Dues of Mortality

by Jason Austin

  “Thanks, pimp,” Trineer said and grinned as the bartender approached him with a sweating bottle of Michelob. Trineer took the bottle and chortled as he watched the bartender walk away.

  “Why do you keep calling him that?” Bruckner asked.

  “Look at him. See how he walks? Just like the pimps in the nineteen-seventies, movies man. Fuckin' hilarious.”

  Bruckner shook his head. “Pretty sure he's got a bad leg, dude.” He looked thoughtful and drummed his fingers on the table. “I'm thinking he's gonna crack more than their servers with this.”

  “Don’t ask me. All this fanatical shit was never my route. I’m a professional. Tell you the truth, I feel sorry for you sign waving, flag-burning...”

  “I don’t burn flags,” Emil said, in authentic offense. He may have had to portray some left-of-common-sense, Bio-eth shit-kicker, but anyone who wanted keep their windpipe in its original position dared not call him anti-American.

  “Whatever you hippie-fakes are into,” Trineer said. “In the end, it’s all a scam anyways; just another way to get over. Shit, I've only met him twice, but he never asked me if I believed in his fight for the soul of humanity. He just offered me a job because he knew I was strapped for cash and I'd be cheap. So fuck all this bio-ethy stuff.”

  Bruckner smirked benignly. He was coming to the painful conclusion that Trineer knew jack shit about the codes or why Ross wanted them. Other than how to get from point A to point B without tripping over his own feet, Ross probably hadn’t told him a thing. Ross was nothing if not consistent about security. It was the single biggest reason for all the blank spots in his bureau file. Also, Trineer didn’t exactly inspire implicit trust amongst his peers. Most of his connections from his gang days were lost to him because he’d ratted out members of his own crew for a sentence reduction. Still, he knew a stylized pro or two who could get in and out of high security areas without leaving so much as a stray hair. That made McCutcheon wonder if Ross might be thinking in terms of Trineer as a liaison between himself and the professional crews. They weren't terrorists, but criminals, nonetheless and that created potential for lucrative mutual benefit. It wasn't likely that Ross would be dumb enough to expand his tent in such a direction, but then he had tapped Trineer. A move that sang of desperation and impatience—the two things that deliver bad guys to the business end of a badge like an email to the inbox. It also meant Ross would probably have to kill Trineer somewhere down the line if he failed to find additional use for him. But, for now, Ross needed him. Ross’s old hookups couldn’t be trusted anymore. There were too many of them walking around in federal prison fatigues, looking to cut deals for his whereabouts. What Ross needed were bodies that were willing to work without asking questions. Annoying as he could be, Trineer didn’t ask a lot of questions. He was having too much fun, feeling indispensable. Bruckner would still try, but chances were he wouldn’t get shit from Trineer tonight. And that would make for one painful meeting later on.

  Chapter 11

  Emil chose an aisle seat in the tenth row of holotheatre seven, per instruction. A shameless disgorgement of techno-crap vandalized the wall as he popped a handful of Milk Duds into his mouth. Holotheatres—the storytelling always got lost in the hardwiring. The movie-makers had to come up with some reason to get people back in the theaters, so they input a peripheral challenge to the audience—discern the living, breathing actors from the computer-generated creations inside the recessed screen-stage hybrid. It would probably work for another ten years, twenty at the most. Funny, how people were too busy being in the movie to realize it was no good. A gaggle of high-schoolers who were gathered down front shouted, “Fake! That’s fake! She’s fake,” pissing off the older patrons who'd come to waste their money in peace. Emil almost hollered at the kids to shut the hell up on general principle.

  They can't pull me out, he thought as he rolled a single candy between his lips. Not now.

  Emil had failed to loosen Trineer's tongue about MIT by buying a round. Instead, Trineer had limited himself to two beers, watched ten minutes of a soccer match and then headed out the door with what had to be an H-head hooker fiending for a fix. Was Trineer smarter than he looked? Did he know to keep MIT on the down-low, to keep it from him? Was MIT even Ross at all, or one of the other eager beavers making the transition to the big leagues? Emil's throat hardened. They can't pull me out.

  Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge, Marcel McCutcheon, was putting on weight. He was eating a bit more since his promotion and spending more time on the job than in the gym. Not that he paid much attention. He defied the increase in his girth like Stonewall Jackson facing off the union army. Besides, this was the way it was for the men in his family once they hit forty. He squirmed under the snugness of his pants, as he entered the theater and took a seat in the row directly behind Emil Bruckner.

  Emil felt the disturbance of the arrival and it made him wince as if someone had stepped on his bunion.

  McCutcheon aimed his mouth at Bruckner's ear while staring at the screen. “What the hell happened?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know,” Emil answered, pressing a knuckle to his nose. He was glad procedure was on his side, allowing the option to keep face-forward; he wouldn't have to look into McCutcheon's probing, paternalistic eyes as he begged to stay on.

  “That much is obvious. If you knew, then we would’ve known, and would've been able to stop it.”

  “Trineer never said a word. Maybe it wasn’t his people. Maybe the claimer was a copycat, a hoax.”

  “We should be so lucky. Preliminaries on the devices and M.O. so far square up entirely with PHANTOM.” McCutcheon thought for a minute. “We might have to pull you out. If you were kept in the dark on purpose, you’re no good anyway.”

  Emil grimaced. “You can’t do that. I’m too close. He’s going to take me to Ross.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Yes. Ross called him from Washington D.C. and set it up.”

  “When?”

  “We’re leaving for the train station tomorrow night.” Bruckner paused. “If I’m still on it.”

  McCutcheon lingered, watching the scene of a rowboat and its horrified passenger dip over a mountainous waterfall. For a second, he thought he was soaked. Jesus, would it have killed them to keep the damn movies flat? “Why D.C.?” he asked.

  “Don't know, but Trineer's buying the ticket and I figured it was best not to ask too many questions or insist on Cleveland. Maybe he's just being cautious, using a layover between here and Boston.”

  “I don’t know, kid,” McCutcheon said cautiously. “If Trineer had no involvement or even knowledge of MIT then it may mean someone has reason not to trust him anymore. You could be walking into the lion’s den.”

  “I know the risks, boss. I took the same oath you did.” Bruckner almost turned, now wanting terribly to look McCutcheon in the eye. “I’m close. I can still do this.”

  McCutcheon sucked in his stomach and held it. “It’s not that simple. There’s...more.”

  “What?”

  “Remember the lab that got hit in San Francisco, just before we busted PHANTOM?”

  “Jenetix?”

  Jenetix was a profitable biotech firm that produced a breakthrough in small-scale tissue regeneration. It was poised to deliver new treatments that would double the healing and recovery speed of certain wounds.

  “There may or may not have been some 'research' consigned at that lab,” McCutcheon said. “I'm not talking about the kind of shit any ten year-old can find on a Grid search either. It's the kind of stuff nobody finds out we've been screwing with until it ends up in the wrong hands.”

  Emil blinked. Did he just hear what he thought he heard? “You think Ross may have been working for someone else? Someone inside the government?”

  “It's just a passing thought. One that gives me a whopper of a headache. But you won't have to guess what public relations will be like if this gets out.”

  “Something like it
is now?”

  “Times ten.”

  Bruckner sighed. “Classified or not, there must be dozens of people who could’ve spilled it.”

  Dozens? McCutcheon thought. Try a number with a few more zeroes at the end of it. “We’ve already got people working on narrowing it down.”

  “What about motive? Is it some sort of anti-investment scheme—trying to dissuade financial backing in certain labs? Or is it fanatical? What could one of our own find so threatening in the Pentagon's charter that they'd league up with a terrorist to stop it?”

  “I don't know. But Ross and his hatred for the biotechs is a perfect scapegoat. Don't get carried away; I just wanted you to know the stakes and what to keep an eye out for. It's probably not as dramatic as all that, anyway. At least I don’t think so.”

  McCutcheon didn’t say “I don't think so” to express his conclusion, but to express his uncertainty. The biotechs weren't just another powerful lobbying group in Washington; they had an agenda, and the people they were in bed with were ruthlessly insane. Some even fell into the category of nihilistic. It made McCutcheon wonder just how close their brand of technology—the cloning, the advanced gene-mods and all that crap—was to actualization.

