Chimera: A Jim Chapel Mission

Chapter 10

Julia met his eye directly and gave him a very warm smile. "I know you're on a tight time frame. But I want you to promise me something. The first time we get a chance, you have to let me show you how much I appreciate your saving my life."
For a moment-just a moment-Chapel thought he knew exactly what she meant by that, and the thought made him feel very hot and bothered. "You don't mean-"
Her eyes opened wide, and she put a hand over her mouth. "Jeez! No. I meant you would let me buy you dinner. Or something." She laughed and reached over and patted his wrist, defusing the sudden tension. "Wow, Chapel. You're blushing."
He turned away, because he could feel the heat in his cheeks.
"Oh, don't be embarrassed. It's cute," Julia said.
Nobody had called Chapel cute since he was seven years old. It felt very strange to hear it now.
"There's something about you, Chapel. You're a tough guy, I see that in the way you move, the lines in your face. But there's an innocence underneath it. Interesting. It's like I can see that you really believe in what you do. In who you are. You're not cynical about your job at all."
"I took an oath to protect my country," he said. "I take it pretty seriously."
Julia shook her head. "I've met spies before. They seemed to feel like having secrets made them better than everybody else."
"The opposite is usually true," Chapel said, furrowing his brow. He was distinctly uncomfortable with where this conversation was going.
Luckily Julia didn't push it any further. Though she did say, almost under her breath, "I wish I could see you in your uniform. I bet you look just adorable."
Now that was one thing no one had ever said about him. He pretended he hadn't heard her and went back to his sandwich.
After they finished their meal, Julia curled up in her leather seat, covered in a thick wool blanket that looked very warm, and was out like a light. Chief Petty Officer Andrews came out and touched a button on the arm of Julia's chair. It reclined smoothly and without noise, so gently Julia didn't even wake up. The chief petty officer expertly slipped a pillow under Julia's head. She smiled at Chapel, then disappeared as silently as she'd come.
Chapel watched Julia's body rise and fall with her breathing for a while. He thought about how she'd held him when he rescued her from Laughing Boy. About how good it had felt to have her body pressed up against his. He'd felt like a hero, then.
He watched her brow wrinkle and knew she must be dreaming.
She was beautiful. Beyond that, there was something more to her. Real substance. She was strong and smart and kind. He hadn't met anyone like her in a long time. He'd brought her with him to keep her safe. That was all. She had kissed him, but she'd said she wasn't trying to start anything. Whatever he was feeling now she probably didn't return it. How could she? He was a man with one arm. That was enough to put anybody off. Maybe she'd just kissed him out of pity. She'd called him cute and adorable, but those were words women used to describe babies and kittens, not men they wanted to get to know better in a romantic way. Weren't they?
Damn. He needed to stop thinking like that. He needed to stop thinking about Julia as anything but an asset that needed to be protected.
He turned his seat to face the window and watched lights blinking on the tarmac. He had to get his mind off Julia. He grabbed his phone and his hands-free set out of his pocket. He put the hands-free set in his ear and forced himself to close his eyes. "Angel," he said, "I don't know if you're listening. I wanted to say I'm sorry."
"Magic words," Angel told him. "Do you have any more of them?"
"I was letting this case get to me," he told her, "when I accused you of having your own agenda. That was wrong of me. You've done nothing but help me. You've been an utter godsend. I'm starting to see that I could never do this without you."
"That's a start," she said.
"This case-this operation-is like nothing I've ever had to do before," Chapel told her. "I'm starting to get worried. There are three more chimeras out there. There's no way I can catch them all before they kill someone."
"It's looking pretty grim, I'll admit," Angel told him.
"And now I have Laughing Boy to worry about. He's killing people, Angel. He's killing anyone who comes in contact with a chimera, just in case they're infected. He was going to kill Julia."
"I know."
"I couldn't let that happen," he said.
"I know. Director Hollingshead wasn't very happy when he heard you'd brought a civilian along for the ride, of course. But I explained everything to him and made him see it was necessary to prevent another death."
"You did that for me? Even after what I said?"
"I care, Chapel. I care about people, just like you do."
Chapel nodded to himself. He was very glad to hear it. "So he's . . . okay with this?" He glanced over his shoulder and saw Julia's sleeping face half covered by her blanket. She was beautiful like that, in repose. When she wasn't angry or grief-stricken. He wondered what it would have been like to meet her before all this. In just ordinary circumstances. But then again, how could that have ever happened? A veterinarian in New York and a defense intelligence analyst in Virginia would have very little to talk about. Almost nothing in common. "He won't demand I turn her over to the CDC?"
