“What is this, Raymond?” Andi asked. “What am I really part of?”
She glanced at me, and I saw nothing but regret in her eyes. Tears welled up in them.
“Get out of the way,” Chalmont commanded, aiming his gun directly at her.
Andi wiped her eyes, and her entire demeanor suddenly changed. Her posture stiffened and she raised her gun and shot him without warning.
The bullet hit him in the shoulder, knocking him back. He pulled the trigger instinctively and Andi cried out as the shot hit her in the stomach. She fell beside Sam Farrell and her pistol clattered along the road.
I raced to grab it and turned it on Chalmont, but he had already made it to the Mercedes and slid behind the wheel. He threw the car into gear and reversed away at speed. I tried to shoot out the tires, but my shots went wide. He killed the headlights and then spun the vehicle around, before racing away into the darkness.
As the sound of his engine faded, I heard a moan and turned and ran to Andi’s side.
Chapter 82
I crouched beside her, but I knew her wound would be bad even before I’d examined it. Her skin had turned pallid, gray-looking in the darkness. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, and her expression full of shock and fear. I was familiar with that look, having seen it before on the faces of others who were realizing the dividing line between life and death was wafer-thin.
“Jack,” she gasped. “Jack, please don’t let me die.”
I ignored the irony of this conspirator in my attempted murder pleading with me to save her, and the fact that like Justine she had suffered a stomach wound. I lifted her shirt to find dark blood oozing from the bullet hole. It looked like an oil slick spreading across her pale skin.
“Jack,” she said faintly. “Please.”
I found her phone and used her thumb to unlock it before calling the emergency services. I gave the operator our location and stressed the urgency of the situation. I could patch up an arm or leg, but a gunshot wound to the stomach would almost certainly require surgery, which was well beyond my field medicine skills.
“Jack, will you hold my hand?” she asked, her voice weak, her breathing growing shallow.
I wrapped my fingers around her cold, delicate hand and squeezed gently.
She smiled. “Thank you. I don’t want to make this journey alone.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” I told her, but my words sounded false even as I uttered them. It’s always a struggle for me to lie convincingly
Her smile faltered and her eyes brimmed as she winced with pain. She took a series of rapid breaths and recovered something like composure.
“After Monaco, we lost the Chalmont Casino,” she said. She was gasping for air now, trying to hold enough life within her to pass on the information she knew I was seeking. “We needed a way to launder funds, so Lawrence has been coercing other racehorse owners into manipulating results so we can launder cash from our illegal operations through gambling. He runs a network of online accounts through the many proxies we have working for us overseas.”
It suddenly made sense. The intimidation of the Kearneys was about getting them to throw races. I reflected on my role in causing this by shutting down the Monaco operation and forcing Propaganda Tre to establish another means of cleaning the money it made from its illegal operations, selling drugs on the streets of Dublin and quite probably across all of Europe. Billions were gambled on Irish racing each year and it was an international concern with massive online betting markets. It would be easy to conceal huge sums in illegal gains within the sea of legitimate stakes.
“The cash is used to fund our political objectives,” Andi said between gasps. “We want an end to liberalism — to bring about cultural and political disintegration. Then we can step in and establish a new order, a return to traditional values, where people stay where they belong.”
I shook my head slowly, wondering how someone so smart could become so twisted by hate.
“I’m sorry. I was a fool. It’s only now I see the truth,” she said, before her breathing became very labored. “Help me, Jack. Please,” she cried before she began to shudder. Her eyes filled with terror, and the breath rasped in her throat with an ugly choking sound. “Jack...”
She fell still and I felt the life leave her. Her eyes glazed over and stared beyond me at the dark sky above.
Andi was dead.
Chapter 83
The van was on its roof and Raymond Chalmont had taken the only other vehicle, so I was stranded.
I used Andi’s thumb to unlock her phone again and changed her security ID to a six-digit PIN so I could access her phone independently. I left her body where it lay near Sam Farrell’s and set off on foot, using Google Maps to guide me cross-country.
I avoided roads in case Chalmont returned to the scene to finish me off, so I found myself traipsing on foot over heavy, damp earth between high trees that reached toward the brooding sky. The drizzle was growing heavier and I had no doubt a storm was coming. I was heading west toward the village of Rathcoffey, moving as fast as I could, hoping I could avoid the worst of the downpour and find some sort of transportation there.
I used Andi’s phone to call Mo-bot.
“Hello,” she said hesitantly.
“It’s me,” I replied.
“Jack,” she said, and then, to the people she was with, she remarked, “It’s Jack.”
I heard indistinct expressions of relief in the background.
“Is Justine there?” I asked.
“Yes,” Mo replied. “And Sci. Let me put you on speaker.”
The acoustics changed a moment later.
“Jack, thank God!” Justine said.
“You okay?” Sci asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “Sam Farrell and Andi Harris are dead. Raymond Chalmont shot them both.”
“Jeez,” Sci said.
“But you’re okay?” Justine asked.
“I’m fine,” I replied. “Seriously. Before she died, Andi told me Propaganda Tre is using Irish horse racing fixtures to launder money from its street operations. She said they had to make the change after we shut things down in Monaco.”
“You need to take this to the cops,” Sci insisted. “No amount of political clout is going to get them off two murders.”
“I can’t,” I replied. “We know Andi was released after someone intervened. Whether it was Conor Roche himself or someone higher up, it’s clear Propaganda Tre is well protected. If I take this information to the wrong person, they’ll just bury it and me alongside it.”
“You need to be careful, Jack,” Mo-bot responded. “Andi’s phone ties you to the scene of the murders and might be used to track you.”
“It’s all I’ve got right now,” I told her. “My only means of navigation and communication.”
She gave a disgruntled murmur but didn’t say any more.
“So, what’s your plan?” Justine asked.
“Confront Lawrence Finch in a way he can’t escape from,” I replied. “Force him to give up his network. Get him to reveal some information we can give to people we trust.”
“Eli Carver?” Justine suggested.
“Why not? He has a personal interest in all of this,” I replied. Carver had been the target of the Propaganda Tre assassination attempt in Monaco. “He will have people in the FBI who will listen to him. There’s no way an operation like this doesn’t touch the United States in some way, and if Lawrence Finch really is the head of Propaganda Tre, then he sanctioned the attempted hit on the Secretary of Defense.”
“He’s got horses running tomorrow,” Mo-bot said. “Including one in the Irish Derby, the largest of the five Classics.”
“Perfect. Then I know exactly where he’ll be,” I responded. “And how to get him to rise to the bait.”