Another footfall. Almost silent, like tennis shoes on carpet. “Kate.” A man’s voice. A scratchy whisper. Someone testing to see if she was awake.
Kate managed to open her eyes a little more. Above her, faint rays of sunlight filtered in through metal blinds that covered short, wide windows. In the corner, a strobe light pierced the room every few seconds, like the flash of a camera snapping a photo incessantly.
She tried to move, but her body wouldn’t respond. She took a deep breath and sat up quickly, seeing the man for the first time. He reeled back, dropping something that clanged and splashed on the floor.
It was Ben Adelson, her lab assistant. “Jesus, Kate. I’m sorry. I was, I thought if you were up, you might want coffee…” He bent to pick up the remnants of the shattered coffee cup, and when he got a closer look at her, he said, “God, you look like hell, Kate.” He stared at her for a moment. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
Kate rubbed her eyes. She had been working day and night for the last five days, virtually non-stop since she had gotten the call from Martin Grey: produce results now, any results, or the funding goes away. No excuses this time. She hadn’t told any of the staff on her autism research project. There was no reason to worry them. Either she got some results, and they went on or she didn’t, and they went home. “Coffee sounds nice, Ben. Thanks.”
The man pulled his black face mask down. “Use your knife inside. Gunfire will draw attention.”
His assistant, a woman, nodded and pulled her face mask down as well.
They exited the black van and walked to the door. The man reached for the door with his gloved hand, then hesitated. “You’re sure the alarm is off?”
“Yeah. Well, I cut the outside line, but it’s probably going off inside.”
“What? Jesus! They could be calling it in right now.” He threw the door open. “Let’s move.”
They ran inside, slamming the door behind them. Above it, a sign read:
Autism Research Center
Staff Entrance
Ben returned with a fresh cup of coffee, and Kate thanked him. He plopped down in a chair opposite her desk and said, “You’re going to work yourself to death. You’ve slept here for the past four nights. And the secrecy, banning everyone from the lab, hoarding your notes, not talking about ARC-247. I’m not the only one who’s worried.”
Kate sipped the coffee. Jakarta had been a difficult place to run a clinical trial, but working on the island of Java had some bright spots. The coffee was one of them.
She couldn’t tell Ben what she was doing in the lab, at least not yet. It might amount to nothing, and more than likely, they were all out of a job anyway. Involving him would only make him an accomplice to a possible crime.
Kate nodded to the flashing fixture in the corner of the room. “What’s that strobe light?”
Ben glanced over his shoulder at it. “Not sure. An alarm, I think—”
“Fire?”
“No. I made rounds when I got here, it’s not a fire. I was about to do a thorough inspection when I noticed your door cracked.” Ben reached into one of the dozen cardboard boxes that crowded Kate’s office. He flipped through a few framed diplomas. “Why don’t you put these up?”
“I don’t see the point.” Hanging the diplomas wasn’t Kate’s style and even if it were, who would she impress with them? Kate was the only investigator and physician on the study, and all seven of the staff knew her CV. They received no visitors, and the only other people who saw her office were the two dozen staff who cared for the autistic children in the study. The staff would think Stanford and Johns Hopkins were people, long deceased relatives maybe, the diplomas perhaps their birth certificates.
“I’d put it up, if I had an MD from Johns Hopkins.” Ben carefully placed the diploma back in the box and rummaged around in it some more.
Kate drained the last of the coffee and set the cup down. “I’ll trade you for another cup of coffee.” Ben’s coffee made Starbucks taste like motor oil.
“So I can give you orders now?”
“Don’t get carried away,” Kate said as Ben left the room. She stood and twisted the hard plastic cylinder that controlled the blinds, revealing a view of the chain-link fence that circled their building and beyond it, the crowded streets of Jakarta. The morning commute was in full swing. Buses and cars crept along as motorcycles darted in and out of the tight spaces between them. Bicycles and pedestrians filled every square inch of the sidewalks. And she had thought the traffic in San Francisco was bad.