by James Morcan
Professor Lindsay jumped to his feet and led Nine upstairs. As they proceeded, they passed rebels walking down, intent on finding more of the children they’d come for.
Half way up the stairs, Nine stumbled as sharp heart pains coursed through him. He had to grab the handrail to prevent himself from falling over.
64
“You okay?” Professor Lindsay asked.
Ignoring him, Nine focused on getting through the pain. He knew it would pass. It always did.
This time however, the pain persisted. Nine searched his pocket for his heart pills. He momentarily panicked when he couldn’t find them then remembered he’d stored the small container of pills in another pocket. Locating the container, he opened it and popped two pills. They took a little time to work – longer than usual – but they worked eventually and the pain passed. Nine motioned to the professor to resume walking.
On reaching the floor above, Nine found Lusambo was holding his nephew, Sonny, and reassuring him. The seven-year-old looked confused and frightened, but otherwise okay.
Lusambo didn’t know it, but he was in for a shock when he finally saw Sonny without his top. He would find burn marks all over his upper torso – a result of experimental electric shock treatment Sonny had undergone over the past two years.
Nine noticed three other young children in the care of the rebels. He recognized their faces from the photos, but only just. Each child now had deformities or unusual features that could only be the results of experiments gone wrong. One little African girl had white skin and all the other symptoms of an albino; another had a bone sticking out of her arm; and a young teenage boy had severely bowed legs and abnormally large feet.
Lusambo caught Nine’s eye and pointed to his watch. Nine nodded. Time was running out fast and he knew it.
Nine jabbed Professor Lindsay with his pistol and motioned to him to keep moving. The professor led the way upstairs to the ground floor. There, all seemed quiet outside. It was evident the rebels had secured the refinery grounds. Nine knew that would all change when the reinforcements arrived from Kindu.
Professor Lindsay led Nine into a large office that accommodated the lab’s IT Department. Without waiting to be asked, the professor entered a password into one of the computers and brought up a list of all the lab’s patients. They were in alphabetical order, as they had been at Thule.
Nine pushed the professor aside and scrolled down the hundred odd names on the list. As he feared, Francis’ name wasn’t there. He turned to Professor Lindsay. “Where’s the list of recent arrivals?”
The professor took over the mouse from Nine and accessed a list of seven children who had been admitted in the past month. Again, Francis’ name wasn’t among them.
Nine felt totally defeated. He’d come on another wild goose chase, of that there was no doubt. The realization he’d been well and truly duped hit him. Frustrated, he raised his head and shouted, “Damn you, Naylor!” Thirteen’s dying words came back to him. He looked around at Professor Lindsay. “How many orphanages does Omega have around the world?”
“Only one other that I know of.”
Nine pulled the professor to him and rammed the barrel of his pistol into the man’s open mouth, chipping two of his teeth as he did so. “I’m only going to ask you once more. How many of these horror chambers does Omega have?”
The professor’s eyes bulged as he pleaded for his life. “Please, I’m telling the truth.” His words were muffled.
Nine withdrew the barrel from the terrified man’s mouth.
“I can show you,” Professor Lindsay said quickly. He immediately accessed another file on the computer. It was headed: Confidential: Icon Corporation’s Medical Laboratories.
Nine recognized Icon Corporation as codename for the Omega Agency.
The professor scrolled down the first page, revealing two labs only: the one he and Nine were currently in and the one at Thule. He looked up at the former operative. “There was one in Germany, but I understand it was closed down recently.”
Nine sensed instinctively the professor was telling the truth – or the truth as he knew it at least. And therein lies the problem. He wondered whether Thirteen knew something the professor didn’t, or whether the operative’s final words had been the delusional ramblings of someone whose brain had been scrambled by MK-Ultra.
Three shrill whistle blasts followed by three more echoed throughout the ground floor. Nine recognized that as the pre-arranged signal for the raiders to depart. He pointed his pistol at the professor once more. “I should shoot you now,” he hissed. God knows he was tempted to pull the trigger.
Professor Lindsay cowered before the pistol. “Please. Don’t kill me!”
“Go back to your lowlife friends in your rat hole downstairs,” Nine ordered.
The frightened professor took off before Nine had a change of heart.
Alone now, a myriad of thoughts flashed through the former operative’s mind. He wondered if Francis was dead then banished that thought as quickly as it occurred. What to do? Assessing his options, he quickly reached a decision: he would go to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. There’s no other choice.
As Nine departed the IT room and hurried to re-join the departing rebels, Thirteen’s final words were etched on his mind. That was all he had to go on – the dying words of someone who was undoubtedly in a mind-controlled state at the time. It was a tenuous lead and he knew it.
65
Seventy-two hours after the dramatic event she and Seventeen had experienced in the Papenoo River valley, Isabelle was feeling safer than she’d felt in a while. She was staying with a Tahitian family in a small settlement well off the beaten track in the island’s rugged interior.
