Any Minute Now (18 page)

When
, not
if
. The difference wasn't lost on Valerie. “St. Vincent has already done damage. Paulus was a nervous wreck when he showed up at my house.”

“And he's staying there. This was anticipated. Make him comfortable. I want him where you can keep an eye on him. I want him close to you.”

“I don't think that will be a problem.”

“See that it isn't,” Preach said in that tone of voice she had quickly learned brooked no contradiction.

*   *   *

DARPA was in a constant state of modified lockdown, as secure as Fort Knox. Nevertheless, even in a facility where secretive projects were as common as houseflies, there were three areas within it so restricted almost no one had access. Almost. Paulus Lindstrom was in charge of one of these. A magnetic chip embedded in the pad of his left forefinger and an iris scanner were employed to gain access.

Lindstrom entered and immediately stepped into an ultrasonic cleaning chamber. The outer door closed, a red light switched to blue and the inner door slid open. He went through, into the heart of the Mobius Project.

The laboratory was windowless, the frigid air constantly cleaned, filtered for microbes, and recirculated. It was large, high ceilinged, and compartmentalized into four discreet areas, Blue, Green, Yellow, and Red. Lindstrom had two assistants: Ben and Jerry. The jokes around the confluence of their names had long gone stale and now were never mentioned. In the early days, either Ben or Jerry would bring in ice cream, but those days were gone, too.

Maybe they had ended when the first chimp had torn off its face, for, contrary to what Lindstrom had told St. Vincent, there had been more than one simian subject to end its life in this grotesque fashion. Lindstrom had told St. Vincent what he wanted to hear and, in so doing, had descended into an entirely new level of hell, one that Dante would not recognize.

It had never occurred to him that St. Vincent would want to try out Mobius in the field at this far too early stage. Progress, as all scientists knew, was not achieved in a straight line. It was, in its way, akin to psychiatry, where it was often one step forward, two steps back, or, if you were exceedingly fortunate, two steps forward and one back. Those who stood outside the laboratory, who had no knowledge of or interest in the scientific method, could not understand. What they understood—what they wanted—were results. Nothing else interested them. This was why he had lied to St. Vincent. The idea of his funding being cut was intolerable. But now he had sent a human being into the field, his mind altered by the Mobius implants.

God have mercy on his soul, Lindstrom thought as he nodded good morning to his assistants. Ben and Jerry were already busy in Green, prepping the first official human subjects for the Mobius implants. Ben and Jerry had had nothing to do with the male subject St. Vincent had provided Lindstrom, who had remained anonymous, referred to by St. Vincent, and now thought of by Lindstrom, simply as Alpha. “For your own protection, Doctor,” St. Vincent had said, though Lindstrom was disinclined to believe him. This had less to do with any sixth sense toward humans—Lindstrom's condition made it nearly impossible for him to read human emotions—than his habit of believing all people he disliked were liars. Valerie would have recognized this as another facet of Lindstrom's childish behavior, and she would have been right. However, in this instance it served him in good stead. St. Vincent had nothing positive in mind for Mobius. Such was the nature of Lindstrom's brain that it never occurred to him that nothing good could ever have come from a project like Mobius to begin with.

The idea behind Mobius was, at its root, simple enough, and had more to do with the psychology of the brain than it did with any scientific breakthrough. In fact, it had come to Lindstrom, like a bolt out of the blue, when he was reading an account of a deeply charismatic homicidal maniac who somehow persuaded a woman and her ten-year-old daughter to come home with him. Again, inexplicably, he had persuaded the mother to allow him to sexually assault the daughter. All of this, though terribly sordid, was, sadly, not so very uncommon. What struck him, however, was the fact that the maniac had stood before a full-length mirror and watched himself and his victim as he penetrated her from behind.

This set in motion a thread of thought in Lindstrom's mind. One of his college professors had posited that the human brain sees the world in two ways: real and unreal. When, for whatever reason, this dichotomy is interrupted, the brain veers off course. Fantasy becomes as real as reality. What the maniac was doing during his assault was trying to reassure himself that his actions were real and not a fantasy his mind had concocted. In other words, his connection with reality somehow had become disabled. He could no longer distinguish between cause and effect. His mind occupied a space outside that of his actions.

