The Agent (An Isabella Rose Thriller Book 3)

by Mark Dawson

  King waved that away. ‘Shall we get on with it?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I hope I can make your visit worthwhile.’

  ‘Vivian hasn’t been here before,’ King said. ‘Let’s show him the highlights.’

  ‘Indeed. It would be a pleasure. I think you’ll be impressed, Mr Bloom. This way, please.’

  King and Bloom followed Ivanosky as he went back into the bright white room behind the glass wall. There was another door with a palm reader, and they waited as the professor placed his hand flat against it. The backlit display changed from red to green, and the door slid open to reveal an elevator car.

  The three men went inside. There were five buttons on the elevator, each floor described by a brief legend.

  The professor pressed a button. The notation beside it read ‘Level One: Zoology’.

  The elevator started to descend.

  Ivanosky turned to Bloom. ‘This might not be the most pleasant venue, but it has its advantages,’ he said. ‘Progress has been much faster without having to concern ourselves with the burdens of regulatory oversight.’

  ‘Or ethics.’

  ‘Ethics have a place, of course, but they can have the unfortunate consequence of acting as a brake on progress. We still have a distance to go, but I am confident that we are making very significant progress. This is the frontier, in many ways. The cutting edge. The work that has already been done in this building will change how we look at many things. And we are at the very edge of what will eventually be possible.’

  Ivanosky stepped out of the elevator.

  ‘Shall we?’

  Chapter Six

  Level one was about five yards underground and off-limits to all except those with the highest clearance. The corridor ahead was all white – floor, walls and ceiling – with hidden lights running in recessed strips where the walls met the ceiling. It was impressive, just as everything in the complex was impressive. Bloom had heard estimates of how much the operation had cost. It was certainly in the billions, the money funnelled from black budgets and hidden from political oversight beneath layers and layers of obfuscation and subterfuge.

  ‘I’m going to show you our baboons,’ the professor said as he led the way along the corridor.

  They came to an airlock that the professor unlocked using another palm reader. The air hissed out of the vents and the door slid aside. They stepped inside and waited in the chamber as the door closed behind them. Bloom heard the buzz of the scrubbers that cleaned the air and, after a minute, the interior door opened.

  The change was immediate and striking. The sterile, white walls on the other side of the airlock were replaced by a rough concrete finish. The cool, sanitised atmosphere was immediately polluted by a heavy, pervasive smell of musk. Bloom could smell urine and excrement, too, so striking that he almost found himself gagging. Ivanosky made no mention of it and led the way along the corridor. He reached an opening and stopped. King and Bloom caught up with him and looked out. The level was cavernous, with a walkway encircling a series of walled spaces that must have enclosed an acre. Natural light was provided by a light well in the middle of the vaulted ceiling, the illumination augmented by powerful arc lamps that were positioned around the room. The walkway continued around the periphery of the space, offering a series of lookout points where staff could observe the activity in the spaces beneath them.

  Ivanosky led them down a flight of stairs to an open passageway that bisected the circular floor space. A second passageway met theirs in the centre of the room, dividing the circle into four equally sized quadrants. The walls were open at the top and punctuated at regular intervals by large windows. The thick panes of glass were clean on this side, but smudged and dirty on the other. Bloom saw tracks that had been scored into the material by sharp objects, and smears of excrement that had been rubbed across the panels.

  ‘We have four pens,’ the professor explained as he led the way along the passageway. ‘Each pen can accommodate a troop of baboons.’

  ‘How many do you have?’

  ‘Just over a hundred in two troops.’

  Ivanosky stopped and turned to the right. Bloom looked into the pen. There was a collection of rocks that had been arranged into a steep pile, tree stumps, and a rope that had been erected six feet above the muck and dirt with tyres strung along it. He saw baboons, the big monkeys arranged throughout the space. The baboons shared certain characteristics: long, canine muzzles and, beneath them, prominent jaws that were lined with sharp teeth. They had thick fur except for at their muzzles and short tails. Their buttocks protruded, with rough, hairless pads of skin that provided comfortable seats when they rested. Bloom watched, fascinated, as they interacted with one another. One of them loped over to one of the suspended tyres and heaved itself aloft with an easy tug of its long arms. Others lounged on the rocks, picking at food that had been left for them: baskets of fruit and vegetables and sides of rotting meat.

