And Then You Die

by Iris Johansen

  “Good night.”

  No questions. No conversation. Just that single act of understanding.

  She lay back down. She had thought she was getting better. She hadn't dreamed of Danzar for nearly three weeks. She was better. She wouldn't accept anything else.

  She closed her eyes and took deep, steadying breaths. That usually helped.

  It didn't this time. She started to shake. After several minutes she got out of bed and headed for the bathroom. She took an aspirin and drank a glass of water. She was shaking so badly, she almost dropped the glass.

  Why wouldn't it go away? She sank down on the tile floor and hunched there, linking her arms over her knees. Think of something else. Think of Tyngate. Think of Julie or Emily or––

  “Okay?” Kaldak was squatting beside her.

  Oh, God, she didn't want anyone to see her like this. “No, I'm not okay. Go away.”

  “I tried to do that. It didn't work.” He sat down and crossed his legs. “So I have to do something about it.”

  “Why? It's none of your business. I'll be fine.”

  “Is it Tenajo?”

  “Do you feel guilty? No, it's not Tenajo.”

  “Esteban?”

  “Do you think I'd let that son of a bitch do this to me?” She blinked furiously to keep back the tears. “Will you please go away?”

  “No, neither of us will sleep if you keep on like this. You're shaking so bad, you're going to break your tailbone on that hard tile.” He pushed back her hair from her forehead in a gentle gesture. It reminded her of the way he touched Josie. “I think you have to talk to me, Bess.”

  “The hell I do.”

  “Talk to me about Danzar.”

  She stiffened. “What?”

  “Danzar. That's what you were muttering when I woke you.”

  She moistened her lips. “Then why did you ask about Tenajo?”

  “A process of elimination.”

  “How analytical.”

  “Sorry, that's the way I am.” He glanced around the brightly lit bathroom. “And my analysis of the situation tells me that this isn't the spot to get you to relax.” He stood up, leaned down, and lifted her to her feet. “Bed.”

  “What?”

  “Don't worry, I meant what I said. Relaxation.” He carried her to the bed and set her down. “Not sex.”

  She looked at him in astonishment. “I didn't think you meant anything else.”

  “I know. I just thought I'd throw in something that would distract you.” He tucked the blanket around her. “I realize I'm not what you'd call a sex object. Unless you get off on Dracula. Actually, there are some women who do.” He got up and turned off the bathroom light.

  The bedroom was plunged into darkness.

  He sat down beside her and touched her arm. “You're still shaking, but not as much.”

  “Then you can go away.”

  “Not after I've gone to all this trouble. I don't want it to happen again tonight. I need my sleep. Talk to me. I won't go away until you do. Is Danzar in Croatia?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long since you were in Croatia?”

  “Three months.”

  “I've never heard of Danzar.”

  “It was only a tiny village.”

  “Was?”

  “I guess it's still there.”

  “You don't know?”

  “They didn't burn it.”

  “What did they do to it?”

  The babies . . .

  “What did they do, Bess?”

  “I don't want to talk about it.”

  “Pretend I'm Emily.”

  “I didn't talk to Emily about Danzar.” She hadn't told those details to anyone. Not even that shrink in the hospital in Sarajevo. Why should she talk to Kaldak?

  “Because I don't care. I'm almost a stranger to you.” He read her thoughts again. “It would be like talking to yourself. What did they do, Bess?”

  Blood. So much blood . . .

  “What?” Kaldak repeated.

  “The babies . . .”

  “What babies?”

  “There was an . . . orphanage. I was doing a photo essay on the orphans of war, and I went to Danzar. The orphanage was crowded, but the kids . . . It always amazes me how kids can be happy in almost any circumstance. Give them a little food, a bed, companionship, and they'll smile at you. There was one little boy. Niko. He couldn't have been more than three. He followed me around while I was taking pictures. He was so––” She stopped, and it was a moment before she could continue. “I kept going back. At first I thought it was the story, and then I thought I was just being a good guy. So many couples in America can't have kids, and if they saw the photos . . . But then I realized it was Niko. I didn't have any business trying to adopt him. It was all wrong. I was single, I was always traveling, but I knew I had to have him with me. He was mine. I started the paperwork.”

