Raj strutted past the entrance to Nick’s cube.
Crack crack.
If Raj turned and said hello, it meant he had work to dump on Nick. Raj never said hello unless he wanted something. Nick stared at his screen, avoiding eye contact as he heard the little rooster digging through his pockets, looking for his keys.
Jingle. Jingle jingle.
Nick held his breath as a key slipped into a lock, and the door to Raj’s offices opened with a wheezing squeak. Then... then...
Crack, crack, crack, crack...
Raj walked into his office. Nick could already hear him punching his code into the phone to listen to his messages over the speaker phone (as all horribly busy men must do). Everyone must know who was trying to reach Raj, and why, and how often they called. The worst was the sound of Raj calling these people back, often while post-docs or graduate students were in the room.
The messages played, “Hello Dr. Gupta, this is Nina Parker from Mr. Pepper’s office calling. Just a reminder that we’ll be arriving this afternoon around twelve. Please have everything ready for Mr. Pepper’s arrival; he doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Oh, and please don’t force him to ask questions during the the visit. All information should be shared in a forthcoming manner. I believe you know what that means. Oh, and Dr. Gupta? He can tell when people aren’t telling him everything, trust me.”
Nick’s ears perked up. The messages from the Pepper Foundation had grown blunt over the last several weeks. That wasn’t a good thing for Raj, but Nick found it extremely interesting. It sounded like Pepper was getting suspicious about Raj’s work. Nick had been suspicious about his work from the get-go. He had edited a few of the papers that came out of the lab, and though he understood little of what was being discussed, he was able to extrapolate some information about the program, but it was sketchy. As best he could tell, the money from the Pepper Foundation was funding a project aimed at halting the spread of an airborne virus and quickly reversing its incubation in subjects. Early on, there had been a few papers examining the effects of the virus in several of the monkeys in the primate center. Research papers never reported failures; those were brushed under the rug, but these reports did seem to show promising advancement toward the goal.
Yet for the last six or seven months Nick hadn’t seen anything from the lab. He did edit one early draft of a paper discussing the best manner in which to disperse substances into the air once a vaccine formulation had been finalized, but even that had been a strange manuscript. Nick felt it would have been better suited to an entirely different department, maybe something in applied physics or the engineering school. Either way, that had been the last paper to come out of Gupta’s lab in months. Either the research was going badly, or it had veered off target. Maybe Pepper was getting the same impression.
Jeff Pepper.
In the back of his mind, Nick couldn’t help but think that making contact with the man was as good a way as any (and better than most) to get his work seen by people who mattered, maybe even get it produced by one of the Pepper Foundation’s publishing and entertainment branches. If the circumstances had been any different, if the visit weren’t so riddled with doubt and apprehension, Nick might even have brought something in with him, maybe just a short story. But the thing was, Nick had an inkling of why the guy was coming in. It was just a stab in his gut, but he’d felt it for a while now. Maybe it was fear, or dread, but Nick’s instincts told him he knew something he wasn’t meant to. He still didn’t know if Raj had seen him that day.
Right after Christmas, Nick had been trying to track Raj down in the labs to get an author release signed for one of the research journals. It had been one of those rare days when Nick was looking for Raj, rather than trying to avoid the man at all costs. Finally, when the journal had emailed for a third time, saying that they really, absolutely, without delay, needed the paperwork signed now, Nick had gone looking for the little man. When he couldn’t find him in any of the Health Science Building labs, he’d headed down to the Primate Center, which was located several stories below the building’s western wing. Nick was surprised his identification badge had gotten him all the way down to the heart of the center. No one had given him more than a passing glance as he walked down corridor after corridor, asking the whereabouts of the Gupta lab. Finally, a small Asian woman rushed past him, and Nick had to all but clothesline her with his arm to get her to stop.
“Excuse me, can you tell me where to find the Gupta laboratory?”
“Which one?” she asked sharply.
“The Pepper Foundation facility?” Nick guessed.
She lifted her arm and pointed to the end of the hall. “There.”
Then she was gone, once again shuffling down the corridor.
That was when Nick saw it. A quick, split-second snapshot, the briefest flash before his eyes, but one that burned itself into his mind. He’d rounded the corner, head down, looking over the paperwork, when his gaze turned upwards, towards a small viewing portal in one of the walls. That’s where he’d seen it, just for a millisecond, the pleading gaze of a monkey’s eyes, sharp and terrified, staring through the glass at him. The air was filling with a sort of mist. He could hear a hissing sound in the background, then...
Phoom!
The face and eyes were gone.
Nick turned in horror, stumbling to the side as he covered his eyes, but the image was stuck there, every gory detail. The animal had disintegrated, its insides turned out. Every blood vessel, every opening on its face -- eyes, mouth, nose -- in an instant, they had sprayed a puff of red, curdled inward, then torn apart in a bloody cloud of fluids and pulpy tissue.
