Immortal (18 page)

‘Go to hell, you evil bastard!’

Irritation sparked across Oppenheimer’s face as he turned and jabbed the scalpel toward Willis’s groin. The scientist was sucking in air to scream again when a soft digital beep
echoed through the room. Oppenheimer turned, looking at a flashing light on the wall as a female voice spoke through an intercom.

‘Two detectives are on their way to see you, Mister Oppenheimer.’

Oppenheimer hurried across to the panel and pressed a button.

‘Who are they?’ he growled.

‘An Ethan Warner and Nicola Lopez, sir.’

Oppenheimer started to reply, and as he pressed the button Willis opened his mouth and screamed as loudly as he could.

‘Help me! For God’s sake, call the police . . . !’

Oppenheimer shut off the intercom and walked across to Willis and slapped a thick adhesive patch across his mouth. Willis watched helplessly as Oppenheimer walked back to the intercom and
pressed the button.

‘I will be there momentarily. Have my security team on standby.’

Oppenheimer walked back to where Willis lay bleeding, and tapped his chest with the scalpel.

‘I shall return, my friend,’ he said coldly. ‘Have a long hard think about what you’re going to tell me. A wrong answer will lose you a perfectly serviceable kidney,
understood?’

Willis screamed beneath the tape, sweating profusely as Oppenheimer turned for the door of the laboratory and looked for the first time at Lillian Cruz. He walked across to her, the bloodied
scalpel in his hand, and she reared up and away from him.

‘You’re sick,’ she gasped.

Oppenheimer set the scalpel down and unlocked the cuff from one of her wrists before yanking her across to the mortuary slab and cuffing her to that instead. He looked down at Willis.

‘Patch him up,’ Oppenheimer snapped. ‘I don’t want him losing consciousness until I’m fully satisfied he knows nothing.’ He looked down at Willis.
‘Don’t forget now, Tyler. Kidney, or no kidney. It’s your call.’

Donald Wolfe left his family in the dining hall and followed his companion to the executive suite. His attendance at the Bilderberg Conference the previous month had been his
first, when he had delivered a speech to the other attendees on the dangers of future pandemics. It was there he had been approached regarding the search for solutions to what the men had called
the ‘human’ problem, and he had realized how high the stakes were for humanity. He was considering those stakes when they reached one of the rooms, and he was led inside. Four men, all
immaculately dressed, waited in the suite as Wolfe closed the door.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said simply.

They never used names. It wasn’t impossible for journalists or even foreign intelligence operatives to bug rooms in the Mandarin, although it was highly unlikely as they would never have
known that men of such power were present at all, so secretly did they move through the halls of governments. The four men before him could have passed the average citizen in the street and they
would never have known that they were within inches of the most powerful men on earth. One was an elderly oil tycoon who liked to hide behind another individual who was the public face of his
company. Another was an equally aged property magnate whose line of work required no public presence whatsoever. The remaining two younger men were both heirs to fossil-fuel fortunes forged before
and after World War Two, who had taken the helm of their fathers’ companies with ruthless efficiency. All four were worth more than the GDP of a small European country and infinitely more
influential.

‘What news?’ Wolfe asked, his throat tight and dry.

The eldest of the four regarded him for a moment before speaking in a soft, cultured voice.

‘The steering committee has considered your suggestions. We agree that the imminent presence of a global catastrophe due to overpopulation, a lack of physical and energy resources and the
growing threat of global pandemics is a clear and present danger. However, we disagree that a radical reduction of select elements of the human population is necessarily the correct course of
action.’

Wolfe felt a chill plunge down his spine.

‘What more practical solution do you envisage?’ he asked, struggling to remain calm.

‘We don’t,’ said the shortest of the men. ‘There is no alternative.’

Wolfe frowned uncertainly. ‘Then what’s the problem?’

‘Simply,’ said another of the men, ‘that in your plan the culling of a major proportion of the inhabitants of developing countries is required to affect a solution. Our
problem, Donald, is that you’re eradicating the
wrong
people. The populations of the Western world are far greater consumers than those of the East. Removing a population like our own,
that of the United States, will have a profoundly better resolution for global resources than removing the entire population of India, for instance. We consume more, therefore by your own logic it
is we who should be removed.’

