by Julia Derek
“To someone at The Adler Group?”
“Yes, that’s what I determined when I did some digging and found out that Baumann was employed by Adler. In addition to the digging I did as soon I was back at my hotel in Zurich, tapping the luncheon at the Pavillion the next day made it all come together for me.”
“Ah.” I smiled. “I see you’ve had practice using those recording chips.”
“Yes, they’ve proven invaluable to get to the bottom of what was going on in that lab. In labs all across the world. ” He exhaled. “Anyway, the next day I went to the luncheon, which was in a separate room at the restaurant. It turned out to be more of a rally than a formal sit-down lunch. All the attendees there congratulated each other for being part of the new world. After listening in on that meeting, I knew that The Adler Group was behind this, and it was confirmed to me yet again that they’d spent decades to develop superior humans using animal genes. I learned that the goal is to create a world void of weak links.”
I frowned. “Weak links? What exactly does that mean?”
“That’s what the speaker at the luncheon kept calling them—weak links. According to him, the plan is to weed out any person that’s not perfect one by one until they’re all extinct. That’s what Senator Eastwood was discussing in her emails with someone at Adler. Remember how Emma said that in her letter? How they’re going to rate everyone from one to five?”
“Right, I do remember that.” I had a big gulp of wine. “My God, this is just so sick…”
“I know, but sadly, that doesn’t make it any less real.”
“So what did you do after that day? You contacted your supervisor at the FBI in the U.S? Or did you already know Americans were involved in this thing? Did they all speak English?”
“No, they all spoke German.”
“Really? Even that lab technician you bumped into?”
“Yep.”
“Do you speak German?”
Ian nodded. “Yes, I do. And French, Spanish and some Russian.”
I whistled. “Wow… I’m impressed.” I really was. Being merely bilingual myself, I felt dwarfed next to Ian now. “You speak those languages fluently?”
“Yes. My mother was French, so I grew up speaking two languages. When you know more than one, I’ve found that it becomes easier to pick up another.”
Yes, if you bother, I thought but didn’t say, feeling lazy now. If we were able to stop these freaks from realizing their worldview, I’d have to learn at least one more language. Like Mandarin or Arab or something else super difficult just to show Ian that I could.
“Right,” I muttered. “So you must’ve hoped this was strictly a German thing then?”
“Yes. Though the fact that Baumann’s email to that Adler executive had been written in English should’ve tipped me off that it was a lot bigger than I wanted to admit to myself. That, and the sheer number of labs. While tapping the luncheon, I learned they have three additional labs like the one I accidentally stumbled upon in the Zurich metropolitan area alone. And from what I now know based on my investigations, they have similar labs in key cities across the world. But you’re right. At the time, I was hoping it was just a German extremist movement.”
“So you contacted the FBI back home then?”
“Yes, I spoke to my supervisor about it.”
“He must’ve thought you were bullshitting him.” I smiled at Ian.
“No, actually he accepted what I had to tell him quite quickly. Which also should’ve tipped me off that it was a lot, lot bigger than what I originally thought. I should’ve figured he might be in on it. He and others at the FBI. I think I was just so freaked out about all the insane stuff I had learned in those two days that I wasn’t paying attention, never mind thinking clearly.”
“That’s perfectly understandable. What did your handler back home say?”
“For me to stay put and continue my work at the company I worked for while he alerted the head of national security as well as the deputy director. From what I gathered of our conversation, they would then put together a task force to nip this in the bud.” Ian grimaced. “Those were Sinclair’s words, not mine.”
“Sinclair? Is that the name of your handler?”
“Yes. John Sinclair.” He chuckled to himself. “The calmness he used while discussing all this with me, barely asking for any details should have instantly told me he was in on it. But I just kept thanking him, relieved that something was going to be done about this secret organization that had been planning so much evil for so long.”
I nodded. “Then when did you realize Sinclair was in on it?”
“When the weeks just kept going by, turning into months, and I never got any updates from him. He told me he’d give me a heads-up when it was time for me to join the task force. Also, I was doing my own research into The Adler Group and slowly but surely realizing just how incredibly secure their network is. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get inside their computers. So I resorted to shadowing people to learn more about the organization. As you can imagine, that was very time-consuming and inefficient, but that was all I could do. And I did get a better picture of exactly what was going on. I began to suspect that people back home were involved as well. I refused to believe it for the longest time. It was only when I told Sinclair that I wanted to come home that I finally accepted how big it all really was. Like you, I didn’t want to believe it at first. It seemed impossible people that I’d always considered sane weren’t.”
“What happened when you asked to come home?”
“He told me the only way I’d be able to come back home was if I agreed to become part of the organization. That’s basically how he broke the news to me.”
“The organization?” I tilted my head. “As in The Adler Group?”
