Liquid Fear (18 page)

Mark parked half a mile from the Monkey House property, pulling the car into the concealment of the roadside pines, whose late-afternoon shadows stretched toward darkness.

He’d never been there, but he’d overhead the plans for its security system. It was one of a dozen facilities on the company books, although it had been mothballed and listed for sale since the 1980s. However, the price was too high, even for the booming Research Triangle Park, which meant no danger of a serious offer.

The revived Monkey House project had been pitched as “Burchfield’s baby,” which suggested only a few close allies were in the loop. But maybe Burchfield was careless in his arrogance, and Burchfield was not without enemies who would be watching his every move.

Enemies both in and out of government.

The Glock had been almost a joke, one of those little macho tokens that were supposed to make corporate executives feel like big shots. Mark had even licensed his handgun, which diminished the locker-room points at the racquet club. He’d only had it out at the range three times. It had made him uneasy to even store it in the closet, and he never thought he’d actually be concealing it, fully loaded.

He’d insisted on a newer model with an internal locking system, because he wasn’t comfortable with the series of trigger safeties. Now he only hoped he didn’t have to use the gun at all.

Mark had dressed in leisure wear, taking a cue from the jogger. Workout freaks could be seen just about anywhere, in all hours and types of weather, without arousing suspicion. People merely turned away with slight resentment as they touched their own soft bellies and made useless, silent vows to get themselves fit.

Mark didn’t run, though. He needed to get the lay of the land first. Two compact research complexes stood to the west of the property, glassed entrances giving way to brick, windowless structures. Mark had seen dozens of them as a CRO exec, and the shiny prescription medications with inventive names often grew from well-lighted but tediously mundane operations in such featureless buildings.

To the south, the orange glow of Raleigh was just visible against the horizon, a state capital that was more sprawling than metro. Sunset brushed the top of the pine forest to the west, an area that industrial development had yet to claim.

CRO couldn’t have chosen a more remote, yet easily accessible, location, which made him wonder how far back they’d been planning the need for secrecy. There was a cartoon he’d once seen of a gorilla standing amid a crowd of briefcase-toting businessmen in suits, with the slogan, “If you want to hide, hide in plain sight.”

He didn’t have any sort of plan besides finding Alexis and getting her out of there. He tried not to think about the fallout, but he was shocked at how little he now cared about his career at CRO.

Alexis. When in hell did you become the most important thing in my life?

The undergrowth scratched at his face, and vines that he hoped weren’t poison oak whipped at his ankles. The forest canopy blocked the dying rays of the sun, which slowed his progress but helped him feel less vulnerable and exposed. He found a road of crumbling pavement that appeared to run parallel to the property, and he followed it where the walking was easier. If any vehicles approached on the access road, he would be able to hear them and hide in the woods.

A minute later, he came upon the sedan with the tinted windows parked just off the road, pulled into the weeds in a halfhearted attempt at concealment. It was a Lexus, not the kind of car someone would use for off-road exploration.

So Briggs has got company besides me.

The road widened ahead and Mark entered the woods again. Foot-high grass and small saplings thrust up through the asphalt beyond the fence, a sign that the complex had not been used much. The front gate was likely monitored, which meant he’d have to find a way through or over the fence.

At least the scrub vegetation grew right up against the wire, a sign of long neglect that meant he could probably buy enough time to find a way in. He was tugging on the bottom of the chain links when he heard the crackle of tires.

Mark ducked low and scrambled through the brush, which tore at his exposed wrists, until he found an opening in the clusters of honeysuckle vines girding the entrance. He peered through and saw a black limousine idling in front of the fenced gate, headlights cutting blue-white swathes.

He recognized the limo, even though its windows were tinted as well.

Burchfield. Checking up on his investment.

He wondered if Burchfield had shown up without an invitation. Either way, Briggs would have to let the senator in. Assuming Briggs was inside.

The question resolved itself with the hum of an electric motor and the clanking of chain as the fenced gate was tugged to one side along a slotted steel track. Mark timed the opening, counting down in the dark rather than risking his watch light.

Seventeen seconds.

The gate clanged into place and the limousine entered the grounds. Mark wasn’t sure whether a monitor camera or laser had revealed the car’s arrival, but he was betting on the limousine diverting attention from inside, and the limo driver—
what was his name? Something butler-sounding
—would be focused on the narrow, overgrown approach. The car was through the gate and fifty feet down the bumpy driveway when Mark made his move.

