Immortal

by Dean Crawford

  ‘You’ll need these,’ Moore said.

  ‘Really?’ Wolfe uttered sarcastically, walking across to the suit as he pulled off his jacket. ‘My department’s hired some real geniuses out here in you guys.’

  Jason Moore did not reply. Wolfe pulled on the cumbersome suit, gloves and boots before donning the helmet. Moore then turned to Wolfe and sealed his neck lining before Wolfe did the same for him. As soon as they were both satisfied that their suits were impermeable, Moore spoke through a filter attached to the helmet’s perspex view-shield.

  ‘Walk through the site and don’t touch anything. The decontamination cubicle is at the far end of the tent. Just stand there and let the showers do their work.’

  Wolfe did not acknowledge him, turning instead and pushing through the plastic partition. In front of him was a solid transparent shield door that opened onto a small cubicle. Wolfe slid the door open and stepped inside as Moore followed him and shut the door behind them. They waited, and a moment later a simple vacuum-motor sucked air in from outside and then sealed the outer door shut. A rudimentary low-pressure system was maintained within the interior of the study cubicle to contain contamination, much like the more sophisticated laboratories at USAMRIID.

  And if the world had any idea of what was inside, Wolfe reflected, they would have been relieved.

  Moore opened the inner door, and Wolfe stepped inside and looked around.

  They were standing in a cubicle of two-inch thick perspex ten feet wide, twenty feet long and eight feet high, constructed from simple panels with the joins sealed with thick layers of duct tape. Even the floor was perspex, the tundra crushed flat beneath the weight of the cubicle resting upon it. In the center of the floor an eight foot by two foot panel was missing, exposing an excavation into the permafrost. On one side of the opening was a row of steel tubs filled with recently removed mud and ice. On the other side, a large object partially concealed beneath plastic sheets. Wolfe walked across and looked down into the cavity.

  He recognized it instantly as a grave, dug some five feet deep into the ice-encrusted earth. Beside the cavity, lying under a thin plastic sheet nailed into the frozen soil, was an exhumed corpse. The face of a woman stared up at him, her long black hair matted and dirty, her eye sockets sunken and shriveled and her skin leathery. Her jaw hung slackly to expose yellowed teeth.

  ‘How old is the corpse?’ Wolfe asked as Moore came to stand alongside him.

  ‘She’s confirmed as having died in the year 1918,’ Moore said. ‘Tissue samples were tested earlier this week, and we even know the person’s name. She still has relatives living at Brevig Mission.’

  Wolfe nodded.

  ‘And the tissue samples?’ he asked. ‘Were they viable?’

  Jason Moore nodded.

  ‘Perfectly so,’ he replied. ‘They’ve been preserved by the permafrost conditions, and I’ve already tested a small culture of them. They’re alive and they’ll be perfect for study by your laboratory, sir. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for hiring me. The virus, if it ever got out again, could kill millions, perhaps billions. I’m real proud to be a part of preventing that, sir.’

  Wolfe did not hear Moore as he stared down at the corpse below them.

  ‘Where are the samples?’ Wolfe asked.

  ‘Over there,’ Moore said, pointing to a large metal case sealed with warning tapes and a pair of heavy padlocks. ‘It’s lung tissue from the deceased’s body. The casing will maintain the temperature of the tissue for at least forty-eight hours.’

  Wolfe nodded and looked around at the tents.

  ‘And you’ve ensured that this operation has remained discreet?’ Wolfe asked. ‘There’s no chance that anybody could have come here and been infected, or seen this exhumation?’

  Moore proudly shook his head.

  ‘No, sir, not a chance. I set up the tents and the cubicles myself, as agreed, to ensure absolute safety. This won’t get out until your team have completed their studies and developed the vaccine.’ Moore smiled. ‘Then we can tell everyone.’

  Wolfe nodded, and then turned to face him.

  ‘Not quite everyone, Jason.’

