McAlister nodded. “It’s only going to get worse. Austin’s been on a tear since returning from his little Caribbean holiday a few months ago. He’s working on tuberculosis now. That’s a big ticket item for us.”
“TB’s currently worth two billion in revenue. And that’s just to us. To the industry, we’re talking at least six. A third of the world’s infected, two million deaths a year,” said Turnbull.
McAlister looked out at the rain pelting his windows. “It’s much bigger than that. If new strains of drug resistant TB become the pandemic that the CDC and WHO are predicting, that’ll be the jackpot we’ve been waiting for. It’ll be a license to print money. It’ll be worth more than AIDS.”
Turnbull wagged his head. “Unless Austin ruins it.”
McAlister glared at Turnbull. “You mean until Austin ruins it. With that guy, it’s not a question of ‘if,’ it’s a question of when.”
Turnbull shook his head. “I can’t believe we haven’t been able to get anything of value from him. We’ve been hacking his computers for how long?”
McAlister waved his hand as if shooing away a fly. “All his data is incomprehensible to our guys. No one can figure out what the hell he’s doing.”
Turnbull said, “He probably realized he was being hacked ages ago and he’s just playing with us.” The scowl on McAlister’s face was reprimand enough for the crack. “So—what’s next Colum?” “Do we just lay down and die?”
“You know me better than that,” replied McAlister.
54
The intercom bell rang in Bobby’s Boston apartment and he buzzed up the delivery guy from the local diner. Taking the paper bag from him, he noticed the bottom was alarmingly soggy. Bobby rushed to his kitchen just as the bag fell apart and his dinner tumbled on to the stainless steel countertop. The styrofoam cup holding the thick brown gravy for his meatloaf hit the counter with a thud, dumping its contents, which combined with gobs of Italian salad dressing from another tumbling container.
“What a mess,” Bobby groaned.
It had been another intense week at the lab as Bobby grappled with his research into tuberculosis. Grabbing his martini shaker, he filled it with ice, poured in at least six ounces of gin, a capful of dry vermouth, and shook vigorously with one hand, as he reached for a glass with the other. The top of the shaker flew-off and half of his drink hit the counter, co-mingling with the greasy mess already there. “Perfect. Just perfect,” he grumbled. He poured the remnants from the shaker into his glass, grabbed his dry meatloaf and mashed potatoes, and walked out of the kitchen disgusted. The phone rang.
“Hi, hon. I just had Armageddon in the kitchen. I’m dead tired. I’m going to wolf down what remains of my dinner, have a drink, and try to get some sleep.”
“Don’t forget about this weekend,” Christina said. “We’re going to the Impressionist exhibit and the Debussy recital.”
“I think I might have to cancel. I’m in the middle of things at the lab.”
“Bobby—you’re not cancelling on me. It’s called ‘having a life.’ You need to try that.”
At eight in the morning, Bobby stumbled into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. He wasn’t looking forward to cleaning up the mess from the night before. To his amazement, there was little evidence of the mayhem on the stainless steel counter. His martini had acted as a solvent, emulsifying the grease.
As the day wore on, Bobby thought more and more about the kitchen incident. Standing by his bank of computers as he looked over print-outs, he mentioned it to Susan and Christina. “You see I told you. Alcohol is healthy. If that martini can clean my sink—think what it does for my insides.”
Susan rolled her eyes. “That’s why alcoholics are in such good shape.”
Bobby laughed. “Right. But if gin can dissolve grease, there must be some substance that can clean people’s pipes —don’t you think?”
55
A solitary figure sat in the dimly lit den of the austere looking limestone townhouse on East 72nd Street. He wasn’t used to typing his own letters, but the message was short:
Dr. Robert James Austin:
Laboratory Address— 17 Grapevine Road, Prides Crossing, Beverly MA.
Home Addresss— c/o Susan Corwin, 5 Adams Way, Apt # 4W, Boston MA.
He printed nine copies of the letter and the address labels for his intended recipients, and then affixed a stamp to each plain white envelope. He was confident that the recipients would know what to do with the information. He then placed the laptop and mini-printer he had purchased that same day in a small black duffel bag.
Taking the letters and the bag with him, he left the house, hailed a cab and went down to Battery Park, at the southern tip of Manhattan. He dropped the letters in a mailbox and then walked to Whitehall Street where he boarded a ferry to Staten Island. Half-way across the massive harbor, he went up on deck. It was freezing outside so he was alone. He threw the duffel bag into the deep turgid water, and caught the next ferry back to Manhattan. Colum McAlister was back in his townhouse enjoying a cognac and cigar within an hour.