That wasn’t research going on in those labs. That was testing.
That’s when Nick turned and ran to the elevators. He rode them back to the Department of Immunology’s main floor, sat down at his desk, and held his head in his hands. Just as he was doing now, all these months later.
The memory had briefly silenced the office around him. Then the squeak of a desk chair, and the “pop” of Raj’s ankle. Nick turned in his chair, just as the “great scientist” peered around the corner of the cubicle wall.
“Uhhhhh....” Nick heard the thick spit sputtering in the back of Raj’s throat as he stuttered around for the right word. “Nick. I’m going to have some paperwork for you to go over later, okay?”
Nick nodded his head.
Raj held his gaze for a moment. “I’ll drop that off for you later, all right?”
“Okay.” Nick responded.
“Just a few things, you know?”
Jesus, Nick thought through a forced smile, I fucking know already! Why did this guy always repeat rhetorical questions long after he’d gotten a clear response?
Then Morgan walked by. Quickly and silently. Nick caught her eyes as she glanced over Raj’s shoulder. He knew the look well. She wanted to sneak off to the storage room.
Raj continued nodding his head and blathering away, but Nick was no longer listening. At last the annoying little man shuffled off and Nick rose from his chair, walked past Morgan’s desk in the workroom, and headed upstairs. Morgan waited an agonizing minute, then followed after him.
Moments later they were upstairs in the dark, door locked, clothes stripped away, hearts ready to explode.
* * *
Jeff looked down at the approaching helicopter pad on the roof of the University Hospital. He glanced at his watch — 11:52. Perfect timing. Not too early and definitely not late. A brisk walk through the corridors, his people at his sides, and they’d be arriving for their meeting right on time. He could be scatterbrained at times, but whether or not people waited for important people was beside the point for him; in his mind, important people didn’t leave others waiting, ‘cause they didn’t have time to waste.
The rotor blades whipperwooled overhead as the copter came in for a landing, its skids gently setting down on the concrete. Jeff secretly loved the bustle of such arrivals. He was notorious for his se
cretive activities and his private personality -- when people talked of his old company, he was inevitably referred to as the “phantom co-founder” or the “accidental gazillionaire” -- but that didn’t bother him. He preferred to remain less well known than his old high school friend, who’d stuck with the company and wound up assuming the position of world’s wealthiest man. For Jeff, it was more fun to have the perks, the wealth, the fame, but go through life with fewer ruffled feathers, so that when someone did recognize him, he could still feign cluelessness but savor the kick of recognition.
A young guy, probably a hospital PR rep, walked up to the copter, accompanied by a landing attendant. They held the cabin doors open as Jeff, Nina, and David disembarked. The PR guy was shouting something at them, but Jeff neither heard nor paid attention to what he was saying. They followed their greeters across the roof toward an open doorway where another guy, a college age kid, was waiting anxiously. This guy clearly knew who Jeff was. He was probably a business major, working at the hospital on a co-op or something. He wore an ill-fitted suit, his hair, tie, and shoes all ever so slightly mismatched, not quite tailored to his posture, but he was on the right track. The kid nodded to him with a smile and Jeff nodded back. The noise from the copter was deafening, but Jeff could just make out the kid’s bellowed “Pleasure to meet you!” as he put out his hand, which Jeff reached out and shook. He patted the kid on the shoulder as the group ducked into the building. Then they were off, racing down corridors, Italian leather shoes clapping on linoleum hospital floors. The PR guy chattered away about their schedule and what an honor it was to meet him. Jeff just thought about the kid’s expression when he’d shaken his hand. That was the look of excitement. These other people, the hospital reps, they were just bootlicking toadies. Jeff didn’t want their tongues smearing his shiny shoes.
* * *
The guy at the front gate didn’t even blink. He didn’t nod. Didn’t hold his gaze on them. Nothing. He just took Tim’s pass, glanced from the picture on the card to the man behind the wheel of the black van, and pushed a button to raise the gate. Tim pulled the van forward and glanced at his companion in the passenger seat, who nodded at him once. Then he continued down the back driveway behind the hospital, looking into his rear view mirror to see if the second group would make it through the security gate with as little notice as he had. He could see the second van coming down the back road to the gate, past the construction site where crews were busy working on the new addition to the hospital. A huge crane towered over the site, its hook and pulley system hoisting materials from the ground and up a dozen stories overhead. Tim’s gaze flashed from a rising beam of metal at the end of the crane’s cable, back down to the van below, where an arm was reaching out to hand the guard another pass, just like his own. Then the arm pulled back into the cab as the gate opened and the van drove through.
