Origin (33 page)

Philippe Messier was proud; indeed, this week was surely to prove the proudest of his incredible career.

As Director General of CERN, Messier was directly responsible for the success of the Large Hadron Collider project. The LHC, like the invention of the internet before it, had given CERN its current status as the world’s primary scientific research centre. The main work of CERN was now particle physics research, and the LHC – as well as the other experimental particle accelerators and the single decelerator that were also to be found on the site – was rightfully famous around the world for both its scale and its cost.

Particle physics centres on the study of subatomic particles, and how they create matter. The trouble is, to thoroughly understand such a subject, the particles themselves have to be broken down into smaller parts, and the only way to achieve this is to have them crash into one another at incredible speed.

Thus particle accelerators came into being, designed to fire particles up to the required speeds for such a collision. The LHC is the world’s largest such ‘collider’, and consists of a circular tunnel 27 kilometres in circumference, buried a hundred metres underground. The extreme length is to give the particle beams the distance necessary to accelerate to the required speed. The beams are fired in opposite directions, in the hope that they will collide upon meeting. However this is, in the words of the LHC’s chief engineer, ‘like firing two needles across the Atlantic and getting them to hit each other’.

Messier smiled when he thought of this quote, knowing that it was in fact easier than the public at large was led to believe. The technology that the Anunnaki had gifted the Bilderbergers essentially ensured that each time the machine was fired up, there was a hit. But even within CERN, only a handful of trusted staff knew that this was the case, because the purpose of getting the beams to collide was to carry out research, not to harvest the energy that resulted from such super-collisions. But harvesting the energy was exactly what Messier had been doing, and transmitting it to the secret experiment further underground.

The wormhole device required power, and lots of it. Controlling the bending of space-time as it did, a normal power source was simply not enough. The experiments going on above with the LHC, however, created a constant stream of antimatter, the most powerful energy source in the known universe. It was the need for antimatter as an energy source that had led Charles Whitworth to lead the drive for CERN’s creation in the first place, back in 1954, and it had taken since then – even
with
external help – to perfect the technology.

Messier looked across the chic, ultra-modern bar at Stephen Jacobs, as Whitworth had been known since the sixties. The man was living proof of the abilities of the Anunnaki, and verification of their promises.

Messier raised his champagne flute in salute, and saw Jacobs smile and raise his own.

Soon they would meet the Anunnaki face to face; and both men felt ready.

Jacobs felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out, and saw it was Eldridge.

After the disaster at Area 51, Jacobs had made a grudging Eldridge take control of the situation, which meant that the commander of Alpha Brigade would have to delay his journey to CERN. This had displeased him greatly, Jacobs knew, but at the end of the day, if Eldridge had done his job right in the first place, they wouldn’t be in such a situation now.

Jacobs answered the phone. The call was coming from his private jet, which was once again being used as their mobile headquarters, as it had been in South America.

‘What’s the status?’ he asked without preamble.

‘I think we’ve got them, sir,’ he heard Eldridge announce with confidence. ‘I’ll wrap this up once and for all, and then meet you for the big finale.’

‘Not the finale, my friend,’ Jacobs corrected. ‘Remember, this is just the beginning.’

L
YNN SAT BY
the window, watching as the large Geneva-Cornavin train station appeared out of the freezing fog ahead of her.

The fog had descended just an hour into their two and a half-hour journey, and had obscured what had up until then been beautiful views of the Swiss countryside.

At any rate, now they were here, and she had to concentrate on what was going to happen next. As before, Ayita and Stephenfield would get off first, checking the platforms for any sign of the enemy. If the coast was clear, she and Adams would leave the train and the four of them would move independently to the taxi rank outside the station.

Their taxis would take them to four random places, from where they would all move on foot to Moilebeau Park. They would meet up there, and then pair up in two more taxis, Stephenfield and Ayita in the lead, with Lynn and Adams following, and ask to be taken to Maisonnex Dessus, the suburb to the north-west of the city just before the foothills of the Jura Mountains. The CERN facility was located very close to this small town, and the four of them would meet up once more and confirm their final plans for entering the base itself.

Lynn was all too aware that the plan for her was to remain in the town of Maisonnex Dessus, monitoring communications and acting as the central point of contact. She understood the rationale behind this, as the fact was that out of the four of them, she was the only one untrained and without direct operational experience. If that had been the only consideration, she would still have insisted that she accompany them into CERN. But as the others had all pointed out – Matt with
extreme
conviction, understandably – she was pregnant, and couldn’t take the risk of getting involved in the action directly.

It was sensible to have someone keeping an eye on things from a distance, and when all things were considered, it could really only be her. Stephenfield had shown her how to operate the array of electronic machinery he had somehow managed to carry with him from America, and so it wasn’t as if she would be doing nothing; but a part of her still wished she would be taking a more active part.

Another side of her – a more powerful side? – demanded that she follow their recommendations and stay out of harm’s way. She didn’t know if it was mother’s instinct already making itself felt, or if she was just afraid. But maybe the two things were linked – perhaps she was afraid not for herself but for her unborn baby.

And, she decided, she could live with that.

Eldridge and his men landed at a private runway at Geneva International, and immediately transferred to a squad of Audi 4x4 vehicles, tearing away from the airport on a direct run for Geneva’s Cornavin rail station.

The big break had come through electronic monitoring of local CCTV surveillance. It had been Caines’ team back at Area 51 that had made the match, picking up an image of Lynn Edwards at Reno-Tahoe airport.

As it was a minor transport hub, the team were not quick to find the match, and by the time the facial recognition software had found and analysed the image, the flight had already landed in Zurich.

Once Edwards had been identified, they discovered that Adams had been on the same flight, and a quick investigation into the passenger list revealed their new passport details. Where they could have got such identification in so short a time, Eldridge could only wonder.

