The Extinction Agenda

by Michael Laurence

  The evergreens peeled back from a playground that had seen better days. He slid his right hand under his jacket and gripped his Glock. Took in everything around him at a glance.

  There was no one here.

  Elapsed time: seventeen minutes.

  Mason turned slowly in a circle, scrutinizing every shadow behind every branch, sifting through every sound. He couldn’t hear anything over the cars racing past on the highway and the wind rattling through the cattails.

  The park was a five-minute drive from the pay phone where the woman had made the call, which meant she could have been here in time to set up in an invisible surveillance position or to have already come and gone. On foot, the walk from the 7-Eleven would have taken twice the given amount of time. No, this was how she had intended the rendezvous to play out, so what was he missing?

  The pea-size pebbles crunched underfoot as he stepped from the path and walked into the playground itself. Bare metal showed through on the swing set and jungle gym. He read the graffiti in case there was a message for him. Looked for anything that didn’t belong. The problem was, he didn’t know what he was looking for. Nothing on any of the ladders or bridges or crow’s nests or slides. Nothing taped to the undersides of the swings. It wasn’t until he crawled through one of the holes and stood under the dome of monkey bars that he saw what he’d been summoned here to see.

  A dozen dandelions had been tied together to form a ring roughly six inches in diameter. It had been left in the dead center of the area beneath the dome. The pebbles within the ring were still damp and discolored from being recently turned over. He knelt and excavated them slowly, cautiously. Glanced over his shoulder every few seconds. Another six inches down he encountered a plastic Ziploc bag, which he carefully removed by the corner, between his thumb and forefinger, so as to leave as few prints as possible.

  He needn’t have bothered. He smelled the alcohol she had used to wipe off any potential latents the moment he had it all the way out of the ground. Inside was a small stack of pictures—not actual photographs, but digital images printed on plain paper, the kind you could find anywhere and everywhere. The top picture was grainy and discolored, as though the printer had been in dire need of a new ink cartridge, and yet he still recognized the Peak View Inn and the outline of a figure wearing a long overcoat and a wide-brimmed fedora silhouetted in the breezeway. He didn’t need to see the shadow’s face to identify the man with the blue eyes.

  Mason opened the bag and again caught a whiff of alcohol. She hadn’t used film that could be traced to a developer, nor had she printed the images at a Kinko’s or some other location he could potentially run down. She’d used her own printer and cut down the images herself so as not to leave any prints. Whoever she was, she was positively terrified of someone.

  He dumped the remainder of the images from the plastic bag and used the sleeve of his jacket to spread them out before him. There were six in all, each of them taken from a different vantage point behind the motel, down the hill and behind the pool, and from the dense cover of the pines and scrub oaks. There was one of Blaine Martin looking over his shoulder as he opened the door to room number nine. Another of him climbing out of a silver Audi in the parking lot. Great care had been taken to capture both him and his license plate at the same time.

  Mason viewed the remaining pictures through a prism of tears. His wife looking back in the direction of the camera from in front of an open door, through the gap of which he saw Martin’s face. Angie getting out of her Lexus, matador red mica, plate number LBN-230. Ascending the stairs from the parking lot, briefcase in hand, glancing behind her. She’d been worried someone might see her, which was not an uncommon trait among adulterers. What was, however, was taking a briefcase to a tryst.

  The photographs proved what he’d known in his heart all along. His wife hadn’t been cheating on him. With that revelation came a measure of absolution. He hadn’t driven Angie into the arms of another man, but he also hadn’t been there for her when she needed him most. He would never be able to forgive himself for that, no matter how long he lived, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to make those responsible pay for what they’d done.

  His phone rang in his pocket.

  Mason glanced at his watch. Right on the twenty-five-minute mark.

  He didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID. Must have been another pay phone. He mentally filed it away so he could determine the location. Answered without taking his eyes off the pictures.

  “Did you find what I left for you?” the caller asked.

  “I’m looking at the pictures now. Did you take them?”

  “Will you still help me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I trust you?”

  “Of course, I’m a federal agent—”

  “That means nothing. Your wife said she was going ask you to help us. Did she?”

  “She said we needed to talk.…” Mason’s words trailed off into silence. “How did you know where I lived?”

  “I met with Angela once. Before. I followed her home.”

  “Why didn’t you just talk to me there? We should meet in person and get—”

  “Not until I know I can trust you. You do not know what the people looking for me are willing to do.”

  “How do you propose—?”

  “I assume the briefcase your wife took to the motel was destroyed in the fire. Inside of it was the tax audit of a company called Fairacre Ranch Surplus and Auction. I will call you again in exactly eighteen hours.”

  Click.

  Mason looked at his watch: 2:00 A.M. on the nose. That gave him until 8:00 P.M. tomorrow—today, technically—to figure out the relationship between the unknown trafficking organization, his wife’s murder, and the financial audit of a seemingly inconsequential agricultural company.

