The Identity Mine

XXIX

‘Will the Chiefs of Staff be present?’ Ethan asked as he climbed back into the limousine.

‘I doubt it.’

‘And the directors of the intelligence and security services?’

‘I certainly hope not.’

Ethan glanced at Lopez as the limousine climbed out of the underground lot and into the late afternoon sunshine. ‘That means LeMay won’t be there.’

Jarvis leaned in conspiratorially as he replied.

‘The President wants to be updated personally on our progress. He knows that what’s happened at Fort Benning will break out globally through the media within days, and he wants every last piece of information at his disposal when the storm hits. That means us debriefing him now before we do anything else. Believe it or not he asked for the both of you personally.’

Lopez raised a perfectly arched eyebrow. ‘Both of us?’

‘You’re a team,’ Jarvis replied. ‘And as it’s now Lopez & Warner Inc, it would have looked odd not to have you both there.’

Ethan glanced out of the tinted windows as the limousine passed through the last of the NSA checkpoints and began heading for the cluttered skyline of Washington DC. He had last met the current President several years before when he, along with Lopez, had prevented a crazed pastor by the name of Kelvin Patterson from infecting the then senator with an alien virus that the pastor had believed was in fact the blood of angels.

Despite the remarkable nature of their encounter they had won the eternal gratitude of the senator and now, it would seem, the President’s ear.

‘If we can let him know about Majestic Twelve, about what’s been happening, about LeMay’s involvement,’ Ethan began, ‘we could really start to root out the twelve men behind everything and…’

‘That’s not going to happen, Ethan,’ Jarvis cut him off. ‘You’ll put the President in a position where he’ll not be able to trust his most senior advisors. Short of replacing his entire administration there’s no way for us to let him know of what’s happening without fatally flawing his presidency, and you’re forgetting one important thing.’

‘What’s that?’ Lopez asked.

‘The President himself might be a member of MJ–12.’

Ethan stared at Jarvis for a long moment. ‘He wouldn’t have gone down that road — he was one of the staunchest senators when it came to government transparency and the reduction of corporate influence at the Capitol. It’s what got him into power.’

‘That’s the public face of politics,’ Jarvis replied as the limousine whispered along the asphalt. ‘What happens out of the eyes of the media, behind closed doors, is another matter entirely. Right now the only people we can trust besides DIA Director Nellis are the three of us and my assistant, Hellerman, as he’s too damned Uncle Sam to even think about taking MJ–12’s coin against our country.’

‘And yet we were working for them and didn’t even know it,’ Lopez pointed out. ‘They didn’t need brain implants to have us around their little fingers. A group so closely woven into the fabric of political life in Washington can’t be unraveled overnight even if the President is on our side, because we can never know exactly who to take this to.’

Jarvis offered them a tight smile.

‘That may not be true,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ Ethan asked, suddenly cautious.

Jarvis leaned back in his seat and watched the suburbs of the city passing by outside beyond the tinted windows as the limousine crossed the Anacostia River on the 11th Street Bridge.

‘I had an idea.’

‘I don’t like it when that happens,’ Lopez replied.

‘It sounds like government speak for “I’ve had a dangerous idea”,’ Ethan agreed. ‘We’re only in this to stop Abrahem Nassir, not run errands for the DIA and the Pentagon.’

‘I haven’t told them about this,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Not even Director Nellis.’

Ethan stared at Jarvis in amazement. The one person who had done more than any other to resurrect the covert unit that Ethan, Lopez and Jarvis represented was now being kept out of the loop for reasons that Ethan could not fathom.

‘What’s going on, Doug?’

Jarvis took a deep breath.

‘You said it yourselves, we can’t do anything because we can’t trust a soul on Capitol Hill or down in the Pentagon. So, the only way we can get that trust is to ensure without any shadow of a doubt that we recruit people who are utterly loyal to us.’

Lopez shrugged.

‘Back to square one then as we can’t do that. We don’t know how far MJ–12’s reach extends.’

Jarvis nodded. ‘Unless the people we recruit have no choice but to help us,’ he said.

‘That’s blackmail,’ Ethan said. ‘That would make us no better than the people we’re trying to bring down.’

‘I wouldn’t use blackmail,’ Jarvis replied.

Ethan’s mind went blank as he struggled to understand what Jarvis was suggesting, but beside him Lopez gasped.

