by Frank Perry
together, not anticipating him leaving so early. They stood together, but no one seemed to know what to do next. John picked up the pace; looking straight at them saying, “Get out of my way.”
They split apart immediately, letting him pass, all looking at the others, expecting someone else to do something. Such fucking wimps. He continued on toward the lobby with several startled onlookers all wondering why he’d been so rude to the executives.
John felt good leaving the building. He had figured some things out. It was all subjective, but the body language had said enough. He now knew that Jules was involved.
Meanwhile, in Jules’ office, the conspirators were meeting behind closed doors. Jules was sitting, looking at his steepled fingers while Hanson ranted. “We’ve got to do something. That guy’s dangerous, he knows too much.”
“What do you suggest, Matt?” Jules was less deliberative in his words and continued sarcastically, “You want to have him killed? It’s probably the only way to stop him. And -- oh gee -- that idea’s been tried, more than once! One of you geniuses, or both, have messed things up from the start.” Jules didn’t really know, or want to know, who was behind the murder plots. He hadn’t looked at either of them.
“On the contrary.” Irina didn’t like the older man’s scorn. “My plan was working perfectly, making you a rich man, until this bumpkin got involved.” She looked at Hanson.
He recoiled. “Hey, Grizelda! Watch your ugly mouth. I got the in-country feet you needed.” Hanson really hated the female scientist. What a group, inseparably bound together in crime, yet loathing each other. None could trust the others but had no choice.
“Stop it, both of you!” Jules’ composure was shattered. Less than a month earlier, he’d received accolades from his peers around the world. Now he was in a deadly plot with morons who would surely send them all to prison for life and destroy the Institute. How could anything get so fucked up so fast? It took a special combination of ignorance and brilliance.
The phone rang, and Jules excused the other two who disappeared into some dark cavern elsewhere in the building, probably Irina’s office, to continue plotting. He was sick of it. “Hello!”
Marie knew he was on edge. “It’s Mr. Osborne, Jules.”
“Oh.” He paused for a moment to compose himself. “Jim, it’s good to hear from you. How are our friends from the sand country doing? Any money on the table, yet?” He did his best to sound aloof.
“Not yet, Jules. But I have a problem; you’ve got a problem, and I want some straight answers.”
“Ah … Okay, shoot.” Great, another headache.
Osborne had anger laced throughout every word. “I just heard that the Commerce Department was sending some Special Agents to your place to seize all records and lock you down.”
“What! Impossible! Why would they do that?”
Osborne wasn’t in a casual mood. After all, he’d been the one to polish the resume for GHI and sell it to the Saudis. There’d been consistent dialogue about him only representing the buyers, but it wasn’t altogether true. His credentials were on the line, which meant more to him than the commissions on one small deal. “I’m not going to tell you who, but I just got the call, and I want to know what’s up, Jules.”
Jules’ head pounded. “Jim, I … I don’t know what to say, I don’t know anything about any Federal Agents.”
“Don’t be cute with me, Jules. I can smell a rat deal a mile away, and you’ve got a serious problem. I heard something about illegal exporting. Sound familiar?”
“Look, I can’t say anything more now, I’ll call you back.” He slammed the receiver down.
Vindication
The neck of the second gin bottle teetered in his hands between his knees. John sat slumped on his second-hand sofa with no plans for the future. He’d come to GHI right out of college and planned to stay for life if he liked it. Now, he’d lost his girl, nearly been killed twice and, for all intentions, lost his job. Doing the right thing hadn’t amounted to much. Africans were dying, murdered by a virus from his lab and many people now knew it, including the police, yet nothing was being done to stop it. He lifted the bottle and took a long gulp, gagging as the liquid burned and spilling down his neck onto his bare chest.
The confrontation with Jules was the final action he planned to take. It was over. The only person he respected at the Institute now was Charlie Ritter. He was the last person John had spoken to. Charlie didn’t seem to believe what John said. If he did, maybe he could do something, but what? GHI was his life too, just like Jules. Would he destroy a lifetime of work out of principle? Not likely … John took another deep gulp.
His head was spinning and his physical dexterity was going away fast. He was drunk and hated it. He’d never liked the feeling and now he was alone, really alone, with no thoughts of the future and no past that he could go back to. Gort! Gort was the answer. John would go back to the island and take over Gort’s business. He would convince Mary to come back to the Island, and they could live in Gort’s cottage and eat lobster pie, lobster pizza, lobster bisque, lobster cakes … for the rest of their lives. It didn’t get any more peaceful than that. He could be happy. He set the bottle on the floor near his feet and stretched out on the couch. He could sleep for days after all that had happened. Shit, what else is there to do now?
The morning, however, brought a different reality with a head ready to explode and a mouth trampled by a thousand wild horses. He had been drunk once before after a tough mission with his Marine buddies, and he’d sworn it would never happen again, but here he was. He struggled up and stumbled to the bathroom for something to help dull the pain. His mouth felt awful and he probably had the breath of a camel.
While he lumbered around feeling sorry for himself, Charlie had spent a sleepless night. John’s assertions had been so outrageous that they might have been true. He couldn’t sleep. For over twenty years he’d worked unfailingly, building a wonderful institution to help mankind. They had found ways to predict and stop Ebola virus! Had it really all been a lie? He had both hated and loved Irina Petronova. She was the worst human he knew, yet she had broken the code, she’d actually learned to model viral mutations. But John said it was a sham, it never was true. Worse, she’d been responsible for hundreds or thousands of deaths using germs cultivated at GHI, his Institute!
It had taken a few hours during the night when he couldn’t sleep to convince himself that the discrepancies in Lorne Bridger’s records were accurate. There was no proof, but Charlie had enough respect and confidence in his former colleague to trust his records even more than the expansive information system kept by Hanson. Hell, the official Institute records could be modified easily by someone with the right system access and motivation to do it – Hansen. How could he not see it? He was the Chief Operating Officer and knew all the employees; he knew all the scientists like his own children. That’s why it had to be true. Everything John Hollis told him was true. Irina was evil, and Hanson was a greedy murderous bastard. He would have fired her years earlier if her scheme with the accountant hadn’t changed everything. It had all been a lie.
In the early morning, before dawn, Charlie’s wife awoke, finding him slumped on the side of their bed, unmoving, focused somewhere in space. “Charlie … are you all right?”
He turned to her and kissed her gently. “No” was all that he said.
An hour later at the Institute, before Jules could organize his thoughts following Osborne’s call, there was a knock, and Charlie came into the office, closing the door behind him. The two had known each other for their entire professional careers and Jules could read his partner’s mood. Charlie stood speechless for several seconds before taking a seat, speaking slowly but directly at his partner in an accusing tone. “We have a problem, Jules.”
“Now look, Charlie, I don’t need any more grief. Can’t this wait?”
Charlie looke
d at his colleague and then spoke softly. “I called the Customs Office in Baltimore. There should be some officers here in a little while.”
Jules was furious; he stood, not knowing what to say next. “What … why?”
“You know why, Jules. I wish it weren’t so, but I think you know it all.”
“What are you talking about?” He wasn’t a good actor.
“Stop playing games! We’ve known each other a long time.” One thing Jules could never doubt was Charlie’s ethics.
Jules just shrugged and sat back down. “What do you want to know?”
“All of it, tell me everything from the beginning.”
Charlie already knew most of it. John had told him what he knew, and Charlie had gone into the containment area checking samples. He then went to Matt Hanson, demanding to know how the inventory records got changed. The physical inventory and the records were in complete accord. The problem with that was Lorne Bridger’s worksheet. Charlie had known Lorne as long as Jules but had been much closer personally. Both were lab researchers with impeccable
