Calypso Directive (27 page)

As Albane stood, extracting herself from EMT duties, she whispered, “Mark.”

C. Remy—
RS:Coordinator
: “Bio, that's your cue. Move toward the door. When the paramedics address the crowd, you slip in and take position on the stretcher. Two paramedics came in, three go out.”

A. Archer—
RS:Bio
: “Roger. I'm ready.”

“Okay, everyone, the show is over. Please make some room. We need to load this man onto the stretcher,” one of the paramedics said to the crowd in Czech.

“You heard him. Move back people. The paramedics need room to work,” Moderkiek said, taking charge of his gathered coworkers.

The other paramedic began pushing the onlookers away—creating confusion and commotion—and no one noticed a third paramedic take position at the foot of the stretcher. This man wheeled the stretcher into position as the other two paramedics readied Kalen for lifting.

“On the count of three, we lift him . . . One, two, three, LIFT,” the paramedic in charge directed, and they lifted Kalen onto the stretcher bed.

“Officer Moderkiek, please get these people out of here,” Albane ordered.

“Yes, Madame Inspector. I'm very sorry.” Moderkiek raised his arms and barked at the crowd. “Back to work. The inspector is in good hands. Everyone, back to your stations.”

“Thank you, Officer Moderkiek.” She extended her hand, which he gladly took within his. “Given this event, the inspection is over. However, your diligent cooperation will be noted in my report and will reflect positively on you as an individual regardless of how the facility fares overall.”

“Thank you, Madame Inspector,” Moderkiek said with a smile, clutching her hand in both of his until at last she pulled it free from his sweaty palms. “If you have any future questions, you know you can count on me.”

He watched the inspectors hurry toward the ambulance. He was proud of himself. He had shown initiative today. And leadership. Maybe instead of being fired, he would be promoted, from Section Leader to Chief of Security. “Chief Moderkiek”—he liked the sound of that.

•     •     •

WITH SIRENS BLARING
and lights flashing, an ambulance sped away from Chiarek Norse through the streets of Prague at 100 kilometers per hour. In the cramped rear compartment, AJ sat in silence, his knees wedged against the metal frame of Kalen's stretcher. With every jarring pothole, his kneecaps suffered a new bruise.

He peered down at the motionless Kalen, resting on the stretcher. Kalen's eyes were closed and his face was drenched with beads of sweat.

“This sort of thing is hard on a body, even for someone as fit as Kalen. Maybe you better check his breathing,” said Albane, from her position next to him on the narrow bench seat.

A lump formed in his throat. No one had warned him that Kalen's health would be put in jeopardy by the stunt. Damn, The Tank was hardcore. He leaned over the stretcher and put his cheek close to Kalen's mouth and nose. He felt a warm moist breath against skin, but it seemed faint and labored. He was about to suggest that they take Kalen to a real hospital when without warning, Kalen's hands shot up and clutched him by the shoulders.

“BOO!”

He jerked free from Kalen's grasp, knocking his head on the ceiling of the ambulance.

Kalen howled with glee. Veronika wiped tears from her cheeks, she was laughing so hard. Even Albane could not help but chuckle at the scene.

His initial confusion gave way to laughter as he joined in his colleagues' revelry at his expense.

“Nice one, Archer,” Kalen said, slapping AJ on the upper arm. “Very nice.”

Boston, Massachusetts

M
EREDITH RUBBED HER
eyes. Instead of rousing from her nightmares, lately it seemed she was waking into them.

“These inspectors, were they Americans?” she seethed, her iPhone pressed hard against her right ear. She had not bothered to get out of bed nor had she turned on the lights in her Boston hotel suite.

“No, Ms. Morley. They were Czech,” the nervous voice on the phone replied in heavily accented English. “They were from the Ministry of Health.”

“Did they have official Ministry paperwork?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Email me a scanned copy of every document they issued. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Ms. Morley.”

If she had a detonator linked to that sorry-ass excuse for a covert facility, she would have pressed the button. She had once seen a bumper sticker that read, “You Can't Fix Stupid,” and by God her people were validating that aphorism on a daily basis. “Is anything missing? Did they confiscate materials? Samples, records, hard disks? Anything?”

“No, Madame. Nothing appears to be missing. But, we are still conducting an inventory of the facility. All patients and research were already transferred to the Bucharest facility. So there was nothing for them to see, other than the facility itself. And with the power outage, most of their inspection was conducted in the dark.”

“Power outage! I was not made aware of any power outage.”

“I'm sorry, I thought you were already informed of the incident. We suffered a power outage at the facility today. About fifteen minutes after the inspectors arrived we lost primary power and the backup generator failed to start. It's good the transfer was complete, because ventilation and refrigeration were down for twenty minutes,” the head of Chiarek Norse security explained.

“How is it possible that the backup generator failed to start?”

“We are still investigating, but apparently the fuel transfer line on the diesel generator was clogged, so the diesel was starved of fuel even though the fuel tank was full.”

“What was the line clogged with?”

