Tom returned fire with a couple short bursts.
Genevieve started to climb the bell tower. At thirty feet, she jumped across to the fortified masonry wall that surrounded the monastery.
Tom was racing up the tower behind her.
She loaded her last magazine into her submachinegun and provided him with cover fire. A monk ordered them to stop. But both sides kept firing.
Genevieve ran along the top of the masonry wall.
At the end of the western wall stood the guard tower, where a monk had triumphantly closed the gate. Already, he was now in the process of trying to open it again.
Genevieve pointed her MP5 at him and shouted in Russian, “Don’t you dare!”
The monk put his hands skyward in supplication.
She grabbed the rope used to raise and lower the gate. Tom pushed past the monk, who quickly moved out of his way.
A group of monks armed with rudimentary weapons, interspersed with the remaining mercenaries, were now racing toward them.
Tom gripped the rope with one arm.
Shots raked the rampart, sending medieval masonry splintering into a torrent of shards. Genevieve grabbed the rope just below Tom’s hand and they simultaneously swung over the thirty-three-foot fortified buttress.
Reaching the muddy ground below, they ran toward the Beriev Be-103 Bekas amphibious seaplane. It must have been how the mercenaries got to the island.
The cockpit door was open and the pilot was having a smoke at the end of the jetty. He turned around, took one look at Genevieve and Tom and dived into the icy water.
Genevieve climbed into the cockpit through the raised bifold winged doors. Tom untied the aircraft from the jetty and gave it a gentle push off as he climbed in, pulling the hatches shut behind him.
She shoved the red fuel mixture throttle to full, switched the master electrics to on, gave the primer three quick depressions, and flicked the ignition key. The twin propellers started to spin. She glanced at her position in relation to the jetty. Already the current had pulled her out.
With her right hand on the throttle, she eased it all the way forward until the twin engines whined with joy.
She turned out to sea and the little seaplane picked up speed.
Behind them she heard the steady staccato of UZIs being fired, but already, the aircraft was increasing the distance between them.
The fuselage hydroplaned, skipping enthusiastically across Prosperity Bay.
Genevieve pulled the wheel firmly toward her chest and the aircraft took off into the air. She brought the aircraft round in a large circuit, being sure to keep enough space between the monastery and them.
She expelled a deep breath of air. They had made it.
That’s where the reprieve ended, because Tom picked up his satellite phone and reminded her that all their troubles were only just starting.
And her mind returned to their earlier discovery…
They needed Sam to know Ben Gellie was the host of the Phoenix Plague.
Chapter Forty
Minnesota Railway Line
The freight train cruised at nearly eighty miles per hour along the class five railway tracks.
Inside his opulent shipping container, Sam Reilly heard his Nokia 3110C start to ring. He rolled off the couch, unsure what time it was, and answered on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Sam!” It was Tom’s voice, and he could hear the relief behind the gravel.
“You okay, Tom?”
“Sure. I’m just a bit relieved to know that you’re alive. Are you all right?”
Sam glanced out through the digital window, where Lake Superior could be seen in the distance. He smiled. “Never better.”
“Good. Are you…” the phone started to break up.
Sam moved to the other side of the shipping container, as though that might improve his chance of getting some decent reception.
“You there, Tom?” he asked.
“Ben’s not…”
“I can’t hear you, Tom. What did you find at Bolshoi Zayatsky Island?”
Through the garbled hiss of his outdated cell phone he heard the words, “…Phoenix Plague.”
“What the hell’s the Phoenix Plague?”
“Did you hear me, Sam?”
“No. I’m having trouble getting reception. Look if I cut out, I’ll call you from North Dakota…”
He glanced at his phone.
It had stopped working altogether. He looked at the screen. It was dark. The damned thing had run out of batteries. He didn’t even have a charger for it. It was another twenty dollars, and he didn’t have the money to buy one at the general store at Harpers Ferry. He cursed himself for not getting Elise to supply him with a modern smartphone.
Ben looked at him. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah. That was my friend. He’s just been to Bolshoi Zayatsky Island.”
Ben’s eyes widened. “Did he find anything?”
“I don’t know. My cell phone died before he could finish telling me about it.”
“What did he say?”
“Something about the Phoenix Plague.”
Ben’s lips curled into a wry smile. “Is that all?”
“Yeah. Ever heard of the Phoenix Plague?”
Ben shook his head. “No. But it can’t be good.”
Chapter Forty-One
O’Hare Airport, Chicago, Illinois
“We just found him!” Ryan Devereaux said.
The man at the check-in table handed him his boarding pass. “I’m sorry sir, you’re going to need to turn that off before you board.”
Ryan looked up and stopped. He was the last one to board his flight. Once on board there was nothing he could do to manage the arrest. He held his cell phone to his ear and met the steward’s eye defiantly. “I said, just a minute.”
On the other end of the line, the Secretary of Defense asked, “Where?”
