wally shrugged to indicate this was more than a moot point.

  “I also told Olivia Simmons.”

  “At BuzzFeed? Does she know about the injunction?”

  “No. And if she doesn’t know about it, it can be argued that it can’t apply to her.”

  Wally’s lips rolled together in a tight frown, a sober look on his face. “Technically, yes.”

  “She’s going to start a whisper campaign. Probe Brodie and his team. Get him to comment, even if it’s just to deny the story.”

  “Brodie’s too smart for that.” Wally looked at Eve. “A whisper campaign has to gather momentum. Develop critical mass. We all know that Olivia’s a credible journalist. But there’s only one of her.”

  “It’s a start,” Eve offered and leaned toward Wally with an imploring look.

  When he saw her studying him, Wally nodded. He lapsed into a brooding silence as he drew his hand over Ella’s neck and toyed with her left ear. He closed his eyes to ponder this new jigsaw puzzle, a puzzle with hundreds of pieces scattered across the table.

  “All right. What time is it?” He glanced at the mantle clock. “Good Lord, one thirty. I’m going to bed. You two take the spare room. Queen bed — you should be all right.” He stood up and pointed to the first room along the hallway. “I’ll set my alarm for six. Then I’ll work the phone.”

  “What do you mean?” Finch eased a hand over his face, tried to rub the weariness from his eyes.

  “It’ll be nine o’clock in New York, Washington, Boston and Miami. Eight in Chicago and New Orleans.” A smile emerged on his face. The wide, cheshire cat grin that had amused Finch for so many years when they worked together. It meant that Wally had come up with a game plan. A way to win. “I know every editor at every major paper in this country that’s managed to survive the last ten years. And the only reason they survived is because they had the guts to go after the big stories.”

  His smile now extended from ear-to-ear. His perfect, square teeth almost gleamed.

  “Tomorrow I’m going to start a whisper campaign. By Friday this story will be front page news from coast to coast.”

  ※ — THIRTEEN — ※

  OVER THE NEXT three days the murmurs from the whisper campaign began to reverberate across the country. The murmurs became gossip. Gossip became speculation. In response the president tweeted his “unwavering suport” (misspelled) for Deacon Brodie. At first, Brodie ignored the taunts — certainly his best defense. If he maintained a code of silence for three or four days, the silence would stifle the speculation. By then the media’s sharks would turn away and seek out fresh blood els
ewhere. But at the end of day three, Mick Arnold, Brodie's communications chief at BrassWing, wrote a corporate Facebook post that denied Brodie had anything to do with the deaths of the fifteen Iraqi fighters in 2004. An hour later, Brodie fired Arnold and the post was stripped from the Facebook feed. But it was too late — the trap was sprung. Brodie denied the murders? In that case, what exactly did he know about them? How many men were killed? How? Where? When? Why? The floodgates swung open and the feeding frenzy began in earnest.

  Finch, Eve and Wally knew that now was time to strike. Eve called The Post’s lawyer, Lou Levine, and directed him to appeal the court injunction that banned them from publishing any allegations about Brodie's crimes. Now that the accusations were in the public domain, Brodie was fair game.

  “It’ll take me at least three hours to turn this around,” Lou said, “maybe a day. But don’t worry, I won’t leave the court until it’s reversed. I’ll text you the minute we can publish.”

  Eve decided to drive down to the office and work with Fiona Page to coordinate the reporting staff and ensure the board of directors would support the coming battles.

  Meanwhile Finch had to complete the series of articles that would torpedo Brodie's bid to become secretary of state. More important, once the stories entered the news cycle, they offered real protection against Brodie's killing spree. With Brodie identified as the alleged killer of five army veterans, if anyone else linked to the story were murdered, Brodie would become the prime suspect.

  But Finch had only one story ready to go, the piece he’d handed to Brodie at the foot of his driveway. Although Brodie had never responded to the accusations, that didn’t diminish the power of Finch’s reporting. Quite the opposite. Finch would reveal that he’d invited Brodie to defend himself against the charges but the offer was declined. This time his silence could only betray him.

  On each of the three days of the whisper campaign — a period that Wally called “the phony war” — Finch packed his laptop into his courier bag and hiked down Russian Hill to North Beach and into the Caffe Trieste on Vallejo Street. He liked the Trieste, a one-room Italian eatery that he likened to an olde worlde coffee house that nourished the neighborhood cultural life. Sitting at a table near the back of the room with a steady stream of caffeine at hand, he wrote two stories a day, six in total: