Ancestor (23 page)

“The thing,” she said. “In the car.”

Clayton reached the Hummer, got in, started it up, then drove down the road right out of town.

Colding watched the black vehicle vanish into the woods, heading for the mansion. “You told Clayton to strand us?”

Sara nodded. “That’s right.”

“Huh. Wouldn’t the joke be better if you were
in
the vehicle with him?”

“No joke this time. I wanted your undivided attention.”

He looked at her, looked close. The pissyness was gone. She seemed all-business.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m listening.”

“Almost right.
I’m
the one who’s going to listen.
You’re
going to tell me some things. How you came to work for Genada, how you found me and my crew and why you had that one amazing night with me then vanished.”

“Sara, we—”

“Now
, P. J. You will tell me now. We had a connection. I thought I was being a girly-girl about that, deluding myself, but in the past couple of days I’m pretty sure my initial instinct with you was right. We
did
connect, didn’t we?”

He could lie. Just say
no
, walk back to the mansion and be done with it. Instead, he nodded.

She smiled a little. Some of the tension seemed to drain out of her. “Good. That’s good. So make like a stoolie and spill.”

He looked around the town. They really were in the middle of nowhere. At least a thirty-minute walk back to the mansion.

Fuck it. Why not?

“I was in the army. Used to work for USAMRIID, the army’s division to protect servicepeople from biological threats. I met my wife there. Clarissa. She was a virologist. We were married for two years, then there was … an accident. Have you heard of H5N1?”

Sara shook her head.

“Bird flu. Terrorist cell was trying to bring it into America the old-fashioned way—by infecting their own people and shipping them over. CIA caught them. USAMRIID was called in to see if we could help the carriers. Long story short, proper restraint precautions were not followed. The guy in charge, Colonel Paul Fischer, he decided to treat the carriers like human beings instead of the terrorist animals they were. One of them … one of them got loose, tore off my wife’s mask and … coughed and spit in her face.”

Sara’s eyes widened with fear. She was probably imagining herself in Clarissa’s shoes. Trying to, anyway—who could really know what it felt like to have someone breathe death in your face?

Colding continued. He couldn’t stop himself now. “They brought Clarissa to an ICU. She caught pneumonia, got through that, but the bird flu gave her viral myocarditis.”

“Which is?”

“Viral infection of the heart. Came on particularly fast for her. Damaged the muscle tissue, made her heart weak, made it swell. Basically destroyed it.”

Sara’s hand went to her mouth. She was such a tomboy, but that gesture of empathy for a dead woman she’d never met ached with femininity. “Couldn’t they give her a transplant?”

“She still had the virus in her system. There was no way to be sure it wouldn’t just infect the new heart. They … they can’t afford to
waste
replacement organs on someone who’s a risk.”

“Because of the shortage of organs,” Sara said, nodding a little. Sadness filled her eyes.

“They put her on a ventilator. After a couple of days they … well, they told me there was no hope for recovery. She was in so much pain, so weak. She slipped under before we could make a decision. So I had to make it for her. I knew she wouldn’t have wanted to suffer, and it was only a matter of time.”

He had to stop for a second. He hadn’t talked about it, to anyone, not since it happened. Doing so dredged up vivid memories, like it was happening all over again. Clarissa’s hands, so weak they couldn’t hold his, so he held hers. Before they put her on the ventilator, he’d told her it would be okay. She’d answered in her weak voice that he was being stupid—she knew what was happening inside her body. Better than anyone, probably, because she was dying from something she’d studied for a decade.

Sara reached out and touched his upper arm. “You ended it for her? You took away her pain?”

He nodded. The tears were coming now. He couldn’t stop them anymore.
Her eyes still closed, eyes that would never open again. The nurse pulling the IVs, removing the breathing tube. Her breaths coming in tiny, shallow gasps. The nurse walking out, shutting the door, leaving the two of them together to ride it out to the end. Till death do them part
.

Sara’s hand on his arm, gently sliding up and down. “What did you do then?”

More memories, just as vivid. The rage he’d felt. All his sorrow and hurt channeled into pure aggression.

“I got in my car and went to see Fischer.”

