Chapter 3: Impasse
Benton awoke to the sound of Bandit barking and growling. He sat up, wincing at the headache the anesthetic had left behind it. "Dad, are you okay?" Jonny asked. His son was sitting up on the bed next to him.
"I'm fine. How long have you been awake?"
"I don't know," Jonny said, shrugging. "It's hard to keep track of time. That lady, the one with the needles, came in a while ago and looked at you and gave me another shot." Bandit stopped growling when he heard their voices and came trotting over to the bed, tail wagging.
"More morphine?" he asked, a little concerned.
"I don't know. But I don't think so. I feel less light-headed than I did."
Benton was seriously displeased. They were giving his son medications without consulting him? Not that he could stop them, he thought, his gut clenching. He looked at his watch. It was ten in the morning. By now, Race had to have returned to Maine. He pressed the button on the side that should have activated the homing beacon, but nothing happened. No doubt the EM pulse had destroyed the circuitry.
"What do they want, Dad?" Jonny asked.
"I don't know." He looked down at his son. "Are you all right, Jonny?"
"I guess," he said.
Benton scooted back against the wall next to Jonny and put an arm around his shoulders. "By now, Race knows we're gone and he'll have started looking."
"Unless they blew up the house," Jonny said. "Or they might have taken him prisoner, too! And Hadji! Maybe even Jessie and Estella!"
Benton tried not to show the horror these suggestions engendered. "I don't think so, Jonny. They probably would have told us by now."
"These people are really whacked out, Dad," Jonny said earnestly. "I may have been pretty dopey with the morphine, but I could tell that much."
"Whacked out?" Benton repeated, lifting an eyebrow. "What does that mean?"
"You're really out of it, you know that, Dad? I mean, try for the 90s."
"Jonny, it's the new millenium."
"Yeah, I know. You're that far behind."
Benton smiled at that sally. "Well, then, educate me, son. What does it mean?"
"They're lunatics," Jonny said.
"Ah, that," Benton said, nodding. "Yes, I had noticed."
"So, what are we going to do?"
"We'll see about that when we know what they want."
The door opened, admitting a tall, bull-like man of middle years. His hair was dark and cut in a conservative style He was followed by two of the ubiquitous gun-toting young people and a blond woman in a medical assistant's uniform. Bandit barked twice and then hid under the bed.
Jonny stiffened and Benton gripped his shoulder a little more tightly.
"Good morning, Dr. Quest. I am Theodore Crandall. We have some issues to discuss, so I thought Patricia could take Jonathon to see Dr. Pascale."
At this suggestion, Jonny leaned closer against him. "I'd just as soon be present when Jonny sees your doctor, Mr. Crandall," Benton said.
Crandall nodded, his brow wrinkling. "Yes, I understand, Dr. Quest. But, as it happens, that wasn't a request."
Benton raised his eyebrows. "No?"
Crandall walked up to the foot of the bed, looming over them. Benton could feel Jonny shrinking down. "Please don't make me give Jonathon another injury for Dr. Pascale to treat, Dr. Quest."
Jonny sat up straighter all of a sudden. "We're not afraid of you!" he declared.
Benton saw the angry light flash in Crandall's eyes. Clenching his teeth, he turned to Jonny. "I guess you'd better go, son."
"But, Dad -" Benton gave his son a look that silenced his protest. Reluctantly, hissing in pain, Jonny got to his feet.
"How far will he have to walk?" Benton asked.
Patricia put a supportive arm around Jonny's shoulders which he shrugged off immediately. Sighing, she said, "Not far. There's a wheelchair just outside."
"I'll see you later, Dad," Jonny said as he left.
"See you later," Benton replied. Jonny was limping painfully, still disdaining Patricia's offer of support. Benton ground his teeth as his son passed out of his sight. Race had better get here quickly. He just hoped that he'd know where Jonny was when Race showed up.
He slid off the bed and stood up, not wanting to be at a disadvantage. One of the guards followed Jonny and the medical assistant out, but the other stayed in the room, standing behind Crandall.
