The Chimera Secret (8 page)

He looked up at Steel and Foster. These boys had an agenda all right.

‘They work for Jarvis,’ he replied. ‘They’re his primary agents.’

William Steel nodded and leaned back in his seat, folding his hands in his lap as he spoke.

‘You are aware of the joint Pentagon and NASA operation down at Cape Canaveral, Project Watchman?’

Mitchell nodded. Watchman was a major defense initiative launched by the National Reconnaissance Office that used orbiting KH-11 Keyhole Satellites and immense super-computers to record events
on earth in real time and compress the data into a virtual world through which operatives could move. The project had been running for over ten years now, and represented for the intelligence
community the ability to do what no other government agency on earth could do – effectively look back in time, anywhere on earth.

‘Watchman is something that the DIA has a close relationship with,’ he confirmed.

‘Too close,’ Steel replied. ‘Your man Jarvis recently allowed both Ethan Warner and his partner, Nicola Lopez, into the facility. Not only that, but he allowed them to actually
use
the program themselves.’

‘They were involved in an investigation that ultimately saved thousands, if not millions of lives,’ Mitchell said. ‘Their exposure to sensitive programs is more than justified
by their success in utilising the information obtained.’

‘That would be true,’ Steel said, ‘were Warner and Lopez not civilian contractors. It’s not in the interest of our intelligence services to bring unqualified risks to our
work.’

Mitchell leveled Steel with a stony gaze.

‘More than half the workforce of the CIA’s most important directorate, the National Clandestine Service, is outsourced, so don’t come in here telling me that my outfit is
jeopardizing national security. Warner and Lopez are only given cases that the rest of the intelligence community has already rejected as unworkable, and their resulting investigations have been
unqualified success stories. Perhaps you should ask yourself why it was that the Pentagon have turned away from at least three major investigations that presented clear and present dangers to both
American security and the lives of our citizens?’

‘This isn’t about blame,’ Foster intervened. ‘We’re being asked to ensure that the security of our most sensitive operations cannot be blown by two people over whom
we have no control. This program that you’re running represents a very weak link in a long chain of carefully orchestrated security measures. I can’t just go back to the Secretary of
Defense and tell him that, hey, everything’s just fine, chill out. If Watchman or a comparable program were exposed to the public, all of our careers would be on the line.’

Mitchell remained impassive.

‘Who sent you, exactly?’ Neither Foster nor Steel replied, which pretty much was an answer in itself. Mitchell let a bitter little smile curl from one corner of his mouth. ‘So,
nobody sent you. The spooks at the CIA have finally taken an interest in what Doug’s achieved down here.’ He glanced at Steel. ‘Let me guess: Warner and Lopez have done what you
guys couldn’t, you’ve gotten all upset about it, so now you’re looking to take over the operation.’

‘This is about security,’ Steel replied in a crisp tone. ‘Nothing more.’

‘Of course it is,’ Mitchell replied without losing the smile. ‘So much so that you want me to breach my
own
agency’s security protocols and tell you everything
about one of our programs.’ He let the smile slip. ‘Not going to happen.’

‘We’re on the same side here, Abe,’ Foster said, trying to keep the mood cordial. ‘We just need to keep everybody’s borders tight is all. If this program is such a
big deal then maybe you could run it through the NRO and cut Warner and Lopez loose. That way it’s all internal and we’re not farming work out to people like that.’

Foster gestured loosely to the images of Lopez and Warner.

‘People like
what
?’ Mitchell rumbled.

‘A convicted felon and an amateur gumshoe,’ Foster almost chuckled in response. ‘Come on, we’ve got much better people available for this kind of work who won’t set
off alarm bells in DC.’

Mitchell’s fists balled of their own accord.

‘If you’d bothered to look into the history of these two investigators, instead of just sucking up the crap that the CIA is obviously feeding you, you’d know that Ethan Warner
is a decorated former United States Marine, as is Doug Jarvis, and that Nicola Lopez is a former DC police detective. Neither of them is amateur at anything.’

