“Okay, no one recognized the guy in the picture, no answer at six of the houses. But this is a small community, people know their neighbours, so between them we can work out who lives at the houses where nobody answered. All except one: Number 25, Schott Path. They’re pretty sure someone lives there, but they don’t know who. The next-door neighbour knocked on the door a few times to introduce herself; never any reply. Could be our man.”
The two-way radio crackled. “We’re all in place, sir.”
He picked up the microphone and spoke into it.
“Okay. If you see a guy making a run for it, stop him, but don’t shoot. He may be scared but he won’t give you any trouble. I mean that: no fireworks. Okay?”
“Affirmative.”
Dominguez turned to Milner. “Are you carrying, Sam?”
“Never leave home without it. What about you?”
“Yeah, but look, there are enough sidearms on these two blocks to stop a small army. We’re only talking to a scientist, for Christ’s sake. Are we all set back there?”
Terry and Maggie said: “Yes.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
Charlie wiped back his thick wavy hair with the fingers of one hand.
“There you go, Dave, Newton Center. The cop on reception said he’s here somewhere. Just coast around, it’s not that big.”
A few minutes later Dave braked sharply. There were several police cruisers up ahead. He drew in to the kerb and switched off the engine. Charlie turned and looked the wiry little man over.
“Not bad. Clean shirt, tie. Did you put proper shoes on, like I told you?”
Dave lifted a foot to demonstrate that he wasn’t wearing the usual trainers.
“Good.”
Charlie opened the cubby and withdrew a semiautomatic. He screwed in a silencer, checked the safety, and chambered a round. Then he reached behind him and tucked the pistol into his trouser belt. He let the jacket fall back to cover it.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Dominguez knocked again and listened. He spoke through the door.
“Police. Let us in, Zak.”
A voice came from somewhere on the other side. It sounded slurred.
“Go away. Leave me alone.”
“Zak, let us in. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re here to protect you.”
“I don’t need protecting. Go away.”
“Zak, you sure as hell do need protecting. They got Grant Challoner and they’ll get you.”
There was a silence. Then the voice said:
“They got Grant?”
“For Chrissake, Zak, don’t you watch the news? Grant’s dead. And so will you be if you don’t let us move you to somewhere safer.”
Another silence.
Dominguez looked at Milner and the young uniform officer they’d brought up the path with them. Then they heard the sound of a key turning in a lock and a bolt sliding back. Another bolt. The door opened a crack, stopped by a chain. A face moved in the gap, a pair of bloodshot eyes roving from side to side, surveying them.
Dominguez had his badge ready. “I’m Detective Dominguez, Zak. This here is agent Sam Milner of the FBI.”
Milner showed his shield.
“Will you let us in now?”
The door closed again. There was a rattling of links, then the door swung back. Dominguez turned to the officer.
“Stand guard here. Don’t let anyone in except those two out there.” He pointed. “See the guy standing in the road with the girl? When I say the word, call them over and let them through. I’ll leave the door open for them. No one else.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dominguez turned and went into the house.
The beginning of the cordon was marked by two police cruisers, parked so as to block the road, lights flashing. The patrol officer watched two men approaching, one tall and well-built, the other small, with a curious spring in his step. When they were a little closer he challenged them.
“Sorry, buddy. You’ll have to stop right there.”
“It’s okay, son,” the bigger man said, flashing a police badge. “We’re part of the operation. Is Detective Dominguez in place yet?”
“Yes, sir. He’s at number 25, Schott.”
“Very good. We’ll join him there.”
Dr. Zak Gould bore little resemblance to the bright young man in the photograph. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved in days. His long hair was uncombed, his shoulders were hunched. Not just his breath but his skin and clothes exuded alcohol, which mingled with the sour odour of his unwashed body.
They stood together just inside the door.
“You’ve been a bit out of it, haven’t you, Zak?” Dominguez said.
“Yeah, you could say that. What happened to Grant?”
