The door to the suite burst open as one of the guards, a phone clasped to his ear, cried out.
‘It’s gone public!’
Aaron Mitchell froze in mid — stride as Huck felt a ball of ice form around his heart as though it had stopped beating. Mitchell glared at the agent.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The fusion cage!’ the agent almost shouted. ‘It’s going viral on Internet sites everywhere!’
Mitchell dropped the files in his grasp and immediately pulled a cell phone from his pocket and speed — dialled a number. He spoke clearly and quickly.
‘Freeze all assets belonging to Stanley Meyer and initiate a lock — down on all broadcasts both digital and otherwise. Seal the system, now!’
As Huck watched, Stanley continued to look out of the window in silence, a gentle smile on his face.
XXXIV
Aaron Mitchell closed the door behind the agent with a stern order. ‘Nobody is to come in.’
The door closed, Mitchell still holding the cell phone to his ear as he listened, and then finally he shut it off and slipped it back into his pocket.
‘What’s happened?’ Huck asked in desperation. ‘What’s he done?’
Aaron glared at the inventor for a long moment before he replied.
‘The money in the accounts he gave us has disappeared,’ Aaron replied, his voice low and filled with a menace so appalling that Huck took an involuntary step back from the agent. ‘One hundred million dollars has been spread across accounts in dozens of countries in an attempt to conceal its whereabouts. We’ll find it, of course, but for now it is no longer accessible to us.’
Huck shot Stanley a glance. ‘What have you done?!’
Stanley, his hands folded behind his back, finally turned away from the panoramic view and faced Mitchell, the smile still touching his face.
‘You didn’t really believe that I’d sell out to any of you black — hearted criminals, did you?’
Huck felt the world shift beneath his feet as though he were losing his balance as the world collapsed beneath him, which in many ways it had.
‘You promised,’ he gasped in a weak voice, barely able to speak. ‘That you wouldn’t share anything, that you would honour the deal.’
‘And I have,’ Stanley smiled, his gaze fixed upon Aaron Mitchell. ‘I have shared nothing, nor have I stolen any of the money. I have completely honored my end of our deal.’
Aaron Mitchell moved closer to Stanley.
‘Who?’ he demanded. ‘Where?’
Stanley’s smile grew wider as he looked up at the towering agent and he shook his head.
‘I think that you and I both know that no matter what happens to me, no matter what you evil cretins dream up, I’ll never tell you anything and that’s because I don’t actually know. This whole thing was out of my hands long before you even started looking for me.’
To Huck’s horror, Stanley’s smile broadened and he began to laugh as he spoke.
‘All this time, you and your greedy little cohorts have been chasing me around the world looking to silence me, but it gives me an immeasureable pleasure to tell you now that the whole thing has been a charade.’
Huck’s legs finally gave way and he slumped back down onto the armchair, his lungs aching and his breath wheezing as though somebody had stuffed a sock down his throat. Aaron Mitchell loomed over Stanley, his giant fists clenched.
‘Who, and where?’
‘You’ve spent millions, perhaps billions of dollars now,’ Stanley continued in delight, ‘and all of it for nothing. Greed is blind, they say, and you’re sure greedy!’
Huck tried to stand, to speak, but he could not. Tears welled in his eyes as he heard Stanley’s delighted cackles echoing around the suite.
‘I knew that you’d come after me, especially when Clearwater disconnected from the grid. It was only a matter of time, really, before somebody figured out that the town was getting its energy for free without a solar panel or a wind turbine in sight. News like that travels fast when there’s money involved, so I decided to ensure that when the time came, you’d come for me first. I couldn’t distribute the fusion cage without funds, which of course no company would provide as an investment without patents in place, so I needed a really big cash injection to get things moving.’
Aaron’s voice rumbled back at Stanley.
‘You didn’t invent the fusion cage,’ he said finally.
Stanley chuckled in delight and shrugged. ‘Nope, sorry! I just plugged it in!’
Huck Seavers almost gagged as he saw an image of Seavers Incorporated stocks plunging, of the entire company folding before his eyes and legal cases piling up by the second as his support from MJ–12 vanished. He knew without a doubt that they would hang him out to dry, that his company would be bought out for a fraction of its value and that his life, his family’s life, would never be the same again. They would lose everything: the house, the boat, the holidays, the cars, the security, the happiness …
Stanley Meyer’s voice chortled at Aaron Mitchell.
‘You’re finished,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing on earth that you can do to stop it now! Mine was not the only fusion cage built!’
Aaron Mitchell stepped forward and one thick fist ploughed down into Stanley Meyer’s plexus like a freight train through an eggshell. Stanley’s cries of delight mutated grotesquely into a wretch of agony as he folded over at the waist and plunged to his knees. A thin stream of bile spilled from his mouth to stain the carpet as he clutched his belly with both arms.
Mitchell grabbed the old man’s collar with both hands and lifted him bodily off the ground, one thick hand gripping Meyer’s throat as the other pinned him against a wall.
‘Who, and where?’
Meyer’s face was twisted in pain, his eyes streaming and blurred as he struggled both to breathe and to fight the pain from the blow that must have wrenched his innards apart. Huck could hear his sobs as Mitchell spoke again.
‘Believe me, what happens to you will be nothing compared to what I will do to your family when I find them. Your daughter, your wife, everybody. I will personally exterminate them one by one unless you tell me, right now, what I need to know. Who, and when?’
Stanley, his knees struggling to pull up to his stomach in sympathy with his pain, shook his head and cried out.
‘Never! I’ll die sooner than tell you a damned thing!’
Mitchell held the old man in place for a moment longer, and then nodded. ‘So be it.’
Mitchell hauled Stanley across the suite, the old man’s legs dragging across the carpet. Mitchell used a key card to unlock the balcony doors, Stanley kicking and struggling as he was pulled out onto the balcony, five stories above the gardens below. Huck dragged himself off the sofa and staggered across the suite, one eye drawn to a large ornate vase as he heard Mitchell’s voice from outside.
‘Last chance, Meyer. Start talking or you’ll end up as nothing more than a damp spot on that lawn.’
Stanley gabbled an agonized insult, and through the white blinds Huck saw Aaron Mitchell jerk one knee violently upward. The bony joint slammed into Stanley’s groin and the old man let out a stifled, pinched groan of agony as he folded up against the railings, weeping and quivering as Mitchell pinned him in place.
‘Your daughter will go first,’ Mitchell growled. ‘Painfully, slowly, while your wife watches. I’ll take months over it, Meyer, years. Nobody will ever see them again and even if they did they wouldn’t recognize what’s left.’
Meyer twitched, his voice sawing and rasping in his throat as Huck reached the balcony and saw Mitchell drag the old man over the railings, his old head and shoulders dangling over the precipitous drop as Mitchell growled at him.