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The woman who had visited the base with Henrikssen was also a mystery. He had finally obtained the visitor logs for the base but they hadn’t proved helpful. The log for the 26
^th
had shown only Henrikssen being admitted to meet with the base commander; there was no record of anyone else. It was possible that there had been an oversight but he thought not. The commander, or the sheriff, possibly the woman herself, had realized that someone was watching the base and steps had been taken to protect her identity. Which meant she had to be important. Was she Gant’s girlfriend, the woman Fitzpatrick had referred to in his message? But that made no sense. Why would the base commander go to the trouble of removing the woman’s name from the visitor log only to reveal it hours later to the world on the base’s website? Well, whoever she was, Henrikssen had to be communicating with her. He needed access to the sheriff’s telephone records. He would find her there.

But first he had to prepare for the Honduran’s arrival. The sun was already creeping over the mountain ridges to the east as he approached his destination. The facility was in the middle of nowhere, served only by a track that was impassable to all but the most capable of off-road vehicles. If anyone did happen to make it out this far all they would find was a high chain-link fence with a rusty chained and padlocked gate, surrounding a shabby single story construction, its windows boarded up, once-white walls brown from the desert dust, the paint on the remaining shutters faded and flaking.

He climbed down from the Land Rover and walked up to the perimeter. The site might look derelict but despite their appearance the gates and fence were well maintained and the locks oiled and sturdy. He took a key from his pocket and inserted it into the padlock. It turned easily, the lock clicked open. The gate was heavy but was mounted on rollers and Friedrichs barely noticed its weight as he slid it out of the way. He drove the Land Rover in, parking it out of sight in one of the outbuildings towards the rear of the compound. He walked back to close and lock the gate behind him.

It had been several years since his last visit and he took a moment to survey the compound. The main building comprised three levels, two of them underground. It housed a fully equipped surgical theatre and an intensive care unit capable of keeping up to half a dozen potential donors alive indefinitely while their blood and remaining organs could be harvested. There were three small outbuildings at the rear of the structure. The first, where he had parked the Land Rover, contained a large garage where vehicles could be stored out of sight. Two electricity generators capable of powering a small city block occupied the second.

The third housed a furnace for disposing of human remains.

22

ALISON
SAT
AT one of the lab benches, a stack of periodicals in front of her. It was early evening, already dark outside. She had been here since before seven that morning, as she had for each of the last three days.

The lab was empty and she had told herself it would be a perfect time to catch up on the reading she hadn’t found time for during the term. But she was finding it difficult to concentrate, unable to force her mind to focus on anything other than Gant. It had been four days since their meeting with Fitzpatrick at Fallon and still there had been no contact. After the second day she had begun to doubt her idea. Had the message been too vague, too cryptic? Surely Gant would recognize her name, would remember their meeting the previous October? But what if whoever else was looking for him found him first? They had already managed it once. Or perhaps he was already gone. If so it could be years before he resurfaced, assuming he ever did. What if he re-entered another branch of the military and ended up getting killed while on duty before she could find him?

Her head sank into her hands as she considered the prospect. How could she continue with her research, up until now her very life’s work, knowing that he was out there, almost certainly holding the key to all of the answers she had dedicated her life to finding. Without him the rest of her work suddenly seemed trivial, pointless. And to think
he
had originally approached
her
, had sought her out to discuss the incredible gift he had. And she had dismissed him. All of this could have been avoided if she had just kept an open mind.

She checked her watch. It was after six and she realized that she was hungry. She hadn’t gone out for lunch, afraid that he might choose that very moment to call. She would give him ten more minutes and then she would go home.

Half an hour later she was walking through the car park, deserted other than for her silver Honda Civic, sitting by itself under one of the tall metal lights in the far corner where she had left it that morning. She had just placed her bag on the hood and was starting to rummage around inside for the keys when something made her look up.

Standing on the other side of the car, just outside the pool of light cast by the lamp, was a young man. He had approached without a sound and was looking at her. For a split second his eyes shone, flashing luminescence in the darkness, but then he took a step closer into the light and it was gone. She let out a cry. Her bag slipped off the hood, spilling its contents on to the ground in the process.

The young man raised his hands slowly, but remained on the far side of the car.

‘I’m sorry Doctor Stone – I didn’t mean to startle you.’

It was the same accent she remembered from their first meeting - neutral, but with a slight twang. And now that he was in the light and she could see him properly she noticed again his eyes. All the photographs she had seen of him over the last few weeks had been black and white; she had almost forgotten how startlingly green they were. She found herself staring, momentarily unable to speak.

‘Can I help you with that?’

He nodded towards the contents of her bag, a few photocopied articles, a purse, the car keys she had been looking for, some lipstick – she wondered how long that had been hiding in there – now scattered on the ground, but made no attempt to come closer.

The initial shock over, Alison suddenly realized how relieved she was to see him. She walked around the car, ignoring the contents of her bag, and threw her arms around him.

‘Thank God. Thank God you came.’

A moment later she released him, starting to blush as she saw the confused look on his face. What was wrong with her?  She had been waiting for him to show up for days and when he did she had screamed at him and then – despite the fact that she hardly knew him – embraced him.

‘Oh look, I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m so happy you’ve shown up. I’ve just been sitting by myself all day in an empty lab waiting for you to show. I suspect I’ve gone a little stir crazy.’

‘Yes, I know.’

She gave him a quizzical look. Had he really just called her crazy?

‘I mean I know you’ve been waiting. Not about the crazy bit.’ He smiled. ‘Sorry, I had to be sure you weren’t being watched.’

