Overfall (36 page)

The place reminded Anna of Jason’s lodge, the way it was laid out and even the aesthetic aspects of the design. There were five bedrooms in addition to the master suite, as well as two guest houses with three bedrooms each. To further supplement the living space, a large banquet tent had been placed on the lawn near the pool. Normally it was used for summertime parties, but now it was being used as a barracks. Sam, Anna, Spring, Jason, Grady, and T.J. each took a room in the main house.

With a grin, T.J. had won the toss for accommodations in the primary residence. That left six men to the tent and six into the two guest houses. There was a lot more coin tossing. Anna unpacked her stuff in the master suite knowing that Sam would be busy for a while with the men. Whether it was necessary or not, she knew that Sam would feel compelled to have a meeting to set things in order.

Although laid as unobtrusively as possible, sandbags now lined the interior walls of the house, rising to window level in the living room. In the event of a full-scale assault the living room would provide the final shelter other than the safe room. More “safe” than “room,” it consisted of a large concrete-reinforced, habitation-adapted, steel safe that sat inside what had once been a utility room. If it got down to the safe room, Sam was counting on the Mounties to arrive before it was breached.

After unpacking, Anna took from her closet a silken robe that she had acquired from Japan. She had never worn it, having resolved to keep it for a special occasion. It wasn’t a special occasion, but it felt right for the moment. Under the robe she decided to wear a silk nightgown that looked vaguely like a cocktail dress. For a second she pondered something more translucent, but dismissed the idea. A quick check of Sam’s room revealed that he was still roaming around with the boys. She should have known that he would need to mark his territory before retiring. She hoped to talk for a while before leaving him to sleep.

She was nearly done with the biography of the Warner brothers, and decided to finish the last chapter.

There was a soft knock.

It was Spring.

“Hi, I would have thought you would be asleep,” Anna said.

“No. I have been wanting to follow up on our prior conversations. You finished the book that your friend gave you.”

“Yes.”

“I wondered if you figured out where she went.”

“I have always resisted any notion that we are somehow the product of our upbringing. I like to feel like the captain of my own destiny. I don’t like introspection as much as I like goals and making choices to get where I want to go.”

“So you’re captain of your ship. And who is captain of Sam’s?”

Anna laughed at that. “Oh, I have a sneaking suspicion that he feels the same way I do. But then you will say: If Sam is in the grip of his past, then who is to say that I’m not? Is that it?”

“I thought all this contemplation might have provided a bit of insight.”

“Into what?”

“Into your situation with Sam. Maybe I’m just a meddling mother interested in Sam. If so, I’m sorry.”

“It’s a confusing situation.”

They talked for an hour and ended with Anna’s poem, which she had not recited since junior college. Spring had her repeat it.

“And you are close with your mother now?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“When you wrote this poem you seemed to be flirting with a feeling that you don’t really express.”

“I never liked day care. The place smelled bad and they ignored me.”

“And what did your mother say?”

“About what?”

“Day care.”

“We’ve never discussed it.”

“What if you one day showed her the poem?”

“It’s no big deal. After all these years it would be mean. Don’t you think?”

“There is a Tilok story that I would like to tell you and I would like to tell it to you while you wait for Sam.”

“I’m not admitting to waiting for Sam in a silk robe and a nightgown.” Anna smiled.

Grady was thinking about Clint and the strange exhilaration of getting to know her father. And his strange nature. Clint was out in the guest house, Anna’s room was to the right of her, and to the left was her father’s, and nothing had ever felt quite so bizarre. She hated to admit it, but she wasn’t sure how to actually build a relationship with her father and she was equally confounded by a man like Clint. There probably wasn’t a large chance that Clint didn’t know about the strip club and that, in a way, made it easier, because if they became friends she would need to tell him before they became lovers.

On the other hand, she wondered if any invitation to friendship that she might venture would be tainted by a thousand other invitations, a thousand other clever lines echoing like old words in a prison hall.

In this beautiful house she wished for her Panzy, the ultimate feline source of comfort. She’d seen that each of the rooms was equipped with a computer and access to the Internet. She could check her AOL account for any messages from the Critter Sitter. The rules set down by Sam for e-mails and the Internet, however, were clear. She was not to access her computer at the apartment because it might be traced. Also she knew she had to view her e-mail through the previewing function and could not per se open it. Under no circumstances could she send an e-mail anywhere, nor could she enter a chat room of any kind. Curious, she turned on the machine and used the password taped to the inside of the Microsoft Guide.

She punched an AOL icon, dialed in, and used her screen name and password. Aside from the junk mail, she had two messages: one from Guy and one from the Critter Sitter, with an urgent subject line. The heat of adrenaline-fueled worry coursed through her body as she thought about Panzy. Maybe sick. Maybe dying. She could not call anyone anywhere except Jill and her other friends at Sam’s office without special clearance, and then the answer would probably be negative. Although certain it wouldn’t hurt, she decided not to even preview the e-mail without asking Sam. It would only take a minute to find him. As she rose, she saw her father standing in the doorway, looking a little uneasy.

