Work in Progress
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Mortal Turpitude - Chapters 6 to 10
Chapter 6
A long shower and a trip to the store for two bottles of wine, some expensive cheese, and
a modest bunch of flowers helped calm my spirits before I sought out Rhiannon Lane’s
house. I thought again about the tall, muscular body, the luxurious black hair, the sleek,
nyloned legs, and the hypnotic eyes. Though two days had passed, I was still aroused by
Lisa’s calculated teasing, and at least some of that desperate energy was channeled into
fantasies about Rhiannon.
My objective mind reassured me that I could relax with her. After all, I had no illusions of
impressing her. As elevated as I was in my tight little research community, outside of it I
was just a middle-aged, medium height, medium weight man with a receding hairline. I’d
vanish in any crowd. Rhiannon, on the other hand, was intelligent and apparently quite
wealthy, and she would never enter a crowded room unnoticed.
The address was only a 15 minute walk from Nottingham Woods, under a gold and pink
Southwest sunset. The cultural transition was greater than suggested by the physical
distance. The trailer park gave onto a small local park. Past the park were several blocks
where elderly adobe houses had been leveled and the space ‘infilled’ with upscale houses
for university faculty and professional people.
I reached the gate with her number on it and let myself in. The front yard was lushly
landscaped in Sedona Red gravel with mimosa trees, Texas rangers, prickly pear, and
bougainvillea. Not a leaf or pebble was out of place. The house itself was a typical one-
story Santa Fe-style stucco, of the sort seen in new neighborhoods all over the Southwest.
I rang the doorbell. I had to ring a second time before I heard the click of high heels on
tile. My belly quivered with excitement. My sober mind knew that this was a simple
social visit, and nothing would come of it. My glands begged to differ.
“Oh, Barry. Come on in.” Given her height, the heels, and the doorstep she stood on, my
eyes were even with her breasts, and I had to force myself to look up at her bright smile.
She’d left two buttons undone, displaying an impressive cleavage. A faint musk of
perfume blew all rational thought from my head. Behind the musk came the smell of
cooking food: curry and some kind of meat.
I held the flowers out to her. I’d been careful to choose a small and unassuming bunch,
intended only as a gentlemanly gesture. Roses, or an elaborate arrangement, would send
too strong a message and make me look needy or presumptuous.
She took the bouquet and actually blushed a little. “Oh, thank you,” she said. “I didn’t
expect this. You do know how to treat a lady!”
“I brought some wine and cheese, too.” I said as she preceded me through a short
hallway. I watched her hips, tightly clad in a dark skirt, swivel and tilt as she walked in
her elegant heels. We entered a bright modern kitchen, where she pulled a vase from a
shelf and arranged the flowers. Through an archway, the living room was furnished in
leather and lit by indirect lighting. Everything was done tastefully in Southwestern style
earth colors.
“Why don’t you pour us some wine?” she said, taking a corkscrew from a drawer and
pointing to a rack of goblets hanging by their stems. “I prefer red myself.”
“I like red, too. Anyway, it’s supposed to be good for the heart. You have a biochemist’s
word on that. The magic word is ‘resveratrol’.” I pulled the cork and ostentatiously
sniffed it before filling the goblets half full.
“Ree-zerv-a-troll?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Not quite. It’s ‘ress-vare-ah-trawl’. Impress the folks at work with it.”
Her laugh was like music. We sat at opposite ends of the living room couch, with a plate
of the cheese with some crackers and our wine. I still didn’t know why Rhiannon had
invited me here. So I asked the question.
“I don’t know many scientists, but I find some of them fascinating. They know so much
about things that the rest of us can’t even comprehend. Sometimes it’s something that
seems trivial, but sometimes, it’s things like deadly diseases or global warming, things
that are vitally important, but too complicated to be understood by most people.”
I said, “You can say the same about plumbers and doctors. And lawyers, too. I mean,
surely you know things about the law that I don’t understand, and could never
understand.” I picked up a cracker and laid a piece of cheese on it. I began to raise it to
my lips, but on impulse, I offered it to Rhiannon. Smiling, she took it with graceful
fingers and put it between her white teeth. For a moment, I was lost in the vision of her
soft, mobile lips enclosing and consuming the cheese. Lucky cheese!
I realized I was staring, and snapped back to the moment. I put some cheese on a cracker
for myself.
“But the law is something human beings created,” she said. “It’s just arbitrary rules.
What you work on is much more fundamental. It’s Nature, the way the world is put
together. Like watching God at work. That’s fascinating.”
Like watching God at work? There were dimensions to this woman I hadn’t suspected.
I said, “That thought is what keeps me going. Sometimes I lose sight of that, on a day-to-
day basis. So much of my time is wasted in meetings, and dealing with students, and
writing, and University politics. The students are the ones having all the fun in the lab. I
don’t do much real science. My job is mostly to bring in the money to run it all.” I sipped
at my wine.
“We lawyers have a joke about that. It goes, ‘Working to make partner is like a pie-eating
contest, where the prize is more pie.’” She smiled expectantly.
I laughed at her joke. “Well, science isn’t like that. When you’re successful in the
laboratory, they reward you by taking you out of the laboratory.”
