Nano (33 page)

“Oh, good! Is that supposed to make me feel better? Where’s that contract you had for me, I’ll sign it right away.”

Berman stared at Pia. He could feel his anger and frustration returning as her sarcasm was obvious, suggesting that he was not making the headway he had hoped and thought he was making only minutes earlier. He cleared his throat.

“Listen, these people in the tanks had to all intents and purposes died prior to their being placed there, and they were going to die anyway if they had not been allowed to come to Nano and participate in our work. Much sooner, in fact. Science has to find its way, and there have to be sacrifices. For centuries, people have died researching drugs. If we reach our goal with the microbivores even five years ahead of time, we could save a million lives, who knows?”

“That’s not how it works and you know it. When the Nazis were brought to trial at the end of World War Two, it was specifically decreed that countries cannot experiment on prisoners. There is no way they can be considered legitimate volunteers.”

“The U.S. government gave subjects syphilis after the end of the war . . .”

“Okay, but they’re not doing it now. And the experiments you are alluding to have been totally discredited.”

Berman was silent. This wasn’t going how he had hoped, but he wasn’t really surprised. Pia was unlikely to roll over at the first opportunity. If she was going to relent, it would take time, and Berman had thought she might be more receptive to the argument about sacrificing a few to save many than she seemed to be. He wasn’t going to give up.

“We lost maybe ten subjects in the whole project for which we can save millions.”

“How long has this respirocyte project been going on?”

“It’s been going on four years,” Berman said, encouraged that she was asking legitimate questions.

Pia let out a sigh and glanced up at Berman. He was looking down at her with an expression she couldn’t read. Did he really think he could talk her around? That he could persuade her into believing that his sick way of looking at the world was justified? It was the darkening realization that Berman did believe he could convert her that was making Pia feel so downcast. She wondered what she could do to give herself a chance at getting away. Was she really somewhere in the United Kingdom? Was she capable of a charade, knowing that he knew she’d already had pulled it off not once but twice? What was going to happen to her if she didn’t give in to the role he wanted her to play? Was he going to try to force her to have sex with him? Too many questions and no answers.

“I’ll never sleep with you,” said Pia.

“I’m not a monster, you might think that of me right now, but you should give some serious thought to what I have been saying. Think of the scientific opportunities there are for a woman like you when you have access to the best equipment and unlimited funds. Believe me, I would not have Mariel Spallek breathing down your neck if you came back for research. I know that’s what you want to do, and I’m offering you a chance that most scientists would jump at.”

“Not if they had to touch you, they wouldn’t. Is this how you get all your girlfriends to sleep with you, by blackmailing them?”

“On the contrary. I told you about Whitney. She and I had some very spirited conversations before she converted to my point of view, and now she is my most loyal employee. You are fortunate that I did not leave you in her hands in Boulder. We certainly wouldn’t be having this talk if I had.”

“Paul Caldwell will find me.”

“I very much doubt it. Your friend George is with him now. They went to my house. Then they went to Nano, where they were kind enough to hand over their IDs. They’ve been to your apartment a few times. Now, they’re just sitting around Paul’s apartment wringing their hands. Perhaps they’re holding hands, I know Paul would enjoy that.”

“He’s ten times the man you are.”

“Well, chances are we’ll never know.”

“They’ll go to the police.”

“Yes, I’m sure they will. But I can’t imagine they are going to get much satisfaction telling the police their concerns about your well-being. You remember how helpful the cops were the last time you saw them.”

Pia did. Clearly, at least some members of the Boulder PD were on Berman’s payroll. Perhaps Berman was bluffing about Paul and George, but Pia wouldn’t be surprised if Berman didn’t have Paul’s apartment under surveillance. She had to stay strong and resist.

“My arm is hurting,” said Pia. “Is there a doctor here?” She wanted to see another face; anyone but Berman.

Berman nodded. “I’m glad you asked me that.” He thought the fact that Pia was requesting a doctor was a positive sign, reflecting that she was able to think beyond her offended morality. And for Berman, it was important that Pia get better. He wanted desperately to have her physically, as she expected, but not when she was injured like this. He did have standards to maintain.

Berman turned and rapped twice on the door. It opened and admitted a Chinese man, about sixty, in a white lab coat. Berman tapped his own arm where Pia had her break, and the man nodded. He stepped over to Pia and bid her to stand up before he started examining her upper left arm and the cast on her wrist.

“There’s something I forgot to tell you,” said Berman. “It might influence your thinking. If somehow your two men friends talk some judge into issuing a search warrant for Nano, perhaps looking for you or whatever, I want to tell you that the human preparations you happened to see have all been replaced with dogs. The humans served their purpose and have all been removed and their ashes will be appropriately sent back to China to be given to their families.”

With that, Berman turned around and rapped on the door to be let out.

