The Black Knight

XXX

‘This isn’t going to work.’

Michael Vaughn drove the pool car through the densely packed streets north of the Upper East Side and Central Park. The Pierre Hotel was just visible through the trees as Lopez peered at it and replied.

‘It’s going to work better than sitting around waiting for these people to just show themselves to us. Majestic Twelve aren’t going to file out of the front entrance waving at the crowds, y’know, and this is where Wilms went after we lost Mitchell. He hasn’t come out since.’

‘I didn’t suggest that they would,’ Vaughn countered. ‘Just that their surveillance would have ensured that every single point of access and egress would be covered in an area like this. We won’t be able to get anywhere near enough to them to record any visual or audio.’

Lopez smiled to herself. ‘You leave that to me.’

Vaughn shook his head as he drove. ‘It’s really just like having Hannah sitting here.’

‘Hannah Ford is a pale imitation, literally,’ Lopez replied without interest as she surveyed the street ahead. ‘Accept no substitutes.’

Vaughn turned south on 5th Avenue, the trees of Central Park on one side and pale sunlight flickering through the leaves as Lopez searched for a suitable spot. She knew that they could not risk driving directly past the front of the hotel — MJ-12 would not have neglected to post guards who would most likely be on the lookout for her after the failed assassination attempt. That left Michael Vaughn, who would be able to monitor the location while Lopez got to work.

‘There,’ Lopez said as she saw one of the city’s distinctive yellow cabs pull away from the sidewalk.

Vaughn pulled into the gap left by the cab as Lopez opened her door and got out before climbing back into the rear of the vehicle. Vaughn killed the engine and watched her in the rear view mirror as she grabbed a large ruck-sack and opened it.

‘You really think that thing will get us a good enough look at MJ-12 to break the cabal open?’

Lopez unpacked a glossy black device, eighteen inches square with a horizontal four inch blade on each corner set into the frame. Along with it she produced a control unit, similar to those used by the operators of remote-controlled aircraft.

‘Hellerman is a genius,’ she replied as she set the drone down beside her on the seat and opened the battery compartment. ‘He’s bred real bees that he hooks up to electrodes and flies around, controlling their brains. Modifying one of these things is child’s play to him.’

‘Why not just send one of his bees in instead?’ Vaughn asked.

‘Too small,’ Lopez explained as she installed the batteries and then began checking the cameras attached to the underside of the drone. ‘They can’t record footage easily, so we needed something big enough to carry a high-resolution camera and a solid state drive to record the data. Hellerman figures it’ll fly with the camera working for about thirty minutes on these high-density batteries before we’ll need to land it.’

Vaughn looked down the street at the edifice of the distant hotel.

‘If they spot it they’ll shoot it down,’ he pointed out. ‘If they get hold of it the whole thing’s a bust.’

‘Full of optimism, aren’t you?’ Lopez murmured from the back seat as she worked. ‘The drone’s fitted with a data relay device which will send everything it records back here to my laptop computer, which you’ll be monitoring. Once we have a good shot of the group, we’re out of here.’

Vaughn said nothing more as Lopez finished setting up the drone and the computer and then looked at a cell phone attached to the dash of the vehicle. Upon the screen was a small red dot moving through Manhattan and closing in on the Pierre Hotel. Doug Jarvis had deployed a small team of DIA operatives to track Gordon LeMay as he went about his business outside of the FBI, and that business had led them to Manhattan. Whatever the Director of the FBI was up to, he’d decided to fly to New York City and that had coincided closely with Mitchell’s encounter with Wilms, before the enigmatic agent had vanished into thin air.

‘Almost there,’ Vaughn said as he scanned the screen. ‘You ready?’

Lopez leaned across the back seat and opened the driver’s side rear window, the sound of the bustling traffic and a gust of cool air flooding the car as she flipped a switch on the drone and activated her control unit.

The drone’s ducted-fan engines spun up with an electric whine and the drone lifted up off the seat alongside Lopez as she deftly hovered the craft in the rear of the vehicle and guided it toward the open window.

‘Stand by,’ Vaughn said as he glanced in his rear view mirror. A flow of vehicles, cabs and goods trucks eased past their car, and then a gap appeared in the traffic. ‘Go!’

Lopez pushed the control column forward and the drone hummed out of the window and over the street outside. Lopez immediately increased the power and the drone ascended rapidly out of sight into the bright sky above as she switched her attention from the drone to another laptop propped against the rear passenger door opposite her.

Through a camera attached to the bottom of the drone she could see the busy street below the drone as it climbed ever higher into the sky. The densely packed buildings to its right contrasted sharply with the angular expanses of greenery to its left as Central Park came into view. She smiled mischievously as she saw their own vehicle tucked in against the sidewalk.

‘This is cool,’ she whispered as she flew the drone.

‘Stay focused,’ Vaughn replied as he watched the traffic flow. ‘LeMay’s coming past us right now.’

Lopez forced herself to focus on the screen and not look outside as she hovered the drone three hundred feet above Manhattan.

