The Fusion Cage

XXXI

Aaron Mitchell strode off the corporate jet and into the sweltering mid — day heat of a Virginian summer, the sound of aircraft taking off behind him on the distant runway interspersed with a ripple of birdsong in nearby trees as he walked toward a sleek, glossy black limousine parked nearby.

The airport handled flights to Paris in Europe as part of its scheduled service, but Aaron as ever was able to call upon the near — limitless financial power of his employers to travel in corporate luxury. Flying under a local airline’s call sign to further conceal his movements, he had landed only minutes before and was forcing himself to ignore the weariness aching through his bones as he opened the limousine’s door and climbed inside.

The interior of the vehicle was as plush as that of the jet, and he looked into the eyes of Huck Seavers and was surprised to see relief and delight sparkling in the younger man’s eyes.

‘What news?’ he demanded.

‘Meyer folded,’ Huck reported with glee. ‘His price is one hundred million, no questions asked. He’s even set up the accounts. We pay, he vanishes and it’s over.’

Aaron looked down at a piece of paper that Huck handed him, containing account codes for numerous overseas banks.

‘It’s never over,’ he said as he took the paper.

‘That’s what Stanley said,’ Huck admitted. ‘He thinks that somebody else will achieve what he has and carry the torch for him. Whatever.’

‘What guarantees did he demand?’

‘That his family be left alone,’ Huck said. ‘Anything happens to them, he blows it all wide open.’

‘He could do that anyway.’

‘Yes he could,’ Huck agreed, eager to maintain the advantage he had created, ‘but then if that’s what you think then you would have simply killed him anyway, so why even attempt to make an offer through me? It wouldn’t make any sense.’

‘There are many, many things that you do not understand.’

Huck ground his teeth in his skull, suddenly nervous.

‘I did what you asked,’ he said. ‘I got him to sell out. He’s going to hand everything over to us and has promised never to speak of his device ever again, or promote it or anybody else’s work. He’s given up — that’s what you people wanted.’

Aaron stared down at the accounts for a long moment.

‘The money will be transferred to Seavers Incorporated by this afternoon, after which you may pass it on to these accounts.’

Huck’s features fell.

‘That’s not what we agreed! You didn’t say anything about me laundering money for you! If this ever did go public they’d trace the payments right back to me!’

‘You are displeased?’

Aaron’s voice rumbled like boulders tumbling down a cliff as he turned in his seat toward Huck, his eyes dark and foreboding. ‘Perhaps you think that you’re being treated unfairly?’

Huck’s eyes wobbled in their sockets as he retreated in his seat.

‘You’re stacking the odds in your favour and putting me at risk,’ Huck blustered. ‘I can’t face any more public investigations or legal threats!’

‘Then you had best be sure that this deal you have struck with Meyer does not fall through,’ Mitchell warned as he leaned closer. ‘The consequences to Seavers Incorporated might be… fatal.’

Huck swallowed thickly, his voice broken and an octave higher as he replied.

‘Go to hell,’ he spat with a feeble veneer of bravado. ‘I’ve done what you asked, we’re finished.’

Aaron watched Huck Seavers for a long moment, and then he twitched his shoulders as though he were about to strike. Seavers flinched in fright and recoiled further in his seat. Aaron watched him for a moment longer before he opened the limousine’s door and climbed out once again.

He turned away from the vehicle and walked across the apron, heard the limo pull away as he pulled a cell phone from his pocket and dialled a secure number. After a series of prolonged digital buzzing sounds as various security protocols were activated, the line rang and was picked up almost immediately.

‘Report?’

‘Meyer is controlled,’ Mitchell said. ‘One hundred million must be wired into these accounts, stand by.’

There was a moment’s pause, and then: ‘Go.’

Aaron relayed the account numbers and then waited patiently as they were diligently recorded.

‘What of Meyer? What are the guarantees?’

‘The man’s word and not much else. That said, he’s been pushed to the edge and he knows that any further provocation will be met with merciless retribution. Meyer has found his price and I believe that he can be contained without further need for bloodshed.’

‘The assault in Nathalie was a mess,’ came the retort. ‘We barely had time to cover our presence and it’s only good fortune that the Pentagon swallowed the story of a terrorist group hiding out in the woods.’

‘The media disinformation I initiated has taken the heat from us,’ Aaron reassured the voice on the line. ‘Right now, we have both removed Meyer from play and also ensured that General Nellis’s lapdogs are neutralized. They’ll be running from law enforcement for weeks and unable to interfere further in our operations. What of the DIA?’

