by James Barney
The pungent smell of wet, charred wood and burned plastic nearly overwhelmed her as she stepped through the gaping hole. She walked carefully over small mountains of smoldering debris, gingerly avoiding twisted metal, protruding nails, and broken glass, and eventually made her way to the blackened remains of the laboratory refrigerator. The door was partially torn off, hanging awkwardly by just the bottom hinge. Kathleen forced it open farther and peered inside. The glass shelves were all broken and lying in a pile of shards at the bottom of the fridge, intermixed with wet ash and globs of black goop. The neoprene sample bottles had all melted in the fire. Everything was gone.
“Not much left in there, huh?” said a voice behind her.
Kathleen recognized the voice of Agent Wills. She shook her head despondently without turning around.
Wills stepped closer. “I know this won’t be much of a consolation,” he said, “but we think we know what caused this.”
Kathleen turned and saw that Wills wasn’t alone. Bill McCreary was standing next to him. “What’s that?” she asked.
Wills pointed to the smoking remains of the hazardous waste area in one corner of the lab. “The fire started over there, near that electrical outlet. A utility pole a couple blocks from here got hit by lightning just before the fire broke out. So my guess would be that outlet shorted.”
Lightning. Kathleen absorbed that information with a sense of irony. God strikes again.
“Also, you’ll be glad to know your colleague, Carlos Guiterez, is doing fine. He’s at Montgomery County Hospital being treated for smoke inhalation and burns. They’ll probably keep him there overnight, but he’ll be fine.”
Kathleen closed her eyes and sighed with relief. “Thank you,” she said with genuine appreciation.
“Dr. Sainsbury,” said Wills earnestly, “is there anything else we can do for you? Do you need a ride somewhere?”
“No, I’ll be okay.” Right now, all she wanted was to be left alone. She had a lot of thinking to do and desperately needed a shower, a change of clothes, and—most important—some sleep.
“Okay then,” said Wills, handing her his card. “If anyone tries to contact you, or if you see anything suspicious—anything at all—call that number right away, okay?”
Kathleen nodded that she would.
“Now if you’ll excuse me.” Wills flashed a wry smile. “I’ve got to go explain to my supervisor how I lost the front door of my car.” With that, he turned and made his way carefully through the burned-out lab and out the front entrance, leaving Kathleen and McCreary alone together.
“I’m sorry about your lab,” said McCreary after Wills left.
“Yeah, me, too,” Kathleen said.
“Looks like that sample’s totally gone, though, huh?”
“Yep,” Kathleen lied.
“You know, if I were you, I’d let people know that right away.”
“Huh?”
“What I mean is, the next reporter who calls you, be sure to tell them that everything was lost in the fire—absolutely everything. Otherwise . . . well, you know.”
“Otherwise, people will keep coming after me?”
McCreary nodded. “Look, it’s for your own safety. Let everyone know there’s nothing left of the INDY gene.” McCreary paused pensively and clasped his hands together, pressing both index fingers against his pursed lips. “In fact . . .” His voice trailed off.
“In fact, what?”
“Well, remember when you asked how SERRATE could control the pace of private-sector research?”
“Yeah.”
McCreary looked around the ruined lab and confirmed they were still alone. He moved closer and spoke in a low, barely audible voice. “One of the techniques we’re authorized to use is disinformation.”
Kathleen didn’t know where he was going with this, but she didn’t like it. She immediately began shaking her head no.
“Scientists are herd animals, Kathleen,” he said in a low voice. “You know that.”
Kathleen continued shaking her head emphatically.
“They live and die by research grants, university sponsorship, venture funding . . . It’s a patronage system, pure and simple. And to get that patronage, they have to sell their research. You’ve been through all of that. You know what I’m talking about.”
Kathleen was still shaking her head. She did not like where this was going.
“To sell their research, it has to be sexy. It has to be promising. It has to offer the allure of prestige, acclaim, prizes, honors, and, most importantly, profit. That’s what patrons of science are interested in these days . . .”
“Forget it Bill,” said Kathleen firmly, already sensing what was coming.
“Kathleen, the one thing that can stop scientific research in its tracks—faster than anything the government could ever do—”
Kathleen was shaking her head emphatically.
“—is the whiff of a hoax.”
There was a long silence, interrupted only by the intermittent squawking of distant radio transmissions from the firemen outside.
Finally, Kathleen spoke. “You want me to say this was all a hoax?”
“Shhhh!” McCreary looked around nervously. “Yes, in a nutshell, that’s exactly what we want. And we can compensate you—”
“Compensate me? How?”
McCreary looked around again and spoke in a hushed tone. “Money. A new house. Even a new identity if you want. We can negotiate a nice package for you.”
“I don’t believe this,” Kathleen mumbled incredulously. “You’re joking, right?”
“No, this isn’t a joke. The government is prepared to pay you to disavow this research. And they can pay you a lot. Think about it, Kathleen. You would never have to work again . . . you could be set for life.”
