The Eternity Project

by Dean Crawford

  Ethan thought back to the Hell Gate homicide scene.

  ‘The warehouse out on the docks,’ he said. ‘Donovan must have dumped a few of them there for Reece and Hicks to collect afterward. I found grooves in the floor, like something heavy had been dragged before the two men were killed. Donovan probably found them the next morning, maybe checking to make sure they’d been collected, and removed the cases from the scene when he found the bodies of the thieves. More profit for him and no connection to the incident on the bridge or the Pay-Go hit. That’s why the thieves got into the warehouse without busting the door, but had to break the chains on the gates. Donovan could get a duplicate key made because the locks were an old style, but to leave the gates open would alert the site manager.’

  Ethan looked at the screen for a long moment. ‘But all of that still doesn’t explain how the two remaining thieves got off the bridge.’

  Joanna stared at the screen before answering.

  ‘What if Donovan’s not the only one involved?’ she asked. ‘What if the whole team’s in on it?’

  Ethan looked around at her. ‘You think it’s possible? The more people in on it, the less cash for each player and the greater the chance of exposure. Besides, Karina seems arrow straight. And why would the wraith be hunting them if . . .?’

  Joanna’s green eyes blazed with realization.

  ‘What if it’s only a couple of them, and your friends Karina and Tom don’t know about it?’

  Ethan felt his throat go dry as he considered what Joanna had said and what Karina had told them about the robbery. ‘Jackson was in another vehicle, waiting to cover them if the thieves got away.’

  Joanna looked at the screen beside them. ‘What if he wasn’t where he said he was? Anything went wrong, he could just show up and collect anybody forced to flee the scene.’

  ‘We don’t see him,’ Ethan realized, ‘because he was on the other side of the bridge. He wasn’t waiting to back them up on Delancey, he was in Queens on the east side of the bridge, backing up the thieves. That’s why the escapees never showed up at the roadblock: Jackson got them out and back into Manhattan, heading in the opposite direction.’

  ‘Donovan obtains the footage of the east side of the bridge,’ Joanna finished for Ethan, ‘and probably conveniently loses it. He covered all of their tracks. But what’s he doing now?’

  Ethan stood up urgently.

  ‘He’s finishing the job,’ he replied. ‘If he’s worked out that Tom’s behind the revenge killings, then he’ll try to have him iced.’

  ‘These are revenge killings you’ve been investigating? How could this Tom guy have done those things?’

  Ethan grabbed his cell and dialed Lopez’s number as he led Joanna out of the room. ‘I think we’re about to find out.’

  The line buzzed in his ear, a strange clicking sound. Ethan looked down at his cell and frowned.

  ‘Line’s out.’

  Joanna grabbed it from him and listened to the tone for a moment before she shut the line off. ‘Electronic scrambling,’ she said. ‘Your phone’s being jammed.’

  ‘But how can it be jammed when it was Doug who . . .’ Ethan stopped walking as he stared down at the cell in his hand. A cold dread settled on his shoulders. ‘Oh, no.’

  Joanna looked at Ethan for a long moment as she connected the dots.

  ‘Your man’s not what he says he is,’ Joanna said. ‘I bet that if you call him though it will connect, no problem.’

  Ethan felt almost physically sick as he realized that Joanna was right. The burner cell Jarvis had given him was not just for contact, but to keep tabs on him.

  ‘He’s probably had me followed,’ Ethan realized. ‘Probably knows where we are right now.’

  ‘He’s controlling you both, Ethan,’ Joanna said. ‘Probably always has been. Now do you understand why I couldn’t trust anybody?’

  ‘Christ,’ Ethan said. ‘Do you have a cellphone?’

  51

  EAST VILLAGE, NEW YORK

  ‘Tom? Open up!’

  Karina Thorne and Nicola Lopez stood at the entrance to the apartment block as Karina rang the buzzer to Tom’s apartment for the third time. They waited, but, once again, there was no reply.

  ‘Dammit,’ Karina uttered. ‘If he’s taken his own damned life again, I’ll kill him.’

  ‘When did you last call him?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘Last night, about maybe ten o’clock. He seemed fine, at least as much as can be expected after all that’s . . .’

