The gulls swooped against the blue sky, their hungry screeches ringing out as they circled the heaps of garbage. Rory tracked their passage as he stood at the fence looking out over the water. A chill wind blasted from the north, but he felt toasty in his thick overcoat.
He was worried about the woman standing beside him. She shivered from time to time in her thin hoodie and she had a hollow, hungry look to her face. He wanted to offer her his coat, but he didn’t want to offend her with some patriarchal nonsense. She was tough, though, he could see that. She didn’t complain. And more than anything, her investigation had dug far deeper than he’d ever imagined.
‘Let’s assess what we know,’ he said. ‘You think the people-trafficking gang is a dead end?’
‘They’re dangerous, no doubt about that. Hard. They’re running a lucrative trade and they’re linked to some extremely powerful people in DC who wouldn’t be happy to see their names exposed, to say the very least. Would they have brought down a plane if they thought Maria Elian might still expose them? Absolutely.’
Rory nodded. ‘And I’d say the lieutenants wouldn’t have any qualms about taking out their leader, Dragov, under those circumstances. What about the evangelist woman?’
‘Definitely sick. The experts don’t think it was Ebola, but she’d travelled upriver. Who knows what she might have contracted.’
‘OK. How about the psychic witch? She sounds like quite a character.’
‘That’s one way of describing her. A con artist with ties to a war criminal.’
Rory watched the gulls fight over some choice piece of garbage. ‘Unless the spirits really were in touch with her, she had knowledge Flight 702 was in danger. I think you’re right – she could have been tipped off by her friends in low places.
‘Though why she got on board in the first place …’ He turned over his thoughts. ‘But the important thing to me is that her story, that knowledge, hints at a plot, a wider conspiracy, perhaps a terrorist threat. Something that was circulating among that fraternity.’
‘And she mentioned the Syrian doctor, Mohammad Aziz, the immunologist. The FBI agent, Dennison, suggested he might have something to do with biological warfare. Maybe he was what set the alarm bells ringing for the psychic witch. Why she decided to get out of there.’ Kaitlin gripped the chain-link fence. She was staring at the water, but she seemed to be a million miles away.
‘What did you think about Aziz’s colleague, the egghead you met at the conference in Atlanta?’
‘He didn’t put my mind at rest, let’s say that.’
‘OK. I’m moving Aziz right to the top of the list until we get some confirmation that he’s innocent. No point speculating exactly what he did, but he’s certainly a person of interest. But Dennison interests me, too. FBI. He could have access to information that’s out of our reach. He thinks the plane is still in one piece, hidden by some government agency. Is that right?’
‘Yeah. I’m not sure how much we should trust anything Dennison says, though. He’s got some mental health issues. A lot of them.’
Rory nodded. ‘Still, you’ve got a lot of important information. It’s amazing you’ve done all this on your own.’
‘What, for a girl?’
‘Oh my Lord, you’re hard work. OK. We’ve got a lot of pieces of the puzzle. Now we need to start fitting them together.’
That night, as Kaitlin tried to sleep, her phone buzzed and lit up the dark bedroom. It was Amelia.
‘Hey. What’s up?’ she asked, rubbing her eyes and trying to hide the exhaustion in her voice.
‘Mate, you need to get out of there, fast,’ Amelia hissed, sounding tense. ‘You need to run.’
‘What? What are you talking about? Amelia, what’s wrong?’
‘I’ve just got back from a meeting with campus security.’
Kaitlin sat bolt upright. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘I’m fine. This isn’t about me. Look, I don’t know what you’ve been getting up to since you’ve been here, but you’ve pissed off some very bad people. Our dorm got trashed. At first, I thought it was just some frat boys playing a prank. But then there were some seriously low-rent thugs asking after you all over campus, all gold chains, tattoos and Eastern European accents.’
Dragov’s gang. It had to be.
‘I told campus security and they’re doing regular sweeps,’ Amelia continued. ‘But those guys are still around, watching. Thought I ought to warn you.’
Kaitlin felt a rising tide of guilt. ‘I’m so sorry you had to deal with that. The last thing I wanted was you getting dragged into this.’
‘Don’t worry about me. What are you getting yourself into, mate?’
‘The less you know, the better. Thank you for warning me. Just … stay as far away from me as possible. I won’t call you. Don’t call me.’
‘Kaitlin, you’re meant to be my best mate. What the actual fuck is going on?’
‘I can’t say any more right now. You just have to trust me.’
All thoughts of sleep were now gone. Once she’d hung up, Kaitlin felt bad about pushing Amelia away, but she knew it was in her friend’s best interests not to get dragged into her mess. And now she had another wave of paranoia washing over her. Not only was she trying to avoid the attention of government agencies, but it seemed she was going to have to stay one step ahead of a brutal criminal gang, too.
Kaitlin closed her eyes, but she knew sleep wasn’t going to come easily.
News Recordings
British Newscaster
The three missing British schoolgirls believed to have travelled to Turkey as part of an attempt to join ISIS have likely reached Syria, British police have said. They’re thought to be the victims of online grooming by a woman known as the White Matchmaker, because of her success recruiting jihadi brides from the West for ISIS fighters.
Terrorism Expert
If you look at Islamic terrorist organisations in the last fifteen years, many have tried to recruit girls and have been very unsuccessful. But ISIL has had a very aggressive social media campaign of deliberately targeting girls and they’ve had a great success.
British Newscaster
A British Islamic State recruiter known as the White Matchmaker and her twelve-year-old son are believed to have been killed in a US-led bombing raid on Aleppo in Syria. Sources say she died close to the border between Syria and Iraq, in a strike also thought to have killed her son.