Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island (34 page)

Toni said, “Not a good idea, Larry.”

He took her hand. “I have to do something.”

“Wait out the three weeks.”

“I hope and wish and hope a lot more. Waiting, doing nothing. Three weeks wasted.” He turned to Peter. “You're right. You know me well and you've seen how troubled I've been.” He looked to Toni. “I have to tell him.” To Peter, “Susanna's been kidnapped.”

“What?!”

“She's being held for ransom.”

“For chrissake, Larry, why didn't you tell me? I could've been a lot more than a tennis and drinking partner. You need money? I can come up with a chunk. How much?”

Larry shook his head. “They don't want money. They want what I've been working on for the last nearly fifteen years. They want my invention.”

“You mean your work in that lab with a defense system like Fort Bragg? What the hell is it, Larry?”

Rossini sighed. He drooped his head. It was all coming out. No sense even asking for nondisclosure. “It's a Dream Visualizer.” And he laid it out for Peter as he had for Kyra and Noel. Peter listened with an amazement equivalent to theirs yesterday. He added only that maybe the best way of protecting the Visualizer was to put it out in the open. By the end of the recital, Rossini had regained much of his normal composure.

Peter said only, “Holy shit, Larry.”

Toni said, “Professor Langley, what Professor Rossini has just told you must never be repeated outside this company. Neither the invention nor the fact of the kidnapping. Not till Susanna is safe. Do be careful.”

“But it's what Larry said earlier; we can't just do nothing. There's been no mention of this in the media. The cops know?”

“Noel and I are working with the Sheriff's office,” Kyra said. “But Larry insists on silence. He's afraid the kidnappers will hurt Susanna.” If they haven't already, she didn't say. “They've demanded Larry speak with no one about this. Well, he hasn't obeyed them, but he's not given us much to investigate with.”

Toni's head shook lightly. “Don't do it. Wait.”

Kyra said to Toni, “What do you know about investigating?”

“I'm a scientist. That's what we do.”

“Coffee's ready,” Rossini said. “And since you three are now involved, and since I promised a scientist”—he bowed—“shall we go see my darling at work?”

From troubled sleep, Fredric fell into fretting wakefulness. He didn't remember a single dream, only that there'd been lots of them. He never remembered dreams. First thoughts of the day, same as last thoughts of the evening: Raoul and Susanna. He would make her breakfast, he'd wear the ski mask. Whip up some scrambled eggs, leave as soon as he delivered the tray. He'd say only “Good morning” to her, while cursing out Raoul.

He got up. In the living room, no Raoul. Only a blanket, crumpled. He picked it up and folded it. Just to be sure, he called, “Raoul?” No answer. Bathroom empty, kitchen ditto. He checked the time. 7:15. Long gone.

He showered, dressed in his usual chinos, T-shirt and flip-flops. He made coffee, cracked and scrambled a couple of eggs and added some herbs. Toast. Eggs on paper plate, plastic cutlery beside it. Ski mask—itchy even after a couple of seconds. He carried the tray down the stairs, coffeepot precariously balanced. He glanced through the peephole, knocked three times, saw her sit on the bed. Baggy clothes again. Didn't matter, she still looked lovely. Tray on cart. He unlocked the door, drew it open and rolled the cart in, locking behind him. “Good morning.”

She stared at him. “Why?”

“Huh? Why what?”

“Why back to a ski mask?”

“What? Oh. Uhm—I have to.”

“Says who?”

“My, uh, partner.”

She had carefully not asked about his role in this kidnapping. But now she blurted out, “Who is he?”

“Let's not talk about him.”

“But the mask, what for?”

“Makes it harder for you to recognize me.”

“But I've seen some of your face—”

“Safer this way. For both of us. Come on, I've made scrambled eggs.”

“You wearing the harlequin mask underneath?”

“Underneath I am naked.”

She let that settle for a moment, stared at him, then walked over to the table. He set the plate in front of her, and a couple of slices of toast. He poured coffee into a cup. She did not sit; she walked over to him and took his hand, squeezed it.

He found it difficult not to squeeze back, but succeeded.

She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed his fingers. She raised her head to his and stared at the masked face. Her head shook. “I can't. Not through all that wool.”

“Have your breakfast.”

She looked at the single plate on the table. “What about you?”

“I'll eat in the kitchen.”

She took his other hand. “I desperately want to tear that mask off you.”

“Please don't. It's better like this.”

“You're really worried for me? That your ‘partner' might—harm me if I saw your face?”

“Susanna. Yes. I am.”

She dropped his hands and looked at her fingers. “I'm not hungry.”

He had to get out of here. He couldn't stand this. “I'll leave the food with you.”

“Will you come back?”

“To get the dishes.” He picked up the coffeepot. “I'll bring some more.” He smiled at her and wondered if she could see enough of his mouth to tell. “At least we're sharing the coffee.” He walked away, holding the pot in his arms as if to keep it warm. Out the door, turn, see Susanna watching him. He locked the door behind him.

Peter, Larry, Toni, Kyra and Noel walked the four hundred yards from Rossini's home, past the Mansion and the Faculty Club. Through the woods, a roadway led to a stone building two stories high. It was surrounded by fencing twice as tall as Rossini, the top layered with razor wire. They approached a steel barred gate. It was padlocked. Beside the gate was a small shed, door open. Serious security, Noel thought.

