‘The photograph,’ Lopez said. ‘The faces were the same then as they are now. Somebody, somewhere, must be able to recognize them.’
‘Yeah,’ Zamora said. ‘But if we put up images and these guys are around, they’ll high tail it out of town the moment they see one.’
Ethan thought back to serving with the Marines in the deserts and mountains of Iraq and Afghanistan.
‘They’d have some kind of escape plan, or maybe even permanently base themselves in the desert. You can live in the wild almost indefinitely, if you know what you’re doing. But they must have a contact of some kind in the city, someone they trust, who could do paperwork, arrange medication and such like.’
‘And they’d have to meet somewhere that they can move freely,’ Lopez said to Zamora, warming to the idea. ‘You said that Hiram Conley talked with an archaic accent. If these guys haven’t all spent much time within modern towns and cities, they might stand out by the way they talk.’
Zamora stood still for a moment and then suddenly he gasped and stared at Ethan.
‘Damn my eyes! Why didn’t I think of it before?!’
‘Think of what?’ Ethan asked. ‘Tell us quickly. Can we find them before we’re thrown out of the county?’
Zamora chuckled to himself and gestured to the old photographs in Lopez’s hands.
‘I’ve got a better idea. I’ll tell the chief of police that you’ve already left,’ Zamora said, and looked at Lopez. ‘You need to go shopping first thing in the morning. By the time we’re done, they’ll never know you’re still here.’
‘How?’ Lopez asked.
‘You’ll hide in plain sight,’ he said. ‘I know exactly where to find those men. Every single one of them.’
35
Saffron Oppenheimer stood unobtrusively beside a small shop selling trinkets on Lincoln Avenue, a grubby baseball cap pulled down low to shield her eyes. She watched the cars flowing lazily through the morning heat flaring off the asphalt, windows down and stereos blaring. Rush hour. Across the street was the plaza, filled with trees and dominated by a large petroglyph, the city’s national historic landmark. The plaza was ringed by structures in the Pueblo, Spanish and Territorial styles, tourists and locals alike bustling past adobe shops with cameras and day sacks on their backs. She kept a particular eye open for squad cars amidst the traffic, ready to take flight at a moment’s notice. The rush hour would ease her escape, letting her outmaneuver the cops and dash into the warren of Santa Fe’s alleys before heading south on the Old Santa Fe trail. Most all cops were either out of shape or downright overweight, having spent their careers sitting in vehicles gorging themselves on donuts, and she had no doubts about her ability to outpace them.
The only man that concerned her was the mysterious Ethan Warner. His tenacity had presented the only real threat she’d encountered so far, apart from the overbearing presence of her grandfather.
The thought of Jeb Oppenheimer coincided almost perfectly with the sight of a nondescript silver Lexus rolling down Main Street. The giveaway was the tinted windows and the unique license plates that betrayed the vehicle as belonging to SkinGen. As the car slid into the sidewalk next to her, a door opened smoothly. The vehicle didn’t stop rolling as Saffron reached out, resting one hand on the roof as she slipped into the vehicle and closed the door.
Three men were sitting inside the vehicle. Two were up front, wearing identical gray suits and emotionless expressions. Bodyguards, one driving and the other watching her in the rear-view mirror. The third man sat beside her in his customary white suit.
‘You’re late,’ she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the overbearing smell of the polished leather seats and upholstery.
Jeb Oppenheimer didn’t look at her as he replied. ‘Traffic,’ he said, looking out of the tinted windows. ‘Too many automatons, robotically going to work for people they’ve never even met.’
‘Without people like them,’ Saffron sneered, ‘your company would be impotent.’
Jeb turned to examine her, his piercing gaze appraising and distrustful at the same time.
‘Without my company they would be jobless,’ he countered. ‘The chicken and the egg, my dear, and this time the egg that is SkinGen wins.’
Saffron smiled without warmth. ‘Pity it’s rotten inside.’
‘Do you have the data?’ Jeb snapped.
Saffron shrugged, not looking at him but instead watching the streets pass by outside as the Lexus slowly circled the plaza. Jeb tutted and shook his head, a throaty laugh tumbling breathlessly from between his thin lips.
‘Not this charade again, surely? You have a role to fulfill, my dear, no matter how much it offends you. We all have to meet our targets.’
Saffron finally looked at her grandfather, mastering the revulsion she felt welling up inside.
‘There’s more to life than your damned targets.’
Jeb leaned close to her in his seat.
‘Not for you,’ he whispered. ‘Now pay your dues, before I change my mind.’
Saffron strained against the overwhelming urge to punch the old bastard as hard as she could, pummel him right here and now in the back seat of his disgustingly luxurious car. An image of his ruined, bloodied and bleating face flickered darkly through her mind and she saw him smiling at her.
‘Yes, do it, little Saffy,’ he rattled. ‘Please do it, and then spend the next sixty years rotting in a high-security cell. It would, I can tell you, make life so much easier for your poor old grandpa.’
Saffron caught a sickening waft of peppermints and decay on his breath, and felt her stomach heave. She reached into her pocket and retrieved a small hard drive, tossing it into Jeb’s lap with more force than was necessary. The old man coughed in alarm at the impact, but he still managed to get one hand on the drive.
‘There, that wasn’t so bad now, was it?’
‘Go to hell,’ Saffron snarled. ‘What did you do to Tyler Willis?’
Jeb Oppenheimer handed the hard drive across to one of his bodyguards, who pocketed it without looking at Saffron. The old man leaned back in his seat, examining the tip of his cane.
‘Mister Willis suffered an unfortunate incident,’ he replied, ‘a fatal one.’
Saffron stared at the creature sitting beside her, an inhumane and emotionless shell that had once harbored her grandfather.
‘That’s bullshit and you know it. You’re a murderer.’
Oppenheimer glanced out of the Lexus and gestured to the masses passing by outside.
‘One person’s death is irrelevant in the greater scheme of things. You see all these people, Saffy? They’re out there in their hundreds, thousands and millions. In just a few generations they’ll be gone and all of society’s problems will disappear along with them.’
Saffron’s eyes narrowed as she struggled to comprehend what her grandfather was talking about.
‘That will never happen,’ she said. ‘No matter how you go about it somebody, somewhere will stop you, even if it costs them their own life.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Oppenheimer growled, ‘and your pathetic little friend Willis would no doubt have been one of them. Suffice to say, my dear granddaughter, that I had nothing to do with his untimely passing — it was actually unexpected, indeed infuriating. However, soon his plight and that of millions will be an irrelevance.’
‘You talk like you’re doing the world a favor,’ Saffron muttered, nausea twisting inside her throat. ‘All you’re doing is trying to deny people the right to have children, to have their fair share of the world’s resources, so you can take everything for yourself. You’re not protecting humanity, you’re sacrificing it for your little army of elitist businessmen and politicians.’