Richard pushed back from his computer screen. His eyes burned, his vision blurred; he had a headache and his mind wandered. For the past week, he sifted through data, catalogued it, sorted it and tried to interpret it. There was a lot of information, and a lot of it was very interesting. But they’d reached a point of diminishing returns. The record showed slow, plodding scientific progress toward a significant understanding of living processes, and some of it was relevant to what the team thought they had in the vial. None of it, however, pointed in a direction that explained why. What was the purpose of the fluid in the damned vial? Why was it so important to its makers that they were eager to kill to get it back? Why were Alex and he targeted simply because they had been so unlucky as to come into its possession? Was it as deadly as they feared?
Richard rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. Alex, Emily and Doug had been gone for about an hour. Oscar went out for breakfast for the two of them and should be back any minute. Maybe this would be a good time to try to grasp the big picture.
Grabbing the many notes he took over the past week, he tried reading between the lines; to get a sense of what was not there. He backed his awareness away from the details of what was written and tried to get a feel for it.
It was bimodal, for sure. On the one hand, people were out to kill them for a vial containing they weren’t sure what. Other people died and it was only by luck Alex and he were still alive. People in high places were involved. If their suspicions were correct, this included some in the FBI, some judges, police, and medical researchers like Todd. The people they knew and suspected of being part of the plot were good people – why in the world would they be involved? Power? Was the vial connected to some kind of power play? The people involved were the least likely perpetrators of something sinister. They were the custodians of the public welfare. Todd’s lab was surely involved, and what Todd’s lab did was study viruses, some very dangerous. But there was nothing in anything they found suggesting weapons development, or any other nefarious research. It all pointed to sound medical research for the enrichment of mankind. How could he connect the dots? Even Todd himself was, by public history, the antithesis of an evil genius. His background, what they could find of it, all suggested a well-balanced, intelligent man who dedicated his life to bettering the human condition. How in the hell could Richard reconcile all of it?
He couldn’t. There was something big missing. Something they hadn’t yet even suspected to exist. The team needed more information, but where could they find it? Was there some way they could confront their nemeses directly, yet safely? Some way they could ask those, like Todd, what the hell was going on?
There was a distant door slam and creaking footsteps on the floor above. Oscar must be back. Richard could certainly use a break.
“Medium coffee, black. Plain bagel toasted with veggie cream cheese, right?” asked Oscar as his ponderous bulk thundered down the wooden stairs to the basement.
“Sounds wonderful, thanks.” Richard reached out and took the paper bag and Styrofoam cup Oscar offered. “What’s the day like out there?”
“Warm, not hot, sunny, mild breeze. Nice day, if you’re into that kind of thing.”
“Man, I would really like to get out of here, if only for a moment.” Richard sat back in front of his computer screen, but couldn’t bring himself to focus on its contents. “I’m getting nowhere new with this stuff.”
“You could always go out on the deck.”
“Yeah, I know. I just feel like I have to get away, you know? I've spent years locked up in a monastery, I'm used to that. It even feels comfortable. But I haven't spent so much time in intellectual concentration since med school. My brain is fried.”
“Well, we can tune into Alex and Emily’s video. They should be there by now. That might be entertaining.”
“Sure, let’s take a look.”
Oscar tapped a few keys at his computer and the screen opened to a scene inside a car. They seemed to be driving through a forested area.
“Hey, where’d all the trees come from? I thought they were in Marlborough,” said Richard as he looked over Oscar’s shoulder.
“It’s really pretty country, isn’t it?”
Suddenly, an alarm sounded and the scene on the screen changed to large red letters, flashing “INTRUDER ALERT!”
Richard and Oscar stared at each other for a moment, stunned. Oscar recovered first by turning to his keyboard and tapping hurriedly on its keys. “Richard, get out of here! Now!”
“But what about you, Oscar. I can’t just leave you!”
“Yes, you can. I have to dump whatever data we have to somewhere else so it can’t be discovered what we know and what we’ve been doing. I’ve gotta get a message to the other guys somehow too. You have to get out of here, now! I’ll be right behind you.”
