Authors: Jon Land

Fires of Midnight (10 page)

BOOK: Fires of Midnight

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He leaped up to warn the rest, but his breath had been choked off, too. Nothing he could do but watch while their flesh paled and shriveled, eyeballs bulging outward as the skin around them receded. They just withered away, like the Wicked Witch of the West in
The Wizard of Oz
, their clothes suddenly robes over the shapeless masses puddling into the aisle as Josh watched it all …

“Excuse me …”

… wondering why he’d been spared. Wishing he hadn’t …

“Excuse me.”

He came awake with a start, to something like a persistent dog nuzzling his leg.

The fat woman loomed over him, trying to get by. Josh pulled his legs in tight.

“Thanks,” she said, not smiling.

And Josh slumped back in his seat, shivering, the nightmare snatched from sleep not too far away at all.

THIRTEEN

“R
ight through that door.”

“Thank you,” McCracken said to the escort who had guided him to the Bryant Park stack extension on a sublevel of the New York Public Library’s main branch on Forty-second Street.

Gloria Rendine served as chief assistant to the curator for Rare Books and Manuscripts. She had been more than happy to schedule an appointment with him on the pretext of his donating a rather large collection of historical materials. Blaine wondered how she would respond upon learning he was here to dredge up her past instead.

McCracken entered and found Gloria Rendine in the midst of a pageby-page scrutiny of an elegantly bound, oversized volume.

“Excuse me.”

“I’m sorry,” the old woman replied, slightly startled. “I didn’t hear you come in. You must be”—she consulted a pad on her right—“Mr. McCracken.”

“That’s right.”

“Please, sit down.”

Gloria Rendine rose and offered him a chair in front of her desk. She was wearing a light sweater over a simple print dress. Her silvery hair was tied up in a bun, but as he approached Blaine could see the stubborn vitality in her watchful eyes. Her skin looked to be unmarked by age or the
environment. Different hair color and a fresh coiffure and she could easily have looked twenty years younger.

“I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your generosity.”

Blaine approached the desk but remained standing. “I’m afraid it comes with a price. You see, actually I’m here
in search
of something rare.”

The old woman looked confused. “I don’t see how I—” “Specifically, a woman. On display for years before she removed herself from circulation. Catalogued under the name Gloria Wilkins-Tate.”

Whatever response Blaine was expecting, he didn’t get it. The librarian simply wet her lips and intensified her stare.

“What are you doing here?” she asked flatly.

“Research into a collection of a different sort made possible by Operation Offspring.”

Gloria Rendine/Wilkins-Tate’s taut expression wavered. She tried to look away, but McCracken’s eyes bored into hers, riveting them to his face.

“I need to know what it is,” Blaine told her, “what it involved.”

The old woman gazed down at the book still open on her desk, as if to take refuge in it.

“I don’t think we’ll find anything about Operation Offspring in that. Or written down anywhere, for that matter.”

“I could deny I ever heard of it.”

“You could.”

“And even if I had heard of it, Mr. McCracken, I’d need a very good reason to discuss it with anyone not in privilege.”

“For reason, try Harry Lime, an old friend of mine.”

The old woman fought against letting her expression trip her up, but it had been too long since she’d had to try. “And assuming I know this man?”

“Then you might be interested in hearing that he’s disappeared, vanished. Someone very good made it look natural enough not to cause even a stir with the authorities.”

“And you, I gather, don’t exactly qualify there.”

“Not in the traditional sense, ma’am. Some would say not in any. The point is that Harry Lime saved my life nine or ten times, most recently two days ago. I owe it to him to find out what happened.”

The old woman sighed. “I’m afraid I can be of no service to you there.”

McCracken used his words as a knife, digging them in. “Some Washington data bank has you listed as Harry’s caseworker. Should we get back to my research, Ms. Wilkins-Tate? For instance, the history involving another dozen or so men and women that has you listed as their caseworker as well. That’s the collection I’m talking about.”

The door to the office opened and a much younger woman entered, wheeling a cart of books before her. She smiled shyly at Blaine and then continued on for the desk on the other side of the room.

“There are some private collection rooms just down the hall,” Gloria Wilkins-Tate said in almost a whisper. “I think we’d better continue our talk inside one of them.”

K
rill never used the main entrance to a building, especially in daylight. He was more comfortable in the shadows; he
owned
the shadows. Service entrances squeezed into narrow passageways and alcoves were much more to his liking. The main branch of the New York Public Library didn’t offer anything like that, but there was a series of doors accessible off the loading dock on Forty-first Street.

He chose one covered between a pair of trucks and took refuge along a dark corridor, glad to be able to remove the dark, wraparound sunglasses that protected his sensitive eyes.

