The Evolution of Evil (The Blackwell Files Book 6) Read online

  The Evolution of Evil

  Steven F. Freeman

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by www.LLPix.com

  Copyright © 2015 Steven F. Freeman

  All rights reserved.

  DEDICATION

  To Ruth Gresh, critique group leader extraordinaire, whose unparalleled feedback and support has done more to improve my writing than that of anyone else living.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to Ruth Gresh, Cheryl Snapperman, Myron Kaufman, Lynn Hesse, Chris Daniel, Priscilla Gould, Sarah Redmond, Elaine Rivers, Willow Humphrey, and Sharron Grodzinsky for their invaluable feedback and assistance.

  PURCHASE OTHER BOOKS IN ALTON AND MALLORY’S “BLACKWELL FILES” SERIES NOW!

  Book 1: Nefarious

  Book 2: Ruthless

  Book 3: T Wave

  Book 4: Havoc

  Book 5: The Devil’s Due

  Book 6: The Evolution of Evil

  Book 7: Bloodline (Coming later in 2015. See below for notification when available.)

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  Author website: www.SteveFreemanWriter.com

  CHAPTER 1

  The incessant barking of Dr. Tuttle’s German shepherd gave the first indication that tonight might not fit the typical pattern of late-night, marathon research sessions interrupted only by the occasional bout of high-octane espresso.

  “What the hell is it now?” murmured Dr. Jan Summit, raising her head from the microscope on the edge of her worn, melamine desk. She squinted in the direction of the noise. The reflection of her office’s florescent lights in the large glass window obscured any view of the evening’s dark shadows.

  Summit shrugged and turned back to her microscope. Perhaps the canine had spotted another iguana idling across the grass.

  The sound of a Spanish phrase drifting in through the open window sent a chill up Summit’s spine. She knew the voice of every local who worked at her Galapagos Islands R&D research facility, but she didn’t recognize the semi-whispered tones of the intruder located somewhere on the property.

  The research biologist leapt to her office doorway and switched off the lights. Moving to the window, she gazed outside but saw no one among the smattering of palm trees and heavy undergrowth illuminated by the pale moonlight. Had a drunken local staggered onto the research grounds on accident? There weren’t any houses nearby, but with enough cerveza…

  The shattering of glass in the adjacent lab dispelled any notions of accidental intrusion. Someone was breaking in, but why? Their goal could be simple theft of the site’s valuable lab equipment, but Summit couldn’t take any chances. If the intruders hoped to abscond with her research notes, she had to eliminate that possibility before the assailants forced their way into her office.

  Summit turned the deadbolt lock in her office door and swiveled her gaze to the glass wall panel separating her office from the lab, just in time to witness a barrage of cylindrical canisters fly through a smashed window and drop with a clatter onto shards of broken glass scattered across the lab’s tile floor. Thick, white smoke poured from the devices and expanded into an evil-looking cloud. Had the attackers known about her debilitating asthma, or was their use of the potentially lethal tear gas just dumb luck?

  She’d have to leave—fast. But first she had to wipe her computer’s hard drive. It was the only way to protect her research. Thank God she had stored her backup files in the usual secure location last night. She’d lose the results of today’s research, but that beat losing it all—or letting it fall into the wrong hands. But if she fled, would anyone know where to look for the files? She typed off a terse message, then clicked the “encrypt” and “send” buttons in quick succession.

  A small plume of choking smoke puffed through the crack under her office door. Within seconds, Summit could smell the vile odor of tear gas. Tears flooded her eyes, and her throat began to constrict. Fighting down panic, she snatched the rescue inhaler off her desk and took several deep breaths as she staggered towards the exterior window. Pushing it open as far as possible, she rolled over the bottom of the window frame and fell into the soft grass below, gasping for breath as she landed on her side with a thud.

  Summit’s breath caught in her throat. She hadn’t had a chance to wipe her computer’s memory! There was no way she could reenter her office, not with the clouds of potentially deadly gas growing thicker by the second. She’d have to trust that the encryption program safeguarding her research notes would be enough.

  What should she do now? If she activated the beacon, Dr. Tuttle would come running. But would his presence facilitate her rescue or simply put them both in danger? Deciding the man possessed enough intelligence to avoid walking into a no-win scenario, she pressed a small, red button centered on a device secured on a chain around her neck.

  For now, she needed to hide, to escape detection from the band of attackers—at least until Dr. Tuttle arrived. She rose, hoping to make her way around the rear of the building and conceal herself in the dense foliage abutting the tortoise enclosure. She wound her way through a patch of overgrown, bright-yellow passion flowers lining the building’s side wall. To her left, a tendril of tear gas emerged from the bathroom window on the building’s exterior wall, trailing into Summit’s path. She fell to her knees as another wave of asthmatic lightheadedness returned.

