The Carbon Trail (4 page)

Chapter Seven

Friday. 5 a.m.

The morning light hit Richie’s eyes like a blow and he jerked awake, hacking hard and convinced that he’d never been asleep. Grabbing urgently for a cigarette to calm the first cough of the day he peered through the window’s condensation, rubbing it away with his hand. It was early. A glance at the clock confirmed it; five a.m. The Lexus sat untroubled in the driveway and the Mitchells were still in bed; he’d got away with dozing this time.

Richie yawned widely, not bothering to cover his mouth. There was no-one around to tell him off and boys would be boys, after all. He opened the car door and stepped out onto the sidewalk, stretching hard, confident that he wouldn’t be seen; only the cats and birds were dumb enough to be awake this early. A sudden buzz of static told Richie that he was wrong. Magee’s wheeze reverberated around the car like a health warning and Richie climbed in again urgently, pulling the door shut behind him in case the neighbours heard.

“Richie. Where are you?”

Even Magee called him Richie. Not out of fondness, out of laziness; his surname took longer to say. Richie pressed the speaker’s button and answered.

“Richie here. What can I do for you this fine, bright day?”

The voice wheezed again then grew stronger. Richie was sure that its strength increased when Magee was bollocking them.

“Don’t get smart with me, son. Where’s Mitchell?”

“In bed if he’s any sense, like I should be. When are you finding us some cover, boss?”

“When I see fit. How do you know that he’s in bed?”

“The car’s in the drive, the bedroom curtains are closed and I didn’t see anyone leave the house all night.”

The last bit was a lie but a pretty safe bet. There was no way Magee could know he’d been asleep unless he had someone watching him as well, and they were too short-staffed for that. Magee’s next words made him wonder.

“Hmmm… I believe you, despite the fact that you’ve been asleep all night.”

What the hell? There was no way he could have known! Magee was already on to other things.

“Did you try Chapman again?”

“Brunet tried him eight times. The first seven rang out and the last cut to answerphone. I’ve tried twice; answerphone both times. My guess is his battery’s dead.”

And him too probably. The words went unsaid but they sat heavily in the air between them. Richie decided to be hung for the whole sheep.

“Greg was at Scrabo Tower on Wednesday night. If he’s hurt he must still be in there, boss. We should go in and look.”

“No. I’ll say when that happens. If Chapman followed Mitchell into the building then he knew the risks. We have cover coming from Boston later, so you and Brunet will get some rest soon.”

“Who?”

“Pereira.”

Richie swallowed hard. He’d dated Rosie Pereira two years before and it hadn’t ended well. Magee knew all about them.

“Follow Mitchell until Pereira relieves you at two. And Richie…”

“Yes, sir?”

“Stay awake until then.”

***

Daria Kaverin pulled back the curtains and gazed through the café’s windows, tutting at the grime that had built up in a week. They needed washed but physical tasks were beyond her now. She sighed heavily; old age was a terrible thing. Then she gave a small smile - at least it hadn’t affected her brain.

Soon Jeff Mitchell would visit again and they would be ready. The work he was doing would change all their fortunes, and help take back their country from the maniac who ran it like the west; allowing corruption and lechery at every turn. They might only be a small group but with what Mitchell would soon give them no-one would defeat them. She could finally leave this godforsaken country and go home to Russia, to spend her last few years in the place where she’d spent her first.

***

Karen glanced shyly at her husband as she slipped Emmie’s dress down over her head, smiling at the memory of last night. Jeff had made love to her differently than usual, gentler somehow. She’d really liked it. He’s still been full of energy and strength, like the man she’d married, but his passion had been unselfish, far more than it had ever been. He’d taken his time, making certain that she was satisfied before he pleased himself; he’d never been so generous before.

Karen admitted it to herself reluctantly. She’d always loved her husband, but no-one could ever have called him an altruist. But now…Jeff felt different somehow; she struggled to define it and then gave up. Just different.

Mitchell smiled at his wife with the confidence of being on more solid ground. He’d felt as if he’d been getting to know Karen last night, although his body had said that he already did. The look on her face said something had changed between them too, in a good way. Something was better, but what? The moment was broken by Emmie jumping onto Mitchell’s lap, and giving his stubble a tug.

“Ow! What did you do that for?”

