Maxime Barbier’s first order of business upon returning to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police headquarters in Toronto was to meet with his supervisor, Clive Minify, to discuss the status of the Alik Vosky investigation.
When he walked into the small conference room, Clive was seated at the table waiting for him. Over the years the two of them had met on countless occasions, but to the best of Maxime’s recollection, he couldn’t think of a single time that Clive had arrived first. He was a stocky man who had a flare for the unconventional. He never allowed his expectations to exceed his reach. It was a source of amazement to many in the Mounted Police how he had ascended to a level of such authority.
Maxime wasted no time hanging up his coat and sitting down. Before Clive spoke, he removed the meerschaum pipe from his mouth. Maxime rarely saw him without it, although he’d never seen him raise a match to the bowl.
“We’ve expanded our staff to have a look at all the material you sent in from Vosky’s house. In addition to our usual people, we brought in a couple of pharmacological and biochemical experts.” Maxime was already well aware of what Clive was telling him. He had more than one friend in the forensic lab who was providing him with regular updates on their progress. “They’ve come across a lot of complex pharmaceutical and obstetric information. Vosky seems to have created dozens of sophisticated laboratory procedures. The files are not only in Russian, but they’re also in some complex encrypted code Vosky invented. I have some of the brightest minds in Canada working on this thing. The only thing they can agree upon so far is that Vosky’s a scientific genius. What they’re wrestling with is trying to figure out if he’s a cold, calculating mastermind who’s responsible for the GNS crisis in the U.S. or some raving madman who needs to be permanently confined to a locked ward. I realize they haven’t had the material that long, but you’d think with the brain trust we’ve got working on this thing, they’d at least be able to tell us something.” Clive moved his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other. “What are your plans for the next few days?”
“Well, it seems like a certainty that Vosky won’t be returning to Anticosti Island for a while. I’ve got some ideas where he might be.”
“Any you feel like sharing?”
“Let me work on them a little first.”
“Fine. Are you still planning on flying out today?”
“Yeah.”
Clive stood up and started toward the door. Maxime escorted him the rest of the way. “I know you work alone and that you tend to be a little quirky when it comes to following the rules, but try to make an exception just this once and keep me informed. I’m getting a lot of pressure from the top on this one.”
“Of course, sir.”
Clive opened the door, but before walking out of the office, he put his hand on Maxime’s shoulder. “I’ll give you as many people as you need, but you have to bring this son of a bitch in, and I mean soon.”
“I understand, sir.”
Maxime released a lungful of air and then made his way down the corridor to his office. Instead of sitting down at his desk, he walked over to the window and stared out at the bottlenecked traffic below. He assumed within the next few minutes Clive Minify would soon be on the phone giving the prime minister the bad news that the RCMP still hadn’t located Alik Vosky. Making matters worse, they couldn’t give him the go-ahead to assure the president of the United States that GNS was not the act of an insane bioterrorist.