The King of Fear Read online

  Now Chaudry had no idea where he was. They’d staked out his apartment, as well as his known associates and friends—although he didn’t seem to have many of the latter. Chaudry suspected that it was going to take a lot more than that to find him. Reilly was smart, he’d obviously received some training from a military intelligence service, and he knew the Bureau was looking for him. All bad, from where Chaudry sat.

  But had this Reilly character actually sent a mentally unstable woman to kill the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank? How had he made her do it? Money? Drugs? Had they been lovers? Bachev’s phone records showed repeated calls to Jenkins & Altshuler, but they had been short, none lasting longer than fifteen seconds, almost like hang-ups, with no calls from Reilly’s office back to Bachev. Not a single one.

  And even if Reilly had some hand in the shooting, it raised the larger question of why. What possible purpose did killing Steinkamp serve? Chaudry could not see a reason. Maybe Reilly, not Bachev, was the one who was mentally unstable.

  Chaudry didn’t know. But she would find out, because untangling complicated cases like this one was what got her to the Manhattan field office in the first place. These cases were what she lived for, and better yet, parsing out the threads of what could be a far-reaching conspiracy was the dream of every FBI agent in the country. If she solved this, she’d be fast-tracked to becoming the youngest agent to run the Bureau’s New York field office. Not youngest female Indian agent. Just the youngest. Period.

  But first, she had to find Garrett Reilly. She wasn’t sure how, but she suspected that he was the key to all of this. Once she arrested him, all the other pieces would fall into place.

  She closed his files and considered her options. Reilly was on the run, an obscure, unknown entity swimming in a sea of anonymity. But it didn’t have to be that way. So far, Chaudry had kept Reilly’s name and picture out of the press—the official word was that Bachev was an unhinged stalker. But perhaps Chaudry needed to change tactics. If Reilly was as smart as he appeared, then she would have to use every bit of leverage to bring him out of the shadows.

  Garrett Reilly needed to become a celebrity in his own right.

  ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA, JUNE 15, 7:45 A.M.

  Alexis Truffant filled her to-go coffee mug and headed out the door of her suburban DC condo. Mentally, she was already bracing herself for the day, which promised to be difficult. Yesterday had been a string of disasters, starting with the shooting of the New York Fed president, and ending with a grilling by a pair of humorless FBI agents. Alexis had answered the FBI as best she could, sticking to the truth mostly, and carefully talking her way around her involvement in tipping-off Garrett Reilly. The agents hadn’t seemed to know about the NSA recording of her phone call, and General Kline never mentioned it, so she found she could answer almost entirely truthfully. Almost.

  The agents wanted background on Garrett and his involvement with the DIA. Kline parried those questions in the usual DIA way—national security this, and national security that—but Garrett was clearly in their sights. They wanted him badly.

  But she’d be damned if she would help the FBI get him. Garrett could not be involved in the shooting of a federal banker. Garrett might yell and scream, be difficult and subversive, even punch someone in the face in a bar brawl, but assassination was not in his character. She knew him well enough to know that. In truth, she still had feelings for Garrett, no matter what she’d told Kline earlier. She might not love him—perhaps she never had—but the two of them were connected. Emotionally connected. And she could not ignore that. Not yet, at least.

  She walked downstairs and through a hallway to the parking garage. The drive to DIA headquarters was ten minutes, and barring traffic, she’d be there at eight sharp, as she always was. Alexis liked order and predictability. She punched the unlock button on her car-key fob and smiled at the reassuring chirp of her Honda Accord. She was halfway to her driver’s-side door when a voice rang out.

  “Alexis.”

  She practically jumped out of her skin.

  Garrett Reilly stepped out from behind a concrete support beam. He was wearing a gray I ♥ DAYTONA BEACH sweatshirt and jeans, but he had on black wing-tip shoes, as if he’d changed out of most of his clothing from the previous business day, but not all of it. He looked strung out, exhausted, as if he’d aged years since she’d last seen him, not months. She felt a pang of guilt: Had she done that to Garrett? She had recruited him. She had seduced him. Maybe she had broken him as well.

