by John Darnton
"What about her?"
"Whose side is she on? Can I trust her?"
Raymond looked at him hard. "Look," he said. "I'm not a goddamned oracle. You've gotta rely on your own instincts for some of this."
"Tibbett?"
"What about him?"
"Do you know he's a member?"
"I do now. What can you tell me about him?"
"Not much. Skyler identified him. He was part of a group that went to the island for some kind of big meeting. Rincon was there, too, but they didn't get a look at him. Anyway, Skyler's sure Tibbett was there. I can't figure him out. The strange thing is, when I look back, I see he's been doing things for me all along. My book was published, it was given a big push. And somehow it was arranged—at least I think it was—for me to meet Tizzie. And the couple of times I've met him, he's always treated me as if I were the one who was special, not him."
"Maybe he's just an old-fashioned gentleman."
"Somehow I doubt that."
"So do I. And that brings me to the point of this meeting."
Jude felt his guard go up. They had reached the riverbank and were standing off to one side. They heard a distant rumble—a train approaching. They stepped farther away from the tracks.
"Go on."
"I thought maybe you could help me."
Jude looked at his friend, who appeared suddenly helpless, almost pathetic.
"Me help you?"
"Look—we don't have time to putz around anymore. We're working against a deadline here. You're in the middle of this thing. You've got Skyler, who can pick them out. You've got Tizzie, who's almost infiltrated the goddamned group. And you are—as you say—special for some reason. We need you three."
"But where is the Lab?"
"That's what I'd like to know."
"But didn't you track them to the island? Didn't you follow them when they left it?"
"Jude—this is what I'm talking about. I didn't even know they were on an island until they'd already left it. And I got no fucking idea where they are now!"
"Christ!"
"I know. It's pathetic."
"Do you know why they left the island? Was it the hurricane?"
"No, that one's easy. The way I figure it, they were all packed up and ready to go. They knew they'd have to leave the day Skyler got away."
The noise of the train was getting louder, so that Raymond practically had to yell.
"So what d'ya say? You gonna help us?"
Jude had time to contemplate the question. The train rushed past, stirring dust and rustling branches and making their clothes flap. It was too loud to talk.
When it had passed, Jude looked at him.
"I may be able to do something," he said. "You want to know who's in the Group? I can get you the list of members, and I can get into their medical records, if we can just find where they are. But I'm telling you—I'm going to demand something in exchange. We'll talk about that later. To start with, I need to see your file."
"That's illegal. FBI files are classified."
Jude just stared at him.
"Okay. I'll see what I can do."
"Okay."
Jude looked off into the woods beside the track.
"Be careful. You were lucky to get off that island, you know. And by the way, there's an all-points bulletin out for you."
"Thanks for telling me. That comes from the other FBI, I take it."
"Right."
"Okay. I'll be careful. You can stop telling me that."
Again, seemingly out of nowhere, Raymond seemed compelled to speak up. His voice seemed full of genuine concern.
"There's something else you should know—these clones. They're not the only ones getting killed. We've lost some guys, too."
Jude started to walk toward the woods. He had hidden his car there, parked along a dirt road that ran for almost five miles before it joined a highway. He could see the surprise beginning to dawn on Raymond's face. "Hey, where the hell you going?"
"This is my stop," Jude replied.
"Fuck."
Jude was pleased to note that he sounded angry.
"You can find your way back, Raymond. And here's something else. Think of it as a down payment on the information I'm going to give you. One of the top conspirators—it's your boss. Eagleton."
By now, Jude was practically shouting.
"That's why we ran away in Washington. So remember—trust no one."
¨
On Friday, Tizzie decided to make her move. That afternoon, she told Alfred that she wouldn't be taking the bus and would have to leave early because her uncle Henry was picking her up. His name would be enough to stop Alfred from asking questions, she had assumed, and her assumption proved correct.
Instead, Alfred just went into a sulk.
At six p.m., she put away the equipment, picked up her purse and paused at the door.
"Don't have them hold dinner," she said. "We'll be eating at Maison Indochine. I'll bring you a doggie bag, if you like."
The sulk turned into a slow burn.
Maybe it hadn't been wise to rub it in like that, but it sure had been fun, she thought going out the door to the courtyard.
Instead of going to the front gate, though, she looked around and then slipped behind the garage into a four-foot-wide dead space that separated it from the fence. There she waited—and waited. It seemed like hours, but it was only forty-five minutes when she finally heard the sounds of doors opening and people heading out—their voices lightened by a sense of release on Friday evening. She heard the bus pull away, then other sounds of people in ones and twos walking toward the gate and slamming it behind them and starting up cars in the lot outside.
Finally, all was quiet. She was about to emerge from her hiding place, when she heard another sound—someone entering by the gate. Was it a night watchman? She hadn't counted on that. She waited for another half hour, listening intently, but didn't hear anything more. Could the person have left without her knowing? Maybe through a back entrance?
She had to risk it.
