Trade-Off

by Trade-Off (retail) (epub)

  Harris figured that they were just lying low for a while, checking out the opposition and working out what they were going to do next, but Ketch was beginning to wonder if they’d all missed something.

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Hunter and Reilly were sitting in the blue Ford in the restaurant parking lot when Evans appeared, driving a cobalt blue Jaguar XJ6.

  ‘Looks like Roland Oliver pays pretty good,’ Reilly said, as he and Hunter climbed out of the Ford.

  ‘Doctor Evans?’ Hunter asked, as they approached the tall, spindly man wearing black-rimmed spectacles who emerged from the Jaguar. His white coat lay over the back of the passenger seat, and Hunter could see the ‘Evans’ nametag through the car’s side window.

  Evans nodded. ‘Yes. And you would be?’

  Hunter let the question hang in the air between them. ‘Let’s go inside, shall we?’ he said, took Evans’s elbow in a firm grasp and led the way into the restaurant. Lunch had finished over an hour ago. Almost every table was vacant and there were only four or five people at the bar. Hunter shepherded Evans to a large round table in the corner of the room next to the window and the three of them sat down, Reilly and Hunter flanking Evans.

  A waiter appeared, and Reilly ordered coffee all round.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ Evans asked, as the waiter moved out of earshot. ‘I’ve never seen either of you before. Let me see some identification, please.’

  Hunter reached into his jacket pocket, deliberately letting Evans see the butt of the Glock, and pulled out Rogers’ FBI ID.

  ‘We apologize for deceiving you, doctor. We’re not actually from Roland Oliver.’

  Out of the corner of his eye Hunter saw Reilly’s eyebrows climb up his forehead. They hadn’t discussed the details of what they were going to say to either the ambulance staff or the Roland Oliver doctor, but Reilly was already wondering just who the hell Hunter was going to claim to be next.

  ‘In fact,’ Hunter continued, ‘we’re not only not from Roland Oliver, we’re part of a special FBI task force which is investigating Roland Oliver’s operations.’

  Evans leaned back in his chair and sighed, apparently with relief, then sat forward. ‘Thank God for that,’ he said. ‘I’ve been praying somebody, somewhere, would take some notice and do something about it.’

  Hunter glanced across at Reilly, who gave him a puzzled frown.

  ‘Can you guarantee me full immunity?’ Evans asked.

  ‘That depends, doctor,’ Hunter said smoothly, ‘on what information you can give us. Start at the beginning, please. What’s your involvement with Roland Oliver?’

  Evans looked up as the waiter appeared with cups and coffee pots. When they all had drinks in front of them, Evans started talking.

  ‘I thought it was just a regular job, to start with. The qualifications they required were minimal – a medical degree was about all they wanted – but the salary was excellent. I thought it was just additional pay because of the long hours involved, you know, being in the building for twelve hours at a time. Twelve on, twelve off, for six days, then a three day break. There are three of us working shifts at McCarran.’

  ‘But you found out differently?’ Hunter asked.

  Evans nodded.

  ‘OK,’ Hunter said. ‘We’ll get to that later. What does your job consist of?’

  ‘Almost nothing,’ Evans said. ‘All I do is monitor the subjects. They breathe a special oxygen-nitrous oxide mixture to keep them unconscious. I’m responsible for monitoring their respiration, body temperature, pulse and so on, and make any changes necessary to maintain them in a stable, but unconscious, state. In fact, I don’t even really need to be there – there’s an automated monitoring system that reacts a lot faster than I can to any change in a patient’s condition – so I’m really there just in case the automated system falls over. That’s it, until their transport arrives.’

  Hunter nodded, as if Evans was just confirming what they already knew. ‘Tell us in general terms what you know about Roland Oliver’s subjects,’ he asked.

  ‘I asked that when I was first recruited. What they told me was that most of the subjects are what you might call “lost souls”. They’re young women, aged between eighteen and thirty, usually without family or close friends. A lot of them, they told me, are prostitutes or drug addicts. That’s more or less it.’

