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intact or even useful after so long is another matter.’
    Ethan thought for a moment.
    ‘Is it possible that Channing feared that something in the bones that he found could have been preserved for tens of millions of years? Did they even have that kind of knowledge back then, enough to understand that he could have been in danger?’
    ‘That depends on what Channing saw that spooked him,’ Hellerman said. ‘The reporter went back to the Montana site shortly before his death, hoping to seek answers to what happened. He said that the bones were gone, that the site had been excavated professionally and that had he not photographed the scene when Channing had been there and known that he was in the right spot, he would never have known that the bones had been in the rock face at all.’
    ‘Somebody cleaned up real good behind them,’ Ethan suggested, ‘which means they had something to hide.’
    ‘Including Channing,’ Lopez pointed out. ‘I take it that the author of the original letter is long dead?’
    Hellerman shook his head. ‘No, quite the opposite, although whether you can get them to talk is another matter. Since the disappearance in 2002 they have never again mentioned what happened, even when the report was finally publicized a couple of years back. They had their name blocked from the report, had lawyers acting for them. We’ve only got their identity because of the police investigation.’
    ‘You got an address?’ Ethan asked.
    ‘Norway,’ Hellerman replied, ‘which means you’re back on a plane again.’
    Ethan nodded wearily and turned to Jarvis as Hellerman hurried off.
    ‘What’s next for MJ–12?’
    ‘We keep the pressure on,’ Jarvis replied with a casual shrug, ‘and find out what their connection to Aubrey Channing was. If we can find a body, we might be able to connect it to one of their own.’
    ‘I doubt they would have got their own hands dirty,’ Lopez pointed out, ‘although if we could locate Mitchell he might know something about what happened.’
    ‘He’s on his own,’ Jarvis replied, ‘and we don’t know what he’s planning either. I doubt that he’ll just retire into the sunset.’
    ‘Me either,’ Ethan agreed. ‘We’ve got to track him down and fast before he starts killing off our suspects. It took us long enough to identify the members of Majestic Twelve – I don’t want Mitchell knocking them off on a revenge spree and MJ–12 becoming a new set of faces we can’t identify.’
    Jarvis did not reply, as clear on their dilemma as Ethan was.
    Majestic Twelve, a secretive cabal of powerful industrial and political figures, had been formed in the aftermath of World War Two after a series of events involving unknown craft observed in flight around the world. Although unidentified flying objects had been observed throughout history as far back as ancient Egypt, it was only in recent times that any understanding of what the craft actually were and the nature of their purpose had been reached. When one such craft had crashed in New Mexico in 1947, close to a town called Roswell, and aviator Kenneth Arnold had observed “saucer like discs” flying at terrific speed near Mount Rainier that same year, the Eisenhower administration had created Majestic Twelve to coordinate a study of the phenomenon. What the administration had not appreciated was that the founders of Majestic Twelve were men who had been aware of Nazi experiments with supposed extra–terrestrial technology during the Second World War, and involved in spiriting that technology away from the United States Government after the fall of Berlin. Majestic Twelve, as it had turned out, was not just a cabal of industrialists intent on the control of governments – it was actively continuing the work of the Nazis.
    ‘If Mitchell knows anything about Montana, he’s going to show up there too,’ Lopez said. ‘He’ll follow the same threads that we do, maybe even have informants of his own showing him