A Knife Edge

by David Rollins

  As expected, Schaeffer said, “Better get on with it then. Dismissed.”

  I went back to my office. I shut down all the internal software on my PC and opened a Web browser. A window came up reminding me of the U.S. government's policy about downloading files with viruses, cookies, and pornography. The advice: Don't. I brought up Google and behaved like a normal, everyday nosy citizen. I tapped “Sean Boyle, Ph.D.” into the search bar and pressed return. There were plenty of hits, approximately 78,000 of them. There were only five for a Professor Sean Boyle. One was a professor of English, the other a Ph.D. in automotive technology. I found references for the guy I was after on page two. He had three entries: two related to academic papers he'd written, the other an invitation to download the PDF file of a speech he'd given to the science faculty of Berkeley. I took up the invitation and double-clicked.

  While I waited for it to download, I Googled the late Dr. Tanaka. There were nearly a thousand hits on the name, but I found my Dr. Tanaka on the first page. There was already a link to an obituary on him in the British newspaper The Observer. According to the article, Tanaka had headed numerous deep-sea diving expeditions on hydrothermal vents from the Arctic to the Azores. A marine biologist, he was apparently the leading authority on the unusual life forms found in these hazardous environments. The article included a picture of the guy with his head attached to his body. I barely recognized him.

  I went back to the PDF of Boyle's speech. On the first page were the words “Playing God.” Interesting title. I hit the print button, sat back, and considered my next move. Moreton Genetics employed these two guys, and they were both working together on a top-secret project for the U.S. Department of Defense. One was a geneticist, the other a marine biologist. I was intrigued.

  I tapped moretongenetics.com into the search bar to see where it took me. Almost immediately an animated double helix appeared, the M and G that I remembered seeing on Boyle's business card, revolving slowly, while the rest of the site loaded. The main image on the home page was of the Moreton Genetics offices and research complex, an architectural representation of the double helix constructed of steel and glass, nestled among ponds of reeds and birds, and set, the accompanying text told me, within five acres of land on the edge of Silicon Valley, California. The place radiated high technology. And money. I surfed the site. Apparently, Moreton Genetics had been one of the links in the chain that had helped unravel the human genome. The company had also isolated a gene responsible for switching off the production of insulin, resulting in new therapies worth millions. Most recently it had produced a sterile strain of the varroa mite, the creature that had single-handedly almost wiped out California's entire population of honeybees and, with it, virtually all flowering plants and crops in the state. Something like that—saving California's agriculture—would have earned Moreton Genetics a lot of money, not to mention kudos.

  I checked the price of the stock, information also available on the site. MG was looking good. Their stock had increased its capital value by eighteen percent in the last year alone. If I had money, it would be a terrific investment, but then so would a decent pair of running shoes, I told myself, which was a fair indication of just how much spare cash I had lying about. I kept trolling around the site, but for what I had not the slightest idea. I saw that the MG complex was environmentally simpatico. It produced its own electricity supply through a combination of wind generators and solar panels, and had become a net contributor to California's power grid. Across its lush acreage, it was also providing habitat for various flora and fauna, those birds that featured on its home page, as well as a couple of endangered species of frog and a rare variety of pond slime. To summarize, MG was an extremely successful company with a social conscience, except that it was sponsoring programs paid for by the Pentagon—to be fair, an organization not known for loving its fellow man of the non-American variety. I also noted that this fact was nowhere to be found on MG's site. Didn't fit with its caring-and-sharing corporate image, no doubt.

  I wondered what MG was doing for the DoD. I wondered whether I wondered about it bad enough to get into trouble finding out. The phone rang. I recognized the caller ID. “Arlen?”

  He said, “I just spoke to Anna.”

  “She stayed at my place last night.”

  “I know.”

  “She's going back to Germany this afternoon,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “It's over.”

  “I know.”

  “If you say ‘I know' one more time, I'll drive over and punch you.”

  “So, what's next? What are you going to do?”

  “What any red-blooded American would do. Go to a sports bar, get drunk, watch old NBA repeats, visit a hooker.”

  “You hate the NBA,” he reminded me.

  I shouldn't have been surprised that Arlen had found out so quick. When Anna had been hospitalized, he'd kept her room stocked with flowers on my behalf. When she'd been released, he'd kept her company while I spent hour after hour in physical therapy. During that time, they'd become close friends. And he was right; I probably wouldn't meet anyone like Anna Masters again, but then she wouldn't meet anyone like me again, either.

  “How was Japan?” he said.

  “Different. You'd love the food. Has a certain bite to it.” The memory of it gave me an idea. “Arlen, could you do me a favor?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it'll get me into trouble.”

  “No, it won't,” I said.

  “Yes, it will, Vin. Your little favors always lead to trouble. What's it about?”

  “I can't say.”

  “Then definitely no.”

  I could tell he was weakening. “You don't want to know because then you won't have deniability.”

  “Will I need deniability?”

  “It's the best defense.”

  “Will I need a defense?”

  “Could you stop repeating everything I say?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Look, I need you to find out something for me. I can't dig around because I've been told specifically I don't have need-to-know. But you haven't had the official NTK bullshit on this one.”

