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

  As the car wound its way through the fields and forests, through the valley and towards the nexus of lakes at Interlaken, Jackson found himself reflecting on the possibility that his thoughts and motives were being controlled.

  Was Melissa DiCanio hypnotizing him into going to Iraq?

  “This is how it’s going to go, Jackson. We’re going to fly into Basra. I’ve arranged some meetings with some senior Red Cross officials in Iraq. We’ll be discussing some clinical trials. The airport security is unlikely to ask details about you; but if they do, you have to persuade them that you’re a physician, not a research scientist.

  “Once we arrive in Iraq, we’ll check into a hotel and work on your appearance. I’m going to go over the plan with you in the airplane. You can meet yet another of our society members: Hafez Kazmi, who’ll be flying the jet. He’s a former fighter pilot, from Iran.”

  Jackson shook his head. He tried to smile. “Melissa,” he began softly, “I haven’t said that I’ll go.”

  She hesitated, shot him a look that made him instantly regret what he’d said. It was genuine surprise, disappointment, confusion. As though he’d upset, with one word, some dearly held belief. Despite himself, Jackson couldn’t help feeling as if he’d let a parent down.

  It took her several moments to recover. When she spoke again her voice sounded controlled, yet hurt.

  “I . . . I don’t know what to say to convince you. Please, Jackson. If you can’t do it for the money, do it for the idea that you’ll be helping the world survive the cataclysms and horror that global warming and overpopulation will bring.”

  “I’m not sure that I believe that those things are going to happen,” he ventured. “Anyway, isn’t the world going to end in 2012?”

  Jackson had intended the last statement as a joke, a touch of humor to detract from the gravity of the situation. From DiCanio’s expression of absolute horror, he realized that he’d overstepped some mark. With difficulty she managed to reply, “Is that what you believe?”

  He laughed. “What? Of course not! That was a joke. Melissa, if you’re one of the people who can use hypnoticin, how do I know you’re not using it on me?”

  “To get you to help us?” She seemed flabbergasted. “Firstly, if you were susceptible to hypnoticin, you wouldn’t be any good to us. Secondly, if I was using it, you’d have agreed to the mission, right away. You’d have wanted to do it, simply to please me. That’s what hypnoticin does; it fills the subject with desire to assist the person who’s using it on them.”

  “So you had to resort to money.”

  “Money is never enough. At best it’s compensation. Think of it as danger money. Is it too much to hope for a spark of idealism from you?”

  “Idealism,” he repeated. “Isn’t that what Connor gave you?”

  “I’d hope your idealism is less jingoistic.”

  “Why the hurry?”

  “Because your brother’s tour of duty ends tomorrow, Jackson. He’ll return to a desk job in Virginia. The opportunity to impersonate him will be gone. We’ll lose our last chance to acquire the artifact, the last chance to discover the secret of our gene’s ancient origins. And with it, the power to unlock our true potential. Yours as much as mine.”

  “I’m sorry, Melissa. Really. Without understanding a lot more, I can’t do it.” Suddenly, saying the words aloud released his escalating tension.

  DiCanio stared at him for a second, her eyes wide with distress. She was about to answer him when the driver, whose eyes had been regularly scanning his rear view mirror, spoke.

  “Professor, we have a tail.”

  Jackson was in the act of turning his head when DiCanio’s voice stopped him.

  “Don’t look around, don’t alert them!”

  He managed to stay calm enough to say just the word, “Runig.”

  DiCanio asked, “Is there something you haven’t told me?”

  Jackson wondered briefly how far to go. He’d pushed the issue of Runig to the back of his mind. But now, surely he had to speak up? Runig had revealed one thing which simply had to be discussed.

  “Chaldexx is not secure, Melissa – Runig knows about hypnoticin. You’ve put my life at risk, and you haven’t even told me the real reason for this mission. Now you can explain or you can go fuck yourself and I’m outta here, I’ll take my chances against Runig!”

  DiCanio was momentarily speechless. Checking the mirror again, she instructed the driver to call ahead to the pilot, ordering that he prepare for trouble.

  His outburst over, he now sat back, waiting for her response.

