Ben followed her to the end of the chamber, which was sealed off from the rest of the subterranean level for security reasons. At the next door there was another alarm box for another system independent of that which had guarded the exterior door. Ben watched her switch it off with another number code.
She said, “The first one is based on Eric's birthday, this one on mine. There're more ahead.”
They proceeded by the beam of the flashlight that Rachael had brought from the house in Villa Park, for she did not want to turn on any lights that might be spotted from outside.
“But you've a perfect right to be here,” Ben said. “You're his widow, and you've almost certainly inherited everything.”
“Yes, but if the wrong people drive by and see lights on, they'll figure it's me, and they'll come in to get me.”
He wished to God she'd tell him who these “wrong people” were, but he knew better than to ask. Rachael as moving fast, eager to put her hands on whatever had drawn her to this place, then get out. She would have no more patience for his questions here than she'd had in the house in Villa Park.
As he accompanied her through the rest of the basement to the elevator, up to the second floor, Ben was increasingly intrigued by the extraordinary security system in operation after normal business hours. There was a third alarm to be penetrated before the elevator could be summoned to the basement. On the second floor, they debarked from the elevator into a reception lounge also designed with security in mind. In the searching beam of Rachael's flashlight, Ben saw a sculpted beige carpet, a striking desk of brown marble and brass for the receptionist, half a dozen brass and leather chairs for visitors, glass and brass coffee tables, and three large and ethereal paintings that might have been by Martin Green, but even if the flashlight had been switched off, he would have seen the blood-red alarm lights in the darkness. Three burnished brass doors — probably solid-core and virtually impenetrable — led out of the lounge, and alarm lights glowed beside each of them.
“This is nothing compared to the precautions taken on the third and fourth levels,” Rachael said.
“What's up there?”
“The computers and duplicate research data banks. Every inch is covered by infrared, sonic, and visual-motion detectors.”
“We going up there?”
“Fortunately, we don't have to. And we don't have to go out to Riverside County, either, thank God.”
“What's in Riverside?”
“The actual research labs. The entire facility is underground, not just for biological isolation but for better security against industrial espionage, too.”
Ben was aware that Geneplan was a leader in the most fiercely competitive and rapidly developing industry in the world. The frantic race to be first with a new product, when coupled with the natural competitiveness of the kind of men drawn into the industry, made it necessary o guard trade secrets and product development with a care that was explicitly paranoid. Still, he was not quite prepared for the obvious siege mentality that lay behind the design of Geneplan's electronic security.
Dr. Eric Leben had been a specialist in recombinant DNA, one of the most brilliant figures in the rapidly expanding science of gene splicing. And Geneplan was one of the companies on the cutting edge of the extremely profitable bio-business that had grown out of this new science since the late 1970s.
Eric Leben and Geneplan held valuable patents on a variety of genetically engineered microorganisms and new strains of plant life, including but not limited to: a microbe that produced an extremely effective hepatitis vaccine, which was currently undergoing the process of acquiring the FDA seal but was now only a year away from certain approval and marketing; another man-made microbe “factory” that produced a supervaccine against all types of herpes; a new variety of corn that could flourish even if irrigated with salt water, making it possible for farmers to cultivate abundant crops in arid lands within pumping distance of the seacoast, where nothing had previously grown; a new family of slightly altered oranges and lemons genetically modified to be impervious to fruit flies, citrus canker, and other diseases, thus eliminating the need for pesticides in a large portion of the citrus-fruit industry. Any one such patent might be worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, and Ben supposed it was only prudent for Geneplan to be paranoid and to spend a small fortune to guard the research data that led to the creation of each of these living gold mines.
Rachael went to the middle of the three doors, deactivated the alarm, and used another key to disengage the lock.
When Ben went through the door behind her and eased it shut, he discovered that it was enormously heavy and would have been immovable if it had not been hung in perfect balance on cunningly designed ball-bearing hinges.
She led him along a series of dark and silent corridors, through additional doors to Eric's private suite. There she required one more code for a final alarm box.
Inside the sanctum sanctorum at last, she quickly crossed a vast expanse of antique Chinese carpet in rose and beige to Eric's massive desk. It was as ultramodern as that of the company's front-lounge receptionist but even more stunning and expensive, constructed of rare gold-veined marble and polished malachite.
The bright but narrowly focused lance of the flashlight beam revealed only the middle of the big room as Rachael advanced through it, so Ben had only glimpses and shadowy impressions of the decor. It seemed even more determinedly modern than Eric Leben's other haunts, downright futuristic.
She put her purse and pistol on the desk as she passed it, went to the wall behind, where Ben joined her. She played the flashlight over a four-foot-square painting: broad bands of sombrous yellow and a particularly depressing gray separated by a thin swath of blood-dark maroon.
“Another Rothko?” Ben asked.
“Yeah. And with an important function besides just being a piece of art.”
She slipped her fingers under the burnished steel frame, feeling along the bottom. A latch clicked, and the big painting swung away from the wall, to which it had been firmly fixed rather than hung on wire. Behind the hinged Rothko was a large wall safe with a circular door about two feet in diameter. The steel face, dial, and handle gleamed.
“Trite,” Ben said.
“Not really. Not your ordinary wall safe. Four-inch-thick steel casing, six-inch face and door. Not just set in the wall but actually welded to the steel beams of the building itself. Requires not one but two combinations, the first forward, the second reverse. Fireproof and virtually blastproof, too.”
“What's he keep in there — the meaning of life?”
“Some money, I guess, like in the safe at the house,” she said, handing Ben the flashlight. She turned the dial and began to put in the first combination. “Important papers.”
He aimed the light at the safe door. “Okay, so what're we after exactly? The cash?”
“No. A file folder. Maybe a ring-binder notebook.”
“What's in it?”
“The essentials of an important research project. More or less an abstract of the developments to date, including copies of Morgan Lewis's regular reports to Eric. Lewis is the project head. And with any luck, Eric's personal project diary is in here, too. All of his practical and philosophical thoughts on the subject.”
Ben was surprised that she had answered. Was she finally prepared to let him in on at least some of her secrets?