“How was she so sure this was connected to her pregnancy?”
“She wasn’t. But when she got back to her apartment, her neighbors told her men had come by asking about her. They were asking a lot of odd questions about her pregnancy and whether or not she had given birth to the baby.”
“Polish?”
“No, Americans speaking Polish and not very well at that.”
I breathed out a heavy sigh. “So she bolted.”
“Immediately. She stayed with a neighbor for a couple of days while she contacted me and asked me to come help her get to safety somewhere.”
“So, you went.”
“Yes. I had no idea what the hell was going on. I had a feeling the contract and the word Acheron had something to do with it, but I no longer had the luxury of figuring it out.”
“But I could.”
“You were the only person I trusted. And I knew if someone could unravel it, you could.”
“Look, Basia, I’m darn close to finding out exactly what Project Acheron is. But there’s something else you should know. Judyta wasn’t the only one implanted with Al-Asan’s child.”
“I know,” Basia said. “Judyta met the other girls in Italy.”
I winced. “Jeez, what was it, some kind of surrogate mother slumber party?”
“I know it sounds odd, but at the time it seemed an easy way for her to make a boatload of cash in a short period of time.”
“Nothing is ever quite so easy. In fact, it’s a lot worse than you can imagine. Brace yourself for this, Basia. For some unimaginable reason, all of the other surrogate mothers have been murdered. It looks like Judyta is the last girl alive.”
“What?” Basia gasped. “Murdered? Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh my God. Then it’s true. Our lives are in danger. I thought someone was following us.”
“Someone is following you?” I asked, my stomach turning to ice.
“Was.” The connection suddenly sounded fainter as though I might be losing her. “Luckily, we know this area better than they do. I’m pretty sure we’re safe for the time being. I guess I don’t have to ask how you found all this out.”
“No time now. But I do need to know how Judyta got hooked up with Al-Asan.” There was a weird crackling noise and for a heart-stopping moment I thought the connection was lost. “Basia?” I shouted in panic.
“I’m still here,” her voice came back faint, but still there. “She answered an advertisement online. She was contacted by Bright Horizons staff in Warsaw and then went through a rigorous health and psychological screening. The pay was incredible, more than she ever could have imagined. She didn’t really consider what it all meant.”
“I’m not being judgmental here. How is she feeling now?”
“She’s fine but understandably scared. Things have changed for her. Lexi, she wants to keep the baby.”
I blew out a breath. “Shit.” A wave of static crackled in my ear. “Jeez, Basia, what do you want me to do now? How can I help you?”
“Are you sure this phone is safe?”
I felt sick to my stomach. “No, it’s not safe at all. There are likely others listening, at the very least, the FBI. You should also know Finn Shaughnessy gave me this phone. He could be listening in, too, for all I know. I know you told me not to trust him, but I think he’s being set up in all of this, as well.”
“I’m not sure I agree,” she said. “Don’t trust anyone except for Lars. He gave me your number.”
“How is he involved in this?”
“It’s not safe to tell you about Lars now.” There was a long stretch of silence with a lot of static in between. “But don’t worry, Lexi. I’m taking precautions,” she finally continued. “This call will be difficult to trace. Judyta and I, we are well protected, at least for now.”
I winced as the static crackled and I knew an end to the connection was imminent. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’ll contact you soon.”
“How?”
“Not by this phone again. Another way. A safer way.”
“What do you want me to do until then?”
“Help me figure out a plan to protect Judyta and let her keep the baby.”
“Yeah, sure, piece of cake,” I said, my voice shaking. “Good thing you’re not asking me to do the impossible.”
“That’s what I like best about you, Lexi. A sense of humor in the middle of a life-threatening crisis.”
“Well you’d better survive so I can kill you myself for what you’re putting me through.”
I heard her laugh, and was relieved to hear some humor to the sound. For a fleeting moment, she sounded like the Basia I knew.
