The Immortalists (21 page)

His watch read one in the morning, but Richard Draman didn’t even know what time zone they were in anymore. He and Carly had been ushered off the jet and into yet another black SUV that had immediately accelerated onto a maze of unfamiliar back roads. As usual, the men in the front seat refused to answer even the most innocuous question.

He and Carly matched the silence of their escorts, watching the dark blur of trees on the side of the road and reading street signs for clues to their location. Beyond the vaguely reassuring fact that they were in English, there was little to be learned.

A distant glow became visible through the windshield, and he quickly identified its source—a biomedical research campus similar to the ones he’d spent most of his adult life in.

“What is that?” Carly asked as they sped toward it.

Richard silently mouthed the response along with the driver. “I wouldn’t know, ma’am.”

The man inside the tiny guardhouse was definitely familiar. One of the guards who handled the dogs on the estate? One of the snipers who had been sitting in the windows of Chris Graden’s house?

They weaved through the brick and glass buildings, finally stopping in front of one at the back. Bill Garrison was standing out front, waiting patiently for Xander’s driver to complete the complex process of extricating his boss from the vehicle.

Richard and Carly took the hint and stepped cautiously from the SUV, looking around them at the spotlight-created shadows and trying not to imagine what might be waiting in them.

“It’s good to see you both again,” Garrison said as they approached. Behind him, Xander was being wheeled into the building’s heavily guarded lobby.

“What is this place?” Richard said as they were led inside.

“Let’s go on up, Doc. You’re gonna like this.”

Xander had staked out a corner in the tiny elevator, and they squeezed in next to him as Garrison inserted a key above the buttons.

They rose to the top floor where the doors opened directly into a laboratory that made his own research facility look like it was put together with stuff found at Kmart.

“This is it?” Richard said. “You found it already? The place where they’re making the drug?”

“I told you Bill was a miracle worker,” Xander said.

Garrison seemed uncomfortable with praise. “It really wasn’t as hard as you’d imagine. We just followed the sales of the equipment on the list you gave us. This kind of machinery generally goes to well-known—or at least well-documented—companies. All I had to do was focus on ones that didn’t fit the bill.”

Richard looked back at the closed elevator doors and then at the cameras angling down at them from the ceiling. Was someone watching? Did Xander even care?

“How did you get access?” Carly asked.

“They don’t own the building,” Garrison said. “They probably decided that buying real estate in the U.S. left too much of a paper trail. Easier just to rent.”

“So who
does
own the building?”

A broad smile spread across Xander’s face, stretching the loose skin into something grotesque. “As of this morning, I do.”

A walkie-talkie hanging from the side of his wheelchair crackled to life, and he picked it up.

“We’ve got two SUVs coming our way at high speed,” a voice said.

Xander rolled his eyes in feigned impatience. “It seems we have a leak.”

Garrison nodded serenely. “Unavoidable. Nothing to be done.”

“Nothing to be done? We can get the hell out of here,” Richard said. “Look, we’ve come up against these people before. They don’t play around.”

“And I do?” Xander snapped, spinning his chair and starting toward the covered windows. “Come!”

They did as they were told, but when Xander toggled a switch that opened the shades, Richard pushed his wife behind him. It was difficult to see through the glass into the relative darkness of the parking area, but anyone outside would be able to see them as though they were standing on stage. And as well equipped as this lab was, bulletproof glass generally wasn’t an option.

Garrison dimmed the lights, and the scene below sharpened. For the moment, everything was as still as a photograph—just empty streets and silent buildings.

The sound of racing engines and squealing tires came first, followed by two black SUVs that looked almost identical to the one they’d arrived in.

“This is crazy,” Richard said as they skidded to a stop in front of the building. “We’ve got to get—”

“Shut up,” Xander responded as four men jumped from the lead vehicle and three more from the other. They were wearing street clothes, but all had assault rifles hanging across their chests on short straps.

Carly grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him back from the glass just as Xander rolled toward it.

“Light ’em up,” he said into the walkie-talkie.

