The Orphan Uprising (The Orphan Trilogy, #3) (22 page)

“Well let’s hope they’re a bit more effective than their colleagues were,” Sterling said, referring to the Greenland disaster.

Naylor hoped so, too. He knew it was only the leverage Nine’s son gave them that was stopping the rogue operative going public about the agency’s illegal medical and scientific activities offshore. The repercussions if Nine went public didn’t bear thinking about.

“Any news of the Frenchwoman?” Claver asked, referring to Isabelle.

“No, but two of our best operatives are on the case,” Naylor said.

“Send another,” Von Pein said. “Find Isabelle Hannar and that will bring Nine to heel.”

Naylor concurred with that assessment, but his resources were already fully stretched with two of his orphan-operatives dead and a dozen others now pulled off important missions to join the hunt for Nine. And that wasn’t counting the two in Tahiti hunting Isabelle. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Von Pein wasn’t happy. “And what about the other woman?”

Again, Naylor knew who Von Pein referred to. He looked at Marcia.

“There’s been no sighting of Seventeen since she and Nine were seen driving from her home into the city,” Marcia said. “I have my people looking out for her.”

Naylor added, “We suspect she has gone to ground somewhere in downtown Chicago. She’ll be found.”

“So many goddamned loose ends!” Claver said. “How can one man cause us so many problems?”

Naylor had no answer. He’d been asking himself the same thing. Looking around, he could see by the worried expressions on the faces of his fellow directors that every one of them was aware things were starting to unravel.

Von Pein looked at his watch. “I have to be somewhere. Was there anything else?”

“Just the boy,” Naylor said referring to Francis. He began collecting his files as he spoke to signal the meeting was drawing to an end. “Doctor Andrews informs me that testing of the boy has been postponed as he picked up a virus soon after arriving at the lab. The doc assures me it’s only a flu virus, but they can’t begin tests until he’s a hundred per cent.”

“What next?” Von Pein mumbled to himself as he took his leave and departed the boardroom.

The other equally disgruntled board members followed Von Pein, leaving Naylor alone. The Omega boss felt a headache coming on and began massaging his temple in a vain attempt to keep it at bay. He cursed the day the ninth orphan had been born.

44

As Naylor sat alone with his thoughts, Nine was about to cross Zambia’s northern border into the DRC aboard a mini-bus.

After killing Three and the CIA agent in Kangerlussuaq, he’d departed Greenland in the guise of an African-American businessman. The elaborate disguise, which entailed blackening his skin, had taken some time to perfect, but he’d felt it necessary because of the numbers of Omega and CIA personnel he knew were looking for him.

Aware they’d be expecting him to arrive in the DRC by air, Nine had flown to Lusaka, in neighboring Zambia. From there, he’d taken a domestic flight to Solwezi, near Zambia’s northern border with the DRC, and there he’d joined an adventure tour party of backpackers who were headed for the DRC’s capital of Kinshasa.

Nine had forsaken his African-American guise in favor of traveling undisguised for once. He still traveled under a different moniker as he was aware the name
Sebastian Hannar
would set off red flags at any airport in the world. His ten traveling companions – all backpackers from as far afield as America, Holland, Japan and Australia – were young and adventurous. Despite the age gap, they accepted Nine immediately and welcomed him aboard their tour.

Now, approaching Zambia’s northern border, Nine observed the crossing point with interest. It was marked by a large sign which read:
You are entering the Democratic Republic of the Congo
. Graffiti below it read:
Formerly the Belgian Congo
,
Congo Free State
,
Congo-Leopoldville
,
Congo-Kinshasa
and
Zaire
.

Armed guards in the uniform of the Army of Zambia patrolled the southern approach to the border crossing while their counterparts from one of the DRC’s many military splinter groups patrolled the northern approach. The two factions were in stark contrast to each other: the former were smartly dressed and professional-looking while the latter were sloppy and decidedly unprofessional in their appearance and manner.

Observing the DRC soldiers as they swaggered about with AK47’s slung over their shoulders, Nine thought they looked more like guerillas, or mercenaries at best. It didn’t fill him with hope for what lay ahead.

