Cell (24 page)

George switched off the light of the dissecting microscope and left the pathology lab after thanking the technician who had helped him. He was pleased with what he had accomplished, but recognized something important: He needed to be careful. Lots of people, including Clayton and possibly the men searching Sal's apartment and surely Amalgamated, would be wanting Sal's microchip. It was, if he was right, a smoking gun.

•   •   •

G
eorge drove home, his mind going a mile a minute. He knew that he had stumbled onto something serious. The first person he should call was Paula. She had to know that her “baby” had been hijacked. He just hoped that she wouldn't blame the messenger, because he knew she would be both horrified and devastated. He wondered if he should call her while she was still in Hawaii, and then wondered why he was wondering. Of course he should call her as soon as he was certain. This wasn't something that could wait. People were literally dying.

GEORGE'S APARTMENT

WESTWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

FRIDAY, JULY 4, 2014, 3:52
P.M.

A
black SUV and a black van, both with dark tinted windows, pulled up and parked behind George's apartment complex. A bank of electronic listening equipment lined the interior of the van. Four men dressed in SoCal Edison uniforms alighted from the vehicles, leaving two men in suits behind in the SUV and two technicians in coveralls sitting in the back of the van.

The four men in uniform strapped on an array of impressive electrical tool belts. One went to a nearby pole and climbed up to tap the phone line. The other three went to the building's electrical panel and opened it, as if they were reading the meter. They then split up: two men went through the complex and the other man walked around the side of the building.

All three quickly closed in on George's apartment, one in back and two in the front. There was no conversation or hesitation. They were professionals. It was all planned. Nothing was left to chance.

The two inside the complex rang George's doorbell. There was no answer, which they fully expected. Earlier, having checked his cell phone with GPS, they knew that George was in the San Fernando Valley. Yet they wanted to be sure his apartment was empty. One of the men quickly and effortlessly picked George's cheap lock.

Without so much as one word, the taller of the two disappeared inside the apartment while the other stood guard just inside the entrance. He peered out of a window. The pool area of the complex was empty. No one was about; it being the Fourth of July, most people with a car were at either the beach or a barbecue.

The other man in George's apartment worked quickly, hiding several small listening devices and cameras, linking them up wirelessly with a battery-powered amplifier hidden by his colleague on the back side of the apartment behind a downspout. The amplifier would catch the wireless signals from the devices inside the apartment and then relay them to the recording equipment in the van. All told, the whole operation took less than seven minutes.

Once safely back inside the vehicles, the four technicians waited to be picked up by a third vehicle. The car appeared moments later, stopping just long enough for the four men to scurry aboard. The men in coveralls were left behind in the van and the two suits were settled into the SUV, removing their sidearms and generally making themselves more comfortable. They knew it would most likely be a long night. But they were accustomed to it. Their jobs required long hours of boredom punctuated by sudden violence.

The man sitting behind the wheel dialed a number on his mobile phone and left a simple message: “We're good.”

GEORGE'S APARTMENT COMPLEX

WESTWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

FRIDAY, JULY 4, 2014, 6:05
P.M.

G
eorge turned into the street behind his apartment. He was exhausted and had a near accident while driving back from the valley. It seemed like rush hour even though it was a holiday. Pulling into his slot, he didn't notice the black SUV at the curb in the street. Or the black van that was parked half a block farther down the road. Such vehicles were more common than palm trees in the neighborhood, especially black SUVs.

George parked and grabbed his gear, carefully making sure the tiny drug reservoir was safely in his pocket, and raced to his apartment. He put everything except the microchip on the dining room table, and then located Sal's broken smartphone as well as Kasey's. With these in his other pocket, he ran outside and up the stairs to pound on Zee's door.

“Jesus! Hang on. I'm coming!” Zee yelled. A second later he yanked the door open and took in George's expression and appearance. “What the fuck, dude?” he said. “We have a fire in the building or what?”

“I need your help. Right now.”