Wolfe stared at the men in disbelief.

‘The whole point of this is to conserve the better prepared populations for the future!’

‘Is it?’ the eldest man asked. ‘In your proposal it was to save the planet from certain doom.’

Wolfe cursed himself mentally, put off guard by the unexpected hostility.

‘It is,’ he replied. ‘But eradicating ourselves isn’t exactly what I had in mind.’

‘Eradicating?’ asked the last of the men, a young man with hawkish good looks. ‘I thought this was about a humane global call for a
reduction
in population.’

‘Yes,’ Wolfe replied, ‘combined with the proposed arrest of aging in selected individuals. The longer that you live anonymously at the head of the Bilderberg Committee, the
longer that your objectives and desires can remain in place. We, right now, have the power to take control of the globe and control human destiny for decades, perhaps centuries to come.’

‘We?’ said the eldest again. ‘I take it that by
we
you mean us, yourself and Jeb Oppenheimer?’

Wolfe hesitated for a long moment before replying.

‘I said nothing of Jeb Oppenheimer.’

The four men exchanged glances for a moment before the youngest of them spoke again.

‘I presume that your men have not yet isolated the source of this supposed
elixir
that you claim to have found?’

‘They are working on it as we speak,’ Wolfe assured him. ‘I have a team in place, and as soon as Oppenheimer locates a viable sample I will acquire it from him and bring it to
you.’

Another moment of silence followed before the eldest man spoke.

‘You believe that it is imminent, that a pandemic will strike the East within our lifetimes?’

Wolfe nodded, relieved to be on surer ground.

‘It is inevitable. The HN-51 virus showed us that the influenza strain has already made the leap between animals and humans on numerous occasions, each time with a new mutation more
virulent than the last. Global inoculation is not possible, especially given the locales in which the strain exists and mutates. With the populations in Africa, India and the Malay Archipelago
growing at a terrific rate it can only be a matter of time before another, truly lethal, treatment-resistant pandemic spreads to all corners of the globe.’

The four men exchanged glances; it was clear they understood the threat and the choice they were being forced to make: reduce the population of the East to prevent a pandemic, or wait for the
disease to spread and see the populations of all countries fall.

‘It’s eugenics,’ one of them said. ‘Whatever way we look at it, we’re taking away natural selection and playing god with millions of lives, perhaps
billions.’

‘Perhaps we are,’ Wolfe countered, ‘but what else can we do? We know it’s coming, we know it’s going to happen. What would you prefer, given the choice? A
controlled, orderly reduction of the population? Or a brutal disease ravaging every continent and killing indiscriminately?’

‘Again,’ said another, ‘why the East? We have our own treatment-resistant illnesses, like MRSA. It too could mutate and we have as many mega-cities as the East, places where
such diseases could spread and become epidemic, even pandemic. Mexico City is just across the border and is the largest city in the world.’

‘It’s simply a question of the odds,’ Wolfe replied, staying calm. ‘Virulent influenza strains have appeared in the East most often, rarely from South America. We
don’t know why, but that’s just the way it is. It’s also preferable from an economic point of view.’

The men nodded slowly, well aware of the manufacturing powerhouses of India and China swiftly rising to threaten the dominance of the United States. Reducing the populations of such countries
beneath the veneer of disease elimination could serve greater purposes for those with vested interests in maintaining the balance of economic power.

There were a final few moments of silence, and then the eldest man spoke with a tone of absolute finality.

‘There can be no witnesses of any kind,’ he said. ‘Everybody who is involved in this must be removed from play for the greater good of all mankind. If word ever gets out it
will be the end of us all, immortal or not.’

‘There will be no leaks,’ Wolfe insisted. ‘The net’s already closing around those involved, and soon we’ll have them in total isolation.’

‘Where?’

‘The New Mexico desert,’ Wolfe said. ‘There, far from civilization, they can be removed from the equation. Nobody will ever know.’

