“Do you have today’s newspaper?” Jennifer asked. “The
“Of course. We cabbies would be bored without newspapers,” he said, dredging up the daily from under his seat. He handed it to her.
Jennifer pulled out the second section and then slipped off her wig. He stared at the paper, then at her. “Somebody in the company tried to kill me,” she said. “And we need to get in one of the Veritas labs. Tonight.”
“Oh, this just gets better all the time. Now you’re a missing research scientist on the run from an evil person intent on killing her.” He turned to Gordon. “And who are you?”
“Just a friend.”
He was silent for a minute, scratched his head, and said, “Ah, what the hell. It beats waiting on Cary Street for a couple of drunks looking for an after-hours club. Anyway, I think I believe you. It’s too crazy a story for someone to make up.”
“Thanks,” Jennifer said, slipping her Veritas ID from her pocket and holding it up. He gave it a quick look. “Holy shit, you’re not kidding. You
“Remember,” Gordon said as they exited the cab. “The south end of the building. And be ready. We shouldn’t be more than twenty minutes, tops.”
They walked up the wide sidewalk and opened the outer door. She looked at Gordon as she held her card above the reader. “This is it. Once I swipe this card, we’re going to be visible.”
“Let’s do it,” he said, giving her a grim smile and checking the time on his watch. “You figure twenty minutes?”
“I think that’s about what it will take for Andrews to get someone out here from the city. Could be a little more or less.” She ran the card through the reader and the light next to the inner door switched from red to green. They entered the building. The security guard stared at her as she approached the desk.
“Dr. Pearce,” he said. “I thought-”
She smiled and gave him a small wave. “Total misunderstanding,” she said. “My car slid off the road in the rain. I managed to jump out, but it took me quite a while to walk back to the nearest house.” It was a lame story, but he bought it.
“Could you sign in, please?”
“I’ll need a guest pass as well,” she said, scratching her signature on the night sheet.
The guard dug out a visitor’s badge and pushed another sheet of paper across the desk. “Name and address of your visitor, please.” She filled in the blanks, and he gave it a perfunctory check, then said, “Thanks, Dr. Pearce. Glad you’re okay.”
“I’m fine, thank you.”They walked to the doors that accessed Veritas’s half of the building and she swiped her card again. The light blinked green and they entered the short section of hallway before the steel security doors. “This is the big one,” she said as they approached the door. “All these doors are at different levels of security. If they’ve downgraded me at all, I won’t be able to open it.” She held her breath and pulled the card through the slot. The light went green and Gordon pulled the door open.
“So far, so good,” he said, checking his watch. “Just over four minutes.”
“Let’s move,” she said, walking quickly down the long hall. Blue doors flashed by on both sides as they hustled down the never-ending hall. They reached the first fork and turned right. Jennifer stopped at the second door on the left. “This is the lab where I saw Dr. Wai arguing with the moving man.” She held her card above the reader. “Keep your fingers crossed,” she said. She swiped the card down in a decisive motion and the light immediately went green.
“Wow,” Gordon said. “Being with you makes it easy to get into places.”
“I’m one of the team leaders,” she said. “There are only eleven of us in the company, and we all have top- level clearance. I’ve yet to find a door I can’t open.”
They moved into the lab and switched on the lights. “I’m surprised Andrews didn’t terminate your security clearance when you went missing.”
She was moving quickly to one of the many tables loaded with equipment. “No, I didn’t think he would cancel my card.
That would almost be an admission that he knew I was dead. Which, of course, he thought I was.” She reached the first lab table and said, “You keep an eye on the time and I’m going to see if I can figure out what they were doing in here.”
“Okay,” Gordon said, looking at his watch. “Seven minutes and ten seconds.”
“Good. This is going just fine,” she said, concentrating on the equipment.
His pager went off thirty-two seconds after Jennifer Pearce first swiped her card. He glanced at the message, then left the restaurant, his cell phone already dialing out. Johnny Altwater answered on the second ring. “The White Oak facility. She’s in the building.”
“We’re on the east edge of the city,” Altwater responded. “We can be there in fifteen minutes, give or take.”
“I’ll be ten minutes behind you,” he said. “For Christ’s sake, don’t miss her this time. Do what you have to. I don’t care if we have to carry a dead body out of the lab, just don’t let her get away.”
“Okay, I hear you.”
His car was almost a block from the restaurant, and he walked as quickly as he could without attracting attention. Bruce Andrews was worried. Exactly how much Jennifer Pearce knew was an unknown, but to Andrews, she was a very real threat. And Gordon Buchanan, the country hick from Montana, was proving to be no slouch. Together they were opening doors that Andrews preferred remained closed. And when someone threatened Bruce Andrews, they were threatening the goose that laid the golden egg. And that golden egg was so close now. Everything had gone exactly as Andrews had predicted. Everything except the unexpected appearance of Jennifer Pearce. But she had made one too many mistakes, and this time they had her trapped.
He reached the car and sped away from the curb, headed for White Oak Technology Park.
64
The equipment contained in a lab tells a story. To the trained eye, it reveals what the lab is being used for and can also tell what the lab was used for in the past. Since the removal of the HEPA filters, the function of the space may have changed, but its current use didn’t interest her. Its previous function was what Jennifer was interested in. She ignored most of the equipment on the tables, concentrating on the clean room near the back.
The clean room was set aside from the rest of the lab, delineated by floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass joined together with strips of inflexible rubber. Empty exhaust vents were the only evidence that HEPA filtration systems had once been in use. Jennifer looked at the Olympus microscopes, noting that most were the IX2 series, motorized inverted models. Serious machines. A couple of explosion-proof freezers sat against the back wall, still plugged in. She opened one and glanced in. Almost empty, save for a few small boxes, and very cold. She closed the lid and moved on. An entire set of shelves was dedicated to chemical and reagent storage, and she made mental notes of which chemicals were present. There were a couple of Burrell shakers and a Jenway spectrophotometer amid a scattering of calipers and micrometers. A high-pressure PVS rheometer used for viscosity measurements sat in a back corner. She spent some time going over it carefully and collected a small sample from one of the relief valves. She quickly prepared a slide and switched on one of the microscopes. She adjusted the slide, chose her magnification, and focused on the sample. Satisfied with the results, she shut down the microscope and slipped the slide in with the remainder of the sample from the rheometer.
Two computers sat on one of the desks, and she quickly powered them up and took a look at the contents. One computer defaulted to English, the other to Chinese. She ran her fingers around the second computer’s casing, then dropped to her knees and looked under the desk. There was a small package taped to the underside of the desk, and she tucked it into her inside pocket. She took one last glance and returned to the regular lab outside the clean room.
Gordon was looking at his watch when she emerged from the glass enclosure. He pointed at his wrist. “Eighteen minutes,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
