Gardener: The Roots Of Ancient Evil

by Jacob Mesmer

  Max had once been young and idealistic, but two tours in Special Forces and ten years working for a private military contractor after that had purged him of all his idealism. The powerful had money, and unless you worked for the powerful, you were on your own. One thing Max knew about himself was that he simply did not have the temperament to operate on his own. He was not an empire builder. He was a soldier. And as long as he was going to use his specialized skills, he was going to get paid as much as he could. He and Mr. Shea had come to that agreement eight years ago, and Max had never regretted the decision.

  He was reviewing the information in front of him in preparation for a meeting with Mr. Shea later this afternoon. Max was curious whether or not he would earn another bonus for his previous work. After a quick glance at the clock, he decided to drive to Mr. Shea’s new office, carefully hidden from public view. Only he and Shea knew of its location. Well, Hailee Maher knew, but she was gone. Max didn’t know where, only that she would never see the office or Shea again.

  “Yes, Max, please come in,” Shea said as soon as Max knocked on the door and poked his head into his office. “What news do you have for me?”

  “I’ve got a preliminary cutout organization set up through which you can invest in GenSpan. Have you decided how much you’d like?” Max asked, sitting down before Mr. Shea.

  “Let’s wait until a few more venture capitalists throw their hats in the ring. Once they’ve got upwards of a hundred million in backing, I’d like to give five, maybe ten percent more than the largest backer; do you think that will cause any issues?” Shea asked.

  “I doubt it, sir. From what I’ve discovered so far, that’s pretty standard for large VC firms to funnel their funding through various back channels. It’s all legal, since it’s all private, and they seem paranoid about tipping their hand to one another,” Max explained. “If you don’t mind me asking, is there any interest in this besides keeping an eye on Miss Berg?” he asked. “The reason I’m asking is if you do have genuine interest in the company, I can hire some researchers and perhaps even get some agents inside the company,” Max suggested.

  Shea pursed his lips in thought. “What do you know about genetic research, Max?” he asked.

  “Not much, but my opinion is that this is just another trend, more flash than science from what I’ve read, not that I understand all of it completely, but they are a long ways away from rewriting the genome to stop the aging process,” Max said carefully.

  “I tend to agree, but is it not true that they also might discover other genetic therapies? I agree that anti-aging is more of a quick-money health scam, but if they are fairly close to other disease cures, GenSpan may be worth something,” Shea said, thinking out loud. “Tell you what, Max, move forward on the VC angle, meaning invest whatever millions you need to be their largest backer, and see about getting somebody inside there. If they do stumble onto a cure for cancer, it would be nice to file for the patent before they do. Curing cancer may be very profitable,” Shea said in a tone Max understood meant to take the ball and run with it.

  “Yes sir, I’ll put something together. And on the other issue?” Max asked, slightly grinning.

  “Excellent as always, Mr. Emerson, you always do such good work. She was indeed a virgin. Your bonus should be deposited into your account by the end of this week.”

  “Will you be needing any future, uh, acquisitions?” Max asked.

  “Yes, yes, I believe we will. I think one per month will be sufficient for now, however, we will be needing to ramp up inventory in the coming months, once Mr. Ricker starts to get our real estate expansion underway,” Shea said.

  “One per month will require some additional logistical support,” Max stated.

  “How so?”

  “Well, after a couple of months, if young sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls in the area keep disappearing, the responses to the various advertisements might start to decrease, especially if there is any recognized link between the two and any subsequent awareness campaigns are initiated,” Max explained.

  “Yes, I see what you mean. What do you recommend?” Shea asked.

  “Well, I don’t see a problem if we can expand our search for young models nationwide. If we could do that, then we could potentially expand the recruitment, to one per week if need be.”

  “Potentially?” Shea asked. “What would be required? One per week would be excellent.”

  “The only sticking point is air travel. Some states require parental consent for minors to travel,” Max explained.

  “What about private carriers?”

  “Theoretically that could work. Getting them on the plane would be easy, as boarding restrictions are essentially nonexistent for private jets,” Max said.

  “So long as you don’t see any potential issues with missing girls being statistically connected with private flights,” Shea said, leaning forward.

  “I don’t think that will be a problem. We have several different shell companies set up through which to lease the private jets, I doubt anybody would make a connection,” Max said.

  “Excellent work. Why don’t you get that started and see how quickly you can increase the recruitment to one per week,” Shea said, smiling.

  “Same demographic?”

  “Yes. Caucasian girls, fourteen to seventeen, preferably virgins.”

  Nineteen

  “How was the flight?” Tommy asked. She’d called him before she left Beaverton and made him promise he wouldn’t waste any money paying for parking. He’d arrived early nonetheless, and had made his way around the loop to pick up arriving passengers three times before he saw her standing on the curb.

  “Good. I even did some work, I modeled some retro-viruses that may help us,” she explained.

  “Wow, that sounds fascinating,” he said dryly. “I hope nobody thought you were a terrorist,” he added, grinning at her.

