by J D Lasica
Sullivan dropped off Gabrielle and the videographer-photographer in front of the Fertility Clinic then parked her car in the executive lot.
She had accompanied her media team today so they could get a weekly production system in place for these updates. Mackenzie was a dream subject, and she hoped the other surrogates would follow the same template as today’s shoot. As soon as the photos and video clips were edited, she’d send them out to Valerie and some of the other moms-to-be who were all under nondisclosure agreements.
She began padding across Birthrights Plaza in her beige scoop neck power suit toward her office when a voice caught her from behind.
“Miss Sullivan, a moment of your time?”
She turned and didn’t recognize the figure standing before her .
“May I introduce myself? I am Dmitri Petrov.” Tall, imposing, and intense, the man took her hand and leaned down to kiss it. “Charmed.”
Are you kidding me?
“How can I help you?”
“I’m an early investor in your amazing company. I’m just in from Minsk and spent a few hours in your Clinic undergoing a parental screening process with Miss Erica Landon. Quite thorough. They even drew my blood.”
Sullivan thought that seemed odd but said nothing.
“I’ve placed an order for ten beautiful children. Is ‘order’ the right word?”
Did he say ten children?
“We don’t use that term.”
“I have a business proposition that could be quite lucrative for your company. It’s a bit out of the box. I understand you’re a member of the inner circle and can be trusted to be discreet. Would you be free for dinner tonight? On Saturday my associates and I fly back to Minsk.”
She wasn’t sure if he wanted to discuss business or if he was asking her on a date. But … ten children? She’d never heard of such a thing. She hoped somebody in the company was on top of this. There were more red flags here than in an old Soviet parade on the History Channel.
“My schedule is pretty full tonight.”
He’s pretty handsome, if a bit of a rogue. And I haven’t been on a dinner date since I moved here from New York. I’m losing my let-it-fly Bitch Goddess edge!
She was pretty sure he was hitting on her, and her curiosity was piqued. She decided to probe a little.
“What would Mrs. Petrov say?” She gave a naughty smile.
“Oh,” Petrov said with a deep laugh. “Do not worry. There is no Mrs. Petrov. It’s settled, then! Shall we say seven-thirty? ”
This guy certainly cuts an interesting figure, and I’ll do more research on him before showing up. What’s he up to? Maybe he knows some inside details about Birthrights and he’ll dish after a few drinks.
“All right. But just dinner, that’s all.”
“I assure you. It will be a memorable evening.”
41
Dallas, August 28
A s they moved with stealth through the campus in the dark of night, Kaden and Nico realized that the Birthrights Unlimited security force had some serious game. The guards made sweeps of the buildings at staggered times, making it hard to anticipate when and where security would be on patrol.
“These guys are packing AR-15s.” Kaden paused at the first checkpoint, surveying the guards moving across the dark landscape with their high-powered rifles. She brought along a tranquilizer gun but hoped she wouldn’t need it.
“Roger that,” Nico said. “I’ve set an automated alert to go out in the unlikely event we’re caught. But let’s keep a low profile and keep your comms on.”
They split up. For their comms, they’d brought their Eyewear, leaving their smartphones back at the house. Nico headed to the unmarked building in the Data Zone to try to patch into the network. Kaden headed to the Research Lab Zone to see what she could turn up .
Nico arrived at his target first and scaled the one-story building with the grappling anchor and rope in his go bag. She could see his movements on her Eyewear, and within minutes he located what appeared to be a vulnerability in a cable that ran from the top of the building down its side and underground. He went to work.
Kaden found a doorway near a row of bushes and bided her time until two of the lab workers exited one of the Lab’s side entrances. She grabbed the door just before it was about to snap shut and slipped inside. She knew she might be spotted on a security camera so she’d have to move fast.
The doors to two of the labs were closed but unlocked. One of them had a closet full of lab coats and she slipped one on so she’d look like just another employee. Since she didn’t have a security medallion with its open-sesame smart chip, she was confined to this one wing. She entered DNA Sequencing Lab 1.
“I’m in,” she told Nico through her Eyewear.
“Good,” he came back. “I’m making progress.”
She poked her head into the first room, with the sign COLD ROOM, and saw a large, white, formidable-looking refrigerator unit in the center.
Next she entered the main lab, with arched ceilings and six banks of bright fluorescent lights overhead. Two large slate-gray tables stretched across the center of the room topped by computer monitors, microscopes, electronic scales, and plastic vials and containers in assorted rainbow colors. She noticed two large vents on opposite walls and guessed they were for air filtration to keep contaminants out of the lab.
Lining two of the walls were a dozen gray and white machines with monitors, all perched along two rows of countertops along the two walls. The top part of the units held beakers of red, blue, and yellow liquids all tagged with neatly printed labels like 260822-ZQX-A .
But it was the bottom part of the units that caught her eye. She went up to the closest one and examined the digital screen affixed to the front. She found what looked like an on-off switch on the right side of the screen and pressed it. The screen flickered on and posed a question in bold blue letters: “Show visualization for Sample 260822-ZQX-A?”
