Next: A Novel (2 page)

But now Watson and the woman crossed Vasco’s own path, passing so close to him that he could smell her perfume, and he heard Watson murmur something to her, and she squeezed his arm and put her head on his shoulder as they walked. The romantic couple.

Was all that an accident? Had it happened on purpose? Had they made him? He pressed his earpiece.

“Dolly. I lost him.”

“No prob. I got him.” He glanced up. She was on the second floor, watching everything below.

“Was that Jack Watson that just walked by?”

“Yeah. I thought maybe…”

“No, no,” Dolly said. “I can’t imagine Watson’s involved in this. Not his style. I mean, Baldy boy is heading for his room because he has an appointment. That’s what I was telling you. He got some entertainment.”

“Namely?”

“Russian girl. Apparently he only likes Russians. Tall ones.”

“Anybody we know?”

“No, but I have a little information. And I got cameras in his suite.”

“How’d you do that?” He was smiling.

“Let’s just say Venetian security isn’t what it used to be. Cheaper, too.”

Irina Katayeva, twenty-two, knocked on the door. In her left hand she held a bottle of wine, encased in a velvet gift bag with drawstrings at the top. A guy of about thirty answered the door, smiled. He wasn’t attractive.

“Are you Eddie?”

“That’s right. Come on in.”

“I brought this for you, from the hotel safe.” She handed him the wine.

Watching all this on his little handheld video monitor, Vasco said, “She gave it to him in the hallway. Where it would be seen on the security monitor. Why didn’t she wait until she was in the room?”

“Maybe she was told to do it that way,” Dolly said.

“She must be six feet. What do we know about her?”

“Good English. Four years in this country. Studying at the university.”

“Works at the hotel?”

“No.”

“So, non-pro?” Vasco said.

“This is Nevada,” Dolly said.

On the monitor, the Russian girl went into the room and the door closed. Vasco turned the tuning dial on his video monitor, picked up one of the inside cameras. The kid had a big suite, close to two thousand square feet, done in the Venetian style. The girl nodded and smiled.

“Nice. Nice room.”

“Yeah. So, you want a drink?”

She shook her head. “I don’t really have time.” She reached behind her back and unzipped the dress, left it hanging from her shoulders. She turned around, pretending to be puzzled, allowing him to see her bare back all the way down to her buttocks. “Which way is the bedroom?”

“This way, baby.”

As they went into the bedroom, Vasco again turned the dials. He saw the bedroom just as she was saying, “I don’t know anything about your business, and I don’t want to know. Business is so boring.” She let the dress fall. She stepped out of it and lay down on the bed, naked now except for high heels. She kicked them off. “I don’t think you need a drink,” she said. “And I know I don’t.”

Tolman threw himself on her, landing with a kind of thud. She grunted and tried to smile. “Easy, boy.” He was panting, gasping. He reached for her hair, to caress her. “Leave the hair alone,” she said. She twisted away. “Just lie down,” she said, “and let me make you happy.”

“Aw, hell, ”Vasco said, staring at the tiny screen. “Do you believe that? He ain’t even a minuteman. When a woman looks like that, you’d think—”

“Never mind,” Dolly said, over the headset. “She’s getting dressed now.”

“So she is,” he said. “And rather hurriedly, too.”

“She’s supposed to give him half an hour. And if he paid her, I didn’t see it.”

“Me neither. But he’s getting dressed, too.”

“Something’s up,” Dolly said. “She’s walking out the door.”

Vasco thumbed the tuner, trying to change to a different camera. All he got was static. “I can’t see shit.”

“She’s leaving. He’s still there. No, wait…he’s leaving, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And he’s taking the wine bottle with him.”

“Okay,” Vasco said. “And where’s he going with it?”

Frozen embryos in liquid nitrogen were transported in a special stainless steel thermos lined with borosilicate glass called a dewar. Dewars were mostly big affairs, shaped like milk jugs, but you could get them as small as a liter. A dewar didn’t have the shape of a wine bottle, because they had a wide-mouth cap, but it would be about the same size. And would fit in a wine sack for sure.

“He must be carrying it,” Vasco said. “It must be in the sack.”

