Paul McKellips - Jericho 3

“Watching paint dry,” Camp started.

“Grass growing,” Finn added. “Either has a million times more energy and action than biomedical research, Raines. How do you do it?”

“And this is accelerated work, gentlemen. How would you like to babysit this process for 15 years as a conventional drug or vaccine moves down the pipeline?” Raines answered not looking up from her computer screen.

Camp walked over to the TV in Raines’ small office, turned it on and flipped through channels until he found some English. It was CNN world news.

“A nuclear scientist was killed in a blast in Tehran this morning, the Iranian news agency reported, in the latest in a string of attacks that Iran has blamed on Israel. A motorcyclist placed a magnetic bomb under the scientist’s Peugeot 405, the state-run IRNA news agency said. The blast also wounded two others. State television channel Press TV reported later that the scientist’s driver had died in a hospital from his injuries. The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations condemned what he called ‘cruel, inhumane and criminal acts of terrorism against the Iranian scientists. ’”

Camp and Finn were jolted out of their fixated television news focus by a loud commotion outside and a stream of people running down the hallway past Raines’ door.

“What the heck?” Raines said as she stood and leaned into the hallway.

“What’s going on?” Camp asked nonchalantly.

“Beats me, but everyone looks pretty riled up,” Raines said. “Wanna go take a look?”

Camp and Finn followed Raines out and down the hallway to the main lobby of LyonBio. A sizeable crowd or more than 200 people had gathered outside the CEO’s executive offices as more streamed in.

Two police officers from the Bureau de Police, dressed in white shirts with light blue berets, stood outside the executive office. Two more agents with Interpol and the Deputy Chief of Police for Lyon spoke with a distraught Thierry Gaudin on the other side of the glass walls.

Raines scanned the growing crowd and spotted Pipi Chandre, the client manager who served as her “go to” problem-solver and who spoke fluent English. Camp and Finn followed Raines as she made her way through the throng.

“Pipi, what’s going on?”

Pipi was almost hysterical.

“Mr. Gaudin’s executive secretary came out a moment ago and told some of the workers that Mr. Gaudin’s oldest son, Bernard, was kidnapped after school today.”

“Kidnapped?” Finn asked.

“Yes. Terrorists have taken him.”

“For ransom? Money?” Finn asked.

“We don’t know.”

The investigators from Interpol led Thierry out of his office and out the front door into a waiting vehicle and away from the legion of his beloved employees as rumors and speculation flew wildly.

Tel Aviv, Israel

Mossad agents Reuven and Yitzhak poured through their daily intelligence reports. Nuclear inspectors were, once again, denied access to several of the Iranian nuclear sites.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, were back in Iran doing the one-step, two-step dance. The steps seemed to be the same each time the dance music was played. Iranian officials always looked forward to IAEA inspections, and they welcomed inspectors to the airport each time. But when it came time for special requests and surprise locations, the Iranians always had an excuse. IAEA inspectors were in Iran every three months, and sites that were inexplicably “unavailable” one month would be put on the list to see three months later.

Yitzhak picked up the phone and called a junior officer in Austria.

“Make the calls, Sasha, and get a few major media outlets to carry this one line: ‘the IAEA does not look at today’s setback in a negative light. Iran continues to be cooperative and we look forward to our visit in three months.’ Do you copy, Sasha?”

“Yes.”

“I need it three places.”

“Got it.”

Reuven looked through a variety of intel reports coming out of Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. One headline in particular grabbed his attention: SON OF BIOTECH EXECUTIVE KIDNAPPED IN LYON, FRANCE.

Reuven read deeper. “Bernard Gaudin (15), son of LyonBio President and CEO, Thierry Gaudin, abducted in broad day light — ransom demands posted on Internet.” Reuven leaned over and clicked on the video link pasted in the classified digital report.

The video was homemade, anything but professional, which made the experience all that more real. The camera pulled back from an image of a black flag with red blood letters that spelled SPEAK. The mask-like face of a small non-human primate seemed to gaze at the letters.

Three adults were standing, two on the left side and one on the far right. They were wearing wool ski masks with cut-outs for eyes, nose and mouth. They were dressed completely in black. In the center of the table was a 15-year-old boy whose mouth was taped shut, and his hands were bound behind his back. Bernard was stripped naked and crammed on one side of an Allentown two-cage metabolic non-human primate cage, 32-inches wide, 29-inches deep and 32-inches high. Feeders and watering units were affixed to the cage. A sliding socialization door separated Bernard from the empty companion cage next to him.

One of the masked men spoke into the camera.

“LyonBio murdered 24 monkeys this week with poisonous gases and mists.”

The video cut to a clip of amateur video allegedly taken on someone’s iPhone from inside LyonBio’s pilot house. Reuven watched four monkeys gasp for their last breaths and die.

“There are 172 more rhesus monkeys that are on death row waiting to be executed later this week. The president and chief executive officer of LyonBio is a Frenchman by the name of Thierry Gaudin. He and his wife Rochelle have three beautiful children. This is their 15-year-old son, Bernard. Their daughter Marie is just 13 years old, and she has a beautiful voice. We know, because we heard her sing in her choir at Sainte-Luc’s. The cage next to Bernard is reserved for Thierry Gaudin’s six-year-old son, Philippe. Don’t worry, Philippe. When we pick you up, we’ll make sure you have a football in your cage because we know you want to win the World Cup for France one day.”

Reuven rubbed his eyes in pain. This was not good.

“If LyonBio does not… DOES NOT… stop all animal testing within 24 hours… then we will continue their animal tests right here on Bernard who has volunteered for duty.”

The masked man next to the spokesman pulled out a scalpel and a set of jumper cables and a car battery. He held one end of the jumper cables near the wire Allentown cage while the other was attached to the car battery.

“In the first 24 hours of human experimentation, we will begin with shock therapy to see how electrical charges affect the human brain of a 15 year old.”

The loose end of the jumper cables was attached to the metal cage. Sparks flew and Bernard screamed through the tape on his mouth.

“After 48 hours, little Philippe will join his brother as we inject the boys with cleaning chemicals to see if their bodies want to reject those chemicals. Logical, right?”

Reuven closed his eyes in disgust.

“But after 72 hours… well, that’s where we get to the good stuff. We will hold a ‘live’ lab on the Internet where aspiring young biomedical researchers can watch us perform a necropsy on these two brothers. You will be able to see first-hand how bad these tests were on humans. Unlike animals, I’m sure that both Bernard and Philippe will want to tell all of you that these experiments hurt. The animals say the same things, but no one at LyonBio appears to be listening. So SPEAK, A Voice for the Animals, will.”