Splicer (14 page)

Spin control,
thought Aaron Grey, fascinated by the idea.
Another lunatic 21st century concept born in the age of the oxymoron. Spin was bad. Spin was chaos. Spin was quantum mechanics, the science of unpredictability and improbability, a nagging inevitable part of life.

Yet Aaron Grey persevered. He fought the odds, arm-wrestled with the gods. Sure his arms were tired, but something burning deep down in his gut kept him going. Without it, he suspected, he would be a husk.
Like everyone else
he thought.

The Canadian government’s delay tactic on
GeneFab's
sale was a painful thorn in his side. He was about to address it. Control the spin that was about to throw his project off the track.

Aaron Grey's principle weapons were his phone and his IOC - his inter office correspondence. His memos, fortified by his position and his immutable resolve had the effectiveness of armor piercing shells. He fired them off with as much care. Each email left a ripple on the pond. His phone calls on the other hand tore the surface of the lake open and whipped the shore.

He dialed first seven digits then four, then six. A metallic female voice intoned, "Please enter your six digit security code." The line whistled, cleared, and then went oddly silent. There was a velvety stillness in Grey's ear - he sensed the system reeling out ahead of him at light speed, snaking down fiber optic tunnels to its destination, unstoppable. Like him.

"Yes," said a woman's voice, her intonation filtered slightly by the scrambling circuitry. She knew who she was speaking to. He was the only one who would or could call her on this line.

"We have a little problem. We need you to look after it for us."

"Fine." So simple was her answer it chilled Grey. He'd done a good job of training her.

"Flight 207 at 9 p.m. Your time tonight. Under the alias of Oswald. Diane Oswald."

"You think I look like an Oswald?" Kim Soo answered sleepily.

"Remember, I don't have the foggiest notion what you look like. Now."

"My nose is better. I'm not happy with the chin. Did a fabulous job on the breasts. That's important in my line of work. Suppose it's deductible?" Grey ignored the chatter.

"Take whatever you need. You'll fly to Pearson International in Toronto. Direct. You'll be there at least a week."

"A week? This a holiday?"

"Think of it anyway you want. You'll have a considerable itinerary. You have rooms booked and a car waiting. There will be some instructions. I'll email you the rest when you get there. Take your encrypted laptop."

"Am I going to need anything else?"

"An arsenal, if you should require it, will be made available.” He also knew she carried her personal murder bag everywhere she went. He had heard about some of the tools she used. A favorite was a glass rod but he didn’t want to dwell on the gruesome details.

"Clothes though would be more effective," he said.

"Or lack of."

"Just be careful."

"Thanks. You too." There was just a hint of sarcasm in her modified voice. The scrambling might have masked it, but Grey came to expect it. It was part of her M.O.

There was no jarring click then on the line, no sense of termination, just a return to that silky silence –and Kim Soo was gone.

Soo was perfect in many ways, thought Grey. She had no scruples. She never thought twice. If there was one thing that Grey believed was the critical ingredient in an effective operative, it was in knowing how many times to think.
Think once. Thinking twice was dangerous. Not thinking at all was the FBI.

There was a shallow indistinct line between agents like Kim Soo who always did what they were told ... and psychopaths. And Grey understood it. The callous ones were the most efficient. They didn't ask why. Didn't grow depressed by long lingering assignments that challenged their beliefs or their motives. They just did it. They were invaluable in the field. But they had absolutely no loyalty to anyone but themselves. Grey learned how to deal with these types. Keep your promises.

On Kim Soo’s to-do list would be an
information gathering session
with a very senior Canadian politician who it was estimated owned as much as fifteen percent of GeneFab. He had the clout to overturn the Securities Commission investigation into the GeneFab sale – he was just being shy. Kim would use her powers of persuasion to move things up on his timetable. And there were others who had insider information. She would try to loosen their tongues as well.

Kim Soo had less than a year left on her
contract
and then she would be free to go away on her own. And she would be released, in a fashion. But a deadly agent like Kim Soo could never be allowed to put herself on the open market. She was bright.
She must know that
thought Grey.
Surely she must know that.

At the age of seven, Malcolm Grieves sat in a worn recliner in the basement of his parents suburban home, both enthralled and terrified by a creature that lived on an airplane wing. The TV show was
Twilight Zone
; the episode, the infamous William Shatner piece where an innocent passenger on a plane flight is haunted by the image of a hairy monster clinging to the airplane's fuselage in mid-flight.

Most children related immediately to the character played by Shatner, someone who sees nightmares in the dark that only he can see. Except Grieves. His perception was quite different. He saw himself as the creature, locked out of the normal loop, clinging to a freezing wing section for dear life.  Or, in instances where they are forced to recognize him, hostile and afraid.

