Halon-Seven

by Xander Weaver

  All the same, his trip to Miami was unavoidable. Cyrus no longer had direct access to the lab and fingerprint analysis facilities he required. When he walked away from the Coalition, he walked away from their support. Luckily he still had resourceful friends in low places.

  A bell chimed as he pushed through the door of the upscale electronics shop near the middle of the block. The store was fairly small, but the entire front wall was floor-to-ceiling windows, polished to perfection and glowing with natural light. All manner of electronic equipment was scattered throughout the shop, arranged neatly on fashionable, real-wood display tables and counters. Everything was bright, shiny, and high tech.

  But Cyrus wasn’t here to shop. He headed directly for the service counter at the back of the store. A short young lady, barely out of her teens, waited behind the counter. She had short dark hair and glasses with thick black frames. She looked a great deal like her father.

  “Is Nathan in?” Cyrus asked with a smile.

  She returned his smile and held open the waist high gate that separated the counter from the showroom floor. “He’s expecting you.”

  Cyrus nodded as he passed and continued through a doorway beyond the counter. There he found a short hallway. A head popped from a doorway along the wall at the far end. A man with short, bushy gray hair and a short, gray, stubbly beard beamed with excitement.

  “Cyrus! There you are, come on back!”

  The head ducked back into the room and Cyrus followed.

  Nathan sat on an expensive Aeron office chair in front of a counter packed with complicated electronics. There was an elaborate computer system attached to several different high-end scanning and printing devices. The counter had a wing that extended into a peninsula. That section of the work surface was dedicated entirely to manual cutting, printing, gluing, and binding tools. Nathan was a jack-of-all-trades. One of his most profitable talents was document forging. He could do the high tech computer-aided work, but he was also a master of the old school art that required the trained eye and skilled hands of a seasoned pro.

  “I’m glad you have time to see me,” Cyrus said as he stepped into the room.

  The man’s face lit up at the sight of his old friend. “I always have time for you, my boy!”

  Nathan made sure he had eye contact with Cyrus before tapping his index finger to his right ear. He archived his eyebrows twice, theatrically. “I didn’t know you were in town. I’m so glad you looked me up.”

  The message was clear. The placed had been bugged. But it appeared the bug was audio only. This wasn’t entirely surprising. Nathan worked almost exclusively for the CIA, strictly off the books. But the spooks made a point of keeping their eyes, or in this case their ears, on their contractors. In theory, Nathan wouldn’t have known about the bug. But if he had let the CIA get the drop on him, Nathan wouldn’t have been the skilled resource Cyrus needed at the moment.

  “Well,” Cyrus said with a chuckle. “You always said to drop by if I was in town. I was just passing through. I thought I’d pop in and say hello.”

  “Fantastic! I was just thinking of you the other day. I was reading your latest piece on the corruption in the Chicago Police Department. You really turned some heads with that one! It’s the talk of the town, even way down here.”

  “Tell me about it. I’m not terribly popular in Chicago right now.”

  Nathan chuckled and scratched at the stubble of his beard. “I should think not.”

  Grabbing a tablet computer from the counter beside him, Nathan passed it to Cyrus, who looked at the screen. There was a blank notepad app on screen. Cyrus nodded to the older man and pulled out the stylus and began writing on the device.

  “So what’re you doing in Florida?” Nathan asked.

  Cyrus knew the man would normally not ask such a question. It was bad form in the trade. People in his line of work didn’t discuss such things. But since they weren’t supposed to be communicating in a functional capacity, and since someone was listening in, certain topics were requisite.

  “I’m researching a new story. Part of it led me down to the ‘Glades. I’m still not sure if anything will come of it, though. It’s kind of the nature of this type of reporting. For every story I break, there are a lot more that fizzle.”

  “Not like the old days.”

  “No,” Cyrus said, his voice growing momentarily more serious. “Not like the old days. Had enough of that to last a lifetime.”

  “Understandable. It can be messy business.” Nathan thought for a moment. “That’s why I’m happy here with my printers and scanners. No one looking to stick a knife in my back while I work, or put a bullet in my head while I sleep.”

  Cyrus continued to scribble notes on the screen of the tablet.

  “Do you have time for a drink?” Nathan asked expectantly. “There’s this great little place just down the block.”

  Cyrus passed the tablet back to Nathan. “I wish I did, Nate. But I really need to hit the road. How about next time?”

  Nathan finished reading the tablet. He looked up and nodded. “Count on it,” he said.

  Cyrus pulled three plastic bags from the pockets of his cargo pants. One bag contained two cell phones with their batteries removed. These were the phones he’d taken off the street thugs the night they tried to abduct Reese. Nathan would be running them for prints and pulling their call logs. A second bag contained a wad of plastic explosives. The detonator pencil was also in the bag, though rolled in cotton and taped up to prevent contact with the explosive. Bag three contained the chrome cylinder and the plunger of the hypodermic Cyrus took from the men who attacked his apartment. Visible thumbprints lined the body of the aluminum cylinder. Nathan would run them as well. The cylinder also contained a sample of the substance with which he was to be injected. Once Nathan had a chance to analyze everything, Cyrus would have a much better idea of what he was up against.

