Rise of the Order (4 page)

Jake cranked the wheel hard at a cross street and accelerated. “Hold on to your balls.”

The lights from the other cop car appeared to Jake's right just as their car reached the crossroad, giving him a micro-second to hit his brakes and timing the collision so his left front bumper clipped the other cop car in the left rear, sending the car careening into parked cars. But Jake was able to shove his stick into second, crank the wheel to the left and miss all of the parked cars.

“One down,” Jake said, his eyes in the rearview mirror for a second to see the other car was nearly a block behind them.

More desperate words on the radio.

“You know this city?” Jake asked Albrecht.

The man thought and then said, “Not well.”

Jake checked the road signs and saw directions to the autobahn and Brno, the Czech Republic. He switched off the lights and siren and turned onto a main street, going in that direction. Seconds later he got onto the main autobahn that lead from Bratislava to Prague. The early morning rush hour was starting to show, but most of the cars were coming from the other direction. Thinking quickly, or maybe not thinking at all, Jake crossed the center median heading directly into oncoming traffic, cars screeching to a halt as their cop car cut a path between a big truck and an Audi sedan.

“What the hell are you doing?” Albrecht yelled, his grip tighter. “You'll get us killed.”

Looking behind him, the chase car followed them across into traffic. As rush hour cars slammed into each other, Jake cut back across the median in front of a line of cars and blended in, with a truck behind him and another on his left. Hidden like that, Jake cruised forward on the autobahn. Just out of town, he turned off the autobahn at the first exit, making sure to slow with the engine so his brake lights wouldn't give them away, and then he saw the cop car pass on the road above.

Jake backtracked down a narrow road toward the Danube River, picked up a frontage road, and turned west in the direction of the Austrian border.

A sign said there was a small town a few kilometers up the road. Jake had a feeling there might be a bridge there—a minor crossing into Austria. But before they reached the town, Jake found a small road that entered a forest to the right. He pulled into the road, drove for a short distance, and parked the police car, shutting down the ticking, tired engine. Then he had Albrecht wipe his prints from the handle and anything else he had touched. The cops he had embarrassed back there would have a description of the two of them, but that's it. And Jake guessed the two would have them both at close to six-feet five and three hundred pounds to diffuse the pain of their failure.

Now they needed to get the hell out of the Slovak Republic. That could be tricky.

Magdeburg, Germany

The former Prussian city of Magdeburg was now the capital of the Sachsen-Anhalt province, and was situated to the west of Brandenburg and Berlin in what had been Soviet occupied East Germany until reunification more than a decade past. The province had seen the rise of Martin Luther, where he had preached at the altar of some of Europe's greatest cathedrals. But Magdeburg had also seen the destruction of religious division during the Thirty Years War, where more than 30,000 of its citizens were killed.

The expansive Magdeburg University sat on a knoll overlooking the Elbe River, its buildings a distant remnant of the elegance it once was prior to the bombing during World War II that destroyed over 80 percent of the city. Some of the buildings had been rebuilt with the old fallen stone, but others were constructed in the 60s under the watchful eye of Soviet occupation, and those resembled blockhouse tenements designed by unimaginative ten-year-olds.

Standing in the window of his third-story office in the engineering building, Dr. Wilhelm Altenstein, a professor of micro and nanoscience, was proud of the accomplishments of his university, and particularly his department. He had led a team recently to a conference at Delft University in the Netherlands, where he presented his findings on nanotechnology and bioengineering—the results of which had raised his reputation to those of Professors Martin of Berlin and even Anderson of Stanford University in America. Although those in attendance had been impressed, they knew only part of his research. He could not reveal more. Not yet.

Altenstein changed his view from the sprawling campus with leafless trees and scattered pines to his reflection in the glass. His hair, black and gray, stood up in all directions, a result of sleeping on the sofa in his office again. His scraggly beard hung down from his chin in a point, and he stroked it now with his thin fingers. In his mid fifties, he looked closer to sixty, he thought, with the bags under his eyes and the wrinkles across his forehead.

