The Eternity Project

by Dean Crawford

  The bullet ricocheted and crashed through one of the huge stained-glass windows, a shower of multi-colored glass fragments tumbling from the heights to sprinkle the stone floor of the cathedral in shards of glinting light as the entire window shattered and collapsed inward. Whorls of rain poured down into the cathedral from the darkness outside, glowing in the light of the candles.

  Wilson hurled Ethan off of him with impressive strength despite his injury, then rolled away and brought his pistol to bear as Ethan scrambled to his feet and swung a boot at the weapon. The impact against his wrist caused Wilson to cry out in pain as the pistol was whipped from his grasp and skittered away across the flags between the pews.

  Wilson leaped cat-like to his feet as Ethan fired a left jab at his eyes, a practiced hand scything Ethan’s blow to one side as Wilson drove his left elbow in behind Ethan’s ear. Ethan twisted aside, the blow glancing off his skull as he slammed his right knee up into the agent’s belly.

  Wilson growled as he folded over but he did not fall, folding his arms around Ethan’s head and twisting violently. Ethan felt bright pain pulse through his neck and his body spin uncontrollably as he was flipped over and crashed down onto the flags on his back.

  He glimpsed Wilson’s face twisted with malice as the agent lifted a boot and brought it down toward Ethan’s face.

  Ethan swung his right arm across and the boot slammed instead into his shoulder as Wilson staggered off balance. Ethan lurched upright and drove a bunched fist into Wilson’s groin with as much force as he could muster.

  Wilson gagged and staggered backward as Ethan got back onto his feet, his shoulder throbbing with pain and his lungs heaving for air. Wilson glared back at him, coming forward again with his fists raised.

  ‘That’s far enough,’ Lopez snarled.

  Ethan turned to see her holding Wilson’s pistol. He was about to smile when he heard a squeal of pain and turned to see Donovan scramble to his feet, blood caking his face as he aimed his pistol at Tom Ross and Joanna. Karina Thorne was on her back on the flags, blinking as though coming awake from a blow and powerless to intervene.

  Joanna hurled herself at Tom Ross and collided with him as Donovan fired.

  The gunshot thumped into Tom as he staggered off the pew and dropped to his knees clutching his belly. Joanna landed alongside him and stared in dismay as Tom rolled over and sprawled across the stone flags.

  ‘No!’ Karina scrambled across the flags past Donovan and grabbed Tom’s shoulders as tears spilled from her eyes to splash across the fallen man’s cheeks.

  Ethan saw the kid stare up at Karina, fear poisoning his expression, and then his eyes finally closed and his body fell still.

  For a moment, the cathedral was silent.

  Donovan lowered his pistol, a grim smile on his face. ‘It’s done. He’s not getting up from that.’

  Ethan stared down at Tom Ross’s body and then across at Lopez. Both of them looked at Jarvis, who was standing amidst the pews nearby.

  Wilson stood glaring at Lopez.

  Donovan turned and aimed at Lopez. ‘Lose the piece, Chiquita.’

  Lopez glared at Donovan with unconcealed hatred, but she slowly lowered the weapon. At Donovan’s gesture, she slid the pistol across the flags to Wilson, who lithely scooped it up and aimed it at Ethan.

  ‘All’s well that ends well,’ he uttered with a grim smile, and then looked at Joanna Defoe. ‘With me, now, or I’ll perforate your friends here.’

  Joanna Defoe stood back from Tom’s body and turned to face Wilson.

  ‘If I come with you, will you guarantee everybody else’s safety?’

  ‘Don’t do it,’ Ethan said to her.

  Wilson’s smile vanished. ‘You have my word,’ he replied.

  Joanna stepped out into the aisle, the veils of rain falling from the shattered window behind her and glittering in the candlelight like a silent diamond waterfall. As Ethan watched, and Joanna took a step away from Tom’s body, so the falling rain suddenly rippled as though a wind had gusted through it.

  Ethan felt his throat constrict as the falling rain suddenly folded in upon itself and began rising up instead of falling down.

  57

  Ethan took an involuntary step back as Karina Thorne jumped to her feet like a startled cat and retreated from Tom Ross’s body. The falling rain swirled and folded upon itself as though rising on invisible thermals, spiraling and coiling like flocks of tiny glistening birds wheeling in tight formation.