“I figure,” Dolly said. “You see ’em yet?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Vasco picked up the couple on the ground floor, near the gondola stand. They walked arm in arm, the guy carrying the wine bottle in the crook of his arm, keeping it upright. It was an awkward way to carry it, and they made an odd-looking pair—the beautiful girl and the diffident, slouchy guy. They walked along the canal, hardly glancing at the shops as they passed them.

“On their way to a meeting,” Vasco said.

“I see ’em,” Dolly said. Vasco looked down the crowded street and saw Dolly at the far end.

Dolly was twenty-eight, and completely ordinary-looking. Dolly could be anybody: an accountant, girlfriend, secretary, assistant. She could always pass. Tonight she was dressed Vegas-style, teased blond hair and a sparkly dress with cleavage. She was a little overweight, which made the impression perfect. Vasco had been with her for four years now, and they worked well as a team. In private life, they got along only okay. She hated that he smoked cigars in bed.

“Heading for the hall,” Dolly said. “No, they’re doubling back.”

The main hall was a huge oval passageway, high gilded ceiling, soft lights, marble pillars. It dwarfed the crowds that moved through it. Vasco hung back. “Change their mind? Or they made us?”

“I think they’re being careful.”

“Well, this is the big moment.” Because even more than catching the fugitive, they had to know whom he was turning the embryos over to. Obviously someone at the conference.

“Won’t be long now,” Dolly said.

Rick Diehlwas walking back and forth along the shops by the gondola canal, holding his cell phone in his hand. He ignored the stores, which were filled with expensive stuff of the sort he never wanted. Diehl had grown up as the third son of a Baltimore physician. All the other boys went to medical school and became obstetricians, like their father. Diehl refused, and went into medical research. Family pressure eventually drove him to move West. He did genetic research at UCSF for a while, but he was more intrigued by the entrepreneurial culture among the universities in San Francisco. It seemed like every professor worth his salt had either started his own company or was sitting on the boards of several biotech firms. At lunch, the conversation was all about tech transfer, cross-licensing, milestone payments, buyouts and payouts, foreground and background IPRs.

By then Karen, Rick’s wife, had come into a substantial inheritance, and he realized he had enough capital to get started. The Bay Area was crowded with firms; there was intense competition for space and hiring. He decided to go to the area north of Los Angeles, where Amgen had set up their huge facility. Diehl built a terrific modern plant, put bright research teams in place, and was on his way. His father and brothers came to visit. They were duly impressed.

But…why wasn’t she calling him back? He looked at his watch. It was nine o’clock. The kids should be in bed by now. And Karen should be home. The maid said she had gone out an hour before, she didn’t know where. But Karen never left without her cell phone. She must have it with her. Why wasn’t she calling him back?

He didn’t understand it, and it just made him nervous as hell. Here he was, alone in this damn city, with more beautiful women per square foot than he had ever seen in his life. True, they were plastic, lots of surgery, but they were also sexy as hell.

Up ahead, he saw a schlumpy guy walking with a tall chick who was striding along on spike heels, and she was just a knockout: black hair, smooth skin, and a hot, lean body. The schlumpy guy must have paid for her, but even so, he clearly didn’t appreciate her. He was clutching his wine bottle like it was a baby, and appeared so nervous he was almost sweating.

But that girl…Jesus, she was hot. Hot, hot…

Why the hell, he thought, wasn’t Karen calling him back?

“Hey,” Vasco said. “Looky look. It’s that BioGen guy. Walking around like he has nothing to do.”

“I see him,” Dolly said. She was about a block ahead of him.

“Nope, never mind.”

Tolman and the Russian girl walked right past the BioGen guy, who did nothing but flip open his phone and dial. What was his name? Diehl. Vasco had heard something about him. Started a company on his wife’s dough, and now maybe she was in control of their marriage. Something like that. Rich broad, old Eastern family, lots of money. Those broads could wear the pants.

“Restaurant,” Dolly said. “They’re going in that Terrazo place.”

Il Terrazzo Antico was a two-story restaurant with glassed-in balconies. The décor was whorehouse modern, gilded everything. Pillars, ceiling, walls: every surface covered with decoration. Made Vasco jumpy just to look at it.

The couple walked in, right past the reservation desk, heading for a side table. And at the table, Vasco saw a heavyset guy who looked like a thug, dark-skinned and heavy-browed, and the thug was looking at the Russian girl and practically licking his lips.