"Please come into the next room, Dr. Quest, where we can sit down and talk like civilized men." Crandall gestured toward a door Benton hadn't yet noticed, on the wall that the bed was up against. It was Hobson's choice. He walked around the bed and went through the door. The next room was furnished as a comfortable sitting room. There was a cream brocade sofa and a pair of matching wingback chairs gathered in a conversation group around a coffee table. A bar fridge stood against one wall with an attractive flower arrangement on top.
Crandall followed him in and shut the door behind them. He could hear Bandit scratching at the door and wondered why they'd brought the little dog with them. It could well be that they'd use threats to Bandit to keep Jonny in line. Benton hoped not. Jonny was devoted to that dog, and if anything happened to him. . .Benton didn't want to think about it.
He realized that he was woolgathering when Crandall cleared his throat and said, "Please, Dr. Quest, be seated."
Benton crossed his arms and glared at the man. "This all very nice and civilized, Mr. Crandall, but would you mind telling me just why I'm here?"
"That is what I came to discuss." Crandall smiled, an expression that Benton noted did not touch his cold gray eyes. "Please sit down."
The tone in the man's voice suggested that this, too, was not really a request. Benton sat stiffly in one of the armchairs. Crandall sat in the other chair and leaned against the back. "Allow me to give you a little background on this organization, Dr. Quest." Benton let out a sigh. Here it came. "We are a provider of goods and services to interested parties."
"Which am I?" Benton asked. "A good or a service?"
Crandall gave him a condescending smile. "We do not traffic in people, Dr. Quest. You are research and development." Benton blinked in perplexity. What did he mean? "We do not usually operate in this manner; these are extraordinary circumstances."
"If you're telling me that you don't usually kidnap people from their homes, you'll have to pardon me if I don't believe you. Your people seem rather practiced."
"Oh, no, that is a standard recruitment technique," Crandall said. Recruitment technique? Benton wondered. "We simply don't usually target anyone quite as prominent as you are."
Benton nodded, pursing his lips. "But these are extraordinary circumstances," he said in a slightly mocking tone. "Please get to the point."
Crandall raised an eyebrow. "Our chief miracle worker in R&D has suffered an unfortunate accident, leaving us in the lurch, so to speak."
"An accident?" Benton repeated skeptically.
"Yes, actually. A car accident, while he was on vacation. It was most vexing." Crandall shook his head. "It has left us with several important projects incomplete and no one to bring them to fruition. With deadlines pending, that's rather problematic."
Benton could see where this was going. "You want me to work for you?"
Crandall nodded. "In short, yes. There are seven projects that need your attention. While you're in the process of being medically certified, I can provide you with George's working notes to give you an idea of what you'll be -"
Benton held a hand up. "You're getting ahead of yourself, Mr. Crandall. I haven't agreed to this arrangement."
"But you will, Dr. Quest. That is if you ever want to see young Jonathon again."
Lowering his hand slowly, Benton stared at the very determined look on the man's face, feeling his gut clench.
Shortly after the forensics team had gotten started, another helicopter arrived carrying a pair of K-9 teams. Race got them started searching the grounds, then went into the house again to try and determine just what was missing. Jonny's roller blades were gone, as were many of his PlayStation 2 games. The machine itself was still there, but since the electromagnetic pulse that had knocked IRIS out had fried it, that wasn't surprising. Benton's entire cd collection was gone from his office and bedroom, and so was most of his summer weight clothing.
This was growing more alarming by the minute, and he still hadn't seen Bandit. He went into the storeroom to see what might have been taken from there, and the first thing that caught his attention was the fact that Bandit's carrier was gone. Kidnappers who took the time to put the dog in his own carrier were terrifying.
He made a quick survey of the rest of the contents of the room. Dr. Quest and Jonny's suitcases were gone as well. Jotting down which items specifically were missing, he headed back to the ground floor where the head of the forensic team met him at the foot of the stairs.