56
By the end of her first year working at Prides Crossing, Christina had become a veteran of Bobby’s intensity. He was juggling research simultaneously on both TB and arteriosclerosis and would bounce from one to the other, in much the same way that he had stood in Peter and Edith’s living room at three years of age encircled by scientific treatises on different subjects, absorbing them all. Immersed in his research, he was neglecting his personal well being more and more. It was as if his physical self was being subsumed to the mental. He slept little, minimized interpersonal communications, ate poorly and drank too much alcohol. He seemed increasingly detached from the present and was in and out of trances for hours a day. Although Christina was the first to arrive for work at the lab, and the last to leave other than Bobby, he saw her infrequently there, as he had asked Susan to assign her an office far from his. His mind was elsewhere and he wanted no distractions.
After stopping at a bakery to pick-up blueberry muffins and cappuccino as a surprise, Christina knocked on Bobby’s office door one morning and then peeked in. Having spent the night in the lab, Bobby was lying on his sofa, still sleeping under a thin blanket. His hair was damp with perspiration, as was his face. He looked pale and feverish. Suddenly, he jerked up as if he had been given an electric shock, and sat bent over the edge of the sofa gasping for air and holding his chest. He looked dazed, as if he was in a terror induced stupor. She quickly put down her bakery bags.
“It’s okay, Bobby. I’m here.” He pulled the blanket around him as he shook from a wave of chills that surged through him.
“Leave me alone,” he said hoarsely.
“Just breathe in deeply and let it out very slowly.”
“I don’t want you to see me like this. Go away.”
“Breathe. Deeply in—as deep as you can go. Then hold it. And then let it out slowly. Just keep doing that. You’ll be fine.”
His eyes were vacant as he stared at the floor. “The nightmares. They’re getting worse. It’s trying to stop me. It wants to kill me.”
Christina stroked his forehead. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. Keep breathing the way I told you.”
After several minutes of following her instructions, she led him to the bathroom which was adjoined to his office. She helped him out of his sweaty clothing and ran a hot shower for him. The water cascaded down on him as the shower stall grew thick with steam. After awhile, she leaned in and said, “Now I’m going to make it cooler.” With Bobby standing under the shower head, she gradually lowered the water’s temperature until it was bracing. The water continued to rain over him, and finally Bobby began to calm down and relax. She got some clean clothes from his office closet and brought them into the bathroom. “When you’re dressed, I have some fresh blueberry
muffins and cappuccino for us. I’ll go heat them up.”
Sitting down for breakfast, Bobby said, “You really brought me out of that. How did you know how?”
Christina spoke softly as she reached for the butter. “I’ve had a little too much experience with nightmares and panic attacks.”
“What do you mean?” Bobby asked.
“We’ll talk about it sometime,” she said.
Bobby took her hand in his and squeezed it. “No, tell me now.”
“Things aren’t always as simple as they appear.”
“That’s not an answer”.
“Another time, Bobby.”
As they cleared the table, her hands trembled. “You’re pushing yourself way too hard. You’re putting yourself under tremendous pressure. It’s not healthy. You can’t go on like this.”
There was no leeway in Bobby’s response. “I have no choice, Christina. People are dying every day. I have to move as quickly as I can.”
Late that afternoon, Susan saw Christina sitting at her desk looking glum. “What’s wrong, sweetie? Why the long-face?”
“I’m worried about Bobby. You know how he’s been lately. And he’s increasingly paranoid. He was saying that ‘it’ wants to kill him. Who the hell is ‘it’? Do you know?”
Susan nodded. “Yes, I know. But he’ll have to tell you himself. He will eventually. He just doesn’t want you to think he’s crazy, that’s all.”
Christina’s face paled. “Is he crazy?” she asked, her voice soft.
Taking a seat across from Christina, Susan leaned in toward her. “Bobby has more demons than a fright house. His personal history is very dark. He’s been left alone many times.”
“What should I do?”
Susan put one of her hands on hers. “Build the trust. You two shouldn’t have secrets from each other. Get him to open up and do the same with him.”
“He said he has a trunk to show me.”
Susan cocked her head. “He said he’d show you the contents of his trunk?”
“Yes, the one in his apartment.”
“That’s a major step. Bobby has never shown that to anyone. I once saw the contents by accident and he freaked out.”
Christina nervously picked at one of her fingernails as she looked down. “I have secrets too. Things I’m ashamed of.”
Susan leaned in close. “Don’t we all? But one thing I’ve learned in life is that love is more powerful than secrets. Sometimes it doesn’t seem that way. But it is.”
57
As Calvin Perrone held a glass of champagne in one hand and a shrimp canapé in the other, he marveled how his career had taken such a huge turn for the better. Here he was, not a guard—but an invited guest—at the director’s Christmas cocktail party for Washington insiders.
