“I don’t know what they looked like,” Josh sneered. “Smith said he killed them, but not until after they shot Samantha.” He paused with a glare that didn’t need words. “I did what you wanted,” he continued. “I spied for you. I lied for you. And now my sister is dead for you.” He leaped from his seat and rushed Abraham, but the like-sized Specials reacted instantly and intercepted him. “You killed my sister!” he screamed. “You killed her!”
“Take him away,” Abraham commanded. “Keep him under restraint until he gets a hold of himself.”
The Specials dragged the feverish Josh out of the suite, leaving the two executives and Charles to sort the issue. Silence reigned for long moments. It was Charles who broke the impasse. “Either our Turkish division is acting alone or with orders from elsewhere.” He looked dubiously at Manoukian.
“So, Mr. Manoukian,” Abraham said. “You have taken it upon yourself to commandeer my Turks?”
“Why would I do that?” Manoukian asked. “Smith was coming to kill you, not me.”
“It was you who ordered our Turks to kill Smith,” Charles said. “They took him on at Susie Quinn’s apartment. The only problem was he wasn’t so easy to kill. They failed then, just like they failed this morning. And innocent people paid the price for your mistake.”
“I don’t give assignments to our Specials,” Manoukian snickered. “They take orders only from Abraham. You know that.”
“I know blood is thicker than water,” Charles argued, “particularly, if you’re Turkish. And you are Turkish, aren’t you?”
Manoukian only stared and did not answer, so Charles added, “You’re from Turkey anyway, and these men you knew personally. It was you who recruited them. For all we know, you’re related to every one of them.”
From behind his desk, Abraham merely listened.
Manoukian countered, “Very good, Mr. Morgan, but you left out one very important detail.”
“You mean what was your motive? That’s the easiest part. It’s the oldest one of all. You’ll find it in the Bible. Cain slew Abel because he was jealous of his relationship with God. You wanted Smith killed because you were jealous of his relationship with a certain blond goddess.”
Charles couldn’t prove his allegation, but when he saw Manoukian’s glum expression, he knew he was right. “You fool. You bumbling fool. For your jealousy, innocent people were killed, including our lead scientist.”
A long quiet ensued. Ultimately, it was Abraham who spoke. “Thank you, Charles.” He turned back to Manoukian. “And there you have it.”
Manoukian simply asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to go away,” Abraham buzzed. “Eternity isn’t yours anymore. Eternity is owned by Soriah Enterprises, and you are out of the equation. My lawyers have the paperwork ready for you to sign. You’ll notice that you will be paid a very generous sum. Either you sign and quit while you’re ahead, or I will press charges against you in a court of law. And I can guarantee that you will lose, Mr. Manoukian.”
“But the formula is lost,” Manoukian pointed out. “What do you plan on doing about that?”
“We will find a way,” Abraham answered. “Either we locate the database, or we start over again.”
“Start over again? But I was told there is no record and no documentation as to how Benson and Bernstein made it work.”
“That’s correct. Still, we’ll find a way. In any case, I’m satisfied to tell you that it’s no longer your concern.”
Manoukian cast a dour glare at Abraham and then at Charles, after which he collected the papers from Abraham’s desk and grumbled, “My lawyers will advise me on my next move.”
When Manoukian departed, Charles felt relieved. He turned to Abraham and said, “That’s one problem solved. I’ll go to Josh and explain to him what happened. He’ll listen to me when he calms down. In the meantime, what will we do about Trent Smith?” Charles waited at the door for an answer.
Abraham responded by raising his clasped hands to support his lowered forehead. The seconds mounted until he looked up and said, “I’m not concerned about Trent Smith. He’s Toka’s problem now.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Chinese Contribution
Toka Tacau slammed his fist against the wall. His security team paced the Auxiliary Computer Lab frustrated and clueless, but he refused to admit he’d been outfoxed. Gigantic machines whizzed and whirled, and Toka frowned. He never liked technology and felt less than secure in the presence of computers larger than laptops. His extreme size had always been an advantage, but being surrounded by such immense equipment forced a sense of the other foot.
