Immortal

by Dean Crawford

  Saffron raised a questioning eyebrow as Ethan gestured out of the window.

  ‘You’re the heir to SkinGen Corp,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want any of it,’ she said. ‘The whole goddamned company can go to hell and—’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ Ethan cut across her. ‘You want to change things for the better? Selling the company off for nothing will achieve exactly that: nothing. Take the helm, organize something, even if it’s just distributing drugs to countries and people who can’t afford them. SkinGen is not a legacy to be avoided, it’s an opportunity. Use it.’

  Saffron leaned back against her pillows with a sigh and released his hand.

  ‘I wouldn’t know where to start,’ she said.

  ‘Anywhere will do,’ Ethan said. ‘Just start. Jeb Oppenheimer was a monster but much of what he believed made sense, especially to ordinary people. Find those things, act on them. Don’t leave SkinGen tainted with the memory of Jeb: reinvent it in the image of Saffron.’

  Saffron laughed briefly, but she saw Ethan’s expression and the laugh faded.

  ‘You think it’s worth it?’

  ‘It’s a no-brainer,’ Ethan replied.

  ‘Fine, I’ll do it,’ Saffron said. ‘Now get out of here, I’ve got a genuine injury to recover from.’

  Ethan grinned and walked to the door. He was about to open it when she called over to him.

  ‘I won’t be seeing you again, will I?’

  Ethan hesitated at the door.

  ‘If the DIA gets you out of this, you’ll be hidden away for quite a while.’

  ‘Maybe I’d have looked you up.’

  ‘Maybe you still should.’

  Saffron shook her head and smiled. ‘I don’t have a chance while your Mexican spitfire’s watching your back.’

  ‘Lopez?’ Ethan said. ‘We’re just partners and—’

  ‘Like hell,’ Saffron cut across him. ‘She likes you, I can tell it from a mile away. You just watch your step with her though.’

  Ethan sighed softly.

  ‘You mean because she sold out to Jeb Oppenheimer? You know she tossed the tracking device before we found the caves, right after she’d sent the DIA the IP address? She had a plan.’

  ‘She looks out for you alright, but she’s a firecracker, hard to handle.’

  Ethan wasn’t sure how to react. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Put it this way,’ Saffron said, ‘if you’re walking about with a grenade in your pocket, you step lightly because it could kill you just as sure as it could save your life. She’s a wild card, Ethan, nobody knows what she might do next.’

  Ethan opened the door, thoughts of Lopez clouding his mind.

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

  74

  The New Mexico sun blazed brightly in a flawless blue sky as Ethan stepped out of the hospital foyer, shielding his eyes. Across the street stood Nicola Lopez, leaning against the trunk of a Ford Taurus and jangling the keys in her hand. Ethan stepped across to her, the hot wind rippling his shirt and lifting one corner to reveal the thick dressings. He touched them self-consciously as he walked.

  ‘You’re not going to start showing that thing off to people, are you?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘Looks good, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘Another war wound to add to the collection.’

  Lopez smiled and shook her head.

  ‘People will just assume you’ve had your appendix out or something. Jesus, you were in hospital for two whole days. Anyone would think you got your head blown off.’

  Ethan, affronted, covered the wound back up.

  ‘C’mon, I suffered for this one. Doctor said a half-inch higher or lower and I’d have been in real trouble.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lopez agreed. ‘My point exactly.’

  Ethan shook his head in dismay.

  ‘Just because you can walk out of a gunfight looking like you’ve been modeling swimwear doesn’t mean everyone can,’ he mumbled.

  Lopez looked at him as a smile blossomed on her face.

  ‘You really think that?’

  Ethan sought to backtrack.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he admitted. ‘But don’t get used to compliments, I’m not paid to blow sunshine at you.’

  Lopez smiled again, but the moment passed. Ethan watched her for an instant, and then gestured to the car.

  ‘We need to talk.’

  Lopez climbed into the car with Ethan and drove out of the hospital grounds, heading toward the I-85. Ethan let the cool breeze funnel in through the open window onto his face as they drove.