“Slow down, dude. I'm here,” Zee said, trying to calm his clearly distraught neighbor.

George took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said, realizing that he had to get himself under control. He knew that what he was asking Zee to do was going to take a long time,
if
he could do it at all. And that was assuming Zee was even willing. That was another big
if
, given that what George wanted Zee to do was very much against the law.

“I need you to do a job,” George said, trying to maintain an even tone. “I'll pay you. A lot. I have almost ten thousand dollars in cash and credit.”

“Whoa, dude! Cool it! You gotta start at the beginning.”

“It's just . . . I know you haven't been working and money is an issue—”

“Money is an issue for me even when I
am
working. But let's hear what you got.”

“I need you to do a little hacking for me.”

Zee's antennae went up. “No hack job is little. Some are easy, some aren't. But none are little. Not to the hackee. Just explain exactly what it is you'd like me to do. And relax. You want a beer?”

George took a seat on the couch and said, “Yeah. A beer would be great.”

Zee got the beers and George launched into giving Zee enough background on Amalgamated and iDoc to intrigue him. Luckily Zee found the idea of smartphones taking the place of primary-care doctors mind-blowing. He wanted to sign up for iDoc himself, explaining if he got the clap, he could get treatment without having to explain everything to a real person, case closed. “You know,” Zee continued, “sometimes going to the doctor can be a little embarrassing. But you know something? I know a way for this iDoc to be even better.”

“Zee, I'd like to keep this conversation on point,” George interrupted.

“No! Hear me out,” Zee responded. “When you go to the pharmacy to fill a prescription, you shouldn't have to deal with the pharmacist! That can be as bad as talking to the doctor. You know what I'm saying? All you should have to do is flash your phone or press your fingerprints onto a touch pad, and, bingo, you get your prescription immediately.”

“That's a great idea, Zee, but we're getting off track.”

“Sorry. Continue!” Zee said, holding his beer up to George in a mock toast.

“The iDoc concept is fantastic and it is the future of medicine. But I think there is a problem. Either by design or by accident it's gone beyond its mandate. I think it's been acting as a kind of death panel.”

Zee just stared at George with a blank expression. Finally, he said, “Explain!”

George did. He told Zee that Kasey, whom Zee had known somewhat from time spent around the complex, had been a part of the iDoc beta-test group, as well as Sal. He then told Zee about Laney Chesney, Greg Tarkington, and Claire Wong, also members of the iDoc study who had serious illnesses on top of diabetes. “All five relied upon iDoc to medicate them in a truly futuristic fashion, functioning like a real pancreas, using an implanted reservoir of insulin and constant, real-time monitoring of their sugar levels in the bloodstream.”

“I get it,” Zee replied. “What's the rub?”

“I have reason to believe that iDoc killed all five by dumping the contents of their reservoirs into their systems all at once.”

Zee looked askance at George. “If you are saying that the reservoir fucked up, I'm with you. Shit happens. But if you think it was intentional, I think you are crazy. I know a lot of those guys—”

“Proof!” George said, interrupting and getting the reservoir he found in Sal's car out of his pocket and setting it on the table. “Proof that the phenomenon I just described is real. Whether it is intentional or a glitch is why I'm talking to you. And to be honest, I'm thinking intentional.”

Zee carefully picked up the reservoir and examined it.

“It can't be fully appreciated without magnification,” George offered. “The surface of the reservoir contains thousands of tiny encapsulated doses of insulin. Each is individually programmed to be released upon reception of a particular radio frequency.”

“I understand the concept. But why have you jumped to the conclusion that iDoc is killing patients?”

“The reservoir you're holding was implanted under Sal's skin about two months ago. It was supposed to last two or three years, depending upon Sal's blood sugar levels. That reservoir in your hand is completely empty. I believe iDoc sent a message to do a massive, total dump.”

Zee set the chip down on his coffee table, revolted by the thought of where it had been and what it might have done. “How do you know that the reservoir dumped all its insulin just before Sal's death? Maybe it happened after it was removed from the corpse.”

