An icon lit up, flickered on the upper right corner of the screen. E-mail received. Geoff toggled to the e-mail screen.
MESSAGE #4
DATE: JULY 5, 2010
TIME: 1708
FROM: Received: Mercury, NYTC.org, 5 July 2010, 17:07; received: telnet/info.umd.edu, 5 July 2010, 17:06; received: telnet/nasa.gov, 5 July 2010, 17:04; received: ber2759.USDA.gov, 17:01; received cobalt, telnet/locis.loc.gov, 17:00; received: telnet/glis.cr.usgs.gov, 5 July 2010, 16:58. Sent: gopher/nih.gov, 5 July 2010, 16:55.
MESSAGE: The truth is a seven percent solution. Similar but different.
They had communicated real time! Proteus was sitting at a computer terminal somewhere at this very moment. Geoff tapped his foot, thought about the cryptic message. Seven percent solution. What did Proteus mean? Again, the familiarity of the phrase vexed him. The message could mean any number of things. Geoff’s mind raced through the possibilities. Seven percent of the internet gates? Maybe Proteus was trying to tell him something about a percentage of the isotopes on the PET scans, or a percentage of the neurosurgical patients on his service who would be in trouble. Nothing seemed to make sense.
Was Proteus simply playing games with him, stalling for time? Or was Geoff simply thinking too literally? If he kept the conversation going, held on, maybe he could find out more. Geoff typed another response.
Where can I find the seven percent solution?
Several minutes passed, another message arrived.
MESSAGE #5
DATE: JULY 5, 2010
TIME: 17:16
FROM: Received: Mercury, NYTC.org, 5 July 2010, 17:15; received: telnet/nasa.gov, 5 July 2010, 17:14; received: ber2759.USDA.gov, 5 July 2010, 17:12; received: cobalt, telnet/locis.loc.gov, 5 July 2010, 17:11; received: telnet/glis.cr.usgs.gov, 5 July 2010, 17:10; received: telnet/info.umd.edu, 5 July 2010, 1708; sent by: gopher/listserve.columbia.edu, 5 July 2010, 17:09.
MESSAGE: 221B Baker Street.
Geoff stared at the message, bit his lower lip. Two twenty-one B Baker Street? There was no Baker Street in New York, at least none he knew of. Geoff was getting tired of this game. So much for the real time conversation idea. Why didn’t Proteus just come out and tell him what he wanted Geoff to know? Was he being toyed with, or could it be the communications were being monitored?
Geoff flipped through the messages one more time, read them over. So cryptic, yet so familiar. He tapped his foot, thought.
The realization smacked him in the face like a cold bucket of water. Of course it seemed familiar. Any high school student could have put it all together.
Excitedly, Geoff entered his response: The Sign of the Four.
Geoff hit the ‘enter’ key, bouncing the message back through the Internet gateways. He had to be right. And if he was, the treasure, in this case the truth, lay hidden in the one place truly fitting such a description.
Could he go there and simply explore unnoticed? It wouldn’t be easy, but his navy training had prepared him for far more difficult missions.
Several minutes passed, another message returned.
MESSAGE #6
DATE: JULY 5, 2010
TIME: 1738
FROM: Received: Mercury, NYTC.org, 5 July 2010, 17:37; received: cobalt, telnet/locis.loc.gov, 5 July 2010, 17:35; received: telnet/nasa.gov, 5 July 2010, 17:31; received ber2759.USDA.gov, 5 July 2010, 17:28; received: telnet/info.umd.edu, 5 July 2010 17:25; sent by: telnet/sklik.mcgilu.edu, 5 July 2010, 17:23.
MESSAGE: Elementary, Dr. Davis. Be on your guard; it’s a deadly game. No further communication possible for now. Good luck.
He was right. Geoff looked around, checked to make sure no one saw his communication. The room remained empty. He stared at the message, then forwarded it, same as the others, to Stefan. His mysterious electronic pen pal had to be close by, studying him, watching his movements. Proteus’ words seemed to pulsate on the screen. Be on your guard, it’s a deadly game. Geoff had held on long enough to get some answers.
