The Ninth Orphan (27 page)

“
Isabelle was very lucky,” the surgeon answered frankly. “The bullet missed any vital organs. It only missed her spine by an inch. One inch to the left and she’d be dead or paralyzed for life.” Monsieur Alleget hung on the surgeon’s every word. The surgeon continued, “Your daughter is young and in good shape. She will make a full recovery. However, she’ll need plenty of rest.” He smiled at Monsieur Alleget who couldn’t hide his relief.

An armed guard stationed in front of the door leading to the recovery room stepped aside when the surgeon told him the visitor was Isabelle’s father. Monsieur Alleget entered the room just as Isabelle was coming around. Behind them, the surgeon shut the door to give father and daughter some privacy.

Monsieur Alleget kissed Isabelle on her forehead then sat down next to her. He breathed a deep sigh as he let out all the stress and worry he’d experienced since learning first, of his daughter’s abduction and, second, her admission to the hospital.

Isabelle slowly opened her eyes. The image she saw before her was blurred. Gradually, the image became clearer. She smiled when she finally recognized her father’s chubby face. “Papa,” she said weakly.

“
Don’t talk,” Monsieur Alleget warned. He kissed her again, on her cheek this time.

Isabelle’s smile faded when she remembered Nine and the danger he’d warned her about. The realization that American operatives may come looking for her chilled her to the bone. Isabelle looked at her father urgently. “You must get me out of here, papa.”

“
Don’t be silly, child. You are in the best place.”

Isabelle half-sat up in bed and grabbed her father’s arm with as much strength as she could muster. “Papa, listen. It is not safe here. They will come for me. Please.”

Thinking his daughter was delirious, Monsieur Alleget paid no attention to her plea. “No, you are staying put, young lady. This is one of the finest hospitals in France.” He gently pushed her back down on the bed.

A few seconds later, Isabelle drifted back into unconsciousness.

#

By mid-afternoon, Nine had reached the outskirts of Paris. Still driving the red Peugeot, he traveled at speed in the fast lane. He was grim-faced as he fiddled with the car radio tuner searching for a news station. Finally, he found one.

Within minutes, a French newsreader announced on air, “Isabelle Alleget, daughter of former politician Fabrice Alleget, turned up at Perigueux Hospital early this morning. She was wounded, having been shot, but doctors say she will make a full recovery.”

On hearing this, Nine allowed himself a brief moment of happiness. The newsreader continued, “Monsieur Alleget was reunited with his daughter only a few minutes ago.”

Switching off the radio, Nine took stock of his situation. Now that he’d heard Isabelle was going to survive, he had to focus on what lay ahead.

The rogue agent was heading back to Paris as he knew that was Omega’s central point of command for the operation.
Certain his fellow Omegans would try to use Isabelle to get to him, he knew there was only one thing left to do: wage war against them.

He thought it unlikely he would survive what he was about to do, but
gave little thought to his own mortality. As long as Isabelle survived, he would be happy. If he died, he would die with a certain amount of satisfaction knowing he
’
d loved and been loved. For he now understood it wasn
’
t just about freeing his physical self, but also his heart and mind. Isabelle had done that. She
’
d shown him places inside himself he never knew existed. Thanks to her, he no longer felt separate from the rest of humanity.

Speeding along the motorway toward Paris, Nine gripped the steering wheel as he thought about wreaking vengeance on his creators. The more he thought about killing them, the more he warmed to the idea.
It’s time for the mouse to chase the cat.

I
n the meeting room of the DST headquarters, in central Paris, Kentbridge and Seventeen studied a map of Western Europe as a French secretary stuck colored pins into it. The pins represented how far Nine could have gone since dropping Isabelle off at Perigueux Hospital. They basically amounted to guesswork. Kentbridge and Seventeen had no definite ideas as to where Nine could be.

Lost in thought, the senior agent turned and looked out the window at vehicles traveling along a distant motorway. Whether by coincidence or some deeper force, it was the same motorway Nine was currently negotiating.

Kentbridge noticed his reflection in the window. His bruised face served as a reminder of his running battle with Nine on the train carriage roof the previous evening.

Fortunately, there were no professional ramifications resulting from the shooting of Isabelle. Naylor couldn't have cared less about her welfare when Kentbridge told him what happened. He knew there was nothing to connect his senior agent or Omega with the near-tragedy. Naylor's only concern was that Kentbridge had allowed Nine to escape. “You must be losing your touch,” he'd told him.

Kentbridge turned back as Naylor entered the room.
The Omega director
looked at Seventeen and at the secretary. “Would you excuse us for a moment?”

The two women departed. Seventeen was inwardly fuming. She hated being dismissed like that.

As soon as they were alone, Naylor pulled a card from his wallet and
handed it to Kentbridge
. “Here's the codes for MK-Ultra. Simply recite these voice-commands to activate any program you desire.”

“
Finally,” Kentbridge replied. He’d requested the codes a week earlier. The delay had caused him much frustration. If he’d had them when face-to-face with Nine on the train, he could have turned the tables on the rogue agent. He asked, “What took so long?”

“
MK-Ultra has had a restricted C12 access since the CIA’s mind control program officially shut down a few decades back. I had to twist a few arms at Langley to get this.”

While the Omega director was speaking, Kenbridge studied the card. Its top surface was simply inscribed
MK-Ultra Pedemont Operatives
; the underside featured a series of codes and the names of all the planets in the Solar System.

Naylor explained, “You only need to name the planets, in order, to activate MK-Ultra in Nine or in any of our orphans for that matter.”

As Kentbridge memorized the wording on the card, he felt a stab of guilt. The very thought of this highly-classified project always made him feel uneasy. MK-Ultra, the CIA's far-reaching mind-control program, was an umbrella project spawned from the US Government's super-secret Project Paperclip, a sinister venture that involved bringing dozens of Nazi scientists to America immediately after World War Two.

