Today's Reading
She steps forward and offers a hand. "Mr. Jamison?"
The guard stays out in the corridor. Dez stands back by the door, out of the way.
Jamison takes her hand. "Hallo. You must be Miss Gomez. Dr. Castillo's assistant."
She adjusts her glasses. "Yes. The doctor speaks no English, I'm afraid. You don't mind my translating?"
"Please."
Professor Castillo rolls out a standing, vertical flat-screen monitor on twin stands, upon which the image of a complex biological formula has been sketched. Lots of hexagons and letters. Dez reads the monitor: C8H10N4O2
Professor Castillo nods to it. "Do you know what this is, Mr. Jamison?"
Miss Gomez translates into English.
"I'm hoping it's the formula you've been working on, sir. The formula that would make synthetic opioids nonaddictive."
She translates.
The old man nods. "Yes, yes. This is the work that has driven the last seven years of my life for king and country, sir."
Dez has noted a security monitor on a table. He strolls that way. It shows a high-res, black-and-white image of the guard who led them up, and the exterior of the door he just been leaning on. The guard checks his watch and, a beat later, checks it again.
"This bit of formula?" The professor finds a remote control. The hexagons shrink and are revealed to be part of a much, much larger chemical structure. "It works. It can eliminate the addictive qualities of synthetic opioids."
"This would...change many things," Jamison says, and the assistant translates. He gestures around to include the whole lab. "This is a government-owned facility. The formula is owned by you, and not the Spanish government, sir?"
Miss Gomez translates.
"It is mine. Wholly mine."
"Then Great Britain is prepared to meet your price, Professor. But know that it is our intention to share this with every other nation on—"
Everyone starts at the distant sound of automatic gunfire. Jamison turns to Dez, eyebrows raised.
Dez sits at the security monitor and begins typing on the keyboard.
Miss Gomez spots him. "I...I believe they said the security monitors can only be accessed by campus personnel, Mister...?"
"Dez," he says, keys clacking away. "Dez Limerick. And aye, likely. I've some small training with computers. Might be able to..."
The screen changes, first to six separate images of the campus. Then twelve, then twenty-four. All from closed-circuit security cameras.
Jamison hurries over, hovering over Dez in his chair. Dez targets the camera monitoring the main gate.
The gate is open. The guard who let them in lies on the ground, bleeding from a bullet wound.
Dez shifts to another camera: Two large SUVs are moving through the campus, lights off.
"Heading our way," Jamison says. He draws his phone and checks. "I've no signal."
"Aye. Professor? Who else did you tell about your fantastic discovery?"
The woman says, "Profesor, con quien—"
"That's not necessary, love. Your mate here's no more Spanish than I am. He speaks Spanish with the accent of one who learned it in the Southwest United States. An' the question stands: Who else knows about the formula?"
Jamison turns to the professor and his assistant. "Well?"
She says, "There were other bidders, but..."
Dez changes to the camera that is right outside the lab.
Their guard is gone. So he's in on...whatever this is. Paid off, probably, Dez thinks.
...
