The Black Silent (18 page)

"You see where this is leading?" Sam said. "American Bayou would have a huge stake in what we're looking at here. In the merger Ben may not only have the key for Sanker with aging, he may also have the key for American Bayou. If American Bayou obtains a big energy discovery, that would enable them to win in this merger struggle."

"But who says you can use this methane?"

"That's a good point," Sam said. "Gempshorn might know something about that."

"It's probably not relevant, but Gempshorn had cancer."

"What do you mean
had?"

The windows were fogging, reducing visibility. Sam started the motor and turned on the defrost. Twenty minutes was forever.

"I don't know. He's still alive. In fact, that day I saw them, Nelson had an IV plugged into his arm. Said it was for the cancer, but said not to tell anyone because his family didn't know. He didn't want to worry them."

"Do you know for a fact he was treating cancer?" Sam asked. "Doesn't that seem odd, doing chemotherapy at a friend's home?"

"Ben's a biologist, but, yeah, I suppose it does."

"What if they were panicking in part because you saw the IV?"

"God, you have a suspicious mind. On the other hand . . ." She stopped.

"They told you nothing about the IV?" "They said it was doing good things, working, whatever, and they asked that I keep it confidential."

"And, of course, this cries out for the possible conclusion that they were giving him some kind of antiaging formulation. Would that be a huge leap?"

"I think it would," Haley said. "I never knew Ben to experiment with people. It's completely unethical without an approved trial, and he had no approved drug trials that I know about."

"At any rate this document is amazing," Sam said. "And Gibbons was just sitting on it."

"The question's whether it has anything to do with long life."

"I see more pages," Sam said.

Haley read for a minute, while Sam studied a couple men parking a car in the marina.

They had a big anchor in the back of their pickup. He doubted Frick would do anything that subtle, but he wished Rachael would hurry.

"Oh, my God." Her voice startled him. "Here's something else altogether. One of Ben's colleagues shows that this methane could explode up from the ocean floor." Sam looked around, watching for Rachael, watching for deputies.

"They think methane explosions have caused catastrophes a number of times already.

Some of this looks like a literature review to substantiate the calculations," she said as she flipped through the pages.

"According to this, it could have caused the mass extinction at the end of the Permian Era. Ninety-five percent of the marine species and seventy percent of land animals and plants. Gone."

"That's scary, but it's just a guess." "It says, 'Methane was also involved in precipitating a giant underwater slide off Norway. . .' Man, we're talking a massive one. Sam. It was eight thousand years ago, but it created tsunamis sixty-five feet high. Compare that to Indonesia. An earthquake triggered the methane release, and that caused the landslide."

Sam nodded, his eyes still on the parking lot. "Oh, my God. They think that in prehistoric times the atmosphere itself lit on fire as a result of a methane release. Or even if there wasn't enough to burn, this says, oxygen could get so thin it would be like living on top of a sixteen-thousand-foot mountain."

That one Sam could imagine, having climbed Mt. McKinley as a teenager with his father. Sixteen thousand feet was substantial. He could imagine someone sitting in their living room unable to breathe except in gasps, nauseated, head aching . . . incapacitated.

"Listen to this conclusion," she continued. '"The world slumbers not realizing the great peril of an unstoppable chain reaction methane release.'

"'The seafloor methane cycle is part of earth's carbon cycle and exercises a great influence over climate shifts that has not been sufficiently studied. Vast quantities of methane have been stored in ocean sediments and there are various potential mechanisms for catastrophic release.' But there is a note here that Ben wonders if this would happen over time, threatening a crisis round of global warming, rather than asphyxiation in your living room."

"Astounding, perhaps deadly either way," Sam said. "I get Ben's meaning now. 'One sigh and we all die.'"

He checked his watch. "It's time."

A
fter what Gibbons said, Sam had altered the escape and diversion plan to allow for a return into the Sanker Foundation facility. It was worth taking one last look inside to find Ben or more of his research. Then, depending on what he found, or didn't find, they'd leave the island and go to Lopez Island across the channel, per the original plan.