After Seventeen had rammed the convertible her former Omega colleagues were traveling in, she and Isabelle had continued to the north coast highway in their stolen station wagon. Then, at the first settlement they’d come to, they abandoned the station wagon and hired a rental vehicle. From there, they’d returned to the same Thai commune they left nearly two weeks earlier, but only after they’d stopped at an Internet café to check their emails. As usual, there was no word from Nine, which only served to depress Isabelle further.
While Seventeen had reservations about returning to the Thai commune, she’d done so out of desperation: she had no more ideas. If there was one thing recent events had taught her it was that Tahiti was a small island with few hiding places for two women on the run. Especially for a pregnant woman who was now only two weeks from her due date.
Chai and the other members of his extended family had proven as accommodating as ever, hiding the fugitive pair in their midst as they’d done previously. However, Seventeen knew that was only ever a temporary fix and had looked for a more permanent long-term alternative.
It was Chai who came up with the solution. He’d had dealings with elders from the indigenous settlement that was now home, for the moment at least, to Isabelle. The settlement – one of the few in Tahiti’s interior – was populated by around fifty indigenous people. They eked out a living, growing tropical fruit and selling it to markets on the coast.
Affectionately referred to by local islanders as Pomareville, after the settlement’s respected Pomare family, it was only accessible by four-wheel drive vehicle and was so small it didn’t feature on any maps. Pomareville was effectively off the grid with no cell phone coverage, few visitors and no reliable power supply. Its only electricity was generated locally and used by those families who could afford it.
Isabelle had initially resisted the idea of relocating there. Memories of her difficult birth when Francis had arrived were still fresh and she wanted to be near modern medical facilities when her daughter arrived.
Seventeen persuaded her otherwise. The former operative had pointed out that Omega would find Isabelle if she remained on the coast, and when they found her they would take her daughter just as they’d taken her son.
Isabelle had needed no more persu
ading. She couldn’t bare the thought of losing a second child to Omega.
Chai had chimed in with some positive comments, too. He’d assured Isabelle the Tahitian midwives at Pomareville were highly experienced when it came to delivering babies. They had to be for their settlement was some distance from civilization.
So it had been decided: Chai would drive Isabelle under cover of darkness to the settlement while Seventeen returned to Papeete to attend to other matters.
Isabelle’s relocation to the interior had taken place the following night. Chai had driven extra carefully as the windy, hilly road they followed degenerated to a rough dirt track before they were even halfway there. He’d had visions the bumpy ride could bring on the baby.
They had arrived at the remote settlement in one piece and, after introducing Isabelle to her host family, the Pomares, Chai returned to his commune outside Papeete.
Now, as Isabelle began her third day at the tiny settlement, she was feeling as content as any woman who had been separated from her husband and son could feel. Her host family, and the other villagers, had accepted her as one of their own. While they didn’t know Isabelle’s circumstances, they sensed she was in need of love and care, and lavished these upon her in true island fashion.
#
While Isabelle was hiding in Tahiti’s interior, Seventeen was staying at a hotel in Papeete. She’d checked in under the guise of a Belgian forensic anthropologist who was supposedly in Tahiti to study skeletal remains of the island’s ancient peoples.
Seventeen’s latest disguise had entailed dying her blonde hair black, darkening her fake tan so that her skin was now nut brown and changing her blue eyes to brown through the use of colored contact lenses. For good measure she had added a faint scar that ran down one side of her forehead – the result of a supposed attack by a chimpanzee whilst on assignment in Uganda should anyone ask.
The former operative’s decision not to accompany Isabelle to her new hideout had been one based on common sense. She’d reached the conclusion that nothing would be achieved by staying with her sister-in-law. Rather, it was time to be pro-active and take the fight to Omega. This way, she could check her emails regularly, too.
Seventeen wasn’t sure if Nine would approve. But he wasn’t here and she had to make her own decisions.
If there was one thing she was sure of, it was that Naylor would send someone to replace the two operatives she’d put out of commission and to assist Eight who, it seemed, had escaped the car crash unscathed. Instead of waiting for them to find her, Seventeen planned to find them.
Since the incident in the Papenoo River Valley, Seventeen had learned that Fifteen had been killed and Twenty Three seriously injured. She’d tracked Twenty Three to Papeete’s main public hospital where, for the first forty-eight hours, he’d been on life support. There, she had seen Eight and tracked her to the hotel she was staying at.
Seventeen planned to keep Eight under surveillance. She was sure the operative would be contacted by the reinforcements Naylor was sending. In other words, Eight would lead her to them, so it suited her to let the operative live a while longer.
As for the injured Twenty Three, she had other plans for him.
66
As Isabelle and Seventeen adapted to their new routines in Tahiti, Naylor presided over yet another urgent meeting of Omega’s board. It had been called at short notice at the insistence of several of Naylor’s fellow directors.
The directors were alarmed by recent events – in particular the Mai Mai militia’s attack on the agency’s medical lab in the DRC and the subsequent incident that had seen two operatives put out of commission in Tahiti.
It was a full meeting with everyone in attendance, although CIA Director Marcia Wilson was once more present in holographic form only.
Naylor had planned to take more sick leave. His headache of a few days earlier had returned with a vengeance. However, he knew it wouldn’t be a good look for the board chairman not to be present at an urgent directors’ meeting, so he’d forced himself to attend.
