[Start at the beginning of the novel: Prologue.]
[Go to the Table of Contents.]
Welcome back to Ship of Fools and thanks for reading!
In this flashback chapter, Liz struggles to understand Kevin’s death, but soon has more personal threats to worry about.
“A GLITCH in the operating system, that’s the most likely theory,” said police detective O’Neill. “Technicians are going over the car right now.”
“Police technicians, or the car company’s?” Liz asked.
“Ours, of course. You’ve never worked the crime beat, have you? You said you’re from the Times? Why are you interested in a local case like this?”
“Kevin was a source of mine. I’m worried his death might have been intentional.”
“What? You mean someone reprogrammed the car to go after him? How would that even work?”
“I have no idea.”
“And why? Who’d want to kill a NASA administrator? Or maybe it was personal?”
“He was digging through old moon landing footage. Maybe he found something someone didn’t want him to find.”
On the screen, the detective’s eyes shifted away, his lips pursing to repress a smile. “You mean like moon landing hoax BS? I thought you said you were a science reporter.”
“I thought it was BS too, until this morning. Or maybe whatever they want to keep secret has nothing to do with any hoax. But first I need to make sure it wasn’t just an accident.”
The detective sighed. “All right, I’ll make sure our people look for any signs of physical tampering or hacking.”
“Thank you, detective.” She swiped away the connection and pondered her next move.
She’d returned to her hotel by a convoluted route, crossing the street randomly, pausing at shop windows to examine the reflection of the street behind her, trying to remember all the techniques from the John Le Carré novels she’d read. She didn’t spot anyone, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
While she waited for the police to do their work, she needed to pursue the other strands of the story. She hadn’t found anything definitive about Herzog’s whereabouts in the mid-’60s, so she spent some time on that. He’d been on the Canary Islands and in Africa for at least part of ’68 and ’69, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t spent a few months on the other side of the globe, and a week or so traveling to and from the moon. It would make a crammed schedule, but he was young, and famously driven.
She was startled by her phone ringing, the personal one she kept for calls from her mother, close friends, and her most serious boyfriend of the last few years. But the ring tone was generic, and she didn’t recognize the number. Strange. It had been years since robocalls had been a problem. She let the call go to voice mail, waited for the alert to appear, then opened the message.
“I’ll call back in two minutes. If you value your life, you’ll pick up at that time.”
The phone clattered against the cheap laminate surface of the hotel room’s desk, her hands were shaking so bad. She got up to get a drink of water from the bathroom, feeling flushed, her heart racing. How had they found this number? It wasn’t like they couldn’t reach her in countless other ways. Probably to show her they could do it. And who were they?
The phone rang again and she ran to it, fumbling to swipe the answer icon. “Who is this?” she demanded, trying to make her voice sound firm.
The voice on the other end was a man’s, deep, cultured, something out of board rooms or NPR interviews. “Who I am is less important than what I can do. Mr. Sloane’s unfortunate accident is just one example of our reach, which should become even clearer when the police report back to you.”
“What do you want?”
“You will cease digging into this story immediately.”
“You can’t just threaten me to kill a story. This isn’t Russia.”
“Who mentioned killing? Just write your usual piece, poor deluded Mr. Himmelstein, what a colorful character, living alone out in the desert, but of course his beliefs are nonsense. It’s so sad that someone would take advantage of an old man by trying to foist such an obvious hoax on him. That’s what Sid’s looking for, isn’t it?”
“You know Sid?”
“I know many people. And I don’t want any of them to get hurt, especially you and Mr. Himmelstein. And how is your mother, by the way? Still enjoying that view of the Pacific? She should be more careful, walking along those bluffs, it really is quite dangerous.”
“I’ll…” She paused, hardly believing what she was about to say. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“I’m so glad we could come to this agreement.” A moment’s hesitation. “Ms. Dare, there is more going on here than you can possibly know. I hope you’ll believe that keeping a lid on this particular truth is in the best interests of your country, and the entire world.”
“And that means you had to kill…” Liz started, but the line had gone dead. She dropped the phone on the bed, her hands shaking even harder.
When Detective O’Neill called two hours later, she’d calmed herself enough to sit down at her laptop. She’d already finished the lede, giving Ben a pseudonym, painting him as a lovable kook, and a harmless one.
“We’ve been over the car backwards and forwards. No physical tampering, and no traces of software hacks either. But here’s the strange thing: the black box doesn’t show the accident at all. The archived video shows Mr. Sloane riding in the bike lane to the right, and the car passing without incident. It’s as if the accident never happened. And yet our technicians swear the video shows no signs of editing.”
“Strange.”
“Strange? That’s all you have to say?”
“Look, detective, I’m on deadline. For now I’m assuming Kevin’s death was accidental. Call me if you find evidence otherwise.” She hung up, knowing no such evidence existed, at least not where the police could get at it.
She continued typing, trying to tamp down any hint or detail that there was more to the story than an old man deluded by a hoax.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter, please give it a like, a share, a restack, or a comment. And if you really enjoyed it, I hope you’ll buy me a coffee or upgrade to a paid subscription.
What a turnaround for Liz! Do you think her capitulation was too quick? Or does it seem realistic, considering the ease with which whoever is on the other end of the phone had Kevin murdered?
Next up: Chapter 11, “Three-Body Problem,” in which Liz begins to suspect something’s up on the Anóitoi and all the threads of Part I come together.