The Carbon Trail (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

Mitchell sat in his office and waited impatiently for Elza’s call. It finally came at half past nine.

“Are you alone?”

“Apart from the blonde cheerleaders.”

Elza’s mouth twisted in a sneer.

“Very witty; I hope you’re still laughing in an hour’s time. Now, follow my instructions. Put the numbers I gave you into your computer and another message will come up containing a code. Key it into your car’s GPS and follow the directions as you go.”

Mitchell gripped the phone in fury.

“If you’d just given me an address I could have gone there directly from home, instead of all this bloody subterfuge.”

“You like subterfuge, remember? You were bred for it. Besides, we have our reasons.”

The line clicked off and Mitchell shook his head, wondering what Elza had meant. She seemed to get some sort of kick from all this cloak and dagger stuff. Mitchell got the code then went to the Lexus and tapped it into the GPS, waiting for a map to pop up. Instead directions to Miele Park in the Bronx appeared. Mitchell was puzzled; it wouldn’t take him an hour to get there. Then he understood. When he got to Miele Park he’d be given another direction. So that was the way it was going to be; drip-feeding him directions to test how much trust he deserved. And whether he was being tailed.

Thirty minutes later Mitchell was on the I-295 and he finally put his foot down and started to think. The fourth key on his fob had fitted the locked door in the café, just as he’d thought he would. He’d never been past the café’s front area during previous visits, always only a customer. But when Daria diverted him away from the door it had made him curious, and as soon as he’d seen the key he’d known with certainty that it would fit. Mitchell thought about what he’d found there that evening and frowned. As he thought about the room’s contents he pulled into the overtaking lane, accelerating past a school bus full of kids. They cheered at him through the windows, heading home after a good day; still innocent of the bad things in life. Mitchell wished that he was.

The door-lock in the café had been small and custom-made and it responded smoothly to the key. Mitchell hadn’t known what he’d find behind it. On his first few visits to the coffee-shop he’d thought it was a store cupboard, with shelves and tins and maybe sacks of flour. Today he’d wondered if it could be a small lab where he carried out his secret research trials. No, he hadn’t known exactly what to expect, but it certainly hadn’t been what he’d seen inside.

Mitchell slowed the car to fifty, not noticing Brad Whitman sitting three cars behind him in the adjacent lane. Mitchell could picture the locked room in the café clearly, as if he was still there. Its high white walls and smooth dark floor had stretched back for hundreds of yards, making him walk outside the building to check how the large space could possibly fit. He’d found his answer quickly. Behind the coffee-shop’s cosy front sat an old warehouse that he’d never noticed. It looked abandoned, barely warranting a second glance, but it was linked to the café via the locked door. The café was the perfect front for secrets and one look back inside the room had shown Mitchell just what those secrets were.

Instead of tins and sacks of food there were shelves and high work-benches. Cables on the wall hinted at rows of computers that were nowhere to be seen. Abandoned cages sat in one corner and he’d shuddered at what they might have contained. The place had been cleared out but there was no mistaking what the warehouse had once been. A sophisticated research lab. His research lab. They’d emptied it as best they could, but Mitchell knew a lab’s layout well.

He’d stood in the room searching for remnants of information to give him answers. Not whether he’d been there before; flashes of memory and a sense of familiarity had already told him that, but answers about what he’d been researching, and how far he’d managed to progress his work.

There hadn’t been much left but he’d crammed whatever papers he had found into his briefcase and they were sitting in the Lexus’ trunk now, waiting for him to make sense of them. What had he discovered that everyone wanted so much? Had he really cracked carbon bio-engineering? Was there even more?

A light flashing in Mitchell’s rear-view mirror pulling him back to the present and he realised that he’d slowed the Lexus to a crawl. He raised a hand apologetically and pulled into a slower lane then cracked open a window to keep himself alert. It wouldn’t do to get killed in a crash before he’d got answers. Mitchell checked the GPS quickly; his turn-off was next. Just as he indicated he noticed a sedan with tinted windows do the same. It looked familiar. Then he realised. Of course…They’d been watching him.

