That was a lot of fretting time for Mike. Rob couldn't even begin to guess what was going on. His first thought was a lawyer. Livvie shoved the peppers in a plastic bag and strangled it shut.
"I think that bag's dead, Mrs Mike," Rob said. "Do you want me to check for a pulse?"
"Just tell him, Rob." Livvie took a bottle of dressing from the fridge and shook it ferociously. "He thinks Leo's coming to tell him he's terminally ill. Tell him to stop angsting."
Mike hadn't mentioned that. He didn't have to share his every thought with Rob, but it was rare that he didn't.
"Yeah, if it's that personal, why would Leo want to see me as well?" Rob asked. "He just doesn't trust phones or e-mail to do business these days. Who does?"
"Sure, but driving all this way, while the Senate's sitting?" Mike shook his head. "And remember what business we're in."
"Whatever it is, mate, I've got your back. It's nothing we can't handle."
Livvie patted Rob's head as she passed on her way to the back door, clutching a knife to go lettuce slaying. "Well done. He never listens to me."
Rob could see a lot of Bev in Livvie, mostly the no-nonsense, get-it-done side of her. Wives whose blokes were away were either self-reliant to start with or had to get that way fast. Livvie didn't have to live this way any more than Mike did, though. She could have had a housekeeper and spent her day on charity lunches, shopping, and getting rat-arsed on cocktails. She definitely wasn't a society wife. She hadn't
come from money
, as Mike put it. Rob had worked it all out. They'd probably been blissfully happy in their student days at Oxford, and they tried to recreate that uncomplicated life here.
Rob couldn't blame them. He knew he was clinging to the kind of life he'd had as a Marine.
It was a long eight hours to wait for Leo, even with all the distractions available at the house. Rob ended up playing Grand Theft Auto with Livvie in the den long after Mike gave up on it and disappeared into the garage to tinker with something.
"This is going to be our last round of IVF," Livvie said suddenly, not taking her eyes off the screen. "I think it's making Mike extra jumpy about his dad."
Rob felt responsible for that.
Me and my bloody advice.
"It's easier getting shot at than dealing with your nearest and dearest. Are you okay with it?"
"Relieved, actually," she said. "I hate getting his hopes up and dashing them every time."
It was hard to know what to say to that. "Plan B?"
Livvie nodded. "Plan B. Buy one off the peg."
It made Rob wince. But that was Livvie, burying whatever she felt under black humour. He imagined that IVF was like prenatal hospital visits but a hundred times worse, with nothing to show for it at the end. Maybe Livvie couldn't bring herself to say that to Mike.
She carried on playing the game, punching out a mugger and taking his victim's wallet. She had the option of keeping it or handing back to the victim. The green light sat there on the map for a moment, testing her honesty.
"Give it back," Rob said. "You don't need it. You're minted."
"I like to know what it feels like to act without consequences." Livvie finally walked her character over the green dot, making off with the wallet. "Actually, it creeps me out. Because that's how a lot of real people live their lives."
"You're just supposed to blow shit up to let off steam, Mrs Mike."
"But I can do that for real."
The debate was interrupted by the quiet
ding-ding-ding
from the hall as the motion sensors picked up a vehicle on the drive. By the time Rob made it upstairs to the hall, Mike was already standing in the doorway, watching Leo's black BMW pull up at the front of the house. The heavily tinted windows made it hard to see who was driving, but Leo got out of the passenger side, and a grey-haired bloke – sixties, maybe – opened the driver's door and squinted against the low sun. He looked more like a harassed social worker than security. He probably wasn't a lawyer, either, not in that crumpled cotton jacket. Next to Leo, always creaseless and immaculate even in a polo shirt, he looked like a drunk after a night in a shop doorway.
"Close protection isn't as picky as it used to be," Rob murmured. "Long-lost relative?"
Mike didn't take his eyes off the scruffy bloke. "Never seen him before in my life."
"Hi, Micko." Leo strode up to Mike and hugged him, then turned to Rob and did a bit of enthusiastic back-slapping. "Good to see you home, Rob. Apologies for the theatrics. This is Dr Charles Kinnery."
Oh shit. Mike's right.
Leo had brought a doctor. He really was ill. Kinnery shook hands, looking awkward. Rob froze for a second, expecting the worst, but Mike plunged straight in.
"Have you come to give me bad news?" he asked.
Leo looked puzzled, then held up both hands, embarrassed. "Oh God, did you think I was sick? I'm sorry. No, I'm fine. So's Mom. Everyone's fine. Charles isn't a physician."
Livvie intercepted them. "Go through to the conservatory," she said. "I'll fetch coffee and a defibrillator, shall I?"
"Sorry, my dear. I didn't mean to scare you." Leo gave her a peck on the cheek. Rob caught Mike's eye and spotted that shaky, deflated look that followed a close call. "We've got an unusual security situation. I could use some professional help."
They sat down facing each other across the pot of white orchids on the coffee table while Rob tried to size up Kinnery, not sure what to make of him. He looked knackered and uncomfortable.
"What do we mean by security here, Dad?" Mike asked. "Are we talking generally, or is this classified? Because I doubt our clearance is as high as yours."
Livvie came in with a tray of coffee and put it on the table. "Okay, I heard the S word, so I'm going to fix dinner. What I don't know, the Feds can't beat out of me."
Kinnery looked as if he wasn't sure whether Livvie was joking. He waited for her to leave, then leaned forward, hands clasped.
"We have a vulnerable young man who's in difficulties," he said. "We need to protect him from interference."
Ah,
bodyguards.
That was easy enough. Rob could finally use the close protection training that the Navy had paid for. He looked at Mike, waiting for the cue to pitch in.
