The Joshua Files - a complete box set: Books 1-5 of the young adult sci-fi adventure series plus techno-thriller prequel

by M. G. Harris

  He glanced at his watch. Six hours since he had removed the samples from storage at minus 70oC. Jackson knew that the sooner he managed to get them onto ice, the better the chances of their viability. He looked around for any sign of Dr. Pedro Juan Beltran, a scientific collaborator based at the Institute of Biotechnology of Temixco, Mexico. Beltran had promised to arrive in good time, with a thermos of ice with which to rescue the vials.

  Jackson soon spotted Beltran eating a cinnamon bun and cradling a paper coffee cup in a small café.

  “PJ?”

  Beltran stood, grinned and stuck out a hand that was still hot from holding the coffee. “Hey! Jackson! Well, well; the newly minted Doctor Bennett, correct?”

  Jackson stuttered slightly. “Not exactly. I’m kind of behind schedule.”

  “Ah. I looked you up on the Web. Found your blog. Doctor Jackson Bennett.”

  Jackson could feel his cheeks burning with embarrassment. That stupid blog. There was nothing there except a photo of him snowboarding. He’d named it prematurely, a joke, because the name “jacksonbennett.com” had already been taken, but “drjacksonbennett.com” was still available. It seemed idiotic to explain all that right now, so he simply continued to blush.

  To his relief, Beltran chuckled. He had the grave, worn face of someone who worked in a concentrated and urgent manner. The sudden smile was a surprise.

  Beltran pulled a small Thermos flask from his inside pocket. He unscrewed the top to reveal a densely packed mound of tiny ice flakes. This was it, the moment to perform the simple task he’d been sent all the way to Mexico for – the handover of precious biological samples. Jackson glanced around for the briefest of seconds to check that he wasn’t observed, then moved a swift hand to his pocket. He palmed the vials, passed his hand over the top of the flask to drop them in with the minimum of movement.

  Beltran’s features broke into a wide beam. “Hey that’s very good, my friend! You take a magician seminar or something?”

  “An old Vegas trick I learned when I was a professional croupier,” Jackson replied with deadpan humor. Beltran’s smile lingered, with a hint of puzzled curiosity. It was clear that he wasn’t sure whether Jackson was joking.

  Beltran gestured broadly. “Bennett, make yourself comfortable. Take off your jacket – you’re sweating like a pig!”

  It was true. The alcohol may have helped to relax his face, but the heat of the hall and tension of the customs line had proved too much. Reluctantly, Jackson removed his beloved brown suede jacket. He folded it carefully over the seat next to his so that the pockets were not exposed to passers-by.

  To Jackson’s astonishment, Beltran leaned forward, his face instantly serious. Close to Jackson’s ear he whispered, “There’s a reason he sent you. I couldn’t tell you via email. Or over the phone.”

  Jackson leaned back to look into Beltran’s eyes. There was no hint of humor. He waited for a few seconds but Beltran continued to stare at him with a penetrating gaze. Eventually he said, “Are we still talking about my work with the phoenix gene?”

  “What else? The thing is, I’ve stumbled across something. It’s strange, unexpected. I thought I was working on something interesting, maybe something I could sell to the biotech industry. There’s something more here, Jackson. Something big. There are other people involved. To be honest, there are things I haven’t yet talked about.”

  “Sounds like maybe you should be talking to my boss?”

  “No. This relates directly to your work. You need to know directly.”

  Jackson was speechless. High-level discussions with a scientific collaborator almost never by-passed the head of the lab. Jackson could scarcely believe that his boss had permitted it.

  “Before you ask, no, your boss doesn’t have any clue about what I’m about to tell you.”

  All Jackson could do was to nod. “OK. . . I guess! Thanks.”

  “Don’t rush the gratitude. The first thing I need to do is to make something of a confession. Throughout this collaboration, there are things I have kept from you and the rest of the team.”

  “What are you saying? You haven’t told me and the guys at UCSF? Or do you mean your own guys too?”

  “I haven’t shared this particular detail with anyone at the University of California at San Francisco. Nor anyone from my own team in Mexico, either.”

