Immortal (32 page)

Saffron looked away from them. ‘It’s complicated,’ she said.

‘I don’t think it is,’ Ethan said. ‘You’re working for Jeb Oppenheimer.’

‘My job is to steal data from rival companies working in the same fields as SkinGen,’ Saffron said. ‘I then destroy the existing records, effectively rendering the company
useless, and deliver the stolen data to Jeb who uses it to advance his own clinical studies. It helps him get the jump on the competition.’

Ethan nodded slowly as he finally got it.

‘Jeb’s got something on you and he’s using it to blackmail you into making these attacks,’ he said. ‘It can’t be your inheritance because you’ve said
you don’t want it, so my guess is that it’s something to do with the death of one of your colleagues in an attack several years ago: you must have been involved, and Jeb knows
it.’

10.56 p.m.

Doug Jarvis hurried toward Director Abraham Mitchell’s office, weaving between the oncoming personnel bustling through the corridors. He had not heard from either
Ethan Warner or Nicola Lopez for twenty-four hours now. While Ethan had gone dark for long periods of time in the past, this time Jarvis had a suspicion that it was not a voluntary act. If his
instincts were right about USAMRIID and Donald Wolfe, Ethan could potentially have an army in pursuit of him. The last time that had happened, Doug Jarvis had almost lost both his daughter Rachel
and granddaughter Lucy Morgan – only Ethan’s tenacity had saved their lives.

Abraham Mitchell was sitting at his desk behind a mountain of paperwork as Jarvis walked in.

‘I hope this is important,’ Mitchell rumbled.

‘That depends on how concerned you are about missing agents,’ Jarvis replied crisply, shutting the office door.

Mitchell looked up. ‘Who?’

‘Warner and Lopez,’ Jarvis said. ‘They’ve been off the grid for twenty-four hours.’

Mitchell looked back down at his paperwork. ‘They’re not agents.’

Jarvis formed a tight smile that made his jaw ache.

‘They’re working for us, which puts them on the right side of things. I told you that without back-up they risked being compromised.’

‘Everybody who works for United States Intelligence risks being compromised,’ Mitchell said without looking up. ‘They know that.’

‘So, we just abandon them then.’

Mitchell sighed and finally looked up at Jarvis.

‘Doug, we’ve got people scattered over half the globe tracking everything from drug lords to terrorists to suspected Russian sleeper agents. Some of our people are involved in
investigations so serious and so dangerous that even I don’t know the full implications of their activities. I would imagine that by comparison your two rogues are having a riot down in New
Mexico. Probably living
la vida loca.
’

Jarvis shook his head.

‘There’s something more to this than just a vanished medical examiner. Donald Wolfe is hiding something, and it’s got to do with SkinGen and its CEO Jeb Oppenheimer.
We’ve had three dead bodies turn up, two of which are now in the hands of departments to which we have no access, based on claims of infectious outbreaks for which there is no evidence. This
whole thing stinks!’

Abraham Mitchell put his pen down, sighed and rubbed his temples.

‘Doug, I really admire what you’re doing here, okay?’ he said. ‘I know what you sacrificed to get this little experimental unit of yours up and running.’

‘I didn’t want to be sitting in your chair,’ Jarvis said without melodrama, gesturing to Mitchell’s seat. ‘This was more important, an entirely deniable, civilian
contracted investigative unit to work on cases that the Pentagon dismisses as anomalous. It was what the DIA needed – it was the right thing to do.’

‘Right for who?’ Mitchell challenged him. ‘You’ve put all your eggs in one basket. Having a dedicated but unofficial investigative force is all well and good, and
I’m sure the Republicans amongst the hierarchy here think it’s a great idea to remove government control and subcontract our work force out to private investigators. But that means that
you relinquish that same control, and the people you’ve hired can be unpredictable.’

‘Ethan Warner is as reliable an investigator as I’ve—’

‘He’s a wild card!’ Mitchell cut across him. ‘The man’s a walking war zone. Since he got down to Santa Fe, he’s been involved in several shootings, an
exploding apartment block and was last seen riding a goddamned horse down the I-25!’

Jarvis managed to keep a straight face. ‘He’s resourceful and self-reliant.’

‘He’s reckless!’ Mitchell brought his wrath under control. ‘What do you want, anyway?’

