He moved his light toward the back and saw windows on either side of another hatchlike door. Again glare made it difficult to see, but through them he spotted workbenches, ventilation hoods, racks of specimen tubes, and even an ovenlike incubator—all identical to the equipment found in any hospital bacteriology or virology lab. But when he shot his beam through the window of the second door and saw a space bristling with nozzles with a third airtight hatch beyond it, he knew this to be nothing like any ordinary hospital facility he’d ever seen.
Swinging the beam farther to the right he gave a start, seeing in the circle of light what resembled a row of human skins hanging limply against the wall. He quickly recognized that they were a dozen silver-gray outfits, each with gloves, boots, and a visored helmet attached in an ensemble. A black corrugated tube trailed out the back of the headgear like a dreadlock and led to a utility belt in the suit’s waistband, suggesting a separate air supply. Three other such outfits hung nearby, these crimson and equipped with cylinders on much bulkier belt packs. Dangling from the ceiling overtop of everything were coils of small orange hoses with metal tips, the kind used to put compressed air in tires.
Sweeping his torch back to the foreground he saw an area of shelves stacked with what looked like binders, books, and videos. On an adjacent table rested a VCR and TV.
A door slammed against the wall in the distance. Voices and running footsteps followed. He spun around to see a faraway rectangle filled with light and small shadowy figures. Above them fluorescent lamps flickered to life, and the harsh white illumination marched toward him section by section.
He turned back to the window, raised his camera, and panned, snapping a string of flash photos the instant before darkness disappeared at his end of the corridor.
Then he ran for the exit, directly toward the men who were coming at him. He counted six shapes, but couldn’t make out if they were carrying guns. They ordered him to stop, their shouts sounding hollow echoing along the closed space. He pulled his jacket up over the top of his head and kept his face down as he scooted under the camera, the way he’d seen mobsters do when they got nabbed in front of TV reporters. If I do get away, he thought, it had better be without leaving them picture ID.
Peering up through his eyebrows, he estimated the half dozen guards hurtling in his direction were twice the distance from the opening for the stairs as he was. They were also closing the ratio fast. His heart pumping as hard as his thighs, he tried to run faster. What would my cardiologist say if he could see me? he wondered.
The side hallway now looked fifty yards away, the men a hundred and fifty. He couldn’t make out their features, but at this distance he’d no trouble hearing the menace in their words.
“Stop, you bastard!”
“Halt now, or we’ll shoot!”
“You’re a dead man, fuck-face!”
He saw one of them start to pull a gun from a holster.
Shit!
He poured on more speed, ignoring the throbbing in his leg and keeping his eye on the man with the weapon. He can’t risk firing a shot and puncturing the sealed door behind me, Steele reasoned, relieved to see him keep the muzzle pointed at the ceiling. But once we’re up top, I’ll be an open target for sure.
A final spurt halved his distance to the stairs while they still seemed a hundred yards away. Rounding the corner he had barely a fifty-yard lead. He bounded up the stairs and pulled himself out the hatch in seconds. Grabbing his crowbar he sprinted to the opening in the fence and dived through it sliding facedown in the mud. Taking no more than a second to hook the flap into place with one of the cut links, he made for the darkness of the adjacent field.
The storm hadn’t abated any, the rain hitting his face like a blast from a cold shower as his feet slithered in the soaked earth. Lightning bathed everything in white so continuously that he knew if he continued upright they’d see him easily. He dropped to all fours where he’d be hidden between the rows of corn and scurried on his hands and knees for what he guessed to be another hundred yards, then risked a glance over his shoulder into the dimly lit compound. His pursuers, their flashlights bobbing in the darkness, ran from greenhouse to greenhouse, still inside the fence. They hadn’t found where he’d cut his way through yet.
Heading diagonally toward the railway line, he scampered crablike on his hands and feet traveling a few hundred yards more past a line of trees before he stood erect and ran full out. He found the tracks in a rare interval of darkness, pitching headfirst down a low embankment, landing on his nose, and skidding across the gravel to the ties. Stopping an inch before cracking his head against the rail, he muttered, “Where’s the goddamned lightning when I need it?”
Fifteen minutes later he climbed in his car, wheeled it back toward the highway, and roared away from Agrenomics. He’d have to find another route back to New York. No way would he risk driving by their front gate.
“They’re using moon suits, Kathleen, and the place has got an air lock with what looks like decontamination showers. I saw a level-four virology facility once during an ER conference at the CDC. It’s where they deal with the most hazardous microbes in the world, such as Ebola and Lassa. I swear this could be a smaller version of it.” He’d reached her on his cellular while filling up with gas and getting directions for New York. “Somehow I’ve got to get back in, especially to look at the documents and videos they’ve got stored there.” He didn’t add If I’m not in jail , but he thought it.
“Wait until you hear my news, Richard,” she replied, and proceeded to tell him all about her conversation with Julie Carr.
“My God,” said Steele when he’d heard her out.
“I even think the vaccine may be what Taiwan and Oahu had in common and the vectors for it are probably what Pierre Gaston wanted me to look for in the Rodez samples.”
“Why would it be in Taiwan?”
