by Dan A. Baker
“Get her out of the way!” Victor screamed, sweating profusely.
“We need a ride, Victor,” he said calmly.
Victor slammed the Ferrari into reverse, hitting the steel garage door. As he furiously spun the steering wheel, Will leaned into the open window and pushed the gun under Victor’s chin, then pushed so hard it stretched Victor’s neck.
“Shut it off,” Will screamed in his ear.
Victor looked down at Will, his eyes bulging. “You can’t be serious! You have a gun, a real gun?”
Will fired a round into the passenger seat, shredding the red leather. The ejected shell hit Victor in the face. He pressed the gun into his neck again. “Do you want to lose it all, today, Victor?”
Victor carefully got out. Will patted him down, and shoved Jasmine in the tiny back seat. Will handed the gun to Jasmine, drove a few blocks, and turned around.
“I hear you’ve got a nice place up there,” Will said.
“It’s not on the market,” Victor said.
Jasmine looked at him for a long moment. He was so nervous that his hands were shaking.
“I’d like to see it anyway, just in case you change your mind,” Will said, slipping the pass card in the slot at the gate.
“Let’s make a deal, and let’s make it quick!” Victor said. “What do you want?”
“Why are you so nervous Victor?” Will asked.
“It’s just the usual bitchy technology partners. I might even have some consulting work for you,” he said.
“How kind you are, and don’t play to the cameras. We’re tired, and I am very pissed off.”
“I can’t believe you. I can’t believe you stuck a fucking gun in my face,” Victor snapped.
“That’s openers,” Will said, dryly.
Victor carried both of his black legal cases up to the condo. Will thought they looked heavy. Victor opened the double doors to the entrance alcove, and opened the black lacquered double entrance doors.
The living room was almost fifty-feet deep, with oversized black leather couches arranged in a big square with a huge black marble table between them. The carpet was an immaculate white wool Berber.
At the end of the room by the sliding glass doors to the deck were two of Lee Bontecue’s cast acrylic plastic sculptures, perfectly lit. They seemed to float in the big room and created a museum ambience that made the room seem even bigger.
Jasmine looked at the black marble table as Will searched the condo. The place of nothingness reached out to her, as she sat down. Death has gravity, she thought, feeling herself pulled into the place of nothingness by her dead friends.
“Will is finally going completely crazy I see,” Victor said in a tense voice.
Jasmine looked at him. He seemed smaller and frightened. The steel hard confidence and hard charging energy were gone.
Twice, Jasmine started to speak, but said nothing. A vast weariness washed over her weakening her knees, and forcing her to close her eyes.
Will came back into the room and sat on the end of the opposite black couch, looking at Victor.
“You’ve been watching too much television out there,” Victor said sarcastically to Will. “I’m sure we have some licensing issues to go over, but this gun thing is… over the top, even for you, Will.”
Will looked at Victor and Jasmine looked at Will, who was so exhausted and beat up, he just smiled. “Talk,” he said quietly.
“You need to get out of my house with that gun,” Victor said.
Will looked at the beautiful Bontecue sculpture. It was a huge orange plastic fish, probably done in the seventies and easily worth two-million dollars. Will looked at Victor for a long time, waiting, and then he casually fired three rounds into the sculpture.
Bang! Bang! Bang! The shockwaves shattered the silence in the big condo, shaking everything. Pieces of orange plastic landed on the big marble table. Victor hit his head diving under the table. He slowly pulled himself up, badly rattled.
“What are you doing? Goddamn it! Do you know how much that piece cost?” Victor screamed.
Will was blinking his eyes, the dust from the trip bothering him.
“How much do you want?” Victor screamed, opening the legal case.
Will didn’t even look at him. “How much do you want?” Victor screamed again. Will fired two more rounds into the couch, two inches on each side of Victor.
“A hundred-million: fifty today and fifty in annuities!”
Will fired a round between Victor’s shins.
“Two-hundred million: fifty today in cash, the balance in secured annuities,” Victor screamed, showing real fear.
“Edgar Bronfman.”
“What?” Victor asked, terrified.
“Head of Seagram’s and head of the World Jewish Congress. When he first sat down with the Swiss bankers, they offered him seventy-million dollars to settle the question of Jewish deposits during the holocaust,” Will said, slowly rubbing his forehead.
“Okay,” Victor said in a cutting tone.
“Do you know what Bronfman said?” Will asked, laughing his crazy laugh, and standing up suddenly.
Victor looked at Jasmine, afraid to reply.
“I don’t care about the money. I want to know what happened.” That’s what he said.
“I can help you with the money, and we can do that quickly,” Victor said, “very quickly.”
“I don’t care about the money. I want to know what happened.”
“And you think I know?” Victor replied.
“They’re all dead,” Will said, looking at Victor.
Victor looked at Jasmine searchingly, turning his palms up, “They?”
“Marjorie, Easton, Nielsen, and Darla,” Will said slowly, deliberately.
Jasmine watched Victor’s face.
“Marjorie’s dead? Easton’s dead? Nielsen’s dead? What the hell went wrong?” he asked. “I need to know! I need to know right now!”
Jasmine looked at Will, watching his mind work.
