The Chimera Secret

by Dean Crawford

  ‘Figures,’ Ben said, ‘the information on her file stops just a few weeks after her disappearance. But that’s what bothered me the most.’

  ‘How come?’

  Ben shifted one of the pieces of paper toward her. ‘Because not only did the department shut down the file on Joanna, which is odd as she was not yet presumed dead, but they opened an entirely new one.’

  Natalie looked down at the sheet of paper and her heart skipped a beat.

  ETHAN WARNER

  US Marines, 15th Expeditionary (Ret.)

  Surveillance active and deployed.

  ‘Ethan,’ she whispered.

  Ben’s voice reached her ears as though from the opposite side of the world.

  ‘Your brother has been under surveillance by at least one intelligence agency ever since he was thrown out of Israel several years ago. Ethan spent a year in Israel trying to find Joanna Defoe and harassing the Knesset to assist him in finding out what happened to her. Israel finally had him expelled from the country when he ran out of cash and threatened legal action against the government.’

  Natalie leaned back in her chair and stared out of the office window as she considered the implications of what she had just heard. The intelligence community was keeping at the least a watching brief and quite possibly 24/7 surveillance on Ethan. Such endeavours required a significant amount of manpower, equipment and money. In a day and age when there were so many threats to United States security, to devote time and money to watching a former officer and patriot in such a way was highly unusual. Natalie had no doubt that her brother did not harbour any secret desire to blow up Congress or sink a Navy frigate, and was in fact absolutely certain that he was immensely proud to be an American.

  ‘Maybe it’s a result of what happened in Israel,’ she said, looking at the page. ‘Maybe he got involved in something sensitive enough for them to want to keep an eye on him?’

  ‘It gets weirder,’ Ben said, tapping a finger on another piece of paper. ‘Your brother is repatriated to the United States, heads home to Chicago and then promptly goes off the radar for almost three years. Doesn’t move much, doesn’t do much. No job, no pay checks, no nothing. Looks like he was renting a small apartment on the Lower East Side and paying for it with menial jobs, cash in hand. He didn’t even have a bank account.’

  ‘We didn’t hear from him the entire time,’ Natalie replied. ‘I was at college for most of it and would have visited but he refused to reveal his address. He could have been dead for all we knew.’

  Ben nodded and slapped down a black-and-white photograph of Ethan stepping out of what looked suspiciously like Cook County Jail, Illinois. His face was bruised as though he’d been in a fight, a cut on his left cheek half-concealed by thick stubble, his clothes tattered and dirty.

  ‘You didn’t know where he lived but somebody did. Took this shot of him a couple of years ago: I found it on his file. Up until this time there’s not much in the files, just general movements. It seems that the watch got careless, didn’t stick close enough to him. Then, Ethan vanishes into thin air.’

  Ben slid another piece of paper in front of her and his features became animated.

  ‘The CIA goes ape-shit! I’ve never seen so much traffic in such a short space of time around a single individual since Osama Bin Laden started getting big ideas back in the 1990s. They put agents all across Illinois trying to track him down.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Natalie whispered. ‘What the hell’s so important about Ethan that they’d commit so much to finding him?’

  For intelligence agencies to pursue an interest in an individual and commit funds and resources to doing so would have to be justified to the chain of command, probably to field office level if the Bureau was involved. That would leave a record, a series of authorizations that could be traced back to an agent on the ground. And yet here there was nothing, no leads to follow.

  ‘The orders must have come from the top down,’ Natalie realized out loud. ‘Christ, this isn’t about Ethan, it can’t be. He’s just not important enough to warrant a surveillance operation this large.’

  Ben leaned closer to her, his blue eyes wide.

  ‘It’s not Ethan they’re interested in,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Ben didn’t take his eyes off of hers, but he slid the final piece of paper across to her. Natalie looked down at it. What she saw there chilled her to the bone.

  NATALIE WARNER

  Surveillance active and deployed.

  Natalie backed away from the page on her desk as though it were a poisonous insect. Her heart fluttered briefly in her chest as her eyes cast further down the page.