  Jackson stared at Beltran. The situation was becoming more confusing by the second. Withholding information from a collaborator could be a serious business. Research funds were hotly competitive. Without a promise of mutual openness, two teams of researchers could scarcely risk so much as a conversation.

  Maybe this was why Beltran had asked to deal directly with him. Unlike his boss, Jackson was no scientific big shot. He wasn’t particularly volatile either. His boss would probably punch a collaborator for holding out on him, then proceed to shred the guy’s career.

  Beltran’s eyes hinted at contrition. “You know how it can be when your research is funded privately. Legally, I’m completely silenced. Just lately, however, I’m starting to get more than a little bit . . .”

  The Mexican scientist stretched his arms across the back of the booth, knocking down Jackson’s suede jacket. Jackson made to stand up but he was effusive with apologies. “Listen to me, I get so melodramatic. Let me get that for you.” He picked the jacket off the floor, made a show of dusting the surface clean. He handed it back to Jackson as carefully as if it had been a kitten.

  Jackson couldn’t stop himself checking the jacket himself. The floor of the café was sure to be sticky with coffee spills. He’d managed to act easy-going about Beltran’s clumsiness but he was actually pretty irritated. The suede jacket was his most expensive item of clothing; the only garment he could count on in which to look semi-decent.

  When he looked back at Beltran, Jackson was bewildered to see that the scientist had become suddenly very still, staring right past his shoulder. He glanced around, following Beltran’s gaze.

  A man approached, dressed in pale grey, unremarkable, ill-fitting suit, white shirt and anthracite-colored tie. He didn’t look like a businessman or a scientist. When he looked back at Beltran, who was now pale with tension, Jackson’s pulse began to race.

  Mexican Customs.

  Had they somehow caught up to him?

  Stiff with tension, Jackson gave the newcomer a coolly polite smile. “Hi.”

  Their new companion stopped level with Beltran. He took a seat next to him and flashed what a perfunctory smile. His hair was immaculately cropped, as though he was fresh from the barber. It was thick, but almost uniformly silver-grey. From his face, Jackson wouldn’t have guessed the man’s age any older than thirty-five. Perhaps he was prematurely grey?

  His attention shifted to Beltran. An unmistakable frisson of fear crossed Beltran’s face as their eyes met for less than a second. Yet all he said was “Doctor Bennett. This is an associate from the Institute. It seems I’m on an earlier flight to Monterrey. So I gotta get going, Doctor Bennett. I’ll see you around, OK?”

  Two “Doctor Bennetts” in quick succession. Beltran had already poked fun at him being overdue with the doctorate. He was on the point of asking Beltran what kind of point he was trying to make.

  The grey-haired man nodded. Speaking English with the merest hint of a Mexican accent, he murmured, “A pity we didn’t get time to talk, Doctor Bennett. Perhaps we’ll catch up in at the Institute, in Temixco?”

  “You’re leaving . . . ?”

  Beltran’s face was curiously devoid of expression as he turned away. The newcomer picked up the Thermos containing the test-tubes, which stood, quite forgotten, on the table.

  “Your flask,” said the man to Beltran.

  For several seconds after they’d left, Jackson remained half-seated, half-way to standing up, unable to decide whether he should follow Beltran or not.

  The grey-haired guy couldn’t be with Customs – or else it would have been Jackson who would have been asked to lea
ve.

  Yet something was wrong – very much so. Beltran had looked frightened, yet his words had been bizarrely at odds with such a swift change of mood. All he’d said to Jackson was Doctor Bennett this and Doctor Bennett that.

  In fact, that in itself was strange.

  Why did Beltran keep calling me “Doctor Bennett”?

  The Grey-Haired Man

  As he left the coffee shop, PJ Beltran had to force himself not to glance back at Bennett. His mind was racing, trying to fathom the motive of the man who was leading him away. The truth was, PJ had never met the grey-haired man before, had no idea who he could be.

  Inside the man’s jacket pocket, there was a gun – PJ had felt it when the man had taken a seat next to him, in the café. He’d felt the hard, blunt nose of it against his side. As they’d walked away, PJ had been given a glimpse of the weapon.

