Deadly Genes td-117 Read online

  "Since you insist, there is something that I would like," the Master of Sinanju volunteered, his voice strong once more. "A minor boon."

  Smith felt the trap snap shut. "What is it?"

  "A piffling thing," Chiun responded. "I would not abrade your tender ears with its name. Say but the word and I will take this trifle as my own, in your generous name."

  "Master Chiun, if it is within my power to grant it to you, I will. But I need to know what it is you want."

  Chiun frowned deeply. The fool wasn't making this easy.

  "I am not sure what it is called," the old Korean said. "White nomenclature is still difficult at times. Remo called it an ABC, or letters equally inappropriate. It is an ugly name for a beautiful animal."

  "Animal?" Smith asked. "Chiun, do you mean a BBQ?"

  "Remo told me it was an ABC." Chiun's voice was puzzled.

  "Those animals are not mine to give," Smith said.

  The chill raced with blinding speed over the fiberoptic line. "You are going back on your word?" Chiun said coldly.

  "I gave you no word," Smith replied firmly. "And given all that has happened, it is likely those animals are vicious. Furthermore, they are the property of BostonBio."

  "One would not be missed." Chiun insisted.

  "There are only eight altogether."

  "A clerical error." Chiun waved angrily.

  "Please understand," Smith said reasonably, "they might still be bred and distributed around the world someday. If they are indeed harmless, I will get you one then."

  "But everyone will have one then," Chiun whined. "I will not be lauded as Na-Kup if I drag home any common American thing. Why not lug a telephone or television?"

  Chiun's lament sparked a memory for Smith. "Now that you mention the telephone, Master Chiun, I could not help but notice the large number of calls you placed to California while sequestered."

  Chiun's sulking tone instantly transformed to low menace. "You monitor my conversations?" he accused.

  "Not the calls themselves," Smith explained hastily. "But the times and dates of all long-distance calls are recorded on the bills I pay. Are you involved in something I should know about?"

  Chiun heard the gliding approach of Remo's loafers.

  "My involvements are my own, Smith," Chiun said flatly.

  Unfurling his hand, he let the phone clunk to the desk.

  When Remo entered the room an instant later, Chiun was settling back down before the tied BBQ. The animal lowed. The old man scowled at it.

  Remo scooped up the receiver. It was warm. He shot a glance at Chiun as he spoke. "Windows are all set, Smitty. Broken one's been replaced. Nobody came or went that way."

  Smith seemed relieved to be speaking to Remo. "Still," he said. "Our prime suspects in all of this remain the animals and HETA. I will have tests performed on the creatures there. With so recent a kill, it should be a simple matter to determine whether or not they were responsible for the body you discovered tonight."

  All at once, a thought occurred to him. Smith's chair squeaked as the CURE director sat up straighter.

  "I don't know why I did not think of it before," Smith said excitedly.

  "What?"

  "One moment."

  Remo heard Smith's fingers drumming rapidly at his special keyboard. After a few short minutes, Smith returned to the phone, voice flushed with success.

  "I believe I might have something," he said. "I checked the HETA membership rolls in Boston and cross-referenced them with credit-card payments at area grain and feed stores. One store in Leominster keeps popping up."

  "Where the hell is that?"

  "It is not important," Smith said. "The credit card used there belongs to one Huey Janner. He and his wife own a farm in Medford."

  "So?"

  "They have ordered large quantities of diverse food items over the past three days. Hay, meatless dog food, bulk oats and so forth."

  "They never ordered anything like that before?" Remo asked, picking up the thread.

  "No," Smith replied "Theirs is a vegetable farm. They do not allow animals on the premises for either food or as beasts of burden. Understandable, given their membership in the HETA organization."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I accessed their Web page."

  "So much for the pristine country life," Remo said dryly. "We'll check it out."

  "If you do find the animals there," Smith instructed, "and they give you any indication that they might be dangerous, it would be in the best interest of all for you to destroy them." His instructions were clinically blunt.

