The past few day’s events indicated that such efforts had been laughably ineffective. Perhaps her commanding officer meeting with her in person meant that he had drawn the same conclusion.
“General,” Olivia said, closing the door behind her as she stepped into the private room.
She recognized General William J. Delacy on sight. No surprise to either of them. For Olivia to do her job she had to know the major players in Washington and that certainly included its highest-ranking generals.
Delacy stood courteously upon her entry, then held out a hand to offer her the seat across from his at the table. He wasn’t a young man, but his current state made him look older than he was. There was a frailness to him. A vulnerability that she’d not sensed from any of his public photos. She wondered if she wasn’t the only one expecting to face career devastating consequences for last night’s escape.
“Before we get into this mess, be advised that I gave the go-ahead for the team Rivers assembled in Libya,” Delacy said.
“I had intended to do the same, Sir.”
The General studied her. “What does your gut tell you?”
“Jonathan didn’t need us chasing down a dead end for his escape to be successful last night. I believe there is something out in that desert Mr. Tibbs actually wants us to see,” Olivia said.
“We agree then,” Delacy said.
He sat back in his chair and sighed.
“Olivia, despite what you may think, I’m not here to relieve you of duty,” General Delacy said. “If anything, we need to be on the same page more than ever.”
Olivia’s pause was brief; it was the only tell that betrayed that this conversation had already taken a very unexpected turn. “I am in one hundred percent agreement, Sir.”
“Good, because I am going to be asking for your discretion, and in return you will have mine.”
“My discretion, Sir?”
The General took a long breath and templed his fingers on the table. “You have a team currently investigating why the failsafe charges didn’t fire last night. I need you to discontinue that investigation.”
They both knew his request didn’t follow protocol—let alone make any sense. Luckily, Delacy didn’t force Olivia to politely point these things out.
“There was no malfunction or tampering. Jonathan and his people had no . . . direct . . . hand in it,” Delacy said. “I disabled the detonator.”
The General’s confession had filled the room with a long silence.
Of the many thoughts that occurred to Olivia in that awkward moment, one rose to the forefront as though it had been seeded in her mind for just this occasion.
Jonathan had not lied to her. He’d said his people could disable the trigger, but that they would not. He never said that one of her people wouldn’t do this for them.
“General, it’s my duty to ask . . .”
Delacy held up his hand. “You don’t need to explain. You have a right to answers if I’m going to ask you to keep volatile secrets. But let’s be clear here. I could have kept this to myself. Let the blame for last night’s escape fall on your shoulders and had you replaced. I won’t pretend that scenario would have been a picnic to explain to the Joint Chiefs—but, it is a storm I can weather.”
Perhaps it was how tired they both were. She felt that the General was in no mood to have to read between the lines any more than she was. But from that moment forward, she feigned no politeness. “I do hope you aren’t expecting me to be gracious because you didn’t try to frame me for your actions.”
The General smiled, but his eyes hardened. “Good, we’re speaking plainly. So here it is, I want us both to remain in control of this operation.”
“Explains why you need my discretion,” Olivia said. “Not why I should give it.”
“Because we’ve been compromised.”
He couldn’t be talking about The Cell or this facility. That would be too painfully obvious to warrant saying. No, he meant the two people sitting in this room.
“I was present, in a manner of speaking, for what transpired during Mr. Tibbs’ interrogation—before and after you dismissed the other witnesses . . .” Delacy said, “and before you edited the recordings.”
Olivia’s face hardened to match the General’s.
He was right of course, she’d had no choice but to remove certain portions of her interaction with Jonathan, specifically the spelling demonstration that had clearly produced such a strikingly uncharacteristic reaction from her.
“Now,” Delacy continued, “you’ve had a busy morning and may not be aware, but during last night’s siege, all that footage from that interrogation right up to the point the equipment was turned off was erased from the main server and the backups. Whether he meant to or not, Tibbs did you and everyone in that room a favor.”
“Sir, in regard to what Jonathan may have been alluding to, I—”
“No,” Delacy’s voice was firm. “I’m not concerned with what he knew. Only that we both admit he clearly possesses information that gave him some degree of leverage over us.”
Olivia’s face gave away her distaste for the topic. “Limited leverage. But yes . . .” She trailed off for a moment. “You said, leverage over us.”
Delacy sighed and leaned back in his chair, seemingly more at ease now that Olivia saw how their fates were intertwined. “I was here last night during the escape. Jonathan and his allies were aware of my presence and used it to their advantage.”
“You mean you were on base, Sir?” Olivia asked.
“Inside this facility,” he corrected. “The panic room—only I and a few of the Joint Chiefs know of its existence.”
Olivia took a long breath, though from the look on her face she may as well have been breathing fire. Her jaw tightened as she took a moment to calm herself before speaking. “So, it would appear Mr. Tibbs was being honest about yet another detail.”
