Beyond Eden

by Sherer, B. K. ; Linnea, Sharon

  “Yes, sir,” she said. Then, “Do you think there’s still a chance any of the kidnap victims are still alive?”

  “I have to admit it’s easier to dispose of someone than to keep him or her alive for months on end.” He saw her stricken look and said, “We have no proof any of them have died. But the sooner we find them, the better their chances.”

  “As I told you. I have a four-day pass. After that, I’m back in the grip of the military and you can work with whomever you think best. But give me these four days,” said Jaime steadily.

  “Four days may well be more time than we have,” Yani replied.

  They stood, and he put a hand on her shoulder. “Jaime. We worked together well before you’d had any training at all. I’m confident that you are now much better equipped to handle whatever we’ll encounter during the successful retrieval of those kidnapped.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. And she tried to tell herself that was enough.

  February 25, 2006, 3:22 p.m.

  The harbor at Vathay

  Samos, Greece

  * * *

  Nestor stepped onto the Gerianne II, his private yacht, and immediately felt himself relax. Perhaps because he was always in perpetual motion, he felt as much, if not more, at home on the Gerianne as he did at any of his stationary residences.

  “All is ready?” he asked the captain, not intending to wait for a reply.

  The Gerianne was classed as a mega-luxury yacht. She had been built in 2003 to the specifications Nestor designed. She was 85 meters long, with 36 staterooms, two dining rooms, a cinema, a full-sized pool, three Jacuzzis, a full gym—and an owner’s suite with panoramic windows. He regretted momentarily that he and Gerianne had met the boat at Samos, instead of flying into Rhodes or another island that would give him a longer ride to their destination.

  This trip he was indulging his wife, letting her have her way, temporarily, at least.

  And his wife was glowing. She was shrouded with the joy of her upcoming meeting. She was the one who knew the yacht’s staff by name—all 40 of them—and inquired after their families and their pets. In the early days, she’d been uncomfortable occupying—let alone managing—his penthouses, villas, jets, and yacht. But it was funny what a human being could become accustomed to. Now Geri was quite at home overseeing travel on a mega-yacht that bore her name.

  “You’re not going to your office, are you, darling?” she asked hopefully.

  “No. I’m a man on holiday. Today, I’m yours.”

  “Let me talk to the chef, and I’ll meet you—where? The spa? Our suite?”

  What a fine invitation. Her hair swept her shoulders, and her eyes danced as they had so often in her youth. She was shapely and lithe—not one of Wolfe’s “social X-rays,” thank God. Nestor liked a woman with curves. He was glad he was the facilitator of his wife’s good mood and planned to exploit it fully. “See you in the suite.”

  She turned to walk and talk with Pepe, the steward. Nestor jaunted down the chrome and glass center staircase into his favorite room: the receiving parlor. He loved the elegant modern angularity of it: the high ceilings, the box chairs, the large square panes of glass that partitioned the music room from the waterfall room. Someone had set out a vodka tonic, little ice.

  Nestor was home.

  He took a seat and looked out the wall of windows to the town of Vathay, which climbed the hills behind the harbor. He knew many people found the Greek islands charming, but he was from a Greek island and all the square whitewashed houses seemed redundant to him. He sometimes felt like he was traveling through a movie with a lazy set designer.

  Yet at this moment, he, too, felt the undercurrent of excitement. Nestor pulled out a small card from his wallet. On it was emblazoned one of the great inspirational quotes of all time, one that kept him going, day in and day out.

  I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

  —Woody Allen

  Let so-called visionaries like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett spend their billions prolonging the suffering of a few peons. Nestor had other plans for his fortune. He was going to change the world… truly change the history of the world.

  He had been born for this. Science stood on the cusp of medical technology that would make it possible to retool the human body so that someone who had the resources could, in fact, live forever. They were so close. New breakthroughs were coming every day. It was now not unusual to live to be 100. Even without enormous breakthroughs, scientists were guessing that by the mid-twenty-first century, it would be possible to live to 120 or even 150, with the right care at your disposal.

  For the last decade, he had been financing a very promising strand of cloning research. Not cloning as in making vacuous twins of yourself but cloning to grow extra, perfect body parts that would fit flawlessly into your own body system as the old ones began to wear out. No organ rejection, no mismatches, since the new organ would in fact be your own organ. But as promising as this research was, it was clear now that cloning probably would not be feasible as an ongoing, renewable source of parts in his lifetime.

  Nestor was CEO of an international society called the Immortalists, a group of scientists, researchers, philosophers, and money men who knew that earthly immortality was not only possible, it was a given. It was solely a matter of time. And Nestor firmly believed that the timetable was dependent on available funds. That was where he came in.

  He had the available funds, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to spend them to help peons stupid enough to catch AIDS or to be uneducated and caught in the midst of some remote civil war. The planet was overpopulated as it was. He thought of their deaths as self-correcting.

  He was going to use his funds to trace the line in the sand dividing the time that the worthy elite—the princes—of the world died and the time they did not.

