The Chimera Secret Page 8

  Natalie was one of a team of twelve analysts assigned to assess documents being provided by the CIA’s Clandestine Service. She cast a quick glance across at her colleagues as she strode through the office. Most were adopting ‘The Nod’, a semi-affectionate name for the head-down attitude of analysts in the department.

  ‘Morning, Natalie.’

  Larry Levinson, a 28-year-old analyst attached to the investigation from Fort Benning, waved at her with a thick wad of computer print-outs in his hand. Thin, diminutive and with big brown eyes, he was the epitome of the high-school chess champion and the butt of continuous bullying from the administration manager, Guy Rikard. Natalie smiled back at him as she weaved her way across the office toward the desk of another colleague.

  Ben Consiglio was an analyst one grade below Natalie who had come to the department from the military two years previously after he had been wounded during an intense fire-fight in Cykla, Iraq. The heroic work of surgeons at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany had seen the bullet that had shattered Ben’s skull removed and his life saved by a titanium plate across his skull. Young, energetic and quietly competent, he got on well with Natalie and they had developed a personable sense of trust. Both had a reputation for getting the job done, and occasionally relied upon each other for assistance handling particularly complex data streams.

  Ben looked up as she approached and kicked away from his desk on his roller chair.

  ‘Morning,’ he smiled. ‘You look like a woman on a mission.’

  Frustration was as much a part of being an analyst as any other job, regardless of how interesting the data or essential the work. But Natalie needed somebody else to perform the search she had in mind. Although the keystrokes of every employee within the Capitol could, in theory, be traced, it was almost standard procedure that new recruits would search for their own names within the system just to see if they had ever been watched by a government agency. Few, of course, ever had. But Natalie was indeed on a mission: to achieve higher office, and she wasn’t about to let some tech-head identify what they would no doubt class as a frivolous use of resources and hold it against her. She hadn’t entered a personal search since her first days in the office.

  Natalie had known Joanna Defoe personally, and needed to keep her distance.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ she said to Ben as she reached his desk. ‘Tedious, boring and most likely non-productive.’

  ‘Another day at the office,’ Ben shrugged. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Data stream for a name, Joanna Defoe. Can you fit it in for me?’

  ‘For you?’ Ben smiled, and scribbled the name on a pad beside his computer terminal. Natalie passed on the date and place of birth, nationality, and blood group.

  ‘What’s the purpose?’ Ben asked her.

  It was a question that would be asked by any analyst worth their role.

  ‘Missing persons,’ Natalie replied.

  Secrecy was an immense part of security within the Defense Department, naturally enough, but a surprising amount of that security came down to nothing more elaborate than trust. Fact was, many employees of the NRO or the NSA had inadvertently walked out of their shadowy halls carrying extremely sensitive defense files that would be worth millions on the black market to rogue states and foreign dictators. True, some had taken those papers for just that purpose, but the number who did so was minuscule. Despite employing literally tens of thousands of people, the department rarely had to contend with anything other than an equally apologetic administrator who had forgotten to return the offending articles before leaving for home late at night. Such was the pride of thousands of unnamed citizens serving their country.

  ‘Any next of kin?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Orphaned,’ Natalie replied. ‘No dependants or siblings. If we’ve got anything useful it’ll be under her name alone.’

  Ben span around in his chair and accessed the department’s search engine before tapping in the name.

  JOANNA DEFOE

  Natalie watched over his shoulder as the search engine began a systematic trawl through the Defense Department’s database for any information. Since the contentious debacle of the Patriot Act it had been possible, although not easy, for the US intelligence community to intercept the communications of any single person on earth, including American citizens. Few people realized, for instance, that when they sent an email, that mail did not go direct to the recipient but went first through servers based in the United States, allowing electronic eavesdropping by US intelligence. The idea that the military actually listened to everything was a myth, technically. Huge super-computers at the ultra-classified National Security Agency in Maryland ran complex programs that watched for keywords in communications. What keywords were sought depended on what Human Intelligence, referred to as HUMINT, had been gathered by agents on the ground. For all the wizardry available to analysts like Natalie, ultimately the keystone of intelligence gathering still lay largely with the brave but vulnerable spy concealed in a foreign, most likely hostile country.