  “As soon as I told Bradley I was coming back, he went ahead and scheduled more meetings with VCs. I guess the cash keeps on coming, so I need to put together all kinds of impressive presentations,” she said.

  “Well, I hope you won’t be too busy to help me shop for furniture,” he teased.

  “Nope. So,” she said, pausing and looking at him, “are you really going to cook dinner tonight?”

  Tommy grinned. He’d asked Cyrus, the cook at Benny’s, to give him a few pointers. His grin vanished as he started planning the logistics.

  “We’ll need to stop by my place on the way, that’s where I got all the stuff,” he said, wondering how she’d respond. Her ideal response would be to volunteer to wait in the car. He didn’t want to ask her to do that, but he was worried what she’d think of his dad, who was likely already on his second drink by now.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t make it weird,” she said, seemingly reading his mind. He pulled up in front of his house and looked over at her.

  “I’ll wait here,” she said, relieving him.

  As he jogged to his front door and gathered the food, he couldn’t help but wonder why she was in such a good mood. She’d decided to come home early, only one day after the funeral. They’d spoken briefly and texted, but she hadn’t given any details. He ran back to the car, his father only giving him a slight sideways glance as he carried the three bags back outside.

  “So, you never told me you cooked,” she said. He’d made a fairly simple pasta dish that Cyrus had showed him, and it turned out pretty decent.

  “I don’t usually, nothing complicated, I mean. Did you really like it?” he asked. She nodded and smiled.

  “So, uh, can you, or do you want to talk about what happened with your parents, or…” he started, not even sure how to talk about relationship issues in general, let alone the aftermath of a murdered sister. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and smiled. A deep, genuine smile he’d never seen from her.

  “I was amazed. I went through her social media, her phone; I’ve never really met her friends. There were so man
y people at the funeral, it was wonderful. My mom cried the whole time, not because of the normal reasons, but because she saw how many good friends my sister had,” Viviana explained.

  “That’s fantastic,” Tommy said. He quickly put the dishes and pans in the sink and went with Viviana to sit on the couch.

  “They even put together a bunch of clips, videos, somebody made a montage of all of the photos they’d collected, it was really sweet,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I mean, the whole time I was thinking of myself, and how hard it would be to talk to my parents about this, but I never even thought of how many people’s lives she touched,” she said, leaning into him.

  He put his arm around her. Held her close. Wanted to say something profound, but the words just didn’t come.

  “I mean before”—she sat up, looking at him—“I was just thinking of why I should have done things differently, or all my control issues, but she made so many people happy. Some of the stories people told me about her, I mean, I started wondering if people would say such nice things about me at my funeral,” she said, chuckling. She leaned against him again. She looked up at him, face relaxed, a slight smile in her eyes. She closed them, leaned in, and softly kissed him. They embraced slowly, carefully, passionately. After a few minutes they both stood and wordlessly moved to the bedroom. They made love purposely, holding eye contact the whole time, only breaking it when they’d finished and lay next to each other, slowly drifting off to sleep.

  Tommy awoke first. The clock read five thirty. He leaned in and kissed the back of her neck. She moaned softly and rolled over.

  “I have to do the dishes before going in today,” she said.

  “What time do you have to be there?”

  “Bradley scheduled the first meeting at nine. So I have to probably get there at eight, to get ready. So I have to leave here at seven thirty,” she said.

  “So if you take a shower at seven, you should be OK, right?”

  “Hmm-mm.”

  “Well, I don’t really have a boss, so I can go in whenever I want. How about you shower at seven and I do the dishes?”

  “OK,” she said immediately, smiling, her eyes still closed. They both struggled to stay awake to enjoy each other for the next hour or so, but drifted in and out.

  “I need to ask you something, and it’s not a happy thing, so I want to get it out of the way,” he said. She opened her eyes and looked at him. Slightly nodded.

  “I’ve done some checking. I found a couple of guys who will look into that website. Normally they don’t look at open cases, but since the website is hosted in another country, they don’t think it will be a problem,” he said. She continued to look at him. “One of the guys says there’s a good chance to find out who he is,” Tommy said.

  “OK,” she said, but Tommy didn’t know if she meant to keep explaining or to go ahead.

  “But they said it’s expensive, about a grand a week. They have to hire a hacker, and those guys aren’t cheap,” he said.

  “Did they say how long?” she asked. Tommy shook his head. Viviana rolled away from him. Looked up at the ceiling. Could she pursue this, while keeping her newly found memory of her sister intact?

  “OK, let’s do that. How much do we need to pay in advance?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Just let me know that it’s OK. This guy, whoever he is, took somebody away from you. Somebody beautiful. Somebody I’ll never get to meet. I want to find him just as much as you do, OK?” Tommy said, leaning up on one shoulder.

  “You sure?” she asked.

  “Yeah, you worry about curing cancer, or saving the world, I’ll worry about finding this guy.”

  Twenty

  Viviana had never seen Bradley so happy. At first she was flattered, thinking he was just glad to see her, but then he explained why.

