The Atlantis Gene (The Origin Mystery 1)

“Times up.” The man turned to leave.

“Wait.” The police chief opened the door to the interrogation room and motioned for the woman to come out. “This man will escort you out.”

She paused at the door and looked at Kusnadi before looking the soldier up and down.

“It’s okay, this man will take you now.”

The man put his arm around her back and said, “Follow me Dr. Warner. We’re getting out of here.”

Kusnadi watched them walk out of the station.

Outside the police station, Kate stopped and turned to the man who had rescued her. He was dressed in black body armor — eerily similar to the man who had taken her children. And so were his men — she saw them now — five of them, standing in front of a large black truck, like an over-sized UPS delivery truck and a black SUV with dark tinted windows.

“Who are you? I want to know—”

“Hang on just a second,” he said.

The man walked over to the short interrogator who had accused Kate of buying the children. The soldier handed the little man a folder and said, “I hear you’re in line for a promotion.”

The little man shrugged. “I just do what I’m told,” he said sheepishly.

“Your case officer says you’ve been a good source. If you’re smart enough to know what to do with this, maybe you’ll be a better police chief.”

The interrogator nodded. “Anything you want, boss.”

The solider walked back to Kate and motioned toward the large black delivery truck. “I need you to get in the truck.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who you are and what’s going on.”

“I’ll explain, but right now we have to get you to a safe location.”

“No, you—”

“Here’s a tip. The good guys ask you to get in the truck. The bad guys put a black bag over your head and throw you in the truck. I’m asking. Look you can stay here or go with me, it’s up to you.”

He walked toward the truck and opened the double doors at the rear.

“Hold on. I’m coming.”

CHAPTER 19

Primary Conference Room

Clocktower Station HQ

Jakarta, Indonesia

Vincent Tarea, the head of field operations for Clocktower Jakarta, massaged his arm muscles as the station’s staff filed into the room. His arms and legs still ached from the attack from those two fools at the clinic and those feral children. And the day had gotten worse from there. But he could put it back on track. He only needed to convince a few of the Jakarta staff to go along with the attack, the rest were already on the Immari payroll.

Tarea held his hands up to quiet the crowd. Everyone at Clocktower HQ was there: all the analysts, all the case officers, and all the field operatives — everyone except David Vale and the five operatives with him. Josh Cohen, the head of analysis, was also missing, but they would find him soon enough. The large screens on the conference room wall showed three crowded rooms, full of field operatives at safe houses across the city.

“Ok, listen up, everyone. Can you all hear me on the video links?” Tarea said.

Heads nodded, followed by a series of “yeah” and “we’ve got you”.

“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it: Clocktower has been compromised.”

You could hear a pin drop in the room.

“And we’re under attack. I received reports earlier today that several cells, including Cape Town, Mar del Plata, and Karachi have been completely destroyed. Several other stations are fighting for their lives as we speak.”

People began talking in low tones. Some shouted questions.

“Hold on, everybody. It gets worse. I’m afraid the enemy we’re fighting is one of our own. Here’s what we know at this point: several days ago, David Vale, along with several other station chiefs, organized a meeting of all the Chief Analysts. Obviously this is strictly against protocol. We believe they told the analysts there was some new threat. We now know that over half the analysts never returned from the conference. The entire charade was a mass-execution, we believe, to cripple our intelligence analysis before this larger attack. The analysts who returned to their cells are now actively working against Clocktower.”

Tarea surveyed the doubtful looks around the room. “Look, I know this is hard to believe, and like you, I don’t want to believe it. I didn’t believe, not until this morning, when David spread our field operatives out throughout the city. Think about it — he’s spreading us out so we can’t defend against an attack. He’s preparing to take down Jakarta Station, it’s only a matter of time.”

“Why?” someone said. “He wouldn’t do that,” another person said.

“I asked the same question. I said the same thing,” Tarea said. “He recruited me, I served with him, I know him. But there’s a lot about David Vale we still don’t understand. We all come to Clocktower for our own reasons. From what we can gather, David was seriously injured during the attacks on 9/11. I didn’t know that until today. Since then, he’s harbored a conspiracy theory about 9/11, some wild ideas about military contractors instigating the attack for their own gain. He may even be the victim of a lie himself. Someone could be using him. Either way, he’s sick, turned around. And he’s brought a lot of other people into the conspiracy. We think Josh Cohen has returned from the analyst conference and is working with the Chief.”

Everyone was silent, seeming to take the news in. A solider at one of the safe houses on the video screen said, “What’s the operation? Bring him in?”

“That may not be possible. He’ll fight to the end. The priority is to minimize the collateral damage. And we’re going to have some help. Immari Security has offered to lend us some men. They are aware of the situation and they want to see this contained as much as we do — it seems Immari is the target of David’s vendetta. We know that David has captured a scientist who works on an Immari-funded project. She could be a co-conspirator or a victim in his plans; we’re not sure yet. The plan is to recover the woman, a Dr. Katherine Warner, and neutralize the Chief.”

CHAPTER 20

Secure Comms Room

Clocktower Station HQ

Jakarta, Indonesia

Josh waited nervously to find out whether his theory about the coded message David had given him was correct. It was Josh’s best idea, really his only idea.

He tried not to stare at the main computer screen on the long wall of the glass room. For the last thirty minutes, the screen had said the same thing: Searching…