  The dogs howling.

  “And did you adopt him, Bess?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  What are you? Some sort of ghoul?

  “Why not, Bess?”

  “He died,” she whispered. “They all died.”

  “How?”

  “The guerrillas. A truce was supposed to be in effect, but there were still attacks. I was sixty miles away from Danzar on another story when we heard about it. I made my driver turn around and go back to Danzar. The guerrillas had already pulled out but the dogs were howling. They kept howling and howling. . . . I went to the orphanage. The children were dead, butchered. Niko was in the kitchen. Who would kill a baby? Monsters. They had to be monsters.”

  “Yes.”

  “I went through the orphanage and took more pictures. I knew that they'd deny it once peace came. It would be covered up and forgotten. That's the way it always is. I couldn't let that happen. I had to show––” She could barely talk. She was trying to stop the sobs. “I couldn't let it––”

  “Shh, I know.”

  “No, you don't. You weren't there.”

  He was silent a moment and then stood up. “I'd like to comfort you, but you don't want that from me. You don't want me here right now at all. You're afraid I'll think you're not as tough as you should be.” His hand touched her hair with the same gentleness he had displayed in the bathroom. “You're wrong. I'll be right back.”

  He was gone. She heard his steps on the staircase.

  She lay there with the tears running down her face. The sobs soon stopped, but the tears still came.

  The babies . . .

  What had she done? She felt as if her insides had been torn out. Once she had started, the words tumbled out and couldn't be stopped. Why spit out all those memories and pain to Kaldak?

  It's like talking to yourself.

  In a way it had been like that. He'd removed himself, stepped away and let the words pour out into the darkness. And then he'd left her so that she'd have no loss of dignity. Why had––

  “Is it okay if I turn on the light?” Kaldak was back, a huge silhouette at the top of the stairs.

  “Sure.” She took a deep breath and hurriedly wiped her eyes with the blanket. “But why ask now? I don't remember you asking permission to turn it off.”

  “Different strokes for different games.” He crossed to the bathroom and switched on the light there. “The situation isn't the same.” He came back to her. “Drink this.”

  He was holding a glass of milk.

  “Good heavens, warm milk?” she asked. “Is that one of your mother's remedies?”

  “Cold milk.” He smiled faintly. “If I went to all the trouble of heating it, you'd think it was another domestic ploy.”

  She looked at him over the rim of the glass as she took a sip. He didn't seem at all domestic. For the first time she realized that he was barefoot and bare-chested and his dark hair was rumpled. He looked muscular, powerful.

  And she probably looked like a mess. Thank God, he'd turned on only the bathroom light. S
he felt vulnerable enough as it was. Was that why he hadn't turned on the more revealing overhead light?

  “Drink all of it.”

  She took another sip and handed the glass back to him. “That's enough.”

  “Okay.” He stood looking at her. “Do you mind if I ask what happened to the pictures you took at Danzar?”

  “The film was confiscated.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. When I got back to army headquarters, the colonel confiscated the film. He said it was inflammatory and that publishing it would be detrimental to the peace process. I showed him inflammatory. I nearly went crazy. I screamed and ranted. I notified every politician I knew. None of it did any good. The army doctors said I was having a breakdown and stuck me in a hospital in Sarajevo. They kept me there for weeks. When I got out, the massacre had been neatly covered up.” She smiled bitterly. “So even we cover up when it suits us. It made me sick. Christ, I hate lies.”

  “You have a right.” He paused. “I'm sorry it was so rough on you. Do you think you can sleep now?”

  Sleep? She felt ready to collapse. “Yes.”

