Earth Thirst

by Mark Teppo

  I peel the plastic wrap and dozen stickers that constitute packaging on the laptop and switch it on. As it boots up, I figure out how to work the in-room coffee maker. The sound of the computer churning and the smell of brewing coffee work to bring Mere out of her stupor. She sits up slowly, trying to push her hair into a semblance of order. A lazy smile spreads across her face when I offer her a cup of hot coffee. She takes a large sip and then lies back in bed, the cup resting between her breasts. “Ah, you know how to greet a girl in the morning, don't you?”

  “I bought you a laptop. It's got a Spanish operating system preinstalled, but there's an English version on the DVD that comes with it.”

  “Now you're just trying to get into my pants,” she says.

  “I don't think you're wearing any,” I say, recalling a crumpled heap lying on the bathroom floor.

  She lifts her head and peeks under the sheet. “Well, then,” she says, taking another sip of coffee. “I guess we must have gotten along pretty well last night.”

  I ignore her comment and put the cell phone and the extra calling cards on the table, next to the laptop. “New phone and calling cards,” I say.

  “In case I want to call my girlfriends and talk about the awesome night I can't remember?”

  “It couldn't have been that awesome if you can't remember it,” I point out.

  “Spoken like an experienced amnesiac,” she says. She winces as soon as the words come out of her mouth. “Sorry.”

  “It's okay,” I say. “I'll take acerbic as a sign that you're going to survive.”

  “It's the caffeine kicking in.” She takes another large sip from the cup, her attention drifting toward the table with the phone and laptop. “By the way, when this headache goes away, I'm going to get out of bed and kick your ass.”

  “Why? Because I took your shoes off before I put you into bed last night?”

  “And my pants.”

  I shake my head as I point to where her shoes are neatly arranged next to the dresser. “There are your shoes. Do you see your pants?”

  “Well, they're not on me,” she says.

  “They're on the bathroom floor, where you must have left them when you got up to pee in the middle of the night.”

  Some expression flashes across her face, and I'm not sure if it is disappointment or outrage, but it is gone before I can really decide which it is. “Regardless of the location of my pants,” she snaps, “that's not why I'm going to put my foot up your ass.”

  “I shouldn't have plied you with drinks while I was dodging your questions?”

  She makes a gun with two of her fingers and slowly shoots me with it. “Bingo.”

  “Call Ralph,” I say. “Maybe he'll play nicer.”

  “At least he'll play,” she says. “You owe me some answers.”

  I shrug. “I'm going to get some breakfast,” I say, heading for the door.

  “Silas. Don't you run away from me.”

  I stop and look back at her. “I'm not. I'll be back in a bit.”

  “Why don't you stay and call room service,” she says, “instead of running away?”

  “Why don't I go get some food while you solve your lack of pants problem?”

  “Why don't you throw me them since you're standing right there?”

  I glance over at the pair under discussion. “I could take them with me,” I suggest.

  A wicked smile curls her lips. She leans over and sets the coffee cup on the nightstand. With a sweep of her arm, she throws the sheets back and hops off the bed. She wobbles slightly as she stands up, but she manages to not lose her balance. Wearing nothing but her sleep-wrinkled shirt and a pair of pale green bikini briefs, she walks over. Standing very close, she leans toward me so that her face is almost touching mine. “Go ahead,” she says. She grabs the top button on her shirt. “You want this too?”

  “I'm going to get breakfast,” I growl. “More coffee?”

  “Please,” she whispers, locking eyes with me. Daring me to look down to see what her hands are doing with her shirt.

  “And a tart,” I say. “A very fresh fruit tart.”

  Her laughter follows me out of the room and all the way down the hall to the elevator. Only when I'm securely behind the closed doors of the elevator, do I look down at the marks my nails have made in my palm.

  There is still alcohol in her blood. That, I tell myself, is the only reason I held back. Otherwise, I would have done something foolish.

  I want her to stay too.

