‘He was the one who hit me!’ Jarvis shouted, pain barraging his weary brain with salvos of agony. ‘Get on the phone to the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant-General Abraham Mitchell. He’ll confirm who I am!’
‘I’m sure he will,’ the doctor nodded patronizingly, and continued to dab at the head wound.
Jarvis mustered every last ounce of his patience.
‘Doctor, if you don’t make that call and get me out of this goddamned gurney, a lot of people are going to die. Do you understand? If I’m lying, you’ll have wasted two minutes on a call. If I’m not, you’ll have wasted millions of lives. What’s it going to be? A hundred second phone call or a hundred million lives?’ He leveled the doctor with a steady gaze. ‘Your call.’
‘All vehicles: suspects armed and considered dangerous, proceed with caution.’
Lieutenant Zamora keyed off his microphone and glanced in his rear-view mirror at the line of four patrol cars following him in convoy down the I-285, their lights flashing.
Alongside him sat Butch Cutler, while in the rear seat of his car, cuffed and silent, sat Saffron Oppenheimer.
‘I’m taking a hell of a goddamned risk bringing you out here,’ he said, keeping one eye on the road ahead. ‘You try to make a break for it, I’ll hand your case over to US Marshalls and have them hunt you down day and night.’
‘Story of my life,’ Saffron replied without concern. ‘How much further?’
‘We’re ten minutes away from the caverns.’
‘Stay north of the hills,’ Saffron said. ‘I’ve never seen those old men head south of them.’
Lieutenant Zamora shook his head in confusion.
‘What the hell is it with those people? If they even exist, why the hell would they stay in the state at all? If SkinGen and people like Jeb Oppenheimer are hunting for them, surely they’d be better hidden in rural Wyoming or something?’
‘I don’t know,’ Saffron replied. ‘Maybe they have people here in New Mexico who help them, keep them supplied with food and water and such like. Whatever the reason, it’s enough to keep them here. We wouldn’t have seen them in the deserts as much as we did if they were roaming the entire continent.’
Cutler stared thoughtfully at the road ahead for a moment before speaking. ‘What makes you so sure that Nicola Lopez will betray Ethan Warner? Near as I could see, they’re pretty tight together.’
‘I know what I saw,’ Saffron insisted. ‘Lopez met with my grandfather and there’s only one reason that he would do that — to buy her off. Did you get the warrant to access her bank accounts?’
Cutler looked at Zamora, who said nothing. Saffron smiled coldly.
‘So you did get them,’ she purred. ‘Incriminating, were they?’
‘Money is money,’ Zamora said. ‘There was an anomalous sum deposited in one of her accounts yesterday, yes, but we haven’t traced its source yet. It could be anything.’
‘Yeah,’ Saffron uttered, ‘course it could.’
65
Donald Wolfe lifted his bottle of water, watching as the hundred-strong audience did the same. Just as the liquid touched his lips, the ceremonial entrance smashed open with a crack that echoed through the hall as hundreds of presidents, prime ministers and their staff turned away from their glasses at the noise.
Doug Jarvis burst into the hall, shrieking at the top of his lungs. ‘Don’t drink the water!’
Donald Wolfe stared wide-eyed at Jarvis, who staggered unsteadily into the chamber, his head wrapped in a bloodied bandage and two security guards flanking him.
‘What the hell is this?’ he uttered, the microphone amplifying his voice.
Jarvis shouted as loud as he could in the hall.
‘The water is infected!’
A rush of horrified gasps echoed through the hall as dignitaries put the glasses down as though they were filled with venom. Jarvis pointed up at Donald Wolfe.
‘He’s organized a pandemic, starting from this hall!’
Wolfe stammered his response even as hundreds of heads turned to look at him.
‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘He’s armed!’ Jarvis shouted, and the two security guards flanking him placed their hands on their weapons. ‘We know everything,’ Jarvis said. ‘It’s time to come clean about New Mexico and Alaska, Donald.’
Wolfe felt a tingling sensation creep uncomfortably down his spine as he felt the eyes of the entire amphitheater watching him.
‘What in the name of God are you talking about?’
‘The death of Tyler Willis,’ Jarvis replied with an impassive expression. ‘The abduction of Lillian Cruz. The men you have dispatched to New Mexico to assist Jeb Oppenheimer of SkinGen Corp in abducting men for biological experiments into longevity, and the murder of a scientist in Brevig Mission, Alaska.’
Wolfe opened his mouth to reply but Jarvis cut across him, turning to look up at the surrounding world leaders.
‘Whatever you do, do not drink the water in your glasses. It’s infected with a strain of 1918 Spanish Flu, obtained by Donald Wolfe from a mass grave in Alaska and brought here to New York.’
A rush of gasps crashed across the delegation.
‘That’s preposterous!’ Wolfe snapped in alarm. ‘Why on earth would I do something like that?’
‘In the next half-hour, more people could die,’ Jarvis shot back at him. ‘We have tracked your movements ever since you left SkinGen in Santa Fe two days ago, and the FBI are already at Fort Detrick and searching your office.’
Wolfe flustered behind the dais, looking this way and that for an escape.
‘SkinGen is a private corporation! I have no connection with them and the FBI can’t just walk in and—’
‘Yes they can,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Jeb Oppenheimer is on the run, Donald. It’s over. Your little scheme to reduce the world’s population through disease is finished, and your partner in crime is wanted for the murder of Tyler Willis. This is your chance to ensure that more innocent people don’t die. Tell us exactly where your men are and what they’re doing, before this becomes a multiple homicide investigation.’
Wolfe gaped at Jarvis and tried to force his brain to feed words to his unwilling vocal cords. ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m in the middle of an address and you’re—’
‘The hell with your address,’ Jarvis shot back. ‘I’ve had men watching you for forty-eight hours. You dispatched over one hundred mercenaries into New Mexico yesterday under cover of a training mission to kill American citizens!’
More gasps filled the auditorium as Wolfe felt dread plunge through him. His throat dried out as he struggled to speak.
‘This is preposterous!’ he shouted, and turned to the secretary-general. ‘I demand that this man be removed from the chamber!’
The secretary-general glanced at Jarvis and then at Wolfe.
‘Denied. Explain yourself.’
Wolfe was about to speak but Jarvis cut across him again.
‘You sent biological clean-up teams into Santa Fe to investigate claims that you made of infected blood or agents being spilled in precise locations within the city,’ he said. ‘We have this on record as your own agenda for sending the teams in the first place. However, we also know that only two people knew that there was infected blood in those locations, and both of them are involved in the murders. My problem, Mister Wolfe, is that unless you’d been informed by those individuals of the presence of infected blood, you could not have known that it was present at the scene.’
A silence descended over the auditorium. Wolfe felt the weight of the world’s political machine bearing down upon him. Jarvis took another step closer to the dais.