Angel was silent for a moment. After recent events, Chapel worried she might not come back on the line. "She could be infected, Chapel."
"I know," Chapel sighed. He'd known it from the moment he'd found Laughing Boy inside her clinic. She had, in fact, been exposed to the chimera, and if it so much as scratched her while they were in the back of the hijacked cab together, she could have the virus already. "If Hollingshead orders it, I'll bring her in. Turn her over to his doctors so they can screen her for the virus. Treat her if necessary. But I can't just send her off to face Laughing Boy on her own."
"He won't order that. Even if she does have the virus, she's probably better off with you where you can watch her and make sure she doesn't spread it. Still-it's just going to make your job harder if you have to babysit her at the same time."
"I'm not so sure about that. She's proved herself to be pretty resourceful, and she might have information I need. Answers to questions I haven't even figured out how to ask, yet."
"Fair enough. Hollingshead says it's okay, she can travel with you. Just make sure she doesn't learn anything too sensitive, and it should be all right."
"That's good," Chapel said. "About Laughing Boy-what can we do about him? If he's running around killing people, then he must have gone rogue, right? Please tell me that Banks didn't order him to kill Julia. Please tell me we can have him arrested and remove him from the field."
"I wish I could," Angel said.
Chapel tapped at the armrest of his seat with his good fingers. "The CIA doesn't just kill American citizens. I mean, it has, and I suppose things happen that I don't get to hear about. But-"
"Chapel, he was authorized to do this. And the authorization came from higher up than Banks."
Chapel grabbed the armrest hard enough to make the leather creak. "So he's got a license to kill? That's something from the movies. Only the president can authorize the execution of American citizens without a trial."
"Higher up, I said," Angel told him.
Chapel shivered at the thought. "Is the threat of this virus really that high? That they would just kill people on suspicion they might have it?"
"I don't have a lot of information on it. But clearly someone thinks so," Angel told him. "This is way beyond top secret stuff. What we do know, and this from confidential sources, is that the disease caused by the virus is incurable and almost impossible to detect until it's way too late to do anything."
"Jesus." Chapel glanced at Julia again. She could be a ticking time bomb right now. She could be incubating the virus while she slept. And there was no way to know for sure. "That doesn't excuse his behavior. We need to find a way to stop Laughing Boy now. Before he can kill anyone else."
"Chapel," Angel said, "I want to tell you something. You were right."
"What?" It had been a while since somebody had said that to him.
"I do have my own agenda," she told him. "Or rather, my agenda is the same as Director Hollingshead's, and it may not match up with yours. We're not like Director Banks and his operative. We don't want to just kill people to keep this thing under control. But we do intend to control it, regardless of what that takes. Director Hollingshead can't stop Laughing Boy. He doesn't intend to try. He may not like Laughing Boy's methods-but he agrees with Banks, at least in principle, about what needs to be done. If Julia does have the virus, we won't kill her. But we will lock her up for the rest of her life in a facility like the one the chimeras escaped from. Because we have no other choice."
PART TWO
IN TRANSIT: APRIL 12, T+15:48
When Chapel was convinced Julia wasn't going to wake up at any moment, he took care of one task he'd neglected all day. Removing his jacket and unbuttoning his shirt, he plugged his artificial arm into a power outlet near his seat, using a retractable cord built into the shoulder. While he waited for it to recharge he called Angel again and asked her about the next two names on the list. "Start with the one in Chicago, first," he said.
"Eleanor Pechowski," Angel replied, and he heard her clacking at her keyboard. "Eleanor, who are you? Let's see. She's a retired schoolteacher."
"That doesn't sound like someone a genetic freak would want to kill," Chapel pointed out. "Maybe a disgruntled former student . . ."
"She worked for the UN, for a while," Angel went on. "In UNESCO. Let's see . . . she lived in New York City at the time, on Roosevelt Island. Looks like she taught English, math, and American history to the children of UN delegates. Maybe she fell in with the black helicopter crowd."
Chapel rolled his eyes. "Please tell me you're not a conspiracy nut, Angel," he said.
Angel laughed. "No, I was just kidding. But just to work at the UN schools, Eleanor Pechowski had to have a security clearance. So the intelligence community would have been aware of her."
