Chronic fear f-2 Read online

  “That can’t happen.”

  “I won’t let it happen, if you like.”

  “And you tried Wallace’s BlackBerry?”

  “No answer.”

  “He wouldn’t go dark on his own, not at a critical time like this.”

  “If I may be so bold, sir?”

  Burchfield sat on the plush leather sofa. “Fire away. I can handle it. Hell, I’ve heard worse.”

  “There are a few options. One, Mr. Forsyth voluntarily went with the Morgans, wherever they are going.”

  “They could have kidnapped him and are going into hiding.”

  “It’s a possibility, but Forsyth isn’t good for anything except insurance. If they wanted value, they would have kidnapped the drug maker, Darrell Silver. After all, Silver is the one who cracked Briggs’s Halcyon formula.”

  “So Silver’s disappeared, too? Maybe the Morgans kidnapped them both.”

  Scagnelli pulled the miniature digital recorder from his pocket and placed it on the coffee table. “Audio proves that they left Silver there. No telling where he headed, but he was around at least half an hour after they took your friend, apparently uncovering stashes of drugs the feds missed.”

  “So Wallace expected Mark to kill his wife? I know Mark is a little…unhinged.”

  Scagnelli nodded. “From my understanding, Mark was the only one of the group who received his first Seethe exposure last year in the Monkey House. Besides, of course, you and Wallace Forsyth.”

  “Damn it. I can hold my liquor. I’m the Charlie Sheen of DC. I haven’t noticed any ill effects.”

  No, I’m sure sociopathy is immune to the effects of personality-altering drugs, because there is no humanity left to destroy. “Oh, I’m sure of that, sir. You’ve behaved calmly and rationally through it all. The liberal bloggers can’t lay a glove on you.”

  Burchfield gave a stately jerk of his shoulders, standing erect as if a camera and a flag were nearby. “I’ll admit, Seethe can be quite effective, which is why it’s so dangerous.”

  “And so useful,” Scagnelli said. “I also discovered your plans to funnel Seethe to the Pakistan border. Enough crazy people killing themselves on both sides of the border, it will escalate pretty quickly, especially if some American troops go down as collateral damage. A hawk like you, already sitting pretty on the defense committee, would be very appealing to the voters.”

  “That’s dangerous talk, Mr. Scagnelli.”

  Scagnelli was amused. Burchfield was just another cog in the machine, and even if he achieved the presidency, he’d be no more than a house servant for wealthy corporations and the finance sector. Much like Scagnelli was a slave to Burchfield and Forsyth. At least for the moment.

  Power had a way of flip-flopping when one side possessed something the other side needed.

  “You hired me for danger, Senator. And I’m not suggesting your plan is seditious. Hell, just between you and me, I like it. But it’s not you I’m worried about.”

  “Wallace?”

  Scagnelli gave a casual shrug. If Burchfield could play the role of world leader, why couldn’t Scagnelli pull off the innocent bystander part as a supporting actor? “He’s been going a little afield, sir. At first, I thought he had orders from you that he wasn’t relaying to me. But he worried me a little with that Book of Revelations stuff.”

  “Wallace has always been fundamentalist. That’s no secret. And I’ve found him to be a sincere man of faith.”

  Scagnelli tapped the documents on the coffee table. “But doesn’t it make you wonder? It looks to me like the evidence puts him on the road to Halcyon and Seethe while pointing all the fingers at you.”

  “Wallace is loyal to me.”

  “A man of God will always choose the higher calling.”

  “No.” Burchfield removed his glasses and tapped them against his thigh. “Wallace has always been a man of sound principle. And before you suggest it, he didn’t suffer any lingering effects from Seethe, either.”

  “It might be cumulative. After all, Mark Morgan didn’t turn into a rampaging, well-armed lunatic overnight. From what I’ve discovered, the others may have built a tolerance to Seethe, probably because the Halcyon suppressed it.”

  “Seethe is unpredictable. That’s what makes it valuable.”

  And that’s what makes it fun. Before this little adventure was over, Scagnelli planned on getting his hands on some Seethe. A guy never knew when dosing somebody into a murderous rage might be necessary, or at least entertaining.

