Immortal

by Dean Crawford

  Three hundred faces were fixed upon his, an absolute silence as every man and woman listened to the sound of his voice. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Wolfe realized why people fought their way to the top of the political sphere: for the power. The knowledge that what you were saying could change the lives of millions, perhaps even billions, was intoxicating. He took a breath before continuing.

  ‘Today, the population of our planet stands at approximately seven billion. Of those, just over one billion live in the developed Western world. We are the consumers, the guzzlers of gas. But daily we are being joined by millions more from the developing world, as emerging powerhouse economies like China, India and a resurgent Russia seek to emulate our success, our prowess, our prodigious consumption of energy and resources.’ Wolfe paused for a moment, before hitting them with a big one. ‘It has been estimated that by 2006, we were consuming resources forty percent faster than the earth could replace them. When those resources are gone, we will see the utter collapse of modern society into something approximating medieval Europe.’

  A ripple of whispers fluttered through the audience, and Wolfe capitalized on the energy among them as he continued.

  ‘It has been calculated by scientists that due to technologies improving such things as farming, humans are now ten thousand times more populous on our planet than nature would normally allow any predator to be. Your own United Nations Environment Program, involving fourteen hundred scientists over five years, concluded that human consumption now far outstrips available resources.’ Wolfe smiled, and gestured outside. ‘New York City consumes as much electricity in one day as the island of Crete consumes in one year.’

  Wolfe scanned his audience with eagle eyes, saw that they were waiting for his next revelation.

  ‘Our planet has what’s known as a carrying capacity: an ability to support a finite volume of flora and fauna. Since the middle of the last century, our bloated consumption of the most crucial substance to the survival of life – fresh water – has caused a chain reaction that now threatens to be the catalyst for the fall of mankind. Without sufficient water, agriculture, the very thing that has allowed our species to spread across the globe, is being undermined. A global decline in world agricultural capacity began in the 1990s and continues to this day, growing exponentially. Groundwater aquifers around the world are failing, producing a grain deficit. Despite all of our efforts and all of our charities, the number of people malnourished in the world has grown by one hundred million per decade, not because we haven’t exported grain to those countries who need it, but because their populations have swollen to such gargantuan proportions as to be unsustainable even with our agricultural technology.’

  Wolfe looked around at the various individual countries’ heads of state.

  ‘Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Mexico and Pakistan are all importing grain due to internal deficits or are on the verge of doing so. Northern China’s food production is forecast to decline by almost forty percent by the end of this century. Here in America, the Los Angeles basin, an area reckoned to be naturally able to support a maximum of one million people, is home to a mega-city of thirty million people, and our population is the only one in the developed world still growing, predicted to rise to four hundred thirty million by the year 2030. By that time, we may no longer have enough resources to export the grain that keeps so many other countries from starving, because we’ll barely have enough water to produce enough grain to feed ourselves.’

  Wolfe subtly changed his tone to a more hopeful oratory.

  ‘We have talked, endlessly, of reducing our carbon footprints, of recycling and carbon capture, of alternative energy sources and radical economic strategies to reduce our consumption of both the electrical energy and resources available to us on our planet. We have passed laws to drill into pristine environments in the pursuit of oil, gone as far as the Antarctic to assuage our thirst for energy, and yet all of this time we have ignored the fact that as fast as we seek solutions to our crises, they are made irrelevant by the increased demands of our growing population. It is estimated that global human population could exceed twelve billion people in the next fifty years.’ Wolfe paused. ‘Just think about that number for a moment. Twelve billion people, almost twice as many as are alive today.’

  Wolfe shook his head.

  ‘We are fighting a losing battle, when within our reach all along has been the solution to our problem. Population itself. It has been estimated by the United States National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition that world population needs to be reduced by two-thirds in order to achieve a sustainable use of natural resources.’ Wolfe let the weight of his words sink in. ‘If all nations were to follow this advice, resources would no longer be an issue for humanity, nor would pollution or the specter of anthropogenic climate change.’