Grieves felt that way then and he felt vaguely the same now.
Why did I have to be special?
Why bless me with a vision of the future that others couldn't see or terrors around the corner that they blindly ignored?
Their ignorance angered him; their
laissez faire
denseness made him want to slap them awake or catch their attention with a flashing sword blade across the bridge of the nose.
Wouldn't that wake them up?
He was always drawn to an image of himself as a sword fighter, King Richard the Lion Hearted, his wide shining blade cutting through the thick neck of an ignorant politician. Flash. The blade arcing down in sudden judgment, that awful weight separating a hand instantly from a well-tailored arm. Flash. Heads rolled. Flash. Voices were silent, cut off in mid-sentence, tongues wagging stupidly in their mouths. 
No rebuttal necessary
thought Grieves, swinging his imaginary scabbard across another self-important belly.
They were speechless now.

Life could be so simple, so clear. But then why did Shay Redfield have to see him like that on the street? The old Grieves, the soft mushy Grieves who could always be trusted to forgive all the abuse, was gone now.  He had evaporated into the sunny suburbs. The new Grieves, standing in the odious dark of the industrial yards, has taken his place. But she had seen him in his new transformation - the longhaired knight, the avenger. She had seen him.
Damn.
Grieves had to act to protect himself.  If his cover was blown, then his mission was in jeopardy. The last thing he wanted to do, he told himself, his voice breaking the silence, was hurt her. But since when did his feelings have anything to do with the ways of the world?  He had to get through to her. At least he had to talk to her. She would see reason. Then he could decide what came next.

He waited in the alleyway for the headlights to pass.  Then he scurried across the blacktop, the divider and a walkway and entered the park, his hair flying behind him.  He estimated twelve city blocks to go.  He had decided to walk. A cab was too risky. It could be traced.

Midnight was upon him, the various greens of the park one solemn black carpet.  Thankfully the park was deserted. What fool would dare pass through this inner-city jungle of rubbish covered grass, shrubs and graffiti-covered park benches this late at night?  The new Grieves would. He saw himself less and less as prey.  He was being groomed as predator.

The short man with the long greasy overcoat crossed the mid-town bridge at ten minutes after twelve in the center lane. A dirty white van passed him, horn blaring. Grieves heard the snap of occupants locking their car doors. He laughed, and then moved down Bloor Street against the sides of the empty office buildings, the sound of his breathing reflected sharply back to him off the pollution stained red brick.  Her apartment block stood at mid-block, a high caragana bush sheltering both sides of the lobby and security foyer.

Grieves licked his lips, tasted anticipation.

He sensed the power of knowing that he was capable now of almost anything.  He was like a man in a dream aware that his actions could have no consequence, that there were no taboos. This feeling exhilarated him and it literally lifted him across the street.

Not thinking, he entered the bright entrance area of the lobby and faced a heavy locked glass door. He tried the handle and the door rattled uselessly in the aluminum jamb.
Security
he thought.
No problem.
He ran his hand over the call panel, pressing dozens of numbered keys. He waited. Within seconds, dozens of voices, their words unintelligible called down to him. He answered back  "Delivery". Several noises called back angrily "for who?" or "wrong apartment" but someone, perhaps expecting a late night pizza or Chinese for four, pressed the release button for the security door. 

Grieves pushed through and smiled. 

"Asleep at the switch," he muttered. "Someone is always asleep at the switch."

Shay Redfield resided in apartment 407. Grieves took one of the elevators up to the fourth floor alone and anxious. He had one small problem - getting past her door.

Bay Street in the summer was populated by an army of shiny stainless steel vendor carts; their awnings announcing every possible combination of hot dog wieners, buns and a strange array of esoteric toppings ranging from homemade sauerkraut to curried yams.

Jayne stood before one, at the foot of the granite steps that led up to the local branch of the Bank of Hong Kong. She was handing change over to a tall blonde dressed in a string bikini. Rusty stood beside her, carefully taking his first bite of a hot dog in a dangerous state of condiment overflow.

"Is this something they teach you in Law School?" asked Rusty, relish attached to his upper lip.

"What?  How to make change?" She turned with her lunch and a can of Diet Pepsi. She pointed to his mouth.

He wiped at his face. "Thanks. No. How to eat one of these while standing on Bay Street in your best trial suit? What's the secret?"

"Speed" she answered seriously. "It's all a matter of timing. If you watch you'll see the corporate lawyers never come down here into the streets. They prefer to lunch in their offices with their dockets spread out in front of them. You'll find bits of Caesar salad, corned beef, and maybe some Kosher pickle juice there sometimes if you look closely enough. They're too slow for the streets. The criminal lawyers, on the other hand, like to get outside. Rub elbows with their clients. And notice how we devour our lunch."  She took her first bite, leaving less than two thirds of the hot dog behind.

