Coffee (13 page)

The
fax was equipped with a thin phone handset, for those calls
requiring manual transfer. Etty pushed an autodial number and
watched the readout.
Autodial 4 ... Enter Security Code ...
Dialing...
. She punched
Cancel
just as the dialing
began.
Incomplete number - Try again
appeared. She
listened through the hand set. Nothing. Again, she hit the
autodial button, waited for
Dialing
, and tried to cancel it
just after the security code. Nothing. Again. Again. But her
persistence paid off - it finally worked - the panel read,
Re-enter
phone number
. The phone had a dial tone, and the fax stood
ready for a number.



“Did
you let Joan Hancock through here?” Bart asked gruffly to the
guard at the ARC security station. The older man straightened in
his chair. “I’ll check, Mr. Maslow.”

“You
don’t know? Have you been sitting here for the last twenty or
so minutes?”

“Yes,”
he said nervously as he typed out some commands on his computer,
sensing the anger in Bart’s voice. “Let’s see,
yes, Joan Hancock passed through at 4:12pm, about 14 minutes ago.”

Bart
pointed behind him to a bunch of guards talking to a woman wearing
sweat clothes in the Rotunda. “
That
is Joan Hancock.
You let in an impostor.” Bart quickly swiped his card by the
turnstile and went in, yelling back as he rushed off, “You’ll
be hearing about this.”

Bart
and two guards hurried in. Pointing to one, “Put out a
broadcast message to all floors.” To the other, “She’s
probably on Red or Yellow. You check here, I’m going down
stairs.” They split up.



Etty
dialed Knut’s phone number at the Dartmouth computer lab.
Ring... ring ... ring. ‘Com’on! Knut, answer!’ A
commotion started in the front room of the office. The wall
intercom sang out a warning.

This
is an emergency security message. A woman has illegally entered the
Agricultural Research Center. She’s approximately five three,
dark black hair, wearing a lab coat and an ID badge for Joan
Hancock. Please report any information on her or on any suspicious
individuals immediately to extension 11.

Etty stood so the front office workers could not see the phone by
her ear, but tried to remain calm. They were talking secretly among
themselves. One dialed a number. ‘Did they know? Knut,
where are you!’ Finally, the ringing stopped with a click.
Knut’s voice began on his answering machine. Etty immediately
noticed a heavy sadness in his recorded voice.

This
is Knut Olafson. The Dartmouth Statistical Research Center is
closed until Tuesday. Due to the death of our dear friend, Harriet
Bishop, all projects will be suspended until next week. Please have
patience. Leave a message at the tone.

Etty
practically screamed into the phone, “Knut! What?”

The
door of the office burst open. Bart crashed in, nearly falling over
the first desk. “Where is she!” he yelled. They all
pointed toward the fax room. He catapulted himself across the room.
Etty slammed down the phone, and ducked back into an even smaller
nook where a pot of coffee lay on a small burner. Bart charged in,
fortunately looking right first, giving Etty a split second to dash
around the corner, into the office. The office workers cowered as
she sprinted by, afraid of what this impostor might do. Bart saw
the flash of white, turned, and ran full speed in pursuit. Near the
door, Etty grabbed the sides of a metal bookshelf, and toppled it
over, spewing books and folders everywhere in a cascade. Bart
yelled, as he stumbled over the pile, “Find out what number
she called off the fax log and notify security!”

Etty
scrambled down the hall, weaving through bewildered workers like a
tiny hockey player chasing a puck. Another hallway with two
swinging doors appeared on her right. She bashed through, but
stopped to steady their swinging, hoping Bart was far enough behind
not to see her turn. A much emptier hallway, storage rooms maybe.
Back and forth she bounced, trying door knobs one after the other,
hoping to find one unlocked. ‘Yes!’ One opened.
Without looking at the name on the door, she charged in. Vigorous
panting made it difficult to focus. Only a small desk lamp in the
corner provided light.

Where
to hide. Under the desk? Crawl into a storage cabinet? She
rejected both. Outside she heard shouting. They must have seen her
turn. She rushed to the door and locked it. In the center of one
wall a large freezer door loomed with a metal embossed sign reading
Sub Zero Freezer
. ‘There!’ she decided.
The large handle and heavy structure made it difficult to open.
Frigid air rolled out in a foggy mist. Seeing the handle on the
inside relieved her fears of being locked in.

