‘Twenty million,’ Ethan echoed. ‘That was the price of silence for you?’
‘For all of us,’ McKenzie replied. ‘It was a once only deal, take it or leave it. No taxes, paperwork all sorted. New name, new home, family included. They just wanted us to disappear and say nothing ‘bout what happened, and they made it real clear that we should never, ever return to Clearwater or mention it ever again.’
‘And what about Stan’s device, the one that was powering the town?’ Ethan asked.
‘Whisked away as soon as we’d all agreed to the deal,’ McKenzie replied. ‘I was one of the last to leave, mostly because I hadn’t tidied my trailer in years and it took me forever to find all the crap I wanted to take with me. The power went out just before I was finished, and I saw them taking away some sort of bright device that they had shielded with large tarpaulins and placed on the back of a truck. I’d have taken the damn thing to be a UFO or something if I hadn’t known what Stan had been up to.’
‘What about the men who offered you the deal?’ Lopez asked. ‘Did they identify the agency with which they were working, or give any clue as to who they were?’
‘Nothing,’ McKenzie said. ‘They were straight — talking folk, no wasted words, and made clear that time was of the essence, if y’know what I mean. From what I saw of the troops outside the barricade around town, their uniforms carried no insignia and their vehicles were unmarked. I did some time in the army back in the day, and I’ve never seen soldiers moving without any insignia like that on US soil.’
‘Paramilitary,’ Ethan said, ‘pretty much what we already knew.’
‘Twenty million,’ Amber murmured. ‘There are not many families who would have turned down a sum of money like that. It’s the kind of cash sufficient to last a lifetime if it’s handled well.’
‘Yeah, there were conditions,’ McKenzie admitted. ‘At least half a million committed to the purchasin’ of a property, and a limit on how much we could spend each year. It was all in the contract, which we signed, some kind of nondisclosure agreement.’
‘Clever,’ Lopez observed. ‘They were trying to minimise the chances of any of you being tracked down by overspending or drawing attention to yourselves.’
‘That figures,’ McKenzie admitted. ‘They wanted everything to be done on the quiet, no big fuss, no big announcements. Just get out of Clearwater, never come back and never say anything about what happened.’
‘You got any idea where everybody else went?’ Amber asked. ‘Old Jeff, Lauren Gardener, any of the logging contractors or hotel staff?’
‘Nope,’ McKenzie said. ‘We were all questioned separately and it was intimated that we should not discuss with any of the other folk what we’d been promised or where we were headed. I don’t think any of us were thinking of anything but the twenty million bucks that were waitin’ for us outside of Clearwater. Which reminds me, you all should be goin’ now, ‘cause I ain’t risking losing my fortune talking to you.’
Ethan figured that the old man had risked enough, and after thanking him he led Lopez and Amber back to their car.
‘He’s the smoking gun,’ Amber said. ‘If we can get him to go public, it’ll blow the whole thing wide open.’
‘Nobody will believe a word of it,’ Ethan said, ‘and I don’t think that Mac there is going to sing for us and lose his new fortune. We need a different angle here.’
‘Is there anybody your father might have confided in, a long — time friend perhaps?’
Amber nodded.
‘Doctor Cecil Grant,’ she replied. ‘He works at the National Ignition Facility in California, was there with my dad for years.’
‘We need to pay him a visit.’
Lopez glanced at Amber with interest. ‘And what about your angle, Amber? There’s twenty million bucks out there waiting for you and your own silence. Have you not thought about heading back to college and letting Majestic Twelve come striding into your life?’
Amber offered Lopez a curt smile. ‘I have something called integrity. You ever heard of it?’
Amber opened the car door and got in, slamming it behind her.
‘Glad I asked,’ Lopez replied.
X
‘Are you sure this is the place to come?’
The flight from Missouri to California had been a long one but Ethan felt certain that the best place for Amber Ryan was as far away from Clearwater as possible, and travelling to California was not something that Majestic Twelve might predict, fake ID documents provided by Jarvis further veiling their path.
‘Cecil Grant still works here,’ Amber explained from the backseat, where she was lying down on a pillow to avoid even the slightest chance of detection by road cameras or other surveillance. ‘I know that dad reached out to Cecil from time to time, that he trusted him.’
The National Ignition Facility was an enormous building, the entrance to which was emblazoned with a promising logo:
Bringing Star Power to Earth
Ethan could not help but be fascinated by the sight of it as he drove past the facility’s main gates. Access to this most secure location was normally limited to employees and special invitees only, the NIF having been used as the set for the USS Enterprise’s warp core in the movie Star Trek: Into Darkness, but Amber had been able to recover from her cell phone the number of Doctor Cecil Grant, an astrophysicist employed at the NIF and a former colleague of Stanley Meyer. Dr Grant had been more than willing to meet with Amber, but he considered the NIF building to be too dangerous and too well monitored to be a safe place to meet in light of what had happened at Clearwater. Instead, he had arranged a meeting at a local cafe where he felt more likely they could talk without being observed.
Ethan drove into the cafe lot and pulled up.
‘Shades, baseball cap, collar up okay?’ Ethan asked Amber.
‘I feel like I’m in a lousy spy movie,’ Amber replied, tucking her thick black hair under the cap.
‘It’s the easiest way to break up your outline without looking too ridiculous,’ Lopez informed her as she climbed out of the car.
‘Does the government really have that kind of ability to track people?’ Amber asked as she too climbed out and slammed her door shut.
‘Oh yeah,’ Ethan replied. ‘Trust us, they can follow you anywhere if they really want to, but to do that they’ve first got to pin you down. Facial recognition software is widely used now, but I’m hoping that the extent of the surveillance won’t reach that far in your case. It’s your father they’re really after.’
Ethan led the way into the cafe, which was really more of a diner and at this hour was barely a quarter full, the air laden with the odours of coffee and fried breakfasts. Ethan stood to one side as Amber entered, letting her lead the way toward one of the tables in the back corner of the diner while Ethan and Lopez scanned the other people seated around them in search of any evidence of government agents or anything else that might make them feel uneasy. Ethan saw nothing to concern himself as he followed Amber toward where an elderly gentleman was sitting with a coffee and watching expectantly as Amber approached him.
Dr Cecil Grant stood up and embraced Amber with a warm smile, then looked her up and down as he rested his hands on her shoulders.
‘I can’t believe I once held you as a baby,’ he said appraisingly as he looked over her shoulder at Ethan and Lopez.
‘They’re with me,’ Amber said.
‘Do they know what happened?’
‘They’re working on it,’ Amber said as she sat down opposite Dr Grant and introduced Ethan and Lopez.