Crime Zero (aka the Crime Code) (1999)

by Cordy, Michael

  It was in the Womb that Prince and her team genetically engineered viruses and created new ones. Viruses are basically nonthinking capsules of genetic material wrapped in protein that exist to seek out hosts in order to reproduce themselves. When a virus finds a host with receptive cells, it enters one of those cells and, like a cuckoo taking over a sparrow's nest, usurps the genetic code already there, replacing it with its own. Then, when the cell containing the new viral DNA divides and replicates, the virus copies itself. Thus the virus spreads throughout the body.

  This property made it ideal for delivering gene therapy, the technology of spreading modified genes throughout a human patient's damaged cells. By scooping out a virus's own genetic material, Prince and her team could render it harmless. They could then insert new therapeutic DNA into the virus and create a vector to target a diseased cancer cell or cystic fibrosis cell and reprogram the cell's damaged genes. Creating viral vectors was at the very heart of Vi-roVector's work. Alice Prince had founded her company by specializing in turning lethal viral killers into genetically engineered "magic bullets" to deliver some of the most spectacular cures in modern medicine. With viral vectors she could change a human's genes, correcting the genetic inheritance received at birth.

  ViroVector had become successful by focusing on viral DNA. It rarely developed the therapeutic human genes, just the viral vector to target and deliver them to the patient. Prince and her team knew more about viruses than any organization on earth. Even the CDC in Atlanta and USAMRIID frequently consulted them for advice. And personnel were often exchanged among the different institutions to foster learning.

  Alice Prince felt at peace here in this temple to science, insulated from the stresses and worries of the outside world. When she put a lethal filovirus under the electron microscope and lost herself in its threadlike beauty, she could almost forget about losing Libby, her only daughter, ten years ago, or about the husband who had deserted her. Gazing at her glass library of viruses, she felt safe and in control, each vial a precious and powerful balm.

  The vials in the refrigerator in front of her were slotted into trays, and each carried a small white computer-generated label with a bar code down one side. "Ebola filovirus (V. 3)" was typed on one vial, "HIV retrovirus hybrid" on another, "Adenovirus 5: gene therapy vector for sickle-cell anemia" on yet another.

  At the bottom of the refrigerator a black rack contained twenty shorter, stubby vials. Each of these bore a label with a Pentagon-approved code. All contained viral vectors genetically engineered to counter known biological weapons. "BioShield #7" immunized against anthrax, and "BioShield #13" against most known rheovirus pathogens. ViroVector sold these vaccines to many of the world powers--friend and foe alike. Classified as medicines, they could bypass even the most stringent sanctions.

  As she ran a gloved hand over the vials, the tinkling sound was to her the music of endless possibilities. Here in the Womb she could fundamentally change things, turn the bad into good. Create order out of chaos for the random world outside.

  With a small sigh she shifted her attention to the job at hand. She walked to a small black safe in the corner beside the Genescope gene scanner. "LENICA 101" was written in big red letters across the front. Bending, she punched in the code on the electronic keypad, and the door opened. Inside the refrigerated interior was a tray of five vials, each the size of a large cigar. Two of them were of red glass, and three of green. The red vials were labeled "Conscience Vector (V. 1.0)" and "Conscience Vector (V. 1.9)." The three green vials bore the legends "Crime Zero (Phase 1--telomeres test)," "Crime Zero (Phase 2)," and "Crime Zero (Phase 3)."

  She put the tray on a work surface next to one of the three computer terminals and turned the red vials around in their slots so their bar codes were exposed. Then she took a computer wand from next to the monitor and scanned the bar codes of "Conscience Vector (V. 1.0)" and "Conscience Vector (V. 1.9)." As she did so, she watched the monitor to her left, checking the differences between the two vectors. She pressed "Print" so a hard copy would appear on the ground-level printer above. The differences between Version 1.0 and Version 1.9 were negligible, certainly not significant enough to merit troubling the Food and Drug Administration. She only hoped Dr. Kathy Kerr would agree.