  Karina was interrupted by the door’s security system buzzing. She pushed against the door handle and it slid open. Lopez followed her inside and together they jogged up the stairwell, neither of them even looking at the vacant elevator car waiting nearby.

  Karina got to Tom’s door first, knocking only to find it already open. She burst in, with Lopez just behind her, in time to see Tom slump back down onto the couch.

  ‘Jesus, Tom,’ Karina uttered. ‘You had me worried.’

  The apartment was dark, the blinds drawn. Lopez could smell the stale air, the faint odour of unwashed plates drifting from the kitchen.

  ‘Christ,’ Karina snapped. ‘You need to clean up here, Tom.’

  Karina reached up and yanked one of the blinds open. Bright light burst into the apartment and illuminated Tom Ross’s face. Lopez froze as she looked at the young police officer as he sat staring blankly before her.

  He looked as though he hadn’t eaten for days and his eyes were darkened orbs ringed with bruised sclera. His hair was in disarray and his shoulders were slumped as though he no longer had the energy to support his own body.

  Karina rushed to his side as Lopez threw open a window to let some fresh air into the apartment.

  ‘Tom, can you hear me okay?’ Karina asked, throwing one arm across her partner’s shoulder as she sat down.

  Tom nodded without replying, staring at his feet. Lopez wasn’t sure but it looked like he hadn’t changed his clothes since the last time they’d visited him, his shirt heavily creased. She looked around the apartment and noticed instantly that the clock on the wall had stopped. The time on it read 10.37. The analogue hands could not reveal whether the clock had stopped in the morning or the evening. She glanced across at a digital clock on the oven in the kitchen. The clock flashed 00.00, as though it had lost power and had yet to be reset.

  ‘You had a power outage?’ she asked Tom.

  Tom blinked up at her vaguely but didn’t respond. Lopez walked across to him and reached down to his left wrist. She pulled it up and looked at his watch, a silver analogue. The hands were frozen in place at 10.37.

  Tom looked vacantly at his wrist.

  ‘What’s been happening, Tom?’ Lopez asked him. ‘Where were you at 10.37 two nights ago?’

  ‘Back off !’ Karina snapped, glaring up at Lopez. ‘He’s been through enough.’

  ‘This isn’t going to go away, Karina,’ Lopez shot back. ‘Either we figure this out or the killings won’t stop.’

  ‘What killings?’ Tom asked, looking up at Lopez and Karina in turn.

  ‘Since you got out of hospital,’ Karina explained, ‘several people have died, all of whom appear to have a connection to the robbery and pursuit on Williamsburg Bridge.’

  Tom squinted at Karina for a moment. ‘What does that have to do with me? I haven’t left the apartment since I came down to the station.’

  ‘That’s why we’re here,’ Lopez said. ‘Tom, you said that when you overdosed, you were floating above your body and that you went up into a tunnel of light. Has that happened before and again since?’

  Tom’s already pale features blanched. ‘No, it hasn’t. Not exactly.’

  ‘Not exactly?’ Lopez pressed. ‘Can you remember any dreams or anything from the times when you’ve been asleep, since the accident?’

  Tom stared at her like a little boy wrongly accused of stealing sweets. ‘Sure I’ve had dreams,’ he replied. ‘Horrible dreams of being in the dark, with n
o sense of time and surrounded by . . .’ His voice faltered.

  ‘What?’ Karina asked.

  ‘Rage,’ Tom said finally. ‘I keep seeing elevators in my dreams, and strangers’ apartments.’ His voice seemed to fall away in horror as he spoke. ‘God, it’s always so cold in the dreams.’

  Lopez looked at Karina for help, and, reluctantly, she took hold of Tom’s hands and held them tightly as she spoke.

  ‘We have evidence, of a kind, that all of the people who have died may have been involved in some kind of corruption. It’s as if this thing is hunting them down, one by one.’

  Tom stared at Karina. ‘What thing?’

  ‘A wraith,’ Karina said, ‘a sort of poltergeist but much worse. Think of the Blair Witch on anabolic steroids and speed. It’s tearing people in half, literally.’

