Read Kingdom of the Seven Online
Authors: Jon Land
Kingdom of the Seven (9 page)
Alexander MacFarlane arrived ninety minutes into Karen Raymond’s stay at the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department substation ten minutes from her house in Del Mar. He hadn’t been home when she had called, but the answering service promised to track him down. When a half hour passed with no results, she tried again, waited another twenty minutes, and dialed once more. The results were the same: none. Finally he called her at the station and said he was on his way. He sounded harried and strained. Now, as he hurried down the hall toward the back office where they had stowed her and the boys, he appeared to her to be frightened. Behind him strolled a trio of men she recognized as part of the private security force Jardine-Marra utilized.
“My God, Karen,” he said by way of greeting, “my God …”
She moved to him and took his outstretched hands in hers. MacFarlane drew her in for a hug. It hurt putting weight on her twisted ankle, and the bandage a paramedic
had wrapped around her torn hand made it impossible to close her fingers.
had wrapped around her torn hand made it impossible to close her fingers.
“We’ve got to leave here,” MacFarlane said softly as they separated. “We’ve got to leave now. We’re going to take you and the boys to my house. There’s plenty of room. And—” he cast another glance the way of the armed guards “—we won’t be alone.”
Karen’s expression was ashen, expressionless. “The police didn’t find them, Alex. The police got to my house and they were gone. But they couldn’t have made it out and away on their own. They just couldn’t. That means others must have come for them. There had to be
more
!”
more
!”
“We’ve got to leave, Karen. Please.”
She stood her ground. “You see what I’m saying, Alex. The attack wasn’t random. They weren’t just after me.” She lowered her voice. “It’s Lot 35; it’s got to be.”
“I know,” he said grimly.
The remark, together with its tone, froze her thinking. “How could you
know
, Alex?”
know
, Alex?”
MacFarlane’s gaze tilted briefly toward the security guards who had accompanied him. “Let these men take your boys to my house. There are two others outside who will accompany us.”
“Accompany us
where
?”
where
?”
“Where I was when the answering service reached me: the plant.”
Karen Raymond was only vaguely conscious of Alexander MacFarlane’s limousine sliding past the Salk Institute and through the Torrey Pines Industrial Park en route to Jardine-Marra. The front of the building was lined with cars labeled with the familiar logo of the security company. Several of the unmarked variety were double-parked next to them. Security guards holding shotguns stiffly across their chests flanked the floodlit entrance on either side. When she stepped out of the limousine, Karen could see a man in a suit standing just inside the lobby.
“FBI,” Alex told her, taking her arm lightly. “They’ve assumed jurisdiction in this.”
“In
what?”
she returned fearfully. “What’s happening?”
what?”
she returned fearfully. “What’s happening?”
Before MacFarlane could answer, the FBI man emerged through the door.
“Quantico’s sending a pair of forensic teams out on the first flight this morning, sir,” he announced professionally.
“What about my house?” MacFarlane asked him.
“Supplemental teams have already been dispatched.”
“I don’t want them supplementing, damnit, I want them supervising!” His eyes gestured toward Karen. “Dr. Raymond’s children will be arriving there shortly.”
“They’ll be safe, sir.”
“See that they are.”
The FBI man spat out some instructions into a walkie-talkie pulled from his belt, while Karen and Alexander MacFarlane started through the JM lobby. The agent caught up with Alex and they exchanged hushed words that Karen couldn’t decipher.
It made sense, each and every piece of it. If the attack on her house had come for the reasons she suspected, it figured the force behind it wouldn’t have stopped there. She was only a part of Jardine-Marra’s miraculous work with Lot 35; an important one, yes, but a part all the same. Other parts, together or alone, were equally important.
Karen’s thoughts stopped abruptly when they approached the entrance to the lab where the research on Lot 35 had been confined, located in a separate section of the building to avoid intrusions by the curious. Another suited man stood guard at the door. He saw MacFarlane and the FBI agent approaching and slid stiffly aside. Karen approached the threshold and felt her feet grow heavy. Her stomach churned. The floor wavered.