  Nestor knew that Geri had hesitations about some of the research he funded, some of the avenues of experimentation they followed. That was, frankly, one reason he’d chosen her as a partner. He didn’t have time to wrestle with moral and religious qualms. So he had hired Geri—well, married Geri—to do it for him. He had been raised Greek Orthodox and figured he still believed most of that crap; he just didn’t have time to mess with it or figure it out. So he left it to her.

  Unfortunately, Geri wasn’t Greek Orthodox, she was some kind of Southern something from Texas, but he figured that maybe her religiosity balanced out his lack of time for the same thing. They’d get to heaven as a package, right? Not that there was such a place, but as a businessman, he knew there were always advantages to hedging his bets. Or was it the Mormons who believed in the package deal thing? Whatever.

  He was letting her follow her conscience. This was more than fine with him, as it currently meant having a well-mixed drink on his vessel of choice, with a romp in the bedroom promised.

  “Darling.” Gerianne had come up behind him and was massaging his shoulders. She picked up the remote that sat on the small table beside his drink and pushed a button. A swell of jazz poured from the speakers that surrounded them.

  “Let’s dance,” Geri purred into his ear.

  He smiled and stretched and stood into her embrace.

  February 25, 2006, 4:22 p.m.

  The Dolphin Nursing Care Facility

  Athens, Greece

  * * *

  Jaime stood in the hallway of the ground floor of the Dolphin Nursing Care Facility in central Athens. It was a long-term-care facility associated with the University Hospital. She was impressed at how it managed to seem well run and antiseptic, yet at the same time the rooms were cheerful and well differentiated. She had to wait only 15 minutes before the head administrator of the facility welcomed her into his office.

  Dr. Andropolous, his name was, and he remembered Jorgen Edders well. Brilliant man. Had been a department head at the university. They had been honored to care for him during the last months of his life. Luckily for Jaime, she
understood conversational modern Greek, even though she was reticent to speak it. However, Dr. Andropolous assumed since she was American that she’d prefer English, which he spoke with little accent.

  Once he was convinced that Jaime was indeed authorized—Mary Gardener was listed as Jorgen Edders’s niece—to see the records, Dr. Andropolous shared with her the medical records and death certificate of Dr. Edders. He had died of a fast-growing brain tumor. His colleagues at the University Hospital had taken all measures possible to save his life but had finally been unsuccessful.

  Jaime was given the names of the doctors who had treated him. Dr. Andropolous even walked her through the halls and up a staircase to the nursing station outside the room that had been Jorgen Edders’s. As they walked, Jaime looked at the medical and legal documentation surrounding Edders’s last days. She rifled through them and finally found what she was looking for: the signed paper denoting his power of attorney. It had been given over to someone named Britta Sunmark.

  The head nurse on the second floor remembered Dr. Edders and rattled on in Greek for a while about what a fine gentleman he was, how quickly the tumor’s growth had clouded his faculties, and was continuing on in that direction when Jaime asked if she remembered Britta Sunmark, the woman who had power of attorney to make decisions about Edders and see to the disposition of his property.

  “Oh yes,” said the rather zaftig nurse. “Sunmark was a young woman who had been his research assistant. She was a constant presence as Dr. Edders was failing. Very faithful.”

  Jaime set the file down on the blue counter at the well-lit nurses’ station and copied down the research assistant’s phone numbers from the power-of-attorney papers.

  “I don’t know that they’ll work,” said the nurse. “It seems to me we tried to contact the young woman, perhaps six months after Edders’s death, and those phone numbers had been disconnected with no forwarding number.”

  “That’s so,” said Dr. Andropolous, in English. “As I recall, she had left her post at the university as well. We never did locate her, did we?”

  The nurse shook her head. “Never did,” she repeated, also in English.

  Red flags immediately sprung up in Jaime’s mind, and she underlined the name “Britta Sunmark” in her notes next to the old phone numbers.

  Dr. Andropolous excused himself to continue his daily duties, and Jaime listened with attention as the nurse described the peaceful death of Dr. Edders; then good-byes were said all around.

  As Jaime returned to the center hall of the first floor, a young nurse’s aide hesitantly came up behind her. “Perhaps I may help,” she said in English. “My name is Isis, and I have been working here when your uncle died.”

  Jaime gave the girl a warm smile. “Thank you for finding me,” she said. “It is nice to meet you.”

  “If you cannot find the woman Sunmark,” said the girl, in what occurred to Jaime was nearly a whisper, “you may be able to find her fiancé.”

  “She had a fiancé?” asked Jaime.

  “Yes. He was here very much,” said the girl. “His name was Constantine. I have for him a cell phone number.” She handed Jaime a folded piece of paper with a series of numbers written in blue ink.

  “Thank you, Isis,” said Jaime. “How did you know Constantine’s phone number?” she asked.

  The girl blushed deeply. “He was a friendly man,” was all she said.

  “Well, thank you again,” said Jaime.

  “Good luck,” said the thin aide, and she disappeared quickly back up the staircase.

  February 25, 2006, 4:58 p.m.

  Somewhere dark

  * * *

  Daniel Derry lay with his ankles crossed and his hands behind his pillow on his bed, running over the details of his kidnapping as he had daily for the last two weeks.

