The Eternity Project

14



Ethan sprinted past Donovan, who turned in surprise as he shouted out his warning to the police officer. The footfalls across the roof had been heading in the opposite direction to the warehouse exit, and Ethan already realized that he would be lucky to catch whoever had been watching their every move.

‘Call for back-up!’ he yelled to Jarvis as he ran through the warehouse door and vaulted down the steps. Lopez was in hot pursuit, with Karina Thorne close behind her.

Ethan turned right, guessing that the mysterious figure would probably drop down into the haulage yard behind the warehouse. He had seen trucks parked there, some loading and unloading inside a small parking lot with maybe a dozen vehicles.

‘Escape route?’ he yelled back at Lopez and Karina, who were also running hard.

‘Anywhere off 26th Avenue!’ Karina yelled back. ‘Probably 4th onto 27th and they’ll be gone!’

Ethan mentally pictured 26th Avenue running parallel to them to the south as he reached the back of the warehouse and slowed. A high chain-link fence lined the rear of the lot, shipping containers stacked up on the other side. Ethan’s practiced eye scanned the fence line and saw a portion of the fence quivering from where it had been recently scaled.

He ran hard across the lot and leaped high up onto the fence, his sneakers finding purchase and his fingers gripping the thin metal links as he scrambled up over the top and jumped down onto the roof of a container that was slick with water and filth.

A man was sprinting across the parking lot ahead and below him, dressed in black and with a hooded top concealing his features. Light brown boots splashed through puddles of icy water as they fled.

‘He’s heading for 4th!’ he yelled back at Karina.

The cop grabbed her radio as she ran and began directing Donovan as Ethan leaped down off the container and rolled onto the cold asphalt, Lopez landing alongside him and setting off like a scalded cat.

Ethan kept running but moved out to the right, hoping to cut the man off as they dashed out of the shipping yard and down 4th while Lopez stayed behind them. He dashed down 3rd Street, a hundred and fifty yards straight, his chest heaving and his heart thundering as he reached the end and turned left onto 26th Avenue.

He had almost made it to the Shop Smart on the corner of 4th when a small, battered-looking gray Pontiac screeched across the intersection in front of him and vanished away to the south. Lopez clattered to a halt on the sidewalk, heaving for breath as she saw him and shook her head.

‘Car was parked on 4th,’ she gasped. ‘No chance.’

Donovan’s car swerved out of 3rd Street behind them, and the cop pulled in to the sidewalk. ‘Where’d they go?’

‘South,’ Ethan replied breathlessly, ‘gray sixties Pontiac, pretty rough-looking.’

Donovan picked up his radio and called in a description for patrol vehicles to keep an eye open for the Pontiac, as Karina jogged up alongside them, her labored breath condensing in clouds on the cold air.

‘Who the hell was that?’ she asked.

‘Probably our perpetrator,’ Ethan replied, getting his breath back. ‘Killers often return to the scene of the crime.’

‘No, they don’t,’ Donovan said, getting out of his car. ‘Unless they’re serial killers looking to get off on how horrible their crimes are or how stumped detectives are in trying to solve them.’


‘You think we’ve got a serial killer on our hands?’ Karina asked. ‘That’s a big leap from the double homicide of two low-life criminals.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Donovan corrected her. ‘It’s not likely to have been the media, and who the hell else would get all the way up on top of that building to spy on us?’

Karina shot Ethan and Lopez a curious glance before she replied: ‘I’ll have somebody get up there and take a look, okay? Maybe see if there were any security cameras running, anything that can pick up their trail or identify them.’

Donovan nodded, got back into his car and drove off into the flow of morning traffic. Karina waited until he was gone before confronting Ethan and Lopez.

‘You want to tell me who you think that was on the roof ?’

Ethan raised a placatory hand. ‘I don’t know, okay? Nobody’s informed the media and they’re unlikely to stumble on this investigation by chance way out here on the docks.’

‘Then, who?’ Karina demanded. ‘You guys turn up here and suddenly there are weird people in black hoods hanging around.’

‘We don’t know who it was,’ Lopez replied. ‘It’s likely that it was somebody snooping around the crime scene for kicks.’

Ethan turned away from Karina in time to see Jarvis’s black SUV sweep through the intersection and turn toward them. It performed a graceful U-turn across the street, its thick black tires squealing as it did so, and pulled into the sidewalk.

Jarvis climbed out. ‘You find them?’ he asked.

‘They got away,’ Lopez replied. ‘Donovan’s on the case right now.’

‘You want to tell me what the hell’s really going on here?’ Karina demanded, eyeing Jarvis suspiciously.

‘Your team is getting the support it needs to solve this case,’ Lopez replied.

‘I mean that goddamned warehouse!’ Karina snapped. ‘We’ve got two impossible murders, you guys turning up and taking over our cases and people photographing a crime scene that nobody but us should know exists.’