  “Jesus Christ,” Alexis hissed. “You cannot be here, Garrett. It’s not safe. And how the hell did you get here in the first place?”

  “There’s an attack coming.” He moved closer to her, talking quietly, his eyes dancing back and forth, scanning the empty garage.

  “I’d say the attack’s already happened.”

  “That’s just the beginning. Tip of the spear.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” Garrett said much too loudly for Alexis’s comfort. “It’s part of a pattern.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said, trying to stay calm. Her eyes flashed across the garage as well. She guessed that the FBI had not put her under surveillance, but that was just a guess. “Tell me about it. But quietly. And fast.”

  “I’ve found an investment pool that’s tied to illegal activity.”

  “Explain.”

  “A fund. A secret fund. Pretty big—a couple of billion dollars. It only trades in dark pools—”

  “Dark pools?”

  “Invisible exchanges where investors buy and sell stock out of the mainstream. So no one knows they are doing it. Thirty percent of the stocks traded in the US right now are done outside of the major exchanges.”

  “That’s legal?”

  “It’s finance. Legal is a secondary concept.”

  “Okay,” she said. “What’s the name of the fund? Who runs it?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t even prove definitively that it exists.”

  Alexis crossed her arms. In the distance, thunder rumbled. Or perhaps it was just a truck lumbering across the city. She studied Garrett. His skin was pale, his eyes were lined with red, as if he hadn’t slept well in a long time. Alexis could feel the anxiety radiating off his body, as if his paranoia were a physical thing, a second skin that enveloped him. Some part of her wanted to wrap him up in her arms, put him to bed, let him sleep for a week.

  Another part of her wanted to run screaming for safety.

  “Don’t worry,” Garrett said, as if reading her mind. “Mitty drove me. And we stayed off the highways. We watched for cop cars. No one followed us.”

  If Alexis were caught with Garrett Reilly, not only would her career be over, but her life would be as well. Kline had already warned her once. She was breaking any number of federal laws, consorting with a suspect in a capital murder case, and now the proof of her complicity was standing in her garage.

  “Why do you think this fund exists?” she asked, trying to keep Garrett’s eyes on hers.

  “I can see ripple effects. When it sells equities and derivatives. Little variations in price that don’t make sense on the open exchanges. Repeated patterns—”

  “Patterns.”

  “What you pay me to find.”

  “Paid you. You quit.”

  Garrett shrugged. “Repeated patterns of selling. Selling stuff that’s on the margins of the financial system. Derivatives, swaps, low-volume equities. Stuff that you would buy if you wanted to make sure no one was really paying that much attention to what you owned. Or what you did.”

  “Okay. This fund. You know what it’s doing?”

  “There is a correlation coefficient of plus one.”

  “It moves in perfect lockstep?”

  “Yes. A sale and then a real-world event.”

  “And the real world event is?”
/>   “Attacks on corporations and banks. And now the killing of a Federal Reserve president. They’re ratcheting up. Getting bigger.”

  Alexis heard another crash, thunder for sure. A summer storm, far away, over the western suburbs, but closing fast.

  “You’re saying there’s a fund out there—an invisible fund—that paid for Phillip Steinkamp to be shot? That this was a planned assassination? Do you realize the implications of what you’re saying? The level of conspiracy?”

  “It’s bigger than just killing someone. The fund is dedicated to creating a systemic volatility event.”

  Alexis titled her head slightly to one side. “In English, please.”

  “Taking down the US economy.”

  • • •

  Alexis checked each hallway and stairwell in her building before Garrett followed her, clearly terrified that another resident would see him with her. Garrett wanted to laugh at this, but he couldn’t exactly blame her: he was a wanted man. That gave him the slightest of thrills; now he really was dangerous. Of course, he didn’t feel dangerous. He felt hunted.

