The Chimera Secret (21 page)

Dana Ford watched the soldiers for a long moment and then shook her head.

‘Even if we do find one there’ll be nothing left of it by the time those assholes have finished blowing it to hell.’

Duran Wilkes’s voice replied to her from out of the darkness.

‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that, ma’am.’

Ethan was about to speak when he heard the hoot of a bird calling out in the forest. He had barely turned his head when he realized that it was not a bird, but something much further away.

‘You hear that?’ Lopez asked.

Ethan was about to answer when a low, alien cry swept across the camp from somewhere deep in the forest.

The laughter of the soldiers died away as across the valley the cry became a keening, strained howl that soared up into the night sky. The sound seemed to shudder through Ethan’s body and
creep beneath his skin.

The mournful howl died away softly to be replaced by the crackling of the flames.

Ethan glanced across at Duran Wilkes, but the old man simply sat and sipped his coffee as though nothing had happened.

‘You’re absolutely sure?’

Ben looked at the images on Natalie’s cellphone of the blue sedan.

‘No question about it,’ Natalie replied. ‘Look, I even got a close-up of the guy driving the sedan. It’s not a perfect shot but it might be enough to identify him. And
that’s not all. Somebody broke into my apartment.’

‘Are you sure?’ Ben asked, stunned.

‘Definitely,’ Natalie insisted. ‘They barely left a trace but I could tell that things had been altered, moved.’

Ben looked at the photograph, thinking hard.

‘Without hard evidence the break-in, if one happened, means nothing. This photograph is probably enough to identify the agent in question, if he is an agent, but this isn’t enough
for you to take it to the House Intelligence Committee. Even if they did turn out to be CIA, they could just say that the agent was out for a drive or something. Christ, all of the major agencies
have field offices in the district.’

Natalie’s shoulders sagged as she realized that Ben was right. Her suspicions about her apartment could be dismissed as paranoia and the photographs couldn’t be used as evidence of a
conspiracy. Even when combined with the evidence that she was under surveillance, it wasn’t enough to place Natalie as a witness to misappropriation of resources by any agency. It might even
raise questions about her own loyalty and patriotism, something that Guy Rikard would no doubt exploit.

‘So we’re back to square one,’ she said finally. ‘And we need to stay quiet about what we’ve discovered here, so it can’t be part of the committee’s
evidence. Not yet, anyway.’

‘Pretty much,’ Ben agreed. ‘Keep the images, they may come in handy later, but right now all we’ve got is the search for Joanna Defoe and the fact that your brother
showed up as a result of it.’

Natalie rolled it around in her head as though she were chasing food around a plate with a fork.

‘Ethan’s been working with the DIA, that much we know,’ she said.

‘Which means it’s unlikely that they’re the ones doing the surveillance,’ Ben said. ‘They already know where Ethan’s going to be when he’s working for
them, so there wouldn’t be much point. We could possibly take this to them and see what happens?’

‘No,’ Natalie replied. ‘They may be a government agency but we don’t really know anything about them and I’m not sure I want to go cap in hand to a bunch of
strangers asking about surveillance operations on my brother.’

‘You need to get to the bottom of this, Nat,’ Ben tried again. ‘Whoever is behind this could be doing it for their own ends and not for national security.’

‘Ethan just got back on his feet after what happened in Israel,’ Natalie insisted. ‘I’m not going to wreck that. I don’t like that he’s working for the DIA
but as long as he’s got something to focus on I’m not willing to risk derailing his life. Plus, he’s got that partner of his, Nicola Lopez. She seems to keep him on the straight
and narrow.’

Ben glanced at the paperwork strewn across his desk.

‘What about her?’ he wondered out loud. ‘You ever meet her?’

Natalie shook her head.

‘She’s never been with Ethan on the rare occasions when he’s come home,’ she admitted, ‘but I can tell by the way he talks about her that they’re
close.’

Larry Levinson’s voice infiltrated their conversation. ‘Why not run a search for her too?’

Natalie glanced at the diminutive man in surprise, and he blushed. ‘Sorry, Natalie, but you guys have been working on this all day. Sooner or later Rikard’s going to corner you about
it, so why not check out this Lopez, and see if she ties in with it all? If she does, you might be able to take the search out of the office and get away from Rikard.’

