Immortal

by Dean Crawford

  ‘That how it is?’ Ethan asked rhetorically.

  ‘That’s how it is.’

  ‘That really how it is?’ Mickey Ferranto complained.

  ‘Shut up,’ Ethan glared over his shoulder. ‘My point is that there’s plenty of competition out there and we can’t afford to get ourselves busted.’

  ‘We can’t afford much at all,’ Lopez muttered and jabbed her thumb over her shoulder at Ferranto. ‘We’re not bagging enough of these losers to make ends meet.’

  ‘I ain’t no loser,’ Mickey complained.

  ‘No?’ Lopez turned round in her seat to look at him. ‘You’re a twenty-three-year-old who’s just cost his mother a couple of thousand bucks jail bond for nothing more than possession of an illegal substance. You’d turned up in court like you were supposed to, you’d have probably been released because you’re not important enough, Mickey; you’re a nobody. Only a loser like you could turn a nothing into a jail sentence.’

  Mickey avoided her gaze and looked sulkily out of the window as Ethan turned toward Cook County Jail.

  ‘Maybe we should spread out more, cover more area,’ Ethan suggested. ‘Maybe even link up with some of the other bondsmen out there.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Lopez echoed. ‘Or maybe we just need to stop scraping around in the dirt for nobodies like Mickey here and pick up something more lucrative.’

  Ethan began to answer when a black sedan pulled out in front of the SUV, passing within inches of his front fender. He was about to remonstrate when another identical car pulled alongside him, boxing the SUV in.

  ‘What the hell?’ Lopez muttered, instinctively reaching for her pistol before remembering that she was no longer legally allowed to carry one. Her hand rested on her baton instead.

  ‘Government plates,’ Ethan said, glancing at the rear of the sedan in front of them as it indicated it was turning off the road.

  ‘You gonna follow?’ Lopez asked.

  Ethan shrugged, then turned to follow the sedan.

  5

  The sedans guided them north on Harlem Avenue before turning off the highway into Waldheim Cemetery. Lonely ranks of gravestones spread across several acres of carefully manicured lawns shaded by hundreds of trees. Ethan followed the lead car until it pulled into a secluded spot off Greenburg Road in the northwest corner of the cemetery.

  Ethan killed the engine and looked in his mirrors suspiciously.

  ‘What the hell is this shit, man?’ Mickey Ferranto whined. ‘I want to speak to my attorney.’

  Lopez shot him a toxic look.

  ‘See all these gravestones, Mickey? You wanna join them, you just keep talking.’

  Ethan climbed out of the SUV and closed the door. Lopez joined him. For a moment, nothing moved. Then two men climbed out of each vehicle, all sporting gray suits, designer shades and earpieces. They moved to guard the SUV, one of them gesturing to the still open doors of the sedan ahead.

  ‘Great disguise, guys,’ Ethan said as he moved toward the car. ‘We’d never have known.’

  The men ignored Ethan, instead standing rigidly to attention as he walked to the sedan and climbed into the rear seat. Lopez joined him from the other side.

  ‘Very cloak and dagger,’ Ethan said as they closed the doors. ‘Are we off to Tracy Island?’

  Douglas Jarvis, an elderly man dressed immaculately in a dark blue suit that contrasted with his neatly parted white hair, turned in the front seat and offered Ethan a grin.

  ‘I see you’re back to your usual self, Ethan.’ He looked at Lopez. ‘Nicola, how’s things?’

  ‘Could be busier,’ she replied cautiously. ‘What’s the occasion? And why not call us instead of damn near running us off the road?’

  ‘Security,’ Jarvis replied calmly. ‘Calls can be monitored, and we want our little accord with you two to remain discreet, remember? The Defense Intelligence Agency has uncovered an anomalous incident that occurred twenty-four hours ago in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The trail’s already gone cold and management aren’t keen to send agency resources in to investigate.’

  ‘Which is where we come in, right?’ Ethan said.

  Douglas Jarvis had once been the captain of a United States Marines rifle platoon, a post he had held when Ethan had served as a lieutenant in the Corps. Their friendship, cemented during the invasion of Iraq, had extended to Jarvis’s current employment with the Defense Intelligence Agency and to their unusual, discreet accord with Warner/Lopez Inc.