  ‘What’s the news on Saffron?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘She’s recovering well,’ Ethan replied, ‘but she’ll be going to trial in Santa Fe as soon as she’s well enough to stand.’

  ‘Doug’s working on it,’ Lopez said. ‘They’ve been going insane trying to figure out who the eighth person is, but I don’t think it’s getting them anywhere. I’m surprised they haven’t tried blackmailing us yet.’

  ‘With what?’ Ethan smiled smugly, settling back into his seat. ‘They can hardly fire us as we don’t work for them directly. Either they work it out for themselves or they uphold their end of the deal.’

  ‘Do you know who it is?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘I’m working on it.’

  ‘Are you tryin’ to tease me?’

  ‘Are you enjoying it?’

  ‘You’re an asshole, Warner.’

  ‘I’m not the one who sold out,’ Ethan replied.

  Lopez kept her eyes on the road ahead for a long moment before she replied. ‘I took an educated gamble,’ she said finally. ‘It made sense at the time, okay? Everybody came out the other side of it.’

  ‘By the skin of our goddamned teeth, Nicola!’ Ethan shot back, dragging a hand across his face. ‘Jesus, we’re going up against some pretty unsavory people here and I don’t know if I can trust you from one day to the next.’

  ‘You can trust me,’ Lopez said instantly, locking her dark eyes onto his.

  ‘How can I when I don’t know what you’re doing behind my back?’ Ethan replied. ‘That little scheme of yours could have cost us all our lives, and for what? A quarter million bucks? Is that what I’m worth to you?’

  ‘That’s not how it went down!’ Lopez protested. ‘I didn’t do anything behind your back. Jesus, we’re not married, you know.’

  ‘Yes we are,’ Ethan insisted, ‘ever since we went into business together.’

  ‘Hey, I’m not just the dutiful wife in this arrangement, cowboy,’ she shot back, the wind rippling her hair in a dark halo. ‘I’m not just a passenger here, your damsel in distress, okay? I can make my own calls, and I’ll goddamned follow my own leads with or without you.’

  Ethan chuckled bitterly and shook his head.

  ‘You didn’t do this for your equality,’ he muttered. ‘You did it to make hard cash, and you risked my life along with everybody else’s to pull it off. Where will it stop, Nicola? Breaking into jeeps is one thing: this is something else entirely. What will you do next?’

  ‘There is no next,’ Lopez said, more reasonably. ‘I did what I set out to do, and now it’s over.’

  ‘Is it?’ Ethan asked. ‘I thought it was over when Doug Jarvis pulled us over two days ago. You said it was.’

  Lopez stared ahead as she drove, and sighed heavily.

  ‘It’s over,’ she repeated, and then looked at him. ‘I won’t let you down, okay? Let’s just drop it for now.’

  Ethan turned away from her to look out across the blistering deserts passing by.

  75

  SANTA FE POLICE DEPARTMENT

  CAMINO ENTRADA

  Claire Montgomery sat in the police department’s interview room with Lieutenant Enrico Zamora facing her across a desk. Two Styrofoam cups sat between them and the unblinking black eye of a closed-circuit camera watched them from one corner of the room.

  ‘He made you do that?’ Zamora asked. ‘Every day?’

  ‘Most days,’ Cla
ire replied. ‘Jeb Oppenheimer liked his assistants to provide him with all and any services. He called them our “targets”. Trouble for him, and fortunate for us, was that most days the old bastard couldn’t get it up.’

  Zamora stifled a grin, nodding as he looked down at his notes.

  ‘Okay, so you’re sure that Tyler Willis was being held within the SkinGen building when he died.’

  ‘Definitely.’ Claire nodded. ‘I heard him on the intercom shouting something, but I had no idea what was happening down there in that theater. Christ, it just doesn’t cross your mind that someone could be so evil. I mean, maybe Nazis or something, but not your boss.’

  Zamora nodded.

  ‘Okay, well that’s all we really needed to know, Miss Montgomery. We were pretty sure that Tyler Willis died at the hands of Jeb Oppenheimer, and the only other witness we have other than Lillian Cruz was one of Oppenheimer’s bodyguards, who died out in New Mexico last week and . . .’ Zamora paused as he noticed Claire’s confused expression. ‘What?’

