The Traveler Page 25

  "I have some wonderful news," Lawrence said. "One of our contacts just called about a drug we've been investigating called 3B3. We think it might help Michael Corrigan cross over."

  "Who developed the drug?"

  Lawrence shrugged his shoulders as if this wasn't important. "We don't know."

  "Can I read the lab reports?"

  "There aren't any."

  "When can I get a supply of this drug?"

  "You're coming with me," Boone said. "We're going to look for it together. If we find a source, you need to make a quick evaluation."

  ***

  THE TWO MEN left immediately, driving down to Manhattan in Boone's SUV. Boone wore a telephone headset and he answered a series of calls—never saying anything specific or mentioning anybody's name. Listening to scattered comments, Richardson concluded that Boone's men were searching for someone in California who had a dangerous female bodyguard.

  "If you find her, watch her hands and don't let her get near you," Boone told someone. "I would say eight feet is the approximate safety zone.

  There was a long pause and Boone received some more information.

  "I don't think the Irish woman is in America," he said. "My European sources tell me she's completely dropped out of sight. If you see her, respond in an extreme manner. She has no restraint whatsoever. Highly dangerous. Do you know what happened in Sicily? Yes? Well, don't forget."

  Boone switched off his phone and concentrated on the road. Light from the car's instrument panel was reflected off the lenses of his eyeglasses. "Dr. Richardson, I've heard reports that you gained access to unauthorized information from the genetic research team."

  "It was just an accident, Mr. Boone. I wasn't trying to—"

  "But you didn't see anything."

  "Unfortunately I did, but ..."

  Boone glared at Richardson as if the neurologist were a stubborn child. "You didn't see anything," he repeated.

  "No. I guess I didn't."

  "Good." Boone glided into the right lane and took the turn for New York City. "Then there isn't a problem."

  ***

  IT WAS ABOUT ten o'clock in the evening when they reached Manhattan. Richardson stared out the window at a homeless man searching through a trash can and a group of young women laughing as they left a restaurant. After the quiet environment of the re-search center, New York seemed noisy and uncontrolled. Had he really visited this city with his ex-wife, gone to plays and restaurants? Boone drove over to the east side and parked on Twenty-eighth Street

  . They got out and walked toward the dark towers of Bellevue Hospital.

  "What are we doing here?" Richardson asked.

  "We're going to meet a friend of the Evergreen Foundation." Boone gave Richardson a quick, appraising look. "Tonight you'll discover how many new friends you have in this world."

  Boone handed a business card to the bored woman at the reception desk and she allowed them to take the elevator up to the psychiatric ward. On the sixth floor, a uniformed hospital guard sat be-hind a Plexiglas barrier. The guard didn't look surprised when Boone pulled an automatic pistol out of his shoulder holster and placed the gun in a little gray locker. They entered the ward. A short Hispanic man wearing a white lab coat was waiting for them. He smiled and extended both hands as if they had just arrived for a birthday party.

  "Good evening, gentlemen. Which one of you is Dr. Richardson?"

  "That's me."

  "A pleasure to meet you. I'm Dr. Raymond Flores. The Evergreen Foundation said you'd be dropping by tonight."

  Dr. Flores escorted them down the hallway. Even though it was late, a few male patients wearing green cotton pajamas and bathrobes wandered around. All of them were drugged and they moved slowly. Their eyes were dead and their slippers made little hissing sounds as they touched the tile floor.

  "So you work for the foundation?" Flores asked.

  "Yes. I'm in charge of a special project," Richardson said.

  Dr. Flores passed several patient rooms, then stopped at a locked door. "Someone from the foundation named Takawa asked me to look for admits picked up under the influence of this new street drug, 3B3. No one's made a chemical analysis yet, but it seems to be a very potent hallucinogen. The people taking it think they've been given a vision of different worlds."

  Flores unlocked the door and they entered a detention cell that smelled of urine and vomit. The only light came from a single bulb protected by a mesh screen. A young man wrapped in a canvas straitjacket lay on the green tile floor. His head was shaved, but a faint haze of blond hair was beginning to appear on his skull.

