Immortal (4 page)

‘So what’s the big deal?’ Ethan asked.

Jarvis gestured to the file that Lopez was holding.

‘The state laboratory ran tests on the bullet, which was found to be a musket ball, and we picked up jurisdiction of the case after they made inquiries to the FBI at Quantico. Carbon
dating, along with estimates of bone regrowth around the ball prior to extraction, confirms that the wound was sustained approximately one hundred forty years ago.’

Ethan stared at Jarvis.

‘That’s not possible. A hundred forty years?’

‘The tests must have been contaminated,’ Lopez said, opening the file. ‘If the wound had been opened to extract the bullet, anything could have gotten in.’

‘The bullet was lodged firmly in the bone,’ Jarvis said, ‘the medical examiner’s pictures show it clearly. And the tests were run three separate times, once by the state
laboratory and twice by specialists on my own team at the DIA when we took over the case. All the tests confirmed the age of the wound.’

Ethan forced himself to think clearly.

‘We should get in touch with the medical examiner first, find out everything we can about where the body was found. The troopers who shot him need to be questioned too.’

‘Already done,’ Jarvis said, ‘and all parties signed nondisclosure agreements. However, the medical examiner has vanished and we need her found. Fast.’

‘What happened?’ Lopez asked.

‘An attack on the facility at the morgue. The lab assistant got the musket ball out of the lab for tests, but by the time she’d returned the medical examiner had disappeared, as had
all of the evidence. The gurney and the surrounding work surfaces had been completely cleaned-out, not even trace evidence remained.’

‘A professional job,’ Ethan murmured, his interest now piqued.

‘We have camera footage but it’s grainy, shot from a nearby building. Whoever did the job was smart enough to take out the medical facility’s own cameras before they went in.
Four men: black jump suits, Halloween-style face masks. Somebody wanted that body real bad,’ Jarvis said. ‘The DIA has an interest, but there’s no way we can send a team down
there without the Pentagon signing off on it, and with the budget the way it is they’ll shut us down before we can do any good.’

Ethan nodded, glancing out of the sedan’s windows at the cemetery outside.

‘So what do you think this is? Some kind of freak ghost story?’

Jarvis smiled thinly.

‘I’ll leave the detective work to you both, but for what it’s worth this guy Conley shot his way out of the Pecos wilderness wearing Civil War era Union battlefield dress and
speaking in what was described by the troopers as an archaic dialect.’ Jarvis glanced at the file. ‘Whatever’s going on down there it’s in the interests of the United States
Government to understand it.’

Ethan nodded and looked at Lopez.

‘You did say you wanted something decent to go after.’

‘New Mexico,’ Lopez murmured thoughtfully. ‘Closer to home, and there’s at least two bail-runners from Illinois thought to be holed up somewhere down there.
Multi-tasking. We’ll do it.’

Jarvis eyed her for a long moment.

‘Good, although I need to know that the DIA can count on you, Lopez, after what happened out at Cedar Lake.’

Ethan glanced at his partner, waiting to see her response. They had agreed to keep her indiscretion on the South Shore between themselves, but clearly Jarvis’s reach went further than
Ethan had realized. A lot further.

‘It was a one-off,’ Lopez said, refusing to be cowed. ‘Deal’s a deal; it went down, went wrong and then went away, okay?’

Jarvis nodded, letting it go. The fact that Lopez, having taken a low-life drug dealer and bail-runner called Adam McKenzie into custody had then accepted a bribe for releasing him, hadn’t
bothered Ethan as much as he’d thought it might. Lopez was supporting herself in Chicago as well as sending much of her meager salary back home to her family south of the border in
Guanajuato. Her parents were, like so many people in Mexico, crippled by poverty and reliant upon Lopez’s generosity to sustain their home. Without it, they would join the legions of beggars
groveling on the streets, and at their age they wouldn’t last long. Cash was cash and Lopez needed a lot. Ethan hadn’t realized just how badly until that day.

She gave him an accusing sideways glance, but he ignored her and looked instead at Jarvis.

‘I’m almost afraid to ask, but what support will we have?’

‘Limited tactical and law enforcement,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Local police know that you’ve got jurisdiction in this case – I can help indirectly, but the DIA will
retain deniability in all eventualities. The President won’t want investigations like these all over the media if word should get out, and the Pentagon would rather have the conspiracy
theorists chasing after your agency than ours.’

