His only personal touch was the putter that leaned in the corner behind the door, a putting cup next to it. Golfing cleared his mind. And, after the distasteful events in Cuba, he liked having something within reach that could be used as a weapon.
He scrolled through his online calendar. Yesterday he’d interviewed yet another unsatisfactory candidate for Dr. Johansson’s job. The woman had proved harder to replace than he had anticipated. Since her death, his workload had more than doubled.
With a grunt, he shifted the position of his wounded leg. The doctors kept telling him how lucky he was that it hadn’t been worse. The bullet had missed his artery, or he would have bled out on the foul Cuban ground. The bullet had missed the bone, too, or he’d have needed emergency surgery performed by an underpaid Navy hack right there on the island. Neither of these so-called lucky circumstances changed the fact that the leg hurt like hell, then and now, or that his wife had to drive him back and forth from work, sighing each time she turned on the car, as if he’d gotten himself shot just to annoy her.
Pain pills in his drawer beckoned, but he wouldn’t let himself take them. They dulled his mind, and he had important things to do today. He was scheduled to speak to another candidate to replace Dr. Johansson, but first he’d be meeting with a source on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The meeting wasn’t on the calendar, so that they both could deny that it had ever happened.
His gaze strayed to the secure cell phone on his desk. He expected a call from Mr. Saddiq today about 523’s status, but the phone hadn’t rung yet. It would be good news. The deadline he’d worked so many years to achieve was so close. He needed things to stay stable for just a few more days.
His intercom buzzed.
“Your ten o’clock is here,” said the nearly mechanical voice of his secretary.
He hadn’t given her the name of the man he would be meeting. She didn’t need to know it. “Show him in.”
Roderick Kirkland swept through the door with a sense of entitlement that surrounded him like a fog. He sat uninvited. “There's going to be a shakeup. December first.”
The doctor eyed him with distaste. The man’s suit was rumpled. He reeked of tobacco, and he couldn’t sit still for more than a few seconds at a time, but he was the best source that Dr. Dubois had. “Who?”
“The entire division.” Kirkland jiggled his muscular leg. “That means a new level of oversight on your Guantanamo Bay trials. Back to the beginning.”
“Indeed?” He tried not to look at Kirkland’s bouncing knee.
“Will everything pass muster?” Kirkland put a hand on his knee as if to steady it. His dishwater-gray eyes looked skeptical.
“It will.” With a bit of luck. He’d eliminated the 500 series, then purged them from the electronic records. Painstaking work, yes, but he’d had little else to do during the weeks that he was laid up with the wounded leg. The official record indicated the lab ran only four series of tests — the 100, 200, 300, and 400 series — all successful.
He’d hired Saddiq to dispose of the bodies of the 500s at one stroke, along with Dr. Johansson and the soldiers murdered by Subject 523. Records showed that they had died in an unfortunate boating accident while returning to the United States.
The only loose end was Subject 523 and the papers that he had stolen. The soldier had confiscated evidence of the 500 series before the campaign of obliteration.
“Doctor?” Kirkland asked. “Do we have a problem?”
“No.” He’d worked on this project for most of his adult life. He wouldn’t allow the truth to cost him control of it now.
Over the years he’d learned about taking risks, about compromising some principles to keep the work going. It was for a greater good — thousands of soldiers who came home with PTSD or lost their nerve and never came home at all would be saved because of his work. US soldiers would be more effective, and effective longer, because of his work.
They didn’t have to be US soldiers, either. The project could make him a fortune if sold to the right allies. He wanted no setbacks.
He touched the disposable cell phone on the desk. Saddiq was overdue to call and tell him that the situation was resolved. Saddiq was very reliable. He’d do the job. But it was impossible to relax until that call came in.
“Subject 523 has been contained?” Kirkland asked.
The doctor rocked back in his chair. How did Kirkland know about that, and what else did he know? He’d better give him a small truth in order to forestall more complicated questions. “The man has been located and will be contained shortly.”
“Is there any risk that he will infect others?”
“Minimal.” Indeed, risk of infection was great, but the risk that such a catastrophe would be traced back to his project was minuscule, and that was all either of them cared about.
“If you can’t get your leak plugged in the next forty-eight hours,” Kirkland said. “We’ll have to burn the project. We can’t move forward.”
He had been through reorganizations before. There were worse things than sitting and waiting until they passed. “When will we pick up the trials afterward?”
“Never.” Kirkland’s nervous fingers tapped his knee. “Your work has been deemed too risky. If you can’t fix your problem, trials will be canceled, and the project will be completely disavowed.”
“Disavowed? They’ve funded this project since the beginning—”
“And if you can’t get it under control, they’ll stop.”
“There are records,” the doctor said.
“As you know,” he smiled, “records can be altered. There is a team in place to paint you as a rogue doctor, hired to conduct fitness trials but secretly performing unsanctioned experiments of your own.”
The doctor’s leg throbbed. “They would regret it.”
Kirkland was already on his feet and heading out the door. “Fix it so nobody has to regret it.”
The door closed behind him. The doctor opened his drawer and took out the pain pills. He dropped two onto his palm and swallowed them with cold coffee. He needed to make that clear. Records were more difficult to alter than Kirkland seemed to think.
Before he started in with those calls, the cell phone vibrated. He glanced down at it. A text. Two words.
It’s done.
Chapter 13
Joe stretched his feet toward the electric fire in the parlor and took a sip of coffee from the Victorian teacup on the side table. Cold. The clock on the mantel told him that it was almost four, time to take a break.
He’d been trying for most of the day to find out more about the presidential train car and its grisly contents. Torres’s presence in the house distracted him. Floorboards creaked when she walked around, and he worried that she’d find the secret passageway behind the upstairs bookshelf. She had declined lunch, but agreed to help herself to anything in the kitchen if she got hungry later.
Every hour she went out and walked the tunnel, as if someone could break in there without him noticing. But it was her job, and he left her to it. He remembered what it had been like to have a clearly defined job. He missed it.
All day, he’d been racking his brain to figure out why she seemed so familiar. He was good with faces — he’d built a multimillion-dollar company off that talent, and he could not remember where he’d seen hers. By afternoon, he’d developed a suspicion, and he had to know if it was true.
He locked the parlor door from the inside with a long skeleton key, ready to see if he was right.