by Alton Gansky
“I don’t work with them. I don’t work with the press. Their lives have never been dependent on any decision I make. What the world thinks doesn’t matter.”
“Does what I think matter?”
He hesitated, then whispered, “Yes. More than anything.”
She pushed herself up and crossed her legs to match him. She touched his bare knee and the feel of it ran through body and soul. His heart stuttered; his lungs hung on a single breath.
Her words floated just above a whisper. “Each day I ask why. Why did you live and the others die? Why you and not one of them? I thank God a hundred times a day that you’re still here with the kids and me. I thank Him repeatedly that I can still touch you, still smell your aftershave, and still pick up your stinky socks from the floor. Every time you laugh, I feel like I won the world’s biggest jackpot. Then the guilt returns. I think about Vinny and Jess and the others. I think about their families — fractured, torn to pieces by the world’s worst coincidence, and I love you even more. Guilt and relief, guilt and joy, guilt and thankfulness, and this thought keeps coming back to me: no one can be that lucky twice.”
Her words scooped the life from him, but he formed a reply. “I don’t know why my dad rushed into burning buildings, except he loved his work, and it was his duty. I know I have to fly at least one more time to prove to myself that I didn’t leave something in space, that I didn’t leave my courage there — that my crew didn’t die for nothing, but for the innate dream that possesses someone like me. I don’t know why God let me live, but He did. Still, I can’t hide from life; I can’t hide from me.”
Heavy silence swirled in the room. Myra lowered her head. Tuck touched her face. “Tell me not to do it and I won’t.”
She shook her head. “Telling you not to fly is like telling a whale to leave the ocean. I’ll support you in this with all my heart and soul.”
“Thank you.”
She lowered herself to the bed and Tuck did the same. He took her in his arms and waited for her to fall asleep.
She did.
Two hours later. .
A weary Ganzi picked up his cell phone and placed it to his ear — an ear previously covered with one end of a set of headphones.
“I have something interesting,” he said.
NINETEEN
Diane Melville walked through the wide lobby of MedSys ignoring the comings and goings of employees. Her head hung as if weighted by the heavy thoughts that churned in her skull. Too many days had passed without any meaningful word from Alderman. When the security expert last left her office, he had assured her that he was closing in on the deadly former employee. So why hadn’t she heard anything?
So much had gone so wrong. Despite her desire, her duty, to protect the multi-billion-dollar company, a constant churning sea crashed at the bulwark of conscience. She reminded herself that children with cancer benefited from the designer drugs MedSys made, that diabetics led better lives, that heart patients recovered from surgery faster, and all because MedSys was the leader in synthetic drugs.
She took long strides to the executive elevator at the end of the lobby and inserted her passkey into the slot to the right side, then waited for the elevator cab to arrive. Sure, she should have told the authorities. At the very least, she should have called the local police once she realized what had happened, but she hadn’t. They would bring in the FBI, and since the crime occurred against NASA, a government agency, Homeland Security would have been crawling all over the corporation, through its bookwork and peering into the private lives of all the employees, including her. As paranoid as the government had become, they might even classify her and every other exec as terrorists ruining lives and destroying careers for a lifetime. The business would never recover.
The brass-clad doors parted and she stepped inside. She punched the button for the top floor with enough force to make the knuckles in her finger throb. Easy, girl. Don’t take it out on the elevator. The doors closed and Diane felt entombed.
At first, she had wanted to notify the authorities, but Burt Linear had convinced her otherwise, and she so wanted to be convinced. Now too much water had passed under the bridge, or over the dam, or whatever the cliché said. Bottom line, it was too late to go to the cops. But concealing what had really killed the astronauts one year ago made her an accessory to the crime. She and Burt would be arrested, MedSys would shake and then be crushed under the weight of scandal, several hundred employees would be out of work, as would subcontractor businesses that depended on MedSys for their existence. People who depended on designer meds would go wanting. What a mess. What a disgusting mess.
The elevator eased to a stop and a moment later opened its doors. She took a deep breath and tried to sculpt her face into a mask of confidence and normalcy. She had become good at donning the disguise.
It was the fear of prison that bothered her most. Last night, she dreamed she had awakened in a dim, dank, dreary cell in a federal penitentiary. Diane had a cousin whose son did a short stretch in a federal prison. He had complained that the thing that bothered him the most was the noise. Apparently, such places were never quiet. Such an environment would drive her mad.
“Good morning, Dr. Melville.” The greeting came from her twenty-four-year-old assistant, Liz.
Diane started for her office located behind Liz’s space. “Any messages?”
“Mr. Linear has been by and would like you to call him when you can. Last night’s mail is on your desk.”
“I don’t suppose Mr. Alderman called while I was out.”
“No, ma’am.”
Diane entered her office. She kept the lighting low and the furnishings dark. Contemporary art hung on the walls, as did her degree from Stanford and her medical license. The latter represented a different era in her life. Medical practice never suited her but research did — and so did business. Twenty years after med school, she was the CEO of the most innovative pharmaceutical firm in the country. At least for the moment.