  ‘What medical research is Roland Oliver involved in?’

  ‘Medical research?’ Evans asked, a puzzled frown appearing. ‘What do you mean – “medical research”?’

  ‘We know from other sources that the subjects who are processed through McCarran are used in some kind of medical research program,’ Hunter replied. ‘We know they’re shipped out to a secure clinic somewhere.’

  ‘Groom Lake,’ Evans interrupted. ‘It’s out at Groom Lake.’

  ‘OK, Groom Lake,’ Hunter said, noting down the name in his notebook. ‘Now, what we need to know is what sort of research is done with them, and why the people running it are apparently prepared to kill anybody who gets close enough to find out anything about it.’

  Evans turned noticeably pale at Hunter’s words. ‘It’s not medical research,’ he said, looking nervously from Hunter to Reilly. ‘If you’ve been investigating Roland Oliver, surely you must know that?’

  Hunter recalled the explanation of Roland Oliver’s functions that they’d forced out of George Donahue.

  ‘OK, perhaps that’s not the right way to put it,’ he said. ‘Maybe medical experimentation would be a more accurate description?’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Evans said, shaking his head, and Hunter noticed a slight tremor in the hand holding the doctor’s coffee cup. ‘It’s not research or experimentation.’

  ‘So what is it? What does Roland Oliver do?’

  Evans shook his head again. ‘I don’t know what the purpose of the facility actually is,’ he said. ‘But I do know that none of the subjects of the program ever come back from Nevada.’

  ‘What do you mean, they never come back?’

  ‘What is done to them is terminal.’

  ‘Terminal?’

  ‘Terminal,’ Evans said. ‘The subjects are taken out there to be killed.’

  A long silence followed. Hunter didn’t take his eyes off Evans. ‘How do you know that?’ he asked.

  ‘I know what happens to them, because when I tried to get out of the program, they flew me out to Groom Lake and they showed me.’

  Evans swallowed twice before continuing, and his hand was shaking so badly that hot coffee slopped over his fingers. But he didn’t seem to notice as his eyes bored into Hunter’s face.

  ‘They told me that if I ever told anyone what really happens there, or if I tried to leave the program again, they’d put me through the same process.’

  Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada

  Straight-line or logical thought patterns suffer from one significant disadvantage – because the problem being tackled has to be clearly defined from the start, certain facts or assumptions have to be taken as givens, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at a solution which ignores these givens.

  The classic example is what might be termed the ‘pebble in the bag’ problem. The scenario is simple enough: an evil landlord has a tenant with a beautiful daughter. The tenant falls well behind with his rent payments and finally the landlord faces him and offers him a stark choice – pay the back rent in full, immediately (which he knows the tenant cannot do), or let him sleep with the tenant’s daughter for one night and he’ll forget about the back rent.

  The tenant protests, but under increasing pressure from the landlord he eventually asks his daughter. She agrees, but with the caveat that the final outcome will be determined by chance, by her picking one of two coloured pebbles from a bag. If she picks the black pebble, the back rent will be forgotten and she’ll spend the night with the landlord, but if she picks the white pebble, the rent will still be forgotten but she won’t have to sleep wi
th him. The landlord agrees to this, but the girl sees that he actually puts two black pebbles into the bag.

  Conventional thinking doesn’t help solve this problem, and normally offers only two possible solutions. Either the girl can cry foul, but that still leaves the problem of the rent to be paid, or she can bite the bullet, pick a black pebble and simply sleep with the landlord and get it over with.

  Lateral thinking provides the ideal solution immediately, by approaching the problem from the ‘wrong end,’ by imagining the best possible result and working backwards from there. If the landlord had played fair and put one white and one black pebble in the bag, and the girl had picked the white pebble, there would be a black pebble left in the bag. That is the ideal result – either a white pebble in the hand or a black pebble in the bag, and it doesn’t actually matter which. So all the girl does is pick either one of the pebbles, and then drop it. That leaves a black pebble in the bag so, logically, the girl must have picked the white one.

