by Jason Briggs
“Yeah,” was all I replied.
When she was done at the sink, she pulled back the covers on her bed and slipped beneath them. I brushed my teeth and turned off the lights, I got into my bed and
Her voice finally broke the silence. “Who do you think is behind all this?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. But I sure as hell am going to find out.”
Her next words were hardly a whisper. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“Get some sleep,” I said. “Chances are we’ve got another long day tomorrow.”
Chapter Seventeen
The morning came quickly, with a couple of kids running past our room waking me just after eight o’clock. I typically get up with the sun, but I obviously needed the rest. I’d slept like a rock and woke up with both my mind and body refreshed. I left the relative comfort of my bed and stepped into a cold shower, letting the icy water roll down my neck and back as I contemplated the day ahead.
I was in the rare position of not knowing where to turn. Peterson had provided the bare bones, but someone was highly motivated to keep us from discovering what was really going on, and that made me think that the truth was far worse than we could think. I knew that a drug or medicine had been developed by a scientist working for the federal government. I knew that the scientist had probably made a deal that would allow him to profit handsomely from his discoveries and had taken the recipe and the patent to one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the United States. But that didn’t explain what that drug was or who all the people might be who stood to profit from it.
I felt like a blind dog trying to uncover a scent while still chained up in the backyard.
Even so, I had a plan.
I turned off the water, toweled off, and got dressed. When I opened the bathroom door, Charlotte was already dressed and had removed her belongings from the dresser to a plastic bag branded with the motel’s logo.
“Morning,” she said. “How’d you sleep?”
“Well, thanks. You?”
She shrugged. “I’ve had better. What are we doing this morning?”
“I want to go back to Pursuant and see if I can turn up anything. Your dad had to have left some kind of bread crumbs, somewhere.” I brushed my teeth, combed my hair, and after grabbing my gun off the nightstand and my bag off the lounge chair, we took our leave of the room. I drove us around to the front and turned in the key to the front desk. When I returned to the car, Charlotte was just ending a phone call.
“That was the detective in Miami,” Charlotte said. “Tina Cox. She said they don’t have Dad’s laptop. She also said they don’t have anything else to share with me at this time.” The way she formed the last few words served to show her discontent.
I remembered what Kathleen had said about Detective Cox, how Cox had been ordered to continue with a quick but thorough investigation, before publicly announcing that there was no indication of foul play and ruling it an accident. I hadn't received an email or phone call from Cox yet and could only conclude that, as yet, she really hadn’t found anything that could help me.
I pulled away from the motel and back into the main street. “What do you want for breakfast?” I asked.
“I’m not all that hungry. But I could definitely go for some coffee.” Her phone was lying in her lap. It rang and she snatched it up. “Hello?” She listened to the caller speak for half a minute. “Hold on,” she said and then put the call on speaker. “Please continue. I’ve got you on speakerphone. I want someone else to hear this too.”
The voice on the other end was laced with a French accent. “Ah, Miss Charlotte, I would prefer that only you have this information directly. It is of… a very sensitive nature.”
“I’m with a man who was good friends with my father, Ryan Savage. He was friends with my father and saved my life last night. Twice, in fact.”
I cringed when she said my name. I had no idea who she was speaking with or what he wanted.
“Saved your life?” the man said.
“I went to the office as soon as I got back into town last night. A man came in with a gun and asked me where Dad’s laptop was. He almost killed me. Had Ryan not showed up, he would have.”
“Charlotte, I am so sorry. You said twice? He saved your life twice?”
“Another man chased us down in the car. But...you said you have Dad’s laptop?”
My ears perked. The light ahead turned red, and I slowed the car to a stop.
“Yes. He gave it to me the night of the party.”
“How did you know him?” she asked.
“He called me the day before and said he would be coming to Miami for a party. He asked me to meet him at the hotel so he could give me his laptop.”
Charlotte looked at over at me. The light turned green, and I gave the car some gas. “Why?” she said into the phone.
“He hired me to examine some information on it. The files were encrypted and could not be properly transferred to an external drive.”
“Hired you? What is it that you do?”
“I would prefer not to say over the phone. Can we meet? My office is in Miami. I’m sorry. I would have called before you returned to D.C., but we just finished analyzing the information on his computer.”
Charlotte looked to me, unsure of how to answer. “You’ll have to forgive me if we’re a little skeptical,” I said. “And I didn’t get your name.”
“I am Jacques Tissot. I am the president of GRM, an independent research lab.”
“How do we know you didn’t just steal the laptop?”
“Of course. Mr. McCleary called me the day he died. We texted several times as well. I can take some screenshots of the texts and send them to you if you like.”
“Please,” I said. “And send your address, too.”
“Yes. I will do that as soon as we hang up.”
“Jacques,” I said. “I’m a federal agent with Homeland Security. I’m going to inform my team that we’re coming to meet with you. Should anything happen to us while we’re there, or soon after, you’ll be a prime suspect.”
