Going Grey

by Karen Traviss

  "I've got a big project at work," Dru said. "So don't go telling your father crazy things about men, or it'll be even harder to get any child support out of him."

  "Well, whatever it is, I'm glad you're happier."

  The job would never be a source of joy and satisfaction, but Dru felt better for having a goal. This was real investigative work, and she loved a good puzzle. Solving puzzles imposed clarity and order on the chaotic unknown. It gave her control in a world where she felt she had none.

  Yes, I know that sums up my neuroses perfectly. But at least I know what they are.

  Dru dropped Clare at Rebecca's and headed for the office to carry on sifting through KWA's paper archives while she waited for the Vancouver agency to open. Assembling all the internal documentation on Kinnery had taken a few days because she'd requested files by year to disguise exactly whose data she was looking for. When she walked into her temporary office in the basement, the brown, blue, and red boxes were stacked in front of the desk like a playground fort. They smelled ancient and musty.

  Weaver had personally signed out the Ringer files to avoid awkward questions. She opened the first box and fanned out a few folders on the desk. Should I be looking at classified material? Should KWA have shredded this or handed it to the DoD? She really wasn't sure. She reassured herself that it was solely between her and Weaver.

  Besides, she wasn't interested in scientific data. She was just looking for names and places to map Kinnery's associations.

  Who would Kinnery ask to carry genetic material for him?

  It wasn't like smuggling drugs. The risks were different, but so was the nature of the trust that Kinnery would have to put in his accomplice. His mule could just walk away with the goods at any time. There wasn't anything that cops would find if they stopped and searched the guy. It was a far cry from someone swallowing heroin-filled rubbers that could burst and kill them if they didn't crap them out in time, or carrying a suitcase full of bagged cocaine.

  Dru wrote the growing list of names, companies, and locations on sticky notes so that she could move them around on the desk pad to try different combinations and maybe spot a pattern. None of this could be committed to her computer to leave temporary files or even trackable keystrokes. Weaver had insisted on absolute secrecy. She took the desk pad home each night, and any calls or searches she made were via two unregistered burner cells that she kept for sensitive enquiries.

  Who would Kinnery rely on?

  You don't pluck the people you really need to trust out of thin air. You already know them. So it's someone Kinnery's sure won't disappear, blab, or sell out to a rival. And someone he can keep tabs on. If he did it, it was probably just before he left KWA.

  No, this isn't about who he trusts. It's about who trusts him.

  Engineered genes could make unexpected changes to the rest of the body. Who would take that kind of risk for Kinnery? A girlfriend? Even smart women would do anything for the worst son of a bitch. I wasn't immune, was I? No, the article said the subject was male, although that was hardly a reliable source, and Dru had no idea about Kinnery's sexual preferences anyway. Maybe it wasn't about trust. It might have been about control, someone he had power and influence over: a student, perhaps.

  If it's not devotion, then why would he have that power? Fear. Losing a cut of the profits. Bad grades. If he goes down, everyone goes down.

  Kinnery's college class from the 1970s was a logical place to start, the earliest point at which he'd have met like-minded people who also understood the science. But what if this mule didn't know what he or she was being dosed with? It still had to be someone Kinnery could keep tabs on.

  Another thought struck her. If this mule existed and was found, how was Weaver going to permanently recover the genes? They'd be embedded at a cellular level, even if they were switched off. They weren't goods that could be seized and impounded; a human couldn't be confiscated like a genetically modified crop or animal. KWA would need to intervene physically to extract tissue samples. That almost certainly meant getting a court order if the mule didn't consent. How the hell was that going to be kept quiet?

  The idea distracted Dru completely for a few minutes as she worked through scenarios of how someone could take genes out of a human being. It just didn't seem possible without violence or kidnapping. Perhaps there was some advanced technique she wasn't aware of. She wasn't a scientist, after all. She simply didn't know.