  This development also introduced a variable he hadn’t considered. He wasn’t the only investigative agent in the house, and he certainly wasn’t the best. Angie had been far more dangerous than he was, especially to a certain faction, a faction that controlled an enormous amount of wealth and, with it, all the trappings of power and influence. He’d never stopped to think that it could have been her investigation that drew the man with the blue eyes from the shadows and forced him to risk revealing himself when she started getting too close. And since he’d obviously made it out of the quarry alive, Mason had to assume he’d taken the virus with him, which meant he’d had a full year to weaponize it and prepare it for release.

  The tumblers finally started to fall into place.

  He was up against a powerful entity with fifteen million dollars in cash and the willingness to murder federal investigators, massacre an entire SWAT team, and expose five men to an unknown biological agent to get what it wanted. And if what it wanted was the virus, then suddenly the stakes were even higher than he imagined. Worse, the elements of escalation and acceleration could mean only one thing.

  He was running out of time.

  Mason gathered the evidence and carefully returned it to the plastic bag. He was nearly to his car when his phone rang again. This time he recognized the number. He couldn’t help but smirk when he answered.

  “What took you so long?”

  26

  Gunnar Backstrom claimed to be on a private plane over the Maluku Islands in the Pacific Ring of Fire when he returned Mason’s call, although since he said it over an unencrypted connection, that likely wasn’t where he really was. Lying had always been second nature to Gunnar, which served him well in his chosen profession. It came from being the scholarship kid at a private school full of children whose paths had already been paved for them with fortune and success. These were the offspring of corporate presidents and CEOs, prominent bankers and lawyers and surgeons, and people who had the kind of money to offer their children the best of all worlds. How could someone whose care packages included gently used shoes and homemade scarves contend with classmates like that?

  He lied. He lied a l
ot.

  It got to the point where only he could keep up with the stories coming out of his mouth. He lived them and breathed them and rehearsed them until there were no holes that could be exploited, but he quickly learned that in order to actually compete, he needed more than stories. He needed to change the battlefield. He was at the Fremont Academy for one reason and one reason only. He was brilliant. That was his advantage. Everyone else was there because their families could foot the bill. He was there because the school had sent recruiters to his grandparents’ farm in Middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin, to offer him a scholarship, which, considering what they charged for board and tuition meant they must have really wanted him.

  Mason had assumed that working in the cafeteria after meals was a condition of that scholarship until he discovered Gunnar had been sending everything he made back to his grandparents, who needed every little bit of help they could get to hang on to their farm. So when it came to long weekends and holidays, he couldn’t afford to go home like most of the others and ended up staying in the dormitory with the kids whose parents wanted them to have every opportunity in life, as long as that life was led somewhere else. People like Ramses, whose new stepmother would sooner welcome a pack of rats into her home than her husband’s only child, and Mason, whose father had embarked upon a quest to rule the world, or at least the country.

  He never actually said what had happened to his parents that led to his living with his grandparents. During the early years, he’d told a dozen different stories, but by sophomore year, he’d stopped talking about them altogether. His only link to his former life was a single photograph of his grandparents, which he tacked to the wall beside his bunk. They were old and frail and dressed in clothes they’d obviously made themselves. And they were off-limits to anyone attempting to tease him. He had to hack into the school’s computer system and destroy a few GPAs before his tormentors finally took the hint.

  By the time he graduated, though, Gunnar had given up on trying to impress his classmates. He recognized the value of his intellect and embraced a future beyond the reach of even the wealthiest among them. His free ride carried him through six years at Harvard, where he graduated summa cum laude, with twin doctorates in business economics and strategy, and the boy who’d grown up fabricating stories in an effort to fit in utilized those skills in conjunction with his education to enter the lucrative world of corporate espionage.

  He’d called himself a corporate terrorist for hire before 9/11 made the usage of the word terrorist light up every satellite listening station around the world. Now he merely billed himself as a financial securities and acquisitions consultant. He was hired to find out where an organization was the weakest, discover the best way to exploit it, and determine the right time to strike. His fingerprints were all over hostile takeovers and billion-dollar mergers. From time to time, he also found himself in the employ of the federal government, although that was the only detail his confidentiality agreements allowed him to disclose. Needless to say, his office was his plane and no one found him if he didn’t want them to.

  He could also do things that Mason couldn’t, at least not without going through channels he had neither the time nor the patience to pursue.

  “This isn’t a social call,” Mason said. “I need your help. It’s about Angie.”

  “You have my condolences,” Gunnar said. “I watched her funeral, you know.”

  “I didn’t see you there.”

  “Eye in the sky, my friend.”

  “You tasked a satellite to watch my wife’s funeral?”

  “There was already one overhead.”

