Unacceptable Risk Page 4

  "Then all I get is goddamn arguments. How can you do this and call yourself an executive? And why do you bring your damn toadies in here?" He dismissed the two assistants with a wave of his hand.

  "That was rude and embarrassing."

  "Don't fucking tell me what is rude. Rude is not getting the damn reports in on time. I have to run this whole company myself—do it all. Nobody else gets anything done. I have to watch, watch, watch. A bunch of damn children still shitting their pants."

  "If you would not like to hear about—"

  "Don't ever bring your flunkies in here unless I ask," he shouted.

  "I am leaving "

  "You are not leaving. Ever since I promoted you, you have been building a little empire. You think you're really doing something over in Malaysia. Well, I will tell you I started that when you were still a snot-nosed intern over at a bullshit company. So, now you want to run in here and tell me the good news as if you had something to do with it."

  "We know it was your idea. I just thought it was important that—"

  "Get on the couch. We're going to do what you're really good at."

  "We're working."

  He slapped her hard.

  "I made you," he said. There was blood on her face. He continued to work himself into a rage. She did not deny him the sex he demanded and during the days to follow continued to offer it under less violent circumstances, and for that as much as the other bad choices, she still loathed herself.

  It was that same day in the evening that she first responded to Devan Gaudet's entreaties. He was the most sinister man she had ever come across. Chellis hired him for things that he seldom talked about, but she knew that Gaudet was shrewd and ruthless. That night she went to bed with him and thus began the long plot to dethrone Chellis. Thereafter she learned that there were men even more ruthless than Chellis, and Gaudet was one of them.

  Chellis had been unwise in creating trusts to hold the stock of Grace Technologies, making his wife and Benoit trustees if he became incapacitated. Benoit, Chellis's wife, and Gaudet saw to it that he was incapacitated, using the genetic brain-altering technology developed by Grace Technologies in Malaysia to turn him into a quivering mass. Although it certainly wasn't the purpose for which the technology was developed, the personality transformation was astounding.

  When Benoit and Gaudet got control of Grace Technologies, the world was their oyster—except for a man called Sam. Unfortunately, Benoit didn't know that this Sam fellow hated Gaudet as much as she hated Chellis. Sam, she learned, lived in a shadow world of spies and treachery. When Sam built the case that put her in prison, Gaudet did what he always did—protected himself and killed his enemies. Apparently, Sam was the exception to the formula since Gaudet had never been able to carry out the second half of his equation.

  Benoit blamed herself for her lot in life and had carefully traced the bad choices. The difficulty was that making only inherently good decisions, if indeed she could recognize them, would not get her out of this pit. To escape she would have to resort to the more troubling of her talents and then, like a caterpillar that transforms itself into a butterfly, she would use her dark side to produce the light. Her task would require more cleverness than was common even for her, more guile than she had yet displayed, and in the end more goodness.

  Circumstances would soon make the transformation a possibility. The French government had shown signs of beginning an all-out campaign to solicit her assistance. She had started the process by giving them a meaningless hint, disclosing that the key to the riddle was nicknamed Chaperone, a protein molecule with a number of anomalies. Predictably, this had sparked their imagination, and for good reason: since Louis Pasteur, the French had not been good at anything except wine and women. On this point she knew she was perhaps a bit jaded, but it seemed that her countrymen were possessed of a kind of brilliance that enabled them only to do stupid things faster. As the government realized that mastering the vector technology, and particularly Chaperone, would quench its thirst for greatness, its representatives would come to her. And she would be ready.

  The familiar sound of the hall door slamming preceded a set of footsteps.

  "They're coming," said the girl from the next cell.

  Benoit gathered herself and waited obediently by the cell door.

  They threw the switch and the door slammed open. As she walked down the corridor, some of the inmates called out greetings; a few unleashed curses. There were three more sets of doors and two corridors before she arrived in the long hall where prisoners usually waited for the visitation room. There were tables and one could sit with visitors under the watchful eyes of the guards. But this time there were no lines, no other prisoners. Her cousin Colette worked for important people and could arrange special visits.

