The Black Knight

XXIII

Doug Jarvis walked down the corridor of the holding cells with no less than eight armed men escorting him, all of them professional soldiers and DIA agents. Ahead, three security gates stood between them and the cells, of which there were just ten.

The security guards accessed the gates one by one, always sealing the last behind them before entering the next, until Jarvis was admitted to the cells. Only one was occupied, a red light active above the cell door. He waited as the guards approached the door and shouted their commands.

‘Mitchell, step up to the door, hands behind your back!’

Jarvis heard the shuffling of chains as Mitchell obeyed the commands, and through a hatch in the six-inch thick steel the guards manacled his wrists together before daring to open the cell door.

Jarvis watched as they stood back and beckoned Mitchell out, the towering man shuffling into the corridor. Even in prison fatigues Mitchell still cut an impressive figure for his age, standing a head above the guards who were not themselves small men. Jarvis wondered how such a physically imposing individual could have remained hidden, allegedly dead, for so many decades.

Mitchell turned to Jarvis, locking eyes with him as he stood in silence in the corridor and waited. Jarvis chose his words with care, uncertain of the assassin’s motives.

‘You turned yourself in,’ he said simply, ‘not what I would have expected from a lifelong servant of Majestic Twelve.’

‘Like I said,’ Mitchell rumbled in response, ‘things have changed.’

‘Haven’t they just,’ Jarvis said as he sauntered across to a heavily-barred window and perched on the ledge. ‘You’ve put me in an interesting position, Aaron. On the one hand I now have a captive who could tell me a great deal about Majestic Twelve, and on the other I have to ask myself what you have to gain by being here?’

‘Majestic Twelve sold me out,’ he replied. ‘They were willing to let me rot, and I wasn’t willing to trust that they would extricate me from the security max facility in which the FBI deposited me.’

‘And on whose orders do you believe you were incarcerated?’

Mitchell’s sombre features cracked into a smile. ‘You know that’s not how this game works, Mister Jarvis.’

‘You’re well informed,’ Jarvis replied, ‘there aren’t many people outside of the DIA who know my name, which merely tells me that you know a great deal more besides and that you’re not in any position to negotiate terms of any kind.’

‘I didn’t come here to negotiate.’

‘Just as well,’ Jarvis said, ‘as we know damned well who put you in the security max, just as we know of the connection of various senior level FBI operatives to Majestic Twelve. Your employers’ little scheme is beginning to unwind, Mitchell, and your arrest and incarceration is just the beginning.’

‘The Antarctic is where it will end,’ Mitchell said, ‘and you don’t have long to put a stop to it.’

Jarvis managed not to let his expression slip as he kept his gaze on Mitchell.

‘The Antarctic,’ he echoed, ‘and what would that have to do with Majestic Twelve?’

‘Like I said,’ Mitchell repeated, ‘that’s not how we play this game.’

Jarvis looked at his shoes for a moment in thought before he replied.

‘You know, of course, that handing you over to the Feds would be a wonderful way of placing an operative inside the enemy on the pretence of defection?’

Mitchell nodded.

‘Which was why I ensured that Lopez was not harmed,’ Mitchell replied. ‘I knew that as soon as I escaped from custody MJ-12 would initiate a clean-up mission to prevent me from gaining leverage to seek refuge with their enemies. That’s why they attacked Lopez when they did, and it was only good fortune that I got to her in time or I would not be standing here.’

‘Where would you be then?’

‘Forgotten,’ Mitchell replied. ‘Even today, it’s possible to disappear completely if you really want to.’

‘Majestic Twelve would find you eventually,’ Jarvis countered.

‘Perhaps, but then that’s why I’m here. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. You help me to retire in peace and I’ll help you dismantle Majestic Twelve one piece at a time.’

Jarvis weighed up the pros and cons of Mitchell’s likelihood of deception. This was a man who had once crushed another beneath a twenty ton shipping container in Dubai. He had killed, repeatedly, murdering Stanley Meyer and many others during the long course of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s mission to expose and destroy MJ-12, and now he was standing before Jarvis and offering his assistance.

‘You’re going to have to give me something to work with that I can verify and fast,’ Jarvis demanded. ‘I’m not about to open our doors to a paid killer on empty promises.’

Mitchell nodded.

‘I wouldn’t expect you to, and besides, I have a personal reason to expose as many of MJ-12’s assets to you as possible at an early stage. I know that one of them personally was responsible for my incarceration in Colorado.’

‘Whom?’

Mitchell took a breath.

‘Gordon LeMay,’ he replied finally, ‘Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He is the primary senior officer within the intelligence community currently in MJ-12’s pocket and responsible for…’

‘Tell us something we don’t know,’ Jarvis cut him off wearily. ‘We’ve known about LeMay for months. Tell me something new and interesting or I’ll have you sent for a swim wearing concrete slippers.’

Mitchell’s expression darkened.

‘Then perhaps you should look into a man who goes by the name of Victor Wilms,’ Mitchell said.

