Alchemist (92 page)

‘FIVE
…
FOUR
…'

Crowe's masked face pressed against the glass. Their eyes locked. Conor felt the venom, the hatred, burning through the glass. Felt Crowe willing him, felt the power drawing him like a magnet. Drawing him towards the door.

‘THREE
…
TWO
…'

He tried to look away but could not. Tried desperately to break away from the grip of those eyes. Imagined a gold cross. It dissolved. Imagine another. That melted into black liquid. His hand went to the edge of the gurney. The door was shaking as if a battering ram was pounding it. Tried to look away. Saw only Crowe's grey eyes, felt their pull, willing him to open the door. His head was bursting and he felt nauseous. The gun fell from his hand.

Gold cross
.

Gold cross
.

Crowe was speaking to him now through the glass. ‘Move the gurney, Mr Molloy. This isn't the way to carry on! We can deal with this in a gentlemanly way. Man to man.' Crowe was suddenly his best friend in the world and he wondered why he hadn't realized that before and why he was trying to hurt him now. Why, he
loved
his best friend …

He turned and put both hands on the gurney, saw Monty frantically shaking her head, then caught Crowe's stare again through the window. No. This wasn't right. He thought of his father. Saw the huge black bird hanging motionless in the sky, its wings outstretched. Saw it hit the ground and jerk its head sharply up and stare straight at him.

The way Crowe was staring at him now.

Thought of his mother. Stared back into those grey eyes.
No. No way, no –

There was a piercing banshee scream.

Crowe's face disappeared. The light through the porthole dimmed. Conor heard a tremendous rush of air. He pressed his face to the glass. A snowstorm was blowing. It was the halon gas forcing out the oxygen, dropping the temperature to below zero, turning all the vapour to ice.

He peered through the glass. The four people inside looked as if they were performing a ritual dance, ripping away their masks, mouths open, cheeks sucked in, eyes unnaturally wide in shock and fear.

The woman he had knocked down was lurching across the floor, pounding her chest with her fists, her face shrivelled like a deflating balloon. She stumbled and fell, pummelling the tiles with her hands and feet.

Linda Farmer was ducking and lifting her head, her face a contorted mask of desperation. Seligman, all composure gone, was stomping round and round in a tiny circle, his body buckled, maniacally jigging his balled fists up and down.

Crowe's face reappeared at the window, blocking it, mouthing frantically to Conor. Conor turned away, looked at Monty and leaned forward, blocking her view of the porthole. There was more pounding on the door. He waited until it stopped.

When he turned back Crowe was still there, a hideous marionette with a purple face, bulging eyes and veins pushing out of his forehead. He was shaking as if plugged into an electrical socket, frantically trying to communicate with Conor. Conor turned away again.

‘What's happening?' Monty said.

Conor pressed his hand against her cheek and said nothing. He waited a good half-minute, watching the corridor in both directions, before turning back to the porthole. Crowe's face had gone.

He looked through. Crowe lay on the floor just beyond the door, curled up, choking and shaking violently, still staring up through the glass. Dr Linda Farmer, Seligman and the other woman lay contorted, convulsing, arms outstretched towards the door, eyes bulging and sightless.

‘Conor!'

He turned as he registered the alarm in Monty's voice. Two guards were racing down the corridor. The gun. Where the hell was the gun? He saw it on the floor, ducked down, grabbed it, then threw himself across Monty, trying to shield her, waving the gun so they could see it clearly. ‘Stop!' he yelled.

They halted, two nervous-looking men in their late fifties, and backed away, raising their hands.

‘Right!' he yelled. ‘Now listen to me! I want Sir Neil Rorke on the end of a phone line. Right now, right this minute, do you understand?'

‘Conor –' Monty tried to interrupt.

‘You hear me? One of you stays here with us and the other goes and finds Sir Neil. I don't care where the hell he is or what he's doing –'

‘Conor!'

