The Eternity Project

16



The apartment Karina drove to was just a few blocks away, near downtown. Ethan sat in the rear seat and watched Karina’s features in the rear-view mirror as she drove.

Karina Thorne was a tough cop. Had to be really, serving in New York City, where crime was almost as prevalent as people. Although things were far better in the city than they had been twenty years before, it was still rough territory at times and nobody donned police blues without a sturdy backbone to support them. Yet he had seen a cold flicker of fear in her eyes in the apartment.

Karina pulled up alongside one of the smarter apartment blocks and scrambled out of the car, Lopez and Ethan jogging to keep up as she launched herself up the entrance steps and jammed a finger against the door buzzer.

‘What are we doing here?’ Lopez asked her.

‘Gut feeling,’ Karina replied.

No reply came from the speakerphone set into the wall. Karina hit the emergency button and, moments later, the voice of a site manager croaked out of the speaker.

‘Maintenance, how may I . . .?’

‘Thorne, NYPD, one-seven-six-nine-two,’ Karina snapped, flashing her badge at the small camera above the speakerphone. ‘I think there may be an emergency, apartment six-Charlie.’

There was a moment’s wait and then the door buzzed open and Karina pushed through.

‘How come we haven’t tried that before?’ Ethan asked Lopez as they piled through and began running up the stairs two at a time in pursuit of Karina.

Karina hit the sixth floor at a run, dashing down a corridor and reaching the door of apartment 6C, just as the site warden stepped out of a nearby elevator; a portly man with receding gray hair and a thick moustache.

‘What’s the rush, officer?’ he asked as he wobbled his way toward them.

‘Non-responsive,’ Karina replied urgently. ‘Just open the door.’

The warden fiddled with his keys and slipped one of them into the lock, then turned it. Karina barged into the door, which snapped open three inches and then stuck fast on a security chain.


‘It’s possible,’ Jarvis admitted. ‘But I saw DCIA’s face in that meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Something was making the fat a*shole nervous, and, as much as I enjoyed seeing it, it’s unlikely to be orchestrated by him.’

‘And what about Joanna?’ Ethan asked. ‘What if we do find her here?’

‘I can’t do much until she shows up,’ Jarvis insisted. ‘Let’s do this one step at a time, Ethan. Right now, just concentrate on solving this homicide case. I’ve got you both a visit to Rikers Island in the morning, to see if the two thieves Donovan’s team arrested on Williamsburg Bridge will identify their accomplices. The police didn’t get anywhere. See what you can get out of them, because it will help your standing with the NYPD. We might need their help to locate Joanna before the CIA do, if she’s in the city.’

Ethan hesitated for a moment, before finally deciding that there was no real use in arguing further. If Jarvis had a solution up his sleeve to this whole damned mess, then he probably wouldn’t reveal it until the last possible moment.

‘I’ll let you know what we find out,’ he said.

Ethan put the phone back in its cradle, and was about to leave when he felt a tingling sensation creep across his shoulders, as though a gossamer web had settled on his skin. He turned, looking around the silent apartment for a long moment, before he finally shook himself out of it and shut off the lights. He closed the door to the apartment behind him, pursued by a strange and unsettling feeling.