Hide and Seek
an excerpt

Prologue:
Stewart Finch was a man about to die. He couldn’t hear for the sound of his heart pounding. Fear pulsed through every vein. There was nowhere left to run, no place left to hide. They would find him, before morning. He had only a few precious hours left to drop the package.

With shaking hands, Stewart removed his glasses, and tried in vain to wipe them clear. He couldn’t see two feet ahead in the pouring rain, and he couldn’t see six inches ahead without his glasses. He’d remember to remove them when they found him. Then perhaps he wouldn’t see what they were going to do to him. A noise startled him out of his worry. No headlights. The alley was dimly lit, and he was crouched down behind a dumpster. What a place to die.

Ha! To think that just a few short months ago his main worry had been which angle he would pursue for his topic as keynote speaker at the Awards ceremony. He’d been arguing that with Larry at the water cooler. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to be standing there right now, dressed in their lab coats, geeks among geeks. Poor Larry. He was already dead. He knew the secret too, though he had not been meant to find out.

Stewart drew a long, shaky breath, then dared to pull out a pack of cigarettes and light one. Even a dying man had a right to a last request. This vice would be his. It wasn’t like the tiny red end on the cigarette was going to give him away. These guys were good. They were professionals, and they were going to find him no matter what. He might as well smoke now, as later. Ironic. For all his scientific genius, all his brilliant logical deductions, Stewart Finch could not find a solution to his impending demise.

He put the butt in his mouth and inhaled. For one blissful second, Stewart felt like Humphrey Bogart, the tragic hero in a trench coat, doomed yet redeemed. Then he doubled over, unable to control the coughing fit. Because Stewart didn’t smoke. This was just ridiculous. He was going to be gunned down because he couldn’t handle his first cigarette. A noise behind him made Stewart almost jump out of the shadows where he hid. It was just a rat, but the small scurrying kind. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. Then he wished he hadn’t because he almost started coughing again. Time to move on. Scanning the alley both ways for the hundredth time, and seeing nothing but the rain on his glasses, Stewart headed to the street a hundred yards south. He could see the familiar red drop box. Last pick up was at 11:00 p.m. for local delivery 9:00 a.m. the next morning. He clutched the cold plastic FedEx bag closer, drawing some sense of security from its contents. Whether he lived or died, this was going to be in Nora’s hands tomorrow morning. If that was his last move in this chess game, it would be a good one.
* * *

“He put the package in the delivery box,” said Viktor Rastov. He spoke rapidly, in Russian, because he only spoke English when he had to, and with a heavy Russian accent. They had brought him to the US for this matter specifically, to assist Anatoly. Otherwise, Viktor would be tending his own “garden” back in Moscow.
“See, I told you he would. He will follow our orders, but he thinks we don’t know everything. We are not rocket scientists. But then, neither is he.” Anatoly Karmenko smiled at his own joke, while Viktor laughed. “We are not interested in rockets, lucky for him. We are interested in what went in the package. Watch him. Make sure he does not leave the alley.”

The two men sat comfortably in the heated black Lexus sedan, engine idling, at the far end of the alley. The air inside was grey with cigarette smoke. They had laughed to watch Stewart get soaked to the skin in the rain as they remained warm and dry behind the bullet proof tinted glass. This scientist Finch had no idea they were the ones watching him now. He thought they would be someone else, and he was right to be afraid. The others who were after him would show no mercy, especially now that he had sent the package. Finch stood better odds with Anatoly, who happened to front the Russian mob here on the good old continental US of A.

“We have a score to settle, and Mr. Finch, the scientist, will be our means to an end. Our means to the end, if all goes according to plan,” Anatoly mused. “Most unfortunately, now I am most familiar with the project Mr. Finch has been working on. Not only has it cut deeply into our profit margins, it has negatively impacted the business of our friends and allies, thereby impacting our business. That is unacceptable. No matter who is responsible, they must pay. But it is the deaths of Sergei and Anya for which they must truly pay.” Anger, riddled with grief, deepened Anatoly’s voice, as he reflected on the events that had brought him here, tonight. “Mr. Finch did not kill my brother and his wife, but his project did. The people who ordered him to make that stuff, the people who decided to use that chemical, take that action, they are the ones who must pay,” said Anatoly, dark and grim. “We have some names, now. It is becoming clearer how all this is working. But I want all the facts. I believe that in the package was that project. We need to find out who is receiving the package, and why.” Because vengeance was the order of the day, and he would not be interrupted in his mission to serve it up. “When he moves, we follow him,” Anatoly instructed Viktor.

