Origin (11 page)

He had seen the photographs that Lynn and her colleague had secretly taken of the body when it was still half-entombed in ice, before the arrival of the military team. But he knew she must have seen more when the body had finally been extracted, and with everything that had been going on, they hadn’t really had a good chance to talk about it.

‘It was . . . strange, really,’ Lynn began. ‘From our initial discovery, it seemed that the body was a man just like modern man. He was in a depression at the bottom of a ridge, which meant that the ice hadn’t crushed the body but kept it perfectly preserved, we think for about forty thousand years.’

‘And he looked normal?’

‘As if he’d been buried there last year. That’s what makes it unique.’

‘So what do we think humans looked like forty thousand years ago?’

‘Well, that’s something else I’ve been researching since getting to Santiago. Apparently, in terms of body proportions, we probably looked almost exactly the same as we do today, we’ve changed very little since the first
Homo sapiens
came on the scene about two hundred thousand years ago.’

‘And facially?’

‘Our skulls were a little different, a mix of both human and Neanderthal elements. Frontal flattening, a larger jaw, very large upper molars. So, facially, we would have looked very different.’

‘And yet the body you found was the same as ours?’

‘Exactly the same. But it’s more what we found
with
the body than the body itself.’

‘You mentioned some sort of unusual clothing back at the hotel.’

Lynn nodded her head. ‘Yes, and Jeff . . .’ she paused as she thought of her colleagues, remembering them. ‘Well, he used to work for the National Security Agency, and he’d never seen anything like it before. And then when that military team pulled the body out, there were other things there with it.’

Adams glanced sideways at her, fascinated. ‘Like what?’

‘Major Daley wasn’t happy having us there and he and his men made sure we didn’t see too much. But the boots, for instance – they had some sort of attachment to the sides, definitely mechanical, perhaps electrical even. And then they found something else, which Tommy and I both thought looked like a motorized sled of some kind.’

Adams thought about this for some time, the desert road streaming past in one long, white blur.

‘If you forget about the dating, what would you think had happened? What would the man have been doing there?’

Lynn thought for a few moments. ‘Cold-weather gear, motorized sled, it would suggest he was perhaps part of some sort of Antarctic research team.’ She paused. ‘Maybe even just like us.’

‘Could the dating be wrong?’ Adams asked next.

‘Possibly,’ Lynn answered straight away, the thought having been constantly on her mind. ‘But we were all as sure as you can be, without taking the ice samples away and analysing them in a laboratory – which is what Major Daley and his team were supposed to be doing.’

‘So,’ Adams said at length as he mopped cold sweat from his eyes, ‘it seems most likely that the body was part of some current military or government research team, was buried there recently, and the forty-thousand-year dating is inaccurate. If they were out there testing some new cold-weather gear, it would also explain why there’s been a cover-up.’

‘Killing a whole team of NASA researchers just to cover up cold-weather equipment and clothing tests?’ Lynn said in disbelief.

‘If you’d said the dating was a hundred per cent accurate, I wouldn’t consider the possibility,’ Adams said. ‘But it’s not a hundred per cent, and even if it’s as high as ninety-nine per cent, I’d still think that the one per cent chance that the body was buried more recently is the most likely.’

Lynn wanted to respond but couldn’t. The fact was, he was right. In all the drama and fear of the past few days, and the excitement of the discovery, a more down-to-earth, mundane explanation had been pushed to the back of her mind. But the logical side of her understood that the more mundane explanations were, more often than not, the correct ones.

But did such an explanation make sense in light of the subsequent reaction? A team of scientists killed, the body stolen, emails intercepted, her ex-husband targeted by interrogators, hit squads searching South America – it all seemed too much just to cover up some new government technology. Somehow, a discovery that redefined human existence seemed more of a justification for what she had been through and the lives that had been lost.

‘Well,’ Adams said, ‘I guess we’ll have a better idea when we get the data analysed back in the States.’

Lynn nodded her head, deep in thought. ‘You’re right. Let’s just make sure we get there in one piece.’

