“You’ve made me feel so optimistic,” he said, wincing in pain.
“My point is that I’m going to be here if and when you need me,” I said. “I’m not going to be out there at the site, unable to get here in an emergency.”
“Are there any hotels in the vicinity?” he asked.
“I’ve asked for a cot. I’m staying here.”
“Why don’t you just get in this bed with me then?” he suggested.
I gave him The Look. “I’m not sure the staff would approve.”
He was quiet for a while. “There’s something else I’ve never told you about,” he started. “I’ve had a nightmare—the same one—since I was fifteen. It’s always the same, it never changes. There’s a violent storm. I’m in the water, and it’s very cold. The current is overwhelming me. I’m struggling to stay afloat. I see a light, a boat, and try to swim toward it. There’s someone on the deck, calling out to me, reaching for me, but I can’t quite make it. I see your face, just once, before I’m pulled under.”
“Mine?” I asked.
“You,” Connor said. “The woman on the boat is you. I saw your face for the first time over twenty years ago. That’s why you seemed so familiar to me the night we met.”
“What do you think it means?” I asked. I didn’t laugh, didn’t question his honesty or his sanity. I believed him. “God gives us visions sometimes to lead us where we have to go.”
“Visions?”
I nodded. “The ancient prophets received visions to lead them, or to lead their people. The Book of Revelation, for example, was given to St. John in a vision.”
“If only prophets have visions—”
“When John the Baptist began his ministry, preparing the world for Jesus’ arrival, there had not been a prophet in four hundred years. God had been silent because his people were not listening to him. And there have been no official prophets since Jesus’ resurrection, though many have had visions.”
“Says a lot about our society, doesn’t it?” Connor said lightly. “God’s kicked us to the curb.”
“Hardly.”
“Does my dream mean you’re supposed to save me from something?”
“Possibly.” I managed a smile. “Probably from yourself.”
25
Connor
“You will be weak for some time to come,” the doctor told me. “Everyday activities will be restricted—forbidden, in some instances.”
I looked at Lynne, then at the doctor again. “What about sex?” I wanted to know.
The doctor shook his head. “Too strenuous.”
Not what I wanted to hear. “Suppose I promise to skip the kinky stuff?” Lynne slapped my shoulder lightly.
The doctor regarded me with mild amusement.
“For how long?” I asked.
“A month, perhaps longer,” the doctor answered. “It will depend upon the progress of your recovery.”
“A month?”
“I’ll see that he plays by the rules, Doctor,” Lynne assured him. “He won’t be doing anything he’s not supposed to do.” She gave me that look. “Anything.”
After the doctor left the room, I turned to Lynne. “A month or longer?” I let out a loud groan.
“You managed without it for six months,” she reminded me.
“Not willingly.”
She kissed me. “We’ll get through it,” she assured me.
“You will. I’ll go quite mad.”
She stroked my hair. I felt the stirrings of arousal at her touch. “No, you won’t. You’ll be frustrated and cranky and an all-around pain in the ass and you’ll test my patience to its limits. But you won’t go mad.”
I looked at her. “How can you be so bloody cheerful?” I asked.
She took my face in her hands. “Because you’re alive,” she said. “I’d rather have you like this than not at all.”
“Even if I’m not a whole man?” I asked, frustrated.
“You are a whole man, albeit a grumpy one,” she insisted. “Even if we could never have sex again, you’re the only man I could ever want. Anyway, what makes you think being a whole man is contingent upon sexual performance? Is that all you think you have to offer, all you think I want from you? You’ve made love to me every day and night since the night we met—with your eyes, your voice, your touch.”
I wasn’t satisfied. “I’d rather be able to do it with my—”
She pressed her fingers to my lips. “I get it, okay?” she said. “You’re impossible.”
“Promise me you’ll take it easy while I’m gone.” Lynne was going to Cairo with Tim.
“How much trouble could I get into here alone?” I asked, trying unsuccessfully to pull off an innocent expression.
She eyed me warily. “You don’t really want me to answer that, do you?”
I tried to look properly offended. “I thought I’d just listen to music or read. Or perhaps try my hand at snake charming.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m going to go mad if this enforced celibacy is long term,” I said then.
“Me, too,” she confessed. “You’re becoming a bigger pain in the ass every day.”
“I think I should pose a question to the good doctor,” I said. “I might ask if he feels the brief stress of lovemaking is not preferable to the long-term stress of celibacy.”
“That could be a persuasive argument,” she said, bending down to kiss me. “And no one knows better than I do how persuasive you can be.”
I didn’t smile. “If I believed in all that supernatural crap, I’d think the devil’s testing me to see if I’m eligible for hell,” I complained.
After she left, I took out my satellite phone and rang up Edward and informed him my solicitor would be in contact with him with regard to my legal affairs. I wanted him to know I wished to distance myself from Icarus and from GenTech as quickly as possible, that I would not be returning to London.
“Please, Andrew—don’t do anything rash,” Edward urged me. “Think it over.”
“I have thought it over,” I insisted. “I’m staying here. I’m going to marry Lynne. I’m going to have children with her.”
