The Methuselah Gene (40 page)

“Hey, I ain't some recluse, man.
 
I did
ya
a favor.
 
You owe me big time.”

“Sure,” I said.
 
“Where did Cliff take my ‘stuff,' Roger?”

“Where?
 
Hell if I know.
 
Why don't
ya
ask him?”

“I'll do that.
 
Did he go into my apartment afterward?”

“Do I know?
 
Ain't none a' my business.”

“It is, if you expect to be paid.
 
Go look, see if my computer is there.
 
I'll wait.
 
And hurry.”

There was a muffled curse, followed by a door opening.
 
Moments later, Roger returned.
 
“Nope, no computer.
 
Looks the same.
 
Want me
ta
call the police now, report the break-in?
 
Cost
ya
another grand.”

“No thanks,” I said, and disconnected.
 
Then I imagined Clifford Seagraves turning away from my dilemma, and with the same nonchalant shrug that samurai
Mifune
gave in Kurosawa's movie
Sanjuro
after easily killing three men with his sword.
 
But it still left me with another question.
 
Why, I wondered, hadn't he returned my computer to my apartment?

I got off the plane in Atlanta just after ten a.m..
 
It was only to be a thirty minute stop in route, but I felt as claustrophobic as when lying in George's coffin.
 
While waiting for a pay phone, I watched the TV monitor in the corner of a glassed-off smoking room opposite me.
 
I couldn't hear the TV because the door was required to remain shut by Federal law.
 
But after the local ABC affiliate cycled through the usual auto and chicken sandwich commercials, the words “Special Report” appeared.
 
A reporter's head shot was followed by a
steadycam
image of Zion's main street.
 
The demolished cars there had been cleared to the side to make way for emergency vehicles, and no bodies were visible except for the shapes within two body bags stretched out in front of the Slow Poke.

A renewed sense of guilt swept me.
 
Had I been fooling myself, imagining that my flight from the scene had to do with stopping Jeffers from escaping justice?
 
Was I really clearing a path to a future life for Julie and me?
 
Logically, there had been little choice for me, other than this, or running away and becoming a fugitive.
 
Certainly I was not running away, because if Seagraves' clandestine hacker group was linked with the private group in Zion, I was more likely running into a trap.
 
That possibility seemed more than plausible, considering my own computer had been hacked.
 
And it all led me to wonder how Darryl could not know about such a link, and think to offer Mills—or whoever he was—a bogus application to join the group.
 
Such thoughts were enough to drive me crazy.

When one of the telephones came free, I decided to call Seagraves to see if there were other clues to uncover, which might help me decode the true nature of my dilemma.

“It's me,” I announced, evenly.
 
“Surprised?”

“You're not in Miami,” Clifford said first, and it was not a good sign.
 
“You can't be.”

“Oh, you're right about that.”
 
I cleared my throat in preparation for what was coming.
 
“What kind of fool do you take me for, Seagraves?”

“A big one, if you expect to catch Jeffers.”

A thread of hope bound my hand to the phone.
 
“What do you mean?”

“I mean he's planning to take a cruise.
 
A long cruise, most likely.
 
Port of Miami.
 
We know that much.”

“We?” I asked.
 
But there was no response.
 
Hope springs eternal, though.
 
“How do you know?”

“Trust me.”

I chuckled at that one.
 
“I'm having trouble doing that right now, Cliff.”

“And why is that?”

“How do I know the police won't be waiting for me in Miami when I arrive?”

“Because I've taken care of that.
 
You're clean.
 
Or as clean as we can make you without your catching Jeffers.
 
It's him and his accomplice who should be fingered for the theft now.”

“Should?
 
What about the CIA?”

“What about them?
 
There was no reference to them on Jeffers' computer, although there is something cryptic about ‘the Studio.'
 
I sent a data recovery program to restore information that may have been wiped, and came up empty there too.
 
But you needn't worry, I think the truth will set you free now.”

“You think,” I repeated.
 
“Nice try.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don't believe you, Cliff.
 
Which cruise ship will Jeffers be on, anyway?”

“We . . . I don't know.
 
He sent an e-mail mentioning the cruise.
 
The e-mail was dated last week.”

“To who?”

“A woman in
Portifino
, Italy.
 
It is apparent they have communicated before.
 
He doesn't mention any date or time of meeting, or whether she is to come to him or he to her.”

“The Italian Riviera,” I said, considering it.
 
“So you're telling me Jeffers sold the virus already, or is he just spending laundered drug money?”

“His mutual funds have been liquidated to a bank in the Caymans.
 
Jeffers has been on the payroll four-oh-one K plan at
Tactar
for twenty years, dollar cost averaging the maximum plus more into index and global aggressive growth funds at Fidelity and Vanguard.
 
He did very well in tech stocks too, always cashing in just in time.
 
His total portfolio exceeded four million.
 
Whether he's sold your M-telomerase elsewhere I have no idea.
 
