Immediately the building was filled with the wail of fire alarms, and people started jumping up from their desks in consternation.
"FIRE! FIRE!…EVERYONE OUT! NOW! FIRE! HURRY! IT'S A BOMB! …"
Kerrin shouted as loud as he could, running towards the stairs as he went. By the time he had made his way across the office to the top of the stairwell, he was caught up in a ground swell of people all panicking and trying to get out of the office as fast as possible.
Within seconds the fire exits were swarming with people, as six hundred employees all tried to leave the building at the same time. The Fire Marshals on each floor started shouting and begging for calm, doing their best to bring some order to the fleeing crowds.
As Kerrin joined the throng and made his way down the stairs, surrounded by hundreds of his work colleagues, he reached into his pockets and pulled out his wig, glasses and false beard.
By the time he made it to the ground floor and had been swept out with the masses onto the road in front of the building, Kerrin had disappeared again.
He had blended in with the others, one unknown face amongst six hundred.
--------------------
The men in black suits stood on the roofs of their Mercedes, trying to spot Kerrin's face amongst the crowd as they surged past them on to the sidewalks around the building.
Yet, even if they had been able to spot him through his disguise, it would have been impossible for them to single him out from the crowd and grab him.
They had lost him. Once again Kerrin Graham had got away.
And now he had the parcel.
Chapter 37
Day Twenty-Four
Rohloff Tower
New York
The helicopter took off from the top of the Rohloff Tower, having disgorged the last-but-one of the Executive Officers of the Board of the Chymera Corporation.
They had been arriving all morning, either by executive limousine into the secure private car-park underneath the Tower, and catching the express elevator to the seventy eighth floor, or by air across the throbbing metropolis of New York, landing on the helipad and catching the elevator down the top three levels to join their companions below.
It was already 10 a.m. and as Rupert Rohloff and Buz Trueman greeted their colleagues, they ushered them politely into the large boardroom and encouraged them to take their seats. As they prepared for the start of the meeting, the last helicopter arrived on the helipad above, and five minutes later, the CEO and President of the Chymera Corporation walked into the boardroom to a rapturous standing ovation.
President Kendrick Hart of the United States was a tall man, and dominated the room from the moment he walked through the door. Just turned fifty-five years of age, his body was firm, his hand-shake strong, and the sparkle in his eye as charming and charismatic now as it was thirty years before. The only real significant sign of ageing was the bald dome which capped his skull, separating the otherwise healthy brown hair growing on either side of his head. His shoulders were broad, and the shirt he wore under his jacket was large enough to be comfortable, but tight enough to show off the powerful muscular frame beneath. The effect was exactly what his PR men wanted. Kendrick Hart was a powerful man, and every inch of his body exuded that power. He was in control and everyone else knew it.
"Welcome everyone. Please sit…I trust that Rupert and Buz have been making you all comfortable?" the President greeted them once the applause had subsided, waving his hands at their chairs and encouraging them to once again take their seats.
Kendrick Hart looked around the faces of those gathered around the long polished mahogany table that dominated the Executive Board Room. The fifty-two men and women before him were without doubt the most powerful people in the United States of America, and at the last audit, collectively they either owned or represented sixty-five percent of the financial assets in the United States. Like himself, over the years, each of them had been personally selected and invited to join the Corporation, based either upon the assets and wealth at their personal disposal, or because of the enormous economic, technological and industrial power they individually oversaw and controlled. Directly, or indirectly, the assembled board controlled over seventy percent of the working population of America.
As the C.E.O. of the Chymera Corporation looked around his assembled colleagues, he recognized them all individually, smiling or winking at some, nodding his head at others. The list of those assembled in the room was truly impressive: sitting before him were the owners of the largest pharmaceutical companies; the majority shareholders and C.E.O.s of the major Utilities companies controlling most of America's water, gas and oil; two heads of the largest communications companies, who between them owned most of the major TV, Cable and Radio networks in America; heads of the three largest banks; and owners or majority shareholders of motor companies, armaments, telecommunications, food, biology and chemical giants, newspapers and the media, banking and insurance. The list went on.
Kendrick Hart had known most of them personally for years.
Since their last meeting, a few new Board members had been selected and appointed, and for those fresh faces, this would be the first full Board Meeting they had attended. They were the successors of those who had died or had stepped down due to ill health, those for whom Item 12 on the Agenda today, the Orlando Treatment, had come too late. Kendrick had read and scrutinized the new members’ files many times over, and had met privately with all of them on more than one occasion. As C.E.O. of the Chymera Corporation, it was Kendrick that had granted the final approval to their appointment.
Each of the Board members was worthy of the accolade which had been extended to them. They were the best in America. Forget the American Government, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Nowadays they were just figureheads, a PR exercise that appeased the people.
