Noah Wolf Box Set 4

by David Archer

  Noah shook his head. “Not here,” he said. “As soon as we finish breakfast, we’re headed over to MI6 HQ. You’ll be thoroughly briefed when we get there.”

  Jenny, who was sitting next to Sam, leaned over and whispered, “It’s all over the news, but they still want us to avoid talking about it in public.”

  Sam nodded, though he quietly shivered. Jenny scared him even worse than Noah did.

  Conversation was light while they ate, and they finished rather quickly. As soon as they were done, they headed out of the hotel and Marco invited Sam and Denny to ride with him and Renée in the Bentley. They slid into the back seat of the big car and sat back as Marco followed Noah out of the parking lot.

  “Try to relax a bit, Sam,” Marco said. “I know you had a rough time with us the last time, but we really do serve an actual purpose.”

  “I know that,” Sam said. “I just have trouble getting used to the idea that our government is involved in the assassination business. I spent most of my life believing the lie that we don’t do that sort of thing.”

  Marco chuckled. “Yeah, so did I, until I got into trouble. Next thing I knew, I was recruited into E & E and given a whole new name and identity.”

  “So it’s true, then?” Denny asked. “You really are professional assassins?”

  “Noah and Jenny are,” Marco said. “The rest of us are support personnel. I’m actually listed on the roster as a ‘thug,’ which is the name they assign to the backup man. We do what Noah tells us, so that he and Jenny can do what they have to do.”

  Denny grinned and looked at Sam. “Interesting friends you have, mate,” he said. The look Sam gave him made him grin even harder.

  The ride lasted nearly half an hour, but finally they pulled up in Vauxhall Cross. They all climbed out of the cars and followed Noah inside, and a young woman stood there waiting. Sam and Denny were given temporary IDs, just as Noah and his team had been, and then they were escorted up to the conference room.

  Catherine Potts was seated at the table and looked up with a smile as they entered. She got to her feet and extended a hand.

  “Mr. Prichard, I presume? Thank you so much for agreeing to come and help.” Then she turned and looked at Denny. “I was genuinely surprised when I heard you were coming along. How long has it been, Dennis?”

  “About three years, I think,” he said. “How have you been, Catherine?” To Sam’s surprise, he took hold of her hand and bent over it, letting his lips brush it gently.

  “Well, heartbroken for the first few weeks,” she said. “You could’ve given me some warning that you were leaving, you know.”

  “It was a sudden decision,” Denny said. “I’m sorry if I left you in a bad way.”

  “All water under the bridge now. The situation we have now is far too serious to let past grievances interfere. Please be seated, and we shall begin the briefing.”

  She quickly made introductions, and then Albert took the floor. In clear, succinct tones, he described the situation as far as they knew it. Sam and Denny were brought up to speed on the nature of the poison, and they began discussing the fact that only a biochemist could have created it. Neil and Angeline added to the conversation several times, each of them contributing what they had learned or deduced, but the majority of the talking was done by Albert.

  “All right,” Sam said when the briefing was over. “So, somewhere out there is a biochemist who is either ready to become a mass murderer on his own, or has provided this deadly protein to some bad actors. It’s possible he’s doing this for his own motives, or he could be doing it under duress. Do we have any intel related to biochemists who have either gone missing or been acting strangely?”

  “Not just yet,” Albert said. “Mr. Blessing had said last night that he was planning to start researching those very points this morning.” He turned to Neil. “Are you ready to begin, sir?”

  Neil picked up the laptop that was sitting on the floor beside him and set it on the table. “I actually already got started,” he said. “Last night in my room, I started setting up a program with a search algorithm that I believe will be helpful. I let it run through the night, and I’ve already got several dozen results. I just haven’t had time to look at them yet.”

  He opened the computer and powered it on, and a moment later he was looking at a series of links on his monitor.

