The Methuselah Gene (38 page)

Promise
, I heard Julie repeat.
 
Promise me.

I tried to hold onto the dream—to retain the fading feeling and image on my closed eyelids—but Julie was gone, and suddenly I couldn't remember her face.
 
A momentary panic.
 
Her face!
 
It had been erased from my short term memory.
 
Had she been a dream all along—a construction of my loneliness?
 
Only with the full return of sensory reality did my panic subside, as the memory of her face returned to me too.

Kyle shook my shoulder.
 
“We've begun our descent,” he informed me, and then handed me his open laptop.
 
“You haven't much time to check your e-mail before they cut you off.”

“Time,” I said, coming back to life.
 
“Time, yes.
 
I have time, don't I?”
 
I quickly connected the cable, activating the
airphone
link.
 
Moments later I was online.

And I had mail.

I clicked on the little upraised flag and saw three e-mails.
 
The first two were junk.
 
It was the third that read:

From: [email protected]
 
RE: Darryl Alexander/URGENT

I clicked on the e-mail and saw ten digits there.
 
That was all.
 
The first three digits indicated a Washington DC area code.

Kyle handed me a pen, and I scribbled the number on the back of an in-flight magazine.
 
Then I signed offline, and used the
airphone
again, punching the numbers as fast as I could, fearing the announcement would come any moment that electronic devices could not be used anymore.
 
The number rang four times before the call was picked up, and after a pause a mechanically nondescript voice answered, “Hello.”

“Clifford Seagraves?” I asked it.
 
Another pause, this one suggesting confirmation.
 
“There isn't much time, Mr. Seagraves.
 
I believe we're being framed by Carson Jeffers, vice president of
Tactar
Pharmaceuticals.”

“We?” asked a new voice—this one more real, and with a distinctive nasal quality, making me suspect the first was computer generated.
 
“For what?”

“Zion, Iowa,” I replied.

“How?”

“That's why I'm calling you.
 
I believe Jeffers has planted evidence in my office at the company lab linking me and possibly Darryl with hiring a team to film an experiment with the stolen—”

“Team?
 
Headed by Stephan
Rudnic
?”

“Who?”
 
I was listening to what sounded like a printer in the background.
 
“Who did you say?”

“Walter Mills is an alias.
 
Rudnic
is his real name.
 
He's former CIA, black projects.
 
He resigned four years ago to open a security consulting group.
 
They do surveillance too.”

“Not anymore,” I told him.
 
“And that's not all they did.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean
Rudnic
is dead, along with Darryl and dozens more in Zion.”

There was a long silence during which even the printer stopped printing.
 
“Say again,” Seagraves intoned at last.

“The story will break very soon, if it hasn't already.
 
It will be bigger than any high school shooting or Internet virus.
 
The virus couldn't be contained, and
Rudnic
filmed it.
 
Either for a secret agency within the CDC called the Studio, or for Jeffers himself.
 
Jeffers has escaped, and may not know I'm alive.”

“Where did he go?”

“No idea.
 
Kevin Connolly, a
Tactar
lawyer, was involved too, but he's out of the picture now.
 
Permanently.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“I'm on a plane about to arrive in New York.
 
I've got a connecting flight into Washington.
 
I need help accessing
Tactar
computers before it's too late.
 
It may already be too late.”

“Their system is accessible from the outside,” Seagraves told me.
 
“I have Darryl's protocols here.
 
I can get in.
 
What am I looking for?”

“Anything linking me or Darryl with stealing M-Telomerase.
 
It may be a subtle trail.”

“I understand.
 
And this theft should be linked to Jeffers and Connolly?”

“I don't know how you would do that.”

“Trust me.
 
I'll find a way.”

“There's no time,” I insisted.

“We'll see.
 
Don't go to Washington.
 
Rent a room at an airport hotel in New York, and call me back when you know your room number.”

“What?
 
There may be physical evidence too, in my office!
 
I need to go there and check it out.
 
You can't get in without me.”

“It's too risky.
 
They may be waiting for you there, and at your apartment.”

“They?”

“A third party.”

“The CIA?” I asked.
 
“Mills, or
Rudnic
, whatever, said the CIA was involved at first, then got out when things got too hot.
 
Anyway, I've taken care of my apartment.
 
My neighbor Roger will be storing my computer and papers.
 
He has instructions not to talk to anybody.”

“Can he be trusted?”

“For a price.”

“Okay.
 
You handle that, I'll check
Tactar
computer files.
 
Call me in an hour and we'll decide what to do about your office.”

“Thanks,” I said.
 
“What about Darryl's wife Hannah?”

“She doesn't know?”

“Not yet.
 
She will soon enough, though.”

“How well do you know her?” Seagraves asked me.

“Not well,” I replied.
 
But then, who did I know well?
 
I was just like Julie.

“Okay, then I'll call her, if I have to.
 