“I knew there was a reason we’re best friends,” she said. “We can discuss this over margaritas soon. My treat.”
Before I could answer, the noise on the line disappeared and there was dead silence.
“Basia?” I said frantically and then shook the cell phone, like that would help. “Basia?”
The connection was gone. I flipped the phone shut and leaned against the counter, shaking. For a good five minutes I stood there trying to absorb all she had said.
Still trembling, I returned to the twins’ command room where they sat lost in their own world. They spoke in low voices while furiously typing away on their keyboards, presumably trying to hack into the Acheron file. I sincerely hoped whatever was in that elusive file would finally clue me in to what was happening in my own life. I wanted very badly to interrupt the twins and tell them that Basia had called but was afraid to break their concentration. I really needed to know what was in that file.
Then another, more disturbing thought occurred to me. If the FBI knew I had Finn’s phone, I wondered how long it would take them to inform Slash that I’d received a call from Basia. I wasn’t ready to talk to Slash just yet. I needed more time to think over the conversation.
“Lexi,” Elvis said suddenly, breaking into my reverie. “I think this is something you should see.”
“Are you in?” I asked, hurrying over.
“Not in Acheron yet. But I found something else in CGM’s files you might find interesting.”
I stood behind his chair, my hands resting lightly on the back of his seat. Looking over his shoulder, I studied the monitor.
“I broke into CGM’s human resource records,” he said. “Your friend Finn Shaughnessy seems to be more than just a lowly lawyer.”
“What do you mean?”
“You tell me.”
Weird, but I thought I heard a trace of jealousy in his voice. What could he possibly have against a guy he’d never met? Frowning, I peered over his shoulder at the screen. “What am I supposed to look at?”
“This document,” he said, swiveling around in his chair and standing up. “Take a look.”
I sat down in his chair. It was still warm, which was good because I was freezing with all the arctic ventilation from the air conditioner blowing on me and I’d forgotten to get a blanket.
I took a breath and started to read what looked like a typical personnel file. Finnigan Shaughnessy, age thirty, born in Cork, Ireland. He attended the National University of Ireland in Dublin as an undergraduate and double majored in business management and public health administration. He went to Georgetown Law School and earned a law degree.
There was a bunch more stuff about his academic achievements and papers. He’d done some research involving medical technology and the law, which made sense since he’d ended up at CGM. Then I read a sentence that stopped my breath. I reread it and then tapped my finger on the monitor beneath the sentence.
“Can this be right?” I asked Elvis, looking at him over my shoulder.
He smiled, apparently satisfied that I had picked up on the oddity. “Don’t see why not. It’s kind of strange, though, don’t you think? A guy like him working at a place like CGM.”
I turned back to the monitor and read the sentence for a third time.
Emergency contact: Father: Mr. Logan Shaughnessy (Shaughnessy Winery, Cork Ireland).
“Logan Shaughnessy,” I repeated. “This can’t possibly be the Logan Shaughnessy I’m thinking of.”
“How many Logan Shaughnessys do you think live in Cork, Ireland and own a winery?” Elvis asked.
“Shit,” I said, putting my chin in my hand. Logan Shaughnessy, the colorful and eccentric Irish billionaire, had topped Forbes’ list of richest men in the world last year. His wine was way too expensive for my palate, but I’d had it at my parents’ house once and it seriously rocked.
“Oh, man, you’re right,” I said, starting to breathe faster. “What could possibly be next? First Slash isn’t who I thought he was, and now I discover that Finn is the heir to a wine fortune. Isn’t anyone who they say they are these days?”
“The real question is what is a guy like Finn Shaughnessy doing at CGM?” Xavier said.
“Whatever the reason, I have a feeling I’m not going to like it,” I moaned.
Xavier motioned to me and sat down in front of another computer nearby and starting typing. “Guess we should read the tabloids more often,” he said, angling the monitor so I could see.