  “What are the odds that a satellite just happened to be in the right place at the right time to view my wife’s funeral?”

  “Slim, but not entirely outside the realm of possibility.”

  “So what’s your theory?”

  “As you know, I have to keep my finger on the financial pulse of the key players, and it’s been erratic for a while now. I’m talking about extended periods of relative calm followed by big bursts of activity. Massive, over-the-top transactions that seem to be designed to attract attention and grab some headlines, while a ton of smaller transactions are firing off in every direction at once. These smaller transactions? They’re all going through shells and subsidiaries, only to end up converging in some deep pockets. It feels like the powers on Wall Street are consolidating their holdings, like they did before 9/11, only on a much larger scale. There’s a lot of subtle manipulation going on right now and that has me thinking that something big is building on the horizon.”

  “What does that have to do with my wife’s funeral?”

  “Think about how many people important to those key players were in attendance. It makes sense that someone would be keeping a close eye on them, especially if my theory is correct. Look at your immediate family alone. Angie’s father is head of one of the largest agricultural conglomerates in the world and yours is a prominent senator who most feel will make a run at the presidency sooner than later. Throw in dozens of influential businessmen, policy makers, and high-ranking federal officials and you’re looking at a lot of power consolidated in one small space. And, unless I’m mistaken, there were a few people mixed into the crowd who didn’t belong.”

  “CIA?”

  “Not on the ground. That’s not their style. I don’t know, and that’s what concerns me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this until now?”

  “You’d just lost your wife, Mace. You didn’t need me burdening you with speculations while you were trying to grieve, especially when there was a chance the positioning of the satellite was entirely coincidental.”

  “Angie was murdered, Gunnar.”

  He was quiet for so long that Mason thought he’d lost the connection.

  “Gunnar?”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Without a doubt. I’m convinced she got too close to something through the course of her work and she was killed because of it.”

  “That changes the dynamics of the situation, doesn’t it?”

  “You don’t sound overly surprised.”

  “Let’s just say I had a healthy amount of skepticism about the circumstances surrounding her death.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the explanation I heard for why she was in that motel room didn’t sit right with me.”

  “You should have said something.”

  “How long has it been since last we spoke? A lot could have changed between the two of you since then. Besides, you know me, Mace. I see conspiracies everywhere I look.”

  “And you’re generally right, I’d imagine.”

  “More often than not.”

  “So what do you see here?”

  “I’ve been hearing whispers about Angie’s old man making a move to topple one of his main competitors in the global market, which would weaken it enough domestically to make its acquisition a foregone conclusion. Interestingly, I’ve also heard the Thorntons have been creeping their way into the pharmaceuticals game. Word has it your father-in-law’s a solid minority shareholder in two of the three largest overseas conglomerates. You know who has an honorary seat on the board of those two companies, as well? Here’s a hint: He also chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Bioengineering.”

  “There isn’t a board or committee my father doesn’t sit on.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Some people who are generally content to sit back and watch things unfold are now actively making a whole lot of subtle moves. These guys are the kind who never do anything unless the risk is great and the reward even greater. The kind who don’t ordinarily pop up on my radar unless they’re influencing global events.”

  “Who are we talking about?”

  “Powerful people who hide so well behind corporate smoke screens that even I don’t know for sure.”

  “You must be losing your touch.”


  “Trust me. I will figure this out.” Mason heard the scream of wind shear in the background. “But that’s not why you called, is it? What can I do for you?”

  “Three things, actually, and I don’t have a lot of time. There’s more at stake here than you know, Gunnar. Someone out there has a deadly virus that could already be weaponized—”

  “Not over an unsecured line.”

  “You know something, don’t you?”

  “A few pieces might have just clicked together. Tell me what you need.”

  “What do you know about a company called Fairacre Ranch Surplus and Auction?”

  “Never heard of it. Sounds like something well below my pay grade.”

  “It’s important, though. Can you check into it?”

  “No problem. Next?”

  “I’ve got a picture of a man and I need to put a name to the face.”

  “If it’s within my power, consider it done.”

  “One more thing,” Mason said. “If I gave you pay phone numbers and times, would you be able to get me imagery?”

  “Without breaking a sweat. Are you flying under the radar on this one?”

  “For now. I want to follow this lead and see where it takes me before I call in the cavalry.”

  “Send me the numbers and I’ll email you what I find. You can use the same email address. If you still have it, that is.”

  “Funny.” Mason typed the phone numbers and times into the body of the message, attached the picture of the man with the blue eyes, and sent it off into cyberspace. “You haven’t been making my phone ring off the hook, either.”

  He heard the roar of engines and the hiss of pressurized air. And beneath it all, the sound of typing.

  “You know how much I appreciate this, right?” Mason said.

  “Just keep your eyes open, Mace. If you’re in as deep as it sounds, you’re going to need to tread very lightly.”