There was no record of suspicious interoffice manipulations in his computer files until now, although I didn't expect there to be.”

“What do you mean, until now?”

“Like I said, we've created a link or trail that will lead investigators to conclude that Jeffers and Connolly were in the plant after-hours the night all the records were stolen, and not you.
 
They, and not you, embezzled eighty thousand dollars from corporate R&D accounts, and Jeffers will have set up a numbered account in Grand Cayman by the end of today's business.
 
Computer user identification codes have been substituted too—theirs for yours.
 
You were supposed to disappear, and not to survive this, I suspect.
 
This is so that police would be looking for you, not a drug company executive on vacation, who would then decide to retire early to avoid all the bad press
Tactar
would be getting.
 
But plans have changed, you see?
 
Jeffers has cut his losses.
 
Up to now he had it arranged for you to be implicated, along with Darryl.
 
Connolly too on a double-cross, if need be.
 
Whatever the plan is now, he appears to be getting away with it, although he'll be hunted for the rest of his life unless he gets a new identity and a facelift.”

“Or a new country of asylum?”

“Yes.
 
Anyway, he must have gotten help from
Tactar
security to pull this off.
 
So it's good you didn't go to your office.
 
I've sent a virus to destroy the records on your office system, and whatever physical evidence is there will be circumstantial.
 
Or they'll consider it to be planted by Jeffers, now.
 
I'd suggest calling your company's president and giving him a full report on your little vacation, though, or it'll look suspicious, and you might be out of a job.”

“
Winsdon
?” I asked, already dreading the call.

“Yes.
 
Now . . . have I left anything out?
 
Probably so.
 
But I've already said too much, even after sweeping our phone line for bugs and taps all the way to the relay terminal on the next block.”

I took a deep breath, and looked at my watch.
 
It was decision time.
 
Call a possible bluff, draw, or fold?
 
It didn't feel as though I had a choice at this point.
 
“There must be a hundred cruise ships docked in Miami,” I said, thinking aloud.
 
“Going to every island in the Caribbean.”

“Port Everglades,” Seagraves corrected.
 
“A dozen, tops, that go further.
 
Remember
Portifino
?”

“But they're like floating cities.
 
How would I . . . why couldn't you . . .”

“We tried, but the cruise lines computerized ticketing and registration records are proving to be tough nuts to crack.
 
Tougher than most government agencies, including the Pentagon and the White House's own guest registry.
 
I have someone working on it, but it's very time consuming.
 
And Jeffers will have registered under a different name, you can bank on it.”

“His new identity, already?
 
He's the one banking on it.
 
Great.”

“At least he's on the run now, not you.”

I deliberated asking Seagraves to track down Julie through Thurman, but decided against trusting him that much just yet.
 
“And not Darryl,” I said, “who I suspected at first.
 
So revenge is my motive now?”

“Can't think of a better one.
 
Why do you think we're helping you, Alan?”

“There's that ‘we' again.
 
Who exactly are you people?
 
I'm
freakin
' dizzy.”

There was a pause before Seagraves said, “Call me when you get to Port Everglades and I'll let you know if . . . we . . . have any more information.”

There was a click, and a dial tone.
 
In the glassed smoking room opposite me images of survivors from the tragedy in Zion were being aired, and some of the women visible were being interviewed.
 
In the background I thought I saw someone I recognized, but her dress, hair, face, and even her bearing did not register to me because it was an impossibility.
 
Then I saw that her hand rested on the head of a little boy.
 
Both wore blue.

“Wow,” I heard myself say in amazement as I dropped the phone.

In the smoking room a young man with scraggly hair suddenly lifted a small object over his head and toward the TV in the upper corner of the hazy cubicle.

A remote control.

“No!” I yelled, and ran toward him.
 
I bounced off a startled businessman who I intersected in the wide aisle, and who lifted his briefcase to shield himself.
 
The kid in the smoking room couldn't hear me, and was oblivious to my accident as he changed channels to finally stop at a Seinfeld rerun.
 
I burst into the inadequately ventilated haze, yelling.
 
“Turn it back!”

The kid with the remote was in his early twenties, and resembled deceased Kurt Cobain come back to life wearing Army fatigues with several service patches ripped off.
 
“Huh?” he said dully, sticking the remaining stub of a lit cigarette into the corner of his mouth.

“The station, get it back!” I demanded.

He stared at me as though I was the drill instructor who'd caused him to go AWOL.
 
He gave me a nervous half smile as I approached him.
 
“You can't have it,” he said, after glancing down at my bandaged hand.
 
“It's mine.”

I held out my good hand, frantically gesturing.
 
“Come on!”

“I said it's mine, man.
 
A universal remote.
 
Got it?”

He pocketed it to prove it, then took a final puff, blew a smoke ring at me, and stamped his cigarette under one booted heel.
 
I looked up at the monitor, which was now doing a night cream commercial involving talking iguanas.
 
“Turn it back.”