The Arena: The Awakening (1) (14 page)

It wasn’t long before the moment passed and she was on her way to Taylor's address. It was a nice looking block of apartments and, on entering the foyer, she could tell that you would need serious money to live here. She found the door number she was looking for and knocked. The door was answered with the security chain on. Taylor looked her up and down and didn’t say a word. From first impressions, Taylor was quite timid and jittery. Also a bit weird, as he was wearing what looked like sunglasses. Indoors??

To break what was becoming a very uncomfortable silence, Laura said “Fitz sent me. He said you could help me locate a few people?”

With that, the door slammed shut and she could hear the security chain being pulled back. The door then opened fully.

Taylor blurted out “Two customers in a week from Fitz, he’s a busy guy for someone who’s retired! Please come in”.

Laura walked through the apartment in the direction indicated by Taylor. She walked along the short hallway and entered an enormous living room. There was a massive bay window overlooking the Hudson River and there was the most spectacular view of the city. It was nicely decorated with everything in its place. It’s not what she expected. As she looked around the room, she could see an oak desk that had four computer monitors on it, a keyboard and a mouse and nothing else. She sat on the large leather sofa and Taylor joined her. It was apparent that he was still a little nervous as he sat at the furthest point possible without falling off.

He nervously wrung his hands but finally asked “What is it you need me to find?”

He was softly spoken but also quite a strange looking character. He had shoulder length hair tied back in a ponytail. He had sharp facial features, and sitting on the bridge of his nose was a set of sports sunglasses with orange iridium lenses. Taylor could see Laura looking at the glasses.

“Please excuse the sunglasses” he blurted out. “They’re actually for medical reasons. I have an aversion to bright lights and to save the headaches, it’s just easier if I wear these”.

Not giving it a second thought, Laura reached into her purse and brought out a piece of paper she had written and handed it to him.

“I need to locate all six of these people. Their home addresses, places of work, and motor vehicles they use”.

“Is that it?” replied Taylor. “That’s not the usual kind of work Fitz sends to me. He usually sends me interesting stuff like government agents, conspiracies and the like. Who are these people?”

Laura sat back in the sofa. “Taylor, is it essential that you know that? Would it stop you being able to find them?”

“No” he replied. “But if there is a common denominator that puts them all together, it’ll speed up the process for you”.

Laura took a moment to have a think about what he had said. While she was doing this, Taylor took the piece of paper over to the oak desk at the other side of the room and started typing away. He typed away at a speed most secretaries would be proud of. This guy really knew his stuff. Out of the corner of her eye, Laura could see the screens he was working on, reflected on the mirror on the main wall in the room. He was flicking between so many different programs she knew that Fitz had put her in touch with the right person.

Laura pondered on telling him the link between them all, while intermittently keeping an eye on what Taylor was doing. As she walked around the room, she started to note how clean it was and how everything was laid out. It wasn’t that it was odd, it was that it seemed like everything was there for a purpose. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it but she felt quite safe and secure in this room. As she walked towards the bay windows, her mind wandered to her previous missions and how easy it would be to take someone in this room out from across the Hudson. As she looked through the glass, she noticed that there was a very slight distortion in the pane. As she looked down to the edges, she could see a hallmark saying '
Civil Protection
', engraved in the corner. It was actually armoured glass!

Under her breath, she said
“That would make it a little more difficult”
.

“What?” said Taylor.

“Nothing” replied Laura, “I’m just admiring the view”. Hoping that would cover her unintentional gaff.

Her consideration of whether to tell him or not was short lived and, as it turned out, quite unnecessary. A few minutes of typing later, Taylor looked over the top edge of his monitors and stared directly at Laura. Even though he was still wearing his glasses, the intensity in his face showed a degree of panic that made Laura think that something was seriously wrong.

Taylor stood up from his desk and announced “You’re her, aren’t you? You’re Mia!”

The tone of his voice was unlike the stare he gave Laura earlier. It was more of admiration than panic.

“How do you know that?” Laura enquired.

“I did some research for another friend of Fitz who was looking for you. I only had some basic information for him the last time he was here, but I carried on afterwards and found out all about you. I can’t believe you’re actually here!”

“For someone who knows a lot about me Taylor, you don’t seem too bothered that I’m standing in your living room” said Laura.

“I’m no threat to you Laura. Mia. Laura?” Taylor stumbled the names, unsure how she wanted to be addressed.

“Laura’s fine, Taylor” setting him straight.

Lowering his tone from excited to almost sheepish, Taylor explained, “All I can do is help you out and provide you with information you didn’t know Laura.”

Before she could ask how, Taylor continued.

“For example, this list you have here. Is this who you think ran the Arena?”

Laura replied, “Yes, under the command of Dr Cooper. I took that list from the safe in his house.”

“Well, I’ve got some more on that for you” explained an excited Taylor. His face was alive and he looked like he was about to just blurt everything out that he knew.

“You’re missing a name from the list. Cooper controlled the Arena but he answered to someone further up the chain.”

Taylor spun the computer monitor in front of him around so that Laura could see. On the screen was a picture of a woman with long dark brown hair. She looked as if she was in her very early 30’s.

“She’s the one controlling everything.” Taylor looked like he was the cat that got the cream. He had a grin ear-to-ear as he felt good about himself when he could tell people things they didn’t know already.

“Her name is Anita Hudson and she’s the director of Specialist and Covert Operations for the FBI. She’s one of these high flying kids that have flown through the ranks quickly due to their super intelligence and the way they network with other high ranking officials. The buck stops with her. She works out of an office in the Pentagon and she answers to no one apart from the Secretary of Defence, and even he’s not stupid enough to ask what projects she has on the go.”

