The Chimera Secret

18

‘When Ethan disappeared the government placed watch-cells on all of you,’ Ben informed her. ‘This is high-level covert surveillance, with all that it entails. I’ve never seen so many resources directed in this way at a single family before. The surveillance itself is not uncommon, but this level and persistence is. I’m guessing it’s because they hoped that Ethan would turn up either at home or at your university.’

‘But he didn’t,’ she said, struggling to understand why on earth anybody at the CIA would be keeping her entire family under surveillance. She worked at Congress, for Christ’s sake, so wasn’t hard to find. Her parents were retired and rarely left Illinois, their mother now too frail for long-distance travel. The level of surveillance simply wasn’t justified.

‘No,’ Ben said, ‘he turned up in Israel. That’s where everything closes.’

Natalie looked at him. ‘Just like that?’

‘Totally,’ Ben replied, looking up at Guy Rikard’s desk to ensure he wasn’t listening in. ‘It’s like suddenly the entire department just shuts down the files as though it had never had the slightest interest in Ethan Warner.’

Natalie frowned. ‘But it says the surveillance is currently active?’

‘That’s what I don’t get either,’ Ben agreed. ‘They’re still watching you all, Natalie. Weirder still, whatever Ethan got up to in Israel has been completely rinsed from the system.’ He turned to her. ‘What happened to him out there?’

Natalie sighed and shook her head.

‘Nobody knows and he certainly doesn’t talk about it. All I know is that he went out there at short notice then came back a few days later. Suddenly he had an apartment, money and was hooking up with a Latino woman called Nicola. She’s some kind of ex-cop or detective out of DC.’

‘Ah,’ Ben said, shuffling through his handful of printed pages. ‘Yeah, here you go. Nicola Lopez, formerly one of DC’s finest. She founded Warner & Lopez Inc with Ethan the year before last. Bail bondsmen and investigators. Quite a turnaround for your brother. You think this Nicola had something to do with it?’

‘Maybe,’ Natalie said absent-mindedly as she thought about her brother. Members of staff walked to and fro between the ranks of desks, and she waited for a pair to pass out of earshot before speaking. ‘But he only starts working with her upon returning from Israel. So whatever happened to him probably occurred beforehand.’

Ben cast a glance across the pages. ‘Joanna then?’

Natalie nodded, thinking hard about the video footage of Joanna that Ethan had mentioned back in Chicago. Not having seen it herself, she did not feel as though it could be used as evidence to further her cause. Besides, Ethan had said he had seen the footage only recently.

‘Maybe he found something else out there in Israel, some new information that gave him hope. Not long after he founded this company with Lopez, he showed up at home and started talking to our pa again. Believe me, that’s a big deal.’

Ben leaned back in his chair.

‘Doesn’t explain why the government is still watching Ethan, unless it’s not Ethan they’re interested in.’

‘Joanna,’ Natalie agreed. ‘There must be something about her that they’re keen on. It’s maybe why they put us all under surveillance, in case she showed up.’

‘Which means they also think that she’s alive.’

She forced herself to calm down, taking slow deep breaths and clearing her mind of obstructive thought. Focus.

‘File gets opened when Joanna disappears,’ she murmured to herself, ‘gets closed a while afterward, then gets opened again when Ethan heads back to the Middle East for reasons unknown…’

Natalie saw in her mind’s eye Ethan sitting opposite her in the restaurant. The name popped into her head of its own accord.

‘Defense Intelligence Agency,’ she said.

‘DIA?’ Ben echoed. ‘What connects them to Ethan?’

‘He mentioned them,’ she said. ‘Ethan told me that he and Lopez do work occasionally for the DIA, something to do with cases that are rejected by other agencies.’

‘Cold cases?’

‘No,’ Natalie said. ‘He was kind of cagey about it, wouldn’t say what they were about.’

Ben thought for a moment.

‘It would explain how Ethan got back into Israel so fast, and also why the CIA were taken out of the loop. The DIA runs its business with a certain amount of autonomy from the other agencies. CIA might have gotten pissed about that and kept Ethan under watch.’

Natalie felt a sense of dread creep across her shoulders. ‘They could be watching me right now,’ she said. ‘They could have bugged my phone, my apartment, anything.’

Ben nodded. ‘Especially now you’re part of an investigation into the CIA,’ he said. ‘You can’t trust anybody, Natalie. Not right now, anyway.’

They sat in silence for a long moment before a voice cut in between them.

‘Does that say what I think it says?’

Natalie turned and saw Guy Rikard’s beady little eyes scan the pages spread across her desk. She hastily swept them aside but Guy smiled at her.

‘Too late,’ he said, and tapped his head with one stubby finger. ‘All in here now.’

Ben stood up and confronted Guy. ‘How about you take off?’

Natalie stood up and put herself between them. She placed a hand against Ben’s chest to hold him back and shot Rikard a dirty look.

‘Good advice, don’t you think, Guy?’ she said.

Rikard’s face flushed red but his eyes flickered with panic as he looked at Ben.

‘Go ahead,’ he uttered. ‘You’ll be in jail by this afternoon.’

Natalie felt Ben press toward Rikard, but the older man backed away with a sneer and strode off back toward his desk.

Natalie turned away from him and thought for a moment before making a decision. The first thing she needed to do was confirm whether or not she was actually under surveillance, and there was really only one way to do that.

‘I’m heading out,’ she said, and picked up her bag and keys.

‘You want help?’ Ben offered.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she replied. ‘Try not to kill Guy while I’m gone, okay?’

Rikard saw her leaving and called across to her.

‘I can’t make lunch today, honey, maybe tomorrow if that’s okay?’

Several faces looked up in surprise. Natalie smiled back at Rikard as she swept from the office.

‘Sure, Guy, let me know when hell freezes over.’

A flutter of chuckles followed her out of the door.