Zwaan had been ignoring the peace of this late-spring day for half an hour already and expected to wait another five minutes. Del usually took lunch at noon, but Zwaan preferred to cover the unexpected, and if this happened to be an occasion when Del left early for any reason, Zwaan wasn’t about to let him slip away from his death.
Zwaan smiled, a movement lost in the waxy, scarred half of his face.
Today was a day Zwaan had anticipated for some time. A showdown of sorts. Rarely was Zwaan challenged; most of his assignments had neither size nor combat skill. Del Silverton had both. Rarely was it a personal matter for Zwaan; he did as directed by Van Klees. But in this case, Del Silverton had not only defied the Institute, he’d done it with full intention of deceiving Zwaan as well.
Much as Zwaan wanted to think of this as a showdown, however, his only real challenge was to find the most efficient way to torture Del without sending him into lengthy unconsciousness or a quick death. He must be careful not to let emotion interfere with duty and must not be so stupid as to give Del the chance to fight or escape.
His plan was simple. As Del walked up to his patrol car, Zwaan would invite him into the rental. The passenger side of the car was already prepared. Del would sit on hypodermics, needles invisible where they protruded from the fabric. The pressure of sitting on them would force the plungers to release chloral hydrate. Four needles were three more than enough, but Zwaan liked to play it safe. Del would wake up in the Institute, sitting on a chair across from Zwaan, bound and ready for Zwaan’s favorite game; the sledgehammer delivered the sweetest symphonies of pain.
As Zwaan contemplated combining work with pleasure, he replayed the music that had come with dealing with the two idiots in Florida. He’d put them in separate rooms and compared their stories about how they’d hoped to make extra money with Darby’s TechnoGen documents. Once satisfied their stories compared, and that the Institute had not been compromised, and that the package had not contained the crucial missing computer disks, Zwaan had let the music in his head begin. He’d started by severing each man’s hamstrings. The symphony, one of his sweetest, had lasted for more than an hour. Perhaps it was the fact that there were two. Or that the one with the snipped ears had been so fearful of further mutilation.
As Zwaan tried to decide the reason, his thoughts were interrupted by a call on his cellular phone.
He pulled it from his jacket pocket, clicked the on switch. He didn’t greet his caller. Just listened.
“Get moving,” he heard. “I don’t care where you are, what you’re doing. Head to the airport.”
Zwaan raised his eyebrows. Van Klees rarely sounded this urgent.
“Not a good time,” Zwaan said.
“Move. Now. If you’re not in your car, get to it. If you’re in the car, return to the base. If someone’s with you, push him out.” Van Klees spit the words out. “Get to the airport.”
“Not a good time.”
“Listen to me. I know where the boys are.”
Zwaan reached for the ignition switch. “Talk as I drive.”
Del was walking down the steps of the county building as Zwaan pulled away from the shade of the oaks.
“What do you know?” Zwaan asked as he turned his head to keep his face hidden from Del. Zwaan consoled himself that Del could die another day, soon. “And how?”
“The sow from Florida just called. You were right about Slater
Ellis.”
Zwaan didn’t mention that it meant Del’s wife had been right about Del’s search. Instead Zwaan swung into the left lane to pass a slow truck and asked the obvious question.
“How would Florida know about Ellis?”
“He met her for lunch about an hour ago. She thinks he’s running some kind of bluff, trying to pump her for information. She called to ask me for advice.”
“Lunch?” Zwaan echoed. “In Florida? What would take him there?” This was not good. Always, Van Klees had kept a full grasp of all aspects of the operation. There had never been surprises. Not even minor surprises. This, however, was so unexpected, it smacked of monumental disaster. How badly had this gone out of control, and how had it happened so quickly?
“Remember Darby’s visit? He left a souvenir behind. A monogrammed pen. Slater found the boys, and one of them had it. It linked the boys to IWRC. He followed that link to her.”
Zwaan was now on Trinity Drive, heading east at precisely five miles an hour over the speed limit, the fastest he could go with total certainty of avoiding a speeding ticket.
“As if Darby didn’t do enough damage,” Zwaan said. He showed anger as rarely as Van Klees, but this warranted it. “If I could follow him into the grave –”
“It gets worse. This Slater Ellis took the boys to Los Angeles.” Which explained why Slater’s house was empty. “He managed to find a translator.”
Zwaan now fully understood Van Klees’s agitation. “I’m about Five minutes from the airport.”
“Good. Hire a helicopter to Sante Fe. There’s a commercial flight to L.A. leaving within the hour. You should arrive a couple of hours before Ellis. When he shows up, get them all. The boys. The translator. Ellis. I don’t want them dead. I want them at the Institute. We’ll need to know who they’ve spoken to and what they’ve said.”
“Details? Where do I find them?”
Van Klees read out a Santa Monica address to Zwaan. Zwaan Filed the address in his memory. If needed, he could recall it anytime for years. “She told you all of this?” Zwaan asked.
“I convinced her that if Ellis was legitimate, he would have turned the boys over to authorities. Told her he probably stole the pen from Darby’s desk and was running a scam on her. Obviously my previous investment of time in her was worth it.”
