Unfortunately, Lindelof hadn’t expected the one-way window would be gone. As such he was startled to see Jonathan wave to him as he handed the items to Rivers.
As the door closed on him, Jonathan seemed unable to help himself. “Thanks Linds, you’re a bud.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
RIVERS WAS HOLDING the paper and pen Lindelof had delivered.
“I guess I can write down those lottery numbers,” he said, a smile coming over his face.
“You don’t remember them,” Jonathan said. “And Olivia turned the recording equipment off before she cleared the room.”
Rivers’ smile wavered, then he sighed heavily. “Don’t suppose you’ll tell me again?”
Jonathan shrugged apologetically.
“Did you actually need this, or was it all meant to put Agent Lindelof in his place?” Rivers asked, referring to the pen and paper.
Jonathan answered by reaching out as far as his restraints would allow for the items. The moment he had them he began drawing.
“All these threats you’ve made,” Olivia said. “What if I said you’re stalling, distracting us before we ask questions you don’t want to answer.”
Jonathan didn’t look up from what he was doing. “I already know your questions. None of the answers will get you what you want.”
“Then perhaps you won’t mind us aski—”
“What do I know about the building in Pioneer Square? The building, which until yesterday, had always been three stories taller? What do I know about all the men under surveillance that have disappeared over the last decade?”
His ability to predict her so accurately was more than grating, but Olivia would ignore it if Jonathan planned on answering those questions. “Yes, for a start.”
Jonathan paused, pulled back and took appraisal of how his art project was coming along, then leaned back in to work.
He trailed off, mumbled, “Damn, Lindelof, every time I say a pencil and he always brings a pen.”
His eyes narrowed as he leaned in closer, his pen beginning to move rapidly as he shaded-in a portion of the page.
“Where are the missing three stories of that building? Way outside your reach. Where specifically? Hell if I know. Could be floating twenty feet over the hangar roof and you wouldn’t know, could just as easily be sitting on the surface of the moon.”
He finished shading, then pulled back, looked at his drawing, and started working on finer details. “Where are the missing men? Depends. The few who disappeared in the last twenty-four hours are where the building is, I can’t be any more specific because, as I already told you, I don’t know where that is . . . however, any that disappeared before that have either been hiding from folks like you for years or . . .”
Jonathan stopped working to look at them.
“. . . or they died fighting to protect you.”
He didn’t go back to work immediately, as though he felt that statement deserved a moment of silence. But when enough time had passed, he put the pen back to work. Olivia noticed he was no longer drawing, but now appeared to be writing words on the page.
“Now, in regard to the alien’s condition. You should listen to Dr. Watts. Nothing at your disposal is going to help him. I know, that’s not what you want to hear. You don’t want to hear it so badly that you’re going to convince yourself I’m lying. That’s a problem, because before the day is out, Dr. Watts will finish her preliminaries. She’ll warn you that she isn’t optimistic about tampering with that band on his arm.
“You’re going to ignore her, because a comatose alien is as useful to you as one you never captured. But—if you amputate his arm, you’re going to find out that having a dead alien is far more useless.
“You see, that bracer keeping him docile was created by his species. It was designed to keep prisoners of their kind from escaping. It is not a bike lock and if you screw with it, you will kill him. The good news is, there is a locksmith who can remove it safely.”
“And who might that be?” Olivia asked.
“You’ve heard of him, goes by Mr. Clean,” Jonathan said.
Rivers and Olivia exchange a knowing look.
“Now, I have a plan to stop the real threat to mankind, but I do need that alien to be breathing. If you kill him, every human being on this planet is either going to die . . . or they’ll live to become cattle to an alien race whose leader thinks himself a god.”
Olivia’s eyes narrowed; at this point she wasn’t sure of anything, but she was sticking to her part. “Vague predictions about a threat we can’t confirm exists,” Olivia said. “If you want me to consider this you need to give me something.”
Jonathan had to bend down low to the table for one of his fingers to tap his nose as though they were playing charades. He flipped over the page he had been working on and start writing again. He was making a list.
“What is that?” Olivia asked. “That you’ve been writing down all this time.”
Jonathan smiled. “I am going to give you coordinates. A map of the basic terrain and instructions. When your team arrives, they will be pressed for time, so I’m giving you as much intel as I can to get you in and out as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, my intel is dated, so they may need to adapt to the situation they find when they get there.
“With any luck, you’ll retrieve the package without causing an international incident. That said, if you must, then, well . . . let’s just say it’s worth pissing off the Libyan government if you have no other choice.”
“And what exactly is it we will be retrieving?” Olivia asked.
Jonathan put the pen down and held out the paper. “The only evidence I can give you, for the time being, that the alien you’ve got locked downstairs isn’t the one you need to be afraid of.”
Olivia tilted her head as Rivers retrieved the page. He looked at the map for a moment and asked, “Is this Arabic?”
Jonathan nodded. “Yeah, loosely translates into ‘please shit somewhere else,’ but I had to take a guy’s word for it.”
Rivers frowned as he handed the page to Olivia.
