‘Doesn’t he just.’
Lopez had never really trusted Doug Jarvis. She liked the man himself well enough, although she never passed up the opportunity to give him a hard time, but she knew that his loyalty to his country surpassed all other considerations. Jarvis had repeatedly taken huge risks with the lives of the people under his command in order to achieve the objectives set him by the government and the DIA, and in that Lopez had often wondered just how much Jarvis differed from the immensely powerful and ruthless men they were trying to bring to justice. There was a fine line between honor and criminality, and Jarvis had spent much of his DIA career skirting the line far more closely that she would have…
‘Visual,’ Vaughn said. ‘He’s here.’
Lopez was mildly surprised to see Mitchell walking down the street on the far side, his hands in his pockets and a sepulchral air surrounding him. Other pedestrians gave him a wide berth as though he were carrying concealed weapons, somehow subconsciously aware of the barely contained violence within.
‘This is a bad idea,’ she insisted as she watched him stride into the hotel. ‘First chance he gets, he’ll bolt.’
‘He could already have done that,’ Vaughn reminded her, ‘the moment he escaped from the facility in Colorado.’
Lopez continued to watch the hotel as she replied.
‘That doesn’t mean he hasn’t got a plan. What I want to know is what the hell he’s got in mind.’
Aaron Mitchell walked into the hotel and bypassed the reception desk, heading instead for the stairwell. The elevators were closer but Mitchell never allowed himself to be completely cornered: elevators had cameras, advance warning for anyone with the wherewithal to monitor the feeds and prepare for his arrival.
He climbed the stairs two at a time and faster than was necessary, deliberately pushing himself physically. It was a hard habit to break, to continually test himself in even the smallest things. He felt once again a pinch of mild pain from his ribs where, a year ago, Ethan Warner had fractured them during a bitter fight in Nevada. Healing was slower now, pain from injuries plagued him for longer, and he knew that his time as an effective field agent was finally coming to an end. He could not afford for this to go wrong.
He left the stairwell on the fourth floor and turned right onto a corridor. Plush red carpets and soft lighting, pictures on the walls. Rooms were numbered in brass, and as he reached room number 37 he knocked without hesitation.
There was a moment’s pause and then he saw the light from the peephole blocked as somebody approached from within. The door opened and a young guy of about thirty with lank brown hair peered out at Mitchell.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Yes,’ Mitchell replied, and slammed his body weight into the door.
The younger man was thrown back in surprise and Mitchell all at once surveyed the room in a single glance as he strode in. Double bed, a young girl asleep on it, wine bottles and beer cans strewn about the room, expensive suits tossed across the backs of chairs and the stale smell of cigarette smoke. Probably an after-office party, or an affair, or just some guy got lucky at a bar downtown.
The guy’s protest and angry expression was silenced as Mitchell’s left fist flicked out and struck the man on his temple. The impact snapped the man’s head back long enough for Mitchell’s right fist to roundhouse against his jaw with a loud crack. The man’s eyes rolled up in his socket as he slammed down onto the bed and fell silent.
The girl awoke and sat up in bed for a brief moment, just long enough for Mitchell to loom over her and wrap one hand over her mouth as the other arm wrapped around her neck and squeezed, pinching off the flow of blood to her brain. The girl fought for only a few moments before she slumped unconscious in his arms, her low blood pressure from being so recently asleep hastening her collapse.
Mitchell released her and spent a moment or two securing the pair, binding them to the bed before borrowing their room key. He ensured that all of the room’s windows were sealed before he turned and exited the room. Moments later, he stopped in front of room 43 and knocked.
The door opened promptly and two armed men with close-cropped buzz cuts and plain gray suits confronted him.
‘Are you alone?’ the first asked.
‘I am.’
‘Are you armed?’
‘I am not.’
One of the men kept a pistol aimed at Mitchell as the other patted him down and waved a wand designed to detect listening devices across his body. Satisfied, they allowed Mitchell into the room and closed the door behind him. Mitchell walked into the room and saw Victor Wilms standing beside the window, looking out over the Manhattan skyline to the south. Wilms turned and gave Mitchell an appraising look.
‘Well, Aaron, I’ll admit that I’m both relieved that you called this meeting and equally surprised. There was some concern that you would start a war against us.’
‘I still might.’
‘Oh come now, you know how foolish that would be,’ Wilms said. ‘You could not hope to succeed. The government has been trying to eradicate Majestic Twelve for decades and has failed. What could you possibly hope to gain?’
Mitchell did not entertain the conversation.
‘You have two choices,’ he said, his voice deep and his expression cold and uncaring.
Wilms’ casual demeanor vanished and his jaw stiffened. ‘And what would they be?’
‘You surrender to the American government and reveal the names of every member of Majestic Twelve, along with everything that they’ve done, in return for immunity from prosecution on your part.’
Wilms blurted out a laugh.
‘Then you’re asking me to commit suicide, Aaron, for such an act would never go unpunished. Even if the cabal were down to its last dime they would ensure they exacted a due and dispassionate revenge, as you have experienced yourself.’
‘Allowing the attempted murder of a former president was a strategic mistake by the cabal,’ Mitchell replied. ‘They have become too confident of their power, too arrogant. It only takes one whistleblower to bring their whole operation down.’
‘The FBI tried that route,’ Wilms pointed out, ‘and it came up empty.’
Mitchell knew that the FBI had investigated documents purporting to elaborate on some elements of Majestic Twelve back in 2002, but that the investigation had concluded that the cabal was the imaginary creation of conspiracy theorists and fringe lunatics.
‘You will become the next whistleblower,’ Mitchell repeated.
‘What’s my other choice?’ Wilms asked, mildly amused as he glanced at the two agents flanking Mitchell, both with pistols drawn and aimed at him.
‘You die here and now,’ Mitchell replied. ‘A tragic fall from that window behind you, just like Stanley Meyer.’
Meyer had been an inventor who had created a remarkable device known as a fusion cage which would have rendered fossil fuels irrelevant overnight, a drain on Majestic Twelve’s resources that they could not allow to reach the public and an act of homicide that Mitchell had bitterly regretted ever since.
‘You’re outnumbered,’ Wilms snarled as hatred twisted his features. ‘I have ten more men outside waiting for you. If anything happens to me in here, you’ll be nothing but a piece of damp bullet art the moment you walk into the street.’
Mitchell did not move, his senses focused on the two men just behind him. He could hear their breathing, could smell their cologne, could sense their presence. Wilms took a pace closer to Mitchell and reached for a pistol beneath his own expensive suit.
‘You’re nothing, Aaron,’ he growled, ‘no matter how important you think that you may be. You’re a spent force, too old to be of use any more in the field. The only person who will die here today is you.’