‘Nellis is under investigation as we speak and Jarvis is under arrest, but if we push too hard then we risk exposing ourselves and defeating the object. The General has the ear of the president and can still kick up a fuss that we might struggle to contain.’

Aaron stopped for a moment as he considered the delicate nature of what Majestic Twelve was attempting to achieve. General Nellis was far too high a figure to consider silencing permanently. Any threat against his life would draw far too much attention to the inner workings of the DIA and perhaps to their interest in MJ–12. The publicity such an event could generate was to the detriment of the cabal and absolutely must be avoided. However …

‘He needs to receive a message,’ Aaron replied finally, ‘a clear message that any further digging into our affairs could be detrimental to more than just his career.’

‘Agreed. But how do we send that message? Any threat to his family is as good as a threat to the man himself and would only entrench him further.’

‘The threat must be close to home, but not personal enough to provoke aggression,’ Aaron replied softly. ‘I believe we have the perfect target.’

‘Whom?’

‘Jarvis.’

Jarvis heard the guards coming as he sat in a featureless cell, the mattress thin and uncomfortable. Half a lifetime served in the US Marine Corps had served him well and taught him the virtues of ‘hurry up and wait’, but none the less he was relieved that something was now happening.

The cell door opened and two armed guards stood back either side of it and beckoned him forward. Handcuffs were presented to him and Jarvis allowed himself to be restrained without complaint. The time for defiance would come later, not now when he was sealed deep in the heart of the FBI’s Headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue — resistance here would be both futile and likely to see him incarcerated beyond the view of the public or legal aid forever. That was how the intelligence community liked to deal with such things: in house. Jarvis knew that his greatest threat now was to simply disappear forever, much like the inhabitants of Clearwater, Missouri, but without the benefit of ten million bucks.

Nobody could hear you scream in a maximum security prison.

The guards led Jarvis through the small cell block to the elevators, where they then took a ride up through the building to the top floor, direct. No stopping on other floors, no access to witnesses or contact with people outside of his predicament. Jarvis was in the system now as an enemy combatant, in effect, and was being treated as such.

The top floor was deserted as he was led out of the elevator, something which would have been ordered a few minutes before his arrival. The guards guided him toward the Director’s office, and Jarvis braced himself to find out what would happen to him and who had taken General Nellis’s place at the DIA. Replacement, in his experience, was what always happened to those who dug too deep. He had lost count of the number of well — intentioned senior officers in prime condition who had retired due to ‘family matters’, or ‘ill health’ or with an ‘unblemished record’. Such men and women were staunch patriots and rarely retired until they were unable to walk or talk straight, unless they were pushed from behind the scenes.

The office door was opened by one of the guards and Jarvis was propelled inside. The door closed behind him and to Jarvis’s surprise General Nellis awaited him, his hands folded before him. Nellis looked up at Jarvis, his features emotionless.

‘I take it that I’m not about to be released with a presidential pardon and the Medal of Honor,’ Jarvis said, his hands still cuffed.

No humour appeared on the general’s face as he replied.

‘They’ve got us over a barrel,’ he replied simply. ‘We’re out of moves.’

‘We’re never out of moves.’

Nellis dragged a hand across his face and with the other pushed a photograph on his desk toward Jarvis, rotating it with his fingers. Jarvis looked down and saw a picture of a bright red Ford Ranger, its hood crushed as it lay on its roof in the middle of a highway, surrounded by fire — retardant foam and emergency service crews.

‘This vehicle crashed on a Virginia Interstate yesterday evening,’ Nellis said. ‘The occupant was killed outright, pronounced dead at the hospital. Braking trails on the road suggest a hit and run according to local police, but there were no witnesses and nobody’s come forward with information.’

Jarvis raised a questioning eyebrow, although he already suspected a connection with the case in which Warner and Lopez were embroiled.

‘The occupant was Red McKenzie, one of the former inhabitants of Clearwater, Missouri, whom your people located and spoke to a few days ago.’

Jarvis closed his eyes.

‘Could be a coincidence,’ he suggested, hearing his own words and despising them. ‘McKenzie was a drinker, he could have lost control.’

‘The only thing that he lost control of was his life,’ Nellis shot back as Jarvis opened his eyes again. ‘The autopsy was completed out this morning. No alcohol in his system, no drugs. He died from blunt force trauma due to the impact from the oncoming vehicle, which flipped his truck over three times and partially crushed it. That requires a big damned impact, and yet there’s no evidence of any debris from the other vehicle but some small fragments of glass and plastic. What does that tell you, Doug?’

