"Yes, sir. I won't even read it myself, sir," she replied with no hint of irony. "We'll get right on it and send it to you as soon as it's done. Still, we're talking two to six weeks, absolute bare minimum."
"Very good," he said. "Do what you can."
"We'll get on it as soon as we get the official order through chain of command."
"Under five minutes. Assemble a team."
"Roger that. Catch you next time, Jake."
"Bye, darling," he said and hung up the phone.
A few minutes later Lieutenant-Colonel Rostan had the order dispatched through official military channels. That done, he picked up the phone and dialed another number.
"Hello?" said the voice on the other end.
"Done. I'll send everything as soon as it's cracked."
"I've wired the first hundred grand to your account. You'll get the rest when I have the data."
"Pleasure doing business with you, Paul."
"Sure thing, Jake. Keep me posted."
Jake Rostan hung up the phone.
Chapter 32
February 13th, 12:16 PM EST; St. Angelina's Cemetery; Gregory Falls, New York.
The gravestones were goosebumps of snow on the landscape, white and harsh in the midday sunlight. The priest droned on in the background while the mourners said their goodbyes. Jerri Bates's mother sat stoically in front; her father sobbed in the bitter cold.
Gene and his team stood in the back, separate from the civilians, the small-town crowd that had grown up with Jerri Bates. Her family, friends, and neighbors mourned the loss of one of their own.
"No Marty?" Carl asked.
Gene shook his head without looking up. "Doctor wouldn't clear him to leave. He tried to bust out, against medical advice, but he didn't make it past the nurse's station."
"He's always had more heart than brains, Gene," Doug said.
"Runs in the family," Gene said.
They stood in silence, listening to the priest pray for the living and the dead, and they muttered "Amen." They listened to Jessica Bates ask the Almighty for justice to be done, and they said "Amen." They heard her pray for forgiveness for the man who had taken her sister's life. They said nothing.
Doug turned and walked away, blazing a path through the snow toward the small parking lot. Sam followed in his wake. Carl looked at Gene, then at the retreating forms of Doug Goldman and Sam Greene. With an apologetic, sad smile, he turned and followed his friends, leaving Gene alone with his thoughts and the family of the girl he had killed.
* * *
April 10th, 6:00 PM EST; Gene Palomini's Apartment; Washington, D.C.
Two months after Jerri Bates' funeral, Gene unlocked his door with a sigh and stepped into the front hallway. His shoes splattered the wall and door with speckles of mud as he kicked them off. April showers…. He hung his jacket on the doorknob, walked over to the fridge, pulled out a Heineken, and popped the tab. A quick swallow quenched his thirst as he unbuckled his pistol and put it on the counter. He set his cell phone and COM ear bead next to it.
He shuffled into the living room and collapsed on the couch, reached for the remote, and noticed an envelope on the coffee table. Instantly alert, he sat up. Beer spilled down the front of his shirt. He ignored it. "Don't move," Paul Renner said from the bedroom doorway. Gene froze, then settled back down onto the couch.
"We're going to catch you," Gene said.
Paul sighed. "If the time comes, and you get close, I'll have to kill you, and I'll regret it. In the meantime you haven't turned up shit, and you're not going to, so there's no reason to go there. I'm not toying with the FBI anymore."
Gene patted the envelope. "This from you?"
"Yeah. There's some information there about Emile Frank you might find interesting."
"Ah. Thank you." Gene didn't feel like thanking him. "Is that all?"
"Yes."
Gene reached forward and opened the envelope. Inside was a single, unlabeled USB memory stick.
"What is it?"
"The truth. Emile Frank helped engineer the gene-therapy technique. He knew it caused immediate psychosis in about one percent of the chimps. He buried the data and went to Bailey Pharmaceuticals with his 'miracle drug.' The rest you know. Sort of."
"Sort of?"
"Over three thousand subjects, Gene, in that clinic alone, between VanEpps and Lefkowitz. But Frank continued his research elsewhere. Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, D.C. One percent went nuts almost instantly, and he killed them with overdoses. The rest are time bombs, waiting to go off."
"That…." Gene hesitated. "Covering that up might be sufficient motive for killing a lot of innocent people."