war, he was Bonnet’s number two in Squad 70. Giraud invited him to Algiers for a sit-down. He got good and drunk one night and spilled the beans to de Gaulle and Giraud! Hundreds of years of secrecy, and this buffoon gets drunk and blows it. Their longevity, the tea, the reasons they’re so aggressive. Everything. So, after the war, de Gaulle remembers this, of course, and decides Ruac needs to be watched, to be studied by the best minds.’
Sara’s head seemed to be clearing. She stood straighter, her eyes were more focused. ‘And that’s what you do?’ she asked. There was a bite of anger to her tone.
Gatinois nodded. ‘Yes, for sixty-five years we’ve been studying the Ruac tea. It’s remarkable really, Professor Mallory, and a testament to modern science that in a very short time you were able to learn many of the features of the tea, things that took us decades because we had to wait for the science to catch up to our needs. So, for example, I believe Dr Prentice would have told you about the activity he found at these so-called longevity genes, the serotonin receptors, the other effects.’
‘And that’s why you killed Fred?’ she asked angrily.
‘Well, we didn’t really have a choice.’ He was casual about it, completely casual.
‘Christ!’ Luc exclaimed. ‘You blew up the lab in England! Over forty people were killed! This was a state- sponsored act of terror!’
Gatinois sighed. ‘I wouldn’t characterise it that way. We have a remit to protect France’s greatest secret. Our methods aren’t subject to review and clearance. Nothing is known higher up. Nothing is official. As long as we are absolutely discreet, all is well.’
Luc felt his fear mounting. This man was telling him too much. The implications were clear enough but still, his desire to know more pushed him on. ‘And you had Bonnet kill my people, and try to kill Sara and me in Cambridge.’
Gatinois laughed at that. ‘Did you hear that, Marolles! That’s a good one! No, Professor. Bonnet didn’t even know we existed. None of them did, except for Pelay here. Pelay was our man. Our informer. Giraud and de Gaulle turned him after the war, after they controlled the government. They gave him money. They gave him secret medals and all the status he never got under Bonnet’s thumb. They buttered him up good, and then they threatened him. They threatened to let Bonnet know he’d talked. He knew Bonnet would carve him up and feed him to the pigs. That was his greatest fear. We’ve used the same approach with the good doctor ever since. So Pelay’s been giving us information for sixty-five years. Every time one of the villagers saw him for a problem, we got a sample of their blood, their urine, their swabs, whatever. We got regular reports. That’s all. What Bonnet did – these murders – he did on his own.’
‘You let him!’ Sara screamed. ‘So you’re responsible too!’
Gatinois shrugged it off. ‘Maybe. In a legal sense, who knows? But this is never going to a court of law. What we do is very secret and very protected. It’s probably easier to get France’s nuclear launch codes! But, yes, we let Bonnet be Bonnet.’
Sara stiffened and leaped forward. Her slight body turned into a weapon, and letting loose a blood-curdling, ‘You fucking bastard!’ she closed the gap between herself and Gatinois, her sheet falling away, and naked she began clawing at his face, his eyes.
Gatinois was too caught off guard to defend himself well so Marolles pulled her off. Others subdued her while Marolles pointed his pistol at Luc and warned him to stay put.
Luc was stunned by Sara’s action, the way she was kicking and screaming at her subduers with wild abandon. ‘Don’t hurt her!’ he shouted.
Gatinois blotted a streak of blood on his cheek with a handkerchief. ‘You see, Professor. That’s a graphic example with one of the problems with the drug. It’s a delayed effect, maybe an hour or two after the high wears off. I’m told it’s the action on the 5-HT 2A receptors.’ He guffawed. ‘You know, this job has turned me into a scientist, what do you think, Marolles?’
His aide grunted and told the men to cuff her wrists and ankles, cover her back up and put her inside the car until she calmed down. She yelled and swore at them ferociously but they managed to remove her from their midst, all the while pointing rifles at Luc and threatening him not to intervene.
