From Filth & Mud (25 page)

“No! I promise. I’ve only called you.”

The phone buzzed for a couple of seconds more then stopped for a moment before sounding an intermittent tone, announcing that it had received a text. Neither woman moved until Sarah’s phone began to ring loudly, inside of her purse, at which point both women jumped. Sarah fished for the phone frantically, it was still blaring when she turned it over to look at the screen. It was also a call from an unknown number. Both phones then began to ring incessantly, but neither one was answered. Finally a recording of the previous minute of their conversation began to play back on Sarah’s phone.

Sarah reached furiously for the phone, “Who is this?” she demanded.

“Call me Tovarich,” said a delicate woman’s voice.

- - - - - - -

Sarah sat stunned, staring at the phone on the coffee table. It was all true. Her paranoid client’s unbelievable story was true, but what was worse was that the details were more frightening than she had ever wanted to know.

“I suggest that both of you get out of this situation as soon as possible. This means that you, Karen, should sign those papers and be done with it or go into hiding. In either case, I don’t know if you will be safe. They did kill Miles Baker after all.” Tovarich continued, “If they haven’t hesitated to send Dr. Monte-Alban halfway around the world, they wouldn’t hesitate to make you disappear.”

“You know where Manny is?” Karen blurted out.

              “Yes.”

              “Where?”

              “Basrah, Iraq. It looks like BioSyn sent him there under the care of the Chinese Government, and they don’t seem to have his safety in mind. He’s there to run unsanctioned trials of this Lilith treatment.”

              “Who the hell are these people?” Karen interjected.

              “Well Eckert, seems to fancy himself a demigod, but he’s backed by the CIA
.
”

              “Why in God’s name would they back him if he’s such a lunatic?” Sarah asked.

“He provides them with extremely lucrative distribution services for illicit drugs and black market pharmaceuticals. I’ve started snooping into their accounts, and it appears that BioSyn’s operations seem to be concentrated mostly in China and Russia for the time being. They’ve got options to enter the drug trade in the South China Sea, and it looks like they’ll be exercising them next year.”

“So that’s more important to them than stopping Eckert from going around killing people? Sorry don’t answer that. It’s obvious that they value his services above everything else.”

Karen jumped in again, “So besides stealing my work to make lots of money, why does Eckert want my designs so badly?”

              “It’s simple really. Lilith could be a weapon and that’s more valuable than any cure.”

- - - - - - -

John sat in the silver-gray sedan for an hour waiting in the multi-story parking lot across the street from the Grand Hotel. He sipped his lukewarm coffee and kept his eyes glued to the second floor room at the end of the building. His team had been following Dr. Mayfield for a couple of weeks keeping tabs on her for Eckert. The tracking devices that had been inserted into her belongings while she passed through BioSyn security relayed her exact location to John’s phone. This was another one of Eckert’s special assignments—
a manifestation of his paranoia
. Eckert had been getting more fickle and unmanageable lately. His normally cool demeanor was showing an ever increasing number of cracks. He’d become more rash since the takeover of LaPierre Pharma, and ordering the hit on that journalism student was beyond pushing the boundaries. Maybe it was the Russians, or the increasingly weary Chinese who were starting to get under Eckert’s skin, but in any case that made it dangerous to be around him. John was under no delusion that he would one day outlive his usefulness. He had multiple escape plans prepared for the inevitable, but the money and action was good right now.

John had seen too much killing, so much so that it all blended into one big stream of carnage. He’d seen the aftermath of reprisal death-squad killings in the neighborhoods of Basrah shortly after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, the beheadings of women and children in Ramadi in 2004, and the mob justice from Shiite tribes against their old Sunni Baathist rulers in Mosul in 2005. He’d killed his share of insurgents in Fallujah in 2006. He’d seen a group of Shiite school children beaten to death by a Sunni crowd in an open-air market in Fallujah in 2007. He remembered how one woman held a toddler down with one hand as she smashed his face with a brick in the other. He’d seen a little girl probably no more than eight years old stroll up to a vehicle checkpoint in some unmapped backwater town in Afghanistan and detonate herself, killing two of his junior Marines on his birthday. These just added to the infinite number of deaths that had occurred, and still occurred daily on the planet. So what was one more body? Who cared if a few more insignificant ounces of blood, innocent or not, were shed? He’d stopped feeling long ago. The nightmares that had haunted him for years had long since blurred into his reality—
he could not remember the last time he’d dreamed
. So here he sat, stalking his quarry once again.

