The Carbon Trail (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Friday, 12
^th
September. 9 a.m.

“Whitman was killed before he could find out who Mitchell was meeting.”

“Bloody waste of life.”

Magee rounded angrily on Richie, his face a deep red. It was a shade that Richie had never seen before.

“Whitman did his job and he did it without complaining, Cartagena, which is more than I can say for you.”

Magee ran out of breath and sucked at his inhaler, then he tapped the screen in front of him and an aerial view of the farmhouse that Jeff Mitchell had visited appeared. The house was set in acres of high grass with only the space it stood in carved out. There was no-where to turn a car but in front of the house; Brad Whitman’s sedan would have been spotted in seconds. If he’d parachuted in nearby, high visibility would have resulted in him being shot before he hit the ground.

Richie nodded, understanding.

“I’m sorry, boss. All I meant was that, thanks to the tracker we put on the Lexus we could have waited until Mitchell arrived then got satellite images of the people he was meeting. Whitman would still be alive.”

Magee shook his head. “We have the images but they’re no use. They concealed their faces and all the car number plates were false.”

A soft voice interrupted him. “An agent was our best chance of getting close enough to capture their faces on film, Richie. Brad knew the risks when he volunteered.”

Richie turned towards the gently said words and instantly felt bad. Amelia Howard’s face wore a sad expression. Whitman had been her friend and he’d gone to almost certain death without a complaint. He’d been a brave man. Richie nodded at her in respect as Pereira watched them both jealously. She joined the discussion with more than a hint of chagrin.

“It’s still a waste. All we know now is that they’ve shifted operations to some farm in the backside of nowhere and we’ve still no clue what Mitchell’s been working on.”

Richie nodded in agreement. “Whatever it is it must be something serious, judging by the security. They weren’t playing when they killed Brad.”

Magee interrupted the exchange in a weak voice. His asthma was getting worse, and some people wondered why the agency didn’t retire him. Richie knew exactly why. Magee had mentored the Director when he’d first joined and he said Magee was the brightest men he’d ever met. Magee’s trade-craft might be rusty these days and he wouldn’t fancy his chances in a chase, but he still had his brain.

“We have every branch gathering intelligence, but the only whisper we have is about the Russians. They’re the prime movers in this, but they won’t be the only ones interested, you can be sure of that. As for what Mitchell’s working on, we have to assume that it’s related to carbon. It’s his field of research.”

Richie cut in. The others admired his hutzpah; if any of them had done it Magee would have had their heads on a plate.

“What? Some new application of Graphene? No way. This can’t just be about electronics. Half the world is already working on that. Mitchell must have found something totally new.”

“Like what?”

The room fell silent as everyone struggled to answer Magee. Eventually he restarted.

“What Mitchell’s working on isn’t our problem. We have scientists working on it back at base. Our job is to find out who the buyers are.”

“We could always try bringing Mitchell in and asking him.”

Everyone turned to look at Amelia Howard. Richie thought she’d undone another button of her shirt and he craned his neck to check. Pereira spotted where he was looking and interjected, mocking Howard’s idea in a caustic tone.

“Yeh, OK. Excuse me Dr Mitchell, would you mind telling me exactly what you’ve discovered and which of the USA’s enemies you’re selling it to?”

“We don’t have enemies nowadays, do we? Aren’t they all just competitors?”

“Whatever.”

Everyone laughed except Magee. He was rubbing his chin deep in thought.

“That’s not a bad idea, Howard.”

“What? You’ve got to be kidding, boss!” Pereira’s voice and expression stank of sour grapes.

“I’m not saying that it’s a brilliant one, but it’s something for me to think about.”

“Lift Mitchell? He’ll say nothing and lawyer up.”

Richie leaned forward, shaking his head at his lover. “I’m not so sure he would.” He told them about Mitchell’s salute the night before. “He obviously knows that he’s being watched and he wanted me to know he did. There was something about that salute…”

“What?”

“Give me a couple more days watching him, and I’ll tell you.”

Magee thought for a moment and then nodded. “OK. Business as usual for two more days, then we’ll talk about bringing Dr Mitchell in.”

He turned towards Richie and nodded, trusting the younger man’s gut.

“Focus on the wife and daughter, Richie, the others can watch Mitchell. Then we’ll see.”

