“You’re just going to trust me? After everything you’ve said about the Birthright?” Daniel asked in surprise.
“In her final report, Agent Amiri expressed great trust in you. She said that you were a good man, and that you may be willing to help us once learning the truth,” Harvell explained, standing up from his chair.
“And no offense, but your background doesn’t really meet their criteria,” Eva added with a smirk.
Daniel let out an audible breath. Norma had kept a lot of secrets from him, but he understood why. To know that she had so much faith in him meant more than he could even comprehend.
“Wouldn’t it be better to keep Demérs and Richfield fighting amongst themselves? House divided and all that?” Daniel asked, rubbing his now unrestricted wrists.
“Gordon Demérs, though powerful is still young and predictable. We know exactly what his endgame is and we can therefore make a plan to stop it. Charles Richfield on the other hand is resourceful, underhanded, and unreadable. While Demérs provides the muscle for a revolution it is Richfield who can provide a winning strategy. As long as he is involved there is no guarantee that we can stop the Birthright from starting a full-on revolution,” Harvell told Daniel.
“That’s all I need to know,” Daniel responded, his grief over Norma now turning to anger. Richfield had sent Daniel out to kill Gordon Demérs, but Daniel would return with a new target in mind.
“You should know,” Daniel spoke, remembering something useful from before that he now wanted to share, “When I was in the Benze house—the first time—I saw something in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It was a person, hooked up to a bunch of machines.”
“No doubt an attempt to create another one,” Eva stated, turning to her director.
“Yeah, well, whoever they are they were important enough for them to go back for. I saw them loading the body and the equipment into the helicopter before you guys got there,” Daniel added.
Harvell contemplated a moment, then reached for the door handle. “Go deal with your boss,” he said before swinging the door open.
“One more question,” Daniel interrupted.
Harvell turned an ear toward Daniel to let him know he was listening.
“Richfield said that he knew you,” Daniel stated rather than asked.
Harvell paused a moment before responding. “Let’s just say that you and Mister Blank are not the only ones his powers of cunning linguistics have had an effect on.”
With that Harvell was out the door.
Chapter 13
Eva Stone sped down the streets of Downtown Chicago as they headed away from the local FBI headquarters and toward the Elite complex. Daniel tried to make his body stop shaking as he sat in the passenger seat, filled with anger and fright created by the knowledge that Richfield had been behind Norma’s murder and that he was now tasked to avenge her death by eliminating Richfield.
Agent Stone remained silent as she cut in and out of traffic, seeing two moves ahead at all times. Her driving skills were most impressive.
Daniel turned to his newly appointed FBI liason. “Agent Stone…”
The Agent turned with a seemingly frustrated expression on her face. “Just Eva. I only needed you to call me that when we were around Director Harvell. He always gives me a hard time about formality, but the truth is I hate formality.”
Daniel grinned. He appreciated that. “Can I have my phone? I need to call Charlie and tell him to get Jordan out of the complex before we get there.”
Eva reached into her pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Daniel took it from her and searched his contacts for Charlie’s number. It was the first time he’d ever had any need to call Charlie. He just hoped that he would pick up.
“Tell him to meet us at the hot dog place across the street,” Eva told to Daniel as the phone began ringing on the other end.
Daniel turned again to Eva and raised an eyebrow. He wondered if she had picked the place by mere coincidence, or if it were because she knew that he had stopped there before his very first interview with Richfield.
After three rings, Charlie picked up his phone.
“Hello?” Daniel heard him say on the other end of the line.
“Charlie! Listen to me,” Daniel instructed.
“Dude, your ex-girlfriend is a blast!” Charlie howled, ignoring Daniel’s instructions.
Daniel rubbed his eye with his palm. Clearly Charlie was unable to perceive the panic in Daniel’s voice.
“We went up to the lounge and she is telling us all kinds of stories,” Charlie continued. “You two are hilarious together!”
“Charlie, you have to listen,” Daniel said again, this time more forcefully.
“Listen,” Charlie responded in a hushed tone, still refusing to let Daniel speak his piece. “I see now why you were so obsessed with this chick. Sexy and funny. You need to try and get this girl back now that she’s single again or I won’t hesitate to make her my second ex-wife.”
Daniel threw the hand not holding the phone up in the air. He gave up.
Eva glanced over, confused by Daniel’s behavior. “Yep,” she said quietly to herself. “Sounds like Barner.”
Daniel decided to take a new approach to the conversation. “You know what, you are absolutely right Charlie. Why don’t you hand the phone over to her right now so that I can say something.”
“Oooo,” Charlie jested from the other end of the line. “Here she is big man.”
After a few seconds of noise caused by the fumbling of Charlie’s phone, Daniel heard Jordan’s voice say, “Hello?”
“You let Charlie take you to the lounge?” Daniel immediately questioned, unsure why he decided to waste his time on such an irrelevant line of questioning. “I told you not to leave my room!”
“Relax,” Jordan responded, as if offended. “It’s not like we left the complex. It was boring in your room so we decided to go upstairs for some drinks. I’m surrounded by Elite agents, everything’s fine. I like your new friends a lot.”