‘They’re both liabilities,’ Steel snapped. ‘Ethan Warner has a reputation for opposing and directly disobeying authority and Lopez is known to be a short fuse at the best
of times. Yet they’re both wandering around the country with access to all manner of classified materials. Jarvis has twice used assets of our Navy and Air Force to achieve his aims in
support of these investigations, which have often led to extreme exposure events such as exploding civilian apartment buildings, violent incidents in allied countries such as Israel and repeated
firearms violations in public areas throughout the country. Our business, sir, is both covert and classified. These two . . .’ Steel gestured at the photographs. ‘They’re a
danger to national security, not an asset to it.’

Mitchell leaned across the desk, his dark eyes glowering into Steel’s.

‘Left to you, none of those cases would ever have been investigated, let alone solved. The Pentagon has acquired extraordinary technology as a direct result of these investigations and
I’ll be damned if I’ll let the CIA kick the door down now.’

Foster sighed heavily as Steel bolted upright from his seat and stalked out of the office. Mitchell waited until the door had closed behind him before he looked at Foster. The soldier’s
expression said it all.

‘Are you really in bed with the CIA?’ Mitchell asked.

‘Transferred out of the army for medical reasons,’ Foster explained. ‘My knees gave in. I’m too damned old to learn the intelligence game and all that computerized crap,
so they attach me to field agents instead for mutual training.’

‘Watch your back,’ Mitchell warned. ‘The CIA has a long history of self-preservation at the expense of its agents.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ve got myself covered,’ Foster said as he stood. ‘But they’ll get what they want in the end.’

He was right, Mitchell knew. That was just the way of things. He knew that Jarvis had hoped to have cracked a few more cases before the Pentagon really started taking notice, which would have
given him more information and evidence to defend Warner and Lopez. Jarvis had a lot of time for Ethan Warner, and to his surprise Mitchell had also been quietly impressed with the man’s
tenacity and success.

‘I know. Just going to try to hold them off for a while longer, is all.’

‘Don’t try too hard. There’s too much at stake, for all three of us now that we’re involved, and for your man Jarvis,’ Foster warned him. ‘It’s better
for you all if you handle their investigations directly through this office and keep us in the loop.’

‘Why’s that?’ Mitchell asked.

‘Because I’m only here due to Warner’s military history,’ Foster replied. ‘Truth is, Abe, I’ve got very little control over what CIA might try to do.
I’m consulting, not controlling.’

‘Steel’s in charge of this?’ Mitchell asked in surprise. Foster nodded. ‘Under whose mandate?’ Mitchell pressed.

‘It went past the Director of National Intelligence,’ Foster replied.

‘Which means an executive order,’ Mitchell rumbled unhappily. ‘Jesus, what are they trying to keep under the carpet now?’

‘I don’t know,’ Foster admitted, ‘and I don’t want to know. Last I heard there’s another Congressional investigation running, looking into CIA projects that
haven’t been seen by Congress. If Steel’s gotten himself knee-deep in something, he’ll want to clear the decks and tie up loose ends before Congress gets hold of anything
solid.’

Mitchell nodded. William Steel was a good man and an undoubted patriot, but he was also ruthless in maintaining secrecy at the CIA and hated the interventions made by Congress in the past.
Mitchell wasn’t sure just how far Steel would go to ensure his agency remained free from interference, but he was damned sure the general would not be made a patsy for a previous
director’s indiscretions.

‘Who’s the enforcer for all of this?’ Mitchell asked as Foster turned to leave. ‘Steel must have somebody on the ground picking up the pieces if everything goes
south.’

Foster’s hand rested on the door handle as he replied.

‘I don’t know, but keep your people in sight. The administration is maintaining complete deniability for this little clean-up operation of Steel’s. If his back is forced to the
wall, Ethan Warner and Nicola Lopez are likely to end up as targets themselves.’

The chartered Beech Twin Bonanza thumped down onto the grass runway and rumbled along beside the tiny town of New Meadows. Ethan peered out of rain-streaked windows at the
soaring mountains nearby, their peaks lost in dense wreaths of gray cloud and the fields below sodden and damp.

A light drizzle had enveloped the airplane all the way up from Friedman Memorial Airport, the thick clouds obscuring Ethan’s view of the mountainous and forested terrain as the pilot
guided them over tumultuous bumps in the air. The mountains caused violent updrafts and downdrafts that tossed the little aircraft about as though it were a leaf in a gale.