***

3 p.m.

Pereira was surprised to see Karen Mitchell’s Lexus arrive outside Scrabo Tower at three p.m., two hours earlier than normal. She was even more surprised when the Mitchell’s headed towards North Moore and turned into 14
^th
Street instead of heading home. The car pulled to a halt outside a glossy building, whose red ‘H’ said medical centre loud and clear. Who was seeing a doctor? Not the daughter, she was still at kindergarten. It had to be Mitchell or his wife. The solemn looks on their faces said that it wasn’t for something small.

Pereira followed on foot and watched the Mitchells take the elevator to the seventh floor then she checked the index board. There was only one specialty on the seventh; neurology. Professor Robert King. A quick search on the internet said that he was a specialist in memory loss. That could be caused by any one of a hundred conditions and she didn’t know which Mitchell was seeing him yet. Pereira checked her watch then made a call, adopting a heavy Brooklyn accent.

“Hello. Is that Professor King’s clinic?”

“Yes, may I help you?”

“I’m Sergeant Cartagena of the NYPD.” She smiled to herself as she said Richie’s name; it had a nice ring. “There’s a silver Lexus blocking the road down here and I’ve got it registered to a Karen Mitchell. Someone saw the couple who parked it entering your building so I’m ringing around trying to see which clinic they’re at. I need them to move it.”

“I’m sorry. We don’t give out patient information.”

Pereira raised her voice authoritatively.

“Lady, they’re blocking a street. I could have it towed but I’m trying to be nice here, on account of they might be sick. Just tell me if a Karen Mitchell has an appointment in your clinic this afternoon.”

The receptionist sighed heavily and Pereira heard a keyboard being tapped. The woman spoke a few seconds later, her voice still reluctant.

“We don’t have a Karen Mitchell, but a Jeff Mitchell is seeing the Professor at three-thirty. Shall I send him down?”

“Don’t stress it, I’ll check on the street and come up.”

Pereira walked quickly to the sedan and radioed Magee with an update. It might be something or nothing, but it was interesting either way. If Jeff Mitchell was sick it might make him vulnerable. Or it might just make him run.

***

Jeff Mitchell left the clinic two hours later with his decision made. All he had to decide now was when. The diagnosis had been clear and the MRI scan confirmed it, he had a brain tumour and it was inoperable. He was going to die, and soon. The only thing he could hope for was that radiotherapy would slow its growth, but that would mean time in hospital and he couldn’t afford to be away from work right now.

Mitchell gazed sadly at his petite wife, her delicate face swollen with tears. He wasn’t sad for himself; he deserved everything he got as far as he was concerned. He’d been ready to sell deadly research to the Russians. He was a spy, for God’s sake; a sleeper agent. Except now he’d woken up, and it wasn’t in a way that either Ilya or Elza was going to like.

He needed time to think things through so he’d lied to the Professor, promising that he would start radiotherapy the following week. Karen had given him a sceptical look and made him swear. She knew him too well. Mitchell had sworn to keep her happy; one more lie wouldn’t make any difference to his afterlife or the damnation that he was sure awaited him there.

One look at Karen Mitchell’s face as they walked towards the Lexus gave Rosie Pereira her answer. Mitchell was sick, very sick judging by his wife’s tears. Pereira didn’t pity him; Mitchell was a traitor ready to sell his genius for the highest price, but her heart felt for the woman by his side.

There was silence in the Lexus as they drove home, Karen sobbing quietly and her husband deep in thought. The tumour explained his failing memory, but it didn’t explain his intimate knowledge of Greg Chapman’s life. Chapman held the key to something and he was determined to find out what. Mitchell made up his mind to go back to Greg Chapman’s apartment and follow whatever trail he found there.

He squeezed his wife’s hand and smiled sadly. They’d had years together but he could only remember the last week; it seemed so unfair. But his diagnosis had convinced Mitchell of one thing. He would die to protect Karen and Emmie, because he had nothing else worth living for.

***

After hours of crying and talking, Karen finally fell asleep. Mitchell carried her up to bed, smoothing down the covers and switching off the light. He stood in the darkness watching her breathe. Karen made him happy and he knew that she’d loved him for years. Mitchell thought of his tiny daughter, with her curls and dimples; Karen’s mini-me. The thought of someone harming them made him understand the urge to kill, but he was smarter than that, even with only half his brain. He would find another way to keep them safe.

