The Eternity Project

53



‘What kept you?’ Lopez asked. ‘And why the hell did you call Tom’s apartment and order us to come here?’

Ethan and Joanna hurried across the street to where Karina, Lopez and Tom Ross were waiting for them beneath the bare branches of trees lining the sidewalk.

‘We were working things out and didn’t want to be tracked,’ Ethan replied. ‘Karina, Tom, this is Joanna. She’s on our side.’

Tom and Karina glanced suspiciously at Joanna, who kept her gaze fixed on Tom as she spoke.

‘I’ve been looking for you for a long time,’ she said.

‘Why’s that?’ Tom asked, his voice feeble and barely audible above the sound of the traffic hustling past.

‘To stop you having to go through what I had to,’ she replied.

Tom Ross squinted at her without really understanding. Karina turned to Ethan.


‘We can chat about old times over coffee when all this is over with,’ she said quickly. ‘Right now, we’ve got to figure out what the hell Donovan’s up to.’

‘Already done,’ Ethan replied. ‘He’s behind everything: the Pay-Go hit, the hiring of the thieves, bribing both the clerk and the lawyer to assist him and corrupt the court hearing. He’s engineered the whole thing and, by now, I’m pretty sure he’ll know that we’ve busted him.’

‘You got evidence of all that?’ Karina challenged. ‘You go in there and accuse Donovan of all this without something solid and we’ll all go down.’

‘It’s him, all right,’ Joanna insisted. ‘The whole event on the Williamsburg Bridge was a set-up. But the auto wreck screwed everything up for them, and they’ve been trying to fix it ever since.’

‘But how could Donovan have done this without the team noticing?’ Karina protested. ‘Surely, one of us would have realized what was going on?’

Lopez looked at Karina for a long moment before she replied. ‘Karina, the whole team was in on it. You and Tom are the only ones they didn’t cut in.’

Karina stared at him for a long time before she replied. ‘Glen?’

‘All of them,’ Ethan confirmed. ‘That’s why the wraith is hunting them down but hasn’t directly attacked you or us. Donovan made sure that you were positioned furthest from the Pay-Go truck when it went down. He then covered the two thieves driving the flatbed truck. They loaded most of the cases into Donovan’s vehicle, or maybe even another one parked ready, then took a few cases with the flatbed as a diversion. Earl and Gladstone sat on top of them in the back of the flatbed to conceal how many cases were actually there. Donovan then controlled the scene at the Pay-Go and made sure the remaining cases disappeared real fast.’

‘And the thieves who escaped from the bridge?’ Lopez asked.

‘Jackson,’ Ethan said, ‘who was most likely waiting in Queens and helped Reece and Hicks switch sides on the bridge and high-tail it back the way they had come. With the auto wreck taking up everybody’s attention and the police blockade on the east side of the bridge, it’s the only plausible way they could have escaped.’

Ethan noticed that Tom Ross was staring vacantly into space, his dark eyes filled with an emotion that Ethan didn’t want to check out. Karina turned away from them, her hand flying to her mouth, and he heard the name she whispered in horror.

‘Glen.’

Lopez stepped forward and placed a hand gently on her shoulder. ‘You couldn’t have known, Karina. Nobody could have known how this would turn out.’

Karina shook her head. ‘It’s why he wouldn’t move in with me, until this was all over. He kept talking about money worries. I thought he was in debt or something and couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t move in with me to save money, why he was so distant all the time. But all this time, he was planning a goddamned heist with Donovan.’

‘Donovan had it all worked out,’ Joanna said. ‘All we’ve got to do now is bring him in.’

‘Not that easy,’ Karina said as she swiped a sleeve angrily across her eyes. ‘Donovan’s just put out an APB on you both.’

‘He’s done what?’ Ethan snapped.

Karina gestured to Ethan and Lopez. ‘Claims that the two out-of-towners must somehow be tied into all of these murders. You guys showed up in the city at the same time the murders started, have been staying at my apartment and have visited Tom Ross twice. You’ve both had access to police officers on the team, one of whom is now dead, and now it seems that you have government agencies interested in questioning you about events that occurred several months ago in Idaho.’

