The Chimera Secret Page 4

  Ethan watched as Sedgewick hurtled around the side of the vehicle and straight into the path of Lopez. Lopez swung an open palm across Sedgewick’s face with a sharp crack that made Ethan wince. The fat man yelped in shock as he came to a tumbling halt and staggered against the side of the vehicle. In an instant, Lopez had one of his wrists wrapped in a steel cuff as she twisted Sedgewick’s arm up behind his back and shoved him headfirst into the rear of the Suburban.

  Ethan jogged neatly alongside the Suburban as Lopez slammed the rear door shut, then he climbed into the driver’s side and slipped the vehicle into gear. Moments later, they were turning right toward the office.

  Ethan said nothing, but glanced in the rear-view mirror to see Lopez looking at him.

  ‘Slick,’ she admitted with a wry grin.

  Sedgewick’s pallid features blanched as he looked at them in turn with wide eyes.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  Lopez, her hands still pinning Sedgewick’s behind his back, clicked the second cuff into place and smiled sweetly at him. ‘Bail bondsmen,’ she informed him. ‘Guess where you’re headed.’

  Sedgewick’s eyes brimmed with tears that spilled down his florid cheeks.

  ‘Don’t send me to Cook County,’ he begged. ‘I’ll pay you anything.’

  ‘Or sell us one of your worthless Ponzi schemes?’ Ethan asked rhetorically. ‘No thanks, buddy, we’ll take the state’s check.’

  Sedgewick’s bloated features imploded in grief as he banged his head against the window and sobbed quietly. Ethan ignored him as he drove into the parking lot and pulled in alongside a pair of dark-blue sedans. A knot of apprehension formed somewhere in the pit of his belly as he noted the government plates on both cars. Lopez’s eyes narrowed in his rear-view mirror as she, too, spotted the vehicles.

  ‘Jarvis?’

  Ethan nodded but said nothing as he killed the engine and climbed out.

  Douglas Jarvis was a former United States Marine officer who had commanded Ethan’s rifle platoon during the second Gulf War through operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Jarvis had long since retired from the corps, serving his country instead from within the shadowy halls of the Defense Intelligence Agency and hiring Ethan and Lopez to conduct investigations into cases that the Pentagon rejected as un worthy of attention. So far, their work had uncovered conspiracies that were beyond anything that Ethan could ever have previously imagined.

  Lopez manhandled Sedgewick out of the Suburban as Ethan saw that the security door to their office was already open, a pair of DIA agents standing guard inside. Lopez shook her head.

  ‘Jesus, what’s that guy’s problem with doors?’

  Ethan couldn’t remember a time when Jarvis had simply knocked on a door and waited for somebody to open it. He just walked in, picked the lock or had his people bust their way in.

  Ethan led the way into the office, the two agents allowing him through. Jarvis was waiting inside, sat behind Lopez’s desk and leafing through a series of documents detailing their recent busts.

  ‘Good morning,’ he greeted them with a smile, and then caught sight of Sedgewick’s face. ‘Looks like you’ve had a busy one, street cleaning.’

  ‘He’s worth a fortune,’ Lopez snapped, holding Sedgewick like a leashed dog in the office doorway. ‘No way you’re pulling this one off us.’

  Jarvis held up his hands.

  ‘I’m not here to snatch your prize, Nicola, believe me. I’ve got more work for you, if you can fit it in.’

  Lopez slammed Sedgewick down into a plastic chair that creaked under the strain. She glanced at Jarvis as she pinned the fugitive to the chair.

  ‘What makes you think we want any more work from you?’

  ‘Because you’re hungry for it and because you enjoy it.’

  ‘Son of a bitch . . .’

  Lopez reached out for Jarvis’s throat. Ethan blocked her and put himself between them, looking down at Lopez as he gripped her shoulders.

  ‘Easy. Don’t go there.’

  ‘He killed Scott,’ Lopez shot back, pointing at Jarvis. ‘We got a pay check and a pat on the back. All he cares about is the goddamned DIA, not us.’

