The Orphan Factory (The Orphan Trilogy, #2) (38 page)

“Correct,” Lady Penelope replied. “Several that I’m aware of.”

All eyes turned to Von Pein. He was weighing up the risks of what was being proposed and wasn’t going to be rushed. His fellow founders were happy to give him all the time he wanted. After Lady Penelope, Von Pein was the agency’s most powerful founder given his influence over the Federal Reserve. Even so, his financial contributions of late had dried up and he was as desperate as anyone to please the Royals.

Von Pein cleared his throat to address Lady Penelope once more. “So you’re saying if Omega can take care of Ezekiel, the Monarchy will pump more monies into the agency?”

“If by that you mean if your operatives can assassinate Quamina Ezekiel, then most definitely. The family will see to it that Omega has sufficient funds to survive at least.” Lady Penelope waited for any other questions. None were forthcoming.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she announced, glancing at her watch. “I must away. I have to prepare for a teleconference with her Majesty later today.” The holographic imagery of her eyes looked directly into Naylor’s eyes. “Andrew, make no mistake. The family will cut all financial contributions to Omega unless you can deliver the desired result in Guyana.”

As he watched the holographic image fade, Naylor digested the fact that it really was crunch time for his beloved agency. That much was crystal clear. Casting his fears from his mind, he turned to Marcia Wilson. “What has your CIA intel unearthed on Ezekiel?”

“He’s been calling his mother’s residence several times a day,” Marcia said. “She’s ninety six and riddled with cancer.” The senior agent had come well prepared. Naylor had briefed her on what was likely to transpire at this make-or-break meeting of the agency’s heavyweights, and since receiving the order to travel to HQ, she had been on the phone to many of her CIA colleagues, learning as much as she could about the man of the moment, Quamina Ezekiel.

“What’s the prognosis?” Naylor asked.

Marcia could see the agency director was trying hard to contain his impatience. His lazy eye was twitching more than ever. “She’s due to die any day now.”

“Not her prognosis!” Naylor snapped. “Yours! What are you suggesting, Marcia?”

“We could put the mother out of her misery now, making it look like she died in her sleep,” Marcia said, unfazed by Naylor’s outburst.

“What the hell would that achieve?”

“Nothing in itself.” Marcia looked down at the map. “But her death would get her son out of Georgetown,” she explained, pointing to Guyana’s seaside capital. “He’s surrounded by his minders there and impossible to get to.”

“Where is his mother currently?” Naylor asked.

Marcia pointed to the Kanuku Mountains, an isolated region not far from the Brazilian border in southern Guyana. “His Mom lives here.” She looked knowingly at Naylor. “As you can see, it’s miles from anywhere.”

Naylor looked down to where Marcia’s forefinger rested. He noted the region she pointed to was shaded green, indicating it was dense jungle. Symbols denoted numerous rivers and mountains, while a lack of dots indicated there were no cities and few towns in what was clearly a sparsely populated region.

“The mom’s funeral would create a small window to terminate Ezekiel,” Marcia added.

Pondering the idea, Naylor looked around at the rest of Omega’s ruling council.

69

As their Omega masters held crisis talks at the agency’s HQ, all twenty three orphans were in the Pedemont Orphanage’s basement preparing for their first overseas missions. Looking on were Doctor Andrews, Nurse Hilda and various other personnel who included two veteran adult operatives. They were all helping the orphans – or orphan-operatives as Kentbridge now referred to them – with their preparations for their first international assignments.

The orphans would start flying out within twelve hours, and the last of them within the week. Collectively, their missions would take them to four of the seven continents.

Preparations included ensuring passports and travel documents were in order, packing suitcases, and selecting and donning disguises.

Nine was focused on perfecting his guise, as were the other half dozen orphans who were scheduled to depart later that day. Standing before a mirror at one end of the basement, Nine applied a goatee to his chin. As he did so, he spoke in Japanese, one of many languages he’d long since mastered. “My name is David Jones,” he said by way of introduction. Though his Japanese was fluent, he spoke with an affected Welsh inflection. “I am from Cardiff, Wales.” He bowed in the Japanese tradition.