She looked at me over her wine glass. “Are you relaxing at last?”
“Why, yes. But why do you say, ‘at last’?”
“Because you seemed very wound up when you arrived. Maybe the wine is working its
magic.”
“I’ve left the cell phone at home for the evening, too. Deliberately. But I feel naked.” I
patted my empty pocket. “There’s some things happening at work. I’d rather deal with
them tomorrow.”
“What sorts of things?” When she asked the direct question, I felt compelled to answer.
Perhaps this is what made her a successful lawyer. I hoped I would never be in a position
where I had to lie to her.
“I have a research group of seventeen people, including myself,” I said. “It’s like a little
village, with its own alliances and rivalries and blood feuds, and a gossip mill, too. For
instance, this afternoon, I was hit with an anonymous accusation that I was behaving
inappropriately with one of my female grad students.”
Why had I told her that? Stupid, stupid! But her eyes were doing it to me. They were
like whirlpools into which I wanted to hurl myself and sink forever. I wanted to confess
everything I’d ever done wrong, or thought about doing wrong, or not done well enough.
“That’s serious, isn’t it?”
“I could lose my job. It’s as serious as faking scientific results. Murder and mayhem are a
long way down the scale of serious from those two things.”
“Does the fact that you were just divorced have anything to do with it?”
“They’re two separate issues,” I said, draining my wine glass.
“I don’t think they are,” she said flatly. Her gaze reached far down into my soul, but how
could she have guessed that?
“Can we change the subject?” The anonymous note had scared me and released a year of
tightly suppressed tension over the divorce and the secret affair with Lisa. Speaking of it
suddenly punctured the dam, and I had to swallow quickly to suppress a sob. I was
heading rapidly toward a serious emotional reaction. I didn’t want to break down and cry
in front of this woman, and I had to stop it.
“Barry, it’s very presumptuous of me, but I already consider you a friend. I’d like to know
about the things that make you happy, and the things that make you unhappy. Right
now, you are not a happy person.”
Not knowing what to say, I broke off and went to the kitchen counter to refill my wine
glass. When I returned, I saw that her wine was still half full. When she sipped, she only
touched her lovely lips to the surface, allowing a few drops onto her tongue.
“Barry, give me ten dollars.”
“What?”
“I said, give me ten dollars.”
“Why?” I was puzzled. Was she going to show me one of those silly jokes you make by
folding a bill, like the ‘9/11 Devil’ illusion?
“Just do it.” This time her voice had an edge.
I took out my wallet and found a twenty. “Will this do?”
She rolled it up and tucked it into her cleavage. “That was a retainer, Barry. Now that I’
ve taken money from you, I’m bound by law to keep secret anything you tell me. Legal
Ethics 101, Lesson Number One. You can tell me anything, anything at all.” She gazed
into my eyes, and my stomach turned to liquid.
“I…ah…”
“Why don’t you start by telling me about your divorce?”
“What do you charge? You’re a lawyer, right?”
“My rate is $800 an hour, but the first meeting is always free.”
“Well, if you aren’t going to be bored by all this…”
“I’m not in family law. I don’t hear these stories every day. Tell me.”
I fidgeted for a moment, sipped some wine, and finally spoke. “I met Shirley in grad
school. She worked as a junior secretary in the Department office…” I went on to tell
Rhiannon how Shirley and I had courted, in spite of my long hours, and married just
before my PhD was awarded, how she had followed me from Michigan to Tufts to Toronto
and finally to Arizona, and then how she’d grown increasingly unhappy as my hours and
commitments increased.
“Lots of wives put up with that schedule. What special thing happened to trigger the
divorce?”
I shook my head.
“In a situation that gets slowly worse, there’s always a tendency to adapt to it. It’s like
the proverbial frog in the pot of water. Heat the water slowly enough, and the frog doesn’t
notice until it’s too late and it’s boiled to death. But for the frog to hop out – or a divorce
to happen – there needs to be a trigger, something that pushes the situation over the
edge. Perhaps an adultery suddenly discovered, perhaps only a badly chosen anniversary
present—”
“I had an affair,” I blurted out. “And so did she. I think she was retaliating, but by then,
we weren’t communicating at all. I still don’t know which one of us went first.”
“Is there any connection between this affair and the anonymous note about the student?”
I told my mouth to say ‘no’, but the word that came out was, “Yes.” I stared down at the
burgundy tile floor, and the lump came back up in my throat.
Rhiannon’s voice was quiet and soothing. “Tell me about the student, Barry.”
I continued looking at the floor. I’d wanted for a long time to open up to someone,
anyone, and this was the opportunity. I attempted to speak, choked, cleared my throat,
and began at last, “She’s a tall, slim, blonde woman. She has beautiful, pale blue eyes.
After her first year of classes, when she started her research, she needed a lot of hands-on
help. I spent hours nearly every day, and every weekend, working side by side with her.”
“And yet you say that your job prevents you from spending much time in the lab? Why
did you suddenly have so much time for her? As the group leader, you could have
delegated this, right?”
“You don’t know her. She’s very talented, very demanding, very ambitious, and from the
first day, never deferred to anyone. The hierarchy means nothing to her. When she
wanted my help, she wasn’t about to settle for someone further down the food chain. And
did I say she was beautiful? One day…” I searched for the words.