An hour later, John observed the lobby entrance of the hotel, as the valets ran for the cars of their impatient guests. He took note of a woman who emerged wearing dark sunglasses and a low-hanging baseball-cap, the rim of which hid her face. The ill-fitting garments sagged off of her shoulders and waist. The amateurish disguise was as obvious as it was ridiculous, but there was something familiar about her gate and her mannerisms. John’s eyes followed her down the sidewalk until she reached the guest parking garage at the building’s edge. He leapt from his sedan to a better vantage point. He looked through his binoculars and found the woman walking briskly toward a familiar SUV, with an unmistakable Marine Corps Eagle, Globe, and Anchor emblem proudly displayed on the rear-window. A stick figure family, a man, a woman, and two boys were adhered to the window, opposite the EGA.

Sarah!
What in god’s name was she doing here? An affair? A business lunch at the hotel restaurant? John’s heart sank—
did she have business with Mayfield?
He fought the urge to get in his car and chase her down to get the answers. He thought logically for a moment. She was a lawyer who worked for a firm here in the district. Was this work related? Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t good for anyone, least of all Jacob. The best case scenario was that his wife was cheating on him. John watched Sarah pull out of the hotel parking lot and merge onto the street below. He waited for a few minutes, thinking of a scenario in which this would end positively. He couldn’t think of one. Just then his phone gave an alarm that Karen was on the move. John looked at his phone to find that his worst fear was confirmed, Karen’s signal was moving down the street, inside of Sarah’s SUV.

- - - - - - -

“So do we have a problem with Dr. Mayfield?” Eckert asked, circling John as he jogged lightly around the helicopter landing pad just outside of his office window.

“No. She’s stayed put in her hotel room for the last week. She’s called her lab telling them that she’s taking some time off to deal with an unexpected family emergency. It appears that she doesn’t have family or friends to speak of because she hasn’t reached out to anybody else.” John was a good liar, but he knew that Eckert was a better one and in that moment he felt like a street-magician trying to pull one over on David Copperfield.

Eckert stopped and searched his eyes for the faintest doubt, but found none. He grabbed a water bottle with disgust and threw it over the edge of the building. “I hate loose ends.”

“What about Mayfield?” John probed.

“Don’t worry about her. Jak will handle her. I need you to handle this delivery issue with the Chinese. They’re complaining about the Basrah operation. They say that Dr. Monte-Alban is not cooperating to the fullest. They’re even alleging that he’s been experimenting on his own on some of the local children. They practically have him and the entire team under house arrest. That’s more of a pressing concern to me right now. Jak will handle the clean-up here.”

“Understood,”

“Let yourself out.” Eckert picked up his pace. The meeting was over.

John was relieved that he had not mentioned Sarah’s role. He knew that it was the right decision as he walked off of the rooftop and out through Eckert’s office. He had to reach Sarah quickly and figure out what her part was in all of this. He couldn’t allow her involvement to continue. Hers and Jacob’s lives were already in more danger than either of them could have known.  

Nathan had not been himself for the past couple of weeks. It was not that he had been sick that had worried both Jacob and Sarah, but the fact that he would wake up with persistent migraines that would not go away. At first the pediatrician thought that it might be due to some sort of virus, and since these things were currently going around she didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t until Nathan started to experience nausea and vomiting that they really got scared. The pediatrician suggested an MRI. The worst case scenario, he thought, was meningitis. That made them worry even more, but when the MRI results returned, they would have given anything for a meningitis diagnosis. It was a tumor! Their world came to a crashing halt.

The day of the first surgery was the worst. They had been referred to a neuro-oncologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Nathan would be given a local anesthetic, and would remain awake for the duration of the procedure. The surgeon would perform a stereotactic biopsy in which he would drill a small hole into Nathan’s skull, and guide a rod using an MRI to assist in navigating through the brain and into the tumor. Once there, the surgeon would remove part of the tumor through a hollow tube that he inserted into the gray-matter. The tumor cells would then be transported to the cancer diagnosis lab to confirm whether or not Nathan’s tumor was malignant.
It was!

A team of the best oncologists in the world informed them that the tumor was difficult to reach, and could not be extracted without causing Nathan great harm. Radiation and chemotherapy were the only courses of treatment available, and these would take their toll on Nathan and the family. Nathan endured several courses of both treatments to no avail. The tumor had only shrunk by ten percent after six months of treatments. The neuro-oncologists and surgeons saw no hope in continuing. Sarah and Jacob were crushed. Luke, who was soon turning seven years old, wanted nothing for his birthday other than for Nathan to come home and wrestle with him.

The disease had brought tension back to their lives. Their finances were equally in shambles. Sarah was forced to drastically reduce her hours which did not ingratiate her with Bodner James’ managing partners. She was stepping away just as they were ramping up their mergers and acquisitions practice in the biotechnology arena, and she was one of their star attorneys.

Jacob took a hiatus from his team to tend to his family although the truth was that he had not taken any special service jobs since the mission in Montreal. XPS was not taking his hiatus well. John had attempted to recruit him back, but Jacob would not relent. He could not risk not being there for Nathan. Jacob tried to work the odd personnel security contract whenever possible, but he had not worked one in a month. His old clients seemed to have moved on. He had no income and XPS did not offer medical benefits since he was technically an independent contractor.

