Repairman Jack [04]-All the Rage (7 page)

His parents had brought him here from Herzegovina at age five. His father had been a Chetnik during World War Two who had found it impossible to live under the Communists afterward. He escaped and brought his family to Brooklyn, where they had never felt at ease. Milos had spent most of his childhood and adolescence scrubbing his speech of any trace of his foreign roots. He'd succeeded. By high school he could speak accent-free English. But as he'd moved into quasi-legal circles, he learned that a bit of an accent could be useful—for charming or threatening, depending on the context. So by age twenty Milos Dragovic had backpedaled and begun imitating his father's English.

"It's not there to give you!" Edwards wailed, cowering in his seat.

"Why not? You are selling to someone else? Yes? This is why you don't give me shipment?"

"God, no!" said Garrison. "We'd
never
do anything like that!"

"You damn better not! If I find you give Dragovic's Loki to someone else, I wring your necks like chick-ens!" He pressed his two fists together, thumb to thumb, and twisted.

Edwards winced.

"So," Milos said, placing his hands on his hips. "If no one else has my Loki, where is it?"

"We don't have it!" Edwards said. He looked like he was going to cry.

Milos hid a smile. He loved torturing these wimps. He knew they ran dry every month, knew damn well they weren't selling to anybody else, but he couldn't resist striking the fear of God—in this case, a vengeful god called Milos—into their blue-blooded hearts. He looked forward to these little meetings. And this windowless, soundproof, electronically secure boardroom was perfect. He could shout, throw things, and no one outside had a clue as to what was going on. Milos preferred to drop in without notice, sans bodyguards—he didn't want anyone else in his organization knowing the origin of Loki—and terrorize the wimps for a few minutes, then take off, leaving them quaking in their brown-stained undershorts.

All except Monnet.

Keep up the game face, Doctor, Milos thought. I've got something special saved, just for you, something that will wipe that smug expression clean off your ugly little face.

Monnet sighed. "How many times do we have to go through this? The Loki molecule becomes unstable. When that happens we need to secure a new template. We will have that by tomorrow. We will start running it immediately. We will test its potency and then go into full-scale production."

Milos leaned forward on the table, glaring at the smaller man. "Is Dr. Monnet"—he made sure to mispronounce it Moe-
nett
—"saying that I am stupid?"

Monnet held his gaze. "Quite the contrary. I think you are far more intelligent than you would like us to think. Which makes these transparent displays of ferocity fruitless and redundant."

Monnet's blase tone made Milos want to rip his head off. But he calmed himself and decided it was time for an about-face. Time to reconfirm their suspicions that he was utterly psycho.

He straightened and flashed them his best smile. "You are right, of course," he said softly, genially. "We should not fight. We are brothers, yes? In my heart I trust you as no others." He clapped his hands once. "So. When should your brother expect his next shipment?"

Garrison and Edwards turned nervously toward Monnet.

"We'll do a trial run of the new template tomorrow, test it late Friday or early Saturday morning. If all goes well, we'll start production immediately. Because of Memorial Day, the first shipment won't go out till Tuesday morning. But it will be a big one."

"Excellent! I will be out of town for the weekend"—he caught the looks of relief on Garrison's and Edwards's faces—"but I will stay in touch."

"Going to Europe?" Edwards said, a hopeful gleam in his eye.

"No," Milos said. "The Hamptons.
East
Hampton. I am having housewarming parties for my new home on the ocean. I would invite all of you, but I know that you will be too busy making my Loki, yes?"

"Absolutely," Garrison said, with Edwards vigorously nodding in agreement.

Milos fixed his gaze on Monnet. As usual, he hadn't been able to rattle him with threats and noise. But he had something special for Dr. Monnet, something he'd saved till now.

"I especially wish the good doctor could join the parties. I will be serving a nice little wine I picked up recently. A Bordeaux. You have heard of Chateau Petrus, yes?"

He saw Monnet stiffen. His tone was guarded. "Yes."

"But of course you have. It is from your homeland. I am silly. Yes, I bought six bottles of Chateau Petrus 1947 Cru Exceptionnel last night, and I will be drinking them all this weekend. It is such a shame you cannot be there to have some. I understand it is quite good."