The moment of silence stretched toward the point of embarrassment and Rhiannon finally
rescued me. “…and one day, one of you touched the other affectionately, and you kissed,
and pretty soon, you were renting a motel room. Am I close?”
I shook my head. “Not close.” I knew already that I was going to tell this stranger
everything. Whether or not it was a wise thing to do, no longer mattered. It was the eyes.
“How close?” She recrossed her legs, giving me an instant’s view of a long, solid thigh.
She was wearing pantyhose today.
I hesitated, but the confession valve had been opened, and was not easy to close. “After a
long Sunday evening working together on some cell cultures, she followed me into my
office, locked the door, and insisted that I have sex with her, right there.”
“In your office? That must have made a mess.” Rhiannon’s expression never changed, not
even the wisp of a smile. Her professional attitude made it easier to keep talking.
“Not the way she wanted it. She made me…” I hesitated. “How much of this do you want
to hear?”
“As much as you want to tell me, and I suspect there’s a lot more.” She smiled and
leaned toward me. I couldn’t help seeing more of her cleavage, while at the same time
trying not to stare like an adolescent. “Barry, I dare you to name a single human activity
that I haven’t heard about in great detail. You’d be amazed at the self-destructive things
big-time corporate executives do, and I have to help pick up the pieces. I know from
experience that things like you’re telling me have a way of surfacing at the wrong time, in
embarrassing places. It’s best I know them now. All the details, please.”
“I…I can’t.”
“Don’t be shy. You’ve told me this much.”
“No,” I said. “Maybe another time.” I looked up and saw that Rhiannon’s face had
flushed, and beads of sweat shone on her upper lip. Apparently, she wasn’t that detached
from her work. Between her forceful presence and the wine, my familiar moral anchors
had pulled loose. I no longer knew whether I was telling too much.
“Maybe later,” she agreed. “But do you feel better, having told your legal representative
about it?”
I thought about it. “Right now, I feel embarrassed and humiliated. But I guess you’re
right. I do feel better getting it off my chest.” It was true. I hadn’t realized how heavily
the guilt sat on me until the weight of it was gone. I’d told my story to this beautiful
woman with the soft, musical voice, and felt relief for the first time in more than a year.
“Tell me something,” said Rhiannon. “What did you two talk about in this motel room?
When you weren’t otherwise occupied, that is.”
I pondered. “Nothing really. We never talked about much at all. It was all about the sex.”
“What would happen if you stopped having sex with her?”
“I can’t.” I paused, but she waited me out. “I can’t stop. I need her.”
“But sooner or later, you’re going to be found out. It’s inevitable. You know that, don’t
you?”
“I suppose, but...but going without her is like being under water, and there’s someone
waiting on the shore with a gun. Sooner or later, you’re going to come to the surface and
take your chances against the gun. You need to breathe more than you need safety. I
need her so much I’m willing to take any risk.”
She stared at me for a long moment. “Later on,” she said quietly, “we’ll figure out what to
do about it.”
“Rhiannon, I can’t afford your rates.”
She laughed. “Barry, I was just joking about the money. I want you to be a friend. My life
is like yours. In law, people use one another all the time, and you never know when your
friend this week will betray you next week. You only know they will, someday. You and I
come from worlds that seem different, but they’re more alike than I thought. But I need a
friend who isn’t connected with law in some way. It would make me happy to be your
confidant and good friend.”
She touched the twenty dollar bill that rested in her cleavage. “But I’ll keep this retainer,
so you’ll still feel comfortable talking to me. You’re still officially a client.”
She stood up. “Now let’s eat.”
Chapter 7
Rhiannon had put me at ease, and I was able to breathe deeply again. The tension that
had threatened to unman me earlier had dissipated. When we went into the kitchen, the
smell of the spicy food restored my appetite, too. She asked me to help her get the
curried beef and potatoes from the oven. While she got everything ready to serve, I set
the table and lit the candle in the center.
Over dinner, she told tales of some of her old cases, without naming names. Since my
schedule left me little time for newspapers or TV, I was completely unaware of some of
the more public scandals and lawsuits she’d been involved in.
On many occasions, she’d represented the sort of corporate pirate who looted pension
accounts, cheated stockholders, and walked away scot-free and even tax-free. She gave
me some details as to how it was done, but it came down to two simple facts: no one was
beyond the influence of money, and no one was without secrets. The laws themselves
were generally written to protect corporate predators, but when they went beyond the
law, there were still ways to do it without leaving a trace and without risk of prosecution.
“It’s not that different from academia,” I joked when she finished describing one of the
more shocking and egregious, and entirely legal, robberies she had helped pull off.
“You can see why it withers me up inside”, she said. “Corporate law is mostly about big
corporations eating little corporations, and little people, too. Sometimes two big
corporations will go to the mat over something. Those cases interest me most because I
usually want them both to lose.”
“If it bothers you so much, why do you stay in it?”
“Well, at first, it was the money. A million dollars a year is enough to buy anyone’s soul,
especially a young partner six years out of law school. But once I’d made enough money
to live comfortably for the rest of my life, it was more about the ego trip. I’m seen as a
corporate warrior. I’ve been told that my name alone has sometimes forced the opposition
to settle.”