He suddenly noticed a map of America on the wall beside the mirror. His eyes wandered to Washington State in the top left corner of the map and settled on Seattle. Nine was reminded of the assassination he’d conducted the day before in that city. He retraced the final actions of his
graduation assignment
. After terminating P.I. Milburn and retrieving the papers she’d taken to her apartment, he’d spent the night sifting through them. The upshot was, despite Omega’s concerns, he’d found nothing in the papers that could incriminate anyone in, or associated with, the agency. Nine worked out the woman he’d killed had died for nothing and his Omega fathers had ordered the hit simply to be prudent.

Forcing the Seattle job from his mind, Nine returned to the present.
In the mirror, he could see his fellow orphans creating their own guises. Number Two, a long-haired, brown-eyed brunette, now wore a short blonde wig and contact lenses that made her eyes appear blue; Five, one of the redheaded female twins, had dyed her hair black and wore the uniform of a flight attendant; Nineteen, the mixed-race male, was lightening his dark skin tone through clever use of makeup; and Eleven, the Beauty Orphan, was glammed up and displaying plenty of cleavage.

The purpose of the guises was not to protect their true identities, for officially the orphans did not exist except as numbers on Omega’s database. Rather, the guises were extensions of the characters all the orphans were slowly morphing into for their first overseas missions. Characters that had assumed names, passports and personal histories.

Two was to travel to Edinburgh to assassinate a Scottish conspiracy theorist and amateur journalist who had uncovered information pertaining to the Omega Agency’s existence.
Five was tasked with drugging a Russian diplomat on a trans-Atlantic flight so that he couldn’t attend a UN meeting in Germany. Nineteen had to pass himself off as a Dutchman in order to abduct a Nexus operative in Holland, while Eleven was to set a honey trap for a Ukrainian official attending a finance summit in Laos.

In Nine’s case, he was to travel to Japan to undertake a tricky surveillance assignment involving a relative of the Japanese Prime Minister.
He had to pass himself off as a Welsh language teacher graduate attending a school in Tokyo.

As he studied his fellow orphans, Nine was surprised he felt more than a little melancholy. He was mindful this could be the last time he would see some of them. From now on, he and the other orphans would continually be on assignments around the world, and usually alone. Many of those assignments would be dangerous.

Some of us may not survive what’s ahead
.

His sentimentality ended abruptly when he noticed Seventeen. His cold, blue-eyed rival was studying herself in a mirror on the basement’s opposite wall. Seventeen’s disguise was more subtle than any of the others. She had simply applied a tanning agent to her normally pale skin to give her the suntanned appearance of someone who spent most of her time in the African outdoors.

Nine knew Kentbridge had tasked Seventeen with assisting with a lucrative diamond smuggling operation in Sierra Leone. He couldn’t help noting that while her disguise was less radical than anyone else’s, she was already in character and appeared to be in no mood to take prisoners.

The ninth orphan returned his attention to his reflection in the mirror and resumed his one-way discussion in Japanese. “As I said, I am from Wales.” He bowed again. “I am spending a year in Japan, teaching English to students in Tokyo and Kyoto.” So intent was he on perfecting his character, he didn’t notice Ten watching him mischievously.

“You sure all you gonna be teaching those Japanese girls is English?” Ten asked.

Nine spun around and saw the orphanage’s resident comedian was entertaining the other orphans at his expense. Impersonating Michael Jackson, Ten placed his hand over his genitals and began moonwalking across the basement floor while rapping. There the likeness to Michael ended: Ten was rapping in fluent Japanese.

“Tommy sent Nine to Japan to collect intelligence on the country’s head, yet good old Nine ended up collecting Geisha girls instead!” Ten rapped. “The eager young man returned expecting a pat on the back, but all he received was a dose of the clap!”

Those orphans within earshot laughed at Ten’s cheeky humor. They’d each been the butt of his jokes on many an occasion, so it was always a relief when he picked on someone else.

Nine knew they’d miss Ten’s shenanigans. He had brought some light into their dark world without even realizing it.

Suddenly feeling great affection for Ten, Nine strode over to him as if to reprimand him. Ten saw him coming and adopted an exaggerated karate stance, berating Nine in Japanese. The pair began to engage in an impromptu martial arts duel, to the delight of the others who crowded around them, egging them on. With each kick he directed at Nine’s head, Ten made high-pitched, Bruce Lee-like shrieks.

