Dues of Mortality

by Jason Austin

  Glenda and Xavier shared a look of borderline asphyxia.

  “Glen, listen to me,” Simonton pleaded. “I have over forty million dollars spread out in three different overseas accounts.”

  “Compliments of ripping off your own company,” Xavier dug.

  Simonton ignored him. “All you have to do is get on the next plane with me. We can leave this shit-hole and spend the rest of our days on the beaches of the Caribbean.”

  Xavier’s hands gnashed harder at the back of the chair. The wood even creaked a little as he threatened to reduce it to kindling.

  “My god, Peter,” Glenda said. “You never know when to stop, do you? All this pain and insanity you've caused and you're still trying to turn a profit for yourself.”

  Simonton fell silent.

  “What information are you talking about?” Xavier asked. He didn't want Glenda giving Simonton opportunity to defend himself. Also—and he didn't want to admit it—half of him was afraid she might actually take Simonton up on his offer. She'd practically done it before and...how many women would say no? “I thought Beaumont got elected on a platform of decency and environmentalism. People have been trying to dig up his backyard for years and they’ve come up dry. What could you possibly know?”

  Simonton stalled, pulling at his neck. “Beaumont is convinced that the government has plans for cloning technology; big plans—the kind that make the advent of the atomic bomb look like a software upgrade. He was always complaining that the biotechs were getting massive taxpayer funding for creating a new system of warfare. It was something that nobody would see coming until it was too late, and there was no one left to tell—at least no one who’d be on their side. He had no proof, of course, and he knew no one important would be willing to listen. He'd be disgraced as a kook. So he took matters into his own hands. He formed an uneasy alliance with the only other people he knew would listen—listen and act.”

  “What do you mean, act?”

  “I mean...” Simonton put up his fists and popped his fingers open—a modern day hand signal for the bombings that were becoming all too familiar... “act in a way that would bring the biotechs crumbling down.”

  Chapter 51

  “Mothafu...” Xavier almost said. “Beaumont’s a terrorist?”

  “He wouldn’t say so,” Simonton answered.

  Glenda was dumbstruck. She pressed her hands in praying fashion, against the sides of her mouth. “I have family in Michigan that voted for him.” She shook her head hard and then looked straight at Simonton. “Okay, I think I understand. But what I still don’t know is how you managed to get me involved. Why am I the one Wallace is trying to kill?”

  Simonton grit his teeth. “Because he’s a lying, double-crossing sack of shit!” he hollered. “Part of the deal was that you were not to be harmed!”

  “Peter, for God’s sake! What are you talking about?” Glenda exploded. She had had it with the guessing game.

  Simonton backed away from her. He looked so poltroon, as to be ill. “Glen...I...” His lips quivered but nothing came of it. He wanted to say it now. Really say it, if for no other reason than to relieve the physical weight of it from his chest. But God help him...he just couldn't.

  In one bolting action, Xavier sprang to his feet and pulled the chair from between his legs in such a way as to make Simonton think he would bash him with it. Indeed, the thought had crossed Xavier’s mind when the truth finally dawned on him. It wasn’t until Simonton threw a glance past him, as if to say, “You tell her,” that Xavier was sure he was right.

  “You miserable sack,” Xavier snarled. He glowered at Simonton like a caged gorilla at its keeper.

  Simonton buried his head in his hands and hunkered for the storm.

  “That's what's been bothering me about all this,” Xavier said. “The close calls when the deck is so stacked against us. We haven’t been getting lucky at all. That’s why she’s still alive. Any one of them could’ve killed her on sight.” He turned to Glenda, but wanted to tear Simonton's throat out. “Wallace hasn’t been trying to kill you. He’s been trying to clone you!”

  Glenda went lightheaded. “What?”

  “Malcolm Block...the guy from the alley...and even Jones, the cop; he could’ve killed you, too, but it’s not what they wanted. Remember what Kelmer said? They had to have a quality source of host DNA, a well they could go back to in order to create a viable clone. They were trying to get pieces of you, samples. They just wanted to mutilate you.” Xavier traded glances between Glenda and Simonton. “It was all part of the deal. In exchange for blabbing on Beaumont, the man of steel, here, gets a cloned duplicate of himself to leave in the plane wreckage, to insure it would pass all DNA scans, no questions.” He paused. “And another clone of you. One that he could have all to himself and manipulate any way he wanted.”