"Is this extraction or protection?" Mike asked.
Leo glanced at Kinnery. "Extraction to a place of safety, I'd say."
"Drugs, alcohol, joy-riding? Cult? Runaway? Relative compromised somehow?"
Kinnery looked confused and opened his mouth to answer, but Leo cut across him.
"I'm going to tell you something that might not sound credible," Leo said. "But it's a situation I can't ignore, and the only people I can trust to do things discreetly and intelligently are you and Rob."
Mike just nodded. "Okay, then, strictly within these four walls."
Leo took a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket and held it up like an auction bid. "Taken from a web site. It might look like the usual Internet conspiracy fantasy, but apparently it's true." He put on his reading glasses and unfolded the paper. "
On the subject of fringe research ... we have seen written testimony that the Department of Defense sponsored research into dynamic mimicry in human subjects, in other words the ability of an organism to change shape, colour, and form at will. Far from being another waste of taxes on paranormal research, it appears that Project Ringer, led by Charles Kinnery, successfully introduced engineered animal-derived genes into human embryos long before the pioneering hybrid research by China. One of those embryos was brought to term, reached adulthood, and was able to change his appearance."
Leo handed the report to Mike to read. Mike scanned it before passing it to Rob. "How did it leak?" Mike asked.
"The kid did it himself." Kinnery kept shutting his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose, not a happy Hector at all. "Okay, crudely put, we have a young man who's a shape-shifter. I can vouch for that. I made him. Forget all the legal and ethical questions for the moment. Right now, a biotech company called KWA will be looking for him."
"You're right, it
is
unbelievable," Mike said.
Kinnery didn't flinch. "By all means use the term
Frankenstein
if that helps you grasp the size of this. I won't mind."
Rob's first thought was that the lad might have needed protecting from Kinnery, not some biotech firm. "What exactly does
brought to term
mean here?"
"Paid surrogate mother," Kinnery said. "She handed him over at birth."
"Didn't she notice?"
"No. There was nothing to notice back then."
"So he can change into anything, can he?"
"Within fairly narrow human parameters." Kinnery just stared at Rob with a weary expression that said
you ignorant twat
. "He can't mimic objects."
Rob tried to look as if he believed every word. Whether Kinnery was mental or lying wasn't the issue. He just wanted to know why Leo was going along with this crap, because that old bugger was as sane as they came.
"Great," said Mike, straight-faced. "That makes life easier."
Kinnery didn't even blink. "So far, we're the only ones who know the boy's identity and location. We need to get him to a place of safety."
"Which is?"
"I'm working on that."
"And you believe this, Dad?" Mike turned to Leo. "You've seen proof?"
"I haven't seen it," Leo said quietly. "But I really need your help with it."
Rob expected Mike to make some excuse and haul Leo off on his own to have a frank chat out of Kinnery's earshot. He didn't. He just blinked a few times as if he was trying to work out whether to take the request at face value or not. Leo had kicked off the conversation with everyone present, so he must have had his reasons for not briefing Mike separately.
"Look, this is an eighteen-year-old boy brought up by a woman he thought was his grandmother," Kinnery said. "And she's just died. His name's Ian. Ian Dunlop. He thought he was mentally ill because nobody told him what he was until a few weeks ago. He's been isolated for years, so he needs the kind of help and protection that he definitely won't get from a government agency – or from a company that sees him as a billion dollars in research assets. They won't give a damn about his constitutional rights.
You
work it out."
"He's not a minor, then," Mike said, still unmoved.
"No."
"And he hasn't committed a crime."
"No. That'd be me."
"Is he mentally incompetent in some way?"
"No. He's very intelligent. Just zero life experience."
"And you engineered all this."
"Sadly, yes."
Mike did that tight-lipped look that he'd probably have given Himmler. He seemed to be taking the principle seriously now, even if he couldn't possibly believe it. Rob wondered how many minutes he'd give it before he asked Kinnery to drop the subject, fuck off, and forget the conversation ever happened.
"If that's true, then you're a sorry excuse for a human being, sir," Mike said.
"You think I don't know that?"
That shut everyone up. The silence pulsed. Rob gave up trying to work out what the real story was and left it to Mike. Rob would back him up, whatever he decided to do. Mike always made the moral choice.
"I still don't get why this is your problem, Dad."
"Well, I opposed the project," Leo said. "And that was long before I knew about Ian. But now I
do
know, I can't ignore it. Someone has to own this problem. Preferably not an agency."
Rob didn't believe in shape-shifters, but he did believe in the power of money. "I get it," he said. "This lad doesn't actually change into Godzilla. He's just carrying some engineered genes, they're worth a lot of money, and he's holding out for the highest bidder. Yeah?" That sounded much more likely. Companies had legal battles over patents for animals and plants. He'd seen it on the news. "So you need to grab the assets before a rival company or some foreign government gets hold of him."
"No, it's not that at all," Kinnery said. "And I fully understand why you think that. But you've got it all wrong."
"So why haven't
you
retrieved him?" Mike asked. "Is he dangerous?"
"KWA's got me under surveillance. I'd lead them straight to him."
"I hope they haven't tracked you here, then."
Leo shook his head. "Don't worry, Micko. We've been prudent. Hence the car. Father visiting his son after a long absence."
"Anyway, he's warned me not to visit," Kinnery said, "I'd only spook him."
"Is he going to want to come with us?"
"I don't know. He was brought up to be wary of strangers."
"Terrific." Mike made a move to the French windows. He gave Leo a look as if he wanted to take him to one side, but Leo didn't react. "Excuse us for a moment, will you? Rob and I need to talk."