Origin (24 page)

‘Your mistake was sending the cloth sample,’ Eldridge told them. ‘If you’d just stuck to the DNA, we may never have noticed. But when we intercept emails and telephone calls about a forty-thousand-year-old piece of cloth, and discover the interest and involvement of a DNA agency, then it sets our little alarm bells ringing. You’ll be pleased to hear that Dr Connor’s colleagues have already been taken care of,’ Eldridge continued. ‘You see what you’ve achieved with your little games? Six other people have now been killed; maybe more if our investigations show that they told anyone else.’

‘You son of a bitch,’ Lynn whispered with true, unbridled hatred at Eldridge, but she was sensible enough not to try and physically engage the seven armed men lined up in front of her. ‘Why don’t you just kill us and get it over with?’ she asked bitterly.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun,’ Eldridge said, a genuine smile spreading across his face. ‘We’ve got some real treats in store for you.’

He gestured to his men, and Lynn watched as one of them moved towards her, another towards Adams. Lynn opened her mouth to protest, then saw the tasers in their hands. She jerked back, trying to get out of the way, but it was too late.

She felt the sudden, fierce burst of electricity enter her body, and then everything went black.

A
DAMS AWOKE FROM
his deep slumber, a sharp pain shooting through his head which seemed to lance his brain.

For the first few moments, he had no recollection of anything, but then things started to filter back to him; the double pistol whipping explained the pain in his head at least.

But where was he now? And where was Lynn?

He immediately noticed that wherever he was, it was dark, almost completely so. Maybe a closed room, somewhere inside, where no light seemed to be getting through. But it was too dark, and he realized he was wearing a thick blindfold. And then he realized he was restrained too, his head, torso, hands and legs secured to a high-backed rigid chair.

He opened his mouth to speak, to try and find out if Lynn was with him in this unknown place, but he had been gagged, and his mouth moved uselessly around a heavy braided cloth, unable to make any sound other than a simple, quiet grunt.

But then he heard a similar grunt from nearby – just six feet away, maybe a little more – and he knew that Lynn was near him. She was still alive.

He tried to move his body to get closer to her, but the chair seemed fixed to the floor, and whatever had been used to bind him was too tight to break. He might try and loosen the bonds later, maybe move his mouth around the gag and push it out, try and shrug off the blindfold. But for now, he relaxed and used his other senses to get a fix on where they were. Once he became less concerned with his restraints, he immediately picked up a low, throbbing hum that seemed to come from beneath him, or maybe to the sides; in fact, it seemed to envelop him, from all angles, as if it were being channelled down the room they were in. And then he felt a subtle vibration through his body that indicated they were moving.

Adams realized in an instant that they were in an aeroplane, in a pressurized cabin. Where the hell could they be taking them? And why?

Presumably the ‘why’ was to interrogate them, in order to find out exactly what had happened over the past few days, and who else they might have told. Adams baulked as he thought of Baranelli, realizing they had put him in danger.

Despite his toughness, his training, his warrior spirit, Adams was under no illusion that he would be able to resist the interrogation. It wasn’t that he was scared of torture, as physical pain was something he was well used to; he was scared of what he might do if forced to witness
Lynn’s
torture. And if his interrogators were to use the latest drugs instead of more brutal methods, then the matter of his power to resist would be moot anyway, as these new synthetic truth serums were virtually guaranteed to work.

But the
where
still puzzled him. He knew from Stephenfield’s research that as well as Jacobs’ main residence at Mason Neck, he also had homes in New York and San Francisco, and Adams wondered if they were heading for one of these. The Bilderberg Group’s unofficial headquarters was at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, from where the annual meetings were organized, and Adams knew that Jacobs also spent quite a bit of time there, as well as maintaining an apartment in the city.

As he went through the various locations, he felt that none of them was right. He didn’t know why but he just couldn’t see why they would be shipped to any of those places.

But there was somewhere else with which Jacobs and the Bilderberg Group had a clear connection, a place with the technological know-how to get them to talk, and where their disappearance would never be reported.