Milos watched with glee as the color faded from Monnet's cheeks, leaving him wide-eyed, livid, and—for once—speechless.

"Have a nice day," Milos said, then turned, unlocked the door, and pushed out into the hall.

6

Luc fought to regain his composure as the door shut behind Dragovic. If he had a gun right now, he would walk out into the hall and shoot the man. He'd never fired a gun before but somehow, with Dragovic as the target, he was sure he could manage it.

At least he would if he could make his legs work. Dragovic's words had left him weak in the knees. Had that… that ape been tailing him? That could be the only explanation. One of Dragovic's men must have followed him to Sotheby's and called his boss when Luc started bidding. Dragovic had sat home and outbid him.

Why? Luc wondered. Certainly not because his Slavic palate could appreciate a fine Pomerol. The only reason could be… simply to frustrate me.

Again, why? Because I don't tremble whenever he looks my way?

If the wine episode was meant to drive home that Milos Dragovic was not a man to be taken lightly, he'd wasted his money. Luc had been forced to accept that.

Brad Edwards moaned as he stepped to the door and relocked it. "How did we ever get involved with this maniac?"

"You know how," Kent Garrison said. He mopped his florid face on his shirtsleeve. "And you damn well know why."

Brad nodded slowly, sorrowfully. "Yes, I do." He dropped his tidy frame back into a chair. "But what's worse, I don't see how we'll ever be free of him."

"I do," Luc said, finally finding his voice.

His partners sprang upright, chorusing, "You do? How?"

"By not supplying him with any more Loki."

"Not funny, Luc!" Brad said, holding up a manicured hand as if to block the words in midair. "Don't even
joke
about that!"

"I'm not," he said, feeling the dread slip over him. "We may not have a choice."

The sound of Kent's nervous swallow filled the tiny room. "You mean what you said about the source drying up? You don't think that's happened, do you?"

"No. We're safe this time. I would have been informed to the contrary." At least Luc hoped Oz would have called. "But I have my doubts, serious doubts, about next time."

"Oh, God!" Brad said, visibly trembling. "You mean this could be it? In four weeks we come up empty? Dragovic will kill us!"

"Yes," Luc said softly. "He probably will. Or at least try."

But he'll have to find me first, Luc thought.

He could get lost in Provence where no one, especially a Serb swine, would find him. But Kent and Brad…

Kent made a noise that sounded like a sob. "We have to tell him, prepare him, convince him that it's not our fault!"

"Do you really think you can do that?" Luc said. "The man is an animal. But despite all his threats we've had nothing to fear from him because we are the world's
only
source of Loki. But once we stop supplying him he'll think we're either holding out for a higher price or we've found another buyer—that's the way they do things in his world. And if he can't have it, he'll finish us. Our only hope is to stabilize the Loki molecule. If we—"

"But you
can't!"
Brad cried, his voice rising toward a wall. "You've been trying to stabilize the molecule since you discovered it and you've failed every time. We spent a
fortune
on that lab of yours. For what? Nothing! And then that Macintosh fellow couldn't do it either. So let's face facts—the Loki molecule can't be stabilized!"

"It can. The problem simply needs a new approach. The new researcher I've hired is quite brilliant and—"

"And what?" Garrison said, his face as red as his hair. "If she's so smart she'll learn too much and then try to blackmail us like Macintosh."

"Nadia is not the type."

When their salesman, Gleason, had mentioned Nadia Radzminsky as a replacement for Macintosh, Luc had been instantly interested. He remembered her for more than that one wild afternoon back in his professor days; she had been a standout student with an intuitive feel for molecular biology. He'd seen her name—second or third in the queue, to be sure—on a number of groundbreaking papers over the last few years. And after her first interview, during which she'd discoursed on his own recent papers so perceptively, he'd known she was their only hope.

"And besides, I've added extra encryption to my personal files. She'll know only what I tell her." He looked around the table. "And we're all onboard about her bonus?"

The other two nodded, Brad a bit reluctantly. "Helluva bonus," he said.

