“I can just pop up and see him for a few minutes,” he told the private security guard. “I know the way. I have some test results to go over for the A/B run they did last week on the two new microbe trial vaccines. You in the loop on that?”
The guard, a kid barely out of his teens who proudly wore the standard-issue sidearm, said, “No, I’m not in the loop on that,” and went back to his coffee and computer screen on which Finn caught sight of an online dating service’s latest offerings.
Finn waited patiently inside the elevator car until someone came along. He held up a plastic card he had just taken out of the slot. “Damn RFID’s malfunctioning again,” he said, referring to the encrypted smart card that was needed to access the elevator. “Third time this month. And every time they said they fixed it. Yeah, right.”
“I know the feeling,” the other man said as he swiped his card through the slot and the doors closed. “What floor you want?” he asked.
“Fifth,” Finn replied, as he put his son’s plastic library card back into his pocket.
He got off on the fifth floor and found the door he wanted right next to the elevator bank. It also required a smart card for entry. He slipped inside a nearby bathroom and dabbed some water on his pants leg. When he heard the elevator ding, he opened the door to the bathroom, pretending to be rubbing his wet hands dry as the doors to the elevator slid open. The woman stepped off and swiped her card in the secure door as Finn stood behind her, his library card in hand.
The woman glanced at him and smiled. “Looks like I beat you to it.”
Finn put his card away. “Hasn’t been a great morning. I spilled coffee on my pants leg on the drive over.” He pointed to the wet stain.
The woman smiled again. “Bet that woke you up.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Finn as he followed her in.
“You here to see anyone in particular?” she asked.
Finn shook his head and held up his phony but genuine-looking ID tag that had the imprint of Homeland Security. “Just a random drop-in. Feds need to see how the tax dollars are being spent.”
“Don’t I know it. Have a good one,” she added as she walked off.
Finn strolled around the lab, surreptitiously taking pictures with his buttonhole camera and nodding to people as he walked along jotting down notes on his electronic tablet with his stylus. It really did amaze him. If you looked like you belonged, people never challenged you. He even had several people give him helpful details on certain vaccines’ potencies. He left and made his way back down to the main entrance, courtesy of the help of another clueless Good Samaritan. When he exited onto the main lobby, however, he froze.
Sam, the fat kid from his office, was up against the wall and the security guard was doing a very unprofessional pat-down. Any person who knew what he was doing could have taken the guard’s gun in a second with no trouble.
“What’s going on here,” Finn called out as he headed over.
“Spy!” the guard said. “Caught him red-handed. I’m calling the cops.”
Finn had no choice now but to pull his credentialing letter and alert their contact inside the building that they’d been uncovered. He didn’t like to have to make that call, but when you brought rookies with you, it sometimes happened. At least Finn had penetrated to where he needed to go. That’s how it would have finished if Sam hadn’t done something incredibly stupid. Panicked at the sight of the gun, he pushed the guard away and started to run.
The guard pointed his pistol at Sam’s broad back and shouted, “Stop!”
“Don’t,” Finn screamed as he hurtled forward. The guard fired his weapon just as Finn collided with him. In an instant Finn had the gun away from the man and pushed his credentialing letter in his face. “Call John Rivers in security, he knows all about-” He broke off what he was saying and stared down the hall. Sam was lying on the floor, blood pouring out of a wound on his back.
“Son of a bitch!” Finn jumped up and raced to Sam.
CHAPTER 67
THE AMBULANCE PULLED AWAY thirty minutes later. After reaching Sam, Finn had stanched the bleeding and then performed CPR on his colleague when Sam had ceased breathing and his heart had stopped, perhaps from shock. The EMTs had arrived and taken over from there. Sam would live, but his rehab would take a while because it looked like the bullet had done some nasty damage to a few of his organs.
Finn watched the red rack lights until they disappeared. Standing next to him was John Rivers, the head of security, who had apologized profusely for the guard’s shooting Sam in the back when he was not being threatened.
“Thank God you were there, Harry,” Rivers said. “Otherwise he’d be dead.”
“Yeah, well, he wouldn’t have gotten shot if I hadn’t dragged him here.”
“They give us no money or time to train our guards,” Rivers complained. “They spend billions on the facility and security technology, but then they put a gun in the hands of a punk who’s earning ten bucks an hour. It makes no sense.”
Finn wasn’t really listening. He had never had anything like this happen before. Sam was a good man but strictly a desk jockey. Finn had never liked taking inexperienced folks with him on these outings, and had voiced that opinion several times. Maybe now they would listen to him.
He drove home and later took Patrick to baseball practice, silently watching his athletic middle child field all balls hit his way and later mercilessly pound the automated pitches in the batting cage. Finn didn’t say much on the way home, letting an animated Patrick talk about his day at school. Over dinner that night, Susie recited her lines from the upcoming play-although it didn’t appear that trees were given much to say, a fact her two older brothers ribbed her about. She took the kidding well before finally telling them both, “Stuff it, dorks.” That comment drew a warning from Mandy, who’d had her hands full lately with the three because Finn had been so buried at work.
David said, “Hey, Pop, you coming to the soccer match on Friday afternoon? Coach is gonna let me play goalie.”
Finn said absently, “I’ll try, son. I might be tied up.” He had to go visit his mother. His wife would not be happy about that.
Mandy gave David some pocket money for when his class went downtown on their field trip the next morning. She took a small bite of food and looked over at her husband, who was obviously not mentally with them.
“Harry, you okay?”
He stirred. “Just some stuff at work.” There had been no news coverage of the incident, even though the police had been called, because Homeland Security had stepped in to put the kibosh on it. Having Finn exposed in the press would put a severe crimp in the red cell contract work that his company did for Homeland Security, work that was critically important to national security. With DHS in Finn’s corner, the local cops had quickly rolled over. The young security guard had not been charged with anything other than being stupid and undertrained, and his gun had been taken away. He had been reassigned to a desk job and told that if he said anything to anyone about what had happened he would regret it for the rest of his life.
After dinner he drove to the hospital to see Sam. He was in the ICU after surgery, but his condition had stabilized. He was on heavy meds and didn’t even know Finn was there. His parents had been flown in from New York that afternoon and were in the ICU waiting area. Finn sat with them for an hour, explaining the situation and downplaying Sam’s complicity in getting shot by stupidly running away from a nervous kid with a big gun.
He left the hospital and drove around for a while with the all-news radio station on. He finally turned it off after bad news became awful news and then moved on directly to terrible. What a world they were leaving for the next generation.