There was silence for a few seconds. “I do understand. Please know that we had nothing to do with Mr. McCleary’s death. I think everything will begin to make sense for you after we speak.”
“I’ll have Charlotte let you know when we arrive back in Miami today and provide you with an ETA to your offices.”
“Very good.”
Charlotte hung up. “What do you think they’re researching?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say it was whatever information Douglas Peterson gave your father.”
I stopped at a McDonald’s and Charlotte went inside and ordered us breakfast while I called Kathleen, filling her in on the conversation with Jacques Tissot. “So tell me I’m not flying coach back to Miami,” I finished.
“Get to Washington Executive Airport,” she said. “I’ll have a plane there for you in half an hour. And Ryan?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to put Brad on this with you. I don’t want any more dead bodies. Maybe if the two of you team up, you can get this wrapped up faster. He’s down in Key West right now, but connect with him on it when you’re down in Miami.”
The passenger door opened just as I hung up and Charlotte got in clutching a paper bag full of food. “I thought you said you weren’t hungry?” I said. “You could feed a small squad with all that.”
She gave me a sheepish smile. “I tend to buy stuff when I’m nervous.” She plucked a breakfast biscuit from the bag and handed it to me, then placed a cup of coffee in my cup holder. “Oh, Jacques sent over the texts he had with Dad. Here.” She held the phone out to me.
I scrolled through them. They were a typical text string between two men looking to do business. It seemed like they had already spoken over the phone prior to messaging. The context was vague, not easy to understand for anyone without proper context. I gave the phone back.
“Satisfied?” she aske
d.
“For now. But I’m still going in with both eyes open.” I turned south onto Route 29, and the wind whipped around my face as I cruised at the posted forty-miles-per-hour and ate my breakfast.
“Where are we going?” Charlotte asked.
Chapter Eighteen
Washington Executive Airport is a public use, single-runway airport half an hour south of D.C. When I turned in, a Challenger 650 was already waiting with its engines running and the airstairs down.
I turned into a parking space, exited the car, and grabbed my belongings. I went inside the airport office, handed them my keys and asked if they had a spare bag that a passenger may have left behind. They were happy to hand over a well-used but clean leather bag with two metal clasps. I thanked them and brought it back to Charlotte, and she used it to quickly bag up all her belongings. She shut the trunk when she was done. “What about the rental car?” she asked.
“Someone will come pick it up. Let’s go.” I led the way across the runway and up the stairs. The pilot greeted us and waited until we were safely into the cabin before raising the stairs and returning to the cockpit.
Charlotte's eyes widened as she made her way farther in. It was a beautiful aircraft, with a wide cabin featuring dark polished wood set against the creamy beige of the leather seats. The spacious galley included an oven, microwave, sink, and a wardrobe for personal items. Executive seats featured 180°-swivel and reclining. Forward and aft bulkhead TVs offered access to every channel under the sun. The aircraft could easily fit ten passengers and since it was just the two of us, it felt all the roomier.
Charlotte set her bag down and turned to me with a twinkle in her eye. “You said you worked for Homeland? Any openings?”
I smiled. “This isn’t my standard means of travel. I had to fly coach on the way up here.” The truth was, the FID was funded by auditing wasteful projects throughout a dozen other agencies. Literally billions of dollars were misallocated or misused and budgets were shrunk elsewhere to give us the resources we needed without adding an additional burden to the taxpayer.
“Coach? Well, poor you.” She took a seat and ran her fingertips across the supple leather. “Fancy.”
“The bar is behind you if you want a drink. Help yourself.”
I took a seat across from her and laid my chair back. The wheels were hardly off the ground when I closed my eyes and sleep took me with ease.
It was just prior to 1:00 PM when we touched down in Miami. A taxi was waiting for us and took Charlotte and me to the public parking garage where we loaded into my truck and set off for North Miami Beach.
The GRM offices were in a new two-story glass building that ran over fifty yards down the edge of Maule Lake. You could still see the lines in the grass from where the sod had been laid only weeks before, and the inside smelled like new construction: sheetrock, fresh paint, and lumber.
An enormous chandelier hung from a beam at the roof and down into the lobby’s atrium. A wide, open staircase led to the second floor. Whatever GRM did, they were clearly experiencing success.
I approached the receptionist’s desk. The young lady was talking with someone through a Bluetooth earpiece and she smiled at me as she raised a finger for me to wait. I grabbed a glossy brochure on the counter and flipped through it as I waited. It seemed that GRM catered to organizations with plump research budgets.
“Thank you for waiting,” the receptionist said. “How may I help you?”
I set the brochure back down. “I’m Ryan Savage. Charlotte McCleary and I are here to see Mr. Tissot.”
“I’ll let him know you’re here,” she smiled. “Can I get you something to drink while you wait?”
“We’re fine, thank you.” I informed her of our names and she said that Jacques would be with us shortly.
