The Zen Gene (25 page)

CSIS

He sat alone by the fire and watched the flames die down. His thoughts were with Andi. He missed her. He was half asleep at the picnic table thinking about crawling into the truck and sleeping on the jump-seat; he was not looking forward to it. He was struggling to stand up when he saw a woman walking up the lane towards him. It seemed such an unlikely thing to happen that for a moment he thought he was asleep and dreaming. She stopped in front of him and smiled.

“May I join you Dr. Mann?”

When she spoke his name it startled him and roused him from his stupor with a jolt.

“Who are you?” he said.

The way he said it was not exactly a challenge but it was not a warm welcome either. She was an older woman, older than him, probably closer to sixty than fifty, he thought. She was short with a stocky build like some Eastern European women of a certain age but he could see this woman was no babushka wearing peasant. She was dressed expensively, her hair was styled, and she was well spoken. The only thing missing was the fashionably long fingernails women of her apparent standing typically wore. Hers nails were trimmed and she had working hands obviously strong and presumably capable.

The odd experience of having a stranger walk up to him out of the darkness in an empty campground gave a dream-like quality to the experience and all the more so when she spoke his name. She had a warm sympathetic smile on her face and he wondered again if he was asleep.

“My name is Barbara Knight. I work for CSIS,” she said. She waited a beat and when he did not respond she added, “The Canadian Security Intelligence Service.”

“You don’t look like a spy,” he said. As soon as he uttered the words he realized how dumb it must sound but it was true she did not look like a spy.

“Most of us don’t,” she said, “it kinda defeats the purpose.”

She smiled warmly again and in spite of the weird circumstances she seemed genuinely nice. He could not help but return her smile.

“Why are you here?” he said.

“I’m here to talk about your situation. We are concerned you may be in danger and I’ve come to offer you our assistance. We are also trying to understand what’s going on,” she said.

He could not help it. The way she spoke and the warm smile made him think of his mom.

“How did you find us?” he said.

“The truck you are traveling in has an asset-tracking system,” she said, “most large commercial trucks do now.”

He was not sure what that meant and at the moment it did not matter because the fact they had been found by CSIS changed everything. A thought occurred to him.

“Do you have identification?” he asked.

She pulled a small plastic ID wallet from her pocket and handed it to him. He opened it and read: Barbara Knight, analyst, CSIS. There was a recent colour photo of her face and underneath was embossed with what he assumed was the official seal of CSIS.

“We are all called analysts,” she said, anticipating his next question.

“What do you know about our situation?” he said. He used her word to describe what was happening because fatigue was making him think slower than he normal and he was way out of his depth generally. The overall effect of the last few days was the uncomfortable suffocating sense he was drowning. He was normally a law abiding citizen but the last few days shook his faith in the authorities. He knew he needed to find out if she knew about POrna but he was having a tough time concentrating on how to go about it.

She paused for a few moments to consider his question before answering him and though his mind was not sharp he got the impression she was being equally careful about how much she disclosed to him.

“We know you were working for Colonel Western. Are you aware he was killed in Vancouver yesterday?” she said.

He nodded affirmative.

She continued, “We do not know the reason he was killed. Do you know why he was killed and who killed him?”

He shook his head no.

“We believe his death was related to his investigation of Tyler Worthy,” she said.

At this point he interrupted her.

“I would like to clarify that I wasn’t working for Western. He coerced me into assisting his investigation by threatening my research funding. Because of this and my past experience with the military I had no intention of helping him with anything and that was before I found out Andi was involved,” he said.

She seemed to accept it, at least she made no comment, and he began to wonder how much, if anything, she knew about POrna. He did not want to give her any information that might be used against them later.

“We know about the exploding van and the military personnel, one of which subsequently died of his injuries, and the other now missing. I don’t suppose you know where she is? We would like to speak with her,” she said.

She was watching his face and he realized she was probably a skilled interrogator and he would be no match for her if he tried to deceive her. He shook his head. It was true he did not know where Hunter was exactly but even if he knew he would not tell her anyway.

“What we don’t understand is why you and the others decided to run rather than reach out to the authorities for help?” she said. She looked at him closely watching his eyes for deception.

He looked at her and then pointed at his face. “This is the assistance I got from the authorities and Andi is in a comma because of them and I’m not sure if she will survive,” he said.

He turned his face away and looked down at the fire. He knew he was overtired but he could not edit the anger and disgust from his voice as he tried to make sense of the details of the last few days. He was trying to determine what, if anything, he should tell her, but at the very least he wanted her to know that, for him, going to the police was not an option.

His thinking was not clear enough to be subtle or insightful so he decided to tell her about being attacked.

“There is a man who is looking for Tyler,” he said. “He works for Colonel Western, or at least he did; I first saw him a few days ago in Western’s office at Naden Naval Base. He was in uniform but I do not know what his rank is or what his role is in this or why he would be involved after Western’s death but I can tell you he is definitely involved.

He attacked Zen and nearly killed her. He repeatedly Tasered her heart and then physically assaulted her while she was unconscious on the ground. When I tried to help her he pistol whipped me and smashed my knee. I am convinced he would have killed both of us if he got his hands on Tyler,” he said. “That’s the reason we ran.”

“How did you get away from him?” she said.