“Professor,” came a voice from the door.

Altenstein startled from his reverie and then glanced at the reflected image of Hermann Conrad. He wasn't expecting him for another hour. Checking his watch, he realized the man was right on time.

The two men met in the middle of the large office and shook hands. Conrad was the chief executive and president of Marienburg Biotechnik, the main funding source for Altenstein's research. The company was established almost a decade ago during the biotechnology boom that followed the mapping of the human genome. Conrad had done quite well for himself, and that was evident by his Italian suit and shoes, the Rolex watch on his right wrist, his perfectly manicured hands, and hair that seemed to shine.

“Hope I didn't catch you at a bad time,” Conrad said, his words soft-spoken like a jazz disc jockey.

“We had a meeting scheduled,” Altenstein said, checking his watch.

“Yes, we did. But I know how busy you can get.”

A jab at past meetings he had missed or been late arriving, Altenstein thought. Conrad had always, ever since their relationship began some five years prior, been patient to a point. Cross him, though, and he would unleash a brutal temper. Altenstein had seen him fire employees for seemingly insignificant indiscretions, and the good professor wanted nothing of that wrath. He needed Conrad's funding or he would end up back in the classroom trying to teach inferior minds the significance of the future of microtechnology, and nanotechnology in particular.

“I heard you turned some heads in Delft,” Conrad said, his eyebrows raising.

Altenstein tried to guess where this was going. “I gave nothing away,” the professor said. “No more than they already knew. I just wanted my colleagues to know I knew what they knew.”

“Perhaps more?”

“I don't know about that.” If they only knew his true research, he would probably be investigated on ethical grounds.

“Have you tested the nano. . .what do you call them?”

“Inhibitors.”

“Right. Inhibitors.” Conrad crossed his arms onto his chest, his mind in deep thought. “Well?”

“The tests are nearly complete,” Altenstein said apprehensively.

“Have the. . .inhibitors acted as you planned?”

Altenstein moved behind his cluttered desk and shuffled some papers, finally extracting a binder with his research. Everything was computerized, saved to CD and DVD, stored in his secure lab and also off-site at a bank vault, but he also printed his data. Some might find his aversion to trusting technology like computers antithetic to his high-tech research, but he also knew the exact failure rates of microprocessors and the surges of the power grid in Sachsen-Anhalt that had fried far too many computers, even those supposedly protected by surge protectors and power back-up systems.

Altenstein turned to midway in his binder, his eyes shifting from the pages to Conrad's waiting glare. “As I told you before, we can target specific genes or other DNA factors with the nanoinhibitors.” He paused and tried to find the words that would not confuse Conrad. He knew that Conrad was a businessman, not a scientist. He had people in his company for that. He was a genius taking technological innovations and exploiting them for commercial use, though. Altenstein's research would be no different.

“Please continue, Herr Professor.”

“Right. So, we had mice with a bacterial infection, for instance, that we then injected with the inhibitors designed to attack bacteria.” Altenstein smiled broadly now, his eyes moving from the papers in the binder to Conrad. “The nanos wiped out the bacteria within twenty-four hours.”

“My God.”

Altenstein felt almost like God at that moment. “Absolutely. We have replicated the studies with more than five of the most common bacteria. Same result.”

“This will make antibiotics obsolete,” Conrad said, his eyes sparkling with the possibilities. He was seeing Euro signs now.

“The other genetic factors you asked to study seem equally promising,” Altenstein said, flipping through more pages. He didn't have to rely on paper; he knew exactly off the top of his mind the results of his work. “We tested for a genetic defect in several mice—those with a predisposition to hormonal obesity—and all mice injected with the nanoinhibitor programmed to eliminate this hormone did just that. All mice lost weight.”

“My God.” Conrad shook his head. “Will this work with any gene?”

Altenstein hesitated, wondering why he would ask this question. “I would think so. With proper inhibitors.”

Conrad was thinking hard now, his head moving up and down. “Could you reverse the problem?”