Five
metal gurneys filled most of the freezer chamber, with naked female
bodies wrapped in plastic lying on three. The thermometer on the
wall read ten degrees below zero. As she stepped in, the cold cut
through her like ice water. Her cheeks stung.

She
slammed the door shut, blocking out every sliver of light. She felt
around, touching the rock hard leg of one of the corpses through the
plastic. She felt her way to an empty gurney. She thought to get
under it, or crouch in the corner, but realized that if anyone
opened the door, she would be as obvious as a neon sign. Her only
hope in escaping a quick search was to look like one of the bodies.
Her shaking fingers became numb, reducing their sensitivity.

Under
an empty gurney she felt a folded blanket of the plastic wrap
material. With a brief pause to gain the nerve, she undressed with
frenzied speed. Every article had to go. She squished the ball of
clothes into a corner behind a bucket. She spread some of the
plastic on the table, jumped up, lay back, and pulled the remainder
over her. She tried to tuck it in, but in the complete blackness,
she had no idea how convincing it might look.

So
terrified. So chilled. The pain from the cold seared through her
back, ironically, like a hot griddle. She heard muffled sounds from
the outer room. They were here! Searching. She tried to blow her
exhales down to her right through a gap in the plastic so it
wouldn’t fog it up. More noise. Yelling. The freezer door
latch unsnapped. Etty forced her shivering to stop, shut her eyes,
and held her breath. Bart’s voice, “I’ll check
here, go on, keep going!” Etty sensed the light through her
eyelids.

Silence.
‘What is he doing?’ Etty needed to breathe. All the
running prevented her from holding her breath more than a few
seconds. ‘Get out of here! Close the door!’ She
screamed at him with her thoughts. She heard nothing, but the light
continued.

A
metallic click snapped in her right ear. Close up. A gun?

“Look
what we have here.” Bart’s voice was close, just over
her head. She cracked her eyelids, only to see Bart’s
disgusting face through the merky plastic. She gasped, then exhaled
a cloud of vapor. “Not bad, little lady, but in all my days,
I’ve never seen a dead woman with red skin and erect nipples.”
He shoved the gun barrel to her temple. The smirky smile left his
lips. “You don’t get it, do you.”

Etty
lay paralyzed, fearing now she would die. Knut’s phone
message echoed. They think I’m dead. They can kill me any
time.

Bart
straightened up, completely ripped back the plastic, and leaned up
against the wall of the freezer. He stared at her up and down,
smiling as he paused on her private areas. “Maybe it’s
time for a little biology lesson. You’re a student, right?”
Etty remained still, disabled by a deluge of conflicting emotions.
Bart paced with forced casualness back and forth in the entryway of
the freezer. “Well then, this ought to be easy for you. I’m
going to give you a little education, something you need to know.
You see, Global Growers is first and foremost a biology company.
This finance stuff that McKinsey built only came later.” Bart
ran his fingers along the end of the metal gurney, as if to check
its smoothness, prolonging the story. The pain in Etty’s body
shot like knives through her shoulders, legs, and bottom.

Bart
continued his lecture, “Insecticide, fertilizer, and growth
hormones. First we kill off the bugs, then we grow the hell out of
the plant - nice combination. Trouble is, they can’t all
happen at the same time. You need the growth hormone sometime after
the insecticide, you know what I mean?” He could see blue
forming in her fingernails and toes. “In fact, the growth
hormone must come at a very precise time, a certain number of days
after the seeds germinate. It’s a time we can’t predict
exactly in advance.”

Etty
felt warmer air from the front room finally raising the temperature.
But the thermostat on the big fans behind her kicked in, starting a
new blizzard of cold fog. A guard opened the lab door and looked
in. His eyebrows jumped up upon seeing Etty. Bart whispered a few
words to him, then waved him away. “Let’s see, where was
I? You’re probably wondering what this has to do with you.”