Military truck, maybe a four tonne transporter or similar, Jarvis thought but didn’t say.

‘McKenzie broke the terms of his agreement,’ Nellis went on, ‘and Majestic Twelve sent both him and the other three hundred people from Clearwater a real clear message: stay silent by choice, or you’ll be silenced permanently. This crash appeared on media networks in states across the east, Doug. An automobile wreck, one of countless dozens that occur in every state every day, and it’s now national news? How does that happen without somebody pulling some heavy strings to put the word out? Every former Clearwater citizen would have seen or heard about it and will know damned well what it means.’

Jarvis thought briefly of the general’s family.

‘They won’t target you,’ he said finally. ‘You’re too high profile, too much of a risk.’

‘Glad you think so,’ Nellis shot back. ‘Personally, I don’t fancy taking any chances with the lives of my daughters. Would you?’

Jarvis avoided the challenge. ‘What happens now?’

‘Nothing happens now,’ Nellis replied. ‘We can’t operate with these people breathing down our necks! They know we’re onto them and they’re applying pressure, letting us know that if we don’t back down then things are going to get nasty — Red McKenzie nasty.’

‘You’re quitting?’ Jarvis asked. ‘You’re the one who instigated this whole thing! You called me out here in the middle of the night to start this program up.’

‘I didn’t know what I was getting myself into,’ Nellis countered. ‘I’ve been dragged up here and informed, in no uncertain terms, that any further intervention by the DIA in these matters will result in direct action against my office, against me. I thought that this was about inter — agency corruption. I wasn’t prepared for what I’ve found out since. These people are dangerous, Doug. They don’t obey the law but are able to manipulate those same laws to hide behind them, to get whatever they want, even if that means strong — arming the administration itself. We’re powerless against this kind of activity.’

Jarvis stared down at Nellis for a long moment.

‘If we’re powerless against such people, then why the hell are we even here? What’s the point of having an intelligence service dedicated to wiping out the enemies of the United States if we’re going to quit at the first sign of danger?’

‘Because the enemy is the United States!’ Nellis snapped. ‘It’s not our government we’re fighting, it’s the big businesses! They’ve acquired so much power, so much influence that our administration is no longer the governing force in our country. Eisenhower was right: we should have believed him when he warned of the growing power of the military — industrial factions that were cosying up to the president at the time. Their power exceeds that of the White House now in all but name: our president has become a cypher, the public face of something that even he does not understand and cannot influence. If the White House cannot control the machinations of global industry, what the hell can we do?’

Jarvis tried to maintain a confident expression.

‘Bring it to the attention of the people who really own the power in our country: the people themselves.’

Nellis scoffed and waved Jarvis aside with a wince.

‘Like hell,’ he uttered. ‘The media can be controlled by this Majestic Twelve, we’ve already seen that. Look at what Fox News does, pushing the opinions and upholding the preferences of its CEO instead of providing unbiased reporting. Majestic Twelve are powerful enough to make Fox look like a madman shouting in the street. We can’t oppose that, we’d be crushed overnight. I take it that you haven’t seen the latest reports coming out of Virginia?’

‘I’ve been in a cell.’

Nellis used a remote to switch on a wall — mounted screen nearby and instantly Jarvis was treated to a report, recorded he guessed, showing Ethan, Nicola, Amber Ryan and Stanley Meyer as wanted fugitives.

‘Local news, at the moment,’ Nellis reported. ‘I’m guessing that if Stanley Meyer doesn’t fold to the demands of MJ–12, this will go nationwide by tomorrow and your people will spend the rest of their lives on the run.’

Nellis switched off the television and tossed the remote down onto his desk.

‘I’ve been told that you’re free to go,’ he informed Jarvis.

‘By whom?’ Jarvis asked. ‘And how come they’re just going to let me go?’

‘Damned good luck?!’ Nellis suggested. ‘You’ve directly assisted fugitives using agency resources, and not for the first time, to evade arrest in both Saudi Arabia and Virginia by the FBI. Any sudden moves, Doug, and they’ll bury you in a federal prison for the rest of your days. I’m sensing that this is our first, last and only warning. I’m shutting the program down and I suggest that you enjoy the rest of your retirement in peace, Doug, otherwise it’s going to be a lot shorter than you planned.’