33
Zulma Pei waited patiently for the message service preamble to play itself out before shouting loudly into the microphone of her headset, ‘Hello Trish, this is Dr Pei. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, today’s ten o’clock will have to be cancelled. She looked out over the expanse of turquoise sea that lay between Australia and the Indonesian archipelago, ten thousand feet below the twin engine Cessna light aircraft. ‘Indeed, I won’t be taking any more appointments until further notice. I will be sending some medication in due course. Make sure you follow the directions precisely. Good day, Trish.’ She flicked the switch on the console to end the call and turned agitated to Canter Collins. ‘She used to think there was a city of termites under her skin. I’m starting to feel that way myself. But it is more than termites under my skin.’
Collins was preoccupied in the rear of the aircraft’s hold, trying to wrest control of his dark brown Labrador, Trumper, who was wildly barking at something among the luggage.
‘Are there mice on board?’ Pei murmured, wondering what was going on.
‘Mice he can ignore,’ replied Collins, restraining Trumper by the chest. ‘The concern on his face was evident. ‘I think I told you Trumper was a stray, but that is not quite the truth.’
‘No?’
‘He was actually a sniffer dog at Sydney Airport. He came sniffing at me after I had disembarked from a flight out of LA. He lingered at my suitcases on the trolley and I should have been worried more about the chances of a friend having slipped in some contraband as a parting gift, but to be honest I was completely enamoured. The most delightful beast I had ever seen. I simply had to have him.’
Pei smirked wryly, aware that he had not been a close friend of her father’s for nothing. ‘Police don’t just give away their detector dogs.’
Collins shrugged. ‘When I want something, I want something.’
Trumper was still yapping excitedly, its eyes fixated on a back corner of the plane.
‘It ain’t no mouse and it ain’t no bone that would work him up like this. You got anything packed away in those bags that might?’
Pei glowered. ‘What do you mean?’
Collins dragged Trumper to her. ‘Hold him a moment, will you?’
Pei reluctantly took him by the collar. ‘Are you ever going to fly this plane?’
‘It can stay on auto-pilot for a while longer.’
His hands now free, Collins urgently plunged in amongst the baggage. It didn’t take him long to pluck out one of the bags of cocaine Furn had planted in the plane during the night. He held it up pointedly. ‘You know anything about this?’
‘Is it what I think it is?’
Collins stuck a finger into the bag of white powder and tasted it discerningly. ‘Not the best quality but good enough to sell in the suburbs or to put someone behind bars for a stretch – depending on which way you look at it.’
‘I look at it as a declaration of war. A war intended to be quick and dirty.’
Collins closed the bag up again. ‘I get the feeling there will be cops waiting at the end of the flight to make the bust.’
‘Yes, I would think so.’ Pei’s voice was taut with rage.
‘Do you have any idea who is responsible?’
‘Yes, I do. Military Intelligence. More specifically an ambitious colonel by the name of Skidmore. And let me make something clear.’ She started patting Trumper with long strokes down his neck and stomach. ‘He deserves to be punished.’
‘Are you sure it’s not one of your patients? You’d think Military Intelligence could do better than a bag of smack.’
‘Like what?’
‘A heat seeking missile.’
‘Sounds like you’ve got the wrong idea about Military Intelligence. A bag of low grade blow is only the beginning of what they’re capable of. And Skidmore is the worst of them all. A real ugly smell.’
‘So, what is he to you?’
‘I worked for him.’
‘He needed a psychiatrist?’
‘Sure he did. To reset all the soldiers who have served under him. A band of traumatized wrecks.’
Collins considered throwing the bag of cocaine out of the plane but hesitated.
‘Military Intelligence?’ he murmured. ‘What could get them so traumatised?’
‘Operation Green Fields.’
‘Is it worse than it sounds?’
‘The kindly name helped with the therapy. We could tell them they could one day help feed the world. The search for new fertilisers is the official purpose, but it is toxins Skidmore really wants. Something with which to poison a country’s water supply or turn a livestock’s feed lethal. Or perhaps to take out an army or two with the case of the mumps.’
‘He’d no doubt bait a detector dog too,’ murmured Collins, ruefully, patting Trumper on his way back to his seat.
‘Skidmore has an obsession with poisons and how he can apply them. He is not a people’s person. This is how he wants to communicate with the world.’
‘I’m surprised you would get involved with such people. Fanatical government types do not pay well. They do not make people rich.’
‘It was not his money I wanted, it was his drugs.’
‘His drugs?’
‘I don’t mean the dirty bags of cocaine he is trying to frame me with. I’m talking about the chemical compounds being produced out of Green Fields. After all, how can you know something is a poison without first trying to cure someone with it.’
Collins looked uneasy. ‘You did experiments?
‘Yes. Skidmore provided the compounds and the subjects to try them on.’
‘Human subjects?’
