The Devil's Vial

by Brumbaugh,Byron

  . . .

  Alex sat next to Doug in the back of the van. They were hovering over a computer monitor Oscar set up for them. The computer in turn was connected wirelessly to a server back at the house. They were checking out the connections Alex just installed.

  Emily slid open the door to the van. “How’s it all working?”

  Alex turned to look in her direction. “Everything seems to be up and running. Hey, with a little instruction from an FBI agent and a little help from an electronic genius, I could become a high tech criminal!”

  “Your training does seem to be going well.”

  “How did it go with virus boy?”

  “He was kind of interesting, actually. He told me about what they were trying to do with viral implantation of genetic DNA, making artificial viruses for medical use, stuff like that.”

  “You know, I’m starting to get worried. What if Todd has nothing to do with what’s going on? What if it’s someone else in the laboratory who’s running things? We could be wasting our time here.”

  “I think that’s unlikely,” said Doug. “This guy is really bright and has a lot of clout. Besides, if not him, then where do we go from here? Our time is probably limited. We have something of an advantage now because we’ve changed our behavior unexpectedly, but the surprise won’t last for long.”

  Emily held out her hand. “Look what I’ve got.” In her hand was a vial identical to the one they found in the pen, including a clear fluid. “Gary told me it was specially made for equipment they designed and built in Todd’s lab. This one has just water in it, but it’s hermetically sealed, can be sterilized without harming what’s inside and it can safely hold the most dangerous viral cultures.”

  Alex stared at the vial. “Wonder how you open the thing?” After a moment, he added, “I guess we really don’t want to know that, do we? It would be better if it were never opened.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Richard sat on a makeshift meditation cushion in the laundry room. The light was subdued, the washer and dryer quiet, the door closed. After a week in the house, his life was reduced to sleeping, meditating, perusing data for interminable periods of time interspersed with short meals, meditating again, then going back to sleep. Respectfully, his fellow conspirators saw his need to meditate and made room for him to do it. He was alone now; Oscar left to run some errand and the others were on their way back from Harvard. At the moment, he wasn't needed.

  His mind began to settle as he followed his practice. There seemed to be a knot in his consciousness, blocking his way. He opened himself to it and, on the surface, it felt like he was tight with guilt. Could it be about leaving the others to take the major part of the load while he meditated? No, there was something else there as well. It wasn’t guilt; it was something more akin to frustration. But whatever label he put on it, it sucked in his attention like iron to a magnet.

  Damn it! he thought. It’s not supposed to be like this. The Buddhist path, the path to enlightenment, was supposed to be, albeit slow, an inevitable trek toward peaceful realization. You just follow the eightfold path: right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration and peace of mind would slowly grow until the goal was reached. That was not what was happening to him.

  It wasn’t as if these eight precepts were some set of moral laws laid down by a supreme being. They were more like signposts left behind by people who had already been that way. They pointed in the direction you should go to follow where others had been. If you didn’t follow them, you would stray off the path. You would suffer, but it would be of your own making; by cause and effect, not due to some divine retribution. You were not evil if you failed to follow the path, you were just missing the mark. The question was, had he made wrong choices? Again.

  It didn’t feel right. He wasn’t being open, direct, and supportive. “Conspirator” was exactly how he felt and it didn’t seem appropriate, somehow. His heart was full of compassion, but what he was doing did not feel compassionate. He was hiding in the shadows, supporting the subterfuge of a fellow being. But what other choice did he have? He could come up with all kinds of reasons why he should be doing what he was doing, but, still, it felt off target. Was he fooling himself? He wasn’t feeling guilty, he was feeling lost.

  And why did he have to deal with it at all? All he wanted was the chance to be as good a Buddhist as he could. But life was not allowing him the chance to do it. It kept engaging him in unavoidable, impossible situations. What had he done to deserve this? Was all this the karmic result of his feeble efforts to do the right thing in that basement so long ago? Or was it the result of accumulated karma from previous lifetimes? Had he been that big of a screw-up? No. That was his western upbringing talking. He was responsible for his choices, but he did not cause what was happening now. The universe was not organized around him. It had a life of its own.

  Richard let these thoughts and feelings well up inside of him, then let them go. The knot loosed its grip on him and his mind continued to quiet. The issues weren’t resolved, but he left them behind. For now.

  . . .

  Alex followed Emily and Doug down the stairs into the basement. Richard and Oscar were busy in front of their respective monitors.

  “Welcome back to the dungeon,” said Richard as he looked up at them. “How'd it go?”

  “Alex did great,” said Emily.

  “Well, I don’t have any wet spots in my pants, anyway,” said Alex. “How’re things working here? Is the data coming through?”

  “The data, yes,” said Richard. “But meaningful information is scarce. We’re getting more of the same stuff we already have.”

  “Emily, show Richard what you’ve got,” said Alex.

  Emily reached into a pocket and gave Richard the vial she was given by Gary, the post doc.

  “Hey! That’s just like the one in the pen!” said Richard.

