‘That’s a long story,’ Lopez said as she joined them and looked down at the fallen soldier.
He was alive but he wasn’t moving. Ethan figured that the bullet had probably severed his spinal cord on the way out of his back, but he was likely still able to talk. Ethan crouched down again alongside the man and spoke in a quiet but firm voice.
‘You have about three minutes to live,’ he informed the injured man. ‘Tell me who sent you, and I’ll patch that wound and you’ll survive this. Refuse, and we’ll walk out of here and leave you to it.’
The soldier offered Ethan a grim smile. ‘Drop dead.’
‘You already have,’ Ethan replied.
He stood up and marched away. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’
Lopez, Schofield and the guard moved to follow, but they were stopped by a shriek from the fallen man.
‘Wait!’
Ethan turned and moved to stand over the fallen soldier, his rifle resting on his shoulder. ‘Make it fast.’
‘They sent me an e–mail, from Italy,’ the fallen man gasped, tears welling in his eyes as blood snaked across the rocks around him and his skin began to turn pale. ‘Named you as a target, you and the Chiquita.’
‘Who sent the mail?’ Ethan demanded.
‘No names,’ the soldier whispered, struggling to stay conscious. ‘But the e–mail was sent from a top hotel in the city, some super luxury pad, I can’t remember the name…’ The soldier’s eyes flickered as a tear spilled down his cheek. ‘Please, fix the wound.’
Ethan looked at the lake of blood already drenching the ice around the fallen soldier, and knew that there was nothing that he could do to save him, but of course the dying man didn’t know that.
‘Go fix it yourself,’ Ethan uttered, and marched away.
He led the way out of the tunnel, walking fast as the pitiful cries for mercy faded away behind them. Lopez, Schofield and the guard followed.
‘What the hell was that?’ Lopez asked as they strode outside.
‘He was already dead,’ Ethan replied without looking at her. ‘There was nothing that we could do.’
‘Yeah, but..?’
Ethan glared at her and she fell silent. ‘They started this war,’ he pointed out. ‘They wanted it, and they’ll damned well get it.’
Lopez lifted her chin as she confronted him, the snow whipping around them. ‘I just don’t want to see you turn into another Aaron Mitchell, is all.’
Ethan pulled his cell phone from his jacket and dialled a number as he walked across to their vehicles and tossed the rifle into the trunk. Jarvis answered on the third ring.
‘What’s up?’
‘MJ–12 have taken the gloves off,’ Ethan growled in response. ‘We just got out of a shoot–out with some of their boys. I need you to do a search on e–mail traffic coming out of Italy’s most expensive hotel: they must have been there recently, and it’s our only new lead.’
‘I’m on it,’ Jarvis replied. ‘What are you going to do?’
Ethan slammed the trunk and made for the driver’s door.
‘Repay them in kind,’ he said simply. ‘Let me know when you’ve tracked them down.’
Ethan shut off the line and looked at Schofield. ‘Tell me everything, before we all end up dead.’
***
XIV
Burj Al Arab Hotel,
Dubai
The huge hotel looked spectacular in the dawn light, glowing golden against Dubai’s vivid beaches, the city skyline glittering like a jewel encrusted into the ancient deserts as the helicopter descended toward a landing pad jutting out from the side of the immense building’s rooftop.
Professor Rhys Garrett gazed down upon the building’s incredible opulence, built as were the churches and cathedrals of old by the hands of the poor, and in this case on land reclaimed from the ocean to create an artificial island almost a thousand feet from Jumeirah beach that had taken longer to create than the gigantic teardrop shaped hotel itself, connected to the mainland by a private curving bridge. The entire city was the poster–child for wealth over practicality, substance over style, Dubai a city built into deserts woefully unable to support it without the arterial lifeline of supplies and land expensively altered to allow the cultivation of green spaces.
Despite his own personal wealth, Garrett had never before visited Dubai and this was in fact his first visit to the Middle East. He had never set foot on their ancient sands and, if he was able, he never would. Garrett looked beyond the glittering, crystalline waters of the bay and out beyond Dubai’s bustling streets and glittering tower blocks and saw there the stain of poverty and disease that was the hallmark of the developing world. He knew, like so many others, that the only wealth in this land was in the hands of the Royal families, and that without their export of oil this city would be as dead and desiccated as the endless deserts that surrounded it. In truth, it wouldn’t even exist. It stood near the site of the old Chicago Beach Hotel, which had its origins in the Chicago Bridge & Iron Company which at one time welded giant floating oil storage tanks, known locally as Kazzans, to fuel the export trade that had made so few wealthy and so many desperately poor.
The helicopter settled onto the landing pad, which was just under seven hundred feet above the waves below, and the engines wound down into silence as Garrett unstrapped his harness just in time for a white–suited concierge to hurry to the helicopter’s door and open it. Garrett saw the man smile and bow graciously, and managed to hide his face as he stepped out of the helicopter and into the dawn air.
Even at this early hour he could feel the heat building from the equatorial sun as it rose swiftly in the east, the bright orange sky tiger striped with thin banners of cloud already being burned off by the rising temperature.