  “All I’m saying is Mr. Forsyth might not be his usual self,” Scagnelli said. “If he’s getting messages from God or whatever, then he’s going to have a different set of motivations.”

  “Excuse me.” Burchfield picked up his own BlackBerry and dialed, then ordered the person on the other end of the line to run a GPS search for Wallace’s BlackBerry. “Call me when you know.”

  Turning back to Scagnelli, he said, “You mentioned other options?”

  “Well, Mr. Forsyth had me kidnap Mark Morgan.”

  “Kidnap? I didn’t order that!”

  “I assumed it was to force Dr. Morgan to turn over the rest of her research records. But what if he wants to partner with them? Maybe even go public, too?”

  Burchfield clenched his fist. “He’d never betray me like that. I am going to make him vice president.”

  “Why settle for number two in the U.S. when you can be number one in heaven?”

  “No way. No fucking way.” Burchfield stormed across the office. The windows were concealed by thick curtains, but Burchfield parted them to glance into the darkness. “Wallace, you son of a bitch.”

  Rage. That’s an unhealthy emotion, Senator. Causes errors in judgment. Or maybe just allows us to give in to our true nature.

  Scagnelli tossed some gasoline on the flames. “Of course, it’s equally possible that he partnered with Darrell Silver. Who cares about the monkeys when you can own the banana tree?”

  Burchfield growled deep in his chest, and Scagnelli was grateful the man was currently his boss and not his enemy. That could change tomorrow, and probably would, when Scagnelli ended up with the formulas for both Seethe and Halcyon and decided Senator Daniel Burchfield was no longer a necessary evil.

  “Nobody stabs me in the back,” Burchfield bellowed.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Nobody fucks with me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Nobody takes away what’s mine.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Burchfield grabbed one of the figurines from the mantel, Thomas Jefferson if Scagnelli had to guess, and hurled it into the hearth. It cracked into a dozen pieces.

  Let freedom ring.

  Burchfield’s BlackBerry buzzed and he immediately relaxed, his face going placid. Scagnelli wondered if Seethe had maybe dug a deeper hole in the senator than he realized.

  “Yes?” Burchfield said into the phone, listening for fifteen seconds before clicking off. He spoke to Scagnelli without turning. “They found Wallace’s phone in the weeds near Silver’s laboratory.”

  Scagnelli decided to keep the kettle boiling. “He probably ditched it when he went with the Morgans. Didn’t want to be tracked.”

  “And you said Wendy called Dr. Morgan?”

  “My guess would be they’re planning a little reunion.”

  “I don’t pay you for guesses. I pay you for results.”

  Damn. You just about had my vote, but now you pull the plantation-owner crap. Oh well, I shouldn’t expect too much. He’s been snouting the trough for so long he can’t smell his own stink.

  “I can give you the results you want,” Scagnelli promised. “Far more effectively than the CIA, the defense department, or the FBI.” He thumped the stolen documents. “I don’t leave paper trails or fingerprints, and I offer plausible deniability.”

  He wanted to add that he’d already taken care of one problem for Burchfield: Anita Molkesky. Instead, he just said, “It’s possible they will be g
athered in one place for the first time since the Monkey House.”

  Burchfield connected the dots. “The first and last times.”

  Scagnelli glanced around the room and mouthed, Is it bugged?

  Burchfield spoke at his previous volume. “Everything stays here in this office.”

  “In that case, you’re in luck. I’m having a half-off sale.”

  Burchfield ticked the names off with his fingers. “Alexis…Mark Morgan…Roland Doyle…Wendy Leng…Wallace…that makes five.”

  “‘Five’ rhymes with ‘no longer alive.’”

  “There’s only one condition.”

  “Only one?”

  “Wallace failed me, but you won’t. Don’t kill them until you have Seethe and Halcyon.”

  “You got it, Mr. President.” Scagnelli flashed a cheesy grin before heading for the door.

  Who knows? Maybe he’ll choose me as his new running mate.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Mark’s headache was getting worse.

