The Fusion Cage (Warner & Lopez Book 2)

by Dean Crawford

  ‘There a way out back?’ Ethan asked Lopez, cursing himself for not checking already.

  ‘Nothing,’ Lopez called back from the bathroom. ‘No way out!’

  Ethan pulled Amber out of the way of the door as he heard heavy footsteps mount the sidewalk outside.

  ‘Get behind me,’ he ordered her. ‘How long did you have that cell turned on for?’

  Amber sulked and said nothing.

  ‘How long, Amber?’

  ‘I texted her, a couple hours ago,’ Amber mumbled.

  ‘Jesus,’ Ethan uttered as he rubbed his temples. ‘This is why I don’t have kids.’

  A long silence ensued as Lopez returned and stood alongside Ethan. Images of flash–bangs being tossed through the windows or a shotgun being used to blast open the door flashed through his mind. The silence drew out along with Ethan’s thumping heart beats, and then there was a soft knock at the door.

  Ethan hesitated for a moment, glanced at Lopez, and then reached out and opened the door.

  ***

  XXXIII

  Ethan sat in silence between Lopez and Amber, all three of them staring back at a pair of men in smart uniforms, clearly trained bodyguards of some kind, who sat facing them in the rear of the people carrier. The men remained impassive, making no attempt at conversation and hiding behind their sunglasses as the vehicle whispered along the highway.

  Ethan had opened the door to the grubby motel room at the knock, and had been surprised to see the two men standing there, supported by a further two behind them. He had been able to tell from the cut of their suits that they were carrying, most likely pistols in shoulder holsters and perhaps assorted close–combat weapons in other, discreet sleeve pouches and such like.

  Outnumbered and unarmed after ditching the M16 Ethan had taken from the soldiers near Nathalie , he and Lopez had known right away that there was little point in putting up a fight. If they defeated the first two men, the two behind them would be on hand to cut them both down with a single shot each, and the interior of the motel room offered no escape or cover. In the end the decision had been easy: Stanley Meyer had sold out, and so to an extent the visit by the armed men could simply be the end of the road or the promise of an escape.

  Nothing to lose, Lopez had said, and maybe everything to gain.

  Somehow, Ethan felt a certain degree of relief as he glanced out of the window and saw the city of Richmond passing by in the distance, tower blocks of metal and glass glinting in the dawn sunlight. There was also a hint of excitement that he was struggling to keep at bay from clouding his judgement. Meyer had sold out, and now it was possible that Majestic Twelve may be willing to buy his and Lopez’s silence too.

  Warner & Lopez Inc had no direct affiliation or loyalty to the Defense Intelligence Agency, and selling out did not mean that they would lose the business the agency provided. Hell, if any payout was generous enough they wouldn’t need the damned business at all. Ten million bucks was a hell of a retirement fund, and would last Ethan the rest of his days and far beyond as long as he was careful and …

  ‘Stop thinking about it.’

  Ethan glanced at Lopez, who was watching him with her dark eyes.

  ‘Kinda hard, don’t you think?’ he replied.

  ‘Stop thinking about what?’ Amber asked.

  ‘The trouble we’ll be in at the DIA,’ Ethan lied smoothly. ‘We’ve failed, in effect, and this is the first time. We didn’t keep Stanley safe and we didn’t recover all of the material surrounding his fusion cage. Presumably that is now in the hands of Huck Seavers, or whoever he’s been answering to.’

  ‘You did what you could,’ Amber replied. ‘I don’t see how dad selling out will cause you any problems. It’s the last thing that I expected him to do.’

  Ethan nodded as he reflected on Stanley Meyer’s stoic refusal to sell his device to anybody, to even consider doing so. Stanley’s goal was a lofty one, to simply give away his device to the world for free and bask in the glow of an act of altruism that would be remembered for generations, perhaps forever. Ethan could see how the threats of violence against so many people and the death of Red McKenzie might have swayed him from his true purpose in life, but it seemed odd to Ethan that Stanley, prepared for the worst that the oil companies could throw at him, would have folded so completely and suddenly.

