Synopsis

When Alan Wright learns his ex-wife Andrea leapt to her death only hours after getting remarried to a man he hates, he’s heartbroken. When he receives a package in the mail two days after her death, filled with the documents she’d used to plan that wedding, he’s hurt and angry. And when he learns that Andrea’s bizarre last wishes require him to spread her ashes over a lake outside a small village in Africa, he’s beyond resentful. But love, loyalty and the uncanny power of human connection win out, sending Wright back into the volatile stew of hope and cynicism that is aid work in the poorest parts of the world. In the teeming city of Kinshasa and the remote villages of the Congo he rediscovers his love for Andrea and begins to understand that buried in the strange details of the wedding itself were subtle clues she’d left for him. Those clues point to a plan she’d helped create but that had gone terribly wrong; a plan to unleash genetic engineering in a way so reckless that its failure could mean the end of all human life, but its success could leave the fundamental definition of humanity in the hands of a small team of scientists and the power-hungry government that supported them.

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Excerpt

One

Andrea uncrossed her long legs. The skin below her short dress was tanned from years in the African sun. On one calf a series of thin white scars showed where the inevitable wounds from jungle life had been left to heal undressed. She crossed her legs the opposite way and drummed her fingers on the soft arm of the plush white leather couch. The bald man sitting on the identical couch opposite her ignored these shows of impatience. He kept his gaze lowered to the glass coffee table between them, intent on his work. Andrea watched the reflection of the ceiling lights ripple unevenly across his shaved scalp as he turned his head back and forth, scanning the pile of documents laid out on the table. From time to time, he’d hold a page to the light in his thick, crooked fingers. He seemed to be looking for faint markings or perhaps for some sort of invisible ink. This amused Andrea in some small way. She knew it was all for show. His cryptography expert had already told him the documents were free from any codes or cyphers. Some of the pages he inspected were printouts from a computer, and some were handwritten in Andrea’s hasty, childlike penmanship.

He glanced up again, holding Andrea’s eyes, attempting to impress her with some sort of silent judgement. She met his eyes blankly, denying him any response. After a moment, admitting defeat in their wordless test of wills, he slid the papers back into their manila envelope.

“Satisfied?” Andrea asked.

“Hardly,” he said. “If it was me deciding, you wouldn’t be sending them at all.”

“It’s not you deciding.”

“You must really still hate this guy. I’d love to hear that story.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” she said.

Those words were true enough, she thought. She knew the meaning the bald security man would take away from them would be wrong. He did not know Andrea’s story with the man to whom the package would be delivered. A story of five amazing years of struggle, hope, and love. Five years that had ended in 48 hours of shame, rage, and, finally, death.

But still, the worst memory of that time was sweeter to Andrea than the best day of the three years since. The bald man did not know that fact, and Andrea did not share it now. He did not deserve to know something so precious as that.

“So that’s what all this is for, just to poke a stick in this fellow’s eye?” the man said, gesturing to the envelope he’d rifled through earlier, and the name she’s scrawled on it as part of the address.

“I figured it would get his attention,” she said. But what she thought was far more desperate. It has to. Or everything else will be a waste.

“You and Stanley have an even more twisted sense of humor than I do, Mrs. Reston.” His English was good, but his words were clipped. Like most Belgians, he spoke several languages and found a way to let his arrogance come through in all of them. He drew out the syllables of her new last name. Maybe he was getting used to it himself; more likely, trying to belittle her with the emphasis. Either way the name sounded as disgusting coming from his lips as it felt in her heart.

“That would be Doctor Reston, to you,” she said.

He smiled thinly. “Still, I would not want to cross you.” You already have, Andrea thought, but she kept her face neutral. She’d gotten very good at that over the past year, offering nothing to the eyes watching her every move and reading every message she sent, the ears she knew were listening to every sentence she uttered.

He sealed the envelope, glancing at the long line of stamps across the top. “Where did you think this was going—to Mars?”

“It’s been a while since I’ve actually mailed something,” she said, faking embarrassment. “I didn’t know how many stamps it needed.”

“These should do the trick.”

“I hope so,” she said.

They have to, she thought.

“I’ll bring it down to the front desk,” she said.

“Nice try. You stay put. I’ll have the bellhop come get it.” The presidential suite was easily two thousand square feet. CNN was playing on a huge TV mounted on the far wall of the sitting area, the volume turned down. As they waited in silence for the bellhop, video footage flashed onto the screen of people in biohazard suits, carrying body bags to a waiting pickup truck. Andrea froze, trying to tear herself away from the screen, knowing too well what the images meant. But she couldn’t look away. Part of her believed she deserved to have that image be the last in her brain as she completed the final step of her plan.

About the Author

Brian Fitzgerald writes intelligent thrillers that explore the human consequences of advances in technology, medicine, and the systems we trust most.

Over a career spanning marketing, technology, and national broadcast media, Brian built his reputation as a storyteller and communicator. As head of communications for a billion-dollar information security firm, he found himself at the center of some of the most significant cybersecurity breaches and global privacy events of the modern era, working alongside, and at times at odds with, the media, academia, and America’s intelligence and law enforcement communities.

Those experiences continue to shape his fiction, where scientific innovation, medical breakthroughs, and emerging technologies collide with deeply human questions that have no easy answers.

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