The Athena Factor

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Authors: W. Michael Gear

BOOK: The Athena Factor
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.
To
Jim and “Tuck” Mills
in hopes that
the joy of the hunt
forever fills your hearts.
The Athena Factor
was written with the help and encouragement of John Meyer, Jr., vice president of sales and the international training division at Heckler & Koch in Sterling, Virginia. John graciously allowed us to participate in the elite HK Executive Protection course. Additional appreciation is extended to Patsy Drew-Rios, Forrest “Skip” Carroll, Bob Schneider, Tom Taylor, and the 9-02 Executive Training class; thank you all for indulging an amateur among professionals. If
The Athena Factor
succeeds, it is due to your intense and comprehensive training.
A novel isn't created in a vacuum. Half of this work is Kathleen O'Neal Gear's. Bob Gleason added his input while Eric Raab shepherded the novel to completion. To our copy editor, Deanna Hoak, go the highest praises and appreciation. Deanna catches my goofs. Finally, thanks to Linda Quinton, Elena Stokes, Kathleen Fogarty, Brian Heller, and David Moench for their dedication to the story.
EAST CALDER, SCOTLAND
T
hat morning, Gregor McEwan was faced with two of his greatest hatreds: He hated to rush. He hated hangovers even more. A bottle of orange juice, followed by a breakfast of rashers, toast and jam, and cheddar-laced eggs had taken neither the edge off his quaking nerves nor the quiver out of his rebellious stomach. They had, however, dulled the sour taste of undigested red ale that still cloyed the back of his tongue.
Nothing would cut the headache but time.
The clock showed half seven, and given the thick fog hanging beyond the window, his normal forty-five-minute commute to the lab would be doubled.
Gregor stopped in the hallway, where he donned his wool coat and looked at the plaque hung there for all to see.
TO GREGOR A. McEWAN
OUR BRIGHTEST STAR
FOR OUTSTANDING LEADERSHIP
Q-GEN LABORATORIES
Beside it was a framed glossy photo showing Gregor wearing a tweed jacket, narrow dark blue tie, and pressed trousers. For once his sandy hair had been combed, and the blaze of superiority in his dark brown eyes had been fairly won. Gregor liked his face—smooth-shaven, with a handsome combination of angles over a strong chin. At the podium beside him stood Q-Gen's president, Calvin Fowler. Fowler was handing Gregor a check along with the plaque. They were smiling at the camera, plaque in one hand, the check in the other. Gregor thought they looked like the sort
of self-congratulatory politicians who. concocted flawed Middle Eastern peace accords.
Gregor, a Ph.D. two years out of Cambridge, had just turned twenty-nine, and already he had become the most successful team leader at Q-Gen.
Not that he wasn't without faults. He had serious failings when it came to both women and full-bodied ales. As had been the case last night when Beatrice stood him up at the Chop and Ale. Spurned by one, he had overindulged in the other.
Which was why he was miserable, hungover, and late to work. Not that it actually mattered in the grand scheme of things. He had no peers at Q-Gen when it came to coaxing zygotes to begin that initial stage of division that led to a viable embryo. He rarely put in less than a sixty-hour week. So even if he was a wee bit late on occasion, nothing would be said by his superiors.
Gregor didn't mind that his colleagues called him a prick. Given his recent successes in nuclear DNA extraction while maintaining cytoplasmic integrity, he could find work in any laboratory in the world. At that very moment he and his team were drafting a seminal paper for publication in the prestigious journal
Nature
that would revolutionize the biotech world the way Wilmut and Campbell had done with Dolly.
The key was in avoiding cellular disturbance as the large mass of nuclear DNA was extracted and replaced. The more the organelles—the working structures inside the cell—were disturbed, the less likely the chance for success.
Dolly, it turned out, had been a miracle. Given the techniques of the time, her creation had been the equivalent of brain surgery accomplished with a stone ax. Gregor and his Q-Gen team were taking the manipulation of reproductive science in totally new directions.
Assuming his head didn't split from the damned hangover and kill him first.
“The price of greatness,” he told his reflection. Then winked at himself, just for good luck. He reached down for his briefcase where it sat by his rubber boots and plucked his wool cap from its peg before opening the door.
