Kingdom of the Seven Read online

  “Ratansky was killed,” the priest continued. His exposed face was long and drawn, worn by fatigue and strain. The deep blue of his eyes had faded. His graying hair hung limply to frame a right ear that angled into a sharp tip and left ear that angled into no tip at all.

  The lobe on that side was missing.

  “We have lost contact with all those forming the chain set up to aid him.” The priest rotated his eyes from one of the figures before him to the other. “The network has been compromised, rendered useless to us.”

  “Are we safe here?” The voice from the figure on the left was young, masculine; fearful and excited at the same time.

  The priest nodded. “I have kept this place a secret even from our most trusted contacts. Now, beyond these walls, trust no longer exists.” He looked at them both. “Remove your hoods.”

  The robed figures did so in perfect simultaneity, revealing soft faces pale with strain and worry. Each had long, sandy brown hair; the boy’s shoulder length and the girl’s a half foot longer. Their eyes were an identical shade of piercing crystal blue, perhaps too large for the rest of their elegantly chiseled, statuelike faces. Their noses were long and slender, narrow chins centered between angular dimples grooved into both lower cheeks. Too perfect and unmarked, too beautiful to be real, and yet so perfectly matched that anyone seeing them would know instantly they were twins.

  “It is only us,” the priest continued.

  “Then we have lost,” said the boy.

  “No, Jacob!” his twin sister insisted, her voice slightly smoky while Jacob’s rose a bit too high for a male’s. “There are still the three of us!”

  “Yes,” the priest acknowledged, and they both turned his way. “But Ratansky had what we so desperately sought.”

  “Then we must retrieve it,” Rachel said staunchly. “Whatever that takes.”

  The priest shrugged. “That may be the only way to stop them. They have the means; we’ve feared that all along. But I never believed they would be in position so soon to bring it off … .”

  “As I said,” Rachel picked up, “whatever it takes.”

  “But,” the priest started, and stopped just as fast, “I can’t! … I can’t!” The words stretched a grimace across his tortured features.

  The twins looked at each other.

  “We will do it,” said Rachel, her twin, Jacob, nodding his agreement.

  “If there was any other way,” the priest followed, his voice dry and pained.

  “There isn’t,” Jacob told him. “And there is no place to run to. At least there won’t be. Not in this world.”

  The priest’s face bent in sadness. The haunting melodic chants of the young choir echoed in the background and turned the sadness to grief.

  “Children,” he said softly, “all that remains are children … .”

  “We are not children,” Rachel insisted.

  The priest looked at them. “You have not yet seen your eighteenth birthdays.”

  “But we have lived this war with you for half of them,” Jacob remained. “And for the last four years we have trained with the other soldiers, who have now abandoned us. Taken the courses over and over again, mastering the skill sets—you said so yourself. And now you know there is no choice, for any of us.”

  “If we are as good as you always said,” put forth Rachel.

  “You are better.”

  “Then we will go to New York. Ratansky must surely have left something.”

  “The challenge lies in finding it,” added her twin. “Perhaps picking up where he left off.”

  “The risks,” from the priest forlornly. “Lord in heaven, the risks …”

  “Whether we go or not, they remain,” said Jacob.

  “Only different,” added Rachel. “This is our last chance, the world’s last chance.”

  The priest nodded slowly, reluctantly. He rose from his crouch, knees and back creaking, and waited for the twins to join him. When they did, facing him with bowed heads, he performed a brief blessing that ended with the sign of the cross drawn in the air before their foreheads.

  “May God be with you,” he said finally. “May God be with us all.”

  Captain Ted Wilkerson of the Arizona Highway Patrol strode down the corridor of Tucson General Hospital quickly, causing Dr. Lopez to break into a trot to keep up.

  “We got him here as fast as we could, Captain,” Lopez explained, trying to plead his case.

  They had come to the elevator. Wilkerson pressed the up arrow.

  “Just give it to me again, Doc, and make it quick.”

