The Last Goodbye (30 page)

The Horizn campus was set north of Atlanta in Dunwoody, a quiet, heavily forested area that serves as home to several midsize corporate offices. As soon as I pulled into the headquarters, I saw the imprint of Ralston's internal psychology on the physical plant. Ralston, having built his company on dubiously acquired technology, was making damn sure nobody made him a victim of the same thing. He had made Horizn a fortress of high-tech security. The chances of entering the premises surreptitiously were zero.

The main buildings were hidden far from the entrance, which was secured by a guardhouse. The road in was barred by a long, substantial-looking mechanical arm. Behind it, reverse spikes threatened the tires of any vehicle capable of breaking through. Cameras mounted high on both sides of the gate stared down. I rolled to a stop, and a uniformed guard wearing an earpiece slid open his window. His voice was polite. “Can I help you?”

I handed him Ralston's card. “Jack Hammond,” I said. “Here to see Charles Ralston.”

“Please wait.” The guard spoke softly into something hidden in his lapel. Nothing happened for a long moment. After a while he said, “Please turn your face toward me, Mr. Hammond. The camera's having a hard time picking you up.” Curious, I turned toward him. After several seconds the guard pointed ahead and said, “Just follow the road.” The arm moved upward, and I drove through.

Now on Horizn property, I followed a winding, black asphalt road into dense woods. At intervals, surveillance cameras mounted on tall poles marked my progress. After about a quarter mile I came around a gentle curve and saw the main complex: a six-story rectangle of bronzed glass and steel, connected by a covered walkway to a smaller, curved building two stories high. I headed toward the taller building and parked in the lot in front.

I walked through the lot toward the building, disembodied security recording my every move. I quickly ascended the low stairs to the front door; before I could touch it, it slid open. I walked forward, only to meet another glass door ahead. As I waited, the door behind me slid closed; I was now trapped between the two doors. Cameras glared down from above. A voice came through a hidden loudspeaker: “Please look to your left.” There was another wait of several moments; then the front door silently slid open. I walked out into a large atrium that was open to the top of the building. Enormous, well-manicured tropical plants reached upward to the bronze-filtered sun. An attractive brunette was standing several feet away from the door. “Hello, Mr. Hammond,” she said. “Please follow me.”

The woman walked me toward an elevator across the lobby. She pressed her hand on a flat metallic surface integrated into the wall by the elevator door. The door opened, and she motioned for me to enter. I stepped in alone, and the door closed. I looked around; there were no buttons; apparently, the elevator was an express to Ralston's office. A video camera stared down at me from above. The elevator began to move briskly toward the top of the building.

After the ride, I stepped out into a small reception area of dark paneling and upholstered chairs. The room evoked a kind of English drawing-room elegance that seemed out of place in such a high-tech palace. Rows of plaques, community service awards, and photographs of Ralston with the glitterati lined the walls. There were framed thank-you notes from the White House, from the governor, from the mayor. The Harvard and Yale degrees were displayed as well, lit from above by a hidden beam. But the place of honor was reserved for a photograph from the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
, showing Ralston defiant in a city council meeting, arm raised, finger pointing accusingly. The caption below the picture read,
Charles Ralston champions needle-exchange program for city's underclass.
A middle-aged, studious-looking woman met me. “Can I get you anything, Mr. Hammond? Tea? Coffee?” I shook my head. “Then if there's nothing else, you can go in.” She pressed her hand on another identification device, and the lock on a door to my right clicked. She pushed it open and motioned me forward.

If Ralston's reception area was a paean to his civic accomplishments, his office was the opposite: it was the most pristine, uncluttered eight hundred square feet I had ever seen. There was virtually nothing in it, its starkness amplifying its size. Apparently, Ralston's definition of luxury was untroubled space, with nothing to interrupt his mind. The room occupied a corner of the building, giving it two exterior walls, each of bronzed glass. Light passing through gave the room a golden, sepulchral, glow. The other two walls were painted a dark green, with large, abstract works of art mounted on them. Toward the far end of the room was a desk—a gleaming, silver surface mounted on a thin, polished metal pedestal—again, with nothing on it. Ralston's office chair was black leather stretched across a chrome frame. There were no other chairs. Apparently, visitors stood. It was a monk's cell built for a millionaire.

