As expected, Schaeffer said, “Better get on with it then. Dismissed.”
I went back to my office. I shut down all the internal software on my PC and opened a Web browser. A window came up reminding me of the U.S. government's policy about downloading files with viruses, cookies, and pornography. The advice: Don't. I brought up Google and behaved like a normal, everyday nosy citizen. I tapped “Sean Boyle, Ph.D.” into the search bar and pressed return. There were plenty of hits, approximately 78,000 of them. There were only five for a Professor Sean Boyle. One was a professor of English, the other a Ph.D. in automotive technology. I found references for the guy I was after on page two. He had three entries: two related to academic papers he'd written, the other an invitation to download the PDF file of a speech he'd given to the science faculty of Berkeley. I took up the invitation and double-clicked.
While I waited for it to download, I Googled the late Dr. Tanaka. There were nearly a thousand hits on the name, but I found my Dr. Tanaka on the first page. There was already a link to an obituary on him in the British newspaper The Observer. According to the article, Tanaka had headed numerous deep-sea diving expeditions on hydrothermal vents from the Arctic to the Azores. A marine biologist, he was apparently the leading authority on the unusual life forms found in these hazardous environments. The article included a picture of the guy with his head attached to his body. I barely recognized him.
I went back to the PDF of Boyle's speech. On the first page were the words “Playing God.” Interesting title. I hit the print button, sat back, and considered my next move. Moreton Genetics employed these two guys, and they were both working together on a top-secret project for the U.S. Department of Defense. One was a geneticist, the other a marine biologist. I was intrigued.
I tapped moretongenetics.com into the search bar to see where it took me. Almost immediately an animated double helix appeared, the M and G that I remembered seeing on Boyle's business card, revolving slowly, while the rest of the site loaded. The main image on the home page was of the Moreton Genetics offices and research complex, an architectural representation of the double helix constructed of steel and glass, nestled among ponds of reeds and birds, and set, the accompanying text told me, within five acres of land on the edge of Silicon Valley, California. The place radiated high technology. And money. I surfed the site. Apparently, Moreton Genetics had been one of the links in the chain that had helped unravel the human genome. The company had also isolated a gene responsible for switching off the production of insulin, resulting in new therapies worth millions. Most recently it had produced a sterile strain of the varroa mite, the creature that had single-handedly almost wiped out California's entire population of honeybees and, with it, virtually all flowering plants and crops in the state. Something like that — saving California's agriculture — would have earned Moreton Genetics a lot of money, not to mention kudos.
I checked the price of the stock, information also available on the site. MG was looking good. Their stock had increased its capital value by eighteen percent in the last year alone. If I had money, it would be a terrific investment, but then so would a decent pair of running shoes, I told myself, which was a fair indication of just how much spare cash I had lying about. I kept trolling around the site, but for what I had not the slightest idea. I saw that the MG complex was environmentally simpatico. It produced its own electricity supply through a combination of wind generators and solar panels, and had become a net contributor to California's power grid. Across its lush acreage, it was also providing habitat for various flora and fauna, those birds that featured on its home page, as well as a couple of endangered species of frog and a rare variety of pond slime. To summarize, MG was an extremely successful company with a social conscience, except that it was sponsoring programs paid for by the Pentagon — to be fair, an organization not known for loving its fellow man of the non-American variety. I also noted that this fact was nowhere to be found on MG's site. Didn't fit with its caring-and-sharing corporate image, no doubt.
I wondered what MG was doing for the DoD. I wondered whether I wondered about it bad enough to get into trouble finding out. The phone rang. I recognized the caller ID. “Arlen?”
He said, “I just spoke to Anna.”
“She stayed at my place last night.”
“I know.”
“She's going back to Germany this afternoon,” I said.
“I know.”
“It's over.”
“I know.”
“If you say ‘I know' one more time, I'll drive over and punch you.”
“So, what's next? What are you going to do?”
“What any red-blooded American would do. Go to a sports bar, get drunk, watch old NBA repeats, visit a hooker.”
“You hate the NBA,” he reminded me.
I shouldn't have been surprised that Arlen had found out so quick. When Anna had been hospitalized, he'd kept her room stocked with flowers on my behalf. When she'd been released, he'd kept her company while I spent hour after hour in physical therapy. During that time, they'd become close friends. And he was right; I probably wouldn't meet anyone like Anna Masters again, but then she wouldn't meet anyone like me again, either.
“How was Japan?” he said.
“Different. You'd love the food. Has a certain bite to it.” The memory of it gave me an idea. “Arlen, could you do me a favor?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it'll get me into trouble.”
“No, it won't,” I said.
“Yes, it will, Vin. Your little favors always lead to trouble. What's it about?”
“I can't say.”
“Then definitely no.”
I could tell he was weakening. “You don't want to know because then you won't have deniability.”
“Will I need deniability?”
“It's the best defense.”
“Will I need a defense?”
“Could you stop repeating everything I say?”
“Sorry.”
“Look, I need you to find out something for me. I can't dig around because I've been told specifically I don't have need-to-know. But you haven't had the official NTK bullshit on this one.”
“OK, before I say absolutely, categorically no, you want to at least give me something so that I have some idea what I'm saying no to?”
Arlen knows how to ask a question. I said, “A company called Moreton Genetics is doing some work for the Pentagon. I want to find out, even if just in general terms, what they're doing.”
“Is this related to what you were doing in Japan?”
“That's something I can neither confirm nor deny,” I said, slipping into jargon for absofuckinglutely.
Even though I couldn't see them, I knew Arlen's lips were clamped into a thin line.
“You'll need a code,” I continued. It would be easy to find the information I was after, but not without a thing called a case code. Whenever any classified information was required, or petty cash claimed, or resources allocated, a case code had to be cited so that an investigation could be traced, tracked, and costed as it wound its way through the system. With the proper code, Arlen could go straight to the DoD's archives and pull the paperwork. The problem was that his interest in Moreton Genetics would be on file if things did end up in the crapper.
“I'm doing a little general digging at the moment for a federal oversight committee. The job has a general access code. All areas. Maybe I can do it discreetly. Might be suitable.”
Damn right. “I owe you, Arlen.”
“Indeed you do, Vin. What are we up to now?”
“Convert the favors into dollars, I'd say around a million or so.”