The Methuselah Gene (47 page)

“You got it all figured out, don't you?”

“Most of it.
 
Mills was a patsy from the beginning.
 
Just like me.
 
Sent here to be killed, after he killed Jeffers.
 
Only now you know that Jeffers isn't coming anymore, so this was to be
Winsdon's
new retirement home, under your own little Witness Protection Program.
 
No biggie, right?
 
After all, he's an old man, and the gene to keep him at the helm failed, while the Studio's tests were bungled by bugs.
 
Wouldn't cost as much to offer him the Mediterranean, with filet mignon and Belgian waffles delivered by room service.
 
Still, you didn't count on me surviving.
 
I was the original patsy, in case things went wrong.
 
Mills was only a backup.”

Levy blew a stream of smoke up and out the side of his mouth.
 
His obsidian eyes never left mine.
 
“Anything else you need to get off your chest, pal?”

“Before my execution?
 
Yeah.
 
I want you to think about it.”

“About what?”

“About how it would look if I disappeared here, like over that rail out there.
 
It's pretty complicated for the Agency now.
 
Must be, or you wouldn't be waiting for your boss to arrive and make a decision on this.
 
Tell me, are they coming by helicopter to take me out of here?
 
Planning to maybe drop me off with a bronze copy of the U.S. Constitution tied around my neck before we reach shore?”

I didn't expect an answer, and got none.

“There are people,” I said, “who know I'm here, Levy.”

“What people?” Levy asked, a little too quickly.

“The ones who helped me.
 
Same ones who doctored the files the FBI must have found by now.
 
Don't you people talk?”

“We don't do lunch, if that's what you mean,” Levy replied brightly.

“Even during the war on terrorism?
 
Maybe that's why we're here now, even with this dilemma.
 
Supposed to have been a couple simple experiments, like maybe other experiments you tried in Zion before?
 
But now the genie's out of the bottle, and too many people are involved.
 
Maybe you want to kill the guy who helped me next door, now, and the guy I talked to on the plane.
 
And what about the guys who hacked your hackers?
 
See, I don't even know who they are.
 
They're real good at hiding.
 
Just like I am.
 
If you can't stop a geek research engineer from breaking in here and discovering the truth, what can you expect from the press?
 
You guys didn't even expect me to get out of Zion alive.”

“We had nothing to do with that.”

“Of course not.
 
Just like you had nothing to do with Jeffers' Caddy hitting a telephone pole or something at eighty miles an hour.”

“How did you—”

“How?
 
It's an easy guess.
 
What ineptitude.
 
The Studio didn't expect the virus to escape, the gene to fail, or Jeffers and the team you hired to fail, either.”

“You mean the team he hired.”

“Whatever.
 
It's all gonna look the same, if it comes out.”

“If?”
 
Levy took another long draw, and squinted at me through the drifting smoke that snaked from his nose.
 
“What do you mean,
if?”

I got up painfully, and shuffled slowly toward the terrace.
 
Levy got up too, and followed me.
 
“Let's say you don't toss me in the ocean,” I postulated, lifting my bloody hand in hypothetical gesture.
 
“Let's say we make a deal.”

“Deal?”
 
He laughed.
 
“What kind of a deal?”

I looked out at sea, and kept my head up, but my gaze fell to confirm what was draped along the side of the chair.
 
At the bottom I could see what had been missed amid the folds of the long, heavy beach towel.
 
The indistinct shape of a pistol.
 
Jeremy's pistol.
 
The barrel just showed, and almost as an extension of the chair's tubular cross support.

“How about
Winsdon
and I swap places?
 
You throw him in the ocean instead of me.”

Levy laughed.
 
“How would that solve our problems?”

“I don't know, but it would solve mine.”
 
I tried to laugh with him, until a stab of pain shot through my groin.
 
“Or how about if I jump?” I posited, and took a step out onto the terrace.
 
“Wouldn't that solve it?”

“Come back inside,” Levy demanded, his voice level.
 
“Now.”

I turned and backed to the rail, my arms out forty-five degrees to the side.
 
“You really want me to jump, Levy?
 
You can just say I tripped, went over.
 
Case closed, right?
 
I don't think so.”
 
I turned my dripping hand palm up.
 
“It's too late to cover this up.
 
Too much blood.
 
It won't disappear, even if I do.”

Levy put one hand on the gun at his shoulder holster.
 
“Get back in here,” he insisted.

“Or what?
 
You'll shoot me?
 
I don't think so.
 
What would your boss say, if you did it before he could interrogate me?
 
Think about it.
 
I don't need a fancy condo, Levy.
 
A trailer park in Wichita will do, long as you pick up my expenses.
 
Do it for Homeland Security, consult with the NSA too, if you have to.”

“You'd sing like a mockingbird at midnight.”

“What about
Winsdon
?”

“He's dead too, now.
 
