The Leaves in Winter (41 page)

Janis reeled back. “My God! They used the wrong suicide gene!”

As Faye drilled farther into the text, Janis rolled backwards in her chair to get to her own workstation across the way. Waking her console from hibernation, she set about finding her own references in the material from Knockout Mouse.

She called out to Faye. “
Natick
Laboratories…”

“The one near
Boston
?”

“Yeah, they’re a division of the Army’s Solider and Biological Chemical Command – SBCCOM. It says here that the Army’s terminator systems were developed by
Boston
University
working with a biotechnology research unit at
Natick
. The anti-material Pseudomonas species engineered by the Navy uses a lethal gene from the bacteria Streptomyces Avidinii.”

Stunned, Faye leaned back in her chair. “How did they get the wrong one?”

Janis continued to search the Knockout Mouse material. “Here it is…”

“What?” Faye got up and joined Janis at her console.

Janis sat back. “When 1st Protocol was engineered by The Group, the Army was doing its research with one suicide gene – the one from Streptomyces Avidinii. At that time, they only had one suicide gene.”

Faye looked at the console and saw what Janis saw.

“By the time The Project scrambled to finish the sabotage agent, the Army had expanded their research. They were testing a different suicide gene from another Streptomyces bacterium. The Project must have grabbed the wrong one. Could it be as simple as that?”

Janis grimaced in perverse amazement. “Up to that point, there had only been one. So why check? The one you pick must be the one, right?”

“Remember what The Project abstract said – the sputnik’s aggressive growth is deleterious to Ghyvir-C, resulting in abortive forms and abnormal capsid assembly of the host virus. The Group had to know this. They had to make sure those abnormalities wouldn’t affect the payload.”

Janis closed her eyes. “But with a different suicide gene, there would be different capsid abnormalities. Ghyvir-C wasn’t engineered to deal with those.”

Faye returned to her station and sat down. “That’s how it happened.”

“That explains the crazy variance I’ve been chasing down all day.” Janis ran her hands back through her hair. “A clerical error; a stupid accident.”

“It’s like your Mom used to tell us,” mused Faye, her eyes tearing up. “Don’t play rough with anything you can’t repair or can’t do without.”

“Shit!” Janis stood and paced away her aggravation. “How do we repair it?”

Faye stood, preparing to go. “I wish we were trying to reverse delayed fertility. At least we could fail at that. I’ve had enough for one night. I’m going to bed.”

Janis joined her in the freight elevator headed up. For half the ride they said nothing to each other. Then Faye turned to Janis.

“This may be as good a time as any to tell you. I got a call from my doctor today.”

Janis came alert with concern. “About the baby?”

“About me – and the baby. It seems I have a risky pregnancy. It’s too soon to be alarmed but she tells me I should prepare to stay in bed if I want to keep it.”

“When did you find out?”

“Late this afternoon. She didn’t want to alarm me but needed to warn me, get me thinking about it in case I needed to shift things with the work I’m doing.”

Janis took her hand. “There’s no way you should be working 18-hour days. That’s got to stop.”

Faye started to cry. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t leave the work…but I want the baby.”

Janis hugged her. The elevators doors opened at the ground floor.

“Don’t worry about the work. You do what you need to do.”

“That’s just it! I can’t give up on the work. If a fix isn’t found, what good is it having a baby?”

Janis smoothed back her hair. “Don’t talk that way. There’s lots of time to do both – have the baby, then we’ll fix sterility.”

Faye buried her face into Janis’ shoulder. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what to do.”

“Whatever it is, you don’t need to decide right now. Let’s get some sleep. It’s not certain. The doctor said maybe. Let’s take it a day at a time. Come on…”

Janis led her out of the elevator, through the lobby, then outside. With arms around each other they walked back to Building 2 where their temporary apartments had been set up. Janis stayed until Faye was in bed and the lights were off.

Then Janis walked back to Building 3.

She walked the deserted hallways until she came to a corner room on the top floor. She paused at the door and watched as hallway security cameras pivoted on their mounts, following her every move.

