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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

LONDON, ENGLAND

SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 2023

1:00 A.M.

I have obtained Mr. Smythe’s home addresses as well as the location of his workplace in London,” Frigg began. “His private chauffeur remains at his estate in Sevenoaks, so he uses a car service for transportation back and forth to work from his residence on Prince Albert Road to Cybersecurity’s headquarters on Fleet Street. His pickups for those are at seven thirty a.m. and four thirty p.m. He employs the same car service to take him back and forth between his office and his club near Piccadilly Circus, where he goes for lunch on an almost daily basis. Pickups for those are scheduled for eleven thirty a.m. and one thirty p.m. respectively.”

“Can you send me the actual addresses?” Cami asked.

“Yes,” Frigg replied. “Addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses will be sent via encrypted text for ease of copying. Right now I’m just hitting the tall points.”

“You mean the high points,” Cami corrected.

“Yes, of course,” Frigg agreed, “the high points.”

“Mr. Smythe’s marital situation is currently in a state of flux,” the AI continued. “He and Margaret, his wife of twenty-six years, are in the process of divorcing. At this point she still resides on the family estate outside the town of Sevenoaks, which is located in Kent, about an hour or so outside London. The property is currently listed for sale at 3.7 million pounds.”

“Sounds like quite the estate all right,” Cami said. “How did he manage to hang on to that when his finances were so bad back in 2020?”

“I believe his business dealings with the Bulgarians may have had something to do with that. As requested, I was able to gain access to his contacts as well as his calendar. This evening, it shows he will be attending a performance of Medea at the Soho Place Theater. Curtain time is seven thirty p.m., with a note that says pick up Elissa at home at five thirty.”

“Who’s Elissa?” Cami asked.

“That would be Elissa Rogers, age twenty-six. She’s a high-end model.”

“Of course she is.” Cami said.

“She’s also three years older than Mr. Smythe’s twenty-three-year-old daughter, Michelle.”

And suddenly, just like that, everything Cami needed arrived at what she would later describe to Mateo as a moment of divine inspiration. Frigg continued to drone on with her verbal report, but Cami was no longer listening. She suddenly knew exactly how to take down Mr. Smythe without ever needing to meet up with him in person and without putting a target on her own back.

Years earlier, Cami had essentially dismantled Adrian Willoughby’s life by contacting his estranged wife’s divorce attorney and letting him know, by way of an anonymous tip, about Adrian’s current love life. Naturally the attorney had taken the bit in his teeth and run with it, forcing Adrian to cough up child support for all his children, legitimate and otherwise.

From a divorce attorney’s point of view, George Smythe’s situation would be far more interesting than Adrian’s. For one thing, there were large sums of money involved, most of which, Cami suspected, his estranged wife knew nothing about. Tracking down those hidden assets was something any self-respecting divorce attorney would tackle in a heartbeat. DI Wallace might need probable cause to go digging into George Smythe’s offshore business interests and his cryptocurrency accounts. Margaret Smythe’s divorce attorney most assuredly would not.

“Wait a second,” Cami said, interrupting Frigg’s monologue. “Stop. Do you happen to know the name of Margaret Smythe’s divorce attorney?”

“Her name is Angela Baker,” Frigg replied. “She’s a partner in one of London’s top family law firms.”

“Is it possible to contact her?”

“I have her email address. Why?”

“Please forward it to me. I’m about to turn that attorney into an attack dog. Once she finds out what George Smythe has really been up to, including the money held in his cryptocurrency accounts, she’ll also be privy to his wire transfers—the one to Adrian Willoughby as well as those used to take out both Willoughby and Petrov. I suspect she’ll be more than happy to forward that information to Inland Revenue along with my friend DI Wallace of the Essex Police.”

Cami’s conversation with Frigg didn’t end until after two in the morning, but even then she didn’t go straight to bed. Instead she composed a long email to Angela Baker:

Dear Ms. Baker,

I am writing in regard to your client, Margaret Smythe. It has come to my attention that her husband, George, has been involved in some possibly illegal money-laundering activities that are being run through a Bulgaria-based business entity called Cигурност Hа данните—aka Data Security—which he operates in partnership with a man named Petar Borisov. Monies received from those ventures are being held in offshore cryptocurrency accounts in his name, the existence of which Margaret is most likely completely unaware.

