At ten yards out, he saw that his brother’s jaw was already shuddering as he treaded water. “Are you okay?” he yelled. Johnny only nodded. A bad sign.
Lane had to be careful. He had no experience controlling the boat, and he’d lose precious time if he overshot. He lined the boat up to intercept Johnny on the starboard side, and pulled the throttle all the way back. He desperately scanned the craft’s interior. No ropes, no life jackets, nothing of any use.
Johnny was coming up fast. He had to act. He might not get another chance. In a moment of blind inspiration, he leaned over the edge and locked his left leg into the spoke and column of the steering wheel. His arms reached the water just as Johnny came sliding slowly along the side of the hull. He plunged his hands into the freezing water, shot them under Johnny’s armpits, and clasped them together on his brother’s chest.
“I’m cold,” Johnny declared softly. “Jesus, I’m cold.”
“I know you’re cold,” Lane said. “But you gotta help me. I’m going to twist you around, and you have to reach up and grab the side. You got that?”
“I’m cold,” Johnny repeated. “I’m really cold.”
“Yeah, if you don’t do what I just told you, you’re also going to be dead. Here we go.” Lane twisted his torso as far as he could without losing his foot lock through the steering wheel. “Do it.”
His nose was just inches from the back of Johnny’s head. His brother’s arms remained limp in his grasp. “Do it!”
Johnny’s right arm came up, grabbed the topside, and held fast.
From that point on, it was a clumsy struggle, but a manageable one. The boat tipped to port under their combined weight, but that made Johnny’s crawl to safety somewhat easier. Once he tumbled into the interior, they both sank into mute exhaustion.
The big outboard engine burbled along merrily at idle, as if nothing had happened, nothing at all.
Lane blew up halfway back to the boathouse. “What the fuck did you do that for? What the fuck were you thinking? You didn’t know shit about this boat, and you took off like a fucking maniac! What the hell were you thinking? Are you crazy? What’s going on with you?”
The answer would play out over the years to come. The euphoric highs, the paralyzing lows. But not today. Johnny’s eyes gleamed and he went into that avian thrust with his head.
“I’m fine. I’m even better than fine.”
They reached the boathouse with Lane at the wheel. They both surveyed the Simmons house and driveway up above, but it looked clear. Lane sighed. It was their first break since this whole horrible business started. He gingerly maneuvered in through the open doors, which Johnny closed while Lane secured the boat to the mooring cleats. They climbed out into the semidarkness broken only by the softly lapping water. Lane led the way outside onto the dock, and Johnny stopped to secure the padlock. “Just like new,” he said, as if that somehow fixed everything. Lane refrained from comment. They started down the dock.
They were a couple of paces from the end when Old Man Simmons stepped out from behind the back of the boathouse.
They froze in terror. Simmons wore his perennial Hawaiian shirt, with a pattern resembling burning embers fanned by a breeze from the depths of hell. His burly arms hung in a cloud of gray hair and his pale eyes bore down on them with no trace of compassion, empathy, or pity. He let the silence nearly suffocate them before he spoke in a snarly rasp.
“You’re gonna do exactly what I tell you.”
Exactly what ripped three weeks out of the twilight of their adolescence. Under the sun of late summer, they chipped, scraped, sanded, and painted the boathouse and then put on a new roof, one shingle at a time. Their parents thought it was a paying job, but of course it was nothing of the sort. They served as a de facto work crew on a penal site that had also served as the scene of the crime.
They seldom spoke during the exercise. Hours would pass without a word. Johnny threw himself into the work. His brush glided back and forth with an incessant rhythm. His head would begin to bob in time with the brush strokes.
Lane consoled himself with an internal justice. His rescue of Johnny absolved him of any guilt. Had he not gone along, his brother would most likely have drowned. Sometimes, he paused and looked over at the beachfront next door, the site of their cabin. It had just been sold, to someone from a software start-up that had just gone public, someone looking for a little timeless charm.
The pilings of the old dock marched out, one pair at a time, into the chilly waters. A white encrustation of barnacles marked the high-water point on their circumference.
The planking they once supported had vanished entirely.
In Johnny’s lab, Lane scans the rest of the cubicle wall. No other artifacts of humanity. No kids, dogs, girlfriends, wives, uncles, or buddies. Only charts, diagrams, spreadsheet printouts, and presentation graphics. One of the graphics catches his eye, the only comprehensible document of the bunch. It’s the first slide of a progress report of some kind, and it addresses the Institute for the Study of Genetic Disorders. It includes six bullet points that delve into technical arcana. Lane moves closer and checks the date in the slide’s bottom right corner. It’s only a few weeks old. It appears that the Institute holds Johnny’s current research contract, and that he’s giving them an update.
Lane had never paid much attention to the organizations that Johnny worked with. They came and went, and after a while he’d lost track. Bio this and bio that. Lots of gens and more than a few zymes. But, obviously, this one deserves a closer look.
He looks at the photo again, at the beach and sky. Both boys seem so happy. Could he ever be that happy again? He removes the picture, puts it in his pocket, and leaves.
“I had a hit today on one of your plane victims.”
“Really? Which one?”
