‘Pah!’ Hans scoffed. ‘You’re living in a dreamworld.’
‘They’ve shot at us,’ Amber defended her father. ‘We’ve been chased across the Middle East by people who want this to remain silent. There is a conspiracy, not perhaps by the government but certainly by people who don’t want to see their livelihoods and their earnings threatened by something like the fusion cage.’
‘Help us,’ Stanley begged his friend. ‘This could be the beginning of a revolution that will make your ITER facility look like a farce. What we have to do is be stronger than those who seek to protect their money rather than our planet, and give it away, to everybody, for nothing.’
Hans stared at Stanley in disbelief for a long moment. ‘You’re going to give it away?’
‘To everybody,’ Stanley acknowledged. ‘To every man, woman and child on the planet, to every single person who needs it the most, and deny the profits to anybody who puts greed before altruism. This is the future, Hans. Be a part of it, go public and support me.’
Hans stared at them for a long moment and then he shook his head.
‘I have a family,’ he uttered. ‘I have a career, a life, a future. Do you really think I’m going to jeopardise that for your pipedream? My career would be over the moment I announced any such thing. I may as well go out there and say that climate change is a fallacy, that we never landed on the moon and that the Earth is actually flat after all.’
Stanley’s hands clapped against his forehead in exasperation.
‘You’re walking away from the future of mankind,’ he gasped. ‘You’ve lost your humanity.’
Hance backed away further from the group and shook his head as he turned to leave.
‘No, Stanley. You’ve lost your mind. Now get out of here, before I’m forced to call security and have you removed from the premises.’
Hans turned his back on them and hurried away as though afraid to be seen anywhere near them.
Lopez turned to Ethan. ‘We need to get out of here and back to America. If he fears for his career as much as he appears to, he may be the first person to pick up the phone to somebody we don’t want to meet.’
Ethan nodded and looked at Stanley.
‘Is there anywhere we can go? Do you know of anybody who might be willing to let us hold out for a while and figure out a new play?’
Stanley nodded slowly, his shoulders sagging in despair as he watched his friend walking hurriedly away. ‘There’s only one person I can think of who might listen to us, but it’s a long shot.’
‘Where are they?’ Lopez asked.
‘Virginia.’
XXVI
Doug Jarvis drove back into the parking lot at the DIAC just over an hour after he’d left the Pentagon, his mind still buzzing with paranoia and fear over what had transpired since he had left the center of the United States military command structure.
A source in Dubai had informed him that at dawn, local time, a small unit of unidentified agents had stormed the maritime vessel Huron at its dock in Abu Dhabi. In the wake of their presence, the ship’s captain had become the victim of a tragic accident, crushed beyond recognition beneath a seventeen ton shipping container. The local DIA agent, a man named Willis with whom Jarvis had spoken only the previous day, had been relieved of his post after suffering what was believed to be a nervous breakdown and was already being repatriated to the US for debrief and counselling. All that Jarvis had been able to glean was that whatever had happened, Willis had witnessed it first — hand and wasn’t talking to anybody about it.
Jarvis parked his car and hurried into the building, then took an elevator up to the fourth floor, hoping against hope that his team had managed to provide Ethan and Nicola with an exit out of Abu Dhabi. He walked into his office and was met with a toothy grin.
‘We did it,’ Hellerman said.
Hellerman was a short, slightly built man with a thick beard and a youthful expression. Barely out of his teens, he had served the DIA for six years and been on Jarvis’s team under General Mitchell before transferring to the DIAC.
Jarvis felt a wave of relief flush through his body. ‘Tell me, everything.’
‘Your guy Warner knows how to smell a rat, just like you,’ Hellerman said with what sounded almost like a fatherly pride. ‘He must have booked a commercial flight out of Abu Dhabi before leaving Damman. They were airborne even before the raid on Huron.’
‘Where did they go?’ Jarvis asked.
‘Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, France,’ Hellerman replied. ‘I managed to track their fake documents but the trail goes cold there. My only guess as to why they’re in France is to do with Stanley Meyer. France is home to ITER, a nuclear fusion project — he may have allies there.’
‘Makes sense,’ Jarvis agreed. ‘There’s no other reason to go there unless Ethan wanted to be off that plane in case MJ–12 tracked him just like you have.’
‘It’s only a matter of time,’ Hellerman pointed out. ‘There are only so many flights out of Abu Dhabi each day, and those documents they were supplied with will only hold up so long. Once they’re identified as having travelled to Paris, MJ–12 will be able to pick up the trail right there and then, and they’ll likely be able to draw in assets on the ground that we cannot.’ ‘Can we get anybody to them from here?’ Jarvis asked.
‘You mean like friends of mine who live in Lyon?’ Hellerman replied with a grin. ‘Who I called, and who might have been able to find them and pass word from us?’
Jarvis’s jaw dropped open. ‘You’ve found them?’
‘They’re on a private jet out of Lyon — Saint — Exupery airport,’ Hellerman chortled in delight. ‘The flight plan’s filed and they’ll land in Virginia about three o’clock local time.’
‘Was the flight chartered?’
‘Private,’ Hellerman reported proudly, ‘using a payment chain that will take the feds days to follow up. If they’re looking for a digital trail, they won’t find it. All they can do is figure that Ethan and his companions will arrive in the USA on a flight from somewhere in France, and that’s a lot of flights to check through.’
‘Don’t think that they won’t do it,’ Jarvis cautioned. ‘They’ll put agents at all civilian fields on the east coast within range of that aircraft. We need to be there to spirit them away from any FBI intercept. What about Huck Seavers?’
‘Heading back from Saudi Arabia,’ Hellerman replied. ‘His crew filed a flight plan direct to Cincinnati. They’ll land somewhere behind our privately hired jet.’
‘What about the Saudis?’
The technician’s jubilant expression faltered slightly.
‘We’ve been monitoring the channels and it’s not looking good. The story of a militant attack on Saudi helicopters appears to have been accepted at face value by the media, but behind the scenes the Saudis are screaming for blood. All they care about is that their Apache was downed by a couple of American fugitives and they’re piling pressure on the administration to hand over those responsible.’
Jarvis winced. The events in the Kingdom had played directly into the Bureau’s hands, giving them every reason they needed to hunt Ethan down.
‘We need to figure out a way for them to disappear once they land in Virginia,’ Jarvis said.
‘Not much we can do for them,’ Hellerman said. ‘The jet’s flight plan is for Charlottesville. I guess we could change it at the last minute, but that might in itself raise a flag if the feds are watching incoming air traffic from Europe.’