“If you’ve got so much money, can’t you use it to support some of the little guys against
the large corporations?”
She shrugged and refilled our wine glasses. “I’ve tried, I really have, but ultimately, it’s a
losing battle. The winner is always the one with the most money and the willingness to
spend it. When they can’t win in court, a big company will just go to the State
Legislature or to Congress and get the laws rewritten to suit them.”
I sipped at the wine. It was my fourth, or perhaps my fifth, glass, and I was feeling a
little unsteady. The meal was finished, and I helped carry the dishes to the sink.
“I wash and you dry?” I said.
She smiled. “No need. I have someone for that.”
“I guess I’ll have to be getting back,” I said.
“No need for that, either. I’m enjoying our evening together. Do you play poker?”
I thought for an instant of strip poker, and how much I’d love to see that magnificent
body uncovered, partly if not entirely. I said, “I haven’t for some years, but I was pretty
good at it once.”
“I’m very good at it. It’s the only table game I like. Poker’s not about the cards, or luck,
or abstractions. It’s about reading thoughts, guessing intentions of real people. It’s about
conflict, mano a mano.”
“No one would ever mistake you for a mano,” I said, eager to slip in a little flattery. “But
I hardly ever lost in grad school.”
She chuckled. “We’ll see who’s the mano in this game, tough guy. I’ll send you home
wearing a Hefty bag. Shall we play for a quarter a chip?”
She was very skilled, and she had an additional weapon, her cleavage, that deep cleft of
creamy tanned skin, which made concentration almost impossible. I imagined touching
that skin with my lips. I imagined falling into it and becoming lost between those
magnificent breasts.
She liked to win, too. On the first hand, I should have seen this when she couldn’t
conceal her glee, singing “ladies and eights” and overwhelming my pair of kings. After
seizing the pot four hands in a row, she was as flushed as she’d been when I’d confessed
my sex life to her. But during play, she went blank as a wall, impossible to read.
Two hours later, I was sixty dollars lighter, twenty for her ‘retainer’, and forty, lost a
dollar or two at a time. She won three hands for my every two. Over and over, she had me
raising through two or even three rounds of betting, confident that I had her figured out.
And I’d lose again.
She’d seen me to the door, and said, “We have to do this again. This is the nicest evening
I’ve had in a long time.” She opened her arms, inviting me to hug her. Her body was hard
as an Olympic athlete’s. She smelled less of perfume and more of woman by now, more
fascinating than any artificial scent. “And we’ll work on that problem of yours, soon. I’ll
call.” Before releasing me, her lips touched my neck and sent a tingle rippling down my
spine to my crotch.
I’ll call, she’d said. I knew then that I’d never be far from a phone until I heard from her.
Chapter 8
In our world, Saturday and Sunday were scarcely different than other days of the week.
To be sure, there were no secretaries and fewer University services; only the library and
the Student Center cafeteria were open, and the campus walkways and lobbies were
nearly deserted. But in the halls of the Molecular Immunology Department, it could have
been any day of the week, or for that matter, any time of day. Grad students bustled up
and down the hall with racks of culture bottles and instrument printouts. Intense
conversations and chalkboard debates went on without pause in offices and labs. In each
lab, solitary students and post-docs sat on stools at their benches, pipetting, preparing
solutions, counting cells, and all the other little tasks intended to move them forward,
inch by inch, to their dissertation or their next publication.
In principle, students were not required to be in the lab on weekends, but since the rest
of the group was there, social pressure eventually forced everyone to come in and work at
least an eight-hour day on Saturday and Sunday. Most worked on until late evening, as
they did on weekdays.
This schedule took its toll. My divorce was the fifth broken marriage in the group. It was
the long hours that really put an end to Shirley and I. The infidelities were only a
symptom. Most of the other group members were unattached or in casual relationships.
Only George Chaudhury and one of the post-docs remained married, apparently
successfully.
With my first cup of coffee, I sat at my desk and daydreamed about my evening with
Rhiannon. On impulse, I Googled her name on the computer, and clicked on Images.
About two dozen thumbnail photos appeared. Most were identical, a demure,
professionally posed photograph on pages of the website for the law firm of Meckle, Lane,
and Shannon, P.C. The same photo appeared with articles in law magazines and some
newspaper articles.
But one magazine photo showed her full length, escorted by a younger, shorter man. The
cameraman had clearly enjoyed himself. She wore a tight skirt and heels, and her
wonderful muscular legs were clearly visible as she strode toward the camera. She looked
over her shoulder at her escort, and a merry laugh lit her face as if he’d just told her a
joke. Her white teeth gleamed from the photo. She was radiant! She was magnificent!
Excitement ran through my belly and my arm quivered as I clicked on ‘Print’.
I looked up and froze when I saw Lisa in the doorway. She couldn’t see the computer
screen, but I cancelled the displayed image. The printer ‘data’ light came on.
“Barry, I need to show you something,” she said. Her face was paler than usual, and her
eyes were dark, as if she’d been crying. To see Lisa, of all people, like this was
frightening.
