Splicer (31 page)

In the moonlight - the outcroppings, the rising mountain of granite and the tenacious evergreens - looked stark and lifeless. The intrusion of the three humans and the dusty vehicle had silenced the loons. The only sound was the wind high in the treetops and the distant rumble of thunder.

Grieves was moving across the high grass on the other side of the ditch in a hurry, away from Rusty and his lawyer.  Neither of them could read the kidnapper's expression; his back was turned away from them and he was now only a few feet from the tree line.

Rusty could only guess how long it would take Grieves to find the gun in the thick darkness at the base of the spruce and pine stand. He had no flashlight. But with a careful methodical approach over an area of several hundred square feet, it would only be a matter of time. Already Grieves must be making a plan, mapping out the area in the filtered moonlight where he would search, likely on his hands and knees until he found the weapon. Even as the pistol arced through the night air and crashed into the foliage, Grieves was racing down into the drainage ditch in the general direction of Rusty's overhand pitch. Rusty's intention was to tackle him and beat him senseless but the more he thought about grappling with him in the long grass, the more his enthusiasm flagged. Then he remembered that Grieves had the car keys.

Rusty and Jayne had little choice. Breaking into the bush in the middle of nowhere would be foolish. They were a hundred miles from a town, perhaps ten miles from the closest cabin or outpost. The forest was full of bog, peat moss and biting insects. That left the road.

To go south on foot meant a relentless trek of over thirty miles. Rusty wasn't sure how long that would take - ten hours? In the meantime, they were an easy target for Grieves with a car, if it was still drivable, and a loaded handgun, which he would surely have within the hour. To the north, at some undetermined distance, was the Grieves’ cabin and a phone. Failing that there was shelter from the coming storm. Perhaps even a weapon.

Jayne looked in his direction as she swatted a mosquito away from her forehead.

"Let's just not stand here," she said.

"You're right." Rusty moved quickly towards the vehicle, lowered himself onto his knees and removed the valve stem cap on the car’s left front tire. He pressed his fingernail into the pressure valve and heard the hiss of air as the tire slowly deflated. Jayne moved to his side.

"What the hell are you doing? Any minute now he's going to have that gun ... "

"Let the air out of the other side. The front only."

She shook her head but moved to the other side of the car. She whispered as loudly as she could to him across the top of the hood, only her head showing above the fender.

"Can't you hot-wire this thing? Didn't they teach you anything in jail?"

“I only spent one night in jail, Jayne. I learned how climb onto the top bunk.” Rusty looked back across the shoulder and the ditch into the darkness. Grieves had disappeared. At maximum it might take him fifteen or twenty minutes to methodically cover the ground where the gun had fallen, if he moved slowly and patiently. He’d have to crawl under branches, feel around tree trunks and deadfall, all the while virtually blind. Or he could get lucky and stumble on the .38 within seconds.

"They taught me that a human being is no match for two tons of steel. It's bad enough he'll have a gun; I don't think we want to offer him free transportation. That’s if this poor wreck will ever move again."

The tire was halfway to flat when they heard the snap of a limb. Rusty jumped and cracked his head against the side mirror when Jayne rounded the front end of the Cutlass.

He gasped.” How did you do that so fast?"

She flashed a small penknife at him.

"Watch out," she said under her breath. She bent down beside him, stabbed the small knife into the sidewall of the tire, pressed, and then pushed it sideways, widening the hole. Air streamed past the blade noisily for only a few seconds. The front of the car sagged sideways.

"You learn that from your brothers too?"

"This? No. A client." She looked up at him in the dim light from the moon. "You can learn a lot from clients."

"Exactly. Now I'm going to teach you the five hundred-yard relay. And we get to play all the parts." With that, he took her arm and turned her to the north. The gravel road stretched off into the dark, seemed to climb up a slight rise. Just then the growing cloud mass above them slid across the moon placing them in near total darkness, and both heard, from a short distance into the heavy cover of the trees, the sound of Grieves’ triumph.