  The search engine finally spat out a single response.

  JOANNA DEFOE, b.1978 – Mt. Vernon, Ohio

  Missing (presumed deceased)

  No Active File.

  Ben shrugged and leaned back in his chair. ‘The file’s been closed.’

  A voice called over Natalie’s shoulder.

  ‘What you got there?’

  Natalie turned and looked straight into the squinting eyes of Guy Rikard. A twenty-year veteran of the department, Rikard had never achieved higher office mainly due to a long history of complaints by female colleagues of physical harassment. Rikard fancied himself as a sort of eighties cop-show rogue whose rough-edged charm and habit of talking over people could let him get away with anything. In reality he was considered by one and all as a feeble-minded chauvinistic jerk, tolerated only because of his near-photographic memory, a valuable asset in the world of intelligence gathering.

  ‘A bad attitude,’ Natalie snapped back at him. ‘Want some of it?’

  Rikard held his hands up, his bald head glistening in the heat from the overhead lights.

  ‘Easy, tiger, just making conversation.’ He squinted at the screen. ‘Defoe. Why you looking for her again?’

  ‘Again?’ Natalie asked, and instantly regretted it. She had, of course, been tempted to search for people during her first days on the job out of nothing more than curiosity and had gone so far as to type their names into the database. The difference was that she had never actually hit the ‘Search’ button for most – just one. It hadn’t crossed her mind at the time that Rikard might have seen what she was doing.

  Rikard eased himself closer until she could smell his cheap cologne, and let his gaze drift thoughtfully up to the ceiling.

  ‘Let’s see,’ he droned nasally. ‘Two years ago, not long after you started here, you were searching for that name in the database. It was a Wednesday, and you were wearing a gray two-piece with a white blouse and one of those little gold necklaces that dangle right between your—’

  ‘Get out of my face, Guy,’ Natalie rumbled, ‘while yours is still intact.’

  Rikard smiled, his chubby cheeks glowing red with the effort.

  ‘No need to get all shy on me, honey,’ he murmured in delight. ‘Not that I would mind you getting on my face.’

  Natalie jabbed her biro up between Rikard’s legs like a spear. Rikard let out a brief high-pitched yelp and wobbled off-balance as she held the point of the pen in place.

  ‘Trust me, Guy, this is as close as you’ll ever get.’ With her free hand, she tapped Ben’s monitor screen. ‘What did the search results say when I last did this?’

  Rikard’s eyes swiveled to look at the screen.

  ‘Search results listed her disappearance from Gaza City a few years back, can’t remember the date.’

  Natalie jabbed the pen higher. ‘Remember harder,’ she encouraged.

  Rikard gasped and shook his head.

/>   ‘There wasn’t a date, but it did say that she was last seen in a place called Jabaliya, some sort of refugee camp in Gaza.’ He sucked in a strained breath. ‘Something about militant abductions.’

  Natalie held the biro in place for a few more moments as she remembered the details of what she’d seen, and then she dropped the pen. Rikard let out a sigh of relief as he staggered sideways and leaned on her desk for support.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Natalie said, looking at the screen. ‘But that extra information has since been removed. Why would somebody do that?’

  Rikard shook his head as he regained control of his breathing and discreetly massaged his wounded crotch.

  ‘Don’t know,’ he wheezed. ‘Probably cleaning out old data.’

  Natalie shook her head.

  ‘No need, there was hardly anything here anyway, maybe just a few kilobytes of text.’

  Rikard stood up slowly as he tried to reassemble his dignity.

  ‘You sure got a quick hand, honey, I like a firm touch.’

  ‘So do I,’ she replied, without looking at him, ‘which is why you repulse me.’

  Rikard’s hastily erected smile collapsed as he sneered at her.

  ‘Some people got no sense of humour,’ he muttered, and walked away.

  Ben Consiglio grinned up at her. ‘You sure got a way with folk. He’s your boss, remember?’

