“But don’t they understand that if the experiment fails, it’s over? There won’t be anybody left to gloat?”
“These people are religious fanatics,” continued Lorentz, “they are not driven by rational thought or empirical data—their faith is all they accept. It doesn’t matter anyway. The decision has been made and the Church team will be here tomorrow, and that’s that. We will all just have to do the best we can to make sure they do not get in our way.”
It took another twenty minutes for the team to vent their feelings over the intrusion of the Church into the project, until finally, Lorentz stood and said, “Meeting adjourned. Let’s all try and relax, shall we?”
As the rest of the team made their way back to their quarters, Lorentz beckoned to Jim.
“Could you hold on for just a minute? I’d like a word,” Lorentz said as he took Jim by the elbow and led him to one side.
“What’s up?”
When Mitchell Lorentz was uncomfortable about broaching a subject with one of the team, he would tap the tip of a pen against his lips while he thought how best to broach the subject matter; it was a personal tell that Jim had learned to recognize. He noticed him doing it now and smiled inwardly as he waited for his boss to find the right words while simultaneously bracing for what he was sure would be more bad news.
“James,” Lorentz began between beats of the pen, “there was a second demand—request—from the Church.”
“They want us all to convert?” Jim pondered.
“No. No,” said Lorentz through a half smile. “They have insisted that you should be the liaison between our team here and the monitors when they arrive.”
Jim looked perplexed. “What? Why me? I’ve never had anything to do with the Second Redeemers.”
“They asked for you specifically. I was told you must be the liaison, and if you did not respond favorably to the request, that I should immediately suspend your position here and have you removed from the project.”
Jim started to object but Lorentz held up his hands. “Wait, wait. Before you say anything just let me say that I will not put you in the position of being ordered to do this. I want you to know that if you decide not to accept their dictate I will back you one-hundred percent, even if it means my own resignation. It’s a monstrous imposition for both of us to endure.”
“Mitchell, it’s not a problem and I appreciate your candor. Of course, I accept. We are too close to completion now. I just wonder, why me?”
“Well,” said a smiling Lorentz clapping Jim on his back, “maybe you ticked somebody off in a previous life.”
Thirty-Five
The monitoring team arrived as scheduled the following day.
Jim stood on the steps of the institute, shooing away the occasional fly that buzzed annoyingly past his head. The sun was high overhead, beating mercilessly down. Along the asphalt approach to the lab a heat haze hung in the air just above the blacktop surface, distorting the image of the vehicle carrying the Second Redemption crew into crazy funhouse mirror shapes as it waited to clear security.
“Here they come,” said Mina Belkov, her hand raised to shade her eyes from the glare.
The security gate slid back. The white nondescript minivan pulled forward and began heading toward the main building. Lorentz had loaned Mina to Jim as his assistant for the duration of the visit, she was to help him with anything he might not be able to handle or know. A situation neither was particularly comfortable with.
The van drove the quarter mile to the steps of the reception area and pulled to a halt in front of Jim and Mina with a screech of overheated brake pads.
Through the windshield of the van Jim could just make out the driver. The other windows, blacked out with a reflective material, revealed nothing of who was inside the van. The driver was stocky with wide shoulders and big arms that bulged under his t-shirt. Large hands clasped the steering wheel of the vehicle as he guided it to a stop. The man sported a full beard and mustache neatly trimmed to match his dark brown crew cut hair. He regarded Jim with intense green eyes, a sardonic smile creasing his face.
Jim was sure he didn’t know the man but it was hard to be sure with most of his face hidden behind the beard and mustache. And what the hell was he smiling at? He looked like the proverbial cat that had caught the canary.
The smiling man pulled himself out of the driver’s seat and strode around to the steps where Jim and Mina waited. He was tall—six-four maybe six-five, Jim estimated. The bearded man grasped Jim’s hand in his own, and Jim felt as if he had placed his hand in a vice, so powerful was the man’s grip.
“Tony Gallagher,” the man said by way of introduction, his heavy Texas drawl turning the pronunciation of his Christian name into Toe-Knee.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Gallagher,” Jim started. “This is my associate Mina Belkov and my name is—”
“I know who you are, Mr. Baston,” Gallagher said with a smirk. “I’ve heard a lot about you, man. A lot about you.”
Before Jim could question Gallagher about how he knew so much about him, the second newcomer stepped out of the back of the van and walked over to the reception committee.
He was the exact opposite of Gallagher: reed thin, in his early twenties and clean-shaven, his sandy blond hair a carefully arranged masterpiece of physics. A sky blue designer—shirt, its look ruined by dark sweat stains under each armpit, clung to a body that probably weighed less than a hundred-and—twenty pounds when dripping wet.
“Justin Beaumont,” the skinny man said, extending his own bony hand. Beaumont’s handshake was every bit as limp as Jim expected for such a birdlike physique, but the man’s voice was deep and sonorous, and Jim had a problem matching it to the skinny young man he saw in front of him.
The third and final member of the Church’s monitoring team stepped around from the back of the van.
Almost as tall as Gallagher, she wore a sleeveless summer—dress that stopped just above her shapely knees and showed off her lithe calves and well-toned arms. Her abundant blond hair would have reached to the middle of her back had it not been tied back in a French bun exposing her sleek, long, throat and the beautiful curve of her jawline. High cheekbones accentuated her round opalescent blue eyes and the strawberry red of her full lips.
“Hello, James,” the woman said as she stepped up onto the curb next to the other new arrivals. “How have you been?”
There was no name for the gamut of emotions that seized Jim Baston at that moment. It was a strange cocktail of intense rage bordering on murderous fury and disbelief; two different strands of emotion woven together to form a rough cord of sorrow that tied up his soul. It felt as though every atom of his body was vibrating, and that at any moment he would simply shake himself into his constituent parts, leaving nothing but a bubbling pool on the steaming sidewalk. Jim’s vision narrowed to the exclusion of all else but the beautiful perspiring woman standing in front of him.
The words tumbled from his mouth before he even knew he would speak them: “Is. She. Alive?” he spat.
Biting her lower lip, the woman glanced at Gallagher who nodded once to her.
“Yes, she’s alive,” said Simone Baston, “Lark is fine.”
Thirty-Six
“God damn it,” yelled Jim Baston, “Son of a Goddamn-bitch.”
Absolutely irate, he paced back and forth in the living room of his apartment, hands clasped firmly on top of his head as if to stop it flying off from the force of his rage. The knuckles on his right hand glowed red where he had punched the door to his apartment, leaving a fist shaped dent in the wood.