  “Please, Doctor Beltran, be calm. Ten minutes of your time is all I need.”

  The grey-haired man hadn’t introduced himself further. But PJ knew without a doubt that he’d be shot if he dared to disobey.

  The next two minutes had passed as though in a dream. As the two men walked down the airport concourse he spoke in Spanish, asking, “What happens now?”

  “I’m a government agent. We’re onto you, my friend. We have cameras everywhere. We need to know what kind of material you are carrying in that flask. I have your flask, but also, there’ll be some questions.”

  PJ wanted to believe him. Aspects of the story rang true. Clearly the man had been observing PJ and Bennett. He had some idea of what was happening. Maybe PJ’s darkest fears were unfounded. But his fear wouldn’t entirely abate.

  ‘Government agent’ sounded convincing. The clandestine gun shook PJ’s confidence. Did Mexican government agents threaten people with guns, practically in public? Maybe the guy is going to ask for a bribe, PJ hoped. He found himself clinging to the idea. The Customs Department could make difficulties for PJ. It might be worth risking a bribe to avoid trouble.

  The alternatives were far scarier – what if this was a prelude to a kidnap?

  Yet a darker, more ponderous fear scratched at the edge of PJ’s thoughts; the anxiety he’d been trying to indicate to Bennett. The research he’d been doing had taken a surprising turn. He may have wandered into dangerous territory. Was it possible that PJ had underestimated just how dangerous?

  PJ’s thoughts went to Jackson Bennett. Why hadn’t this ‘agent’ gone for the American scientist? Or maybe someone else was taking care of Bennett.

  PJ had only been able to think of one way to signal caution to the American graduate student – calling him ‘Dr.’ Bennett. After the joke he’d made, Bennett was bound to have found that odd. Scientists this close to their doctoral exam tended to be hypersensitive to the issue. Fervently, PJ hoped that he’d understood.

  ***

  Jackson sipped his coffee slowly. What the hell just happened? He didn’t have any illusions: scientists as eminent as PJ Beltran often didn’t have time for new kids on the block, like him. The grey-haired man was clearly more important than Jackson but there was something weird about the whole thing.

  Beltran had looked scared.

  Leaving, Beltran and the stranger had stuck close together – he spotted that they had even paused when other travelers had tried to walk between them, forcing them instead to walk around.

  “Almost as if they were handcuffed together. . .”

  Then it hit him: the reason for Beltran’s odd behavior, his making such a point of calling Jackson ‘Dr.’ Bennett when the two had already established that he was anything but a ‘Dr’ yet. The grey-haired man had followed Beltran’s lead. He didn’t know that Jackson wasn’t yet Dr. Bennett.

  Beltran was trying to send him a coded signal.

  Could it have been a warning?

  The anonymous grey suit wasn’t a businessman or a scientist. Maybe a government man?

  With a gulp, he swallowed the coffee.

  Beltran had been arrested. The flask, the test-tubes – the whole game was up. Yet somehow, Beltran had kept Jackson out of it.

  He reached for his cell phone. Someone at Beltran’s lab had to be warned. If the government were involved then reprisals might be swift. The only number he had for Beltran was a mobile number. There was an address for the Institute in Temixco, but no phone number. Jackson hesitated. He had to do something.

  He picked up his jacket, peered down the airport concourse one last time to see if there was still any sign of Beltran or the stranger. There wasn’t. Jackson rapped the table with the edge of his phone, thinking. The Institute was a long way to go, something like a two hour drive. What else could he do? He couldn’t leave things like this.

  At the Alamo office, he hired a car. With as much haste as he could muster, he stashed his rolling suitcase in the trunk of the car and slid into the driver’s seat. He turned on the satellite navigation and tapped in his destination: ‘Temixco’.

  He was more nervous by the minute. The government was onto the whole illegal exchange. Presumably they would interrogate Beltran. It was just a matter of time before they were after Jackson, too. Presumably Beltran’s colleagues in Temixco could advise him. Did he need a lawyer? Or would he do better simply to leave the country, right away?