All of Nathan’s treatments and care were extremely expensive. Sarah’s insurance covered eighty-percent of most treatments. The problem was that Nathan’s hospital stays were only covered for a month, and he had been in and out of the hospital for four of the last six. Sarah and Jacob had run through all of their savings, and Sarah had begun to raid her retirement accounts. Jacob had none to dip into. The harsh reality of his inability to provide for and protect his family was crushing his soul more than ever. He finally reached out to John in desperation. If he had to return to the Special Services Division then so be it. He could not sit idly by and watch Nathan die because of his inability to pay for his care.

Aiden came back from the office tired and annoyed as usual. Politics! He’d spent the afternoon like most, on conference calls with D.C. trying to stay on top of the lobbying efforts for his government assistance, as he called it.

Irina ambushed him with a worried look and an extensive file on Mayfield and Eckert. “You’ve got to see this Aiden,” she exclaimed, as she shoved the tablet into his chest, and then whirled around in her chair to get back to her furious research.

“What am I looking at?”

“Read!”

“Who are they?”

“Read!”

“Jesus, have you been following this woman for a few months now? She’s not on the main system is she?”

“She came in as a possible target a few months back in a batch of a couple hundred. She caught my eye. I deleted her file.”

“You what? You know the system is designed to track any tampering effort…” Aiden stopped himself because he knew better.

“
Please
. I tracked her to a meeting today with this Eckert guy. It looks like he’s getting ready to blackmail her. She’s doing some pretty interesting work on a biotech project that Eckert’s company owns. It looks like they want to steal her work.”

“So what? How does this concern us?”

“Well she appeared as a target on Yente.”

“I’m tired Irina. Didn’t you just say she appeared in a batch along with a couple hundred others?”

“
Our
Yente!”

Aiden was now paying attention. He cleared his mind and focused on the screen.

“I’m sending you this now.”

Aiden watched as a new name popped onto his screen.

“This is Dr. Emmanuel Monte-Alban. He’s a researcher at BioSyn working on something called Project Lilith. Mayfield had been working on his project for about a year. It appears that she provided a breakthrough for his work and it’s something big, some kind of new treatment.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“So I don’t understand the mystery here. BioSyn is a biotech company with a greedy CEO who wants to steal work from an ideological scientist. That’s pretty cut and dry.”

“Well here’s the problem. One of Mayfield’s research colleagues died suddenly a few months ago and now Dr. Monte-Alban has disappeared off of the web, his digital life has been deleted, and all of his accounts have gone dark. Here is the kicker. You’re going to love this. BioSyn has only existed as a company for ten years and in ten years they’ve come out of nowhere and turned into one of the leading biotech firms, in terms of capital, but they have relatively few employees and facilities, one in Syracuse and one in Silicon Valley. Wall Street has been courting them aggressively, but they’ve stayed private. I did find one intriguing note on them, and that is that they have somehow managed to secure Chinese government backing to the tune of five-billion-dollars-worth of debt.”

“Still not that unheard of, capitalism is a shady business.”

“Well, here’s the cherry. Eckert plays the role of aloof, eccentric, New York CEO quite well, but he does have one hobby that is especially curious. He is listed as a member of XPS Services LLP, which is a joint-venture partnership between a subsidiary of BioSyn, Inc., and XPS, Inc., the latter being a private security contractor whose website reads docile enough, but whose company balance sheet and expenses resemble that of a mercenary army.”

Aiden shook his head trying to follow the trail that Irina was so obviously laying down. “So why would this biotech company have a joint-venture with mercenaries?”

“Weird right? And now for the coup-de-grace, I ran Eckert against our special access database, through my backdoors to Yente 2.0, and found this.” Irina pulled the image from her screen and sent it to Aiden’s tablet with a wave of her hand. “You see that? Our boy CEO is on a CIA list, for what I can tell, is a project designed to open back-channel communications between the CIA and sources within the Chinese government and industry. Look here, there are logs in spreadsheets detailing drug shipments and money transfers throughout China, all being pushed through Hong Kong.”

“Fuck me!” Aiden mumbled as he stared in disbelief. “Fuck me!” He glared at Irina now more worried than he’d been since being stranded in Russia. “Are you sure that there’s no way that you can get back-hacked, and that no one knows you’ve got this stuff?”

“Not possible. All of my stuff goes back to Tovarich at best. If there are leftover artifacts from the access, then it will all look like a random brute-force attack that failed. That will leave enough evidence to generate suspicion that China was behind the attack.”

“So what do we do with this?” Aiden asked half-afraid of what Irina had in mind.

