"And what happened at the meeting?"
"Henry knew that we wouldn't move to California…he thought we were getting a rough deal…you've got to understand that we'd all been together practically from the beginning. Gen8tyx was as much our baby as it was Sonderheim's!"
"And so?"
"…And so we decided to form our own company in Florida…Fuck, if Sonderheim was going to steal our futures from us, we were going to steal the company back from him! We weren't about to take it lying down."
"So what happened…?"
"…So, we planned to steal that which was rightfully ours anyway, and to download all the files onto our own computers and servers, and to copy all the information, data, and results that we needed to start again from scratch!"
"Isn't that totally illegal? Sounds like industrial espionage to me…"
"Technically maybe it is, but we really felt that it was Sonderheim that was stealing the information from us. It was our research. We did the work. In the past few years Sonderheim had become nothing more than a figurehead…he was more of a politician than a scientist!"
"So what went wrong?"
"Nothing…well, not immediately. We all succeeded in getting the information we wanted, and storing it off-line, on our own home computers… Put it this way, we got what we needed. And we proved the process worked…The Phase One trials were a success!"
"And what were they?"
"We all took the Orlando Treatment…We became walking examples of what it could achieve. The results were almost immediate, and everyday it becomes more apparent …better…more effective…Kerrin, it's incredible!"
"Then what went wrong? Why did everyone start dying?"
"Because Roberts sold us out. Shit…I knew that Roberts knew more than he was telling us…something else was going down that we didn't know about…I started to do my own research…Do you know that I owned 5% of the Gen8tyx shares? I still do. Well, Sonderheim tried to force me to sell them, and then it all started to make sense. Suddenly I knew what this was all about…and how much danger we were all in. Then Henry chickened out. He knew what was happening too. I knew he did! He came round to see me one evening. He told me he'd had a change of heart…we had a big argument…He said it was unethical what we were going to do, argued that it was wrong, truth of the matter was he was just shit scared… Like I was…"
"Why? What was happening? What was Roberts going to do?"
"Henry threatened to tell Sonderheim about what we had done, and what we were going to do…The fool…I told him that if he did that he'd put all our lives at risk…By that time we knew that Sonderheim was messing around with some pretty heavy people. And they weren't exactly likely to put up with us doing our own thing. If Sonderheim wanted to stop us, he'd have no choice but to kill us all! I told him…I bloody warned him…but he wouldn’t listen!"
Alex was getting emotional. His face was becoming red, and his hands were gripping the beer bottle so tightly that the whites of his knuckles were showing.
"Who were these people Alex? And why would they kill you? Why?"
"Don't you see? They couldn't afford to let us live, knowing that we would make the whole Orlando Project public, knowing that we were all walking examples of what could be possible,… knowing that we knew enough to start our own company… Do you really think that a billion dollar company would simply make their best employees redundant…'Here, Mr Chief Scientist…here's a golden handshake…have a nice life…oh, and please…would you mind awfully if you don’t use your expert knowledge and compete with us in the future?' Do you really believe that? For fuck's sake…They're not about to give you a golden handshake…they're going to give you the golden bullet…give each person a golden bullet in the head. Personally delivered with 'the Company's' gratitude! Kerrin, the days of redundancy are gone…in the future, if you're redundant, you're dead!"
It was a startling concept: the idea that a corporation would actually have key members of its own staff executed, rather than risking them going over to the competition or building a business to compete with their own!
Kerrin was silent. He sensed that Alex was just about to tell him something important. Alex was looking down at the table, his head bowed, his voice low, speaking almost in a whisper again.
"I had to do it. There was no choice…"
"What did you do Alex?"
"Henry was determined to tell Sonderheim, and I believed he would. The man had become a fool. He just couldn't see it! So,… I drove round to his house, to try and talk to him one more time, but as I got there I saw an ambulance leaving… I followed it to the hospital, but it wasn't till the next day that I found out that he'd tried to kill himself…Mrs Roberts was a mess… According to the hospital, Henry was in a coma…Fuck, things were getting way too intense…" Alex paused for a second, shook his head, then lifted his beer and took a long drink.