He tore through the honeysuckle, discovering it had grown over a series of long steel poles that bruised his shin. He clambered over and kept as close to the fence as possible. The gate began retracting, and he had to expose himself to run ahead of it.

He moved, ducking low, half-expecting a gunshot or a megaphone blare of warning. Instead, he hurtled through and rolled just before the gate locked back into place.

The forest inside the fence was sparser, with taller, spindly trees that made for easier progress yet offered less concealment. The meager landscaping had long since gone wild, and the asphalt lot was spider-webbed with weaving rows of tall grass and weeds. Mark wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have flagged down Burchfield’s limousine and rode in with the boss, but the chill that had swept over him upon seeing the limo affirmed his instinct to hide.

The road was easy to follow while still remaining in the trees, and he heard the distant echo of car doors closing. He couldn’t make out the voices but there were at least two, and maybe three, men talking. He moved through the darkness as fast as he dared.

The voices had stopped, which led Mark to assume everyone was inside. Unless there were guards on the grounds.

Mark didn’t think so, because of the secretive nature of the project. A show of security would have aroused suspicion both from competing pharmaceutical companies and from the government agencies Burchfield hoped to avoid.

He reached the edge of the woods and an expanse of rough lawn about twenty yards wide separated him from the building. A high band of light marked a row of windows near the top, and he estimated the facility at about an acre in size. A solitary spotlight projected from the front of the building, revealing the shadowed alcove of an entrance with a steel door. The limousine was parked near the door, and Mark saw no sign of movement.

Great. What do I do now? Knock?

He turned to sneak around back and check for additional entrances when something moved to his right.

“Looking for your jogging buddy?” came a brusque voice.

“Uh, I’m…uh…”

“Yeah, I know,” the big man said, moving just out of the shadows so Mark could make out his square face and small eyes in the floodlight. His mouth sagged to one side as he spoke. “You’re lost. That happens a lot around here.”

“I guess this road is the way out?” The gun seemed like a stupid idea now, but still Mark debated fishing it from his waistband. In the gloom, the man probably wouldn’t even notice until he already had it out.

But then what? It wasn’t like Mark was going to shoot him, and he couldn’t see forcing the man to let him in the building.

“Well, it would be the way out
if
you were leaving,” the man said.

And then the gun was out, but it wasn’t Mark’s. The man pointed his gun at Mark and then waved the barrel toward the building. “If you’re so curious, let’s go have a tour of the place.”

Mark had never been threatened with a gun before. All the movies made it seem like no big deal. You banter with the shooter, and before you know it, he drops his guard and you jump him. Mark had seen it dozens of times.

Except the cold, black eye of the gun seemed to be peering deep into his soul.

As Mark headed for the limo and the factory door, the man came close behind him and yanked the Glock out of the back of his waistband. “Careful with this. You don’t want a new asshole.”

“I’m a friend of Senator Burchfield’s,” Mark said.

“Sure you are,” the man said. “And you brought the Easter Bunny and Hillary Clinton with you, didn’t you?”

Mark wondered if he should have mentioned Sebastian Briggs, but Briggs was the kind of guy people didn’t like to talk about.

“You’ re one of the people from the trials, aren’t you?” the man said. “You’re about the right age for it.”

“Yeah,” Mark said, wondering whether the lie would keep him alive or amp up the danger. Whatever happened, he figured it would get him to wherever Alexis was.

“How come you’re not freaking out like the rest of them?”

“I’m freaking on the inside.”

The man gave a bark of laughter and pulled out an old-fashioned key ring. He opened the door and stepped back. “Welcome to the Monkey House.”

“This complicates things,” Briggs said, though secretly he was pleased. If circumstances warranted, he’d synthesized enough Seethe to dose them all, one way or another.

You always have to keep an ace up your sleeve.

But Briggs had two aces and a joker stashed away. While Burchfield knew about the serum that was deliverable via injection and oral delivery, he wasn’t aware that Briggs had developed a gas version as well.

The military loved chemical agents that could be dispensed from afar, because that added extra layers of plausible deniability, reduced resource risk, and always seemed more humane. After all, it wasn’t the military leaders of the world who had called for the banning of mustard gas. No, it was the do-gooders and the self-righteous. And Briggs suspected those do-gooders wanted to keep their killing up close and personal.

Briggs certainly did.

And so did his little monkeys.

“What’s going on down here, Briggs?” Burchfield said, glancing warily at the hulking machinery. “You promised delivery of Halcyon and a lot of people are waiting.”

