From her resume, Henry had learned that Marchetti was thirty-two, had dual doctorates in reproductive medicine and microbiology from the University of Milan, and had worked for six years at an Italian pharmaceutical house supervising the production of human growth hormone from bacteria. He had no idea if she could speak English. If she couldn’t, then his plan would be in trouble even before it began.
They were leaving . . .
Henry grabbed his tray and headed across the room on a course that brought him to the woman’s side. “Excuse me, Doctor Marchetti.”
She turned to look at him, a neutral expression on her face.
“Do you speak English?” he asked.
“Of course,” she replied, apparently offended.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know . . . Could I ask a favor? I’m having problems with some cell cultures, and I think it’s bacterial contamination. Would you take a look at one and tell me what you think?”
The skin of Marchetti’s face was tight and shiny, and she had sharp features. Normally, large eyes softened a woman’s look, but Marchetti’s had not a spark of warmth in them, so they reminded Henry of something you’d catch in the ocean.
“Bacterial contamination is not difficult to recognize,” she said.
Ignoring her thinly veiled criticism of his needing assistance with such an elementary question, Henry plunged ahead. “Great. Then you’ll help?”
“Very well. But I can only give you a few minutes.”
“My office is just down the hall from your section . . . right on the way.”
She turned and spoke to the men in Italian. From her inflection, it sounded like more criticism, but as long as he got what he wanted, what difference did it make?
Feeling like the pied piper with all the Italians trailing behind him, Henry led the way to his lab and unlocked the door. Marchetti and one of the men had a final rapid verbal exchange and she accompanied Henry into his lab, where he gestured at his inverted microscope.
“Over there. That culture flask on the stage is the one I’d like you to look at.”
Marchetti sat, turned on the scope’s light source, and leaned into the eyepieces.
Henry had left the scope on its lowest power and out of focus on purpose so it would take her a few seconds to adjust it and see the cell culture he’d intentionally contaminated.
Her hand floated expertly over the microscope’s controls. In less than ten seconds she looked up at Henry. “It is contaminated and it’s definitely bacteria. To know more you’d have to examine stained samples with oil immersion optics, or set up cultures on different growth media. Now I must go.”
“Sure, I understand. Thanks for your help.”
He saw her to the door and watched her until she went around the corner. Then he returned to the scope, removed the engineered ocular that Micky Hardaway at Calgene had sent him by overnight express, and replaced it with a normal ocular.
The failure of the FDA to approve the Histogen vessel had made this decision for him. Even so, at first he had harbored some misgivings. But the more he thought about how hard Bruxton had been pushing him, the less he worried about stealing from him.
And those arrogant damn Italians; too good to sit with anyone else, jabbering in Italian right in front of him to make him feel excluded. Clannish bastards.
To put one over on the Italians sweetened the deal. But he was going to need some luck. He’d roamed through the company’s files on the computer and had not found the sugar attachment protocol, so there was likely a hard copy somewhere in the special projects section, maybe even in plain sight, like taped to a refrigerator. In any event, he couldn’t make his move until tonight when everybody was out of there.
HENRY FLICKED OFF the lights in his lab, and then shut and locked the door in case Bruxton should show up to ride him some more. With the place dark, the old geezer wouldn’t wander around looking for him.
After a quick glance down the hall to his left, Henry turned and walked quickly in the opposite direction. The usual way out of the building from the special projects section was past Henry’s door. He’d been keeping watch, so he knew that two of the Italians had left at five-thirty and the others at six. But he’d waited until much later to make sure they weren’t coming back.
With his heart floating against the top of his chest, Henry turned the corner and was stopped by the locked steel doors of the SPS. The doors were controlled by an iris scanner that read the right eye of whoever wanted in. If the pattern of your iris was in the computer, the lock opened. If not, you took a hike.
To thwart anyone attempting to gain unauthorized entry by holding a photograph of an iris up for the scanner to read, the computer was programmed to accept only images that showed the usual fluctuations in pupil diameter and the movement of blood through the tiny vessels in the iris. It was generally believed that such a device would in time, pay for itself by eliminating the need for a security guard. This was, of course, a mistake, for if anyone could breach the scanner, there was no backup. And Henry had the scanner’s number.
Stepping up to the scanner port, Henry reached into his pocket for the ocular he’d taken off the microscope in his lab after Marchetti had used it. To all outward appearances, it was a normal ocular, but in reality, it was also a tiny digital camera that had made a ten-second recording of Marchetti’s iris.
Unable to get enough air into his lungs because of his nervousness, Henry placed the ocular over the scanner port and activated the recording. After a short delay, there was a sharp sound of the deadbolt in the lock being withdrawn.
Once he was safely inside, Henry began to relax. Then, hearing a tinkling sound, he tensed . . .
But it was just the lights in the hall coming on automatically. He didn’t view this as a problem, because all the windows in the section faced onto a vast cornfield.
He was in a wide tiled hallway about twenty yards long. Halfway down on the left was a door, and beyond that, at the very end, an elevator that went to the receiving area where all shipments came in. Opposite the elevator, there appeared to be a cold room. Between Henry and the cold room on that same side, were two more doors.