The printer whined as the gears came up to speed. As I heard the paper pick up inside, I
tried to think of a way to distract her. I jumped up and came around the desk to see what
she was holding in her hand, just as the image began to roll from the paper chute.
“I found this pushed under my apartment door this morning.” She held out a piece of
paper, creased where it had been folded to fit an envelope.
In the center of the page, it said, ‘You’re fucking Professor Croft.’
“Close the door,” I said. While she was doing that, I took Rhiannon’s picture from the
printer and slipped it into a drawer. I leaned back against my desk. Sudden sweat chilled
my forehead and my stomach felt empty and aching.
She leaned against the desk beside me, nearly hip to hip, and asked, “Do you know
anything about this?” I smelled her scent, but at the moment, it did nothing for me.
I debated whether to tell her about the note that went to the graduate dean, and decided
against it. I shook my head. “Do you have any idea where it came from?” I said.
“I do know it scares the shit out of me. They came to my apartment. They know where I
live.” She reached out and touched my wrist, and withdrew it again quickly. I had never
seen her frightened before.
“I’ve got more to worry about than you do. No student has ever been expelled over … for
doing that. But more than one faculty has been given the boot. ”
“But if you’re gone, I’ll have to start my thesis work all over again. Three years down the
drain.”
She wasn’t concerned with the consequences to me. I had no illusions, and was neither
surprised nor hurt. From the very beginning, she’d used me and never pretended
affection. But she was definitely concerned about how it would play out for her.
I said, “Buddy Lester would take over, you know. There’s a structure in this group that’ll
survive the loss of any one of us. That’s the advantage of a large group.”
“One thing is for sure, Barry. Lester wouldn’t let me work on the B-1B. He wants us to
destroy it. He wants it gone from the face of the Earth”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Back to the issue at hand.” I tapped the
paper. “Is there anyone you suspect? Any ex-boyfriends? Stalkers?”
She studied the backs of her hands. “I imagine almost anyone in the group. Some of them
are jealous of me.”
“Because of the B-1B?”
“Partly, but they think I have special access to you, and that you’re playing favorites. I’
m the only grad student here that ever got three publications while still a grad, and two
more in press.”
“You know that’s because you work hard and you’re smart.” In part, I was lying. I‘d
worked harder to get her work published than I had for my other students, partly out of
respect for her talent, but partly because of her other, special talents. But I wasn’t going
to confess that now.
“That doesn’t stop them from talking.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “No matter
what you and I do together in private, have I ever asked you to give me an advantage
over the others?”
“You know you haven’t.” That, at least, was the truth. I had helped her, but she hadn’t
asked.
“What should I do?” A tear had gathered at the corner of one eye, which frightened me a
little. Her typical response to a problem or challenge was to attack it head-on. I
wondered why she hadn’t stormed through the lab, angrily waving the paper and
interrogating her colleagues until someone confessed? That would have been her normal
reaction.
I put my hand on her wrist, finding it cool and clammy. “I suggest you leave it be for
now. It may have been someone making a wild guess. I mean, look at the wording. Does it
suggest anything to you?”
She peered at the note again, and shook her head. “I don’t know. Is it supposed to be
blackmail, or…”
“That’s not what I mean. They called me ‘Professor’. How many people in our lab call me
that?”
“No one.” She wrinkled her brow. “I see what you mean. And they said we…” She went
silent and looked around her. She whispered, “What we did…we never did that. Not once.
Is that what you mean?”
“Not that I haven’t wanted to,” I whispered back, smiling. Her scent excited me, in spite
of the circumstances. “It’s just somebody trying to provoke something. Maybe even a
coincidence. They might not know anything about us at all.”
She smiled weakly. “I guess I should just wait and see if more shit happens.”
Chapter 9
A few minutes later, Chaudhury and Lester showed up to remind me of our staff meeting.
It was nearly eleven o’clock, an hour later than scheduled, but prearranged meeting times
were always approximate. Lisa didn’t appear, so it was just the three of us. Today, as
most days, the staff meeting covered drab information about budgets and project status.
As we were winding down, Buddy spoke up. “Since Lisa’s not here, can we have a quiet
and rational debate about the B-1B thing?”
“Your terrorist weapon?” I said with mild sarcasm.
Buddy’s eyes were small, and they narrowed further against his chubby face. “Barry, I
want you to tell me why someone who might lay their hands on a sample of B-1B, by
whatever means, and has the facilities and motivation, won’t use it to build some kind of
superplague. I can think of a dozen virus diseases that spread like crazy. We throw them
off in a week or so, and don’t even notice. But make them invisible to the immune
system, and what else do you have but the next Great Plague?”
I pursed my lips and pondered a moment. He’d made this argument before, and I’d
dismissed his worries. This was a research laboratory, and our business was generating
new knowledge. We were not being paid to frighten the public with stories of unstoppable
viruses. But this time, I asked the question. “Do you think it’s time to bring in the folks
at CDC?”
“Barry, it was time twelve months ago.”
“I’d feel happier if we had more data on it. We only have the skimpiest notion how the
ten genes interact. In fact, I’m not sure there’s only ten. Right now, we’d be going there
with hardly more than a scare story. What do we have to back it up?”