He
paused again, watching Etty’s frightened face. “In the
old days, we used to have only one choice - put the insecticide down
first, and then wait and watch, and put the growth hormone down
later at the right time. Trouble is, by the time the plants started
to grow, you don’t want to be digging up their roots to inject
hormone. A real problem.” He paused again to drag out the
story, relishing the view. “But Global Growers put their best
people on it, and what they came up with will blow your mind.”

‘Why
is he doing this,’ Etty shrieked to herself. Only thin
plastic separated her skin from the stainless steel. A dull
throbbing pain replaced the stinging.

“The
solution? Radio controlled release. Believe it or not, Etty, we
have the ability to release hormone into the fields by satellite
transmission. It works the same way pagers do. Growth hormone is
buried in the earth at seed planting time surrounded by a special
radio activated coating, in little pellets. Microscopic transistors
in the coating release a solvent when the special frequency is
aired, allowing the hormones to seep into the ground. We have the
satellite emit the frequency with the touch of a few buttons. Within
minutes, the coating dissolves, the hormone is released. Pretty
nifty, ey? Perfect timing every time, the moment we want it released
- all with no damage to roots.”

Bart
smiled broadly, and studied Etty’s expression as he continued.
“But! That’s not all! You haven’t heard the best
part. You see, Miss Bishop, you too have been planted with remote
controlled surprises.” Etty’s eyes opened wider, now
oblivious of her nakedness. “We injected a little insurance
policy into your body, little packets filled with a killer bacteria
in suspension. Kinda like little snowballs of glue and germs. And
these aren’t garden variety bugs. Our scientists have
re-engineered some simple bacteria to produce an exotoxin. Not a
lot, and not enough to easily detect, but enough to wipe out a host
in a matter of hours and look like pneumonia. If we set off the
frequency, it will vibrate the transistors, and melt the little
snowballs.”

He
bent closer. “Etty, we dial your beeper number, and you’re
deader than Miss Popsicle over here.” He patted the frozen
breasts of the body in the next gurney.

Etty
read his face, and believed the terrifying story. She recalled the
injections and the sore bumps all over her body. Bart continued his
pacing, and added, “And it doesn’t matter where in the
world you are.” Etty lurched forward, swinging her legs off
the gurney. She must run, get away, hide, anything. She started
sprinting as soon as her feet hit the ground.

Bart’s
powerful arm pivoted around. The heavy gun he held added momentum.
When the blow hit her chin, she immediately collapsed.

- Chapter Eight -

For
the second day in a row, Etty awoke with a horrible headache. She
labored to sit up in the soft four poster bed in her condo.
Pre-dawn offered no natural light. Only the flood lights from the
pool below, and the distant city sparkles, cast a pallid glow over
the room. She started a yawn, but the pain in her jaw prevented it.
Her back felt hot against the pillows, swollen and sensitive. She
was naked, and could barely see her clothes crumpled on a sofa
chair.

Waves
of dizziness hindered her mental check. ‘Nothing broken. Head
bump, no blood. In my apartment. Bart must have brought me here.’
One by one, the memories returned. Injections with radio
controlled diseases. The freezer. Bart’s punch to the jaw.
Knut’s message. She couldn’t hold up her head, and
slumped back down. Pain everywhere. Pain in her groin.

Without
looking or touching, she suddenly knew, she’d been raped. She
sensed an odd throbbing in her vagina, and the sheets under her
bottom felt crusty. Urges to jump up, scream, cry, take a hot bath,
all came at once, but her body would not move. A mild concussion
kept her rolling on the edge of consciousness.

Her
head fell back to the pillow, eyes slightly opened, trying to focus.
Even in her semi-awake state, a new direction became clear. Tears
dripped off her cheeks. “I’ll beat them. They’ll
pay.” She groaned softly, and blinked the water from her eyes.
“I’ll write the best paper they’ve ever seen.
Win their trust. Then I’ll act. Maybe weeks, maybe months, but
I’ll get them. I must get to a doctor ...” and then
lapsed back to unconsciousness.



Monday
night, or early Tuesday morning, Knut unlocked the computer room
door for the first time in three days since the accident. Life was
supposed to return to normal in a few hours, and he needed to
prepare - not the office, but himself.