Rights Available
By Craig L. Andrews
Synopsis
The Helix Conspiracy is a story of a man whose integrity compels him find justice for a friend and while on his quest he finds himself trying to prove that he's worthy of his former love.
Chris Hardwick is a young FBI agent whose career after 9-11 and the Iraq war has been languishing under an incompetent boss. It's June and Chris is working late in his Alexandria Virginia office when he receives a strange call from his old college buddy, Kevin, whom he hasn't heard from for years. Kevin asks if they can meet in two days. The next night Chris' life is blasted into high gear when Kevin's grief stricken wife and Chris' former college girlfriend, Faith, calls to tell him that Kevin has been murdered. After an emotional meeting with Faith later that night, Chris promises to find the perpetrator of the heinous crime. Faith struggles to reconcile the man she sees before her now with the immature Chris Hardwick she knew and loved in college. She harbors doubts that Chris has matured enough to stick with a crusade to find Kevin's killer. Chris' new purpose crystallizes a resolve to stand face-to-face with his boss and bitterly refuse to stop investigating Kevin's murder. The meaning of Kevin's final cryptic words to Faith leads to a hidden laboratory journal which discloses Kevin's fear of being killed, and the details of Kevin's chilling work on virus DNA at Quasar Corporation that he suspected was aimed at a planned assassination of the president.
Chris and Faith escape an assassination. While online researching Quasar Chris is contacted by Alex Cole, a CIA operative who has been tracking Quasar's Mid-Eastern activity to trade a Chinese nuke for oil through his friend Andrei Vlasov in Syria. They begin collaborating. After learning the basis of Kevin's DNA work from a professor Chris and Cole struggle to get the Secret Service to take precautions against the far-fetched designer P255 bird flu virus. Eventually they encounter Samuels in a warehouse shootout and after an explosion, Cole questions the wounded Samuels about a Quasar deal to trade of a nuclear bomb with Iraqi Shiites for oil connections. Samuels dies without disclosing any information about Quasar, but he acknowledges Kevin's death.
Satisfied they had found Kevin's killer, Chris accepts Cole's suggestion to take Faith to lunch. At Faith's friend's condominium Chris meets a condominium maintenance administrator. During their handshake Chris sees the ominous burning rose tattoo reportedly worn by the deadly Samuels. By using a mirror on the wall Chris kills the real Samuels in a blurred exchange of pointblank bullets. After Chris gets out of the hospital he learns that he, Cole, and a professor helped save the President.
A day later Faith and Chris are sharing a restaurant dinner while out hunting a wedding ring, when Cole calls to tell him that he has a job for Chris at the CIA, that the news he is about to see on the TV isn't really an earthquake, and that Quasar's package of Chinese origin had been delivered. Moments later the TV displays a news bulletin about an earthquake in eastern Afghanistan. Chris realizes that Cole's team has just blown up a terrorist group with a Chinese nuclear weapon, the one Quasar was trying to trade for oil.
Excerpts from the Book
Faith Stewart anxiously watched her husband, Kevin, from the audience. It was nearly nine o'clock on June 10 and the night of the
biggest presentation of his career. It pained her to watch him shift his feet and rub his index finger over his thumb repeatedly,
as if trying to wipe away his stage fright. She found it strange the way the massive conference hall blotted his words from the
air as if they were being absorbed by a black hole. Every time he looked into the audience trying to send his eyes past
the bright orb surrounding him, out into the darkness, she knew he would bring his eyes in her direction searching for her reassuring face.
Faith gazed upward at the top of the buildings cutting into the clear night sky.
Like silver neon, the bright moon was peaking over the top of one of the office
buildings down the street. Kevin nudged her to start across the street for the
garage.
"Did you remember the number for the location of where the car is parked?" Faith asked
jokingly.
They entered the west end stairs and started to the second floor of the parking garage.
The barren concrete walls that seemed to suck the heat out of the night threw the sound
of their steps back at them. Faith felt a clammy cold. The dimly lit stairs caused her
to clench her teeth with anxiety. She had heard many stories about the crimes in downtown
public buildings and parking garages. She tried to put it out of her mind.
"We don't have far to go, we're just at the other end of this floor," Kevin said
reassuringly as he pushed open the heavy steel door to the second level.
As they stepped into the parking area Kevin pierced the air with a finger pointing in
the direction of their car. It was like a concrete cavern filled with shadows. There
seemed to be as much light coming from the nearby city lights through the open-walled
skeletal structure as from the few bulbs scattered along the ceiling of the garage.
Three motorcycles materialized from behind a van, their engines roaring like
snorting Spanish bulls preparing to charge. It was as if they formed out of the
shadows at the end of the isle of parked vehicles. Faith reached for Kevin's arm
and gasped as she saw the ghostly black, suited riders with their eyeless helmets
moving slowly in the diminished cavern light. She was going to ask Kevin what
they should do.
"Kevin, I'm scared."
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