Elixir. Part 16

"I don't care about that, Chris. I care about us."

"So do I, but I told you what they were planning."

"You have no proof they were going to blackmarket it."

"Betsy's death is proof enough."

"That could have been a random killing-some lunatic. d.a.m.n it, Chris, I'm not living this way. I'm not living in hiding. You promise me you'll go to the police, or I'll call them myself."

"Honey, please calm down."

"Don't 'honey' me. Give me your word, or I'll call them, so help me G.o.d!"

"Okay. Give me a couple days to think it out. Please."

"Two days, that's it. Then you are going to take us back home and go to the police."

"Okay."

"Swear on it."

And for a split second he heard Iwati. "I swear."

A little before six they arrived at the old hunting lodge. The place sat deep in the woods off a logging road on the sh.o.r.e of Black Eagle Lake. Except for the headlights of their car, there was no sign of life anywhere. Just impenetrable black.

The property was still registered under Wendy's maternal grandmother who had bought it in the 1930s. With the mortgage long paid up, it was not easily traceable to Chris and Wendy should they have to hole up for a while. The nearest winterized house was over a mile away, and the nearest town, Lake Placid, twelve miles. Every summer Wendy's parents brought her and Jenny up from their Albany home. Because of the drive from Boston, Chris and Wendy rarely used the place. Jenny and Ted never did.

Unfortunately, the driveway had not been plowed, so they had to trudge through deep snow to reach the house.

Once inside, Chris turned up the heat and made a blazing fire in the fieldstone hearth. The old television still got good reception from a station in Vermont. They found some wine and canned food, and Wendy settled by the fire under a blanket. Meanwhile, Chris set up a makeshift crib for Adam in a bureau drawer. He changed and fed him and had just put him down when he heard Wendy scream in the other room.

In reflex, he pulled the gun and bolted into the living room, half expecting to see somebody coming through the window. Instead, Wendy was sitting straight up, her hands pressed to her mouth, eyes fixed on the television screen and huge with horror.

"It blew up. Eastern flight 219. It blew up!"

The news anchor was describing the explosion: "...had been on route from Boston to San Juan when it went down about 120 miles off the coast of Savannah, Georgia.

"Although there were no witnesses, the plane disappeared from radar at about 10:20 this morning. Wreckage and bodies had been strewn over a large area, indicating to authorities that the plane had exploded before crashing.

"Initial speculation is that the aircraft was. .h.i.t by lightning. A large coastal storm continues to hamper search-and-rescue operations. So far, there have been no reports of survivors...."

To the right of the announcer was a map of the mid-Atlantic coast with a star in the water indicating the site of the crash. Suddenly the map shot was replaced by another still photo.

"Those poor people," Wendy said. "If it weren't for us-" Suddenly she gasped.

On the screen was a picture of Chris. "Killed in the explosion was Dr. Christopher Bacon, his wife Wendy, and their young child.

"Just hours ago, Boston police issued a warrant for his arrest in the death of a coworker, Betsy Watkins, whose body was found yesterday in a pool at a local YMCA. According to authorities, police had questioned Bacon earlier in the day and released him. But following a medical examiner's report issued later, it was concluded that Watkins had been struck on the head with a heavy object before drowning. Physical evidence was found linking Bacon to the murder scene...."

The caption across the bottom of the screen read: MURDER SUSPECT DIES IN AIR CRASH.

Wendy said something and the announcer carried on with the story, but Chris just stared into the flickering glare of the screen, thinking what a brutal new shape the universe had taken.

16.

JANUARY 30.

"You didn't say you were going to blow up the plane," Quentin said. "You killed 136 innocent people. You were supposed to do it on the island-just him, nice and simple. Like with Betsy."

"It was Antoine's idea." Vince said. "He calls the shots."

"That guy's an animal."

"You might want to keep that opinion to yourself."

Quentin was at a pay phone outside a gas station on Route 2 in Concord about three miles from his house. It was Sunday morning, and after a few calls back and forth, he had connected with Vince Lucas at another pay phone someplace on Long Island. It was how they communicated without worry of taps.

"Innocent people die every day," Vince explained. "It had to look like an accident, so n.o.body asks a lot of questions. If he showed up with a bullet in him, the authorities would be looking for a third party and two unsolved murders from the same company in the s.p.a.ce of a week. Which means they'd be wondering if it was an inside job and thinking about you. This way, there are no loose ends."

Quentin hadn't thought about that, but Vince was right.

According to the news, the water was nearly a mile deep with little surface wreckage to determine the cause. The lead theory was a lightning strike. As one commentator had said, commercial jets were built to fly through storms, but a direct hit by a couple million volts could do it. Of course, all it took was three volts from two double-A batteries, a timer, and two pounds of Simtec plastic explosives in the cargo hold below the central fuel tank. And two baggage handlers working for Antoine.

"Now you and your people can move ahead with the stuff, all nice and clean," Vince said..

"Yeah, nice and clean. You took out all the Elixir, too."

"What's that?"

"He had it with him. All of it, including the science notebooks."

"What are you telling me, Quentin?"

"I'm telling you that Chris Bacon cleaned us out. He took every G.o.dd.a.m.n drop of Elixir, and every G.o.dd.a.m.n page of notes on how to produce the stuff. The son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h was skipping the country with the whole show. He probably had made connections in San Juan to South America or Europe, wherever. They were on the plane with him. His wife, his kid, and Elixir."

"How do you know it's not all back at his house?"

"It's the first place I got the police to check."

The silence was cut by the hush of the open line. That and the clicking of Quentin's heart in his ear.

"You mean you don't have the formulas to make the stuff?"

