Karina’s eyes narrowed. ‘What did you have in mind?’
‘Call him,’ Donovan suggested. ‘Tell him that we need to talk to him and bring him up to Hell Gate. We can’t interview him at the station without arousing attention, so let’s keep this to ourselves. If Tom alibis out, all’s good. If he doesn’t, we can pursue it without risking him being arrested or charged.’
Lopez caught Karina’s eye and slowly shook her head.
‘Why the big interest in helping Tom now?’ Karina pressed. ‘Yesterday, you wanted to string him up.’
‘Yesterday, Jackson wasn’t dead!’ Donovan snapped. ‘We can’t deal with this in the normal way, Karina. Christ, it’s hardly a normal situation! Can you get Tom to Hell Gate or not?’
Lopez shook her head again. Karina spoke toward the cellphone.
‘We’ll be there. We’ll find Tom and meet you, before sunset at the latest.’
‘Good,’ Donovan replied, ‘keep him out of sight until then.’
Lopez turned off the cell and shot Karina a concerned look.
‘The law can’t sort this, Karina.’
‘Then the law can’t hurt Tom, either,’ Karina replied tartly. ‘What would they charge him with? Homicide by psychokinesis?’
Lopez looked Karina in the eye.
‘And if Joanna Defoe successfully goes public with evidence for MK-ULTRA? Then there’ll be grounds for a prosecution, no matter how bizarre it might seem. Maybe there’ll be evidence there that this kind of thing really is possible.’
Karina was about to reply, but Tom Ross cut her off.
‘I can speak for myself, ’ he uttered, and looked at Karina. ‘We can’t run from this. We have to face it down.’
Karina shook her head. ‘How?’
‘We need to get out of here,’ Tom said, ‘fast.’
The phone in the apartment suddenly trilled. Karina looked at Lopez, who shook her head. ‘We don’t know who it might be.’
Karina thought for a moment, and then dashed across the lounge and picked it up.
‘Tom Ross’s house.’
‘Karina?’ came Ethan Warner’s voice down the line. ‘Listen to me and do everything I say.’
52
Mr. Wilson sat in his non-descript sedan and ignored the cold seeping through the vehicle and his bones.
As a covert agent, he had spent countless hours sitting immobile in cars, watching, waiting or simply sleeping. Often, there was no alternative, the risk of identification in motels too high. Instead, a deserted and trash-strewn service alley on Harlem’s south-side off 8th Avenue served as the perfect anonymous staging post. He could reach Queen’s via Randall’s to the east, or head directly south toward Manhattan at a moment’s notice while remaining unobserved and undetected.
There were no cameras or pedestrians. Ironically enough, he was only a couple of blocks from a police precinct building, but there was nothing of interest to them where he sat. A handful of vehicles were parked behind service shutters for businesses that faced the main streets either side of the block, plus a couple more vehicles long abandoned and coated with a thin film of dust splattered with raindrops.
His cellphone vibrated on the passenger seat next to him and he reached down and pressed the answer button. The line connected via a small speaker plugged into his car, allowing him to answer without picking the cell up.
‘Wilson.’
The voice of Douglas Jarvis answered. ‘I have them.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know where they’re headed yet. All I can be sure of is that Joanna Defoe and Ethan Warner are together as we speak. Nicola Lopez is not with them right now, but it’s only a matter of time.’
Wilson nodded. Today had turned out better than he could have expected. With both Warner and Defoe searching for the same person, the descendent of the long-dead soldier Barraclough, it was now simply a waiting game. As soon as they found their mark, Wilson would be in position to complete his mission. Two birds, one very violent stone.
‘What direction are they currently headed?’
‘Stay where you are. Every indication suggests they’ll move north out of Manhattan. I’m tracking them as we speak.’
‘Keep me informed.’
‘Your director lied to me,’ Jarvis said. ‘He lied to the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, too. Joanna Defoe hasn’t killed anybody, you did. Steel’s afraid of prosecution and…’
Wilson cut the line off and then dialed another. An automated voice answered, and demanded a code from him.
‘Wilson, eight-eight-one-five-nine-three-alpha.’
The line clicked and, moments later, the Director of the CIA, William Steel, picked up.
‘What news?’
‘They’re within reach,’ Wilson replied without emotion. ‘Chances are they’ll be neutralized before tomorrow morning.’
‘Take your time, and don’t underestimate either Warner or Lopez,’ the director warned. ‘We thought they were dead in Idaho and they returned. We’ll finish this properly this time.’
Wilson’s expression betrayed a hint of disgust that flickered behind his eyes. The director was safely tucked up in his office in Virginia, not hunting down American citizens in the field. There was no we.
‘What about Jarvis? He knows that Defoe is innocent of the slayings.’
There was a moment of silence before the director replied.
‘Accidents happen.’
Wilson shut the line off and started the engine, before he looked at his watch. It was half three in the afternoon and already the bleak gray horizon was touched with streaks of fiery gold where the sun was sinking into the west between tenement blocks.
Wilson pulled out and dialed another line. This time it was Donovan who answered.
‘Where are you?’ Wilson demanded without preamble.
‘The east side,’ Donovan replied, his tones equally crisp and uncompromising. ‘I’ve been in contact and they’re on the move. The person you’ve been looking for is Tom Ross, a police officer.’
‘Where are they going?’
‘Hell Gate Field,’ Donovan said. ‘The subject is with a woman, Lopez, and another of my team, Karina Thorne.’
‘Good,’ Wilson replied.
‘Too many people are getting involved,’ Donovan insisted. ‘ We can’t wrap this up quietly if half the damned city knows what’s going on.’
‘Then you had best hurry to ensure that nobody else turns up!’ Wilson snapped. ‘Get there ahead of them and secure the area. I’ll join you shortly.’
Wilson shut the line off and turned southeast toward Randall’s and Queens. With luck, he would be there in time to close the last couple of blocks on foot. He knew the area only because of the crime scene that Warner and Lopez had been poking their noses into. Remote and full of nothing but old dock buildings and small-holdings. Deserted at night.
Perfect.
Doug Jarvis sat in the rear seat of an SUV and stared at his cellphone for a long moment. There was no doubting that Wilson would double-cross him — the CIA man’s sole purpose was to clean up the mess that his bosses back at the Barn had created over the past four or five decades.
Jarvis was not idealistic enough, and more than cynical enough, to know that there was no point in expecting the CIA to honor its side of the bargain and leave Warner and Lopez alone. Joanna Defoe, likewise. All of them represented a clear-and-present danger not just to the security of CIA operations but to the agency’s very existence. It was one thing to blow the whistle on malpractice or corruption, but another entirely to expose several decades of cruel and unusual punishment meted out to innocent American civilians. The backlash, even from the hawks in Congress and the Senate, would be unprecedented.