  “OK, before I say absolutely, categorically no, you want to at least give me something so that I have some idea what I'm saying no to?”

  Arlen knows how to ask a question. I said, “A company called Moreton Genetics is doing some work for the Pentagon. I want to find out, even if just in general terms, what they're doing.”

  “Is this related to what you were doing in Japan?”

  “That's something I can neither confirm nor deny,” I said, slipping into jargon for absofuckinglutely.

  Even though I couldn't see them, I knew Arlen's lips were clamped into a thin line.

  “You'll need a code,” I continued. It would be easy to find the information I was after, but not without a thing called a case code. Whenever any classified information was required, or petty cash claimed, or resources allocated, a case code had to be cited so that an investigation could be traced, tracked, and costed as it wound its way through the system. With the proper code, Arlen could go straight to the DoD's archives and pull the paperwork. The problem was that his interest in Moreton Genetics would be on file if things did end up in the crapper.

  “I'm doing a little general digging at the moment for a federal oversight committee. The job has a general access code. All areas. Maybe I can do it discreetly. Might be suitable.”

  Damn right. “I owe you, Arlen.”

  “Indeed you do, Vin. What are we up to now?”

  “Convert the favors into dollars, I'd say around a million or so.”

  “You ever going to cough up?”

  “Next payday,” I vowed.

  “I'll see you in half an hour in the Pentagon cafeteria,” he said.

  I hung up and almost immediately the phone rang again. I didn't recognize the caller ID on this one. It did, though, have an unfa
miliar international area code. I picked up.

  I heard a cough echo down the line. I knew that cough from somewhere.

  “Hello? North Pole?” said a male voice.

  “Sorry?” I replied.

  “Is this Santa Claus?”

  “What?”

  “You remember? You gave me your card.”

  That wasn't a big help. I handed around my card like flu virus got handed around on public transport.

  “I met you on the Natusima. The name's Cooke.” He coughed again, a rasping metallic sound.

  My memory kicked in. “Cooke with an e, right? You're the cook.”

  “You got it.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Cooke?”

  “You said I should call if anything came to mind.”

  “That's right.” The line wasn't great. There was a couple of seconds of delay every time he answered a question. I wondered where he was calling from.

  “You asked me whether I saw the guy who got eat fall in the water. I told you no.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, y'see, I said no ‘cause I didn't see him fall. That's because he didn't fall—the Jap guy was thrown.”

  EIGHT

  Thrown? So you saw this happen?”

  “I was having a smoke on the deck, in my spot—the place where I met you,” he said. “There wasn't much light from the moon. It was real calm, but cold. A storm was comin' in. I saw the doctor come out the hatch. He was drunk. I watched him lean up against the gunnel and I heard him puke over the side. I turned to flick my smoke into the water. Next thing I hear is a shout and a splash. I look back and the doctor ain't there no more.”

  “You said he was thrown. How do you know he didn't slip?”

  “You've been on the boat. The gunnel—where he was standing—comes up around your chest. If he'd slipped, the only place he'd have landed would've been his ass. Going over the side there wasn't possible, not without help. And he wouldn't have been able to jump it. He weren't no athlete. And anyway, like I said, he was drunk, swaying about like the ground was movin' under his feet, only it wasn't.”

  “What about you, Mr. Cooke; were you also drunk at the time?”

  “I'd had a drink or two, but I wasn't fallin' down.” “If you saw a man in the freezing water, why didn't you raise the alarm? Or throw in a life preserver?”

  “He went under right away. I couldn't see him.”

  This didn't feel right. Cooke saw, or rather heard, a man go overboard, yet he'd done absolutely nothing about it. So what if he couldn't see him? With a little fast action, the doctor could have been saved. And then it hit me. “You wanted to see what would happen.”

  “What?”

  “You said you saw him… I think the words you used were ‘he got eat.'“

  “Did I say that?”

  “Yes, you did.” I sensed a shrug coming down the line like I'd accused him of accidentally burning a hole in my parka with a cigarette. “You watched the shark eat a man for the hell of it—for entertainment.” I had the image of Dr. Tanaka in the water, screaming for help, choking with white cold fear. No one would have heard his cries—everyone was at the party. Everyone except for Cooke, and according to him one other person—the killer.

  “I didn't do no crime,” Cooke said.

  There's nothing in the rule book that makes it a crime to stand around eating popcorn while you watch someone else commit murder. There's also nothing in the rule book that said I couldn't make him squirm. “In a certain light, you could be portrayed as an accessory to murder. You witnessed a crime take place. You were right there, and you did nothing to stop it.”

  Cooke came back fighting. “Accessory? I don't think so. Like I said, it was a dark night, and the doctor was in shadow. It might be that I could change my mind about what I saw. And anyway, you know and I know, there ain't no crime in minding your own damn business.”

  I'd met plenty of people like this guy over the years, the type that enjoyed watching others take the heat and, in this particular instance, get eaten alive. “So what you saw was hidden in shadow, and you were also drunk,” I told him. “That makes anything you might tell me worthless.” Even a half-wit prosecutor could chew holes in this guy's so-called eyewitness account.

