Trade-Off

by Trade-Off (retail) (epub)

  ‘You screwed her?’

  It was more a statement than a question. The woman called Suzanne nodded.

  ‘Yup,’ she replied.

  ‘I don’t know why the hell you don’t just give ’em the smokes and be done with it.’

  ‘Perks of the job,’ Suzanne snapped. ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘You use anything? Lubricant, I mean?’

  The woman grinned. ‘No need. This one was a real juicy Lucy.’

  The man walked across to the bed and pulled off the sheet which had been covering Carol’s legs from mid-thigh down. He reached out and spread her legs wide, then walked back and opened his bag. He took out a box of Q-tips, bent over Carol’s body and with deft, experienced strokes, took two vaginal swabs.

  ‘With you, it’s always the same, isn’t it?’ Suzanne said. ‘Never blood or saliva, always you go straight for the cunt.’

  ‘Taking a blood sample causes bruising, and getting a saliva specimen can scratch the inside of the mouth,’ he said defensively. ‘This way’s safest – and a lot more fun,’ he added.

  He stepped back from the bed, reached into his black bag and took out a metal object about the size of a shoe box. What it did would have been instantly familiar to any medical laboratory technician, but the machine itself would not have been. It was a highly sophisticated body fluid and DNA analyzer with its own internal power supply and computer display.

  The man inserted the end of the first Q-tip into the receptor and pressed the ‘Analyze’ button. The machine hummed and purred for a couple of minutes, and then data began appearing on the colour display.

  Suzanne stood behind the man’s shoulder, and both watched with professional interest as the information appeared. She nodded as she read the lines of information printed in green lettering, which indicated that Carol Class was basically healthy.

  Suddenly, a line in red appeared, and Suzanne stiffened as she looked at it. ‘Oh, shit,’ she said. ‘She’s HIV Positive. No good for us.’

  The man nodded. ‘I’ll run the second swab, but if it’s confirmed, that’s it.’

  Four minutes later he snapped the machine closed and replaced it in his bag. ‘Confirmed,’ he said. ‘She’s no good.’

  Suzanne straightened up. ‘I’d better get back downstairs,’ she said. ‘We need to find five more this week, and it’s Wednesday already.’ She shook her head. ‘Shit,’ she said again, looking towards the bed. ‘She looked clean – maybe she’s a hooker and I didn’t realize.’

  ‘Yeah,’ the man agreed, ‘she does look clean, and she is beautiful.’ He paused, and glanced somewhat slyly across at Suzanne. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You mind if I –’

  Suzanne shook her head. ‘Help yourself. I’m going to take a shower – make sure you’re finished before I get out. Remember – no anal, no oral, and use a condom.’

  ‘Because she’s HIV Positive?’

  ‘No,’ Suzanne said. ‘I don’t care what you catch. I just don’t want her finding your semen running down her legs when she stands up.’

  As she headed for the bathroom, the man took off his jacket and tie, unbuckled his belt, dropped his trousers and jockey shorts on the floor and walked towards the bed.

  Ninety minutes later Carol Class woke up alone, got dressed and let herself out of the suite. She was to die of an AIDS-related illness twelve years later, but she would never know how lucky she’d been.

  Chapter Four

  Wednesday

  Beaver Creek, Western Montana

  Hunter was up just after seven thirty, and by eight he was shaved, showered and dressed. He collected two cups and a pot of coffee on a tray from the motel restaurant, and pushed open the door to the adjoining room at eight ten. Christy-Lee was awake, but still in bed, so Hunter put the tray on the bedside table and sat beside her.

  ‘Good morning, again,’ he said. ‘Any bright ideas?’

  Kaufmann sat up and shook her head, her blonde hair tumbling in an unkempt swathe across her face. She brushed it away with her hand and reached for the coffee. Hunter kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘Not,’ Christy-Lee said, with a sleepy smile, ‘during the working day, please. Save it for tonight.’