52.

PUBLIC SAFETY CENTER, BOULDER, COLORADO

WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 2013, 8:05
A.M.
MST

Paul and George rode to the Boulder police station, arriving a little after eight in the morning. For a few minutes, they sat in the car and discussed the best approach to take. George Wilson was very impatient; he had been ever since he arrived back in Colorado, and he looked the part with mismatched clothing and a two day’s growth of beard. He felt there must be something more they could be doing after checking out Berman’s house and trying to get into Nano, while Paul counseled patience. Paul had worked his shift at the ER the previous evening and would work again that night. He had tried to get some time off, but Paul’s private practice that had the contract to run the ER was already down to two doctors, all the others were out on family summer vacations. Consequently Paul would have to keep working while they looked for Pia. George, on the other hand, had a lot of free time. Before he left L.A., he had managed to arrange for a two-week vacation on an emergency basis. The powers that be had looked kindly on his request as he had not taken any vacation since starting the residency program, and they had been encouraging him to do so.

George had done his best to get Paul to do something more, but in Paul’s estimation, George’s ideas—breaking into Berman’s house and breaking into Nano—were ridiculous and would be counterproductive. Under the surface he was as frantic as George, but he didn’t show it. He was certain there was no sense in racing off and getting arrested: they had to go to the police first and play it by the book, and they would do it that morning if they hadn’t heard from Pia, and they hadn’t.

The upshot of the strategizing was that Paul insisted on doing the talking with the police. Actually he would have preferred to go in alone, but George was having none of that, although he did acquiesce to the idea of letting Paul be the point man. Paul had told George it was he who knew the situation better, it was he who had last seen Pia and to whom she was due to return. In reality, Paul was worried George was likely to fly off the handle and make wild accusations against Berman and Nano that he couldn’t substantiate. They had to be calm and businesslike, and that was Paul’s department.

But meeting with the police wasn’t quite as easy as they had envisioned. After a half hour of waiting in unforgiving plastic chairs in the lobby of the building with what looked to be a half dozen other derelicts, some even less presentable than George, even Paul’s patience was wearing thin. By then George was pacing around like a caged animal, checking his phone and sighing loudly.

“Come on!” muttered George, more to himself than Paul. “Isn’t anyone going to help us?”

Finally an officer came out, called out their names, and led them to a desk, still in the public area of the facility.

“Aren’t we going inside the station?” asked George. He’d seen enough police procedurals to expect such treatment.

The young uniformed officer, whose badge read Gomez, looked at George. “This is where we conduct first interviews, sir.”

“Of course, thank you,” said Paul, glaring at George. Paul found himself remembering a saying that you know you’re getting old when the police officers start looking young, but Paul felt he was too young himself for such a sentiment. But still, Officer Gomez looked to be about sixteen. They all sat down. Paul then outlined the story to her including what he and George had done but leaving out the parts in which Pia had drugged her boss and that she had essentially broken into her former place of work. He could feel George shifting in his seat as he talked. After a while, Gomez put down her pen and pad and faced the two men.

“Sir, you understand it’s not against the law for someone over the age of eighteen to leave their home without warning. And they are entitled to their privacy. Even if she showed up in Denver, and we found her, if she said she didn’t want to be contacted by certain individuals, we couldn’t tell them we knew where she was.”

“Listen, I understand. I’m an ER doctor. We see domestic violence cases all the time. For all you know I could be an abusive partner looking for my girlfriend to beat up.”

“Paul, that’s ridiculous,” said George. “Officer Gomez, Pia Grazdani has been kidnapped. I’m sure of it. Not in the usual ransom sense, but more to get rid of her and shut her up. My friend isn’t saying all this because he’s afraid we won’t be taken seriously, but I’m convinced that’s the case.”

Paul sighed and looked at George with a combination of irritation and frustration. Officer Gomez stiffened in her seat. As Paul feared, she was now looking at George, unshaven and shabby, in a different light.

“Officer Gomez,” said Paul, using his calming, official doctor voice. “My friend is agitated. Before Pia disappeared, we know she had entered her place of work using a borrowed ID.” Paul didn’t elaborate on his euphemistic description of Pia’s elaborate foiling of Nano’s iris security system and flouting a specific order to stay away from her lab.

“She implied to me that she had stumbled on something illegal going on at Nano,” Paul continued in an even, calm tone. “I know you’re obliged to act if there is evidence that the person was abducted or is in danger, and I believe she is in great danger. The last time she saw me in the wee hours of Monday morning, after she had made the disturbing discovery, which she said she would explain later, she told me she would be coming directly back to my apartment. Sometime later she texted she was on her way but never showed up.”

“You’re essentially saying she got into the Nano complex illegally?” said Gomez. “This is the same Nano Institute up in the foothills that makes such effort on security to avoid, should we say, industrial espionage?”