“We’ve got dead rabbits and mice. The animals had no business even becoming infected
with the virus.”
“Tell you what, Buddy. I’m going down to CDC next week for a couple of days. Suppose I
talk in confidence to a couple of infectious disease specialists I know, and get their
reaction, on a what-if basis?”
George had been quiet through all this, but now he spoke up. “I’m inclined to agree with
Buddy. The downside chances are small, but if it turns out the virus will infect humans,
the worst-case outcomes are awful. I think you should do it.”
Buddy interrupted. “I should come with you. United front and all that.”
I pondered a moment. “They’ll want to hear directly from Lisa. It’s her project and her
data. I’ll take her along.”
Buddy’s face reddened, and he and George glanced at one another, just the shortest
possible meeting of the eyes. How much did they know? Had Buddy sent the notes?
George? No, George would never have done that. Buddy didn’t shy from confrontation,
and would have come to me directly. He wouldn’t have circulated anonymous notes.
Had they received notes of their own? The thought chilled me through.
After we’d gone our separate ways, I began my daily tour of the lab, which resembled
‘grand rounds’ of my med school days. I’d seek out students and post-docs, look at their
notes, talk about their work, and recommend experiments. A few benches were vacant. I
knew that one of the younger students was off with her visiting mother, touring the city.
But two students were missing without having cleared it with me. I made a mental note.
Too much of that and I’d have to put a word in their ears.
Lisa’s bench was in a small lab she shared with two other students, who lived in constant
terror of her demands and rages. She was writing in her notebook when I found her there.
When I came near, she closed it and leaned an elbow protectively on the cover. She
cocked an eyebrow, as if barely able to tolerate the interruption.
“George and Buddy have finally convinced me we ought to take this B-1B work higher,” I
said.
“Higher?” She glared suspiciously at me. I expected trouble if I even seemed to be
threatening her turf.
“Meaning CDC-higher. You should come with me to Atlanta on Wednesday and talk to
some people about it.”
“What good would that do? The best case here is that someone would steal my work. The
worst case is that some military asshole will want to put it in a bug and use it to kill
people in some fucking Third World country.”
“How could that happen? We have the only B-1B there is.”
“And how long would that last once the cat’s out of the bag? They’ll force you to hand it
over. Even make you feel good about it.” She lowered her voice, mimicking a generic
bureaucrat. “‘Oh, Dr. Croft, we want to help you study how the complex goes about
turning off the immune system. Trust us. We’re the Government.’”
“Lisa, sooner or later, we’re going to have to publish your work. It’s part of the process.”
“Those fuckers can put a secrecy seal on my work. Lock it up like Fort Knox. It’s been
done before. What if, after all that work, I can’t put it on my c.v. or even talk about it at
the immunology meeting? How’s that going to help my career?”
“It’s beginning to look like an issue of responsibility, Lisa. We’ve got something
potentially dangerous here.”
“And it’ll still be here when I’ve finished my thesis,” she said. “Then you can go turn it
over to the military babykillers if you want. In the meantime, there’s never been a more
careful lab worker than me. No one’s going to be infected by that virus, and all my stuff is
kept in a safe when I’m not in the lab. Which is never.”
I shook my head. “Lisa, we’ve got to go to Atlanta. Buddy, or maybe even George or Amos
Burton, could blow the whistle on this and get your work shut down.”
She snorted. “Yeah, I can just see the headlines: ‘Arizona lab invents killer cold virus.’
Shit! Okay, I’ll come and tell the bastards where to go and how to get there.”
Back in my office, I sat at my desk, stomach churning after the confrontation with Lisa. I
took a couple of Tums from my drawer, and saw the printout of Rhiannon Lane’s picture I’
d left there. I gazed again at the perfect legs, and the happy laughter on her face, and
the long black hair, and how she towered over her escort.
The longer I stared at her, the more I wanted to hear her voice again. I found her card
and dialed the phone. The sound of her voice sent a shiver up my spine.
I said to her, “I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed last night. Thanks. It helped
to get things off my chest.”
Over the phone line, I heard echoing voices, as if she were in a large hall. “I’m glad you
came over. I spend so many evenings alone and it was so nice to have someone intelligent
to talk to.”
I didn’t remember my sounding particularly intelligent. In fact, I must have sounded like
the Self-Destructive Asshole of the Universe. But my talk with her had been purgative and
left my spirit temporarily calmed. “Are you somewhere?”
“Yes, I’m at the airport, and they’ve just called my flight. But I’ll call when I get back.”
“Have a good trip, Rhiannon.” I put the Tums back in the bottle. They were no longer
needed.
Chapter 10
Late Tuesday, Lisa and I arrived at our hotel on the east side of Atlanta and checked in.
Lisa was given a room on the third floor, and they put me on the fourth. By 10:00 pm, I
tapped softly on her door.
She was clad in a thin terrycloth robe. She’d showered, and her hair streamed wetly over
her shoulders.