“Because exploiting a natural outbreak of bird flu there by unloading a half-assed vaccine on unsuspecting farmers in order to make a quick buck is exactly the way some biotechnical companies would operate. Except in this case they did something particularly harebrained. Criminal, even.”
“Knowingly criminal? You mean they knew they were risking a recombinant event from the outset?”
“No, about that they were probably as blindly ignorant as the rest of the world. What they deliberately ignored was that the use of any bird flu vaccine in an active endemic area should have been contraindicated, the same way giving a flu shot to humans who already have the flu is contraindicated because it would make them sicker. Farmers scattering the feed around a flock where some of the birds were already infected would only fuel the outbreak.”
“My God!” he said again. “But how can you prove that’s what Agriterre did?”
“Once I get the primers I need from Julie, I’ll show they made the stuff. It’ll be up to Inspector Racine to track down where they marketed it.”
“So that’s what the attempts to kill you and me have been all about? To cover up a faulty vaccine for chickens?”
“To cover up the fact it killed Tommy Arness, and probably the child who died in Taiwan. Any good lawyer there could at least argue the vaccine certainly made the outbreak worse. That’s two counts of negligent homicide and a potential class-action suit for damages from Taiwanese farmers if the story came to light. You don’t think trying to escape jail and massive lawsuits would be motive enough for murder?”
He didn’t know what to answer. Her logic sounded plausible, sort of. If she were talking about just Biofeed in Hawaii and a few people trying to avoid prison, maybe he could see them killing Hacket and trying to kill her to keep the truth about Tommy Arness’s death secret. But the scale and international sweep of what they were up against here—Agriterre in France, the murder of a French geneticist, the killers in Hawaii running around with silencers and speaking a language native to Iran or Afghanistan, and finally the attack on himself in New York—it all seemed such a massive web. Too big to
be only about a careless attempt to immunize a bunch of hens. Besides, when companies of this size make mistakes, even lethal ones, they usually hired lawyers, not killers.
“Frankly, Kathleen, a lot doesn’t fit,” he said, and proceeded to tell her why. When he finished, silence reigned on the line, interrupted by spurts of static as a few flashes lit up the distant sky. Wandering away from his car to find an area where the reception would be better, he felt his wet and muddied clothes stick to him like paste, but at least it had stopped raining. “Kathleen?”
“I’m here. Just thinking over what you said.”
“There’s something else I can’t make sense of. What’s Agrenomics’s interest in all this? They weren’t even in operation until a year after Tommy Arness got infected.”
She hesitated a few seconds. “I don’t know. Maybe the person or persons responsible for that vaccine came on staff at Agrenomics in the meantime. Possibly they’re even doing similar work with bird flu in the lab you saw, intending to market it again, and don’t want the real story about how dangerous it is to get out.”
“You don’t need all the expense of a level-four facility to handle the usual strains of influenza virus, including H5N1. Masks, gloves, gowns, and vented hoods would suffice—basically the same level of precautions I’ve seen you take against the spread of genetic vectors in your own lab.”
“It does sound like overkill,” she admitted.
“Whatever they’re making at Agrenomics, I think we have to assume they laid out all the money it would take to build what I saw because they actually need a level-four viral facility.”
As he waited through another earful of thoughtful silence from her, he started to shiver. Soaked to the skin with nothing to change into he felt cold to the bone.
“So what do you think they’re doing?” she asked.
He grimaced to keep his teeth from chattering. “I’ve no idea. You know the field. What would a geneticist be up to with those kinds of pathogens?”
“Whoa! You’re scaring me, Richard.”
“What are the possibilities?”
“None that are sane. There’s always talk among research geneticists about trying to attenuate one of the really infectious monsters, like the AIDS virus, and using it as an even more aggressive carrier than the ones we have now to transport genes. But even that’s not a level-four pathogen. The thought of a commercial outfit like Agrenomics playing with the organisms you mentioned? It gives me the creeps. . . .” She trailed off, her breath ending in the quick uneven gasps of a shudder. “Hell, only a lunatic would even think of that kind of thing.”
Wondering if she intended the epithet to include him, he said, “So what do we try now?”
“I think the first thing you should do is come over here to the lab and comfort a lady who you’ve frightened all to hell.”
His own breathing coasted to a full stop.
“I can hear you shivering, Richard. You must be soaked. From here it looked like a hell of a storm up your way.”
He said nothing.
“We’ve got a place to shower, and our hot plate always has a pot brewing. There are no robes, but we’ve lots of lab greens and white coats you can slip into while we dry your clothes. Then we can discuss strategy. After what you just suggested, we need to do some fast thinking. How about it? But before you come, call Martha and put her out of her misery with a word that you’re okay. I talked with her earlier, and she sounded worried sick.”
He sensed full well what she offered here. To his own surprise, he found he wanted to accept. As little as a few weeks ago he might have backpedaled and said, “Thanks, Kathleen, but I better get home. I’m tired, and for sure I’ll think a lot clearer in the morning.” Instead he took a few seconds to work out in his head what to reply, so as to still leave her room to back down, in case she felt as ambiguous as he did. “Are you sure? It’s past ten-thirty, and it will take me another hour and a half to get back to New York.” No sooner were the words out than his courage failed him, and the prospect of saying yes to the full extent of her invitation so intimidated him that he teetered on the brink of retreat.
