Alchemist (76 page)

Conor frowned. ‘Why do that?'

‘Simple; you digest mercury and it stays in your system for life, right?'

‘Right.'

‘So – the combination of chemicals the Medicis gave their staff could never be eradicated from their systems. But it
could
be contained with an antidote; so long as they took the antidote twice a day, they were fine. But the formula and elements of the antidote were a secret. Ergo the staff could never leave; they needed the antidote, so they were wholly dependent on the Medicis giving it to them. If they left, they would be dead within a few weeks.'

‘The Medicis really did that?'

‘Yes. It was their way of creating staff loyalty. Has a certain kind of macabre elegance about it, don't you think?'

Conor felt a sudden tremor as the realization struck home. ‘Sweet Jesus!' he exclaimed. ‘They couldn't do that!'

‘They did, Conor – it's documented.'

‘I – I don't mean the Medicis.'

Schwab gave him an odd look. ‘What
do
you mean?'

Conor glanced down at the floor, unable to continue. ‘I – it – it's not important,' he said. ‘Forget it.' But his brain was busy racing with excitement, reeling with horror, at the enormity of the implications.

The Medici Trial
.

The words burrowed through his mind.

Medici Trial
.

How far had Dr Bannerman got with his tests on the
Maternox? Had he identified the DNA? Because if he had, and if Conor was right in his very latest assumptions, there was no question that in doing so the scientist had signed his death warrant. And Monty's, and Wentworth's, and his own.

No question at all.

Wednesday 7 December, 1994

At ten past five in the evening, Gunn lifted the phone on his desk and punched two keys for a stored number to Maryland. He was answered by a gravelly voice on the third ring.

‘McLusky.'

‘Good afternoon, Mr McLusky, I was expecting to have heard from you.'

There was a silence, then the head of the Bendix Schere United States Security Operations said, with a slightly embarrassed laugh, ‘Oh – ha – yeah, Major Gunn, I was just waiting for positive confirmation before disturbing you.'

‘It's after midday – I thought you were dealing with things last night.' Although the line was secure, Gunn was sometimes guarded in what he said over it.

‘That was our plan, but I'm afraid it didn't work out.'

‘Why the hell not?'

‘I can't answer that right now. Seems like he spent the night other than in the hotel – maybe he was visiting a floozie or something.'

‘You mean you don't
know
?'

‘He checked in but he didn't spend the night in his room.'

‘You lost him, is that what you're trying to tell me?' Gunn thought about the overweight ex-FBI officer with his walrus moustache and salt-and-pepper hair. He was a good operator, dependable and ruthless when required. It was unusual for him to make any kind of error. But he was nudging sixty; maybe he was starting to slacken off.

‘No, we didn't lose him, Major, I guess he just gave us the run-around for a few hours. We have him under surveillance right now; he's located in his business meeting and we'll pick him up when he leaves the building.'

‘Good.'

‘No change in your instructions, Major Gunn?'

‘No. I just want it to look convincing.'

‘No problem in that division.'

‘You also didn't come back to me yet on his background.'

‘We're still working on that one. He's a talented guy, knows how to cover his tracks pretty good. I figured since you'd upgraded us from just identifying him to dispensing with his services, there wasn't such an urgency on his background.'

‘I always like to know who I'm killing, Mr McLusky,' Gunn said wryly. ‘I consider it to be good clinical practice. And good clinical practice is very important to the company.'

Washington. Wednesday 7 December, 1994

‘This is a breach of regulations, Conor, I don't know if I can do it.'

‘You'll have it back in a few hours.'

Dave Schwab shook his head. ‘I'm not comfortable about it.'

‘Dave – remember that time I covered for you with Julie? When she rang up wanting you and I told her you were crashed out, like stoned out of your brains, while you were shagging that little thing, what was her name – Hollis Emmerson?'

‘That was then and this is now, man. Life's changed lanes, this is the real world.'

‘And nothing counted then because we were all students and you hadn't taken Julie down the aisle?'

‘Yes.'