Just don't know it yet.
 
Probably thinks he merits plastic surgery, so he's not going to talk about this yet.”

“And all this because we can't tell the public we wanna play God?”

“You might put it that way.”

“I could also put it down to covering your ass, and passing the buck.”

“Whatever.”
 
He stepped toward me.
 
“Your gene was a bust, Dyson.
 
Might have helped, but it's too late now.
 
Time to clean up the mess.”

“But I'm not the one who made the mess, remember, Levy?
 
It was Jeffers, and now it's
Winsdon
.
 
Why don't you finish the job?
 
The old coot needs to be wiped.
 
He's been drooling again.”

“Nice try, but it's not my decision.”

“Then I was right,” I said.

“Right about what?”

I leaned back to look up at the upper deck, where the eternally festive music had never once paused, except maybe around September 2001, March 2003, and more recent dates.
 
And then I saw what I'd only hoped for—Jeremy looking over the rail from high above.
 
“About everything,” I finally answered, just as Jeremy saw me.

I feigned more pain than I already felt, and doubled over to stumble toward the chair and beach towel.
 
But in four quick strides, Levy was there ahead of me.
 
As I had expected, he blocked my way.
 
Then he lifted the towel, revealing the gun.
 
“Well, what have we—”

At that moment I propelled myself backward, up and over the rail.
 
It had been my alternate plan, if I found I was being watched.
 
With Jeremy being the one watching, the decision was clinched.
 
It was something I would never have been able to do unless I had to.
 
I sailed out and down into the churning ocean twenty-five feet below, yelling as I fell.
 
Then I struck the aquamarine water, and plunged into the cool embrace of a rolling wave, through a tunnel of bubbles.

I stayed under for a moment.
 
But no bullets stitched the silence around me, only the hollow thrumming sound of the ship's propeller as it passed.
 
Then, mingled with that sound, I imagined I could hear my mother's voice calling from below . . . or was it from above?

Mother?

Yes, child.

I had the brief, eerie sense that only by drifting down into the dark blue void beneath me would I meet her.
 
Into the depths that held the eternal quality of outer space, and the unknown.
 
But how could that be?
 
She should be beckoning me to rise, not to sink.
 
To life, not death.
 
It was so like her, though, I realized.
 
She had believed what Jasper's mother believed.
 
That life didn't matter—it was only an experiment, an interlude.
 
But had I ever really lived?
 
Had I ever really tried it?
 
Was I done with it so soon, and ready to return to my Maker?

Mother?
I asked again.

Yes, son?

I looked up at the bright swirling surface above me, which now beckoned with a precious new light like I'd never seen.

Goodbye,
I said.

I rose, as from baptismal waters.
 
I came up in the wake, and looked toward the stern.
 
And there I saw him again—Jeremy.
 
He was looking in my direction from on high.
 
My guardian angel, I decided.
 
I held my bloody hand above the water, and waved.
 
Thinking of sharks, I did not stop waving, even after Jeremy and two others saw me, and ran for help.

They did their best stitching my hand in the ship's infirmary.
 
There were pills to take, and a morphine derivative given intravenously, for which I was grateful.
 
There wasn't much one undercover agent could do to stop me from making my call via radiophone to the FBI, especially considering everyone on the ship's crew now knew who I was, and because I'd claimed to have been thrown overboard.
 
While catching up on the news by watching a TV monitor from my bed, I placed a call to the
Miami Herald
too, and was told a helicopter was being sent for me.
 
One that didn't belong to any government agency.

Then I called my sister.

Rachel hadn't slept all night.
 
She'd imagined me dead.
 
I told her what had happened, then asked if she had found Julie yet through the
Thurmans
.

“No,” Rachel replied, her voice sounding tired but at least calmer now.
 
“Julie's vanished.
 
Jean gave her statement to the press, and spoke for her.
 
But even she doesn't know where Julie went.
 
Do you?”

“I'm not sure,” I replied.
 
“Let me call you back.
 
And don't worry, Sis, this is over now.
 
Or almost over.”

“What do you mean?
 
Alan?”

“I'll explain later.”
 
I started to hang up, but paused.
 
I was always hanging up on her, without explanation, and she deserved more.
 
I needed her now, too.
 
She was family, after all, and didn't we define ourselves by family and friends?
 
“Can you come to Washington to meet me tomorrow?”

“Washington?”

“Yes, tomorrow.”

“Okay.
 
Okay, I will!
 
Tomorrow, then.”

“Don't worry,” I repeated, and then I hung up.

I dialed Clifford Seagraves next.
 
But a different computer voice answered this time, just as impersonal, and said the number had been disconnected.
 
What now? I wondered.
 
Was I alone again, as I'd always been alone?

No.
 
Julie was out there, somewhere.
 
Maybe she would find me, if I didn't find her first.
 
But I would try, even though I didn't know her real name.