  ‘He’s an ass,’ she replied as she stared at the monitor screen for a moment longer. Fact was, Ben now knew that this wasn’t the first time that she’d tried to help Ethan in his search for Joanna Defoe. Ben’s smile melted into understanding.

  ‘You got a stake in this, Nat?’

  She nodded. No sense in messing around now. Besides, she trusted Ben.

  ‘She’s my brother’s fiancée. I was trying to keep this under the radar.’

  ‘Until that dick showed up,’ Ben nodded, jabbing a thumb in Rikard’s direction.

  She glanced across the office to see Rikard now back at his desk, his pallid cheeks flushed red with embarrassment and impotent fury.

  Last she’d heard, Rikard was separated from his wife. No children. The fat idiot had somehow managed to snare himself a spouse and then insulted her by playing out of school, or at least trying to, with a succession of co-workers. Lived alone now and never got invited to after-works drinks. She’d feel sorry for him if he wasn’t such a jerk, and not for the first time she wondered why people found it necessary to devote such energy to pissing others off. Despite her anger with her brother for all that he had done, she could only admire him as a man.

  She looked back down at Ben.

  ‘Can you do some digging, find out why the file on Joanna was closed or by whom?’

  ‘Sure,’ Ben replied. ‘What’s your brother’s name? I’ll start there.’

  13

  IDAHO COUNTY JAIL, GRANGEVILLE

  There was only one chief jailer and seven detention officers staffing the jail, which given Idaho’s low population density Ethan did not find surprising. Whereas back home in Chicago the jails were a teeming mass of drunks, hobos and gang hoods filled far beyond their design capacity, out here in north-central Idaho there were an average of just eighteen inmates each day passing through the system.

  Earl Carpenter took them to an interview room with a one-way mirror, where Ethan and Lopez waited with obligatory Styrofoam cups of coffee until Earl returned with an inmate shackled to his wrist and led him into the next room.

  Jesse MacCarthy was a thin, pale-looking kid with messy black hair and eyes sunken beneath the weight of too many sleepless nights. He looked up briefly from behind the veil of hair at the mirror behind which Ethan and Lopez watched and then dropped his gaze away again. Earl directed him to a chair and the kid sank into it without resistance. Earl’s voice reached them through a speaker set into the wall.

  ‘You want to talk again about what happened?’

  Jesse sat silent and still, his dark eyes staring into nothingness.

  ‘Shock,’ Lopez murmured as she watched the kid.

  ‘Traumatic stress,’ Ethan confirmed with a nod. ‘I saw something similar once, after engagements with the Taliban. Some of the guys had that thousand-yard stare of terror.’

  ‘Jesse,’ Earl said to the unresponsive kid. ‘I can’t help you if you won’t speak to me.’

  ‘He’s closed up,’ Lopez went on. ‘He might go into denial if we don’t break him.’

  Ethan nodded, and grabbed his coffee. ‘Let’s go.’

  They walked out of the observation room, and Ethan knocked on the interview room door before walking in with Lopez.

  ‘Jesse, this is Ethan Warner and Nicola Lopez,’ Earl introduced them. ‘They’re trying to figure out what happened and how to help you.’

  Jesse peered up at Ethan but said nothing. Lopez smiled down at him.

  ‘We’re not cops,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t look like cops,’ he observed in a voice that might once have been bold but was now scoured of confidence. ‘Why would you want to help me?’

  ‘Because you didn’t kill your brothers,’ Ethan said.

  A glimmer of hope appeared in Jesse’s eyes.

  ‘They don’ believe me,’ he said, glancing briefly at the sheriff.

  ‘It’s not an easy story to believe, son,’ Earl said.

  Ethan slid into a seat at the table and looked at Jesse. ‘You ever heard of a giant oarfish?’ he asked. When Jesse shook his head, Ethan went on. ‘It’s about sixty feet long and looks like a sea serpent, like one of those things that sailors used to swear attacked ships hundreds of years ago. People didn’t believe them, until they caught one. Now there’s a skeleton of one hanging in a university in Chicago.’

  Lopez sat down next to Ethan and leaned forward on the table. She took Jesse’s hand, her rough-edged persona melting as she smiled at the kid.

