Hannah scoffed. ‘You’re watching too much television, Jarvis. The Bureau looks after its own, as does the entire intelligence community.’
‘Valerie Plame,’ Jarvis replied, ‘a CIA agent whose identity was exposed by the Bush administration after her husband, a former US Ambassador, criticized the intelligence used by that administration to go to war in Iraq. Valerie and her husband ended up taking members of the administration to court. They even made a Hollywood movie about it.’
Hannah gritted her teeth. ‘The administrations have learned from the mistakes of the past.’
‘You keep telling yourself that.’
‘LeMay isn’t going to suddenly turn on me.’
‘It’s exactly what he’ll do because you’re just like Ethan Warner.’
‘I’m nothing like him.’
‘You’re exactly like Warner, because I originally hired him for the same reason that LeMay’s chosen you: expendability. You’re used to perform a task and then dropped like a hot rock. The only reason Ethan’s still anywhere near the DIA is because he’s so good at what he does and we have history going back to the Corps, something I’m not willing to betray. If he hadn’t had that, I wouldn’t have fought so long and hard to maintain him as an asset. You, Hannah, don’t have a damned thing to protect you and Special Agent Valery Jenkins is champing at the bit for any reason to come down on you.’ Jarvis smiled. ‘You’re about to become the perfect patsy.’
Hannah shook her head, chuckled.
‘You’re just covering yourself with scare stories,’ she replied. ‘I’d have thought somebody at your level could come up with something more original. You’re worried about what I’ll uncover.’
‘That’s right,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Agent Ford, I can’t do this meet again. I brought you here in an attempt to ensure that we would not be observed by LeMay or any of his assets who I’m certain will already be looking for you. If you keep digging you’re going to come up against people who are everything you see on television and worse. I wish I could reveal more but I cannot.’
Hannah glanced without concern across the Potomac’s choppy waters. ‘I’ll remember to play nicely.’
Jarvis took a pace closer to her.
‘I know about the blood that you found at the hotel in Virginia, Hannah,’ he said. ‘I know that you’re looking into the man that it belongs to.’
Now Hannah’s gaze snapped back to Jarvis. ‘Mitchell.’
‘Ethan has encountered Aaron Mitchell on two occasions, and on both of them he barely escaped with his life. You don’t know what you’re getting into here Hannah, either of you. These people will crush you like worms without the proper support, and while Ethan does have that protection I can assure you that you don’t.’
‘I have the Director of the FBI behind me,’ Hannah protested. ‘How does protection get more powerful than that?!’
‘Because LeMay is part of the threat,’ Jarvis replied. ‘He’s using you to fold up our investigation because we believe that he’s a part of something called Majestic Twelve.’
Vaughn stepped up now, concern etched into his features.
‘Warner mentioned something about an MJ–12,’ he said, ‘some kind of cabal, industrialists and politicians? We took it as fantasy.’
‘It’s real,’ Jarvis assured him, ‘very real. Forget television programs. MJ–12 has existed now for some seventy years and is on the record, despite attempts by the CIA to destroy those records during investigations in 1973 and again in 2004. Enough remained that the Government Accountability Office was able to mount a case against the agency, which resulted in its Director resigning.’
‘Natalie Warner,’ Hannah murmured, almost to herself. ‘She worked there, at the GAO.’
‘And was almost killed by Aaron Mitchell’s predecessor,’ Jarvis acknowledged, ‘a man named Mister Wilson. At the time I had believed that I was working for the government, when in fact both I and my superiors had been working for Majestic Twelve — that’s how highly placed these people are. Now, we’re working against them and have both the DIA and elements of the administration supporting us.’
‘The same kind of administration that you just berated for having betrayed Valerie Plame?’ Hannah challenged.
‘Like you suggested,’ Jarvis countered, ‘each administration can learn from the mistakes of its predecessors, and this one is not so beholden to the hawks in Congress and the Senate. LeMay is part of the old guard, a stooge of Majestic Twelve or perhaps one of its members. He wants you to stamp us out, to bring us to justice for real or imagined crimes, and thus remove the threat of exposure.’
‘Or bring you to justice because you’re the one working for Majestic Twelve,’ she suggested in reply.
Jarvis grinned.
‘That’s the intelligence game for you,’ he said. ‘I can’t prove one way or the other who the enemy is, Hannah — that’s something that you’ll have to decide for yourself. But believe me, LeMay will cheerfully see you betrayed and abandoned if it suits his purpose and there will be nothing that you can do about it.’
Hannah watched Jarvis for a moment in the bright sunlight.
‘I could just arrest you right now, have you brought back for questioning.’
‘Yes you could, and I would not resist. But then I would be freed, just as Ethan and Nicola were, and you would be back to square one.’
‘That’s the kind of power that this MJ–12 could wield,’ Vaughn said. ‘You’re spinning us a tale but there’s nothing to substantiate any of this.’
‘Except Aaron Mitchell,’ Jarvis countered. ‘You have a choice. You can choose to obey LeMay and pursue Ethan Warner, who even now is on his way to Iraq in pursuit of another threat against our country’s security, on the pretence of his having some awareness of the events behind Stanley Meyer’s murder. Or, you can pursue a man whom you actually know was present at the unsolved homicide, who is supposed to be dead but isn’t and keeps vanishing whenever local law enforcement appears on the scene.’ Jarvis raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘I know where I’d put my money.’
‘You and I are not the same people,’ Hannah said.
‘I know,’ Jarvis grinned, ‘which is why I’m giving you this advice instead of letting you walk into the end of your careers and perhaps worse. It’s your call what you do. Don’t take my word for anything I’ve said, just be mindful that for now you can trust only yourselves.’
Jarvis walked past them and away down the path. Vaughn called after him.
‘And what the hell are we supposed to do if everything you’ve said turns out to be true?’
‘Call me,’ Jarvis replied without looking back. ‘By that time, I’ll be the only friend you have.’
Hannah watched Jarvis leave, saw through the trees the SUV return smoothly to pick him up with their FBI pool car alongside.
‘I’m not buying it,’ she said finally. ‘He’s got every reason to try to derail us or convince us not to pursue Warner.’
‘He’s got no reason to tell us as much as I think he just did,’ Vaughn countered. ‘C’mon, Hannah, we both know the intelligence game isn’t a black and white thing with good guys fighting bad guys. Jarvis said it himself, he’s ended up working for the wrong people without even knowing it.’
‘And you think that somebody in the position of Director FBI could be in the grip of some mysterious cabal? My ass, it’s the last thing I’d bother with if I were in the Bureau’s hot seat.’
‘But maybe not if you were on the way to the top and needed a push,’ Vaughn said. ‘Crazier things have happened. We should do what Jarvis says and take a closer look at this Mitchell guy, see if we can pin him down. He’s the link between all of them, this whole charade. If he is guilty of killing Stanley Meyer it proves everything that Warner and Jarvis are saying.’