He lowered his voice. “In a shipping container on his way to Minot, North Dakota!”
“How’d you work that one out?”
“Tom just changed his flight plan on his route back from Russia. He’s now heading direct to North Dakota. Also, we hacked his computer, and found him checking a third party dummy company – most likely owned by Sam Reilly – which purchased a readymade shipping-container-come-tiny home in Frederick and had it shipped to North Dakota.”
“How did Sam and Ben get inside?”
“Here’s the good bit. I contacted the logistics company, who told me that the purchaser requested it to be shipped by road to Martinsburg before being put on a freight train to Minot!”
“Good God!” The Secretary said. “That’s them!”
“What are you going to do?”
“I have an undercover team of agents and SWAT converging at the railway yards at Minot. I’m about to board a flight to North Dakota to oversee the operation personally. We’re going to catch him this time.”
“You’d better. We both know what’s riding on this.”
“It will all work this time. One thing’s bothering me though.”
The Secretary said, “What?”
“They’re close to the Canadian border, so why stop there?” Devereaux gestured one finger to the steward and mouthed the words, just one more second! “It means that they’re heading somewhere specific. The question is what’s in Minot, North Dakota, that Sam and Ben need?”
“Not what. Who. And I know why, too.” The Secretary audibly exhaled. “This has just upped the ante.”
Devereaux raised his eyebrows. “Who?”
He felt a shiver of terror at her response.
“Aliana Wolfgang.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Minot, North Dakota
Aliana Wolfgang glanced out her window.
It had started to snow. Yesterday’s fog had become today’s powdery snowflakes, drifting down lazily in the still air. The weather forecasts were warning people about the blizzard of the year, if not the decade. Schools w
eren’t closed yet, but every single TV station, radio station, and schoolchild was predicting heavy snowfall – the sort of blizzard that brings a place like Minot to a standstill.
The temperature was twenty degrees Fahrenheit, cold but not too cold. You’d want to put your heavy coat on, that was for sure, but you didn’t need to put your light coat on underneath your heavy coat. Wind chill? Without any wind, there wasn’t any. No, the storm hadn’t arrived yet. They might still have another day of reprieve before it hit.
Aliana ignored the weather warnings.
Her mind was fixated on one of the greatest leads of her career in pharmaceutical research and development. It would be the greatest advancement in life expectancy, quality of life, and medicine in her lifetime. Commercially, it would make her company more valuable than gold. She smiled, revealing a set of white evenly spaced teeth.
It made her think of that song by Queen – Who Wants to Live Forever?
She’d heard the song plenty of times in her teens. Queen might have had some insight that she was missing, but the honest answer to the question was always going to be a resounding, everyone wants to live forever!
And her new research might pave the way to one day give it to them.
Her cell phone rang. She wanted to ignore it. Right now, she had no interest in talking to anyone. Her mind was fixed on both the scientific and ethical dilemma she’d been given.
She glanced at her smartphone. The name came up from her directory – Emma. They were at MIT together. While Aliana studied microbiology and biomedicine, Emma studied straight medicine. Two years ago, she inherited her father’s pharmaceutical company. They had often talked about what the two companies could do working together, with Aliana’s performing the research and development, while Emma’s produced and distributed the product.
Her heart skipped a beat. She pressed accept. “Emma!”
“Aliana,” replied Emma. “Did you get the sample I sent you?”
“Yes.”
There was a brief silence. “You want to tell me what you think of it?”
Aliana expelled a deep breath. She’d known Emma for most of her adult life. Still it amazed her that her friend had entrusted her with the blood sample. It was like mailing the winning lotto ticket to a friend to photocopy before you cash it in. “All right, it might be the breakthrough of the century. Where did you get it?”
“A prisoner having routine blood tests.”
“Does he know he has the genetic mutation?”
“Not a clue.”
“Christ!” Aliana swore. “Do you know how many laws we’re breaking?”
“Does it matter?” Emma’s voice was flat, her response anything but flippant. The potential rewards from their discovery had the chance to change the world and save lives. It was the very reason they had both gotten into their industries: to help people.
“You’re right, something like this, there are no risks too great to take the chance. It’s too valuable.”
Emma’s voice hardened. “So, can you reverse engineer the mutation?”
“I don’t know yet. Everything’s possible.”
In ten years, they might be able to prevent most types of cancer. That alone was worth whatever she sacrificed. In her research, she had known so many people who had only met her because they had fallen under the shadow of the terrible disease. And she had known so many of them who had since died…
Emma said, “We analyzed the DNA on one of the previous samples. There was definitely no sign of a breakdown along the telomeres.”
Carefully, Aliana said, “No sign?”
“None,” Emma replied. “Now, I’m not one of the world’s top DNA researchers. But even I know how unusual that is.”
It was. The shortening of the telomeres at the ends of DNA strands, not just in human beings but in almost every living species on the planet, was one of nature’s tradeoffs. The telomeres were, as far as they could currently ascertain, a bunch of meaningless junk at the ends of each strand of DNA as it weaved its way into a double helix.
