Blood Money (20 page)

“If you even exist at all,” Kelton said.

“I can assure you that we do exist,”
Nicholas said. “We are a very small group, created relatively
recently, made up of only the most highly-skilled operatives from
the more well-established agencies. We operate under the umbrella
of the Department of Homeland Security but answer only to the White
House itself. Our specialty is domestic operations. And we are very
good at what we do.”

“See, that wasn’t very difficult.”

“It was more difficult than you know,”
Nicholas said. “Especially considering how much trouble I could get
in for spelling it out to you like that.”

“Well I thank you for being straight with
me. It certainly helps our relationship.”

“I will do what I can in that regard.
Assuming, of course, that you are truthful with us, Mr.
Kelton.”

“If I have one weakness, Nick, it’s that I
always tell the truth.”

Nicholas laughed again, and this time it
actually sounded like there was some humor mixed in. “There are
many out there who consider that a strength.”

“Not in our line of work.”

“Very true, indeed,” Nicholas said. “As I
said earlier, I will do all I can for you. I promise. But now, I am
afraid I must end our conversation. I have other business to attend
to. It was a pleasure talking to you, Mr. Kelton, and I look
forward to more fruitful conversations in the very near
future.”

“As do I,” Kelton said.

The Humvee came to a stop and Kelton was hit
by a blast of hot air as the door opened and Nicholas presumably
stepped out. Then they were moving again.

Kelton relaxed his body as much as possible
and turned his thoughts to Jessica.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

By Kelton’s rough estimation, they had been
driving for about an hour before finally coming to a stop.

He caught a whiff of a conversation between
the driver of the vehicle and what sounded like a guard of some
sort, and then they were moving again. They continued on for
another few minutes before stopping, this time presumably for good,
as the engine was shut off.

The door to his right opened, and a pair of
hands pulled him out of the Humvee.

“Where are we?” Kelton said.

There was no reply.

Somewhere near him, a conversation was going
on, and although they weren’t talking about anything important,
Kelton could tell by the way the voices echoed that they were in
someplace large and open, like a warehouse, or possibly even an
airplane hanger.

Probably some old, de-commissioned
military base in the middle of the desert,
he thought before
being gently prodded from behind.

He walked blindly for a couple hundred feet
before somebody stopped him in his tracks with a palm to the chest.
He heard a button being pressed, then an automated prompt for a
fingerprint scan. There was a beep, then a click, and a new voice
told him to walk forward three steps and turn around. He did as he
was told, and a few seconds later, his stomach dropped slightly and
he realized they were in an elevator going down.

After they came to rest a few seconds later,
Kelton was led out of the elevator and through a carpeted area,
finally coming to a stop after about 30 steps. He heard a door open
in front of him and felt a tug on his arms, then suddenly, his
wrists were free. Someone gave him a soft push and he stumbled
forward a few steps. A door slammed shut behind him and he turned
around quickly, rubbing his hands together to get some circulation
flowing through his arms once again.

“Can I take this damn thing off now?” he
asked aloud.

When he got no answer, he tore the hood off,
blinking at the sudden brightness. He dropped the hood to the
floor, rubbed his eyes and realized he was alone in what appeared
to be an interrogation room.

The space was small, and its white walls
held no pictures or any other decorations, save for the large
one-way mirror that took up the wall opposite the door. The only
furniture was a wooden table with a black plastic ashtray in the
center and two flimsy plastic chairs set on opposite sides. The air
was cold, almost to the point of discomfort.

Kelton wasn’t bothered by the room. He had
been in similar situations before. He figured they’d come at him
hard and fast with two, maybe even three agents throwing threats
his way to get him on edge. Then, after the groundwork had been
laid, a nicer, gentler agent—Nicholas, most likely—would come in
and work a deal.

He was pleasantly surprised when it didn’t
go down like he’d imagined.

