Page 36 of Go First
“That’s why it has to be watertight,” Phillips said, almost fierce.“And why it’s taking so long.Every fact checked, every source corroborated.Men like Whitfield don’t just sue, they destroy.If you want to take them down, you’d better have a mountain of evidence behind you.”
“I was under the impression that dead men can’t sue,” Marcus said.
“Their estates can.You think these foundations and institutions are going to crumble just because the figurehead’s gone?Don’t you know how Christianity was born?”
There was a silence.Kate let it stretch, then said softly, “Would you be willing to share what you have so far?”
Phillips hesitated.Then she nodded briskly.“I’ll print you a draft of what there is so far.It’s messy, needs an edit, absolutelynoneof it is cleared for printing or quoting or forwarding…” Here she fixed them with a steely gaze over the top of her spectacles.“But you’ll get the picture.”She stood, smoothing her skirt.“It’ll just take a minute.The departmental printer is on the main floor.”
As she left, Marcus’s eyes flicked instantly to the connecting door.
Kate’s voice was quiet, warning.“Marcus—”
But he was already moving, a silent glide across the floor.He slipped through the door like a shadow.
Kate sat stiffly, listening to the hum of the radiator, the faint clatter of keyboards in the outer office.After a few minutes she coughed—once, sharply, hoping the sound would be enough to pull him back.
The door behind her opened again, and Angela Phillips returned, carrying a thick stack of papers.She looked at Kate, then at the empty space beside her.The silence was sharp as a blade.
“Your partner?”she asked, voice deceptively mild.
Kate forced a cough again, exaggerated this time, but Marcus didn’t reappear.
Phillips’s expression cooled.She walked past Kate and opened the connecting door herself.Kate followed her sheepishly.
“Curious, Agent?”
Marcus straightened guiltily, caught mid-step.Kate saw his eyes flick once to the wall and understood why.
Every inch of plaster was covered.Newspaper clippings, printed articles, glossy photographs fixed with push-pins in a ragged mosaic.Whitfield at a podium, Harper shaking hands with politicians, headlines screaming about prosperity ministries and financial fraud.But interspersed with the press clippings were other images—grainy shots taken through telephoto lenses, both men in assignations: Whitmore with a voluptuous blonde companion in a fancy restaurant, Harper handing a briefcase to the driver of a silver humvee.And in the corner, unmistakably, stills from surveillance cameras, timestamped, some of them no more than a few weeks old.
Phillips made no move to hide it.She only crossed her arms, standing beside Marcus, her profile sharp against the chaos of images.
“I’m working on the chapters about Whitfield and Harper,” she said, matter-of-fact.“This is my aide-memoire.Easier to arrange it on a wall than in files.”
“Surveillance footage?”Kate asked, carefully neutral.
Phillips nodded.“Yes.Some public, some less so.You don’t expose men like these without evidence.They would sue me into oblivion otherwise.So I document.I corroborate.If that means photographing who they sneak into hotels with, so be it.Every lie they lived, I will drag into the light.”
Kate stepped closer, scanning the wall.It did look like research, the obsessive compilation of a scholar building a case.And yet something about it made her uneasy: the sheer density, the pins clustering like constellations, the red lines connecting dates and locations.It spoke of obsession.
Then her eyes caught on something else.On the back of the office door, mounted high, hung an object gleaming faintly in the dull light.
A sword.Long, curved, unmistakably Japanese.
Kate’s heart jolted.An authentic katana—or, more specifically, a samurai sword, polished steel edge reflecting just enough light to draw the eye.
She shot Marcus a look.His eyebrows twitched in the barest acknowledgment.
Angela Phillips followed her gaze, then smiled faintly.“Ah.That.A gift, many years ago.I spent time in Japan after leaving the mission field.Studying the clash between Shintoism and charismatic Christianity.”
Her voice was too calm.
Kate closed her notebook.“We’ll need you to come with us, Dr.Phillips.Back to Bureau headquarters.”
Phillips tilted her head, regarding them both with an expression caught between amusement and irritation.“On what grounds?”
Kate held her gaze.“On the grounds that two men you denounced met their ends in a remarkably ritualized fashion, and your office wall looks like an intelligence operation.You have sufficient medical knowledge to perform a whole extraction of the victims’ tongues.And that sword, meanwhile, looks remarkably sharp.”