“I don’t know what you’re going to do Aiden, but I’m going to stay on Mayfield and Eckert until I figure out what is going on.”

“Well I’m going to keep this under my hat, since all of this information was gathered illegally, and beyond our mandate. Keep me updated with what you find.”

Aiden tried to fall asleep after his shower while Irina’s screens glowed faintly in the bathroom. It was her habit to move her setup there while he slept. He assumed that it gave her a sense of being back in some lowly, Slavic motel. Maybe it kept her on edge and sharpened her creativity? He battled for sleep despite how tired he was, but his mind raced with thoughts of covert drug running operations, and the faces of Karen Mayfield and Eckert. He was so preoccupied with his newfound worries that he forgot to tell Irina about a few new college interns that had applied to work at the company.

The background checks had returned clean on all of the intern candidates so he didn’t see the problem in hiring them, besides none of them would be coding for anything important. They were going to be working with Rhea on some social network software, something Collier Analytics was pursuing in order to create a credible front for the company as a software firm, plus it had the added benefit of being potentially profitable. Rhea had agreed to babysit for a few months in return for three months paid vacation, wherever and whenever she wanted. As he finally fell asleep with the help of a few Ambien, Aiden’s mind was incapable of focusing on anything that would cause worry, let alone one Dimitri Karadenkov, who was among the candidates for the internship.

- - - - - - -

Dima walked into the bookstore café where Alexi had been waiting all afternoon with his face buried in a copy of Popular Science. Dima pulled up a chair and took a seat opposite his partner.

“So I got it Alexi. I’m in. I will start next week.”

“Now you have to learn something about coding,” Alexi chuckled at the thought of his hot-blooded partner doing anything desk related let alone something that required expert computer skills. Dima had barely survived secondary school.

“I don’t have to learn anything of the sort. I’ll just do what I did at university, find a girl, romance her, and have her do all of my work for me.” Dima waved down a waitress who came by. “Excuse me can I bother you for an espresso? I know that you are probably very busy, but I’m so tired and need a little buzz.” He smiled the kind of smile that made all women instantly helpless in his presence as his baby-blue eyes twinkled to help cast the powerful spell. The young waitress returned his infectious smile, nodded shyly, while turning several rosy-shades brighter. Alexi knew that Dima would have her number by the time they left the bookstore. He’d have robbed her of her virtue by the end of the week, and today was Friday.

“So that’s your master plan? You’re going to charm your way through security and find this girl?” Dima batted his long, fine eyelashes which fanned his espresso as he sipped seductively toward his target who was trying not to look obvious behind the café counter.

“Focus Dima, we’ve got work to do. Collier’s been all over town the last few days. He has no routine other than arriving at his office by 1 p.m., and then he locks himself in there until evening. The girl has been locked in the house for the last couple of weeks. We need a way in there and a way to find out what is going on. Most of this stuff is going to be kept electronically with these people, and that’s not exactly our forte.”

“So what’s your plan, Alexi?”

“Stay on them for now and wait to see if we can find an opportunity to exploit them.”

The waitress circled back with a couple biscotti, on the house, of course. Her number was scribbled on the top of Dima’s napkin.

- - - - - - -

Irina had worked day and night tracking Mayfield while simultaneously tugging at the loose strings that would unravel the BioSyn mystery. She had surreptitiously accessed XPS data and communications systems through a simple and clever method. Step 1: She searched employment profiles of the largest professional networking sites for current XPS employees. Step 2: She filtered through the profiles to see which ones were the most active and had the most updated information. This usually meant that the employees were polishing their resumes because they were ready to jump ship. Step 3: She concentrated on the thirty-somethings in low to mid-level management positions as these were the most likely to be disgruntled, and probably ignored security protocols since no one supervised them on a daily basis; three fit the profile. Step 4: She overnighted a package of complimentary,
USB thumb-drives from a fictitious, online retailer to each of her three candidates. Step 5: She waited until she received a datalink message from one of the XPS system computers that had been infected by the malignant code she’d written onto the thumb-drives.
People loved themselves some free chachkies!

Irina waited two days before the first datalink was confirmed. Within a few hours, she had managed to bypass all but the most complex security protocols within the XPS network. She was impressed by how compartmentalized the system was. It was obvious to her as she looked at the code and network architecture, that XPS’ security protocols were written by NSA systems personnel. The software suite was off-the-shelf NSA code that was a powerful deterrent for even the best of hackers, but she had seen this stuff and its precursor editions since she was a tween messing around on the Russian Darknet. Back then, she would have launched a brute-force assault on the entire system in an effort to overload it, literally a ‘smash & grab’ job, but now she had the knowledge to deftly maneuver around all of the security to avoid any of the standard trip-wires of these cookie-cutter programs. Now that she was safely planted within the security system itself, all she had to do was sit and wait for events to unfold.