The Genesis Key (29 page)

Chapter Fifty-Two

T
he Fire Department was just finishing up on the scene when Steve Goodwin pulled his white Suburban into the QLS parking lot. McCreary sat in the front passenger's seat. Kathleen sat in the back, surveying the mess through the Suburban's dark tinted windows. The TV news vans were gone now, as were the ambulances and most of the crowd. Kathleen's heart sank as the QLS office suite came into view. It was a charred, smoking hulk—more of a
hole
than an office suite. The adjacent units had also sustained serious damage, but they looked salvageable. QLS, on the other hand, was completely gone
.

“You gonna be okay?” said McCreary with passable concern.

“Yeah,” Kathleen said. “Just fine.”

“Again, we can put you up somewhere safe. A hotel in the city, if you'd like . . .”

“No, I think you guys have done enough.” Kathleen's tone was bitter. Deep down, she'd accepted that Bill McCreary and the SERRATE program were probably not to blame for all of this. Still, she couldn't help feeling betrayed by him, by DARPA . . . hell, by the whole United States government. Eavesdropping? Deception? Spying?
And these were supposed to be the good guys?
As much as she wanted some protection right now, she simply didn't know whom to trust.

Kathleen got out of the Suburban without saying a word and made her way straight to the front of the building. An exiting fireman tried to stop her, but she easily sidestepped him and continued marching up the walkway to the front door, or at least what
used
to be the front door.

The pungent smell of wet, charred wood and burned plastic nearly overwhelmed her as she stepped through the gaping hole. She walked carefully over small mountains of smoldering debris, gingerly avoiding twisted metal, protruding nails, and broken glass, and eventually made her way to the blackened remains of the laboratory refrigerator. The door was partially torn off, hanging awkwardly by just the bottom hinge. Kathleen forced it open farther and peered inside. The glass shelves were all broken and lying in a pile of shards at the bottom of the fridge, intermixed with wet ash and globs of black goop. The neoprene sample bottles had all melted in the fire.
Everything was gone.

“Not much left in there, huh?” said a voice behind her.

Kathleen recognized the voice of Agent Wills. She shook her head despondently without turning around.

Wills stepped closer. “I know this won't be much of a consolation,” he said, “but we think we know what caused this.”

Kathleen turned and saw that Wills wasn't alone. Bill McCreary was standing next to him. “What's that?” she asked.

Wills pointed to the smoking remains of the hazardous waste area in one corner of the lab. “The fire started over there, near that electrical outlet. A utility pole a couple blocks from here got hit by lightning just before the fire broke out. So my guess would be that outlet shorted.”

Lightning.
Kathleen absorbed that information with a sense of irony.
God strikes again.

“Also, you'll be glad to know your colleague, Carlos Guiterez, is doing fine. He's at Montgomery County Hospital being treated for smoke inhalation and burns. They'll probably keep him there overnight, but he'll be fine.”

Kathleen closed her eyes and sighed with relief. “Thank you,” she said with genuine appreciation.

“Dr. Sainsbury,” said Wills earnestly, “is there
anything
else we can do for you? Do you need a ride somewhere?”

“No, I'll be okay.” Right now, all she wanted was to be left alone. She had a lot of thinking to do and desperately needed a shower, a change of clothes, and—most important—some sleep.

“Okay then,” said Wills, handing her his card. “If anyone tries to contact you, or if you see anything suspicious—
anything at all
—call that number right away, okay?”

Kathleen nodded that she would.

“Now if you'll excuse me.” Wills flashed a wry smile. “I've got to go explain to my supervisor how I lost the front door of my car.” With that, he turned and made his way carefully through the burned-out lab and out the front entrance, leaving Kathleen and McCreary alone together.

“I'm sorry about your lab,” said McCreary after Wills left.

“Yeah, me, too,” Kathleen said.

“Looks like that sample's totally gone, though, huh?”

“Yep,” Kathleen lied.

“You know, if I were you, I'd let people know that right away.”

