Chimera (19 page)

“Jesus.” Chapel glanced at Julia again. She could
be a ticking time bomb right now. She could be incubating the virus while she
slept. And there was no way to know for sure. “That doesn't excuse his behavior.
We need to find a way to stop Laughing Boy now. Before he can kill anyone
else.”

“Chapel,” Angel said, “I want to tell you
something. You were right.”

“What?” It had been a while since somebody had said
that to him.

“I do have my own agenda,” she told him. “Or
rather, my agenda is the same as Director Hollingshead's, and it may not match
up with yours. We're not like Director Banks and his operative. We don't want to
just kill people to keep this thing under control. But we do intend to control
it, regardless of what that takes. Director Hollingshead can't stop Laughing
Boy. He doesn't intend to try. He may not like Laughing Boy's methods—but he
agrees with Banks, at least in principle, about what needs to be done. If Julia
does have the virus, we won't kill her. But we will lock her up for the rest of
her life in a facility like the one the chimeras escaped from. Because we have
no other choice.”

PART TWO

 

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 12, T+15:48

When Chapel was convinced Julia wasn't going to wake up at any moment, he took care of one task he'd neglected all day. Removing his jacket and unbuttoning his shirt, he plugged his artificial arm into a power outlet near his seat, using a retractable cord built into the shoulder. While he waited for it to recharge he called Angel again and asked her about the next two names on the list. “Start with the one in Chicago, first,” he said.

“Eleanor Pechowski,” Angel replied, and he heard her clacking at her keyboard. “Eleanor, who are you? Let's see. She's a retired schoolteacher.”

“That doesn't sound like someone a genetic freak would want to kill,” Chapel pointed out. “Maybe a disgruntled former student . . .”

“She worked for the UN, for a while,” Angel went on. “In UNESCO. Let's see . . . she lived in New York City at the time, on Roosevelt Island. Looks like she taught English, math, and American history to the children of UN delegates. Maybe she fell in with the black helicopter crowd.”

Chapel rolled his eyes. “Please tell me you're not a conspiracy nut, Angel,” he said.

Angel laughed. “No, I was just kidding. But just to work at the UN schools, Eleanor Pechowski had to have a security clearance. So the intelligence community would have been aware of her.”

“It's a pretty tenuous connection. Just because somebody did a background check on her doesn't mean she ended up working for the CIA. And the last time I checked, the agency didn't hire a lot of English teachers. Okay, what about Jeremy Funt, the one in Atlanta? What's his story?”

“That one's easy. He was a government employee, and all his records are right here. Nothing hidden at all.”

“Tell me he worked for the CIA,” Chapel said, leaning forward and nearly pulling the plug on his arm.

“Not exactly,” Angel said. “He worked for the FBI.”

“Huh,” Chapel said. That didn't make much sense. The CIA and the FBI had little to do with each other, other than both being government agencies. They weren't even overseen by the same cabinet department. “Is it possible that's a cover?”

“Not unless it's an extremely good one. His service record is an open book, here—and it shows him working a steady load of cases from 1981 to 1996, all pretty standard stuff, missing persons, kidnappings, wire fraud. The one question mark is that he left the bureau in 1996 at the age of forty-five, long before mandatory retirement. With a file like that, normally you'd expect that he left the bureau in disgrace, that he messed up somehow and was forced to retire, but there's no indication here he was anything less than a solid asset to the bureau.”

“So Funt just dropped off the bureau payroll with no explanation, huh? That's interesting. And at least he sounds like a more likely target.” He had no idea why the chimeras would want to kill Funt, but if he had to prioritize targets, an FBI agent sounded higher in value than a retired schoolteacher. It sounded like Atlanta might have been the right choice after all. “Angel, what else can you tell me about this guy? What does he do for money? Does he have any family in Atlanta?”

“I'm looking at that right now. It looks like—hold on. Chapel, give me a second here, there's something wrong with one of my laptops. Looks like somebody got a keystroke logger in my system, but that's—hey!”

“Angel?” Chapel asked.

“Somebody's piggybacking on my signal,” she said, sounding indignant. “Just who the hell do they think they are? Hacking me, why, I ought to—”

Static filled Chapel's ear and then the signal went dead.

“Angel?” he called. “Angel, come in. What just happened? Angel?”

A new voice spoke to him.

