A Better World (7 page)

User ID: 784321

You’re right, that would take, like, the president of the United States.

Oh wait—he was in on it. Dipshit.

Re: Con$piracy around murder of DAR director

El Chupacabra

“Why is it called ‘common sense’ when it’s so rare?”

User ID: 493324

So how far does this rabbit hole go? Walker was president; who else is in his cabal? President Clay? SecDef Leahy?

Re: Con$piracy around murder of DAR director

Benito the Mighty

“Be still and know that I am God”

User ID: 784321

Could be. All I know is that my go-bag is packed and my cabin is prepped. Two pallets of canned goods, 200 gallons of water, and the hardware to defend it.

When the shit goes down, I’m going to ride it out in style. And woe betide any numb nuts who crosses my fence line.

Re: Con$piracy around murder of DAR director

BananaGirl

“Worry is a misuse of the imagination”

User ID: 897236

Dude, you don’t need all that water. Just build a catch basin and a purification system. Here, check out the schematics.

CHAPTER 5

“Big-girl pants? He really said that?”

“And smiled like he was being cute.” Marla Keevers sipped her coffee.

“It’s quick, at least.” Owen Leahy shook his head. As the secretary of defense, there weren’t many people around whom he dared show his hand. But Marla was a friend, or as close to one as politics at this level allowed. They’d worked together under President Walker, and he’d quickly learned that she was one of those rare people who got the job done, whatever it took. He liked those people. He was one of them. “The president seems smitten.”

“Cooper won him over right away. You know how? When Clay offered him the job, he refused.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. You believe that? Sitting in the limo, after a show-of-force pickup with twenty Secret Service agents, and the guy says no.”

They were in her office, the doors closed, and Leahy had his foot up on his knee, the chair rocked back on two legs. These informal conferences had started as a way to keep the train on the rails during the transition from Walker to Clay, but they’d become chatty. “Was it a performance?”

“No. That’s the weird thing. He honestly didn’t want the job.”

That was unnerving. This was Washington, DC. Everyone wanted the job. “So Cooper is the new fair-haired boy.”

Marla nodded. They stared at each other, then broke into laughter. It felt good, absurd as the situation was.

“What a world, huh? Throw your boss off a roof, end up serving the president,” Leahy said. “I guess we could always use that as leverage to control him.”

“Cooper won’t be a puppet. Plus, do we really want to open that particular can of worms?” Marla shook her head. “If the truth about that night came out, people would start asking who else was involved.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with the Monocle.”

“Neither did I. But there are plenty of other things we have been . . . aware of.” She left it at that, a gesture he appreciated. Deft.

“I don’t know, Marla. Is it just me, or is the world going crazy? We’re facing maybe the greatest crisis in American history, and the president is getting his advice from a Boy Scout.”

“You know how many people Nick Cooper has killed?”

“Okay,” Leahy said, “a dangerous Boy Scout.”

She shrugged. A message pinged in on her system, and she glanced at it, typed a quick response. Leahy laced his fingers behind his head, stared at the ceiling.

“In 1986, when Bryce published his study on the gifted, I was just starting at the CIA. Done my four years in army intel, transferred over. I was the FNG on the Middle East desk, a junior analyst getting all the junk assignments. But when I read that study, I got up from my cubicle, walked straight to the deputy’s office, and asked for five minutes.”

“You didn’t.”

“I was young.”

“Did he see you?”

“Yeah.” Leahy smiled, remembering that day. January, and cold; his shoes had salt stains on them, and while he’d waited outside Mitchum’s office, he’d licked his fingers to wipe the leather clean. He could still taste the tang of salt and dirt. “The deputy looked at me like I might be mentally challenged.” He shrugged.
“No way out at that point, so I figured, screw it, today you either make your name or lose your job.”

“What did you say?”

