The Athena Factor

by W. Michael Gear

  36

  The knock was louder this time, more demanding. Christal sat up on her bunk and called, “Come on in! It’s only locked from the inside.”

  She wasn’t terribly surprised when the portal swung open and Hank Abrams stepped in. He was dressed in a dark blue blazer, light blue button-down shirt, Dockers, and white running shoes. His hair looked slightly mussed, as if he’d been standing out in the sea wind. A faint flush lingered on his cheeks, and his eyes gleamed as he studied her.

  “Hey, Christal. How’s it going?”

  She balled her fists, gauging the distance, wondering if she could stand, swing her leg back, and land a kick in his crotch hard enough to blast his testicles up past his ears.

  He read her expression, and stepped back with enough haste that she decided her opportunity had vanished.

  “Look,” he said softly, hands out, “I’m sorry. You had some people worried.”

  “Yeah, well, perhaps you’ve forgotten the things you used to know in your old job, Hank. Like the statutes on abduction … legal curiosities like the Mann Act, reckless endangerment, breaking and entering, assault, and a whole list of fractured or broken legal codes I’m only beginning to get hints of.”

  “I told them that they’d be wasting their time.”

  “Who’s wasting their time?” She narrowed an eye. “Copperhead?”

  “Who?”

  “The redheaded bitch that accompanied you to my apartment.”

  “Ah, April.”

  “She your latest, Hank? Wow! After Marsha, you’ve fallen to new lows.”

  A faint quiver of his lips betrayed him. “I wouldn’t bring up the women I’ve fucked. You might be surprised at who we’d discover was right up front in that list.”

  Christal let it go, watching him, struggling to see inside his skin. “I don’t get it. Did I really read you that wrong? This whole time were you really just a shit? Or did you cover it so well that no one guessed? I mean, damn, it’s not just that you fooled me, but the whole Bureau: Wirthing, Harness, even the folks in the academy who are trained to spot bad apples.”

  “You know, I was just as dedicated as anyone else.” His eyes hardened. “And I was doing a damn fine job until I ran into you. You fucking wrecked my life, Anaya. I tell you, it was God damn biblical! You’re the damned anti-Christ. One minute I was on top of the world. Then you fucked me blind that night in the van. When I could finally see again, I’d lost everything. My wife, my career, my self-esteem. Everything.” He made an explosive gesture with his hand. “Slam-bam! Gone.”

  “Gee, Hank, I’m going all weepy for you. I remember that night in the van really well, but my hearing must have been bad, ‘cause I don’t remember you crying ‘no’ over and over as you ran your hands up under my bra, or when you unsnapped my pants. I don’t remember you battling mightily against my wiles as you slipped your erection inside me. And, come to think of it, you didn’t pull out again until long after you came. Even then you lay there until I reminded you we didn’t want to make a mess on Ben’s pad. As I recall, we spent another two hours talking about how good it had been. Remember that? You were half of the postcoital conversation—you, with that idiotic happy expression on your face.”

  “You bitch!”

  She waved it away. “Forget it. Gonzales won. You landed on your feet, flush in your new career as a big-league felon. You know, I’m going to have the time of my life when I finally bring you down.”

  He crossed his arms. “Christal, they don’t want a fight with you. They want to come to some sort of settlement.”

  “What? Bribe me? It was a bad choice, sending you down here to negotiate.”

  He sighed in mock despair. “You know that we’re in the middle of the fucking ocean, don’t you? You’ve got a lot of time to think about it. I’m going to say this one more time: No one wants any trouble.”

  “They got it the first time your sweet April slugged me in the gut. They got more of it when mousy Gretchen shot at me. And, on top of that, I’m not inclined to forget that some bastard stuck a needle into my neck and carted me off to … where the hell are we? The Atlantic?”

  “They just want a little more time, that’s all. They’ll pay you for the insult done to you, for your inconvenience, and, it seems, for the privilege of patenting your DNA.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Get what?” He spread his arms. “Christal, Genesis Athena is the coming thing! I’ve seen their lab. Jesus! It’s amazing some of the things they can do.”

  “Yeah, cloning the dead? Your pal the Sheik just backhanded Dr. Frankenstein right across the chops. Talk about one-upmanship.”

