The Extinction Code (17 page)

Mitchell followed and waited, all the while glancing at the map and plotting an alternative route to the hotel, one that would allow him to park up and observe from afar. When they got within a mile of the hotel, he turned into a side street and left the Mercedes and its escort, driving his car through a maze of narrow back roads until he found the spot he was looking for and eased into the sidewalk.

Aaron Mitchell, an African American standing six foot three and two hundred forty pounds, was not at his anonymous best in an urban environment in daylight. He remained in his car on the Via Della Minerva, where he had deliberately parked behind a goods vehicle to help conceal his location and his vehicle’s license plate.

Before him across a large, square open plaza was the Grand Hotel de la Minerva, one of the city’s most exclusive. Milling crowds of tourists further helped conceal his presence as he saw three vehicles move into view. The first was a non–descript white sedan, which Mitchell realized was the recon’ car and noted its number immediately. The Mercedes followed a moment later, and finally the rear guard vehicle. As Mitchell watched, his target exited the Mercedes with two men swiftly flanking him and walking with him through the hotel’s large double doors.

Mitchell turned and looked at the buildings surrounding the Palazzo Severoli. Most looked inaccessible, but one stood out to his right: The Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy’s doors were open, and as Mitchell looked up he could see that its rooftop terrace stood just a little higher than that of the Minerva Hotel.

Mitchell got out of his car, a briefcase in his hand as he walked across to the academy. The interior visible from outside was as luxurious and decadent as he would have imagined, neoclassical Italian architecture and art transformed into hallowed halls of the Roman Colleges of the Catholic Church. Mitchell neither knew nor cared much for the faiths of the world, and had merely used his burner phone to discover that the academy was dedicated to the priesthood’s diplomatic Corps and the secretariat of State of the Holy See.

Mitchell walked with a purpose, one of the key skills provided to field agents when they began their training. If you look like you know where you’re going, nobody thinks that you don’t and therefore you do not stand out. None the less, Mitchell kept his face away from the hotel across the plaza as he walked not into the Pontifical Academy but into a small trinket shop right alongside it.

There was little chance of Mitchell getting through such a building as the academy without raising the alarm, much less escaping again. But the rows of little shops nearby provided a second route, built as they were into the same massive edifice shared by the academy.

Mitchell ducked inside the shop and closed the door behind him, a small bell tinkling to alert the shopkeeper to the presence of a new customer. Mitchell turned the door’s “
chioso
” sign to show out to the street outside as he saw an elderly man hobble out to greet him with a smile.

‘Buongiorno signore,’ Mitchell intoned as he set the briefcase down beside him. ‘Avete accesso al tetto?’

The shopkeeper’s smile faded into confusion as he wondered why this new customer would want access to his roof.

‘Sissignore,’ he replied and then switched to English as he detected Mitchell’s American accent. ‘But you can’t go up there because it’s owned by…’

Mitchell’s hand was faster almost than the old man’s eye. He scythed the blade of it across the shopkeeper’s throat, just below the thorax, in a loose blow designed not to kill but to incapacitate. The old man staggered backwards, both hands flying to his throat as it collapsed in the wake of the blow and he wheezed as he tried to suck in air. Moments later, his legs gave way beneath him and he collapsed to his knees.

Mitchell locked the shop door and gently pulled down a blind, then turned and walked across to the old man, who was gasping for air. The shopkeeper raised a hand defensively to protect himself from Mitchell, terror in his old eyes. Mitchell grabbed the old man’s hand, and then gently lifted him up onto his feet and spoke softly.

‘You are in no danger,’ he said. ‘You will not be harmed, and I need only a few moments of your time.’

Mitchell turned the old man around and used a length of fabric from a nearby rack of scarves to bind the old man’s wrists before he walked him out into the back of the shop and sat him in a chair. Moments later, the old man was bound in place. Mitchell rested one giant hand on his old shoulder and squeezed gently.

‘I will be a few minutes,’ he said. ‘Don’t try to escape, understand?’

