by Jeff Buick
They were in a small lab, perhaps one-quarter the size of the lab Andrews had used to create the virus. Two long lab benches, anchored securely to the floor, ran perpendicular to the wall that housed the door they had just entered through. They were covered with equipment and sophisticated-looking machines. There was a secondary exit at the far end of the lab and Jennifer headed for it, groping her way in the dark and trying to remember where the lab benches were from the brief glimpse she’d had when the light was on. Gordon moved to one of the benches and ran his hand along until he found a sharp metal spike used for stirring liquids. Then he returned to the door and rammed it into the light switch. Outside, he could hear the men on the phone calling back to the security desk with the lab number.
“Move, Jennifer,” Gordon said quietly as he came up behind her. “They’re talking to the security guard. They’re probably asking him to open the door remotely for them.”
The door clicked and it opened, throwing a beam of light from the hallway into the lab. Gordon and Jennifer were on the far side of one of the long tables and out of the light. The man entering the lab tried the light switch, but the metal spike had destroyed it. He cursed and moved slowly into the semidarkness, searching for Gordon and Jennifer.
“You can’t get away,” he said quietly. His voice carried through the empty room. “Just come out and we’ll talk. We need to talk with you.”
“Bullshit,” Gordon whispered to Jennifer. “Andrews’s guys. They need to kill us.”
He could barely see her shape in the darkness, but he could tell she was nodding. “The rear exit,” she whispered back. “Let’s get out of here.”
They crawled along the floor, staying below the level of the lab benches. Jennifer’s hand bumped into a stool, and it wobbled for a second until Gordon caught it and stopped it from toppling over. They remained motionless for a minute, then continued. Behind them they could hear the sounds of unsure feet shuffling across the tiles. Jennifer reached the exit and asked quietly, “Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
She gripped the handle firmly and pulled. An alarm instantly sounded and the emergency lighting system kicked in. Jennifer was already through the door, and Gordon dived after her. He had a fleeting glimpse of a man with a pistol aimed at him, then that strange sound and a searing pain in his right leg. His momentum carried him through the doorway, and Jennifer slammed the metal door behind him.
“Damn it,” he said, grabbing at his leg. His hands came away bloodied. He pulled his pant leg up and looked at the wound. There was a small hole in the calf muscle where the bullet had entered. He felt on the other side of his leg and found another hole. “It went through,” he said, struggling to his feet. “Just a flesh wound. Now get out of here. Head for the exit at the south end of the building and I’ll be there in a minute.”
“I’m not leaving without you,” she said.
He grabbed her by the shoulders. “This isn’t a movie. And it sure as hell isn’t time to get heroic. Get back to the cab. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it. He was serious. She set off down the secondary hallway at a brisk run. She glanced back at a corner in the hall and saw Gordon kicking in a door with his good leg. Then she was alone, running for her life down the dimly lit corridor.
Gordon smashed in the wooden door marked MAINTENANCE.
Inside was standard fare for cleaning an industrial building. He pulled a mop off its hanger and swung it hard against the wall. The mop broke off, leaving just a splintered handle. He grabbed a bottle of ammonia and unscrewed the lid. A second later, the door crashed open and a man entered, a silenced pistol in his outstretched hand. Gordon stabbed at the man’s hand with the sharp end of the mop handle, the splintered wood driving into his attacker’s wrist. The gun flew from his hand and he howled in pain, the shattered handle shoved clear through his arm. He looked up at Gordon with disbelief in his eyes and saw a liquid coming at him. The ammonia hit his exposed eyes and he dropped to the floor, screaming and clawing at his face. Gordon gave him one well-placed kick in the head and he went silent, unconscious.