  She and Hunter had been sleeping together at Helena for nearly six months, in direct contravention of FBI standing orders, which forbid liaisons of any sort between agents. Hunter contended that, as he wasn’t actually an FBI agent, the rules didn’t apply to him. Kaufmann said that didn’t make any difference, but she slept with him anyway.

  They each had their own apartment, were scrupulous in never spending an entire night together in Helena, and at work they had developed a kind of professional coolness towards each other which had fooled everyone – even Gloria Gray, who had a nose for scandal that would have made a National Enquirer reporter envious. Almost everybody thought they simply didn’t get on with each other.

  ‘The FBI’s working day,’ Hunter said, ‘begins at eight thirty. That gives us –’ he glanced at his watch ‘– another eighteen minutes. People like us can do a lot in eighteen minutes.’

  Christy-Lee smiled at him, but shook her head. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I have to shower and do all my other stuff. Wait until tonight, and then –’

  The knock at the door of Hunter’s room was loud and abrupt. He slid off the bed, walked back into his own room and pulled back the corner of the curtain.

  ‘It’s Sheriff Reilly,’ he said, and closed the connecting door.

  ‘Good morning,’ Reilly said, walking into the room as Hunter opened the door. ‘You and the lady sleep well?’

  Reilly sat down uninvited in the living room chair. He was carrying a round object in a black garbage bag, which he placed carefully on the floor beside the chair.

  ‘Good morning to you, sheriff. Thank you, I think we slept well enough. What’s in the bag?’

  Reilly smiled up at him. ‘Another little puzzle for you,’ he said. ‘You two seem to be the official custodians of the weird around these parts, so I came to you. Agent Kaufmann not here?’

  Hunter gestured to the connecting door. ‘She’s not dressed yet,’ he said. ‘Would you like to tell me about it?’

  Reilly shook his head, and Hunter realized for the first time that the sheriff was actually enjoying having the FBI around. Having somebody he could dump his problems on made for an easier life.

  ‘It’ll keep,’ Reilly said, ‘until Agent Kaufmann can join us. Say, you wanna get some breakfast? I’m hungry and I’m buying.’

  Hunter nodded, opened the connecting door and called out to Christy-Lee that they would be in the motel restaurant, and then the two men left together.

  On the way across the parking lot to the restaurant, Reilly opened the passenger door of his Cherokee Jeep and placed the black bag carefully inside on the floor. Then he locked the vehicle.

  ‘Definitely don’t want to be carrying that into a place where there’s people eating,’ Reilly said, with a grin that he probably thought was enigmatic, but which just made Hunter want to punch him in the mouth.

  They were half way through their hash browns, ham and eggs when Christy-Lee joined them. She declined food, and just asked for orange juice and fresh coffee.

  ‘So, what’ve you got for us this time, sheriff?’ she asked, when the waitress had moved out of earshot.

  Reilly finished his mouthful of ham and leaned forward. ‘What we got this time,’ he said, ‘is a human skull half-way up a tree.’

  Hunter put down his fork. ‘Are you putting us on?’ he asked, his voice low and dangerous. He’d already picked up quite a lot of American expressions.

  Reilly shook his head. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Got in it the Cherokee right outside.’

  ‘You brought it here?’ Christy-Lee asked, incredulously. ‘That won’t exactly help the forensic pathologist, will it? You should have left it and let him examine it in situ.’

  Reilly put the last forkful of hash browns in his mouth and chewed in silence for a minute or so
. ‘You trying to tell me I don’t know my job, Agent Kaufmann?’ he asked, finally. ‘I’ve been in law enforcement a long time. I know what should be done, but there’s times when you can’t do it, and this was one of them.’

  He took a drink of coffee.

  ‘Happened yesterday,’ he said. ‘A kid over at Williamsburg – that’s about five, six miles southwest o’ here – was out shootin’ squirrels in the woods. He saw this round thing way up in a tree, and so he took a shot at it. He hit it a coupla times with his twenty-two, and the third time it fell out. When he saw what it was, he put it in the bag he’d got his sandwiches in and took it back to his father, and he brought it to me first thing this morning.’

  ‘Did you get –’ Hunter started to say.

