by Layton Green
“The lights are kept low to facilitate visibility through the microscopes,” Dr. East explained. A dark-haired woman hunched over her microscope, one hand slowly manipulating a pencil-like instrument around the slide. “Clara is vacuuming the bovine DNA out of the oocyte.” He pointed to a narrow-faced Indian man seated two tables over from Clara. “After Clara finishes vacuuming, she’ll immobilize the oocytes with suction, and Ravi will deposit a single human skin cell into the cytoplasm. We’ll give our little girl a jolt of electricity to help her accept the transfer, and then spray her to trick her into believing she’s been fertilized. It’s hard, you know—it’s hard to get the procedure to take. And the odds that the embryo will survive the nine or ten days it takes to reach the blastocyst stage—let’s just say that before a few days ago, we weren’t sure it was possible.”
He prodded them towards a corner of the lab where a projector had been set up. On the screen was the outline of a small, geometrically perfect circle filled in with a bubbling, gelatinous mass. He stopped, hand on his hips, and grinned again. “There she is.”
Grey took a long look at the image on the projector. A visceral shudder ran through him, an involuntary reaction to the impersonal mannerisms of the scientists as they performed interspecies genetic manipulation. Grey had never had a problem with stem cell research, but he couldn’t deny that a somberness overtook him, a feeling of culpability that his people—his species—had perhaps committed a divine trespass here, had poked into a secret corner of life and death that should not have been disturbed. That the scientists in this suburban basement had taken a bite from a modern-day forbidden apple.
Veronica stared at the image on the projector, mesmerized. She said without turning her head, “What happens next?”
“Right now, nothing,” Dr. East said. “There’s an injunction in place, and the court will decide her fate by tomorrow. I expect that… I expect that at best, we’ll be ordered to freeze her. It’s all silly, you know—she of course can’t develop into a viable fetus. We only want to harvest her embryonic stem cells, or study her effect on transgenic theory. We don’t even know if it’s possible, or if the embryonic stem cells harvested from an interspecies blastocyst will be viable for humans. But, if it is, imagine the possibilities. The ethical problems with this type of work stem from the use of human oocytes. If we can circumvent that with the use of bovine oocytes…”
Grey said, “Sorry to interrupt, Doctor, but I think I’ve seen enough of the lab. Before I move on, let me ask you something. If you were worried about a threat to your security from a competitor or a hate group, who might you be concerned with?”
Veronica swished her hair and looked at Grey.
Dr. East looked confused, and Grey said, “My job is to assess potential security threats, no matter how attenuated. We can’t have a bomb going off at or near a diplomatic visit. If there were someone you wouldn’t turn your back on, who would it be?”
Grey’s eyes flicked to Veronica again, now eying him curiously. It was time to wrap this up.
Dr. East’s eyes moved to the projector, where his creation hovered above the room in an ironic reversal of physical size. “I’m sorry, I don’t really know. If I had to pick one, I suppose I’d say Army for Life.”
Grey left Veronica and Dr. East discussing the challenges presented by interspecies somatic cell nuclear transfer. He finished sweeping the facility, seeing nothing else of interest. A pair of policemen escorted him through the crowd to the street.
• • •
Grey was surprised to find Veronica waiting at the end of the drive, in a three-quarter length red coat. His surprise soured as she stepped towards him. She touched his arm and smiled. “Do you have a few minutes?”
“Sorry, I don’t.”
He kept walking. When he rounded the wall he cursed. The crowd on the back side had swelled to cover the entire street. He pushed his way through the rear of the roiling throng, and to his great annoyance Veronica stayed with him.
When he reached the other side he turned. “Look. I’ve got a number of appointments today. I don’t have time to chat.”
“Why don’t we—”
She broke off. Three men had split from the crowd and approached them. The one in the middle, a huge man with a tattooed neck and a ponytail, grabbed Veronica by the elbow and tried to shove a sign into her hand. He reeked of alcohol, and was wearing an Army for Life T-shirt underneath a biker jacket. She tried to pull away, and he gripped her.
