Origin - Season One (18 page)

The medic stood and closed the case. “The good news is you’re fine. You’ll probably feel like shit for another day or two, but that’s par for the course when you drink yourself stupid.”

The paramedic turned to the police officer standing in the doorway. “He’s good to go.”

Mitch looked at the cop and did his best to appear ashamed of himself. It wasn’t hard. Aside from once or twice in his early college days, he didn’t drink as a rule and had never been in trouble for it in his life. He’d been too busy saving up for much-needed hardware to have either the time or money to indulge in much else. Of course, that was probably the case with half the child-murdering drunk drivers this guy had arrested, Mitch thought.

“I guess you’ll want that mug shot now,” Mitch said. He felt a little lightheaded, but when he stood up the feeling passed. Whatever the medic had given him, it was doing wonders for his headache, which had settled down to a dull throb.

“We’ll need to get you cleaned up first,” the cop said and handed him a pair of folded light blue coveralls. There was also a pair of pull-on slippers with a zip-lock bag on top. “I need you to put your personal possessions in the bag. The shower’s downstairs.”

Mitch followed the man out the door to the end of the hall, through a set of double doors and down two flights of stairs. They walked past a block of cells which were all empty and the cop pointed to a door at the end of the room. Mitch took out his wallet and put it in the bag, then fished a handful of loose change from his pocket and threw that in, too. The cop pointed to his watch, and Mitch took it off and handed it over.

Half an hour later he was showered, dry and sporting a whole new look. He knew what he had done was bad, but the jail suit made him feel like a convicted felon. Every eye that glanced his way seemed to suggest they knew he was either a rapist or a pedophile, but couldn’t quite work out which. A woman sitting on a chair against the far side of the large open-plan office – she looked like a prostitute at the tail end of a long and fruitless career – winked at him and held up her cuffed hands. She was dressed in a pair of leopard-skin Spandex bottoms and a dirty white T-shirt that made her shoulders look like a coat hanger.

“Hey, honeybunch, I’m doing blow jobs for dime bags if you’re interested,” she said and began to laugh, exposing dry, white gums with only two or three teeth left. Mitch looked away. The cop behind him laughed. The woman seemed to take that as a cue and stood. She began grinding her bony hips and stuck out her tongue.

“I’ll fuck everyone here for a buck a pop,” she said and cawed with laughter, which quickly turned into a coughing fit. A man in jeans and a black T-shirt with the letters
PHPD
printed on the front turned to her and said, “All right, Wanda, that’s enough. Sit down.”

She sat and pouted her lips to suggest she was hurt by this rebuke, but when Mitch looked over at her she winked at him again.

“Take a seat right here,” the cop said. “Detective Lawson will be in in a minute.”

Detective Lawson turned out to be
Miss
Lawson, a squat, stocky, square-jawed woman with short, brown hair who was either busy infiltrating a lesbian crime syndicate or gay herself. Mitch thought the latter was more likely. She sat down at the desk and opened the file in her hands.

“Says here you’re with the Bureau,” she said and looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Were you on some kind of sting operation?”

The sarcasm in her voice was unmistakable. Mitch guessed that Miss Lawson was not just a woman-lover, but also a man-hater. Her eyes seemed to accuse him not of drunk driving, but of having the audacity to be alive.

“I’m a technician,” he said. “Down in DC.”

“And you’re what? On vacation?”

“Not exactly.”

“Sort of on vacation?”

“I don’t know,” Mitch said. “I had a bad day at the office. I needed to get away for a bit. It’s hard to explain.”

“So you thought you’d come up here and drown your sorrows on the interstate. That about the size of it, Mr. Rainey? I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re bipolar.”

“Look, I’m not going to justify myself. It was an idiotic thing to do and I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? Well, that’s all right then,” she said. “I’m guessing your people down in Washington will want a slightly better explanation, though.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

She was about to say something else when a man stepped out of the office at the back of the room and said, “Brenda, can you come in here for a minute?”

She looked back at Mitch and stood up.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she said and gave him a smile that suggested she would love it if he tried.

A minute later she was back with two uniformed officers. One of them produced a set of handcuffs. “I need you to stand up and put your hands behind your back, sir.”

