People, he’d already noticed, were giving him a wide berth. He could imagine what he must look like, drenched in blood, mud and sweat. What would they all think, he wondered, if they realized he was trying to take away the one shred of hope they were all desperately clinging to?
Hauling himself upright, he started walking again, wondering where the hell he was going to lay hands on some food. He was still running on adrenalin after his encounter with Donohue, but at some point soon he was going to have to eat.
As it turned out, he waited only a few minutes before Olivia got back to him.
‘Send me your coordinates,’ she told him briskly. ‘I need to know exactly where you are right now.’
Saul did as requested. ‘It’s going to be a lot harder than I thought to get out of here,’ he told her. ‘Every car I come across is either burned out or a total wreck. But I can see what looks like a medical drop zone just south of here, with manned choppers landing and taking off. There might be some chance of swinging a flight back to Orlando, or to somewhere else I can get to Arizona from.’
‘Stay put for now,’ she advised. ‘I’ve got hold of the names of some senior staff who’re cleared to carry EDP codes.’
‘I’m impressed,’ he remarked sincerely.
‘What can I say, I’m resourceful. But under any other circumstances I’d be facing about six life sentences right now. Is that impressive enough for you?’
‘I guess it is. So, who’s on your list?’
‘Turns out one of the people you want is holed up in a hotel near the Array. Place called the Dorican. You know it?’
Saul stared over at a row of hotels a couple of kilometres beyond the medical drop zone. ‘I see it. What’s his name?’
‘Constantin Hanover.’
Saul laughed. ‘You’re shitting me.’
‘You know him?’
‘You could say that. I wonder what he’s doing there?’
‘Go ask him yourself. Maybe he’s waiting to be evacuated. Saul, just to be clear on one thing. I don’t know that he actually has the codes you need, only that he’s authorized to carry them. And, even then, I don’t know how the hell you’re going to persuade him to reveal them to you.’
‘I guess I’ll have to rely on my natural charm and powers of persuasion.’
‘Now I really feel sorry for him. How long before you can make it here to Arizona, do you think?’
‘No idea.’ Saul stared at the drop zone with longing. ‘But it’s going to have to wait until I’ve spoken to Hanover.’
‘Fine.’ He heard her sigh. ‘They’re going to try and hold off one of the launches until you get here, but there’s only so long they’ll be prepared to wait.’
‘I understand.’
‘Good luck, Saul. But, before you go, I want to ask you something.’
‘Fire away.’
‘What made you ask about Mitchell?’
Saul started walking towards the group of hotels. ‘A man named Donohue was trying to tell me something about him.’
‘Tell you what?’
‘That’s the thing, I don’t know. We got interrupted before he could finish.’
‘This isn’t making a great deal of sense,’ she said.
‘Right before you tracked me down at Harry’s, I was helping to track down an ASI shipment hijacked out of Florida. According to Donohue, it was loaded with Founder artefacts, but it wound up sinking to the bottom of the Pacific at the exact same location the first of the growths appeared.’
‘I remember hearing about a hijack on the news, but I’d no idea they were in any way connected.’
‘Nobody did, at least not then. But I think Donohue was trying to tell me that the plane going down, when it did, was connected with Mitchell in some way. What that connection might be, I can’t even begin to guess.’
‘But you think there’s something in that?’
‘After the past couple of days, Olivia, I’m prepared to believe pretty much anything.’ He hesitated. ‘This means I’m going to need to ask you for at least one thing more.’
‘What exactly?’
‘That’s kid of hard to define,’ he admitted. ‘I thought if there was anything significant, then maybe it would be buried in the ASI’s own databases.’
‘You’re asking me to break into their records
