Tarnished Image (29 page)

Then Angelina saw her—Juanita. She was walking rapidly from the other end of the courtyard. Her obsidian hair, weighed down by water, lay flat against her head. She wore a light, flowered cotton dress that was soiled with mud. Behind her was Roberto, her fiancé.

“Juanita!” Angelina screamed as she ran for her sister, her father close behind. They met in the middle of the
courtyard and embraced, arms intertwined. Angelina held her sister around the waist, and her father hugged them tightly, as if he feared that letting go would allow them to slip forever from his sight. He repeatedly kissed Juanita on the forehead.

A light rain began to fall from the remaining clouds. No one noticed. No one cared.

When the embrace ended, Angelina looked at her father. Rain dripped from his soggy hair; even more water poured from his eyes.

“We were at Mary Puntu’s,” Juanita said. “Part of her ceiling caved in and hit her on the head. It was just the plaster, but it cut her. I heard Angelina’s voice and came out. I could not believe my eyes. I was afraid … afraid that …”

“We’re all well,” Papa said.

“I said we would be fine,” Angelina said excitedly, tears of joy streaming down her face. “Didn’t I say we would be fine, Papa?”

Her father laughed. “Yes you did, Puppet. Yes you did.”

David watched dolefully as Calvin walked from the office and into the hall. He remained seated behind his desk, feeling weary, weak, and afraid. His stomach churned, and the muscles in his neck constricted into tight knots.

The die had been cast. They had acted out their part, their play. Calvin had sat in his chair and argued vehemently against David’s proposal. It was a convincing portrayal, and David knew that Calvin had not been acting. He still opposed the idea. But that didn’t matter now.

The conversation between the two men had lasted only twenty minutes. There had been plenty of give and take and
emotion, and all of it had been transmitted by several listening devices they knew were in David’s office.

Now there was nothing to do but wait. This was the hardest part.

David could script only his words and those of Calvin; he could not direct the actions of those who tormented him. He had no idea what form their response would take, but he was certain that they would react. He had to be ready.

His biggest fear was for the safety of Kristen and Timmy, but since they were confined to the upper floors of Barringston Tower, and since additional trained guards were patrolling the building, he felt that little danger could come their way.

He wondered again if he was wrong and Calvin right. Maybe this was reckless and inappropriate. Perhaps he should have waited for the investigation to be finished and then slugged it out in court. David shook his head. No, too many lives were at stake, and there was too little time.

When he had returned from his drive with Calvin where he had spelled out his plan, he found an update from Oz on his desk. Hurricane Claudia had devastated western Cuba. Havana, the country’s capital, had been brought to its knees. Early estimates placed the dead at over five hundred and the property damage in the tens of billions. More would die from illness, contaminated water, and lack of food.

The word from the Bay of Bengal was no better. Early on-scene estimates by the International Red Cross and its companion, the Red Crescent, the Indian and Bangladeshi governments, and Barringston Relief’s own workers listed close to eighty thousand dead along the coast, an additional one hundred thousand missing, and innumerable injuries. Oz had tacked on a personal note:
David
—
double these figures.

And Barringston Relief could do nothing about it. They were able only to send reserve supplies held in Central America and Mexico to Cuba, and from the inland areas of India to Bangladesh. Those supplies would be exhausted in less than two days. Barringstons funds had to be released, and the sooner the better. Each day that passed could be counted in lives lost.

David had done the right thing. There was nothing to do now but wait. And David hated waiting.

Jack swore to himself as he hung up the phone. He had not expected this. The question now facing him was how to tell his boss what his operative had just told him. The operative had been monitoring and recording the listening devices in O’Neal’s office and conference room. They had been unable to bug his apartment, but had successfully set up a phone tap. O’Neal was the most monitored man in San Diego.

Perhaps
, he thought,
I should wait until the tape gets here. That way she can hear the recorded conversation herself.
It took only a moment for him to change his mind. If he did that, she would question his delay. No, it was best to tell her immediately and just deal with whatever emotions she decided to throw his way.

Jack rose from his desk chair and stepped into the hall. His office was on the same floor as his boss. Although smaller, it offered the same view of the Pacific Ocean. The plaque on the door read, J
ACK
L
A
B
OHM
, V
ICE
P
RESIDENT
, but he was more than an administrator. Dr. Elaine Aberdene may be the most famous drug researcher in the Western world, but she got that way by skirting, bending, and at times breaking the law. It was his job to take care of those
matters that might prove embarrassing to Aberdene Pharmaceuticals or its founder. It was a job he had held for eleven years and one at which he demonstrated great skill. He always had the right connection and knew people who owed him suitable favors. Aberdene never had reason to complain about his service, and he was going to make sure that she had no reason now.

He looked at his watch as he started down the wide, carpeted hall—3:15. She would be in the lab. Aberdene had a personal laboratory in which she ran her own experiments. In addition to being the most beautiful woman he had ever known, she was also a brilliant scientist. She was also the most quick-tempered.

