Breakpoint (22 page)

“This here's Captain Jack's,” Mr. Waters explained as he threw a line onto the dock, “where you s'pose to be. I got your bag. Pleasure to take you across.”

Susan now saw the man who caught the rope. He was tall, broad, in a short-sleeved blue Oxford button-down and white slacks. He was black and, Susan thought immediately, handsome. “Miss Connor, Mr. Gaudium sent me. I'm Arnold Scott.” He helped her out of the boat and led her to a table under an umbrella. “I assumed you wouldn't have eaten, so I took the liberty of ordering you some lunch. Grouper and conch fritters, fresh and locally caught.”

Over lunch, Scott kept to small talk about the islands and about himself. He said he had been told not to ask any details about Susan. She wondered what he knew. He was a graduate of Morehouse, class of 2003 ROTC. He had been out of the Army, Special Forces, almost two years. And he really enjoyed working for Dominion Commonwealth Services.

“Let's take a walk so we can talk more about what we're going to be doing,” Arnie Scott suggested. They left the dock bar and wandered down the dirt road lined with small, pastel-colored cottages, an old London red telephone booth and a red British Royal Mail box. There were no cars on the island and little foot traffic. Susan noticed a golf cart beside a small grocery store. Scott suggested he show her the Atlantic side and the reef. They walked through the courtyard of a small hotel, the Hopetown Lodge, past its outdoor bar, to the beach. The bright white-sand beach seemed to stretch endlessly off to the right, entirely unoccupied by bathers. An almost unnaturally fluorescent turquoise water spread out from the beach to a line of foam a few hundred yards offshore. There, the Atlantic hit the long coral reef protecting the cay.

“Kind of ironic. Ponce de Leon landed here almost exactly five hundred years ago looking for the fountain of youth. Now these guys come here seeking life-extension genes,” Scott said, shaking his head in disgust. “The lab is at the far end of Man-O-War Cay, which is the next island over in the chain. It's a big villa, walled off, with its own dock. They usually fly the patients directly to the dock on a seaplane from Fort Lauderdale. They spend a night, maybe two. Get tested and then do the procedure.”

The March sea kept up a constant roar as it crashed on the reef a few hundred feet away.

“Arnie, exactly what do we know about the procedure?” she asked while looking out to sea.

“Only the basics. We think they add the new chromosomes to the embryo, probably
in vitro.
We're hoping you find out more. However they do it, they have a high rate of success, a money-back guarantee, and no complaints that we could find.” He shook his head in disgust, “Its like that movie
Gattica,
where you could order up whatever added features you want in your kid. You just pay more for each addition.”

Susan stopped and sat on the sand near the water's edge. “The ruling elite, the first wave of an entirely new genus.”

“Let's hope they're the first and the last,” Scott said bitterly. He continued to stand, towering above Susan.

Susan looked up at her escort. “Are you, like, a foot taller than me or what?” she asked, trying to get him to loosen up.

“Only eight inches,” Scott said, and chuckled. She thought he had a pleasant face when he was smiling, not trying to be Army guy.

“And seven years younger, and we are supposed to be married and wealthy?” Susan rattled off what she knew of their cover story from reading the folder Gaudium had left for her on his plane. “Would you believe that shit?”

“I made three hundred thousand a year for three years in Iraq. You are a partner in a major consulting firm in Boston. You got yourself a smart, rich, young stud,” Scott said as though he were only reciting the lines he had been given. “The height thing…I don't know about that.”

“Did you make three hundred thousand a year in Iraq?” she asked.

“Hell no,” he said definitively. “I did the same thing as guys getting three hundred K working for those private firms, but I was still in the Army, ma'am—I got one-tenth of that amount.”

They walked along the empty beach away from the town. “Let's go over how this is supposed to work and what I'm supposed to find out,” Susan asked.

“My orders are to let you satisfy yourself that there is an offshore facility creating designer babies with extra chromosomes,” Scott explained. “They bring in nine women at a time, by the way, three times a week, and they have been doing that for almost a year and a half. If you can, find out exact numbers, ideally their addresses.”

“Can't you steal their database?” She thought she'd push a little further. “Hackers?”

“These guys are smart. Their computers aren't connected to the internet. They don't use wireless.” Scott stopped in the sand. “If you can, if you are alone in a room with a terminal or printer, there's a tiny bug I'll give you. It transmits out far enough for us to pick it up with an antenna and relay hidden in a rock we'll place on the beach. That could set up a path to get us into their LAN.”

Susan listened and then started walking down the beach again. “And we didn't fly in on their seaplane because…”

“They only fly in the mothers, and our story is that you wanted me to come along, wanted to relax first with a few days on the beach,” he answered, catching up with her. “They won't let me in, but I'll take you over to Man-O-War in the morning and walk you up the Queen's Highway to the gate by seven-thirty tomorrow morning.”

“Queen's Highway?” she repeated.

“It's another sand-and-dirt path that runs from one end of the cay to the other. Their idea of a joke over on Man-O-War,” Scott said, and flashed a toothy smile. Susan was thinking what was he doing working for some private security company and what was it doing working with Gaudium? Then Susan heard herself asking Arnie a question her subconscious generated: “Does Will manage the company now or just own it?”

“Oh, I think he's just the owner,” Scott replied. “He's so busy with everything else he does.”

“Yes, I know. Senator George came by the winery while I was there with Will. Have you met him yet? Dynamic speaker.”

“Yes, yes, he is,” Scott enthused. “I was on his protective detail for a week and then this assignment came up.”

Susan lifted her sunglasses onto her head. “And where are the two rooms, might I ask, where the Scott couple are supposed to be spending the night?”