Slowly and stealthily, she crept out from behind the garage. In the gathering shadows she crossed the courtyard, used her badge to open the front door and climbed the stairs to the restricted area, the second floor. There was the door—and the camera. Was it functioning at night? She couldn't take a chance. She took off her shoe, rose on tiptoes, and slipped it over the lens.
Then she approached the keypunch. 8769. Immediately, there was a responding buzz; the door clicked open. She was inside the restricted area. The smell hit her full in the nostrils.
Light in the first room came in through the windows, just enough to cast a dim pallor over everything. There were rows and rows of metal cages stacked to the ceiling, and inside were rhesus monkeys, one to a cage. Some grabbed the wire mesh with both hands and shook their cages loudly as she walked by. Others sat almost motionless, as if in a stupor. She noticed that these monkeys were stooped and grizzled, with gray hair on their chins and lining their temples.
She moved quickly past the cages and into the second room, the inner laboratory, a clean, windowless chamber where computers regulated the temperature of the dust-free atmosphere. Microscopes and lab machinery told her this was where she wanted to be. She closed the door and turned on the light.
There on the desk was a pile of reports and lab notes. She sat down and skimmed them, and then kept skimming through daily records, charts and graphs, and computer printouts. Gradually, a picture of the research began to emerge. She went to the counter, switched on the microscope and sampled the slides. They were of cells much like the ones she handled—in fact, some of her stained handiwork, red and blue, were stored carefully to one side.
But most of these cells were different.
She looked closely. Before her were dozens, hundreds, of diseased cells that, like the others, mimicked the symptoms of old age. They looked as if they had simply reached the end of the line—the Hayflick limit. That in itself wa
s not peculiar; what was strange was that she could see it happening right before her eyes.
She couldn't believe it. She put in another slide and then bent down to the eyepiece again. There it was—happening again. These cells were in instantaneous terminal crisis. It was as if they passed from the bloom of youth to senescence in the blink of an eye—with no middle life whatsoever. As she peered through the microscope, she had the sensation that she was watching the stages of life play themselves out at high speed—breathtaking in the brutal way that death took the cells at half bloom.
It did not take her long to identify a major part of the problem. The diseased cells were flooded with telomerase, which was odd. Telomerase was supposed to keep cells youthful, by capping the chromosomes with protective sequences of DNA so that the chromosomes did not shorten with replication. All cells had a gene that produced telomerase, but it was switched off and inoperative except in two cases—the cells of the germline, which were passed on from parent to child, and the cells of cancerous tumors.
And yet these other cells, these ordinary cells for skin or bone or organs, were drowning in telomerase. And far from making the cells live longer, the enzyme seemed to be killing them.
It was too much of a good thing. Germ cells and cancer cells. The beginning of life and the end of life.
She turned off the microscope, closed the books, and after a look around to ensure that nothing appeared disturbed, she extinguished the light. It was darker now in the outer room, and as she walked past the cages, her footsteps sounding loud, the monkeys began to stir. One leaned into the cage and screamed at her. Then another. Soon the whole room was in chaos, and she fled between the rows. When she reached the door, she flung it open and quickly closed it behind her. Still the chorus of screams resounded through the building. She reached up behind the camera, retrieved her shoe and ran down the staircase.
Then, as she was crossing the courtyard, she heard another sound, and looked behind her. It was a guard dog, tearing around the building from the rear, coming straight at her. She ran as fast as she could, flung open the door and ran through the entryway to the opposite door. She knew the dog would come around the building after her.
She was right. But she had gained precious time. And now she ran flat-out for the gate. She could hear the low growling, the sound of its paws hitting the ground. Ahead was the door latch. She lunged for it. If it was locked, she would be dead.
It was not. She was through the door and safely on the other side before she knew it, listening to the beating of the paws on the other side, the growls and barks. Only now that it was over did she begin to feel fear overcome her, making her legs tremble. She had to sit down.
She was still sitting when a figure loomed up before her, almost indistinguishable in the growing darkness.
"I knew you were lying," the figure said.
It was Alfred.
Chapter 28
"So how do you want to do this? I call them up right now, we go over there, I denounce you and we see what happens—or we talk first and then I denounce you? Your call."
Alfred was enjoying his position of power. That's the trouble with a sycophant, thought Tizzie. You give him a little leverage and it goes right to his head. A little leverage—hell, he thinks he's got me totally at his mercy.
They were driving on Anderson Hill Road, which dipped and turned around the hills and threadbare lots of Purchase, then merged into King Street and entered the multi-acre estates of Greenwich. They passed a small roadhouse with a red neon beer sign beckoning in the window.
"How about a drink?" she ventured.
"Very good. She picks option number two," he said, in the pseudoresonant voice of a quiz-show narrator.
What an asshole, she thought.
They took a wooden table in a corner. She ordered a vodka straight up and he, not to be outdone, did the same. When it came, she drank it straight down, and so did he.
"Okay, why don't you tell me exactly what you happened to be doing in the restricted lab after dark with no one else around? I'm sure there's a perfectly credible explanation, now that you've had five minutes to think it up."
