The Carbon Trail (20 page)

Mitchell glanced quickly at the clock; ten p.m. Karen would be getting worried about him. He checked his cell-phone quickly. No missed calls. Maybe she was giving him some space to work. Mitchell turned back to the Archaeus file and made a decision, hurriedly pressing print, then he transferred all the computer files to a flash-drive and pressed delete, wiping them from the PC’s memory. If the Alliance knew that the files existed they might still be able to retrieve them, but deletion would slow them down at least. Mitchell grabbed the hard copy and the flash-drive and headed for home, completely unprepared for what would greet him there.

***

Magee tapped his pen repeatedly against the desk, thinking through the options. If Scrabo was after Mitchell’s research then he was going to sell it. That much was certain. The question was, to whom? Magee ran through the usual suspects. They knew the café was a front for the Russians, but they still weren’t sure whether they were acting alone. If they weren’t, then Syria and Iran had to be high on their partnership list, and neither of them was in love with the USA. They were dangerous, not just because of their fanaticism but because they believed in something; an ideal. Idealists were always lethal. They didn’t have any price but death.

Neil Scrabo was a different proposition. A lone wolf, out for a fast buck. If he was prepared to screw his own company and its U.S. interests, then he could sell the research to anyone. Top of the list had to be the Arabs, or worse, the North Koreans. Zealots led by a dynasty convinced of its right to rule. There was no way of reasoning with them.

Magee shook his head in disgust. Not at the North Koreans but at the fact that Tom Evans was helping Scrabo make the deal. He’d trained Evans for God’s sake, and before he’d gone rogue Evans had been one of the best men the agency had ever had. Evans had been a patriot, almost too much of one perhaps. He’d believed in the goodness of political leaders while the rest of them were saying ‘I told you so’. Cynics, every last one of them, and him the worst of all. But not Tom Evans. He’d bought the whole shebang about flag and country. He’d taken the President’s screw-up on Iraq really hard while the rest of them had just shaken their heads. God save America. From idealists.

Evans ideals had turned him into a whistle-blower and he’d gone rogue in 2005 and leaked classified information to the press, then he’d taken off to Havana with a warrant on his ass. The last they’d heard he was a mercenary somewhere in the middle-east. Now he was with Neil Scrabo, selling his country out. Magee shook his head again. No. He could call Tom Evans a lot of things, but all of them started with ‘idealistic’. He refused to believe that Evans would help Scrabo sell dangerous research to the Koreans for money, no matter what the evidence said.

***

10.50 p.m.

Mitchell parked the rental car in the street and walked swiftly towards his house. He was dreading what he’d find when he read the Archaeus file, and he needed to hug his wife tight, to get the courage not to throw it in the fire. As he walked through the front gate Mitchell was surprised to see the house in darkness. He glanced at his watch, it was almost eleven o’clock. Karen might have gone to bed. No. That wouldn’t explain the complete lack of light. She always left a lamp on in the hall.

Mitchell stopped in the driveway and stood completely still, scanning his home’s pale wood façade. Something was wrong. A cold sweat covered his brow, matched by a trickle down his spine, but it wasn’t fear, it was anticipation. He felt every muscle in his body tense, ready to fight and kill. Wherever his combat instincts were coming from they were welcome now.

Then he saw it. The front door was ajar. Mitchell slipped through the gap and crouched down in the hall, listening hard to the noises of the house, until they drowned out the pulsing in his ear. The wooden stairs creaked quietly, joining the refrigerator’s hum to make it seem just like any normal night, but something was missing. He tuned out the background soundtrack, listening for movement of some kind, but there was none. Not even Emmie turning in her sleep.

Entering the kitchen first Mitchell moved swiftly from room to room, until he saw Buster in a corner of the utility room, asleep. As he got closer he saw that the dog wasn’t sleeping; a single stab wound to his neck had ended his life. Bastards. But whoever had done it was no amateur. Mitchell thought of Emmie’s tears when she found out that her pet was dead and his urge to kill whoever had done it grew. Slipping into his darkened study Mitchell pushed a book on the shelf to one side, revealing a lock-box. He prayed that his gun was still inside. It was. He loaded it and moved on, reaching the family-room across the hall.

