Free The Confessor by Mark Allen Smith Page B

pops we’re at nine”? What’s that?’
    Matheson smiled faintly. ‘Poppy fields?’
    ‘And “S-P and G-R
shellcos
”?’
    ‘Shell companies. Spanish? Greek?’
    Harry sat back. He finally nodded. ‘Argent Industries is buying Afghanistan. Wow.’
    ‘Sounds like it.’
    Harry straightened up and cracked his knuckles. ‘This is gonna take some time, David. Pixel by pixel examination and comparison.’
    Matheson put a cigarette in his lips. ‘Gonna have a smoke.’ He opened the door, stepped out and closed it behind him.
    Harry’s fingers settled on the keys – and something made him stop. It was the click in his brain – a slow, rhythmic ticking – pleasing, familiar, long absent. He had the look of someone who’d remembered a favorite song he hadn’t heard in years. It was the sound he heard when he was a
Times
reporter – the click of his lens focusing, locking on to something whose meaning might outweigh the common and mundane. It felt good.
    Matheson lit his fourth cigarette with the butt of his third and paced slowly, leaving a white, wafting tail in his wake. These days, if he was standing up he couldn’t stay in one place. A medically informed observer might have surmised he suffered from a moderate form of akathisia, or perhaps ADD – but the motor of Matheson’s restlessness was in his soul, not his brain or muscles, and it ran on a high-octane blend of zeal, outrage and remorse. The first two were ammunition for his online crusades . . . and the last a constant flow of melancholy – blood from an open wound, the severance from his son.
    He’d grown up rich and rootless, dead-on aware of his lack of skills and desire for any. His sole passion, art, finally eased him into a profession – middle-man for the buying and selling of paintings and antiquities. It suited him – exotic travel, short episodes with people that didn’t require an effort at intimacy, and a modest sense of accomplishment – even though nothing was actually ever created or produced. Then, like so many others on the planet, the concussive waves of 9/11 swept him off his path, and he found himself on another.
    Veritas Arcana was born, Matheson was reborn.
    And the quest consumed him. His secret life casting shadows on his old one. A growing estrangement from his family, divorce, a creeping separateness and seclusion, Christmas and two summer weeks with his son – and then the Geiger incident and the break with Ezra. Matheson was not one for introspection, but he carried his son’s sense of betrayal with him, always. He had shattered the boy’s trust, and heart. He had no illusions about what he’d become – a slave to his obsession, ridden by it like a horse and master, waiting for the next secret to show itself . . .
    ‘David! C’mere!’
    Matheson tossed his cigarette and swung the door open.
    Harry watched the gold, pentagon-shaped icon blinking on the screen. ‘Done.’
    ‘And . . . ?’
    ‘Real. Probably.’
    ‘Probably? What the hell does that mean?’
    ‘It means the program found minimal anomalies – but this is
one shot
, David. So that’s why the “probably”. This software isn’t perfect. If you want closer to one hundred percent certain “it’s real” – you’ll need all the photos and docs.’
    Matheson scowled. ‘What do you think?’
    ‘The right side of my brain says it sounds and reads legit. Non-American. Limited English – the misspellings, grammar, syntax . . .’
    ‘And putting the day before the month in the date . . .’
    ‘That too. But the left side of my brain says “setup”. This is tailor-made to burn your ass. Lots of people would like to do that.’
    Matheson was nodding. ‘They certainly would.’ He took out his cigarette pack. It was empty. He crumpled it up, pulled a new pack out and started smacking it against his palm in the addict’s ritual.
    Harry sighed. ‘And you’re gonna do it – aren’t you?’
    ‘I’ve been here before. This is what I