The Dragon Factory (20 page)

THREE HUNDRED AND
twenty yards away, deep inside a stand of trees by the far turn, Conrad Veder dropped the rifle on the ground. It was one he had purchased for the job and sighted in for this hit. He stripped off the long rubber sleeve protectors and removed the plastic welding mask. He had never touched those items with his bare flesh, and all traces of gunpowder residue would be burned into them. He dropped them into a shallow ditch he’d prepared, emptied a whole can of lighter fluid over them, and dropped in a wooden Lucifer match. Fire bloomed at once. Veder pulled off the rubber surgical gloves and dropped them into the blaze.

He moved quickly through the trees, retrieving the fawn coat and trilby hat he’d hung on branches, and pulled them on. A pair of Wellingtons stood by the edge of the copse and he stepped into them. The shoes he wore were size 10 trainers of the most common and inexpensive generic brand. Probably half the people on the racecourse would be wearing the same brand. With his feet inside the boots and the coat and hat he looked like what he was: a racecourse official. One of the nameless, faceless men hired by the day to stand at various points along the racecourse to watch for falls or other problems. Veder had worked at the racetrack for three weeks. He moved out of the trees and crossed the track and then cut through another wooded area, coming out on the far side of the stands. Then he joined the crowd that moved and yelled in confusion as word of the murder spread through the rumor mill. He eventually ducked out of the crowd, found a bathroom, removed his coat, hat, and boots, and left them in a stall. From under the plastic trash bag in the bathroom dustbin he removed a small parcel that contained new shoes, a blue windbreaker printed with the name of the local football team, wire-framed glasses, and a pair of spectator binoculars. He flushed his mustache down the loo.

When he rejoined the crowd he was one of hundreds who looked and dressed and acted like startled spectators at an afternoon’s event that had become suddenly more interesting.

It was the second kill since he’d accepted the seven-target job from DaCosta. The first had been simpler—the poisoning of a man in a wheelchair whose once brilliant mind was lost in the unlit labyrinth of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Two down, five to go.

The Deck

Saturday, August 28, 2:06
P.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 93 hours, 54 minutes E.S.T.

“The Twins are still in the staff room,” said Otto. “They’re interviewing Bannerjee and their other
spies
. Before you ask, yes . . . Bannerjee and the others have been briefed. They should be wrapping up in a couple of hours. You could stay in the tank a bit longer if you’d like.”

“No,” said Cyrus as he climbed out of the sensory deprivation tank. “I’m done.” He cut a sharp look at Otto. “What’s wrong?”

“We lost another one,” said Otto as he held out a bathrobe.

Water sluiced down Cyrus Jakoby’s legs to form a salty puddle on the floor. He turned and held his arms backward so Otto could slide the robe on.

“Another what?”

“Researcher. Daniel Horst.”

“Virology?”

“Epideminiology.”

“How?”

“He broke his bathroom mirror and cut his wrists,” said Otto. “He bled out in his tub.”

Cyrus scowled as he padded barefoot to the workstation in the corner. He called up the staff directory, found Daniel Horst, and entered a password to access the man’s most recent psychological evaluations. Cyrus read through and his frown deepened.

“It’s all in there,” said Otto mildly. “In the after-session notes. Both Hastings and Stenner remarked on Horst’s increased levels of stress, frequent headaches, nervousness, lack of direct eye contact. Plenty of signs of depression and diminished self-esteem. He was also a late-night regular at the staff bar every night. Classic stuff.”

“We missed it,” said Cyrus.

“We didn’t see it,” corrected Otto. “We’ve been otherwise occupied.”

“It’s my fault. I’m weeks behind in reading the staff evaluations.”

“Neither of us saw it for the same reason. We need to delegate more, Mr. Cyrus. We’re spreading ourselves too thin. If we try to do everything, then we’ll get sloppy.” He paused. “We need to process more of the SAMs into the Family. We need to put them to work.”

“I wish Eighty-two . . .” Cyrus let it hang.

“He’s not ready.”

“The others are?”

“Some are. Enough to take some pressure off of us.”

Cyrus shrugged. “Horst’s death could be trouble.”

“No. The cleaning woman who found him reported directly to the security shift supervisor, and he contacted me. I quarantined the cleaner. She’ll be on the next flight to the Hive. The security supervisor is one of the Haeckels, so there’s no problem with him keeping his mouth shut.”

“Good, good,” Cyrus said distractedly. “Do we have a cover story for Horst being missing?”

“He was needed at the Hive. A rumor can be started that he got a juicy promotion and went to the Hive to head up a new division. A component of the rumor will be that his apparent stress was him sweating whether he’d get the promotion or not. It’s worked before and the rumor does some good for morale and overall team efficiency.”

Cyrus nodded. Staff sent to the Hive were never allowed to return to the Deck. Except for a special few—Otto and Cyrus, the SAMs, several of the Haeckels, and one or two key scientists—no one else was allowed to travel between the two facilities. No one outside that circle even knew where the other facility was. Disinformation was frequently seeded into the rumor mill. There was even an abiding belief that there was a Laboratory A somewhere in Mexico and a new facility set to open in Australia, though neither was true. It was useful to sustain the belief when it became necessary for staff members to disappear.

This latest suicide was troubling. Suicides among the virology and epidemiology staff was very high. Drug addiction and alcoholism was even higher, though the recent increases in random urine and blood testing had decreased the risk of technicians staggering into a clean room while high. That had been a lesson they’d learned the hard way.

