Dead End Deal (17 page)

Growing up poor left him with a huge hunger for money, but not to the point of greed. Greed, he believed, was a major cause of bad judgment. Despite his financial advisor’s words, he had enough now to live in a modest home on Mulholland Drive, a collection of expensive watches, and a garage filled with classic Harleys. In fact, right now he longed to be home instead of in fucking Seoul working this fucking job. Fuck the risk. Fuck working for buggers like Stillman. Soon as he got back to LA he’d roll the flathead out of the garage and begin the cross-country motorcycle trip he’d fantasized about all these years.

Assuming of course, he could dump this fucking FBI agent and avoid capture. Survive this one last job and be done with it.

Feist turned off a busy street into a residential neighborhood of row after row of cookie-cutter concrete apartment buildings, each one distinguished from its neighbor only by a large block letter and number on the upper right-hand corner. Very few windows glowed at this hour of night. Feist figured a big-assed complex like this would be a perfect place for a parked KIA to go ignored until the trunk stank enough to draw attention. Might be a couple days. By then he’d be long gone and done with this fucking job.

After wiping clean all interior and exterior spots he might have touched, he locked the doors and started walking in the general direction of the business district. Three blocks later he dropped the car keys in a drainage ditch. He’d cover at least two more miles before flagging a cab to take him to the center of town. From there it would be easy to double back to the restaurant and retrieve his piece of shit rental cycle.

23

T
HE INCOMING CALL ON
Stillman’s cell didn’t identify the caller, so he figured it had to be Feist. He stepped to the door to his office, scanned the cubicles in the immediate area to confirm they were empty and his secretary hadn’t yet arrived. Satisfied, he closed the office door before answering with a simple, “What up, dog?”

“Ran into a bit of a snag, mate.”

“Hold on.” Stillman angled the Venetian blinds to minimize the risk of being lip read by someone with binoculars in a neighboring building. “I’m back. What kind of snag?”

“You dead certain this connection’s secure?”

Stillman laughed at Feist’s paranoia, but at the same time he appreciated it. It paid to be cautious when it came to these things. “Yes, but just to make sure, no names.”

“All right, then.” Feist hesitated. “That tail on our friend? A government man is what he was. Federal.”

“What?”

“A fucking FBI agent, he was.”

Several things flashed through Stillman’s mind, all competing for dominance. He paused to sort them out, selecting the most important. “You said
was.
The use of past tense, is that intentional?”

“Right-right.”

“Government, huh. You say FBI. You sure about that?”

“Oh yeah.”

Stillman thought about that and smiled. This could be a very good sign. The FBI would be tailing Ritter for only one reason: they swallowed the initial bait planted the night of Lippmann’s murder. Perfect. The Avengers would be blamed just as long as he and Feist were careful enough to leave nothing to point back to them. “Does that surprise you?”

Feist hesitated again. “No. But what it does do is increase the risk of this job. And the bad news for you is this means a twenty percent surcharge that’s neither negotiable nor delayed. I want it paid up front, now, meaning it appears in my account before I do any bloody more work.”

“Understood.” Stillman’s smile broadened. The extra cost? Chump change compared to what the formulation would net. “I’ll wire it immediately. Same account?”

“Right.”

“Settled. New subject: you good to go as planned?”

“If the payment’s in my account, I am.”

“Excellent. Stay in touch.”

Stillman set the phone on the desk and leaned back in the swivel chair. A week at most and, if things went a planned, Ritter’s clinical trial would be a disaster, something the Koreans would never let see the light of day, and Ritter’s technique would be his. When the time was right, and that would be soon, Trophozyme would apply to the FDA for the first-ever human stem cell implant to reverse Alzheimer’s disease. He expected to get quick approval. After all, he would argue, it was previously reviewed and accepted by the NIH. This would place Trophozyme in the forefront of a huge, lucrative market. Too bad Ritter hadn’t jumped at the chance to be chief medical officer. Would’ve been nice to have him on the team. Oh well, we all make mistakes that ripple through the rest of our lives.
This, in fact, could be a pivotal point for my life
. Stillman grinned at the thought.

