Death Watch Read online

  “All right,” Sydney said. “Let’s assume the Russian mafia is behind this. How are they doing it? Last night Lyle Vandeveer died at precisely the instant they said he would.”

  Hunz pulled out a photograph from the manila folder and tossed it into the center of the table. “Yuri Kiselev,” he said. “Scientist. Disappeared two months ago.”

  The man in the black-and-white photo was a pale, hollowcheeked Russian with piercing eyes and a bad comb-over.

  “You think Baranov grabbed him,” Sol said.

  “That, or he went willingly. It’s sketchy, but Baranov and Kiselev knew each other during their Soviet days. Kiselev worked with the army to develop experimental weapons. Baranov was the head of that project.”

  “What kind of weapons?” Helen asked.

  “At this point, it’s speculation,” Hunz said. “The project simply provides a possible tie between the two men. It’s what happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union that’s important. Yuri Kiselev is Russia’s foremost authority in an emerging technology.”

  “Nanotechnology,” Grant Forsythe said, stealing Hunz Vonner’s thunder.

  “What’s that?” Cori asked.

  Hunz looked to Grant. The silent exchange had an edge to it. Did Grant want to field the question? The coanchor deferred to Hunz.

  “Basically,” Hunz said, “nanotechnology is an attempt to manufacture products on the atomic level, arranging atoms as though they were colored Lego bricks. Kiselev is experimenting with molecular robotics. He’s building devices that are one one-thousandth the width of a human hair. These machines—called nanobots—are then inserted into the human bloodstream.”

  “You asked Mr. Vandeveer if he’d had an injection recently,” Sydney said.

  Hunz nodded. “We believe they may be contaminating batches of popular medicines with nanobots. A person goes in for a flu shot and they get a programmed molecular robotic injected into their bloodstream.”

  “Is that possible?” Helen asked.

  “Scientists the world over are working on nanotechnology. Some of the projects on the drawing board are to use them to clean arteries, repair DNA, repair damaged cells, find and eliminate viruses, and even clean the inside of our lungs.”

  “Our greatest strides in aviation occurred during time of war,” Grant said. “Could it be that our greatest strides in microrobotics will come as a result of terrorism?”

  “So Lyle Vandeveer…,” Sydney prompted.

  “Two possibilities,” Hunz said. “One project that’s being explored is the use of nanobots as cancer killers. The robot would be programmed to seek out cancer cells and inject them with a poison that would kill them.”

  “Substitute a cancer-killing poison with a fatal poison,” Helen said, “released with computerized precision.”

  “The other possibility is the use of nanobots to fight thrombosis, or blood clots. Ideally, the nanobot would patrol the bloodstream and search for unwanted developing internal clots. We all know that a stray clot in the bloodstream can cause a heart attack if it clogs an artery or gets into a lung, or it can cause a seizure if it goes to the brain.”

  Helen tapped her pencil on the pad in front of her. “So, have they determined the cause of Mr. Vandeveer’s death?”

  Sydney felt the blood drain from her face. Before leaving the house this morning she’d called the medical examiner to get a report on the cause of Lyle Vandeveer’s death. “He died of a blood clot,” she said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  An uneasy feeling wormed inside Sydney. Could it be that as she sat next to Lyle Vandeveer last night a nanobot was swimming in his bloodstream? A ticking time bomb smaller than a human hair? Could that really be what killed him?

  She turned to Hunz, who still had the floor at Command Central. “Can they be detected? These nanobots. Is there a scanner that can detect them?”

  “They’re microscopic,” he said. “I know that those who implant them can give them acoustic signals. Other than that ” He shrugged.

  “Something worth looking into,” Helen said.

  “What about Baranov and Kiselev?” Grant Forsythe asked. “Do we know their whereabouts?”

  “The FBI has men on it.”

  “Good,” Helen said. “What else do we have? Sydney?”

