by Cliff Ryder
“What is it?” she asked, reaching out to touch the box.
Rand flinched as he saw her draw close to it, and in that instant she saw how, as excited as he was, he didn’t let his hand slide too close.
“Not now,” he said, calming himself. “Not here.
We need to get this to one of your labs. Clear one—a small one, fully equipped—right away.
We’ll need it for the rest of the month, maybe longer, and I can’t risk anyone but you having access. I’ll have a locksmith in to upgrade the security.”
Brin turned away from the case to stare at Rand.
The man was clearly not himself.
“Have you lost your mind?” she asked. “What did you bring in here, some new form of plague?
What are you afraid of?”
Rand frowned and Brin pushed the case an inch closer to his hand. He yanked his hand back and cursed under his breath. Brin would have laughed if it hadn’t been such an unexpected reaction.
“What have you done?” she asked.
“Just get that lab ready,” he snapped. “This is big and could means hundreds of millions of dollars to our company. I’m counting on you for this. It isn’t what you obviously think, but it is, I will admit, disturbing in other ways. This may well be the break you’ve been looking for your entire career—not exactly related to your work, but very, very close—and with implications that could change your whole approach.”
Despite herself, Brin laughed. She looked at the package again and her scientific curiosity won out over any misgivings she had. “Okay. I can clear the corner lab on my wing. We have some cultures in there, but they aren’t under any critical environmental restriction, and there’s room for them in other spaces. It will take a couple of hours to remove what’s in there. I assume you have a list of specifics—equipment I should requisition, supplies I might need? And while you’re at it, if we’re going to be doing any serious research I’m going to need a laptop for the data—I get the feeling you don’t want me taking this work home with me.”
“If I had my way, you’d sleep in the lab until this was over with.” Rand’s tone finally lightened up a little, and he chuckled ruefully. “I’m sorry for the attitude, Brin—and my paranoia. This development took me a bit by surprise. I knew we were working on it, but I didn’t expect this level of success so soon, and the pressure from up top is huge.”
“I thought you were up top, ” Brin replied.
“There’s always someone further up the chain—
that’s how chains work. You know that our research-and-development side is largely funded by foreign interests. Our own government would rather spend its money elsewhere, and we couldn’t do the work we do, the work you do, without foreign investors. That’s where the push is coming from on this. Those shareholders want results and want them right now. There are other parts of the company working on different aspects of this project, as well, but we were chosen as the only U.S. branch. I guess it’s an honor, but at the moment it’s starting to feel more like one giant pain in the ass.”
Brin turned back to the case. She ran her hand over the labels and wished for a universal transla-tor.
“I’ll get right on it,” she said, turning away. “I’ll give you a call when the lab is ready, then I’ll bring up a transport cart and we can move it down ourselves. I’m not sure it’s going to help security if the CEO and a department head cart a sealed climate-controlled case off into a sealed lab, but I’ll do as you ask. You have me curious—I want to crack this thing open and see what’s inside.”
“When you get the lab cleared, I’ll send down the laptop you requested. I anticipated it, so I had it preloaded, and I’ve already personally transferred the files that came in with this case. The reading should keep you busy while the security is upgraded and the equipment is installed. There are cover stories in place for all of this, and they are included in the files. The first and best answer to any questions is that you don’t know, and that it’s something coming down from the top. Hopefully you’ll have time to catch up on the back story while you figure out what the hell is in there—and what we’re in for when we let it loose.”
Brin took a last look at the case, shrugged and turned to the door. “I’ll get Steph and Billy in there to clean up the cultures. I can keep the curiosity level down for a while, but once the dark forces descend on that lab, all bets are off. I’ll keep my mouth shut, but I hope you have a good plan. Otherwise the rumors on this one are going to span the gap from terrorism to genetic tampering, and there won’t be anything we can do to stop them.”
“We’ll deal with that when the time comes. For now, we need to get moving on this and keep moving. They’re expecting the first report in a week—that doesn’t leave much time, even for someone as brilliant as you.”
BRIN RODE the elevator alone and stopped by the coffee mess for a strong black cup of concentration. When she entered her office for the second time that day, she stopped cold. In the excitement she’d forgotten all about the pharmacy. She hadn’t even been thinking about Alex, and while that was usually a good thing when he was on the road, it still upset her to think how easily she’d been distracted.
She sat down, picked up her phone and dialed her lab assistant’s extension. Stephanie Peters picked up on the second ring.
“What’s up, boss?” she asked.
“Nothing too important,” Brin lied. “I need you to find Billy and get over to the corner lab. Rand has a special project in, and we need a place to isolate some samples. Those cultures we have going can be moved easily enough. Stick them over in the back of 7C, okay?”
“Sure thing. I’ll get right on it. I was just finish-ing up some slides, and I don’t have anything pending this afternoon. Is the new project something I can help you on?”
Brin smiled. “Not this time. It’s a security clearance issue. I know you’re cleared to secret, but this one is in from the top—probably some new form of fungus that makes golf balls fly farther. I’ll let you know what’s going on as soon as I can, okay?”
