Origin (21 page)

Jacobs sighed inwardly. So Lowell really did have something after all; it just wasn’t the most important thing he could have found, and Jacobs actually found himself relaxing slightly.

‘What do you mean?’ he said at length.

‘What do I mean?’ Lowell said, stifling a laugh. ‘I mean these eleven deaths –
mysterious
deaths – all occurred to people who had recently attended a Bilderberg Group meeting.’

‘And?’ Jacobs asked, sure that Lowell must have more to go on than that.

‘
And
, they are deaths that have all occurred on your watch as chairman of the group.’

It was Jacobs’ turn to laugh. ‘Eleven people die after meetings at which I presided? Harvey, I have been chairman of the group for twelve years, and with an average attendance of one hundred and twenty, that is – what? – between fourteen and fifteen hundred people. Eleven people is—’

‘Zero point seven six per cent,’ Lowell interrupted. ‘Or a death rate of seven point six per thousand, but as they all died within twenty-two days of the meetings, this equates to a death rate of one hundred and twenty-six point one per thousand per year, which is
twelve times
higher than the national average. How do you explain that?’

‘I’m not sure I have to, do I?’ Jacobs asked mildly.

Lowell’s nostrils flared. ‘Do you know the death rate for people attending Bilderberg meetings before you took over? It was
lower
than the national average, which is what you would expect given the wealth of the attendees and their easier access to advanced medical facilities. So what we have is a
twentyfold
increase in the death rate of attendees since you took over, a rate that has been pretty much steady for the twelve years you have been in charge.’

‘I’m still waiting for the part where you tell me what you’re doing here,’ Jacobs said offhandedly.

Lowell slammed his fist down on the table. ‘Dammit, you know exactly what I’m talking about! You’re running the Bilderberg Group like a recruitment centre, we all know that. Those little private meetings, we all know you’re interviewing for something. And maybe some people you choose, when they realize what it is you’re offering, they just hold their hands up and say, “Hell, no!” And then what do you do?’ Lowell slammed his fist down on the table again. ‘Kill them!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Just like that!’

Jacobs was silent for a time, then started chuckling to himself. ‘I’m still waiting for the evidence you possess, besides some dubious statistical anomalies. Croaker died of a heart attack, Schliesser was hit by a car, Ostrawski had a brain aneurism, the list goes on, all certified by doctors, nothing untoward ever suggested or implied. Suspicious? I’ll give you that. Solid, as in court-of-law solid?’ He smiled again. ‘I don’t think so.’

Lowell sat back in his chair and smiled his own wide, wicked smile. ‘Stephen, I think you have me all wrong,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to arrest you.’

Jacobs’ eyes narrowed, suspecting what the man really wanted. ‘What
do
you want, Harvey?’ he asked quietly.

‘I want in,’ Lowell said with confidence. ‘Whatever your little scheme is, I want a part of it. And if you don’t let me in, I’ll do my best to bring it all crashing down around you.’

What the hell?
In the cupboard below the study, Adams had positioned himself on the uppermost shelf, his ear to the ceiling, senses strained to the maximum as the conversation filtered down through the old house’s woodwork.

The Director of the Secret Service, Harvey Lowell, was asking to be brought into Jacobs’ inner circle, become part of the project.

Was he serious?
Adams couldn’t believe it. Was there nothing people like this would stop at when it came to increasing their power, wealth and status? Adams sighed; of course there wasn’t, he knew that about as well as he knew anything.

He listened harder; if Lowell was asking to be let in, and Jacobs capitulated, then he might just be able to learn what the hell this thing was all about.

‘What makes you think I’m going to tell you anything?’ Jacobs said, as he sipped thoughtfully at his brandy glass. ‘Maybe you’re just fishing, hoping I’m going to incriminate myself.’

‘Maybe I am,’ Lowell said evenly. ‘But then it would just be my word against yours, wouldn’t it? You can have me swept for a wire if you want.’

Jacobs looked at his glass for several moments, then pressed the intercom on his desk.

‘Yes, sir?’ Jones’ voice came through, loud and clear.

‘Wesley, get Eldridge in here,’ Jacobs ordered.

Then both men rested back in their seats, looking at one another, each one trying to assess the other, weigh up their character, their willpower, their internal resources.