  “Christal, it’s not just that.” He was grinning at her now in the old way that used to excite her. This time it only incited fury. “The technology is the thing. It’s about who actually has the right to control DNA. Genesis—”

  “Bullshit! It’s about money! The right to control DNA? They stole Sheela’s. Snatched it right off her tampon! They’re involved in theft! Grand larceny. You’re a bunch of fucking witches!”

  “Huh?”

  “Soul stealers. Predators of the body and heart. Raising the dead for unsavory purposes, just like in the old stories. You’re purveyors of the ancient evil. Grandmother’s old-time Pueblo witches, but you’re wearing modern clothes, doing it with twenty-first-century technology.”

  “Oh, shit! Here we go again. Not good old Grandma and her quaint Mexican ways! I heard enough of that crap to last me a lifetime.”

  “But this is different,” Christal continued stubbornly. “It used to be superstition, metaphysical tales told to raise the hackles on dark winter nights. No, you’re right uptown now. Santa Monica Boulevard, doing it for real.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why, Hank? Why are you on the other side now?”

  He stared at her floor for a moment, shrugged, and said, “Because, as you no doubt recall, I’ve got nothing else. Not only that, but as I came to find out so recently, it’s inevitable. The Raelians and Clonaid, with their little publicity stunt, were just the harbingers of things to come. Genesis Athena—or some other company like it—is the coming thing. Big, funded, multinational, they’ll be to molecular genetics what Microsoft is to computers.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “The technology is here. It will be used. You can’t stop it. So just accept it.”

  “What? Without even thinking about what it means to people?” She tried to see past his calm. “Something else is driving you, Hank. What? Pissed because you got your hand slapped? Is that it? You got caught with your pecker dripping, and now you’ll pay back the whole world?”

  “Fuck you!”

  She paused. “That’s right, isn’t it? In your whole life, you’ve never been knocked down before. Never took a fall. You were a golden-haired boy who never had to learn what it was to lose, to fail and have to live with it.”

  “God! You, of all people, have a hell of a lot of nerve to analyze my life. Why don’t you go straight to fucking hell?”

  “Or is it just the money? Huh? You sold out for bucks? Is that it? Money over legalities?”

  “We’re not breaking any laws. Look, we’re in international waters. You’re riding in a legally registered vessel flying the Yemeni flag. Genesis Athena has a second lab—bigger and better—in Yemen, where this is all legal. They have corporate offices in Doha, Qatar, where there are also no laws against it.”

  “Seems to me I recall Genesis Athena operating on American soil, where we’ve got laws. As a federal agent, you damn well know it.”

  He chuckled. “Look, there’s no winning an argument with you. As to the ethics, I don’t know. If someone wants to buy one of Sandra Bullock’s clones, why should I care? What’s DNA anyway? It’s a molecule. Like water, or benzene, or a polymer. You blast thousands of DNA molecules out every time you sneeze. That night in the van I filled you full of eight million little copies of my DNA. But for a matter of timing—and your IUD—your
DNA and mine might have wrapped around each other and made someone new. It’s what life’s all about, right?”

  “Go to hell, Hank.”

  “I already did. And it was you who took me there. Believe me, I’ve paid through the nose for it.” He slapped the wall absently, looking around her small cabin. “Think about what it would take to settle with Genesis Athena. They want to make things right. Find an amicable solution. They’ll be reasonable if you will.” He turned to the door. “The one thing you’ve got plenty of right now is time.”

  And with that he was gone.

  In anger, she threw her pillow, watching it bounce harmlessly off the cold steel.

  Rex sat at the Formosa bar, elbows propped, his butt on a red leather stool. Across from him, he caught his partial reflection through the bottles shelved in front of the back bar mirror. His broken reflection displayed a man with a sour disposition. A glass of Macallan, neat, and a water back stood before him. He toyed with the scotch glass, rocking the amber fluid back and forth.

  For this meeting Rex had chosen a dark blue Armani sport coat over a light blue pinstriped shirt. Gray flannel slacks were snugged with an ostrich-hide belt.