‘I think that we should organize some kind of search of SkinGen, if we can get the warrants.’

‘Sublime.’ Mitchell smiled in disbelief. ‘You want people to go in there and raid one of the most powerful pharmaceutical firms in the world on the basis of a hunch. I
can’t wait to see what Congress makes of that during the inquests that will doubtless follow.’

‘Ethan Warner was certain that Tyler Willis was being held under duress in the building before he was found dead a few hours later. It was Wolfe’s men who prevented Ethan from
accessing the room in which Willis was being detained.’

Mitchell’s expression became somber.

‘It’s not enough for us to gain access to SkinGen,’ he said. ‘We’d never get the warrants, and nor would state police under the same circumstances. The state
attorney would throw the request out at first glance without probable cause. Not to mention the fact that even if you are right, Donald Wolfe works for USAMRIID. Wild accusations aren’t
enough for me to go crap on their doorstep.’

Jarvis handed Mitchell a piece of paper that he’d printed out minutes before.

‘How about this then?’ he asked. ‘Donald Wolfe travels down to New Mexico for a meeting with Jeb Oppenheimer. He stays overnight and then flies here to meet with you yesterday.
Check the flight times.’

Mitchell scanned the sheet of paper and looked up at Jarvis.

‘It’s eight hours out.’

‘Eight hours and fourteen minutes to be precise,’ Jarvis agreed. ‘He didn’t stay overnight in New Mexico. I managed to pull the flight plans but they don’t add up
either, so I got on the phone and contacted air-traffic controllers in several states, managed to track the aircraft north to Alaska.’

‘Alaska?’ Mitchell rumbled.

‘I got in touch with the National Security Agency over in Maryland and pulled a few strings. They sent me tracking data from one of their KH-11 keyhole satellites that passed over the
Bering Sea and Alaska at the time the SkinGen jet would have been in the area.’ Jarvis handed Mitchell another piece of paper, this one bearing a photograph. ‘This shows the aircraft at
Bethel Airport.’

‘What the hell would he be doing up there?’ Mitchell asked.

‘It wouldn’t have raised a question if he hadn’t tried to cover his tracks,’ Jarvis pointed out. ‘There’s more. Wolfe got into a private aircraft, hired not
by USAMRIID but by SkinGen, and flew north to a remote outpost called Brevig Mission.’

‘To do what?’ Mitchell asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Jarvis admitted. ‘But I’d sure like to find out.’

Mitchell looked at the image for a long moment, and then nodded.

‘Okay, fine. Send a team from the nearest FBI field office in Alaska to find out what he was doing there. Tell them we need something solid within twenty-four hours.’

‘What about my people?’ Jarvis asked. ‘I need just a small unit to go in and find Warner and Lopez. For all we know they could be rotting in the desert somewhere while we sit
here twiddling our thumbs waiting for a phone call.’

‘We’re looking at a time discrepancy here, Doug,’ Mitchell said, ‘not a homicide.’

‘You really want to take a risk like that?’ Jarvis prodded him. ‘If they’re onto something big and we hang them out to dry . . .’

Mitchell’s eyes scanned the paperwork for a long moment as he digested the meaning behind Jarvis’s words before he spoke.

‘There’s a Marine-recon unit conducting training operations out of Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. If you haven’t heard from your little John Wayne by the time the FBI
report back to us, you can re-task them to infiltrate the area. But I don’t want to hear that you’ve gone in heavy unless there’s concrete proof, understood?’

Jarvis nodded and turned to leave the office.

‘Doug.’

He turned at the door to see Mitchell regarding him seriously.

‘This experimental unit of yours is becoming more and more difficult to keep under wraps. If your boy Warner can’t do his work without incinerating city blocks, it will get shut down
before year’s end and everything you’ll have done will be for nothing.’

Jarvis held onto the door handle for a long beat, and then left the office. As he walked down the corridor he realized there was no longer anything he could do cooped up in DC. He pulled out his
cell phone and punched in a number. His secretary answered on the second ring.

‘Karen, get me on the first available military transport out of Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility to Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. And get me the number of the USAMRIID unit
chief operating in Santa Fe. I’ll be needing a quiet word with him.’

Saffron Oppenheimer didn’t say anything for a long moment as Lopez picked up the threads. ‘The activist that died,’ she recalled. ‘You were there and
the police suspected that you were involved, but there was a lack of evidence. But if Jeb withheld that evidence from them as leverage against you . . .’

