Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Acknowledgments
About the Author
_148178348_
To Janet Elizabeth Wright, 1946–2023
With love to fill a lifetime
You must leave as few clues as possible. That’s the only rule.
You have to talk to people sometimes; it’s inevitable. There are orders to be given, shipments to be arranged, people to be killed, etc., etc. You cannot exist in a vacuum, for goodness’ sake.
You need to ring François Loubet? In an absolute emergency? You’ll get a phone with a voice-changer built in. And, by the way, if it’s not an absolute emergency, you’ll regret ringing very soon.
But most communication is by message or email. High-end criminals are much like millennials in that way.
Everything is encrypted, naturally, but what if the authorities break the code? It happens. A lot of very good criminals are in prison right now because a nerd with a laptop had too much time on their hands. So you must hide as well as you can.
You can hide your IP address—that is very easy. François Loubet’s emails go through a world tour of different locations before being sent. Even a nerd with a laptop would never be able to discover from where they were actually sent.
But everyone’s language leaves a unique signature. A particular use of words, a rhythm, a personality. Someone could read an email, and then read a postcard you sent in 2009 and know for a fact they were sent by the same person. Science, you see. So often the enemy of the honest criminal.
That’s why ChatGPT has been such a godsend.
After writing an email, a text, anything really, you can simply run the whole thing through ChatGPT and it instantly deletes your personality. It flattens you out, irons your creases, washes you away, quirk by quirk, until you disappear.
“ChatGPT, rewrite in the style of a friendly English gentleman, please.” That is always Loubet’s prompt.
Handy, because if these emails were written in François Loubet’s own language, it would all become much more obvious. Too obvious.
But, as it stands, you might find a thousand emails, but you would still have no way of knowing where François Loubet was, and you would still have no way of knowing who François Loubet is.
You would, of course, know what François Loubet does, but there would be precious little you could do about it.
PART ONE
From the New Forest to South Carolina
1
It had finally happened.
Andrew Fairbanks had always known he would be famous one day. And that day—a quiet, sunny Tuesday in early August—had, at last, arrived.
The years of Instagram fitness videos had given him a following, sure, but nothing like this. This was insane.
There had been an on-off relationship with a minor pop singer, which had seen his picture in the papers from time to time. But not on the front pages like today.
The notoriety Andrew Fairbanks had chased for so long was finally his. His name on lips around the world. Trending on social media. That selfie on the yacht was everywhere. Andrew, shirtless and tanned, winking into the camera, the warm sun winking along behind him. His bottle of Krusher Energy Drink raised in a happy toast.
And the comments beneath the photo! The heart emojis, the fire emojis, the lust. Everything Andrew had ever dreamed of.
Some of the other comments might have dampened his spirits a little, however. “Gone too soon,” “So fit, RIP,” “So haunting to see that photo when you knew what was about to happen”—but you couldn’t argue with the volume. Impressive traffic. In the offices of the Love Island production team, his photograph was passed around, and there were discussions about how perfect he might have been if only, well, you know.
Yes, finally, everybody knew Andrew Fairbanks. Or, as he was now more commonly known, “Tragic Instagram influencer, Andrew Fairbanks.”
So it wasn’t all upside. And, in fact, even that slim upside is starting to dim. It is Wednesday afternoon by now, and his name is already beginning to slip down the rankings. Other things are happening in the world. A baseball star has driven his pickup into his ex-wife’s swimming pool. A beauty vlogger has said something inappropriate about Taylor Swift. The conversation, like the tide, is turning.
Andrew Fairbanks had been found dead: shot in the head, tied to a rope, and thrown from a yacht bobbing about in the Atlantic. There was no one else on the yacht, and no sign that anyone had ever been there, with the exception of a leather bag containing nearly one million dollars.