  He was making faces into the partially obscured mirror, trying to understand what had jerked the rug out from under him, when Tony Zell came striding through the door, slowed to look around, and met Rex’s eye.

  Zell’s golden jewelry caught the light, shining from his neck, wrists, and watch. White leather loafers contrasted with the wood as he walked across the parquet floor. A white sport coat over a blousy black shirt accented his faded jeans.

  “What’s up, Rex? Sorry I’m late. Had a thing with a client, you know?” He smiled, white teeth flashing in his perfectly tanned face.

  Tony slid onto the barstool to Rex’s left. “Got your message. Bruckheimer’s bummed. He’s going with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Can you imagine? It’s like, wham! Out of the blue, Sheela just craters. It’s not like her.” He turned, waving to the bartender. “Hey! Got a Remy XO?”

  “Yes, sir,” the man called, turning to reach for a high bottle.

  Rex spread his fingers wide, seeing the contrast between his skin and the bar wood. “She’s falling apart. It’s a lot of things, I guess. A big one in particular.”

  “Anything I can do?” Tony was watching him, wide-eyed, as if expecting some truth to come tumbling out like wisdom from the Buddha.

  “Can you walk up behind Lymon fucking Bridges, slit his throat, and dump his guts on the ground in a pile?”

  “Lymon, huh? What’s he got your rice steamed over?”

  “I think he’s porking Sheela on the side.”

  “No shit?” He paused, thinking about it. “So? Why should we care who greases Sheela’s snatch?”

  “He’s playing out of bounds. He’s the hired help, for God’s sake!”

  “Uh-huh,” Tony agreed solicitously as the bartender placed a brandy snifter on a napkin before him.

  “My tab,” Rex told the man, who nodded and walked back to the end of the bar. “Hell, it’s more than that. It’s bad enough that he’s screwing her. Worse, he’s trying to wrap his damned wings around her. I’m starting to feel like I need Lymon’s permission if I want to see my client.”

  “That’s what went sour on the Bruckheimer deal?”

  “Yeah. Part of it, at least I know for a fact he was telling her not to do it.” Rex balled a fist “We just watched the bodyguard tell Sheela to kiss off a twenty-million-dollar deal.”

  Tony frowned down at his drink, picked up the snifter, and scented the aroma before he took a swallow. “You’re sure about this? About Lymon, I mean? You’re sure it’s not just the publicity? The thing with her tampon and all the shit that came down after that?”

  “Stuff like that happens in this business. The nuts are everywhere. Sheela’s been through shit like this before. Maybe not so personal, but, you know, times she and her lovers were splashed on the front pages. She never folded then.”

  “What’s the deal about Christal’s disappearance?”

  “Sheela’s taking it pretty hard. Did you know that Lymon and Sheela saw it happen? They were out flitting around on Lymon’s bike. What’s he doing running her around town in the middle of the night? And on a motorcycle, for God’s sake? His job is to protect her, not get her killed.”

  Tony straightened. “They saw Christal’s abduction?”

  “Yeah, and that’s another thing: What were they doing there? Huh? I mean, what’s Lymon doing taking her to one of his employee’s hotel rooms?”

  “You’re sure they saw it?” Tony was watching him with a sudden curiosity.

  “Yeah. In fact, they got an ID on one of the muggers. Get a load of this: It was such a fuckup on Lymon’s part that a paparazzo followed him and Sheela on their little ride. The guy had an IR camera … got photos. They got a facial shot of an ex-FBI guy. One of Christal’s old boyfriends, or some such thing.”

  Tony pursed his lips, eyes unfocused. “No shit?”

  “No shit. Look, I wanted to get together and let you know the score. I’m at the end of my rope. Bridges is butting into Sheela’s business. We just lost a major film.”

  “They looking for this guy? The FBI guy?”

  “I assume. Tony, are you listening? We’ve got trouble brewing here. Sheela’s at the top of her trajectory. She can’t take time off—if she does, she loses leverage. Leverage means money in our pockets, mine and yours. You getting this? So, what does she have on tap? How many options with how many producers?”

  Tony frowned, lifted his cognac, and sipped. “For the time being, she can pretty much write her own ticket.”

  “For how long?”

