Fake Truth (Ian Ludlow Thrillers) Read online

  PRAISE FOR FAKE TRUTH

  “A winner from first page to last. Lee Goldberg has singlehandedly invented a new genre of thriller. At once nail-bitingly suspenseful and gut-bustingly hilarious . . . but never less than a pedal-to-the-metal, full-on page-turner. Fake Truth is clever, edge-of-your-seat entertainment that I read in one glorious sitting. And that’s no lie!”

  —Christopher Reich, New York Times bestselling author

  “Timely, satirical, and funny. Lee Goldberg’s Fake Truth is deftly ironic and painfully observant.”

  —Robert Dugoni, New York Times bestselling author

  PRAISE FOR KILLER THRILLER

  “Killer Thriller grabs you from page one with brilliant wit, sharply honed suspense, and a huge helping of pure originality.”

  —Jeffery Deaver, New York Times bestselling author

  “A delight from start to finish, a round-the-world, thrill-a-minute, laser-guided missile of a book.”

  —Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author of Judgment

  “Killer Thriller is an action-packed treasure filled with intrigue, engaging characters, and exciting, well-rendered locales. With Goldberg’s hyper-clever plotting, dialogue, and wit on every page, readers are in for a blast with this one!”

  —Mark Greaney, New York Times bestselling author of the Gray Man series

  PRAISE FOR TRUE FICTION

  “Thriller fiction at its absolute finest—and it could happen for real. But not to me, I hope.”

  —Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Jack Reacher series

  “This may be the most fun you’ll ever have reading a thriller. It’s a breathtaking rush of suspense, intrigue, and laughter that only Lee Goldberg could pull off. I loved it.”

  —Janet Evanovich, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “This is my life . . . in a thriller! True Fiction is great fun.”

  —Brad Meltzer, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The House of Secrets

  “Fans of parodic thrillers will enjoy the exhilarating ride . . . [in] this Elmore Leonard mashed with Get Smart romp.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A conspiracy thriller of the first order, a magical blend of fact and it-could-happen scary fiction. Nail-biting, page-turning, and laced with Goldberg’s wry humor, True Fiction is a true delight, reminiscent of Three Days of the Condor and the best of Hitchcock’s innocent-man-in-peril films.”

  —Paul Levine, bestselling author of Bum Rap

  “Great fun that moves as fast as a jet. Goldberg walks a tightrope between suspense and humor and never slips.”

  —Linwood Barclay, New York Times bestselling author of The Twenty-Three

  “I haven’t read anything this much fun since Donald E. Westlake’s comic-caper novels. Immensely entertaining, clever, and timely.”

  —David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of Murder as a Fine Art and First Blood

  “The story of an innocent man caught in a deadly conspiracy has been told before, but Lee Goldberg takes it a step further in this rollicking, sometimes humorous, always deadly True Fiction. Highly recommended.”

  —Brendan DuBois, author of Storm Cell

  “Ian Ludlow is one of the coolest heroes to emerge in post-9/11 thrillers. A wonderful, classic yet modern, breakneck suspense novel. Lee Goldberg delivers a great story with a literary metafiction wink that makes its thrills resonate.”

  —James Grady, author of Six Days of the Condor

  OTHER TITLES BY LEE GOLDBERG

  King City

  The Walk

  Watch Me Die

  McGrave

  Three Ways to Die

  Fast Track

  The Ian Ludlow Thrillers

  True Fiction

  Killer Thriller

  The Eve Ronin Series

  Lost Hills

  The Fox & O’Hare Series (coauthored with Janet Evanovich)

  Pros & Cons (novella)

  The Shell Game (novella)

  The Heist

  The Chase

  The Job

  The Scam

  The Pursuit

  The Diagnosis Murder Series

  The Silent Partner

  The Death Merchant

  The Shooting Script

  The Waking Nightmare

  The Past Tense

  The Dead Letter

  The Double Life

  The Last Word

  The Monk Series

  Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse

  Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii

  Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu

  Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants

  Mr. Monk in Outer Space

  Mr. Monk Goes to Germany

  Mr. Monk Is Miserable

  Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop

  Mr. Monk in Trouble

  Mr. Monk Is Cleaned Out

  Mr. Monk on the Road

  Mr. Monk on the Couch

  Mr. Monk on Patrol

  Mr. Monk Is a Mess

  Mr. Monk Gets Even

  The Charlie Willis Series

  My Gun Has Bullets

  Dead Space

  The Dead Man Series (coauthored with William Rabkin)

