Unacceptable Risk (30 page)

"Yeah I guess I do. On the desk."

"When did you deposit it?"

"This morning." Grady grabbed the tracking slip off the desk, got on the phone to Jill, and gave her the information. The package was sent to a street address in New York. It would be diverted and would end up in LA at Sam's new offices. They put Nemus on the phone for about thirty seconds to confirm the change. Jill would investigate the mailing address, but it would no doubt be newly established and a dead end.

"How much were they paying you for the 1998 copy?"

"I told you thirty thousand. But I don't know who they were. I swear."

"Where's the money?"

"They were going to give me the money with the rest. The hundred thousand for the copies of the others. Like I said."

Grady hated this Nemus character for putting her through the last forty-five minutes. She planned to talk to Lyman and make sure this fool was done at Cornell.

"I'll tell the guys to bring the trunks," Michael said.

"I'm gonna call the cops on you guys."

"Yeah, needle dick, you do that. We'll call the FBI. And we'll tell them what you stole, show them the FedEx receipt, and have you arrested for a damn felony," Grady shot back.

Nemus shut his mouth.

Grady went to get the security guys with the two 4-foot trunks and the Ford Explorer. They carried them up to the car like a couple of tiny caskets. After they had packed up the volumes, they left Nemus to his own thoughts and to contemplate the blessing of his intact body and his freedom.

Baptiste and Figgy sat at a table at a convenient restaurant located down the street from the executive terminal at Teterboro Airport. They were trying to be prudent in their eating and so had each ordered blackened salmon on cream-sauced pasta, but had the chef hold the pasta and substitute broccoli. It was boring for a Frenchman but perhaps more palatable to Figgy, Baptiste wasn't sure. It had been three long and hectic days since Baptiste had left France, on a flight to New York—the one following the flight taken by Benoit Moreau.

"Once we're on that plane, we've got no control."

"Wouldn't you want it that way if you were Gaudet?" Baptiste replied.

"There are better ways to meet people."

"It seems to me that we need him more than he needs us. As I see it, he makes money with or without us. He just makes more with us. Without him I don't see us making anything."

"That's not true. What about the copy of Bowden's 1998 journal you're waiting for? Is that nothing?"

"We won't know until we've had a chance to study it."

"Does the admiral know you're about to get the journal?"

Baptiste looked at Figgy as if he'd lost his mind. "No, and he won't until I'm ready. I need you to understand this. Gaudet is a shield, a ... How do you say? A prophylactic for us. We need to convince my government that Gaudet stole the journal. Not you, and certainly not me. We're just making a deal with him."

"A deal with Gaudet?"

"It's complicated, but it'll work. Benoit will handle it all through a Swiss escrow. She knows Gaudet and we don't." Baptiste changed the subject to an unpleasant topic before Figgy could protest. "You killed Sam's man. A guy he probably liked."

"What the hell are you bringing that up for? It's old news. When he recognized me, I had no choice. The man attacked me!" Figgy's face had grown red. "Where are you going with this?"

"We need you either all the way in or all the way out. All the way in means trusting me to run this show. It also means letting Gaudet execute his Cordyceps plan against the U.S."

"You're a crazy motherfucker, Baptiste. That was never part of the deal. We were supposed to sell the technology to a foreign government. That's it."

Baptiste clucked his tongue and shook his head, and when Figgy had quieted, he explained the plan to multiply their cut of the deal as laid out by Benoit Moreau. "To really make money, we need Cordyceps to happen."

"It seems you and Benoit have thought of everything. I hope you two haven't outsmarted yourselves. You know she was Gaudet's lover—probably still is."

"And?"

"She could be with him right now discussing this deal!"

"You are completely out of your mind. I said you need to—"

"Whoa! Don't get touchy. You ... you are in love, aren't you? Shit. In love with a black widow."

Baptiste stood and threw his napkin down. "That's enough! Worry about yourself, Meeks. Pay the bill and let's get out of here."

They waited at Executive Air at La Guardia for Gaudet to arrive. They noticed a sleek jet with large engines taxi up in front of the establishment and shut down.

"It's a Citation X," Figgy said. "A very fast plane."

