“Diplomatic firewall?”
“Like penetrating the CIA.”
After a silence, Galiano said, “Ryan’s keeping us in the loop on Nordstern.”
“We’ll know more when we go through his notes.”
“Hernández and I confiscated a laptop when we tossed his room at the Todos Santos.”
“Anything useful?”
“Let you know when we crack the password.”
“Ryan’s pretty good at that. Listen, Galiano. I want to help.”
“I would like that.” I heard him draw a deep breath. When he spoke again his voice sounded huskier. “These deaths haunt me, Tempe. Claudia. Patricia. These girls were the age of my son, Alejandro. That is not an age to die.”
“Díaz will be livid if he hears about the CT scans.”
“We’ll get him a snow cone.” The melancholy was gone.
“I’m finished here. It’s time to refocus on Chupan Ya. If I can also help nail Patricia Eduardo’s killer, I’ll die a happy woman.”
“Not on my patch.”
“Deal.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” he asked.
“What’s that?”
“The perp’s full name.”
It took me a moment.
“Miguel Angel Gutiérrez,” I said.
“A guilt-ridden id can break your balls.”
I finished my reports on the shrunken head and the dismembered torso, and informed LaManche of my plans to return to Guatemala. He told me to be safe, wished me well.
Ryan arrived as I was finalizing arrangements with Delta Airlines. He waited while I requested an aisle seat, then pried the receiver from my hand.
“Bonjour, Mademoiselle. Comment ça va?”
I grabbed for the phone. My phone. Ryan stepped back and smiled.
“Mais, oui,”
he purred. “But I speak English.”
I curled my fingers in a “gimme” gesture. Ryan reached out and wrapped his free hand around mine.
“Not really. But your job, now
that’s
difficult,” he said, voice oozing sympathy. “I couldn’t begin to keep all those flights and timetables straight.”
Unbelievable. The guy was turning the charm on a reservation agent in suburban Atlanta! My eyeballs rolled almost a full three-sixty.
“Montreal.”
And the bimbo was asking his whereabouts.
“You’re right. It’s not that far at all.”
Yanking my hand free, I slumped back in my chair, picked up a pen, and began sliding it end to end through my fingers.
“Do you think you could squeeze me onto that same flight Dr. Brennan just booked,
chère
?”
I stopped in mid-slide.
“Lieutenant-détective Andrew Ryan.”
Pause.
“Provincial police.”
I heard a distant, metallic voice as Ryan shifted the phone to his other ear.
“You learn to live with the danger.”
I nearly gagged.
After a pause,
“Fantastique.”
What was fantastic?
“That would be terrific.”
What would be terrific?
“No problem at all. Dr. Brennan knows I’m a tall boy. She won’t mind a middle seat.”
I sat forward.
“Dr. Brennan
will
mind a middle seat.”
Ryan waved a hand at me. I threw the pen. He batted it down.
“Six foot two.”
Eyes of blue. I knew her reply without having to hear it.
“Yes, I guess they are.” Humble laugh.
This was absurd.
“Really? I don’t want you breaking rules on my account.”
Long pause.
“Two A and Two B through to G City. You’re amazing.”
Pause.
“I owe you, Nickie Edwards.”
Pause.
“You do that.”
Ryan handed me the receiver. I cradled it without comment.
“No need to thank me,” he said.
“Thank you?”
“We’re riding up front.”
“I’ll send Nickie a Hallmark.”
“I didn’t ask for special treatment.”
“I guess Nickie was overwhelmed by your French magnetism.”
“I guess.”
“Is Nickie going to knit you a sweater for those cool Guatemalan nights?”
“Think I can get through to her again?” Ryan leaned on the arm of my chair and reached for the phone. I held him off with a hand to the chest.
“You could have her traced,” I suggested icily.
He shook his head. “Abuse of the badge.”
“Not to worry. Nickie will be calling once she’s finished the
Teach Yourself French
tapes.”
“Think she’d FedEx the sweater ahead?”
I shoved. Ryan righted himself, but did not open the distance between us.
“Are we going to continue this little tête-à-tête, or are you going to tell me why you booked a flight to Guatemala City?”