  ‘Yup,’ Reilly said, nodding. ‘I took a statement from the kid and his father. The kid doesn’t think he could locate the tree again, but he says it was a Douglas fir, and the skull was stuck about twenty feet off the ground. He didn’t think anyone could climb up that high, not without special gear, anyway.’

  Reilly paused, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, then belched and pushed his empty plate away from him.

  ‘I’m not a doctor,’ he said, ‘but I looked at the skull. Know what struck me as odd about it?’

  Hunter shook his head. ‘No, sheriff. Go ahead, surprise us.’

  Reilly leaned forward again. ‘It was fresh,’ he said. ‘Like the bone you get in a joint of meat. It hadn’t been there long. And you know the other thing?’

  Hunter shook his head again.

  ‘I reckon the brain’s still inside,’ Reilly said, with relish.

  Christy-Lee Kaufmann shuddered slightly.

  ‘Anyways,’ Reilly finished. ‘I brought it along so’s you and your tame doc can take a look at it. Probably not related to the Billy Dole thing, but you never know.’

  FBI Headquarters, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

  William McGrath knocked on the Director’s door a little after eleven, and walked into the office when he heard a muffled call. George Donahue was sitting behind his desk, working on a bulky blue file, but when he saw McGrath he closed it with a snap.

  ‘Yes, Bill?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ve just heard from Helena. Kaufmann used her laptop to email an initial investigation report to the Field Office this morning. Her report confirms the Beaver Creek sheriff’s statement. Do you want the details, sir?’

  Donahue nodded.

  ‘Kaufmann and Hunter visited the crime scene and inspected the body. The sheriff had done a good job, keeping everybody away from the corpse and taking plenty of photographs of the scene. Kaufmann’s report substantiates all the details we received last night – the way the victim was killed, the lack of footprints and so on. Kaufmann requested a forensic pathologist from Helena last night, and he’s at Beaver Creek now, doing an autopsy.’

  McGrath paused and turned the page of his notes. ‘And there’s something else,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’ Donahue asked. ‘What?’

  ‘This is a little strange,’ McGrath began. ‘The sheriff arrived at Kaufmann’s motel early this morning carrying a human skull in a garbage bag. Some teenager out shooting had found it in the woods yesterday, and he and his father delivered it to the sheriff this morning.’

  Donahue looked keenly at McGrath. ‘Was it a fresh skull?’

  McGrath nodded. ‘According to Kaufmann, yes. Hunter and the sheriff seem to think that the brain is still inside it, but we won’t know that for sure until the pathologist’s had a chance to see it. He’s going to examine it as soon as he’s completed the autopsy of Billy Dole – that’s the name of the murder victim.’

  McGrath looked up then and noticed that Donahue’s expression had changed. A look almost of resignation had settled on his heavy features, and his voice when he spoke was dull and low. ‘Where was the skull found?’ he asked.

  McGrath again glanced at his notes. ‘In woods in the vicinity of Williamsburg – that’s a few miles to the southwest of Beaver Creek.’

  Donahue shook his head. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ he said. ‘I meant where did this teenager find the skull – on the ground, half-buried in the earth, or what?’

  ‘That’s the oddest thing of all, Director,’ McGrath replied. ‘According to the statement of the boy who found it, the skull was lodged about twenty feet up in the air, in the boughs of a Douglas fir. If he hadn’t been out shooting squirrels, and looking up into the trees, he’d never have seen it.’

  Donahue nodded, almost as if that was the answer he had been expecting. ‘OK, Bill,’ he said. ‘Leave everything you’ve got with me, and let me have the file you opened. Then forget all about this.’

  McGrath was surprised, and said so. ‘Forget it, Director? That’s not so easy. What about this Omega business?’

  Donahue shook his head. ‘That’s why you have to forget it, Bill. What you’ve told me is a confirmation of what I feared. This matter is now officially an Omega Incident, which means I’m the only one at the Bureau cleared to handle it. You just forget everything about it and leave me to take the necessary action.’

  McGrath nodded, put his notes on Donahue’s desk and left without saying another word.

