Alex Swinton pulled out the factor 35 suncream and smeared a fresh dollop of the white goo all over his forehead, chest and arms. His sensitive skin didn't tolerate the sun at all, and in spite of years of living in Florida, he had never been able to tan or build up any resistance to the sun's rays. If he didn't watch out he would burn as red as a lobster in less than thirty minutes.
It was hot. Very hot.
He blinked for a second, the sweat streaming off his forehead and over his eyebrows, carrying some of the sun-cream into his eyes.
He wiped them quickly, and rinsed them with some water from his half empty bottle of Evian.
That was better.
He lay back onto the sand, settling his expensive pair of new Ray Bans back onto the bridge of his nose.
This was the life. Sunbathing on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. It was a far cry from the adrenaline rush of the past few months. He hated to admit that he had thrived on the excitement of the whole thing, particularly as it had resulted in the deaths of several of his colleagues, but Alex was an adrenaline junkie. In some perverted way, he had enjoyed the chase. The thrill was even better now, knowing that he had survived it.
Perhaps what he had done was wrong. Perhaps not. But he had only done what was necessary.
And then he had just disappeared.
No one knew where he had gone.
Here he was just one of thousands of other tourists, inconspicuous in the fact, that like so many others, he was so obviously not from here.
He didn't have any plans, except that for the next few weeks he would lie low. Avoid detection. And in the meantime he would take the time to get some serious windsurfing done. Perhaps at Langebaan, or maybe even along the rugged, lonely coast at Wilderness. The South-Easterlies were really blowing this time of year, and he could get some really good sails if he wanted to.
Being alone out at sea a few k's from the beach, just him versus the wind, would give him the chance to live life at the edge again. Just like he used to do before he got too serious about his work.
Alex's academic career at university had been outstanding. After a year as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, he had won funding and transferred to a place at MIT. After graduating 'summa cum laude' and head of his year, he had won a fellowship to do a PhD. at Stanford, which had brought him to the attention of David Sonderheim, one of the world's leading geneticists. David was just about to set up a new genetics company based in Florida, which would specialise in the investigation and study of the genetic causes of neuro-degenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. The goal? The holy grail of all the major pharmaceuticals -to find a genetic based cure. A cure which an increasingly ageing population would pay enormous amounts of money for on a regular, extended basis. And the longer they lived, the longer they needed to pay for the treatment.
When Alex had graduated with his PhD. in Genetics and his revolutionary work into the study of ribosomes, he could not turn down the lucrative offer that the new CEO of the Gen8tyx Company had made him. He had packed his wind-surfer and surf boards and driven across America in his beaten-up, red Volkswagen Camper. It had taken him three weeks to make the trip and he had enjoyed every mile of it. As it had turned out, it was the last real freedom he would enjoy for the next six years.
As soon as he had arrived on the campus of the Gen8tyx Company he dived into a brand new project, one so inspired and so radical, that it had the potential to change the world. He had forgotten about the sun, the sea, and the wind and swapped it all for years of long nights in a lab, with a white coat and an electron microscope.
But the results had been extraordinary. As he himself had proved when he had been the first person to test the new treatment they had created.
Then it had all started to go wrong.
After five-and-a-half years of hard work, almost as soon as they knew they were onto something big, something strange started to happen in the background. Suddenly the machinations of corporate finance became more important than the dream they were all trying to fulfil, and as politics and business plans began to take over, David Sonderheim had slowly lost the support of the core team that had made the Gen8tyx Company what it was.
At the same time, one by one new staff were being recruited into the company without the knowledge of the rest of the core team. One day they would come into the lab, and hey presto, there'd be another member of staff, effectively shadowing your work, following you around the lab.
Who were these people? Why were they being recruited?
Then all of a sudden David Sonderheim had made the announcement that the Gen8tyx company had been purchased and was now moving to a bigger facility near San Francisco, California.
Not surprisingly, many of the original core members of the team refused to uproot their families and leave behind their friends.
"You'll be sorely missed. All of you!" was all the beloved Professor Sonderheim had said at the breakfast meeting he had called 'in honour' of a select few. The modern European term 'made redundant' had not hid the fact that effectively they had all been fired, right there on the spot between the orange juice and the toast. Now the purpose of the new recruits had been obvious.
At first the anger had been a blanket which had covered all their reason. Then together they had begun to make their own plans. Plans for their own futures.
He had done his best to protect those plans and he told himself repeatedly that what he had done had only been in the best interest of the group…
That’s when the suicides had started to happen. One by one they had been found dead, murder and suicide becoming horrendously confused.
It was time to leave. To disappear.
He had got out just in time and now nobody knew where he was. Not even his sister or brother.