  “There's a killer walking around who should be locked up. I'm just a concerned citizen, doing my duty.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Do you want to know who threw the doctor overboard, or don't you?” he said.

  At this point, I had no investigation. That was because, according to the Tokyo Police and indeed to my own report, the one I was about to submit, no crime had been committed. So of course I was anxious to know if Dr. Tanaka had been murdered, only I didn't want to give this asshole the satisfaction of knowing he was the one about to wind me up and set me loose. Sometimes, though, Justice has to take whatever she can damn well get. “Just tell me what you saw,” I said, making my voice sound bored.

  “After the shark had had its fill, I saw another person on deck.”

  “You keep going on about how dark it was. So how come you can all of a sudden see someone's face out there?”

  “I got a good look at him when he opened the hatch to go back inside. He stepped into the light.”

  This asshole was drawing it out like a wood splinter.

  “I saw the professor,” he said.

  “Professor Boyle?” I asked, making sure.

  “There weren't any other professors on board,” he replied, enjoying the moment.

  Why would Boyle murder his associate? The question reminded me of Durban and her story about the panda. Perhaps there was another shark there that night cruising the Natusima's stern, a shark in a man's skin. “Where are you calling from, Mr. Cooke?” I asked.

  “So now you're interested, right?”

  I let the delay in the line answer for me.

  “I'm on the Natusima,” he said after a lengthy pause that ended with a cough.

  “You still tied up in Yokohama Bay?”

  “No. In the Philippine Sea, heading toward the Marianas. I'm using one of them satellite phones.”

  There was the delay accounted for. Wonderful. “Why didn't you tell me any of this when I was on your ship?”

  “I wasn't sure about what I saw.”

  “And you are now?” I wondered if Cooke had waited to see if there were any angles worth playing. Had he perhaps unsuccessfully tried to blackmail Boyle before this attack of civic-mindedness had overcome him?

  “Yeah—couldn't get it out of my head.”

  Sure.

  “I also thought maybe you'd think I done it. And if the professor fingers me, it's my word against his. Who're you going to believe—a guy who peels spuds for a living or a doofus with letters after his name?”

  He had a point. But something about Professor Boyle didn't jell. And now I had a witness to the crime, albeit one whose story was as flimsy as a bride's negligé. The question now: What to do about it?

  “When are you back in port, Mr. Cooke?” I could see myself being winched out of a helo onto the deck of the Natusima to take Cooke's statement in person. Like hell I could.

  “Just over a week. We'll be pulling into Guam.”

  Guam: Andersen Air Force Base. I could get OSI there to take Cooke's statement or, failing that, someone from JAG. “Mr. Cooke, I want you to write down everything you've told me, date it, sign it, and have it witnessed by the ship's master. Then I want you to fax it to me.” I gave him the number. “When you arrive at Guam, you'll get a visit from someone who'll ask you a bunch of questions.”

  “One of Santa's little helpers?”

  “You got anything else you want to tell me?” I asked.

  “Just Merry Christmas to you and Mrs. Claus.”

  The line went dead. He'd hung up. Mrs. Claus—Anna. “Thanks for reminding me, asshole,” I said to the handset before putting it back on the cradle. I glanced again at the title page of Boyle's speech: “Playing God.” I r
ecalled my last meeting with Dr. Tanaka in the coroner's refrigerator. If Cooke wasn't lying, the professor sure was pretty good at smiting. The phone rang again.

  “Hello, Arlen,” I said.

  “Who've you been talking to?”

  “Don't I get a hello?”

  “We've already done all that. I've been down here twenty minutes already.”

  “Where's down here?”

  “The cafeteria.”

  I realized why he was angry: He was probably drinking the coffee. “Have I been on the phone all that time?” I looked at my watch. A good half an hour had passed since we'd last spoken.

  “I don't know—you tell me. You've got seven minutes to get down here.”

  “You got anything for me?” I asked.

  “That's six minutes, fifty-five seconds …”

  Seven minutes. Arlen was referring to the often-quoted brag that, despite occupying close to four million square feet and having three times the floor space of the Empire State Building, no point in the Pentagon was further than seven minutes away from any other point in the Pentagon. It's probably true, but only if you're Jesse Owens in spikes. I made it in eight minutes thirty.

  The smell of the cafeteria always spoke to me well before I arrived there. What it was telling me was to turn around and run in the opposite direction. If I could have dissected that smell, it would have been a combination of sugar, deep-fried dough, grease, and the aforementioned coffee.

  Despite this, however, the cafeteria was always reasonably full, as was the case this time, the gentle roar of hundreds of conversations rising toward the ceiling. It was a sea of uniforms. Every military service was represented here, mixed in with politicians, clerks, public servants, contractors, spooks—the individual cogs that made up the inner workings of the greatest fighting machine the world has ever known. The place had to be bugged.

  I scanned the floor and saw Arlen standing, waving his arm above his head. On the small, round table in front of him were two cups of coffee, one half empty, and two sugar doughnuts, one with a bite out of it.