Terminal (41 page)

“Come on,” he insisted. “I wouldn’t be breaking in here unless I thought it was mighty important. Something bizarre is going on, and there might be some answers here. Trust me.”

“What if someone comes?” Janet asked. She gave another nervous glance over her shoulder.

“No one is going to come,” Sean said. “It’s seven-thirty Sunday morning. Besides, I’m only going to look around. We’ll be out of here in fifteen minutes, I promise. And if it makes you feel any better, we’ll leave a ten-dollar bill for the window.”

After everything they’d been through, Janet figured there wasn’t much point in resisting now. She let Sean help her through the window.

They were standing in a men’s lavatory. There was the scented smell of disinfectant coming from an oval pink cake in the base of the urinal attached to the wall.

“Fifteen minutes!” Janet said as they cautiously opened the door.

Outside the men’s room was a hall running the length of the building. A cursory check of the floor revealed a large laboratory across from the men’s room that also ran the length of the building. On the same side as the men’s room were a ladies’ room, a storeroom, an office, and a stairwell.

Sean opened each door and peered inside. Janet looked over his shoulder. Entering the laboratory proper he walked down the central aisle, glancing from side to side. The floor was a gray vinyl, the cabinets a lighter gray plastic laminant, and the countertops stark white.

“Looks like a normal, garden-variety clinical lab,” he said.

“All the usual equipment.” He paused in the microbiological section and looked into an incubator filled with petri dishes.

“Are you surprised?” Janet asked.

“No, but I expected more,” Sean said. “I don’t see a pathology section where they’d process biopsies. I was told the biopsies are sent here.”

Returning down the main hall, Sean went to the stairwell. He mounted the steps. At the top was a stout metal door. It was locked.

“Uh oh,” Sean said. “This might take more than fifteen minutes.”

“You promised,” Janet said.

“So I lied,” Sean said as he inspected the lock. “If I can find some appropriate tools it might be sixteen minutes.”

“It’s been fourteen already,” Janet said.

“Come on,” Sean said. “Let’s see if we can find something to act as a tension bar and some heavy wire to use as picks.” He retreated down the stairs. Janet followed.

S
TERLING’S CHARTERED
Sea King touched down with a squeal of rubber at seven-forty-five in the morning at the Key West airport and taxied over to general aviation. At the commercial terminal right next door an American Eagle commuter plane was in the final boarding process.

By the time Sterling had gotten a call back from the charter company it had been close to five
A.M.
After some persuasion which included a promise of extra money, the plane was supposed to have departed around six, but because of refueling problems it wasn’t ready to leave until six-forty-five.

Both Sterling and Wayne took advantage of the delay to catch some sleep, first at the Edgewater Beach Hotel, then in the waiting area at the airport. Then they had slept most of the flight.

Arriving at the general aviation building in Key West, Sterling saw a short balding man in a floral print short-sleeved shirt gazing out the front window. He was holding a steaming foam cup.

As Sterling and Wayne deplaned, the balding man came out and introduced himself. He was Kurt Wanamaker. He was of stocky build with a broad, suntanned face. What hair he had was bleached by the sun.

“I went by the lab about seven-fifteen,” Kurt said on the way to his Chrysler Cherokee. “Everything was quiet. So I think you’ve beaten them if they are planning on coming at all.”

“Let’s go directly to the lab,” Sterling said. “I’d like to be there if and when Mr. Murphy breaks in. Then we could do more than merely deliver him to the police.”

“T
HIS SHOULD
work,” Sean said. He had his eyes tightly closed while he fiddled with the two ballpoint pen refills. He’d bent the end of one to a right angle to serve as a tension bar.

“What exactly are you doing in there?” Janet asked.

“I told you back at Forbes,” Sean said. “When we were trying to get in the chart vault. It’s called raking the pins. There are five of the little guys in there keeping the cylinder from turning. Ah, there we go.” The lock opened with a click. The door swung in.

Sean entered first. Since there were no windows, the interior was as dark as a moonless night, save for the light that spread up through the stairwell. Groping on the wall to the left of the door, Sean’s hand hit against a panel of switches. He flipped them all on at once and the entire ceiling lit up in a wink.