The concierge closed the helicopter’s door and beckoned for Garrett to follow him toward a doorway that led into the hotel’s interior. Garrett followed in silence, a single chrome briefcase in his hand that shone like gold in the sunlight. Many people would have preferred to enter the hotel through its main entrance, to boldly state their presence and revel in the opulence of the towering lobby or dine in the exclusive Al Muntaha restaurant, which was reached via a panoramic elevator and had views across the Persian Gulf, or perhaps the Al Mahara restaurant, accessed via a simulated submarine voyage and replete with a two hundred sixty thousand gallon fish tank. Garrett, however, was appalled by such extravagance, not to mention the publicity it risked by being seen in such a place. Now, more than ever, it was important for him to maintain a low profile.
For this reason, his reservation for the Royal Suite that night had been booked under one of his assumed names by one of his secretaries, and had cost some nineteen thousand dollars.
The concierge guided him to the suite and opened the door for him. Garrett strode inside, aware of the continued opulence around him as the aide began speaking.
‘Welcome to the Royal Suite sir, our finest and most luxurious accommodation.’
‘I’d like to be alone,’ Garrett said softly.
‘As you wish sir,’ the concierge continued smoothly. ‘If you require anything at all, please simply press the call button on the wall by the door’
Garrett smiled his thanks, and handed the man a thin wedge of notes that made the young man’s eyes bulge in amazement.
‘Sir, I couldn’t possibly…’
‘Make sure nobody interrupts me, understood?’ Garrett said as he pushed the money into the man’s hands.
The aide turned on his heel with another deep bow and hurried away. Garrett waited until the door to the suite was closed before he set the briefcase down on the immense leather couch that dominated the suite and looked around. He walked to the balcony doors and threw them open to take in the extraordinary view. Fresh air billowed in from across the Persian Gulf, devoid of the stench of the human stain.
Soon, that stain would no longer be a problem.
Inside the chrome briefcase was a simple laptop c
omputer, one that before the end of the day would have its hard drive removed and crushed to a pulp, while the rest of the device would be thrown from Garrett’s helicopter on the flight over the bay to the airport and his private jet. Now, all he needed to do was tend to his guest and await the arrival of a very powerful group of men.
Garrett walked to the bathroom door, which had been locked on his instructions after his package had arrived about an hour before he had. Delivered just as he had been by helicopter, it had been placed here for safe keeping. Garrett unlocked the door and walked into the spacious bathroom, saw the marble tiles, the gold–plated taps, the polished floors. He ignored all of it and walked across to the shower, then yanked the curtain back.
Curled up inside the shower was a man, dressed only in soiled shorts, his body covered in bruises and his face swollen and puffy. The beating he had endured had been designed more to terrify than to cause permanent injury, and that was important to Garrett. He needed this man to be in good shape when his guests arrived – not perfect shape, obviously – for he also needed them to see that he would perform any act in order to achieve his goal. Then, once the information the man held in his mind was delivered in person before his guests, he could again demonstrate his resolve in a final and undeniable act of loyalty.
Garrett reached down to his wrist watch and pressed a button. Moments later, the door to the suite opened and two burly men strode efficiently inside and joined Garrett in the bathroom.
‘Get him ready,’ Garrett ordered as he turned and walked from the room. ‘They’ll be here within the hour.’
*
ARIES, DIA Headquarters,
Washington DC
‘We’ve got something.’
Hellerman hurried across the Watch Room to Jarvis’s side, carrying with him a tablet computer that he handed to Jarvis as he explained what was on the computer.
‘Surveillance at the NSA picked up some shielded chatter coming out of Dubai International Airport. There are not one but three private jets landing there right now that are known to be on the books of members of Majestic Twelve. Given that they’ve been laying low for some time I thought that you ought to know.’
Jarvis nodded, immediately sensing the urgency of the situation. ‘What assets do we have in play in Dubai?’
‘The FBI has a field office there, as do we, and two safe houses inside the city,’ Hellerman replied. ‘We could probably put a tail on any one of them right now, maybe even ask local law enforcement to...’
‘Not a chance,’ Jarvis cut him off, ‘police there are far too vulnerable to bribes. We’ll have to keep watch using trusted assets. Put any available agents that we have on watch, find out what they’re doing out there and where they’re going, understood?’
‘Got it,’ Hellerman agreed. ‘What about Ethan and Nicola?’
‘They’re in Norway,’ Jarvis replied, ‘but I’ll fill them in on this and get back to you.’
Hellerman rushed off as Jarvis walked into his office and closed the door behind him. He pulled a cell phone from his jacket and dialled a number, waited for the line to connect. A voice answered on the third ring.
‘Yes?’
‘We’ve got contact, confirmed sightings of at least three of the cabal in Dubai. Where are you?’
‘I’ll be there by tomorrow and will pick up the trail.’
‘There won’t be much time. They must know about Wilms by now.’
‘You let me worry about that.’