“To talk to him?”

“No,” Colding said. “To kill him. I tackled him as soon as I saw him, really fucked up his knee. His face was a sheet of blood by the time they pulled me off. Army was going to court-martial me, but Fischer pulled strings. Got me a dishonorable discharge, and I was out.”

“What did you do then?”

“Nothing,” Colding said. “Sat on my ass for six months. Got fat. Felt sorry for myself. Collected unemployment. Missed my wife. Then Danté Paglione called me. Genada was trying to solve the organ-shortage problem. They had multiple lines of experimentation, but one involved getting women to carry transgenic animal pregnancies.”

“Carry … are you kidding me? Is that even legal?”

“No. A Genada scientist named Galina Poriskova ratted out the experiment to Fischer. Danté had a second line of research that would solve the organ-shortage problem forever, but if Fischer busted them for the human experiments, that second line would never be completed. I offered to come aboard, but only if Danté scrapped the human experimentation for good. Wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but Danté needed me. I knew how Fischer worked, how USAMRIID operated. Danté shut down the experiments. By the time Fischer got to Genada, there was no evidence of wrongdoing.”

“Danté is smart,” Sara said. “Ruthless, but smart. Hire the guy who would do anything to stop people from dying the way his wife died, right?”

“Transparent as hell, but also dead-on.”

“And Tim? How did he come into the picture?”

“He did some contracting for USAMRIID,” Colding said. “Research stuff. That’s where I met him. He was a double PhD candidate in genetics and bioinformatics. I know some of the science, but needed my own guy to make sure Genada was staying honest. I hired him to come along for the cleanup. Once Galina left, Danté threw money at him to make him stay and replace her.”

“But how did Danté
find
you? How did he know about you, and Fischer, about your wife?”

“Same way he found you when I had the idea for the C-5. Magnus and Danté have a high-level contact. From the NSA, I think. The contact can get at all kinds of service records, and more. We found you, found out you
were behind on payments for your 747. Then I came to talk to you and what happened … happened.”

“Yeah,” Sara said. “I remember. Which brings us full circle. Why didn’t you at least call me, or say good-bye?”

“You gotta understand … my wife had been dead all of seven months when I met you. You talked about a connection? Well, I felt it, too, but I
couldn’t
feel that way when her grave was barely cold. I couldn’t betray her memory like that.”

Sara stepped forward until their chests touched. She reached up and caressed his cheek, her fingertips somehow warm despite the frigid temperature. “No wonder you’re so gung ho for this project, Peej. I thought you were a rotten douchebag, but now I know I was wrong—you’re not all that rotten.”

Colding laughed. “Wow, am I glad I bared my soul to you.”

Her smile faded, and she touched his cheek again. “Any woman would just melt inside if she knew how you felt, Peej. You did what you thought was right, to honor your wife’s memory. But now she’s been gone a lot longer than seven months. It’s okay to move on with your life.”

Colding leaned toward Sara and kissed her. Her lips were soft and warm, and he forgot all about the cold.

Implantation +4 Days

ONE OF HIS cell phones buzzed. Lower-left inside jacket pocket. Only one person had that number. Magnus quickly walked to his office and shut the door behind him. He didn’t need to share these calls with Danté. Not just yet, anyway.

Danté’s will seemed to be faltering. They’d reached that point before. With Galina. Magnus, of course, had fixed that, just like he would fix things now.

He answered the phone. “Go ahead.”

“Well helllooooo, Big Poppa.”

The incoming area code said 702—Las Vegas. All he knew about Farm Girl was that she had once worked for the NSA. Maybe she still did. Judging from the crap sound of the call, she had already bounced the signal through a dozen relay points and was nowhere near Vegas.

“You sure know how to throw a party,” she said. “Dad is looking for you and your friends in the dairy industry.”

Magnus nodded.
Dad
was Fischer. She wouldn’t have called for just that. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to know CIA assistant director Murray Longworth would still be driving Fischer to track down Rhumkorrf and Jian. Longworth did not like loose ends. “So why doesn’t Dad come ask me himself? He knows where I live.”

“He is,” she said. “He’s coming to see your brother.”

