Mutant

by Peter Clement

  We do know that the night Gaston disappeared, New Year’s Eve, he returned to the Agriterre building, went to his laboratory, and left again. No one knows why, and the CEO, Dr. François Dancereau, remains adamant that nothing is missing from the premises.

  In the meantime, I can only say that I share your frustration. May I assure you that your efforts in our behalf are greatly appreciated, and I remain humbly at your service.

  Sincerely,

  Inspector Georges Racine

  He could call himself whatever he wanted, but she knew e-mail from Claude Rains when she saw it. As she read his words on her computer screen she could practically smell his Gauloises and see him gesturing with it, the smoke curling up from its tip. Except unlike his character in Casablanca , he hadn’t rounded up “the usual suspects” yet. Disappointed, she started to log off, then wondered again why the name Dr. François Dancereau sounded vaguely familiar. Perhaps he’d presented a paper at some conference she’d attended or published an article she’d read. Instead of shutting down, she clicked onto the Medline page—the most complete listing of publications in the health science field—and typed in the man’s name.

  No matches found.

  Oh, well, worth a try, she thought, and got back to her latest batch of gels.

  Monday, June 5, 9:00 P.M.

  “Relax! She’s skirting around the truth like a moth around a flame, but so far she doesn’t get it,” he reassured Morgan over the phone. “And according to her latest e-mail from that police inspector in Rodez a few days ago, he’s not making any progress, either.”

  “You haven’t had a homicide detective at your door.”

  “He wasn’t there for you. Besides, that was well over a week ago, and he hasn’t been back. Obviously he can’t find any link between that idiot guard and Agrenomics beyond what your personnel people told him.”

  “When do we take care of Sullivan and Steele?” Morgan persisted, sounding increasingly frustrated. “The cops may not have found a connection, but those two won’t stop until they do—now that we’ve made them both suspicious as hell about the place, thanks to you and your bright ideas about using our own people!”

  “Soon,” he told him softly, and hung up, choosing to ignore the criticism. Leaning back in his chair, he stared out his window and savored the view as the setting sun once more ignited the Twin Towers. “Soon,” he repeated, “we will have taken care of everything, including you, my frightened little friend.”

  Tuesday, June 6, 5:50 A.M.

  She heard his voice far away, yet he seemed to be yelling, speaking in the same harsh language used by the hooded pursuers.

  She flew awake, at first confused as to where she lay. She stared about her, the thin first light of dawn only dimly illuminating the office. In seconds she remembered—her sofa bed, sleeping over at the lab—and settled back on her pillow, her heart still pounding.

  She must have had another nightmare, she thought, feeling cold and pulling her blanket around her. The dampness in the place had gotten so bad with all the rain that everyone complained of feeling perpetually chilly, and none of the doors would open or close properly. The fact that they routinely lowered the heat in May whether the weather warranted it or not didn’t help matters.

  As she lay there shivering, hoping to warm up enough to get a few more hours of sleep, she didn’t pay it any attention at first, it sounded so faint. Even when she did, her mind initially dismissed it as a distant radio. Until an instant later a sudden increase in its volume made her realize the guttural sounds of her dream were coming from somewhere down the hallway outside her door.

  A chill ran through the length of her body that had nothing to do with the temperature. Instantly she sat bolt upright, her heart sprinting to triple digits in a second flat. While she listened the sounds continued in brief spurts, then broke off. Occasionally there were repeated yells followed by silence. As far as she could tell, only a single male voice spoke. A telephone conversation?

  Even though she couldn’t make out the words, the rapid staccato cadence and irregular explosive rhythms of the person’s speech definitely mimicked those of the voices that now haunted her dreams. It can’t be one of them, she tried to tell herself, her throat growing tight. She sprang out of bed, tiptoed on bare feet over to her desk, and reached for the phone, intending to call 911. She had her hand on the receiver when she thought, The extension light! If I pick up, it will flash on his end and warn him that I’m here.

  She spun around, thinking she could use her cell phone instead, but in the gray light couldn’t spot where she’d left it. Keeping an ear tuned to the distant conversation while figuring he wouldn’t be coming for her as long as he kept talking, she quickly checked beneath the couch where she’d been sleeping.

  Nothing.

  Riffling through the pile of clothing she’d discarded before going to bed produced the same result. Thrusting her hand into the pockets of her lab coat where it hung in the closet . . . she couldn’t find it anywhere.

  I must have left it on the workbench, she thought, her insides lurching into a knot.

  She pulled on her dress and slipped into her shoes, planning on being able to run if she had to. Careful not to let the crepe soles squeak on the linoleum floor, she went up to her door. Slowly opening it, she immediately could tell from how much louder the voice got that it came from one of the rooms nearby. The sudden amplification enabled her to better hear the words themselves— foreign and harsh, yet terrifyingly familiar—erasing any doubts she had about the language being the same as the killers’.

  Peeking down the hallway, she saw where a thin wedge of light slashed the darkness in front of Azrhan’s office. His door stood partially open, and a shadow from within moved back and forth across the frosted glass. The conversation sounded even angrier now—the person breaking it off in midbreath as if he’d been interrupted, then cutting off the brief silences with a furious tirade that she would have guessed to be profanity in any language.