“The reason we survived was Tyler. He saw him wailing on Zen and came up behind him and nailed him with a pipe. He knocked him out cold. For all I know he’s dead but I wasn’t willing to risk our lives on it. We needed time to sort out what to do next and we could not afford for him or anyone else to take another run at us because next time we might not be so lucky,” he said.

He watched her face as she listened to his story and he wondered if, as Zen put it, she was a good guy or a bad guy. Unfortunately in this situation there was no way to sort out who was good or bad and, like it or not, he would have to trust her. He noticed as he spoke to her that she was looking decidedly more troubled after he told his story compared to when she first sat down.

“Where did Tyler hit him?” she asked.

He thought it an odd question considering what she might have asked.

“I could not see clearly but I think he hit him on the head,” he said.

“No, I mean where did it happen?”

“In the old industrial section of Victoria with lots of abandoned buildings I don’t know the name of the street.”

“Fuck! Where is Tyler now?” she said.

Her voice held a different quality one he could not immediately define maybe it was urgency, but it also sounded like anger.

“He and Zen are asleep in the tent,” he said. He nodded to the tent set up on the far side of the truck on the grass. He sat in silence and watched her breath billow in the cold air. She was thinking something over and her face revealed that whatever she was thinking it was not making her happy.

“Dr. Mann, it appears I have made a grave error,” she said.

He waited but she said nothing more. He watched her take out a cell phone press send without looking at it and then held it to her ear. His pulse jumped when she used her free hand to remove a small black automatic from inside her coat. The sight of the gun sent a wild surge of anxiety through him.

She scrunched her face and held the phone with her shoulder as she removed the gun’s clip and checked it while waiting for her call to be answered. He did not know what was going on but the look on her face gave him the horrible feeling he had condemned them all to die. He made the fatal error of believing her when she told him she worked for CSIS. He was well aware of the fact any kid with a computer can make a fake ID with a colour printer and a plastic laminator. The students at college did it all the time.

His anxiety mounted. Judging by the look on her face, whoever she was calling was not answering and that fact seemed to be bad news. She ended the call and jacked a round into the chamber of her gun and thumbed off the safety. The smile on her face vanished along with any resemblance to his mother.

The woman holding a gun before him was all business. Before he could ask her what was happening she abruptly stood up from the table and turned her back to him to face the direction from which she came from. She spoke to him without turning her head.

“The man who assaulted you caught a ride with us from Victoria. When I came to speak to you I left him and my partner waiting in the van down the road and now my partner is not answering his cell,” she said.

The air around them turned thick with tension. He felt a drop of cold sweat trickle down the centre of his back. It left an ice slick of dread in its wake.

“Do you have a weapon, Doctor?” she asked.

“Yes, in the truck,” he said.

“Can you use it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never shot a gun before,” he said.

He never fired any type of weapon or even held one before today.

“Get it,” she said, trying to make her voice sound calm and reassuring but he heard the shaft of steel at its core. He got up from the table and almost tripped and fell. His injured knee was stiff and would not flex as he hobbled around the front of the truck to the passenger side door. The light went on in the cab when he opened the door, and he felt exposed and at risk. He pulled himself up and stood on the welded toe-hold on the fuel tank.

He reached in and hurriedly dug inside the travel bag he brought with him from Victoria. He found the gun and Taser he took from Sedulca. He grabbed them both and tucked the Taser into his pants pocket. From the sleeper came the gentle snoring of Ellie. He was glad she was not awake it would add more complication if she was awake and knew the man who attacked Zen was in the area.

He quietly closed the truck door and awkwardly climbed down with the gun in his hand. The woman held out her hand for the weapon and it momentarily flashed through his mind it might be a mistake to hand the gun over to her but he went with his initial instinct about her and gave her the weapon. He hoped he was not wrong about her. She took it and efficiently removed the clip to check the load. Satisfied with what she saw inside she slapped it back in and jacked a round into the chamber.

She handed it back to him handle first with the safety on. She demonstrated how to click off the safety and said, “Point and shoot like your digital camera. Don’t keep your finger on the trigger.” She smiled at him reassuringly. “I’m going to check the van and see what happened to Owen.

If you hear gunfire or anything at all no heroism Doc, you get everyone out of here and to the nearest police station. Look at me Doctor Mann,” she said.

She waited until she made eye contact and then said, “Do not stop and think about it, go. Your life and the lives of the others may depend on it. Okay?” she said.

He nodded remembering he said similar words to Zen before she was brutally attacked outside the old factory.

“What is your cell number?” she asked.

He told her and said he would have to get the phone out of the truck to turn it on.

“Get it. I’ll wait,” she said.

He climbed back into the truck and fished around in his bag. He could not find it and had a panicky few minutes until he remembered it was in his other coat. Once again he quietly closed the door and went back to rejoin her. When he rounded the side of the truck she was gone. He could not see her anywhere and he froze where he was. As his eyes began to adjust to the dark he saw the shadow of someone lying on the ground behind the picnic table.

He edged backwards slowly and stood around the corner of the truck. He did not hear a gunshot or any kind of struggle but he was sure it was Barbara on the ground. She was not moving and that was not good. The camp fire had died down and there was little light with which to see if anyone was lurking in the shadows. He concentrated hard but he heard nothing except the distant surf and the rapid pounding of his heart. His heart jumped hard in his chest when Sedulca said, “Put the gun down and step over near the fire Doc.”