by Graham Brown
Funny, Hawker thought, because he felt just the opposite. As if he were heading toward some type of doom long avoided but always creeping closer. He’d always known that Ranga and Sonia were keeping some great secret during their time in Africa. Whatever it was, it drove them on, binding them together yet also forcing them apart. Even then, Sonia spent nearly as much time in the lab as her father, receiving an education at his hands.
It was only when the generals started pushing him harder that Ranga began working in the lab alone. Did he want to protect Sonia or to keep her from knowing what he was doing?
Hawker didn’t know and at the time hadn’t asked. Questions and explanations weren’t part of the deal. But after viewing the tape and listening to Ranga speak, Hawker wondered if he’d been protecting a lunatic.
He wondered if things might not have been better had he let Ranga and Sonia die or languish as captives all those years ago. If he had, the world might not be staring down the barrel of a heavily loaded gun.
As the thoughts swirled, he felt a little guilty about lumping Sonia in with her father. Truth was, he didn’t know what her part was in all of this, either then or now. Had she gotten away from Ranga’s circus as soon as she had the chance, like Keegan suggested? Certainly, it seemed like she’d built her own life. Then again, Paradox, the company she worked for, listed Ranga as an original principal. Was it simply a natural place for her to land, a place where the Milan family knew a few people?
Hawker felt now much as he’d felt when seeing Keegan: There are no coincidences. Ranga, Sonia, Paradox, this plague — in his heart of hearts he was certain there would be some connection. And that thought bothered him more than anything else.
Ten minutes later, as they stepped out into the lobby of the hotel, the Emirate man joyfully bid them adieu. In a private room at the base of the hotel, Callahan was introduced to several staff members of the drug company. He signed papers of confidentiality and was scanned from head to toe for recording devices or other electronic equipment. An aide held out a plastic bag, into which Callahan placed his BlackBerry and his iPhone.
Then he and Hawker, who underwent the same treatment, were led to an elevator. It started upward, moving smoothly and rapidly until it stopped and the doors opened to the top-floor ballroom.
Amber-colored marble stretched out ahead of them. Blue light shone through the tinted floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the Persian Gulf. Out on the floor millionaires mingled, whispered, and snacked on Beluga caviar.
Callahan stepped out with Hawker at his side. A quick check told Hawker the place was secure.
“You’re in good hands here,” he told Callahan. “I’m going to walk the perimeter, make sure there are no threats or weaknesses the hotel security has overlooked.”
Callahan laughed. “That’s why I like you,” he said.
“Because I do my job?”
“No, because you take it so seriously,” Callahan said. “We’re cool here. Nothing’s gonna happen. Hell, the only reason I brought you was for looks.”
Not that he really cared, but he had to know. “What do you mean, ‘looks’?”
“A guy ain’t squat at one of these things if he don’t have his own security,” Callahan said. “It’s like a platinum card — except everybody has those now — no, it’s more like your own jet. You don’t want to be the guy who rents.”
Hawker actually smiled. He wondered how someone so idiotic could be worth so much money. Either it was all an act on Callahan’s part or there really was no justice in the world.
“Go find yourself a few drinks,” Callahan said. “And if you can find yourself a girl, have at it. I’ll pay you a bonus.”
Hawker nodded and walked off, feeling as if he’d just been paroled or something.
He checked a few doors, studied the hallways in and out, and found himself lingering near the wall of glass on the eastern side of the building. Below he could see the coast of Dubai, in the distance the city lights, and up above, the base of the circular helipad that jutted out from the roof.
A waiter stopped by and Hawker took a glass of champagne.
A second waiter followed, holding a tray toward him.
Hawker studied the tray: thin crackers, caviar, and foie gras, if he wasn’t mistaken.
“I’m guessing you don’t have a cheeseburger hiding back there somewhere,” he said.
The man stared at him.
“Never mind,” Hawker said. He held out a hand, passing on the food.
The waiter moved off and Hawker began to scan the room.
Filling out the incredible space was an international group of investors and medical professionals. Whatever Paradox was selling, a pretty distinguished group of guests seemed interested in buying.
Wealth from twenty countries walked the floor. Americans like Callahan, Middle Eastern men in traditional garb, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian attendees could be seen and overheard. Aside from the waiters, Hawker was undoubtedly the poorest man in the room. It left him feeling oddly out of place.
And then he spotted Sonia, standing near a podium, in a form-fitting white cocktail dress. Leaning close to a thin, gray-haired man, she seemed to speak in hushed tones. A whisper here, a nod there, a smile and a handshake for someone who stopped by.
She was all grown up now, no doubt about that. The awkward beauty of a twenty-year-old had morphed into a gorgeous thirty-year-old with curves and confidence. From what he saw, she was in her element, shining as the center of attention while everything else swirled around her.
She said a few more words to the man next to her, a partner or executive by the look of things, shook another set of hands, and then exhaled at a break in the pressing crowd.
As she took a breath her eyes came up; her gaze stretched out across the ballroom as if to relax for just a moment, and in the process landed directly on Hawker.
