by Steven James
“Who’s that? Drake?”
“No. Dr. Rigel Osbourne.”
“Wasn’t he at some kind of conference?” “He’s back,” I said. “A telemarketer just called his house. He picked up.”
Ralph grinned. “What were you selling?”
“Luggage.”
“That’s not even funny.”
“Let’s go pay the doctor a little visit.”
89
Twenty minutes after escaping from police custody, Creighton Melice rounded the corner in the car he’d jacked off some lowlife crack dealer two blocks from police headquarters, and cruised down India Street. Shade had given him the time and place to meet after his escape, and it looked like things were right on schedule.
The escape had gone just as planned.
Inserting the six-inch shiv into his hand last night at the warehouse had been easy. He’d just positioned it against the base of his left middle finger and pressed. It went right in. Just like sliding an oven thermometer into a turkey.
Of course, digging it out meant peeling back a layer of meat from his palm during the interview. For anyone else it would have been painful, but of course he didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel anything. Then, on the way to the exam room, he used the shiv to pick the lock on his handcuffs, and when they arrived and the pockmarked cop was on the phone calling for the doctor, Creighton simply grabbed the guy’s hair with one hand and shoved the shiv all the way into his neck with the other.
It went in clean and smooth. Just like sliding a thermometer into a turkey.
Then he smashed the handcuffs into the other cop’s face. The guy howled in pain and, based on his reaction, Creighton guessed that having your eyeball flattened into paste was a painful experience.
He took note of that as he swung the cuffs at him again and again, sending him reeling into the wall. At that point, though, he realized he needed to hurry, so he’d decided not to take the time to kill the guy, but instead grabbed the keys to his ankle chains, unlocked the shackles, helped himself to a new gun, and walked casually and confidently to the evidence room.
Creighton let the car roll to a stop inside the auto body shop. A moment later he’d pulled down the garage door and locked it. He swept his hand across a nearby workbench, scattering the tools, discarded car parts, and a pile of greasy rags to the floor. Then he retrieved the black duffel bag from the backseat of the car and carefully set it in the center of the area he’d just cleared.
His fingers were trembling.
This was it. The moment he’d been waiting for.
Tonight, after they’d finished with the woman, Shade would use the device on him and he would finally feel pain. Finally realize what it’s like to suffer. What it’s really like to be a human being.
Creighton closed his eyes and let his mind wander into his elaborate fantasies of pain. The spiders were just the beginning.
He thought of blades and screams, of tender flesh so easily torn, and of splintered bones piercing meat. He dreamt of finally feeling that elusive ghost called pain.
Before Creighton could unzip the bag, he heard a swift whish of air and saw the wood of the bench explode less than an inch from his hand.
“Don’t turn around,” said the electronically altered voice from behind him. “Unzip the bag.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Creighton barked. A tense moment passed where neither of them spoke, and then finally, Creighton unzipped the bag, unwrapped the foam, then stared down at a tripod of three broken mop handles with a radio, a can of solvent, and a broken coffeemaker all duct-taped together onto the end. He felt his teeth clench. “No.” Grit. Grind. “No. No!” “Pick it up,” said the voice.
Creighton didn’t just pick it up, he grabbed the fabricated device and smashed it, smashed it, smashed it against the workbench until only a shattered array of broken pieces remained.
“So,” said Shade. “Someone has decided to get creative with us.”
Creighton snatched up a business card that had flown to the floor, read it to himself, then said, “It’s from a federal agent. Bowers. He’s got the real device. He’s taunting us.”
“I know Agent Bowers,” Shade said. “I’ll take care of him. You’ll need to leave here quickly and lay low. I’ll call you in one hour.
Don’t worry, we’ll get the real device. Trust me.”
Creighton Melice probed the corner of the shop with his eyes.
He couldn’t see Shade.
Shadows, always in the shadows.
Creighton didn’t want to play these stupid games anymore. He’d had enough. “Before, you told me not to trust you.”
“And now, I’m telling you to trust me. Follow my instructions or you won’t get what you want when this is over.”
Creighton still had that cop’s gun.
Take care of this freakin’ creep. Do it now.
He drew the gun, but as he did, Shade put a bullet through his right hand, sending the gun clattering to the floor. “Careful, Creighton,” said Shade. “I’d rather you stay alive and assist me, but I’m prepared to deal with my disappointment if you choose not to let that happen.”
“I’m tired of all this spy bullcrap.” Creighton stood tense, ready for a fight, blood dripping from the shredded flesh of the wounds that he didn’t feel in each of his hands. “Show me your freakin’ face. Kill me if you want to, but my guess is I’ll be able to do you some damage first. If we’re going to do this, if we’re going to end this tonight, let me see your face. That or I’m done.”
And then, after a brief moment, the shadows parted and a figure stepped out, and Creighton stood frozen, staring, his jaw gaping. It really was the last person Creighton would have ever expected.
“We finish this, tonight.” No masked voice anymore. Finally, finally standing in the light. “We finish it together.”
90
Ralph and I each carried the oversized laundry bags we’d scavenged from the police headquarters gym to our cars. I had the real device, Ralph’s bag was weighted to look just like mine.
