Origin - Season One (41 page)

Monday 24 July 2006

1500 EDT

It took them ten minutes, but Francis eventually managed to get his hands close enough to pull the tape off Mike’s mouth. However, before he could ask Mike anything the car stopped. They heard a door being rolled shut and then two of the doors on the car opened. Caroline was saying something to one of the men in German. It sounded like the two were arguing. A moment later the trunk opened and they found themselves looking up at the stern face of Caroline de Villepin. Her hair was a mess and the navy blue trouser suit she was wearing was done for, but she seemed unharmed.

“We need to talk,” Francis said.

“Who sent you?” Caroline asked.

“No one. And I didn’t blow up your car, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“I’ll tell you what,” Francis said, “you arrange it so my friend here can get his knee out of my balls and I’ll do my best to explain it to you.”

Five minutes later Francis and Mike were seated on opposite sides of a steel beam protruding from the floor. Their hands were tied behind their backs and their feet were bound together with thick, plastic wire ties.

“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Francis said. “What about you, Mike? Is this what you had in mind?”

“I had my heart set on a couch, actually,” Mike said.

The man guarding them didn’t respond. He just stood there, stone-faced, looking straight ahead. He had an MP5 submachine gun slung over one shoulder.

“What happened to you, anyway?” Francis asked. “I told you to jump if they tried anything.”

“I was never a very good swimmer,” Mike said.

A door opened at one end of the empty warehouse and Caroline walked in through a dusty beam of bright sunshine. She was talking to someone on the phone and sounded agitated.

“Then find him, god damn it,” she said. “I want him on the phone in the next hour.”

“Things not going well?” Francis said when she put the phone down.

“I’m going to ask you one more time,” Caroline said. “Who sent you?”

“And I’m going to tell you one more time,” Francis said. “No one sent us. We’re here alone.”

“Where did you get this?” she said, holding up the hard drive.

“I stole it from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,” Francis said. “I thought it belonged to the CIA.”

She clearly didn’t believe him, but evidently decided to humor him all the same. “And how did you know it was being kept there?”

“I just told you, I didn’t. I had no idea what was on it until you assholes started killing people.”

“Killing who?”

“Are we really going to do this?” Francis asked.

Caroline only looked at him.

“All right,” Francis said, “Gerald and Cynthia Ross, for starters. Valerie Tremblay and the cook out on I-91, for another. Any of this sounding familiar yet? Several FBI agents in La Tuque? No?”

The bitch of it was, she really didn’t seem to know what he was talking about. It wasn’t in her face or the eyes – those things were easy enough to control with a little training – but in the way she was getting annoyed. Not because he was telling her things she already knew, but because she clearly thought he was just buying time.

“I’m running out of patience,” Caroline said. “I want to know who sent you and who gave you this drive. If you’re not going to tell me freely, then it will have to be under duress.”

Her choice of words and the way she said them made the threat sound pathetic somehow. Francis didn’t think the idea of torturing anyone had ever crossed her mind before.

“Mike,” Francis said, “if you’ve got any ideas, now might be a good time to share.”

“We know about Bruce Jessops,” Mike said. “Why don’t you call and ask him how we got the drive?”

Again, the name seemed to mean nothing to her. Before Mike could say anything else the man beside Caroline spoke. The only word they recognized was Jessops. Caroline frowned and asked him something else. When he answered she said, “How do you know about Jessops?”

“I met him at the FBI field office in New York,” Mike said. “You may not believe it, but the Fed was broken into, and this is the guy who did it. I know because I was one of the investigating officers.”

“You’re an agent of the FBI,” Caroline said. It wasn’t a question, but her way of saying she didn’t believe him.

“Yes, I am. Or was. Jessops was sent from Washington to supervise the handover of the investigation, which is how he got –”

Caroline’s phone began to ring and she answered it.

“Where the hell are you?” she said.

She listened for a moment and said, “Carl? Are you sure?”

She listened again and said, “All right, I’ll leave right away. Call me when you find him.”