“Sure. I’ll give you a call when the lab’s cleared.”
“Thanks.”
Brin hung up and reached for the brown bottle of pills and the phone number. She had some time, and until she had the laptop from Rand, there wasn’t anything she could do to prepare for the work to come. It was time to get to the bottom of the mysterious neurologist and the unexpected prescription. Maybe the doctor had a weekend clinic or emergency contact number.
If Alex called, she intended to give him holy hell about it—for keeping secrets and for scaring her.
He almost never called when he was on assignment, though, and she assumed this time would be no different. She really didn’t have a clear idea of what kind of work he did. Security consulting covered a lot of ground, but when he’d gently told her he couldn’t explain fully, she’d understood.
Now she wished she’d been more insistent. She didn’t even have a good contact at his company to check in with—just an emergency number in case she or Savannah was hurt.
The separation had always bothered her, but this time was different. This time it left a dull ache in her chest, and she needed to make it go away.
She glanced at the number, picked up her phone and dialed.
Liang and Alex left the airport without incident.
Liang guided the truck through the bustling streets of Beijing as Alex watched out the window. His legs still ached a bit and his eyes were dry and itchy, almost as though he had allergies or something nagging at them. He thought Beijing was part industrial city, part sociology experiment.
There was noise everywhere, bright splashes of color and people packed so tightly together that you could topple them all just by shoving one down.
The airport was surrounded by the city itself, and huge, close buildings that seemed to lean on each other. The farther they drove, the farther apart the buildings became until Alex found himself looking out the window at far-flung wa
rehouses and factories. The air grew heavy and gloomy with soot that assaulted his already itching eyes. Alex longed for the countryside and the quiet.
Finally, Liang backed the truck up to a loading bay at the rear of a desolate warehouse. According to the sign, the building belonged to the Wang-Soo Electronics Company. The loading bay door rolled up on its huge tracks, and three large men stepped from the concrete slab to the back gate of the truck.
Liang stepped out, exchanged a few words with them and then flung open the truck’s door. Alex wondered briefly if he should step outside and help, but thought better of it after a shift in his position sent warning cramps up his legs. He’d managed to keep the aches and pains to himself thus far, but he couldn’t afford to have Liang lose confidence in him.
It took less than ten minutes for the four men, working together, to unload the truck. Alex glanced at them in the rearview mirror once or twice, but paid them no more mind than that. He caught sight of Liang, proffering the bill of lading for a signa-ture, and then lost sight of him as he crossed to the driver’s side and stepped back into the cab.
“All’s well?” Alex studied the man for a moment. Hauling all those TVs hadn’t caused him to even break a sweat. It occurred to Alex, just then, that aside from the illness, maybe he was getting too old for all this.
“It’s all good, as you Americans say. We’ll go to my apartment now and wait for the sun to set.”
“What cover story do you give your wife?”
“I don’t need a cover story. I import electronics from South Korea. I work hard. When I want to go out, I go out.” He nodded curtly and smiled. “It’s a cultural thing.”
“My wife thinks I’m in security,” Alex said. “A consultant.”
“Ah.” Liang pulled away from the loading dock and turned back toward the city. The truck bumped and lurched over the potholes in the road.
Twenty minutes later, Liang parked the truck at the back of a huge apartment complex. He pocketed the keys and locked the doors, then fished another set of keys from his pocket.
“We’re home.”
No matter how he craned his neck, Alex couldn’t seem to see the top of the building. “I have just two questions—what floor do you live on?
And do you have an elevator?”
“Twenty-second and yes.”
“Thank God,” Alex said, sighing with relief despite himself. The idea of climbing all those stairs had sent chills down his spine.
Alex let Liang lead the way, some of the road weariness sloughing off as he stepped into the air-conditioned back lobby. They rode the elevator to the twenty-second floor, stepped out and walked a short distance down the hall to Liang’s apartment.
The key wasn’t even in the lock before Liang’s wife threw open the door and launched herself into his arms. Liang caught her, looking slightly embar-rassed.
“I missed you,” she cooed, kissing him hard.
Her face paled as she spotted Alex, standing off to one side and watching his shoes.
“This is Soo Lin, my wife. Soo Lin, this is Mr.
Vance, an associate of mine.”
Soo Lin half bowed and pressed her hand into his, the best of both worlds. “So pleased to meet you, Mr. Vance. Please, come inside.”
“A pleasure to meet you, too. Liang brags about you constantly.” He noticed her blush and smiled back at her. “He says you’re quite the amazing chef.”
“Well, I suppose I have a reputation to live up to, then.” She shut the door behind them and stepped off to the side. “I will make tea. Dinner will be ready in half an hour. You should rest for a while.”
Alex noticed the pile of shoes on the mat by the door and added his own to the collection. Liang was already in his stocking feet, padding quickly across the carpet toward the hallway.
“We’ll take tea in a moment. First, I have something to show Mr. Vance. Come this way, please.”
Alex followed him to the back bedroom, one of only two in the apartment. It was all very sparse, but clean and neat. Alex felt comfortable at once.