  ‘I thought you said the power was off !’ Lopez yelled at the monsignor.

  ‘It is!’ he shouted back in horror, his eyes transfixed by the swirling apparition before them.

  Ethan saw Wilson aim his pistol at the writhing mass of water vapor as it swelled above them. From the roiling core spread what looked like two vast wings, as though the wraith were some kind of avenging angel. The millions of droplets of water sparkled in the candlelight above them like a veil of diamonds caught in a sunbeam as Ethan felt the air turn bitterly cold, the spiraling raindrops turning to frosty crystals, until the wraith’s hellish form was, for a few moments, visible as it loomed over them all.

  With a dawning realization, he looked at Tom Ross’s body and saw the blood staining his shirt. He had been hit low in the belly, a certainly fatal wound without treatment. But in the candlelight, Ethan saw the glistening fluid gently changing shape, the reflections of the light subtly altering in a slow rhythm as Tom breathed.

  A rippling shower of tiny blue sparks of light leaped to and fro across his body, as though he were enveloped by a static charge. Karina Thorne was staring not at the wraith rising up from his body but at the bizarre sparks.

  ‘Get away from him, Karina!’ Lopez warned her.

  Wilson’s aim dropped as he saw the sparks leaping across Tom’s body, and Ethan hurled himself at the agent before he could fire. Ethan crashed into him and they collided against the rock-hard pews, the pistol trapped between them.

  Lopez leaped over Tom Ross’s body and swung a hard right into Donovan’s jaw, which sent him reeling backwards down the aisle. The officer tripped over Ethan’s boots and sprawled onto the flags as Ethan struggled to disarm Wilson.

  The agent’s near-suicidal determination was no longer enough to sustain his ageing muscles and blood loss from his wound, and Ethan’s relative youth began to turn the tide in his favour. Wilson’s wrists gave in before his spirit did, and Ethan twisted the pistol from his grasp just in time for Donovan’s fist to crack across his temple.

  Ethan spun away, his vision starring violently as he crashed down onto the flags. He blinked as his vision returned and saw Donovan aiming the pistol over his head at Tom Ross. Karina tried to throw herself in front of Tom, but Ethan could already see that she wouldn’t make it.

  Donovan looked up at the swirling mass of writhing rain hovering over Tom’s body. It remained in place and did not move, as though watching the officer. Donovan sneered at it.

  ‘Night-night!’ he snapped, and squeezed the trigger.

  Ethan flicked his boot up and connected with the pistol just as the shot rang out across the cathedral. The weapon jerked upwards, the shot flying high, and in an instant the seething mass of energy raced toward Ethan and Donovan.

  Donovan fired at the wraith in desperation just as it plowed into him and sent him spinning through the air to crash into the pews nearby. Ethan rolled away and saw Donovan’s pistol clatter onto the flags. He leaped up and dashed toward the weapon, as Wilson aimed at Joanna.

  Joanna dove behind the pews as Wilson fired three shots that clattered off the altar’s ornate marble surface, spraying chips and clouds of marble dust into the air.

  Ethan grabbed Donovan’s pistol and aimed at Wilson, who dashed across the cathedral and ducked behind one of the huge fluted columns. Ethan aimed at the spot where he had vanished, but turned as a shriek of agony echoed out across the cathedral.

  Ethan turned to see Donovan’s body being dragged across the stone flags at
high speed, his face contorted in pain. His body hit the altar hard and was flipped up on end before he crashed down onto his back, his limbs hanging loose over the edges.

  ‘Help me!’

  Ethan scrambled to his feet, staying low enough behind the pews to avoid being shot by Wilson, and ran toward Tom’s body. He was halfway there when he heard a loud cracking sound.

  He looked up, and saw the huge golden crucifix suspended above the altar shudder as its guide-lines were snapped. The immense object plummeted downward, and Ethan heard a fearsome scream just before the object plunged down through Donovan’s chest and embedded itself into the marble altar with a deafening crash.

  The sound echoed across the cathedral like a clap of thunder, rolling away into the distance as Ethan stared at the gruesome corpse now lying on the altar, Donovan’s face staring lifelessly at them, his tongue hanging limp from his slack jaw.

