Eternal Night

by Richard Turner

  “Hey, you never know when something like that might come up in a conversation,” replied Jackson.

  Lee continued. “The population of Singapore stands at around five point seven five million people, making it the second-densest sovereign state in the world.”

  “The first being Monaco,” said Jackson.

  “Correct.”

  “Useless trivia, huh?” said Jackson mockingly to his friend.

  “The majority of the state’s population comes from China, with the next largest ethnic group being native Malay, followed by Indians,” explained Lee. “In order for so many different ethnic groups to talk with one another, English was adopted as the language of business. Most people here speak more than one language. I am fluent in English, Mandarin, and Japanese.”

  “Fascinating,” said Mitchell, looking out the window of their car at the brightly-lit downtown architecture. Multicolored neon lights shimmered on the black waters in the harbor.

  “I’m glad your boss is paying for this,” said Jackson, as the hotel came into view. The white-painted, three-story building looked like a throwback to the architecture and glamor of the 1930s.

  Two young men in white uniforms waited for the Rolls to stop, before rushing to open the passenger doors.

  “Follow me, gentlemen,” said Lee. “Leave everything to me. I’ll sign you in and see that your bags are taken to your rooms.”

  Mitchell and Jackson followed Lee inside the palatial hotel. Bouquets of fragrant flowers were scattered throughout the busy lobby.

  “This is the good life,” said Jackson, sniffing a blue-colored rose.

  “Yeah, just don’t get too used to it,” said Mitchell. “Come tomorrow, if we strike out with the people at the lab, we’ll be going home having accomplished nothing.”

  “True, but it’s still a nice break from crawling around an ice-covered island in the South Atlantic, or the mountains of Chile.”

  Mitchell chuckled. “That it is.”

  “Gentlemen, please,” said Lee, walking toward an elevator. They rode to the third floor and walked halfway down the green-carpeted corridor, until Lee stopped and handed them their room keys. “Your luggage is already in your rooms. Enjoy what’s left of your evening, and I’ll see you in the lobby at precisely nine tomorrow morning.”

  “Thanks,” said Mitchell, shaking Lee’s hand.

  “Just doing my job,” replied Lee, before heading back to the elevator.

  Mitchell opened the door to his room. He walked inside and shook his head. “Wow! This room must cost a thousand dollars or more a night.”

  “I could bring my entire family here and not see them once,” said Jackson. “These rooms are enormous.”

  Mitchell dug out his secure laptop and laid it on a mahogany table on the far side of the suite. “Why don’t we check in with the ladies, before heading downstairs for a late supper?”

  Jackson closed the door behind them, and took a seat at the table. “Do you know what the time difference is between here and back home?”

  “They’re exactly twelve hours behind us,” replied Mitchell, turning on his computer.

  Jackson checked the time. “Everyone should be at work by now.”

  A minute later, Jen’s and Fahimah’s faces filled the screen.

  “Hey there,” said Mitchell to his wife, wishing he was there with her.

  “Hey there to you, too,” she replied, smiling. “Where are you guys?”

  “In the Raffles Hotel,” said Mitchell. “We got an unexpected upgrade to a rather expensive establishment, located in the heart of downtown Singapore.”

  “Is it nice?”

  “Let’s just say I’m glad we’re not paying for it.”

  “So, what’s your game plan for tomorrow?” asked Fahimah.

  Mitchell passed on Lee’s schedule for the day’s activities, including the VIP seats at the Singapore Grand Prix.

  “Sounds nice,” said Jen. “I wish I was there with you.”

  “Not a chance,” said Jackson, cutting her off. “I’m looking forward to sitting in a VIP box, eating and drinking copious amounts, while watching a world-class race at someone else’s expense tomorrow.”

  “Did you two fine ladies learn anything new while we were on our way here?” Mitchell asked.

  “A couple of things,” said Fahimah. “The general asked me to speak with Mrs. Dinu, and to ask her how she got in touch with Grace.”

  “And?”

