The Egyptian

by Layton Green

  Thoughts of Nya lurked at the edges of his mind. But tonight that dagger cut more like a kitchen knife, and he resented its dullness.

  He’d arrived half an hour early on purpose, but he felt a lightening of his chest when Veronica arrived in high heels and a shimmering blue cocktail dress that set off her eyes from across the room. Half the male patrons watched her strut to Grey’s table.

  Grey noticed a hint of jasmine as she sat across from him. She ordered a pinotage, brushed her hair behind her ear and crossed her legs. Her mouth curled wide before she spoke, and he knew it was a mouth used to getting what it wanted. “Nice to see you again, Dominic Grey.”

  His greeting died on his lips and he slowly set down his beer.

  “I have an ex with the FBI. There’s no Mike Hood working for Diplomatic Security, now or ever. Funny, though, a man named Dominic Grey with your physical description was terminated a few months ago in Harare. Ex Diplomatic Security and Marine Recon. A former Special Forces hand-to-hand combat instructor, no less. After what I witnessed, I believe I have my man.”

  He started to stand, and she put a hand on his arm. “Like I said before, I don’t know or care who you work for now. I’m only interested in what you’re sniffing. I assume because you’re here that you need my help.”

  He gave her a tight-lipped smile. “You promised a name.”

  She pouted. “Time for business already? Can’t you let a girl finish her first glass of wine?”

  Grey shrugged mentally; Veronica wasn’t going to make an issue of his visit to BioGorden. “Somehow I doubt Veronica Brown, freelance investigative journalist for the W.H.O. now on assignment for the International Biomedical Organization, ex lead reporter for the Washington Post, and at Detroit and Cincinnati papers before that, is rarely off the job.”

  She raised her glass. “Touché.”

  “How did you get into biotech?”

  “I covered a cryogenic scandal at the Post, a company that was taking families’ life savings and freezing plastic dummies instead of relatives. That started the ball rolling. I don’t mind biotech, but it’s a means to an end.”

  “What end?”

  “I don’t know.” She laughed conspiratorially. “Something. Everything. Cocktails in yachts on the Mediterranean, rafting down the Amazon, tracking leads in Rio, cover of Time.”

  “At least you know what you want.”

  “Don’t you?”

  He eyed her wine, and signaled the bartender for another round. “Time for business.”

  She stared at him for a few seconds, then uncrossed her legs and straightened. “Fine. What in the world were you doing at BioGorden?”

  “You know I can’t discuss that. I’ll tell you what I’m sure you picked up already: I’m looking for a biotech involved in the theft of corporate secrets.”

  “What kind of corporate secrets? BioGorden has the hottest thing around right now, and we just got a full frontal of the Minotaur. If there was anything hotter I’d know about it.”

  “You’re pretty sure about that.”

  “There could be something new out there, but I’d be surprised. And very, very interested. Does it involve new or existing technology?”

  “I’ll save you some trouble: I don’t even know what it is.”

  “Then why would anyone hire you?” She pondered her own question, then said, “I suppose you don’t have to be an expert on the crime to catch the criminal. It helps, though.”

  “Which is why I’m talking to you. So educate me.”

  Veronica swirled her wine. “Biotech is a broad term, and encompasses many types of companies. The particular biotech world you’ve stepped into is the one that makes the news. It’s radical and controversial.”

  “Biomedical gerontology. The science of aging.”

  “Good. Yes. Thanks to biological limits, we’re allowed to experience only a fraction of the world. But what if that changed?” Her eyes gleamed. “My God, how can you not want to grasp onto life like a spider clinging to the most fascinating web it’s ever spun, visit every mountain-studded island shore, taste every exotic cuisine, see every spired city, have a thousand loves, live a thousand lives?” Her eyes twinkled and she laughed. “Sorry, that was my spiel to get the BioGorden gig. But I believe in it. Those biological limits—they’re not set in stone. You wouldn’t believe some of what these scientists are doing. They’ve already extended the lives of mice by more than half. And I’m not talking doddering old mice stumbling around a cage. I’m talking sustainable prolongevity—living twice the years at the same health rate.”

