The Identity Mine (Warner & Lopez Book 3) Read online

  Hannah sat in silence for a long moment in the wake of Hannah’s riposte.

  ‘Very eloquent,’ Hannah replied. ‘It doesn’t change the fact that I’m looking for Ethan Warner in connection with a homicide and he seems to keep avoiding me.’

  ‘Can’t imagine why,’ Natalie smiled sweetly.

  ‘You said that you were involved in one of your brother’s investigations,’ Vaughn pointed out. ‘That it resulted in the death of a colleague?’

  ‘Ethan and Nicola were working a case for the Defense Intelligence Agency, which the CIA opposed as it would uncover programs they would have rather kept under wraps.’

  ‘What kind of programs?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘Classified programs that involved the manipulation and abuse of American citizens,’ Natalie explained. ‘As a result, the CIA inserted an assassin inside a non–governmental–organization office in an attempt to ensure that none of the offending documents reached the light of day. I was working in that office and almost lost my life too.’

  Hannah frowned, glancing at a series of notes she had made earlier.

  ‘How did they get involved with you, exactly?’

  ‘Ethan had asked me to help him out in a search for his fiancée, Joanna Defoe. Jo had gone missing five years earlier in Gaza, Palestine, presumed abducted by militants when she and Ethan were working there as journalists. No trace of her had ever been found and Ethan wondered whether I would be able to use my office privileges to see if there was anything in the records about Jo, which it turns out there was.’

  Hannah blinked, scribbling as she went. ‘And this Joanna, did he find her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘What happened?’ Hannah snapped. ‘Is she alive? Can we talk to her?’

  ‘She’s alive, but you won’t find her,’ Natalie replied. ‘She went off the grid a couple of years back and hasn’t resurfaced yet. Shame, I liked her. She has a way with people.’

  ‘She does?’

  ‘You wouldn’t know,’ Natalie smiled again.

  Hannah felt color flush her cheeks with heat as she saw Vaughn fight off a smirk beside her.

  ‘And where is Ethan right now?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Natalie replied. ‘One minute he’s in Chicago hunting down bail jumpers as usual, and then next he’s called in by the DIA and I won’t hear from him for a couple of months.’

  ‘You said that you knew that Ethan’s not dead,’ Vaughn pointed out, ‘that’s why you’re not concerned about our visit, right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Natalie agreed. ‘He called this morning, said he and Nicola would be out of the country for a few days, a rush job of some kind for the usual suspects. That’s a sort of code between us that means they’re working for the DIA again.’

  ‘You got any idea why they headed over to New Jersey?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘How long’s a piece of string?’

  Hannah felt prickly heat rise up over her head as she shot out of her chair and turned for the office door.

  ‘Many thanks Miss Warner, you’ve been very helpful indeed.’

  ‘Always a pleasure.’

  Hannah was half way down the hall and storming toward the exit before Vaughn caught up with her.

  ‘You’ve really got to reign in that attitude of yours, Hannah,’ he said as they walked out into the sunshine.

  ‘The hell I do,’ Hannah shot back. ‘That cow in there only just fell short of giving me the bird. Why do I think that if we visit Warner’s parents we’re going to get the same treatment?’

  Vaughn sighed.

  ‘Because Warner might actually be a stand up guy,’ he replied. ‘Maybe there’s something more to this than we know about?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Hannah uttered, ‘maybe. All we’ve got left now is his former commander in the Marine Corps, a Douglas Jarvis. His address is in the district but he’s also DIA so he’s going to be wrapped up tighter than a mosquito’s ass.’

  Vaughn shrugged.

  ‘That doesn’t mean he won’t talk. Let’s stick with it, maybe Jarvis will open up a little and we may even be able to figure out why Warner’s in New Jersey.’

  They walked together across the street and got half way to their pool car when two glossy black SUVs pulled into the sidewalk alongside them. Doors opened as armed agents stepped out and surrounded them.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Hannah uttered as she reached for her badge.