Grey pressed his thumb into the hollow of the man’s throat, just enough to make him gag and let go. The man cursed and came at Grey with a wild swing. Grey stepped back to avoid the swing, but the man kept coming. Grey ducked the next swing and jabbed the man straight in the groin.
The man’s head lowered as he sucked in air. Grey had already started rising, and he splayed the man’s nose with an upward knee. He then grabbed a fistful of ponytail and yanked him down by his hair at the same time he swept his legs out. The man crashed to the ground and stayed there.
A man with thick arms and a beer gut stepped forward to check on his friend, while more men in biker jackets edged forward. Grey took Veronica by the elbow and backed away. “Just keep walking,” he murmured. “Gangs are like dog packs. They freeze if their leader’s taken out.”
They kept backing away until they rounded a corner. They put some distance between themselves and the crowd, and Grey was surprised to see Veronica unruffled. “Thanks,” she said. “Heading back to Manhattan?”
Grey nodded, and they continued walking briskly towards the train station. The din of the mob receded, replaced by the manufactured calm of the suburb.
“Army for Life is a joke,” Veronica said, without breaking stride. “I know the name of the company you’re looking for, but I want to know why you’re looking for them. Does it involve the Minotaur, or something else?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“When you were fighting your jacket shifted. I couldn’t help but notice you weren’t carrying a gun. I don’t know any federal agents that don’t carry on assignment, or that take the train, even to Manhattan.”
He kept walking. “Now you do.”
She touched his arm. “I know biotech. Meet me for a drink, and maybe we can have an information tradeoff.”
Grey saw the train station in the distance. He couldn’t wait to leave this place and its perfect lawns behind. Veronica slid a card into his pocket. “Look. Meet me for thirty minutes. I’ll give you the name whether or not you tell me anything. I don’t give a damn why you were here, or who you work for. You can’t lose.”
She turned and began walking back the way they’d come. Grey called after her. “Not taking the train?”
“My car’s a few streets back.”
He watched her sway down the sidewalk, her high-heeled boots clacking her along faster than most people walk in flats. Competence, he thought, that’s what that woman exudes.
He also thought that a woman like that didn’t go out of her way to walk a random man to his train. Not without a very good reason.
– 6 –
The woman next to Jax on the plane asked him if he always flew first class, and he shifted to answer her, looking her in the eyes to establish trust.
Venezuela produced some remarkable examples of feminine perfection, including the Caraceña next to him: creamy beige skin, a hand resting on the inner curve of a firm thigh, flickering eyelashes hiding smoky moons, a chest that swelled up and down beneath her blouse as she gesticulated her words.
“It’s my first time flying first class with such a lovely traveling companion.” He slipped in a grin. “Normally I get stuck with overweight gringos.”
“You’re not a gringo?”
“Only by birth.” He extended a hand. “Jax.”
She smiled. “Graciela.”
Maybe it was her hazel eyes, but Graciela reminded Jax of Lisa Delacruz, the one ethnic girl who had graced his high school. She was a stunn
er, but everyone in that petty little town except Jax had ignored her.
Remembering Lisa caused him to remember David James Smith, the name the hospital had chosen for him at birth, an identity he left behind long ago. Who wanted to be called David James Smith, anyway? He might as well tell people he was a tax attorney.
He said, “A pleasure, Graciela. That’s a beautiful name.”
“Gracias.”
“You have family in Miami?”
“Si. My uncle and two cousins. You also?”
Fair Graciela, mine is the sad clichéd story of callous birth parents and foster homes, of adolescence in a dry county in Oklahoma with a foster family whose provinciality would shock a Quaker.
“No.”
“And where is your family?”
My family members are the beautiful doves like you, sprinkled across the world like a living treasure hunt. As for my birth family, I don’t know and don’t care and they can go to hell. And if you meant my final foster family, the last time I saw them was the day I left Oklahoma to join the Army. Five years ago they both died of lung cancer, and that was that.