  It took Sydney a moment to make the mental transition. She was still thinking about Hunz’s nanobots. When she realized Helen was expecting some kind of report from her regarding Death Watch, her heart stalled. Just like in high school. The one time you don’t do your homework and the teacher calls on you. Everything she had was reported by Hunz last night on the air.

  “We have the follow-up on Lyle Vandeveer’s death, that he died of a blood clot,” she said lamely. “And there was a hoax last night at UCLA.”

  “A dormitory hoax?” Cori scoffed. “Hardly breaking news.”

  “Anything else?” Helen asked.

  “Oh! Lyle Vandeveer’s brother says he received a confirmation regarding Lyle’s death watch notice. We haven’t found anyone else who’s received a corroborating notification, but it might be something.”

  “Good,” Helen said.

  Trying to make up for the lack of substance with quantity, she forged ahead. “And this morning, I plan to go to the Homeland Security Internet page. They’ve been logging the death watch notices. I thought I’d download the information and see if I could find any patterns.”

  “Be sure to make a list of any injections they’ve had,” Hunz said. “Location. Date.”

  “And don’t spend too much time playing solitaire,” Cori said.

  “Is that all?” Helen asked.

  Sydney grinned sheepishly and nodded.

  “Helen,” Cori said, “I think it’s pretty obvious Sydney’s in over her head. Maybe I should take over for her.”

  “Why?” Helen said. There was a sharp edge to the question. “Do you have a contact with the Russian mafia’s press secretary?”

  Cori Zinn’s face reddened. Next to her, Grant Forsythe chuckled. From the tone in Helen’s voice, Cori was not on her list of favorite people right now.

  “In case anyone hasn’t heard, seems she lied to get the governor’s interview,” Grant said. “No exclusive.”

  “Shut up, Grant,” Cori said.

  “How about a death watch clock on the news set?” Sol Rosenthal said, changing the subject. “You know, like the ones they have that keep an ongoing tally of American debt. How about a clock that updates the total number of deaths as they’re reported? We could have it running behind the anchor desk.”

  “That’s rather ghoulish, if you ask me,” Helen said.

  “I think it’ll make a splash,” Sol said.

  Which meant it was as good as done.

  Sydney sat down at one of the station’s computer terminals just after Sol propelled Hunz into his office for coffee and croissants. She rubbed her eyes as she waited for the Department of Homeland Security homepage to load.

  She took a sip of orange juice she’d grabbed from the vending machine and stared at the screen. There were actually two Internet sites for Homeland Security. One, a subdirectory of the official White House site, featured current news related to national security. The lead story today was about the death watch killings. An announcement indicated the president would be addressing the nation this evening on the subject of Death Watch. It was rumored in the newsroom he’d raise the Awareness system to Level Four, which meant government and public buildings would be closed; transportation systems would be monitored, redirected, and constrained; and emergency personnel mobilized.

  Two raises in two days was unprecedented.

  How do you mobilize a nation against nanobots?

  She scanned the rest of the site to see if it said anything about the Russian mafia. She found nothing.

  Switching over to the Homeland Security site, she found an organizational chart of the Department of Homeland Security; a photo of Wallace Perkins, the department’s second direct
or; and instructions to follow in case of emergency or disaster. After Hunz’s briefing, Sydney realized how dated the information was. It was based on prior terrorist acts—the role of fire and police departments in an emergency, how to report suspicious activity around bridges and high-profile buildings, and so forth. There was nothing about how to guard against a subatomic nanobot attack.

  She found a link to recent news items and clicked on it. A new screen appeared. At the top, a banner headline: Death Watch Notifications.

  Bingo. One more click and a list of known death watch victims appeared. It could be sorted by name, state, or chronologically.

  Sydney clicked on the date and time column.

  Jeffrey Conley appeared twenty-first on the list. The seventh person to die in Los Angeles, the twenty-first in America. He died minutes after a woman in Montana and a West Virginia man.