It had been a deadly game already. Geoff couldn’t imagine things getting much worse.
Chapter 23
As the elevator swiftly ascended to the twelfth floor of the PETronics Research Building, Geoff’s mind raced. He tried to sort out the pieces of the complex puzzle. He wanted to review the PET scans in person with Suzanne, but this was far more important. He left her a message postponing their dinner plans. Her response indicated she wasn’t thrilled.
Geoff had deciphered Proteus’ cryptic messages and distilled valuable information from them. The clues were from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tale of Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four, a story of murder, cryptic letters from an unknown sender, and a missing treasure, hidden in a laboratory.
It’s a seven percent solution. Cocaine was a seven percent solution in those days. Same, but different. Cocaine was structurally similar to morphine; both stimulated endorphin production. It made perfect sense to Geoff to search Balassi’s lab for the answers.
Proteus seemed to be an ally. Or was Geoff simply being set up, led down a path to slaughter? His instinct told him he was not.
Balassi was a man Geoff had known for five years and worked closely with for the past year. A man who knew the trauma of Geoff’s personal life in detail and who nonetheless came to his aid and offered him a place in his lab. A man Geoff respected tremendously. A man he thought he knew as well as anyone did. Geoff could not believe if the Josef Balassi he knew suspected, or knew, anything about foul play with his research, he would tolerate it for a moment without calling for a massive investigation.
Geoff had made an accusation—indirect, but an accusation nonetheless—that the girl was injected intentionally. Balassi reacted as if it were a debate on grand rounds. Balassi’s reaction to the other patients’ bizarre deaths was strangely detached. That’s what didn’t sit right with Geoff. Balassi’s facial expression. The laughter. This was not the old Josef Balassi. This was a man with something to hide, a genius playing games.
Geoff was beginning to feel he was being set up. The tailor-made lab research position, the chief residency. Why the red carpet treatment for a doctor suspected of drug abuse, even if he was innocent? All the more reason Geoff had to do what he was about to do. All the more reason to proceed with extreme caution.
Geoff knew if he was caught he’d be bounced from the program in a second, but knew the best place to find the answers and information he needed was in Balassi’s lab. Balassi practically lived in his laboratory. It was where his research projects were developed and carried out, compounds stored, papers written, phone calls logged, even personal notes and appointments cleared though the lab’s calendar. It was Balassi’s inner sanctum.
The elevator decelerated and came to a halt with a slight bounce as it arrived at the twelfth floor. Geoff looked up at the cobalt blue, illuminated numbers overhead to be sure he was at the right floor, then remembered there was no need to check as the automated voice reminded him: “Floor twelve, PETronics Research Center. Please have your I.D. ready.”
Geoff clenched his fists together and took a deep breath as the elevator doors parted and the refrigerated air from the corridor wafted into the elevator. He stepped cautiously, hands in his lab coat pockets, and looked around to see if anyone else was there. He didn’t want to be seen, but if he was confronted he had prepared a story about a patient chart he left in the lab. That might buy him a safe ticket out, but he would not have accomplished his mission. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. The odds of anyone walking the halls of the research lab at eleven o’clock on a Monday night were small, except for the guard. A year working in the lab, however, had made Geoff well aware of the fact the guards at the Research Building, like security guards elsewhere, took frequent coffee breaks and would rather be watching late night TV or surfing the web than stare at vide
o monitors. Their routine was to make their rounds at midnight. Geoff checked his wrist, set the timer on his watch. He had fifty-eight minutes to get in, find what he needed, and get out.
He walked briskly down the long, starkly lit corridor, squinting his eyes to shut out the glare of the florescent lights. He felt like a bank robber in broad daylight. He wished he could shut the damn lights off, but doing so might attract more attention. Even more worrisome was the incessant squeaking of his Nikes on the polished vinyl floor echoing down the empty corridor. He slowed his pace, attempted to tread lightly, rolling heel to toe to minimize sound.
