by Dakota Banks
“Speaking of Mr. Evil,” Hound said, “he’s not only evil but invisible. I couldn’t turn up anything on somebody operating like him from my sources. Yet we know he’s involved in these murders and I’m guessing the Rainiers weren’t his first targets. I have more to go on with a physical description. Maliha, can you tell us anything else you learned while you were in the lab with him?”
“Bullets were flying. I was kind of busy. Never got a chance to look for anything, once I noticed the bomb. And of course that substance is dangerous. Why else would Ty and Claire have been killed to keep them from talking about it?”
“Maybe the killer was there for something unrelated,” Amaro said. “Some other research of theirs.”
She frowned at him. “No. It was because of the sample. Otherwise he wouldn’t have taken the canteen. Are you guys testing me or just slow?”
“So we assume Mr. Evil got out alive, before the bomb, with the canteen,” Yanmeng said.
There was no disapproval in his voice, but Maliha added his words to the guilt she felt about her friends’ deaths.
“I had to get Ty out of the building. He was still alive and I couldn’t leave him that way. I couldn’t chase the killer and look after Ty at the same time. Outside, Ty said some things I haven’t had much time to think about.”
Yanmeng picked up the guilt in her voice. “You don’t have to justify what you did. It was a split-second decision. We trust that you did the right thing,” Yanmeng said. Amaro and Hound nodded.
Maliha rested her hand on her belly where she’d lost two figures from the good side of her scales. “Ty said, ‘Not bio,’ ‘nan’ something.”
And, “Tell Claire I love her.” I never had a chance to do that, but Claire knew. She came to him.
“‘Not bio’ probably means not biological. So the sample wasn’t biologically active. They did make some determination,” Yanmeng said.
“He didn’t mention ‘chem’ or chemical, so are we in the clear on that?” Amaro said.
Maliha shrugged. “He didn’t have a whole lot of time to talk.”
“Who’s Nan, then? A lab assistant?” Yanmeng said. “Do you know anyone named Nan in their lives?”
“It doesn’t have to be a person. Nan with a little n. A very little n. Maybe nanites,” Amaro said.
Maliha seized on it. “Killer nanites. Not biological. It fits.”
“A good theory. Something in the victims’ bloodstream or cells. Tiny hitchhikers that would go unnoticed in a local Sudanese morgue even if there was something left of the bodies to autopsy. They don’t have the specialized microscopes to see them. That equipment is found in research labs. Well-funded labs. An ordinary blood test or an X-ray wouldn’t show up nanites. It makes sense,” Amaro said. “Glass wasn’t affected because she wasn’t there when the nanites were distributed. We were never in any danger at the Swiss clinic. They’re probably programmed to shut off when their host dies.”
“Nobody expected an American woman to suddenly pop in and complicate things,” Yanmeng said. “Otherwise no sample would have gotten out, and everybody would have believed the Janjaweed raid story.”
“Wait,” Amaro said. “The Rainiers weren’t experts in nanotech. Would they even know what they had in that sample?”
“Evidently, they found out. The university must have those special microscopes somewhere on campus.” Amaro nodded.
Yanmeng said, “Would fire kill the hitchhikers? Maybe they’re still in Darfur, in the soil or something.”
Maliha was startled with the simplicity of it. No one would think to take soil samples. Everyone thought the Janjaweed had slaughtered and incinerated the villagers and that was the end of it. “We need to send some experts in nanotechnology out there. Amaro?”
“I’m on it already.” He was walking over to his computer. “Why not start at the top? I’ll find out who the most respected researcher is.”
“We don’t need to respect him,” Maliha said. “Just find out who’s good and I’ll hop on a plane and drag the guy out to the site. Wait, he doesn’t have to go.” She rolled her eyes. “What a dummy. I can go there myself and take soil samples. It’s hostile territory there.”
“Whoa,” Amaro said. Yanmeng and Maliha stared at him.
“Whoa, as in don’t get soil samples?”
