The tall man slammed the car door shut, turned away and reached into the pocket of his jacket as he walked to the filler cap at the rear of the car. He produced from his pocket a plastic sack filled with a clear fluid, opened the filler cap, tore off the tip of the plastic sack and poured the contents down into the fuel tank.
Almost immediately he heard a hissing sound as the volatile chemical mixed with the fuel deep within the car. He placed the filler cap back on its mount but did not tighten it, balancing it so that a gap remained where oxygen could enter the tank, then turned and walked briskly away from the vehicle.
Moments later another car pulled in alongside the shoulder, this one a nondescript Plymouth with Maryland plates.
Mr. Wilson reached out and opened the door, climbing lithely in as the vehicle drove without haste away from the scene of the wreck.
In the comfortable air-conditioned interior, Mr. Wilson briefly glanced into the wing mirror to see Ben Consiglio’s vehicle consumed within a funeral pyre of seething flames.
44
GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE, WASHINGTON DC
Natalie sat behind her monitor and fumed in silence, paying little attention to the rest of the team and studiously avoiding Guy Rikard. Being pulled off her investigation at such a crucial moment had brought her to the edge of a paroxysm of fury like nothing she had ever experienced before. Rikard, the fat arrogant pig, was using his authority to belittle her in front of her colleagues.
She managed to master both her revulsion and her anger and looked down again at the notes that she and Ben had compiled so far. Most of it was showing a general pattern: that Harrison Defoe was involved in a government- sponsored CIA program to create assassins, or at the very least informers, out of unwitting citizens. The program had ruined his life and he had passed on his bitterness to his daughter, who had become a journalist with a mission to stamp out government corruption. That meant one of two possibilities: either she had simply inherited her father’s bitterness before he died, or Harrison Defoe had told his daughter everything that had happened.
The fact that her father had testified before the US Senate meant that Joanna would have been hard pressed not to have heard about MK-ULTRA. But then why had she not told Ethan anything? Or if she had, then why hadn’t Ethan told her about it when he’d had the chance in Chicago?
The only sensible reason for that would be that Joanna had told Ethan nothing about MK-ULTRA, her father, or anything else. For that to be true, she must have had a good reason.
‘She was still investigating it,’ Natalie murmured to herself. Then another thought hit her even harder. ‘It might still be active.’
She looked down at the files before her as a realization began to dawn. Joanna had vanished from Gaza City years before, while probably pursuing leads against a corrupt arms supplier working in Israel called MACE. There was no evidence that she or anybody else connected to her was under surveillance at the time. Joanna was abducted, Ethan went searching for her but ultimately ended up broke and living in South Chicago. Everything was done, finished, over. And yet then all the surveillance started after Ethan’s return from Israel.
What the hell was it that she wasn’t seeing?
Natalie leaned back in her chair and looked out of a nearby window at Washington DC’s busy streets, home of the Capitol, the White House, the beating heart of America’s government. There was nothing connecting Joanna to that government except her investigation into MACE, who had been supplying arms to Israel and . . .
Natalie’s train of thought slammed to a halt. What if it wasn’t just Joanna herself that was the focus? MACE had maintained close relations with the Pentagon, who in turn had close relations with the CIA. MACE had been shut down due to corruption, but if Joanna had been investigating them at the time and had uncovered information that could have brought down the government of the day then the Pentagon would have cheerfully seen her silenced or somehow removed from play.
Two words flickered through her mind: extreme rendition. The CIA’s policy of grabbing suspected terrorists or enemy combatants and transporting them to countries outside of the Geneva Convention for interrogation.
Joanna herself might be the key. Joanna may have known about MK-ULTRA. MK-ULTRA may still be active. By abducting her, the CIA would have been killing two birds with one stone.
‘She’s involved in it all, somehow.’
Natalie sifted through the pages at her desk and focused on the files detailing the Senate testimonies of former MKULTRA members. She worked her way back through the pages until she found what she was looking for. The original copies of the typed testimonies, signed by the hands of the victims who had made them.