“What about the package? How do you want to find out who it goes to, and what he is sending?”

Anatoly smiled. A cold, hard smile from a man who knew his business well. “We make it easy on ourselves. We will ask Mr. Finch directly, da? But let’s see what happens next. We don’t want to let our cat out of the bag just yet.”

Chapter 1: Where It All Begins
Buried deep in the Nevada desert was the sprawling labyrinth of MedCo Laboratories. The only building around for a hundred miles, it was a hulking, grey-white concrete mass, surrounded by a series of three armed security fences that began nearly a mile before the facility was visible from the two lane highway. Aside from desert tumbleweeds, or the occasional vulture circling above, it was just blue sky and sand for as far as they eye could see. Nobody came out here, and that was just the way MedCo wanted to keep things. There were no Welcome signs for visitors, because there were never visitors. The actual entry point was at an unmarked point along the electrified fence. It was an electronic gate with keypad entry. Blink and you would miss it. Enter the incorrect keypad combination, and it was as though the National Guard had been called in. Sirens wailed, helicopters with armed guards appeared from nowhere, and armoured vehicles hurtled themselves across the dunes within the guarded perimeter. Those foolish enough to fool with MedCo were prosecuted to the full extent of the law, as the tiny sign posted on the fence beside the gate warned. The full extent of the law, as it applied to MedCo, consisted of jail sentences applicable for threats to National Security. MedCo, or The Facility as it was known by those who used it, fell under the protection of Homeland Security, and those were people who didn’t take trespassing lightly.

A distinct absence of tended gardens, fountains or greenery served as MedCo’s attempt at making a corporate entrance way. The road ended at the main building. Parking facilities and loading docks were not visible. They were accessible underground, only with security clearance and authorization. The non-descript sliding doors were tinted bullet-proof glass, again operated by keypad entry code. Above the numeric keypad was a retina scanner. Directly inside the doors were two fully armed guards, and not the rent-a-cop variety. They wore military-issue Beretta semi-automatic rifles, complemented by Walther PPK handguns. While the visible part of the building was actually just three floors above ground, the heart and soul of the top-secret facility extended deep into the bowels of the earth, thousands of feet below ground. Nobody knew the actual number of floors, unless they had to. Everything at MedCo was on a strictly need-to know basis. Either you accepted that without question, or you were shown the door before you were shown the rest of the contract. If prospective employees were looking for a company where they would socialize at the water cooler, or attend the annual picnic, they were firmly but politely bid adieu. Studies proved that work just didn’t get done when employees were busy trying to be friends with each other. At MedCo, they were very serious about getting work done, and getting more work to do. Three little words summed up their business philosophy: lucrative defence contracts. The Facility was excellent at what they did, but they were proven the best at keeping secrets. And there were lots of secrets at MedCo. Secrets that went to the grave.

In the dozen years he’d been employed there, senior research chemist Stewart Finch had heard the rumours. They entertained him, like urban myths. No one could seem to prove they were true. But then, no one could prove they weren’t true, either. Stewart was a scientist, and scientists believed in cold, hard facts. Until he saw or touched it, it wasn’t real. MedCo paid Stewart, and all his associates, very big money to do their jobs, mind their own business and keep their mouths shut. While a strange scenario for most people, this was somewhat ideal for uber intellects who lacked the gene for social graces. What need was there to idly chit chat at some water hole when you could calibrate and titrate something that was going to change the world. There was no room in these scientists’ lives for anything else but science. Few were married, more were divorced, and company policy strictly prohibited any kind of unprofessional relationship between employees. The only questions anyone asked were work related. No one paid any mind to the comings and goings of highly decorated military personnel, observing the work from observation galleries or through the long glass windows from the corridor outside the labs. No one ever dared to ask who was in the fleet of gleaming black limousines, or being ushered in by the scary and heavily armed entourage. Perhaps that was the purpose the stories and rumours were meant to serve. Tales of MedCo staff who stopped showing up for work one day, because they asked a question they should not have. Tales of projects so sinister in their outcome that everyone involved was relocated to another facility, never to be heard from again. But it wasn’t one of these stories that Stewart uncovered. It was something even more diabolical. And like Pandora’s box, once the lid was off, there was no putting the secret back.