“On the back is everything I am going to need from you once we’re all on the same page. I’m giving it to you now, because you need to start thinking about how to deliver on each item even if, for the moment, you can’t imagine ever trusting me.”
When Olivia looked at the list, she nearly laughed in his face. “Mr. Tibbs, hell will literally freeze over, thaw out, and freeze over again before the US government gives you a nuclear weapon.”
“Yeah,” Jonathan said with an uneasy smile before clearing his throat. “But I need five of them.”
After Jonathan informed them that the conversation was over, Rivers stood with Olivia outside of the interrogation room as Harrison and her guards retrieved the prisoner.
“Put him back in his cell; I want him gagged, blindfolded, and . . . stuff something in his ears. None of it is removed until he’s in his cell. I don’t care if he has a heart attack on his way back, don’t make any detours,” Olivia said.
Harrison nodded, and her team disappeared into the interrogation chamber.
“We buy any of this?” Rivers asked.
Olivia shook her head. “No. He’s mixing fact with fiction to get in our heads.”
Rivers didn’t want to argue but couldn’t hide his uncertainty.
“I don’t fault you for questioning it Rivers, it was—quite a show. However, if any of it were true, then we’d never have captured him. He’d have known we were coming before we ever got close.”
He nodded, clearly finding some comfort in her logic. “Fantasy aside, he still played that well. Compromised our people and tied our hands until we can put a protective detail on their loved ones.”
“I’ll see to it,” Olivia said. “I want you separating out truth from lies. Start with the map, probably a complete run around but we need to be sure.”
Rivers nodded just as the guards brought Jonathan out into the hallway. His gaze lingered
on the prisoner as they escorted him away.
“What’s on your mind, Rivers?” Olivia asked.
“Why he asked for me to stay. I don’t see what I brought to the equation.”
He had a point, and it was one she hadn’t considered yet. “It’s safe to assume he knows I give your opinion weight. Perhaps he thinks that if one of us buys his story, then the other will follow.”
“Maybe,” Rivers said, but he looked unconvinced.
“Don’t let him in your head, Rivers,” Olivia said. “He bought himself a few hours, nothing more. Once our people are secure, one way or another he will lead us to this Mr. Clean.”
An analyst came around the corner, looking relieved to find Olivia unoccupied. “Ma’am, we’ve had a development. A few minutes ago, the prisoner’s mother began disabling surveillance cameras. Our agents are standing by. Do you want her and the others brought in?”
She and Rivers traded troubled looks. An unlikely coincidence that the mother’s indiscretion followed so closely behind Jonathan’s ultimatums. He’d been clear about any action taken against his loved ones.
“No,” Olivia said. “Cut off their communications and keep them confined to the premises. Our agents will keep their presence unknown unless someone attempts to leave that house. Should that happen, they’ll politely be told to stay put. Force will only be considered if they are unwilling to comply.”
With a nod the analyst turned to leave, already picking up a phone and disseminating orders. The moment they were alone again, Rivers asked, “Do we believe he is capable of escaping this facility?”
Olivia shook her head. “Our people are already under orders to expect an attempt to extract the alien. If there were any other security measures to consider, we’d already have put them in place.”
Rivers grimaced. “The way he described it, if we change anything it might very well be playing into his hands. He may have told us he plans to leave because he wants us to increase security.”
“Don’t, you’re letting him into your head,” Olivia said. “It’s what he wants. I’ve no intention of letting him sit idle in that cell plotting another distraction. If he wants to play mind games—we’ll play.”
Rivers nodded, but now that they were completely alone in the hallway, he tactfully brought up something else Jonathan had mentioned. “What was he talking about when he said you had a trigger in your pocket?”
Despite their being alone, when Rivers asked her this, she seemed to change her mind about any further discussion in the hallway. She signaled him to follow, only stopping when she opened a door into a secured conference room. He followed, and she locked the door behind them.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
OCT 15, 2005 | 5:30 PM | JBLM FACILITY
“THERE, I SLOWED it down,” Margot said. “It’s not a video artifact. That thing is real.”
“Leah,” Olivia said. “I need a word with you.”
Both women looked up, and seeing their expressions, Olivia grew curious what it was they were so focused on. “It can wait a moment if you’ve got something to report.”
Leah gave Margot a look. “We think . . . I don’t know exactly, but we found something.”
They pushed their chairs apart to make room for Olivia. She could see they were viewing the footage retrieved from Jonathan’s garage. What was odd was that Margot had distorted the color saturation, run it through digital filters that gave some parts of the image more emphasis over others.
“I was suspicious, just didn’t know what was bothering me,” Leah said. “It was the way Jonathan shook before he surrendered. Looks like a cold chill—adrenaline, but it wasn’t. The more I watched, it was as though he was fighting the urge to squirm.”
Margot pointed at a spot behind Jonathan and hit play. In slow motion, with the colors altered, Olivia saw what had been invisible to the naked eye. A worm darted out from behind a cabinet, slithering up behind Jonathan’s shoe. A moment later, Tibbs twitched uncomfortably. As though it had just crawled up his skin.
In the seconds that followed the defiance on Jonathan’s face disappeared. He put his hands behind his head and dropped onto his knees in submission.
