The Blue Ridge Project: A Dark Suspense Novel (The Project Book 1) (13 page)

Robert’s journey back from his clandestine meeting with Don was slow. He purposefully drove well under the speed limit, allowing him to think over his next step. He called Eliza and left a message when she didn’t answer, saying he would be home when he could.

Snatching glances at the envelope with the damning photo of Frey inside, Robert thought about who he could bring it to for an opinion on its authenticity. Obviously he couldn’t bring it to a stranger. His old colleagues and contacts could be trusted to keep a secret, right up until the next publication deadline when they were short on a story. He wracked his brain thinking of a way, of some unlikely someone who would possess the skill to spot a fake yet not want to spread it around, and then suddenly it came to him: A driver behind him laid on the horn when he made a sharp turn off the highway and onto a smaller road.

Another few twists and turns and he was on a stretch of road where the buildings ran out, a couple of miles outside of Beacon. He slowed the car after he saw a landmark he recognized, and came to a full stop outside a trailer parked up on the side of the road. Robert thought that it looked more abandoned than parked.

It was in tall grass that was turning brown in places, about twelve feet from the edge of the road. There was the stump of an old tree to one side, holding a variety of potted flowers that were slumped and drooping. A long, dark-green hedge stretched behind the trailer that grew out of control on the edge of someone’s land. A gate had recently been installed about twenty feet up from where the trailer was.

The trailer itself was a shining metallic gray, spotted with rust in some places near the roof. Some of the blocks that held it up were broken and crumbling, but the green-brown grass covered most of the damage. There was a clear patch of well-worn ground in front of the door. There were two small, square windows with screens on them to either side of the door, and a tiny outlet pipe puffed out small clouds of white smoke from the roof. There was a smell in the air of wet grass and scorched wood, mixed with a hint of cow shit, although Robert hadn’t seen any cows in the area.

He got out of the car and made a big show of dawdling to look at the flowers on the stump. After about a minute of this, a man stepped out of the trailer and onto the grass. He was wearing a white vest that was starting to yellow in spots around the midsection and a pea-green shirt that was a size too big for his skinny frame. Black corduroy trousers and a pair of grayish hiking boots completed the ensemble. His hair was longer than Robert remembered, and it was thinning drastically. He had the makings of a week-long beard, scruffy and patchy around the neck. A pair of glasses hung on a cord around his neck, and he put them on as he approached Robert.

“Hey, I know you?” the man asked, recognition dancing around the edges of his eyes, a growl in his voice in case he was wrong.

“Unfortunately so, Mr. Jergens. If I remember correctly, the last time we met you chased me away with your shotgun.”

“Hm. Probably that whiskey doing the driving. I must have had a good reason.”

“Maybe. I was trying to get an interview under false pretenses.”

“Ah, so you’re another vulture. Hold on right there, I’m just going to get something from inside—” Jergens turned to go back to the trailer when Robert called out, his voice plaintive.

“Wait, please. It’s not a story. I need your help.”

Jergens stopped and looked back at Robert, his green eyes set behind dark eyelids. Then he sighed and stretched, rubbing his lower back as he did.

“All right, come on. I’ll grab a chair and a bottle. And you’ll call me Pete, or I’ll grab that shotgun and we’ll see how far you get this time before I can aim at you.”

*****

Jergens raised his glass to Robert in a silent toast. The last of the day’s light was long gone, but the moon was full in the clear sky and it lit up the glass. It had a cartoon cow that looked like it was happy with its existence, and was half full of the whiskey that Jergens had brought outside with the frayed camping chairs. The chair he gave to Robert was only slightly more damaged than the one he kept for himself.

After he had polished off half of his drink, Jergens sat back and made a contented smacking sound with his mouth. He poured another measure in and twisted the bottle into the ground a little so it wouldn’t fall over. Robert took a swig from his own glass, the whiskey burning the back of his throat and warming his belly.

“So what can I help you with, Mr.—?”

“Robert Duncan. I was hoping you could take a look at a photo for me.”

Jergens eyed him over the rim of his glass. “Right. I thought it might be something like that. They’re going to put that on my cheap tombstone, you know. Pete ‘the Cheat’ Jergens, the man who faked a war crime.”

Robert was silent for a second, looking down into his own glass. Then he looked up.

“Can I ask you a question, Pete? Not an interview, I swear. I just want to know something.”

“You want to know why I did it.”

Robert nodded.

Jergens took another gulp of his whiskey.

“All right, youngster. I’ll tell you, and you can do what you want with it. Ain’t no one gonna believe either of us anyway.”

He cleared his throat and smoothed down the creases in his trousers.

“Before New Zion, I was doing okay for myself. Managed to keep the lights on and food on the table with my freelance work, as well as a little bit of recognition in the appropriate circles. Then one July, I get a call from some reporter, Leng, who wants to head out to cover the conflict. Expenses paid, what few expenses there were in a war-torn shithole like New Zion. Apart from bribes, of course. Gotta grease the wheels if you wanna get around down there.”

Robert nodded. He had read the stories about the guides who had held visitors hostage in the jungles and desolate places, until they paid up twenty times the original price. Some still ended up shot by the militia who rescued them because they had no money left.

“So we’re there, traipsing around the jungle, and I’m snapping those photos that everyone was so crazy about back here, back then. Our guide took us through old rebel trails to avoid all the booby traps and landmines dotted around the place. Meanwhile, Leng’s getting all these interviews with survivors and escapees and rebel forces. Nobody stopped us. People wanted, shit, they
needed
to tell us their stories. To show us their dead and wounded, and their burnt houses and farms.

“You know what happened when we came back. The awards, the inquiries, the TV spots. We were famous. More importantly, we were making serious money. All of a sudden, all those photos I couldn’t even sell for a god damned religious pamphlet were getting bought up by the dozen.” Jergens spat into the grass.