Geoff continued around the corner, then froze. He caught a movement in his peripheral vision. Instinctively, he flattened his body against the wall, his attention fixating in the direction of the movement. It was the security camera, a small, silver box mounted in the corner, rotating back and forth to scan the area. Geoff scurried into a shadowy doorway, his heart pounding, and held his breath as the camera aimed in his direction, then slowly rotated down the other hallway.
He slid out of the shadows and down the hall, parked himself behind a large grey trash can and slumped to the floor to catch his breath and get his bearings. He checked his watch. Fifty-three minutes remained. Only one short stretch of hallway to go, but he had already wasted five valuable minutes. He would have to move the next time the camera aimed the other way.
Geoff peeked around the edge of the trash can, his gaze following the camera. It had just made its pass in his direction and was starting back the other way.
Geoff moved quickly down the corridor to the lab. He breathed a sigh of relief seeing those familiar, black stenciled figures on the door, PR-217. Beneath it was a warning in bright red lettering: “Authorized personnel only.”
Geoff reached into his pants pocket and removed a key marked “do not duplicate” and smiled at his cleverness for having kept it from his research days. Carefully, he put the key into the knob and slowly slid it in. He felt the tumblers click as they rolled over each ridge. He turned the key, but it didn’t move. Geoff removed the key and inserted it again, going through the same motions. Nothing. He jiggled the key and the knob back and forth, the sounds echoing throughout the empty hallway. Still nothing.
The locks had been changed. When and why, he didn’t know. A lost key, a routine precaution, or was it something more?
Geoff bit his lower lip as he pondered his next move, a move he would have to make quickly. There was only one other way to get in, and that was through the keyless entry using his ID card. Using the ID would be like leaving a calling card, but it was now or never.
He reached down to the breast pocket of his lab coat, removed the ID card and held it for a moment, studying the seven-year-old picture with a nostalgic smile. Life was so much simpler then.
Cautiously, Geoff raised the card to the slot on the door, paused to reconsider. Balassi would know Geoff had been there when he checked the entry log in the morning. But by then Geoff would know all he needed to know, and Balassi would either thank him for uncovering the problem in his lab or be implicated himself beyond doubt.
Having rationalized the situation as best he could, Geoff closed his eyes, exhaled and jammed the card home, awaiting the reassuring click indicating the door had been unlocked.
The shrill alarm that came instead caught Geoff totally by surprise and just about sent him through the roof. The siren reverberated up and down the hallway, and a strobe light flashed over the door of the lab, a beacon for security guards sure to arrive any minute.
Geoff’s heart pounded so fiercely he thought his chest would explode. Chief Resident of the New York Trauma Center captured breaking into a research lab by the Keystone Cops.
No way he was going to let that happen.
Geoff looked around for a place to hide, tried a few doors. They were all locked except the men’s room. The guards were sure to search there right away. All that remained was the elevator, but he’d be nailed there in a minute.
Large droplets of sweat poured off his glistening forehead and landed on the floor. His shirt was like a sticky, wet sheet against his chest. Keep your cool, man. This was a piece of cake compared to Navy Seals training exercises.
The green exit sign at the end of the corridor caught his eye just as he heard a faint whooshing noise that sounded like a wind tunnel. Only it was getting louder, closer.
“Shit!” he said loudly and bolted down the hallway. His feet squeaked loudly as he raced toward the stairwell. He heard new sounds down the hall behind him. The sounds of voices, muffled behind closed doors. They were still in the elevator. His legs carried him closer. The voices were now louder, closing in.
The wind whistled as it rushed under the elevator doors, and the bell rang faintly, indicating the elevator’s arrival on the twelfth floor. Geoff heard the elevator doors part and several pairs of feet scramble onto the linoleum floor. He was just a few feet from the stairwell. There was no time to turn around and look back. If they saw him, it was too late. If not, he was home free.
His sweaty palm reached out and grabbed the handle to the door just as it burst open from the other side. It all happened so quickly that neither Geoff nor the tall black man dressed in blue had time to avoid the collision that knocked them both on their behinds.