Baptiste had no idea what kind of plane would come to fetch them. Several business types, men and women, disembarked, so it was obviously not Gaudet. Next a single-engine plane with a butterfly tail came taxiing up and they dismissed that as too small.

"It's a Beechcraft Bonanza," Figgy said. They waited and noted that it was one minute until the appointed time. Two men and a woman got out of the Beechcraft. Oddly, the woman wore an Islamic burka that covered her from head to toe. Her height, if indeed it was a she, was difficult to ascertain under the tentlike garment. That was unusual enough, but it seemed oddly out of place when the two men and the woman boarded the Citation X.

"Probably an Arab princess or something," Figgy said. "The pilots are still in the cockpit."

One of the men, tall, good-looking, with swept-back blond hair and dressed business casual, exited the jet and walked directly toward the lobby where they sat waiting. He came right to them.

"Gentlemen, I am Jack. I have come on behalf of Devan Gaudet to invite you aboard the jet."

Baptiste retained his poker face but immediately feared that something was amiss with the person under the burka. It wouldn't have been necessary to put someone on in full view—it had to have been done for effect. But what effect?

Then as they walked to the plane, he reconsidered. The whole thing was a carefully orchestrated mind game to throw him off balance, to make impressions about important themes. He just hadn't figured it out yet.

"I will have to ask you to enter the plane one at a time. I regret it, but we will need to search you for weapons," Jack said.

Baptiste went first into a posh business jet that would seat comfortably perhaps ten people. There was a curtain across the middle of the jet and two armed men sat on their side of the curtain. Jack did a thorough pat down, apologizing once more for the inconvenience. They used a sort of electronic wand to check for microphones and another to check for metal. Baptiste and Figgy took seats facing the two men and the curtain.

"Welcome," said an electronically scrambled voice.

Baptiste should have known they would neither hear nor see Gaudet directly. Recording such a voice would be useless even if they had managed to smuggle a microphone on board the jet.

"Good afternoon," Baptiste replied in English.

A stewardess rose from the backseat of the plane, closed the heavy exterior door, and brought a tray of French pastries. They appeared to Baptiste to be of the finest quality. Figgy took one of the delicious-looking chocolate eclairs. Baptiste declined. The engines spooled up and the plane began the long taxi. The man on the other side of the curtain did not speak. As the plane taxied toward the runway, the stewardess and the two men went forward on the far side of the curtain.

"This jet is very fast," Figgy explained. "The fastest private jet. Something like Mach .92. That's even faster than the new Gulfstream."

"So, you are interested in airplanes," said the electronic voice.

"May I assume that you are Mr. Gaudet?" Baptiste said.

"You may assume anything you like. But I am not the man."

Then a cabinet in the back wall of the plane opened up and a TV screen appeared. On it was a man whose face was largely shadowed. He had a beard, but it was difficult to make out features.

"Please put on your headphones," said the man on the far side of the curtain. On the arms of their chair were large headphones with a microphone, the sort of headset that a pilot might wear.

"I am Gaudet," said the man on the screen in another electronic voice speaking into the headphones. "I am pleased to meet you. I regret that I can't join you, but I'm not particularly fond of airplanes. I merely tolerate them and I wouldn't actually put myself inside a heavily secured area like an airport for a meeting."

"Just out of curiosity, why the burka?"

"She is an intermediary between myself and the Swiss escrow company where we will do business if we make a deal. I understand from Benoit that the escrow is a must. Like me, my intermediary prefers not to be known and not to be photographed."

Baptiste figured it was either an escrow agent or a trusted lieutenant of Gaudet's. The rest were no doubt contract mercenaries.

"Let's get down to business," Baptiste said as they shot down the runway for takeoff.

And so the negotiations began. First it was peripheral matters and the bragging by each side of all that they were bringing to the table. They talked about the financial terms and there was haggling, but the end result was much as Benoit had suggested. A $200,000,000 purchase by France, with a kickback to everyone on Baptiste's team of $5,000,000 in cash. They agreed on how exactly they would communicate with the escrow company, security codes for the communications, and other related matters. An additional $5,000,000 in cash was to go to the Eviral Trust and various other trusts and corporations as dictated by Gaudet. For some reason Gaudet found some humor in the dispersal, but it escaped Baptiste.

