‘Almost there,’ Vaughn said as he scanned the screen. ‘You ready?’
Lopez leaned across the back seat and opened the driver’s side rear window, the sound of the bustling traffic and a gust of cool air flooding the car as she flipped a switch on the drone and activated her control unit.
The drone’s ducted-fan engines spun up with an electric whine and the drone lifted up off the seat alongside Lopez as she deftly hovered the craft in the rear of the vehicle and guided it toward the open window.
‘Stand by,’ Vaughn said as he glanced in his rear view mirror. A flow of vehicles, cabs and goods trucks eased past their car, and then a gap appeared in the traffic. ‘Go!’
Lopez pushed the control column forward and the drone hummed out of the window and over the street outside. Lopez immediately increased the power and the drone ascended rapidly out of sight into the bright sky above as she switched her attention from the drone to another laptop propped against the rear passenger door opposite her.
Through a camera attached to the bottom of the drone she could see the busy street below the drone as it climbed ever higher into the sky. The densely packed buildings to its right contrasted sharply with the angular expanses of greenery to its left as Central Park came into view. She smiled mischievously as she saw their own vehicle tucked in against the sidewalk.
‘This is cool,’ she whispered as she flew the drone.
‘Stay focused,’ Vaughn replied as he watched the traffic flow. ‘LeMay’s coming past us right now.’
Lopez forced herself to focus on the screen and not look outside as she hovered the drone three hundred feet above Manhattan.
‘Passing us…,’ Vaughn said, ‘…now.’
‘Got him.’
Lopez saw the silver Mercedes in the drone’s sights as it passed by, heard the whisper quiet engine and the hum of its tires on the asphalt as it passed them on its way to the Pierre Hotel.
‘You think that you can pick him up once he goes inside?’ Vaughn asked. ‘We won’t be able to see him inside the hotel, and the DIA only bugged his vehicle not his clothes.’
Lopez nodded, replying as she kept her gaze fixed to the screen.
‘He’s meeting Majestic Twelve. I figure nothing else will do for them but the Penthouse Suite.’
*
Gordon LeMay checked his tie one last time as he walked through the foyer of the Pierre Hotel and into an elevator, the bell hop pressing the button for the top floor without the need to be asked. The hotel had been informed of LeMay’s arrival by the driver and the door staff, and everything prepared for his smooth passage through the hotel.
The elevator hummed quickly up to the top floor and opened onto a thickly carpeted corridor. The bell hop did not follow LeMay out, under strict orders along with all of the other staff to remain clear of the top floor. The elevator door closed behind LeMay and he turned toward the only open door before him at the far end of the corridor.
Somehow, he knew that there would be no turning back after this. Once he had been fully welcomed into the fold of Majestic Twelve there could be no leaving, no changing his mind, which was damned well fine with him. He was done with the stress of the intelligence community and more concerned with ensuring his own survival of any Congressional investigation into his conduct as Director of the FBI than anything else. Membership of Majestic Twelve would ensure that such irritations would be swept away and his future secured.
LeMay walked through the open door and saw a figure close it behind him. Victor Wilms was standing with his hand on the door handle, sealing LeMay into the elaborate room, which was occupied by eleven men that at a glance he knew represented Majestic Twelve.
‘Gentlemen,’ he greeted them.
‘What news from Antarctica?’ asked the tall, gaunt leader of the group.
No greetings. No ceremony. Down to business it was then, LeMay realized, but as a man who often gave the President his daily intelligence briefing he was used to being prepared.
‘The team have accessed the tunnel system beneath the ice and have reached the base concealed within,’ he reported. ‘Communications are patchy at best, but I have it on good authority that the DIA team dispatched before us is now pinned inside with no means of escape. There have been casualties, but there will be no evidence of our presence at the site.’
Another of the men peered at LeMay.
‘The DIA reached the artifact before your men?’
‘Yes,’ LeMay replied, ‘an unfortunate eventuality but not one that could be avoided. They are, as you are no doubt aware, supported by US Navy SEALs and well equipped. But their success in reaching the base first means nothing if they cannot escape.’
The gaunt man shook his head.
