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‘You have overstepped the mark, Lady Morgan. Surely I am the true cause of all this peevishness?’

  Opening her parasol, Lady Morgan tilted her dismayed face away from him. Staring down at the torn grass—so carefully cultivated, so easily destroyed by a game—she realised with a jolt that the last remnants of affection between them, and all possibility of seduction, had evaporated. Feeling very old indeed, Lady Morgan looked around at the crowd, the young women vying for the attention of the handsome polo players. So much of her identity had been invested in this notion of eternal beauty: a masquerade she had maintained her whole life. For two decades she had used her lovers like an elixir, their youth inspiring her wit, their presence generating an allure to dress up an aging façade.

  Those who wavered she won over with gifts or the tantalising promise of social promotion. For those who were offspring of the merchant class, Lady Morgan offered an invaluable introduction into an elite circle that offered not just prestige but extraordinary professional opportunities.

  ‘Morgan’s Finishing School’ was the satirical moniker by which the young blades referred to the wealthy widow. An affair with her was an almost obligatory rite of passage, and most certainly an entry into the season and its ever-important business contacts. They may have ridiculed her in the clubs, but many of her former lovers still carried a secret appreciation for her passion, her ability to enrich their notion of culture—both the getting and cultivation of it, and, finally, for the core of sentimentality buried under her famous irony.

  Oh, ingrates, all of them! Furious, and profoundly saddened, Lady Morgan forced herself to wave at a passing acquaintance. How wrong I was to advise Lavinia Huntington to ignore her husband’s indulgences, she concluded, her fixed smile aching as she strove not to appear in the slightest part dejected.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ Hamish insisted, frustrated by her aloofness. ‘I will not have my good friend and his wife insulted.’

  Embarrassed at being confronted in a public place surrounded by her peers, many of whom would relish her discomfort, Lady Morgan hoped that her flushed face might pass as a reaction to the summer heat.

  ‘Mr Campbell, I will not tolerate such intimidation. Does the wife know about the true nature of your friendship with the Colonel?’

  ‘And I will not tolerate your attempts to manipulate me into an affection I do not feel. Good afternoon, Lady Morgan.’ He tipped his hat to her and walked away.

  On the other side of the field, Lady Gillingham lowered her binoculars.

  ‘It appears that dear Lady Morgan has lost the last of her flock,’ the stately dowager remarked to her younger companion, the recently widowed Lady Dove.

  ‘I have always thought it prudent to keep one’s paramours within the aristocracy,’ Lady Dove replied.

  ‘Indeed. One may expect a greater degree of discretion in the right circles. Not to mention cleanliness.’

  Squinting again through the binoculars, Lady Gillingham noted a minute breach in Lady Morgan’s composure, a slump of her shoulders that suggested an unexpected vulnerability. In the next instant, she was as before, gaily laughing and entirely ignoring Hamish Campbell and his companions. However, the fatal observation had been made.

  ‘It does seem that, finally, poor Frances has faltered,’ Lady Gillingham concluded with satisfaction.

  Lavinia immersed herself in a novel by George Sand as a distraction from the discomfort of the bumpy highway. The Huntingtons were returning from the polo match and had offered Hamish Campbell a place in their carriage. The three sat in absolute silence. Lavinia imagined herself as one of the author’s misunderstood heroines, noble in her pursuit of love over conventional expectation to marry for position and security. Surely there can be nothing more laudable, she concluded, looking across at the Colonel.

  The countryside rolled past in a series of tableaux. Lavinia, drawn from her book by her thoughts, stared out of the window. A farmer ploughed a muddy field; a group of men were busy raking straw into a stack, the dried grass thrown up like snow in a storm; a young girl herded a flock of pigs down a country lane, a terrier snapping at the creatures’ muddy trotters. Lavinia thought how Aidan would have enjoyed seeing the snorting animals.

  As they entered a village, the rutted lane became a cobblestoned road and Lavinia could hear the horses’ hooves clattering on the hard surface. They passed a Tudor inn that had probably stood there for the past four hundred years, the rim of its thatched roof almost buried in the wildflowers that grew in clusters around the building. Beside it stood the town hall, built of Georgian grey stone; next to that, two tenement-style houses of garish red brick, newly built, the scaffolding still jutting out like an awkward skeleton.

