by JJ Pike
They were being dismissed. Jo stood and reached across the table to shake her boss’ hand. She wished it had just been the two of them so she could tell him what an enormous mess she’d made, but they were several moves further down the chess board now and she had to suck it up whether she liked it or not.
She and Rayton chit-chatted on their way downstairs. It wasn’t Jo’s favorite mode of communication, but it was necessary in a building where everyone knew walls have ears. To say nothing of the fact that they were dealing with a case of industrial espionage. Loose lips and all that.
They poured their coffees from the pot, grabbed a couple of chairs, and settled into the corner furthest from the doors.
Jo took a sip of her coffee. It was good and strong. Just what she needed. “Tell me everything you know about MELT. How long have you been undercover?”
“Haven’t your guys briefed you?”
There was no point playing coy. She wanted to start over. Clean slate. Get it right this time. Stick to the truth, but not too much of it. “I haven’t been briefed. The Bureau didn’t know you worked for the CIA. In fact, we didn’t know anyone was on the inside at K&P. My bosses and your bosses, apparently, aren’t sharing data.”
“One hand doesn’t know what the other one’s doing, more like.”
Jo had to stifle a laugh. That about covered it. “How long have you been with the Company?”
“I was recruited in my second year of college.”
Jo nodded. He was going to go all the way back to the beginning. Couldn’t hurt.
“It started off innocuously enough. I tailed a couple of radicals, reported on penny ante groups. Animal activists, mostly. Harmless. They’d break into labs and free bunnies and beagles. That sort of thing. Like most intelligence work, most of my intel didn’t lead to anything.”
“Yup. But that was twenty years ago. What does it have to do with MELT?”
“I’m getting there,” said Rayton. “It all links up, eventually. The Company paid for my education, which is no small shakes. My undergrad was at Columbia, Masters at Stanford, DPhil at Oxford. I had an expense account, as well as a free pass to travel and collect intel when I was a student. The catch was I had to work wherever they sent me once I graduated.”
“But you’re the same age as Alice. You haven’t been at K&P since then, have you?”
“Right. I did what you’d expect when I finished school. Couple of years in biotech, couple of years in medical. China, Singapore, South Korea. Always the same mandate: can whatever is under development be weaponized and is there anyone here who’s selling it to the ‘wrong’ people? We stopped some major incidents and defused a bunch, preventing them from going viral, most of which never made the headlines. When a white powder is mailed to a Senator, everyone sits up and takes notice, but when a lethal fungus, designed to take out half the work force, is introduced into a major corporation, it’s not going to get reported anywhere near as often. But I won’t bore you with that. You’ve probably heard most of those stories.”
Jo hadn’t, but he was giving her permission to steer them back to his K&P intelligence. She smiled by way of encouragement. “So, K&P? Doesn’t seem likely. Your mandate is international, right? What are you doing here in the United States?”
Rayton nodded slowly. “It’s complicated. I started out in K&P’s labs outside Beijing. I was promoted internally—Klean & Pure Industries don’t know I’m anything other than a scientist—and it would have looked extremely suspect if I’d refused the promotion. The CIA has no mandate, as you so rightly point out, to investigate Americans or American companies, but I was investigating a case that began in China and, we believed, spread to the States. I’m aware that the law doesn’t allow for operatives to…”
Jo cut in. “I’m not worried about the legality of you snooping around K&P’s offices here. That’s fine. I want to know what you found out.”
Michael smiled. He’d expected her to be one of those “straight up and down rule followers” the Bureau was so famous for, but she was fine in the murky waters the CIA cruised. Got to break eggs if you want to make omelets. Mixed metaphor, but whatever. She was getting close to some answers. She was excited.
“Honestly, I thought I had landed on my feet when they first sent me there. Everything was calm. My colleagues were true believers, doing something they thought was going to change the planet for the better. They were idealistic, hard-working, and pleasant to be around. Of course, there was the occasional jerk, but for the most part it was a dream job.”
“But you’ve been there for years, right? So, the Company had to believe something was in play. If there’d been no threat, domestic or otherwise, they’d have pulled you out.”
Rayton nodded. “I’ve been there seven years. Almost since the beginning of MELT.”
“That’s a long time to be undercover.” She should know. She’d been tracking Wolfjaw Ridge for almost the same amount of time. Both agencies knew how to play the long game, it seemed.