  ‘Command and control won’t throw money at this, and the Pentagon’s certainly not interested,’ Jarvis confirmed. ‘It’s the perfect case, well worth your time.’

  ‘What’s the story?’ Lopez asked, curious, despite herself.

  Jarvis produced a glossy black file and handed it to her.

  ‘Santa Fe Medical Examiner autopsied the remains of a desert bum by the name of Hiram Conley, found dead after a clash with state troopers. Ten hours after Hiram Conley died his remains were described as mummified. The examiner attempted to extract material from the body and found an intact bullet that fell from the victim’s shoulder, and another, older one lodged in his right femur. They got the older bullet to the state crime laboratory for tests.’

  ‘So what’s the big deal?’ Ethan asked.

  Jarvis gestured to the file that Lopez was holding.

  ‘The state laboratory ran tests on the bullet, which was found to be a musket ball, and we picked up jurisdiction of the case after they made inquiries to the FBI at Quantico. Carbon dating, along with estimates of bone regrowth around the ball prior to extraction, confirms that the wound was sustained approximately one hundred forty years ago.’

  Ethan stared at Jarvis.

  ‘That’s not possible. A hundred forty years?’

  ‘The tests must have been contaminated,’ Lopez said, opening the file. ‘If the wound had been opened to extract the bullet, anything could have gotten in.’

  ‘The bullet was lodged firmly in the bone,’ Jarvis said, ‘the medical examiner’s pictures show it clearly. And the tests were run three separate times, once by the state laboratory and twice by specialists on my own team at the DIA when we took over the case. All the tests confirmed the age of the wound.’

  Ethan forced himself to think clearly.

  ‘We should get in touch with the medical examiner first, find out everything we can about where the body was found. The troopers who shot him need to be questioned too.’

  ‘Already done,’ Jarvis said, ‘and all parties signed nondisclosure agreements. However, the medical examiner has vanished and we need her found. Fast.’

  ‘What happened?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘An attack on the facility at the morgue. The lab assistant got the musket ball out of the lab for tests, but by the time she’d returned the medical examiner had disappeared, as had all of the evidence. The gurney and the surrounding work surfaces had been completely cleaned-out, not even trace evidence remained.’

  ‘A professional job,’ Ethan murmured, his interest now piqued.

  ‘We have camera footage but it’s grainy, shot from a nearby building. Whoever did the job was smart enough to take out the medical facility’s own cameras before they went in. Four men: black jump suits, Halloween-style face masks. Somebody wanted that body real bad,’ Jarvis said. ‘The DIA has an interest, but there’s no way we can send a team down there without the Pentagon signing off on it, and with the budget the way it is they’ll shut us down before we can do any good.’

  Ethan nodded, glancing out of the sedan’s windows at the cemetery outside.

  ‘So what do you think this is? Some kind of freak ghost story?’

  Jarvis smiled thinly.

  ‘I’ll leave the detective work to you both, but for what it’s worth this guy Conley shot his way out of the Pecos wilderness wearing Civil War era Union battlefield dress and speaking in what was described by the troopers as an archaic dialect.’ Jarvis glanced at the file. ‘Whatever’s going on down there it’s in the intere
sts of the United States Government to understand it.’

  Ethan nodded and looked at Lopez.

  ‘You did say you wanted something decent to go after.’

  ‘New Mexico,’ Lopez murmured thoughtfully. ‘Closer to home, and there’s at least two bail-runners from Illinois thought to be holed up somewhere down there. Multi-tasking. We’ll do it.’

  Jarvis eyed her for a long moment.

  ‘Good, although I need to know that the DIA can count on you, Lopez, after what happened out at Cedar Lake.’

  Ethan glanced at his partner, waiting to see her response. They had agreed to keep her indiscretion on the South Shore between themselves, but clearly Jarvis’s reach went further than Ethan had realized. A lot further.

  ‘It was a one-off,’ Lopez said, refusing to be cowed. ‘Deal’s a deal; it went down, went wrong and then went away, okay?’