  Roger Ketch had never heard of the ‘pebble in the bag’ problem, but he had occasionally unconsciously employed lateral thinking with marked success.

  With Reilly and Hunter still refusing to show themselves anywhere near McCarran, he had tried to put himself in Hunter’s shoes and work out what he would do.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ he said suddenly, and reached for the telephone.

  McCarran Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada

  All the monitoring systems were on automatic, as usual. What wasn’t usual was the state of the telephone system, which Evans had switched over to answering machine before he left the building. He hadn’t left a new message saying where he was going, so Roger Ketch was none the wiser when he angrily replaced his receiver.

  Roland Oliver standing orders were quite clear. The duty doctor was never to leave the building, except for overseeing the reception of new subjects, during his shift. That meant, Ketch realized, that somehow Hunter and Reilly had got into the base and might even then be in the Roland Oliver building.

  He reached for the telephone and had actually begun dialling the number of Harris’s mobile phone when he suddenly stopped and replaced the handset.

  ‘That’s not it,’ he muttered to himself. ‘If Hunter and Reilly were in there, why would the answering machine be switched on?’

  After another few seconds, he pulled a telephone directory off a shelf next to his desk and flicked through the pages. Then he dialled a different number at McCarran, and within moments was talking to one of the main gate guards.

  ‘Has Doctor Evans left the base?’ he demanded, after identifying himself as a senior USAF officer – one of several cover identities he held.

  ‘Wait, please,’ the guard replied, and ran his finger down a list on a clipboard. ‘Yes, sir. He was checked through the gate at fourteen twelve local time.’

  ‘By himself?’ Ketch demanded.

  ‘We can’t tell. He was driving his own car, according to the log, but there’s no record of a passenger with him. We normally only record passengers coming into the base,’ the guard added.

  ‘Great,’ Ketch grated, and slammed his hand on the phone cradle.

  The moment he got a dial tone he called Harris’s mobile phone number.

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  ‘What process? What do they do to them?’ Hunter asked, again.

  ‘I won’t tell you,’ Evans said, shaking his head. ‘I won’t tell you unless you can guarantee me full immunity, officially and in writing. And give me a guarantee that I can just walk away from this – never go back there. Maybe even put me in the witness protection program.’

  Hunter looked at Reilly. They’d both noticed the trembling in Evans’s hands and realized that he was absolutely terrified. Probably no matter what they did to him, or threatened to do to him, he wouldn’t tell them much more.

  ‘OK, Doctor Evans,’ Hunter said. ‘We can’t give you any guarantees right now, but if you cooperate fully I’m sure we can work something out. Now,’ he added, ‘we have a more immediate problem. We need to trace one particular subject who may have been fed into the Roland Oliver program.’

  ‘When?’ Evans asked.

  ‘This week,’ Hunter said.

  ‘No problem. I’ve got copies of the last week’s admissions in the trunk of the car. I’ll go and get them,’ Evans said, and stood.

  Hunter reached up and pulled him firmly back into the seat. ‘My colleague will do that, doctor,’ he said. ‘Just give him the keys, please.’

  ‘It’s a grey folder labelled “Admissions”,’ Evans said, as he passed Reilly a leather key fob. ‘On the left hand side of the trunk, next to my medical bag.’

  ‘Why do you keep copies of the records, doctor?’ Hunter asked, as Reilly left.

  ‘For a situation exactly like this,’ Evans said. ‘Ever since I found out what Roland Oliver actually does, I’ve kept copies of the admission sheets. I thought that if the operation was ever going to be shut down, knowing exactly who had been through the system might help bring those responsible to justice.’

  Hunter smiled for the first time since he’d walked into the restaurant. ‘That was good thinking, doctor. Can you give us access to those records? Where are they?’

  ‘At my bank,’ Evans replied, ‘in a safe deposit box. Here, I’ll give you the details.’

