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Ethan stepped aside as Cutler led his team past them toward the smoldering apartment block.

  ‘Interesting,’ Lopez said. ‘They got here real quick.’

  ‘Too quick,’ Ethan said, turning to Zamora. ‘You got a Center for Disease Control unit down here anywhere?’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ he admitted. ‘And we didn’t call one in.’

  Ethan watched Cutler for a few moments, and then turned to Lopez.

  ‘Let’s go and meet Jeb Oppenheimer, and see what he has to say for himself.’

  24

  JAY’S BAR & GRILL HIGHWAY 85, LA CIENEGA

  NEW MEXICO

  The warbling of an old Kenny Rogers number strummed through the half-filled bar as Lee Carson swaggered somewhat unsteadily through the entrance and focused on his surroundings. He’d already downed half a dozen tequila shots after work with the guys, and it seemed to have affected him more than usual. Maybe he was losing his touch.

  He looked at his reflection in the glass of the front door. His tasseled cowhide jacket, low-brimmed Stetson and leather ranch gloves were a little too much for him in the warm air, but they looked damned good and he knew it. No, he certainly wasn’t losing his touch.

  He glanced in the mirror that ran behind the bar as he sauntered across to a vacant stool. The reflection showed his chiseled jaw, the wide sideburns he’d been cultivating for a few days and hazy blue-gray eyes staring back at him from beneath curls of jet-black hair as he removed his hat and set it down on the bar.

  ‘Afternoon, mister.’

  Carson flashed a perfect white smile at the young girl approaching him from behind the bar. She looked early twenties, a blonde ponytail framing an angelic face above a cleavage barely contained by her tight white vest.

  ‘Well afternoon to you, ma’am.’ Carson grinned.

  ‘What’ll it be?’ she asked, leaning on the bar toward him.

  ‘A shot of your finest bourbon, and whatever you’re havin’, Miss . . .’

  ‘Eloise.’ She giggled, clearly enjoying the attention. ‘You got it.’

  Carson watched her walk away down the bar toward the liquor rack, swinging her hips with more vigor than was strictly necessary. He glanced over his shoulder at the restaurant. Barely a dozen people, mostly eating at tables and booths. Perfect. He’d have the full and undivided attention of Eloise both now and during the later that he already knew would come.

  Lee Carson was, by consensus, a very handsome man. He’d been blessed with genes from his parents that had given him a near classic-cowboy look, rugged and tough, a look that he’d only too happily cultivated by working as a ranch hand doing physical jobs that maintained his impressive physique. His shoulders were broad, his legs long, his chest that of five men, his belly flat and his waist slim. He looked at himself in the mirror again and couldn’t help but smile. He looked damn fine, for a man of one hundred sixty-eight years.

  ‘Straight bourbon,’ Eloise said, setting his tumbler down in front of him on the bar. ‘Mine’s a Coke.’

  ‘To y’health,’ Carson said, raising his glass and clinking it against hers.

  He knew she was watching as he tilted his head back and downed the shot in one, closing his eyes as the bourbon seared the back of his throat and then sank warmly to the pit of his stomach. He exhaled the fumes noisily and set the glass down again.

  ‘Damned if I didn’t need that,’ he said.

  ‘Hard day at the ranch?’ Eloise inquired, leaning further forward on the bar and providing him with a vertiginous view of her creamy breasts.

  ‘Up an’ down all day,’ Carson replied. ‘I’ve done got me all beat out.’

  Eloise chuckled.

  ‘I guess that means that you’re tired,’ she said. ‘Shame. Guy like you needs to keep your strength up.’

  ‘For what?’ Carson smiled.

  ‘You never know.’ Eloise shrugged. ‘Just got to be ready for anything.’

  Carson leaned a little closer to her.

  ‘Y’mean I might be up an’ down all night too?’

  Eloise threw a hand to her mouth and giggled as her eyes opened wide.

  ‘Damn you, mister, you don’t know nothing about manners.’

  ‘What’s them?’ Carson asked. ‘And it’s Lee, Lee Carson.’

  Eloise extended her hand over the bar, and he shook it gently.

  ‘Pleasure to meet you, Lee Carson.’ She held on to his hand for a moment longer than was necessary. ‘Will you be staying a while?’

  Carson nodded. ‘Just as long as you’re here, ma’am.’

  ‘You’ll be needing another drink then.’

  Carson watched as Eloise made her jaunty way back down the bar, and then he slipped out of his tasseled jacket, hanging it carefully on one of the bar hooks beside him. Carson had, he knew with absolute confidence, slept with more women than any other man in the history of the human species. He possessed something of an unfair advantage of course, in the fact that he hadn’t aged a day since his twenty-seventh year. He thought for a moment. One hundred and forty-one years ago. Damn, it got harder with each passing decade to keep track of time and the things he’d seen over those years, those decades. He shook his head, smiling to himself again. The rest of them, damned fools, had lived their lives in seclusion, had chosen not to take advantage of what God, if He existed, had given them: a gift, a blessing. Or maybe just some damned fine luck. Lee Carson had grabbed that gift with both hands and made full use of it.