Grey pressed his thumbs hard into his retinas. He let out a breath of air, emptying his lungs. When he opened his eyes again he peered out at the leaden dawn over Washington, the guardrails circling the landing field flicking past the window of his limousine.

He leaned forward, pressed a rosewood panel built into the back of the driver's-seat. He slid the panel to the right and inside, each strapped to a Velcro harness, sat four bottles of liquor - a Canadian whiskey, a British Gin, an ancient bottle of sake, and a partial decanter of Smirnoff. He never drank while on assignment but guessed that the rules to the game where changing even as he considered them.
They were inadequate. All rules were obsolete virtually the moment they were put to paper.
He pulled out the whiskey, at the same time reaching into another section of the bar for a glass. He poured an inch of the amber fluid over the cut crystal sides.

The limo hit a shallow rut and glass clinked against glass. "Cheers," he muttered to himself and leaned back into the worn leather.

Grey needed time to think. He had just been told the injunction against the sale of GeneFab was still in force. Despite everything they had done. The Canadian government was not playing ball. He had one of his researchers contact the Securities Commission. A member of parliament had made a decision.
A member of parliament
his head screamed. He asked for more and it came just moments ago by email. A county court judge by the name of England had originally pressed the Commission to suspend all trading on
GeneFab
because of the on-going murder investigation. The Commission had declined. No jurisdiction. Then the Minister of Justice interceded. Foreign trading possibilities. Securities replied that XTech had Canadian ownership. The Minister suggested there might be an American owner, which would call for further review of the case.

Grey drank half the whiskey. How did they know? He called XTech. The rumor was confirmed. All financial transactions with a view to change of ownership in
GeneFab
were suspended with no date for resumption.

One more thing - Rosenblatt was worried. He needed more money.
Goddamn it
pulsed Grey.
Rosenblatt needed money? For what.
He was earning a million a year as a Director. It had all seemed so easy before. A diversion with a big plus if he pulled it off. Now he had a
GeneFab
Excedrin headache.

Grey had no idea how long this suspension might last? With Rosenblatt solely in charge, the company could lose steam fast. And now Rosenblatt was hungry again. The limo pulled into the grass of a small airfield west of the Arlington called Hoover Field.

The murder was not a good idea. If Kim had carried it out in the first place in Nevada as planned - professionally - the whole matter would have faded quickly. The planted stories about underworld connections in Las Vegas would have satisfied the politicians and the media. But Rosenblatt hired some amateur who muddied up the situation by framing some software salesman called Redfield and then all hell breaks loose.

Grey emptied the glass and licked his lips. The Scotch burnt like envy at the back of his throat. Now he had to get involved, risking everything.
Has no one up there got anything better to do than shit on my plans? Don't they see what will happen if the Splicer hits the streets and every wacko organization on the planet places their orders? Al-Qaeda with the Splicer? Forget the medical system - there will be the disease of the month - how about the disease of the day. Designer microbes. Nothing will matter. Might as well give every five year old on the planet an armed ten-megaton thermonuclear device. It would be safer.

The second that Grieves entered the shelter of the pine forest, he was submerged into a black murky world of indistinct shapes. The ground was uneven and rocky; one misplaced footstep would carry him into a depression where a branch would stab at his face or a chiseled-edged rock would slice at his knees. He was over-excited. He realized that Rusty and the lawyer with the tousled hair and pouting lips, were his. There was no escape for them. He had the car keys. Soon he would have the gun again. And out here, that was everything.

The lone road climbed up the hill to a dead-end at the cabin, or back through the Tamarack swamp for at least twenty-five miles. They had no choice but the road. By looking back toward the clearing he could make out the rise of the roadbed in the moonlight; hear their hushed voices. They were going to do just what he expected - travel north to the cottage. It was at least another four miles. About an hour walk.