Geoff was dazed, but conscious enough to wince as the cold metal handcuffs were snapped around his wrists.
“Hold it right there, asshole. You’re under arrest.”
Chapter 24
Geoff looked up at the imposing blue blur of the man above him, wondering whether or not this was all simply a hypnogogic hallucination, a terror too bizarre to be happening to him. He sat slumped on the floor of the stairwell landing, handcuffed like a common criminal, awaiting a swift kick in the ribs from the pissed-off security guard.
He was confused, hearing a familiar voice instead.
“Geoffrey Davis, what the fuck are you doing?”
“Randall?” asked Geoff, incredulous but elated.
“You’re gonna’ give my guards here a heart attack setting off all kinds of alarms and making them think there’s a thief in here. Worse yet, you gonna’ get hurt yourself,” said PETronics Security Chief Randall Johnson with a grin.
“That sound sure will startle a man. Looks like it scared the bejeebers out of you!”
He reached down, offered Geoff a hand and pulled him up off the floor, then turned to the other guards. “Hey, undo these cuffs, will you, Jonesey, and turn off that fuckin’ alarm. It’s giving me a whopper of a headache.”
Geoff brushed off his bottom and straightened his lab coat, trying to act as composed as a man who had been knocked on his butt possibly could. He was grateful that of all the security guards at the Research Center, Randall Johnson was the one he literally ran into. Jones removed the cuffs, and Geoff massaged his sore wrists.
“Well, I, uh—”
“Forgot to pick up the new key, did you doc?” Randall interrupted. “Yeah, we had to change the lock yesterday. Somebody got hold of a copy of the master, and we had to change all the locks in the whole goddamned building. You can’t believe what a fucking pain in the ass that was, man!” Johnson shook his head back and forth in disgust.
Geoff felt the noose around his neck loosening, sighed, wiped the sweat off his brow. “I bet it was.”
“Bet your ass, my friend.” Johnson waved off the other guards and sent them back to the office. “Come on, doc, let’s go open that door for you.” He put his arm around Geoff’s shoulder as they walked back towards the lab.
“I really appreciate it, Randall. You know, I’ve been meaning to call you for that lunch I promised, but I—”
“I didn’t expect a call until at least Christmas. So, whatcha’ doing coming to the lab at so late an hour, anyway? You should be home right about now. All work and n
o play’s not too healthy. Take it from me.” Johnson smiled.
“Yeah, you’re right, but there’s a chart in there I need for rounds in the morning. Pederson will kick my ass if I don’t have it.”
Johnson reached down to his belt and removed a jingling ring of keys. He honed right in on the proper one, and the door opened with a neat click. “Wouldn’t want to see that man on anybody’s butt. No,sir.”
“Especially mine. You know how he is with the chief resident.”
“I hear you,” said Randall with a curious smile as he flipped the light switch and scanned the lab from the doorway. “Listen, after you find that chart or whatever it is, make sure you lock up, or it’ll be my ass on the line with Doc Balassi, and he can be one bad Hungarian!”
“I’ll take care of it,” said Geoff. He extended his hand.
“I know that, doc,” he replied. Johnson leaned closer to Geoff and spoke in a loud whisper. “Whatever it is you’re up to, be more careful, next time, will you? There’s people out there just waiting for you to screw up like you almost did tonight. Ol’ Randall Johnson can’t always be there to save your ass.” He turned and left.
Geoff entered the lab and locked the door securely behind him. He slumped against the inside of the door and exhaled a huge sigh of relief. He had escaped a trip to the city jail only by luck and the good graces of Randall Johnson. The episode had almost cured Geoff’s agnosticism. Nonetheless, his cover was blown, and even though he felt he could trust Randall, one of the guards was sure to talk.
Balassi, worse yet Pederson, would find out soon. Then he’d be in deep shit. He knew he had been granted only a temporary reprieve and the only way to save his ass was to get hold of the information he had set out for tonight. Then they had to believe him. Facts couldn’t be denied. He’d be the hero, not the troublemaker.
The Endorphin Conspiracy Page 14