  “Most of these are not here in the U.K.,” he said, “because I set the parameters to run worldwide. We know from past experience that terror organizations don’t care where they recruit somebody from. I also set it up to look for any sign that these people have been acting in an unusual way. As Mr. Prichard said, we have to consider the possibility that one of them might have been blackmailed into creating this protein. People under stress tend to act out, to seem different to those around them. I told the program to look for their social media profiles and scan for any comments their friends might have made about them acting differently.” He started clicking links and looking at the results, occasionally shaking his head. The rest of them sat quietly as he scanned through what the program had found, and Sam couldn’t help thinking about Indie and Herman.

  “Okay, some of these people I can eliminate, just because the things that triggered my search program are the sort of things that naturally cause stress. A couple of them were moving at the time, another one was having a baby, and several were going through divorce. Things have gone back to normal, so it’s highly unlikely that they are having any guilty feelings about their creation killing people in the U.K.”

  “And the others?” Albert asked.

  “There are four biochemists who have disappeared in the past few months,” Neil said. “Those are certainly worth looking into, but I’ve got a few more who might actually fit the bill just as well. Jason Willingham, Bridget Streeter and Martin Embry are all biochemists within the U.K. who have been terminated within the last six months, and each of them has been very vocal about feeling they had gotten the shaft. Willingham was fired because he’s posted a lot of things that would be called anti-government back home. Bridget Streeter, she’s got a lawsuit pending against her former employers because she claims they stole some of her work, something about a protein that attacks particular cancer cells.” He looked up. “I don’t suppose any of the victims have been employees of pharmaceutical companies?”

  “No,” Albert said. “About half of them have been unemployed, and the rest were just your average citizens.”

  “Okay, good. If it was one of those two, I would expect at least one of the victims to have been connected to one of their former employers. This last one, though, Martin Embry, he’s kind of interesting. He was employed by Forestall Pharmaceuticals, and was fired for conducting unauthorized research, but there’s nothing that describes what type of research he was doing. To be honest, it almost looks like it was covered up. I think he bears looking into.” He looked up at Sam. “Would you agree, sir?”

  “Absolutely,” Sam said. “In fact, I’d like to talk to his employers myself.”

  “All right,” Noah said. “And we’ll start looking at the physical evidence. Neil is pretty good at that sort of thing, so we’ll see what he can come up with.”

  EIGHT

  A courier had arrived with the letter and photos received by Scotland Yard, and Albert showed Noah, Neil and the others the way to the computer lab. Neil broke into a grin when he saw the high-resolution scanner, and immediately set up his computer to connect to it.

  The letter and photos had already been neutralized, immersed in a solution that broke down the protein and rendered it harmless. It had been dried, and the ink was just as clear as it had originally been. The photos showed two women and a man, and had been printed on plain paper. The note, on the other hand, had been handwritten. In neat, precise, block letters, it said:

  There is nothing you can do to stop me. To prove this point, I shall kill the three people shown in these photographs within the next twenty-four hours. You may try t
o prevent their deaths, but you will not succeed.

  “Cocky bastard,” Albert said. “Scotland Yard ran the photos through facial recognition as soon as they were neutralized, but without result. They may well be foreigners, people who have never been added to our own database.”

  “And yet,” Charlie said, “he is challenging us to stop him by giving us their photos. There must be some way we can identify them, wouldn’t you think?”

  “We haven’t found it yet,” Albert said. “All we can do is hope to find a new clue as to their identities.”

  Neil was looking at the letter and the photos as they laid them on the desk in front of him. “The police already scanned for prints on all of the items,” he said, as Noah leaned over to watch him closely, “and tested it for any sign of DNA, but didn't find either one. What they didn't do is scan it for any type of microscopic residue on the paper or photos, so I'm gonna try that now.”

  “Microscopic residue?” Albert asked. “Have you a microscope hidden away, then?”

  Neil grinned, pointing at the scanner. “Yeah, an electronic one. This scanner of yours is capable of resolutions at almost twenty thousand dots per inch, which means it can serve as a pretty decent electron microscope. If we can find any kind of environmental residues, it might give us a clue about where the note and photos were put into the envelope.”