“Captain Chapel, I presume,” the voice said. “You and I need to have a little talk.”

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 12, T+16:02

“Listen, I don't know who the hell you are, but this is an encrypted line,” Chapel said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. The screen showed he was still connected to the number (000) 000-0000. There was no indication anything had changed. “Intruding on this channel is a violation of any number of laws, and—”

“Law?” The voice in his ear chuckled. It was a male voice, a little gravelly as if its owner was a habitual cigarette smoker. There was iron in that voice, but also a little silver—it was the voice of someone used to speaking for a living, like a salesman or a voice-over actor. “I know all about the law,” the voice said. “I apologize for cutting in, but they weren't going to let me speak to you, otherwise.”

Chapel bit his lip. This was very, very bad. If someone could compromise his line to Angel, then they could find out everything he'd said to her. They could know all his plans and everything he'd learned.

He couldn't imagine that the chimeras could be doing this. They weren't stupid, but they had shown no sign of having the kind of organization it would require to pull off this kind of stunt. He hadn't forgotten, though, that someone had to be helping them. Somebody had broken them out of the facility in the Catskills. Maybe, for the first time, he was running up against that shadowy organization.

“Tell me your name, right now, and who you work for,” Chapel insisted. “That's not a request. I can have you up on charges for impeding a federal investigation—and maybe treason, too. You've made a very bad mistake contacting me like this.”

“Captain, do me a favor and look at your phone. All will be explained.”

Chapel frowned, but he looked down at the screen of his phone. The screen went blank and then lit up to show a grainy video feed. He saw what looked like an image of someone's office, a desk with a green blotter and behind it a window looking out onto a night-shrouded cityscape. After a moment, someone stepped into the frame and sat down behind the desk so the camera could focus on his face.

Chapel recognized the man right away. It was Franklin Hayes.

“Your Honor,” he said, despite himself.

Hayes was the Denver-based federal judge whose name was on the kill list. This was one of the people Chapel was trying so desperately to protect.

So what the hell was he doing breaking into Chapel's encrypted line?

“I know this is surprising, Captain,” Hayes said. He was an older man, maybe seventy, with silver hair but sharp, intelligent eyes. He wore an immaculate suit with a handkerchief perfectly folded in the breast pocket. “I know it's unorthodox. But I assure you I mean no harm.”

“Your Honor, I apologize if I was abrupt, but I was serious about the breach of security. This line—”

Hayes waved one hand in dismissal. “Director Hollingshead wouldn't even tell me your name,” the judge said. “Director Banks proved a little more tractable. He owed me a favor, from long ago, so I've called it in. My friends in Langley were able to tap into your line.”

So Hayes had connections with the CIA? That was interesting. Chapel made a mental note to look into it. It seemed everyone on the kill list—with the exception of Christina Smollett—was related to the CIA somehow.

“I've been trying to contact you all day,” Hayes said, “ever since I was informed my life was in danger.”

“Yes, sir,” Chapel said. “I had one of my people call you about that. I wanted to make sure you knew to get to a safe place, somewhere you could be protected.”

“And I've done just that,” Hayes told him. “I'm in my courthouse. I keep a cot here in case I work too late and can't go home, so I'm relatively comfortable. I have state police crawling all over this building.”

“Then you should be fine. They can protect you until I arrive.”

“Captain. Please don't insult my intelligence. I know what happened to Helen Bryant. And I have some notion of what kind of man is coming here to kill me. Oh, I don't know all your secrets. But Director Banks filled me in on a few pertinent details.”

Chapel wanted to strangle Banks, and not for the first time. This case was so secret even the people working on it weren't allowed to know any details. Yet Banks had clearly spilled some of the unknowns to a civilian, just because he'd asked nicely.

“I know,” Hayes went on, “that the man in question is more than a match for a few state police. They're little more than highway patrolmen. I need better protection than this. I think I might rate a personal visit from the one man we know is capable of taking out one of these killers.”

“I'm sorry?” Chapel asked.

“I'm saying, Captain, that I want you to come here, to Denver, and protect me personally. Director Banks tells me I'm the highest-value target on your list. That I deserve the best protection. It's clear that you're it.”

“With all due respect, Your Honor, that's not possible right now,” Chapel said. “I'm in the middle of an investigation, and I can't break it off now.”