The line cut off abruptly and Jarvis pocketed the phone, conscious of his surroundings and hoping that the shielding on the burner cell was sufficient to protect the call. Although he was inside one of the most secure buildings on earth, there remained in all government facilities an institution known as “trust”. People like Edward Snowden existed because without trust there was no security. The DIA monitored signals from all over the world in conjunction with the National Security Agency, but unless a specific search was made they would have very little control over who was calling out from within the building. Jarvis knew that as long as he kept his calls short and infrequent, there was little chance of his duplicity being noticed.
Jarvis had worked for far too long in the intelligence game to be certain that the apprehension and trial of figures as powerful as those within Majestic Twelve was at best a futile gesture and at worse a waste of time, resources and even lives. He had himself seen massively wealthy and powerful drug lords negotiate “deals” to avoid lengthy prison sentences, politicians found guilty of massive fraud given jail sentences less prolonged than those daily dispensed with joy against less powerful citizens for shoplifting. In a society where the powerful lived under a different set of laws to the general populace, there would never come a day when Jarvis would see Majestic Twelve’s cabal rotting behind bars for mass murder. He knew that even if caught, tried and prosecuted, not one of them would ever likely serve a day in a real prison, their lawyers too numerous and too powerful, their wealth too great, their friends in the Capitol and even the administration able to pull strings and quote laws that he would never be able to oppose.
Jarvis looked in the mirror, saw his rheumy eyes looking back at him. His white hair was thinning now, his features tired and drawn. He had spent far too long in this game already and he knew that it was only a matter of time before his role went to another, younger and more energetic soul than he. But he was damned if he would go down without first seeing one of the most dangerous cabals ever conceived brought to its knees, crushed from existence. Jarvis knew that the greatest punishment he could mete to the members of Majestic Twelve was to take away their power, for it was that upon which they feasted, that and the fear of the powerless citizenry who suffered as they profited.
Jarvis’s hand clenched the burner cell in his pocket tightly, threatened to crush it. He forced himself to relax a little, to breathe. Anger at the hopelessness of the ordinary man when confronted with people like MJ–12 was as clear to him as the next man on the street, perhaps even clearer because he, uniquely, was in a place to do something about it.
Jarvis took a breath and opened his office door, headed out to a desk in the Watch Room and quickly accessed a terminal. Within moments he was able to identify his own out–going cell signal from the DIA building, and then identify the nearest cell tower from which the answering cell had pinged.
He smiled ruefully as he noted the location of the cell.
‘Saudi Arabia,’ he whispered to himself as he deleted the call trace and data from the server.
Aaron Mitchell was already in a position to strike.
***
XV
Burj Al Arab Hotel,
Dubai
Professor Rhys Garrett stood on the balcony of the Royal Suite and watched the distant waves of the Persian Gulf hundreds of feet below roll serenely toward the beach behind him, which was covered with tourists from countless countries blissfully unaware of the cataclysm rushing toward them.
His men had dressed their victim and planted him firmly on a chair in the lounge, to which he was heavily bound and his mouth gagged. That anybody would venture up here by chance was unthinkable, especially now that there were literally dozens of discreetly placed security agents scattered throughout the hotel and watching the movements of every single person who entered or exited the building.
Majestic Twelve had sufficient power to topple governments, provoke stock markets and engineer economic crashes, create or destroy lucrative drug trades and even influence the President of the United States depending on who held office at a particular time. Thus, creating a security perimeter around an already highly exclusive hotel was not a stretch for them.
A soft buzzing intruded on his reverie and he turned with some reluctance from the stunning vista outside and closed the balcony doors behind him. He pulled the blinds closed to prevent any observation from outside, and then moved across the lounge to the entrance and opened the door.
Outside stood a tall, gaunt looki
ng man whom he recognized instantly although most people could have walked past him in the street and had no idea who they were looking at.
‘Good morning, Rhys,’ the man greeted him with a hand shake and a sombre voice. ‘May we come in?’
‘Of course,’ Rhys said as he backed away from the door and gestured for the men outside to enter.
One by one they walked into the room, each wearing a tailored suit that would have cost most people a month’s salary, wrist watches worth more than many luxury cars and colognes from brands too exclusive to even be available to the general public.
For the most part Garrett did not recognize the men as they filed into the room, accompanied by two armed escorts. The apartment door was closed behind them and they variously sat or stood as he turned to face them. Of those that he did recognize, he knew them to be reclusive trillionaires who had forged their fortunes in stock markets, real estate, agriculture and military technology. Not one of the men was less than fifty years of age, and there were just eleven of them, not twelve. Their number had been reduced a few years previously when a Texan oil billionaire named Dwight Opennheimer had met his maker, and his replacement had recently disappeared from the streets of New York City, never to be seen again. That disappearance weighed heavily on Garrett’s mind as the eleven men looked at him and then at the man strapped into the chair nearby.
‘What brings us here, Mister Garrett?’ asked Samuel Kruger, the gaunt man who had greeted him at the door.
Garrett took a breath and began.
‘As you know, gentlemen, I have spent most of my career involved in the study of genetics, and have achieved my status both profesionally and personally as a result of the patenting of novel coding techniques that allowed mankind to map his own genome, among other things. In more recent years I have been involved in a new study, and during the course of that work a groundbreaking discovery was made which I would like to share with you all.’
The Extinction Code Page 10