Ralston didn't turn when I entered. He was standing at the far end of his office, arms by his side, eyes level, staring into the woods surrounding Horizn. He wore a dark, exquisitely tailored suit. For a while, neither of us spoke. Eventually, he turned and looked at me. His features were as precise as a ruler, with a straight, narrow face, and thin, determined lips. But he wasn't menacing; instead, there seemed to be a weary sadness around him, a grayness hovering over him like an aura. He didn't look like a man a few days away from winning the biggest victory of his professional life. When he finally spoke, his voice was so low I had to strain to hear it. “Why does business have to be war, Mr. Hammond?”

The room was stark and quiet; I hesitated to break its silence with my own voice. “I don't know,” I answered softly.

He made a small motion with his hand. “Come here.”

I walked across yards of immaculate gray carpet to a spot a few feet away from him. He motioned out through the glass walls. “It's beautiful, isn't it?”

The woods below shimmered with a golden, surreal glow. “Yes, it is.”

Side by side, we looked out into the wooded expanse surrounding Horizn. “I'm not a businessman, Jack. I trained as a scientist. Did you know that?” Ralston stared out through the glass, unblinking. “Have you ever wanted to turn back the clock, Jack? Go to a point in time when everything was perfect?”

“Yes.”

He turned and looked at me, his eyes level, inquiring. After a moment he nodded, as though he approved. “I loved research as a young man. Pure research, not chasing government grants around. Just observing, and asking why.” He smiled. “That's a beautiful question, isn't it, Jack?”

“The question why?”

He nodded. “You trypsonize a protein and discover there are fifteen fragment peptides. Why just fifteen, and not sixteen? The answer has nothing to do with business. It's a question for a scientist.” He paused, looking past me, as though reminiscing. “You start out in business with ideals. You want to help people, maybe make a dollar or two along the way. And somehow, without actually noticing it, it turns into war.” He fell silent again, lost in his own thoughts. “I'm sorry about the delay at the gate,” he said, after a moment. “Bugs in the facial recognition program. It's nothing personal. Everyone who enters the building is put in the database.” He looked up at me ruefully. “Even my wife's lovers.” A terrible silence followed, the kind that swallows you up. I started to speak, but Ralston waved me off. “It doesn't matter,” he said. “Once she chose you, there was nothing you could do.”

“I was under the impression we were choosing each other.”

Ralston gave a wan, vaguely sympathetic, smile. He walked to his desk and touched its surface; the spot under his finger lit, and the glass walls gradually darkened several shades. Eventually we were standing in a somber, gold cocoon. Ralston touched another place on the desk, and the wall behind him flickered into life, revealing a gigantic plasma screen six feet across. The wall of light showed an enormous double helix.

“This is my life's work, Jack,” Ralston said. He stared at the image, mesmerized. “Magnificent, isn't it?” He touched another button, and the strand of DNA began to replicate, the double helixes folding back on themselves, the splines splintering and recombining, until finally it had created a precise copy of itself. Ralston watched, rapt. “My wife finds me cold, Jack.”

“I know.”

“I'm a scientist, you see. Not a philosopher, or an artist. But here . . .” He pointed to the screen. “Here is my philosophy, if you like. Here is my art.” The duplication continued, two becoming four, four into eight, eight into sixteen. “It's life, Jack. Omniscient. Omnipresent. Omnivorous.” He pointed to the screen.
“That
is my philosophy, and I have all of nature on my side.”

I stood watching the screen, thinking about Ralston's words. “There are no choices to make in that world,” I said. “No genuine intelligence. No morality.”

