While Justice Sleeps(104)
“What?” he sputtered.
“I know you gave him the compound. You put him in the coma.”
Ani squinted, then his face cleared. “Ah, the Sleeping Beauty drug. In the proper dosage, they could keep him alive for years. I developed the formulary for Hygeia in another line of genetic experiments, before Tigris. Advar took over the company before I discovered a way to reverse the coma, but I believe it is possible.”
“Is that why he took it?” she asked. “To put himself in a coma indefinitely?”
“If the research is reinitialized, his coma may be ended, and he could wake up. But he does not expect to survive. He simply wanted to determine when he would lose control of his body. This was a compromise between us.”
Jared asked, “But it is possible to wake him up?”
“I cannot, but my earlier experimental results are also on the drive.”
Ani stood, and Avery also rose. He stared at her in silence, then added, “Howard was willing to die to stop them. I am not as brave. Once I leave, I will not return.” He bent down to pick up his bag. With jerky motions, he tossed the leather strap over his shoulder.
At the mention of Justice Wynn, Avery said, “One more question. Do you know what this means? If I had accepted absurdity and given smallpox to my child, I would not be mourning him today and the atrocities would not have been.”
“I am sorry, no. We did not discuss smallpox.”
“You can’t just walk away,” Jared ordered. “You deserve to be in prison for what you’ve done.”
Ani took a step back. “I long ago abandoned my Hindu faith, but if our gods exist, Yama will mete out his own punishment. My actions have killed my family, my friends, and possibly your father. There is no prison greater than the hell I live in every day, but your nation will not be my judge. Not when they have been complicit in my crimes.” With a terse nod to Jared, he faced Avery. “Use the information I have given you. Save him.”
He turned and jogged across the park. Jared reached for his phone, and Avery grabbed his hand. “What are you doing?”
“Calling Agent Lee. That man is a mass murderer. I don’t care why he did it, he should answer for his crimes.”
“Yes, he should. But think about it. He’s managed to evade DHS for months. By the time the FBI gets here, do you really think they’ll find him? More likely, we’ll be taken into custody, have to explain what he’s done, show them information we haven’t seen yet, and hope for the best.”
Knowing she was right, Jared tightened his fingers around the phone. “That’s assuming Major Vance doesn’t have us detained and transported under an extraordinary rendition order.” He shook his head in disgust. “Avery, we have to expose them. All of them.”
“I know. If what we have proves that President Stokes and Major Vance were part of this, we will. I promise.”
Jared took her hand and began to lead her across the park to the Metro station. “I believe you. Let’s get back before they figure out we’re gone.”
FORTY-THREE
Avery and Jared returned to the law firm and, using a signal they’d prearranged with Noah and Ling, made their way to the conference room without alerting their security detail. An hour later, Agent Lee arrived at the firm. Through the glass, they watched him as he spoke to one of the agents on duty.
She felt the flash drive tucked ominously in her pocket. As she had all weekend, she swung wildly between wanting to tell Agent Lee everything and wanting to keep the documents a secret until she solved Justice Wynn’s final riddle. But Nurse Lewis was dead. Betty Papaleo was missing. She and Jared had been attacked. Ani Ramji was on the run, and Justice Wynn lay in a self-induced coma. As long as she tried to fix this herself, she was risking her friends’ lives and her own. Yet if she told the FBI agent the truth, there was no way to predict how he’d react. Or who he’d tell. Her mind circled with the conundrum, but no new answer emerged.
She decided to stick with what she knew. Who she trusted. Pulling out the flash drive, she announced, “Jared, we need to review the drive.”
With a nod, he reached out his hand for the slim casing, and Avery placed it in his palm. In short order, files began to open on his screen. Jared had taken extra precautions. No eavesdropper or hacker would be able to access what they read, the data immediately encrypted.
In silence, the team huddled around the screen and read the data, absorbing the information that confirmed their own research. Ling homed in on the images of DNA strands and scientific formulas, her occasional gasps signaling both wonder and horror.
A video file was next on the directory.
“Hold on,” Noah said. He opened the door and spoke to their guard. “I know you like to keep an eye on us, but we need to watch a few videos. We’ll need to use the blackout screens and the projector.”
“Understood.”
Noah came back and, using the audiovisual controls, darkened the room and dropped the screen. Jared connected his laptop and started the video.
They watched as a large room appeared. Bunk beds had been lined up across the far wall, five in the row, stacked two deep. Off camera, a soft alarm sounded, rousing the occupants from sleep. One by one, they woke from their slumber. A few young men, in their early twenties by their looks, climbed down from the bunks. Others moved more slowly, particularly the elderly men who had bunked side by side on the lower level. A nurse entered the room from the left, her peach scrubs identical to the ones worn by the occupants, except theirs were either blue or green.