  “OK, look. There’s a second burial chamber, just like the one in Iraq. It’s in Mexico. We discovered it about three months ago.”

  “How?” insisted Jackson.

  “Jackson,” DiCanio muttered, clearly irritated, “I told you we have many people in the organization. With many specialties, and we’ve been looking for years. Once we began to receive more specifics about the Eridu chamber from our source in the UN, we could rule out most of the leads we had. We were left with only a few.

  “Like the one in Iraq, the artifacts are behind a locking mechanism. There is a space for a key-like object – about the size of a TV remote control. We call it the Adaptor. Now, we’ve seen the list of artifacts found in Iraq. One of them fits the description of the Adaptor. Our hope is that the Eridu Adaptor will function in Mexico.”

  “Where in Mexico?” he remembered suddenly Marie-Carmen’s puzzled reaction to the fact that a Chaldexx employee had official business in Chetumal. The bio-reserve story had been fairly convincing, but there were a lot of ancient ruins in that part of Mexico. Was that their real reason for being in Chetumal?

  “I can’t answer that, Jackson. I’d have to be convinced of your loyalty. Not until we get back.”

  He considered for a few seconds. “So you want to get this artifact from the Eridu chamber, to use in the Mexico chamber?”

  “The Iraq chamber is in the hands of the National Reconnaissance Office, Jackson. So far as we are aware, only we have discovered the chamber in Mexico.”

  “What do you think you’re going to find?”

  “The Adaptor is the key that will unlock an ancient technology. Each member of our society is linked to the ancients who built that chamber. We’d be unlocking the secret to our past and possibly, our future.”

  He stared at her. “You’re serious? Ancient technology? How do you know you’re linked to those ancients?”

  “Think about it – where else did our gene come from? It doesn’t appear anywhere in the DNA record of this planet until three thousand BC. We think.” She hesitated, locking her eyes with his for a moment. “We believe that the ancients were survivors from a super-ancient race, possibly of extra-terrestrial origin; extra-terrestrials who mingled their DNA with ours. The buried chambers may be some relic of their civilization. And we’re descended from them, Jackson, you and I.”

  He gaped. Ancient technology of extra-terrestrial origin? He’d heard a lot of kooky-sounding theories of ancient civilizations having contact with aliens, but surely it was all nonsense? Yet this highly credible, powerful and connected scientist seemed perfectly serious. Could it be some bizarre, hallucinogenic side-effect of the drug her company had developed?

  “How powerful is hypnoticin, really? Can you use it to persuade someone to kill?”

  “The stronger the inhibition, the easier it is to resist, unless the subject is seriously physically weak. Just like in the mouse experiments – the hypnoticin-treated mouse could only influence the other mice when they were all close to starvation.”

  “How can I believe you?”

  “Hypnoticin is not a weapon of mass destruction, Jackson, or even as convincing as a gun to the head. And you’ll notice that no-one is holding a gun to your head.”

  Jackson flopped back into the seat. He was confused, afraid. “I’d need to see a demonstration.”

  “Agreed; I’d hoped to show you today at the office.
Your friend Runig has somewhat raised the stakes.”

  “I’m not agreeing to anything until I’ve seen this drug in action.”

  Gently, DiCanio said, “I can only appeal to you as a scientist, as an idealist who believes in using your talent to further the health of society on this planet. You can still go with Runig if you prefer. I won’t stop you, I promise. When we get to the airport, you can either make a run for it to the jet, with me, or you can give yourself up.”

  He inhaled deeply. He knew what he would choose, and although he sensed no direct pressure, there was a vague feeling of powerlessness. He looked at himself in the mirror.

  Jackson Bennett, secret agent for an underground society of genetically-enhanced intelligentsia?

  There was a stark discrepancy between his ordinary persona and the one into which he was evolving. It was as disturbing as the growing sense of Jackson’s own vulnerability.

  The car was now speeding alongside the smooth, teal-colored water of Lake Thun. After a few minutes the driver turned off the road, following road signs to the small Thun airfield at Beizli. The car behind did the same.