“What was Horst working on?”

“Tay-Sachs.”

“Why the stress? Surely you vetted him for—”

“We did. He’s not a Jew; he never had any significant Jewish friends, never dated a Jewish woman. His distrust of Jews was marked in his initial evaluations and recruitment interviews. He even scored in the high sevens for resentment against Jews for jobs and grants in his field.”

“Then why was he depressed?”

“Why do most of the suicide cases go soft on us? It’s always the same thing. Conscience. No matter what we do to prevent it, they reach a point where their vision and trust in the New Order is overmatched by fear.”

“Fear of what?” Cyrus snapped.

“Damnation, probably. In one form or another.”

“Bullshit. We screen for atheism in every single member of the science staff.”

“Most atheists are closet agnostics or disappointed believers.”

“So?”

“As you point out in so many of your staff speeches, Mr. Cyrus, we’re at war. The saying that there are no atheists in foxholes is more often true than not. Even if the belief is momentary and conditional.”

“So . . . you’re saying that this is
my
fault?”

“Not at all, Mr. Cyrus. I’m saying that this is evidence of the kind of inherent weakness that the Extinction Wave will wash away.”

Cyrus cinched the robe more tightly around his waist and walked to the window. The view was that of the production tanks and the white-suited technicians who milled around them.

“We should have tried harder to find the gene that controlled the conscience,” said Otto.

“What I don’t understand—and
I
should understand, Otto—is why and how this happens when we systematically and exhaustively treated every person on the science team to deactivate VMAT2.”

VMAT2—Vesicular Monoamine Transporter 2—was a membrane protein that transports monoamines like dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, and histamine from cellular cytosol into synaptic vesicles.
Geneticist Gene Hamer had pioneered the belief that the gene was more active in persons who held strong religious beliefs and less so in those who held little or no beliefs. Cyrus accepted this as likely and subscribed to several similar neurotheological views. He had spent years exploring the links between N, N-Dimethyltryptamine levels in the pineal gland and spiritual beliefs.

“None of the team should be capable of religious beliefs of any kind,” Cyrus said gruffly.

“We’ve had this discussion before, Mr. Cyrus. You told me that you did not totally accept the ‘God gene’ theory.”

“That’s not what I said, dammit,” Cyrus barked. He leaned close and shouted at Otto. “I said that I don’t believe it accounts for all faith. It doesn’t account for true faith. False faith may be controlled by genetics. Faith in ideals and deities that are clearly unrelated to the divine path of racial development. No one with a pure genetic line, no one who believes in the right and only way, requires a gene for faith. That’s a fundamental truth to faith itself. It’s the so-called mystery of faith that those Catholic swine have been beating themselves up over for two thousand years.”

Otto wiped Cyrus’s spittle from his shirtfront.

“As you say.”

Cyrus leaned back, his eyes still hot and his face flushed.

“The gene therapy must be flawed.”

“Of course, sir,” said Otto neutrally. “That must be it.”

“We’ll run the sequence again. We’ll do a new round of gene therapy.”

“Naturally.”

“I don’t want any more inconvenient attacks of conscience.”

“God forbid,” said Otto with a smile. He left before Cyrus began throwing things.

Private airfield near Denver, Colorado

Saturday, August 28, 2:29
P.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 93 hours, 31 minutes E.S.T.

Top and Bunny met me as I got off the jet. They were dressed in black BDUs and wearing shoulder rigs but had no other obvious weapons. Neither of them looked very happy. There was a lot of that going around.

Hanler shook hands all around but stayed with his plane as we headed to a small hangar at the edge of the field. There was a Mister Softee truck parked inside; however, the man who leaned against the rear corner didn’t look like he sold ice-cream cones for a living. He looked like the actor Ving Rhames, except for the artificial leg and the shrapnel scars on his face.

“Cap’n,” said Top, “this is Gunnery Sergeant Brick Anderson, head of field support for the Denver office.”

Brick fit his name and he had a handshake that could crush half-inch pipe.

“Good to meet you, Cap,” said Brick. “I’ve heard stories.”

“You look like you could tell a few stories of your own, Gunny,” I said. “How’d you slip the NSA?” I asked.

“They heard I was a cripple. Only sent two guys to pick me up.” He shrugged. “Didn’t go like they planned.”

Bunny murmured, “Not handicapped—handi-
capable
.”

“What’s the plan?” I asked.

Brick shrugged. “Big Man back home said to give you whatever on the ground support I can manage. Deep Iron’s a half hour from here. I pretended to be a potential customer and asked if I could come out sometime this week. Asked what their hours are. They’re open now. Head of sales is on the grounds. Name’s Daniel Sloane. Here’s his info.” Brick handed me a slip of paper with contact numbers. Then he handed me a slim file folder. “This is basic stuff I pulled off their Web site. Specs and such.”

“Good job.” I flipped open the folder, took a quick glance, and
closed it. “I’ll read it on the way. How are we set for equipment? I have a handgun and two magazines. Can you load me up?”

The big man grinned as he led us to the back of the truck and opened the door. The whole thing was a rolling arsenal. I saw just about every kind of firearm known to modern combat, from five-shot wheelguns to RPGs.

“My-oh-my-oh-my,” Top said, breaking out into a big grin. “I’m so happy I could cry.”