The Delta Factor (25 page)

“You do what's necessary,” the chairman barked, “and I'll get you on the board. Simple as that. Owen MacKenzie is a man of his word. That's something you can bank on.”

“I'll, ah, need some help.”

“Right. Got a pen?”

“Yes.”

“Hang on.” Owen MacKenzie pulled out his pocket diary and thumbed to the telephone directory. He had collected quite a few odd contacts and odder memories along his scramble to the top. “Okay, write this down.” He gave him the number. “Ask for Chico. Tell him Frankie sends his regards, and spell out what you need.”

“Chico,” Whitehurst repeated, his voice faint.

“Right. Now get out there and do what's necessary, Director Whitehurst.”

“You should have called,” Deborah said for the dozenth time.

“I tried a couple of times before we sat down for dinner,” Cliff replied. They were returning to her house Saturday morning from the supermarket. “When I didn't get an answer, I just went ahead and booked myself into the guesthouse. It's not a problem, Debs.”

“Yes it is. I don't like you spending good money for a room. I'm going to have a key cut for you this afternoon, and then you can come and go as you please.”

The offer silenced him. Then, “Thank you, Debs, that means a lot.”

She shrugged it off. “It looks like you're going to be spending a lot of time down here. I don't want you racking up any more hotel bills during your courtship.”

Courtship. It sounded so formal, yet it fit the place and the woman. Blair. He could scarcely think her name without feeling his heart take wings. “Where were you, anyway?”

“After the police got all the details of Tom's kidnap attempt and finally let us go, I decided I'd had enough of this. I went to see a friend who teaches at the university in Norfolk. He's agreed to make some room in his lab, as long as we can be through before the summer break ends.”

“That's great, Debs.”

Her hand made a see-saw motion in the air between them. “Good and not so good. Warren is not all that great shakes at research, which means I'll basically have to do everything myself to get usable results. And what's worse, he is a real publicity hound. I had to spill the beans about what was going on here. Or at least what I think is going on. If it turns out to be true, Warren is going to go as public as a skyrocket. That's not just stretching the boundaries of ethical conduct as far as Pharmacon is concerned. I've snapped them like I was playing with rubber bands.”

“Hey, but look at how they've treated you.”

“Two wrongs don't make a right, Junior. That's one lesson you should have learned by now.” She squinted through the windshield at the old black man who was walking down the middle of the road, waving at them. “What on earth is Reuben up to?”

She pulled up beside the old man, stopped, and rolled down her window. “Good morning, Reuben. What's the matter?”

“Mornin', Miss Debs. Probably ain't nothin',” he replied. “Just seemed a trifle strange to these old eyes, is all.”

“What did?”

“There's a feller out fishin' in front of your house. ‘Cept he ain't got no fishin' gear. And he ain't dressed like no fisherman I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of 'em in my time.”

Deborah cut off her motor, her face suddenly pinched. “Did you get a look at him?”

“Made a point of it, yes ma'am. Don't look like nobody from around here. Black hair all slicked back, skin kinda dark. Got on a fancy suit, dirty white color. Nice shirt, tie, the works. Just sittin' there, watchin' your house like he was up to no good.”

Deborah started the motor. “Climb in, Reuben. You mind if we go use your telephone?”

“'Course not. Who you done got mad at you, Miss Debs?”

“That's the problem,” she replied, putting the car in gear. “I don't know.”

“Don't tell me this is gonna become a regular habit with you.” The sheriff squinted out over the empty waters of Edenton Bay. “I don't take partial to being called up and told to drive all the way out here just so I can admire the view.”

“Is that what you think this is?” Deborah struggled hard to keep her voice under control. “Just a hoax?”

“Right now I don't know what to think,” the sheriff said. “What I
know
is that there ain't no boat out there tied to any cypress stump carrying no foreign spy in a fancy silk suit.”

“I don't know if it's silk.”

“Well, soon as you do, missy, you be sure and let me know. Danged if it won't be keeping me up nights ‘till you call.”