  “Good, then maybe I can too. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  He turned off the light and left, all brusque, abrupt, cool, as if that moment of intimacy had never happened. Intimacy? He was a stranger.

  But he wasn't a stranger. Already, he was more familiar to her than many people she had known for years. She knew the terse, crisp way he spoke, the intensity masked by impassiveness. She had even seen through his menacing demeanor and detected a measure of humor and gentleness. Good God, it was like bonding with Jack the Ripper.

  No, Kaldak killed out of necessity, not for pleasure. He had shown her violence, but he had not been wantonly brutal.

  In another minute she'd be putting a halo over his head. She smiled. Not bloody likely.

  What on earth had possessed him to bring her ice-cold milk? He hadn't answered her question about his mother's remedies. It was odd to think of Kaldak with a mother who taught him household tasks and manners. It was odd to think of him with a mother, period.

  I didn't crawl out from under a rock.

  He was obviously accustomed to people thinking of him as something other than human.

  And that's exactly what she was doing.

  Yet he was her companion now and had been her savior at San Andreas and guardian on that journey through the hills. In some way she was making contact with him.

  And, yes, his presence was becoming almost comforting.

  Nine

  It was nearly nine-thirty in the morning when De Salmo got off the plane at Hartsfield Airport and close to ten by the time he drove his black Saturn rental car out of the lot.

  He checked the city map and then got on the I-75 highway heading north.

  It was raining hard, but the traffic was moving smoothly. He should be at the CDC within a half hour. If he was lucky, this might be a very quick job.

  It took Kaldak and Bess almost an hour on I-75 South to make it to the CDC headquarters. Kaldak pulled into the parking lot and shut off the engine.

  “Aren't we going inside?” Bess asked when he made no move to get out of the car.

  Kaldak shook his head. “Ed is going to meet us here. He's a cautious man.”

  “If he was cautious, he wouldn't be involved with you.” She tried to peer out the windshield. “And he's going to be very wet.”

  “Which will only make him worse-tempered.” He nodded at a tall, gangly man in a trench coat springing across the parking lot. “Here he comes.”

  Ed Katz was in his early forties, with receding brown hair and a thin, freckled face. He opened the back door of the car, dove in, and slammed the door. “It's a bad sign.”

  “The rain?” Kaldak asked.

  Katz nodded gloomily. “It's a bad sign.” He stiffened when he saw Bess. “Who is she?”

  “A friend.”

  “Oh, great. Why don't you invite the whole world, Kaldak?”

  “She's safe.”

  “Until they ask her to testify against me.”

  “No one's going to testify against you.”

  “Yeah, sure. If this goes down, everyone's going to take a fall.” He thrust the briefcase he was carrying at Kaldak. “Take this and let me get out of here.”

  “Thanks, Ed.”

  “Just don't ask me to do anything else. You know you could probably have done a better job than me. This was nasty stuff.”

  “Did you do a double check on the test?”

  “I'm almost sure it was positive, but there was too much deterioration of the sample. We'd need a lot more to do the job.”

  “I know. I'll see to it.”

  “Make it quick. And I don't want to hear from you until then.”

  Kaldak nodded. “I won't bother you if I can help it.”

  “Find a way to help it.” He got out of the car. “We're even, Kaldak.” He hesitated, raindrops pouring down his face as he stared at Kaldak. “It's real nasty. You going to be able to do anything about it?”

  “With a little help from my friends.”

  “I'm not your friend. Do you hear me, Kaldak? I'm not your friend. Don't you bring this back to me unless you have a way of stopping it.”

  “Not unless it's necessary.” Kaldak started to back out of the parking space and then slammed on his brakes to avoid hitting a black Saturn that was whipping through the parking lot. “I'll call you.”

  “Don't.”

  The black Saturn was out of the way and searching for a parking spot in the next row. Kaldak backed out and headed for the exit.

  Bess looked over her shoulder and saw Katz still standing in the rain, looking after them. “He's scared.”

