False Prophet: The gripping breakthrough thriller (A Saul Marshall Thriller 1) Read online

  False Prophet

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  False Prophet

  Richard Davis

  Prologue

  Tuesday, February 26, 2013, 7:02 a.m. EST – 86th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan.

  Aaron Woolf sat down for breakfast, opened his newspaper, and read his obituary:

  Retired realtor, Aaron Woolf, died today aged 55. His body was found in his apartment on West 86th Street, Manhattan, hanging from the light fixture above the dining table. Police are treating it as suicide.

  Setting down his newspaper on the metallic table, Aaron could see his hand shaking. Some wacko had doctored his paper into a veiled death threat. They’d done an immaculate job, too – the text was seamlessly integrated alongside the other obituaries. Aaron felt his body flooding with adrenaline, and jumped as the ring of his landline broke the silence. He hobbled to the phone and snatched the receiver to his ear.

  ‘Hello?’

  The voice on the other end belonged to Aaron’s son, Joshua. This would have been unexceptional had Joshua not been missing, presumed dead, for the past two years. He was reciting the obituary Aaron had just read, word for word. The sound of Joshua’s voice made Aaron stumble.

  ‘Josh, where are you?’ Aaron said with escalating volume. ‘Where are you?’

  But Joshua kept on with his recital, slow and sure, oblivious to this inquiry. When he got to the end, the line went dead.

  Panic seized Aaron, and – after trying and failing to get a dial tone – he began scouring the kitchen for his cell. But it was missing. A moment later, he found himself staggering into the hallway of the seventh floor.

  But when Aaron hit the elevator call button, it failed to illuminate. The elevator was down. Yet it was only when he tried the door to the stairwell and found it locked that he knew this was a trap, the stairwell door was never locked. With pain coursing through his chest, he clambered to the door of 232 – one of the two other apartments on his floor – and banged it hard. Nobody came. He tried the same with the door of 233. Again, there was no response.

  Aaron edged back to his apartment. But before he made it, he heard the sound of hinges working. He turned around. Six men – each dressed in grey, and wearing purple hoods – were filing into the hallway from apartment 232. They seemed to be softly repeating the word ‘Taprobana,’ and were carrying rope and a small blowtorch. Immediately Aaron understood that the ones who’d taken Joshua had come for his father but by the time he thought to yell, the men were already upon him and silencing his mouth. He tried to resist, but it was little use. His feeble body, crippled by a stroke suffered four months prior, was no match for these six powerful men.

  The men wasted no time. They dragged Aaron into his apartment, tied his hands behind his back, and removed his socks and shoes. Then they stood him on the table’s edge, strung a noose around his neck, and tied the other end of the rope to the light fixture. Finally, Aaron’s mouth was freed.

  ‘Why are you doing this? Haven’t I suffered enough?’

  One of the hooded men slowly looked him over. ‘We are here to show you mercy,’ he replied. ‘For your salvation. You have lived in sin. Divine justice will come through your self-annihilation.’

  ‘You fucking lunatics!’ Aaron shouted. ‘Where’s my son?’

  Aaron spat at the man. But he didn’t respond with words. Instead, he took up the blowtorch, activated the flame, and crouched beneath the table. He then put the flame to work on the table’s underside. Aaron felt the metal warm and his feet prickle. Then, all at once, his senses were saturated by searing pain and he was screaming. So he did the only thing he could to switch it off: he closed his eyes, and took a single step off the table’s edge…

  Chapter 1

  Monday, April 14, 2013 – New York State.

  I’m in a squalid motel room, holed up like an animal, and they’re hunting me.

  If they find me, I’ll be lucky to be taken alive.

  But I have experience evading the authorities as I was on the run for four years in the 1990s. And this time, I’m wiser: I’ve spent fifteen years working at the FBI, in some of their most elite departments. So if anyone’s got a chance of staying a step ahead, it’s me.

  The shit hit the fan about a month and a half ago – that’s when I received the call. But really, this whole mess began long before that. And perhaps had the warning come from anyone else but Solomon Teague – an inmate at Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, where they keep the UK’s most dangerous psychopaths – things might’ve been different…

  Teague’s lawyer contacted me a year or so back, and told me that Teague had something to tell me that could save my life – something so sensitive, he had to tell me in person. If I was in any other line of work, I’m sure I would have dismissed Teague as a loon. But when you’re with the FBI, you treat circumstances like these with a bit more respect, and so I heard the lawyer out. Teague, he told me, was something of an odd-one-out at Broadmoor. For one thing, unlike the majority of inmates there, he wasn’t a psychopath – he was a schizophrenic. For another, there was a good deal to suggest he’d been wrongly imprisoned. He was in for assaulting a police officer on a bus to Trafalgar Square in late 2009. But only a week earlier, Teague had taken on a new psychiatrist who’d misread Teague’s notes, and prescribed him a third of what he’d needed, and apparently it was this error that’d directly caused his outburst. So the psychiatrist was to blame, not Teague.

