Adams shook his head, eyes down at the floor as he spat blood from his mouth. He looked back up. ‘Seriously,’ he said, ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.’
The man sighed, rolled his eyes theatrically to the ceiling, and stomped viciously down with a booted foot into Adams’ face.
His head rocked back again, and he saw stars. His ears popping, he looked back at the man in front of him, eyes questioning.
‘Your ex-wife,’ the man explained in exasperation. ‘Dr Evelyn Edwards. Where is she?’
Adams’ head rang again, but not from being hit. It was confusion. My ex-wife? Lynn? ‘She’s dead,’ Adams said bluntly. Isn’t she?
‘If she’s dead,’ the man said ponderously, ‘then how do you explain the email?’
‘Email?’ Adams wondered aloud. ‘What email?’
The suited man came forward to hit Adams again, but he held his hands up, placating. ‘Hey, hey, I don’t know what you’re talking about! I’ve been out on a tour for the past four days!’
The man paused, considering the matter. ‘You mean you’ve not seen the email?’ he asked at last. He pulled a sheet of paper from a pocket, holding it up directly in front of Adams’ face.
Adams closed his eyes, re-opened them, trying to focus. It was a print-off from an email. He recognized his own email address, but not the sender.
He looked harder, clearing the pain from his head as he read the words.
Matt. It’s Lynn. I need your help. Someone is trying to kill me, but I don’t know who. It might be the military, the government, even NASA. I don’t know who to trust, except you. Please, I know it’s been a long time but I need your help. Meet me at the park. And please come. As soon as you can. Lynn.
Adams was dumbfounded. Was this message from Lynn? He looked at the date. Two days ago. That was four days after the helicopter crash that was supposed to have killed her.
‘So what do you make of it, Mr Adams?’ the man asked. ‘Which “park” is she referring to?’
Adams’ head was spinning but clarity hit him suddenly. Lynn was alive, in danger, and she needed his help. Why else would the men be here, unless they believed the message was genuine? And if they were trying to find her, with force and with weapons, it could only be for one reason — to finish the job, and make sure she was dead.
Adams knew he wasn’t up to much at the minute, but the anger that suddenly coursed through his veins seemed to revitalize him. They wanted to kill Lynn? Well, we’ll see about that, Adams thought silently to himself. We’ll damn well see about that!
His mind and spirit unified as one for the first time in many years. Free Bear jerked backwards, head twisting out of the way of the gun barrel, his hand snaking round to grab the gunman’s arm.
With the other three men still to draw their weapons, Adams knew he had a chance. His elbow jerked back violently, connecting with the gunman’s jaw and knocking him cold. At the same time, Adams grabbed the handgun, finger slotting through the trigger guard.
The man in front had his own Sig Sauer semi-automatic halfway out of its quick-release belt holster when Adams fired. The shot hit him centre mass, propelling him backwards through the small room, a plume of blood bursting from his back as the round left the body in a gigantic exit wound.
Adams angled swiftly to his left, firing again. The alcohol was having an effect, though, and he caught the third man in the shoulder, but it was enough to incapacitate. He ignored the man as he fell to the floor, eyes wide, going into immediate shock, and instead turned instantly to fire at the last intruder.
This man, realizing that fumbling with his gun might prove fatal, was instead charging towards Adams, trying to close the distance and disarm him. It was a good strategy. By the time Adams had turned, it was too late — the man was on top of him, shoulder driving hard into Adams’ gut.
The wind knocked out of him, the gun went spiralling into the air, landing near the kitchenette. And then Adams felt the weight of the man on top of him, his big meaty fingers gripping his throat, squeezing the life out of him.
The whisky, the lack of sleep, the blows to the head, the sheer confusion of everything that was going on was too much for him, and he felt himself giving in to the pressure of the fingers, his brain going light from lack of oxygen.
No! There was no giving in; there simply couldn’t be.
His arm pushed out from under the big man’s body, reaching for the cheap glass coffee table near the sofa. Just as his eyes were going dim, he used the last of his energy to smash through the glass.
The sharp sound of breaking glass made the man pause, relax his hold slightly, and that was all Adams needed, as he grabbed a shard of broken glass from where it had fallen on the floor, driving it into the big man’s neck with a feral yowl of triumph. The carotid artery was severed and a great stream of bright crimson blood sprayed out and covered his own face.
Adams lay on the floor for several minutes afterwards, blood pooling off his body on to his cheap carpet.
Finally, he got to his knees, then to his feet, and surveyed the carnage. Three men dead, one unconscious from shock.
But Adams was OK. And he knew exactly where to go.
The park.
Lynn was alive.
3
Stephen Jacobs sipped his herbal tea from a china cup as he stared at the screen on the large walnut desk in front of him.
On the screen, the eleven other members of the organization’s elite leadership stared back at him. It was a secure electronic conference call, bringing together twelve of the world’s most influential power brokers for an emergency discussion.
Yasuhiro Obata looked seriously into the camera. ‘Have we been compromised?’ he asked simply. As the head of Japan’s largest zaibatsu business conglomerate, he was used to direct speech, a fact some of the more political members of the inner leadership found rather disconcerting.
‘No,’ Jacobs answered, equally directly. ‘The body has been secured at our Nevada facility, and everyone outside of the organization has been neutralized.’
‘Except for Dr Edwards,’ interjected Sergio Molina, the Italian motorsport kingpin.
Jacobs adjusted himself in his club chair before he answered. ‘It is true that we have yet to find Dr Edwards, yes. But the operation to locate her has just begun.’
On the screen, he saw Yuri Andropov, the owner of Russia’s largest media concern, lean forward. ‘And if she talks beforehand?’
‘It will not come to that, I am sure,’ Jacobs replied and took another sip of tea. ‘Besides, she knows very little. If she surfaced, what would she say? Nothing that people would believe, anyway. And let us not forget that our organization controls eighty per cent of the world’s media. The story would be killed in any case. But put yourselves in her place — she feels someone is trying to kill her, which is why she contacted her ex-husband rather than the authorities. It’s highly unlikely she will want to bring attention to herself. No, ladies and gentlemen, I think we are safe for the time being.’
‘How much longer do we need?’ asked Lord Thomas Hart, the longest serving member of Britain’s House of Lords.
Jacobs turned his eyes to the image of Professor Philippe Messier, the Director General of CERN, the nuclear research centre and particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. ‘Professor?’ he asked, passing the ball along.
Messier cleared his throat. ‘Things are progressing well. We should be ready to test the device before the end of the month.’