House on Fire

48

That handy device that Devlin had lent me, the Boscloner, could generate its own blank keys, but because I wanted it to look as close to a real badge as possible, I preferred to use the ID card printer I’d bought for around a thousand bucks.

Dorothy figured out how to operate it, and back at the office she made me one that looked a lot like the real thing. A medium blue PVC card key with the Phoenicia logo on it. The name “GRANT James.” Meanwhile, my receptionist, Jillian Alperin, was hunting down for me the simple gray uniform that Phoenicia’s security staff wore. I had a small collection of uniforms, but not that.

At seven in the morning, I arrived at the silvery cube that was Phoenicia Health Sciences’ headquarters in Waltham. Very few cars in the parking lot; several in the clinic and clinical patients spaces. There was a separate entrance to the research clinic at the back of the building, by a row of manicured cedars, just for people taking part in medical studies here.

A very nice receptionist guided me to a waiting room, where a very nice nurse greeted me and handed me a bunch of forms to fill out. All the chairs and couches in the waiting room looked brand-new. There were just a few other people there, two small, dark-haired young women, who seemed to know each other, and a heavyset guy of around thirty with long, greasy blond hair.

I found myself filling out a consent form that indemnified the company in case of all types of possible calamities, including “mutilation or death.” I didn’t like the sound of that one. And there were all kinds of other forms that protected Phoenicia from being sued.

Within a couple of minutes the waiting room had filled up with twelve visitors. The head nurse led us all into the adjoining room and made us watch a short video that was basically propaganda about all the good we were doing for science and humanity. The guy with the greasy blond hair turned around and said, “I’ve seen this one, like, ten times already,” and he chuckled. He sounded like a regular.

Another woman came out, a research coordinator. She was tall and broad and clearly comfortable being in charge. She explained to us how the study was going to work. Nothing very complicated. They were testing a new acid-suppression medicine. They’d give us a pill, give us three meals, and measure our stomach acid throughout the day and night.

She didn’t explain how.

She gave a little wave to the guy with the greasy blond hair. “Hi, Winston,” she said. “Welcome back.” By now I was starting to get hungry. They required you eat nothing after midnight the night before. I could drink water; that was all. Don’t take any antacids.

A few minutes later my name was called and I was shown to a curtained-off area full of medical machinery, like blood pressure monitors and such. A sprightly redheaded nurse named Denise measured my blood pressure and drew blood. She gave me a cup, asked me to fill it with urine. I went to the nearby bathroom and did it.

Meanwhile, I was looking around at the layout, the floor plan in my head. Looking for cameras. Making mental notes of where the exits were located and how visible they were.

Denise left and came back a few minutes later with a coil of thin plastic tubing sealed in a ziplock bag. She didn’t explain what it was. “You haven’t eaten anything since midnight, is that right?”

“Right. What’s that?”

“The pH probe.”

“I see. And where does it go?”

“Into your stomach.”

“How?”

“Through your nose, down your esophagus, into your stomach.”

“That tube goes down my nose?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay,” I said.

I had endured far worse. But I hadn’t counted on this little complication.

She unwrapped a long syringe, filled it with a topical anesthetic, and stuck the thing in my nose. She squeezed out some cold viscous liquid into my right nostril. Then she refilled her syringe and asked me to open my mouth and squeezed some more of the liquid onto the back of my throat. My nose went numb, and so did my throat. The stuff tasted nasty. She gave me a cup of water with a straw.

Then she wiped some kind of goop on the thin plastic tube and inserted it into my left nostril, which felt weird. She kept pushing it in, threading it down, and asked me to take a sip of water and swallow, to help move the tube down my throat. I almost gagged. My eyes watered.

“Sip and swallow,” she said.

I took another sip. It slid down farther. I could feel it slithering down my throat and I almost gagged again. She taped the probe to my nose and then connected the probe to a small plastic computer-looking box, which she said was the data recorder.

I sneezed. Then I asked, “I have to carry this thing around?”

“This can just be clipped to your belt during the day.”

“What about at night?”

“You can put it on your beside table,” she said.

Then she gave me a large red pill and asked me to swallow it. She told me that this was the medication they were testing, that it was supposed to suppress stomach acid for twenty-four hours. I swallowed, and the tube pulled at my nose from the inside.

She showed me to my bedroom. It looked like a college dorm, with a bunk bed. My roommate was already there. The heavyset guy with the greasy blond hair. He was sitting on the bottom bunk. The tube was already in his nose and taped to his face.