Ethan stared at Lopez, who shook her head in disbelief.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t believe it either. He’s got to have spoken to somebody high up, somebody with enough weight to pull this off’

Ethan nodded, thinking furiously. If Donovan had somehow managed to look them up, maybe contacted police departments in Chicago or Idaho, then he might have attracted the attention of government agencies. The National Security Agency’s immense wire-tapping and surveillance could have detected keywords or vocal-resonance signatures, which would have flagged alerts up at the Barn and quite possibly at the FBI. Inter-agency alerts would have brought the traces to the attention of those concerned at the CIA or perhaps even MK-ULTRA, if they had a dedicated complex.

Amid the seething digital maelstrom of communications, the names of Ethan Warner and Nicola Lopez could have landed right on the doorstep of the very people they had been trying to avoid.

‘It’s worse than that,’ Ethan said. ‘The cell that Jarvis gave me is being monitored by him.’

‘So?’ Lopez asked.

‘I couldn’t call you directly to warn you about Donovan,’ Ethan explained. ‘That’s why I called Tom’s apartment instead and I used Joanna’s cell. It’s a burner, too.’

Lopez stared at Ethan for a moment. ‘I told you so.’

Ethan nodded. ‘Even now, after all that’s happened, he’s playing us.’

‘You think he’s in with Donovan?’ Karina asked.

‘No.’ Ethan shook his head. ‘He’ll be playing a much bigger game,’ he said as he looked at Joanna. ‘He said repeatedly that we wouldn’t be tracked by the CIA because he’d cut a deal. I think I know what he traded.’

‘Me,’ Joanna guessed. ‘Only way he can protect you is to sell me out.’

‘But how would he know you’re even here?’ Karina asked.

Ethan retrieved from his pocket the burner cell that Jarvis had given him and turned it over. He prized the back cover free and peered inside. A small, glossy black device lay taped to the battery pack, which was only half the size it should have been.

‘It’s got a bug in it,’ he explained to Lopez. ‘GPS tracker, very small, very sophisticated. Enough to track me in case Joanna showed up. Jarvis knew that our paths might cross on this eventually. He’s probably had somebody tailing us since we met him at the motel.’

‘Son of a bitch,’ Lopez uttered. ‘He’s always got a motive. We can’t trust him, Ethan.’

‘There isn’t anybody else we can trust!’ Ethan pointed out.

A silence hung in the air for a moment around them, and then Lopez stepped slowly forward and looked up at him. ‘We trust each other,’ she said simply.

Ethan stared at her for a long moment, and then Joanna stepped forward alongside Lopez.

‘And me.’

Karina looked at him and nodded. ‘We’re all in this now. Let’s do it our way.’

Ethan’s gaze fell on Tom Ross, who seemed to have returned to the present as he looked at his four companions. As if finally realizing all that had been done and all that had happened in the last three days, he stepped forward with a glitter of new resolve, burning like a distant star in his eyes, as he looked at Joanna.

‘What do you want with me?’ he asked.

‘To expose what the CIA has done to me,’ Joanna said. ‘You’re the wraith, Tom, but what’s happening to you is similar to something that they did to me. Been having any bad dreams lately?’

Tom swallowed. ‘Like what?’


‘Like being alone in the darkness, hunted and angry, for what feels like a thousand years but could have been moments? They’re called near-death experiences, Tom, and I suspect you’ve been having quite a few.’

Tom held Joanna’s gaze for a moment before he spoke.

‘It’s time,’ he said softly, ‘to finish this. All of it.’

Ethan looked at each of them and felt his shoulders fall. ‘Okay.’

‘Donovan wants us to meet him at Hell Gate,’ Karina said. ‘Says he wants to work this all out. If I can speak to Glen, I might be able to turn him, get him to come clean and end all of this. Christ, if this wraith is hunting for revenge then he’s as much of a target as Donovan.’

‘It’s too dangerous,’ Lopez insisted. ‘Donovan’s not going to fold now. He’s in this for the long run.’

‘It’s the only way,’ Karina insisted. ‘Donovan won’t try to attack me if Glen’s there, he wouldn’t just stand by and do nothing.’

‘We need to protect Tom,’ Joanna said. ‘It’s him they’re after. Their biggest threat now is the wraith, not us. First chance they get, they’ll ice him and then run.’

Ethan nodded slowly and handed the bugged cellphone to Karina. ‘Then we’d better make sure that doesn’t happen.’