A Knife Edge Read online

  “Has he got any relatives?”

  “Only Uncle Sam,” I said. “That's why I'm here.”

  By now, both phones on Metzler's desk were ringing. So was his cell. Someone was also knocking on the door. I'd taken up too much of the captain's time.

  TEN

  Before I'd left, Metzler had promised to do what he could, circulating the documents among the emergency services crews without giving a specific reason for the fuss, but he warned that things were still a mess. There were plenty of victims of the bombing suffering severe shock with no clue who they were, and plenty of corpses burned beyond recog nition. It could take weeks to sort through the identity issues. He said it was likely that some people might never be found or accounted for. He also advised me to keep an eye on the Web site where the names of the newly positively identified were being posted every minute. More than that, he warned, he couldn't do.

  I made my way through the confusion of the command center and headed for the exit. Outside, I took shelter under an awning. It was raining heavily, the weather aligning with the city's mood. Low gray clouds scudded across a backdrop of a deeper gray and dumped buckets of the Pacific Ocean on the frantic rescue attempts still going on down in Clay and Montgomery streets. Sirens, seemingly hundreds of them, wailed and screamed through the dark city canyons. Somewhere close by, there were helicopters in the sky, hovering, braving the nil visibility.

  I ran to my vehicle, an old beige Ford Crown Vic, with my jacket bunched up over my head. The car had been left for me to pick up at the airport. The thing sagged to the left when I sat in it. Inside, it reeked of sweat, cigarettes, and stale sex.

  The financial district had been evacuated and sealed off by the National Guard. The streets not in use by the emergency crews were eerily deserted. I drove to the checkpoint and stopped beside a huddle of Humvees and a cluster of armed guardsmen wearing black ponchos slick with rain. I hit the switch and the window came down.

  “Sir?” said a kid with a high voice and an M16 who barely filled out his uniform. “Can I help you?”

  “I'm heading to Palo Alto. What's the best route through the city?”

  “It's all gone to crap beyond here, I'm afraid, sir.” He put his head in the window and pointed down the street. I smelled beer and ham sandwiches. “You're on Grant. Continue straight ahead till you get to Market. Then turn right and go all the way till you get to Van Ness. You'll know you're going the right way when you see signs for Highway 101.”

  I repeated the instructions to make sure I had them straight. The kid nodded and his helmet nearly fell off, sliding forward over his eyes.

  The directions turned out to be meaningless. With the financial district closed to public access, a major part of the city's road system had been effectively amputated. Beyond the guard's control point, the traffic became a snarling tangle of flashing lights, patrol cars, detours, and gridlock.

  The detours funneled the traffic through the retail part of town, where Santa Claus reigned like a South American dictator. Posters and plastic models of the fat guy were everywhere, along with tinsel, lights, and the usual Christmas paraphernalia.

  Santa Claus. Seeing him reminded me of Al Cooke, the cook aboard the Natusima, the man who accused Sean Boyle of throwing his research partner, Dr. Tanaka, into the waiting mouth of a hungry great white shark. I reminded myself not to be so dramatic. The shark wasn't exactly waiting. And weren't the damn things always hungry?

  I crawled past a group of people taking down the display of a sleigh pulled by reindeer. The bombing had stripped everyone of their Christmas cheer.

  It took three hours to reach the 101, where things began to move quicker. The highway wound its way in a southeasterly direction through passing showers and tendrils of shredded cloud. Off to the left, San Francisco Bay hid behind a wall of solid rain. Meanwhile, the highway ran through a sea of fast-food joints, tire stores, and car dealerships.

  An overhead sign said the turnoff I was looking for was coming up in two miles. Boyle was a geneticist. His “Playing God” speech had discussed the science involved in creating what he termed “designer life”—life created by genetically reengineering existing life forms to do specific tasks. I hadn't understood his speech completely, but the gist was easy to follow. Basically, according to Boyle, it was now possible to genetically engineer organisms and then patent them. Companies could own a new life form and demand royalty payments for its use year after year. There were examples of drugs being produced in this way, as well as various seeds used in agriculture. Theoretically, it was even possible to produce human-animal hybrids that, despite looking and acting the same as human beings, had a slightly different genome that was patented, meaning these human beings weren't technically human at all and therefore had no constitutional protection, no rights. They could thus be owned, a euphemism for enslaved. Nice.