Adams knew in his gut that they were headed for Area 51.

A
N INTERMINABLE TIME
later, Adams felt a dipping sensation in his stomach and intestine as the airplane’s altitude started to drop, and he knew they were finally coming in to land.

By now, he just wanted to get it over with. He was sick of being cooped up on the plane, unable to move, see or talk; he wanted to get to wherever it was they were going so he could see if they had any chance of getting out of there. With no information except for the fact that they were on an aeroplane, his options had so far been limited. He knew they could only increase upon landing.

He felt the altitude dropping quickly now, and then he heard a faint electronic grinding noise, somewhere far away, and realized it was the landing gear opening up ready for touchdown.

Three more minutes later, the aircraft was taxiing, and then it came to a complete stop.

The sound of opening doors greeted him just moments after the aircraft braked to a standstill, along with the heavy pitter-patter of several pairs of booted feet. Adams could hear the breathing, and estimated half a dozen people had boarded the plane.

There were no orders given, no words spoken, but whoever had just boarded set to work immediately, and Adams could sense the people around him, could hear as they unlocked various catches, felt his chair loosened from its moorings, and he realized that he was in a wheelchair that had been fixed in place to the aircraft floor.

He was tilted backwards, upended but still strapped securely to his chair, and then he was being wheeled down the length of the fuselage. The chair hit a bump, was pushed forcibly over it, and then he was rolled slowly downwards.

From the length of the fuselage to the exit, and the fact that he was being pushed down a ramp at the rear end of the plane, Adams quickly grasped that he and Lynn had been flown here in a C-130 Hercules transport aircraft. A primarily military aeroplane, it lent credence to Adams’ earlier guesswork as to their destination.

Still no words had been exchanged between the people who had boarded the plane, but Adams identified a slight grunt as that of Lynn, and he could hear her chair being moved too, rolled down the ramp behind him.

From the body odour, gait, and breathing pattern, Adams could tell his chair was being pushed by a man, although he didn’t know about Lynn’s. The people pushing them seemed to take a long, winding, circuitous route to their destination, and Adams could only assume it was part of the same disorientating process as the gags and blindfolds, designed to make them panic, and weaken their resolve. He nevertheless tried to memorize the route – if they managed to escape, he might try and reverse it in order to find their way back. Although what good that would do him, he didn’t yet know. But the concentration necessary was good for avoiding the disorientation and feeling of helplessness that might otherwise ensue.

First of all, they were wheeled along an even, smooth stretch of tarmac, which Adams assumed had to be the runway. He could hear other vehicles as well: two more planes taxiing in different directions, one of which had a strange, almost electronic vacuum-like engine noise that he had never heard before; a small utility vehicle, 4x4, probably some sort of military jeep; a larger truck, further away in the distance; and then another truck, passing by just a few feet away, the deep rumble of its diesel engines covering up all other noise as it thundered past.

Then suddenly they were inside, and Adams struggled to hear anything except the dull, monotonous roll of the chair wheels, and the sharp crack of the booted feet of their escorts, echoing off what he took to be a concrete floor, and down a long, empty corridor.

And then they turned right, and were immediately assailed by a bombardment of savage noise, like that of an industrial complex at full production – electric saws eating their way through sheet metal, acetylene torches doing welding work, the grinding of heavy machinery, and voices, all with the same scientific, professional tones.

Four more turns later, they stopped dead, waited for twenty seconds, and then moved forwards again, just six feet. Adams heard some doors close behind them, and sensed they were in a very confined space. He guessed it must be an elevator, and this was confirmed just seconds later as he felt the drop in his stomach and intestines once more, but much more intensely than on the aeroplane. This elevator was terribly fast, and Adams feared that he would be sick, the gag making him choke on his own vomit.

But he kept it down, and then marvelled at how long the fast descent was taking – five seconds, ten, fifteen, twenty – and he could only wonder how far down in the bowels of the earth they now were. He knew it took forty-five seconds to get from the lobby of the Empire State Building to the eightieth floor, and almost choked again as he realized the extent of the base’s secret facilities.