  “The guy who gave it to me said their lab had it specially made for some of the equipment they designed and built there.”

  “What do you know…” said Richard. He rolled the vial in his hand, apparently deep in thought. “What’s in it?”

  “Just water,” said Emily. “But otherwise, it’s the same as the one we have.”

  “Doug, how’d you like the van? Pretty radical, no?” asked Oscar.

  Doug sat down next to Oscar and looked at the large computer screen in front of him. “Pretty impressive, Oscar. Just what can we do with it? What’re its capabilities?”

  “You were able to pick up data coming from Todd’s office computer, weren’t you?”

  “Sure. What else can we do from the van?”

  “Lots. And I can add more capability as we need it. It’s flexible.” Oscar sat his bulk back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. He put his hands behind his head, fingers interlaced. “Suppose you wanted to track Todd in his car. I’ve written some software that searches for wi-fi networks, breaks through the firewall on the routers and then connects to us here. If you put a bug in Todd’s car, you can sit in the van, or here in the basement, and access the networks in the immediate vicinity of his car. You find out which networks are within range of the car and you can triangulate to get the car’s location. A poor man’s tracer.”

  “Is there some way we could use GPS?” asked Alex.

  “It would make the bug bigger, but I think we could still hide it in the car without much trouble. But it would make it easier for others to locate the van…” Oscar’s voice dropped off as he became absorbed in thought.

  “I like the idea of tracking where Todd goes,” said Doug. “What else can we do?”

  “The van’s fully equipped with high speed computers that can quickly break into secure networks. You can do that here too, but it’s more dangerous because you’re stationary. But the van moves around so you’re harder to trace. In principle, you could break into NSA computers, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Those guys have
some pretty smart dudes who can tell if there’s been a breach and then trace the source while you’re mining for information. I could work on it though, if you want.” There was an eager glint in his eye as if begging for the chance to try.

  “I hope it won’t come to that,” said Doug.

  “I’m troubled,” said Alex. He sat down next to Richard. “Are we sure Todd is the guy we want to chase after? We’ve found nothing to suggest he is, other than what you unearthed at LQNH.” He looked at Doug. “We have several clues the lab is involved somehow, but maybe Todd doesn’t know what’s going on. I have this uncomfortable feeling we’re on a wild goose chase. We’re sure not making any real progress here.”

  “That’s the way investigations go sometimes,” said Emily.

  “Sure. But there are nasty people out there who are trying to find us and kill us. How long do you think we can get away with staying undiscovered? We’ve been lucky, but for how long?”

  “I feel your angst,” said Richard.

  Doug looked down at his hands, then up at Alex. “You’re absolutely right. We are pushing our luck.” A silence fell on the group.

  “This is a government conspiracy, right?” asked Oscar. “So why not hack into government computer systems and mine for relevant data from there? We could forget about Todd and see if we can get more information somewhere else.”

  Doug shifted in his chair. “That’s really dangerous. If anyone could do it safely, Oscar, you could. But it’s too risky. I think staying the course with Todd a bit longer might still prove useful. I just can’t believe a guy in his position who has access to so much money could allow it to be used on a project without his knowledge and direction. I strongly believe in the ‘Follow the Money’ directive.”

  “Well, I’ve found one interesting thing.” Oscar hit a few keys on the keyboard and a scheduling program came up on the screen. “I was able to access Todd’s schedule. If you look at it closely, you’ll notice he’s in the Harvard office only about thirty percent of the time. We know he’s not at home for more than twenty percent of the rest of the time, so the question is, where does he spend the other fifty percent? And this excludes when he’s out of town.”

  “Hmmm,” said Doug. “Interesting question. We’re only accessing fifty percent of the man. Maybe we’re just not looking in the right place. Anybody got any ideas?”

  There was a pause as everyone racked their brains for answers.

  “I think we should bug Todd’s car like Oscar suggested,” offered Richard.

  “Yeah,” said Oscar. “I could write a program that traces and maps his car’s location and keeps track of the amount of time he spends at each place.”

  “Could you do the same thing with Todd himself and the bugs we’ve placed on him?” asked Doug.

  “That would be harder because the capability of those bugs is less. For one thing, I had to sacrifice some power to make them harder to detect. You can get away with a larger bug, and so more power, on a car because the bug’s easier to hide. With the smaller bugs, if you’re not close to a wi-fi source, you’d never be able to communicate with it.”

  Alex looked up at Oscar in a flash of inspiration. “You know, I’ll bet Todd spends a lot of time around computers, either doing his research, or writing papers, or processing data. Most computers these days come with wi-fi built in and if a computer close to him is turned on, all we need to do is get the bug to connect with the computer by wi-fi. Couldn’t we trace him that way?”

  Oscar rubbed his chin. “The small bugs are also limited as to what they can do. They’re designed to connect to computers preprogrammed to let them in. The larger ones can break through firewalls and force their way in, but the smaller ones can’t.” Oscar paused for a moment. “But, you know, if I knew the approximate location of the bug, I could go through the internet and program all the nearby computers to communicate with it. The problem is, I can’t program all the computers in the city. I’d have to know where he’s likely to go…”

  Alex leaned forward, excited. “You don’t need to know. As long as he goes between gigs in his car, you can find out which computers to access by tracing the car.”