  “From what I’ve read so far, the science hasn’t translated to humans yet.”

  “True. There’re a few things out there, severely restricted caloric intake, lowering the metabolic rate by prolonged controlled breathing, which can extend life for a few years. But who wants to live like a monk for a few more years in the nursing home? It’s on the way, though. There are drugs hitting the market that can do amazing things. We’re at the tip of the iceberg.”

  She took a deep breath and took another drink. “It’s something I’m passionate about. Let the finality of death roll around in your mind for a second. You or whoever you love will be gone forever. Your children, maybe. Your wife. Your parents. How is that acceptable?”

  Grey sipped his beer, expressionless. He let his eyes roam the bar, now filled to the brim with Manhattan’s finest, the picks of the litter. No, he wasn’t obsessed with extending life. “So when do I get the golden egg?”

  “If I were looking for something shady in biotech, I’d look at Somax. It’s a company headquartered in Bulgaria.”

  Grey kept a blank face, but his inner alarm was buzzing. Somax was one of the seven companies on Al-Miri’s list. “I didn’t realize cutting-edge technology was taking place in Eastern Europe.”

  “Somax started in the former Soviet Union, under a different name and government ownership. From the beginning it’s been involved in radical experimentation, in particular biological warfare and militaristic human experimentation. God knows what else they were doing, back in the day. During the cold war they moved operations to Bulgaria.”

  “Good choice. Bulgaria’s not exactly known for its transparency.”

  “When Bulgaria gained independence, Somax privatized and moved into aging. Somax has a number of patents, is cash-rich, and no doubt has plenty of legislators in its pockets.”

  “What exactly do they do?”

  “If it’s done in biotech, they do it. Fetal stem cell research, cloning, organ farming, interspecies experimentation, cryogenics, biological warfare, designer genetic engineering, you name it. There are lots of rumors, and few facts. I’ve been looking for a reason to investigate them, a solid lead, for some time.”

  “Thus this meeting, and why you told me without much of a fight.”

  She lowered her voice, batted her eyes and purred. “Alcohol lowers my mental defenses.”

  Grey smirked. “What else do you know about them?”

  “The last time Somax was really in the news was a few years back. The story was never proven, but they allegedly conducted a series of biological tests in a village in Sudan. A few months after Somax left, a baby was born in the village with four arms and no face. No one could trace it to Somax, but it was widely assumed their drugs were responsible.”

  The buzzing in his mind escalated. Sudan. Africa.

  “They call it science and progress, but they operate in a moral vacuum, in my opinion. And I’m progressive.”

  He considered what he’d seen in that lab. “I admit that… embryo… we saw today made me pause. Apparently the people outside the gate weren’t too happy about it.”

  “The minotaur isn’t viable, of course. But it’s still alive, depending on your definition. People, especially religious types, tend to get a little crazy when the natural order of things is disrupted. Can you believe the Pope recently denounced the “largely uncharted world of biotech” as today’s greatest danger z
one for the human soul? I’m sorry, how about mass poverty and child soldiers? People don’t like change, and biological experimentation is change most extreme. It challenges people’s worldview, their concept of egocentric humanity and the divine design behind life.”

  “You don’t seem to have a problem with it.”

  She lifted her hands, palms up. “I don’t know about the whole God thing, but if He didn’t want us to tinker with it, why make it accessible?”

  “There’re lots of things theoretically available to us, but off limits. Like experimentation on African villagers.”

  “I’d never dispute that. I’ve heard it all before, believe me. If you run in the biotech world for long you’ll see life and death and everything in between in a whole new light. Did you see what they were doing today? They sucked out the DNA from a cow egg, and inserted human DNA. Think about that. Do you understand how new this field is? What’ll we be seeing in five, ten, fifty years? If God doesn’t want us to go certain places, He better step in quick, because His new high priests are tinkering with life and death.”

