Page 20 of Dead Fall

“Any relation to the cannibal from Tampa?”

“Nope. The man had never even set foot in the state of Florida. Not that it mattered. AllThe Public Truthblog needed to do was insinuate that it was the same person and the fuse was then lit.

“Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that one of the other employees taken into custody—a dishwasher—had multiple outstanding felony warrants, one of which was for child molestation.”

“Jesus,” she exclaimed.

“The blog ran with that, too. It published a totally bogus ‘report’ that the pair came from the same South American country, had been smuggled into the United States by the same coyote, and that there were wire transfers—washed through an account in the Caymans—that traced back to a powerful group of club members, none of which is true.”

“This was all the Russian troll farms at work?”

Carolan nodded. “As you can imagine, with a small collection of bots and fake social media accounts, a story this juicy was able to start gaining purchase in some of the darker corners of the internet. Because of the club’s location and membership, it played right into people’s growing distrust of government and institutions. But to keep the fire spreading, it had to be stoked even further with more outrageous kindling. This is where the conspiracy really takes off.

“They took the myth of the cannibal and mashed it together with the outstanding warrant for child molestation. The next thing you know, the club is home to a child-trafficking cabal of pedophiles who feast on their victims’ flesh.”

“Like I said,” Fields replied. “Next-level lunacy.”

“Even better, they allegedly keep scores of children locked up in the club’s basement.”

“Basement?There aren’t any basements along this part of the Potomac. The water table’s too high. Half that club, if not more,” she said, pointing out the window, “is built on pylons.”

“You don’t think a cabal of evil, child-trafficking politicians and elite power brokers can’t figure out how to sink a secret basement beneath their yacht club? Could they have ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to build a top-secret, backup fallout shelter for Congress there? Better yet, maybe the club is constructed over an abandoned D.C. metro stop that has been erased from all modern maps. Perhaps the basement is actually an old vault that Abraham Lincoln used to hide the Union’s gold in case the Confederacy ever stormed the capital. How can anyone really be sure?”

Fields smiled. “We’re back to all that stuff about conspiracy theories being unfalsifiable, aren’t we?”

“We are,” Carolan responded.

“So why do you think this connects to Burman and how are you so convinced we’re looking at his murder and not a suicide?”

“I’ll take those in reverse order, starting with his shoes. He was wearing pristine, white leather sneakers. The toes, however, were noticeably scuffed. Unless he drags his feet around town like a petulant six-year-old, somebody—likely a person on each arm—dragged him out onto the terrace and tossed him over. I’m guessing that he was heavily under the influence of something and probably wasn’t even conscious.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because if you’re dragging me anywhere against my will, I’m digging in my heels, not my toes.”

“Good point,” Fields admitted.

“Another reason I’m leaning toward murder is the fact that his wallet is missing. It wasn’t on the evidence log for the personal effects found on his body and it wasn’t on the list up in his apartment.”

“Could it have been a robbery gone bad?”

“They take his wallet but leave his Rolex, eleven hundred bucks in cash, and all the art and everything else in his penthouse? No way. Plus, how many robberies have you ever heard of where they throw the victim off a roof? It would have been much easier to kill him inside the building. This is all about creating a public spectacle. That’s what they wanted. And it’s quintessential Moscow.”

“You and I both know,” said Fields, “that people get tossed out of windows and off of rooftops in Russia all of the time, but here? In the United States?”

“I had trouble remembering earlier, but there was one. Four years ago. A Russian media figure who had run afoul of Peshkov fell out the window of his hotel in Manhattan. He had been seen drinking heavily in the bar that evening and, with no evidence to the contrary, the cause of his death was ruled accidental.

“But what triggered my recollection was that—like Burman—his wallet was never found. Afterward, someone told me a rumor that Russianwet-work teams have been known to keep the wallets of their targets as a kind of scalp, proving to their superiors that they were the cause of death and not some well-timed accident.”

“Okay, I’m willing to go with both—that Burman was killed by the Russians and that Moscow wants to build some sort of conspiracy theory around the Commodore Yacht Club. What I don’t get is, what’s the connective tissue? What ties the two together?”

Carolan spread his hands as if he were revealing a table loaded with food and replied, “Like everything else in this town—politics. And more to our purposes,geopolitics. The Commodore has a certain slant, which makes absolutely no difference to me, but it does to the Russians.

“To a person, the Senators and Congressmen who are members here are decidedly pro-Ukraine. Not only are they some of Kyiv’s biggest backers, but there’s also more than one defense contractor who moors a boat here, as well as a handful of lobbyists who are getting their beaks pretty wet via the war.”

“But why tie Burman into all of this?” Fields asked. “Was he even a member of the club?”

“I don’t recall seeing his name on the roster. Not that it matters. Killing a Peshkov critic could serve more than one agenda. It sends a message to all the other critics, particularly those who think they’re beyond the reach of Moscow, that none of them are safe—not even steps away from the White House.

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