Origin (32 page)

Jacobs listened intently as Caines gave him a rundown of what had occurred over the past few hours.

‘Do you have any leads whatsoever?’ Jacobs asked.

‘No, sir,’ Caines admitted, glad Jacobs was not in the room with him. ‘We have no idea where they might have gone as of this time. But we’re doing everything in our power to relocate them.’

For a brief moment, Jacobs considered shouting at Caines, screaming down the phone at him for his ineptitude and threatening him with torture and death for failing in his mission; and then he would have liked to smash the phone to pieces.

Instead, he merely closed the phone slowly, cutting off the call without a word, succeeding in his efforts to control himself. It was no use shouting at Caines. What purpose would that serve now?

Adams and Edwards were clever, and now they were even more dangerous than ever. Why had he told them everything, back in the laboratory? His pride had got the better of him, that was why. He was certainly old enough to know better, but just as there was no use in shouting at Caines, there was also no point in beating himself up either. Instead, as his limousine glided along the smooth Swiss roads, he considered how they might have performed their vanishing act.

Moments later, he snapped upright and grabbed his phone to call Caines back.

Caines saw that it was Jacobs calling and reluctantly answered. ‘Yes, sir?’ he said gingerly.

‘Caines, have you checked the inner base?’ He could hear Jacobs’ excited tone.

‘I’m sorry, what do you mean, sir?’

Jacobs sighed audibly in exasperation. ‘I mean have you searched inside the damn base?’ he almost screamed down the line.

‘Er . . . no, sir,’ Caines answered, never having considered that the fugitives might have broken back
into
the base.

‘Well, get checking now!’ Jacobs ordered. ‘If you can’t find them outside the fence line, they must have gone back in!’

Adams looked out of the small window next to him, watching the thick clouds obscuring the view of the Atlantic Ocean far below, and allowed himself to relax ever so slightly. The flight from Reno-Tahoe to Zurich took sixteen hours, giving him the opportunity to do nothing
but
relax.

A flight to Geneva would have been ideal, but the international flights went to Zurich, and they would have to arrange onward transportation from there. Once Jacobs had learnt of their escape he would doubtless have arrivals at Geneva monitored anyway, so it was probably just as well that Zurich was the destination. A fast train from there to Geneva wouldn’t take long, and the train stations would be easier to arrive at unannounced.

To avoid any undue attention, the four of them were sitting in seats well away from each other, so Adams didn’t even have anyone to talk to. The in-flight magazine didn’t keep him occupied for more than a few minutes, and he had no interest in the mediocre selection of films that were on offer. And so he was left alone with just his thoughts for company. Still, that was no bad thing, he considered. He had known no other way for many years.

As he sat there, he tried to concentrate on what they would do once in Zurich. It had been decided that Ayita and Stephenfield would deplane first, try and spot any surveillance and draw the attention of anyone who may be there waiting for them. He and Lynn would follow, if the coast was clear. They would then go separately through passport control, and each get taxis to the main city square. They would meet up and make their way on foot to the train station, using cash to purchase four tickets to Geneva.

Once in Geneva, things would get a little more problematic, Adams knew; and yet try as he might to think things through logically, his mind kept returning instead to Lynn.

Evelyn Edwards, his ex-wife and now the mother of his as yet unborn child. So beautiful, so intelligent, so resourceful, even all these years after they had first met. To some extent he couldn’t believe that she had ever fallen for him in the first place.

He still loved her, he knew that for certain. That had been a part of his problem for so many years, the fact that he was still in love with her. It had stalled the rest of his life, making him incapable of carrying on fully. And now she was pregnant, and they were going to have a child of their own. Adams just didn’t know how to feel about that. The larger part of him was almost indescribably happy – he was to have the child he had always wanted, with the woman he wanted. But there was a deep conflict too. Given all that was going on, what would happen with the baby? Would he or she ever be born, or would humanity be wiped out before that glorious day?

