The Lupin Project

by Allan Leverone

  His father’s anger began to build as Rob related the story. It started out as frustration and grief, but as he talked, Rob could see it morphing into something more.

  He began to fear he had made the wrong decision in telling his parents about the encounter. Maybe this would serve as the last straw to his dad, to whom passivity was a foreign concept. He was a man accustomed to taking action. The last thing Rob wanted was for his dad to go off in a rage and confront the police chief personally or take some other action that could put him or his mother in danger.

  But he had launched into the story and he couldn’t stop now. He wrapped it up as quickly as he could and when he finished speaking, silence fell over the room. His mother had been crying softly, but even her tears seemed to have subsided, at least for the moment, as she listened to his words. Undoubtedly there would be more to come.

  Rob’s mother surprised him by speaking before his father could get a word out. “That girl’s in danger, Robbie. She needs help. Where is she now?”

  “They’re both in danger, obviously,” his father said.

  Rob and his mother shook their heads at the same time. He was amazed. Even in her grief and heartbreak, his mother had followed Rob’s story and understood perfectly the reason for what had happened out on Route 9.

  “No,” she said. “Robbie was involved only because he happened to be driving that young lady around at the time of the confrontation. She was targeted because of what she saw last night when Eddie was…attacked.”

  She sobbed once, the sound deep and wrenching, and then repeated her question. “Where is she now, Robbie?”

  “She’s safe, Mom. I stashed her in one of the motels along Route 9 on the south side of New Quebec. Nobody knows she’s there except me. She should be fine until we figure out what to do next.”

  “What about her parents?”

  Rob explained that Alicia’s mother was away for the weekend, and when he was done his mother surprised him again. “That poor girl must be terrified. She shouldn’t be alone. Go get her and bring her here.”

  “No, Mom. She’s better off where she is. If the people who are after her knew she was here, I’m afraid everyone in this house would be in danger. And as far as her being alone, I’m going to leave in a few minutes and head back there. I’ll stay with her tonight.”

  He had expected an argument, had expected his mother to insist the family be together at such a terrible time, but once more she surprised him. “You’re a good boy, Robbie. We’ve always known you and Eddie were going to grow up to be strong, independent young men, and you’re proving how right we were about that.”

  Rob’s eyes filled with tears and he couldn’t answer. He just nodded and stared at the floor.

  “If everything you’ve told us is true,” Rob’s father said, “if Eddie is really gone and he was killed as a result of something happening over at Tamerlane, and if it’s all being covered up by the New Quebec Police, I can’t just sit around this house and mourn my dead son like a helpless victim. I have to do something.”

  “I know Dad, and I’m not asking you to be a victim. That’s the last thing I want, for you or for any of us. But I’m just asking for a little time, until we can figure out the best next steps.”

  “I won’t do anything overt. I won’t approach the New Quebec Police—yet—or take any other action that will place anyone in this family in danger. I promise you that.”

  “Thank you. I know it won’t be easy.”

  “I’m not finished yet. I won’t place this family in danger, but when the authorities can’t be trusted to protect the citizens they’re sworn to serve, the media has a long tradition of bringing their malfeasance to light. I’m going to search until I find a television or newspaper reporter that will delve into this story. Maybe no one will take me seriously, I don’t know, but I’ll never find out if I don’t try. So I’m going to try.”

  Rob realized this was probably the least dangerous result he could have hoped for. Expecting his father not to do something to fight back after the story he had just heard would have been unreasonable, not to mention unfair. And maybe bypassing the police until a media presence had been established—assuming his father would be successful, which was by no means guaranteed—would ensure nobody else wound up dead.

  Maybe.

  It was something to hope for, anyway.

  Silence settled over the room again, this time not just sad but grimly determined as well.

  After a moment his mother said, “We’ve been in here a long time, and everyone who’s been kind enough to come and support us today deserves to know what’s happening, at least as much as it’s safe telling them. I’ll do that while your father works the phones.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes red and wet. “You get back to the motel and take care of that poor girl.”

  23

  “I’m going to get someone working on our little problem immediately,” Colonel Toler said as he eased the replacement Humvee into his reserved spot in front of Tamerlane. “For now, we’re in a holding pattern, but if you decide to go home, you’d better damned well stay by your phone and be prepared to come back here at a moment’s notice. The minute my people locate our little problem child, we’re going to end this thing once and for all.”

  Jason didn’t know how to respond. In his mind he was screaming, Our problem? Ours? How is any of this my problem, other than you making it so? And if by “end this thing,” you mean “kill someone,” you can count me out.

  But he said none of it aloud. He said nothing at all. Nothing about Toler’s behavior during the drive back to the research lab had lessened Jason’s concern about the pistol his boss had been waving around like a madman, and he wasn’t anxious to incur the colonel’s wrath while trapped inside this rolling tin can.