“You’re just in time. How about getting those clothes off and drying my hair?” She tossed
the towel at me and sat at a chair in front of the mirror while I hurried to undress. I stood
behind her chair and rubbed her hair with the towel, as she closed her eyes and rolled her
head from side to side. She insisted on using the electric dryer herself, as I waited
awkwardly behind her, fully erect. After a time, she had me brush her hair to a golden
gloss while she closed her eyes and purred in satisfaction.
Finally, she stood and removed the robe with a flourish and posed for me, canting her
narrow pelvis from side to side, with a hand on her hip and an inviting smile on her lips.
Knowing my minor fetish for jewelry, she reached into her overnight case and put on a
thin necklace of rubies set in gold.
“Where’s your turquoise?” I asked. “It’s my favorite.”
“Oh, I left it in the lab by accident. Don’t worry; it’s safe.”
“It’s okay. I like the rubies, too.”
She led me by the hand to the easy chair and arranged herself with her knees resting on
the arms, while I sank to my knees before her.
The leisurely brushing had put her in the mood, and she quickly exploded in orgasm. No
sooner had she come down from it, than she held my face snugged against her and let a
slow, delicious one build up until she came in a crying, gasping crescendo. Later, she
stretched under the sheets like a satisfied cat. Resting her head on my shoulder, she
toyed with my chest hair and teased my nipples while I gasped and squirmed. Her taste
was still in my mouth and my body buzzed with arousal.
“You’re so tense,” she said. “Are you going to be able to sleep tonight?”
“I don’t know.”
She said, “It’s important you be rested in the morning. Go get a condom and we’ll take
care of things.” I rummaged through my overnight kit, turning up a strip of Trojans, held
in wait just for this occasional event, and put one on. I got back into bed and she cuddled
up against me.
“Okay,” she said, leaning on an elbow. “You take care of yourself while I watch.”
“Lisa, please. It’s been nearly three months. Please.”
She took my latex-covered cock in her fingers. “I’m just kidding, Barry. Don’t take things
so seriously.” She moved her hand, so slowly, while my muscles tensed and my back
arched. In just a few seconds, I grunted and convulsed in agony and pleasure while she
giggled in my ear.
I caught my breath, and said, “Sometimes I feel cheated as a man. Over two months of
lying awake wanting this, and it’s all over in ten seconds. But your climaxes never seem
to end, and you can have them over and over.”
“But I can tell, the tension’s all gone out of you. You can sleep now.”
“The climax was good, but the rest – your bossiness, the going down, the teasing – that’s
what makes sex with you so worthwhile and fulfilling.” I wanted to add, ‘I love you’, but
she wouldn’t believe me, and it wouldn’t be true in any case.
She whispered in my ear, “I know you so well. A good orgasm flushes all the wimp out of
you and makes you the aggressive bastard you need to be tomorrow. I don’t want you
giving up the B-1B until my thesis is between covers, and all the publications are in
press. That’s the line in the sand I want you to draw. Inform them, ask for advice, and
give up nothing. Do you understand?”
I nodded, still coming down from the heights where she’d taken me.
Thanks to Lisa’s caresses, I slept in blissful peace, waking only when she shook me. After
a modest breakfast, we found the single-story complex that housed the Emerging Diseases
Division of the Centers for Disease Control, known affectionately as CDC/EDD. We
checked our cell phones at Security and waited while our brief cases were searched. After
passing through a metal detector, we were given red VISITOR badges to hang from our
necks.
All visitors had to be escorted, so we waited near the security checkpoint. In a few
moments, Dr. Hoffer himself came to meet us, his own blue badge swinging with his walk.
He was nearly bald and about fifty, just a few years older than me. “It’s so good to see
you, Barry. It’s been six months at least.”
“My bad, Pete. It’s been ten months,” I said. “This is Lisa Grissom. Lisa, Dr. Peter
Hoffer.”
Hoffer shook her hand with a broad grin, clearly enjoying the sight of such a beautiful
woman so early in the day. Lisa glanced down shyly and seemed to shrink, assuming the
role of a proper subordinate. We followed Hoffer through a maze of halls to his office,
where we were offered styrofoam cups of coffee to sip while he and I exchanged news.
Lisa sat silent and still throughout, alert as a student should be.
“Before the time gets too short,” I said. “Do you want to hear a preview of Lisa’s work
before the seminar?”
He shrugged. “No, let’s wait, so she only has to go over it once.” He smiled at her, and
she briefly smiled back and looked at the floor.
“I mean there’re national security implications,” I said. “Like I told you on the phone.”
He nodded soberly. “Everyone that’ll be there is cleared to the Secret level. And the need-
to-know is obvious.”
At ten minutes to 11:00, we strolled down to the seminar room, where Lisa loaded her
talk into the projector from a little thumb drive. She studied her notes, her lips moving
slightly, while Hoffer and I continued talking. Soon, people began to filter into the room,
ID tags swinging from their necks, notebooks in hand.
When the room was filled, Hoffer briefly introduced Lisa, who sat quietly with her hands
folded. She looked at me, a little nervous, which I knew perfectly well was part of her
act. I smiled back, encouraging.
The introduction over, she stood up and clicked on the first slide, which she
paraphrased. “I’m here to talk about a viral gene sequence with unusual effects on the
mammalian immune system. The gene complex has the property of turning off the
immune system and rendering an animal unable to respond to infection by the most
benign virus.”