The eldest man folded his hands before him as he spoke.

‘Acquire the samples you claim will render us immune to aging. Prove they work, and we will in turn set in motion the required laws to reduce global population. It will take time, but it
will come to pass.’

‘Are you sure that you can turn the United Nations?’ Wolfe pressed him. ‘They will oppose any such enforced population control at every turn, as will the Vatican.’

‘The United Nations will have little influence over our plans,’ the eldest man said. ‘European population growth has been negligible for some time and is even in negative
figures in some countries. It is in the developing world where the issue is strongest. China enforced a one-child policy for decades with our help. Others will follow suit or suffer the
consequences of trade embargoes: we will use the economic markets to force their hand. As for the Vatican, people care less about its opinion by the year and are leaving the Church in their
millions anyway. The Pope’s view on this is irrelevant because the Vatican’s only success in its long and miserable existence is to prove that it knows nothing about the nature of
either gods or people.’

Donald Wolfe nodded.

‘And if an infection breaks before these plans can be implemented?’

The four men glanced at each other again before the eldest spoke. ‘Then we must endeavor to keep it beyond our shores,’ he said, ‘and we can tell the United Nations that we
warned them of the danger.’

‘I’ll get things in motion immediately,’ Wolfe said.

‘This conversation never occurred,’ the eldest man said to him. ‘And if your role here should be compromised, we expect that you will remove yourself from existence entirely
before our own involvement can be exposed. Do you understand what I am telling you?’

Wolfe baulked, but nodded once without thinking.

‘Say it,’ the old man insisted. ‘Tell me that you understand what I’m telling you.’

‘You’re telling me that you want me to commit suicide if I am exposed?’

The man nodded once.

‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you, Donald. You’ve said it yourself: this is an extremely sensitive issue with immense repercussions. We do not intend to be on the
receiving end of any investigation and we cannot trust you alone to shield us from scrutiny. Therefore, you will remove yourself from the equation.’

The four men moved to the door of the suite. The old man turned and looked over his shoulder at Wolfe.

‘If you refuse or are unable to commit the act, Donald, then rest assured we will arrange for somebody to do it for you.’

Wolfe swallowed thickly and watched as the men filed silently from his suite to disappear once more into absolute anonymity.

7.28 p.m.

‘This guy has more money than God.’

Lopez was sitting beside Ethan in the passenger seat of the Mercury, the screen of her handheld showing an Internet page detailing SkinGen Corp.

‘Major pharmaceutical chiefs often do,’ Ethan said as he pulled into the heavily manned gates of the company’s headquarters and showed his identification to the guardsmen.

Lopez scanned down through the Internet entry as they waited for access to the site.

‘True, but this one’s special,’ she said. ‘SkinGen’s annual turnover is measured in billions, and Jeb Oppenheimer has a reputation for extreme corporate
ruthlessness. Says here that he once bought an entire company and then shut it down, in revenge for a deal several years previously that had gone against him. Almost three hundred people lost their
jobs overnight, and the shut-down cost Oppenheimer fifteen million dollars.’

‘Let me guess,’ Ethan said as the barriers lifted to allow them through. ‘He took the hit happily.’

‘By then fifteen million dollars was small change to him. He owns yachts worth five times that, which he doesn’t visit for years. Properties in Manhattan, London, Paris, Sydney and
Rome, none of them worth less than ten million, and also a fleet of private jets on permanent standby in each of those countries.’ Lopez shook her head. ‘Seriously, how many private
jets can one person need?’

‘I’d have just one for business and one for pleasure,’ Ethan said. ‘No sense in being greedy. What’s his line of work exactly?’

Lopez scrolled through a few pages before reading slowly.

‘SkinGen’s current research involves the manipulation of cellular transdifferentiation in mammalian species.’

‘Thought so.’

‘Sure,’ Lopez smiled. ‘Something to do with aging, but most of the research has been done behind closed doors under great secrecy. For whatever reason, the government is either
unable or uninterested in monitoring whatever old Jeb’s up to in his labs.’