"There are two more matters," Baptiste finally said. "We have heard that Benoit, acting through you, may be able to deliver copies of Bowden's 1998 journals to the French government. You will need to speak with Benoit about that. We realize that there is no guarantee for the French government that Chaperone is in those journals, but circumstantial evidence suggests it may be."

"Hmm. I am envious. How did you manage to pull off getting the journals?"

"That would be Benoit's doing. Take it up with her. You should get some additional money from the French government and we should get half."

"You're greedy bastards. You blame the theft on me and get half the money."

"Much will already be blamed on you... what is one more thing?"

Gaudet actually chuckled.

"The second issue is that Cordyceps must not come too quickly after delivery of Chaperone."

"Five days," Gaudet said.

"That is very fast," Baptiste said.

"That is all you get. I can't wait around. As it is, my investors won't like it. When Chaperone and related documents, including Bowden documents and all vector technology documents, are in escrow, you will have five days' notice of Cordyceps."

"What if we need time to authenticate before closing?"

"You do that on your own clock. My five-day clock starts running when I have everything you're buying in escrow. If we and Benoit working together take too long getting Chaperone into escrow, then we will so notify you and the deal is off."

"But we have no control over that."

"How right you are. But you don't have to spend your money if we don't deliver the product. And that, gentlemen, concludes our business."

A hungry man will risk a bad oyster.

—Tilok proverb

"There goes our boy Figgy," Sam said to Jill on the cell phone. Sam was sitting in an FBO at Teterboro next door to the establishment hosting the Citation X. Sam doubted that Gaudet would be on the plane despite the intercepted messages that called for a "meeting." There had been what looked to be a woman in a burka and Sam's mind was churning over who it might have been. Gaudet? Doubtful. Again, he would not likely be present.

The question he couldn't answer was what they might be discussing. It had an ominous feel to it. When the plane taxied toward the runway, he engaged an entire group on a conference call. On the call were several private detectives, Grogg, and others on Sam's staff.

"How was the picture?" Sam asked.

"Better than CNN," Grogg said. "Great show."

"Anybody get anything while they were sitting at the FBO?"

"Nothing. They talked about airplanes."

"Who was under the burka?" Sam asked.

One of the private eyes spoke up. "It was a hundred feet from the Bonanza to the Citation. He or she took fifty steps to cover it. By the stride, I'd say it was a woman. He or she put out a hand when she climbed the stairs. Woman-size hand, although it was gloved. Height we guess at five feet eight inches. He or she is accustomed to airplanes because he or she didn't hesitate for even a second as would someone unfamiliar with private jets. But he or she is not accustomed to the burka because he or she slightly misjudged the added height and just touched the header on the entryway to the jet. We got just a glimpse of the shoes as he or she climbed the steps. They were upscale and they were female-size feet. So we think it's a she and not a he."

"Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but that could bring it down to a few thousand since not many woman with nice shoes and a normal build are used to climbing in and out of private jets. Assuming, of course, we're right about the jets," Grogg said.

"Did anyone notice the fingers of her right hand?" Sam asked.

There was silence.

"Play the tape again." Everyone watched. Sticking down out of one sleeve were the gloved fingers of a hand. They moved like cilia on a sea creature but very slowly.

"Get a signer who knows signing for the deaf."

"That won't take long; we have someone," Jill said. While he waited, Sam used his cell to call people in the flight control center tracking the jet. It was headed for Martha's Vineyard. Then Jill came back on.

"Got it. You won't believe it. She signed STOGETH-ERBM and I would take that to mean 'Sam together Benoit Moreau.' "

"Resourceful," Sam said. "In more ways than one. She's out of jail and in the U.S.? What game are the French playing?"

"Figures one of the French is wired into the deal, probably illicitly," Jill said.

Grogg added the punctuation: "Surprise, surprise, surprise."

Sam found Michael and Grady in a booth at a tavern in Gramercy Park nearby the bed & breakfast, apparently having sat with their beers for some time. There were six bodyguards spread around the place and their roving eyes created an odd sensation, but it didn't seem to interfere with business. Grady had taken Anna's tragedy hard, but she was weathering it in the presence of the strong calm that was Michael Bowden. It had been two days since the airport incident and Figgie hadn't said a word.