Kentbridge was aware that some believed MK-Ultra’s beginnings actually went back to the horrendous psychiatric experiments the Nazis conducted during the Holocaust.

He was also aware of the often-disastrous impact MK-Ultra had had on the lives of CIA operatives and unwitting citizens over the years. Some of America's highest profile assassins – including the likes of John Lennon’s killer Mark David Chapman and Robert Kennedy’s assassin Sirhan Sirhan – claimed they were CIA-programmed killers hypnotized by MK-Ultra.

The media portrayed them as crazed lone gunmen, so naturally the public paid little attention to their claims. Kentbridge, however, knew it was possible some of these men were mind controlled soldiers, or
Manchurian Candidates
, carrying out assassination orders their conscious minds were not even aware of.

Kentbridge’s guilt stemmed from the fact he’d reluctantly agreed to enter his orphans into the MK-Ultra program – and while they were still very young. Naylor had convinced him at the time Omega needed a way to control its orphans if any of them ever rebelled. That had been twenty five years ago and neither man had thought much about MK-Ultra again until Nine went AWOL in the Philippines. That was the first time they’d experienced a major problem with any of their orphans.

Kentbridge finished memorizing the card Naylor had given him then pocketed it. He looked at his superior. “Now I just need to lure Sebastian and it's game over.”

“
How do you plan to do that?”

The senior agent looked intuitively at Naylor. “He'll come for me.”

Naylor paused reflectively for a second then nodded. He trusted Kentbridge implicitly when it came to the orphans. “Alright, but be careful, Tommy. Don't forget, MK-Ultra was a problematic mind control program. Who knows what might happen.”

Seventeen suddenly barged into the room. “Sorry to interrupt, sir,” she said to Naylor. Turning to Kentbridge, she said, “The helicopter is ready to take us to Perigueux.”

Experiencing a sudden brainwave, Kentbridge interjected, saying, “Let's extricate Isabelle Alleget from the hospital and use her as bait. That'll force Nine's hand.”

Naylor pondered this before replying, “The media will have a field day.”

“
Exactly. They'll alert Nine for us.”

Naylor nodded, then turned back to Seventeen. “I want you to take care of the Alleget woman yourself. I’ll let you know where to detain her.”

Seventeen was pleased to finally be given some control. As she left the room, Naylor returned his attention to Kentbridge. “You stay here and set the trap for Nine.”

#

Elsewhere in Paris, in a crowded inner-city street, Nine edged the red Peugeot through heavy traffic. Parking the vehicle, he jumped out and entered a public phone box where he called Perigueux Hospital to check on Isabelle’s condition. He pretended to be a journalist asking for an update. A ward nurse told him Isabelle was in a stable condition and was still expected to make a full recovery. Nine also got confirmation that there was an armed guard outside Isabelle’s room and that her father was still with her.

Having heard all he needed to, he hung up in mid-conversation. He felt relieved that Isabelle had at least some protection. Climbing back into the stolen Peugeot, he rejoined the bustling afternoon traffic. As he drove, his thoughts returned to his latest game plan: targeting his Omega kin. First, though, he had to locate them.

Working fast over the course of the afternoon, Nine managed to enter several intelligence buildings variously disguised as a cleaner and a courier. He even snuck inside the DST headquarters where his Omega colleagues had held their meeting earlier that day. Unbeknown to him or Kentbridge, the two men missed each other by only a few minutes.

Nine eventually checked into an inner city hotel. He decided he’d be better off hacking into intelligence grids online and searching for his oppressors remotely.

A
round the time Nine was checking into the hotel in Paris, afternoon tea was being served to patients in Perigueux Hospital.

In a private room of the hospital’s recovery ward, Isabelle had regained consciousness, but was still in pain. A little color had returned to her cheeks and, although tired and weak, she was feeling more with it now that the effects of morphine and other drugs were wearing off.

Monsieur Alleget and Isabelle’s stepmother, Catherine, sat close by. They couldn’t stop smiling, so relieved were they their daughter had survived. The trio wouldn’t have been so happy if they’d known, at that very minute, Chinese and American intelligence agents were converging on the hospital.

While she was glad to be alive, Isabelle’s emotions were in a whirl. Her relief was matched by confusion, a sense of loss and more than a little fear – fear about what could happen next. Nine’s warnings, about certain people wanting to get to him through her, were still fresh in her mind. Isabelle’s confusion was caused by her feelings for the enigmatic man who had abducted her and whose actions had almost cost her, her life.

Try as she may, she couldn’t deny her feelings for Nine.
Damn you, Sebastian
. She was missing him and this accounted for her sense of loss.

Isabelle tried to sit up, but lacked the strength and fell back on the pillow. Catherine came to her rescue, placing two extra pillows behind Isabelle, enabling her daughter to sit up with a minimum of pain.

The patient looked at her parents gravely as she wondered how best to explain her unusual situation to them. As she thought over
her brief, tumultuous time
with Nine, it seemed so extraordinary even she had trouble believing it actually happened.

She took a deep breath. “Papa. Catherine. I don’t have time to explain what occurred over the last week or so, but I have something very important to tell you.”

Isabelle was momentarily distracted when she noticed Nine's silver necklace on her bedside table. The ruby attached to it glowed red under the hospital lights. She reached for it, but the effort was too much. Catherine passed it to her. Isabelle immediately placed the necklace around her neck then looked at her parents intently.

When she saw she had their undivided attention, she continued, “My abductor is not the evil person the media has portrayed him to be. He did take me hostage, but it was for my own protection, and his. He has opened my eyes to some shocking conspiracies. I am now aware of some very sinister people and organizations operating in this world.”