  Face of Evil

  Ring of Knives (with James Daniels)

  Hell in Heaven

  The Dead Woman (with David McAfee)

  The Blood Mesa (with James Reasoner)

  Kill Them All (with Harry Shannon)

  The Beast Within (with James Daniels)

  Fire & Ice (with Jude Hardin)

  Carnival of Death (with Bill Crider)

  Freaks Must Die (with Joel Goldman)

  Slaves to Evil (with Lisa Klink)

  The Midnight Special (with Phoef Sutton)

  The Death March (with Christa Faust)

  The Black Death (with Aric Davis)

  The Killing Floor (with David Tully)

  Colder Than Hell (with Anthony Neil Smith)

  Evil to Burn (with Lisa Klink)

  Streets of Blood (with Barry Napier)

  Crucible of Fire (with Mel Odom)

  The Dark Need (with Stant Litore)

  The Rising Dead (with Stella Green)

  Reborn (with Kate Danley, Phoef Sutton, and Lisa Klink)

  The Jury Series

  Judgment

  Adjourned

  Payback

  Guilty

  Nonfiction

  The Best TV Shows You Never Saw

  Unsold Television Pilots 1955–1989

  Television Fast Forward

  Science Fiction Filmmaking in the 1980s (cowritten with William Rabkin, Randy Lofficier, and Jean-Marc Lofficier)

  The Dreamweavers: Interviews with Fantasy Filmmakers of the 1980s (cowritten with William Rabkin, Randy Lofficier, and Jean-Marc Lofficier)

  Successful Television Writing (cowritten with William Rabkin)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Adventures in Television, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542014694 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 15420
14697 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781542093118 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1542093112 (paperback)

  Cover design by Mike Heath | Magnus Creative

  First edition

  To Valerie and Maddie:

  what I feel for you is true.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  POSTSCRIPT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Syria, Virginia. July 11. 2:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

  It had been four days since author Ian Ludlow and his research assistant, Margo French, saved the lives of the presidents of the United States and France and four hours since they’d left the Oval Office, where the leader of the free world privately expressed his gratitude for their heroic actions.

  Nobody would ever know what Ian and Margo had done, and Ian was fine with that. In fact, he was still having a hard time believing any of it had actually happened. It was the kind of outrageous adventure that Clint Straker, the freelance superspy in his bestselling series of novels, had every day.

  But not Ian. He didn’t have the body or the training for it. He was a flabby Californian in his thirties who had learned everything he knew about covert spying from James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Austin Powers.

  And yet here they were, riding with CIA director Michael Healy and his two bodyguards in a bulletproof black Suburban on a country road through a forest in the hills outside Syria, Virginia. The road ended at a remote log cabin, where another black Suburban was parked out front.

  “What is this place?” Ian asked.

  “A CIA safe house,” Healy said. He was a clean-cut man in his fifties who appeared so wholesome that Ian was sure he could pass as a high school teacher, a Mormon missionary, or the reliable love interest in one of those Hallmark Channel movies.

  “In Syria,” Ian said, sounding skeptical.

  “Virginia,” Healy said.

  “Still, you have to appreciate the irony.”

  “I don’t see it,” Healy said.

  Ian did and he wished he could use it in a novel. But when he agreed four hours earlier in the Oval Office to share his future plot ideas with the CIA, just in case some of them might come true again (as they already had twice, in a big way), the arrangement came with the promise not to reveal any government secrets he might learn.

  “What if the safe house was in Moscow, Maryland, or Lebanon, Pennsylvania?” Ian asked. “Would you see it then?”

  Healy straightened up. “How did you know we have safe houses there?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Margo laughed. “It’s nice to know that there’s someone in the CIA besides me who has a sense of humor.”

  She was in her twenties, naturally slim, with short crow-black hair that looked like she’d angrily trimmed it herself with a serrated bread knife, which Ian thought was a real possibility. He’d also frequently thought about sleeping with her, but that was definitely an impossibility, since she was gay.

  When Ian met Margo a little over two years ago, he was on a promotional tour for his latest Straker novel and she was the professional dog walker and aspiring folk singer his publisher had hired to drive him to book signings around Seattle. He’d just learned in the past few days that, in the year since then, she’d been secretly recruited by the CIA and was using her job as his researcher as a cover. It was a ridiculous plot twist that could have come right out of one of his thrillers.

  “It’s no joke,” Healy said. “If some idiot intentionally located safe houses in places that share the names of enemy states and cities, then it’s a pattern that can be discovered by our adversaries and puts the assets we are protecting in mortal danger. Every one of those safe houses has to be shut down. Ian, you’ve proved your value to us once again. We need the perspective of someone outside looking in.”

