‘She did not waste time — she tried to make a bolt for it, to disappear again that very night. But I’d already arranged to have her — how shall I put this? — to have her escorted to a safe place.’
Erica’s hand went to her mouth and she wiped away the moisture there, squeezing her eyes closed as if to force away the dregs of the drug. ‘You’re a contemptible man, David,’ she said.
‘Really? That’s not very sporting or grateful of you, especially after all I have given you.’ He let him arm swing lazily to point out Gareth.
Tremain came over, a little concerned about Lambert-Chide allowing himself to get too close to the woman and Gareth. He waved him away. ‘She is as harmless as a little kitten, Randall,’ he assured.
‘It was rape,’ she said. She sounded as if she’d been drinking and Gareth could see how desperate she was to gain control of her body.
‘That’s not quite right, is it? I mean, artificial insemination isn’t technically rape, is it, Randall?’ The man gave a loose shrug in response.
‘You see, Gareth, Evelyn — you don’t mind me calling you Evelyn, do you? — Evelyn became central to Project Gilgamesh. Are you familiar with Gilgamesh, Gareth?’ He admitted he wasn’t which appeared to please Lambert-Chide. ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest-surviving pieces of literature, from Mesopotamia. It is a poem, and tells the tale of the friendship between Gilgamesh and a wild man created by the gods named Enkidu. Gilgamesh is distraught at Enkidu’s death, which prompts him to carry out a long and perilous search for the secret of immortality. Just as we sought it. As we seek it. My company’s Project Gilgamesh was necessarily a secret, and Evelyn was central to it. In fact she was, in essence, the project itself — with her we aimed to find the answer to life without end, to extend human longevity, to end death from old age and disease.’
‘Kept prisoner, treated little better than a lump of meat, stuck with needles, cut open, raped, for two years,’ said Erica. ‘All in the name of company profit. And the plan remains exactly the same. Personally, I’d rather die,’ she said, her throat dry and painful.
‘That isn’t an option, I’m afraid, Evelyn. We need you very much alive. Gene technology and understanding has moved on in leaps and bounds since the 1970’s, and personally I don’t have much time left to me. I need results fast. I’m determined to find the key that turns off aging and reverses it very soon, even if it means I have to take you apart piece by beautiful piece until I do.’
Lambert-Chide moved over to Gareth, who had been stunned into silence by all that he’d been hearing. He did not want to believe any of it, but that was becoming impossible with every minute that passed.
‘But of course,’ he continued, ‘I can afford to do that now, can’t I, because I have a back-up. I have your son.’ He saw Gareth open his mouth to speak, then close it again, the words left unsaid. ‘You are first and foremost a little miracle, do you know that, Gareth? But of course not! How could you? How innocent you have been all this time, believing one thing yet the truth being another.’
‘The drug is wearing off,’ warned Tremain, standing close to Erica. ‘We need to get her back to her cell.’
‘Cell?’ echoed Gareth.
Tremain removed the gun from his jacket as a silent warning, and Gareth sat back, helpless.
‘She has lived a long time,’ said Lambert-Chide. ‘You cannot comprehend how long. But in all that time she has never been able to have children. Perhaps an unfortunate side-effect of not aging. Perhaps the key makes you infertile. Our experiments using a range of select donors over a two year period eventually proved successful. She became pregnant, not with one child but with twins! Twice the insurance should anything happen to her. Three times the possibility that the project would succeed in its aims.’
‘And when they were born you would have used them like lab animals,’ said Erica. She rubbed her eyes, as if she were clearing them of sleep. ‘You are little more than an animal yourself, David. It’s not enough that you’ve had money and power all your life.’
Lambert-Chide ignored her feeble protest. ‘But Project Gilgamesh was all but put on hold when Evelyn was helped get away by someone we thought we trusted. A rising young star in the industry, or so I thought. But you cannot trust anyone, can you, Gareth?’ He bent down on his haunches to stare at Erica’s face. ‘Your savior, Doctor Stephanie Jacobs, destroyed all tissue samples, all notes, as many records as she could lay her hands on, and then she took you from me. You and my miracle babies. And for over thirty years I’ve been searching for you. You are clever, Evelyn, I will grant you that; managing to stay low for so long, obviously a well-practiced art of yours. In the end, though, it was simply a mother’s love that brought you to the surface again, winkled you out of hiding.
‘The way I picture it in my imagination, you’d always kept a discreet and distant watchful eye on Gareth as he was growing up. I’ll bet you were never very far away from him. If only we’d known that you left your baby in Cardiff station; that would have made our work a lot easier! What happened? Was Doradus getting close to capturing you? That’s it, isn’t it? You were on the run and they were hot on your heels. Only he didn’t know about the baby, did he? I mean, it wasn’t possible for someone like you to have a baby. So it was very noble of you, Evelyn, to abandon your baby rather than have him taken by Doradus; how painful a choice it must have been, to decide whether you kept him and so watch him suffer the same fate as you if you’re captured; or to let someone else have him instead, to know he will hate you for the deed you did but he will at least live in relative safety for a while, till he too realizes who he is. Because he must, you know. You could only postpone the inevitable. But what of the other twin? What happened to it?’
‘She,’ said Erica. ‘It was not an it.’
‘A girl? What happened, did she die at birth? She can’t have lasted long, I think. I am of the mind you only had Gareth at the time you left him in Cardiff. It is unlikely you would abandon one child and risk the other being caught with you. And even less likely you dropped them off like so many parcels in different places. No, the twin died, of that I am certain.’ Erica remained tight-lipped and silent. Lambert-Chide looked to Gareth. ‘Yes, Gareth, you see, you really did have a sister, albeit briefly, it appears. Died in childbirth, I suspect, or soon afterwards. Which made Gareth all the more special to you, eh? Precious, you might say.
‘He may belong to another, but you were irresistibly drawn to him, weren’t you, Evelyn? The son you never even heard speak; the boy you didn’t see cut his first teeth, or had the joy of seeing him take his first steps. You could not keep away. You had the world to choose from but all along you were here, almost under our very noses. All through Gareth’s life, a distant, ghostly presence he never knew existed, a shadow in the distance, watching him. You even dared to attend an exhibition of his in London a matter of months ago, treating yourself to two of his prints. But recently you were also afraid Doradus was getting close to discovering the truth about who he was and so you sought to warn him, to protect him. You sourced false documents, something you have been doing for decades. Of course, you had to pretend to be his sister, for now, because the truth would have been too much all at once. Yet we both know it was always more than that, wasn’t it? More than simply trying to warn him. You may be immortal, Evelyn, but you cannot escape the timeless bonds between a mother and her child. You had to get even closer. You just had to meet him, didn’t you? Oh, you had a valid excuse, but in reality you were brought into the open by an inescapable physiological urge.