by James Barney
But Whittaker just shrugged and flashed a toothy smile. “Just good old-fashioned leg work,” he said. “Following leads, picking up on clues . . .”
Kathleen wanted to puke. On the other hand, she had to admit he did look good on TV.
“Now, I understand that you’ve spoken with Dr. Sainsbury, the CEO of Quantum Life Sciences, in the past few days,” Rice said. “Have you had any contact with her since the explosion this morning?”
“No, I haven’t,” Whittaker replied. “She was last seen getting into a vehicle at the scene of the fire. I understand there were reports of gunfire being exchanged, but the facts are still very sketchy.”
“Remarkable,” said Rice, shaking her head dramatically. “Now, Dr. Fitzgerald, I’d like to get your thoughts on something, very quickly. What do you believe are the implications of this INDY gene technology in humans?”
“Well, assuming it’s genuine,” said Fitzgerald, “and again, we don’t have any confirmation of that, I believe the discovery of this gene in humans could be one of the most important breakthroughs in genetics since the discovery of DNA itself.”
“Do you personally see this as a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Oh, a good thing, of course,” said Fitzgerald assuredly. “This technology has the potential to improve all of our lives.”
“Well,” said Rice provocatively, “it seems not everyone agrees with you on that point. Joining us now are two people who have very different opinions on the subject.” As Rice spoke, two more squares appeared on the screen, leaving her face in the middle of four remote guests. “Joining us now by satellite are Dr. Sylvia Matherson, a bioethics expert from Stanford University, and the Reverend Jeffrey Kline, senior pastor at Freedom Baptist Church in Clarksville, Tennessee. Good evening to both of you.”
The two new guests nodded and smiled.
“Reverend Kline, I’d like to begin with you,” said Rice. “I understand you have some reservations about this technology based on your religious beliefs. Can you briefly explain those?”
“Yes I can,” responded Reverend Kline in a charming, Tennessee drawl. “In Genesis six, verse three, God commanded Noah and Methuselah that His spirit would not abide with man forever, but instead, being mortal, man’s days would be limited to one hundred twenty years. Now, that is a commandment from God, no different from ‘Thou shalt not kill’ or ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ And anyone who attempts to circumvent that commandment, through genetics or otherwise, will be guilty of a very grave sin. I, for one, will instruct my congregation not to partake of any sort of genetic treatment that offers to extend their lives beyond the number of years allotted by God. Now, Randi, don’t get me wrong. Science is wonderful. It has given us many important and useful things. But science should not be used to circumvent God’s will.”
“Very interesting,” said Rice, nodding. “And Dr. Matherson, you also have some concerns about this technology . . .”
“Yes, indeed, Randi,” said Dr. Matherson. “I am very concerned about the socioeconomic impact this technology could have on our country, and really, around the world. Who will have access to this life-extension technology? Only the very wealthy? Or will it be made freely available to everyone? I fear that if only the wealthy have access to it, it will further widen the gap between rich and poor, with possibly devastating consequences. I’m also very worried about what impact this technology might have on our healthcare system and social security, as well as the environment. These systems are highly sensitive to changes in demographics, so introducing an abrupt change like this could have a far-reaching and insurmountable negative impact. Those are just some of my concerns.”
“Thank you. When we come back . . .”
Kathleen turned off the TV and shook her head, wondering in silent anguish what in the world she should do. Her thoughts were interrupted by a quiet knock on the door. The bedding, she remembered. She stood to answer it.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Washington, D.C.
Special Agent Wills clicked “relational timeline” on the NASC screen and anxiously awaited the results. On the screen, a complex, multicolor scatter plot suddenly appeared, showing the degree of interrelation of the nine people he’d just identified, plotted as a function of time. With a few clicks of his mouse, he adjusted the X-axis to focus only on the past thirty days.
As the adjusted plot appeared on his screen, his pulse quickened.