“The mechanic says it was sludge.”

“Don't you find that a bit suspicious?”

“No. The mechanic says this can happen if the fuel tanks are old, if the fuel is contaminated in some way, or if the maintenance is not proper on the machine.”

An awkward silence persisted before Meredith finally said, “Is Dr. Pope with you now?”

“Yes, he is standing next to me.”

“Put him on the phone.”

“Hello, Meredith.”

Xavier Pope's dulcet voice was a lullaby. With all the stress of recent events, she found herself suddenly yearning for his company. She missed their late-night sessions in Prague. She missed the euphoria they had shared during the early days of the project. The start of a new project was what she lived for. So much hope. So much anticipation. It was the same feeling she had as a girl, just after opening the first present on Christmas morning. Holding a new treasure in hand, but knowing that many other gifts, each possibly more grand and exciting, still awaited unwrapping.

Now, that feeling was gone. Anticipation replaced by anxiety, fervor supplanted by frustration.

She was cleaning up other people's messes.

She hated messes.

“Have you positively identified the people who paid us the visit today?”

“No. I've not seen a decent image of any of the inspectors' faces. We lost all camera footage during the blackout, and the video feed from the lobby wide angle camera was corrupted before the power loss.”

“How convenient,” she mumbled.

“Indeed.”

“And where the hell were you when this all went down, Xavier?”

“I was en route to the airport. You told me to personally oversee the final preparations in Bucharest.”

“Unfortunate timing . . . What about the server room?”

“No forced entry as far as we can tell. The servers have a thirty minute UPS, so they stayed online for the duration of the black out. Most of the doors in the facility have magnetic locks that fail when power is lost, but the server room has a key lock for double security. But it doesn't matter anyway. All project data was exported off the servers before they arrived, and the clean files you provided were imported in their place, as instructed.” Pope assured her.

“Excellent,” Meredith said. “And the record room?”

“I pulled Foster's charts yesterday myself and replaced them with the ones you sent by FedEx.”

“Well done, Xavier. It's good to know I have at least one person in this organization I can count on.”

“Is there anything else I can do, Meredith?”

“Find Will Foster before someone else does,” she laughed.

The line fell silent.

“Call me when the identity of the inspectors can be corroborated,” she said.

“Do you still want me to go to Bucharest, or should I remain in Prague in case the inspectors come back?”

“They won't be back. Leave on the next available flight. We've lost three days of research time. I can't afford to lose any more.”

“You realize it will be difficult, if not impossible, to proceed without Foster.”

“We have his entire genome mapped, Xavier, and months of research data. You should be able to continue the work without Foster now.”

“It's not that simple, Meredith. There are over twenty thousand genes scattered among three
billion
base pairs in the human genome. And just because you've identified a gene, doesn't mean you know what protein it encodes. It also doesn't tell you what function that protein performs, or how it interacts with other proteins. The Foster mutation is something we've never seen before. It could be expressed by a single gene, or by multiple genes—we're still evaluating.”

“I never said this would be easy, Xavier. And you still haven't answered my question,” she said, her ire rising. She heard him exhale loudly on the other end of the line and it annoyed her.

“Identifying the genes that express the Foster mutation is not the same thing as understanding
how
the mutation works. Before I can devise a gene therapy that confers Foster's unique mechanism of immunity, I have to understand exactly how his immune system operates. For that, I need more time.
”

Her tone soured. “Enough. He'll be back in your custody by week's end,” she said and ended the call without salutation.

She looked down at her iPhone. She wanted to throw it across the room, but she resisted the urge and set it gently down on the bedside table. She exhaled slowly and told herself that she was proud of herself for showing restraint. Then, she picked up the iPhone and hurled it across the room. It hit the facing wall with a thud and dropped to the carpet. She was tired. So very, very tired. When she was in college, pulling one or two all-nighters a week was no problem. Now, her thirty-nine-year-old body was not as forgiving, and the events of the last several days had left her haggard. Mentally and physically. She was functioning more on instinct than intellect at the moment, and her usual vicelike control over her emotions was slipping.

Foster was proving to be vexingly more allusive than she had anticipated. She was not surprised that Raimond Zurn and his half-wit brother Udo had still not located Foster. Hiring the Zurns had been a mistake, but Nicolora's team's impotence thus far was as appalling as it was astonishing. No sooner had she finished damning Nicolora's team than she began to second-guess herself. If her relationship with Nicolora had taught her anything, it was that his competence was overshadowed only by his cunning. If the Tank did not have Foster yet, then she had reason to worry. With Nicolora, the straight line was never the shortest distance between two objectives.

“Surprise Ministry of Health inspection,” she scoffed in the dark, “I know it was you Robért, you devil.”

Her iPhone rang.

She turned on the bedside lamp, got out of bed, and walked over to where she had thrown it. She picked it up off the carpet and looked at the caller ID. Fantastic, more bad news.

“What?” she barked.

“Ms. Morley, this is Bart Bennett at Wien BioScience . . . We need to talk.”

Prague, Czech Republic