by C G Cooper
“Wonder of wonders, Keren assured me of her love. Instead of dismissing me from our bed, she plotted with me to escape from our self-made tangle of lies. We fled through Jordan and Fahd’s Saudi Arabia. Not easy going. Keren was pregnant at the time.
“We took assumed names and settled in the Emirates. My savings were enough to keep us in comfort, even in that Mecca of the privileged. Keren brought our Sylvia into the world then followed up the miracle by becoming pregnant again. The Israelis had so much on their collective plate that I imagined Mossad would stop looking.
“They did, until my old mates stirred the pot. The one thing MI6 despises more than an enemy is a defector. Once they learned of Keren’s connections, they opened secret negotiations to have me deported. The Israelis didn’t want to admit they’d let us slip away, so they sent agents to track us down. Easy living had made us careless. I learned later that they’d known our location all along,” he said, grimacing. “They’d merely lacked the cue for action.
“We were on a drive when they struck. I was at the wheel. Keren in shotgun. She spotted our tail. They gave chase, ran us off the road.” He shut his eyes a moment before opening them and continuing. “I woke to flames and my daughter screaming. Keren, half strangled by her safety belt, went into labor. They saved the baby, our Emma. Keren bled to death on the way to hospital. Our Sylvia survived, badly burned.
“I languished in Mossad custody for a fortnight, nursing my hatred.” His voice had turned hard. “When MI6 came to the rescue, I thought them friends, but after all I’d done, all my years of faith and labor, they loved me less than Dick Tomlinson, who’d just tried publishing his exposé. I’d not breached official secrets. Still they branded me a pariah. Fool that I was, I gritted my teeth at the Israelis as I strolled, lamb-to-the-slaughter, between confinements.
“Even when I saw how the wind blew, I clothed my anger in meekness. The service was my only link to Sylvia and the baby. Months I begged for help and news. At long last I was contacted by a sympathetic listener. The man turned out to be a double agent. He came with a job offer. The organization’s demands were slight, at that early stage. They would save me from my immediate difficulties. In return, I was to wait upon their call. What would you do, eh?” His expression was momentarily pleading before he continued.
“My new employers kept their part of the bargain. Thanks to maneuverings by some highly-placed moles, I was granted liberty, provided I departed the Old World for the Continent. The CIA was informed of my credentials, nothing more. Secret negotiations began to return Emma to my care. Sylvia had already been placed with Keren’s family in Israel. I let her remain, partly out of guilt, partly because she looked too much like my Keren to keep comfortably by.
“Emma was a fierce wee thing at eight months,” he said with a wan smile. “The second Mrs. Jarrald delighted at the prospect of motherhood, a station that had been denied her by God and science. We married. After a few years, Emma adopted enough of her stepmother’s temperament that no one questioned how the strands of our family knitted together. I was happy again. But I’d not forgotten my friends, nor what the fiends in human guise had taken away.” He paused, took a deep breath, then continued.
“My patrons checked in every few months. Usually chats over the phone in which little was said and much implied. Sometimes a colleague would reveal to me his membership in the secret cabal, always just before a transfer, mine or his, to a new university. It was their way of keeping tabs, you know.
“Over time, contact became less frequent. Gaps of months stretched to half-a-year. Then a year, then two. When I’d gone four years not seeing hide nor hair, I thought I’d been abandoned, but what the eye can’t see, the heart can’t mourn. Whatever comeuppance my enemies had coming, I resigned myself to behold it from a distance.
“That was when Sylvia showed up on my doorstep.” Mac could feel the sense of wonder in that memory mixed with pain. “Such a strong girl, bull-headed like her mother. After her foster’s death, she’d served her military turn, refining blood and bones into fire and iron. But she missed the cordiality of kin. The organization contacted her, anonymously, and told her how she’d gotten her scars. There were as many lies in their version as the official account, no doubt. But they were different lies and sweeter. They came with my home address.
