The Black Silent (46 page)

They went back in. As they walked through the first floor of the lodge, they found a back bedroom with four more men on the floor. The men looked rough and ready, even in repose: definitely Frick men.

"It's odd that four men were all right here," Sam said. "I wonder what they were looking at?"

Sam looked around, searching the walls and the floor. Haley followed, doing the same.

The men lay near a heavy large trunk. Closer inspection of the men and the floor revealed that they probably were gassed, shot by a Taser, and then anesthetized with a hypodermic in the neck. It was elaborate.

Haley pointed at the trunk, and Sam nodded in agreement. Together they pushed on the trunk, but it wouldn't move. It took a moment to realize that it was affixed firmly to the floor. They tried opening it, but it was locked.

"This trunk is curious," Sam said.

"Yes, it is," a voice said. It seemed to come from inside the trunk.

Sam smiled. Such incredible surprises amused him.

"Would it be. . .?"

"Ben Anderson and company."

The trunk slowly began to open. Sam and Haley stepped back in disbelief. Ben Anderson stuck his head out. Oddly, he wore handcuffs.

Without another thought Haley leaned forward and hugged him long and hard.

"Oh, thank God you're all right," she said.

After they had hugged again, and reproclaimed their joy at seeing one another, Sam cocked his head and pointed at Ben's handcuffs.

"Oh. Yes. If you want to come down, you'll have to put these on. My friends are the anxious sort. Very anxious, actually."

"Where would we be going?" For some reason Sam felt less anxious than he knew he ought to.

"Under this lodge is a very large hollowed-out vault in the rock, and below that an exit out to the sea, as well as tunnels leading to other exits above ground. It's a big place down here."

"These islands are all glacial till," Haley said. "You taught me that yourself. How can there be a cavern?"

In place of an answer Ben held out two sets of cuffs. "I know I haven't been . . . truthful with you." He was directing his comments at Haley, but he glanced at Sam as well. "You can trust me, if that's what you're wondering."

Sam wondered about Ben's "friends," but he didn't see a choice in the matter. First he moved the bodies away from the trunk in hopes of keeping the trunk's secret a secret.

Then he accepted the cuffs, along with Haley.

Ben led them down a long set of stairs. Sam closed the trunk over their heads and latched the strong but simple lock.

"Miners around the turn of the century made part of this," Ben said, belatedly answering Haley. "So in that sense it's not truly a cavern. For some reason there's limestone in this granite and that's a riddle that the geologists can debate. Now you'll get an idea just how giant these rocks can get. One of them had a hollow in it, as you'll see below."

Sam shook his head silently. This had become surreal, a sort of mix of
Alice in
Wonderland
and
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
with Ben playing the role either of the white rabbit or the chocolatier, take your choice.

There were stairs and lots of them, a new test for Sam's legs. For twenty feet or so the steps had been carved in the rock; after that, they were made of wood, going down in a square-edged spiral. Twenty to thirty men stood at the bottom, all gazing upward as they descended. One of them was Lattimer Gibbons. Two were younger men armed with no-nonsense Uzis, both bulky, with backs straight and shoulders squared, obviously the sort whose business was protection. Sam didn't see the two women mentioned in the documents.

As they reached the cavern floor, Sam noted a silver-haired man with a mustache and a bruise on his cheek, who seemed to be calling the shots. He had a perpetual slight smile as a regular part of his expression, as if none of the ironies of life were ever lost on him.

Of the group he seemed the most confident, speaking in short, clipped sentences when he wanted one of the Uzi fellows to move.

"Nelson Gempshorn," Ben said.

Sam and Gempshorn nodded at one another.

As Sam and Haley stood for introductions, they took in the whole of the cavern, which was larger than Sam had expected, and carved from gray stones with occasional white streaks in the walls. In the middle of the man-made cave, and nearly filling it, stood a structure that looked like a typical upper-middle-class house, complete with siding and windows—except that the roof angles were shallow and the shape was rather boxlike.

