Origin (23 page)

Ayita nodded his head. ‘It would certainly make some sort of sick sense,’ he agreed.

‘I’m worried about the timetable,’ Stephenfield said. ‘You say Lowell mentioned Jacobs’ “secret little project in Europe” becoming operational next week, which presumably somehow ties in with how this unknown group are coming to earth. We also have to factor in how the Director of the Secret Service and thirty-one other agents have been slaughtered by Jacobs’ men, and he didn’t seem fazed in the slightest.’

‘The crash with the oil tanker was reported as an accident, and the fireball that resulted probably won’t give much in the way of evidence,’ Ayita responded, having been monitoring the events from Tucson.

‘But there will be evidence, undoubtedly; it will just take time to uncover. And Jacobs’ attitude indicates his belief that such an investigation will be of no consequence by then. Which means, by extension, that the full force of the president and the United States government will not worry him at all in about a week’s time.’

Ayita nodded his head, considering the matter. ‘Yes, it does look like we’re running out of time,’ he agreed. ‘It looks like next week is crunch time.’

‘But what I still don’t get,’ Adams interjected, ‘is where the body Lynn’s team discovered comes into all of this. I mean, it seems alien contact wasn’t made until nineteen forty-seven and yet the body she found – and which Jacobs and the Bilderberg Group are prepared to kill for, and which might even be of alien origin itself – is forty
thousand
years old. So what’s the connection?’

Lynn stared ahead, deep in thought. ‘I just don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘It still doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Well, I might just have some good news for you,’ Ayita said, smiling for the first time since the debriefing began. ‘DNA Analytics will have your results ready to pick up this afternoon.’ He watched Adams’ and Lynn’s eyes go wide with excited anticipation. ‘They said to be there after three.’

DNA Analytics was its usual bustling self when Adams and Lynn entered through the electronic double doors.

Even though they were both believed dead, they still wore dark glasses, their hair was dyed and they wore bulky clothes to disguise their physical profiles. At this late stage, there was no use in taking chances.

Adams hung back to keep an eye on things as Lynn walked up to the reception desk.

The blonde receptionist, who sported the name tag ‘Angela’, gave her a warm, if not exactly genuine, smile. ‘Good afternoon, welcome to DNA Analytics Phoenix, how can we help you today?’

‘I’ve come to pick up some test results,’ Lynn said. ‘Name of Gower, Lucy Gower.’

Angela turned to her computer, her long, false nails clacking away at the keyboard. ‘Ah, yes, here you are,’ she said. ‘Dr Connor will take you through the results. You can find him in Room Sixteen, second floor,’ she continued, pointing down a long corridor to the east of the main reception. ‘Down the corridor, take a left and there are the elevators. When you get out, turn right and it’s the second room on the left. OK?’

Lynn wondered just how large this place was, and how many people got lost here. ‘Thanks,’ she said simply, and turned round, nodding to Adams to follow her.

Five minutes later, they were outside the office of Dr Connor.

The second floor was in sharp contrast to the first. Whereas the entire first floor seemed to be a frenzied melee of people all rushing about, the second floor was almost deserted.

Adams’ survival instinct was instantly aroused by the change of pace, wondering why they should have had to go to such a different area to collect their results. If going to see the doctor was standard procedure, then surely this corridor should also be swarming with people?

He felt for the Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol cinched into his waistband, feeling its reassuring weight resting there. He looked up and down the corridor, and saw two men rounding the corner at the end, deep in discussion. There were three closed-circuit television cameras, but none of them seemed to be interested in either him or Lynn.

He heard the elevator
bing
as it brought others to the second floor, and Adams let his hand rest over the butt of his pistol as he waited for the doors to open.

They opened, and another couple came out into the corridor. Adams watched them as they turned left, checked the name panel on a door further down the corridor, and then knocked. A smart young doctor opened the door and welcomed them in.

‘Are you finished?’ Lynn asked, frowning at him. ‘I think it’s all above board.’

Adams smiled sheepishly. ‘I’m finished,’ he said, and reached forward to knock on the door.

It opened moments later, an older yet equally smart doctor standing there with a friendly smile. ‘You must be Ms Gower,’ he said, extending his hand.