  “That’s not true,” Simonton protested, snapping Xavier a bladed look. He then turned to Glenda moony-eyed. “I mean, it is, but...but not the way he’s saying it. Wallace told me all he needed was a little DNA.”

  “Oh yeah, a real sweetheart deal,” Xavier shouted. “I bet all you had to do was pop a blue pill and squeeze off a couple of rounds into a cup while she has to give up a pint of blood and an ear...or a finger!” Xavier's left hand curled to a fist and his right levitated toward the gun in his waistband. Simonton was well on his way to a fist or a bullet or both.

  “He said it wouldn’t be violent,” Simonton insisted. “He promised he could get what was needed humanely!”

  “There's nothing humane about what they did to her, you twisted son-of-a-bitch!” Xavier pulled his gun and leveled it at Simonton's head. “I should kill you right now!”

  Simonton raised his hands and broke into an instant sweat. “Please! I swear he told me all he needed was a few ounces of blood! He assured me it would be painless! I would never have agreed to anything else!”

  “Painless,” Glenda repeated. She felt faint. “That's what Block said to me in my apartment.”

  Xavier looked thoughtful. “Didn't you say the police said something about finding drugs on him?” he asked Glenda. He never took his eyes off Simonton.

  “Yes, several doses of H-ball.”

  “And a hyposhot; the safer way of administering the drug without fear of overdosing.”

  “Yes, but how...”

  “Hyposhots are still a syringe like any other; they can be used to draw as well as inject and have an adjustable capacity. Block could have knocked you unconscious and taken more than enough blood to produce a clone. Then he could have switched out the vials and injected you with a shot of H-ball. And because hyposhots are programmable smart needles he wouldn't have had much of a problem using the same injection site; so that when you reported it the police would dismiss you as some fool experimenting with drugs...maybe even conclude that you hallucinated the whole damn thing.”

  Glenda looked nauseated. “Peter is that true?” she asked.

  “I doubt he asked for too many details,” Xavier said. “After Block failed Wallace got impatient, worrying about the vote. Then he just kept on sending people after you with no luck. The more desperate he got, the more unrestrained the attacks.”

  “Peter, tell me you didn’t,” Glenda begged, knowing he wouldn’t. “I can’t believe you would do something like this, make me into one of those...machines!”

  “No, Glen,” Simonton pleaded. “I never wanted some computer controlled robot of you. The most it would have been is some adjusting of your memories, you know, to...erase the mistakes I made with you—give us a fresh start.” He sat down next to Glenda and tried to touch her. She recoiled in odium.

  “I told him I wanted a real person—one who could grow and learn, and feel on its own,” he said. “I didn’t want to manipulate you, Glen. I wanted the real thing. But since I couldn’t have that I...” Simonton let go of the thought. He’d run dry of palpable excuses now and couldn't even bear to hear himself talk anymore. He sat down in abject shame.

/>   To his surprise, Xavier felt a stir of sympathy for Simonton. Imagine, a man so in love with a woman he couldn't have that he’d settle for a cheap copy of her. And for the rest of his life. He suddenly wondered if he would have ruled out the option of replicating Elana if he'd had it? What if he could bring Momma back? What if he could just talk to her again, have the chance to hug her, to say he was sorry? Didn’t he long for those opportunities?

  Xavier lowered the gun.

  Shit. Why did people like Simonton always get their shot first? Why did they always have a choice when everybody else just had to suffer with what fate had thrown at them? At least, until the price came down?

  “Please, forgive me, Glen,” Simonton said, welling with tears. “You were all I had left.”

  Glenda strained to touch him, but her hands protested so that they shook. “Peter, I...”

  “I think she can forgive you,” Xavier said, “on the condition that you start telling us everything...the whole truth.”

  Simonton looked bewildered. “What are you talking about? I just told you everything.”

