Origin - Season One (22 page)

The second time was a little clearer. He had been strapped to a seat with a shoulder harness. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was bright green light coming from a narrow gap only a few feet in front of him. When his eyes regained their focus, he had seen it was an instrument panel flanked by two men wearing pilot’s headsets. One of them had looked back and seen him, then said something into his mouthpiece. A moment later, the man sitting next to Mitch – Mitch hadn’t even seen him – raised a syringe over his thigh and the world had swum away again. That had definitely been at night. He could remember seeing stars through the windows.

This time at least he wasn’t moving. He looked around the room, closed his eyes to make sure he really
was
awake, then opened them again.

He was sitting on a white leather couch in a room that looked like it might have been lifted off the set of a space opera. Everything was white, from the polished linoleum floor to the ceiling tiles. It hurt his eyes to look at it. It took him a minute to realize he didn’t have a hangover any more, which was strange because the last time he’d gotten drunk it had lasted almost a week. Aside from being a little drowsy and extremely confused, he actually didn’t feel too bad.

He was about to stand up when he heard footsteps approaching the door. It opened and two people entered the room. The first was a tall woman with long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. The man who came in behind her was at least three inches shorter and looked no older than twenty-five. Both were wearing white lab coats. The woman had a stethoscope around her neck. She put her hand out and the man handed her a clipboard. She studied it briefly, and looked up at Mitch. “Mr. Rainey, how are we doing today?”

“I’d be doing a lot better if I knew what hospital this is,” Mitch said. “And how I got here.”

She smiled. It was the kind of smile you might offer someone who was clearly insane, but not dangerous. She turned to the man beside her. “Where is his profile? I don’t see it here.”

“Doesn’t have one,” the man said.

“Then what’s he doing here?” she asked.

“Security breach,” the man said and pointed at the clipboard. “He’s cleared. Authorization came through last night. They want him sedated all the way.”

She studied Mitch for a moment then turned and left the room without another word. The man looked at Mitch apologetically, but said nothing.

“Okay,” Mitch said. “Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?”

The man only looked at him. He seemed as uncomfortable as Mitch himself. Mitch was about to ask again when the woman returned.

“I suppose it had to happen sooner or later,” she said. “Still, it would have been nice of Brendan to let us know before he arrived.”

She looked at Mitch. “I’m not sure keeping him sedated for the whole trip is a good idea. I want confirmation from Brendan before I authorize it.”

“Hey,” Mitch said. “Do you mind? I’m sitting right here. Now is someone going to tell me what the hell is going on?”

The woman regarded him for a moment and said, “Mr. Rainey, we’re truly sorry about the manner in which you were apprehended. If you bear with us a little longer, I’ll see what I can do about answering at least some of your questions.”

“Okay,” Mitch said. “That would be swell. In the meantime, could you at least tell me where I am?”

She looked from Mitch to the man beside her and back, apparently unsure how to proceed.

“I’ll be right back,” she said and left the room again.

Mitch stood up. The man by the door seemed to interpret this as an act of hostility and took a step back. “Mr. Rainey, please take a seat. She’ll be back in a minute.”

“Take it easy, pal,” Mitch said. “I’m the guy who doesn’t know where the hell he is, remember? The guy who just woke up on a couch in a fucking postmodern version of Narnia?”

The man took another step back and reached for the door handle. Mitch took another step forward.

“Oh no you don’t,” Mitch said and began walking toward the door. The man quickly shut it and Mitch heard the lock turn.

“Well, that’s just fucking great,” Mitch said, locking his hands together above his head.

A minute later he heard the lock turn in the door again. He was expecting the woman to return, but this time it was two men who must have weighed at least four hundred pounds put together. Both were wearing the same lab coats, although to Mitch they now looked more like the uniforms orderlies wear in mental hospitals. One of them had a syringe in his hand.

“Hey, back off,” Mitch said. “I want to speak to the doctor. Where is she?”