This would be Nine’s second visit to the DRC, though his first didn’t really count. That had been a fleeting visit to its western seaboard where the DRC – or Zaire as it was then – meets the Atlantic Ocean. Arriving after dark on that occasion, and departing before dawn, he’d overnighted there en route to a mission in neighboring Angola.

Despite the armed presence on both sides of the border, the mini-bus crossed into the DRC without any problems.

The tour party’s next stop was Kananga, a sizeable city to the east, and that’s where Nine planned to part company with his young traveling companions. His destination was slap bang in the middle of the country – a dark, forbidding place referred to by explorers and historians of yesteryear as
the heart of Congo
. It was there he hoped he’d find Francis.

#

Seventeen thought she was imagining someone was observing her as she parked her Jeep behind the motel unit she shared with Isabelle.

A minute later, while unloading groceries from the vehicle’s rear seat, the former operative became convinced she was being observed when she saw the head cleaner’s reflection in the Jeep’s side window. The big Tahitian woman seemed to be furtively watching her from the open doorway of the unit opposite.

When Seventeen turned around to look, the woman pulled back out of sight, confirming her suspicions.

The former operative tried to appear casual as she carried the groceries into her unit. Inside, she found Isabelle half asleep on a couch in the main room. Peering outside through a small gap in the curtains, she asked, “You awake?”

“Yes.” Sensing something was wrong, the sleepy Frenchwoman sat up. “What is it?”

“We’re leaving.”

“What?”

“No time to explain.”

Isabelle knew not to question Seventeen. Something was obviously wrong and now wasn’t the time to ask questions. She immediately retrieved her pre-packed bag from her bedroom while Seventeen retrieved hers from a wardrobe.

The pair took only a couple of minutes to load their bags into the Jeep. As they drove out of the motel grounds, Seventeen noticed the head cleaner keenly observing their departure.

At the motel’s front gate, Seventeen turned right and headed south toward the Tahiti Iti peninsula. A mile down the road, she executed a U-turn and headed north back through Taravoa, all the time checking the rear vision mirror to confirm they weren’t being followed.

Isabelle wanted to ask why they were heading north, but she held her tongue. Seventeen had been giving her the cold shoulder ever since she’d admitted she ventured outside the motel for a stroll. The former operative had been furious at Isabelle over that transgression, and had directed a few choice words her way. Since then there’d been nothing. Only silence.

The Frenchwoman didn’t know, but Seventeen had already put that behind her. She wasn’t talking because she needed to concentrate, not because she was still angry. Seventeen knew their choices were limited. Tahiti was a surprisingly small island for
anyone trying to hide.
What would you do, Sebastian?
She desperately tried to figure out a solution.

45

At the motel Isabelle and Seventeen had vacated minutes earlier, Fifteen interviewed the head cleaner. The big Tahitian woman advised him she’d seen the pregnant woman and her husband depart in their Jeep. She also gave him the registration number and told him which way the vehicle had gone.

Fifteen thanked the woman, paid her an agreed cash bonus and returned to his convertible. Driving south in pursuit of the Jeep, the African-American operative wondered who the man was masquerading as Isabelle’s husband. He knew it couldn’t be Nine as the description the cleaner gave indicated the man was too short to be his fellow orphan.

The operative also wondered why he hadn’t seen the Jeep when he was driving north from the peninsula to the motel. If the Jeep had been heading south, as the cleaner had said, he should in all likelihood have seen it. His gut told him the Jeep was traveling north, so he turned the car around and sped back toward Taravoa.

As he drove, he called Twenty Three on his cell phone. The call was answered almost immediately.

Fifteen quickly established that Twenty Three was at Atiue, a settlement on Tahiti Nui’s east coast, south of Papeete. He advised him of the reported sighting of Isabelle and the man posing as her husband, and suggested that Twenty Three drive up the coast road to head off the Jeep the couple were traveling in. Before signing off, Fifteen relayed the Jeep’s registration number to his fellow operative.

