Origin - Season One (35 page)

“I’m going to find them,” Francis said.

“You? What happened to us?”

“You’re not coming. There’s somewhere else you need to be.”

Mike had been looking out the window. Now he turned to Francis. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Francis reached into his bag, pulled out an airline ticket and handed it to Mike. Mike flipped the cover sheet over and said, “Panama? What the fuck am I going to do in Panama?”

“There’s someone down there I think you’ll want to see. Two someones actually.”

Mike was about to protest again when the penny dropped.

“They’re in Panama?”

Francis nodded. “Not quite. The flight leaves at noon tomorrow. Joe will take you to the airport. Don’t ask me exactly where they are because I don’t know. There’s a restaurant in the town of Nuevo Emperador called La Trona. Leave this on the bar.”

Francis handed him a silver dollar with the Iwo Jima Memorial printed on one side.

“Go back at noon on the following day. Someone will be there to meet you. I also suggest you buy some local clothes, shave your head and leave the beard.”

When Mike said nothing, Francis raised his eyebrows. “What do you say, partner? Sound good?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Tell me,” Mike said. “What happens after that? Once I’m back with my family? We can’t exactly head back to Phoenix or New York, can we?”

“No. Not for now.”

“So what? We take up life in some rural farming community and pray that no one mistakes us for a group of Americans who have no business living there at all? Or do we live in the basement of some safe house and pray that word will arrive one day that everything is fine? And what if that word never arrives? What then?”

Francis nodded slowly. “I don’t know, Mike. I promise I’ll get word to you once this is over and it’s safe for you to return home.”

“Not good enough.”

“What else can I do?”

“I’m coming with you.”

Francis shook his head. “Out of the question. For one, you have a family. I don’t know what I’m going to find in – where I’m going, but it’s too risky.”

“Really? That’s what you’re worried about? Not the fact that I might slow you down?”

“It’s a factor. I’ve been doing this for a long time, Mike. I have no doubt that you’re a good agent, but it’s not the same.”

“Bullshit. I don’t buy it. I appreciate your concern for my health, it’s very touching. But like you said, I’m a father and a husband. I don’t want the people I love just living some hand-to-mouth existence. Not as long as there is something I can do about it.”

“Is there anything I can say to make you change your mind?” Francis said.

“Yeah, you can tell me right now that the coast is clear and that I can take Susan and Josh home and not have to worry about anything. Can you say that?”

“You know I can’t.”

“Then it’s settled. I’m coming with you.”

Francis considered this in silence. When he finally looked up, it was with the faint trace of a smile. “Are you sure this isn’t just a ploy because you’d miss me if I was gone?”

“Fuck off,” Mike said, but he was smiling, too. “Besides, you’re not exactly a spring chicken yourself. I have a feeling you might need someone to watch that prized behind of yours before this is over.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Francis said.

“What did Mandy and Jess have to say?” Mike asked.

“They’ll be fine. I plan to come back for them as soon as I can.”

“When are we leaving?”

“In about fifteen minutes.”

Mike nodded. “Come on then, we better go say goodbye.”

Aurora

Sunday 23 July 2006

0900 EEST

Mitch was standing on a dock, looking up at what had once been a Soviet nuclear submarine. She was over a hundred and twenty yards long and looked every bit as menacing as she had during her decade of service with the Baltic Fleet. Behind the conning tower two enormous hydraulic doors built into the top of the hull were slowly opening.

“I don’t know what to say,” Mitch said to the man standing next to him.

Aurora’s dockmaster, a young man in his early twenties wearing a navy blue jumpsuit like his own, pointed to the far side of the small subterranean lake where a large oil tank stood on a concrete platform. “This side’s for cargo; that one’s for fuel. We use a lot of it here.”

“Where the hell did you get it from?” Mitch asked, unable to take his eyes off the submarine.

“We bought it.”

“You bought a nuclear submarine?”

“Not exactly. This is a first generation Victor-class, built in the late sixties. She was retired in ‘82 after running aground. The Russians stripped her and sold her for scrap to a company in Norway. We found her sitting in a port in Trondheim. The reactor and turbine had been removed, of course, along with almost everything else.”

“And you rebuilt it?” Mitch asked. It was a stupid question, but the only one that came to his lips.

“From the ground up. I’m sure Captain Williams will let one of the crew show you around if you’re interested.”

Mitch was about to ask the next of a hundred questions he had when a man approached them and said, “Where do you want the generator, boss?”

Mitch watched as a large wooden box branded with the Caterpillar logo was pulled from the hold by a large crane on the dock and set down on the bed of a wide, and very futuristic looking, truck with a bubble-dome window. A hand tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around to see Sarah. She had changed out of her jumpsuit into jeans and a white blouse.

“Hey you!” she said.

“Hey yourself,” Mitch said. “What happened to the boiler suit?”

“It’s my day off. Well, it’s supposed to be. I thought you might like to visit the museum.”

“The museum?” Mitch asked.

“It should answer some of your questions,” she said.

The access road to the dock snaked around an outcrop of rock onto a concrete platform surrounded by a narrow channel of water that ran all the way around the perimeter of the cave. Beyond the two small bridges connecting the platform with the rest of the facility the ground was covered in lush green grass and trees. Set into the high, steep walls were three stories of windows and balconies that made them look like apartment buildings chiseled out of rough stone.

They reached the intersection and turned right across one of the small bridges into what looked like a small New England fishing village. Mitch had seen it the day before, but the wonder he felt as they passed first a barber shop and then a small convenience store, was no less intense. The sight was so out of keeping with the rest of the place. It looked like a Hollywood film set built inside a giant indoor studio lot. There was a small cinema currently showing The Da Vinci Code and Disney Pixar’s Cars, a clothing outlet and an English style pub called One Eyed Jack’s. Several people waved at them as they passed. A woman who looked old enough to be Sarah’s mother waived and Mitch found himself waving back, so surreal was the scene.