The floor around the building was stamped concrete that Sam recognized from one area of the Sanker lab complex. Coming from the top of the building, and disappearing into the side of the cave, ran a very large duct pipe.

Another extraordinary feature of the place was a giant copper tank, the size of a two-car garage, in the shape of an ellipse, with all manner of tubes and wire about it. With its hand-crafted look, the contraption appeared to be something out of a nineteenth-century science-fiction story.

"What on earth is that?" Haley asked. "Don't tell me, let me guess. You grow Arcs under pressure and with no oxygen in it."

"Very good," Ben said, stepping closer to hold her hand. He indicated the general space.

"We imported labor to do the rock work and build the lab. Most of the workers, I'm embarrassed to say, were in the country legally but working illegally. We took the best of some Mexican crews building condos for Americans in Baja. When they were down here, they didn't even know where they were. We built the whole thing in ten weeks. No one left the compound during underground construction. It was a phenomenal effort. Of course, the copper vat was built by some very curious metalworkers in a metal-fab shop three states away."

Sam looked around, wondering at both the physical plant and the well-preserved, older gentlemen standing around him.

"We have a great shaft down to the base of the cliffs that comes out in the sea.

Originally we used it to house a large conveyor that moved some of the broken-up rock out to the sea bottom. It also served as an underwater test bed for our research ideas.

That was, and is, its most important function. Today its third and final use comes into play: it's a useful hidden entry to the lab, and an emergency exit."

"How did you fund this project?" Sam asked.

"All courtesy of American Bayou Technologies."

Haley and Sam shared a look, wondering how that worked.

"I'm astounded," Haley said. "All those times you said you were going to Seattle, you were coming here, weren't you?"

Ben looked a little sheepish and Sam knew that Haley was getting heated up.

"I don't see how you could do this . . .," she began. "Haley, there is a special calling for you. It is a very important position of leadership. In the coming days you will understand why I had to tell you nothing."

To Sam, Ben's words were a great illumination of the twilight that surrounded the grand plan. But his attention returned to Ben's wrists. Of all the scientists in the cavern, Ben was the only one wearing handcuffs. Ben anticipated Sam's question.

"Nelson is the president of our little club at the moment," Ben said. "He speaks for the group. We had a very big misunderstanding, which we've mostly straightened out."

"I see," Sam said. "And I gather you're not part of the group."

"He is one of us," Nelson said. "We're just cautious about Ben."

"Why is that?" Sam asked quickly before Haley could protest.

"Because he is an idealist and we are dealing with hard, practical realities." Nelson said it without derision and Ben seemed to accept it that way.

"It's also because they are slightly paranoid from the Arc regimen and don't really know it," Ben said in a stage whisper.

"That's your view," said Nelson good-naturedly.

From above came the sound of an electrical motor and two large metal plates moved to cover the entry hole, one immediately under the trunk, the other just above the spiral wooden staircase. It would take hours or days to break through the metal plates. Going around them would entail burrowing through solid granite.

As the plates settled into place, one of the beefy security men unlocked Sam's handcuffs. Before Sam could comment, the guard refastened them behind Sam's back.

"I'm Sam and I'm pleased to meet you," he said to the beefcake.

The man nodded, but his face didn't change expressions. "I've heard from Ben that you're a guy who knows his way around."

The other guard never moved his Uzi from Sam's midriff.

"Let's go to the conference room," Ben said, seeming to pay no attention to the Uzis or the handcuffs.

Inside, the house-cum-laboratory was crammed with equipment; in the middle stood a large workbench with a vent over its top. To the right, before entering the lab, was a conference room as spartan and functional as the lab itself.

"The amenities stay topside," Ben said, as if to explain as the group squeezed into the room.

No one responded.

"This thing with the guns and cuffs is silly," Ben said.

"When the whole world will soon be plotting against you," said Nelson, "it is normal to be paranoid." He smiled slightly.

"All right," Ben said. "Everyone here but me, Len, and Stu is on what we call the Arc regimen. Nelson is on a modified lesser form. Hence, he's a little less paranoid."

Nelson didn't smile this time.

"We've read about it," Haley said.