Richard grabbed all the paper lying around and threw it into a hopper that fed a large shredder. Then he took the vial from its hiding place under his computer's keyboard. Earlier, he removed it from the pen and replaced it with the one containing water Emily brought back. The real vial, he now slipped into an unobtrusive pocket sewn into the inseam of his pants just for this eventuality. He felt the inside of his left shirt sleeve. The pen and its water-filled vial were sewn into a pocket hidden there. It was his hope, if caught and given a cursory pat-down search, both the pen and the vial would be missed. If not, the pen, being larger, would be more easily found and might cause the searchers to stop looking before the real vial was found. Maybe. One thing was for sure - he couldn't leave it behind.
“What are you doing?” shouted Oscar. “Get the hell out of here. We don’t have much time! I’ll take care of everything here.”
“I’ll see you outside.” Richard gave Oscar one last glance. He was bent over his keyboard, furiously typing.
“UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY ATTEMPT FRONT DOOR” glared lettering on the screen.
“Get going!” said Oscar. “There’s not much wind out there and the smoke is going to build up fast. You wait much longer and you won’t be able to see what the hell you’re doing.” Oscar built an elaborate security system Richard only vaguely understood. It included the release of smoke to help cover the escape routes Oscar devised.
Richard turned toward the stairs and ran up them three at a time. At the top, in the kitchen, he rushed toward more stairs going to the second floor. He could hear banging around the corner at the front door. Someone was trying to force their way in. Shit! Oscar’s never going to make it! He considered, for a moment, turning back to help Oscar, then remembered the vial. He couldn’t let it fall into the hands of those other people. What could he do to help Oscar anyway?
At the second floor, he went out a back door to the deck, climbed up on the railing and grabbed the eave of the roof. The cloud of smoke, promised by Oscar, enveloped the house, obscuring the activity in the front yard. The back was filling up with smoke as well and it covered anything going on there. He heard shouting and banging, but couldn’t see what was going on. This was probably a good thing as it meant he couldn’t be seen either. The smoke had a vague chemical-dissolved-in-water-vapor odor to it, but didn’t bother his eyes.
Pulling himself up onto the roof, he felt its gritty tiles. The abrasive surface made his footing feel a little more solid. The slope of the roof over the deck was shallow; not so, the roof of the house proper. He swung up onto the roof and immediately felt insecure, as though, if he wasn’t very careful, he would slip and fall to the ground many feet below. He was sure that would hurt.
Scooting his butt along so as to maximize the surface area he had in contact with the roof, he made his way to the middle. Across a short gap was the neighbor’s house. The smoke didn’t yet cover his part of the roof and he could see a spot just across the gap where a metal pipe stuck out of the top of the other roof; something he could grab a hold of when he landed. He coiled his feet up under him and looked at the ground below. It was obscured by the smoke which made the space seem like a bottomless pit. The gap, seemingly so short when viewed from below, now seemed a long way to jump. What had Oscar been thinking when he planned this? Richard couldn’t wait; the smoke was welling up and soon would make the other roof difficult to see.
Richard took a deep breath and pushed as hard as he could with his feet. A little too hard. His right foot slipped at the last moment, causing him to spin a little as he soared over to the neighboring roof. He hit hard on his right side, just short of the pipe. Ow! The vial better be as strong as I hope it is! he thought. Fortunately, a large portion of his body was in contact with the roof, which was the only thing that kept him from sliding off. He lay motionless on his side until he was sure he would not slide down the roof.
In front of him, about two feet above, was the pipe he had been aiming for. He slowly rolled over onto his back, bent his knees so the full surface of the soles of his feet were in contact with the roof and tried lifting his back off the roof with his arms. His arms and feet held. He gingerly pushed himself up the roof and onto his back again. Pulling his feet up into position again, he inched his way up to the pipe. Using the pipe, he pulled himself up to where he could grab a hold of the peak of the roof and scrambled over to the other side.
Only then did he look behind him to see what he could of their “safe house.” Richard could just barely make out two black sedans parked across the street from the front of the house. There were two men in suits standing by them, looking toward the front door of the house. The house itself, and its yard, front and back, was still enveloped in white smoke. No one seemed to be aware of him. So far, so good.