  HENRY WARNER / KATHERINE WARNER

  Surveillance active and deployed.

  ‘That’s my entire family,’ she uttered, feeling almost sick.

  18

  ‘When Ethan disappeared the government placed watch-cells on all of you,’ Ben informed her. ‘This is high-level covert surveillance, with all that it entails. I’ve never seen so many resources directed in this way at a single family before. The surveillance itself is not uncommon, but this level and persistence is. I’m guessing it’s because they hoped that Ethan would turn up either at home or at your university.’

  ‘But he didn’t,’ she said, struggling to understand why on earth anybody at the CIA would be keeping her entire family under surveillance. She worked at Congress, for Christ’s sake, so wasn’t hard to find. Her parents were retired and rarely left Illinois, their mother now too frail for long-distance travel. The level of surveillance simply wasn’t justified.

  ‘No,’ Ben said, ‘he turned up in Israel. That’s where everything closes.’

  Natalie looked at him. ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Totally,’ Ben replied, looking up at Guy Rikard’s desk to ensure he wasn’t listening in. ‘It’s like suddenly the entire department just shuts down the files as though it had never had the slightest interest in Ethan Warner.’

  Natalie frowned. ‘But it says the surveillance is currently active?’

  ‘That’s what I don’t get either,’ Ben agreed. ‘They’re still watching you all, Natalie. Weirder still, whatever Ethan got up to in Israel has been completely rinsed from the system.’ He turned to her. ‘What happened to him out there?’

  Natalie sighed and shook her head.

  ‘Nobody knows and he certainly doesn’t talk about it. All I know is that he went out there at short notice then came back a few days later. Suddenly he had an apartment, money and was hooking up with a Latino woman called Nicola. She’s some kind of ex-cop or detective out of DC.’

  ‘Ah,’ Ben said, shuffling through his handful of printed pages. ‘Yeah, here you go. Nicola Lopez, formerly one of DC’s finest. She founded Warner & Lopez Inc with Ethan the year before last. Bail bondsmen and investigators. Quite a turnaround for your brother. You think this Nicola had something to do with it?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Natalie said absent-mindedly as she thought about her brother. Members of staff walked to and fro between the ranks of desks, and she waited for a pair to pass out of earshot before speaking. ‘But he only starts working with her upon returning from Israel. So whatever happened to him probably occurred beforehand.’

  Ben cast a glance across the pages. ‘Joanna then?’

  Natalie nodded, thinking hard about the video footage of Joanna that Ethan had mentioned back in Chicago. Not having seen it herself, she did not feel as though it could be used as evidence to further her cause. Besides, Ethan had said he had seen the footage only recently.

  ‘Maybe he found something else out there in Israel, some new information that gave him hope. Not long after he founded this company with Lopez, he showed up at home and started talking to our pa again. Believe me, that’s a big deal.’

  Ben leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Doesn’t explain why the government is still watching Ethan, unless it’s not Ethan they’re interested in.’

  ‘Joanna,’
Natalie agreed. ‘There must be something about her that they’re keen on. It’s maybe why they put us all under surveillance, in case she showed up.’

  ‘Which means they also think that she’s alive.’

  She forced herself to calm down, taking slow deep breaths and clearing her mind of obstructive thought. Focus.

  ‘File gets opened when Joanna disappears,’ she murmured to herself, ‘gets closed a while afterward, then gets opened again when Ethan heads back to the Middle East for reasons unknown . . .’

  Natalie saw in her mind’s eye Ethan sitting opposite her in the restaurant. The name popped into her head of its own accord.

  ‘Defense Intelligence Agency,’ she said.

  ‘DIA?’ Ben echoed. ‘What connects them to Ethan?’

  ‘He mentioned them,’ she said. ‘Ethan told me that he and Lopez do work occasionally for the DIA, something to do with cases that are rejected by other agencies.’

  ‘Cold cases?’

  ‘No,’ Natalie said. ‘He was kind of cagey about it, wouldn’t say what they were about.’

  Ben thought for a moment.