“Hi, I’m Winston,” he said.

“Nick.”

We shook hands.

“Breakfast is coming,” Denise said as she left.

So I didn’t have my own room. That could be a problem. I didn’t plan to stay in my room all night.

“You’ve done this kind of thing before?” I asked.

“Not with the nasal probe. But I do clinical studies all the time.”

“Pay good?”

“Better than working at Dunkin’ Donuts.”

“I guess.”

“I mean, I don’t mind getting paid to piss in a bucket, you know what I mean? So I’m a human lab rat, man.”

“Okay.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“To advance medicine and help humanity.”

“And the money.”

I shrugged. “I won’t turn it away.” It paid a few hundred dollars.

“The overnight studies is where you make the real money,” he said. “I did a bedrest study for NASA. I basically lay in bed for ninety days and got paid fifteen thousand bucks. I mean, fifteen thousand bucks to watch TV and play video games? I’m there.”

I nodded. “That’s three months of lying in bed?”

“Fifteen thousand bucks. What do you do, Nick?”

“I’m an actuary,” I said. That’s usually a conversation-killer. Most people don’t know what that is and won’t ask.

“Uh-huh. Anyway, I did one study where I got twenty-five hundred bucks for doing painkillers and drinking booze!”

“You’re not worried about doing damage to yourself?”

“I did hear about one study where a guy died. Had a bad drug reaction. But that doesn’t happen very often.”

“Huh.”

“I oughta move to Austin, man. That’s where all the clinical trials are.”

Then breakfast was brought in on two trays. Scrambled eggs, toast, fruit cup. Institutional and perfectly okay.

Then they left us alone for a while. Winston asked me if I wanted to play pool, and I demurred. He went in search of the inevitable video games, and I made calls and used their Wi-Fi.

The day passed slowly. I made a lot of phone calls and read old magazines.

At two in the morning, I got up — I hadn’t been sleeping; I was lying there mentally going over my next moves. I used the ladder to get out of the top bunk, moving quietly. I didn’t want to wake Winston, who was snoring pretty loudly.

The first thing I did was to tug the long tube out of my stomach, out of my esophagus, and out of my nose. It made me feel queasy again, but that feeling passed quickly. It was a relief to have the thing out. I left the probe and the data recorder on a wooden dresser. Then I changed into my security-company uniform, or at least as close to a uniform as Jillian was able to assemble. It was a pair of gray pants and a gray shirt. Unfortunately, the gray shirt was just a generic gray shirt from Target; it was missing the stitched-on logo of the security company. I took out my metal clipboard. My forged Phoenicia ID badge hung around my neck on a lanyard. It was a good forgery.

Winston kept snoring.

I slung a small nylon messenger bag over my shoulder. It contained a few small pieces of equipment. My bag of toys.

I opened the bedroom door slowly and quietly and looked to either side to see if anyone was out there.

No one.

I slipped out, closing the door gently behind me. All was quiet, just the rhythmic pheep pheep pheep from some machine.

The lights were on out here, but I didn’t see anyone awake and working. Maybe there was a skeleton night staff. No one saw me. No CCTV camera globes in this part of the clinic. In a place like this, they’d be obvious, not concealed.

I found a door marked simply exit. I was fairly sure this was the right door, based on the floor plan I’d memorized. There were several. For reasons having to do with the fire code, it didn’t require an ID. You just pushed the door open. Coming back in you’d need an ID badge. Which, of course, I had.

It opened onto the concrete apron of a large, dark loading dock. It was cold and smelled of gasoline. It was dimly lit by just the low-power emergency lights. I could just barely make out a row of large plastic trash bins, some of them marked with a biohazard symbol. This was where the clinic’s rubbish was dumped and stored. I looked up and saw a video camera mounted high on the wall. Just where it should be on the loading dock. Presumably there was at least one more, on the other side.

I had to assume the camera was being monitored. Probably by a couple of guys sitting in a room somewhere in the building that had a lot of screens on the wall. But that was okay. I looked like a member of their security force.

There was no one in the loading dock. Not at 2:05 in the morning. Walking like I belonged, I made my way to the freight elevator that I knew was there, from the floor plans. Pressed the button, and it opened right away.

I got in. There was a camera in the elevator, which didn’t surprise me. Management didn’t trust the guys who worked the loading dock.