  Wolfe’s hands had warmed enough for him to reach into his jacket and produce the small pistol nestling in his pocket. He saw Jason Moore’s face register neither fear nor surprise but confusion. Wolfe fired twice, the blasts deafening in the confines of the tent. Jason Moore screamed briefly before losing consciousness as the rounds impacted his chest. His arms flailed wildly as his legs crumpled beneath him and he crashed down onto the hard earth at Wolfe’s feet.

  Wolfe slipped the pistol back into his pocket before shifting his position slightly and shoving Moore’s body with his boot so it rolled over the edge of the grave to thump down at the bottom. Wolfe turned, and tipped over two of the metal bins, spilling soil down into the grave to cover Moore’s corpse. He clambered down into the cavity and jumped up and down on the soil, felt it give beneath his boots and heard the muffled cracking of breaking bones.

  He climbed out of the grave and walked over to the corpse beneath the plastic, pulling the pins from the frozen earth and then with his boot shoving the infected remains back into the grave on top of Moore’s inert corpse. He then reached into his other pocket and retrieved a satellite phone, dialing a number from memory. A rattling voice answered.

  ‘What news, Donald?’

  ‘I’ve acquired the samples,’ Wolfe replied. ‘You’ll have them within twenty-four hours. Rest assured, there will be nobody willing to investigate this site after what’s been buried here in the past.’

  ‘Are you sure, Donald?’ Jeb Oppenheimer rasped. ‘Nobody knows?’

  ‘Nobody,’ Wolfe replied. ‘My associate here maintained absolute discretion, something he’ll be continuing to do for eons to come. What have you gotten from the remains of the man killed in Glorietta Pass?’

  ‘There is much promising research within, but there is also a problem.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘We’ve been maintaining a watching brief on the Los Alamos Laboratories and the Aspen Center in New Mexico. Apparently, there was an explosion at the center earlier today.’

  Wolfe stared into the middle distance. ‘What kind of explosion?’

  ‘Activists, according to local police sources. Somebody broke in, started shooting at people and then blew up the mainframes within the laboratories. There were no serious injuries and the police investigation is ongoing, but that’s not the main problem.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Wolfe moaned. ‘It’s something to do with Saffron.’

  ‘It’s who the local police are working with on the case,’ Oppenheimer said. ‘Two investigators who are not state police were seen nosing around the scene, apparently working alongside the police.’

  ‘Do we know who they are exactly?’

  ‘No names yet,’ Oppenheimer admitted, ‘but they’re backed by someone powerful enough for them to be assisted by state troopers. My guess is FBI, at the least.’

  Wolfe cursed silently to himself.

  ‘This is exactly what we needed to avoid,’ he hissed. ‘If you can’t keep things under control out there then this whole thing will be for nothing.’

  ‘Calm yourself, Donald. All you need to do is use your military connections to find out who they are and apply pressure where it’s needed.’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ Wolfe muttered, and then smiled grimly. ‘Of course, it’ll cost more.’

  A throaty chuckle cackled down the line.

  ‘Worry not, Donald, you’ll be compensated for your inconvenience. Once you have identified the investigators, I expect them to be eliminated. We wouldn’t want your little detour up there to become common knowledge now would we? Who knows who might investigate what you’ve been up to?’

  Wolfe was about to retort when Oppenheimer hung up. He looked down at the frozen grave at his feet for a moment, then turned and grabbed the edge of another of the mud-filled bins. M
oments later, the infected corpse had vanished beneath the soil and ice.

  15

  BUREAU OF VITAL RECORDS

  SANTA FE

  15 May, 12.43 p.m.

  ‘This way, Mister Warner.’

  Ethan followed a middle-aged, primly dressed clerk from the reception desk through a large door that led to the record hall. Towering ranks of shelves held carefully filed boxes dating back decades, perhaps even centuries. It had taken a call from Doug Jarvis to get Ethan immediate access to the records, much to the chagrin of the clerk. Most public requests for records could take weeks to disseminate, time that Ethan could ill afford to waste.

  The building itself was a large modern construction, allied to the births and deaths office further down South St Francis Drive.

