‘Lee Carson’s hands and lower forearms were decaying before he was shot,’ Wolfe replied. ‘It may be that this condition of theirs was starting to recede and that they were looking for help. It would explain why Hiram Conley came out of hiding and approached Tyler Willis in the first place.’ Wolfe took a breath. ‘They may be dying.’
Oppenheimer shook his head vigorously.
‘No, that’s not possible. You know for yourself now, it’s true. These men are some two hundred years old and haven’t aged since they encountered whatever it was that caused this.’
Wolfe leaned back in his chair, seemingly unperturbed by the revelations.
‘I doubt, Jeb, that your clientele would appreciate discovering that their elixir of youth would only extend their lives by a few decades.’
Oppenheimer cracked his cane down on his desk, pointing a finger at Wolfe’s image on the screen.
‘It makes no difference. What nature provides we can improve. Once we know how the bacteria work we can make the necessary genetic alterations to enhance performance. By the time my clients realize that they’re vulnerable we’ll have had another fifty, sixty or seventy years to research improvements.’
Wolfe grinned coldly.
‘But the price, Jeb,’ he said. ‘It will suffer.’
Oppenheimer felt his throat constrict. His voice gurgled as he struggled to control himself.
‘You worry about ensuring that what happens in New Mexico stays in New Mexico. Let me worry about who’s paying for what. Right now we’re selling a concept that alongside global population control will enhance the quality of the human race a hundredfold in just a few decades, and the glory of it all is that we’ll still be around to see it.’
Wolfe examined his fingertips as he spoke.
‘And if any one of those clients were to see the state of Lee Carson’s arms in the meantime?’ he suggested offhandedly.
Oppenheimer growled his reply.
‘I take it that your silence on this matter is required once more.’
‘As you like to say,’ Wolfe replied, ‘everybody can be bought. And my price just doubled.’
Oppenheimer ground his teeth.
‘So be it.’
Wolfe’s demeanor instantly changed. He held the cards now, and Jeb knew it. For as long as Wolfe was the only security against Oppenheimer’s exposure, he could call the shots.
‘Good. I’ll see what can be done this end to ensure Lee Carson’s body remains in our possession. In the meantime, I suggest that you carry out your search as quickly as possible.’
‘What’s the rush?’ Oppenheimer asked. ‘They’ve been out there for decades and they’re not going anywhere.’
‘No,’ Wolfe smiled, ‘but Lee Carson was reputedly killed by one of his friends, a man who fled the scene with several accomplices. That suggests discord within their ranks. Their vehicle was found abandoned in the wilderness seventy miles south of Socorro. If Carson was killed by his own companions — the men that you seek — how long before they wind up taking themselves out altogether?’
Oppenheimer grimaced. ‘I don’t possess an army to conduct the search.’
‘No,’ Wolfe conceded, ‘but I have connections with ex-soldiers, people willing to work without asking questions. I will send a hundred of them down to New Mexico under the guise of a civilian survival-training course. They will be at your disposal from when they arrive, and I will ensure they are equipped to deal with your little problem.’
With that, Wolfe disconnected their video link. Oppenheimer sat in impotent silence for a moment, cursing Wolfe’s apparent stupidity. A hundred men might take a decade, even a century, to find two fugitives in the desert. But of course, Oppenheimer had an advantage that he would not share with Wolfe, one that would ensure that once the bacteria were in his hands, Wolfe could go sing for his payment.
Oppenheimer tapped a few keys on his computer, accessing Google Earth and zooming in to New Mexico, then typed in an Internet Protocol address. Moments later, a tiny flashing dot appeared deep in the desert, and Oppenheimer smiled.
‘Hello, Ms Lopez.’
Donald Wolfe stared at the now blank screen of his monitor for a long moment, thinking about what Jeb Oppenheimer had said, before he looked up at the pockmarked face of the soldier standing before him. Red Hoffman had a round, pale face and fiery ginger hair that gave him his name, and his eyes were like narrow slits pinched between his puffy features. He stood to attention wearing all-black combat fatigues festooned with radios, pouches and a pistol holster.
‘Gather your men,’ Wolfe ordered. ‘They’ll be tasked with a search and destroy training mission concerning some potentially lethal carcinogens being carried by suspected terrorists.’
Hoffman nodded, saluting smartly.
‘Can we expect resistance from the targets?’ he asked with military efficiency.
‘From one of them at least.’ Wolfe nodded. ‘Ethan Warner. The rest are nothing that should concern you. I feel certain that with odds of one hundred to eight in your favor, victory should be assured.’
Hoffman smiled, saluted again, then marched out of Wolfe’s office.
42
‘You sure about this?’
Lopez’s voice sounded tiny in the immense silence of the wilderness surrounding them. Ethan stared out across the barren landscape and took a mouthful of water from his bottle before pushing it back into his webbing. His limbs and joints still ached after his earlier unplanned flight from Ellison Thorne’s car, but not enough to hold him back.
‘Only way to get to the bottom of this is to find these people and figure out what the hell’s happening to them.’
Lopez was wearing a rucksack like Ethan’s, a military-issue Bergen containing a bedroll, sleeping bag, supplies and a webbing belt with water bottle, ration packs and medical kit, all picked up in Albuquerque on the journey south. The load weighed almost as much as she did, a burden she would never have carried as a detective in DC’s Metropolitan Police Force.
Since boldly handing in her badge and founding Warner/Lopez Inc. with Ethan, Lopez had come to realize that working for herself was not all it was cracked up to be. A steady, predictable salary in the force had been replaced with an endless succession of good months and bad months, traveling expenses and now hiking through ninety-degree heat in a desert. To top it all, they were not armed.
‘Maybe,’ she said, taking a drink from her own water bottle as they walked across open ground toward a vast mountain range ahead. ‘But we’re blind here, Ethan, following a hunch that could lead us further from the truth, not toward it.’
Ethan shook his head, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder toward the small town of Glencoe now far behind them on trail Fs443, beyond the rolling hills trembling in the heat haze.
‘Ellison Thorne and his men abandoned their car a mile outside of Glencoe on this track. That means they were heading south, and they’ve obviously decided to do so on foot. There must be a reason for that and it can’t just be about getting away from SkinGen and Jeb Oppenheimer, or anyone else for that matter. These guys are good at staying out of sight: they’ve done it well enough for the last hundred forty years. They must be heading in this direction for a good reason.’
Lopez looked about her in disbelief.
‘Well, they couldn’t have picked a worse place to go. There’s nothing out here but shrubs, dust and scorpions for a hundred miles.’
Ethan smiled.
‘You’d be surprised what you can find out here to survive on, if you know where to look.’