Haley appeared as stunned on the review of the plan as she had the first time. She bore a significant responsibility in the scheme to keep Sam alive while they went after Ben.

Sam could see that she appreciated being trusted to this degree. The problem was, though, that what she would be doing was very dangerous, and he wasn't sure she could do it and survive. A bond had been growing between them, and Sam realized that he was probably more concerned about Haley's safety than she was worried about herself.

The parking lot was well-lit, but the mist blowing through left halos everywhere, the fog sending an extra chill down the backbone, especially when one contemplated extreme boat maneuvers in the black of the night.

Sam turned to her. "There's something I need to tell you. It's about the work I've done."

"I know it's been ugly. You've told me enough to know that."

"It's not just that. I've lost a lot of people. Some were people I loved. So far, I haven't lost me. But what works for me doesn't always work for my fellow travelers. And here's the thing, Haley: I might be able to hit Sanker and do the rest without you. Would you consider walking to a friend's house and just hiding until this is over?"

"Absolutely not," she said. "Your plan depends on diversion, on rattling Frick and making him look weak in front of the deputies. I see how it works—Ben's life, our lives, depend on it—and I'm going to do it."

"I know how important Ben is to you. And stopping Frick." "That's right. Thanks to Ben, I'm an experienced pilot, and thanks to growing up in these islands—and my ex-boyfriend and Ben—I know a lot about fast boats.

"I need to live long enough to see my heel on Frick's neck," she said. "If I die, I swear I won't hold it against you."

At that, he struggled to smile but couldn't quite pull it off.

"We can't let Frick hurt Ben," she continued. "You just need to trust yourself. I don't know what those people did to you, to your legs, but I know you're here, and so one way or another you beat them."

He looked at his watch. Rachael was due. "If we assume that Ben discovered something that would slow aging, or prolong youth, how long ago do you suppose he did it?" Sam said.

"I'd say quite a while. Frick came to Sanker nine months ago, so it was probably at least three months previous that Ben somehow tipped his hand to Sanker that he had something of value working. It must have been years in the making."

"So Ben has kept his work to himself a long time."

"Yeah," she said. "And let's not forget Glaucus, the youngest old octopus in the world."

"Right. How old's he?"

"Now I have figured out that he is probably seven. And it seems like Ben could have had something five years ago, if that's the case. Or maybe even seven if he genetically altered Glaucus at conception."

"There she is," Sam said. A car had pulled in behind them.

"What now?"

"I've got to go down to the dock with her and help her find a hiding place until you come by with Frick's boat. I'll get a portable VHF radio from a friend's boat. I'll leave her there and she'll get ready. Then we've got to go park her car."

"Was this sort of thing routine for you during the great silent period?" Haley asked.

Sam opened the door. "Regrettably, it was."

It had come to Frick at a moment of frustration. McStott was droning on, taking a long time to say nothing, and something triggered a memory of Sarah James. Her mention of the safe-deposit box had seemed choreographed—another of Ben Anderson's precautions. She lived on Lopez Island and commuted daily to Friday Harbor on her speedboat. As his assistant she knew Anderson's comings and goings, and she was also his close friend. Frick suspected that they had become lovers, or at least that they thought about it.

He needed Sarah under his control. Now.

Frick sent men to fetch her and authorized them to soften her up on the way. He started to think of a cover story for her abduction, then stopped. At the moment it was a waste of his time. If things flew much more out of control, or took much longer, his deal with Sanker would be history, anyway. If that happened, it would be every man for himself, and cover stories and disappearing bodies would start to lose their importance.

He realized that Khan was talking to him. "McStott thinks his guys found something."

"So in plain English," Frick said, "what did they find?" "Anderson was making something he called an Arc regimen. And he thinks it was like a production deal, maybe for animal experiments."

"So he called it an Arc regimen. Big deal. How's it work? What's it do?"

"Well, if McStott knew
that,
he'd probably be here instead of in the lab. Right?"