  Remo looked back to Chiun. The BBQ was in the process of licking the old man on the nose. Hearing Smith's words, the Master of Sinanju's face grew appalled.

  "Find someone else," Remo said firmly.

  "But if they are as vicious as they now seem to be, they cannot be allowed to survive," Smith argued.

  Chiun wrapped his bony arms protectively around the BBQ's thick neck.

  "No way, Smitty," Remo said emphatically. "The Old Yeller guilt-o-meter is already cranked up to high. I'll find them, but I'm not going to kill them."

  "It may become necessary," Smith warned.

  "Let somebody else do the honors. I'm not a butcher."

  The emphatic manner with which he delivered the words sounded odd, even to Remo. Given his profession, it seemed hypocritical for him of all people to be so passionate in his refusal to euthanize the BBQs. The seeming contradiction merely acted to further firm his resolve.

  Smith seemed displeased with his objection. "Very well," he relented. "But at least return them to BostonBio. Any difficulties with the creatures can be resolved then."

  Stemming any further complaints from CURE's enforcement arm, Smith severed the connection. Across the room, Chiun continued to hug the BBQ close to him. The animal was oblivious to the protective arms.

  Remo closed his eyes. So much death in what was supposed to be a simple, altruistic assignment.

  And in his heart of hearts, Remo hoped fervently that the BBQs were not responsible for all the evil he had seen of late. There were already too many species of killer animals in the world.

  Chapter 18

  She was no longer Judith White. Yet, in so many vitally important ways, she still was.

  It amazed her every time she thought about it. Thought. Rational, intelligent thought.

  The thing that lay beneath the cool sheets in the hospital bed at St. Eligius Hospital understood that this was what made all the difference in the world. Thought. The ability to think, to reason. It distinguished her from all other animals on Earth, save one.

  Thin gossamer streaks of white moonlight, mixed with the waxy yellow glow of parking-lot lights, spilled across her quietly resting form. The smells of the ward the humans had brought her to flooded her senses.

  All the ointments and medications, the stale meals and bad perfumes, nervous sweat and soiled linens-she took them all in.

  She smelled the humans. Each odor individual and distinct. To the creature that had been born Judith White, they were not fellow men. They were meals.

  The humans had Meals on Wheels. Judith White had her own version of that. Meals in Shoes.

  She snorted at the amusing thought.

  "Meals in Shoes," she muttered softly, smiling. "Delivered warm right to your door."

  "Excuse me?" whispered a voice from the hall. Judith had heard her coming, of course. But she was surprised the nurse heard her voice. Human hearing was just about the worst of any animal in the world. But occasionally one surpassed the rest. Not difficult to do, given the commonness of human limitations.

  Judith remained still. Her eyes were open barely a slit. Only enough to see. In the 3:00 a.m. darkness of the room, her whites wouldn't be seen.

  Predictably, the nurse attributed the soft voice to a dreaming patient. The woman tiptoed quietly into the room, her white sneakers virtually soundless on the linoleum. To Judith, she might just as well have stom
ped in wearing tap shoes and a suit of armor.

  The nurse checked the patient in the next bed, an obese fifty-year-old woman with two ingrown toenails who had refused to be treated on an outpatient basis. The woman was deep in medicated sleep.

  Stepping over to Judith, the nurse smoothed out some nonexistent wrinkles in her bedcovers.

  She wore a name tag. Elizabeth O'Malley, R.N. Just beneath the silver tag, the woman's heart thudded audibly in her chest. The enticing sound rang like a dinner gong in Judith's ears. She repressed the urge to lunge.

  To the nurse, everything seemed fine. As quietly as she had entered the room, she slipped back out into the hall.

  Judith heard her step back up to the nurses' station. A moment later, the woman headed down another corridor.