  Xavier aimed his gun at Simonton’s temple. “Don’t lie to me again! You lie one more time and I’ll disintegrate your fuckin' brains!”

  Glenda was flabbergasted. She trusted Xavier, implicitly but this point of going off three-fourths cocked, without letting her in on it first, was becoming an annoying habit. “Xavier, what...”

  “He’s crazy, Glen!” Simonton said, ready to shit himself.

  Xavier rolled his finger over the gun's charger and it made that familiar little whirring noise. “I want the truth!”

  “What are you...?”

  Xavier fired a shot into the floor that left a football-sized crater in the reinforced screed.

  “Jesus!” Simonton shouted.

  “The truth, goddammit!” Xavier demanded. “Right now!”

  “Xavier, what are you doing?” Glenda asked him.

  Xavier reset the gun against Simonton's head. “You just accused a United States Senator of being a terrorist,” he said to Simonton. “The problem is that he wouldn’t be stupid enough to tell you that, just because you had similar political interests. There’s no way Beaumont would trust you with that information unless...” Xavier’s eyes flared and he moved the gun’s barrel, pressing it against Simonton’s glistening cheek. “Unless you were involved.”

  “Y...you’re crazy!” Simonton said.

  Xavier fired off another shot, this time, shattering a pallet in the corner. “The truth!”

  Simonton was locked in a violent tremble. “All right! All right! Jesus Christ, all right! I helped Beaumont finance the jobs through Thaddeus Maguire!”

  “Who?” Glenda asked, amazed there was more.

  “Thaddeus Maguire,” Xavier answered. “The little rich bitch who funded a bunch of Bio-eth terrorists. Supposedly, he even gave them inside information on his father’s rich competitors with high stakes in the biotechs...all just to piss off daddy.”

  “Beaumont had business and political ties with Maguire's father, Chad,” Simonton continued. “Though he may have found out about Thaddeus's involvement with the group through his contacts in the FBI. He may have even used those sources to keep the group's leader, some guy named Ross, from getting caught in the first place, I don't know. After the heat of Thaddeus Maguire's trial wore down, Beaumont decided to reactivate Ross, but he still needed sources of untraceable cash.”

  “And that’s when he came to you. Who better to ask for help than somebody who wanted to deal the biotechs out of the game more than he did? Then there's your obvious talent for laundering money. And I suppose with Beaumont being on the armed services committee, he could easily connect the lobbyists to the line items in any bill before it went up and he’d know where all the big checks were going.”

  “Who knew he was the only senator in the country who actually read the bills before they went to the floor. Now could you please point that thing somewhere else?”

  Xavier lowered the gun, but with a look that told Simonton to keep going or else.

  Simonton breathed a sigh of relief strong enough to blow over a fire-hydrant. “Beaumont drew up a list of the firms that were contracted, and then he sent it to me. I’d then send it off to Maguire along with the necessary funds that were needed for the job.”

  “After revising the list with a few Millenitech subsidiaries, I bet,” Xavier said.

  “Fat lot of good it did me,” Simonton replied. “I didn’t have enough time to put anything more than a dent in Wallace’s purse before it all fell apart. I was the only one who lost money on the deal.”

  “And when you thought you could make up the difference by ramrodding your labor force, somebody up the chain got a sudden attack of conscience and blew the whistle on your funny accounting practices.”

  “Fucking unions.”

  “Beaumont must’ve been awfully desperate to blow up a school.”

  “MIT was a mistake. No one was supposed to get killed. The last list he sent me had three Boston firms on it, all contracted by the D.O.D. All but one silently partnered with Millenitech, so I didn’t bother to add anything.”

  “They were all contributors to the recently finished lab, too, weren’t they?”

  “Yes. Thanks to Ross’s previous successes, they’d all beefed up their security, so Ross demanded more money for the job. Unfortunately for him, I had a company that was already losing money and a workforce that was just hours from a full-scale walkout. Ross didn’t want to wait for anything to change in his favor. He was desperate to make a hit that PHANTOM—that he—could take credit for. He wanted the biotechs to know that wherever their money went so did he. Beaumont was a fool to think he could control Ross.”

