Lyle had looked Roz right in her mischievous eyes and asked her point-blank if she honestly, truly, believed the government was capable of keeping such an incredible secret for so long.
She had smiled and said, “Just because I don’t believe in government conspiracies doesn’t mean I can’t believe in—”
“Yes, it does,” he’d interrupted. Then, quite wisely he thought, they’d both decided to leave everything alien well enough alone.
On Kingsburgh’s computer screen, Lyle now saw that a schematic diagram was flashing on and off in all different orientations against a rough background of random smears of color.
“What now?” Kingsburgh asked.
“We keep the joint cool and we wait.” Keisha swiveled in her chair, to face Lyle and Roz. “With such precise coordinates, it shouldn’t take more than a few hours.” She held up her handcuffs. “Deal done?”
“Not yet,” Lyle said. Ironwood was still in Vanuatu, and still had to provide the names of everyone involved in getting him the database.
After that, the only mystery remaining to be answered was why the alien-loving billionaire was so interested in such a bleak, barren, snow-covered piece of rock.
In the end, Lyle decided, the answer to that mystery was unimportant.
He’d done his job. The case was closed or soon would be.
Nothing else mattered but returning to his ordinary life.
He sat back, closed his eyes, and thought again of Roz’s eyes, wondering for the first time how old was too old. How young, too young.
In the shade of an umbrella woven from palm fronds, David lay back on the white-canvas-covered deck chair on the wood veranda and tried not to think of dying. The wounds on his chest had been cleansed and dressed and no longer throbbed. There was an ice bucket beside him—polystyrene, with a printed plastic sleeve that was supposed to look like wood, perhaps the cheapest ice bucket on the planet. Still, it was filled with cans of Red Bull, and there was a cupboard in the elaborate kitchen stocked with a never-ending supply of Doritos. A year ago, he might have thought it was a good thing to live like a billionaire—even a frugal one—but ever since his inadvertent genetic discovery, everything that surrounded him was simply a distraction to mask the sound of ticking, the clock of his life running down much too quickly.
Jess was facing troubles of her own, and proximity to Ironwood was still a problem for her. David had heard the man explain to her that he had always imagined their rivalry as a chess game. That the stakes they had vigorously played for were high, but were never life-or-death. That Nathaniel Merrit had acted on his own, and that he, Ironwood, accepted full responsibility for not realizing what his own security chief was doing. That it had never been his intention for anyone to come to harm.
“My aunt’s still dead,” Jess had said. That had been the end of Ironwood’s first attempt at reconciliation.
In Australia, it hadn’t been difficult for David to persuade Jess they needed Ironwood to help them search for the White Island, if that’s where the coordinates led. Not after he’d pointed out that there were only three groups, as far as either of them knew, that had the required resources to help. Since the air force was only interested in arresting him for espionage, and her family wanted to “confine” her, at the very least, that left only Ironwood.
Besides, David had added, despite the long-standing animosity between the MacCleirigh Foundation and the billionaire, Ironwood was motivated to find the lost site and study it. If Su-Lin and Andrew, on the other hand, discovered it, there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t dispatch another demolition crew.
Jess had agreed.
It hadn’t been that difficult to reach Ironwood, either. Jess had called the CEO of Haldron Oil and given him a brief message for Ironwood. Haldron’s CEO had called his counterpart at Royal Sovereign Oil—wholly owned by Ironwood Industries. Royal Sovereign Oil headquarters were only four blocks away from Haldron’s in Aberdeen.
From there, the path taken by their message was unknown to David, but he knew studies had shown that any two people on earth could be linked by as few as seven intermediate connections between acquaintances. At the rarefied levels of connection Jess and Ironwood occupied, magnified by wealth and influence, he guessed it probably didn’t even take seven.
Their message had been brief and to the point. I know where to find the oldest outpost with your help. Jessica MacClary. Then the number for a disposable phone.
That phone had rung six hours later. Message received and answered.
Now, two days later, he and Jess were guests in Vanuatu, and they were waiting for Jack Lyle to report that a temple had been found at the coordinates taken from the star and sun maps. Maybe that would change the dynamic between Jess and Ironwood.
There wasn’t much chance it would change anything for him. Twenty-three days from now, he would reach the threshold age of twenty-six years, six months. Past that date, death would come at any moment. No one he’d yet found with his genetic anomalies had lived more than five and a half months past that. There was simply no more time left.
He felt numb, angry, frustrated. He burned with the desire to do something, anything—but he didn’t know what.
The satphone rang.
David opened his eyes. The phone was on a small wooden table beside him. He sat up as he heard Ironwood’s heavy footsteps thud through the kitchen and onto the wooden deck.
Ironwood read the caller ID, called out, “Jessica. This is it,” then swung out the satphone’s stubby antenna and accepted the call as Jess joined them.
He listened. He grinned. “As soon as I receive the file, I’ll e-mail the full report.” He listened again. Made a face. “If there’s anything wrong with the report, Agent Lyle, you know where you can find me.” He disconnected. Beaming.