  As they approached the small terminal building, he could see a handful of private jets parked. Another one was moving, taxiing very slowly towards the runway. It was white, had two turbofans positioned near the tail and appeared to have capacity for several passengers.

  Suddenly, the driver pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator. Within a second or two he’d put fifty yards between DiCanio’s car and the car in pursuit.

  His heart plummeted when he saw the car behind also speed up, racing to catch them. He had still hoped that they’d been wrong. Deep down however, he knew that Runig would never have simply waited for Jackson to turn up for that 8.30am meeting. He found himself joining in with DiCanio, urging the driver to speed up and pull up alongside the jet.

  The jet was already moving down the runway when they reached it. Their driver slowed down to match its speed and opened the left hand rear window. The airplane’s door was open and two burly-looking men leaned forward to offer a hand to lift them out of the BMW. The pursuit car was only a few yards behind them. It in turn was now being followed by two security cars, sirens blaring. He stared in disbelief at the sight of DiCanio removing her high-heeled shoes, throwing them into the jet’s cabin, and then climbing out of the car window, stretching to catch hold of one of the outstretched hands.

  With surprisingly little fuss, she transferred over to the jet. Now it was his turn. When Jackson kept his focus on the jet, he realized that after all, it was not so difficult. Their relative speeds matched, it was a small jump. Then, to his horror, he heard shots ring out. The car in pursuit had taken position behind the jet. The passenger had wound down the window, taking potshots at the gap into which he was preparing to launch himself.

  He hesitated for just a second longer, turned to look at Priya. She seemed oblivious, gazing out of the window, knees drawn up to her chest. He said to the driver, “You gotta take her to a hosp. . .” but DiCanio’s voice broke across him, yelling, “Come on, Jackson, now!”

  Ahead he glimpsed, briefly, the approaching end of the runway. This was the final motivation. He heaved himself out of the car and lunged towards the jet, both hands catching the arms of the men on board. They hauled him into the jet. The plane’s nose tipped into the air and all aboard clung tightly to anything in sight. The floor tilted sharply, Jackson’s body hung momentarily in mid-air.

  Eyes wide open, he gripped the back of a seat. He counted the seconds as the jet pulled further from the ground, hideously aware of the open door directly behind him. Less than three minutes later, the jet straightened. One of DiCanio’s men manually pulled the door shut. He exhaled, long and slow. DiCanio had managed to get into a seat. He glanced in her direction.

  For a second, their eyes met. Defiance? Gratitude? Circumspection? He couldn’t quite fathom her expression.

  Captain Connor Bennett

  Once the plane was in the air, Jackson reached inside his jacket, fumbling for his cell phone. He needed to read Marie-Carmen’s email properly, the one that she’d given the subject ‘Worried About Iraq’. He’d barely managed to skim it before Runig – or whoever he was – had called him, but what he’d seen had been pretty crazy, full of quotations from ancient Sumerian texts. He guessed that it had something to do with what they’d seen on the website that Runig had used to trap people searching for the fifteen-letter code; the amino acid sequence of hypnoticin.

  The cell phone wasn’t in his pocket. He peered around, shifted his feet and checked under the seat. There was no sign. He thought back to the chaotic moment of transferring to the jet on the runway. It must have fallen then. He bit his lip. This was going to be a serious inconvenience.

  During the long flight over Iraq as the plane proceeded south to Basra, Jackson was glued to the window, gazing abstractedly at the seemingly endless stretches of desert and barren land. Every now and then, he’d spot a tiny patch of green, a lush oasis of fertility, but mostly, the impression was of a harsh, almost relentlessly flat landscape.

  Observing him, the pilot Hafez Kazmi, remarked, “Imagine how hard it was to make a living from this land before oil. Then remember that Iraq is the cradle of civilization; maybe the original inspiration for the Garden of Eden.”

  Jackson’s fingers touched the plastic of the window. After a moment he turned, examining the man who was flying the jet. Kazmi was powerfully-built, probably somewhere in his fifties to judge from his face. He was trim at the waist with heavy musculature apparent under his pale blue shirt. His thick hair was about half-way to being grey, impeccably trimmed and smooth. He wore a thick beard that was even darker than his hair. Like all pilots Jackson had observed, Kazmi had that air of competence; a man commanding technology. Just the sort of hardy physical specimen that he could imagine DiCanio would admire.