He thought back to when it had all begun to fall into place for him—-that night, just under two years ago, when he had navigated so well in the dark using only his pocket flashlight. He had made his way through the small office of the gynecologist, quickly located the file room, and in a matter of seconds picked the flimsy lock on the cabinet. Finding the patient file he was looking for, he had photographed each page, and was out in under ten minutes. Just like all of his other intrusions, that one went undetected too. And then, the next morning, he had carefully incorporated the pertinent information into his analysis. That was the final piece of data he needed to complete the research for Project WS, to which he had been designated as lead agent by the director himself. It had taken him and a staff of four agents over three months to narrow the field down to ten candidates for the director’s review. He had placed the ten individual files in a large black binder and hurried to the director’s office. It was so fresh in his mind it was as if it had happened yesterday.
“What do you have for me?” Varneys asked.
“Based on the previously agreed screening criteria, I’ve narrowed it down to ten people for you to consider, sir,” replied Perrone.
“Re-cap the criteria for me”.
“We employed seven basic filters to initially identify potential candidates:
Age: 25—31
IQ: minimum of 145
Education: minimum of one doctorate in physical sciences or math
Social Status: heterosexual, single, never married, no serious current relationships, no children
Physical Health: excellent, with no record of hereditary disease in the last three generations
Psychological Profile: No mental health impairment or history of same in the last three generations
Physical Appearance: Above average
“Let me see the files,” said Varneys. Perrone placed the binder containing the ten files on Varney’s desk. “This will take me awhile. Let’s re-convene at 8:30 AM tomorrow.”
As the elevator descended to his office, Perrone smiled. If Project WS were successful, he knew that his relationship with Varneys would be made.
The next morning Perrone was directed into Varneys’ private conference room. All ten files were already laid out on the large oval table. On top of each file was a photograph of the candidate whose personal information was contained in the file. Entering the room, Varneys said, “There are some credible candidates here. Well done, agent.”
Perrone stood at ease. “Thank you, director. It’s taken a great deal of effort. We started with data in the computer banks on all doctoral and post-doctoral government sponsored fellowship recipients in the last three years, and worked on from there. These are the ten females who made the final cut out of almost nine hundred we identified. They’ve been vetted fully.”
“And who do you think is the number one candidate out of the ten?”
Perrone knew that this was his moment to impress. “I think it’s that one,” he replied, pointing to one of the photographs on the table. “She has among the highest IQs of all the prospects we screened—155. She has knock-out looks and she’s not a nerd like most of the others. I think she’s the best match.”
Varneys laughed. It was a low guttural sound that came from a place deep within him from which few laughs emanated. “I’m inclined to agree with you, but I’m concerned about her background—she could be unstable.”
“You’re referring to the abortion?” Perrone asked.
Varneys shook his head. “It’s more than an abortion don’t you think? She was only 14. It was her step-father. She’d been raped by him for years.”
“Her gynecological reports indicate that the abortion didn’t affect her fertility or her ability to carry to full term,” replied Perrone.
“I read the reports, agent. What I’m referring to is the breakdown she had after the abortion.”
“But she bounced back strong. Her psychiatric records are clear on that.”
Varneys began to pace the room. “She became a wild kid in high school, didn’t she?”
“Wild yes, but brilliant. And she buckled down in college. Her professors still rave about her.”
Staring out the window, Varneys stood in silence, looking pensive. Perrone waited patiently. Finally, Varneys said, “I just hope she’s not a nut case.”
“I think Christina Moore is exactly what we’re looking for,” replied Perrone confidently.
“But will she do it?” asked Varneys.
Perrone wagged his head. “That’s the tough question.”
“It’s down to you Agent Perrone. Make it happen.”
Ten days later, Christina picked up her mail at the graduate student housing facility at Stanford. As usual, there wasn’t much to look at —a few catalogs, a credit card bill and a cell phone bill. But what caught her attention was a letter whose envelope bore the name and address of the NSA. Once inside her small studio apartment, she opened the envelope. The letter on NSA stationary read
:
Dear Ms. Moore:
Regarding certain important matters in connection with your current NSA fellowship award, it is important that you meet with the undersigned as soon as possible. The meeting will be arranged to take place on the Stanford campus so as not to inconvenience you. Please contact the undersigned upon your receipt of this letter.
Very truly yours,
Calvin Perrone (819-549-8121)
Concerned that there could be a problem with her fellowship, she dialed the contact number. Perrone picked up after three rings.
“Is this Mr. Perrone of the NSA?” Christina asked.
“Who’s speaking please?”
“This is Christina Moore. I received your letter asking me to contact you about my NSA fellowship.”
Perrone smiled. He could tell from her voice that she was nervous, afraid her fellowship was being terminated or reduced. He thought of the beautiful young woman on the other end of the phone line holding his letter. She had so easily fallen in line with his plan. He mused about the power of a piece of stationary. “Oh yes, Ms. Moore. I’ll be on the Stanford campus tomorrow taking care of a few matters. Is it possible for us to meet then?”
“Is there some problem with my fellowship? I was quite alarmed by your letter.”
Miracle Man Page 24