  When Garrett stepped inside Alexis’s condo apartment, he was flooded with memories. He had been here once before, a year ago, and he and Alexis had spent the night making love. That had been their only night together, but he remembered it perfectly: the sheets, her skin, the orange sunlight streaming in through the windows the next morning. He sat on the far corner of a couch in the living room, and contentment washed over him. He realized he’d wanted to get back here for the last year; not to have sex with Alexis again, but just to sit quietly, in her apartment, alone with her. To talk. To be near her.

  He cursed himself silently for being a sentimental fool. Alexis Truffant had used him for his abilities, then tossed him aside when their relationship no longer mattered. He had to force himself to remember this, to imprint it on his consciousness: Alexis had screwed him over and would again if the circumstances demanded it. He had to keep his distance.

  Garrett watched as Alexis called Kline’s office and told his secretary that she was having car trouble, and that she would be in the office in an hour or so. Then she brewed more coffee and poured Garrett a cup, offering him food as well—breakfast cereal and eggs—which he declined.

  “Where’s Mitty now?”

  “A few blocks away. She’s fine. She knows to wait.”

  Alexis sat across from him in a padded, brown chair, sipping her coffee, her eyes seeming to note everything about him. Garrett realized his fingers were twitching, so he gripped the sofa armrest hard to make them stop. His head ached, and the blood in his veins felt thick, as if it were dry and clotted, as if his heart might explode at any moment from the exertion of pumping. He knew this was withdrawal, a hallucination, but it was powerful, and growing. He had his bag of meds in his back pocket, but he needed to stay off them, at least for the moment. He breathed deep to ease his rising panic.

  Alexis seemed to sense this. “Garrett, listen, I don’t want you to take this wrong, but are you still taking prescription medications?”

  Garrett blinked in surprise. “Fuck you for looking at my medical records.” Christ, he thought to himself, is there absolutely no part of my life that’s private? Am I an open book to the world?

  “You had a top-level security clearance. We have to be careful with everyone who has ever worked for us. You can understand that.”

  “No, I cannot understand that. My personal business is my own. Not yours. What the hell is wrong with you people? What is wrong with this country?”

  “I understand you’re upset, but—”

  “You don’t.” An ember of rage glowed in his chest. “You understand nothing about me. You never have.”

  They sat silently for half a minute. Garrett’s mind raced. He replayed the conversation they’d just had in his head. Had he been too defensive? Yes. Well, no, the DIA had dug into his medical records. That was wrong. And illegal. On the other hand, he was taking too many drugs, even he recognized that. Maybe she was actually worried about him. No, no, and no. His thoughts were ping-ponging back and forth. He slammed shut his eyes and tried to focus on what he had told himself only moments earlier: He had to keep his distance from Alexis. He did not love her anymore. Keep. His. Distance.

  “Did you say something?” she asked, brow creased in concern.

  “What?” he asked. Had he said his thoughts out loud? He slapped his open palm against the sofa cushion, trying to jolt his mind to reality, to the present. He was a mess. His mind was a mess. “No. I was just—nothing.”

  She nodded slowly, as if to say, Okay, I believe you. Sort of. “Can you tell me a little more about this pool? And who you think is behind it?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say a nation-state. Not an ally. But maybe not a full-on enemy either. They’re sending someone into this country. To destabilize things. That’s what they’ve been doing now for weeks. In Europe. Hacking, stealing, causing a bank run.”

  “If it’s cybercrime, why send someone into this country? Why not do it remotely?”

  “It’s not just cybercrime. It’s social engineering. Conning people. You need to be here in person to do that. To make the dominoes fall in the right order.”

  “I saw an intelligence report on the bank run in Malta. You’re saying that’s a part of this?”

  He nodded yes.

  “But Europe is not the United States.”

  “They’re connected. Corporations in London, banks in New York, data centers in Hong Kong. Nothing is truly separate anymore.”