  He wondered fleetingly if she and Kazmi were intimate. Despite her blonde hair and detached manner, DiCanio managed somehow to avoid the ‘ice queen’ cliché. Maybe it was because he detected a faint air of desire in the way she gazed at him, even if the desire wasn’t sexual, as Jackson now realized was probably the case. Did the same apply to Kazmi, he wondered?

  “Iraq was the inspiration for Eden?” he wondered aloud, eyes taking in the vastness of a desert below. “But how?”

  Kazmi chuckled, a deep, throaty sound tainted with decades of cigarette smoke. “My friend, you must gaze with historical eyes! The entire region was habitable by the good fortune of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The same way that Ancient Egypt grew up around the Nile. Unfortunately the Tigris and Euphrates don’t flood as reliably as the Nile. When they flooded just the right amount, the soil was enriched, things were good. The country was a garden. But often, the floods were bad. The land is so flat that they’d affect an enormous area; the floods became legendary.

  “The Biblical flood myth is probably based on earlier Sumerian accounts of a flood in Mesopotamia found in the Epic of Gilgamesh. In fact, some people even think that all world myths of the giant flood are actually corruptions of the Gilgamesh flood story, applied to local events. The truth is, we don’t even really know when this early flood happened. Parts of the flood story have been found on clay tablets going back as far as two thousand BC. Some people think that even those are compilations of an older, much older, story.”

  DiCanio was staring at him, her eyes full of hopeful expectation. “This place has been central to the destiny of the world for thousands of years. Plus ça change. What you’re going to do, Jackson, could help us unlock the secret of who we are, where we came from, the true extent of our abilities.”

  ***

  The jet landed at Basra International Airport six hours after they had left Switzerland. A car was waiting for DiCanio, Jackson and the bodyguards. The pilot, Kazmi, bade DiCanio farewell with a kiss to her hand.

  “I’ll have the jet fuelled and ready within three hours,” he said, adding, “I’ve
made arrangements at the house in Manama.”

  Jackson watched with an increasing sense of powerlessness. DiCanio’s society seemed to have it all worked out. He placed a hand on her wrist. “What about the demonstration, Melissa? I said no deal until I’ve seen evidence that your hypnoticin works.”

  If DiCanio was at all slighted by the faint pressure of his hand near hers, she showed absolutely no sign of it. She remained pleasant, amicable. “I’ve got vials of hip33 in my suitcase. Relax, darlin’, you’ll get your show.”

  In the car, Jackson sat rigidly, brooding. He was reduced to silence by the cruel desolation of the surroundings. Despite the fact that the war had been over for years, bombed-out buildings were everywhere, the air seemed to be filled with a fine, sticky dust, there were queues for petrol. Everything seemed to be grey, tan or khaki; vivid color was in short supply. Local businesses appeared to be conducting brisk trade. Small trucks parked and sold fruit directly out of containers. Where he could catch their expressions, people looked slightly weary, but determined.

  “So this is what it looks like when a country gets rescued by the United States military.”

  But DiCanio misunderstood his words, took them to be some kind of endorsement of his brother’s actions in the war. “For now, maybe. Let’s wait and see what happens when the last troops actually leave.”

  Changing the subject, she began to go over the plans for infiltrating the base.

  Connor Bennett, they were informed, went on duty in eight hours. It would be his last shift at the underground chamber. Until then, he would not be expected to report to the base at Abu Shahrain. That was Jackson’s window for infiltrating the base, hopefully with minimal fuss, leaving well before Connor returned. By the time the artifact was discovered to be missing, they planned to be long gone.

  Connor’s position was thought to be that of Head of Operations, Headquarters of NRO Communications, Systems Acquisition and Ops Directorate in Iraq. Why the National Reconnaissance Organization, primarily responsible for designing, building and monitoring reconnaissance satellites, should still have an operation on the ground in Iraq, had long been a mystery to Jackson.