The next night, Bourne parked the stolen Ford Bronco at a neighborhood bar in the downscale West End district of Atlanta. There was no urban feel to the area, just wide-open lots and old houses tucked among the trees and telephone wires. Across the street was a car wash, and next door was a discount warehouse. The bar was busy. Live music played from inside, and outside a food truck served up meat pies to a long line of customers. He and Abbey found a picnic bench along the side of the bar and ordered beers.
Abbey kept an eye on the people arriving.
“Sloane said ten o’clock,” she commented. “If he shows up, that is. He didn’t sound excited about the idea of getting together. Not that I blame him. I’m toxic at this point. Plus, it’s not like we were really friends. We took a few classes together at McGill, and we both worked for The Fort, but we didn’t really hang out together.”
“How did he end up in Atlanta?” Bourne asked.
“He got married. His wife’s from here, and she had a good job with Delta. It was easier for him to move than her. I think he’s had a rough go, though. The Journal-Constitution wasn’t hiring, and he ended up taking a job at a weekly business newspaper. It’s not much money and not much of a profile for a top-notch reporter. But if I know Sloane, he’s still clued in on the political scene. He was always a wizard at finding sources.”
She waved at a man near the food truck, and Jason saw a tall, thin Black man acknowledge them and head their way. Sloane Jenks carried a meat pie in one hand and a half-pint of dark ale in the other. He wore a button-down blue shirt and jeans with cuffs upturned at his ankles. He had only a thinning crown of hair left on his head, but his beard was full and neatly trimmed. The black frames of his glasses gave him an austere look, and he didn’t smile as he greeted Abbey. The look he shot Bourne was equally cold as Abbey introduced them, using Jason’s cover as Alan Longworth.
“It’s good to see you, Sloane,” Abbey said when they were all sitting down again. “Thanks for meeting me.”
“You said it was important, but I’m not sure what you want.” He took a sip of beer and eyed both of them. “You’re in the big bad Black city, Abbey. Aren’t you afraid someone is going to steal your car?”
Abbey made a little hiss through her teeth. “Fuck, Sloane. Do I really need to tell you that the story was bullshit? I was set up. It wasn’t me.”
“Sure sounded like you.”
“Well, it wasn’t.”
“Uh-huh.” Sloane didn’t look convinced. He used a plastic fork to take a bite of his meat pie, and he chewed slowly. “Steak, mushroom, and ale. Best in Atlanta. You should try it.”
“I’m serious,” Abbey went on. “That post wasn’t me. The woman calling into the radio station wasn’t me, either.”
“And why would anybody go through that kind of trouble to set you up?”
“Because of a story I’m pursuing.”
“Uh-huh,” Sloane said again. He focused on Bourne. “And who are you? Her lawyer?”
“Let’s just say I’m after the people who targeted Abbey,” Bourne replied.
He watched Sloane take his measure from the other side of the bench. Abbey was right that the man had good instincts, because the reporter’s eyes narrowed with a new curiosity, sizing up Bourne as someone who didn’t fit easily into any of the usual equations. Sloane took note of the jacket that Bourne was wearing on a warm Georgia night, and he frowned, probably guessing correctly that the coat hid a gun.
“Well, I’m here,” Sloane said, digging into the meat pie again. “You might as well tell me what you want.”
Abbey leaned forward. “Have you heard of a group called the Pyramid?”
Sloane froze with the fork halfway to his mouth. He shoved the fork back into the meat pie and pushed it away, as if he’d lost his appetite. “Nope. Never heard of it.”
“It looks to me like you have,” Bourne said.
“I don’t care what it looks like. I’ve never heard of the Pyramid.”
“We just saw Walden Thatcher,” Abbey told him. “He says a group called the Pyramid is manipulating stories. Censoring them. And shutting down anyone who gets in their way. Like me.”
Sloane picked up his glass of beer, then put it down without drinking. He took a slow look at the other tables on the patio, then turned his attention back to the two of them. When he spoke again, his voice was light, as if he wanted to switch their conversation to safer ground. “Walden, huh? How’s the old man doing these days?”
“Still as sharp as ever,” Abbey said.
