Cthulhu Unbound 3
Page 23
Peel and Jordan’s means of communication was simple, an obscure website that both could log on to anywhere in the world to leave messages for the other. Mostly they were requests for information. Occasionally there were requests for assistance against Code-89 threats, tasks they were each individually assigned by their respective masters every second week, or more frequently as had been the case of late.
Peel had not been lying when he said he hadn’t heard from Jordan in six months. He been starting to think his friend was dead, killed in the line of duty. It was a relief and a worry that he was alive and well, and on the run from his own people.
“Okay, you’ve got me there, Ms. Isles.”
She gave him a smile. “Zoe.”
He smiled too. He did find her very attractive. “You got me there, Zoe. Yes, I have a means of contacting him, but I’m not about to disclose what that is.”
“Can you access that means anywhere in the world?”
Peel stared at her. “Maybe.”
“Well you’ll be ordered to do so, and soon. You and I are booked on an overnight CIA chartered flight to Lima—and before you argue it’s already been cleared with your superiors.”
It had been indicated as much just minutes before this meeting that Peel was to cooperate with Isles to the fullest extent of the definition.
“Peru?”
“Yes. Jordan was caught on security tape detonating a vast quantity of high explosives inside a container ship in Callao three days ago. With any luck he’s still there, despite us being three days behind his last known whereabouts, and you’ll lead us straight to him.”
Peel chewed on his lips, licked his teeth. He didn’t want to ask, but knew he had to, just so everything was clear between him and Isles. “Is this a kill or capture mission?”
Isles closed Jordan’s file, scooped it into her arms. Her expression was cold and calculating, and yet all Peel wanted to do was kiss her.
“What do you think?”
3. Lima
Jordan hated breaking tradecraft. He was alive today only because he always did everything by the book. He never stayed in any one locale for more than a few days even when he was on vacation. He never went anywhere where there was a chance old friends might recognize him. He wiped away his fingerprints in every place he stayed. He used public internet cafes for research and disposable cellular phones for communication. He’d built a career on being able to contact other people, never on anyone ever being able to contact him. He was so good at being invisible that the CIA loved him, as did MI6, ASIS, FSB, GRU and a half dozen other intelligence agencies who had him listed as a reliable asset.
So when Jordan decided to telephone his daughter, he knew he was taking a terrible risk.
It was well after sunset, and Jordan sat on a pew towards the back of a darkly lit Catholic Church near central Lima. He watched the mostly older Peruvian men and woman pray to Christ and the obscenely gold-plated iconography and altars that dominated the stone walled interior. The church was crowded for the news of the day had not been good. The entire populations of three Pacific Islands separated by many thousands of miles had all vanished overnight. Satellite imagery the next day had identified communities devastated by unprecedented flooding, and yet there was no evidence of tidal waves originating anywhere on planet Earth which would have caused such destruction.
Jordan took the cellular phone he had bought only minutes before from a convenience store, and dialed.
“Hello, Grand River Movie Rentals,” came the distant voice on the other end. “Madison speaking.”
Jordan caught his breath. This was his daughter’s voice. Madison had just spoken to him for the first time.
“Hello?” she said again. “Hello?”
Realizing that he hadn’t spoken, he did so quickly. “Hi, Madison right?”
“Yes, that’s right. Can I help you?”
“Hi, yes, I’m after a DVD.”
She laughed lightly, not at him, but with him, and he liked that. “Well, that’s what we’re here for Mister, DVDs, we have them all. You after anything in particular?”
Jordan felt awkward, which was an unusual feeling for him, but this was his daughter he was talking to after all. He couldn’t tell her over the telephone who he was, not like this. But he didn’t want to stop talking to her either.
“Actually, there is this movie I’m looking for, I can’t remember the title. It’s about a father,” he cringed, knowing what he was about to say, “who was trying to reconcile with his daughter. Do you know it?”
Madison ‘umed’ for a moment. While she did, Jordan tried to imagine what she looked like. Probably dressed in a cheap shapeless uniform, and yet she would be sophisticated and attractive. The only photograph he’d found of her on the Internet was from her high school website from three years ago. It wasn’t a great photograph but she was the prettiest girl in the world.
“We have Dan in Real Life, Steve Carrell? Is that what you are thinking of?”
“Don’t know it.” Jordan never watched movies. He never had the time. Never found them realistic. “Is it any good?”
“It’s great. It’s one of my favorites actually. Steve Carrell plays a dad whose trying to cope bringing up three daughters after their mum dies, and then he meets Juliet Binochett, and they fall in love, and then…” she was getting carried away with the romance of the story. “Is that the film you are thinking of?” she said in a more business-like tone.
“I think so,” All Jordan heard was that Dan in Real Life was one of Madison’s favorites.
“I can hold it for you.”
“Um, that would be great. No, wait, it won’t be necessary. I’ll pop in later, to pick it up.” He checked his watch. He’d been on the telephone for at least thirty seconds, long enough to make a trace.