“She left IDF, taking an identity the organization provided. I greeted her with joy. I wept, gentlemen. Would you believe it? I thought my tears spent ages past. Her arrival was a message. My patrons had granted me a boon they could rescind. But they needn’t have worried. A Jarrald pays his debts. When they reached out, asking the benefit of my expertise, I accepted graciously.” His voice made it clear there had been no other choice.
“I was given a minder, young Niko. Most ruthless man I’ve ever known. Charming with it. You know him by another name, Tad Marshall, or else you’d not be sitting here. He phoned to say we’d had a breach. Another few minutes, Mac, and you’d have found a crater where half my hill had been. Bless you for saving the womenfolk,” he said earnestly. “I regret that this recitation is the only currency I have to give in exchange. Where was I, now?
“Ah, yes. Niko,” he continued. “As minder, it was his task was to support HYSTERIA any way he could. HYSTERIA, by the way, was our name for the operation. We called the chemical and subliminal agents it produced PHOBOS. Introduced in the proper sequence, PHOBOS was designed to compel obedience in any subject by manipulating their acute stress response.
“The considerable progress we made toward discovering that Holy Grail of clandestine science owes as much to Niko’s determination as my genius. He commissioned the building of my personal laboratory, complete with an access tunnel for bringing in supplies under Zelda’s nose. He recruited Cora, a capable enforcer. I understand she gave you quite a kicking, Mac.”
His voice had become so mesmeric, it took Mac a moment to respond. “Uh, yeah. I guess she did. Seems like bad manners to talk about it, though.”
“Forgive my pleasure at your misfortune,” said Brian. “I’ve thought of you as a foe for the past few days. Back to friends now, eh?”
Mac shrugged.
“Wait and see. Aye. My sympathies at the loss of your partner, by the way.”
Chance said, “Get on with it.”
“Patience, Detective,” said Brian. “We’re getting to your part. The greatest challenge Niko and I faced was finding a way to test our creations. We needed a subject who was willing to be controlled yet innocent enough that the actions Niko compelled him to perform could be readily identified as out-of-character. Niko found our Patient Zero. A local, not a student. We’d have been wiser to make that a matter of policy.
“I met Jordan Ross - Gan they called him, then Dac - only once. A feeble-minded youth, he was possessed of all the qualities we required. With PHOBOS subverting his will, Niko conducted him through a series of progressively more deviant acts. I’ll spare you the intricacies for fear they’d haunt your imagination. Suffice it to say that young Ross advanced from shoplifting to homicide precipitously. By the time the late Miss Garrett approached him, he was well and truly a new man.
“That young woman was clever, by the way,” he added. “It took only a jiggle and a grin to twist Gan around her finger. But Niko? She played a dangerous game deceiving that one. Whether Cora believed in her conversion to our cause, I don’t know. She would have argued against bringing in any rival for Niko’s attention. I never knew if they became lovers or if Tiffany stuck by Gan to the end.” He shrugged, as though it was a curiosity but nothing of real importance.
“The way Cora told the tale, she followed the girl one evening and discovered she was acting as catspaw to some rival. We never learned the identity of the opposition, only that they had planted Tiffany as a spy. Confronted with this intelligence, Niko ordered her death. I objected, I assure you,” he said, clearly knowing how his narrative sounded. “She was too much like my Emma. But Niko was a flywheel in the great machine, I a me
re cog.
“Even in carrying out her execution, Niko never lost sight of his goal. Ariadne, as they called Tiffany, after the Cretan queen, was not weak-willed. Compelling her to take her own life was an excellent test of PHOBOS’s efficacy. Gan primed her with the first of two compounds by drugging her food over the period of a week. The subliminal component was supplied by an early Christmas gift, a playlist Niko prepared as companion to a headset Gan wrapped and delivered.
“On the night she died, the final compound, a catalyzing inhalant, was administered to her. The result, as you already know, was her death. I would not have ordered the experiment, as I have said, but its outcome did much to validate my work.”
Brian leaned back, said over his shoulder, “I wonder, Detective, if you’d be so kind as to step into Chandra’s office next door and brew us some coffee, eh?”
