Necessary Evil

Chapter 23

Stretching in the heat of the wood stove, Jessie decided that nothing had ever felt so good. Both candles on the table were burning. One lantern glowed and a little natural light shone through the windows. The sounds of the boiling water and crackling fire, the smells of cooking meat-these things charmed the senses. Cattail sprouts and two kinds of tubers steamed over a saucepan while the beaver meat sizzled in its own fat. At one end of the cabin all of their clothing but what they wore hung from a line strung wall to wall. Kier, shirtless and wearing almost-dry jockey shorts, tended the food as Jessie, clad tentlike in his T-shirt and her panties, stood close by.

She could have sat or leaned against the wall. It wasn't necessary for her to be near him. Of course, she was also close to the food. The newest shoots from the cattails, now six months old, could still be eaten raw, and she had already eaten quite a few.

Sweat glistened in the hollow at the base of Kier's throat. She noticed it, and the bulk of his arms. Although his arms were long and a little bit lanky, they were the size of a thin man's thighs. Veins in his flesh stood out just like those on hefty athletes. His chest was massive and hairless, smooth.

She could feel the heat of him. When his eyes caught hers, she had a great urge to smile, as if they were sharing some secret joke. Whenever she looked up, his gaze was there, waiting in ambush. The eyes were deep brown, smiling. Aside from mirth, they looked full of desire. Maybe love. Again she looked away. She hated to think she was embarrassed.

"Prolonged eye contact is a form of boundary testing," she said in as detached a tone as she could muster.

When next she looked, he was concentrating on the food, no longer staring. As he pressed the meat with a fork, she studied his face, looking to see if there was any hint of his emotions. She could read nothing until he glanced her way with a little smile.

"What?" she asked.

"Are my eyes such a force?"

For a moment, her gaze followed her hand as it reached for a cattail sprig, then returned to his.

"It's your desire."

Kier turned from the frying pan, inches from her, looking down into her face. The warmth of him washed over her as she tried to decide… what? She reached out with her hand, even as things tumbled in her mind. Her hand hovered over his chest, waiting. It was a perfect parody of her indecision.

"You're right. I'm sorry. I was flirting," he said, breaking the spell. "It's an unnatural situation. We're both tired."

He was right. People in harrowing circumstances felt compelled toward one another for strange reasons. She and Kier would never work. Looking at him now, he seemed relaxed. The tension had departed, leaving only the cooking smells and the comfort of the fire. Yet something inside her wouldn't let her leave it alone.

"Do you think that some hurts are so big we never really get over them?"

"I don't know. A lot of times I think that sort of thinking is just an excuse."

''Did you ever think about the downside of love?''

"What's that? Loss of freedom?"

"No. The fact that it ends. Either in life or in death." He looked perplexed. "You don't have the faintest idea what I'm getting at, do you?"

"Afraid I don't."

"Do you think you ever just decided to go it alone because the risk of it all ending was too great? I mean when you were a little kid. When your dad died. When your first wife left you. Did you ever say to yourself: 'Kier will take care of himself. Kier doesn't need anybody else'?"

"Everybody needs to take care of himself. But I think I understand what you mean."

"Your first wife left you."

"Well, it was complicated."

"Don't complicate it, Kier. You taught at the university together, Claudie told me."

"Yes."

"You wanted to come to the mountains so you both moved here."

"Yes."

"She left."

"Okay. She left."

"So this stir-the-oatmeal kind of love that you're longing for-how risky is that?"

"I've heard the old saw about afraid to fall in love. I don't think that's me."

"God no. Kier couldn't be afraid of anything. So let's not talk about fear. I want to know what you did with all the pain."

Kier shook his head with a half-smile.

"I felt the pain," he said, looking irritated.

"Which caused you more pain, your father's dying or your mother's need to prove that her son could be somebody even without a father?"

"Where do you get all this?"

"You forget. You've spilled your guts to my brother-in-law, and we both know that Claudie owns him. I put it all together."

"So you're a shrink as well as a cop?"

"I'm a disillusioned woman, Kier. Maybe numb from the pain myself."

He put his hand to her face for just a moment, then shook his head. "I guess I don't like depending on other people."

"What if we changed the word to 'trust'? What if we said you don't like the feeling of needing to trust someone?

''When you were at that university, with your wife, where she was the hotshot, where she knew everybody, came from a prominent family, knew her way around, how did that feel? Did you maybe worry just a little bit about what if she cut you loose?''

"I think I was confident of her loyalty."

''So when you moved back to your turf, where you knew everybody, where you were the hotshot, where you were in control, did that feel different? Did you really need to trust her back here?''

"Any of us feels insecure if we're out of our element."

"That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about you not being able to love somebody when it takes a lot of trust. Actually, I think I'm talking about you not being able to love somebody."

"I can love Willow. Are you questioning that?"

"Love can never be built on a lie. Until you tell her what you have in mind for love-this passionless caring sort of thing that you call 'stir the oatmeal'-then you can't love her."

