Kingdom of the Seven

by Jon Land

  “I have an important task that awaits you, my brother, one I wanted you to receive directly from me.”

  “Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.”

  Tennyson, Frye noted, from “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”

  “You have been told of the woman who has disrupted our plans.”

  Early’s slight nod was almost lost amidst his wild fall of hair.

  “We believe we know where she can be found. We have reason to believe she has enlisted the help of some former friends, members of a motorcycle gang. This gang is protecting her and her children.”

  The slightest trace of a smile crossed Early’s lips at that. “Children pick up words as pigeons pease, And utter them again as God shall please.”

  Frye returned the smile, understanding. “Yes, my brother. And know that God has spoken. You know what you must do.”

  Early nodded again. “The glories of our blood and state, Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armor against fate.”

  “You are fate, my brother. I am counting on you. God is counting on you.”

  “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm.”

  “Yes! Yes!” cried Harlan Frye, beaming. “And now we ride with him, you and I and all the others who are worthy. But we must show ourselves to be worthy. Do this for me, my brother. Do it as none of the others in my legion can.”

  Earvin Early’s face appeared from within his tumbling hair, as if he had pushed it forward. The festering sores had purpled. The boils were oozing whitish pus.

  “’Tis my vocation,” he said with a faint smile, quoting what the Reverend recognized as Shakespeare. “’Tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation.

  Indeed, thought Harlan Frye. Indeed.

  CHAPTER 19

  “That him?” T.J. Fields asked.

  “It’s his car,” Karen replied, noting the black Lexus 300 coupe inching its way through the dust of the closed-off exit ramp.

  She stepped out from behind the cover of a pile of chewed-up roadway and faced the approaching car. The unfinished off-ramp along the Pacific Coast Highway was built on a moderate decline that created a tunnel effect between the gradually diverging overpasses above. The Lexus’s driver seemed to see her, and the dust-covered car slid to a graceful stop forty feet away. The driver’s door opened and Freddy Levinger stepped out, elegantly dressed in a dark suit that showed every speck of dust the wind tossed at him. He tried in vain to brush it from his suit and kick it off his highly polished shoes, but gave up after a brief attempt. The wind ruffled his fashionably slicked-back hair and he ran a hand through the locks to smooth them back into place.

  Karen had gone to graduate school with Levinger at UCLA for a time, and their rises through the industry were pretty much mirror images of each other, although Freddy’s gains at Van Dyne Pharmaceuticals stretched way beyond hers at Jardine-Marra in a relative sense. He was head of development now, which meant if anyone could tell her about Van Dyne’s AIDS vaccine, it was Levinger.

  Meanwhile, clandestine meetings in the pharmaceutical industry, although not exactly commonplace, were not unusual, either. People at high levels often developed a notion to make a change, for one reason or another, and contact was often initiated in just that way. After all, there was always a chance that someone new to the company might be bringing something new; in fact, it was often the only reason that person was invited into the new surroundings. Karen had implied making a change was the reason she needed to meet Freddy, hoping her reputation in the industry, along with their friendship, would be enough to lure him to such a strange meeting place.

  “You need me, babe,” Karen heard T.J.’s voice call as she started forward, “I’m here.”

  She could see Freddy Levinger squinting into the sun, missing his sunglasses. “I really hope that’s you, Karen, because if it isn’t …”

  She stopped two yards away from him. “Hello, Freddy.”

  Levinger smiled and tilted his eyes back toward the Lexus. “Wouldn’t have a hose anywhere around, would you?”

  “Nice car.”

  “Thanks.” He turned sideways to the sun, face gaining confidence. “I hope the subject of this meeting justifies me getting it so filthy. I don’t mind telling you, Kar, that Van Dyne’s has had their eye on you for some time.”

  “Someone had more than that on me two nights ago, Freddy; last night, too, for that matter.”

  The playful glint dropped off his expression. “Really?”

  “I’m not here because I’m considering a change. Actually I’m here because of my kids.”

  “Your kids?”

  “Two boys.”

  “I know that.”

  “Did you know they were almost killed Monday night?”

  Levinger’s eyes bulged in shock. His mouth dropped.

  “And you’re part of the reason—at least what you’re involved in at Van Dyne.”

  His whole body had stiffened. He edged back toward the Lexus. “I think I’d better leave.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “If I can back my car up this ramp …”

  “Bad idea.”

  “Huh?”

  “Look up.”

  When Freddy looked up, he could see members of the Skulls lining the overpasses, responding to Karen’s signal. Their shotguns, rifles, and pistols were showcased plainly before them.

  “Who are these people?”

  “Friends of mine. You can never have too many. Are you still my friend, Freddy?”

  “Jesus, Karen …”

  “I need all the friends I can get right now.”

  Levinger started cautiously back toward her from the Lexus, eyes reluctant to leave the figures draped in black leather. “What’s going on, Karen? What’s this all about?”

  “You mean you don’t know? It’s about AIDS, Freddy. Its about an AIDS vaccine that Van Dyne presently has in the testing phase—your domain, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Levinger’s tanned face was going white.

