“Excellent,” Meredith said. “And the record room?”
“I pulled Foster’s charts yesterday myself and replaced them with the ones you sent by FedEx.”
“Well done, Xavier. It’s good to know I have at least one person in this organization I can count on.”
“Is there anything else I can do, Meredith?”
“Find Will Foster before someone else does,” she laughed.
The line fell silent.
“Call me when the identity of the inspectors can be corroborated,” she said.
“Do you still want me to go to Bucharest, or should I remain in Prague in case the inspectors come back?”
“They won’t be back. Leave on the next available flight. We’ve lost three days of research time. I can’t afford to lose any more.”
“You realize it will be difficult, if not impossible, to proceed without Foster.”
“We have his entire genome mapped, Xavier, and months of research data. You should be able to continue the work without Foster now.”
“It’s not that simple, Meredith. There are over twenty thousand genes scattered among three billion base pairs in the human genome. And just because you’ve identified a gene, doesn’t mean you know what protein it encodes. It also doesn’t tell you what function that protein performs, or how it interacts with other proteins. The Foster mutation is something we’ve never seen before. It could be expressed by a single gene, or by multiple genes — we’re still evaluating.”
“I never said this would be easy, Xavier. And you still haven’t answered my question,” she said, her ire rising. She heard him exhale loudly on the other end of the line and it annoyed her.
“Identifying the genes that express the Foster mutation is not the same thing as understanding how the mutation works. Before I can devise a gene therapy that confers Foster’s unique mechanism of immunity, I have to understand exactly how his immune system operates. For that, I need more time.”
Her tone soured. “Enough. He’ll be back in your custody by week’s end,” she said and ended the call without salutation.
She looked down at her iPhone. She wanted to throw it across the room, but she resisted the urge and set it gently down on the bedside table. She exhaled slowly and told herself that she was proud of herself for showing restraint. Then, she picked up the iPhone and hurled it across the room. It hit the facing wall with a thud and dropped to the carpet. She was tired. So very, very tired. When she was in college, pulling one or two all-nighters a week was no problem. Now, her thirty-nine-year-old body was not as forgiving, and the events of the last several days had left her haggard. Mentally and physically. She was functioning more on instinct than intellect at the moment, and her usual vicelike control over her emotions was slipping.
Foster was proving to be vexingly more allusive than she had anticipated. She was not surprised that Raimond Zurn and his half-wit brother Udo had still not located Foster. Hiring the Zurns had been a mistake, but Nicolora’s team’s impotence thus far was as appalling as it was astonishing. No sooner had she finished damning Nicolora’s team than she began to second-guess herself. If her relationship with Nicolora had taught her anything, it was that his competence was overshadowed only by his cunning. If the Tank did not have Foster yet, then she had reason to worry. With Nicolora, the straight line was never the shortest distance between two objectives.
“Surprise Ministry of Health inspection,” she scoffed in the dark, “I know it was you Robért, you devil.”
Her iPhone rang.
She turned on the bedside lamp, got out of bed, and walked over to where she had thrown it. She picked it up off the carpet and looked at the caller ID. Fantastic, more bad news.
“What?” she barked.
“Ms. Morley, this is Bart Bennett at Wien BioScience… We need to talk.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“What’s a Blue Gene?” Kalen asked.
“It’s a supercomputer made by IBM,” VanCleave said, without looking up from his laptop screen.
“Why would they have a supercomputer at Chiarek Norse?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out, but I’m having trouble concentrating because someone keeps interrupting me,” VanCleave snapped.
“You must have a couple of guesses what they’re using it for.”
“I have a theory.”
“But you’re not saying?”
With a sigh, VanCleave looked at Kalen. “It appears they are using it for DNA sequencing.”
“DNA sequencing of what in particular?” AJ interjected.
“Again, I am still assessing the data the spiders were able to transmit before they went dark. I’ve found some inconsistencies. The data on their mirror drives does not match the data on the primary drives.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that someone scrubbed their primary drives and uploaded new data, but they forgot to scrub the mirror drives,” VanCleave sniffed. “Amateurs.”
“What was on the primary drives?” Albane asked.
“The same information Vyrogen gave us in Boston.”
“And on the mirror drives?”
“I’m not a microbiologist, but if I had to guess, I’d say we’re looking at the entire genome of Patient-65… aka Foster.”
AJ looked at Albane.
She nodded.
Kalen cleared his throat. “Okay, I’ll ask the stupid question. What does sequencing Foster’s DNA have to do with drug testing?”
“I don’t think Vyrogen is studying a particular drug. I think they’re studying William Foster,” AJ mumbled. “Did you find anything else on the mirror drives?”
“Yes, but I haven’t had time to pour through it,” said VanCleave.
“Can you give me access? I’d like to take a look at the data.”
“Of course, grab your laptop and pull up a chair.”
“This can’t be coincidence,” AJ said pointing to the computer screen.
Albane walked over and stood behind him so she could see over his shoulder. “What did you find?”
“Somehow, Vyrogen must have gotten access to my research data, because they copied my AAV vector protocol exactly. What I was testing on mice, they’ve been testing on real freaking people in a gene therapy preclinical trial for the past three months at Chiarek Norse.”
When Albane didn’t respond, he spun around in his chair to face her.
She met his gaze.
“You’re not surprised by this?”
She said nothing.
“Because… you already knew. Didn’t you?”
“We had our suspicions.”
“Of course. That’s why Briggs recruited me the first place. You knew they stole my fucking research! I’m such an idiot.”
“There are no accidents in our line of work, AJ.”
“How did you find out?”
“The editor of the science journal Immunology tipped off your advisor, McNamara, that Meredith had gotten her hands on a pre-publication draft of your paper. McNamara was concerned, so he contacted us. He and Briggs have history.”
“And when were you planning on telling me this?”
“Does it make a difference?”
“Hell yes, it does.”
“Breathe, AJ,” Albane said, resting her hand on his shoulder.
He shrugged her off, stood up, and starting pacing. He ran his fingers through his hair and let out an exasperated sigh. “Why wouldn’t you tell me? That’s a better question. We wouldn’t have wasted all this fucking time.”