"We've identified the blood, Mr. Bannon," he said. "It's Jonathon Quest's."
A cold lump developed in Race's gut. "Have you determined how much he lost?"
"The amount of blood loss we can confirm would not be enough to be fatal, sir," the man said. "It looks as though he fell into the bushes and then, from the discarded packet we found in the wastebasket, the wound was stitched on the kitchen table." Race nodded. That was promising. You didn't stitch wounds on corpses. "We also found the left leg of a pair of jeans, cut off pretty high. There's a jagged tear on the outside thigh, consistent with the sort of damage that would have been done by the bushes." Good news and bad news, Race reflected. Thigh wounds can be damned dangerous. "Apart from hair samples that are consistent with the Quest boy, and fibers that likely came from his jeans, we have four distinct fiber samples that we have not been able, thus far, to match to anything in the house."
"I see. Good. Keep at it." He went outside to check on the dog teams. Both dogs had evidently led their handlers straight to the beach, or at least that's where they were gathered. Great, Race thought. A boat. So easy to track. He was very glad that both Jessie and Hadji were too far away to take any foolish actions.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of one of the cameras, frozen in place where it should be turning, tracking the movements it sensed. It was pointing toward the spot on the beach where the handlers and dogs were congregated.
Hard copies! He turned and ran back to the house and down into the hub of the security network. On a day to day basis, IRIS stored data from the camera digitally, and, unless the images were specifically downloaded, they were lost after fifteen days. However, while he was gone, IRIS automatically stored all camera images on video discs in an ultra-compressed format for later reference. Even if the EM pulse had wiped the digital memory, the hard copies should still be there.
It took a bit of effort to get the discs out of the machine, but he slipped them into their cases and put them in his pocket until he could locate a machine that would play them. That done, he surveyed the damage to the computer network. The phone system was a mass of melted wires, and there was smoke residue on the vents of all the various machines. That had been one strong pulse. It was going to take a mint to rebuild this system, not least because the whole house would have to be rewired. Even if some of the wiring was still capable of carrying current, for safety's sake they'd have to have it all replaced.
Race went back out into daylight just in time to see Phil Corvin coming up from the airstrip. "Race!" he called. "Any news?"
Race waited until they were in easy talking distance before he spoke. "The blood was Jonny's. It looks like he fell into the bushes under his bedroom window and gashed his thigh. They took the time to stitch the wound, though."
"That's a good sign. You don't fix somebody you're planning to kill."
Ignoring the chill that sent through him, Race shrugged. "Oh, and they took the dog. In his carrier."
"The dog?" Corvin exclaimed. "Why would they take the dog?"
"I don't know. Maybe for the same reason they took all of Benton's music and Jonny's roller blades? It doesn't look much like a ransom kind of situation. For one thing, there haven't been any demands." Race's eyes narrowed. "Or have there?"
"None." Corvin shook his head. "But there are all sorts of people who wouldn't mind getting their hands on Benton Quest and a hostage to use to force his hand."
Race had to admit that Phil had a point. But so far, there weren't even any clues as to who took them, much less why. In the absence of an obvious villain, they would have to start at the most basic level of detective work.
"All right, Phil," he said, pulling the data discs out of his pocket. "You got anything with you that will read these?"
Jonny was frustrated. He'd refused absolutely to sit in the wheelchair and be pushed along by these bozos. When he'd gotten to the doctor's office, she'd treated him like he was about six and a moron to boot, doing everything short of offering him a lollipop to take his shots like a good boy. Evidently that was what the guy with the gun was for.
Somehow, they'd gotten ahold of his immunization records, so he didn't have to go through the whole range of shots, but they'd given him a tetanus booster and a TB test. Now he was sitting in a room that looked like it was designed for small meetings. Ten rolling chairs surrounded a utilitarian sort of table, and there was a whiteboard, an overhead projector screen and a TV/VCR that was mounted to the wall. The guard was outside the room, but there was nothing useful in here. He could see several dataports, but without a computer, he wasn't going to be making use of any of them. There wasn't even a phone.
