“And the surveillance equipment?” Deck asked. “Is it all in place and ready to go?”
The smile cracked. “No, but, look, it’s not my fault. Getting guys with the expertise you ask for isn’t easy or cheap. I still have to come in under budget. Have you forgotten that? Besides, there are precisely two firms on the East coast that can do this job and both are booked until August.”
“Then fly in a West coast crew,” Deck said. “Oh, don’t give me that woe is me look. You bid this job, knowing the time constraints.” Deck turned on his heel and continued his march to the main hospital. Over his shoulder he called, "I'll tour the place myself. You start making those calls."
"You start making those calls," Hal mimicked, falsetto voce. He was furious at how Deckard had treated him, however it was a testament to Kip's legendry anger that Hal pulled out his cell phone and started dialing numbers on the spot.
The second Deck turned away he put the architect out of his mind and focused on the job at hand: analyzing the current state of security. He opened the front doors and stood just inside the dusty lobby, trying to visualize how the building would look once it was complete. It would be a cast-iron bitch.
Sure it would be beautiful. Dr. Kipling had in mind the most picturesque laboratory/hospital money could buy. He was hoping to rival the fanciest private hospitals in the world. No expense was being spared in creating this curative wonderland, but all that gilding was putting Deck on the spot.
It was going to be his job to guard a twenty billion dollar cure. It was roughly one-sixth the value of all the gold in Fort Knox and a million times easier to stick in your shorts and walk out the front door with. And to make matters worse, the cure had likely been half-stolen already. Rumors had been circulating in the research world, rumors that Deckard was quick to catch up on.
Setting up HUMINT--human intelligence operatives--in competing pharmaceutical and biotech companies had been his first order of business when Kip had hired him six months before.
For the most part, the operatives were passive agents, little more than "friends" in these other companies. They had been wined and dined, and "gifted" with small wads of cash. There was also the promise of more to come, simply for keeping an ear out. What they were supposed to be listening for had been and was still, frustratingly vague. Scientists, even the ones he was supposed to be helping, were as secretive as CIA agents.
All Deck had to go on was the type of cancer they were trying to cure and the words: Com-cell or Combination Cell Therapy. He figured he would be just spinning his wheels, however there was such a uniformity of thought in the field that the term Com-cell had stood out.
Understandably, Kip had freaked when he heard Deck’s report that a French company was kicking around a new concept involving a combination of mutated cells. It meant someone at R & K had given away or sold vital information. The next thing Deck knew he was on a plane to Canada to have a chat with one of his "operatives." Jean Basteau, a sweaty, little man, who tried to impress Deck with his spy chops by keeping his back to the door and jumping at every sound, had come by the information third hand. That had been two weeks before and Deck was still trying to chase down leads, but that too was turning out to be a bitch.
He simply didn't know enough about the Com-cells to ask the right sorts of questions; in effect he was basically clueless about what he was guarding. He found the one authority on Com-cells on the fourth floor of the Walton facility. When the elevator doors opened Dr. Lee was standing halfway down the central hall, staring at what were going to be "her" labs for the duration of the clinical trials. She was visualizing just as Deck had been doing, though in her case she needed quite the imagination. The fourth floor was in such a chaotic state that it could either have been halfway to being completed or halfway to being utterly destroyed.
Without turning she said, "They're working in the back on the left, in the BSL-4 labs."
The irritation in her voice was too obvious to miss. "And you don't think they should be?" he asked.
Thuy turned and when she saw Deck, her eyes widened just the slightest. "No. Most of our work will be done in the BSL-3 labs and that is more of a precaution than because of any real danger." Biosafety levels or BSLs, range in containment practices and are designated a level based on the toxicity or the communicability of the pathogen under study. Deck, who had read up on the CDC safety standards, had already made it a promise to himself to steer clear of the category four labs if at all possible. He had no desire to see what the bubonic plague looked like first hand.
"So why don't you tell them to switch their attention to the other lab?" he asked.