The alarm from opening the back door had ceased; that worked for Gordon, as he needed the quiet. He knew from the footsteps in the hall that there was more than one person after them. He took deep slow breaths, his ears in tune with every noise. Nothing for a few seconds, then a slight scraping sound just outside the door. The second attacker was right there, just on the other side of the wall. Gordon put his foot on the first man’s arm and pulled the mop handle out. Then he moved back a couple of feet and rammed the sharp end of the handle into the wall. It punctured the drywall on both sides of the studs as if it didn’t even exist, then hit something solid. Gordon heard a strange sound, something he’d never heard in his life. It was like air escaping an enclosed space, except that it was accompanied by the strangest gurgling sound. He waited a minute until the sound had diminished to almost nothing, then ventured a quick peek around the corner. The sight brought bile to his throat.
The second attacker was impaled by the broken handle, like a pig on a barbecue spit. Blood poured from his mouth and he made feeble efforts to dislodge himself. It was useless-he was dying. Gordon looked at the man, into his eyes, and felt sick. The stare was vacant, almost as though his spirit had already left his body and the physical part of his being had yet to expire. He had just severely maimed one man and killed another. He took one last look and ran down the hall, toward Jennifer and the cab.
The driver was exactly where they had asked him to wait. Jennifer was already sitting in the backseat, and she broke into a smile when he came running out the fire door. He sprinted to the cab and jumped in.
“Get us out of here without anyone else seeing us and there’s an extra thousand in it for you,” he said as he collapsed into the seat.
“That would be a good thing,” the driver shot back.“I’m sure that if anyone sees me leaving and gets my plate number, I’m going to be in some serious shit. Another thousand bucks is just a little more incentive to do something that was already on my mind.” He steered the car back into the parking lot, switched off his headlights, and took the back roads until he reached the main access to the I-64. He turned his headlights back on once he was on the ramp to the freeway. He accelerated up to the posted speed limit and blended in with the night traffic.
“You okay?” Jennifer asked Gordon.
“Sort of,” he said, thinking of the look in the dying man’s eyes. “I’ll be all right. How about you?”
“Scared,” she said. “Scared shitless.”
“Well, at least we’ve got proof of what Andrews was up to.”
“And this,” she said, pulling out of her pocket the small package that she had stripped off the underside of the lab table. She opened it and showed him. It was a CD with Chinese markings on the top. “It’s a trick lots of researchers use. We hide disks near our computers with confidential information on them. That way, if someone hacks into your computer or steals it, they don’t get your latest research. It seems Dr. Wai thinks the same as I do. This was hidden under the desk.”
“What do you think is on it?” Gordon asked.
“I’m not sure. Probably something to do with the work he was doing for Andrews in the lab. It could be another nail in Andrews’s coffin.”
“Then let’s get somewhere with a computer and find out what’s on it.”
“Slight problem,” she said, pointing to the writing. “You speak Mandarin or Cantonese?”
He was quiet for a minute. “No, but I’m getting hungry. How about Chinese?”
She took a good look at his leg. “After we get something to bandage that and get you some painkillers.”
“It’s a flesh wound,” Gordon said, putting some pressure on it and wincing. He saw the look on her face and grimaced. “Okay, first the leg, then dinner.”
65
The cabdriver, whose name was Eric, found an ATM on the southeast out
skirts of Richmond and Gordon withdrew three thousand dollars. He counted out fifty twenties and handed them across the front seat. Eric slipped them into his pocket with a nod of his head and a grin.
“They already know where we are, so this is probably a good time to stock up on cash,” he said to Jennifer.
He had the cabbie stop in front of a pharmacy, and Jennifer ran in and stocked up on extra-strength Tylenol and some compresses and white tape. She carefully bandaged his leg in the backseat of the cab and he took two of the pills. She had a close look at his wound while applying the gauze. Gordon was right-the damage was mostly superficial. The bullet had gone right through and the muscle was damaged, but the bones were intact. When they were finished, Gordon asked Eric, “You know where we could get some authentic Chinese food?”
“Hey, I live on Chinese. I know the best places. You care which part of the city we end up in?”