‘Convenient,’ Lopez said as she closed the file. ‘Anything else?’

‘Conley was involved in an argument with a man named Tyler Willis, who he then shot, starting the whole fracas. I’d start there if I were you.’ Jarvis handed Ethan a clear
plastic bag which contained a yellowing slip of paper. ‘Hiram Conley’s social security details, found on him when he died. They check out, but they’re identical to those of an
alias we think he was using previously, Abner Conley. We didn’t have access to records going back that far at the DIA, so you’ll have to chase them down in Santa Fe. Whoever this guy
really was he used multiple identities, and there’s always a reason for that.’

15 May

The broad waters of the lake, surrounded by the soaring heights of the Jemez, Ortiz, Sandia and San Pedro mountain ranges, glittered beneath the sun.

Jeb Oppenheimer sat upon the quarterdeck of a vessel that dwarfed the tiny cutters and fishing boats in the nearby quay, the pearlescent white hull of his yacht almost painful to look at in the
bright sunlight.

‘Cigar.’

His voice was gravelly from decades of smoking a dozen a day of Cuba’s finest, but as with everything else in life Jeb Oppenheimer didn’t give a shit. Likewise he didn’t care
that the yacht upon which he sat was far too large for the lake or that there was no exit to the ocean, the lake itself being a mere aberration in the flow of the Santa Fe River. Jeb had bought the
vessel and had it transported there so that he could enjoy the water without the cumbersome irritation of lakeside neighbors on the shore.

A white-suited crewman walked out of the shade of the yacht’s interior with an expensive-looking silver box. He opened it for Oppenheimer, who foraged within with a wiry hand laced with
purple veins. He waved the crewman away and opened the cigar, lighting it and inhaling the aromatic fumes deeply. As he sat enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke another of his crew appeared.

‘Donald Wolfe is here to see you, sir.’

Oppenheimer polluted the air anew with a cloud of pungent smoke and waved impatiently. The servant bowed and turned, gesturing to a man waiting inside the yacht. The man walked out, his
ink-black suit stark against the pure-white deck. Oppenheimer turned his head fractionally, acknowledging his guest with a barely perceptible nod and pointing to one of the chairs opposite.

Donald Wolfe was a full colonel who had been attached to the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID. Wolfe sat down, regarding the old man from behind
wrap-around sunglasses, the mirrored lenses reflecting the sky above.

‘Why do you wear those?’ Oppenheimer pointed at them. ‘You look like one of those teenage morons who waste their lives surfing and catching diseases from whores.’

Donald Wolfe’s smile betrayed no warmth.

‘Better to be young and stupid than crumbling with senility.’

Oppenheimer laughed, slapping one spindly leg beneath his white trousers. The effort provoked a sudden spasm of membrane-tearing coughs that caused Wolfe to wince. Oppenheimer brought what was
left of his lungs under control, reached for a handkerchief on the table beside him and wiped a glob of mucus from the corner of his mouth.

‘If you weren’t so useful,’ Oppenheimer smiled, ‘I’d have you thrown overboard, you insolent pup.’

‘Why am I here?’ Wolfe asked.

Oppenheimer folded his skeletal hands under his chin.

‘The situation has not proceeded as we had expected. We were not able to extract viable biological samples from the remains.’

Wolfe leaned forward, plucking a grape from a nearby bowl. He popped it into his mouth before speaking. ‘That doesn’t surprise me, given the state they were in. We agreed that you
needed to obtain a live specimen, not one with half its face blown off.’

As Oppenheimer chuckled throatily he saw Wolfe brace himself for another hacking broadside of coughs that fortunately did not materialize.

‘It may not come as a surprise that they are reluctant to expose themselves, Donald, for fear of what people like us may do to them.’

‘So you say. But then of course you would, if this was all just a charade of ghost stories.’

Jeb Oppenheimer’s wrinkled features hardened.

‘Two months ago you wrote me off as a madman chasing an illusion,’ he rattled, jabbing a gnarled finger in Wolfe’s direction. ‘Now you’re sitting on my yacht
wondering what the hell happened in Santa Fe.’

