VIABLE (16 page)

Alison sat back in her chair, suddenly realizing that she was angry with Jerome Bryant. To think what could have been learned if he had just read the signs, if he had realized the potential that the man had presented before it was too late. With that knowledge, and another seventy years to develop it, who knows what could have been achieved for her father? 

She forced herself to return to the problem at hand. She felt sure now that Codratus Doyle was in some way linked to Mitchell, Jackson and Gant. But she had no proof – the article hadn’t contained a photograph of the man that she could compare. She noticed for the first time that it was turning dark outside. She checked her watch. It was already almost four o’clock. She had spent most of the afternoon in the internet café; she should really finish up and get back to her mother. She sent the article to her hotmail account. She was about to begin composing an email to the sheriff when she realized there was one more search she should perform. Returning to the search page she typed
Codratus Doyle
into the text field and hit Enter.

This time there were only nine results. The first two were for the article she had just read. The third referred to a Catholic saint who had been abandoned as a child and had some power over wild beasts, the next two hits variations of the same nonsense. She clicked on the sixth entry, which took her to a website
www.victoriacross.co.uk
. The site contained details of all recipients of the Victoria Cross, which the homepage explained was the highest military decoration awarded for valor in the face of the enemy to members of the British armed forces. She clicked the site index. Following a link to a list of all the holders of the medal, she scrolled down to the following entry:

DOYLE, Codratus (reg No. 584).

Trooper, 1 Special Air Service

Gazetted on 17th August, 1944

Born 10 March, 1920 at Stockwell, South London

Enlisted 17 July 1941

Died 6
^th
June 1944, Normandy France.

Memorial not known

Digest of Citation reads:

On the night of 5
^th
June 1944 SAS Trooper Doyle with SAS Trooper Graeme Lyons were parachuted behind enemy lines in Normandy, France as part of Operation Titanic, a mission to divert the enemy’s attention from the Allied landings the following morning. Having completed their mission both men made their way to the site of the landings where SAS Trooper Doyle single-handedly attacked a German machine gun position which was firing on Allied forces attempting to establish a beachhead, displaying the utmost gallantry. He perished shortly afterwards while attempting to cross a mined area on the same beach. It was through his heroism and resource that the beach was secured and that Allied casualties were not heavier.

Additional information: VC awarded posthumously. No known next of kin.

Beneath the entry was a black and white photograph showing two men, both in uniform, standing side by side outside a wooden barracks. The text beneath the image explained that the photograph had been taken while the men were undergoing Commando training at Achnacarry Castle in the Western Highlands of Scotland in 1941. According to the photograph the man on the right was Graeme ‘Jock’ Lyons.

The man on the left was Gant.

Alison stared at the screen. She was still unsure what this meant, but she no longer harbored even the slightest doubt that the resemblance between the men was more than coincidental. Had Doyle provided the DNA for Mitchell, Jackson and Gant? His name pointed to him as the source, but with what she knew all she could do was hypothesize. The important thing now was to let the sheriff know what she had discovered.

She copied the link to the Victoria Cross website from the browser’s address bar and opened her hotmail account to begin an email to the sheriff. She kept the mail short, simply copying the information she had found in chronological order, starting with the article from The Lancet. She would explain everything when she called him. When she was done she attached the file containing the scanned photo of her father with Jackson, pressing ‘Send’ before she had a chance to rethink what she was doing. She reached in her pocket for her cell phone, searching her recent calls for the number of the sheriff’s office in Hawthorne.

The same woman she had spoken with from the airport the day before answered, and again she was put straight through. It occurred to her for an instant that if the sheriff had not believed her before when she had told him that she had met Gant, what she was about to tell him now would sound truly incredible. She put the thought from her mind. She had more than enough evidence to establish a connection between Gant, Mitchell, Jackson and Doyle. The line clicked open, the now familiar sound of Henrikssen’s voice on the other end of the line.

‘Sheriff, I believe I’ve found some more information about Carl Gant that you should have. Before I start to explain, can you check your inbox for an e-mail I’ve just sent you?’