  Xavier shook his head. “You sure can pick ‘em,” he said to Glenda. “Your ex is a terrorist, and not even a good one.”

  “Peter,” Glenda sighed. She was positively exhausted from listening to the confession. She was right—she didn’t know who Peter Simonton was. She never did. The man she’d known had seen the world through a child’s eyes—generous, but scared, whimsical, but vulnerable, and constantly crying for attention. He was also successful and thirty years older. She could lovingly bestow all the TLC she wanted, yet, not worry about him making his way home at night. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

  “Look, we haven’t got a lot of time,” Xavier said, equally exhausted. “Deal or no deal, it’s obvious Wallace has changed his plans. That last odd couple back in Seattle tried to buck blast the lot of us. They weren’t just trying to pick off pieces.”

  “That’s why I came back,” Simonton said. “I’d heard the news about the dead cops and all. I knew Glen was in trouble. I knew Wallace had double-crossed me and I had to get her out of danger.” He strained to look at her. “I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me.” He took inventory of her expression. “Do you?”

  Glenda blinked. She was astounded he had the stones to ask.

  “No, Peter. I don’t hate you,” she said. She folded the damp bloodstained handkerchief in her lap. “I’m just extremely pissed at you.”

  “You have every right to be.”

  “I know,” she said sourly.

  “I just wanted to be with you, Glen. I love you.”

  Xavier’s blood curdled and he bit hard into his lip.

  Glenda shook her head. “Peter, you can't just turn around and declare your love, after you do something so...horribly unloving. My God, you’re responsible for the death of an innocent man. And your wife may have hated you, but to let her think you’re dead. And what about your daughter? She thinks she’s lost her father.”

  “Marcia couldn’t be happier,” Simonton said. “I had a seven-figure life insurance policy. And the last thing Amanda told me was that she wished I were never her father. She hasn’t spoken to me in four months. You really were all I had left, Glen. You were the only reason I could find to go on.”

  Glenda finally forced one of her hands
to cover Simonton's. The effort made it seem like she was trying to uproot a tree with one arm.

  Xavier just stood there, the gun at his side. He felt another twinge of sympathy for Simonton. No man could take that level of pity from the woman he loved and feel good about it. And that's exactly where Glenda's gesture had come from—not out of sympathy or loving understanding...but pity. Pure...unadulterated...pity.

  Chapter 52

  “Have they been chasing us, too?” Xavier asked Simonton. “Goddamn terrorists?”

  “What are you talking about?” Simonton replied. “What would they have to gain by hurting you? They’re not in league with Wallace.”

  Xavier's eyes narrowed. Simonton was probably right. Breaking bread with PHANTOM wouldn’t win Wallace any favor by a long shot. Still, the fact that a terrorist group, no matter how disorganized, was indirectly involved, only made things worse from any perspective.

  “What are we going to do?” Glenda asked, Xavier.

  Xavier just looked down his nose at Simonton. “What do you have on Beaumont?”

  “E-mails, money transfers, everything,” Simonton answered.

  “All of which incriminate you, too.”

  “I wasn’t planning on being around for the welcoming committee.”

  “What did you do with the evidence?”

  “I encrypted it onto two data-pins and placed them in a safe deposit box at the Federal Reserve downtown.”

  “Where’s the key?”

  Simonton sneered. “You don’t honestly expect me to tell you?”

  Xavier reached down and snatched the asshole by the top of the shirt, along with a few chest hairs for good measure. He had had enough of Peter Simonton.

  “I expect you to do exactly what you pampered rich pricks have always done,” Xavier fumed. “You’re going to cover your ass as well as you possibly can without the slightest consideration to what or whom you use to do it.” He bared his teeth like a rabid dog. “And right now, I am your cover. I am the only thing standing between you and Wallace. Not to mention the FBI, IRS, and a very long stay in a federal prison with a very horny cellmate.” He paused, letting the notion take hold on Simonton. “However, if that's all too subtle for you, you could always fall back on the fact that I could just shoot you in the head.”