Medusa (NUMA Files 8)

“With the ability people have to globe-hop now,” he said, “that 1918 figure would be a drop in the bucket.”

“This time, it’s the whole bucket, Kurt. The feds classified our findings and made all the lab people government employees, so that anyone talking out of turn could be prosecuted for treason. They also added White House and military people to the board. Then they moved most of the research to a secret undersea lab.”

“Why not stay at Bonefish Key?” Austin asked.

“Too public, for one thing. But there were practical reasons too. We wanted to be near the resource. The blue medusa once covered a wide area, but now it is found primarily in and around a specific deepwater canyon. And we wanted to quarantine our work. We were developing an enhanced version of the medusa, a sort of superjellyfish, a dangerous predator, not the kind of thing you’d want to find in your swimming pool.”

“Are you saying you were working with malignant mutant life-forms, Doc?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“What would happen if they got in the wild?”

“Don’t worry, there’s no danger of them wiping out the ocean’s biomass. They can’t reproduce and would eventually die out in the open. We took great care during the genetic engineering to prevent the possibility of proliferation.”

“That’s still playing with dynamite, Doc. Mother Nature doesn’t like to be upstaged.”

“I know, I know,” Kane said, his voice tightening. “But we were under intense pressure from the government. We had to have greater quantities of the toxin to conduct our synthesis experiments, so we simply grew bigger medusae. The enhanced creatures proved to be more aggressive than the original, and the toxin they produced went off the charts.”

“Before you came to the Beebe, you were in the Pacific Ocean,” Austin observed. “Is that where they put the lab?”

“Yes. Micronesia, to be more exact. The government used an undersea observatory under development for the Navy. We call it Davy Jones’s Locker. I was working there when I heard I’d been nominated for the B3 dive. The project was about to be wrapped up, so I left my assistant, Lois Mitchell, in charge and took a leave of absence. You know the rest.”

“Only up to the point when the Coast Guard snatched you from the deck of the Beebe.”

“The call I got on the Beebe was to tell me that the secret lab had vanished around the same time as the attack on the B3. The security ship guarding the lab was heavily damaged by a missile that may have been launched from a submarine. The whole undersea complex of labs and living quarters, along with the staff, disappeared from the bottom. The Navy’s still searching.”

Austin gazed at Kane as if he’d seen the little man who wasn’t there.

“You’re just full of surprises, Doc.” Stavros was coming from the kitchen with plates in his hands. “Why don’t you tell me about it over appetizers?”

In between bites of pita bread, Kane told Austin about the attack on the support ship and described the depressions left in the ocean floor. When Kane asked Austin if he had any idea how the lab could have been moved, Austin said he’d run it by Zavala. Then he asked a question of his own.

“How far had the research gone when the lab disappeared?”

“We had identified the microorganism that produced the chemical in the jellyfish. With that done, we were on the verge of being able to produce the synthesized version in quantity. We were going to skip over the clinical trials and rely on lab tests and computer models even as we distributed it. There wasn’t time otherwise. We had to have the medicine manufactured and in place if and when the virus broke out of China and spread to other countries.”

“Have you thought of who might be behind the lab’s disappearance?” Austin said.

“I’ve been turning the question over in my mind for days. All I’ve got in return has been a headache.”

“You said that a missile was used to knock out the support ship and that it probably was launched from a submarine. Only a government or a big organization would have the resources to attack the bathysphere and move the lab,” Austin said.

“My thoughts exactly. It follows that only a government would have the resources to untangle this mess. Without that lab, we have no defense against the pandemic. The virus is spreading in China. Once it hits urban areas there, it will break out beyond her borders.”

“The Navy must have ships searching,” Austin said.

“They’re combing the area. But the people who did this would have expected a Navy search and done something to forestall it. A White House guy at my board meeting said he had heard Vice President Sandecker sing your praises, and I saw what you did when the bathysphere was all but lost. So I put out the word that I wanted to see you. And here we are.”

“And here’s our dinner,” Austin said.

He ordered a dry white Santorini wine to go with the fish. For the next half hour, Austin entertained Kane with accounts of dives he had made in the Greek island’s caldera and theories about Santorini being the site of the legendary Atlantis. He then pushed away his empty dinner plate and ordered a custard and thick Greek coffee.

“Well?” Kane asked expectantly.

“I’ll do what I can, but you will have to be totally up front with me, Doc. No holding back. And I’ll need to be able to get in touch with you at any time.”

“You’ll have my full cooperation, Kurt.” He looked over at his bodyguards. “My babysitters are giving me the eye. I have to leave. They think that there’s a whole army of assassins waiting out there to do me in.”