“What does she know about the Institute?” Zwaan asked.
Silence greeted his question. Zwaan saw the turnoff For the airport ahead and started to slow the car.
“I said, what does she –”
“I heard you,” Van Klees said. “I didn’t like being reminded.”
Zwaan’s hand tightened on the cellular phone.
“She can link IWRC to TechnoGen, Zwaan. Ellis asked her about it. She said hearing TechnoGen jogged her memory. Darby had mentioned it is his letter. If she’d told me that during our Washington meeting, she’d already be at the Institute and Ellis wouldn’t have reached her.”
“Not good.”
“She’ll pay,” Van Klees said. “We’ll have everything mopped up by tomorrow.”
“You want me to go to Florida after L.A.?” Zwaan was nearly at the terminal parking lot.
“No,” Van Klees said. “That’s where I’m headed now. To mop up. As John Hammond, I’ll take her out for another supper. After all, it’d be a shame to let a prime specimen like her go to waste.”
***
Slater found Ben Austad and the three boys dipping nets for goldfish. Over a span of years, Austad had carefully cultivated his hillside backyard into an Asian rock garden, complete with pools, miniature waterfalls, and miniature pine trees. Sunlight, softened by evening’s approach, lit the scene into a Rockwell painting.
Austad set his dipping net down as Slater greeted them.
“About a half-hour ago, I found them here in the backyard, staring into the water,” Austad said. “The boys were incredulous, discovering little things that wriggled away from their fingers but didn’t drown in water. I can’t imagine how they’d react to a zoo.”
Slater hunkered beside the boys and watched the glints of silver and gold as the fish darted away from their nets. The world was a fascinating place, Slater decided, if you kept the vision of a child.
“Trouble is, when I tell them I caught a fish this big –” Austad stretched his hands apart in the classic fisherman’s pose, “they look at me as if I’m an idiot.”
Slater grinned at Austad’s enthusiasm. “Is there a Latin term for the one that got away?”
“Really,” Austad insisted. “A coho s
almon. On a fishing trip near Vancouver Island.”
He frowned slightly. The lines on Austad’s face showed it was not a customary movement. Sixty something, he could have been a decade younger. Most of the creases on his face showed peaceful good humor, and his appearance matched what Slater had expected from the voice over the telephone – relaxed lean face, trim build, graying hair.
Austad was two years from retiring and planned to build a sailboat as soon as he left the university.
Slater raised an eyebrow at the frown. “Yes, Ben?”
“I didn’t expect you back until later,” Ben said. “I hope this doesn’t meant it went badly.”
“Just the opposite. We had lunch. I was able to catch an earlier flight here.”
Ben nodded. “And...”
“And lots. She said her husband mentioned TechnoGen in a letter. Plus something she called the Institute. She had more to tell me, but wanted to wait until tomorrow.”
Slater shrugged. “So I guess I wait. What about your day? Learn anything from your friend in the genetics department?”
“Yup. That to suggest human beings have been cloned is a believable concept but totally impossible.”
“Interesting start,” Slater said, “if this is how you lecture, I’ll bet you never face an empty classroom. Believable but impossible?”
“Believable because worms and frogs have been cloned in experiments for decades.”
“So any day they’ll have the technology to clone more complex species.”
“Technology’s already there. It’s now routine to clone cattle.”
“Why not humans then?" Slater stood and stretched his legs. “I mean in principle.”
Austad stood with him. They left the three boys at the edge of the pond and moved to a group of boulders arranged as a bench.
“I asked the same question, Slater. And I was asked a question in return, the same one I’ll ask you.” Ben smiled to take away any offense. “How long can an embryo grow in a test tube?”
“Good point,” Slater said after some thought. “Very good point. You need mothers who would agree to bring the embryos to term. Where would you get all the mothers and doctors, and even if you did, how could you expect something like that to remain a secret for long?”
Slater thought again. “Maybe you implant the duplicated embryos in women across the country. Let them have the babies and if none of them ever saw the other babies, they’d never know each was a clone...”
He stopped himself. “Not a good theory. Sure the clone is secret from each of the other mothers and doctors, but how do you explain the Latin and the laboratory the kids told you about? Kidnap all of the babies at birth?”
Slater watched the three boys for several moments. “I don’t want to hear that maybe these three were embryos transplanted into the wombs of apes.”
“Terrible thought,” Austad said. “Fortunately I can dispel that idea with two words. Umbilical cord. As they develop in the womb, babies share blood with their mother. Ape blood and human blood don’t mix.”
Austad sighed. “Only human mothers can nurture human embryos. You’d have to have a place to engage in large-scale experimenting in humans. No way could you have a place that big, involving that many people, and expect it to remain secret. Human nature dictates someone would eventually talk about it. And where would anyone find the funding? Something that big would take major money. You can’t keep major money secret either.”
“Military?” Slater asked. “Remember Los Alamos and the atomic bomb? Until 1957 the entire town was a closed base.”
Austad frowned. “That’s the wrinkle that bothers me. A major portion of the Human Genome Project is based in Los Alamos.”
He answered the question before Slater could ask. “A five-billion-dollar project to map out the entire sequence of the human genetic code.”