  Colette was the chief of staff for Charles Montpellier, a well-known member of France's Senate, le Senat. Although Colette did not approve of Benoit's chosen course in life, she nevertheless acknowledged that Benoit had a heart that seemed to draw those who loved life and some of its excesses. Benoit was the rascal that people liked despite themselves. That would include a fair portion of the French legislature, where she was well known to several members.

  When she entered the visitation room, Colette managed a slight smile. Benoit knew her cousin hated it here. All the tables were bare metal, likewise the chairs and the walls equally stark and heartlessly mechanical.

  Benoit sat down across the table from her cousin and, for a moment, they just stared as if looking across a gulf. And indeed they were. Two different worlds would collide and then, after a few short minutes, separate.

  "I have a plan to change my life," Benoit began.

  "Too bad the men who put you here aren't around to help."

  "Well, they aren't and they wouldn't. I've got to do this myself."

  "Does it involve committing more crimes?"

  "I am in a bottomless pit. To get out I must climb over certain people."

  "Speak plainly."

  "I will use the greed and the lust in others to further my own advancement, but I myself shall not be taken with greed or take any ill-gotten gain. When I reach my goal, I will have love and a law-abiding life."

  "What about before you reach this goal?"

  "I cannot promise perfection in a world of flaws. I need your help, Colette. I will not endanger you. I will ask you to do things that will enable me to catch demons, but I will catch no angels because I have no angel bait."

  "You speak in metaphors. I think Americans would say bullshit. But so far you have never dragged me into your problems. You have destroyed only yourself."

  "You know that the French government, now that they have taken over Grace Technologies, must be desperate to understand the genetic research that I helped administer before they put me in here."

  "I know very little about it really, but what if that is true?"

  "If I helped them get it—if I did a great service for the government, could I get a pardon? This technology is very valuable. There are the parts Gaudet has. I can get those. There are the parts even Gaudet doesn't have, the part called Chaperone. I can get that as well."

  "We have gone over this. I think there is no way for you to get a pardon."

  "I hear the SDECE is paying me a visit."

  "That is not about a pardon. It is because they desperately want your help. It is the beginning. Maybe years from now if things go well with them, you could get something. House arrest they call it, or something like that. Don't think about a pardon, you will only be disappointed. Many French shareholders lost a fortune when Grace Technologies went under and they are angry. And I am telling you, do not try to fool the government."

  "I will tell the SDECE the truth. From you I want to know Admiral Francois Larive's prospects for political advancement. I want to know where his strengths lie, what position he might next hold, and who would be responsible for getting him there. I want to know the same for an agent, Jean-Baptiste Sourriaux. I
n the not-too-far distant future I may want you to send certain e-mails to America."

  A guard came in.

  "Time to go back."

  She would wait for the Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre Espionnage, commonly the SDECE, and she would hope—for without hope she would die.

  Grady was dressed in her gym shorts and sweatshirt and was ready to go out the door for a late-afternoon workout in lieu of a lunch break. She was taking a last look at her desk; then she looked up from her cubicle to see Sam walking toward her with a gray-haired, mustached man. Her gut tightened. Never had she met anyone inside this building that wasn't part of the company. And certainly she had never met visiting dignitaries while she wore her gym clothes.

  Harry growled a low growl.

  That was even rarer.

  "Grady, I would like you to meet Figgy Meeks, officially Alexander H. Meeks. One day I will have the pleasure of telling you how Figgy got his moniker."

  "I'll blow you to hell, Sam," Figgy said.

  "This is Harry, he kind of adopts Grady when I leave and he's my pal and he's smarter than most people."

  Figgy nodded at Harry, but Harry left the cube, most likely for Sam's desk.

  "Figgy here, as you can see, is a cursing, uncouth man who can't make breakfast taste good without the f word, but he helped teach me the spy trade."

  "The private spy trade. We could never persuade Sam to become a government man, although it wasn't for lack of trying."

