Page 12 of Heart of Danger
That caught Lee’s attention. He looked up from the screen, frowning. “What about her?”
Dr. Catherine Young was crucial to the Enhancement program. She was a brilliant researcher. If she were in Germany she’d be called Doktor Doktor—a double PhD in biology and neuroscience, and an MD.
Though incredibly smart in terms of scientific research, she also seemed to be clueless in terms of the broader picture, focusing narrowly on the dementing patients they sent to her, not questioning how they got that way.
Unlike Roger Bryson in the Cambridge lab. His questions had become irritating, then dangerous. He deserved to die in the fire, he had become much too curious and insistent.
The ironic thing was that he really had come up with a cancer vaccine, the formula for which was now safely in a vault in the Ministry of Science in Beijing. A canister of the active vaccine had been removed from the Cambridge lab just before the Ghost Ops strike and taken to Beijing by diplomatic pouch. All the members of the Politburo had been vaccinated.
Later, when the world was theirs for the taking, the vaccine would be offered to all ethnic Chinese.
It might take a hundred years but that was all right. China had always taken the long view. America operated on a quarterly basis. Three months was a ridiculous time horizon. China operated on a century basis.
So far everything was on track.
With the exception of the Cambridge lab—and General Clancy Flynn had taken care of that—things were going reasonably well, though some technical problems seemed to be intractable. But all in all, a twenty-year plan was coming to fruition along the scheduled timeline.
The Cambridge lab fiasco had yielded some advantages, however. Three gifted soldiers—true warriors—to experiment on. Three men he could do anything to, study as he wished.
It was perfect terrain for testing their protocols. Artificially dement them then bring them back, then harvest their brains and analyze the neurological tissue. Testing on warriors would have proved impossible if they were of sound mind and body but they’d been reduced to physical and mental shells and were harmless.
Once Dr. Young and her team finished the analysis of the beta patients and established the correct protocol and drug regimen, she would be terminated. Pity, because she was a beautiful, highly intelligent woman, but Lee’s plan was going to alter the course of world history. One woman would not stand in his way.
Dr. Young was right in the middle of the analyses of the betas. She was a dedicated researcher. Not showing up for work was so unusual as to warrant an alarm.
“Did she call in sick?” he asked Bering.
“No, sir. And she’s not home. We checked.”
Lee felt the faintest prickle of unease. “She might not be answering the doorbell.”
“When I say ‘not home’, sir, I mean just that. We scanned the house. There was no one inside.”
The chill grew stronger. This was unlike Dr. Young. “Did you track her cell?”
Baring’s voice grew cold. His words were staccato. “Yes. Sir. Not transmitting.”
This had been a bone of contention. Baring wanted to inject micro tracers into every single researcher on the Millon campus, but Lee had turned the request down. There was massive IQ on-site. All it would take was for one researcher to somehow figure it out and the news would spread and there would be hell to pay.
Lee made sure the scientists working at the Millon facility saw the project only through straws, but they were very bright men and women and were perfectly capable of putting two and two together. That was why the average stay at Millon was 6 months. An exception had been made for Catherine Young because Lee felt her work shouldn’t be interrupted and it would take another scientist a year to be caught up to speed.
She was tasked with making an fMRI map of the altered minds, creating a baseline for further work. Her work had to remain confidential which is why Lee had planned on having Baring terminate her once the map was complete, instead of transferring her.
Young knew a lot. More than enough to create trouble.
He kept her under surveillance, always.
And now she’d slipped through their net.
“What about her car?”
“Not transmitting. Transponder dead.” Baring’s lips clamped closed in disapproval.
Baring had petitioned to put trackers in staff cars, too. But most of the staff had electric cars, which would soon become mandatory in California anyway. All cars were run by microchips which were hackable with a little effort. There Lee definitely ruled against Baring. An external tracker on a car would be a dead giveaway that something was wrong, particularly when any car could be hacked as long as it was running.
All the cars had the usual transponders which allowed all ecars to send out an emergency signal.
So, Catherine Young’s car was somewhere out there, but not running and the transponder was dead.