"I don't really know what happened…or why he tried to kill himself…but all I could think about was that if he came out of the coma, if he hadn't already told Sonderheim what was going on, then he would do just as soon as he could speak…I knew that I had to make sure that he didn't talk to anyone…What would you do? It was like a golden opportunity had been given to me!" He looked at Kerrin, almost pathetically, his eyes searching Kerrin's for approval.
"So what did you do Alex?"
"I went to the lab, got some TertraZyamide 236,…a commercial muscle relaxant we use routinely in lab experiments,…and I just walked into the hospital dressed in my lab gear…no one stopped me…it was too easy…Henry wouldn't even have felt it…he died in his sleep…and no one would ever suspect anything was wrong…Kerrin, it was him or us!"
"Are you telling me that you killed Henry Roberts? It was you?" Kerrin couldn't believe what he was hearing.
Alex looked him straight in the eyes.
"This is completely off the record…you'll never be able to prove anything…and I'm not coming back to the States. I'm staying here. Henry would have died anyway. I was just making sure. Making sure that he wouldn't get the rest of us killed!"
"Did you kill him, Alex?"
"Yes…Yes, I did."
Kerrin was stunned. Of course, it would be impossible for Kerrin to prove anything against Alex…even if he wanted to. And yet, from what he was saying, he could understand why he had done it. He even believed that Alex had genuinely acted in self-defense, in an attempt to save the lives of his friends.
"..Then Sam died…" Alex said, looking straight into Kerrin's eyes. "…then Mike …and I realized that I'd been too late. Henry had already told Sonderheim before he died. After that, I knew I had to get out quickly, otherwise they'd kill me too. So I disappeared. But knowing that from now on that I'll have to live, day in and day out, with the guilt that I've taken another human life for no reason…"
He was silent for a while. Then he continued.
"…You know, I thought about it afterwards and figured out that maybe Henry had tried to kill himself because he realized too late that he'd put the death sentence out on the others and he couldn't live with the guilt…Or maybe Sonderheim had tried to kill him too. The first 'suicide'…In which case, Henry was a dead man anyway. If I hadn't killed him, Sonderheim would have finished him off later."
This all didn't bear thinking about. Kerrin looked away from Alex, gazing down the street, and staring at the moon without really seeing it.
A car drove down the road, heading out of town in the opposite direction from Cape Town. The noise brought Kerrin back, and he turned to face Alex again. That so many people had died to protect the secret of the work they had done at Gen8tyx…Whatever they had been working on had to be special. Very special indeed.
"Alex, I need you to tell me about the Orlando Project. What was it that you developed or discovered that was so valuable that Gen8tyx was willing to kill its employees to protect its secret getting out?"
"Perhaps if I tell you Kerrin, perhaps then you will understand me more. You won't judge me so ha
rshly for what I did? Maybe then you'll understand that I didn't just kill Henry for ourselves, to save our own lives. I did it to save humanity!…" Alex drunk the rest of the beer, and pushed the empty bottle to the side of the table.
"Gen8tyx was a brilliant company to work for at the beginning. Fantastic. David Sonderheim was one of the most outstanding Geneticists in his field…and when he asked me to come and work for him, it was literally an offer I couldn't turn down. The rest of the team were brilliant too. Each one was handpicked by Sonderheim. The best of the best… And Sonderheim really enthused us all. Right from the start everyone knew that what we were doing could really make a difference…could save lives…could even maybe one day change the world…"
"…We started off looking at how genetics could help us find a cure for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, but then when Sam Cohen joined us we started a new field, looking at stem-cell technologies. It was a really exciting time…we all gave up our social lives, started practically living in the labs. For four years we pushed back the boundaries of science. Soon we believed we knew how to cure Alzheimer's, and had found a way how to rid the world of Parkinson's, and then,…then came the chance discovery that changed everything!"