“Huh?”

“What I mean is, the next reporter who calls you, be sure to tell them that everything was lost in the fire—absolutely everything. Otherwise . . . well, you know.”

“Otherwise, people will keep coming after me?”

McCreary nodded. “Look, it's for your own safety. Let everyone know there's nothing left of the INDY gene.” McCreary paused pensively and clasped his hands together, pressing both index fingers against his pursed lips. “In fact . . .” His voice trailed off.

“In fact, what?”

“Well, remember when you asked how SERRATE could control the pace of private-sector research?”

“Yeah.”

McCreary looked around the ruined lab and confirmed they were still alone. He moved closer and spoke in a low, barely audible voice. “One of the techniques we're authorized to use is
disinformation
.”

Kathleen didn't know where he was going with this, but she didn't like it. She immediately began shaking her head no.

“Scientists are herd animals, Kathleen,” he said in a low voice. “You know that.”

Kathleen continued shaking her head emphatically.

“They live and die by research grants, university sponsorship, venture funding . . . It's a patronage system, pure and simple. And to get that patronage, they have to sell their research. You've been through all of that. You know what I'm talking about.”

Kathleen was still shaking her head. She did not like where this was going.

“To sell their research, it has to be sexy. It has to be promising. It has to offer the allure of prestige, acclaim, prizes, honors, and, most importantly, profit. That's what patrons of science are interested in these days . . .”

“Forget it Bill,” said Kathleen firmly, already sensing what was coming.

“Kathleen, the one thing that can stop scientific research in its tracks—faster than anything the government could ever do—”

Kathleen was shaking her head emphatically.

“—is the whiff of a hoax.”

There was a long silence, interrupted only by the intermittent squawking of distant radio transmissions from the firemen outside.

Finally, Kathleen spoke. “You want me to say this was all a hoax
?
”

“Shhhh!” McCreary looked around nervously. “Yes, in a nutshell, that's exactly what we want. And we can compensate you—”

“Compensate me? How?”

McCreary looked around again and spoke in a hushed tone. “Money. A new house. Even a new identity if you want. We can negotiate a nice package for you.”

“I don't believe this,” Kathleen mumbled incredulously. “You're joking, right?”

“No, this isn't a joke. The government is prepared to pay you to disavow this research. And they can pay you a lot. Think about it, Kathleen. You would never have to work again . . . you could be set for life
.
”

“It wouldn't work, Bill. People would figure it out.”

“Oh, you'd be surprised.” McCreary arched his eyebrows knowingly. “Kathleen, nobody in the scientific community wants to be associated with a hoax. It's the ultimate form of humiliation for a university or a private foundation. And, of course, venture capitalists won't touch a concept with a ten-foot pole once there's talk of a hoax. Trust me, this has been done before.
And it works.
”

Kathleen pinched her eyebrows together. “What do you mean, it's been done before?”

McCreary looked around again and lowered his voice even further. “I can't tell you the details because it's covered by another SCI channel. But this exact technique was used about twenty years ago to stem the rising tide of research into a particular area of technology that the government felt was . . . let's just say
problematic.
The two scientists involved are both living very comfortably today on the French Riviera. And there hasn't been any serious research into that technology since they publicly declared it to be a hoax more than
twenty years
ago. So, trust me, this can work.”

“No way,” said Kathleen firmly. “I can't do that.”

“There's got to be something that could make you change your mind.”

Kathleen stared deeply into McCreary's eyes. She was thinking about her grandfather. “There isn't. Forget it.”

McCreary sighed heavily and handed her his card. “Think about it and give me a call.”

Kathleen slipped McCreary's card in her pocket, next to Wills's card and watched with a twinge of contempt as McCreary turned and made his way out of the lab.

A few feet shy of the exit, McCreary turned to face her. He had a gloomy, deflated expression on his face. “This is Pandora's box, Kathleen. You know that, right? If this technology falls into the wrong hands . . .” He shook his head slowly. “Well, let's just say we'll be regretting it for a long time.”