  He handed Hunter a slip of paper bearing the name of the bank and the safety deposit box number and passed it over as Reilly walked back in. Evans took the folder, opened it and spread the sheets of paper across the table.

  Hunter and Reilly looked at them. The pages were ruled into five columns, containing the subject’s name, date of birth, address, social security number and Roland Oliver number. Several of the columns held blank spaces. Evans caught his glance.

  ‘The documentation for lots of the subjects is poor. You must understand that Roland Oliver harvests –’ Hunter grimaced at Evans’s use of that particular word ‘–subjects from a wide variety of sources and locations. Sometimes we have little more than a name, and sometimes not even that.’

  ‘Why do they record these details at all?’ Hunter asked.

  ‘In case there’s ever any need for a denial about one of them. We need to know if that person was ever processed by us.’

  Reilly had taken the list and had scanned through it, looking for the name Christy-Lee Kaufmann. He got to the last page, checked it and looked up at Hunter, shaking his head. A gust of relief swept over the Englishman. Wherever Christy-Lee was, at least she wasn’t on her way out to Groom Lake.

  Hunter took the pages from Reilly and flipped through them, just for confirmation. He turned the second to last page, then skipped back to the previous sheet. Something had caught his eye. The fourth name from the bottom was ‘Maria Slade.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Saturday

  North Las Vegas Air Terminal, Las Vegas, Nevada

  Kenneth Arnold walked slowly, head down and lost in thought, across the concrete, a light-weight suit jacket slung over his left arm and his briefcase in his right hand. It hadn’t, he rationalized, been quite as bad as he had feared. Not quite. At least he still had a job.

  The summons from the head office in Tucson, Arizona, had been abrupt, almost peremptory, but they usually were. The company operated on results. The bottom line on the spreadsheet was what counted, not the sensibilities of its employees. Not even the sensibilities of the head of the Nevada office. And sales figures were down – he couldn’t deny that. Certainly not with the chief accountant sitting on the other side of the long conference table with two fat ring-binders open in front of him.

  The problem, really, was the local market. Companies selling air-conditioners in Nevada weren’t exactly rare, and the ones sold by Arnold’s company were among the most expensive. That meant good profits and a hefty commission for every sale, but getting sales was difficult – why should Joe Q Average spend five hundred and fifty dollars for a basic conditioner if the store down the street could sell h
im one that looked pretty much the same for only three thirty-five?

  Arnold switched mental gears, and returned to a familiar theme. Maybe the company’s marketing slant really was wrong, despite what the head office gurus claimed. The company had been targeting the domestic and small business market for years – maybe it was time to start looking at the big corporations, the guys with the money to spend on the right product. That, Arnold reasoned, might be the best way forward. He’d work on a tactful presentation over the weekend and email a proposal to Tucson on Monday.

  He nodded to himself, quickened his pace, and then came to an abrupt halt. He looked around, puzzled, then pulled his airline ticket folder out of his jacket pocket and glanced at what he’d scribbled on the back. Bay 453.

  Arnold looked behind him, then back at the number painted at the front of the empty parking bay in front of him. 453.

  ‘Aw, shit,’ he muttered, opened his briefcase and pulled out a mobile phone.

  He didn’t even glance at the old Ford pickup sitting in bay 457, almost next to where he’d left his blue two-year-old Ford compact three days earlier.

  McCarran Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada

  Harris parked the Chevrolet in the ambulance bay next to the Roland Oliver building, turned off the engine and looked around. The parking lot had only five marked spaces, and there were no vehicles in any of them.

  ‘I guess Ketch was right,’ Morgan said, opening the passenger side door. ‘Hunter or Reilly must have talked him into leaving the base and meeting him somewhere outside.’

  ‘It’s Hunter,’ Harris said, as he closed the driver’s door.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s Hunter who’s pulling the strings,’ he said. ‘Not Reilly. The sheriff’s just along for the ride. The brains behind this operation belong to Hunter, and we’ve got to find him and shut him down real quick.’