  A recently constructed railway station came next, and Lavinia guessed the tenement houses must be accommodation for the railway workers. Many of the villages on the outskirts of London were expanding, boosted by the influx of workers now able to commute on the new railway system.

  A duck flapped lazily across the glassy surface of the pond in a small green at the centre of the village. Soon, even this quintessentially English landmark might disappear, Lavinia observed.

  The landau pulled up at a railway crossing, where a sign proclaimed HALT in gleaming red paint. A moment later, the cry of a train whistle pierced the air and the locomotive steamed past, a silver-steel centaur that puffed and bellowed as it stretched relentlessly into the future.

  Lavinia watched the train passing, saw the children’s faces pressed against the glass, the heads of other passengers turning like pages in a book—an elderly matron, grief bowing her head beneath its black veil; four young soldiers grinning drunkenly; a lone adolescent boy dressed in a school uniform. Lavinia had wanted to travel to the polo match by steam train, she had wanted to feel the roar of this industrial revolution beneath her, but the Colonel considered such travel vulgar. The machine screeched again as it streamed away from them and their lives. Somehow, Lavinia felt less emancipated with its vanishing.

  Turning back to the carriage, she saw that Hamish Campbell’s foot was pressed against that of her husband. James was feigning sleep, his face resting against the leather upholstery. In that moment, catching Campbell’s glance at the older man, Lavinia’s worst fears about the nature of their friendship were confirmed.

  53

  Los Angeles, 2002

  JULIA SAT IN THE CAR MESMERISED by the traffic light. Lost in intense thought, the engine purring under her skin as she waited, the red traffic light as hypnotising as an errant sun.

  Years ago she’d learnt that the best way to trigger inspiration was never to search for it directly, but to look sideways. She’d tried daydreaming, running until all conscious thought had been burnt out of her head, writing the quandary down and leaving it by the side of the bed as she slept—anything to trick the mind into taking a lateral leap.

  As a child, Julia had done much of her musing in the back seat of her mother’s ’68 Mercedes. Every so often her mother would drive south from San Francisco, down the coastline of Big Sur, to escape the tedium of her job. She would bundle her daughter into the back of the car, along with a tent, an eiderdown, a flask of instant coffee, a portable TV (which they never ended up using) and a box of oranges picked from the tree in their yard. They would always start out late and it would be dusk before they hit the coastal road. This was the one part of the trip Julia really loved—leaning back, her face upside down as she watched the evening sky descend through the rear window, the stars and the moon streaming away almost as fast as they appeared; the cosmos, the infinite unknown, each galaxy embodying a million possibilities. Out there in the great unknown, she could be anyone, do anything. Aged seven, she’d seen the immense velvet night as a metaphor for her own future, which streaked forward as inevitably as the white stripe of freeway that disappeared, beat after beat, under the speeding car.

  A couple crossed the road at the lights. The man was tall with thick brown-blond hair and was wearing the same comfortable sporty
clothes Klaus might have chosen. He had his arm around the woman. She looked a couple of years younger than Julia, her long legs encased in tight black pants, expensive trainers on her feet, a loose duffle coat trimmed with fur around her shoulders. As they passed in front of the car, Julia could see that the woman was pregnant, well into her third trimester—the stage Julia would be at now if she hadn’t lost the baby.

  Absurdly it then occurred to her that a single freak event had sent her life into chaos—like an aberrant collision of particles. That would have been my life if it hadn’t been for that one day, she concluded. Fascinated, Julia couldn’t pull her eyes away from the woman. Only when the car behind hooted impatiently did she realise the lights had changed.

  She accelerated out onto the freeway. The road ahead widened into a clear panorama broken only by telegraph poles sprouting rhythmically across the terrain. Long dash, short dash, long dash—a Morse code of wooden posts. They jolted her back to the image of the stained DNA barcodes. What did her case studies all have in common? Dyslexia? Insomnia? Low levels of serotonin? Learning disabilities as children? She remembered some of the men had displayed problems with speech and math as children, but what did that prove? Some had bad skin, and many were tall, but how were all three linked? There must be one other factor she could search for that would be the clincher, the final piece in the puzzle.