Those sunglasses helped to minimize the problems his appearance caused him in public. He had learned to hold his arms crimped upward, keep his lips squeezed over his jagged rows of teeth, and hunch over to conceal his true height. People usually paid him little heed and, when they did, it was to regard him with pity or revulsion. As the freak their stares reminded him he was. Second looks were rare.

And today’s assignment promised to minimize the chance of encountering even first ones. Libraries were always dark, filled with narrow, angular paths through the cavernous stacks of neatly rowed books. Even better, the woman he had come here for worked in the stack extension located in a basement level. That meant he wouldn’t have to worry about windows, either.

Krill had memorized a map of the subterranean maze of corridors that led to the stacks beneath Bryant Park at the library’s rear. He reached a door marked “Rare Books and Manuscripts” and entered slowly. Inside a young woman was busy behind her desk cataloguing books.

“Excuse me,” he said in his smoothest voice, stopping a yard away and angling his eyes down, “I’m supposed to meet with Ms. Gloria Rendine.”

The young librarian was afraid to break her concentration and scarcely looked up. “She should be back any moment.”

Krill feigned checking his watch, hoped the young woman didn’t notice the width of his forearm that would have made wearing one impossible. “I’m rather pressed for time,” he sighed. “If you could just tell me where she’s gone perhaps? This shouldn’t take long.”

T
he collection room smelled heavily of leather, darkened by the books lining the walls in the humidity-free and temperature-controlled environment.

“Tell me about the men like Harry Lime,” Blaine demanded as Gloria Wilkins-Tate backed up against the farthest shelf. “Tell me about Operation Offspring.”

“We have to start at the beginning,” she insisted.

“Marked by your recruitment of Nazi scientists to serve in The Factory, no doubt. I suppose they made for your very first collection.”

“Does that revolt you? For a man who seems to understand history, it shouldn’t. They were advanced far beyond us. Under the circumstances, we would have been foolish not to take advantage of them, of their brilliance.”

“And their gratefulness for not being jailed or executed.”

“That’s how we won their loyalty. We saved them.”

“And in return you hoped they could save you.”

“Not just us—the country.” Gloria Wilkins-Tate moved to the room’s single desk and rested her hands atop it for support. “Perspective, everything is perspective.” She hesitated. “Let’s talk about your history, your battles. Vietnam.”

“It shows that much, does it?”

“It does to me. You believed in what you were doing over there. Otherwise it would have been impossible to perform the tasks required of you.”

“Obviously.”

“Well, we believed, too. Our enemy was different and so was the war. But we believed in the urgent need to defeat that enemy or at least keep him from defeating us. The fifties, McCarthyism, the Red Scare. The Communists weren’t overflying in planes, they were moving in next door. The threat seemed real. Hysteria. Agreed?”

McCracken nodded.

“Then consider that desperate measures were called for, any measures that might help us destroy this menace. And if that meant using German scientists who offered substantial expertise in areas we had only begun to probe, then so be it.”

“And The Factory was built around them.”

“A misconception in most respects,” the old woman told him, her voice hurried and cracking, sounding her years. “There was no one ‘factory.’ Mainly the scientists worked independently, seldom aware of how deep our commitment to their collective use had become. Each thought he was special, not just a mere part but a whole in himself.”

“I imagine you also wanted to keep them away from each other. Collectively, they could make for a pretty formidable enemy.”

“That was a consideration as well. I was chief coordinator and as such I determined which projects were worthy of development and which were not.”

“Operation Offspring being one of them.”

“The last I approved, in fact. I never would have done it if the scientist who conceived it wasn’t responsible for much of our most advanced work. The man had already displayed unlimited promise and potential:

“Dr. Erich Haslanger,” Gloria Wilkins-Tate finished.

FOURTEEN

“Y
ou should have told me this before, Doctor,” said Colonel Fuchs, looking up from the stack of manila folders Haslanger had brought him.

“It wasn’t your concern. It was … ancient history.”

“Anything but, apparently, based on the most recent accomplishments of your prodigy.” The edge in Fuchs’s voice was tempered somewhat by the excitement he felt over the possibilities Operation Offspring raised. “Holding back is not a smart thing, Doctor.”

“I haven’t had anything to do with Joshua Wolfe or any of the others since they were mere toddlers.”

Fuchs’s thinking seemed to veer in another direction. “I find myself curious as to why you settled this boy and the others with guardians outside the laboratory.”

“Geniuses can’t be raised in a vacuum, Colonel. They must be exposed to the world to understand the effects of their discoveries. At the same time, though, we needed to control their upbringing. I approved of the individual guardians only after being assured by the parties responsible that their selection would allow for the control we sought.”

Fuchs’s lifeless eyes blazed across the desk. “Can I trust you anymore, Doctor? If you have any more … secrets you wish to share, this is the time.”