  Tom Ross looked at them both for a long beat. ‘You think that I’m doing it?’

  Lopez took control of the conversation. She knelt down in front of him, bringing her eyes to his level and softened her voice.

  ‘Tom, when you overdosed, the main reason that Karina came here so quickly was that you appeared to her in her kitchen. It was like a vision and it happened the moment you died. That’s called a crisis-apparition, a last fleeting glimpse of the dead person’s soul before they go wherever the hell it is we go when we die. Is there anything like that running in your family, Tom? Is there anything that might cause you to somehow be able to attack people even when you don’t know you’re doing it, like when you’re asleep?’

  Tom stared at the floor for several moments before he spoke.

  ‘My great-grandmother,’ he whispered. ‘My mother once told me a story about how my great-grandmother, Pennie Barraclough, claimed to have seen one of her sons at the moment he died, out in some great battle in France during the First World War. She was thousands of miles away when it happened.’

  ‘That’s a crisis-apparition,’ Lopez confirmed. ‘There were many of them during the Great War. Has anything like that happened to you since?’

  Tom sat still for a moment, and then he appeared to go white as a sheet as though the blood were draining from his body.

  ‘I haven’t been sleeping properly,’ he said. He looked down at his watch. ‘The clocks keep stopping and I keep having to re-set them.’

  Lopez looked up at the clocks again, the one on the wall and the digital display on the oven. Another display on a DVD player near the television was also flashing zeros at her.

  ‘How many times has this happened?’ she asked him.

  Tom frowned as he struggled to remember. ‘Four,’ he said finally.

  Karina looked at Lopez. ‘That blows your theory. There have only been three murders.’

  Karina’s cellphone buzzed in her pocket. Lopez watched as she picked up the call and switched it onto speakerphone. She put one finger to her lips as she set the phone down on the table.

  ‘Yeah, what’s up?’

  Lopez heard Donovan’s voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘We’ve figured it out, Karina. We think that Tom’s doing this but he doesn’t know it. There was another murder last night.’

  Karina’s eyes flared in alarm as she looked at Lopez. ‘Do we know who was killed?’

  ‘It was Jackson,’ Donovan replied. ‘Got hurled out of his apartment window and hit the sidewalk at about two hundred miles per hour. Forensics said it’s not physically possible to fall at that speed unless he was being forced downward by something.’

  Lopez glanced at Tom, who looked as though he had been slapped across the face.

  ‘How can you tell that Tom’s involved?’ Karina pressed.

  ‘These things only happen at night,’ Donovan replied. ‘Either somehow he’s doing it or he’s getting somebody else to do it for him. Either way, we’ve got to bring him in. I figured you’d rather talk to him first, give him a chance to alibi out or at the least explain himself

  Karina’s eyes narrowed. ‘What did you have in mind?’

  ‘Call him,’ Donovan suggested. ‘Tell him that we need to talk to him and bring him up to Hell Gate. We can’t interview him at the station without arousing attention, so let’s keep this to ourselves. If Tom alibis out, all’s good. If he doesn’t, we can pursue it without risking him being arrested or charged.’

  Lopez caught Karina’s eye and slowly shook her head.

  ‘Why the big interest in helping Tom now?’ Karina pressed. ‘Yesterday, you wanted to string him up.’

  ‘Yesterday, Jackson wasn’t dead!’ Donovan snapped. ‘We can’t deal with this in the normal way, Karina. Christ, it’s hardly a normal situation! Can you get Tom to Hell Gate or not?’

  Lopez shook her head again. Karina spoke toward the cellphone.

  ‘We’ll be there. We’ll find Tom and meet you, before sunset at the latest.’

  ‘Good,’ Donovan replied, ‘keep him out of sight until then.’

  Lopez turned off the cell and shot Karina a concerned look.

  ‘The law can’t sort this, Karina.’

  ‘Then the law can’t hurt Tom, either,’ Karina replied tartly. ‘What would they charge him with? Homicide by psychokinesis?’

  Lopez looked Karina in the eye.

