The Eden Prophecy

CHAPTER 15

Barton Cassel IV walked into his office on the thirty-eighth floor of the Cassel Pharmaceuticals office tower in downtown Nice. An American who preferred to be considered a citizen of the world, Cassel had taken over the family business from his father at the ripe old age of twenty-nine; thirty years later he’d transformed it from a sleepy little drug distribution company to an international producer of four blockbuster medications. CPC (Cassel Pharmaceutical Corporation) revenues had reached almost $3 billion per year. Profits would hit $200 million for the trailing twelve months, depending on the exchange rate.

Such wealth had transformed Cassel into an international playboy of sorts. He owned yachts anchored in Miami and Monaco; he had purchased a run-down castle and transformed it into a thirty-thousand-square-foot home where he threw lavish parties that attracted supermodels, movie stars, and Formula One drivers. Recently he’d toyed with the idea of buying some type of title so he could be officially addressed as Duke, Prince, or Count.

But for all his wealth, Barton Cassel IV was not a man without problems. To begin with, his four blockbuster drugs generated 95 percent of the company’s revenues, but three of them would go generic within the next year; the fourth would follow shortly, crippling CPC. Revenues would drop by half, and without huge layoffs and other cutbacks, especially in the horrendously expensive research and development budget, profits would disappear and the red ink would flow as if a dam had burst.

Despite a massive effort Cassel had nothing in the pipeline to replace them. And cutting the R and D budget meant there would be little likelihood of coming up with anything anytime soon.

That was one problem. As he switched on the light in his sprawling office, a second, derivative problem stared him in the face.

“Hello, Barton,” a voice said.

Cassel looked up. On a couch near the small kitchen and wet bar that were part of his office, he saw a man with a shaven head and a dark, rectangular tattoo wrapping halfway around his neck like a collar.

Cassel knew the voice, the tattoo, the ugly gaze.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I came to bring you news,” the tattooed man said.

Cassel looked toward the door, a bit too obviously.

“Don’t bother,” the tattooed man warned. Then as if it weren’t a threat: “You’re going to want to hear what I have to say.”

Cassel fumed. He had the best security service in the country, multiple layers of protection from the street on up; he had cameras and scanners and even a key-coded lock on his own door that he’d just opened. All designed to keep him from dealing with “stuff.”

The man across from him definitely qualified as stuff.

“How the hell did you get in here?”

The tattooed man laughed. “Did you really think your store-bought security would keep me out? I spent half my life figuring out how to get through systems like yours. Most of them a hell of a lot better than your pathetic little show.”

Cassel shifted in his seat. He knew all this, of course; it was the danger of dealing with a man from such a background.

“I paid a heavy price for relying on my own security once,” the tattooed man said. “A heavy price. I suggest you avoid making the same mistake. You’re not out of reach. No one is.”

The man across from him had once been respected and powerful, Cassel knew that. It was the only reason Cassel had listened to him when he’d first come in, the only reason he’d agreed to work with him. Not the only reason perhaps — desperation played a part — but what Cassel hadn’t realized was that far more than the man’s appearance had changed.

The man called himself “Draco” now and he seemed to think of himself in bizarre, vainglorious tones. Apparently suits and ties being replaced by tattoos and Goth-like clothing were more than a cosmetic change. Madness had come and settled in. Draco had gone from being merely ruthless to vicious, sadistic, and erratic in his behavior.

Perhaps a fall from such high places did that to a man. Cassel had no desire to find out personally.

“What kind of news do you have?” he asked.

“I need more money,” Draco said.

“That’s not news.”

“Put another million dollars into the account,” Draco said, as if Cassel worked for him.

“Another million? And what do I have to show for the millions I’ve already spent? Do you have my sample? Do you have the proteins you promised, or the coding?”

“I have a sample, but it’s not the sample you want.”

Cassel squinted. Draco held up a small vial the size of a thimble, sealed but unlabeled.

“What the hell are you talking about? Our deal was for the drug Milan was working on. What’s this?”

“Partial delivery,” the man said. “Some of Milan’s latest work is contained in that vial. Enough for you to see where it’s going.”

“I’m not paying you millions of dollars to see where things are going,” Cassel said, anger overriding fear and concern. “I want the fucking drug you promised, the one you said would change everything.”

Draco tilted his head, the tattoo-covered scar around his neck stretching oddly. “Give me my money and let me continue the search.”

Cassel’s mind spun. Continue the search. The man spoke the words like he was looking for a lost dog. If Cassel counted right, he’d killed nearly a dozen people on this search already, including Ranga Milan, the man who was supposed to give them what they were after.

“I’m done with you,” Cassel said.

Across from him Draco sat taller. “Are you now?”

“Think you’re going to kill me and walk out of here?” Cassel asked. “No way.”

Draco stood and stepped forward. Cassel reached his hand toward a red button on the desk.

“I touch this button and they lock this place down, and I don’t care how store-bought they are, you’ll never get past them if I’m not with you.”

Draco walked ominously toward Cassel, putting the vial down on the desk in front of Cassel.

“Inside is the virus sent to the UN a week ago,” Draco said. “Ranga’s prototype. They’re still trying to figure out what it is. I would hate for them to know it was designed with equipment you gave us.”

“They’ll never trace it.”

“I’ll prove it to them if you make me.”

Cassel drew his hand back.

“While you’ve been dutifully hiding, burning and destroying any evidence of our partnership, I’ve been taping, recording, and tracking every one of our transactions. I have enough to prove where my money came from and what we agreed to do. It makes no difference to me. I’m a wanted man anyway. But you …”

Cassel stared at him. “I have people who will hunt you down,” he insisted.

“Yes, I’m sure you do,” Draco replied. “And you’re willing to take risks. That’s why I came to you. But now you have exposure and, as someone once told me, It’s a terrible thing to live with exposure.” He pushed the vial across the table. “Put two million in the account.”

“You said one.”

“For my troubles.”

“And then what?”

Draco smiled a sinister grin. “I know someone who can finish the synthesis for you. I just have to reel her in.”

“Who?” Cassel asked, curious despite all that had gone on.

“The one who led us to Ranga in the first place.”

“His daughter.”

Draco nodded.

Despite his revulsion for Draco, Cassel warmed instantly to this thought. Ranga had almost completed work on something magnificent. If CPC could get it and tweak it, move it away from what Ranga wanted and toward something more commercial, Cassel could turn it into the single greatest drug of all time. He would measure sales in the billions per month. And that was just the beginning.

The problem lay with the complexity of what Ranga had done. Even with a sample, it would take years for his people to deconstruct the changes and coding. His daughter, Sonia, was known to have worked with Ranga for years before the two had a falling-out. If anyone could finish the serum he’d been working on quickly, it was probably her.

Perhaps Draco’s skills in the criminal arts remained useful. If he could get into Cassel’s office unannounced, what was to stop him from finding and abducting Ranga’s daughter?

“You can bring her in?” Cassel asked.

“We won’t have to bring her in,” Draco insisted. “With the right offer, she’ll beg us to let her on board.”