Laura sat back trying to take it all in.

“What about my list?” she enquired.

“These guys are all relevant to the operation. They used funding from each of their departments, NSA, CIA as well as the rest, to finance the Arena with the hope of having an assassin at their disposal should the project,
you
, work. You’re their dirty little secret.”

“Can you find where the people on my list are and the details I need?” asked Laura.

“Way ahead of you. Here.”

Taylor passed Laura a bundle of papers that had printed off in the background while they were talking. As she looked through them, she could see that most of the names on the list lived in the DC area which was handy as she knew it very, very, well. There was one in the Morristown area, a Director R.T. Gascoigne, but she noticed but there was one stumbling block with his address. Where his address should be, there was a set of GPS co-ordinates.

“What’s with this,” she said looking at Taylor.

“Give me a minute,” he replied, burying his head into his monitors and keyboard. After a few minutes and what sounded like a thousand words being typed, he looked up above his monitor and asked “What happened to Dr Cooper, Laura?”

With that statement, Laura saw an opportunity to test how comfortable Taylor was with her and also to see if he had any ethical issues with what she had done.

“Dr Cooper?” she exclaimed. “Dr Cooper
accidently
got shot in the head after being caught lying to someone he shouldn’t”

She could see Taylor's full face as he sat upright in his chair. You could see that his mind was racing, but after a few seconds he smiled and quietly said “So cool,” and returned to his monitors.

“Those co-ordinates come back to a research centre in a place called Glencoe in Scotland. They’ve been posted on his record only yesterday, so I presume they’ve heard about Cooper.” “Wait, Wait!” proclaimed Taylor. “I’ve got another here relocated to London.”

Laura muttered under her breath “That figures, running scared.” She handed the papers back to Taylor and he rifled through to the one he needed and scribbled down the details in the appropriate place.

Laura was almost done with Taylor at this point but decided that she needed a couple of other things from him.

“I’m going to need new passports, driving licences, all with false details, for me to carry on Taylor. Can you help with that?”

“I can, but I can’t get you the physical documents. I can do all the technical bits on the official systems but I can’t create the documents in physical form. I don’t have the equipment. I do know someone who does though, but you’ll need to pay her when they’re done?”

With a nod of her head, Taylor started typing again. She sat back and let him get on with it and after about thirty minutes or so, he was finished.

“Anything else?” he enquired in almost a bragging tone.

“Yes” replied Laura handing him a piece of paper with a long serial number and a list of smaller numbers and letters. “That’s the chassis number of my car, can you make it disappear on the DMV database using these number plates?”

“Easy” he replied and tapped away once again. After about ten minutes he was done.

The time came for Laura to move on for the day. As she stood up, she asked Taylor how much money she owed him for his time. He told her it was five thousand dollars. She asked how much would the documents from his friend cost, to which he replied “Probably about two thousand.”

She reached into her purse and said to Taylor, “Three things Taylor. First, you deal with your friend for me and I’ll return and pick up those documents from you, as it’s best I don’t meet too many people at the moment. Second, that extra information you got for Fitz’s friend the other day, make sure he doesn’t get it until I say it’s OK, and third, I need a contact cell phone number for you, as I’ve a feeling I may need more information at some stage.”

Taylor wanted to ask why, but before he could, Laura handed him fifty thousand dollars in brand new notes. He was stunned at seeing so much money in real life, but before he could say thank you, Laura was up and heading towards the door. Laura tried to shake Taylor's hand as she left but he recoiled his hands back out of the way.

“Sorry” he said. “Issues.”

He reached into his back trouser pocket and handed Laura a card with just a cell phone number on it. She knew he was in! Laura smiled and walked off down the corridor. She felt a real sense of achievement. She caught up with an old friend, and had potentially made a new one. It was time for a well-earned meal and a drink somewhere.

Chapter 23

Difficult Decision

The meal and drink the night before had obviously been needed. Laura didn’t wake until nearly 9am. She felt refreshed and a little more comfortable in herself. She knew her steps over the last couple of days had been covered by Taylor and his computer magic, so she knew she wouldn’t need to be looking over her shoulder for the moment. She had ordered room service for breakfast and, after eating that and having an amazingly long shower, she sat on the sofa and started to look through the paperwork Taylor had given her. At the top of the pile was Cooper. She dismissed this and then ticked his name on her original list. The next file was on a Senior Investigating Officer Michael Scott. Little did she know that this name and file was going to cause eruptions in her plan and she was going to be forced to make a decision that she wouldn’t be happy about. As she read through, she could see that he was a highly decorated investigator with the FBI. He had commendations for all sorts of investigation as well as previous employment in special operations in the Pentagon.

The next page was going to change everything for Laura. Listed on his profile was a home address in the Mountain Lakes area of Morris County. That was handy as it was only a short distance away from where Laura currently was. Under his employment location, it listed a covert field office in the Midtown Shopping Centre in Morristown. Laura couldn’t believe what she was reading. This was the Field Office that Hank worked from. Was Hank involved in all of this? After all, he had tracked her down. Did he know who she was all along and what she was doing? Surely not? These were questions Laura really needed the answers to.

This changed her game plan completely as she wanted those answers from him. She couldn’t deal with him from a distance. This one needed to be dealt with at close quarters. Laura levelled her thoughts and had a look at both the Arena members that had fled the country. She knew that if she did take Scott out of the picture, the ramifications in the United States would be for them to hunt her down. At the moment, she didn’t need or want to be going about her business while looking over her shoulder all the time so perhaps a period of absence afterwards would work in her favour.