She hung up and said something to the man beside her, who nodded and pulled back the cocking handle on his MP5. Caroline was halfway to the door when he turned it toward Mike and offered him a humorless grin.

“We know where the submarine goes!” Francis shouted after her.

She stopped but didn’t turn around. The man holding the gun on Mike lowered it and looked at her. Francis saw real worry on his face.

“If we go missing, half the US Navy is going to show up on your doorstep,” Francis said. “Might be a bit awkward, don’t you think?”

Somewhere outside, a turbine engine fired up, followed by the sound of rotors beginning to pick up speed. Caroline seemed to be in two minds about what to do.

Francis and Mike had no idea what the man with the MP5 said to her, but whatever it was, it seemed to make up her mind. She said something and walked out the door. A moment later the man Francis thought of as bridge guy number one came back in. He untied them as MP5 guy stood back. They were led out of the warehouse, which wasn’t a warehouse at all, but a hangar, and out into a farmhouse courtyard. They saw the helicopter about fifty yards beyond the low stone wall sitting in the middle of an open field. Its rotors were now a blur and the wind caught them as soon as they walked through the rusty steel gate.

Francis recognized it as a Kazan Mi-172, a converted version of the Mi-17 Russian transport helicopter. It was painted a dark blue and appeared to have only two windows toward the front of the fuselage. Caroline stood aside as they were ushered up the steps into a luxuriously decorated interior. Bridge guy number one walked to the end of the cabin and opened a narrow door. MP5 guy told them to get inside.

When the door was closed and locked they were back in the dark. Francis felt around and was relieved to find a cushioned seat running along both sides.

“We know where the submarine goes?” Mike said.

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it? I don’t know if you were keeping up with current events back there, but we almost bought the farm.”

“I don’t think she has a fucking clue what we were talking about,” Mike said.

“I think you’re right,” Francis agreed. “I’d say we were dealing with one of two possibilities. Either they take a very laid-back approach to management, or someone has broken ranks and set out on their own. I’m inclined to believe the latter.”

“Why would their own people want to cover up the missing drive?” Mike asked.

“I don’t know,” Francis said. “But we better convince them that that’s exactly what’s going on, because I don’t have any more aces up my sleeve. The old submarine trick was the last one.”

The Callisto

Somewhere on the Baltic Sea
Monday 24 July 2006

1600 CEST

Titov and Captain Williams were sitting in the officer’s mess looking over a map when a member of the crew came in.

“Sir,” he said, “The chief asked me to tell you that he can fix the generator, but it will take him another three hours.”

“Good. Tell him I’ll be right down.”

Williams took the plotting compass and held it between their position and the town of Utska on the Polish coast. “One hundred and eighty miles. There’s no point turning back to Aurora without the comms link. If we’re moving again by 1900, we could be there by 0330 at a stretch.”

Titov nodded. “What choice do we have?”

“None. I’m going down to the engine room to see if I can speed things up.”

Utska, Poland

Monday 24 July 2006

1930 CEST

The three men seated around the table all looked up at the guard as he came in.

“Contact Aurora and tell them we’ve lost contact with the Callisto,” Richelle told him.

The man left in a hurry. Richelle looked down at the map in the middle of the table where a large circle had been drawn to indicate the position of the Pandora, now anchored halfway between Klaipeda on the Polish coast and the Swedish island of Oland. “I fucking knew something like this would happen,” she said. “God damn it!”

A moment later the head of the security team appeared in the doorway.

“What is it, Gary?” Richelle said.

“Ma’am, there’s a helicopter approaching. It’s using the correct authentication codes.”

Richelle stood. “Keep trying. I want Captain Williams on the line by the time I get back.”

As they walked out into the back garden another guard came running out of the house behind them.

“Who the hell is that?” Richelle asked.

“I don’t know, ma’am,” the security chief said.

“Is it ours?”

Before he could answer the helicopter turned on its landing light and they were both temporarily blinded. Richelle moved back, covering her eyes.