  Nathan took the three plastic bags and placed them in a heavy steel cabinet drawer. He slid it silently closed and locked the drawer with a key he kept in his hip pocket. He flipped through a stack of file folders on the corner of his desk. A moment later he located the one he wanted and handed it to Cyrus.

  “No worries,” Nathan continued. “I’ll walk you out. I want to introduce you to my youngest daughter anyway.”

  Neither man made mention of the folder as they left the room.

  Chapter 24

  Miami, Florida

  Wednesday, 1:32 pm (11:32 am Colorado Time)

  Cyrus slipped behind the wheel of his rental car and started the engine. He flicked the air conditioner on high and took a deep breath while silently coaxing the cooling unit into action. He flipped open the file folder Nathan provided. When Cyrus had sent an encrypted email to Nathan to arrange the meet, he had asked a favor. The folder contained the results of that request, the complete autopsy results for Professor Walter Meade.

  He read the extremely detailed report, but at first glance it held no surprises. It seemed to conclude what Reese had explained. Meade had suffered a severe heart attack and had not survived. There was some bruising near the base of his skull, and he had broken two fingers on his left hand. Both had occurred shortly before death, likely the result of a spill he took as he fell victim to his failing heart. Mild trauma to the chest and ribs was obvious and consistent with CPR procedures.

  Liver temperature and lividity indicated Meade’s time of death to be between 5:00 pm and 7:00 pm.

  Next Cyrus flipped to the police report. It was surprisingly lacking in detailed information. It concluded that Meade was alone in his hotel room when he suffered a heart attack. He’d been unable to reach the telephone in time to call for help. He wasn’t discovered until the cleaning lady came to work on the room, late the following morning. Meade had still been dressed from the night before, and the bed had not been slept in.

  Next, Cyrus flipped to the photos shot by crime scene technicians. There wasn’t much to see. Meade was found flat on hi
s back, not far from the sofa, in the sitting room of his hotel suite. The telephone was on a table across the room. Presumably, the man was on his way to the phone when he collapsed and expired. The police hadn’t bothered with much in the way of crime-scene documentation or photographs, likely because they didn’t believe it was a crime scene.

  Next were the photos from the morgue. The shots were more complete and professional. Close-up images of the back of Meade’s skull showed the bruising. Cyrus carefully studied the purplish marks along the hairline. It was difficult to tell what was bruising and what was discoloration due to the pooling of the body’s blood following death, but the irregular pattern that was visible into Meade’s hairline above the base of the skull made the difference noticeable. What concerned Cyrus was the cause of this bruising. If the old man had fallen on the way to the phone, as the medical report suggested, there was nothing on which to bang his head. Furthermore, it was a very unusual part of the skull to strike in a fall.

  Moving on through the photos, Cyrus found shots documenting mild bruising of the chest, consistent with the application of CPR. Flipping to a set of x-rays included in the folder, he examined the high-resolution color copies. It was a shot that presumably documented mild fracturing of the ribs attributed to CPR. It didn’t matter how closely Cyrus looked at the films, he couldn’t make out the difference between the ribs and the supposed fractures. He would take the medical examiner’s word on the matter.

  But looking at the films, something occurred to him. He flipped back through the stack of papers and returned to the police report for review. Though he could recall the details of the document with perfect clarity, he wanted to see the original again. He had to be sure.

  There it was, just as he knew it would be. The police report indicated Meade had expired alone in his room and was not discovered until the following morning. But if he was alone, why were there indications that CPR was performed? The police report’s conclusion clearly contradicted the evidence.

  His mind racing, Cyrus flipped through the stack of photos almost mechanically. His eyes weren’t really seeing the images before him anymore. He was working through the conflicting information within the reports. How could the authorities miss something like that? Was this conclusive? Were there alternate events that could result in the same evidence?

  The flipping of photos stopped cold. He was looking at a close-up of two broken fingers on Meade’s left hand. This photo was shot at the crime scene before the body was carted away to the morgue. It was a photo shot some time prior to the photograph included in the pathology report he had reviewed, back in Colorado. Although the first photo led him to suspect the fingers of Meade’s hand were broken intentionally, the photo from the crime scene left no doubt. The angle of the fingers was grotesque and more pronounced. It was not the sort of injury one suffered when they stumbled and fell.

  Now the pieces were starting to line up, and things were starting to make more sense. One more question stood out as a possible glaring mistake in the staging of the scene. Tapping quickly on his cell phone, Cyrus dialed a number from memory. Several rings later, Underwood answered.

  “Mister Underwood, it’s Cyrus Cooper. I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time.” Even as Cyrus said the words, he was doing the time conversion in his head. It would be nearly 7:00 pm in the UK.

  “Not at all, not at all! But please, call me Allan.” Underwood said warmly. “Just sitting by the fire, enjoying a good book and a bottle of wine. What can I do for you?”

  “When we first met, you explained that Professor Meade was a personal friend.”

  “That’s right. We were friends for a great many years, in fact.”