“Someone beat him to death. Do you know why anyone would want to do that to him?”
Zak seemed to shrink into himself. His voice became thin, high-pitched.
“Oh shit. Poor Grant. He was such a great guy. Oh shit.”
“I’m sorry, Zak.” Dominguez laid a hand gently on the man’s shoulder. He was inwardly cursing himself. He’d hoped to scare Zak into cooperation. He’d misjudged it.
Milner caught his eye and took over.
“Listen, Zak, there’s a couple of English people outside, scientists like yourself. They’d like to meet you. Can I let them in?”
Zak uncurled slightly and gave him a bleary look. His voice dropped to a more normal pitch.
“Sure. What’s the difference? Come through. Have a drink.”
He shambled off. Dominguez turned and signalled to the officer to call Terry and Maggie over. Then he went inside.
When Terry entered, Milner was standing in the corridor. “He’s in there,” he said, pointing. “You get started, Eddie. I’m going to see if I can rustle up some strong coffee.”
Dominguez headed into the living room and Terry and Maggie followed. The room was almost devoid of furniture: just a small desk with a chair, and two more chairs. Zak had probably rented the house and a few sticks of furniture to put in it. On the desk was a glass and a whisky bottle. Zak went over, lifted the bottle and held it to the light. It was empty. He said “Shit” again and dropped it into a wastepaper basket. It made a loud clink as it hit the bottles that were already there. Then he sat down heavily.
Dominguez pulled a chair up.
“Why did they kill him, Zak?”
He didn’t seem to be listening.
“Why, Zak? Was it the organism?”
Zak’s bloodshot eyes rolled slowly over to him and reached some sort of focus. His voice was distant.
“Th’ organism. Yeah. He coulda told everyone.”
“He could have done that years ago. Why didn’t he?”
He frowned and refocused. “He was tryin’ to protect me.” He laughed a little hysterically, then slumped. “Shit. He was such a great guy.”
Terry and Maggie were standing quietly at the back of the room. They exchanged glances and Terry saw her nostrils twitch. Dominguez continued.
“Did he come to see you after the Board Meeting? The one where he resigned?”
“Oh yeah. He was real angry – ’bout the organism, I mean. When he tol’ me they were going into production, hell, I was angry too. We were on the same side, Grant and me, always had been. They had no right to start makin’ it. I wasn’ finished. Nowhere near it. Jesus.”
He buried his head in his hands.
From another room there came the sound of a kettle boiling.
Zak’s voice continued, slightly muffled.
“Grant said if things got out of hand I’d be in danger. Said I should hide out somewhere, helped me find this place. He shoulda done the same. But he wouldn’t hide. Not Grant.”
“So Grant was the only one who knew where you were.”
“Tha’s right.” Zak’s voice was a plaintive sob. “He looked after me!” He turned red-rimmed eyes on Dominguez. “I was only trying to do a bit of g
ood in this goddamned world. You ever seen poverty? I mean, real poverty?”
“I seen poor people, yeah.”
“I don’t mean like we got in this country. I mean real poverty. I seen it. When I was a student, back-packing in the Far East. Poverty there all right. I’m talkin’ ’bout people with a lousy piece of corrugated iron for a roof, dirt for a floor, nothing to eat but a handful of rice a day, sometimes not even that. And the damnedest thing is, these people, these people who got next to nothing, share whatever they got with you – ’cause it’s a tradition with them to honour guests, see? Jeez, I said to myself, I swear if I ever get a chance to do something to help ’em I will.”
“And you did…”
Milner came in, carrying a mug. The smell of coffee wafted after him, doing something to ameliorate the odours that pervaded the room. He planted the mug on the desk in front of Zak.
“Here, drink this, buddy. It’ll make you feel better.”
Zak sized up the mug, then reached for it. He took a swig of the coffee and swallowed noisily.
“Rod didn’t like it, of course,” he said.
“Rod Hillman?”
