Shadowfires

Vincent Baresco, head of all research for Geneplan,
had been found by DSA agents in
Geneplan's Newport Beach headquarters, unconscious on the floor of Eric Leben's
office, amidst indications of gunplay and a fierce struggle.
    Rather than take Baresco to a public hospital and even partially
relinquish control of him,
Sharp's men transported the bald and burly scientist to the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro, where he was seen by a Marine physician in the base infirmary. Having received two hard blows to the throat that made it impossible for him to speak, Baresco used a pen and notepad to tell DSA agents that he had been assaulted by Ben Shadway, Rachael Leben's
lover, when he had caught them in the act of looting
Eric's office safe. He was disgruntled when they refused to believe that was the whole story, and he was downright shocked to discover they knew about Wildcard and were aware of Eric Leben's
return from the dead. Using pen and notepad again, Baresco had
demanded to be transferred to a civilian hospital, demanded to know
what possible charges they could lodge, demanded to see his lawyer.
All three demands were, of course, ignored.
    Rupert Knowls and Perry Seitz, the money men who had supplied the
large amount of venture capital that had gotten Geneplan off the
ground nearly a decade ago, were at Knowls's sprawling ten-acre estate, Havenhurst, in Palm Springs. Three Defense Security Agency operatives had arrived at the estate with arrest warrants for Knowls and Seitz and with a search warrant. They had found an illegally modified Uzi submachine gun, doubtless the weapon with which two Palm Springs policemen had been murdered only a couple of hours earlier.
    Currently and indefinitely under detention at Havenhurst, neither
Knowls nor Seitz was raising objections. They knew the score. They
would receive an unattractive offer to convey to the government all
research, rights, and title to the Wildcard enterprise, without a
shred of compensation, and they would be required to remain forever
silent about that undertaking and about Eric Leben's resurrection. They would also be required to sign murder confessions which could be used to keep them acquiescent the rest of their lives. Although the offer had no legal basis or force, although the DSA was violating every tenet of democracy and breaking innumerable laws, Knowls and Seitz would accept the terms. They were worldly men, and they knew that failure to cooperate-and especially any attempt to exercise their constitutional rights-would be the death of them.
    Those five were sitting on a secret that was potentially the most
powerful in history. The immortality process was currently imperfect,
true, but eventually the problems would be solved. Then whoever
controlled the secrets of Wildcard would control the world. With so
much at stake, the government was not concerned about observing the
thin line between moral and immoral behavior, and in this very
special case, it had no interest whatsoever in the niceties of due
process.
    After receiving the report on Seitz and Knowls, Sharp put down the
phone, got up from the leather chair, and paced the windowless
subterranean office. He rolled his big shoulders, stretched, and
tried to work a kink out of his thick, muscular neck.
    He had begun with eight people to worry about, eight possible
leaks to plug, and now five of those eight had been dealt with
quickly and smoothly. He felt pretty good about things in general and
about himself in particular. He was damned good at his job.
    At times like this, he wished he had someone with whom to share
his triumphs, an admiring assistant, but he could not afford to let
anyone get close to him. He was the deputy director of the Defense
Security Agency, the number two man in the whole outfit, and he was
determined to become director by the time he was forty. He intended
to secure that position by collecting sufficient damaging material
about the current director-Jarrod McClain-to force him out and to blackmail McClain into writing a wholehearted recommendation
that Anson Sharp replace him. McClain treated Sharp like a son,
making him privy to every secret of the agency, and already Sharp
possessed most of what he needed to destroy McClain. But, as he was a
careful man, he would not move until there was no possibility
whatsoever of his coup failing. And when he ascended to the director's chair, he would not make the mistake of taking a