Aliana thought about that in silence for a moment, because even those long sequences of meaningless junk had a purpose.
Every time a living being needed to reproduce its DNA in order to replace and rejuvenate the cells in its body, the bodily systems in charge of the reproduction “snipped” off a short section of that junk code.
Why?
As the telomeres became shorter and shorter, the valuable code of the DNA past the sections of telomeres became more and more exposed. Finally, the DNA became shortened enough that the cells weren’t able to reproduce, and therefore replace, damaged cells.
Aging.
The loss of the telomeres was a countdown to aging…and death.
But without the destruction of the telomeres came a second, even more serious issue: mutation. The earth was constantly being bombarded with solar radiation, despite the protection of the earth’s ozone layer. Life was always encountering something that damaged its cells on a molecular level. Chemicals, radiation, random chance…
Some of the mutations improved the gene pool; others ensured that it ended before it could reproduce.
Over a long enough period of time, though, DNA would be mutated into something undesirable.
Cancer.
By guaranteeing individual cells could only reproduce so long before they wiped themselves out, nature protected itself against most of the mutations that would lead to cancer – most of the time.
Cancer, however, fought back – by forcing cells to produce telomerase, an enzyme that added more telomeres right back on to the ends of the DNA. One of the most famous lines of cancer cells, that of Henrietta Lacks, or the HeLa line, was practically immortal, because of the way it aggressively produced telomerase.
So the fact that the prisoner’s cell sample wasn’t losing telomeres as it reproduced wasn’t exactly unique. Unless…
“In a healthy individual?” she asked.
“No sign of cancer. None.”
“Telomerase levels?”
“They were completely normal.”
She drummed her fingers on the tabletop and took another sip of coffee. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.” In some types of cancer, telomerase levels didn’t rise at all.
She thought about it some more, pulling her coffee close to her chest and letting the steam waft up into her nose. “How old is the subject?”
“Forty. He looks thirty.”
“Have you met him?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“What’s he like?”
“Handsome, polite. Currently a threat to national security.”
Aliana grinned. “There’s always something, isn’t there?”
Emma’s voice softened. “I’ll say. I’m not kidding. The guy seemed really nice.”
Aliana’s eyebrows narrowed with disapproval. “What did he do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
Emma said, “No. I’m a medical doctor. I treat who I’m asked to treat. That’s all.”
The lines around Aliana’s face hardened. Something about Emma’s voice sent a chill down her spine. Had she just been lied to?
It brought her back to the original question… was there a crime so morally and ethically wrong that she shouldn’t commit it in order to give the new drug a chance to change the world?
It came back again with a resounding, no.
“All right, I’ll keep at it,” Aliana said. “Look. If we’re going to do this we’re going to have to do it right. That will mean dipping into some significant capital. I’m okay with that, but I don’t honestly think the company will have the resources that you’re talking about, both in expertise and material, to reverse engineer the sample you’ve given me.”
Emma said, “I agree. I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
“And?”
“I think we should merge the two companies. Pool our assets. I’m willing to put everything
on the table to make this happen.”
Aliana admitted, “I don’t even know how we would go about such a merger.”
“We can talk deals soon. I’ve told the hospital I’m not coming in for the rest of the week. I’ll be on a flight to meet up with you as soon as I can.”
“Both companies are publically listed. A merger will require some government oversight. And more time.”
“You’ll see,” Emma said. “There are structures in place that would trigger a merger, if it’s warranted or necessary. But for the most part, it’s nothing but shared profit and shared opportunity. And the chance to cure cancer.”
It was an overblown phrase. Cancer researchers never thought in terms of “curing cancer.” It was impossible, too big to hope for. You might as well hope for the sun to stop shining, because that’s what it would take to end all mutations.
And where would humanity be without mutations?
Still in the trees with the rest of the monkeys?
No, without mutations, life didn’t exist. There was no cure for cancer.
But there might be a cure for some types of cancer. Or…a way to stop cells that weren’t cancerous from aging.
Take your pick.
Aliana said, “When will you get here?”
Emma said, “I’ll be on a flight first thing in the morning.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Devils Lake, North Dakota – One a.m.
The train rolled on through the night.
Sam stayed awake, having slept intermittently for the previous twenty-four hours. He was recharged, ready for whatever came next. He listened to the drone of the train’s wheels, monotonously grinding along the iron track, the freight cart rocking gently, reminding him of the swell of a gentle ocean.
Ben jammed himself into a ball on the adjoining, two-seater couch. He joined the sleep of the damned after refusing to sleep for the first leg of the trip, in case the train was boarded. Sam checked his watch, they were getting close.
The train started to slow. He glanced out the digital window.
A sign read, Welcome to Devils Lake.
Sam grabbed his thick jacket and woke up Ben. “Wake up. This is our stop.”
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