The Darkness Drops

by Peter Clement

  But the general had been insistent. “It’s the third time in six weeks that Yuri’s sought out and seduced the senior researcher at a small pharmaceutical company, all since the anthrax attacks. Then he paid this one a half-dozen return visits, so there’s obviously something he likes here.”

  Probably a good fuck, Terry had thought.

  It hadn’t surprised him that the general’s contacts in the FBI were watching Yuri. They’d had the Russian gangsters in the man’s medical practice under surveillance for years, which made it easy to keep an eye on the good doctor as well. But they probably wouldn’t have bothered without Robert’s urging.

  “In particular, we’re worried about Boris Yurskovitch--Bori to his friends, at least those who are still alive after calling him that. A real nasty old-time arms dealer,” the general had explained. “And he’s all siloviki’d up, which means the guys who formerly worked the old-time Soviet spy network in rogue states now keep that same network alive to serve Bori’s private enterprises.”

  “And you think Yuri’s involved?” Terry had said, as skeptical as ever of any opinion the general might hold about Yuri, other than as a way to get at Anna. “I mean, I’m no fan of the guy, Robert, but why would a flashy lady’s man with expensive tastes assume the risks of throwing in with dangerous gangsters when he already plucked easy money off them as their doctor?”

  “Can’t say. But Boris sees a lot of him these days, as does Bori’s wife, Tania. We’re not sure what’s up, but one possibility is that Boris realizes peddling bullets is passé, a least as far as where the real money’s at. Maybe he wants to get into the high-tech weapons trade, be it bio or chemical. That would explain an interest in pharmaceutical companies, in which case he could be using Yuri both as a front and a technical expert. Our phone taps indicated Yuri approached these women claiming to be the chief researcher in charge of a multicenter drug trial. Told the poor dears that he wanted to make a preliminary site inspection of their facilities to see if they would be suitably equipped to manufacture the drugs.” Daikens gave a quiet chuckle. “Well, he inspected them all right, every orifice.”

  He had then shown Terry the data they’d pulled up on the woman in question at Seneca. Carol McIsaac: Forty-four, divorced, no dependents, lived alone in a third-story penthouse on the outskirts of Watertown, did her postgraduate work in molecular biology at University of Syracuse, had a modest number of publications to her name--in all, competent, but no budding discoverer of a miracle drug. They’d also found a picture. She had brown eyes, wore short black hair cut in a layered, spiky style that made her look younger, and showed a shy tentative smile. The leanness of her face suggested a body to match, but the photo ended at the shoulders making it impossible to tell. So unless she turned into Miss Universe below the neck, he saw a mousy, plain Jane clearly out of her league compared to Yuri’s usual, more flashy conquests.

  Seneca Pharmaceuticals, however, suited her average professional abilities. According to public records, the place specialized in what the kinder critics would call “me-too” research, tweaking a molecule on established drugs just enough to peddle them as new products, yet not enough to alter their therapeutic values or create new side effects. The brutally honest called it stealing. But it was legal.

  Yet even that kind of place could pose as a front for ordering lethal organisms. And with Yuri’s interest in it peculiar at best, Terry had had to admit that a closer look might be worthwhile after all.

  First he had checked it out at a distance, by hacking into the company’s computers, another set of skills he’d acquired under the general’s tutelage. He discovered that Seneca Pharmaceuticals didn’t deal in antimicrobials, nor were they on record of ever having requisitioned microbes. So presumably they had no facilities in which they could handle bacteria or viruses. On paper.