  The veils of frost and rain swirled upward again, and, as Ethan watched, so he saw the terrible shape converge in the center once more above Tom Ross’s body. It surged upward, and then raced down toward Doug Jarvis.

  Ethan dashed the last few paces across to Tom’s body and dropped down as he punched the comatose officer in his wound.

  The thump cracked across the cathedral and Tom Ross jerked awake and sucked in a huge lungful of air as pain convulsed across his body. Ethan saw the writhing cloud of rain dissipate and fall gently down around where Jarvis crouched with his hands over his head. Ethan reached down and pushed against Tom’s wound, stemming the blood spilling onto the stone flags.

  Karina Thorne dropped onto her knees alongside Tom and grabbed his hand, already slick with blood from his wound.

  ‘It’s okay, Tom, stay with me, you’re going to be fine.’

  Lopez and Joanna hurried to Ethan’s side.

  ‘Wilson’s disappeared,’ Lopez said, gesturing over her shoulder. ‘I guess he got spooked.’

  Ethan nodded and looked down at Tom Ross.

  His skin was even paler now, his eyes sunken into their orbits and his breathing irregular. A thin sheen of sickly sweat glistened on his forehead.

  ‘Ten minutes and he’ll go into toxic shock,’ Ethan guessed. ‘The bullets perforated his stomach and the contents are leaking into his bloodstream.’

  Karina looked up at Monsignor Thomas, who was cowering behind the knave. ‘Call 911, right now!’

  The monsignor nodded and dashed away. Karina looked back down at Tom. ‘Stay with me, Tom, you’re going to be fine, okay? Just hang on.’

  Tom looked up at her, and then his head turned to see Donovan’s lifeless corpse dangling from the altar. He swallowed thickly and then looked back at Karina. Slowly, he reached down with his free hand and began pushing Ethan’s hand away from the wound.

  Ethan looked into his eyes. He saw no evidence of delirium. Despite the terrible fatigue clouding Tom’s expression, he saw somewhere deep inside a resolution he had seen before only rarely, on the battlefield when the injured knew that they were lost.

  ‘No,’ Karina whispered, clutching Tom’s hand tighter. ‘Just hang on a little longer.’

  Tom looked at her and breathed a reply that sounded as though he bore the weight of the world upon his shoulders. ‘I don’t want to.’

  Tom pushed Ethan’s hand away again, and, this time, Ethan released the wound. Fresh blood spilled onto the flags and he heard Tom’s breathing begin to falter.

  Lopez joined him and watched in silence as Ethan stood up and backed away from Tom’s body. Lopez leaned in close, her voice a whisper.

  ‘What if he dies and that thing comes back, permanently?’

  Ethan shook his head. ‘I don’t think it works like that.’

  Tom’s eyes began to droop, and, as Karina held his bloodied hands, so his chest gently sank as his final breaths escaped wearily into the cathedral’s cold air.

  Then, slowly, Tom’s eyes opened again and he looked up above where he lay. For a brief moment, a little life returned into them, and Ethan saw the faintest ghost of a smile curl from one corner of his lips.

  Karina held Tom’s hands as his eyes closed and he exhaled a long, slow sigh. His hand fell from Karina’s grasp and slid gently onto his stomach, and Ethan knew that he was gone.

  Karina remained kneeling alongside his body for several minutes in the silence of the cathedral, until wailing sirens brought the outside world noisily back into her life.

  Ethan turned to Lopez. ‘Where’s Joanna?’

  Lopez looked up and around the cathedral and shook her head. ‘She was right here. Where’s Jarvis, for that matter?’

  Ethan turned to where Jarvis had last been, but there was nobody there.

  58

  DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS CENTER, JOINT BASE ANACOSTIA-BOLLING, WASHINGTON, DC

  Two days later

  ‘I don’t like this at all.’

  Nicola Lopez paced up and down in the small briefing room, radiating tension. Ethan sat in a chair, with his hands in his lap, watching her walk up and down.

  ‘How can you just sit there like that?’ she demanded.

  ‘Standard procedure in the military,’ Ethan replied. ‘Hurry up and wait.’

  Lopez scoffed and continued her pacing. ‘They’re conspiring,’ she decided. ‘They’ve asked us to come over here so they can figure out a way of getting us into some goddamned Supermax prison or something.’