  ‘I don’t think anybody who knows Stanley expected him to do this,’ Lopez agreed. ‘Can’t say I’m disappointed though.’

  ‘I am,’ Amber scowled, her arms folded across her chest. ‘He could have been so much more than this, was so much more than this. People like Huck Seavers don’t give a damn about the people, they’re too interested in the size of their bank balance. I hope that my father has sold out to them and then uses the money to build ten thousand fusion cages and distributes them around the world. That would teach those damned corporate fat cats a lesson about money and their greed and … ’

  Amber’s words drifted off in Ethan’s mind as he sat absolutely still in his seat and stared vacantly straight ahead. A single sentence revolved around in his head over and over as the vehicle whispered along the asphalt.

  ‘ … uses the money to build ten thousand fusion cages and distributes them around the world … ’

  Stanley, if he had indeed sold out, would undoubtedly be under strict orders not to develop his device any more. The consequences of doing so would likely be literally fatal, so there was no way that the old man could get the word out about what he had achieved unless he intended to make the money disappear somewhere and then shout about his invention as loudly as he could before MJ–12 put a bullet in his skull.

  No. Ethan scratched that off of his list. The media would be blacked out from any such broadcasts, MJ–12’s reach seemingly long enough to prevent Stanley from achieving his aims through the media. None the less, Ethan could not square the old man’s new course of action with the character that he knew. It didn’t make sense, because Stanley already seemed aware that powerful corporations might attempt to take his life once he tried to go public: he seemed prepared for such an eventuality, willing to risk his life to …

  ‘Oh no.’

  Ethan stared into the middle distance as a sudden flurry of thoughts and realizations flashed through his mind in rapid succession.

  ‘What?’ Lopez asked.

  Ethan leaned forward and stared into one of their escort’s sunglasses. ‘Can you tell us where we’re going?’

  The guard remained stone faced and silent. Ethan tried again.

  ‘This isn’t about us,’ he said. ‘Stanley Meyer may have duped everybody. I need to know where we’re going because I think that he may have placed himself in great danger.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Amber asked, leaning forward.

  Ethan looked at her.

  ‘I don’t think that Stanley is behind all of this,’ Ethan said. ‘I think that he’s deliberately made himself a patsy.’

  ‘Patsy for who?’ Lopez asked. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  Ethan looked at their escort again. ‘Please, you need to call ahead and let them know about what’s going on, or Stanley Meyer might not be alive when we find him. I know you’re not FBI, or working for Majestic Twelve or Seavers Incorporated. Where are we going?’

  The guard lifted his chin and then turned to his right and nodded at his accomplice, who pulled a cell phone from his pocket and began to dial. The guard looked back at Ethan and spoke in a monotone voice.

  ‘Richmond International, for Las Vegas,’ he said.

  ‘We need to delay that, turn around and find Stanley before he gets himself killed.’

  ‘Will you tell me what the hell’s going on?!’ Amber insisted.

  Ethan leaned back in his seat as Amber’s words of days before drifted through his mind. I was adopted. Stanley and Mary couldn’t have children, so they adopted me at the age of two. Mary was an electrochemist and they met as undergraduates at university. I think that because they couldn’t have
children they made their careers their priority, and then later in life decided to adopt me.

  Mary was an electrochemist.

  ‘It’s all a deception. We’ve all been chasing the wrong person.’

  *

  Huck Seavers strode down the plush corridor toward the hotel’s penthouse suite and felt as though he were floating on an invisible ocean of joy, his footfalls making no sound on the deep carpets as he reached the door of the suite, which was guarded by two of his most trusted men. One of them unlocked the door and pushed it open for him to pass through.

  Seavers had spent much of his life in such luxurious surroundings, the best that life could offer so familiar to him that he never really considered the fact that there were hundreds of other, less exuberant rooms on the floors below. He strode casually into the suite and saw Stanley Meyer sitting on a vast leather couch, a sparkling glass of chilled wine in one hand and a smile on his face as wide as the San Francisco bridge as he looked up at Seavers. The old man reached for a remote and switched off the vast plasma screen television dominating one wall.