She didn’t see any buttons to push, so she said, “Yes?”
The screen started showing a video of a normal-looking white house cat. The cat meowed for a while but went silent when the lights went out. Strange. In the video you could still make out the cat in the darkness, aglow with a steady, low-intensity phosphorescence. The cat’s nose and body and even whiskers were all lit up in a ghostly golden glimmer.
A glow-in-the-dark cat! Freaking weird!
She heard a noise from the hallway. A door opening and slow footsteps. She shut off the monitor and ducked low behind a metal partition in the lab table behind her. She held her breath and sensed a guard was surveying the room. She froze her position for a good thirty seconds before she heard the footsteps recede into the next wing.
She checked her Eyewear. “Find anything yet?”
“I managed to add an implant to the master router, so I’ve got eyes on everything,” Nico said. “Turning up all kinds of crazy shit. Check this out.”
He started sending over screenshots, which Kaden began browsing on their encrypted network. Video chats between Birthrights HQ and Moldova discussing trackers. … Some random chatter about foster homes and runaways. … Satellite communications between the main compound and operatives in France, Italy, China, Russia, Spain, the U.K. … Some weird files on Hollywood celebrities. … Maps of grave teams.
Grave teams? The St. Peter’s operation came rushing back. Kaden had strongly suspected Randolph Blackburn was behind that op. And it looked like Birthrights Unlimited was planning something much larger—on a global scale.
“Nico!” Her voice rang with a note of urgency. “Keep digging. And send what you’ve got to B Collective.”
42
Minsk, Belarus, August 28
S ophia Navitski pranced down the bike path along the riverfront, basking in the new sights, sounds, and smells of Minsk, the city she’d lived in her entire life but had only rarely experienced. The lush trees lining the Svislach River were bright green and smelled fresh and cheery. The air was
so light it appeared to Sophia as if it might skip off.
She stopped at a street corner to survey her surroundings: church spires and golden domes and stern-looking government buildings. Lots of younger people were milling about, smoking cigarettes or riding motorcycles with their bright shirts and sunglasses. Kids her age, too, laughing and playing on the amusement rides along the river. And grownups eating foods she wanted to try and telling each other the most wonderful stories, she was sure of it!
There were some things she didn’t understand. When she looked up at the street signs she wasn’t able to make out any of the words. She was an excellent speller, and these signs didn’t make any sense at all .
She put that out of her mind. There’s so much to see and do. All those years spent studying when I could have been here experiencing new things ! She hopped up onto a giant metal statue of Maksim Gorky and gave his shoulder a hug. She was proud of herself for knowing that—they named this park after him.
She saw an old woman staring at her, so she hopped down and went up to her. The lady was wearing a green shawl with pretty red roses on it.
“Hi. My name is Sophia. What’s your name?”
The old woman knitted her eyebrows and frowned. She said something in a funny language.
Sophia didn’t understand. All of her lessons were in English. She sometimes heard students in other classes whisper to each other in a funny-sounding language, but the rule at the Home was that everyone spoke English. She could understand a few words in the local language, but she couldn’t read it and she certainly couldn’t speak it.
She tried again and pointed at her chest. “Me … Sophia.” She pointed at the old woman. “You ... what’s … your … name?”
The old woman just shook her head and walked off, mumbling something in that funny-sounding tongue. Maybe I can learn it!
Sophia turned around and started walking toward a street vendor. She didn’t have any money but she just wanted to smell the aromas wafting from his metal wagon. Some of the smells she recognized, others were new to her. But they were all wonderful! Lamb shawarmas. Kebabs. Cheese pies and sugared donuts. She closed her eyes and licked her lips.
Someone grabbed her harshly by the shoulder. She turned, looked up, and saw a policeman with a stern expression wearing an enormous police cap with an eight-pointed silver star on front. He was speaking the same language she didn’t understand.
The policeman wouldn’t let go. He was scaring her. Sophia began to cry.
They drove her to a rundown office building a long way from the Minsk Home. She sat quietly in the back seat as the policeman and a wrinkled-looking man began arguing outside her window. Then she saw the wrinkled man count out a lot of paper money and hand it to the policeman. The policeman opened the back door and gestured for her to get out.
The wrinkled man took her by the hand and led her up the steps of the sagging office building. He brought her into a dingy room and made her sit on a torn brown couch.
“Sophia, you’ll wait here and be quiet.”
Oh, the man speaks English. And he knows my name!
The man closed the door behind him and walked down the hallway. She knew he would be bringing her back to the Home and that she would get The Stick for running off like this. But she didn’t care. Her adventure was worth every minute of it.
Time passed. Sophia sat there waiting for a good two or three hours, at least . She had skipped lunch and her stomach began to growl. She rose and went to the door. Locked. She started knocking on it and, when no one answered, started banging on it as loud as she could.
“Excuse me, sir, I want to go home!” she cried out.
She heard footsteps, and the door swung open. It was the wrinkled man again, looking angrier than before.
“Sit down!” he ordered.