Eldridge met the rest of his men at Santiago’s SCL Airport, where the Lear jet landed on the private runway towards the rear of the complex.

He boarded the plane alone, his nine other teammates still working with the police and government agencies back in the city, trying to come up with a movement profile for the two fugitives.

Out of the twenty-four men on board, Eldridge retained a group of four, sending the other twenty off to liaise with the existing men in Santiago. He then declared the Lear jet his new operations centre, and ordered the plane to be refuelled and ready for take-off immediately. On the orders of Stephen Jacobs, the private jet had been specially modified to accept aerial refuelling, and this was promised to be immediately available from the Chilean Air Force, enabling Eldridge to stay in the air indefinitely.

He felt that he needed to be able to react to incoming information instantly – from the air, he could get to anywhere on the continent relatively quickly. If he was stuck on the ground, it would double or even triple his response time. And with every hour that passed, every hour that Adams and Edwards were out there, the risk to the organization grew.

The surveillance footage from traffic cameras was being fed back slowly, and Jacobs was piping it straight to the supercomputers at the NSA, from where it was then sent to his own technicians in Nevada.

There was nothing so far, but Eldridge knew they couldn’t have gone too far. Both of the fugitives’ passports had been red-lighted, and if they were used, an arrest would be made instantly. Photo surveillance at all airports, ferry ports and transnational bus and train stations was being constantly analysed, and there had been no hits so far. This indicated two things to Eldridge. The first was that the fugitives were still in Chile, somewhere within her borders. The second was that they were using the roads, probably driving stolen vehicles or hitchhiking.

Eldridge put in requests for the national police and the Carabineros to stop suspect vehicles and check IDs, as well as to check on stories of hitchhikers. He also requested all information on recently stolen vehicles to be fed directly to him.

As he studied the maps of Chile’s road system, he figured that there were again two options: they would either take their time along the slow, empty back roads, in the belief that they would be less likely to be seen; or they would take the major roads, hoping to blast along them and use speed as their ally, putting as much distance between them and their pursuers as possible.

Eldridge ordered detailed satellite analysis of the vehicles travelling along the country’s back roads, the NSA’s systems programmed to report any anomalous driving behaviour, and then put in another call, direct to the Chief of National Police.

‘Señor Vasquez,’ Eldridge began, not needing to give his own name, ‘I’m afraid I have another request.’ With the apparent full backing of the US government, it was more of an order than a request, but niceties had to be observed.

‘What is it you want, my friend?’ Vasquez replied obsequiously.

‘I want roadblocks,’ Eldridge replied. ‘On every interstate, at hundred-kilometre intervals.’

There would be no escape, Eldridge promised himself.
No escape
.

A
DAMS DIDN’T SEE
the roadblock until it was almost too late, so tired that his eyes closed involuntarily every so often, travelling blind for dangerous distances before his vision returned.

It was hard to judge distance against the desert backdrop but he guessed the roadblock was set up about a mile further down the long, straight highway. From this distance, he could make out what looked like three police cars straddling the interstate, waving down vehicles to check their documents.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ Adams told Lynn, nudging her awake from her own sleep.

Opening her eyes, she instantly took in the sight ahead of her. ‘Oh no,’ she moaned. She felt the car slow as Adams took his foot off the gas.

Adams wasn’t using the brakes, not wanting to draw attention to the car by slowing suddenly, but he did want to slow the car enough to figure out a plan of action.

‘What are we going to do?’ Lynn asked, and Adams struggled to come up with an answer. If they stopped, it would be instantly suspicious, and the police would immediately come to them. If they got to the checkpoint, their identification would almost certainly get them instantly arrested. And Adams wasn’t sure if the little Fiat was capable of smashing through the roadblock.

‘I guess we’re just going to have to make it up as we go along,’ he said finally.

Police Sergeant Manuel Vega sat on the hood of the lead car, chatting to his men. Sitting out in the middle of the Atacama waiting for vehicles to come along was nobody’s idea of fun. The temperature out in the desert could drop well below zero, and although it was the middle of the day, the men were all starting to feel the effects of the cold.