He saw her pause. Her expression changed, signaling a moment of confusion and indecision. He guessed she wasn’t sure what she was seeing or didn’t believe what her mind was telling her. And then she drew in a breath, her lips parted in surprise, and Hawker knew that she’d recognized him.
The gray-haired man tapped her on the shoulder. She turned toward him abruptly, but in a second she was back on form. And Hawker realized that Sonia wasn’t just part of the show — she was the main attraction.
Moments later the lights began to dim. Sonia and the gray-haired man stepped off the platform and Hawker lost them in the crowd. At each end of the room, huge plasma-screen monitors began to descend from the ceiling while some type of spalike music rose up.
The show was about to begin. Whatever Sonia had been up to for the last few years, whatever Paradox was selling, Hawker and the rest of the crowd were about to find out.
CHAPTER 19
Upon their arrival in Beirut, Danielle and Moore had been whisked away to the American embassy. Waiting in a secured communications room, Danielle took the opportunity to talk with Moore about Hawker.
“I’m not sure Hawker is the best person to be on this mission,” she said.
Moore remained stoic. “I was wondering when you’d mention that. What are your thoughts?”
“He has a stake in it,” she said. “He wants his friend to be cleared, wants to believe in him.”
As Moore considered her words, Danielle felt sick inside. She felt as if she were stabbing Hawker in the back somehow. She believed what she was saying and, more important, she believed she was speaking in Hawker’s best interest, whether he knew it or not.
Moore seemed less concerned. “Who wouldn’t want their friend to be proven innocent?” he said. “He seems objective to me.”
Danielle struggled. Perhaps objective versus subjective was the point, or at least it might become the point.
“There’s no one else I know more interested in doing what’s ‘right,’ ” she said. “But if what’s right from his point of view conflicts with what’s right for the rest of the world … we kno
w where Hawker comes down on that. He believes in the tribe around him. That’s what matters. It’s the reason we love him, and the reason he frustrates us so badly. Even in Mexico he threatened to let the world burn if it came down to choosing between those he loved and everything else.”
“And did he?”
“No,” she said, remembering how Hawker had ultimately chosen. “But it’s still a blind spot.”
Moore stopped scribbling the notes on his pad and turned toward her. “We all have blind spots,” he said. “Sometimes they’re what make us who we are.”
“I know, but—”
“Hawker joined up for a reason.”
“Because he wants a clean slate,” she said.
“That’s not why he joined,” Moore insisted.
Danielle sat back, fixing her gaze on Moore in an inquisitive way. She was pretty certain she understood the deal they’d crafted for Hawker and what he was getting out of it.
“We’re his tribe now,” Moore explained. “You in particular. He joined up so he wouldn’t be alone.”
“And the fact that he’s now making contact with a woman from his past, someone he obviously had feelings for?” she asked.
“You tell me,” Moore said. “Would he choose her over what’s right?”
She hesitated. How could she know?
“The feelings between you two are no great secret,” he said. “Can you be objective about it?”
“It’s not his body I’m trying to save,” she said defensively.
Moore made a face as if he were weighing the possibilities. “Then you watch him, you make the call.”
As she considered Moore’s directive, a great irony struck her. She had always been good at seeing the forest for the trees, focusing on the bigger picture. But now her mind was on Hawker. She was the one seeing it on a personal level, trying to spare her friend from the dark road he seemed to be heading down.
She didn’t want Hawker getting pushed into a corner and forced to choose. He’d suffered enough of that already.
A moment later the feed from NRI headquarters in Virginia kicked in and Danielle recognized Walter Yang from the NRI’s medical science department. Dressed in a white lab coat with rimless glasses, Walter looked every bit the PhD in molecular biology and genetics that he was. For reasons she could not fathom, he was also wearing a holster with a pistol secured in it.
Moore cleared his throat. “Why are you armed, Walter?”
“You told me to shoot anyone who tried to break the quarantine,” Yang said.
Moore looked distraught and glanced over at Danielle. “Remind me not to use metaphors when speaking to the sciences department,” he said, and then he turned back to the screen.
“Have you shot anybody yet?”
“No,” Yang said proudly. “No one has tried to escape.”
“Good,” Moore said. “Let’s keep it that way. Turn the gun back in to security, forget what I said about shooting people, and tell me what you’ve discovered on the data Ms. Laidlaw provided.”
Yang looked disappointed for a second, then brightened. “First off,” he said, “the data are incomplete.”
“I was in kind of a hurry,” Danielle said, realizing that Yang would know nothing about where the data came from or how it was collected.
“Sure,” he said. “Well, the good thing is we have enough here to reconstruct the gist of this clinical trial: several years of work on a long list of deliberately mutated viruses. Things don’t go straight-line, of course, but in general each new Series seemed to improve on the last.”
“Can you see a connection with the UN virus?” Moore asked.
“I can’t speak to their genetic similarities, because the data contains only trial results, not the actual genetic coding, but based on the range of infected cells claimed in the trials, the UN virus and trial 951 are likely highly related but not the same. Given some modifications, both could probably be used in genetic therapy.”
“Ah,” Danielle said. Onscreen, Yang grinned and nodded.
