by Bill Clem
At that moment, a howl cut through the air. Whiting wheeled around. “Come on. We need to move now!”
Thirty-Eight
* * *
PETER CARLSON STOOD STARING AT Ellen. Her presence of mind and determination had impressed him. Now, however, he was wondering if she’d gone too far.
“What do you mean, they’re gone?”
“I went to the storage tanks—“
“Are you crazy? If Tibek caught you in there, there’s no telling what he’d have done.”
“I opened the tanks. The embryos are all gone. All six of them. He must’ve taken them, who else could it be? He’s been acting strange for days now.”
Peter was silent for a minute. Ellen’s newest revelation left him deeply troubled. Her accusation, though staggeringly bold, had just opened all kinds of new doors, and got him thinking in a completely new direction. If Tibek did take them... was it for corporate or scientific espionage? What did he stand to gain?
A darker thought crept into his mind.
How far would he go?
“You’re quiet,” Ellen said, beside him.
Peter glanced over. For an instant, in the muted lighting of his quarters, he saw a softness in Ellen’s eyes he had not noticed before. Shaking off the thought, he gave her a tired sigh. “I can’t believe this. It seems to get worse with every passing hour. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t signed on for this.”
“That makes two of us.”
“What if this whole thing is a sham? What if the Prince has just put all of us here to—“
“To what?”
Peter’s words came faster now. “I hate to say it, but I think there’s much more going on here than what we’ve been told. By the Prince and everyone else.”
* * *
Peter paced in his room. Ellen had left and now his senses were tingling. He didn’t know which was more discomforting—Ellen’s news about the missing embryos or his vain attempts to contact Prince Habib.
The Prince didn’t answer.
When his cell phone rang, Peter quickly ran through his mind what he was going to say to the Prince. When he flipped open the phone, he was surprised to hear a stranger’s voice on the other end.
“Dr. Carlson?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Who I am is not important. What I’m calling about is. Listen carefully. I work for Gem/BioTech. We received a package that came from your...”
Peter heard a pop... pop... on the line, followed by static.
Then the line went dead.
Along with whoever was on the other end of the call, Peter surmised.
Thirty-Nine
* * *
JACK AND THE GROUP MADE slow progress, slogging through mud and thorny vines. They’d decided that if they were going to find the lab, they needed to get to higher ground in order to survey the landscape.
“There’s a waterfall somewhere near here. I’ve seen it before,” Whiting said, “if we can get there by morning, we can see across the island.”
An hour later, the roar of a nearby waterfall grew louder, gradually drowning out the sound of the large beetles that crackled in the night air. The vegetation grew thicker, becoming nearly impenetrable. A cool mist from the falls settled on their faces and hair, the moisture creating a welcome micro-climate, vastly different from the sauna-like heat of the day.
“There’s something up here,” Whiting whispered from ten feet ahead. Jack caught up with him, his flashlight illuminating a large dugout canoe beached at a calm eddy.
Whiting knelt in the moist mud and examined the footprints. The tracks headed inland for a few yards before hugging the shore again, disappearing in the direction of the falls.
“Aborigines, “Whiting said.
“They’ve got to be close,” Jack said.
They walked for five minutes, each yard becoming more treacherous. Mud gave way to long slabs of wet sandstone. The constant misting from the falls provided a perfect habitat for moss and lichen, which made the rocks as slick as an oily garage floor. Tracy stumbled twice, scraping her knees against the rough rock. More disconcerting, they could no longer see any tracks.
As they neared the top of the falls, they realized a slip now would be disasterous. The rocks in front of them dropped off to a sandstone floor. While it was nothing compared to the magnificent waterway at Victoria Falls, Jack knew passing the hundred or so feet of rushing water, cascading down to smash into the swirling pool below, required extreme caution.
He stopped abruptly and surveyed the scene. The falls were so loud, Jack felt confident speaking again. “We can’t go any further. It’s too risky. A slip here isn’t a bruised knee or cut shin.”
Hammond heaved a smile. “But I dragged my ass over two miles.”
“You always hated exercise,” Tracy said.
“I hate exercises in futility.”
“I can make it,” Tracy said, looking at the expanse. “I can jump that ravine over there and scout ahead a ways, then come back.”
Jack shook his head. “Are you crazy? We can’t let you go out there.”
“Jack, I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
Whiting chimed in. “She might have a point, Jack. We are on the other side of the island now. Those things have their colony set up on the far side. If she can get across, she should be safe.”
“That’s a big if, Doctor.”
Tracy peered at her intended path. “Don’t worry, Jack. I’ll be back. And don’t forget. When we get out of here, you owe me.”
Forty
* * *
AT THE SIGHT OF HIS SON, Prince Habib was shocked by his appearance. Although he had not thought it possible, Khalid looked even paler than he had the day before. His eyes were visibly sunken into their sockets and were surrounded by circles so dark, they looked like he had black eyes. The rank smell of fresh vomit hung in the air.
Habib wanted to hold his son, but he couldn’t move. The agony of his inadequateness held him back, although the boy lifted his arms to him.
