Gets a *lot* of details on a dude

Six forty five minute meetings in a parking garage in a part of town near the docks?

There was an office building nearby, but the businesses inside all closed before eight P.M. There were no other obvious businesses that he might have been going to, and if he had, he'd have more likely parked on the street at 8:30 in the evening. The timing was suspicious.

He hadn't known that today would be the day, though; that had been clear from the moment that he'd gotten into the pickup truck. He'd been easygoing and relaxed and he hadn't been worried about anything. It made sense that they wouldn't have told him. I'd have picked up on it immediately. The best way to deal with a thinker who could detect lies was to make the people they interacted with believe they were telling the truth. As long as you made sure they never met anyone who knew what was actually happening, you were golden, assuming that they didn't have any ability to independently confirm what was going on.

Even if they somehow didn't know about me, they'd have worried that he'd have been unable to keep it a secret. He was clearly conflicted about the whole thing.

Agent Stevens hadn't received money, but his wife had been pushed to the front of the line for an experimental treatment for her Huntington's Chorea even though she wasn't an ideal candidate. It would have been easy for them to threaten her too; after all, she was already sick. She'd developed symptoms ten years ago at an earlier than normal age, and on average people died fifteen years after symptoms began. She was living on borrowed time, and it wasn't likely that she was living a full life either. After all, beyond the movement disorders, the tremors, the difficulty speaking and swallowing, it also caused problems thinking. People often ended up with depression, irritability, insomnia and suicidal thoughts.

It must have hurt him every day to see her slow decline toward the inevitable.

So when someone offered potential lifeline, it must have seemed like a miracle. I had no doubt that they'd offered the lifeline first and then only later revealed the cost.

***

After I'd talked to the Director the first time I'd been allowed access to his bank statements, gathered by other investigators. There were records of his pulling money from his IRA, sacrificing his entire retirement for just the slightest chance that his wife would have a chance at life. Eventually, that had vanished, and he'd taken out a mortgage on his house, but that money had gone quickly too.

He must have begged them, and they'd finally presented a solution when he had no other options.

The problem was that it was a lie. The drug treatment wasn't really very promising. It could be seen in Medhall's stock prices. If they'd had a likely candidate they'd have been trumpeting it and their stock prices would have been shooting through the roof. While Huntington's was rare- less than 200,000 people in the US had it, they'd have been able to charge almost anything and get it. There was a whole class of drugs called orphan drugs; the costs of researching new medications was so high that people with rare conditions wouldn't have been able to get any research into their condition at all if the drug companies hadn't been able to charge exorbitant costs to recoup their investment and make a tidy profit besides.

Medhall was a small enough company that even a minor success would have done wonders for its stock prices while a bigger company would have had a milder bump. Medhall wasn't really known for having a robust research and development arm. They mostly made generic drugs, taking advantage of other companies research.

He was selling his soul for a fool's chance to win the life of his wife. It was almost admirable if he hadn't been working for the Empire.

I could tell that he was conflicted, though.

It was what had initially put me on his trail. He'd had slight looks of guilt since I'd first met him. I hadn't been able to find out anything that he'd actually done, other than accept the bribe, but it was inevitable that they were going to demand something sooner or later. He was a man on the front lines, so he simply didn't have access to the kind of information that people in the office did.

Most likely they'd planned to have him inform them when there was about to be a raid on one of their facilities. They'd have removed the really important stuff while leaving some patsies there to make the PRT think they'd had a success. I couldn't tell whether he'd done something like that or not; after all, if the PRT didn't know that something more important would have been there, it never would have been reported.

For the moment he wasn't actively betraying us; he was working to help us.

***

Ethics