  An eighteen-wheeler truck roared past in the next lane. A bumper sticker on the back, Forget the bull Ride the Cowboy, sat next to an old election sticker that read Eat Dick and Lick Bush. As Julia accelerated past the truck, she caught sight of the driver in her rear-vision mirror: a huge muscular tattooed character sporting a grey ponytail—the ultimate male. Ultimate male. The phrase repeated in Julia’s head. Men with Jacob syndrome—an extra Y chromosome, XYY—were usually tall, and often developed acne. Could it be possible that the extra Y chromosome was the missing factor? She picked up her mobile phone.

  ‘Gabriel, you know that missing factor you mentioned? I want you to test for Jacob syndrome.’

  The retired sergeant yanked the metal tag on the beer can, poured himself a glass, then filled one for Julia. He flicked away a fly and sat back in his plastic chair. The desert sun had shrunk his face into a bronzed mask of fine lines, and the grey stubble on his head was still shaved into an army buzz cut. They were sitting in his yard—at least, that was how Dwayne Cariton had described it. Drive out and we’ll have iced tea in my yard. Best backyard this side of the Mojave. It was a square of obsessively groomed lawn fenced in by wire. Beyond stretched the Mojave itself, miles and miles of red-brown scrub, behind which the blue hills of the desert loomed.

  Two planes stood in a small airfield just over the back fence: a Douglas A–1E and a Cessna L–19 Birddog, standard Vietnam issue. Their wheels disappearing into an iridescent strip of heat, they reminded Julia of tremulous dragonflies about to take off. A control tower—a glorified water tank—was situated to one side of the runway. Cariton’s Flying School was painted on the side in green and orange letters, now peeling and rusty. Cariton had established the school after his discharge from the army, shortly after the My Lai massacre.

  The sergeant scratched at the plastic strip taped across the vein where Julia had taken her blood sample. ‘Jesus, that needle hurt. Mother! Where’s those beer nuts?!’ he yelled at the top of his lungs, seemingly to no one in particular.

  For a moment, Julia wondered about his sanity and her safety—his file had indicated that he lived alone. But a minute later a Filipino woman, somewhere between thirty and fifty, appeared, silently placed a bowl of nuts next to the tape recorder sitting on the Formica table in front of them, then disappeared into the back of the house, which Julia now noticed was on wheels. Dwayne followed her gaze.

  ‘Yep, it was one of those ready-made houses they deliver to your vacant lot. Hell, when they rolled up with that thing, I thought, what the heck, I’ll keep it on the trailer base then I can disappear quickly. That was back in ’72. I needed to disappear back then.’

  He picked up a beer nut and threw it at a puppy dozing behind an empty chair.

  ‘Some of the men in the platoon couldn’t get through the day without being totally bombed out of their brains. Others, they just loved the frontline adrenaline. Then there were those who didn’t know who they were until they were actually fighting. Yeah, maybe that’s it. You just don’t know until you’re there, swept up in the smell of it. Man steps out of his rational mind in those times.’

  ‘And you had no nightmares, no episodes, flashbacks, psychosis, afterwards?’

  ‘Never. I sleep like a baby—did before, do now. People are just too fucking sensitive nowadays. Living is a dirty business, dying is dirtier.’

  ‘Most soldiers who went through what you did were pretty roughed up, emotionally and mentally. So that makes you unusual.’

  ‘Well, them’s refreshing words to someone who’s been regarded as a freak most of his life. The way I see it, there’s guys out there who are built for battle. They’re not crazy, they’re not psychopaths, they’re just natural warriors—warriors who crave the noble war. And you know what else, Professor Huntington, now, right now in these fucked-up times, our nation needs these men more than anything.’

  He threw another nut at the puppy.