Pei nodded. ‘We wanted drugs that could manipulate a person’s thought processes, that could make them more pliant. So, it would be a waste of time testing them on monkeys, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I suppose. But live human experiments?’
‘Money cannot buy the kind of facilities or subjects bold science requires. It takes an enthusiastic government.’
‘These subjects you talk about, were they the patients you set onto the police?’
‘No, those patients were all from my private practice. They can’t compare with what Skidmore brought to the table. A limitless supply of foreign desperadoes. Five years of service and he’ll let them call Australia home.’
‘What service?’
‘They train overseas and they fight overseas.’
‘His own foreign legion.’ Collins looked out at the looming coastline of Java out the cockpit window. ‘In Indonesia as well?’
‘You can count on it. I administered the treatment to foreign nationals from the world. Skidmore’s chemicals and my behavioral encoding. Some went insane right there and then. Others graduated.’
Collins shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t have become friends with such a man. But more than that, you shouldn’t have then become his enemy.’
‘I did not realise how unsound he was until I was in too deep. In fact, I suspect he has been testing his herbal extracts on himself. It is the only way to explain what he has done.’
‘Our cocaine stowaway?’
‘No, something else. He has lost his chief scientist, one Gustav Dokomad, to a laboratory mishap. A nasty incident to be sure. But Skidmore is not about to write off his best scientist just yet, so he has had two more hands made available. The donor is the head scientist’s less than willing brother. A patient of mine. Dr Dokomad referred him to me, hoping I could cure him of his criminal inclinations. Wragg Dokomad is his name and he was so easily manipulated it was just too good to pass up on. So, I turned him into a Sapien.’
Collins face twisted in revulsion. ‘Skidmore had one pair of Dokomad hands grafted onto another?’
‘That is why it has come the time to run. Skidmore lured me in with promises of supreme control, but there was always the danger of me losing it instead. I apolgise for dragging you into this situation.’
‘Don’t wor
ry, your father did the same thing more times than I can remember. He would tell me that if there was something you wanted there would always be an enemy to deal with, and if you actually got it, there would be ten more. He liked to kill his enemies before breakfast. He felt it took the weight out of the rest of the day. So, what do you have in mind for this enemy of yours?’
Pei’s eyes narrowed in a hard stare out across the skyline. ‘It is getting to him that is the complicated part. Of course, I have considered it in quieter moments. But I should first ask how old are you?’
‘Not too old you need to ask,’ Collins snapped. ‘Not yet.’
‘That’s reassuring because I don’t have any more of my Sapiens left. And only enough mind altering compounds for one more patient.’
‘Your pretenses have been well and truly blown. So, no need to keep referring to them as patients.’
Pei ignored the remark. ‘Do we have enough fuel to reach Borneo?’
‘Just.’
‘Good, because that’s our only chance of reaching Skidmore.’
‘I was always too afraid to ask your father his plans, but you I’m capable of asking.’
‘Skidmore’s number one scientist is on an operating table about to get new hands. His number two scientist is in Borneo searching for rare species of jungle ivy that he can turn into poisons. He is a botanist. Dr Franz Flant.’
‘And what do we need him for?’
‘Skidmore’s strength is also his weakness.’
‘It usually is. In this case?’
‘His secrecy. From what I could garner from my patients I treated, he rarely leaves the Green Fields research facility. It is somewhere on the fringe of the desert, and Skidmore has ensured that as few people as possible know where it is and what is done there – which means it is sparsely guarded.’
Collins smirked. ‘So, you will pursue him to the very heart of his empire. If I may say so, you’re every bit as brazen as your father. I take it this Dr Franz Flant can tell us where the Green Fields is located? Borneo, however, is a very big island, and there are a lot of trees for a botanist to hide behind.’
‘I know the devil is always in the detail.’
‘On this occasion, however, we’ve been cut a break. Your father and I have done some quality smuggling out of Borneo over the years and we have a few contacts that might prove useful. Government, of course. There’s no point trying to smuggle without them.’
‘I see. There’s another devil in the detail.’ Pei hesitated with the thought. ‘I didn’t exactly have time to pick up my final pay check. Not all of it at any rate.’
She was met with a laugh. ‘There must be something in those bags of yours apart from socks and cocaine. But never mind, if it’s money you’re worried about, just let it go. Your father all but paid for this plane. And he always had the best places to fly to. I owe him, and helping his daughter is the closest I can come to personally paying him back. Anyway, this bag of cocaine on board will help cover some costs.’
‘There will be more,’ replied Pei confidently. ‘One bag of cocaine would not be enough to put me away for as many years as they would like. Trumper will sniff the rest out when we land.’
Collins banked the plane sharply eastward. ‘So let’s go pay your botanist friend a visit. If he’s interested in rare things, there is nothing rarer than an enemy of the Pei’s – living and breathing at any rate.’
Pei reached across and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Lead the way.’
Directive RIP Page 46