  * * *

  She's wearing pants when I return, and appears to have been upright for most of the time that I've been gone. On the wall beside the dresser and TV unit, she's attached a white sheet and has been covering it with circles, lines, and scribbled writing.

  “I asked the staff for tape and a marker,” she says, stepping back from her work as I put my bags on the table. “In case you didn't get my psychic messages.”

  “I did,” I reply glibly. “But I also knew you couldn't wait for me to come back with them and would badger the concierge instead.” I open a small box filled with round, sugar-coated objects and hold it out to her. “Berliner? Or as the Germans call them: pfannkuchen.”

  “A what?”

  “Jelly donut.”

  “Why didn't you say so in the first place?”

  “When in Rome…”

  “Is that an Arcadian saying?” She takes one and bites into it, discovering the jelly center. “Like, the First Rule of Arcadia is: pretend you're in Rome.”

  “It's the other way around,” I say. “The First Rule of Rome is to pretend you're in Arcadia.” I pause thoughtfully as I pluck a berliner from the box. “Though that may have been Nero.”

  She wrinkles her nose as she finishes the first berliner and reaches for another. “Before my time,” she says.

  Chewing my donut slowly, I look over what she's done on the sheet. “This seems a bit more recent,” I say. “Corporate connections.”

  She nods. “Ralph gave me a bunch of it, and while I'm waiting for him to call me back, I started making notes.”

  Near the center are three circles: Secutores Security, Hyacinth Holdings, and Arcadia. From the first two, she's drawn a number of lines to smaller bubbles, and each line has tiny notes running above and below. Hyacinth is connected to Hyacinth Worldwide as well as Hyacinth Pharmaceuticals—easy connections to make—and she's drawn a line between Secutores and Kyodo Kujira, but the line has a lot of conjecture scribbled along it.

  There are clusters of notes orbiting each of the three central circles, but no lines connecting them.

  “There's a Hyacinth Pharmaceuticals?” I ask.

  She picks up her laptop, selects one of the browser tabs she's got open, and hands me the small computer. It's a page from Hyacinth Pharmaceuticals' website—a lot of market speak extolling the natural medicinal virtues of star fruit. At the bottom of the page is a back button that takes me to a summary page that gushes about the majestic mystery of the natural world and how much humanity could benefit from a more holistic approach to naturopathic medicine.

  “Pretty over-the-top marketing copy,” she notes. “Notice anything about that list of trees and plants?”

  I pay attention to the two columns at the bottom of the page. “Some of them are Polynesian. Some are African. These four are Chinese. That one is extinct—”

  “I bet they're all growing in the crater at Rano Kau,” she says, interrupting my recital. Her voice grows more animated; it is clear from my expression that she knows something I don't, and she's delighted to be the smart one in the room. “Those trees we saw were big and healthy. A farm like that doesn't spring up overnight. How many years would it take to grow a farm that size?”

  “A couple decades,” is my guess. “More, probably,” I amend, thinking of the stately toromiro.

  “Hyacinth Pharmaceuticals was incorporated three years ago. It's hard to tell without going back, but I'd be willing to bet that building out there in the crate
r isn't more than two years old. The Hanga Roa Royal Resort goes back thirty years, but four years ago, it went through major renovations—including that five-story building we were staying in. The resort increased its number of rooms from sixteen to a hundred and eighty. For an island that's a marginal tourist attraction and pretty much out of any cruise line routes, what would create such a boom in housing needs?”

  “A workforce. One that needs temporary housing.”

  “Exactly.”

  She wanders over to the chart and taps Hyacinth Pharmaceuticals. “Figure Hyacinth Worldwide is managing the land, since they're already on the island. Maybe the hotel is originally built to facilitate the team that plants all the trees. They spend three decades growing that farm, and when the trees start to mature, they build the lab.”

  “That's some long-term thinking.”

  “Who thinks like that?”

  “The Japanese.”

  “Big Ag,” she says, rolling her eyes at me. Then, more seriously: “And Arcadians.”

