able to throw a scare into the couple, something of that nature. But when he’d made his request to one such acquaintance over dinner in Little Italy, Williams was told that the fuss made by the various senior-rights organizations on local media outlets had created an awkward hitch.
“Think about it,” his acquaintance had explained. “All the bad publicity you’ve gotten on this, a wasp stings one of those decrepit old farts, and he or she cries
Williams had looked at him pointedly across the table.
“You people are supposed to be experts at persuasion, and I can’t see how this is a tall order,” he’d insisted. “Besides, I’m not the only one losing out while the old farts sit on a fortune. Or don’t you understand how much of this wealth your organization could be sharing?”
The other man had stared at him a moment, then slowly lowered his fork onto his plate.
“Isn’t me who’s misunderstanding,” he’d replied. “I said there were problems, not that we couldn’t get past them. You sit tight, I need to approach somebody I know of. He’s on another level from everyone else, so I’ll have to go through the Commission. If he thinks he can help, he’ll reach you.”
And reach Williams he did. The original notification had been E-mailed to him within a week, and it struck him as the craziest damned thing. A designer virus, that was what the sender had declared he could provide. There might have been a hundred other proposals Williams wouldn’t have questioned for an instant, recognizing that his acquaintance moved in a realm that was beyond his experience. But it had seemed absolutely far out. He’d had trouble giving credence to it.
Little by little, though, a belief in the claim’s legitimacy had begun to emerge in his mind. Something about the way his unidentified contact had been spoken about at the Little Italy meeting had impressed Williams. This cyberspace phantom commanded deference from a man who was almost nobody’s lesser.
Nor was it just that. Under the advisement of his broker, Williams had bought heavily into the genomic futures market, but not before doing his homework. Projects that involved the mapping of human and non-human DNA were on the verge of leading to a scientific revolution on a scale with the coming of the industrial age, the harnessing of atomic energy, and the advent of the microchip in its ramifications for society. Genomic research promised rapid breakthroughs in the prevention and diagnosis of disease, drug treatments, the farming of lab-cloned body parts for transplantation… there was no telling what advances to expect, no keeping pace with those that had already been made. Nearly every day some new application of biotechnology was announced, so why be skeptical that a customizable virus had been hatched? The longer Williams contemplated it, the more the idea that one
In fact, he’d thought, it would be selling short his own biotech investment folder to doubt the probability — and Murdock Williams never bet against himself.
He replied to the E-mail with a note requesting that he be advised when the product was ready for issue and then tried his best to focus on other business. Still, in his idle moments, Williams would visualize his building soaring above the riverfront, a lasting, commanding monument to his mastery of the developer’s art. And as far as it went for that old couple, how much time could they have left before they reached their expiration dates, anyway? Cancer, heart attack, stroke, everybody got hammered sooner or later. Williams honestly felt he’d just be hastening along the inevitable.
As his appreciation for the beauty of the solution increased, his craving to gratify his drive and ambition became unbearable. Had the “cyber-phantom” taken any longer to respond, the impatience would have eaten him up alive.
Thank heaven the wait was finally over. He’d have paid ten times the asking price to end it.
A week, one more week — seven days until he could get things rolling.
Williams knew he’d be counting down the hours.
ELEVEN
“I can’t do what you’re asking. It isn’t an option.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Palardy,” Enrique Quiros said. “Because, as a matter of fact, it’s your
“Don’t use my name. It isn’t safe—”
Quiros shook his head and indicated the portable bug detector on the seat between them.
“There’s where you’re mistaken again,” he said. “Because this is my
Palardy let out a sigh. The Safe Car in which they sat was a Fiat Coupe that Quiros had driven into the parking lot outside the cruise ship terminal on Harbor Drive. It was six P.M., the upper rim of the sun sinking into San Diego Bay, the area outside the terminal crosshatched with dusky shadows. Palardy had left his own Dodge Caravan several aisles away when he’d reluctantly arrived in answer to Quiros’s summons.
“Those pocket units aren’t reliable,” he said. “Their bandwidth sensitivity’s limited. And certain kinds of listening devices operate in modes that won’t scan. It’s my job to know this sort of thing, my goddamned
“Settle down. I haven’t forgotten anything,” Quiros interrupted. “This vehicle is garaged on my property, and the grounds are under constant video surveillance. There are alarms. Canine patrols. Unless I happen to be inside it, as now, it’s never parked anywhere else.”
They looked at each other, Palardy seeing his own features reflected in Quiros’s dark green Brooks Brothers sunglasses. He’d always found it offensive when a man wore tinted lenses during a talk with somebody who wasn’t wearing them, in this instance himself, the concealment of the eyes a blatant means of gaining distance and position. State troopers, paranoiacs, egotistical movie stars — so many personality types, and yet that desire to set themselves apart was an attribute they all shared.
“Open areas are hard to secure; even the military has problems with them, I don’t care how many watchdogs or alarms you’ve got.” Palardy sighed heavily again. “Listen, I’m not trying to argue. My point’s just that it doesn’t hurt to be careful.”
Plainly tired of the subject, Quiros reached into the inner pocket of his sport jacket and produced a zippered leather case.
“Let’s make this short so we can both move on,” he said, holding the case out to Palardy. “Everything you’ll need is in here.”
“I told you I can’t do this. It’s too dangerous. It’s too much for me.”
Quiros looked at him in silence for several moments. Then he nodded to himself, turned toward the front of the car, and leaned back against his headrest.
“Okay,” he said, staring straight ahead with the case still in his hand. “Okay, here’s how it is. I’m not interested in what you have to tell me. When you wanted money to pay off your gambling debts in Cuiaba, you were glad to sell off confidential information about the layout and security of an installation that it was your job to protect. When you were rotated back to the States and found yourself in hock again, loan sharks riding all over you, you became more than eager to slink into your employer’s office and collect material for a genetic blueprint that you knew would be—”
“Please, I don’t feel comfortable talking about—”
Quiros raised his hand. The gesture was slow and without anger, but something about it instantly quieted Palardy.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t feel comfortable, either. Because you’ve done worse than break bonds with every professional trust that’s been placed in you. You’ve been an accessory to acts of murder and sabotage. And if that information were to surface, it could put you away in prison for the rest of your life.”