What would happen, Lindstrom had thought, if he could find a way to artificially induce this disconnect. He would thus create a man—or woman—without a moral center, someone who would commit any atrocity and not feel responsibility. This was the premise of Mobius and, to his credit, with triptyne Lindstrom had succeeded. But only up to a point. There were those pesky chimps for whom the disconnect was intolerable. They looked at themselves in their water bowl and did not know what they saw. Rather than live in that state, they ripped that unknown face off.

“All set, Doctor,” Jerry said.

“The subjects' vitals are normal,” Ben said.

“Then they're ready for Blue,” Lindstrom said via an intercom.

He watched through a two-way mirror as his assistants led the subjects—one man, one woman—from Green to Blue. He had decided to use a male and a female because the success rate among female chimps was unaccountably higher than among males.

Ben and Jerry laid the two subjects facedown on operating tables set up in Blue, affixed oxygen masks so they wouldn't suffocate when sedated, then administered Propofol IV. After scrubbing his hands, wrists, and forearms, Lindstrom entered Blue to begin the procedure of implanting the triptyne into the place where the spine met the skull. The alkaloid had to be delivered in just the right way at just the right dose. From this moment on, every move, every decision was critical.

As he began work, Ben said, “A guy walks into a bar. There's nobody there except the bartender and a beautiful woman. The man says, ‘I'm buying that woman a drink.' The bartender says, ‘You don't want to do that. She's a lesbian.' The man says, ‘I don't care.' After the woman gets the drink, she raises the glass to her benefactor. The man strolls over to her and says, ‘Hi, I'm Bill Williams from Terre Haute. So how are things in Beirut?'”

Jerry almost doubled over in laughter. Not to be outdone, he said, “A boy catches his mom and dad having sex. He watches them for a moment, then asks them what they're doing. His dad replies, ‘Making you a brother or sister.' The boy thinks a minute, then says, ‘Do her doggy style; I want a puppy.'”

More guffawing and general hilarity ensued.

Lindstrom made a face. “I fail to see why you two feel the need to tell what I assume to be jokes while crucial matters are in progress.”

“Tension,” Jerry said.

Lindstrom's mind was firmly on the procedure. “What about it?”

“Sometimes it needs to be broken.”

“Again, why?”

“Because it gets to be too much.”

“You're in the wrong profession,” Lindstrom said.

“Forget it, Jake,” Ben said with a wry smile, “he's Chinatown.”

Lindstrom didn't bother to ask who Jake was; he didn't care. He had other, more pressing matters to deal with, such as narrowing his focus. He did not want to think about who these subjects were, where they came from, how they were chosen, or what they had been told. As to the last, lies, he was certain. He kept his thoughts tightly concentrated as his hands went about their business. Advances in medicine would never have been possible without subjects such as these. They were part and parcel of history. As such they were no less heroic than the men and women in the Armed Forces serving in battle zones overseas. If Mobius could shorten those battles by even a week, Lindstrom told himself, as the instruments he wielded penetrated skin and flesh, all sacrifices would be worth it.

“Doctor,” Jerry said, serious at last, “are we going to give these subjects the polyprednaline tabs to take for the first ten days?”

“I don't think we have a choice.” Lindstrom stanched a bit of bleeding with a sterile pad. “The polypred seemed to help in the final simian trial.” Alpha had been given a ten-day supply with urgent instruction not to miss a dose.

“With all due respect, Doctor, it's too soon to tell.”

Lindstrom lifted his head for a moment. “Get back to work, please, Jerry.”

As Ben handed Lindstrom the syringe, Jerry switched on the music and the Beatles' “A Day in the Life” exploded through the operating theater. The volume made Lindstrom wince, but he said nothing. It was imperative to keep his assistants happy, as he had neither the time nor the inclination to train replacements. Plus which, he worried for their future if they ever did quit—a future that was sure to be determined by St. Vincent. He feared their future would be very short indeed.