  Angeline nodded. “Of course,” she said. “For instance, should he find some sort of industrial residue, dust or something along that line, it could indicate that the perpetrator lives near a factory.”

  “Exactly,” Neil said. “I'm hoping to spot something that might be relatively exclusive to an area, like that, but that’s the general idea.” He carefully took the note and placed it on the scanner, then closed the cover. “Let's see what we find.”

  The scanner began to hum, and a moment later, the screen on Neil's computer began to form an image of the page. As soon as it was complete, Neil zoomed in on the upper left corner to the point that they could see the actual fibers in the paper.

  “This is awesome,” he said. “Look at that, it’s like diving into an atomic size universe.” He slowly began moving the image to the left, across the screen, and then stopped. “We’ve got a lot of dust on this thing,” he said. “What I’m seeing right now is mostly common house dust, which is made up primarily of dead skin flakes. People and animals are constantly losing them, and if you take a look at the dust in a beam of sunlight, most of it is nothing but dead skin.”

  “Then why didn’t they find any DNA?” Albert asked. “Wouldn’t dead skin have DNA in it?”

  “In humans,” Angeline said, “skin cells are dead by the time they get to the surface of the skin. They start out as normal skin cells in the lower layers, and then gradually migrate toward the surface. Along the way, they die and end up losing most of their biological characteristics. Their nucleus is degraded and the cells fill up with keratohyalin, which dehydrates them, so by the time they make it to the outer surface and fall off to become dust, they’re basically nothing but tiny little blocks of keratin. It might be possible to draw DNA out of them, but most forensic scientists think it highly unlikely.”

  Everyone in the room had turned to stare at her during the explanation, but nobody spoke. After a moment, she simply shrugged. “I read it in a forensics journal,” she said.

  “At least somebody knew the answers,” Albert said. “All right, so this dust doesn’t really tell us anything?”

  “Not yet,” Neil said, “but let’s keep going.” He continued moving the image around, and stopped again after a couple of moments.

  There was a tiny, bright red spot on the paper. It would’ve been invisible to the naked eye, but the extreme magnification afforded by the scanner had given it the appearance of a small piece of fine, red cloth.

  “If I’m not mistaken,” Neil said, “this is a tiny little piece of a flower petal. The red makes me think of a rose, but I know there are other red flowers. If we can identify what type it is, it’s possible we could use it to determine at least a general area. Do you folks have anybody who can isolate it and try to do that?”

  “Of course,” Angeline said. “The biologics lab can do that. When we’ve done here, I should think we should send it there.”

  Neil didn’t find anything else of interest on the letter, so he turned to the photographs. He removed the letter from the scanner and put the first of the photos inside, and waited for it to fully appear on his monitor.

  The people in the photos were basically nondescript, average folks with no obviously distinguishing features. Neil moved the photo around on the screen, looking at every spot and imperfection on it, trying to identify each one and get a sense of where it might have come from.

  “Most of these are nothing but more specks of dust, of course,” he said. “These photos were printed with a decent quality photo printer, but there’s no way to identify a specific model or type. I don’t see any sign that the photos have been edited at all, which is good. Let’s get back to trying to identify the victims. What database did you run them through?”

  Albert looked at him. “The U.K. maintains its own government database,” he said. “All U.K. drivers licenses have photos, and nearly everyone in the U.K. carries some form of government issued photo ID, so it’s actually rather extensive.”

  Neil looked closely at the photos and then raised his eyes back up to Albert. “Anybody run them against Facebook?”

  Albert blinked. “The social media website? We can’t get into their photo database.”

  Neil grinned. “I can,” he said. He scanned the other two photos quickly, then opened a program on his computer. A moment later, photos began cycling on the monitor at a rate too fast for the human eye to see. “This is going to take a little time,” Neil said, “but it’s probably our best shot.”

  * * * * *

  Sam and Denny had left immediately after the initial meeting, taking a car provided by Albert. Sam put the address for Forestall Pharmaceuticals into his phone’s navigation app, and Denny followed the directions as he drove. It took them almost an hour to get all the way across the city and into the industrial area where the company’s network was located.