“Good question. And I don't know for sure,” George admitted. “That's one of the reasons I need your help.”

“And why do you think it was intentional?”

“In all five cases, the insulin dump occurred soon after a serious likely terminal diagnosis had been entered into their electronic medical records. That's a very odd coincidence.”

Zee sat silent, staring at the reservoir on his coffee table. “Exactly what do you want me to do?”

George let out a sigh of relief with the sense Zee was softening up. “Several things.” He pulled out a smartphone. “This was Kasey's.” He turned it on and showed Zee the iDoc icon, then demonstrated how it didn't open. “I think Amalgamated wipes it clean after the patient dies, which makes a lot of sense. It guards the confidentiality of the patient's medical history.”

George then produced the second phone and handed it over to Zee. “This was Sal's. It followed his body out through the windshield of the Oldsmobile when he crashed. It was obviously damaged. But it apparently functioned for a short time because an ER nurse was able to extract some medical information from it before it died, and I got it to turn on briefly.”

Zee examined Sal's phone, turning it over in his hands. “Poor guy.”

“Now, it's only an idea, but I think that perhaps in this case the app wasn't wiped clean. I want you to see if you can get anything out of the phone. Maybe a dump command or something like that.”

Zee nodded, staring at the phone's shattered display face. “I might be able to do a kind of forensic autopsy. There should be some data still in its storage unit, if not in its processor.” He looked up at George. “You're willing to pay me ten thousand dollars to do this?” Zee asked incredulously.

“I'd want a little more than that for ten thousand.”

“Figured. What?” Zee frowned.

“I want you to hack into Amalgamated's central iDoc servers. If we can get Sal's whole record we can compare it to whatever you find on his phone. If it's intentional, like I suspect, I want to be able to prove it. Only then can we be one hundred percent certain of what is going on and if it's outside hackers or commands from inside Amalgamated that are responsible for the deaths.”

“You're asking for a lot—”

“If I'm right, they killed my fiancée. You knew her. If I'm right, they killed Sal. You knew him. I'm aware of five deaths. How many others will die before they should when iDoc goes national and then international?”

“I don't know, man,” Zee mumbled. He looked at the two phones. “This is serious shit, hacking into health records. It's on par with hacking into the Pentagon, for Chrissake.”

“It is serious,” George agreed. “So is killing people.”

Zee nodded. George had him on that point.

“Amalgamated must have contingency plans to handle anyone with questions or suspicions. I want to be open with you. Doing this might put you and me in physical jeopardy, knowing what kind of money is involved. Billions are at stake, if not trillions. And that's no exaggeration.”

From the grave look on Zee's face, George recognized he wasn't helping his case, bringing up the downside. Still, he felt he had to be honest. “Listen, Zee,” George continued, trying to tone down the urgency in his voice. “I have to play this out whether you help me or not, but I need proof of what is going on in order to go to the media, which is my idea of what I will do if my worst fears are realized. And the only proof I can imagine getting is what I'm hoping you can provide me.”

Zee softened a bit. “Are you serious about the ten grand?”

“I am. And if I'm right, I'm betting there will be a lot of job offers for the guy who helped expose it all.”

Zee nodded, a little embarrassed. “It's just that I've had some recent online poker losses and, well, I have rent and bills and all.”

“Help me and the money is yours.”

“Okay, I'll do it,” Zee said. “But with a couple of conditions. I use your computer when I try and access Amalgamated's servers. And I only use your modem. When the shit hits, I prefer it hit there.”

“No problem,” George agreed immediately. “When can you start?”

“Give me an hour. I need to shower and grab a bite to eat to be fresh for this. It ain't going to be easy. I imagine they have created some serious firewall shit.”

George felt a huge relief wash over him. “Okay, great! How can I help?”

“By paying me. Knowing that I can pay my past due rent will let me give you my undivided attention.”

“Consider it done.”