The morning smelled cool and damp. Thick gray fog softened the lines of his hedgerow and the trellised gate that let out onto the road. He turned right, following the stepping stones embedded in his uncut grass to his old green Jaguar. Skid marks in the gravel marked where the car had slewed to a stop mere inches from a cock-up.
Gregor winced, glancing suspiciously at the body. Water beaded and trickled in round droplets from the waxed surface, but no dents or scrapes marred the sleek metal.
It appeared he hadn't hit anything on the way home. Thank God for that! He'd been lucky again.
“Have to stop that shit,” he muttered as he walked up to the driver's door and fished his keys from his pocket. He lifted the lever, surprised to find it locked.
He never locked the car here, so far out in the country. Using his fingers he slicked the dampness from the glass to see the lock was down. He squinted at his key fob. Pressing the right button, the locks clicked up.
“Bloody hell.” He squinted against the pain in his head and a sudden queasiness that tightened around his breakfast and made his mouth water. He pressed his eyes closed, willing the sickness away.
When he finally opened them, two men had stepped up to take positions on either side of him. It was as if they had just popped out of the fog.
He jumped, startled, whirling about and stammering, “Who're you? Damn! Gave me a start, you did.”
“Dr. McEwan,” the man to his right said with an accented voice. “We are sorry to bother you.”
Gregor peered past the lowered brim of the man's dew-silvered wool cap, seeing intense black eyes and a thin hooked nose above a severe mouth. He looked Arab or Persian. His right hand was balled in the coat's large pocket.
The companion had a thickset body with powerful shoulders and a similar, if broader, face atop a hard jaw. They both wore long waxed-cloth jackets over denim pants. Heavy hiking boots, dark with dew, impressed patterns into the gravel. “Right, right.” Gregor recovered, one hand to his heart. “Look, I'm running bloody late. Whatever it is, can it
wait until later? My number's in the book. Ring me up or leave a message on the machine.”
“We hate to bother,” the first man said, stepping close. His hand slipped free of the pocket. Gregor blinked, his mind stumbling over the reality of the sleek black pistol pointed at his navel.
“Shit!” Was that a real gun? “Look, I don't know what this is about, but if I did something last night, I bloody well apologize. I'll make it square, whatever it was. Honest, you don't have to go to extremes, right?”
“You will come with us.” The second man's voice had a harsh raspy quality.
“It is not what you have done,” the first rejoined. “It is what you
will
do. Hold still. This will hurt only a little.”
From the corner of his eye, he caught the second man's quick movement. Arms, strong as steel bands, tightened around him. His briefcase gave a hollow thunk as it fell to the gravel.
“I …” Gregor never finished. The first man stepped close, the pistol jamming into Gregor's stomach. For an instant their eyes held—remorseless inevitability behind the Arab's. The man's other hand rose. Gregor caught a glimpse of the needle: a filament on the syringe. Then a sharp sting was followed by a cool rush into the side of his neck.
Gregor opened his mouth to scream, but the pistol speared hard under his solar plexus.
Dear God! What's happening to me
? This couldn't be happening! Not to him! He was a scientist, for God's sake! It wasn't possible. It just wasn't … .
His last memory was of those hard black eyes dropping away into eternity.
WOODLAND, CALIFORNIA
The black minute hand pointed at the ten, and the thick hour hand had crept way past the eleven. Nancy Hartlee arched her back as she studied the clock. The lab was cluttered with tubes and tube racks, rows of micropipettes, several microscopes,
different sizes of centrifuges and electrophoresis gel trays with wires running to the power supplies, two transilluminators, a PCR machine, and a big hood next to the autoclave. It all looked stark under the white fluorescent light.
Nancy had passed her twenty-seventh birthday two days ago and had missed the celebration. Something about being unable to fit it into her twenty-hour days. When at work she kept her shoulder-length brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Green eyes and a delicate nose didn't quite balance the strong jaw and sharp cheeks. She wasn't homely, just different. Oddly, men thought her attractive, mostly because of the poise and the natural grace with which she carried herself. Swimming had been her passion during her high school years; she had the state championship medals on her wall to prove it.