“Mr. Rainey,” the man with the syringe said, “This will be a lot easier if you cooperate.”

“Yeah, not gonna happen,” Mitch said.

He jumped over the couch and backed away until he reached the wall. The men split up, each moving to opposite sides of the room. Mitch made a dash forward, intending to jump back over the couch and head for the door. He had barely left the ground when a hand grabbed his arm and pulled him down. He hit the floor on his back and the air rushed from his lungs. A moment later, he felt the needle prick his left shoulder.

The last thing he saw as he raised his head was the doctor. She was standing in the doorway smiling at him sympathetically.

Lake Commissaires, Quebec

Thursday 20 July 2006

1800 EDT

Lester had been sitting behind the wheel of the Saab for over an hour trying to figure out what to do next.

He had found the road easily enough. The fresh tracks of the vehicle Valerie had taken them in could be seen coming and going. Finding
their
tracks had presented no challenge either. But then the trail had ended. He’d found the boathouse and cursed when he saw it was empty. Tire marks and footsteps were easy enough to follow, but a boat left no tracks and the lake was huge.

In all the time he had been sitting in the car, he had not seen a single boat on the water or another car on the road. This was dead country, a place
made
for hiding.

He considered calling Eugene to let him know what he had found but the idea insulted his pride. There had to be a way.

According to the map, the lake was almost fifteen miles long, making a blind search impossible. But the boathouse was located where it was for a reason, and unless it was simply to fool the likes of him, he thought what he was looking for would be somewhere directly across the lake and within walking distance of the shore. That meant a camp, or possibly even a dwelling of some kind.

He consulted the map again. There was a small town named after the lake several miles up the road. He started the car and drove back to the main road.

Two miles beyond the town, he found a narrow dirt road leading off into the trees in the direction of the lake. A slanted, rusting sign advertised a hunting shop a quarter mile on. Below the sign someone had tied a piece of cardboard with the word
BAR
written in black marker pen.

The hunting shop was closed, but the bar was open, if bar was really the right word. It was little more than a brick annex with a door and a window. A neon sign hung in it, advertising Molson Dry Beer, although half the letters were no longer illuminated. Above the door a small wooden board said
De Commissaires
in charred black letters. There were two old pickup trucks and a red ATV parked outside.

De Commissaires was as big a disappointment on the inside as it had been from the outside. Just an oblong room about twenty by forty feet. At the back, a makeshift counter made of unpainted plywood stood resting on two sawhorses. The walls had been painted white long ago, but were now yellow with smoke, except in a few places where a picture or poster had recently been taken down.

There were six men inside, seated around two mismatched tables that had been pulled together in the center of the room. A few Canadian one-dollar coins were piled in the middle and each man was holding several playing cards. All of them smoked the same cigarettes and all wore variants on the same basic theme: leather boots, jeans and thick woolen shirts in a colorful variety of scotch patterns. All but one of them had a beard.

When Lester entered, the conversation died and twelve eyes turned toward him in unison, each less welcoming than the next. They grew visibly uncomfortable as he approached the table. One even produced a knife and put it down in front of him with a deliberate clang.

“English?” Lester asked.

Their eyes all moved in the direction of the man sitting at the end of the table. He was the smallest of the group and looked about fifty, but that may just have been the beard. The man regarded Lester with dark-green malevolent eyes, then stood and pushed his chair back. “I speak English.”

“Are you American?” Lester asked.

The man shook his head. “I’m from Vancouver. Is there something we can do for you, mister?”

“There is. I’m looking for someone hiding on the other side of the lake.”

The man translated this for the rest of them. Two of the men laughed.

“Do you hunt over there?” Lester asked.

“Who’s asking?”

“I am.”

“And you are?”

Lester put one hand behind his back and reached into the waistband of his pants. The man with the knife stood up. When Lester brought his hand back around, he was holding a thick wad of American hundred-dollar bills.

“I’d make it worth your time,” he said and threw the bills onto the pile already on the table.