  Ian wasn’t sure he wanted to be that guy. It was too dangerous.

  The driver parked behind the other Suburban. The two bodyguards got out first to sniff the air for terrorists, snipers, and other potential dangers, and then, once they were satisfied it was safe, they opened the back doors for Healy, Ian, and Margo.

  The three of them were met on the front porch by two CIA agents wearing stiff new John Deere baseball caps, aviator shades, and untucked, loose-fitting Carhartt plaid work shirts over faded blue jeans, outfits that Ian figured were supposed to make them blend in with the locals. If that was the goal, then the agents probably should have parked a mud-spattered Ford F-150 pickup in front of the cabin instead of a spotless black Suburban with windows tinted darker than tar paper.

  “She’s inside and the cabin has been swept for listening devices,” one of the agents said. “It’s all clear.”

  Healy led Ian and Margo into the cabin, where Wang Mei sat, in a peasant blouse and blue jeans, on a log couch with leather-upholstered cushions. It wasn’t exactly the appropriate wardrobe or setting for the beautiful young daughter of an imprisoned billionaire and one of the most famous actresses in China.

  She held a mason jar of ice tea in her hand. Of course the glasses were mason jars, Ian thought. The cabin was like a production designer’s idea of a mountain retreat. All that was missing was an elk’s head mounted on the stone fireplace.

  “This is a surprise,” Mei said when she saw Ian and Margo. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you two again.”

  She didn’t strike Ian as too excited about it, either.

  “Not even at the Straker premiere?” he asked. She was one of the stars of the big-budget movie adaptation of his books, which had just started production in Hong Kong. That was where he’d met Wang Mei and helped the actress defect to the United States, which had probably killed the movie, though he hadn’t been keeping up on Hollywood news lately. Mei had brought with her a microSD card hidden in the flesh of her thigh. That was something Ian was definitely going to use in one of his books.

  The microSD card contained decades-old hidden-camera footage of Vice President Willard Penny, then a young politician, cavorting in bed with two naked Chinese women. The Chinese had been using the film for decades to blackmail Penny into doing their bidding. Now Healy was using Penny to feed the Chinese false intelligence.

  �
�If they finish the movie, which I doubt they will, I won’t be in it,” Mei said. “I’m expecting to get a new identity and then be sent off to Wyoming to live in a double-wide and work at Walmart for the rest of my life.”

  “Is that what you want?” Healy asked.

  “What I want doesn’t mean anything to you,” she said, a sharp edge to her voice. “I defected to deliver a punishing blow to China and perhaps stop President Xiao from achieving his dream of ruling there for life. But you betrayed me.”

  “Oooh,” Margo whispered to Ian, “this is going to be good.” And then she went to the refrigerator, pulled out the pitcher of ice tea, and helped herself to two mason jars from a kitchen cabinet.

  “On the contrary,” Healy said. “We acted immediately on the information you gave us on the microSD card, saved the lives of two presidents, and undermined a scheme that Xiao spent decades, and billions of dollars, to achieve. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  Margo poured a jar of ice tea for Ian, and then one for herself, while they watched the show.

  “No, it wasn’t,” Mei said. “I wanted to destroy Xiao to avenge my parents, who he has imprisoned for life. But you blamed ISIS for the assassination attempts, not Xiao, and you didn’t expose his plot to the world. He walks away unscathed, and in November that party congress will let him become dictator.”

  Healy waved off her argument. “That’s only the way it seems. The fact is, you’ve dealt Xiao a fatal blow that will eventually destroy him and his government. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

  “Eventually. That’s nice,” Mei said. “I hope I’ll still be alive to see it. When do I go into hiding?”

  “You don’t,” Healy said.

  “Then I definitely won’t be alive to see it.”

  Ian thought she was probably right about that.

  “Your life isn’t in any danger,” Healy said. “Penny told the Chinese that you brought us no actionable intelligence and that you’re just a spoiled, neurotic heiress who played us for fools.”

  “And you think they believe him?” Mei asked.

  Margo spoke up. “Why not? Half the story is true.”

  Ian quickly asked a question to distract Healy and Mei from Margo’s caustic remark. “What’s China saying about her defection?”

  “Not a word,” Healy said. “Not even through back channels. They don’t seem to care that Mei is gone.”

  “They care,” Mei said. “Xiao will send assassins to kill me. I have to disappear.”