“I’ll have it next week. The FDA already has the data on the animal testing. Once we prove the efficacy and safety in the human clinicals, we can move into formal trials. You know the drill.” Briggs couldn’t resist reverting to the quasi-Marine talk Burchfield loved to employ, even though Burchfield’s military experience had been limited to three years in the Boy Scouts.

“And you’re sure they can’t trace all this back to ten years ago?” Burchfield said.

“Names have been changed because mistakes were made,” Briggs said, now employing passive voice in a parody of bureaucratic doublespeak.

Burchfield’s scared. An interesting development.

The fire-breathing defender of American principals was famous for his televised rhetoric and advocacy of a U.S. military presence in the Middle East. It could be the influence of the little white-haired man standing beside him, Wallace Forsyth, whose moral compass always pointed straight to God.

Forsyth’s gaze was focused on the charcoal sketch of the naked Wendy Leng, his mouth puckered in distaste but his eyes exhibiting a decadent glow of hunger.

Ooh, Mr. Forsyth, the things I could do with you, given time. But I don’t think we’ll have much time. Besides, she’s spoken for.

Now where is Mr. Kleingarten, my dim-witted insurance policy?

Briggs secretly glanced at the bank of monitors, letting his unexpected guests study the bizarre scrap-metal maze Briggs had constructed with the help of his illegal Mexican friends. From their vantage point, Burchfield and Forsyth couldn’t see the monitors.

On screen, Kleingarten stood at the front door, his gun leveled at a man in running clothes. The man’s back was turned to the camera.

Another agent? The partner of the man Kleingarten had murdered earlier?

On the screen, the limousine door opened and Burchfield’s driver got out. Kleingarten spoke to the driver, who also had the look of a federal agent, impassive and steely-eyed.

“Senator, how many bodyguards did you bring with you?” Briggs asked.

“Just Winston, my driver,” he said, approaching the bank of monitors. “What’s wrong?”

“It appears I’ll need to put out another place setting for our mad little tea party.”

As they watched, Kleingarten shifted his gun toward the driver, who went for the inside flap of his jacket. There was a silent flash from the muzzle and Winston collapsed. The report echoed dully inside the big, open building, rattling off the steel and rotted rubber.

“Goddamn it,” Burchfield said. “I told Winston to keep it holstered.”

“I don’t think it’s Winston you need to be worried about,” Briggs said.

The noise upset David Underwood, who began howling and shrieking from the depths of the building. His cell was dark, so the monitor showed only the dim greenish outlines from the infrared camera. Anita was asleep or catatonic, exhausted from her encounter with Briggs, who’d played a delicious but dastardly game of “Let’s make some amateur porn” using a few toys he’d saved for the occasion.

“What’s that wailing?” Burchfield said.

“Sounds like somebody opened the gates of hell and called the devil to supper,” Forsyth said.

“Winston?” Burchfield shouted, filling the factory.

Kleingarten and Mark Morgan emerged from around a tall sorting machine that dangled rusty chains from its array of pulleys. Under the dim glow of the high fluorescent lights, Mark’s face looked green.

“Mark!” Burchfield said, losing his characteristic poise. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Mark shrugged. “You told me to keep an eye on things.”

“All these people just keep asking to be killed,” Kleingarten said, his gun held down near his hip.

“Drummond,” Burchfield said, with the indignant anger of a man who was never crossed. “You’re supposed to stay on the perimeter.”

“Well, that’s what
you
were paying me to do,” Kleingarten said, then nodded at Briggs. “He paid me for something else. And you can drop the ‘Drummond’ bit. I’m my own man now.”

“What’s going on here, Daniel?” Forsyth asked. The man’s wrinkled hands flexed in dismay.

“Hello, Mark,” Briggs said. “I guess you didn’t believe me when I said your wife would probably survive.”

“You can’t blame me for not trusting you,” Mark said. “Your goon here just killed a Secret Service agent in cold blood. That’s not going to be so easy to cover up.”

“Hey,” Kleingarten said. “He was going for his gun. And if he wasn’t, he would have sooner or later. That’s just what those guys do. You better be glad you’re such an amateur, or I’d be covering you up, too.”

Briggs smiled. Kleingarten no doubt had a juvenile jealousy of real cops and agents, since he’d only risen as high as night watchman. But the man was behaving erratically, even for a hired killer.

Maybe he saved a little of that Seethe dose meant for Alexis. Maybe he’d wanted to see what all the fuss was about. In which case, the night might prove even more interesting than I predicted.

