The Trikon Deception Page 33

  “I need my comm link back,” Dan said to Freddy. “Then stretch duct tape across Weiss’s compartment, O’Donnell’s compartment, and his lab. I don’t want anyone tampering with anything inside.”

  It took Freddy less than two minutes inside the utilities section to reestablish a link with ground control. Then he flew off to follow the rest of Dan’s instructions. Meanwhile, Dan called Tom Henderson.

  “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon,” said Henderson.

  “Maybe I’m just damn lucky,” Dan said sarcastically. He recognized Quigley and the other consultants milling behind Henderson. “I have a question for you, Tom. It isn’t necessarily related to the murder. Okay? What’s Hugh O’Donnell’s business up here?”

  “He’s a Trikon scientist.”

  “Trikon may have sent him, but Trikon business isn’t what he seems to be about,” said Dan. “Unless Trikon’s working with drugs.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “What about them?” said Dan, indicating the group behind Henderson.

  “They don’t know, either,” said Henderson. “What the hell, you got a Trikon honcho on board. Ask him.”

  “I will,” said Dan. “I have someone in custody who I believe may be Aaron Weiss’s murderer.”

  “O’Donnell?”

  “I said the question about O’Donnell wasn’t related.”

  “Who is it?” said Henderson.

  “I’m not going to tell you.”

  “What?!” Quigley’s face appeared beside Henderson’s. “You’re not going to tell us? With all due respect, Commander Tighe, a murder in an orbiting facility is a complicated matter.”

  “Damned right it is.”

  “There are all types of considerations: political, international, diplomatic, not to mention legal and ethical.”

  “I know all that, goddammit! That’s exactly why I’m not telling you.”

  “But the implications—”

  “Look, Bigley or Quigley or whatever the hell your name is. The victim is an American, the suspect is an American, the death occurred in the American lab module, and the body was hidden in an American scientific-supply canister. It’s an American problem, okay?”

  Quigley’s jaw hung slack.

  “I want to talk to Tom,” said Dan.

  The lawyer’s face slid from the screen.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Dan,” said Henderson.

  “I wish you’d stop saying that to me. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m doing what I think is best for this station.” Dan hoped no one overheard him. Admitting that he was treed could be a station commander’s fatal mistake. “And that includes safeguarding all personnel, allowing them to continue with their work, and preserving evidence for the proper authorities. In that order. Now when can you get someone up here?”

  “Days,” said Henderson. “One aerospace plane is in for overhaul. The others are committed to a series of suborbital flights. That leaves Constellation.”

  “What about Trikon’s retainer contract with NASA?”

  “That only covers resupply emergencies. I could ask ESA about Hermes, but they’ve only had one orbital flight with the little bugger so far. I don’t think we ought to risk a rendezvous with the station, even if the French would okay the mission. Besides, it would take weeks for them to make up their minds.” Henderson spread his hands in a helpless gesture.

  “Okay. Then here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell everyone on board that the investigation is over. They can go back to work. Did you announce Weiss’s death yet?”

  “Not yet. We haven’t had time.”

  “Good. Don’t mention it was murder. We’ll let the investigators handle that whenever they get here. Meanwhile, I’m going to continue the blackout of all comm channels. You’ll probably get complaints about that.”

  “We’ll handle them,” said Henderson. “What about your suspect?”

  “I’ll keep him segregated until your boys get here.”

  Freddy Aviles could hear angry voices erupting from the rumpus room as he flew down the connecting tunnel. He didn’t know how long Tighe would talk to ground control and it was obvious that the scientists were on the verge of mutiny, despite Bianco’s assurances. He had to work quickly.

  His first stop was O’Donnell’s compartment. Before entering, he snapped on a pair of latex gloves. He had searched the compartment on a few occasions and knew exactly how O’Donnell arranged his meager belongings. His movements were swift and sure. The search uncovered nothing that could even be adapted into drug paraphernalia. He latched the accordion door and stretched two strands of duct tape in a giant X across the frame.