  ‘You’re looking a tad more cheerful than this morning,’ Seavers observed with a smile, buoyed up by his own relief that the whole sorry episode was over.

  ‘Things have improved immensely,’ Stanley replied and took a sip of his drink. ‘To be honest, I wish I’d done this sooner.’

  ‘So do I!’ Seavers gasped, flopping down onto a deep armchair nearby and tossing his Stetson onto a glass table between them. ‘I take it that the money has reached your accounts?’

  ‘Half an hour ago,’ Stanley acknowledged. ‘I must say I admire that you have kept your word, Huck. The payment was immediate and in full, no questions asked.’

  ‘An agreement was made and it was honored,’ Huck replied. ‘Do you have the documents regarding the fusion cage?’

  Huck knew that as soon as Stanley had been paid, and with full access to the Internet and phones supplied, he had begun the process of gathering all of his research materials together into one place so that Huck, and by extension MJ–12, could take control of them, completely removing all trace of the fusion cage from the public domain. A motorcycle courier had delivered a package to the suite only minutes ago, the door guards informing Huck immediately, and he had hurried up in order to take possession of them.

  The door to the suite opened, and Aaron Mitchell strode in. Stanley looked up at the towering agent, and his jovial expression withered away. Huck caught the change in mood and spoke quickly to smooth over it.

  ‘You know, if only this had been done sooner when the offers were first made, then none of that bloodshed would have occurred,’ Huck said as he watched Stanley rifle through a folder of papers. ‘You would never have had to go on the run, your family would have remained safe and Red McKenzie would still be alive and well. Hiring those gumshoes to help you was a mistake.’

  To Huck’s surprise, Stanley chuckled and nodded.

  ‘Well, it was a necessary evil although I didn’t actually hire anybody myself. They found me in Saudi Arabia and were with my daughter when they arrived. In truth, I have no idea who hired them or even who they truly work for.’

  Huck looked up at Mitchell, who glowered silently as he spoke.

  ‘The Defense Intelligence Agency. They’ve been prying into things they have no business interfering with for some time now, under the guise of one program or another.’

  Stanley closed the folder he was holding and walked across to Aaron, his features beaming with delight once more and his arms clutching the folder to his chest.

  ‘And who do you work for?’ he asked the towering agent.

  ‘You don’t need to know. Hand over the material and I will disappear.’

  Stanley smiled almost pityingly at Aaron.

  ‘You people, you wear the flag of our country and claim to act in the defence of what you call national security, but really you’re just as corrupt as the people you work for. Majestic Twelve, isn’t it?’

  Huck’s eyes almost burst from their sockets. ‘How do you know about them?!’

  ‘I made it my business,’ Stanley snapped back as his happiness vanished in the blink of an eye and an incomparable fury grotesquely twisted his features. ‘I did my homework for months and I found out all about that dirty little nest of vipers, feeding off the poverty of millions for their own greed.’

  ‘The files,’ Aaron growled.

  ‘You want them?’ Stanley asked. ‘You want these?’

  The old man looked down at the files he was holding, and then he tossed them onto the thick carpet at Aaron’s feet and turned his back on the agent and strolled away with his hands in his pockets.

  ‘Take them,’ he said finally. ‘Enjoy every last detail because it won’t do you any good.’

  Huck, a sliver of panic now slithering through his guts, watched as Aaron Mitchell swallowed his pride with a visible effort and picked up the thick folder. He opened it and leafed through the contents and then looked at Huck and nodded.

  ‘Good enough, for now,’ he said as he looked at Stanley. ‘Any further mention of this device, or anything in connection with it, by you or any of your family, will result in your funds being taken from you and your own life coming to an abrupt end, is that clear?’

  Stanley kept his back to Aaron as he replied.