He was staring at his computer. “There’s been another incident. They’re saying it was a fire wildly out of control. An oasis settlement burned in northeastern Niger. All the inhabitants killed and incinerated in the fire. Sound familiar?”
“How many times does it take for people to get suspicious? Wouldn’t there be some investigation?” Maliha said.
“It’s Africa. Two different countries. That doesn’t make a pattern, not yet, and anyway, it doesn’t affect us, so ignore it. That’s unfortunately the attitude toward a lot of things that go on in high-poverty areas,” Amaro said.
There was bitterness in his voice. Maliha knew he was thinking of his early life in a favela in Rio de Janeiro. In those slums life was cheap and the police usually avoided becoming involved. Amaro and his sister Rosie would have died there as teenagers if Maliha hadn’t rescued them from gang violence.
“I wouldn’t say that as a rule,” Yanmeng said. “There are plenty of people who care, like us.”
“Hound, how about we go to Niger and take a look? Get some soil samples and generally raise a stink for the press? Amaro, my jet’s still at Midway?”
“Unless you took it on a romantic getaway with Jake.”
“Not yet. Would you please set up a flight to…I guess to Algiers. We’ll have to figure out how to get to the settlement in Niger from there.”
“You actually said please.”
“I’m growing polite in my old age.” No one had mentioned her appearance, but Maliha had gotten a glimpse in the mirror. Anu’s aging for the Rainiers’ deaths had not been kind to her. The tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes had deepened. Perhaps she was more sensitive to every silver hair or wrinkle than those around her, but she had reason to be. Her powers diminished with age, and there could come a time when the kinds of exploits she now took for granted would be beyond her physically. If she didn’t balance her scale by then, Rabishu would win when she succumbed to old age.
Maliha and Hound had just taken off for Algiers when she got a call from Amaro.
“I’ve got your nanotech expert lined up. Top researcher Dr. Fynn Saltz.” He spelled it for her. “Lives in Miami, but here’s the thing: He hasn’t been seen in the last two months. He could be hidden away somewhere working on the hitchhiker program.”
“Or just decided he needed a little R and R away from the wife and kids,” Maliha said. “Either way, he sounds like someone I need to find. We’ll head for Miami and I’ll get off there. Hound can continue on his own.”
With a revised flight plan filed, the jet headed south.
Maliha started with legwork and lying at the University of Miami. She’d learned from Hound never to broach the authorities of an institution, because that’s where red tape was purchased in bulk quantities. Instead, she mingled with the students, asked questions, was sent to a couple of dead ends, and then struck dirt with Dr. Saltz’s grad assistant, Larry Maybry.
The first thing Larry wanted to talk about was something that both annoyed and worried him. His boss had a research project going on at a different location, or at least Larry thought he did. He hadn’t been in contact with him recently.
“I guess I shouldn’t feel slighted. Fynn was supposed to get married last week. He never showed up. I wonder what his fiancée thinks about that?” Larry asked.
“Maybe he got cold feet,” Maliha said.
Larry shook his head. “Nah. Whatever else I think of the guy, I know he was devoted to his fiancée.”
Once he got away from grousing about the boss, Larry loved to talk about his work. She let Larry explain nanotechnology to her to keep from breaking the flow of conversation.
“Nano
tech requires you to think on a very small scale,” he said. “Smaller than bacteria, smaller than viruses. We’re talking about things on the atomic or molecular level, one millionth of a millimeter. That’s a nanometer. I’m seeing those beautiful green eyes of yours with light with a wavelength of about five hundred nanometers.”
“I’ve never had anyone flirt with me by describing my eyes as a wavelength.” She didn’t mind being a flirt. It was the gentlest of her ways of getting information.
“You’ve never met me before,” Larry said. There was no arrogance in his tone, just a statement of fact. “For nanotech, the sizes can be much smaller than the wavelength of visible light. It’s like taking a tiny, tiny tweezers and placing atoms or molecules exactly where you want them to create materials. Suppose I wanted to make a strawberry. If I know the chemical components of it, I could assemble a strawberry from water, dirt, and air, and a little bit of energy. Not the way Mother Nature does it with cell division and growth powered by photosynthesis, but it would taste the same.”
