Chapter 20
“Sixteen,” said Dr. Harold Smith. “It is hard to fathom, even now.”
Three infant clones had been recovered when the FBI swept down on Dr. Radcliff’s house in Irvington, Kentucky, to arrest Althea Bliss and take one dozen unwed mothers into something like protective custody. If all of them delivered healthy children, it would soon be twenty-eight.
“You’ve seen it for yourself,” said Remo from the other side of Smith’s desk in his office at Folcroft Sanitarium.
“Yes, unfortunately.” Smith had all the animation of a vegetarian confronted with a heap of uncooked beef and pork. “The FBI is sorting through the papers found at Radcliff’s clinic, but it is still too early to predict if they will find anything.
“He had to have some kind of scientific staff around the place,” said Remo. “His age. I’d bet money Radcliff didn’t do it all himself.”
“I have some payroll records,” Smith informed him, “and I am checking out the names. “At least three known employees of the clinic have already disappeared.”
“The daughter?” Remo asked.
“The FBI is talking to her,” Smith replied. “So far, she is still denying any knowledge of her father’s covert work. She says she was coming out to visit him and drove into the middle of a war zone. She was simply trying to protect him when she came at you.”
“It may be true.”
Smith’s frown was frankly skeptical. “Perhaps,” he said. “It is evident from clinic records that there were some normal patients being treated there, for infertility. The authorities will have to check them all, of course, and make sure Radcliff did not do anything unwholesome to them when their backs were turned.
“He wouldn’t leave a Hardy clone with normal parents,” Remo said. “You need the proper background to produce a sure-fire killer.”
“Possibly.” Smith sounded dubious once more. “With Radcliff’s penchant for bizarre experiments on humans, though, it is best not to take any chances.”
He was right, of course. With thirty years of work behind him, all that blood money to keep him going, Radcliff could have easily conceived some grand new project that would see him through his golden years.
Another shot at immortality, perhaps? Forget it, Remo thought. They could sit back and theorize for fifty years and never know what kind of crazy mischief had been generated by Quentin Radcliff’s brain. How many false starts had there been, before he got it right with Thomas Allen Hardy, back in ’65? Admittedly the doctor wasn’t that long out of training when he signed on with Eugenix, but that kind of fascination didn’t turn up overnight, the product of a restless dream. Radcliff had obviously thought about it for a while—perhaps for years—before he found a vehicle to make his fantasies reality.
“The normal kids?” asked Remo, taking first things first.
“Thirty-three were collected,” said Smith. “They have been distributed to state facilities or foster care until they can be placed in the adoption system.”
Remo knew what that meant, from his own experience in childhood. Most of those penned up at Fairfield were from nine to fifteen years of age, with half a dozen younger. Even so, the youngest “normal” boy they’d found was six years old, which placed him well beyond the normal cut-off age dictated by childless couples seeking pretty infants they could raise. With thirty-three on hand, he guessed that it would be a miracle if half a dozen of the children found adoptive homes.
Still, Remo told himself, a foster home or honest orphanage was hardly worse than being held as prisoners and cover for a madman who was breeding monsters in the basement, more or less.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them need counseling, with what they’ve been through,” Remo said.
“They will get it,” Dr. Smith replied firmly.
It sounded as if Smith planned to plunder the CURE operating budget, if necessary. An unusual surge of generosity coming from a man noted for his parsimonious nature.
“And the others?”
They were getting to the-nitty-gritty now, the Hardy clones whom Radcliff and his people had been training for their future work as hired assassins going to the highest bidder. There was one thing Remo had to say for Radcliff: he had seemingly divorced his work from any taint of politics, religious ideology or racial bigotry. If you could meet his price, the troops were yours, no matter if you served the KKK, Black Liberation Army, Mafia, Hebrew Defense Association or the PLO. In theory, if a husband had the right connections and. sufficient income, he could hire a clone from Radcliff to eliminate his wife.”
Remo believed the adult clones were all dead now. He couldn’t prove it absolutely, but his backup theory said that any troops still in the field would finally reveal themselves or self-destruct when they found out their lifeline to Kentucky had been severed. And if he was wrong, at least they would be stripped of paying clients, no more dangerous than any other psycho rolling in to hit a liquor store on Friday night.
Not much.
“I cannot be sure yet,” Smith replied. “They are going to require evaluation, and it takes some time. Of thirteen clones, there are four in their teens who have completed major segments of their training. Frankly, Remo, I am not certain they can ever be deprogrammed. They may be dangerous for life, like pit bulls raised to fight.”
“What happens then?”
“Other agencies are involved now,” Smith replied. “It is no longer my decision.”
Remo knew what that meant. Any subject deemed incorrigible had to be forever isolated from society.. The only question would be whether they survived—presumably confined in some secure facility that catered to the criminally insane—or if they would be liquidated in the interest of expediency. “Damn.”
“I know exactly how you feel,” Smith said, and Remo knew he meant it.
“What about the younger ones?”
“It looks a little brighter there,” Smith told him. “Nine boys, aged six to twelve—the older one is marginal, I grant you—who may still be salvageable. Of course, that is no guarantee.”
“I understand,” said Remo.
With the proper counseling and education, maybe medication, some or all of them may come around.”
“No suicidal acting-out?” asked Remo.
“None so far. My guess would be their keepers left that for the later stages of the training program once they had the basics down and were approaching readiness for action in the field. It would not take that long to plant the seed with drugs and posthypnotic suggestion, especially working with people conditioned from birth to obey without question.”
“What’s the long-range forecast?”
“Hazy,” Dr. Smith replied, a frown etched on his lemon face. “There is still a world of difference, understand, between deprogramming these kids and making them productive members of society. The younger ones—I am talking six to nine years old, now—may be street safe by the time they hit their teens, but that is a guess. On the older ones, a quiet life in some nice home may be the best we’ve got to hope for.”
“Jesus. What about the infants?”
“Ah.” Smith grudgingly allowed himself the bare suggestion of a smile. “Now, there is some good news. Based on what the matron told us—what’s her name again?”
“Althea Bliss,” said Remo.
“Yes. If we can trust her statements—and FBI pediatric experts suggest we can—the infants range from three months to eleven months in age. Tests are being run to see if Radcliff’s people shot them up with anything, but they are too young for any kind of operant conditioning to really stick. He could have taken steps to break the bonding cycle—that is apparently one of the keys to breeding psychopaths—or shown them gangster movies day and night, but it is a case of wait-and-see. Meanwhile they are being well cared for, and no one will be teaching them to load a gun before they learn to write their names.”