  But even more interesting than this was Teague’s history pre-Broadmoor, which I unearthed by digging around myself. In 1998, he won the Pulitzer Prize for an article he wrote in the Washington Post entitled ‘Timmy’s Life,’ detailing the world of an eight-year-old heroin addict. But the kicker was, he made the whole damn thing up and when the truth eventually came out, it caused so much outrage that Teague had felt his only option was to emigrate to London.

  After learning all this, I decided I was curious enough to meet the guy. And so one afternoon in May 2012, during a business trip to London, I caught a train to Crowthorne, Berkshire, the tranquil patch of English countryside where Broadmoor is
tucked away…

  *

  As I disembarked the train at Crowthorne Station, I immediately recognized the little man on the platform as Teague’s lawyer, Ian Gillett: his round body, bulging eyes, and sparse salt-and-pepper hair were as distinct in the flesh as they’d been in the photograph he’d sent me beforehand. But though he was smiling, it was clear he was unsettled – his hands were shaking, his face flushed, his shirt checkered with sweat – and this was hardly surprising. This was a man used to spa days and fine dining, not trips to insane asylums with FBI agents.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to this, Mr Marshall,’ he said as he shook my hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ I replied. ‘You’ve bested all the travel agents. None of them could get me into Broadmoor. And please, call me Saul.’

  He smiled a strained smile. ‘Really, I appreciate it. I’ve not dealt with anything like this in all my years.’

  ‘It’s an odd situation,’ I said.

  Odd was right, it’s not every day a schizophrenic at Broadmoor seeks you out with a life-or-death message. But actually it was the oddness of the man himself, in particular his unusual history of fraud, that had captured my attention more; because as it so happened, I, too, had once upon a time been caught up in the world of fraud and deception. But for me it wasn’t a fabricated article in a newspaper: it was four years, between late 1991 and mid-1996, spent as a professional con-artist. And during this time, I’d been very busy: I forged historical documents, masqueraded as a psychiatrist, fell in with organized crime, started and finished a relationship with a congressman’s daughter, got engaged to another woman altogether, had a child, tipped off the FBI about one of the most prolific serial killers in American history, and made over $2.5 million through illicit means. All before turning twenty-two.

  ‘So how long am I getting with Teague?’ I asked, as Gillett drove us the short distance to Broadmoor.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ he replied. ‘And it’ll just be you and him – he doesn’t want me present for the conversation. Though mind you, you’re lucky to be getting that long: he’s the only patient in the Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder Unit with visitor privileges at all.’

  The discovery that Teague was in Broadmoor’s DSPD Unit confirmed to me what I already knew, that this was heavy stuff. But had it failed to do so, the protocol for entering the facility would have done the trick: when we arrived at the outer perimeter, Gillett’s car was ransacked and our mobiles confiscated; guards armed with Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns interrogated us in the parking lot; and there was stringent, airport-style security at the entrance to The Wellness Centre, the facility’s chosen euphemism for the visitors’ complex. But finally, I was separated from Gillett and ushered into the visitors’ hall – already populated by twenty or so others – where I found myself a table.

  Five minutes later – when the wall clock hit 5 p.m. – the inmates entered.

  Only then – as I was confronted by a cluster of men in identical orange jumpsuits – did it occur to me that I didn’t know what Teague looked like. But no sooner had I thought this when a man broke away from the group, and came and sat down opposite me. A statuesque man – with a tall, slender frame, wispy grey hair, and deep hazel eyes – who held himself with a grace that distinguished him from the other inmates.

  Yet for all his composure, Solomon Teague looked exhausted. He must’ve been about fifty, but he looked a good deal older.

  ‘Saul Marshall. I have been so excited to meet you,’ he said in a Canadian accent.

  ‘Well, I was just in the Broadmoor neck of the woods, so thought I’d drop by,’ I said, with a smile.

  ‘As you do,’ he riposted; then he added: ‘I was unsure which version of Saul Marshall might be turning up, or if I’d even recognize you at all. I’d have to say my favorite of all your personas was William Martin. Just because of the sheer cheek of it, you know?’

  William Martin was my first ever persona. I was sixteen, living in Brooklyn, and playing at falsifying historical documents. The next thing I knew, I was selling them for big bucks under the name William Martin, an antiques salesman from New York. Why that name? During WW2, the British created a fictitious man, Major William Martin, to feed false intelligence to the Germans. The MI5 took the body of an already dead man, planted on him papers identifying him as Major William Martin along with erroneous battle plans, before leaving him for Jerry to find. The tactic was a complete success, and so I decided to use the name for my own deception in homage to this masterful plot.

  It was curious that Teague knew this detail from my past. But much more curious was his nonchalance. So far, he didn’t seem remotely like a man with something urgent to say, and not much time to say it.