“Dr. Saltz is working on making manufactured food?”
“That was just an example. But manufacturing—that’s the idea. You’ve seen those big robotic arms that assemble cars, right? They can only handle big pieces, like a steering wheel or something. Shrink the arm down to a hundred nanometers, and now you’ve got a nanite that can handle atoms or molecules. If you have one nanite build you something that sizable, like a paper clip, it’s going to take a long time because it’s assembling atom by atom. So have a huge number of them working together—you’ll get something that’s actually visible to the eye much faster, especially if you can provide some kind of scaffold for them to place atoms in. The little guys could repair themselves or build more of themselves, or cooperate to build a nanite that doesn’t look like them. Theoretically, they could even mutate—make a bad copy.”
She touched his arm gently. “Go on.” She checked his aura. It was mostly a muddy orange, with spikes of dull brown. He was eager for success but lacking in confidence. He’d be the type who would run over others to achieve success. A few streaks of red showed that he was responding to Maliha’s sexuality.
He’s hooked. But I didn’t need to see his aura to tell that.
She was perched on a lab stool next to him, and she casually crossed her legs.
“What are you and the professor working on?”
“I’d rather not say. It’s proprietary. But I almost think Saltz has lost interest in it. He’s onto something bigger.”
“Bigger?”
“I told you earlier he has a project going that he won’t let me even look at. I won’t get any credit when he publishes, and that ticks me off. He’s supposed to be my advisor, and it looks like he advised me right out of the picture. I haven’t seen him for a while, so I guess he’s working off-site someplace.”
“Do you know him well?”
Larry frowned, but it came off as a sneer. “He doesn’t let anybody get close except that woman of his. He brought up his son Doyle to follow in his footsteps, but the guy’s a bum.”
Maliha thanked him and made her way out of the lab, bursting Larry’s lust bubble. She was pleased with all the information she’d collected.
Maybe I should apply for a Private Investigator’s license and go into business with Hound.
She asked around for information on Saltz’s son Doyle and put together a picture of him. He was a college dropout who worked part-time jobs when he could find them. His mother died early in his life, leaving him in the reflected glare of his brilliant father, who had great plans for his son. Those great plans had boiled down to sending his son money every month in the hopes that he’d come to his senses. Dr. Saltz lived in Coral Gables, an upscale community near the university. Doyle lived in the polar opposite, Liberty City, probably just to be spiteful.
Maliha walked through Liberty City after dark. The area had a reputation as crime ridden, but she wasn’t worried. Although not dressed in her killing outfit, she had the advantage of knives, throwing stars, and her superb martial arts skills. Maliha garnered numerous whistles and a couple of crude offers, easily deflected. Doyle’s apartment was on the second floor of a building at the end of the hall. It was one of the nicest buildings on the block, but had urine stains in the corners and the scratching noises of rodents coming from dark places. As she walked down the hall, she noticed the carpet was worn, the lights dim, and the arguments behind closed doors loud. She’d called ahead, so Doyle was expecting her. His apartment was cramped but clean, except for the layer of marijuana smoke at roughly head height. After the introductions, Maliha sat down on a spongy couch, lowering her head below the smoke layer. He offered her a joint and when she didn’t take it, reluctantly put his stash aside.
He was in his thirties, not a people person, but surprisingly willing to talk about his father.
“Yeah, he’s been gone since sometime in September. He used to call me every week, make sure I’m still alive, I guess. That stopped weeks ago. I went over to his place and he wasn’t there. Wasn’t dead either, which I kinda had a feeling was the case. Feels weird to think I’m doing the same kind of shit for him—trying to look out for him and see that he’s okay.”
“What about the police?”
“They looked into it for about thirty seconds. That was how long it took them to find out that he’d filed for a sabbatical leave of absence from the university. After that they weren’t interested. Said he was entitled to his privacy and I should shut the fuck up.”