She pushed on the door and stepped through darkness.

The blinds were open.

As she approached the windows, the lights of
Aguadilla
blazed up from below.

Clustered around the bed, vital sign monitors blinked and glowed with tiny indicator lights. The hum from watchful electronics filled the room.

Janis stepped to the side of the bed and looked down on her sleeping daughter.

She brushed back her hair with the tips of her fingers.

She watched the rise and fall of her breathing.

Then she sat down in a chair, bedside.

For the longest while she sat. She thought. She cried.

An hour before light returned in the east, she fell asleep.

Chapter 39

Off the coast of the Frioul Archipelago

Marseille
,
France

Awareness returned with disorientation and pain. Javier Francisco regained consciousness with the world swaying around him. Dizziness alone didn’t explain it. A splitting headache throbbed at the back of his skull. With great effort he opened his eyes. Lying on his back with hands tied behind him, he wondered where he was.

The night sky was overhead. Stars were in motion from side to side. All around was the smell of the sea. What was the last thing remembered?

Javier had come to Marseille to visit an informant, a man with a price for sharing the inside strategies of radical group New Class Order. The day had gone well. The meeting in the afternoon had been brief but helpful. His evening was open to enjoy. He gravitated to a club. At the bar he struck up a conversation with a young man. There was obvious attraction. All the signals were right. The young man invited him back to his place for some quick man-on-man love.

But they never got there.

The last thing Javier remembered was leaving the club and walking down the sidewalk. It was right after midnight when everything went dark.

Into the void went missing time.

A face appeared overhead. The stranger called out, “He’s awake.”

The sound of a zipper and a yank to the side jolted Javier. He raised his head long enough to look around. He could see he was zipped up in a body bag on the aft deck of a boat. Two men stood nearby; a third came out of the cabin. The cabin light caught the man’s face and Javier recognized him. It was André Bolard.

The leader of New Class Order stood over Javier and considered his fate.

“You have a choice to make,” announced André. “To be helpful or to be dead.”

“It doesn’t help you to kill me.”

André squatted down and grabbed Javier’s jaw with one hand while playing with the body bag’s zipper with the other.

“My friends don’t believe you’re going to be helpful so they put you in this weighted bag. They want to get back to shore and have some fun. The sooner they drop you overboard, the sooner the fun begins. I convinced them to wait. I thought I should check with you first.”

Javier fought vertigo and pain. “What do you want?”

André stood back up. “I like a good conspiracy theory. Unlike most people, I believe that memo between Eugene Mass and you was real. I think the two of you do all sorts of things together. I mean, besides being lovers.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Famous last words. Stick with that and they certainly will be.”

Javier could hear the ocean nearby. The thought of being zipped up alive in the body bag and shoved overboard was hitting home.

“I’m small time, a fixer, nothing big, nothing that would interest you.”

“That’s for me to decide.” André stepped closer to the fantail. “Tell me something I don’t know. Something about
Eugene
Mass.
Surprise me.”

Javier tried to concentrate but struggled to find something to say. “We have a place together in
Brussels
, in
Marie-Louise Square
…”

André paced. “I can read about that in any scandal magazine.”

Javier stammered through the pain. “…when we’re there, he likes to meet in the top floor bedroom, the one that faces the street.”

Dissatisfied, André jerked his head to signal the others.

One of the men zipped the body bag closed. The other pushed it overboard.

From inside the bag, Javier’s shouts could be heard.

“…no wait! Don’t do this! I’ll tell you whatever you want…!”

The body bag slid into blackness. It dropped off the fantail and splashed into the water. The weighted watertight bag headed for the bottom.

The men stood by and watched as a fifty foot tether uncurled and shot into the ocean after the bag. The other end of the line was secured to a deck cleat. After the full length of the line had uncoiled overboard, André stepped to a bench seat and sat down to wait a tantalizing few seconds.

“All right,” he ordered. “Haul him up.”

The two men pulled fist over fist on the rope until the body bag emerged from the sea. Hefting the weight of it back onboard, they watched with satisfaction as the man inside the bag struggled and shouted in panic.