  No – that would be pretty cowardly. Beltran’s colleagues might need help to cover Beltran’s tracks. It wasn’t cool to let someone else take the hit for something that also involved him.

  Sweat flushed from every pore of Jackson’s body. What was he taking on?

  The drivers in this city were every bit as bad as he’d been warned. They drove almost intimately close in eye-wateringly narrow lanes, with an informality that made the sweat patches under his arms grow larger by the second. Jackson held his breath. He probably needed eyes in the back of his head to get to his destination without at least a minor crash.

  If he’d been less frazzled, Jackson might have noticed the black Ford Explorer drop neatly into the southbound traffic, just two cars behind him.

  ***

  PJ began to wonder where the expressionless man at his side was leading him. Brisk steps took them further down the marble floors of the airport concourse. PJ had expected simply to be led into one of the many discreet, unmarked airport offices. They had already passed at least a dozen.

  Things were happening faster than his ability to process. Finally it struck him that it was odd that they were heading for the far end of the airport. They’d passed all the check-in desks for the domestic departures. Now the number of people around thinned to just a handful.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” the grey-haired man said. He stopped and gripped PJ’s shoulder. His weapon dug hard into PJ’s ribs. There was something forced about the man’s tone, as though he wasn’t used to sounding quite this accommodating. “You should take the opportunity too, Dr. Beltran. For you, this is gonna be a long night.”

  PJ flinched. So, there was going to be an interrogation. Who was in charge?

  Abruptly, PJ felt himself steered into the men’s room. It was empty, apart from a uniformed attendant who sat slouched over on a low chair reading a dog-eared, semi-pornographic comic book. With a cursory glance around the room, the grey-haired man held out a fifty peso note to the attendant. Politely, he asked him to fetch some more hand towels. The attendant’s eyes boggled for a second at the size of the tip. He snatched the fifty pesos, tucked the comic book into the waist of his uniform trousers and left.

  PJ’s heart began to pound so heavily that his chest shook. For the first time, he was alone with the man who had escorted him away from Bennett.

  “OK, Dr. Beltran. You first. In this cubicle.” The grey-haired man reached inside his suit jacket, pulled out an automatic pistol. Beltran froze. He opened his mouth but the sound that came from it was muted. In silent disbelief, he watched as the man’s hand went to a trouser pocket and pulled out a thick metallic cylinder. PJ’s mind struggled to comprehend what he was se
eing. PJ felt his breath turn to ice. Very calmly, the grey-haired man twisted a silencer onto the muzzle of the pistol.

  PJ’s hesitation ended as rapidly as it had overtaken him. He flung himself forward, only to find himself knocked back hard, into the cubicle by a swipe of the semi-assembled weapon. Sticky blood poured into his left eye. A wave of concentrated terror flowed through him. In that instant, PJ Beltran understood that he was going to die.

  His muscles seemed to have become locked. He heard the grey-haired man’s order to sit on the toilet seat as though from a great distance. PJ watched, almost detached, unable to move as the revolver was raised. At that moment he sensed the crumbling of the foundations of his ordered universe; this was the abyss that people talked about, the final abyss of terror.

  PJ Beltran was staring deep inside.

  A Test-Tube

  The bullet entered PJ’s eye with almost no sound.

  It blew his eyeball out of its socket with a slight pop, streaming easily through his head. Bone shattered as the bullet exited and sank with a faint thud into the soft plaster wall behind the toilet. Blood and brain tissue spilled freely from the open wounds. The assassin stepped into the cubicle and locked the door behind him. He pulled hard at the pale blue shirt that Beltran was wearing, yanked the garment over the dead man’s head. He made a makeshift knot at the top to stem the flow of blood. The assassin spooled out bunches of toilet paper. With meticulous care he wiped away all drops of blood and flecks of brain which had spilled near the neighboring cubicle.

  The man then picked up the Thermos flask which lay, discarded on the floor. He manipulated PJ’s body so that it sat quite stably. Finally, he hoisted himself over the barrier to the right, leaving PJ’s body locked inside. He flushed away the handfuls of blood-soaked toilet paper, and left the cubicle empty. For a couple of minutes he stood at the sink, calmly washing his hands.