“Wonderful.”
“You will also provide a running commentary on your procedures and why you are doing what you are doing, so that we may document your methodology ourselves.”
“Hooray.”
“We will begin at once.”
Archer felt a hand on his face and the blindfold was ripped away. He stared into the muzzle of a snub-nosed automatic weapon which slowly retreated as Archer blinked.
“What do you need to start?”
“A dozen Petri dishes with agar media, inoculation samples from test-tube rack number 32A in cold storage, a well-slide in the microscope, and the GenTrack program running on the computer.”
“Will that be all?”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll take a bottle of your best champagne on ice, some caviar on wheat crackers, and two of your best hookers, please.”
At length the kidnapper said, “Perhaps when you succeed, Doctor Archer, those wishes might be granted. Until then, your existence will be considerably less extravagant.”
Two masked assistants hustled about the lab as they prepared William Archer’s requests.
Part V: Denatured
…GAAA57CGAA …
3:33 P.M.
Dr. William Archer fine-focused a microscope as he gazed through its optics at another world. A clutch of rod-shaped cells decorated with fragile-looking appendages swam through droplets of water placed on a glass slide. He looked up from the scope.
“Can I have a Diet Coke, please?”
It wasn’t the question itself that disarmed the captor who leaned casually on the lab bench a few feet away, but rather Archer’s sudden movement after so many minutes hunched motionless over the scope. The guard had been caught in the act of lifting his mask to scratch an itch on his chin, and now Archer looked away quickly after making eye contact with the Chinese man who was supposed to have remained unseen.
The guard looked over at his associate, the only other person in the room, by the entrance. This one had a habit of compulsively cleaning his firearm and had not been looking.
“Eh?” the guard next to Archer grunted.
“Diet. Coke.” Archer pointed to the refrigerator on the far wall, wanting even more than the guard to ignore the fact that he had just seen most of the guard’s face.
“Get back to work. I will get it.”
The din of power tools started up again as crewmen worked just outside the lab to repair the hole Archer had blasted in the ship. Archer threw up his hands. The guard came back with a can of Diet Coke and scowled at him.
“I can’t see what I’m doing in the microscope with the vibrations from that drill.”
The guard shrugged and jabbed his gun toward the computer. “Then run a partial sim based on the cell counts you’ve gotten so far until the drilling stops. They should be done in ten more minutes,” the guard said.
Archer’s heart sank. He had no leeway, no opportunity for slack time whatsoever. There would be no more stalling. Immediately following his interrogation, the kidnappers had brought in a man they identified only as their “lead scientist.” This man had demanded of Archer that he tell all of his proposed methods for creating the GREENBACK organism, taking detailed notes and pausing here and there to ask intelligent questions. Just like a graduate student in a lecture, Archer had thought. Except for the voice modulator and the automatic weapon.
Apparently, the lead scientist had schooled his subordinates on what Archer should be doing for each minute of the four hours he’d claimed he needed for the procedure. Worse, they seemed to understand it. Which made sense, Archer mused, since it would take a certain amount of applied scientific knowledge in order to benefit from GREENBACK.
But it was just as well, Archer thought as he cracked open the coke. He had no more cards to play. Might as well bring out the ace. The real thing, he thought, drinking from the can. He nodded to the guard.
“Good idea. Any other suggestions?”
“Yes. The next time you disappoint us will be your last. Do not let that happen.”
A half an hour later, Dr. William Archer had attracted an audience of his captors as he prepared to execute a key step of the procedure. Six of them huddled around him, watching his every move intently as he operated a micropipette. One of them aimed a video camera. Archer felt like he was giving a lab demonstration to a group of potential investors. Which in a way he was, only they weren’t paying him for his services. Intimately familiar with the procedure he was carrying out, Archer had slipped into a kind of trance-like state while he performed the lab work. Even through this heightened sense of concentration, however, he was still aware that the lead scientist had entered the room some time ago.
Presently someone rapped an object on the bench top. Archer looked up. The guard who fetched his cokes stopped tapping his gun. The lead scientist wagged a finger at the micromanipulator attached to Archer’s microscope, then looked up at the flat screen display used to monitor what was under the scope. Archer had just finished copying a stretch of DNA and injecting it into a different cell.
“Why did you insert that segment of DNA into the host?” the lead scientist intoned through his voice modulator. Archer looked up from the scope and stared at the monitor display, as if surprised by what he saw there. His mind had been running smoothly, sailing through the complex lab procedure on auto-pilot; he resented the intrusion. He answered the question, wanting only to get back to work and get this over with.
“It’s a watermark.”
This triggered a hushed conference in rapidly spoken Mandarin Chinese between two of the kidnappers and the lead. For some reason they also lowered their voices, as if Archer had any hope of understanding their language.
Then the lead said, “Explain what a watermark is in this context.”
Archer gave an irritated sigh, as if beginning to lose his patience with a slow student. “Diet Coke,” he snapped at his guard, who glared at him before stalking off toward the refrigerator.