Mitchell walked downstairs to the study and flicked on a lamp, lifting the briefcase that he’d left there the night before. After he’d seen his farm laboratory ideas had flooded into his mind. He’d covered the papers from the café with them. Just random snippets, scribbled in the margins, but he had to make sense of them now. Pouring himself a whisky Jeff Mitchell sat in his well-worn chair and started searching for answers while he still could.

Chapter Twenty-Four

1 a.m.

Elza flicked through the channels, staring blindly at the TV screen. The Iranians had thought that a door would stop her hearing; don’t let the feeble woman hear the big men’s talk. But the bug she’d planted in the room after they’d swept it had fed every word into her ear. Most of it was boring; macho posturing and bullshit. Only one bit had made her listen hard. Mitchell was planning to take his wife and child with him when he left. If he took that anaemic bitch Karen anywhere it would be over her dead body. She hadn’t been screwing him for two years just for fun.

Elza slammed down her wine glass and then gazed at her hand, watching as a shard of glass pierced the skin. Drops of blood ran along its edge then fell slowly to the floor, one by one. She stared at them for a moment then lifted the cut to her mouth and sucked it dry as she made her plan. Jeff Mitchell was her future and anyone who got in her way would have to go.

***

Mitchell stared at the pages until their edges blurred and the words became shadows merging into one. He knew exactly what he’d been researching now; altering carbon-based life. He’d told the Board the truth. Mitchell corrected himself quickly. No, he’d told them part of the truth, not the whole truth, so help me God.

He poured himself another whisky and organised his thoughts into two parts, his work and the mess that he’d made of his life. Had his life led him astray in his work, or vice versa? He settled on the latter. If he’d been in the States since childhood, then he’d been groomed for this work from the off. But how had the Russians known that he’d be bright enough even to go to college? Mitchell shrugged; the Russians. He still acted as if he wasn’t one of them, except that he was.

Mitchell answered his own question. They’d known that he’d be bright enough to go to college because they’d IQ tested him as a child. They’d selected him for the task specially. He’d been talent-spotted for his brain, just like athletes who were hot-housed young.

Mitchell was shocked by the wave of grief that suddenly overwhelmed him. Warm tears streamed down his cheeks, freed by the bad news that he’d got that day. The tumour was the end of his future, except that it had never really been his, had it? He thought of his family asleep upstairs and then of the Russian family that he’d never known. Who were his real parents? Not the two people whose picture he’d been shown at ten, told that they’d died in a car crash, that was for sure.

Mitchell startled at the crystal-clear memory. It was the first clear one he’d had of anything before the morning of his blood-filled shower. He concentrated, pushing hard at the past, trying to retrieve something more. He searched for things that had happened before he was ten, struggling to see his mother’s face. But there was nothing. She was gone. He prayed that she was dead, so she hadn’t had to miss her child for all these years.

Sipping at his whisky Mitchell turned his thoughts back to work. If Ilya had bred him for logic then he would use it against him now. OK, what did he know? The whole world was working on Graphene, looking for new applications that would make them millions. Its conduction properties weren’t new; everyone knew about them and about its high ratio of strength to weight. Devon had been set to work on that, while he’d obviously focused his research in a completely different direction. Totally new forms of carbon.

Graphene was only one form of carbon, like Diamond. But they were both inert substances and he’d been curious to see how making a newer form of carbon might affect living things. Mitchell read a scribble he’d written at the side of a page. ‘Carbon applications– inert and dead.’ There was a space and then one more word. “Living?”

He slumped back in his armchair, staring into space. Inert carbon could be anything from a diamond to a lump of coal. But dead? That implied something that had once been alive. What had he been referring to? Plant life? A dead leaf? His mind flew back to the farm lab that Elza had shown him to. He’d expected to see most of the equipment that was there. Glass, steel and technology, just like in Scrabo’s basement lab. Theoretical work. Carbon manipulation at an atomic level.