The spell was broken moments later by a knock on the door. ‘Come in,’ Jacobs said, and he looked over Lowell’s shoulder as Flynn Eldridge entered the room.

‘Check Mr Lowell for a wire, would you, please?’ Jacobs asked him.

Eldridge nodded his head, and asked Lowell to rise from his chair. He then passed an electronic sensor over the man’s body, before giving him a thorough physical check.

Halfway through the check, Jacobs managed to catch Eldridge’s eye while Lowell’s back was turned. He blinked twice, clearly, and then gave a coded signal with the fingers of one hand.

Eldridge recognized the order immediately, and blinked his own eyes once in confirmation.

He finished the search, thanked Lowell and turned back to Jacobs. ‘He’s clean,’ he said, before being dismissed by Jacobs.

Once the door had closed behind Eldridge with an audible click, Lowell turned to Jacobs, all business. ‘Satisfied?’ he asked.

Jacobs shrugged his shoulders. ‘I suppose so. What now?’

‘Now,’ Lowell said happily, ‘tell me everything.’

‘The Secret Service?’ Lynn asked, wondering what it could possibly mean.

‘John’s confirmed the license plates,’ replied Thomas. ‘Looks like the director himself has gone to pay Jacobs a visit. Our guys watching Kern have also said that his phone has been going crazy for the past half-hour, so we can probably assume it’s an unannounced visit, and Jacobs or his staff have been trying to contact Kern to find out what the hell is going on. And according to our guys, Kern is flapping himself, knows nothing about it.’

‘Do you think the Secret Service have been working the same angles as us? Do you think they’ve found out what’s been going on?’

‘Who knows?’ Thomas replied. ‘But if that’s the case, maybe they’ll do our job for us.’

J
ACOBS FINISHED ONE
glass of brandy, poured himself another and drank half of it before he leant back in his chair and smiled at Lowell.

‘You want to know what’s going on?’ he asked.

Lowell leant forward, his glare intense. ‘I
demand
to know.’

Jacobs sighed resignedly, nodded his head, and motioned to the metal cube in the corner of the room. ‘We used to have to contact them through all manner of complex apparatus. Our questions took weeks to get to them, and their answers the same to return. And now we can communicate just by using that box there.’

‘“They”?’ Lowell asked, a look of scepticism writ plain across his aquiline features. ‘And just who in the hell are “they”?’

Jacobs smiled charmingly. ‘You’ve heard of Roswell, of course.’

‘Roswell?’ Lowell asked, unbelieving. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘July the eighth, nineteen forty-seven,’ Jacobs began, almost as if Lowell wasn’t there. ‘Roswell, New Mexico. Walter Haut, the Public Information Officer for Roswell Army Air Field, made a press release announcing that the 509th Bomb Group had recovered a crashed “flying disc” from a nearby ranch. It was later claimed that the debris recovered from the crash site was in fact from a highly classified project known as “Mogul”, a high-altitude surveillance balloon that was designed to spy on Soviet nuclear weapons tests. But the original story was in fact true. The wreckage was indeed from a flying disc, of unknown origin. Unfortunately the pilots died in the crash, but we have established contact since, aided by the technology we recovered.’

Lowell looked stunned, still not sure whether to believe a single word of what he was hearing. ‘But contact with
who
?’ he persisted.

Jacobs gestured at the box behind Lowell. ‘Why don’t you ask them yourself?’

Beneath the office, Adams tried to ignore the other sounds he was picking up from around the house, important though they were, and did his best to concentrate on the sounds above.

It looked as if Jacobs was about to open communications with whoever he was working with – or maybe even working
for
– and Adams hoped to finally learn what was going on. He pressed his ear to the thin fibreboard ceiling panel, and strained to his utmost.

‘Who . . . who are you?’ Adams heard Harvey Lowell, the Director of the US Secret Service, say uncertainly.

Adams waited for the answer but was rewarded with silence. He was concentrating so hard on listening he could even pick up what he took to be the men’s breathing – Jacobs’ deep and rhythmic, Lowell’s excited and nervous. But still no answer.

‘What is this?’ Lowell said next, sounding shocked.

‘That’s the way the box works,’ Jacobs answered. ‘Just let it happen.’

The box?
Adams wondered.
What the hell is he talking about?

‘OK,’ Lowell said next, determination in his voice. ‘Can you tell me what is going on?’