Kent leaned back and ran both hands through his damp red hair. "Worth every cent if she does it." He cast a sharp look at Luc. "And doesn't try to screw us."

Luc wasn't worried about Nadia. Her reverence for him was touching. He'd use that and the bonus—and throw in some warmth and intimacy, just for the delicious hell of it, perhaps—to keep her on track.

"Christ,',' Brad said. "We only have four weeks. When does she start?"

"I'm introducing her to the Loki molecule today. She'll start work on the new template molecule tomorrow."

"Four weeks," Brad whispered. "It can't be done!"

"It can," Luc said.

It
must
, he thought.

The walls of the small room suddenly seemed to close in on him. Brad had had it built as soon as they'd started dealing with Dragovic. A good idea, too, since all too frequently they had to meet to discuss delicate matters—
felonious
matters—and an electronically shielded, soundproof room fit the bill. But the lack of windows gave Luc a caged feeling, and now the air seemed to be going sour.

He rose and headed for the door. "As a matter of fact, I'm supposed to meet her now in the dry lab."

He unlocked the door and pushed it open slowly in case someone was hurrying down the hall. They'd had to reverse its swing in order to assure a soundproof seal when it was closed. He stepped into the hall and breathed the cooler air. At least it seemed cooler. But still he felt weak.

He leaned against the wall and wondered how it had all gone so wrong.

When Kent and Brad had approached him to be part of a new venture, to lend his name and reputation to the company they were starting up, the future had looked so bright. All things seemed possible. Now it was all turning to shit. He wanted to scream.

To think that an innocent investigation into a strange-looking creature's blood had brought him to this nadir point in his life—a drug trafficker, a murderer. How much lower could he sink?

It was up to Nadia now. He'd tried every way he could imagine to stabilize the molecule but had run up against a wall. Maybe he was too old; maybe his creative juices had dried up; maybe it was the stress dealing with Dragovic and the constant sense of impending doom, the realization that his whole world could implode at any second. Whatever the cause, he'd found himself incapable of breaching that wall.

But a new mind, brilliant, unfettered by such oppressive concerns, might succeed where he'd foundered.

Four weeks… Luc squeezed his eyes shut, You must not fail me, Nadia. Everything depends on you.

7

Nadia sat alone in the darkened room, a bulbous shape floating in the air before her: a molecule of lovastatin, the cholesterol-lowering drug that had gone off-patent; Merck originally had an exclusive on it as Mevacor, but GEM now sold its generic equivalent at a much lower price.

Without taking her eyes off the molecule, Nadia tapped her keyboard, rolled her trackball, and an extra methyl group appeared and attached itself to one end of the larger mass. She rotated the 3-D image 360 degrees in two planes to make sure the new group had the proper orientation, then:
voila
—lovastatin had become simvastatin, Merck's other lipid-lowering agent, Zocor. But Zocor was still patent-protected, so that one was off-limits to the production department. For now, at least.

Nadia loved the dry lab and all its state-of-the-art equipment. No jars of reagents, no pipettes, no ovens or incubators—every experiment and chemical reaction in this small spare room was virtual, thanks to the holographic molecular imager. Nadia knew it had to cost a fortune, far more than any other pharmaceutical company GEM's size would spend. But Dr. Monnet had told her that GEM had made a commitment to original research. They weren't going to be a me-too company forever. The dry lab was ample proof of that.

Nadia sighed. She was restless. She felt she'd had enough practice now. She had the imager down cold. She was more than ready for her first real challenge.

"Hey," said a familiar voice behind her. "Can we play
DNA Wars
on that?"

Nadia gasped and spun in her chair. Her words came in a rush when she saw who it was.

"Doug! My God, what are you doing here! How'd you get in? You'll be fired if anyone sees you!"

Strong arms pulled her from the chair and enfolded her. She wrapped her arms around Doug and breathed in his cologne—Woods, she knew, because she'd given it to him for his birthday. Nadia held him close, loving the solid feel of him.

Douglas Gleason, a fair-haired six-footer with an easy smile and merry blue eyes. A natural charmer whose easygoing manner hid a tenacious, razor-sharp mind. He was dressed for work in his gray suit—the same suit he'd been wearing the day they met.