He glanced down at Monty, the urgency in her voice reaching through to him; she was staring at the corridor behind him. He saw a shadow leap along the wall and a split second later felt an explosion inside his head.

The gun flew from Conor's hand. As he slumped sideways he dimly saw it spinning on the floor beyond his reach on the other side of the gurney. An arm clamped around his throat; his neck was jerked violently up, his legs were kicked away and he was brought crashing to the floor on his back.

A moment later someone was on top of him, a burly guard he did not recognize. He heard footsteps. Shouting. Someone yelled: ‘Move that trolley, move that fucking trolley! Open the door, get the fucking door open!'

Dazed, Conor struggled to free himself, but his arms were battened down by the guard's knees. Then he saw the muzzle of a handgun, inches from his face.

‘I can't move it!' someone shouted. ‘It's stuck! Jesus, it's wedged tight, gimme a hand, get out of the fucking way!'

The guard climbed slowly off him, keeping the gun on his face. ‘Stand up. Quick.'

Conor staggered to his feet and lurched sideways, colliding with the wall. Guards were appearing from all directions. Two of them were frantically pushing and pulling at the gurney. Conor was relieved to see it still had not budged; the pressure from the halon gas in the operating theatre would be forcing the door outwards, jamming the gurney even harder.

‘Lift it!' one of them shouted. ‘Lift it from beneath! C'mon!'

‘Get the fucking woman off it!'

They tore off the straps and tipped Monty on to the floor, then climbed beneath and tried to push it upwards. It still did not budge. Monty crawled on to her knees, white and shaken. Conor moved towards her but the guard jabbed him away with his gun.

A hard-looking man in a suit appeared around the corner at the end of the corridor, walking rapidly, jacket open, tie flapping. Conor recognized him instantly: Major Gunn, Director of Security. Then, following a yard behind, he saw the unmistakable figure of Rorke, looking highly agitated.

With a loud metallic scrape, the gurney finally swung free.
One of the guards inserted a card, tapped the keypad, then pulled open the door. Conor felt a powerful blast of cold air. Rorke charged through into the theatre. Gunn, pausing for a second to stare at Monty and then Conor, followed him.

Conor exchanged a glance with Monty. She was shaken, but on her feet. She looked fine. Half a dozen guards now blocked any possible escape path in either direction.

There was a long silence. He stared at the partially open operating theatre door. There were more footsteps; two men raced down the corridor dressed in lab coats, one carrying a large black bag. They swept through the open theatre door.

‘How you feeling?' Conor asked Monty.

‘Shut it,' the guard said, jabbing the gun at him. ‘I don't want a word from you. Not one word from either of you.'

Conor looked at him. ‘I need to speak with Sir Neil –'

The guard raised the gun and tightened his grip. Conor said nothing more.

Ten minutes passed. Then the theatre door opened wide and Rorke came out, ashen faced. Gunn followed him. Rorke looked at Monty, then Conor, then turned to Gunn, and said, in a quavering voice: ‘Take that creep somewhere and shoot him. And that little bitch – and her father. They've done enough damage. Get rid of them.'

Gunn shot a glance at Conor, then turned to the Chairman. ‘With respect, sir, I think we do need them.' He met Conor's eyes.

Conor took his cue. ‘Sir Neil,' he said, more calmly than he felt, ‘I sent Dr Crowe an eMail, but I don't think he read it. I think you'd better have a look at it – you –'

‘I don't care what you think, Mr Molloy. I'm not interested in what you have to say.'

‘Dr Crowe did read it,' Gunn said, curtly. ‘He copied it to me. I've spent the past hour and a half working on it.' He turned to Rorke. ‘I'm afraid you're going to have to listen to him, Sir Neil. If you don't, in three hours' time you won't have a company.'