He went to the door on the left and tried it.
Surprisingly, it was unlocked. But after finding the light switch, he saw that it was just a storage room for old equipment and extra glassware.
From there, he went to the door immediately across the hall. This one was locked. No matter. Henry put down his briefcase and reached inside it for the pick gun Hardaway had sent in the same package as the ocular camera. Drawing on the experience he’d gained in a half hour’s trial on the back door of his home, Henry was soon inside.
Once again, the lights percolated on automatically, illuminating an exceedingly large laboratory of standard design: yellow oak cabinets with green benchtops against most of each wall; above the benchtops, cabinets of the same material with sliding glass doors. Two work islands extended into the room from the far wall.
On one of the island bench tops was a huge blender, probably for mixing bacteria with the enzyme solution used to break them open. The rest of that bench top and the one on the other island were taken up with tall plastic cylinders half-filled with small translucent beads. Each cylinder was equipped with a plastic cooling jacket through which icy water circulated from a refrigeration unit. These were obviously columns for Vasostasin purification. Some were almost certainly dedicated to harvesting the inactive Vasostasin protein made by the company’s engineered bacteria. The beads in those columns likely had antibodies attached to them that would bind the inactive protein in crude bacterial extracts. Let an extract run through the column . . . the inactive form of the protein stays on the beads, everything else runs out the bottom. Wash the bound protein from the beads and you’re ready to put the sugar molecules on it that make it active. Other columns were p
robably dedicated to purifying the fully glycosylated final product, which meant the sugar binding protocol should be nearby.
Ignoring the room’s chilly temperature, Henry searched the bench tops of both islands looking for a sheet of paper that would probably be in a plastic protector. But he found nothing.
He searched all the other bench tops, with similar results, then checked the various papers held by magnets to the three refrigerators in the room.
No protocol.
Near the refrigerators, his eye was taken by a calendar on the wall with the heading, V PRODUCTION SCHEDULE. Two eight-day periods were blocked out, with lot numbers written in the shaded areas. According to the schedule, they were now in day one of the second production cycle for the month. On the first day of each cycle, the word ARRIVAL had been written in. On the second day, they’d written BEGIN COLLECTION.
Arrival of what? Henry wondered. It was his understanding that the entire production of Vasostasin was carried out in this area.
You’re becoming sidetracked, he told himself. Get moving and get out of here.
He spent the next five minutes pulling out cabinet drawers.
Then he saw it; a plastic-covered sheet.
But it was just an abbreviated set of instructions for the instrument used to collect solutions coming off the columns.
Where was the damn thing?
He remained there a while longer, looking in the unlikely larger storage areas under the bench tops just to be thorough.
There were no file cabinets or desks where he was and no notebooks. So all that must be in the next room, which would actually make that a better place to look.
The first thing he saw in the second lab was the huge stainless-steel fermentation chamber where they grew the bacteria that made Vasostasin.
But something was odd.
Having once worked in a hospital microbiology lab, he wasn’t as ignorant about bacteria as he’d made himself appear to Marchetti. In any lab that’s growing bugs, there’s a certain unmistakable smell that comes from the culture medium. The calendar said the Italians were in the first day of production. So why was there no smell?
Henry walked over to the fermentation chamber and rapped on it with his knuckles.
Hollow. There was nothing in it.
How could they begin collection tomorrow with the chamber empty? And what did “arrival” mean on the calendar?
The next things he saw were nearly as puzzling as the empty chamber. The Italians had two fancy phase-dissecting microscopes equipped with little culture chambers and micromanipulators. What the hell did they need those for?
On the bench top along the right wall was a large tissue culture incubator. Opening it, he saw that one shelf was filled with the same kind of rectangular plastic culture flasks he used. Too curious now to resist, he removed a flask and took it to one of the scopes. In seconds he had the contents in focus: a healthy pavement of cultured cells—bacteria free.
Why did they need these?
Showing him a puzzle was like teasing a schnauzer with a Pup-Peroni. So it was with difficulty that he turned his attention back to his search for the protocol.
As he’d predicted, off this lab there was a smaller room containing a computer, a couple of file cabinets, two desks, and some bookshelves. After a quick look through the rest of the lab he was standing in, he headed for the area with the desks.
ZANE BRUXTON’S IMPENDING death created a problem for him beyond the loss of his life. By arranging for his wealth to be distributed to various “worthy” causes, he had set in motion events that would cause his name to be spoken of with affection and respect for many years after he was gone. If he solved this problem that was all around him.
He was in his picture gallery, a large, windowless, interior room housing a collection of old master paintings that would be the envy of many a museum curator had its true extent been known. Rembrandt, Titian, van Goyen, Rubens, Vermeer, Caravaggio, van Ruisdale, and many others filled the walls two tiers high. Some of the paintings had been bought on the open market. But more had not been for sale when Bruxton first coveted them. Those had come to him through Karl Moeller, a German art dealer with a knack for acquiring the unobtainable while keeping the authorities unaware of his activities. Moeller was utterly discreet and possessed a fierce loyalty to his customers that protected them against being offered up as bargaining chips should he be arrested.