  ‘I had a visitor the other day—son of an old friend of mine. Angry young gun, one of the D guys. Sniffing around like a dog looking for a bitch on heat, asking all kinds of questions—just like you, Professor. One thing’s for sure—if you do find this mutant gene thing, I reckon it’s gonna to be dynamite. Don’t fancy standing in your shoes, girl.’

  Gabriel stared down at the file. He had begun to see a correlation between some of the readings; it was just the whisper of an instinct but already he could feel that rattling excitement of discovery. It would be the flip side of the mutant gene, a positive way of utilising it. If he was correct, he imagined the commercial potential to be enormous, far more outreaching than merely genetically profiling potential combat soldiers. Sitting there at the desk, Gabriel envisaged surprising Julia with a whole proven hypothesis, executed independently of her; in secret, parallel to their primary research. How satisfying would that be? And how, if his hunch proved correct, he could demonstrate that he was her equal, that, despite their age difference he was able to match her, even challenge her, intellect. She would have to take him seriously as a lover then. Now if only he had someone he could test out his theory on, someone who believed in him.

  Remembering his conversation with Matt Leman a couple of months back at the conference, Gabriel booted up his computer and began to compose an email to the head of Xandox Pharmaceuticals’ Californian division.

  54

  BY THE TIME JULIA GOT THE blood sample back to the laboratory it was after hours, the night porter was on duty and the staff had gone home. The place was eerily empty.

  Placing Dwayne Cariton’s sample in the freezer, she closed the fridge. A noise in her office made her swing around—the light was still off but the door was now ajar. Looking around wildly, she picked up a scalpel then, feeling faintly ridiculous, tiptoed to the office.

  ‘I’m sorry if I scared you.’ The voice, somehow familiar, was a deep whisper in the dark. Trying to swallow her terror, Julia switched the light on. The office chair swivelled around.

  ‘Tom Donohue,’ the terror sounded out in her own voice.

  Still clutching the scalpel, she stared at the handsome tanned face. He smiled, the disarming smile of a sincere man—she didn’t lower the blade.

  ‘You’ve been briefed, I see.’

  ‘I have, and apparently you’re dangerous.’

  He reached into his jacket and pulled out a hand gun, which he placed on the desk between them. ‘So are you. I read the Afghanistan report.’

  ‘That was meant to be confidential.’

  ‘The military’s a promiscuous world. If you weren’t a scientist, they’d probably be trying to recruit you.’ He indicated the scalpe
l. ‘You planning to trim my toenails?’

  She lowered the blade. ‘It was you, wasn’t it, who broke in last night?’

  In lieu of an answer, he stood and walked over to the pinboard, ran his finger along its rim. ‘Kurt Moony, Winston Ramirez, Jack Lewis. I know some of these guys. Some of them I actually care about. How about you?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  He sat on the desk and began tapping it with his fingers: a rapid little drum roll. He turned back to the pinboard. ‘Psychopaths, cold killing machines or simply men lacking a piece of heart?’

  ‘You’ve got three minutes to convince me not to ring Smith-Royston,’ Julia said.

  ‘Nice guy; pity about the politics.’ He pulled out a cigarette packet. ‘What did they tell you about me? That I’d fallen out of the tree? Gone AWOL? Lost the grand design?’

  ‘Something like that. You can’t smoke in here.’

  He ignored her and lit up.

  ‘Well, I guess from their perspective it’s all true. Frankly, I’ve never felt more lucid.’

  ‘Okay, now it’s down to two minutes. Surprise me.’ She edged closer to the phone.

  He glanced at her, and for a moment he appeared fallible.

  ‘About a year ago, one of our junior diplomats went missing in São Paulo. Kidnapping is rife in that part of the world. Last year was particularly bad due to the national election. President Cardoso had problems—problems he called upon the US to help with. There was a village, a small Bakairi Indian outpost on the banks of the Parantinga River—we were led to believe a local drug lord had taken refuge there and was using it as a front for his operations. The junior diplomat who went missing—well, he’d been a little outspoken about this particular drug lord. Seems he’d had a kid brother who died of crack cocaine. So we got the intel he was there and worked up an extraction plan. Normally I craved those blacks ops—the more dangerous the better—but this one was different.’