  Luckily, traffic thinned as they left the interstate and began the winding climb up into the mountains, but every sweep of oncoming headlights hit him like a sheet of battery acid laced with jalapeno. Closing his eyes didn’t help, and he couldn’t risk encasing his head in a jacket to muffle the external stimuli.

  No, that’s just what they would want me to do. I have to stay awake.

  Alexis glanced from the driver’s side once in a while, but Wallace Forsyth, who was in the passenger’s seat, hadn’t spoken in the past hour. In the seat behind them, Mark wondered if they’d devised some plot behind his back, perhaps to wait until he was asleep and take the gun away.

  “You look bad, honey,” Alexis said to his reflection in the rearview. She was calm, but the greenish dashboard lights revealed the strain in her eyes.

  “I am bad,” he said. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

  “Please take the Halcyon.”

  “Right. Like I’d trust something cooked up by your hippie sidekick?”

  “No, it’s not like that,” she said, and her pleading tone disgusted him.

  Amazing how you could live with someone, sleep with someone, for years and then one day realize you didn’t know a thing about them. The stranger you loved was the strangest of all.

  “What’s it like, then, Lex? What’s the latest reality you’re trying to pitch?”

  She glanced at Forsyth. It was just a glance, and though Mark could only see the back of her head and a faint flick of her eyes in the mirror, he knew.

  “You haven’t been the same since the Monkey House,” she said. “The Seethe exposure has been eating away at you. The rage, the headaches, the paranoia. I know it’s hard for you to see from the inside, but it’s happening.”

  “Oh, yes. Nice sales pitch. Such sincerity. And you want me to see a shrink, right? Get help just like Anita did.” He leaned forward, letting the barrel of his Glock rest on top of the front seat. “But we know what happened to Anita, right?”

  “She was different.”

  Mark punched the gun against the seat, causing Forsyth to jerk a little. “Of course she was. Because she wasn’t lucky enough to be under the care of Dr. Alexis Morgan. The only one besides the dear dead Sebastian Briggs who is an expert on Seethe and Halcyon.”

  “We’ve never had Seethe.”

  “Why should I believe you? You lied to me about hiding Halcyon, you never told me you developed it, and you lied to me about the CIA stealing your research.”

  Forsyth finally spoke. “She didn’t know we were after it.”

  Mark laughed, and the air rushing up from his abdomen was sour and painful. “You’ve probably been working with her since the bioethics council. But it’s all going to fall apart soon. The two of you have been planning this little reunion for quite a while, I’m sure. But I’m crashing the fucking party.”

  Alexis slowed the car, and Mark noticed they’d entered the rural foothills, the two-lane highway flanked by tall hardwoods, an occasional farmhouse dotting the side of the road. Mark had spent summer vacations in these mountains as a child, swimming on Watauga Lake, riding the Tweetsie Railroad steam train, and hiking on Grandfather Mountain. In the night, the destination took on a foreboding aspect, as if all the secrets of the Appalachian Mountains had grown deeper with no one looking.

  “How much farther?” Mark asked.

  “Maybe two hours. It’s beside the Unegama National Wilderness Area.”

  So Roland and Wendy had found a hollow hidden deep in the land of legend. That made sense, considering they had played hide-and-seek in the Monkey House so well. And they would be waiting, because all of them had a hand in it. Sure, his wife was the one who’d been dosing him with Seethe, but they were all watching, waiting, eager for him to crack.

  But I’m not going to crack. I’m the only one who remembers, and if I’m gone, they win, Burchfield wins, CRO wins, and Seethe wins. I can’t let that happen.

  Mark shoved Forsyth’s shoulder. “So, what do you think of the doctor’s theory? If Seethe is causing us to lose it, why are you so rational?”

  “I draw my strength from the Lord,” Forsyth said, evenly and quietly, barely audible over the hum of the tires on asphalt.

  “If you’ve got a direct line to God, then tell me this: why would He turn Seethe loose on the world?”

  “It was prophecy.” Forsyth continued staring straight ahead, not giving in to the exhaustion that probably haunted his old bones. “‘And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.’”

