Mortal Crimes 1

by Various Authors

  “Julia,” a voice called and she felt a flood of relief.

  A man in a suit pushed his way through the crowd. It was Anton Markov, the collections management officer for the implant program. He was about three inches shorter than her, no taller than 5’5” at best, balding, but buffed up like he spent every spare minute compensating at the gym.

  “I thought you forgot about me,” she said.

  “Your plane was early. How was the flight?”

  “Fine. But I feel like I haven’t slept for a week.” Her watch said 8:45 AM. She’d reset it carefully during a hellacious eleven-hour layover in London and again before the plane took off to Namibia. She strategized most of the flight about how to alternate sleep and coffee so she could quickly adapt to the time change. That was great, until it came time to sleep and all she could do was sit and watch a harried mother try and calm an overtired baby while her toddler ran windsprints in the aisle before crashing in a fit of tears. Markov, she knew, had not flown commercial. He looked rather more refreshed than she felt.

  He looked around. “Let’s find Chang and get out of here.”

  “Chang?”

  “Yeah, he went to change some money, but that was twenty minutes ago.”

  Julia stared at him in dismay. “But why is Chang here?”

  “Who do you think called for you? He got here first, figured out that we’d need you along. I’ll tell you what you need to know as soon as we get in the car.”

  The phone had rung at four in the morning—was that yesterday? No, two days ago. Terrance had answered with a mumble, then passed over the phone and rolled back onto his stomach. A moment later, he was sitting up, listening, as Julia made arrangements with Markov to fly to Namibia.

  Her flight left in two hours, which gave her just enough time to throw together a suitcase, snatch up her passport and take the waiting car to Dulles. Even so, she’d done an admirable job. She’d been to enough academic conferences in her career that she knew exactly what went into every pocket in her single travel bag.

  Chang emerged from the crowd a moment later, holding a greasy sausage wrapped in bread with one hand and stuffing a wad of bills into his pocket with the other. “Hey, Nolan,” he said. “You going on safari or something?”

  Julia looked down at herself and felt foolish. Markov told her to dress casually, which apparently meant a suit for himself and a t-shirt, jeans, and sunglasses propped atop the head for Chang. While packing, Julia tried to think of how she could blend in—this was covert CIA stuff, after all—and thought she could go for the tourist look. She found some khaki shorts and a button-down khaki shirt with a big, over-the-shoulder camera.

  “Hope you brought some sunblock,” Chang added. “Those are the whitest looking legs I’ve ever seen.”

  “You’ll both need to change first thing,” Markov said. “I know what I said before, but our visit has become more official than I’d hoped. You do have business clothes, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” Julia said. She held up her garment bag, relieved that she’d second-guessed herself enough to bring at least one nicer change of clothes.

  “Uhm, well, no,” Chang said. “I don’t. Not really, I mean.”

  Markov looked him over with a scowl. “Well, do you at least have a shirt without any corporate advertising on it?”

  “I’ve got my ‘zombie apocalypse’ shirt. There’s this guy on the front with—”

  “No, stop. I don’t even want to know.” Markov gave a disgusted shake of the head. “Well, we’ll have to stop and get you something.”

  Julia suddenly didn’t feel so bad about her safari get-up.

  ________

  Windhoek looked vaguely European to Julia’s eyes, with outdoor cafés and two and three story buildings with a lot of foot traffic, but most of the people were black and every other corner held an open-air market or a cluster of street vendors.

  Coming west from the airport, Markov had stopped the car at a street market halfway to Windhoek and come back with a gray button-down shirt which he ordered Chang to put on. The sleeves were too long and Chang had to roll them.

  Julia had changed at the airport, spent a few minutes to freshen her makeup and brush back her hair. She could use a hot bath and good night of sleep, but compared to Chang, she looked professional and put together. And what was jetlag after ten years of neurosurgery call?

