The Lupin Project

by Allan Leverone

  He closed his eyes and brought up the mental image, the Jeep and the license plate appearing with crystal clarity in his mind. Then he booted up his desktop computer and logged on to the Internet.

  Every keystroke made on his work computer was recorded and stored somewhere in the bowels of Tamerlane, and probably also archived in some CIA electronic database as well, he knew that, making the Internet search he was about to undertake a risky proposition. Should Toler become suspicious about why Jason was still at work and decide to do a little snooping, Jason might well end up with a couple of United States Army-issued 9mm slugs in his skull.

  Under the circumstances, though, it was a risk Jason was willing to take.

  The search engine’s graphics popped onto his computer monitor, and Jason began typing his request into the search box. He wasn’t sure exactly what terms to enter, but he figured he would be able to zero in on the correct ones pretty quickly.

  He tried “Track license plate” and realized immediately upon seeing the results that he hadn’t been specific enough. He tried again, this time entering “Track New Hampshire license plate.”

  A series of web addresses were returned in a fraction of a second. Jason scrolled through the first page of results, clicking on several of the links. All of the sites seemed remarkably similar, each promising detailed information about the owner of any vehicle registered in the state, all based on entry of the vehicle’s license plate number.

  While most of the sites identified themselves in some fashion as “free,” Jason discovered the site operators must have a different definition of the term than was commonly understood. When he tried entering the Jeep’s license plate details, without exception he found that the sites required payment before yielding any results.

  Inputting a credit card number would be even more dangerous for Jason than executing the search in the first place, for obvious reasons.

  He didn’t care. He selected a site and entered the information, then pulled out his wallet and removed his MasterCard.

  Entered the account number and expiration date and waited.

  Seconds later his monitor filled with information: the Jeep owner’s name, his home address, the length of time he had owned the vehicle and how much he still owed on the car loan.

  Despite his overwhelming depression and fear, Jason Greeley smiled. It really was incredible how much data was readily available online to anyone willing to do a little digging. This was exactly what he needed—more than he needed, really—and his hastily devised plan began coming together.

  Now came the hard part: compiling a digital dossier of evidence without getting caught by Colonel Toler. Because Jason had crossed a line, and were Toler to even suspect Jason’s intentions now, he knew he would earn himself an immediate execution, followed by an anonymous burial in whatever shallow hole last night’s “cleanup crew” had deposited the unfortunate teenage victim of the Lupin Project.

  And while he couldn’t deny that the prospect of leaving this earth and its pain behind forever held a certain appeal—without his research and his scientific reputation, he had nothing to live for, anyway—he was determined to outlive Frank Toler, at least long enough to rectify his contribution to this Greek tragedy.

  After that, he really didn’t give a damn what happened to him.

  27

  Jason worked quickly, his only goal to fill hisexposéwith as much damning evidence as possible in what little time he had available. He was almost positive Colonel Toler was still in the building, which meant one of two things: either the colonel was hard at work setting up another attempt on the Jeep driver’s life—an attempt to which Jason would undoubtedly be forced to participate—or Toler suspected Jason might be up to something.

  The first possibility was frightening.

  The second was terrifying.

  Digital copies of virtually all the research notes and experiment summaries had been stored on Jason’s computer during his tenure at Tamerlane, so a good portion of the information he needed was easily transferrable.

  But he also wanted to include representative video evidence of the Lupin Project’s progression. Hundreds of hours of video catalogued the project, and the challenge was to attach enough evidence that the animals’ deterioration would be plain even to anyone who was not a scientist. The task was time-consuming and complicated.

  But by far the most important evidence in the file would be the written document detailing in his own words what Jason had seen last night on that lonely logging trail deep in the forest, and the step-by-step indictment of Colonel Frank Toler’s actions of last night and today.

  He typed hurriedly but comprehensively, trying to be as specific as possible: Toler’s insistence in covering up the killing of the boy. His cell phone call from the middle of the forest to some unknown entity requesting a “cleanup crew,” a term Jason had never heard before. His attempt in the Humvee this afternoon to force the Jeep off the road in the middle of a snowstorm, as well as his subsequent effort to get close enough to the Jeep’s driver to shoot him.

  Jason realized he was sweating heavily as he began to suspect he was running out of time. He compiled the project notes and video and finished typing his statement. Then he proofread it quickly and closed the document. He added it to the zip file he had created and then saved the entire thing to his desktop.

  Next, he studied the information he had obtained about the owner of the Jeep. The vehicle was registered to a college student, a twenty-two year old man named Robert Senna. The license plate search had revealed that Senna’s home address was New Quebec, New Hampshire, but that he was currently attending college out of state at the University of Maine at Orono, roughly three hours away.

  With minimal additional research, Jason had learned that Robert Senna was one of two children of Clayton and Marie Senna, the other being an eighteen-year-old student at New Quebec High School named Edward.