Rossini pressed a button on the right-hand metal fencepost. A buzzer sounded. A ruddy-faced man appeared, white shirt, gray flannels, strong boots, pistol holstered on his belt. “Big group, Professor Rossini.”

“Right, Chet. All vetted.”

“If you say so.”

On the post above the buzzer button, a small photoelectric screen. Larry toggled a switch and pressed his thumb on the lighted screen. It went dark.

The guard reached through the gate, turned the lock, poked in some numbers. The lock opened. He pulled it off, released the bar and swung the door inward. Larry and his guests passed through. “Thanks,” called Rossini.

Noel asked, “Is that gun really necessary?”

“Can't be too careful. Usually no outsider enters the compound unless accompanied by Chet. Today I'm your guide.”

Set in the building's stone front wall was a wooden double door maybe twelve feet high, and as wide. Four windows crossed the top, each about a foot square. No keyhole but another electronic code-lock. Larry pressed in what must have been the correct sequence, because the door swung open. They passed through a small foyer into a pleasant wood-paneled room hung with three large paintings. Some heavy chairs and a reception desk. The trim woman sitting there greeted Rossini, giving off a sense of no-nonsense-accepted-here.

From Rossini a smiling, “Good morning, Phoebe. I'm taking these people on a tour.”

“Very well, Larry.” To Noel she sounded unsure.

Larry pointed at the wall to the right. “That's my office. We'll go there later.”

No obvious door in the wall. Larry led them left to an evident door. Again he pressed a number-code box and they entered a long hall with, on each side, three doors about fifteen feet apart. They passed the first pair, signs saying
MICROBIOLOGY
left and
BRI
on the right.

“What's BRI?” asked Peter.

“Bionic Resonance Imaging.”

Next set of doors,
NANOTUBE MICROSCOPY
and
DATA RETRIEVAL
. Larry worked the coded lock of the latter and entered. The others followed. A bank of computers, a man and a woman working, to Kyra incomprehensible images on the screens—except for one beside the woman, presenting a slide show of a few-months-old baby. Larry introduced the workers, “Karl and Harriet, my brilliant technicians. Some guests to see the results.”

Karl stared at Larry. “Change of policy, boss?”

“They've been vetted,”

Karl shrugged.

“Could you run the earliest visuals, Karl?”

“Sure.” Karl shifted to a screen at his right. He coded in a set of letters and numbers which Noel figured were an algorithm, or maybe several.

On the screen, black lines wiggled and squiggled against a light blue background—like the worst TV reception Kyra had ever seen. They watched for a few seconds. A balloon-like shape started to cross the screen. In moments it dissolved into jagged lines. Kyra asked, “What's that supposed to be?”

“Where we started. Before human subjects. Rats that have been first injected with carbon molecules of a certain group, then orally fed molecules of another group. We needed beings that did actually have dreams. So we dealt with rats and dogs. Rats first—simpler animals, we assumed. Also there's been some very good work done by Matthew Wilson and his team at MIT. We've learned a lot from them.”

“Like what?” asked Kyra.

“He was looking at the firing patterns of a collection of cells, and that gave him a way to figure out what the rat was dreaming about. He claims rat dreams are related to what the rat experienced before sleeping. Like when the rat ran, its brain produced a specific pattern of neurons firing in the hippocampus. Then they monitored it again while it was asleep, and in about half their experiments, that specific neuron pattern was repeated.”

Kyra was fascinated. “Is that how you work?”

“No no,” Larry said, smiling, “those experiments took place more than a decade ago. We've got much more complex methodology these days.”

“The tunneling microscope?”

Larry, nodding, said, “The STM, the scanning tunneling microscope. And we have much more advanced computer technology these days. The STM creates images of surfaces at the atomic level. It in effect simultaneously reads the massed protein molecules wherever they've settled in the body of the subject—as I said, in every organ, from the heart to the gonads to the brain to the skin.”

“And you did this with rats and dogs.”

“Yes, and now with human subjects.”

Peter looked troubled. “When did you begin working with humans?”

“Less than two years ago, when we got approval from the Food and Drug Administration. That was a breakthrough, let me tell you. We applied first time seven years ago. They wanted more and more experimental evidence, not only of what we could do but whether there were side effects. We finally convinced them, but they insisted on a caveat—we have to report our findings every month, whether or not we make any advance.”

Kyra asked, “When you started working with people, how'd you find subjects?”

“Volunteers.”

“What,” said Peter, “you put an ad in the
San Juan County News
?”

“No. In the
Morsely Times
. Keeping it all in-house.”

“How many did you get?”

“Seventeen applicants.”

“A lot.”

“Five sessions, two thousand dollars.”

Noel squinted at Rossini. “For all seventeen?”

“For those who qualified. Finally, three subjects.”

“Men? Women?”

“Two men, one woman. We started with a man. Karl, can you run those results?”

Karl scowled. “You sure you want me to do this, Larry?”

“These people need to know.”

“Yeah.” With resignation, “Sure.” He signed off the rat video and entered a new set of algorithms.