Mitch got to his feet and did as he was told. The officer put the cuffs on and tightened them until Mitch felt the circulation to his hands stop.

“What the hell’s going on?” Mitch said.

Neither officer said anything. They each grabbed one arm and led him back towards the door he had come through. Brenda gave them a wide berth and only took her hand off the butt of her pistol when they were gone.

They led him back down the stairs and into the cellblock. A third officer held the door open to one of the cells and Mitch was pushed inside.

“You going to take these things off?” Mitch said.

“Shut up,” one of them said, and they both turned to leave.

“Hey! My hands are turning blue!” Mitch shouted after them.

He had no idea what had just happened, but whatever it was, it had clearly changed the mood. The idea that this was all leading back to what he and Mike had been up to hadn’t even occurred to him. But it did now.

He sat down on the bunk, first trying to think, then trying not to. There was really nothing to think
about
. For all he knew, Mike was sitting in his own cell somewhere, arriving at the same conclusion.

At some point, overcome by mental and physical exhaustion, he managed to fall asleep.

When he opened his eyes again, there was a full-on argument going on outside his cell.

“I don’t give a shit what he’s been accused of,” someone said. “He has rights.”

Two uniformed officers were standing on the other side of the bars. One of them was carrying a tray of food.

“He’s a damn terrorist,” the officer holding the tray said.

“Suspected terrorist. This isn’t Guantanamo. Take the damn cuffs off him and give him the tray. If you have a problem with that, you can take it up with the captain.”

The officer with the tray turned to Mitch and said, “Turn around and approach the bars.”

Mitch did and the man removed the handcuffs. Mitch walked straight to the toilet. His hands felt like two lumps of lead and he ended up getting as much piss on the floor as in the bowl. When he was done he turned around and said, “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” the cop said and dropped the tray onto the floor just inside the cell. Mitch walked to the bars. The other officer was sitting at the desk reading something.

“What have I been accused of?” Mitch asked.

The man looked up and frowned. “You’ll know soon enough.”

Mitch had no idea how long he had been going out of his mind when two uniformed officers he hadn’t seen before opened the door to his cell and stepped inside. One of them was holding a Taser.

“I don’t know what you’ve been told about me,” Mitch said. “But I used to get beat up by girls at school.”

The stony expressions on their faces didn’t change.

“Stand up,” one of them said.

“Where are we going?” Mitch said.

The man grabbed his arm, forced Mitch to his feet and ushered him to the door. When he passed the officer with the Taser, Mitch opened his mouth to ask again. He only managed a single word before something pinched his stomach just above the navel and his body began to spasm. His knees buckled under him and he collapsed to the floor. The fillings in his teeth felt like they were vibrating and his field of vision shrank until he was seeing the world through the wrong end of a telescope.

He was vaguely aware of being picked up by the arms and dragged, first across the room, then out a door and into fresh air. Somewhere about a million miles away a car door opened, and he was pushed inside face-first. There were voices, but they were muffled and impossible to understand. His legs were pushed into the car and the door slammed behind him. He twisted his head round and saw the blurry image of someone getting in behind the wheel. Again, he tried to ask where they were going but his mouth refused to open. The last thing he heard was the engine starting. Then his eyelids grew heavy and he felt as if he were falling down a deep well, perhaps into Wonderland, or maybe into hell.

New York, New York

Wednesday 19 July 2006

1200 EDT

Mike woke up in his bed around noon with no recollection of how he’d gotten there. He reached below the covers, found his service pistol and was relieved to see he’d at least had the sense to engage the safety.

All the news networks were busy with the killings in Vermont. Nobody knew where Gerald Ross was, but it was being assumed that he had either been kidnapped or committed suicide on learning of his wife’s death. At least that was what the thinking heads were telling their talking counterparts. Mike, thanks to the assistant director, and now Mitch and his illegal fact-finding mission, knew better.

He tried to call Mitch twice, once at his office and once on his cell. The woman who picked up the phone at OSD said he hadn’t called in, but might have just overslept. Apparently Mitch did that a lot. His cell went straight to voicemail.