Tolman marched right up to the table and spoke to the dark-skinned man. The guy looked puzzled. He didn’t invite them to sit. Vasco thought, Something’s wrong . The Russian girl had stepped back a pace.

At that moment a flash went off. Dolly had snapped a picture. The Tolman kid looked, took it all in, and bolted.

“Shit, Dolly!”

Vasco started running after Tolman, who was heading deeper into the restaurant. A waiter held up his hands. “Sir, excuse me—”

Vasco knocked him flat, kept right on going. Tolman was ahead, moving slower than he might, because he was trying not to shake his precious wine bottle. But he didn’t know where he was going anymore. He didn’t know the restaurant; he was just running. Whang through swinging doors, into the kitchen, Vasco right after him. Everybody was yelling at them, and some of the cooks were waving knives, but Tolman pushed on, apparently convinced there was some sort of rear entrance to the kitchen.

There wasn’t. He was trapped. He looked around wildly. Vasco slowed. He flashed one of his badges, in an official-looking wallet. “Citizen’s arrest,” he said. Tolman cowered back by two walk-in freezers and a narrow door with a slim vertical window. Tolman went through the narrow door and it closed behind him.

A light blinked by the door.

It was a service elevator.

Shit. “Where does this go?”

“Second floor.”

“Anywhere else?”

“No, just second floor.”

Vasco pressed his earpiece. “Dolly?”

“I’m on it,” she said. He heard her panting, as she ran up stairs.

Vasco positioned himself in front of the elevator door and waited. He pressed the button to bring the elevator down.

“I’m at the elevator now,” Dolly said. “I saw him; he went back down.”

“That’s a tiny elevator,” Vasco said.

“I know.”

“If he’s really got liquid nitrogen with him, he shouldn’t be in there.” A couple of years back, Vasco had chased a fugitive into a laboratory-supply warehouse. The guy had nearly suffocated after he locked himself in a closet.

The elevator came down. As soon as it stopped, Vasco yanked the handle to open it, but Tolman must have pushed an emergency switch, because the door wouldn’t open. Vasco could see the wine sack on the floor. The velvet had been pushed down to reveal the stainless steel rim of the dewar.

And the top was off. White steam around the opening.

Through the glass, Tolman stared at him, wild-eyed. “Come out, son,” Vasco said. “Don’t be foolish.”

Tolman shook his head.

“It’s dangerous,” Vasco said. “You know it’s dangerous.”

But the kid pushed a button, and the elevator started back up.

Vasco had a bad feeling.

The kid knew, all right. He knew exactly what he was doing.

“He’s up here, ”Dolly said, standing on the second floor. “But the door won’t open. No, he’s going down again.”

“Go back to the table,” Vasco said to her. “Let him go.”

She realized at once what he was talking about. She hurried back down the plush red velvet staircase to the ground floor. She was not surprised to see that the table where the thuggish man had sat was now empty. No thug. No beautiful Russian girl. Just a hundred-dollar bill tucked under a glass. He’d paid in cash, of course.

And vanished.

Vasco was now surrounded by three hotel security guys, all talking at once. Standing half a head above them he yelled for quiet. “One thing,” he said. “How do we get the elevator open?”

“He must have hit the override.”

“How do we get it open ?”

“We have to kill the power to it.”

“Will that open it?”

“No, but then we can wedge it open, once it’s stopped.”

“How long will that take?”

“Maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Doesn’t matter, this guy isn’t going anyplace.”

“Yes, he is,” Vasco said.

The security guy laughed. “Where the hell can he go?”

The elevator came down again. Tolman was on his knees, holding the glass door shut.

“Get up,” Vasco said. “Get up, get up. Come on, son, it’s not worth it, stand up!”

Suddenly, Tolman’s eyes rolled up into his head and he fell onto his back. The elevator started to rise.

“What the hell?” one of the security men said. “Who is he, anyway?”

Ah shit, Vasco thought.

The kid had pushed some override that had jammed the elevator circuits. It took them forty minutes to get the doors open and haul him out. He was long since dead, of course. The instant he fell, he was immersed in 100 percent nitrogen atmosphere, from the liquid nitrogen that was streaming from the dewar. Because nitrogen was heavier than air, it progressively filled the elevator from the bottom up. Once the kid flopped on his back, he was already unconscious, and he would have died within a minute.