"What have you read?"

Haley explained quickly and very succinctly.

"You got into Sarah's computer," Ben said. "Good for you."

"How were we supposed to know to look there?" Haley asked.

"You got your birthday pearls?"

"Yes," Haley said.

"There was a line drawing in there. It was of a watercolor at Sarah's place. Back of the watercolor."

"Oh," Haley said.

"You must have had your hands full," Sam said, looking at Nelson Gempshorn when he said it.

"I have, for some time," Ben said. "And given the situation above us, it's time the counsel voted."

Sam and Haley shared another glance, wondering what this could mean.

Nelson looked uncertain; the rest of the group appeared to be concerned, but no one spoke.

Ben turned to Sam. "I believe I have persuaded them that we need to completely cloak the secrets of longevity. Destroying files and notes is one thing. You and Frick probably have all that's left, in the way of documentation. To finish the job we need to release Glaueus into the sea. He has genetic markers that could be reverse-engineered to reveal part of the regimen."

"But he could reproduce," Haley said.

"No. He can't," Ben said. "I'll explain, but first we need the vote." He addressed his next comment to the group of scientists: "I have to be freed along with Sam and Haley to go release Glaueus."

As Nelson rose and left to discuss the matter with an apparent American Bayou fellow executive, Ben told the other men, "I would like to talk in private."

argument the others left and closed the conference room door.

Haley started to speak, but Ben interrupted her, a grave look on his face.

"Let me explain, sweetie. I kept you out of this because we were breaking the law. If you have an unapproved pharmaceutical and you give it to someone in order to stop them from dying, you are breaking the law. Maybe not a moral law but some regulation or other of the federal government. I knew eventually I'd need someone completely clean and un-involved to be a leader and an intermediary with the government. I hoped you would be one of those people. I was going to bring you in, once we made a deal in principle with the government."

"It makes sense to me," Sam said, but he could tell that Haley didn't completely buy it.

In time she would.

"What was the big misunderstanding you had with Nelson?" Sam asked.

Ben lowered his voice. "For a long time I've been sure that Sanker would do anything to get sole ownership of the regimen. So I created an imaginary persona—I called him Judas—to contact Sanker. Judas was a turncoat, someone close to me, who told them a lot and offered to sell me out."

Sam couldn't help but smile at the crafty counterintelli-gence plan that Ben had concocted.

"When Judas contacted them," Ben said, "instead of calling me, Sanker worked with Judas against me, including hiring Frick."

Sam had a guess. "Did Lattimer Gibbons play 'Judas' for you?"

Ben nodded. "When I knew Sanker was bad, I did some things. I was also worried about my colleagues." He nodded in the direction of Nelson and the group. "The regimen affected their mental condition."

"We read about that," Haley said.

"So are you and the Arc regimen scientists on the same side, seeing eye to eye? With handcuffs?" Sam said wryly.

"You have to understand that they are slightly paranoid, anyway, and a couple days ago they discovered that all the Arcs in that vat had been deliberately exposed to oxygen by yours truly and the Arc DNA destroyed. The Arcs in the vat died in the microbial sense.

Although I saved some Arcs in a special container, the other scientists did not know that, and this misunderstanding was critical in their thinking. I destroyed all the documentation in the vault beneath this building. That's a pretty outrageous thing to do.

Nelson and the others didn't know I'd saved a batch of Arcs in a special portable container. To reassure them, I had left a note saying that I kept some of the Arc regimen in Seattle and I saved some Arcs as well. They didn't find the note, though, and. . . Well, they went nuts. As a result they did things they shouldn't have done. Like they kidnapped me and brutalized me terribly in a mental sense, although they never intended to hurt me physically.

"Once I explained that I hadn't destroyed all the Arcs— that I had written some things down in Sarah's computer— they became somewhat mollified."

"But not completely," Sam said.

In response Ben held up the cuffs.

"But could they create the Arc regimen without you?"

"Between you and me, probably not. Don't forget, various of them know most of the parts. I think maybe all the parts, generally, if you put all of their knowledge together.