He made his way to the kitchen and found a loaf of Wonderbread, so named presumably because it was four days old already and still looked fresh. He was doing a test run with an unbuttered slice when the phone rang in the hall. It was the assistant director.

“Mike, how you feeling?”

“Fine. Everything all right?”

“Actually, I was calling to ask if you’d heard from Mitch Rainey today. No one’s seen him at OSD and his cell seems to be turned off.”

“I haven’t spoken to him since yesterday,” Mike said. “Anyone been to his home?”

“Someone’s on their way there now. I just wanted to check with you. I know you guys are friends.”

“No, I haven’t spoken to him since yesterday,” Mike said.

“Okay. I’ve got to scoot. You take care.”

“Sure.”

Mike put the phone down and finished the slice of bread. He returned to the TV to find a young Ivy League professional being interviewed on CNN. According to the presenter, he was a “counter-terrorism expert” with one of the big think tanks on Capitol Hill. Mike watched for a minute, musing at the way the man leaped from one absurdity to the next with characteristic lack of humility. He turned off the TV, cursing under his breath.

– – –

On the street below, a red Buick had pulled up behind the Chevy Blazer. The man behind the wheel of the Buick gave his colleague a thumbs-up. A moment later, the Chevy pulled out onto the road and disappeared into the afternoon traffic.

Pont-Rouge, Quebec

Wednesday 19 July 2006

1300 EDT

Francis heard the door handle move and reached for the gun under his pillow. The maid saw him, muttered an unintelligible apology and quickly closed it again. He heard her murmur something as she pushed her trolley on to the next room. Francis checked his watch and saw he’d been asleep for several hours.

He sat up and glanced at the computer sitting on the small table by the window; then headed to the bathroom, intending to take a shower. One look at himself in the mirror changed his mind. He found his wallet on the bedside table, saw he still had a hundred and fifty Canadian dollars left, and decided he needed a change of clothes first.

He left the truck in the parking lot and made his way into town on foot. He found a UNICEF hospice shop at the end of the main drag and picked out a pair of jeans that looked about the right size, an old plain black T-shirt and a red sweater with the Canadian national ice hockey team logo embroidered on the breast.

Francis gave the woman at the counter a twenty-dollar bill and told her to keep the change. On his way out the door he saw something in the window that made him stop. Laid out in a row on top of a dusty box containing a Nintendo game console were several compact disc cases with the letters CD-RW printed on the sleeves. Francis picked up all six and took them back to the counter. There was no price tag on any of them, so he handed the woman another twenty and left the shop.

When he got back to the hotel he looked at the CD drive on the old PC and felt his heart jump when he saw the same four letters on the optical drive tray: CD-RW. He turned the computer on and waited with growing impatience for the lumbering old machine to load the operating system. When the churning inside the case settled down and the pointer began to respond to the movement of the mouse, he quickly opened the first file he came to and right-clicked.

And there it was, an option to
burn to disc using Nero Burning ROM
. He took one of the discs out of its case and put it in the tray, then selected the option and followed the prompts until he heard the drive spin up and saw the red light begin to flash. When it was done and the drive tray spat out the disc, he took it and put it in his laptop.

The file was there.

It took him almost half an hour to figure out how to add multiple files to a single disc but in the end he managed to burn everything, a total of 285 megabytes. It took another half hour for the disc to burn. By the time it was finished, Francis was all but jumping out of his skin with anticipation.

The first of the files the older computer had been unable to display turned out to be a scanned blueprint of a door-opening mechanism drawn by a German company called Arman Tenner. From what he could tell, the door was a proposed retrofit to a submarine of some kind. The fact that the drive also contained pictures of a Soviet Victor-class sub seemed to lend this credence. He sat staring at the bizarre image for a long time. Far from shedding any light on the problem, the more he looked, the more unclear things seemed to become. The next file he opened was a drawing by the same company of a space probe design labelled
SC-1135 Siren Call
. He opened the next drawing. It was another satellite, but this one looked like any other. It too had a name. In a box in the bottom right hand corner someone had typed:
Darkstar CommSat 443
, and below that,
Skyline Defense.