She'd been in the lab for sixteen intense hours. No wonder her whole body ached, and she couldn't think straight. Stretching didn't seem to help the cramps in her back. Twelve hours ago, she'd seen the clock hands in the same position—but that had been just before she, Mark, and Jim had walked down the hall, out to the parking lot, and bought warm burritos from the canteen van.
“Hey,” Nancy called as she returned her attention to the micrographs on the light table. “What's the verdict?”
Jim poked his head around the lab door and replied, “We're there! Mark just placed the last tray in the incubator. As far as we can tell, everything's okay.” He grinned. “Cool, huh?”
“Great. Button up and get the hell out of here. If you hurry, you can still make it before midnight.” She gave him a meaningful nod. “
Just
before midnight.”
She rubbed her tired eyes and walked back to her little cubicle of an office. The light's white glow ate right through her into her brain. She closed her eyes for a moment's respite. When she blinked them open again, the world was maddeningly just the way she'd left it.
She slid into her chair, rolled in front of the computer, and began tapping in her notes. Seventeen of their twenty specimens were positive and ready for implantation. The oocytes
had been interrupted at the second meiosis, the point where the maternal chromosomes were duplicated and separated. In that state her team had incised the cellular wall with their latest generation nanoscalpel and carefully removed the nuclear DNA through a process called enucleation.
Nanotechnology was their prize. Nancy had always believed that many of the problems in reliably cloning mammals lay in the manner in which nuclear DNA was removed and reinserted into the host oocyte. Their nanoscalpel sliced through the plasma membrane, the vitelline space, and the zona pellucida instead of punching through them with all the finesse of a blunt-nosed bullet the way the older pipettes did.
Then nuclear DNA from a donor—for ethical reasons Nancy had used her own—had been inserted. The cytoplasm, the liquid soup of cellular function, was comprehensively monitored for minute changes in chemistry. Rumor had it that Q-Gen was way ahead of her team when it came to that. Let them be. She had the nanoscalpel.
Nancy recorded the last of her observations as Mark called, “Good night. See you … when?”
“Take tomorrow off. Sleep. Rest. Recharge your batteries.”
“Cool! Good night.”
She turned back to the screen and frowned. They had been sure that the key to a viable clone lay in the cytoplasm and the orientation of the inserted nuclear DNA. Cellular trauma and disruption to the organelles, especially the endoplasmic reticulum, had to be minimized; the nuclear DNA had to be placed in just the right position to ensure the embryo's correct development.
Finishing her notes, she smiled up at the picture over her desk. There, a bright-eyed baby chimp lay cuddled in its mother's arms. Her first triumph.
Nancy saved her work, backed it up, and put the computer into sleep mode before she found her purse and walked to the door. Flipping off the lights, she locked up, set the security system, and yawned as she tottered down the hall. The fifteen-minute drive to her apartment was going to feel interminable.
Nevertheless, as she stepped out into the cool California night, she experienced a sense of exhilaration. If they had
seventeen of twenty viable embryos, they had beaten the odds. She was already composing the article for Science in her head.
Three vehicles were left in the lot. The security guy's Ford pickup was off in the corner, and an unfamiliar Excursion gleamed in the spot beside her battered Toyota. Had someone gotten a new SUV? And such a monster, at that?
Her tired mind dismissed it as she walked between the vehicles and bent to insert her key into the lock.
The soft click of a door behind her was the only warning.
It came much too late.
ECHUNGA FARMS, NEAR ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Brian Everly kicked manure from his rubber overshoes and climbed the cement steps to the farm office. Echunga Farms Ltd. had a large complex of paddocks and hay barns with a tool shed and mechanical building for the storage of tractors and loaders.
Brian's four-door Holden sedan was parked on the other side of the fence next to a hay wagon. He could see heat waves on the bonnet as the faded brown paint baked in the hot sun.
He opened the office door, slipped off his overshoes, and stepped inside.
Clairice Higgins sat at the desk. She looked up and arched an inquisitive eyebrow. She was in her forties, gray-haired, with a round face used to smiling. Too many years in the Aussie sun had faded her blue eyes and taken its toll on her wrinkling skin.
