Shadowfires

product development with a care
that was explicitly paranoid. Still, he was not quite prepared for
the obvious siege mentality that lay behind the design of Geneplan's electronic security.
    Dr. Eric Leben had been a specialist in recombinant DNA, one of
the most brilliant figures in the rapidly expanding science of gene
splicing. And Geneplan was one of the companies on the cutting edge
of the extremely profitable bio-business that had grown out of this
new science since the late 1970s.
    Eric Leben and Geneplan held valuable patents on a variety of
genetically engineered microorganisms and new strains of plant life,
including but not limited to: a microbe that produced an extremely
effective hepatitis vaccine, which was currently undergoing the
process of acquiring the FDA seal but was now only a year away from
certain approval and marketing; another man-made microbe “factory”
that produced a supervaccine against all types of herpes; a new
variety of corn that could flourish even if irrigated with salt
water, making it possible for farmers to cultivate abundant crops in
arid lands within pumping distance of the seacoast, where nothing had
previously grown; a new family of slightly altered oranges and lemons
genetically modified to be impervious to fruit flies, citrus canker,
and other diseases, thus eliminating the need for pesticides in a
large portion of the citrus-fruit industry. Any one such patent might
be worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, and Ben
supposed it was only prudent for Geneplan to be paranoid and to spend
a small fortune to guard the research data that led to the creation
of each of these living gold mines.
    Rachael went to the middle of the three doors, deactivated the
alarm, and used another key to disengage the lock.
    When Ben went through the door behind her and eased it shut, he
discovered that it was enormously heavy and would have been immovable
if it had not been hung in perfect balance on cunningly designed ball-
bearing hinges.
    She led him along a series of dark and silent corridors, through
additional doors to Eric's private suite. There she required one more code for a final alarm box.
    Inside the sanctum sanctorum at last, she quickly crossed a vast
expanse of antique Chinese carpet in rose and beige to
Eric's massive desk. It was as ultramodern as that of the company's
front-lounge receptionist but even more stunning and expensive,
constructed of rare gold-veined marble and polished malachite.
    The bright but narrowly focused lance of the flashlight beam
revealed only the middle of the big room as Rachael advanced through
it, so Ben had only glimpses and shadowy impressions of the decor. It
seemed even more determinedly modern than Eric Leben's other haunts, downright futuristic.
    She put her purse and pistol on the desk as she passed it, went to
the wall behind, where Ben joined her. She played the flashlight over
a four-foot-square painting: broad bands of sombrous yellow and a
particularly depressing gray separated by a thin swath of blood-dark
maroon.
    “Another Rothko?” Ben asked.
    “Yeah. And with an important function besides just being a piece
of art.”
    She slipped her fingers under the burnished steel frame, feeling
along the bottom. A latch clicked, and the big painting swung away
from the wall, to which it had been firmly fixed rather than hung on
wire. Behind the hinged Rothko was a large wall safe with a circular
door about two feet in diameter. The steel face, dial, and handle
gleamed.
    “Trite,” Ben said.
    “Not really. Not your ordinary wall safe. Four-inch-thick steel
casing, six-inch face and door. Not just set in the wall but actually
welded to the steel beams of the building itself. Requires not one
but two combinations, the first forward, the second reverse.
Fireproof and virtually blastproof, too.”
    “What's he keep in there-the meaning of life?”
    “Some money, I guess, like in the safe at the house,” she said,
handing Ben the flashlight. She turned the dial and began to put in
the first combination. “Important papers.”
    He aimed the light at the safe door. “Okay, so what're we after exactly? The cash?”
    “No. A file folder. Maybe a ring-binder notebook.”
    “What's in it?”
    “The essentials of an important research project. More or less an
abstract of the developments to date, including copies of Morgan
Lewis's regular reports to Eric. Lewis is the project head. And with any luck,