Stamping their feet to keep warm, one of the officers suddenly pointed down the road at the small car coming towards them.

Vega slid off the hood and clapped his hands together. ‘Oh joy,’ he said, feeling nothing of the sort. ‘Another one. Still,’ he joked to his men, ‘at least we get overtime, eh?’

As Adams rolled the car to a stop in front of the lead police car, he rolled his window down and cold air spilled into the cabin. The sweat started to freeze on his body.

He watched with interest at the reaction of the police chief and his men. First there was total disinterest; then, as they realized the car held a Caucasian woman and an Amerindian man, there was a flutter of concern, a narrowing of the eyes, and then rapid movements as orders were given.

Adams saw the police chief check an A4 sheet of paper, presumably with their pictures on, then bark orders at his men, who then surrounded the vehicle, weapons drawn.

‘Get out of the car, hands on your head!’ shouted the sergeant. ‘Now!’

‘Just wait a minute,’ Adams said reasonably from his place behind the wheel. ‘Do you know who we are?’

‘Terrorists, damn it!’ the police sergeant screamed. ‘Get out of the car, now!’

Perfect
, thought Adams. Branding people as terrorists was a typical move if you wanted things to happen quickly. Tell people there’s a criminal on the loose, and the wheels will turn very slowly, if at all. Tell them it’s a terrorist, and the reaction couldn’t be more different.

Vega watched the pair in the car with eagle eyes. He couldn’t believe it was his team that had caught them! Terrorists, in his country! And
he
had caught them! He was going to be rewarded for this, that was for sure. A promotion was a certainty, possibly with a presidential citation to follow.

But why was the man so calm? And why was he asking questions?

The man’s next words caused even more confusion.

‘You’ll know what we are carrying then,’ he said, a smug smile on his face.

What did he mean? Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. ‘Get out of the car! This is your last warning! Get out now, or we will open fire!’

And then the woman moved, her hands raising something up to the windscreen for them to look at. What was it?

He peered forward, trying to make it out.

It was a . . . a test tube?

Lynn held one of the DNA samples of the frozen body up to the windscreen. She had been reluctant to show it, but Adams had argued that if they were arrested, the samples would be lost anyway, and so she had agreed to go along with his off-the-cuff plan.

‘
Bacillus anthracis
,’ she heard Adams tell the nervous police sergeant through the open window. ‘Anthrax.’

Anthrax?
Vega’s head started to spin. He’d been told nothing about
this
! But there it was, something in a cold-storage test tube, just like you’d find in a laboratory.

Would it be anthrax? Vega just didn’t know. What else could it be? Why would terrorists be carrying test tubes of anything, if it wasn’t a weapon of some sort?

‘Once I let go, and you gentlemen breathe in the spores,’ he heard the man continue, ‘you’ll start to feel the effects by later this afternoon. It’ll feel like flu to start with, then get rapidly worse, your body’s systems collapsing until – in maybe a week’s time, if you’re lucky – it progresses to lethal haemorrhagic mediastinitis.’ The man flashed him a smile. ‘Fatal in ninety per cent of cases.’

It took less than thirty seconds for Vega to make up his mind.

‘Drop your weapons,’ the sergeant ordered his men, and both Adams and Lynn sighed with relief. They’d bought it, hook, line and sinker.

As the policemen lowered their weapons, Adams progressed to phase two of the plan.

‘Now put your guns on the ground and step back two paces.’

The police sergeant barked a translation of the order to his men, and they all did as they were told. Passionate about their work as they might otherwise be, the threat of infection with a lethal bioweapon was more than enough to ensure their compliance.

Adams and Lynn slowly stepped out of the car, Lynn keeping the fearsome test tube held up where everyone could see it. After assessing the assembled men, Adams picked two of the most promising candidates. ‘You two,’ he said, gesturing at them, ‘handcuff the rest of the team.’

The sergeant again translated, and the handcuffing was quickly done, the fear writ large across the faces of the officers. The handcuffed men were told to lie face down on the ground, and Adams turned back to the two policemen who had done the handcuffing.