BLIND TRIAL Brian Deer (best novels for beginners TXT) 📖

we empathize. MindSafe. Vaccine Choice Rebellion. QAnon. They’ve got all kinds of dumb names and all those crank websites.”

A ripple of applause endorsed him.

“Sometimes they’re well-intentioned. Misguided. Idealistic. But this one’s a nut. A drug addict. Drug dealer, we suspect. And involved in violence. This anti-vax thing’s getting nasty now. And after all we’ve done for him. I can only apologize for what’s occurred this afternoon. In my book, this is more than a prank. It’s terrorism.”

A male voice: “Whose got the real paper?”

Another: “What’s his name?”

“Tampering with research publications, setting fire alarms. These aren’t matters we find humorous in the BerneWerner Legal Department. Anyhow, Marcia, everybody, thank you. Let’s not let him wreck this momentous day.”

BETWEEN STACKS of cartons, two arms reached up and hauled Henry’s son to his feet. He stretched his shoulders. Blood surged to his brain with the force to wrestle order from chaos. The voices in the ballroom dimmed to irrelevance. Ben Louviere’s time had come.

SCREWED INSIDE module B, usually opposite the swivel chair, was a mirror to remind staff of their image. He leaned toward it, studied his face, and straightened Luke’s fleur-de-lis tie. He squeezed his nose: the swelling was fading. He flapped his arms. Ready for this.

He peered through the entrance and studied the doors: the only ones open to the ballroom. The red-faced guard—brown-uniformed, punch-ugly—leaned against the frame with his back to the module, as if tasked to interrogate arrivals.

Ben lifted a carton and stepped through the arch.

The guard heard him move and turned to look.

“Hi bro.” Ben smiled. “What’s up? How you doing?”

The guard grinned broken teeth.

“Excuse me, please.”

“Sorry, pal. Private meeting.”

“Yeah, well that’s okay. I’m here like part of it, you know. With Mr. Hoffman in there. Got this stuff to take in for after.”

“Sorry, pal. Orders.” An arm shut the door.

Gelding’s voice quietened. “Poor Trudy…”

“Yeah, but you know, I got to take these in.”

The guy’s stance said, “Try me, please.”

“You have a supervisor I can speak with possibly?”

“Yup. In there.” And witty.

Gelding trilled. “Magnificent. Quite fantastic.”

Weak applause from the ballroom. More talking.

Ben checked a clock: 15:56.

He turned toward the module and back. “I’m sorry.”

“No worries.”

Then he turned again—only this time quicker—and back even quicker than that. He released the carton, which flew through space and struck the guard’s guts dead square.

The guard reeled backward.

Ben kicked him in the nuts.

Champagne bottles rolled across the floor.

Ben grabbed a door handle and pulled it toward him.

The guard recovered and lunged.

But Ben had momentum. He was through the double doors, onto the jazzy carpet, and bathed in white light. He strode past empty chairs to the aisle.

“Ladies, gentlemen, doctors, everybody.”

A hundred heads turned as one.

“That paper you’ve got’s true. It’s all true. That man there’s a murderer. They killed a volunteer. And they probably killed Doc Mayr too.”

Two hundred eyes converged on a single point: him. Doctorjee’s, Wilson’s, Gelding’s, Hoffman’s, Darlene Ruffin’s, Sarah-Jane Blitzer’s… And there, by the aisle, Sumiko’s face told him she knew he was telling the truth.

The Grand Ballroom froze, like a video stalling, or that subway train screaming toward him. Doctorjee, Hoffman, Sarah-Jane, Sumiko… Even the guard stopped to think.

A beat. A beat. Then everything moved. Everything moved at once.

Gelding hammered the microphone: a sound like gunfire. “Somebody do something. Please.”

Doctorjee rose, clasped his fingers to his throat, and bent to the floor for his rucksack.

“These people are murderers,” Ben called. “They rigged the results. The vaccine made those people sick.”

Then a fault-line shifted—a tectonic realignment—and the security guard returned to his mission. He rushed, grabbed… But his grip was halfhearted… To him, this was only a job.

Ben strode toward the podium. But Hoffman blocked his path. The general counsel lifted a chair. Behind him: the fax machine, spot-lit and ready. In a moment, it would hum, a tug of paper would begin, and the license for the vaccine would emerge.

“This is shocking,” Gelding shrieked. “He’s mad. Deranged. Well, this is outrageous. Do something.”

Now the guard tried again, an arm swinging for a punch. But a foot snagged his leg, and he stumbled. Someone had tripped him: Hiroshi Murayama. He’d come to the rescue with a foot.

Ben returned to the doors and hurried left behind the chairs.

Hoffman yelled. “He’s on drugs. Watch out.”

Left at the wall, down the side to the front, left again, and back to the fax machine. He stopped, looked around. The ballroom was paralyzed. He knocked lights aside and pulled wires. He grabbed the machine, dragged it from the table, and lifted it, straight-armed, above his head.

Then he swung it—yanked it—cable mountings snapping—and hurled it to the carpet.

Smashed.

A chunk of plastic flew off. The paper feed shattered. The gray-and-black casing split apart. He bent, picked it up, and crashed it down again. The keypad snapped in two.

Everyone was standing. Heads were shaking. Rubber wheels sped down a ramp. And there across the room—his skin dark and bright—Theodore Hoffman’s face ran with sweat.

WEDNESDAY JULY 30

Sixty-two

THE BERNEWERNER Building at ten Wednesday morning looked as bright and clear as the sky above Atlanta. Approached from the east, it sparkled. As staff departed Monday for the Washington event, window cleaners’ cradles were winched from the roof and an eight-strong crew in pressed-white coveralls squeegeed every pane of the hexagon. Now the bronzed glass reflected the towers of upper Midtown like pendants in a crystal chandelier: the red GLG Grand, the rose-colored Promenade, the Rosa Porrino One Atlantic Center.

The Tenth Street entrance got special attention: stripped of stickers—“Sliding Doors” and “Do Not Push”—before a meticulous wash and buff. Now, two days later, they reflected their surroundings in crisp mirror-image reversal. In a wide cement turnaround, out front of the building, a white Taurus Interceptor of the Atlanta Police Department gave the appearance of righthand drive. And a metallic green BMW, with two men in the front, met another seeming to come the other way.

Ben hit the brakes, throwing Luke against his belt, and sending stuff clattering in the back. He swung right, braked again,