“I wasn’t supposed to be looking at MELT when I first arrived in China. K&P had another compound they were developing. BOOST was a compound mineral additive, designed to make plants grow faster. Any time you’ve got the mass production of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium there’s a strong likelihood that someone will be looking to produce explosives. My colleagues were convinced there were going to be black marketeers swarming all over the joint, but I never found a single person at K&P who was in any way connected with any terrorist cells. The BOOST team was squeaky clean both here and in China and, in any case, K&P shelved it because of the competition. Some bean counter worked out that the market was already saturated. You can put that down to the legalization of marijuana. Hydro-farms have sprouted up and competition for the best bud is fierce. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has a way to get your weed to grow like a weed. Pun intended.”
Jo managed a light laugh. She wanted him to feel encouraged and keep going. This stuff was gold. She stashed the information about BOOST in a “to be reviewed” file at the very front of her brain. It was related. She was sure of it.
“That’s when the firm turned its attention to MELT.”
Jo strained against the impulse to sit forward in her chair. She relaxed her hand around her mug and evened out her breathing. No matter who you worked with or for how long, in her line of business you never put all your cards on the table. Rayton seemed to be on the side of right, but appearances can be, and often are, deceiving.
“I knew there was something wrong about a month ago. I couldn’t prove it, because Professor Christine Baxter had things locked down pretty tight. Quality control was high on her list and she was a stickler for making sure only those who were authorized to handle the product ever got near it.”
Jo’s heart was pounding in her chest. Rayton knew something solid about how MELT had malfunctioned. They were going to lick this thing.
“Alice wasn’t even on the science team, but she was allowed into the lab. She was the weak link.”
Jo snorted. She couldn’t help it. Nothing about Alice Everlee spelled “industrial espionage agent.” She didn’t buy it.
Rayton held up his hands. “Hear me out. It’s never the ones you suspect. She looks squeaky clean which is just another reason to look at her harder.”
Jo shook her head. “Not her. I’m telling you. It’s not her.”
“I did what I could to get samples out of the lab, but we’ve never uncovered a bad batch. Whatever she was doing, she was doing in a randomized way.”
“Explain.”
“Let’s say she works for a foreign power.”
“Okay. Run with it. Let’s hash it out and see if it holds any water.”
Rayton was unfazed. “This foreign power needs to know if MELT can be weaponized.”
“Yup, I’m following you so far.” Jo strode to the corner of the room where the coffee pot was housed and got herself another cup of coffee.
Rayton was right behind her. “She h
as to prove that before she can sell it to them.”
“But why not give them a sample and let them test it themselves?” Jo swirled her coffee with a stick, even though she had added neither creamer nor sugar.
“I know,” said Rayton. “It’s baffling.”
“Let me see if I am understanding you correctly. You’re saying Alice works for a foreign power?”
“Superpower, yes.”
Jo took a deep breath. The Russians and Chinese were known for their excellent undercover work. But Alice? What would motivate her? She still didn’t buy it. She strolled back to her chair, turning her friend’s profile over in her head.
“The science team was testing MELT, to see if there was an agent or reagent that could speed it up. Make it do exactly what it’s doing now.”
Jo stopped. “BOOST?”
“Yep,” he said.
“And it went off the rails?”
“No. BOOST didn’t have that kind of power. It’d speed things up, but not like this. This is something else altogether. This is why I think Alice was involved. There was a third additive. Something we’ve never found. Something she knew could wreak havoc once it was released.”
“I’ve known this woman almost as long as you have,” said Jo. “She’s ambitious and driven, but she’s a straight shooter. She believes in this product. Why would she sabotage it?”
“Money? Politics? I don’t know. Like I said, I’ve only begun to look into her.”
Jo sat. They were allegedly on the same side. They were sharing information. It was her turn to offer up some goodies.
“Can you tell me anything that would be useful to my investigation?” He’d come to the same conclusion as her.
“There were ten names on our ‘persons of interest’ list.”
Michael sat beside her. “Your boss walked me through the list. We’ve investigated all but one and eliminated them.”
“Don’t tell me,” said Jo. “Eloise Farmanday.”
Michael nodded. “Eloise Farmanday. No social, no address, no digital footprint. Nothing. The woman’s a ghost.”
“What do we know about ghosts?” She put her cup down and leaned close.
“Deep cover operative, perhaps planted years ago.”
“Agent, double agent, triple agent. Mole, informant, turncoat. In it for personal gain or power.”
Michael shook his head. “Not in our world. CIA agents don’t turn for power or money. It’s just not part of the profile. If it’s one of ours, it’s ideological.”
“What else?” Jo was on her feet, itching to get to her computer. She had an idea.
“How do you mean?” Michael had his hands firmly on his cup, restricting his gestures. She’d noticed exactly that level of discipline in the field; the man knew how to tamp down his own tells. He was doing no gesturing, only watching and keeping his voice even. He might be in her building, with her boss telling her to play nice, but she knew better than to let her guard down completely.