The old man looked into Mitchell’s eyes, and what he saw there made him nod slowly, conveying that he did indeed understand that the consequences of disobedience would be severe.

Mitchell retrieved his briefcase from the shop out front, and then walked past the shopkeeper and out toward a storeroom out back. It took him only a few moments to find an old door behind stacks of tinned goods that had been likely sealed decades before. Access to other sections of the same original building would also be in place, but Mitchell knew that he had only one direction in which to travel.

Up.

He slipped a small leather case from his jacket, and within a minute had picked the lock of the old door, hardly a major task given its antiquity. Mitchell tried the lock, and to his delight it opened, the owners not having sealed the door from the other side using more robust locks. It was possible that they did not even know of its existence, furthering Mitchell’s advantage.

The door opened onto a stone staircase, one that had probably once climbed between rooms in the now separate buildings. He could smell damp and dust, stale air cool on his skin as he closed the door carefully behind him and climbed up the stone stairs to a small landing where two more doors awaited, one to each side, both locked.

Mitchell knew that the academy likely awaited on both sides, occupying all of the upper floors, so he tackled the door to his right in the hopes of avoiding the main building. Mitchell waited for a few minutes, listening intently, and having satisfied himself that whatever awaited on the far side of the wall was devoid of human presence, he picked the lock as quietly as he could and then opened the door.

A wide staircase faced him, climbing ever up toward the roof.

Mitchell shut the door behind him and eased silently upward.

***

XX

Grand Hotel de la Minerva,

Rome

Felix Byzan strode into the penthouse suite of the hotel as though he owned the place, which of course he could at any moment he chose, if he actually had liked the city. Rome, to him, was a city built on the foundations of a former glory that it had never recaptured: an icon, a relic to something that had once been great and was now forgotten in all but school text books and historian’s libraries.

The doorman opened the room’s windows for him to allow a breeze to drift across the sumptuous furnishings, and then waited beside the open door for Felix to tip him. Felix looked him up and down for a moment, and then smiled.

‘Giornata piena, Signore?’

The man smiled to be spoken to in fluent Italian, and replied in perfect English.

‘Very busy sir, the tourist season is beginning.’

Felix handed the doorman a fifty Euro note. ‘Buona fortuna.’

‘Grazie, Signore.’

The door closed, and Felix slipped out of his jacket and tossed the three hundred dollar garment across the leather couch as though it were trash, then unbuttoned his collar and pulled off his tie. The fresh air was welcome and he could see from his balcony the view across the plaza below, and the small obelisk that dominated the square. He had seen similar obelisks across the country, even in front of the Vatican itself, and marvelled again that so many people could worship here when the country’s history of Egyptian and other civilization’s presence even now told the true story of Italy’s heritage. Rome had long since been stripped of all reference to its mighty imperial past, the museums filled instead with the religious iconography that the church believed the people wanted to see. Felix himself had been deeply disappointed to find that even the famed Colosseum was devoid of any true history, stacked instead with cheap religious trinkets.

He turned from the window and poured himself a drink, his mind filling with other more pressing concerns. The meeting had not gone well, at least he did not feel that it had. Garrett’s claims had unnerved him, and did not sit well with the cabal’s preferred method of probationary membership before a newcomer was welcomed into the fold. Then again, he had not enjoyed watching Gordon LeMay die earlier in the year either, but it was not his place to dictate Majestic Twelve’s choice of actions, only to
advise
.

Felix sipped the single malt he’d poured and then felt his cell phone buzz in his pocket. He answered it, set it onto speaker phone on a coffee table nearby.

‘Felix,’ Kruger’s voice greeted him, ‘your thoughts on our potential new member?’

‘I don’t like him,’ Felix replied. ‘He’s too confident in what he’s doing when we all know that he’s dabbling in something we cannot control. We’ve been fighting the threat of a new extinction age for decades and if there’s one thing we’ve learned it’s that no volume of technical wizardry is going to stop seven billion people from ultimately self–destructing. There are just too many of us.’

A long silence filled the suite until Samuel Kruger finally answered.