“You don't believe Reuben either, then, I take it.”

“Shoot, I've known Reuben since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. That man's older than Santa Claus, you know that? I hope my eyes are half as good as his if I ever get to be his age.” The sheriff kicked at a loose clod. “I just can't believe you'd try to railroad a fine old gentleman like that into your wild schemes.”

“Wasn't like that, Sheriff,” Reuben said, his gaze direct. “Nossir. Wasn't like that a'tall. I's the one saw that feller out there in the boat. Tol' Miss Debs just like she say. Tha's why she calls you like she did.”

The sheriff turned and stared out over the placid waters. “I'm still waiting to hear how you're gonna tie this to the hippie gathering over at the Taylor farm.”

“I don't know anything about that,” Deborah replied. “But now that you mention it, I imagine there is a connection somewhere.”

“I knew it,” the sheriff told the bay. “Sure as I'm standing here, I knew that one was coming. Saw it a mile off.”

“What about the attempted kidnapping up in Norfolk,” Deborah demanded. “Are you going to shrug that one off too?”

“Yeah, I'm aiming to give those folks up in Norfolk a call just as soon as I get back to the office. ‘Fore I do, though, lemme make sure I got it all straight. This alleged kidnapping was of an old geezer from a veterans hospital, who claims he was on the take for handing information over to a foreign spy, now, is that right?”

“I know it seems far-fetched, Officer, but I assure—”

“Wait, now, it gets better. The only other witness to this alleged kidnapping was a big Injun feller on your payroll, who just happened to be strolling by.”

“He wasn't strolling by,” Deborah snapped. “I called for him.”

“Right, ‘scuse me, I got that part down wrong. Now what did you say his name was again?”

“John Windover,” Deborah replied grimly.

“No ma'am, I'm referring to the name that everybody knows him by, according to you.”

“Cochise.”

The sheriff broke out a leathery grin. “I been raised on fish-camp tales, but man, if this story don't take the cake, I don't know what does.”

Deborah asked in a soft voice, “So who is it that's got you on their payroll, Sheriff?”

The face snapped down tight. “I'll forget I ever heard that, ma'am. On account of if I don't I'd be tempted to break one of my own rules, which is to never strike a lady, which all of a sudden I'm not so sure you are.” He stared at her hard. “Now, if you'll excuse me,
ma'am
, there's a world of other items out there just waitin' for my attention. And if this phantom of yours happens to come rowing by again, why, don't you hesitate to call on your friendly neighborhood sheriff's office.”

Deborah watched him stomp back to his car, then said to the pines and the wind and the surrounding day, “I just goofed up big time.”

Reuben hummed a two-tone agreement. “Don' believe I'd have said what you said like you said it. Not in a million years.”

“My temper got ahead of me.”

“Tha's the time I find it best to haul back on them reins and shut my mouth up real tight.”

“Sounds like good advice to me,” Cliff said, speaking for the first time since the sheriff's arrival.

“Yeah, it's seen me through a lotta trials and a lotta years,” Reuben replied. “'Course, them reins do start to chafe sometime. Yes ma'am, they surely do.”

“I guess I can't count on him to come back anytime soon,” Deborah said to the empty road.

“Well, now,” Reuben said, “I'd say if you was to call him tonight, that sheriff, he might get here ‘long about Christmas time. Give or take a month.”

Cliff looked across the road at the ever-growing collection of tents. “From this distance it looks like the world gypsy congress.”

Deborah stripped off the rest of her protective gear and followed his gaze. Aging flower children strolled through the golden fields of rapeweed. Younger people clustered and danced and raced through the dying rays of another day. Groups of musicians played a variety of instruments, their sounds drifting over the distance like some cacophonous alien tongue. The atmosphere was surreal, timeless, unnatural.

“Four more days,” she said.

“Do you think the effect might spread before they shut it all down?”

Deborah kept looking out over the fields. “I don't think so. I hope that's my head talking, and not just my heart. But no, I don't think so. The viroid cannot replicate, as I said.”