Right away I took out my phone and put it to my ear. “What’s up?” I said to no one. Phone in my ear, clipboard in my hand, I looked like a busy supervisor.

I hit the button for the seventh floor, where the executive suite was located. Including the office of the chief scientific officer.

The elevator didn’t move. I put my ID badge near the card reader, and the elevator started moving, up.

I’d studied the seventh-floor drawings particularly closely, so I had a pretty good idea where the executive offices were. But the drawings were original, done before the headquarters building was constructed, and the company could have done all kinds of renovation since then. I’d have to explore.

As the elevator rose, I continued talking into my phone, making inane conversation. “Yeah, Jack, I’ll check it out. Sure, if you say so. So far so good.”

There was a video cam mounted at the ceiling of the elevator. It probably didn’t capture sound as well. But if anyone was watching the monitors, they’d see my mouth moving. They’d see me talking on the phone and looking like I knew what I was doing. I was going about my security business.

My fake Phoenicia badge was a clone of one of the maintenance workers’ badges. So it would probably get me anywhere in the building. I’d chosen that one because it had the widest privileges of any of the ID badges I captured.

In a minute the elevator’s doors opened on what I assumed was the seventh floor. It was a dark corridor. The floor was carpeted with squares of some cheap indoor-outdoor fabric. Straight ahead of me was a door, and next to the jamb was a wall-mounted RFID reader. It was highly unlikely there was a camera here, but I kept up the pretense of talking on my iPhone. I took a few steps and waved my ID badge next to the reader.

Nothing happened.

I touched the card to the reader, and again nothing happened.

I was stymied. I’d expected the cleaning guy’s card to give me access to the entire seventh floor. But for some reason this one wasn’t doing it.

Shit.

I knew the cloned card wasn’t defective, since it had gotten me into the elevator and onto the seventh floor. But apparently there was another level of access. Maybe people who had offices on the seventh floor had a different series of numbers encoded in their ID badges. Higher access. Only for the company’s top executives and their assistants.

But the cleaning crew also had to get onto the seventh floor, or it would never get cleaned. So at least someone on the crew had to have a badge that worked here. Unfortunately, I hadn’t captured the right person’s ID.

Behind me I heard the elevator machinery whirring to life as the elevator descended.

Someone had called it.

“Door’s locked,” I said into the phone, to no one. I inspected the wall-mounted ID card reader more closely.

The door was solid steel, a fire door. I wasn’t going to be able to force it open. I was screwed. I thought for a moment. What the hell should I do now?

The elevator opened, and I spun around. A guy came out. He was dressed just like me. A security guard. He’d probably been watching the camera feed, seen me in the elevator, and wondered what I was doing here in the middle of the night.

What happened now was important. You always talk first. Initiate conversation. Take charge of the situation.

Still holding my phone to my left ear, I said to the guy, “Oh, man, I’m glad you’re here.”

“Can I help you, sir?” the guard said. He was tall, even taller than me, and had a pockmarked face and cauliflower ears. He looked like he used to box or prizefight.

I held up an index finger, telling him to wait a beat. “Hold on,” I said into the phone, “you don’t have to come all the way here. There’s a gentleman right here who’s gonna open the door for me.”

I smiled at the guard. As if this was all some silly formality.

At this point, ninety percent of security guards would have relented and opened the door for me.

But not this guy.

“I’m sorry, what’s this for?” he said, giving me a wary glance.

“Security audit,” I said. “What’s your name, please?”

“João Miguel,” he said. “Jomi.”

“Thanks, Jomi.” I waited a moment for him to badge me in. But he was not a trusting soul.

“What’s this security audit for, sir?”

I sighed with exasperation. “I’ll call you back, Bill,” I said into my phone. To Jomi I replied, “I’ve got the letter in my car, let me go get it. No, hold on. I have it right here.” I took an iPad out of my messenger bag, tapped in my password to unlock it, and opened my email. The message I wanted came right up.

It was from the CEO of Phoenicia, authorizing a “security audit” to be conducted within the headquarters building from two a.m. to four a.m. Please extend all cooperation and so on. Dorothy had spoofed this email. It really looked like it came from the CEO himself.

And email is just as good as a letter to most people.

He squinted and leaned close to the iPad. Then he looked up. “Sorry, sir,” he said. He waved his ID badge at the sensor and unlocked the door for me. He said he was sorry three times before he left.

I was now on the executive floor. I was inside.