‘I think that they want to talk,’ Ethan said cautiously.
Lopez shot him an incredulous look. ‘About what? How many ways they can ventilate us all and leave no trace of their ever being here? Fun chat.’
‘They’d have opened fire by now,’ Ethan said as he watched the STS troops. ‘They’re waiting for us.’
Ethan reached for his door handle and then felt Lopez’s hand on his forearm. ‘You go out there, you could become a hostage.’
Ethan saw a look of genuine concern on her face and it warmed him even in the cold air, the memory of the closeness of their comradery in Chicago returning to him once more. ‘We’re all out of plays here, Nicola. All we have is negotiation. They don’t need us dead, they need what’s in the back of this truck.’
‘No way,’ Lucy shot back. ‘We can’t hand this over. If we give up now, Beth won’t survive.’
‘And we can’t help her either if we’re dead,’ Ethan pointed out.
Lucy did not respond, and as if in a tantrum she turned her back on Ethan and clambered over the rear seats of the vehicle and into the back alongside the mummy. Ethan opened the door of the vehicle and climbed out. The bitter wind whipped snow around him like a tornado, and he could hear the crackling of the flames that snapped this way and that around the burning vehicles nearby. He slammed the door of the vehicle shut and then began walking slowly toward the tall man and his soldiers.
Beside him, he glimpsed Lopez shut her door and walk alongside Ethan.
‘Couldn’t help yourself?’ Ethan asked as they walked.
‘I’ve got Yuri’s pistol,’ Lopez replied. ‘If they start shooting, I’ll be damned if I won’t take at least one of them with me. Preferably Devlin.’
Ethan glanced down at Lopez but said nothing further as they walked. Closer to the vehicles, Ethan could see the bodies of the occupants burning, blackened by flames in their seats or scattered across the road. One of the STS soldiers was cradling a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on his shoulder, aimed now directly at the vehicle Ethan had arrived in. One false move, he thought as he approached the tall man in their centre, and Lucy and Jarvis would be fried in an instant.
‘Ethan Warner,’ the tall man greeted him.
His voice was deep and resonant, carrying even above the bitter wind rumbling across the plains. He watched Ethan without emotion, awaiting a response.
‘Who are you?’ Ethan asked.
‘I’m your salvation,’ the man replied. ‘Or your doom. It all depends on what you do next.’
‘Vladimir Polkov is dead,’ Ethan said, ‘and so is his son. The people with me don’t represent any threat to you.’
‘No,’ the man agreed. ‘But what they now possess does. We picked up the distress message from your associate, Jarvis. I suspect that the Intelligence Director will by now have been informed of the existence of the same message and will be amassing an exfil’ operation as we speak. I and my men will be long gone by the time they arrive. What happens to you depends on how much you all enjoy being alive.’
Ethan glanced at the soldiers behind this enigmatic, threatening man, and recognised the features of the troops who had ambushed them days before in Cambodia.
‘How have you tracked us all this way out here?’ he asked conversationally.
‘Good luck and charm,’ the man replied.
‘What do you want?’
‘The remains that your team excavated from the mountain.’
‘The life of a young girl depends on Lucy Morgan’s extraction of genetic material from those remains,’ Ethan replied.
‘I am aware of that.’
Ethan squinted in the gusting snow. Although the man’s expression had not faltered, Ethan felt sure that he could detect the slightest tremor of regret in his tone.
‘Then let the remains go,’ Ethan said. ‘They mean nothing to you personally. They’re just bones.’
‘They’re bones that could cause untold distress to millions of people,’ the man replied. ‘They could unseat governments, cause widespread civil unrest and religious conflict, shift the very nature of what it means to us to be human.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Ethan said. ‘The reverse could be true. Nobody knows what will happen, only that it’s going to happen one day, that people will learn the truth. The longer people like you hide them from it, the harder it will become to adjust to the new world it will create, both for them and for Majestic Twelve.’
The man’s eyes widened at the mention of the name. ‘Such things are not for us to decide. Your lives, Mr Warner, in return for those remains. There will be no further debate.’
Above the whistling gale Ethan heard the STS troops shift position, preparing to fire should he refuse. Ethan sighed and looked behind him, then looked at Lopez and nodded.
He stood and waited as Lopez returned to the truck and moved to its rear to unload the mummified remains. He saw Lucy Morgan clamber out of the truck with the mummy bundled in her arms, as though it were a new born swathed against the bitter chill.
‘You’re taking a life,’ Ethan reminded the man, hopeful that he might yet reveal some meagre shred of humanity.
‘Or saving many more,’ the man replied without emotion. ‘This has been the way of things for many, many years, and will be for many more to come.’
Ethan said nothing more as Lopez accompanied Lucy Morgan to his side. Lucy set the mummy down on the ground, the solid frozen remains sitting on the snow without support, and then she walked past Ethan and straight up to the towering man before them.
‘You’re the man behind all of this?’ she demanded.
‘The latest in a long line,’ the man replied, his dark eyes searching Lucy’s. ‘Believe me, it’s nothing personal.’
‘If I could, if I were cold-hearted enough,’ Lucy hissed, ‘I swear I would kill you right here and now.’
The man smiled with his eyes only, and from his pocket retrieved a small photograph. Ethan spotted a woman he recognised in the image, Rachel Morgan, Lucy’s mother.
‘If I were cold-hearted enough,’ the man replied, ‘I would already have abducted your mother and brought her here at gunpoint. I give you then chance now to avoid any further bloodshed, and hand over the remains.’
Lucy stood for a long moment as she looked away from her mother’s image and up into the man’s eyes, and then she handed him a small image. The man looked down, and from his vantage point Ethan could just make out the photograph of Bethany that Lucy had shown him so long ago in his cottage in Scotland. Lucy’s words to the man reached Ethan as a faint whisper on the wind.
‘Yuri Polkov didn’t believe in god,’ she said. ‘Neither do I, and yet we’re a world apart in our humanity. Congratulations, you’re the third non-human being I’ve found on this planet in my career.’
Lucy turned her back to the man and stalked back toward the vehicle. Lopez cast him a last glance and joined her, leaving Ethan standing before him.
‘You’re only delaying the inevitable,’ Ethan repeated.
The man nodded as he turned away. ‘For as long as it takes.’
Ethan stood before the flaming wreckage as the STS team stayed in position, the tall man walking away between the twisted, burning metal and then waving a single gesture at the team’s commanding officer.
The soldiers withdrew, and behind the wreckage Ethan glimpsed a pair of large Black Hawk helicopters, futuristic in shape, clad in modern black radar-absorbent panels. Their engines were already turning as the man climbed aboard one of them, his soldiers following, two of them carrying the mummy.