“I dropped the study on his desk, and I said, ‘Sir, you can forget about the sheiks, and Berlin, and the Soviets. This is the going to be the conflict that defines the next fifty years of American intelligence.’ ”

“No.” Marla was smiling broadly. “No.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He laughed me out of his office, and I spent an extra year as a junior analyst. But I was right. I knew it then, and I know it now.”
And Mitchum does too.
It had taken five years before the deputy saw the truth, but when he had, he’d remembered who told him first. Deputy Mitchum had taken a personal interest from then on, and Leahy’s climb up the ladder had accelerated dramatically. “Nothing in our history presents the same threat that the gifted do.”

“Easy. The
New York Times
would pay a fortune to quote you saying that.”

“The
Times
can bite me. I’ve got three children and five grandchildren, and none of them are gifted. How do you like their odds? Think in twenty years they’re going to be running the world? Or serving fries?”

Marla didn’t respond, just typed another message on her system. Leahy said, “What do you think of him?”

“Cooper?”

“Clay. He’s been president for two months. The grace period is over. What do you think?”

She took her hands from the keyboard. Picked up her coffee and took a thoughtful sip. Finally, she said, “I think he would make an exceptional history professor.”

Their eyes locked.

There really wasn’t any point in saying more.

CHAPTER 6

It was the kind of crisp blue day that made a man proud to own his house, to be out in scrub clothes working in his yard. A beer on the edge of the porch, radio voices talking in the background. Ethan was partaking in that greatest of white-collar lies, “working from home,” and not feeling at all bad about it. He put in plenty of hours at the lab. Besides, what the news had termed the “Crisis in Cleveland” had been going on for three days now. People would be running out of supplies, starting to get hungry. Hungry people did stupid things, and he wasn’t leaving his wife and child alone.

“—expected to address the nation this evening. In advance of that press conference, the White House has reiterated that the National Guard is in the process of setting up aid stations to distribute food and supplies in each of the affected cities—”

One thing he’d discovered about owning a house, the damn leaves just kept falling. But he found a kind of Zen to stuffing the bags, soaking up the small details, the smell, the way each armful sent splinters to float in the air, lit by golden autumn sun.

“—have indicated that this will be mostly an inconvenience, with no lasting repercussions. They are asking that everyone remain calm—”

“Dr. Park?”

Ethan looked up. A man and a woman stood on the curb. They wore dark suits and sunglasses, and the man held out a wallet with a badge. “I’m Special Agent Bobby Quinn, and this is Special
Agent Valerie West. We’re with the Department of Analysis and Response. Do you have a moment?”

Ethan straightened, his back singing. “Um. Sure.”

“You are Dr. Ethan Park, of the Advanced Genomics Institute?”

“Yes.”

Quinn nodded, taking in the yard, Ethan’s torn clothes and dirty hands. “Would you mind if we came in?”

“What’s this about?”

“Dr. Abraham Couzen. Could we talk inside?”

Abe?
He shrugged, said, “Sure.” Feeling a bit surreal—where but in the movies did government agents show up on your front lawn?—he led them up the steps and inside. “Have a seat. You want some coffee or anything?”

“No, thank you.” The two agents sat side by side on the couch. Quinn said, “Nice place.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ve got a little one?” Gesturing to the infant swing.

“A girl. Ten weeks. Look, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but what is this about?”

“When was the last time you saw Dr. Couzen?”

“A couple of days ago.”

“Can you be precise?”

Ethan thought about it. Abe came and went according to his own whims.
Actually, he does pretty much everything that way
. “The day before yesterday. At the lab.”

“And you haven’t heard from him since?”

“No. Has something happened?”

Quinn looked pained. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but yesterday a neighbor reported gunfire coming from Dr. Couzen’s house. Police responded and found his back door kicked in. His home office had been ransacked, and Couzen was gone.”

“
What?
Is Abe okay?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“Dr. Park,” West said, “do you know of anyone who had made threats against Dr. Couzen?”

“No.”

“Anyone let go from the institute recently, or who might bear a grudge?”

Ethan almost laughed at that. “Let go, no. Bear a grudge? Sure. Abe’s not an easy guy to work with.”

“How do you mean?”