  An agent’s hand shot out and forestalled her as the rest of the agents reached for their concealed weapons. Hannah froze, as did Vaughn.

  ‘We’re FBI,’ Vaughn warned them.

  ‘We know who you are. Step inside the vehicle, please,’ said the lead agent, square headed, shaven hair, eyes hidden behind designer wrap around shades.

  It wasn’t a request.

  ***

  XV

  Ramstein Airbase,

  Kaiserslautern, Germany

  The enormous C–17 Globemaster III of the 305th Air Mobility Wing out of McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, landed at Ramstein with barely a rumble of wheels on asphalt as Ethan watched the base’s massive illuminated control tower pass by to his right. The airbase was consumed by a pre–dawn darkness, bright lights demarking the runway and taxi ways around them.

  The Globemaster had lifted off from McGuire and flown non–stop across the Atlantic on a routine supply mission to the USAF Europe headquarters based at Ramstein, allowing Ethan and Lopez to catch a ride on the DIA’s ticket.

  ‘You think anybody’s tailing us this time?’ Lopez asked as the massive aircraft taxied off the runway toward a service ramp.

  Ethan knew what she meant. Since they had taken up again with the DIA they had encountered a new and potentially lethal enemy in the form of a cabal of powerful industrial and military leaders known as Majestic Twelve. Formed during an extraordinary meeting between military leaders and President Harry S. Truman via an Executive Order in 1947, the event had become the stuff of legend but the group had recently revealed themselves as all too real through the work of their chief field operative, a man named Aaron Mitchell.

  ‘We’ll have to assume so,’ Ethan replied as the aircraft came to a stop and he unbuckled himself from his seat. ‘MJ–12 has taken an interest in everything we’ve been working on since Argentina. They’re always watching.’

  Ethan led Lopez out of the huge aircraft as its enormous tail ramp lowered to facilitate the removal of the military vehicles with which he and Lopez had shared the aircraft’s cavernous interior. Groups of USAF loadmasters hurried inside and began unchaining the vehicles as Ethan saw two agents awaiting them beside an unmarked vehicle.

  ‘Warner, Lopez,’ the taller of the two greeted them. ‘We’re your ride. Anywhere you need to go, just ask.’

  No names. No unnecessary information. Just the way the DIA liked it after what had happened a few months before in Abu Dhabi, when an otherwise effective agent had resigned from the agency after witnessing a truly horrific murder. Whatever had to be done would be down to Ethan and Lopez, keeping official agents off the record.

  ‘Do we have a location for Heinrich Muller?’ Lopez asked, equally aware of the new rules.

  ‘His residence is to the south,’ came the brisk reply. ‘We can take you there now and obtain him before he travels to his clinic.’

  ‘Do it,’ Ethan said as he opened the car’s passenger door. ‘I want this guy off the streets.’

  Ethan climbed in alongside Lopez and within moments the vehicle pulled away from the aircraft servicing area, its passage smoothed by pre–warned security guards who allowed the vehicle through the various gates without delay.

  ‘What are we going to do with this guy once we get him?’ Lopez asked.

  Ethan took a deep breath as he considered his reply. Nobody who had served in the military could fail to be aware of the issues surrounding information obtained by the measures implemented by the CIA under the Bush admin
istration. Extreme rendition and “enhanced interrogation techniques”, a sanitized name for agency sanctioned torture at prisons like Abu Ghraib, had provided intelligence often proven to be unreliable at best and outright false at worst, prisoners compelled to say anything in order to prevent their further suffering.

  Ethan had never been a proponent of such methods, not wanting to cross the line in his mind that he believed separated him from the kind of people he was paid to hunt down. But now time was of the essence, and it was highly probable that Muller was their man and had something to do with the horrific deaths suffered by so many US military personnel.

  ‘We do what we have to do,’ he said finally, and then leaned forward and tapped one of the agents in the front of the vehicle on the shoulder.

  ‘Do we have a secure safe house?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ came the reply. ‘You can operate from there for as long as you require.’

