‘What?’ Lopez asked.
Ethan leaned forward and stared into one of their escort’s sunglasses. ‘Can you tell us where we’re going?’
The guard remained stone faced and silent. Ethan tried again.
‘This isn’t about us,’ he said. ‘Stanley Meyer may have duped everybody. I need to know where we’re going because I think that he may have placed himself in great danger.’
‘What do you mean?’ Amber asked, leaning forward.
Ethan looked at her.
‘I don’t think that Stanley is behind all of this,’ Ethan said. ‘I think that he’s deliberately made himself a patsy.’
‘Patsy for who?’ Lopez asked. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
Ethan looked at their escort again. ‘Please, you need to call ahead and let them know about what’s going on, or Stanley Meyer might not be alive when we find him. I know you’re not FBI, or working for Majestic Twelve or Seavers Incorporated. Where are we going?’
The guard lifted his chin and then turned to his right and nodded at his accomplice, who pulled a cell phone from his pocket and began to dial. The guard looked back at Ethan and spoke in a monotone voice.
‘Richmond International, for Las Vegas,’ he said.
‘We need to delay that, turn around and find Stanley before he gets himself killed.’
‘Will you tell me what the hell’s going on?!’ Amber insisted.
Ethan leaned back in his seat as Amber’s words of days before drifted through his mind. I was adopted. Stanley and Mary couldn’t have children, so they adopted me at the age of two. Mary was an electrochemist and they met as undergraduates at university. I think that because they couldn’t have children they made their careers their priority, and then later in life decided to adopt me.
Mary was an electrochemist.
‘It’s all a deception. We’ve all been chasing the wrong person.’
Huck Seavers strode down the plush corridor toward the hotel’s penthouse suite and felt as though he were floating on an invisible ocean of joy, his footfalls making no sound on the deep carpets as he reached the door of the suite, which was guarded by two of his most trusted men. One of them unlocked the door and pushed it open for him to pass through.
Seavers had spent much of his life in such luxurious surroundings, the best that life could offer so familiar to him that he never really considered the fact that there were hundreds of other, less exuberant rooms on the floors below. He strode casually into the suite and saw Stanley Meyer sitting on a vast leather couch, a sparkling glass of chilled wine in one hand and a smile on his face as wide as the San Francisco bridge as he looked up at Seavers. The old man reached for a remote and switched off the vast plasma screen television dominating one wall.
‘You’re looking a tad more cheerful than this morning,’ Seavers observed with a smile, buoyed up by his own relief that the whole sorry episode was over.
‘Things have improved immensely,’ Stanley replied and took a sip of his drink. ‘To be honest, I wish I’d done this sooner.’
‘So do I!’ Seavers gasped, flopping down onto a deep armchair nearby and tossing his Stetson onto a glass table between them. ‘I take it that the money has reached your accounts?’
‘Half an hour ago,’ Stanley acknowledged. ‘I must say I admire that you have kept your word, Huck. The payment was immediate and in full, no questions asked.’
‘An agreement was made and it was honored,’ Huck replied. ‘Do you have the documents regarding the fusion cage?’
Huck knew that as soon as Stanley had been paid, and with full access to the Internet and phones supplied, he had begun the process of gathering all of his research materials together into one place so that Huck, and by extension MJ–12, could take control of them, completely removing all trace of the fusion cage from the public domain. A motorcycle courier had delivered a package to the suite only minutes ago, the door guards informing Huck immediately, and he had hurried up in order to take possession of them.
The door to the suite opened, and Aaron Mitchell strode in. Stanley looked up at the towering agent, and his jovial expression withered away. Huck caught the change in mood and spoke quickly to smooth over it.
‘You know, if only this had been done sooner when the offers were first made, then none of that bloodshed would have occurred,’ Huck said as he watched Stanley rifle through a folder of papers. ‘You would never have had to go on the run, your family would have remained safe and Red McKenzie would still be alive and well. Hiring those gumshoes to help you was a mistake.’
To Huck’s surprise, Stanley chuckled and nodded.
‘Well, it was a necessary evil although I didn’t actually hire anybody myself. They found me in Saudi Arabia and were with my daughter when they arrived. In truth, I have no idea who hired them or even who they truly work for.’
Huck looked up at Mitchell, who glowered silently as he spoke.
‘The Defense Intelligence Agency. They’ve been prying into things they have no business interfering with for some time now, under the guise of one program or another.’
Stanley closed the folder he was holding and walked across to Aaron, his features beaming with delight once more and his arms clutching the folder to his chest.
‘And who do you work for?’ he asked the towering agent.
‘You don’t need to know. Hand over the material and I will disappear.’
Stanley smiled almost pityingly at Aaron.
‘You people, you wear the flag of our country and claim to act in the defence of what you call national security, but really you’re just as corrupt as the people you work for. Majestic Twelve, isn’t it?’
Huck’s eyes almost burst from their sockets. ‘How do you know about them?!’
‘I made it my business,’ Stanley snapped back as his happiness vanished in the blink of an eye and an incomparable fury grotesquely twisted his features. ‘I did my homework for months and I found out all about that dirty little nest of vipers, feeding off the poverty of millions for their own greed.’
‘The files,’ Aaron growled.
‘You want them?’ Stanley asked. ‘You want these?’
The old man looked down at the files he was holding, and then he tossed them onto the thick carpet at Aaron’s feet and turned his back on the agent and strolled away with his hands in his pockets.
‘Take them,’ he said finally. ‘Enjoy every last detail because it won’t do you any good.’
Huck, a sliver of panic now slithering through his guts, watched as Aaron Mitchell swallowed his pride with a visible effort and picked up the thick folder. He opened it and leafed through the contents and then looked at Huck and nodded.
‘Good enough, for now,’ he said as he looked at Stanley. ‘Any further mention of this device, or anything in connection with it, by you or any of your family, will result in your funds being taken from you and your own life coming to an abrupt end, is that clear?’
Stanley kept his back to Aaron as he replied.
‘I will never speak of my device again,’ he said softly. ‘Now why don’t you be a good little puppy dog and disappear back to your masters? Maybe they’ll throw you a bone and pat your head for being such a good boy.’
Huck stared in disbelief at Stanley, astonished that he would so deliberately try to rile Mitchell, a clearly dangerous man. Mitchell glared at Stanley but said nothing as he turned his back and began striding toward the suite door.
Huck Seavers got to his feet and shook off Stanley’s sudden aggression. He was probably pissed for having sold out to MJ–12, putting money before his own crazed mission to donate the most valuable energy generation device in the history of the planet to billions of people that he would never meet. The activists, they always took things too far and …