It was the Chymera Corporation that really governed the United States of America. In this room, the decisions that this select group of people made whenever they sat in session together, controlled the lives and future of the whole country. They were the real elected representatives of the country, elected by virtue of the power they yielded and the fact that it was they who truly owned the country; the citizens of the United States were no more than worker ants who burrowed and toiled at the coal-face under their guidance and their leadership.
Yet there was not one amongst them that did not understand and respect the position or responsibility that was theirs. The burden they carried was a heavy one, and none of them did so lightly. For to underestimate the power they wielded was a weakness. A weakness that they could not afford.
Each of them knew and understood the importance of their contribution to the group, and no one had ever failed to deliver on a promise they had made to the Board.
They ruled their land in private, an organization that had existed since before the Second World War, which had grown in power from year to year through its investments, and from the careful planning and execution of its decisions.
There were few outside of the Corporation that had ever heard of them. They were a jealous organization, ruthlessly protecting their identity, their purpose and their vision, keeping their organization hidden from all those who would seek to discover them.
Together they formed the purest of organisms. They existed for one reason only.
Power.
And they exercised that power in the pursuit of a single goal: to make the United States of America the most powerful and wealthy nation on the planet.
"Okay, to business."
Kendrick Hart sat down almost theatrically in his seat, turning his attention from his fellow board members to the documents lying in front of him. Around the table the delegates followed his lead and picked up the special portfolio that been meticulously prepared for each of them. It contained an agenda, the minutes of the last meeting and numerous reports which would assist in the decisions that had to be made that day.
As they each studied the
agenda from their pack, Buz pressed a button on the control panel beside his seat, and the doors of the meeting room closed electronically. With a loud 'clunk' large metal bolts slid out from the centre of the doors into special grooves bored into the surrounding metal frames, locking the doors firmly in place. Across the windows, thin tinted glass panels containing an invisible micromesh metal gauze slid up from the lower wall; although the occupants of the meeting room could still see out, no one outside would be able to see in. Either visually, or electronically.
As part of the latest security technology, the micromesh in the windows extended throughout the walls surrounding the meeting room, wrapping the occupants in a glorified Faraday cage which, like the system deployed in David Sonderheim's office in Purlington Bay, prevented any form of covert electronic surveillance from being able to penetrate the room.
Security officers expert in the art of electronic surveillance sat in a room close to the boardroom, continuously monitoring the airwaves for indications of any attempt to eavesdrop upon the goings-on within the meeting room, and using the latest multi-frequency filtering loops, they would be able to identify and nullify any intrusive signals, simultaneously blocking and jamming them by re-transmitting a junk signal back to the source.
Inside, electronic sensors spaced throughout the room automatically detected any form of electronic transmitting or recording devices, preventing anyone from recording anything that took place within the boardroom. In the Chymera Corporation, security was a prime concern, and nothing was left to chance.
Buz pressed another button on his panel, and the wall at the end of the office behind Kendrick slid backwards, and a large plasma screen slid down from the ceiling. The lights in the room dimmed and a bright colorful map of the Middle East appeared on the overhead screen.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a busy agenda ahead of us. Items One to Three this morning are issues that demand our immediate attention. As you know, recent events in Saudi Arabia have caused a significant rise in the price of crude, and a significant drop in the value of gold. Our oil production in Kuwait has been severely affected, and the situation looks as if it's not likely to rectify itself in the near future. The question of our interests, and American interests in the Middle East…" Kendrick Hart began the business of the day, moving from one item to another.
"And now, Item Four, and a report from Mr Small on the new hydro-electric dam that he is suggesting we build in Colorado…", which was swiftly followed by a report suggesting that the Corporation acquire more stock in Microsoft, and then another proposing the acquisition of a new Satellite Broadcasting company that had just announced a joint venture with Europe's largest news and media empire.
And so it went on. Hour after hour. Topic after topic. Decision after decision.
At 2 p.m. the agenda allowed them time for lunch, and Buz pressed one of the little buttons on his magic panel. There was a buzzing sound and the bolts clicked loudly, before sliding back into the centre of the doors, which opened automatically to let them outside.
In the reception area beside the boardroom, a buffet had been laid on. The lunch was small, so as not to encourage drowsiness when they returned to the meeting, and alcohol was strictly forbidden. Fruit juices, coffee and water were the order of the day.
At 2.30 p.m. sharp they filed back into the boardroom, and excitedly awaited the next item on the agenda. Item Twelve was to be a report on the Phase Two trials of the Orlando Treatment, followed by a decision on whether or not to proceed to the next stage and to the wider and long hoped for Phase Three trials.
Without further encouragement, the assembled group took their places and turned their attention to their chairman.
Kendrick turned to Buz and nodded, and the doors closed automatically.
Kendrick slowly stood up and faced the Board. He stood there silent before the group.
They looked back at him expectantly.
Kendrick had long ago learned to use the power of silence to emphasize and underline the importance of something just about to be said. For a few moments he said nothing.
