Hello hello.
Eteri: hopefully yes, this chapter will explain a bit more. What Gillian is dealing with is certainly unexpected, Cal is struggling to match this with the woman he knows. Poor guy!
Reynolds stood by the window watching the heavy rain fall, seeing the irony in realising how some things really come out of nowhere. Not that he had paid much attention to the weather, but the storm had been sudden and unforeseen, much like the call from Cal and everything else that had followed.
It was late but they hadn't left the office. Staying there wasn't going to help in any particular way or even to speed up things, but it was inconceivable for either of them to be anywhere else. Cal had checked on Emily, a very awkward phone call judging by what Reynolds had been able to catch, then the scientist had left the room for the second, and more important, call.
Professor Thomas Radner was - had been apparently - a CIA operative. The name had rang a bell in Cal's mind but he hadn't been able to place it properly until he had seen the picture: they had never worked together but Cal had met him once to talk about the deception programme when it was still only an idea written on the back of a paper napkin. The meeting had been a waste of time, Radner didn't see or understand the value of his science and they had parted ways. And since they had been introduced by someone he knew at the CIA, Cal had decided he had to make a second highly unexpected call within 24 hours.
That was what he was doing, back in his office while Reynolds waited in Gillian's to give him a semblance of privacy. Reynolds had put in a few calls on his own; the statement on the university website only mentioned that the professor had passed away without sharing many details, and they had a lot of questions regarding the academic's demise. If he was the one who sent the package he must have died afterwards, but they had to make sure. More than anything, they had to find out how he had died because when put together with everything else, the fact that he was CIA certainly left much to wonder about.
It was almost midnight when Cal walked back in his office, looking worse for wear and too flabbergasted by the conversation he had just had to add to feel how tired he was. He looked over at Reynolds with a small nod, then held up his phone and sighed.
"Radner was CIA, as in still was when he died." He confirmed then. "That is all my contact could tell me, no mention on how he died or when exactly."
"Anything about a connection with Foster?"
"No, no that he knew of."
As he said that out loud, the realisation that his best bet had probably been a losing one, Cal did feel a sudden rush of exhaustion wash over him and stumbled over to the armchair in Gillian's office where he sat down. Feeling way more like a guest than him, Reynolds just stood and leaned on the desk, looking down at Cal who was now looking around the room with attentive eyes. He had done that already, after the FBI had cleared the room, trying to figure out if something of note was missing. He hadn't noticed anything particularly out of place, but then again the past 24 hours had shown that when she wanted Gillian was really good at blowing smoke in his eyes. For all he knew she had a damn safe of her own hiding somewhere in the room!
From his vantage point Reynolds noticed how the scientist's look seemed to empty for a moment, something he had seen once or twice before during the day. He knew what it meant, that Cal had that look in his eyes whenever the realisation he didn't know his best friend as well as thought dawned on him, and now the CIA had been added to the mix. The agent knew that there was no point in trying to comfort him, he had no clue how to do that even if he'd wanted to try. He figured the best way to help him was to keep him focused on the situation, and make him feel like he could do something about it.
"Do you believe him?"
Cal looked up, probably seeing the agent's intentions and accepting the symbolic stretched out hand, then sighed and nodded.
"That he can't tell me about Radner's death? Oh yeah!" He slouched down on the seat, stretching out his legs. "That he doesn't know of any connection with Foster? I wish I could say he was lying but no, he really had no idea."
"Do you think there might be one?"
"I don't know, mate. I really don't." Cal confessed in a painful moan, absently waving his hands in the air. "Two days ago if you'd told me Gillian could be involved in something like this I would have said you'd lost your marbles. But now?" He shook his head then looked up at him again. "What did your guys say?"
"They are making some inquiries, we have time difference with Hong Kong on our side at least. I called in a few favours to see what we can find out about the other stops the package made before getting to Gillian."