  The length of the list chilled Sydney’s flesh. A black dot appeared by the names of those confirmed dead. It reminded her of Treasure Island. The cursed black spot.

  Halfway down the list the times caught up with the present. There was an hour lag between the placing of black dots and present time, nothing to indicate this was anything but an administrative lag as the deaths were confirmed.

  Sydney printed out the list, then clicked on the state column to get a list of California names. Lyle Vandeveer’s name stood out. Sydney wondered who would inherit his trains and scenery layout.

  Sydney bit her lower lip to fight back her emotions.

  She’d promised him he would beat Death Watch.

  After printing out the state list, she scanned the lower half for LA residents, those people who were counting the minutes until they died. One name didn’t fit. The address was a temporary one, the Excelsior Hotel in Century City. An out-of-town visitor had reported receiving a death watch notice.

  “Welcome to California,” Sydney muttered.

  Before logging off, she checked her email. It was a reflex, something she did several times a day. Today, however, the moment she hit Enter, while the computer accessed her account, her heart caught in her throat at the sudden realization of what she might find in her in-box.

  The screen changed, and she wished she hadn’t initiated the process. She hadn’t really prepared herself for what she might see. She’d forgotten how everything had changed since yesterday.

  Checking email. Opening a mailbox. Answering the phone. Answering the front door. Yesterday these were ordinary events. Today, a person’s life could change by any one of them.

  Her personalized email screen came up.

  Thirteen new messages.

  Sydney stared at the number for several moments. A mouse click would list the messages by subject. Was she sure she wanted to do this?

  Her breathing was shallow. She was spooked, she admitted it. And the longer she sat there staring at the screen, the more spooked she became.

  She reached for the mouse and clicked the program closed. She didn’t want to know. It was better not to know, wasn’t it? It was unnatural for a person to know the precise moment of her death, wasn’t it?

  Terminally ill patients knew, but they were given a general time frame. You have six months to live. You have a year to live. To know the exact time was to share an experience with death-row prisoners, but they’d done something to deserve their fate. Even then, some people argued that knowing one’s time of death was cruel and unusual punishment.

  It was better not to know. You could put off thinking about it. You could deny it would ever happen to you. You could believe you were going to be the exception to the history of humankind and live forever, or that like Enoch and Elijah, God would spare you the penalty of death and take you straight to heaven. Jesus could return at any moment, couldn’t he?

  Sydney stood and backed away from the computer. The screen had returned to the station’s homepage.

  She stared at it without looking at it.

  Wanting to go. Wanting to know.

  She sat back down and logged in. She clicked on the button that called up her email. Since it had already been retrieved, it came up faster this time.

  Thirteen new messages.

  Taking a deep breath, Sydney clicked on her in-box icon. She scanned the list, looking for two words.

  She recognized several online store names, merchandisers from whom she’d ordered who now bombarded her daily with ads. There were replies to emails she’d sent; forwarded email, usually junk poems with animated pictures encouraging you to pass the email to ten friends.

  Three quarters down the list she saw it.

  Two words.

  Death Watch.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Sydney’s mind wasn’t on her driving. She was thinking about the death watch email she’d found in her in-box. It had been sent from the public library by The Rev, the same man who’d tried contacting her yesterday. He claimed he knew who was behind the death watch notices and, this time, wanted her to meet him at the Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery at noon today. He didn’t give a description of himself, said it wasn’t necessary. He knew what she looked like.

  What had Cori said about this guy? That she’d interviewed him for a mental insanity news feature—that was it, wasn’t it? Wasn’t he the guy who claimed he could talk to angels?

  Sydney had deleted the message, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Probably because the death watch subject heading had scared ten years off her life, and then when she realized it wasn’t what she thought it was, she’d gotten angry at him for scaring her.

  But even if she had the time, which she didn’t, she wouldn’t have followed up on the story. Newscasters get tips for stories, every day from people who, nine times out of ten, have an ax to grind or are crackpots.