  “We're all scared, aren't we?”

  But it had shaken her to realize an expert in the field was so terrified by the results of the tests. She suddenly remembered something Katz had said. “He said you could do the test yourself. Could you?”

  “Given the right equipment.”

  “Then are you a doctor like Katz?”

  “No one's like Katz.”

  “Don't sidestep. Are you?”

  “Yes. A long time ago. Ed and I went to school together.”

  “Then why––”

  “Did I give it up to kill people?” Kaldak finished. “It takes time for a man to find his true vocation. Katz leads such a dull life.”

  It was clear Kaldak had no intention of telling her anything more. At least she had that little morsel Katz had thrown out. It put a whole new light on Kaldak.

  Or did it? He had been an enigma since the moment she had met him.

  “Don't worry about it.” Kaldak shot her a sly glance as he negotiated his way through the traffic toward the freeway. “I didn't mean to overwhelm you with my myriad qualifications. Just treat me as your run-of-the-mill hit man. I'm sure you prefer it.”

  Damn him.

  She changed the subject. “Will he help us if we need him?”

  “He'll help us.”

  “He deals with dangerous germs every day. Why did the anthrax frighten him so much?”

  “It comes packaged with money. He sees the potential. Money is alive.”

  She shook her head. “Money is just paper.”

  “Is it? Take a twenty-dollar bill out of your wallet.”

  “What?”

  “Do it.”

  “This is stupid.” She flipped open her purse, took out her wallet, and extracted a twenty-dollar bill. “It's just paper.”

  “Tear it up.”

  Her hand instinctively tightened on the bill. “Don't be ridiculous. We might need it.”

  “You see, it's not just paper, it's alive. That twenty-dollar bill could send your kids to college, pay for your house, free you from a job you hate, buy you a heroin hit to keep your body from screaming with pain. Who's going to refuse it even if there's a danger of it being contaminated? Most people think bad things are going to happen o
nly to the other guy.”

  “I can tear it up.”

  “Then do it.”

  She ripped the twenty-dollar bill in two.

  “Congratulations.” Then he smiled. “But what are you doing?”

  “Just putting the pieces back in my wallet.”

  “So that you can tape them together later.”

  Her eyes widened as she realized that's exactly what she had intended to do. “It would be stupid to lose the money for a silly experiment.”

  “Right.” He swung onto the freeway. “They say self-preservation is the first law. Wouldn't you say that twenty-dollar bill has just preserved itself?”

  Alive. The idea was ludicrous. No, it was frightening. Because she now understood what it meant. Money was not only currency, it was knit into the fabric of people's lives and dreams. Esteban couldn't have chosen a more irresistible siren to deliver the bacteria. “Diabolical.”

  “Yes.”

  “But if people knew, surely they'd reject it.”

  “Maybe. But when we see them tearing up or burning money, we'll know we're really in trouble. What emotional response do you think it would take to trigger an act like that?”

  Despair. Frustration. Fury.

  “There would be anarchy. Just the situation Habin wants. It was his idea to use the money. He planned and worked for over seven years to steal those plates from Denver.”

  “Where are they making the counterfeit money?”

  “They made the pesos in an underground installation in Libya. I think they moved the operation earlier this year when they started making the U.S. currency.”

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere in the U.S. is a good bet.”

  “You don't know?”

  He shook his head. “But it would make sense not to have to transport the anthrax all over the world.”

  “My God, what do you know?”

  He was silent for a few moments. Then, “I found references to Waterloo, Iowa.”

  “How?”

  “Esteban had a lieutenant removed when he became overly curious about what was happening at Tenajo. I searched his belongings afterward.”

  After Kaldak had killed the lieutenant himself. It was too easy to make the connection.

  “Yes.” He answered her unspoken question. “And if I hadn't done away with Galvez, I wouldn't have had enough information to take the chance of getting you out of San Andreas.”