  ‘It would explain how Ethan got back into Israel so fast, and also why the CIA were taken out of the loop. The DIA runs its business with a certain amount of autonomy from the other agencies. CIA might have gotten pissed about that and kept Ethan under watch.’

  Natalie felt a sense of dread creep across her shoulders. ‘They could be watching me right now,’ she said. ‘They could have bugged my phone, my apartment, anything.’

  Ben nodded. ‘Especially now you’re part of an investigation into the CIA,’ he said. ‘You can’t trust anybody, Natalie. Not right now, anyway.’

  They sat in silence for a long moment before a voice cut in between them.

  ‘Does that say what I think it says?’

  Natalie turned and saw Guy Rikard’s beady little eyes scan the pages spread across her desk. She hastily swept them aside but Guy smiled at her.

  ‘Too late,’ he said, and tapped his head with one stubby finger. ‘All in here now.’

  Ben stood up and confronted Guy. ‘How about you take off?’

  Natalie stood up and put herself between them. She placed a hand against Ben’s chest to hold him back and shot Rikard a dirty look.

  ‘Good advice, don’t you think, Guy?’ she said.

  Rikard’s face flushed red but his eyes flickered with panic as he looked at Ben.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he uttered. ‘You’ll be in jail by this afternoon.’

  Natalie felt Ben press toward Rikard, but the older man backed away with a sneer and strode off back toward his desk.

  Natalie turned away from him and thought for a moment before making a decision. The first thing she needed to do was confirm whether or not she was actually under surveillance, and there was really only one way to do that.

  ‘I’m heading out,’ she said, and picked up her bag and keys.

  ‘You want help?’ Ben offered.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she replied. ‘Try not to kill Guy while I’m gone, okay?’

  Rikard saw her leaving and called across to her.

  ‘I can’t make lunch today, honey, maybe tomorrow if that’s okay?’

  Several faces looked up in surprise. Natalie smiled back at Rikard as she swept from the office.

  ‘Sure, Guy, let me know when hell freezes over.’

  A flutter of chuckles followed her out of the door.

  19

  WHITE BIRD, IDAHO

  Ethan found the settlement of White Bird just off the US-95, nestled between the highway and soaring hills of sandy rock peppered with hardy cedars clinging to life on their barren slopes.

  ‘You sure we’re going to find our man here?’ Lopez asked, looking out of the window of their hired Taurus.

  ‘This is where Earl Carpenter told me he lives,’ Ethan replied. ‘Best tracker in the business, so he said.’

  White Bird boasted a population of less than one hundred souls, and most of the homes were single-story clapperboard affairs with neatly kept yards. A colorful swing-sign welcomed visitors to the town, emblazoned with ‘Est. 1891’. The Sacred Heart Church was painted a pure white and the town boasted both a post office and a library. They passed a bar called the Silver Dollar, a bunch of well-polished trucks parked outside. The trees around the residential areas gave the little town a splash of greenery that contrasted with the rugged hills looming around it.

  Ethan pulled in alongside the address he’d been given when he’d asked the sheriff for an experienced woodsman to act as a guide. The small, immaculate homestead looked like many of the others in the town except for one small detail. The truck outside was caked with mud and dirt, the mark of a four-by-four used for what it was actually designed for. Off-roading.

  Ethan got out and let the Labrador that wandered over lick his hand and snuffle the cuff of his jacket as they walked toward the porch. The door opened before they even got there and a young girl of maybe eighteen or nineteen peeked out at them.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Ethan offered her an easy smile.

  ‘We’re looking for Duran Wilkes. We were hoping to hire the best tracker in Idaho.’

  The silhouette of a man appeared in the hall behind the girl, who stepped back as the door opened fully and a bearded, wizened face peered suspiciously at them.

  ‘Who sent you?’ the old man demanded.

  ‘Sheriff Earl Carpenter,’ Lopez replied. ‘Said you were the go-to guy for tracking.’

  ‘Did he now?’ the old man asked, one hand reaching up to tug at his straggly beard. ‘Well, that all depends on what it is you’ll be wantin’ to track.’