“Yes, I needed to become one of them if I wanted to return as Ian Armory, not James Morton. That’s when I understood Sinclair was one of them and had been from the moment I called him to tell him about it. I asked him how many were involved at the Bureau. He snapped at me to stop asking so many questions and just be happy that I was still alive. That he was giving me a chance to not only stay alive, but to be part of the ones that would rule over the weaker links until they were extinct. I refused, said I could never be a part of something so evil. I’d rather be dead first. He told me I had twenty-four hours to reconsider, then I was cut off.”
“Cut off?” I felt my eyes widening a touch. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I wasn’t sure myself and I never got a chance to ask him to clarify because he hung up on me. I remember sitting in my apartment in Berlin thinking that after those twenty-four hours had passed, I would be killed somehow. I would have an accident or a sniper would get me. It didn’t matter; I didn’t need any time to reconsider. There was no bloody chance I’d ever be part of what these maniacs were planning, no matter what would happen to me.”
I put my emptied wineglass on the coffee table. Ian instantly filled it with more wine. “But nothing happened to you, correct?”
“Correct,” he said. “Instead, a couple of days later during which I’d been sleeping with my gun in my hand, waiting for something to happen to me, Sinclair faxed me some of the articles that had been written about me in the national press. Like the one you like to mention. The one in the Washington Post. ”
I sipped on my wine. “Hmm. I wonder why they didn’t just have you killed instead.”
“Like I’ve told you before, I wonder that as well. Still wonder. They must have their reasons for wanting to keep both you and me alive. At this point, there can’t be much doubt that they know you’re aware of what’s going on. I’m still convinced that your husband was killed by them, and that the reason they made it seem like Cardoza was behind it was only so that no one would suspect the real killers. They just needed to get your husband out of the picture before he learned more about The Adler Group and what they’re up to.”
I thought about Ian’s words. I had
to agree that it must be the way he said.
“What did you think when you received those articles?” I asked him.
“At first I thought it was just something they’d fabricated and hoped I would believe had actually been in print. That way I wouldn’t even try to alert others in the government. On the bright side, having received and read those articles, I now figured fewer people in the U.S. were involved than I’d come to fear. Obviously they were worried I’d tell on them and wanted me discredited. Well, me to think I was discredited at least.”
“So how did you find out that everyone actually believed you’d been sentenced for a crime you didn’t commit and then served five months in prison, not to mention being a druggie?”
“After I flew back to the U.S. and requested back issues of the Post. After I saw that, I called the prison where I supposedly had served my sentence, pretending to be a reporter and asked about myself. The prison warden himself confirmed that I’d been serving time at his prison, which meant he was clearly in on it.” Ian snorted. “Apparently, I’d been a fairly obedient prisoner… Around that time, two men claiming to be from the FBI visited me in the hotel room I stayed in while in D.C. and demanded I give them my badge, ID and gun. I instantly realized something was off with them, so I claimed to have handed in all the items as soon as I landed on American soil. They told me they’d verify this and if I was lying, they’d be back. I never heard from the Bureau or them again. It’s been several months since their visit.”
“It’s odd they let you keep your identification and gun after going through all that trouble to make it seem like you’re now an ex-con with substance abuse problems.”
“No more odd than that they let me stay alive when I know so much about them if you think about it. At least Sinclair knows that I’m the kind of guy who’ll do anything to stop them. He and I go way back. They probably figured it didn’t really matter if I kept my badge and gun. Anyway, shortly after that I headed to New York to become a member at Nikkei Sports Club as my investigations had repeatedly confirmed they used this club as a form of headquarters. And then it didn’t take long until I spotted you.” Ian smiled. “The rest you know.”
Chapter 4
“Okay, I’m still waitin’ for you to tell me that all of this is a joke, chica, ” Dante said in my ear. “You sure you’re not on crack or somethin’?”
“Unfortunately, my mind’s perfectly clear and I’m not kidding around. Wish I was. No, all of it is true.”
After I finally left Ian’s house, I went to buy a disposable cell phone to use when calling Dante. The disposable had been per Ian’s recommendation; wiretapping prevention software or not, we still couldn’t be one hundred percent sure the computer whizzes at Adler hadn’t been able to get through it. I wanted my best guy friend to know everything that I now knew and see if there was a way he could help us; he and Jose were after all very resourceful people. Also, I just needed to talk about it with someone other than Ian that I could trust. Someone who would take everything I told him seriously, though I was beginning to have my doubts about that now.
“Hello,” I said when he didn’t say anything else. “Dante, are you still there? I’m telling you, it’s all true. I would never joke around about something like that.”
“No, I know that… I’m just fuckin’ in shock is all. Can you blame me?”
“No, I can’t. That’s exactly how I felt when I finally accepted the truth. Ian’s been telling me about it since the day I got here, but I refused to buy it. It just seemed too… unbelievable. That’s why told you to make sure you sat down before I told you everything and that you had the time to listen. I figured you’d react this way.”
He gave something between a chuckle and a snort. “So you’re telling me I might be bumping into one of these super humans right here in Los Angeles then? Lots of them look like super humans already, if you ask me…”
“Yeah, I know they do, but for sure some of them are hybrids. One of them might even be working for you… I’m sure I’m working with several of them myself as, apparently, Nikkei is part of their headquarters here in New York.”