  He had no need to work. Over time many of his belongings had become antiques, earning him cash whenever he needed it. His home of the last twenty or so years, a simple farmhouse out on the very edge of Santa Fe, had no outstanding mortgage. Carson simply traded up from time to time as the market favored him, and occasionally used his contacts to arrange the purchase of a property under an assumed name, the paperwork leaving the property to him in a ‘will’. As long as he left about fifty years between each will, nobody was around to remember the last one. He worked only to stay fit, occupied and healthy, and to avoid any awkward questions from the IRS or nosey locals.

  He watched from the corner of his eye as Eloise poured his drink, and saw her surreptitiously looking at him from time to time. The expressions, the body language, the tone of voice: Carson had studied young women for over a century, and knew a sure thing when he saw it.

  Tonight was going to be a good night.

  Lee Carson once again thanked whatever lucky star he’d passed under all those many years ago and reached down, pulling off his gloves.

  A lance of shock pierced the very depths of his stomach and he let out a loud yelp of alarm. As he yanked off the glove, thick chunks of skin spilled from within to sprinkle the surface of the bar. Carson gagged as he looked down at his hand, the stench of decaying flesh acrid in his nose. His skin was crumpled like canvas, pallid gray in color and sagging from the bones he could see within, like white poles propping up a limp tent.

  ‘Jesus!’

  Carson stood abruptly, as though doing so could get him further away from his own disintegrating hand. He stared at it in alarm as Eloise returned, her face tight with concern as she looked at his hand.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Carson slapped his good hand over the other and shot her an embarrassed look.

  ‘I . . . er . . . I’ve gotta go, ma’am. Real sorry, an emergency.’

  Eloise looked crestfallen.

  ‘You’ll come back, right?’

  Carson barely heard her as he grabbed his hat, gloves and jacket and rushed out of the bar into the cool evening air. He stood outside for a moment, taking in long deep breaths to steady himself.

  ‘Be cool, Lee,’ he whispered, and looked down at his hand again.

  The gnarled, bony fingers were like those of an old crone, reminding him of his grandmother from a century and a half before. The muscles within his fingers had wasted and the tendons sagged uselessly. He tentatively wriggled his fingers and felt a dull ache throb through the joints as though
he were . . .

  Old.

  A fresh wave of panic swept through him as he realized he was suddenly running out of the one thing he thought he’d never have to worry about again.

  Time.

  25

  MANDARIN ORIENTAL HOTEL, MANHATTAN

  NEW YORK CITY

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to thank you for coming here tonight and for giving me this opportunity to address you directly.’

  Donald Wolfe stood before a small lectern overlooking an array of dining tables in the Mandarin Ballroom, each delicately arranged with wine glasses, champagne bottles on ice, dinner plates and elaborately illuminated bouquets of flowers. Along an entire wall, tall windows looked out across the glittering nightscape of the Manhattan skyline. Each table was occupied by smartly dressed men and women, each of whom was potentially worth millions or billions of dollars, depending on which pharmaceutical company they happened to own. Yet none of them was important, at least not to Wolfe. The focus of his gaze rested instead on the small handful of Bilderberg Committee members who were worth trillions of dollars, sitting unobtrusively at tables far from the stage.

  Wolfe’s vision of the future was shared by such men: streets devoid of the wearisome crowds and their gluttony for material wealth. The parasite would soon be eliminated, the infection cured, and what would be left of humanity would proceed onward into a brighter future.

  The thought provoked in Wolfe a sense of well-being that was further amplified by the knowledge that his efforts at the annual Bilderberg Conference, a three-day event that had taken place a month before, had come to fruition. It had been a close-run thing, but his determination and dedication had paid off, and he knew his revelations had been laid before the Bilderberg steering committee and discussed at length by its members as a matter of global importance. Their decision, which he was sure would be aligned with his plans, would change the face of humanity forever.

  Few people knew of the existence, let alone the importance, of the Bilderberg Group.

  Members of the Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations had been charged by global corporations with the post-war takeover of the democratic process. The measures implemented by this group provided general control of the world economy through indirect political means. The meetings were held annually and attended by most prime ministers and presidents in the developed world. It was not a conspiracy, for attendee lists were available to the public. But its meetings were screened from the public domain and the prying eyes of the media for one simple reason: so that every attendee could speak their mind without fear of public reprimand. No journalist was ever invited to attend the Bilderberg meetings. If any leaks occurred, the journalists responsible were discouraged from reporting them. The group took its name from the location of the first meeting – the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland, in May 1954. The concept of Bilderberg was not new. Groups such as Bohemian Grove, established in 1872 by San Franciscans, had played a significant role in shaping post-war politics in the US. The Ditchley Park Foundation had been established in 1953 in Britain with a similar aim.

  Bilderberg was originally conceived by Joseph H. Retinger and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Prince Bernhard, at the time, was an important figure in the oil industry and held a major position in Royal Dutch Petroleum. There were usually some one hundred fifteen participants in each annual meeting. Eighty were from Western Europe and the remainder from North America. From this mixture, about one-third came from government and politics, with the remaining two-thirds from industry, finance, education and communications.

