Immortal

5

The sedans guided them north on Harlem Avenue before turning off the highway into Waldheim Cemetery. Lonely ranks of gravestones spread across several acres of carefully manicured lawns shaded by hundreds of trees. Ethan followed the lead car until it pulled into a secluded spot off Greenburg Road in the northwest corner of the cemetery.

Ethan killed the engine and looked in his mirrors suspiciously.

‘What the hell is this shit, man?’ Mickey Ferranto whined. ‘I want to speak to my attorney.’

Lopez shot him a toxic look.

‘See all these gravestones, Mickey? You wanna join them, you just keep talking.’

Ethan climbed out of the SUV and closed the door. Lopez joined him. For a moment, nothing moved. Then two men climbed out of each vehicle, all sporting gray suits, designer shades and earpieces. They moved to guard the SUV, one of them gesturing to the still open doors of the sedan ahead.

‘Great disguise, guys,’ Ethan said as he moved toward the car. ‘We’d never have known.’

The men ignored Ethan, instead standing rigidly to attention as he walked to the sedan and climbed into the rear seat. Lopez joined him from the other side.

‘Very cloak and dagger,’ Ethan said as they closed the doors. ‘Are we off to Tracy Island?’

Douglas Jarvis, an elderly man dressed immaculately in a dark blue suit that contrasted with his neatly parted white hair, turned in the front seat and offered Ethan a grin.

‘I see you’re back to your usual self, Ethan.’ He looked at Lopez. ‘Nicola, how’s things?’

‘Could be busier,’ she replied cautiously. ‘What’s the occasion? And why not call us instead of damn near running us off the road?’

‘Security,’ Jarvis replied calmly. ‘Calls can be monitored, and we want our little accord with you two to remain discreet, remember? The Defense Intelligence Agency has uncovered an anomalous incident that occurred twenty-four hours ago in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The trail’s already gone cold and management aren’t keen to send agency resources in to investigate.’

‘Which is where we come in, right?’ Ethan said.

Douglas Jarvis had once been the captain of a United States Marines rifle platoon, a post he had held when Ethan had served as a lieutenant in the Corps. Their friendship, cemented during the invasion of Iraq, had extended to Jarvis’s current employment with the Defense Intelligence Agency and to their unusual, discreet accord with Warner/Lopez Inc.

‘Command and control won’t throw money at this, and the Pentagon’s certainly not interested,’ Jarvis confirmed. ‘It’s the perfect case, well worth your time.’

‘What’s the story?’ Lopez asked, curious, despite herself.

Jarvis produced a glossy black file and handed it to her.

‘Santa Fe Medical Examiner autopsied the remains of a desert bum by the name of Hiram Conley, found dead after a clash with state troopers. Ten hours after Hiram Conley died his remains were described as mummified. The examiner attempted to extract material from the body and found an intact bullet that fell from the victim’s shoulder, and another, older one lodged in his right femur. They got the older bullet to the state crime laboratory for tests.’

‘So what’s the big deal?’ Ethan asked.

Jarvis gestured to the file that Lopez was holding.

‘The state laboratory ran tests on the bullet, which was found to be a musket ball, and we picked up jurisdiction of the case after they made inquiries to the FBI at Quantico. Carbon dating, along with estimates of bone regrowth around the ball prior to extraction, confirms that the wound was sustained approximately one hundred forty years ago.’

Ethan stared at Jarvis.

‘That’s not possible. A hundred forty years?’

‘The tests must have been contaminated,’ Lopez said, opening the file. ‘If the wound had been opened to extract the bullet, anything could have gotten in.’

‘The bullet was lodged firmly in the bone,’ Jarvis said, ‘the medical examiner’s pictures show it clearly. And the tests were run three separate times, once by the state laboratory and twice by specialists on my own team at the DIA when we took over the case. All the tests confirmed the age of the wound.’

Ethan forced himself to think clearly.