  The patient opened his eyes and smiled at the three men standing over him. "Hello, everyone. Why don't you take out your brains and make yourselves comfortable?"

  Dr. Flores smoothed the lapels of his lab coat and smiled pleasantly. "Terry, these gentlemen want to learn about 3B3."

  Terry blinked twice and Richardson wondered if he was going to say anything at all. Suddenly he began pushing with his legs, wiggling across the floor to a wall, then forcing himself up to a sitting position. "It's not really a drug. It's a revelation."

  "Do you shoot it, snort it, inhale it, or swallow it?" Boone's voice was calm and deliberately neutral.

  "It's a liquid, light blue, like a summer sky." Terry closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them again. "I swallowed it at the club and then I was cracking out of this body and flying, passing through water and fire to a beautiful forest. But I couldn't stay for more than a few seconds." He looked disappointed. "The jaguar had green eyes."

  Dr. Flores glanced at Richardson. "He's told this story many times, and he always ends up with the jaguar."

  "So where can I find 3B3?" Richardson asked.

  Terry closed his eyes again and smiled serenely. "Do you know what he charges for one dose? Three hundred and thirty-three dollars. He says it's a magic number."

  "And who's making that kind of money?" Boone asked. "Pius Romero. He's always at the Chan Chan Room."

  "It's a midtown dance club," Dr. Flores explained. "We've had several patients who have overdosed there."

  "This world is too small," Terry whispered. "Do you realize that? It's a child's marble dropped into a pool of water."

  They followed Flores back out into the corridor. Boone walked away from the two doctors and immediately called someone with his cell phone.

  "Have you examined other patients who have used this drug?" Richardson asked.

  "This is the fourth admit in the last two months. We put them on a combination of Fontex and Valdov for a few days until they're catatonic, then we lower the dosage and bring them back to reality. After a while, the jaguar disappears."

  ***

  BOONE ESCORTED RICHARDSON back to the SUV. He received two more phone calls, said "yes" to each person, then switched off the cell.

  "What are we going to do?" asked Richardson.

  "Next stop is the Chan Chan Room."

  Limousines and black town cars were double parked outside the club entrance on Fifty-third Street

  . Held behind a velvet rope, a crowd of people waited for the bouncers to search them with hand-held metal detectors. The women standing in line wore short dresses or flimsy skirts with slits up the side.

  Boone drove past the crowd, then stopped beside a sedan parked halfway down the block. Two men got out of the car and walked up to Boone's side window. One of the men was a short African American wearing an expensive suede car coat. His partner was white and as big as a football lineman. He wore an army surplus jacket and looked like he wanted to pick up a few pedestrians and throw them down on the street.

  The black man grinned. "Hey, Boone. It's been a while." He nodded at Dr. Richardson. "Who's your new friend?"

  "Dr. Richardson, this is Detective Mitchell and his partner, Detective Krause."

  "We got your message, drove here, and talked to the club bouncers." Krause had a deep, growly voice. "They say this Romero guy came in an hour ago."
r />   "You two go around to the fire door," Mitchell said. "We'll bring him out."

  Boone rolled up the window and drove down the street. He parked two blocks away from the club, then reached under the front seat and found a black leather glove. "You come with me, Doctor. Mr. Romero might have some information."

  Richardson followed Boone to an alleyway at the rear exit of the Chan Chan Room. A rhythmic, thumping music pushed through the steel fire door. A few minutes later the door popped open and Detective Krause threw a skinny Puerto Rican man onto the asphalt. Still looking cheerful, Detective Mitchell strolled over to the man and kicked him in the stomach.

  "Gentlemen, we'd like you to meet Pius Romero. He was sitting in the VIP room drinking something fruity with a little umbrella. Now that's not fair, is it? Krause and I are dedicated public servants and we never get invited to the VIP room."