He’d pulled up Celebrity Focus magazine online. Still in shock, I leaned over and read the cover story about Finn being one of Ireland’s most desirable bachelors. According to the article, he was currently dating Finnish supermodel-turned-actress, Claudette Hyvärinta, whose last name just happened to mean “good chest” in Finnish. The article also had pictures of him racing speedboats off the coast of Ireland, looking gorgeous with his hair tousled and his cheeks red from the wind.
Still in disbelief that Finn and this guy were one and the same, I continued to read the article, feeling stupider by the minute. It wasn’t so much that I’d met with him several times and had no idea he was a celebrity, but more that I felt betrayed he hadn’t even mentioned it. He was under no obligation to do so, but it made me appear doubly idiotic since I work at the NSA and hadn’t even bothered to uncover information about him. Now that I thought about it, why hadn’t I checked out Finn more thoroughly?
Oh, yeah, I remembered why. Because Slash told me he had Finn checked out and nothing unusual popped up. Nothing unusual my ass, that SOB. I was certain Slash knew who Finn was. He probably thought it was a riot to keep me in the dark. That’s me—stellar NSA employee who turns out to be completely clueless.
Elvis must have noticed I was upset, because he put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t let it get to you, Lexi. Perfect hair, chiseled muscles, well dressed…that is so not your type.”
I glanced up at him in surprise. “I have a type?”
“Sure, we all have a type. Sometimes we just don’t know it.”
Elvis had a type? Just as I started pondering that, the shrill sound of my cell phone rang and I reached into my pocket to grab it. I started to open it and then changed my mind. Instead I pushed a button and turned it off.
Elvis looked at me in surprise. “Why’d you do that?”
“I don’t want to talk to anyone just yet,” I said. Mostly because if it was Finn, I needed more time to assimilate the information I’d just learned about him. If it was Slash, I needed to decide whether he was trying to help or hurt Basia and Judyta.
“Hey, guys, I’ve got something,” Xavier suddenly exclaimed, his voice excited. “We’re in.”
I momentarily forgot my mortification about Finn and leapt to Xavier’s side, peering eagerly at the monitor. “In Acheron?”
“The one and only,” Xavier said gleefully.
Elvis’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “Oh yeah, come to Daddy,” he breathed as data suddenly scrolled across the screen.
“Are you downloading it?” I asked in a hushed voice.
“We’ll have the whole thing in about three minutes,” Elvis answered.
For the next three minutes the room was completely silent except for the whir and hum of the computers and the air conditioner. Then Elvis typed something and stood up.
“Another one bites the dust,” he said and then stretched. “I think I’ll have a beer.”
Neither of the twins looked worried in the least, while I was on the verge of a heart attack. To the twins it was just another hack. To me, it was life or death.
Xavier sat in Elvis’s vacated chair and perused the file. After a moment he whistled. “Not good,” he said, his voice serious. “There is some pretty bad shit in here.”
“Define shit.”
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
“Not really, but I don’t see how I have much of a choice.”
“Okay, then here goes. Bright Horizons isn’t just doing in vitro fertilization procedures to help couples conceive.”
“Like, duh. They’re doing some kind of weird surrogate pregnancy deal, right?”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean ‘not exactly’?”
“I mean they’re creating life all right. But not by traditional means.”
“What other means are there?” A niggling finger of dread crept up my spine.
“We’re not talking in vitro fertilization, hormone therapy or surrogacy pregnancies, legal or otherwise,” he said. “We’re talking about something much more sinister here.”
My stomach clenched. “How sinister?”
Xavier looked at me, his expression grim. “Bright Horizons is cloning human beings.”
Chapter 12
I felt as though he’d punched me in the gut. “Cloning?” I gasped. “As in reproductive human cloning? Impossible!”
Elvis walked into the room with three beers. He handed one to Xavier and me and then sat down beside his brother. “Backspace, dude. Did I just hear you say human cloning?” He looked as startled as Xavier, which was pretty amazing since I didn’t think much of anything shocked the twins.
