Dying For LA by Ian Jones (best adventure books to read TXT) 📗

Sammy turned back and stared at the screen.

‘Now who the hell are you?’ she asked quietly, and decided to talk to some of the others who had been working at the channel for years, she was sure that at least one would have an idea how to find him, just in case Chief Brady wasn’t interested in being helpful.

Chapter Four

In the conference room Keane was holding forth. He was writing conscientiously in his notebook and painstakingly going through the chain of events the previous night. They had been joined by a woman called Judy Blake from the FBI.

She had ferociously burst into the room and introduced herself, and then wanted an immediate update, asking many questions as everything unfolded.

‘So, you’re the famous John Smith? Or should that be infamous?’ she asked looking at him with a mischievous smile.

‘Preferably neither,’ John replied.

‘You’ll need to convince me. And Patrick says hi.’

Patrick Skelton, John’s good friend in the FBI.

‘That’s good to hear. Tell him hi back.’

‘We had a conference this morning, early. Patrick rang to give us the low down on you. He wasn’t surprised you were caught up in this. At all.’

John shrugged.

‘Yeah, he has witnessed this kind of stuff happening to me.’

‘He said that. But he vouched for you, and from him, that means a hell of a lot.’

‘We do have a history, I was with him in Texas just last year.’

‘Yeah he told me about that. He told me to apologise again for dragging you into it. So, sorry!’

She reached into her bag and took out a file, and slid it across to Warner.

‘It’s all about him,’ she said, with a sideways nod at John.

Warner opened the file, and Keane moved over to look over his shoulder.

‘Let’s go get a coffee,’ Judy suggested, and she and John left the room.

There was a small kitchen just down a corridor, and John and Judy sat down with a coffee each.

Judy Blake was a homely looking woman in her forties. She was wearing a grey trouser suit and a red blouse and looked as if she had been rushing about all morning. He dark hair had tinges of grey she didn’t bother to cover up. She was carrying a handbag with Paw Patrol stickers all over it and there were different colour stars on her mobile phone. She was a busy mum. John liked her.

‘So you from Washington?’ John asked.

Judy shook her head.

‘No, but I do actually know Patrick. I worked with him some time ago now, he is a sharp guy alright. Now, I head up a unit out of Atlanta.’

‘You do realise this isn’t a terrorist attack, right?’

‘I do yes. That’s not the unit I run. I got alerted when the whole 1-Too thing got mentioned. They are on our radar, same as the CIA.’

‘Right. I don’t know much about them, but if I can use a phone I can get all the information we got.’

‘Cool, let’s go.’

Judy was clearly not someone who could stay still for long. She moved back into the big office and commandeered a phone. John thanked her and called Neil Wallace, his old boss back when he was in the department.

Neil was surprised, but pleased to hear from him, and was happy to give John all the information, offering to email across the relevant documentation. Judy gave the thumbs up and passed John her email address, and Neil promised to send it. With a loose arrangement to meet for a beer soon John hung up.

Keane walked across to them.

‘Let’s go sit down again,’ he suggested.

They moved to a smaller meeting room. Brady and Truman were not there. Warner was already sitting at the table and passed the file back to Judy.

‘That’s interesting reading,’ he said with a half-smile at John.

John desperately wanted to know what was in the file but knew better than to ask.

‘Right,’ Keane began, and then stopped. ‘You want to do this Kyle?’

The big black man, who always appeared to be cheerful shook his head.

‘No Ron, this is your city. You take the lead buddy.’

Keane cleared his throat.

‘Right, well we have made a decision. Now Judy’s here, I think we are all set. First thing, we are cutting the PD out.’

‘I thought you were a policeman?’ John asked.

‘Sure I am, but not the running round busting heads kind. I don’t do that no more. I’m more behind the scenes.’

‘Ron here is our liaison,’ Judy said, and Warner nodded in agreement.

‘Now, we got to discuss this 1-Too thing,’ Keane continued. ‘What can you tell us John?’

‘Well I just spoke to Neil, he was my old section head at the department. Like I said, I was never assigned to it but they were a big deal at the time. Basically, two city boys got murdered. Both shot in their own homes on the same night. They were oil and gas traders, both young, rich guys. The Met, as in the Metropolitan Police, found a fax to one of them warning that 1-Too were asking questions. It meant nothing to the Met, the guy’s wife had never heard the name, and none of his colleagues had either. The fax was sent from a computer somewhere, untraceable. Both men worked for different companies and as far as we could work out had no connection other than they both did the same job. Eventually they realised that 1-Too had a connection to criminal organisations right round the world and in the end, it was passed to us, but this was several months afterward. We found out who and what they are, but it took some time. They ‘re not actually a terror group, they are a kind of revenge outfit, anyone can hire them. The two men that were murdered were part of a money laundering scheme which was financing a Lebanese syndicate. We found links to several governments all around the globe. We also discovered that they stayed around in London for a long time after the murders. But we couldn’t get