The Lot 35 laboratory was a shambles. Tables had been turned over atop shattered glass. Filing cabinets had been spilled and robbed of their drawers. Computers lay in smashed heaps.
Strange, Karen would reflect later, on how those were
the images she would always recall coming first. Not the blood. Not the bodies of her eight-person Lot 35 lab team who, as always, were working late.
the images she would always recall coming first. Not the blood. Not the bodies of her eight-person Lot 35 lab team who, as always, were working late.
She should have been here! On any other night she would have been.
The bodies of her team lay scattered randomly throughout the lab, dropped in the positions they had been working. She had shared the better part of the past two years with these men and women, the significance of their discovery bringing them especially close over the past six months. They savored every second, coveted that final mad, sleepless dash to the finish line. They cried, they hugged, they ate Chinese food, and, finally, they celebrated.
“They were shot,” Alexander MacFarlane said softly. “All of them.”
“One team sent to my house,” Karen muttered, “the other …”
“Here,” he completed for her, swallowing the pause. “The killers took everything: notes, computer disks, samples, even the test animals.”
She grabbed his arm. “Get me out of here, Alex.”
“I think we—”
“Now!
”
”
Karen felt a sudden desperation to be with her sons. No matter how deep her pangs of sadness and loss might be, they paled next to the very real possibility that Taylor and Brandon might still be in danger.
“I want to be with my kids.”
“Karen, you and I really need to talk.”
“Take me to my boys, Alex.”
“They’re safe.”
“Now!”
“You’re all that’s left,” MacFarlane said in the limo. “If they had … been successful at your home as well, we would have lost Lot 35.”
“Who are
they
, Alex?”
they
, Alex?”
“Quite obviously someone who does not want our vaccine to ever reach the market.”
Karen tried to stop herself from shuddering and couldn’t. “That means there was a leak. You know that.”
He looked at her through the darkened cavernous rear of the limo. “But I don’t know at what level, not yet.”
“Yes, you do. And so do I. One of our board of directors is responsible for this. One of them must have a pipeline to someone who wants Lot 35 buried forever, someone at
another
pharmaceutical company!” she finished, the realization striking her hard and fast.
another
pharmaceutical company!” she finished, the realization striking her hard and fast.
“Karen—”
“Hear me out, Alex. Say this other company is as close as we are to a vaccine, maybe even closer. There’s billions of dollars at stake here,
tens
of billions, and there’s only room for one AIDS vaccine.”
tens
of billions, and there’s only room for one AIDS vaccine.”
“You’re moving too fast.”
“So did whoever it was on our board who leaked Lot 35’s existence.”
“They weren’t the only ones with access to the information you’re referring to,” MacFarlane cautioned.
“No, but they were the only ones who learned of Lot 35’s existence
today
. Everyone else in confidence has known for at least several months. The fact that all this happened tonight can only mean … Tell me I’m wrong, Alex. Go ahead and try.”
today
. Everyone else in confidence has known for at least several months. The fact that all this happened tonight can only mean … Tell me I’m wrong, Alex. Go ahead and try.”
MacFarlane sighed. “The FBI reached the same conclusion.”
“And what do they intend to do about it?”
“Investigate each of the board members thoroughly.”
“Tell them to try Merck, Ciba-Geigy, Pfizer, and Van Dyne as well.”
“I’m sure they intend to.” MacFarlane fidgeted, drew himself closer to her. “Our problem now is one of recreating your work under tight security, probably in a different location. You can do it, of course. You always insisted on keeping all the backups yourself.”
She nodded, but the nod gave way quickly to a shrug. “It’s just difficult to think in those terms now.”
“Of course. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t owe me any apologies, Alex. You lost as much as I did tonight.”
He touched her arm. “We’ll put it back together, Karen, the two of us. I promise.”
