The Anvil (35 page)

By the time the first streaks of dawn were in the sky, MacLean and Leavey had built up a picture of life in the hidden valley. There were six separate wooden chalets where the girls lived; each housed two girls. The babies, usually about thirty at any given time, were kept together in a single nursery building and looked after by ten of the girls during the daytime and by three at night. If the babies should start crying at night however, the other girls were under orders to lend a hand in quietening them because Dr Von Jonek got very angry about the noise. ‘There is an echo off the cliffs,’ said Carla. ‘Sometimes people can hear the sound on the other side.’

‘The “lost souls” of the
Hacienda Yunque
,’ said MacLean.

‘How many guards?’ asked Leavey.

‘Fifteen in all, although they are not just guards; they have other duties. They are split into three groups of five. One group works in the boiler house, one does the maintenance work in the Hacienda and the third group works here.’

‘Any other people?’ asked MacLean.

‘Dr Von Jonek and two other scientists,’ said Carla.

‘And Hartmut,’ added Fernanda, exchanging glances with Carla.

‘Hartmut?’ asked Leavey.

Carla grimaced and said, ‘Dr Von Jonek keeps a strange man with him. He is not normal … not right.’

Leavey asked where Von Jonek and the others worked.

‘Somewhere inside the rock,’ replied Carla. ‘But none of the girls ever get to go there.’

Carla and Fernanda were both on duty in the nursery at seven thirty in the morning so it was agreed that Leavey and MacLean would lie low in their chalet. They would spend the day resting and regaining their strength, waiting for nightfall when they would attempt to find Von Jonek’s laboratory and the Cytogerm they had come for. In the event, neither of them slept much but the rest did them good and by mid-afternoon they felt ready for the final part of their mission.

‘When we get the stuff we’ll still have a problem,’ said Leavey.

‘You mean, how do we get out of here?’ replied MacLean.

Leavey nodded.

When they had entered the tunnel through the fake sterilizer door they had found a button to close the door behind them but both had noticed that there was no obvious way of opening the door from the inside. ‘There must be a way,’ said MacLean. ‘I don’t fancy the climb.’ He looked up at the cliffs.

‘Not easy,’ conceded Leavey.

‘Even if we made it to the top, we can’t get down the other side because of the overhang.’

‘Then we’ll have to ask someone the way out,’ said Leavey with characteristic understatement.

‘And we’ll have to do it tonight,’ said MacLean. ‘They’re going to start taking the absence of one of their guards seriously pretty soon.’

Leavey agreed. They had been counting on a ‘honeymoon’ period when, although the guard was seen to be missing, innocent explanations would prevail for a while. This, they hoped, would be especially true in the case of the
Hacienda Yunque,
which to all intents and purposes was impregnable. The man had been hopelessly drunk when he ‘disappeared’ so it would be assumed for a while that he had not appeared for duty because of this. When a whole day had passed however, without anyone seeing him, they would start searching for him in earnest.

When the girls returned just after dark MacLean told them of the plan and asked them to prepare themselves to leave at a moment’s notice. They were not however, to have bags packed and waiting by the door because of any search that might be mounted for the missing guard. As a precaution, the four of them searched the chalet for anything that might have belonged to him, no matter how small. They found nothing.

The two men slipped out of the chalet into the darkness and crossed the open ground quickly. They made it to the shelter of the rocks and settled down to wait. The night, a complete contrast to the previous evening, was warm and balmy, pleasant to be out in but with the disadvantage of a clear, starry sky above them and the prospect of moonlight to contend with when the moon cleared the rim of the cliffs.

When they were satisfied that most of the to-ing and fro-ing was over for the day they moved nearer the tunnel that led to the Hacienda. They had already decided that Von Jonek’s laboratories must lie down the shaft in the tunnel that they had not explored. They crept up to the entrance, hugging the contours of the rock to avoid silhouetting themselves, and had a look. Everything seemed quiet so they sprinted quickly and quietly up to where the tunnel split into three. Once more the sound of voices sent them scurrying for cover in the dark, disused shaft.

From the shadows they watched five men pass by. They were arguing amongst themselves and as the sound of their voices faded Leavey said that they were probably the relief guards being summoned to assist in a search for the missing man. The two men crossed the junction and moved into new territory. There was a light coming from under the first door they came across and MacLean put his ear to it. He heard muted voices from within and signalled to Leavey that they move on. They came to another junction in the tunnel and found another door. On it in large red letters was the word, PRIVADO.

‘Do you think that applies to us?’ whispered Leavey.

MacLean smiled despite the feelings in his stomach. He watched their backs, gun raised with the barrel resting against his cheek, while Leavey dealt with the lock and let them inside. They were in a small laboratory equipped with basic glassware and general lab items but nothing to excite MacLean. He looked through drawers and cupboards in a methodical, clockwise search but still found nothing interesting. Finally, he opened a large refrigerator, letting yellow light spill out into the room. He hoped to find supplies of Cytogerm but it contained nothing but racks of small plastic tubes. He asked for Leavey’s torch and removed one of the racks to examine it more closely.

Each tube had a nametag on it. MacLean repeated the names under his breath as he went through the rack, removing each in turn. Halfway through, the names started to sound familiar. He went back to the beginning and filled in the blanks. Karman, Nobel prize winner in physics … Normark … prize winner in medicine … Ericson the finest mathematician of his generation. The list began to sound like a roll call of outstanding achievement in the twentieth century.

‘Mean anything?’ asked Leavey.

‘Quite a lot,’ replied MacLean thoughtfully.

‘Do you know what’s in the tubes?’ asked Leavey.

‘Sperm samples,’ said MacLean.