  Is it only Azrhan? she thought, confusion adding to her panic and leaving her barely able to breathe. She’d heard him speak Arabic before, but this sounded altogether different. Could his voice be so distorted by the strange dialect and rage that she could hardly recognize it?

  To reach the room where she’d left her cell phone, she had to pass that door. It also stood between her and the exit to the outside corridor where the elevators were. Despite her fear, she stepped into the dark passage and crept forward. But as she got closer to the sliver of light, she began to wonder even more if it wasn’t him. After all, I heard no one breaking in, so whoever it is must have had keys, she reasoned. Shouldn’t I try and take a peek first before calling the police and avoid bringing them for nothing? After all, if it is him, he has a perfect right to use his office any time, day or night, or to speak any language he wants. Yet the prospect of his speaking that particular language, despite her best effort not to think the worst, sent darker implications nibbling like parasites on the edge of her thoughts.

  She’d gotten nearly abreast of the door when she heard a particularly vehement string of gibberish and the receiver slam down.

  Uh-oh, she thought, frozen in midstep. As she watched, the shadow within grew darker on the glazed window.

  He’s coming out! her mind screamed, and she instinctively backed up, ducking into her office again. She swung the door closed behind her, but it jammed before she could shut it enough to snap the lock. Applying more pressure, she pushed so hard it lurched into place with a bang.

  Not daring to breathe, she stood there listening. At first she heard nothing. Then tentative footsteps approached along the hallway. “Dr. Sullivan, are you awake?” came Azrhan’s voice.

  Chapter 14

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you.” His words came out strained, and at least a half octave too high.

  “Why are you here in the middle of the night?”

  “It’s a long story,” he said, jigging his leg nervously and looking
miserable as he took a sip of tea.

  “Get on with it,” she commanded, making him wince. She’d not let him say anything while she’d boiled the water, prepared the pot to steep, and folded up the sofa bed. The familiarity of the routine helped her to get a rein on the pounding in her chest. Only when they were seated on opposite sides of her desk, cups in hand, did she permit him to try and explain.

  “Okay,” he began, his body visibly slumping, as if he were surrendering to a wrestling hold. “As I told you, I’ve been having family problems. My parents in particular. While doing my postgraduate work I met an American girl. We live together. When my parents came to visit, they were appalled—about her being an American, about us living in sin, about it being pretty obvious that I don’t intend to return to Kuwait. You see, my parents are devout Muslims, and they can’t accept any of it. Worse, I have a younger brother—he’s twenty—who wants to follow in my footsteps and live in America. My father blames me for that as well.”

  “What language were you speaking tonight?”

  “Farsi. My family is originally from Iran. After the fall of the Shah, we escaped to Kuwait, and are citizens of that country now. While we all learned the local Arab dialect of our new community—I was a little kid, so it came naturally after a while—my father insisted that we continue to speak our native language at home. Now, we revert to it when we’re alone, especially to argue, which is all the time these days.”

  “Do any other nationalities speak it?”

  “There’s a dialect in Afghanistan that’s very similar. Otherwise, it’s unique. Why?” he asked, his voice all at once another half octave higher and sounding a little too innocent.

  “Because I told you about the attack on me when I got back from Honolulu, including a few phrases I remembered of the strange language I’d heard. Did you realize that I’d been describing Farsi, yet said nothing?”

  He didn’t answer. Wouldn’t even look at her.

  “You did know!”

  “Yes,” he admitted, looking miserable.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

  He remained silent.

  “Azrhan, either you come clean with me, or I’ll have your resignation. Now, why the hell didn’t you say that you recognized what language I heard?”

  His head jerked up, his eyes black with anger. “All right, I’ll tell you. Do you have any idea what it’s like, Dr. Sullivan, being an Arab in this country? Even a ‘good Arab’ like me—a superbright, overachieving, hard-working one—is far too often looked at askance while walking in the street, asked by police to pull the car over, and targeted for special scrutiny whenever it comes to airport security.”

  “Azrhan! I never measure you other than by your ability—”

  “I know you don’t. Under your tent, I’ve received nothing but equal opportunity. I’m talking about out there.” He gestured to the window.

  “But I’m not responsible—”

  “I don’t advertise I’m Iranian, okay! Not to any American. If I must declare my original nationality, I say Persian. Why? Because even though it’s been over twenty years since the hostage crisis, the images of that outrage are burned indelibly into the American psyche. I say Iran, and that’s what an American thinks of. Something happens in your eyes, whoever you are, or however intellectually open and liberal you happen to be—as if an inner lid comes down, and you see me differently from then on. If I say I’m from Kuwait, I’m everybody’s pal, because you all feel so good about having liberated us, and you sure as hell know we’re not the enemy over there.”

  He snapped his gaze away and glowered into the bottom of his teacup. The outburst had left him breathing heavily, but as she watched, the rise and fall of his chest slowed.