“Get us away from the ATM I just used,” Gordon said. “Other than that, I don’t care.”
“What happened to the guys chasing us?” she asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
They lapsed into silence and watched the darkened city flash by. Everything so normal: cars stopping for red lights, couples out walking their dogs. But for them things were far from normal. They both knew that this fight had become a fight for their life. And Bruce Andrews was not going to stop. Somehow they had to take him down. But the question that was running through both their minds as Eric pulled up in front of a restaurant was How? How can we convince someone in a position of power that Andrews is corrupt? They had the SEC on his tail with the accounting irregularities and they now had samples of the virus taken from the White Oak lab, but whom did they go to with the evidence? It was a million-dollar question.
Eric told them he preferred to sit in his car and ordered some takeout while they were in the restaurant. They sat in a booth tucked away in a corner, and when the server came around with Chinese tea, Gordon asked her, “Is there anyone here who speaks and reads Mandarin?”
She gave him a strange look.“This is a Chinese restaurant. We all speak Mandarin, and a couple of the cooks speak Cantonese.”
“Okay, is there anyone on your staff with a technical background? Medical, sciences, that sort of thing?”
“Sure, that would be Kelly, one of our waiters. He’s in his third year at university, majoring in biology. Want me to send him over?”
“Yes, please.”
A few minutes later, a young Chinese man approached with a puzzled look on his face. “You were asking for someone who speaks Mandarin and knows something about biology?” he asked.
Jennifer slipped the CD from her pocket and held it up. “We need to know what’s on this disk. We’ll pay you to translate it.”
“I’m working right now,” he said. “I can do it tomorrow.”
Gordon pulled out the remainder of the cash from the ATM withdrawal. “Three hundred dollars says you plug that into your computer and do it now.” He set the money on the table and placed a saltshaker on it.
Starving university students love cash. Kelly smiled and said, “Give me a minute. My computer’s in the back.” He returned a minute later with a Sony laptop and set it up on the table adjacent to Gordon and Jennifer’s. He took the disk and slipped it into the CD drive.
“This goes nowhere but between us and you,” Gordon cautioned him.
“For three hundred bucks, I don’t have a problem with that. I’ll even get them to throw a few extra shrimp in your chop suey,” he said, a huge grin pasted across his face. Fifteen minutes later, he joined them at their table. He wasn’t smiling. “Do you know what’s on here?” he asked.
“We have our suspicions,” Jennifer said, setting down her chopsticks. “What did you find?”
Kelly ran his hand through his hair and shook his head. “This is really serious stuff. Really serious.” He looked upset and his hands were shaking.
“We suspect that there are research notes on that disk for a hemorrhagic virus,” Jennifer said. “A lethal virus that was developed by a Chinese research scientist for a local pharmaceutical company. Is that fairly close?”
Kelly swallowed, his hands shaking so badly he set the disk on the table.“Yes.That’swhat is on the disk. How did you know that?”
“It’s a long story. But you can trust me when I say we’re the good guys here. We’re trying to nail the people who created this bug.”
“Is there anything else on the disk?” Gordon asked.
“Just a footnote at the end.” He dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out a napkin with some writing on it. “I jotted down the translation.” He handed it to Jennifer, who was closest to him.
“ ‘He has someone of great influence and power working with him. I am convinced it is one of the four.’ ” She read it one more time and asked Kelly, “The reference to ‘one of the four’- does that mean anything in Chinese?”
Kelly, who had stopped shaking, thought for a minute, then said, “No. There’s nothing in Chinese culture that emphasizes anything about ‘the four.’ I don’t think it’s on the disk simply because the author was Chinese.”
“Okay, thanks,” Gordon said, retrieving the disk from the table and handing the money to the young man. As an afterthought, he said, “Here,” and handed him another two hundred dollars. “Don’t say anything about this. Okay?”
Kelly looked scared. “Absolutely no way am I saying one word about this. I read the newspapers and watch television. I know what this is all about and I don’t want to be involved.”