“I understand you're on your way to Atlanta,” Hayes said, as if Chapel had said nothing. “That's good, you're headed in the right direction. It will only take a few more hours in the air for you to get here, to Denver. I'll have a car waiting for you at the airport and it will bring you straight to me. I'll let you know when I have the name of the liaison you'll be working with—”

“Your Honor,” Chapel cut in, “I'm sorry, but the answer is no.”

Hayes waved his hand in dismissal again. “I'll give you complete autonomy on how you want to set up your defenses. You'll be in charge of my escort and you can requisition any more units you need from the local police department, should—”

“I said no,” Chapel said, more forcefully.

If anything, that just made Hayes look confused.

Judges had a lot of power. In their courtrooms, they were like gods, able to hand down judgments and throw anyone in jail on contempt charges. Chapel could only imagine how godlike a federal judge must feel most of the time.

Chapel had met enough generals to know that people like that, people who thought of themselves as omnipotent, stopped understanding the word
no
. It didn't just make them angry—they fell out of practice with knowing what it meant. People did what they said, all the time, and nobody ever questioned them.

So it took a few seconds for the negation to sink into Hayes's head.

Eventually he pursed his lips and said, “I can make a lot of trouble for you.”

“Is that a threat, Your Honor?” Chapel asked.

“I'm a federal judge, Captain. I don't make threats.”

The implication was clear. Hayes didn't need to make threats—when he could make promises instead. Chapel forced a smile onto his face. He was making a bad enemy here, and he knew it. He was about to inherit all kinds of problems. But for this one brief moment it felt pretty good to tell the judge where to stick it. “I'm in the middle of my investigation. More lives than just yours are at stake. The person of interest won't reach Colorado—can't reach Colorado—in less than twenty-four hours from now. If I can't stop him before that, I'll see you in Denver before he arrives. But in the meantime I have other work to do. So no, I won't be coming directly to you.”

“Now listen here,” Hayes said. “I don't remember requesting your opinion, and I won't put up with—”

A hand fell on Chapel's shoulder.

He jumped in his seat. Swiveling around, he saw Julia standing behind him. She was looking down at his phone.

On the screen, Hayes had gone silent. His face was a mask of utter surprise.

“Why are you talking to Agent Hayes?” Julia asked.

“
Agent?
” Chapel asked.

The screen of his phone went black, instantly.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 12, T+16:14

“I'm so sorry,” Julia said. “I didn't mean to see anything I wasn't supposed to, or . . . or whatever. I just woke up because I heard you shouting at that man, and I came over . . . I guess I shouldn't have. I'll go back to my seat now.”

“No, Julia, it's fine,” Chapel said, grabbing her hand before she could walk back to her seat. “I'm sorry, I was a little worked up there. But what did you mean when you called him Agent Hayes? He's a judge.”

“He is?”

“You didn't recognize him? He's been in the news recently. He's about to become a Supreme Court justice.”

Julia shrugged. “I get my news from the
New York Times,
not the TV, so I don't know what a lot of people look like. I mean, I've heard about Franklin Hayes, but . . . wow. I guess I never put two and two together. It can't be the same guy, can it?”

Chapel squeezed her hand. “Care to let me in on what you're thinking?”

Julia inhaled deeply. “This is getting weird.”

“This case? Yeah, it has its peculiarities,” Chapel said.

“No,” Julia said. “I mean the way you're holding my hand.”

Chapel glanced down and saw he was still holding on to her. He let go. “Sorry. Like I said, I'm a little worked up.”

“Just . . . never mind,” she said. “Look, I told you a while back about how I knew my parents were in the CIA. Because an agent came to dinner once a year to debrief them. His name was Agent Hayes, and I'm pretty sure it was the same man you were just talking to. He looks a little older, obviously, but, yeah, that was him.”

“That's actually really important,” Chapel told her. “It helps me fill in a couple of blanks.”

“You're welcome, I guess,” she said.

“I need to talk to somebody about this. I might have some more questions, but first—”

“I'll be right over here,” Julia said, walking over and patting the headrest of her seat. “In the meantime, though, I think I'll go back to sleep.”

“Uh, okay,” Chapel said.

Their eyes met and something passed between them. Chapel wasn't sure exactly what, and he didn't have time to think about it. Maybe she was starting to think she'd made the wrong decision, coming along with him. Or maybe . . .