Liang stooped down, lifted a bit of the carpet and pulled it back. Beneath the carpet lay a wood floor panel, and once that was lifted, Alex could see Liang’s small cache of tools.
“Whatever you don’t have in that bag of yours, I have in here or can get at a moment’s notice. I’ve taken the liberty of contacting a few of my associates, sources for those items that are harder to come by.” He smiled at that, his eyes twinkling with a hint of menace.
“Good to know. We can better decide what we need to take that place out once we’ve had a look at it,” Alex said.
“No need to worry here. I have security measures in place and, despite their appearance, these walls are quite soundproof. You can talk freely unless my wife is in the room.”
“You’re very thorough, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“You have the explosives covered?”
“Yes. They aren’t here, of course. I have access to what we need. We could start a war, if that was our desire.”
Soo Lin called from the living room and Liang tugged at Alex’s arm. “Time for tea and dinner. We have about two hours before the sun sets. The building usually clears out about an hour after that, so there’s less traffic on the roads around it and less chance of us being seen.”
“Two hours until we leave, then.”
“Until then, we can stuff ourselves.” Liang poked him in the stomach with his elbow and laughed.
ALL THE HYPE over Soo Lin’s cooking had not been exaggerated. Not only did she also lay out a five course meal, but she did so as if the president of China himself were coming to dinner. They ate until they could hold no more and then they retired to the living room to rest while Soo Lin cleared away the mess.
Fifteen minutes after the sun was completely down and the darkness had stolen the shadows, Alex gathered his gear, changed into darker, more appropriate clothes and followed Liang back to the parking lot. This time, they took a small hybrid car out into the countryside. It was quieter and faster than Alex had anticipated. Like the plane he’d flown in from South Korea, it just wasn’t much on legroom.
Liang drove them to the top of a hill just south of the lab building. The view from there was good and the woods offered cover. Alex lay flat on the ground, Liang at his side, and pulled the night-vision goggles from his duffel bag. The building was heavily guarded, more so than might be expected of a mere medical-research company.
The entire compound was ringed with razor wire, and guards with large dogs at their sides patrolled the parking lot and surrounding landscape. Alex supposed that, somewhere inside that compound, there were more than a few men staring at the woods beyond that fence.
“There are cameras on each corner of the fence and the building itself,” Liang whispered. “There are three sets of doors—front, back and a set with the loading-bay doors in the rear—and each has a camera and coded lock. All but the door cameras are programmed to sweep the entire area.”
Alex nodded but did not speak. He was watching the cameras do their sweep and using the timer built into the goggles. “Every forty-five seconds,” he said. “It’s safe to assume those are being fed to recording devices, as well as monitors.”
He did another visual sweep. “At least the advance reports I read were correct. The guards are heavily armed—rifles, pistols and Tasers.”
“I did the advance report,” Liang said, “so if it was incorrect, I would be to blame. But yes, they are well equipped and there are a great number more inside.
They work in shifts, changing one third every twelve hours. These aren’t the usual sort of guards we see out here. They are well trained and professional.”
“PMC,” Alex grunted, as he watched several groups of men and women move in and out of the building. He scanned the parking lot, making mental notes of makes and models, checking the height of those he saw, hairstyles, manner of dress.
Most of the workers he saw seemed t
o be Chinese, but there were a sprinkling of others.
“The staff-demographics report made it sound like a much broader range of ethnic backgrounds,”
he said. “Any Europeans? Latinos? Arabs? There have to be a lot of research-and-program development positions in there. I assume the Pakistanis and Indians have a presence?”
“It’s an eclectic group,” Liang replied. “The night crew is more heavily Chinese—for security purposes. During the day you’ll see that they have brought in scientists, researchers and doctors from all over the world.”
Liang glanced at Alex and grinned. “You won’t stand out unless you don’t know anything about drugs, research or biochemistry.”
“My wife is in biomedical research,” Alex said.
“I can get through that part of it. If it’s anything like the lab where she works, there will be plenty of drones—research assistants working on their own degrees and doing the drudge work. No one will care what they think or say.”
Liang nodded. “Well, then, all that remains is finding the best way to get you in there—and a way to get the explosives in with you.”
“I still have some reading to do,” Alex said, handing back the night-vision goggles. “I need to be more familiar with the layout and with the particular project we’re after.”
“I have some files we managed to recover,”
Liang told him. “They’re supposed to be shredded, but sometimes people get lazy, and if you’re in the right place at the right time, you can find things.”
“Like the loading dock?” Alex asked, grinning.
“Maybe so.” Liang chuckled. “Let’s go. We need to have a couple of drinks so Soo Lin will know we’ve been out behaving like men.”
Alex nodded. He pressed off from the ground, felt his arm giving out on him and hesitated. His hand shook violently, and he closed his eyes for just a second. The tremor passed, and he managed to lever himself to his feet with reasonable grace.
Luckily Liang had been turned away, putting the glasses into a bag. They returned to Liang’s car and headed into town.