At the far left of the plot—representing about thirty days ago—each of the nine colored lines zigzagged up and down in saw-tooth fashion, generally running parallel to the baseline—a rainbow tangle of lines that was nearly indistinguishable from the baseline noise. But, about two-thirds of the way to the right on the X-axis, or about ten days ago, the colored lines suddenly began ramping up noticeably. The increase in their interrelated activity was gradual at first but spiked significantly about three days ago.
Something was happening.
Then, at the far right of the plot—roughly corresponding to when the QLS article first appeared in the Washington Post—the colored lines shot up nearly vertically. Whoever these people were, that article had them buzzing like a swarm of bees. Which told Wills all he needed to know.
Wills next turned his attention to Guillermo de Juan Iglacio Gomez, one of the members of the group. That name brought back a flood of memories. With a few strategic strokes of his keyboard, he retrieved Gomez’s old FBI file, which was now prominently annotated at the top, in red letters, CASE CLOSED.
“Like hell,” Wills muttered.
Wills studied the grainy black-and-white picture of Gomez and recalled the day, roughly five years ago, when he was ordered to close the case on him. It still burned him up to think about.
Five years ago, Wills had been in charge of a special FBI taskforce called “SUNSHINE,” whose sole mission was to track, apprehend, and arrest the elusive mastermind behind one of the biggest drug distribution networks in North America. Guillermo de Juan Iglacio Gomez.
They’d received intelligence—most likely filtering in from the CIA (but nobody really knew)—that Gomez wanted to get out of the drug business altogether. He was allegedly trying to go legit and had already cut deals with the Mexican government, or at least paid off enough people in the government to escape prosecution there. But he wanted more. He wanted the freedom to travel, conduct business, and own property, not just in Mexico and South America, but all around the world. Even in the United States.
In short, he wanted to be reborn.
Of course, there would be no such deals with the U.S. government. Quite the contrary: the FBI was eagerly awaiting the day when Gomez would inevitably misstep and wander into the jurisdiction of U.S. law enforcement. The FBI field offices in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, San Juan, Saint Croix, Dallas, and San Diego were already on high alert for that event, as were other cooperative agencies in the Bahamas, Jamaica, and the British Virgin Islands. It was suspected that Gomez was seeking to acquire real estate in the Caribbean. So, the thinking went, it was only a matter of time before he showed his face on one of those islands.
That all changed, however, when the director of the FBI received a phone call one day from the director of the CIA, who reported that they’d worked out a deal with Gomez. He was now a CIA “asset.” He was not to be arrested or bothered in any way in any U.S. territory. His file was to be closed.
The FBI director nearly blew a gasket.
But, in the end, the FBI backed off, having lost yet another turf war to the CIA. And, with that, Gomez was officially “reborn”—free to roam the world, the Caribbean, even the United States, without fear of incarceration, extradition, or prosecution.
Wills personally had to close the file on Gomez and fold up the SUNSHINE taskforce, which, needless to say, left him bitter and more than a little disillusioned.
Staring at Gomez’s picture on the computer screen now, a strange thought was bouncing around Wills’s mind. It had started as a subtle twinge and had grown p
rogressively until the idea was now pounding in his head like a bass drum.
Luce Venfeld had worked for the CIA.
Wills snatched up the stack of papers labeled LUCE VENFELD from his desk and quickly thumbed to Venfeld’s government employment history, which—as Hendricks had warned—was almost entirely blacked out with redactions. Frustrated, Wills entered Venfeld’s identification number into an interagency database and called up his employment history on the screen. It, too, was mottled with black squares and rectangles, obscuring all but the most mundane information.
But Wills knew how to make those redactions disappear.
He pressed Alt-F3 on his keyboard, and a small dialog box appeared on the screen, atop Venfeld’s employment record. Wills quickly tapped in the nine-digit code for SERRATE and pressed enter. Instantly, most of the black redactions disappeared.