  Denny parked the car in the visitors space near the front door and he and Sam walked across the nicely appointed courtyard toward the front doors. A receptionist inside looked up and smiled.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said. “How may I assist you today?”

  Both of them held out the ID cases they had been given. “My name is Sam Prichard, and I’m working with MI6. I’d like to speak to someone about a former employee of yours, Martin Embry.”

  The receptionist’s eyes seemed to widen slightly, but the smile never left her face. “Certainly,” she said. “You shall need to speak with Mr. Murphy, our personnel manager. If you’ll wait just one moment, please.” She picked up the phone and pushed a couple of buttons, then said, “Mr. Murphy, there are two gentlemen from MI6 here to speak with you. It concerns Martin Embry.” She listened for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said, and then hung up the phone.

  She looked up at Sam. “If you would have a seat, gentlemen, Mr. Murphy will come for you in just a few moments.”

  Sam thanked her, and they sat in a couple of chairs in the lobby. They only had to wait for about a minute and a half, and then a man came out of the elevator and walked directly toward them.

  “I’m Jared Murphy,” he said. “I believe you were waiting for me?”

  Once again they held out their IDs. “Yes, thank you,” Sam said. “We’d like to speak to you about a former employee, Martin Embry.”

  Murphy glanced at the IDs, then looked at their faces. “Yes, of course,” he said. “If you will come with me, please?”

  He led them back into the elevator and they rode up one floor. As soon as the doors opened, Murphy stepped directly across the hall and opened a door into what looked like a small conference room. They followed him in, and he
invited them to take seats at the table while he took one for himself.

  “Now,” he said, “how can I assist the SIS?”

  “You’ve undoubtedly heard about the mysterious poisonings taking place around the city,” Sam said, and the man nodded. “It turns out that the poison is actually a protein, one that has been engineered specifically to destroy the membrane of red blood cells. From what we’ve been told, it multiplies itself very rapidly, and exposure to it is fatal within no more than fifteen minutes. Since a protein of that nature could only have been developed by a biochemist, we’re looking into anyone in the field who might have any sort of grievance or agenda. In a routine search of biochemists, we found that Mr. Embry had been terminated for conducting unauthorized research, but there was no information as to what type of research it was he was doing. Can you enlighten us?”

  Murphy scowled. “I suspected I was going to be hearing from someone about him,” he said. “Martin Embry is a brilliant scientist, but he is one of the worst people in the world for cooperating with the team. His department was assigned research based on developing a neurochemical treatment for dementia, but he had other ideas he wanted to explore. One of them, I’m sorry to say, was the idea of proteins that will attack certain types of cells, to eliminate disease. He was absolutely certain he could devise a protein that would disrupt the formation of amyloid plaques. If he truly could, that would certainly make him a saviour to many, many people, but our top people say it’s impossible. For that reason, he was told to abandon his own projects and stick to what he was assigned to do.”

  Sam and Denny glanced at each other and then turned back to Murphy.

  “And why did that result in his termination?” Sam asked. “Was there some sort of specific problem involved?”

  Murphy blinked. “Well, yes,” he said. “Proteins are part of the building blocks of life. While there are certainly proteins in nature that have destructive effects on certain tissues, engineering one for the purpose carries a great number of risks. Testing, for example, is done first in controlled laboratory settings, in a petri dish, for instance. A protein that attacks exactly the right cells in a petri dish may look like a success, but when introduced to a living body, it could easily attack other cells. There is certainly no way to have every type of living cell in a petri dish, in order to determine whether the protein might have deleterious effects on others, other than the one it is intended to attack. He had proposed several times that we allow his research to involve both animal and human testing, and his request was always denied. When we learned that he was proceeding with it on his own, utilizing corporate laboratory time and equipment, that was essentially the last straw. He was let go, and as part of the severance agreement, we promised not to publicize the reason for his dismissal.”