  Her speculation was cut short when someone rapped on the door. Luis, the facilities manager, wheeled in a sack truck loaded with three more boxes.

  "I think this is the last of it." Luis tapped a box. "These are the oldest phone records. Twenty five years old. Ah, those were the days."

  That surprised her. "I didn't know we kept them that long."

  "Patents last twenty years, and my predecessor never disposed of anything until someone made him, so this is his legacy."

  It was another mountain of work. But as long as Dru was busy, she still had a job. "Thanks. That'll keep me going."

  "Are you looking for something specific?"

  "Just getting an overview for a report. You know how it is. Halbauer wants to know the history of the world before the wedding can take place."

  She closed the door again. A paper investigation wasn't just about leaving no footprint on the system. Looking through the hard copy let her mind take in things she might not consciously notice. Writing down the details and even applying them to maps engaged different parts of her brain. Then the subconscious processing would throw up recurrences and connections, and she'd see patterns that might be worth following up. It looked mind-numbingly dull to most people. But that was why she saw what others missed. To her, this was Aladdin's cave.

  The Ringer files were a mix of original documents and computer printouts. She was busy scribbling down names when the Skype tone interrupted, and a glance at her screen confirmed it was the agency in Vancouver. The webcam was disabled. It was mainly to prevent the camera picking up any sensitive detail behind her, but not entirely.

  I used to be hot. Well, passable, anyway. Now look at me. Worn out. Greying. So over and done with. Let's preserve the illusion of adequacy.

  "Hi, Grant," she said, trying to smile audibly. "How did you get on?"

  "Well, the subject flew to Washington on Monday." Grant had a lovely, creamy Canadian voice. He sounded about forty. It gave Dru a brief and completely illogical moment of hope that quickly faded. "DC, that is. Our affiliate says he walked to a restaurant where they couldn't follow him, but he didn't come out the front door. They picked him up later returning to his hotel, then lost him again until he returned to his hotel again on Wednesday. There's a thirty-six to forty-eight-hour gap to be filled there, I'm afraid"

  "And he's home now?"

  "He got back to Vancouver late yesterday. I'll send you a full report and images, but those are the headlines. Do you want me to maintain surveillance?"

  "Has he called anybody?"

  "Well, being able to answer that question – unless an operative was in earshot in a public place – would require an illegal act."

  Translated, that meant Grant might be able to get hold of phone logs. Dru tried to keep her answer ambiguous as well. She couldn't openly ask him to do it. In his profession, he was probably used to reading between the lines between the other lines.

  "Understood," she said. "Yes, please carry on. I'll tell you when to call it off."

  "I'll mail you some encrypted stuff. Check your spam trap too. You'll know it when you see it."

  Dru was baffled for a moment. It sounded like there were multiple messages. If he was worried about spelling that out on the phone, then it was probably illegal, or at least irregular. She took her burner out of her purse, waiting for the report to land in the mail account that she kept purely for off-the-books stuff.

  This was a grey area that she'd found herself edging into a step at a time over the years without really noticing that she'd crossed the line. Fir
st she'd prided herself on not breaking the law. After a while, she'd lowered the bar far enough to accept irregularly-obtained intelligence for an informal investigation, because a pointed interview with the erring employee almost always led to the individual admitting what Dru had already worked out via the back door. It was a confession. No harm had been done: her hands were clean. She was simply operating from a position of greater awareness to get an answer. Law enforcement did that all the time. Her job wasn't that different.

  Ping. Grant's encrypted e-mail arrived. It wasn't easy to view this on a phone screen. There were long-lens images of Kinnery walking down the road or getting into taxis, and a timed list of his movements. Even if she could have accessed CCTV footage, it probably wouldn't have told her much more.

  A second encrypted message headed CANADIAN BARGAIN BREAKS: BOOKING CONFIRMATION arrived about two minutes later, from an e-mail address she didn't recognise. Now Grant's odd comment made sense. This message had to be from him. The attachments were images that took some zooming to work out.