The weight of the responsibility came crushing down on him. It was up to him to make sure that never happened, just like it had been up to him to get to that damn truck in the desert.

But unlike then, he promised himself now that he would not fail, no matter what it took.

J
ACOBS WAS IN
the foothills just ten kilometres from the fabled CERN Large Hadron Collider when the call came through from Caines, the man’s tone now more optimistic.

‘You were right, sir,’ he said with some excitement.

‘You’ve found them?’ Jacobs asked immediately.

‘Not exactly, sir,’ Caines answered, the nervousness back in his voice. ‘What I mean to say is that they
did
come back on to the base but they left several hours ago.’

‘And just how in the hell did they manage that?’ Jacobs almost exploded.

‘We checked all CCTV footage of the base grounds, and although the film is a little dark and hazy, it looks as if they managed to sneak on board the six o’clock Janet flight to McCarran.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding me. So where are they now?’

‘We’re still investigating, sir. Terminal CCTV has them leaving the plane and escaping into the parking lot. Using traffic cameras, we’ve traced them to the Luxor Hotel and Casino. It looks like they made a call from a payphone next to the slot machines, and we’re following up on that. But we’re confident we can reacquire them in short order, now we’re on their trail.’

‘Good,’ Jacobs said. ‘Keep me informed.’

Adams took the bumps slowly along the desert road in his Toyota Landcruiser, taking the twists and turns at under five miles per hour, the vehicle seemingly unable to go any faster.

He could barely see, and didn’t want to crash off the road. What good would he be to anybody then?

He looked through the windscreen up at the burning sun, and looked away, his head aching, in agony.

He pulled over to the side of the road. It was no use. He’d been on the truck’s trail for three days now and was no closer to catching it. He needed a rest, just half an hour to shut his eyes. He’d been here before so many times, knew what the consequences would be if he fell asleep, and yet he was powerless to resist. He had to carry on, had to try and get there in time, at least once, at least this time. But he was so tired . . .

He was in the desert, on foot now and tracking the tyre marks that had gone off the road just half a kilometre from where he had been resting. The sun was lower in the sky, several hours having passed. He cursed himself, knowing what that would mean. He would find the truck like he had a thousand times in the past, open the doors, hoping that this time it would be different.

But it wouldn’t be different; there would still be the same rotting bodies lying dead in the rear of the scorching hot truck, dead because he couldn’t keep himself awake.

Still he soldiered on, trapped in the dreamland version of the event that had destroyed his life. He tracked the tyre marks for another mile over the dusty terrain, until he found the truck lying there deserted in the dying rays of the afternoon sun. He moved close, and immediately knew that there was something different this time.

What was it? He tried to think, to clear the fuzz from his head.

The smell! It wasn’t there! Were they still alive? Quickly, he rushed to the rear doors, pulling them open in excitement.

And there they were – dozens of children, dazed and starving, but still alive! They looked at him in wonder, and then there seemed to be more, and instead of dozens there were hundreds, and then thousands, until there were as many as there were grains of sand on a beach, until his vision could take in nothing else.

He heard a ticking sound, and his head turned to it. There was a small clock on the truck wall, counting down the seconds, and Adams instinctively knew that this was the amount of time the children had left until they died. He moved forward immediately but was halted by a voice to his rear.

‘Matt!’ Lynn’s voice called out, and his head snapped round at the sound.

He could see Lynn with a newborn baby –
his
baby – cradled in her arms, mother and child both teetering on the edge of a cliff, about to fall.

He looked at the clock on the truck’s wall. Ten seconds.

He turned back to Lynn and the child. Her foot slipped, rock and shale falling into the chasm below, her balance lost.

Adams froze, unable to move, caught in indecision. In the truck were thousands, millions of people to be rescued. On the cliff was the woman he loved, and his own child, a part of himself given life through that love.

What should he do? How could he save both sets of people in the time he had available? He had to do something but he couldn’t move; he just didn’t know which way to turn.

