Covenant (4 page)

“I’m not in the business anymore, not after what happened in Gaza.”

“I know,” Jarvis admitted. “But this time it’s different.”

“Surprise me.”

“Two days ago, an American scientist went missing in the field and we need to locate her.”

Ethan knew all too well that thousands of people around the world went missing every year, vanishing from the face of the Earth and leaving their families unable to grieve or abandon the hope to which they clung so desperately. The suffering of those they left behind, people like him, could not be measured simply in terms of grief, of regret, or even of guilt. It was the corrosive anxiety of not knowing, the terrible pangs of helplessness searing and scalding through the veins.

“Where was she when she went missing?” he asked.

“The Negev Desert, Israel, near the border with Jordan.”

“So call the Red Cross, inform Interpol, and hopefully she’ll turn up.”

Jarvis smiled tightly.

“It’s not quite that simple. Israel is in the middle of peace negotiations with the Palestinian authorities, and for once the various factions that make up Palestine’s resistance have all observed a strict cease-fire. If we raise the alarm with Interpol or have the Red Cross scouring the Gaza Strip, and either Palestinian insurgents or Israeli right-wingers are accused of abduction, both sides could walk away from the table before the signing ceremony on August twenty-sixth.”

“So what do they want from me?”

“They want you to go in there, discreetly, and find out where she is.”

Ethan had seen it coming, but hearing it still felt as though someone had clubbed him around the head. On the rare occasions when Ethan could be honest with himself he accepted that his life was dull, shitty, and almost entirely devoid of hope. But if there was anything that the last two years had taught him, it was that he didn’t need the endless traveling and the artillery-shelled hotels, the vacant stares of traumatized children and the undiluted misery that war inflicted upon the innocent masses groveling for mercy beneath its wrath. The memories were a swollen abscess of pain festering deep within his chest that was slowly being drained by the passing of time. A daily diet of cigarettes, nihilism, and little else had taken its toll, but hell, he was getting somewhere, wasn’t he?

“I can’t help you, Doug.”

“Can’t help,” Jarvis echoed. “You working?”

“No.” Ethan didn’t meet his gaze.

“I wouldn’t be asking if this wasn’t important, Ethan.”

“Israel has excellent security forces.”

“Israel has put a cap on this,” Jarvis explained patiently, “to avoid upsetting the peace process. There’s a total media ban in force too.”

“There’s nothing that I can do out there that they can’t.”

“Except look. You’re good at this, Ethan; you always were. You found those people in Bogotá, didn’t you, and Somalia? You’ve got history in Gaza, friends who can help.” As Ethan continued to stare out of the window in silence, Jarvis changed his tone. “But if you’d rather just sit here and let yourself go to hell, then that’s fine by me.”

Ethan kept his tone neutral. “My life’s good as it is.”

“What life?”

A stab of pain pierced Ethan’s chest. “The one that doesn’t involve me risking my life or anyone else’s. I don’t want to go back out there.”

“So what
do
you want, Ethan?”

Ethan opened his mouth to speak but found no words. His rage withered and he wondered why he had shown it in the first place. Two years with nobody to vent it on.

Jarvis jabbed a finger in his direction.

“You’re sitting here with your thumb up your ass waiting for your life to begin again. I’m giving you some direction, something to move toward before you self-destruct. Christ, it took some effort for the agency to even consider hiring you.”

“I can’t,” Ethan said repentantly. He sought desperately for something to say, and was disappointed with what finally came out. “I still don’t sleep much.”

“You think you’ll sleep better if you just keep running away from what happened?” Ethan shot him a hurt look but Jarvis continued without mercy. “You’re not that kind of man, Ethan, and you know it.”

“So I should spend some time trying to avoid being shot in Gaza instead?”

“Sure, or you can sit here on your ass feeling sorry for yourself. Your call.”

A laugh blurted unbidden from Ethan’s mouth. Jarvis stood, his hands at his sides.

