Artifact: A Daredevils Club Adventure Part 3

"We can leave that up to others." He waved away the concern like an errant mosquito. "When we go public with this, there'll be experts from every discipline-"

"Public?" Frik said, straightening away from the bench. "I don't think so. Not till we know more."

"We've gone as far as we can with our limited resources. The next step is a university setting, a major research center-"

"No," Frik said, steel in his voice. "Not yet. Not until we've found the fifth piece."

4.

"This is not open to debate, Paul," Frik said. "I want absolute secrecy. In fact, I don't want that thing to leave this room. And I want this room locked at all times. Is that clear? This is too important a find to rush into the public eye, especially in an incomplete state. Who knows what that fifth piece will do? For all we know it could transform the artifact into some sort of devastating weapon. No...we've got to proceed cautiously and weigh every move. Do you see what I'm saying?"

Paul nodded. He saw what Frik was saying.

Exactly what he was saying.

"Good." Frik thrust out his hand. "Then can I have your word that you will keep everything you've discovered here secret until I decide the time is right to go public?"

"Very well," Paul said, shaking hands reluctantly. He didn't see that he had any other option, but in his raging heart he held back from a true promise.

He's lying to me, so it's only fair that I lie to him.

"Good! After all, Paul, my men found it, so I feel responsible for it."

"Yes," Paul said. "A terrible burden."

In his peripheral vision, reflected in the shiny surface of the stainless steel door of a storage cabinet, Paul glimpsed the angry set of his own jaw. He was reminded of how his daughter had looked the day she'd turned her Ph.D. in physics into a paper boat and floated it off the dock. She'd resembled her mother so much that day, with the latte-colored skin of her mixed French-Arawak ancestry. As he'd stood with her and watched the breeze take away the piece of paper that had given him such pride, she'd announced her intention to go to Caracas and join a small group of like-minded people dedicated to the preservation of the environment, by any means necessary.

Much as he'd tried to dissuade her, much as he'd tried to tell her she'd be wasting her intellect, a part ofhim was proud of her. And wanted her to be proud of him.

"Keep working with it," Frik said, clapping Paul on the shoulder. "Write up your notes, but do it yourself-no secretaries involved. We'll talk tomorrow and decide our next step."

"Yes." Paul was afraid his anger would explode if he dared to say more than the absolute minimum. He clenched his fists at his sides; resisting the urge to throw something hard at the back of Frik's head, he settled for tossing out the word "Tomorrow."

When he heard the Hummer start up and drive away, Paul pulled out a plaster cast. He had made it to support earlier reasonably successful attempts to duplicate at least the look, if not the feel, of the artifact, which he'd wanted to study without always risking the original. Separating the device into its original four pieces, he used the largest of the authentic pieces as his base and constructed a polyurethane model of the artifact. Then he locked the two smallest real pieces together, put them in a padded envelope, and addressed it to himself.

The third, the one with the figure eight at one end, he packaged separately, along with a letter of explanation to the only person he could fully trust-the only person who, as a physicist, would understand what he was saying-his daughter, Selene. He wrote her name on the package. Nothing else.

Since she'd joined that ecoterrorist group, Green Impact, she had given up on conventional addresses.

His only route to her was through Manny Sheppard. The diminutive boat captain had been a friend of Paul's wife. When she'd been killed, Manny had helped raise Selene, teaching her the joys of the ocean, and how to be true to herself.

Turning back to the model, Paul checked that it was solid and placed it in the middle of the lab table, as if it were no more important than the beakers and tongs. That little bit of "carelessness" should drive Frik crazy, he thought.

He put the packages in the wide pockets of his lab coat, draped the coat over his arm, and glanced at his watch. It was after four. Manny should be arriving down at the dock, if he wasn't there already. Bone weary, Paul left the lab, making sure he heard the click as he pulled the door shut and it locked behind him.

Once outside the building, he walked to his Nissan, got in, and drove out of the parking lot. He followed the potholed, semipaved road for a few hundred yards, out of view of the labs, then turned onto a side road which wound down to the smaller of Oilstar's two docking areas. In quick glimpses between the hills, fruit trees, and palms, he spotted the a.s.segai's tall masts. As he turned the final bend in the road, he saw Manny's small cargo boat and something that made his heart leap: Frik's Hummer, parked at the end of the dock.

Paul stomped on his brakes and threw the car in reverse. Using his cell phone, he dialed Frik's ship-to-sh.o.r.e number. What he didn't need was Frik walking in on his conversation with Manny.

He let the phone ring a dozen times. This was an emergency number that Frik always answered if he was on the boat. When Paul was convinced that his boss was not on board, he put the car back in gear and drove down to the dock. He had set up the duplicate device in the conviction that Frik would go back to the lab tonight to find it.