 

16

Everyone was asleep, even the flight attendant. Charlie had fought sleep for as long as she could, then she, too, succumbed. Everyone was asleep, except for Whitman. He had noticed Flix surreptitiously swallow a pill before he sank back into his seat.

Whitman stole across the aisle and, kneeling, rummaged through Flix's pack until his fingers curled around a smooth cylinder. It was a pill container, made of brown plastic. Opening it, he shook out a couple of tablets, expecting a painkiller for Flix's headaches. They were a charcoal gray, unlike anything he'd ever seen before, but obviously a prescription medication. A typed label on the cylinder said:
POLYPREDNALINE. TAKE TWO DAILY BY MOUTH, MORNING AND NIGHT, FOR TEN DAYS.
What the hell was polyprednaline? Whitman wondered. According to the label the prescription had been filled by Valient Pharmacy on Connecticut Avenue. There was also a phone number.

A hand on his shoulder made him start. He turned to see Charlie standing over him.

“What the fuck are you doing?”
she mouthed silently.

Whitman shoved the tabs back into the cylinder, replaced it in Flix's pack, and, rising, guided her to the rear of the plane. The galley was to their right, the toilet to their left. The flight attendant was sound asleep in her seat just in front of the closed door to the cockpit. Though they were alone, they stood very close together, speaking in whispers.

“I want to know what Flix is taking,” he said. “Do you know what polyprednaline is?”

“What do I look like, a pharmacist?”

Which gave Whitman the idea. He checked his watch, calculated where they were and backtracked the time in D.C. Just before five p.m. He pulled out his sat phone, dialed the number of Valient Pharmacy from memory. He waited patiently for someone to pick up, but got only a voice-mail message: “The pharmacy is closed at this time. Please call back during regular hours.” If five in the afternoon wasn't regular hours, what was?

Utilizing the jet's Wi-Fi, he typed Valient's name and address into the Google page on his mobile's browser. Nothing. Then he brought up Google Earth, inputted the full address, watched as the globe of Earth spun until it honed in on the United States, then D.C. On Connecticut Avenue, he switched to street view, searching for the address. The program stopped in front of the storefront at the address on the medication container: it was Valient Dry Cleaners. “Special Orders Welcome,” he read. Not as special as polyprednaline, he reckoned.

Charlie, witness to the search, said, “What the hell is going on?”

Whitman shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

“We'd better keep an eagle eye on your
compadre
from now on.”

“I'd trust Flix with my life.”

“Commendable, but in this case irrelevant,” Charlie said. “Is that man the Felix Orteño you knew?”

*   *   *

“You look like you've gained some much needed weight,” St. Vincent said on his next visit to the Bethesda Institute of Mary Immaculate. “That's good.”

“I'm feeling much improved.” Lucy, having bribed one of the guards, had received advance notice of his visit, and had prepared herself. “Like a new woman.”

“Even better.” St. Vincent had not taken off his overcoat. His wrists lay on his knees, looking like weapons at rest.

They were in Lucy's room, she sitting on the edge of her bed, he on a chair he had turned around from its place by the desk. As protocol dictated, the door was open to the hallway behind.

“I imagine you'd rather be seeing your uncle,” he said.

She cocked her head. “What gives you that idea?”

She could see that she had surprised him.

“Well, I don't know, he's family, after all.”

“I hate his guts,” Lucy said with no little venom. “I hate my mother.”

Frown lines appeared on his forehead. “You can't mean that.”

“If I had the chance I'd kill them both.” She uttered this with a kind of chilling neutrality. “That clear enough for you?”

“No.”

“My mother stood by while my father abused me over and over.”

St. Vincent shook his head. “How could a father do that, Lucy?”

“You're a man. You tell me.”

He sat for a moment, hands now clasped together, fingers intertwined, as if changing his aspect from inquisitional jailer to priestly confessor. “I have no answers for you. I'm not that kind of man.”

His personality was that mercurial, a quality Lucy recognized and noted for future exploitation.