Wills scrolled down, skimming with great interest Venfeld’s twenty-year career as a CIA analyst and operative. He stopped just short of the last entry—Venfeld’s retirement—and read the second-to-last description with unchecked surprise. It read:
SERRATE—Cont. Surv.; Cont. Ops. (DFA); Quintana Roo, MX.
Wills shook his head in disbelief. He should have known. Venfeld had been part of the SERRATE program . . . five years ago!
Staring at the entry, another item jumped off the screen at Wills. The letters “DFA.” Deadly Force Authorized. Venfeld was a trained killer.
The puzzle pieces were now coming together. Wills stroked his chin, deep in thought. A twenty-year veteran of the federal government didn’t make that much money—a fact Wills knew all too well. He, too, was coming up on the twenty-year point. Retirement was right around the corner, and he was already starting to worry about his savings.
Venfeld, however, had managed to leave the CIA and immediately begin living large—a fancy car, a luxury apartment, top-dollar office space on K Street.
He’d cut a deal with Gomez.
That thought lingered in his mind for a long while as Wills stared blankly across the dim expanse of the FBI field office. The whirring of the vacuum cleaners had ceased long ago; the cleaning crew had moved upstairs. The entire second floor was dark and eerily quiet.
Wills’s thoughts seemed to float above the vacant cubicles and government-issued desks of the field office. What, exactly, did Venfeld get out of the deal?
Wills once again brought up the file on Guillermo Gomez and stared at his picture for a long time, shaking his head slowly from side to side.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Kathleen pressed her eye against the peephole of her grandfather’s door and peered out into the hallway. Seeing nobody, she asked, “Who is it?”
“I’m here with sheets and pillows,” said a man’s muffled voice, indistinct and oddly garbled.
Kathleen didn’t recognize the voice, but, then again, she didn’t know everyone at Garrison Manor. She wondered briefly why she couldn’t see the man’s face through the peephole but decided not to let paranoia get the better of her. Drawing a deep breath, she carefully engaged the security chain above the doorknob and slowly cracked open the door.
Which was all Luce Venfeld needed.
In an instant, he smashed the door open with a vicious kick of his foot, tearing the security chain clear out of its bracket and sending the door slamming hard into Kathleen’s shoulder.
Kathleen let out a terrified yelp and stumbled backward into the room, managing to regain her balance before nearly smashing into the glass-top coffee table behind her. Before she could do anything else, Venfeld was practically on top of her, pointing his 9 mm pistol directly at her face.
“Where is it?” he demanded angrily.
Kathleen knew better than to play dumb this time. “There,” she sputtered, nodding at the coffee table behind her.
“Hand it to me.”
Kathleen slowly turned and bent down to retrieve the neoprene sample bottle from the coffee table. Venfeld kept the barrel of the pistol hovering an inch from her head the whole time.
“That’s it,” he cooed nastily, extending his left palm. “Hand it over. Nice and easy . . .”
John Sainsbury awoke to a raucous commotion in his room. It took him the better part of a minute to figure out exactly what was happening. These days, it wasn’t unusual for him to be awakened by nurses or orderlies in the middle of the night to give him his pills or to change his linens. But this was different. Someone had just broken down the door. And there was a man with a gun in his room!
John Sainsbury’s life at Garrison Manor was largely a blur of medications, changes of clothes, nurses and orderlies, bland meals, and television—hours and hours of mindless television. He knew he was ill—seriously ill. He knew something was terribly wrong with his mind, although he had no idea what it was. He just . . . couldn’t . . . remember . . . anything. In fact, most days, it took all his mental energy just to remember who he was, let alone anyone else.
But there was one person in particular (although he couldn’t remember her name) who was especially nice to him.
She brought him Oreo cookies.
And, right now, someone was pointing a gun at her head.
That’s all John Sainsbury needed to know.
