‘No.’ Saul could feel a sour taste building in the back of his throat. ‘Danny disappeared, and Mitchell was frantic. He asked me to help try and find him. I was already doing undercover work, so had an idea how to track him down. To cut a long story short, I was the one who found him.’
Olivia had that faraway look that told Saul she was accessing public records on the incident. ‘He got himself involved with traffickers,’ she said, glancing back at Saul a moment later. It was a statement, not a question.
‘I eventually found him in an illegal gene-lab that had been set up in an abandoned apartment building. The traffickers Danny had been working for were all long gone when I discovered him.’
‘They killed him?’
‘That’s whatthe coroner’s report said.’ He could clearly picture Danny’s lifeless face, still twisted up in anger. ‘The lab had been developing customized embryos for unregulated off-world labour markets. Slaves, essentially.’
‘Jesus. And you’ve no idea why they killed him?’
Saul shook his head. ‘Let’s just say it was all pretty rough on Mitchell, so when he said he wanted me to go along on that jump, six months later, I didn’t really feel up to saying no.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s like you said. We were all moving in different circles by then.’
Saul stood up and gazed down at her. ‘Look, I’m sorry about the way things worked out for us both, but talking to you this way brings back too many bad memories. Deanna would never have gone to live on Galileo if it hadn’t been for us two.’
‘Saul—’
‘Please,’ he insisted, ‘just hurry the hell up and tell me whatever it is you came here to say, otherwise I’m gone.’
She crumpled slightly, and he could see lines around her eyes showing how much older she’d become since he’d last set eyes on her.
‘Just give me one minute.’ She patted his vacated stool.
He slid back down on to the seat with evident reluctance, keeping one foot planted on the floor. ‘Make it quick.’
‘Like I said, I’m here because of Jeff. We had a reconciliation, just in the last year or two.’
Saul couldn’t hide his surprise. ‘Seriously?’
‘I know.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Took both of us by surprise, too. Most of that time he’s been involved in some kind of off-world research that takes him away for weeks or even months at a stretch, so it’s not like we really get to see that much of each other.’ She licked her lips and took a deep breath. ‘The thing is, now he’s disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’
‘More than a week ago. I knew for a good long while that there was something on his mind, something to do with his work, but he wouldn’t talk about it.’
‘Maybe he
couldn’t
talk about it? The ASI had him working on a lot of high-security research projects, didn’t they?’
She shrugged. ‘I guess so. Thing is, we’d planned on spending some time together when he got back from his last trip out. Instead he cancelled everything and told me he was heading off somewhere on his own. He wouldn’t tell me whyt tI could tell that something bad had happened.’
Saul finally lifted his foot off the floor, and shifted himself into a more comfortable position. He was curious, despite himself. ‘And you haven’t heard from him since?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Here’s the thing, though. Two different people contacted me since he vanished, both desperate to find him. The way they talked made me sure he was in some kind of trouble.’
‘Olivia,’ he spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness, ‘I don’t mean to sound callous, but I’m not sure what any of this has to do with me.’
She gave him an angry look. ‘Jesus, Saul, he’s your friend.’
‘
Was
my friend, until I started sleeping with his ex-wife.’
She stared back at him in silence.
‘All right,’ he raised his hands, ‘I’m sorry. Don’t you have any idea where he might have gone?’
Olivia shook her head. ‘Before I tell you anything else, there’s something you need to see.’
Saul’s UP informed him that she had just sent him a video file.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Just take a look.’ She rolled her eyes.
Saul pushed his glass to one side, then tapped the four corners of an imaginary square on the bar counter with one finger. His contacts responded by projecting the clip she had sent within the confines of the same square.
It turned out to be something snatched from one of the main news feeds. He saw men in diving suits falling backwards off a boat into the waters of a lake, snow-capped hills dense with pine visible beyond the shore.
He glanced at Olivia, as the video clip remained locked to the counter. ‘What is this?’ he asked.
‘They dredged Jeff’s body out of that lake yesterday morning. We have a cabin up in Montana, where we used to spend our summers. There was a local news report saying it was suicide.’
Saul swallowed. ‘Shit, Olivia, I’m so sorry.’
‘No, don’t be. I don’t believe it.’
‘Don’t believe what?’
‘That it was suicide.’
He gave her an appraising stare.
‘I’m not out of my head, all right?’ she snapped. ‘It just . . . not something he would do.’
‘You can’t possibly know that, Olivia.’
Tendons stood out on her neck as she replied. ‘I
know
him, Saul, and I know he wouldn’t drown himself deliberately. I think somebody killed him.’
‘Does this have anything to do with the people that were looking for him? Who exactly were they?’
‘One was a guy called Dan Rush who’d worked with Jeff. The other was Mitch.’
Saul shook his head. ‘Mitch?’
‘Mitchell Stone.’ She peered at him like he’d lost his mind. ‘We were just talking about him, remember?’
Saul froze, with one hand clasped around his second Drambuie. He nodded slowly, his expression impassive.
‘He called you during the last couple of days? What day was it exactly?’
She thought for a moment. ‘It would have been the 29th.’
‘Of January?’
She nodded. ‘The other man, Rush, called me a few days before that.’
Four days ago
, Saul realized. ‘I need you to be sure about that.’
She gave him a reproachful glare. ‘Jesus, Saul, of course I’m sure.’
He picked up his drink and took his time with it in order to give himself some more room to think. Donohue and Sanders had told him about Mitchell’s supposed death on the 20th – which was more than a week ago.
‘This guy, Rush, you ever met him?’
‘Just once, not long after I and Jeff got back together. So I already knew they were colleagues. When he called, he told me Jeff was in some kind of trouble.’ She pushed her hair back from her face. ‘I had a feeling Jeff might have gone up to the cabin, but he never replied to my messages. I was going to drive up there to try and see if I could find him for myself, but then I heard about him on the news.’