"You've got to get out of New York," Sam said to Michael, not in the mood for circumlocutions.

"What are you thinking?" Bowden asked.

The words didn't contain attitude, but Sam thought the tone did. "Look what they've done to try to get those journals. Gaudet has almost killed you, Grady, me, and Anna. What more do you need to see?"

"I know the whys. Why I should run. Why Gaudet wants me. What I don't know is what you're suggesting. I want him out of my life and everyone else's, out of commission, whatever. Dead. Right? Aren't we more likely to catch him if I'm visible than if I'm hiding?"

"You're right, and I don't disagree. But think about it first. It's not just your life we're talking about."

"Grady should not be with me until this is over. I know that."

"Don't I get a say in that?" Grady had had enough.

Sam and Michael looked at each other.

"Get used to it, Michael. Hey, you have to admit she's not doing bad." Sam drained his drink and leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Look, if you're in, that's fine with me. I have a thought as to how we might lay a trap. But you have to be sure."

"I'm not dying to be a staked goat, but it's better than doing nothing."

Sam looked at Grady, who glowed with pride at her mentor's earlier remark. Behind the glow, though, her face showed her disquiet. In her eyes he saw both the undaunted determination of a woman with a plan and a smart person afraid for her life. And Michael's.

"All right at least let's move you to a bed-and-breakfast over in Greenwich Village. They'll have to find you again."

"That's fine," Michael said and Grady nodded.

"First, I have a big piece of news," Sam said. "We received an e-mail today from France. We think they are relaying messages from one Benoit Moreau." Sam briefly explained her history with Grace Technologies and her imprisonment. "She seems to be out, and possibly in New York. Apparently she will want a meeting; an attorney ready to attend and most interesting, a fake 1998 journal copy that looks real but is entirely a forgery."

"What?"

"That is totally weird," Grady said.

"I do not know why that request and she hasn't said when she wants a meeting or why. It could be to work her own scam or it could be because she wants to help us. If they think they have the journal, they lay off you. I think she wants me to believe she is on our side. I should mention that the attorney is to be an expert in immigration."

"Should I make a journal with incorrect latitudes and longitudes and with altered descriptions of the material? Mis-describe flora, fauna?"

"It couldn't hurt. But I'm sure it would be a lot of work."

"A whole year's worth of actual data? Maybe. But if I got Lyman and some honest graduate students..."

* * *

By the next day, a full twelve days after his arrival in New York, Sam had set up temporary offices. Every morning that he could, he would stop by to see Anna and he called Anna's mother or the nurse Lydia at least twice a day. Here he could work the phones and brainstorm with the investigators feeding Big Brain. It wasn't glamorous, but unlike the LA office, he could be near Anna. He had a better chance of finding Gaudet from the computer room than he did walking the streets, because from the office he could greatly multiply his efforts using contract investigators. A new priority was learning why the French were having secret meetings with Gaudet and who had hired the grad student to steal Michael's journal.

Back at the bed-and-breakfast he kissed Grady on the cheek, clasped her hand, and left her with Michael. His instincts were talking to him again. Grady and Michael were assuming he'd go back to LA. He didn't bother to correct the impression, although there were various ways they might find him out. Since he always took calls on his cell, it wasn't always easy to determine his whereabouts and people were very used to not knowing.

Preferring anonymity he stayed over in Greenwich Village, in the apartment of a retired FBI agent. The man was traveling.

On the way to the office he stopped by the hospital. In mid-afternoon the hospital was getting ready for a shift change. Nurses were standing around flipping through charts and talking in low tones. Anna's room was a good walk down a long corridor filled with people with serious problems. There was a faint antiseptic smell and somehow it didn't help his mood. As he neared the door, the deep reserve of sadness that was always with him these days took over his mind. When he entered, he noticed that the monitor was now silent and each beat was only a line on the screen. Sitting by Anna's bed, her mother held her hand, and it made him feel good and it made him feel guilty all at the same time. When he approached Anna's mother, he noticed that her face was drawn and that deep fatigue had set in. The vigil was taking its toll.