Two security guards hustled from the fire exit. The first one said, “There’s no one in there, Chief. We checked all the way down both ends. Nothing.”
Toka considered his next move. His crew scoured A wing with no result, and now they needed to search the entire complex. He lifted his radio and shouted, “Keep a mobile patrol on the perimeter. If the son of a bitch slipped outside, confine him. If he resists, shoot him!”
“We’re on it,” sounded a voice through his radio.
Toka lifted his radio again. “Blue team, you got anything?”
“Nothing through the hub,” answered blue team’s captain.
“Okay, fan out. Leave two men in the hub, and the rest of you get back to B Wing. Red team checks C Wing, and green team checks D Wing. Move!”
Toka returned the radio to his belt and pondered his dilemma.
One of his lieutenants asked, “What are we going to do about E Wing?”
“That’s what I’m thinking about,” Toka replied. “You and main squad recheck A Wing. We might have missed him somehow. And as far as E Wing is concerned... I’ll check E Wing myself.”
“Alone?” the lieutenant asked. “Why don’t you take the new guy with you? Mr. Morgan hired him because he’s an ex Kung Fu champion, but all he does is sit on his ass all day.”
“The son of a bitch killed my brother,” Toka growled to his subordinate. “This is personal, and I’ll be damned if I need help to kill one man.”
* * * *
Trent’s alternate route had led him into D Wing. After checking for traffic, he slipped out of the vent just inside the entrance to the lobby. There were two white lab coats hanging from hooks on the wall. The nametag on one read Fitzsimmons, and the other had a name he couldn’t pronounce. He slipped into the coat that read Fitzsimmons and commenced his tour. Workers paid him no mind as they were focused on their duties, and shortly, Trent discovered several caged animals in various stages of experimentation. The comatose chimps, he was sure, would preclude any invitation to inspectors from PETA.
Further exploration uncovered a busy workshop about the size of a small cafeteria. Several Asian women in lab coats and hairnets tinkered with intricate instrumentation on countertops lined throughout the room. Latex gloves, safety glasses, and filter masks completed their garb. It was a processing lab of some kind, and as Trent walked in, a pungent odor assailed his nose. He recognized it. The scent was not uncommon in the kitchens of fine Japanese restaurants. “That smells like Fugu,” he said to the technicians working nearby.
A young woman lowered her mask. “It is,” she replied. “This is where we extract the tetrodotoxin from the puffer fish.” She was the lead worker of what looked like a Japanese assembly line dissecting the fish. They placed separate parts of it in trays that moved on conveyer belts through rifts in the wall.
“Well, I won’t be helping myself to any of that,” Trent quipped. He was familiar with the deadly poison of the puffer fish. Even though it was considered to be a delicacy in Japan, many people died yearly from eating improperly cleaned portions. Trent had always refrained, because even mere traces of the toxin could paralyze a person or induce comas simulating death. There were cases of people being buried alive after medical examiners confused TTX paralysis with death. To make matters worse, survivors had reportedly been fully conscious thr
oughout the ordeal. It begged him to ask, “Why is tetrodotoxin being processed here?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she lowered her gaze to the nametag on Trent’s lab coat. “Are you an inspector, Mr. Fitzsimmons?”
Trent had noticed her own nametag identified her as Yamaguchi, so he answered, “Bokuwa anataga doku o T’sukuruno o miteimas.”
The woman’s surprised expression prompted Trent to add, “Ichi milliliter dakede shinu a sorega arimas.”
Trent’s fluent Japanese drew a smile from the woman, and she responded, “Tetrodotoxin is one of the ingredients to Eternity.”
“A deadly poison is part of a drug that prolongs life?”
“Don’t ask me how,” she answered. “We send it over to E Wing through the air pony. That’s where infusion takes place. Here in D Wing we use it to keep the animals comatose.”