  Once again his creepy, wonderfully suspicious mind, capable of conjuring up the worst bioterror scenarios, had stopped short of seriously considering that a full-blown, biohazard facility could be hidden in a basement. But mousy Carol McIsaac might get away with concealing something less ostentatious and just as deadly. Pharmaceutical companies were perfect dual-use facilities. They often utilized recombinant technology, the science of hijacking the cellular machinery in harmless organisms such as yeast and forcing that machinery to read the DNA of a dangerous microbe, thereby replicating portions of its protein coat. Fragments of that coat, if administered to humans in a vaccine, could stimulate an immune response against the microbe in question and save lives. But if those same yeast cells were made to read certain DNA strands of another particular bacteria-- Clostridium botulinum for example--the end product would be deadly toxins of botulism. Since only the technician making them need know, discovery by an outsider would be unlikely. Even then, if their game involved botulism, the perpetrators could claim to be waging war on wrinkles and that their plant was simply engaged in the manufacture of Botox. In ninety-eight, according to rumors, the manager of a pharmaceutical company in Afghanistan had been on the phone trying to peddle exactly that story when Clinton’s missiles hit.

  Perhaps he should pay the mouse’s premises an on-site visit, Terry had decided, albeit remaining skeptical. It wouldn’t take much--hop a flight to Syracuse on his next Washington trip and drive up to Watertown.

  So here he stood, dripping wet in McIssac’s office, having committed the crime of breaking and entering on a cold, wet Sunday night, expecting to be busted by a local cop at any second.

  He went into her washroom, dried his face and hands with paper towels, then wiped up any water on the floor. He stuck the towels in his pockets, determined to leave no trace.

  Time to search.

  A cursory look in her filing cabinets yielded nothing.

  He crept back out to the hallway, again skirting the field of the cameras.

  He wasn’t sure what he expected to find.

  If Seneca Pharmaceuticals were using recombinant techniques, legitimate or not, there would be beer-vat-sized containers of yeast, along with washes, reagents, and equipment for separating out the final product. No single item by itself would scream foul play, but a combination of things could tip him off, such as the mix of reagents, the proportions of different washes, and how long an extraction process took as shown in the equipment logs. These factors pointed to the specific molecular structures and organic substances that the people in the white coats would be after. If a potential weapon were part of the batch, he’d nail it.

  Nothing on the first floor struck him as suspicious.

  The second story housed only the standard sterile production rooms, the sort he would expect in a place that copied pills for everything from ailing hearts through upset tummies to failing memory. And no vats to be seen.

  The basement, however, contained a little surprise after all.

  An empty room the size of a tennis court with nothing in it but a computer console.

  Making its controls yield to the code-breaking programs that the general’s people had provided proved simple enough. He watched the screens light up, and a prosaic looking title appeared.

  Holographic Virtual Reality of Molecular Structure.

  An icon invited him to Play.

  He pressed it.

  A three-dimensional, ten-foot-high image of two red spheres attached to a single central blue ball illuminated the dark space in front of him.

  H2O, he thought, two hydrogen atoms attached to one of oxygen.

  The icon said Next.

  He pressed it as well.

  A similarly sized apparition of a single black orb attached to a pair of blue spheres towered above his head. CO2--carbon dioxide.

  The rest of the menu contained similarly simple structures: A pair of blues, O2--oxygen. A green ball and two blues, NO2--nitrous oxide. One red, one black, and three blues, HCO3--bicarbonate.

  He summoned the next image--one yellow, four blues--and stepped forward to wander around the rendering of SO4, a sulfate.

  It
was like inspecting a modern art structure.

  He’d heard some imaging specialists had started to develop such programs. But seeing one was a bit of a revelation.

  Of course it was nothing he couldn’t already do in his head for far more complex compounds. Yet here was a relatively crude first step in attempting to make that perspective available to everyone. So much for his advantage in the molecular biology field, he thought. Well, maybe not for quite a while yet.

  Did use of holograms have anything to do with why Yuri found Carol McIsaac and her lab so intriguing? Hard to imagine. At such a primitive stage, it wouldn’t give much of an edge to someone trying to come up with a new molecule of any significance, good or evil.