  Scott Bryson had been a retired Navy SEAL who had helped them on their last investigation. A colorful character with far more personality than sobriety, he had nonetheless sacrificed himself to protect Lopez. The covert nature of their work meant that nobody would ever know of what he had done, and along with his death the injustice had poisoned Lopez with a deep-rooted hatred of government work.

  ‘Doug didn’t kill anybody,’ Ethan replied. ‘The government did. The Pentagon did. National Security did. Why don’t you take Sedgewick here down to Cook County Jail and get him processed, okay?’

  Lopez stopped straining. Ethan released her and watched as she stepped past him and reached out for Sedgewick’s paperwork. Her dark eyes glowered at Jarvis as she snatched the papers out of his hand.

  ‘Whatever you’re here for,’ she growled, ‘you better make damned sure it doesn’t get anybody else killed on our watch.’

  With that, Lopez turned and stormed out of the office, reaching out with one hand to yank Sedgewick to his feet and haul him out of the room like a giant recalcitrant teddy bear. The office fell silent in her wake as Ethan turned to Jarvis.

  ‘You really should keep your pet under control, Ethan,’ the old man murmured.

  Ethan hooked one boot behind the office door and kicked it shut.

  ‘You think? You got any idea what she went through?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ Jarvis shot back. ‘I don’t go out of my way to get civilians killed, Ethan. It’s what we’re here to prevent. But Nicola has a serious attitude problem and you need to make sure she keeps a lid on it. The DIA won’t hesitate to take their work somewhere else if they find out what she can be like. Discretion is what we’re about, Ethan. Perhaps you should go it alone, it’s how you worked best in the marines.’

  Ethan ground his teeth in his jaw. ‘I had a platoon behind me in the marines, Doug. I’d much rather be with Lopez than without her, no matter what you think. You here on business?’

  ‘Not entirely. How are things? Any news on Joanna’s whereabouts?’

  A shadow descended upon Ethan even as the name fell from Jarvis’s lips. The things that should have remained buried.

  ‘No,’ he uttered. ‘I don’t know where to start looking for her, or even if I should.’

  Jarvis stood up.

  ‘We can talk about that on the way,’ he said.

  ‘On the way to where?’

  ‘The University of Chicago’s zoology department,’ Jarvis replied. ‘We’ll pick Lopez up en route. I’m sending you both up north, but you’ll need to hear from an expert what’s happened first, otherwise you won’t believe it.’

  6

  CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  To say that the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, General William Steel, was in deep shit was something of an understatement and nobody knew it more than he. Sitting in his office in the brand new headquarters in Fairfax County, he was the commander of perhaps the most famous of all America’s many clandestine intelligence agencies.

  And it was that fame that was ruining both his day and his career.

  He had just received a call from the President of the United States, who that morning had received, as he always did, a daily briefing from the CIA. Within that report, compiled by analysts to give the President a broad-strokes picture of the current state of affairs around the world, was a single paragraph detailing a covert program that had been running for six years. William Steel had not authorized the program; it had been initiated during the tenure of his predecessor. The President also had not authorized the program, it had been created by his predecessor. Both men had inherited it, and it had blown up spectacularly in their faces to become a problem that could end both their careers.

  Thus, the phone call had not been especially cordial.<
br />
  The President rarely swore. He shouted profanities even less. The message had been clear: make the problem go away. Right now.

  The problem with making the other problem go away was that it was a covert operation conducted not on the dusty plains of Iraq, the bitter mountains of Afghanistan or in the dangerous alleys of Pakistan, but in the picturesque hills of Idaho. Worse, the problem was compounded by a further issue: the program was one department within a larger CIA-funded and controlled program that had been running covertly for no less than forty-eight years.

  William Steel sat in his leather chair, his thick hands folded on the desk in front of him and his eyes vacant as he mulled over the complex dilemma he faced, his craggy and graying features creased with the burden of responsibility.