They were in.
It had taken them the better part of two years to get everything in place, from assembling his team in the U.S., to setting up their bank accounts, living arrangements, and jobs. Whenever possible, they’d found ways to get themselves jobs at the university, ones that got them as close as possible to the center of the organization’s operations. Most of them worked as janitors. One had even gotten a position in the campus safety department, which had proved immeasurably helpful in forging security clearances for the members of the team that had taken work outside of the university.
Why were they in the United States?
What was their intention?
They weren’t terrorists. Not in any traditional sense. Maybe according to Western culture they were, but that was a world whose opinions they did not value. They weren’t here to hurt the Americans. They weren’t trying to murder or control the people they encountered while carrying out their mission; those people were not the ultimate target. If they got in the way, that might change, Tim knew that neither he nor his men would hesitate to kill or use anyone they encountered in order to further their progress. He had no doubt there would be casualties today, but their goal was not to instill fear; their goal was to find weapons, weapons no one had ever seen, weapons for which there was no defense. Once they had what they’d come looking for, they would take them to the places where they could best aid in advancing their cause. That was where the real terror would come in, but that was far from here. Still, just because they weren’t after Americans, that didn’t mean they didn’t have their problems with them. Several of his men would have been more than happy to twist their plans back on the people of the country where they had been operating for the last few years. Others found themselves drawn into the culture more than they could ever have thought possible, and those were the ones that might have problems carrying out today’s task. Their mission in and of itself was simple, at least on paper: They were here to pick up a weapon. They had found exactly what they’d been looking for and more. If dropping the bomb on Hiroshima had sent a shockwave through the world, stopping the war in its tracks and simultaneously destroying not only the people of the city, but every square inch of land and civilization, then this weapon would have that same effect, while keeping the infrastructure and the physical world intact.
As they approached the southeast corner of the building, the road swooped downwards and the van slipped into the darkness of an underground parking facility. Like everything in the mission, their parking arrangements had been carefully mapped out. Tim drove down one level, circled the van around the back corner of the garage, and backed into a spot tucked between two massive concrete support columns. A moment later, the second van approached and backed in beside them. Tim shut down the van’s engine and got out of the cab.
“Did you have any problems?” he asked.
The other driver shook his head.
“Then it’s time to get started.”
The side doors of both vans slid open and a half dozen people slipped out of each vehicle. Their eyes were set, cold and determined, as they filed out into the darkness. There were 14 men total, including Tim. They were all ready, they were all armed, and they were all dressed in Seattle Fire Department gear.
“Check your equipment.”
Tim heard the solid, cold sounds of well oiled metal clicking and engaging as his men loaded their firearms and slipped them inside their coats. They stood waiting for his order to move out.
Tim hesitated. Once they began, there was no turning back. He took one deep breath to center himself.
“Let’s go.”
* * *
Renoir was running late. Not an uncommon occurrence, but one that irked him terribly. His shoes made little slapping noises as he rushed down the hall of the Health Sciences Building and rounded the corner into the department’s entrance. Two of the graduate students were sitting at the front table. Both were long-time students, the variety that never seem to wrap up their studies and actually move out into the working world. Renoir smirked; if they kept this up they’d be on the faculty soon! He didn’t know their names. Binky and Dooseldorf sounded good enough to him. Binky was a big, fat guy. Even now, he was sitting at the table, munching on a cinnamon bun as he talked to Dooseldorf, who looked up from the paper as he saw Renoir walking in.
“Good morning Dr. Renoir.”
Renoir nodded and walked past them. The receptionist was sitting at the front counter, talking on the phone. He turned right and saw Sandy’s office. The door was open, but the manic woman was nowhere in sight.
The rest of the place was quiet. A few of the faculty’s office doors were open, but he would have expected more, considering the type of people they were expecting. He had a paper to discuss with the latest editor, a young guy named Mike or Nick or something. He could never remember it. They’d had no so many editors over the years, owing to drama with Sandy or their pure irritation at Raj, that he had long ago stopped getting to know them. Most of the time he just edited his papers himself. Nevertheless, he ducked into the guy’s cubicle to ask him a question, but found only an empty ch
air. The computer was on, though, which meant only one thing. He was off with that student assistant again. That had been going on for months. He hadn’t said anything, since a part of him admired how very French it all was. What was the point at working at a college if you couldn’t get away with the important stuff. He and Isabelle had been the same way when they’d met during his post-doctoral work.
Renoir glanced into Raj’s office. He wasn’t there either. Thank God. He’d have a few moments of peace to sit down at his desk, flip through his paper, and gather his energy for the day. He had a feeling he was going to need it.
Billionaires, Bullets, Exploding Monkeys (A Brick Ransom Adventure) Page 4