"No, it's going to be alright," she said. "Mr. Kingman said he'll have it all completed in time." By the slight shrug and the tilting of her head, Deck knew she wasn't convinced of the architect's sincerity. After his earlier talk with Hal Kingman, Deck certainly wasn't convinced.
"Give me a minute, will you?" he asked and yanked out his cell phone. As he reamed out the architect he walked past Dr. Lee and did a quick tour of the half-completed labs. Most of the rooms were without walls and one was without a floor. Deck found himself staring down at an electrician having lunch in the third floor cafeteria. It made little sense, but the cafeteria was as whole and complete as anyone could ask for while the far more important labs looked to have been ignored until only recently. In his ear Kingman was making all sorts of promises, but Deck didn’t want to hear it and tore the man a new one.
"Mr. Kingman will refocus on the category three labs this afternoon," Deck said as he came back to Dr. Lee. "You just have to know how to speak his language.”
"That's a language? I certainly don’t curse as fluently as you, Mr. Deckard, but if things continue the way they are, I might just have to start.” She was as clearly exasperated at the facility’s level of unpreparedness as he was and when they locked eyes they shrugged at the same time and then smiled.
After a few seconds her smile faltered. “Is there anything I can help you with, Mr. Deckard?”
He swore inwardly at his foolishness—he’d been staring at her. It was hard not to when she smiled. Dr. Thuy Lee was absolutely, exotically beautiful. Her features were a study in perfection. After the first time they had met in Kip’s office, he’d pulled her file: Thuy Heather Lee: age thirty-seven; Vietnamese/American war baby. Born in Saigon in the closing days of the Vietnam War and smuggled out of the country in a cardboard box by her desperate mother. She possessed a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Yale University and a Doctorate in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from Johns Hopkins. Among her many credits she had published thirteen papers, none of which held Deck’s attention beyond their lengthy titles.
She was brilliant, but it was a tossup whether her unique beauty was greater than her intelligence. Both left Deck a little tongue-tied.
“I, uh…yes. There is something more that I…I mean you can help me with.” He coughed, making a pretext to break eye contact so that he could order his thoughts. “It’s the Com-cell. I need to know more about it if I’m going to have any hope of tracking the leak.” Now it was her turn to look away. He let out a little barking laugh. “You don’t trust the man who is supposed to be protecting you and your secrets?”
"I don't know you well enough to trust you," she answered, truthfully. “It’s a question of motivation. Some people around here consider you little more than a mercenary and from what I understand about mercenaries, it’s money that drives them. If that's the case I'm being wise not to divulge anything beyond what you need to know.”
"Would it matter to you to know I did not seek this position out? Mr. Rothchild came looking for me because I have a reputation. This is not the first time I could have sold out my employers for a ton of money."
Edmund Rothchild had promised Thuy that Deckard was as honest as they came, however the Com-cell was worth a lot more than a ton of money. "Supposedly everyone has their price," she remarked.
"Except you of course," D
eck shot back.
Her large doe-eyes narrowed slightly before she answered, "I don't think you can understand what motivates me."
This made him laugh. "Of course I can understand. In spite of how smart you are, you're still human. We all have the same underlying desires: success, security, popularity...love. Your main motivation is obvious: it's fame. You will be the woman who cured cancer. That is way bigger than money as a motivating force. It may even be bigger than love."
She flashed a quick smile. It was there one moment and then gone the next and though it was brief, it hinted that there was a deeper warmth to her that she tried hard to keep hidden. “Ok, sure, I won't deny it. Yes, it will be something to put my name on a cure for cancer. But that's not the only reason I began this research.”
"Of course not," Deckard said. "Your mother, born Hue Le, changed her name in ’75 to Heather Lee when she emigrated to the U.S. She died of breast cancer in 2003. She had just turned fifty.”
Instead of a return of that quick smile, her eyes grew more guarded. “You seem to know a lot already.”