Conor stared at his friend. ‘Well, you were sure as hell scared out of your fucking brains you were going to lose her. Now it's my turn,
I'm
scared and
I
need a favour.'

Schwab looked dubious. ‘I could get into all kinds of trouble over this.'

‘Dave – come on; get real, like you just said yourself. This is the Civil Service in the United States of America, they can't stop you having friends, they can't hang you over a loan to a pal – one that doesn't have anything to do with business.'

‘They might not see it that way.'

Conor was beginning to lose his temper. ‘But they're not ever going to know. Jesus Christ, why the fuck should they?'

Schwab raised his hands. ‘OK, OK, take it.'

‘You'll call Julie, tell her I'll be round for the other helmet and leathers?'

‘I'll call her. My leathers are in the cupboard behind you.' Schwab reached wearily behind him, picked up the crash helmet and handed it to Conor; then he dug in his jacket pocket and tossed over a set of keys. ‘You take the elevator down to the basement and turn right. You'll see it, a red Suzuki seven-fifty. You ride up the ramp and the doors'll open automatically.'

‘I'll drop it off at your place later this afternoon.' Conor took out his wallet. ‘And I'll even give you thirty bucks for your cab fare – that about cover it?'

Schwab shook his head vigorously. ‘Oh no, definitely not; that would be a bribe, man. I take that and my ass is grass. Just take the goddamn bike and get out of my rug, do what you have to do.'

Conor stood up. ‘Always knew you were one of the good guys, Schwab. One day you might even find a certificate on the wall from little ole me.'

The bar in the departure lounge at Dulles Airport was crowded and at first, as Conor approached with Schwab's crash helmet under his arm, he thought Monty had not yet arrived. Then he saw her shock of blonde hair, and his heart jumped. She was sitting, bundled up in her mackintosh, reading a magazine, her small suitcase on the floor beside her.

She noticed him when he was a few feet away, looked up distractedly for a moment, then her face broke into a smile that he wanted to hold in his memory for ever.

He plonked the helmet down on her case and they hugged each other tightly, clinging as if terrified some external force was going to rip them apart. Monty pressed her lips to his and they kissed fiercely for a long time before they spoke.

‘Conor,' she said, breathlessly. ‘You're here, you're OK!'

In response he expressed an identical concern for her. ‘God, I've been so worried about you. You made it!'

She pressed her face against the soft leather of Schwab's biking gear. ‘You look cool in this – I didn't know you were a closet Hell's Angel.'

He smiled, curling his arms around her and cradling her. ‘First time I've ridden a Suzuki in about fifteen years.' He looked around as he spoke, but there were far too many bodies for him to be able to single out the one that might be watching them. He knew for sure he had not been tailed from the Patent Office. ‘No news on your father – or Wentworth?'

‘No.'

He kissed her. ‘Let's move outta here, we'll talk later.' He tucked Schwab's crash helmet back under his arm, and was stooping to pick up her suitcase when she took a step back suddenly and he saw her expression change; her eyes turning fiery.

‘Where are we going, Conor?'

‘A place we'll be safe, and where there's someone who can maybe find your dad.'

‘Why the mystery?'

He smiled awkwardly, taken aback. ‘There's no mystery.'

‘You told me a few days ago that you would explain everything in Washington. Well, I'm here,' she said defiantly. ‘And I want the explanations now. Right now.'

‘Monty, there's no big deal I'm hiding from you, I promise. It's just –' He sighed. ‘I guess the truth is just so fantastic that maybe I wasn't sure myself – nor was I sure that you'd believe me if I tried to explain it to you.'

‘Try me,' she said. ‘Tell me what we're up against.'

‘Follow me,' he responded, ‘and you got yourself a deal.'

Conor swung the motorbike off the Beltway, and on to a wide, quiet road through lush suburban countryside, being careful to keep within the speed limits. He saw nothing following him in his mirrors.

Despite everything, he was enjoying the exhilaration of the ride and the snug grip of Monty's hands round his waist, and felt a nostalgic yearning to own a machine like this again. Maybe when all this evil was over he would buy one, he thought wistfully, and take her on a long trip somewhere warm and safe. If they were still alive and if there ever was a safe place for them again.