“Yes,” said George, answering the question that had been directed at Paul.

“Wait here!” said Gomez, who got up and left.

“Great, George. You were supposed to let me do the talking. Now Pia’s gone from a missing-person’s case to a fleeing fugitive.”

“So what?” said George. “Which do you think they’d spend more time looking for?”

Thirty minutes later, Gomez reemerged, accompanied by a man in a suit who looked every inch the veteran detective that he was, with an outdated haircut, gray mustache, overweight, and an old-fashioned suit.

“Detective Samuels,” he said, shaking Paul’s hand and then George’s. “Okay, we called your friend’s place of employment, and they say she’s on paid leave and as far as they are concerned, there have been no irregularities or problems with unauthorized visitations. I also talked with Nano security who corroborated that there have been no reports of any break-ins or lost IDs that could be used to gain illegal entry. They did say you two gentlemen showed up there yesterday trying to get in and were turned away.”

Paul snuck a quick look at George.

“We’re worried about our friend,” said Paul. “She was very upset by something she found at work.”

“Did she say what it was?”

“No, as I mentioned to Officer Gomez, but I could guess it had something to do with a Chinese runner . . .”

“A Chinese runner? Okay,” said Samuels skeptically, “Officer Gomez filled me in on what you gentlemen have told her. Seems that your stories, or at least your interpretation of the situation, is somewhat different. You, Dr. Caldwell, feel that she was very upset and failed to come to your apartment in the wee hours of the morning after having illegally broken into the Nano facility. And you, Mr. Wilson, are convinced that this woman, who is on medical leave, was kidnapped?”

“I know she was,” said George.

“You went to her apartment,” said Samuels, reading from Gomez’s notes, “and you found a Web page with driving directions to a place in New Jersey . . .”

“Someone else called up that page!” George was raising his voice. “Pia would never stop to look for directions, she’d just start driving. She’s very headstrong . . .”

“Someone who’d break into a place, headstrong in that way?” said Samuels.

“But no one reported it, did they,” said George.

“And you also say you received a text from her phone that you don’t believe she sent.” Samuels let that piece of information hang in the air. “Has it occurred to you guys that she’s stringing you along? I don’t see any evidence she’s been kidnapped. We’ll take those pictures you brought in. I wouldn’t mind asking her about this illegal entry she was talking about. I know a lot of those security guys who work at Nano. They are a very professional group and justly concerned about industrial security involving proprietary secrets and any and all episodes of illegal entry. I will take everything you have told us under advisement, and we will be back to you gentlemen. Thank you for coming in.”

“Are you implying that’s what Pia Grazdani was doing? Stealing secrets from her workplace?”

“I’m not saying anything, Mr. Wilson,” said Samuels. “Okay, I think we’re done here. Again, thanks for coming to see us today. Come on, Officer Gomez! We have work to do on this matter.”

Samuels and Gomez walked away.

“Don’t say it,” said George.

“I have to,” Paul said. “When someone over eighteen disappears, there has to be hard evidence of foul play, and the only known crime here was committed by Pia herself.”

“But we know she’s been taken,” said George.

“Sure, but look at it from their point of view,” said Paul.

“You heard the guy,” said George, who started to walk out of the building. Paul followed. “He’s pals with the security at Nano. I know Pia can be paranoid, but that looks mighty cozy, don’t you think? I wonder if Nano recruited from the local law enforcement for their security team. What about the FBI? I think we should go and talk to them. I doubt there’s any former Feds at Nano.”

“You think the FBI is going to say anything different? They have the same standards of evidence, and they’re sure to knock it back to the police.”

“So it’s up to us, is that what you’re saying?” said George. “Should we just try to file a run-of-the-mill missing-person’s complaint?”

“I think that’s what we just tried to do.”

“I suppose you are right. This is the kind of situation where Pia’s isolation works against her. But we can’t just do nothing.”

“I don’t know what we can do. Listen, George, I’m willing to help you, of course I am, but I don’t see how breaking into Berman’s house or anything else along those lines is going to help, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I know if I could only get into Nano. . . .”

“Then what, George? The place is tight as a drum with security. Remember what Pia did last, and she worked there, remember?”

“What about Pia’s boss, Mariel? Mariel whatever her name is. She’s a piece of work, but who knows? We could start there, talk to her, see if she’ll tell us anything.”

“I suppose. If we can figure out how to get in touch with her. I assume she’ll be at work on a Wednesday.”

“My sense is that work is all she has,” said George. “It might be hard to contact her, but we have to do something. Maybe it would be helpful to find out where she lives.” He winked at Paul.

Paul shrugged, but didn’t say anything. At least it was better than trying to break into Berman’s castlelike house or Nano.