“It’s my job. I know you scientists think of me as little more than a mall-cop in a nice suit, but I'm being tasked with guarding, not only a billion dollar secret, but billion dollar minds as well.” There was the smile again! Like a shooting star, he caught just a glimpse and had to fight his lips not to reply in kind.
“Billion dollar mind is a bit much,” Thuy said. “I’m worth maybe nine hundred million, tops.”
Without realizing it he stepped closer to her. He was a tall man, thick through the shoulders and chest, normally very intimidating; she didn’t step back. “I’ll stick with my initial assessment," he said. "One billion, even.”
For a moment she forgot herself in the smell of his cologne and his chiseled looks but the moment passed. “Ok, enough flattery,” she said, laughing, feeling embarrassed and not understanding why. She leaned back, crossing her arms. “I won’t give up my trade secrets so easily.”
“I’m not after secrets, especially ones I probably wouldn’t understand. I just need more of, I don’t know, something. Something I can get my hands on or wrap my brain around. Kip wants me to find out how far the French have gotten and I'm running into brick walls. Can you at least tell me if there are exotic components that go into making this Com-cell? Plutonium? Iridium? Anything like that? Are there unusual flowers in it that are found only in the jungle or roots from the taro pant found only in Bora-Bora? These are the sorts of things I can trace.”
"I don’t know if I can help you. There’s really nothing about the Com-cell that’s out of the ordinary. You'll find almost everything that goes into it in every properly outfitted lab in the world. Except for maybe the stem-cells, that is.”
His demeanor changed in a flash. “Stem-cells? Do you mean from babies?”
“No, not fetal cells. We use adult cells harvested from donors. Kip didn’t care where we got them, but Dr. Rothchild was adamant: no fetal stem cells.”
He relaxed a little. “Stem cells…I’ll look into it. Anything else?”
Thuy opened her mouth to say something and once again their eyes locked: his were warm brown, while hers were so dark in color that they looked like wet coal. That darkness made them seem particularly wide and deep and slightly mystifying in a way that held him, as if he were on the verge of being hypnotized. It felt like a pull that went deeper than…
Dr. Lee blinked and glanced at the floor. When she looked up again that particular coolness of hers had blanketed her once more. “I’ll let you know if I think of anything that will help you, Mr. Deckard. I won’t detain you any longer.”
Just like that, he’d been dismissed.
3
Phillip Riggs PhD
Walton Facility
In the cafeteria, the only part of the Walton Facility that was entirely complete, the three research teams were gathered around their tables waiting for the meeting to begin. Much as in a school cafeteria the teams sat as cliques; no one daring to break the code and sit apart from their colleagues.
Riggs really wished they would. His six-person team had been handpicked by him, not for their wit or engaging minds, but to accommodate his dominant personality trait: laziness. His team of worker ants was not known for brilliance of mind, it was made up of worker ants; nose-to-the-grindstone drones who excelled when tedious chores were heaped on them. If brilliance was called for, that was where he would step in.
At least that’s what Dr. Riggs PhD used to think. Then he was scooped by her. And he still didn’t know how. Everything was being held very close to the vest. Too close in his opinion. In order to confound the spy who had leaked the information, Thuy had compartmentalized each activity: Stem cell harvesting and preparation was being overseen by Milner. Riggs’ team was then transferring the mycotoxin-bearing organelles into the stem cells. Lastly, Thuy had assigned her team the work of growing the receptor cells and then “gelling” the receptors to the stem cells.
The end result was a miracle little molecule…supposedly. The results of her tests were also a tightly controlled secret.
He doodled 15% on his note pad, wondering: How could she have been the green light for a third round of tests with a fifteen percent success rate? His own Com-cells, using far more powerful mycotoxins had a forty percent success rate in the animal trials with the unfortunate side effect of causing a rabid-like mania in nearly half of the subjects. A rabid opossum wasn’t a pretty sight.