  The instant she was out of earshot, Judith's perfect legs slipped out from beneath the sheets. Her feet made no sound as she stalked across the room to the small closet.

  Finding her clothes, Judith suppressed an unhappy cluck. Too much blood on the blouse and jacket. Skirt was dark. At night, the stains wouldn't be visible.

  She stuffed the hospital johnny she was wearing inside her short skirt. It gathered in bunches around the waist.

  There was a large coat in the closet. No doubt the property of the patient in the next bed.

  Judith turned to the gently snoring woman. She watched the sheet rise and fall over her ample belly. A hungry purr rose from the throat of the geneticist.

  Familiar footsteps suddenly registered in the hall outside. Judith spun rapidly back to the closet, throwing on the fat woman's coat.

  She looked quickly around the room. The footsteps were too close.

  The door was out of the question. There was only the window.

  Judith made an instant decision. She spun on her heel and headed to the window. With one quick stop along the way.

  WHEN NURSE O'MALLEY PASSED by the open door to Judith White's hospital room a few moments later, she glanced inside. She was startled to see both beds empty.

  The nurse went into the dark room, not certain what to expect. A cursory examination revealed that neither patient was in the small bathroom.

  The nylon curtains of the second-story room blew gently in the soft September breeze.

  She looked out the window. Briefly, she thought she saw a dark figure moving quickly and stealthily beyond the lights of the parking lot two stories below. Whatever it was, it seemed to be carrying something large.

  A practical woman, she dismissed the sighting as nothing more than her imagination giving in to all of the hysteria swirling around the wild animals that some local company had set loose on the streets of Boston.

  Efficiently, Nurse O'Malley clamped the window shut. Leaving the empty room, she went off to search the floor for her two missing patients.

  Chapter 19

  Judith White's parents were young urban professionals before anyone had even heard the term yuppie.

  Her father was a successful corporate lawyer, her mother an executive in the same company.

  Back when daddies generally played ball with the kids after coming home from work and mommies usually stayed at home, mother and father White were so busy they had to pencil little Judith in for appointments.

  At least, that was what Mr. and Ms. White liked to call them-appointments. In point of fact, the periods of time spent with their only offspring were less appointments than intense, brutal lessons in how not to rear a child.

  The point behind these sessions was simple. They had succeeded. Judith would succeed. End of bedtime story.

  Mr. White kept his daughter up late the first nine months of her life trying to teach her to talk.

  Mrs. White "walked" infant Judith around the house until she was bowlegged and had to wear corrective leg braces.

  Expensive tutors were hired to cram knowledge into a mind that-at the age of two-only wanted to play. Nannies were employed to take the place of a mother who, when home, acted more like a tyrant than a nurturer.

  Little Judith was put on teams in order to round out her personality. Never mind the fact that she was much younger than the rest of the children and that the older kids taunted her. When she cried to stay home, her parents coldly told her that everything-good or bad-was a learning experience.

  Judith's parents wanted her to have a life that neither of them had enjoyed. Mrs. White's father had been a minor city officer in a small town near Springfield, Massachusetts. Mr. White's father had been-to his son's eternal shame-a truck driver. According to the Whites, both of their mothers had never realized themselves as complete individuals, having stayed at home to raise their respective broods.

  Judith would have the best. Just as they had not. For the first year or so of grammar school, young Judith had worked hard to fulfill their expectations. In her parents' eyes, of course, she never succeeded but she tried her best. And for almost two years it appeared, at least on the surface, as if things were going perfectly well.

  That is, until the first incident.

  As with most parents who pushed too hard, the Whites found that their daughter eventually pushed back even harder.

  The first time was small. Someone had gathered up all the toilet paper in the girls' lavatory in their daughter's public school and set it ablaze. The bathroom had gone up in flames. The school had to be shut down for the day.

  Judith denied she was the culprit. And in spite of the testimony of the two other girls who had been with her and a teacher who had witnessed her leaving the smoking bathroom, her parents had insisted that their daughter was innocent. No matter what the others thought they'd seen, their precious Judith would never do such a thing.