"You found a cure to Alzheimer's?" Kerrin interrupted Alex, incredulous of what he was hearing. His own father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and although he had lived with it for five years, for the last two years of his life, his father hadn't known who he was or who his relatives were. The disease had killed his father long before his body had finally stopped functioning.
"Yes…but that's trivial in comparison to what we discovered next! Mike Gilbert was the one who noticed it. He's the one who should get the credit. It may even go down as the single most important discovery in the field of genetics and medicine ever. You see, one day, while looking at…"
A car drove down the middle of the street. It slowed down as it approached the veranda outside the hotel where Kerrin and Alex were sitting. Kerrin was too engrossed in listening to Alex to notice a figure leaning out of the back near-side passenger window. He was too mesmerized by Alex's revelation to hear the loud click of metal as the person in the car flicked the safety catch off the Ingram Sub-machine Pistol, and depressed the trigger.
Alex Swinton was lifted off his seat and thrown against the wall of the hotel, his head bursting open and his face disappearing in a cloud of red and grey.
His legs caught the underside of the table, flicking it up and into Kerrin, knocking him backwards onto the wooden floorboards of the veranda, a spray of bullets passing over his head as he fell. He lay on the ground, stunned and dazed, but as his brain picked up the sound of a car engine braking, he glanced at the road and saw the car swinging round and heading back up the road towards them.
Too slow to react or move for cover, he watched helplessly as the car came closer, a gun protruding from the other passenger window.
A full view of the car was obscured by one of the wooden beams which ran alongside the outside of the veranda, forming a fence bordering the restaurant, but peering between the bottom rung and the wooden floor Kerrin could make out the faces of two people in the car as it drove past. Both faces were looking out the window anxiously, checking to make sure their victims had been killed.
Kerrin didn't recognize the man in the front of the car behind the wheel. As he drove past his face was in the shade, and aside from his blonde hair, he couldn't distinguish any real detail. But the woman on the near side holding the gun was familiar. Very familiar indeed.
It was the lady who had flirted with him in Business Class the night before.
--------------------
As the car drove toward the restaurant Laura breathed deeply, trying to control her racing heart.
The thought of the impending kill excited her. She felt strangely aroused.
As they drove through town for the first time, she had noticed Kerrin talking to Alex on the veranda of the restaurant. That Kerrin had already hooked up with Alex was something she hadn't reckoned with.
She had to think quickly…What had Swinton already told Graham? How long had they been together? Was it too late? Their mission was to find Swinton, interrogate him and then dispose of him, but they had to stop him talking to Graham at all costs. They couldn't waste a minute more.
"Turn round. We have to kill Swinton now!" she ordered Dirk.
"Are you mad? We could be seen!"
"We have no choice. Swinton is talking to Graham as we speak. We have to kill him before he tells him too much."
Dirk swung the car around on the open highway a few minutes past the last house in the main street, pulling over to the side of the dusty road facing in the direction of town. He got out and walked round to the trunk of the car, lifting up a false bottom and opening up a hidden compartment beneath the spare tire. They had transferred the weapons from the van to the car before leaving Cape Town, choosing to travel with the faster car rather than the larger van.
Dirk slipped a magazine into the Ingram, and took a bundle of extra ammunition clips out of a box in the secret compartment. He closed the trunk, and tossed the extra magazine to Laura.
"Have you used a Ingram before?" he asked almost patronizingly.
"Yes." She took it off him, examining the deadly weapon in her hands, before climbing back into the back seat of the car. "Let's go…but slow up as you get to the restaurant…We'll hit them on the way past, then turn and drive back to make sure he's dead."
Dirk put the manual into gear and drove off.
