The Hades Factor c-1 Read online

  Tremont knew all this because he had the kind of honed mind that automatically grasped, stored, and used important facts. Adirondack Park was vital to him not only because it was a stunning woodland wilderness, but because it was sparsely settled. One of the stories he liked to tell guests around his fireplace was about a state tax chief who had bought a local summer cabin. When the tax man decided his county bill was too high, he had investigated. In the process, he had ― here Tremont would laugh heartily ― discovered county tax officials were involved in massive corruption. The official was able to get an indictment against the lowlifes, but no jury could be impaneled. The reason? There were so few permanent residents in the county that all were either involved in the illegal scheme or related to someone who was.

  Tremont smiled. This isolation and backwoods corruption made his timbered paradise perfect. Ten years ago he had moved Blanchard Pharmaceuticals into a redbrick complex he had ordered built in the forest near Long Lake village. At the same time, he had made a hidden retreat on nearby Lake Magua his main residence.

  Tonight as the sun faded in a fiery orange ball behind pines and hardwoods, Tremont was standing on the roofed veranda of the first floor of his lodge. He studied the play of the brilliant sunset against the rugged outlines of the mountains and drank in the affluence, power, and taste that this view, this lodge, this lifestyle proved.

  His lodge had been part of one of the great camps established here by the wealthy toward the end of the nineteenth century. Built with the same log-and-bark siding as the lodge at Great Camp Sagamore on nearby Raquette Lake, his sprawling hideaway was the only surviving structure from the old days. Concealed from above by a thick canopy of trees and from the lake by a dense forest, it was all but invisible to outsiders. Tremont had planned his restoration that way, allowing the vegetation to grow high and wild. There was neither an address post on the road nor a dock in the lake to reveal its presence. No public nor corporate access was provided, or wanted. Only Victor Tremont, a few trusted partners in his Hades Project, and the loyal scientists and technicians who worked in the private high-tech lab on the second floor knew it existed.

  As the October sun dropped lower, the chilly Adirondack night bit at Tremont's cheeks and seeped through his jacket and trousers. Still, he was in no hurry to go inside. He savored the thick cigar he smoked and the taste of the fifty-year-old Langavulin he sipped. It warmed his blood and coated his throat with a satisfying burn. The Langavulin was perhaps the globe's finest whiskey, but its heavy peat-smoke flavor and incredibly balanced body were little known outside Scotland. That was because Tremont bought the entire supply each year from the distillery on Islay.

  But as he stood in the last golden rays of the sunset on the veranda, it was the wilderness rather than the whiskey that brought a smile to his patrician lips. The pristine lake was only a short canoe portage from overpopulated Raquette. The tall pines swayed gently, and their pungent scent filled the air. In the distance, the naked peak of 5,344-foot Mount Marcy shone like a finger pointing at God.

  Tremont had been attracted to the mountains since he had been an unruly teenager in Syracuse. His father, a professor of economics up on the hill at the university, had not been able to control him then any more than the fat-ass chairman of Blanchard could control him now. Both were always insisting upon what could not be done, that no one could do everything he wanted. He had never understood such narrowness. What limitation was there except your imagination? Your abilities? Your daring? The Hades Project itself was an example. If they had known in the beginning what he envisioned, both would have told him it was impossible. No one could do it.

  Inwardly he snorted with disgust. They were puny, small men. In a few weeks, the project would be a total success. He would be a total success. Then there would be decades of profits.

  Maybe it was because this was the final stage of Hades, but he had found himself occasionally drifting off in reverie, thinking about his long-dead father. In a strange way, his father had been the only man he had ever respected. The old man had not understood his only son, but he had stood by him. As a teen, Tremont had been fascinated by the movie Jeremiah Johnson. He had seen it a dozen times. Then, in the dead of an icy winter, he had taken off for the mountains, determined to live off the land just as Johnson had. Pick berries and dig roots. Hunt his own meat. Fight Indians. Pit himself against the elements in a heroic venture few had the courage or imagination to attempt.