"Well, no one can fault you for not speaking your mind." He gave her a little smile.

''No, I speak my mind well. Go ahead and change the subject. I know you're dying to.''

"Remember I was going to tell you what I read, something I figured out."

"Yes," she said.

"It's something that I only barely understand. I think I have an idea of how, at least in the early stages of their research, they created the God Model that enabled them to figure out gene function. They call it DNA chip technology."

"I remember reading something totally unintelligible about that."

"I think I understand the basics of how it works," he said. "Are you ready for more biology?"

"As long as there's no lab."

"Just the theory."

Kier began putting the food on the table as he talked.

"In each cell is a little factory that produces one or more types of protein. Instructions to the factory regarding what kind of protein come from the messenger molecule RNA."

She dished up the beaver tail, trying to cut a sizable hunk for herself. But her mind was mostly occupied with Kier's explanation and didn't focus on the fact that she was using an ordinary butter knife.

"Wait, wait. Let me make sure I've got this. When a cell wants to send a message to make some particular protein, it sends out RNA."

"Right. Let's use this," he said, pulling out a sharper knife.

"This RNA is unique to that particular gene."

"That's right. The RNA is just a mirror image of the DNA that makes up the gene."

"Beavers are tough guys," she said.

"They are." They both took a few bites, saying nothing. Then Kier began again with his mouth full, obviously intent on his thought.

"So at a given moment in time if you collect the RNA that a cell is giving off, then you will have a fingerprint of both the involved DNA and, if you know enough about the process, the protein that is being created. Another way of saying it is that you will know which gene is activated."

They both ate ravenously. Kier stopped talking to take a few more bites.

"The quantity and type of RNA that is given off by various cells may change as circumstances change. Such changes could include stress, disease, hormonal surge, tough beaver tail, passionate sex… The patterns of the proteins made by those cells change as the body sends signals to deal with the new situation."

"So the trick is to discover which genes are sending out RNA in response to the condition under study," she said.

Kier continued chewing. "Exactly."

"And this DNA chip measures it."

"Sort of. To create a DNA chip, droplets of DNA from different genes are put on a chip. They can put thousands of droplets on each chip. When Tillman's researchers wanted to know what RNA was produced under a given bodily condition, they could extract RNA from the cells of whatever living tissue was affected and expose it to the chip. By seeing which DNA droplet matched the RNA, the researcher could tell which gene was activated as a result of the illness or condition under study.''

"I follow that. You know in advance which DNA is in each droplet. The chip detects which droplet the RNA matches, and then you know which gene it came from."

"That's right. Then by studying a person who has recently been infected with a disease, for example, they can learn through the RNA from various organ samples which genes are involved in fighting the disease, and where relevant, which are involved in propagating the disease."

"So this would help them understand disease processes."

"Right," he said. "Causes, cures, the works. But to do this efficiently, you would need human subjects. And you would need a sample of every disease you wanted to study. So it becomes clearer why all the diseases. But if they were, for example, using Tiloks, we would at the very least have a bunch of sick Tiloks. And for what I'm talking about, you'd be regularly punching holes in their bodies to get tissue samples from organs so it wouldn't be a secret."

"So they're not doing that on the Tilok tribe. You're thinking if the reference in this RA-4TVM study was to human infants, then they were cloning people and using the clones for medical research."

"That's right. First they used this chip technology on the same cloned infants. Later they just took organ samples and ran the RNA through the computer. And that's how they got light-years ahead of the rest of the world's scientists."

"So they sacrificed babies to make progress," Jessie said.

"It seems too outlandish to be possible. But I believe it, even if I can't prove it."

When they finished eating, they lay exhausted on the bed. Both fell instantly unconscious.

It happened in the middle of the night, after they had been sleeping for hours. Nothing that he could recall had awakened him, but he opened his eyes with a start. A creaking sound disturbed the still cabin. He couldn't tell its source. For no discernible reason he became very uneasy.

"We've got to leave right now."

He was shaking her awake. He turned on a small light, grateful that he had covered the windows. Her mouth opened, probably to ask why.

"Get dressed. I'll throw the food in the pack and get some other things."

"What is it?" she asked, already pulling on her jeans.

"No time to figure it out." He had his pants on, then his outer shirt, leaving his T-shirt for her. They struggled into the camouflage outerwear. Kier began cramming more canteens, professional mountain-climbing gear, and snare material into the pack, all of which he had hauled from a trapdoor in the floor.

"Let's go." Five minutes had passed since it first hit him. Too long. "Out the back window."

He helped her through the window and led her straight away from the cabin into the forest so that someone watching the front would detect nothing. Once again, however, they left a trail in the snow. After two hundred yards, they circled, coming back to the creek that they had followed down to the cabin. Remaining in the creek so that they would leave no tracks they headed back uphill toward the caverns.

"Where in the hell are we going?"

"Hide in the caves."

"Why not follow the creek down? Your whole tribe could be-"

"If they figured out the creek, they'll be waiting below."

"But how do we know-"

"We don't know anything," he cut in. "It just didn't feel right."

