comfort. Dr. Tarver provided round-the-clock climate control and music to keep the social animals happy. Even now, Mozart's Seventh Symphony was rising to a crescendo in the background.
The mouse cages-prefab plastic things-were stacked against the north wall. Near the east wall hung breeding bubbles for the fruit flies:
Most of the floor space was occupied by massive refrigerators used for storing cell cultures, and testing machines built by the Beckman Coulter company. Two were newer models of analyzers in the oncology and genetics departments at UMC. Dr. Tarver had initially tried to carry on his experiments at the medical school, under cover of his legitimate work, but budget constraints had resulted in a level of oversight that made this impossible. On occasion he ferried samples from this lab to the medical school to view them under the biochemistry department's electron microscope, but for the most part he'd had to construct a virtual mirror of the UMC labs right here. He could do PCR amplification on the spot, and with remote connections to the computers in the commercial pathology lab he operated in north Jackson, he could use Sequence software to do genetic analysis. To date, he had spent more than $6 million on the facility. Some of the money had come from his wife, an early believer in his talent, but after her death he'd been forced to find more creative sources of financing.
Like Andrew Rusk.
There were other sources happy to provide him with funds, of course, but all were foreign-usually foreign governments-and Dr. Tarver would have no truck with them. Not that he wasn't tempted. The United States had adopted an almost suicidal policy regarding medical research-nearly as bad as the Brits, though not quite. In Britain you couldn't experiment on chimps
Your Chinese, on the other hand, didn't give one goddamn how many chimps were left in the wild. They would send an army of biologists to strip every tree in Africa if they decided it was necessary. The animal rights fanatics could go straight to hell, for all they cared. Dr. Tarver shared this view. In his experience, the moral convictions of animal rights activists lasted about as long as it took them to get a fatal disease that could be cured by receiving a valve from a pig's heart. Suddenly that pig didn't seem so goddamned sacred after all. Your animal rights fanatics weren't like Jehovah's Witnesses, who would lie there and die within ten feet of a bag of blood that could save them. They were liberal arts pussies raised by Summer of Love hippies; they'd never gone without a life-essential since the day they were born. Jehovah's Witnesses had been some of the toughest resisters to Nazi tyranny, Eldon knew, especially in the death camps. He figured the average animal rights activist would have lasted about three days at Auschwitz.
Animal experimentation had a long and venerable history. Aristotle and Erasistratus had experimented on live animals, and Galen had dissected countless pigs and goats in Rome. Edward Jenner had used cows to develop the smallpox vaccine, and Pasteur had cured anthrax by purposefully infecting sheep. How the hell anyone expected scientists to cure cancer or AIDS without using animals to set up testable models was beyond him. But Dr. Tarver didn't stop there. Because the truth was, animal models only took you so far. When you got into neurological diseases or viral studies, it wasn't enough to experiment on a
Any serious medical researcher could tell you that. Only most of them wouldn't. Because research dollars were often controlled by foggy-minded liberals who hadn't a clue to what science really was, and no one wanted to risk his research budget for something so politically dangerous as the truth. The conservatives could be just as bad. Some of them didn't even believe in
Dr. Tarver walked across the lab and watched Judah bathe a sedated chimp. It gratified him to see his adoptive brother carefully scrubbing the chimp's snotty cheeks. After patting Judah on the shoulder, he walked over to the metal table he used as a desk in here. On the right side of the big table lay a stack of thick file folders. Each folder held a unique compilation of documents and photographs that added up to a person's life. Each had been delivered to Eldon by Andrew Rusk, who had ordered them compiled by various clients over the past two years. The files held daily schedules; medical histories; keys labeled for what they opened, which included cars, houses, offices, and even vacation homes; lists of important numbers, such as Social Security numbers, passport numbers, phone numbers, PINs, and credit card numbers; and of course there were photographs. Eldon didn't spend much time looking at the photos until right before an operation. He spent most of his time poring over the medical records, searching for anything that might negatively affect his research, or something that might make someone a candidate for a particular approach. Dr. Tarver was as meticulous in this work as he was in all things.
Everyone was in such a hurry. Everyone wanted it done yesterday. Everyone believed that his case justified special consideration. But that was the twenty-first-century man for you. No notion of patience or deferred gratification. When Eldon had faced a similar situation, he'd handled it himself. He was uniquely qualified to do so, of course. But he had never let unfamiliarity stop him before. When a mechanic tried to gouge him on the price of repairing an engine, Dr. Tarver had ordered a maintenance manual from the Ford company, studied it for four days, then disassembled the engine, repaired it, and reassembled it himself in perfect working order. This kind of thing was beyond most Americans now. And because of that, the day was coming when conventional war would not be an option against any major power. Only a special weapon would suffice.
Dr. Tarver intended to be ready.
CHAPTER 23
Chris was working late in his studio when he sensed that he was not alone. He'd been running footage on the Apple, using the familiar routine of reviewing and editing video to occupy his conscious mind, while on a deeper level his brain worked out what his next step should be. His first thought upon sensing another human presence was that Ben had awakened. Chris saved the file he was working on, then walked down the hall toward the back room of the converted barn. Any other night, he would have put Ben to bed and then come out to the studio to work alone. But fifty yards of darkness separated the studio from the house, so tonight he'd let the boy fall asleep on the sofa where he and Thora had made love two nights ago. Once Ben was dead to the world, Chris had moved him to an old twin bed in the back room.
'Ben?' he called softly, opening the door.
Ben lay stomach-down on the bed, fast asleep. Chris stared for a second, then rushed back to the front room and switched off the light. After listening carefully for twenty seconds, he edged up to the window and drew back the curtain. The darkness just outside the studio slowly revealed itself to be empty. Beyond that lay the black gulf between the studio and the house. Feeling a little foolish, he switched on the light and went back to his workstation.
He was reaching for the flywheel when a sharp knock sounded at the studio door. He had no firearms out here, but an aluminum baseball bat was propped beside the door, left there after an informal batting practice. He jumped up, grabbed the bat, and went to the door.
'Who's there?'
'It's Alex,' said a recognizably female voice. 'Alex Morse.'
He yanked open the door. Alex stood there in the same clothes she'd worn in the cemetery that afternoon, and she looked still more drawn and confused, if that was possible. In her hand was a black automatic.
'What the hell are you doing?' he demanded. 'If I'd had a gun, I might have shot you!'
'I'm sorry for just showing up like this. I tried to call. I know I said I'd wait, but…Can we go inside?'
'The published number only rings in the main house.'