“In the conventional sense, as you know, a watermark is a faint image incorporated into a piece of paper. An example of a digital watermark is a corporate logo superimposed over a copyrighted electronic image. I have taken this concept one step further, by applying it to bioengineered cells. By positioning DNA base pairs in a particular order according to a pre-arranged coding system, I am able to store data of my choosing within the junk DNA of a living cell.”
Archer’s new beverage appeared on the lab bench. He spoke louder to be heard over the murmurs of excited chatter that coursed around the group. “In this case, that data is my company’s name, Alacra Genomics.”
As he paused to open his coke, Dr. Archer realized the severity of his mistake. It hit him at the same time as the pffft of the soda opening reached his ears, wafting through his brain along with the carbonated mist liberated by the open can.
The Chinese lead scientist spoke. “You will remove the watermark.”
Archer paused. Maybe they wouldn’t see it. He held his hands palms up, shrugging.
“Remove it? Oh, I see. Because it says Alacra. Sure, I can remove it, but it’ll add time. You realize that leaving it in has no affect on functionality whatsoever. It’s like asking a builder with a supply of surplus concrete blocks with his former client’s name chiseled into them to sand the name off—when they’re only going to be used in a non-visible structural support role. Who cares?”
A kidnapper at the lead scientist’s side stepped forward. “Sand the name off. We are not asking you, Doctor Archer. You will remove all watermarks from anything you create in this lab.”
Archer threw his hands up, though he was careful not to exaggerate the motion too much, lest it spook a jittery trigger finger in the room. The months of captivity had conditioned this kind of self-restraint, which he had never known before. It angered him that he possessed it now, that he had been habituated to keep his emotions constantly under tight wraps. Killing one of them had made it vastly more difficult—his true disposition allowed to s
urface for one ephemeral burst of truth before being stifled again. He fought to keep an even temper. He felt broken.
Taking a deep breath, he said, “Okay. It’ll take about an hour.”
He didn’t wait for a response. Dr. Archer bent to the task of removing the watermark from the genetically engineered cell under his microscope. He was ten minutes into the undertaking when he realized that the kidnappers were watching him more intently than ever. They argued amongst themselves, sounding ridiculous and scary at the same time with their voice modulators, some wildly gesticulating with their weapons.
Archer was visually comparing a string of nucleotide base pairs on the computer screen with the molecules he was looking at under the microscope when he felt a gun barrel jab the small of his back. He lifted his head slowly from the scope, like a sloth that had been poked with a stick.
“What?” he said.
But he knew they’d made the connection.
…TTCA58CGAA…
4:04 P.M.
“That huge beach up ahead is the west end of Molokai,” Rob announced. They flew toward a thick white line that formed one of the short ends of a roughly rectangular island. Heavy whitecaps scarred the blue sea. Rob fingered the instrument panel’s controls before posing a question.
“You want to cover the north or south coast of Molokai first?”
“What’s the difference between the two coasts?” Tara asked. She'd been spotting with binoculars as they crossed the Kaiwi Channel between Oahu and Molokai. They had thus far seen only two commercial vessels, and no private ones.
In contrast to Oahu, what they could see so far of Molokai showed no evidence of human habitation—no roads or buildings—only a mottled brown and green landscape of hardy scrub brush over volcanic dirt. Rob answered as the island loomed.
“I know a little about it from doing pilot training runs. North side is mostly unpopulated. High cliffs—some of the world’s tallest sea cliffs, they say. Very rugged terrain. The old leper colony peninsula is there at Kalaupapa. Pine forests at the high elevations, the peak is about 5,000 feet. South side is flat, has the island’s only town, harbor, hotel, and most of the residents. About 7,000 people live on Molokai, compare that to 900,000 on Oahu.
“Let’s check the north side,” Tara decided. Dave and Lance agreed. “A yacht there ought to stick out like a sore thumb,” Dave said. “And the island’s not that big, so we could check the other side, too.”
Rob angled the chopper northeast. Below them, the gently curving sandy beach gave way to rocky shores with pounding surf.
“I don’t see how that was necessary,” Archer said.
The lead scientist spoke. “And I don’t see how you have a choice. But let’s just say it makes us feel better while allowing us to test our practical knowledge of a new side technology. Added value, if you will, for dealing with your insubordination. You will now continue with your procedure as before.”
Archer glared at the lead as the masked and jumpsuited figure left the lab, trailed by two assistants carrying a rack of test tubes containing the sample Archer had just reluctantly made for them at gunpoint.
Two of the kidnappers remained in the lab. Archer guessed that one was more scientifically trained, as this man hovered over Archer as he worked, occasionally jotting down notes or asking Archer to snap a micrograph of what was under his microscope. The other man—Archer’s beverage fetcher—was a professional guard dog, never seen without his automatic weapon at the ready. This one kept a safe distance from Archer at all times, sliding his cans of coke across the lab bench rather than handing them to him. Archer also knew that the guard needed only to shout a command into the headset microphone he wore to bring fully armed reinforcements running.
The geneticist had been working again for some time when he heard the rumble of the boat’s engine starting up. He thought he could just hear the faint whine of the electric winch hauling in the yacht’s anchor. He looked up from a Petri dish at his two kidnappers.