“That explains the chimps,” Trent said. “From what I’ve read, the clinical applications of tetrodotoxin are only experimental.”
“All I know is we send E Wing most of our procurement. After processing, they send it to C Wing called Compound X.”
“Compound X? It sounds like something from a secret agent movie.”
“That’s why we call E Wing the Secret Wing. The only people from the main complex who ever go in there are the Big Three.”
“The Big Three?”
Trent envisioned monstrous Soriah Specials until the woman specified, “You know, Doctors Benson, Wong, and Lee. The Big Three.”
“Right,” Trent said. “What about Security? Don’t they patrol in there?”
“Only the security chief. That really big guy.”
Trent thought to himself he had to get into E Wing. If they used the dangerous toxin to keep animals comatose in D Wing, just what were they doing with it over there? He had never heard of an antidote to the poison, and as far as he knew, none existed. Did tetrodotoxin unlock the secret of eternal life? Trent refused to speculate further. He still believed the whole thing a sham. He bowed, said, “Arigato,” and then continued with his tour.
Within minutes, Trent snooped upon more unconscious animals, including chimps fixed with transparent craniums and see-through chest walls. While scrutinizing the electronic cabinets between the comatose apes, he observed two small cylindrical containers attached near the top. Skull and crossbones identified the first container above the letters TTX. The label on the second cylinder read Solvent. Plastic tubing from both serviced I.V. solutions, which, in turn, fed an arm on every sleeping simian.
It hurt to consider that inside each unmoving primate could be a mind fully conscious. No wonder Soriah needed his state senator to enact special zoning laws. This was an animal activist’s nightmare. Could E Wing be worse? Trent returned to the central corridor. He only covered half of D wing, but he’d seen enough. He needed to make his way into E Wing before the day was done.
Peeking through sectional windows, Trent spied security guards with green shoulder patches. He slipped into the next room and through the fire exit. Once again, he squeezed into the air duct. The pitch-black crawlspace made routing difficult. Only intermittent vents allowed light, and it didn’t travel far.
Trent passed over the main hub and found himself in C Wing. Peering through the mesh, he saw the lobby occupied, so he moved on. His first chance to drop unseen was deep into the wing. In his confiscated coat, he probed the corridors and witnessed space-suited workers using high tech machinery to mix and measure unfamiliar solutions. He observed additional staff using elaborate robotics to pour a watery substance into various-sized vats.
In the next section, two workers tended glass flasks and heated cisterns. Instead of airtight spacesuits, they wore scrubs and a retractable face shield. More interesting to Trent was the humid smell of poppies. He decided to inspect the room since the technicians paid him no mind, and it was then he realized what he had discovered. It was a lab that processed heroin. “Are you telling me this is part of the formula?” he asked the closest worker.
The worker, barely more than a boy, lifted his visor and replied, “Well, yeah, but only a very small part.”
“I see,” Trent said. “Do you know if it’s vital for the healing process or for the anti-aging element?”
“Who knows?” He was a fair-haired, jolly-faced youth. “I couldn’t tell you the science of it, but I figure this makes sure the users don’t miss their daily doses.” He smiled at Trent and tacked on a wink. “It’s what gives you that initial rush every time you inject it.”
“No kidding,” Trent said. He couldn’t believe the formula would contain an addictive constituent and used for that exact purpose. Was this why Manoukian and Soriah didn’t bother with FDA approval? Federally regulated narcotics like heroin and deadly poisons like tetrodotoxin could be very discouraging elements in any kind of medicine. “No wonder it’s called a wonder drug,” he remarked.
“Yeah, and that doesn’t even take into account the secret ingredient,” the youngster volunteered.
“The secret ingredient? You mean Compound X?”
“Yeah, we get it from E Wing through the air pony. No one knows what it is. We just mix it in with our batch here and call it a day.”
