As she reached out for the handle, she could see through the frosted panes of glass a figure standing on the other side of the door waiting for her. She flipped the latch and turned the handle, then opened the door toward her.
A waft of bitterly cold air swept into the hall, touched with the scent of early morning frost that enveloped her in a freezing embrace and seemed to reach into her very bones as she looked into the eyes of her unexpected visitor.
Oliver, her son, stood before her on the porch of their home. His face was splattered with a gruesome mess of mud, blood and dirt. He was wearing his full battle uniform, the material thickly smothered in mud and ice, and, as she stared at him, her stomach plunged in despair as she saw a half-dozen ragged bullet holes torn through his young body. Fresh blood soaked the coarse material of his uniform.
Pennie opened her mouth to speak but no sound came forth. The cold morning air seemed frigid and utterly silent as though time had come to a stop. She stared at her son, his brown eyes looking into hers, and Oliver smiled softly as though he were suddenly old and wise beyond his years. He slowly reached out toward her with one muddied hand and then faded from view until he vanished into the misty air before her eyes.
Pennie felt a sudden, wrenching loss as though her own life was being ripped from her and she sank down onto her knees on the porch.
She knew without a shadow of doubt that her Oliver had died.
2
This would be the last time he would visit this place.
Douglas Ian Jarvis was flanked by a pair of security guards in an elevator that was making its way with an efficient hum up to the seventh floor of the DIAC building, the headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The producer of military intelligence for the Department of Defense, the DIA employed almost six thousand staff and worked on a budget that was largely shielded from congressional scrutiny. The DIA was more clandestine than other celebrated partner agencies such as the FBI or CIA, chiefly because it handled all intelligence that passed through the myriad of Pentagon departments via the ultra-secretive National Security Agency.
Doug Jarvis had seen much of that intelligence. He had begun his career serving with the US Marines in South East Asia and later in both the Gulf Wars, before resigning his commission in order to serve his country on home soil. His chagrin at being unable to continue a field posting due to his advancing years had been replaced by a stoic patriotism as his increasing authority and experience peeled back layer after layer of military secrecy. In recent years, his work had unveiled a Pandora’s box of extraordinary discoveries, many of which now languished under military protection in locations kept secret even from him.
Jarvis’s last mission within the DIA had been to create a small but efficient department of investigators that were willing to scrutinize cases that other agencies rejected as paranormal or the work of fraudsters. He had relinquished the chance to take the DIA director’s chair in favour of starting the new unit, and had hired a former United States Marines officer with whom he had served some years before. The fact that the said officer had been a drunken recluse at the time had not endeared him to the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the Pentagon, but the results he achieved had. In fact, they had been so spectacular that the CIA had begun taking a great interest in seizing the department’s assets, and had eventually done so with customary zeal.
A congressional investigation into malpractice at the CIA, started eight months before by a Democrat senator in DC, had initiated a brutal manhunt by CIA agents desperate to conceal their own abuses of power. In the aftermath of the investigation’s closure, Jarvis had seen his authority and security clearance revoked, the director of the CIA cleared of all charges via a Pentagon inquiry that nobody trusted and Jarvis’s two best investigators forced to go underground for fear of assassination attempts. Put simply, everything had gone to hell in a hand-basket and that mightily pissed Jarvis off. So much so that he had spent the last six months collating evidence to clear his own name and that of his colleagues, all of it contained in an envelope in his jacket pocket that he fingered subconsciously.
For the last three months of his personal crusade, he had repeatedly been denied an audience with his former boss at the DIA. Hence, he had not expected to be summoned urgently to that very office this morning and was still none the wiser as to why. There was a fire under somebody’s ass and Jarvis presumed he was about to be accused of lighting it. He ran a hand through his thick white hair and lifted his chin. Confidence was everything. Semper fi, as they used to say in the corps.
The elevator reached the top of its climb and Jarvis stepped out with his escort onto a carpeted corridor. A secretary looked up at them from behind her desk and pressed a button: Jarvis knew that it would illuminate a discreet light on the director’s desk, alerting him to the arrival of his guest. The two guards took up flanking positions either side of the door to the DIA director’s office. Jarvis tightened his tie before knocking.
‘Enter.’
Jarvis walked into the office and was struck by the unexpected desire to bow. DIA Director Abraham Mitchell, a three-star general, sat behind a large desk, his burnished-mahogany skin glistening. With him were seated the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior officers from each of the services forming neat lines of gray hair and polished medals: Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Alongside them were the JCOS Chairman and Vice-Chairman, and, most remarkably, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, General William Steel, the man directly responsible for Jarvis’s demise. Between them there was enough brass to fit out an orchestra and enough authority to influence and perhaps even overrule the President himself.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ Jarvis said, deciding to leave the chip on his shoulder outside the room.
‘Jarvis,’ Mitchell rumbled, and gestured to the only remaining empty seat.
Jarvis sat down and was relieved to find that the chair wasn’t wired to the mains for the amusement of the most powerful men in America. Even with his recently revoked authority, Jarvis would have been a small fish swimming in a shark tank.
‘Thank you for coming, Doug,’ said Admiral John Griffiths.
Jarvis felt a rush of gratitude toward the admiral for his unguarded familiarity, born of their working together in the past. The mood in the office changed instantly as the other chiefs took note of the admiral’s tone. Only DCIA Steel retained a stony silence.
‘No problem,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Why am I here?’
‘Where are your people, Doug?’ Mitchell asked.
‘By my people, I suppose you mean Ethan Warner and Nicola Lopez?’ Jarvis asked and was rewarded with a nod. ‘I’ve been asking without success for an audience here for months. Now you drag me in here at a moment’s notice. What’s the deal?’
Mitchell turned his gaze to DCIA Steel. The podgy man, his face glowering with supressed rage, looked at Jarvis.
‘We think your people are murdering CIA agents as an act of revenge,’ he said. ‘They’re hunting them down one by one.’
Jarvis’s jaw dropped. He could have anticipated any number of responses, but that was one he would never have seen coming. ‘How many men are down? When did it happen?’
‘Where are they?’ Mitchell asked Jarvis, ignoring his questions. ‘I mean, right now?’