He was aching to be given the chance to figure out what had gone wrong, instead he was playing lab assistant to Dr. Lee. Riggs shook his head, watching her glance at her notes and then at her watch. She could’ve begun speaking already but she was always exact even when exactness wasn't needed. She’d called the meeting for three and Riggs knew it wouldn’t start until three precisely. Thuy bent to pick something out of her briefcase that sat at the foot of the podium. Her tight skirt grew even tighter.
“Yowza,” Riggs said, under his breath.
“What is yowza?” Eng asked. “Is this engrish?”
Riggs tried to keep the annoyance off his face. In the last few days, Eng had kept closer to him than his own shadow. Eng was scientifically curious to a fault. A very annoying fault. “It’s nothing to do with the project. Why don’t you read your handout?”
Eng had already read it once, but to satisfy Riggs he read it again. He was halfway through when Thuy’s watch beeped at her. As usual she didn’t bother with pleasantries or a warm up joke. She went right in with her opening statement concerning the funding status of the project and didn’t pause until she noticed Riggs sitting with his hand in the air.
“Dr. Riggs, do you have a question on the current state of our funding?”
They’d worked together for the last six years so the skepticism in her voice was well warranted. “You know I don’t,” he answered. He only cared about funding when a project was his and his alone. “I want to know how you did it.”
She glanced to Deckard, the security man, who was standing behind her. As far as Riggs knew the security man hadn’t done much around the facility besides adding an aura of suspicion. He remained motionless save the raising of a single eyebrow, suggesting the decision was on her.
“Come on, Thuy,” Riggs said. “The trial starts in thirteen days. You have us flying blind here and it sort of feels like we’re about to fly into the side of a mountain.”
"Yeah," Milner agreed; a rare occurrence.
Thuy knew she’d have to give up her secrets eventually, however the very idea that one of the people in front of her was a corporate spy galled her. It made her feel violated.
And yet the others deserved to know what it was they were working so hard on. “Fine,” Thuy said and then sighed down at her notes. When she glanced up again she was a little shocked to find she had the room’s full attention—they had all been drowsing through the funding report, but now every one of them was listening eagerly. “Ok, I like your enthusiasm. For those non-sc
ientists, to understand the Com-cell, you must understand its parts. I'll start with what we call the receptor cell. We are using the 27Q proteasome because of the high affinity and specificity..."
Deckard cleared his throat, lightly and leaned in. "Maybe a little less with the specifics, Dr. Lee. There is still the leak to worry about and any little thing puts your competition that much closer."
"Of course. You’re absolutely correct," Thuy acknowledged with a nod. She turned back to her teams. "All of you understand the concept behind the receptor cell: just like every other naturally occurring molecule, carcinomas have catalytic sites...docking stations if you will, where they receive nutrients and where they expel waste. Some of these sites are very specific to that particular form of cancer. This specificity allows our Com-cell to travel throughout the entire body and yet only latch onto the tumor."
"Mine didn't," Riggs stated in a loud voice. "And I was using the same proteasome as you. For some reason they built up along the ménages of my opossums with unfortunate side effects."
Thuy was unruffled by the outburst. "It is my theory that your mycotoxins were too powerful. Yes, they destroyed carcinomas, but I believe they also modified the Com-cells causing them to be able to dock at other sites." She paused to let Riggs respond, however he was picturing the Com-cell he had created and fearing she was right.
When he didn't meet her eyes, she went on, "The next step in creating the Com-cell is the merging of an adult stem cell with a fungal organelle; one that will release mycotoxins. In my first attempts with Fusarium the mycotoxins were too weak and too diffuse to make much of a difference against tumors larger than a gram in weight. I decided that instead of trying a more potent mycotoxin as my colleagues were, I changed tactics. Still using the weakest of the mycotoxins, I introduced the Com-cells via inhalation. This was a positive in a number of ways. First, the Com-cell was able to attack the cancer in the lungs right away without having to run up against the immune system. Secondly, the Com-cells were extremely concentrated allowing for the destruction of any sized tumors, and finally, the stem cells, having released their deadly payload were in a perfect position to replicate.”
The Apocalypse Crusade (Book 1): War of the Undead Day One Page 6