Again Adams tried to listen to the answer but could hear nothing, just the breathing. And Lowell’s breathing was rapidly increasing. Adams wondered what it was he could be hearing.

‘It . . . It can’t be true!’ Lowell stammered.

‘Oh, but it is, my friend,’ Jacobs assured him. ‘And you’ve not even heard the best of it yet.’ His tone changed, as if he was now speaking to someone else. ‘Why don’t you tell him what is going to happen?’

Again there was silence, and again Adams wondered not just what the two men were hearing in the room above but how they were hearing it. What was the box they had? Surely it wasn’t as simple as some sort of telecommunications device – Lowell certainly wouldn’t have been impressed with anything so mundane. Was it some sort of alien technology? Jacobs’s talk of Roswell, and the recovered wreckage of a flying disc, would certainly hint at such a possibility, and at this point Adams was ready to believe anything.

‘You’re . . . You’re crazy!’ Lowell shouted, and the fear and horror in his voice were clear. ‘You can’t do this! You can’t!’

‘Harvey, this is why you weren’t selected at the last meeting. We decided you would never approve of the plan. You’re simply not strong enough.’

‘Strong?’ Lowell said, his voice regaining some of its earlier composure. ‘This isn’t strength, Stephen. It’s genocide.’

‘And that doesn’t take strength?’ Jacobs shot back. ‘Something like this takes more strength than you would believe possible.’

Genocide?
Adams’ head was spinning.

‘It doesn’t matter any more anyway,’ Lowell said. ‘I’m gonna shut you down. I’m gonna shut it all down, and I don’t care who your friends are or where they come from. I’m going straight to the president, your secret little project in Europe is
not
going to be operational next week, and those friends of yours are never going to set foot here. And you and all your Bilderberg cronies are going to jail for a
very
long time.’

There was a pause, and then Adams heard Jacobs chuckle.

‘Oh, you think this is funny?’ Lowell asked. ‘My men are all over this place, and you’re all under arrest as of right now.’

Jacobs chuckled again, and Lowell changed his tone, sounding as if he was now talking into a microphone. ‘Jenkins, start rounding them up,’ he said with renewed vigour. ‘We’re shutting this place down.’ There was a pause. ‘Jenkins?’ he asked again, anxiously.

Still Jacobs was chuckling, and the noises Adams had tried to drown out from the other areas of the house all started to drop into place.

‘Fredriks?’ Lowell asked next. ‘Fielding?’ His voice snapped back to Jacobs. ‘Damn you, what’s happened to them?’

‘They’re dead, Harvey. Their fate was sealed the moment you brought them here.
You
had a chance, though. If you’d accepted the vision, you could have joined us. You could have been one of us.’

‘Hey,’ Lowell said in a placatory tone, ‘let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Stephen. We can negotiate, right? I mean, that was then, and this is now, right? It’s not too late. I can still join you. You know I can be useful. You know that, right?’

‘No, Harvey, I don’t. But why don’t I ask my friend?’ he said reasonably. ‘What do you think?’ he asked, and Adams could envision him directing his question to the mysterious box.

‘Well,’ Jacobs said moments later, ‘that seems pretty clear, doesn’t it?’

‘No!’ Lowell yelled, and Adams heard him pushing his chair backwards, moving quickly, fearfully. ‘No!’

And then Adams heard the loud, concussive blasts of three 9mm rounds fired from a semi-automatic handgun, and the heavy thud as Lowell’s dead body hit the floor above him.

J
ACOBS STARED DOWN
at the dead body of Lowell, lying bleeding on his study floor. It had been unfortunate but necessary.

‘Why did you contact us?’ The voice entered Jacobs’ mind almost painfully. ‘You could have dealt with this yourself. It was unnecessary to give him details.’

‘On the contrary. We felt we could use him on our team before. He was a good man, we just felt he wouldn’t go along with it. But then he came here,
demanding
to be a part of it. It was worth finding out.’
Especially as I still need to find one more person anyway
, Jacobs didn’t say.

‘Just so long as it does not interfere with our schedule.’

‘It will not,’ Jacobs promised. He had already decided what to do with the bodies of Lowell and his men. ‘We will meet in person within the week, I promise you.’

‘What the hell’s going on over there?’ Lynn asked, startled by the muted gunfire coming from the other side of the woods.