“Jason,” she said, still not used to calling him Dad. “You don’t look well.”

“The Nannites. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to see me like this, but I just wanted to look at you for a moment. To see that there is some good in the world.”

“Anna will give you some oil.”

“Yes. I’ll find her.”

“Anna says Nutka will be here soon and she can give you a regular massage.”

“They keep saying that” He raised his hand. “What are you doing?”

“I miss my cat.”

“Panzy, right?”

“Yeah. I am worried about her. I was going to find Sam to ask him something.”

“About cats?”

“Not exactly. I need to get into some e-mail. I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Sure. The Nannites aren’t going anywhere. Neither am I. The little bastards.”

Jason desperately needed Nutka. But Anna could give him oil and that would cure the Nannite nerves. He also needed the board that they were now putting together so he could work equations, and he needed his computer. Grady was his only consolation. He had never wanted to get near her for fear the Nannites would commence their plague. But now she was here and it wasn’t his doing and he wanted to know her.

He walked over to the computer and squinted at the screen. AOL. An in-box of sorts. Someplace called the Critter Sitter had sent an urgent e-mail regarding Panzy. No wonder Grady had been distraught. Clicking the mouse, he opened it.

Need immediate treatment authorization for Panzy. We have detected a large sarcoma tumor in her abdomen. Surgery may save Panzy if performed immediately. Please respond by e-mail so that we have a record of your authorization.

If it were his pet, Pasha, he knew what he would do. He wrote:

Take all necessary steps to save Panzy. You have my full authorization for any and all treatments.

He sent it and felt better immediately. Then he got an idea. Perhaps he could call Grace Technologies and access his own e-mail. It would be fun to send Chellis a message. He clicked out of AOL and thought how he might access the satellite. Then he considered all of the weird goings-on and how Sam and Anna had traveled and seemed to be hiding. Better to wait and discuss it with Anna.

“Grady, listen carefully. No way do you access your e-mail. You are going into AOL over an eight hundred line?” Sam asked.

“Yeah.”

“Did you open anything or send anything?”

“No, I would never do that without asking.”

“If it is a trap, if they’ve figured out about your cat, the second you open that e-mail they’ll know you’ve called the account and that could be the beginning of the end for us. Responding with your own e-mail would without question give away our location unless we did a whole lot of programming that hasn’t been done here.”

“They can find that out?”

“A corporation like Grace would make up some bullshit story and they would be able to easily discover the local carrier that put that eight hundred call through. AOL has to keep track of all eight hundred calls for billing purposes. The local carrier will know the physical address of the phone that placed the call. Or in this case the modem. We use these techniques all the time.”

“God, Big Brother.”

“I’ll send someone to check on your cat. Don’t worry about it.”

“There is no way I can read that e-mail?”

“Too risky even to do that. Let’s not take chances.”

Grady returned to her room and found her computer displaying the desktop icons and her AOL screen gone from the monitor. Certainly her father knew about computers, so he probably went off on the Internet or something. It was just as well. She wouldn’t have to look at that e-mail again. She shut down the computer and looked at the clock. She would read the book that Anna had given her. Oddly she seemed to find herself the subject of every chapter. It was called
Where Did He Go? Where Did She Go?

Anna found Sam bent over a desk strewn with maps of the house and grounds.

His room was large to accommodate three walls full of oil paintings, a king-size bed with a massive oak headboard, and a big-screen television mounted in a mahogany entertainment center. Although the room had several lights, Sam worked by a single desk lamp, and so the cream and faux gold walls were softened and enriched by the man-made twilight.

“Secluded homes often don’t make good safe houses. Bad guys can hide in the woods.”

She nodded, looking at the maps.

“But this place is perfect. We are in the middle of a two-acre lawn manicured with flower beds and low-lying shrubbery. There is a fence all the way round, three dogs, and good electronic security. It’s the summer retreat for a contractor who builds nuclear plants and he likes his peace and doesn’t want to be disturbed by environmental activists.”

“You really had me going with the yacht story.”

Sam smiled and turned around in his seat. “You and my mother have been talking incessantly.”

“She told me a story.”

“Yeah?”

“An Indian girl grew apart from her husband and ??about a single man to take as a lover. Many nights she sneaked across the stream. To make it easy she planted large stones and learned to dance across and keep her moccasins dry even in the dark. Then her lover took a wife and left her alone. Every day she looked at the stones and was reminded of him. One night she danced across the stones and found her husband waiting. After that meeting, so the legend goes, they prospered and had many children and every night her husband waited for her at the other side of the river. Over time the story of the stones got around the village and dancing across them in the dark became a game amongst the young women, and soon they placed more stones and made more elaborate crossings.