  Tony considered. “To keep her current contract, she’s got a couple of months before her value starts to slip. That’s depending on what happens with the release of Jagged Cat. If they market it right, position it right in the schedule, if they can cover for Manny’s breakdown, if the postproduction and editing work …” He shrugged. “You know the variables. A film’s a crapshoot, Rex. With lots of different people throwing dice. If any one of them makes a bad cast, they can scuttle it.”

  “So, you’re telling me that Sheela’s career rests on this picture’s box office?”

  “That’s the film biz.” Tony sniffed, rubbed his nose, and gave Rex a serious look. “I saw some of the dailies. Sheela was brilliant. My impression is that Bernard’s got chops as director. Now it’s up to the editors, but my gut tells me that Sheela’s performance is going to keep the thing afloat.”

  “But your gut could be wrong.”

  After a long and pensive silence, Tony asked, “You thinking about bailing, Rex?”

  He lifted his scotch, tossing back a full swallow. The amber god warmed his throat with its sweet burn. “If I told Sheela she had to pick between me and Lymon, what would she do?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.” A pause. “Is the guy really that big a problem?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure this is all professional?” Tony lifted an eyebrow. “Like … maybe there’s some jealousy here? You know, the old bull is walking stiff legged because a younger bull is mounting the lead cow?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Okay, so now that we’ve got that figured out, what do you want me to do?”

  “Put pressure on Sheela. Let her know that she’s flushing her career. I want her back on track, Tony. She’s got another ten years, fifteen at the most, before she’s a has-been.”

  Tony smiled, amused. “Yeah, I get it. Not only is she getting fucked under your nose, but your own mortality is chewing at the edges of your well-being. Greed, jealousy, and desperation. You’re a sad case, Rex.” He paused. “So, what’s my incentive to convince her to ditch Lymon?”

  “About ten million if we can keep her working for another ten years.” As Rex stared into his scotch he could feel Tony’s probing eyes, and asked, “What?”

  “Last time I saw Sheela, she looked pretty ragg
ed. I’ve seen ’em crash before, Rex. They go down in flames and explode when they hit the ground. You can squeeze only so much out of a person. Some take it better than others. As to Sheela, you sure this is the time to press?”

  “At twenty million a picture, you tell me.”

  “What if she has a breakdown? What if she snaps? You know, you can kill a goose by forcing it to lay too many golden eggs.”

  “There are ways to handle stress.”

  Tony chuckled. “Yeah, pills, drugs, booze. It’s the old Hollywood dance. Wring ’em dry before they burn out.” He slapped the bar. “Damn, Rex, you’re the only man in this town who’s shittier than I am.”

  “You going to tell her?”

  Tony lifted his snifter, clinking the rim on Rex’s scotch glass. “To partners.”

  37

  Christal made a fierce face and ignored her burning muscles as she finished her last reps. She pulled her knees up, gasping after her seventy-five sit-ups.

  Falling back, she pulled strands of sweaty hair to one side, rolled over, and began her battery of push-ups. Outside of staring at the whitewashed steel walls, there wasn’t much else to do, so she had determined to shape up. And, who knew, it might be her ticket off this ship of fools.

  All she needed was an opportunity.

  Her shoulders bunched as she pushed herself up, lowered, pushed herself up, and stopped as a hesitant rapping sounded on her door.

  She jumped to her feet, clawed her long black hair back out of the way, and said, “Yeah? What’s up?”

  The lock clicked, and a fit-looking young man glanced uncertainly around before stepping into her cabin. “You alone?” he asked quickly in a voice literally dripping with Australian.

  “Nobody here but us mice. Who are you?”

  “Brian Everly.” He closed the door behind him, leaving it ajar. He stopped short, staring at her as if he’d never seen a sweaty, panting, and disheveled human female before.

  She used the moment to take his measure. Tall, square-shouldered, he had longish sandy blond hair, weathered skin that betrayed faded freckles, and the most fascinating pale blue eyes. A sheepish smile teased the lips of a decidedly masculine mouth. His red-checked flannel shirt couldn’t hide the deep chest that tapered to a thin waist where it was tucked into faded Levis. Buff leather shoes with crepe souls shod his feet.