“We have a name that belongs to no one, but it has ended up on our list. Was it leaked to us? Is it a plant? Is it deliberate misdirection? If so, who’s doing the directing and to what end?”
“Good questions.”
“If it’s not a plant. If she’s not an agent or a puppet, but a private operative, she’ll be much harder to find.”
“Though they have a tendency to trip themselves up over the stupidest things…”
“You’re thinking what I’m thinking, right?”
They nodded together.
“It’s all in the name. Eloise Farmanday is an anagram. We’ve got her.” Jo picked up her phone and dialed her boss. “I want to hand pick my team.” She nodded. “Now. We’re ready to start now.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alice sat down, her finger still on the wounded man’s jugular vein. She’d given up trying not to get other people’s blood on her. It was impossible. The place was like a charnel house. He was on his front, his left arm reaching for the door. He’d been trying to get out. He couldn’t have known he was going the wrong way. Poor sap. She needed to roll him over and check out his wounds, then get back to Barb and Pete and the boy whose name she’d forgotten to ask.
Her arms were still weak. She couldn’t roll him. She pushed. He moved a little, screamed, then slumped back on his front. She had to put her entire body weight into the effort, bracing her feet against the bench behind her to get him completely turned over. The sounds he made as she rolled him were unearthly. He groaned and screamed and cursed. Finally, he flopped onto his back, sobbing. She couldn’t understand the words. They ran into each other like an unending brook, babbling all the way out to the sea.
No wonder he was incoherent. He was drenched in blood, his arm strapped to his bare chest. They would need to change those bandages as soon as they found sterile supplies. He’d made a tourniquet, so the gash must have been deep. She held her hand out to soothe him, but she couldn’t touch him. His face was a bloody mess in its own right. He had cuts to both cheeks as well as lacerations to his forehead and neck.
He opened his eyes.
The air was sucked out of the subway. She couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t possible. How could it? He was supposed to. What about the? How could? Why? What? It was Bill.
The air rushed back, filling her lungs with sorrow. She threw her arms around him, but his screams made her draw back. She leaned in close with her phone light, inspecting his arm. There was bone. Visible bone. Where was his hand? She couldn’t see his hand.
She was immobilized, filled with terror, unable to think or plan or understand how any of this made sense. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be with the kids. What was he doing under Manhattan? She wanted to scream at him. Hit him. He’d come looking for her.
The tears came. Her hands curled into fists and she beat the floor. This wasn’t what happened. He was safe. He was always safe. She needed him safe or she couldn’t go on.
She slid one arm under her Bill and tried to sit him up. He was too heavy. She was too weak. She’d been on her way out of the pitch black and headed towards the light when a dog had made her stop.
The knowledge crashed around her ears, pulling her off center, taking her apart at the seams. She’d stepped over him, taking him for dead. If it hadn’t been for Maggie-loo, he would have died here on his own, looking for her and she would never have known it.
She tried to stand, but her hand slipped and she crashed down beside him. She had to get help. If she didn’t, they would both die in the dark. She scrambled, slipping again, falling forward then back. It was too much. She couldn’t find her balance. There were too many demons. She was going to drown in her sorrow and his blood.
“Slow down.” It was Barb. She stood over Alice with her hand reaching down, her hair framing her face like a halo.
Alice was losing it, seeing angels where there were none. Barb’s hand felt real enough. She clasped it, hauling herself to her feet.
“Deep breaths,” said Barb. “Deep breaths. In through the nose and out through the mouth.”
“It’s Bill,” said Alice. “It’s Bill.” She couldn’t manage any other words. What would she say? He is my everything. We have to save him. I can’t leave without him. Please help me. That was it. That’s what she needed to say.
Barb was already at Bill’s side. “He’s done a good job. The tourniquet is recent. He’s lost a lot of blood, but not so much that he can’t make it.”
“Make him get up,” said Alice. “Make him walk.”
“One step at a time. There’s bone.” She was nodding.
How was Barb the sensible one and Alice out of her wits? She couldn’t think. Everything was still scrambled. His arm was Papa’s arm, his blood Mama’s. It was happening again. Her love was being taken from her, right in front of her eyes.
Barb had her ear by Bill’s mouth. Was he talking? What could he say to Barb that he couldn’t say to her?
“He has a knife?”
/> Alice nodded. He loved that knife. She’d fought over it because it was so heavy, but in her heart she knew she partly fought him because she was #guilty. She’d whipped Aggie and he’d had to take her away, into the woods, where she would be safe from her mother. The irony. That Aggie should be safe in the place she herself had been undone. Aggie had killed a buck on that first outing. Bill had been jubilant, insisting they use the antlers to fashion a handle for his knife. Everywhere he went Bill had that reminder that Aggie was safe.