  “As it turns out, she didn’t. We had it all wrong. Grace contacted Mrs. Dinu out of the blue and offered her services at no charge to find her missing daughter.”

  “Whoa, that doesn’t sound like her,” said Jackson.

  “No, it most certainly does not,” agreed Mitchell. “There are always dollar signs attached to anything she does.”

  “Did Mrs. Dinu have anything else to say?” asked Jackson.

  Fahimah shook her head. “No, not really. When I asked about her husband’s work, she claimed not to know much about what he did. It seemed they rarely talked about his work. I called his former employer, but they were less than helpful. They said it would take a court order for them to divulge what Mister Dinu was working on. The only thing of interest I learned was that her husband planned to take a few days off to visit Indonesia before coming home.”

  “That corroborates what Mister Chevalier passed on to us,” said Jackson.

  “Did she say why he planned to visit Indonesia?” Mitchell asked.

  “It had something to do with family history,” explained Fahimah. “Max Dinu had recently learned about his grandfather’s wartime experiences and wanted to check them out.”

  “Is there any way we could get our hands on the information Max Dinu had before he disappeared?”

  “I’m one step ahead of you,” said Fahimah. “Mrs. Dinu scanned all the pertinent documents and forwarded them to me. I’ll go through them this morning, and get back to you as soon as I find anything of value.”

  “What about Mister Sandesh?” asked Jackson. “Is he on the level?”

  “So far, all I can tell is that he’s somewhere between an angel and a saint,” said Fahimah. “The man is squeaky clean.”

  “Everyone has something to hide,” said Jackson.

  “If he’s hiding something, I doubt we’ll ever learn what it is,” responded Fahimah.

  “How about Yuri?” asked Mitchell. “Anything on him?”

  “I’m still working the problem,” said Jen. “His friends aren’t that forthcoming with information on him.”

  “I guess there is some honor among thieves,” quipped Jackson.

  “So, to sum up, the only new piece of info we have is why Max Dinu planned to visit Indonesia before flying back home to Romania,” said Mitchell.

  Jen and Fahimah both nodded.

  “I hope there’s something to go on in those documents you have, or this fishing trip will be over sometime tomorrow afternoon,” said Mitchell.

  “It’s beginning to look that way,” said Jen.

  “Any word from Sam or Gordon?” asked Jackson.

  “Not yet,” said Fahimah. “They’re still on route to Oman.”

  “Oman?”

  “Yeah, the boss approved a short duration mission to look for a missing plane. As for Jen, her secondary project is to look into Darcy Wright’s wartime exploits and see what we can learn from them.”

  “Wow, sounds a mite busy back there,” said Mitchell

  Fahimah smiled. “It’s nothing we can’t handle.”

  “I really don’t like splitting up the team like this without first discussing it,” said Mitchell. “But I guess the boss had his reasons.”

  “I sense that he’s hedging his bets. If one of the missions fails to pan out, the rest of the team can easily slide over and help out with the other assignment,” explained Jen.

  “Makes sense to me,” said Jackson.

  Mitchell smiled at his wife. “I’ll call you later.”

  “Sar
ah and I look forward to it.”

  Mitchell ended the call and closed his laptop. He stared at the far wall and drummed his fingers absentmindedly on the table.

  “Penny for your thoughts, Ryan,” said Jackson.

  “Grace. She’s playing games,” replied Mitchell. “You heard Fahimah, she’s the one who reached out to Mrs. Dinu. Something smells about this entire assignment. I’d love to know what Grace is up to.”

  “The plot thickens.”

  “Yeah, but without something to go on, we’re going to be out of ideas come tomorrow.”

  “There’s always Indonesia.”

  “True, but without a positive lead, stumbling around a country made up of over seventeen thousand islands is not my idea of a good time.”

  “Well, let’s hope the ladies discover a clue,” said Jackson, standing. “Come on, let’s head downstairs and grab a bite to eat.”

  “Sure, why not. After all, Mister Sandesh is going to foot the bill after we’re gone.”