  In his speech, Boyle said that while this sounded like science fiction, a lot of it was technically feasible right now, with the balance theoretically possible in the not-too-distant future. For example, tomatoes could be reengineered with a gene from sole—the fish—that resisted freezing, allowing the fruit to be kept in freezers so that it could be stored longer. It was now possible to reengineer salmon to grow to forty times their normal size. The speech gave numerous examples of how this technology was pervading all our lives.

  Boyle's specific area of interest was in the genetic reengineering of bacteria to produce new medicines.

  It all sounded scary, and yet, in the way Boyle couched it, noble. This research was being done not for corporate profits, but for the betterment of humankind. Except that, according to the information obtained by Arlen, Boyle was in fact working on a new type of organism that was so secret there was no documented outline of exactly what it was. But there were clues. Boyle's partnership with Tanaka was unique. Both men were renowned experts in their respective, seemingly unrelated, fields. Tanaka was a marine biologist specializing in deep-sea life, specifically the search for previously undiscovered organisms that lived in the ultrahostile environments provided by hy-drothermal vents. So Tanaka came up with new life, the genes of which Boyle manipulated to produce … what? Something the DoD was prepared to pay big money for.

  I reached the turnoff. The road brought me out at the gates of an area of light industrial compounds. Signs pointed the way to Moreton Genetics. I followed them until I saw the distinctive double-helix building raised above the plain on its man-made hill. A high electrified fence surrounded the complex. There were plenty of surveillance cameras. I took a left turn into the security checkpoint, a brick bunker with a heavy steel gate across the access road. More cameras. A fit young woman accompanied by a body-builder type complete with roid acne came out to check on my reasons for being here.

  “Good morning, sir,” said the woman in a perky way, taking the lead, all teeth and blond hair, leaning into my open window. She wore a short-sleeved white shirt stretched across a lean, athletic torso. The double-helix symbol was embroidered on a breast pocket. The name tag pinned below it informed me her name was “Jacki.” Jacki and partner—I immediately named him Jill—wore the ubiquitous security earpiece. A Taser stun gun was clipped to her belt. Jill, similarly dressed and blond, the sleeves of his short-sleeved shirt looking like tourniquets around his pumped upper arms, was likewise packing. Were they expecting trouble here at MG?

  “Morning,” I replied to Jacki.

  “So, how can I help you today, sir?” she asked, beaming bright enough to give me a tan.

  “Special Agent Vin Cooper, Department of Defense. I have an appointment with Dr. Freddie Spears.” I gave her a good look at my DoD credentials. So far, so good. I rarely called ahead when I wanted to interview someone, particularly when that someone might not want to be interviewed. Still, I had made sure Dr. Spears would be out at MG by making an appointment and using the name of a TIME journalist lifted from the magazine's editorial credits. Dr. Spears would be crazy not to stick around for an interv
iew with the respected magazine read by thousands of potential MG stock buyers, wouldn't he? So I could assume the guy was in; I just had to get to him, and that meant getting past Jacki and Jill.

  Jill extracted a personalized digital assistant from a pocket and began stabbing at it with a pencil-like implement. After a few moments, he shook his head and showed Jacki the screen.

  “That's Cooper with a C,” I said helpfully.

  The guy shook his head again.

  Jacki's smile switched to a look of concern. “I'm sorry, sir, but you're not on our list of today's visitors.”

  “Gee,” I said, matching her concern with some of my own. “Freddie's expecting me. We're old friends. He'll be real disappointed if I don't show up.”

  I must have said something wrong because Jacki's expression become instantly suspicious. “Can I ask what this is in regard to, sir?”

