Messier looked across the chic, ultra-modern bar at Stephen Jacobs, as Whitworth had been known since the sixties. The man was living proof of the abilities of the Anunnaki, and verification of their promises.
Messier raised his champagne flute in salute, and saw Jacobs smile and raise his own.
Soon they would meet the Anunnaki face to face; and both men felt ready.
Jacobs felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out, and saw it was Eldridge.
After the disaster at Area 51, Jacobs had made a grudging Eldridge take control of the situation, which meant that the commander of Alpha Brigade would have to delay his journey to CERN. This had displeased him greatly, Jacobs knew, but at the end of the day, if Eldridge had done his job right in the first place, they wouldn’t be in such a situation now.
Jacobs answered the phone. The call was coming from his private jet, which was once again being used as their mobile headquarters, as it had been in South America.
‘What’s the status?’ he asked without preamble.
‘I think we’ve got them, sir,’ he heard Eldridge announce with confidence. ‘I’ll wrap this up once and for all, and then meet you for the big finale.’
‘Not the finale, my friend,’ Jacobs corrected. ‘Remember, this is just the beginning.’
4
Lynn sat by the window, watching as the large Geneva-Cornavin train station appeared out of the freezing fog ahead of her.
The fog had descended just an hour into their two and a half-hour journey, and had obscured what had up until then been beautiful views of the Swiss countryside.
At any rate, now they were here, and she had to concentrate on what was going to happen next. As before, Ayita and Stephenfield would get off first, checking the platforms for any sign of the enemy. If the coast was clear, she and Adams would leave the train and the four of them would move independently to the taxi rank outside the station.
Their taxis would take them to four random places, from where they would all move on foot to Moilebeau Park. They would meet up there, and then pair up in two more taxis, Stephenfield and Ayita in the lead, with Lynn and Adams following, and ask to be taken to Maisonnex Dessus, the suburb to the north-west of the city just before the foothills of the Jura Mountains. The CERN facility was located very close to this small town, and the four of them would meet up once more and confirm their final plans for entering the base itself.
Lynn was all too aware that the plan for her was to remain in the town of Maisonnex Dessus, monitoring communications and acting as the central point of contact. She understood the rationale behind this, as the fact was that out of the four of them, she was the only one untrained and without direct operational experience. If that had been the only consideration, she would still have insisted that she accompany them into CERN. But as the others had all pointed out — Matt with extreme conviction, understandably — she was pregnant, and couldn’t take the risk of getting involved in the action directly.
It was sensible to have someone keeping an eye on things from a distance, and when all things were considered, it could really only be her. Stephenfield had shown her how to operate the array of electronic machinery he had somehow managed to carry with him from America, and so it wasn’t as if she would be doing nothing; but a part of her still wished she would be taking a more active part.
Another side of her — a more powerful side? — demanded that she follow their recommendations and stay out of harm’s way. She didn’t know if it was mother’s instinct already making itself felt, or if she was just afraid. But maybe the two things were linked — perhaps she was afraid not for herself but for her unborn baby.
And, she decided, she could live with that.
Eldridge and his men landed at a private runway at Geneva International, and immediately transferred to a squad of Audi 4x4 vehicles, tearing away from the airport on a direct run for Geneva’s Cornavin rail station.
The big break had come through electronic monitoring of local CCTV surveillance. It had been Caines’ team back at Area 51 that had made the match, picking up an image of Lynn Edwards at Reno-Tahoe airport.
As it was a minor transport hub, the team were not quick to find the match, and by the time the facial recognition software had found and analysed the image, the flight had already landed in Zurich.
Once Edwards had been identified, they discovered that Adams had been on the same flight, and a quick investigation into the passenger list revealed their new passport details. Where they could have got such identification in so short a time, Eldridge could only wonder.
Caines, to his credit, had then ordered a satellite to be rerouted to cover Zurich, as well as real-time monitoring of ticket information systems; the passport details Edwards and Adams had flown under were red-flagged, and the fugitives’ latest images were uploaded into the surveillance systems of the Swiss capital.
They had then lost them for a short while, before a partial match — again of Edwards — was made at Zurich’s Hauptbahnhof. It seemed that Adams — as expected, given his background — was rather more adept at hiding from the surveillance cameras.
There had been no ticket purchases made in the names of the passport holders, but when Caines had made his report, Eldridge had known there was only one place the two of them could have been headed — Geneva, on their way to try and stop the return of the Anunnaki.
If only Jacobs had kept his mouth shut. Why did he have to tell them everything? What possible good could it have served? But tell them he had, and now they were on their way.
Eldridge had accessed the train timetable and identified the most likely routes, then ordered Caines and his men to analyse satellite images of the platforms as the trains boarded.
The matches had not been one hundred per cent but they were good enough for a partial ID, this time of both Edwards and Adams. And so now Eldridge and his men were racing through the streets of Geneva for a deadly rendezvous with their targets.
Adams watched through his window as Ayita descended from the now stationary train on to the platform. Although it wasn’t obvious, Adams could tell that he was doing a thorough counter-surveillance run.
Less than a minute later, Stephenfield also got out, subtly checking out the platform from the other side. After another minute, both men extended their right forefingers, indicating that it was safe for himself and Lynn to leave the train.
Having Ayita and Stephenfield along was proving invaluable, Adams acknowledged. He knew the search would be primarily for himself and Lynn, and so it was immensely useful to have two such seasoned professionals able to check out their route beforehand. It also made him feel much better that they would be accompanying him to the CERN laboratory instead of Lynn. He was uneasy about Lynn having come this far but he knew she would never have stayed in America. At least this way she could be of help and still stay relatively safe.
Adams rose from his seat, about to turn into the gangway, but suddenly went rigid, his eyes picking up movement from Ayita’s right hand. All four fingers went straight, the signal that somebody was there; the coast was not clear.