  Wolfe looked about at the hundreds of faces watching him.

  ‘It is time to act before the escalation of resource wastage becomes irreversible and our security upon this planet unsupportable. If we are not willing to do it for ourselves then at least we should consider doing it for our children, for it is they who will shoulder the burden of our inaction. But it will not be conflict through inadequate resources that will bring about their downfall. There is a far greater disaster awaiting them if we do not act.’

  Silence reigned throughout the chamber as they listened.

  ‘Forty-five percent of humanity live in cities, often in conditions of squalor and disease. It is only a matter of time before a major pandemic, one that festers and flourishes in these hotbeds of sickness and is able to spread rapidly, begins the next major disaster in human history. We think of pandemics as explosions of some new and exotic disease that appear without warning, but in fact they fester for years, decades even, before becoming established. The HIV-1 virus entered the United States many times before taking hold in 1969, over a decade before it was identified. Modern flu viruses like HN-51 appear and disappear, struggling to take a permanent hold in human populations. Soon they too will emerge as true killers, and they will decimate the populations they infect.’

  Wolfe looked around the amphitheater at the people of power arrayed before him.

  ‘I have provided you with press packs that cover these facts in more detail. Pass them on,’ Wolfe said, ‘to your staff, to your ministers, to anyone with the will and the means to influence what we do next on the global stage to prevent the eradication of our species by disease. We have a choice, ladies and gentlemen: either we control population for ourselves, without unnecessary loss of life, or I predict that within the next five decades nature will control population for us, and millions, perhaps billions, will pay the price. Our sons and daughters will be among them.’

  Donald Wolfe reached into his pocket and produced a bottle of water that he had purchased a week before – one of several thousand he now stored in his home to guard against the coming apocalypse, and lifted it to show the entire audience before him.

  ‘Water. Something so simple that we take it for granted – we even bottle and sell it when we can so easily access it from our taps. Yet one billion people worldwide cannot perform this simple act, of accessing clean water. Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like you to raise your glasses and show your support for action against the destruction of our world, of our species, which has begun already in the draining of the world’s fresh water supply. We must act now, before it’s too late to act at all.’ Wolfe paused. ‘Is there anyone in the hall who is not willing to act?’

  Wolfe watched as every single man and woman sitting before him lifted their glasses.

  ‘To humanity,’ Wolfe toasted. ‘And our role in saving it.’

  64

  UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY

  NEW YORK CITY

  Doug Jarvis awoke as pain ripped across his skull. Bright light seared his eyeballs as a voice spoke in his ear.

  ‘Just lie still, sir, you’re going to be fine.’

  Jarvis struggled to focus aga
inst the pain, and saw a man leaning over him, smiling encouragingly.

  ‘Where am I?’ Jarvis rasped.

  ‘You’re going to be fine, just relax. You’ve had quite a bash.’

  Jarvis saw that he was in a small room, a first-aid box hanging from the wall nearby. A sudden flurry of memories bolted through his brain and he fought to sit upright. The sound of metal on metal clanked in his ears, and he realized that he was cuffed to a gurney.

  ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Please stay still, sir,’ the man beside him said.

  ‘Why the hell am I cuffed? Where’s Donald Wolfe? He’s trying to poison the General Assembly and—’

  ‘There’s no need to worry about that,’ said the doctor softly.

  Jarvis peered at him and saw the kindly smile on his face, the look of a man tending to a child.

  ‘Have you got my identification?’ Jarvis demanded.

  ‘You didn’t have any,’ the doctor said, dabbing gently with a crimson-stained cloth at Jarvis’s head. ‘You were found slumped in an elevator. You must have taken quite a fall. It’s a wonder how you got into the Conference Building at all.’

  Jarvis felt a sudden impending doom descend upon him as he looked up at the doctor.

  ‘Sir, I’ve been stripped of my identification by Colonel Donald Wolfe. The man is armed. He intends to infect the water within the General Assembly Hall with a strain of Spanish Flu that is highly lethal. You know what Spanish Flu is, I take it?’