  The Americans were heavily influenced by the Rockefeller family – owners of Standard Oil – competitors of Bernhard’s Royal Dutch Petroleum. Bilderberg business always reflected the concerns of the oil industry in its meetings which centered almost entirely on two unnerving facts: one, that oil was rapidly running out; and two, that the population of the planet and its demands for fuel were still increasing at a trimetric rate. Soon, it would all be over and humanity would come to an end. The search for alternatives was pointless as everything from hydrogen cells to the virtually useless wind turbines required abundant supplies of rare metals which were hoarded by China; materials such as europium, lanthanum, neodymium and countless others. It was now no longer about how to save humanity: it was about who would survive the coming catastrophe.

  Donald Wolfe cleared his throat. If this speech went down well, then his next, to world leaders at the United Nations, would herald nothing less than a new epoch in human history.

  ‘The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases,’ he began, ‘is the army’s main institution and facility for infectious-disease research that may have defensive applications against biological warfare. At the present time, the development and procurement of medical countermeasures for pandemic influenza and other emerging infectious diseases is our chief concern, especially in these difficult times of cultural upheaval, ideological wars fought in the name of opposing religions and ever-increasing population density. Any one of them, at any time, could be the cause of agents that could potentially kill millions of people.’ Wolfe smiled. ‘So we’re handy to know.’

  A ripple of polite humor swept across the tables, white smiles above black tuxedos and ball gowns, a couple of the suited magnates raised champagne glasses to Wolfe. He should have despised them for making their fortunes by selling drugs at the highest prices to the Western world while withholding them from those who needed them most, the poor of the developing world, but he couldn’t, for he had become wealthy outside his military service on the back of the vast chemical wonderland that was Big Pharma. Hell, it wasn’t their fault that some countries couldn’t afford medicines: if those country’s governments had spent more on their own people than on buying weapons then there wouldn’t be such a divide between the healthy West and the sickly East. It was a point of view Wolfe had made on a few occasions when traveling overseas as a representative of his department, and the reason why the higher office he’d sought had eluded him. Washington didn’t like straight talkers and people who ‘tell it like it is’, as a senator had once told him. It risked giving ordinary citizens the illusion that they actually had some kind of influence in government, and that was the last thing that the ruling classes wanted.

  ‘But right now there’s a problem, and it’s one I know you’re already familiar with. Our ability to create new drugs to treat those in need is rapidly declining. In the fields of medicine, biotechnology and pharmacology, drug discovery is the process by which drugs are discovered or designed, and productivity has collapsed over the past twenty years. In the past most drugs have been discovered either by identifying the active ingredient from traditional remedies or by serendipitous discovery. A new approach has been to understand how disease and infection are controlled at the molecular and physiological level and to target specific entities based on this knowledge.’

  The process of drug discovery involved the identification of candidates, synthesis, characterization, screening and assays for therapeutic efficacy. Once a compound had shown its value in these tests, it began the process of being developed prior to clinical trials. And it was that which was slowing down the arrival of new drugs to the market.

  ‘Despite our advances in technology and understanding of biological systems, drug discovery is still a long, expensive, difficult and inefficient process with low rates of new therapeutic discovery. Currently, the research and development cost of each new molecular entity is approximately 1.8 billion US dollars, a financial burden too great for us to bear. Information on the human genome has been hailed as promising to virtually eliminate the bottleneck in therapeutic targets that has been one limiting factor on the rate of therapeutic discovery. However, data indicates that this is not so and that the genome cannot be relied upon to cure all ills. In short, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for change.’

  Wolfe regarded them for a long moment before
speaking again.

  ‘We need to focus new drug development to a changed home market. There are now simply too many people with too many physiological variations causing too many mutations in infectious and contagious diseases for our ability to control and treat those conditions, regardless of cost, time or availability. Sooner or later, one of those diseases is going to become a pandemic, with the loss of millions, perhaps even billions of people. In the fourteenth century in Europe, the plague known as the Black Death eliminated some sixty percent of the population, who were suffering from compromised immunity due to chronic malnutrition, a predicament common still in the developing world. It is not the science that is at fault, it is the fact that there are simply too many human beings populating our planet acting as petri dishes for and carriers of exotic infectious diseases. If we do not act now, their carrying of the next great pandemic could spill over into our own countries and threaten humanity’s very existence.’

  To Wolfe’s surprise, there was a sudden burst of rapturous applause that thundered round the stage. Wolfe raised a hand before speaking again as the furore died down.

  ‘There will be some, particularly our friends in the media, who will no doubt vilify my comments as ignorant of the needs of millions of people around the world who have complained for many decades about their lack of access to desperately needed drugs. However, sometimes science reaches a point where the volume of demands placed upon it can no longer be met by even its most talented and determined servants. The truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that we need a reduction in population to improve almost every single facet of our modern lives. There is no silver bullet. There is no miracle cure. And there is no light at the end of the tunnel if we continue on our current path of excess consumption and bloated ignorance of the limits of our planet and our own human ingenuity in solving not just our own problems but those of our fellow man. We have outgrown our beds, and now we are forced to lie in them.’