  He stepped back to the computer console, but before shutting it down, saw that the master program had been patented by a group in Alberta, Canada, called Holomolecular Designs. He’d have to stay abreast of progress in their work, just to know if they were catching up on him. Otherwise, what a complete waste of time. His creepy, wonderfully suspicious mind had definitely overread Seneca Pharmaceuticals and Yuri’s love life.

  Feeling his way through the dark hallways, he stole back to where he’d left his boots. A few wipes of the damp floor where they’d been standing, and he’d erased the last record of his ever being there. Stepping outside, he pulled the door shut behind him with a click and reconnected the security system.

  The rain had congealed into a half-frozen sludge that pelted the hood of his jacket and coated the ground. When he started to walk, it stuck to his boots with the consistency of paste.

  Once he made it back into the woods, the darkness thickened, forcing him to keep an arm raised in front of his face to ward off unseen branches. He took his bearings, and forged a beeline toward where he’d parked his car on a dirt road about a mile away. Unable to hear anything but the icy droplets drumming on his hood, he kept glancing over his shoulder, a prickle in the nape of his neck warning how easily someone could slip up on him from behind.

  He quickened his pace.

  A moment later the the storm abruptly stopped. Except for an occasional gust of wind that whistled through overhead branches, and the subsequent plop off wet snow onto the ground, silence reigned. The underpadding of leaves muffled his footfalls, with the rare snap of a twig beneath him offering the only sound to mark his passage.

  The prickle in the nape of his neck subsided, but he continued to walk at a brisk speed.

  Soon the moon emerged through an opening in the clouds, lighting the denuded forest in pale silver. Everything around him glowed as ethereal as the mist that snaked between the dark tree trunks.

  The trouble with a visual imagination, it didn’t confine itself to science. In this setting of ghostly beauty, a collage of scenes from old spooky movies flashed through his head. He began to see his favorite monsters lurking in the shadows: Dracula, the Mummy, Frankenstein’s creature wearing the usual ill-fitting, good-will line of clothing.

  Why do you watch so many movies? Anna had once asked him.

  Better them than the movies in my head.

  He clamored up a sharp, forty-foot rise, its slick, wet surface causing him to slide backward more than a half-dozen times. The exertion left him hot and sweaty. On reaching the top he paused, opened his jacket, and threw off his hood. His breath turned luminous in the cool air.

  A crisp snap of a branch breaking sounded from the direction he’d just come.

  He slowed his respirations and listened.

  The wind rose, tossing the barren tree tops to and fro, and a few of their limbs groaned in forlorn protest. Had one cracked?

  He heard a another snap, but from ground level.

  Then another.

  A deer? Maybe a moose? Or a bear looking for a hollow to hibernate in? Those were the likely explanations. His favorite monsters couldn’t be blamed. They’d skedaddled now that he had something real to focus on.

  He knelt under the shadow of a large rock outcropping and peered into the forest below. From up here the landscape appeared duller, the trees bathed in the soft sheen of pewter rather than silver. Their bark, grooved with restless shadows cast by the tangles of branches swaying overhead, seemed to swarm with life. Otherwise he saw no movement.

  But there were more snaps, in quick succession now, as though the silence from him had caused whatever had been following his trail to come running forward.

  At first he saw only wisps of motion, the moonlight rendering their forms as gray as ashes and blending them in with the rest of the terrain. Then he made out two men in camouflage suits jogging toward where he hid, both carrying rifles.

  Hunters?

  Probably.

  But it was past the season.

  And their being out at night any time of year made them poachers at best.

  More importantly, had they heard his noises and taken him for an animal? He preferred not to risk a face-to-face encounter that could later be described to the police, in case McIsaac ever realized she’d been victim to a B&E. But better that than being shot as venison for the Thanksgiving dinner table. Besides, poachers weren’t likely to come forward as witnesses. “Hey, you two! This is the game warden,” he yelled, figuring they’d probably scatter. Illegal hunting would carry a hefty fine, if not outright confiscation of their weapons.

  They stopped in their tracks, instantly blending into the background.

  Not what he’d expected.