“You think that's what happened? The wind carried the fertilizer and the viroid into the rapeweed fields?”

“It's the only thing that makes any sense. The altered genetic sequences were taken into the rapeweed root system and had an effect on the pollen.”

“But what happens if the pollen spreads its effect into the next generation of plants?” Cliff pressed.

“Then we're lost,” Deborah said simply. “But I don't think, no, that's not strong enough. I am ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent certain that it is impossible. The basic tenet of using nonreplicating genetic instructions means that we are affecting only one generation at a time.” She swung open her door. “Come on, Junior. You've scared me enough for one night.”

“Where to?” he asked, climbing aboard. “Norfolk?”

“Not tonight. I'll drive up tomorrow when I'm fresh. Do you mind if I stop by the lab on the way home and just check for messages? I haven't been by since Thursday.”

“Go ahead,” he replied, not yet ready to let the matter drop. “So exactly how do you make up this new genetic sequence anyway? The other day you said something about it, what did you call it, tack technology?”

“T-A-Q,” she corrected, spelling it out. She rewarded him with her lopsided grin. “That's what I like about you, Junior. Never afraid to face up to the vast reaches of your own ignorance.”

“You don't have to sound so pleased.”

“Okay.” She put the car in gear. “We've got to go back to the farthest reaches of time for this one. All the way back to 1985, when the world of microbiology was completely turned on its axis. The dust still hasn't settled. That year, they discovered something called PCR, or preliminary chain reaction. This change made it possible to manipulate DNA and grow new chains. Not in months or years, but in hours.”

She stopped at the intersection and used two hands to form a coil in the air. “DNA is a double-helix, spiraling up sort of like a twisted ladder. Anybody who has taken high-school biology knows this. But what isn't so well known is that DNA is not stable. Under certain conditions, like high heat, it falls apart, sort of like a zipper being opened.”

Deborah turned onto the main road and drove toward the sunset. “There are enzymes called DNA polymerazes, which attach themselves to certain DNA sequences. This has been known for a long time. It's one of the body's basic building processes, enzymes reacting to certain amino acids, forming proteins and disposing of others. But the problem was, the same high heat that opened up the DNA protein also destroyed the enzyme.”

Cliff turned his attention from the road, watching his friend, enjoying as ever the shared thrill of her scientific world. The longer she spoke, the more excited she grew. Her mind focused with diamond-fired intensity on frontiers a scarce molecule wide.

“In 1985, though, some researchers isolated what are called TAQ enzymes from thermofile bacteria. These are organisms able to live in superheated conditions, like around the undersea volcanoes at the ocean floor. These TAQ enzymes remained intact even at heats that unzipped the DNA. This was really important, Junior.
Really
important. You have to open up the DNA chain to get at any particular gene. But you have to have some chemical hand ready to reach down and pluck out the gene when it becomes freed. And presto, the TAQ enzymes could be chemically programed to do just that.”

Cliff watched and saw as her face lost its aged look, her eyes their weary cast. She lived for the challenge of this work, he knew. She
lived
for it.

“So the DNA was split up under the high heat, and the TAQ enzyme pulled out the specified gene,” she continued. “And now you have the really big surprise, the explosive payoff. When the solution was cooled down, what happened but this isolated gene joined with free-floating amino acids left in the solution and
grew another helix
. After that, it became almost a continual chain reaction. Heat it up, the helixes unzip. Cool it down, more amino acids are gathered and more helixes are formed. Over and over and over, each new helix a perfect copy of the gene you wanted to isolate and use. Doubling every few minutes. Very simple, very powerful.”

“Humulun,” Cliff said.

The sudden shift startled her. “What?”

“I was trying to remember where I had heard of that technology before. I didn't handle the application, but I remember somebody telling me it was going to be the wave of the future.”

“Oh. Sure.” She glanced into her rearview mirror, signaled, turned. “DNA-engineered insulin. Humulun is the trade name, right?”

Cliff nodded. “Lilly makes it.”