“I remember his lectures in that class we took at McGill. That commanding voice of his, broaching no disagreement. ‘The greatest sin for any reporter is to become part of the story. Self-referential journalism isn’t journalism at all. It’s nothing more than mental masturbation. The word that you should avoid in your stories at all costs, like rats scurrying from the plague, is the word I.’ ”
Abbey smiled. “I remember that, too.”
“Of course, Walden lost that battle long ago, didn’t he? It’s all self-indulgent bullshit these days.”
“Not your work,” Abbey replied. “And not mine.”
Sloane shrugged. “We’re fighting a losing battle.”
She reached across the table and took his wrist. “Talk to us, Sloane. We think the Pyramid was involved in the Georgia Senate race last year. The contest that Sadie Adamson won. If they were, then you must have come face-to-face with them somehow. I know you. If there were rumors floating around the state, you would have heard them.”
There was an immediate change in Sloane’s demeanor at the mention of the Senate election. Bourne watched the reporter’s fingers tighten around his beer glass. The man’s face flinched, surveying the patio again, worried that they were being watched. Then he shifted his attention back to Bourne. “So was this your idea, coming here? Is this some kind of test? Who the fuck are you?”
“Sloane, I’m the one who wanted to talk to you,” Abbey told him.
“Leave me alone. Both of you. Leave my family alone. I did what you wanted. Isn’t that enough?”
He swung around on the bench, then pushed himself up and marched toward the parking lot. Abbey looked stunned by Sloane’s response, and Bourne took her quickly by the arm, and the two of them followed. They rushed to catch up with him, and Bourne spoke softly, but loud enough for the reporter to hear.
“I don’t know what threats they made against you, but we’re not part of them. We’re trying to stop them.”
“You’re lying. Get away from me.”
“He’s not lying, Sloane,” Abbey insisted. “Don’t you get it? They came after me, too.”
Sloane said nothing. He continued toward a white Kia parked near the street, but as he opened the driver’s door, Bourne slammed it closed again. “Yesterday they killed an editor named Tom Blomberg in Washington. Did you read about that? They blew up his car. Abbey and I were there when it happened. They were targeting her, too. They’re shutting down everyone that might expose what they did. If you know something, then you’re next on the list. How long do you think it’s going to be before they come after you?”
The reporter squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t care about me. They can do what they want to me. But they threatened my wife and my little girl, too. Somebody got close enough to my wife to slip a garrote into her purse. I told her it was probably some gangbanger ditching evidence, but I knew what it really was. When I picked up my daughter at school the next day, there was a guy watching us from across the street. Just watching, not doing anything, but making sure I spotted him. It was a message. Drop the story, and shut the fuck up. You think I’m going to take any chances with shit like that?”
“Talk to us,” Bourne said. “Right now, we’re your best hope.”
“No way.”
Abbey took his shoulder. “No one will know the information came from you.”
“They’ll know,” Sloane replied, “because I’m the only one who has it. They’ll know I gave it to you.”
“Gave us what?”
He breathed hard, his nostrils flaring. “A video I took.”
“A video?” Abbey asked. “Of what?”
“The fire.”
“Sloane, please. Tell us what happened.”
The reporter glanced around the parking lot. A gravel road led to the back of the bar, and there was a band of tall trees behind the road, separating the building from a residential neighborhood behind it. Sloane gestured that way with his head, and the three of them headed for the trees. The darkness swallowed them up at the back of the parking lot, but Sloane still kept a nervous eye on their surroundings.
“You know the race, right? Sadie Adamson was the left-wing candidate. No one figured she had a chance down here. Marshall Gage was an Atlanta cop, well liked, moderate, or at least that was the image he put out there. Then stories started showing up. Most of them were national, not local, which is strange to begin with. We know this area, they don’t. But interviews began to run with people claiming that Gage had a long history of pulling over Blacks on pretext stops, roughing up suspects, some real racist shit. There was talk of bodycam footage being covered up by the department. Now, I’m the first to tell you, you don’t have to search hard to find cops like that down here. But this is my beat, and I never heard any of that shit about Gage. Maybe I missed it, but I figured it was worth a second look to see whether this was all legit. I started digging into the stories, and nothing added up. Hell, most of the people being interviewed on the morning shows, I couldn’t even find them. It was like they didn’t exist. I started writing about it, but my stories disappeared. Nobody picked them up. Nobody listened. Anybody who shared them on social media had their accounts disabled. It was fucking weird. And by the time the riots started, demanding Gage quit the race, believe me, the narrative was done. There was no changing it.”
