The Methuselah Gene (41 page)

“Screw you, man.”

There were no knobs on the TV.
 
No way to change the channel back.
 
So I advanced toward the kid in green.
 
And he got up to leave.

“Hold it,” I warned.
 
“Or I'm getting the airport police.”

“So
get'em
,” he chided me.
 
“And get stuffed.”

I shouldn't have done it.
 
It was stupid.
 
But I tackled him on his way out.
 
He collapsed along the side glass wall, beyond where everyone in the terminal could now watch us struggle.
 
I put my good arm around his neck and jerked as far back as I could to keep him off balance.
 
“Turn it back,” I said, “now.”

From the kid's throat emitted something like the bleat that a goat makes, just before he pulled out the remote.
 
He found the channel, too, but just as I thought I glimpsed Julie, another commercial started to air.

“
Ya
happy,
ya
wacko?”

I froze, stunned at what I'd just seen.
 
As an elderly black man on a chair in the back of the room put a cigar back into his mouth, and clapped, the kid pulled free, and rushed out, possibly looking for airport police.
 
I'd given him the idea, after all.
 
You need to make a run for it, to the gate, now, my mind screamed.
 
And I knew that I needed to do this, but for a moment I couldn't.
 
Because part of my brain still couldn't answer the question which the image that had been burned on my retina still asked: had I really just seen Julie on TV, holding her backpack and eating an
apple
?

Despite the liquor I'd consumed, the flight to Miami reduced me to nervous distraction.
 
Not just because of the sporadic news reports I listened to on my headset, but because of a storm over Orlando that caused the 727 to pitch and shudder under the duress of wind
sheers
which couldn't entirely be bypassed.
 
Small comfort to me was the fact that the news media had still not linked the devastation in Zion to M-Telomerase.
 
The identities of several soldiers-of-fortune found dead there were being released instead.
 
Members of some clandestine tactical surveillance organization filming a bizarre snuff flick.
 
When the key words “
Tactar
Pharmaceuticals” finally came, I winced.
 
But then I learned that the mention was because two of the bodies found among the other scattered corpses had been discovered to be
Tactar
employees.
 
When the reporters asked whether the drug company might be involved in what had happened, the FBI field investigators wouldn't speculate on camera.
 
But they were looking into it.

I couldn't get Jean or Julie out of my mind, and I was only getting myself in deeper by the second unless the link to Jeffers was coming next, and soon.
 
It had to be, if Seagraves wasn't an SOB insider linked to the theft and test.
 
But what if Clifford's real name was Mohammed-something, and he'd been in on the plan to steal and test both viruses from the beginning?
 
Considering that prejudiced supposition, and since there hadn't been time to drive from Iowa to Miami, I then imagined seeing Jeffers skating past authorities at the Miami airport while they whisked me away in handcuffs, perhaps even wearing the same kind of face mask used to restrain Hannibal
Lecter
.

So it was a jittery, paranoid walk for me up that
blind sided
gangway “plank” into the Miami airport terminal.
 
And only after it was over did my heart settle down.
 
Then I was more inclined to believe that Cliff really was Cliff, and that he did have tape on his glasses and used a pocket protector.
 
What worried me now was that if Julie and Jean were both in Zion and talking, they were probably in trouble too, for withholding information.
 
Because wouldn't the FBI think to run my last name through interline computers for a match placing me on a flight to Miami?

I took a cab directly to the cruise ship docking area, tipping the cabbie an extra ten for breaking the speed limit, and offering him an extra hundred if he ever spotted a blue El Dorado with Virginia plates among all the cars parked at least a mile away.
 
Port Everglades held a number of cruise ships at anchor, including the MS Rotterdam, SS Norway, the SS Seven Seas, and even the original Love Boat.
 
Along the bustling paved docks rushed shuttles, supply trucks, and cruise line personnel amid a flurry of preparatory activity.
 
I stared past them all toward the open blue sea, wondering what ships might have sailed recently, carrying newlyweds or retired pharmaceutical V.P.s to the Bahamas, the
Windwards
, and beyond.
 
With over ten cruise lines represented in the port, no doubt with strict rules regarding passenger records, I calculated that—even if Jeffers was in Miami already, having flown here ahead of me—my odds of finding him amid the thousands of people coming and going was roughly equivalent to winning at Churchill Downs with a plow horse.
 
All I knew for sure was that time was running out for discovering his escape plan.

Not knowing whether cruise ships sailed from Miami to the Mediterranean, I went to the port authority to ask.
 
I figured it wasn't likely, although it was possible the woman Jeffers had e-mailed was supposed to meet him here.
 
Unless the claim of an intercepted e-mail by Seagraves was still somehow untrue, I would find out easily enough.

As I approached the harbormaster's office, I tried to recall the few times Jeffers had mentioned cruise ships to me.
 
There were quite a few.
 
He'd even favored me with a subscription to
Cruise Holiday
once, as part of a meager bonus.
 
It had been his favorite vacation, although this time his “vacation” would be permanent.
 
Given this, was there a ship more likely to attract Jeffers?
 
In getting an answer to that question, I quickly narrowed my interest to the SS Seven Seas—a new ship sailing trans-Atlantic into the Mediterranean, with stops along the Riviera for a Suez passage and a continuing voyage around the world.
 