“He’s . . .” Ethan shrugged. “In the old days, they would have said he was brilliant, but that means something different now. He’s not an abnorm, but he’s an off-the-charts genius, and not the most patient person.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“He’s abrasive. Difficult. Dismissive of anyone not as smart as he is, which means he’s dismissive of pretty much everyone.”

“Including you?”

“Sometimes. But I didn’t break into his house, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It’s not,” Quinn said, holding up his hands. “We’re just trying to figure out why someone might have targeted Couzen.”

“Targeted?” He looked back and forth between the two agents. “I’m sorry, I’m still catching up here.”

“This wasn’t a simple robbery,” Quinn said. “They came in while he was home. There was a struggle, and Dr. Couzen is gone. At this point, we’re assuming it’s a kidnapping.”

Ethan leaned back against the chair, trying to process what he was being told. Kidnapping? Who would kidnap Abe?

“Dr. Park—”

“Ethan.”

“Ethan, can you tell us what Dr. Couzen was working on?”

“Epigenetic roots for variable gene expression.”

The agents exchanged a glance. Quinn parted his hands, raised his eyebrows.

Right.
Ethan said, “Have you ever heard of the Dutch famine cohort?” No change in the blank looks. “Toward the end of World War II, Germany starved the Netherlands. It was called the Hunger Winter; something like twenty thousand people died. As you’d expect, the women who were pregnant at the time gave birth to weaker babies. That part makes sense. But the surprise is that those children eventually gave birth to kids with the same problems. And so did
their
kids. In a nutshell, that’s epigenetics.”

“Whoa,” Agent West said. “Seriously?”

“Cool, huh?”

“Yeah. So what, the starvation changed their DNA?”

Ethan found himself liking her. The other agent had a slick G-man feel, but this one was nerdy in a way he could relate to. “No, that’s the tricky bit. Not the DNA itself, but the way the genes express themselves, the way they’re regulated. Epigenetics is nature’s way of addressing environmental changes without altering the DNA itself.”

“But how?”

“Well, that’s kind of the question.”

Quinn said, “In the last few months, you’ve had some breakthroughs.”

You have no idea.
“We’ve made progress.”

“Can you tell us what you’ve learned?”

Ethan shook his head. “We all sign a nondisclosure agreement when we join the lab. The work we’re doing could be worth a lot of money.”

“I understand that, sir, but we’re not geneticists—”

“I’m sorry, I really can’t. I’m not allowed to tell my
wife
what we’re working on. Abe is very serious about his NDAs.” Ethan paused. “Wait a second. Are you suggesting that someone kidnapped him because of our work?”

“Whoever came in was after more than Dr. Couzen,” said Agent West. “They took everything of value from his office, right down to his server hard drive.”

Bobby Quinn said, “Your lab is privately funded, right?”

“Yes.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know.”

Quinn cocked his head. “You don’t know?”

“Like I said, Abe is eccentric. He’s been burned before. He didn’t want to risk someone stealing our research and making an end run.” Ethan had a guess on the identity of their benefactor, but now didn’t seem the time to share it.

“Wait a second.” Quinn scratched at his chin, a move that looked practiced. “You’re saying that you do research you can’t talk about, for an employer you can’t identify?”

“We aren’t refining plutonium. And funding is funding.”
Although if our results are accurate, funding will never be a problem again. A whole lot of things will never be a problem again.
He pushed the thoughts aside, said, “I’m not really sure what this has to do with Abe being kidnapped.”

“Ethan,” West said, “I know this is all very sudden. But I analyze data for a living, and the data here is ugly. Couzen is in danger, and anything you can tell us about what he was working on might save his life.”

What’s the harm? Knowing the goal doesn’t mean they’ll be able to replicate the results. Shit, even you can’t do that. Abe is the only person with all the pieces of the puzzle—

Wait a second.

“Why DAR?”

“Excuse me?”

“If he was kidnapped, why would the DAR be involved? Isn’t that handled by the FBI?”

“We’re working with them. He’s a prominent guy, and we’re doing everything we can to find out what’s happened.”