  But there had been little that was noble about the experience. He killed two deer out of season with his father's 30–30 Remington, mistakenly shot at and almost killed some hikers, got violently sick on the wrong berries, and damn near froze to death. Fortunately, because of his missing rifle, parka, and backpack, plus his constant talking about the film, his father had guessed where he had headed. When the forest service wanted to give up the hunt, his father had raged and pushed all the levers of academia and state politics. The result was the forest service grumbled but soldiered on, eventually finding him, miserable and frostbitten, in a cave on the snowy slopes of Marcy.

  Despite everything, he counted it as one of the most important experiences of his life. He had learned from the mountain fiasco that nature was hard, indifferent, and no friend to humanity. He had also discovered physical challenge held little allure for him; it was too easy to lose. But his greatest lesson was the critical point of why Johnson had gone to the mountains. At the time, he had thought it was to challenge nature, to fight Indians, to prove manhood. Wrong. It was to make money. The mountain men were trappers, and everything they did and suffered was for one goal ― to get rich.

  He had never forgotten that. The boldness and simplicity of the goal had shaped his life.

  As these thoughts flickered through his mind on the rustic veranda, he realized he wished his father were here for the conclusion of Hades. The old man would finally recognize that a man could do anything he wanted as long as he was smart enough and tough enough. Would his father be proud? Probably not. He laughed aloud. Too bad for the old man. His mother would be, but that was meaningless. Women didn't count.

  Abruptly he came alert. He cocked his head, listening. The chop-chop of helicopter rotors was growing louder. Tremont knocked back his scotch, left his cigar in a large serpentine ashtray to die a natural death, and strode into the enormous high-beamed living room. Peering down from the log walls were the glass eyes of mounted trophy heads. Adirondack wood-and-leather furniture stood on hand-knotted rugs around the walk-in fireplace. Tremont continued past the crackling fire and along a back hall where the aroma of hot baking-powder biscuits scented the air from the kitchen.

  Finally he stepped out on the other side of the lodge into the cool dusk. The chopper, a Bell S-92C Helibus, was settling down in a clearing a hundred yards away.

  The four men who descended were in their mid-forties or early fifties, like Tremont himself. Unlike Tremont, who was dressed in custom-made chinos, pewter-colored bush shirt, Gore-Tex lined safari jacket, and a broad-brimmed safari hat that hung from its chin strap down his back, they wore expensive, tailored business suits. They were smooth-looking men with the sophisticated manners of the privileged business class.

  As the noisy rotors thundered, Tremont greeted each with the broad smile and vigorous handshake of an old friend. The chopper copilot jumped out to unload luggage. Tremont waved toward the lodge and turned to lead his visitors there.

  Moments after the Helibus took off into the twilight, a smaller 206B JetRanger III helicopter settled into the clearing. Two men very different from the occupants of the first helicopter stepped from the JetRanger. They wore ordinary, off-the-rack suits no one would look at twice. The tall, swarthy man in the dark blue suit had a pockmarked face with heavy-lidded eyes and a nose as curved and sharp as a scimitar. The round-faced, bland-looking man with the big shoulders and lanky brown hair wore charcoal gray. Neither had luggage. It was not only the ordinary clothes and lack of suitcases that marked them as different. There
was something about the way they moved… a trained predatory manner that anyone who knew about such things would recognize as dangerous.

  The pair ducked under the JetRanger's flashing rotors and followed the others toward the lodge.

  Although Victor Tremont never looked back, the four other men noticed the last two. They glanced at each other uneasily, as if they had seen both men before.

  Nadal al-Hassan and Bill Griffin showed no reaction to either Tremont's indifference or to the nervousness of the other four. Silently, their gazes swept all around, and they entered the lodge by a different door.

