Reckless

“Back then, the story was fracking,” Hunter said. “Specifically, corruption in the fracking industry. But, appalling as it was, that soon turned out to be the tip of a giant iceberg of shit. A ‘shitberg’ as I liked to call it.”

He smiled but Tracy wasn’t laughing. “Go on.”

“Corporate corruption was being carried out on a massive scale, right across the globe. But it was the government involvement that really stank. Cash for contracts. Diplomatic bribes. Blind eyes turned to human rights abuses. There were CIA agents, sanctioned by Washington, showing up in China with suitcases literally stuffed with cash. Havers’s administration were in it up to their dirty, white-collared necks. The president’s obsessed with breaking the Saudis stranglehold on our economy. Jim Havers wants to go down in history as the man who broke America’s oil addiction and he’ll stop at nothing to do it. And I mean, nothing.”

“So you planned to expose Havers?” Tracy asked.

“Among other people.”

“You knew enough to end his presidency?”

“For sure. I noticed unmarked cars parked outside my apartment. All of a sudden I couldn’t take a shit without the CIA knowing about it. Nobody had read my piece. It was all in my head at that point. But the government knew what questions I’d been asking and to whom. They wanted me dead.”

Tracy frowned. “That’s a pretty wild accusation. This was the same government who tried to rescue you in Bratislava, let’s not forget. If they wanted you dead so badly, why go to the trouble?”

“They wanted me dead,” Hunter repeated. “But they wanted it to look like an accident. So there were no shootings, no abductions. Instead there was a gas leak in my building.”

“Come on,” Tracy said. “Gas leaks happen all the time.”

“Exactly. Except this one happened only in my apartment—nowhere else in the building. Enough carbon monoxide to kill a man three times my body weight in under an hour. I know this because that’s how much they found in my cat’s bloodstream when he died that night instead of me. I stayed over at a girlfriend’s place.”

Clearly Hunter was the one with the nine lives.

“A week later, I almost drove my car off the Atlantic City Expressway.”

“What happened?”

“My steering wheel jammed. Next thing I know I’m shooting up an exit ramp and into a tree. I was lucky. Broke my collarbone, got a few bangs on the head, that was it. But if I hadn’t made that ramp I’d have been dead for sure. Probably taken out a bunch of others with me. Afterwards, the guy in the shop told me someone had messed with my steering column, and put a slow leak in my brake fluid. Deliberate sabotage.”

A nerve began to twitch in Tracy’s jaw.

Deliberate sabotage. To the steering column.

It was exactly what Greg Walton told her had happened to Blake Carter’s truck, the night of the accident. The night Nicholas died.

“The Americans weren’t the only Western government playing dirty in the Shale Gas Wars,” Hunter went on. “Everyone was at it. The British, the French, the Germans, the Russians. Opponents were silenced, taxes waived, and all the while the rich at the top of the industry grew richer, like fat mosquitoes gorging on the blood of some hapless animal. It was the sheer scale of the corruption that really shocked me. That and the fact that no one was reporting on it.”

“Why do you think that was?” asked Tracy.

“I have no idea.” Hunter refilled his wineglass. “Maybe no one else was looking. Or maybe people were looking, but someone was shutting those people up.”

“Killing them, you mean?”

“Sometimes,” Hunter said. “I’m sure that’s what happened to Sally, by the way. She’d worked out a lot of this on her own, while I was on the run. Somebody decided it was time to stop the questions. Somebody with less concern for appearances than your masters at the CIA. But sometimes people were paid off. Which leads me to the next chapter in all this: Group 99.”

Tracy leaned forward. This was what she’d waited for. This was where it all came together, where the pieces of the puzzle began to fit.

“So I’m writing my piece, uncovering all this dirty money and dirty politics around fracking, trying not to get killed. And as I’m doing my research I run into a bunch of different anti-industry groups. Most of them are environmentalists—well meaning, badly organized—doing their best to be a thorn in the side of the shale gas giants and the governments helping them to line their pockets. But then all of a sudden this one group pops up, and they’re different from all the others.”

“Group 99,” said Tracy.

Hunter nodded. “Group 99 got interested once shale gas fields were discovered in Greece. Rumors were flying around that some former Greek royals had signed a vast, private deal to sell swaths of land for fracking. The family stood to make a mint, as did one or two corrupt government officials, and the frackers themselves of course. But there was to be no public benefit from exploiting this natural resource. Things were pretty bad in Greece at that time. The poor were at breaking point. That’s when I first started hearing about Apollo—Alexis Argyros—and Althea, a Western woman, supposedly an American, who was raising money for this group, and maybe even running the show.

“Group 99 were a game changer. They had a totally different agenda from all the other antifracking groups. They didn’t care about the environment. They wanted wealth equality, and to punish the greedy at the top of the tree. They also had a totally different MO. Remember, they were nonviolent at that time. They were smart, super smart, and tech savvy. They were well funded. They were highly organized but non-hierarchical. And they had global reach. The way I saw it, that put them in a unique position to attack the fracking industry, maybe even to bring it down, but at a minimum to end corruption at least in Greece.”

Hunter drew breath for the first time in minutes. Tracy noticed for the first time how tired he looked. He’d waited a long time to tell his story, but now that it was finally happening, the effort seemed to drain all the energy out of him.

“Tell me more about Althea,” Tracy said. “About Kate. You knew her identity all along?”