  A sharp knock at his office door snapped him out of his reverie, and he sat up straight as a tall, sepulchral-looking man strode in and closed the door behind him. The man walked across to a seat opposite Steel and sat down before regarding the director with frosty blue eyes set into an emotionless face.

  ‘How bad?’

  The man’s voice was disarmingly soft, more like a doctor than an experienced field agent. Truth was, Steel did not like Mr. Wilson at all. A product of the agency’s darker years after the political and military fallout of the Vietnam War, Wilson was a lethally capable trained assassin.

  ‘You’re here, aren’t you?’ Steel replied.

  ‘What would you have me do?’

  No hesitation. No emotions. No concern, hubris or doubt that Steel could detect. Wilson was all business. Christ, the man didn’t even seem to blink. It was like sitting in front of a goddamned waxwork.

  ‘Congress has started another investigation into CIA-sponsored paramilitary programs,’ Steel said. ‘After what happened in 2009, when one of our counterterrorism programs was busted open and terminated by Congressional meddling, we want to shut down some of our more sensitive operations until the dust settles.’

  ‘I’m not an administrator,’ Wilson replied without rancour.

  ‘One of the programs is almost a half-century old,’ Steel explained. ‘You of course know about it.’

  Wilson’s eyes narrowed. ‘Project MK-ULTRA.’

  ‘The same,’ Steel confirmed. ‘The other is a subsidiary of the same program being run out in Idaho. That’s where the big problem is. We’ve lost all contact with the team on site.’

  Wilson leaned forward in his seat. ‘You know what they’ve got up there,’ he said, revealing for the first time a hint of concern. ‘What they’ve been doing.’

  ‘I do,’ Steel confirmed, ‘and if word gets out about it, it won’t just be the end of my career or the President’s. It’ll probably see the end of this agency. We’ll lose our independent status and with it protection from Congressional control. With the bleeding-heart liberals running operations our ability to protect the United States from our enemies, to do the things required to maintain security, will be totally compromised.’

  Wilson nodded, his icy gaze never leaving Steel’s.

  ‘You didn’t bring me here to send me to Idaho,’ he said. ‘You can use a paramilitary team to clear up the mess there and—’

  ‘We already sent two teams,’ Steel cut him off. ‘We lost contact with the first of them last night. A second team is in the field at the moment and have tied up some loose ends, but they’re under strict orders not to let anybody approach the site.’

  Wilson stared at Steel for a long beat. His frosty eyes finally flickered as though a ray of sunlight had penetrated their glacial depths.

  ‘It’s escaped,’ he said. Steel nodded but said nothing. ‘Has the second team you sent maintained security?’

  Steel bit his lip before replying.

  ‘They removed one player who had obtained information regarding the site, a civilian. But the Defense Intelligence Agency got to the paperwork before we could intervene,’ he said. ‘It appears they’ve got some kind of outsourced team that investigates events passed over by the FBI.’

  Mr. Wilson glanced out of the office windows.

  ‘So they killed a civilian, and now we’ve got independent investigators crawling around out there?’

  ‘Nobody’s on site as far as we can tell,’ Steel said, ‘at least, not yet. They’re probably trying to put the pieces together as we speak. If the DIA sends anybody, they can be dealt with. I’m more concerned about the possibility that Congress picks up the trail too. If the committee assigned to investigate projects that have been withheld from Congress lays its hands on hard evidence of what’s been going on, we’re screwed. It’ll all be over.’

  Wilson nodded.

  ‘What would you have me do?’ he asked again.

  ‘Derail the investigation in any way that you can,’ Steel replied. ‘Hinder, obstruct and otherwise block all avenues of investigation in Washington DC that lead to either MK-ULTRA or Idaho either via the Defense Intelligence Agency or Congress.’

  ‘That could prove difficult,’ Wilson pointed out. ‘I won’t have deniable access to either the DIA building or Congress. If I’m seen, I’m useless to you.’

  ‘I’ll put pressure on the DIA director and the Congressional committee myself,’ Steel said. ‘You will apply your own pressure more discreetly.’

  Steel let the word hang between them.