“No,” Daniel replied harshly, “everything is not fine. Turns out your boyfriend’s little organization has infiltrated Elite. In fact, it’s run by one of them. You are NOT safe!”
There was a momentary pause on the other end of the line as Jordan digested the information Daniel had just delivered, followed by sudden panic.
“What do I do?” She asked in a scared tone.
“Give the phone back to Charlie and do what he says,” Daniel instructed. “You need to get out of there.”
Again, there was a moment of fumbling as Jordan passed the phone back to Charlie.
“What did you say to her Daniel?” He asked suspiciously. “It looks like she just shit her pretty panties.”
“Shut up Charlie!” Daniel yelled into the phone. All that followed were a few seconds of dead silence. Daniel could picture the offended look that was most certainly on Charlie’s face.
“Elite has been compromised. Well—I suppose I’m the one who has compromised it—never mind, you and Jordan need to get out of there. I’m on my way with an FBI agent right now. Meet us at the hot dog place across the street from the complex in twenty minutes. Don’t trust anyone. I’ll explain everything when I get there.”
There was more silence that followed, and for a moment Daniel feared that he had lost the call or that Charlie had gotten angry and hung up on him. After seeing that the call was still connected, he brought the phone back to his ear.
“You sound serious,” Charlie finally responded, as though he were trying to decipher whether or not Daniel and Jordan were trying to play some sort of practical joke on him.
“I’m incredibly serious!” Daniel shouted into the receiver. “Now get out of there!”
“Okay, okay,” Charlie replied with more than a hint of annoyance behind his voice. “We’ll see you there in twenty.”
“Thank you,” Daniel exhaled. “If anyone asks, Demérs is dead, the threat has ended and you are taking Jordan to meet
me somewhere.”
“Roger,” Charlie confirmed. “Just curious, who’s with you from the bureau?”
“Agent Eva Stone.”
In his side-vision Daniel saw Eva’s head drop at the mention of her name.
“Oooh!” Charlie screamed into the phone so loud that Daniel had to move it away from his ear. “Stone and I go way back!”
Eva shook her head between her arms which were on the steering wheel. Charlie was loud enough that she could hear him through the earpiece.
Daniel pushed the “End Call” button, leaving Charlie to execute their plan without further delay.
“Don’t ask,” Eva ordered immediately after Daniel had ended the call.
“Knowing Charlie, I probably don’t want to know anyway,” he quipped.
There were a few moments of silence before a million more questions following his conversation with Harvell began popping into his mind.
“I would like to know more about Norma,” he said. “Agent Amiri.”
Eva stopped their vehicle at a red light before turning to face Daniel, sorrow filling her eyes. “I knew Norma Amiri through her mother, whom I also knew very well.”
Daniel’s eyes widened. Norma had described her mother as a typical Iranian housewife, ever grateful for her husband’s decision to move their family to the United States.
Eva saw the surprise in Daniel’s eyes. “She was a member of the resistance to the Birthright,” she told him.
“But, how?” Daniel asked, confused. It was quickly becoming a trend with him. “Norma said she was Iranian.”
“You think all of our agents are American born?” Eva countered. “She loved this country and everything it stood for, so she was a natural fit for our group.”
Daniel shook his head in disbelief. “Did Norma know?”
“Norma found out when she was recruited in a couple years ago,” Eva explained. “Before then, no one in her family knew anything. Her husband had no clue. When he’d go to work or out with his male friends and leave her at home he just assumed she was at home doing typical female chores.”
Eva laughed. “If he had only known the truth.”
Daniel bit down on his tongue. Had he ever truly known anyone involved with Elite?
Eva continued her story. “Agent Amiri—the older one—was my mentor. When I was recruited out of my regular field position and assigned to the resistance, she was one of the higher ranked agents and was instrumental in my recruitment. There were few female agents involved with them at the time, and she took it upon herself to make sure that I did not disappoint.
“She often invited me to her home for dinner and things like that, and that was when I met Norma.”
Daniel could see that Eva was beginning to get choked up from the telling of her story. “Naturally, being close to the same age, Norma and I got along great, and it wasn’t long before I even considered her a friend.”
Daniel let out an audible breath. He had known Norma only a few months and her death had hit him hard. He could only imagine how Eva must have felt having been a friend of not only Norma but her mother as well. In some ways Norma must have felt like a sister to her.
“Fila—Norma’s mother—retired from the bureau shortly after Norma had enlisted in the military. There was never any interest in asking Norma to join the resistance, in fact Fila specifically asked that Norma be left alone and kept out of it.
“That only lasted until Richfield approached her about joining his little band of body guards. Whether or not Richfield knew about Fila is still unclear, but Harvell immediately identified this as our opportunity to infiltrate Richfield’s organization.
“He assigned me personally to go and talk Fila into allowing Norma to join us. She resisted at first, but I truly believed that with Norma’s help we could turn the tide on Richfield and crush the Birthright where it hurt them most. Reluctantly, Fila agreed to allow Norma to join us and even volunteered to recruit her herself, on the condition that I be assigned as Norma’s caretaker while she was on the inside.”