He turned and disappeared around the corner.

Chapter Fifty-Three

Washington, D.C.

S
pecial Agent Wills sat alone at his desk in the FBI's Washington field office in Judiciary Square. It was just after 9:30
P.M.
The only other occupants of the second floor were a small cleaning crew busily making its rounds, emptying trash cans, vacuuming, and conversing in Spanish.

The overhead lights were dimmed for the evening. Wills's neatly organized desk, however, was brightly illuminated by a sleek brushed-nickel desk lamp.

Agent Hendricks had left two hours earlier. She'd left abruptly without asking if there was anything else she could do. That was fine with Wills. He preferred to be alone. Besides, Hendricks wasn't part of the SERRATE program, so there were limits to what she could do.

Wills sat motionless at his desk, oblivious to the rhythmic droning of the vacuum cleaners and the clanking of metal trash cans in the background. He was deep in thought, struggling to organize a dozen seemingly unconnected bits of information into some sort of logical explanation.

Something was missing . . .

He glanced down at the four tidy stacks of papers that Hendricks had assembled on his desk at his request. Each was labeled with a yellow sticky note: LHV G
ROUP
, L
UCE
V
ENFELD
, R
IAL
, and E
LIAS
R
UBIN
. He picked up the half-inch thick stack labeled E
LIAS
R
UBIN
.

According to his bio, Rubin was a seventy-six-year-old man from Haifa, Israel, a serial entrepreneur and financier. He was listed by
Forbes
magazine as one of the hundred richest people in the world. Rough estimates put his net worth at anywhere from 3 to 5 billion dollars, depending on Rial's daily stock price.

And he was
eccentric
.

Turning to his computer, Wills quickly typed “Elias Rubin” and “Venfeld” into the Google search engine. There were no hits.

Undeterred, he double clicked the icon for the FBI's intranet, typed in his user name and password, and then clicked on a link to the National Security Analysis Center. This was a new and highly controversial system—developed jointly by the FBI and CIA—that employed sophisticated data-mining techniques and relational software to detect patterns of communications and interaction between people or groups, sometimes four or five removed from an original target. With proper authorization, the NSAC system could access phone records, ISP records, credit-card records, and a host of other electronic information floating around the digisphere.

Because of the intrusive nature of the system and the controversy surrounding it, its use by the FBI was strictly limited to investigations relating to counter-terrorism and other certified national-defense concerns.

But Wills had a way in
 
. . .

On the NSAC login page, he typed in “SERRATE” and a nine-digit security code. Seconds later, the system opened up, and he found himself presented with a start page with more than a dozen input fields. For the better part of five minutes, he filled in each field, providing numerous search parameters and field restrictions and entering detailed information about the people and topics for which he hoped to find a link. These included: “Elias Rubin,” “Rial Laboratories,” “LHV Group,” “Luce Venfeld,” “longevity gene,” “INDY gene,” and, finally, “immortality.”

He pressed
ENTER
.

And waited.

Nearly ten minutes elapsed before NSAC returned its first set of results. When the
SEARCH COMPLETE
icon finally appeared, Wills briefly reviewed the available data-presentation formats and opted for a simple list of names in order of relevance. He clicked the appropriate link, and a total of nine names appeared with relevance scores above the noise threshold of 250 that he'd selected. They were

812  Elias S. Rubin

571  Luce H. Venfeld

478  Jin Shan Wu

471  Guillermo J. I. Gomez

462  Eswara Haryadi

414  Aleksei Nazarov

378  Roger C. Glick

320  Leonidas Diakos

270  Wilhelm F. Van der Giesen

Wills leaned forward and studied the list with acute interest. He immediately recognized the names of Elias Rubin and Luce Venfeld at the top of the list. He also recognized Roger Glick, CEO of WestPharma Corporation.

But he was surprised to see another name on the list that he recognized.

Guillermo Gomez.
The Mexican drug smuggler turned real-estate mogul.

Wills knew him well.