  “Your man Denbo—”

  “He’s not just my man. He’s a man with a family who are gonna want to know what happened to him.”

  “Well, as you know, he was found by one of your patrols four hours ago halfway between Tombstone and Mexico. He had driven a good ways across the desert, by all indications, and was suffering from severe heat prostration and dangerous dehydration. I think we got him here in time, but the next twenty-four hours will be the key.”

  The elevator doors opened and Captain Wilkerson stepped in without waiting for those inside the compartment to step out. Dr. Lopez squeezed through the crowd to join him.

  “I want to prepare you for what you’re going to see,” Lopez continued as the elevator hummed toward the third floor.

  “I seen lots of men been in the desert longer than Wayne Denbo, Doc.”

  “It’s not the desert that accounts for what I’m talking about, Captain. It’s whatever happened to him before he drove himself out into it. Shock’s not unusual in these cases, but Officer Denbo is totally unresponsive and incoherent. He hasn’t said a word since we brought him in here, and we’re not sure he can hear what we say.”

  On the third floor Lopez lunged out of the compartment ahead of Wilkerson and led him toward Wayne Denbo’s room: a corner private with a view of the night-lights burning in the hospital’s parking lot. When they got to the door, Lopez felt his progress stopped by a beefy hand in his chest.

  “I’ll take it from here, Doc.”

  “But—”

  “Call ya if I need you.”

  Wilkerson closed the door in Lopez’s face and turned to find Sergeant Bart Harkness standing vigil over Denbo’s bed.

  “Jesus,” muttered Wilkerson.

  Denbo lay there spread-eagle on the bed with his unblinking eyes staring at nothing. The heat blisters that had pocked his face had all been swabbed and bandaged, giving him the look of a man who had gone crazy during his morning shave. The flesh Wilkerson could see was sunburned red.

  “Anything?” the captain raised.

  “Not a word,” said Harkness.

  Wilkerson reached Denbo’s bedside and looked back at the sergeant. “What the Christ happened?”

  Harkness let his eyes fall on the still form lost in the air-conditioned cool of the room. “He makes a crazy distress call to dispatch, but before he can say where he is, the message just cuts off.”

  “Like that? Nothing else?”

  “When we found the car, what was left of the mike was on the passenger seat. Looks like he crushed it apart. Tore up his hand in the process,” Harkness explained, gesturing toward the bandage covering Denbo’s right palm. “Anyway, he left wherever he was in a hurry and drove straight into the desert. Didn’t seem to matter where he went, ’long as he got away. Chopper found him just before dark. He was sitting by the front fender, the car out of gas, looking just about like he does now. We airlifted him here.”

  “What about his partner? What about Langhorn?”

  “Not a trace. We figure maybe Denbo left him off somewhere between where he ended up and where he started.”

  “Any idea yet where on their patrol that was?”

  “We’re sweeping a widening perimeter around Joe and Wayne’s last known position. Lots of square miles, though. Size of Rhode Island, maybe.”

  Captain Wilkerson took a long look at Wayne Denbo’s blank face before continuing.
“What was it you couldn’t tell me over the radio, Bart?”

  “Wayne and Joe had someone in their backseat. We found hair that don’t match neither of theirs and fresh blood.”

  “Blood …”

  “Not much. Enough to tell us it wasn’t Wayne or Joe’s, though.”

  “Where’s Langhorn?” Wilkerson asked out of frustration. “What the Christ happened to him?”

  The question drew a shrug from Harkness. “Wish I knew, Cap.”

  “Then try answering me this, son: What is it can make a man drive himself into the desert and leave him like … that?”

  The two men looked down at Denbo’s still form and then at each other.

  “What the fuck did he see, Bart?” asked Wilkerson. “What the fuck did he see?”