Ethan knew that Idaho was not a densely populated state, but even so the vast tracts of wilderness that had stretched into the gloomy distance beneath them had seemed so immense that he could
not imagine how one might begin systematically searching it for any creature unknown to science, much less one that had made these lonely forests its home for untold millennia.

‘We’re digging ourselves a hole with this one,’ Lopez said, peering out of her window as the aircraft taxied off the runway and bumped along a track. ‘A big, damp, cold
hole.’

‘Sheriff’s picking us up from here,’ Ethan replied as he unbuckled from his seat. ‘Maybe there have been more developments since we left Chicago.’

The pilot shut down the aircraft’s engines, and as Ethan clambered out of the airplane he saw a portly sheriff ambling his way across the rutted, rain-sodden soil toward them.

‘Earl Carpenter,’ he introduced himself, ‘Riggins Sheriff’s Department. Welcome to Idaho.’

He said it with a cheery smile and a twinkling eye, and Ethan wondered whether the drizzle and cold was something folk just got used to up here. The sheriff proved himself a helpful soul,
carrying their bags to his patrol car before they climbed in and set off north on the U-95.

‘Riggins is about thirty-five miles out,’ Earl informed them as he drove away from the airport. ‘Say, where did you guys come from? All I got told was that you were working for
the government or something?’

‘Private contractors,’ Ethan replied by way of an explanation, ‘the FBI don’t have the manpower to dedicate a team to this investigation, so we help fill in for
them.’

Earl Carpenter frowned as he glanced in his mirror at Lopez.

‘You qualified for this kind of work, ma’am?’

‘Worked homicide as a detective in DC for six years,’ Lopez replied without bridling. ‘Ethan here is ex-marines, recon.’

Earl raised an eyebrow and smiled apologetically at them. ‘I guess that’s good enough for me.’

‘What’s the story so far?’ Ethan asked. ‘You’ve got two dead bodies, another supposed dead but still missing and a kid who swears that his brother was killed by an
animal, right?’

‘To cut it short,’ Earl agreed, ‘but there’s a whole lot about this that doesn’t fit right.’

‘Tell us,’ Lopez said.

Earl puffed his cheeks and blew the air out as he drove.

‘Hard to know where to start. I get me a call about a local lady whose son’s been found hanging in the garage.’

‘Randy MacCarthy,’ Ethan said.

‘So I goes down there,’ Earl went on, ‘and I check out the scene before the county coroner gets called in. Sure enough, Randy’s swinging in the wind. There’s a
stool underneath him and he’d been dead for a few hours.’

‘How did you know?’ Lopez asked.

‘Body was cold,’ Earl replied. ‘His neck weren’t broken, so he died on the rope.’

‘Any history of prior convictions?’ Ethan asked. ‘Anything that might motivate this kid to take his own life?’

‘He’d been busted a couple of times for possession but nothing serious, got held by the local police department for forty-eight hours but no charges were filed as he wasn’t
dealing,’ Earl replied. ‘Made a lot of claims about conspiracies and said that he had evidence of government agents working in and around Riggins. Watched too many TV shows, you ask me.
But there’s no evidence of foul play. I took some photographs before forensics moved in, and Randy’s post-mortem confirmed death by asphyxiation.’

‘You got copies of the photographs on you?’ Lopez asked from the rear seat.

Earl reached down into the side pocket of his door and pulled out a manila envelope before passing it to the back seat. Ethan watched as Lopez pulled out a wad of six-by-eight images and began
sifting through them. If there was anything unusual about the crime scene, she would notice it soon enough.

‘What about the other brothers?’ Ethan asked. ‘And the ranger who was killed?’

Earl Carpenter rested one arm on the sill of his door as he drove. Ethan noticed that the hills around them were getting steeper as they traveled, thickly forested with pines or coarse grass,
and the roadside flanked by occasional shacks and game crossings.

‘Well, that there’s a mystery. Cletus and Jesse go off huntin’ out in Nez Perce Forest, and it turns out that the ranger, a local man called Gavin Coltz, spotted them tracking
a game elk. Season’s out right now so he decided to follow them and catch them in the act. He was a tenacious soul, Gavin, and he stuck with them for almost four hours before they tried to
take their shot out near Fox Creek.’