As she spoke, her voice rose in pitch and volume, she stood tall and erect, and her
bearing grew more self-assured as she morphed back into her real self. “The original
purpose of this work was to develop a strain of adenovirus to use in gene therapy. We
tried to develop a virus that wouldn’t trigger an immune reaction but would be self-
limiting. Once it had done its job, we wanted it to self-destruct.
“Well, that’s not what happened. One of the electroporation experiments yielded a virus
that would infect and kill cells, but the immune system never gets the message.
Moreover, when we took the altered part of the genome out of the virus, we found we
could put it into other viruses and it would do the same thing. Even an RNA transcript
could be put into RNA viruses.
“In the most recent experiments, we went straight from cells to whole animals, mice and
rabbits. The adenovirus 38Q, which doesn’t normally infect rodents, killed the animals
100% if they were bearing the B-1B complex.”
Some of the people around the table exchanged glances. Others scribbled frantically in
their notebooks. Having caught their interest, Lisa began describing in detail the
experiments that led to the isolation of the B-1B gene complex. I watched in admiration
as Lisa, fueled by my tutoring, boosted by her natural talent, and magnified by her
striking beauty, electrified the room.
Lisa talked well into lunch hour, but the group hung on her words and no one left. At the
end, hands went up. She answered the storm of questions in measured tones, revealing as
little as possible. Most were questions of a technical nature – experimental design, choice
of methods, and so on.
As the questions dwindled and some people prepared to leave, a handsome young man
with curly black hair piped up from the back of the room, “Are you aware that your B-1B
complex could be used to create a biological weapon?”
He seemed unaware that the issue was so obvious to everyone in the room that it hadn’t
been mentioned. Back in our own lab, a question this naive would have unleashed a
withering blast of Lisa’s sarcasm. Here, among those who controlled our futures, she kept
her cool and replied, “We are aware. As soon as the possibility occurred to us, we made
arrangements to come here and seek advice.”
The man continued, “How can you keep someone from stealing the B-1B complex?”
“Well, the first step is secrecy. Everyone in the group is required to keep quiet about our
work outside the lab. Second, all the samples of B-1B are kept in a safe in our cold room.
Only Dr. Croft and I have the combination.”
“Yes, but you have to actually do the experiments out in the lab, don’t you? Are you
there 24 hours a day?”
Lisa’s answer, “As a matter of fact, I am,” raised a few chuckles. “The B-1B is only
handled in our BSL-3 labs – you only get in with a card swipe, and all entries and exits
are logged. We know who’s been in the lab, when, and for how long. I autoclave all the
trash, and then I personally take it to the incinerator and stand there while it burns.
None of the B-1B DNA will be getting out of my lab.”
He shook his head, as if it was the most ridiculous thing he’d heard all day. “If everything
you’ve shown us today can be verified, it seems to me you ought to be handling this
material in a BSL-4 lab.” The Biological Safety Level 4 lab was the highest level of
biological protection, involving moon suits and multiple-filtered air supplies. They were
enormously expensive to build and use.
He added, “And your security arrangements are stone age.”
Lisa’s face reddened, but she replied as I would have, with evasion. “We are here to
discuss that very subject.”
Hoffer stood up and closed the meeting, and most people filed out of the room. The curly-
haired man came forward and introduced himself. His badge was brown, different from the
others, and identified him as Paul Fortino, Major, assigned to Fort Detrick, the Army’s
biological warfare lab. He wore only street clothes and didn’t have a military look at all.
Hoffer said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve invited Major Fortino to join us.”
I knew Lisa was watching me, and I said to Hoffer, “I asked to speak only with you about
this. I don’t want the military involved at any level until we’ve talked.” I tried to put an
edge on my voice.
Fortino said, “I’m a scientist like you, Dr. Croft. MD from Columbia, and a PhD in
microbial physiology from Johns Hopkins. I’ve got 30 papers in genetic engineering of
viruses and pathogenic bacteria. I’m on your team.”
“I doubt it,” I said, glaring.
Hoffer said, “Major Fortino isn’t here at my whim. Or his, for that matter. There are
provisions in the Patriot Act and several Presidential Executive Orders that require me to
involve him. You acted correctly in bringing this to us.”
“Lisa is close to finishing her thesis,” I huffed. “I don’t need all her hard work derailed by
bureaucratic bullshit. She has a brilliant career ahead of her. If her work is locked up in
some classified cabinet somewhere, it will be as if she never did it. She’ll go off to her
post-doc with no publications to show for her five years’ work.”
Hoffer held his hands flat, as if smoothing sand. “Before anybody jumps to conclusions
here, why don’t we get some lunch and talk about this?”
The autumn day was pleasant when we climbed into Hoffer’s car and drove to a little Thai
place not far away. As we walked through the parking lot to the restaurant, Hoffer and I
discussed unrelated funding matters, but I was distracted by the conversation between
Fortino and Lisa, who walked behind. He was asking questions about her family, her life
before grad school, things that a man might ask when hitting on a beautiful woman.
An acid ache boiled in my stomach. Jealousy. I hadn’t felt it since I’d discovered Shirley’
s affair.
Go to Ch. 11-15