  Then he saw movement again, but low to the ground, swirling back and forth, like smoke.

  What the hell, he thought.

  He kept watching where the men had been. “Hey!” he yelled again.

  No reply.

  He began to get a bad feeling, sensing they were watching him as he watched them.

  And there was that gray, twirling shape near the ground again.

  Was he seeing things?

  Enough of this nonsense, he decided, and propelled himself backward on his stomach, sliding far enough over the height of land to be out of their sight. Then he got to his feet and ran.

  The ground was level, and the lunar glow made it easy to see his way. The distance to his car, he figured, would be about another half mile.

  He kept glancing over his shoulder, but saw no sign of the hunters. Good. Those two guys didn’t want trouble any more than he did. Or they hadn’t realize he’d vamoosed.

  The land sloped downward now and he picked up speed. There couldn’t be more than a quarter mile to go.

  He looked back again.

  This time he saw movement, but not running men.

  That gray shape again, except now it swirled back and forth along the rise where he’d been hiding. Once more he wondered if he were hallucinating, when suddenly the form went still, then twirled, and came streaking after him like a vapor trail.

  In a heartbeat, it became glittering eyes, white fangs, and a blur of paws. Terry leapt ahead, propelled by sheer panic.

  They had set a dog on him.

  Down the slope he flew, windmilling his arms for balance, zigzagging between trees, not daring to look behind again for fear he’d bash into a trunk or lose his footing and fall. The sounds of his own breath filled his ears. It came in short harsh rasps, the primitive noise of prey fleeing for its life on raw adrenalin, not the measured respirations of an athlete in top physical condition. He could also hear the beast panting behind him, gaining every step of the way.

  He’d never run fast enough to outrace it, but might just beat it to his car.

  He tore through a shallow brook that meandered through the woods, more or less parallel with the road on which he’d parked. But the water flowed more turbulently here than he remembered going in, which meant he’d come out at a different place. His fright trebled. If he reached the road more than fifty feet from his vehicle, he’d be a goner.

  He clamored up the far bank, his wet boots sliding back a little with each step, the thud of paws growing louder behind him. He clawed at roots and rocks all the harder, convince
d he was losing ground fast, imagining fangs would sink into his legs at any instant. Still he didn’t look back. If he got out of this alive, it would be by seconds, and he couldn’t squander a single one.

  He finally pulled himself up onto the muddy shoulder of the dirt road and, desperately glancing right and left, staggered to his feet.

  He spotted his car fifty yards to the right.

  Shit!

  Sprinting toward it, he dug the keys out from his jacket pocket.

  The sound of the dog splashing through the stream reached his ears.

  Please, let it have the same trouble with traction.

  He heard a snarl all too close, but also wet sloppy noises that could be sliding paws.

  Thirty yards to go.

  The gravel gave him footing, and an extra burst of speed.

  He cut the distance to twenty.

  A scuffle of paws and scattering stones rattled behind him as the dog also fought to purchase a grip on the road.

  Ten more yards. He might make the car, but would never get inside it.

  He pressed the unlock button on his remote. The headlights flashed.

  The spray of stones behind him increased as the dog accelerated. Its snarl amplified into a guttural rage.

  He reached the car, yanked open the door on the driver’s side, and dove into the front seat, twisting onto his back, preparing to fight off the attack with his feet.

  But the animal had started its leap, and the full force of a lunging German shepherd hit the window of the still open door with a click of teeth and the crack of glass. The blow slammed the door shut, barely missing Terry’s foot. The creature let out a yelp as it rebounded partway down the embankment toward the stream.

  Before it could crawl back up, Terry started the car, threw it into reverse, and rocketed backward to the highway.

  A pair of backwoods idiots who got their kicks by letting Fido use strangers as a doggie bone? Not impossible. He’d seen Deliverance. But his every instinct screamed Siloviki, and they’d wanted him dead because he’d gone there to check out what Yuri was up to.