  Jarvis nodded, letting it go. The fact that Lopez, having taken a low-life drug dealer and bail-runner called Adam McKenzie into custody had then accepted a bribe for releasing him, hadn’t bothered Ethan as much as he’d thought it might. Lopez was supporting herself in Chicago as well as sending much of her meager salary back home to her family south of the border in Guanajuato. Her parents were, like so many people in Mexico, crippled by poverty and reliant upon Lopez’s generosity to sustain their home. Without it, they would join the legions of beggars groveling on the streets, and at their age they wouldn’t last long. Cash was cash and Lopez needed a lot. Ethan hadn’t realized just how badly until that day.

  She gave him an accusing sideways glance, but he ignored her and looked instead at Jarvis.

  ‘I’m almost afraid to ask, but what support will we have?’

  ‘Limited tactical and law enforcement,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Local police know that you’ve got jurisdiction in this case – I can help indirectly, but the DIA will retain deniability in all eventualities. The President won’t want investigations like these all over the media if word should get out, and the Pentagon would rather have the conspiracy theorists chasing after your agency than ours.’

  ‘Convenient,’ Lopez said as she closed the file. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Conley was involved in an argument with a man named Tyler Willis, who he then shot, starting the whole fracas. I’d start there if I were you.’ Jarvis handed Ethan a clear plastic bag which contained a yellowing slip of paper. ‘Hiram Conley’s social security details, found on him when he died. They check out, but they’re identical to those of an alias we think he was using previously, Abner Conley. We didn’t have access to records going back that far at the DIA, so you’ll have to chase them down in Santa Fe. Whoever this guy really was he used multiple identities, and there’s always a reason for that.’

  6

  COCHITÍ LAKE

  NEW MEXICO

  15 May

  The broad waters of the lake, surrounded by the soaring heights of the Jemez, Ortiz, Sandia and San Pedro mountain ranges, glittered beneath the sun.

  Jeb Oppenheimer sat upon the quarterdeck of a vessel that dwarfed the tiny cutters and fishing boats in the nearby quay, the pearlescent white hull of his yacht almost painful to look at in the bright sunlight.

  ‘Cigar.’

  His voice was gravelly from decades of smoking a dozen a day of Cuba’s finest, but as with everything else in life Jeb Oppenheimer didn’t give a shit. Likewise he didn’t care that the yacht upon which he sat was far too large for the lake or that there was no exit to the ocean, the lake itself being a mere aberration in the flow of the Santa Fe River. Jeb had bought the vessel and had it transported there so that he could enjoy the water without the cumbersome irritation of lakeside neighbors on the shore.

  A white-suited crewman walked out of the shade of the yacht’s interior with an expensive-looking silver box. He opened it for Oppenheimer, who foraged within with a wiry hand laced with purple veins. He waved the crewman away and opened the cigar, lighting it and inhaling the aromatic fumes deeply. As he sat enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke another of his crew appeared.

  ‘Donald Wolfe is here to see you, sir.’

  Oppenheimer polluted the air anew with a cloud of pungent smoke and waved impatiently. The servant bowed and turned, gesturing to a man waiting inside the yacht. The man walked out, his ink-black suit stark against the pure-white deck. Oppenheimer turned his head fractionally, acknowledging his guest with a barely perceptible nod and pointing to one of the chairs opposite.

  Donald Wolfe was a full colonel who had been attached to the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID. Wolfe sat down, regarding the old man from behind wrap-around sunglasses, the mirrored lenses reflecting the sky above.

  ‘Why do you wear those?’ Oppenheimer pointed at them. ‘You look like one of those teenage morons who waste their lives surfing and catching diseases from whores.’

  Donald Wolfe’s smile betrayed no warmth.

  ‘Better to be young and stupid than crumbling with senility.’

  Oppenheimer laughed, slapping one spindly leg beneath his white trousers. The effort provoked a sudden spasm of membrane-tearing coughs that caused Wolfe to wince. Oppenheimer brought what was left of his lungs under control, reached for a handkerchief on the table beside him and wiped a glob of mucus from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘If you weren’t so useful,’ Oppenheimer smiled, ‘I’d have you thrown overboard, you insolent pup.’