“Keisha found it. Within a mile of the coordinates you two worked out. About fifty feet down inside a mountain, and she says that there look to be miles of tunnels and other chambers and who knows what else. It’s not just an outpost, you two—it’s a whole base! Maybe a whole city! In Antarctica! Now is that impossible or is that impossible!”
Ironwood looked ready to dance with excitement. David was struck by the improbability—no, make that impossibility—of the existence of a complex city constructed underground in Antarctica. Jess, though, was subdued.
“Jessica?” Ironwood asked. “Shouldn’t this be about the happiest day of your life? We’re on the brink of confirming a major—major—discovery!”
Rather than respond, Jess left the veranda.
David watched her go. “She’s been through a lot the past few weeks. Her whole family’s out to get her because of what she’s doing with us.”
“Family expectations. Not an easy burden.” Ironwood paused, curious. “You’re not a southern boy, are you, Dave? Where’re your people from?”
“Here and there.” David changed the topic. “So what happens now?”
“We plan an expedition. No way to get to Antarctica now—weather, they tell me, is too dangerous. In a couple more months, it’ll be coming up on what passes for high summer. I’ll hire an ice-rated tub, put together a team. Helicopters, generators . . . Heck, I’m tempted to call up National Geographic, see if we can make it a live television event!”
Ironwood threw his arms out as if to embrace the world. “What’d I tell you when we met? We’re going to change everything! Two months’ time, we’re going to change the world!”
Caught up in his own delight, Ironwood had failed to notice that David was as unresponsive to his news as Jess MacClary.
Whatever was waiting in Antarctica, David knew he’d never see it. There’d be no discovery that could save him. Jess and Ironwood might still win what they were after, but David had lost everything.
FORTY-EIGHT
“How exactly did you obtain this?”
Andrew McCleary tapped a neatly shaped fingernail against the incomprehensibly colored printout on the mirror-polished surface of
his desk.
Across from him, Merrit sat rigidly upright. His right ankle was still tightly bandaged, but his back had recovered and the wounds on his rib cage were healing as they should. None of those injuries interfered with his perception of danger, though. He knew the risk he had taken walking through the doors of this law firm, and into this man’s office. These people were as experienced as he was in making the unwanted disappear.
“The government e-mailed that file to Ironwood as soon as they obtained it. I have access to his company’s mail system. The encryption wasn’t strong.”
McCleary studied the yellow outline on the printout. It, at least, was recognizable, Merrit knew. Ironwood’s alien outpost. Or a temple, as the Foundation referred to it. The rest of the background image was a jumble.
“How did you know the government would be sending it?”
“I didn’t. I monitor everything going to and from Ironwood. That’s how I know Jessica MacClary and David Weir are working with him. They probably have been from the beginning.”
“No,” McCleary said. “We’ve had another source within the Ironwood camp. This is the first there’s been any contact with Jessica.”
Another source? Merrit tried not to show his interest in what the man had just revealed. “Anyway,” he said, “they’re working together now.”
The lawyer smoothed his already perfect tie, and looked over to the screen angled up from the side of his desk. “What say you?”
On the screen, Su-Lin Rodrigues y Machado pursed her lips in thought. Merrit had only seen a single photo of her in her file. It had been taken through an extreme telephoto lens at night, many years ago. She looked younger in person. Or what passed for in person these days. Ironwood’s file said Rodrigues was based in Zurich, and, from the slight satellite delay in her video, Merrit thought it likely that was where she was transmitting from.
“What’s your purpose in bringing this to us?” she asked.
“I need protection.” That was the truth, and truth was required because, Merrit was certain, McCleary’s inevitable voice-stress analyzers would be processing every word he said, probing for lies.
The woman’s smile had an edge. “There are those in my family who could say the same: that they need protection from you.”
“Miscalculations and wrong moves. I’m not the only one working for Ironwood.”
“If you’re so ready to betray your previous employer,” McCleary asked, “how can we possibly trust you?”
“Ironwood betrayed me.” That was the truth as well.
“If all this plays out as you hope,” the woman said, “what form would our protection take?”
“Cross Executive Protection Services. I could be an asset.”
“You’d work for us?”
“Same work I’ve been doing for Ironwood. Assembling teams and maintaining security at sites around the world.”
Merrit watched as McCleary and Rodrigues regarded each other across the screen. There was some type of information being passed between them. Subliminal? If so, it betrayed a close association.
“Very well, Mr. Merrit,” the lawyer said. “We’ll take you on—provisionally. Until we see how this information checks out.”
“How will you do that?” Merrit asked. Any time he spent waiting without the shield of the MacCleirigh Foundation was time he was at risk of arrest by the air force.
“You’ll be doing it yourself,” Rodrigues answered. “The Foundation has good friends in the Casa Rosada. You understand?”
Merrit didn’t.
“Argentina, Mr. Merrit. There was trouble there a few years ago. The Foundation played a part in restoring their troubled economy and, as a result, we have the goodwill of many public officials.”
“I don’t get it.” Merrit doubted he was supposed to. This felt like a test. “What’s important about Argentina?”
