out into the night air and stretched his arms and back. He was wearing a white surgical mask and cap, a long white lab jacket and disposable rubber gloves. He pulled the gloves off and threw them in a large cardboard barrel near the door. Then he pulled down his mask, let it droop around his neck and lit a cigarette. He took a deep drag, let out a long satisfying sigh and leaned against the wall.
The door opened again, light bloomed and a woman stepped out. She peeled off her gloves, tossed them into the barrel, removed her mask and took a puff from his cigarette while she fumbled in her lab jacket for her own pack. They were both in their early thirties.
'Damn heat,' she said. 'I can hardly breathe in there. Especially with these dumb masks.'
He shrugged. 'It's a bitch. But it's better than getting any of that stuff in your lungs. You see what happened to Tulley last week when he took his mask off to scratch his nose.'
She nodded. 'No great loss. He was a lech.'
'Yeah, but he worked fast.'
'Ha! Nobody works fast enough in there. They got Superbrain screaming at us all the time. 'Do this. Do that.' Shit, he may be some kind of genius or something, but he sure is a pain in the ass.'
The man nodded in agreement.
'Well,' she continued, 'at least we've made the deadline. The first shipment went out today. The rest tomorrow morning.'
'Bonus time.' He grinned.
'And I know just how I'm gonna spend mine. Club Med in Playa Blanca. Lots of sun and gorgeous hunks.'
He laughed, stubbed out his cigarette. 'Gotta get back. Already got a lecture about the evils of smoking from Superbrain.'
'See ya, Stew.'
'Right.' He went inside.
She lingered another minute, puffing on her cigarette. Bolan would have preferred the man to stay. At least then the lab jacket would have fit.
Five minutes later the Executioner entered the door with the woman's mask tied over his nose and mouth. Her hat had been extra large to accommodate her long hair, which she wore piled in a bun under the cap. It was still a little small for Bolan, but not as small as the damned lab coat.
He pulled it on, rolling up the sleeves and not even trying to button it. He hoped they would think he was merely on his way to the rest room or something. Besides, he didn't intend to be there very long.
Immediately inside the door was a roll of disposable gloves. He squeezed his fingers into a pair and wandered down the corridor into the main plant area.
People in similar outfits worked diligently, controlling huge vats, giant mixers, machines of all sizes and varieties. At the end of the production line a green powder was funneled into big cardboard barrels. The labels on the barrels showed a cluster of oversize vegetables and fruits surrounding the product's name: Eden-Plus. A chemical formula was printed beneath it.
'Certainly you cannot see clearly from here?' the voice behind Bolan said in a friendly tone.
Bolan spun around. The man wore a surgical mask too, but Bolan could see the one blue eye and the one brown eye. And in his hand, a 9mm Tokarev.
23
'Photosynthesis,' Zavlin said.
'Plants,' Bolan said. 'That's the process they use to convert sunlight and water into oxygen.'
'More or less,' Zavlin said.
'More,' Subrov said. 'So much more.'
They were sitting in one of the offices away from the main production area. A filter system cleaned and recirculated the air in the room to allow them to remove their masks.
Bolan sat in a chair against the wall. Zavlin ran one hand through his white hair and used the other to hold his gun leveled at Bolan's chest.
Subrov was in his early twenties, with gaunt cheeks and hollow eyes. He had a certain intensity that indicated obsession.
'Dr. Subrov is only twenty-one,' Zavlin explained with some annoyance, 'but he is in charge of this project.'
'Exactly what is this project?' Bolan asked.
'No need for you to know, Mr. Blue. If that is your real name. I will ask you several questions. You will answer them without hesitation.'
'And if I hesitate?'
'I will kill you.'
'And if I speak?'
Zavlin smiled. 'I will kill you, of course. But there is death and there is death. One is much more uncomfortable.'
'I've been hearing that distinction a lot lately.'
Zavlin raised an eyebrow. 'I suspect that is because you are the type of man who leaves his enemies no other choice.'
'What's all this got to do with plants?' Bolan asked.
'It is not your concern,' Zavlin repeated firmly. He was a professional all the way. There would be no bragging or explanations. Just interrogation and then death.
But his young comrade was not so experienced. He was pleased to have yet another ear to explain his own brilliance. 'It was my idea,' Subrov said, pointing his bony finger at Bolan. He leaned up against the blackboard next to his desk. There was chalk dust in his black hair and some on his pants.
So this is Superbrain, Bolan thought.
'I discovered the process while in the university at Moscow when I was fourteen. But it took me another seven years to perfect.' He was lecturing now, as if addressing a classroom of admirers. 'How, I asked myself, could the proper nutrition be introduced into the masses who are basically resistant to anything healthy? How do we combat their stubborn ignorance and the stupidity of the individual for the greater good of the whole?'
'Likes people, huh?' Bolan said to Zavlin.
Zavlin's jaw was clenched. Bolan could sense the man bristling. Apparently this hundred-and-twenty-pound kid carried more weight with Moscow than even the great Zavlin.
'Photosynthesis, that's the key,' Subrov continued. His accent was British, with only a hint of Russian in the vowels. 'If we could interrupt the photosynthetic process by which a plant produces carbohydrates...' He picked up a piece of chalk and attacked the blackboard, writing a complex chemical formula. 'Then we are using the glucose units as they link together to form starch as pockets to hold these nutrients. If we also consider that in the light reaction, the energy of an absorbed photon of light is used during the enzyme-catalyzed transfer of an electron from an unknown molecule to a carrier...'
'Which all boils down to what?' Bolan said.
'Boils down?' Subrov said, annoyed at the interruption. 'Ah yes, you mean what is the end result?' He dropped the chalk on his desk and stared contemptuously at Bolan. 'You are a very rude man.'
Bolan waited. He knew the kid's arrogance would force him to tell, to show off to one more person.
'It 'boils down' to this. We can now introduce certain substances into plants, merely by sprinkling the substance onto the leaves. Eventually, the plant absorbs it, transforms it until it becomes a part of the plant itself. Simple enough?'
Bolan nodded. 'You're saying that if you sprinkled nutrients on a tomato plant, that plant would add the nutrients to the tomato. The person eating the tomato would be healthier.'
'Yes. Something like that.'