“Anslow. John Anslow.”
“And who was asking?”
“His brother, Lane Anslow. He’s a contract cop. I couldn’t just blow him off.”
“I understand. So tell me this: Have you managed to identify Dr. Anslow’s remains?”
“It’s a real mess out here, Mr. Khan. I doubt that we’ll ever identify Dr. Anslow.”
“That’s too bad. I’m sure you’re doing your professional best.”
“Yes, we are.”
“And I’m sure you will continue to do your professional best.”
“Absolutely. You can count on it.”
“Well, goodbye then.” Arjun hangs up. So now they may have a competitor in their search for Dr. John Anslow. But the incident seems a minor nuisance compared to what he sees on the CT scan up on the big display on his office wall. The cancer has metastasized. He’s not a radiologist, but his powers of professional observation are extremely keen, built up over many years in the medical industry. The originating tumor is plainly visible in the left lung, and now new growths have popped up in the opposite lung, the colon, and various lymph nodes.
Arjun is Hindu, if anything at all. The tumors could be construed as the forces of the god Yama, who prepares to command them in a final assault. He gets up from his desk and looks down the long corridor at the numbered doors of the subject bays.
Yama, the lord of death, will soon pay a deadly and unexpected visit to this place.
***
Harlan Green is an asshole. Harlan Green is a job.
Rachel Heinz idly speculates on the relationship between these two facts as she sprawls on the couch in her apartment and cycles through the Feed looking for political news, however slanted, corrupted, or misdirected it may be. Like most political professionals, she is once and always a political junkie as well. She watches politicians from local council members to the president of the United States with the same practiced eye. She compulsively analyzes their words, delivery, gestures, messaging, and subtext. She always spots the flaws and the fixes, regardless of ideology.
In some ways, the Street Party is an ideal home for Rachel because she grew up very close to the street. H
er adolescence featured a long-gone dad and alcoholic mother. But while other disadvantaged girls turned to sex as a weapon, she saw a much larger battlefield. Politics was power writ large, and she intuitively understood this. She stayed in school, she worked on campaigns, she studied the issues, and she came to understand the intricate web of relationships that formed the essence of the political milieu. But she kept her personal ambitions to herself: First, a seat on the city council, then state rep, then the U.S. Congress. Then, who knew what?
But before college, the incident intervened. She knew she needed a degree, but had no financial aid. With student loans already a relic of the distant past, she worked long hours while pursuing a degree in political science. If she excelled, maybe she had a shot at a grant and an advanced degree. But employment was hard to come by for a young woman with no social leverage, and she had to take whatever she could get. She wound up working nights as a “model,” where she performed for men of means who peeped in at her through a small glass window. Then, one night, the police showed up. Someone hadn’t paid off someone, and the place was going down, and Rachel’s dreams of higher office along with it. She served no time, but it didn’t matter. The conviction was there, waiting for any inquisitive future journalists to dig up and fling out over the Feed.
She finished school and decided to stay in the game, even if she had to play from the sidelines. She started as an intern on the mayor’s staff and quickly ascended. Then along came Harlan and the Street Party. She recognized his potential long before others did. Working with him gave her a shot at the national stage. She quickly signed on.
While Harlan’s politics didn’t quite synchronize with hers, they were close enough. And she resonated with his personal ascendancy from the lower strata of American life. Still, she was immune to his charisma, and he seemed to value her distance. A sycophantic chief of staff was a liability.
The early days were the good days, but now they were long gone. As Harlan gradually consolidated his power, he had canonized himself. He became a higher court, a court of no appeal. He was astute enough to conceal this monstrous conceit from his followers, but in private, the symptoms were all too apparent. History had witnessed them countless times in others of his disposition. Angry outbursts, paranoia, insufferable vanity, and capricious cruelty.
She sighs and shifts her weight on the couch. A window pops up on top of the Feed and interrupts her rumination. It’s from the security camera down in the lobby.
“Johnny! What are you doing here?”
“I look pretty good for someone who’s dead, don’t you think?”
In fact, he looks pretty awful. “What happened to you?”
“Hard to say. Why don’t you buzz me up and we’ll talk about it?”
When she lets him in, he looks like he’s just climbed out of the plane wreck. Dirty clothes, stringy hair, smudged face and hands.
“Wow,” she exclaims. “You want to get cleaned up?”
“Later,” he says as he plops down into an easy chair. “Right now, a deal has to be made.”
“A deal? What kind of deal?”
He reaches into his shirt, produces the card from his discarded handheld, and hands it to her. “Take a look at this. It’ll be the first clip to come up.”
She picks up her handheld off the end table, inserts the card, and starts the video. It shows a thing, an awful monstrosity pulsating in the back of what appears to be a van. The only motion seems to be some kind of respiration, and bubbles forming atop several unidentifiable orifices.
“Oh Jesus! What is this?”
“Let me have the card back and we can talk.”
“This is sick, really sick,” she says as she hands the card back.
“And it’s only the opening act. You know, I don’t follow politics too closely, but I do know a bit about your boss. It seems that he’s made Mount Tabor a symbol of sorts, a place where big corporations do evil things behind closed doors. And you know what? Turns out he’s right. What a lucky guy!”