  Trying to ignore the burning in her eyes, she concentrated on steadying her breathing. The inhaler seemed to be helping, but the physical exertion she had demanded from her body, combined with the potent chemical, could not be overcome. She collapsed to the ground, once again struggling to regain her breath and trying to relax when every fiber in her being screamed at her to run. Panic won the battle, and the flickering black spots dancing at the periphery of her vision soon crowded in, obscuring everything as she slipped into the black night of unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER 2

  Alton Blackwell pushed back from his computer monitor and rubbed his eyes. Exhaling, he ran a hand through his closely cropped, chestnut hair. He loved his work as R&D vice president at Kruptos, Inc., arguably the world’s leading cryptography firm, but no job was perfect. In his other role as manager of Kruptos’ satellite office in Washington, DC, Alton led his company’s sales efforts to Federal Government agencies. Working up the final proposal for Homeland Security’s “solicitation of bid” for next-generation encryption software had proved to be every bit as laborious as he had expected.

  Alton stretched out his left leg and worked it back and forth. The limb had been permanently injured in an IED explosion during his tour of duty as an Army Communications captain in Afghanistan four years earlier. Despite months of physical therapy, the leg had never fully healed. Its sensations now alternated between mild discomfort and searing pain, depending on the exertion he demanded from it. Had Alton not maintained a regime of swimming and strength training, thereby keeping his frame lean and muscular, the pain surely would have been worse.

  As usual, the stretching helped his pain subside. Alton looked at his watch. Seven o’clock—Mallory should be getting home soon. The thought prompted him to wrap up for the evening. As much as he wanted to finish the Homeland proposal, his greater desi
re lay with joining his wife of three months for dinner at their midtown condo.

  After battling the evening traffic snarl, Alton pushed open the front door of his residence and called out. “Hey, Honey. Keeping the criminals at bay?”

  Mallory, a forensic accountant with the FBI’s White Collar Crimes Division, approached and leaned into a brief kiss. While Alton’s height ran only slightly above average, Mallory’s petite stature required her husband to lean down a bit. Having recently arrived home from work herself, Mallory’s long, obsidian hair remained bound in a determined bun, but her navy blue business suit couldn’t hide the appealing curves of her athletic frame. She appeared happy to see him, yet her furrowed brow seemed out of place with their evening reunion.

  “What is it?” asked Alton.

  Mallory nodded her head to the right, in the direction of the dining room. Alton hadn’t noticed a burly figure seated in the shadows. The man rose, and Alton’s momentary alarm subsided as he recognized the NSA agent with whom he and Mallory had inadvertently joined forces on an investigation in Italy the previous year.

  “Agent Vega,” said Alton, extending a hand. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Yeah, I don’t tend to call ahead,” said the Bronx native, whose looming figure outweighed Alton’s by a good seventy-five pounds. “In my line of work, it’s better to stay off the grid as much as possible.”

  Alton nodded. He traded small talk with Vega for a minute but soon cut to the chase. “Of course, it’s nice to catch up. But I’m guessing you didn’t come here for the chicken cordon bleu and Chardonnay.”

  Vega chuckled. “Sounds pretty good, actually. No, my boss assigned me to a case this morning, and I’ve already hit a roadblock.”

  “So why come see me?”

  “This particular dilemma is right up your alley. Do you know Senator Richard Jackson?”

  “I’ve heard the name,” said Alton, “I know he’s on the Senate’s technology subcommittee, but other than that, I really don’t know much about him.”

  Vega began to pace the room. “Last night, he received a message from his wife, Dr. Jan Summit, a research biologist working in the Galapagos Islands.”

  “What did the message say?” asked Mallory.

  “That’s just the problem,” replied the NSA agent. “We don’t know. It was encrypted.”

  “Surely you must have folks on staff who can take care of that,” said Alton. “We are talking about the NSA, after all.”

  Vega stopped pacing. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, yes. Our guys could handle it. But this message has stumped our most seasoned experts.”

  “And you’re wondering if Alton can help decode it,” inferred Mallory.

  “Yes, we need a cryptologist of his caliber to step in,” replied Vega. “But it goes even deeper than that. As you can imagine, Summit’s message worried her husband, so he called his wife’s cellphone. When she didn’t answer, he called the local police and discovered they had already been summoned to his wife’s lab. Jan Summit’s research facility was in a shambles, and the doctor herself is missing.”

  Alton glanced at Mallory.

  “Summit backed up her data files onto an on-site server,” continued Vega. “We downloaded those files to search for any evidence that might suggest what happened. Those files are encrypted, too. Our chances of finding her are slim without decrypting those files.”

  “So you want me to decrypt both her e-mail message and her data files?” asked Alton.

  “That’s, uh, the long and short of it,” replied Vega.

  “I don’t know,” said Alton. “I’d like to help, but I’m facing an urgent deadline at work. I have only two more days to submit a solicitation of bid—”

  “To Homeland Security,” finished Vega. “You think I don’t know that? Look, help me with this, and I’ll see to it your proposal gets all the attention it deserves.”

  “I suppose I can take an afternoon to help, if you’re sure Homeland Security will extend their deadline.”