He wanted to know when they were going to let him go back to where his father was, and he wanted to know what was going on. He also wanted to pound on Crandall for a while, but that didn't look like it was going to happen either.
They had given him a couple of books he'd already read years ago, a deck of cards and a magazine of crossword puzzles to keep him occupied, but all he wanted was to see his father.
Benton stared at Crandall, trying to digest the threat. The man was deathly serious, Benton could tell from his eyes and the posture of his shoulders. Whether he meant that he would kill Jonny or just that he would take him somewhere that Benton would have trouble finding him seemed immaterial at the moment.
"I see," he said slowly, trying to still the shaking of his hands. "Well, then, suppose you give me the notes and I'll see what I can do."
"I'm glad to see that you can be practical, Dr. Quest. I really wasn't looking forward to having to prove that I was serious."
Benton decided not to ask just how he would have done that. "How long do you plan on keeping us?"
"Well, that really depends on you," Crandall said. "You're here primarily to complete the seven projects that George left unfinished. The deadlines for these projects will all come up over the next three months or so. Once that's done, if it's done in a reasonable amount of time, we'll let you and Jonny go, assuming you still want to leave at that point." Benton's eyes widened. "You might even be back home in time for Jonny to start school in the fall."
Three months or so? And then he'll let us leave? "Who exactly are these projects for?" he asked neutrally.
"That's not really your concern, now, is it, Dr. Quest?" Crandall said in a reasonable voice. "You're Research and Development, not Customer Service. Everything you need to know is in George's notes, which I will send your way as soon as I'm back in my office. In the meantime, you will also need to undergo a physical examination. We have stringent health requirements for our employees, which you and Jonathon will have to meet."
"Where is Jonny now?" Benton asked, keeping his tone level and calm by a great stint of effort.
"He's nearby, being entertained," Crandall said, his expression just a touch smug. "Your exam will likely take an hour or so, and then you will be returned here for lunch and the notes will be delivered at that point. Jonathon will stay where he is for the time being. Once you've had some time to go over the information in the notes, you and I will meet again to discuss your course of action."
"I'd like to see him now," Benton said.
"I'm sorry, but that won't be possible. I know you're used to scheduling your own time, Dr. Quest, but you must recognize that this situation simply does not allow for that." Crandall stood. "Patricia should be back any moment now. She will take you to see Dr. Pascale. Please cooperate, Dr. Quest." The man smiled, and there was a malicious glint in his eyes. "I guarantee that if you don't, you will not like the results."
With that, Crandall left the room. Benton stared at the door after the villain shut it behind him. What were these projects? What was he going to have to do to keep Jonny safe? Race, he thought, there's no time like the present.
True to Crandall's word, Patricia, the medical assistant, arrived moments later accompanied by a husky young man with a gun. All too aware that he could do nothing while Jonny was still missing, Benton made no objections when they took him out of the room.
The hallways they passed through were largely deserted and had no windows. The slight deadness to the sounds they made as they walked through the corridors suggested that the building was either heavily soundproofed or that they were underground. The walls were painted a pale shade of green and there were no paintings or posters. The place seemed quite barren.
The doctor's office was much the same. Patricia weighed him, then had him sit on the examination table while she took his blood pressure and temperature. She drew blood into four separate vials and asked for a urine sample. Benton complied, though he was irritated by the poking and prodding. They'd brought him here after all, it seemed a bit much to demand a medical exam on top of that.
Furthermore, Dr. Pascale was one of those doctors who treated her patients as if they were mentally defective. That was aggravating at the best of times. In these circumstances it was nearly intolerable.
When the exam was finally done, the guard guided him back to the pair of rooms. At least, he thought they were the same rooms. The halls were so bland that they were maze-like, probably on purpose, to confound escape attempts.
