The Black Silent

CHAPTER 1

Ben stood on his carpeted office floor, dripping in his dive suit, his chest heaving and leg muscles cramping badly. But his mind was working fluidly.

It was a relief to find his workspace unoccupied. As dangerous as it had been to return, Ben simply couldn't leave things where they lay.

He had worked alone through the holiday weekend, feverishly setting flasks of nutrient broth inoculated with strains of genetically altered bacteria on an orbital mixer and watching three timers. He'd had no choice but to keep the manufacturing process moving at a frantic pace. Time was of the essence.

After growing the genetically altered bacteria, he had used the sonicator to break them up and then put the solution in the centrifuge to separate out the constituent protein of interest. He'd planned on completing the project by the wee hours of Monday morning, then leaving Sanker forever. The entire time he'd worked as if someone's life depended on it-in this case it was his own.

On the wood bench in front of him lay priceless tubes of organic molecules; all of which had never previously been manufactured except by Ben. In fact, the last part of the process was using a new gene that promised to be even more effective. Nothing on earth existed like these particular organics, and in the future, men would study them with the devotion of acolytes.

An hour earlier, Ben had been working on the last phase when the Sunday-morning quiet had been pierced by the sound of a horn that sounded similar to the dive signal on a World War II submarine. It meant the lab's saltwater system was in some jeopardy. In minutes Ben had concluded the problem was in the octopus pen, and he'd left his work to don scuba gear and fix the malfunctioning pump. Just as Frick had planned.

Fortunately, as far as Ben could tell, Frick's people hadn't tampered with his lab.

Perhaps they were waiting for confirmation of his "accident" and the death certificate before exercising the foundation's legal right to take possession of all Ben Anderson's research, materials, and lab work.

Ben wondered about Glaucus, the octopus that, in addition to the broken seawater pump, inhabited the marine pen. Glaucus was the world's largest-known North Pacific octopus. Ben had named him after a fisherman in Greek mythology who had eaten magic sea grass, becoming a sea god and gaining eternal life.

Ben admired the creature. Glaucus had a leg span of more than thirty-eight feet from tentacle tip to tentacle tip and weighed more than seven hundred pounds. Octopuses of Glaucus's species only had a five-year life span, Glaucus was now seven. That made him the rough equivalent of a ninety-two-year-old human with a thirty-year-old body. Only Ben Anderson knew how and why.

Before leaving, Ben had a few important things to do.

First, notify the police.

After a dozen or so rings someone answered at the sheriff's office.

Ben asked, "Is the sheriff in?"

"I'm sorry, he's on vacation."

Of course. Ben knew that. "Can I speak to a deputy?"

"This is the dispatcher. There are two cars on patrol, both at Roche Harbor."

"I have a situation over at the Sanker Foundation. This is Ben Anderson."

"Are you in trouble?" The dispatcher's tone had gone from bored to slightly concerned.

"Someone just tried to kill me," Ben said.

Real concern now. "Are you safe?"

"I don't know." Ben looked out his window and down the hillside. He couldn't see the walkway along Glaucus's pen. Somehow he doubted the diver was still there. Ben explained the events of the last few minutes as best he could.

"Okay," the dispatcher said. "Where are you in the compound?"

"In my office. Second floor in the Oaks Building."

"Just a minute."

Ben heard the dispatcher talking to a patrol car before returning to Ben's call. "Is your door locked?"

"No. But it will be." Ben went and locked the door, wondering what good it would do.

"I need to go now."

"Okay, sir. Don't let anyone in. I'm calling Officer Frick at home."

"Wait. He's not a regular deputy," Ben said, heat rising into his neck and face. "Would you please send someone else."

"He's a special deputy with the rank of sergeant and fully empowered," the dispatcher said. "He's also chief of security there at Sanker. I'm going to call him now."

Ben hung up. It would be a waste of precious time to argue.

Frick had used the political power of Sanker and taken great pains to get himself ftilly integrated into local law enforcement. Frick had been brought in by Sanker almost a year previous, not coincidentally around the same time that Ben's research had started finally to become known in a general way to Sanker executives. In small communities retired cops could get special reserve commissions.

From what Ben had been told, the county sheriff didn't much like Frick and was trying to find a politically graceful way to get Frick out of his department or at least severely limit him.

From his closet Ben pulled out jeans and a shirt. People who swam in the ocean as part of their work tended to keep extra clothes. His morning's outfit remained in the dive room.