  “And, as I recall, you mentioned he would visit you, when he was in Europe.”

  “That’s correct. He visited often.”

  “Can you tell me, where did he stay when he was in London?”

  The silence of the phone line first made Cyrus wonder if the call had dropped. Only he knew better. Underwood wasn’t sure how to answer the question.

  “He never stayed in London, did he?” Cyrus finally asked.

  There was another brief silence on the other end. Cyrus knew Underwood was trying to divine his understanding of Meade’s work. “No, he never stayed overnight in London,” the old man said cautiously.

  Because he didn’t have to, Cyrus considered silently. Why stay in a hotel when he could be back in his own bed every night?

  Confidence returned to the old man’s voice. “It seems you’ve been a busy man.”

  They were skirting the subject, talking about it without using the words, but there was clearly a teleportation platform in London. Meade would not stay in a hotel when he could just as easily return to his home in Colorado. Cyrus suspected Underwood knew about the technology, but he needed to vet the man. Underwood had needed to do the same. No doubt Underwood knew something of the secrets that awaited Cyrus when he had taken his first trip to Meade’s home in Colorado. It had all been part of a plan laid out by Meade and left for Underwood to execute.

  “Allan, what would you say if I told you that I suspected Meade’s death was not entirely due to natural causes?”

  Silence filled the other end of the line. Finally Underwood returned. “Walter always suspected something like this might happen. What have you found?”

  “Nothing conclusive…but I’ve got a stack of anomalies that make for pretty damning evidence. First, the police report indicates Meade was alone in his London hotel room when he expired. Based on what you and I know, there was really no reason he would have a hotel room in London. Second, there are signs that someone performed CPR. But that’s not possible if you believe the assertion that he was alone in the hotel room when he died. Lastly, there was bruising on the back of his skull, the likes of which I’ve seen before. The bruising is left after the barrel of a gun has been pressed against the back of a man’s head.”

  “I see.” The old lawyer’s voice sounded very far away. “Then it wasn’t a heart attack?”

  “No, I think it was,” Cyrus concluded. “He had an attack a few years back. He was drugged in an attack—”

  “You’re referring to Washington, D.C.?”

  “Yes. The perps messed up the dosage when they drugged him, and it resulted in permanent damage to his heart. His health was never the same after that. I think someone grabbed him while he was in London. They worked him for information. I think the people who grabbed him didn’t know about his bad heart, and it failed on him. I think they performed CPR, and when they couldn’t bring him back, they needed to cover it up. They put him in that hotel room and staged it to look like he died alone.”

  “The authorities didn’t catch any of these details?”

  Cyrus was asking himself the same question. “I don’t know. I think they found an 80-year-old man on the floor of his hotel room, with obvious signs of a heart attack. Maybe they just didn’t look too hard. But that scenario bothers me. He was an important man. He knew a lot of people in Washington. It’s one thing for the bobbies in London to overlook this sort of thing. I expected a lot more scrutiny from his friends on-high. I’m surprised no one looked closer after the fact.”

  “Yes, well—” Underwood was searching for the right words. “It might not be all that surprising. Walter burned many bridges in Washington over these last few years. His project was considered a matter of national security for many decades. But in recent years, he was feeding the powers-that-be information, supporting a conclusion that the project was no longer viable.”

  Now it was Cyrus’s turn for silence. He was at a loss for words. “I don’t understand. We know it works.”

  “You’ve no doubt given some consideration to the economic and political fallout that would ensue, should such a technology be controlled by any singular power?”

  “Oh…” Cyrus now understood. “He knew that his government wouldn’t be any more altruistic with the technology than any other?”

  “Prec
isely.”

  “So he kept the work to himself and took it underground?”

  “More or less. He didn’t need to hide the work, once he turned in enough reports showing how and why the project goals were wholly unattainable. He didn’t want the technology brought to market by any single player. No matter who controlled it, not only could it be perverted, it most certainly would.”

  “He was going to open source the technology?” Cyrus finally understood. “Free to everyone… Something no one person or nation could control?”

  “Precisely!”

  Cyrus considered this information. “And it got him killed,” he concluded.

  “I fear you may be right,” the old man agreed. “And when Walter passed, he left the project in your hands. He believed you were the only one who could see the project through to completion.”

  “But I’m not a scientist.”

  “Walter knew that. The team doesn’t need another scientist. It has those in spades. Walter did the heavy lifting. As I understand it, the hard science is complete. He wanted someone who could protect the team. He needed was someone trustworthy and altruistic. Someone to see this through. What he needed, is exactly what you have to offer. It was his life’s work in every sense of the phrase.”

  Cyrus considered the magnitude of the undertaking. It wasn’t really that much more responsibility than he had already assumed. A wise man would walk away from all of this. But that sort of wisdom wasn’t a part of his DNA. As much as he hated where this responsibility might take him, this was the right thing to do. He had no choice in the matter. He would see Meade’s work through to the end. There was a good chance it would land him back on the Coalition’s radar, and that would have consequences. But right now it was a triage situation. He would worry about the here and now, and he would sort through the rest as it came.