  There was a chance that the old guy might have gotten wind of the arrest of Jesse MacCarthy, and maybe even heard of the story that the missing Cletus had been taken by a monster. But Ethan doubted it. This man looked like he wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in the affairs taking place outside his own picket fence, much less in a town down the road. Ethan took a chance.

  ‘A man,’ he replied. ‘By the name of Cletus MacCarthy. He disappeared out in the forests of Nez Perce and we were hoping you could help us try to find him.’

  The old man chuckled as though relieved.

  ‘A man? That’ll be easy. Cretins leave a trail like a herd of bison through a wheat field.’

  Duran Wilkes stood back and held the porch door open for Ethan and Lopez to step through. He closed it behind them and followed them into the lounge. Ethan’s gaze was drawn immediately to what looked like half of a tree affixed to one wall. It was only when he saw the elk’s head in the middle that he realized what it was.

  ‘Jesus,’ Lopez said, flashing the old man a bright smile. ‘You bring that down with your bare hands back in the day?’

  He cackled a laugh as his frosty demeanour melted.

  ‘Just last week, honey.’ Duran gestured to the teenage girl who watched them from the kitchen doorway. ‘This is Mary, my granddaughter. She travels with me and knows the land just like I do.’

  Ethan nodded at Mary, who perched herself unobtrusively on the edge of an armchair. Duran gestured for Ethan and Lopez to sit down and looked at them both for a moment before speaking.

  ‘I like you, both of you,’ he said. ‘You don’t have the air of the city-boy jerk-offs I get coming down here offering a thousand bucks for day trips to shoot shit for the hell of it.’

  ‘For a thousand bucks I’d get some other asshole to shoot for me,’ Lopez replied.

  Ethan leaned forward as he spoke.

  ‘We need you for a couple of days, is all. We have a good idea of where Cletus MacCarthy was when he vanished. The plan is to pick up his trail from there and see where it leads us.’

  Duran nodded and waved airily as though he’d heard it all before.

  ‘What’s the last known location?’

  ‘Fox Creek, Nez Perce Forest.’

  Duran Wilkes’s features froze in motion for an instant, as though
he’d briefly forgotten where he was. He reached for his beard again as he spoke.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, his voice softer now. ‘What happened out there, anyone know?’

  Ethan sensed an obstacle and let Lopez do the talking.

  ‘Cletus and his brother were out poaching elk when they were caught in the act by a park ranger named Gavin Coltz. As he was about to arrest them the ranger was attacked and killed.’

  ‘An accomplice,’ Duran said, ‘and a violent one. If it’s criminals we’re tracking my price doubles, you understand?’

  Lopez, cornered already, glanced at Ethan before she replied. ‘We’re not tracking a criminal.’

  Duran watched her for a long moment. ‘What happened to this Cletus fella?’

  ‘Cletus was also killed by the attacker,’ Ethan replied. ‘His body is missing. The only survivor was the younger brother, Jesse, who is now under suspicion of homicide.’

  ‘What’s his story?’ Duran asked.

  Ethan again let Lopez lead, hoping it would soften the blow somewhat.

  ‘Jesse swears that his brother and the ranger were attacked and killed by some kind of animal.’

  Duran Wilkes’s gaze remained fixed on Lopez as he nodded slowly.

  ‘I’m takin’ it that he was smart enough to know a bear when he saw one?’

  ‘He knew bears,’ Lopez agreed, ‘and he was adamant that it wasn’t a bear, despite the fact that had he said it was he wouldn’t be under so much suspicion.’

  Duran Wilkes’s head dropped for a moment as he examined his own hands, folded before him as he sat on the couch. He sighed softly before speaking.

  ‘You found the ranger’s body at the scene, but not Cletus’s?’

  ‘That’s what was strange,’ Ethan said. ‘This animal, whatever it was, killed both of the victims but only took one body with it. More than that, Jesse said that the creature let him go. You ever hear of a bear doing that?’

  Duran glanced at his granddaughter, Mary, and Ethan detected a look of apprehension pass between them.