  Pius Romero lay on the asphalt, gasping for breath. Boone pulled on the black leather glove. He gazed at Romero as if the young man was an empty cardboard box. "Listen carefully, Pius. We're not here to arrest you, but I want some information. If you lie about anything, my friends will track you down and give you a great deal of pain. Do you understand that? Show me that you understand."

  Pius sat up and touched his scraped elbow. "I ain't doing nothing wrong.

  "Who supplies your 3B3?"

  The name of the drug made the young man sit up a little straighter.

  "Never heard of it."

  "You sold it to several people. Who sold it to you?"

  Pius scrambled to his feet and tried to run away, but Boone caught him. He threw the drug dealer against the wall and began slapping him with his right hand. The leather glove made a smacking sound every time it hit Romero's face. Blood trickled out of his nose and mouth.

  Dr. Richardson knew this violence was real—very real—but he didn't feel attached to what was happening. It was like he was one step back from what was going on, watching a movie on a television screen. As the beating continued, he glanced at the two detectives. Mitchell was smiling while Krause nodded like a basketball fan who had just seen a perfect three-point shot.

  Boone's voice was calm and reasonable. "I've broken your nose, Pius. Now I'm going to strike upward and crush the nasal turbinate bones beneath your eyes. These bones will never heal successfully. Not like a leg or arm. You're going to feel pain for the rest of your life."

  Pius Romero raised his hands like a child. "What do you want?" He whimpered. "Names? I'll give you names. I'll give you everything .."

  ***

  AROUND TWO O'CLOCK in the morning, they found the address near JFK airport in Jamaica, Queens. The man who manufactured 3B3 lived in a white clapboard house with aluminum lawn chairs chained to his porch. It was a quiet, working-class neighborhood, the kind of place where people swept their sidewalks and placed concrete statues of the Virgin Mary on their tiny front lawns. Boone parked his SUV and told Dr. Richardson to get out. They walked over to the detectives sitting in their car.

  "You want help?" Mitchell asked.

  "Stay here. Dr. Richardson and I are going to go inside. If there's trouble, I'll call you on my cell phone."

  The sense of detachment that had protected Richardson when Boone was beating Pius Romero had disappeared during the ride out to Queens. The neurologist felt tired and scared. He wanted to run away from the three men, but he knew that would be useless. Shivering from the cold, he followed Boone across the street. "What are you going to do?" he asked.

  Boone stood on the sidewalk and gazed up at a light coming from a third-floor window. "I don't know. First I have to assess the problem."

  "I hate violence, Mr. Boone."

  "So do I."

  "You almost killed that young man."

  "I didn't even come close." Puffs of white breath came out of Boone's mouth as he talked. "You need to study history, Doctor. All great changes are based on pain and destruction."

  The two men walked down the driveway to the back door of the house. Boone stood on the porch and touched the door frame with the tips of his fingers. All of a sudden, he took one step back and kicked just above the knob. There was a cracking sound and the door flew open. Richardson followed him inside.

  The house was very warm and smelled harsh and foul, like someone had spilled a bottle of ammonia. The two men passed through the dark kitchen, and Richardson accidentally stepped on a water dish. Creatures were moving around the kitchen and on the counters. Boone flicked on the switch for the overhead light.

  "Cats," Boone said, almost spitting out the word. "I hate cats. You can't teach them anything."

  There were four cats in the kitchen and two more in the hallway. They moved quietly on soft paws as the inner layer of their eyes reflected the dim light and turned gold and pink and dark green. Their tails curved up like little question marks while their whiskers tasted the air.

  "There's a light upstairs," Boone said. "Let's see who's home." Single file, they climbed up the wooden stairs to the third floor. Boone opened a door and they entered an attic that had been turned into a laboratory. There were tables and chemical glassware. A spectrograph. Microscopes and a Bunsen burner.

  An old man sat in a wicker chair with a white Persian cat on his lap. He was clean-shaven and neatly dressed, and wore bifocal eyeglasses tilted downward on the end of his nose. He didn't seem surprised by the intrusion.