“Someone want to enlighten the old man?” Moore asked.
Danielle took a shot. “Genetic therapy has been talked about for years. The first moves from the lab to the medical profession are just starting to take place, from what I understand. Basically, patients with genetic disorders, mutations, or certain cancers can’t be treated with normal drugs because the issue isn’t sickness, it’s defective coding. No matter what drug you use to treat the symptoms, each time the defective cell divides and the DNA replicates, it copies the mistake into the new cell.”
“Like cheating off a kid who doesn’t know the answers,” Yang added.
Moore turned to the screen, his eyebrows up.
“Not that I ever did that,” Yang said.
“The only way to break the cycle,” Danielle said, “is to patch the DNA so the newly replicated cells carry the correct code and not the defective gene. Best way to do this is to design a virus that can be released into the body carrying a DNA ‘patch’ that corrects the genetic code. From then on, when the cell divides, it makes a nondefective copy of itself.”
“Like cheating off a kid who actually knows his stuff,” Moore said, reusing the analogy.
Danielle smiled and looked at the screen. “If we take Dr. Yang’s computer analogy, it’s like downloading software to your hard drive. If that software contains a bad virus, you’re in trouble; if it contains a patch to fix a flaw in the original programming, your computer now runs like it was supposed to.”
Yang took over. “The problem is the average human body contains a billion cells. Can’t exactly reset the codes one by one. So one way to reach the defective cells is with what we call a carrier virus. We modify the virus to carry the updated human DNA and then inject it into the defective area of the patient. The virus then does what it’s designed to do, spreading across the cells, implanting its new DNA into the cells, and reproducing by the billions. Those copies do the same thing, and so on and so on, like that shampoo commercial from the seventies.
“The end result is a regeneration of sorts in the specific organ or system that was defective. It’s not a hundred percent, but you end up with far more healthy cells than unhealthy ones, and over time the healthy cells crowd out the weak and the dying.”
From an academic perspective, Danielle understood Yang’s excitement. But knowing Ranga’s radical position on population and his work on telomeres, she grew more worried. Used malevolently, Ranga’s trial 951 might age every cell in the human body, radically reducing life spans just as he suggested the world might need to do.
“Can it be weaponized?” Moore asked.
Yang nodded. “Both the UN virus and 951 can survive outside the host, both can be carried by air or other vectors such as birds or insects. Aerosolized dispersal from crop dusters or via airburst from missiles or artillery shells would create a very effective biological spread.”
“So how did they go from the inert UN virus to this trial 951?” Moore asked.
“It might be as simple as changing payloads,” Yang said.
“Payloads?”
“Those blank spaces I told you about,” Yang said. “As it stands right now, the UN virus is an empty carrier, but it has been designed with a space holder for whatever the user might want to put inside. That’s the payload. Designing the virus itself is the hard part, like designing a ballistic missile. In comparison, putting a DNA patch in the leftover spaces would be relatively easy. Like loading the warhead onto the missile. You can go conventional, you can go nuclear. In this case, they could put a corrective gene in those blank spaces or they could put something devastating. That might be what they did with 951.”
Danielle thought about what would happen if the code from trial 951 were placed inside the UN virus. Pretty soon the whole human race might look like the aged and dying rats she’d seen in Ranga’s lab.
Danielle was thirty-seven, in the prime of her life. In the world Ranga envisioned, the world he might ha
ve been trying to bring about, she would be in her last days, an old woman feeling infirmity and facing death. In fact, her life might already have been over.
“Anything else?” Moore asked.
“Not yet,” Yang said.
“All right,” Moore said. “Turn in your gun. I’ll touch base with you in twelve hours.”
Yang signed off. Moore turned to Danielle. “So the UN virus does nothing,” he noted. “Then why send it?”
“Could be a message, like Ranga’s well-staged death,” she said. “If the goal is extortion, making your point without killing anyone at first is a pretty good start.”
“No one’s called with any demands,” Moore said.
“Maybe they’re not done making the point,” she said.
Moore looked as if he agreed. “We’re pessimists,” he noted. “Anything you can think of that might make the future seem a little bit brighter?”
“Only the obvious,” she said.
“Which is?”
“They don’t have anything to put inside. They don’t have a payload yet.”
“Ranga gave them a blank virus,” Moore said, following her line of thought.
She nodded. “Why else would they need him back? Why else would they go to his lab?”
Moore’s face brightened. It was all speculation but it made sense. “Ranga breaks away without giving them the crucial payload, they hunt him down and catch him, but instead of killing him outright they grab him and torture him.”
“And he gives up the address on rue des Jardins,” she said.
“And he’s willing to give it up, because he’s got the place wired to blow,” Moore finished. “Score one for Hawker’s friend if that’s the case. So what would they do next?”
Danielle tried to put herself in their place. It didn’t take much. “They’d find someone to finish the job.”
“Ranga’s daughter.”
It didn’t have to be her; there could be others. The evidence showed Ranga and Sonia hadn’t worked together in years, but that hadn’t stopped the NRI from sending Hawker to Dubai. Which was exactly where Danielle felt she should be.
