Chapter 17
Dr. Quentin Radcliff was a man who didn’t panic, even in the worst adversity, but rather kept his wits about him, challenging his colleagues and subordinates to do the same. He was, in short, a problem-solver.
He had launched the project he called Lazarus to benefit mankind. He might still achieve that goal, if bureaucrats and other meddlers would but leave him to his work. Of course, the termination of his early funding from the government had left him at loose ends, but he had solved that problem in his own inimitable style. Another mark of genius, that was, turning his adversity around and using it to prove his theories were correct. Correct and practical. If he had turned a tidy profit in the bargain, what was wrong with that?
America was built by people looking out for number one. The idiots in Washington should get down on their knees to thank him for his work, instead of treating him like a pariah, some demented modern Frankenstein.
Radcliff had been there, and he knew the truth: mankind would doggedly resist improvement to the bitter end.
Advances were still possible, of course, but why should any work done on behalf of an ungrateful race be viewed as charity? Drug companies made billions from the treatment of disease, with hospitals and doctors rioting for their own place at the trough. Public officials, pledged to serve the common good, were never shy in voting raises for themselves or lapping up the perks that came with electoral victory. Evangelists begged constantly for cash to help them live in luxury while they were saving souls.
Radcliff had no regrets—except that he had failed to see the latest problem coming. He had been distracted by his work, and left the details of its application in the field to others, lesser intellects, but that was changing now. Henceforth, he would exert a more direct control, the hands-on method, even if it meant more hours on the job.
Perhaps he could have been more cautious in his choice of clients, more selective in the use to which his children had been put, but mercenary soldiers did what they were paid to do, without debating the morality of a specific cause or customer. What good was an assassin with a conscience, after all?
Inevitably they had suffered losses. All the preparation in the world would not make any man invincible. From the beginning, Radcliff knew that losses were unavoidable, but he always hoped they could be minimized, protracted over time and space to keep the law from catching on. Bad luck, or maybe Fate, had intervened, two losses in the past twelve months—and then another four, within a week.
The first two had been unavoidable, perhaps. When news of the arrest in Florida reached Dr. Radcliff, he had waited to be sure his child would go the limit, as programmed, and sacrifice himself to frustrate the authorities. It had gone off like clockwork, perfectly, and Radcliff’s clients had been duly satisfied. No comebacks on the operation meant they could proceed with business, rolling up their profits once the problem was resolved.
The mishap in Wisconsin, while regrettable, was likewise an event for which Radcliff had long prepared himself. He didn’t have the details, didn’t want them, but he understood some negligence had been involved. His man had missed a federal agent, going in, and wound up dead because of the mistake, but he had done the job before he died. His death itself ensured that there would be no grilling by authorities, no test of his resolve.
In theory, one dead soldier should have cleared a list of pending cases in America and Europe, but a second loss, so soon after the first, had obviously touched off an alarm somewhere in Washington. What happened next—the questioning of Yuli Cristobal, Devona Price’s disappearance—told Radcliff that he was perilously close to trouble. Once they made the link to Thomas Hardy, only incredulity itself could help save Project Lazarus. The Feds would not, could not, believe, and therein lay the doctor’s hope.
He had done everything within his power to cut their losses, reaching out to silence Cristobal and Jasper Frayne. The fact that they had quickly lost another man in Florida disturbed Radcliff, as much for how it happened as for the mere fact itself. Whoever had eliminated Frayne’s assassin didn’t stick around to file reports or take the credit—which told Radcliff that the person had not been a cop. From what he had been able to discover unobtrusively, from sources near the scene, the mode of death had also been unusuaclass="underline" no guns involved, perhaps a bludgeon, though the medical examiner’s preliminary findings leaned toward something in the field of martial arts.
Before Radcliff had managed fully to assimilate that information, he had been confronted with the problem at Ideal Maternity. Two orderlies found dead, one of the breeders missing. There had been no choice but to abandon the facility. Three of his children had been left behind to watch the grounds, report if the police or Feds showed up, and deal with any trespassers who didn’t wear a badge. Instead of cleaning up the mess, however, all three had themselves been killed—again with no apparent weapons used, by someone who slipped in and out, left nothing of himself behind.
At least the other breeders were secure, for now. He would be forced to find more permanent accommodations, start from scratch on that end of the operation, but luckily the farm was still intact and undisturbed. While that remained, he was in business.
He would have to guarantee that no one found his children while their education was in progress.
Dr. Radcliff sipped his whiskey and prepared a mental list of who would have to die to keep his secret safe and sound.
The Scotch burned Chelsea Radcliff’s throat, but that was normal. She restricted her intake of whiskey to “medicinal” occasions, when she needed something less than Valium but more than transcendental meditation for her nerves.
Like now.
It had been foolish, going out to dinner with the newsman. Even then, she could have salvaged something from the situation, if only she were better at suppressing her emotions where her father was concerned.
It was ironic, Chelsea thought, that despite her training in psychology—a doctorate, no less—she still had problems sometimes, when it came to self-control. If someone pushed the “daddy” button, she was off and running, rising to defend him, even when he obviously did not need her help.
When did he really need her, after all? The man was self-sufficient, always had been. Chelsea had no doubt that he appreciated all her work around the clinic, but she knew that any competent psychologist could do the job. Sometimes, despite her self-confidence, she had to ask herself if it was simple nepotism that had prompted him to put her on the staff at the Family Services Clinic, or something else.
Perhaps an understanding that his little girl could keep a secret.
And she had. She didn’t understand the technical minutiae of her father’s work, but she had seen and heard enough to recognize his genius, realize that he was years beyond his rivals in the field. He had not come so far by lavishing attention on himself, his family. Her mother should have understood that from the start.
It had been worse than foolish, dredging up the story of her parents’ separation when she spoke to Remo Washington. Chelsea had hoped that it would help to soften her father, maybe add the human touch, offset the chill that always seemed to blight his contacts with the press. Now she was worried that it may have been a grave mistake.
Who was this Remo Washington? She hadn’t checked him out at Newstime yet, though that was still an option. It ran against the grain for her to trust him on such short acquaintance, and she didn’t yet. His charm was a facade, as with all men; it didn’t move her…much. In other circumstances, possibly…