David Dun - Overfall

It now made sense in retrospect that Chellis might have forged a business relationship with the elusive assassin. Not long ago a French minister who had called for investigations into Grace Technologies died suddenly in an apparent drowning accident. What good fortune for Chellis, Samir had thought at the time.

Samir knew more than most about Gaudet, but it still added up to precious little. He had started out as a thief and a loan shark enforcer, become a hired killer, amassed a fortune, gotten into business, and worked for only a select few. His clients included men with oil money who funded terror. Samir had never seen Gaudet-at least that he knew of-but it was said that the killer favored a beard. Perhaps he would discover something of Gaudet in the lab, but he doubted it. More likely he would discover something about himself-probably something he didn’t want to know.

Fortunately Kuching was an easy place to move men and materials. Samir stopped watching the fish and told Fawd that the drug cocktail was good enough-it was time to perform the break-in.

As he waited for his men to take care of the security guards, he hoped he wouldn’t fall apart. He tried to calm himself by acknowledging the degree to which he’d planned and prepared for this operation. Long before this trip to Kuching, Samir had had his best men study the Grace lab. He had always known there might come a time when he’d have to look in on his partner’s business without Chellis knowing. In general, no laboratory staff members worked between midnight and 6:00 A.M. Only the janitors visited the building, and when they were in, the alarms were off.

Trained security men walked the buildings and grounds, but there was fatal regularity to their attempts at random patrols and they undertook their duties in the somnambulistic fashion of the underpaid. By five minutes after midnight Samir’s men had all four guards trussed and blindfolded and sleeping soundly from a narcotic. They would wake in twelve hours on their front porches, smelling of whiskey and with no memory of anything that had happened to them. Clinical experience had proven that the drug erased the memory, and further that recipients would unconsciously manufacture self-protective and context-appropriate explanations for unexpected happenings. These men would convince themselves, upon awakening on their front porch to the smell of alcohol, that they had finished their jobs and had a drink. Despite his panicked state Samir savored the irony that he had originally gotten this drug from Chellis.

Once his men had carted off the security staff, they merely waited for the janitors to finish the northernmost wing. At 3:00 A.M., Samir and his men moved down the hall methodically. It was just as Samir remembered. Walls bare and off-white, the floor shined, everything clean, nothing fancy, the faint odor of caged primates.

They went straight to the neurology wing in the primate building and there they found no files. Apparently security discipline was being enforced. Samir had to take another tranquilizer and gather himself. He sent his men to do the work while he sat in an office and shook.

His men backtracked to the offices of the scientists nearest neurology. There they went through locked file drawers, Samir hoping that human nature would yield some stray documents. He had told his men that he wanted files on people, not apes, and that any such files should be immediately photographed. He sent another group to administration, and fell asleep because of the heavy doses of medication.

Fawd reported that the large walk-in safe at administration was hard to miss, but it was locked, had a timing device, and his safecracker could not gain entry. To use powerful enough explosives to open the door of the safe would wake the city and destroy the building. Samir was not about to get thrown in a Malaysian jail-especially with his new anxiety problem.

Disappointed, they retreated to the locked file drawers in the offices of the various research scientists and again awakened Samir. Hundreds of available files yielded only two interesting documents. One pertained to Jason Wade, the other to Jeremiah Fuller. Fuller had evidently been treated for dementia, likely the result of late-onset Alzheimer’s. Wade had apparently been treated for a rare brain disease whose course was not well known. Apparently both men had been desperate enough to subject themselves to experimental treatment.

The portions of the files containing treatment details were missing, but the last paragraph of the last page of a technical write-up in the Jason Wade file read:

Production of retro viral vector by multiplying circular vector plasmid using e-coli restriction digestion. Production of coding sequence for receptor amplified from cDNA source by PCR. Coding sequence for blocker by PCR. Promoter amplification from genome DNA by PCR. We introduced 5ml vector times 19 through venous transfusion: one aloquat per each promoter. Estimated 98 % success to infected cells, estimate infection rate 92 %. Transdermal application of suppressor/activator cell agent feasible. Test to see if JH receptor is in frame.

Samir ordered one of his men to photograph the technical language. He would send it to a lab that might tell him something. He also ordered his lieutenant to find out everything possible about Jason Wade and Jeremiah Fuller, including information on family and friends. They went back to the primate lab, observed the packs on the backs of the two macaques, and continued looking. In a storage room they found packs and plastic bottles labeled JH with dates. One was denominated Potency Exp. 05/05. Another bore the label Transdermal JHRA.

“What does it mean?” Fawd asked the science expert on the team.

“Whatever it is, they apply it through the skin. I assume from the lab note that SA means suppressor agent.”

“Take all there is. Take the two liters,” Fawd said. “They will know someone broke in, but why should we care?”

Anna’s Manhattan apartment was on the twenty-eighth floor of her West Side building. She had been trying to read a book that had been recommended during cocktail talk at a party. The friend who made the suggestion was a psychiatrist, a man who had been happily married for thirty years. Although she couldn’t help bristling at what she thought might be an implication, however subtle, that she couldn’t stick with one man, she was now reading with more interest than she cared to admit. Normally she read a book in a few days, but with this one she read slowly, picking her way through the ideas and the feelings. It was titled Where Did She Go? Where Did He Go? and purported to study a phenomenon called emotional unavailability. Having resumed her reading of the book upon her arrival from Canada, she had come to realize that she was reading about Sam. She had started to wonder if she might also be reading about herself.

Like a lot of highly motivated and self-directed people, Anna had the mother of all double standards for those with a title like therapist, counselor, psychiatrist, or psychologist. Shrinks of all flavors were fine… for the other guy: There was not a shred of shame in consulting them. Anna had found no difficulty in consulting head doctors for the sake of her brother, but since beginning this book she had gone to someone strictly for herself twice in a week.

The phone rang-her publicist. Apparently when the press had called her to ask whether Anna had spent the night with a rugged, American sailor aboard his yacht in British Columbia, the publicist had responded with “no comment.” Ordinarily that would be okay, but in this instance it would be taken as an admission. Anna knew Sam would be angry if his name or even his general description ever came up.

“Just call them back, say that you checked with me, and explain that there was no night on a yacht at all. I was with my brother. I did some survival training with an expert. We stopped at the resort for a few minutes, this expert and I, and I signed autographs for some bird-watchers. End of story. Nothing has changed between Lane and me.”