He helped her gather her things from the ground, waiting while she shoved the last of the photocopies back into the bag before turning to him, tucking the stray strands of hair that had fallen in front of her face back behind her ears.

‘So Cody we need to talk – I have so many questions to ask you. Do you want to go back into the lab?’ She pointed in the direction she had come, adding ‘It’s that way’ immediately realizing that of course he already knew that. He had just told her that he had been watching her sitting by herself for three days. 

He hesitated. He was pretty sure that she wasn’t under surveillance yet but it was the first place anyone who had worked out Fitzpatrick’s message would look. And to make matters worse it was a really bad location; the lab building had limited exits and the campus was deserted. They’d have no chance against a team like the one that had picked him up at Salt Wells.

‘Are you hungry?’

Alison nodded enthusiastically. In all the excitement she had forgotten just how hungry she was.

‘Good, I’m starving. It’s hard keeping watch on someone who never goes for lunch.’ He smiled again. ‘How about we grab some food? Do you like Thai? I passed a place on my way up here, looked like it might be okay.’

Ten minutes later they had parked her car and were sitting at the back of the restaurant. He had excused himself for a moment when they first sat down and had headed off in the direction of the restrooms, feigning embarrassment when he had walked into the kitchens by mistake. She wondered if he had been checking the exits. She hadn’t noticed it when they had been seated but now she saw that he had chosen the booth carefully. He had let her sit first but had guided her towards the side closest the door so that when he sat opposite he had an unrestricted view of the room.

The restaurant was quiet and the owner, a plump Asian woman in her sixties, took their order. She returned a few moments later with a couple of Singhas before retreating into the kitchen.

Alison took a sip of the cold beer. She could contain herself no longer. She had thought a lot over the last few days about how she might get him to open up about his past, deciding that the best approach was to tell him what she already knew about him. And so she started talking, explaining quickly how she had been approached by the sheriff before Christmas when the lab technician at Mount Grant had found anomalies in the blood samples they had taken from him, how she had then started to piece together information about his background. When she told him how her mother had identified him from a photograph that had been taken with her father in Vietnam he interrupted her.

‘Wait, you’re Pete Stone’s daughter?’

She nodded, suddenly realizing that in all the excitement of finally meeting him she had forgotten that this man had known her father. She had so many questions to ask him about that as well.

‘How’s he doing?’

At that moment their food arrived, the owner filling their table with a variety of steaming dishes. The old woman smiled again as she refilled their glasses before taking the empty tray away.

‘My father died six years ago.’

He listened as Alison told him how, still only in his forties, her father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, how the disease had taken its toll on him, until in the end he hadn’t recognized either her or her mother. She explained how finding a cure for the disease – initially simply to try and save her father, but later so that no other family should have to suffer its horrors – had led her first to Johns Hopkins, then to Harvard and finally to Berkeley.

‘It’s why I needed to find you Cody. You may well hold the key to curing countless diseases like the one that killed him. I need to learn as much as I can. I know that you’ve spent your life trying to keep people from finding out about you. I know that you were planning to disappear again after what happened at Mount Grant. And I can see why you would want to do that, believe me I can. But you may have the potential to end suffering for thousands, even millions of people. For people like my father. There has to be a way that I can convince you to stay around and help me.’

She had spent the last four days alone in the lab rehearsing what she might say if he showed up, how she might prevent him from leaving again. She had intended to build up to her request slowly, but the shift in the conversation to her father had meant that she before she had fully realized it she was making her plea, and now it sounded to her like she was rushing him, asking too much from this man she had only just met.

He sat back, silent for a moment.

‘How long would you need me to stay?’

She had anticipated the question, but now she hesitated. Should she tell him something just to keep him here, at least for a while? Perhaps everything else would get resolved and then she might be able to convince him to stay longer.

‘I honestly can’t say. We could have a quick breakthrough but from my experience most of the progress tends to come in incremental steps, and takes time. I’ll stop lecturing, devote myself fully to research, work as hard as it takes, nights, weekends, whatever.’ She paused, realizing he needed a more precise answer. ‘Months. Maybe longer.’

‘It’s not safe for me here until I know more about the people who tried to kidnap me. Which means it also wouldn’t be safe for anyone around me. I need to think a little more about what I’m going to do next. For now why don’t you ask me what you need to know and I’ll try and answer your questions as fully as I can.’

Well at least he hadn’t refused. She knew she couldn’t push him any further and so she would just have to hope that he would reach the right decision if she left him to think about it. She only hoped she had said enough to convince him.

For the next few hours she quizzed him about his life and about the capabilities he seemed to possess. The facts she had pieced together from the internet and from speaking with Fitzpatrick were largely correct, but there were significant gaps in what she knew. He told her about how he had been found abandoned on the steps of an orphanage, how he had been taken in by a kitchen hand and named for a Catholic saint, Codratus, whose feast day it had been when he had been found. He had grown up in London between the wars, working at the docks after he left the orphanage, later enlisting with the British Army. He told her how he had found Jason Mitchell in the middle of a minefield on Omaha on the first morning of the D-Day landings, how he had been injured when Mitchell had stepped on a mine, and how their records must have become mixed up. He had been shipped back to the States, later to re-enlist, and had learned to fly jets. After he was shot down over North Korea he had made his way to the Philippines. He had spent several years there before returning to the United States as Luke Jackson. He told her about his time in Vietnam, and about his capture and the years he had spent moving between prisoner-of-war camps in Laos, about escaping to Thailand and returning once again to the United States, this time as Paul Kyle. He told her about joining the 160
^th
SOAR and what had happened in Mogadishu, and how his time with that unit had prompted him to return to the States to enlist with the Navy and complete the SEAL CSAR training.