The laboratory separated his office from hers, so it took only a few steps for him to arrive at his destination. He paused at the door. Her image filled his mind as it did a hundred times a day and a thousand times each night. Her thick mahogany hair shining in the light, her brown eyes, and her supple lips. Well, he assumed they were supple. He had never touched them. Jack would marry her in a minute even if it meant a life of total servitude to her volcanic emotions and self-serving plans. She, however, had shown no interest in him or, to the best of his knowledge, anyone else.

Jack knocked on the door and entered. He found her just as he had expected—hunched over a microscope.

“What is it, Jack? I’m busy.”

“My apologies, but I thought you would like to know as soon as possible. O’Neal is changing the game.”

“Oh?” she said without looking up.

“He just had a heart-to-heart with his attorney. He’s going to call our bluff.”

“Call our bluff? Don’t be obtuse, Jack. Get to the point. How is he going to call our bluff?”

“He says that he can prove that the video is a fake. He plans to use the photos we sent him as further evidence that he’s being framed.”

“Not likely,” she replied calmly. Her placidity made Jack nervous.

“He also said he knows who it is that’s framing him and that he plans to make it public soon.”

Aberdene raised her head, then turned toward Jack. Her eyes narrowed. “How can that be? Everything is perfect. The video and pictures are free of any evidence that could incriminate us.”

“Maybe he made the Belize connection,” Jack offered.

“Don’t be stupid. There’s no way that he could have connected our work in Belize to his firm.”

“I’m sure you’re right, but how can we know that for sure?”

“What we did there was done nine years ago.”

“But the whole reason we’re doing this is Barringston Relief’s research on the dengue hemorrhagic fever that is being conducted there.”

“I know why we started this, Jack,” she snapped. Picking up a thin pair of tweezers from the worktable, she turned back to the microscope and picked up a small insect from the slide. It was immobile. Jack had seen Aberdene anesthetize the insects with a small amount of ether before. “This is why we’re framing, O’Neal,” she said. “This mosquito and millions like it are making us rich, Jack. O’Neal can ruin that if he can connect the new DHF to us. It’s not likely, but if our clients get wind that that’s even a remote possibility, we could
lose them. I’ve worked too long on this to let it slip away.” She walked over to an aquarium-shaped container, opened a small port, and dropped the insect in.

“I’m aware of that,” Jack said.

“Arbovirology, Jack. That’s the future of medicine and warfare. Do you remember what I taught you about arboviruses?”

Jack nodded nervously. “Uh, yes. Arbovirus is short for arthropod-borne virus. A mosquito is an arthropod.”

“Very good, Jack,” Aberdene said. She leaned over and put her face close to the glass container. “There are five hundred mosquitoes in here, Jack, give or take a bug or two. Each one carries a virus—a virus I engineered. That makes them special. There are no others like them in all the world.”

“Except Belize.”

Aberdene stiffened, stood erect, and turned her attention to Jack. “Except Belize,” she agreed. “Accidents happen. That virus was designed to respond to a special antiviral. It mutated. That happens a lot in the world of microbiology. It’s not all that unusual to get one to two thousand mutations per million viruses per site per year. That’s not a lot, but when you’re dealing with millions of viruses that become billions of viruses … well, let’s just say it adds up. Belize got away from me. That’s all.”

“But you do have a cure,” Jack said. “Couldn’t we just provide that? Aberdene Pharmaceuticals would be heralded as the lifesaving corporation, and you would win more awards. You’d become even more famous.”

“No,” she replied quickly. “Scientists are a curious bunch. That’s why they’re scientists. Sooner or later some nosy researcher or clever graduate student would start asking how
it is that we came up with a cure so soon after a specialized, never-before-seen strain of DHF virus appeared. Too risky. Besides, I don’t care about the awards or the fame. I care about the work and the money.”

“Someone may find out all that anyway,” Jack said.

“Not likely. Right now the only people close to doing that are Barringston Relief doctors in Belize. That’s why David O’Neal and Barringston Relief must be discredited.”

“If what he says is true, then he might be ready to blow the cover off all of this.”

“So we step things up.”

“Step things up?” Jack thought for a moment. “I suppose we could release the new video earlier than planned, but we won’t get the full publicity value out of it if it comes in on the coattails of the first video.”

“Forget the new video.”

“Forget the video?”

“That’s what I said.” Aberdene went back to her stool and sat down.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Jack replied. “We’ve worked so hard to fabricate that footage that it seems a waste—”

“Come on, think, Jack. We can’t be concerned about cost and time. I don’t think they can prove it’s a fake, but suppose they can. Suppose that whiny little Archer Matthews made a mistake or even planted a clue, then we could be in real trouble. We lose everything. The people who want these mosquitoes would be more than a little upset. In fact, we could find ourselves floating facedown somewhere.”

“I thought you said the U.S. military wanted the virus.”

“They do, and so do a few other countries. Military is
military. Just think of the advantage an army would have if it had only to fight soldiers who were stricken with DHF: Mosquitoes are the perfect weapon. Release them from a plane or plant them in some country near military institutions. They reproduce very quickly, and my little guys live far longer than the normal sixty-five days of the typical mosquito. My little friends are insecticide resistant. Nature provided that for me; I just encouraged it.”

“If we’re not going to use the video, what are we going to do?”