“It wouldn’t work, Bill. People would figure it out.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised.” McCreary arched his eyebrows knowingly. “Kathleen, nobody in the scientific community wants to be associated with a hoax. It’s the ultimate form of humiliation for a university or a private foundation. And, of course, venture capitalists won’t touch a concept with a ten-foot pole once there’s talk of a hoax. Trust me, this has been done before. And it works.”
Kathleen pinched her eyebrows together. “What do you mean, it’s been done before?”
McCreary looked around again and lowered his voice even further. “I can’t tell you the details because it’s covered by another SCI channel. But this exact technique was used about twenty years ago to stem the rising tide of research into a particular area of technology that the government felt was . . . let’s just say problematic. The two scientists involved are both living very comfortably today on the French Riviera. And there hasn’t been any serious research into that technology since they publicly declared it to be a hoax more than twenty years ago. So, trust me, this can work.”
“No way,” said Kathleen firmly. “I can’t do that.”
“There’s got to be something that could make you change your mind.”
Kathleen stared deeply into McCreary’s eyes. She was thinking about her grandfather. “There isn’t. Forget it.”
McCreary sighed heavily and handed her his card. “Think about it and give me a call.”
Kathleen slipped McCreary’s card in her pocket, next to Wills’s card and watched with a twinge of contempt as McCreary turned and made his way out of the lab.
A few feet shy of the exit, McCreary turned to face her. He had a gloomy, deflated expression on his face. “This is Pandora’s box, Kathleen. You know that, right? If this technology falls into the wrong hands . . .” He shook his head slowly. “Well, let’s just say we’ll be regretting it for a long time.”
He turned and disappeared around the corner.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Washington, D.C.
Special Agent Wills sat alone at his desk in the FBI’s Washington field office in Judiciary Square. It was just after 9:30 P.M. The only other occu
pants of the second floor were a small cleaning crew busily making its rounds, emptying trash cans, vacuuming, and conversing in Spanish.
The overhead lights were dimmed for the evening. Wills’s neatly organized desk, however, was brightly illuminated by a sleek brushed-nickel desk lamp.
Agent Hendricks had left two hours earlier. She’d left abruptly without asking if there was anything else she could do. That was fine with Wills. He preferred to be alone. Besides, Hendricks wasn’t part of the SERRATE program, so there were limits to what she could do.
Wills sat motionless at his desk, oblivious to the rhythmic droning of the vacuum cleaners and the clanking of metal trash cans in the background. He was deep in thought, struggling to organize a dozen seemingly unconnected bits of information into some sort of logical explanation.
Something was missing . . .
He glanced down at the four tidy stacks of papers that Hendricks had assembled on his desk at his request. Each was labeled with a yellow sticky note: LHV GROUP, LUCE VENFELD, RIAL, and ELIAS RUBIN. He picked up the half-inch thick stack labeled ELIAS RUBIN.
According to his bio, Rubin was a seventy-six-year-old man from Haifa, Israel, a serial entrepreneur and financier. He was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the hundred richest people in the world. Rough estimates put his net worth at anywhere from 3 to 5 billion dollars, depending on Rial’s daily stock price.
And he was eccentric.
Turning to his computer, Wills quickly typed “Elias Rubin” and “Venfeld” into the Google search engine. There were no hits.
Undeterred, he double clicked the icon for the FBI’s intranet, typed in his user name and password, and then clicked on a link to the National Security Analysis Center. This was a new and highly controversial system—developed jointly by the FBI and CIA—that employed sophisticated data-mining techniques and relational software to detect patterns of communications and interaction between people or groups, sometimes four or five removed from an original target. With proper authorization, the NSAC system could access phone records, ISP records, credit-card records, and a host of other electronic information floating around the digisphere.
Because of the intrusive nature of the system and the controversy surrounding it, its use by the FBI was strictly limited to investigations relating to counter-terrorism and other certified national-defense concerns.
But Wills had a way in . . .
On the NSAC login page, he typed in “SERRATE” and a nine-digit security code. Seconds later, the system opened up, and he found himself presented with a start page with more than a dozen input fields. For the better part of five minutes, he filled in each field, providing numerous search parameters and field restrictions and entering detailed information about the people and topics for which he hoped to find a link. These included: “Elias Rubin,” “Rial Laboratories,” “LHV Group,” “Luce Venfeld,” “longevity gene,” “INDY gene,” and, finally, “immortality.”
He pressed ENTER.
And waited.
Nearly ten minutes elapsed before NSAC returned its first set of results. When the SEARCH COMPLETE icon finally appeared, Wills briefly reviewed the available data-presentation formats and opted for a simple list of names in order of relevance. He clicked the appropriate link, and a total of nine names appeared with relevance scores above the noise threshold of 250 that he’d selected. They were
812 Elias S. Rubin
571 Luce H. Venfeld
478 Jin Shan Wu
471 Guillermo J. I. Gomez
462 Eswara Haryadi
414 Aleksei Nazarov
378 Roger C. Glick
320 Leonidas Diakos
270 Wilhelm F. Van der Giesen
Wills leaned forward and studied the list with acute interest. He immediately recognized the names of Elias Rubin and Luce Venfeld at the top of the list. He also recognized Roger Glick, CEO of WestPharma Corporation.
