The Chimera Secret

31

Natalie walked into the agency’s foyer with her visitor’s pass attached to the lapel of her jacket. She felt like an imposter as she strode through a series of security checks and into the building proper. Truth was, she wouldn’t have gotten into the building at all were it not for Ethan’s friendship with Douglas Jarvis, even on the back of the Congressional investigation’s mandate. People didn’t just walk into the DIA for a chat. You asked, you waited, and you generally got denied.

Jarvis had, for whatever reason, agreed to meet her.

Natalie had taken the time to pull what files the committee could access on Douglas Jarvis. Born in 1950, Brooklyn, New York, Jarvis had been educated in New Jersey and had joined the corps right after graduating.

Jarvis had shipped out to Vietnam in 1968 and served with the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines near Da Nang during the Tet Offensive, surviving two tours before the division was pulled out of the country in 1971. Battle-hardened and no doubt scarred as so many were after the horrors witnessed during the conflict, Jarvis had served the corps with distinction but had not sought the higher ranks. He had been just a captain when he had commanded Ethan’s rifle platoon with the 15th Expeditionary Force in 2003, and by then his age precluded his participation in front-line combat duty. Frustrated by his limited operational options, Jarvis had finally left the corps at the age of fifty-four and joined the intelligence community at the Pentagon before transferring into the DIA to head up some kind of paramilitary unit within the agency.

That, apparently, was where the story ended.

Natalie suspected that it was almost certainly where the story began.

An elevator carried her up to the fourth floor and, moments later, she was outside an unassuming office door with Jarvis’s name upon a polished aluminum plate attached at eye level. Natalie reached up and knocked before entering the office.

That Doug Jarvis had been waiting for her was obvious. He was leaning against his desk with his hands in the pockets of his dark-blue pants, his jacket undone and his tie loose. He looked more like somebody hanging out in a bar after work than a senior officer in one of the most secretive agencies in the world.

‘Mr. Jarvis? Natalie asked as she closed the door behind her.

Jarvis pushed off the edge of the desk and smiled at her. The window of his office looked out over the airbase behind them, the runway lights twinkling in the night.

‘You look a lot like him,’ he said by way of a greeting. ‘Although you’re attractive.’

Natalie grinned, thrown off guard by the old man’s affable nature and firm but gentle handshake.

‘He says the same,’ Natalie replied. ‘He’s always full of bluff wit and charm.’

Jarvis gestured for her to take a chair at his desk, and as she sat down she saw two cups filled with steaming coffee, surrounded by a bowl of sugar and a jug of milk. Two possibilities infiltrated her thoughts: one, that Jarvis was just a decent guy who wanted her to feel at home; and two, Jarvis had plenty to hide and was hoping to fob her off with idle chatter and a sweet old smile.

‘Sugar?’ Jarvis asked, reaching for the sachets.

‘I’ve got it,’ Natalie said, and picked them up herself.

Better safe than sorry, she decided. Whatever this guy was up to he had plenty of power and probably access to things so secret that neither Natalie nor the most far-reaching Congressional committee in the history of the United States of America would ever get close to.

Jarvis pulled his own cup closer as he sat down and looked across at her.

‘Your brother’s a paradox, you know,’ he said conversationally. ‘One of the best officers and soldiers I ever served with, but a stubborn son of a bitch. Sometimes I think he used to disobey orders just to see what chaos he might cause.’

‘I thought that Marine Corps officers would be beyond that kind of thing,’ Natalie said. ‘All by the book and ship-shape.’

Jarvis chuckled.

‘If only. Officers are the worst law-breakers sometimes.’

‘You were a captain in the corps yourself, weren’t you?’ she asked sweetly.

Jarvis inclined his head as he stirred his coffee. ‘Touché,’ he said, ‘although I was going to add that those same officers only break the rules to protect and to serve.’

‘Of course,’ Natalie agreed. ‘Ethan loved the corps. I think he only left to be closer to Joanna.’

Jarvis slowed in his stirring, pulled the spoon out and set it down.

‘You’re here for something, Natalie,’ he said finally. ‘You could be here on behalf of the Congressional committee but they’re investigating the CIA, not us, so I have to ask why you are here.’