  ‘Why am I here?’ Wolfe asked.

  Oppenheimer folded his skeletal hands under his chin.

  ‘The situation has not proceeded as we had expected. We were not able to extract viable biological samples from the remains.’

  Wolfe leaned forward, plucking a grape from a nearby bowl. He popped it into his mouth before speaking. ‘That doesn’t surprise me, given the state they were in. We agreed that you needed to obtain a live specimen, not one with half its face blown off.’

  As Oppenheimer chuckled throatily he saw Wolfe brace himself for another hacking broadside of coughs that fortunately did not materialize.

  ‘It may not come as a surprise that they are reluctant to expose themselves, Donald, for fear of what people like us may do to them.’

  ‘So you say. But then of course you would, if this was all just a charade of ghost stories.’

  Jeb Oppenheimer’s wrinkled features hardened.

  ‘Two months ago you wrote me off as a madman chasing an illusion,’ he rattled, jabbing a gnarled finger in Wolfe’s direction. ‘Now you’re sitting on my yacht wondering what the hell happened in Santa Fe.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Wolfe nodded, ‘and what the hell exactly did happen in Santa Fe, Jeb? From what little I can gather, you’ve committed abduction and theft of state-controlled corpses.’

  Oppenheimer squinted out across the rippling waters of the lake.

  ‘Needs must, Donald,’ he said quietly. ‘SkinGen has invested over eighty million dollars into the search for and the control of the genes that govern human aging. Those genes, once isolated, will be worth over thirty billion dollars to SkinGen over the next ten years, and I don’t intend to see either that profit or the investments I have already made compromised by a militia of illiterate peasants.’

  The last word sent along a spray of spittle. Oppenheimer paused, reaching again for his handkerchief before regarding Wolfe seriously.

  ‘That material, wherever it can be found, is the future, Donald. Most companies are out there gene testing and spending millions, billions even, on research and development, completely oblivious to the fact that the genes controlling longevity have already naturally evolved. We worry now about our economic woes and climate change, about terrorism and Third World nuclear powers, but all of it is bullcrap. All that matters is who survives, how they survive and when the new world order begins.’

  Wolfe frowned behind his sunglasses.

  ‘There are rules, Jeb, political as well as legal. Buying up the patents for specific genes could see you up in
front of any number of courts. The United States Department of Health and Human Services will block you regardless of my influence if you try to define who gets what from any published research or medication.’

  ‘To hell with the goddamn rules!’ Oppenheimer roared, cracking one fist down on the table loudly enough to make Wolfe flinch. ‘This is about survival! How long do you think our world can continue to support six billion people? Seven billion people? Nine billion people? We’re at our limit now! Oil, gas and coal are running out – why do you think that petrochemical companies are having to drill in the bottom of seabeds? It’s because all the cheap stuff has been used, the wells are dry, gone up in smoke! Four fifths of the population live in poverty Donald, and they want to live like us. Well, they can’t, and they never will because the world cannot support it. The only solution is to reduce the population so that fewer people can live in greater material comfort. It’s as simple as that, and I intend to make it happen.’

  ‘If you can acquire the relevant strains,’ Wolfe said, ‘and if your wonder bacteria actually exist.’

  Oppenheimer’s leathery face creased into a smile, one ancient line embedded amongst hundreds more.

  ‘Oh, they exist all right. I’ve spent the past thirty years searching for them, and I’ve seen enough to know that they do.’

  ‘But I have not,’ Wolfe stated simply. ‘You’re asking me to subvert entire departments of military research and medical health in order to ensure your discovery can be marketed only to the elite, and yet you’ve provided me with not a single biological example of a human compatible immortalized cell with acceptable telomere length.’

  ‘Patience, Donald,’ Jeb murmured. ‘The wait will be worth it.’

  ‘The government have their hands on the lab results from Hiram Conley’s autopsy, and they’re bound to investigate. I’m supposed to be here waiting for a scientific breakthrough not a jail sentence. What we’re talking about goes far beyond gene manipulation.’

  ‘My influence will prevent any unnecessary complications.’