"Must be some hell of a favour!" Cal chuckled, honestly impressed. Then his whole body deflated and he joined his hands in his lap, staring at the agent. "Why are you doing this? Why are you helping us? I mean, you could have hung up on me when I called and you'd have all the rights to do so."
"True, but I didn't have any real reasons for it." Reynolds chuckled at Lightman's confusion, then finally sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk. "I know the FBI gave you a hard time when I got shot but it wasn't really your fault. I knew you were a hothead and that you were probably doing your own investigation behind my back, but I was the one who decided to follow you."
"You nearly died there," Cal reminded him in a low voice. "And you followed me to prove to Dillon I wasn't a plonker, so can you see how I feel that's on me?"
"Well that's your problem, Cal." Reynolds stated. "And you weren't entirely wrong, about DIllon."
"Come again?"
Reynolds stifled a laugh, knowing it wasn't all appropriate but unable to hold it back.
"Don't get me wrong, he is clean, straight as they come. When we worked the street fights case he was fair with you in the end when the truth came out, you both put your beef aside for a greater good. But then I got word of that illegal poker games thing he tried to pull on you, and it seemed to me that he was trying to get back at you."
"Would you believe I'm not entirely sure what happened there?" Cal chuckled too, for some reason honestly entertained by the direction the conversation had taken, but then a dark shadow passed over his face and his whole demeanour changed. "Gillian got me out of that, whatever it was."
Reynolds bit at his bottom lip, cursing the fact what might have been a distraction was turning out to be just a temporary detour taking them back to the original track. He wanted to tell Cal that everything was going to be fine and that she'd be back, but he didn't believe much in it and the man in front of him would have certainly called him out on that.
The silence was heavy now, the room they were in starting to feel too small and not suited for their presence. Cal too was starting to feel like an intruder, although part of him figured if Gillian had been there she'd have no ground for protest.
After a while, feeling no need to add to the conversation and considering the matter closed, Cal stood up and walked over to Gillian's desk to power up the computer. As unbelievable as it might have sounded, even though he knew Gillian's password he didn't go looking for something - else - she might have been hiding, but instead went online and looked for information on Professor Radner. It was a mere empty exercise, if the man had been with the CIA there was hardly going to be anything compromising about him online but you never know what is going to come down the tree if you shake it hard enough. Besides, with a bit of luck there might be some helpful information out there that they could gather without calling in dodgy favours or exposing themselves.
Cal was by no means a cautious person and not one to shy away from danger, but he'd lied to himself if he didn't admit that he had been mulling over Gillian's request to take a step back. She wasn't wrong, one of them if not all could have gotten killed at the post office and obviously she had stumbled on something big. He trusted her with many things, including being capable of taking care of herself…but the more they unveiled about that story the less he felt comfortable that she could indeed deal with it on her own as she claimed. So, he thought, maybe he could work out some sort of compromise: he could stay relatively put and let the FBI hit the field when needed, but there could be nothing wrong in some online research.
"Radner was a professor of marketing and advertising in Hong Kong," he mumbled out loud, waiting for Reynolds to come closer to carry on. "No wife, no kids. He'd been teaching in Hong Kong for 15 years, but didn't publish anything or attended any academic event for the past 20 or so."
"Kind of weird right? I mean, even if he was a CIA operative."
"A little." Cal agreed, after all the whole point of being undercover was to have a believable life to hide behind. "I guess it depends on what he was doing for them."
"Your contact didn't say?"
"Only that he didn't know. It was bullshit of course, but he knows I can't really get to him besides a phone conversation."
"Anything on the way Radner died?"
Cal typed away and opened a number of tabs, most redirecting to the university's page and a newspaper for Americans living in the country reporting on the man's death. There wasn't much there, which in a way was an ulterior confirmation that something was afoot. Even if he hadn't been all that active recently Radner was still quite the academic profile, and all those short and vague notes about his passing screamed cover up. Eventually, he found a brief note mentioning "natural causes", believable for a man in his 70s but again a sign that something had not been shared with the public.
"Why am I not surprised?" Reynolds mumbled, his thoughts in sync with Cal's view.