Chance looked daggers at the man.
“Ask the deputy to do it,” said Mac.
Chance glanced his way, then walked stiffly to the door. The officer who had driven Mac to the school through the blinding snow was on guard at one end of the hallway. As Chance called to him, Mac said to Brian, “We’re not done.”
“Are we not?” said Brian. He looked genuinely surprised.
Mac waited as Chance gave directions to the deputy, then shut the door.
“Two things,” said Mac. “First, why did Niko and his crew make trouble for me instead of lying low?”
Brian smiled. “That was the subject of much debate. I warned Niko to leave you alone, but he wouldn’t listen. If PHOBOS could subvert a Company man’s will, he said, we’d have proof of our product’s infallibility. His plan was mad, of course. We should never have drawn your attention. Cora was on my side of the debate. I hope you’ll not take it personally that I asked her to remove you from the picture.”
“You sent her after me, dirt bike versus rental car?” Mac’s eyes widened slightly. “Thanks. I’d been trying to work that part out. Weren’t you afraid it’d bring on more heat than it shed?”
“Undoubtedly, it would have,” said Brian. “But my pressing concern was Niko. He’d grown reckless. If I thought that I could take him out of the picture instead— But the organization would have frowned at his removal.” He cocked his head. “Indulge a condemned man’s curiosity, Mac. How did you work out the rest, eh? Where did we go wrong?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“I believe you had another question for me to answer,” said Brian. “Let me guess. Something touching the intentions of my silent employer?”
Mac looked at Chance. Chance said, “It’s your rodeo.”
“All right,” said Mac. “We’ll cut a deal. I’ll give you the CliffsNotes, you tell me what your bosses are planning to do with PHOBOS.”
“Happily,” said Brian.
“Sending Cora to do the hit was the right play. That night, your gang lured me into a trap at St. Alban’s. After I slept off the worst, I started to wonder where somebody with those kinds of fighting skills would go to keep in shape. On a hunch, I asked if there was an MMA place in town.
“You want to know where you went wrong? Sending your thugs to get their training from Sylvia. You’re right about her being the spitting image of her mom. I didn’t know that when I met her, of course. Maybe if I’d taken you up on the offer to tour your office earlier, I could have saved time running around.”
He got up from his chair and examined the family photo that showed a pregnant Keren alongside her husband and little Sylvia. Now that he had made the connection, Yael Tobar’s resemblance to her mother and her younger self was unmistakable.
“In my defense,” said Mac, “I didn’t know at the time what Tiffany Garrett had been up to on the night of her death. The— The detective helped me figure that out.”
He covered his hesitation by jerking a thumb at Chance.
“Sending messages to your bosses out of Mikayla’s office was smart,” Mac said, walking over to the closet. “It threw me for most of a sleepless night. But once I figured out where I’d seen your wife’s face before, all I had to do was pull up some early schematics to predict what the detective would find hidden in here.”
He reached inside the closet, where Brian’s collection of shirts had already been pushed to one side. The concealed button Chance had shown him earlier gave a click. The back wall of the closet pivoted out on a hinge. Mac grasped a rung of the short ladder thus revealed.
“There used to be a broom closet directly above. In the newer plans, it’s missing.”
“Trade-off for shifting the load-bearing wall,” said Brian. “That’s how I sold it. The cleaning staff make do.”
The demonstration over, Mac returned to his seat. “I don’t guess you’d give me the name of Sylvia’s star pupil?”
“Absolutely I would, if I knew it. I knew Cora only by nom de guerre. I believe she studied art here at some point, but I’ve not seen her photo in any university publication or our internal records. Surpassed her instructors, that one has.”
“Never mind,” said Mac. “PHOBOS. What do your bosses have in mind?”
“There’s better news for you, Kamaui Maka Mahoe. The Ascended Masters expect nothing less than perfection. It’s plain, from your hesitation to shoot young Jordan, that PHOBOS is not yet perfect. DIOS won’t abandon so promising a field of inquiry, but you’ve bought yourself some time while less brilliant men trace my footsteps.”