  She then turned to the green vials. These were even more important than the Project Conscience vectors. Kathy Kerr knew nothing about them. First she scanned "Crime Zero (Phase 1--telomeres test)." When she looked at the computer monitor and watched the project summary spreadsheet appear, she noted the six names with "San Quentin" typed above them. The five younger men had recent dates beside them--all different--plus a file number, referring to the autopsy findings. The same five had a tick in the far right column of the spreadsheet. So far all had met TITANIA's predicted timings. Only the sixth remained undated and unticked: Karl Axelman.

  Alice Prince took a deep breath. She could see from the projected date in the left-hand column that Axelman was due anytime now. TITANIA had already brought forward the Phase 2 shipments to Iraq to meet the looming crisis. This was on the understanding that Phase 1 would be fine. They couldn't possibly go to Phase 3 if either 1 or 2 was compromised. To compound her concern, there was also the call she had received from the orphanage in Cartamena. It was probably only a scare, and she would hear back any moment. But it still made her nervous. Project Conscience was going to be difficult enough. Perhaps Crime Zero was too ambitious, too risky, whatever Madeline Naylor said.

  A sudden beep made her heart lurch, and she instinctively checked her suit for tears. Then, realizing it was only the signal for the door opening, she breathed a sigh of relief and vowed to have the tone changed; it was too similar to the biosuit alarms. Turning around, she heard the hiss of the airtight seals and watched the lab door to her left slowly open. She had expressly instructed her senior staff with Silver level access to the Womb that she wanted the place to herself for the next hour.

  Flustered, she switched off the computer and reached for the tray of colored vials. But before she could move them, a blue suit entered the Womb. When it turned, Alice saw Kathy Kerr's excited face smiling through the visor. Kerr glanced at the tray for a moment before Alice awkwardly stepped in front of it.

  "Alice, I've just heard the news. Isn't it great?" Kathy said. Alice smiled but said nothing, letting Kathy continue. "The FDA have approved all the Conscience safety tests for Version nine. Now, at last, we can go ahead with efficacy trials on criminals. Isn't it brilliant?"

  Alice Prince nodded. "Yes, yes, it's great," she said quickly, turning to put the tray back in the safe. The last person she wanted to see the vials was Kathy Kerr. She scolded herself for not including Kerr in her request for privacy. Kathy had Silver level clearance but was based down the road at Stanford University. "Look, Kathy, I'm busy now. And really I had planned to be alone."

  Kathy's smile faded. She looked embarrassed. "Oh, I'm sorry, Alice. I didn't realize."

  Alice closed the safe, heard the lock click, and then turned to Kathy. "That's OK. It's good news. Madeline Nay-lor's coming tomorrow. We'll celebrate then. OK?"

  Kathy looked at her, obviously disappointed she wasn't more excited. "OK, Alice. See you tomorrow," she said quietly, and left.

  As soon as the door closed behind her, the speakerphone beeped. "Dr. Prince, I have a call from Director Naylor for you," said a voice from the speaker by the door. "It's on a secure line."

  "Thank you," she said.

  "Alice, are you there? Can we speak?" said the booming voice of the FBI director. Alice could just imagine Madeline Naylor sitting in her office on the fifth floor of the Hoover Building in Washington, her professionally manicured Chanel Rouge Noir nails drumming on her desk. It still amused Alice to think that the skinny twelve-year-old girl with shocking white hair and dark eyes whom she had known at school was now running the most powerful law enforcement agency in the world.

  "Yes, I'm alone, Madeline. You still coming over?"

  "Of cour
se."

  "Have you got my E-mail? We've got FDA approval to go ahead with Conscience."

  "About goddamn time. Pamela was getting more than a little nervous, as you know. She's got a TV debate tonight and wants to tee up the Conscience policy announcement for this Friday. Still, better late than never."

  Friday was only two days away. In less than forty-eight hours the first stage of their strategy would go public. Just enough time for the American voters and media to get excited, without giving Pamela's Republican opponents an opportunity to rally before the election next Tuesday.

  "I'm still worried about Crime Zero, though," said Alice. "The BioShield vaccine's been dispatched early to Iraq because of the escalating crisis, but we have a potential issue at the orphanage, and the San Quentin experiment is looking tight. Perhaps we--"

  "Stop worrying, Alice. That's why I'm calling. I've got news as well."