  Ethan nodded.

  ‘Good. We’ll need to pick up some things along the way. I’ll write a list.’

  *

  Heinrich Muller awoke as he always did, with the dawn.

  It was not as easy to get out of bed as it once had been and he could feel his advancing years aching in his bones. The room seemed colder than it used to despite the heat from the radiators, but he forced himself out from beneath the warm duvets and dressed slowly before making his way out of the bedroom toward the ornate circular staircase that descended through the mansion.

  Nestled in the hills south of Kaiserslauten, Muller had lived in the house alone since his wife had passed away and his children moved out into new lives of their own. He had made his fortune both as a much–respected surgeon and for his willingness to offer his services to those who could afford them, whether those services were necessarily legal or not.

  Muller reached the bottom of the staircase and rubbed his cold hands together, glancing instinctively at the digital thermostat on the wall and wondering whether there might have been a power outage during the night that had tripped the boiler’s fuse. It was then that he saw the front door to his home, wide open.

  Muller froze in mid–stride as he stared at the open door. The mansion was alarmed, and he knew that he had set it before bed the previous night because he was paranoid about such things and he never retired without double–checking the system.

  Muller turned immediately for the nearest phone, set into the wall alongside a passage that doubled back beneath the staircase toward the kitchen. The phone was out of its cradle, missing. Muller barely broke his stride as he whirled and ran at a pace he had not achieved for years out of the front door, wondering just who it was who had breached his security and, more worryingly, what it was they wanted.

  The blow caught him low in the belly as he passed through the doorway and he crumpled as he sank to his knees, stopped dead by the attack. He saw boots alongside him just before a black sack was thrust down over his head and fastened tightly about his neck, his arms yanked behind his back and his ankles bound all at once with startling efficiency.

  ‘Bitte, bitte,’ he gasped through the sack. ‘Please, what do you want?’

  Nobody replied as he was hauled to his feet and thrust into a waiting vehicle that he heard approach up the long, private drive, far from prying eyes. Muller was shoved into place on the rear seat, doors slammed all around him, and then they were on the move. A deep, angry voice growled at him through a distorter, the digitized oratory both impersonal and frightening.

  ‘You knew this day would come,’ it growled. ‘Shut up, stay still, do as we say and you might just survive it.’

  Muller whimpered with fear but managed to hold his tongue for the drive. It felt as though he were cramped on the seat for hours when in reality it was barely twenty minutes before the car slowed and parked and he was dragged from its interior and guided unsteadily on his feet into a building.

  The odours of stale air and bare wood drifted through his sensorium, the footfalls around him sounding hollow as though they were walking through the bare shell of a house, no furniture, no carpets.

  ‘Ich verstehe nicht,’ Muller mumbled finally. ‘I don’t understand.’

  No response. Moments later, Muller was turned about and thrust downward onto a seat of some kind. His legs were swung up and around and then he was laid down, the back of his head cracking against solid wood. He felt straps securing his arms, chest and ankles and he began to weep inside the sack.

  ‘Bitte, bitte!’

  The sack was torn from his head and he blinked in the light as he saw four masked men surrounding him. They watched him in silence, and he furtively hoped that this was some kind of horrific mistake.

  ‘Please,’ he gasped, ‘I work for the United States.’

  ‘We know,’ came the response. ‘Tell us, everything.’

  Muller’s mind raced. ‘Everything about what?!’

  The tallest of the men strolled to one side of the wooden board upon which Muller lay, and the old man saw a tray atop an old table nearby. On the tray were an assortment of power tools and a pair of garden shears.

  ‘Mein Gott, nein,’ he gasped as the masked man turned to look at him.

  ‘Everything,’ the man repeated.

  Muller nodded frantically. ‘I’ll tell you everything about what you want to know! I don’t have anything to hide!’

  The man nodded to one of his accomplices and the other man pulled a sheet of paper out from his pocket, unfolded it, and pinned it to the wall of the otherwise bare room. Muller focused on the image and recognized the face upon it immediately.