“Thanks, again,” Gordon said. The waiter disappeared into the kitchen and Gordon turned to Jennifer. “Well, what now? What do you think Dr. Wai was saying with that little quip?”
Jennifer was slow to answer. When she did, it was with carefully chosen words. “I think the ‘he’ and ‘him’ in the message refer to Bruce Andrews. Certainly, it was Andrews who had Dr. Wai develop the virus so they could get Zancor through FDA approval. But who is ‘of great influence and power’?”
“I’m still in some sort of a state of disbelief that this whole thing was about getting a drug approved. I can’t believe people would kill just to get an FDA approval.”
“It’s all about money, Gordon,” Jennifer said. “You have no idea what goes on behind the scenes with the pharmaceutical companies and the regulatory boards. Veritas and the other Big Pharma have enormous influence in D.C. and in Congress. But there are times when drugs get stalled in the NDA and someone digs in their heels. When that happens, the company can either accept the hundred-or two-hundred-million-dollar loss for the R amp;D that went into the drug’s development and move ahead, or they can resort to slimeball tactics to try to get it through. Sometimes they’ll dig up dirt on the FDA employee who’s keeping the approval from going through. In some instances, they’ve been known to physically threaten people. And you heard what Elizabeth Ripley over at the SEC said about that young woman with three children.”
“So they’re willing to kill in order to get their drugs to market. Christ, what a bunch.”
“Don’t paint them all with the same brush, Gordon. Marcon, for one, would never push a drug beyond Phase II trials if it was dangerous.”
Kelly returned with their bill. He set it on the table and said, “Sorry about coming unglued there, but what you guys had me look at is pretty scary.”
“It’s okay,” Jennifer said, taking the bill and digging into her pocket.
In his other hand was a newspaper. He held it up, folded in half so the second section was visible. “This is you, isn’t it?”
She glanced at the picture accompanying the story about her car being found at the bottom of the cliff. “Yes, that’s me.”
“Take care,” he said, setting the paper on the table and accepting the money for the bill. It was over by twenty dollars, and he handed her the tip back. “You’ve already given me enough money tonight. Thanks, but no thanks.”
She pocketed the
twenty and pushed her plate away. It hit the newspaper and the top section flipped back, revealing the front page. “I’m finished,” she said. “Totally stuffed.” She set her chopsticks on the table and stopped. She stared at the newspaper, the front page of the first section now visible. “Gordon,” she whispered. “Tell me I’m crazy.”
“What?” he said. “What are you talking about?”
“Look at the picture,” she said.
On the front page of the late edition of the Richmond Times Dispatch was a picture of six men, all dressed in suits and standing side by side. The two on the far right were Bruce Andrews and Dr. Chiang Wai. The remainder of the six were the representatives of the four agencies that had formed the task force to combat the threat of the virus.
“Take away Andrews and Wai, and what are you left with?” she asked quietly.
“The guys from the CIA, FBI, NSA-and Rothery, from the Department of Homeland Security. Why?”
“Four men,” she said.
Gordon stared at the picture. He grabbed the translation Kelly had left with them. “ ‘He has someone of great influence and power working with him. I am convinced it is one of the four,’ ” he said. He read the names from the caption under the picture. “Craig Simms, Deputy Director of the CIA, Jim Appleby, Special Agent in Charge with the FBI, and Tony Warner with National Security Agency. And, of course, J.D. Rothery, DHS and head of the task force. All household names these days.”
“One of the four,” Jennifer said.
“Christ,” Gordon said. “This just keeps getting better.”
66
Two cars sat in front of the White Oak Technology Building that housed the Veritas labs. Inside the front foyer, a man spoke quietly to the security guard while another man cleaned up the mess outside the maintenance room. The body was loaded into the trunk of one of the cars and the injured man was taken to a nearby clinic, where his eyes were flushed, the bones in his wrist set, and his skin stitched.
