‘I’d count yourself good at what you do,’ Victor snapped. ‘You got your ass kicked for the first time in thirty years. It’s not like you quit.’
‘I thought that I would be replaced.’
Victor smiled and shook his head. ‘MJ–12 prefers trusted operatives to fresher faces. You’re too valuable and still an effective agent. Trust me, they’re more than happy with your work over the years.’
‘And who is it that I work for?’
‘You know better than to ask me that, Aaron.’
Aaron stopped on the path alongside the reservoir, the smooth water perfectly reflecting the blue sky and drifting clouds.
‘I’ve dedicated thirty years of my life to MJ–12, never once questioned my role or the things I’ve been asked to do. I’ve taken many lives on the orders of men I’ve never met, and now it may cost me my life to continue to do so. I want to know whether it’s worth it.’
Victor stood before him, his hands in the pockets of his jacket as he directed a stony gaze at his former protégé.
‘You want to know whether it’s worth it?’ he echoed. ‘What’s brought all of this on, Aaron? I know damned well that it’s not the fear of death, you’ve faced far worse, and a couple of broken ribs isn’t it either.’
Aaron glanced out over the nearby water. ‘Stanley Meyer.’
‘Meyer?’ Victor echoed as though shocked. ‘You’re getting cold feet about the man that could have destroyed this country’s entire economy? Jeez, Aaron, and there was me thinking that this was serious.’
Aaron’s own gaze was no less chilling and Victor’s off — handed humor shrivelled.
‘It’s serious to me.’
Victor averted his gaze and gathered himself. ‘The man was a fool Aaron, to think that he could somehow put the entire globe before himself, render our entire fossil fuel industry irrelevant overnight. Your disposal of Meyer cleared the way for a stable economy and re — levelled the balance of power back to where it should be.’
‘Did it?’ Aaron challenged. ‘What Meyer had there, what he could have done would have ended the wars in the Middle East and removed Russia’s choke — hold on the gas supply to Europe. It would have ended climate change and brought in a new era of power generation that would have broken up the big fossil fuel companies and levelled that playing field and yet we killed him, stole the technology and buried it.’
Victor took a pace toward Aaron.
‘Yes, we did,’ he snapped. ‘Because there are too many people making too much money from those Middle East wars, too much money from fossil fuels, too much leverage from Russia’s control of gas. Majestic Twelve is the industrial — military complex, Aaron, you know that and you’re employed to protect them. That’s what you do, it’s what you signed up for and you’re in far too deep now to just suddenly get a conscience and walk away.’
Aaron glowered down at his former mentor.
‘When I become too old for this job, what happens then?’
Victor smiled. ‘You become like me, Aaron. You continue to serve in a less physical role but you remain a part of MJ–12. It’s like a family, Aaron, we look after our own.’
‘So does the Mob.’
Victor’s smile turned cold. ‘If you walk away, Aaron, they’ll hunt you down like a dog.’
‘Some family.’
‘I pulled you off the streets,’ Victor snapped. ‘Gave you a life again, gave you something to believe in!’
‘You lied,’ Aaron reminded him. ‘You told us that we’d be working for the Pentagon, remember?’
‘You do work for the Pentagon, for the administration, for the people and the country in their name. But they don’t own America any more than the administration does. Industry owns America. The Presidents of the United States live in the White House because people like MJ–12 finance their political campaigns. We live in the glory of a free — market capitalist economy, and that’s made MJ–12 not just bigger than government: they own it. The United States of America is a business, Aaron, just like any other. MJ–12 decides who does what, when, how and why, and what you, me or anybody else thinks isn’t worth crap.’ Victor took a breath and smiled at his own ingenuity. ‘You work for the people in a way that can never be publicly admitted but you’re performing a public service Aaron, one that is essential to the continued dominance of America’s interests.’
‘Business interests.’
Victor sighed. ‘Are you saying that you want out, Aaron?’
Aaron shook his head slowly. ‘No, not at all.’
‘Then what’s this all about?’
‘I just needed to know where I stand.’
‘Well, now you do.’
‘Where can I find Ethan Warner?’
Victor smiled. ‘Ah, so you wish to exact revenge for your hurt pride?’
‘I wish to finish the job,’ Aaron growled. ‘Where is he?’
‘He caught a flight to Iraq two hours ago,’ Victor replied. ‘He’s back on the DIA payroll and he’s after something that I want you to find and bring back to America for me.’
Victor produced a file, which Aaron took and briefly leafed through. He saw a series of images of metallic, splinter — like objects an inch long, marked as “cerebral implants”, and the names of four National Security Agency operatives who had vanished in Kowloon some twenty years before. Beside their images were two words: Mind control. He looked up at Victor in surprise.
‘The killings at Fort Benning?’
‘Indeed,’ Victor said. ‘Our Islamic terrorist friends suddenly got all sophisticated. I don’t need to remind you of how important it is that they should not be able to deploy this technology on US soil again. Recover it and bring it home.’
Aaron closed the file and slid it beneath his jacket. ‘Warner has a head start in Iraq.’
‘You’re not going to Iraq,’ the man said. ‘You’re going to Hong Kong to look for a man named Jin Chen. You’ll be briefed on the way.’
‘I want Warner,’ Aaron growled.
‘You’ll get him in good time, my friend,’ Victor said with a smile that held no warmth, ‘Let Warner and the DIA track down the terrorists while you track down the technology, and this time you really are working for the security and benefit of the United States.’
XVIII
‘Been a while since I’ve been here,’ Ethan said.
The Arab Emirates connecting flight from Dubai had landed a few minutes earlier but the airport terminal was virtually silent as he walked with Lopez toward the exits, few international flights moving into and out of the country in the face of near — constant uprisings by Islamic State terrorists and other insurgent tribal groups vying for power and influence.
‘I don’t think much of our chances of hunting any of these people down,’ Lopez replied as they stepped out into the blistering heat outside the terminal, her hair hidden by a native hijab to avoid offending the more religiously sensitive Muslims. ‘The country’s in chaos as much now as it was a decade ago. They could be anywhere, maybe even dead.’
Ethan nodded in agreement.
‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘but they worked for our military and it’s my guess they’ll stay close to what they know.’
Before they had left on the flight to Iraq, Jarvis had provided them with documents taken from Heinrich Muller’s office detailing a number of junior doctors and surgeons who had worked alongside the doctor during his tenure in Iraq.
‘If the implant in General Thompson is the work of Islamic State or a similar organization, most of the people connected to it will likely have been executed,’ Lopez said.
Ethan heard his cell phone ring and answered it, switching to speaker phone as they waited beneath the searing sun for a cab.