Delacy nodded. “Yes, and I’m fairly certain his mentioning it last evening was for my benefit. He knew I was here, and he wanted me to know it.”
Olivia frowned. “Why?”
“Once The Mark was captured, I wanted to observe progress firsthand. Near the onset of last night’s siege, I received a call from the surveillance hub in the hangar—a call that ended abruptly. I was asleep at the time. Had I not been woken, I might not have witnessed all of last night’s events. The panic room has access to a secondary set of surveillance systems. What is telling, is that while Jonathan’s allies infiltrated the primary system, they made a point of leaving the secondary online.”
Olivia took a moment processing all of that. Certainly, it explained how Delacy knew what had transpired between her and Jonathan during his interrogation. What remained unknown, was how his presence had played into the escape.
“What advantage did Jonathan and his allies gain from leaving the secondary systems up?”
The General pointed to himself. “They knew that I would be inside that room. That I was awake, watching, and listening. They knew I would override the failsafe trigger.”
Olivia leaned forward in her chair and studied Delacy. Given what Tibbs had known about her and her team, she didn’t doubt that if leverage to extort the General existed, they could have found it. Still, what could Jonathan have possibly known about Delacy that warranted his committing treason?
“They blackmailed you into disabling the detonator?”
The General closed his eyes and shook his head. “Not in the way you’re imagining. I was never approached with an ultimatum. But . . . they did get to me.”
“How?” Olivia asked.
The General grimaced the way one might while pulling a thorn out of their skin. “I figured I’d let Jonathan explain it himself.”
She cocked her head questioningly at Delacy.
“While our servers were completely erased last night, one file was left behind. Its permissions were restricted to you and me alone. Jonathan wanted to be sure that only the two of us could access it
,” General Delacy said.
“What was in the file?” Olivia asked.
The General drummed the table with his fist lightly as he studied her. “It would appear that Mr. Tibbs took no chances that his promise to always tell you the truth would ever come into question.”
He reached over and turned on a monitor, then navigated through the facility’s system files. A very short process considering only one folder containing one file remained. As soon as she saw a video file and its time stamp, she knew.
“The sixth cycle,” she said, and the disbelief in her voice was genuine.
In the chaos since the raid, she’d forgotten that Jonathan had promised to tell her what he knew about Leah if she left her in his cell. Now, she understood. He’d always known they would be long gone before she ever had a chance to hear the message he left for her.
The General was right. There was only one reason this file was all that remained. Jonathan didn’t want her to be able to say there was a single instance in which he’d lied to her.
This in turn meant one thing was certain. Despite his escape, they weren’t done with one another yet. There was an even bigger game being played and he intended for her to be his pawn.
“The video implicates me,” Delacy said.
“If you knew it’s dangerous to you why show it to me instead of deleting it?”
“I want you and I to remain in control of this operation,” the General sighed. “And my gut is giving me a feeling about this kid.”
He sighed and closed his eyes. “He could have done this all very differently. I think he needs us here. That he might be manipulating us because we’re too stubborn for our own good. I’m worried we should stop resisting.”
The General looked down at the table, tapping the surface with his knuckle as he chose his words. “Olivia, when is the last time you took an order you didn’t already plan to follow.”
Olivia cocked her head. “Other than involving Leah in this investigation?”
“Perfect example,” he said. “You disagreed with the order. You nearly overstepped the boundaries of your authority to see it undone. It’s the same for me. The Pentagon usually follows my lead.”
“You’re talking about . . . control, Sir,” Olivia said.
The General nodded.
“I think Jonathan Tibbs is telling the truth,” Delacy said. “You didn’t buy his story about an army of monsters—but I looked into the kid’s eyes—he believed every word he said. He wants you and me in charge of this operation.”
Olivia studied the General for some time, but she didn’t understand why he’d come to this conclusion.
“You watch much football, Olivia?” the General asked.
Her lips flattened into a line. “It’s not one of my interests, but I understand how it’s played.”
“Well, when two teams have a practice game that doesn’t count toward league play, it’s called a scrimmage.”
“I’m familiar,” Olivia said. “How is this relevant?”
Delacy took a long breath. “I think Jonathan Tibbs invited us to scrimmage with him last night. No one got hurt, just some property damage, but imagine if that had been a league game.”
While Olivia didn’t particularly disagree with the analogy, she didn’t think it warranted as much consideration as the General was giving it.
“Would you say, Jonathan went to extreme degrees to manipulate our every decision? That his allies clearly had the power to come in and take him and the alien out at any time and they could have done it with far less theatrics.”
Olivia nodded. “Clearly. But he wanted to scare us. To show us who was in charge. Take some revenge for what he sees as trespasses against him and his family.”
“Oh, I’m sure some of it put a smile on his face, but no, I think he would have done it the same even if there wasn’t anything personal at play,” the General said. “Because despite everything we learned last night, there was one lesson that was most clear.”