“That creature on the video came from Mount Tabor?”
“I’ve played all the cards I’m going to without talking to Mr. Green himself. The deal is simple. I’ll trade Mount Tabor for personal protection of the highest order.”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to see what I can do. By the way, your brother’s looking for you. He’s really worried. You need to let him know you’re okay.”
“He doesn’t need to know anything about this, at least, not for now. I can handle this by myself. Keep Lane out of it. Completely. If he gets wind of it, the deal’s off.”
Rachel shrugs. “Your call.” He reminds her of a surfer who’s cleared the crest of a big wave and started the long ride down.
Chapter 9
The Gig Is Up
At police headquarters, Lane hunches over a computer in a vacant office, one of many such vacancies brought on by ever-shrinking budgets. The buzz of random conversation floats in from outside as he types, points, and clicks. Whoever’s behind Johnny’s disappearance might be onto him already. He’s Johnny’s only family, the only interested party, and a cop to boot. But they can’t trace him to this particular machine, which is more or less public property. Besides, it gives him a free ride to the higher access levels of the Meternet.
It takes him no time at all to run down the Institute for the Study of Genetic Disorders. It has an impeccable provenance and credentials, along with nicely crafted copy that explains its mission and goals. Since the majority of the mutation-triggered diseases strike in childhood and claim their victims at an early and supremely tragic age, the Institute’s mission is to put a stop to this, once and for all. It funds and coordinates a variety of research efforts in the search for a comprehensive cure. The site lists the executive staff, which is led by a CEO named Linda Crampton. Her photo shows a mature but attractive woman with a slightly showy hairstyle and clever eyes.
Lane leans back. So much for the management, what about the funding? Where’s the money? No mention. Then he sees a link that leads to press releases, and he follows it. He finds no money but he does find Johnny. A release from eighteen months ago announces Johnny’s latest research contract, with its emphasis on the computerized simulation of genetic action in human development. Beyond that, it makes little sense. Lane suspects the PR people had little idea what they were talking about and blew several paragraphs of thick smoke.
He moves on and finds no more on his brother. But he uncovers two other releases in the same time frame that announce major research contracts. One is to a principal investigator named Dr. Martin Griffen, and the other to a Dr. Juan Ortiz. Both specialize in areas too esoteric to make any sense within the confines of a press release.
Griffen and Ortiz. Two more big players in the science sweepstakes sponsored by the Institute. What if they were part of the big deal, the trip to New York? Lane grabs his handheld and punches in Bellows at the Washington County coroner.
“Yes, Mr. Anslow,” Bellows says with transparent impatience.
“I’m sorry to bother you again, but I should have asked about my brother’s associates, Griffen and Ortiz. They’re both friends of the family. Have you managed an ID on either of them?”
“No, we have not. And as I told you about your brother, it’s unlikely that we ever will. Is there anything else?”
“No, that’ll do it. Thanks.”
Lane pockets his handheld and smiles. Bellows just gave away the store without even knowing it.
“Lane, they told me I’d find you in here.” Lieutenant Siefert comes in and plops down in a chair on the other side of the desk. “What are you working on?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll let you know when I know. How’s that?”
“That’s great.” Siefert scratches the scruffy brown fringe wrapped around his bald head. “But there’s something else we gotta talk about. As of now, you’re off the active contractors’ list. No more gigs.”
“And why’s that?” Lane doesn’t want to
feel sick, but he does.
“You know why. You’re too old. We’ve already bent the rules for you, and if we bend them any further, they’re gonna break.”
“Okay then, just tell me one thing. Did you think this up all by yourself, or did somebody whisper in your ear?”
Siefert manages a sad smile. “I know you’d like to think it’s some kind of plot, but it’s not. Sorry. It’s quite simple. You’re too damn old to be running around the Middle East mixing it up with Bad Boys half your age. End of story.”
“Yeah, end of story.”
“You’ve done good work. We can do letters of commendation. You can get a consulting gig.”
“Sure.”
Siefert gets up and heads for the door. “Keep in touch, okay?”
Lane doesn’t bother answering.
Lane doesn’t go home. It feels better to be immersed in the hustle of the city. He drifts down to a little joint on the river and orders a straight whiskey. In one of the booths, a young woman beams and giggles at her clueless boyfriend. In another, a fat guy lays waste to a cheeseburger. He washes it down with beer straight from the pitcher.
Lane sits at the bar, where the Feed drones on about oil prices topping a thousand dollars a barrel. He pulls out his cell and checks his bank account. He has enough for maybe six weeks. Then, the street.
Or the Bird. Undoubtedly, the Bird would pay well. Lane might even be able to get behind a gate somewhere.
He takes a gulp of whiskey and feels its buttery burn on the way down. All he’d have to do to earn his keep was whatever the Bird told him. Impossible.
Time for a distraction. He pulls out his handheld and connects with Rachel Heinz at the Street Party.
“How are you, Mr. Anslow?” She comes across cool and confident, like she’s won the race before it’s even run. He has to admire that.
The Forever Man: A Near-Future Thriller Page 10
