Page 77 of False Flag

He gave her the rundown on being called in to the meeting, learning that Lloyd had been setting him up for something. He left out the piece he was forbidden from sharing—that Osborne was named in the Laskin files and NSWC was concerned about the vice president actively wooing him, along with a podcaster who headed a doomsday cult.

“You might be able to get Freya to tell you what I can’t, but I don’t know if she’s in the loop as far as my purpose here.”

“She didn’t say anything today—but then we didn’t talk about why you were here at all.”

“I spoke to my XO and Chris earlier. XO wanted to pull me, but I told him if he did, I’d go AWOL. I’m the only one who could get this access, and now…with Lloyd… I need to see this through. He said he understood.”

“So when you told me you weren’t here for me, you were being honest. You weren’t even here for Lloyd. You’re doing recon on Gerard. Or Casper. Both?”

He stroked her back, enjoying the feel of her against his side. He needed her like he needed oxygen. She was the only reason he was holding himself together. “I wanted to be here for you. What you’re doing is dangerous, and I didn’t even know about the Truther attack. Or Beau.” He sighed. “I’d hoped I might be able to extract Lloyd before he did something that would land him in prison. I’m still trying to figure out how he got in so deep that he might be an Archaeology Truther.”

“He’s been radicalized, like Beau. Gerard is like every other disinformation operator—he gives them someone to blame for what they perceive as their misfortune. ‘We’re living in a world shaped by a history of lies. It would all be different if archaeologists and historians weren’t controlling the narrative. Our power structures would be different.’ His claim that a Burns would be king of Scotland is a perfect example. He then moves on to his real grift and grievance: ‘White people were here before First Nations and Native Americans. They were killed off by a biological weapon wielded by the ancestors of the people who live it up on reservation land with casinos. The world’s first genocide was committed ten thousand years ago.’ The narrative is ugly, and Gerard’s followers eat it up.”

Jake nodded. “I didn’t know about any of that when we first met, by the way. I mean, I knew about his theories about a biological agent triggering the lost civilizations, but he’s pretty careful not to pin it on any living Indigenous groups.”

“He leaves that for the AT groups to discuss in their forums. I discovered that when I had a peek at Beau’s computer.”

“Are you in any of the forums now? Under an alias?”

“Not anymore. I wouldn’t be able to access them from here without giving myself away. Vicki is in the official ones. She hasn’t been able to access the dark web Truther chats. But she monitors the surface web and the comments on Gerard’s podcast. She’s trying to identify the most active users.”

“Anyone in the house on her short list?”

“Several.” She paused. “This morning, when I was ‘changing’ on the boat, I was really messaging Vicki—first time I could get through to her without using Osborne’s Wi-Fi since my second night here. She found Lloyd’s alias after I gave Freya the heads-up that he was here. He’s all over the forums, as are Philip and Riley. Dahlia is a moderator, which makes sense given that she’s been Gerard’s assistant for years.”

“I haven’t really spoken to Philip and Riley, but it’s a shame about Dahlia. She seems nice.”

Staci snickered. “You say that because she thinks you’re hot.”

He couldn’t help but smile. “It’s a fact, not an opinion.”

She pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Hard to argue with that.”

“It must have been FMV who alerted NSWC about Lloyd. Because you told Freya he was on the team.”

She nodded.

Jake’s thoughts turned back to Lloyd and the path that led him to join the Lost Civilizations expedition.

“I’m pretty sure his radicalization began when our dad died. At the time, we lived on leased tribal land. Dad owned the house but had a fifty-year lease that was about to expire. When he died, the tribe decided not to renew us for another fifty. Instead, they offered us five years—long enough to see me through high school, which, honestly, was pretty considerate given that the land itself was worth a fortune to them if they could develop it.

“Mom decided to sell the house and move right then. Our house wasn’t worth much, but it would be worth even less in five years when she had no leverage of time with the tribe. They gave her a bigger buyout than they had to. She was content to move. Lloyd and me, not so much. But I accepted it. Lloyd never did. He hated the tribe after that. From there, his anger turned to all tribal groups. And then Gerard came along and told him exactly what he wanted to hear: the tribe has no right to that land. They stole it with genocide. Sure, it was thousands of years ago, but it was being reinforced today by the lies of archaeologists.”

“I’d say it’s shocking how many people willfully chose that narrative, which has no basis in reality, except I’m no longer shocked by what people are willing to believe.”

Silence settled in, and they sat there for a long time. Jake felt drained. Not of tears—more of those would come soon—but of words. He couldn’t justify his brother and didn’t want to explain him. He just wanted to grieve the person he’d lost years ago.

The harsh truth of Lloyd’s death wasn’t that his brother was gone—the boy he’d been had faded over time, and Jake had been grieving for years. No. As long as Lloyd was alive, Jake had hoped to get his brother back. That was what he grieved now. The loss of hope.

Eventually, he rose from the couch. He offered Staci his hand, and she took it. He pulled her to her feet. “I’m going to get ready for bed. We have separate rooms, but I’d like to sleep—emphasis on sleep—together if you’d be comfortable with that? I promise, this isn’t a come-on. I just don’t want to be alone. Not if I don’t have to be.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist. “I’m glad you asked, because I don’t want to be alone either.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

“I’m going to expect that shirt back,” Jake said as he handed Staci his T-shirt to sleep in.

“You fail to understand the rule of shirt-sharing. Once you give it to a woman to wear, it’s hers as a chivalrous souvenir.”