Armed with intelligence related to the president of the United States’ deteriorating health, Alex was on a critical mission for his country. He was going to infiltrate Simon Giamatti’s inner circle in the guise of Tom Nolan and bring much-needed Russian influence to America’s destiny.
On several occasions during the flight, Alex had gone into the tiny bathroom, stuck his face in the mirror and studied his new persona. He was still getting used to looking nothing like himself, living inside someone else’s identity. “I am Tom Nolan,” he said into the mirror, and it came out in Tom Nolan’s voice. “I am Tom Nolan.”
The shell was in pretty good shape, all things considered. There were some nicks and blemishes from Louis Karp’s period of ownership. Karp had put a lot of mileage on it in a short period of time. It was like slipping behind the wheel of a used car, but the vehicle operated smoothly with overall good performance. Alex had no complaints.
He slipped the passport out of his sports jacket pocket and looked at it one more time. The passport linked Tom Nolan’s face with the fabricated name of William Jennings for smooth passage into the country, where the real Tom Nolan was still wanted by the law.
The complexity of it all made his head swim: I am Alex Nikolaev disguised as Tom Nolan under the fake name of William Jennings.
He looked out the window at fat, rolling clouds, high above the earth. America grew closer. He was anxious for the mission to begin.
* * *
After landing at O’Hare, Alex was impressed by how well his legs adjusted to a swift walk through the international terminal. Typically after such a long flight, his legs would be sore and stiff, but he felt no such pain whatsoever. He was built for maximum comfort.
As he worked his way through the long, wide corridors that wound through the airport, someone called out one of his names. He hesitated as to whether to stop and answer or keep going. When the voice became persistent and louder, he knew he had to respond.
“Tom Nolan!”
Alex stopped in the center of a pedestrian tunnel. He turned as a continuous swarm of people moved past him in either direction. From out of the crowd, a tall, smiley man in a wrinkled blue suit emerged, laptop hanging off his shoulder on a strap.
“Tom, oh my goodness, what are you doing here?”
When Alex just stared at him uneasily, the man said, “It’s Dean Carruthers. We worked together at Slawin and Peabody, remember, fresh out of law school?”
Alex became Tom and smiled with a snap of recognition. “Oh yes, I remember. Dean at Slawin and Peabody. How are you?”
“No,” said Dean. “The question is how are you? I heard about you getting sick…and then this trouble. Are you out on bail or what?”
Alex did not like this encounter and knew he had to choose his response carefully. “It’s all getting sorted out,” he said. “It’s not like it appears. Listen, I have to catch a ride.…”
“I can help,” Dean said. “Seriously. I’m an attorney with Trabaris and Kaplan downtown. We specialize in criminal cases. We can assist you. You’ve got Lowrey’s disease, right? That’s what I heard from the grapevine. Okay, well, that’s your defense. You’re sick, the stress, maybe there’s brain issues related to Lowrey’s that created poor judgment and altered your behavior. Maybe it was the meds, right? Let me represent you.”
Dean’s naturally loud, exuberant voice was raising Alex’s anxiety level. People passing by were starting to stare at the two of them. Alex didn’t want any attention drawn his way. This blabbermouth lawyer was going to mess up his plans before he even got started.
“I’m your friend, I want to help, and I won’t take no for an answer,” said Dean.
Alex didn’t need a protracted argument standing in the middle of a crowded airport terminal. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s talk. But let’s find some privacy.”
Alex quickly looked around and spotted a nearby men’s room. “In there,” he said.
“Got it.”
Alex and Dean entered the men’s washroom. An Asian man was finishing up at a urinal. Alex and Dean stood off to one side, silent, until the Asian man left. Alex glanced beneath the stalls, then turned to Dean. “Okay, we’re the only ones in here. I just didn’t want to talk about it out there.”
“Totally understand,” Dean said. “So, what’s your current situation? Out on bail? You’re not here looking to skip out of the country, are you?”
“No, nothing like that. I’m not out on bail, either. To tell you the truth, I’m still a wanted man.”
“No way. Number one, we can’t have that.”
“No,” said Alex. He held up his forefinger. “Number one…we can’t have you.”
“What?” Dean said. It was the last word he would ever utter.
Alex jabbed his finger into Dean’s throat. He plunged it deep, a powerful insertion of several inches of steel. He pushed Dean backward, crashing him through an open stall door, and slammed him into a sitting position on the toilet.
Alex pulled out his finger and a rapid stream of blood escaped from Dean Carruthers’ jugular vein. He was rapidly losing consciousness. Alex adjusted him to make sure he stayed balanced on the toilet and then quickly backed out of the stall and shut the door.
As Alex washed his hands in the sink, a couple of men entered the bathroom and shuffled over to the urinals, oblivious of the dying man at the far end of the room. Alex exited the bathroom with great calm, expecting a few minutes to pass before someone spotted a growing puddle of blood emerging from the stall, and then several more minutes before authorities arrived on the scene and attempted to figure out what they were dealing with.