For the near future at least, he was safe.
--------------------
Sarah Schwartz was an attractive seventeen year old brunette. Five foot seven, a dimple on her left cheek, a fantastic smile, green eyes and very large breasts. Not exactly the typical computer nerd you would expect to find working in the security department of a national bank in New York.
Next year she hoped to go to the local college. If she got good grades in her final exams, perhaps she would even make it to state college and become a math major.
Math was her thing. She felt comfortable with figures, and was easily able to understand and manipulate the notation of mathematics, which others could only see as a foreign language without any meaning. She wasn't a genius. She wasn't gifted. But she was definitely above average. And at $18 dollar an hour, it was probably the best summer job she had ever had.
Brought up with a strict Lutheran background, this was her first time in the Big Apple. She didn't get out much at night time. She didn't have many friends, although recently quite a few strangers had asked if they could meet her for a drink after work. The people in New York seemed to be very friendly. She had been tempted a few times, but she knew her parents in Pennsylvania wouldn't approve. Instead, she stayed at home babysitting for her cousin's daughter, looking out of the window of their apartment on the twelfth floor and watching the flashing lights of the city below.
Today she was on credit watch. It was one of her favourite activities, because it allowed her to study, and get paid for it. For most of the time there was not a lot to do, and for several hours each day she would be able to just sit there and read the latest text book on the list of 'college recommended reading'.
She sat at a large desk in a small dimly lit room at the back of the bank. The room was comfortable apart from the constant hum of air conditioning, which for the first hour of each shift was always incredibly annoying until all of a sudden her brain would somehow adapt to it and manage to filter it out. After that she never noticed it was there, until she stepped outside the room at the end of the shift and was deafened by the silence.
The desk was covered by a large panel of computer mo
nitors, across which a continuous flow of credit card numbers passed in a never ending stream. Each of these numbers represented the number of a credit card which had been stolen or black-listed in the last five days. In the top right corner of each screen there was an empty red box.
Sarah's job was to watch the screens and notice when one of the numbers in the continuously flowing screen suddenly appeared in the little red box. As soon as one did, she was meant to call up that number on another screen and examine the details. The information she would be presented with would confirm that the credit card had just been used again, and would give her the exact details of where and when any transaction had taken place. As soon as that information came up on the screen, she was to hit the 'print' key on her terminal, then carry the report through to Mr Johnson in the other room.
On average, in a six hour shift, about twenty numbers would appear in the little box. The rest of the time her biggest problem was staying awake.
She was halfway through reading the chapter on 'An introduction to Fourier Analysis' when the console beeped at her. She looked up, and there sure enough, was a credit card number flashing in the red box.
As she had done so many times before, she moved to the other keyboard, and called up the details of the flashing number. According to the screen, someone had just used the credit card belonging to a man called Alex Swinton, whose card had been reported missing a few days ago. The record showed that it was a cash withdrawal, about four thousand Rand, a conversion of dollars into the local currency of South Africa. The withdrawal had just been made in a town called Wilderness, at 11 p.m. in the evening, local time.
She waited for the printer to rattle off the details, then swooped them up from the print tray and walked through to Mr Johnson's room. She knocked and waited for the loud 'come in' before entering.
Mr Johnson sat at a large brown desk, peering up from the newspaper he was reading, a fresh cup of coffee steaming in his hand.
"So, what have you got?" he asked from behind his sleek, designer-label, black glasses, his eyes wandering quickly from her face down to her large cleavage, and then to the report in her hand.
"Someone just used a card in South Africa. A few hundred dollars."
She handed the paper over to Mr Johnson and left.
Johnson watched the girl walk out the office, following the wiggle of her bottom and fantasising for the hundredth time that day just what it would be like. She was good at her job, but that wasn't why he had hired her. They say you make up your mind about someone in the first twenty seconds of an interview. Well, with Sarah, it had only taken three: the amount of time it had taken to see how outstanding her qualifications for the job really were. And since then, coming to work in the morning had been just that little bit more interesting.
He picked up the report she had dropped on his desk and scanned the details. Then reaching inside his jacket pocket, he pulled out his personal diary, flicked it open and found the telephone number he was looking for. He dialled it carefully and when his contact in Miami answered, he spoke quickly.
"We got contact on one of the card numbers you wanted us to trace. Turns out your man Alex Swinton is in South Africa." He read the list of details aloud then hung up.
On his normal bank salary, Mr Johnson would never have been able to afford his active lifestyle. Meeting the woman from Florida in a bar one night had been the best thing to happen to him in years. At five thousand dollars a number, his freelancing activities certainly paid off.
Chapter 6
Day Eight
Hooters Bar
Fort Lauderdale