“Move back and be prepared to shoot anyone that gets out,” she said.

Both men cocked their machine guns and knelt down behind the low hedgerow running along the back of the house. The helicopter turned as it descended and Richelle saw that it
was
one of theirs. It touched down gently on the grass and the pilot immediately switched off the turbines. The blades were still spinning when the door opened and Caroline stepped out.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Richelle said when Caroline reached them.

“Has Jack Fielding called?” Caroline said.

“No, he hasn’t. Are you going to answer my question?”

Caroline turned back toward the helicopter and signaled. “We have a serious problem. I thought Jack would have called to let you know we were coming. It was his idea.”

Richelle watched as Mike and Francis were led down the steps and across the lawn. When they stopped Francis winked at Richelle and said, “Evening, ma’am.”

“Who the fuck are these people, Caroline? And why would you bring them here, of all the god damn places on earth?”

“Someone tried to kill me, Richelle.”

“What?”

“Someone planted a bomb under my car. I would have been on my way to Frankfurt at the time, but these two showed up…”

Caroline’s voice trailed off and went silent, as if this fact had eluded her until now.

“Someone better start making sense,” Richelle said.

“Richelle,” Francis said. “May I call you Richelle?”

“No you may not! Who the hell are you?”

“Okay, Ms. de Villepin, then. My name is Francis Moore. I admit we came to Zurich to find your sister, but we had nothing to do with the bomb. If you can just accept that in good faith for the time being, perhaps you’ll let me explain why we are here. From what I have seen, it may be more important to you than it is to us.”

Richelle studied Francis for a moment. “What are you doing here?”

“To cut a long story short, I used to kill people for the Pentagon. Ten days ago I broke into the Federal Reserve Bank in New York with the help of a man named Gerald Ross. A man your people killed. I did it to get my hands on something I needed to blackmail my former employer into shutting down the program I used to work for. The safety deposit box I found your drive in once belonged to the CIA. If I’d known that was no longer the case, I would never have taken it.”

Caroline handed the drive to Richelle. “He found this at the bank.”

Richelle studied the drive for a moment. “You found this in a vault in New York?”

“Yes,” Francis said. “We came to Zurich to return it. And to tell you we have no interest in what’s on it as long as you call your people off.”

Richelle looked almost too stunned to speak. She turned to Caroline. “Is this true?”

“I – I don’t know. He had the drive. I called Jack from Zurich to ask if he knew anything about it.”

“And what did he say?” Richelle asked.

“He said Carl had a safety deposit box at the Fed, but didn’t know anything about the drive.”

“I should think not,” Richelle said. “These were all supposed to have been destroyed. And Jack told you to come here?”

“Yes,” Caroline said, “until he could find out what was going on.”

“We had nothing to do with the bomb under your car,” Mike said.

“And
you
are?” Richelle asked.

“Michael Banner. I’m an agent with the FBI field office in New York. I was assigned to the investigation before it was taken over.”

“Jesus, Caroline,” Richelle said. “You brought him
here
? What the hell were you thinking?”

When Caroline didn’t answer Richelle said, “Never mind. It doesn’t matter now. Gary, take them downstairs and lock them up.”

“Jesus, lady,” Francis said. “Did you hear what I just said? If you don’t know anything about this, then you’ve got a traitor on your hands. They tried to kill your sister. If they know where she is, what makes you think they won’t try again?”

Richelle’s hands became a blur. One moment her left was down at her side, the next it was gripping Francis by the throat. With her right she had drawn a pistol and put the barrel to his temple. “Listen, I don’t know who you are or what the hell you’re doing here. If you ask me, your story sounds like pure bullshit. Until I get a call telling me otherwise, you two are the only people I’m suspecting of anything. Clear?”

“Crystal,” Francis said. “But you’re making a big mis –”

Richelle took her hand off his throat and brought the elbow of her right arm crashing into his temple. Francis looked at her, his eyes suddenly dull. He stumbled to one side and fell to his knees. When he spoke the words were slurred. “That all you…?”