Ben shrugged, turned to his monitor and tapped Lopez’s name into the search engine.

‘Let’s see if she shows up,’ he said, sitting back and waiting for the engine to complete its search.

‘Why would she be on there?’ Natalie asked. ‘Surely she’s got nothing to do with our family.’

‘Maybe not,’ Ben said, ‘but like you said, what if this isn’t about your family?’

Ben gestured to the monitor screen as it flashed up the results of the search.

NICOLA LOPEZ
b. 1981, Guanajuato, Mexico.
Surveillance active and deployed.

‘I’ll be damned,’ she whispered.

‘Holy crap,’ Larry whispered. ‘Is this for real?’

Ben nodded as he prodded his chin with the tip of his pen and looked up at Natalie.

‘You, your brother, your brother’s work partner and your folks are all being watched simultaneously, presumably by the same agency. Lopez is the odd one out here as she is not family
and yet is connected to you via Ethan, so best guess would be that this operation isn’t about direct family at all. Lopez is being watched simply because your brother’s always with her.
This is about somebody who connects you all.’

‘Joanna Defoe,’ Natalie said softly.

‘Who, according to our database here, is not under any kind of surveillance whatsoever,’ Ben said. ‘Which kind of makes sense, seeing as she disappeared years ago.’

Natalie frowned in confusion.

‘Then why the surveillance on us?’

Ben tossed his pen down on his desk as he replied.

‘It’s a fair bet that nobody actually knows where Joanna Defoe is or even if she’s still alive for sure, so this surveillance operation is a kind of sleeper-cell gig. The
agency in question has exhausted all leads and has set this up as a last resort in the hopes of catching her if she hightails it home to Ethan in Chicago.’

Natalie ran one hand through the thick tresses of hair hanging down across her shoulders.

‘That’s a long shot, especially seeing as she disappeared so long ago and in Gaza City of all places. The likelihood of her waltzing straight back into Illinois is just about
zero.’

‘Like I said,’ Ben replied, ‘a last-resort action. There’s nothing else that they can do but sit tight and hope that Fate throws them a lead.’

Larry Levinson spoke softly beside Natalie. ‘You know what would bother me the most about all this, if it were me?’

‘What?’ Natalie asked.

‘Why?’ Larry replied. ‘What could be so important about a journalist that a government agency would spend so much time and effort on even the smallest possibility that she
might turn up alive?’

Natalie stared at the monitor screen and wondered for the first time whether she actually knew Joanna Defoe at all.

They had first met when Ethan had brought her round one Sunday to meet the family. The pair had already been dating a while but Ethan had always been naturally cautious when it came to
relationships. Joanna was one of just a handful of girls he had brought home. Natalie had taken to her instantly, which wasn’t hard to do. Joanna had one of those smiles that was infectious
and bright, a genuine enthusiasm for other people’s lives and a willingness not to speak but to listen. Natalie had, in retrospect, embarrassed herself by confiding to Joanna her entire past
semester at college, including several fumbling encounters with a fellow student.

But Joanna had listened without complaining, all the while fielding questions from Natalie’s parents and also carefully observing the growing animosity between Ethan and their father over
his resignation from the Marine Corps. Joanna had effortlessly mediated, endearing herself to their parents as a result, and had proven herself the perfect catch for her troubled but decent
brother.

Natalie had not been surprised at how hard Ethan had taken her disappearance years later in the dark and dangerous alleys of Gaza. For such a personality to simply vanish from the face of the
earth must have been like witnessing the sun blinking out and plunging a warm summer’s day into a frozen darkness.

‘We could try some of the other databases,’ Ben suggested, ‘see if she turns up there.’

Natalie blinked herself awake from her reverie and forced herself to think. Fact was, nobody was looking for Joanna because she had disappeared too long ago for there to be any real hope of
picking up any trail she might have left behind.

The answer popped into Natalie’s head almost immediately and she kicked herself for not thinking of it earlier.

‘The agency responsible for this must
know
that she is alive, somehow. That’s the reason they’re willing to commit to surveillance operations. The odds must not be so
long after all.’