‘Good,’ Gatinois said. ‘Much quieter.’
‘You’ve gotten a drug out of the broth?’ Luc finally asked.
‘Not one. Three, actually. We’ve had them since the 1970s but, as I said, it’s taken until now to begin to understand the biological characteristics of the most important compound, R-422. These longevity genes, SIRT1 and FOXO3A were only recently discovered. There will undoubtedly be other important things scientists will come up with in the future. Eventually we’ll understand how 422 works. The other ones are easier, better-defined. The main ergot drug, R-27, makes you high as a kite. It’s quite the hallucinogen, really sends you on a trip. The drug R- 220, that’s an interesting one. It works on potency and libido. In fact, we had a bit of a scandal on that one in the late 1980s. We had an outside contractor working on the compound, a university chemist who didn’t have a clue where it came from – that’s the way we like to work – and he apparently passed some information about the chemical structure to some guy he knew at the pharmaceutical company, Pfizer. That, apparently, was how Viagra was invented, so I think we’ve given back to society, wouldn’t you say? But our drug, R-220, though it’s even stronger than Viagra, has a nasty side-effect. It shortens and paralyses the sperm tails, makes the men infertile.’
Luc nodded knowingly.
‘And this you were aware of?’ Gatinois asked.
‘Yes, I knew. From the rapes.’
‘Ah. But from our perspective, R-422 is the real gem. That’s what all the fuss is about. That’s what Unit 70 is about. Imagine! The genuine fountain of youth! Live for two hundred years! Three hundred! In good health! And where are the heart attacks? Where are the cancers? What can this do for mankind, eh? Think about it.’
‘But,’ Luc said emphatically.
‘Yes, but,’ Gatinois agreed. ‘That’s the problem. That’s why there’s secrecy. The violence, the aggression, the impulsivity. These are not trivial effects. The drug can turn a man into a wild animal, a killer if the circumstances are right. And what about other longterm effects on personality, the mind? With Pelay’s help, the people of Ruac have been our guinea pigs for sixty-five years. There’s a mountain of data to sort out. The epidemiologists call it a longitudinal study. But most importantly, we’ve been working very hard to get the scientists to modify the drug, to change its structure to retain the longevity effects and eliminate the serotonin effect. So far, no luck. You lose the rage, you lose the longevity. It’s more complicated than that but anyway, it’s how a layman under-stands it. So you see?’
‘I see that Sara and I have been inconvenient for you.’
‘Inconvenient. Yes, a good word, but somewhat understated,’ he said, waving the hand clutching the blood- stained handkerchief. ‘Your discovery of the cave was a disaster for us, and maybe for mankind. Can you understand this? These plants are everywhere. Anyone with a saucepan can make the tea. Can you imagine what would happen if thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people started taking the Ruac tea? For the sake of your little sliver of prehistory study, you wouldn’t want to bring chaos to the world, would you? Millions of stoned, licentious, violent characters, creating havoc? It’s a scene from a horror movie, no? So we kept it contained within Ruac. Imagine if the genie were out of the bottle for ever. No, it’s up to us to protect the world from this.’ His voice rose. ‘Once we’ve found a safe way to exploit R-422, then France will own it, France will control it and France will do what is right for mankind.’
Luc went silent.
Gatinois stooped over the detonator and pulled the broken wire through Bonnet’s dead fingers. ‘They gave you the tea tonight?’ he asked Luc.
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve shown no signs of it. Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Maybe we should study you too,’ Gatinois chuckled. He told one of his men to shine a torch on the detonator while he carefully inspected it.
‘What are you doing?’ Luc called at him.
Gatinois stood and rubbed the dirt off one of his knees. ‘It should work well. Bonnet had some men from the old days, good munitions men. If they said they could blow up the cliff, then they could blow up the cliff. We’ll see.’ He called one of his men forward by name. ‘Captain, get everyone back a few hundred metres and set off the