The names were blacked-out, as was standard practice during sensitive hearings concerning the security agencies.
Natalie glanced up at her colleagues behind their desks, and took a chance. She picked up the testimonies and hurried to a side office, closing the door behind her. She turned on a desk lamp and sat down. Fact was that documents that had been redacted properly were available only as copies, the information beneath the blacked-out areas forever lost. But when the original copies were available, a little ingenuity was all that was needed to reveal the information.
One by one, she held the documents up to the light then tilted them so that the light was shining down the surface of the page toward her, and looked closely. Through the black bars of thick marker pen, she could clearly see both the indentations made by the original strokes of the pen and the strikes of letters from the typewriters used to write up the testimonies.
Sometimes using the back of the pages where the indentations of the pens was easier to see allowed the observer to identify the words concealed there. It took Natalie no more than ten minutes to record a list of eight names of former members of MK-ULTRA who had testified before the Senate regarding their exposure to the illegal CIA program.
Natalie turned off the lamp. She hurried out of the office and back to her desk.
Rikard was out of his chair and loping his way toward her even before she’d managed to pick up her phone.
‘Got something for me, Natalie?’ he asked.
‘Not yet.’
‘You’re taking your time,’ he muttered, and glanced at the paperwork on her desk. ‘And you’re not working on the files I left for you.’
‘It’s called multi-tasking,’ Natalie shot back with an icy smile. ‘You should try it someday.’
Rikard ignored her and picked up one of the files from her desk, then leafed through it.
‘MK-ULTRA,’ he uttered. ‘Are you kidding me?’
Natalie set her phone down again. Rikard was an asshole, and right now she felt certain that he was taking a far greater interest in her work than he otherwise might. Usually he spent most of his time ogling her breasts instead. But, she figured, telling as much of the truth as possible was usually the best way to lie.
‘Joanna Defoe may have a connection to it,’ she replied. ‘It’s a thin lead but it’s got enough potential to chase it down.’
‘Again,’ Rikard reminded her. ‘You’ve done this before, Natalie, and nothing came of it.’
‘I didn’t have the information then that I do now,’ she replied.
Rikard dropped the file on her desk.
‘You don’t have shit,’ he snapped, his podgy face turning an ugly shade of red as he squinted at her. ‘I’ve given you more leeway than most people here but it stops right now. You’re chasing fantasies when other people here are spending their days doing real work, work that matters, work that gets results. You either clear this whole thing up, refile it, and get back to work right now, or I’ll fire you and have somebody else hired who can do the job!’
‘What’s your problem, Guy?’ Natalie shot back, standing up from her seat as the entire rest of the office looked on. ‘Why the opposition to this work when it might expose the biggest misuse of taxpayer’s money and the most disgusting abuse of human rights by a governme
nt agency since the Nazis?’
The office fell dead silent around her but Guy shook his head, his features beaming with malicious delight.
‘That’ll sound great at your dismissal hearing,’ he replied, and shook his head. ‘I was hired to do a job but I got fired chasing down a huge conspiracy. You really think that anybody believes a word that you’re saying?’
‘Ben believes it, and he’s out there right now doing his job too!’
‘He’s wasting his time,’ Rikard snapped, ‘and you’re wasting my time.’
‘How the hell can Ben be wasting his time out there? This is relevant to CIA activity, we know that!’
‘It’s relevant to you personally!’ Rikard yelled. ‘This office serves Congress not your paranoid little fantasies, now shut up and get back to work! And I want Ben Consiglio back here right now, no arguments!’
Natalie was about to answer back when Larry Levinson walked nervously up to Rikard.
‘Boss?’
‘What?!’ Rikard yelled, turning to loom over the smaller man.
‘There’s been an accident,’ Larry said, and looked at Natalie. ‘Ben’s been in a car wreck over in Virginia.’
Natalie felt a cold veil of horror sink over her, her limbs feeling heavy as she balanced herself on her desk.
