The Chimera Secret

72

Douglas Jarvis sat behind an oak-paneled table in a conservatory that looked out over a perfectly manicured lawn that he had spent many years carefully cultivating. Most all of his colleagues over the years were highly amused to find that a former marine captain and veteran of several conflicts liked nothing more than to spend his spare time gardening.

Jarvis reminded them, when he could be bothered, that there was little more peaceful in life than a simple garden, especially when his entire career had been spent fighting in war zones or trying to prevent wars from starting in the first place.

A career that was now over.

Winter was coming now, the fall almost over and the lawn littered with the last red and brown leaves. He would have to clear them again soon enough, and at least now he’d have the time to do it properly. The sky above was laden with gray clouds, a fine drizzle spilling down against the glass windows.

‘Any word?’

Natalie Warner stood in the doorway to the conservatory. Dressed in jeans and a loose cardigan with her hair hanging across her shoulders, she looked five years younger than she had in the Capitol. Only her face carried the weight of her worries.

‘Nothing yet,’ he replied. ‘Ben okay?’

Natalie nodded, and walked into the conservatory.

Ben Consiglio had been admitted to hospital in Washington under Jarvis’s strictest orders, even though he no longer had the authority to enforce them. The younger man’s injuries were not serious, they’d learned, but he had been suffering from exhaustion and dehydration, enough that they had kept him in overnight before releasing him in the morning.

Natalie had insisted on staying by his bedside until he was released.

Jarvis had likewise insisted that she accompany him to his home rather than return alone to her apartment in the district. Fact was, she wasn’t safe and there was nobody that she could turn to except Jarvis for protection.

‘They haven’t found him?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Jarvis replied. ‘And I don’t believe that they will.’

Wilson had been gone by the time the emergency services converged on the crime scene. Most probably Wilson, a long-service agent with enormous experience, would have worn a protective vest. The bullet would have knocked him out cold but would have caused nothing more serious than bruising on his chest. Had Jarvis been quicker he would have taken the head shot, but Natalie was not experienced with firearms and had done the right thing: aimed for the biggest target, the torso.

Guy Rikard’s homicide was being investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department, who would be unlikely to find themselves making connections to the CIA. The murder would most likely become a cold case, maybe the victim of a random freak accident or a crude suicide bid. Rikard was split from his wife and had financial difficulties, was a known drinker and womaniser and suchlike. His past would be trawled by the detectives on his case but the extinguishing of his life would be forgotten by all but those closest to him by the following morning.

‘You think he’ll come here for us?’ Natalie asked him.

Jarvis looked out of the window for a moment and then shook his head. ‘No. Too obvious. He’ll lie low for a while, avoid attracting any more attention to what’s happened. The death of one Congressional investigator can be put down to bad luck: another one and everybody will start to take notice. It would defeat the object.’

‘Which is what?’ Natalie asked. ‘He was going to kill me.’

‘He almost certainly was not,’ Jarvis said.

‘The CIA had Guy Rikard killed,’ Natalie snapped.

‘Larry Levinson was a CIA agent, that much is for sure, but there’s no way he’ll be traced back to them,’ Jarvis said. ‘The name will be an alias, his entire history forged: it’s unlikely he’ll even be on the CIA’s payroll: the kind of units Mr. Wilson and Larry Levinson work for are funded through the Pentagon’s Black Budget, which is protected from Congressional scrutiny.’

Natalie stared down at the floor for a moment.

‘So what happens now?’

Jarvis stared at the news channel and then leaned forward and turned up the volume as a newscaster read a report. Behind her on the screen was a large image of a forested mountain range.

Natalie’s hand flew to her mouth as the newsreader went on.

‘Oh Jesus,’ Natalie gasped, and whirled away out of the conservatory.

Jarvis muted the television and sighed as he leaned back into his chair.

A cleaning team would be put into the mine now that a suitably convincing cover story had been put in place. They would remove any last pieces of evidence of whatever existed there and then seal the mine shut.

Nobody would ever get in there again.

Jarvis wanted to hope that Ethan and Lopez had gotten out of the mine before the blast, but he had no idea who the remains that had been found belonged to. The admission that any fatalities had occurred meant that the CIA most likely would be forced to hand over the bodies at some point, perhaps due to the inevitable pressure that would be applied to the Sheriff’s Office and the National Guard by concerned families of people missing in the Idaho wilderness. But nobody would ever be informed of exactly who had died, or what they were actually doing there.

He stood up from his chair and stared out of the window for a moment longer.

Mr. Wilson had done his work well, and now there was nothing left and nothing that Jarvis could do to change it.

It was over.

He turned and walked out of the conservatory. As he did so his cellphone rang in his pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen before answering the call. An unidentified number waited for him. He punched the answer button and lifted the cell to his ear.

‘Doug Jarvis.’

The answer was brief.

‘Doug, it’s Ethan. We’re on the run and dark until further notice. Whoever did this to us is going to pay.’

The line clicked off and the dead-line tone buzzed in Jarvis’s ear.

He slipped the cell into his pocket and walked through to the kitchen, where Natalie sat at a table with her head in her hands.

‘You’d better write down everything you found out about MK-ULTRA,’ he said. ‘Your brother’s alive, and he’s on the warpath.’