  ‘These are chacma baboons,’ Ivanosky said. ‘Old World monkeys, part of the subfamily Cercopithecidae. Papio ursinus ursinus. Native to Africa and Asia and adaptable with regards to their environment: they can be found in rainforest, on the savannah, in shrub land and on mountain terrain. They are omnivorous, with a preference for meat if they can get it. Our baboons are from South Africa. They were raiding villages, taking lambs and goats. There were reports that small children had been taken, too. The locals were shooting them. Save lions and crocodiles, they have no other natural predators.’

  The baboon that had been swinging on the tyre noticed them and dismounted. It came close to the glass and pressed both hands against it. It had small, close-set eyes, glassy black orbs beneath a lowered brow, and obscenely pink lips that were pursed as if in an expression of contemplation. The fur was a little thinner on the baboon’s arms and chest, and Bloom could see the bulges of well-developed musculature beneath it. Bloom locked eyes with it for a moment before the baboon drew back its hands and slammed its palms repeatedly against the window. The glass looked thick, but it quivered with each blow. The baboon flashed its eyelids and displayed its ugly teeth with exaggerated yawns. It screeched, a high-pitched clamour that filled the holding area. The other baboons joined in, too, and the screeching and barking very quickly became almost unbearable.

  Ivanosky tolerated it for a moment and then held up his hand. The baboon stopped shrieking at once, and, within seconds, the others also stopped. Ivanosky lowered his hand, the baboon following it with his eyes. The animal looked up, found Bloom again, and pulled back its pink lips to reveal a jagged upthrusting of sharp teeth. It put them together in a gruesome smile. Bloom felt a moment of unease.

  It was as if the baboon were speaking to him.

  If you were on the other side of this cage, I could rend you limb from limb.

  ‘Baboons are ideal for our purposes,’ Ivanosky explained. ‘The scientific community has been using them for years. They are ideal research models for the study of common complex diseases: dyslipidaemia, hypertension, osteoporosis, obesity. And species with similar phylogenetic relationships to humans like this not only share biological characteristics, but also have many of the same genes influencing relevant phenotypes operating on a similar genetic background. Biologic processes associated with reproduction, growth, development, maturation and senescence in baboons differ very little from those in humans. The baboon heart is so similar to a human’s in function and size that it was used in early xenotransplantations. Lipid, lipoprotein and carbohydrate metabolism and disorders associated with their disruption are very similar in the two species.’

  ‘In English, Professor?’

  ‘The genetic similarities make them ideal for perfecting the new techniques that we are developing. They are also extremely aggressive.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Bloom said.

  Ivanosky was so engaged with his explanation that he was seemingly unaware of Bloom’s discomfort. ‘We have found that to be particularly interesting. We have been able to id
entify the baboon gene connected to aggressive behaviour.’

  ‘All right,’ King said. ‘Enough of the zoo. Let’s go and see what it means in practice.’

  Chapter Seven

  Ivanosky led the way back to the stairs. The baboons started to bark and whoop as they retreated, and as they reached the top, Bloom turned to look back. The animals had drawn together, gazing in their direction. They hopped and jumped and slapped their palms against their barrel chests. He felt fresh unease and was glad when he heard the hiss of the airlock. He turned away and hurried after the other two men.

  ‘The infirmary is on level four,’ Ivanosky said, pressing the requisite button.

  The elevator descended again, smooth and silent.

  Bloom couldn’t stop thinking about the monkeys.

  ‘The baboons are test subjects?’ he asked.

  ‘Partly. Like I said, their genome is very similar. It’s the reason I’ve been working with them for so long. Once we remapped it, we realised that there were enough points of similarity that they would be well suited to that purpose.’

  The doors parted and the automated concierge relayed a warning that Bloom found unsettling.