  ‘It would have been easier to just arrest us on sight,’ Ethan pointed out, ‘and spirit us away than let us travel all the way up here.’

  ‘Jarvis is up to something,’ Lopez said, changing tack. ‘He betrayed you, you know that? He sold out on Joanna.’

  Ethan did not reply. Fact was, he knew damned well that the only way Wilson could have found them was if Jarvis had revealed her location. Ethan felt surprisingly unperturbed by what Jarvis had done. The old man had been given an impossible choice, and had done his very best to protect as many people as he could. The fact that Joanna was alive seemed to have finally divested Ethan of the bitterness that had festered inside of him for so many years. It had always been the not knowing that had poisoned his life, had erased so many weeks and months and years in a paroxysm of hate and regret. Now, knowing had extinguished those emotions and others, too.

  ‘He betrayed us,’ Lopez repeated, bending at the waist and getting in Ethan’s face. ‘I said he would, and he has.’

  Ethan looked up at her. ‘He betrayed Joanna, not us.’

  ‘There’s a difference?’ Lopez snapped.

  ‘Joanna is Joanna,’ Ethan replied, ‘and she’ll be fine now. We’re us, and we’ll be fine, too.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Lopez uttered. ‘You think they’re just going to let us walk, after all that’s happened.’

  Ethan didn’t doubt it, although he didn’t bother elaborating to Lopez. She had made up her mind that they were doomed to incarceration and solitary confinement in some CIA black prison in Eastern Europe, or similar, and wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise by his hunches. But the fact was that MK-ULTRA now had nothing remaining to hide, except its chief assassin, Mr. Wilson. While Ethan seriously doubted that the CIA would willingly hand over their loyal killer after so many years of service, it seemed unlikely that he would be able to continue working.

  A door opened nearby and Jarvis stepped out, closing it behind him and walking toward Ethan and Lopez. Ethan stood up as Lopez got straight into Jarvis’s face.

  ‘Spill it!’ she snapped.

  Jarvis looked at her without concern, and smiled.

  ‘The Joint Chiefs of Staff have all concurred that your work here was of the highest order and that the witch-hunt orchestrated by the CIA was severely misguided. All operations against you have been officially terminated.’

  Lopez took a pace closer to him. ‘What about that asshole, Wilson?’

  Jarvis glanced at Ethan. ‘That particular asshole is now retired, after I accidentally put a photograph of him into the hands of police departments in Washin
gton, DC, New York City, Ohio, Wisconsin and Atlanta.’ Jarvis rolled his eyes. ‘Butter fingers.’

  ‘What photo?’ Lopez pressed, not willing to back down yet.

  ‘Taken by Ethan’s sister six months ago, in DC,’ Jarvis explained, ‘when she was being followed by members of the CIA while working at the Government Accountability Office. I also added some shots taken by an associate of mine, down the barrel of a sniper rifle. Needless to say, I didn’t mention that to the police.’

  Ethan began to feel the tension in his shoulders slip away. ‘Non-disclosure agreements all round?’

  Jarvis nodded. ‘Witnesses to the events in the cathedral have all signed their respective documents, with one exception.’

  ‘Joanna,’ Ethan guessed. ‘She took off.’

  ‘As did you,’ Lopez pointed at Jarvis. ‘Mighty surprised you didn’t see her.’

  ‘She’s quick as a cat,’ Jarvis replied. ‘If I knew where she had gone, I would have tracked her down by now.’

  ‘She’s good at lying low,’ Ethan said. ‘But she hasn’t made contact with us either. What’s the JCOS’s decision on her?’

  Jarvis shrugged. ‘If she’s willing to testify, behind closed senate doors, obviously, then those responsible for her imprisonment and treatment can be brought to trial.’

  ‘But then that would expose the CIA’s director to homicide and treason charges,’ Lopez uttered. ‘Like that’s going to happen.’

  Jarvis nodded apologetically toward Ethan. ‘If they agree to put to trial former CIA figures, then it defeats the whole purpose of protecting the CIA’s presence and operations. It can’t end well.’

  Ethan nodded, guessing the rest.

  ‘So, as long as she stays quiet, she’ll be likewise left alone. That’s the deal.’

  ‘That’s about it.’ Jarvis nodded.

  ‘And what about us?’ Lopez demanded.