"It's a pretty tenuous connection. Just because somebody did a background check on her doesn't mean she ended up working for the CIA. And the last time I checked, the agency didn't hire a lot of English teachers. Okay, what about Jeremy Funt, the one in Atlanta? What's his story?"
"That one's easy. He was a government employee, and all his records are right here. Nothing hidden at all."
"Tell me he worked for the CIA," Chapel said, leaning forward and nearly pulling the plug on his arm.
"Not exactly," Angel said. "He worked for the FBI."
"Huh," Chapel said. That didn't make much sense. The CIA and the FBI had little to do with each other, other than both being government agencies. They weren't even overseen by the same cabinet department. "Is it possible that's a cover?"
"Not unless it's an extremely good one. His service record is an open book, here-and it shows him working a steady load of cases from 1981 to 1996, all pretty standard stuff, missing persons, kidnappings, wire fraud. The one question mark is that he left the bureau in 1996 at the age of forty-five, long before mandatory retirement. With a file like that, normally you'd expect that he left the bureau in disgrace, that he messed up somehow and was forced to retire, but there's no indication here he was anything less than a solid asset to the bureau."
"So Funt just dropped off the bureau payroll with no explanation, huh? That's interesting. And at least he sounds like a more likely target." He had no idea why the chimeras would want to kill Funt, but if he had to prioritize targets, an FBI agent sounded higher in value than a retired schoolteacher. It sounded like Atlanta might have been the right choice after all. "Angel, what else can you tell me about this guy? What does he do for money? Does he have any family in Atlanta?"
"I'm looking at that right now. It looks like-hold on. Chapel, give me a second here, there's something wrong with one of my laptops. Looks like somebody got a keystroke logger in my system, but that's-hey!"
"Angel?" Chapel asked.
"Somebody's piggybacking on my signal," she said, sounding indignant. "Just who the hell do they think they are? Hacking me, why, I ought to-"
Static filled Chapel's ear and then the signal went dead.
"Angel?" he called. "Angel, come in. What just happened? Angel?"
A new voice spoke to him.
"Captain Chapel, I presume," the voice said. "You and I need to have a little talk."
IN TRANSIT: APRIL 12, T+16:02
"Listen, I don't know who the hell you are, but this is an encrypted line," Chapel said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. The screen showed he was still connected to the number (000) 000-0000. There was no indication anything had changed. "Intruding on this channel is a violation of any number of laws, and-"
"Law?" The voice in his ear chuckled. It was a male voice, a little gravelly as if its owner was a habitual cigarette smoker. There was iron in that voice, but also a little silver-it was the voice of someone used to speaking for a living, like a salesman or a voice-over actor. "I know all about the law," the voice said. "I apologize for cutting in, but they weren't going to let me speak to you, otherwise."
Chapel bit his lip. This was very, very bad. If someone could compromise his line to Angel, then they could find out everything he'd said to her. They could know all his plans and everything he'd learned.
He couldn't imagine that the chimeras could be doing this. They weren't stupid, but they had shown no sign of having the kind of organization it would require to pull off this kind of stunt. He hadn't forgotten, though, that someone had to be helping them. Somebody had broken them out of the facility in the Catskills. Maybe, for the first time, he was running up against that shadowy organization.
"Tell me your name, right now, and who you work for," Chapel insisted. "That's not a request. I can have you up on charges for impeding a federal investigation-and maybe treason, too. You've made a very bad mistake contacting me like this."
"Captain, do me a favor and look at your phone. All will be explained."
Chapel frowned, but he looked down at the screen of his phone. The screen went blank and then lit up to show a grainy video feed. He saw what looked like an image of someone's office, a desk with a green blotter and behind it a window looking out onto a night-shrouded cityscape. After a moment, someone stepped into the frame and sat down behind the desk so the camera could focus on his face.
Chapel recognized the man right away. It was Franklin Hayes.
"Your Honor," he said, despite himself.
Hayes was the Denver-based federal judge whose name was on the kill list. This was one of the people Chapel was trying so desperately to protect.
So what the hell was he doing breaking into Chapel's encrypted line?
"I know this is surprising, Captain," Hayes said. He was an older man, maybe seventy, with silver hair but sharp, intelligent eyes. He wore an immaculate suit with a handkerchief perfectly folded in the breast pocket. "I know it's unorthodox. But I assure you I mean no harm."