  “I can’t stand seeing that lid come down, Dr. Sullivan,” he continued after a few seconds, speaking softly now, his initial anger having vanished, “especially when it happens in people who are important to me. It’s like a curtain descending on the relationship, and somehow we’re never the same together again. I didn’t let on I knew the language, because I knew you would ask me how I knew it, and either I’d have to lie, or you’d learn my real nationality. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing that lid descend on my relationship with you.”

  “Azrhan, look me in the eye, right now!” she ordered.

  Raising his head, he reluctantly did as she asked. “What do you see?”

  He didn’t reply, but held his gaze steady on her.

  “Well?” she said impatiently.

  He gave a tentative smile. “I see you’re pissed off as hell at me.”

  “Any ‘lids’?”

  “No,” he said with a nervous laugh.

  “And if you don’t be wantin’ to ever see the likes of ‘lids’ in these baby greens of mine, don’t you ever be lyin’ to me again, understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” he answered, his face breaking into another smile.

  “But why did you come here to use the phone in the first place?”

  The smile vanished. “Time zones,” he answered quickly. “Middle of the night here is when it’s best to reach my father there. Knowing he and I would probably have another fight, I didn’t want to disturb my fiancée by using the phone at our apartment.”

  She watched his eyes again. They shifted ever so slightly, then held on her.

  “Okay, then let’s get ready for the morning staff,” she said quietly.

  After he left her office, she felt uneasy about the encounter. Everything he’d said had a ring of truth to it, and Lord knows she wanted to believe him. But it particularly bothered her how she could have worked so closely with him and never have picked up on the resentment he felt so profoundly. Had she been racist by default, not clueing in to how he saw things because she preferred not to do so? Or was she ignorant of his anger because he’d chosen to conceal it from her in order to keep their working relationship easy? That would be understandable, noble of him, even. But could he also have kept so much of himself hidden from her for more sinister reasons?

  Fueled by her fatigue, driven by her desperate need to discover who might want her dead, and at a total loss over how to unlock whatever answers lay in those unknown fragments of DNA, she allowed her own hidden lids to come down, and she thought the unthinkable of him. Could he be part of what was going on in Rodez and Maui? Had their professional congeniality been a carefully acted sham from the beginning? Had he, in fact, gotten himself placed with her to keep an eye on what she did? Like released pus, paranoia poured out of her mind unchecked, until even his not accompanying her to Honolulu started to look suspicious. Was his refusal because he’d been in contact with those men and knew they were going to try to kill her? She suddenly felt sick for ever having asked the question.

  No! Damn it! I won’t let myself think that way.

  But she had thought “that way.” And it changed how she regarded him. Ashamed, she found herself avoiding his eye in the lab. When she did inadvertently catch his gaze, she saw a dark impermeable sadness that nearly broke her heart.

  Damn! she cursed silently, loathing herself. Damn! Damn! Damn!

  Friday, June 9, 11:46 A.M.

  He rolled the car to a stop on the shoulder of the road under a solitary oak tree. It cast a giant shadow speckled with winks of light from a noonday sun in a high, unbroken blue sky. From Steele to the next hill stretched a mile of asphalt between two fields of young corn, the new sprouts barely two feet high. Approximately half a mile away he could see the Agrenomics facility. The oasis of treed lawns surrounding the long, low building and the deserted railway spur curving away from the rear of the grounds toward the west looked exactly as Kathleen had described it for him. But her brief mention of the massive greenhouses behind hadn’t prepared him for the actual size of the monstrous glass and metal structures. Each of the six could have housed one and a half football fields, and using his rusty memory of the conversion from square yards he figured the area under glass to be about seven acres in all.
A tall chain-link fence topped with curls of wire ran around it, the occasional flash from the coiled strands suggesting they were laced with razors.

  It’s like a prison, just as Kathleen said, Steele thought.

  What intrigued him even more: the entire complex looked practically deserted. The parking lot held fewer than a half dozen cars, and apart from a solitary security guard at the front gate, he saw no one, not on the grounds or around the greenhouses. He paid particular attention to the latter, scanning the place with the binoculars he’d brought along, but couldn’t discern any movement behind its highly reflective panels.

  Settling back, he lowered his windows and felt a warm breeze flow over him. Outside the passenger door a bee droned intermittently, making its rounds through the purple lupines and early phlox that grew wild in the ditch. Mingling with the pinging noises of his car as it cooled, the leaves above, dangling from the branches like quivering, silken emeralds, filled the air with a soothing rustle.

  He’d driven up that morning hoping some of the staff would be willing to talk with him about the pizza-faced man who’d once worked with them—at least more than they had when, two weeks earlier, McKnight had asked the questions. Timing the visit to arrive at lunch hour, he figured he could follow some of the workers to a local eatery where they’d be off company property and might feel more inclined to speak up, especially if he bought them a few beers. “For openers, I’ll show them my leg wound, and attest that they’d been right all along to feel uneasy about Fred Smith with his beasts,” he’d explained to Sullivan when they first discussed his coming here. “One thing I’ve learned in ER about getting information out of people is that when it comes to casual acquaintances—distant neighbors, people who work together, that kind of thing—nothing gets tongues wagging more than people having their worst suspicions about someone confirmed.”