  "Yes?"

  "San Quentin. It's happened. Just as TITANIA predicted." Madeline's voice softened. "Relax about Crime Zero, Ali. Cartamena will prove to be a false alarm. The FDA Conscience approval was the big one. Well done. I'm due in a meeting about now. But I'll be over in a few hours."

  "See you later," said Alice as the speaker went dead. Perhaps Madeline was right; she usually was. Gaining FDA approval to begin Conscience Phase 2 trials was vital for Pamela Weiss to go ahead with her preelection announcement. And it was looking as if it would be increasingly crucial to the election itself, given the latest opinion polls, which showed a strong Republican lead. As for the FDA approval to embark on efficacy trials, that was academic. Under the auspices of Project Conscience, Alice Prince and Madeline Naylor had been secretly testing behavior-modifying gene therapy on unsuspecting convicts for more than eight years now.

  Chapter 5.

  Cartamena Orphanage for Young Boys, Mexico. Wednesday, October 29, 5:23 P.M.

  Dr. Victoria Valdez looked down at the small boy lying on the gurney and released a sigh. Fernando, only thirteen, was one of her favorites. Brave and cocky with a skinny body and huge dark eyes, he had a gift for soccer and making her laugh. He was far too young to have suffered a brain hemorrhage. She looked around the small, spotless clinic attached to the orphanage. His death was especially poignant because it was so rare for a child to die here.

  The Cartamena Orphanage for Young Boys, thirty miles south of Mexico City, was fortunate. A large proportion of its costs and all its medical expenses were funded by a little-known charitable trust in the United States called Fresh Start. The funding and resources had been provided for some nine years on the understanding that there would be no publicity. Valdez knew Fresh Start was a front for ViroVector Solutions in California, but if a large company wanted to help young children without claiming the credit, she wasn't complaining.

  The great Dr. Alice Prince even visited from time to time and selected certain children for her personal attention. And if the children ever had any serious problems outside Dr. Valdez's experience and training, then Dr. Prince and her company provided more specialist care. No, Valdez thought that she and the orphanage had much to be grateful for. The boys here were better cared for than in any institution she knew. In the last nine years she knew of only seven fatalities, remarkable here in Mexico. And those had been just as sudden and unexplained as Fernando's death had been. Some of his hair had fallen out recently, but that could have been vitamin deficiency. And the acne on his face was normal for a boy of his age. When he had gone to sleep last night, he had been fine, but today he was dead.

  As a matter of procedure she had immediately called Fresh Start. It had asked to be notified of all deaths. She was put through eventually to Dr. Prince herself. Victoria told her that the boy had died of a suspected brain hemorrhage. At first Victoria was touched by Alice's apparent genuine concern but then was surprised to be asked only one question: Had Fernando reached puberty?

  Nonplussed, Victoria already guessed the answer but said she would check after hanging up the phone. The orphanage cared for boys only until the age of puberty and then either sent them to other homes or found them jobs. The rules were strict, and Fresh Start insisted on them, but Victoria still thought Dr. Prince's question was strange. The boy was dead. What did it matter whether he could still stay at the orphanage or not?

  Looking down at the naked corpse, she shook her head again. She walked to the wall, picked up the handset, and dialed the number Dr. Prince had given her. "Yes," she said in reply to the American's first question, "but only just."

  Valdez frowned when she heard the sigh of relief. The response hardly seemed appropriate.

  The Marina District, San Francisco, California.

  6:47 P.M.

  Luke Decker felt calmer when he pulled up outside his grandfather's tall Victorian house in the Marina in San Francisco. He had spent the last few hours driving aimlessly around the city. He almost called in on one of his old buddies from Berkeley, a journalist called Hank Butcher, who lived in Sausalito, just to take his mind off things.

  He was still reeling at Axelman's claim. What the hell was he playing at? Decker had tried to challenge him afterward, but he'd begun screaming again and frozen up, so Rosenblum had stopped the interview.

