Harold W. Smith was a man who kept up on current events. It was the very definition of his work. If he was the sort of man who had friends, he could have been a brilliant and depressing conversationalist. Everybody wants to know the latest news. Unfortunately, far fewer people want to know one more way the country may be headed for disaster.
Even so, ya Homaar was something barely on his radar, and with good reason. Until very recently, the would-be terror group never existed. The first mention of them Smith found was in some encrypted CIA messages the CURE computer had intercepted and decoded, regarding a faction that had split off from Daesh over the fundamentals of whether martyrs of jihad were going to get seventy-two virgins in heaven, or seventy and two virgins, with ya Homaar proposing the latter meant they would receive two virgins and seventy of some other unknown treasure. There were a few beheadings over the dogmatic schism, and when it was over those who survived formed ya Homaar and took to hiding in the caves of Afghanistan. They never did make clear what the other seventy might mean, but they had ideas that it must be something better than virgins.
Smith had the CURE systems run a full cross-reference on all known ya Homaar survivors and their whereabouts. He furrowed his brow in frustration that the system persisted in dragging in stories about global tremors, obscuring any real national threats, but he hadn’t yet had the opportunity to bring the matter to the programmers. He grabbed the floating object of earthquake stories and dragged it over to the recycle bin. This forced the latest ya Homaar references into the foreground, and he searched through them for potential threats. Finding nothing, he implemented a search across all the other systems that made up the true depth of CURE’s reach, and then moved on to systems used by hackers and trolls like Incognito and Forchun. Smith found the users there puerile and attention-hungry, but their access to information through social media was unparalleled, so long as it was filtered by something as uninterested in gossip as the CURE search engine—or Smith himself.
Smith found an airline passenger manifest a few months back that included one Abdel Kassab, formerly a student at the University of Cairo who had abandoned the pursuit of his doctorate in neuroscience for a career in making online videos shouting “Death to America” as frequently as possible. The itinerary placed him in Los Angeles. By the time Smith had read that far, the system was already employing facial recognition to every captured image from surveillance cameras all around the city, following him to the taxi stand outside LAX, to a traffic light in Burbank where his cab driver ran through a red light, and ultimately to the foyer of the Billy Walker Evangelistic Outreach Watchtower.
Smith wondered what would bring an insurgent like Abdel to the home of what he would consider the greatest infidel America could produce. Smith knew the building hadn’t suffered an attack, but that didn’t mean that Kassab hadn’t left something behind that was yet to be felt. He called up all the footage from the building, and watched as Abdel paced nervously in the foyer before going directly to the information desk. A few minutes later, he was allowed passage through the turnstile where he took an elevator to the top floor.
Several minutes later, Kassab returned to the foyer, looking dazed with bliss. He looked up, laughed, and then skipped to the exit with the exuberance of a child. Smith followed him back into another cab, through two more red-light cameras, and back to LAX where he purchased a one-way ticket to Herat. Shortly after that, ya Homaar began to bubble up in the headlines of terrorist attacks—somewhat bungled ones, though still resulting in the loss of lives. The attacks were focused in the Middle East, but were also occurring at random around the world.
Smith didn’t like the implications. The notion that someone within Walker’s organization was funneling money to a terrorist organization was incomprehensible. Unless, Smith thought, someone had intentionally infiltrated the work of “America’s Pastor” with the intention of using the charitable organization’s vast wealth for other purposes.
Smith added the Evangelistic Outreach Watchtower to the keywords of the computer’s regular list of triggers. Almost immediately the system brought up a page 12 story from the Los Angeles Times about a mugging-turned-murder. A man, Jacob Riser, had been found in an alleyway, his wallet and life both stolen from him. Crime scene photographs began to sprout up next to the article, showing Riser’s lifeless body, face down on the pavement, his left hand extended outward above his body. Optical character recognition subroutines boxed any letters in the image and represented them in plain text. Graffiti on the wall was sorted to the bottom of the extracted words as irrelevant or meaningless. Appearing at the top of each list for each picture, however, was a numerical representation: 1:49. Smith peered at the photo and saw it was smeared on the lower corner of the garbage dumpster near Riser. It seemed obvious the numbers were written by the dying man in his own blood, but there was nothing in the police reports about it. Smith frowned. It was no surprise. The last thing any beat cop wants is a Raymond Chandler mystery interfering with his pursuit of a pension.
But what was the connection to Walker? What algorithm caused the system to highlight this event? Smith called up the digitized evidence locker to see what else might be important. Aside from the discarded wallet, the police had collected: one cellular phone (broken from impact), one keychain (with three keys), one page of itinerary, and two rabbit’s foot charms.
The LAPD had thoughtfully taken digital images of all the items, saving Smith the need to have someone examine the physical evidence. Smith looked at the aforementioned itinerary sheet, which was little more than a list of cities and timestamps, none of which matched up to any events on his radar. He dragged a copy of the image over to his desktop for later analysis, and moved on to the cellular phone.
Within moments, Smith had pulled up a list of Riser’s calls, including one made only minutes before his demise to a Chicago number. The police had no doubt called the number, but Smith was just as sure that they had asked all the wrong questions. He punched in a sequence of numbers, then added the last number from Riser’s history. The phone on the other end would display an incoming call from Pinnacle News, which could be verified if the person felt the need to do so. Most didn’t.