Brian smiled. “All three of the lambs are doing well. No signs of any abnormality at all. The vet just left with blood and urine specimens to run at university, but I think they're doing brilliantly.”
“And the celebrities?” she asked.
Brian turned slightly so he could look out the window at the “wolf” building. This wasn't a real wolf, but the once-extinct marsupial wolf,
Thylacinus cynocephalus,
a predator
native to Australia before the arrival of the Europeans. Brian liked to say “once-extinct” because now two immature females were exploring the hay out in the wolf building. The third, a little male, had just begun peeking out of Bertha's pouch. Bertha was a matronly, if somewhat foul-tempered, giant red kangaroo. Her uteri had been host to “Beth” the first wolf, and then “Gina” and “Max” in sequence.
Clairice didn't jest when she called them celebrities. ABC, BBC, and a slew of American, French, and Japanese media had paraded through the farm when Beth was first born.
Echunga Farms had been host to the first successful resurrection of an extinct species. Brian, working in a postdoctoral position, had succeeded where so many had failed. Not just once, but with three different embryos created from three different museum-derived donor specimens. He was waiting for the patent to be registered before he authored his first refereed paper on the methodology.
“Max is a terror,” Brian replied. “I'm afraid if he bites Bertha one more time, she's going to boot him right through the wall.”
“So the vet says they're healthy?” Clairice lifted an eyebrow. “I've got to phone in to the ABC in Melbourne, you know. They want weekly reports. A bit of Aussie pride, right? We were the first.”
Brian sobered. “I wish they wouldn't be so bloody sure of themselves. It is a first. I keep reminding people of that. They have forgotten that we only got three successes out of four hundred and six attempts. So much can still go wrong. It's like being in the red center, right? We don't know where we're at, or if there's even water at the end of the road. It's damned easy to get lost when you're a trailblazer.”
Clairice reached for her glasses, rubbed them on her blue cotton skirt, and slipped them on. “All I need to say is that they are still alive and healthy. One day at a time.”
“Right. I'm out of here. I have a meeting this afternoon at the agricultural station. Martin wants to go over some figures, and then it's off to the solicitor.”
“Price of success. Drive carefully,” Clairice added as she returned her attention to the papers on her desk.
Brian walked through the office and out the front door. He followed the cement walk to his Holden and slipped into the driver's seat. The vinyl on the dash was cracked, the steering wheel warm under his hands. The car smelled old and dusty in the hot air.
The engine ground, squealed, and roared to life when Brian turned the key. He grasped the shift lever with his left hand, slipping it into reverse. Once he backed around the hay wagon he followed the road out. At the security gate, the guard waved while the chain-link gate rumbled open.
Brian turned onto the blacktop and ran through the gears. Someday soon, when the paperwork was done and his process licensed, he'd have enough for a nice car. Maybe a Lexus or top-line Toyota.
Winding along the banks of Echunga Creek, he passed manicured farms alternating with virgin patches of eucalyptus trees. He slowed, downshifting as he approached the intersection. A man was standing beside the stop sign where the road T'd at Mt. Bold Reservoir. To Brian's surprise, he waved, and stepped over as the Holden's squeaking brakes brought the vehicle to a stop.
“Dr. Everly?” He leaned down, smiling into the window. He wore a brown Akubra hat, a light canvas jacket, and a shirt open at the collar. Something about him, the dark thin features, sent the briefest of warnings.
“Yes, but I can't chat now. Please, call my office and they will be most happy to …” The thin black pistol was centered between Brian's eyes.
“Do not move, Dr. Everly,” the man's accented voice cooed. “Do not try to drive off. It will only get you killed.”
Stunned, wordless, Brian was barely aware of the second man who walked up on the car's off side. It took all of his will to glance away from the gun when the door clicked open. A big man, also Arab-looking, had settled into the passenger seat to his left.
“You will follow my friend's instructions, Doctor, and you will not be hurt.” The gunman smiled as he opened the rear door and slipped into the seat. “On the contrary, we want you to be very, very healthy.”

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