  Obviously it couldn't be true. Axelman was either demented or playing stupid mind games. Killing time before his killing time. But however much Decker tried to dismiss what he'd been told, the notion still stirred something deep and disturbing within him.

  Eighteen months ago, when his mother had died, he had been working simultaneously on six particularly gruesome cases. He had been in Buffalo, New York, when his grandfather Matty Rheiman called to give him the news. Apparently his mother had died quickly, but her last words had been "I want to see my son before I die." It was only when he touched her cold face in the mortuary the next day that he realized how late he was. Decker had been so busy he hadn't made time to see her for almost nine months. He still wore the guilt like a cold vest.

  His grandfather, a mild man, had reproached him at the time. "What's with you, Luke? Your mother needed you, yet you never visited. It's like you prefer to spend time chasing after your killers."

  Matty had immediately apologized, but his words had struck home. The idea that he might enjoy inhabiting the minds of murderers terrified Decker. The notion that he empathized with the evil in others because he possessed it too was abhorrent. Combined with physical overwork and guilt, this thought had contributed to a breakdown. It had taken being institutionalized and more sessions than he cared to remember with the gentle Dr. Sarah Quirke at the Sanctuary to soothe his frazzled brain. Until then Decker had always believed there was a mental firewall between his own mind and the inflamed minds he hunted, that the evil he pursued in others was somehow separate from him.

  When he was younger, he'd challenged his mother about his fascination with the darker side. But she had quickly reassured him, telling him that he was perfectly normal and that his father had been just like him. That was why Captain Richard Decker was such a good interrogator, his mother used to say. He knew the questions to ask the enemy because he could think like them.

  But what if Richard Decker hadn't been his father? What if his inherited gift for understanding the darker side in others came from a more sinister source?

  Even though he tried to dismiss these thoughts, they remained. He kept thinking of Wayne Tice and his family tree and remembering how he'd scoffed at Kathy's theory of inherited evil.

  After getting out of the car, Decker approached the house. He wondered if he should have phoned ahead to let Matty know he was coming, but there was something almost childlike in his grandfather's enjoyment at seeing him when he least expected it. He seemed delighted that Decker had taken to dropping by since his mother's death, as if this house were still his home rather than some hotel where he needed to make reservations in advance. As he neared the front door, he heard the sound of the sweetest music coming from a room upstairs. Decker could picture his grandfather standing
in the music room on the middle floor, violin on his shoulder; his gnarled fingers shaped by years of playing curled around the instrument. The large windows would be wide open, a breeze blowing in from the bay as if summoned by his playing.

  Opening the front door, which was rarely locked, Decker entered the spacious hallway. Rhoda, the live-in housekeeper who looked after Matty, greeted him from the living room. She was a large woman with a larger smile and had been with Matty ever since his wife died twelve years ago.

  "Luke, what a great surprise," she said, coming over to give him a hug. "He's upstairs," she whispered with a conspiratorial wink. "Come, give me your things."

  "Thanks, Rhoda. Good to see you."

  Decker handed over his old tote bag and walked upstairs to the middle floor. The mahogany banisters had just been polished, and the smell took him back to his childhood. His mother and maternal grandparents had brought him up in this house. He had spent half his life here, and whenever he entered the front door, it felt like coming home. On the middle landing he walked to the spacious music room. A piano stood in the corner, alongside an empty open violin case. Luke's own battered saxophone leaned against a tall bookcase filled with tapes, compact discs, and sadly antiquated vinyl.

  Photographs of his grandfather sat atop the piano next to an ancient metronome. Most of the pictures were taken at Davies Hall, where despite offers from the best orchestras in the world, he had played with his beloved San Francisco Symphony for most of his illustrious career. Other photographs showed Matty at the Hollywood Bowl, in London's Royal Albert Hall with Yehudi Menuhin, and of course the famous one of him embracing Isaac Stern onstage at Carnegie Hall. Beside them, slightly by itself, was a picture of a tall blond man and a petite dark woman, Richard and Rachel Decker, Luke's parents. The man was in naval uniform, and his hair was cut short, like Luke's.