‘Is he okay?’ she asked.
Larry shrugged apologetically. ‘I don’t know, Nat. I just know that his car was identified as one of our vehicles and the police on scene called it in.’
Natalie’s hand flew to her mouth as she realized what that probably meant. She wasn’t a family member, so any details of death would be withheld from their office until Ben’s family had been informed. ‘Oh, Jesus.’
Rikard rubbed his temple with one hand.
‘That’s all I need, one man down at a time like this.’
Natalie stared at Rikard for a moment as her mind emptied of conscious thought, and then she stepped forward and swung her fist at him.
Her knuckles smacked into Guy’s sweaty temple with a sharp crack. The blow was so unexpected that Guy span aside and sprawled across a desk, scattering a phone and pens onto the office floor. His blotchy face collapsed into rage and he leapt up off the desk toward Natalie, who stepped back out of range as to her surprise Larry put himself between them. The diminutive analyst raised a hand toward Rikard.
‘Easy, Guy,’ he said in a trembling voice. ‘You earned that one.’
‘She assaulted me,’ Guy growled, his beady eyes cold as they glared at Natalie.
‘And there are plenty of people who will attest to that,’ Larry replied. ‘You hit her back and I’ll attest to that too whether you like it or not.’
Guy glared down at Larry, but Natalie sensed that he realized retaliation would only serve to scupper his own career as well as Natalie’s. His arm quivered as though alive with unspent energy as he pointed at Natalie’s desk.
‘Clear your desk and get the hell out of here,’ he hissed.
Natalie, still numb with shock, merely turned and picked up her bag and the handwritten names of the MK-ULTRA victims. She turned and strode away from the desk as she called back over her shoulder.
‘Clear it yourself, asshole.’
Natalie strode out of the office and down the corridor outside, her mind swimming. She had walked fifteen paces before she realized she was heading in the wrong direction. She turned and saw Larry hurrying after her.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
‘Never better,’ she replied vacantly.
Larry fell in step alongside her.
‘That’s crap. Ben’s hurt or worse and you just lost your job after assaulting your boss.’
‘It’s only Ben I’m worried about.’
‘Me too,’ Larry replied. ‘And about you. As for Guy, I think that every single person in that office has dreamed of doing that for many, many years. It’ll go down in Congressional history.’
Natalie reached the elevators and stopped. Larry was watching her with an earnest expression, and she managed a faint smile. Larry gave her a nod as the elevator doors opened. ‘Now go and find out what happened to Ben. They said he was out on Route 646, got hit head-on in a hit-andrun. I’ll see what I can do here to talk Guy out of filing assault charges.’
Natalie turned and hurried into the elevator, both flooded with gratitude for Larry’s help and filled with dread for Ben’s safety.
‘Thanks, Larry,’ was all that she could think of to say.
‘Thank me later when this has all settled,’ he replied, ‘and call me when you find out what’s happened to Ben.’
45
NEZ PERCE NATIONAL FOREST, IDAHO
The light was fading fast.
Ethan’s bergen felt heavier than ever as he clambered up the steep hillside, the dense forest around them cloaked in swirling mist and clogged with cold moisture that beaded on his face and eyelashes.
Duran Wilkes was just ahead and moving at a furious pace, as he had been for almost two hours now. How the wiry old man was able to cover ground so fast at his age was a wonder to Ethan, who was struggling with fatigue. Behind him labored Lopez, equally exhausted, followed by Dana and Proctor.
To their flanks, Kurt Agry’s soldiers kept pace with Duran, moving through dense patches of foliage with practiced efficiency and near complete silence. Down to five men, they were now taking their predicament very seriously.
‘It’s getting dark,’ Lopez said behind him.
‘We’ll have to make camp soon if we don’t catch up with this thing,’ Ethan replied. ‘Duran’s not going to like that but we’ll not be able to track it at night.’