“Are you going to tell her everything?”
“I’d rather not, but if I must, I will,” I said.
“How long do you think she’ll stay with you, once she knows the truth about you?” Edward wanted to know.
“I’d like to believe she’ll forgive my deception.”
“You’re far too intelligent to believe that.”
I was quiet for a moment. There was one question I'd never asked, but now I felt a need to know the answer. “Tell me, Edward—did you ever love my mother?” When he didn’t respond immediately, I said, “I didn’t think so.”
“How long do you think you’ll be satisfied, living as you do now?” Edward asked.
“I think I could be happy here indefinitely.”
“Have you lost your mind?” There was panic in his voice.
“No, Edward. I’ve found my soul.”
26
Caitlin
“There’s not much I can tell you,” Audrey Mann apologized. “I was Dr. Sadowski’s assistant—that is, secretary—for many years, but I’m afraid he was very tight-lipped about his work. I was only there to answer the phones and keep everyone at bay when he didn’t want to be disturbed. I never had access to any of his files.”
“You had no knowledge of his experiments?” I asked.
Audrey shook her head. “None, I’m sorry to say,” she apologized. “Few did, actually. In fact, I’m fairly certain only Dr. Sadowski and Dr. Stewart had full access to everything.”
“What can you tell us about Dr. Stewart?” I asked.
“He was Dr. Sadowski’s protege,” the woman said. “He was a science prodigy—graduated college at eleven years of age. He had three degrees, including his doctorate, by the time he was fifteen. He started working with Dr. Sadowski when he was only sixteen.”
&nb
sp; “Genius,” I said.
“Beyond anything you might imagine,” Audrey said, nodding. “He was brilliant.”
“Where is he now?” Jack asked.
“No idea,” the woman said. “He left Boston the week before Dr. Sadowski passed away, and I haven’t seen or heard from him since.”
“He didn’t leave a forwarding address or anything?” I asked.
“No one did, under the circumstances.”
“Do you know where he was from?” Jack pursued.
Audrey shook her head. “I knew nothing about him. To tell the truth, I rarely even saw him when he was here,” she admitted. “He preferred to work alone. To be left alone. He could be very testy when he was disturbed.”
I turned to Jack. “Flag his passport. If he’s still in the country, he won’t be able to leave,” she said. “If he’s left, we’ll know where he went.”
Olive Oyl’s was the funkiest restaurant I’d ever seen. Located near the harbor in a low, weather-beaten building with peeling gray paint, it was a family-style seafood restaurant with decidedly nautical decor. Nets and fishing paraphernalia hung on the walls, there were benches instead of tables, and food and drink was served on tin plates and in Mason jars.
We found an empty bench near a window facing the water. Our server, a young woman with strawberry blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, was chewing gum. She blew a large bubble as she approached, then popped it and sucked the gum back into her mouth. She pulled her order book from the pocket of her apron. “Hi, I’m Melanie,” she greeted us, grabbing the pencil tucked behind her ear. “Ready to order?”
“Not yet,” I said, scanning the menu. “What do you recommend?”
Melanie didn’t hesitate. “Getting out of here while you still can,” she deadpanned.
Jack laughed. “That bad?”
She nodded. “The catch of the day was thrown back four days in a row, but it finally made the menu today,” she confided. “It was the only fish in the net, I’m told.”
“I’ll have the tilapia,” I finally decided.
Melanie wrote it down. “Tilapia with a side order of e.coli.” She turned to me. “You?”
“I think I’ll have the orange roughy,” Jack said.
“Good choice,” Melanie said with an approving nod. “We’ve only had three incidents with the roughy. Just a minute.” She turned her attention to another customer who was headed for the door. “Hey, cheapskate—where’s my tip?”
Stunned, the man scurried back to his table, dropped some bills on it, then rushed out.
Jack laughed. I shot him a disapproving look. "Hey, it was funny," he defended himself.
“Do you always chase customers for tips?” I asked.
“On the crappy wages Olive pays, I have to,” she said with a shrug.
“There really is an Olive?” Jack asked.
Melanie nodded. “Her last name’s not really Oyl, but yeah. No Popeye, though.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “That woman could sit on a dime and squeeze out nine cents. Anything to drink?”
“I’ll have an Arnold Palmer,” I said.
“Half iced tea and half lemonade,” Melanie said as she wrote it down.
“Make it two,” Jack said. He'd never had it before, but was clearly looking forward to hearing what she had to say about it.
Melanie nodded. “Two Arnolds, a roughy and a tilapia. Anything else?”
“Maybe dessert, if we survive dinner,” I said.
“Dessert’s safe. We don’t make it here,” Melanie said.
As she headed for the kitchen with the order, I turned my attention to my partner. “I keep waiting for Rod Serling’s voice over,” I admitted, keeping my voice low.
“Without proof, who’s going to believe it?” he wondered aloud.
I stared absently toward the window overlooking the harbor. “Dorothea’s parents died years ago. There are no living relatives in her family to speak with. Sadowski’s, the few he had left, are all in Poland. The Sadowskis’ son left Boston years ago. Nobody knows where he is now. We can talk to some of his former colleagues at the university—and I’ve tracked down two of the women he coerced into sex.”