‘Support will reach them soon, likely a nuclear submarine or perhaps even a major fleet,’ he cautioned. ‘It is imperative that this is brought to a close before such reinforcements can arrive in the area.’
‘It will be,’ LeMay assured them. ‘My people are under strict instructions to either escape the area with Black Knight in their possession, or if that proves impossible to destroy all trace of the site and the DIA team. We either get what we want, or nobody does.’
The leader of the group nodded and then stood. Despite his obvious advancing years he projected an aura of menace and competence that unnerved LeMay as he glared down at him.
‘Your work has impressed us,’ he said, ‘and your commitment to our cause has not gone unnoticed despite the danger to your own career. You are certain, Gordon, that you have not been tracked to this location?’
LeMay realized that he had not until now been called by his given name, that the act of doing so was likely a major concession in the silent war of wills between them.
‘Nobody knows that I am here with you,’ LeMay assured him. ‘I am visiting family in the city.’
‘Good,’ the tall man said, ‘then it is time for you to come out of the cold. We know that your position as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is coming to an end as a result of the work you have done for us. We will ensure that your exit will be without any political or criminal
discomfort
.’
LeMay beamed. ‘That would be much appreciated.’
‘Furthermore,’ the gaunt man went on, ‘we should like to hold a small ceremony, a tradition if you will, that has been a part of our history and will formally welcome you among our number. You, my friend, will become Number Four.’
LeMay’s eyebrow raised in surprise. ‘I am to replace a member?’
The gaunt man, evidently Number One, chuckled although LeMay could detect no true humor.
‘We have a great deal of power,’ he replied as the rest of the members got to their feet, ‘but we do not yet have control over our longevity. I am not the first leader of this cabal and I shall not be the last. The previous Number Four was a man named Dwight Oppenheimer, who ironically was involved in searching for the elixir, the fountain of youth, several years ago in New Mexico. He died at the hands of a man whom I believe you to be familiar, one Ethan Warner?’
LeMay’s expression darkened. ‘I know of him.’
‘Then your first mission, once our Antarctic business is complete, will be to eradicate Warner and his partner, Lopez. You will be a part of our future, Gordon, and we shall celebrate that formally tomorrow. But for now, congratulations.’
Number One extended a thin, wiry hand laced with purple veins that Gordon LeMay shook vigorously as the other men in the room clapped politely and Victor Wilms handed LeMay a champagne flute.
***
XXXI
‘Keep it steady.’
‘I’m trying!’
Lopez worked the control unit furiously as she guided the drone alongside the rear of the Pierre Hotel. The calm air at ground level near Central Park had been replaced by the faster free winds three hundred feet above the city that buffeted the drone as Lopez sent it whizzing across the rooftops toward the top of the hotel.
The dizzying height and the drone’s instability in the wind began to take its toll on Lopez’s ability to control the device, and she realized quickly that such unsteady footage was not going to be sufficient to identify the members of Majestic Twelve. Jarvis, and indeed the President, would need clear images of the group combined with the audio obtained from LeMay’s implant in order to ensure that any convictions stuck.
‘I’m going to have to switch on the auto-stability that Hellerman included in the package,’ she said as she struggled to control the drone.
‘Won’t that use up more power?’ Vaughn asked.
‘Yeah, but at this rate we’ll get nothing, it’s too damned windy.’
Lopez’s thumb moved briefly off the control column and flipped a switch on the top of the controller. Almost immediately the drone levelled off and began returning a crystal clear image of the city.
‘Damn, Hellerman,’ she smiled as she worked the controls and brought the drone back onto course toward the hotel’s penthouse suite.
The top floor of the hotel, so she recalled had once been up for sale for around a hundred million dollars, a sum so vast she wondered why anybody would bother paying so much money for something so comparatively small. She knew that the suite held three bedrooms, two bathrooms, an expansive lounge and terraces that overlooked Central Park in its entirety, but she knew that any folk with funds like that could buy a five bedroom mansion outside the city and be blissfully happy in retirement for the rest of her life for a tenth of that sum.
‘How the other half live, eh?’ Vaughn said, clearly thinking the same thing as her.