“What do you mean?”

“Instead of inhibiting a process. . .could you make the nanos react to a genetic factor?”

“You mean attack a certain genetic trait?” Altenstein shrugged. “It's possible.” After he said it, he regretted having done so. A light went off in the professor's brain. God indeed.

“How long before you could test for that?” Conrad said, his voice shifting from jazz to heavy metal.

“I would have to get mice with a particular trait we wanted to eliminate,” Altenstein said. “That could take a while.”

“Let's not reinvent the wheel here, professor.” Conrad rubbed his chin. “What's the most obvious genetic trait?”

Altenstein didn't want to answer. He couldn't.

“What about hair color?” Conrad said. “You have white mice. . .and black mice. I've seen them in your lab.”

“You want me to test mice with white or black fur?”

“Can you do that?”

Altenstein wanted to say no, but he was sure Conrad could ask a scientist on his staff who would tell him the truth. He probably already had, he guessed. With the entire mouse genome in the university database, fur color would be the easiest factor to test.

“Sure.” Altenstein said tentatively.

“Wonderful. Do that as soon as possible.”

“But your company could make a fortune from the antibiotic inhibitor alone, not to mention the anti-obesity inhibitor.”

“Absolutely,” Conrad said. “Send all your data to my scientists on both of those, and then move on to the new tests.”

Conrad reached out to shake Altenstein's hand, and the professor reluctantly shook before taking his hand back and shoving it deep into his pocket. Had he just made a pact with the Devil?

Starting for the door, Conrad stopped and turned. “Make sure you keep this and future research to yourself and only your most trusted graduate students. No more conferences.”

It was not a request, Altenstein knew. What had he done?

Conrad shuffled out of the office and the professor walked to the window. In a few moments he watched his benefactor make his way to his Mercedes, get in, and drive off. He wondered if they could factor in Mercedes drivers? Altenstein smiled at that. Maybe only left handed Mercedes drivers.

By the time Jake got back to Vienna with Albrecht in tow, he was tired and confused, two things Jake hated to consume his body. Having found a small, isolated bridge crossing the Danube, Jake had quickly found a train station on the Austrian side. From there they had taken a train back, picked up Albrecht's Mercedes, drove to the airport southeast of the city, and parked the car in the long-term lot. Jake was afraid that if they left the car on the street eventually the Polizei would find it and then someone would realize Albrecht was missing. Albrecht already had someone trying to find him, and kill him, and he didn't need the Austrian Polizei also looking for him.

From the airport Jake and Albrecht had taken the schnellbahn, the U-Bahn and a tram back to Jake's car, and immediately headed out of the city to try to hide the Grand Master.

Now it was mid afternoon and Jake kept his VW Golf at a moderate pace along Autobahn A1 westbound toward Linz. He kept his eye on the traffic around him, making sure they were not being followed. So far so good, he thought.

“That was a good idea leaving my car at the airport,” Albrecht said. He had been quiet for the past hour, probably trying to understand the fate of his friend in Bratislava. “Not to mention having me call my office and telling them I'd be taking a few days off. They would have worried, especially once they got word of my friend's murder.”

Jake grunted and watched for signs ahead. He would need to turn off soon, at random, and stash his new boss in some small town. No forethought. Just pick a town. There. A sign for the Steyr exit. Steyr was a smaller town just south of their location, a town made famous mostly by production of one of the world's great automatic weapons.

Looking in his rearview mirror as he slowed down the off-ramp, Jake checked to see if anyone had followed them off the autobahn. Nothing yet. He got onto a small southbound two-lane road and picked up speed. Out in the countryside, he glanced back again and then hit the brakes, pulling into a farmer's road among a small grove of trees. He turned the car around, pulled forward until he was sure the trees hid them, and waited.

“What's the matter?” Albrecht asked, concern in his worried eyes.

Jake pulled out his gun, slid a round into the chamber, and gently moved the hammer forward. “Just as we turned south, I noticed an Audi come down the autobahn ramp. Just a precaution.”