A sabbatical that his assistant didn’t know about? Larry was nosy, especially about Dr. Saltz. He would have known.
Maliha spotted a couple of framed pictures showing young Doyle and his father on a deep-sea fishing boat. She estimated the boat at forty feet, and didn’t see any crew in the pictures. Dr. Saltz must be experienced to captain his own boat.
A man who hated his father wouldn’t have any photos on display, so the relationship between Doyle and his father was more complex than outright rejection.
Doyle isn’t making some kind of statement to his father with his lifestyle, it’s just the way he is.
“Did you follow your father’s research enough to know what he was working on?”
Doyle shook his head. “Not much. I know he was some kind of wizard with nanites. The last thing he was working on was some way to coat the little critters with something so they wouldn’t get rejected in the body. Yeah, that was it. He said he could help people with it, like it could fix things in the body. Diseases like diabetes, I think. Maybe something else.”
That must be the secret project Larry complained about. If nanites could assemble complex things, they could manufacture insulin in the body. Something to “fix” diabetes would be worth hundreds of millions. Larry was motivated by more than academic pride. He wanted in on the money.
“Did he act strangely before he disappeared? Maybe seem under a lot of stress?”
“He was always under stress. This experiment didn’t work, that one was a disappointment. He was very devoted to his work. The weeks before he disappeared he was acting strangely, even for him.”
“How?”
Doyle looked off to the side. His features may have been handsome at one time, but now sagged, giving him a worn look beyond his years.
“Nervous. Maybe depressed. It could be hard to tell with him. Would you believe he didn’t show up for his own wedding? Now that’s gotta be suspicious. I hired an investigator, did I mention that? He came up with nada and charged me a couple hundred bucks to do it. I don’t have that kind of money, especially since Dad disappeared. He used to slip me a few bucks every now and then. You said on the phone you were looking for him. You gonna try to charge me, too? I mean, I want to find the guy because I don’t think he’s on a sabbatical. Would’ve told me. I don’t have anything left to pay. The rent’s due.”
“I’m not going to charge you anything. He was depressed even though he was getting married? That doesn’t make
sense. He didn’t call her and tell her he was breaking up with her?”
“Nah. All of a sudden she just said the wedding’s off. No explanation.”
“What’s the woman’s name? I’d like to talk to her.”
“Jamie Blake. She lives in New York. He met her there at some scientific conference. I got her phone number here somewhere.” He stood up, crossed the room, and rummaged in a box that served as a desk. “Yeah, here it is. She’s a real nice woman. Got a beautiful kid. They were good for each other.” He handed her a piece of paper.
The phone rang in another room. “I need to get that. Possible job.” He started toward the kitchen, then turned around. “You find out anything, you let me know, okay? I mean, think if it was your father. You can’t give up.”
“You can’t give up,” Maliha echoed. “Believe me, I’m going to look very hard for Dr. Fynn Saltz.”
He just might be the key to the hitchhikers and exactly what they do. And how to stop them.
Chapter Fourteen
Fynn Saltz’s fiancée worked at Columbia University, in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. She had a second floor apartment on West 122nd Street, within walking distance of her job as a biology professor.
Maliha wore a long-sleeved blouse, tucked into trousers, and a light jacket over that. It was chilly, but she didn’t want to wear a long coat that would restrict her motion. While walking there, Maliha had a sudden feeling of apprehension about something ahead. She took inventory of her weapons: three knives hidden about her body and the whip sword curled at her waist, its thin, flat handle serving as a belt buckle.
Perhaps this feeling of danger isn’t a problem for me, maybe Hound instead. Wonder what’s going on with him?
The building had no doorman, so Maliha walked right in and found the name Jamie Blake neatly lettered above the mailbox slot for 2-B. She took the stairs. The building was clean but spare, with art deco details that made it exactly the kind of place Maliha would choose for herself if she were in Dr. Blake’s circumstances.