“There’s nobody else I can think of who can help, Ethan. I wouldn’t be coming here asking for this after what happened to you, unless I was out of options.”

Ethan felt as though he was slamming a door in Doug’s face.

“I’m the last person you should be asking.” He looked up, suddenly curious. “What’s your stake in this anyway?”

Jarvis’s features creased as he spoke.

“The missing scientist, Lucy Morgan, is my granddaughter.”

Y
ou should have said something sooner.”

Ethan reveled in the breeze funneling in through the open window of the Ford Taurus as Jarvis drove them out onto South Lake Shore Drive, heading north toward the city skyline and the Willis Tower.

“The Defense Agency’s being discreet about what is really a civilian matter. They wouldn’t front your bail until I’d had you checked out.”

Ethan doubted the agency had been impressed by what they’d heard. He sighed and shrugged inwardly. Nothing matters so don’t get involved. Since he’d lost everything it had been easy to just ignore the world around him. What was the point in worrying? What was the point in anything? If you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing. Why would he want to fly halfway around the globe searching for some damned fool scientist?

Ethan looked at his reflection in the car’s side-view mirror. Narrow irises floated in discs of sun-flecked gray beneath a thick mop of light-brown hair. His skin seemed more heavily lined than his years deserved, creased by both time and neglect, and the cut on his cheek was forming a line of purple bruising.
You shouldn’t be doing this. You’re not ready. Go and see what Doug’s associates have to say, advise them as best you can, then walk away. Just walk away.

“You okay?” Jarvis asked.

“Where are we going?”

“The Chicago Field Museum of Natural History.”

Ethan gave Jarvis a curious glance but said nothing, looking back out of the window. The sparkling expanses of Lake Michigan glistened in the hot sunlight, the beaches and neatly maintained marinas making the South Side look more appealing than it actually was.

It took more than twenty minutes to reach their destination through the laborious traffic, the immense porticoed edifice of the museum towering over them. Jarvis avoided the main lot and turned instead through a discreet side entrance and into a small parking lot, pulling up near a loading bay at the rear of the building.

Ethan followed as Jarvis got out and led him toward an access door, beside which stood a tall woman. Ethan surveyed her disheveled black hair and features creased with exhaustion as they approached.

“Ethan, this is Rachel Morgan, my daughter.”

Rachel Morgan’s handshake was firm and dry, but her smile was feeble and her green eyes haunted by drifting shadows of pain that Ethan recognized all too quickly.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Warner,” Rachel said, hope twinkling like a newborn star in her eyes, before withering as she observed his tired features and the bruising on his cheek. “Please, this way.”

Ethan followed Rachel down a narrow corridor that wound endlessly through the depths of the museum. Ethan whispered to Jarvis from the corner of his mouth, “Why the hell are we going down here?”

The old man shook his head, refusing to be drawn.

Rachel reached a large door and beckoned them through. Ethan found himself walking into a cavernous hall closed off to the public. Shafts of sunlight from soaring windows sliced through a galaxy of dust motes drifting on the musty air. The walls were dominated by scaffolding draped with the hallmarks of ongoing renovation, workmen in hard hats laboring high on the precarious walkways. A huge mammoth fossil dominated the center of the hall, standing three times as high as a man and with tusks as thick as Ethan’s waist. It stared solemnly down at him from the depths of prehistory as he passed by.

At a table near the center of the hall sat two men, dressed in identical gray suits and bearing identical serious expressions. They stood as Ethan approached the table, the taller of the two extending his hand.

“Andrew Woods, Defense Intelligence Agency. This is my colleague, Adrian Selby.”

Ethan shook their hands as Rachel Morgan and Doug Jarvis stood unobtrusively to one side.

“My apologies for the circumstances of your arrival here, Mr. Warner,” Woods said, “but we’re in the midst of a crisis and attempting to keep a lid on things.”

“Doug informed me of the situation,” Ethan said.