Lynn shook it. ‘A pleasure, Dr Connor,’ she said in return. ‘This is my friend, James Davies.’

‘Mr Davies,’ the doctor said, shaking Adams’ hand. ‘Please, come in.’

He led them into a small but plush office, expensively furnished and clinically clean. He showed them to two leather armchairs on the other side of his designer glass desk, and then took his own seat, looking down at the papers gathered in front of him.

He looked up suddenly through his half-moon glasses. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve not offered you a drink,’ he said apologetically. ‘Can I get you anything? Tea, coffee?’

‘No thank you,’ Lynn said for both of them. ‘We’re anxious to get the results of the tests.’

Connor smiled at them. ‘Of course.’ He tapped the papers on his desk. ‘The results. Most interesting.
Most
interesting.’

Lynn and Adams looked at Connor expectantly.

‘Ms Gower, Mr Davies,’ Connor began, staring once again through his spectacles, ‘I am the senior consultant here in Phoenix. Upon initial examination, your samples were referred to me for validation. Do you mind if I ask you where they came from?’

‘We can’t answer that, I’m afraid, Dr Connor.’

He nodded, and looked back down to the test results. ‘OK,’ he began. ‘Here we go.’

T
ONY KERN LEFT
the president’s office and immediately dialled Jacobs’ number.

When Jacobs answered after the first ring, Kern got straight into it. ‘He’s going crazy,’ he said. ‘Literally crazy. The oil tanker? He doesn’t believe a bit of it. He’s already ordered a full investigation and it’s going to be getting priority over literally everything else.’

‘But did he know anything about Lowell’s visit beforehand? Did he know Lowell was coming to see me?’

Kern shook his head as he walked towards the Situation Room in the West Wing of the White House, even though he knew Jacobs couldn’t see him. ‘Didn’t know a thing about it, which is why he’s even more pissed. I mean, the Director of the Secret Service and a whole platoon of agents, all out on some unregistered operation? He wants to pull out all the stops until he knows exactly what’s been going on.’

‘So at the minute he doesn’t know anything,’ Jacobs said. ‘How about anyone else at Secret Service?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Kern answered. ‘The people with him were all loyal to the director, known to him personally. Some of them were even off-duty. So it looks like some sort of private affair, which concerns the president greatly.’

‘And my involvement?’ Jacobs asked.

‘Well, the crash obviously occurred close to your home so it’s assumed that they were on their way to see you, but there’s no actual evidence for that. But I’d expect a full cohort of investigators arriving on your doorstep any minute now. Is Eldridge there?’

‘He’s taking care of a little business somewhere else right now,’ Jacobs answered.

‘Probably a good thing, he doesn’t have a good reputation around here. Has the house been cleaned?’

‘The whole estate,’ Jacobs confirmed. ‘I flew out a team from Nevada, they’re used to doing deep cleans. The place is spotless, like they were never here.’

‘Good,’ Kern said, smiling at a pair of advisers as he passed them in the narrow basement corridor. He held the cellphone closer, whispering now. ‘I know we’re close, but we still can’t afford to take any chances. Do we have a day yet?’

‘Not yet. Philippe thinks it will be ready to go by the middle of the week.’

‘OK,’ Kern said, still whispering as he waited outside the closed door of the Situation Room. ‘I’ll try and slow things down as much as I can from here. Another week shouldn’t be a problem.’

‘Make sure it isn’t,’ Jacobs answered.

‘First, let’s start with the scrap of material that you asked us to pass along to our sister laboratory in Pasadena,’ Dr Connor began. ‘Although the exact nature of the material couldn’t be determined, it is thought that it is some sort of silk derivative, much like the silk of a spider’s web in terms of its strength-to-weight ratio. It exhibited remarkable thermal properties too, although the piece was too small to test as thoroughly as my colleagues would have liked.’

‘Had they seen anything like it before?’ Adams asked.

‘No,’ Connor answered immediately. ‘Never. They thought it might be related to some sort of advanced military technology – we know they are looking into using synthetic materials to mimic things like spider’s webs – but then they performed other tests and were forced to reconsider.’

‘Radiocarbon dating?’ Lynn asked.

Connor nodded his head. ‘Exactly.’

‘And?’ Adams prompted.