Once he was in the sitting room, the guard left him alone. Benton stared disgustedly after the retreating figure. Race would advise him to befriend the fellow, to make of him a source of information and possible help, but he couldn't bring himself to make the effort. Crandall had said that he and Jonny would be released when the projects he wanted done were complete. Benton wondered how much he could believe him.
Opening the door to the bedroom, he saw that Bandit was asleep on the bed. He left the door open so that the little dog could join him if he woke up.
A note lay on the coffee table on top of a pile of seven thick file folders. A phone sat nearby, plugged into a jack in the floor. Picking up the note, he scanned it.
Your lunch is in the refrigerator.
These are copies of George's notes. If you have any difficulty deciphering the writing, dial 874 and Cheryl will help you. She has the originals ready to hand. The phone is a dedicated inside line with no access to the land lines, so don't waste your time trying to call for help.
I will be back to see you at 7:00. I don't expect you to have memorized the files, but I will expect you to have a solid understanding of the purpose and goals of each project. Be prepared to discuss possible plans.
Crandall
Setting the note aside, Benton opened the top file with some trepidation. He didn't know what sort of work Crandall needed done that he felt it necessitated kidnapping him and Jonny to accomplish it. He reluctantly sat down and started to go over the information.
The files were very clearly organized with an ingenious indexing system. Attached to the inside front cover of each file was a sheet with an abstract detailing the goals of each project, estimated work time, proposed work schedule and deadline. Then there was a table of contents which covered every single sheet of paper and cocktail napkin the file contained. George was evidently one of those people whose ideas came at unexpected moments, for his notes were written on a wide variety of different items, from the backs of receipts to paper bags.
Following the index was a brief summary of the work done so far, including both negative and positive results. He glanced through the summaries, feeling slightly sick at the sight of some of the descriptions. Two of them he set aside after a cursory perusal. He simply didn't have sufficient knowledge or skill to tackle either reverse engineering a drug or creating an anthrax vaccine. Hopefully Crandall would understand that.
The others were distressingly possible, which left five files that he had to have a reasonable grasp of before seven o'clock. He glanced up at the clock on the wall. Twelve-thirty. Six and a half hours. That gave him an hour and six minutes per file.
Three of them were straightforward engineering problems. Creating a tank capable of higher speeds could be challenging, but he was more than capable of the calculations and design work involved. Similarly, he knew that, given enough time, he could build a universal lock pick capable of penetrating everything from palm print to retinal scan to voice print security. He had a feeling that there were others elsewhere who were working on methods to further miniaturize and reduce the weight of Generation III night vision binoculars, and probably many who were more suited to the task than he was, but he had sufficient knowledge to make a credible attempt.
It appeared from the notes in the fourth file that computer programming hadn't been George's forte. He was supposed to develop a virus that would untraceably invade a target computer system, download every piece of data on it, then scramble the target computer's memory.
Benton found himself wondering if George's death had been as accidental as Crandall claimed. People who didn't balk at kidnapping, who in fact described abduction as a 'recruitment technique,' would not likely flinch at killing someone who wasn't measuring up to snuff. Perhaps George hadn't had children to threaten.
It was a distracting train of thought. Benton wrenched his mind away from it and back to the final project. It was distinctly problematic. They had a nerve gas that was extremely effective against human targets - and Benton didn't want to know just how they'd determined that - but they wanted it to be upgraded slightly. That was the word the abstract used: upgraded. They wanted it to penetrate the filters on standard issue military gas masks, but the key was that it should happen slowly, so that the victims would be well within the affected area before they realized that their masks had been compromised.
He might not have been able to develop the gas itself, with its specific effects on the human nervous system, but creating something to carry it through the filter or to cause the filter to gradually degrade was just within his capacity. He wondered if he could persuade Crandall that it was outside his capabilities. Somehow he doubted it. He wasn't even sure Crandall would let him off the hook on the two projects he truly didn't have the expertise for.
The hands of the clock kept moving, snipping away the minutes that remained till seven. Benton wished he knew where Jonny was and what he was doing.