  “We left the island,” I tell her.

  “Are you sure?” she asks. She still has that glint in her eye—that journalist delight at having uncovered some unexpected secret.

  “No, I'm not sure,” I say as my stomach starts to tighten.

  “Okay, let's look at the list of what you'd get from a farm on Easter Island.” She takes the laptop from me and switches over to a document that she was working on. “Sirolimus,” she starts. “Sourced from a bacterium found only on the island. If we buy the marketing hype, star fruit is useful to combat infections and it also acts—and I quote—‘as an inhibitor of certain isoforms.' What does that mean?”

  I suspect she already knows, but I play along. “It increases the efficacy of other drugs.”

  She makes the popping noise with her lips as she points a finger at me. “There's agbayun,” she continues, working down the list. “Also known as miracle berry—a source of miraculin. Handy when you're making native medicines. And African serendipity berry too, which has thaumatin in it, much like miraculin. They're also working with Amyruca, a natural source of DMT; Oldenlandia affinis, widely used in Africa to assist in childbirth; Polygala tenuifolia, a memory aid found in a number of Chinese herbal remedies; a couple others which I haven't figured out what they're useful for yet; and the jujube, which I thought was something that Lewis Carroll made up, but is apparently useful for a whole host of things.”

  “Ziziphus,” I say. “Ziziphus zizyphus.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I know of it. We used to eat the fruit. We'd dry it and eat it.” I shake my head at her raised eyebrow. “Never mind. Yes, I can see why it's on the list.”

  “A small pharmaceutical company could make its nut—if you will—off any one of these if they could figure out how to harvest and/or synthesize them in large enough quantities. Yet, if we believe the marketing copy isn't just for show, Hyacinth Pharmaceuticals is doing all of them. Doesn't that seem a tad…?”

  “Ambitious?” I try. “Delusional?”

  “Either. Both,” she says. “Remember when I talked about the corporate pyramid? Every company is working on a piece of something else, and none of them know anything other than the part they're responsible for. Someone much higher up the chain knows the real score. They're the architects of the capital ‘P' plan. This is like a compressed version of that sort of vision. It's all in one place. In one company. We've got psychedelics, antipsychotics, immunosuppressants, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antifibrinolytics, God knows how many other anti- agents there are. If you put them all together what have you got?”

  “I got lost somewhere around the third anti-.”

  “Complete systemic disassociation.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You won't feel a thing, and your body won't reject anything you put in it. Or attach to it.”

  It clicks for me. “Nigel.”

  “They weren't just torturing Nigel,” she says. “They were cutting him up for parts.”

  “Parts they could use for something—or someone—else.” I struggle to wrap my head around the idea of parts. Not just organ transplants, but entire pieces of a body. Or even building an entirely new body out of disparate sections. How would this work? “Lemon trees,” I breathe.

  “What about lemon trees?” Mere asks.

  “Do you know how a lemon tree is cultivated?” She shakes her head. “You grow lemons and oranges on the same trunk. It's done all the time. They're from the same family. You can graft a branch on, and the trunk will accept it. With this pharmacopeia, you could do the same with any genetically similar species.”

  “Like Homo erectus?”

  I nod, knowing it's more than that. It'd be even easier with a species that is more refined, genetically-speaking. Something singularly sourced.

  Hyacinth wants to grow their own Arcadians.

  TWENTY-SIX

  “Who owns Hyacinth?” I ask, suppressing the serpentine twist of fear rising up my back. Focusing on what we know. Setting aside this line of speculation. Knowing who you are fighting is often times more important than why.

  “That's turning out to be harder than I thought,” she sighs. She runs her hand over the sheet. “The part where they all have ‘Hyacinth' in their names is pretty easy, but beyond that it turns into a fucking rabbit hole of shell companies, subsidiaries, and corporate nepotism so off-the-record that I'm going to have to dig up the Twitter accounts of bored socialite CEO wives to figure out who's playing golf with whom—or fishing for marlin or whatever they do for male bonding these days. I can figure it out—I did something similar when I followed the money out of Hachette Falls—but it's going to take a few weeks.”