  It didn’t take a genius—which Jason was—to figure out that Robert Senna wasn’t just home for a weekend visit. He had returned to New Quebec on a non-holiday late-November weekend because his brother was the one who had disappeared without a trace. Robert Senna was doing what anyone in his situation would do—he was trying to determine what had happened to his little brother.

  The location of Toler’s attack on Robert Senna gave Jason two more pieces of information: that the colonel had been having Senna followed, possibly by the same “cleanup crew” he had utilized last night, and that the Jeep this afternoon contained not just Robert Senna but the mystery witness who had managed to escape death last night.

  That would explain Colonel Toler’s nearly apoplectic rage upon failing to eliminate the occupants of the vehicle: the witness had escaped Toler’s clutches a second time in less than twenty-four hours.

  The most important bit of information Jason gleaned from the license plate search, though, was also the simplest: Robert Senna’s name and address. Armed with that knowledge, getting Jason’s proof of Toler’s malfeasance into Senna’s hands should prove relatively simple.

  He hoped.

  His initial instinct had been to search out a newspaper or television reporter, but doing so would require an investment of time that Jason knew he did not have. As a scientist, cloistered in his lab and separated from the outside influences of society, Jason rarely watched television and almost never read the newspaper, so he hadn’t the slightest inkling of how or where to begin searching for a reputable reporter.

  And even if he found one, he would then have to convince that man or woman to take his story seriously. If there weren’t time to find a reporter, there certainly wouldn’t be time to outline all the evidence.

  But there was one person he knew would have no trouble believing him: Robert Senna. Not only that, the young man who had just lost his only brother would be well motivated to find the right news outlet and then dog that outlet until the truth came out and was circulated widely enough to shut down the Lupin Project once and for all.r />
  And also to ensure Colonel Frank Toler faced some sort of accounting.

  This would mean, obviously, that Jason would face the consequences of his actions as well, not all of which had been entirely honorable. But he didn’t care. His life, career and reputation were ruined either way; it was well past time to come clean.

  He sighed heavily, nerves thrumming. Thought about the Internet, and what little he knew about online social media. His world was about as far removed from that of college and high school students as it was possible to be, and his interest in anything social-media-related was virtually nonexistent. His Internet use was mostly limited to researching scholarly articles and using email to communicate with other scientists in his field.

  Still, even a sixty-six year old man in his position had heard of the major social media sites like Instagram and Twitter and Snapchat.

  And Facebook.

  As far as he knew, Facebook was still the giant, the eight hundred pound gorilla of the social media world. If Jason were to have any chance of communicating directly with Robert Senna, it would most likely be via Facebook.

  He sat up in his chair and hunched over his computer keyboard. He opened another window on his desktop and navigated to the Facebook site. Found the search bar and typed in “Robert Senna New Quebec New Hampshire.”

  Bingo. There he was. It had to be the right kid. How many Robert Sennas could there be in New Quebec, especially ones who were the correct age and who attended the University of Maine at Orono?

  Even as rushed as Jason felt, as exhausted, as certain as he was that Frank Toler would march into his office at any moment and demand to know what he was working on, even with all of that weighing on him, Jason took a moment to examine Robert Senna’s page. He was a good-looking kid, tall and handsome in an outdoorsy kind of way, the exact opposite of how Jason had looked at the same age.

  He shook his head at the trauma this young man must be experiencing, first finding out his brother had disappeared without a trace and then nearly being killed twice in a span of roughly ninety seconds this afternoon. He resumed his examination of the page, knowing there must be a way to communicate on this Facebook site. After a moment, during which his frustration level skyrocketed, Jason found what he was looking for: the messaging application.

  But he couldn’t use it. Messaging was limited to Facebook members and Jason had never once considered joining Facebook or any other social media site.

  He chuckled softly despite the stress. Began the process of opening up a Facebook account. His first—and likely only—foray ever into the world of social media.

  Creating an account didn’t take long. In just a couple of minutes, Dr. Jason Greeley was an official Facebook user, having created a bare-bones page. There was no profile picture, no friends list, no autobiographical information. Just his name on an otherwise blank background.

  But he didn’t need any more than that. Now, as a member of the Facebook community, he could send a message, and that was all he cared about. He opened the messaging option and repeated the search terms he had entered just a few minutes ago: “Robert Senna New Quebec New Hampshire.”

  The results flashed onto his monitor, identical to those he had received during his earlier search. Jason clicked on the same outdoorsy-handsome kid and tried to decide how to begin.

  What he was attempting was risky, and not just because Toler could storm into his office at any moment and put a bullet in his head. Just because Robert Senna owned a Facebook account, that didn’t necessarily mean he was an active user. And even if he was, he might well be far too busy at the moment, given the situation with his brother and all that had happened to him today, to pay much attention to social media for quite some time.

  And even if he did check his Facebook account regularly, he might very well ignore unsolicited messages from strangers. Jason certainly would have.

  But it was a risk he would have to take. It wasn’t like he had a lot of other options.

  Or any other options.