  After putting on the shirt, Chang grumbled a bit, flipped open his laptop, and pointedly ignored Julia and Markov. His screen was shielded, so she had no idea if he was working on classified documentation or simply playing tetris.

  “Sorry about the commercial flight,” Markov said, “but we’ve got certain rules for civilian contractors.”

  “Hey, at least the international flights still serve meals.” She peeled her attention from gaping out the window. “So. The whole mission was a screwup. Is that it?”

  “Sorry, the operational details are NTK.”

  “I know, I get it. But reading between the lines it sounds like Ian and Kendall are in trouble with the Namibian authorities.”

  Markov frowned. “Who told you that?”

  “Either they’re both so badly injured that you can’t bring them back to Langley, or they’re in the custody of the Namibian government. Otherwise, why would you have flown me to Namibia?”

  “Yes, good observation.”

  Chang looked up briefly from his laptop. “Obvious, you mean.”

  “Was there a problem with the implant?” she asked.

  “We don’t know. That’s why I brought you and Chang.”

  “Okay, back up then,” she said. “Start at the first and tell me what you can.”

  “It was a recon mission, nothing serious. The two operatives were to have infiltrated a potential Al-Qaeda camp and observe.”

  “Al-Qaeda?” she interrupted. “In Namibia? I mean, I don’t know much about the country, but I spent my layover in Heathrow online, trying to read as much as I could. It’s not even Muslim.”

  “Try not to think literally. By Al-Qaeda, I mean extremists that might be harmful to American interests in the region.”

  “So that could be shorthand for any manner of bandits, smugglers, or…” she widened her eyes and lowered her voice to a stage whisper, “bad guys?”

  “Maybe a bit more serious than that,” Markov said. “Anyway, don’t interrupt. It’s annoying and pointless. Your knowledge of Namibian religious structures is irrelevant to the problem at hand.”

  “Sorry.”

  “The plan was to send in the operatives, have them record data that our specialists could analyze, see what we could learn about who was running this camp. If we ran into any… difficulties…we had the resources to extract them with a minimal amount of fuss.”

  Already they had passed to the outskirts of Windhoek and now the driver turned down a side street, past a station manned with armed guards who waved them through. Markov tapped the glass for the driver to open the partition, then ordered the man to pull up to their destination and keep the engine idling.

  “In short,” he continued after the glass closed again, “the junior agent had a psychotic breakdown roughly four hours after entering the camp.”

  “The junior agent?” she asked in disbelief. “You mean Ian?”

  “Yes, I mean Agent Westhelle.”

  She remembered his self-effacing comment about needles and the joking, rough exterior during the subsequent two weeks of training, where she had taught him how to activate and control the cortical implant. He had seemed in perfect mental and physical condition to be the first to receive one of the new implants.

  “But there was nothing in his psychological profile that would indicate such an outcome,” she said. “And as for the implant itself—”

  “Again, Dr. Nolan, who is briefing whom here?” He didn’t sound angry, more like a teacher telling one of his students to either stop passing notes or come up and read the note to the entire class.

  “Before
the operation had a chance to yield any information,” Markov continued, “the junior operative blew his cover, forcing engagement with the Al-Qaeda camp for his rescue. Worst of all, when his colleague was defenseless and calling for help, the junior operative eliminated his superior as well.”

  “Wait a minute, are you saying that Ian killed Kendall?”

  Markov gave her a look that was exceptionally grim. “Yes, Dr. Nolan, that is exactly what I am saying. Ian Westhelle, in his psychotic state, attempted to remove Kendall Rose’s implant with a military standard KA-BAR knife, documented by a photograph shot from a military support plane engaged in the battle.”

  The news rocked her. “Oh my God. They were friends. They were best friends from when they were just kids, and they fought in Afghanistan together and Kendall once told me…I can’t believe that Ian would…”

  “The battle drew the attention of Namibian authorities, who took our resource into custody and are more than a little put out by the whole incident. Of course they don’t know or need to know the details of the operation, only that we need to recover our resource.”