24

J
IN-WOO WAS ALREADY
outside in his idling Hyundai when Jon walked out of the hotel lobby at 7:02 the next morning. As Jon climbed into the passenger seat Jin-Woo wished him good morning. Jon detected an unusual note of excitement in his voice, a departure from the usual monotone.

Jon awoke two hours earlier in spite of downing an Ambien before slipping into bed. It wasn’t just the time zone change that accounted for the premature awakening. The anxiety over what they were about to embark on began yesterday, intensifying with each preparatory step completed. The stomach butterflies had been in full force when his eyes abruptly opened at 5:00 a.m. Today they’d start the cultures. Two days from now, they’d implant the first two patients. The surgery would probably be the easiest step in the entire experiment. The most difficult part would be waiting the next four months before they could do the first tests to evaluate any change in the patients’ dementia. Right now, he needed to stop thinking about the future and focus on all the little details leading up to surgery. If things went as they usually did, once they actually began culturing the cells, his anxiety would be pushed aside by his intense focus.

As they drove Jin-Woo seemed more animated, quick with little nervous laughs and small attempts to crack jokes in spite of the cultural differences in humor. His looser mood helped ease Jon’s edginess. More importantly, it helped convince him that Jin-Woo would put forth the same effort as Wayne. How could he ever repay him?

Rush hour traffic was relatively light, allowing them to breeze along, covering the usual fifteen-minute trip in just over eight. Jin-Woo drove into the huge concrete garage behind the medical center, parked, and led Jon through a damp, musty basement to a windowless steel fire door. From there they took the stairs to the first floor, went down a hall, turned right, and were at the front door to Security. They entered a small reception area. Behind a laminate counter stood an officer with nicotine-stained teeth and a bad brush cut. After a few words from Jin-Woo, the officer raised a section of counter and motioned Jon to follow him to a small room with a straight-backed chair. Immediately behind the chair was draped a blue sheet as a backdrop. Jon sat. The officer checked the display on the digital camera, adjusted Jon’s head slightly before snapping a head shot. Within a minute Jon’s face was embedded on a bar-coded plastic ID card dangling from a lanyard, the entire procedure consuming less than five minutes. This security card provided Jon access to all areas, except a few restricted regions within the medical center, day and night.

While retracing the path to the garage, Jin-Woo explained, “This card is your key to the entire building. You must wear it at all times. If you not have it on, where security can see it, and they see you, they will make you to leave building.”

They cut across the garage to an unmarked steel fire door into the largest rectangular building of the medical center complex. Embedded in the cement wall to the right of the door jamb was a card reader with a glowing red LED. Jin-Woo nodded at Jon’s ID card. “Go ahead, try it.”

Jon swiped the card through the reader slot. A slight pause, followed by a metallic snap of a lock, and the red LED turned green.

The heavy door opened into an echoing, concrete hall with the disgusting smell of animal feces and dried food pellets. A half block of concrete hall took them to a no-frills freight elevator protected by a heavy steel mesh door so well counterbalanced Jin-Woo could raise it easily with one hand. Once inside, Jin-Woo lowered the door and pressed five.

As soon as they stepped off the elevator Jon recognized the entrance to Jin-Woo’s lab two doors down. To the right of the door jamb was a stainless steel plate, a speaker, a number pad, and a glowing red light. Jin-Woo punched six numbers into the pad and hit the pound sign. A computerized voice responded. Jin-Woo spoke slowly and clearly into the speaker grill. The door lock clicked.

“Voice recognition,” Jin-Woo said proudly. “Very good security, I think. I installed it two months ago. We will program your voice soon as cultures begin.”

Jon entered a spacious laboratory with temperature-controlled air carrying a hint of disinfectant. An impressive setup, lavishly outfitted with state-of-the art equipment, greeted him: spotless black soapstone work counters, gleaming chrome and stainless steel fixtures, six-foot-high freezers, centrifuges, microscopes, computers—all the toys a well-funded neuroscientist could ever ask for as well as a status symbol of Jin-Woo’s standing in Korean scientific circles.

Jin-Woo proudly showed Jon his supply of stem cells and the vials of various nerve growth factors to be combined to force the cells to eventually become neurons.