“Where are we going?”
The guard answered him with a hum-drum lilt to his voice, like he was bored. “You know that is not your concern. We will inform you of everything you need to know. Get back to work.” The scientist captor nodded in agreement, anxious to see the outcome of Archer’s manipulations of the microbial colony.
Archer rubbed his temples, debating whether to argue with them. He understood that where the yacht was heading would ultimately matter to them, they just didn’t realize it yet. He decided to remain quiet. Why make it easier for them? He arranged some lab equipment on the bench in front of him, looked into the microscope, and consulted the computer monitor.
Then, resigning himself to yet another round of lab work, he snapped at his guard: “Diet Coke,” as he felt the vessel pick up speed.
As they raced along Molokai’s rocky north coast, the passengers in the helicopter could see that they were running out of land.
“This is the end of the island already?” Kristen asked. The pilot nodded as he banked the craft right, to the southeast.
“Cape Halawa down below is Molokai’s easternmost point. So it’s decision time again: we can follow the east coast around and then cover Molokai’s south shore, completing our circumnavigation of the island, or,” Rob said, punching a button on the dash, “we head southeast for a few minutes and we’ll hit Maui’s north coast. You can see Maui up ahead there,” he said, pointing to a mountainous outline visible in the distance.
“What’s the north coast of Maui like?” Kristen asked.
“Relatively unpopulated—mostly agricultural lands and a few bed and breakfasts. Shouldn’t be a lot of boat activity. Lahaina, where the main tourist action is, is on the south side.”
“Let’s go Maui north,” Tara said. “Get the easy ground out of the way.” Dave nodded in agreement.
It had indeed been easy going as they flew along Molokai’s nearly deserted north shore. They saw no vessels braving the turbulent coastal waters save for those tucked away in the very small marina on the Kalaupapa peninsula. After swooping in low, they quickly saw that there were no boats even remotely large enough to qualify as a yacht.
Rob fingered the controls as he spoke into his headset mic. “Here today, gone to Maui,” he said, aiming the craft for the Valley Isle’s northwest tip.
It took William Archer longer than he predicted to remove the watermark, but he didn’t let it faze him. His captors didn’t seem overly concerned either. They merely stood around him, observing, the lead scientist included. Archer kept right on working, demanding sodas and snacks when he wanted them, dividing his attention between the stereo zoom microscope and the computer.
All the while, the yacht motored onward at a steady cadence under the blistering Hawaiian sun. To where? Archer pondered this as he performed a gene splice—one he’d done literally thousands of times—by rote.
He had no way of knowing which direction the boat headed. The only window—the porthole—was still painted black, so that he could not even get the direction of the sun’s rays. Moreover, his captors had discovered his modifications to the brass fixture and had restored the integrity of the bolt. Not that it mattered with his new 24/7 guard.
After another thirty minutes of work, Archer looked up from his scope, massaged a cramp in his neck, and stood. He addressed his captors.
“The proto-cells are experiencing rapid division. I should have a first generation of GREENBACK in one more hour.”
Hearty cheers erupted around him as the kidnappers rejoiced at the news. Archer knew they were cheers, but through the voice modulators they sounded downright frightening, a chorus of electronic whelping noises. Archer held up a hand.
“There’s more.” The room quieted.
“Once we have a first generation, I’ll need to test it by exposing some of the cells to frigid, thin air, like the conditions it was designed to operate in to fulfill its intended purpose.”
“So the cells will need to be put into cold storage?
” one of the masked figures intoned. The lab was equipped with a small but high quality industrial freezer unit for storing samples at precisely regulated cold temperatures.
But Archer shook his head. “No. I said cold, thin air. The idea is to see how the cells perform in high altitude atmospheric environments, reduced pressure.”
Archer watched with satisfaction as the kidnappers grunted electronically processed syllables to each other, trying to grasp the meaning of what their captive was insinuating. He hoped like hell they wouldn’t pull a baro-chamber out from somewhere. Wouldn’t be surprising if they pulled one out of their asses the way these guys seemed to have everything money could buy, Archer thought. But he’d looked around the lab before he was put into lockdown mode, and he hadn’t seen one. He assumed they didn’t have a second lab somewhere else on the ship, although he had considered that they might, as a way to test their own practicability of Archer’s work.
“How do you propose we access cold, thin air?” the lead scientist queried. Archer had to concentrate hard not to breathe an audible sigh of relief. They had no pressure-regulation chamber on board or he wouldn’t be asking this question.
“The only suitable place in Hawaii is the peak of Mauna Kea.”
The lone sound following this statement was the purr of the yacht’s engines. Then there was a huddled conference of sorts by the kidnappers. At length, the lead turned to face Dr. Archer.
“On the Big Island?”
“That’s the one,” Archer said, crossing his arms as he sat on his stool. “All 13,796 vertical feet of it.”
“I see you know it well,” the lead said.
“If you recall, sir, I was on my own voyage through Hawaiian waters when you...” Archer paused, seeking just the right word. Not kidnapped. Not abducted, or seized, or any other word that would provoke them.
kiDNApped (A Tara Shores Thriller) Page 25