Free Pandora's Succession by Russell Brooks Page A

community’s radar, illustrating his success in acquiring Pandora. This would in turn let her know that it was all right to disperse of what she had obtained. Framing Ares for it was a bonus.
    Stealing Pandora from the weapons consortium, known as the Arms of Ares, would be a serious blow to that organization. Valerik was a professional. He’d proven himself several times before and wouldn’t be so careless as to lead a trail to either him or Hexagon Pharmaceuticals.
    Even if he did, Hashimoto was more than equipped to handle them should they ever come looking for him.

Chapter 9
    Hexagon Pharmaceuticals Head Office, West Tokyo, Japan, three hours later
    Dr. Nita Parris parked her car in her reserved parking spot. It was the first time in days that she had chosen to drive to work. Most of Hexagon’s employees took advantage of Hexagon’s shuttle bus service from the nearby train station that dropped them off at each of the building’s four main entrances. She remembered the orientation session she had to get—mandatory for new employees and overseas transfers, like herself. Her guide even spoke English to her when he gave her a personal tour. All that was important to know about Hexagon Pharmaceuticals was that there were four Plexiglas-covered buildings that took up an area of ten football fields, named each according to orientation.
    The south building was the tallest and had a two-storey lobby area with five office floors above it. The north building had residences on its two floors and a basement for compensated human trials. The east building had a ground floor and four sub-basements where chemicals and other products were manufactured and stored. Then there was the two-storey west building which consisted of conference rooms, auditoriums, and a cafeteria. All four buildings were easily accessible by horizontal escalators inside. Someone that could memorize that would never get lost inside. If they couldn’t, then they could refer to the maps.
    With her black golf umbrella in one hand and her Madison Avenue Tote hanging from her opposite shoulder, she walked up the divided, flower-adorned walkway to the south entrance and joined a group that poured out of a shuttle bus. The crowd that surrounded her was a portion of the 105,000 that were employed worldwide in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Brazil, making Hexagon one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.
    Being the only black woman among mostly Asians wasn’t the only thing that made her stand out—it was how fast she walked. Even in her four-inch-high stacked heels, she moved quickly. Seven years after she had hung up her track spikes, she still couldn’t slow down. But to her, it was everyone else who was slow.
    As a young girl growing up in Barbados, she easily out-sprinted the boys, even the older ones. And although it’d been more than eight years since her last track meet, she couldn’t resist finding an outdoor, galvanized-rubber surfaced track to do some wind sprints on—just for the rush she used to have. She joined a gym that was a fifteen minute jog from where she lived and managed to go twice a week. She was flattered every time someone had trouble guessing her age, but she knew that most of the men did so just as a cheap pick-up line.
    When she had competed for the Princeton University Track Team she was always hunted by the boys on the football and basketball teams. They’d always been present at home competitions, in packs of eight to ten, and always tried to get the phone numbers of the girls on the team.
    Even today, things hadn’t changed in terms of how men looked at her. Such as the four men she had caught in her peripheral vision since she’d left her apartment earlier. It wasn’t a natural habit, it was a CIA-based trained habit to be able to spot people that either observed her or followed her inconspicuously.
    She liked the flowers in the center median. They reminded her of the ones that she and her