“Quickest way to get there.”
“Ryan—”
“You’re not delighted at the prospect of my company? You’re breaking my heart.” He placed both hands over the injured organ.
“You are not going to Guatemala to please me.”
“I would.” The choirboy smile.
“Do you intend to tell me why?”
Ryan ticked off points on his fingers. “Uno: Olaf Nordstern was killed in Montreal shortly after arriving from Guatemala. Dos: Nordstern’s assassin carried a Guatemalan passport. Tres: André Specter, Canadian ambassador to Guatemala and citizen of our fair city, is currently the subject of discreet inquiry.”
“You volunteered to go to Guatemala?”
“I offered my services.”
“You’re being reassigned.”
“Guatemala seemed preferable to central booking.”
“And you speak Spanish.”
“Sí, señorita.”
“You never told me that.”
“You never asked.”
“Were you able to dig up anything on Specter?”
“According to the wife, he’s Albert Schweitzer.”
“That’s not surprising.”
“According to External Affairs, he’s Nelson Mandela. And strictly off limits.”
“Galiano said you’d run into that. Did you talk to Chantale?”
“According to Chantale, her old man’s the Marquis de Sade.” Ryan shook his head. “That is one angry kid.”
“What did she say?”
“Plenty. None of it complimentary. Most notably, she claims Daddy’s chased skirt as far back as she can remember.”
“How could a child know that?”
“Says she overheard numerous arguments between her parents, once caught the ambassador having phone sex in the middle of the night.”
“Could he have been talking to his wife?”
“The missus was sacked out upstairs. The ambassador was doing the deed on the phone in his study. Chantale also claims that shortly before blowing town, she and Lucy stumbled on her father exiting the Ritz Continental with a chick on his arm.”
“Did Specter see them?”
“No, but Chantale recognized Daddy’s companion. Says the lucky lady graduated from her high school two years back.”
“Christ. Did she provide a name?”
“Aida Pera.”
“Do you believe her?”
Ryan shrugged. “I definitely plan to talk to Aida.”
“So the ambassador likes young girls.”
“If the daughter from hell is telling it straight.”
“Did you interview any of the Chez Clémence posse?”
“That pleasure was denied me. Seems the three stooges have all vanished.”
“You ordered those assholes not to leave town.”
“They’re probably off on a geology field trip. My colleagues will round them up.”
“In the meantime?”
He pulled Nordstern’s disc from his pocket.
“We get acquainted with SCELL.”
I slipped the disk from its envelope, inserted it into my computer, and clicked over to the D drive. One file name appeared: fullrptstem.
“It’s a monster PDF file. Over twenty thousand kilobytes.”
“Can you open it?” Ryan had squatted beside me.
“The contents will be gibberish without a reader.”
“Do you have one?”
“Not on this machine.”
“Aren’t those programs available as free downloads?”
“Can’t put anything on a government computer.”
“God bless bureaucracy. Let’s give it a shot.” He gestured with his chin. “Maybe there’s an imbedded reader.”
I opened the file. The screen filled with letters and symbols divided by horizontal dots indicating page and column breaks.
“Damn.” Ryan shifted and his knee popped.
I looked at my watch. Five forty-two.
“I have Acrobat Reader on my laptop. Why don’t I take the disc home, cruise through it, and give you a synopsis during our flight tomorrow.”
Ryan stood, and his knee cracked again. I knew what was coming before he said it.
“We could both—”
“I’ve got a lot to do tonight, Ryan. I may not get back here for a while.”
“Dinner?”
“I’ll grab something on the way home.”
“Fast food is bad for your pancreas.”
“Since when are you concerned with my pancreas?”
“Everything about you concerns me.”
“Really.” I pressed the button and the disc slid out.
“You get sick in the highlands, I don’t want to be rinsing out your panties.”
I considered flinging the disc at him. Instead, I held it out.
He raised his eyebrows. “Why don’t you take that home, cruise through it, and give me a synopsis during our flight tomorrow.”
“Hot damn. There’s an idea.” I slid the disc into my briefcase.
“Pick you up at eleven?”