“Pinch me,” Mitch said.

“Why?”

“Because I feel like Alice in Wonderland.”

She smiled. “Wait until you see the museum.”

Aurora

New York, New York

Sunday 23 July 2006

0330 EDT

“What the fuck am I looking at here, Jack?” Bosch said.

They were upstairs in the operations room. Marius had three news channels playing on three separate screens. On the first, a young female reporter was talking to the camera from the shore of a lake. Behind her in the distance the black tail fin of a large airplane was sticking out of the ground. A column of smoke rose from the wreckage, painting a sharp black line across the blue sky. The headline running across the bottom of the picture read: HIJACKED PLANE SHOT DOWN OVER US-CANADA BORDER.

The second screen was showing the chaotic scene on the edge of the runway in La Tuque. A motley and chaotic jumble of police cars, fire trucks and ambulances were scattered across the tarmac. The headline in this picture read: STATE DEPARTMENT PLANE HIJACKED IN QUEBEC.

On the third screen there was a picture of Amanda Hinsdale and Jesse Corbin above the words: MORISSON HOSTAGES STILL MISSING.

The three networks were shifting rapidly back and forth between the two stories.

“Jack?”

Jack seemed not to hear him. His eyes were fixed on the screen in the middle, where a Canadian police officer in a captain’s uniform was making a statement from behind a small podium, in front of what looked like the town hall.

“Jack, can you please tell me what the hell is going on?” Bosch said.

Marius looked at Jack, his eyes pleading.

“Please tell me this has nothing to do with us,” Bosch said.

Before he even knew he was going to do it, Jack had pulled his silenced nine-millimeter Beretta from under his left arm. Marius tried to scream but all that escaped his throat was a pathetic squeal. Jack pulled the trigger twice. Marius turned his head and stared in horror as Bosch sank to his knees and fell forward onto the floor.

“Help me move him downstairs,” Jack said, putting the gun back in his shoulder holster.

Marius didn’t move.

“We need to get him out of here,” Jack said.

When Marius still didn’t move Jack took his head in both hands. “Titov told me to do it. He wants the body out of here before he arrives.”

That got Marius moving.

“Take his feet,” Jack said and knelt to roll Bosch over onto his back.

They carried him to the elevator. Marius moved like a man paralyzed by a concoction of fear and bewilderment. When they were inside Jack dropped the body and pushed the button for the basement.

They dragged the body down a long corridor, past the boiler room and into a small loading bay to a white van sitting in the far corner. Jack opened the back doors. “Help me get him inside.”

– – –

Ten minutes later, they were back upstairs.

“I need you to access the camera system and erase the footage from inside the elevator and the basement,” Jack said.

Marius nodded and sat down in front of one of the computers. When he was done he said, “I still can’t believe it. I mean, Carl? He worked for the director, didn’t he?”

“For two years,” Jack said. “It just goes to show you can never really know anyone.”

“When is Titov getting here?” Marius asked.

Jack considered the question for a moment. “Did you erase the footage?”

“Yes.”

There was a loud thump followed by a crash as the monitor in front of Marius slid off the end of the desk in front of him and fell to the floor. Jack put his gun down and lifted Marius’s head off the keyboard. There was no exit wound but the face looked distorted somehow. One of his eyes seemed to have ruptured from the inside and turned red. A single line of blood ran from his nose to his upper lip and began to drip onto the keyboard. Jack set the head down and put the gun back in its holster.

He hurried downstairs to Bosch’s office and opened the safe hidden behind an enlarged reproduction of van Gogh’s Portrait of Doctor Gachet on the wall by the desk. He removed four bundles of hundred dollar bills, stuffed them into his pockets and replaced them with several sheets of paper, including a map of the Baltic Sea.

Twenty minutes later Jack was driving the van across the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey. On the seat beside him next to a German passport was a Delta Airlines economy class ticket to Zurich in the name of Dietmar Klein.

Aurora

Sunday 23 July 2006

1000 EEST

Mitch was standing in front of a large, framed picture that Mike Banner would have recognized. But unlike the picture Mike had seen on Reginald’s computer, this one contained two overlapping images. One was a close-up of the ship, the other a computer generated graphic depicting Origin in a detailed outline. At the bottom of the frame a small brass plaque said: Origin – Voyager II, July 1979.

Sarah was standing next to him but seemed more interested in looking at Mitch than in what would arguably be the most incredible discovery in the history of the human race, and clearly also the biggest joke.

“So what is this?” Mitch said. “Some kind of art project?”

According to the annotation in the picture, the ship was supposed to be over twelve miles long. That was the distance from Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix to his parent’s house in Wedgewood Park, a trip that took twenty minutes in clear traffic and over an hour when it got busy. The idea that a man-made object – and there was a joke for you – could ever be that big just made the whole idea that much more ridiculous.

“What do you mean?” Sarah said.

“The picture of the giant spaceship,” Mitch said. “It’s an art project or something, right?”

She looked puzzled. “An art project?”

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s good. In fact it’s very good. I used to know a guy back in college who did a lot of digital stuff like this. He got a job at DreamWorks.”

Sarah was looking at him, practically staring him down. Mitch felt the start of another hot flush crawling up his neck and into his cheeks. People in the real world didn’t stare at you like that because it was rude. To Sarah, who had apparently never lived in the real world, it was simply her way of showing him that he fascinated her. Or so he thought.