“Sure, well let me know, if you come in, and I’ll find it for you.”
“Thanks.”
Jordan disconnected quickly. He couldn’t believe how hard he was breathing, how red his face must be. Still, he’d just survived his first conversation with his estranged daughter.
Pity he had no intention whatsoever of meeting her. With the number of contracts out on him, and the bizarre supernatural elements always invading his life, he wasn’t going to bring his hell into her world. She deserved better than that.
Jordan turned off the phone, took out the SIM card and crushed it, wiped down the cellular and left it in the donation box, then vanished into the night.
* * *
It wasn’t just a couple of seats on a chartered airplane, Isles had secured her own CIA Learjet, which immediately told Peel that she was very senior and very well connected within the Company. He hadn’t had time to check her credentials on the NSA file servers before they had left Washington DC, but a quick discussion with his boss told him that she worked on some very big projects in the Code-89 arena including some which Peel had been involved with: Grey Nebula, Infinite Eye and Resolution Zero. All three were career making or breaking covert operations that dealt directly with alien intrusion. They’d obviously made hers.
Peel stared out the window for a long time, but because it was night there was nothing to see. When boredom overcame his self-reflective mood he looked instead at the team he would be working with over the coming weeks. They were a dozen underlings, a mixture of security types (plain clothed muscles with bulging guns under their jackets), and analysts (nerdy computer loving history experts who could tell Peel anything and everything he would ever need to know about South America). Any assassins on the team would be traveling separately.
Peel couldn’t help noticing that more than half of Isles’ team members were women, which went well against the grain of their profession. He found himself admiring Isles’ gusto to have risen so high so young, and yet making her own mark on the Company.
When the Learjet was airborne Peel had asked for and received a laptop, which he used to source the Internet and the few files on Jordan that Isles would grant h
im access to. There was a wordy file on Peel and Jordan and their time in Venezuela, which he expected, but it was scant on details on what really had happened in the Amazon jungle and the true capabilities of his new stomach.
There were plenty of files on Jordan himself, but most of the interesting information—where he was born, his education, his family, clubs and societies he joined, political ideologies, old lovers, even his real name—was nowhere to be found. Jordan had worked hard to keep his past secret, which would make it even more complicated for Isles to find him.
Several of Jordan’s files had a delta-like green triangle stamped on them, and no indication as to what it meant. He’d seen this symbol many times in his career, including on his own files. One day, he promised himself, he would investigate further to its meaning.
Peel glanced over these files only briefly. He already knew most of what he was reading. It was Jordan’s recent activities since Iraq that interested him.
Something Jordan had seen or done in Baghdad had deeply affected him. One moment he was working a simple ‘real world’ case against fanatical insurgents, the next he was a global crusader assassinating people he had never met and destroying facilities that he had never seen. Four men had been shot dead with a silenced weapon on a golf course outside Berlin. A pharmaceutical factory had been destroyed with C-4 explosives in Guangzhou. Another man had been thrown off a cliff into the North Sea in Scotland, where hypothermia had killed him.
Four days ago Jordan had been spotted in Peru when he snuck onto a container ship in port in Callao. Peru was where he made his first mistake, by using a CIA issued passport to enter the country rather than one secured through criminal means that his employers could not trace. Jordan had also allowed himself to be identified by security cameras at the port. Peel studied the photograph again. There was no mistake. It was Jordan staring right into the lens.
Jordan however was a professional; he never made simple tradecraft mistakes. And the name on the passport, Carson Colgate, was the same name on the passport Peel had glimpsed Jordan use when they were flying out of Caracas to Miami after their first covert operation together. It seemed likely that glimpse had been orchestrated. Jordan had to be sending Peel a message.
Peel wished he could log on to their shared secure website to see if Jordan had posted a less cryptic message. It might explain what was really going on here. But he couldn’t risk looking while he was logged onto a CIA laptop. Isles would be watching every keystroke he made from her own machine, waiting for him to slip.
He checked the news sites, CNN, BBC, ABC, SBS and a dozen others. They were all running the same story. The populations of five Pacific Islands have been completely wiped out by freak, localized tidal wave events. Now container ships were also disappearing, and wild storms were raging across the Pacific Ocean. Peel couldn’t help feel these events were all connected.
When he looked up Isles was sitting opposite him, watching him.
“You didn’t notice me here?” She smiled. “Loosing your edge Harrison?”
He grimaced.
“You should get some shut-eye. We land in a few hours and you haven’t slept since we left.”
“You know, Zoe, there is a glaring omission in these files you gave me.”
“Of course there are; you’re not CIA. You’re not even an American citizen. Most files pertaining to this case will be denied to you, especially those with sensitive operational material.” Her smile grew large, as if to challenge Peel to question her authority.
“That’s not what I mean,” Peel rubbed his hand across the millimeter thick hair on his scalp realizing that he needed to shave his head again. “A petrochemical factory in Guangzhou, China; several men killed in Berlin and Scotland; and the container ship in Callao. They all have a common connection that you’ve failed to mention in any of your reports, anywhere. In fact, I’d even say you’ve gone to some effort to hide that connection from me.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Go on?”