  Time to come out swinging. “Sure, you can ask, but it's none of your business, so I probably wouldn't tell you,” I said, confusing her with my sweetest smile. “But what you can do is tell Freddie that Special Agent Vin Cooper from the DoD is here to see him. You can also tell him I'm filling in for Steve Liu from TIME, and that I don't seem to appreciate being kept waiting. And then let's just see if my name doesn't miraculously appear on that PDA of yours.”

  I wasn't sure what it was about these two that stuck in my craw. It could have been the fact that they looked like a couple of dummies in a gym-equipment store window. But it could also have been the Tasers, those nasty little antipersonnel devices on their hips, that set me off. I'd trained with this so-called nonlethal weapon. It fired a pair of probes attached to the “gun” by small wires. An electric current designed to disable the human nervous system surged down those wires and through the probes, curling the target into a helpless quivering ball on the ground. Trouble was, far too often those electrical impulses had the same effect on the heart, stopping it permanently.

  “There is no need to be rude, sir,” she replied.

  “Jacki, this is not me being rude. This is me being obstinate and determined. But I can do rude if it would make you feel more comfortable. Although, trust me, it wouldn't.”

  Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times, and her partner was speaking into a handset while giving me his best glare. Jacki touched a finger to her ear and then disappeared briefly inside the bunker. Maybe she was feeling the cold, after all. Or perhaps it was to activate the gate, which swung outward.

  “Have a nice day,” I called to them as I drove through. One of the cameras followed me—like the eyes in those paintings, the ones in old horror movies. I'd been to sensitive military establishments with less security. Again I wondered why a nice, friendly company like MG would need to arm its gate guards with Tasers.

  The access road meandered through the reeds, birds, and, no doubt, the rare endangered species of frogs and pond slime featured on the Web site. The drive gave me time to think about how I was going to play this interview. Chip Schaeffer had given me the green light to pay MG a visit. His tone had shifted from the earlier stay-the-hell-away mode to the maybe-go-have-a-snoop-around one. Frankly, his change of heart made me nervous. Something was going on at the DoD, and I'd had enough experience with this feeling to be wary of it.

  As I drew nearer, I glanced up at the MG complex crowning the top of the man-made hill. The structure was a lot bigger than it appeared to be on the Web. It was also an extraordinary feat of both architecture and engineering. A movement out to the right caught my attention. It was a golf buggy, a couple of security personnel on board. I was either being shadowed or we all happened to be heading to the next tee.

  A heavy rain shower crashed down, reminding me of a descending curtain. I hit the button to wind up the window, but the electric motor chose that moment to expire with the window stuck two thirds of the way up. The smell of burnt wires filled my nostrils. I swore as the rain began to slant in through the opening, soaking my sleeve and pants. I turned in toward the complex and pulled into a covered foyer. Through the condensation covering the windscreen, I saw I had a reception committee waiting.

  I climbed out of the Crown Vic, a suspicious-looking wet patch stretching from groin to knee. “Shit,” I said, pulling the soaked, freezing fabric away from my skin.

  “Special Agent Cooper,” said a woman's voice. “I'm Dr. Spears.”

  I looked up. What? Freddie was a woman? Freddie's expecting me. We're old friends. He'll be real disappointed if I don't show up. No wonder Jacki and Jill at the front gate had lost their happy faces. When I'd surfed the Moreton Genetics Web site, Dr. Spears's picture hadn't been posted. And when I'd called to see if the doc was in, I hadn't thought to check the male/female angle. I'd just put “Doctor,” “CEO,” and “Freddie” together and come up with a bald guy in his mid-fifties wearing thick glasses and a lab coat. “Frederique?” I asked.

  Dr. Spears nodded and even added a smile. “You're not the first to make the mistake and I'm sure you won't be the last. And I gather, along with being Special Agent Cooper, you're also Steve Liu, TIME journalist?”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” I said.

  She shrugged and gave me her public-relations smile, not overly perturbed by the ruse. “It worked, didn't it? Got you in. But I assume you do have the appropriate credentials—this is a high-security facility.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Do you mind?” She held out her hand and I gave her my badge. She examined it in detail for several seconds before returning it.