  “The main reason I know about your vaccine is because I discovered one, too, something called Lot 35, if that matters. Anyway, I presented my findings to Jardine-Marra’s board of directors Monday afternoon. Monday night three gunmen tried to kill my sons and me. They might have been the same gunmen who killed all the members of my research team right in our lab at JM.”

  “What?”

  “Are you really shocked to hear this, Freddy?”

  “God, yes.”

  “I’m glad, because it might mean you’ll be willing to help.”

  “Karen—”

  “Let me finish first, Freddy. Alex MacFarlane took my sons and me to his home, where we were supposed to be safe. But I got this notion that Alex wasn’t playing totally straight and took off. I was right. We met last night and Alex admitted some things to me. He admitted informing your people about our rival AIDS vaccine. MacFarlane claimed he had no choice. You see, Van Dyne owns JM.” She paused. “Did you know that, Freddy?”

  “Karen, Jesus, I swear this is the first I’ve heard of it.” Then Levinger was silent for a moment, searching for something to say that wouldn’t reveal how nervous he was becoming. “Maybe I should be talking to him.”

  “You can’t, Freddy. He’s dead. Killed by whoever killed the eight members of my lab team and would have killed my kids.”

  “Karen,” Levinger started, shaking his head slowly, “you’ve got to believe I know nothing about all this.”

  “Prove it.”

  “How?”

  “Whatever’s going on, this vaccine you’re testing is the key. I want you to tell me everything you can about it. I want to see the files, the paperwork.”

  Levinger came closer. His eyes swept the twin overpasses where the half dozen bikers stood rigidly at their posts. “That could cost me my job. You’ve got to give me time to think about it.”

  Ka
ren shook her head. “I know you, Freddy. You’ll go back to Van Dyne and ask some questions. Then, tomorrow or the next day, you’ll end up like MacFarlane and my team. And you know what? Your death won’t get reported either.”

  They stood there facing each other for what seemed like a very long time. Finally Levinger spoke.

  “What exactly do you want to know?”

  “How your vaccine was discovered. The fundamentals of its function. How it was refined and developed. That should get us off to a decent start.”

  “That’s years of work!”

  “Then talk fast. I’m in no rush, anyway.”

  Levinger’s lips trembled as he began to speak. “We went back to the beginning, Karen, and I mean the very beginning of AIDS as it is known today.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “How much do you know about the work of Hilary Koprowski?” he started.

  Karen looked at him scornfully. “Beside the fact that it led to a generally discredited theory of the disease’s origin?”

  “Discredited because people refused to keep an open mind. It seemed too simple, too pat, so it was disregarded.”

  “With good reason.”

  “We found reason, Karen.”

  “Go on.”

  “You’ve got to have full grasp of the scenario first. Koprowski was under tremendous pressure to come up with a polio vaccine, just as Salk was; even more, since at one point he was closer to the answer. Koprowski’s problem was that by that time India had suspended export of rhesus macaques, so he began importing green monkeys from Africa, specifically the Belgian Congo. Typically he used their kidneys to cultivate his vaccine. Only there was a problem.”

  “The green monkeys carried a disease in their blood,” Karen picked up, nodding. “Something called Simian Immunodeficiency Virus or SIV.”

  “Dormant in the greens, just like you said, but not in humans. A few years after Koprowski began testing his vaccine, which had been grown in the monkeys’ kidneys, the first African natives began showing symptoms of the disease we now call AIDS. A relatively benign virus in green monkeys mutated and became a killer when incubated in the systems of humans.”

  “All of this is widely known, Freddy, but not widely accepted.”

  “Karen, seventy-five thousand African children in Leopoldville became the first to receive Koprowski’s vaccine, starting in 1958. A year later we know now that the first detection of AIDS was made there.” Levinger looked as if his point had already been made. “We went back to Koprowski’s original work with the greens,” he continued confidently, “starting with some of the actual cultures that had been frozen for forty years. We re-created the precise conditions that had converged to keep the SIV we believe evolved into HIV dormant in monkeys until Koprowski used their kidneys to cultivate his vaccine. Koprowski couldn’t have understood it, because he lacked the technology. Until very recently, so did we.” Levinger stopped. “Protein, Karen.”

  “What?”

  “The reason why SIV remained benign in the green monkeys was because it was enclosed by a protein coating the animals’ antibodies had formed around the individual cells. When grown in the animals’ kidneys, Koprowski’s vaccine eroded that coating and released the virus that became HIV into the systems of those inoculated with his vaccine. But Van Dyne successfully isolated the original protein from the frozen tissue samples and formulated its DNA. Once we had the genetic codes, we were able to produce antibodies that successfully recognized and then enclosed the invading cells of the AIDS virus in a similar coating, forming an impenetrable seal.”

  “Trapping them so they can’t spread and destroy the immune system,” Karen concluded.

  “All our research indicates the immune system destroys itself, begins destroying its own CD4 cells once the virus short-circuits it to promote its own spread. The virus is ruthless but limited. Our antibodies don’t totally eradicate it from the system, just render it forever dormant as was the case with the SIV Koprowski’s green monkeys had in their systems.”