A speeded-up version of my visit to the club the first day I was back in New York flashed through my mind. I remembered how surprised I’d been at the sight of all those perfect-looking specimens working here now. And then amazed when I learned just how smart, nice and hard-working all of them were. Well, with the exception of Jonah perhaps. He was the only one who, the more I got to know him, the less pleasant he turned out to be. I had no idea why this was.
“De puta madre…” Dante muttered under his breath. “So now what?”
“Ian thinks we can stop them from doing the coups against the different governments. I’m not exactly sure how he imagines us doing that, but I’m choosing to believe him. If I don’t, I might as well blow my head off right now the future looks so bleak.”
“You can say that again. So you think these Ad… Adele people know about you guys then? Both of you, I mean?”
“Adler, not Adele. Yeah, probably. Ian thinks they didn’t realize who I really was when I first came to work at the club, but then somehow figured it out. Pretty quickly too.” I reminded Dante about Felix Bose and how he had attacked me in the park. Ian and I had yet to find out more about Bose, but I thought it was fair to say that he must have been sent by Adler and their cohorts to try to take me out early. I told Dante this.
“At some point, it seems they stopped wanting to see us dead, though,” I finished. “Or me, at least. So far, they haven’t really made any active attempts to take out Ian. Neither he nor I can figure out why this is.” I wanted to tell Dante that we could only hope it wasn’t because they knew any attempts on our part to stop their plans were futile. No point in making this seem any worse than it already was. Besides, I didn’t believe this was the case anyway.
Don’t want to believe, a small voice in my head nagged.
“And then you got those threatening texts,” Dante said, interrupting my thoughts. “The ones from a Skype account that only turned out to be routed via Ian’s computer. You think they might be behind those, too?”
“Yeah, for sure.”
How could I ever forget about those texts and how scared I’d been of Ian? Ian had been spot-on when he’d claimed that I would have tried to kill him had I not discovered the nasty texts had only been routed via his computer. The mere thought of what I might have done had there been even more “evidence” against Ian made goosebumps appear all over my body and I was suddenly freezing. Thank God for George’s superb intervention there…
“Remember how we used to think Ian was the person behind those texts?” Dante asked, his soothing voice exactly what I needed to hear to feel better right now. “How we were so sure he was a psycho?”
“Yeah, I definitely remember that,” I said, wondering if Dante somehow had been able to sense what I’d been thinking right then. “I remember it way too clearly.”
“And then you thought it was that investment banker who used to be buddies with Cardoza. Jose and I had an awesome time down in Texas looking for connections to that hijo de puta.”
There wasn’t even a hint of sarcasm in Dante’s words, even though I so deserved it for having sent him and Jose down on wild-goose chases. But unlike Ian, acerbity had never been something Dante seemed capable of. He was a straight-shooter with the warmest, biggest of hearts, Latin all the way to the bone. It had always amazed me how a man like that had been able to survive ten years as a gangbanger, an environment in which you had to be ruthless to survive. Somehow, Dante had managed, though.
Still, I said, “I know, I’m so sorry I sent you guys down there, wasting your time.”
“No worries, querida. Honestly, we had fun. And Ricki didn’t miss me anyway. All she has time for these days is Enrique.”
Enrique was their now seven-month old son. A pang of longing went through my chest as I pictured the little boy’s adorable face. I was his godmother and was rather att
ached to the little thing. But there was no time to talk about how much I missed my godson, so I said, “I guess that’s good ’cause I’m pretty sure we could use your help soon again. And Jose’s.”
“Got it,” Dante said, “Well, you just let me know. Anything you need, we’re there for you guys.”
“Good to know.” I was about to tell him that I had to go—it was late—then remembered how close Dante was with his wife, who was also my friend. She was a wonderful person, but she had a big mouth. For now, the fewer people who knew about what Adler was up to and how we were trying to stop them, the better. I also didn’t want to worry Ricki unnecessarily.
“Hey,” I said. “Please don’t tell Ricki about any of this. Until you really have to.”
“Chica, you think I’m crazy? Then everyone and their mother would know about it. Don’t worry, I want us to at least have a fighting chance to stop these bastards.”
I giggled, relieved that I didn’t have to explain exactly why it was paramount that Dante kept his mouth shut. We exchanged a few more words, then hung up.
I thought briefly about contacting Captain Brady, but decided to leave it for later. I honestly wasn’t sure his heart would be able to handle hearing all that I had just told Dante. It wouldn’t be the first time the man had had a heart attack. Plus, I soon realized, I would have a much harder time trying to convince Brady that what I was telling him was really the truth. I sighed as I thought about that he might in fact not buy it at all, no matter how much he respected me as a detective. He might think I had snapped from all the sorrow Nick’s death had caused me. It wasn’t a farfetched assumption; what I had just spent an hour telling Dante was after all not an easy story to buy.