‘Passing us…,’ Vaughn said, ‘…now.’

‘Got him.’

Lopez saw the silver Mercedes in the drone’s sights as it passed by, heard the whisper quiet engine and the hum of its tires on the asphalt as it passed them on its way to the Pierre Hotel.

‘You think that you can pick him up once he goes inside?’ Vaughn asked. ‘We won’t be able to see him inside the hotel, and the DIA only bugged his vehicle not his clothes.’

Lopez nodded, replying as she kept her gaze fixed to the screen.

‘He’s meeting Majestic Twelve. I figure nothing else will do for them but the Penthouse Suite.’

Gordon LeMay checked his tie one last time as he walked through the foyer of the Pierre Hotel and into an elevator, the bell hop pressing the button for the top floor without the need to be asked. The hotel had been informed of LeMay’s arrival by the driver and the door staff, and everything prepared for his smooth passage through the hotel.

The elevator hummed quickly up to the top floor and opened onto a thickly carpeted corridor. The bell hop did not follow LeMay out, under strict orders along with all of the other staff to remain clear of the top floor. The elevator door closed behind LeMay and he turned toward the only open door before him at the far end of the corridor.

Somehow, he knew that there would be no turning back after this. Once he had been fully welcomed into the fold of Majestic Twelve there could be no leaving, no changing his mind, which was damned well fine with him. He was done with the stress of the intelligence community and more concerned with ensuring his own survival of any Congressional investigation into his conduct as Director of the FBI than anything else. Membership of Majestic Twelve would ensure that such irritations would be swept away and his future secured.

LeMay walked through the open door and saw a figure close it behind him. Victor Wilms was standing with his hand on the door handle, sealing LeMay into the elaborate room, which was occupied by eleven men that at a glance he knew represented Majestic Twelve.

‘Gentlemen,’ he greeted them.

‘What news from Antarctica?’ asked the tall, gaunt leader of the group.

No greetings. No ceremony. Down to business it was then, LeMay realized, but as a man who often gave the President his daily intelligence briefing he was used to being prepared.

‘The team have accessed the tunnel system beneath the ice and have reached the base concealed within,’ he reported. ‘Communications are patchy at best, but I have it on good authority that the DIA team dispatched before us is now pinned inside with no means of escape. There have been casualties, but there will be no evidence of our presence at the site.’

Another of the men peered at LeMay.

‘The DIA reached the artifact before your men?’

‘Yes,’ LeMay replied, ‘an unfortunate eventuality but not one that could be avoided. They are, as you are no doubt aware, supported by US Navy SEALs and well equipped. But their success in reaching the base first means nothing if they cannot escape.’

The gaunt man shook his head.

‘Support will reach them soon, likely a nuclear submarine or perhaps even a major fleet,’ he cautioned. ‘It is imperative that this is brought to a close before such reinforcements can arrive in the area.’

‘It will be,’ LeMay assured them. ‘My people are under strict instructions to either escape the area with Black Knight in their possession, or if that proves impossible to destroy all trace of the site and the DIA team. We either get what we want, or nobody does.’

The leader of the group nodded and then stood. Despite his obvious advancing years he projected an aura of menace and competence that unnerved LeMay as he glared down at him.

‘Your work has impressed us,’ he said, ‘and your commitment to our cause has not gone unnoticed despite the danger to your own career. You are certain, Gordon, that you have not been tracked to this location?’

LeMay realized that he had not until now been called by his given name, that the act of doing so was likely a major concession in the silent war of wills between them.

‘Nobody knows that I am here with you,’ LeMay assured him. ‘I am visiting family in the city.’

‘Good,’ the tall man said, ‘then it is time for you to come out of the cold. We know that your position as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is coming to an end as a result of the work you have done for us. We will ensure that your exit will be without any political or criminal discomfort.’

LeMay beamed. ‘That would be much appreciated.’

‘Furthermore,’ the gaunt man went on, ‘we should like to hold a small ceremony, a tradition if you will, that has been a part of our history and will formally welcome you among our number. You, my friend, will become Number Four.’

LeMay’s eyebrow raised in surprise. ‘I am to replace a member?’

The gaunt man, evidently Number One, chuckled although LeMay could detect no true humor.

‘We have a great deal of power,’ he replied as the rest of the members got to their feet, ‘but we do not yet have control over our longevity. I am not the first leader of this cabal and I shall not be the last. The previous Number Four was a man named Dwight Oppenheimer, who ironically was involved in searching for the elixir, the fountain of youth, several years ago in New Mexico. He died at the hands of a man whom I believe you to be familiar, one Ethan Warner?’

LeMay’s expression darkened. ‘I know of him.’

‘Then your first mission, once our Antarctic business is complete, will be to eradicate Warner and his partner, Lopez. You will be a part of our future, Gordon, and we shall celebrate that formally tomorrow. But for now, congratulations.’

Number One extended a thin, wiry hand laced with purple veins that Gordon LeMay shook vigorously as the other men in the room clapped politely and Victor Wilms handed LeMay a champagne flute.