"Did you ask your guys if they found anything here that mentioned Radner? Or at her house?"
"I did, they are going through everything again to see if something pops up- Hold on a sec."
The agent cut himself off when the phone in his pocket rang and he picked up immediately, listening carefully and scribbling down things as the conversation went on. Knowing his time to know about it would have come Cal carried on with his research, but found nothing else of great note. Out of a sudden curious desperation and a bit of boredom he googled Gillian's name, trying to convince himself he was only doing so for comparison. A little voice inside his head was now trying to make the strong point that she might have been with the CIA too, which would have explained a lot, and he found himself looking for similarities between his friend's online presence and Radner's. And hoping there was none.
He went at it for a few minutes, his mind muting Reynolds voice while scrolling up and down on the screen to see information about Dr Foster. In all honesty, he mostly lingered on images of her, smiling without a care in the world in most of them, and when he heard Reynolds was about to end the call he quickly shut all the incriminating tabs and went back to Radner.
"I got something." The agent announced. "Radner died of cardiac complications." Cal rolled his eyes and grunted, disappointed, but Reynolds shook his head. "Not just any complications. The autopsy revealed that the problem was created by mixing two different medications that were not supposed to be taken together."
"Any chance Radner didn't know about the side effects?"
"Doesn't matter." Reynolds pointed out. "It seems that he wasn't on any of the two drugs on a regular basis."
"So he was what, poisoned?"
In a way the possibility was intriguing and could shed a light on their investigation; of course, the downside was that the man who had sent the package had been murdered.
"Kind of. Technically it was natural causes, just…facilitated natural causes. And you know what else?" Cal shook his head, not entirely sure he wanted to know the rest if that was only the first part of the news. "He died the day after the package was mailed."
Cal let that piece of information sink in, closing his eyes and trying to mentally put together the puzzle. Radner, a CIA agent of sorts, had been killed the day after he had shipped something out of the country: even a firm believer in greatest powers and coincidences would have struggled not to see a connection there. He shook his head and threw it back to look up at the ceiling, for a fleeting moment thinking he had never really looked up there, then realising with great frustration that the more they discovered about the situation the less he liked the scenario coming together.
"May I?"
Caught off guard, Cal looked down at Reynolds who was asking to have a go at the PC. There was something in the agent's demeanour that Cal remembered all too well from their first case together, that focused expression on his face when he had identified Paul's hiding place within seconds following his instincts and knowledge, and he quickly moved out of the way. He was onto something and Cal had no intention to mess with his process. So he stood up and they switched places, watching as Reynolds took control of the keyboard and started typing away while talking to him.
"Thanks to Peters we know where the package was and when," he explained, then took his notepad and frantically browsed the pages. "What if Radner is not the only one who died because of it?"
It was an interesting thought, and a scary one too considering who was the last person who had received the package. Equally intrigued and afraid, Cal leaned a little closer to take a peak of the agent's notes but gave up seeing it look like a stenographer on crack had jotted them down, then he focused on the screen instead. Reynolds started with Moscow, the second city on the package trail, typing away and lost in his own hunch to the point that Cal had to tap him on the shoulder to remind him he wasn't alone.
"It's a long shot," he said, clearly looking to manage expectations. "These are all big cities with millions of habitants so we might get nothing, but last year the Interpol launched a database to register deaths of foreigners abroad, as a way to support national agencies investigating disappearances by sharing essential information."
"What kind of information?"
"Name, when known. Gender, cause of death and of course nationality. See?"
He showed Cal's the screen, he had entered the database and searched for death of Americans in Hong Kong correspodsing to Radner's murder and his name was on the list. The two men exchanged a long and silent look charged with excitement, the feeling of the hunt washing away the fatigue and everything else. The notes about Radner included the names of the two drugs that had provided the deadly mix, and with that it became easy to narrow it down. He spent the following minutes going back and forth between the database and his notes, looking for any similarities and correspondences in deaths registered in Moscow, Hamburg and Valencia in the days around when the package had been mailed from there. Moscow and Hamburg easily provided a very precise match, two men had been found dead the day after the package had been shipped out with the exact same cocktail of drugs found in their systems. Whoever had taken care of the database in Valencia had not been as thorough, but there were only three American nationals reported dead in the relevant days and two of them were a couple killed in a boating accident.