His disease was too powerful, and he still had nothing to offer his son. Even his vast resources couldn’t fix this nightmare. Time was running out, and every minute that passed felt like a knife in the Prince’s side. He had hoped he would be able to save his son, but without the formula, it was hopeless. Habib resigned himself to the idea that his son was not going to get better. All the palliative treatment in the world wouldn’t stop the inevitable progression of this disease.
Without any warning, the boy retched. His slender body heaved, and heaved until there was nothing left to expel.
The Prince felt a wave of anxiety wash over him as a nurse ran in to the room and cleaned the boy’s face.
At that moment, Habib’s assistant Jimi came rushing into the room, his face white. “Your Highness. It is the phone for you. This is the call you’ve been waiting for.”
Forty-One
* * *
AS THE HAMMERED-SILVER MOON hung above the dark rocky hills, Tracy Mills clambered along the slippery outcropping of the falls and raced along the tree line, looking for a way into the jungle before any monstrous pursuers caught her. She quickly arrived at a gap in the foliage the size of a small car, where she turned and sprinted down a dark path, into the gloom beneath the trees.
She heard nothing behind her and did not waste any time squinting back into the darkness. But she suspected that her predators would be silent stalkers, revealing themselves only when they pounced.
The coastal woodlands were comprised mostly of blue gum and eucalyptus, their leaves so dark now that they looked like bits of funeral shrouds. Tracy followed the winding trail as it began to slope into a canyon. The trees were so tall and thick in places, the partial moon’s glow only penetrated enough to lay a scalpel of light upon the path.
Even where moonlight revealed the way, Tracy proceeded with caution fearing the surface roots on the jungle floor, which spread across the animal-trodden path, would trip her. Every fe
w feet, low-hanging branches presented another danger to her, but she kept one arm up and hurried along.
Soon, she would reach the bottom of the slope where she could either turn back toward the sea or head deeper into the jungle where her prospects might be bleak.
Frantically wondering which way to go, she descended the last fifty feet. The trees flanking the trail gave way to an impenetrable tangle of low-lying thorns, called African Box. A few immense ferns, ideally suited to the frequent rains, overgrew the path and Tracy pushed through them, the nettles like small hands grabbing at her.
A shallow stream cut a course through the bottom of the canyon, and she paused beside it to catch her breath.
The night was soundless.
Hugging herself, she realized how cold she was. In jeans and a tank top, she was adequately dressed for a sunny spring day on the beach, but not for the cold, damp air of a jungle night.
Spurred by cold and fear, Tracy stepped off the stream bank and onto a bank of loamy soil eroded from the heavy rain a day earlier. She tried to jump across the narrow stream, but landed a few inches short, soaking her tennis shoes. Nevertheless, she fought through more mud up a steep embankment, and then turned east toward the next arm of dense forest. She could tell east by the position of the moon and from that, she could stay on a course that would take her further up the coast to where the lab was supposed to be.
Yeah, she thought. Good luck.
She would have a hard time getting anyone to believe her story. She had no illusions about that. They would tell her she was just being paranoid and that what she’d heard was little more than a lynx or a cougar, common to the jungles of Tasmania.
But she had to try. Someone would believe her. Someone had to!
Behind her, a couple hundred yards away from the slope she had just descended, something shrieked. It was not entirely an animal cry, but it wasn’t human either. More screams followed, each one unique in its tone and pitch, answering the first shrill call.
I thought that doctor said I’d be safe on this side.
Tracy halted on the steep trail, one foot firmly planted against a small boulder. She looked back as her pursuers simultaneously began to wail, reminiscent of a pack of wolves, yet far more frightening. The sound was so bloodcurdling it penetrated her flesh like a needle to her marrow.
“What are you?” she whispered. She suspected they could see as well as cats in the dark. Could they smell her as well, like dogs can?
Her heart began to slam painfully in her breast.
Tracy Mills turned and clambered up the steep embankment and into the dense forest. She heard the wailing grow louder behind her, but she dare not look back. There was only one way to go.
Forward.
Forty-Two
* * *
PETER CARLSON’S MIND WAS IN overdrive. As he stood in the lab, these sophisticated machines were a stark reminder that not all that glitters is gold.
Carlson stepped over to his desk and gazed down at the latest genetic mapping of the Thylacine fetus. The short arm of chromosome 12 was not consistent with the original gene map. There were still thousands of base pairs that didn’t match up. It could only mean one thing.
At that moment, Ellen Choy entered the lab.
“They changed the DNA,” she said.
“How do you know?” Carlson asked, having already suspected as much.
Ellen held up a sheaf of papers, “Because I stole his notes.”
Carlson looked at the stolen documents. “He sold out. He wasn’t even trying to grow an adult. He just needed stem cells.” He read further. “Gem/BioTech!”
Ellen nodded.
“That explains a lot,” Peter said. Like why they never answered his inquiries; that was where the foremost researcher he tried to contact was from.
Obviously, Tibek was in Gem/BioTech’s pocket. Deep in their pocket. The conclusion was undeniable. Theft.