‘I wouldn’t want to be any one of them,’ Lopez replied. ‘So much money that you no longer have any sense of its value.’
Vaughn raised an eyebrow. ‘I’d give it my best shot.’
The drone was now behind the penthouse suite, where two terraces looked out to the west over the cityscape. Lopez guided the drone closer to the terraces.
‘Take it easy,’ Vaughn cautioned, ‘we don’t want them to see it.’
‘I’m on zoom,’ she replied calmly as she flew the drone around the south side of the suite, seeking the lounge windows. ‘I doubt they’ll ever know the drone was there.’
The drone drifted around to the east side, moving back over 5th Avenue and Central Park as Lopez fought to get a good line of sight into the building. The large windows reflected the bright morning sky, the sun behind the drone and the reflected light obscuring the interior of the suite.
Lopez’s heart skipped a beat as she saw movement among the light playing on the windows, the reflections of clouds translucent enough to see suited men standing inside the building.
‘Here we go,’ she said as she guided the drone in closer.
The interior of the suite was colored in shades of magnolia, the dark suits of the circle of men within contrasting sharply with their surroundings. Lopez peered at the gathering and thought she saw a single gray suit among the black.
‘Almost there,’ she whispered.
The drone hovered, descending slightly, and as Lopez got her first glimpse at the men’s faces so the sun broke through the clouds and a brightly reflected flare of sunlight ripped across her field of vision.
‘Damn!’
Lopez guided the drone to the right, hoping to change the angle of view of the drone and lose the reflected sunlight. The drone flew sideways and she glanced at the power bar to see that it was already two thirds depleted.
‘Less than ten minutes,’ Vaughn warned her. ‘Get the footage, Nicola.’
‘Stand by,’ Lopez replied in a whisper that she barely heard herself, manipulating the controls carefully.
The brilliantly flaring reflection of the sunlight faded out as the drone maneuvered to one side, and then the image cleared and Lopez gasped. She saw Gordon LeMay standing in the center of a group of men, all of them clapping and smiling as one of them handed LeMay a flute of champagne.
‘I’ve got you now, asshole,’ she chortled in delight as she watched LeMay sip from the flute as he shook the hand of a tall, sepulchral looking man dressed all in black.
‘We’re getting half of them,’ Vaughn said from the front as he watched the display and the faces of the men upon the screen. ‘Damn, we’ve got Majestic Twelve on film.’
*
Gordon LeMay sipped the champagne in the flute and acknowledged the smiles of greeting on the faces of the men with whom he was sharing the most expensive apartment in the western world. Truth be told he was completely amazed that he had been allowed to even enter the same room as these men, all of them worth billions, perhaps trillions of dollars each, all of them wielding more power than Presidents and Prime Ministers the world over, all of them part of a shadowy network of businessmen shaping world events to suit their own needs. Perhaps that was how they had become so wealthy and so powerful, by joining the cabal, and suddenly he found himself thinking that he too might become as wealthy and as powerful as the men around him.
‘So, how does it feel to finally be here?’ Wilms asked LeMay as he approached him.
‘It feels good,’ he replied, ‘I’m relieved to be here, for sure, I don’t mind saying.’
LeMay took another sip from his champagne and glanced out of the window across the stunning vista of Central Park and the city, and almost immediately his eye caught upon the black speck on the immaculately polished glass windows, sharply contrasted against the vibrant New York morning sky.
LeMay had spent the last thirty years working for the FBI and knew just about every surveillance trick in the book. To believe for even an instant that any agency would have been foolish enough to place a bug on the outside of the window itself seemed so outlandish that he could not even begin to entertain…
LeMay saw the speck move across the sky and then come to an abrupt halt, and in a moment of clarity he realized that he was not seeing a tiny object at the distance of the window but a larger one outside the building. He turned to Wilms, his eyes wide as he opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came forth.
LeMay tried again, but his voice was a mere croak that whistled from somewhere deep inside his throat. He felt his legs start to lose rigidity beneath him, swayed as Wilms snatched the champagne flute from his grasp as two more men moved in behind LeMay.