As the restaurant came up on their left side, Laura wound down the window and leant out, arms outstretched and ready to absorb the recoil from the rapid fire. Apart from Alex Swinton and Kerrin Graham, there was no one else on the veranda, and Swinton was on the side of the table nearest them as they approached. She took aim, flicked the safety catch off, and depressed the trigger.
A hail of death erupted from the muzzle of the gun, and despite trying to anticipate the recoil, the kickback from the weapon pushed her backwards onto the rear passenger seat.
Dirk turned and laughed at her.
"Quick, turn around…NOW!" Laura shouted, pulling herself up. "Did I get him?"
"Yes. Lifted him clean off his feet and spread him against the restaurant wall."
The car skidded, and spun around in the road, the squealing of the brakes echoing loudly off the sides of the buildings in the main street. Laura struggled back up into a sitting position, the muzzle of the gun protruding once more from the window. The car shifted forwards again and pulled up slowly beside the restaurant. Alex was dead, his head blown clean off and his torso lying quivering on the floor against the far wall. Laura turned her attention to Kerrin.
"Shit…You've shot Kerrin too! You were ordered to leave him alone!" Dirk shouted.
Laura looked quickly at the body of Kerrin on the floor, the dining table lying on top of his chest and his legs. It was a brief look, but in those few milliseconds their eyes met and Kerrin was looking directly back at her.
"No. No. He's okay…He's alive, I don't think I hit him…Quick, get us out of here. This place will be swarming in a few minutes…"
Without any further bidding, Dirk put his foot down hard on the accelerator, the wheels spinning for a second before they eventually found traction and propelled the car out of town. As soon as they were underway, Dirk pulled the cell phone out of his pocket, and dialed a number.
"Marieke? Mission complete. Call the chopper in… NOW…to the second agreed rendezvous point! We'll be there in ten minutes…TEN MINUTES…Do you understand?…"
Minutes later, they swung over onto a dirt track, and headed towards the ocean. When they got to the beach, Dirk and Laura jumped out just as a helicopter came in from the sea, and hovered just above the sand.
Laura and Dirk ran around the car, quickly emptying a couple of cans of gasoline over it. Grabbing their bags and the other weapons from the trunk, they ran to the waiting helicopter and jumped aboard.
"Okay…go!" Dirk ordered to the pilot sitting in the cockpit.
As the helicopter began to rise above the ground, Dirk broke open the first aid kit inside the cabin, and leaning forward out of the open helicopter door, he fired a distress flare at the abandoned car.
There was a rush of flame, and a flash of heat as a fireball burst from the car, dark smoke billowing into the sky above.
"Take me directly to the airport," Laura shouted above the din of the rotating blades. "There's still time to make the last flight to Jo'burg, and from there I'll take the first flight to Washington tomorrow morning."
Fifteen minutes later, they landed beside an obscure hanger on the outskirts of the airport. Grabbing her bag, Laura dashed across the tarmac and made her way into the main hall. Luckily, the gate for the last flight to Johannesburg was still open, and she managed to get herself a ticket with some time to spare.
She looked at her watch, and then finding a seat far enough from everyone else in the departure lounge so as not to be overheard, she dialed an international number on her cell phone. It would be about two o'clock at home. Hopefully she would be lucky and catch him at his desk.
The phone picked up on the second ring.
"Hello, Rodriguez!" the man answered.
"Agent Rodriguez. Hi! It's your favorite flirt Agent Samuels here. I need you to do a favor for me!"
"Anything for you darling…anything…"
"Good, but I need this done NOW, okay?"
"Okay, what do you want done?"
"Last night I flew down to Cape Town in South Africa. I took the overnight flight from Washington D.C. with South African Airways. I sat in Business Class, seat 2B. I want you to hack into the South African Airways reservation system, find the flight details, and the passenger list and erase my name. Make it like I was never there. Okay? "
"Okay…"
"Yes, but can you do it in the next half hour? I need to know…"
"Maybe…if you promise me a reward…”
BOX SET of THREE TOP 10 MEDICAL THRILLERS Page 71