"That's what I'm telling you."

"Don't you remember how to do it? All those scientists you got, and n.o.body knows how to do what they've been doing for a f.u.c.king year?"

"Vince, it's not exactly a recipe for baking bread. There are hundreds of complicated steps and procedures. He must have planned it for weeks. Jesus! Do you believe it? We set him up for Betsy, meanwhile he robs us blind."

"What about backup copies of the notebooks?"

"He took those too."

More silence as Vince absorbed the implications. "And where exactly were those backup copies?"

"In the fireproof locker I showed you."

"Two sets of notebooks containing the formulas for endless youth just fifty feet from each other?"

"More like a eighty or a hundred feet," he muttered, and suddenly he felt a hole open up. "Besides, those are reinforced steel fireproof lockers. I mean, they were perfectly safe. You could torch the place and they'd be fine."

But Vince found no solace in that. Fireproofing was not the problem. "What about off-site copies?"

"Off-site copies?" The hole opened wider and Quentin slipped to his waist.

"Copies in safety deposit boxes in banks or your home safe. Second backups in case the place blows up, or some a.s.shole decides to clean you out?"

"Well, not really. It's not company policy.... I mean, we never had a need to, you know. n.o.body ever steals project notebooks. Our people are very, you know... trustworthy..." He trailed off, wishing he had a place to land, wishing he could edit out the last thirty seconds of the conversation. Wishing he had never said anything about the missing notebooks.

"Didn't you once tell me that he didn't like the idea of marketing the stuff on the side?"

"I guess I did."

"Didn't you once say you were worried he might try to take the patent and run off on his own?"

"Yeah, but I wasn't really serious. I mean, he wasn't really the type. Didn't have the b.a.l.l.s for a heist, and all...."

Silence.

"Vince, look I'm sorry. Tell Antoine we'll pay everybody back their deposits. That's no problem. They'll get their money back. Please tell him everybody will get what they're owed."

"Money's not the issue."

"What is?"

"Longevity."

"Sure, of course. I know, I've lost that too, believe me. Jesus, the son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h. But, you know... what can I say?"

"Nothing," Vince said. "Not a f.u.c.king thing."

And he clicked off, leaving Quentin standing there in a raw winter wind as cold as eternity.

If Jenny caught the evening news, she would be hysterical. So Wendy drove to a pay phone on highway 87 outside of Lake Placid to avoid leaving records at the cottage. Chris would have gone, but his face might be recognized. He was already thinking like a fugitive.

With the snow it would be two hours before Wendy returned. Meanwhile, Chris removed the trunk containing the Elixir to a small chamber in the cellar where Wendy's parents had stored wine. The room was locked and well insulated. The thermometer read 20 degrees, which was fine, since Elixir could be kept frozen indefinitely without decomposition. The two-liter container he left in the refrigerator upstairs because freezing would split the container. The rest was kept in two hundred-and-twelve ampules fixed with rubber septums for injection needles. Because tabulone was highly active in low concentrations, Chris estimated that he had enough Elixir to keep a single rhesus monkey stable for two thousand years.

A little after two, Wendy returned wrung out. She had reached Jenny.

"What did you tell her?" Chris asked.

"That the police reports were wrong, that you were framed for Betsy's murder."

"How did she take it?"

"How do you think she took it? She was shocked, confused, and horrified," Wendy explained.

"Does she know we're here?"

"Yes." Wendy was so weary that she leaned against the fireplace mantel to keep from slipping to the floor. Her face was colorless with defeat. "I told her we took off when you suspected a plot to get you too." Her voice sounded like a flat recording. "When she finally calmed down she offered to help us."

Chris nodded, thinking how Jenny might be able to do that. "Did you tell her why?" he asked cautiously.

"No, I did not tell her about Elixir." Even her exhaustion could not mask the sarcasm in her voice.

"You did the right thing," Chris said, knowing how hollow that sounded. She didn't care a d.a.m.n about keeping the stuff secret.

Wendy pushed away from the wall. She wanted to go to bed. "So, what are we going to do?" She asked. "They found your snorkle stuff in the locker room."

"That was planted. It was a setup. I was halfway to Providence at the time."

"And what evidence?"

Chris took her by the shoulders. "Jesus, Wendy, you don't think I killed her, do you?"

For a split second, she appeared to struggle with her answer. "No, but the police do."

"I can't doc.u.ment where I was until later in the day." He had driven straight to Providence and breakfasted on complimentary donuts and coffee in the hotel lobby, then settled in a corner of the deserted bar to look over the seminar material undisturbed. He had spoken to no one, and left no receipts. He had no evidence; n.o.body could place him there that early.

"Then you have no alibi. It's your word against theirs."

He took a deep, shaky breath. "I'm sorry," he whispered, and pulled her to him. Wendy lay limply against his chest. It was like cuddling somebody who had died. For a long moment Chris held his wife, thinking that this might be the first time in seventeen years that Wendy had ever regretted her marriage to him.

Over the next three days, the crash slipped from lead story. When the weather cleared the NTSB dispatched helicopters and a coast guard vessel to search for bodies and debris.

The mood in the cottage varied from abrasive silence to panic. On some level Wendy blamed Chris for the upheaval of their lives, irrational as she knew that was. Because she had opposed Elixir from the beginning, the latest twist only served as proof that the project was a curse. For seven years Chris had chased Nature to her hiding place, and now they were stuck in these G.o.dforsaken woods, exiled from their old lives and the ordinary world. And it had happened at the peak of renewed joy for her. But she resolved that, no matter what, they would fight this, for she would not bring up her baby in hiding.