A single word had indeed popped in my brain, at hearing about the ship:

Bingo
.

“It's a maiden voyage,” the assistant harbormaster explained to me, glancing up from his paperwork.
 
“The ship has a private level of condos for sale on board.
 
Millionaires can actually buy their cabin, then live in it or lease it out on a time share basis.
 
Several condos are still vacant, if I hear what you're asking, but the Seven Seas should sail in two hours, so you really can't go on board to check it out.
 
Sorry.”

“Two hours?” I said.

“It's supposed to leave now.
 
But there's been, shall we say, a slight delay?”
 
He gave me a slightly ironical smile as his phone began to ring.
 
“It involves a freighter not a mile offshore.”
 
He hooked a thumb toward the window and the open ocean, where I saw a hulking gray shape beyond the headland, lumbering like a wounded seal.
 
“It's spilled some diesel fuel.”

“Some?”

He favored me with a broader gallows smile.
 
“Quite a lot, actually.”

“Thank Allah,” I said, and sighed.
 
Then I left him to answer his phone while he stared after me with the look of a man who had just lost a bet over the spelling of the word insouciance.

I found a pay phone and called the administration offices of the cruise line that owned the Seven Seas under a Panamanian registry, no doubt to avoid U.S. taxes.
 
I asked about contacting one of the passengers, a Carson Jeffers.
 
It was an emergency, I said, and I claimed to be Carson's brother, Tom.
 
I recalled Jeffers mentioning a brother once, and for some reason the name “Tom” had stuck.
 
I waited while Jeffers' name was checked.

“I'm sorry, sir,” the response came back, “but we have no Carson Jeffers on the passenger or resident manifests.
 
May I ask the nature of the emergency?”

I hung up impulsively, then cursed, using up all the four letter words that came to mind.
 
Then I called the same number back again, because I'd forgotten to verify for certain that access to the ship was unavailable.
 
Luckily, I got a different representative this time, and asked permission for a tour prior to launch, saying I was interested in viewing a model condo.
 
“That would be impossible at this time,” I was told.

“At this time,” I repeated, by now hating the word time enough to add it to my four-letter-word list.

“But if you give me your name and address we'll be happy to send you a brochure and video tape, along with an application to tour the facilities at some future date.
 
When the ship returns, that is.”

I asked, “Are all the passengers on board?”

“Most are, yes.
 
That is right.
 
So it would be inappropriate for you to view the model rooms right now.
 
We are really very busy, I hope you can understand.
 
Your name and address, sir?”

I hung up.

For a moment I thought about retiring to write my memoirs for
Pharmaceutical Lab
magazine, perhaps while riding the roller coaster at
Dollywood
until my savings ran out.
 
The moment passed.
 
All I really needed was a photo of Jeffers on board the SS Seven Seas, hiding under some new identity.
 
After that, the FBI would be more inclined to believe me, and they could take it from there.
 
One photo would do it, too, and I needed to be the one to take that photo, just before breaking Jeffers' nose with an uppercut.
 
Then maybe I would take another photo of Jeffers as a souvenir.
 
One I'd later blow up and hang on my wall to throw darts at whenever I couldn't sleep due to nightmares.
 
Immediately after taking both photos, of course, I'd call
Winsdon
and the FBI.
 
Then Julie and I would be free to decide what to do next.
 
Yet if I didn't spot Carson's pre-battered face near the docks and surrounding shops, and since I didn't have a pass or ticket, I didn't know how in hell I would even get on board the SS Seven Seas to take my double shot, straight up.
 
Although my good fist was already tightening like a rock.

Yet if chance was not on my side, maybe my bad luck had run out at last.
 
Because no sooner had I posed the question when something else decided to intervene.
 
Call it fate.

And fate had a face.

It was a face I hadn't expected.
 
I was not one hundred percent certain of it from a distance, only about ninety-seven percent.
 
Something about the hair and the chubby, grizzled look . . . the way he stood, as I'd seen him stand before, with feet a little too wide apart, as though expecting to be tackled from behind.
 
The man he conversed with was a stranger to me.
 
But the stranger held my attention too, even from a hundred yards away.
 
They stood near the entrance to a restaurant/bar across the breezeway from where the cruise line's shuttles ferry luggage and passengers from the airport and the parking lots.
 
The second man was older, thinner, with a mustache, and he wore a lime green sport coat with white slacks.
 
He looked like a retired used-car salesman whose boozy overweight wife had just died of a stroke and left him with a Chihuahua named
Fritzi
—a dog that he had thrown out the window of his bus on the way here.
 
His rat face now telegraphed intensity as he listened to what might have been whispered instructions.
 
Then a brown camera case was passed between the two men, and they turned away from each other.
 
Ratso
into the restaurant, and Fate toward a waiting
cab
.
 
No time to intercept.
 
No time to question, or even to snap a photo with a camera I hadn't yet purchased.
 
And there were no other cabs available either.
 
So I was forced to watch an escape, with Fate looking back only once in the direction of the restaurant before settling back into his seat.

Luckily, he hadn't noticed me, or identified me.
 
I was just another tourist waiting for the wife and kids.
 
But my view of him was enough to bring me up to one hundred percent on the certainty scale about his identity.