"I'm impressed"

They went and sat on a cool green marble bench. Above their heads, through the close forest of steel and glass they enjoyed a narrow window of cloudless blue sky. "This is a measure of my trust in you to share these professional secrets."

"And don't think I don't appreciate it," said Rusty. "So? How are we doing?" he asked finally.

"With the Judge?" She shrugged. "He's beginning to look lost. When that happens they usually decide to err in favor of putting it to trial."

"I knew it."

"Sorry, Rusty. But with these technical trials … the system needs a whole new breed of judge. The ones we have right now just don't have the education or the background to make sensible decisions in cases like yours."

"And it's only going to get worse."

She looked at him, squinting in the bright sunlight. "You're right. But that might work in your favor. Whoever wants you put away is probably feeling pretty cocky right now. That's just as well."

Rusty finished his lunch and rolled up his napkin in his fist looking around for a trash receptacle. "Do you know what DNA is?" he asked her.

"I can’t remember what it stands for but it has something to do with our genes. It's as individual as fingerprints. And I can't see how this has anything to do with this case unless you're talking about analyzing forensic material?"

"DNA is a
program
– a computer program for building human beings. Or any anything living, from whales to bananas. Shrunk down to the size of a couple trillion molecules. One gram of DNA could hold the information of half a million HD movies."

"How do you know so much about this stuff? I thought you were just a salesman?" asked Jayne.

"I used to sell encyclopedias,” said Rusty with a smile.

Jayne shook her head slowly. "Shouldn't lie to your solicitor.” She stood. "Let's take a walk. I'm beginning to
feel
like a hot dog."

"And what is this business about
just
a salesman?"

"I didn't mean anything by that. It's just that after reading
A Death Of A Salesman
in high school, I always had the feeling that those Willy Loman types were sort of … sad and limited."

"Limited? That's a roundabout way of saying
boring
. You're saying salesmen are boring?"

She shrugged and smiled at him. "I could be wrong."

They headed for the east side of the street - to the shade. He continued. "This huge program written in our DNA is the blueprint for you or me. Even boring salespeople. If you could read yours it would be very specific. Nose. Nose shape. Nose color. Interior and exterior mass." She looked at him quizzically. "By the way, you have what I would describe as a
classic
nose."

"What? Operationally? How would you know?" she asked.

"Cosmetically."

"I wouldn't think you were the
cosmetic
type."

"Every part of your body, your mental make-up, chemical structure, genetic predilection to disease - every single cell was built using that DNA blueprint."

She had stopped to look into a store window. "How about personality?" she asked.

"Good question. They've already proven that qualities like shyness, aggressiveness, predisposition to anger and depression - are all linked to a gene. Meaning you were born with it."

She turned to him, her expression unreadable. "That's bullshit. You make it sound like self-determination is dead and buried."

"I didn't say you couldn't overcome these things. We aren't totally instinctual creatures."

"You haven't met my office staff."

"Well, if you don't like them, then just change them."

"You've got my attention."

"You get me a sample of their DNA. We modify it to your preference. Then grow another one. And then replace them with the new improved model."

Jayne laughed. "Maybe we could use the insanity defense on you," she said, turning back into the flow of lunchtime foot traffic.

"Jayne  - this is not
Star Trek: The Next Generation
. This is what Ludd was working on. Ludd was making a machine to make people - to modify people."

Jayne nodded and smiled at a tall well-dressed man passing in their direction. "Can they make them like that?" she asked, a sardonic smile on her lips.

"This is all do-able right now. The only thing holding us back is the will and the money."

"So how do we change this DNA blueprint then? With the
Splicer
. And how long does it take?"

Rusty was buoyed by her interest. "You’ve heard of companies developing bacteria that will eat oil spills or toxic waste? Do you know how long that takes? To modify a thing as basic as bacteria?" asked Rusty.

"Couldn't guess. A year?"

Rusty shook his head. "It would take five to ten years. Hundreds of individuals - researchers, programmers, technicians. Millions and millions of dollars in research funds. All just to generate one tiny organism who gets off on eating something like PCB's."

"Somehow I see us up to our armpits in these things eventually. Don't they grow?"

"Exactly. So you have to breed in other factors. For example, all they can live on are high concentrations of PCB's. When the PCB's are gone, they're gone. And fast. The last thing you want to do is dream up a solution that's worse than the problem."

"I hate to be critical, but isn't that somehow typical of this whole business?"

"No data to substantiate that, I'm sorry."

"Yeah - and look at who's collecting the data."

"Touché."

"Anyway, 5-10 years. Lots of people. So what?"

"Remember the printing business years ago? You had printers, and press people, writers, artists, editors - a whole operation to produce a newsletter or a local paper. Then along came the computer and now one person can do the whole job in a day."