“Because you’re funny, Daddy. Funny, furry face”.

Mitchell rose to his feet, lifting his daughter high in the air and smiling up at her. “Funny, furry face, have I?” Then he set her on the ground with a playful growl. “Well, then, you’d better run, because old furry face is coming to get you.”

Karen laughed as Emmie ran around the room squealing. Richie pulled his earpiece out quickly as a high-pitched sound pierced his ear. He cursed the sensitivity of the bugs they’d put in the house then he realised what the noise had been. Mitchell was playing with his kid! He’d never done that before. Jeff Mitchell was being less of a bastard than usual for some reason, but it wouldn’t last, no-one ever changed that much.

Chapter Eight

Friday. 2 p.m.

The sedan’s passenger door opened sharply and Richie turned to see a pair of slim thighs wrapped in tight, black trousers standing outside. He would have known those thighs anywhere. He threw out a curt “get in” and gazed straight ahead through the windshield, craning his neck to see the top of Scrabo’s impressive tower. The company certainly knew how to spend money. Still, in Manhattan a business’ image was everything; that and the research that made them billions.

Richie didn’t turn as Rosie Pereira slipped into the car; instead he lit a cigarette slowly, cracking the window open just an inch.

“Is this it then?”

Pereira’s voice was husky, as if she smoked twenty-a-day, except that it came naturally to her, like the musical lilt from her first tongue. It was a lethal combination.

“Is what it?”

Richie tried not to glimpse Pereira’s dark curls out of the side of his eye. Two years apart wasn’t long enough for their effect to have waned. She pointed at the skyscraper overhead and snorted derisively.

“This. The great case that’s going to make your career. Watching some scientist stare down a microscope?”

Richie hit back fast.

“Mitchell’s not that sort of scientist. More the atom-bashing type. And yes, this is it.”

Richie stubbed his cigarette on the dash and threw it out the window, then he turned his brown eyes slowly towards her, braced for the effect that she always had. His thoughts were cooler than he felt; all the bracing in the world wouldn’t work against Rosie.

Richie gasped inwardly at her face, just as he’d done so many times before. Untamed blue-black curls spiralled to her shoulders, framing slim cheekbones that provided the scaffold for a pair of sloping black eyes. Below an aquiline nose Pereira’s full lips half-curled into a sceptical smile. If she’d been a man that smile would have made Richie want to smack her one, but on her it looked inviting, begging to be kissed off her mouth. He steeled himself against her effect and turned to face front again.

“It’s surveillance; what did you expect? You got somewhere better to be today?”

Richie paused, willing himself not to ask the question that would expose his hurt, but the words marched out unstoppably. “New husband?”

As soon as he’d said them Richie wanted to bite them back, but Pereira had already heard. Her smile widened, not sceptical now but sarcastic. Her tone matched his for acidity. “Same one that I left you for.”

Richie recoiled as if she’d punched him and she instantly regretted her cruel words, but it was too late. His door flew open and he was out in the street, her only handover a sharp. “Check the log.”

Then he was into the waiting van and Rosie Pereira was alone, running through the exchange in her head. Why the hell did they bring always out the worst in each other? She already knew the answer. Pereira shook her head sadly then sat back for a day spent watching the all-American scientist whose research could bring the country down.

***

Devon Cantrell glanced up from his computer as Mitchell entered, carrying sandwiches from the canteen. The younger man flicked on the percolator then he raked his hands through his long dark hair and tapped twice on his keyboard with a puzzled look.

“Did you log-in on Wednesday evening and forget to log-off, Jeff? You’re showing as logged-in just before 18.30, but you never logged-off again. It was slowing down my intranet so I had to get security to check it yesterday evening after you left.”

Mitchell shook his head, genuinely confused. “Why would I do that?”

He hesitated, struggling to recall his movements on Wednesday evening, the night before his blood-stained shower. After a minute he gave up and grabbed a seat. Mitchell gazed at his deputy’s open face and decided to take a chance.

“To be honest Devon, Wednesday’s a blur. I can’t remember anything before yesterday morning at home.”

“Nothing? What about the firm’s annual barbeque last weekend? Do you remember that?”

Mitchell screwed up his face in concentration then nodded hesitantly. A meshwork of images formed slowly in his mind; picnic rugs on the grass and a small baseball diamond with people all around. Karen and Emmie were there and he was on the rug beside them drinking beer.