‘CCTV footage,’ Saffron said finally to Ethan. ‘He had it digitally stored and then had the cameras erased before the police could confiscate them as evidence.’

‘What happened?’ Ethan asked. ‘Why were you there?’

‘To make a statement,’ Saffron said, ‘to expose what people like my grandfather were doing to animals all in the name of cosmetics. We managed to get into the SkinGen compound
and began attacking the building with stones and rocks. We were there to make a fuss, but not to hurt anybody.’ She shook her head. ‘One of the protesters got out of line, began
assaulting staff as they tried to leave the building.’

‘And you got involved,’ Lopez guessed.

Saffron nodded.

‘There was a fight, between protesters, staff, everyone. It got real hectic. The guy that died was hitting one of the SkinGen scientists, and I was behind him trying to pull him off. He
turned and hit me instead, and I just snapped. There were rocks lying everywhere from when we’d been pelting the windows with them. When he came forward to hit me again, I picked one up and
let him have it.’

Saffron fell silent, staring at her boots.

‘Unlucky hit,’ Ethan surmised.

‘Blood clot on the brain,’ she replied bitterly. ‘I must have caught him at a million-to-one angle. He died two days later in hospital. The confusion of the fight meant that
nobody knew who did it other than my grandfather, who’d had the cameras erased to prevent any lawsuits against his own staff. He watched the digital copies, saw what had happened, and has
used it against me ever since.’

Ethan sighed, looking out over the darkened wilderness for a moment.

‘You need to come clean about this.’

‘I tried!’ Saffron retaliated. ‘I whacked Colin Manx in the hopes that he’d spill everything to the police. I was waiting for them to pursue us out here, where I’d
conveniently lead them to all the data Jeb’s been blackmailing me to steal from other companies and tell them how it’s all happened.’

‘You copied everything you stole,’ Lopez guessed. ‘But Jeb could still worm his way out of it.’

‘I recorded the conversations I had with him whenever I delivered data.’ Saffron nodded. ‘There’s almost an hour of it. My plan wasn’t foolproof but I’m tired
of running. It was working out until you two showed up and got in the way of the police.’

‘It has to stop,’ Ethan said finally. ‘If you don’t come forward with this information Jeb’s got you over a barrel until the day he dies – if he ever does
– and I’d put money on it that he’ll find a way to control you from beyond the frickin’ grave.’

‘The guy’s a creep,’ Lopez added. ‘He’ll pay someone to keep you under control. He knows you’re in line to inherit the entire company and he’ll want to
make sure you don’t just sell it off for nothing as revenge.’

‘He’s my grandfather,’ Saffron snarled at her. ‘It’s called
loyalty.
’ Saffron coiled the last word up and spat it into Lopez’s face. Ethan looked
at both of them curiously, but didn’t dare push Saffron too hard while she was still talking.

‘Why did he agree to leave the entire company to you when he died, if you’re so opposed to him?’

Saffron’s lips curled into a bitter smile.

‘He didn’t. His wife, my grandmother, Eloise Oppenheimer, suggested that he should from her deathbed after my parents died in a car crash – the same one that eventually killed
her. She was the polar opposite to Jeb: kind, caring, compassionate. Even Jeb was still passably human back then, but when Eloise died it’s like he turned into a monster.’

‘One who will kill to get whatever he wants. Jeb Oppenheimer killed Tyler Willis, probably to find out what Tyler knew of Hiram Conley. It’s possible that Hiram was trying to find a
cure for their condition and Lee Carson was helping him. The remaining old soldiers figured it out and came after Carson while Oppenheimer was chasing Hiram Conley’s body after he was shot
and killed.’

Saffron frowned.

‘Tyler Willis was probably trying to isolate whatever was in Hiram Conley’s blood, to figure out why he hadn’t aged,’ she said. ‘I doubt he would have been able to
resist trying to patent what he found. If some kind of anti-aging drug could be made from whatever bacteria were within Hiram Conley’s body, it would have made Willis a
multi-billionaire.’

‘True,’ Lopez said, ‘but at least he wasn’t slicing people up to achieve it. Hiram probably realized that Tyler was in danger of selling out and they argued about it up
at Glorietta Pass.’