  ‘The census runs back to the 1790s,’ the clerk informed him, slightly less frosty now. ‘Birth and death certificates are much less complete however, owing to the turbulent and transient nature of our citizens over the earliest centuries of arrival here.’

  Ethan looked up at the shelves and cabinets as they walked through the silent hall.

  ‘I’ve got a birth certificate here, which corresponds to a man by the name of Conley, but we’re trying to trace the line further back.’

  ‘Births are over there,’ the clerk pointed, to where two rows of cabinets stretched wall to wall. ‘They’re alphabetically arranged.’

  Ethan thanked the clerk, and was about to walk across to the shelves when his cell phone rang in his pocket, echoing loudly across the hall. Ethan grabbed it, setting it to ‘silent’ before answering.

  ‘Warner.’

  ‘It’s Zamora,’ came the reply, his accent heavy over the line. ‘Picked up something interesting for you regarding the attack on the center in Los Alamos.’

  ‘Go for your life.’

  ‘The woman who led the attack, who you chased in the laboratory – Saffron? Turns out that she’s the granddaughter of none other than Jeb Oppenheimer. You ever heard of him?’

  ‘Should I?’ Ethan asked as he walked slowly between the towering shelves.

  ‘He’s the sole owner and operator of SkinGen, a global pharmaceutical company that’s headquartered in Santa Fe. It’s one of New Mexico’s biggest employers, and this Oppenheimer fella has his fingers into every government pie going, from local right up to the White House some say.’

  Ethan stopped walking.

  ‘What’s Saffron Oppenheimer’s angle on all of that?’

  ‘She’s his only living relative and heir to the SkinGen empire, but she wants none of it. Her parents died in a tragic automobile accident over a decade ago, as did Jeb’s wife. She’s alienated from him, refuses to have any part in the company and has actively denounced all vivisection operations states wide. In short, they’re sworn enemies.’

  Ethan blinked. He’d heard of SkinGen, if not its owner, and he knew that it was worth billions of dollars. Saffron Oppenheimer’s motivation, or confusion, must be almost superhuman.

  ‘Thanks, Enrico, I’ll get back to you as soon as we learn anything more.’

  Ethan rang off and grabbed a nearby rolling stepladder, pulling it along behind him until he found a section of shelves marked CO. He stood on the step, reaching up and tracing the letters on the shelf edges until he reached CONL. He found a single box, thick with dust and sagging slightly at the edges, beneath another marked CONN. Ethan levered the box carefully out, carried it to a study table and sat down. He opened the box and began sifting through the reams of papers that became increasingly faded and yellowed the deeper he delved.

  The truth was he wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for, but beside him on the table was the document given him by Doug Jarvis back in Chicago. The birth certificate for Hiram Conley, born Las Cruces in New Mexico, 1940. Judging by the documents Ethan was pulling from the box, the layout and style of the certificate indeed most closely matched those dated around 1940. The birth details could still have been forged, but what interested Ethan was that, forged or not, it looked every bit as old as it claimed to be.

  ‘So far, so normal,’ Ethan murmured to himself, turning his attention to the second name Jarvis had given him, Abner Conley.

  According to the paperwork, Hiram had sometimes used the name Abner, with occasional receipts signed as evidence. Ethan couldn’t be sure if that meant that Hiram was deliberately using another name or was perhaps suffering from some kind of age-related amnesia or confusion.

  A document appeared as he flicked through a dense wad of papers, the name at the top corner catching his eye. Abner Conley. Ethan gently pulled the aged sheaf of paper from the pile and felt a twinge of intrigue as he read: Abner Conley, born Las Cruces, New Mexico: March 9th, 1880.

  He stared at the document for a moment longer, and then began shuffling through the ever older and more fragile scraps of paper, some of them so worn that he feared they would crumble beneath his fingertips. Reaching out, he took a pair of fine rubber gloves from a box on the edge of the study table and slipped them on before continuing, until another document, this one ragged at the edges and soft to the touch, caught his eye.

  Hiram Conley, born Las Cruces, New Mexico: March 9th, 1807.