“I think you will find everything you need. You start. I will come for you at six, take you back to Walker Hill.” The plan was to work round the clock with one person always in the lab to prevent contact inhibition and perform the other routine chores that couldn’t be confined to the hours of a standard work day.

Jon watched his friend leave and heard the metallic snap of the lock, immediately encasing him in heavy silence. For a moment he stood still, absorbing the sleek impressive laboratory, savoring the milestone so long in coming. Along with this heady elation, fear began deep within his stomach. By nature, he wasn’t a gambler, preferring to be relatively conservative in just about everything that influenced his life. The person to always do the responsible thing, to start saving for retirement as soon as his training ended and his first real paycheck arrived. At this moment, all his career chips—the accumulated worth of a dedicated professional reputation—were being risked on the outcome of this trial. The gravity of the course he was about to take became almost paralyzing.
Where to start?

25

A
S YEONHEE LEE SAT
in the speeding subway she felt a combination of anticipation and anxiety. Her excitement was pleasantly titillating, but it made her mouth unpleasantly dry and her palms tingle. The anticipation of working in the same lab with a world-class scientist was, in itself, exciting. Knowing she would be standing shoulder to shoulder with Jon gave her an extra layer of excitement. She knew what it would feel like and wondered if he felt the same. She thought about the way her heart beat faster when they accidently brushed against each other in the close laboratory quarters. Did he ever wonder what was beneath the shapeless white lab coat?

What would it be like to kiss him?

But she had to concentrate on her work. For the next four weeks she needed to devote one hundred percent of her energy to the laboratory project. Jin-Woo made that clear. And because he was her boss, she would do it. But she also knew how much this project meant to Jon. And that, more than anything, cemented her commitment. But already Jung-Kyo was acting like a spoiled little brat. Last night, within five minutes of walking into her apartment, her phone rang.

“Where have you been?” Jung-Kyo asks.

“I told you. I had to go to dinner with Dr. Lee and his American friend.”

“Had to? He said he’d fire you if you didn’t?”

“No, but it was expected of me.”

“Which restaurant?”

“Is that really important?”

“Oh, so you don’t want to tell me. Is there anything else that happened last night you don’t want to mention?”

“What are you implying?”

“Why so defensive? Are you hiding something?”

He was already jealous of the time she spent with Jin-Woo. They’d fought about it before.

“You fuck him, don’t you.”

“Believe what you want. I don’t care.”

“Why don’t you just tell me.”

“I need to hang up. I have a busy day tomorrow.”

Did he really expect a girl her age to be a virgin? Did she ask for a detailed list of every girl he’d ever slept with? Or the various things they’d done in bed? As long as it wasn’t her best friend, she couldn’t care less who he’d slept with.

The airbrakes hissed for the Medical Center stop. With her mind still caught up in personal issues, she flowed with the morning crowd onto the subway platform and then, in a clot of other workers, toward the escalators that would carry her up to the huge plate glass doors.

She pressed the button, spoke her name into the speaker, heard the metallic snap of the lock. A moment later she was inside, face to face with Jon.

J
ON WAS CHECKING
email when the lock snapped and the door opened and Yeonhee entered. She smiled at him. “Morning, Jon.”

He responded with, “Morning,” and immediately felt awkward, like a teenager.

She let the door close and lock automatically, quickly exchanging her black raincoat for a white lab coat, then came over to where he was working, her hands in the coat pockets, face serious, ready to begin work. “You already started the cultures, I see.”

“Yes.”

She stood next to him, studying the flasks he just finished preparing, her familiar scent triggering memories. He studied the wisps of black hair loose around her right ear and resisted the urge to reach out and touch her. “Have you posted the schedule?” she asked.

He routinely posted a schedule on a clipboard near the counter for pipetting the cultures for the duration of the experiment. Whoever was responsible for the task on that particular shift initialed the sheet each time they completed it. He was impressed that she remembered such a little detail and took it as just one more indication of how meticulously she worked. “Over there,” pointing at it. Then, without thinking, asked the interrupted question from the other night. “When this is over and we have time, would you like to have dinner with me?”