“Vaguely. But Wednesday’s hazy. Tell me what we did.”

Devon poured the coffees then unwrapped his sandwich, staring curiously at his boss.

“It was pretty much like any other day. In early and work all day, except for breaks. When I left at six o’clock you were still here. You said you had some stuff to finish up. You don’t remember any of it?”

Mitchell shook his head. “Nothing.”

Devon scanned Mitchell’s face then gave a wry smile. “Maybe you were working on that new stuff you told the Board about.”

There was a huff in his voice but Mitchell let it pass. He turned Devon’s PC screen towards him and typed in some words. A table flashed up and he scrolled back through the logs till Wednesday night. Devon was right. He’d logged-on to his computer at 18:26, but there was no activity after that. Mitchell had a bad feeling about it.

“What did security say?”

Devon shrugged. “That you must just have forgotten to log-off. There was nothing new on your screen and your files were untouched, but they changed your password just in case. You know what they’re like.”

“Why didn’t you mention this to me before?”

“I was busy this morning, supervising the new intern, and you had to leave early yesterday so I didn’t want to call you at home. What was that about anyway?”

“Emmie’s new kindergarten. Karen wanted me to take a look.”

As Mitchell said the words he felt more ownership of his family than he could ever recall. He was proud of them. The realisation pleased him, but the thought that he hadn’t felt it before nagged at something in the back of his mind. Devon’s next words pulled him from his reverie.

“Great…Look, Jeff, I don’t want to make a big deal of this, but shouldn’t we check the tapes in reception and the lab just in case? If your computer was wide open someone could have accessed our results.” He paused and then continued. “And you still haven’t told me about your new carbon allotrope.”

Mitchell stared at him, not reacting.

“What you told the Board about yesterday. It was as much news to me as them. I really want to hear about your work on carbon-based organisms.”

A surge of anger flooded through Mitchell and he fixed his deputy with a cold look. He felt furious but he didn’t know why. All he knew was that he wanted to reach across and choke the life out of his friend. Mitchell raced through the possible reasons for his anger. He didn’t mind Devon questioning him about his poor memory, or even theorising about new allotropes as they done before they’d gone to see the Board- that wasn’t it. And checking the security tapes was just routine.

Mitchell found the reason for his ire quickly. Discussing carbon theory the day before had been fine, but he didn’t want Devon asking anything about the actual research on carbon-based organisms that he’d told the Board about. Mitchell knew instantly that he would kill his deputy if he did.

With a huge effort Jeff Mitchell re-arranged his face into a smile and patted the young man reassuringly on the arm.

“I just exaggerated to the Board yesterday to get them off our backs. It’s only theory, Devon, just like we discussed. It hasn’t got off the page, but if it ever does then you’ll be the first to know.”

“But if it’s something for the company surely they should have been told before?”

Mitchell’s forced smile widened. “To be honest the concept is so far ‘out there’ that I didn’t want to tell anyone and look stupid. I only mentioned it yesterday because the Board backed me into a corner. And you heard them, they’re happy to give me time to firm it up. ”

He stood up briskly, making it clear that the discussion was at an end. “Now, let’s go and view the tapes for Wednesday evening. That way we’ll find out if I’m losing it completely.”

***

Karen wandered aimlessly around the law library, lifting books and flicking idly through them, then replacing them without reading a single word. Finally she gave up, too preoccupied with her feelings to concentrate on Tort, and decamped to the coffee-shop on the corner to make sense of her week.

Jeff had seemed so much happier in the past two days, different somehow. Karen searched for the words to describe it and stumbled onto one; kinder. He was kinder. Jeff had never been cruel to her exactly, well not physically, but his sharp words had made her cry plenty of times. Not enough to make her leave him, or even to stop loving him, but enough to make her wish that he would change.

Karen loved her husband but even she knew that he was a rigid man, cool and organised to the point of being obsessive, but that was to be expected from his job and his time in Iraq. He’d gone over as a surgeon on a short commission but left in 2003 to go back and study biophysics, finishing his PhD at Harvard and starting a career in research. Scrabo Research Enterprises had head-hunted him in 2008 and then their life together had changed. Jeff had become secretive, disappearing without a word, sometimes for days. He always returned, but without a word of explanation, refusing to answer her questions, even about the smallest things. Eventually she’d stopped asking, learning to be grateful for whatever she got.