‘Who is Wilms?’

‘He’s a former Green Beret, served in the earliest days of the Vietnam War before transferring to MJ-12, or perhaps what he thought was a government branch at the time. He was responsible for recruiting me in DC forty years ago, and still holds a position of great trust within MJ-12.’

Jarvis eyed Mitchell suspiciously for a moment.

‘To what degree would this handler of yours be useful to us?’

‘I believe that he knows personally the founders and leaders of Majestic Twelve.’

Jarvis raised an eyebrow as though the revelation was no big deal to him, but his mind was already turning rapidly. With LeMay their single lead in hoping to identify the leaders of MJ-12, and with the embattled director likely now as much of a liability as an asset to the cabal, there was no guarantee that he would be meeting senior figures within MJ-12 any time soon. Dispatching Lopez and Vaughn to watch the director was costly in terms of time and manpower, and a long shot when there was no immediate likelihood of him meeting Majestic Twelve’s shadowy leadership.

But if Mitchell could identify and lead them to Wilms, a man with a far more likely chance of encountering the heads of MJ-12, then the DIA would have achieved a considerable intelligence coup against one of the most nefarious criminal organizations that had ever existed.

Jarvis offered Mitchell a wry smile.

‘And I take it that in order to expose this Wilms, if that’s his real name, you would have to be released to make contact?’

Mitchell nodded.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Wilms and I are not on the best of terms, but as I’m on the loose he may fear for his life as a result. The same will be true of LeMay — both have betrayed me, and Wilms has already voiced a fear of retribution on my part. If I attempt to meet with him on his own terms, to give him the confidence that I don’t intend to ice him, then you’ll be able to identify and tail him.’

Jarvis frowned. ‘You think that MJ-12 will respond to that?’

‘They will not want to lose Wilms as an asset, and if Wilms can be convinced that I’m no longer a threat then they may be more comfortable meeting him,’ Mitchell replied. ‘All that’s required is that MJ-12 believe that I have acted alone and that I am not in your custody. Your agents will be able to follow me and track me as much as they wish, I’m not running anywhere.’

‘You’ve displayed a remarkable knack for evading arrest,’ Jarvis said. ‘My superiors are not going to want you walking the streets at all, monitored or not.’

‘I can’t bring you Wilms while I’m shackled in a cell,’ Mitchell pointed out. ‘The longer I’m here the more chance there will be of MJ-12 learning of my location and realizing that I’m now working for the DIA, or worse closing ranks and making themselves even harder to locate.’

Jarvis bit his lip, unsure of whether Mitchell’s plan would be enough to convince Nellis to cut Mitchell loose.

‘They’ll need more,’ Jarvis said. ‘How much do you know about Antarctica?’

Mitchell tilted his head as he replied.

‘Not as much as I’d like right now,’ he admitted, ‘but the plan to recover Black Knight has been years in the making. I take it that you have personnel involved in an attempt to recover the device as we speak?’

‘We have a team in the region,’ was all that Jarvis was willing to share.

‘Then they will be going toe to toe with a man named General Andrei Veer,’ Mitchell said. ‘He’s an American of Lithuanian descent and former Army Ranger recruit who was thrown out of his training cadre shortly before graduation for striking a senior officer. He’s built himself a nice little career heading mercenary units in countries like Bosnia, Syria, Afghanistan and others. Wilms uses him for paramilitary ventures that need to be kept under the radar, operations funded by Majestic Twelve.’

‘How do you know this?’ Jarvis enquired.

‘Because I hired him,’ Mitchell replied. ‘Veer is a blunt instrument, the difference between a lock-pick and a grenade. He’s not stupid however, and he has the ability to raise hundreds of men to his banner if the price is right, mostly disaffected soldiers who were thrown out of their own regiments for various crimes. He always picks from elite units: airborne, rangers, Special Forces even if he can recruit them, and they rely on superior numbers and firepower to achieve their objectives. How many people do you have on the ground in Antarctica?’

Jarvis smiled tightly.

‘We deployed an advance force of twelve Navy SEALs, supporting a small team of scientists.’

Mitchell stared at Jarvis as though he was insane.

‘You sent twelve men on one of the most important recovery missions in human history?’

‘We needed to be discreet.’

‘They’ll need a damned miracle,’ Mitchell shot back. ‘Where’s Ethan Warner?’

‘Embedded with the SEALs,’ Jarvis replied, ‘along with Hannah Ford.’

Mitchell nodded and held up his wrists.

‘Wilms is the man holding the sword of Damocles over the Antarctic,’ Mitchell explained. ‘If things go wrong for them down there, he’ll destroy the entire site and everything in it.’

‘How?’ Jarvis demanded.

‘Like I said, that’s not how we play this game,’ Mitchell said as he held up his manacled wrists. ‘If you want me to get Wilms we’re going to have to move fast because if I can’t get him to help you identify MJ-12, your boy Warner and his team are as good as dead.’