He kicked off his covers and clumsily rolled himself out bed. The gunman had his back turned and didn’t seem to notice. Without a second thought, John Sainsbury—eighty-five years old and feeble—grabbed the metal clipboard from the foot of his bed, raised it high over his head with two trembling hands, and brought it crashing down on the gunman’s head.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Venfeld screamed as he was struck. He spun angrily and smacked John Sainsbury across the cheek with the handle of his pistol. Sainsbury grunted and fell backward to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
“Grandpa!” Kathleen shrieked.
Venfeld quickly shifted his attention back to Kathleen.
This time, however, she was prepared. Just as Venfeld turned to face her, she brought up her knee forcefully, summoning all the power of her days as a high-school soccer player, and landed it squarely in the center of his crotch.
Venfeld groaned loudly and doubled over, wincing in pain. “Fucking bitch!” he hissed through gritted teeth.
But Kathleen wasn’t done. She answered Venfeld’s insult with a roundhouse kick to the side of his head. The powerful blow landed flat on his left temple and sent him sprawling across the floor in agony.
Kathleen wasted no time. She scooped up the remaining items from the coffee table and shoved them all into her pocket.
Venfeld was already struggling to his feet. “Give me that sample!” he demanded, scrambling for his gun.
Kathleen ignored him and stole a look at her grandfather, who was still lying motionless on the floor. Her heart sank. She desperately wanted to help him, but Venfeld was already on his feet, stumbling awkwardly toward her with the gun in his hand. She realized that her grandfather was safer wherever she wasn’t.
She had to go.
Kathleen turned and bolted through the open doorway. No time to wait for an elevator, she sprinted full speed toward the central marble staircase. Seconds later, she heard Venfeld’s voice in the hallway behind her.
“You stupid bitch!” he screamed. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with!” A split second later, two deafening gunshots exploded behind her.
The first shot whizzed past her left ear and shattered a porcelain vase on a console table several yards ahead of her. She never broke her stride. The second shot splintered the top of the newel post on the staircase banister, just as she was reaching out to grab it. She retracted her hand but did not slow down. Hooking a hard right at the top of the marble stairs, she began descending the steps two at a time. Seconds later, she heard Venfeld’s footsteps above her, in hard pursuit.
Kathleen reached the ground floor and darted into the lobby, where Ellie McDougal was frantically punching buttons on the reception desk phone, a terrified expression on her face. “W
hat’s going on?” she screamed.
“Ellie, get down!” Kathleen shouted.
Just then, another shot rang out. The bullet ricocheted off the marble floor near Kathleen’s feet and slammed hard into an adjacent wall.
Ellie screamed and ducked behind the front desk. Kathleen sprinted for the front doors and ran out into the parking lot.
She reached her car parked near the front entrance and frantically fumbled her keys from her pocket, which seemed to take forever. Panting and shaking with fear, she unlocked the car and slipped into the driver’s seat. She was just cranking the ignition when she saw Venfeld barreling out through the front entrance. “Oh no,” she whispered.
Venfeld took a few steps toward her car, stopped, took careful aim with his pistol, and fired.
Instinctively, Kathleen ducked her head. At the same instant, both the passenger’s side and the driver’s side windows shattered as Venfeld’s bullet passed just inches above her head. Still low in the driver’s seat and unable to see above the dash, she threw the car into reverse and floored the accelerator. The Subaru squealed backward across two rows of empty parking spaces until it crashed into Nurse McDougal’s lime green VW Beetle. The force of the impact snapped Kathleen’s head back awkwardly, and, for a few seconds, left her dizzy and disoriented.
Another 9 mm ACP round shattered a rear passenger window and tore through the driver’s headrest, just millimeters above Kathleen’s head. Realizing she had to get out of there immediately, Kathleen sat up, put the car in gear, and sped through the parking lot toward the exit.
As she made a hard left onto Route 2, she glanced back and saw Venfeld running through the parking lot in the opposite direction.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
The white Chevy Suburban squealed out of the bank parking lot next door to Garrison Manor and pulled up quickly behind Kathleen’s southbound Subaru. Within seconds, it was less than a car’s length away.