  CHAPTER 7

  Alexander MacFarlane arrived ninety minutes into Karen Raymond’s stay at the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department substation ten minutes from her house in Del Mar. He hadn’t been home when she had called, but the answering service promised to track him down. When a half hour passed with no results, she tried again, waited another twenty minutes, and dialed once more. The results were the same: none. Finally he called her at the station and said he was on his way. He sounded harried and strained. Now, as he hurried down the hall toward the back office where they had stowed her and the boys, he appeared to her to be frightened. Behind him strolled a trio of men she recognized as part of the private security force Jardine-Marra utilized.

  “My God, Karen,” he said by way of greeting, “my God …”

  She moved to him and took his outstretched hands in hers. MacFarlane drew her in for a hug. It hurt putting weight on her twisted ankle, and the bandage a paramedic had wrapped around her torn hand made it impossible to close her fingers.

  “We’ve got to leave here,” MacFarlane said softly as they separated. “We’ve got to leave now. We’re going to take you and the boys to my house. There’s plenty of room. And—” he cast another glance the way of the armed guards “—we won’t be alone.”

  Karen’s expression was ashen, expressionless. “The police didn’t find them, Alex. The police got to my house and they were gone. But they couldn’t have made it out and away on their own. They just couldn’t. That means others must have come for them. There had to be more!”

  “We’ve got to leave, Karen. Please.”

  She stood her ground. “You see what I’m saying, Alex. The attack wasn’t random. They weren’t just after me.” She lowered her voice. “It’s Lot 35; it’s got to be.”

  “I know,” he said grimly.

  The remark, together with its tone, froze her thinking. “How could you know, Alex?”

  MacFarlane’s gaze tilted briefly toward the security guards who had accompanied him. “Let these men take your boys to my house. There are two others outside who will accompany us.”

  “Accompany us where?”

  “Where I was when the answering service reached me: the plant.”

  Karen Raymond was only vaguely conscious of Alexander MacFarlane’s limousine sliding past the Salk Institute and through the Torrey Pines Industrial Park en route to Jardine-Marra. The front of the building was lined with cars labeled with the familiar logo of the security company. Several of the unmarked variety were double-parked next to them. Security guards holding shotguns stiffly across their chests flanked the floodlit entrance on either side. When she stepped out of the limousine, Karen could see a man in a suit standing just inside the lobby.

  “FBI,” Alex told her, taking her arm lightly. “They’ve assumed jurisdiction in this.”

  “In what?” she returned fearfully. “What’s happening?”

  Before MacFarlane could answer, the FBI man emerged through the door.

  “Quantico’s sending a pair of forensic teams out on the first flight this morning, sir,” he announced professionally.

  “What about my house?” MacFarlane asked him.

  “Supplemental teams have already been dispatched.”

  “I don’t want them supplementing, damnit, I want them supervising!” His eyes gestured toward Karen. “Dr. Raymond’s children will be arriving there shortly.”

  “They’ll be safe, sir.”

  “See that they are.”

  The FBI man spat out some instructions into a walkie-talkie pulled from his belt, while Karen and Alexander MacFarlane started through the JM lobby. The agent caught up with Alex and they exchanged hushed words that Karen couldn’t decipher.

  It made sense, each and every piece of it. If the attack on her house had come for the reasons she suspected, it figured the force behind it wouldn’t have stopped there. She was only a part of Jardine-Marra’s miraculous work with Lot 35; an important one, yes, but a part all the same. Other parts, together or alone, were equally important.

  Karen’s thoughts stopped abruptly when they approached the entrance to the lab where the research on Lot 35 had been confined, located in a separate section of the building to avoid intrusions by the curious. Another suited man stood guard at the door. He saw MacFarlane and the FBI agent approaching and slid stiffly aside. Karen approached the threshold and felt her feet grow heavy. Her stomach churned. The floor wavered.

  The Lot 35 laboratory was a shambles. Tables had been turned over atop shattered glass. Filing cabinets had been spilled and robbed of their drawers. Computers lay in smashed heaps.