At the bottom of this missive, I’ll be attaching applicable identification numbers for those accounts. I suspect your passing this information along to Inland Revenue would be greatly appreciated. In addition, wire transfers made from these accounts lead back to at least two recent homicides—the murder of Bogdan Petrov in San Bernardino, California, and the death of Adrian Willoughby in Grays, Essex.

I’m sending this information to you as an anonymous tip. For various reasons, I’m unable to supply my identity. In addition, this message has been encrypted so that, within fifteen minutes of your reading it, the email and the account identifiers listed below will vanish from your mailbox. You will not be able to reply. If you’re interested in following up on any of this information, please copy this message and save it to another file before that happens.

You may be wondering about my involvement in all this. I happen to be someone whose life was put in jeopardy by George Smythe but who is unable to prove it. If you can provide justice for Margaret, you will also be providing justice for me.

I’m wishing both you and Margaret the very best of luck. Just consider me an interested bystander.

Long after Cami pressed send, she sat staring at her computer screen. It was now three o’clock on Saturday morning. She had just dropped a pebble into a deep well. All Cami could do now was wait and hope that the attorney was up to the task. If she was, and if this worked, it would be more than a little ironic that the GHOST-generated email Cami had just sent could shoot down the guy who had been prepared to go to any lengths, murder included, to lay hands on Lance Tucker’s handiwork.

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” Cami muttered aloud to herself. With that, she finally crawled into bed, where she fell asleep instantly and slept like a baby.

When she awakened hours later, her Apple Watch was dead because she’d forgotten to charge it when she went to sleep. A glance at her bedside clock told her it was 11:00 a.m.

Rachel, who had let herself into Cami’s suite, was visible, camped out on the sitting room’s love seat.

“It’s about time you woke up,” she observed. “You were so pissed off when you left my room last night, I was afraid you might have taken off on me, so I let myself into your room to check and found you sound asleep. I finally ordered up a pot of coffee along with some toast and jam. Want some?”

“Please,” Cami said, crawling out of bed and pulling on her robe. Once in the sitting room, Rachel handed her a cup and saucer.

“Are you okay?” Rachel asked. “You look like hell.”

“Gee, thanks,” Cami said.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“Not right away. But if it’s any consolation, I’ve come around to your way of thinking. Trying to sell an illicit copy of GHOST to George Smythe was a stupid idea. It was too risky and probably wouldn’t have worked anyway.”

Cami let Rachel have the win without bothering to mention that she had found a completely different way to deal with George Smythe.

“I’m so relieved to hear that,” Rachel said. “As I said last night, it’s time to trust the system. As for today? It’s Saturday. No appointments, right?”

“None whatsoever,” Cami replied.

“All right, then,” Rachel said. “It’s the weekend. What say we do something fun for a change?”

“Like what?”

“How about seeing if I can sort out tickets to a couple of West End shows for tomorrow night and a road trip for today?”

“Seeing a show or two might be fun,” Cami said, “but what kind of road trip?”

“Have you ever been to Stonehenge?”

“Never,” Cami said. “I’ve always wanted to see it, but when I’ve been here, I’ve always been totally focused on work.”

“Time to change that, then,” Rachel declared. “Stonehenge happens to be one of my favorite places on the planet, and it’s only a little over two hours away. Our car and driver are available. On a trip like that, it’ll be easy to spot if someone is following us. What do you think?”

Considering the stress and pressure of the last two weeks, Cami was all for it. “Sounds good to me,” she said.

“Good,” Rachel said. “While you shower and dress, I’ll go downstairs and order up one of the Portlandia’s epic picnic lunches. It’s about time the two of us had some fun.”

Forty-five minutes later they headed out of the city and into an emerald-green countryside bathed in brilliant sunshine and topped by bright blue skies. Relaxing in the back seat, Cami couldn’t have cared less where they were going. She was grateful to be out of the hotel and able to relax.

Two hours later, when they turned off the highway onto a much smaller road, they seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. But then after a few more minutes of driving, as they topped a small rise, all was revealed. The circle of huge, ancient stones was still off in the distance, but Cami felt an immediate sense of wonder.

“It looks magical,” she said.

“It is magical,” Rachel agreed. “Now let’s go have fun.”

They did just that. They walked the circle, disappointed that they weren’t actually able to touch the massive stones. Cami took a few selfies and texted them to Mateo and Ali. Later, in a quiet field on the far side of the car park, Cami and Rachel shared their picnic lunch with their driver, Fred, who turned out to be retired MI-5.

As they headed back to London, Cami felt lighter than air. A day off was exactly what she’d needed.