  The doctor looked down at Jarvis.

  ‘Yes, I do. But I can assure you that there is no danger. Colonel Wolfe was the man who found you and called the medical team. He seemed quite concerned.’

  ‘He was the one who hit me!’ Jarvis shouted, pain barraging his weary brain with salvos of agony. ‘Get on the phone to the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant-General Abraham Mitchell. He’ll confirm who I am!’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ the doctor nodded patronizingly, and continued to dab at the head wound.

  Jarvis mustered every last ounce of his patience.

  ‘Doctor, if you don’t make that call and get me out of this goddamned gurney, a lot of people are going to die. Do you understand? If I’m lying, you’ll have wasted two minutes on a call. If I’m not, you’ll have wasted millions of lives. What’s it going to be? A hundred second phone call or a hundred million lives?’ He leveled the doctor with a steady gaze. ‘Your call.’

  LAKEWOOD

  New Mexico

  ‘All vehicles: suspects armed and considered dangerous, proceed with caution.’

  Lieutenant Zamora keyed off his microphone and glanced in his rear-view mirror at the line of four patrol cars following him in convoy down the I-285, their lights flashing.

  Alongside him sat Butch Cutler, while in the rear seat of his car, cuffed and silent, sat Saffron Oppenheimer.

  ‘I’m taking a hell of a goddamned risk bringing you out here,’ he said, keeping one eye on the road ahead. ‘You try to make a break for it, I’ll hand your case over to US Marshalls and have them hunt you down day and night.’

  ‘Story of my life,’ Saffron replied without concern. ‘How much further?’

  ‘We’re ten minutes away from the caverns.’

  ‘Stay north of the hills,’ Saffron said. ‘I’ve never seen those old men head south of them.’

  Lieutenant Zamora shook his head in confusion.

  ‘What the hell is it with those people? If they even exist, why the hell would they stay in the state at all? If SkinGen and people like Jeb Oppenheimer are hunting for them, surely they’d be better hidden in rural Wyoming or something?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Saffron replied. ‘Maybe they have people here in New Mexico who help them, keep them supplied with food and water and such like. Whatever the reason, it’s enough to keep them here. We wouldn’t have seen them in the deserts as much as we did if they were roaming the entire continent.’

  Cutler stared thoughtfully at the road ahead for a moment before speaking. ‘What makes you so sure that Nicola Lopez will betray Ethan Warner? Near as I could see, they’re pretty tight together.’

  ‘I know what I saw,’ Saffron insisted. ‘Lopez met with my grandfather and there’s only one reason that he would do that – to buy her off. Did you get the warrant to access her bank accounts?’

  Cutler looked at Zamora, who said nothing. Saffron smiled coldly.

  ‘So you did get them,’ she purred. ‘Incriminating, were they?’

  ‘Money is money,’ Zamora said. ‘There was an anomalous sum deposited in one of her accounts yesterday, yes, but we haven’t traced its source yet. It could be anything.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Saffron uttered, ‘course it could.’

  65

  UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY HALL

  NEW YORK CITY

  Donald Wolfe lifted his bottle of water, watching as the hundred-strong audience did the same. Just as the liquid touched his lips, the ceremonial entrance smashed open with a crack that echoed through the hall as hundreds of presidents, prime ministers and their staff turned away from their glasses at the noise.

  Doug Jarvis burst into the hall, shrieking at the top of his lungs. ‘Don’t drink the water!’

  Donald Wolfe stared wide-eyed at Jarvis, who staggered unsteadily into the chamber, his head wrapped in a bloodied bandage and two security guards flanking him.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ he uttered, the microphone amplifying his voice.

  Jarvis shouted as loud as he could in the hall.

  ‘The water is infected!’

  A rush of horrified gasps echoed through the hall as dignitaries put the glasses down as though they were filled with venom. Jarvis pointed up at Donald Wolfe.