  “I don't think that is a luxury we have.”

  “I've got Ralph digging too, and that'll help, but it's just the two of us against a hundred or so lawyers who bill a lot of very expensive hours dirtying up the paper trail.”

  “We need a shortcut.”

  “And if there is one, I bet it is figuring out what is going on here.” She points to the empty space between Secutores and Hyacinth Holdings. “What's the connection?”

  “You don't think they work for Hyacinth?”

  She shakes her head. “I know that divisions of a corporation can be working on projects that seem to cancel each other out, and it's typically for a market dominance reason, but it doesn't make sense for Hyacinth Pharmaceuticals to be working on a weed killer with the efficacy of what we saw. These guys have got to be working for someone else.”

  She switches to another tab on the laptop's browser. “Secutores has a very dull website. They keep a pretty low profile. They have a page listing their previous ‘employment opportunities.' What a phrase. Okay, here they are. Protection and security for more than two dozen government ambassadors. Intelligence gathering for a bunch of three-letter acronym agencies, a couple of investment firms, one Hollywood studio—I have no idea what the hell that's all about—and some technology companies. Operative training for four governments, a dozen agencies, and twice as many ‘sanctioned' military organizations. And then it turns into a bullet list of services that mean something to some people, I guess: ‘Unconventional Operational Planning,' ‘Counter-drug Services,' ‘Restricted Site Access,' ‘Asset Acquisition,' and ‘Ground Truth Validation.'”

  “They sound competent,” I say.

  She gives me a raised eyebrow. “This is the sanitized bullshit list, of course. You know what I found on the Internet? Lots of people railing about black ops missions. Unverifiable and vigorously denied by corporate leadership, of course, but there's rumors of everything from espionage—both corporate and political—to aiding rebel insurgents to outright assassination. These guys aren't Boy Scouts.”

  “Neither am I,” I point out. “And if you were trying to capture someone like me, these might be the sort of people you'd contract the job to, right?”

  She doesn't like the direction I'm taking the conversation, but sh
e nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I would.”

  “What about the corporate management? Are they bean counters or do they have field experience?”

  “Their CEO is a guy named Tony Belfast. English.” She fusses with the trackpad. “Hang on. Let's see if I can find a picture of this guy. There's nothing on the website.” She types a name, hits return, and pops her lips twice while waiting for search results to come back. “Oh shit…” she whispers when the screen loads. She spins the computer around to show me. “That's him.”

  “Who?” I ask, my voice hard. The search result has returned a screen full of pictures, most of which are of men who are probably named “Tony” and are wandering around Belfast getting their pictures taken. But the first few are of the same man. Well-dressed, cropped gray hair, looking like an older model.

  “The guy from the boat,” Mere says.

  And the guy who was in the silver Mercedes in the parking garage at the Adelaide hospital, and who showed up as we were leaving Eden Park.

  “That's Albatross,” I realize.

  “How do you know?”

  “He's a hands-on type. You and I have both seen him, in the field. He'll want to be in the loop on any operation. The others report directly to him. Simplest chain of command.”

  Mere shakes her head at my words. “Don't do it,” she says.

  “Do what?”

  “I know what you're thinking,” she says. “I can read it right there. On your face. ‘I'm going to call him.' That's what your face is saying.”

  “I should call him. It's the easiest solution.”

  “And the dumbest. Not to mention awkward and more than a little dangerous.”

  “It's direct.”

  “So let's call it Plan D then, and how about we come up with a few other plans before we settle on this one?”

  “D for dumb, is it?”

  “D for Desperate is more like it.”

  “I suppose we try to rise above that for Plan A then. For Amateur, perhaps?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Or Asinine. And B for Backwards.”

  “And C would be?”

  “Catastrophic. At best.”