  Bruckner sighed even louder, smoothing his forehead.

  “What?” McCutcheon said. “Did you think ‘need-to-know’ basis was only for the grunts?” He paused. “Look, I don’t give a flying fuck what those Frankensteins are up to, although I have my theories. Ross is a terrorist and a killer. That means we have a job to do.”

  Bruckner thought for a moment. “Wait...are you telling me we had contracts at MIT?”

  “The leading contributors to that lab do have 'unofficial connections' at the Pentagon.”

  “All the more reason to keep me in.”

  McCutcheon tugged at his pants again. He knew Bruckner would say that. “You'd have to go in completely un-wired. Ross is extremely on top of his game; if you go in transmitting he'll know it. We'd have to rely strictly on the slipdisk. No offense, kid, but I'd have to be crazy to let a rook do this.”

  Bruckner raised his chin. “You know the only difference between me and that MIT security guard?”

  “Kid...”

  “He didn't sign up for it.”

  Chapter 12

  August 26, 10:00 a.m.

  Glenda’s interview at the bank was in thirty minutes. She checked the time and saw that she'd been listening to her mother for at least half that. A mild headache threatened as she sat at the old hardline phone trying, like hell, to keep the woman from going off the deep end. The last thing Glenda needed was to have to worry about her parents worrying about her. She’d done enough of that as a teenager, even getting arrested a couple of times, testing personal boundaries, and grappling with a puberty-induced stubborn streak. She squinted hard, raising a vein in her temple. Cabin fever had set in after just one night in the dinky motel room.

  “Mom, I told you, I’m fine,” Glenda said for the fourth time. “It was just some sleazebag who couldn't take 'F you' for an answer; it was nothing.”

  “Your father thinks you should come back home,” Louise said, stifling the plea in her voice, “at least for a little while.”

  “Mom, Daddy’s been trying to get me to come back home ever since I left. I’m not just going to turn tail and run at the first sign of trouble.”

  Their conversation was temporarily broken by an incoherent rant from somewhere on Louise's end. Glenda’s father could no longer keep quiet as he drained the wet bar in the dining room, attempting to thaw his blood at the news of his daughter being accosted. It was renown, throughout the land, that to mess with Jeremiah Jameson’s little girl was to enact the wrath of God almighty. Once, when she was in the fourth grade, Glenda had come home sopped with tears after a classmate at school had viciously taunted her before an audience of unsparing children. A sweep of layoffs at the auto plant had kept her father out of work for several months, and Glenda had qualified for a discount lunch voucher. Some buck-toothed little piss-ant in the lunch line had noticed and given her the Oliver Twist treatment the rest of the day. Ordinarily, Jeremiah would've gone twelve rounds with a grizzly bear if it had given his daughter that kind of shit. But, he couldn’t just go smacking around a nine-year-old kid, no matter how much the little turd had it coming. By the time the clatter of car parts had drawn Louise to their garage, her husband had demolished every shelf in the room and had reduced his workbench to firewood. He was just standing there, the old Louisville slugger stiff in his pulsing fists. “They hurt my baby,” he kept snarling in a voice that had to be shredding his vocal cords. “They hurt my baby!”

  It took nearly an hour for Louise to settle the man. Meanwhile, little Glenda had been eating chocolate pudding and laughing at her favorite cartoons in the family room, tears long since dry.

  Glenda heard her father shout something again from the background. “Oh, knock it off, Jeremiah! She’s not getting a gun!” she heard her mother respond. Not surprising. Glenda's distaste for firearms was practically an inherited trait. Louise couldn't stand them. From Jeremiah Jameson's perspective, his wife had become considerably easier to live with after he gave up hunting when Glenda was still in grade school.

  “Mom, will you please tell him it’s not that serious. Statistically, if I’d had a gun in the place, I would’ve been the one more likely to get shot. Everybody and their mothers are walking the streets with a damn gun. I’m not contributing to that. It only makes things worse.” Glenda pinched the bridge of her nose. Did she just sound like her mother? Oh my god, she thought. If her sanity was to survive the day, this conversation had to end now. “I have to go, okay? I’ve got an interview.”

