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  More applause clattered around the room, and Wolfe turned to wave to the wings of the stage. Instantly, three young girls hurried out, running to his side and clinging to him with shy gazes. They were joined by Wolfe’s wife, who stood alongside him at the lectern as he spoke.

  ‘Our global population is impossible to maintain in the face of a world beset by a growing specter of so-called “peak” phenomena, the point at which consumption totally overwhelms resources. We have peak oil, peak water, peak phosphorus, peak grain and peak fish already threatening civilization at large. I say to you all now, to the watching media and the people who will see this on the news, not as the Director of Operations at USAMRIID but as a husband, a father and a human being: for all of our sakes we must reduce our numbers in order to conserve the very resources upon which we depend, before our success as a society becomes our downfall as a species.’

  Donald Wolfe, resplendent in his tuxedo and neatly parted hair, replaced the microphone on the lectern and stepped politely off the stage as wave after wave of applause followed him. The diners were all on their feet and clapping far harder than was necessary, as though each and every clap accounted for the millions of dollars that had flowed into their accounts over the decades. Voices accompanied the slaps on his back as he weaved between the tables.

  ‘About goddamn time.’

  ‘Took the words right out of my mouth, Donald.’

  ‘Good work, Wolfe, you’ll save our lives with that.’

  Wolfe worked his way through the tables, to where one of the discreet men he had been watching stood to greet him and gestured toward the exit.

  ‘We need to talk, Donald,’ the man said. ‘Please, this way.’

  26

  SKINGEN CORP

  SANTA FE

  7.12 p.m.

  Darkness. Disorientation. Confusion.

  Tyler Willis was lying on something that felt hard and cold. His hands and feet tingled uncomfortably where thick leather straps had cut off the circulation, fastening him down so firmly that he could not move an inch. He could hear movement, the opening and closing of a door and a strange rasping sound, but his vision was obscured by a black cloth covering his head.

  The cloth was whipped aside, bright light stinging his eyes. Willis blinked and saw that he was lying on his back on a mortuary slab. Above him, Jeb Oppenheimer looked down into his eyes. The old man’s breath wheezed softly, carrying with it the mingled vapors of cigar smoke and peppermint.

  ‘Welcome,’ Oppenheimer said.

  ‘Where am I?’ Willis asked.

  ‘Somewhere entirely secure,’ Oppenheimer replied. ‘Trust me, Tyler, it’s just you, me and our observer.’

  The old man gestured to one side with a nod, and Willis turned his head to see a middle-aged woman handcuffed to a table a couple of yards away.

  ‘Tyler Willis,’ he said, ‘I’d like you to meet Lillian Cruz.’

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Willis said.

  The old man tossed the black cloth down across Willis’s legs, and he felt it touch his bare skin. He strained to look down and saw that he was entirely naked. Oppenheimer reached out, and removed Willis’s spectacles, slipping them into his pocket before studying him with mild interest.

  ‘The human body is a remarkable feat of nature,’ he said. ‘The result of eight million years of evolution. It’s strange, don’t you think, that our scientists spend years researching the origins of life on our planet when we carry the answers within our own cells? Bacteria were some of the first forms of life to emerge on Earth, but they did not make way for more advanced forms of life. Instead they joined us, are a part of the fabric of our existence.’ He leaned toward Willis. ‘Did you know, Tyler, that there are more bacteria living inside you than there are cells that make up your body?’

  ‘Let me go,’ Willis said.

  Oppenheimer smiled as though pitying him.

  ‘I’d love to, Tyler, I really would. But alas, despite your prodigious talents, if I leave you to continue on your path the whole population of our planet will pay the price.’

  Willis swallowed thickly, shaking his head.

  ‘You can’t keep it for yourself. Sooner or later it will be found by others, no matter what you do to me or to anyone else.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Lillian Cruz demanded.

  Oppenheimer smiled but ignored her, tutting to himself and shaking his head as he reached out to an unseen tray nearby and pulled on a pair of thin surgical gloves. Willis felt his bowels convulse with fear.

  ‘The unworthy, unwashed masses can only learn of what we’ve strived to achieve, Tyler, if they are alive to do so. Soon they will not be. Those of us who remain will not care, because we will be the sole remaining tenants of this wonderful world of ours.’

  Willis felt his entire body begin to tremble uncontrollably as Oppenheimer lifted from the unseen tray a brand new surgical scalpel, gently sliding the glinting blade from its plastic sheath and examining the tip intently.

  ‘Hey!’ Lillian shouted.

  ‘One of the sharpest tools of the modern surgeon,’ Oppenheimer murmured to himself. ‘Of course, it’s been some time since I dissected a human cadaver, and they were so dull, so lifeless. Most had been in storage for weeks or months, pale, somehow false. So much more interesting to perform the procedure while the subject is still . . . vibrant.’

  He looked down, and Willis felt his bowels loosen as his thighs trembled and his ankles rattled loudly against the mortuary slab.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ Willis said in short, sharp jerks.

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ Oppenheimer agreed. ‘But I want answers, and I want Lillian here to know that there is nothing I will not do to achieve my aims and that she would be sensible to comply with my demands. So, tell me, where did Hiram Conley contract his infection and how can I get there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Willis said, hot tears running freely down his cheeks. ‘He came to me with the samples, but wouldn’t say where he’d gotten them.’

  Oppenheimer looked down at Willis for a long moment and then wagged a crooked finger at him.

  ‘Now that’s not helping either of us, is it, Tyler? One more time: where did Hiram Conley obtain his infection?’

  Lillian strained against her handcuffs.

  ‘Let him go, for God’s sake!’

  Willis sucked in a deep breath.

  ‘He didn’t tell me anything! For God’s sake, I swear it’s the truth. If I knew I would tell you!’

  Oppenheimer leaned over Willis’s chest and rested the blade on his sternum. Willis felt a tiny prick of pain against his skin.

  ‘Well, Tyler, we’ll soon find out.’

  The pain suddenly spread like fire as Willis felt the blade plunge hilt-deep into his flesh. Oppenheimer drew it down toward the navel in a searing line of agony, thick blood spilling across Willis’s dark skin as the sound of his own screams filled the room. The terrible pain reached his groin and then changed as the blade was pulled from his flesh with a sucking sound that sent a bolt of nausea churning through his stomach. He felt his blood trickling warmly down his flanks as Oppenheimer’s wrinkled features looked down at him as though studying a dissected insect.

  ‘Did that pinch?’ Oppenheimer asked.

  ‘I’ll do what you want!’ Lillian shouted, yanking on the handcuffs as she tried to reach Oppenheimer. ‘Just let him alone!’

  Willis, his eyes blurred with tears of pain and helplessness, spat his answer in a frothing dribble.

  ‘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.’

  27

  MANDARIN ORIENTAL HOTEL, MANHATTAN

  NEW YORK CITY

  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.’