"What makes you think I was in the restricted lab?"
"The monkeys. They make quite a racket when they see a stranger."
He had her there.
"Not all of them. Some are too old to do much of anything. I wonder why that is?"
The redhead scowled. She had to find a way to play for time. She finished her water and hid the glass under the table. Just then, their second vodkas arrived, and while he downed his, she poured hers into the glass.
"Let me ask you something—why did you suspect me?"
"Give me a break. I've been on to you for a long time. Always leaving. Sneaking around. Women's problems. Christ's sake—what do you take me for?"
She was tempted to tell him. Instead, she ordered another round of drinks—it would begin to affect him soon, she thought.
Time for the calculated risk. Sooner or later, all spies—all double spies, at least—reach the point of no return.
"I might as well tell you," she began. "I don't see what there is to lose."
She saw that she had his attention. He was leaning forward over the table.
"You figured it out quickly. Not everyone would have."
The appeal to vanity—the oldest trick in the book.
"You're wondering who I am working for, aren't you? Who's behind me?"
He nodded.
"I wish I could tell you specifically because it might be important for you—very important. It's crucial for you to know what you're up against—just as it was crucial for me to know what I was up against. These people are playing for keeps—on both sides. Understand?"
He nodded again, a little uncertainly.
This time he ordered the drinks.
"I have to admire the Lab, when I think of all they've done—the breakthroughs, the underground research in Jerome, that island, the colony of clones. It's remarkable stuff."
She raised her glass in a toast. Albert did the same, looking confused.
"It would have been twice as remarkable, don't you think, if the Lab could have done all that without attracting the attention of... certain agencies. But in a way, I suppose they are victims of their own grand design. I mean, it's just too ambitious, too big. The web site. All that equipment. It's quite impressive, really, but how do you think for one moment that it was possible to keep it all a secret? People talk, word gets around. You following me?"
He was. She could tell by a tiny gleam of fear that had crept into the corner of his eye.
"I was trying to think just the other day how many laws have been broken. Murder one—multiple times. Conspiracy. Conspiracy to commit murder. Some of these states have the dealth penalty, you know. Organized crime statutes. RICO. Federal laws. Violations of civil rights. Conspiracy to inflict bodily harm."
She looked off, as if she were contemplating the marvelous scope of the law enforcement system.
"This one starts at the top with capital punishment crimes and goes all the way down to income tax violations and probably even mail fraud. They usually throw that in just for laughs."
"And, of course, these people I'm working for, they know what I'm up to. They know what I'm doing. They even know about you."
"About me?"
"Of course—you don't think they're just going to send me there all by myself and stay out of contact. Why do you think I've been taking those walks at night? Anything happens to me and there's going to be hell to pay."
He definitely looked concerned.
"A person could do a lot of time for something like that. You're already in enough trouble as it is."
"Who are you working for?"
He was slurring his words. Time for another drink all around, she thought, signaling the bar maid.
"I wish I could tell you. I really do. They make us sign things, you know. We're pledged to secrecy. But I see a certain doubt in your eyes.
I have a number you can call to check it out. The contact's name is Raymond. You don't have to talk to him. Just see who answers the phone. See if there's anyone there by that name."
On a cocktail napkin, she copied Raymond's number. It was time to twist the knife.
"Things could be pretty tough for you in prison, you know, with your red hair. Hair color like that attracts attention. Gets you a reputation. Some of those guys in there—it'll be like waving a flag at a herd of bulls."
He staggered off to the men's room. When he came back, he looked dreadful.
I think I've got him, she thought.
"You know," she said. "Maybe you were the lucky one tonight. Finding me there might have been the best thing that ever happened to you."
He stared at her, angry, confused, uncertain.
"I may just turn out to be your lifeline," she added.
She stood up, almost knocking over the water glass of vodka on the floor.
"There's no need to do anything, no need to say anything," she added, in a voice that had a certain element almost of solicitousness. "Let's just go back to the Homestead and sleep on it. Maybe in the morning, when you've got a clear head, you can call that number. Then we'll get together—see what we can work out."
They left the roadhouse, and she held her hand out for the car keys.
"Alfred, I better drive. You've had too much."
At breakfast the next morning, she was happy to see that Alfred looked horrible. His hair, ordinarily so meticulously combed, was disheveled, and his clothes, usually crisp and pressed, looked as if he had slept in them. She looked closely; he had—they were the same shirt and pants he'd been wearing last night. His eyes were bloodshot.
She let him eat in peace and then suggested a Saturday morning outing. He meekly agreed. They drove to a tiny harbor downtown filled with bobbing sailboats. On a pier, they purchased two tickets and boarded a ferry that would take them to Island Beach, a mile out in Long Island Sound.
It was a glorious July day. They sat on the upper deck and felt the sun warming their skin. The sky was a crystalline blue, speedboats purred by heading for the open water, and on both sides of the harbor, Gatsbyesque mansions dominated hills that sloped down to rocky jetties and were covered with lawns the color of billiard felt.