That done, Fifteen made some calls to contacts in the network he and Twenty Three had established, advising them of the Jeep and its likely whereabouts. On the other side of the island, Twenty Three did the same.

The net was closing.

#

Isabelle and Seventeen were still traveling north, but they were no longer in the Jeep. While Fifteen had been talking to Twenty Three, the fugitives had abandoned the Jeep in favor of a late model station wagon, which Seventeen had noticed parked in a layby overlooking the sea. The station wagon belonged to a fisherman who was fishing from the rocks below the layby.

Before jump-starting the station wagon’s engine, Seventeen had driven the Jeep a short distance down a no-exit dirt track and hidden it in the dense rainforest. She hoped it wouldn’t be discovered any time soon.

Having commandeered the station wagon, the former operative still had no set plan. Her problem was the island’s interior was almost entirely uninhabited, so as far as she knew hiding places for Isabelle and herself were limited to the coastal towns and villages. She was sure if they remained on the coast, they’d be found sooner or later.

The solution to their problem came when they reached the small settlement of Papenoo, a popular surfing spot on the island’s north coast.

Seventeen slowed the station wagon when she saw a roadside signpost pointing to a tourist lodge ten miles inland. A billboard beneath it advertised a vacancy at the establishment. The former operative turned off the coast road and headed for the lodge. Isabelle was unaware of the change of direction as she was fast asleep.

Looking at her sister-in-law, Seventeen noticed the ruby hanging from the silver necklace around her neck. It reminded her of Nine. He’d worn that same necklace for as long as she could remember.

Seventeen’s memory was improving with every passing day. Since she’d been deprogrammed by Nine’s friend in Chicago, fragments of past events, people and places had started coming back to her, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Some memories – like the killings she’d been involved in – she’d have preferred had remained buried.

The road they travelled followed the Papenoo River, Tahiti’s biggest river. It cut through some of the most picturesque scenery on the island. High, craggy mountains rose up on both sides of the river valley and lush rainforest abounded. Every few miles along the road, spectacular waterfalls cascaded down the mountainsides.   

As she drove, Seventeen decided it was time to stop posing as Isabelle’s husband. That cover was blown now anyway. She was looking forward to being a woman again and being able to dress, talk and act like one.

Seventeen pulled over and set about changing guises while Isabelle slept on. Ten minutes was all it took. Making use of the spare clothes and disguise aids she had with her, she transformed herself into a chic tourist complete with fashionable shades and a decorative sun hat that wouldn’t look out of place at the Kentucky Derby or the Royal Ascot even.

As Seventeen was adding the final touches to her new guise, Fifteen was driving through Papenoo in his convertible. He was still hoping to catch up to the Jeep he thought the fugitive pair were traveling in and didn’t give the tourist lodge sign or signpost a second glance as he sped past them.

46

After Nine and his fellow backpackers crossed into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they were faced with a full day’s drive east to their first stop, Kananga. That’s where Nine planned to part company with his newfound friends. While they went bungy-jumping at a new adventure tourism venture run by local tourist operators on the nearby Lulua River, he’d fly north in a chartered private helicopter.

Traveling in heat of Africa and in the confines of a mini-bus whose air-conditioning system had malfunctioned, every hour spent on the bumpy road was torturous for the tourists. For Nine, it was especially torturous as he knew every hour that passed was time he, or Francis, could ill afford.

Despite the need to find his son quickly, he’d opted to cross the border on land as he thought it a no-brainer Omega would be scrutinizing the passengers of all commercial flights arriving in the DRC. While he had supreme confidence in his shapeshifting abilities, he didn’t want to push his luck any more than he had to. After all, he’d used just about every disguise in his repertoire.

The mini-bus arrived in Kananga just on dusk and therefore too late to connect with the private helicopter Nine had chartered earlier. He contacted the chopper pilot and organized an early morning departure then joined his young friends for dinner in a cheap restaurant on the ground floor of the backpackers’ hostel they were overnighting at.

Nine only wished the circumstances had been different. He found his traveling companions stimulating company and enjoyed their sparkling conversation, but his family was never far from his mind. It was with regret that he made his apologies and retired upstairs for an early night.