The Green Trap (25 page)

Compared to some of the ambassadors' suites Tulius had seen at the UN's headquarters the UNESCO offices were a drab, functional ants' nest of bureaucrats. Not that anyone scurried busily; the outer office was large and fully staffed with men and women at their desks, but the place was quiet, almost languid. No guards that Tulius could distinguish; not even terrorists were interested in harming UNESCO personnel. Not yet, Tulius thought. Eventually the day will come.

He was met at the long counter that blocked access to the big room's interior by an exotically good-looking young woman wearing a swirling, colorful robe.

“May I help you?” she asked in lilting English.

“Mr. Shamil, please. He's expecting me. I am Dr. Jason Tulius.”

“One moment, please, sir.” The woman went back to her desk, picked up a headset, and pecked at her keyboard. After a few words she looked up and smiled at Tulius, then ushered him through the maze of desks to the private office of Zelinkshah Shamil.

Shamil was a Chechen who worked as a professional administrator in UNESCO's labyrinthine bureaucracy. He was a dour, unsmiling man of sturdy build, at least two inches taller than Tulius himself, with skin that looked as if it had been stained by tobacco, a thick black mustache, muscular shoulders, but a soft, bulging middle. His dark eyes always glowered with suspicion.

“Salaam, Dr. Tulius,” he said, in a rough, rasping voice. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

Tulius waited while Shamil firmly closed his office door and went to his gray steel desk, gesturing to the hard plastic visitor's chair.

“I'm in New York to meet with Lionel Gould,” Tulius said. “He wants to buy the center. I thought you should know.”

“Gould Energy still wants to buy the Calvin Center?” Shamil grumbled.

“Not Gould Energy Corporation,” Tulius corrected. “The Gould Trust.”

Shamil shrugged annoyedly. “Gould Energy, Gould Trust, what difference? It's all the same man.”

“He's making an offer that will be very difficult to refuse.”

“I see. And our arrangement? What of that?”

For four years Shamil had quietly been diverting UNESCO funds to the Calvin Research Center, on the promise that Tulius's scientists would find a way to make cheap hydrogen fuel. A fugitive from the devastation of Chechnya, Shamil knew that a breakthrough in producing hydrogen
would shatter the international oil market. OPEC would suffer, but that did not bother Shamil. Russia—the world's second largest producer and exporter of petroleum—would suffer more. And for the barbarous destruction that Russia had unleashed on his native Chechnya, for the slaughter that Russia was still wreaking on the people, the women, the babies of Chechnya, for the utter destruction of Grozny and other Chechen cities, Shamil had sworn vengeance.

Jason Tulius, grandson of a Lithuanian lawyer who had died in a Soviet gulag, had just as little love for the Russians as Shamil. He would be glad to see their main source of foreign capital dry up in a global move from petroleum to hydrogen.

Tulius squirmed uncomfortably in the squeaking plastic chair. “One of my staff apparently made the breakthrough we were looking for,” he began.

“Apparently?”

“He was murdered. His data was stolen.”

“By Gould,” Shamil snapped.

“I don't think so. Why would Gould want to buy the laboratory if he already had what he wanted in his hands?”

“Then… who?”

Tulius shook his head. “I wish I knew. I have my staff working ballsout to reproduce the murdered man's work. His brother is involved, too. With some woman named Sandoval. A very beautiful woman.”

Shamil took a deep, sighing breath. “I have taken many risks to fund your research. I don't want your work to go to Gould.”

“Does it matter?” Tulius asked. “I mean, does it matter who owns the hydrogen fuel patent? So long as the world market for petroleum collapses?”

Stroking his mustache thoughtfully, Shamil replied, “It matters if Gould wants control of the hydrogen work merely to suppress it.”

“Suppress it?” Tulius felt shocked.

“The man has enormous interests in petroleum, does he not? It wouldn't be in his best interests to break the back of the oil market.”

“I'd never thought of that.”

“You are a scientist. To you, the beauty of the research blinds you to the realities of the world.”