Sitting upright as if he’d just been jabbed, Brian brought a hand to his mouth in mock concern. “Oh dear. I’ve just spoken the name of your adversary. How careless. But surely you’ve heard it before.”
Mac considered playing dumb. Could the fact that he had already heard the name DIOS be tracked back to Anne?
“Say I did.”
Brian steepled his fingers. “Do you know what it means?”
“DIOS. Spanish for God.”
“A mere linguistic irony,” Brian said dismissively. “The name is an acronym: D-I-O-S. Divine Incarnation of Serapis. Not quite so melodramatic as it sounds. Not quite.
“In theory, they’re a political order dedicated to the replacement of the social paradigm. They believe civilization took a false turn when Octavian conquered the Ptolemies. A lot of New Age mumbo-jumbo if you ask me, but it’s motivated some quite sober thinking on how the world should end. It was their particular keenness to destroy the clandestine apparatus of Western nations that so fired my imagination.”
“Revenge,” said Chance. “Is that all you’re after?”
“Persons who knock it,” said Brian, “have no cause to seek it out.”
The deputy came in, carrying a bamboo tray from Chandra’s office with coffee in three disposable cups. Chance took one in each hand. Mac waved his away. The deputy left, blowing across the spare. Chance set a cup just inside Brian’s reach and backed away.
“I’ll not try to scald you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” said Brian. “I’m content to bide my time here. This room has been a second home to me. Fitting that I should spend my final night upon this earth surrounded by my treasures.”
“We’ll protect you,” said Mac.
“You’ll try. Now, is there cream, or do you expect me to drink it black like my soul?”
Chapter Forty-Four
— Day Five: Mac —
Sometime before three, the power went out. Mac woke shivering. He swung his feet over the side of Chandra’s imitation leather couch, put on his jacket, and switched on his hearing aids. The noise of a coyote baying in his head was dulled by a slightly off-pitch electronic simulation. The sounds faded together into the background. Mac got to his feet.
On his way to the bathroom, he peeked in on Brian Jarrald. From the dean’s dark words, he half expected to find him strangled to death or frothing from the mouth after cracking a cyanide tooth cap.
In fact, he was sleeping peacefully, slumped in his chair. The deputy on guard duty looked a plea at him, tugging a sleeve of his thin shirt. Mac s
hook a “hang loose” sign at the deputy and hunted up his winter coat from an office down the hall. Handing the coat to the square-jawed man, he heard Chance snoring from the back of Brian’s office.
The rest of the night passed in fits and starts. Mac suspected that everybody was uneasy. Though in all his nocturnal wanderings, he didn’t catch Chance awake.
Brian also stayed under most of the night. Only once, near dawn, did the eyes in the wrinkled face peer out from under fire-orange eyebrows as Mac passed the door. Their expression was unreadable.
A phone call woke Chance an hour later. “Whoa, hey,” were the words that announced the detective’s consciousness. Mac strolled into the office.
According to dispatch at Wilburville PD, the plows had cleared the rural route all the way to the school, though the blades of the behemoths were too wide to scrape the bridge across Banner Creek. Chance was to march his prisoner through the snow to a convoy en route. He’d be escorting Brian to Wilburville. Once he turned over custody, he’d be free to go home.
“Good luck,” Mac said after Chance related the news. He shook the detective’s hand. “You do good work, brother. You deserve to get back to Val in Albany.”
“What about the woman, Cora?”
Two deputies had flanked Brian. As they hoisted him out of his chair, he said, “She’ll be leagues away by now. Take my advice. Human nature will take its course. Enjoy the time you have left. Don’t spend it fighting pointless wars.”
Mac and Chance watched as the heavyset man, his suit hopelessly rumpled, was conducted out of the office.
Quietly, Mac said, “A hard-target search on domestic soil is a step too far for the Company. They’re going to call in the Feds.”
“I thought you guys hated each other.”