Caines, to his credit, had then ordered a satellite to be rerouted to cover Zurich, as well as real-time monitoring of ticket information systems; the passport details Edwards and Adams had flown under were red-flagged, and the fugitives’ latest images were uploaded into the surveillance systems of the Swiss capital.

They had then lost them for a short while, before a partial match – again of Edwards – was made at Zurich’s Hauptbahnhof. It seemed that Adams – as expected, given his background – was rather more adept at hiding from the surveillance cameras.

There had been no ticket purchases made in the names of the passport holders, but when Caines had made his report, Eldridge had known there was only one place the two of them could have been headed – Geneva, on their way to try and stop the return of the Anunnaki.

If only Jacobs had kept his mouth shut. Why did he have to tell them everything? What possible good could it have served? But tell them he had, and now they were on their way.

Eldridge had accessed the train timetable and identified the most likely routes, then ordered Caines and his men to analyse satellite images of the platforms as the trains boarded.

The matches had not been one hundred per cent but they were good enough for a partial ID, this time of both Edwards and Adams. And so now Eldridge and his men were racing through the streets of Geneva for a deadly rendezvous with their targets.

Adams watched through his window as Ayita descended from the now stationary train on to the platform. Although it wasn’t obvious, Adams could tell that he was doing a thorough counter-surveillance run.

Less than a minute later, Stephenfield also got out, subtly checking out the platform from the other side. After another minute, both men extended their right forefingers, indicating that it was safe for himself and Lynn to leave the train.

Having Ayita and Stephenfield along was proving invaluable, Adams acknowledged. He knew the search would be primarily for himself and Lynn, and so it was immensely useful to have two such seasoned professionals able to check out their route beforehand. It also made him feel much better that they would be accompanying him to the CERN laboratory instead of Lynn. He was uneasy about Lynn having come this far but he knew she would never have stayed in America. At least this way she could be of help and still stay relatively safe.

Adams rose from his seat, about to turn into the gangway, but suddenly went rigid, his eyes picking up movement from Ayita’s right hand. All four fingers went straight, the signal that somebody was there; the coast was
not
clear.

Adams stayed where he was as the other passengers continued to filter out. Pretty soon he would be the only person left in this compartment, and if Lynn had also seen the signal, which he hoped she had, she would also be left alone in hers, which would make them both stand out.

Ayita must have had his reasons, and Adams knew it couldn’t be anything good. He began to move, walking as calmly as he could for Lynn’s compartment just through the next door. If something was about to happen, he wanted to be with her.

He saw Lynn through the little porthole window and put his hand to the door handle, pushing down.

And then all hell broke loose.

E
LDRIDGE WAS TIRED
of playing nicely. Too many times now he had tried to capture Adams and Edwards, or lie in wait for them, or try and catch them out in some sort of sophisticated trap. But no more. This time they were going down.

He and his dozen men, all top commandos in the Alpha Brigade, had left their cars running outside the train station and went through the doors at a sprint, cocking their assault rifles as they went. Eldridge had cleared their presence with the municipal transport police, but if they tried to stop him anyway, he would have no problem adding a few of them to his tally of corpses.

He led the surge on to Platform 5, an internal line with a train just in from Zurich, and ordered his men to spread out down the length of the stationary train, guns trained on the doors. He and his men ignored the screams of the throngs of passengers as they left the train, concentrating instead on their faces. Adams and Edwards were not among them. And then Eldridge scanned the windows, and a smile spread across his face as he saw both of his targets, in two separate carriages. Perfect.

The smile was wiped off his face instants later. The shock of the bullet hitting him in the shoulder spun his upper torso round while his feet remained rooted to the spot. Pain ripped through his hips and chest.

He hit the ground, gasping for breath, and saw his men turn and open fire at a man standing on the platform, a pistol in his hands. The man dived for cover behind a metal bench.

As Eldridge checked that his armoured vest had successfully stopped the round that hit him, two of his men were hit, by rounds coming from the opposite direction. Eldridge turned to look and saw a second man aiming a pistol and firing at his team, loosing off an entire magazine before dropping to the railway tracks, using the concrete platform itself for cover.

From inside the train, Adams and Lynn, now in the same carriage, watched in horror as the thirteen armed men stormed the platform, and then as Ayita and Stephenfield opened fire and were in turn fired upon.

Adams had seen enough. He took his own pistol out and shot through the glass of the opposite window. Then he turned to grab Lynn and pulled her to the other side of the train.

‘But the others!’ she cried. ‘We can’t leave them!’

‘We have to,’ he snapped, disgusted with having to make the decision. ‘If we stay, we’re dead. And then what happens if the wormhole opens?’

Lynn paused for a moment, then nodded her head and followed Adams to the shattered window, her thoughts still on Stephenfield and Ayita as she went.

John Ayita watched from behind the bench as Matt and Lynn escaped out of the other side of the train.

He saw Stephenfield was holding his own, hiding down behind the platform’s edge. His friend pulled up, fired three shots – two of which hit their targets – and then dropped low again. Ayita fired his own gun twice more, then stopped to change magazines. As he did so, Stephenfield popped up again, raised his gun, and then – and then . . .

Ayita couldn’t believe his eyes as he saw the top of his friend’s head explode, a 9mm round taking the skullcap straight off, the reddish grey mass of the brain quivering as Stephenfield staggered backwards, before he took twenty more shots to his centre mass, his entire body quivering under the massive shock of the bullets’ impact.

And then Ayita felt pain of his own, his ankle exploding in agony. He looked down and, saw the huge wound in his lower leg, blood staining the ground around him.

Ayita spat on the platform. He was wounded, his friend was dead, but he wasn’t going to go down without a fight.