The hairs on Jeff Mitchell’s arms stood on end as he sensed that there was something there. He peered through the darkness searching for human shapes, but there was nothing. Then he stared again, his eyes falling on the glass deck-doors. Even in the darkness he couldn’t miss it. A small white shoe was wedged between them, as if someone had dragged a child through and yanked so hard that their shoe had fallen off. Mitchell’s heart dropped in his chest and he moved towards it, smelling the scent of Karen’s perfume grow with every step.

As he bent to retrieve the small shoe he saw that a memory card was tucked inside. Mitchell seized it, already guessing what it contained, but dreading the moment that he was forced to find out. He checked the rest of the house for signs of a struggle. Signs of invasion filled their bedroom, bedcovers torn back and abandoned on the floor, ornaments and mirrors smashed, as if someone was angered by what happened in there. Karen was nowhere to seen. She and Emmie had been taken.

Mitchell re-entered the family-room and flicked on all the lights, gasping loudly at a patch of blood by the door. He stared at it for a moment, taking comfort from its size; it wasn’t enough blood for a wound. What then? The answer came quickly and he pictured a needle piercing his wife’s skin. Shaking off the image Mitchell re-entered the study, booted-up his laptop and inserted the memory chip. Then he braced himself for what he would see.

The screen opened to a video showing Karen and Emmie unconscious on a wooden floor. Mitchell squinted; it was the floor in the family-room. Whoever had done this had taken the time to film before they’d left the house. Mitchell’s stomach turned over in disgust then something clarified. To know that they’d had the time to film meant that the intruder had known he wouldn’t be home. This was someone who knew his movements.

Mitchell’s mind raced with the possibilities then his thoughts jumped to the car outside. He’d seen the agent with dark hair watching as he’d pulled up. He could have done it! Even as the thought came it disappeared and Mitchell shook his head. No. The agent wouldn’t still be there if he had. Besides, he would have come in through the front. Whoever had done this had crossed the deck at the back, both ways.

Mitchell kept on watching the video as the camera panned silently across Karen’s face and then his child’s. Their breathing was slow and laboured; they were alive, but only just. The camera moved to a syringe with a bottle of Morphine alongside. Showing that they were safe, or not? It all depended on the dose. It was exactly the message that Mitchell was meant to get and he knew it. ‘See. We could have killed them with this if we’d wanted, we’ve just chosen not to. Yet.’

The camera moved around the room and then back to the sleeping shapes, focusing on a typed note by Karen’s side. It was succinct. ‘Act normally and work hard. We will be in touch.’ Then the screen flickered and went dark, leaving Mitchell without ‘We’s’ name.

Mitchell sat in darkness for almost half the night, his anger filling him with hate. By first light it was gone and logic had taken its place. Whoever had taken Karen and Emmie wanted him to ‘work hard’. They wanted his research, that much was clear, but was it Neil Scrabo or the Alliance? He knew the Alliance was having him watched but was Scrabo still watching him as well, even though Devon had failed? They could both have known that he would be late home. Should he be adding the government to the list? No. They might be watching him but they would never harm a child. If they would then America was really screwed.

For some reason that Mitchell couldn’t name, Neil Scrabo was fading from his list. Yes, the Board wanted his research, but surely they would just spy on him at work; Devon was proof of that. Mitchell shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Five more minutes of speculation narrowed his list to two names. Now he just had to decide what to do.

***

Thursday. 6.40 a.m.

Richie yawned and checked his watch then he rested back again, cranking up the car heater to keep warm. Six-forty. Handover was in twenty minutes then it was home for a shower and sleep and back again at seven o’clock tonight, to sit on his ass for another twelve hours. The glamour of being an agent was overwhelming.

He turned the radio dial and listened as Howard Stern told New York to wake up, using his rhetoric like an assault weapon. Easy listening would be kinder but then he would never stay awake. As Neal Peart beat the hell out of some drums Richie thought about Jeff Mitchell. He didn’t like the man, but he had to admit that Mitchell seemed to love his wife, more so in the past few weeks. He was positively affectionate towards her nowadays. He felt sorry for Karen Mitchell that her husband would soon be dead, but if Mitchell was prepared to sell his research to corrupt powers then maybe his brain tumour was doing the world a favour.