  ‘We need to know what happened, Jesse, what you saw up in those mountains. Whatever it is, we need to prove it exists before the state of Idaho decides that you’re insane and puts you behind bars for the next fifty years.’

  Jesse bit his lip, his attention fixed on Lopez’s disarming gaze.

  ‘I din’ kill my brothers, or that ranger. That . . .’ He struggled for words. ‘That thing got them.’

  Ethan watched the kid closely. His hands clenched as he spoke of the animal that had killed his brother. A fingernail paled as it was crushed against the Formica surface of the table.

  Ethan could see it wasn’t an act, the kid wasn’t lying. Most teenagers tended to be full of vigour and arrogance: they didn’t cry in front of others. Jesse MacCarthy had not just been frightened beyond belief but had been psychologically transformed from a cocky, fearless youth who had spent an entire childhood out in the woods into a cowering child, afraid of his own shadow.

  Lopez squeezed Jesse’s hand gently.

  ‘Can you describe it? How did you find it?’

  Jesse sucked in a trembling lungful of air.

  ‘Headed east out of Riggins and followed the animal trails into the mountains. We went up that way because the elk move to the valleys in the fall, and most all the hikers stay close to the towns with the tour parties. We figured there was nobody out there to watch us. Cleet, he was the shooter, I was the back-up in case our mark bolted.’

  ‘Season was out though, right?’ Ethan said. ‘Why not wait?’

  Jesse managed a brief, bitter chuckle, staring at the table top as he spoke.

  ‘Cleet hated the tourists. He was like our old man, reckoned that the forests were better without the people in them. Exceptin’ himself, of course.’

  ‘We found the ranger’s body out by Fox Creek,’ Earl Carpenter said. ‘Did he follow you all the way?’

  Jesse shrugged.

  ‘Guess so. We tracked a big male elk out that way. Cleet wanted to take his shot at dusk, when we could get real close in the half-light and make sure of the kill.’ Jesse shivered. ‘I guess the creature that killed
the ranger was thinking the same thing.’

  Lopez’s dark eyes narrowed. ‘You think that it hunted you on purpose?’

  Jesse nodded, his voice haunted as he spoke.

  ‘The ranger collared us before we could take our shot,’ he explained. ‘He asked us who was with us. When we told him it was just the two of us, he din’ believe it and said that somebody was following us. Before we could figure out who the hell it was, we all smelled something.’

  Ethan frowned. ‘You smelled something?’

  ‘Worst thing ever,’ Jesse confirmed. ‘Was like a soccer team’s used kit rubbed in crap then left in a steam room for a month. I nearly puked, it made my eyes water up, it was so bad. Then . . .’ He trailed off. ‘Then it broke cover and went for the ranger.’

  ‘Describe it,’ Lopez encouraged him. ‘As if it was a person.’

  Jesse swallowed thickly, his hand gripping Lopez’s tightly enough that his knuckles showed white beneath the harsh glare of the lights.

  ‘Big, way bigger than a man or even a bear. Russet-brown fur, and it walked on two legs the whole time except when it charged down the hillside after Cleet. God, it moved so fast, and it screamed.’ Jesse stumbled over his words as fear poisoned his veins anew. ‘I’ve never heard a noise like it. It echoed down the valley and was so loud it hurt my ears.’

  ‘This thing was standing when it hit the ranger,’ Ethan said. ‘Can you tell us how tall it was?’

  ‘Nine feet,’ Jesse replied through his repressed sobs as he ran a wiry hand through his thick black hair, ‘maybe ten. Fucking hell, man, it was huge, made the ranger look like a little kid. Then it hit him. His head came clean off and went into the creek and I freaked. I just froze and couldn’t move. Cleet tried to protect me and fired at it. Hit it straight in the guts with a .308 slug from no more than fifteen yards – might as well have been at point-blank range.’ Jesse slowly shook his head. ‘If he’d have shot the elk that close it would have been dead before it hit th’ground. Man, it just made the thing madder. It went after him, hurled him into the river and broke his neck.’