As if reading his ambivalence, she added, “I’d like you to come to me, Richard, if you want to.”
Again neither of them said a word. But unlike his silence, growing heavy with unsaid doubts and indecision, her quiet remained electric, quivering, and filled with unspoken offerings. Before he could collect his wits enough to say anything, he heard a soft click of the receiver as she hung up.
God, how could I have been so blatantly obvious, she thought, riding the elevator to the ground floor.
Frankly, when he hadn’t shown by half past twelve, she’d given up on his coming at all and felt embarrassed for having issued the invitation. When he phoned from his car ten minutes ago to say he’d just pulled up in front of her building, she felt her face grow flushed. “I’ll be right down,” she managed to squeak, thinking she could pretend her invite had been for nothing more than what she’d said—a coffee, a chance to throw around ideas about Agrenomics, and a change of clothing. “Yeah, sure,” she muttered, “take off your wets and step into my shower—I always offer men who get caught in the rain a midnight cleanup. Doesn’t mean a thing. How could you possibly get the idea I was suggesting a quickie under the nozzle?”
The minute she saw him through the glass door, she burst out giggling. He was caked with mud from head to toe and appeared completely miserable. My God, he really does need a hosing down, she thought, sliding her access card through the security system and pushing open the door. Reaching to take him by the hand she laughed and said, “Look at you.”
Back in her lab she first made him get under the steaming jets of water with his clothes still on. “Hand them out to me when the big dirt’s off,” she shouted over the sound of the faucet. “There’s a launderette a few floors below that the students use. I’ll go down and toss them in while you finish giving yourself a scrub. There’s towels, a set of lab overalls, and a large white coat on one of the benches for you. Meet you back in my office.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and reached from behind the curtain, giving her a dripping wad of what he’d been wearing.
She went back out in the hallway and walked over to the elevator entrance, only to find the car they’d rode up in had been sent back to the ground floor. Must be somebody else in the building, she thought, taking the stairs instead, the laundry being only three flights away. With ten stories of labs housing the projects of a thousand graduate students, one of them burning the midnight oil hardly seemed unusual.
A few quarters bought her a box of soap; for a few more she got the wash-and-spin cycle that went with it. Making a mental note of the time she should come back to put everything in the dryer, she returned upstairs. He’d already found the coffee and laid out two cups on her desk, both black. He seemed relaxed, lounging on her couch in bare feet. The lab outfit she’d left him didn’t include socks.
“I don’t know how you like to doctor it,” he said, getting up and offering her the mug nearest him.
“Thanks. Neat’s fine,” she said, slipping into her usual chair and clasping the steaming drink between both hands. “You look a lot better.” All at once feeling playful, she eyed him with a grin and added, “Of course it wasn’t hard to improve on the state you were in.”
He smiled back at her, but the corners of his eyes remained pinched-looking and stiff from not being squeezed into laugh lines often enough. Traces of where the skin had once crinkled in merriment seemed to be still there, though, like markings on faded parchment.
She became determined to bring them out. “Maybe the improvement in you is totally thanks to this magnificent wardrobe I provided. The shoeless image especially suits you, Dr. Steele, makes you look casual, more like Robinson Crusoe on a beach instead of the very serious chief of ER you usually go around as.”
His smile widened, and his face slid into pleasant warm contours just as it had on the other occas
sions when they’d laughed together, except this time it seemed as if it had wanted to be in that shape all along. “Why thank you, ma’am. That’s high praise coming from the world-famous Dr. Kathleen Sullivan.” Still on his feet, he all at once did a little pirouette, making as if to model what he wore. “I agree the naked-foot style sure beats the naked-butt line I demonstrated in ER a few weeks ago.”
She abruptly chortled into her coffee, spraying it across her desk. “Oh please, Richard, don’t get me started again.”
But start they did. She pointed at his rear end, he made a pretense of trying to cover it up, and soon they were doubled over, nearly choking as their sides ached and tears streamed down their faces. She once again felt lifted by their laughter, propelled higher and higher until the howls of glee reached a peak, then released them both, leaving her sated and spent, as though she’d just made love.
He stood bent over her desk supporting himself with his outstretched arms, trying to catch his breath. She leaned forward in her chair, looking up at him. He slowly lowered his head, and they kissed softly. “Thank you, Kathleen,” he murmured.
She reached up and touched his face. “For what?”
“Making me laugh. I used to think I never would.”
They kissed again. It started even softer than the first, then went deeper, and longer. Her breath and heart quickened as she strained forward, sliding her hands around to the back of his neck and entwining her fingers in his hair. He gently pulled her to her feet and kissed her more fiercely, the desk still between them. She side-stepped it and walked into his arms, pressing against him. Through the flimsy material of his lab clothing she felt him hard and ready for her.
She melted inside and ground her pelvis into his, matching his growing frenzy while he continued to kiss her, his lips passing to the line of her jaw and along her neck. She heard herself give deep-throated moans and clung even harder to him. “Do you have something?”
Mutant Page 25