  “But if that’s true, if it really works—”

  “Yes, Karen,” Freddy Levinger broke in before she could continue, “our vaccine is therapeutic as well as preventative. It should work in all but the most advanced cases of AIDS.”

  Karen nodded, strangely calm. “Surely one of the greatest discoveries in the history of medical science.”

  “If not the greatest.”

  “And most lucrative.”

  “Of course. But …”

  “I think you’re starting to see my point. We’re talking about a discovery worth tens of billions of dollars here. But if there was another vaccine, a rival vaccine, that worked at least as well …”

  “Yours?”

  Karen nodded and explained the parameters of Lot 35 to him. Levinger responded at the appropriate times, suitably impressed until a squint of confusion crossed over his features.

  “Okay, Karen, now tell me why, since according to you, Van Dyne owns Jardine-Marra and thus Lot 35, the company would bother to destroy it and murder eight people?”

  “Nine,” she corrected, remembering Alexander MacFarlane, “and here’s the clincher. Van Dyne wasn’t trying just to destroy Lot 35 Monday night, Freddy, they were trying to steal it. But they didn’t know I’ve got the only complete files. They sent MacFarlane to make a deal with me, and when he failed they killed him.”

  Levinger stood before her, motionless. “Tell me what you want from me, Karen.”

  “What level has your vaccine progressed to?”

  “Well into final, large-scale human testing. Several months in. With government approval and support, I might add.”

  “I want you to go over the staging with me, Freddy. I want to go over every bit of data up to this point, step by step.”

  “Even I don’t have access to everything.”

  “You’re Van Dyne’s head of development.”

  “Karen, I’d be breaking the law if I helped you. We’re partners with the government on this, for God’s sake.”

  She looked at him harshly. “Get me the latest results of the test group, Freddy.”

  “And just what do you expect to do with them?”

  “Use them as proof that Van Dyne’s vaccine exists. Hard evidence to convince the proper authorities of what’s going on. They’d never believe me without it.”

  Levinger’s eyes flared. His face reddened. “This was supposed to be between us! I trusted you!”

  Karen shook her head. “No, you talked because you were scared. But you’re not as scared as I am, and let me tell you, being scared makes you capable of just about anything.”

  Levinger thought about it briefly. “This will take some time to arrange. I don’t have access to all the materials you want.”

  “You have until tonight to get it.”

  “Karen—”

  “And don’t even think about going to Van Dyne’s corporate wing with this, Freddy. Don’t even think of playing hero to your company.” Karen let her eyes drift to the gunmen standing sentry over the scene and waited for Levinger’s to follow her gaze. “You’ve got a wife, Freddy. You’ve got three kids. If anything happens to me tonight …”

  “No! That’s sick! How can you—You can’t—”

  “Only what was almost done to me, Freddy. When someone threatens your kids, your choices get narrowed pretty fast.” She paused. “I think you just realized that. You do what you have to do.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” he followed, seething.

  “Tonight, Freddy. So long as it’s by tonight.”

  CHAPTER 20

  McCracken flew from Chicago into Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport on the first flight out Wednesday morning, after Sal Belamo successfully completed the next stage of his research into the Reverend Harlan Frye’s Key Society. Specifically, Blaine wanted the name of the largest donor of all.

  “No sweat, boss,” Belamo reported first thing Wednesday. “Information wasn’t hard to come b
y. Guy by the name of Jack Woodrow, better known as Jumpin’ Jack Flash.”

  “Don’t know him by either name.”

  “Be different if you lived down in the South. Jumpin’ Jack happens to be the most successful automobile dealer in the whole U.S. of A. Got maybe twenty dealerships spread over five states, and all of them rake in a ton. Made his name with trucks, four-by-fours, RVs, and campers, and they’re still the source of his primary bread and butter. He operates a dealership outside of Atlanta that’s got twenty solid acres of them lined up bumper to bumper, new shipments coming in every day.”

  “What’s Woodrow in for with Frye?”

  “Near as I can figure, a hundred easy, boss.”

  “A hundred million?”

  “I kid you not. You ask me, Jumpin’ Jack must figure he’s got a lot of soul to save.”

  Blaine ran that through his mind briefly before speaking again. “I’ll ask him personally when I get to Atlanta. Anything from Johnny?”

  “Funny you should ask. Called me last night from Cali-for-ni-a. He’s been spending some time in the woods. Turns out he ran into some holdovers from a criminal commune Earvin Early literally fell into. You’ll never guess who the founder was.”

  “Harlan Frye.”

  “I gotta stop underestimating you, boss. Anyway, maybe fifteen years ago Frye tries to burn up the members who don’t agree with his plans.”

  “Nice way to treat your followers.”

  “Hey, if he ain’t changed …” Sal Belamo let the thought complete itself. “You want me to tell the big fella to head east?”

  “And make sure he keeps calling in.”

  For Jacob and Rachel the wait was agonizing. Blaine McCracken was surely long gone from Illinois by now, and they needed to know to where. So far, contacts still available to their father had managed to turn up a number of the aliases McCracken traveled under, so the search had to incorporate all of them at both O’Hare and Midway airports.