We heard the click of shoes across the wood floor, and a man appeared from an adjacent hallway and started to make his way across the atrium. It was one of the men I had seen on the rooftop speaking with McCleary—the one I had pegged as French or Italian. He was dressed as well as he had been the night of the party, tailored suit, silk tie, and a matching pocket square. His black hair had a wet look, hung loosely over his ears and stopped before it reached his shoulders. His sharp nose seemed too long for his face and his eyes were a deep green. He smiled as he approached, “Hello, I am Jacques Tissot.” He extended his hand to me, and then to Charlotte. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “How was your flight?”
“Fine,” I said.
He reached out and lightly touched Charlotte’s arm. “I’m very sorry about your father, Charlotte. It’s a terrible thing.”
“Yes,” she said, “Thank you. It is.”
“Well, please, follow me. I am sure you have many questions, and I am eager to share with you what we found.”
Charlotte stepped in beside me as he led us up the stairs.
“How long ago did you move into this building?” I asked.
“Just four months ago. We were at a smaller location up in Fort Lauderdale for many years, but last year we landed a long term contract with one of the largest hospital networks in the southwest and had enough capital to expand.”
“What exactly does GRM do?” Charlotte asked.
We turned into a second-story conference room that overlooked the lake. A couple of kayakers were paddling over the water and beyond them, a small boy was sitting on a dock with a line in the water. His legs were dangling back-and-forth as he waited patiently for a bite.
Tissot extended a hand toward a couple of high-backed conference room chairs at the end of a long table. “Please, have a seat.” He selected a chair opposite for himself.
“When a research lab,” he began, “is tied to a large university for funding, or one specific government agency, then politics and differing agendas can often get in the way of innovation. GRM has privatized research, which allows our scientists the freedom to pursue research that might be considered unfundable by a risk-averse research council. Our clients are as wide-ranging as the United Nations and large foundations looking for flexible and efficient means to improve the soil conditions in third-world countries or the effectiveness of vaccines for ailments that affect those same regions—things like malaria, HIV, and respiratory diseases.”
“How did my father come across GRM?” Charlotte asked.
“To be quite honest, I do not know. We do have a small department that caters to the general public. It typically caters to lawyers whose cases are in need of independent testing or verification.”
Tissot was interrupted by another man entering the room. I recognized him at once as the other man on the rooftop, the one who had worn a frumpy suit and unkempt hair. Now he wore khaki pants and a polo shirt beneath a white lab coat. A file folder was tucked beneath his arm. His hair still looked as though he had burned his combs.
“Ryan and Charlotte,” Tissot said, “let me introduce you to Dr. Edward Nance.”
I stood, reached across the table, and shook his hand. Charlotte did as well, and we took our seats again. Dr. Nance looked a mixture of excitement and concern. He smiled quickly at us and murmured a hello before grabbing a remote from the table and pointing it at a TV mounted on the wall at the end of the table. We swiveled in our chairs to get a better view.
“Dr. Nance is one of our leading researchers,” Tissot offered as the TV came on. “He has degrees from Johns Hopkins and MIT. Initially, I had put one of our junior researchers on analyzing the data that was on your father’s laptop. But once we began to understand what we were looking at, I moved the project over to Dr. Nance.”
“So what did you find?” Charlotte asked.
“Okay,” Nance began. “So I received the laptop late yesterday morning, and it took me several hours to work through the science inherent in the data.” Nance shook his head as though he were dumbfounded. “What Mr. McCleary had on there is utterly striking.” Nance pressed a button on the remote and a mathematical formula appeared. The bottom part of it was
circled. I never had been much of a math guy so it was all Greek to me. He switched to another image: the title page for a research paper. The next slide was a second formula that seemed to be setting forth proofs for whatever science was being laid out. Nance set the remote down and turned to us. “I don’t expect you to understand all that,” he said, “but I wanted to show it to you because it’s absolutely incredible. What we have here is the ability to manipulate the amygdala—that’s the part of the brain that processes your emotions—while controlling serotonin levels and providing a cognitive uplift. At least, in theory.”
Tissot smiled at his eager scientist. “What Dr. Nance is trying to say is that this could rid humans of depression while at the same time greatly enhancing our mental functions. Each area of our brain is always functioning, but only at about fifteen percent of its capacity. This formula, should it prove itself, could allow us to double our cognitive processing while keeping our emotions from interfering.”
“Of course,” Nance said, “there would have to be years of tests and trials, but the foundation is there. This… this is huge. It could have literally thousands of applications from how effective we are on a daily basis, to the way we respond to trauma and the lingering effects of depression.”
A middle-aged lady in a business suit rapped lightly on the door and poked her head in. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, looking at Tissot, “but you have an urgent phone call.” Tissot stood up and excused himself, promising to return promptly.
I looked to Dr. Nance. “Are there names of any scientists associated with this data?”
The question sent a frustrated look into his face. “No. And that’s the strange thing. I don’t know if Mr. McCleary had an early edition of the research, but there are no names on any of this. Just the research itself.”