“I’ll pack lots of panties.”
A truck had overturned in the tunnel, and the trip home took almost an hour. After dumping my briefcase and purse, I dug a frozen delight from the freezer and popped it into the microwave.
While I waited, I cranked up my laptop and opened the PDF reader. The microwave beeped as I clicked on the fullrptstem file.
When I returned, a surrealistic tableau filled the monitor. I stared at the blobs and squiggles exploding from a central mass, then scrolled upward and read the title.
It made no sense at all.
“
FRIGGIN’ STEM CELLS
Ryan had been in a rotten mood since picking me up at eleven. A forty-minute flight delay was not improving his disposition.
“Yes.”
“The little buggers your moron fundamentalists are pissing their shorts to protect?”
“They are not
my
moron fundamentalists.”
“That’s it?”
“Two hundred and twenty-two pages’ worth.”
“Is it some kind of progress report?”
“And a discussion of future research directions.”
Ryan was in a snit because he couldn’t smoke.
“What genius prepared it?”
“The National Institutes of Health.”
“How come Nordstern had the report on disk?”
“He probably downloaded it from the Net.”
“Why?”
“Excellent question, Detective.”
Ryan checked his watch for the billionth time. At that exact moment the digits on the screen behind the Delta agent changed again. We would now be departing an hour behind schedule.
“Sonovabitch.”
“Relax. We’ll make the connection.”
“Thank you, Pollyanna.”
I dug a journal from my briefcase and began leafing through it. Ryan got up, crossed the waiting area, recrossed it, returned to his seat.
“So what did you learn?”
“About?”
“Stem cells.”
“More than I ever wanted to know. I was up until two.”
A man the size of South Dakota dropped a bag on the floor and flopped into the seat to my right. A tsunami of sweat and hair oil rolled my way. Ryan’s eyes met mine, then shifted toward the windows. Wordlessly, he got up and changed location. I followed a compassionate thirty seconds later.
“Stem cells are taken from embryos?” Ryan.
“Stem cells can come from embryonic, fetal, or adult tissue.”
“It’s the non-adult forms that have the Christian zealots in a frenzy.”
“The religious right is strongly opposed to any use of embryonic stem cells.”
“The usual sanctity of life crap?”
Ryan did have a way of cutting to the chase.
“That’s the argument.”
“And G. W. Bush bought in.”
“Only partly. He’s trying to sit on the fence. He’s limited federal funding to research using existing stem cell lines only.”
“So scientists needing government grants are only allowed to experiment with cells already growing in labs?”
“Or with stem cells derived from adult tissue.”
“Will that do the job?”
“In my opinion?”
“No. Give me the thinking in the Politburo.”
Nope. That’s it. Back to my journal.
After a few moments, “O.K. Give me the stem cell basic course, condensed version.”
“We’re agreed on courteous listening as a protocol?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Every one of the two hundred cell types in the human body arises from one of three germ layers, endoderm, mesoderm, or ectoderm.
“Inner, middle, and outer layers.”
“That’s excellent, Andrew.”
“Thank you, Ms. Brennan.”
“An embryonic stem cell, or ES cell, is what’s termed pluripotent. That means it has the ability to give rise to cell types deriving from any of the three layers. Stem cells reproduce themselves throughout the life of an organism, but remain uncommitted until signaled to develop into something specific—pancreas, heart, bone, skin.”
“Flexible little dudes.”
“The term ‘embryonic stem cell’ really includes two types: those that come from embryos, and those that come from fetal tissue.”
“The only two sources?”
“To date, yes. To be perfectly correct, embryonic
stem
cells are derived from eggs just a few days after fertilization.”
“And before the egg is implanted in the mother’s uterus.”
“Right. At that point the embryo is a hollow sphere called a blastocyst. Embryonic stem cells are taken from the inner layer of that sphere. Embryonic
germ
cells are derived from five- to ten- week-old fetuses.”
“And the grown-ups?”
“Adult stem cells are unspecialized cells that occur in specialized tissues. They have the ability to renew themselves, and to differentiate into all of the specialized cell types of the tissues in which they originate.”