Woods sat down and looked at a series of papers spread across the table.

“Ethan Warner, born 1978, Chicago, Illinois. You worked as a war correspondent.”

Ethan was about to respond but before he could open his mouth, Selby spoke.

“And you’re a man with a talent for finding people.”

Ethan said nothing.

“Some fifteen individuals over a period of several years,” Woods added. “Half a dozen from inside the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Somalia, and many more prior to that in Mexico and Colombia.”

Ethan glanced at Jarvis, who refused to catch his eye. He turned back to the two men. “What do you want?”

“Reassurance,” Selby replied quickly, “that you can be trusted and that you can do what we require. We have … concerns. We understand what happened in Gaza and don’t wish to dredge up any unnecessary regrets.”

A dense pall of sadness swelled in Ethan’s chest.

“Help us with what we need,” Selby said, “and in return we can help you find closure.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Woods raised a pacifying hand as he spoke.

“Israel is a powerful and influential nation, but they are not without diplomatic vulnerabilities. We could provide sufficient leverage to help you find out what happened to your fiancée in Gaza.”

Ethan experienced a transient blurring of his vision, his fingernails digging into his palms as he shouted, “You want to tell me why you haven’t been doing that all along?”

“We’re doing what we can,” Woods said immediately. “We’re as uncomfortable about this as you are, and felt that an incentive was required.”

Selby stood and held a photograph out to Ethan. He reached for it, suddenly and inexplicably afraid. He looked down at the grainy image and felt something sharp sting the corners of his eyes as a gasp leaped unbidden from deep within his chest.

A woman held firmly in the hands of masked men, being transferred from a building into a battered-looking sedan on a dusty street. Distress etched into her features. A Kalashnikov wedged against her side. Hair in disarray, wrists bound. Joanna.

Tears that Ethan struggled to conceal burned like acid across his eyes, and his voice was a rasp as he spoke.

“When? Where?”

“January, near Jabaliya in the Gaza Strip,” Woods replied. “Israel only released this image after considerable diplomatic pressure.”

Ethan looked at the picture for a moment longer, a face he hadn’t seen for three years, then cleared his eyes and throat. He glanced at Jarvis. The old man was watching him hopefully, as was Rachel.

“A paleontologist has gone missing in Israel,” Ethan said as he pocketed the photograph.

Woods looked down at his paperwork.

“Dr. Lucy Morgan had been involved in an excavation for the Hebrew University near a place called Be’er Sheva in the Negev Desert, along with a team of scientists. The team completed its work and returned to Jerusalem but for reasons unknown Lucy remained in the field. Members of the university sounded the alarm after no contact with her for twenty-four hours.”

Apparently sensing Ethan’s change of heart, Jarvis picked up the story.

“Lucy has always complied with standard safety procedures in the past.”

“She found something,” Ethan suggested with a clairvoyant flash.

“That’s the last that was heard of her,” Jarvis said. “We’ve no idea where she went or why.”

“Any news on possible abductors?”

“Nothing,” Selby answered. “Most insurgent groups out there consider foreign hostages a major coup. They should be screaming at the top of their lungs by now.”

“Anything else?”

“Lucy’s research program was involved in the study of …” Woods hesitated. “Mitochondrial deoxy … ribo … nucleic acid.”

Rachel Morgan spoke for the first time. “Mitochondrial DNA. You know, the double helix?”

“There have been some major studies going on out in the Middle East and Africa,” Woods continued, “looking for traces of our earliest ancestors.”

“Why would someone abduct her for that?” Ethan asked.

Woods, Selby, and Jarvis all looked at Rachel.

“My daughter was involved in an off-the-record dig at an excavation site she herself discovered. I only received a single e-mail from her, sent here to the museum and copied to me before she vanished. She also sent the museum a bone fragment from her discovery that the DIA has acquired. During her excavations, Lucy found the remains of a species of humanoid buried in the Negev Desert.”