  So he sat quietly in the passenger seat, and when Toler set the parking brake and shut down the engine, he opened his door and slipped out of the vehicle. Normally in this kind of weather he would hurry to the front door, burying his head into his chest and wrapping his skinny arms around his skinny body in an effort to ward off the cold, but today he moved slowly, deliberately, barely noticing the temperature.

  Barely noticing the blowing, swirling snow.

  Barely noticing anything.

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought this must be what PTSD was like, and while he knew his experience over the last twenty-four hours hardly compared to what soldiers returning from combat duty in the Middle East went through, it served as enough of a trauma to his reasoned, scientific, analytical mind that he’d been shaken to his very core.

  Between seeing the ruined body of the dead teen last night, so brutalized by his wolves that the corpse was barely recognizable as human, and then participating, however marginally, in the attempted murder of the Jeep driver, Jason Greeley doubted he had ever appreciated his insulated little laboratory-oriented world more.

  He yanked open Tamerlane’s front door and was halfway through it before he realized Toler was still speaking to him. The mosquito-like drone of the man’s voice had turned to an insistent wheedling in the background of Jason’s churning brain, and Jason half -turned as he continued walking.

  “I’m sorry, I missed that. What?”

  “I said I want an acknowledgement from you. Stay close to your phone.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I got that. Close to the phone. Sure.”

  Toler said something else, speaking almost but not quite under his breath. It was clearly a statement he wanted Jason to hear, which meant it was some kind of insult, a comment about egg-headed scientists with their heads in the clouds, or something along those lines.

  Jason didn’t care. He’d heard similar insults his whole life. Besides, he had already tuned Toler out again. He walked in a daze across the Tamerlane lobby, trailing slushy water across the floor. As tired as he had been earlier, he felt equally wide-awake now. He wondered if he would ever be able to sleep again.

  So instead of going
home, he was heading to his lab office. It was where he was accustomed to doing his most reasoned thinking, and if ever he needed to reason his way through a problem it was now. He was a little surprised to see Toler head down the corridor toward his own office, but Jason had learned a long time ago that there was no telling what his boss might do next.

  Jason trudged through the lab, his eyes straying to his wolves. Normally at this time of the evening they would be roaming the grounds of the facility’s thousands of acres of wilderness north of the lab building. Now, of course, the animals found themselves confined to their wire indoor-outdoor cage.

  The cage was a long, narrow structure running the length of one lab wall. It came equipped with a large doggy door leading out the side of the building and opening onto to an exterior run, approximately fifty feet in length and also constructed of heavy-gauge wire. This arrangement theoretically allowed the animals the opportunity to stretch their powerful legs while remaining secured.

  Jason had always hated the configuration. It failed to offer anything close to enough room for wolves, whose DNA had been imprinted with the need to run and roam free. Back in the early days of his research, once he had demonstrated sufficient progress, he had asked for and was granted—unofficially, of course—the option of allowing the wolves the run of the fenced-in grounds during the overnight hours.

  For the last several years it had been a rare occasion when the pack was caged up in the evening. Following last night’s tragic events, however, he had been entirely unsurprised when Colonel Toler rescinded that privilege.

  And as much as Jason wanted to disagree with Toler’s decision, he really couldn’t. In fact, if he was being honest with himself, he thought it was probably long overdue, given the ongoing deterioration in the pack’s physical and cognitive abilities.

  The latest indication of the Lupin Project’s steady downward trend was also perhaps the most frightening. The animals were more and more exhibiting the classic symptoms of rabies: drooling, stumbling as they walked and ran, weaving drunkenly rather than moving in a linear fashion.

  And don’t forget escaping the facility and mauling an innocent teenage boy so badly his body resembled nothing human by the time they were finished with him.

  He didn’t think he would ever forget the sight. What decent person could? The mauled tissue, the skeletal remains that had nearly been picked clean, the blood, it would all haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life, of that he was certain.

  But in a strictly scientific sense, last night’s horrific events represented nothing more than an extension of that steady downward trend his project had been suffering. The whole thing was crumbling before his very eyes, and he still had no idea why.

  The chips that served as the focal point of Jason’s project had been implanted in his wolves’ brains years ago, when they were tiny pups. The chips had two main functions: to act as radio receivers, allowing their handler to exert control over the pack from very long distances, and to stimulate the receptors in the animals’ brains that controlled cognitive ability and learning rates.

  Jason had fully expected the wolves to exhibit negative effects from the implantation of the devices early on in the project—he had expected to spend years, perhaps decades, attempting to overcome those issues.

  But the anticipated negative effects had never materialized. Following the lengthy recuperative process one would expect following invasive brain surgery, the animals had shown no ill effects whatsoever. The surgeries had been more successful than Jason had permitted himself to hope for in his wildest dreams.

  Until now.

  He realized he had stopped walking and was standing motionless in the middle of his lab, gazing at the animals and shaking his head.

  Things were getting worse.

