Michael
Crichton
Jurassic Park 3
A novel by
Trevor Alex Sumner
Based on the novels Jurassic Park, The Lost World, and Congo
Written by
Michael Crichton
Based on characters created by
David Koepp
Peter Buchman
Alexander Payne
Jim Taylor
Introduction
Jagged Puzzle Pieces
Ed James, the best at the job, never skimped on the details. However, that didn't necessarily mean that he always revealed his entire hand. No one that played the game ever did if they were actually good at their skill set. He played his hand better than most, and it always worked to his advantage, as well as the advantage of anyone that paid the right price.
That being said, Ed James always kept an open mind when doing business. Corporate espionage, spying on the unsuspecting for delicate information, and everything else in between basically rounded out his calling card. Despite that The Biosyn Corporation of Cupertino, California was his biggest employer, always turning to him when needed, he kept his options open at all times. Regardless of how much money he was being rewarded for going to boring lectures from a Mathematician that had been incorrectly pronounced dead in Costa Rica six years prior, as well as others that had partial connections to him, Ed James had been approached by someone paying him more than Dr. Lewis Dodgson.
Working for Dodgson had been fine and dandy, but the prospects of getting paid enormous sums of money from a mysterious organization called Mantah Corp had been too good to pass up.
This bioengineering corporation that had seemingly sprung up from the ashes of InGen Bioengineering of Palo Alto, California, apparently loved the imagery of the mythical manticore, using it for their logo, which Ed James kept seeing everywhere during his overall investigation for both rival companies. They were funded by people that hadn't given him anything to work off of, except for the woman that had approached him directly with the cash on hand: Tasha Johnson, a beautiful viper that could kill you with just a single stare if she wanted.
Doing his due diligence, Ed James spent as much time as he could trying to discover just who this woman was, only managing to find out that Tasha had previously worked at a law firm in San Francisco called Cowen, Swain, and Ross. Making certain to have whatever little background he could, just encase, he researched the law firm and found that the men on the title were Richard Cowen, Peter Swain, and Daniel Ross, the last of them closely tied to someone Ed James had been tailing after: Donald Gennaro. All of them were connected previously to the now Chapter 11 InGen Bioengineering.
The interesting thing was, apparently Gennaro had been out of the United States on a business trip, or at least, that was the cover anyway. What he soon discovered from having tailed Daniel Ross for a few days was that Gennaro was on a top secret expedition in Africa with Ross' daughter Karen, formerly of Earth Resources Technology Services. Karen had apparently been in the Congo several years prior, and she finally returned after whatever horrors she experienced to put the past behind her.
Ed James proceeded to tell Tasha about the whereabouts of Gennaro, since he was one of the people to watch out for, but he kept the information from Dodgson as a favor to her after a grand had been deposited into his Swiss bank account. Whatever was going on, Mantah Corp wanted to stay one step ahead of Biosyn.
Just why exactly Donald Gennaro had been key to this, Ed James wasn't really sure. Hell, he didn't really know why either company cared about what InGen's former investors were doing.
Daniel Ross had been spending the last several days trying to track down his daughter and Gennaro when the news reached him that both of them had died of dysentery while on the expedition. This gave James pause, finding it odd that this news would reach Ross so quickly, but he was told to drop it by Tasha, revealing that there were plans in the works for Gennaro, and he was to let Dodgson know that the lawyer had indeed died of dysentery on a business trip and to leave out the parts about Karen Ross and the Congo entirely.
Another grand deposit made certain that Ed James did as he was told.
This made Ed James extremely suspicious, regardless, and so, despite that he continued his further investigations for both companies, on the side, he looked into what had occurred in the Congo, discovering something very interesting when he took a flight to Zaire, claiming that his overseas trip was to track down a Veterinarian on Dodgson's list: Dr. Gerry Harding.
In the end, this was partially true, as Harding had last been rumored to have retired, living around the African savannah, near to where his daughter Sarah, a Biologist, studied predators on a regular basis when not touring the United States. One thing that surprised him about Sarah had been that she was a close friend and colleague of one of the men that Ed James was following: the Jesus Mathematician. It felt all too convenient how all of these people seemed connected in one way or another. There was too much that he didn't know from either company.
That became clearer about Mantah Corp when Ed James discovered from travel visas and other documentation that he'd swiped from The Zaire Government on a nightly sweep. Ed James was too good for this job or any other. The Zaire Government hadn't been any the wiser. He could've been James Bond in another life.
Regardless, he learned that there was more going on with Mantah Corp than he liked to admit, as it had been revealed to him that Donald Gennaro hadn't been the only one to go with Karen Ross into the Congo. Robert Muldoon had gone as well. Muldoon had been an InGen employee back in the eighties, and apparently had become close friends with Gennaro after a trip to Costa Rica. It wasn't necessarily surprising to Ed James that Muldoon, having been a great white hunter of merit for his time, had gone, probably as protection and backup, but it was just odd to him that Mantah Corp decided to seemingly fake Ross and Gennaro's deaths, and conveniently left out that Muldoon had been with them as well. Did he die of dysentery also? Ed James highly doubted it.
Harding had been a dead end, as he had apparently left his home suddenly and unexpectedly. His housekeeper was less than helpful with information on his whereabouts, and at the time, Sarah Harding was in the United States visiting the Jesus Mathematician.
When he presented the information about Gerry Harding to Tasha Johnson, she appeared less than interested. Whether it was because she didn't care about a retired Veterinarian or something else, Ed James wasn't sure. He would keep an open mind to the possibility though, because, as it turned out, Gerry Harding had worked with Robert Muldoon. Both had been InGen employees in the eighties. All of it was too coincidental. It was highly likely that Tasha Johnson knew exactly where Dr. Gerry Harding was, and it was probably the same place as Gennaro, Muldoon, and Karen Ross.
Tasha Johnson apparently had no reason at all to care about Dr. Ian Malcolm, the back from the grave Jesus Mathematician, or even Dr. Alan Grant, Paleontologist, Dr. Ellen Sattler-Reiman, Paleobotanist, or the grandchildren of the late John Alfred Hammond, founder of InGen and The Hammond Foundation. The puzzle pieces just weren't fitting together, jagged and deformed.
The night that Ed James met up with Dodgson and his associate, Dr. George Baselton, at a Marie Callender's in Palo Alto, another jagged piece to the puzzle was revealed in the form of something called Site B. It wasn't until he went to meet with Tasha Johnson afterwards that she laughed, not giving anything else away except that it was nearly time, and before the end of the week, everything would become perfectly clear to him. Somehow, Ed James highly doubted it.