  Chang looked up from his laptop. “We’re stopped,” he said in a cheerful voice. “Does this mean we’re here?”

  They stepped out of the car and approached the uniformed men who stood guard at the door. Markov flashed his credentials and the two men admitted Julia and the CIA agents into the building.

  Markov took Julia’s arm. “Given your unfortunate predilection for blurting unnecessary information, may I suggest keeping your mouth shut in front of the Namibian officials? In particular, the Central Intelligence Service Director. He is especially prickly about our so-called violations of Namibian sovereignty.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ian lay curled up on his side in a corner of the cell, arms wrapped around his chest, rocking and moaning. Vomit stained his shirt and something that looked like mud and vomit clumped in his hair. The floor was bare cement, with a hole the size of a man’s fist for waste, a bucket and a spigot in the corner for cleaning up, and a worn mattress in another. Smelled like urine.

  It was a shocking change from the last time Julia had seen him. They’d taken over a marine training center twenty miles from Langley, where Kendall and Ian had sprinted through the obstacle course with mud pits, rope climbs and fake explosions sounding all around them while simultaneously activating and deactivating commands in the implant.

  The entire training followed a grueling regimen, but they rarely showed their exhaustion. She wasn’t sure if they were trying to outdo each other, impress her, or simply were as driven as they appeared. Either way, they never complained, and were unfailingly polite and obedient. Ian and Kendall had come to her mobile lab after finishing the last of their training runs, splattered in mud. She took one look at their mischievous grins, took a step back and pointed to her white lab coat with a shake of the head. “Don’t even think about it guys.”

  “Of course not,” Kendall said. “We wouldn’t dream of getting you dirty, not around so much sensitive equipment. So, is that it? Only a half day today?”

  She looked at the schedule. “Looks like it. Well, I guess that’s all, you guys are ready. You’ll go off and do your thing and I’ll return to the lab. Can’t say I don’t prefer working with real people to hanging out with apes and monkeys all day.”

  “Oh, you’ll still be with us,” Ian said. He tapped his forehead. “But remember, it’s not nice to peep on guys when they’re in the loo.”

  “Come on, you know it doesn’t do that.”

  “That’s what you keep telling me. But I’m sure you’ve put in a few upgrades, for your own viewing pleasure, you know.”

  “What he means,” Kendall said, “but he’s too shy and tender-hearted to say it, is that we’ll miss you.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course,” Ian said. “You’ve been great.”

  “That’s so sweet, guys.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, brother?” Ian grinned at Kendall.

  Kendall nodded, “Let’s give her a big goodbye hug.”

  She held up her hands. “No, don’t!”

  But the two men wrapped their muddy arms around her and lifted her into the air, laughing. Then she felt something completely unexpected. As she was held by two pairs of strong arms, a zing ripped through her. The sense of male attention, otherwise so lacking in her life, made her feel elated, alive. When they put her down, she made a point of wiping off the mud with as much fuss as she could muster.

  Seeing Ian curled in the jail cell provided a terrible contrast to her last memory of the man. There were half a dozen other cells, but they were empty. Chang had a handheld device that looked like a PDA, which he waved around the room for a minute before nodding at Markov. “No bugs, we’re clean.”

  “I hate to see our man stuck in a place like this, but I suppose it’s an improvement over certain Ethiopian prisons I have seen,” Markov said. “Hopefully we’ll get him out soon.”

  “Come on, look at him,” Chang said. “This screwup wouldn’t know the difference if you put him up in the Ritz Carlton.”

  Julia felt an angry retort rise to her lips, but Markov beat her to it. “This screwup put his life on the line for his country. What have you done? Now let’s quit messing around and get what we came for.”

  ________

  Chang spent about twenty minutes fiddling with his probe and laptop before he gave up. “We may as well forget it. This thing can’t make a connection, so there’s no way to get the data.”

  “There’s got to be some way to download,” Markov said.