That was despite the obvious trail left through the forest. Ethan had never been an expert tracker despite his training in the corps. Some people had an eye for that sort of thing, and while he knew enough to follow simple game and the foot patrols of enemy soldiers he had always left point duties to those more gifted. But even he could see this trail. Snapped branches, trodden foliage and deep, obvious footprints wound their way ever higher into the mountains.
‘I bet Duran could follow this trail at night,’ Lopez pointed out, probably thinking the same as Ethan. ‘Hell, even I could.’
‘It’s carrying two bodies,’ Ethan replied, ‘one of them hopefully still alive. Even something as big as that must have limitations and . . .’
Ethan broke off as Duran Wilkes slowed and raised a hand. He crouched down in the trees and touched the earth at his feet. Ethan moved slowly to join him with Lopez, and from their right Sergeant Agry crept alongside them and looked at the old man.
‘What is it?’
Duran scanned the forest ahead as though the trees themselves would tell him what he needed to know.
‘It’s slowing down,’ he replied.
Ethan didn’t miss the old man’s use of the present tense. ‘How far ahead is it?’
‘No more than a couple of hundred yards. We’re right behind it.’
Kurt Agry’s eyebrows raised sharply. ‘And you didn’t tell us?’
Duran looked at the soldier.
‘It’s leading us somewhere. Ethan is right. This trail is too obvious, so it wants us to follow it. And it’s got Mary. One false move from you trigger-happy assholes and it could snap her neck like a twig.’
‘Maybe it already has,’ Kurt pointed out callously. ‘No need to keep her alive if we can’t see her.’
‘That’s not your call to make,’ Ethan cut in. ‘It’s Duran’s.’
The old man set off again, this time in a low crouch, shifting direction from cover to cover as they advanced slowly up the hillside in the weakening light.
Lopez followed closely alongside Ethan as they climbed, the air frigid and cold and the first hints of sleet drifting down amid the drizzle. Ethan saw it collecting on his jacket in little patches of translucent ice.
He saw the forest ahead start to thin out a little, and the foliage around them began to give way to a loose shale of stones and rocks, as tho
ugh somewhere up ahead the mountain had crumbled and fallen down into the woods. Ethan spotted sheets of sand shaped by running water from heavy rains, bearing the occasional heavy footprint that dwarfed Duran’s as he followed the trail.
Ethan sensed that whatever was waiting for them was now very close, perhaps just ahead in the clearing. Duran reached the edge of the treeline and squatted down to look out across a clearing of gray shale and sand that stretched for a couple of hundred yards to the north up the mountain slope, dotted with occasional trees.
The trail of huge prints disappeared into the opposite treeline.
‘Where are we, exactly?’ Lopez asked as they squatted down. ‘We need to take stock before we go any further.’
Kurt Agry pulled a map from a pouch on his webbing and folded it to their location.
‘About three miles north-northwest of Moore’s Lake,’ he said, and jabbed a finger on the map. ‘There’s nothing out here. The nearest forest trails are probably eight miles to our east and four miles to our west.’
‘Where’s the nearest road and town?’ Ethan asked.
‘The nearest road’s about ten miles to our north,’ Kurt replied, ‘or there’s a ranger trail a couple of miles south of Moore’s Lake. Nearest town’s probably fifteen miles to the northeast. Hell, we’re right out on our own here.’
‘It’s no wonder nobody sees much of these things,’ Lopez said.
Duran, who had remained silent, stood up and strode out across the shale clearing to follow the trail. Ethan, Lopez and Kurt exchanged glances before getting up and following him.
It took only a few minutes to cross the shale bed before they were plunged into the darkness of the forest again, but this time there was a clear path slicing through the woods. Partially overgrown, Ethan could still see what looked like tire tracks ground deep into the ancient hillside, as though a vehicle of some kind had passed through.
‘Wagons,’ Kurt said as they moved. ‘There were people here.’
Before Ethan could reply, the smell of decay and putrefaction slithered into his nostrils and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He slowed along with Lopez and Kurt as they approached another clearing ahead.
The Chimera Secret Page 27