“Have you heard this story?” she asked Sam.

“Yes,” he said. “But keep going. Sometimes my mother’s stories have a fork in the road—which fork depends on the traveler.”

“Then you know that as time passed, crossing the river on the stones became a wedding ritual for brides, who would find their husbands waiting on the other side to take them off to a secret place.

“Then one day a Talth went to the people and said this ritual was not right because the stones were a memorial to treachery and should not be part of a wedding celebration. Wanting to keep the tradition, the people went to the chief and inquired about the message of the Talth.

“The chief said that time for love must be stolen from the cares of life or it will fade. So the ritual was good because it taught an important lesson.”

Sam smiled as if he understood the point. “And what did you get out of the story?”

“There is something about escaping cares and commitments and just stealing time for love that perpetuates it. For a lot of people, it’s sort of in the blueprint for marriage that duties are more important than love.”

“But?”

“Love seems dangerous. If you don’t want to feel it you can escape it, but you then become emotionally unavailable.”

“She really is getting to you.”

“Are you feeeee ... ling something, Sam?” she asked teasingly. “You won’t get this overnight. How did your mother tell the story to you?”

“It was the same story with a different emphasis. It was all about the path in your mind that not trusting makes. You know, it leaves a trail like the stones. She was telling me that my dad left a trail in my mind. Of course the moral had to be that it’s up to me to give the stones a new meaning. In the story the woman’s husband and the whole tribe gave the stones a new meaning. With the new trust came new feelings. It’s a versatile story.”

“Funny. I wrote this poem. It seems like she would have told me the meaning she told you. The part about reinterpreting something that happened in the past.

“Anyway did the story soften you up, Sam?”

“Give me a break. What man with any balls is going to be softened by a story?”

The phone rang. It was T.J.

“We got an e-mail. They’re ready to talk at Harvard.”

“Okay. We’ll come to the scrambler and place the call.”

Sam turned on the speakerphone and everyone but Sam, Anna, Grady, and T.J. cleared the office area that had been set up in the house’s spacious library.

“I think we have it licked,” Fielding began. “We elected George to explain it.”

“I don’t know how much you want me to try to cover on the phone.”

“The whole thing,” Anna said. “I want to know what’s wrong with Jason.”

“Well, as you know there were two codes just to get into the main files. Paul cracked the second, but then individual files were encrypted and we had to go back to Big Brain four times. Jason had hacked into various parts of the Grace computer and downloaded backup files from the lab in Kuching. We are the first to read them, and it took a whole team of us including some folks from the University of Washington and a private foundation lab. But we got their game or at least part of it. And it is fascinating.”

“How does it affect my brother?”

“Okay, maybe I should start with the rather glum conclusion and then explain it.”

“Yes.”

“They altered his DNA. The DNA of his neurons. His brain. It’s probably permanent unless the lab that did it has a fix. But there does seem to be a treatment and we know the active ingredient. It is a temporary antidote that will relieve the effects of the DNA alteration for about twenty-four hours. If he takes it every twenty-four hours, he may not feel the effects of what has been done to his brain.”

“So he’s paranoid because of this?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“This seems incredible.”

“Well, there is a lot to it. I can explain if you like. I will tell you that we can send you some hormone that will make him feel better.”

“Yes. Yes.”

“All right Where to start ... let’s see ... they needed to alter just certain of his brain cells. They started with neurons in the limbic system, the prefrontal cortex, and the amygdala. They alter them genetically. Once changed, they have radical effects on people’s state of mind. To change them genetically they alter the DNA. To do that they deliver new DNA that affects certain predetermined neuron cell types.”

Anna seemed to pale.

“Okay. We’re all ears,” Sam said.

“Okay, to begin with, if we’re trying to influence anxiety we go to the cells that influence that mental state. Anxiety is largely controlled by certain brain cells in the limbic system, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex.”

“Okay.”

“There are two kinds of cells there. Some enhance a response, such as anxiety, and others reduce it. Activator cells or inhibitor cells, we call them. Grace calls the inhibitor cells suppressor cells, so we’ll go with their lingo. If you increase the sensitivity of anxiety-suppressor cells, you will actually be suffering less anxiety, whereas the opposite is true if you increase the sensitivity of an activator cell. To increase sensitivity to a neuron they add what we call a receptor. It’s actually a molecule on the dendrite.”

Sam let George know that they’d become familiar with the workings of dendrites and synapses, courtesy of Dr. Yanavitch.

“If I understand this,” Sam said, “my next question is how they forced the DNA changes in Jason’s brain.”