  Strange, Karen would reflect later, on how those were the images she would always recall coming first. Not the blood. Not the bodies of her eight-person Lot 35 lab team who, as always, were working late.

  She should have been here! On any other night she would have been.

  The bodies of her team lay scattered randomly throughout the lab, dropped in the positions they had been working. She had shared the better part of the past two years with these men and women, the significance of their discovery bringing them especially close over the past six months. They savored every second, coveted that final mad, sleepless dash to the finish line. They cried, they hugged, they ate Chinese food, and, finally, they celebrated.

  “They were shot,” Alexander MacFarlane said softly. “All of them.”

  “One team sent to my house,” Karen muttered, “the other …”

  “Here,” he completed for her, swallowing the pause. “The killers took everything: notes, computer disks, samples, even the test animals.”

  She grabbed his arm. “Get me out of here, Alex.”

  “I think we—”

  “Now!”

  Karen felt a sudden desperation to be with her sons. No matter how deep her pangs of sadness and loss might be, they paled next to the very real possibility that Taylor and Brandon might still be in danger.

  “I want to be with my kids.”

  “Karen, you and I really need to talk.”

  “Take me to my boys, Alex.”

  “They’re safe.”

  “Now!”

  “You’re all that’s left,” MacFarlane said in the limo. “If they had … been successful at your home as well, we would have lost Lot 35.”

  “Who are they, Alex?”

  “Quite obviously someone who does not want our vaccine to ever reach the market.”

  Karen tried to stop herself from shuddering and couldn’t. “That means there was a leak. You know that.”

  He looked at her through the darkened cavernous rear of the limo. “But I don’t know at what level, not yet.”

  “Yes, you do. And so do I. One of our board of directors is responsible for this. One of them must have a pipeline to someone who wants Lot 35 buried forever, someone at another pharmaceutical company!” she finished, the realization striking her hard and fast.

  “Karen—”

  “Hear me out, Alex. Say this other company is as close as we are to a vaccine, maybe even closer. There’s billions of dollars at stake here, tens of billions, and there’s only room for one AIDS vaccine.”

  “You’re moving too fast.”

&
nbsp; “So did whoever it was on our board who leaked Lot 35’s existence.”

  “They weren’t the only ones with access to the information you’re referring to,” MacFarlane cautioned.

  “No, but they were the only ones who learned of Lot 35’s existence today. Everyone else in confidence has known for at least several months. The fact that all this happened tonight can only mean … Tell me I’m wrong, Alex. Go ahead and try.”

  MacFarlane sighed. “The FBI reached the same conclusion.”

  “And what do they intend to do about it?”

  “Investigate each of the board members thoroughly.”

  “Tell them to try Merck, Ciba-Geigy, Pfizer, and Van Dyne as well.”

  “I’m sure they intend to.” MacFarlane fidgeted, drew himself closer to her. “Our problem now is one of recreating your work under tight security, probably in a different location. You can do it, of course. You always insisted on keeping all the backups yourself.”

  She nodded, but the nod gave way quickly to a shrug. “It’s just difficult to think in those terms now.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t owe me any apologies, Alex. You lost as much as I did tonight.”

  He touched her arm. “We’ll put it back together, Karen, the two of us. I promise.”

  The mere mile-and-a-half distance to MacFarlane’s home in the three-car convoy, the limo sandwiched by vehicles manned by the security force, took barely five minutes. Set upon the cliffs of La Jolla three hundred feet above Black’s Beach, his house was a sprawling, three-story geometric marvel of circling layers and triangles locking around limestone patios. Steel frame with a 90 percent glass exterior that allowed for an open ocean view for hundreds of miles from most rooms, and Black’s Beach from all of them. Called that for the volcanic sand that caked it, the beach was accessible either by a treacherous descent down the face or the elevators that many of the residents had installed which angled down over the cliffs. Karen’s boys were probably the only ones to have used Alex’s when they visited in the past few years, since MacFarlane’s kids had long grown up and he hadn’t been to the beach himself since his wife died.