“Why?” Will asked.
“I just need to know,” Victor said, starting to settle down.
Will fired another round into the couch, cutting Victor’s jacket.
“Goddamn it, Will! You almost hit me!” he screamed. “Just tell me what happened down there! Tell me, and don’t shoot that fucking thing anymore!”
“We were attacked on my boat by two guys with a HERF weapon. They shut down the boat on one of the hottest days of the year. They fired a rifle into the water to keep us on the boat, and our patients died in ten minutes, Victor. They died in our arms. They were people we loved, and we want to know what happened to them,” Will bore down on Victor.
“I have no idea,” Victor said, looking directly at Will.
“We ended up with some mines in our treatment, Victor. Mines that were meant to kill the patients when the genes expressed. One of them was a heat sensitive gene that shuts down signals from the brain to the heart. The 9900 was wired, Victor. It ported out our work to your guys, and they inserted data packets that we couldn’t see.” Victor leaned in to hear, the ringing in his ears still loud.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“Koji recorded some of the downlink. It was code.”
“No shit,” Victor said, genuinely shocked.
Will pressed the magazine release button on the gun and let the clip fall to the carpet. He slowly slipped in a new magazine and banged it with the palm of his hand. “To do what they did would require a master bioinformatics scripter, like someone who knows the 9900’s front end. Who do you suppose that might be?” Will asked, staring at Victor.
Victor looked at Jasmine, then back at Will. “I did not do this. I did not know or participate in any mining of the treatment. I did not,” Victor said, his eyes slowly widening.
Will sat back in the big black leather couch. The gun was so heavy he laid it down on his knee, and looked at Jasmine.
“Who did?” Jasmine asked Victor.
“I
don’t know, maybe a freelancer. They have some molecular biologists of their own, MIT guys who just went or…”
“No,” Jasmine said.
“No,” Will said.
“Not hard to get to a junkie,” Victor said. “Look at it this way. They wouldn’t need me to do what they did, and they don’t need me to know about it, so why would they?” he pleaded.
Will thought about what he said, while concentrating on the style of the attack. “Maybe it was your idea, your style,” he said, looking at the ceiling.
Jasmine watched Victor’s reaction carefully. As tense as he was, she still believed he was basically decent.
“Did you find the gene?” he asked.
“My lab was seized by the local Gestapo.”
“Did they try to kill you?” Victor asked.
“No, but they’re charging me with illegal medical practices. I think they’re using me to stage a big crackdown on garage biotech. Tell me the story, Victor. Tell me everything and tell me now,” Will said, weaving from the exhaustion, “and don’t leave anything out.”
Victor’s mind raced as he tried to work out just what to say. Will looked at him and fired a round into the couch.
“Goddamn it, Will!” Victor started to get up, but stopped, realizing the gun was pointed at him.
“I just want to know what happened.”
“Alright, but I’m in a hurry! I’ll burn through this, and we’ll make a deal you’ll be happy with, and we’ll go!”
“Talk,” Will said.
“You stole our mainframe. Since it belonged to us, we didn’t see a problem with porting out what you were doing. We were impressed, to say the very least. I’ve seen a few leaps in imagination, but the work you psychopaths did was big. Really big! We followed your results in Arizona, which were also impressive. We got the protein diffraction data from Berkeley. It told us what it told you, that the synthetic genes from those guys in San Diego were perfect.”
“And…?”
“I told the Singapore guys to wait. I told them to wait at least a year. They’re normally a rock steady group, but all of a sudden they want to treat some of their honchos. I go over everything, and just like you, I find that it looks perfect. I send the data and they treat. Everything’s fine, until now! Then, they just died. They all died! They just fucking died! There must have been some kind of timer in the treatment.”
“Who’s all?” Will leaned in.
Victor closed his eyes tightly, “Six of their guys…”
“Spit it out, Victor,” Will said, wearily.
“And a couple of freelance deals,” he said finally.
“Freelance?”
“Cash and carry,” Victor said, looking quickly at Jasmine.
Will blinked his eyes again and looked at the ceiling. Victor quickly continued, “Carmelita, Carmelita Masabay,” he said.
Jasmine gasped, “Did she have to sell her shoe collection?”
“How much,” Will asked.
“Three-billion in cash, so we cleaned her out,” Victor said.
“And, what else?”
“There were a couple of brothers who were rich, old and dangerous. I owed them a favor,” Victor said.
“Maguey?” Will asked.
“Yeah,” Victor said, sweating profusely, and looking at Will’s gun.
“And who were the brothers?” Will asked.
“The Honchos, and I owed them a favor, but I still got a good price,” Victor said flatly.
Jasmine said nothing. Will said nothing.
“Finish,” Will said, wearily.
“We looked at everything, including your treatment, data, scans, and the dogs. We even looked at Roy’s data. They called me everyday. “Is it ready? Can we treat? Do you think it’s safe?” Victor threw his head back and rotated his head, trying to ease some tension.