But he was surprised to see another name on the list that he recognized.
Guillermo Gomez. The Mexican drug smuggler turned real-estate mogul.
Wills knew him well.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Bethesda, Maryland.
It was dark by the time Kathleen pulled into the garage of her apartment building, weary and defeated. Her mind was numb, her clothes and skin covered with soot and grime. There was dried blood in her hair and on her face from the cut on her forehead.
Kathleen guided her Subaru into her assigned space on Level P4, parked, locked up, and made her way groggily to the elevator. Every muscle in her body was stiff and aching. She was already thinking about the hot bath she would take when she got upstairs. She would unplug her phone, turn off the TV, pour a glass of Chardonnay, and just sink into the tub. There, she could finally do some thinking. She needed to sort everything out in her head and figure out what to do next.
A good night’s sleep wouldn’t hurt either.
She arrived at the sixth floor, stepped into the landing, and began making her way toward her apartment at the end of the hallway. She was a few steps shy of her door when a terrifying thought suddenly occurred to her.
She wheeled around and walked quickly to the other end of the hallway, where a small window overlooked the visitors’ parking lot. She stood on tiptoe and peered out the grimy window.
She recognized the canary-yellow Mustang that had been parked at the front of the lot for nearly three months. How someone had managed to keep that rust-bucket there for so long without it being towed away was a mystery to her. She also saw a red Toyota pickup truck that belonged to one of her neighbors and a black Corvette that belonged to the current boyfriend of the blond bombshell on seven.
But what about that one?
Kathleen’s heart skipped a beat as she spied a shiny black BMW double-parked at the back of the lot. Without question, it was the same make and model she’d seen this morning. The one driven by the man who’d threatened to kill her. She looked around frantically, half-expecting the man to be behind her at that very moment. But the hallway was quiet and empty.
Was he in her apartment?
Kathleen raced to the elevator and pushed the DOWN button. She nervously eyed her apartment door, just twenty feet away, fully expecting it to swing open at any moment to reveal the man with the purplish scar.
“Come on!” she whispered, pressing the down button several more times.
The elevator arrived with a loud ding, and she winced at the noise. As soon as the doors opened, she slipped inside and jabbed the P4 button several times.
Thirty seconds later, the elevator reached her parking level. Looking both directions and seeing no one, Kathleen tentatively stepped out and hurried to her car. She buckled herself in, started the engine, and lurched out of her parking space. She maneuvered quickly through the garage, braking hard at each turn with a squeal of tires as she spiraled up three levels to P1.
With a wave of her electronic pass, the unmanned entrance gate to the garage automatically lifted. She pulled out and turned right onto Sandalwood Street, slowing down momentarily to glance up at the living-room window of her apartment.
A man’s face was staring down at her.
Then he was gone.
Kathleen gasped and floored the accelerator, sending her Subaru peeling wildly down Sandalwood Street.
Chapter Fifty-Five
“There she goes!” Bill McCreary exclaimed, pointing at Kathleen Sainsbury’s car as it made a sharp right turn onto Old Georgetown Road about two blocks away.
“I’m on it,” replied Goodwin, punching the accelerator of the Suburban.
“Where’s she going?” McCreary muttered under his breath.
“I dunno, boss. But we’ll find out.” Goodwin made a hard right onto Old Georgetown Road and maneuvered his vehicle skillfully through traffic until it was approximately ten car lengths behind the silver Subaru.
“God damn it!” barked Venfeld as he turned away from the window and rushed to the door of Kathleen Sainsbury
’s apartment. He barreled out into the hallway, slammed the door hard behind him, and bounded quickly to the elevator. When the elevator failed to arrive within ten seconds, he cursed again and sprinted to the end of the hallway, toward the fire stairs.
He took the steps two at a time, nearly losing his balance as he flew down six flights to the lobby level. He burst through the stairwell door, banked hard left, and rushed out the back door into the visitors’ lot behind the building. The unexpected presence of a brightly painted red-and-yellow tow truck struck him immediately. It took a moment for him to realize what was happening. “Hey!” he screamed at the man standing beside the tow truck. “What the hell are you doing?”
The tow operator remained unfazed and continued pressing up on the hydraulic lever on the side of the tow truck until it had finished lifting the front end of Venfeld’s BMW off the ground.
Venfeld raced over and got directly in the man’s face. “I said, what the hell are you doing?”
The tow truck driver didn’t flinch. Without removing the lit cigarette that dangled from the side of his mouth, he replied in a slow, backcountry drawl, “You’re parked illegally.”
“I don’t give a damn!” Venfeld snapped. “Put my car down.”
“Towing fee’s two hundred dollars. Cash.”
Venfeld’s eyes hardened. He reached into this coat pocket, pulled out his Beretta, and aimed it at the man’s chest. “How about this instead?”
The man’s expression barely changed. Apparently, he’d been through this before. “All right, fella, take it easy.” He pressed the hydraulic lever down without saying another word.
Venfeld watched anxiously as his BMW slowly leveled out and the harnesses were unhooked.
“Now, get your truck out of my way!” Venfeld said as he slipped into the driver’s seat of his BMW, slamming the door shut.