  ‘I will never speak of my device again,’ he said softly. ‘Now why don’t you be a good little puppy dog and disappear back to your masters? Maybe they’ll throw you a bone and pat your head for being such a good boy.’

  Huck stared in disbelief at Stanley, astonished that he would so deliberately try to rile Mitchell, a clearly dangerous man. Mitchell glared at Stanley but said nothing as he turned his back and began striding toward the suite door.

  Huck Seavers got to his feet and shook off Stanley’s sudden aggression. He was probably pissed for having sold out to MJ–12, putting money before his own crazed mission to donate the most valuable energy generation device in the history of the planet to billions of people that he would never meet. The activists, they always took things too far and …

  The door to the suite burst open as one of the guards, a phone clasped to his ear, cried out.

  ‘It’s gone public!’

  Aaron Mitchell froze in mid–stride as Huck felt a ball of ice form around his heart as though it had stopped beating. Mitchell glared at the agent.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The fusion cage!’ the agent almost shouted. ‘It’s going viral on Internet sites everywhere!’

  Mitchell dropped the files in his grasp and immediately pulled a cell phone from his pocket and speed–dialled a number. He spoke clearly and quickly.

  ‘Freeze all assets belonging to Stanley Meyer and initiate a lock–down on all broadcasts both digital and otherwise. Seal the system, now!’

  As Huck watched, Stanley continued to look out of the window in silence, a gentle smile on his face.

  ***

  XXXIV

  Aaron Mitchell closed the door behind the agent with a stern order. ‘Nobody is to come in.’

  The door closed, Mitchell still holding the cell phone to his ear as he listened, and then finally he shut it off and slipped it back into his pocket.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Huck asked in desperation. ‘What’s he done?’

  Aaron glared at the inventor for a long moment before he replied.

  ‘The money in the accounts he gave us has disappeared,’ Aaron replied, his voice low and filled with a menace so appalling that Huck took an involuntary step back from the agent. ‘One hundred million dollars has been spread across accounts in dozens of countries in an attempt to conceal its whereabouts. We’ll find it, of course, but for now it is no longer accessible to us.’

  Huck shot Stanley a glance. ‘What have you done?!’

  Stanley, his hands folded behind his back, finally turned away from the panoramic view and faced Mitchell, the smile still touching his face.

  ‘
You didn’t really believe that I’d sell out to any of you black–hearted criminals, did you?’

  Huck felt the world shift beneath his feet as though he were losing his balance as the world collapsed beneath him, which in many ways it had.

  ‘You promised,’ he gasped in a weak voice, barely able to speak. ‘That you wouldn’t share anything, that you would honour the deal.’

  ‘And I have,’ Stanley smiled, his gaze fixed upon Aaron Mitchell. ‘I have shared nothing, nor have I stolen any of the money. I have completely honored my end of our deal.’

  Aaron Mitchell moved closer to Stanley.

  ‘Who?’ he demanded. ‘Where?’

  Stanley’s smile grew wider as he looked up at the towering agent and he shook his head.

  ‘I think that you and I both know that no matter what happens to me, no matter what you evil cretins dream up, I’ll never tell you anything and that’s because I don’t actually know. This whole thing was out of my hands long before you even started looking for me.’

  To Huck’s horror, Stanley’s smile broadened and he began to laugh as he spoke.

  ‘All this time, you and your greedy little cohorts have been chasing me around the world looking to silence me, but it gives me an immeasureable pleasure to tell you now that the whole thing has been a charade.’

  Huck’s legs finally gave way and he slumped back down onto the armchair, his lungs aching and his breath wheezing as though somebody had stuffed a sock down his throat. Aaron Mitchell loomed over Stanley, his giant fists clenched.

  ‘Who, and where?’

  ‘You’ve spent millions, perhaps billions of dollars now,’ Stanley continued in delight, ‘and all of it for nothing. Greed is blind, they say, and you’re sure greedy!’

  Huck tried to stand, to speak, but he could not. Tears welled in his eyes as he heard Stanley’s delighted cackles echoing around the suite.