  Pulling to a stop in the middle of a downtown intersection brought Sydney’s mind back to the present. Her left signal blinked repeatedly while she waited for a break in the traffic. A steady flow of cars streamed past. The signal light turned yellow. The cars kept coming. Red. Still the cars came, two, three, four, five, before finally someone stopped, but by then, the cross traffic was crowding into the intersection, honking at her because she was in their way.

  Driving in LA used to bother her. Not so much anymore. If you wanted to get around in LA, this was the kind of thing you had to deal with.

  Moving again, Sydney shifted her thoughts to the Homeland Security Web site and the growing list of death watch victims. The list was limited to deaths in America. Other Web sites attempted to tally worldwide totals. It was these numbers that would power the KSMJ death watch clock to tick with relentless horror.

  Sydney found that scanning the worldwide list of names was in some ways like reading headstones in a cemetery. You’re aware that they were all dead people, but it didn’t impact you emotionally because you didn’t know them.

  Reading Lyle Vandeveer’s name on the list was different. His name got to her. It was personal.

  She told herself this next interview would be different. She’d made a mistake with Lyle Vandeveer. She let herself get too close to him. She knew at the time it was a mistake, yet she did it anyway. A reporter is supposed to remain detached. Objective. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  The twin towers of the Excelsior Hotel rose up in front of her. Sydney began preparing herself for the interview, to distance herself mentally and emotionally.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sydney St. James fell in love with Cheryl McCormick the instant she laid eyes on her. She fell in love with little Stacy a second later. Mother and daughter greeted her with smiles.

  “My, they sure grow them pretty out here,” Cheryl said, when she first saw Sydney.

  “Actually, I’m an Iowa girl,” Sydney said.

  Cheryl invited her in while Stacy stared at her from behind her mother’s legs. For a woman who had just recently learned she was going to die, Cheryl seemed unusually chipper. A show of strength for the little girl’s sake?

  “Honey, why
don’t you color in the other room,” Cheryl said. “Mommy’s going to talk to this nice lady.”

  Sydney was impressed that Stacy agreed without a fuss. Before going, however, she had to show Sydney some of the pictures she’d already colored.

  “Wonder Woman!” Sydney flipped page after page of green scribbled faces. “I love Wonder Woman! I used to pretend I was Wonder Woman when I was a little girl.”

  Stacy beamed.

  While Cheryl deposited her daughter in an adjoining room, Sydney took a quick look around. The suite was immaculate, but cold. Tile floors. Gold inlaid pillars. Cathedral ceiling. Polished ferns strategically placed. Maybe the subject of her visit was influencing her, but it reminded her of a mausoleum.

  Cheryl returned and joined Sydney in a little alcove overlooking the city.

  “When are you due?” Sydney asked.

  “Less than a month,” Cheryl said. “Will there be cameras?”

  “The cameraman’s about thirty minutes behind me. I like to do a precamera interview. That way we both know what to expect.”

  “How considerate. Thank you. Is what I’m wearing all right?”

  Cheryl was dressed in an emerald green maternity top that draped gracefully over her form and set off her red hair.

  “You look beautiful,” Sydney said.

  It was the truth. Cheryl McCormick had an aura of pleasantness about her that had nothing to do with her expectant condition and everything to do with her personality, which troubled Sydney even more. How could this woman be so composed under the circumstances?

  “May I see the letter?” Sydney asked. She found it difficult to say Death Watch, as though saying it would confirm it. It wasn’t needed anyway. Cheryl knew what she was referring to.

  Without getting up, she groaned in an effort to reach across her belly for her purse. Sydney jumped up to help.

  “Thank you,” Cheryl said. “Sometimes I feel like a beached whale at low tide.”

  With Cheryl directing her, Sydney found the envelope stuffed in the purse. She opened it. The wording was identical to all the other death watch notices. The time of notification was at the top. 7:28 a.m. The exact time she checked in. Cheryl had less than forty-two hours to live.