  * * *

  At the long Norwegian banquet table, Victor Tremont and his four guests dined on a feast that could have come from Valhalla itself ― wild duck confit with shitaki mushrooms, poached local lake trout, and venison shot by Tremont himself, with braised Belgian endive, potatoes dauphin, and a Rhone Hermitage reduction sauce. Flushed and sated, the men chose overstuffed chairs in the vast living room. They indulged in cognac, Remy Martin Cordon Bleu, and cigars ― Cuban Maduros made exclusively for Tremont. After they were settled in around the blazing fire, Tremont finished his status report on the project that had consumed their imaginations, hopes, and lives for the last dozen years.

  “…we'd always hypothesized the mutation would take place in the American subjects as much as a year later than it did in the non-American subjects. A matter of general health, nutrition, physical fitness, and genetics. Well…”

  Tremont paused for emphasis and to study their faces. They had all been with him from the start ― a year after he had returned from Peru with the odd virus and the monkeys' blood. There was George Hyem far off to the right, like a wing gunner. Tall and ruddy, in those days he had been a young accountant who had seen the financial potential instantly. Now he was chief accountant for Blanchard while actually working for Tremont. Next to him was Xavier Becker, going to fat, a computer genius who had shortened research on improving the virus and the serum by five years. Opposite Tremont sat Adam Cain, postdoc virologist who had seen George's numbers and decided his future was with Blanchard and Tremont, rather than with the CDC. He had found a way to isolate the lethal mutated virus and keep it stable for as much as a week. On Becker's other side was Blanchard's security chief, Jack McGraw, who had covered all their asses from the start.

  His four clandestine associates were ready and eager for the payoff.

  Tremont held the pause another beat. “The virus has surfaced here in the United States. Soon it's going to appear across the world. Country by country. An epidemic. The press doesn't know about it yet, but they will. No way to stop them or the virus. The only recourse governments will have is to pay our price.”

  The four men grinned. Their eyes shone with dollar signs. Big dollar signs. But there was something else, too ― triumph, pride, anticipation, and eagerness. They were already professional successes. Now they were going to be financial successes, hugely wealthy, achieving the pinnacle of the American dream.

  Tremont said, “George?”

  George abruptly reset his face. He looked sad, crestfallen. “The profit projection for the stockholders is ready any time.” He hesitated. “I'm afraid it's less than we'd hoped. Perhaps only five… six at best… billion dollars.” And laughed uproariously at his joke.

  Xavier Becker, frowning severely at George's levity, did not wait to be asked. “What about the secret audit I discovered?”

  “Jack says that only Haldane has actually seen it,” Tremont told them, “and I'll handle him when we meet before the board dinner at the annual meeting. What else, Xavier?” Mercer Haldane was chairman of Blanchard Pharmaceuticals.

  “I've manipulated the computer logs to show we've been working on the cocktail of recombinant antibodies that form our serum the whole ten years, improving it since we got the patent, and that we've finished our final tests and submitted it for FDA approval. The logs also now show our astronomical costs.” Excitement was in Xavier's voice. “Supply's in the millions of doses and climbing.”

  Adam laughed. “No one suspects a damn thing.”

  “Even if they suspect, they'll never find the trail.” Jack McGraw, the security chief, rubbed his hands, pleased.

  “Just tell us when to move!” George begged.

  Tremont smiled and held up his hand. “Don't worry, I've got a complete timetable based on how fast they realize they've got an epidemic on their hands. I'll make my move on Haldane before the board meeting.”

  The five men drank, their futures growing brighter every second.

  Then Tremont put down his brandy. His face grew somber. He again raised a hand to silence them. “Unfortunately, we've run into a situation that could be more of a problem than the audit. How big or small the danger is, or whether there's any danger at all after some, ah, steps we were forced to take, we can't be certain yet. But rest assured it's being watched and thoroughly dealt with.”

  Jack McGraw scowled. “What kind of problem, Victor? Why wasn't I told?”