  Grey could only think of one appropriate response. “I need another beer.”

  – 8 –

  Veronica watched Dominic Grey leave the bar after their second round. Soon after the biotech discussion ended he mumbled something about needing to take a walk, then paid their tab and left. He wasn’t the king of social graces, not even a minor marquis, but at least he’d bought her drinks. Veronica was not old-fashioned by the furthest stretch of the imagination, but that was one thing she appreciated.

  As he headed down the street, hands in his pockets and slightly hunched, she noticed a feline grace to his step that disturbed her. Men didn’t walk that smoothly unless they were one of two things: gay or dangerous. She was pretty sure Dominic Grey wasn’t gay; if he was, he sucked at it. In spite of the fact that he didn’t hit on her, which both interested and annoyed her, he didn’t exhibit any of the signs of ambiguous sexuality for which she had a well-trained eye.

  She remembered the boyfriend a few years back who had only wanted to cuddle and shop and watch fashion on television. He dressed better than she did, which was hard to do, and he liked to discuss their body flaws. The last thing she wanted to date was another woman.

  She did tend, she had to admit, to go for the playboy types: successful, confident, smooth, handsome in a JFK kind of way. Dominic didn’t have any of the qualities on her list. He did have, she had to admit, a pretty face and soulful green eyes. Fine, maybe he was a little sexy, in a raw and mysterious sort of way.

  Another thing: the playboy types, for all their flair, were riddled with insecurities that Veronica had spent a lifetime practicing how to exploit. Dominic was downright awkward socially, but she sensed an underlying strength of character that she hadn’t come across in far, far too long. So long that she wondered if something about herself wasn’t repelling the good ones.

  But Dominic hadn’t been awkward when he manhandled that thug. Again, that walk… not graceful in an effeminate manner, but in a predatory one. Like a stalking cat. Her profession involved frequent contact with policemen and criminals and other edgy types, and she knew he had the walk of a dangerous man, a man beyond the need for affected confidence in that realm. A man who didn’t question his hierarchy in the jungle. She rolled her eyes and made a face. God knew what skeletons he had in his closet.

  But he intrigued her, and above all else, Veronica Brown liked to be intrigued.

  Someone tapped her on the shoulder and offered to buy her a drink. God, he was almost sixty. How old did he think she was? She smiled and pointed at his wedding ring. He gave her a sheepish grin, and she gave him her back.

  She finished her wine, grabbed her handbag and left. She caught a taxi and headed south on First. In the taxi she replayed their conversation in her mind. A company with the infamy of Somax, coupled with the real possibility that ground-breaking work might be taking place there, was the stuff of which investigative journalist dreams were made. Career changing.

  Biomedical work may not sound exciting, but she had found a niche and worked it. She had paid her dues over the years from Kentucky to Cincinnati to Detroit to Washington to New York.

  The time had come for bigger and better things. Biotech was her ladder, and Somax could be the final rung. Where did the ladder lead? Perhaps a top network position, perhaps a book contract, maybe even to that ultimate opener of locked doors: fame. A thief in the night, that one. She’d seen it with others in her profession: it came and took your body and soul and flung them across the earth.

  But what a ride it would be.

  Bulgaria was not exactly a place the IBMO accountants liked to see on expense account receipts. In fact, the IBMO probably wouldn’t be interested in the sort of scandal she hoped to find at Somax.

  But many sources would be. Many. She’d pursue a lead on her own, if it was promising enough.

  And she’d just had drinks with someone that might have one.

  • • •

  She climbed to the third floor of her pleasantly crumbling East Village building, exhausted after a day that had started at five a.m. The BioGorden copy had gone out just before she met with Dominic.

  She entered the cramped one-bedroom, kicked off her heels, and sighed at the mess. There was only so much time in the day. She sloshed a nightcap into a wine glass and collapsed on the sofa.