He picked absently at a sugar packet. It was an old habit, picking at things on the dinner table. “That should be an interesting interview,” he said.
“Yeah.” I continued to stare through the window at the water. “I don’t think I want to hear any of the details. Not without a barf bag, anyway.”
“Stewart’s still in the US, according to the State Department,” he said then. “Now all we have to do is find out where.”
“You make it sound so simple,” I said.
“At least we only have to scour one country,” he reminded me.
“Interesting fellow,” I commented. “He’s a super genius in the truest sense of the term. Young, very attractive—according to Audrey Mann—but a real loner.”
“Geniuses tend to be a little quirky,” he pointed out. “Super genius, super quirky.”
“If any of Sadowski’s records remain, I’m betting Stewart has them,” I said. Reaching for my cell phone, I called one of our colleagues. “Berkley? Hammond here. I need you to run a check for me…”
“We know that Sadowski’s right-hand man, Dr. Stewart, is still somewhere here in the States,” I told Randy Baker. “We know that the rumors about Sadowski’s extracurricular activities with his female students are true. We don’t know if he really did have a celibate relationship with the wife or if he did indeed impregnate her by in vitro. The only one who would know for sure, obviously, is Sadowski himself, and he’s currently living in a timeshare in hell. It’s all speculation, but given what we do know, I’m inclined to believe it’s true.”
“None of Sadowski’s files were found,” Jack put in. “Destroyed, obviously.”
“We have some information regarding one of Sadowski’s experiments,” Baker said. “The horse, Icarus’ Agenda, was bred in the UK, not here. He was brought to the US by the owner, who claimed he just wanted the horse to compete here.”
“We have the name of the owner?” I asked.
Baker nodded. “A man in London by the name of Edward Rhys-Williams,” he said. “He’s richer than Midas, founder and chairman of a company called Icarus International.”
“What do we know about him beyond that?” Jack asked.
“No previous illegal dealings or anything remotely suspicious. He’s a real recluse, a widower with two adult children. Philanthropist. Gives millions to charity through his own foundation, a real do-gooder.”
“And his connection to Sadowski and company?” I asked.
“He was Sadowski’s chief financial backer.”
“Sadowski knew the FDA was going to shut him down,” I told FBI Special Agent Harry Lambert, speaking to him by phone in London. “Somebody warned him of what was coming down. He destroyed most of his files before their people were able to seize them. But from what we got from the staffers we interrogated, he was into some pretty bizarre experiments—genetic enhancements, accelerated growth hormones, human cloning….”
“He actually cloned human beings?” Lambert asked, amazed.
“Yeah. He did what Hitler’s boys couldn’t. The man was on the fast track to creating the master race—physically superior, super-geniuses,” Jack put in.
“What about Rhys-Williams?” I asked then. “You talked to him. What did he have to say?”
There was a pause. “He denies knowing anything of the nature of Sadowski’s experiments.”
Jack and I exchanged a look. Jack shook his head.
“He poured millions into the man’s research and didn’t keep tabs on his activities?” My laugh was hollow. “That’s hard to believe. Especially since it was his horse that got the benefit of all that work.”
“He claims he hadn’t seen the horse in more than a year. He bought the dam as an investment, or so he says. He’d never even watched the thing race. As for the money he gav
e to Sadowski’s research, he says that’s all done by committee. He’s not even involved in the approval process.”
“Yeah, right.” I said, unconvinced.
“Keep us posted. If you find anything at all—”
“Count on it. And you do the same.”
27
Phillip Darcy
It was turning out to be one of those days. How had I ended up in Israel?
I looked at my watch as I collected my bags, trying to remember if I had reset it to accommodate the time change when I arrived in Athens from Moscow. At this point, I wasn’t even sure what day it was. Tel Aviv had the tightest security of any airport in the world. Not unwarranted, of course, given its history with terrorism, but it was still a pain, especially when I was in a hurry. Two terminals handled an average of 17,000 passengers daily. Each vehicle that entered the property was routinely searched. Baggage was screened thoroughly. Travelers were profiled in ways that would never be tolerated in the States. If they had been, terrorists would not have been able to take over our planes and kill thousands of our own. We won’t be done in by nuclear weapons—the ACLU will be our downfall.
I spent what seemed like an eternity in Customs, and I still wasn’t sure what, exactly, I was supposed to be doing here. The e-mail from the Boss Lady said only that I should take the first available flight to Tel Aviv and call the office from there. The fact that my editor was e-mailing me was an indicator that she probably wasn’t in a good mood. It meant she’d tried unsuccessfully to phone me. It bugged her that I was so hard to reach sometimes—deliberately so, I might add. Ally liked direct contact.
This had better be good, I thought as I headed off to the Solan communications center to make the call. When I received the message from Alberta Ashland, I was at the airport in Athens, waiting to board a flight back to the States. I hadn’t been home in six weeks and for once was actually looking forward to some down time.
Chasing the Wind Page 11