The expectation that hung in the air was so heavy that Kendrick could almost reach out and touch it.
It was time.
"Gentlemen," and he turned and smiled at a few of the more attractive members of the board, "…and of course, ladies…now we come to what I am sure we all agree is perhaps the most interesting item on the agenda." He paused. There was a round of nodding heads around the table, and several people nervously adjusted the position of their portfolios on the table before them.
"At this point I would like to invite Rupert to report to us on the progress of the Orlando Project. After all, Orlando was his idea…"
Kendrick clapped his hands together a few times and Rupert Rohloff stepped to the front of the room. He spoke slowly and clearly, his voice authoritative and powerful, his German accent barely discernible.
"A number of years ago, the Chymera Corporation became aware of the work of the Gen8tyx Company, a fledging biotech and genetics company, with a revolutionary entrepreneurial spirit and a new approach to some of the major problems facing our increasingly ageing society. Over the years we have kept a keen eye on their progress, and have seen them turn into a billion-dollar company with some truly market-leading products. However, as you will all remember, a few years ago when we learned of their most recent field of research, we realized we were shortly to be faced with some interesting questions. Putting aside the profit motive, we knew we would soon have to decide whether or not we could allow their research to continue unchecked. Then, and I am sure you will remember as I do, Harry West from Sabre Genetics addressed the board and gave us a most memorable presentation." Rupert waved his hand at Harry who was sitting towards the back of the room. Harry turned slightly red and nodded his head in response to the praise.
"As a result of Harry's recommendation, the Board recognized that this research did indeed pose a threat to society. But we also realized that it simultaneously presented us with a golden opportunity which we could not pass over… the opportunity to re-engineer and correct the decay that affects all our bodies as we live our lives from year to year, …the opportunity to halt and prevent the onset of old age. No, not just an opportunity,…an obligation! An obligation to build a society where the leaders of mankind would be able to extend their active life spans, giving them the opportunity to retain the precious experience that they had built up over the decades of their existence and to exercise that experience for longer, to the benefit of a much needing society…"
"Gone will be the days when the wisest men in the world will forget the wisdom they have learned, and when the greatest intellects in our society will be reduced to cabbages as senility sets in and robs them of everything that makes them who they are…"
He paused in mid-sentence, his words hanging in the air…
"I'm sorry, I do not intend to redo the speech that Harry gave us last year. You have all read the files…You all know the value of the Orlando Treatment, and its potential…" Rupert paused.
"…At a previous board meeting we made the decision to acquire the Gen8tyx Company, based in Orlando, Florida. This has been done. The company has now completed the move to its new, more secure headquarters in Purlington Bay, California and the second phase of the trials of their revolutionary treatment has just been completed. In a few moments I will invite David Sonderheim, the CEO of Gen8tyx to come and present their findings to us. Before I do so however, I wish to impart to you the importance of this research. At the end of the meeting I will ask for a vote. I will ask the Board for its support in agreeing to fund Phase Three of the project."
There was absolute silence in the room. The average age of the assembled group was sixty three years old. The eldest person in the room was seventy one. There was not one person on the board that had not privately already signed up for the Phase Three Trials.
Rupert Rohloff spoke again.
"First of all, you may have notice
d two empty places at the table. As many of you know, Trevor Simons has been fighting advanced Leukemia for several months now. Unable to find a suitable bone marrow donor, it was estimated that he only had a few weeks to live. The other seat belongs to Colonel Packard. I'm afraid that due to their deteriorating medical conditions both have had to seek urgent medical care…and could not make the meeting as we expected."
There was a hasty flurry of glances and murmurings around the table. Many of the Board members looked in sympathy at the two empty seats.
"At this point I would like to hand over to the Chief Executive Officer of the Gen8tyx Company…Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome David Sonderheim…" Rupert stepped backwards towards the wall and swung out his arm towards the door, which opened automatically under Buz's command.
David Sonderheim walked through, a little surprised by the applause and the warm reception he was receiving. He walked with a slight limp, but the wounds in his foot were healing at an incredible rate and in the excitement of the day it was easy to forget the pain.
He stepped up to the front of the table, and behind him a large logo of the Gen8tyx Company appeared on the plasma screen.
"Thank you. I'm truly honored to be given the opportunity to talk to you all today about our most recent work…But before I begin…I think we should welcome two more of our friends who have been sitting outside waiting patiently to join us…"
All eyes turned to the door. No one else had been expected. There were few people on the planet who knew of the existence of the Chymera Corporation, let alone had seen them. The Board Members guarded their identities with the tightest of security…A number of the Board members shifted uncomfortably in their seats, and several rose as if to make a protest. Guests were not only an absolute breach of protocol, they were a threat…
A man came through the door into the room, walked around the table and sat down in one of the empty seats. There was a chorus of gasps of surprise and disbelief from all those present.
BOX SET of THREE TOP 10 MEDICAL THRILLERS Page 86