An alarm sounded, and he turned to the truck; and then Lynn screamed, and he turned to the cliff.

His mouth went wide as he saw Lynn and their baby fall over the cliff edge, and he started towards them, but was halted by the screams behind him, the cries of millions of souls in torment.

The sun above him seemed to grow larger, increasing in size as it came towards him, bigger and bigger, hotter and hotter, until it was all he could see, all he could
feel
.

And then Adams did the only thing he could do; he collapsed to his knees and screamed.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ the portly Texan next to Adams said with concern, shaking him awake.

Adams snapped out of it immediately, doing his best not to look around the cabin and bring even more attention to himself. ‘Yes, I’m OK,’ he said to the kindly man. ‘Thank you. Just a bad dream.’

The Texan nodded his head in understanding. ‘I know what that’s like, son,’ he said. ‘Ain’t nothing you can do about your dreams.’

Adams nodded his head. ‘I guess not,’ he said, giving the man a reassuring smile, making clear that he was now OK.

The dream was new, but it was most definitely bad. Was there truly nothing that he could do about it?

Adams felt a drop in altitude, heard the change in engine speed, and then saw the seat-belt lights come on. They were coming in to land, and he rested back into his seat, understanding that he was probably about to find out.

T
HE SIGHT WAS
glorious as always, the myriad buildings that made up the ground-level complex of the LHC facility. They were not at all beautiful in and of themselves; rather it was what they represented that was glorious.

The wormhole device was so secret that it didn’t even have a code name; only those few selected knew of its existence, apart from the specialist technicians who worked on it, and who would never see the light of day again after it became operational.

Jacobs’ limousine passed through the main gateposts, and he wondered how long it would take to gather everyone together. Most of the Bilderberg Hundred had been at the dinner the night before, but some members had still to make it to Switzerland. He hoped they would be here before the device went operational; they wouldn’t want to be caught outside after the Anunnaki had returned.

The car continued on through the outlying buildings, winding through the snow-covered inner roads until it came to a stop outside the main administrative building.

Jacobs’ driver went round to open his door, and as he stepped out, he was pleased to see Philippe Messier striding out to meet him, hand extended.

‘Philippe,’ Jacobs said in greeting as he shook the proffered hand. ‘How are we looking?’

Messier smiled in answer and escorted Jacobs towards the entrance. ‘Let’s just say I hope the others get here soon.’

Eighteen hours after boarding the flight at Reno-Tahoe, Adams found himself in Das Central, the main square in the old historic area of Zurich.

He stood at the barrier overlooking the Limmat, a chillingly cold body of water that nevertheless sparkled under the rays of the winter sun. He took up a position where he could monitor both banks of the river, checking on the comings and goings of the streams of people, ever vigilant against the threat of surveillance.

He hadn’t been stopped at the airport, and as far as he could tell nor had Lynn or the others, which indicated that they were not under observation but he knew he couldn’t be sure.

His counter-surveillance picked up both Lynn and Ayita long before they arrived at his position by the bridge. He was careful not to show too much emotion as Lynn approached, although he was overjoyed to see her; they were just a group of friends taking a tour of the city. Stephenfield arrived last, and although he was the least observable, Adams was pleased that he was still able to pick him up before he was upon them; if he could spot an intelligence operative as good as Stephenfield, then his skills were probably sufficient to spot anyone else that might be observing them.

‘Was anyone followed?’ Ayita asked when they were all together. When they all replied in the negative, he turned to the north. ‘Come on then. The train to Geneva leaves in twenty minutes.’

As they set out along the Neumühlequai, Ayita continued, ‘We’ll board the train and get our tickets from the inspector once we’re travelling. We don’t have time to get them in the office, and anyway, the purchase doesn’t get reported this way.’

They turned north-west along Museumstrasse, all of them keyed up, constantly checking about them. But as they neared the Hauptbahnhof, the city’s main train station, they realized that no one was watching them, and they might yet reach Geneva unopposed.