It suddenly occurred to Paul that maybe Frik hadn't answered the phone because he was moving sooner than Paul had antic.i.p.ated. The Afrikaner could easily have walked the quarter mile from the dock to the lab while Paul was making his preparations. He could have been hiding in the bushes when Paul left the lab, waiting for the building to be empty.He could be in the lab right now, which made it even more imperative that Paul find Manny and rid himself of the packages in his pocket.

To his enormous relief, as he parked he saw Manny sitting on a piling, a cigarette loosely held between two fingers of his left hand, which also held a Carib. The diminutive seaman waved as Paul approached.

"Good to see you. Get you a beer?"

The chemist shook his head. "I've got something to tell you, Manny," he said, "and a favor to ask. A large favor."

Paul told Manny everything that had happened, beginning with the call from Frik and ending with the Afrikaner's own words: Who knows what that fifth piece will do? For all we know it could transform the artifact into some sort of devastating weapon.

"The man's a ruthless b.a.s.t.a.r.d, capable of anything."

Paul nodded. "We both know why I'm working with him, but you? You have a choice-" He stopped himself. "I'm sorry," he said. "It's really none of my business."

"I work for Frik for two reasons," Manny said, ignoring Paul's last comment. "The first is obviously money."

"And the second?"

"I'd rather be in a position where I can keep my eye on him, and stay in touch with the few good people who work for him. Now, what's that favor you wanted?"

Paul held out the two packages. "I don't know where Selene is exactly, but I'm sure you do."

"I know how to find her," Manny said.

"I need you to get one of these to Selene and post the other to me. Wait a few days first." Paul paused.

"If anything happens to me, make sure Selene knows about it and get the other package from my place.

Don't risk keeping it yourself. Give it to someone you'd trust with your life, the way I'm trusting you with mine."

Grinning, Manny replied, "I know just who the doctor ordered."

5.

Frik ducked deeper into the foliage as Paul Trujold stepped out the front door of Oilstar's labs. The chemist's lab coat was draped over his arm, and his shoulders sagged. He looked exhausted.

About time he came out of there, Frik thought. He glanced at his Rolex. Four o'clock. Thought he'd never leave. What was he doing all this time?

From the cover of a thick growth of hibiscus, he watched Paul lock the door and head for his car. He felt ridiculous. Here he was, the owner of this whole complex, hiding from one of his employees so that he could steal a piece of property that already belonged to him.

I should have demanded it from him, he thought. Should have stuck out my hand and said, Give it to me, Paul. It's mine.

Much as he'd wanted to, he hadn't been able to force the words past his lips. Had he done so, Paulwould have known; he'd have looked down on him from the moral high ground he occupied and seen into Frik's heart. He wouldn't have uttered a word, but the look in his eyes would have said it all.

I know what you're thinking, Frikkie. I know your intentions. You never want this artifact to see the light of day. You want to sail out past the edge of the continental shelf and hurl it into the sea, let the Guyana Current carry it into the abyss.

And he'd have been right, d.a.m.n him.

That was indeed what part of Frik wanted to do. But he wouldn't. Couldn't. He'd never forgive himself for destroying a technological boon like that. If need be, he'd hide it, keep it to himself. Not forever, maybe, but for a long, long time.

He was not a man of science, yet he knew as sure as he knew this morning's spot price on a barrel of sweet crude that the artifact operated comfortably on principles not even suspected by modern science.

Just as surely, he knew simply by looking at the thing that it wouldn't give up all of its secrets until it was complete.

When that happened, he would need people he could trust, people like Paul, to help him decode it, decipher its technology and break it down into patentable units to make it Oilstar's technology. He'd call the shots then.

Paul's car cruised out of the parking lot. Frik didn't move. Best to give the man a few minutes on the road, in case he forgot something and decided to come back. He could think of worse places to hide than among these fragrant red blossoms. A little more time in the bushes wouldn't kill him.

The sound of a familiar motor drifted up from the boat dock just down the hill from the lab. Manny had arrived with some of Frik's favorite supplies, the ones he didn't want pa.s.sing through the sticky fingers of the customs inspectors in Port of Spain. He had left the Hummer down there and walked back up, knowing that anyone seeing it there would a.s.sume he was on his boat. When he went back down there to pick up his car, he could also pick up his loot.

The thought encouraged him to pull out his cigar case and remove a long, fat Cohiba Esplendido. He could have a celebratory cigar now without worrying about Paul seeing the smoke.

As he lit up he thought again about that scene in the lab this morning. Christ, what a moment that had been. He had imagined one of those gizmos attached to every car, truck, train, and plane engine, to every furnace, to every freaking dynamo in every power plant across the world. Frik could see his life's work crumbling to smoke and ash if this device were reproduced and oil became as old-fashioned as vinyl records.