“And the fire?” Bourne asked.
“It was a downtown building. Closed because of the pandemic and supposedly empty. It got torched during the riots. Except the building wasn’t empty at all. Several homeless families had been squatting there, and nine people died, including three children. The outrage was overwhelming, and it only got hotter when two white supremacists were arrested for setting the blaze. Newspapers and politicians all over the country called for Gage to get out of the race. He kept denying everything, but to the party, he was damaged goods. He dropped out a few weeks before the election, and Adamson won easily.”
Abbey shook her head. “So what did you get on video?”
“The guy who really started the fire,” Sloane replied.
“It wasn’t the two they arrested?”
“I don’t think so. I was downtown filming the unrest that night. There were plenty of bad actors around, but most of the shit was petty fights, looting, broken windows, that kind of thing. The fire was on a whole different level. I’d been shooting video with my phone right around that area, but I didn’t even know what I had until I reviewed the footage later. As soon as I saw it, I tried to get the news out there. Posted it. Wrote about it. But the same weird shit happened. The story and the video both fell down a hole. Nobody would touch it. The social media platforms shut it down. I started to make noise and reach out to some of my national contacts, and that’s when the threats started. I’m used to the usual anonymous crap I get on email, racist messages on my phone, whatever. I can deal with that. But this was different. This was organized and serious, and I didn’t doubt for a second that they meant business. If I kept pushing to get the story out there, they’d kill me and kill my family.”
“Who really started the fire?” Bourne asked.
Sloane heard something in the trees, and he shot a look over his shoulder. He hesitated, then kept going. “You’ve heard rumors about this guy they call Umbrella Man? He shows up at riots, but nobody knows who he is? I caught him on video coming out of the building. A minute later, there’s an explosion—a series of explosions—and the whole place goes up. He did it. He fucking did it. But he’s masked, and the umbrella hides him most of the time. I don’t know who he is, but somebody really didn’t want him getting the blame.”
Abbey put a hand on his shoulder. “Give us a copy of the video.”
“And have them go after my wife and daughter? No.”
“At least let us see it,” she said.
Sloane frowned. His body twitched with anxiety, but then he reached into a pocket and brought out his phone. With a few taps, he queued up the video, and Bourne and Abbey leaned together to watch it. It was hard to make out anything on the small screen. The video had been filmed at night in the middle of chaos, with hundreds of people running back and forth on the streets and sirens blaring in the background. Clouds of tear gas descended like a cloud, and the video jittered as Sloane gagged while doing the filming. For a while, everything went out of focus, and then as the camera steadied, they saw a three-story redbrick building on the other side of the downtown street.
“He shows up now,” Sloane said.
They watched closely. Very clearly, they saw a tall man emerging through a broken window in the building and dropping gracefully to the ground. He was masked and too far away to make out any details about him, even when Sloane paused the video and enlarged the frame. As the playback continued, they watched the man pop an umbrella that covered his face and torso. Then he headed for the street.
Bourne froze. He asked Sloane to replay the footage and then replay it again. The walk! He knew that walk. He’d seen that odd floating gait before, and it was always a precursor to murder.
Lennon.
Lennon had been in Atlanta. Lennon had started the fire.
“Do you see something?” Sloane asked. “Do you know who that man is?”
Jason’s voice was clipped. “No. I thought I saw something, but I was wrong. What does he do next?”
“I lose him pretty fast,” Sloane said. “The explosions are coming soon.”
“Keep going anyway.”
The video continued as Umbrella Man walked away from the building, heading down the Atlanta streets at an unhurried pace. He even twirled his umbrella in his hand for show. But just before he walked out of the video frame, he stopped, passing a woman on the sidewalk. It wasn’t obvious whether they knew each other, or whether the meeting was a coincidence, but Bourne thought a message had passed between them.
The woman’s profile was to the camera, but then she turned, showing her face.
“Stop!” Abbey hissed. “Back up, enlarge it, let me see her again.”
Sloane did. He zoomed in on the woman on the street, and even at that distance, there was no mistaking the face.
“That’s Deborah Mueller,” Abbey murmured. “That’s Louisa.”