She waited while Henrikssen logged on to his machine. After what seemed like an eternity the sheriff announced he had found her e-mail.

‘Good. Okay. Now I realize what I’m about to tell you will sound far-fetched, but please bear with me. The e-mail I’ve sent contains the sources for everything I’ve found. All the information is available to anyone who cares to look for it. You can check it all out after the call.’

Alison hesitated for a moment. Where should she begin? With her father and the photograph that had sat on the sideboard at her parents’ house for decades, or with the article from The Lancet? She took a deep breath.

‘Sheriff, I believe there is something very unusual about Carl Gant. I don’t know quite what this means yet but I’ve found a connection between Gant and three other men – Codratus Doyle, Jason Mitchell and Luke Jackson.’

Henrikssen said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

‘The article I’ve attached to the e-mail is from a medical journal called the Lancet. The article was written by an orthopedic surgeon in a London hospital describing how in 1940 during a German air raid Doyle was admitted with horrific injuries – a broken neck, second and third degree burns to most of his body - injuries that even today he couldn’t hope to recover from. Somehow Doyle managed to heal completely.’

Now Henrikssen spoke. Clearly he had been skimming the article while she had been speaking.

‘Okay Doctor, so why do you think this guy’s got anything to do with Gant? Other than the fact that Gant approached you about a similar topic what’s to connect him to this Doyle? I don’t see a picture of him in the article.’

‘No Sheriff, there isn’t one. However, if you click on the first link in the e-mail I’ve sent you there’s a picture of a Codratus Doyle who enlisted in the British Army in July 1941. That’s the same month that the Codratus Doyle from the Lancet article discharged himself from the hospital where he had been treated. The dates of birth match, and the name can’t be that common.’

‘This guy’s certainly the image of Gant. They must be related.’

‘That was what I thought at first, but I think it’s more than that. Take a look at the next link.’ She waited while Henrikssen opened the page describing Jason Mitchell’s exploits as a fighter pilot in Korea, giving him time to examine the picture of Mitchell.

‘This guy’s name was Jason
Cody
Mitchell?’

‘Yes. I think it’s short for Codratus. It was a search for the name Cody that led me to what I’ve found. Why?’

‘Well, the commander at Fallon said that Cody is what everyone calls Gant on the base. But that wasn’t in any of the files I gave you. I know because I checked myself. How did you know to search for it?’

She asked the sheriff to open the scanned image of her father with Luke Jackson.

'So how’d you find this photo?'

‘Well, that's the strange thing Sheriff. It’s been sitting on a sideboard in my parents’ house for as long as I can remember. The man in the photo who looks like Gant is Luke Jackson. He was also known as Cody. The man to the right of Jackson in the photo is – was – my father. He and Jackson served a tour together in Vietnam in 1971, although Jackson had been out there since 1965. It’s actually this photograph that caused me to start digging into Gant’s past. I knew Gant was familiar to me from somewhere, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I showed my mother a picture of him last night when I got home and she recognized him immediately.’

There was a pause at the other end of the line before Henrikssen spoke.

‘So your father was with Air Cav, huh?’

‘He was. Were you out there as well?’

‘Yes, in ’70, the year before your father. I was just a grunt, though. Only nineteen at the time, counting the days ‘till it would be over and I could get home. Turned out that was sooner than I was expecting. I took a bullet seven months into my tour, somewhere up in the highlands northwest of Khe Sanh. It's what gave me this bum leg. Air Cav lifted me out and three weeks later I was back in Nevada. So have you tried to find out whether Jackson might still be alive?’

Alison told the sheriff what had happened to Jackson and how it had affected her father.

‘It doesn’t surprise me. It was a strange time, over there. You could form a bond, a trust, with a group of men over the course of a few days that might take you half a lifetime to achieve otherwise.’

His voice trailed off, as if remembering.