  “I’ll meet you in the hallway,” said Jackson, heading to his room to get his jacket.

  Mitchell took his laptop and locked it in his room’s safe, grabbed his jacket, and left the suite.

  Across town, in a darkened office, Krasimir Dimov removed his headset and poured himself a tall glass of Scotch. The listening device placed by one of his men in the room had worked flawlessly. It was clear from the conversation that the two Americans weren’t interested in Mister Sandesh, or his company, whatsoever. That helped to relax Dimov’s troubled mind. Perhaps Sandesh was right. A word or two slipped into a conversation during tomorrow’s tour of Hygeia Designs would help send the two Americans off in the wrong direction. All he needed now was time. What had begun years ago as a dream was now only days away from completion, and he didn’t intend to allow anyone to stop him. Not when he was this close.

  11

  The next morning, Mitchell met Jackson in the hotel lobby wearing a blue Polo shirt and white slacks. He had forgone breakfast for a run through the busy streets of Singapore.

  “Here,” said Jackson, handing Mitchell a cup of coffee. “I know you. You won’t last an hour without your daily pick-me-up.”

  Mitchell grinned. “Thanks.”

  “Any word from back home?”

  “Yeah. Fahimah read through the notes Mrs. Dinu provided on her husband’s grandfather, and it would appear that unlike his country, the elder Dinu refused to support the Axis powers, and remained loyal to the Allied cause. He worked in the Indonesian oil fields until the day the Japanese arrived. He was taken prisoner, and regrettably, beheaded a week later. His remains are interred with hundreds of others at the Jakarta War Cemetery. I guess that’s where Max Dinu was planning to visit when he vanished.”

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” said Lee, bounding toward the two Rangers. “I hope you slept well?”

  “I don’t know about Ryan, but I slept like a log,” replied Jackson.

  Mitchell toasted Lee with his coffee. “I slept okay, too.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” said Lee. “Now, if you will follow me outside, I have a car waiting to take us to the heliport.”

  “Heliport?” said Jackson.

  “Yes. Hygeia Designs is located on an island a couple of kilometers offshore. Office space is naturally at a premium here in Singapore, so Mister Sandesh bought an uninhabited island from the government and set up out there.”

  “Please, lead on,” said Mitchell.

  A metallic-blue Hummer waited outside. Once everyone was buckled in, the driver drove to a heliport located less than fifteen minutes from the hotel. There, Lee led them to an all-white Augusta-Westland helicopter. The flight took only a few short minutes. The moment the chopper’s wheels touched down, a couple of armed guards rushed over and opened the doors on the helicopter to let everyone out.

  Mitchell got out and instinctively ducked to avoid the helicopter’s spinning rotor blades. One of the guards guided the group off the landing pad and down a flight of stairs, where they were met by a slender Asian man wearing a white lab coat.

  “Gentlemen, let me introduce to you Doctor Chong,” said Lee. “He will be taking you on your tour of the facilities. Also, he and Doctor Kim were the last two people to see Miss Dinu alive before she went missing.”

  Mitchell stuck out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Doc.” He quickly made the introductions.

  “You’re not coming with us?” Jackson asked Lee.

  “Regrettably not,” said Lee. “I have another tour to organize. I’ll meet you back here at fourteen-hundred hours for the flight back into the city.”

  “I guess we’re all yours, Doc,” Mitchell said to Chong.

  “This way,” said Chong, leading them past a stone-faced guard with his automatic rifle slung over his shoulder and down the stairs to the front doors of the multi-story building.

  “You certainly do have a lot of security,” said Jackson.

  “Industrial espionage is a multi-billion-dollar business, Mister Jackson,” explained Chong. “If our competitors were to get their hands on our technology, it could cripple, if not destroy, all of Mister Sandesh’s work.”

  “And what would that be?” asked Mitchell.

  “Let me show you.” Chong opened a side door and led them down a sterile hallway until they came to a sealed room. Chong dug out his pass card and swiped it through a security lock on the wall. The door slid open. Everyone stepped into a small, glass-encased room. On the other side of the glass was a large room filled with testing equipment. “This is what we call a clean room,” explained Chong. “Everything done inside this room is conducted by robots without the help of human beings.”