A murmur went up among the men and Vancouver said something to them in French. He bent over, picked up the bills and leafed through them.

“My friends and I might be able to help you,” he said.

“Good. Are there any dwellings over there?” Lester asked.

Vancouver frowned.

“Houses or cabins?”

He consulted two of the others and said, “This man says he knows of two cabins on the other side. He says one of them is in pretty good condition.”

“I need you to take me to them,” Lester said.

When Vancouver addressed them again, an argument erupted in French. All eyes remained on the bills in the short man’s hand. As the exchange grew more heated, Lester reached back and produced another wad. He threw it down on the table with deliberate effort and the group went quiet.

“Money is not an issue,” Lester said. “Time is. That’s ten thousand dollars. And this makes it twenty. Get me to where I need to go and there’s another twenty in it for you.”

This time there was no argument, just a lot of surprised faces. The men all stood up at once and headed for the door. Vancouver put on his jacket, picked up the money and stuffed it into his pockets. He held a hand out to Lester, who looked at it as if it were covered in shit.

“I don’t want to know your name,” Lester said. “And I don’t want to be your friend.”

Vancouver shrugged and said, “Suit yourself, pal. That your car?”

“Yes,” Lester said. “I need you to get rid of it.”

The man shrugged again, “Sure; why not?”

One of the men turned off the lights in the bar and locked the door. Vancouver asked Lester for the keys to the Saab and handed them to one of the others who got in and drove it away.

“You can ride with me,” Vancouver said.

They moved out in a convoy, the quad bike taking up the rear. Within a few minutes the truck was bumping along a badly maintained set of ruts through thick woodland. When they broke through the trees into a clearing, Lester saw they were on the tip of a peninsula that ran some way into the lake.

From here the opposite shore was only half the distance it had been by the boathouse. The men began to assemble their hunting gear, looping knives to their belts – and in one case to a leg – checking flashlights and other equipment and stowing these away in any one of a hundred pockets. Each man had a rifle with a scope. Lester saw that two of them were equipped with night-vision.

When the group was ready, Vancouver handed Lester a Canadian Army-issue raincoat with a fleece lining. It had a strange pattern of camouflage that looked like a badly pixelated image of small green, black and brown squares. The men moved in single file toward the shore where a small wooden dock led out to two four-man, steel-hull fishing boats. Each had a large outboard. One of the men was in the process of starting one of these up when Lester shook his head “No motors!”

Vancouver didn’t need to translate the message. The man held up his hands in exasperation and reached down to pick up the oars.

“We’ll lose time if you’re in a hurry,” Vancouver said.

“Then I suggest we stop talking and get going,” Lester said and pushed past him.

Lester climbed into the boat already occupied by two of the men and indicated for the one holding the oars to move aside and let him have them. When both boats were in open water, Lester began to row, first at a steady pace to keep up with the other boat, then faster. He increased the breadth of his strokes until the stern sank visibly and produced a steady series of small waves in their wake. Within minutes the other boat was at least a hundred yards behind them. The two men in the boat with him sat looking at Lester in a montage of horror and wonder. By the time they reached the far shore, the other boat was at least two hundred yards behind. Lester hadn’t even broken a sweat.

“Where are the cabins?” he asked.

Vancouver called to one of the men with a night-vision scope on his rifle.

“The closest one is a mile inland from here,” he said. “The other is about three miles in that direction, a few hundred yards from the shore.”

“Just the two of you,” Lester said, pointing at Vancouver and the man beside him. “Tell the others to wait here.”

“Can I ask who you are you looking for?” Vancouver said.

“That doesn’t matter. If you see anyone, just stop and signal.”

“I only ask because even forty grand doesn’t cover being shot at if they have guns.”

“They’re not armed,” Lester said.

The man with the night scope took the lead. Lester stayed ten yards behind Vancouver. It took them half an hour to cover the distance. Alone, Lester would have cut that down to ten minutes. But the men in front of him were both unfit, and surprisingly clumsy, for people who called themselves hunters.