What he hadn’t expected were the small steel cages lined up against one wall. He’d noticed some in the café’s lab but dismissed them. But now there were more. What species were going to be kept in them? The largest cage would have held something the size of a small dog. Was his work really being trialled on more than dead leaves? Dead animals? Live ones? If it was then that Mitchell understood the need for secrecy; the animal welfare people would never countenance this.

Mitchell shuddered and glanced at his Labrador, Buster. He was lying against the room’s radiator even though it was turned off; ever optimistic. Mitchell beckoned him over and stroked his pet’s coat thoughtfully while he read. The papers were clear. He’d made a breakthrough in his research at some point. He’d managed to alter an ivy plant, re-combining its carbon atoms into something entirely new. People had been genetically modifying food and plants for years but he’d created an entirely new genus just by re-arranging its carbon! Still, the discovery wasn’t that exciting, there had to be more to his work than this.

He wondered idly why he hadn’t published the research in any journals and then he pictured the tabloid headlines. “Scientist plays God.” The controversy would have halted his work for years, not to mention the religious backlash. And that was only a plant. He could imagine what would have happened with animal trials. Mitchell rifled through the rest of the pages searching the scribble-filled margins for more clues, but there was nothing except one word; ‘Archaeus’.

Mitchell thought for a moment, racking his brains for what he knew about the term. It came from an obscure medieval science called Alchemy, famous for believing that lead could be turned into gold. Archaeus described the ‘Life Ether’, a grey area where matter transmuted into living energy; the Vital Spark of living things. The philosophy had been debated for centuries but discredited long ago.

Mitchell shook his head, smiling. The reference was cryptic, even for him. How could an abstract concept like Archaeus possibly be relevant to his work? He was an evidence-based scientist, a biophysicist; he dealt in hard facts, not fantasy.

He turned his thoughts back to the cages in the lab and shuddered, ruffling Buster’s coat apologetically. If he’d applied his carbon research to plants, it wasn’t a huge leap to think that he’d managed it with animals as well. If he had then it would explain the need for secrecy and the work’s monetary value. Whoever had that research would make billions. The applications were endless. Mitchell thought of the possibilities, imagining biological weapons too awful to name. He couldn’t let the Alliance get their hands on it. Or anyone else.

Mitchell poured himself another drink, trying to drown a nagging thought at the back of his mind; the thought that he’d taken the work even further than this. ‘Archaeus’. He’d no idea what it referred to but he didn’t like the sound of it.

Somehow Greg Chapman held to key to everything. He was sure of it. His brain tumour might explain him forgetting if he’d met Chapman, but it wouldn’t explain him knowing about his apartment key. And there were other things. Knowing the name of Annie, the girl at Chapman’s building. His and Chapman’s similar taste in music and booze, and his clear memories of Florida, somewhere that he’d never been.

Mitchell made a decision. He sat for a moment longer formulating his plan, then he rose to go to bed. Buster jumped to his feet hopefully, barking for a walk but he was disappointed when his master headed upstairs for the few hours left of the night. Tomorrow Jeff Mitchell was going to find some answers.

***

Saturday. 8 a.m.

Karen watched as her handsome husband straightened his tie and tears started to fill her eyes. Mitchell gave her a mock frown.

“If you’re going to cry at me all the time, then I’m going to feel even worse.” He smiled and pulled her close. “Cheer up, honey. I’m not dead yet and I’m a long way from giving into this thing.”

Karen pressed her head against his muscled chest and whispered so that Emmie couldn’t hear. She was playing happily in the corner and they wanted that to continue for as long as it could.

“Do you have to go into work today, Jeff? It’s Saturday.”

Mitchell smiled down at her, stroking her hair. “The sooner I get things sorted at work, the sooner I can start treatment.”

She stared hard at him, as if doing so meant that she’d see the truth. “Will you go for radiotherapy, Jeff?”

Mitchell held her at arm’s length and smiled again, nodding. “I promise that I’ll start it one day next week.”

Karen opened her mouth to object and Mitchell pressed a finger to her lips.

“Trust me, please, Karen. I have loose ends to tie up. I may need to take a trip away for a day or two, I’m not sure yet. But I’ll be at the clinic next week, I swear.”

It was only half a lie. He’d be there if the Alliance didn’t kill him first. Mitchell kissed his wife gently and then turned her towards the door, smiling.

“Now, go get the car ready, or I’ll be late for school!”