Natalie silently inhaled and ordered her thoughts. Jarvis was a straight talker, which helped, but it also meant that he was a sharper tool than most and wouldn’t be easy to trip up.

‘What kind of work does Ethan do for the agency?’ she asked.

‘I’m not at liberty to answer that question,’ Jarvis replied, and took a sip of his coffee.

‘How does the agency feel about having a private contractor working on some of its most classified projects?’

‘I’m not in a position to ponder the preferences of this agency, only to achieve results from our investigations as best as I can with the resources at hand.’

Natalie bit her lip and went for the kill.

‘Congress cannot access much of the material that we know is handled here on a daily basis, but we can organize a complete and thorough access to the files of Warner & Lopez Inc, and by way of that obtain warrants for relevant and connecting files within the DIA.’

Jarvis’s eyes narrowed.

‘That’s not a legally valid course of action for a Congressional investigation.’

‘It will be,’ Natalie replied. ‘One way or the other we’ll find a way to break into whatever’s been going on here. You can make it easier for us by telling me a few simple facts about my brother.’

‘I’ll tell you what I can,’ Jarvis said, and smiled over his mug.

‘Is Ethan your friend?’

Jarvis’s smile vanished and his blue eyes fixed on hers for a long beat. For a moment Natalie thought she saw there the man himself, with all the years of soldiering and secrecy stripped away to reveal just another human being struggling to do what he felt was right.

Jarvis set his mug down.

‘In this business, you try not to make connections because they’re all too often severed by circumstances beyond your control.’

‘That’s not what I asked,’ Natalie replied.

Jarvis hesitated only for a moment longer before he spoke again. ‘Yes.’

Natalie reached down to her bag and pulled out a file. From within she produced a series of printed pages that Ben had prepared at her request. She tossed them onto Jarvis’s desk and fanned them out with one hand.

‘Documents uncovered earlier this afternoon. These search strings revealed the names of subjects currently under observation by unknown government agencies in direct contravention of statute laws protecting citizens of this country against invasive acts of observation.’

Jarvis looked down at the images, and as he read the names on the files Natalie saw the old man’s eyebrow raise, saw him take a slight breath. The subtle body language told her that whatever else Jarvis might know, he did not know about this.

‘How long have these been running?’ Jarvis asked.

‘Four years,’ Natalie said. ‘Ever since the disappearance of a journalist from Jabaliya, Gaza Strip.’

Doug Jarvis looked up at her from the files.

‘Joanna Defoe,’ he said.

The old man was showing all the signs of somebody experiencing revelation after revelation and struggling to link them all together. He furrowed his brow as his eyes danced from one sheet of paper to the next. Natalie leaned forward and swept them away from his gaze and back into the file. You’ve got him on the run now. Keep control of him.

‘You’ll have noticed that not only was Ethan’s name on the files and that of his partner Nicola Lopez,’ Natalie said, ‘but my name is on these files as being under surveillance, as are those of my parents, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some secretive agency snoop around our personal and private lives without telling me exactly why they’re doing so.’

Jarvis looked at her. ‘This isn’t a DIA operation.’

‘How would you know?’ Natalie asked. ‘You’re not the director. They could have something going on above your pay-grade. Hell, they could be watching you too.’

‘I have no doubt that they are,’ Jarvis replied smoothly, catching her off guard. ‘Difference is that we would have a tangible reason for doing so. I don’t see anything here that suggests to me that this surveillance is anything other than some kind of training exercise. You’re on the committee’s list of investigators, Ethan and Lopez work for the DIA — maybe everyone’s keeping tabs right now.’

‘And my parents?’ Natalie pushed. ‘Are they being watched due to your supposed cautionary measures? My father’s a former United States Marine and my mother’s both elderly and suffering from arthritis. Are you expecting them to be behind the next major terrorist attack in this country? Does the DIA suspect that right now she’s working out how to build a rocket launcher from her goddamned walking stick?’

‘I think you’re overreacting,’ Jarvis replied. ‘And all of this is just paperwork without evidence to support it, which I don’t suppose you…’

Natalie slid her cellphone smoothly across the desk, the device spinning round as it came to a stop in front of Jarvis. He looked down at the image of a blue sedan, taken on what looked like the freeway over the Potomac.