A moment later, the two SUVs and the men who had arrived in them were covered in tiny red dots. They didn’t even bother to aim their weapons, instead raising their hands and remaining completely motionless as they squinted into the shadows that had worried Richard when they arrived.

“Should we take them out?” came the voice over the radio.

Xander turned his chair and looked back at them. “What do
you
think, Carly? It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea. At least some of those guys are probably involved in tracking down your daughter. Should we get rid of them?”

“You mean murder them?” she said. “You can’t do that.”

“No?” he said, seeming to enjoy her horror and confusion. “I doubt they’ll have the same reservations when they finally catch up with little Susie.”

She didn’t answer, and he affected disappointment at her weakness before speaking into the walkie-talkie again. “Just hold ’em ’til we’re done. Then set ’em loose to do whatever they want.”

The implication was clear and obviously intended. If anything happened to Susie, it would be their fault. Of course, the idea that he based his decision on their wishes was laughable. More likely, he wasn’t confident enough in his above-the-law status to order the deaths of seven human beings while sitting in a lab he’d broken into.

Xander’s men separated themselves from the shadows, and their shouts were audible through the glass, though too muffled to be understood. Their captives dropped their weapons and fell to their knees with their hands behind their heads. Xander was clearly disappointed in the orderliness of the scene. Deep down, he’d probably hoped for something more visceral. Something that would run a jolt of omnipotence through his failing body.

“Do you want them questioned?” Garrison asked.

“No,” the old man responded. “They don’t know anything.”

“How can you be sure?” Richard said.

“Because Mason isn’t stupid enough to tell a bunch of hired muscle something we could use,” he responded and then pointed back into the lab. “Now quit talking, get a marker, and put an X on everything you want. There’ll be a truck here in ten minutes.”

The waterfall had a perfection of flow that suggested a human hand in its design. Oleg Nazarov stood before it, staring at the sun’s reflection and letting the crash of it fill his ears. Karl was staring at the water too, but he remained silent and opaque.

“Why wasn’t the lab shut down and moved weeks ago?” he said, finally.

Nazarov’s heart felt hollow in his chest, as though it knew he didn’t have much more time. Before agreeing to subordinate himself to the group, he had wielded enormous influence—near omnipotence in his small corner of the world. Now he was nothing.

“Our manpower is extremely limited. I’m trying to make everything top priority, but obviously that’s impossible.”

“What could be more of a priority than the lab?” Karl’s voice cut through the sound of the falling water with surprising ease.

“Mason and the others—ensuring that they aren’t discovered and captured.”

Nazarov shared Karl’s distaste for excuses, and he was loath to give them. But in his current situation, it seemed wise to overcome that bias. The truth in this case was that he had been outsmarted. He’d taken Xander’s reluctance to hide his activities as bravado— a dying man trying to wield the last of his power. And that was undoubtedly partly the case. But it had also lulled Nazarov into carelessness about watching for less overt activities—such as the sale of the building that housed the lab to a company carefully designed to look like an unremarkable real estate investment group.

Karl opened his mouth to speak but seemed to lose his thought. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Or maybe it was just the mist.

“What did he get from the lab?” Karl said.

“Everything. Computers, equipment, files. And the refrigeration unit.”

Karl seemed to want to lash out. He looked around him with awkward, jerky movements, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Projected damage?”

“They’ll get into the refrigerator and find some of the components for the therapy stored there. I spoke with Mason, and he says there’s little they can learn from them.”

“And the therapy itself? Can they access that?”

In what had been yet another stroke of devastating luck, a dose had recently been completed for one of the group scheduled for transition. It too was contained in that refrigerator.

“It’s in a separate protective case that’s all but impenetrable.”

“All but?”

“There are no certainties, Karl. But we’re taking steps to further reduce the chance that they can penetrate the container.”

“The computers?”

“Everything is heavily encrypted. I’m told by our technical people that it would take even America’s National Security Agency years to crack.”

“Could we shorten this counter so it doesn’t go all the way to the wall?” Richard Draman said.