Of course we may have to let her find out from . . .”
 
His words trailed off, as though he'd just become aware of talking too much—or perhaps of being intercepted and recorded.

“The police?”

“You said it, not me.”
 
Another pause, then: “One hour.”

There was a click, and he was gone.
 
I replaced the
airphone
, snapping it back into its cradle.
 
Then I ripped off the back cover of the magazine with Seagraves' phone number written on it, and turned to Kyle.
 
He was staring at me expressionlessly.
 
Perhaps what he'd heard was too much to absorb.
 
Maybe he'd read things in
Newsweek
, too, about hacker pings, slave software programs, breaking through firewalls,
uplinking
viruses.
 
Who hadn't, these days?
 
Or maybe he was just trying to decide whether to turn me in.
 
“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I'm . . . different,” Kyle replied.

As we walked up the companionway toward a concourse at JFK International, I felt my heart rate quicken like a
Wahabi
with a see-through rain coat.
 
If one of the few people waiting behind the red rope beyond the end of the tunnel were wearing dark sunglasses or holding a TV news
cam
, I might have bolted back to the plane and demanded to be taken to Cuba.
 
In first class, of course, where the liquor ran free.
 
But since it was only four-thirty a.m. in New York, the news from Zion had not yet had a chance to flood every major media market in the country.
 
That wouldn't happen until seven a.m..
 
Then by eight a.m. everyone on the Eastern Seaboard would know the truth, although whether they would know the real truth was questionable.
 
So the question for me now was: did I really want to risk flying to Washington and walking into another concourse, or should I rent a car from a different agency than I had in Des Moines, drive to Washington, and possibly arrive too late to avoid arrest when I showed up at
Tactar
to search my offices?

Time was running out, so I decided to take the connecting flight as planned.
 
The shuttle was scheduled to leave in thirty-five minutes, allowing me time to say goodbye to Dr. Metcalf at a terminal coffee shop and bar opposite a fast food franchise that operated twenty-four hours.
 
I ordered a cafe mocha, needing the sugar.
 
Kyle ordered a straight coffee, black.

“Thanks,” I told him, “for saving my life.
 
You may have doomed the perpetrator of this horror in the process, too.
 
Let's hope so, anyway.”

Kyle sipped his coffee, and looked over at the television monitor above the bar area as if watching for the first signs of the horror I'd laid on him.
 
But there, CNN was airing a sports update, complete with a live satellite feed from a soccer match on the other side of the world.
 
What is wrong with this picture? Kyle seemed to be thinking.
 
His face still bore the strain of his indecision, between dread and wishful skepticism, although I conceded to myself that his shell-shocked look might just be sleeplessness sustained by caffeine.
 
As he stared at the monitor, his red eyes seemed to will the screen to continue in its usual pattern of programming, like a jet stuck in a holding pattern.
 
Hopefully dubious, though his look was also expectant, fearful.
 
Then his lips moved in a half conscious muttering.

“Maybe you can return the favor sometime,” he said.

I pointed at a fat kid across the way, taking possession of his purchased burger, along with a supersized fries and soda.
 
“Maybe I can,” I suggested.
 
“See that boy over there?
 
Don't do what he's doing, and you may outlive him.”

“Thanks,” Kyle told me, giving a short nervous laugh.

“No, I mean it.
 
Something Kevin Connolly told me about the FDA and the American diet, before he was silenced.
 
Said their food pyramid was upside down, while they knew they were killing people.
 
Intimated they ignored sugar and trans fats like hydrogenated vegetable oils because it kept the AMA fully employed, and may have forced National Health Care.”

“You sound like Dr. Atkins,” Kyle chided.
 
“Before he died.”

“Well,” I said, “it is true Eli Lilly just built another factory to make insulin.
 
There's a billion dollars in profit to be made every year in drugs to treat new diabetic cases.
 
Makes you wonder about funding methods, doesn't it?”

“If you're paranoid.
 
Thanks for the tip, anyway.”
 
He glanced at his watch.
 
“I have to go.”
 
He gave me his card, but I had none to give him.
 
Just as well.
 
He didn't seem to want one in return, particularly.
 
Maybe he intended to claim he didn't know my name.
 
“I don't know how my speech will come out,” he confessed as we limply shook hands.
 
“I hope I can say I met an interesting nut case on the plane with paranoid delusions stemming from his experimentation with drugs.”

“I wish that were it,” I said.

“Maybe it is, and you just don't know it.”
 
He turned to walk away, then stopped himself to look back.
 
“Good luck in Washington.
 
Call me later and fill me in.”

“Just watch the news, that'll fill you in.
 
As far as calling you, it may be my lawyer, seeking your testimony.”

It was an awkward goodbye, with a little half wave and a nervous backward glance or three.
 
When he was gone, I looked at my own watch and went to a pay phone on the end of a line of a dozen similar aluminum cubicles.
 
My sister answered on the second ring this time.