She set her purse in one of the drawers of her wide desk and sat in a suede leather executive chair. On the desk rested a pile of mail. Most were routine things she had seen a thousand times before, but one caught her attention: a white envelope with the return address for the IRS. The bottom right corner of the envelope read, “Department of Audits.”
“Great. Just what we need.”
Removing a daggerlike letter opener, she sliced into the mailing with more force than required and snatched the letter from its holder. Like the envelope, it was white and the letterhead read Internal Revenue Service. The paper felt odd, almost oily.
The body of the letter told her that MedSys had been selected at random for a corporate audit. She whispered an obscenity. Then she saw it. The signature seemed wrong. She read it again. It was signed by S. W. Eet-dreams. It took a moment for her to decipher the puzzle. “Sweet Dreams? What kind of joke is this?”
Her chest tightened and the next few breaths came with difficulty. She heard herself wheeze. She sat and read the letter again. On the surface, the Internal Revenue Service form looked legit. Even the address looked right, but something struck her as wrong — something she couldn’t put her finger on. The signature could be real. The world had its share of bizarre names, but this seemed too odd. It had to be a joke, but who would go to such extremes?
She set the paper on the desk and rubbed her fingers together. Like the paper they felt oily. She sniffed them but caught no unpleasant odor. Diane picked up the letter and raised it to her nose. No smell. As she drew the paper from her face, the light in the room revealed something on the other side. She turned the document over.
I KNOW YOU SENT HIM AFTER ME. YOU
SHOULDN’T HAVE.
“Quain.” She had to force the word past her lips. Her vision blurred. Her head pounded like a bass drum.
“Oh, no.” Oh no, no, no. She tried to rise, but her legs refused to obey. “Liz.” She meant it to be a cry for help, a scream heard through the buildi
ng. Instead, she managed only a croak. Her left eye began to spasm, then her right.
Again she tried to rise but only managed to shift her weight. Thirty seconds later, Diane slipped from her chair to the floor. Two minutes after that the room went dark. . . .
Liz glanced at her watch. Her boss had arrived nearly sixty minutes before and had shut herself in her office. Not unusual. Diane Melville was an intense woman who worked long hours. Liz hated to disturb her, but she needed to get some signatures and other information.
Liz picked up the phone and buzzed her boss. No answer. She buzzed again. Nothing.
She rose, stepped to the door that separated her office from her employer’s, and then, after knocking, opened it. Diane wasn’t at her desk. She hadn’t left so that meant that she must be in the rest —
Liz screamed.
Diane Melville was not at her desk but under it, her arm and head the only thing visible from the doorway. Her eyes had blanched and a small pool of frothy drool formed beneath the corner of her mouth.
Liz screamed again. . . .
Burt Linear had just opened the letter from the IRS and was reading it for the second time when the sound of a woman’s screams rolled into his office. He rose, still holding the missive in hand. “What the — ” He stepped from his office. His assistant Cary Woodland met him.
“Did you hear that?”
“The whole world heard that.” He pushed past her and into the corridor. As he crossed the threshold, Liz appeared at the door of Diane’s office.
“Help. Help.”
He charged forward, brushing past the panicked woman into Diane’s office. What he saw froze him in place. It took all of his will to walk forward and place two fingers on the CEO’s throat. The skin was still warm. No pulse.
Like Diane, he had trained first as a medical doctor before entering the more lucrative world of pharmaceutical research. His first thought was that she had had a massive heart attack. That assumption melted under the heat of his next discovery: a letter from the IRS resting on the floor near her lifeless hand — a letter identical to the one he held.
“Call 911. Call now.” His speech slurred. Liz didn’t move. He raised a tremulous hand and pointed at her. “Do . . . it . . . now.”
Liz disappeared into the outer office. No doubt, she thought the ambulance was for Diane. He knew it was for him.
Burt snatched up the letter before he could change his mind, stood, and staggered to the small fireplace in the office’s conversation corner. The gas-operated unit was more for décor and seldom used except at the key executive Christmas party. Burt tossed the two letters in and pushed the start switch. The letters burned quickly and Burt switched off the gas and returned to Diane. He wondered if he would look the same in death.
Liz reentered the office. “Paramedics are on the way.”
Burt nodded but said nothing. Sweat dotted his forehead, and his heart rumbled. The room began to spin.
“Aren’t you going to do anything?”
“No. Nothing . . . can be done.”
“CPR. Help me do CPR.” Liz started past Burt but he grabbed her arm.
“Too late. Don’t touch her.” He swayed. “Dangerous . . .”
“Dr. Linear? Are you all right?”
“Tell para . . . tell them . . . ccs of epinephrine . . .”
To Burt the floor seemed to rise. His head bounced off the carpeted surface.
“Dr. Linear!”
“Don’t touch . . .”
Blackness flooded his eyes, then his mind.
It seemed to Liz that a year had passed from the time she had called 911 until the paramedics arrived. When they did show, they went to work quickly, their gloved hands feeling for a pulse, checking for any sign of life. They fired off questions in machine-gun fashion: “Did either party have a previous medical condition . . . ever pass out before . . . complain of chest pains . . . under a doctor’s care . . . on medication . . . ?” Liz answered the best she could. Every VP in the building stood nearby waiting for some determination of their leaders’ fate, although one look at the corpses had settled that in everyone’s mind.