“Well, look at this!” Sean said in utter amazement. Here was the lab he’d expected to see at the Forbes Cancer Center research building. It was enormous, encompassing the entire floor. It was also very white, with its white floor tiles, white cabinets, and white walls.

Slowly Sean walked down the center aisle, appreciating the equipment. “Everything is brand new,” he said admiringly. He put his hand on a desktop machine. “And strictly top notch. This is an automated southern blotting instrument. It runs at least twelve thousand dollars. And here is the latest chemiluminescence spectrophotometer. It’s a cool twenty-three.
And over there is a high phase liquid chromatography unit. That’s around twenty grand. And here’s an automatic cell sorter. That’s at least one hundred and fifty thousand. And my God!”

Sean stopped in awe in front of a peculiar egg-shaped apparatus. “Don’t let your credit card get near to this big guy,” he said. “It’s a nuclear magnetic resonator. You have any idea what this baby costs?”

Janet shook her head.

“Try half a million dollars,” Sean said. “And if they have that, it means they have an X-ray defractor as well.”

Walking on, Sean came to a glass-enclosed area. Inside he could see a Type III maximum containment hood as well as banks and banks of tissue culture incubators. Sean tried the glass door. It opened out, so he had to work against the suction holding it closed. In order to prevent the escape of any organisms, the pressure inside the viral lab was kept lower than the rest of the laboratory.

Stepping into the maximum containment area, Sean motioned for Janet to stay where she was. First he went to a floor freezer and opened its hood. The temperature on an internal gauge stood at minus seventy degrees Fahrenheit. Nestled inside the freezer were multiple racks containing small vials. Each vial contained a frozen viral culture.

Closing the freezer, Sean glanced in some of the tissue culture incubators. They were being kept at ninety-eight point six degrees Fahrenheit, mimicking the normal internal temperature of a human being.

Moving on to the desk, Sean picked up some electron photomicrographs of isometric viruses as well as accompanying engineering-style drawings of the viral capsids. The drawings were done to study the icosahedral symmetry of the viral shells and included actual measurement of the capsomeres. Sean noted that the viral particle had an overall diameter of 43 nanometers.

Leaving the maximum containment area, Sean proceeded into an area in which he felt very much at home. A whole section of the lab seemed dedicated to oncogene study, just
what Sean was doing back in Boston. The difference, however, was that in this lab the equipment was all brand new. Sean longingly looked at shelf upon shelf of appropriate reagents for the isolation of oncogenes and their products, the oncoproteins.

“This place is state of the art in every regard,” he said. In the oncogene section there were additional tissue culture incubators the size of thousand-bottle wine coolers. He opened the door of one and glanced at the cell lines. “This is a place I could work,” he said, closing the incubator.

“Is this what you expected?” Janet asked. She’d followed behind like a puppy except when he went into the maximum containment area.

“More than I expected,” Sean said. “This must be where Levy works. I’d guess that most of this equipment has come from the off-limits area of the sixth floor of the Forbes research building.”

“What is all this telling you?” Janet asked.

“It’s telling me I need a few hours in the lab back at Forbes,” Sean said. “I believe…”

Sean didn’t get to finish. The sounds of voices and footsteps were heard coming up the stairway. Janet put a hand over her mouth in panic. Sean grabbed her, his eyes desperately sweeping that area of the lab for a place to hide. There was no escape.

March 7
Sunday, 8:05 AM

“
H
ere they are!” Wayne Edwards announced. He’d just pulled open a stout metal door to a small storage closet near the glass-enclosed maximum containment lab.

Sean and Janet blinked with the sudden intrusion of light.

Sterling stepped toward Wayne’s discovery. Kurt was at his side.

“They may not look like fugitives or agents provocateurs,” Sterling said. “Though of course we know the truth.”

“Out of the closet!” Wayne commanded.

A subdued and remorseful Janet and a defiant Sean stepped out into the bright light.

“You people should not have left the airport last night,” Sterling scolded. “And to think of the effort we’d expended on your behalf to thwart your abduction. Some gratitude. I’m curious to know if you’re aware of how much trouble you’ve caused.”