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ he murmured, and set the documents alongside each other.

  It was not unusual for sons to be named after their father, and in fact in states like New Mexico it was commonplace. What was more unusual was that none of the names gave any clue that they were inherited. Hiram Conley III or similar would have been more credible. Not to mention the fact that all three of the supposed births occurred on the same date in the records, March 9th, something that Hiram may have done to ease recall when required.

  Ethan looked up at the shelves around him, and then down toward the front of the hall where a computer terminal and copier occupied a sturdy table. Ethan made copies of all of the documents before carefully replacing them in the box and putting it back on the shelves. Then, he sat down behind the computer terminal. The server was dedicated to the county clerk’s office, and contained digitized images of all records and photographs going back hundreds of years.

  Ethan began typing search commands into the computer, scanning through dozens of records, newspaper stories and photographs relating to the name Hiram Conley. Lists flashed up one by one, older and more vague as he searched.

  ‘Come on, damn it,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Just one, that’s all I need.’

  After an hour, he had gone back to the 1880s, finding numerous mentions of both Hiram and Abner Conley, but no images. Given the scarcity of cameras at the time he considered that only to be expected. Those that did exist used albumen print photography that produced images from large glass negatives. Fatigue began to pull at his eyes, and his arm ached as he scrolled dutifully down through endless slides and plates, yellowing images of old frontier towns, families in archaic clothes and tall hats standing in front of colonial-style houses. Paintings of notable figures from history such as Abraham Lincoln, or brave women who had served alongside their husbands, fathers or brothers in the Union army during the Civil War popped out at him and were passed by as he diligently continued his search. An ancient newspaper scrap, torn along the bottom edge but photographed for posterity, caught his eye. A group of seven men in Union uniforms stood shoulder to shoulder beside some kind of old wagon, a tall officer in their midst staring down at the camera with cold, hard eyes above a broad moustache.

  Ethan froze, staring at the image.

  There, third from left, stood a man with a beard and a huge musket, the butt standing on the floor at his feet and the bayonet resting against his shoulder. The face leapt out at Ethan, and he fumbled in his pocket and produced a photograph of Hiram Conley, taken just days before by Enrico Zamora in Glorietta Pass. He held the image up to the screen.

  ‘Goddamn.’

  Hiram Conley stared out from the screen at Ethan, a serious expression on his features and a clay-burner pipe jutting from his mouth. Etha
n looked at the title of the photograph.

  SURVIVORS OF THE BATTLE OF

  GLORIETTA PASS, NEW MEXICO

  March 1862

  Ethan took one more look at the photograph handed him by Doug Jarvis, and then printed out the photograph from the computer terminal and carefully folded all the documents into his pocket, still unable to come to terms with what the evidence was telling him.

  With a brief thank you to the clerk, Ethan hurried out of the hall.

  16

  SKINGEN CORP

  SANTA FE

  ‘I can assure you, Mister Oppenheimer, that your investment in my company will represent a guaranteed return of between twelve and fifteen percent in real terms over the next five years.’

  Jeb Oppenheimer sat behind a broad glass desk, uncluttered except for a speaker phone and an unobtrusive plasma screen connected to a mini hard-drive and keyboard. The office was carpeted with deep white pile, the walls painted ice white with massive windows looking out over the Petroglyph and the state park beyond.

  ‘Fifteen percent?’ Oppenheimer murmured as he caressed the top of his walking cane, the finely polished chrome handle gleaming in the sunlight.

  ‘Guaranteed.’

  The earnest young man sitting opposite Oppenheimer was one of a dozen or so potential investment partners who variously groveled, promised or lied their way into his office each week for the chance to buy into the SkinGen fortune. Oppenheimer only allowed them this far as a means to relieve the boredom of signing endless legal documents and firing employees who had failed their targets for the month. Oppenheimer liked targets: they provided leverage, especially when they were kept mostly out of reach of his legions of staff striving desperately to achieve them and their promised bonuses.

  ‘Twenty percent then, if we can achieve it,’ the young man said.