  ‘He’s organized a pandemic, starting from this hall!’

  Wolfe stammered his response even as hundreds of heads turned to look at him.

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’

  ‘He’s armed!’ Jarvis shouted, and the two security guards flanking him placed their hands on their weapons. ‘We know everything,’ Jarvis said. ‘It’s time to come clean about New Mexico and Alaska, Donald.’

  Wolfe felt a tingling sensation creep uncomfortably down his spine as he felt the eyes of the entire amphitheater watching him.

  ‘What in the name of God are you talking about?’

  ‘The death of Tyler Willis,’ Jarvis replied with an impassive expression. ‘The abduction of Lillian Cruz. The men you have dispatched to New Mexico to assist Jeb Oppenheimer of SkinGen Corp in abducting men for biological experiments into longevity, and the murder of a scientist in Brevig Mission, Alaska.’

  Wolfe opened his mouth to reply but Jarvis cut across him, turning to look up at the surrounding world leaders.

  ‘Whatever you do, do not drink the water in your glasses. It’s infected with a strain of 1918 Spanish Flu, obtained by Donald Wolfe from a mass grave in Alaska and brought here to New York.’

  A rush of gasps crashed across the delegation.

  ‘That’s preposterous!’ Wolfe snapped in alarm. ‘Why on earth would I do something like that?’

  ‘In the next half-hour, more people could die,’ Jarvis shot back at him. ‘We have tracked your movements ever since you left SkinGen in Santa Fe two days ago, and the FBI are already at Fort Detrick and searching your office.’

  Wolfe flustered behind the dais, looking this way and that for an escape.

  ‘SkinGen is a private corporation! I have no connection with them and the FBI can’t just walk in and—’

  ‘Yes they can,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Jeb Oppenheimer is on the run, Donald. It’s over. Your little scheme to reduce the world’s population through disease is finished, and your partner in crime is wanted for the murder of Tyler Willis. This is your chance to ensure that more innocent people don’t die. Tell us exactly where your men are and what they’re doing, before this becomes a multiple homicide investigation.’

  Wolfe gaped at Jarvis and tried to force his brain
to feed words to his unwilling vocal cords. ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m in the middle of an address and you’re—’

  ‘The hell with your address,’ Jarvis shot back. ‘I’ve had men watching you for forty-eight hours. You dispatched over one hundred mercenaries into New Mexico yesterday under cover of a training mission to kill American citizens!’

  More gasps filled the auditorium as Wolfe felt dread plunge through him. His throat dried out as he struggled to speak.

  ‘This is preposterous!’ he shouted, and turned to the secretary-general. ‘I demand that this man be removed from the chamber!’

  The secretary-general glanced at Jarvis and then at Wolfe.

  ‘Denied. Explain yourself.’

  Wolfe was about to speak but Jarvis cut across him again.

  ‘You sent biological clean-up teams into Santa Fe to investigate claims that you made of infected blood or agents being spilled in precise locations within the city,’ he said. ‘We have this on record as your own agenda for sending the teams in the first place. However, we also know that only two people knew that there was infected blood in those locations, and both of them are involved in the murders. My problem, Mister Wolfe, is that unless you’d been informed by those individuals of the presence of infected blood, you could not have known that it was present at the scene.’

  A silence descended over the auditorium. Wolfe felt the weight of the world’s political machine bearing down upon him. Jarvis took another step closer to the dais.

  ‘In addition, you flew from Santa Fe to New York City yesterday, to attend a function last night and this United Nations meeting. However, your flight took some eight hours longer than it should have done. I have proof that you traveled to Brevig Mission in Alaska, and that since your arrival there a scientist working on the glacier has been found buried in the grave of a victim of Spanish Flu.’ A flurry of horrified whispers filled the hall as Jarvis went on. ‘Tissue samples from the infected corpse were found in the laboratories of SkinGen Corp just moments ago, sir. Can you explain how you came to acquire them while in Alaska, or how they ended up in the hands of Jeb Oppenheimer?’