‘Anyway Doctor, it looks like we both have a reason to find this Gant. I’ve made an appointment to meet with the base commander at Fallon right after Christmas. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in heading up there with me? I’ll be honest and say I don’t know what to make of what you’ve dug up here. But there certainly is something unusual about him, something that might make it worth the effort to try and have him kidnapped. And I reckon you’ll have a better shot at working out what that reason is than me.’

Alison agreed to meet Henrikssen in Fallon the day after Christmas Day. After he hung up she went back online, cancelled her return flight and booked a one-way ticket to Carson City. Her mother would be disappointed that she was cutting her visit short, but she would make it up to her. Despite the sheriff’s skepticism she was convinced of the connection between Gant and Codratus Doyle. And if Gant possessed similar regenerative powers to Doyle he would be the most important medical find of the century. No, of any century.

She only hoped that whoever had tried to abduct him once already hadn’t figured out what she had.

18

LARS
SAT
ALONE in his office, staring at the three printouts from NCIC. The email from Alison he had printed off sat next to them on his desk. Connie had left for the evening and it was quiet.

A serial killer abducting people who possessed a rare blood type for their organs. A man overpowering a security guard and checking himself out of Mount Grant just hours after having been shot and written off for dead. And now everything he had learned the young doctor from Berkeley. Just what in the hell was he mixed up in?

Well, first things first. He needed to do something about Joseph Brandt. What Emily Mortimer had seen should be enough to re-open the man’s case. He picked up the phone and dialed the number for the FBI agent who had led both the Rowe and the Taft cases. Lars saw that Lawrence DeWitty had done well for himself - he was now the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s operations in Salt Lake City. The phone was answered on the second ring.

‘DeWitty.’

‘Special Agent DeWitty, my name is Lars Henrikssen. I’m sheriff of the town of Hawthorne, Nevada.’

‘How can I help you, Sheriff?’

DeWitty sounded distracted, his thoughts elsewhere.

For the next ten minutes Lars proceeded to outline the events that had taken place in Hawthorne over the previous week, his description punctuated by the sound of papers being shuffled, the clatter of keys as something was typed on a computer, an occasional murmur of acknowledgment to indicate that the FBI agent was still listening. But as he began to describe how Carl Gant’s blood type had led him to Shilpa Desai, Cindy Rowe and Robin Taft, Lars noticed that DeWitty had stopped whatever he was doing on the other end of the phone. By the time he got to his interview with Joseph Brandt and what the old woman had told him about the things she had seen the day Cindy Rowe had gone missing, Lars was certain he had the man’s full attention. When he was finished there was a long pause before the FBI agent said anything.

‘Well Sheriff Henrikssen, looks like you’ve been busy. I guess the homicide at Mount Grant just wasn’t enough to keep you occupied. Operating a little outside your patch though, wouldn’t you say? Last time I checked the Utah State Penitentiary didn’t fall within the jurisdiction of the Mineral County sheriff’s office.’

DeWitty didn’t wait for a response before continuing.

‘So let me get this straight, Sheriff. You’ve got two armed terrorists on the loose, one of whom escaped from your custody. Another in the morgue. Your town’s in danger of losing its livelihood. But instead of attending to these important matters you’ve busied yourself by looking into a forty-year old missing persons case from Massachusetts, by attempting to re-open a murder case that was actually
solved
thirty years ago, and by carrying out unauthorized interviews with a convicted murderer and a woman who claims to have withheld material evidence in a murder case for three decades. And have you got anything to show for all this? Are you even any closer to finding any of these people - the girl, the schoolteacher, Robin Taft? Sure doesn’t look like it
.
But yet based on the confused ramblings of a – by your own account – mentally ill convicted murderer and an elderly woman who thirty years ago witnessed a cable repair van parked suspiciously opposite her house, you want me to do what? Re-open the case of a man who was convicted on the basis of sound forensic evidence and tell a retired United States congressman that his nephew has been abducted by an organ-collecting serial killer you believe has escaped the Bureau’s attention for the last forty years? You don’t think that maybe you’re getting a bit carried away, Sheriff? Do you think it might be time to let the professionals handle this.’