"Your Honor, I apologize if I was abrupt, but I was serious about the breach of security. This line-"
Hayes waved one hand in dismissal. "Director Hollingshead wouldn't even tell me your name," the judge said. "Director Banks proved a little more tractable. He owed me a favor, from long ago, so I've called it in. My friends in Langley were able to tap into your line."
So Hayes had connections with the CIA? That was interesting. Chapel made a mental note to look into it. It seemed everyone on the kill list-with the exception of Christina Smollett-was related to the CIA somehow.
"I've been trying to contact you all day," Hayes said, "ever since I was informed my life was in danger."
"Yes, sir," Chapel said. "I had one of my people call you about that. I wanted to make sure you knew to get to a safe place, somewhere you could be protected."
"And I've done just that," Hayes told him. "I'm in my courthouse. I keep a cot here in case I work too late and can't go home, so I'm relatively comfortable. I have state police crawling all over this building."
"Then you should be fine. They can protect you until I arrive."
"Captain. Please don't insult my intelligence. I know what happened to Helen Bryant. And I have some notion of what kind of man is coming here to kill me. Oh, I don't know all your secrets. But Director Banks filled me in on a few pertinent details."
Chapel wanted to strangle Banks, and not for the first time. This case was so secret even the people working on it weren't allowed to know any details. Yet Banks had clearly spilled some of the unknowns to a civilian, just because he'd asked nicely.
"I know," Hayes went on, "that the man in question is more than a match for a few state police. They're little more than highway patrolmen. I need better protection than this. I think I might rate a personal visit from the one man we know is capable of taking out one of these killers."
"I'm sorry?" Chapel asked.
"I'm saying, Captain, that I want you to come here, to Denver, and protect me personally. Director Banks tells me I'm the highest-value target on your list. That I deserve the best protection. It's clear that you're it."
"With all due respect, Your Honor, that's not possible right now," Chapel said. "I'm in the middle of an investigation, and I can't break it off now."
"I understand you're on your way to Atlanta," Hayes said, as if Chapel had said nothing. "That's good, you're headed in the right direction. It will only take a few more hours in the air for you to get here, to Denver. I'll have a car waiting for you at the airport and it will bring you straight to me. I'll let you know when I have the name of the liaison you'll be working with-"
"Your Honor," Chapel cut in, "I'm sorry, but the answer is no."
Hayes waved his hand in dismissal again. "I'll give you complete autonomy on how you want to set up your defenses. You'll be in charge of my escort and you can requisition any more units you need from the local police department, should-"
"I said no," Chapel said, more forcefully.
If anything, that just made Hayes look confused.
Judges had a lot of power. In their courtrooms, they were like gods, able to hand down judgments and throw anyone in jail on contempt charges. Chapel could only imagine how godlike a federal judge must feel most of the time.
Chapel had met enough generals to know that people like that, people who thought of themselves as omnipotent, stopped understanding the word no. It didn't just make them angry-they fell out of practice with knowing what it meant. People did what they said, all the time, and nobody ever questioned them.
So it took a few seconds for the negation to sink into Hayes's head.
Eventually he pursed his lips and said, "I can make a lot of trouble for you."
"Is that a threat, Your Honor?" Chapel asked.
"I'm a federal judge, Captain. I don't make threats."
The implication was clear. Hayes didn't need to make threats-when he could make promises instead. Chapel forced a smile onto his face. He was making a bad enemy here, and he knew it. He was about to inherit all kinds of problems. But for this one brief moment it felt pretty good to tell the judge where to stick it. "I'm in the middle of my investigation. More lives than just yours are at stake. The person of interest won't reach Colorado-can't reach Colorado-in less than twenty-four hours from now. If I can't stop him before that, I'll see you in Denver before he arrives. But in the meantime I have other work to do. So no, I won't be coming directly to you."
"Now listen here," Hayes said. "I don't remember requesting your opinion, and I won't put up with-"
A hand fell on Chapel's shoulder.
He jumped in his seat. Swiveling around, he saw Julia standing behind him. She was looking down at his phone.
On the screen, Hayes had gone silent. His face was a mask of utter surprise.
"Why are you talking to Agent Hayes?" Julia asked.
"Agent?" Chapel asked.
The screen of his phone went black, instantly.
IN TRANSIT: APRIL 12, T+16:14
"I'm so sorry," Julia said. "I didn't mean to see anything I wasn't supposed to, or . . . or whatever. I just woke up because I heard you shouting at that man, and I came over . . . I guess I shouldn't have. I'll go back to my seat now."