  ‘Mein Gott,’ he uttered again in horror. ‘It wasn’t?’

  The picture of Major General Frederick Thompson looked down upon him as the masked men closed in all around. Their boots crackled against something on the ground beneath the table, and Muller looked down to see a large sheet of plastic spread beneath him.

  He wept again as the tall man looked down at him, an electric drill now held in one hand. The drill suddenly spun with a shrill whine that filled the room, a six–inch long steel bit gleaming in the morning light streaming through a grubby window nearby as he growled down at Muller.

  ‘Talk.’

  ‘I don’t know what happened to Thompson!’ Muller pleaded.

  The masked man nodded to his accomplice, who stepped forward and with one mighty tear ripped off Muller’s shirt and exposed the blotched, bare skin of his flabby belly. The man lifted the drill and lowered it toward Muller’s skin, the bit spinning in a frenzied blur a finger’s width above his defenceless flesh.

  ‘Talk.’

  ‘I don’t know what happened!’ Muller screamed in terror. ‘I don’t know!’

  The masked man looked at his accomplice once more and the second man gripped Muller’s head and forced it back against the board. Moments later the drill lowered and Muller screamed as raw pain tore across his stomach and the drill whined and churned as it sank into his flesh. A splatter of blood sprayed against the masked man’s clothes as he worked and Muller screamed.

  The drill was yanked free, dripping with blood as the masked man looked down at him once again.

  ‘Last chance! Talk, now!’

  ‘I’ll lose everything!’ Muller screamed in raw terror and pain. ‘Everything!’

  The masked man turned away and lifted the drill once more and Muller’s last feeble resistance withered away and he shouted out.

  ‘I inserted the implant!’ he cried, staring at the ceiling through blurred tears and praying that there would be no more of the terrible pain.

  The drill whined down into silence once more as the masked man looked down at him and shouted in his face. ‘Everything!’

  ‘They paid me!’ Muller sobbed. ‘Paid me to insert devices into the nasal cavities of my patients at Ramstein and Basra! I had to. They knew my family, my children. They said I would be well paid to do as I was told, that the patients would not be harmed!’ Muller sucked in a ragged breath, his vocal chords twisted wi
th agony. ‘They didn’t say that it was the patients who would be doing the harming!’

  ‘Who paid you?!’

  Muller closed his eyes, tears streaming down his quivering jowls.

  ‘There were no names, only meeting places and private payments via off shore accounts. I was given names and dates, nothing else.’

  There was a moment’s silence as Muller’s captors seemed to consider what he had said.

  ‘How many?’ the masked man demanded. ‘How many implants did you complete?’

  Muller tried to think straight. The pain in his belly was subsiding, but he was shivering with fear as he realized that he would be unlikely to get out of the room alive.

  ‘Twenty, thirty, I can’t recall!’

  ‘How much were you paid?’ another, equally distorted voice asked.

  ‘A quarter million dollars for each patient!’

  ‘Over how long?’

  ‘Five years.’

  ‘When was the last one?’

  Muller detected a ray of light as he realized that his captors were no longer shouting at him, that there seemed to be a hint of compassion or concern detectable even through the digitized distortion devices they were using. Muller realized that anything he said could not be used against him, that his torture would nullify any confession.

  ‘Two months ago.’

  ‘We want names,’ a voice demanded, ‘names of all the patients you implanted.’

  ‘I’ll have to get them, they’re at my office,’ Muller said. ‘Please, let me go and I’ll help you!’

  A long silence and then the masked man spoke again. ‘Too late, Muller. We’ll get the names ourselves.’

  The drill howled into life and Muller saw it jab downward as white pain seared his stomach and he screamed at the top of his lungs.

  ‘Abrahem!’ he screeched, and the drill fell silent as he sobbed in ragged breaths. ‘Abrahem, that’s all I know. Somebody in Iraq.’

  Muller’s body convulsed with a shudder and he passed out.