“Centaurus Holdings Limited.”
She held Peel’s stare for a very long time. “Centaurus, you mean the corporation Centaurus?”
“Centaurus, Zoe, is a global corporation with a multi-billion dollar portfolio in petroleum, pharmaceuticals, construction, the production of nuclear and conventional power plants, and defense. Surely you are aware of them? They are one of the Pentagon’s top defense contractors.”
She tucked a strand of her strawberry hair behind an ear. “So explain to me, what is the connection to Jordan?”
“I try to keep up to date with intelligence that crosses my desk, Zoe, even the boring reports. Firstly, the petrochemical factory that Jordan destroyed manufactures products for CHL, although through several dummy companies so the connection isn’t at first obvious. Secondly one of the executives that Jordan shot on the golf course was a silent board member, and I suspect the others might be too. The man in Scotland, he works for a security company that specializes in protecting corporate operations in Africa and the Middle East, and they list amongst their clients Centaurus. The container ship in Callao I don’t know about, but I suspect if we dig deep enough there is a Centaurus connection.”
“That’s very interesting.” Zoe forced a smile this time as she stepped from her chair, grabbed Peel by the arm and led him to the jet’s private conference room. With the door closed behind them said through gritted teeth, “How the hell did get access to the Centaurus files?”
Peel grinned. “I didn’t. I just read between the lines of the reports you gave me. You telling me none of your people know about the Centaurus angle?”
She looked away, fixed her hair. “The senior members of the team do, and they’ve been warned to say nothing. The Centaurus connection remains a ‘need to know’ basis.” She gripped Peel’s shirt tightly. “You discuss this with no one except me, you understand?”
Peel unlatched her tense fingers, realizing that this was the first time he had touched her, and that her skin was soft and smooth. She was so close her breath was on his cheek. He wanted their physical closeness to last longer than a moment. “So you’ve also concluded Jordan is trying to infiltrate Centaurus.”
“No Harrison, it’s far worse than that, he’s trying to take them down. We’re trying to take him out before he does any more damage.”
“We’re fighting wars for corporations now?”
She bared her teeth. “This reflects badly on the CIA; he’s our man and he’s gone rouge. The US Government has hundreds of billions in national defense projects invested with Centaurus Holdings. It’s of national interest that Jordan doesn’t succeed in crashing their stock price. If he does he will put our military stratagems five years behind the Chinese. You want the Chinese to rule the world, Harrison?”
He said nothing, knowing that any response he gave would trap him.
“This information is not to get out, Peel. You understand me?”
Peel took a moment to study the woman who was as good as pressed up against him. Despite his infatuation, something about her warned him away, but he couldn’t quite place his finger on what that was. Yes, they were flirting, but was this real emotion they were sharing, or just the application of tradecraft techniques to get from the other what they each wanted?
He finally asked, “Are Centaurus involved in any Code-89 projects?”
“What do you think? Yes, one big project, okay.”
“Well then, you can have this one for free: Jordan’s trying to shut it down. If he thinks Centaurus are a risk to national security, or whatever you want to call it, he’ll be working against them, particularly when he thinks no one in authority is doing anything about it. What’s the project by the way? Something big in the Pacific?” he asked remembering the news articles he had just read.
“How the hell did you know that?” She shook her head. “Never mind. Jordan has to be terminated before he unleashes something he shouldn’t, an alien biological weapon to be precise, that could kill billions.”
“What kind of weapon, and where is it?”
“You don’t need to know that. What I need to know is that you’re committed, Harrison. If I give you the order to kill Jordan, I need to know you won’t hesitate?”
She was staring him in the eye, refusing to look away. She was so close their noses, more importantly their lips, were almost touching.
“Harrison?”
He took a deep breath and said: “You can count on me.” He wondered if he was as good a lair as she was, and if she had noticed.
As he left the conference room she slammed the door behind her for privacy. He noticed her dialing rapidly on her cellular phone.
Peel covertly watched her punch in the numbers and memorized them. He had a suspicion on the nature of that call.
* * *
Lima was cold and grey, despite their proximity to the equator. The mist seeping off the Pacific was like a fog, leaching moisture from the air as it had done for millions of years, the creator of the desert that surrounded the city of eight million inhabitants.
Despite the mist, Peel stared out at across the wealthy suburb of Miraflores from the third story balcony of his hotel. He’d wanted to go for a walk just to clear his head, but Isles’ security detail watched him like he was their target of interest. When it got dark he telephoned room service, ordered a beer with his meal and ate it in front of the television. He watched a soccer match between Argentina and Brazil to refresh his Spanish. When he unfolded his napkin he found a postcard waiting for him.
It was postmarked from Cancun. The picture was of a tropical beach scene with a palm and white sands. Dated one week ago, it simple said: Hi Jack, Having the time of our lives, love Jenny.