Just in case anyone was watching us, we each chose a different route to Dr. Rigel Osbourne’s house, and after making sure we hadn’t been followed, we carried our bags to the door.
“How do you want to play this?” I asked him.
“Cassandra Lillo is dead. Anyone implicated in her abduction will be tried for murder.” He knocked on the door. “Improvise.”
“Have you sent a car to Cassandra’s place yet?” I heard footsteps from the other side of the door. “It’s possible Melice will go after her, to finish what he started.”
“Already done,” he said.
A moment later, the door opened and Dr. Rigel Osbourne stared at us through the crack. “Yes?”
Ralph put a hand on the door and pressed it open, sliding Dr.
Osbourne to the side. “FBI,” Ralph said with a quick flip of his badge. “You don’t mind if we come in, Rigel? We just need to ask you a few questions.” Ralph and I both set the laundry bags on the floor, then I swung the door shut behind us.
“Who are you?” Osbourne’s eyes were twitchy. His lower lip looked like it was used to being chewed on. “What’s this about?”
“A shark researcher,” I said.
“Found dead,” said Ralph ominously.
Osbourne’s face grew pale. “I don’t know anything about a dead shark researcher.” He wet his lips several times and began to eye the door. Neither Ralph nor I spoke. “How… how did she die?”
“We didn’t tell you the researcher was a woman,” I said. This guy was obviously not used to interrogations. I hoped that would help us find out everything we needed.
Ralph busied himself with opening one of the laundry bags and removing the device. “It’s a federal offense to lie to an FBI agent.”
Osbourne was watching Ralph pick up the device and lay it on the couch. “I just assumed, I mean… I didn’t know. Where did you get that?”
“Doctor Osbourne,” I said.
“We’re here to find out everything you know about this device. We don’t have a lot of time, and neither of us is in a very good mood.” Then I nodded in Ralph’s direction and lowered my voice. “Especially not him.”
Dr. Osbourne shook his head. “He told me it was destroyed.
He told me-”
“Who told you?” asked Ralph.
“Victor Drake.”
Was Drake Shade?
“I’ll go get him,” said Ralph.
“Wait.” I pulled him aside and whispered, “We need everything we can get on Drake first. Let’s finish with Osbourne, then we’ll go talk to Drake. You know how it works: the more evidence we have when we get there, the more evidence we’ll have when we leave.”
Ralph considered that, then nodded and said to Osbourne, “All right. Talk. This is your only chance. And if I don’t like what I hear, I’m taking you in as an accessory to murder.”
“Murder! I didn’t… I don’t know-”
“Listen to me,” I said. “Let’s just take it slow. Start at the beginning. Tell us everything you know.” General Cole Biscayne rolled to a stop in the driveway of his sister’s beach house, and sighed.
Ever since the PROC meeting earlier in the day, he’d been fielding phone calls from the State Department, the Pentagon, and even the White House, trying to assure them that the prototype had been destroyed. After all, the fire had completely consumed Building B-14, nothing was found at the scene or on the shore, and the police reports confirmed that the arsonist did not have the device with him when he threatened the federal agent and was subsequently stopped by means of lethal force from attacking her. So, it looked like the satellites’ development might be pushed back, but in the long run things would work out.
Cole’s sister Beverly was working late but had told him to make himself comfortable, to grab whatever he wanted out of the fridge, and that she would see him about ten o’clock. He was glad for the space. It’d been a long, tedious, stressful day. He needed some time to relax and unwind.
The evening had cooled, and the general’s windbreaker snapped to attention around him as he stepped out of the car. Out of habit, he glanced at the shadows lurking around her house, remembering the form he’d seen outside his home in New England.
But there was no one there in the shadows. Of course there was no one there. This whole business with Sebastian Taylor had gotten blown completely out of proportion. Taylor had been on the run for almost four months. If he were going to make a move, he would have done it by now.
And so, General Cole Biscayne reassured himself with these thoughts as he walked up the stony path to his sister’s home and slipped a key into the lock.
91
Dr. Osbourne had swallowed all the spit in his mouth, so before he could begin telling us what he knew, he poured himself a glass of water, downed it in one great tenuous gulp, set down the glass, and then said, “I never met the shark woman, Cassandra Lillo. I swear. All I did was use some of her findings. We’re not allowed to meet each other.”
“Who’s not allowed to meet each other?” Ralph asked.
Stone silence. Dr. Osbourne had already told us more than he was supposed to. His hand was shaking. “All I know is that we each have one person to report to. One contact person. We pass our research along to him; he passes it along to someone else.” Dr.
Osbourne bounced his nervous gaze from Ralph to me to Ralph again. “There’s nothing illegal about it.”
It seemed like a highly unusual and inefficient way to do research, but it wasn’t unprecedented. In World War II only a select few people knew exactly what was being developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee-the parts and fuel for an atomic bomb. Only when the bomb was completed did the staff find out what they’d made. So it’s possible Osbourne is innocent, just another pawn.
I wondered what kind of weapon would warrant this kind of secrecy today, but decided for the moment to follow up on the process, not the product. “So,” I said. “Cassandra sent you her findings. Who did you send your findings to?”