“To deliver the DNA coding sequence they use a structure that is in some respects like a virus and it is called a vector. To make it they break apart a virus and strip away its protein coating. Then they insert two pieces of DNA. One causes the formation of the extra receptor molecule on the dendrites and that is called the coding sequence. The other is called the promoter strand and it identifies the cells that are to be changed by the coding sequence. It’s like the passkey to changing only the neurons that make a difference in the anxiety response.

“Specifically, Grace breaks down a monkey herpes virus. They splice in the coding DNA and the promoter DNA, reinstall a new protein coat around this new ring of DNA, and bam, they have a delivery vehicle that infects a foreign cell and installs new coding sequences. All body cells of different function are defined by the proteins that they make. What defines those special proteins that make a cell unique are the promoters that are active in the cell to produce their unique proteins. For cells that have specialized functions like a cell in the amygdala of your brain, involved in an anxiety response, there must be unique proteins produced by that cell and cells of the same function. Each cell type will have its own promoter.

“If the vector enters a neuron that doesn’t recognize the promoter, then there is no change in that cell. They introduce the vector (which for these purposes is like a virus that won’t replicate) and it invades all or most brain cells indiscriminately. The protein changes forced by the changed DNA will only apply to the desired cells of the brain. So if any given neuron happens to be a brain cell concerned with anxiety, the vector basically says, ‘Honey, I’m home,’ and the cell recognizes that voice.

“Now this is something of a simplification because Grace has identified over a dozen unique cell types involved in the anxiety response; therefore they used a dozen different forms of the vector, each with a different promoter but all having the same coding sequence. Remember that the coding sequence is just the formula for producing the extra receptors.”

Sam looked at Anna, who was nodding her head as if in shock.

“Here is how the research progressed. Grace started with rats and mice but moved to monkeys in their Kuching, Malaysia, lab. First thing they discovered was that it’s easier to take a calm monkey and make it permanently nervous than vice versa. So that is how they started. In effect, to learn about making nervous monkeys calm, they initially studied the reverse process. To make a monkey nervous all the time you put extra responders in those activator brain cells concerned with the fear response. You just turn up the sensitivity of the activator cells.”

“And this is what they did to Jason?”

“Well, we’re not there yet but this is the research track they were taking. They were making calm animals nervous as a prelude to curing anxiety disorders. Now remember that a vector is just DNA with a protein coat, and—”

“We understand,” Sam cut in. “What about the opposite process?”

“I was just getting to that. To make Jason calm they don’t touch the activator cells or turn down their sensitivity; they use a hormone to stimulate an inhibitor or as they call it a suppressor cell.”

“A hormone?”

“Yes, and get this, it turns out they use insect hormones, called juvenile hormones. They aren’t produced in mammals.”

Sam looked to Anna, shaking his head, wondering what was next.

“The activator cell receptors and the suppressor cell receptors are sensitive only to juvenile insect hormones. Each to a different hormone. They got part of the DNA sequences for the receptor molecules from insects and mass-produced the hormones in the lab.”

“This is sick,” Anna said.

“Yeah. So they can install receptors that make the calm person nervous by making activator cells more sensitive. To counteract the effect you introduce the hormone that sensitizes the suppressor cells to make the subject calm again. To make him very calm you just superboost the suppressor cells.”

“Or you could do the same thing in reverse,” Sam said.

“Right. We could stimulate the activator cells and do nothing to the suppressor cells and create hyper-paranoia. But the hormones have no effect on someone with normal DNA.”

“The applications for this are almost unlimited,” said Sam.

“Right. They have a profile known as the Soldier profile. On demand they hyperstimulate fear-suppressor cells as well as activator cells associated with extreme aggression. They also stimulate suppressor cells related to remorse. In sum they can create fearless, aggressive killers with absolutely no remorse.”

“Why haven’t we heard about this for gene therapy for healing applications?”

“They cured the so-called bubble children with DNA fixes to the immune system using retro viral vectors to place genes in the bone marrow and altered the DNA that way. The problem with vectors is the human immune system. It tends to attack foreign bodies and a vector is a foreign body. With the bubble children there was no immune system and hence nothing to fight the vector as a foreign body. We know that Grace somehow solved the problem with the immune response because Jason was not a bubble boy and had a fully intact immune system. Jason didn’t steal that file.”

The French fighters from the rooftop flashed in Sam’s mind.

“They take an ordinary individual, alter his DNA, and apply hormones to make him an ultrasoldier,” Sam recapped. “When they want him normal again they wait the twenty-four hours or so until the hormone dissipates or they create the opposite reaction with other hormones. And I heard you say this: To accomplish a permanent alteration of a subject’s DNA, all it takes is for the subject to inhale a real good dose of the vector. But how about discipline, intelligence, strategy, and so on? For soldiers?”

“Don’t know.”

“I faced a group of fighters that had no fear. Now I have a theory about them.”