  “They will. You and I both know Kruptos has the best software solutions. You’ll be approved. But we have to follow the procurement rules.”

  “Agent Vega,” said Mallory, “you’ve told us the reason for your visit—ostensibly, at least—but you still look uncomfortable. Is there something else you haven’t told us?”

  Vega looked her in the eye. “Yes. Summit’s Galapagos research facility has five servers, two desktop computers, and a dozen laptops. I don’t want you to spend a few hours looking over one set of the files from your Washington office. I need feet on the ground, someone who can work with the physical equipment and ensure we’re not missing hidden or encoded data files, and can act quickly when any files are uncovered. I’ve assembled an NSA team, and I want you to join them for an on-site investigation.”

  “Now wait—” began Alton.

  “As I said,” cut in Vega, “upon your return, you can be assured of a contract with Homeland Security. You have my word on that.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Then the bid from Cyber-Moat might start looking better than Kruptos’ offer,” said Vega. He sighed. “Look, I don’t want to go down this path, but like you, I have a mission to perform. And I’m gonna do what it takes to execute it. So what do you say? Are you in?”

  Alton pondered the question. He’d have to review the change of plans with Jake Hines, his boss and CEO of the company. But he knew how his manager would respond. The Homeland contract represented by far the largest deal in the history of Kruptos, more than doubling its revenue for the next five years, possibly longer. With a portion of that profit funneled into R&D, Kruptos could pull even further ahead of the competition, establishing its dominance for the foreseeable future.

  “Yeah, I’m in,” said Alton. “What about Mallory? Is she invited, too?”

  “I was just getting to that,” replied Vega. He turned to Mallory. “Agent Blackwell, you’re a decorated member of the FBI, and you demonstrated a singular talent for ferreting out information during our adventure in Rome last year. And most importantly, it seems to me that as far as you and your husband are concerned, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In other words, together you seem to achieve more than you probably would individually.”

  Mallory nodded. “That’s true. I don’t think either one of us would have got to the bottom of the Italian episode on our own.”

  “So you’re in?” asked Vega.

  “Sure. I’ve always wanted to see the Galapagos Islands anyway. But hey, what about my boss? I’ll have to get this approved.”

  “Already taken care of.”

  “Of course.” Mallory twirled a loose strand of hair. “Agent Vega, I can’t help but wonder…it seems like the NSA is investing a lot of resources for a simple missing person’s case.”

  “Yeah, well, when you’re a senator and your wife is missing, you have that prerogative,” replied Vega. “But the timing isn’t critical just because Summit is a senator’s wife. She also has a medical condition that could become severe, maybe even lethal, without her usual meds. I’ll explain more on that later. But the bottom line is that I need people like you two who can get results quickly.

  “Even ignoring Summit herself,” continued Vega, “allocating the extra manpower may be truly worthwhile in this instance.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Alton.

  “Dr. Summit was working on a cure for Alzheimer’s—not a treatment of the symptoms, mind you, but an actual cure. Her husband said she reported ‘exciting progress.’ But now…”

  “Now it’s not just a biologist we’re trying to recover,” said Alton. “We’re looking to retrieve her research as well.”

  “Exactly. That’s another reason decrypting the research notes on her computer is so important. Senator Jackson assures me that his wife claimed to be on the verge of a breakthrough. But until we find the scientist or can at least decode her files, those secrets will remain out of reach.”
/>   CHAPTER 3

  In the Galapagos port town of Puerto Ayora, a disheveled man with bowed legs pushed through the doors of La Cantina Fantastica, a local joint in which the water-stained walls and faded curtains did little to live up to its ostentatious name. A pair of ancient speakers pumped out a lively reggaeton ditty, but the bar’s few inhabitants seemed more interested in their drinks than the music. Nor did the customers seem to mind the joint’s lack of amenities. The bar lay nestled among a tangle of ramshackle inland shops, away from the flow of tourists from the cruise ships, so cheap prices trumped ambience.

  The scruffy man approached the bar and laid down a ten dollar bill. “The usual,” he said in his native Spanish tongue.

  The bartender popped the top off a Pilsener, a brand of Ecuadorian beer, and set the brew on the counter, along with the man’s change.

  “Keep it. I’ll be here awhile.” Settling onto a wooden barstool topped with a faded, black-plastic cushion, he gripped the bottle with a hand turned dark and leathery from years of exposure to the blazing, equatorial sun.

  A local woman who had been nursing her own beer moved down the bar to sit next to the new arrival. “Hola, Diego.”

  “Hola, Narcy.”

  “I didn’t see you here last night.”

  The man scratched the three-day growth of beard on his chin and looked away. “I was…working.”

  “I guess so. I can’t remember the last time you came in with so much to spend. Think you can spare a bottle for me, amigo?”

  “Sure, Narcy.”

  The woman, a fading specimen of forty or so years, turned to study her companion’s face. “That must be a good-paying job.”

  “It was.”

  “‘Was’? They’re not hiring anymore?” Her shoulders drooped in disappointment.