“A man named Kurvetek. Dr. Octal Kurvetek.” “What do you know about him?”
“Nothing, except he works closely with Victor Drake.”
“Figures,” said Ralph.
“And you worked out of Building B-14?” I said.
Osbourne nodded.
“Listen carefully,” I said. “I want you to tell me what went on in Building B-14. Why would someone burn it down?”
“It’s where we collated the findings, kept all the files, all the research.” He motioned toward the device. “And that thing. The prototype. We kept everything in hard files, so no one could hack the system. The government was worried about the Chinese.”
In my mind I tried to gather up the fragments of information I’d collected so far, but they were still in disarray. “This prototype,”
I said, “it does more than just sense faint neural electromagnetic impulses, doesn’t it?”
He nodded nervously but didn’t say anything.
“I’d suggest you be a bit more forthcoming,” Ralph said to Dr. Osbourne, who rubbed his fingers anxiously together in response.
“Tell us about the connection to MEG technology,” I said.
He eyed Ralph, who was leaning forward, his shirt straining against his thick, corded neck muscles. Dr. Osbourne’s eyes quivered as he continued, “The device uses the same basic principles as magnetoencephalography, or as you said, MEG technology. An MEG machine is too big to be used in the field, and a patient needs to sit beneath it without moving for several hours. Also it needs cryogenic temperatures and a shielded room to block other magnetic-”
“So that’s where the sharks come in,” I said, speaking my thoughts and inadvertently interrupting Dr. Osbourne. “Sharks don’t need any of those things. They can identify the signals instantaneously, on the fly, using the jellylike substance in their electrosensory organs.”
“Mucopolysaccharides,” he said with a nod. “My point is, sharks don’t need cryogenic temperatures or shielding devices. And they do it over long distances.”
“Exactly,” said Dr. Osbourne. “So by combining a laser-guided targeting device with the neuromorphic and biogenetic engineering developed from electrosensory research on sharks, and including magnetoencephalography technology, we created an inorganic version of the shark’s ampullae of Lorenzini receptors and neural pathways.”
Surprisingly, I was following what he was saying. But there was more, there had to be more.
“What about the cesium-137?”
“That’s been one of the problems.” He walked over and pointed to the device. “See this removable pack?” He took a moment to slide the cesium-137 unit from the bottom of the device. “We weren’t able to figure out how to stop minute quantities from escaping-just during use, you understand. We’re perfectly safe right now.”
He reattached the cesium-137.
“OK,” I said. “I know that when the neurons in our brains fire synapses, they create minute electromagnetic impulses. That’s what the MEG records. But how does all this fit together?”
“With the recent strides in understanding how hemodynamic and electrophysiological signals relate to each other-”
Ralph threw his huge hands to his hips and stood like a drill sergeant. “He’s wasting our time, Pat.” The more irritated Ralph appeared, the more Osbourne seemed to open up. Ralph might have noticed that and been playing into the scenario, or he might have really been getting annoyed. Hard to tell.
“Talk us through the brain signals,” I told Dr. Osbourne.
He rubbed his fingers nervously together and edged back slightly from Ralph. “Hemodynamic and electrophysiological signals are different processes within the brain, different ways we respond to stimuli. By studying the spatial and temporal correlation of the two different processes, we can better understand which neural impulses relate to which cognitive tasks.” “Wait a minute.” I stared at the device l
ying on Dr. Osbourne’s living room carpet. “You’re not saying this machine can read people’s minds?”
“No, no, no. Nothing that specific.”
“So not at all, then? Not even in a broad sense?”
“No.” He paused though, and his eyes wandered across the far wall. I had to believe he was at least considering the possibility.
“Theoretically, I suppose… this line of research might explore the possibility, but that would still be decades out.” I thought of DARPA and their research on the theoretical weapons systems of the future. I felt like I was slowly seeing all the threads weave together, but I hoped I was wrong.
Ralph scrunched up his face. “But you are telling us it can map the way someone thinks?”
“That’s one way to put it, yes, by identifying specific neural patterns.”
By mapping a person’s unique neural signature the government could identify someone by the one thing no one can cover up or mask or disguise-his brain waves.
Ralph must have shared my thoughts. “Law enforcement could use this instead of facial recognition,” he said. “Install it anywhere.”
A tense thought began scratching at the back of my mind-what if this device could be installed on the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s next generation of spy satellites? The NGIA would be able to map people’s neural patterns, and since the technology could “see through” buildings or rubble, it would be able to locate and identify someone whether he was indoors, or outdoors, or hiding in a cave. It was Calvin’s global video project taken to the most extreme level.
Ralph’s ringing phone jarred me back to the conversation. He looked at the number and stepped into the other room to take the call.
And then the final hammer blow fell in my mind. It would still be theoretical, of course, but if it ever became possible… I remembered what Tessa had said.
Think like Dupin.
As impossible as it seems, it did occur, so it must have been possible.
I had to consider it. “Rigel,” I said, opting for familiarity and hoping it would keep him talking. “Could the device be calibrated to do more than simply identify and map the pattern of neural impulses?”
