When her book was published, they parsed the entire text for key words and phrases. Then using a Boolean search engine, they scanned the Web for database matches to key word strings including the name George Orwell. In a process of elimination, one solitary record had multiple hits—the Web site of Mr. Joshua Blake who had included with his curriculum vitae a link to his doctoral thesis for perusal by interested scholars. It did not take long to realize that Vanessa Watts had lifted whole chunks from Mr. Blake.
As the Porsche hummed its way up the coast, Malenko’s mind turned to the Whitmans. With the same degree of scrutiny they had investigated the husband’s financial dealings with Cape Ann Banking and Trust where he had filed a fallacious claim about the worth of SageSearch on his bank loan application. The other useful piece of information was that Whitman knew nothing about the wife’s TNT past or her guilt. To his mind, their son’s disabilities came up in the genetic dice roll. But not a clue how Mom had loaded them. All of which meant that he had some goods on each of the Whitmans.
A little before one, Malenko turned onto Exit 7, which would take him to smaller routes that would eventually branch off to an ancient logging road that led to the compound.
Camp Tarabec was nestled in the woods at the edge of Lake Tarabec, a large and private body of water with its own woodland island about a half-mile offshore. The place was Maine-idyllic, with neat log cabins, a central meeting ground, flagpole, playing fields, climbing apparatus, and a little beach which was barricaded a hundred yards offshore to keep swimmers and canoeists from wandering into deep water.
Only seven years old, the camp was operated by a private organization founded and directed by Lucius Malenko. Although it was advertised as a summer camp for “special” kids, to those few in the know it was a “genius camp”—where gifted children went for in-depth, hands-on learning in disciplines from astronomy to zoology.
It was a little after two when Malenko arrived, so it was “free time,” which meant that the kids were engaged in outdoor activities—canoeing, swimming, tennis or baseball, archery, et cetera. After that it was snacks and back inside to the computer labs or science projects. Because the children here were gifted, the counselors sometimes had to pry them away from their terminals or labs to go out and be physical. Malenko parked the Porsche and went into the main office.
A boy about sixteen behind the reception desk smiled as Malenko entered. “Hey, Dr. M.”
“Hello, Tommy. How’s the boy today?”
“Pretty good. How’s the Red Menace? Still doing zero to sixty in five point eight?”
“Only when the police aren’t looking. And it’s five point two.”
“But who counts?” Tommy said and laughed.
He had been coming to the camp for the last three summers, ever since his parents had him enhanced. They had been dissatisfied with his poor analytical skills, particularly with math and logic. At their wit’s end, they came all the way from Chicago to the Nova Children’s Center where they met Dr. Malenko. When all else failed, they put up an expensive summer home as collateral. Now Tommy was a sophomore math major at Cornell. He was also a computer wizard who taught compu lab here. It was he who had done the Boolean search that linked Vanessa Watts to Joshua Blake. Her own little Big Brother.
He stepped into the main office behind the reception desk and said hello to Karl who managed the camp. He handed Malenko some mail. “Oliver’s waiting for you.”
Malenko took his material and stepped back outside. On the baseball field across the way, two teams in red and black T-shirts were at play. At one end of the first-baseline bench, some second-stringers were at a laptop, probably working out the odds for a hit based on the batter’s record and pitcher’s ERA.
Some kids in the tennis court across the dirt road saw him and waved. “Hi, Dr. M.,” one of the boys in white shouted. “How about a game?” The girl across the court waved at him.
Malenko smiled and waved back. “Maybe some other time.”
The boy’s name was Fabiano. He was the son of the Brazilian ambassador to the United States. Eight years ago he had an IQ of 75 and was a boarder at a school in New York City for the learning disabled. Today at sixteen, he was entering his sophomore year at Columbia with interests in astrophysics. And the young girl was interested in international law. As with all the Tarabec children, they would be getting the intensive exposure and training that would propel them toward their goals. Next week, for instance, they would be guests of astronomers at the observatory at the U. of Maine where they had use of the large reflector telescope.
Malenko got back into the Porsche. Some of the kids hooted him on to peel out. That would not set a very good example, he thought, but he trounced the accelerator and lurched forward in a cloud of dirt. In the rearview mirror, the kids waved and cheered.
Malenko pulled down a small dirt road to the water and into an old boathouse that also served as his garage. He parked, took his bags, and headed down to the dock.
As Karl had said, Oliver was waiting in the boat, a long white twin-engine outboard. He took Malenko’s bags and started the engines. “You made good time.” Oliver removed the ropes.
“Traffic was light.” Malenko took the passenger seat behind the windshield. Oliver maneuvered the boat through the little channel and around the floats that forged the barricade to the open water. In a few seconds, the big Mercury engines were cutting a wake to the island.
Oliver Vines was a carryover from their NSA days—a onetime operative who had assisted Malenko in the enhancement project, which back then was known as “Project Headlight”—a dumb name, but that was governmental skulduggery for you. Once that was terminated, Oliver and Malenko went their separate ways until ten years ago when Malenko set up his private practice. What made Oliver particularly valuable were his connections—from former government ops to private investigators to small-time crooks. He also had a total lack of compunction about performing matters that made others squeamish. Like excessive exposure to radium, governments did that to people. But it also meant that he left no trails—such as that snatcher he had hired in Florida.
Oliver had two passions—money and flying, the former he shared with his wife Vera, a former nurse’s aide who watched over the children. Of late, he had done considerable flying—little midnight excursions.
As they rounded the eastern flank of the island, the blue and white DeHavilland Beaver came into view at its berth on the small dock just offshore from the compound. If the weather held, Oliver would make another run in the plane later that evening. And because he would mostly be over water, he needed a clear sky to fly.
Oliver pulled the boat up to the dock then took one of Malenko’s shoulder bags as they climbed the dirt lane to the main building, a large brown structure that had once been a fishing and hunting lodge.
Before he entered, Malenko waved to Vera who was in the backyard playground with some of the children. Oliver led him inside where they were met by Phillip who poured Malenko a cup of coffee he had just made. In spite of the fact they were brothers, Phillip looked nothing like Karl back at the camp. Phillip Moy, a former private investigator who had run afoul of the law, had been recruited by Oliver. Phillip was proficient at running background checks on people. He was also handy with machinery and computers, which made him very useful keeping things in operating condition. On occasion he worked with the kids or accompanied Oliver in the dirty work.
“How’s Miss Amber doing?” Malenko asked, sipping his coffee.
“A little dopey,” Phillip said.
“Of course.”
As with all the patients, she had been administered an IV containing a mild tranquilizer that diminished anxiety over being away from home. They had also given her cyclohexylamine, also known as Ketamine, an anesthetic that produced amnesia, effectively blotting out all recall of the enhancement procedure. It was a remarkable drug, almost one hundred percent effective.
While Oliver took the bags upstairs to the bedroom, Malenko followed Phillip down the main hallway to the door in the rear storage room off the kitchen. He unlocked it and the next door at the opposite end, and they descended the stairs to the cellar.
They proceeded into the long bright tunnel that ran nearly a hundred feet under the backyard woods. At the far end was the operating room. Along the tunnel walls were windows spaced a dozen feet apart—one for each dormer. A dormer for each patient. The glass on the windows was thick and one-way visible, a reflecting surface on the obverse side giving the impression of a simple wall mirror, framed to complete the illusion. Because they were underground, the air was cooler and less humid than above. It was also filtered against dust and microbes.