“How much trouble I
am
causing,” Sean corrected.

“Ah, Dr. Mason mentioned you were brash,” Sterling said. “Well, we’ll allow you to vent your impertinence on the Key West police. They can do battle with their Miami counterparts as to jurisdiction of your case now that you’ve committed a felony here as well.”

Sterling picked up a phone in preparation to dial.

Sean pulled the long-dormant gun from his jacket pocket and pointed it at him. “Put the phone down,” he commanded.

Janet sucked in her breath at the sight of the gun in Sean’s hand.

“Sean!” she cried. “No!”

“Shut up,” Sean snapped. The threesome surrounding him in a wide arc made him nervous. The last thing he wanted to do was let Janet give them an opportunity to overpower him.

As Sterling replaced the receiver, Sean motioned for the three men to group together.

“This is extremely foolish behavior,” Sterling commented. “Breaking and entering in the possession of a deadly weapon is a far more serious crime than mere breaking and entering.”

“Into the closet!” Sean commanded, motioning toward the space he and Janet had just vacated.

“Sean, this is going too far!” Janet said. She stepped up to Sean.

“Get out of my way!” Sean snarled. He shoved her roughly to the side.

Already dismayed at the appearance of the gun, Janet was doubly shocked at the sudden change in Sean’s personality. The cruel and vicious sound of his voice and the expression on his face cowed her.

Sean succeeded in herding the three men into the narrow closet. He quickly closed and locked the door behind them. Pocketing the gun, he moved some sizable furniture against the door, including a heavy five-drawer file cabinet.

Satisfied, he grabbed Janet’s hand and started toward the exit. Janet tried to hold back. They got halfway to the stairway when she managed to pull free.

“I’m not going with you,” she said.

“What are you talking about?” Sean whispered forcibly.

“The way you talked to me back there,” she said. “I don’t know you.”

“Please!” Sean voiced through clenched teeth. “That was theatrics for the benefit of the others. If things don’t go the way I imagine they will, you’ll be able to contend that you were coerced into this whole affair. With the work I have to do back at the lab in Miami, there’s a chance things might get worse before they get better.”

“Be straight with me,” Janet said. “Stop talking in riddles. What’s going through your mind?”

“It’s a bit much to explain at the moment,” Sean said. “Right now we have to get out of here. I can’t tell how long that storage closet will hold those three. Once they’re out, the cat’s out of the bag.”

More confused than ever, Janet followed Sean down the stairs, through the first-floor lab, and out the front of the building. Kurt Wanamaker’s Cherokee was angled in from the street. Sean motioned for Janet to get in.

“Convenient and thoughtful of them to have left the keys,” Sean said.

“As if that would have made any difference to you,” Janet said.

Sean started the car, but then immediately killed the engine.

“What now?” Janet asked.

“In the excitement I forgot that I need some of those reagents from upstairs,” Sean said. He got out of the car and leaned in the window. “This won’t take but a minute. I’ll be right back.”

Janet tried to protest, but Sean was gone. Not that he’d cared much about her feelings about any of this mess so far. She got out of the car and began to pace the length of it nervously.

Thankfully, Sean returned in a few minutes carrying a large cardboard box which he shoved into the back seat. He got in behind the wheel and started the car. Janet got in next to him. They pulled out into the road and headed north.

“See if there’s a map in the glove compartment,” he said.

Janet searched and found one. She opened it up to the Florida Keys. Sean took the map and studied it while driving. “We can’t count on getting all the way to Miami with this car,” he said. “As soon as those three get out of the closet, they’ll realize it’s missing. The police will start looking for it and since there’s only one road north, it won’t be hard to find.”

“I’m a fugitive,” Janet marveled. “Just like the man said when they found us in the closet. I don’t believe it. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

“There’s an airport at Marathon,” Sean said, ignoring Janet’s
comment. “We’ll leave the car there and either rent a car or fly depending on the flight schedule.”

“I presume we’re going back to Miami,” Janet said.

“Absolutely,” Sean said. “We’ll go directly to Forbes.”

“What’s in the cardboard box?” Janet asked.