  ‘You said Tyler Willis died at the hands of Jeb Oppenheimer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ Claire said. ‘He was alive when Oppenheimer left the building. Willis died hours later.’

  Zamora was about to reply when an urgent knock sounded at the door of the interview room, and a sergeant stepped quickly in with a sheet of paper in his hand.

  ‘Results of the autopsy on Tyler Willis,’ he said to Zamora. ‘You need to see this.’

  Zamora took the piece of paper and scanned it, his eyes widening with each line. He stood up out of his chair.

  ‘You’re sure? Absolutely sure?’

  The sergeant nodded.

  ‘And that’s not all,’ he said. ‘There’s been another abduction.’

  76

  SANTA FE

  4.38 p.m.

  Ethan sat on the edge of his bed in the hotel room and stared at the face of his cell phone, the Illinois number waiting there to be dialed taunting him in silence. The absurdity of his own reluctance, nervousness even, to just call the damned number wasn’t lost on him. But through Ethan’s moral compass he owed Saffron a promise, and despite himself he jabbed the dial button and listened to the phone ringing in his ear. To his surprise, it picked up on the second tone.

  ‘Ethan.’

  There was no detectable tone in the voice to suggest surprise, concern or awareness that his father hadn’t received a call from him for two years. Ethan found himself suddenly unable to think of anything to say.

  ‘Hi, Dad, how’s things?’

  Lame. The towering rock that was Henry Warner would probably laugh in his face and cut the line off with a shake of his craggy head and . . .

  ‘Not so bad, son. Haven’t heard from you for a while, thought you’d forgotten what goddamned phones were for.’

  ‘I’ve been busy,’ Ethan replied, strangely feeling a little bit more relaxed. ‘I’ve started a new business.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘I work for the government, investigations and such like. It’s going good.’

  ‘Where are you right now?’

  ‘Santa Fe.’

  ‘Good for you. To what do I owe the honor of this unexpected communiqué?’

  Ethan took a breath.

  ‘I just thought I should call. We haven’t spoken in a long time and I didn’t want to leave it any longer.’

  ‘You didn’t have to leave it at all, Ethan. Your mother’s found this all very difficult, you know.’

  ‘So have I.’

  A long silence enveloped the line as Ethan struggled to find something useful to say. Nothing came. He considered hanging up, but his hand refused to obey. Henry Warner’s voice suddenly sounded down the line, startling him.

  ‘I take it you’ve gotten over what happened in Palestine, Ethan, Joanna’s disappearance and your . . . difficulties afterward.’

  ‘Diplomatic as always, Dad,’ Ethan responded.

  ‘No sense in treading on eggshells,’ his father replied. ‘Ever since you resigned your commission your life hasn’t followed a steady track.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as a steady goddamned track, Dad. Life doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘Your mother and I have done okay by living how I—’

  ‘Mom just does as she’s told because it’s easier than having to negotiate with you!’ Ethan shot back, unable to contain himself any further. ‘People are not machines, Dad! Families are not the Marine Corps, and home is not a barracks! When are you going to learn that?’

  A long silence filled the line. Ethan realized that he was now holding his breath.

  ‘The Corps did you proud, son, you should remember that. There was a time when you were afraid to climb up that tiny tree in our garden, let alone go to war for your country.’

  ‘People change as they grow up,’ Ethan said through gritted teeth. ‘You should try it someday. Is mom there?’

  ‘She’s out visiting,’ came the response, then a long pause. ‘Has there been any word, about Joanna?’

  Images of his long-vanished fiancée flickered through Ethan’s mind. It had been so long now since she had disappeared from Gaza City that he had begun to associate her memory with the four years he had spent searching for her, instead of the good times they had shared. Now, he tried not to think about her at all.

  ‘Nothing,’ Ethan said in a whisper. ‘Four years now. Whatever happened to Joanna, I don’t think she’ll be coming back.’