That gave Alex all the time he needed to reach a set of doors leading outside to a loud, honking, exhaust-spewing line of cars picking up passengers. Identifying a license plate, Alex found his ride, two members of the Russian spy cell team in Chicago. He climbed into the back seat.
“All good?” asked Yefim, the driver. Alina sat in the front passenger seat.
“Everything is good,” Alex said, shutting the door with a slam. The black sedan pulled away from the curbside chaos and entered a thick throng of traffic, departing from the terminal with growing speed.
Chapter Twenty-One
The baby was crying again in a piercing outburst that filled every room of the small apartment. The twin toddlers were busy with loud, rambunctious mischief despite the desperate pleas of their too-gentle, too-soft-spoken mother to control themselves. Madeleine Morris could take it no more. She slapped her laptop shut, left the bedroom and confronted Steven, who was making a sandwich in the kitchen.
“I can’t hear myself think!” she said.
Steven started to respond, but she was already moving toward the front door. She opened it and stepped into the outer corridor. He quickly followed.
She stood in the long, carpeted hall, arms folded, looking ready to cry. Steven joined her and shut their apartment door. They could still hear the noises inside: muted, yet persistent.
“The neighbors are going to start complaining again,” said Madeleine.
“I can talk to the neighbors. They know the situation.”
“There’s not enough room. This can’t drag on. Poor Christie. She tries to rein it all in, but it’s too much.”
Steven nodded in glum agreement. Things were better when Randy was home. Randy could help calm the children, but he was largely absent as he took on two jobs to pay off the mound of debt while fighting to stay afloat with the bare necessities.
The twins slept on the floor in sleeping bags by night and mostly climbed the walls by day. Steven and Madeleine took turns helping, working hard to be fully supportive, but everyone’s nerves were beyond frayed.
“I ran some numbers last night,” Madeleine said. “They’re not going to be ready to get a place of their own for at least a few more months. Even something simple,
something small. They’re doing everything possible. It’s not their fault. The creditors are everywhere.”
“I know.…”
Then she declared, “I’m going to quit the food bank. It just doesn’t pay hardly anything. I’m going back into PR work where I can earn some real money and help. They’ll take me back at Bushnell and Lum.”
“That hellhole?”
“What else are we going to do? Your project is on hold but you can’t leave for another job. You keep telling me ‘I’m under contract, I’m under contract.’ Break the goddamned contract.”
“That’s not possible.”
The baby’s screaming cries continued inside the apartment, relentless and shrill.
“We are in a financial disaster, Steven,” Madeleine said. “We are, and your sister, and her husband and those three kids in there. We were ripped off royally. I hate to say it, but we were stupid. All of us. Starting with Randy.”
Steven nodded. He felt terrible for Randy. Randy came from a family of very modest means in rural Iowa and always seemed insecure about his upbringing at the lower end of the economic spectrum, especially compared to the comfortable financial status of Christie’s family in Chicago. Christie loved him without any reservations, yet Randy remained troubled by his roots, telling her on repeated occasions that he felt he wasn’t good enough for her.
Randy was also a dreamer – someone who didn’t drink or do drugs but did indulge in lottery tickets and had a knee-jerk attraction to ‘get rich quick’ schemes.
He was convinced the real estate investment was going to deliver a huge payoff and put his kids through college because that’s what the other partners told him. Before they disappeared with all his money.
“My whole life I’ve worried about money…and when I try to do something to fix it, I only make it worse,” Randy told Steven. Steven told Madeleine about the comment.
“You know, yesterday he came to me crying for forgiveness,” Madeleine told Steven as they stood in the hallway. “Literally. Tears were streaming down his face. I didn’t know what to say. I can’t get mad at him. I can’t get mad at us. I can’t get mad at their kids. I – I just need to find some peace somewhere.”
Then, inside the apartment, as if on cue, the baby stopped crying.
Steven looked into Madeleine’s eyes. She broke out into a smile. He smiled back.
“There,” he said. “There’s our peace. Ask and you shall receive.”
She reached out and hugged him. She shut her eyes tight.
“We’re going to be okay,” he said. “All of us.”
* * *
The call came later that evening.
“The Gemini team is reconvening,” said Cooper.
“I’m ready,” Steven said.
Cooper delivered a set of instructions. Steven responded in single-word responses. Madeleine sat nearby and he couldn’t allow her to hear any details.
This was the big one.
He was going to help save the president.
“I’m taking the rental car tomorrow,” Steven told Madeleine after the call ended.
“Your project is back on?” she asked. That’s all she knew – it was a ‘project’.
“It was never off,” he responded. “Just a short break.”
When she asked about it, he discussed it in vague and technical terms that quickly made her lose interest. He effectively made it sound so boring that she stopped probing.