In the past few months there’d been something more; Jeff had been vague and forgetful, always complaining of a headache that tablets wouldn’t shift. She’d watched him, worrying silently but knowing that there was no point asking him how he felt. His answer would always be the same; silence.

She’d loved him anyway, even as he was, but in the past two days she’d seen a different Jeff, a softer man, and she liked the change. Karen closed her mind to the bloodied shirt she’d found in the laundry basket the day before, and prayed to whatever God was listening that the change was here to stay.

***

The video footage in the Tower’s main reception was unambiguous. Mitchell peered at the images again but there was no doubt; it was definitely him. He’d walked through reception’s metal detector at 4:35 on Thursday morning and exited the building through the West Street door.

After he’d logged-on to his office computer around six p.m. he hadn’t hit a key, yet he’d been in the building for another ten hours. What had he been doing for all that time? Had he worked on someone else’s PC instead of his own? And if so, why? Mitchell banged his hand against his head in frustration. Why couldn’t he remember?

Devon watched his boss’ confusion helplessly. Something was wrong with Mitchell but Devon was certain that even he didn’t know what. They entered the elevator and descended to the basement laboratory on the lower-fifth floor, exiting into the cold air. As Devon walked towards the lab’s door, he missed Jeff Mitchell’s expression change from confusion to blind rage.

Devon punched in a code and scanned his retina and the steel door slid back quietly, revealing the high ceilings and low lights of the best equipped lab in New York. As he punched in a second set of numbers the lights brightened automatically and a soft whirring started, signalling the machines awakening from their sleep. There were millions of pounds of equipment and even more valuable knowledge locked inside this room.

Devon gestured towards the cameras overhead. “Let’s take a look at the tapes. Maybe you came down here to work on Wednesday after I left?”

Mitchell felt himself coil like a spring. Something had happened here on Wednesday night, he was sure of it. His instinct said that it hadn’t been good, and that it had to stay a secret. Mitchell watched as Devon turned away to start his search and visualised how easy it would be to snap his neck. He reached out his hands towards his deputy and then gasped, shocked by his own actions. What the hell was wrong with him? Was he prepared to kill for some secret that he couldn’t even recall?

Devon heard Mitchell’s gasp and turned, seeing the pallor on his face. He stared at him anxiously.

“Are you OK, Jeff? You’re as white as a ghost.”

Mitchell’s heartbeat slowed ominously and a terrible dread overwhelmed him. There was something in this lab that he needed to hide, but he didn’t know what it was. He nodded Devon on, following slowly as they entered a small security room and Devon clicked on a screen. Images of them both appeared and Devon waved, watching as he waved back. The timer showed 15:10 on Friday September 5th. So far so accurate. Devon tapped a key and a wall of files appeared; archived tapes for each day of the month. He clicked on Wednesday’s tape and fast forwarded it to 18.26; the time that Mitchell had logged-on upstairs.

Mitchell’s fists clenched and he got ready to strike. He didn’t know what the tape would show, but he knew that Devon might have to die as a result. He was shocked by the thought, but part of him felt that it was inevitable.

The timer on the screen reached 19.00 and the basement lab’s doors slid open. Mitchell appeared, dressed in a suit like every day. He walked slowly towards a steel door at the far end of the lab and opened it using a code. Devon clicked again and the interior hallway behind the door appeared, leading to a refrigeration room and a small office on either side. Half of the office was laid out as a lab, with a desk, computer and work-bench; the other half lay behind ceiling-to-floor glass, creating a small, glass room secured with a door.

Devon turned to Mitchell with a wry smile. “Your inner sanctum.”

“You’ve never been in there.”

It was half-statement, half-question and Devon frowned as he replied.

“In your research suite? No way. I know where I’m not welcome. You were very clear on that.”

Mitchell eased more information from Devon like an expert, enough to find out that he’d had the inner research suite built to specification fifteen months before, without ever telling Devon why. They watched the tape as Mitchell entered the suite’s office at 19:05, then as he moved to the desk and started typing. Ten minutes later he walked to the work-bench and read some papers. He looked just like a scientist carrying out research. Devon looked up from the screen and smiled.