‘We should get in touch with the medical examiner first, find out everything we can about where the body was found. The troopers who shot him need to be questioned too.’

‘Already done,’ Jarvis said, ‘and all parties signed nondisclosure agreements. However, the medical examiner has vanished and we need her found. Fast.’

‘What happened?’ Lopez asked.

‘An attack on the facility at the morgue. The lab assistant got the musket ball out of the lab for tests, but by the time she’d returned the medical examiner had disappeared, as had all of the evidence. The gurney and the surrounding work surfaces had been completely cleaned-out, not even trace evidence remained.’

‘A professional job,’ Ethan murmured, his interest now piqued.

‘We have camera footage but it’s grainy, shot from a nearby building. Whoever did the job was smart enough to take out the medical facility’s own cameras before they went in. Four men: black jump suits, Halloween-style face masks. Somebody wanted that body real bad,’ Jarvis said. ‘The DIA has an interest, but there’s no way we can send a team down there without the Pentagon signing off on it, and with the budget the way it is they’ll shut us down before we can do any good.’

Ethan nodded, glancing out of the sedan’s windows at the cemetery outside.

‘So what do you think this is? Some kind of freak ghost story?’

Jarvis smiled thinly.

‘I’ll leave the detective work to you both, but for what it’s worth this guy Conley shot his way out of the Pecos wilderness wearing Civil War era Union battlefield dress and speaking in what was described by the troopers as an archaic dialect.’ Jarvis glanced at the file. ‘Whatever’s going on down there it’s in the interests of the United States Government to understand it.’

Ethan nodded and looked at Lopez.

‘You did say you wanted something decent to go after.’

‘New Mexico,’ Lopez murmured thoughtfully. ‘Closer to home, and there’s at least two bail-runners from Illinois thought to be holed up somewhere down there. Multi-tasking. We’ll do it.’

Jarvis eyed her for a long moment.

‘Good, although I need to know that the DIA can count on you, Lopez, after what happened out at Cedar Lake.’

Ethan glanced at his partner, waiting to see her response. They had agreed to keep her indiscretion on the South Shore between themselves, but clearly Jarvis’s reach went further than Ethan had realized. A lot further.

‘It was a one-off,’ Lopez said, refusing to be cowed. ‘Deal’s a deal; it went down, went wrong and then went away, okay?’

Jarvis nodded, letting it go. The fact that Lopez, having taken a low-life drug dealer and bail-runner called Adam McKenzie into custody had then accepted a bribe for releasing him, hadn’t bothered Ethan as much as he’d thought it might. Lopez was supporting herself in Chicago as well as sending much of her meager salary back home to her family south of the border in Guanajuato. Her parents were, like so many people in Mexico, crippled by poverty and reliant upon Lopez’s generosity to sustain their home. Without it, they would join the legions of beggars groveling on the streets, and at their age they wouldn’t last long. Cash was cash and Lopez needed a lot. Ethan hadn’t realized just how badly until that day.

She gave him an accusing sideways glance, but he ignored her and looked instead at Jarvis.

‘I’m almost afraid to ask, but what support will we have?’

‘Limited tactical and law enforcement,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Local police know that you’ve got jurisdiction in this case — I can help indirectly, but the DIA will retain deniability in all eventualities. The President won’t want investigations like these all over the media if word should get out, and the Pentagon would rather have the conspiracy theorists chasing after your agency than ours.’

‘Convenient,’ Lopez said as she closed the file. ‘Anything else?’

‘Conley was involved in an argument with a man named Tyler Willis, who he then shot, starting the whole fracas. I’d start there if I were you.’ Jarvis handed Ethan a clear plastic bag which contained a yellowing slip of paper. ‘Hiram Conley’s social security details, found on him when he died. They check out, but they’re identical to those of an alias we think he was using previously, Abner Conley. We didn’t have access to records going back that far at the DIA, so you’ll have to chase them down in Santa Fe. Whoever this guy really was he used multiple identities, and there’s always a reason for that.’