The phone rang twice.
“Yeah?” the voice sounded from the other end.
“Mr. Schultz, please,” Smith said.
“Take me off your list,” Schultz said, right before the line went dead. Smith redialed. He dialed again. The phone continued going to voice mail.
A few keystrokes, and Smith found another number and dialed it.
After one ring, Smith got a response, “Yeah?” Apparently Schultz didn’t have a Hello in him.
“Mr. Schultz, my name is Harold Smith, and…”
“Boy, you got some nerve, calling me up at my place of business. You know my cell phone is on the Do Not Call list! I should have you reported.”
Smith let him rant, then interrupted. “Mr. Schultz, I’m not calling to sell you anything. I’m calling about Jacob Riser.”
That earned Smith a pause from Schultz. “Yeah, I know. I heard,” Schultz finally said. “I already talked to the cops, so I know you’re not a cop. What’s your angle?”
Smith cleared his throat. This Schultz was not one for small talk. Smith’s admiration for him was instant, so he cut to the chase. “Billy Walker.”
“Ah, Christ,” Schultz moaned. “Even in death, Riser’s killing me.”
So there was a connection after all, Smith mused. “Can you help me out?” Smith asked. “What was the story between those two?”
Schultz sighed. “Look, if you’re trying to put together a piece on Walker based on Jake’s death, let me give you some free advice. Don’t do it. You can thank me when you retire with your 401k intact.”
“I’m going to need more information than that,” Smith pressed. “Did they have a history?”
“History!” Schultz barked a laugh. “Yeah, you could call it that. You really don’t know, do you?” He exhaled, preparing to launch into a story he did not like telling. “Fine, but do me a favor. Leave me out of it, okay?”
Smith averred that Schultz’s name wouldn’t be published in any story he wrote. Which, since he didn’t plan on writing anything, and didn’t have the imagination for such a thing in the first place, was the truth.
“All right,” Schultz said. “This was years ago, see? You couldn’t turn on the tube without seeing some story about one famous religious guy or another getting outed with a prostitute or scamming his followers. It was the hot topic. You get one of those stories, you got instant audience, you know?”
Smith made a grunt of acknowledgment as if he remembered the time well and understood exactly what Schultz meant.
“So Jake, he’s just this cub reporter, right? And he’s eager. He’s a decent writer, and he’s had a couple of breaks on the Chicago crime beat, so people are starting to notice him. I’d taken him under my wing, all right? Mentored him a little. Don’t write that down, though.”
“No, of course not,” Smith said.
“So anyway, Jake’s not blind,” Schultz continued. “He’s hungry, and he sees which way the wind is blowing. So he says he’s looking into Walker. Back then, Walker wasn’t famous. Not nationally. He was something of a local celebrity, though. Had a megachurch just down in Lockport. Did a weekly show every Sunday morning. And Jake, he figures maybe he can find something, get a good local story.”
Smith couldn’t see where this was going. Was Riser killed out of some kind of revenge for exposing something about Walker so long ago? “What did he find?” he asked.
“Bupkus!” Schultz said. “But we didn’t know that. He came in with some bullshit story about embezzlement and scamming—the usual spiel that matched so many other guys, you know? I guess that’s why it was so believable.” He paused. “I vouched for that son of a bitch,” he added bitterly. “So The Clarion ran the story. Walker sued. Not that I blame him for that. The boys, they were so invested now in Jake’s story being on the up and up, they wouldn’t settle out of court and retract. They forced it into court. And let me tell you, that got an audience!”
Schultz was on a roll now, and didn’t need any prompting from Smith. “In the end, the jury awarded him a cool million. And you know what he did? He dropped it to court costs. All he wanted was for the paper to print a retraction. And he still got rich. You know why? Because America saw something they thought didn’t exist—an honest man. That little Sunday morning show of his went national. Money came pouring in like water, and every penny of it went exactly where Walker told everyone it did. He’s got the big fancy glass tower on the west coast now, a global operation. And he still pulls down pretty much the same salary he always has.”
“I don’t understand,” Smith said. “This was years ago. Was Jacob Riser still pursuing Walker on the night he died?”
“He just couldn’t let it go,” Schultz said. “He’d lost his job, his credibility. Best he could do was write tabloid crap, and even that he had to do with a pseudonym. But he always kept one eye on Walker, always waited for the guy to trip up so he could have his vindication. Poor son of a bitch. So that night, he calls me up, says he’s finally got something, something big.”
“Did he say what it was?” Smith asked.
“I didn’t give him a chance,” Schultz said. “Fool me once, you know? I told him to take a hike. Damn. That must have been just a few minutes before he got mugged in that alley. Poor son of a bitch,” he repeated.
“I see,” Smith said. “Thank you, Mr. Schultz. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Who, me?” Schultz said. “I didn’t say a thing. I never even heard from you.”
“I understand,” Smith said. “Thank you anyway.” But Schultz had already disconnected.
Smith planted his elbows on his desk, propped up his chin and thought. If this Riser fellow was doggedly checking up on Walker’s ministries, he might have stumbled across whoever it was in the organization who had met with ya Homaar. If so, it was quite probable Riser’s death wasn’t a mugging after all, and far from random.