Jarvis stepped forward, taking over from Lopez.

‘This is how we work,’ he replied. ‘Sometimes agencies have problems solving cases and they pass jurisdiction to us.’

Karina shook her head. ‘The FBI haven’t even visited this site yet, so how the hell would they know? How did you get jurisdiction of this scene and this investigation? Why are you here?’

Ethan looked at Karina and sensed that she was not the type to simply back down. If they didn’t bring her in as an ally, sooner or later she would start digging and things would get even more difficult than they already were.

‘It’s complicated,’ Ethan said. ‘We’re here to help but right now we need your help, too. Can we talk, later? We’ll explain as much as we can.’

Karina looked from Lopez to Ethan to Jarvis and back again.

‘Apartment 4B, Forton Place, Broadway,’ she said. ‘I get off at eight.’

As Karina turned and stalked away, Jarvis looked at Ethan and gestured to the SUV. ‘We need to talk.’

Ethan got into the vehicle with Lopez as Jarvis climbed in behind them and shut the door.

‘You’re damned right, we need to talk,’ Ethan snapped as the vehicle pulled away. ‘There’s a hell of a lot going on right now that doesn’t make any sense. I thought you said that the CIA was off our case?’

‘They are,’ Jarvis replied defensively. ‘I don’t know who that was on the roof.’

‘It could have been CIA,’ Ethan said reasonably. ‘You said it yourself: the CIA’s director was at the meeting with you.’

‘They’re not on the scene,’ Jarvis assured him. ‘The director promised to pull his people off your tail just as long as we didn’t make any further investigations into MK-ULTRA.’

‘And you believed him?’ Lopez asked. ‘I wouldn’t trust a spook as far as I could throw one.’

‘Nor would I,’ Jarvis admitted with a brief shrug, ‘which is why you’ll continue with your investigation.’

Ethan raised an eyebrow in surprise, as the SUV smoothly changed lanes. ‘You’re double-crossing them?’

Jarvis smiled thinly.

‘The CIA has made a fifty-year career out of double-crossing people, so Director Steel’s not likely to be shy of going behind my back. I’m not about to let this go until I have absolutely solid proof of CIA corruption or involvement, whether sanctioned or not, in the killing of American citizens. Right now, the evidence I have is circumstantial unless we can find somebody to testify to the Senate.’

Lopez leaned forward in her seat, a cynical smile slapped across her features. ‘And once you have this evidence, then what? Somehow, I don’t think you’ll run screaming to the papers.’

‘The evidence will be presented to a military court,’ Jarvis said. ‘Either that or it will be locked safely away at the DIA to act as insurance against any further inter-agency interference, from the CIA or anybody else.’

Ethan felt something uncomfortable slither inside him. ‘And what about this case here: the two losers they found in that warehouse?’

‘I want you to work with the police team and solve this case, while I find out what I can from Donovan about Aaron Lymes’ death. It will look good back at the DIA that you’re still actively on their side. Right now, half of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is entertaining the possibility that you two have been murdering CIA agents, remember?’

Ethan’s guts felt as though they had turned to stone.

‘I’m not doing this to suck up to a bunch of brass.’

‘And what about Joanna?’ Lopez asked. ‘If we lose her trail, she’ll be almost impossible to pick up again; and if we find her and the CIA are watching us, then they’ll grab her and that’s the last we’ll see of her.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Jarvis pointed out. ‘It’s what she might know that scares them, and what she might do with that knowledge. If Joanna has done what they obviously think she has and gone underground on a mission to expose MK-ULTRA, then the CIA’s mission is to stop her at all costs. But if she can be prevented from doing so, and we at the DIA hold any hard evidence she possesses, then she is no longer a threat.’

Lopez leaned back in her seat with a bitter chuckle. ‘The DIA has its own get-out-of-jail-free card and we’re all in the clear. You’ve got it all worked out, Doug, I’ll give you that.’

‘I don’t know,’ Ethan said, finally. ‘The bodies in the warehouse could just be some sort of elaborate hoax to throw investigators off the trail.’

Jarvis shook his head.

‘Unlikely. We’ll have to get you both down to the Medical Examiner’s Office as soon as possible to find out what the autopsy says. Even if it’s not a case that warrants the DIA’s involvement, it gives you a reason to stay in New York and any case you solve will increase your standing. Right now, you need all the support you can get.’

Ethan glanced out of the vehicle’s window at the bleak winter sky and the cold gray cityscape of New York City. The huge metropolis was both the perfect place for a fugitive to hide and also the perfect hunting ground.

‘Whatever the situation might be, this city’s going to be a dangerous place until we resolve this situation once and for all. There’s a possible assassin, fugitive and serial killer on the loose here all at the same time.’


‘Then we’d best get to work,’ Jarvis said. ‘Stay close to Karina. Maybe she can help.’