“They wouldn’t run experiments on kids!”
“My source said no,” Austad answered. “It’s legitimate. High public profile. But still, you have to wonder.”
“Maybe we’ll learn something from Paige’s phone call tomorrow,” Slater said.
“And if somehow our guess is right, what then? These are kids, Slater; they deserve to live as kids. Not as medical freaks.”
Slater sighed as loudly as Austad had. “You’re right. For starters, they should be dressed like kids. What say we take them shopping tonight?”
“I’d like to, but I can’t,” Austad said. “I’m expecting a master’s student to stop by with questions on her thesis. Should you be taking them public without me around as a translator?”
“How about if I take just one?” Ellis suggested. “Whatever I buy to fit him will fit the others.”
“Good idea. Take Caesar.”
At that name, the kid on the end looked back at Austad. Austad spoke quickly to him in Latin, and the kid want back to dipping his net.
“You’ve named them?” Slater asked with a half-chuckle,
“Better than numbers, don’t you thinks And they like the concept too. I chose names that meant something to them.”
“Marcellus?” Austad said, The middle kid looked up, beamed. He held his net triumphantly in the air to show a trophy, flopping around in frantic pain against the air, throwing tiny beads of water all around.
Austad spoke gently to him in Latin and he put the net back in the water, not lowering it enough for the fish to escape.
“Pontius?” Austad said.
The third kid paused. “Ben!” he said, pointing at the professor.
Ben grinned and waved. He turned his attention back to Slater.
“See? Quick studies. Makes me wish all over again my wife and I could have had kids before she died.”
He looked sharply at Slater. “How about you? Wife? Kids? I noticed you asked plenty about me last night but avoided the subject of yourself.”
Slater made a noncommittal grunt.
“You’ve got to know I have questions,” Austad said. “Someone who can leave New Mexico like you did on a half-hour’s notice probably doesn’t have a job or family. On the other hand, you were able to pay full fare to Florida and back.”
“How about I just say I did have a wife? In another lifetime.”
Austad kept watching Slater, then relaxed with a grin. “Dumb of me to ask. After all, this is California.” Austad gave Slater a brief salute. “See you when you get back from shopping.”
“You’re one with the other two? I mean, having an appointment and all.”
Ben waved him away. “Of course I’m fine. What could happen while you’re gone?”
***
Josef Van Klees and Paige Stephens stood beneath the sleek belly of a private jet. They’d walked a hundred yards to the jet from where Van Klees had instructed the limo driver to stop at the side of an airplane hangar. This corner of the runway was nearly abandoned. The relative darkness showed Tampa Bay’s lights bouncing pale yellow off clouds that had moved in from the gulf and piled low in the night sky.
Van Klees was careful not to show it, but inside, he seethed.
Sow. Sow. Sow.
He didn’t castigate himself for indulging in raw emotion. In all the secret, careful, diligent years of building, he had not once faced a single threat – minor or major – that might unravel the structure of the Institute. Yes, each of the foundation corners had faced occasional and various perils. Even then, there had been no danger to the Institute. One corner or other of the foundation might fall – none had, of course, thanks to his brilliant tactics – but Van Klees had structured it so that at all times the Institute would remain hidden and untouched by the loss of any one of the cornerstones.
Until this stupid woman.
Without her, Slater Ellis could have done what he wanted with the boys, and that matter, damaging as it might now become, would have been a mystery, soon forgotten as the media moved to the next issue of the day. Without her, Darby’s death would have sealed off that dangerous tunneling into another c
orner of the foundation.
With her, the connections could occur, the Institute might come to light.
Raging inside, he smiled for her the Van Klees womanizing smile, a hint of danger combined with boyish recklessness.
Almost a mile away, the commercial runways rumbled with the roars and high-decibel whining of incoming turbine engines. Van Klees raised his voice to be heard.
“For you,” he said, sweeping his arm grandly to show the lines of the private jet. “The surprise you’ve patiently indulged me to present to you tonight.”
“John, there’s only one problem,” she said, “I don’t have my pilot’s license.” She laughed, throwing her hair back, probably taking pleasure from something as mundane as cool silky air brought in ahead of a gulf storm.
Oh yes, Van Klees reminded himself. She has attempted a joke.
He laughed with her. Deep and rich.
“You might recall I mentioned a need for a corporate jet during our get-together in D.C. It got me thinking, why not? What better excuse, I asked myself, than another chance to see you – without the hassle of commercial airlines.”
She looked at him, looked back at the gleaming silver of the jet’s body.
“A Challenger 604,” he told her, “flies at mach .74. Or if you insist on crude measurements, 490 miles per hour. Our pilot’s up front, waiting.”
“Waiting?”
“I promised you dinner tonight,” he said. “I just didn’t say where. How about Mexico City? We can be there by nine. If not Mexico City, then Chicago. We’d be there by nine-thirty.”
She laughed again. “You’re not serious.”
“Yes, I am,” he said, injecting grave dignity. “I... I...”
Proper amount of hesitation now Let her see the confident John Hammond suddenly becoming shy, awkward, fumbling.
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