It was a good thing Oscar had another route of escape planned. There was no way he could ever navigate his considerable mass across that void between the houses. Richard now understood one of the reasons why Oscar planned more than one way to get away.
Richard slid down the roof to the eave and again leapt into space. This jump didn’t go much better than the first, except he was able to grab the pipe on the opposite roof. In a moment, he was on the other side of the peak of the second house and looking down into a driveway. He felt some relief at knowing there was no way he would be able to leap over that gap; his jumping was at an end.
He worked his way along the roof to the back of the house where the slope shallowed over another deck. Swinging his legs over the edge, he lowered himself onto the deck railing, then the deck, and ran down stairs to the ground below. He climbed over the fence in the back and moved quickly to the street beyond. There, he slowed, trying to walk casually. As he walked, he turned his head and looked behind. Nobody followed; he was pretty sure he hadn’t been seen. Soon, he turned a corner and was walking down a main street.
Richard concentrated on slowing his breathing and pounding heart. He was sweating in the cool morning air. It really was a beautiful day, and he really was into that kind of thing. It felt good to be out of the mildewed basement, although this was not exactly what he had in mind when he thought about it. He hoped Oscar was okay.
He walked, as casually as he could manage, toward a gas station he saw two blocks away. The plan was to make a land line call from there to a prepaid cell phone. Once at the gas station, he found a phone booth - Oscar told him there'd be one. His spirits improved. He walked into the booth and closed the door. As he did so, a black sedan pulled into the parking lot and two men dressed in dark suits got out. Richard took a deep breath and held it. The men came straight up to the booth, opened the door, and looked at Richard. “Well, well, well. Look who we have here,” one said. “I told you it was him.”
Richard's heartbeat accelerated and his mouth got dry.
The other man pulled out a photograph and held it up to Richard. “Yep, that’s him,” he said. “You’ve got a good eye.” He grabbed a hold of Richard’s arm and shoved him toward the sedan. One of the men opened the back door of the car and Richard was pushed into the back seat. The man who held him threw a hard, closed-fisted punch into Richard’s right ribs. It made him gasp for air and bent him over. “We’re not going to have any trouble from you, right?”
“No trouble,” gasped Richard through teeth clenched in pain. He was caught. Whatever might happen now was out of his control. He had no ideas about how to get out of this. The car door closed, the locks chunked home; there was nothing exposed that Richard could use to unlock the doors.
The guys in dark suits got in the front. The one in the passenger seat put a phone to his ear. “We have Gregg,” he said. A few seconds later, he turned to the driver. “We’re to keep searching the area for now, then go to the house.” He listened to the phone again. “Any of the other teams find anything?” Short silence. The phone went back into his pocket. “Nothing. The others have seen nothing. Maybe they can get something out of the guy at the house.”
Oh, crap. They have Oscar.
. . .
The two men grabbed Richard under the arms and pulled him from the car. It was hard for him to keep his feet and he stumbled as they dragged him up the stairs to the porch in front of the house. At the curb, there were now black-and–whites, policemen doing crowd control and about fifteen or so men in black clothes moving purposefully in and out of the house. There were a couple of ambulances parked nearby as well. Down the street, both ways, small groups of onlookers gathered; no doubt to see what all the commotion was about.
Could this be the same house? wondered Richard as he stepped through the front door. The porch was littered with glass, wood splinters, and melted bits of metal. The front door was ripped out of place, leaving behind ragged pieces of brick hanging loosely from the front wall. The front window was smashed over the living room floor and the steel grating that had been behind it leaned up against the wall to the side; its edges were melted back and its woof and warp were no longer flat. There were bullet holes in the walls and ceiling of the living room and gaping holes torn loose here and there, leaving bits of plaster and drywall mixed with the glass on the floor. The shiny hardwood floor was littered with small rubber wheels, little electric motors, short pieces of wire, circuit boards, and chunks of plastic that looked like they had once been toys. The air was thick with the odor of spent gun powder, doused fire and chemical fumes. What happened here?
The two men pushed Richard toward the kitchen. Others moving through the house had on Kevlar. Their eyes avoided Richard, and their faces wore scowls and frowns. They were not happy.