“Yeah. He said we needed to finish what we’d already started. But hell, I was working on it in my own time. It was my special project. See, these people aren’t lazy; not at all. They work hard. They could grow two, three crops of rice a year, and other things too if they could only put the nitrogen back in the soil. But the soil’s poor and they can’t afford the goddamned fertilizer. That’s why I worked on the organism. I thought I could make a difference.”
He took another sip of the coffee and wiped at one eye with the back of his hand. Dominguez winced, thinking he was about to cry, but instead he suddenly looked into the mug of coffee, frowned and said, “I need a drink. A proper drink. I have to get another bottle.”
Dominguez said gently, “In a moment, Zak. Have some more coffee, now. Look, there’s someone here waiting to talk to you. Her name’s Dr. Maggie Ferris. She’s come all the way from England to meet you.”
He looked up, caught Maggie’s eye, and made a very slight movement of his head.
Maggie hurried over and Dominguez got up to make way for her. She pulled the chair around so that she was sitting next to Zak and laid a hand on his arm.
“Dr. Gould,” she said, “it’s such an honour to meet you.”
He looked up at her for the first time. His expression was curious.
“It is? Why?”
“The organism you engineered. It’s brilliant! How on earth did you do it?”
Zak blinked, then blinked again. He seemed to be gathering far-flung thoughts, assembling them. When he looked at her again his eyes had acquired a little more focus and the voice was a little less lazy.
“You know the hardest part?” he asked.
Maggie chewed her lip furiously. Then she took a deep breath:
“No normal organism would turn out ammonia incessantly. It would stop as soon as the local concentration got too high.”
Zak brought the flat of his hand down on the desk.
“That’s exactly right! You’re a smart person. Okay, so what did I do? I took sequences from a nitrogen-fixing species, and put them in an organism that doesn’t normally fix nitrogen. It doesn’t have the feedback control, see, so it never thinks it’s making too much. It just goes on and on and on, exporting ammonia. On and on and on. Better’n any species that ever existed.”
“You inserted the sequences as a plasmid?”
“Yeah, ’course. A plasmid.”
“Can this type of organism exchange plasmids, Zak?”
“What, like antibiotic resistance, you mean? I don’t know. It was one of the things I wanted to check.”
“Zak, if it could exchange plasmids that would be dangerous, wouldn’t it? It wouldn’t be just your soil organism that made ammonia; it would be cyanobacteria all over the world, rivers, oceans, everywhere.”
“Oh shit, yeah. You wouldn’t want that to happen.”
“Suppose it did happen, Zak? How would you stop it?”
The young officer at the door stiffened as he saw the two men approaching. They turned up the path. The one in front was small and bounced along on the balls of his feet. He could see that the second man was larger but he didn’t have a clear view of him.
He held up a hand. “Sorry, guys. No one’s allowed in.”
The small man smiled, and then he did a curious thing: he skipped lightly to one side.
And now the officer saw the man behind, a heavy-set man with a full head of wavy hair and a crooked nose, and there was something in his hand, and he saw the flash, and something slammed into his chest, and suddenly nothing seemed to matter anymore.
For a moment he stared uncomprehendingly at the sky. Then it darkened at the edges and shrank to nothing.
Two pairs of shoes stepped around the body, over the threshold, and into the house.
Terry stood near the door, holding his breath. This was it: the crux of the investigation. Maggie was at centre stage, yet she looked relaxed, as if she were having a casual conversation with a colleague over a cup of tea. To her right, Dominguez and Milner stood frozen so as not to provide the slightest distraction.
Zak blinked several times and shook his head. “You couldn’t stop it.” Then he frowned and lifted his forefinger. “’cept, maybe…”
“Yes?”
He smiled and prodded her gently on the arm with the forefinger.
“Has an Achilles’ Heel,” he said. “See…” he prodded her again. “It was in there already.” He laughed.
“What was in there, Zak?”
Something caught the corner of Terry’s eye. He looked to his right and froze. The black muzzle of a silencer was coming through the slightly open door. And it was pointing directly at Maggie.