“Only Krill.”

“Hardly a secret. And his existence pales by comparison with that of Joshua Wolfe and the others.”

“No, only Wolfe. The others did not pan out as hoped for.”

“An expected ratio?”

“We did not know what to expect, Colonel. For us, this was all new ground.”

“How did you do it?” Fuchs asked suddenly.

“Do what?”

“You created him during your tenure at The Factory, didn’t you? I’m curious as to the procedure, the origins.”

“Selective breeding,” Haslanger responded in purposeful understatement.

“The residue of your work for a different regime, no doubt.” Haslanger didn’t bother denying it. “The control of genius was known to be part of any future regime’s hopes for hegemony. We wanted to create minds we could cultivate and control.”

“Which ‘we,’ Doctor?”

Haslanger ignored him. “Oppenheimer, Teller—men like this would determine which way of life would thrive and prosper. Beyond the hydrogen bomb, beyond chemical warfare. Parties I was beholden to secured samples of sperm from some of this country’s greatest minds. I never knew which, never cared … .”

“What about you?” Fuchs interrupted. “I mean, you would have considered yourself a genius, too, of course.”

“Yes.”

“Come, don’t be shy, Doctor. You contributed a sample yourself, didn’t you? Conceivably Joshua Wolfe could be your …”

“The odds would be dramatically against that,” Haslanger said after Fuchs’s voice had tailed off.

“But certainly he has lived up to your expectations.”

“Exceeded them.”

“How so?”

Haslanger nodded. “What he managed to create in the labs at Harvard following his entry into the sciences program indicates he has mastered concepts we at Group Six are at least a decade away from.”

“Explain.”

But Haslanger hesitated. Fuchs was no scientist and could seldom grasp anything beyond rudimentary principles, which meant he had to choose his words carefully.

“I’m waiting, Doctor.”

Haslanger sighed. “Nanotechnology.”

“What?”

“A new form of science the boy apparently has ventured into.”

“Nanotechnology,” Fuchs repeated, as if he understood it.

“In essence, the ability to build molecules atom by atom toward the accomplishment of a specific purpose or task. So far the only viable ongoing nanotechnological research has centered around repairing damaged human cells. Building what are essentially molecular machines designed to enter human cells and fix what is wrong with them, such as an enzyme deficiency or some form of DNA damage. In the future they could cure cancer, or birth defects within the fetus itself. The research the boy was apparently conducting indicates significant progress in this area.”

“But that has nothing to do with what he caused in Cambridge.”

“Yes, it does. Joshua Wolfe constructed a molecular machine, an organic machine, programmed to seek out and destroy air pollution by entering the molecules of nitrates and sulfates and breaking down the bonds in them between nitrogen and oxygen. What happened at the mall was a result of his machine breaking down the same bonds in human blood as well.”

“Why?”

“A slight error in the formula for the molecular machine’s creation, I suspect.”

“An error that could be purposely recreated?”

“With the original formula in hand, yes.”

Fuchs liked the sound of that, letting his voice drift slightly with his mind. “Imagine the wondrous things this boy’s brain might yield given the proper environment, thanks, of course, to the superb preparation you provided him.”

“That’s the real problem: his background, according to the report that General Starr sent to you.”

“What about it?”

“It followed my dictums to the letter, almost without variation. He graduated high school when he was eight years old and enrolled at Stanford, graduating three years later with a triple major in chemistry, biology and engineering. It was on to medical school after that, four years’ curriculum completed in two.”

“No plans for him to become a doctor, though, obviously.”

“No. I wanted him to have a complete understanding of the functions of the human body.”

“To make him more efficient in creating various means to destroy it, no doubt.”

“Precisely. But who was following through on my original plan, Colonel? Who picked up where I left off?”

“It’s too bad we can’t ask this”—Fuchs gazed down at the pages spread on the desk before him—“Harry Lime.”

“None of this seems to concern you.”

“Because whoever they are, by all accounts they’ve lost their prodigy, leaving him out there for you to reclaim. You said the boy had exceeded
even your expectations, Doctor. That means we may well be looking at development of the ultimate weapon, the savior of our very existence at Group Six.”

“You’re speaking of the organism from the mall.”

“I am speaking, Doctor, of Joshua Wolfe himself, but we must have his organism, too.” He lifted a folder and skimmed its brief contents. “Toward that end I have arranged for the services of the Firewatch team leader assigned to Cambridge. Her file is most interesting,” Fuchs said, handing the folder across the desk.

Haslanger saw the name at the dossier’s top. “A woman?”

“A very special woman, so far as our needs are concerned.”

Haslanger scanned Susan Lyle’s background. “I see.”

“I thought you would.”

BOOK: Fires of Midnight

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