  Weiss’s compartment, located a few doors down, took slightly longer to search. Time prevented Freddy from rifling all the storage compartments, so he concentrated on the laptop computer attached to the fold-away desk. He copied the entire contents of the hard disk onto a floppy. He would sort through the files later.

  Freddy zoomed into The Bakery. He knew the exact nature of the work O’Donnell had been conducting in the tiny lab, and until this morning he had no reason to inspect the project for himself. It was now essential that he get inside. Bracing himself with one arm, he pressed his ear against the padlock and turned the four number circles. One by one, he heard the tumblers click into place. The lock sprang open.

  Under perfect circumstances, Freddy would have taken samples from each of the vials that lined one wall. He would have taken clippings from each of the plants. Conditions were far less than perfect. He booted up O’Donnell’s laptop and frantically scrolled through the directory. O’Donnell had created many files on the hard disk. Since few ran more than one or two kilobytes in length, Freddy assumed that each contained the structure of a different genetically engineered microbe.

  Freddy inserted a floppy into the disk drive and copied all of O’Donnell’s data. Then he crashed the system. No one else would ever see what O’Donnell had been doing.

  3 SEPTEMBER 1998

  TRIKON STATION

  NEW DRUG APPEARS IN EUROPE BUT NO ONE REMEMBERS USING IT

  London (Reuters)—Health officials and clinics in several large European cities have reported that a powerful new hallucinogen is gaining popularity among the avant-garde elements of the European drug culture. The new drug is called Lethe, after the mythological river whose waters induced amnesia. Not surprisingly, one of the side effects of the drug is loss of memory.

  Little is known about the drug because few people seeking treatment have any recollection of ingesting it. Blood analyses of people exhibiting the symptoms of giddiness, depressed inhibitions, and memory loss suggest that it may have a methamphetamine base.

  In the early 1980s, another drug with a methamphetamine base, Ecstasy, enjoyed widespread popularity in both the United States and Western Europe. Technically legal, it became the drug of choice in discos and nightclubs, where it was purchased and used openly. The drug’s mild stimulant and hallucinogenic effects supposedly allowed users to function rationally while under its influence. In 1985, the United States classified Ecstasy as an illegal narcotic.

  A similar fate may befall Lethe—if investigators can determine its chemical composition. Much of what is currently known about the drug is anecdotal. Accounts of its use first appeared in an anonymous pamphlet in Basel, Switzerland, in the mid-1990s. Shortly thereafter, it was rumored to have surfaced in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Paris, London, and Berlin.

  An Interpol source recently stated that Lethe definitely was a synthetic or “designer” drug and that it was being manufactured in a single laboratory. The source, however, declined further comment.

  Meanwhile, the mythology of Lethe grows daily. A fortunate postscript to the story is that the drug’s effects, though strange, are not particularly lethal.

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer, 8 November 1997

  Dan Tighe announced over the intercom that all Trikon personnel and Martians were free to leave the rumpu
s room. Everyone quickly obliged. Most of them were still in the connecting tunnel when Dan and Freddy guided a groggy Hugh O’Donnell out of the command module.

  Everyone stopped and flattened against the tunnel walls, staring. No one asked a question; no one spoke. Everyone was too unnerved by the sight of O’Donnell, trussed and helmeted, with his eyes rolled back in his head and his mouth trailing tendrils of drool.

  “Aft bulkhead,” said Dan as they squeezed through the entry hatch of the rumpus room. Lorraine Renoir and Lance Muncie, who had joined the procession along the way, followed them inside.

  Dan secured his bonsai animals while Freddy hooked a strong arm around O’Donnell’s waist. O’Donnell grimaced and groaned but did not break through into full consciousness until after he was tethered to the bulkhead.

  “…the hell …” he muttered. His gummy eyelids opened. “Dan… Doc… what the hell?”

  “That’s what we want to know,” said Dan.

  “Feel like shit.” O’Donnell shook his head as if testing the limits of a headache. Then he realized that he was bound. “Why am I tied?”