Carlson sat at the counter and swung the lamp closer. The first file he opened contained a mixture of photocopies and lined yellow pages filled with Michael Whiting’s long flowing script. The pages that had been copied represented studies, or portions thereof, that had been used repeatedly, perhaps with all the surrogates Whiting had used in his studies. Peter was already familiar with most of the scientific procedures Whiting had used, having read everything published on the subject.
The rest of the papers were from Tibek himself and contained everything from articles from Scientific American to personal finance records and handwritten formulas. One article did stand out and apparently had captured Tibek’s interest as well. Splashes of yellow highlighter dotted the article throughout. A German biotech firm had gentically manipulated cat DNA to incorporate material “friendly” to humans, creating transgenic stem cells that tricked the immune system of the human recipient. Then they took those cells, placed them back in the host with human growth hormone, repeating the process again to ‘tweak the stem cells into unprecedented growth’. In pencil at the bottom of the page, Tibek had theorized: injection of Thylacine cells into host system: same effect? A later notation declared: Additional samples are necessary. Mutations occurred.
Finally, the journal articles ended and the subsequent pages were more notes about various sequencing protocols.
Peter turned to Ellen, whose head was resting in her hands. “Well, I’d say you have your proof.”
Ellen looked up and nodded. “There’s more. I found mention of Ron Powers in those notes.”
Peter gave her a bewildered look before tearing through the papers again. “Are you sure? I didn’t see that. Ron Powers, the CEO of GenSys.”
“Yes. I think Tibek set him up.” She walked over to Carlson and flipped through the papers, finding the one she was looking for. “There,” she said pointing a shaky finger at Powers name on the document.
Peter furrowed a brow. “They are both involved.”
“This whole thing is a lie, Peter.”
Unfortunately, it was too late now.
Forty-Three
* * *
RON POWERS WAITED FOR THE sun to break through the morning mist each day before taking his breakfast out on the veranda. The afternoon brought eighty-degree weather and warm penetrating rays to deepen his already near-perfect tan. But mornings could be downright chilly.
He had to admit, his self-imposed exile hadn’t been entirely unpleasant. Thank God he’d had the presence of mind to withdraw a large amount of cash from the bank—an account his wife knew nothing of—before leaving California. But his stay at San Lupos had been costly. His European–style hotel located on the rocky cliffs cost him upwards of eight hundred dollars a day. But he had no regrets as he sat watching the Caribbean Sea hurl its powerful waves against the rocky shoreline below. In fact, the time he’d spent there had served him well. It had allowed him to think about his situation.
As the last remnants of coastal haze gave way to another idyllic morning, the telephone by his bed rang. No one had this number, no one knew he was here. He debated not answering but it kept ringing. Finally he rose from his Spanish omelet and walked inside, grabbing the receiver. He expected it to be the front desk, but when he heard the caller’s voice, he knew it wasn’t.
“Hello, Mr. Powers?”
“Yes. Who the fuck is this?’
“Just a minute, please.”
Powers took a slow sip of his vanilla latte he’d ordered with his breakfast, and then waited. Someone was going to have some explaining to do. This was a private suite, godammit!
A few seconds later a familiar voice came on the line.
Powers felt his body flush. “Your Highness. This is a surprise.” Powers sat slowly on the side of the bed.
“A pleasant one, I hope.”
“Of course. It’s always good to hear from you.” He couldn’t help but look around, though he knew there was no way the Prince knew where he was. Except the Prince had called him here. Not on his cell phone, on the hotel line. A bead of sweat appeared at
his hairline.
“I trust our arrangement is still intact.”
“Yes. I was just about to call you.” He modulated his voice to show no alarm.
“Great. In that case, we can do our business in Dunali. I am sending a plane for you.”
“A plane? When? I mean... this is a bit of a surprise.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t keep you long. I’ll have you back in a day or so. I have some of my venture capitol friends coming in. I’d like you to be there. I have arranged a car to pick you up, at your hotel there in San Lupos.”
Powers shit a brick. “When will that be?”
“They should be there within the hour.”
“Very good. I’ll see you soon,” he said with fake enthusiasm.
Ron Powers was frightened. Scared shitless. Without a completed formula to give the Prince, he would lose any hope of getting the sixty million. But he had a way around that. In truth, he knew all the Prince wanted was proof that the clone embryo was genuine. That would be something he could verify through Frank Tibek. Time for Tibek to earn his cut.
However, an hour later, with the Prince’s car arriving any minute, Ron Powers hadn’t any luck contacting Frank Tibek.
Powers slammed the phone down and walked to the window. A black Mercedes sedan rolled to a stop in front of the lobby entrance. Two dark-suited men climbed out and entered the hotel.
A minute later, he heard a rap on door.
Forty-Four
* * *
INSIDE HIS OFFICE, FRANK TIBEK bent down in front of a cabinet at the bottom of his bookcase. He unlocked the thick door and reached in to grasp the heavy TSA data books that he’d written in code.
What!
His hand met empty space.