Benny figures it out and dies of complications of a virus (or the Mole in the Hole)
Benny recommended a post-doc biology woman (the fifth Jet) to an old friend and accomplice at Woods Hole years ago, knowing that one day the payoff would be monumental.
Woods Hole and the Jackson Laboratory at Bar Harbor Maine are the Silicon Valley of Marine science. Their official business attracted sincere scientists and shady speculators like Benny. The overlap was carefully nurtured by the shadow executive teams whose distributions of grant funds, legitimate and tainted, amounted to the same pay scales of the Partners and venture capital people in Boston. A million a year for horseshoe crab blood work was five times what the bright young scientists could make teaching in Cambridge.
Althea knows that there are other Jets but knows not who they are. Back in the assassination days, she provided neurotoxins to be added to seafood dinners at some of America?s finest restaurants. The business dried up, unfortunately, when the wrong individual was served at a prestigious Old Philadelphia location.
There were some accidents and fires, of course, to eliminate the trail and Benny?s associates closed up that segment of their joint ventures. Althea received a substantial bonus for her dedication to returning to her work. Like Benny, she didn?t see herself as chum.
She loves Benny and hates him.
What do you think is going to happen?
D: she?ll make it look like a heart attack and it won?t be painful, she promises herself.
She thinks about suicide and discards the idea, knowing Benny wouldn?t approve. Homicide is fine; suicide is gratuitous, he believes. His PET scan haunts him occasionally when he wishes he could feel his predilections.
She put an obscure neurotoxin aside for a special occasion like this a few years ago.
It?s labeled Yuengling and is deep in her deep freeze, next to Mauch Chunk, which, when aerosolized, could take out the Cape in three days, depending on the wind.
hell hath no fury.
Inshallah
Benny spends a week looking over Faucci?s data which Althea has hacked and finds the the vaccine, the Holy Grail, easily from his ten samples. Faucci will need two years to run traditional case-control tests with more than 20,000 volunteers in double blind trials of each of the ten vaccines.
Benny tried to seduce Faucci a decade ago and failed. He discussed an accident with the venture capital people and Bill but they declined.
Faucci is pleased to see Benny again and they arrange to have dinner in Provincetown with Althea…she calls Bill who approves both deaths and recommends the seafood scampi at the Cafe Blas?. He coveted the property on Commercial Street since his old drinking days with Norman Mailer. The two ??food poisonings?? will also kill the Cafe.
B B B Benny and the Jets.
The end.
??and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make? (Paul McCartney)