  “Falling back on the Bible. The coward’s way out.”

  “I can’t judge your soul, Mark. But that day is coming.”

  “So, what do you think, honey?” Mark said to Alexis. “Could Seethe be the cause of his religious delusions?”

  “Seethe creates individualized responses, based on unique brain chemistry-”

  “Shut up and give me the vial.”

  “Are you going to dump it?”

  “After what happened in the Monkey House, I’d say you’re the last person who should be dispensing little pills.”

  “What you said happened…it didn’t happen.”

  “You killed him, Lex. You bashed his brains in with a hunk of metal. I saw it. Hell, I see it almost every time I close my eyes.”

  She shook her head. Forsyth reached across the front seat and touched her arm, a conspiratorial motion that caused rage to ripple up Mark’s spine.

  “Forgive him, for he knows not what he does,” Forsyth said.

  Mark put the tip of the barrel against the top of his wife’s spine. “Give me the vial.”

  She slowed the car, fished it from her pocket, and held it up. He snatched it away and flicked on the dome light. He shook it once, like a maraca, and struggled with the lid.

  “Goddamned childproof caps.”

  Finally, he popped it open. Forsyth had turned and was looking over the seat at him. Alexis kept glancing in the rearview.

  Mark rolled a few pills into the palm of his hand. They were larger than the Briggs concoction, unmarked, with no hard coating. They were plain white and looked as if they would crumble if he squeezed them.

  As a drug-company executive, he hadn’t spent much time on the production end, but pills with such shoddy development were considered counterfeits. They were dangerous primarily because pills might cost only pennies to make, but drug companies claimed they need huge markups to offset the cost of research. Companies like CRO feared only one thing-cheap and plentiful drugs that did the job. Luckily, Congressional members like Burchfield were only too happy to adopt protectionist policies while slipping campaign contributions into their war chests.

  But the politics of greed were far removed from this simple choice before him. Did he trust his wife, or did he believe what his admittedly confused mind was telling him?

  He rolled down the window, and the moist rush of the moun
tain air filled the car. He could fling the pills into the ditch and be done with them, at least until Darrell Silver cooked up another batch.

  But he’d already tried to push Halcyon out of his life. He seemed intricately bound to it, a junkie who even in abstinence was defined by his habit.

  If Alexis had dosed him with Seethe, wasn’t Halcyon the only alternative besides madness?

  “I love you, Mark,” Alexis said.

  What’s behind door number three?

  As far as he could tell, he loved her in return.

  And if he could think clearly, maybe he could rediscover what love meant.

  And wasn’t that worth a little risk?

  He slipped one of the pills into his mouth.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Roland’s first impulse was to destroy the painting.

  But even if he doused it with kerosene and torched it, the inherent truth wouldn’t go away. Somehow, Briggs had used Wendy as a living data bank, burying the molecular compound in her memory. If he destroyed this one, it might turn up on scratch paper, the dry-erase board on the fridge, or on a chalkboard somewhere.

  The doc was smart. He knew computers weren’t safe, not with all these federal agencies watching. Maybe he knew they’d eventually take it from him before he was ready. And, sick as it was, he wanted Seethe to live on.

  But knowledge was power.

  Gundersson had made a big deal out of protecting them, promising to spread false information that would move them off the radar. Maybe their chances were better if Roland handled the negotiations himself, played one side against the other, or maybe even took the drug public.

  Roland didn’t understand the symbols and structure of the diagram, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t his job to mash molecules together. His job was to keep his wife safe and to secure their future. Apparently running to the remote Blue Ridge Mountains wasn’t far enough. They might have to go overseas, maybe to Tibet.

  You trade a painting for two tickets to anywhere. And they’ll just let you fly off into the sunset. Right. You really ARE mindfucked.

  Wendy had gone back to bed, but Roland was restless, sitting on the porch and nursing a cold cup of coffee. Dawn pinked the ridges on the eastern horizon, the first birds calling from deep in the woods. The revolver was on the table, but now it seemed ridiculous. Gundersson was right. He was a lousy shot.