‘What for?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said MacLean. ‘It’s not unusual for great men to be asked to provide sperm samples for preservation in deep freeze, a sort of genetic bank for future generations. But I can’t see where Von Jonek fits in to all this.’

‘Artificial insemination?’ suggested Leavey.

‘The donors would never allow it,’ said MacLean.

‘If Von Jonek’s involved I don’t see that they would have had much say in the matter,’ said Leavey and MacLean had to agree.

‘I think that must be it,’ said Leavey. ‘They are using the samples to inseminate women, maybe at the clinic?’

MacLean looked unconvinced. He said, ‘That kind of operation wouldn’t take a budget of 18 million dollars and it wouldn’t explain the secret nursery.’

Leavey conceded.

MacLean opened more doors and found an incubator room being kept at 37 degrees centigrade, human body temperature. Inside there was a rotating drum full of test tubes containing a red-coloured fluid.

‘Anything?’ asked Leavey.

‘It’s some kind of cell culture system,’ said MacLean, closing the door again and opening up the door next to it. This proved to be another fridge. He almost went weak at the knees when he saw a light blue box lying on the middle shelf. It was labelled, CYTOGERM. MacLean picked it up and held it to his chest for a moment before raising it up to his lips. Carrie would have her new face.’

‘Mission accomplished,’ said Leavey.

MacLean nodded but was too emotional to say anything. Leavey asked, ‘Is there enough?’

MacLean nodded again, opening the box and stuffing the glass vials into his pockets.

Almost absent-mindedly, Leavey completed the search of the lab by opening the final door. He expected to find a cupboard; instead he found a cathedral.

The door was the entrance to a huge cavern in the rock, lit by an eerie green light. When they entered they found they were standing on a metal platform, ten metres above the floor of the cavern and part of a gallery that ran right the way around. The ceiling was another good ten metres above them.

‘It’s bloody enormous,’ whispered Leavey. ‘What the hell’s it for?’

The floor space was occupied by parallel rows of large glass tanks, each filled with liquid, as if the place were some sort of giant marine museum. Leavey led the way to a flight of steps leading down to the floor, their footsteps echoing on the metal rungs and MacLean went up to one of the tanks for a closer look.

‘What in God’s name is that?’ exclaimed Leavey with revulsion as he joined him.

‘It’s a human foetus,’ said MacLean, finding exactly the same in the next tank along and the one after that.

Leavey grimaced at the discovery but MacLean was puzzled. He couldn’t see the point in keeping so many exhibits of the same thing when they all seemed to be perfectly healthy. There was nothing of any pathological interest at all.

‘This place gives me the creeps,’ said Leavey.

MacLean thought such an admission strange coming from Leavey. ‘It’s the strangest museum I’ve ever been in,’ he admitted. He rested his fingers on the glass of one of the tanks but immediately recoiled as he found it warm. He opened his mouth to say something when suddenly the foetus inside gave a spastic jerk and both men jumped back.

‘They’re alive!’ exclaimed Leavey.

MacLean took more than a few moments to come to terms with the sheer horror of the discovery then realisation dawned. ‘My God, he’s succeeded in gestating children outside the womb.’

‘Surely that’s not possible?’ whispered Leavey.

‘I didn’t think it was either but I knew various Japanese research teams have been trying. To succeed in simulating placental function for nine months
in vitro
is an incredible feat.’

‘Unless your name is Von Jonek and you have an 18 million dollar budget apparently,’ said Leavey.

‘But why?’ murmured MacLean as they moved among the tanks.

‘They all have numbers on them,’ said Leavey. ‘This one has a seven.’

MacLean looked at the contents and said, ‘It’s a seven month old foetus, perfect in every way.’

‘What’s the German for “month”?’ asked Leavey.

‘Monat,’ replied MacLean.

‘I thought so,’ said Leavey. ‘The label says,
Sieben Woche
. That, if I’m not much mistaken, means seven weeks!’

‘That’s crazy,’ protested MacLean, ‘It’s far too well developed.’ He looked at the labels on other tanks but still had a problem with labelling. ‘There is just no way that … ‘ And then the truth hit him. It was obvious. he should have realised it at once. It was Cytogerm that was speeding up cell proliferation and shortening the gestation period. That’s how Von Jonek had succeeded where others had failed. Everything fell into place. The cell cultures he had found in the incubator room were human ova. They were being fertilised with the sperm of celebrated men and brought to maturity in the tanks with the aid of Cytogerm.

‘Someone’s coming!’ hissed Leavey and MacLean dropped to his knees beside him to look anxiously up at the gallery. They heard the sound of approaching footsteps on metal and Leavey signalled that they should get underneath the tanks. They held their breath as the sound grew louder. MacLean wriggled up into a position where he could see the entrance to the high gallery through a gap in the tank’s supporting frame. He saw a man appear and rest his hands on the guardrail to look down at the tanks.

MacLean’s first reaction was to press his face back to the ground but he found that he could not take his eyes off the man. He was well over six feet tall and dressed entirely in black, a colour which emphasised the fact that he was completely hairless and had skin the colour of alabaster. Even at that range MacLean could see the redness of the eyes. The man was an albino.

MacLean and Leavey adjusted their position under the tanks to follow his progress as he walked slowly round the echoing gallery, pausing at intervals to look over the rail like an animal sniffing the air. He made a complete circuit of the gallery and disappeared through a door, which banged behind him; the noise reverberated round the cavern.

Leavey let out his breath and said, ‘I guess that was Hartmut, Von Jonek’s little helper.’

The two men started to make their way back to the steps leading up to the gallery. MacLean paused when he got to the foot of them and looked back.

Leavey read his mind and said, ‘What do you want to do about this place?’