Chapter 34
We were walking to the cell culture lab to find Alice when we met Mike in the hallway.
“I was looking for you”, he said, with a weird expression painted on his face.
“Everything good with you?”, I asked.
“With me?”, he echoed my words, “For sure, everything is quite fine with me”
“Do you have the time to come to my office?”, he added after a pause.
Brad and I exchanged a perplexed look, more for the urgency in his tone than for the question itself.
“Sure”, Brad replied, “We actually have news that might interest you after our last investigations on the polymer”.
Mike responded with an alarmed stare, and we stood there in the hallway for a moment longer till Brad arched his brows shaking Mike from his worried trance.
“I think you guys really ought to have a chat with me”. Mike started to walk to his office and gestured us to follow. “Have a seat”, he said when we got there, locking the door behind us.
“What’s happening Mike?”, I asked, sitting at the edge of the chair, leaning towards him across the desk, my hands joint. I had seen Mike in a bitter mood more times than I could count, but I would have thought anxiousness was unknown to him up to this point. Mike was a methodic man with certainties and a hard shell impervious to external perturbations. If Mike was in this state something must have been terribly wrong.
He looked straight back at me. “I don’t know what is happening, but whatever it is, I suspect it is very ugly”.
“Can you be a bit more specific?”, Brad asked impatiently.
“Sandeep called me this morning. I could tell he was very nervous. His precise words were that under no circumstance we should bring samples to the Cross cancer institute, and most of all we should not carry any pure polymer there”
“But did he say why?”, I asked, feeling my stomach tighten
“That’s what I wanted to understand too, but I couldn’t get anything out of him. He was scared, I tell you. I think he found out something and now somebody is threatening him. It must be someone who got a hold of your polymer, and wants to do something which is not so clean and fancy with it. Whoever the guy is, he must believe that there’s a lot at stake, or else he wouldn’t go so far as to threaten somebody. The question is who could be so interested in your polymer and why”.
“Wilhelm”, I whispered.
“Wilhelm?”, repeated Mike.
“Sandeep asked this guy, Wilhelm, to help with the analyses because the guy is supposed to be a super-expert”, I explained.
“Ehm, I see…”, said Mike, “But what would be using the polymer for?”.
“I don’t know”, I replied, “but the other day when Brad and I were at the center there was a journalist at the entrance. He claimed that the mortality among the patients had been suspiciously high lately, he insisted on talking with some doctor. He was gone after we met with Sandeep, I am not sure if he succeeded…”.
“It’s too early to draw connections”, Brad interrupted.
“Maybe it is, but something is obviously not right”, I insisted.
“I cannot see what our polymer would have to do with the death of some patients”, argued Brad.
“I can’t either and I hope the answer is nothing”, I replied, “but what are we going to do?”.
“Sandeep asked to send him an email saying that you’ve sorted everything out and that you will not need his help anymore, or whatever other story you wish to write as long as the conclusion is that he will no longer be involved with your work. He also asked that you don’t return to the institute and that you dismiss any possible offer of help coming from people who work there, “for everybody’s sake”, he said”, Mike told us.
“Maybe we should talk to McMurrich”, I suggested, “After all she must be made aware of this”.
“Not yet”, said Mike, “Let’s recollect our thoughts before taking any rushed decision”
Brad agreed. “McMurrich can wait. Let’s go visit Alice now, perhaps some of her new discoveries can shed some light on the mystery”.
“Ok”, I conceded in a half-hearted way.
I still had no clue that what was to come would surpass my imagination, but something told me that my lab games had slipped out of hands and that something real, and terribly wrong, was about to happen.