Passionate Obsession by D.M. Mortier

Chapter Twenty

The Director

I allowed a brief smile of supreme satisfaction to cross my face as I deleted the last CCTV footage capturing the actions of Andrew McAllister and his family. As head of the Agency, I ensured that all my agents were adequately protected. And Mac and his family needed all the protection they could get right now.

Over the years, each Director was retired at an appropriate age of sixty, and a new Director named. No one ever saw the Director, as he was always in some disguise or another, so no one knew what he looked like. The agents who worked for me knew me only as the Director. None have ever met me personally. I will have to make an exception when I recruit Katia McAllister.

The thought of that made me smile and made me uneasy at the same time. I was still weighing the pros and cons of bringing her in as an agent. I needed to better understand her capabilities and how best to utilize them while keeping her safe. Unlike Mac, she was not made of infinite strength, nor did she have the ability to heal as fast. She was more vulnerable in so many ways.

Since this was the third time that Colt and Imani had gone into hiding, it might also be a good time to bring them on board with the Agency as well. I could offer them much more security and stability as our agents. I needed to make a decision on them before the Chinese operatives currently tracking them succeeded and got their hands on a weapon that could wreak havoc on the security of the strongest military forces throughout the G7.

The scientists had stirred up a lot of fervor over the existence of successful test subjects to their serum. I quietly squashed any headway they made by presenting them as overzealous quacks to my various military contacts around the world. And their funding had already been greatly diminished after their repeated failures. The powerful senators that had backed the use of defense spending on the serum project had backed down when the records of the project were leaked to the Gang of Eight. The Gang of Eight were the eight bi-partisan leaders in Congress that were privy to all classified intelligence matters. With the loss of their funding from the U.S. government, Dr. Everette and Dr. Forbes would soon find themselves languishing behind the walls of a very stark prison.

The only governments likely to entertain the scientists now were probably the Chinese and Russians, and even they would more than likely steal the serum rather than buy it. No, the scientists were on borrowed time now.

I had originally thought to have Mac and his family secreted in his castle in Ireland, but I revised that stance when the scientists went after Justin, his wife, and his daughter. Rescuing them before any real harm was done was not only essential but it was also something that had to be done immediately. The castle would come later.

As the Director, I had to maintain an icy calm when making decisions that were invariably life or death for those impacted. Usually, I would have my agents go in and extract the individual who was a virus to a society and simply arrange their imprisonment for life or arrange their untimely death if they could not be extracted safely. This was Mac’s original assignment when he was placed undercover to spy on Colonel Ragnarson.

Colonel Ragnarson had come into possession of a bulletproof shield, which could not only shield him from a bullet but could also shield him from a weapon as powerful as a bomb. He had also acquired a custom gun, engineered to be a cross between a SIG assault rifle and a hand-held semi-automatic Glock, and it had bullets that could pierce anything metal. These acquisitions drew my attention because if the blueprints of those weapons got into the wrong hands, wars that were being fought now would be even more deadly. It was fortunate that Colonel Ragnarson and, more importantly, Imani had had no intention of providing the blueprints or the weapons to anyone or to any government. Unfortunately, before Mac could be reassigned and given a new identity, Katia and the boys happened. He had to remain Andrew McAllister to provide stability and an identity for his young family.

Now I had to deal with the complication of these scientists, who had put a grain of interest into the minds of too many men of war for this to be squashed indefinitely. As long as Mac and his family are seen as attainable, and as long as the serum is a possibility, the scientists will be dangerous. I should have ensured that there was no trace of that serum years ago instead of trusting in the decency of doctors to honor the ethics of their Hippocratic Oath.

Unlike when Mac’s identity was altered by a change of name, a passport, an unkempt beard, the length of his hair, or a simple change in style of dress or speech, hiding the McAllister family in this digital world of endless image recognition would be next to impossible. Katia’s exotic beauty was too captivating for anyone to forget. And together, Mac and Kat were two shockingly beautiful people, their skin tones as strikingly different as ebony and ivory, perfect foils for each other. Keeping them hidden would be a miraculous feat.

No, hiding this time was not an option. Mac and Katia must live in the open. With their combined powers, they were untouchable, and must be seen to be so. The scientists and others who might hunt them needed to realize that, needed to see that any attempt to capture them was futile. However, to make the situation as unattainable as possible, the serum and those with knowledge of how to create it must also no longer exist.

The first thing that needed to be done must be to negate the scientists and the serum. With Katia’s account of what she witnessed in Giselle’s flat and the CCTV footage of Dr. Everette entering the flat, I would make Dr. Everette’s and, by association, Dr. Forbes’ stay in London very unpleasant for sure. The murder of an MI6 agent would not be something the good doctors could talk themselves out of in a pinch. While they are tied up with the British penal system, I will work on ensuring every trace of a possible serum is destroyed.

I managed to carve out a few hours of privacy to sequester myself with my laptops. They arrived a few hours ago, new and already equipped with the files and programs I needed. My staff is nothing if not efficient. No matter which country, which office space, or in what circumstance I find myself, my staff always ensures that I am never disconnected from my work for long. Given the number of missions that are always running concurrently, I couldn’t afford any disruption or inefficiency, too many lives were at stake. Therefore, I employed only the best.

There were a few missions in progress for which I issued new commands. I had been tracking them with my high-tech custom smartphone, which I always carried with me. I sent a team of six of my best agents to Alaska. Dr. Reiner will be forced to decide what is truly important to him. If his decision is not the right one, he will endure the same fate as his colleagues.