  ‘I might have fooled a few experts,’ I replied, opting to keep up the patter. ‘But William Martin was all imitation. With you, it was fabrication. And to think how you sent those policemen and politicians running after a boy that didn’t exist…’

  Teague gave a wistful smile.

  ‘Those were some days,’ he said, with a note of longing, but also remorse – pride and regret slugging it out. I knew the feeling. But then, all of a sudden, Teague’s body language shifted: he leaned forward, widened his eyes, hunched his shoulders. Then he said abruptly:

  ‘Listen, Saul: I have something to tell you that could save your life.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I replied, with equal abruptness. ‘If you had something so important to say, then why waste the last minute with small-talk?’

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You’ve just been taken to Broadmoor to meet with a schizophrenic. I understand how that must look. I needed to establish my sanity before I bothered to tell you a damned thing.’

  I grunted. Understood his logic.

  ‘Now, look,’ he continued urgently. ‘What I need to tell you starts in September 1981. I was eighteen, living in Toronto. Next thing I knew, I’d landed myself in an insane asylum. The hows and whys are unimportant. But I’d ended up at the Oak Ridge Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Ontario, an experimental facility for treating psychopaths and schizophrenics. They stripped us naked, pumped us full of LSD, then watched to see what happened. All this in what we knew as the Total Encounter Capsule.’

  I couldn’t see a motive for making this up.

  ‘Describe it,’ I said.

  ‘Padded walls, with straws built into them through which they provided food.’

  He said this with conviction, like it was something he’d truly seen. Then again, Teague was a schizophrenic: things he sincerely believed he’d seen could still easily be products of his own mind. Back to square one.

  He continued: ‘While at Oak Ridge, I was thrown in with a lot of disturbing characters: killers and sadists – much like here. But there was one I found particularly disturbing. A seventeen-year-old called Ivan Drexler. He’d been admitted a few months before me for convincing a kid to attack his own family with a crowbar. The kid’s sister wound up dead. Most psychopaths don’t mind getting their hands dirty. Drexler preferred to inspire others to do the dirty work.

  ‘In short, he was lethal, intelligent, and most of all disarming. I remember him telling me about that very incident which had landed him in Oak Ridge. He told me how it had made him feel like God to have that power over another person, and how he wanted to inspire that behavior time and again. He told me that what he’d loved most was the self-abuse on the victim’s part – the kid having murdered his own sister. But somehow, despite these comments, he still had a magnetism. It’s difficult to explain.’

  I nodded my understanding. Between late 1993 and early 1995 I had masqueraded as a psychiatrist in Salt Lake City and in the process, I’d learned a lot about psychopaths. The key is the amygdalae – the part of the brain which processes emotions. In a psychopath, the amygdalae and the central nervous system don’t communicate. As a result, their brains aren’t able to process another’s suffering.

  They’re inhuman, yet
they ooze charisma.

  ‘I’m not proud of this,’ said Teague. ‘But I’ll show you.’

  He rolled up his right shirt sleeve. There was a red butterfly tattooed on his forearm.

  ‘Drexler has one of these, too,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Identical.’

  ‘And then what?’ I prompted.

  ‘Then we both left Oak Ridge,’ he said, unrolling his sleeve. ‘Both discharged in June 1983. I was declared well, so long as I stuck to my medication. But Drexler was pronounced wholly cured. Supposedly the Oak Ridge experience had taught him what a psychopath can’t be taught: empathy. But even then, it seemed too good to be true. There was something too polished about him – too perfect.

  ‘And then we went our completely separate ways. I reasonably expected not to cross his path again. Why should I? I moved to DC, to pursue my dream of becoming a journalist. And as I’m sure you know, I eventually got a job at the Post after fudging my resume. I was ambitious, driven. Drexler didn’t cross my mind for years.

  ‘It wasn’t till 1997 – fourteen years on – that I began rummaging among the skeletons in my closet. I decided to do an article on Oak Ridge: a dramatic exposé on experimental medication; a brave admission of my own personal history. I did my research and met with others who’d been through Oak Ridge, and my findings were disturbing. Here’s the gist: while around sixty percent of psychopaths who go through conventional treatment reoffend, among those who’d been through Oak Ridge, the figure was eighty percent. I had questions. I looked Drexler up. I couldn’t help myself.’

  He paused, thinking how to proceed. I couldn’t yet see what this had to do with me.

  ‘It turned out he was serving a thirteen year prison sentence in upstate New York – the Coxsackie Correctional Institute. I paid him a visit.

  ‘I remember the day clearly. Drexler was so pleased to see me. Ecstatic. It was unsettling how precisely he remembered me. No longer in awe of his charisma, I began to see it as part of his inhumanity. I asked him what he thought of Oak Ridge, and he gushed. “I learned how to manipulate more effectively,” he said, “and to keep my more shocking instincts out of sight.” Oak Ridge had taught psychopaths how to seem humane. It had made Drexler more dangerous, more difficult to spot what he was.’