  “Aaron Weiss is dead,” said Dan.

  “Huh?”

  “Murdered. A broken neck.”

  “What?”

  “Outside your lab. Sometime around midnight.”

  “So what…” Realization flickered in O’Donnell’s eyes. “Dan, you don’t think—”

  “Doesn’t matter what I think. Constellation will be here in a few days with a team of investigators. They’ll do the thinking.”

  “My job…”

  “You’re finished with it.”

  “But—”

  “You did it too well, if you ask me.”

  “There is another factor,” said Lorraine. “The fentanyl you ingested.”

  “Fentanyl? What?”

  “No sense lying about it,” said Dan. “We tested your blood. You had enough in you to send half the station into never-never land.”

  “But I didn’t—”

  “Save your breath,” said Dan. “I’ve already made my decision. You’re staying right here until Constellation arrives. Then the investigators will take over.”

  He spun away and motioned for Freddy and Lance to join him at the far end of the rumpus room. O’Donnell looked at Lorraine. Without his glasses, his eyes seemed small, watery, pleading for help. Lorraine bit her lip.

  “You knew the rules,” she said.

  “Someone must have slipped it to me.”

  “You can’t charm your way out of this one,” she said. “Sorry, Hugh.”

  Like all the others, Fabio Bianco had been stunned by the announcement of Weiss’s death. But when he saw the station commander towing Hugh O’Donnell, bound and unconscious, down the tunnel toward the rumpus room, Bianco immediately leaped to a conclusion: Weiss had been murdered and O’Donnell was suspected of being the killer.

  Making his way slowly back to his own cubicle, Bianco played the evidence of his eyes over and over again in his mind. Weiss was too young and healthy to just suddenly die of natural causes. The reporter was not in the best of physical condition, true, but the flinty look on Commander Tighe’s face clearly said that Weiss had been murdered. And O’Donnell was bound hand and foot, like Samson taken by the Philistines.

  Murder. Aboard Trikon Station. Murder in this haven of peace and scientific research. I created an Eden for them and they have fouled it with the most heinous crime imaginable. Murder. Here. On my station.

  By the time Bianco reached his compartment he could hardly see for the tears that filled his eyes.

  Chakra Ramsanjawi gazed down the length of ELM through the open door of his office. There was little activity in the module. Scientists and technicians occupied the various workstations, but no one was doing anything constructive. Some stared at blank computer monitors or at racks of colored vials. Others whispered to each other. Death is like that, thought Ramsanjawi. It sobers people quickly.

  The death had sobered Ramsanjawi himself, though not in so philosophical a manner. He was scheduled to report to Sir Derek, and for the second consecutive time he had no data to send. The pace of research had not merely been choked off to a trickle; it had screeched to a halt. He had hoped Aaron Weiss would discover something significant, perhaps a cache of data that O’Donnell had been hiding. Now he had nothing, not even Weiss. And every possible avenue of espionage had been sealed by Tighe.

  Ramsanjawi removed a tiny booklet from its hiding place at the rear of a storage compartment. The booklet contained the code Sir Derek had devised. He placed it under his kurta, then looped a leather belt around his waist. Ramsanjawi swam through ELM without acknowledging any of his underlings. The two public telephones in the command module were unoccupied. Ramsanjawi sealed himself into one of the booths and unhooked the sleek handset from the wall. It was dead. He tried the handset in the other booth. That one was dead as well. He poked his head out the door. The only person in sight was the doctor, Lorraine Renoir, who was just exiting her office.

  “These telephones are not operating,” he said.

  “All the comm links are blacked out until further notice,” said Lorraine.

  “Is that wise?”

  “It’s Dan’s order,” she said.

  She dove out the hatch before Ramsanjawi could say another word. He ignored her rudeness. Engaging the female doctor in an intelligent conversation about station procedures would have been a futile activity. He sank back into the booth and contemplated the pitfalls that had suddenly opened in his path. The pace of research had fallen off; O’Donnell, undoubtedly the culprit, had been “arrested” and his lab sealed; Aaron Weiss, the contact he had cultivated, was dead; and now the phones were shut down.

