spent decades and millions on reversing the process, having cosmetic surgeries and illegal organ transplants. However, it wasn’t his body that was letting him down. It was his mind.
He couldn’t accept his utter failure, and, because of that, he went through the motions of life in a daze.
It had been his daughter Heidi who had taken charge when they were still flying toward Turkey. She had told the pilot to alter their flight plan and had directed them to Zurich instead. There, she had drained several Responsivist bank accounts, converting the cash into stocks purchased by a dummy company she had the bank set up for her. She had understood that, with Eos destroyed, the authorities would arrest every high-ranking member of the organization, and her only chance to remain free was to go into hiding with her sister.
Cooper wanted to stay with them, but she said that he had loose ends to tie up back in the States, and since his Dr. Adam Jenner persona was a world-renowned critic of Responsivism he was above suspicion.
So he had returned home, mostly to empty a series of safe-deposit boxes in Los Angeles that the FBI didn’t know about. When he’d taxied past the big house in Beverly Hills, there was crime-scene tape draped like a garland along the perimeter fence and uniformed police with cruisers camped in the driveway.
The dream was well and truly over.
Greek authorities had closed the Responsivists’ compound in Corinth, and nations were kicking out Responsivist clinics all over the world. Even though there had been no mention in the media of the plot to sterilize half the planet’s population, the corruption charges filed against the group had caused a backlash that continued to reverberate. Famous members, like Donna Sky, were turning their backs on the faith, claiming they had been brainwashed in order to financially support the group.
In a fourteen-day span, Cooper’s lifetime achievement had been reduced to fodder for comics on late-night television. He closed up Jenner’s practice, happily telling the other psychologists who shared the office suite that his work was done and he was retiring, while, inside, he was dying by degrees. He put his house up for sale, instructing the broker to accept the first offer.
Rather than live in glory as the famed Dr. Lydell Cooper in a sustainable world, he was forced to retire to obscurity as Adam Jenner.
He was returning to his house the day before he was to fly to Brazil, which has a notoriously lax extradition treaty with the United States. Because of the crippling arthritis in his hands, he had replaced a normal lock-and-key entry with a push-button pad. He pressed the sequence and stepped inside, using his elbow to close the door behind him. A moving company had packed the few possessions he wanted to keep, while the rest was to be sold with the house.
He crossed the foyer and made for his study to check the latest news on his laptop. The heavy wooden door closed behind him when he entered. He turned. A stranger had been hiding behind it.
Had he been in a normal frame of mind, he would have demanded the person leave, but he just stood there mutely instead, staring at the man who had invaded his home.
“Dr. Jenner, I presume?”
“Yes. Who are you? What do you want?”
“I paid you a great deal of money to help a friend not too long ago.”
“I am retired now. All that is finished. Please leave.”
“And how do you feel about that?” the stranger asked. “Responsivism is dead. You won. You must feel vindicated.”
Cooper couldn’t bring himself to answer. His identities blurred in his mind. He didn’t know how to feel or act any longer.
“You know what?” the man continued. “I don’t think you feel good about it at all. In fact, I think you’re reeling inside because I know something that would surprise a lot of people.” Somehow, Cooper knew what was coming. He sat heavily on a couch, his artificially youthful face ashen.
“Even if you hadn’t been overheard bragging to Kovac on Eos Island, I think I would have figured it out.
You were the only person who could have betrayed us in Rome. We thought Kyle might have had an embedded radio tag, but now we know he didn’t. He had no idea where he was being taken, so there was no way he could get a warning out to Kovac to snatch him back.” Now that the truth was out, Cooper sat straighter on the sofa. “That’s right. I did make the call, getting Kovac to Rome and then telling him which hotel, once I had arrived and was left alone with that kid. You were behind the attack on Eos?”
The stranger nodded. “And we discovered the virus in the
“Don’t you understand that the world is doomed? I could have saved all of humanity.” The man laughed. “And do you know how many crackpots have been saying the world is doomed over the past couple hundred years? We were supposed to run out of food in the 1980s. We were supposed to run out of oil in the 1990s. The population was supposed to hit ten billion by the year 2000. Every one of these predictions was wrong. Heck, they wanted to close the U.S. Patent office in 1900 because everything that could be invented had been invented. I’ll let you in on a little secret: you can’t predict the future.”
“You’re wrong. I know what is coming. Anyone with half a brain can see it. Fifty years from now, civilization will be swept away in a tidal wave of violence, as nations realize they can’t support their populations. It will be anarchy on a biblical scale.”
“Funny you should mention that.” The man removed a pistol from behind his back. “I’ve always liked biblical justice. An eye for an eye, and all that.”
“You can’t kill me. Arrest me. Put me on trial.”
“And give you a stage to spout your demented ideas? I don’t think so.”
“Please!”
The gun spat. Cooper felt the impact, and when he moved to touch his neck he could feel something sticking in his flesh, but his clawlike hands lacked the dexterity to remove it.
Cabrillo watched for ten seconds as the tranquilizer from the dart gun coursed through Cooper’s body.
When Cooper’s eyes closed and he slumped over, Juan brought a radio to his lips. Moments later, a big ambulance pulled up the drive, and two paramedics burst out the back doors, pushing a gurney.
“Any problems?” Eddie asked, wheeling the stretcher into the study with Franklin Linclon.
“No, but after talking to him I feel like I need a shower. I’ve seen some loons in my life, but this one beats all.”
Linc gingerly lifted Cooper off the couch and set him on the gurney. As soon as Cabrillo found Cooper’s passport and a one-way ticket to Rio de Janeiro in a kitchen drawer, they rushed out of the house. A neighbor had come out of her house to see what was going on.
“He’s had a heart attack,” Juan told her, as he held open the ambulance doors so Linc could slide the gurney inside.
Forty-five minutes later, the ambulance arrived at LAX, and, ten hours after that, the Corporation’s Gulfsteam touched down at Gardermoen airport, thirty miles north of Oslo, Norway.
They had a brief reunion at an airport lounge with Jannike Dahl. She had permitted Eric Stone to escort her home. When Eric declined her invitation to show him the sights of Oslo, saying he had to return to the ship, Juan had taken him aside and explained that she wasn’t that interested in him seeing her home-town.
Eric had asked what she really wanted, and the Chairman had to explain it further. Red-faced with embarrassment and unbridled enthusiasm, Eric quickly accepted her offer.
It took another jet flight to Tromso, in the far north of the country, and a helicopter ride, to finally arrive at their destination. Cooper was kept sedated the entire time and was closely monitored by Julia Huxley.
The glacier sparkled in the bright light of a summer afternoon, glittering as though it was the finest lead crystal. Outside the valley, the temperature hovered in the mid-fifties, but on the ice it was just above freezing.
George Adams had flown them in on an MD-520N, the replacement for the little Robinson. This chopper was larger than the previous one, and required some modifications to the hangar elevator, but it was also much more powerful and faster. And because it vented engine exhaust through the tail, to counter the main rotor’s torque rather than rely on a second, smaller rotor, it was significantly more quiet.
The