‘About Mitchell,’ said Saul, ‘I don’t want to sound like I’m doubting you, but are you sure it was really him?’
She looked at him. ‘Why wouldn’t I be? Besides, I know his voice. Why?’
Saul thought for a moment. ‘Okay, let me ask you this. Is there a reason you’re talking to me, and not the police?’
&lsquI already spoke to them, soon as I heard about Jeff being dredged out of the lake. They said there was no evidence of foul play and they didn’t even sound very interested in what I had to say. In fact, they treated me,’ she said, with a touch of venom, ‘like they thought I was crazy.’
‘But did you explain to them that you thought he might have been in some kind of trouble?’
‘Sure, except as soon as I mentioned that he worked for ASI’s research wing, they said I had to talk to the ASI instead.’
‘And?’
She shrugged. ‘So I talked to them as well, and they gave me exactly the same kind of brush-off.’ She smiled uncertainly. ‘After that, I figured that if anyone was in a position to look into things, it would be you.’
Saul nodded and smiled to hide the tension gripping him like steel. If what Olivia was telling him was true, then not only had Hanover lied about Mitch being dead, but Donohue and Sanders had done so also.
He guessed Olivia must have misinterpreted his sudden silence as reluctance, as she reached out and laid a hand over his. ‘I know you think I’m out of my mind, Saul, but I’ve never been more sane. I know I can’t ask this of you lightly.’ She smiled again, and he realized her confidence in him was genuine.
If only you knew the mess I’ve been making of things
, he thought.
His mind whirred with possible connections. Mitchell had originally been a member of Hanover’s team, and Saul could see no direct connection between his reported death and the shipment hijack, but if he could be lied to about Mitchell’s death, what else might have been kept from him?
He thought back on the failures of the past several days – Jacob’s death, Hsiu-Chuan, Hanover – and felt the same anger that had been simmering inside him all throughout the long flight home start to rise up again like a hot tide. Donohue had used Galileo to bait him into volunteering for a risky mission, then discarded him without explanation as soon as he’d ceased to be of any use.
He’d find out why – whatever it took.
Saul reached out, touching two fingers to Olivia’s elbow. ‘I’ll check it out,’ he said, struggling to keep his voice level. ‘It’s the least I can do.’
Lakeside, Montana, 3 February 2235
Early the next morning, Saul caught a red-eye hopper to Montana, then fell asleep in the back of a hire car as it carried him towards Flathead Lake. By the time he woke again, cramped and hungry, mountains that had been a distant blue at the start of his journey now rose all around him, their grassy slopes dense with forest and spotted with clumps of snow.
He pulled in at an autocafé, less than fifty kilometres from his destination. Breakfast consisted of paste sandwiches and coffee with a faintly metallic taste, and he sat by the window, browsing local news feeds in case he could discover anything more about Jeff’s supposed suicide. Once he’d finished his coffee, he placed a call to the police station in Lakeside. He soon found himself talking with the sheriff there, a man by the name of Waldo Gibbs, who agreed to meet him when he arrived.
Just over an hour later, Saul pulled up outside the police station in Lakeside, a two-storey brick building with an open garage next door, crammed with trucks and cars built for the mountainous terrain. Gibbs stood waiting for him on the steps. Saul guessed he was in his mid-fifties, with a weather-beaten face beneath a fur-lined hat, and he looked like the type who preferred a life outdoors. Saul made sure to activate his UP so the sheriff could confirm his identity, as they shook hands.
‘Mr Dumont. I’m a little unclear why the ASI has been showing so much interest in Cairns. Did your boys forget something before they left?’
Saul kept his face impassive. He’d had no idea ASI agents had been involved in the investigation. ‘When exactly were they here?’
Gibbs squinted at him in the early afternoon sun. ‘Just this morning, but I’m afraid you’ve missed them. I’m sorry if that means you’ve had a wasted journey.’
‘I’m here to follow up on some things,’ Saul improvised. ‘Were you present when they pulled his body out of the lake?’
Gibbs nodded. ‘I was there all right, and I told your boys they had the wrong man, but they didn’t seem interested in listening to me. Now they’ve gone and put it out that Cairns is dead, when I know for a fact he ain’t.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘What I’m saying is, the man we dredged out of that lake was not Jeff Cairns. But, the way you guys act, it’s like you don’t give a damn.’
‘Then . . . in that case, who was it?’
Gibbs led him round one side of the station to a one-storey extension at the rear. ‘This is our morgue,’ he explained. ‘You wouldn’t think we’d need one this big for a town this small, but our catchment area covers a good chunk of the Rockies. If somebody’s got a body needs putting on ice, they either fly ’em in or drive ’em here.’ Gibbs pushed his way through a swing-door, and Saul followed him inside. ‘If a pathologist needs to see them, then they go on to Miles City.’
Saul noticed a lab assistant sitting at a live-desk. ‘How did you know for sure it wasn’t Jeff Cairns?’
‘We didn’t know who the hell he was, when we pulled him outrsquo; said Gibbs. ‘He was wearing contacts, but they’ve got some kind of heavy-duty encryption on them that we can’t break.’
‘You still have them?’
‘Nope.’ Gibbs shook his head. ‘ASI took them. You’re lucky you got here when you did. They told us to cremate the body straight away. As it happens, it’s still waiting to be picked up.’
Gibbs stepped over to a wall of metal drawers and pulled one open. Saul stepped up alongside him and watched as the policeman pulled the sheet back off the corpse contained within.
Saul found himself staring down at Sanders, Donohue’s partner. One side of his skull had been caved in.