  He remembered a boyhood Christmas, soon after his arrival in England. Sir Walter had ordered motorized bicycles for both Derek and Chakra, but the merchant had cocked up the order and delivered only one. Sir Walter was properly angry at the merchant and properly embarrassed in front of the two boys. He suggested that they take turns at riding the bike on the path that wound through the gardens behind the manor house. Derek rode first and relinquished the bike after one tour through the garden. However, his subsequent turns lengthened until he completely disobeyed his father’s admonition to share the toy. Chakra turned to Lady Elizabeth. She placed her arm around his shoulder and smiled down at him.

  “Derek is silly,” she said. “Be patient. Good things happen to those who wait.”

  Those words had followed him into his manhood. Her assessment of Derek was correct, but the rest seemed to be pure rubbish. His experience had not borne out the idea that good things happened to those who waited. He had waited and he had been royally screwed up the arse, swearing fealty to the adopted brother he despised in order to return to his rightful place. His last chance might now be slipping away. He already was too old to wait.

  Dan found Fabio Bianco waiting for him in the command module. The old scientist looked as shriveled as a dried pepper as he hung in a micro-gee crouch outside the door to Dan’s office. He smoothed his hairnet over his wispy tonsure.

  “May I have a word with you, Commander?”

  “I was hoping for the same with you.”

  “I suppose we have an even exchange,” said Bianco.

  Dan anchored himself in front of the communications console, realizing even as his feet slipped into the loops that the desire to attach himself to something solid was becoming a habit. He wondered what the psych-types on the ground would think.

  “Okay, Professor, who should begin?” he said.

  “I defer to you,” said Bianco. “In this realm, you outrank me.”

  Dan grunted in cautious agreement. “You probably gathered that I am holding Hugh O’Donnell under suspicion of murdering Aaron Weiss.”

  “I had assumed as much.”

  “I also suspect that O’Donnell’s work was the reason. That is, Weiss wanted to investigate it and O’Donnell wouldn’t let him.” Dan pau
sed to gauge Bianco’s reaction to his words. He saw nothing. The old man was as blank-faced as a Mafia don in front of a Senate investigating committee.

  Tighe continued, “No one seems to know exactly what he’s doing here: not me, not Dr. Renoir, not the American scientists, not the ground. Do you know?”

  “I regret that I do not.”

  “You’re the Trikon CEO and you don’t know what O’Donnell’s doing here?”

  “I am CEO, not Il Duce,” said Bianco. “There are things that pass under even this nose.”

  “I suspect he is working on an experiment to test how people in orbit react to certain drugs.”

  “Trikon is conducting no such work,” said Bianco. “That I can say with confidence.”

  “I didn’t say Trikon, Professor.”

  Bianco shrugged. “I am very saddened about Mr. Weiss. He was a good man. Had you ever seen him on television?”

  “A long time ago,” said Dan, sensing that Bianco had dug in his heels.

  “He struck me as someone who could be very diligent in his pursuit of the truth, though not always well advised in his actions. He was learning something up here. I could see it in his eyes when we spoke. They started out as laughing eyes, as if nothing we did here could impress him. But he was impressed, Commander. He was in awe of our work.”

  Dan mumbled noncommittally.

  “You do not seem overly concerned with our work here, Commander Tighe.”

  “I didn’t sign on to conduct experiments, Professor.”

  “What did you sign on for?”

  “Uh-uh, Professor. You’re not going to get me to say that this is the last frontier. The last perfect environment where man still can dream and all that crap.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “It is and it isn’t.”

  “I agree with you, Commander. Our work is what it is and Aaron Weiss’s untimely end is what it isn’t.” Bianco smiled. “I did not come here to trade philosophies with you. There is concern among our coordinating scientists. I told them I would request a meeting with you.”