“It surprised him,” Margot said. “But he must have known what it was because he tried to keep from reacting.”
Olivia nodded. “A thorough body search was performed. Nothing was found on him or his roommates.”
“That thing could hide anywhere,” Margot said. “Especially if you consider that it was moving of its own volition. There isn’t any sign of Jonathan doing anything to call it to him. If it was smart enough to keep from being seen when it attached—”
“He could have swallowed it the moment we put that bag over his head,” Olivia said.
Margot paused, then shrugged with an uncomfortable smile. “Well, a thing like that could have found a lot of places to hide on, or in . . . a person if our people didn’t know what they were looking for.”
Olivia was quiet for a while as she mulled over how this fit into the picture—in particular, how far it might go to explaining what happened during Jonathan’s interrogation.
“I think it’s alien tech,” Margot said. “If I’m right, who knows what it’s capable of. Might be a tracking device, a listening device, both. Christ. That thing might not even be with Tibbs anymore. For all we know, it slithered into our servers the moment we brought him here and started downloading everything we have.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Olivia said. “I’ve reason to believe it’s still on him. Talking to him, perhaps . . .”
Olivia trailed off as the thought occurred to her . . . perhaps even talking for him.
She was reflective a moment longer, until Margot and Leah’s faces reminded her that she’d never finished her sentence.
“This is excellent work, both of you,” Olivia said. “But . . .”
Olivia reached out, gently taking hold of Leah’s arm. “As I said, I need to speak with you in private. Please, accompany me down to conference room seven, I’ve asked Dr. Watts to join us there.”
Margot looked disappointed that Olivia wasn’t taking an active interest in their discovery. But she only smiled politely as Leah excused herself. A moment later, she realized that Olivia had not actually left. She looked up, surprised to find the woman was still looking at her—considering.
“Ma’am, sorry I didn’t realize you were still there, is there something I can help with?”
Olivia sat in the chair Leah had left empty. Her voice wasn’t a whisper but she was discreetly quiet. “Margot, I’m going to ask you a highly inappropriate question. You have my word that I would never do so if it had no bearing on this investigation. But I need honesty and I will not be able to give you an explanation.”
“Uh, okay, I’ll do my best ma’am,” Margot said.
“You have a son, but you’re divorced,” Olivia said.
“That’s correct, ma’am.”
Olivia nodded. “And the reason for your divorce, was it perhaps related to your sexual orientation?”
“Oh wow, um, no. Not at the time,” Margot said. “But it’s pretty clear what you’re asking me. We don’t need to whisper; it’s not a big secret.”
“Right,” Olivia said, thinking for a moment, before smiling politely. “Thank you.”
As Olivia stood and walked away, Margot frowned at her empty seat for some time. Eventually, she turned to look at the rubber duck she kept beside her keyboard. Like many programmers, she kept it there because sometimes she had to talk an idea through with someone and there was no one around to listen. The duck was a stand in at those moments.
“So, that was weird right?” she asked the duck.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
RIVERS FOUND OLIVIA alone inside the observation deck of the alien’s containment shell. She was leaning with one hand against the glass window, looking down at The Mark’s comatose frame as Dr. Watts’ teams milled about below. She seemed to be watching The Mark’s face, bu
t Rivers couldn’t read her expression, only that she looked tired.
He hadn’t slept much since they had arrested the prisoners; he wondered if Olivia had slept at all. Rivers cleared his throat, and her head tilted toward him for a moment. “Got something?”
“I did some digging on the map Jonathan gave us,” he said.
She nodded, straightening her back such that she was no longer leaning against the window.
“It can wait,” Rivers said. “If you’re—”
“No, tell me,” Olivia said.
Rivers nodded. “The coordinates he specified are in the Libyan Desert. Nothing but sand for a hundred miles in most directions,” Rivers said. “I’d have thought he was sending us on a wild-goose chase. But if his goal is wasting our time, he’s being smart about it.”
Olivia turned, her eyebrows raised in interest.
“Douglas Tibbs was sent to Libya in ’84. Coincidently, it was the same operation in which Jeremy Holloway was supposedly killed. I cross-referenced the coordinates Jonathan gave with his father’s military records. There is a high likelihood that his team passed through those exact coordinates. The interesting thing—there was a delay in their mission progress reported right about the time they were in the area.”
“What was the reason?” Olivia asked.
Rivers turned up his palms. “The records documenting the cause of the delay were lost some years back. Unsurprisingly, deleted from the digital record and all hard copies misplaced.”
“The Mark,” Olivia said with a sigh.
“Like I said, if Jonathan is wasting our time, he’s going about it in a way that’s hard to ignore.”
Olivia’s arms came to rest on her hips before she shook her head. “Given what Leah and Margot uncovered, it’s possible that someone on the outside is feeding him information. That feels more likely than the notion that Douglas Tibbs told his son about a twenty-year-old top-secret operation before he died.”
A moment later Olivia grimaced in frustration. “Then again, we haven’t actually confirmed Douglas Tibbs is dead. Seeing as how the body we exhumed turned out to be a John Doe.”
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