“Perhaps,” Tulius admitted reluctantly. “But even so, I can't very well say no to Gould. His offer is too good to refuse.”

Shamil went back to stroking his mustache. “But suppose you took his
offer, reproduced the breakthrough the murdered man made”—he smiled—”and still give me the information.”

Tulius's eyes widened. “If Gould found out… he'd kill me.”

“Not necessarily,” said Shamil gently. “Of course, if you refuse to give me the information after all the millions I've siphoned to you, well… some of my fellow Chechens are much more impulsive than I. Much more violent, as well.”

I
f anything, Dr. Esterbrook's office was even smaller and shabbier than his lab. It was little more than a cubbyhole containing a heavy old-fashioned scroll desk that looked to Cochrane as though the old man had picked it up in a rummage sale, a mismatched pair of straight-backed wooden chairs, and a wall covered with ceiling-high bookshelves. The one window looked out on an alley that, this late at night, was dark with menacing shadows except for a lone street lamp half a block away that cast a forlorn pool of light that only seemed to make the darkness more sinister.

Esterbrook's computer was first-rate, though, Cochrane realized as he worked with the older man on writing their report. Cochrane was sitting on one of the stiff wooden chairs with his laptop, appropriately enough, on his lap. His computer was connected wirelessly with Esterbrook's desktop machine as they laboriously wrote the report they would send to the National Academy and Senator Bardarson.

“Writing is always such a chore,” Esterbrook muttered as they struggled
through a paragraph describing the genetic modifications of the cyanobacteria.

Cochrane nodded agreement. “Research would be fun if you didn't have to write the damned papers.”

Esterbrook glanced up from his desktop screen. “Still, you know what Faraday said: ‘Physics is to make experiments and to publish them.' It isn't science until someone else can test your results, and no one can test your work unless you write it down for them to read.”

Cochrane grunted, thinking, Faraday again. For a cobbler's son the man had a lot to say.

He had been working with Esterbrook on this mother-loving report all day, and into the night, taking only a brief break at seven o'clock to grab a quick dinner with Sandoval. Then he had kissed her good night and hurried back to the Georgetown campus.

Despite the old man's grousing, Esterbrook seemed to be in his element. Cochrane was impressed by how he could take the complex bio-engineering that Mike had done and express it clearly and succinctly. This report isn't just for other scientists, Cochrane knew. Or even for Andy Love. The senator's the real audience for this. It's got to be written so that a scientific illiterate can understand it.

And it was shaping up that way, he saw as he scrolled through the paragraphs they had put together. Cochrane himself was no microbiologist, so he was serving more or less as a devil's advocate for Esterbrook, pointing out phrasing that depended too much on specialized jargon, asking questions where the report brought up subjects that he didn't know about.

Cochrane glanced at the time displayed in the lower right corner of his laptop's screen: ten
P.M
. We've been at this for more than twelve hours now, he realized.

“I'm starting to see double,” he temporized.

Esterbrook peered at him over his half-glasses. “Tired, are you?”

Trying to make it sound humorous, Cochrane asked, “Don't you have a wife to go home to?”

“No,” the older man replied, completely guileless. “I've been a bachelor all my life.”

“Well, I'm wasted.”

With a patient little smile, Esterbook said, “But you're the one who's in such a rush to get this report out.”

“I know, I know,” Cochrane said, his fingers shutting down the laptop's program. “But I—”

The phone rang.

Cochrane's insides jumped. Then he thought, Nobody knows I'm here except Elena. She's probably wondering when I'm coming home.

Esterbrook stared at the phone. “Now, who would be calling at this time of night?”

“It's probably for me.”

Gesturing to the phone console on his desk, Esterbrook said, “You may answer it, then.”

Cochrane picked up the handset. “Hello.”

“Paul, it's me.” Elena's voice: high, hurried, frightened. “Kensington's here. He—” Her voice cut off.

“Elena?” Cochrane fairly screamed.

“She's all in one piece,” Kensington's dark voice came through the earpiece. “If you want to keep her that way, get yourself back to your hotel right away. And I mean right away.”