‘You know that we’re losing influence, Felix. We need a man like Garrett to bolster our position, perhaps in the face of an extinction level event. The FBI no longer represents a valuable asset to us, despite our links to the agency remaining strong despite the loss of LeMay.’

Felix let a bitter little smile flicker across his features.

‘Loss,’ he echoed. ‘Waste, is a word I would have used. As for Wilms, I take it that you believe that Mitchell was behind the attack?’

‘It would appear so,’ came the reply. ‘It was only a matter of time before this happened Felix, you and I both know that. Wilms would have talked eventually, and it’s only convenient that Mitchell struck before somebody in our own employ was able to make Wilms a historical irritation.’

‘Wilms was a servant of our organisation for many long decades and you hung him out to dry,’ Felix snapped back. ‘One of the pillars of loyalty is that said loyalty is shown to those who work for us. The walls start falling when people come to believe that loyalty is a one way street; that it only applies to those at the top. I predicted this would happen if either LeMay or another of our assets was compromised.’

‘I don’t appreciate the lecture.’

‘Which is why we’re in the state we’re in,’ Felix shot back. ‘Garrett is dangerous, more so than I think any of us realize. He’s not here to join us; he’s here to take control. He says he has the cure for a disease so powerful that nobody on earth can stop it, and yet he won’t allow us access to that cure? Since when do we allow ourselves to be blackmailed?’

‘Since we started becoming the hunted,’ Kruger growled back. ‘Mitchell rightly has every reason to believe that we will kill him the first chance we get, therefore he is now making the first move. It is only a matter of time before he reaches one of us, before he finds out who we are and is able to target us directly.’

Felix shook his head.

‘The Defense Intelligence Agency already knows who we are,’ he corrected, ‘but they cannot use the imagery they obtained in New York against us. It would be inadmissible in court without letting the world know that the President of the United States is merely a cipher for power in our country. No self–respecting Congressman or Senator is going to say that they’re a powerless pawn in our geo–political games.’

‘We can’t be sure of that.’

‘No?’ Felix challenged. ‘So, what’s the news saying about Wilms? Are they suddenly now reporting that he’s been shot by an assassin?’

Another long silence before the reply came. ‘No, there was a brief report an hour ago that a prisoner in Florence ADX facility had died of a self–inflicted chest wound.’

Felix nodded and smiled. ‘And the coroner’s report will reflect that and no mention will ever be made of Mitchell’s kill, the weakened security of Florence ADX or the fact that Mitchell escaped from the damned place! The government still fear us, are still unable to admit to the people of the world just who really pulls the strings for the greater good. If they find out that people like us control nations and remain unaccountable there would be riots on the streets of every capital city on earth!’

‘And arrests,’ Kruger pointed out.

‘Perhaps,’ Felix agreed, ‘but I trust in politicians’ shared desire for the illusion of power, their propensity to lie and their spineless nature to ensure that none of them would ever upset the status quo. No matter how strong the DIA’s agents become, or how deeply ingrained Mitchell’s hatred of us grows, they won’t be able to bring us down.’

‘Unless somebody at the DIA is feeding Mitchell information.’

Felix stopped pacing again. ‘That’s unlikely, they want him brought down as much as we do.’

‘Our people have so far failed to derail General Nellis’s effort to expose and arrest us,’ Kruger reminded him. ‘The longer they have, the greater the chance that they will succeed, and there is always the chance that one of our weaker members might decide to turncoat if things get too tough.’

Felix nodded again to himself, a concern of his own that some of the cabal’s other members might not entirely share Majestic Twelve’s vision of the New World Order.

‘We must talk more on this, in person,’ he agreed.

‘Garrett’s invited us to his island,’ the director said. ‘Most of us have accepted.’

‘That’s dangerous.’

‘It’s necessary,’ the director insisted. ‘We need a way forward and a means to maintain a hold on the United States Government. Without that, we’re as vulnerable as we’ve ever been. And if Garrett’s threat of a global pandemic is real, we need to be with him when that unfortunate event occurs. We’re no longer
safe
, Felix, we have little choice.’