"So?"

"So … Ludd wanted to do the same thing with clinical and biological research."

"I still don't see …"

He grabbed her arm and stopped her on the street. "A bug that eats pollution would be worth millions but also costs millions to make. With the Splicer the idea is to make that same bacteria in an afternoon for pennies. Think about how that would change the world. Then think about the military applications.”

"Weapons?” Jayne asked.

“You could sequence your enemy – say North Koreans. Find a common genetic trait. Then build a virus that attacks only that trait. You could develop the North Korean Flu in an afternoon with the
Splicer
.”

“That’s awful. And you worked on that technology?”

“The
Splicer
was supposed to save lives. It wasn’t until the military knocked on our door that we realized what we were creating.”

"That’s when you quit?” she asked. Rusty nodded. “And took Grieves with you. So you pissed off the partners. And a lot of other people as well. People with a big stake.”

"Grieves, who was the key to making the technology work, literally went insane. He couldn’t deal with everything. He’s never been the same since. All work on the
Splicer
stopped."

"So why kill Ludd then if the project was dead."

"Jayne, I wish I knew. There are so many potential bad guys here I don't know where to start."

Jayne looked around as if expecting one of them to leap out of the crowd. "How do you know this?"

"Grieves wrote the code and I was taught to market it."

They had reached the entrance to an underground shopping complex called the
Courts.
She took his arm and pulled him to the side. Speaking in a whisper, her lips barely touched his cheek. "Don't look around. Smile. I know this sounds hopelessly melodramatic but we're being followed."

"Again? By who? And where am I supposed to look?" He could feel the heat from her face on his." How about into your eyes."

"Fine. But I want you to get a look at him. See if you recognize him."

"It's probably a cop," said Rusty, finding his throat dry. "Let's pretend we're lovers. That will really mess with his mind." Jayne's eyes blazed with anger.

"I'm scared to death and you’re acting like this is a made-for-TV movie." Rusty couldn't think of anything to say that would make her feel better.
That's because she was probably right
. But she stayed close to him.

"Let's head back. He's tall. Dark hair. Leather jacket. He's been with us ever since we left the Court House." She turned and cleared her throat. She forced a smile.

Heading back through the crowded sidewalks, Rusty made out a man several yards in front of them turn into the entrance of a small shop. He matched the description. They passed the store and walked in silence for several moments. Rusty stopped at another storefront, this time an antique toy store. He turned away from the window pretending to cough into his hand.  Their follower was behind them

"You're sure he's following us?" he asked Jayne who was holding her hands against the glass window of the shop.

"He's been with us since lunch and he turned when we did. When we stop, he stops."

"Want some exercise?" he asked, a mischievous expression on his face. She shrugged again. "I'm game," she said.

Rusty grabbed her hand. She looked down at his, slightly surprised. "Follow me," he said.

Rusty ran, with Jayne in tow, down the alley that entered the street beside the toy store. He knew the area well from his youth. As kids they would race down these back lanes, using them as shortcuts to the local pinball arcade. He had waited for their tracker to turn into a shop entrance, hoping this would give them some time.

"Did you grow up in Toronto?" he said, under his breath, looking over his shoulder. She shook her head, her hair in her face. He pulled her to the left and turned into a battered doorway. The door stuck when he pulled on the handle, then noisily gave way to a dimly lit hallway filled with empty trash bins. They moved down the narrow hall a few yards, which then broke into a wider corridor that branched to the left and the right. Rusty grabbed her shoulder and turned her carefully, his eye on the back door.

"Used to be the world’s best comic book shop down here. I spent a lot of allowances in this building. Almost bought
Spiderman Number One
here in 1999 for five hundred bucks. If I had it today, I could use it to pay most of your legal bill"

"Is this where you do all of your reconnaissance work now?" She noticed again that Rusty was still holding her hand.

They both jumped when they heard something at the back door. Rusty pressed his fingers to his lips and Jayne crept away from the back hallway. The rear door opened with a squeal, letting in a wash of light from the alley. A man entered the hall. Rusty bent back against the green plaster wall and waited. When the footsteps were close to the junction of the two corridors, he jumped out and yelled, his hands balled into fists. A skinny Chinese kid with a food delivery bag jumped back and screamed. Without saying anything, Jayne grabbed her clients sleeve and propelled him down the hall and back out into the alleyway.

"What the hell was that?" she yelled. "Were you going to try hand-to-hand combat?"

"Me? No way. I was just going to ask him what he was doing?" answered Rusty, blinking in the sunlight.

"This is no game. The judge who warned me about this case is as serious as they come. He hasn't cracked a smile since the Lindbergh kidnapping. And what were you going to do? Make a citizen’s arrest?" The high points of her cheeks couldn't have been whiter if they were covered in frostbite. She was livid.