  “And who is this person they’re sending?”

  “An assassin. A financial assassin.”

  Garrett watched Alexis’s reaction, how her lips tightened, how her eyes shot quickly high and to the left, looking out a window, avoiding his gaze. That was a tell. She didn’t believe him. She thought he was crazy; a deranged drug addict. Maybe she thought he did have something to do with the Steinkamp killing.

  “Garrett,” she said calmly, “why don’t you get Mitty to come up here. You guys can hang out in my apartment, and I’ll run your theory past Kline—”

  Garrett laughed. “And then he can call the FBI, and they can take their time coming down to your apartment to arrest me?”

  “If I’d wanted you arrested, I wouldn’t have called you at your office,” she snapped.

  Garrett fell silent. She had a point. Paranoia was wrapping itself around his brain like a noose, cutting off his thoughts, limiting his ability to see the world as it was.

  “It’s just—a billion-dollar fund? Targeting the US economy? A financial assassin? I mean, it’s pretty fantastic. What other sources do you have?”

  “Hans Metternich. He found me last night. Left me a note. That they were coming. Coming to this country.”

  “Hans Metternich? The man you said you met on a subway a year ago? A spy we could never find, no matter how hard we looked?”

  Garrett stood abruptly. Anger shot up through his body, out to his limbs. He stabbed his hands in the air and paced the room. “I’m here to give you a piece of critical information. I don’t even work for your fucking program anymore. And all you think is that I’m nuts? How often have I been wrong in the past?”

  “Calm down.”

  “I will not calm down!” he shouted, marching to the window. He stared out at the row of trees separating her apartment building from the next set of suburban condos. A swimming pool lay just below the window, the blue water sparkling in a blast of yellow sunlight. Garrett knew he was behaving erratically, his anger surging, and that Alexis was on the verge of calling the cops. But why did he even give a shit? The whole world could go down in flames for all he cared: Wall Street and DC and investors and the FBI. Everyone—Alexis included—could go to hell. Let the economy crater—it would serve America right. Rome falls, and something else takes its place. Let them all bur
n in . . .

  No.

  He had an attraction to the chaos, he knew that. Some part of him was drawn to the maelstrom of destruction, that darkest desire to see it all collapse, to watch the rich and the powerful—the very people who always seemed set against him—go down in flames. But there was also a spark of resistance in his brain, the faintest dim light of refusal. He might be angry and isolated and hunted by his own government, but under it all, he did not want everything around him to fall to pieces. He had some humanity left. He could love life more than he wanted his enemies to suffer. Chaos might call to him, but he still craved order more than anarchy.

  Now he just had to convince Alexis.

  He walked across her living room. His eyes tracked the photos on the walls, the books lying on the coffee table, notes on the refrigerator, the gym bag in the corner. He blocked out his rage and let the surroundings wash over him, all the hints and clues about Alexis’s life, the telltale signs of where she had come from, and where she was heading. He didn’t force the process, he just let it unfold, as it always did when he was at his best. A pulse started at the base of his spine, a tiny dot of understanding that began to grow, and suddenly . . . he knew.

  “You need this. You need it badly.”

  “Excuse me?” Alexis asked.

  “You’ve been demoted,” he said, not waiting for her to respond. “No, transferred. Within the agency. Kline too. You’re both doing something meaningless. Your career is stalled out.” He pointed to the coffee table. “The half-read books. Fluff fiction. The magazines. TV Guide. The gym bag in the corner. You go every day. The errands list on your fridge is trivial make-work. You have time to kill. Your job doesn’t take up all your waking hours. It doesn’t even come close to filling them. That’s a change.”

  Alexis let out a soft laugh, but Garrett ignored it. He was right. He could feel it.

  “If you’re trying to impress me, Garrett, it’s not working. You wouldn’t need to come to my apartment to guess those things.”

  “Not guesses, observations. And I don’t give a shit about your past. It’s your future that I’m trying to keep from becoming a disaster.”