Eva paused to close her eyes a moment and swallowed aggressively. Daniel now felt a slight burning in his eyes as well. Eva was closer to this than he had ever imagined.
“I’m the reason she’s dead,” Eva said, fighting back her body’s desire to break down in tears.
“No,” Daniel said. “Norma understood what she had signed up for. I could always see that in her, even though I didn’t know what she was involved in at the time. There was nothing you could have done against a man like Titan. Believe me, I know.”
Eva did not seem at all comforted by Daniel’s words. She sniffed violently.
“She saved my life,” she whimpered. “I was supposed to protect her and she died protecting me. I failed.”
Daniel shook his head. He could feel the pain coming from Eva, and it hurt him as well.
“I grew very close to Norma,” he spoke softly. “And maybe it was just because she was assigned to keep an eye on me, but there were times when she allowed herself to open up to me, and I like to think I got to know a little bit about who she was as a person. She never would have allowed anyone she cared about to die for her. Norma had the heart of a true hero, and she died for something she believed in.”
Daniel reached over and laid his hand on Eva’s arm, hoping it wouldn’t make her uncomfortable. “For some one she believed in.”
He turned to glance out the windshield and noticed that they were getting close to the complex. Eva’s expression immediately turned from one of sorrow to business. She reached down to her side and pulled a gun out of her holster. Daniel believed it to be his.
“Have you ever killed anyone before?” She asked Daniel with an inappropriate level of calm in her voice.
“Not that I know of,” Daniel answered. This was the second time in one day he needed to prepare himself to take a life for the first time. “I beat a couple guys up pretty bad, but as far as I know they survived.”
Eva made a left turn onto the street on which the hot dog restaurant was located. She then handed Daniel the pistol.
Daniel grabbed the gun and checked the clip to make sure it was loaded. He then slammed it against his palm, locking the clip into place. It was his gun alright.
Norma parked the car in a parking lot across the street from the restaurant. Through the front window Daniel could see Charlie and Jordan inside, taking a seat at one of the booths. Eva reached into the center console and pulled out a metal lighter.
“It will probably be easier if you don’t see yourself do it,” she told Daniel while simultaneously sending a telepathic message through facial expression.
Daniel looked into her eyes as he took the lighter. He wasn’t entirely sure what she had meant, but he trusted that he would understand when the time came. The two then hopped out of the SUV and quickly made their way across the street to the not-so-discreet rendezvous point.
As they walked through the front door the bell that was strung to it began to jingle. Eva wasted no time marching over to where Charlie and Jordan were seated, taking a seat across from them. Daniel followed suit.
The man behind the counter stared at them grouchily, both confused by their presence and irritated by their apparent lack of interest in ordering any food.
“Agent Stone,” Charlie greeted with an inappropriate familiarity.
“Not now,” she ordered sternly, sticking her index finger aggressively in Charlie’s face. Charlie’s expression suggested that this was not the first time he had received that reaction from the agent.
“You two,” she began, referring to Jordan and Daniel, “I have some things for you.”
Eva pulled a black envelope out of her jacket. Daniel hadn’t even realized she was carrying it. She tipped the envelope forward, allowing all of its contents to slide out onto the table. In front of them were a few extra mag clips for the Glock, a set of keys, a phone, two identification cards, and some other documents.
“Quickly,” Eva warned
them. “First, we have set you up with new identities.” She grabbed the two ID cards off the table and handed one to Daniel and one to Jordan.
Daniel’s had his picture on it but read “Daniel Simmons.”
“We used the same first names so there isn’t any confusion if you slip up and call each other by your real names,” Eva explained. “There are a million Daniels and plenty of Jordans out there, so no one will be able to find you by your first name alone. Here are your birth certificates and social security cards as well. Everything you should need to live your lives under your new names.”
“Like witness protection,” Charlie interjected.
Surprisingly, Eva did not seem perturbed by Charlie’s interruption. “Kind of, yes. But even deeper than that.”
Eva then handed Daniel the map. “I was ordered by Director Harvell to choose your identities and your hiding location for you. I will be the only person on this planet who will know where you are hiding. That way there will be no chance that the Birthright can get their hands on the information.”
“Excuse me,” Charlie again interrupted. “Birthright?”
Daniel first looked at Eva for approval, then explained what was happening to Charlie. “The Birthright of the Elite is a secret society of white collar people—some the relatives of British nobility—who want to turn this country back into a monarchy and rule over the lower classes. Richfield is one of their leaders, and he put us together to protect his fellow monarchists. He hired Horchoff to transform me into what I am in order to turn the tides of their secret war against our government, and now I have to take him out to put the kibosh on the Birthright’s plans. Then Jordan and I will need to disappear so that Demérs and the rest of the Birthright doesn’t come after us.”
Charlie stared at Daniel and blinked obnoxiously. “O-okay.”
“I need your help to get everyone out of the complex when I go in,” Daniel instructed.
Charlie nodded. It was clear he didn’t fully comprehend what was happening or why, but he seemed to trust that Daniel and Eva had a very good reason for going to all this trouble.
Elite 2: The Wrong Side of Revolution Page 17