  They were pictures of itemized billing records with no name or identification. Grant hadn't added any comments except the labels CELL and LANDLINE, but they had to have come from a phone company employee, photographed and returned to their source with no trackable route out through the telco's e-mail system. It didn't so much give Dru a thrill as a slightly sick feeling in the stomach. She was pretty sure that was illegal at some point along the chain.

  The landline print-out was very short, showing fewer than a dozen calls to and from the same number, nothing else. The other list was Kinnery's cell activity over the last two months, and it was easy to see that he wasn't a teenaged girl. He didn't call many people, and not many people called him, but she recognised Weaver's direct line. Now all she had to do was enter the numbers into a reverse look-up application and see what fell out.

  If anything.

  At least it was a relatively short list. For a wicked, guilty moment, she wondered how long it would take to do the same search on Clare's records, but Clare understood the bill was itemized and that Mom was good at checking that sort of thing if she was given cause to worry.

  But then she might just go out and buy a second-hand burner that I'd never know about.

  There was no such thing as complete monitoring. Dru got impatient with TV dramas and police documentaries that made it look as if every person could be tracked and found, every clue detected, and every crime solved simply by technology. People believed what they saw on those shows. Families with missing loved ones believed it as well, but they were living proof that people could disappear forever even in a surveillance society and right under the noses of neighbours. And crimes went unsolved every day, no matter how many street cameras, drones, spy satellites, phone taps, and computer snoops there were. On the other hand, old fashioned human intelligence, plus hours of work, could often do what high-tech couldn't.

  So what's this phone you only use for one number, Kinnery?

  It was like some weird Cold War hotline from the White House to the Kremlin. She liked the thought that it might be a big red phone with a flashing light on it. The number he'd called had a Seattle area code, but Dru couldn't tell if it was a landline or a cell.

  It's all about people. Observing human behaviour and association. Breach security by asking someone nicely. Wreck the smartest system in the world by employing the dumbest human. How smart are you, Kinnery?

  Dru did a reverse look-up for the Seattle number and found nothing. She'd have to call it to check who answered, but timing was an issue. How would she know if calling would alert someone too soon? She had no idea what too soon or too late meant when she was dealing with something two decades old. All she could do was collect pieces of the puzzle, each innocuous on its own.

  If only she could get hold of the document that The Slide had received. She pondered that all the way through to lunch as she cross-checked phone numbers, names, area codes, and locations.

  Drudgery wasn't mind-numbing at all. It was as soothing as needlepoint. Each stitch, each little curved pillow of yarn placed on the canvas field, and each thread of information would build up into something that she could eventually stand back from and see as a complete picture.

  Dru switched between checking the phone numbers in the records and reading the paper documents to extract names and places for the timeline. Doing searches on the burner phone was fiddly and it wasn't perfect security, but it was better than leaving trails on the office network.

  Just as she left no footprint, though, she also had no proof of what she'd been asked to do. She hoped she wouldn't need it.

  By the end of the day, she'd put more flesh on Kinnery's bones than the personnel file or even Weaver had given him. He'd split up with his wife within a year of leaving KWA, and he'd stopped referring to a partner online. Dru had the names of at least ten other biologists who probably knew him well, plus a selection of forum comments, customer reviews, and other unguarded and innocuous stuff that gave her an idea of where he liked to go for weekend trips, the restaurants he visited, and the movies he regretted paying good money to see. She knew where he'd given talks and presented papers for the last ten years. Eventually, it would all form a tapestry recording as vivid a sequence of events as the one at Bayeux.

  Why did smart people reveal all this? Nothing was harmless detail.

  Not paranoid. Never. Just aware.

  Weaver paid her a visit while she was packing up for the day. "Any leads?"

  "He went to DC for the weekend." Dru didn't even say Kinnery's name aloud in the confines of her office. Should I mention the Kremlin phone? No, not until I've got something concrete. "I'm still trying to work out what he was doing there. Might be nothing. Have you had any more media calls?"