Ah, the scientific method. Always with the unexpected outcomes.

“Look here, Briggs,” Burchfield said. “We’re wrapping up Halcyon. Now.”

The broken, demented wails of David Underwood provided the soundtrack to Burchfield’s last power play. The five men stood in Briggs’s high-tech cage, Forsyth shrinking away from the confrontation. Mark, to his credit, was keeping his wits about him. He appeared to be taking in all the equipment and hiding his amazement at the scope of the operation.

Briggs decided there was little to be gained by a power struggle, since he still needed both the senator and the killer. At least for a while.

“Senator,” Briggs said. “You don’t understand the full implications of our work here. As Mark no doubt told you, we’re not just developing drugs to help veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. We’ve discovered something far more valuable.”

“Yeah,” Burchfield said. “That ‘rage’ drug. I’ll back you on that, too, of course. I’m sure I can get my friends at CRO to cough up a little more seed money. But I need something to show for their investment.”

“So word’s getting around,” Briggs said, glancing at Mark.

“These drugs are critical to national security,” the senator said. “The CIA is already taking an interest. But if we keep this among ourselves, I’m sure we’ll all achieve our objectives.”

“I understand your concern. A man in your position, with so much to lose. Wallowing in the base human cesspool of fear and hate and paranoia must be so alien to you. Only true sociopaths can achieve political success, because compassion and humanity are the first casualties of any war.”

Burchfield’s lips quivered, as if he were just now grasping the fact that he was outranked.

“What do you want me do with him?” Kleingarten said, pushing the gun into Mark’s back.

“We have some extra rooms in the psych ward,” Briggs said. “Make sure our guests here are comfortable.”

“Damn it, Briggs,” Burchfield said. “You’re finished for good this time.”

“Scientists never finish, they just discover new problems,” Briggs said. “Try rooms three through five,” he said to Kleingarten.

He fished out his key ring and handed it to Kleingarten, who took it while keeping one eye on Mark. Briggs didn’t trust Kleingarten with the code for the electronic keypad. He’d use the remote-control button beside his monitors.

“Do we have to be back there with that screeching devil?” Forsyth said. “We’ll all go off the deep end if we put up with that for long.”

“It won’t be long, Mr. Forsyth. But I suggest you pray. I suggest you pray a lot.”

“That’s a mighty sad suggestion, coming from the likes of you,” Forsyth said.

“Your god is built on fear, so my discovery should put millions of people in touch with him eventually,” Briggs said.

“You’re the devil,” Forsyth said.

“Thank you for the promotion, but, please, let’s stay humble. There is still work to be done. Kleingarten?”

Kleingarten cocked an eyebrow, noting Briggs had used his real name. “Yeah?”

“After you’ve shown our guests to their rooms, please clean up the mess outside. You can park the limousine in the woods.”

“Whatever he’s paying, we’ll double it,” Burchfield bellowed, making a last play with the only weapon he had left.

Briggs waited while Kleingarten mulled the options.

Bad move, Senator. You should have offered him the job as your new bodyguard, something with prestige. A man like Kleingarten enjoys money, but it’s his ego that requires feeding, not his wallet.

Briggs decided that Burchfield had just lost his vote, should the man survive the scandal—and the night—and eventually show up on a presidential ballot. The senator was simply a lousy judge of character. He should have taken a few psychology classes in college.

“You heard the man,” Kleingarten said to his three captives. “Just follow the screaming and we’ll be there in no time. And, you, the praying guy? You better pray he doesn’t start in with ‘Home on the Range.’ Talk about hell.”

Mark took one step toward Briggs, but Kleingarten held the gun out with a smile.

Mark visibly tensed. “Where’s Alexis?”

“Don’t worry. Your wife will be here soon.”

“If you hurt her—”

“Please, Mark. We’re all friends here.”

“CRO’s pulling the plug when they find out.”

“You know something, Mark?” Briggs met the gaze of each of the others, so they would know his words were for all of them. “CRO, the U.S. government, the three or four shadow organizations keeping an eye on me, Al Qaeda, Mossad, and God knows who else? They want what I have. And I am the only one who has it. I’d say that puts me in the driver’s seat.”

“Go on,” Kleingarten bellowed at them. “I got work to do. All these corpses don’t hide themselves.”

As the four men navigated the dim corridor, Briggs checked the monitors, the security equipment, and the several little surprises he would soon spring.

He was in the driver’s seat, all right, and he was about to slam the pedal to the floor and let go of the wheel.