CHAPTER 52
Before Terry could react there was a flash and a curious sound – something between a thud and a chirp – accompanied by a cry from the other side of the room. The muzzle came further through the door and there was another flash and a thud.
A tidal wave of anger surged through him. He grabbed the exposed wrist and yanked it through the doorway. He acted in the same instinctive way as he had all those weeks ago by the river in Wales. He twisted, stepped in tight, and threw the man, Aikido style, with the wrist, elbow, and shoulder locked. He felt as well as heard the sickening wrench and the man landed heavily with an agonized shout, the semiautomatic clattering onto the floor. Still gripping the wrist, Terry kicked the weapon away just as he heard Milner shout:
“Watch out!”
He looked up to see a small man coming straight at him. He threw the wrist away from him and faced the newcomer.
He didn’t see where the punch came from. It shot out with the suddenness of a snake striking and sent him staggering against the wall. The man closed on him quickly, his hands a blur, throwing punches to Terry’s head and body with bewildering speed. Terry ducked to one side and dived into a rolling breakfall, coming up again into a fighting stance. The man came forward again, bouncing and weaving. Two jarring hooks landed to Terry’s body and another high on his cheek. Terry backed away, trying to read his next move. It came quickly, a straight left to Terry’s face, but this time he was ready for it. His hand snapped around the man’s wrist. He held it as he side-stepped and swept the man’s legs from beneath him in an ankle throw, dumping his astonished attacker on his back. Terry moved in fast with an arm lock, his leg across the man’s throat, hips lifted against the straightened arm.
Looking across the floor he could see Milner pinning the larger man face down, both arms twisted behind him. Milner shouted:
“Eddie, get the cop outside to cuff him!”
Dominguez ran for the door.
Terry yelled, “Maggie, are you hurt?”
“I’m all right, I’m all right.”
Terry murmured, “Thank God.” Then, louder, “What about Zak?”
“Shit, he’s been
hit.”
Terry sighed grimly and tightened his hold. The man started to jerk up and down, trying to buck his way out of the hold. Terry raised his hips slightly, eliciting a squeal of pain.
“Keep still, or I’ll break your arm,” he shouted.
The bucking stopped.
Dominguez returned with a pair of handcuffs. With Milner’s help he clipped the larger man’s wrists behind him.
Milner snapped, “Where’s the cop?”
Dominguez kept his voice low. “He’s dead. The bastard shot him.”
Milner’s eyes flashed. “You lousy sonofabitch!” he said. He kicked the man viciously in the ribs, and the body contracted with a grunt. Then he seemed to reconsider and threw in a harder kick, prompting a howl of protest.
“Okay, that’s enough,” he said. “Keep him covered.”
He came over to Terry, drew his revolver, and pressed the muzzle against the smaller man’s ear.
“You give me any trouble, punk, and I’ll be delighted to blow your fucking brains out,” he said. “Got that?”
The man looked at him with wild eyes. He said nothing.
Dominguez lifted the two-way communicator in his other hand.
“Dominguez. Emergency. Everyone to the house, number 25. And we need paramedics – fast.”
Minutes later they heard a stampede of footsteps and the room was full of blue uniforms. Dominguez kept the sidearm trained as Terry relinquished his hold and handed his snarling opponent over to two officers. As they put the handcuffs on, Dominguez pointed to his chafed knuckles.
“Well, well. What have we here?”
The man sneered insolently at him. “Did that just now.”
“I don’t think so. I think maybe you did that Tuesday night, when you were busy beating someone to death. Take him away.”
Two more officers were already walking the other man through the door. Dominguez went with them.
The room suddenly seemed empty.
Terry crossed to the desk and crouched down behind it, next to Maggie. She was holding Zak’s hand. A red stain was spreading across the man’s shirt.
Maggie was distraught. Tears were streaming down her face as she said desperately: “You have to save him. You don’t understand. He can’t die.”
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