In the meantime he had a quadrant of roughly twenty feet by twenty feet to cover to rescue the gun. In the dark, using his hands and his eyes where possible, he should average about twenty minutes, maximum thirty, to complete the search. Then he would make his way back to the car, drive up the hill, and force his captives back into his control.

Or he would kill them right there and be over with it.

He knew approximately where the gun had fallen so he made his way carefully to that point. When he bumped up against the scaly bark of a tree, he stopped to look around him. Nothing looked familiar. For a moment he even lost site of the road. He decided he would start his search here, making growing concentric circles out from the giant pine.

Grieves lowered himself to his knees and pushed his hands through the soggy needle bed. He felt carefully around him and then took two steps forward and repeated his groping of the forest floor.  His surroundings were still and silent with the breath of the forest on his face - a cool moist smell full of decay. The trees around him, so indistinct in the twilight, seemed to vibrate and move in and out of focus. At times he felt it easier to shut his eyes tightly and focus mentally on his hands. The pine needles bit at his palms and fingers. He blamed each cut, each pinprick of surprise, on Redfield.

Grieves had decided some time ago that he actually held the power to permanently disable
the Splicer
. It was a grand scheme, some might say unrealistic and immature, but Grieves believed he had the solution. The first step was to eliminate any possibility that some one like Redfield could pop up somewhere with his subroutines and make it all possible again. But that only solved one problem. What about the hundreds of researchers all over the continent who were working towards the same goal?  Grieves had a plan to deal with new research as well. It would require more money, but that should be forthcoming from Rosenblatt. It would also take long hours, painful untiring research and planning.

The key to Grieves idea was the
Info-net
, the network of tens of thousands of computers used by labs, universities and government all over North America and Europe.  Every day, the growing mountain of biological data was updated and tended. Naturally, a good portion of this information was confidential and therefore locked away, but Grieves had long ago wormed his way into the security systems surrounding these caches of scientific discovery. In many cases
Dante
, or an earlier form of the micronaut, was instrumental in learning passwords and de-constructing carefully conceived security measures. To Grieves, much of this classified data was as accessible as the Sears catalogue. Any discovery that looked close to the kind of technology used in
the Splicer
could be quietly altered, or erased. This was the ultimate video game for Grieves.

But before any of this could be dealt with, Grieves needed to make sure that the code that Rusty had copied from him was gone for good. As this assertion formed itself in his subconscious, his hands struck something cold and smooth. Grieves sucked back his breath and groveled in the soggy pine needles until his hand closed around the object. It was still in one piece. Then Grieves did a strange thing, something that surprised even him. He howled out loud.

Jayne felt more than heard Grieves howl. The pit of her stomach trembled and a wave of goose flesh rolled over her chest and the back of her arms. Within seconds the cloud had smothered any remaining light and the landscape before her became alien and unreal. She heard Rusty's feet spit up gravel as he raced down the road. She followed, feeling a tendril of panic sneak up and into her chest. She took several deep breaths and easily caught up to her client. The panic subsided slightly.
How far can bullets from a handgun travel? How accurately could an amateur like Grieves shoot over this unlit terrain?
She realized that what they needed was mileage between them. She picked up her pace.

:

Grieves had the gun in his grasp and had just reached the edge of the gravel shoulder when he noticed that there was something odd about the car. It had its nose down in the gravel like a cringing dog. Then he saw the tires, deflated, the rims exposed. He swore, circled the rear of the Cutlass and jumped into the front seat. He tried the headlights, which lit up the area in front of the car, but due to the cant of the vehicle, not much else. He pushed the keys in and started the engine. Then he pushed the gear selector down angrily and floored the gas pedal. The car wobbled ahead. The front wheels no longer had any other purpose but to frustrate the cars forward movement. The rubber flapped on the rims and then dug into the soft shoulder. Grieves flipped the transmission into reverse, backed the car up violently, and then tried again, aiming toward the center of the road. The steering wheel bucked in his hand as he increased his speed.