  "None."

  "Can I ask you something?"

  "Sure."

  "If this mule exists, how are you going to retrieve the genes? It'll be part of his cell structure."

  Dru was looking right into Weaver's face when she said it. She saw the microsecond of reaction in his eyes. Either he hadn't thought about it, or else he'd already reached a conclusion that he wasn't keen to share with her.

  "We'd be dealing with a criminal," he said carefully. "A thief. A smuggler. Like someone carrying drugs or stolen data through customs."

  The thought played out like a movie. Dru could see the green customs channel in her mind and some guy trying to walk through, only to be stopped and asked to step into a side office.

  "Yes, but how do you remove genes from someone?" she asked. "Perhaps you can switch them off, but how do you get all your property back? How do you do it without attracting attention, too? You can't even take a saliva sample without consent if – "

  "We'd think of something." Weaver cut her off and looked at her for a heartbeat too long, as if he was willing her to erase the idea. "Confronting a mule and offering a compromise would probably resolve things. Right now, I just want to know if The Slide's story has any basis. I hope it doesn't. I'd always thought Charles would come back one day." Weaver now seemed unusually chatty. It was a diversionary tactic. Embarrassment? Guilt? Dru couldn't tell. "Halbauer would like that, I imagine. You just find whatever's to be found, and I'll worry about the rest."

  It was as near to a disturbing conversation as Dru had ever had at KWA. "I'd better get home," she said. "I can't leave my daughter on her own for too long, not if I want to find the house standing when I get back."

  "Fifteen? Sixteen?"

  "Fourteen."

  "We have to trust them sooner or later."

  "I just got a new carpet for the living room."

  "Maybe not quite yet, then. Goodnight, Dru."

  On the drive home, Dru mulled over the practical issues of retrieving stolen genes. It might have made a good movie, but this was the real world, where reputable biotech firms like KWA worked within a complex framework of regulations and laws. That didn't include grabbing thieves whose haul was now an integral pa
rt of their body. She was worrying about nothing. If a mule existed at all, Weaver would simply pay him and make sure the genes were switched off.

  But how would he enforce it?

  If you could switch a gene off, you could probably switch it on again. And how would that affect the mule's health?

  It probably didn't matter. She'd have no say in it. Only following orders. I'm just a good little kapo. Honest. By the time she pulled into the drive, she'd reached the conclusion that conscripting a mule was a brilliant idea. Kinnery knew Weaver would have a hell of a job getting at the material, and an even harder one securing it permanently. It would have been even better to carry the genes himself. But if he knew what the genes could do, he might not have wanted to take the risk personally.

  Goddamn. This is actually getting scary.

  Clare was preparing pizza in the kitchen, or at least removing one from the packaging. Dru's reflex these days was to ask her what she was really after. She stopped herself.

  "Ready for dinner?" Clare asked.

  "Sorry, I got held up."

  "If it's not a man, Mom, is it going to get you promotion?"

  "Neither. I'll settle for keeping my job right now. Medical and dental, flex time, and a hundred per cent four-oh-one-K matching. And expenses. You'll sell your soul for that in a few years."

  "How about having more fun?" Clare asked. "This is the only life you get."

  Clare swung between fourteen, four, and forty. She was a teenager. They did that. Dru realised it wasn't the forty-year-old persona speaking but the fourteen-year-old, telling her mom that she was scared that she might end up like her. That was painful.

  "Fun," Dru said. "Yes, I've heard of it."

  After dinner she settled on the sofa and tried to think like Kinnery again. What if he didn't have someone bound to him by loyalty or fear? Maybe he'd have to pay his mule for silence and cooperation. Follow the money. Kinnery had made a mint by selling his stake in KWA. But how could she examine his finances without referring this to the police? She'd need grounds, and a half-assed allegation about a possible gene-stealing shape-shifter wasn't going to do KWA any favours.