Kelton was sitting on one of the plastic
chairs when someone knocked on his door. He didn‘t bother getting
out of his seat as the door swung open.

A short man with wire rim glasses and a
business suit walked in and nodded his head once. The man looked to
be in his middle to late forties, and quite small—5’8”, 125 pounds,
tops—with short blond hair and a rapidly receding hairline. His
face was sharp, with hard lines around his jaw and eyes, his eyes
piercing, his skin taut and nearly wrinkle-free.

“I am glad to see you are still in good
spirits Mr. Kelton,” the man said. The words were slow, deliberate,
and free of contractions.

Kelton recognized the voice immediately.

“Glad to finally see your face, Nick.
Although it’s not quite what I expected, I must admit.”

“I get that a lot,” Nicholas said as he sat
down. He looked across the table at Kelton with a stare that
revealed nothing.

“Well, I must say I’m glad you decided to
get down to business so quickly,” Kelton said. “I was expecting the
typical dog and pony show to try and loosen me up a bit before you
swooped in to cut a deal.”

Nicholas shrugged his shoulders and held his
hands out, palms up. “There are those who wanted to do it that way,
to be sure. But I argued against it.”

“And won, it looks like.”

“Yes, well, I can be very persuasive at
times.”

Kelton smiled. “Oh, I’m sure you can.”

“Plus, there is a certain element that we
have to contend with that helped sway the decision in my
favor.”

“And what element is that?”

“Time,” Nicholas said. “There are those of
us who are afraid that if this conversation drags on too long,
circumstances will begin to spiral out of our control.”

“That’s probably a good assumption.”

“But I must warn you, if we think that you
are not complying fully with us, we will be forced to take a
different approach to this meeting.”

Kelton’s smile faded. “I hope that’s not
meant to be a threat.”

“Not in the least,” Nicholas said, meeting
Kelton’s piercing stare with neutral eyes. “Besides, there is no
reason to believe that you will not be completely truthful and
straight-forward with us, right?”

“Why would there be?” Kelton said. “After
all, I gave myself up to you guys, remember?”

“I do indeed,” Nicholas said. “Speaking of
which, why exactly did you choose to go that route? It was . . .
unexpected, to say the least.”

Kelton leaned back in the chair and crossed
his arms at his chest. “Basically, I got sick of things not working
out with my employer. And once we found your little gift inside
Jessica’s arm, I wanted to know what the hell was going on.”

“What makes you think we could help you in
that regard?”

“Come on, don’t give me that crap. We both
know you guys have been watching us since I pulled Jessica from
that safe house.”

Nicholas brought his hands together and set
them on top of the table. “And what makes you believe that?”

Kelton felt his anger flare but he kept his
voice flat. “Look Nick, if you’re going to dick me around, then
this is just going to be a waste of our time. We both know that you
guys have been on to us from the beginning of this whole operation.
If you’re going to sit there and deny it, then this conversation is
pointless. I have no problem giving you guys everything you want,
but you have to stop trying to play me. I simply won’t stand for
that kind of crap. Not this late in the game.”

“I think we are having a communication
breakdown here,” Nicholas said, his tone not altering in the least.
“Perhaps I should phrase my question differently. I do not mean to
imply that we are unaware of the situation at hand. I simply mean
to inquire as to how
you
know so much about what is going
on.”

“It became painfully obvious that our
initial intelligence was incorrect after multiple attempts to lose
our tail were unsuccessful,” Kelton said. “From there, we simply
worked out what the situation must be, based on what we knew. This
gave us a very good picture, but what continued to give us problems
was trying to decipher who was behind the whole thing.”

“Which is why you turned yourselves in, to
find that out,” Nicholas said. It was not phrased as a
question.

“Exactly.”

“So I am supposed to believe that you turned
yourself over to us solely because you wanted to know who was
behind this whole operation?”

“Not solely,” Kelton said. “There were other
reasons also.”

“Like what?”