Images flew into Mitchell’s mind, slotting into place all at once. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t seen it before. The sedan that was parked across from Scrabo Tower, on his street at home and now here. Were they working with Elza? Or were they government men? Thirty seconds later Mitchell had his answer. A dark green van pulled in behind the sedan and even in his mirror Mitchell could tell that it was too close. The sedan’s driver seemed not to notice the van for a moment and then without warning, the sedan accelerated past Mitchell, swerving in and out of the lanes with the van following close each time.

They were three car lengths in front of him when the van finally made its move. It pulled alongside the sedan and Mitchell watched, shocked, as the passenger window slid open and the unmistakable shape of a gun barrel emerged. The faint pop and muzzle flare were over before anyone else had seen, but their result was very clear. The sedan swerved wildly to its left and then left again, scattering cars furiously around it, trying to clear a path. It ricocheted off a small Honda, rolling it over, throwing sparks up from its wheels. As Mitchell watched the Honda’s driver struggle to free himself, the sparks became flames and the car turned into a supernova in his rear view.

Mitchell swore aloud, glancing back at the funeral pyre, but the fast flowing traffic was only heading one way. He grabbed at the car phone to dial 911 and then thought again. Someone else would do it and he couldn’t risk the cops’ lives by involving them in his mess, not until he knew exactly what it was. The road ahead equalled the road behind for carnage as the sedan mowed down everything in its path, the driver far beyond controlling it. Mitchell watched as it hit two other cars, scattering them like pool balls with the same effect as before.

The vehicles far ahead of him had managed to clear a path and Mitchell wondered how they knew to do it. The sound of rotor blades overhead gave him his answer. A police helicopter was hovering above the scene, alerted by a concerned citizen. They’d used a loudhailer to direct people out of the way just in time to avoid the sedan.

The runaway car hit the highway barrier, buckling the steel beneath its wheels and making a noise like a crushers’ yard. As Mitchell held his breath the sedan cut through the metal obstacle like heat through snow, plummeting over the road’s edge to wreak more havoc on the road underneath. A moment later Mitchell heard a loud splash and exhaled, relieved. They were on the Throgs Neck Bridge and there was only water beneath them. He thanked God for the small mercy. Enough people had died because of him today.

The traffic slowed down to gawp and Mitchell used the pause to search for the van. He saw it abandoned a car length ahead, its work done. No-one would follow him to the meeting now; Elza and her allies made sure of that. It answered his questions; the sedan had been a government tail. The van had risked civilian lives to kill the sedan’s driver and no government agency, no matter how maverick, would ever have done that. The knowledge that he was being watched by the good guys was strangely comforting, but whoever the green van’s driver was, Mitchell had no doubt that they worked with Elza, and whoever Elza worked for didn’t want an audience tonight.

Mitchell edged the Lexus into the left hand lane and indicated, slipping quickly off the main drag and onto the Cross Island Parkway until he picked up his route. He drove slowly, checking his mirror every few yards like a man on the run, but there was no-one there. The van had done its job. Ten miles later the GPS told him to turn again, onto a farm road that tested the Lexus’ suspension to the hilt. It went on for miles, running between fields of high grass. Mitchell was surprised; he hadn’t known that there were fields this close to the city. Then he glanced at the milometer; he was forty miles from the office!

The track narrowed until the walls of yellow-green foliage grew so close that Mitchell could have touched them and there was no way to go but ahead. He drove until the evening sky was dark and his car lights kicked on. The only sound to be heard was a hawk overhead, swooping towards the car. Wherever he was going it was certainly out of the way.

A half-hour later the track opened suddenly into a clearing, where a small one-storey farmhouse sat surrounded by cars. Not the pick-up trucks that the rural location hinted at, but high-end limos with foreign makes. Mitchell was puzzled but the GPS confirmed that he’d reached his destination. Any doubt was quashed by the sight of Elza slipping elegantly from a dark Mercedes outside the house’s front door. She strolled towards him like a panther and Mitchell’s body twitched from lust. It was just a reflex, like blinking, something over which he had no control. It was nothing to do with love; that belonged to Karen. Mitchell smiled confidently as Elza reached the car.

“Interesting journey?”

