and lifted out a second phone. Its cord was attached to a black box about six inches square: a scrambling device. Evan dialed a longdistance number and leaned back in the soft leather chair, waiting for the voice he knew would answer.
“Are you on the secure phone?”The voice belonged to Bruce Andrews.
“Yes. What can I do for you?”
“I have a problem, Evan. One I need handled quite quickly.”
“Where can I pick up the package?”
“The Commonwealth Park Suites Hotel, in Richmond. It’s at the front desk under Brent Saunders.”
“Anything else?”
“Just that this person poses a very real threat to the direction I want our research to go. And if that happens…”
Evan’s voice was terse. “I read in the newspaper that you were scaling back on your biotech division-that your investment into brain chips was waning.”
“Don’t believe everything you read, Evan.” Andrews’s voice had gone cold. “Just get to Richmond and take care of my problem. Let me worry about getting your son out of that wheelchair.”
“You do that,” Evan said as the line went dead. He replaced the phone in its cradle, returned it to the drawer, and locked the handle. A solitary copier sat in the corner of his office: an old relic just for display. He walked across the carpet, opened the front access panel, and pulled on a colored handle. The copier’s guts slid out on a metal track. He reached in behind the array of gears and lenses and pulled on the toner tray. Inside was a package, wrapped in thick cling wrap. He set it on top of the copier and peeled open the wrapping. Inside were a passport, two credit cards, a driver’s license, and a large bundle of cash. He checked the identification, all of which displayed his picture and a different name, for expiry dates. Then he pocketed the ID and two thousand dollars. He phoned in a reservation on United Airlines from Denver to Richmond, departing Denver at 10:23 P.M. the next day, locked the outer office door, and headed home. Only for a brief moment did he wonder one thing.
What had this person done that they now had to die?
6
Albert Rousseau clicked on an icon resembling a laboratory beaker and sixteen file folders appeared on his computer monitor. He moved the cursor to one titled “MM-1076” and clicked on it. A series of chemical formulae unraveled on the screen. He scrolled through the first ten pages, right-clicked on the mouse, and sent the entire file to a Sony Micro Vault, a portable storage unit plugged into the USB port. The transfer took a few milliseconds. He slipped the drive out of the port and secured it in his front pocket. Then he deleted the file on his computer, switched off the lights in his office, and locked the door.
It was still early to be leaving the office, and the elevators were almost empty. He nodded to a couple of people he vaguely knew, exited the building, and made his way to his assigned parking spot. His freshly washed Ford Mustang gleamed in the evening light. A quick twist of the key in the ignition and he was moving.
Rousseau lightly touched his shirt pocket, reassuring himself that the evidence was still there. He had a very secure location for it at his house in his safe. No one knew about it. He’d had a contractor come in and build the safe into a place that no one would think to look. He grinned, crooked teeth showing through thin, pale lips. What a bunch of dumbasses. He had enough proof to sink the company if they didn’t play ball with him and cough up some money.
Serious money.
Not a million. Not two or three, but ten or twenty. He hadn’t decided yet. But they were going to pay. And when they did, he’d be living life large in the Caribbean or Europe. He ran his hands over his cheek, feeling the acne he’d lived with all his life. That would be gone, and his teeth would be straight and capped. He’d have all the women he’d always dreamed of. Money could perform miracles-he’d be living proof of that.
He touched the storage device again like it was a winning lottery ticket. But unlike sheer luck in a lottery, he’d worked for this. He’d noticed small things in the clinical trials for Triax-cion, errors that somehow had been overlooked by the other researchers and eventually by the FDA. He suspected someone inside the Food and Drug Administration was on the take, as the problems with the drug were too serious to be swept under some convenient carpet. No matter, he still had enough to fry the company’s top management-enough to lever a few million from the corporate coffers, then head overseas.
He pulled up in front of his town house on Cooley Avenue, a red brick building with black trim around the door and windows, and switched off the ignition. One week more and he’d be gone. No more lonely nights watching the Devils play hockey or reruns of
Perfect.
Christ, he was the keeper of the key to the Holy Grail of pharmaceutical lawsuits.
He grinned again as he slid out of the Mustang and slammed
the driver’s door. Maybe he’d hit them up for twenty-five million. Recent memories are always the sharpest, and that Buchanan fellow had died at just the right time.
Such luck.
7
A gentle mist settled on Mirror Lake, hovering three or four feet above the water. A solitary loon burst through the covering and glided inches above the murky cloud, trailing wisps of mist in its wing vortex. The bird reached the shoreline and banked sharply skyward, barely clearing the hemlocks bordering the lake. Jennifer Pearce watched until the loon disappeared behind the trees then glanced back over the soupy cloud blanketing the water.
The sun had yet to rise, the Porcupine Mountains still shrouded in the lingering shadows of the spent night. The spring air was cool, and as she exhaled, her breath sent short bursts of steam into the mountain air. The sound of approaching footsteps drifted to her and she turned to see who else was up before dawn. A man in his early fifties, tanned and dressed entirely in Eddie Bauer, nodded to her as he reached the lake’s edge. He leaned over and dipped his finger in the water.
“It’s cold,” he said with a hint of irritation in his voice. “Everything about this place is cold.”
“It’s not the Caribbean, Mel,” Jennifer said. “It’s Michigan and it’s the last week of April. Get used to it.”
“I don’t like cold weather,” he said, standing next to her and looking out over the lake. He was quiet for a minute. “I should have brought my camera. This is really beautiful.”
Jennifer didn’t speak. She didn’t like Mel Lun, just tolerated him for the doors he could and sometimes would open for her. Lun was a sycophant of the highest degree, with his perfect nose up so many Marcon assholes she was surprised to see him walk around without someone attached to his face. Lun was a regional director for Marcon Pharmaceuticals, and to some degree held the purse strings for her research money. Not directly-even with his Harvard degree he didn’t have that level of clout with the pharmaceutical giant. But he had the ear of those who controlled the money, and that made him a valuable ally.
“You made an excellent presentation yesterday,” Mel said, squinting slightly as the sun finally crested one of the eastern ridges. “They were impressed.”
“It’s important, Mel,” she said quietly. “I believe in what I’m doing. This goes far beyond the funding. It means quality of life to a lot of people.” She kept her gaze focused on the lake. The last thing she wanted Mel Lun to see was even the slightest hint of vulnerability. That could be taken as a sign of weakness, and that was not a trait to exhibit this week.
One week of every year, top Marcon executives and their department heads dropped off the corporate map to