“Montana,” he said.
“I don’t know it. I’ve been to Miami and New York and Chicago.” She pronounced Miami in the Spanish way, and New York and Chicago in the English. “What do you think of my country?”
“Stunning,” he said. “I miss it already.”
“Did you go for business or pleasure?”
“A little vacation, Graciela. Everyone needs some fresh air and sunshine now and again.”
“So you do not live in Miami. There is plenty of sunshine there. Where do you live?”
Graciela was sexy as hell, but she had an innocence that… corralled… his physical attraction, and opened a valve of reflection he couldn’t shut off.
Where do I live? Many places, love. Many. I don’t want to think about the places I lived before Oklahoma, because they are not good memories.
I could have stayed in Oklahoma. I excelled at football and chasing women and shooting whiskey, which were the things that counted in my town. But all I could see was a suffocating horizon where my future should have been, a black hole of empty beer cans and strip malls and too-familiar faces. No, Graciela, this would not be me. Could not be me.
So I joined the military, and I learned how to survive and how to kill. I volunteered to go abroad and saw a glimpse of the world—a taste, just enough to know I’d found my true loves, freedom and adventure. An entire world to explore! Any name I wanted, any hobby I wanted, any home I wanted.
After my tour, both jaded and fresh at twenty-two, I stepped off the bus in Dallas. I had five hundred dollars saved, and within a month I’d drawn four thousand from my credit cards. What was ruined credit to someone who never cared to see his homeland again? I sold everything I had and took a plane to London.
But I digress. Where do I live? Everywhere. Nowhere. I’ve lived in Paris, Tokyo, Rome, Auckland, Dar-Es-Salaam, Mumbai, Rangoon, Beijing and Tangiers. I’ve lived on a yacht in the Indian Ocean and in a hut in Kenya and under a bridge in Prague and in a hammock in Bahia and on a kibbutz in Israel and—
“Jax?”
He blinked. “Sorry love. I got distracted by the view.”
“Ay, si. I love when we are above Miami and the islands are like little green cookies.”
“It’s a good city.”
“You never told me where you live,” she said.
“Florence, at the moment.”
She gasped. “Italy?”
“That’s the one.”
She grabbed his arm. “That is my dream city for as long as I can remember! When I was young we had a book on our, I think you say coffee table? The pictures of Florence… it looked like a magical tale.”
“Fairy tale. Still looks that way. You should go soon. No one’s dream city should go unvisited.”
She looked wistful, and smiled at him again. “You’re a nice man. “
Nice? If you knew who I really was, you would ask for a different seat. No, a different plane.
“You are so lucky to live in Florence. What do you do there?”
Ah, he thought, the inevitable delicate question. What do I do? I’m a mercenary. I work for those who pay me, pure and simple. I have loved and fought and wept and tortured and killed. I should be in prison, I have a thousand regrets and I would change a million things.
But I’ve lived, my dove.
I have lived.
Jax beamed a smile at her, full of bourgeoisie charm. “I’m in the import-export business.”
• • •
At Miami International Jax gave Graciela a gratuitous squeeze and wished her well. If he didn’t have a connecting flight it would have been a rental Bentley, poolside drinks and his usual suite at the Delano. He was quite sure his corralled libido would be loosened by a couple of stiff gin and tonics.
He had to admit he loved Miami. America’s advanced judicial system was bad for his line of work, but unchecked capitalism had its benefits.
Work, however, came first. He settled for a double espresso and turned on his laptop.
In the beginning, Jax had advertised for a few years as a mercenary. Places existed, online and in newspapers and in certain magazines, where mercenaries of all sorts, even hired killers, advertised their services. Whatever dirty job one wanted done, someone would do it for the right price.