  After half a glass she sighed again and swung to her feet. She turned on her laptop and checked the major news sources one last time. Once in the early morning, once before bed, and often in between. Veronica Brown would not be caught unaware of breaking news. It was the one daily regimen she forced herself to keep. She would like to say the same about running and aerobics and Pilates, but at least her job kept her on her feet.

  Next to the computer lay a Rosetta Stone Intermediate French CD-ROM, which sat atop a buyer’s guide to fine wines, which fought for space on the desk with an introductory manual on yoga and a Thai cookbook still in its wrapper. She needed to find a way to work in her sleep. Couldn’t those biotechs hurry up and find the secret to eternal life? Dammit.

  Her eyes lingered on the image of a couple standing in front of a peeling clapboard house wedged between two other identical houses. The couple appeared elderly, but Veronica knew that was because they had aged far beyond their years as a result of factory jobs and a hardscrabble existence. She knew this because they were her parents, she knew the house because she grew up there. The screensaver photo served as more than a memento: it was her constant reminder of what must never happen to her.

  She went to the bedroom, a closet in a normal city, then shrugged into a long T-shirt and pulled down the Murphy bed. Before she climbed into bed she did the last thing she did every night: she opened the window and took a few deep breaths of air. The air was clean, or clean for New York, because Veronica had traded square footage for a window on Tompkins Square Park.

  She gazed into the thicket of elm outside her window, and then gripped the windowsill.

  Someone was standing in the trees, facing the direction of her apartment. Someone dressed in some kind of white clothing that reflected the dull light of the moon with a weird glow.

  People did cut through the park, and the homeless sometimes crashed there. But this person was just standing there, waiting alone in the darkness. What the hell was he doing?

  Veronica took her miniature binoculars out of her handbag and crouched beside the window. She swung the binoculars around until she found the blurry image of the figure, and focused on it.

  Then she gasped.

  She slammed the window, locked it and threw the curtains across. She raced to the other side of the apartment, made sure she’d dead-bolted the door, and took rapid shallow breaths.

  She ran to the phone and dialed with shaking fingers.

  “Emergency 911.”

  “I just saw someone outside my window standing in the middle of Tompkins Park covered head to toe in white b
andages, they were just standing there and I don’t know what the hell is wrong with them but they’re not right in the head. Someone needs to come out here and check on them, I think someone’s escaped from the mental hospital.”

  “Calm down, ma’am. Tell me where you live. We’ll send someone to check it out.”

  After Veronica gave her information she sat on the couch and waited for the sirens. The sudden sight of that escaped mental patient, or prankster, or whoever it had been, had disturbed her more than anything else had in ten years of living alone. She didn’t care if the police came and found kids dressing up; she wanted them arrested for scaring the bejesus out of her.

  God, she hoped that had been a prank.

  When the trembling stopped she evened out with another glass of wine, and then another. The sirens came and went, and she fell asleep with her fingers wrapped around the glass.

  – 9 –

  Grey did some research on Somax in the morning. He confirmed some of what Veronica had told him, but found little else. Somax corporate headquarters was located in Sofia, Bulgaria. Radicals on both sides of the fence mentioned Somax in their blogs: either as a haven for brave new research, or as a moral cesspool of scientific irresponsibility. He suspected the truth lay somewhere in between, as it usually did.

  Or maybe not. The story about the African village troubled him. He found a few articles from three years ago that advanced the same suspicions of human experimentation Veronica had mentioned.

  He also discovered that Somax received grants from the Lazarus Foundation, which research revealed to be a nongovernmental organization dedicated to the progress of science. More digging presented a clearer picture: the Lazarus Foundation granted funds solely for anti-aging research.

  Grey found nothing else of interest on Somax, and he phoned Al-Miri. He answered on the third ring.

  “I have some things I wanted to run by you,” Grey said. “I paid a visit to BioGorden yesterday, the company in New Jersey. I don’t think they’re the one you’re looking for. Somax sounds more promising.”