Cal watched it all unfold, the information piling up with substantial proof to boot, excruciatingly conflicted between being happy they had something concrete to work on and the realisation of what was becoming increasingly obvious: whoever had been associated with that mysterious package had not lived long afterwards.
"You think you could revisit your contact on these names?" Reynolds questioned him then, holding out the print outs of the information. "To confirm if they were involved with the CIA."
"Probably not, but worth a shot." He picked up the papers and absently looked at them before walking over to the couch. "Should we?"
"What do you mean?"
That maybe Gillian's right, maybe I have no idea what this is and I should not mess with it.
Cal sighed and looked at the papers in his hand, thinking about Radner and the three unknown victims. He was sure about Radner and the chance the others had been involved with the agency was highly probable: did they really need to go and poke people about to get confirmation of something that seemed pretty clear already?
"What if by asking questions we stir up things with the wrong people? I mean, people got that package and died. They were killed in a way that wouldn't make it look so, but Gillian broke the pattern." Reynolds didn't feel like pointing out that probably meant she had seen it coming, that she had been expecting it; Cal knew it by then, whether he cared to admit it or not. "Maybe we should keep this to ourselves until we know more about it."
"Like what? Besides confirming they were with the CIA too, what else would we need to know?"
"Let's do some more research on them, see if we can find any connection between them and with Radner. And with Gillian," he added then in a low voice. "We know they are related because of the package but if they were all with the agency it would have been too risky to expose each other by sending the package."
"You think we should try to find out what they were sending around?"
Cal nodded, also thinking he desperately wanted to find something denying that Gillian was a CIA agent. He nearly asked Reynolds if they shouldn't be focusing their efforts on finding Foster outright, forget about the damn package or the globetrotter killers going around murdering people and just get her home safe. He held it back, of course: it would have been a very selfish request since there were obviously lives on the line and he didn't have the bigger picture.
"I think the people who killed Radner and the lot are here in Washington. They are after the package and they are after Gillian." He said eventually. "Maybe if we can find them we can find her. Or at last stop them."
"It won't be easy."
"We can follow the same track", he said then, holding up the papers. "More likely the same people who shot at us today are the ones after the package, they must have travelled along with it even if they were a couple of days behind." Reynolds frowned, a bit confused. "The package wasn't stopped so they must have gotten to their targets too late."
Reynolds nodded slowly, seeing the pattern outlined by Cal.
"We can try to check with immigration and airlines, see if the same names pop up around the same time the package transited in those countries." Cal nodded, but the agent urged to add with a gloomy voice. "I wouldn't expect too much of it, Cal. I have a feeling these people would not be so stupid to travel with the same ID while on an international killing spree."
Cal didn't think they would, but desperate times call for desperate measures or, like in that moment, for desperate hopes. Then Reynolds stood up and walked over to him to take back the papers he had printed, absently looking at them with a thoughtful expression.
"Let me make some calls," he said, then he looked down at the scientist. "Why don't you try to get some sleep? This might take a while and frankly, you look like crap."
"You always make me feel so special."
Cal joked sarcastically, but he didn't need a mirror to know the agent was right. He hadn't slept in nearly two days, barely eaten and drank only alcohol: he could barely function, and until they had more to go on he knew that he would spend every waking moment obsessing about Gillian's secrets and worrying about her safety. So he nodded at the agent and watched as he left the room, then he kicked off his shoes and laid down on the couch, closing his eyes and bracing for the worst sleep of his life to come.
Some more information coming to the surface and Cal kind of following Gillian's advice: where will this go next?
Hoping to see you share your thoughts on this.
Chapter 8; Swan song