  Satisfied, she said, “So, Special Agent Cooper. Pleased to meet you.” She held out her hand to shake. I obliged. The grip was firm but still womanly, businesslike. I figured she'd had plenty of opportunities to get the pressure just right. “Come inside. I'll get you a towel.”

  She gave the MG security personnel—both carrying Tasers—a nod. They drifted away.

  I guessed Dr. Freddie Spears was in her late forties, though she looked a little younger. She was a naturally large-boned woman who, I surmised, had an eternal struggle with weight. Currently, she was winning the battle. Rightly or wrongly, I had the impression that this close to Hollywood you had to look younger than your age if you had any hope of trampling over your contemporaries on the way up the corporate ladder. She wore a gray silk skirt with a hemline below her knees, and matching jacket. Her hair was black, dyed, worn in a bob, and her earlobes featured diamonds that were too big to be real, only I guessed I was wrong on that score. There was a matching diamond on a thin gold chain at the base of her throat. Her wedding finger was bare. Including her shoes I guessed she was wearing about a hundred grand. If Mattel ever got around to making an executive power doll for the daughters of corporate-conscious parents to play with, I could see it modeled on Doc Spears.

  I walked beside her across the black slate floor. A vast glass wall slid soundlessly to one side as we approached. Inside was a cavern of glass and triangulated steel that formed intricate patterns high overhead. A big LCD screen monitor, tuned to the mess going on in the city, held a large group of people enthralled. “Are you involved with the tragic business down at the Four Winds?” Spears asked.

  “No. Not directly.”

  “It's terrible about Professor Boyle being caught up in that.”

  “Terrible,” I agreed, although if he'd done what I thought he'd done to Dr. Tanaka, dying quickly over a bowl of breakfast cereal like so many of his fellow residents at the Four Winds was probably not terrible enough. “Moreton Genetics has had a bit of bad luck lately.”

  “You mean with what happened to Dr. Tanaka too? Yes, awful.”

  Awful, terrible, tragic. If we kept going along this line too much longer, we'd be reaching for the thesaurus. A young male sat behind a glass desk, a slim stainless-steel laptop the only object on it, answering phone inquiries through a headset while his eyes were locked on the news report. Dr. Spears had a quick word with him. I scoped the place while I waited. The waiting room for corporate visitors was up a set of
stairs like thin steel blades leading to a Perspex floor suspended from the roof on cables. Visitors could sit there on blocks covered in dark chocolate-colored leather. The hard, impersonal nature was softened only by a collection of very large and brightly colored beanbags on the main floor.

  “Just organized a towel for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “They're supposed to represent living cells,” said Spears, anticipating my question about the beanbags. “Can't see it myself.”

  I couldn't, either.

  “Do you get the symbolism of this place?” she asked as she entered a glass box I suddenly realized was an elevator, holding open the door for me.

  “The double helix? The molecule of life?”

  “Very good. Two right-handed polynucleotide chains coiled around the same axis. The colored steel arms you can see represent the proteins adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. The white bars are the hydrogen bonds.”

  If my answer was “very good,” then why did I suddenly feel like a thumb-sucking three-year-old talking to a grown-up?

  “The double helix—we sometimes call it a Slinky,” she added.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled. “You'd lost me there for a second.”

  “The truth is, a lot of it is still beyond us. For example, we can see why each tiny change in the combination of those proteins leads to a radical change in the organism, but we just don't get how this bunch of chemicals… well, comes alive.”

  “And then sits down to watch a game of football with a six-pack of Budweiser on its belly?”

  Dr. Spears laughed. “Actually, yes. Exactly. The team that consulted with the architects who designed this building played an expensive joke on our stockholders. Like I said, small changes in the protein sequences lead to radical changes in the organism. So we thought we were getting a representation of a mouse, the animal that has been used so extensively by science to uncover the mysteries of life. But when we actually checked, we discovered we were working within the gene for the plague.”