  ‘I want assured immunity,’ Wilson said, ‘in writing from both yourself and the President.’

  Steel raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I can give you assured immunity from prosecution if this all goes belly up, but the President will—’

  ‘Will want his own ass covered,’ Wilson cut the director off. ‘So get the Defense Secretary, or the Joint Chiefs or the goddamned Director of National Intelligence to sign the paperwork. Either way, you want me to take down American citizens on your watch, you sign the paperwork and you get it to me. Otherwise, I don’t budge.’

  General Steel had of course expected Wilson to demand some kind of immunity from prosecution. But it wasn’t the first time that the CIA had been forced to consider the killing of American citizens. A previous intelligence chief had once testified before the House Intelligence Committee in 2010 that the US intelligence community was prepared to kill US citizens if they threatened other Americans or the United States. Assassinations, both on American soil and abroad, occurred regularly. That was the nature of counterterrorism: sometimes, people had to die so that the majority might live. The CIA’s charter was a pure white canvas of idealistic patriotism, but that canvas was regularly stained by the harsh reality of blood spilled in the name of national security.

  But targeting members of Congress or their colleagues was another matter entirely.

  ‘I’ll get it done,’ Steel said finally.

  There was no other option. The danger of seeing the CIA shut down was simply too great. Steel knew that threats to disband the agency dated back to the Kennedy administration. As recently as 2004, senators had repeated a need to end the agency and see it broken up into smaller departments overseen more closely by Congress and other intelligence agencies. With public concern about the lack of information regarding CIA policies and activities, a $44 billion per year budget and the potential for the abuse of unchecked executive power, a scandal now could bring the agency down around General Steel, an outcome he intended to prevent with all of that unchecked power.

  Wilson stood and looked down at the director.

  ‘Focus on the outsourced investigators at the DIA,’ he advised. ‘That’s the weak link in their investigation and the easiest way to trip them up. We need controllable government agents up there in Idaho, not freelancers.’

  Steel nodded. Both the CIA and the DIA employed contractors that accounted for almost 50 per cent of the total workforce. The travesty of the situation meant that civilians were exposed to classified information which could then be leaked to the media, and the only retaliation the agency could mount would be expensive and complex court battles instead of more discreet i
nternal investigations and punishments.

  ‘I’ll arrange a meeting with the Director DIA, Director NSA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff,’ Steel confirmed. ‘With luck I might be able to get this back under our control.’

  ‘It’s already too late for that,’ Wilson replied coolly. ‘This is damage limitation. The Idaho site needs to be removed from play entirely and anybody up there eradicated along with it.’

  Steel sighed heavily but he knew that Wilson was right. Cutting the head off the Hydra was no longer an option: only total destruction would suffice.

  ‘What about that thing they have up there?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s your problem,’ Wilson replied. ‘I’ll take care of this end. I know for a fact that we’ve had at least one Congressional official under surveillance for some time. They’ll come in handy right now.’

  Steel stared at Wilson in amazement.

  ‘Who?’

  7

  UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

  The zoology department was a gothic-looking building located on East 57th Street. Ethan looked out of the window as the sedan pulled in alongside an ornate archway called Hull Gate. Jarvis climbed out and led Ethan and Lopez into the complex. Tree-lined residential halls were filled with students hurrying from one lecture to another or catching the last warmth of the fall on the neat gardens.

  ‘What are we doing back at school?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘There’s been an incident, way up in Idaho. You need some background training before you head up there.’

  They turned left along a path that led to the entrance of the compound’s zoology building. Ethan followed Jarvis inside, the old man apparently knowing exactly where he was going, and reached an office within. Ethan glimpsed a nameplate on the door as he walked in: Professor Giles Middleton.

  The office was in part a laboratory, but one that looked as though it had been built sometime during the previous century. To Ethan it looked like a cross between Hogwarts and Frankenstein’s dining room. Tall glass cabinets lined an entire wall, filled with glass jars containing the remains of bizarre creatures the likes of which Ethan had never seen.