The Project 01 - White Jade by Alex Lukeman Page B

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    She took a sip from a glass of water.
    "Tell me about Director Harker."
    "She was part of the post nine eleven task force at Justice . She pissed off a lot of big shots by insisting it wouldn't have happened if the right hand had known what the left was doing. No one wanted to hear that, back then. It stalled her career. When Rice got elected he tapped her to head up the Project."
    "What is the Project? You've got Crays, then you have resources. What do you do there?"
    "It's the President's brainchild, a counterweight to the big intelligence agencies. Project is an acronym. Presidential Official Joint Exercise for Counter Terrorism. The joint part doesn't work too well , though, except for NSA . Harker's job is to cut through the smoke and mirrors tossed out by the big agencies and tell the President what's really going on. She's not afraid to speak her mind and s he's a brilliant analyst. The three letter agencies d on't like her. She answers only to the President, so t hey c an't control her or tell her what to do . That d oesn' t stop them from trying. "
    "You're not an analyst."
    "No. Ronnie and I get sent into the field to find things out. Sometimes to clean up messes that wouldn't have happened if CIA and the others had been doing their job. "
    "That's why you carry the gun?"
    He looked out at the coastal range in the distance. The mountains formed blue ridges in the haze.
    "Sometimes people shoot at us . "
    Selena put Burps down and stood up. He meowed loudly, gave her an insulted look and stalked off under the deck.
    " Let ' s look at the book , " she said.
    They went inside and he got the book from the safe. A t the kitchen table Selena began reading .
    He got a kit out and began cleaning his pistol. He watched her turn the ancient pages . She was concentrating, the tip of her tongue exposed between her lips.
    When Megan died he'd shut down any thought s of letting someone get close again. Selena brought up old feelings, feelings he'd thought were dead and buried. He wasn't sure it was a good idea to bring those kinds of feelings back to life. He wasn't sure he wanted to let Selena in. You let someone in, it made you vulnerable. You weren't in control anymore.
    S elena looked up.
    " There's a list of some ingredients for an elixir of immortality , like cinnabar and gold . And there's a map to someplace in Tibet . "
    " Cinnabar? "
    " Th at's what you make mercury from. Mercury was in a lot of the Chinese immortality formulas. It probably killed most of the people who took them. It might even have killed the Emperor. But China has known high grade deposits of cinnabar . T hey wouldn ' t care about that. "
    He held a bore light in the chamber of the .45 , looked down the barrel.
    " There ' s a reference to ' burning silver rocks ' in the formula that I don ' t understand , " she said.
    He ran a cleaning brush through the bore.
    She turned another page, studied it. " Do you think the Chinese government is behind this? "
    " No. I think it ' s Yang acting on his own. Maybe he's just nuts, looking for an elixir of life. "
    Selena brushed hair back from her forehead and frowned.
    " There has to be a rational purpose behind all this. I ' ll feel a lot better when we know what it is. "
    Carter watched her studying the text . She had retreated onto familiar ground, the expert linguist.
    He'd had his share of beds but he'd never been a woman chaser. Besides, t he Corps was hard on relationships . Then he'd met Megan and knew she was the one . It was a miracle to him that she'd felt the same way . When she died i t left a hole inside him, big enough to pull him in and cover him up if he let it.
    He'd plugged it with war . He was good at war, it was pretty much all he knew how to do. But m aking love with Selena had changed something. The hole was coming unplugged. It made him nervous, the feeling. It wasn't something he was used to.

Chapter Twenty

    Harker sent a Gulfstream GIVSP to pick them up at Beale. It was a government