The Chimera Secret

47

Natalie saw the pillar of oily black smoke smeared across the afternoon sky five miles before she reached the scene of the wreck.

Two fire trucks and an ambulance were parked by the side of the road, which was shut off to traffic by two patrol vehicles on either side. Natalie had managed with a quick telephone call to her Capitol office to gain access to the accident itself, the state troopers reluctantly waving her through. Rikard had obviously not yet managed to have her name wiped from the system, although she felt certain that before sundown any authority she had would be erased from existence.

Ben Consiglio’s pool car was a smoldering black wreck of tortured metal that sat on the rims of its wheels amid a sea of white foam sprayed by the emergency crews when they’d arrived on the scene.

Natalie felt a plug of nausea lodge in her throat as she detected the acrid stench of burning chemicals, molten plastic and rubber. A dull gray haze hung in the air around the vehicle like a chemical halo.

Natalie approached a group of paramedics clustered nearby, sipping coffee from a thermos flask. They saw her approaching and quietened down as the senior man among them stepped forward.

‘Natalie Warner,’ she said, ‘I’m a friend of the driver of the vehicle. Is he…?’

The paramedic’s features were strained.

‘We found the remains of some clothing in and around the vehicle, ma’am,’ he said softly. ‘They’ve been bagged for forensics, but if you could identify them for us?’

Natalie nodded, not able to find the strength to say anything as she followed the paramedic to the rear of the ambulance, where a number of scorched items of clothing were laying in clear plastic bags. In an instant she recognized part of Ben’s jacket, and what was clearly a scorched and tattered white shirt.

Natalie sucked in a deep breath of air and turned away as the nausea swilling in her stomach intensified. Hot tears scalded the corners of her eyes as she put her hand to her mouth and struggled to keep her breathing under control.

‘That’s his shirt and jacket,’ she confirmed in a whisper.

The paramedic nodded and gestured to one of his men.

‘We’ve got an identification, Ben Consiglio, works in DC,’ he said. ‘Soon as the vehicle cools down we’ll find him and get him out.’

Natalie blinked her tears away and turned to the paramedics.

‘He’s still in there?’

‘I believe so, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘The vehicle burned with extreme ferocity, much more than I’ve ever encountered before in a vehicle wreck. Our hoses weren’t having much of an effect, so standard procedure is to drench the surrounding area to prevent the fire spreading and then let it burn itself out.’

Despite herself, Natalie’s eyes flicked across to the burning wreck.

‘Jesus,’ she muttered to herself. ‘It was supposed to be me coming out here.’

‘Ma’am?’ the paramedic said. ‘It’s normal for people to find a way to blame themselves for the loss of life, but believe me this happens every day somewhere in every county. It’s a hit-and-run wreck, and there’s absolutely nothing that you or anybody else could have done about it.’

Natalie blinked away some of her tears, knowing that he was right.

‘Did anybody get an ID on the other vehicle?’

‘Sure did, ma’am,’ he replied, and gestured across the road. ‘It’s against the shoulder, right over there. Weird, though — we can’t get identification for the driver. The vehicle’s not in our database or on the police files.’

Natalie turned away and walked around the wide patch of churning foam surrounding the burning pool car. She was halfway around when she caught sight of the abandoned sedan on the shoulder opposite. Her heart skipped a beat as she laid eyes on it.

A blue Cadillac Catera.

Natalie began walking quickly toward it as she fished her cellphone out of her pocket. She flipped through a series of images, selected one of them and zoomed in. She read the license plate of the blue sedan that had followed her earlier the day before over the Potomac, and then looked at the abandoned sedan before her.

Same plate. Same vehicle.

Natalie slowly turned around and looked again at the burning pool vehicle and the tire marks on the road that betrayed where the accident had taken place. She walked across to them and then turned toward the scene of the accident.

She saw the marks left by Ben Consiglio’s car as it had suddenly locked up and skidded hard left. Ahead of her, the asphalt glittered where thousands of tiny pieces of glass had scattered when the windows in Ben’s car had imploded under the impact. A few scattered chunks of fender plastic and chrome trim littered the side of the road.

‘Ben travels along here,’ she murmured to herself as she walked the course of his car, ‘then suddenly brakes and swerves left toward the opposite lane.’

She looked up. Ben’s burning car was facing her on the opposite side of the road, and although the foam blocked some of her view she could see enough of the tire marks to tell that it had spun through a hundred-eighty degrees and come to rest where it was.

The sedan, on the other hand, was sitting nose-first into the shoulder, its passenger-side front fender mangled and warped but otherwise undamaged.

And there were no tire marks on the road. No attempt to avoid a collision.

‘It swerved deliberately toward Ben,’ she went on to herself, voicing her thoughts aloud. ‘Hit him, then stopped here.’ She walked to the driver’s side of the vehicle. ‘The driver gets out, and does what?’

The soft earth of the verge bore a couple of footprints heading back onto the road. Which meant that the driver had gotten out and walked back to Ben’s vehicle, then presumably vanished.

Natalie didn’t need to think about it anymore. Ben had been the victim of a deliberate attack, one probably meant for her. But for anybody to have known he would be coming out here and would in fact pass this spot meant that the killer must have been told about it. Natalie felt a chill run down her spine as she realized that only one person could have known about this, the same person that had been blocking her investigation from the very start.

Guy Rikard.

Natalie rushed across to the Virginia state troopers standing guard near the wreck. Out here, she felt confident enough that they were far enough removed from the Capitol to not be in the thrall of the CIA or anybody else. She showed them her phone and the pictures of the blue sedan from earlier in the day.

‘This guy followed me for almost an hour this morning, and it was me who was supposed to come out here this afternoon,’ she explained. ‘I work for Congress on a team investigating illegal activity by the intelligence community, and we’ve learned that we’re being followed day and night by government agencies that presumably want to prevent us from uncovering too much about their activities.’

The trooper looked at the photograph of the car.

‘I appreciate what you’re saying, ma’am, but that car could have been driving quite innocently across the Potomac earlier in the day. It could have been stolen since. There’s nothing to link it to this accident.’

‘No there isn’t,’ Natalie agreed, and then flicked to the next picture on her cellphone. ‘But you guys can’t trace the car to a driver.’

Natalie held the picture up to the two troopers, that of the sedan’s driver from the previous day. The long, gaunt face was half in shadow but the features were clearly recognizable.

‘Good enough for you?’ she asked them.

‘Damn straight,’ the trooper said, and pulled out his own cell. ‘Send me the images you have to my cell and we’ll get them distributed.’

Natalie did as she was asked and then looked at Ben’s burning car. Her cellphone started ringing in her pocket. She looked at it, and frowned. It wasn’t a number she recognized. She looked at the cops: if there was ever a place that she was safe, this was it. She shut off the call.

‘This was a deliberate attack,’ she said to the officers, ‘and I think I know who orchestrated it.’

The troopers looked at her expectantly.

‘Two men,’ she said. ‘Guy Rikard, my boss and the only person who knew that Ben would be here this afternoon, and Douglas Jarvis, a senior security specialist at the Defense Intelligence Agency. It’s my belief that they’re working together to silence anybody who gets too close to whatever they’re up to.’