Ralston smiled. “You believe in a certain kind of world. The romantic vision. Good guys and bad guys. Clint Eastwood getting the girl.”

“I like clarity.”

“I would, too, if it existed.” He pointed to the screen. “Can I tell you something that the rest of the world is only now finding out?”

“Yes.”

“There is no such thing as ethics, Jack. They don't exist. Chemistry
is
theology.”

“Hell of a world you're building.”

“All right, Jack. You want to moralize with me. Does the fact that you feel guilty about sleeping with my wife give me a reason to hate you any less for it?”

“I was given to believe it didn't matter to you one way or the other.”

Ralston gave me a look of reproach, but didn't respond immediately. After a moment, he asked, “What did you come here for, Jack?”

“I was invited.”

“You were invited because you wanted to come and because it would have been impossible to see me any other way.”

I paused, thinking. “All right,” I said. “I wanted to look you in the face. You're the big mystery, the man behind the scenes.

Stephens, I understand. He puts on a big front, but lawyers don't make things. They're like suckerfish. They need a shark to latch on to. You're the shark.”

Ralston's smile flickered. “You're a very smart man, Jack.”

“So I'm here to try to figure you out, man to man. You caught hell for the needle-exchange program, and it was a brave thing for somebody in your position to do. It cost you money, and points with the political machine around here. So maybe you're just a tough businessman, and it's really Robinson's ineptitude that killed those people. If so, no hard feelings, and I'm sorry I slept with your wife.” I paused. “It's also possible you're an unscrupulous bastard who's willing to trade the lives of eight innocent people for a huge sum of money. Considering the way things are in the world these days, I'm not going to be shocked if that's the way it turns out.”

“And what would you do if you decided I was guilty of such a sin?”

“I would take you down.” I paused a moment, then added, “I would also make sure you never got close to Michele again.”

Ralston watched me intently a moment. “Have you made up your mind?”

“It would be pretty easy, if Robinson wasn't such a basket case. So no, not quite.”

Ralston nodded thoughtfully. “You realize I can't have a man like you running around making noise right now, don't you, Jack?”

“Sorry.”

“I want to make you a proposition.”

“I'm listening.”

“You say you want the truth. I will give you five minutes to ask me anything you like. If I know the answer, I'll tell you. I promise you in advance that I will not lie. But in exchange, I want something from you.”

“Which is?”

“Peace. A cessation of hostilities. Rumors have power, and the kind you're carrying around are very unwelcome.”

“It puts me in an interesting position.”

Ralston shrugged. “My offer is on the table.”

“I suppose my agreement would depend on your answers.”

Ralston looked at me a moment, then quietly said, “Fair enough. You may begin.”

“Was Doug Townsend working for you?”

“Yes.”

So he means what he said, and the next few minutes are going to be unvarnished.
“Did he hack Grayton for you?”

“For the purposes of this conversation, yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that this is not a court of law. We're just having a friendly conversation.”

I nodded. “How did you find him?”

“Corporate security department came to me. They told me that someone had breached our network. Someone very talented.”

“An expert in cypher technology.”

“The best they had ever seen. He was penetrating deeper and deeper with every attempt.”

“Why didn't you have him arrested?”

“Because locking up a mind like his behind bars would be an idiotic waste of talent. Did the Americans lock up Wernher von Braun just because he worked for the Nazis? On the contrary, they put him to work. The important question was to identify this intruder, find out what he wanted. Was he a competitor? Domestic or international? Or was he an independent, a rogue who was simply amusing himself with the challenge?”

“So you find Doug.”

“Yes. We controlled his access, but he was allowed free rein within those limits. I didn't want to spook him. He had to be handled carefully.” Ralston got a faraway look in his eyes. “There were things about him that were predictable. Genius IQ, already on the outskirts of society. Deeply flawed, with no observable social life. The standard details of a hacker.” He paused. “Of course, that was before we learned what he really wanted, his true purpose for violating Horizn.”

“Michele.”