  He had been at the mall that Sunday with his friends. The Sunday before Valentine’s Day. He hadn’t admitted it even to his small posse, but he had been shopping. During a fifteen-minute stint when he had professed to be using the restroom, he had slipped over to Kay Jewelers and impatiently waited his turn, knowing exactly which gold bracelet he wanted, knowing exactly how he wanted it inscribed.

  It was the first Valentine’s Day that he had a girlfriend, and he had used an unwise amount of his savings to purchase the bracelet. His friends all thought he and Janel were just friends; Janel was almost one of the guys, after all. But she wasn’t one of the guys. She was a girl. She was Daniel’s girl.

  He tried to envision the look on her face if he’d given her the gift. Would she have been pleased? He had been planning to ask her to the junior prom. Would she have said yes? What would her parents have thought?

  They seemed to like him. Her parents were military, too. That was good because even if they were bigoted enough to care that his mom was white, the fact his dad was a general did carry weight with military people.

  Oh, who cared about her parents? Daniel missed her. His girl. He had a girl. She had loved to hug him and kiss him. Oh, man, could she kiss. He ached for her arms around him, the feel of her breasts beneath her shirt.

  She never called him Did. She called him Daniel.

  And no one would ever know to pick up the bracelet. It was engraved. It was paid for. It was sitting in an envelope in a drawer in a jewelry store in the Pentagon City Mall.

  Did Janel know he’d been kidnapped?

  How had she found out? Who had told her?

  He tried to envision the scene at the Derry house when he hadn’t come home. Did they know that crazy lady with the kid had duped him into the parking garage? Did they know he’d been drugged? Or did they think he was one of countless runaway teenagers?

  That was the only thought that made him panic: What if they thought he couldn’t measure up to Zeke, so he’d run away?

  But they had to know. He’d been on his way back to his friends; he’d seen them in the food court, had waved that he was coming back—and then the lady came running in, all upset.

  Certainly his family knew he’d been kidnapped. And if they did—for once in his life, the tumult at home would be about him.

  That was usually where his litany of memories would end, because he couldn’t stand to picture his mother upset.

  His brother and sister, well, OK. A little bit.

  Daniel sat up as he heard footfalls outside his room. He glanced at his watch. It wasn’t the time of day that the guards usually came. This must be something different. He didn’t want to think about what.

  He sat up and scrunched himself back, pushing his pillow into the wall.

  The door swung open. There were two guards, including Mr. Lab Coat Guy. It was what they had with them that Daniel found unsettling, to say the least.

  But he couldn’t find the words to ask the question.

  He sat, staring, and waited.

  February 25, 2006, 5:10 p.m.

  Facility of Biology, University of Athens,

  Ilissia-Panepistimioupoli Campus

  Athens, Greece

  * * *

  Yani had called Jaime as she’d returned to her Vespa from the care facility. She was wearing the new helmet he’d issued her, sleek and white, which had a communications device inside. “I’m not far from you,” he said. “Come through the Zografou Gate by the Medical Center, and go straight until the road dead-ends by the mathematics building. Make a right. I’ll find you there.”

  It hadn’t taken her long to do so. Since it was Saturday, she wasn’t surprised to find most students by the dormitory and the ball fields, leaving the departmental buildings nearly deserted. She was surprised, however, to find Yani in jeans and a forest green polo shirt, a lightweight navy windbreaker on top, sitting on a bench, sipping a can of soda. She parked her bike several yards away and walked over to him. The sun had come out; she guessed it to be in the mid-sixties Fahrenheit. Not bad for February.

  “Find anything?” she asked, removing her helmet and sitting beside him.

  “The only
thing I found in the departmental files was that Edders was indeed the department chair until six months before his death. His tumor progressed very quickly. At some point, all his research files were removed by his research assistant, a woman named—”

  “Britta Sunmark,” finished Jaime. “She also held Edders’s power of attorney.”

  “Hmm. Interesting. Because Ms. Sunmark is also missing. All I could find out in the time I had was that she had switched departments, from the Department of Cell Biology and Biophysics to the Department of Genetics and Biotechnology, specifically to work with Edders three years ago.”

  “When you say ‘missing,’ do you mean there’s a chance she was also abducted?” Jaime asked.

  “No. She left suddenly, though it seems under her own volition. It wasn’t suspicious enough that her colleagues called the authorities, but it was quick enough that she left them all fairly annoyed.”

  “Any hints as to where she might have ended up?”

  “Well, since today is Saturday and the offices are officially closed, I was able to look around in the office which had been Sunmark’s, which yielded nothing, and the office which is now the office of the director. This was in the back of a very long file drawer.”

  Yani tossed a Xeroxed copy of a grant application into Jaime’s lap. She squinted down at it in the winter sunlight. It was filled out in a small, controlled script by one Britta Sunmark. It was for a grant from a corporation called FIA—Future Imagined and Achieved. The grant was filled out in English, although the corporation’s address was in Greece.

  “Look at page seven,” directed Yani. He had his arms spread wide across the back of the bench, and he sat relaxed as she thumbed through. On page 7, the blanks were suddenly left unfilled. I must speak to you in person to convey the enormous importance of this work, was all it said.