He sat at the desk, and she slunk onto the couch, but she wasn’t happy about it.
“When are we going home?” she demanded.
“You’re not going back to the Home,” he said in a gruff voice.
What! How could that be? Where would they send me? To another children’s home?
“I promise I’ll be good!” she pleaded .
The man said nothing and checked his phone instead of answering her.
“Then I want my sister. Or my mommy!” she wailed.
“Shut up,” the man said without looking at her. “You don’t have a mother. Never did.”
“What do you mean! Everyone has a mother!”
She knew that’s what they’d told her all these years, but she never believed it. Not for a second. How can it be that I don’t have a mother!
The man didn’t answer. Just then his phone rang and he answered. He began speaking in the funny language, looking at her with a scowl. She didn’t understand a word of it.
She started to cry, and there was nothing the wrinkled man could say to make her stop.
43
Dallas, August 28
S haron Sullivan stepped out of the stretch limo in front of the Mansion on Turtle Creek, an uptown hotel and restaurant housed in a palatial 1920s estate that has played host to countless soirees of the rich and famous. Downtown’s thicket of glittery skyscrapers winked through a montage of carefully tended century-old trees. The doorman directed her to the restaurant.
“Have a lovely dinner,” he said.
“You, too,” she answered and felt like a dolt for saying it.
The door opened, and the maître d’ escorted her through the sophisticated dining room inspired by sixteenth century Renaissance Italy.
Dmitri Petrov stood waiting for her at a cloth-draped table next to a wall of stained-glass windows rescued from some European church or another. He set down his glass of Cognac and approached her, bending forward and brushing her fingertips with his lips.
This time she blushed. She had come straight from the office and was still wearing her scoop-neck business suit and heels while he had spiffed up and now sported a dark suit, black shoes, and red power tie, “the main color of the Belarus flag,” he told her.
Two waiters helped seat them, and they started out with small talk about their day before they started exploring the menu. Petrov ordered a bottle of 2003 Chateau Pap Clement, Cru Classé, that Sullivan noticed cost $595. He suggested skipping the standard menu because the chef had agreed to prepare a special meal for the two of them.
“You know how to impress a girl,” she said.
“I have my moments.”
They looked out over the elegant dining room where a who’s who of Dallas elite had begun to gather. Then he started flirting with her, asking if she was seeing anyone (she wasn’t), asking if she regretted the move from New York to Dallas (she did but lied and said she didn’t), asking if she liked to enjoy the finer things in life: private jets, lavish parties, owning fine art or a vacation home on the French Riviera (she laughed at the absurdity of that).
This guy is a real character . What’s next? Want to buy me the Dallas Mavericks?
They finished their appetizers and entrées—the Mansion’s famous tortilla soup, an on-the-menu appetizer that weight-watching socialites treated as an entrée, followed by a farm-to-table pheasant dish with “albufera,” a term Sullivan had to ask about, but which only drew a wry grin from Petrov, who was understandably well versed in European cuisine. The subject turned to business just as their cinnamon creme brulee topped with apple sorbet arrived.
“I’ve read your bio.” Petrov broke the caramel crust of his dessert. “I see you have quite the impressive background in marketing and creative media, but you’re new to the biotech space. Do I have that right?”
“Guilty as charged.” Sullivan picked at the rich dessert. “I’m still getting my bearings. ”
“Excellent. Those who are new to a field can often bring a fresh perspective.”
She sipped again from her glass of red. Wonderful bouquet, amazing finish.
Petrov leaned forward and gave her a power stare. “I am hoping you�
�re open to new ways of thinking about things. From a 30,000-meter view, I believe is the expression?”
She twisted her mouth into a smile. “Close enough.”
“Here is my situation.” Petrov hesitated, as if weighing his words. “I sense that Sterling Waterhouse and I are not on the same wavelength. I would like to explore opening a backdoor with you.”
She paused in mid-bite and raised her eyebrows, trying to gauge his meaning.
“Apologies, I’m not sure if backdoor is the right word. I did not mean anything of a sexual nature.” He choked back a laugh. “My English is not what it should be.”
“Perhaps you mean back channel?”
“Yes, I think so. Let me start again.”
The waiter came and refilled their wine glasses, and Petrov waited for him to leave.
“Here is a question for you.” He folded his napkin and placed it atop his silverware. “Is it not better to have lived and loved than never to have lived at all?”
“I think the expression is, ’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
“Ah, but that is not what I meant. Is it not better to have lived? You see, my people and I have a simple proposition. We would like to bring many more beautiful young women into the world. For them to live, to love, to laugh. To spread joy to others while they receive our utmost personal care and attention. We know the custom is for birth centers and hospitals to imprint you with an official identity the moment you come into the world. Your name, thumbprint, footprint, parents’ names—all entered into the record books. But what is the harm if we were to skip that step?”
Sullivan stared at him with the coldness of a Belarus winter. I do not like where this is going.
Petrov finished his dessert and poured the last of the wine into her glass. “If your choice is to be born with no paperwork or to be not born at all, which would a person choose? The answer is obvious.”