Adams was distraught over the loss of his friends, but as he explained what had happened to Lynn and himself, what they had found out, and what was about to happen, such a private tragedy began to pale in comparison.
‘So we need to get to Geneva as quickly as possible,’ Adams finished. ‘The stakes really don’t get any higher than this.’
Ayita bowed his head as he considered the matter. Adams was right, of course. Their own lives were as nothing compared to the fate of the whole of humanity; there was no use in hiding now. He turned to Stephenfield. ‘Can you still get passports?’ he asked.
Stephenfield considered the matter before nodding his head. ‘Given the alternative of not getting to Geneva, you bet I can.’
Three hours later, Stephenfield returned to the motel room. It never ceased to amaze him what could be accomplished if you had enough cash, and he hadn’t been shy with his money. If they couldn’t get to Geneva to stop Jacobs, what would be the use of money anyway?
He reached into his bag and pulled out not only passports, but also driving licences and social security cards, as well as a variety of cloned credit cards. He put them all on the table between them, and Adams was surprised when he noticed that there were four passports.
Stephenfield smiled at him. ‘You didn’t think you and Lynn would be going alone, did you?’ he asked.
‘Look,’ Adams argued, ‘I don’t want you risking your lives as well, it—’
‘You need us,’ Ayita said, steel in his voice. ‘And what do we have to stay here for anyway? If what you say is true, if you fail then we’ll all be dead anyway.’
Adams realized he was right. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’d better book some tickets out of here then. What are our new names?’
‘I’ll give you the lowdown on the way,’ Stephenfield said. ‘Flights are already booked, we leave from Reno-Tahoe International in two hours.’
Adams smiled. ‘Excellent,’ he said, happy to be leaving immediately. ‘We’ll get to Geneva, and then we’re going to make those bastards wish that “contact” had never been made.’
PART FOUR
1
For the first time in as long as he could remember, Jacobs was excited.
He had lived as Jacobs for several decades now, and no longer thought of himself as Charles Whitworth. But Whitworth he had been, firstborn son of Benjamin and Mary Whitworth, and he had cut his teeth at the back end of the First World War. He had done and seen it all. But this would outdo everything.
He couldn’t wait to meet the Anunnaki, and he had none of the doubts that Adams and Edwards had tried to instil in him. They would keep their end of the bargain; of course they would, he was already an immortal. But the real reason that Jacobs trusted them — at least for now, anyway — was that the Anunnaki needed him and his chosen colleagues.
For all their hi-tech advancement, the fact remained that the Anunnaki had not lived on a real planet for several thousand years; their minds were strong but their bodies were weak, and they needed assistance if they were to truly enslave the rest of humanity. The deadly virus would only do so much; the survivors would need hunting down, which was why the entire Alpha Brigade were also to be spared. The Bilderbergers’ mission was to use their various talents to lure out the other survivors, so that the Alpha Brigade could capture them. This physical task was something that the Anunnaki could simply no longer manage. They had the technology to build all sorts of robotic or cybernetic answers, of course; but they didn’t have the space — which was why they were coming back to earth in the first place.
And so Jacobs was more than happy to trust the Anunnaki upon their return. He had no doubt they would look for a way to get rid of him and his allies at the first available opportunity, but he planned to make himself indispensable to them in the short time he had, which he was more than confident he could do. He also harboured another, altogether more ambitious plan but was wary of thinking about it too much due to the Anunnaki’s telepathic abilities. Over the years he had developed a technique for getting around this to some extent. He had learnt that the thoughts or words had to be fully formed before the Anunnaki could interpret them, and therefore when he was thinking about anything he didn’t want them to know about, he never let anything become fully realized in his mind. It was almost like trying to see something in the dark; you didn’t look at it directly but glanced to the side so that peripheral vision picked it up instead.
And so it was that Jacobs’ ultimate plan lay just out of reach of the Anunnaki, and although he had no guarantees that it would work, it was certainly something that was worth pursuing when the time was right.
For now, though, he was just enjoying the anticipation, as he was whisked through the dark, snow-filled streets of Geneva. He and his colleagues — they were the Hundred once more, after his invitation to Saul Rubino, a billionaire diamond merchant, had been accepted — had arrived at the airport late the previous evening and had decided to spend the night at the Palais Grande, overlooking the wonderful lake that had made the city so famous.
Wesley Jones had stayed behind to manage affairs back in Washington, aiming to stall the investigation into the crash site near Jacobs’ house, but he was due to get to Geneva in time for the arrival of the Anunnaki. Jacobs had come to rely on Jones over the years and found himself hoping that he would make it.
The rest of the Bilderberg Hundred were now in convoy, travelling out of the city and taking the autoroute through the glorious foothills of the far mountains, heading for the Large Hadron Collider facility of CERN, the organization he himself had helped to establish for the express purpose of bringing the Anunnaki back to earth.
Philippe Messier had come to join them for dinner at the hotel the night before and, over lobster and Dom Perignon, he had informed the assembled group that the device would be operational by the following afternoon. There had been cheers and celebration, and Messier had been toasted time and again, until he could barely stand.
As the first rays of dawn started to appear over the mountains, Jacobs rested back in the deep leather seat of the huge Rolls-Royce limousine, and took a sip of early morning cognac.
His telephone rang as he put the glass to his lips, and he quickly retrieved it from his pocket. He saw who it was and answered the call immediately, the blood draining from his face.
It wasn’t a call Colonel Caines had wanted to make but better it came from him directly than that Jacobs heard it from another source, which would surely happen before the morning was out.
‘Mr Jacobs,’ he started uneasily. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news.’
Jacobs listened intently as Caines gave him a rundown of what had occurred over the past few hours.
‘Do you have any leads whatsoever?’ Jacobs asked.
‘No, sir,’ Caines admitted, glad Jacobs was not in the room with him. ‘We have no idea where they might have gone as of this time. But we’re doing everything in our power to relocate them.’
For a brief moment, Jacobs considered shouting at Caines, screaming down the phone at him for his ineptitude and threatening him with torture and death for failing in his mission; and then he would have liked to smash the phone to pieces.
Instead, he merely closed the phone slowly, cutting off the call without a word, succeeding in his efforts to control himself. It was no use shouting at Caines. What purpose would that serve now?
Adams and Edwards were clever, and now they were even more dangerous than ever. Why had he told them everything, back in the laboratory? His pride had got the better of him, that was why. He was certainly old enough to know better, but just as there was no use in shouting at Caines, there was also no point in beating himself up either. Instead, as his limousine glided along the smooth Swiss roads, he considered how they might have performed their vanishing act.