“I told you earlier. I want to know what’s
really going on here. Because, quite frankly, based on what’s
happened over the last few days, I think I may have been mislead
about the specifics of this job by my employer. And, depending on
what the truth is, I may decide to try and find out if there’s any
way we can cut a deal to get us both what we want.”

“And what is it that you think we want?”
Nicholas said.

“My employer.”

“Suppose you can indeed deliver him to us,”
Nicholas said. “What are you looking for in return?”

“Come on, Nick. You don’t really think I’m
going to give that up without getting something from you first, do
you?”

Nicholas’s mouth flicked in what might have
been a smile. “No, I suppose not. Shall we begin our discussion
then?”

“Not yet.”

Nicholas waited, his curiosity marked solely
by a slightly raised left eyebrow.

“I need Jessica in here with me before I
decide on a course of action,” Kelton said. “This is her decision
as much as it is mine.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“Where should we start?” Kelton said.

“How about with your employer,” Nicholas
replied.

They had moved to a larger, less sterile
room; one that had actual furniture and pictures on the walls.

Jessica and Kelton were next to each other
on one side of a oak banquet table, each seated in large,
comfortable chairs. Nicholas sat opposite them, a pad of yellow
lined paper open in front of him. The setup made the whole thing
seem more like a business meeting than an interrogation.

“Okay,” Kelton said. “What do you want to
know?”

“You know your employer as Walter,
right?”

Kelton nodded.

“Last name?”

“He’s never mentioned one.”

Nicholas scribbled something on the paper
without losing eye contact with Kelton. “But you’ve worked with him
before?”

Kelton tilted his head, looked at Nicholas
sideways. “Don’t you guys already know all this stuff? I was under
the impression that you’d been listening to us throughout this
ordeal.”

“While it is true we had listening devices
prying into your conversations in various ways over the past couple
of days, our information is by no means complete. So you should
answer whatever questions I ask. Think of it as humoring me, if
that helps.”

“All right,” Kelton said with a shrug. “Yes,
I’ve worked with Walter a couple times over the years.”

“In jobs similar to this one?”

Kelton nodded. “In spirit, if not
specifics.”

“How so?”

“Every job I’ve ever done for him fit within
the same basic parameters, in that I’m acquiring something from the
hands of the undeserving and giving it to those who need it.
Righting some wrong, so to speak.”

“And the wrong you were righting here is
what, exactly?”

“Allowing me to get my AIDS vaccine to the
masses,” Jessica said, leaning forward in her chair. “Something
that my handlers were trying to prevent.”

Nicholas shifted his gaze towards her. “Do
you really think our government would sit on something as
monumental as an AIDS vaccine?”

“Do you really think they wouldn’t?” Jessica
fired back.

“I am certain that they would not,” Nicholas
said. “And even if they considered it, they would quickly come to
the conclusion that it would be impossible.”

“Don’t give me that crap,” Kelton said.
“Cover-ups like this happen all the time.”

“I am not going to lie to you,” Nicholas
said. “Did stuff like this happen ten years ago? Five even? Sure it
did. But now?” He shook his head. “Something this big, in this day
and age? Somebody would talk. Or more accurately, somebody would
write a book. Or put it in their blog. Word would leak out. There
would be an investigation. And the people in charge would blame
some lowly clerk for the whole debacle, just so they could save
their own ass.”

Jessica scoffed, shook her head. “You can
sit back there and spin it however you want, but my AIDS vaccine
worked, and you guys sat on it.”

Nicholas crossed his arms at his chest and
leaned back in his chair. “Really? Because I was under the
impression that it failed the final trial run.”

“That’s what my handlers told me. But the
data was altered to make it look like it failed. It didn’t.”

Nicholas pursed his lips and nodded his head
as though contemplating this idea. “I see. And you know this
because . . .”

“Because Walter contacted me and told me the
truth,” Jessica said

“What makes you so certain that he was
indeed telling you the truth?”