Connor cleared his throat. ‘The consensus – after
three
separate tests were made – is a date of 40,500BC. In other words, the bit of cloth you gave us is over forty-two thousand years old.’

Lynn and Adams exchanged looks. So Devane’s off-the-hoof estimation of age from the ice layers had been pretty much dead on, and Adams’ own theory that the most likely explanation was an incorrect initial dating could now be put to bed. The body, and the artefacts the scientist had found with it, were indeed truly ancient.

‘And the DNA testing?’ Lynn asked nervously.

‘Well,’ Connor began, obviously disconcerted by the radiocarbon findings, ‘we carried out the usual diagnostic tests, including variable number tandem repeats, particularly short tandem repeats, and then used both polymerase chain reaction analysis and amplified fragment length polymorphism analysis.’

Lynn nodded her head, while Adams just stared blankly ahead. The methods didn’t matter to him so much as the results.

‘The subject was male, approximately forty years of age, with blond hair and blue eyes. No indication of internal pathologies, seems to have been robust and healthy.’

Lynn looked at Connor, her gaze boring into him. ‘Let’s cut to the chase, doctor,’ she said. ‘Was the subject human?’

The nervous anticipation of Lynn and Adams, as they sat poised on the front edges of their seats, waiting for Connor to give his answer, was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a door crashing open behind them.

‘Don’t answer that, doctor!’

Everyone turned in their seats to see a large, fierce man in the doorway, flanked by three armed men on each side, who quickly fanned out through the office. Adams recognized him instantly as Eldridge, the chief of security from Jacobs’ house back in DC. In his hand he held a silenced pistol, aimed directly at Connor’s head.

Adams and Lynn had no time to react before each of them had three silenced submachine guns trained on them.

‘You!’ Lynn exclaimed as she stared at Eldridge, recognizing him as Major Daley from the Antarctic. ‘You bastard, I’ll—’

Before she could finish her sentence, there was a low bark and the back of Connor’s head suddenly exploded across the rear wall of the office, the subsonic bullet from Eldridge’s handgun leaving only a small entry wound in the man’s forehead. For several moments the doctor’s body held upright as if suspended like a puppet, his unbelieving eyes still covered by his half-moon glasses, and then he bent straight over from the waist, his bloody head crashing into the glass tabletop.

Lynn’s eyes went wide with shock and disbelief, but Adams came to his senses. Using the sound of the doctor’s head smashing on to the table as a distraction, he reacted forward to create space, going for his concealed handgun. But Eldridge’s men were too switched on, and the nearest one quickly smashed the butt of his weapon into the base of Adams’ skull.

He literally saw stars, his head swimming with pain from the heavy blow as he collapsed to the carpeted floor, feeling rather than seeing as another man reached forward and removed the gun from his waistband. He groaned, struggling to stay conscious.

Lynn reacted herself, moving off her chair to help Adams, but she was forced back, one man slapping her across the face with a sharp
crack
.

Adams returned to reality instantly, shooting up from the floor to defend Lynn, only to be forced back down, face pushed into the carpet as his hands were pulled violently up and behind his back, and secured with plasticuffs.

He turned his head to the side, his cheek scraping along the carpet, to see Lynn also being cuffed and hauled up off her chair.

Both Adams and Lynn were pulled to their feet and pushed up against the desk, gun barrels up and raised straight into their faces.

‘Dr Edwards,’ Eldridge said ingratiatingly. ‘Still alive.’ He clapped his hands mockingly. ‘I commend you, I really do. You’re quite exceptional.’

‘Screw you, you murderous bastard!’ she yelled back in response, only to be met with a cruel smile.

Eldridge turned to Adams next. ‘And you must be Matthew “Free Bear” Adams. Quite an exceptional man yourself, giving us the runaround the way you have.’ He suddenly took two paces towards Adams and violently pistol-whipped him across the face.

Adams’ legs gave out and he collapsed to the floor. Eldridge looked down at him with an emotionless expression. ‘That’s for my men.’ He looked over at Lynn. ‘I’m not the only murdering bastard in the room, Dr Edwards. You’d do well to remember that.’

‘That was self-defence!’ Lynn exclaimed indignantly.

Eldridge only scoffed, as Adams climbed back to his feet, a colourful bruise already starting to appear on his dark skin.