  "Good evening, gentlemen." The man spoke very precisely, enunciating each syllable. "I knew that you'd show up here eventually. In fact, I predicted it. Newton's third law of motion states that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction."

  Boone watched the old man as if he were about to run away. "I'm Nathan Boone. What's your name?"

  "Lundquist. Dr. Jonathan Lundquist. If you're the police, you can leave right now. I haven't done anything illegal. There's no law against 3B3 because the government doesn't know that it exists."

  A tortoiseshell cat tried to rub against Boone's leg, but he kicked it away. "We're not policemen."

  Dr. Lundquist looked surprised. "Then you must be—yes, of course—you work for the Brethren."

  Boone looked like he was going to slip on his black leather glove and break the old man's nose. Richardson shook his head slightly. No need for that. He walked over to the old man and sat down on a folding chair. "I'm Dr. Phillip Richardson, a research neurologist with Yale University."

  Lundquist looked pleased to be meeting another scientist. "And now you're working for the Evergreen Foundation."

  "Yes. On a special project."

  "Many years ago, I applied for a grant from the foundation, but they didn't even answer my letter. That was before I learned about the Travelers from renegade Web sites on the Internet." Lundquist laughed softly. "I thought it was best if I worked on my own. No forms to fill out. No one looking over my shoulder."

  "Were you trying to duplicate the Traveler's experience?"

  "It's much more than that, Doctor. I was trying to answer some fundamental questions." Lundquist stopped stroking the Persian cat and it jumped off his lap. "A few years ago I was at Princeton, teaching organic chemistry . . ." He glanced at Richardson. "I had a respectable career, but nothing flashy. I was always interested in the big picture. Not just chemistry but other areas of science. So one afternoon I went to a graduate seminar in the physics department about something called brane theory.

  "Physicists have a serious problem these days. The concepts that explain the universe, such as Einstein's theory of general relativity aren't compatible with the subatomic world of quantum mechanics. Some physicists have gotten around this contradiction with string theory, the idea that everything is composed of tiny subatomic objects that are vibrating in multidimensional space. The math makes sense, but the strings are so small that you can't prove much experimentally.

  "Brane theory goes large and tries to give a cosmological explanation. `Brane' is short for `membrane.' The theorists believe that our perceivable universe is confined to
a sort of membrane of space and time. The usual analogy is that our galaxy is like pond scum—a thin layer of existence floating on a much larger bulk of something. All matter, including our own bodies, is trapped in our brane, but gravity can leak off into the bulk or subtly influence our own physical phenomenon. Other branes, other dimensions, other realms—use any word you wish—can be very near to us, but we would be totally unaware of them. That's because neither light nor sound nor radioactivity can break free of its own particular dimension.

  A black cat approached Lundquist and he scratched behind the animal's ears. "That's the theory at least, in a very simplified form. And I had the theory in my mind when I went to hear a lecture in New York given by a monk from Tibet. I'm sitting there, listening to him talk about the six different realms of Buddhist cosmology, and I realize that he's describing the branes—the different dimensions and the barriers that separate them. But there's one crucial difference: my associates at Princeton can't conceive of going to these different places. For a Traveler, it's quite possible. The body can't do it, but the Light within us can."

  Lundquist leaned back in his chair and smiled at his guests. "This connection between spirituality and physics made me view science in a new way. Right now we're smashing atoms and ripping apart chromosomes. We're going to the bottom of the ocean and looking up into space. But we're not really investigating the region within our skull except in the most superficial way. People are using MRI machines and CAT scans to view the brain, but it's all very small and physiological. No one seems to realize how immense consciousness really is. It ties us to the rest of the universe."

  Richardson glanced around the room and saw a tabby cat sitting on a leather folder crammed with sheets of stained paper. Trying not to alarm Lundquist, he stood up and took a few steps toward the table. "So you started your experiment?"

  'Yes. First, at Princeton. Then I retired and moved here to save money. Remember, I'm a chemist, not a physicist. So I decided to search for a substance that would break our Light free of our body."