"No, Julia, it's fine," Chapel said, grabbing her hand before she could walk back to her seat. "I'm sorry, I was a little worked up there. But what did you mean when you called him Agent Hayes? He's a judge."
"He is?"
"You didn't recognize him? He's been in the news recently. He's about to become a Supreme Court justice."
Julia shrugged. "I get my news from the New York Times, not the TV, so I don't know what a lot of people look like. I mean, I've heard about Franklin Hayes, but . . . wow. I guess I never put two and two together. It can't be the same guy, can it?"
Chapel squeezed her hand. "Care to let me in on what you're thinking?"
Julia inhaled deeply. "This is getting weird."
"This case? Yeah, it has its peculiarities," Chapel said.
"No," Julia said. "I mean the way you're holding my hand."
Chapel glanced down and saw he was still holding on to her. He let go. "Sorry. Like I said, I'm a little worked up."
"Just . . . never mind," she said. "Look, I told you a while back about how I knew my parents were in the CIA. Because an agent came to dinner once a year to debrief them. His name was Agent Hayes, and I'm pretty sure it was the same man you were just talking to. He looks a little older, obviously, but, yeah, that was him."
"That's actually really important," Chapel told her. "It helps me fill in a couple of blanks."
"You're welcome, I guess," she said.
"I need to talk to somebody about this. I might have some more questions, but first-"
"I'll be right over here," Julia said, walking over and patting the headrest of her seat. "In the meantime, though, I think I'll go back to sleep."
"Uh, okay," Chapel said.
Their eyes met and something passed between them. Chapel wasn't sure exactly what, and he didn't have time to think about it. Maybe she was starting to think she'd made the wrong decision, coming along with him. Or maybe . . .
He put that thought out of his head right away. That couldn't possibly be right.
"Angel," he said, to clear his mind. "Angel, are you there?"
"I'm back," Angel told him. "What happened there?"
"Franklin Hayes broke into your signal. The Franklin Hayes. He had some help from Banks, by the sound of it."
"Banks hijacked my line?" Angel sounded mortified. "That son of a . . . I can't believe it. Well, I mean, I believe he would do such a thing. I just can't believe he actually pulled it off."
"I think we need to assume from now on that he can hear everything we say," Chapel told her. "I don't like that much, but-"
"I'll do what I can to change that," Angel told him. "It means switching to a new system, cutting myself completely out of the network for a while, rebuilding my public and private keys, getting a whole new block of IP addresses. I'll be offline while that's going on-I won't be able to contact you at all. And it'll take some time."
"We don't have a lot of that," Chapel told her.
"I know. It'll take about four hours, and even then I can't guarantee he won't pull that stunt again. But it's something we need to do. Director Hollingshead will freak out when he hears about this. Oh my God, I have so much work to do here. I thought I was secure! I mean, I've got firewalls in here, I've got 256-bit encryption, I've got defenses nobody's supposed to know about. All of it military spec. I'm supposed to be invisible here. I feel like somebody broke into my house and went snooping through my underwear drawer, Chapel."
"I can imagine," he told her. "Angel, before you go offline, I just need to know a couple of things. I need you to look at Franklin Hayes. Apparently he worked for the CIA at some point. Can you confirm that?"
"Should be no harm in looking. Wow. That was easy. It's on his public website. Yep, before he became a judge he worked for the CIA, back in the eighties and early nineties."
"As an asset?"
"No, as a lawyer. Nothing clandestine," Angel said. "The CIA has its own cadre of lawyers. Just like the Mafia does and for the same reason-because so much of what it does is illegal. It looks like his time there was pretty mundane. His records aren't even classified. Let's see what I can pull up."
Chapel waited while she tapped at her keyboard.
"Huh," she said, finally. "Interesting. Franklin Hayes was lead counsel on a couple of high-profile cases. Civil liberties lawsuits, mostly-American citizens claiming the CIA had trampled on their rights. Ninety percent of his cases were settled out of court, but that isn't unusual. Corporate lawyers have the same ratio, typically. I'm running through the list of his cases . . . huh. Oh, boy. Chapel, you're going to like this."
"Go ahead."
"One of the cases was brought by the family of a young woman who had been committed to a mental hospital for schizophrenia. She claimed the CIA had sent one of their spies to sneak in her window every night and . . . ah . . . take advantage of her in her bed. The case was thrown out for lack of evidence. The judge who heard it chastised the family for wasting the court's time. Franklin Hayes was counsel for the agency on that case."