  ‘Warning. Authorised personnel only. Biological hazards present.’

  The white-walled corridor led to the left and right. Ivanosky went right.

  He continued to speak. ‘Let me try to explain it as best I can. Baboons have forty-two chromosomes arranged into twenty-one pairs. What we’ve been able to do is add a forty-third. It’s possible to modify the genetics of an organism without that forty-third, but having it there makes it easier. Think of it as a scaffold. We can add new genetic modules to the scaffold and remove old ones when they are obsolete. We have been able to significantly adapt the genome and then either switch on or switch off the modifications with a simple injection.’

  They passed several doors before they reached one that was stencilled with the legend ‘Infirmary Number One’. The professor put his eye to the retinal scanner next to the door, held it there until his eye was successfully scanned and then stepped back. The door unlocked and opened.

  ‘Messing around with monkeys is one thing,’ King said.

  ‘Of course,’ Ivanosky agreed. ‘It was our starting point. But we’ve managed to do the same thing with the human genome.’

  Ivanosky pulled the door all the way back and held it open for King and Bloom.

  Bloom went inside. The door accessed an observation suite that looked down upon an infirmary. He stepped up to the curved window and looked inside. There was a bed flanked by rows of medical equipment. A woman was sitting on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Is that her?’ Bloom asked.

  ‘That’s Maia,’ Ivanosky said.

  Bloom had never seen the woman before. She was a little taller than average. Five foot nine or ten, he guessed. She was slender with long hair that was woven into a French braid. She was wearing a hospital gown that was fastened at the back by two ties. The ties had not been pulled tight, and Bloom could see her naked shoulders, back and coccyx. There was another person in the room with Maia. She was wearing a white smock and was inspecting Maia’s shoulder. She loosened the ties and pulled the gown down so that she could examine her back more carefully.

  The asset turned her head and stared straight at him. Bloom would not have described her as pretty, but there was an attractiveness to her rounded face. Her nose was very slightly flattened, but it was her eyes that detained him. He could see that they were brown, but instead of holding soulfulness, they were blank. She stared up at the window, her face inexpressive. Bloom felt a twist of nervousness in his gut.

  ‘She can’t see me, can she?’

  ‘No, Mr Bloom. The glass is one-way.’

  Maia was the asset that they had relied upon to tidy away the evidence of extra-governmental involvement in the recent events in London. The man called Mohammed had been the cut-out, the stooge that they would have relied upon had anything gone wrong, but his downing of Flight 117 had also signalled the end of his usefulness. His loyalty had been bought; a million dollars had been his price to kill hundreds of people. What would he do for two million? What would he say? He could ask for more, any request backed by the implicit threat that he knew far too much to be allowed to bear a grudge.

  Maia had followed him throughout the first and second phases of the operation and, when his usefulness was at an end, she had eliminated him.

  That task, at least, had been performed satisfactorily.

  King was looking down at Maia and the woman treating her. ‘Tell him about her.’

  Ivanosky needed little encouragement; it was clear that he was inordinately proud of what he had achieved and what the asset represented. ‘Maia was the first of the thirteenth iteration to show promise. We had seen levels of success before, even in the early days, but we were unable to maintain healthy and stable development. The hazards of germ line transmission of DNA modification are well known by now. The literature on transgenic animals contains numerous examples. The biology of each individual embryo is fundamentally altered by the genetic manipulation. We saw extensive perturbation of development. The disruption of normal gene development by the insertion of foreign DNA caused lack of eye development, lack of development of the semicircular canals of the inner ear and anomalies of the olfactory epithelium, the tissue that mediates the sense of smell. We might have been able to find ways around those problems, but germ line introduction of improperly regulated genes also resulted in progeny with increased incidence of paediatric tumours.’

  ‘They all died,’ King added unnecessarily.

  ‘Correct. From very nasty cancers. But the “M” cohort, on the other hand . . .’ – Ivanosky paused and smiled – ‘that has been very different. So far as we can ascertain, they have adapted to the improvements that we have made to their genome with no serious side effects.’