On the screen, Rodrigues held up her own copy of the printout he had provided. “The location of this . . . underground complex is on territory Argentina claims as its own. Tierra de San Martín, they call it. There’s an Argentine airbase and a settlement nearby, both within a hundred and fifty miles of this site. We won’t have any difficulty enlisting our friends’ assistance to locate it and confirm that structures, buried or otherwise, exist there. They will also assist us in taking the appropriate action.”
Merrit realized McCleary and Rodrigues were expecting another response from him. An informed one this time.
“Appropriate action,” he repeated, and saw their expectations rise. “Like in Cornwall.”
His new employers shared the same smile.
“As in Cornwall,” the lawyer agreed.
FORTY-NINE
Even worse than being ordered to make a deal with a criminal like Ironwood was having to write a report of the sorry affair.
Jack Lyle had a stack of notepads to review.
Sealed in a plastic bag was the logbook used by Del Chang at the stakeout of Weir’s warehouse lab. It was charred around its edges, blown clear of the hit by a shoulder-launched rocket. It was obscene to Lyle that no one would pay for that outrage.
The only consolation, if there could be one, was that it seemed the country, and the world, were safer today because the SARGE database was back under U.S. control. Even though the trigger to the deal was now classified at the highest compartmentalized level, General DiFranza had gotten word back to him that Ironwood’s algorithm was everything they’d hoped for: Whatever the individual cost, the benefit to the country more than outweighed it. It was a trade-off only a warrior could understand—human life for a better world. Lyle understood the general’s assessment, but that didn’t mean he liked it.
Then there were the transcripts. Every conversation that had ever occurred between Weir and Ironwood.
Lyle sighed and rubbed his aching knee. It was going to take him longer to write his report than it had taken to close the case.
He looked out the door to Roz’s desk. A few moments ago, she’d been there working on her parts of the report. He wondered where she’d gone. Lunch?
His phone buzzed.
He answered, wondering if she had read his mind. It was the sort of thing she’d believe in.
“Jack, it’s Lou DiFranza.”
It took a moment for Lyle to recognize the name without the rank.
“General?”
“For this call, it’s Lou.”
“Two guys in a room?” It was the code for putting rank aside. He was about to hear something that the rules said he shouldn’t, but that a three-star general thought he should.
“Exactly. The Ironwood deal might not pan out.”
“Lou” had his full attention.
“Those coordinates he gave us. On the Antarctic Peninsula. It looks like there’s a military connection after all.”
“In the Antarctic?”
“No one here knows what the connection is, but I got a heads-up from NSA that those coordinates are flagged in some back-and-forth traffic between assets of the Sixth Brigade of the Argentine Air Force.”
“You lost me.”
“They’re planning some kind of show of force, Jack. Analysts here are thinking it has to do with them maintaining their claim to the peninsula as their own territory. So they’re going to conduct military operations there.”
“What kind of operations?”
“No word on that yet. They’re moving their Mirage fighters and a refueling tanker to the Gallegos airbase, right at the tip of South America. And they’re shipping supplies, thought to be munitions, to the Marambio airbase. That’s on an island just off the peninsula, maybe two hundred klicks from the Ironwood site. ETA is four days, and they’ll be good to go anytime after that.”
Lyle was still at sea. “I don’t know what to say. I’ve never picked up any sort of involvement with Argentina or Antarctica in any of our intercepts.”
“Well, things are getting fierce here, and I thought you should know. There’s been a report floating
around that the way Antarctica’s been losing its ice cover, it’s about to be a flash point for resource competition. Easy to sign a treaty promising not to mine or drill someplace where it’s impossible to do it anyway, but if different countries are already starting to covertly establish commercial and industrial bases down there . . . I tell you, our big concern is that Ironwood duped us into using SARGE to reveal the location of a secret British base, and the Argentines are going to react as if their home soil’s been invaded. It’ll be the Falklands all over again, and if that’s what’s going down, they’ll be looking for a fall guy, and I don’t want it to be you. Watch your six, Jack.” The general clicked off.
Lyle stared at the small phone in his hand until he realized he wasn’t alone.
Roz was standing in his doorway, her concern evident.
“Interesting call?” she asked.
“How much did you hear?”
“Argentina and Antarctica. So I’m guessing this is something to do with our favorite pardoned felon.”
“The pardon might not apply much longer.”
Roz whistled. “Details?”
Lyle had her close the door, then told her everything.
When he had finished, Roz said, “That doesn’t sound right.”
Lyle tapped his fingers on his desk. “I know Ironwood’s never given a sign of being in contact with a foreign agency, but—”
“I don’t mean that,” Roz interrupted. “I mean the Brits carving out a secret underground military base in Antarctica—without us and about twenty other countries happening to notice. I believe in a lot of crazy things, but that scenario’s too far out. Even for me.”
Lyle had his doubts as well, but if the Pentagon was investigating, there was some slim chance of possibility. Otherwise, what other answer could there be?
“Okay then, skeptic, this is what we do know. One: Ironwood’s technique for finding underground structures with the SARGE database works. A little bird told me his algorithm’s the real deal.”
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