‘Indeed,’ Wolfe nodded, ‘and what the hell exactly
did
happen in Santa Fe, Jeb? From what little I can gather, you’ve committed abduction and theft of
state-controlled corpses.’

Oppenheimer squinted out across the rippling waters of the lake.

‘Needs must, Donald,’ he said quietly. ‘SkinGen has invested over eighty million dollars into the search for and the control of the genes that govern human aging. Those genes,
once isolated, will be worth over thirty billion dollars to SkinGen over the next ten years, and I don’t intend to see either that profit or the investments I have already made compromised by
a militia of illiterate
peasants
.’

The last word sent along a spray of spittle. Oppenheimer paused, reaching again for his handkerchief before regarding Wolfe seriously.

‘That material, wherever it can be found, is the future, Donald. Most companies are out there gene testing and spending millions, billions even, on research and development, completely
oblivious to the fact that the genes controlling longevity have already naturally evolved. We worry now about our economic woes and climate change, about terrorism and Third World nuclear powers,
but all of it is bullcrap. All that matters is who survives, how they survive and when the new world order begins.’

Wolfe frowned behind his sunglasses.

‘There are rules, Jeb, political as well as legal. Buying up the patents for specific genes could see you up in front of any number of courts. The United States Department of Health and
Human Services will block you regardless of my influence if you try to define who gets what from any published research or medication.’

‘To hell with the goddamn rules!’ Oppenheimer roared, cracking one fist down on the table loudly enough to make Wolfe flinch. ‘This is about survival! How long do you think our
world can continue to support six billion people? Seven billion people? Nine billion people? We’re at our limit now! Oil, gas and coal are running out – why do you think that
petrochemical companies are having to drill in the bottom of seabeds? It’s because all the cheap stuff has been used, the wells are dry, gone up in smoke! Four fifths of the population live
in poverty Donald, and they want to live like
us.
Well, they can’t, and they never will because the world cannot support it. The only solution is to reduce the population so that fewer
people can live in greater material comfort. It’s as simple as that, and I intend to make it happen.’

‘If you can acquire the relevant strains,’ Wolfe said, ‘and if your wonder bacteria actually exist.’

Oppenheimer’s leathery face creased into a smile, one ancient line embedded amongst hundreds more.

‘Oh, they exist all right. I’ve spent the past thirty years searching for them, and I’ve seen enough to know that they do.’

‘But I have not,’ Wolfe stated simply. ‘You’re asking me to subvert entire departments of military research and medical health in order to ensure your discovery can be
marketed only to the elite, and yet you’ve provided me with not a single biological example of a human compatible immortalized cell with acceptable telomere length.’

‘Patience, Donald,’ Jeb murmured. ‘The wait will be worth it.’

‘The government have their hands on the lab results from Hiram Conley’s autopsy, and they’re bound to investigate. I’m supposed to be here waiting for a scientific
breakthrough not a jail sentence. What we’re talking about goes far beyond gene manipulation.’

‘My influence will prevent any unnecessary complications.’

Wolfe laughed. ‘Even
you
don’t have that kind of money.’

Oppenheimer’s smile withered, his rheumy old eyes turning hard as steel.

‘I have more money than you could dream of, Donald, and don’t you ever forget it. If it’s money that makes the world go around then I’m turning the fucking crank, you
understand?’

Wolfe regarded the old man for a long moment. ‘Collateral?’

Oppenheimer’s pale lips leaked a dribble of blue smoke.

‘What will be, will be.’

Wolfe took off his shades, regarding them for a moment as his eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight flaring off the decks.

‘The President is opposed to corporate pharmaceutical control of patented genes. If he or Congress gets wind of this, the whole charade will be for nothing.’

Oppenheimer removed the cigar from his lips and turned it lit end down toward one calloused palm. He held the glowing tip millimeters from his skin and let blue coils of smoke writhe between his
digits as he spoke.

‘American citizens do not own America. The White House does not own America. The President does not own America.
We
own America. The presidents of the United States live in the
White House because people like us finance their damn political parties. That, my friend, is the glory of a free-market capitalist economy – we’re not just bigger than government: we
own
it. We pay for them to sit and spout crap to the world about how much better everything will be, even though everybody already knows it’ll just stay the same. The United States of
America is a business, Donald, just like any other. We decide who does what, when, how and why, and what the President thinks isn’t worth a rat’s ass.’