  The school had suspended her for a week. Her father had threatened to sue. Eventually, the school had given in.

  During the two short days she was forced to stay home-for the very first time in her life-her parents had doted on her. At least it seemed that way to Judith.

  They had come running to her defense. They had stood up for her when no one else would. They had become, for one brief moment, real parents.

  Forget the fact that their chief concern was how the whole affair reflected on them. Judith's by-now-twisted mind saw their behavior as an act of love. For the first time in her life, she almost felt good. And she wanted the feeling to continue. In her next plea for attention, Judith used a pencil to stab one of the girls who'd squealed on her.

  Everyone in class saw it clearly, including her teacher.

  Judith was thrown out of school.

  This time, her parents reacted differently. In the face of overwhelming evidence, they'd screamed bloody murder. Within forty-eight hours, Judith was shipped off to the Excelsior Academy for Young Women, deep in the woods of New Hampshire. She was seven years old.

  At the school, Judith's young intellect was nurtured by stern yet caring teachers. Without the negative influence of her self-absorbed parents, Judith excelled. She graduated at the top of her class, moving on to a prestigious prep school. Four years later, Judith was valedictorian.

  Her parents were there for graduation. Aside from her annual Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, it was the only time she'd seen them since they'd shipped her off to Excelsior. Unlike those holiday visits, however, at graduation Judith didn't even try to be polite.

  When Judith's father tried to hug her, she shoved him away. When her mother tried to kiss her, she spit in her face. It was the happiest day of her miserable life.

  Judith could finally sever the tenuous ties with her unloving patents. She had gotten several scholarships to fine colleges. She no longer needed Mr. and Mrs. White.

  College was a breeze. Judith had an exceptional intellect. She moved swiftly, achieving her B.A. in two years. After graduate school, her brilliance got Judith noticed by a bioengineering firm on the famed high-tech Route 128 north of Boston. It was a short jump from there to the Applied Genetic Research Department of BostonBio. Shorter still was the time it took Judith to develop the BBQ
project.

  As the guiding force behind the creation of the world's first fully genetically engineered animal, Judith White was unstoppable. She was also arrogant, single-minded, bossy and virtually impossible to get along with.

  When some of the earliest prototypes of the creatures were developed-the ones with the equine DNA that would help name their successors-Judith wasn't averse to taking the weakest of the lot and strangling them in front of her team.

  She would wrap her strong hands around their necks and squeeze in the cruelest, most giddily delighted way until the animals' tongues lolled from their mouths and they dropped over onto the floor.

  When she was finished strangling one of the hapless creatures, Judith would always say the same thing.

  "That felt great. Any coffee left?" The carcass was left for an underling. In this and in other matters, she gave off every sign of a woman who was mentally unbalanced. If she'd been a man, Judith probably wouldn't have lasted long at her job. But she had one remarkable asset. In a field of nerdy men and beefy women, Dr. Judith White was an absolute stunner. She merely had to flash her perfect teeth or bat her long eyelashes, and the board of BostonBio would drop an inquiry before it even started. Of course, if she didn't get results, this brand of manipulation would have lasted just so long. But the fact was, Judith did get results.

  In another corporate entity, BostonBio had once been the Boston Graduate School of Biological Sciences. BGSBS had been at the vanguard of genetic manipulating in the late 1970s, but had fallen on hard times after a freak accident involving one of its top geneticists. Judith had spent much of her early time at BostonBio exhuming and digesting the records of the earlier BGSBS experiments.

  Judith had to admit, the research was brilliant. Flawed, but brilliant. She would have enjoyed meeting the woman responsible for the earlier exploration into breaking down the genetic differences in mammals, but her predecessor had vanished years ago under a cloud of controversy. The woman was presumed dead.

  Still, her research lived on. Powerfully so.