Like Naylor, the other directors were horrified at the thought that Nine had wreaked so much havoc at the DRC lab, especially coming so soon after the events in Greenland. They were in no doubt Nine was behind the latest attack even if no-one had actually seen him. No-one still alive that is.
The directors were also alarmed that someone had attacked the three operatives in Tahiti, putting two of them out of commission. That was the last straw as far as they were concerned.
It was founding member Fletcher Von Pein who expressed what everyone was thinking. “What the hell’s going on in this agency?” the elderly banker asked. He was looking directly at Naylor and it was obvious to everyone that’s who he was directing his criticism at.
Naylor squirmed and tried to ignore his pounding headache as Von Pein let fly.
“The last two weeks have been a comedy of errors. First, an over-the-hill operative with a heart condition uplifts confidential information from right under our noses. Then he breaks into our Arctic facility and kills two of our best operatives.” Von Pein paused for effect then continued. “A few days later, rebels attack our facility in the Congo, killing not one, not two, but five of our operatives.”
“No prizes for guessing who was behind that,” fellow director Bill Sterling ventured.
Naylor went to speak, but Von Pein continued right over him. “And if all that’s not enough, we learn someone is hunting our people down in Tahiti.” He looked accusingly at Naylor. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the agency’s wheels seem to be falling off.”
All eyes around the table were now on Naylor. The besieged Omega boss knew exactly what his fellow directors were worried about. Naylor shared their fears. He, and they, were worried that news of Omega’s underground medical labs, and the unsanctioned and unspeakable experiments being conducted inside them, could leak to the outside world. They were in no doubt they’d each be vilified and probably imprisoned for life if news did get out.
For once, Naylor decided honesty was the best approach – for the moment at least. “First, let me summarize what we know. We know it was Nine who drove Seventeen from her house in Chicago and she hasn’t been seen since. And there’s little doubt it was Nine who infiltrated the lab in Greenland and killed our people there.”
The other board members looked restless. Naylor was telling them nothing they didn’t already know.
Naylor continued, “We all know Nine was behind the attack on our lab in the DRC. The European gunman sighted with the rebels could only have been him.”
“And was Nine behind the attack on our people in Tahiti as well?” fellow director Lincoln Claver asked.
“In a way I suspect he was,” Naylor said. “I believe he arranged for his sister to fly to Tahiti to protect Isabelle Hannar.”
“But before he was killed Fifteen reported the Hannar woman was with a man who claimed to be her husband,” Claver said.
Marcia chose that moment to enter the discussion. “Don’t forget all our orphan-operatives are masters of disguise. That goes for Seventeen, too.”
“Yes I believe that was Seventeen disguised as a man,” Naylor agreed.
“So what are we doing about that situation?” Sterling asked.
“Two more operatives are on the way to Tahiti now. They’re under orders to find and kill Seventeen, and then locate Missus Hannar.”
“I’m surprised we have any operatives left,” Von Pein said with more than a touch of sarcasm. Before Naylor could respond, Von Pein asked, “So where does all this leave us, Andrew?”
“It leaves us with some collateral damage, but that’s all.”
“You’re joking, surely? What about the risk of Nine going public with what he knows?”
“He won’t do that,” Naylor responded confidently. “Not while he believes there’s any chance his son’s still alive. And sooner or later, he’ll make a mistake. Then we’ll have him.”
“Well I hope you’re r
ight,” Von Pein said, “for all our sakes. What about the boy?”
“The boy is still safe and sound at our new lab in Nevada and, as far as we know, Nine doesn’t even know it exists.”
“As far as we know?” Sterling asked.
“I never told him about it and it wasn’t mentioned in any of the files Nine accessed at my place.”
“Who else knows about Nellis?” Claver asked.
Everyone present knew he was referring to Nellis Air Force Base, the site of the secret lab in Nevada.
“Besides us and Doc Andrews, no-one except for the lab staff who work on site. And they’re employed under the usual confidentiality conditions and security restraints.”
Again, everyone present knew what Naylor meant by that. It was common knowledge among the directors that Omega’s employees were extremely well paid, but they were also under threat of death if they broke any of the strict terms of their employment.
“Just what security arrangements are in place in Nevada?” Von Pein asked.
Naylor looked at Marcia, or at her holographic image at least.
“We sent Operatives One and Ten to Nellis a week ago,” Marcia said. “They’re stationed at the lab on base.”
“Is that sufficient given what has gone down at the other orphanages?” Sterling asked.
“I believe so,” Marcia said. “As Andrew alluded, it’s highly unlikely Nine even knows of the Nellis lab’s existence.”
As Marcia spoke, Naylor was watching Von Pein. He thought the ageing co-founder was about to explode. His face was turning crimson red and his expression was furious.
Von Pein could contain himself no longer and he jumped to his feet. “For Christ’s sake!” He thumped the table with one massive fist. “Haven’t we learned anything?” He glared at Marcia’s image then looked at Naylor. “We’ve been trying to second-guess Nine every step of the way, and every step of the way he has made fools of us!”