The contractor ran a finger along the blueprints spread out on a piece of drywall and nodded. “No problem. They told me if you want a solid gold statue of yourself twelve feet high, you get it.”

“Let’s start with the counter, and I’ll think about the statue.”

“Right on,” he said, trudging off to check the progress of a group of men tearing plaster from the ceiling of Xander’s cathedral of an attic.

“Wow. Maybe I should have brought my hard hat.”

Richard turned and saw his wife approaching with his lunch on a tray. “Amazing, isn’t it? In a week, I’ll have a facility that I would have killed for at the Progeria Project. And it all came from a wave of Xander’s hand.”

“His private jets and security and mansions didn’t really make that much of an impression on me,” she said, shaking her head in amazement. “But getting contractors to show up on time and work? That’s power.”

Richard laughed and took the tray, setting it down next to the blueprints.

“You don’t do that very often anymore,” she said.

“What?”

“Laugh.”

“I thought that there wasn’t a lot to laugh about. But now I think maybe I was wrong.”

“Could this really be it?” she said, looking around at the chaos. “Could this attic be where you find a way to help Susie and the other kids?”

“It’s hard not to let yourself start to—”

He cut himself off when one of Xander’s security men strode through the door and motioned to them. “Could you both come with me, please?”

“Where?” Richard said. “I’m a little tied up here, and I haven’t eaten all day.”

“Xander’s orders,” the man said. It was a phrase that was starting to come up as often as “I wouldn’t know,” and it was just as ironclad. People acted as though God spoke directly through the old man and displayed what seemed to be honest confusion when Richard questioned his periodic decrees.

There was no point in fighting it, so Richard followed his wife toward the door. As she passed the guard, he nodded respectfully. “Lunch today, ma’am…that was the best chili I’ve ever had. And I’m from Texas.”

Richard and Carly had become accustomed to chasing Xander’s limo in one of the many black SUVs used by his protection detail, but now the protocol had changed radically. In addition to the driver and the man in the passenger seat, there were now two machine-gun-toting guards in a third row of seats behind them. Just as obvious was the fact that their motorcade had grown to be nearly a block long.

“I don’t think the president has this kind of security,” Carly said as the lead vehicle blocked an intersection so they could maintain their speed as they passed through.

“There’s no way Mason doesn’t know about Xander. It’s not like he goes out of his way to keep a low profile.”

“He’s stupid and arrogant,” she said, not caring that her criticism would be reported back to the old man—assuming he wasn’t listening already.

Richard squeezed her hand. “We didn’t come to him for subtlety, Carly. Sometimes you just have to reach for the biggest hammer.”

“Maybe. But it’d be nice to have some say over what it hits.”

He sighed quietly. She was right, but it was hard to complain too much. Did Xander have a psychotic compulsion for tempting the gods? Sure. But there was also no denying that his methods had provided them the contents of Mason’s lab, the identities of some of the members of his group, and an impenetrable fortress to live in. Where would they be without the old bastard? Probably dead, with Mason’s assassins hot on Susie’s heels.

“Carly, I think we just have to be gra—”

The flash came first, followed by a wave of sound that seemed to suck the air from his lungs. Richard tried to throw himself protectively over his wife, but was hurled backward when the SUV slammed over a curb.

His head hit the side window hard enough to crack the glass, and he saw the two men behind them stand up through the sun-roof with their guns as he tried to shake off the pain and refocus his vision.

Carly didn’t seem to notice any of it. She just stared blankly through the spider-webbed side window as the SUV accelerated. When his head had cleared enough for him to maintain his balance, he twisted around to see what she was looking at.

Xander’s limo had flipped over in the middle of the street and was spinning slowly on its roof. Flames billowed through it, sending a column of black, oily smoke into the sky as the people inside were engulfed.

“Get down!” he heard someone yell, and he pushed Carly back into the seat. Her body convulsed as she sobbed beneath him, and he gently stroked her hair, concentrating on trying to breathe.

It was over. Xander was dead, and in a few minutes, they probably would be too.

Susie’s last hope was on fire.