He turned left at an intersection and accelerated, his eyes fixed now on the building looming up about half a mile ahead, a massive, bland high-rise. A couple of hundred yards short of it, he pulled into the kerb then killed the engine, jamming his feet firmly on the ground against the enormous swaying deadweight of the Suzuki, and pushed up his vizor.

Monty climbed off, relieved that her suitcase, perilously strapped to the top of the pannier, was still there, removed her helmet and shook out her hair, then stomped her feet on the ground. She was bitterly cold despite Julie Schwab's fleece-lined leathers which she was wearing over her own clothes.

She followed Conor's gaze and examined the high-rise right in front of them. It was a muddy-brown colour and appeared, at first sight, to be two buildings, one behind the other; but as she looked harder she could see it had been designed in two tiers, the far one several storeys higher than the one which faced them. Its sheer size gave it an air of importance, but Monty thought, in spite of that, it looked ugly and charmless. A gaggle of protesters, gathered outside the main entrance,
suddenly broke into a chant as a male figure emerged and crossed the quiet street to a cab rank.

Conor seemed strangely silent.

‘What is this place?' she asked.

He put an arm around Monty, and she sensed him taking a deep breath. ‘I needed to bring you here,' he said. ‘But, believe me, this is the hardest place in the world for me to be.'

He kissed her lightly on the side of her forehead, and she could feel him trembling. ‘A lot of people,' he went on, ‘are driven by something. They have one thing that kind of obsesses them above all else – like your father and breast cancer research, right?'

The mention of her father sent fresh anxieties for his safety spiralling through Monty. She swallowed and nodded.

‘He's a driven man, you told me that yourself – because he's obsessed with identifying and destroying the breast cancer genes. I know what that kind of passion means. You wake up every morning with just one thought on your mind and you go to bed at night with that same thought. With your dad it's because he watched your mother die and that's something he can never forget. Well, I too have something that I can never forget, that's why I understand how he feels. Your dad deals with it his way, I deal with it my way.'

Monty was stunned into silence and on his face she could read only a moving combination of sadness and grim determination.

The building looked even vaster close up, and it was far longer than she had realized. Some of the protesters were still chanting, some waved banners and Stars and Stripes flags, other strutted around wearing sandwich boards. The multicoloured lettering on one read:
KEEP VITAMINS
&
AMINO ACIDS LEGAL
! Another said:
ABOLISH THE FDA
!

Monty turned to Conor. ‘Is
this
the FDA? The Food and Drug Administration?'

He did not seem to hear her as he grabbed her case and they crossed a narrow grass strip that isolated the huge car park in front of the building from the pavement, walking past a rather faded sign that said ‘Parking By Permit Only'. Conor's pace quickened so that Monty found it hard to keep level.

‘How many people have we talked to who've died now, Monty? Jake Seals, Zandra Wollerton, Walter Hoggin, Dr Corbin, Charley Rowley; we don't know about Rowley, but in each case there doesn't seem to be anyone else involved: Wollerton drives through the barriers at a train crossing; a hook drops on Corbin's head; Seals pours acid over himself; Hoggin has a heart attack. These are all perfectly innocent tragedies when looked at individually. But when you take a collective view the ball game changes. Right?'

‘Yes.'

‘But there's no conventional force that would make a man throw acid over himself, that would make a woman drive through a barrier in the path of an oncoming train, that would make a hook drop accurately on to a human head.'

They'd reached a massive blue sign sited above a flowerbed that said:
US DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
. A flag hung limply above it. They stopped at the base of the building, and Conor set down the suitcase, then craned his neck to see the top floors.

Monty looked up as well, up along the wall of brown tinted glass that towered into the cirrus-streaked sky and mirrored its reflection back at them. There was an uncanny peace, suddenly, but one that suggested a thousand unseen eyes stared down at them. No traffic noise, no wind, just the solitary pinging cheep of a lone bird, then that, too, stopped.