Even so, only a fool would believe there was no risk in dealing with him. But when Bruxton wanted a painting he had to have it, becoming so obsessed with it that Moeller often remarked that Bruxton must have linseed oil in his veins. Now, with Moeller deceased, the only danger to Bruxton was his own mortality. For when he died, all the paintings he’d obtained from the shadow market would come to light. He’d then be known as a man who’d bought stolen property, and every penny he’d given to worthy causes would have been wasted.
How to ensure that this wouldn’t happen? That was the problem. He’d considered anonymously returning the “liberated” paintings to their previous owners, but to ensure that it was all handled properly to hide his involvement, he’d need to personally direct the return, which meant he’d have to give them up while he was still able to enjoy them. And that, he could never do.
Vexed by the problem, Bruxton went into his study and casually scanned the TV screens that kept watch over the special projects section.
AS HENRY PENNELL came back into the hall from the second lab, briefcase in hand, his hope of finding the sugar-binding protocol was dashed. He’d gone through the two file cabinets, checked all the desk drawers and the notebooks. He’d even prowled through the material on the section’s computer, thinking it might be in a file inaccessible from the company network. But he’d seen no protocol.
He had, however, run across some odd material related to Vasostasin that had turned his mind back to the questions he’d had earlier. Now it suddenly struck him that he’d seen no stocks of bacterial growth medium. Was that what “arrival” meant? Was the fermentation chamber empty because their shipment of medium hadn’t arrived? But why would they arrange it so the medium always arrived on the first day of each production cycle? Why not give yourself a break and always keep some on hand?
Too curious now about the whole operation to ignore anything, he walked down to the cold room and opened the heavy metal door. Wincing at the frigid air inside, he flicked on the light and took a look around. The low room was only about six by eight feet with a sink on the wall opposite the door. The rest of the perimeter was lined by floor-to-ceiling metal shelves holding gallons of solutions in big flasks and large glass carboys; nothing even mildly interesting.
As he closed the cold room door, he suddenly heard the hum of the elevator. Someone was coming up. And it was only one floor. He’d never make it to the entrance at the end of the hall.
He ran to the door of the storage room, yanked it open, and ducked inside. Afraid that if he turned on the light, it might be seen under the door, he left it dark. But that meant he couldn’t see to hide himself. If anyone came in, he’d be standing right there.
He heard the elevator doors slide open. Then the sound of footsteps. Whoever it was uttered something in Italian . . . a male voice. From the inflection, he sounded upset.
The hall lights, Henry thought. They shouldn’t have been on.
His toes curled and the contents of his stomach turned sour.
Another voice . . . calmer. He heard a squeak, like a turning wheel.
The first voice again . . . also calm now.
More footsteps and again, that squeaking.
Henry braced himself. Then, through the hiss of his own breathing, he heard a clanking noise that could only be the door of the cold room opening. After a brief pause, the door clanked again. Footsteps and more squeaking, the elevator doors opening and
closing . . . the hum as it descended. Then silence.
Henry stayed in the storage room for three more minutes, listening hard. Finally, he inched the door open and peeked out.
They were truly gone.
Wondering what they’d done in the cold room, he walked down there and opened the door. Sitting on the floor to the right, where there had been nothing when he’d looked a few minutes ago, was a big plastic drum with a snap-on lid.
Needing both hands free, he put down his briefcase, then pulled at the lid on the drum and stripped it off. What he saw inside made him forget all about the protocol he hadn’t found. Hardly able to believe his eyes, he leaned against the drum and rocked it, shifting the position of the floating contents.
It was absolutely what he thought it was.
My God.
In a flash of intuition, it all made sense, and he knew why he’d been hired . . . how he fit in.
Oh man, oh man.
His worries about Bruxton were over. Once he told the old geezer what he’d seen, he wouldn’t dare fire him. In fact, it should even be possible to negotiate a sort of finder’s fee for his discovery. Elated at his new prospects, Henry shut off the cold-room light and went back into the hall.
IN HIS STUDY, eyes fixed on the TV screen showing Henry leaving the cold room, Bruxton cursed under his breath. Of all the people in his employ, why did it have to be Pennell? And what perverse forces made him choose the worst possible time to snoop?
Bruxton now had a decision to make. Actually, there could be only one decision, even it if would set the program back at least six months. He reached for the phone.
AS HENRY APPROACHED the guardhouse at the company gate, the night security man stepped out and waved him down. Henry’s first thought was that he’d been caught. He thought about hitting the gas, but then, realizing that he had a bargaining chip that would keep him out of trouble even if someone knew he’d been in an off-limits area, he stopped his car.
“Evening, Doctor Pennell. Doctor Bruxton called a few minutes ago and said if I saw you I should tell you he needs to talk to you. He called your lab first, so I guess you just missed him. C’mon in, we’ll use my phone.”
The Lethal Helix Page 9