‘What’s the chances of that turning out to be an agency pool vehicle if I run the plates through the committee’s investigation?’ Natalie asked. ‘It followed me for almost an hour this morning, along with another acting in support.’

‘It could be,’ Jarvis replied, his gaze still fixed on the image of the sedan. ‘But it won’t be DIA.’

‘I don’t care who the goddamned hell it belongs to,’ Natalie snapped as she grabbed her cellphone back. ‘I’m being followed. So are my family. I want to know why. I want your official assistance in this investigation, Mr. Jarvis. I want you to find out why my family are of such interest to the government, and I think that you already know more than you’re letting on.’

Again, the raised eyebrow and look of bemusement. ‘Really?’

Natalie felt a surge of anger at the old man and his casual disregard for her plight.

‘Y’know, for a friend of Ethan’s you sure know how to short-change him,’ Natalie shot back. ‘Who the hell do you people think you are?’

Jarvis sighed softly.

‘We’re the ones who have to make difficult decisions every single day of the year,’ he replied, ‘often decisions that conflict with what we would morally consider to be the right thing to do. There is no easy way to say this, Natalie, but Ethan, Nicola, yourself, your family, even me and mine, are nothing more than pawns in the epic sweep of mankind’s tale. Our priority is to protect and to serve this country for the benefit and security not of ourselves but of people who are not even born yet. It is they who will reap the rewards of our efforts, as we now reap the rewards of countless men and women who died in war zones to protect our way of life.’

Natalie sat in silence for a long moment. ‘Even if it costs innocent lives?’

Jarvis, his face impassive, nodded once.

‘Even then. It’s horrible, unfair and tragic, but sometimes our people are lost to enemy action through more than just a knife or a bullet. Sometimes it’s simply unavoidable that collateral damage will occur from operations and individuals can become exposed, their identities revealed to the enemy before we can protect them.’

Natalie realized that she was grinding her teeth in her skull. She forced herself to stop.

‘This surveillance,’ she said finally. ‘It’s not about my family, is it? It’s about Joanna Defoe.’

‘I don’t know,’ Jarvis replied.

‘You say that Ethan is your friend. I know that he respects you, Mr. Jarvis, although right now I’m struggling to figure out why. Surely you must consider it worthwhile to find out what happened to her, even if not in an official capacity?’

Jarvis remained impassive.

‘It is not within my remit to use the resources of this agency to satisfy personal grievances, no matter how tragic.’

Natalie pushed away from the desk and stood. Jarvis stood with her and extended his hand. Natalie was momentarily surprised. She looked into his eyes and saw swimming there a regret that she had not noticed before, like a long-forgotten dream breaking the surface of his thoughts.

‘I’m sorry that I can’t help you, Miss Warner,’ he said.

Natalie shook his hand and for a moment wasn’t sure what to say.

‘I know,’ she replied finally. ‘But rest assured, I will not stop until I find out what happened to her, regardless of your collateral damage.’

Mr. Wilson sat in silence in his car and watched from a distance as Natalie Warner drove out of the DIAC building’s lot and joined the freeway headed north for the district. He made no attempt to follow her, for to do so now could jeopardize the entire operation. Clearly, the analyst shared her brother’s soldiering instinct: Wilson knew he’d been spotted by Natalie on the freeway near Washington DC. Her keen eye had surprised him, but he would not be caught out so easily again.

He lifted his cell to his ear.

William Steel’s voice echoed down the line, distorted by the intense electronic shielding.

‘What news?’

‘Natalie Warner just visited somebody at the DIA, presumably Doug Jarvis. They’re onto something here, something beyond what we’re trying to protect. Without access I can’t tell what they’re up to.’

‘Then there is no longer any other option,’ Steel replied. ‘We cannot afford to take any chances. Bold action is all we have left. Ensure that the analyst is prevented from furthering her investigation.’

‘Understood,’ Wilson replied, and shut the line off.

He tossed the cellphone onto the passenger seat next to him and set off for Washington.

He would not be able to fire his gun easily in the city. He would have to use his imagination. A smile curled from the corner of his mouth.