  "He was good enough to teach me and they don't come any better than this professor emeritus of the spy business. He's here on behalf of the French government."

  At the mere mention of the word "French," Grogg stuck his head up from a nearby cubicle, his quarter-inch-thick glasses hiding his eyes but not his emotions. Grogg couldn't stand the French, but his feelings were based on nothing more than a nasty divorce to a rotund and mouthy woman of French descent.

  "The French are the only human subspecies actually capable of fitting their own nose up their own ass," Grogg said.

  "This, as you know, I'm sure, is Grogg," Sam said. "He no longer drinks French wine and he's given up French women altogether." Before Grogg could say anything, Sam said, "Come on. Let's go to the conference room."

  As they turned to leave Grady's cubicle, they ran into Jill. "Well, well," she said. "Figgy Meeks, the legend himself."

  He kissed her hand, continental style, and she joined the group.

  On the way down the hall Figgy stopped. "That must be the infamous 'Big Brain.' " He stood at a large glass-walled area with racks of computer hardware.

  "Officially it's called the Common Object Repository for the Enterprise," Sam said. "And Grogg here—our expert on French ex-wives—helped me conceive her."

  Grogg nodded.

  "Bet she's some kind of memory hog, huh?" said Figgy.

  "Anything we download is in there forever," Grogg said. "It's amazing how much we use old stuff."

  "What kind of stuff?"

  "Oh, we have investigators trained in what to feed Big Brain."

  "From people's garbage cans to your computer," Figgy said.

  "Yep. We're good at collecting garbage and other things. But it's how you query the database that really matters."

  Figgy nodded, feigning interest for Grogg's sake.

  The conference room was large enough to seat thirty around the massive table. It was a room with character, collectors' items in a bookcase, pictures on the wall, heavy wood moldings, quite out of sync with the high-tech cubicles in the rest of the office. Sam had a cubicle like everyone else, just a little bigger. When he wanted complete privacy, he worked in the conference room.

  On a sideboard stood a jug of coffee, juice, soft drinks, and Danish pastries stuffed with a combination of cream cheese and blueberry preserves. Sam wanted two, but dutifully he passed on the pastries and high-calorie juices, poured himself some water, and thought about whether defined abs were really worth it. The prior day he had suffered through the sight of Grogg wolfing down a Reuben sandwich. Sam had turkey on whole wheat, mustard, but no mayo. He was still thinking about the Reuben. Somehow he sensed that Grady was watching him and the Danish to see who would win and, of course, it was imperative that he be a rock. When alone, Sam had no problem with food, but there was something about watching another man expressing his satisfaction that tested Sam's steel.

  "So, let's start with what I've got to know." Figgy sat and took a giant bite of a Danish. "Fill me in on this technology."

  Sam leaned back in his chair. "Let's not be disingenuous, Figgy. You work for the French, and they know the score. Better than we do. So don't ask me — tell me."

  "Actually, the French are in the dark about this technology."

  "According to the French, Grace Technologies never made any successful gene-altering discoveries. So what do they have to be concerned about?" Sam pressed.

  "They know it's a gene-altering technology that can induce violence or tranquillity in people. The French want to stop Gaudet as badly as you do. News of your incident with your neighbors up north sparked their interest. They sent me." Figgy sat back in his chair, hands down, palms out. "Sam, we go back a long way. I'm telling you what they told me. I have no reason to disbelieve them."

  Sam looked at Grady and Grogg, chuckling. "See how good Figgy is. Now he's using old times' sake to get what he wants."

  Figgy finished the Danish. "Do we have a deal?"

  "First you tell us what the French know about our problem; men we'll get serious about deals and the like."

  Figgy sighed. "Grace was into all kinds of research—"

  "I was there, Figgy. We all know in general about the vector technology. We know your clients have it and are probably floundering around with it. They're probably torturing monkeys as we speak."

  "France now owns all the assets of Grace Technologies, including this vector technology. Devan Gaudet also has it, which could mean disaster anywhere, anytime. What we can't figure is why Gaudet would use this extreme vector on a couple of your neighbors in the mountains."