“Dominion has a house on Man-O-War we've been using for the surveillance, but I assumed you might want to stay in a hotel, so I got you a room here in the Hopetown Lodge. The boatman brought your bag there. Unless you want me to hang around, I'll bring the boat over from Man-O-War and pick you up at seven tomorrow.”

“See you then,” Susan replied, thanking her instinct or subconscious or wherever that question about Will and the security firm had come from.

After Arnold Scott left on his boat back to Man-O-War, she walked slowly down to the water's edge. She felt alone, out on a limb. What was she doing on an out of the way little island no one had ever heard of, by herself? She had signed up to be an analyst. But she had wanted more, to be involved, on the edge with the most important issues, crises. Now, as Rusty had done in the Islamyah crisis, she was playing it solo in the field, like an agent. She was not trained for this. She had almost been killed at Moffett Field. Even Jimmy had almost been killed at Twentynine Palms. And where had it got them? Sol had to fly off to Hong Kong, grasping at straws, trying to avoid a showdown with China. What had she done? She looked out at the surf on the reef.

Gaudium. She had found him and come to understand him, really sympathize with and appreciate him. Nonetheless, putting aside emotion, although she could not prove it yet, the analytical side of her brain was telling her there was a connection between him and the attacks. There had to be. He actually owned the security company that was protecting Senator George and had ex–Special Forces guys like Arnie Scott doing surveillance on
in vitro
fertilization labs. Gaudium was aware of the Man-O-War lab and, if Soxster was right, the hacker Packetman was, too. Packetman had said they were going to eliminate something. And Packetman had worked at the ranch that Jimmy had raided, the ranch from where somebody had attacked the Marines and probably the satellites, the people who were planning to kill hundreds. Shit! Was that the Hiroshima event Will had in mind?

Susan felt for her BlackBerry. Its battery still had juice. She needed to call Jimmy. She hit his speed-dial number. Nothing happened. There was no cell service on this side of Elbow Cay! She ran up the beach to the hotel. At the outdoor bar, the bartender was laughing with an American couple, handing them drinks with little umbrellas. There was a phone on the bar. It would be better to use it; her room phone might be bugged. “I'm staying here,” she gasped. “Can I use this phone to call the States?” She called Jimmy's mobile number.

“How's the patient?” she asked.

“Great. I just took the bandages off and I can see fine, better than before,” Jimmy said as he stared out of his apartment window in Battery Park City, zooming in on the Jersey shore. “You heard about California and the west, the blackout? Almost a hundred million people without power. They're saying it could not have been an accident.”

“Shit, that will put even more pressure on the President to do something to somebody,” she said, walking with the cordless phone to a table near the bar.

“Find anything yet in the Bahamas?” Jimmy asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I think so. Remember Soxster said a hacker knew about Man-O-War and how the hackers were going to penetrate something, stop something?”

“Sure, that was Packetman. I just talked to Soxster about that, because he also said Packetman wanted to attack the power grid,” Jimmy said, looking at his notes.

“Will Gaudium knew about Man-O-War, too, and it turns out that Gaudium owns a security firm that is surveilling the place here. The firm is called Dominion Commonwealth something. Can you check it out?”

“You got it,” he said, sitting down at his computer terminal. “You liking Gaudium in the attacks?” The landline phone rang and Jessica Foley answered it in the next room. Now she was waving at him, signaling that the call was for him.

“No, well, maybe, could be somehow connected.” Susan put her hand up to the mouthpiece and spoke softly. “Jimmy, remember what TTeeLer said, how they were going to kill hundreds sometime in March? Packetman says they're going to destroy something related to Man-O-War? Jimmy,” Susan stopped and exhaled, “Jimmy, what if the hundreds they're going to kill are the
in vitro
children conceived at the Man-O-War lab? They don't have their addresses yet, but…”

Jimmy said nothing. Then: “That's like the Bible, Suz, the Pharaoh ordering the children be slain. Passover.”

Jessica was walking the phone over to Jimmy. “It's him,” she said, holding up a phone. “It's Belov.”

“I'll know tomorrow,” Susan replied. “See what Soxster can dig up and keep getting a good rest. We need you recovered.” Susan terminated the call and walked the phone back to the bar and said to the bartender, “Thanks for the phone. Do you have any Balvenie?”

In New York's Battery Park, Jimmy Foley traded phones with his wife.

“James,” the voice on the phone began, “It's your lunch date. I may have some answers. Can you come to the Teterboro Airport? Now?”

2030 Local Time
Hong Kong

Sol Rubenstein marveled at the city-state. It had been years since he had been to Hong Kong. Its magnificent Kai Tak island airport, connected to Central by a maze of tunnels and suspension bridges, and its skyline of architecturally stunning eighty- and hundred-story office towers were startling. Every square inch, even on the steep hills, was covered with apartment towers that Rubenstein belatedly realized were routinely fifty stories high.

The economic success of the mainland had created, in effect, two river states. Guangzhou and Hong Kong and a series of smaller cities were the Pearl River state. Shanghai and a series of lesser-known, several-million-population cities on the Yangtze made up the other river state. The upriver cities each specialized in a different product, and in many cases they accounted for half to seventy-five percent of the world's output in the categories of things they manufactured. The coastal metroplexes were the ports, economic hubs, and increasingly international centers for the two river states. Why did they need Taiwan? Why were they even thinking about risking this magnificent economic machine that they had built?

The flex-fuel BMW 785 had been waiting curbside after he was whisked through Customs and Immigration by an expediter. China was now growing more whip grass than the United States and fueling more cars with flex-fuel or ethanol blends. Rubenstein had been the only passenger in first class on the Cathay Pacific 787ER that had flown him nonstop from Washington. The flight attendants had been amazed. First class was almost always full. So far, the Chinese were making it painless to go halfway around the world for a mysterious meeting. He had, however, not experienced the day that somehow disappeared as he crossed the international date line.