Olivia raised an eyebrow.
“We don’t understand the rules of the game,” the General said. “He sat in the middle of a US military base, told us exactly what was going to happen, and we still couldn’t stop him.”
She considered this for a moment. “For the sake of argument, let’s say I agree. Doesn’t tell me why?”
He looked her dead in the eye. “We need to consider that it’s all true. That this kid is about to fight a war he already knows Earth’s leaders can’t understand. That he does need our help, but he can’t have us second guessing his orders.”
“You think he was trying to show us who needs to lead and who needs to follow?” Olivia asked.
The incredulous sound of her voice as she asked the question was hard to miss. The General didn’t seem to take it personally. “Olivia. Ask yourself something, now that you’ve scrimmaged, do you ever want to play against him again?”
Olivia sighed impatiently, letting the disbelief show clearly on her face.
“Speak your mind,” he said.
“I think you’re grasping at straws. This is ridiculous.”
“There is a reason I can see this, and you can’t.”
“Then that is something I’d like to hear,” Olivia said.
“You are predisposed to believe Jonathan is the enemy,” General Delacy said, pushing play on Jonathan’s recording. “I have reason to . . . hope . . . he is something else.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
JONATHAN STARED BACK at her calmly, leaving no doubt that he’d known where the camera was. Leah was beside him, her face hidden by her long hair.
“Your name is Rachel Leah Delacy. Daughter of General William J. Delacy. In September 2003 you were the sole witness to the disappearance of Peter Delacy, your brother—”
He went on to tell the story of General Delacy’s daughter. Rachel, a young woman believed to have suffered some delusional break. Claiming she’d seen her brother disappear in front of her. Professionals telling her that her mind had made up a story to cope with the real trauma of her brother’s disappearance.
Her father would struggle with this narrative. His daughter wasn’t prone to fantasies—if anything she had a talent for rooting out the fantasies in others.
His doubt would be enough. Eventually he’d use his position to seek out any possibility that his daughter’s version of events was true. Soon, his inquiries would uncover the existence of a long running clandestine operation within the government—The Cell.
An operation centered around a man in a black hat and coat.
This man would be the perfect likeness to the one his daughter had described. The man speaking to her brother the day he had disappeared, who she claimed to have taken a picture of, only to have that picture somehow erased from her phone. They called this man The Mark, but they didn’t believe he was a man at all.
Over the two years that followed, the father and daughter would conspire to play a dangerous game. The world would come to believe Rachel Delacy had committed suicide. Shortly after, any sign that she’d ever existed would incrementally be removed from record.
A process, Jonathan pointed out, that Olivia was quite familiar with.
While Rachel’s identity was being erased from existence, she underwent a series of plastic surgeries. Meanwhile, General Delacy maneuvered himself to take control of The Cell. Once he had done so, he would reorganize The Cell, reassign most of its agents, and bring in new blood. Olivia would be one of those brought on during this overhaul, and she would be tasked with the implementation of a new protocol.
The secondary protocol—authored by an unknown from the private sector. Alias: Leah.
The protocol would soon prove far more effective than previous measures for the surveillance of persons of interest in connection to The Mark. But it would also establish greater boundaries between Olivia and her superior.
At that point in the story Jonathan had leaned forward. “Olivia, you will discover the identity of your commanding office
r tomorrow morning. When that happens, a question you’ve been asking yourself for some time will be answered. Why did the secondary protocol enforce such draconian measures to keep you, its lead investigator, from knowing the identity of your commanding officer? Reasons laid out in the secondary protocol were all well and good, but clearly futile.”
His words hit a nerve.
Olivia had undertaken the effort to keep her CO’s identity unknown with the same professional diligence she did any of her responsibilities. But Jonathan’s use of the word ‘futile’ echoed her own thoughts on the matter. If The Mark wanted to learn their chain of command, they could slow him down, but they couldn’t stop him.
Now, she saw the real motivation behind those safeguards.
Olivia had once asked to undertake an exploratory exercise—see if The Cell, under her leadership, could identify the private contractor known as Leah. They hadn’t succeeded. However, Leah had been brought in by order of her commanding officer. If Olivia had known his identity, she would have examine the General’s background for possible leads. In short, she would have figured out the familial connection—and would have been forced to act against her commanding officer for endangering the operation months ago.
General Delacy stopped the playback.
“It’s all true,” he said. “Leah—Rachel—is my daughter. She is carrying my grandchild.”
In the silence that followed a web of subterfuge became visible in her mind, blurry at first, but rapidly becoming clearer with each passing second as every dangling loose end—every mystery surrounding Leah and her commanding officer began to connect.
“Leah and I were the only people who knew about the panic room. That it contained the one exit to the surface should the facility’s fail-safes be engaged. I knew what she was facing—what she’d gotten herself into once the child was conceived.”
The Never Army Page 35