“Must have been nice, for what it was,” Robert said, finishing off his glass. Jergens wordlessly topped both of their drinks up.

“I suppose,” Jergens continued, “it was all right for a while. People buying you drinks, women wanting to sleep with you just because you’ve been on a picture box in their living room. After a time, though, it just felt hollow. None of it meant anything, except for the photos from New Zion. And the plebes had all but forgotten about the atrocities we had laid bare for the world. Some small intervention by peacekeepers for a couple of months and then back to business as usual. So I found someone willing to go back with me, some young pup named Murphy with dreams of retracing our steps and getting his own name up there in lights.

“When we get there, I looked up one of the contacts we had before, but he doesn’t want anything to do with us. He sends me off to his cousin, who informs me about the new regime. There was some truce that was a result of the peacekeeper mission, allowing the militia and the government forces to join up and slaughter most of the rebels and freedom fighters. On paper, it looked like progress. In reality, the horror and the violence had just been sanctioned by the government.

“I flashed some cash around, and managed to find someone who’d take us through the jungle again, see what was going on in deep country. One night, when we’re stepping through some thick brush, the jungle opened fire. I just saw Murphy, the young guy with me—” Jergens stopped, looking out past Robert and beyond him, down the way he had come.

“What happened?” Robert asked, instantly regretting the question as soon as he asked. He was terrified that he had ruined the mood, and Jergens would clam up and run him off again. Instead, Jergens took a drink and looked again at Robert.

“The bullets ripped through him. It was like he had little bombs dotted all over his body that exploded one after the other. The blood flew up and hit me in the face, and there was smoke coming from behind the bushes in front of us. I dropped to my knees and put my hands to my face. The blood was warm and sticky, I remember. I looked to my right and the guide was there, also unharmed. He looked like I felt.

“Three men in military gear picked me up and put me on my feet. They were speaking loud and fast to the guide, while gesturing at me with their rifles. The guide was gibbering back to them, pointing to himself, then me, then Murphy’s crumpled body on the ground beside us. I guessed he was trying to negotiate our lives. Then, one of the men grabbed my camera from my neck and looked through the photos and started laughing.

“‘You are journalist, yes?’ he asked me, right up in my face.

“‘Yeah,’ was all I could say. I don’t think it would have been in my interest to correct him and tell him I was actually an award-winning
photo
journalist.”

“Probably not,” Robert said in a voice just above a whisper.

“Next thing I know, they’re leading both of us through the jungle again, until we come to a clearing where more men in military gear were unloading boxes from the back of a truck. The guy who spoke English pointed at the boxes.

“‘Food. Medicine. For the people,’ he said, then laughed. His breath stank, but I just nodded. ‘Pictures,’ he told me, pointing at the camera and holding it out to me, ‘take pictures. Yes?’ He wiggled his rifle at me, and I got the point. Started snapping pictures of these supposedly altruistic fucks loading what was probably stolen medicine and food onto the ground.

“They let me go soon after, but they didn’t let me take Murphy’s body. The bastards, they wouldn’t even let me take a keepsake from the body for his family.

“After I got back, I drank a lot. Shut myself off, stopped taking calls, interviews, stopped going to the parties. Stayed at home and went through the old photos, occasionally trashing my semi-luxurious apartment. One night, after a few bottles, a broken mirror and a trip to the emergency room, I had an idea.

“I called the guy who first ran the New Zion photos and I told him I had some new ones. Pictures that showed the government loading out weapons and chemical agents to use on their citizens. And that was that.”

Robert exhaled and shook his head slowly.

“I never thought.... Everyone thought you just did it for the money,” Robert said finally.

“That’s what people want to think, when you do something wrong. That or you’re just a bad person, and to the fickle public it all boils down to the same. You’re only as good as your last good deed, Robert. Words of wisdom from a man who lives on the wrong side of the road.”

They drank together in silence for a few minutes then, looking up at the bright moon, thinking of the dark part that people couldn’t see but knew was there, just behind it.

*****

“So tell me,” Jergens said after a while, after their glasses had been refilled, “what’s the story behind this photo of yours? Must be something, if you brought it to me.”

Robert pulled the envelope from his pocket and slid the photo out face down.

“I can’t really say much about it,” Robert said. “As far as I can tell, there are major players involved, and I don’t want to put you in unnecessary danger.”

“Like I said, ain’t nobody interested in Pete the Cheat no more.”

“All right. You’re up to speed with the political landscape these days?”

Jergens nodded and belched, and Robert took a deep breath then handed him the photo.

Jergens put his glasses on, took a small penlight from his pocket and sat forward. He studied the photo for a long time, then stood up and went inside. He came back seconds later with a magnifying glass and peered again at the photo. After about five minutes of his silent inspection, Robert leaned forward.

“Well? Any ideas?”

Jergens turned slowly and looked at Robert over his glasses. “The way I see it, sonny, either way you’re fucked.”

“How’s that?”

“I know who this is, or who it’s
supposed
to be. If it’s real, the fact that he’s taking part in it would hint at some criminal collaboration. Knowledge of something like this couldn’t be allowed to exist in the public domain. Therefore, your ass would be murdered and dumped somewhere where even the rats wouldn’t find it. Your loved ones first, though, so you can bring your lesson through to the afterlife.

“If it’s fake, it means you’re being set up by someone very proficient at it. Maybe even by someone on their payroll. It could be some double bluff, or a distraction, hiding some real bad shit that he’s up to. The circus this would cause could give him the cover he needs to do whatever it is he’s been doing on the quiet. He comes out looking better than ever while we’re all looking in the wrong direction, and your credibility is shot forever.