An image of Karen sprang into Richie’s mind and he admitted that he cared what happened to her. He shouldn’t, after all she was just a subject, but he did. She and Emmie would be totally lost when Mitchell died and he would die very soon, either from cancer or a bullet. What would his little family do then?

Richie’s reverie was broken by a sharp rap on the windshield. He startled, registering the time before he saw the outline of a man. It was too early for handover; Magee timed it to the minute. Richie reached for his gun, knowing that he’d be dead already if the man had wanted him that way. He turned slowly and was shocked to see Jeff Mitchell standing there. It was against every rule! Didn’t Mitchell know that it was his job to be watched and Richie’s to do the watching? It was just plain wrong to turn it around.

Richie pulled his gun from its holster, more from protocol than need, then pushed open the car door and stood facing his quarry in the street. It was an incongruous scene. One man exhausted, his hair standing up from a night spent holding his head in thought. The other pointing a gun. Not a sight you saw often in Lloyd Harbor at any time.

The men stared at each other warily. Similar age, similar height, nothing else in common except the hunt. Finally Mitchell broke the silence, smiling at Richie as if he’d known him all his life.

“Come in for coffee. We need to talk.”

Mitchell turned on his heel, leaving the invitation hanging as Richie watched him re-enter the house, his mind computing the chances that it could be a trap. Every ounce of his training said to radio in, but his instinct and the week he’d had said to go ahead and take the risk. Richie Cartagena did both. He radioed Magee that he’d stay on until nine, without telling him why, then he left the safety of the sedan and headed to the neighbours for pot luck.

***

Tom Evans rubbed shaving foam into his stubble and lifted his razor to get clean. He stared at himself in the mirror, his features blanked out by the overhead fluorescent light. It was a pity that his conscience wouldn’t blank out too. He stared for a minute longer, searching for some sign of the men he’d killed throughout the years marked on his face. No-one stared back except himself. His dark good looks gave no hint of the bad things that he’d done; he was a modern day Dorian Gray.

Evans pulled the blade roughly across his jaw, trying to hurt himself and feel alive, but even his razor wouldn’t cooperate. It just slid across the foam to smooth his features even more. Evans threw it down in disgust; not at the metal; it had done its job. Coldly and sharply, just as he did his. His disgust was all for himself. Bile filled his mouth and he spewed it into the sud-filled sink, wanting to vomit up all his guilt.

Guilt for the life he led now, when it had all started out so well. Guilt at the money he’d taken as a mercenary; printed in dead men’s blood. He’d been a patriot once, an honest-to-God George Washington; ‘We the people’ tattooed on his every pore. And now what? A paid thug. A hired gun; without even the honour of a war to salve the wounds he caused.

Evans retched in self-disgust and then turned his eyes ahead, gazing at his face. He’d blamed the government for letting him down, and they had, but he’d blamed them for long enough. Handing himself in would mean prison and he wasn’t doing time for any man, but he wasn’t giving the North Koreans a weapon either. There had to be a middle way.

Tom Evans knew instantly what it was. He wiped his face clean and dressed very carefully, then sipped an espresso until it was dry, psyching himself up. When he was ready he scrolled through his phone for a number and dialled it quickly, before he had time to change his mind.

***

Richie entered the low-ceilinged hall slowly, not exactly wary, but cautious. The house was quiet, quieter than a family home should be at seven a.m. He stopped and gazed up the stairs, expecting the clatter of tiny feet to run down them any minute. Or more elegant adult ones. But there was nothing. Even the dog’s bark was nowhere to be heard.

Mitchell turned, beckoning him into the family-room. It was warm and small with a wooden floor and an old settee, set opposite a large TV. It said winter movie evenings spent cuddled up, and popcorn in a big bowl. But it said something else today as well. He could see it in Mitchell’s glance towards the door. Richie’s eyes flew to where Mitchell’s were already focused. There was blood on the floor. Not much, but enough to tell him why he was there. He looked at Mitchell quickly and Mitchell nodded then said the words that told Richie he’d completely blown last night’s watch.