Before he could consider it further, they were being rolled out again, down another long, empty, concrete corridor, until he heard the opening of a metal door. They were wheeled through into a room, and the sound of the wheels indicated the floor was metal too.

Then he felt the hands on the back of his wheelchair relax, and pull away; he heard the boots retreat, back out into the concrete corridor outside.

And then the door closed, trapping him and Lynn in the mysterious metal room, hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth.

Adams could sense Lynn was in the room with him, and took comfort from the fact that she was still near, although he was at the same time terrified for her safety. But at least he knew where she was; he could only imagine how he would feel if she had been wheeled off to some other part of the complex.

They were left alone for a long time, and Adams put it down to an attempt to wear them down, to make them lose all sense of time and place. His mental tracking of their route, and his current counting of the seconds of their wait helped him retain his faculties, however, and he could only hope that Lynn was doing the same thing.

His tracking of the time took him to just under fifteen thousand seconds, or just over four hours, before the door opened again.

He heard two sets of feet enter the room, one booted, one in leather-soled shoes. The lights were turned on, and Adams could feel the intense glare even through his blindfold. He knew what was coming next.

Seconds later, a strong hand ripped the blindfold from his eyes, and Adams knew the plan was to momentarily blind them, to weaken them further. But Adams had screwed his eyes tight shut the moment he had felt the hand reach forwards for the blindfold, and although the glare of the halogen spotlights in the ceiling above them threatened to burn through his eyelids, at least the shock to his retinas was somewhat subdued.

He gradually opened his eyes, and was greeted by the unwelcome sight of Flynn Eldridge grinning at him sadistically. ‘I trust you had a good journey,’ Eldridge dead-panned.

Adams ignored him, instead looking over to Lynn, glad to see she had also shut her eyes when her blindfold had been removed. As she opened them, he gave a reassuring smile, trying to offer her comfort and hope with his eyes.

Turning back to Eldridge, Adams could see, over the man’s muscular shoulder, a debonair, suited man of advancing years whom he immediately recognized as Stephen Jacobs. Adams was impressed. So the big man himself had come down for the interrogation.

Adams watched as Jacobs approached them, appraising them as a biologist might examine a newly discovered life form. ‘So here we are, my friends,’ he said finally, his tone deep and smooth. ‘You and I all know that you are not going to leave this facility alive. You are going to die, make no mistake about that.’ He smiled. ‘How you die, though, that might make a big difference to you.’

Jacobs gestured at Eldridge, who moved forward and removed first Adams’ gag, and then Lynn’s. No sooner was Lynn’s off than she spat at the man, straight in his face, a look of pure hatred on her own.

‘Oh, come now, Dr Edwards,’ Jacobs said to Lynn as Eldridge wiped the saliva off his cheek, ‘it isn’t his fault. Not really. He was, after all, merely following orders.’

‘Your orders?’ Lynn shot back resentfully.

‘As it happens, yes,’ Jacobs replied, his confidence unshakeable. ‘And now I have ordered our experts to interrogate you using any and every available means at their disposal, until we find out exactly what you know and who else you have told.’

‘We’ve already found Baranelli,’ Eldridge told them with a hint of pleasure. ‘It didn’t take much for him to squeal like a piggy. Luckily, he hadn’t had time to tell anyone else. He is dead now, of course.’

Both Lynn and Adams tried to launch forward out of their chairs, to get to Eldridge; both would have dearly loved to choke him to death with their bare hands. But their bonds were too tight, and the violent movements barely caused the chairs to rock slightly.

‘It probably doesn’t matter any more anyway,’ Jacobs said, ignoring the attempted attack by the two captives. ‘Things have progressed too far to worry about what might happen if the word gets out now. But it just doesn’t do to leave things hanging, so to speak. You are both loose ends, and have to be tied up. There is too much riding on this to let any mistakes occur now.’