The phone rang and instinctively Liz moved to her office to answer it.
“If that’s the press, you know nothing. Got it?” The order came from Wally Thompson, VP of operations. Liz assumed he was taking charge.
She snapped up the phone. “MedSys, Diane Melville’s office . . .” Speaking her dead employer’s name brought her to the edge of tears again. “This is . . . this is Liz.”
“This is Garrett Alderman for Dr. Melville, please.”
“Oh . . . um . . .” Liz broke into tears. She had met Alderman on several of his visits to the office.
“Whoa, easy. I’m not that hard to deal with.”
“Oh, Mr. Alderman, it’s . . . it’s horrible. Dr. Melville died in her office a short time ago.”
“What? In her office?”
“Yes, and Dr. Linear too. How could both die on the same day and in the same place?”
Liz couldn’t hear what Alderman said. It sounded as if he had removed the phone from his mouth. A few seconds later, he was on the phone again. “Who is in charge there?”
“Several of the VPs are here.”
“Who . . . wait . . . let me think . . . Thompson . . . Wally Thompson heads operations right? He’s medically trained?”
“Yes.”
“Get him on the phone. Don’t use my name. Just tell him it’s important.”
Liz said, “I’ll try.”
She put Alderman on hold and walked to Wally Thompson. She motioned for him to bend toward her so she could whisper in his ear. All she said was, “You had better take this call.”
Liz could see his reluctance, but he followed Liz to her office. She stepped away once the phone was to his ear. A moment later, she heard the VP shout, “What?”
Alderman closed his flip cell phone and set it on the desk of his hotel. Acid burned his stomach. The worst had happened. No, he corrected himself. Not the worst. Quain is still out there and he could kill thousands if he wanted.
With the death of Melville and Linear, he no longer had a client. No one to foot the bills and no one in MedSys who knew what happened. Things could go downhill fast now. He knew nothing of Wally Thompson. He might be of a different mind about keeping things secret. In his heart, Alderman hoped that was true, but it was too late for that kind of honesty to do him any good. The authorities would see Alderman’s stealth as obstruction of justice and more. Things could end up with him in prison, Melville and Linear in their graves, and Quain free to hopscotch around the country killing as he pleased.
The number of variables had reached a point beyond calculation. If he returned to MedSys to discuss matters with Thompson, he might find himself nose-to-nose with the FBI. If he returned to his own office, he might find the same thing. Since he couldn’t be certain what Quain had used to infect Melville and Linear, he had to assume it might still be present. To save lives, Alderman had given the Reader’s Digest version of what had happened and hopefully Thompson had listened and had the room cleared. Unfortunately, such largesse would not keep him from a dozen or more years behind bars.
Alderman rubbed weary eyes and sat on the bed. His mother used to describe any conundrum as being stuck “between a rock and a hard place.” The rock had just grown larger and the hard place even harder.
It was time to call his office. Additional contingency plans were needed. . . .
Edwin Quain drove his rental car through the streets of San Diego. Azure sky, warm air, and the faint smell of salt from the ocean made things seem just right. He thought of his former employers opening letters from the IRS. Everyone opened letters from the IRS. The organization was so frightening that no one would ignore such a mailing. He had received a few in his day, and so it took very little effort to have letterhead and envelopes printed. Any good printer hooked up to a decent computer could do it. Very few people would examine the lettering t
o see if it measured up to the real thing.
Quain smiled. By tomorrow, he would have confirmation of their deaths. A simple hookup to any wireless network would allow him to search Google News. Their deaths would be mentioned there.
Yup. It was a fine and beautiful day.
Anthony Verducci hung up the phone and took a deep breath. Things had just become far more complicated and telling his boss had been difficult. More people would now be involved, and every addition was one more link in the chain that could fail. He didn’t like that — didn’t like it at all.
He picked up the receiver again and punched in the number of Ganzi’s cell phone.
Ganzi’s words were hushed. “Yeah?”
“We need to talk.”
TWENTY
Five months later
“So tomorrow is the big day.”
“Yup. This time tomorrow, I’ll be touching the edge of space. Not as high as a Shuttle mission, but seventy-two miles up is nothing to sneeze at.”
Ben Tucker nodded his head, then brushed back a wisp of gray hair. As they relaxed over coffee in the hotel restaurant, Tuck looked at his father and felt the high tide of pride. A brave man who faced all problems head on, even in his senior years, his father remained an impossible force to ignore. Perhaps his strength came from the many years spent as a firefighter, or the equally many years as a deacon in his church.
“And you say the ship flies like it should?”
“It’s a dream beginning to end and top to bottom. As you know, I’ve done two test flights with it, and others have flown the earlier version. Tomorrow we take up our first passengers and make history in the process.” A broad smile crossed Tuck’s face. “When I was a kid, I dreamed of a spacecraft like this. The Shuttle has a beauty all its own, but Legacy looks like something out of the old sci-fi magazines. Actually, it looks better. You’ll get a firsthand look tomorrow morning. That’s another thing I appreciate.”