"I will leave you alone," she said quietly.

Nothing had ever made him feel so helpless.

Anna's face revealed nothing and it seemed to Sam that she was very far away.

She always liked the smell of a good Cuban cigar, so in violation of all the rules he sat by her bed and smoked a few puffs. After he put out the cigar, he leaned forward and whispered in her ear.

Sam sat in New York in front of the video-conferencing monitor, talking to Jill in LA the way old acquaintances do, snacking, drinking, and lapsing into silence between broken phrases that called up a history of late nights at the office, long lunches, walks in the park, and even pillow talk. They had each ordered in some fried yearling oysters and Sam carefully dipped the end of about every third oyster in ketchup. He called the ketchup dunking "cleansing the palate." Jill liked the unadulterated oyster flavor and skipped the condiment. Harry sat on the conference table of the New York office watching every oyster that went into Sam's mouth and got about one out of four. Jill said the dog had superior taste—he'd have none of Sam's ketchup. One of Sam's staff had been kind enough to bring the lonely dog with him from LA.

For a few minutes Jill listened while Sam tried to tell her how he felt about Anna lying unconscious in the hospital. For some reason it was hard for him to speak the right words, and yet he knew she understood.

"I wish I were there to hold your hand," she said. There were a few moments of silence. Harry put his chin on his paws and looked disconsolate.

"You know the way you're leaning back with those oysters, you're going to spill ketchup on your shirt."

"Have you ever noticed how some people can't just wear their ketchup stain—even ketchup lovers like me. They have to cover it with a tie, or hold their hand on their stomach, or take the shirt off and use towels and water. In the extreme cases they have to leave the office and get a new shirt. As long as that ketchup is there, they can't stop thinking about it. The ketchup actually rules their life."

Jill said nothing for a moment.

"Grieving is good, Sam. It's not like a ketchup stain, so don't even think about comparing them."

"I was talking about hypocritical ketchup lovers."

"And I was talking about you."

Sam thought about that. For him, was it Gaudet that was the ketchup stain? Or was it something inside? Was it his self-doubt? Was it that he had Indian blood? Or maybe it was his anonymous life. One thing he believed: nothing could be normal or right until he got Gaudet. Not grieving, not life. Maybe he could choose a public life after Gaudet. Maybe he would have more confidence that he was good enough for Anna. Now he didn't know.

He thought about what his mother had said about Grandfather, about the focusing of his life force. Could a man focus his life on catching another man and have a life worth living? It was a question that he shoved out of his mind almost as fast as it came. Some things were necessary, he told himself.

"You don't think you should tell Grady and Michael you're really in New York."

"It worked last time."

"Yeah, Grady was almost strangled."

"I've gotta get this man that is really not a man. He is more devil than man."

"I guess if we're going to stop him, we better get to work."

"Title of the file in Gaudet's mainframe was interesting," Jill said. " 'Alpha Worm.' Some kind of joke."

"Uh-huh."

"You're tired."

"Not that tired. How is Figgy doing?"

"Great. If you like would-be traitors. He has a lot of contacts and he's working them. I guess we just ignore that he seems to have had a meeting with our mortal enemy and isn't mentioning it. He has gotten information about Grace from the French, who are suddenly discovering that they knew things they supposedly didn't know."

"Do you think he would betray the United States for some renegade French spooks?"

"What do you think, Sam?"

"I think we got serious trouble that I don't understand. We can't trust Figgy with anything we don't want Gaudet to know until we prove otherwise. It is possible to meet with your enemy without embracing him. We can't forget that. I would like to think that Figgy and the French are trying to trap him."

"But you don't believe it."

"Unfortunately, I don't."

"You know I was talking to our Harvard guys. They just keep saying that this would be an unimaginable medical breakthrough if Grace had a way of altering the immune system so that it would accept foreign cells. All of the diseases in which our bodies reject good cells could be cured. Growing and implanting replacement organs would be a breeze. We'd have pig farms growing human parts. Gene repair would be vastly simplified. You have to hear it for yourself. They make it sound like the Second Coming."

"It would be worth a fortune."

"And?"