Page 182 of Lethal Obsession

“I see.” Mak’s face is grave. “You stumbled onto a dangerous target, Lex. Make no mistake: Thorne’s crusade to remake the world order is as fanatical as any religious belief, and he’s not above presenting his twisted ideas as a divine plan, and himself as the righteous enforcer.”

“That much I’ve already seen.” I bring up the headlines Dima and Lars showed me weeks ago: “The Pakhan’s Plan,” “The Biscayne Butcher.” “A thousand untraceable bot accounts. All citing nonexistent news articles. I couldn’t work out who was behind the campaign at the time, which is why I shut down my entire operation.”

“Classic Thorne.” Mak’s mouth is a hard line. “The Meridian Network is a psyop infrastructure that specializes in mass media manipulation, via the creation and viral spread of disinformation.”

“There’s more.” I click onto the Compass Initiative, Kristy Hunter’s college campus organization. “You already know Kristi Hunter. She’s Marty Hunter Jr.’s nightmare of a daughter, the one who set me up with a fake drug buy in my club. Well—guess who’s the cofounder of her not-so-little college campus outfit?”

“Tyler Thorne.” Mak leans forward. “Another one of Silas’s sons, I take it?”

“Yup. Carter’s younger brother. And take a look at this.” I bring up the diagram I sent Lars, with the Compass Initiative at the top, the Meridian Network at the bottom, and the logo from the John Owens card in the center. “This was what I sent to Lars when I couldn’t get ahold of you.” I point at the top logo. “At the time, I thought this arrow was supposed to be the ‘needle’ on the Compass Initiative, pointing north.”

Lars staring skeptically at the logo: It looks like a cock . . .

“But then I saw the arrow on the Meridian logo. It points south—and it’s exactly the same shape and color as the Compass one. When I put the two logos in alignment,” I say, “they look exactly like the central north–south line in the global logo I’ve put in the middle of that diagram. It appeared on the card John Owens gave me back in Miami Airport. I didn’t realize it when I first looked, but there is a cross at the center of the globe, with arrows pointing to all four sides, like a compass. And the arrows on the Owens logo are drawn in the same font, same color, same everything, as those on the Compass and Meridian logos. Not to mention the names, which both have geographical connections.”

I sit back. “It can’t be a coincidence. If my theory is right, then there are at least two more companies.”

I point to the east–west line running across the Owens logo, which, like the north–south one, has arrows on each end, like a compass needle. “Possibly more, going by all the thinner lines crisscrossing the logo.”

Mak gives a humorless laugh. “Shall I fill in the rest of it for you?”

“Please.” I turn the laptop to him, and his fingers race across the keys. He opens two windows.

“Sentinel Operations.” He points to one logo, which incorporates an arrow the same style as the others, pointing west. “Sentinel does private security, almost exclusively lucrative government contracts.”

“Wait.” I pull up the photos and video Lars and Dima sent weeks ago of the private security guys who boarded the Cardeñas boats and closed down my clubs. “West-facing arrow.” I zoom in on the lone mark I could make no sense of at the time. “Not the full Sentinel logo, just the fucking arrow.” I shake my head. “No wonder we couldn’t place them.”

Mak nods. “And this logo”—he points to the east-facing arrow on the second—“belongs to the Zenith Advisory, a government consulting firm who made a name for themselves by advocating the use of ‘decoy’ candidates in elections. In other words, they find sacrificial candidates, puppets who can be manipulated, blackmailed, disgraced, or used, according to requirements.”

“Like Marty Hunter Jr.”

“Exactly.”

“What a reassuring picture you paint of the US government,” I say dryly.

Mak doesn’t smile. “Companies like Meridian, Sentinel, and Zenith are the government, Lex. They just prefer to rule without the inconvenience of elections and public scrutiny. I’ve been watching all of them for years, but until the attack on you in Paris, I’d never seen such clear evidence of them working together. It’s what first roused my interest.

“The Paris operation itself,” he goes on, “had all the hallmarks of Sentinel Operations: slick, big payroll, completely untraceable. And the media cover-up was classic Meridian.”

He brings up a stack of social media posts showing grainy photographs of the van on a Paris street, with headlines like “Immigrant Crime Tears Paris Apart” and “The Paris They Don’t Want You to See.”

“That combination was enough to rouse my interest, but then came the news of Marty Hunter Jr.’s candidacy for governor, which had the Zenith Advisory’s fingerprints all over it. Along with the anonymous attacks on your organization, it became very clear to me that for the first time, I was actually watching Meridian, Sentinel, and Zenith operating together, in real time. It was the kind of bait I couldn’t resist, which is why I asked you for that favor in the first place.”

He sits back, rubbing a hand over his face. “Do you recall,” he says, “when I first came to see you on the Quantum Drift, and you asked me if we were dealing with government, bratva, or corporation?”

“You said we could be dealing with all three.”

“You also asked if that logo meant anything to me.”

“And you said, not yet.” My chest tightens at the memory. The conversation feels like it happened in another life, back when the future stretched in front of me full of tantalizing possibilities.

Back when I thought it was funny that Lars was impersonating me.

The sickening rush of shame and guilt makes the room spin. I breathe, trying to focus on Mak’s voice.

“The logo was familiar,” he’s saying, “but so generic that until recently I didn’t realize why. Take a look at this.”

He brings up a social media page for what looks like some kind of college club. It’s from a long-defunct platform, and the photo grid only has a handful of pictures. They’re all taken atop various geographical landmarks, like mountain peaks and waterfalls, and feature young men dressed in top hats and tails, sporting oddities like monocle glasses and waistcoat pocket watches.