‘But I thought you said that Ethan told you he was starting the search for Joanna again?’ Ben said. ‘Did he find evidence of some kind that confirmed she was alive?’

‘Yes,’ Natalie replied. ‘He had proof of life, video footage.’

Beside them, Larry frowned uncertainly.

‘Proof of life usually concerns abduction victims,’ he said, ‘and is used in order to provide leverage for ransom negotiations or whatever the kidnappers want. If they’ve
got proof of life of Joanna but are watching your family then surely she must have escaped from somewhere.’

Natalie nodded, a sudden urgency to her thinking.

‘It makes sense,’ she said. ‘Ethan told me that he wanted closure on all of this, that he just wanted to know what happened to her so that he could finally shut the door on all
that happened to him. He’d been shown footage of her alive in Gaza, and said the reel was a year old. So if she’s still alive . . .’

‘He’ll go after her,’ Ben finished her sentence for her. ‘If he’s as tenacious as I’ve heard, he won’t let it go.’

Natalie clenched her fist and thumped the desk.

‘The DIA must know what happened to her,’ she said. ‘They’re the ones employing Ethan and Nicola, they’re the ones who showed Ethan that reel and they’re the
ones who sent Ethan to Israel.’

‘Where he had his mysterious experience and came out a changed man,’ Ben agreed. ‘But there’s no way we’re going to get near any documentation of what might have
happened out there.’

Natalie shook her head.

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ she said, and looked at her watch. The sun was just descending toward the horizon outside the office windows.

‘What are you thinking?’ Ben asked.

‘This surveillance and all that it entails,’ Natalie replied. ‘What if Joanna knows something of immense importance, or perhaps has evidence of some kind? She was abducted by
militants in Gaza, and then apparently escaped. So why didn’t she run to the cops or to Israel? Why disappear? Only reason I can think of is that she wasn’t abducted by militants but by
somebody else, and then escaped with evidence of her abductors. If it was a government agency, that would be reason enough to hunt her down before she could blow the whistle.’

‘Extreme rendition,’ Ben conceded, ‘civilians apprehended and taken to foreign countries outside of the Geneva Convention for interrogation as enemy combatants. But how can we
figure out if it’s true and why? We don’t know any more than whoever’s searching for her does.’

‘It depends on whether Ethan still works for the same guy he served with in the corps,’ she replied. ‘Can you find out if a Douglas Jarvis still works at the DIA? Maybe
I’ll pay them a visit after all.’

‘You want to tell me what the hell that was?’ Lopez asked.

Ethan sat down alongside her in front of the fire, the haunting howl that had echoed through the forests bothering him far more than he dared admit.

‘Coyote or something,’ he said.

It sounded lame and he knew it.

‘Coyote,’ Lopez repeated. ‘Well, that sounded like the biggest, meanest and most unfriendly coyote I’ve ever god-damned heard.’ She glanced across at Dana Ford.
‘You ever heard anything like that before?’

Proctor and Dana sat side by side as Dana replied.

‘We’ve been sent a thousand recordings that sound just like that,’ she said. ‘Sometimes the howls are long, low and mournful like that one was. Other times, they’re
high-pitched and warbling. The worst ones aren’t the howls at all though.’

‘No?’ Lopez murmured. ‘You figure that, how?’

It was Proctor who replied, awkwardly playing with his mug as he spoke.

‘It’s the ones that sound like dialect,’ he said. ‘It’s horrible to listen to, the strangest combination of growls, whoops and gabbling you’ve ever heard. It
sets the hairs of your neck on end because it’s something so familiar and yet so odd.’

Proctor seemed to shiver where he sat and clasped the warmth of his mug with both hands.

‘How many of these things have you gone after?’ Ethan asked them.

‘We’ve uncovered evidence for bipedal apes in almost every state but how many of the encounters are genuine we just don’t know, and we have to do it in our own time and pay for
it out of our own pockets because we’d never get grants for this type of work,’ said Dana.

‘Yeah,’ Proctor snapped. ‘You even utter the word cryptozoology in the halls of residence and you’re out on your ass by the end of the week. Nobody wants to fund research
into sea monsters or North American bipedal apes, but if you find anything suddenly everybody says they suspected it was there.’