“I finally called their game. They told me it was the old man. He was dying. They got him to agree to give up half his net worth! Ten-billion dollars: he actually wrote them a check for that much money! We batched the treatments in Singapore, and treated six patients four months ago who were smart and valuable guys. Everything ran perfectly including the gene cascades and the self-regulating protein loops. They regressed to a body age of about forty, and then they just died! Boom! They died of massive cardiac arrest. You should see the EKGs! There are no signals to the heart!”
“And then what?”
“The old man died yesterday. He has a big family. They play rough, and they are very angry. Carmalita died almost at the same time. In Cuba, they were still talking about barbecuing the Bay of Pigs guys when I went down there.”
“You made one big mistake.”
“Yeah,” Victor said.
“The Singapore boys aren’t going to like the freelance deals. They don’t like that stuff. They wanted to keep a lock on this for as long as possible. That’s going to piss them off in a big way,” Will said.
“We need to get out of here.” Victor said.
“What do you know about Lake Havasu?” Will asked.
“I got the data, that’s all! I didn’t get any of your behavioral stuff, only the treatment stuff. They couldn’t get into Nielsen’s operation, but they were very impressed. They wanted me to approach you about working for them for awhile,” Victor said.
“What did you tell them?” Will asked.
“To forget it,” Victor said.
“Did you know they were going to attack us?”
“They never told me anything! I wouldn’t sign off on something that stupid anyway! I thought they were happy getting what they got. They should have been happy, but I guess they wanted it all,” Victor said. “These guys are rough!”
“And you?” Will asked.
“I had a hard time understanding them. It’s not about money with them. It’s about power. It’s about the future. They want a running start at the age of biology. They want to win, and winning ugly is okay with them,” Victor said, his voice cracking.
Will and Jasmine looked at Victor carefully.
“I don’t want to die,” he said meekly. “I honestly don’t know what happened to the treatments.”
Jasmine believed Victor, as she had never seen fear in him before. Fear from Will’s reckless shooting was there, but there was a deeper, more profound fear she had felt in the elevator.
“They’re going to kill you,” Will said.
“I know,” Victor said.
“Someone in Singapore doesn’t feel like waiting their turn for power. That’s probably what happened there, but it doesn’t explain the rest. There’s another player somewhere in this.”
“Who?” Victor asked.
“I don’t know,” Will said, “but I believe it’s someone with a lot to lose.”
“All I know is somebody altered that batching data after it left here,” Victor said. “I need to get out of here now.”
“Let’s go. I don’t want to stop your bullet.”
“I’m scared, Will. Dealing with these guys was a bad idea,” Victor said. “On top of that, I even have my own stalker.”
“You’re being stalked?” Will asked.
“This crazy demonstrator followed me home from Genetechna. He was a crazy religious geek. I think they’re paying him to shadow me,” Victor said.
“Now, there’s one more thing.”
“Make it quick.”
“What was your deal?”
“Three-billion, and I doubled that on the freelance deals.”
“Did they pay you?”
“Yeah, they paid me. I made sure of that,” Victor said.
“I’ll take a third of the juice,” Will said.
“Help me stay alive,” Victor said, handing one of the legal cases to Will.
“Where were you going?” Will asked.
“I’m going to a quiet little resort in Oregon. I’ll be driving and using land lines only.”
“Bad idea, they’ll find you fast.”
“What do you think I
should do?” Victor pleaded.
“Come with us. We’ll make it hard for them. They want us alive and they won’t take a chance on killing you while you’re with us. They need you dead, but you don’t have to be dead now. They can wait.”
“Okay, maybe we can find out what the fuck is really going on,” Victor said, stacking the shards of orange plastic in little piles.
“Did it bother you when the patients you treated in Cuba died of cancer?” Jasmine asked softly.
“The Cubans were in a hurry! They were desperate,” Victor said.
“And they had unlimited money,” Jasmine said.
“Yes, they had unlimited money,” Victor said wearily, “and their own little country, which can be very handy.”
“I’ve had enough,” Jasmine said.
Victor and Will turned to her.
“I’ve had enough of this intrigue; this cowboy science and killing! I’m going to the FBI tomorrow morning, and then I’m going public with everything: the treatment, Roy, Lake Havasu, the murders and…”
Will and Victor looked at Jasmine. Through tears she said, “This is what happens in the underworld! There is no law! We have actually become gangsters, and I can’t stand it anymore! People I loved were killed!”
Victor and Will looked at each other.
“Look at us! We are standing in a room with billions of dollars in cash, with two immensely powerful groups trying to kill us! Our homes are bugged, we are wanted for crimes, we haven’t slept in three days, and we’re carrying guns! We are scientists - remember? This is wrong and I can’t stand it any longer. The only way for us to stay alive and make this right, is to go public,” she said, sitting down, looking into the black marble table and sobbing uncontrollably.
Will and Victor moved to the end of the living room.
“We’ll go to Jasmine’s house and we’ll work out a strategy. We need to find out who the other player is,” Will said. “I’ll pull the Jeep up across the street and wait for you to come out.”
“Okay,” Victor said quietly.
“There’s one thing,” Will said, looking at Victor. “Did you tell me everything?”
“Yes,” Victor said, “That’s everything I know.” Will moved over to help Jasmine. She was standing in the hall looking at a framed picture.