André stood and approached the bag. He unzipped it enough to reveal Javier’s head, then gazed down on a man back from the dead.

“I think we should try that again.”

Javier heaved terrified breaths in and out.

Relaxed and casual, André asked again, “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“What do you want?” gasped Javier in terror.

André squatted down alongside him once again. “The memo says
3P will be a fait accompli
. Is 3P referring to 3rd Protocol?”

Javier was eager to comply. “Yes, yes it is.”

“What exactly is 3rd Protocol? Is it really a method to collapse the population?”

“That’s right. Yes, it’s a virus.”

For André, it was one thing to have suspicions; quite another to face confirmation. Every implication of what it all meant drove home and infuriated him.

“You’re going to tell me the plan. You’re going to tell me everything you know about 3rd Protocol. At any time, if I’m not satisfied with what I’m getting, I’ll let these gentlemen throw you away. And next time, they’ll disconnect the rope. Understand?”

Javier answered with a vigorous nod. He raised his head up and watched as one of the men disconnected the tether from the foot end of the body bag. If he was ever going to get out of this alive, he would have to give André Bolard something he didn’t know, something that was reasonable, but something that was explosive enough to warrant keeping Javier as a valuable resource, at least for the time being.

All Javier needed was to buy time. If he could get through this night, any way he could, maybe tomorrow would present opportunities for escape. But he had to think quickly. André was sharp. He’d see through a blatant attempt to lie his way out of this. It had to be something that André would accept. But most of all, it had to be something that, if possible, would protect Mass if not help him.

But how? How could Javier shift the situation, use it and hopefully live?

Javier thought back to the memo. André had quoted the memo. That was the place to start. If he could use something else from the memo, spin it in a way that fed into the drama André expected, but what?

André had said he liked a good conspiracy theory, so why not give him one.

Javier shivered away the feel of deep water coldness. He raised his head up off the deck and directed all his energy into his story, straight at André.

“There’s only one thing you need to know about 3rd Protocol…” Javier’s teeth chattered. “It’s the one thing everybody’s missed, even the intelligence services.”

André held his skepticism in reserve. “One thing…?”

Javier nodded. “The New World Harmony is more harmonious than people think. You have to watch for misdirection. The thing you believe the strongest is probably the thing they want you to believe. But it’s not the truth.”

André was restless. “What are you talking about?”

“NovoSenectus and GeLixCo. They’re made out to be such big competitors, rivals. But it’s all a sham. Eugene Mass and Curtis Labon are best of friends. They’re really partners.”

André was shocked. “Partners? How?”

“Mass takes the heat and gets all the attention so Labon is free to work silently in the background. But make no mistake; they both want the New World Harmony.”

“Are you talking about
GenLET
or 3rd Protocol?”

“All of it!” Javier put all his remaining energy into it. “They want the focus to be on
Mass.
That lets Labon develop 3rd Protocol without interference and without fear of being exposed.”

André drew near. “GeLixCo is creating 3rd Protocol?”

“Of course,” snapped Javier. “Mass is the perfect cover for him. But they’re all in it together. They all want the new class order –
GenLET
for the elite few and a population collapsed to a sustainable size in harmony with the planet. 3rd Protocol is real and they’re getting ready to release it. The masquerade in
Kansas
was the final sign. Every time you demonstrate or riot against Mass or NovoSenectus, you’re doing just what they want. They’re using you to draw attention away from the real action.”

André was neither believing nor disbelieving it. He stared down at Javier but could only read exhaustion and pain on his face.

“If GeLixCo is getting 3rd Protocol ready, where are they doing it?”

Javier thought back to days past working with Malcolm Stowe. “That’s the big secret now, isn’t it? No one’s told me for sure, but it could only be one place – their
Advanced
Research
Center
. It’s somewhere in the
Caribbean
.”

André stood and stared down at Javier a long while. Finally, he turned away.

“Take him below. Lock him up. We may need him again.”

As the two men dragged Javier into the boat, André stayed out on deck.

A dark ocean surrounded him. But an even darker plot needed to be stopped.