‘I hope this is important,’ Mitchell rumbled.
‘That depends on how concerned you are about missing agents,’ Jarvis replied crisply, shutting the office door.
Mitchell looked up. ‘Who?’
‘Warner and Lopez,’ Jarvis said. ‘They’ve been off the grid for twenty-four hours.’
Mitchell looked back down at his paperwork. ‘They’re not agents.’
Jarvis formed a tight smile that made his jaw ache.
‘They’re working for us, which puts them on the right side of things. I told you that without back-up they risked being compromised.’
‘Everybody who works for United States Intelligence risks being compromised,’ Mitchell said without looking up. ‘They know that.’
‘So, we just abandon them then.’
Mitchell sighed and finally looked up at Jarvis.
‘Doug, we’ve got people scattered over half the globe tracking everything from drug lords to terrorists to suspected Russian sleeper agents. Some of our people are involved in investigations so serious and so dangerous that even I don’t know the full implications of their activities. I would imagine that by comparison your two rogues are having a riot down in New Mexico. Probably living la vida loca.’
Jarvis shook his head.
‘There’s something more to this than just a vanished medical examiner. Donald Wolfe is hiding something, and it’s got to do with SkinGen and its CEO Jeb Oppenheimer. We’ve had three dead bodies turn up, two of which are now in the hands of departments to which we have no access, based on claims of infectious outbreaks for which there is no evidence. This whole thing stinks!’
Abraham Mitchell put his pen down, sighed and rubbed his temples.
‘Doug, I really admire what you’re doing here, okay?’ he said. ‘I know what you sacrificed to get this little experimental unit of yours up and running.’
‘I didn’t want to be sitting in your chair,’ Jarvis said without melodrama, gesturing to Mitchell’s seat. ‘This was more important, an entirely deniable, civilian contracted investigative unit to work on cases that the Pentagon dismisses as anomalous. It was what the DIA needed — it was the right thing to do.’
‘Right for who?’ Mitchell challenged him. ‘You’ve put all your eggs in one basket. Having a dedicated but unofficial investigative force is all well and good, and I’m sure the Republicans amongst the hierarchy here think it’s a great idea to remove government control and subcontract our work force out to private investigators. But that means that you relinquish that same control, and the people you’ve hired can be unpredictable.’
‘Ethan Warner is as reliable an investigator as I’ve—’
‘He’s a wild card!’ Mitchell cut across him. ‘The man’s a walking war zone. Since he got down to Santa Fe, he’s been involved in several shootings, an exploding apartment block and was last seen riding a goddamned horse down the I-25!’
Jarvis managed to keep a straight face. ‘He’s resourceful and self-reliant.’
‘He’s reckless!’ Mitchell brought his wrath under control. ‘What do you want, anyway?’
‘I think that we should organize some kind of search of SkinGen, if we can get the warrants.’
‘Sublime.’ Mitchell smiled in disbelief. ‘You want people to go in there and raid one of the most powerful pharmaceutical firms in the world on the basis of a hunch. I can’t wait to see what Congress makes of that during the inquests that will doubtless follow.’
‘Ethan Warner was certain that Tyler Willis was being held under duress in the building before he was found dead a few hours later. It was Wolfe’s men who prevented Ethan from accessing the room in which Willis was being detained.’
Mitchell’s expression became somber.
‘It’s not enough for us to gain access to SkinGen,’ he said. ‘We’d never get the warrants, and nor would state police under the same circumstances. The state attorney would throw the request out at first glance without probable cause. Not to mention the fact that even if you are right, Donald Wolfe works for USAMRIID. Wild accusations aren’t enough for me to go crap on their doorstep.’
Jarvis handed Mitchell a piece of paper that he’d printed out minutes before.
‘How about this then?’ he asked. ‘Donald Wolfe travels down to New Mexico for a meeting with Jeb Oppenheimer. He stays overnight and then flies here to meet with you yesterday. Check the flight times.’
Mitchell scanned the sheet of paper and looked up at Jarvis.
‘It’s eight hours out.’
‘Eight hours and fourteen minutes to be precise,’ Jarvis agreed. ‘He didn’t stay overnight in New Mexico. I managed to pull the flight plans but they don’t add up either, so I got on the phone and contacted air-traffic controllers in several states, managed to track the aircraft north to Alaska.’
‘Alaska?’ Mitchell rumbled.
‘I got in touch with the National Security Agency over in Maryland and pulled a few strings. They sent me tracking data from one of their KH-11 keyhole satellites that passed over the Bering Sea and Alaska at the time the SkinGen jet would have been in the area.’ Jarvis handed Mitchell another piece of paper, this one bearing a photograph. ‘This shows the aircraft at Bethel Airport.’
‘What the hell would he be doing up there?’ Mitchell asked.
‘It wouldn’t have raised a question if he hadn’t tried to cover his tracks,’ Jarvis pointed out. ‘There’s more. Wolfe got into a private aircraft, hired not by USAMRIID but by SkinGen, and flew north to a remote outpost called Brevig Mission.’
‘To do what?’ Mitchell asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Jarvis admitted. ‘But I’d sure like to find out.’
Mitchell looked at the image for a long moment, and then nodded.
‘Okay, fine. Send a team from the nearest FBI field office in Alaska to find out what he was doing there. Tell them we need something solid within twenty-four hours.’
‘What about my people?’ Jarvis asked. ‘I need just a small unit to go in and find Warner and Lopez. For all we know they could be rotting in the desert somewhere while we sit here twiddling our thumbs waiting for a phone call.’
‘We’re looking at a time discrepancy here, Doug,’ Mitchell said, ‘not a homicide.’
‘You really want to take a risk like that?’ Jarvis prodded him. ‘If they’re onto something big and we hang them out to dry…’
Mitchell’s eyes scanned the paperwork for a long moment as he digested the meaning behind Jarvis’s words before he spoke.
‘There’s a Marine-recon unit conducting training operations out of Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. If you haven’t heard from your little John Wayne by the time the FBI report back to us, you can re-task them to infiltrate the area. But I don’t want to hear that you’ve gone in heavy unless there’s concrete proof, understood?’
Jarvis nodded and turned to leave the office.
‘Doug.’
He turned at the door to see Mitchell regarding him seriously.
‘This experimental unit of yours is becoming more and more difficult to keep under wraps. If your boy Warner can’t do his work without incinerating city blocks, it will get shut down before year’s end and everything you’ll have done will be for nothing.’
Jarvis held onto the door handle for a long beat, and then left the office. As he walked down the corridor he realized there was no longer anything he could do cooped up in DC. He pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number. His secretary answered on the second ring.
‘Karen, get me on the first available military transport out of Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility to Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. And get me the number of the USAMRIID unit chief operating in Santa Fe. I’ll be needing a quiet word with him.’