  He stared at the monitor and decided it would be critically important to use a message identifier—he thought of it as a headline—that would grab young Robert Senna’s attention, something that he would be incapable of ignoring once he had seen it.

  Something like REGARDING YOUR BROTHER’S DISAPPEARANCE.

  28

  Colonel Toler had not planned on spending the night at Tamerlane. He had fully expected to finish this nasty business today by eliminating the only living witness to last night’s debacle and then leaving the cleanup to his shadowy—but discreet and extremely thorough—CIA contacts.

  But as with every other recent occurrence surrounding Greeley and his goddamned magic wolves, things had degenerated into a shit show. Best laid plans, indeed. Frank’s expectations had gone right out the window, and even he had to admit there was no one to blame for this latest fuckup but himself.

  He had underestimated the driver of the Jeep and was now paying the price. Instead of panicking, as Frank had expected him to do, the other driver handled his vehicle like Mario Fucking Andretti or some Hollywood stunt man, spinning his truck just prior to impact and making Frank look like a damned fool.

  Lesson learned. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  The problem, of course, was that time was running out. Quickly. The wolf attack on the boy was bad enough, but thanks to a combination of luck, weather, the extreme isolation of New Quebec, and fast work by himself and his cleanup crew they had managed to contain the story.

  So far.

  But while the years Frank had spent greasing the palms of the town’s police chief paid dividends last night when the girl tried to report what she had seen, eventually it would occur to her to involve the news media. And once that happened, the lid would be blown sky-high on the Tamerlane Research Facility. No amount of payoffs or murder or anything else would be sufficient to stop that snowball once it started rolling downhill.

  And heads would roll.

  And Frank’s would be the first on the chopping block.

  So going home and sleeping was out of the question. He would stay awake and alert until this job was finished. Whether it took two hours or two weeks, he would guzzle coffee and pop amphetamines and do whatever else was required to keep his ass out of a sling.

  ***

  He tried to buckle down and catch up on paperwork while waiting for goddamned Matt Bertrand to call him back on his goddamned private cell.

  It was hopeless, though. He was too keyed up—and let’s face it, too nervous—to accomplish much of anything. Every minute the dead kid’s girlfriend spent on the loose somewhere out there in the storm represented the steadily increasing likelihood of incarceration for Frank Toler, and concentrating on anything besides the need to eliminate that threat was proving impossible.

  So when the office phone buzzed on the desk next to him, he nearly jumped out of his skin. He stared at it like he’d never seen it before. This was an unexpected development. He almost never worked on the weekend, and on the rare occasions he did, he was out the door by three o’clock or so in the afternoon. He didn’t think he had ever been behind his desk at nine on a Saturday night.

  The thought flashed through his mind that maybe Bertrand had somehow forgotten the number to Frank’s burner phone and had been forced to use his official line, but he shook it away almost immediately. For the PI to do that would be sheer idiocy, and while Bertrand had become one more in a long list of problems for the colonel, he knew the man was anything but stupid.

  He stared at the phone on the corner of his desk, the flashing red light indicating an outside call.

  Maybe he should ignore it.

  Probably he should ignore it.

  But eventually, curiosity got the best of him as the circuit continued to buzz. Someone wanted to contact him in the worst way, and in Frank’s experience, that kind of persistence rarely meant good news. And if the call represented bad news, the only reasonable approach would be to get a jum
p on it and deal with it immediately.

  Allowing problems of any size to fester only resulted in bigger problems.

  He punched the red button on his phone and picked up the handset. This particular circuit was a secure line, a number known only to a select few people; it wasn’t like a citizen calling Tamerlane would have the capability of contacting Colonel Frank Toler directly. The public line into Tamerlane was routed through the front desk, which was staffed during business hours only.

  “Toler,” he said curtly, intentionally putting as much rasp as he could manage into his voice. He wanted to convey the impression of a man slaving at his desk late into a Saturday night because the critical nature of his work permitted nothing else. And right now, that impression was as accurate as it had ever been.

  “Frank, what in God’s name is going on up there?” The voice coming through the handset was soft, cultured. It sounded like it belonged to a long-tenured college professor, grandfatherly and kind. It was the sort of voice that might cause a hard man like Frank Toler to underestimate the speaker.

  But Frank knew better. He had worked with the man on the other end of the line for a very long time. It was Lee Collins, Frank’s contact with Central Intelligence. Lee would consider himself Frank’s handler, but it would be a cold day in hell before Frank Toler admitted to being “handled” by anyone, even one of the most powerful—and thus most dangerous—people inside the CIA’s Directorate of Operations.

  “Hello, Lee. I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I understand your question. Going on up here? What do you mean?” Frank doubted there was one single other person in the world he would have apologized to, including his wife and his Pentagon bosses. He’d always been an intuitive sort, though, and had long known that conversation with Lee Collins required the utmost discretion. Even now, with his career and his life hanging in the balance—hell, especially now—that remained the case.