  “Glenny, are you sure you’re all right?” Louise asked. She wanted desperately to whisper into the phone that she would bring her one of her father's old rifles. The one he used to kill the big animals.

  “Mom, I know it’s a sad statement, but these things happen sometimes. Trust me. I’m fine.” Not entirely false, but not entirely true either. “Please don’t worry, okay?”

  There was a queen-sized sigh and Louise said, “Okay honey, if you say so.”

  “I do. I’ll try to call you later. Tell Daddy to put down the vodka.”

  “Okay, sweetie.”

  “Bye, Mom.”

  Glenda hung up, knowing her mother would not be able to say goodbye. Louise hated that word. Rarely, could she bring herself to use it. Most of the time, she just said things like “later” or “much love,” and left it at that. If she ever said “goodbye” it was a sure sign for Glenda to keep talking.

  In the motel’s parking lot, a blue antique Camaro coasted into a space and its engine killed. The thin, overly-tanned man behind the wheel sat casually with puckered lips, looking into the rearview mirror and stroking his hair. Hobson had a habit of primping a bit before a job. When finished, he leaned over and took a small black case, about the size of a thick novel, from the glove compartment. He rested it in his lap and smoothed his hand over it as if caressing a woman’s buttocks, his favorite part of the female anatomy. He flipped open its lid, exposing a digital organizer and a fanciful, pearl-handled hunting knife, recessed in a molded case. He gazed back at the mirror at the first hint of movement.

  A gorgeous brown-haired woman with a long, curvy frame exited her motel room and headed for a blue Honda Civic parked not more than twenty feet away. She was wearing business attire, a black skirt, dark blue blouse and a white blazer. She massaged her neck, looking fatigued. Poor thing. It looked like it had been a long night for her; she probably hadn’t gotten much sleep. That might make it all the easier though, Hobson figured, since he had heard she was feisty. He examined a detailed holograph of the woman in his organizer. He seemed a tad annoyed with the fact that she was leaving the room, just as he was arriving. But that wasn’t his fault. Gabriel took his sweet time deciding that since Hobson was already in for a penny, he might as well go for the pound. All Hobson would ne
ed would be a few minutes of alone time, isolated, in a dark or at least poorly lit location, and away from surveillance. Such spots were rare in the city this time of day, but not completely off the map, depending on where she was headed. He waited for her to start her car and get far enough ahead before pulling out.

  Chapter 13

  Washington, D.C., August 26, 10:42 A.M.

  In a small motel just a stone's throw from Mt. Vernon square, Ross entered the room, closed the door behind him and engaged the locks in one seamless movement. He was disgusted with himself. The fleabag motels were all starting to run together in a mishmash of unaccomplished goals. He let his backpack slide from his shoulder and caught the strap in his hand. How far I’ve fallen, he thought. The very notion of trifling with Case Western Reserve University's servers as a PHANTOM attack left him dead inside. The technicalities alone rendered the entire exercise virtually pointless and wholly uninspired. The only reason to even proceed with such a waste of energy was if he'd given up on taking out BioCore altogether—and there was no chance in hell of that happening.

  Ross went straight to the room's desk, extracted his fliptop from the backpack and established his secured connection. A connection icon flashed on the fliptop's cover and he opened it to Thaddeus Maguire's timely expression of “what-the-fuck”.

  “I want BioCore, Tad,” Ross exclaimed off the bat. He paced between the desk and the bed, as if he couldn't decide from which to sit. “I want Millenitech.”

  “You wanted them last year too,” Maguire said. “Look where that got you.”

  Ross stopped and practically bored a hole in the screen, with a glare that said, “This is how I'll look at you when I break your neck.” It didn't matter that Maguire was right, that it had been Ross's overreaching that had tipped off the feds and led to PHANTOM's downfall. Ross had gotten so caught up in the Millenitech hype that he hadn't taken the time to fully vet his opportunities. Not that he ever had a real chance. Jerome Wallace always had more gators in the moat than it appeared. Even if Ross's hit against Millenitech had made it out of the planning stages, he wouldn't have gotten so much as a firecracker beyond the front door.