  ‘And if Joanna Defoe successfully goes public with evidence for MK-ULTRA? Then there’ll be grounds for a prosecution, no matter how bizarre it might seem. Maybe there’ll be evidence there that this kind of thing really is possible.’

  Karina was about to reply, but Tom Ross cut her off.

  ‘I can speak for myself , ’ he uttered, and looked at Karina. ‘We can’t run from this. We have to face it down.’

  Karina shook her head. ‘How?’

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ Tom said, ‘fast.’

  The phone in the apartment suddenly trilled. Karina looked at Lopez, who shook her head. ‘We don’t know who it might be.’

  Karina thought for a moment, and then dashed across the lounge and picked it up.

  ‘Tom Ross’s house.’

  ‘Karina?’ came Ethan Warner’s voice down the line. ‘Listen to me and do everything I say.’

  52

  HARLEM

  Mr. Wilson sat in his non-descript sedan and ignored the cold seeping through the vehicle and his bones.

  As a covert agent, he had spent countless hours sitting immobile in cars, watching, waiting or simply sleeping. Often, there was no alternative, the risk of identification in motels too high. Instead, a deserted and trash-strewn service alley on Harlem’s south-side off 8th Avenue served as the perfect anonymous staging post. He could reach Queen’s via Randall’s to the east, or head directly south toward Manhattan at a moment’s notice while remaining unobserved and undetected.

  There were no cameras or pedestrians. Ironically enough, he was only a couple of blocks from a police precinct building, but there was nothing of interest to them where he sat. A handful of vehicles were parked behind service shutters for businesses that faced the main streets either side of the block, plus a couple more vehicles long abandoned and coated with a thin film of dust splattered with raindrops.

  His cellphone vibrated on the passenger seat next to him and he reached down and pressed the answer button. The line connected via a small speaker plugged into his car, allowing him to answer without picking the cell up.

  ‘Wilson.’

  The voice of Douglas Jarvis answered. ‘I have them.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know where they’re headed yet. All I can be sure of is that Joanna Defoe and Ethan Warner are together as we speak. Nicola Lopez is not with them right now, but it’s only a matter of time.’

  Wilson nodded. Today had turned out better than he could have expected. With both Warner and Defoe searching for the same person, the descendent of the long-dead soldier Barraclough, it was now simply a waiting game. As soon as they found their mark, Wilson would be in position to complete his mission. Two birds, one very violent stone.

  ‘What di
rection are they currently headed?’

  ‘Stay where you are. Every indication suggests they’ll move north out of Manhattan. I’m tracking them as we speak.’

  ‘Keep me informed.’

  ‘Your director lied to me,’ Jarvis said. ‘He lied to the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, too. Joanna Defoe hasn’t killed anybody, you did. Steel’s afraid of prosecution and . . .’

  Wilson cut the line off and then dialed another. An automated voice answered, and demanded a code from him.

  ‘Wilson, eight-eight-one-five-nine-three-alpha.’

  The line clicked and, moments later, the Director of the CIA, William Steel, picked up.

  ‘What news?’

  ‘They’re within reach,’ Wilson replied without emotion. ‘Chances are they’ll be neutralized before tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Take your time, and don’t underestimate either Warner or Lopez,’ the director warned. ‘We thought they were dead in Idaho and they returned. We’ll finish this properly this time.’

  Wilson’s expression betrayed a hint of disgust that flickered behind his eyes. The director was safely tucked up in his office in Virginia, not hunting down American citizens in the field. There was no we.

  ‘What about Jarvis? He knows that Defoe is innocent of the slayings.’

  There was a moment of silence before the director replied.

  ‘Accidents happen.’

  Wilson shut the line off and started the engine, before he looked at his watch. It was half three in the afternoon and already the bleak gray horizon was touched with streaks of fiery gold where the sun was sinking into the west between tenement blocks.

  Wilson pulled out and dialed another line. This time it was Donovan who answered.

  ‘Where are you?’ Wilson demanded without preamble.

  ‘The east side,’ Donovan replied, his tones equally crisp and uncompromising. ‘I’ve been in contact and they’re on the move. The person you’ve been looking for is Tom Ross, a police officer.’