As if in response, an explosion rocked the mountainside behind them, reverberating in the fog. M-16 automatic-weapon fire rang out.

"I'd say they just destroyed my friends' new cabin. With luck we have a minute or two before they start on our track."

Kier trotted up the creek now, hoping that Jessie could keep up.

It made no sense, he told himself. They had gone a couple of miles underground. Tracking should have been impossible. Dogs couldn't follow their bodies coated in charcoal and pine scent, even assuming they brought bloodhounds this far into the mountains. Tillman probably was not fooled by the avalanche, lost no time, and had a man or two follow each creek down the mountain. If so, he had an uncanny ability to predict Kier's methods.

Kier heard her breathing and could see her sides heaving. Sprinting up this mountian with all the rubble and loose rock under the snow was physically punishing. Altitude with the resulting lack of oxygen made it worse.

For just a moment he would stop.

"How are you?"

"Maybe I should just end the pain-let you go alone and save the world. I'm holding you back."

"Give me your gun. Everything," he said.

Woodenly, she handed him the M-16, the pistol, and two grenades.

"I need you to give this everything you've got… like at the pond. I'm not leaving you and we're going to jog-even on the ledge."

"No." She shook her head.

"Yes."

He turned up the creek. The pep talk wasn't working. Awakened from a sound sleep, her belly full of food, and now sprinting, no doubt to the point of nausea, she looked wiped out. Probably making her angry was the best medicine.

''I don't know how they let women in the FBI,'' he mumbled.

She grabbed his arm.

"What did you say?"

"I don't know how they let Tillman get past the FBI."

"That's not what you said."

Then he started running up the mountain.

She was almost certain she understood him. It was such a stupid thing to say. Trying to suggest that she wasn't tough or lacked determination just to get her to run up a hill. It was infuriating. After all their talks, how could he resort to this sort of thing? She wanted to tell him to get lost, but she wanted to really skewer him, and he wouldn't slow down. Her chest burned, and killer pain squeezed at her temples. Making her yet more miserable, borderline nausea had begun creeping into her gut. She considered that she might be suffering a mild heart attack. God, she would get even with him.

Slick from the constant wet, the limestone made for ankle-jarring, knee-banging frustration. When they reached the bottom of the chute and her memory of it returned, she gave an involuntary groan.

"Wait here," Kier said.

"Is that a joke?"

Without a word he began scrambling furiously with hands and feet up the edge of the water-filled shoot. He disappeared in the dark shadows of first light. She heard a rock tumbling and then another. Instinctively, she stepped back. When at last she heard a yell she began groping for a line and was almost disappointed when she saw its outline in the gray light. Knowing Kier, she tied it firmly around her waist, managing only through great effort to stay on her feet as he pulled her up.

At last they were on the dreaded ledge. Before they began, Kier looked at her. Dawn was just breaking.

"The cavern is the one place they can't corner us or catch us. Not even infrared will work. Once we go in there, they have to either bring in an army or wait."

"Okay."

She was thinking about how exposed they would be. She forced herself to follow Kier's brisk walk along the ledge until he dropped flat on his face and she almost landed on top of him, lying between his legs, her chin on his butt. Kier looked 360 degrees, then pointed to something that froze her body stock-still.

An M-16 will kill at a mile, although aiming at such great distances was problematic because the bullet traveled in an arched trajectory. Shooting a couple of people at six hundred yards was a simple matter.

There were two groups of men, one on the slope far beneath their ledge and one on the mountainside at their elevation, but behind them. Each group stood perhaps six hundred yards distant. Both groups had emerged from the heavy forest at about the same time. She and Kier had five or six hundred feet remaining to reach the cave, at least half the length of the ledge. The worst part was ahead. It was inconceivable that they would not be seen.

Now they crawled. Sharp rocks grated over her thighs and belly. Nothing could be dislodged; not a single one of the hundreds of golf-ball-sized chunks could leave the ledge. One ping would bring field glasses searching around to their tiny outcropping. Watching Kier, she did as he did. An elbow and a knee moved together, but slowly, carefully, with exasperating precision. There was no option as to where to place her reddened elbows and skinned knees. Using the captured binoculars to study their hunters, Kier moved when the groups moved, stopped when they stopped.

Keeping Kier's pace while maintaining concentration was punishing. Soon Jessie found herself groaning every time an elbow caught the rock or came down too hard. Each little stone that branded a knee became hateful.

Then, in a split second, the glimmer of hope that had spurred her on evaporated. Just ahead of them two more men walked on their very same ledge, toward the entrance to the cavern. Kier and Jessie could not go up, they could not go down, and they could not stay put. If they shot the two in front of them, the bodies would fall and the men below would see them instantly. The near certainty that she would die hid in the darkened corners of her mind, waiting like a cancer to take it over. There would be no need to continue struggling once she accepted it.

For a few seconds, surrender seemed sensible. On further reflection, it seemed fully justified. It was only her innate grit that made her want to go out fighting.