Ethan looked at Lopez, who shrugged.
‘Do it from across the street or something,’ Ethan said. ‘If this is a set — up of some kind, at least they won’t be able to bag us all at once.’
Amber strode for the reception door and without another word she opened it and stomped outside, slamming the door behind her. Ethan felt something resembling relief as the room fell silent.
‘Tenacious,’ Lopez observed.
‘Yeah, and I have to put up with both of you.’
‘Oh come on, I’m not that bad!’
Ethan cast Lopez a weary glance. ‘You’re my boss, on paper at least. You ever meet a boss you could get on with?’
Lopez was about to answer when the door to the room burst open and Amber dashed inside.
‘They’re here!’ she yelped.
Ethan dashed to the window and peered out to see two expensive looking vehicles pull into the lot and screech to a halt directly in front of the apartment.
‘There a way out back?’ Ethan asked Lopez, cursing himself for not checking already.
‘Nothing,’ Lopez called back from the bathroom. ‘No way out!’
Ethan pulled Amber out of the way of the door as he heard heavy footsteps mount the sidewalk outside.
‘Get behind me,’ he ordered her. ‘How long did you have that cell turned on for?’
Amber sulked and said nothing.
‘How long, Amber?’
‘I texted her, a couple hours ago,’ Amber mumbled.
‘Jesus,’ Ethan uttered as he rubbed his temples. ‘This is why I don’t have kids.’
A long silence ensued as Lopez returned and stood alongside Ethan. Images of flash — bangs being tossed through the windows or a shotgun being used to blast open the door flashed through his mind. The silence drew out along with Ethan’s thumping heart beats, and then there was a soft knock at the door.
Ethan hesitated for a moment, glanced at Lopez, and then reached out and opened the door.
XXXIII
Ethan sat in silence between Lopez and Amber, all three of them staring back at a pair of men in smart uniforms, clearly trained bodyguards of some kind, who sat facing them in the rear of the people carrier. The men remained impassive, making no attempt at conversation and hiding behind their sunglasses as the vehicle whispered along the highway.
Ethan had opened the door to the grubby motel room at the knock, and had been surprised to see the two men standing there, supported by a further two behind them. He had been able to tell from the cut of their suits that they were carrying, most likely pistols in shoulder holsters and perhaps assorted close — combat weapons in other, discreet sleeve pouches and such like.
Outnumbered and unarmed after ditching the M16 Ethan had taken from the soldiers near Nathalie, he and Lopez had known right away that there was little point in putting up a fight. If they defeated the first two men, the two behind them would be on hand to cut them both down with a single shot each, and the interior of the motel room offered no escape or cover. In the end the decision had been easy: Stanley Meyer had sold out, and so to an extent the visit by the armed men could simply be the end of the road or the promise of an escape.
Nothing to lose, Lopez had said, and maybe everything to gain.
Somehow, Ethan felt a certain degree of relief as he glanced out of the window and saw the city of Richmond passing by in the distance, tower blocks of metal and glass glinting in the dawn sunlight. There was also a hint of excitement that he was struggling to keep at bay from clouding his judgement. Meyer had sold out, and now it was possible that Majestic Twelve may be willing to buy his and Lopez’s silence too.
Warner & Lopez Inc had no direct affiliation or loyalty to the Defense Intelligence Agency, and selling out did not mean that they would lose the business the agency provided. Hell, if any payout was generous enough they wouldn’t need the damned business at all. Ten million bucks was a hell of a retirement fund, and would last Ethan the rest of his days and far beyond as long as he was careful and …
‘Stop thinking about it.’
Ethan glanced at Lopez, who was watching him with her dark eyes.
‘Kinda hard, don’t you think?’ he replied.
‘Stop thinking about what?’ Amber asked.
‘The trouble we’ll be in at the DIA,’ Ethan lied smoothly. ‘We’ve failed, in effect, and this is the first time. We didn’t keep Stanley safe and we didn’t recover all of the material surrounding his fusion cage. Presumably that is now in the hands of Huck Seavers, or whoever he’s been answering to.’
‘You did what you could,’ Amber replied. ‘I don’t see how dad selling out will cause you any problems. It’s the last thing that I expected him to do.’
Ethan nodded as he reflected on Stanley Meyer’s stoic refusal to sell his device to anybody, to even consider doing so. Stanley’s goal was a lofty one, to simply give away his device to the world for free and bask in the glow of an act of altruism that would be remembered for generations, perhaps forever. Ethan could see how the threats of violence against so many people and the death of Red McKenzie might have swayed him from his true purpose in life, but it seemed odd to Ethan that Stanley, prepared for the worst that the oil companies could throw at him, would have folded so completely and suddenly.
‘I don’t think anybody who knows Stanley expected him to do this,’ Lopez agreed. ‘Can’t say I’m disappointed though.’
‘I am,’ Amber scowled, her arms folded across her chest. ‘He could have been so much more than this, was so much more than this. People like Huck Seavers don’t give a damn about the people, they’re too interested in the size of their bank balance. I hope that my father has sold out to them and then uses the money to build ten thousand fusion cages and distributes them around the world. That would teach those damned corporate fat cats a lesson about money and their greed and … ’
Amber’s words drifted off in Ethan’s mind as he sat absolutely still in his seat and stared vacantly straight ahead. A single sentence revolved around in his head over and over as the vehicle whispered along the asphalt.
‘ … uses the money to build ten thousand fusion cages and distributes them around the world … ’
Stanley, if he had indeed sold out, would undoubtedly be under strict orders not to develop his device any more. The consequences of doing so would likely be literally fatal, so there was no way that the old man could get the word out about what he had achieved unless he intended to make the money disappear somewhere and then shout about his invention as loudly as he could before MJ–12 put a bullet in his skull.
No. Ethan scratched that off of his list. The media would be blacked out from any such broadcasts, MJ–12’s reach seemingly long enough to prevent Stanley from achieving his aims through the media. None the less, Ethan could not square the old man’s new course of action with the character that he knew. It didn’t make sense, because Stanley already seemed aware that powerful corporations might attempt to take his life once he tried to go public: he seemed prepared for such an eventuality, willing to risk his life to …
‘Oh no.’
Ethan stared into the middle distance as a sudden flurry of thoughts and realizations flashed through his mind in rapid succession.