  “Our nine o’clock is small time, but there’s a guy coming at eleven that’s potentially huge, I mean that guy alone could double our funding,” he explained.

  Viviana nodded and quickly configured her laptop. “Nine o’clock is how many?” she asked, rapidly clicking through her slides.

  “Just one, he’s only got a budget of a million, he even apologized to me on the phone for wasting our time,” Bradley said, grinning.

  “Well, you never know. Here, help me practice, I need to get my game face back on,” she said. She gave a brief presentation to Bradley while he purposely asked difficult questions to which he knew there was no right or wrong answer. She practiced a few different answers to the most complex ones; he guided her on the best responses for somebody thinking of investing a million dollars. As usually happened, the questions that their nine o’clock appointment had were few and very simple, at least for Viviana.

  “So let me be blunt, you sound like you know what you’re doing,” he said after she was finished, “so I’ll take your word for it. What are the chances that you’ll develop enough forward progress to be bought out by one of the big guys?”

  “You mean like J&J or SmithKline?” Bradley asked.

  The potential investor nodded.

  “Well, our plan really is to have something solid, biology-wise, within two years. But if we, or excuse me, Dr. Berg publishes in any main journals, which I think is highly likely, I expect very strong interest from them. I don’t want to say your investment is guaranteed, but we really are solid,” he carefully explained.

  “Well, all right then, I’m authorized to given a written promise for one million, and once I return to our head office, I’ll get the fund transfer set up,” he said.

  “How’d that feel?” Bradley asked when he returned to the lab twenty minutes later.

  Viviana nodded. “Pretty simple, I wish they were all that easy,” she answered. They both kept glancing at the clock. Ten more minutes until the big fish came swimming by.

  “Look, this guy is worth fifty, maybe a hundred million, but don’t stress it, really. We don’t get it, there’s plenty more,” Bradley said.

  Viviana smiled and nodded. They’d already received slightly more than a hundred million in funding, which would buy quite a bit of high-end equipment, which would allow her to do some really advanced research. She didn’t tell Bradley, but she was confident that with the money they already had, she could do enough research to write at least one good paper in a top-level genetic journal. That itself would bring in a lot more funding. She smiled inwardly, waiting for the next investor looking to multiply his money ten- or twenty-fold to come inspect their potential.

  “Dr. Berg, I’d like you to meet Mr. Sikes, with Edge Capital,” Bradley said as he walked in.

  Viviana greeted him with a firm handshake. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Sikes,” she said.

  “Before you get started, I must admit I know absolutely nothing about this business. Only that our board of directors has decided that they want us to be highly involved in genetic research. Bradley tells me your main objective is to unravel the aging process, but it’s also likely you’ll be developing other genetic therapies?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s correct. Similar to the space program in the sixties, when there were many secondary and unexpected inventions on the way to the moon,” she explained, using a metaphor that she and Bradley had come up with. “So even if we do fall short of our ultimate objective, I’m certain there will be a lot of secondary discoveries along the way,” she explained.

  “Now, what exactly is your primary objective? I mean, it’s to extend the human life span using genetics, but by how much do you think is realistic, in the next five to ten years?” Sikes asked.

  “That’s what’s so exciting about this. We really have no idea how much our genetic programming controls the aging process. I believe that within ten years, it’s very possible to slow it down, giving our average lifespan an additional ten or twenty years,” she said.

  Sikes nodded, seeming to think about it. “I don’t know if you can answer this, but what kind of secondary discoveries do you think y
ou’ll stumble across along the way? To be perfectly honest, our board isn’t really on board with the anti-aging thing, but they’re particularly interested in any cancer therapies or particularly Alzheimer’s cures,” he explained.

  “In the interest of full disclosure,” Bradley explained, “any monies you invest with us would be used solely to fund research in our core business, so we can’t really predicate any potential interest of Edge Capital on any promises or even estimates on secondary discoveries.”

  Sikes again stood, thinking carefully. “Suppose we threw some money your way, and in exchange, in addition to any future profits, we would get a license option on any secondary discoveries on cancer or Alzheimer’s therapies. What would you say to that?” he asked Bradley.

  “If you don’t mind my directness, how much are we talking?” Bradley asked.

  “I’m authorized to promise up to seventy-five million,” he responded immediately.

  Viviana’s head was spinning with the kind of extra equipment she could purchase with that much. There was very little chance that she would find something useful to extend the aging process, and if they had to sacrifice the profits from what they found along the way, that was a fair exchange, in her opinion.

  “Yes,” she blurted out, causing both Bradley and Sikes to smile and turn their heads, “I think that would a very fair exchange. Bradley, I’m certain that the additional resources we could acquire, any licensing profits we would forsake, would be more than worth it,” she said. Bradley nodded toward Mr. Sikes and began to extend his hand.

  “There’s just one more thing, this is only a request,” he said, seemingly a bit embarrassed.

  “Sure, anything,” Bradley said.

  “I have a nephew, just graduated with a degree in biochemistry, says the market is really tough,” he said, trailing off.