Nine burst out laughing. They were both soon laughing so hard, they couldn’t continue fighting. Nine suddenly hugged Ten. The resident joker became serious. It was as if he, too, recognized this could be the last time they would ever see each other.

70

The Omega Agency’s founders, together with Marcia Wilson, reassembled in the HQ’s boardroom following a brief lunch adjournment. They were confronted by a floor-to-ceiling video screen on the wall behind Naylor. No sooner had they sat down than the agency head pressed a button on a wireless remote.

A man’s face filled the screen. His features were distinctly South American Indian. The fiftysomething man was being interviewed in a television studio. Flickering black and white images and a fuzzy soundtrack signaled the footage was dated and shot on a low budget.

“Excuse the quality of the film,” Naylor said. “It gets better as it goes on.”

Having already been briefed, the Omegans were aware they were watching rare footage of one Quamina Ezekiel, a little-known, but highly influential Guyanese intelligence official. At six foot four, the man’s imposing countenance was magnified on the fifteen foot high screen.

“I am a proud citizen and patriot of Guyana,” Ezekiel proclaimed in a deep, gravely voice. “I was named after the hero of the Demerara Rebellion.” He was referring to his namesake, Quamina, who led the great revolt of 1823 when ten thousand slaves rebelled in the former Crown colony of Demerara-Essequibo. “I would never betray Guyana.”

Naylor knew the former Guyanese Army Colonel was telling the truth. At least it was the truth as he knew it. But deep in the recesses of Ezekiel’s mind resided a terrible secret – something that had occurred in the jungles of Guyana twenty years earlier.

“So he’s a sleeper agent?” Marcia asked as she watched the Guyanese.

Naylor nodded. Next to him, Von Pein scribbled something on a notepad. Naylor glanced at the note. It read:
MK-Ultra
.

The Omega director was very aware of the CIA’s insidious mind control program, which had been used to employ advanced mind control techniques on unwitting subjects. He had it on good authority that recent MK-Ultra victims included Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh as well as the Branch Davidians at the Waco compound in Texas.

“I voluntarily entered Jonestown only days before the deaths,” Ezekiel said in response to his interviewer’s latest question.

Again, Naylor knew Ezekiel was speaking the truth only as he knew it and not as it truly was. The sleeper agent had been under the influence of mind control when he entered Jonestown just days before the so-called mass suicide of more than nine hundred of Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple followers in 1978. Omega had discovered the Nexus Foundation had brainwashed Ezekiel and thirty other agents using the MK-Ultra program, and planted them in Jonestown.

A knock at the door prompted Naylor to stop the film. “Come in!” he shouted.

The door opened and Kentbridge walked in. “Afternoon all,” Kentbridge said to his fellow Omegans as he sat down next to Marcia. The special agent looked remarkably fresh despite not having slept since Naylor had woken him with an early morning phone call, ordering him to attend today’s meeting. He glanced at the video screen and saw the frozen image of Ezekiel.

Naylor was pleased to see Kentbridge. He felt it was important the head of the Pedemont Project be present for what was coming up. “Quamina Ezekiel,” Naylor said as he pointed to the screen. “He’s in Guyanese Intelligence,” the Omega director continued. “Officially, Ezekiel holds a low-level government position, but that’s just a smokescreen.” Naylor paused for effect. “What do you know about Jonestown?”

Kentbridge shrugged. “Just what I saw on the news at the time. Nine hundred odd people drank cyanide and died, right?”

Next to Naylor, founding member Bill Sterling chuckled. “Jonestown was one big Trojan Horse, Tommy.” The software magnate slid the Quamina Ezekiel file along the table top to Kentbridge. He continued speaking as the special agent scanned the dossiers on Ezekiel and Jonestown. “The cult and the resulting deaths appeared to be very straightforward on the surface, but weren’t what they seemed.”

The
Trojan Horse
Sterling had referred to reflected his belief that the truth about Jonestown had never been revealed to the American people. A belief shared by his fellow co-founders. They were certain that while there were undoubtedly suicides at Jonestown, the event could more accurately be described as a mass murder that resulted from an experiment of sorts carried out by various US agencies.