The Whole Truth

CHAPTER 64

NICOLAS CREEL WAS GROWING IMPATIENT. He would have thought that the Scribe would have published the story by now. Lesnik was dead; he had told James all. She had the story of the century. The very thing she needed to take her back to the top. So what was the problem?

He had his people place certain tactful phone calls to various sources, including the Scribe. Creel was actually a passive investor in the newspaper and he’d been the one who’d discreetly behind the scenes orchestrated the assignment for her. There seemed to be some tension there, he had learned. She had submitted the story. But they were holding on to it for some reason. Well, he would put a stop to that.

He phoned Pender and explained the situation to his “truth manager,” as Creel liked to refer to him.

“I don’t want to be seen trying to influence the paper, so shake this story loose from them, Dick, any way you can.”

“Never fear, Mr. Creel. I have the perfect way to get it done.”

Pender hung up the phone. There was one surefire way to make a newspaper sitting on a story publish it. And that was make them think they were about to be scooped. In the age of the Internet, it was the easiest thing in the world to do.

By that evening, Pender had planted in several different but highly visible places on the Internet entries implying that a drastic turn of events regarding the London Massacre was about to be revealed.

“Startling new revelations,” one fake blog entry proclaimed. “Insider’s account to be revealed.”

Another said that “global consequences are resting on the murders in England and what really happened there and why,” and that it was connected to another recent murder in London. And that the story would be revealed in full any minute and the truth would be astonishing.

Pender had had these statements placed on sites that he knew most newspapers, including the Scribe, trolled hour by hour for material.

He sat back and waited for them to pull the trigger.

It didn’t take long.

Kevin Gallagher was made aware of the claims on the Web barely an hour after they’d been posted. Like other papers he had staffers posted there to snatch up items of interest. Well, what his people were dropping on his desk were not only matters of interest, they were slowly eating away at Gallagher’s stomach lining. When the higher-ups at the paper discovered that they were about to be beaten to the punch on the biggest story any of them could remember, Gallagher was told in crystal-clear terms that if the Scribe was scooped on this story, it would be the last thing that he ever did as an employee of the paper. And if Katie James wouldn’t agree to release the story, Gallagher had better damn well find a way to do it.

With thoughts of his career and a Pulitzer for the paper going down the tubes, Gallagher did what he felt he had to. And then he called Katie.

“We have to run the story, Katie,” he said. “We’re about to get scooped.”

“That’s impossible. No one else knows.”

“I’m looking at four different Web sources that say otherwise.”

“Kevin, we’re not publishing.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not right.” And I gave Shaw my word.

“I’m sorry, Katie.”

“What do you mean you’re sorry?” she said sharply, her heart starting to pound.

“I didn’t call asking for your permission.”

“Kevin!”

“It’ll be in the morning edition.”

“I am going to kill you!” she screamed into the phone.

“They were going to fire me. I’ll take death over that. Sorry again, Katie, but I’m sure it’ll turn out all right.”

He clicked off and Katie sat there staring at the wall of her London flat. God, did she need a drink.

Then she stopped thinking about booze. Shaw!

She called him, part of her hoping he wouldn’t answer, but he did.

“I have some bad news,” she began lamely.

When she’d finished, he said nothing. She said, “Shaw? Are you there?”

Then the line went dead. She did not take this as a good sign.

The next day the world learned that, according to an inside source, the killers behind the London Massacre were Russians sent there allegedly by Russian president Gorshkov. Their motive was as yet unknown. To say that this hit the earth like a molten-lava tsunami would have been the grossest of understatements.

Dozens of lawsuits were immediately filed by the victims’ families against the Russian government in British courts, even though those tribunals had no jurisdiction. A small bomb exploded outside the Russian embassy in London. Security was beefed up as protestors marched in front of the building, while the grim-faced ambassador was holed up inside burning up the phone lines to Gorshkov. On the streets of London thousands of marchers carried flags reading “Gorshkov is a murderer.” They’d been discreetly supplied by people working with Pender.

The families of the victims appeared on the BBC, all major U.S. networks, and also in several other countries. All denounced Russia’s atrocity, and their tearful faces and crushed hearts made a stunned world reach a level of apoplectic fury that had been seen very few times in history.

Stoking the inferno even more was the revelation that the inside source, Aron Lesnik, had been shot down in broad London daylight. In fact, he’d died right in front of Katie James, who’d just zoomed back to the top of the journalism world after her exclusive bombshell.

The Russians again issued stern denials of it all. And these statements made not a dent in the opinion of the world. Gorshkov was said to be so crazed that he was walking around the Kremlin carrying a gun and threatening to blow his and anybody else’s brains out at any moment.

Everyone wanted to find Katie James. As did the London police once they realized they’d been snookered by the intrepid journalist. Only she’d disappeared. There were rumors flying around that Gorshkov had ordered her killed.

Was she already dead? A few billion people wondered.

As soon as Shaw had hung up on her Katie had packed her bag and fled. She’d found a room at a decrepit boardinghouse that accepted cash and asked no personal questions at all. She settled in – no, burrowed in was a more appropriate term. She vowed that if she survived all this, her first order of business would be to fly to the States and take a baseball bat to Kevin Gallagher’s knees.