The problem was, cops also knew of those sources. Jax had never been to jail, and would do anything to avoid it. Loss of freedom was his greatest fear. He avoided taking work in countries with modern prisons and with officials less willing to take a bribe. Should he ever find himself sweating his life away in a third-world hellhole, his friends and business acquaintances knew he had a standing reward of one million pounds for his rescue. It would clean out half his savings, but would be worth every penny.
Jax thought of himself as a mercenary not in the classic definition of a hired soldier, but in the secondary definition: one who serves or works solely for monetary gain. Just like any businessman.
Jax maintained a personal ad in the London Times. The potential client would email Jax and mention importing furniture, and leave a return email address. Jax would reply, get a phone number, then make contact via his virtually untraceable satellite phone. If Jax liked what he heard, he would set up a meeting place of his choosing.
Jax had enjoyed the Venezuela job; it had a danger element, and he worried he was getting soft. Too many of his recent jobs had been like the Cairo job: meet with middleman and supplier in shady location, take secret package halfway across the world to ultra-wealthy buyer.
The buyer in the Cairo job was some suave Eastern European scientist who looked like a class president. Jax felt like he was delivering baked goods. He needed a good old-fashioned arms deal in a war-torn republic, where he had to stay steps ahead of a rival warlord and parachute out of a helicopter into a burning canyon to make a delivery.
For this job, Jax had been emailing someone named Mohammed, who wanted to meet in New York to discuss the transport of an unnamed but valuable object. Jax didn’t usually go to the client, but he assumed Dorian had passed his name on. He had to change planes in New York anyway.
Mohammed fought hard for choice of venue. He tried to persuade Jax to come to his suite, and Jax had laughed at him. Jax told him he could meet him at the cafe in Grand Central Market, or find a cheaper mercenary.
They set a date. Jax told him to arrive at the cafe at eight p.m., and to leave a newspaper open on the table with the obituaries showing.
Today was the day of the meeting. Jax planned to relax someplace after this job, maybe Sicily. He loved the change of pace there: the morning light, the culinary perfection, the absolute absence of the rule of law.
Jax’s plane landed in New York at five. He dropped his bag at Hotel Pennsylvania and grabbed a spring roll on the way to Grand Central. He arrived at seven-thirty, and took a seat at a table within viewing distance of the cafe. His bo
ot knife rubbed against his calf when he sat. Within seconds, if needed, he could reach a taxi, a bus, the subway, the streets, or the trains.
At eight o’clock, two men arrived at the café who made an immediate impression on Jax. One was tall, bald, wrapped in a full-length forest green coat, and carrying a paper. He looked Arab. He entered, ordered, set the paper on the table and opened it.
The other man sat with him; Mohammed had conditioned that he went nowhere without his bodyguard. Jax understood such a thing, and had agreed. One bodyguard didn’t worry him.
Funny, though. Jax had never seen a five-foot-tall bodyguard.
– 7 –
After a visual sweep, Grey chose a cocktail table at the rear of the bar, facing the crowded main room. He sat with his back against the velvet-lined wall, and ordered a Sapporo. Grey didn’t consider himself a product of any one culture, but he did identify with the Japanese. He loved their food, their art, their sense of beauty, their methodical way of life in the rural areas, the neon-soaked throb of their cities. And, of course, he loved everything about the martial arts, and Japan was the either the birthplace or the incubator of the great ones.
The Karma Lounge was just the sort of place he’d expect Veronica to choose: modern and hip, yet still classy. A few blocks south and west of the UN. He knew Veronica would do her best to extract something from him, and he anticipated a valiant effort. But client confidentiality did not include an exception for attractive and ambitious women, especially not those who published the results of their investigations for a living.
Grey had never felt comfortable on the Scene. He preferred the basement bars on the potholed side streets where the tourists never ventured. Where the darkened caverns and haze of cigarette smoke hid not just faces, but pasts.
He felt at home casing the Karma Lounge for exits and potential problem types, but when that ended, and he sat with his sweating beer in front of him and his arms shifting from folded to on the table to folded again, the familiar and uncomfortable feeling of being alone in a place not meant for solitude crept over him.