Paul had seemed somehow oblivious of the full implications of what he'd found. Yes, he was holding the key to a future free of dependence on fossil fuels. But that key, that odd little contraption he had a.s.sembled in there, could make Oilstar obsolete. No...obsolete was a euphemism here.

Extinct was more like it.

Let's not forget you a.s.sembled that thing from pieces I gave you, he thought. It's not about money, Paul.

As it is, I've got to rack my brains to begin to find ways to spend the interest on my holdings. Money hasn't been the point for a long time. It's the doing, Paul. This is my company.

Frik thought back to when he had left South Africa. His family's fortunes in land and gemstones could have kept him in Cohibas and fine scotch for a lifetime, but it would have meant being under his father'sthumb. He couldn't stand that. He'd filled the a.s.segai with supplies and sailed alone across the Atlantic to make a life he could control.

I worked as a stinking charter captain for a year to get together a few thousand bucks, he recalled.

Hocked my soul for start-up money, sank my first well almost single-handed. Oilstar isn't just a company, it's not some soulless corporate ent.i.ty. It's me, d.a.m.nit.

He was a bull tyrannosaur now, but that little gizmo Paul had a.s.sembled in there was a dino-dooming asteroid aimed straight at the heart of Frik's personal Cretaceous period.

Think what you will of me, Paul, he thought. I'm not ready to become extinct.

Figuring he had waited long enough, Frik stepped out of the bushes. As he strolled down the slope to the lab, he fished a set of keys from his pocket.

Immediately after leaving Paul this morning, he'd returned to his office in San Fernando and put together a full set of keys for the lab building. He just prayed that Paul hadn't at some time changed the lock on his personal lab.

He unlocked the front door and hurried down the central hallway. The key fit into Paul's door...turned.

He was in.

He crossed to the workbench but stopped halfway there. The artifact sat alone in the center of the black surface.

Christ, Paul hadn't even bothered to stick it in a drawer. This was not something to leave lying about, even in a locked room.

He approached it slowly, cautiously, with the proper respect due a thing of such wonder. He leaned close to the bench top and stared at it. No question-there was something unearthly about this thing.

Reminded him of the science-fiction paperbacks he'd read when he was a teenager, the ones with the abstract covers by someone named Powers who squiggled bizarre-looking shapes in the backgrounds of his paintings. This thing would have been right at home on one of those covers.

"Where did you come from?" Frik muttered.

He looked around and found the chopstick-length forceps Paul had used earlier. Turning on the bench lamp, he grasped the artifact with the tips of the forceps and lifted. He twisted it, turned it, rotated it this way and that, waiting for the loop of the figure-eight piece to fade away.

Nothing happened.

He kept at it, remembering how it had taken Paul a good bit of trial and error this morning before he'd found the precise orientation that made it work, and he'd had a whole night of practice.

Still nothing.

Frik felt himself starting to sweat. Why wouldn't it work? Had Paul taken one of the pieces? No, all four were there. Then what-?

"I thought I'd find you here."

Frik froze. The words had been spoken without inflection, with far more weariness than heat. And that only sharpened their edge. Clamping his cigar between his teeth, he turned to face Paul Trujold'swithering stare.

"Oh. h.e.l.lo, Paul." Frik maintained his game face and drew deeply on the Cohiba.

"Oh. h.e.l.lo, Paul," Trujold mimicked. "Is that the best you can do?"

The scientist's dark eyes blazed. Frik fought the urge to step back as Paul stopped two feet in front of him.

"What were you going to do with it, Frik?"

"Put it in a secure place. This room is too vulnerable. I'll feel better if it's in the safe in my office." He held up the artifact, still clasped within the forceps. "Perhaps you're forgetting, Paul. This belongs to Oilstar, and Oilstar belongs to me."

"Yes, Oilstar's yours Frik, but the artifact belongs to the world. One man can't be allowed to keep it hidden."

"Since when do you speak for the world?"

"Since now, you selfish son of a b.i.t.c.h."

Frik couldn't say exactly what happened next, what it was inside that snapped. In his mind, the bizarre object he was holding became a meteor, and Paul the inexorable laws of the universe that were propelling it toward Frik's world. He reacted the only way he knew. Sure that the scientist was about to grab for the artifact, he dropped it and lunged at the smaller man. He grabbed Paul by the shirtfront and twisted him toward the lab table.

Paul took a swipe at Frik, knocking the cigar from his mouth instead. The Afrikaner pushed Paul backward into the workbench. It tilted under the force of the impact, and the very air seemed to explode, sending Frikkie staggering in the opposite direction.

When he recovered his balance, he heard screaming. Paul was rolling on the floor, his body bathed in flame.