Magnus felt his eyes narrow and his lip curl. He forced himself to relax. If Fischer tried to screw with Danté, the man had another thing coming.

“How close is Dad to finding my friends?”

“Doesn’t have a clue where to start. Heck, Big Poppa, even
I
don’t know where they are.”

That was as close as you could get to a compliment from this woman—if Farm Girl couldn’t find you, you couldn’t be found. Colding and Danté
had really pulled it off, hiding the project right under the Americans’ noses.

“Dad’s frustrated,” Farm Girl said. “If your friends stay quiet, I don’t think he’ll find them at all.”

“Glad to hear it. Anything else?”

“I need to expand my wardrobe a bit. Things get more costly every day.”

Farm Girl wanted more money. Well, fuck it, she could
have
more money. Thanks to her intel, Genada was the only horse left in the xenotransplantation race.

“That’s fine,” Magnus said. “Maybe Santa will be nice to you this year.”

“I like Santa. I
love
to sit on his lap.”

Magnus sighed and hung up. Once she started with the sexual innuendo, she didn’t stop. She sounded sexy as hell, true, but he’d heard enough about her in certain circles to know that getting horizontal with Farm Girl could be a very bad experience. The woman was nine shades of psycho.

Fischer and Longworth were clueless. The rest of the G8 nations had no idea Genada was still in the hunt. The Chinese knew, but they weren’t about to talk and give up a chance to save millions of their own people.

Genada now had the most valuable resource it could hope for—
time
. The Rhumkorrf project, it seemed, might just pan out after all.

Implantation +5 Days

COLDING TYPED IN the supersecret password of 0-0-0-0 and entered the security room. Gunther sat at the terminal, his eyes wide and his fingertips flying across the keyboard.

“One sec,” he said without looking away from the screen. His fingers never paused. Colding shut the door behind himself and stood there, waiting. Once Gunther got into a writing groove, you had to just let the man do his thing.

“She screamed … and grabbed … the broken pool cue,” Gunther muttered, leaning so close to the monitor that he had to turn his head a little to read from left to right. “Never again, Sansome said … never again … will you harm my love. He jabbed the cue down … like an axe … and the point punched through Count Darkon’s … unprotected … chest. As the body … vanished … no, wait, as the body …
disintegrated
… yeah, that’s the
shit
right there … he knew that it was over. Forever.”

Gunther leaned way back in the chair until it almost tipped over, pumping his raised fists in victory. “The
end
, bitches!”

“You’re done?”

“Hell fuckin’ yeah. I just finished
Hot Midnight
. The trilogy is complete.”

“Nice work.” Colding checked his watch. “Not to muck up your afterglow or anything, but I need to report to Danté.”

“Oh, right.” Gunther stood, then leaned forward to tap in a few more keys. “Just saving this slice of brilliance.”

“Congrats, man. When do you send it to publishers? How does that even work?”

“Screw the publishers,” Gunther said. “I’m going to give this baby away.”

“Give it away?”

“Yeah, online,” Gunther said. “You’ll see. I’ll rack up so many fans that the publishers
have
to give me a big fat deal.”

Gunther walked past, his eyes once again dopey-looking and half-lidded. He held up his hand for a high five, which Colding met, and then Gunther walked out and closed the door behind him.

Give the book away, for free? That was the dumbest thing Colding had ever heard of.

He moved the mouse and clicked the icon labeled
MANITOBA
, then waited patiently as the encrypted line connected with the home office. Less than a minute later, Danté’s smiling face appeared.

“Good morning, P. J. How is the weather out there?”

“Getting colder, sir. Word is we’re due for a big dose of the white stuff.”

“When it comes, you have to get on those snowmobiles. Fabulous times. What’s up?”

“They did it.”

Colding watched Danté’s reaction. The man looked half hopeful, half skeptical. “They’ve done
what
, exactly?”

“Implantation.”

“Finally,” Danté said, more of a breath than a word. “And it’s successful thus far?”

Colding nodded. “Forty-seven cows are pregnant. Two failed to implant, one fetus aborted on day two. What’s more,
all
of the pregnancies are either twins or triplets.”