The Eternity Project

42

5TH PRECINCT POLICE DEPARTMENT, NEW YORK CITY



Donovan set his phone back down in its cradle and sat back thoughtfully in his seat.

It was late and the station was virtually empty but for the night crew manning the cells and the phone lines. It not being a weekend, evenings were generally quiet, even in New York City. Only the patrol officers would have their work cut out for them, an endless stream of gangland territorial disputes and domestic disturbances to field.

‘What did the CIA say?’

Glen Ryan sat opposite Donovan. The younger man was intelligent, determined and committed to his job, but he was also vulnerable in his affection for Karina Thorne. Donovan was not sure just how much he ought to be telling him. Yet now there was another crisis. Jackson had been sent home a jabbering wreck. The events in the lecture hall had fractured his nerves and Donovan was not sure when he would return to work. Or worse, if he would fold under the pressure.

‘They know about Ethan Warner and Nicola Lopez,’ he replied finally. ‘It was strange. I got bounced from one department to the next before I spoke to somebody.’

‘What’s strange about that?’ Glen asked.

‘Because each new office was higher than the last,’ Donovan said. ‘Then, they put me through to another number, and this guy answers. I’d called Langley, but this guy was here in New York.’

‘So?’ Glen said. ‘The CIA has field offices in every city, right?’

Donovan shook his head. ‘This guy was in a car and talking on a cell. Soon as the line opened he asked to meet me.’

Glen frowned. ‘Somebody looking for Warner?’

‘Maybe,’ Donovan confirmed. ‘And right now that suits me just fine.’

‘You’re going to sell them out?’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’ Donovan asked. ‘They’re climbing all over our asses right now and we could do without the attention.’

Glen leaned forward on the desk. ‘Right now, it’s the DIA that’s helping us with this investigation and also preventing the media from tearing us to pieces. That guy Jarvis has turned what happened at the law school into a whole big nothing. The media had packed up and gone within an hour of arriving.’

‘They’re digging around too much,’ Donovan insisted. ‘Sooner or later . . .’

‘I don’t give a damn!’ Glen snapped and smashed his fist down on the chief’s desk. ‘You saw what happened. There’s something out there and it’s hunting us down! At least Warner and Lopez seem to know something about it. Without them we’d probably be dead by now.’

Donovan looked at Glen for a long moment before he spoke.

‘Glen, you saw what Karina did in that corridor, didn’t you?’

Glen sighed and sat back, rubbing tired eyes with his fingers. ‘I saw her do something,’ he replied. ‘I heard her say to Warner that she was calling for back-up.’

Donovan shook his head. ‘I don’t buy that. She could have called for back-up any time and she’d have used her radio not her cell.’

‘Our radios were down,’ Glen said. ‘So were our cellphones for that matter, while we were stuck in that elevator.’

Donovan nodded.

‘Seems like whatever the hell that wraith thing is, it only affects an area immediately around it. The lights flicker, batteries drain, shit like that. Maybe Karina was far enough away that her cell was working.’

‘It fits,’ Glen agreed. ‘The lights were on outside the building and on other floors. Did you feel that cold, too? But that also figures if what Ethan said is right, that it gets its juice from something but that it can run out, too.’

Donovan thought hard. Karina had still used her cellphone and not her radio, which meant that she wasn’t calling for back-up. Something nagged at him but he couldn’t put his finger on it. With Jackson down for the moment, there was nobody else he could ask. At least, he figured, he’d get to know where Glen’s loyalties truly lay.


‘Glen, I need you to pull Karina’s cell. We need to know who she was calling.’

Glen stared blankly back at Donovan. ‘What the hell for? What does it matter who she was calling?’

‘She’s up to something, Glen,’ Donovan replied. ‘I don’t know what, but whatever it is it’s important enough that she would make a call whilst we were under attack from some godforsaken homicidal ghoul.’

Glen shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It was a panicked situation, she probably just grabbed the first thing that came to her mind and—’

‘Glen,’ Donovan interrupted him. ‘If you’re worried about upsetting her now, imagine what will happen if she, Warner, Lopez or Jarvis manage to figure out what really happened on Williamsburg Bridge.’

Glen sat silently for a moment and then dragged a hand down his face.

‘If I try to pull the records, it’ll show up,’ he said. ‘Easiest way to do this is for me to just take a look at her call list on the cell itself.’

‘However you do it,’ Donovan muttered, ‘do it soon. We don’t figure out a way to stop all this before they do, then everything we’ve achieved is for nothing.’

Glen stared at Donovan. His features paled slightly. ‘You really think that this thing that’s hunting us is the ghost of Tom Ross’s wife?’

‘I don’t give a damn what it is!’ Donovan snapped. ‘Right now, all that matters is stopping it, understood?’

Glen got up out of his seat and looked down at the chief. ‘What about this CIA guy? What are you going to say to him?’

Donovan grabbed his jacket as he stood and slipped it over his shoulders.

‘I’m going to offer a trade,’ he replied. ‘I’ll hand Warner and Lopez over to them provided that they get the DIA off our case here. Everybody wins.’

‘But that doesn’t remove our problem,’ Glen insisted. ‘Christ’s sake, Donovan, we’re being haunted!’

‘Everything dies,’ Donovan snapped, and jabbed his finger into Glen’s chest. ‘We use our brains to figure out how to kill it. It’s not invulnerable – we’ve just got to figure out where it gets its juice from, okay? We solve that, then we finish this.’

Glen exhaled noisily, then turned and walked out of Donovan’s office.

The chief looked at his desk for a moment and then rested one hand instinctively on his sidearm. He had no idea why a CIA agent would want to meet him in secret in the middle of the night way up in Harlem, but, after what Jackson had found out about the killings in DC, he sure as hell wasn’t going unarmed.