Reaching the stairwell to the basement, the men shoved Richard through the door and let him go. He would have fallen down the stairs, but the stairs were gone! In their place was a smooth hard ramp and Richard slid down feet first. He hit hard on the wall opposite the ramp at the bottom.
“Look what we found,” said one of the two men from the floor above.
Richard looked up and scanned the familiar room he spent so many hours in. It, at least, looked unchanged. Oscar was lying on his side on the floor and standing, leaning over him, wearing a Harley-Davidson doo-rag, was the tall blond cop that was present at the start of all this - Martin. Oscar was conscious, but obviously hurt. His face was bruised and swollen with streaks of blood and spittle running from his nose and mouth. His T-shirt and jeans had spattered splashes of dried blood. There was one other man present, wearing a black suit, white shirt and black tie, who stood looking on with no expression on his face.
“Ah, Richard Gregg,” said Doo-rag.
Richard had a hard time thinking of him as “Martin”; it just seemed too human.
“It’s been a real pain-in-the-ass to find you.” Doo-rag looked intently at Richard. “You’ve caused us one hell of a lot of trouble.” Reaching up, he pulled off the doo-rag, exposing angry red scars under close shaved, blond hair. “And that's not mentioning the headache your friend and his damned dog caused me.” Replacing the doo-rag, he turned his gaze to Oscar, cocked his leg back and kicked Oscar as hard as he could in the stomach. “And this fat fuck has been one clever son of a bitch, haven’t you, Oscar!” he growled.
Richard looked at Oscar and said, “You alright?”
“Not exactly,” Oscar answered. Bubbles of blood and saliva formed on his lips as he tried to speak. “These guys seem,” Oscar took a slow breath, “pissed.” He coughed weakly and red spray jetted from his lips.
Doo-rag turned toward the suit. “Put him in the chair!” He waved sharply in the direction of Oscar.
Suit bent over, grabbed Oscar under the arms and struggled to slide his bulk into the chair that still sat in front of Oscar’s computer.
Doo-rag looked at Richard. He moved over to where Richard was lying on the floor, lifted him up by the shirt and slammed him against the wall. “Where’s the pen? Where’s the vial? I know you know what I’m talking about!” He threw Richard roughly into a chair and secured him there with wire ties.
Richard looked back at the man with a purposely blank expression on his face.
Doo-rag back slapped Richard. Once, then twice. “I need that vial, NOW!” He let Richard’s head fall onto his chest, then hit him hard in the mouth. He hit him once more in the stomach. Richard slumped over in the chair. His lip hurt and he could feel warm thick liquid running down his chin. He said nothing.
Keeping his head bent, Richard looked up toward Oscar. No longer the center of attention, Oscar somehow got a hold of one of the small cameras like the ones he placed on Emily and Alex. He surreptitiously reached over and his fingers danced briefly on a computer keyboard on the desk by his chair. His face was drawn into a bloody wince of pain.
Doo-rag turned back toward Oscar who was once again quite still. He was breathing heavily and clenching his fists in a fit of frustration. “Where are the others?” he shouted at Oscar
“I don’t know anything,” said Oscar weakly. His breathing was labored and any movement, even breathing, seemed to hurt him. “Really.”
“Tell us where they are, now!”
“I don’t know!”
Doo-rag raised his right arm and gave Oscar a hard blow across the face. “We will resort to other means, if we have to.”
“Tell us what we want to know now, or you’re going to start losing pieces,” said the suit.
Doo-rag raised his arm again and struck Oscar. Richard saw Oscar’s arm and the hand holding the camera reflexively thrown forward and the camera flew out and struck the wall. The other two apparently did not notice.
“It’s awfully public here,” said Suit. “Don’t you think we should get these two somewhere more secure to continue this? There are too damned many eyes around here belonging to outsiders.”
Doo-rag stood up, took a deep breath and turned toward Suit. “Alright. Get them ready to travel. You know where to take them. And be sure we get all the hard disks out of here too. Strip this place. Collect all the clothing, all the personal effects, everything and take it with you. Leave nothing that’s not nailed down behind. Let’s move it!”
I gotta hide the vial and pen somewhere else, somehow, and fast!