Now came the most important part. Ben ran back to the spacious lab and went to work destroying everything that mattered.

Next he took a wooden box full of 50mm freezer tubes bundled in five different lots, each lot with its own color, and removed it from a freezer, then ran with it down the stairs and a long hall to a workshop. There he pushed aside shelving that disguised a hidden door. He stepped into a secret study, most of it taken up with a Revco minus-eighty-degree freezer set to minus-twenty degrees. He put the box in the freezer and slammed the door.

Then he gathered his lab notes and took them to his office. There he added them to some other notes hidden in a large-scale replica of a blue whale affixed to the wall. He didn't touch the wall safe, even though he was supposed to be the only one with the combination.

A beep sounded; the light under his office's security camera was flashing. The foundation was rife with security measures that Ben had once considered excessive. It was a part of the corporate culture of this rich, private foundation that Ben had always disliked-dislike that had turned darker after what they'd done to Haley.

Ben hurried to the video monitor and saw someone standing at the gate. He looked more closely. It looked like Haley. Panic filled him at the thought of someone hurting her. Adopted by Ben when she was nine, and raised by him and his now-deceased wife, she was his family.

He used the cell phone in his pocket, scrolled down to her name, and pushed the call button. "Haley, this is Ben"-the line had static-"Can you hear me?" It went dead. He hurried back to his desk, engaged the speaker phone, and called Haley's cell phone, hoping to warn her away. He got a steady beep that wasn't a busy signal and that usually meant the repeater was overcrowded. He tried again and got the voice mail. He muttered a curse.

"Haley, if you get this message, do not come inside the foundation. Get in your car and go to Sam. I'll call you as soon as I can."

With mounting frustration he watched her on the monitor just standing there ringing the bell. It occurred to him that she had never appeared to answer her cell phone. Without thinking about it much further, he pulled the spring-loaded handle that operated the front gate. A second camera followed Haley as she walked through. The image was grainy- probably the camera going bad. Something wasn't quite right. He pulled another lever that unlocked the main door to the facility. Then it hit him. That wasn't her walk. No wonder she didn't pick up her cell. It wasn't her.

The door opened and she disappeared. Then Ben watched in shock as two men ran through the camera's field of view, mere yards behind the Haley look-alike. They wore masks and moved with deadly purpose. Another thought occurred to him, horrifying and hopeful at once: if that wasn't Haley, then it was a decoy, and Haley was probably safe.

Ben heard heavy footsteps running on the stairs. He looked around the corner at the stairway landing. The two men were coming fast, both of them unrecognizable with nylons over their heads. If they were Frick's, why wouldn't he give them a key? He didn't have time to ponder that one.

Ben punched the silent-alarm button. Then he pulled back into his office, grabbed a knifelike letter opener, shoved it in his pocket, and ran to the window. He opened the window and put a foot onto the steep roof.

The roof dropped off for two stories at the gutter, a mere foot and a half from the window. He stepped through the window and onto the tiny section of steep roof. As carefully as possible, he moved along the face of the gable until he reached the corner.

Then he began crawling toward the rooftop.

The roof was gray heavy composite shingle that looked much like slate. It was hard on the skin and slick from a light coating of moss. He heard nothing from below. The silence was anything but comforting. Then the window slid open and the intruders' voices became suddenly audible.

"There's no way out," one said. "They'd have told us."

"I think he went out on the roof," said the other.

Ben recognized neither voice.

"He's no athlete," said the first. "It's practically straight up."

Ben climbed as quietly as he could, trying not to look down at the lawn and stone work far below.

"I don't see anything." The second one again. "It's steeper than hell."

Ben could see nothing of them, but he could tell from the sound of the voice that the second man had stuck his head out the window. He crested the peak.

He had to escape. He looked around. There was the giant fir that grew up the two stories and a bit over the roof. Perhaps the uppermost branches would support him. Then his eye gauged the distance and he realized he'd need to be a monkey or a brave teenager.

There were gables on this side of the building as well. He slithered down the roof, but after having nearly rounded the gable, he heard the window open. A man's head appeared at the corner of the gable. Even with the nylon stocking the man's hair appeared short. From his arms Ben could tell that he was olive-skinned, with black hair to match. In his hand he held an ugly-looking pistol.

"Come on in before you hurt yourself," the man said.

Ben didn't respond.

"If you don't cooperate," the man said, coming closer, "we'll kill you pure and simple."