  "Because he's a twisted son of a bitch," Jill said. "He has history with Sam. Maybe it's a thrill to kill a guy using his neighbors."

  "What kind of history?" Figgy asked Sam.

  Sam tried not to think about it. There had been plenty, and it wasn't a favorite topic. "Like a lot of high-powered criminals, you tend to run into Gaudet in more than one sewer. He's killed people who were close to me. That isn't the point. The point is, yes, Gaudet possesses a powerful, poorly understood, destructive technology. But he doesn't have the whole thing, at least as I understand it."

  Figgy's face was a blank. "Meaning?"

  "It's an immune-system issue. It doesn't take long for the body to reject this gene-changing vector, because it literally creates foreign tissue in you. It appears that with this particular vector, when they change the DNA in your brain cells, they might as well have been transplanted from another person. Or it may be that the body is rejecting the vector, treating it the way it would a virus. So far, Gaudet doesn't have the immunosuppressive part of the technology that we think was used by Grace. Either that, or he isn't using it." Sam paused. "Tell me if this isn't familiar to you. The French know this. If they aren't telling you, you're of no use to them... or us."

  "I know what Grace did with the vectors. Generally. Grace used the vectors on human and nonhuman subjects. The vector worked to alter brain cells and the subjects lived without an immune-system catastrophe. Some of these people, like Chellis, are still in the custody of the French government, so we're sure about this. Gaudet and Benoit gave Chellis what the Grace company staff called the nervous-flier vector—an extreme form that was cooked up just for him. The opposite end of the spectrum was an extreme version of a soldier vector called raging soldier."

  "You think that's what Gaudet used on my neighbors?"

  "No doubt. Best we can tell, the original vector technology, as used by Grace, included some other exot
ic molecule—the French have named it Chaperone, because that is what Benoit Moreau called it. Chaperone prohibits the vector from killing its host."

  Sam nodded.

  "Gaudet doesn't seem to have the Chaperone part of the vector. If he did, he'd have an unbelievably powerful—and valuable—tool. He wouldn't waste time coming after you and your neighbors. He'd be selling it and maybe using it, depending on whether he'd like his homicidal creations to last more than a day or two. Instead, he doped your neighbors with the raging soldier vector and, according to your report to the FBI, one of them died within hours from the immune reaction."

  "Don't be sure Gaudet wouldn't be coming after me. He probably wants me as bad as I want him. But I do believe that Chaperone isn't being used by Gaudet and that he probably doesn't have it or understand it," Sam said. "And I don't understand why he didn't try a much more efficient method of killing me. Using my neighbors wasn't the best method and that is unlike Gaudet."

  Figgy stood and grabbed a second Danish. "We're on the same page. We suspect that the people who understood this Chaperone technology are either dead or on the run. From Gaudet."

  "And the French," Grogg added.

  "Do you think this Michael Bowden knows something about Chaperone?" Figgy asked.

  "Maybe. He's an ethnobotanist. In the Amazon he could have discovered an organic material that at least contains the basis for the Chaperone molecule."

  "What makes you think that—besides Gaudet's interest in Bowden?"

  "For a few years Bowden has sent his organic samples to Northern Lights Pharmaceuticals. They in turn had a long relationship with—"

  "Grace Technologies," Figgy said.

  "Before we make any deal, you have to tell me what the French want. Is it to catch Gaudet? Or to get ahold of Chaperone? Perhaps it has occurred to them that it would revolutionize the practice of medicine and be worth a fortune."

  "Both," Figgy said. "The technology legally belongs to France. I have to be sure that you and the U.S. government will recognize my client's title to the Chaperone technology, if you find it"

  "Talk to patent lawyers and the State Department about that. It's not my concern. Stopping and catching Gaudet is. But to do that, I have to know everything the French know about Chaperone." Sam hated the amused look on Figgy's face. For some perverse reason the Danishes had never looked all that tempting until Figgy started wolfing them down with such relish.