  The woman in the smock went to collect a syringe from a small chrome table fixed to the end of the bed. She returned to Maia’s side and gently rolled up her sleeve.

  ‘Who is that?’ Bloom asked.

  ‘Aleksandra Litivenko. She’s a doctor of experimental molecular embryology. She works exclusively with our female assets. Because we’ve made changes to the germ line, the women are particularly valuable. The genetic enhancements are already present in their eggs.’

  ‘And what’s she doing? What’s she injecting?’

  ‘One of the changes to the genome was to introduce genetic material from the monkeys. Their muscle twitch responses are faster than our own, for example. They are also more naturally aggressive, as you saw. We discovered that they have a mutation in a gene that makes an enzyme called monoamine oxidase A, or MAOA. The function of the enzyme is to break down norepinephrine and dopamine. A deficiency causes elevated levels of those neurotransmitters, and that stimulates the brain circuitry that encourages aggressive behaviour. There was a study twenty years ago in Holland. Twenty males within a large family unit were all discovered to have MAOA deficiencies. Affected males differed from unaffected males by increased impulsive and aggressive behaviours.’

  ‘So what does that mean? You made sociopaths?’

  King interceded: ‘It means we can breed soldiers who are temperamentally well suited for the kinds of work they are asked to do.’

  ‘Correct,’ Ivanosky said. ‘Some people might call it a side effect. We think of it as a benefit.’

  ‘And the injection?’

  ‘A very large dose of citalopram. It’s a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.’

  ‘For depression.’

  ‘That’s the usual use. But, in this case, it increases levels of serotonin and balances out the dopamine and norepinephrine. They have it every week. It keeps them level.’

  ‘When we want them a little bit more dangerous, we just decrease the dose,’ King said. ‘It’s like an on-off switch.’

  Ivanosky crossed the observation lounge to a two-way intercom. ‘Let’s see how
she is,’ he said, toggling the switch. ‘Good morning, Doctor. It’s Ivanosky. I’m here with Mr King and Mr Bloom, from London.’

  The doctor looked up to the window and nodded her greeting. ‘Good morning, gentlemen.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘The knife wound? She’s healing as we would expect.’

  Bloom had read the report. Isabella Rose had stabbed Maia in the shoulder and then the asset had jumped out of a third-floor window when it was clear that she needed to retreat. He could see her back as the doctor examined it; the wound had almost completely healed.

  ‘When was she stabbed?’

  ‘Nineteen days ago. Can you see? Can you see how fast she heals?’

  ‘It’s remarkable,’ Bloom admitted.

  Ivanosky spoke into the microphone. ‘Thank you, Doctor. We’ll leave you to it.’

  Litivenko raised her hand in acknowledgement.

  Ivanosky toggled the intercom off.

  He turned to Bloom. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Vivian thinks that you’re creating monsters,’ King suggested.

  Ivanosky snorted. ‘Monsters?’

  Bloom shrugged.

  ‘No,’ Ivanosky said. ‘Not monsters. We’re making angels.’

  Chapter Eight

  Dr Aleksandra Litivenko leaned closer and touched the wound with gentle fingers. ‘How does it feel?’

  ‘It feels normal,’ Maia said.

  The doctor wore a small voice recorder on her lapel. She activated it with a press of her thumb.

  ‘This is Dr Aleksandra Litivenko with subject M-18273, referenced Maia. I’m conducting an examination of the subject’s recent wound. To recap, subject was stabbed in the right shoulder. The blade pierced the skin over the deltoid muscle and was dragged down all the way to the triceps of the right arm. The incision was deepest at the shoulder, the blade withdrawing all the while as the subject twisted away from her attacker. The wound was inflicted nineteen days ago, yet cicatrisation is almost complete. The incision was shallower on the back of the subject’s arm, and the wound there has healed. The deepest point of the incision was at the deltoid and that is healing, too. The subject reports that haemostasis clotted the blood within minutes. The inflammatory phase was completed fifteen days ago. White blood cells, growth factors, enzymes and nutrients have all diverted to the area in extraordinary amounts.’