  Tremont eyed him. “Because I don't want Blanchard even remotely connected.” He expected Jack to be jealous of security, but in the end Tremont made all decisions. “As for the problem, it was simply one of those events no one could anticipate. When I was in Peru on that expedition where I found the virus and the potential serum, I ran into a group of young undergraduates on a field trip. Beyond being polite, we paid little attention to each other because we were interested in different studies.” He shook his head in wonderment. "But three days ago one called. When she said her name, I vaguely recalled a student who had shown a lot of interest in my work. She went on to become a cell and molecular biologist. The problem was she's now at USAMRIID, which is studying the first deaths. As we expected, they hadn't been able to figure out the virus. But the unique combination of symptoms suddenly brought that trip to Peru back into her mind. She remembered my name. She called me.''

  “Jesus!” George exclaimed, his ruddy face gone white.

  “She tied the virus to you?” Jack McGraw growled.

  “To us!” Xavier exploded.

  Tremont shrugged. “I denied it. I convinced her she was wrong, that there'd been no such virus. Then I sent Nadal al-Hassan and his people to eliminate her.”

  There was a collective relaxation in the giant living room. Sighs of relief as the tension eased. They had worked hard and long for more than a decade, had risked their professions and livelihoods on this one visionary gamble, and none had any intention of losing the riches that were now within reach.

  “Unfortunately,” Tremont went on, “we were unsuccessful in doing the same to her fiancé and research partner. He escaped us, and it's possible she had time to speak to him before she died.”'

  Jack McGraw understood. “That's why al-Hassan is here. I knew something was up.”

  Tremont shook his head. “Don't make more of this than there is. I sent for al-Hassan to report on how we stood. While I have the most to lose, we're all in it together.”

  The silence in the room was louder than any noise.

  Xavier broke it. “Okay. Let's hear what he's got to say.”

  The fire had died down to glowing coals and a few flickering flames. Tremont moved to the side of the stone fireplace. He pressed a button in the carved mantlepiece. First Nadal al-Hassan and then Bill Griffin entered the cavernous room. Al-Hassan joined Victor Tremont before the fireplace, while Griffin remained unobtrusive in the background. Al-Hassan related details of Sophia Russell's call to Tremont, her death, and his removal of everything that could connect the virus to the Hades Project. He described Jonathan Smith's reactions. He detailed Griffin's blackmailing of Lily Lowenstein and the subsequent erasure of all electronic evidence.

  “Nothing remains to connect us to Russell or the virus,” al-Hassan finished, “unless she told Colonel Smith.”

  Jack McGraw growled, “That's a pretty damn big `unless.' ”

  “That is what I think,” al-Hassan agreed. “Something has made S
mith suspicious that her death was not an accident. He has been investigating vigorously, ignoring his share of the scientific work on the virus itself.”

  “Can he find us?” the accountant, George, asked nervously.

  “Anyone can find anyone if they look long enough and hard enough. That is why I think we must eliminate him.”

  Victor Tremont nodded to the rear of the room. “But you don't agree, Griffin?”

  Everyone rotated to stare at the former FBI man, who was leaning against a wall behind them. Bill Griffin was thinking about Jon Smith. He had done his damnedest to warn his friend off. He had used his old FBI credentials to learn from Jon's office that he was out of town, and then he had gone through a Rolodex of agencies acquiring one bit of information after another until he had finally uncovered which conference Jon was attending and, from there, where in London he had been staying.

  So as his canny gaze swept the five who stared at him, he did what he had to do to save himself, while trying to distract the heat from Jon: He shrugged, noncommittal. “Smith's been working so hard to find out what happened to the Russell woman that I think she must've told him nothing about Peru or us. Otherwise, he'd likely be here right now, knocking on the door to talk to you, Mr. Tremont. But our mole inside USAMRIID says Smith's stopped investigating her death and is back concentrating on the virus with the team. He's even flying to California tomorrow to do the routine interviews with the family and friends of Major Anderson.”

  Tremont nodded thoughtfully. “Nadal?”

  “Our contact in Detrick says General Kielburger ordered Smith to California, but he refused,” al-Hassan reported. “Later he volunteered to go, and that is a very different matter. I believe he is seeking corroboration in California for what he already suspects.”

  Griffin said, “He's a doctor, so he was at the autopsy. No big deal. They found nothing. There's nothing to suspect. You've taken care of everything.”