The mere mile-and-a-half distance to MacFarlane’s home in the three-car convoy, the limo sandwiched by vehicles manned by the security force, took barely five minutes. Set upon the cliffs of La Jolla three hundred feet above Black’s Beach, his house was a sprawling, three-story geometric marvel of circling layers and triangles locking around limestone patios. Steel frame with a 90 percent glass exterior that allowed for an open ocean view for hundreds of miles from most rooms, and Black’s Beach from all of them. Called that for the volcanic sand that caked it, the beach was accessible either by a treacherous descent down the face or the elevators that many of the residents had installed which angled down over the cliffs. Karen’s boys were probably the only ones to have used Alex’s when they visited in the past few years, since MacFarlane’s kids had long grown up and he hadn’t been to the beach himself since his wife died.
The activation of every floodlight on the property had turned the front yard to near daylight brightness, enough to cast shadows for each of the uniformed figures shifting about on the grounds. The single guard posted before the front door moved toward the limousine as it snailed to a halt.
“Dr. Raymond’s boys,” was MacFarlane’s greeting to him.
“They’re under guard upstairs as instructed. They insisted on taking one room instead of two. I believe they’re asleep.”
“There,” said the president of Jardine-Marra to Karen. “See.”
“I want to see them.”
“Why wake—”
“Now, Alex.” Then softly, firmly.
“Now.”
“Now.”
The sight of her sleeping boys lifted a great weight from Karen’s mind. She did not wake them up, though it took all her willpower to keep from doing so.
Karen closed the door behind her and didn’t turn on the light, leaving the room’s sole illumination as that which slipped through the drawn vertical blinds from the floods positioned in a tree across from the window. Her thoughts turned to tomorrow and beyond. Alexander MacFarlane was right: They had to put Lot 35 back together, assemble a new team and work round the clock if that’s what it took, because only winning publicized approval for formal testing could make her feel safe. Once they went public, the enemy that had struck tonight would have no reason to go after her.
Or her boys.
Karen looked at them sleeping peacefully in the same big bed, faces awash with the light of the floods from outside. She wanted to lie down between them, take her sons in either arm and surrender to the dark for a time. Afraid to disturb them, she didn’t. Just stood there thinking about it with the stars, the sky, and the ocean peering in at her through all that glass.
Then, as her mind returned to the events of the night, a sobering thought struck her, chilling in its message: according to Alexander MacFarlane, the killers had struck with virtual simultaneity at the lab and her home. But the attack at her house hadn’t come until nearly midnight, long after at least a few of her co-workers would have called it quits for the night. There was no way, no way at all, that all of them would be present in the lab as late as twelve o’clock. Which meant, which meant …
Alexander MacFarlane had lied about the timing of the massacre. It must have been considerably earlier, several hours at least. Only when it was discovered she had been missed was the attack mounted on her home. The men had
come with incredibly accurate intelligence. The invaders knew
everything
, about the alarm, the layout.
come with incredibly accurate intelligence. The invaders knew
everything
, about the alarm, the layout.
Alexander MacFarlane had an identical alarm in his home. She had bought her house from a friend of his two years ago.
Not Alex, never Alex. Anyone but Alex
…
…
And yet, and yet …
He had her where he would have wanted her: in his domain, frightened and subservient. Along with Taylor and Brandon.
He had her sons.
The problem now is one of re-creating our work under tight security, probably in a different location. You can do it, of course. You always insisted on keeping all the backups yourself
.
.
Was that what he wanted,
the backups
? Was he afraid that somehow Lot 35 might endure beyond her?
the backups
? Was he afraid that somehow Lot 35 might endure beyond her?
It made a terrifying kind of sense. And yet it didn’t, because she trusted Alexander MacFarlane. And if she couldn’t trust him, then who could she trust? Beyond that, there were more people involved than just him. The FBI, for example.
Other books
Circles of Time by Phillip Rock
Steal the Light (Thieves) by Blake, Lexi
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
On Becoming His by Russell, Benjamin T., Dayne, Cassandre
The Irish Upstart by Shirley Kennedy
Exit Laughing by Victoria Zackheim
The Long Hunt: Mageworlds #5 by Doyle, Debra, Macdonald, James D.
Miss Delacourt Has Her Day by Heidi Ashworth
Gabriel by Nikki Kelly
Defy by Sara B. Larson