  “I like the way you think, Alex,” said Oscar. “That just might work…” He gazed off into space, lost in thought again.

  Emily sat up in her chair. “We still have one other place to search, you know. We haven’t really explored the primate lab in Marlborough.”

  “That’s right, too,” said Doug.

  Silence reigned in the room for a couple of minutes. Finally, Doug stood up. “Let’s do this. I’ll go bug Todd’s car – that should be a one man job. Emily, you’ve been to the primate lab. Why don’t you come up with a plan of attack where we can explore the place. You three,” he indicated Oscar, Richard and Alex, “continue mining the data we have access to and find something useful. And remember, we’re pressed for time. We will be discovered, it’s just a matter of when.”

  “What we really need is an edge we can use when we’re discovered,” said Alex.

  Doug raised his eyebrows. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I’m still working on it. I’ll let you know.”

  . . .

  Alex felt like he had been scanning through computer screens of data for weeks, though it was only a few hours. His eyes hurt and he was beginning to get a headache. Sighing deeply, he tried to keep his attention on what he was doing. It was no good; he needed a break.

  Just as he sat back to rest his eyes, he heard footsteps on the floor above – he hoped it was Emily. That would be a pleasant interlude. “I’m going upstairs to take a breather, anybody want anything?” The other two were focused on their computers.

  “A piece of pizza would be nice,” said Oscar without moving his eyes from his screen. “I think there’s still some in the fridge.” He seemed totally engrossed in working out some software issue or other.

  “Ugh. Cold pizza. Again.”

  “What?” asked Oscar. “It’s one of the major food groups. You know, with beer, chocolate and hot dogs.” He continued to enter data via his keyboard with a fast flurry of clicks.

  “To each his own. Richard?”

  “I’ll wait for dinner, thanks.” Richard had a bored look on his face.

  “Richard, are you okay?” Alex hadn’t seen him like this before.

  Richard sighed and went back to his screen. “I guess so. I just don’t understand why it’s so hard for me to lead a quiet, contemplative, peaceful, compassionate life.”

  “The world won’t let you.”

  “But it’s supposed to be possible in all circumstances.”

  “Well, good luck with that.” Alex took a deep breath. “Look, Richard, you need to keep your eye on the bigger picture. I understand you're conflicted by what we're doing; God knows a lot of it's well into the moral gray zone. But there's something really nasty going on here. We all have private issues, but the vial and what it represents is what's important. That's bigger than all of us.”

  “I know. I know.” Richard sighed and turned his attention back to his screen.

  When Alex got upstairs, Emily was just walking into the kitchen. “How’d it go at the monkey farm?” he asked.

  “It went well. Do you remember that guy I met before, the Brazilian guy?”

  “I remember you mentioning something…”

  “I ran into him again. I think we can get him to give us a simple tour. At least we can see what’s there.”

  “Does he know Todd? Is Todd ever there?”

  “I, uh, couldn’t think of a way to ask without it sounding suspicious. You guys come up with anything new?”

  “Nada. And I have to tell you, I’m getting scared. My intuition tells me time is getting very short. And we’re no closer to figuring out a next step. I can almost feel ‘them’ moving in. What do you think will happen if, or when, we get caught?”

  Emily paused, leaned up against the kitchen counter, and let out a deep sigh. She pursed her lips
. “That probably depends on who catches us. If it’s the bad guys, at least some of us are toast, probably all of us, as we know too much. If it’s cops who aren’t in on whatever it is that’s going on, one of two things could happen. We could be turned over to the bad guys and we’re toast, or, we might be able to make contact with someone in authority who would be willing to help us. I know for a fact not everyone in positions of power would support our demise. On the other hand, the word is out you guys are cop killers… Basically, we’re toast.”

  “Thanks for the reassurance.”

  “I think we can hold out for a little while, if caught, because they’re going to need to get the vial from us. That gives us a little edge, but not much. They’ve already shown us they’re more than willing to kill to get what they want.”

  Alex opened the fridge and pulled out the box of left-over pizza. “Want a piece?” he asked Emily.

  “Please, you offend my delicate feminine nature.”

  Alex smiled. “I hear you. It’s still early, maybe we can break Oscar away from his computer long enough to go for a real food run.” He put the leftover pizza on a paper plate and headed for the basement stairs. “I promised Oscar a snack,” he said as he retreated down the stairs.

  “Alex, look at this,” said Oscar as Alex held the plate of pizza out to him. “I’m getting signal in from the bug in Todd’s car.” On Oscar’s screen was a street map of Cambridge with a flashing red dot on a street by the Harvard Medical School campus. He hit a button and the screen split. On the other half of the screen was text having a clock counting up and a description of the location of the dot. After a moment, a second dot, this one green, appeared near the car and text appeared on the other screen with Todd’s name and another clock. “His personal bug just came in range.”