C
ochrane's insides were churning so badly he thought he'd throw up in the taxi. Traffic wasn't too heavy at this time of night, the rational part of his mind noticed, yet still the cab seemed to inch along through the streets. At last the taxi pulled up to the hotel's entryway. Cochrane stuffed his last twenty-dollar bill into the little receptacle built into the plastic partition that protected the driver, then dived out of the cab and ran through the lobby to the elevators.

His hands were shaking. It took three tries for him to get his key card into the slot. The light turned green and he pushed the door open.

Kensington was sprawled lazily on the sofa, his long legs resting on the coffee table, watching television. He grinned as Cochrane half staggered into the room.

“Took your time getting here,” he said, reaching for the remote and clicking off the TV. “I was starting to think you wouldn't show up.”

“I got here as fast as I could,” Cochrane said, panting.

Kensington slowly got to his feet. “Too bad. I was just starting to think about how much fun I could have with her if you didn't show up.”

“Were is she? What—”

“Relax, four-eyes. She's okay. So far.”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing much,” Kensington said, stepping around the coffee table. He brushed a fingertip against the crusty scab beneath his right eye. “Nothing much,” he repeated.

He rammed a lightning-fast fist into Cochrane's midsection. Cochrane felt as if a bulldozer had slammed into him. He doubled up, his body flaring into pain, his breath knocked out of him, and collapsed to the floor.

“That's for marking me with that toy sword of yours,” Kensington said.

Cochrane couldn't speak. He gasped for breath. The pain was overwhelming, thundering through him.

Kensington knelt down on one knee and leaned close to Cochrane's ear. “Now, you just do what you're told and everybody'll be happy. Understand?”

Cochrane tried to speak, couldn't.

“Understand?” Kensington repeated sternly, jabbing Cochrane's shoulder with stiff fingers.

Cochrane nodded.

“Good. The cunt's in a safe place. Nobody's going to hurt her as long as you deliver the goods.”

“Deliver… the goods.”

“All your brother's discs,” Kensington said. “And the report you're supposed to be working on for the senator. Understand?”

Cochrane nodded again. The pain was dulling to a sullen agony, like being slowly roasted over a bed of hot coals.

“And we want the names of those three friends of yours that you mailed the data to. That's important. Names, addresses, phone and e-mail numbers. Got that?”

Squeezing his eyes shut against the pain, Cochrane realized that they knew everything. Everything. All the cards were in Gould's hands.

“Okay.” Kensington got to his feet. “Now we understand each other.”

Cochrane didn't even try to get up. He lay on the carpeting, face down, helpless with pain.

Kensington started for the door, hesitated. He turned back toward Cochrane. “Oh, yeah, one more thing.”

He kicked Cochrane in the small of his back. White-hot agony flared through him. He screamed from the pain, but nothing came through his throat but a strangled groan.

“That's for telling Gould that I was willing to sell him out.” Kensington studied Cochrane's prostrate form, nodded as if satisfied with his work, then said, “Have a nice day.”

He left Cochrane lying there, awash in sweat and misery. He remembered the pager that Quinn had given him, started to fumble in his pocket for it. What's the use? he said to himself. Too late now. He's gone. Too late. He felt himself slipping into unconsciousness, felt grateful for the dark oblivion that swallowed him.

 

T
he insistent ringing of the telephone awakened him. Cochrane blinked gummy eyes, focused on the phone. It was on the night table beside the bed, a hundred miles away. Just lifting his head off the carpet brought on a surge of agony that made his insides heave.

The ringing stopped. Cochrane licked his brittle dry lips. Got to get up, he told himself. With infinite effort he reached for the coffee table, leaned one arm on it, and tried to lever himself up to his knees.

The damned phone started again. Stiffly, slowly, Cochrane crawled on all fours toward the night table. It seemed to take an hour to cross the few feet of distance.

Fumbling the phone off its base, he sat against the bed and mumbled, “Hello?”

“Dr. Cochrane? Paul? It's me… Owen Esterbrook.”

“Dr. Esterbrook?”