  ‘Then perhaps you can finally move on.’

  ‘Sure,’ Ethan muttered. ‘Sounds easy if you say it quickly enough.’

  He heard a heavy sigh in response, as though his father was already tiring of the conversation.

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that, Ethan, and you know it. Why don’t you come by when you’re back in the state, come and visit? Natalie’s here too, on sabbatical.’

  Ethan was surprised to become aware of the broad smile breaking across his face. He hadn’t seen his sister in two years. Last he’d heard, she was studying politics at college. He took a breath.

  ‘Sure. I’ll hopefully have some time off when we get back to Illinois.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘My partner and I,’ Ethan replied. ‘That is, my business partner and I, at least for the moment.’

  ‘Well, you’re welcome to bring her too. Just make sure you bring yourself, okay? It’s been too long, son, you know that, don’t you?’

  Ethan avoided answering the question directly.

  ‘Sounds great, Dad, I’ll be there within a few days.’

  ‘Good. We’ll all be glad to see you, Ethan, after all that’s happened and despite our . . . differences. If there’s one thing that’s more important than anything else it’s family.’

  Ethan smiled again, and was about to reply when a sudden realization slammed into his field of awareness like a bullet through glass. Ethan’s smile vanished as he stared blankly into nowhere and his jaw fell open as he heard his father’s words echoing around in his mind. If there’s one thing that’s more important than anything else it’s family.

  ‘Ethan?’

  ‘Dad, I’ve got to go, something just turned up.’

  Ethan leapt up from the bed and dashed from the room, sprinting down the corridor outside and down a stairwell three at a time. He burst into the hotel foyer, where Lopez was casually leafing through a magazine.

  ‘They’ve got away!’ Ethan shouted.

  Lopez dropped the magazine, leapt to her feet and stared at him.

  ‘Who’s got away?’

  ‘I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid,’ Ethan said, holding his head in his hands.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘Get the car,’ Ethan said. ‘We’ve got to go, right now.’

  MEDICAL INVESTIGATOR

  FACILITY, ALBUQUERQUE

  Ethan opened the car door and stepped out even before Lopez had fully braked to a stop, the outside of the f
acility swarming with police cars. Ethan hurried to the police cordon and asked for Lieutenant Zamora, who emerged from the facility a minute or two later and waved Ethan and Lopez forward.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Zamora said.

  Ethan looked at him.

  ‘There’s been another abduction, right?’

  Lieutenant Zamora nodded, running a hand through his hair.

  ‘We put a guard on the house just in case and extra security here, but it’s like they just vanished into thin air. I can’t understand how it happened.’

  Ethan closed his eyes. ‘I can.’

  Lopez grabbed Ethan’s shoulder and squeezed it hard.

  ‘Will you tell me what the hell is going on?!’

  77

  HOTEL DE BILDERBERG OOSTERBEEK, HOLLAND

  8.12 a.m. (European Time)

  Gregory Hampton III sat in the plush surroundings of his penthouse suite and looked out of the window at the sumptuous grounds of Veluwe Park. A fine early morning mist had enveloped the park, street lights glowing like candle flames amongst the trees, and at this early hour there were no pedestrians. He stood and walked to the door of the suite, opening it at 8.10 am (European Time) and moving into the corridor outside.

  Hampton was not a man who was used to being recognized, but he saw clear recognition in the smartly dressed person striding confidently toward him, precisely on time.

  Gregory Hampton had been born in Hampshire, England, in 1936, just before the world collapsed into the chaos and destruction of World War Two. Sent away from his family to live in the West Country away from the Blitzkrieg blasting England’s major cities, he returned home an orphan and determined that he would never be subject to the whims of others again. Within fifteen years he was a millionaire magnate presiding over a booming property portfolio in London, profiting from a rebuilding frenzy in the aftermath of the war’s destruction. Twenty years later, he was a billionaire. Another decade after that, he stopped even trying to count his fortune. He owned islands in the Pacific, a significant proportion of Dubai and Manhattan and several cruise liners, but prided himself on the fact that nobody would have known him if they passed him on the street.