Frick tolerated the sarcasm, waiting for Khan, who seemed to have something to say.

"What?" Frick said.

"It seems to me that what we're doing is nearly impossible. But if we
could
pull it off, we'd be in the catbird seat and it would be worth a hell of a lot more than whatever you're getting paid to retrieve it."

Funny how Khan's mind worked like Frick's own. "What's your point?"

"Maybe we're both working for the wrong people," Khan said. "Maybe we should be working for ourselves. Could be a chance of a lifetime if there's anything to this bullshit."

"I'll think about it. Get that weasel McStott in here."

It took a few minutes for McStott to arrive.

"Dr. McStott," Frick said in mock-grandiose tones, "how would you and some of your colleagues like to win the Nobel?"

"Only if I earned it."

Liar.
McStott's beady rat eyes shifted and looked away. Truly, the man had led a despicable existence, Frick thought.

Working in the church, he hummed Satan's tune. As for himself, at least Frick didn't question which choir practice to attend.

It was quiet, cold, and overcast and the northwest winter damp was pervasive. Most people were off the streets and the few who were out had their necks pulled down inside their heavy coats and their hands shoved deep in their pockets. Sam had a great tolerance for cold, but the moldy damp of this wet fall had him on the verge of shivering.

"Let's leave it here in the shadows," Sam said of Rachael's car. Other automobiles lined Warbass Street; one more wouldn't be a standout. "Leave your cell phone in it with the dry clothes and take Lattimer's car. Stay on the back streets and I'll meet you off Guard Street on Marguerite, in twenty minutes. Rachael and I will walk back to the docks.

Good luck." He kissed Haley on the cheek.

Sam looked at his watch. It was 6:45 p.m. Rachael walked beside him, obviously succumbing, bit by bit, to the shivers. They took their time and Sam made it a point to be somewhat aimless in his movements, stopping now and then to look at anything that gave an excuse. At the Coldwell Banker's offices he looked at the properties on the outside wall neatly arranged in a glass display case.

Sam's mind kept returning to Ben's research. He supposed that whatever the discovery was, it would be like most new things—not as good as initially thought. Perhaps it would add a few years to a person's life or identify a new energy source that wasn't cost-effective to mine.

For a moment, though, Sam let himself imagine something that would add hundreds of years to a human life span. Administering the elixir to large groups would be expensive because there would probably be scarcity, at least initially. That would mean rules about allocation. Who would choose who gets a long life? Literally everyone had the aging disease. Once a cure appeared, age would be
the
dread killer on the planet.

It didn't take much for Sam to imagine the envy, even violence, between the haves and the have-nots.

Would everybody with money get the stuff? Would the government try to make sure that it wasn't available to terrorists or people with violent propensities—or people who supported "evil" endeavors? Would there be some sort of test to qualify applicants?

Would the test have a moral component? Would you give it to people on welfare?

The more he thought about it, the more he realized how treacherous such a discovery would be.

Ben's research had turned up more than the fountain of youth-issue, though. He was also concerned about people dying in a methane disaster, and Sam wondered exactly how imminent such a thing might be. Big meteors and asteroids would eventually strike the earth, but one hoped it wouldn't be any time soon. Underwater lava flows were not that unusual and neither were landslides and volcanoes. It was puzzling how the same scientist seemed to be obsessed by two such different research tracks. One idea was living and the other dying. Sam guessed that one could view both notions as the problem of staying alive. That and the Arc microbe seemed to connect the two. There had to be more, something they weren't yet seeing.

As he and Rachael walked down the waterfront road, Sam realized he'd lost track of his surroundings for a minute or more. He never allowed that on the job, instead striving to live keenly in the moment, aware of everything in his environment. It was how he had remained alive. This daydreaming was completely out of character. It struck him then that the notion of extreme longevity was a beguiling mistress. He saw a sheriff's boat sitting with its running lights on at

the outer entrance to the moorages, where a deputy could see any passing vessel. Sam wondered whether it would be a real deputy or some Frick stooge, like the fellow who'd gotten burned at Ben's.