When Jacobs answered after the first ring, Kern got straight into it. ‘He’s going crazy,’ he said. ‘Literally crazy. The oil tanker? He doesn’t believe a bit of it. He’s already ordered a full investigation and it’s going to be getting priority over literally everything else.’
‘But did he know anything about Lowell’s visit beforehand? Did he know Lowell was coming to see me?’
Kern shook his head as he walked towards the Situation Room in the West Wing of the White House, even though he knew Jacobs couldn’t see him. ‘Didn’t know a thing about it, which is why he’s even more pissed. I mean, the Director of the Secret Service and a whole platoon of agents, all out on some unregistered operation? He wants to pull out all the stops until he knows exactly what’s been going on.’
‘So at the minute he doesn’t know anything,’ Jacobs said. ‘How about anyone else at Secret Service?’
‘Not that I know of,’ Kern answered. ‘The people with him were all loyal to the director, known to him personally. Some of them were even off-duty. So it looks like some sort of private affair, which concerns the president greatly.’
‘And my involvement?’ Jacobs asked.
‘Well, the crash obviously occurred close to your home so it’s assumed that they were on their way to see you, but there’s no actual evidence for that. But I’d expect a full cohort of investigators arriving on your doorstep any minute now. Is Eldridge there?’
‘He’s taking care of a little business somewhere else right now,’ Jacobs answered.
‘Probably a good thing, he doesn’t have a good reputation around here. Has the house been cleaned?’
‘The whole estate,’ Jacobs confirmed. ‘I flew out a team from Nevada, they’re used to doing deep cleans. The place is spotless, like they were never here.’
‘Good,’ Kern said, smiling at a pair of advisers as he passed them in the narrow basement corridor. He held the cellphone closer, whispering now. ‘I know we’re close, but we still can’t afford to take any chances. Do we have a day yet?’
‘Not yet. Philippe thinks it will be ready to go by the middle of the week.’
‘OK,’ Kern said, still whispering as he waited outside the closed door of the Situation Room. ‘I’ll try and slow things down as much as I can from here. Another week shouldn’t be a problem.’
‘Make sure it isn’t,’ Jacobs answered.
‘First, let’s start with the scrap of material that you asked us to pass along to our sister laboratory in Pasadena,’ Dr Connor began. ‘Although the exact nature of the material couldn’t be determined, it is thought that it is some sort of silk derivative, much like the silk of a spider’s web in terms of its strength-to-weight ratio. It exhibited remarkable thermal properties too, although the piece was too small to test as thoroughly as my colleagues would have liked.’
‘Had they seen anything like it before?’ Adams asked.
‘No,’ Connor answered immediately. ‘Never. They thought it might be related to some sort of advanced military technology — we know they are looking into using synthetic materials to mimic things like spider’s webs — but then they performed other tests and were forced to reconsider.’
‘Radiocarbon dating?’ Lynn asked.
Connor nodded his head. ‘Exactly.’
‘And?’ Adams prompted.
Connor cleared his throat. ‘The consensus — after three separate tests were made — is a date of 40,500BC. In other words, the bit of cloth you gave us is over forty-two thousand years old.’
Lynn and Adams exchanged looks. So Devane’s off-the-hoof estimation of age from the ice layers had been pretty much dead on, and Adams’ own theory that the most likely explanation was an incorrect initial dating could now be put to bed. The body, and the artefacts the scientist had found with it, were indeed truly ancient.
‘And the DNA testing?’ Lynn asked nervously.
‘Well,’ Connor began, obviously disconcerted by the radiocarbon findings, ‘we carried out the usual diagnostic tests, including variable number tandem repeats, particularly short tandem repeats, and then used both polymerase chain reaction analysis and amplified fragment length polymorphism analysis.’
Lynn nodded her head, while Adams just stared blankly ahead. The methods didn’t matter to him so much as the results.
‘The subject was male, approximately forty years of age, with blond hair and blue eyes. No indication of internal pathologies, seems to have been robust and healthy.’
Lynn looked at Connor, her gaze boring into him. ‘Let’s cut to the chase, doctor,’ she said. ‘Was the subject human?’
The nervous anticipation of Lynn and Adams, as they sat poised on the front edges of their seats, waiting for Connor to give his answer, was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a door crashing open behind them.
‘Don’t answer that, doctor!’
Everyone turned in their seats to see a large, fierce man in the doorway, flanked by three armed men on each side, who quickly fanned out through the office. Adams recognized him instantly as Eldridge, the chief of security from Jacobs’ house back in DC. In his hand he held a silenced pistol, aimed directly at Connor’s head.
Adams and Lynn had no time to react before each of them had three silenced submachine guns trained on them.
‘You!’ Lynn exclaimed as she stared at Eldridge, recognizing him as Major Daley from the Antarctic. ‘You bastard, I’ll—’
Before she could finish her sentence, there was a low bark and the back of Connor’s head suddenly exploded across the rear wall of the office, the subsonic bullet from Eldridge’s handgun leaving only a small entry wound in the man’s forehead. For several moments the doctor’s body held upright as if suspended like a puppet, his unbelieving eyes still covered by his half-moon glasses, and then he bent straight over from the waist, his bloody head crashing into the glass tabletop.
Lynn’s eyes went wide with shock and disbelief, but Adams came to his senses. Using the sound of the doctor’s head smashing on to the table as a distraction, he reacted forward to create space, going for his concealed handgun. But Eldridge’s men were too switched on, and the nearest one quickly smashed the butt of his weapon into the base of Adams’ skull.
He literally saw stars, his head swimming with pain from the heavy blow as he collapsed to the carpeted floor, feeling rather than seeing as another man reached forward and removed the gun from his waistband. He groaned, struggling to stay conscious.
Lynn reacted herself, moving off her chair to help Adams, but she was forced back, one man slapping her across the face with a sharp crack.
Adams returned to reality instantly, shooting up from the floor to defend Lynn, only to be forced back down, face pushed into the carpet as his hands were pulled violently up and behind his back, and secured with plasticuffs.
He turned his head to the side, his cheek scraping along the carpet, to see Lynn also being cuffed and hauled up off her chair.
Both Adams and Lynn were pulled to their feet and pushed up against the desk, gun barrels up and raised straight into their faces.
‘Dr Edwards,’ Eldridge said ingratiatingly. ‘Still alive.’ He clapped his hands mockingly. ‘I commend you, I really do. You’re quite exceptional.’
‘Screw you, you murderous bastard!’ she yelled back in response, only to be met with a cruel smile.
Eldridge turned to Adams next. ‘And you must be Matthew “Free Bear” Adams. Quite an exceptional man yourself, giving us the runaround the way you have.’ He suddenly took two paces towards Adams and violently pistol-whipped him across the face.
Adams’ legs gave out and he collapsed to the floor. Eldridge looked down at him with an emotionless expression. ‘That’s for my men.’ He looked over at Lynn. ‘I’m not the only murdering bastard in the room, Dr Edwards. You’d do well to remember that.’