  Julia rolled her eyes at Chang. “It might help if Ian turned on record mode first. Did you stop to think maybe he disabled it?”

  Chang and Markov exchanged glances. Markov turned to Julia and said, “There’s an emergency override so we can retrieve data in case of an operative who is incapacitated.”

  “What? Are you saying it’s always on? Since when? That means the implant could be picked up by something as primitive as an EEG.”

  Markov shifted his weight. “Out of my hands. This was a tactical decision made at the highest levels of this project. Protection against conventional electronic countermeasures was thought to be sufficient…”

  “I thought I was at the highest levels of this project.”

  “Medically, yes, but tactically—”

  “Don’t give me that tactically crap,” she cut in. “You made a tactical decision that compromised my patient due to your ignorance of the medical facts. If you’d bothered to consult with the expert—that would be me—this wouldn’t have happened.”

  Markov looked surprised and then he gave a nod that looked like grudging respect. So, you can’t make a connection. Is there any way to get the data?”

  “Of course,” Chang said, “but we’ll have to remove the CPU first. That’s one of the reasons Julia is here.”

  “They’re not made to be removed,” Julia said. “Didn’t you read the white paper? We take the CPU out of his chest and that leaves exposed, ungrounded leads going right into his brain. Do that and he’ll be liable to have a grand mal seizure any time he walks by a power line or someone turns on a microwave.”

  “What about taking out the whole implant?”

  Julia shook her head. “I said they’re not made to be removed. I put in 6 cortical arrays. Each one, when unfolded, covers 30 square centimeters of surface area, with thousands of tiny spikes embedded into the brain. What am I going to do? Tug them out one by one? You’d have microhemorrhages all over the brain, and the swelling would kill him within a few hours. Do I take off his whole skull? This implant is like a ship in a bottle. You put it in carefully, and it doesn’t ever come out.” She held out a hand to Markov. “You have the key?”

  He handed over the key and Julia used it to open the cell. She made her way to Ian’s side. He smelled worse than he looked. She lowered his hands and pulled down the neckline of his shirt. His hands stayed where
she put them; by all appearances he was catatonic. “Come and look at this,” she said.

  She pointed to his neck and chest and motioned Chang over. “His entire neck and chest has taken shrapnel. This one here is right over the CPU. Maybe it got damaged in an impact? In a controlled environment, I could probably replace the CPU with another unit safely. Then we could download the data directly from the old unit. At least that’s my best guess.” She turned and walked back to Markov, out of earshot of Ian, Chang following. “He looks awful. I can’t believe that…”

  Without warning, Ian sprang to his feet with a cry and whipped his head from side to side, his expression wild. Markov hastily pulled the cell door shut behind them. “Ian,” Julia said from the safety of the other side of the bars. “Can you hear me?”

  He came to the edge of the cell in a swift motion, reached through and grabbed for Julia’s jacket. “It’s not over,” he said. His eyes bugged, his voice sounded strained, desperate. “I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to finish what I started.”

  Julia stayed out of reach, but leaned in to look at his eyes. They looked dilated. His face was pale and blood trickled from one nostril. His hands were shaking.

  “Ian, what’s going on?” she asked. “What do you mean, finish? What happened?”

  “Don’t question him,” Markov snapped.

  But Ian didn’t answer anyway. Instead, he collapsed to the ground, curled back into a fetal position and moaned.

  “Jesus,” Chang said. “This guy is messed up.”

  The door opened behind them and a tall, thin black man with a suit came striding in. He looked over the three of them with an openly hostile expression. “I was half expecting tanks and airplanes. Isn’t that the way you guys usually operate when you want to violate someone’s sovereignty?”

  “You must be Charles Ikanbo,” Markov said in a calm voice. He held out a hand, which the man refused to take.

  “That’s right, Namibian Central Intelligence Service Director. Who the hell are you?” Ikanbo held a lit cigar in one hand. He slowly brought it to his mouth and puffed smoke in Markov’s face.