The next morning, Steven drove to the Giamatti mansion. After the security gates opened to admit him, he parked with seven other cars in a large space behind a massive garage that looked more like a house. He reported to the front entrance of the main residence and Bella greeted him warmly.
She led him to the basement, where the other scientists and doctors were gathered in a room filled with the familiar equipment and technology from the Lake Forest laboratory.
Cooper checked attendance and the meeting began precisely on time at nine a.m. when Giamatti entered the room.
He addressed his team, beaming with a smile inside his white beard.
“You are the chosen ones,” he said to the eight attentive faces. “You have been selected from the larger Gemini team to take part in a very special phase of our project. We have talked to you about it individually and now we move forward as a group. You have knowledge the others do not. We are going to apply our medical breakthrough to save the life of the president.”
He motioned to the immediate surroundings. “This is our ‘pop-up’ lab. We have converted this large space in my home into a private laboratory. I’m sure you recognize the equipment. It was transferred here from the Perking Institute. The president is coming to stay here, as he has in the past. So we are bringing the lab – and your expertise – to him.”
Giamatti stepped over to a covered body on a gurney. All eyes followed him. He peeled back the sheet.
The lifelike shell of President Hartel rested on its back in perfect stillness, wearing only a thin hospital gown.
“Everything we’ve been testing…everything we’ve validated…it all culminates in this. You, the brilliance in this room, will transfer the president’s consciousness into this shell. We will need to conduct the operation quickly, but as we’ve discussed with you individually, this should not be a problem. We know what works. We have a proven blueprint and now a turnkey process. It is no longer an experiment. It is a practical and substantiated procedure.”
For the next five minutes, Cooper and Boyd stepped forward to discuss the itinerary and protocol. “Do not speak to the president unless spoken to,” said Cooper.
Following them, Giamatti offered to answer questions. But first he addressed one outstanding issue he knew was on the minds of everyone in the room.
“We continue to pursue the stolen shell from our first experiment,” he said. “The real Tom Nolan remains safe in the guest wing of this house. Obviously his residency here is secret and must not be discussed outside these walls.”
“Can we see him?” asked Steven. He had not seen his friend since the fateful day they were both assaulted at the Lake Forest lab.
“Our top priority is the immediate mission before us,” Giamatti said. “There will be time to visit with Tom Nolan at a later date. For now, we must stay focused on the president.”
“I have a question,” said Carl Nodden, a stocky neurologist with curly hair. “This work is revolutionary. It’s going to save so many lives. When can we go public? How long does it need to stay under wraps?”
Boyd started to speak, but Giamatti stopped him. “I can speak to that. Your contracts stipulate confidentiality until a date to be determined by the project owner, which is me.”
Giamatti looked back at the president’s duplicate. “We will reveal all after the president has concluded his second term. Once that has been accomplished, we will make a very big splash, I promise you.” He faced the team again. “When we make our announcement, all of you in this room will become heroes of modern medicine and technology. You will go down in history. The Gemini Experiment will become the Life Sustainability Institute.”
Some members of the team smiled, others looked exasperated at the length of time they would need to keep the secret.
Carl Nodden had another question. “Let’s project this out five, ten, twenty, even fifty or a hundred years. Like any other advancement in technology, it will become easier and faster to replicate and apply. Costs will come down. Operation centers will flourish across the country and around the world. The demand will be monumental. People will stop dying. A marvelous feat, but what will it do to the earth? Have we done the math on the population explosion? Quite frankly, human life on earth is a system of turnover, like any other living thing, whether it be animals or plant life. What happens, Mr. Giamatti, when we become so focused on saving ourselves that we can’t save the earth? There are fi
nite resources on this planet. What do we do when no one dies and we run out of space?”
The room grew silent.
Giamatti hung his head for a moment, thinking. “I have thought about this,” he finally said. “I really have. Because we can’t ignore it and say it’s a problem for future generations, because we will be that future generation. I have a belief that one day, many years from now, we will no longer require our physical medium. By that, I mean we will digitize our consciousness but not plant it in a physical object. Everyone, one day, could be uploaded to the cloud. The cloud will give us infinite space. Right now, we are seeing the very early stages of this. So much that is meaningful in our lives already exists in a virtual space. We rely on the cloud. One day, we might all become the cloud.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
In the darkest corner of a murky tavern tucked beneath the rumble of the elevated train on Chicago’s Northwest side, Alex found Sergei ‘The Stick’ Vladin. The legendary Russian spy, regarded in hushed circles with equal parts admiration and fear, sat alone with his six-foot-six frame hunched over a tall drink. He did not look up. He did not wave Alex over. Alex slid into the seat across from him and greeted his comrade in their native language.
The Stick shook his head, not pleased. His eyes remained on the table.
“English,” he said.
“Yes,” said Alex. “Of course.”
“Do not let it happen again. We only speak the language of our host. As long as we are on their soil, we become one of them. Say you understand.”
“Yes, I understand.”
The Gemini Experiment Page 15