  A chill ran down Mitchell’s spine as he recalled a similar lab on an oil rig off the coast of South America. In this lab, several large, robotic arms built on top of sturdy platforms with tracks for mobility moved around the room conducting experiments. “Doc, what are the robots testing for?”

  “Anything and everything,” he replied, cryptically. “Our work here is in human genetics. Do either of you two gentlemen know much about genetics?”

  Jackson chuckled. “No, sir. How about a crash course?”

  “Imagine if you can that you had a sick parent or child who was afflicted with a disease that would cripple them or kill them after an agonizingly long period of suffering. Every day, all over the globe, people needlessly suffer and die when they don’t have to. We here at Hygeia Designs are on the cutting edge of gene editing.”

  “Come again?”

  “Gene editing is the process by which we take a person’s DNA and alter their cells. Conceivably, we could eradicate the gene that causes glaucoma in millions of Asians, or stop children under five from contracting the sometimes fatal Kawasaki Disease. Wouldn’t you help those people if you had it in your power to do so?”

  “Of course, I would.”

  “Naturally, what I just gave you was the simplified version of what we do here, but it is Mister Sandesh’s wish to alleviate the pain and suffering of children throughout the world.”

  “The man surely has his heart in the right place,” said Mitchell.

  “He’s a hero, and a source of inspiration to millions in Asia,” said Chong.

  “Who’s controlling the robots?” asked Jackson.

  “A team of technicians and scientists on another floor control everything that happens in the lab,” explained Chong.

  “What if I were a spy and tried to enter that room?”

  “That would be a really bad decision on your part, Mister Jackson. Those robots could snap your arm as if it were a twig.”

  Jackson scrunched up his face. “Ouch.”

  “Not to worry. It would have to be programmed to attack you, and to the best of my knowledge, such a thing does not exist.”

  “That’s good.”

  “How many people work here?” asked Mitchell.

  “There are just over four hundred scientists, technicians, security, and maintena
nce personnel who work here on a twenty-four-seven basis,” replied Chong. “With more and more people donating their DNA for testing, this place never closes.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Have you had any success in eradicating any diseases?” asked Jackson.

  “No, but with the recent introduction of CRISPR technology, it is only a matter of time before we do,” said Chong, saying the acronym as if it were a word.

  “Sir, I’m lost. What is CRISPR technology?” asked Mitchell.

  “CRISPR stands for Clustered-Regularly-Interspaced-Short-Palindromic-Repeats.”

  “I’m still not following you.”

  “It’s a fairly complicated process, but I like to think of CRISPR as a pair of scissors. With this technology, we’ll be able to cut and then permanently modify the genes within an organism.”

  “So, conceivably, you could tinker with a child’s DNA before it is born to prevent it from contracting a heredity disease like hemophilia?”

  “Correct.”

  “But why stop there? Why not bio-engineer your child until you get a flawless baby? In short, we could soon have an entire generation of designer humans.”

  Chong’s back stiffened. “That would never happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it would be grossly unethical, Mister Mitchell.”

  Mitchell smiled. “That’s what I thought.”

  “So, what else is on the tour, Doc?” asked Jackson.

  “I thought you gentlemen might like to see the command center where everything is controlled,” replied Chong.

  “Sounds great.”

  The next stop was on the third floor of the building. After vouching for Mitchell and Jackson to a pair of armed guards, they entered a state-of-the-art command center. Screens covered the walls showing the entire perimeter of the island, along with every room in the building currently in use.

  Mitchell spotted Lee standing next to a tall, European-looking man wearing an expensive gray suit. He had short, black hair with a trimmed beard. He didn’t look like a scientist or a bureaucrat. A shiver ran down Mitchell’s back. The man had a dangerous look about him.

  Lee noticed them and waved them over. “Gentlemen, how is your tour going?”