  As soon as the door had closed behind McGrath, Donahue walked across to his wall safe, spun the combination wheel and opened the door. He took out the sealed Omega Procedures file, walked back to his desk and sat down. Then he took a desk knife, sliced through the binding tapes, opened the file and began to read.

  After twenty minutes he closed the file and leaned back in his chair. Then he pulled on his suit jacket, picked up the file and left his office. Ten minutes later he was in a sound-proof booth in the Communication Centre, talking on a secure and scrambled telephone line to a man on an unlisted number in Nevada.

  Beaver Creek, Western Montana

  ‘Subject is a well-nourished male, age about sixty-five. Height six feet three inches, weight two hundred and twenty pounds. Dead approximately three to four days. External examination shows extensive damage to the surface tissues of the face, head and neck, and lesser damage to the hands, apparently caused by vermin. The top of the skull has been shattered, and protruding from it is what appears to be a human femur.’

  Even as he said the words, Alan Parker was aware of how bizarre they would sound in any court of law. He stopped talking and moved back from the dissecting table so that the photographer could use his camera.

  ‘Several of the skull, please,’ he said, ‘and the bone.’

  When the photographer had finished, Parker moved back to the body and looked carefully at the femur. He reached out and touched the shaft of the bone gingerly, then stroked the tip of his forefinger along its length.

  ‘Odd,’ he muttered, and looked at the shaft more closely.

  He placed his left hand on the corpse’s forehead, gripped the shaft of the femur firmly and attempted without success to move the bone. He spoke again into the over-table microphone.

  ‘The femur appears genuine, but requires separate investigation, and the distal end is wedged firmly into the base of the skull. My initial assumption is that the knee joint of the femur has jammed itself into the mouth and lower jaw of the skull. The bone of the femur is visible through the mouth of the deceased, which is locked slightly open.’

  Parker turned to the technician. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Take the x-rays as we discussed, then I’ll start cutting.’

  Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada

  The longest runway in the world is also the world’s least known. It’s six miles in length and is located virtually in the centre of the Groom Lake Air Force Base, which itself lies near the middle of Nellis Air Force Range and Nuclear Test Site, a chunk of the Nevada desert the size of Switzerland. The popular name ‘Area 51’ is derived from the numbering system used on US military maps of the area.

  The complex was established in 1955, funded in part by the CIA, specifically to facilitate flig
ht-testing of the top secret U-2 spy plane, which had been designed and built by the Lockheed ‘Skunk Works’ black project design team. The CIA’s willingness to contribute financially to a United States Air Force facility was entirely due to the fact that the U-2 was to fly CIA-directed missions over or close to hostile territory for almost its entire working life.

  After the development and eventual deployment of the U-2, Area 51 was used for the covert flight-testing of a number of other secret high-technology aircraft, including the A-12, forerunner of the SR-71A Blackbird; the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter; the B2 stealth bomber and the Aurora sub-orbital spy plane – all so-called black projects.

  In 1984, immediately before a period of expansion and enlargement that was to last more than two years, the American Government decided that the area was so secret and sensitive that it was to be omitted from all maps, and its existence was officially denied until 1992. The ostensible reason for this was that black project development, by its very nature, required the ultimate in secrecy and security.

  This was the truth, but not the whole truth, because Groom Lake also housed a number of other classified projects. The one most likely to cause international embarrassment to the United States was the existence of the so-called ‘Red Hat’ squadrons. These were squadrons of US Air Force pilots who flew only Soviet-Bloc aircraft that had been obtained intact, usually by the CIA, from air forces around the world. Having access to an enemy’s principal weaponry bestows a huge advantage upon any fighting force, and the US Government was determined that this aspect of Groom Lake’s operations would remain as secret as possible.

  Embarrassing though disclosure of ‘Red Hat’ would have been, Groom Lake also concealed, and still conceals, another secret – the last and greatest secret that has ever been withheld from the American people. The magnitude and nature of this secret are so great that if it had ever become public knowledge, no government of America, whether Democrat or Republican, would have survived its disclosure.