  The wolves were exhibiting a new behavior.

  They were gnawing at the wire of their indoor-outdoor cage. All of them, at the same time, feverishly working the metal tines in what looked like a coordinated effort to chew their way free. Long strings of saliva hung from their jowls, white and foamy, dripping thickly to the cage floor.

  The sight was chilling, and one thought flashed into Jason’s brain: What kind of damage can they inflict if they get loose?

  He shook his head again. Somehow he needed to get a grip on himself. He was being ridiculous, because there was no way in hell the wolves would be able to escape their cages, no matter how strong their jaws or how determined their chewing. He chuckled at his foolishness. He was overtired, that was all, and unnerved by last night’s tragedy and Toler’s actions of earlier today.

  The wolf pack was contained and would remain so.

  At least in that sense, there was no reason for concern.

  Then why did his chuckle feel so much like a sob?

  24

  Frank Toler was self-aware enough to know he had plenty of faults. He was arrogant and vain, and rough around the edges. He was also a master of manipulation and intimidation, having utilized both techniques to advance much farther in life and rise much higher in the ranks of the United States military than he probably should have, given his utter lack of empathy or anything resembling human emotion.

  Or maybe his success wasn’t all that surprising, considering his career choice.

  But among his many faults, one he did not suffer from was stupidity. No one could question his intelligence, and he knew it. Frank Toler’s IQ was sky-high, and over the course of many decades he’d come to possess the unshakeable belief that he was the smartest man in the room, no matter who he shared the room with, and that included the egghead scientist, Dr. Jason Greeley.

  In this case, though, his intelligence allowed him to fully understand how badly he had screwed the pooch tonight in allowing the white Jeep to escape. The witness to last night’s killing in the forest had been inside that Jeep, and she was the key to squashing this whole fucked-up affair before it got any worse.

  And he had allowed her to slip through his clutches when she should be dead and on her way to an anonymous burial right now. Worse, he was running out of time to set things right.

  Perversely, the snowstorm that had caused him to fail in his attempt to force the Jeep off the road and kill its occupants might now be his only ally. Everyone in New Quebec—hell, everyone throughout the entire northeastern United States—would be hunkered down until this massive system raced out to sea, meaning the young girl he needed to silence must still be near. He might yet get one last chance to put a lid on the simmering pot of shit that was about to blow up in his face.

  He tapped his fingers on his desk. Picked up his cell phone, the one custom-built to utilize the special cell relay only he and his CIA handler knew about, allowing it to operate inside Tamerlane.

  He punched in a number from memory.

  It was answered on the second ring. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you again so soon,” Matt Bertrand said.

  “I need your services.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The kids you followed earlier today.”

  “Yeah? What about them?”

  “I need you to find them again. And I need it done immediately.”

  “Christ, you misplaced them already? After I led you right to them? How could that happen? Did you at least make it to ten minutes before you lost them?”

  Bertrand’s mocking me. Bertrand is mocking me. BERTRAND IS FUCKING MOCKING ME. Frank couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t talk. His insides felt like an erupting volcano, and he actually feared for a moment his head might explode.

  The asshole PI didn’t notice. “I don’t know, Colonel. This doesn’t sound like the Frank Toler that I’ve worked with in the past. Frankly, it sounds like someone who’s losing his touch.”

  A cold fury spread over him. It started in his core and spread rapidly to his extremities, and just like that, Frank realized his voice had returned. As near as he could tell, his head hadn’t exploded, either.

  He answered in a tone that would cut g
lass. “You’ll want to watch yourself, Mr. Bertrand. Things are complicated right now. I am not a man blessed with an abundance of patience in even the best of times. And this is far from the best of times. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yeah. I hear ya. I was just teasing you, boss.” The resentfulness in Bertrand’s tone couldn’t be missed, but Frank didn’t care. He wasn’t the least bit concerned with the feelings of one low-rent investigator—there was that little empathy problem rearing its ugly head again.

  “Anyway,” the PI continued, “I’ll get right on it. I should have something for you soon.”

  “Be sure you do.”

  “It won’t be a problem. After all, it’s only been a couple of hours since you lost them and there’s a raging blizzard outside. How far could they have gotten?”

  Frank felt his blood pressure surge. Again. Bertrand was getting a little too comfortable. Frank was going to have to do something about that, but right now he needed the information Bertrand could provide more than he needed to reinforce the man’s place in the pecking order. Before he could say anything he might regret, he punched the cell phone’s screen to disconnect the call.

  He made a mental note to eliminate the private detective once this assignment was complete. It wasn’t that he wanted to kill one more person, although the prospect of murdering an innocent man didn’t particularly concern him, either. But once the girl he was about to locate for Frank—for the second time—disappeared without a trace, Bertrand would put two-and-two together.

  He would then blackmail Frank. The second event would follow the first as surely as night follows day.

  So he had no choice in the matter. Bertrand would have to disappear.