‘You want to implant people,’ she said. ‘You want to control our own people and find out what’s going on using the same tech’ that Abrahem’s been using!’

Jarvis raised his hands.

‘It’s only an idea at this stage,’ he said. ‘But it represents a technological leap in our intelligence gathering capabilities and it cannot be cast aside simply because human rights lawyers are…’

‘It’s illegal,’ Lopez snapped.

‘The subjects would be carefully selected and would not be controlled, only monitored in the same way that the criminals under The Identity Mine program are observed.’

‘Until somebody blows it wide open,’ Ethan said. ‘Another Snowden for instance, then what would we do? Can you imagine the fallout from something like that? It would make PRISM and MYSTIC look tame in comparison.’

‘But the reach we will have in pinning down MJ–12 could be unparalleled!’ Jarvis insisted. ‘The ends justify the means in this case, as the individuals we implant will know nothing of the device in their brains, just like the criminals we’re already tracking. The intelligence we’ve uncovered using The Identity Mine has solved countless law enforcement cases. With this technology we could extend that reach into counter — terrorism and in the case of MJ–12, counter corruption at the highest levels.’

Ethan shook his head.

‘And those highest levels of corruption would have no problem with murdering anybody they suspected of informing against them,’ he pointed out. ‘You’d be putting innocent lives in harm’s way and they would know nothing about it. It’s like putting a child in a blindfold and letting them walk into a lion’s cage.’

Jarvis waved Ethan’s argument aside with a waft of his hand.

‘They wouldn’t be informing, they’d be listening on our behalf without ever knowing it and what we learn would be available to us in real — time. If we thought that somebody was in danger we could prevent an attack long before MJ–12 could put it into action. And besides, the goal behind my plan was not to implant any civilians or military personnel at all.’

‘Who then?’ Lopez demanded, and then she got it.

‘LeMay,’ Ethan murmured, almost afraid to say it. ‘You want to implant the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation with an illegal monitoring device that hacks into his brain.’

Jarvis nodded, clearly aware of the magnitude of what he was proposing.

‘If you want to kill the Hydra…’

‘You can’t keep cutting off its heads because they’re replaced. You have to pierce its heart,’ Lopez replied. ‘Jeez, how would we even go about something like this? LeMay knows about what’s happening, right?’

‘Wrong,’ Jarvis replied. ‘The task force behind this is being held back by the President, remember? Nobody knows right now, because everybody wants it covered up. That means that MJ–12 may not yet have the full story, and we know that LeMay has dispatched Agents Ford and Vaughn to Hong Kong in an attempt to discover what’s going on, presumably because they’re aware of a connection to what we’re investigating. I figure that means he knows squat, at least for now, because both Vaughn and Ford are missing.’

‘They’re missing?’ Ethan asked.

‘We intercepted communications between two FBI field offices,’ Jarvis explained. ‘The two agents disappeared somewhere on the south of Hong Kong island.’

Ethan looked at Lopez, who despite her dislike of Hannah Ford could not conceal her concern.

‘Mitchell,’ she said.

‘We should have made more of an effort to warn them,’ Ethan snapped at Jarvis.

‘I did everything that I could,’ Jarvis insisted. ‘Ford wouldn’t listen to me.’

‘If both Ford and Vaughn are missing,’ Ethan added, ‘then LeMay’s main source of information on the ground in Hong Kong is limited, unless Mitchell is working for him. LeMay might by now know about the implant technology.’

‘Either way, you’re ahead of them,’ Jarvis pointed out. ‘If we do this, we do it soon and get an implant into LeMay during the security operation around Abrahem Nassir at the White House.’

‘But the security will be tighter than ever,’ Ethan said. ‘How do we get to him and pull this off?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jarvis said, ‘but remember; LeMay is in bed with MJ–12 and as such has already betrayed his country in favor of his own pursuit of power and financial interests. He has become the enemy. What we do now, however illegal it might be, could be the difference between justice being done and our country falling into the hands of businesses obsessed with their own profits over Americans’ civil rights. This isn’t about turning our technology on our own people, it’s about using MJ–12’s own techniques against them. Now, are you in or not? If Ford and Vaughn did uncover what’s happening, joined the dots and decided to inform LeMay, then they’re likely dead. Do you want their sacrifice to be for nothing?’

Ethan and Lopez exchanged a glance and then made up their minds.