The Whole Truth (A. Shaw 1)

“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?”

“You will create an international incident?”

“What’s one more?” Royce retorted.

“I want to go to the Chinese embassy. Immediately.”

“Passport first and then I’ll see if I can get you a lift over,” Royce said pleasantly enough, even tacking a smile onto the end of his offer.

Feng very slowly handed over his passport. “This is outrageous.”

“Absolutely,” Royce agreed. “Everything we’ve discovered here so far is outrageous.”

As Feng and Royce headed out, Shaw said, “I’m going up to Anna’s office.”

“Shaw, we only removed the body. The rest of the place is untouched. It’s not very…”

“I know it’s not.”

CHAPTER 57

SHAW TOOK THE STEPS two at a time and followed the carpeted floor down to the end of the hall. The door on the left stood open. He closed his eyes and willed himself to focus on the task at hand – finding

anything that could help lead him to Anna’s killers.

He walked into the room and suddenly grew very cold. His gaze wandered over the room, the books, the old desk, and the chair he had sat in when visiting her here. His eyes took in the small patch of oriental carpet in the middle of the room, her plants, and the sweater that still hung on the back of her chair. He touched the sweater, and his wall of professionalism started to crumble when he breathed in Anna’s scent that somehow still lingered on the fabric, despite the still-present stench of discharged weapons and the antiseptic vapor trail of the forensic team.

His professional demeanor started to crumble a bit more when his gaze went to the bookshelf right behind her desk where there were several photos of him and Anna. Their broad smiles seemed to pile up on him, like grain into a silo, threatening to bury him with their collective tonnage.

When he glanced down at the floor and saw her blood where it had leached into the wood, he had to sit down. In those dark stains he saw his past, present, and even his bleak, lonely future in one crushing vision. When you gave your heart to someone, you were never free ever again. And you had better be prepared for something like this. Only you never really could be.

The shattered window had been taped over, but he rose and studied it anyway, telling himself that if he broke down now, it would not help avenge Anna. He saw the scratches her desperate fingers had made in the window frame. She must have been seconds from jumping. He glanced back at the door and the twin bullet holes there. His practiced eye did the rough trajectory. It would have indeed hit her chest-high as the video had shown. Yet with the door closed the shooter could not have known Anna was trying to jump out the window.

A lucky shot, he concluded painfully.

She had fallen back inside the room. He knelt down and looked at the bloodstains and taped outline. Outside he could hear the normal sounds of a large city. In here there was only the silence of death. And yet sometimes the dead speak loudest of all.

Talk to me, Anna. Tell me what happened.

He looked closer and thought he saw the faint trace of a footprint in the blood. It wasn’t large enough to help with the investigation, which was probably why Royce hadn’t mentioned it. He moved to Anna’s desk and sat down in her chair. Her computer had been removed for examination by Royce’s people, but her desktop was still covered with things she’d been working on. The only difference was that each item had been sealed for evidence.

Shaw picked up one bundle. Through the plastic he saw Anna’s precise handwriting in the margins of the typed pages. He had joked with her more than once that she was an inveterate scribbler and annotator; that she never saw a piece of writing she couldn’t comment on. He put it down and picked up another bagged stack.

The documents in here purportedly showed that Anna had been engaged in putting together elements of the Red Menace propaganda. Even though her fingerprints were supposedly all over the documents, Shaw knew the idea that Anna had helped propagate the Red Menace campaign was ridiculous. And if he had any doubts as to Anna’s involvement they were dispelled by these pages not having a single mark from her pen on them. Anyone who knew the woman well would have spotted that glaring omission. Yet Shaw was aware that that would hardly be conclusive proof for the rest of the world.

They must have pressed everyone’s fingers against the papers after they were dead. And they’d shot Anna in the head, even though the chest wounds would’ve been fatal. And I will take great pleasure in killing every single one of the heartless bastards.

He also suspected that every computer in the place had had incriminating files downloaded onto it. Careful scrutiny might show that they had been put there on the day of the killing, but if someone really knew what he was doing they might never be able to prove that.

He wasn’t going to tell Royce his doubts about the evidence because he wasn’t sure how all this was going to turn out. While he made a show of working with Royce, he knew that his and the MI5 agent’s interests were going to diverge at some point. Royce wanted merely to arrest whoever had done this. Shaw simply wanted to kill them.

Feng had admitted that the Chinese government had ties to The Phoenix Group. So was someone trying to make it seem as though the Chinese were behind the Red Menace? But who would do that and why? Russia against China? What maniac would want that global scenario to play out?

And Anna had been caught right in the middle. But why had they chosen the Phoenix Group out of all the places they could have targeted? Was it just a coincidence that it had ties to the Chinese government? No, it can’t be.

The killers had obviously found out the connection, which must have taken some legwork. Yet there must be tens of thousands of entities with ties to China spread all over the world. Why here? Why Anna?

He went to the shelf and picked up one photo. It’d been taken the night he’d proposed. Anna had gotten a waiter to snap the picture of them together, with particular emphasis on the new engagement ring on her finger. Her smile, so full of the bright future ahead, made him forget about the pain in his arm, because the agony in his heart hurt so much.