Mitchell stepped from the Lexus and stared at her, hiding his disgust with a wry smile.

“You could say that - the fireworks were unexpected. There were casualties.”

Elza shrugged, dismissing the deaths. “We protect our assets.” She entwined his fingers with hers and gazed at him pointedly. “What’s ours is ours.”

The meaning was clear and Mitchell knew that Elza was applying it to more than work. He realised something that he’d missed before. Elza had feelings for him; maybe even love. The knowledge gave Mitchell an edge and he stored it for future use. Elza held his gaze for a second longer then they moved towards the house, the moment gone. As they walked she whispered instructions to Mitchell under her breath.

“Ilya you will know. But there are others inside; men you know nothing about.”

Ilya. Mitchell had heard the name from her and Daria. He’d be expected to know him. How could he cover the fact that he didn’t?

Elza stopped walking and stared up at him gravely. “We’re nearing the end now, and that means they will want results. You must finish your work quickly. These people don’t play games. You understand?”

Mitchell understood completely. If he didn’t finish his work soon, they would dispose of him and take it for some puppet scientist to complete. He nodded and Elza smiled, opening the front door wide. This time Mitchell half-expected what lay ahead. The farmhouse’s plain exterior covered a wood-lined entrance hall, with doors leading off to a series of rooms. Mitchell knew that one of them would mimic the laboratory at the café. Large and clean, but this time with the shelves filled with books and laptops on every bench. His new lab. Mitchell smiled inwardly; very clever. He admired their resourcefulness if not their goals.

Elza walked ahead and opened the first door on her right, showing Mitchell into a small, pale-walled room. Four men of different hues sat at a table. Mitchell recognised one of them but he couldn’t remember from where. He was a powerfully built man of around seventy and he shot Mitchell a smile that said he knew him well. Ilya?

Mitchell didn’t know the others but he recognised their greed. They wanted power. Money would follow but it was almost incidental for men like this. They already had more than they could spend. Power was what drove them, the power to control other people’s lives.

A small man at the table stood up to greet him, beaming with bonhomie. He was wearing a suit so white that Mitchell was reminded of an old movie about a fabric that was always clean. He smiled at the incongruity of his thoughts and the small man smiled again. He looked Arabic. It was confirmed when he spoke.

“Salam. Dr Mitchell. I am Behrouz Javadi.”

Mitchell’s hand automatically flew to his chest, lips and forehead in greeting. “Salam.”

“Please sit. Coffee? Or something cool after your long drive?”

“Coffee’s just fine.”

Mitchell cradled his drink as he scanned the room. There were two other men at the table and two men by the door that he hadn’t noticed before. They had bulges in their jackets that had nothing to do with style. The men at the table were a mix of Arab and Slav and Mitchell knew that he was looking at an alliance; between Russia and the middle-East. Middle-East where? The answer came soon.

“You know Ilya of course.”

The old man that Mitchell had recognised smiled warmly and Mitchell nodded in return, struggling to recall anything about him.

“This other gentleman is a colleague from Tehran.”

Iranians. Mitchell wasn’t surprised. The Iranians had kept pretty quiet throughout the Arab Spring, watching carefully from the side-lines, determined not to let it happen to them. They’d always wanted nuclear power, but the West had been watching. If they obtained his carbon research they would have an asset worth far more than that.

He’d guessed at Russia from Daria and Elza, but an alliance with Iran was something new. It was like a scene from a cold-war movie except that the sweat trickling down Mitchell’s back said that it was very real. Why the hell had he got involved in this? Was it for money? Could he really be that mundane?

Ilya waved Mitchell to a seat and Elza was dismissed; a woman unimportant in a world of men. Mitchell smiled inwardly, knowing she wouldn’t like it. Javadi turned towards him oozing warmth.

“Ilya tells me that you have a family. A wife and a little girl?”

The words carried a clear threat. Mitchell nodded, not trusting himself to speak without using his fists. Javadi smiled at him again, like a snake-charmer playing a tune.

“Would you like to take them with you?”

To where? Where the hell was he going? Mitchell knew that he couldn’t ask or it would give the game away so instead he just nodded again.