Just as the youth finished his statement, a muffled whoosh sounded behind a small section in the wall. “That’s it right there.” He opened the hatch and removed a red fiberglass cylinder clamped on the end. It was about a foot long and four inches in diameter. The technician unfastened the cap and popped it open, revealing foam padding in which five holes were cut in a circular pattern. From each hole, he extracted a sealed glass test tube, each filled with a clear liquid solution. “Here we go,” he said. “Compound X, right on cue.”
“This came from E Wing?”
“Yep.”
“And you don’t even know what’s in it?”
“We know it has TTX in it. You know what that is?”
“Yeah, it’s a deadly poison, and it’s probably used to nullify the addictive effects of this heroin.” Trent was only guessing. He was aware of theoretical applications of the toxin, one of which was to combat heroin addiction. “But the amount of TTX in one of those test tubes must be minute. What makes up the rest of that compound?”
“Who cares? All we know is that it makes the drug more suitable to the human system and interacts with the rest of the formula to make it work.” The youngster held a test tube to the light and examined its colorless fluid. “Looks like saliva to me. For all we know, they bring in those truckloads of Chinese people to spit in a huge bowl. Then they stir it up and send it to us in test tubes.” He turned around to give his smiling co-worker a high five.
Trent narrowed his eyes. “What did you mean when you said ‘truckloads of Chinese people’?”
“Well, that’s who works over there. They think we don’t know, but we see them come and go at the back end of E Wing. Only thing is, sometimes they come, but they don’t go.”
“You’re not serious.”
“For real. But, hey, it’s all good. We’re paid to not ask questions, so you can bet that we don’t.”
Trent shook his head. “You guys have been around this heroin too long.”
In response, the youngsters surrendered a good laugh, and again they high-fived. “You’re too cool, man,” the talkative one said.
“Thanks,” Trent replied as he turned to leave.
The connotation of the boy’s suggestion was too morbid to consider. Trent could only attribute the concept to a far-fetched imagination. Still, it lingered in his mind due to the high level of secrecy afforded to that part of the complex. All he really knew at this point was that a secret ingredient came from the secret wing. And he didn’t like secrets.
Trent returned to the central corridor and considered further investigation, but multiple voices from the adjacent room put the notion on hold. Another peek through a sectional window revealed more security guards, this time with red patches on their shoulders. Trent decided to make himself scarc
e. He darted through a fire exit and traveled the vents once again. He was determined that his next stop would be the mysterious E Wing.
A tedious crawl circumnavigated the hub and accessed the restricted area manned by a solitary guard. The circulatory systems were not partitioned, and Trent managed his way into the forbidden zone. He dropped through the first grill that viewed no activity. It was a wide corridor lined with doors on either side, all sealed and most operated only from within. Sectional walls divided the corridor every twenty paces, but contained centralized doors, and the next thing Trent knew, he was surrounded by workers in white uniforms.
The young technician in the heroin lab was right about one thing—everyone scurrying back and forth was Chinese. If not for the white lab coat, Trent would have appeared overly conspicuous. He hoped to complete his tour without reproach.
In the next section, large circular gateways were evenly spaced down both sides of the corridor. Having no visible knobs or handles, they operated mechanically, Trent realized, when in the act of opening, double layers rotated in opposite directions accompanied by a motorized hum. To keep the footpath clear, the lower quarter penetrated the floor, and when the rotation completed, an aperture appeared. In closing, the process reversed.
Small circular windows centered each grand disc, and chance peeks only revealed nurses and technicians stirring about. They tended computerized monitors, unfamiliar machinery, and rows of transparent countertops. Trent couldn’t discern anything more than that. He decided to keep moving, lest he attract unwanted attention.
Soon, a pair of nurses emerged from a side room, pushing carts of medical supplies. Trent walked alongside them and asked, “Are these supplies used to process Eternity?” He was hoping to learn more about Compound X.
The nurse to whom he spoke eyed him with curiosity, but did not slow down or attempt to address his question. He tried again. “Excuse me, are these supplies used for Eternity?”
Killer of Killers Page 25