Xavier nodded, taking a swig of his beer and scrolling rapidly through the file. “Yeah, and from what I can tell this Al-Asan dude paid big bucks to try and get himself one.”
“How big?”
Xavier’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “Looks like about forty million dollars big. Probably just a drop in the bucket for a guy like him.”
“Forty million dollars?” I exclaimed. “So that’s how CGM was able to financially afford to turn things around. My brother Rock uncovered the same figure, except now we know it came from one source—Al-Asan. I wonder how many other potential clients CGM has got lined up.”
“Probably plenty,” Xavier said. “But presumably only if Project Acheron works out.”
“The name makes sense now,” Elvis murmured. “Project Acheron.”
I backed into a chair and sat down, my legs suddenly weak. “Odysseus poured sacrificial blood into the confluence of the rivers Acheron and Styx to summon the ghosts of the dead,” I muttered. “I get it, too.”
“Actually, it’s more like resurrecting the dead,” Elvis commented. “Creating an immortal life, in a way, if one keeps cloning oneself forever. Grotesque and yet, dissonantly poetic.”
“This is seriously messed up,” Xavier said, shaking his head. “How in the world did a girl like Basia get mixed up in a mess like this?”
My stomach roiled. “Her cousin Judyta is one of several surrogates hired to carry Al-Asan’s clone. The problem is, Judyta doesn’t know about the cloning part. Probably the other women didn’t either.”
I quickly gave them the complete rundown, including my recent conversation with Basia, all the information Slash had told me about Al-Asan’s bodyguards being murdered in Italy, and the young women presumably carrying Al-Asan’s clone showing up dead across Europe.
Xavier whistled under his breath when I finished. “Are you saying someone tracked down these women and killed them execution style?”
“According to Slash, yes. All except Judyta. But Basia told me she thinks their lives are in danger. Judyta has already managed to escape one accident.”
“Nasty stuff
, if it’s really playing out this way,” Elvis commented.
“What do you mean, if it’s really playing out this way?” I asked.
“Well, cloning is a complicated procedure,” he explained, shrugging. “Cloning humans is likely to be even more difficult than theorized. Scientists aren’t able to properly study or determine its safety without conducting a large-scale study. In laymen’s terms, that means clinical trials on a mass scale. I just don’t see that happening in the near future, at least not out in the open. And once you take the research and trials underground, the science itself becomes suspect.”
“Jeez,” I said, trying not to be disgusted. “Do you really think CGM has a good chance of getting a clone of Al-Asan out of this?”
Elvis shrugged. “It depends on the ability and the genius of the people involved, as well as the procedures they used. And I wouldn’t discount a healthy dose of luck. But as far as I know, primates are especially difficult to clone for a wide variety of reasons, not the least of which is proper brain development. But if I were to make guess based on sheer mathematical supposition, the odds would be extremely low that CGM could get a healthy clone from this. Let me take a look at the file for a moment.”
He moved over to another terminal and started scrolling through the Acheron file. A few minutes later, Elvis twirled around in his chair. “Well, from what I can see, it looks like CGM gave it their best shot. Their scientists, geneticists and doctors all appear to have solid credentials. They had the money, the equipment and the resources. Implementation took place last December in Genoa, Italy, using freshly harvested skin cells from Al-Asan who was also in Italy for the procedure. It looks like seven women were implanted at this time, all of varied nationalities. From what I can tell, this appears to be a deliberate action. The scientists wanted to see if any one nationality might have a stronger physical constitution over another that might help stabilize the fetus.”
I swallowed hard. “First of all, eeew. Second of all, is Judyta definitely one of the seven?”
“Her name is listed in the file.”
I inhaled a deep breath. “Okay. So, the odds are low, but there is still a chance CGM could get a clone out of this, right?”
No One Lives Twice (A Lexi Carmichael Mystery) Page 23