Gunn closed the door of the Chairman's office, and Rorke, white with shock and anger, switched on his computer
terminal, logged on then stepped aside. Gunn tapped a command on the keyboard. Conor stood beside them and watched impassively as the words came up on the screen. Monty watched, fascinated.

x-Sender:
[email protected]
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 1994 11:48:56 + 0100
To:
[email protected]
(Dr Vincent Crowe)
From:
[email protected]

Attachments: Audio
Subject: Re:
MEDICI FILE

Hi, Dr Crowe.
This is Conor Molloy. You'll be interested, I'm sure, to see the following file that I came across on a restricted access level on the Bendix Schere computer system. No doubt you are familiar with its contents?

MEDICI FILE
Maternox. Phase One Status.
Batch no. BS-M-6575-1881-UKMR.
Launch date: 31 Oct 1993.
Expected result concentration: Sept 94–June 95

There followed the case reports of Sarah Johnson and the other three deaths to date, Zeenat Patel, Roberta McDonald and Caroline Kingsley, and the list of the remaining women who had conceived after taking the doctored Maternox, and their expected delivery dates. The symptoms of the dead women and their babies were identical and damning: severe pustular psoriasis and death from respiratory failure in the mothers; Cyclops Syndrome combined with acute psoriasis and death due to gross malformation of the respiratory organs in the babies.

Conor's eMail continued:

I'm sure you'll be interested, Dr Crowe, to see the following transcript of an audio tape recovered from Dr Richard Bannerman's laboratory in Berkshire on the night he was kidnapped whilst working
on analysing Maternox capsules. The voices have been identified as those of Dr Bannerman, yourself and Major Bill Gunn:

Dr Bannerman:
‘Poliovirus possibly indicates intent to use an oral delivery system. Most viruses can't be used to deliver genetic material orally, because they can't survive in the human gut. Poliovirus can. It is simple to produce a defective poliovirus that cannot replicate.'

(Pause.)

‘You bastards. My God, you bastards!'

Dr Vincent Crowe, Chief Executive of Bendix
Schere
:
‘Good evening, Dr Bannerman. I just happened to be passing – thought I'd drop by and have a chat. Haven't seen much of you in the past week or so. I'm not sure if you've met Major Gunn, our Director of Security?'

Dr Bannerman
: ‘I'd like an explanation from you, Crowe, as to what the hell you think you're doing with your Maternox.'

Major Bill Gunn, Director of Security, Bendix Schere
: ‘Well, we'd like an explanation from you, Dr Bannerman, as to what you're doing with a Maternox formulaic template owned by the company.'

Dr Bannerman
: ‘Would you prefer that explanation to take place in a court of law, or in front of the Committee for Safety of Medicines? Now, I'd like you to stop trespassing on my property and leave. If you feel the need to drop in for a chat with anyone else at one o'clock in the morning, I suggest you drop by your lawyers and start briefing them, because by God you're going to need 'em.'

Major Bill Gunn, Director of Security, Bendix Schere
: ‘Right, just roll up his sleeve and I'll get this into him. Won't give us any trouble; he'll be docile as a lamb.'

Dr Crowe, you will find the complete audio duplicate of this recording on an icon marked
DR BANNERMAN ABDUCTION
, which will have automatically been placed on to your hard disk memory. If you click on the icon it will play the sound.

This same eMail message and audio attachment is being stored on 200 eMail file servers around the world at this moment. For verification, among the locations where you will be able to find and read it are the following: Vienna. Moscow. Paris. Cape Town. Zagreb. Warsaw. New York. Washington. Chicago. Los Angeles. Rome. Vladivostok. St Petersburg. Hong Kong. Sydney. Brisbane. Reykjavik. Gothenburg.

At the end of this mail are the eMail addresses of the above so that you can verify for yourself.

For Bendix Schere's protection, this information is encrypted. However, unless I personally intervene, at 7 p.m. tonight GMT, one of these servers will automatically unencode and begin mailing copies of this information to all 9500 current newsgroups on the Internet. Another server will commence mailing copies to the President of the United States, the British Prime Minister and all other heads of state and military around the world with Internet addresses. A third server will mail this information to all newspapers, television and radio stations in Britain, the United States and elsewhere around the world which have eMail addresses.