by David Caris
‘Sure you are. I just walked in off the street.’
Nixon took a small step back, put both hands in his pockets and studied Kovac’s face with new interest. The women stopped typing and looked up again, sensing a change in the room.
The guards moved to search Kovac, but he shook his head. They paused and looked back towards Nixon, who seemed torn. One hand came out of his pocket and went for the phone on the desk off to his right. He picked up the receiver and used the same hand to punch in a few numbers.
He turned 180 degrees and put the receiver to his ear. He was mumbling but Kovac could still make out the words. ‘A John Kovac here to see –’ He held out the receiver and looked at it with annoyance. Dead like everything else.
Still, it was all useful information. Kovac figured Nixon had turned out of instinct, to face the person he was trying to call. An unthinking, very human tic. This was confirmed when Nixon waved to get someone’s attention.
Kovac followed Nixon’s gaze through a few glass walls. At the far end of the level, out beyond a number of other office workers, he saw Megan. She was at a desk near the center of a large corner office. Her father’s old office.
He knew these people too well.
She looked up at Nix’s waving and nodded.
Just how long had Kovac known Megan? He rewound in his head as he waited. Since the day she first showed up at the farm, he decided. She had been a kid then, ten or so, like a little sister. Over the years that followed, she had developed feelings for him – a young girl’s impossible crush. He hadn’t felt anything in return. Not back then anyway. Things hadn’t heated up between them until he returned from his first mission for her father. She had been turning eighteen by then, right on the cusp of adulthood. He was just into his twenties. The age gap – while still there – hadn’t felt as extreme as in the past. There had been one kiss, which Kovac had always considered a mistake.
She crossed to her office door and opened it. She made her way down a glass corridor. She was wearing suede boots, a pair of trousers, a thick white T-shirt and a black lightweight blazer. She was meeting his eye, but he noted the balled fists at her sides. Nerves or anger or … something. ‘You’re older,’ she said.
‘I am.’
‘I suppose I am too.’
He didn’t say it because it would sound odd, almost creepy, but she looked exactly as he expected. Kovac had seen Megan pretty much every day since his diving accident and “death” in Egypt. Until finishing up with Curzon, her safety had at least in part been his responsibility. That meant considering threats to her safety, which in turn meant a lot of keeping tabs, a lot of watching from afar. There was also her ubiquitous media persona. She was everywhere now that she was taking on greater responsibility at Curzon. Everyone knew she would be the company’s next Chairman, and it had launched her public profile into the stratosphere.
Nixon gallantly put himself between Megan and Kovac, handing her the papers he had stapled. She took them but didn’t break eye contact with Kovac.
CEO, Kovac thought. Soon to be Chairman. It was all happening for Megan Curzon. He figured there was still some of the old bravado, her childhood willingness to fake-it-until-she-made-it. But there was also a new confidence – a willingness to stare him down and dominate this interaction.
Megan said: ‘You’re late.’ She extended one hand, one entire arm, and Kovac assumed she was offering him a handshake. He was moving to accept it when she pivoted and pointed back along the glass corridor. ‘We can talk in my office.’
The move felt calculated, and he was suddenly reminded of another side of Megan. He remembered now what a fierce competitor she had always been. Even when she stood no chance against him, she had put up a fight. Megan had liked him, perhaps even loved him in her teenage way, but she had also always wanted to crush him.
It made sense given her success within Curzon.
So maybe not faking it…
He followed her down the corridor. When out of earshot of Nixon, he said: ‘Your security here is bullshit.’
‘They’re attacking us with computers, not knuckles.’
He didn’t comment on this. ‘And they’ve knocked out power?’
‘I did that.’ She opened the heavy glass door leading into her office and waited for him to enter. She was wearing some kind of perfume, with hints of spices. The sweet fruity smells of her teenage perfumes were long gone. It was now a conservative, warmly professional smell. He remembered a day in her bedroom, both of them laughing as she sprayed a perfume that smelled like candy and taught him how to “walk through the cloud”.
Ancient history.
‘I was hoping to get power back by 5:00 p.m.. But it seems the way we shut it off, there are hoops we have to jump through to get back up and running.’ Megan sat down behind her vast desk and gestured with the stapled documents for him to take one of the two seats directly in front of her. He felt like a schoolboy being called in by the principal. ‘How have you been?’ she asked, as if unsure where or how to begin after so long.
‘Fine.’
‘Since everything that happened with Peng, I mean.’
‘Fine,’ he said again. ‘How’s your step-sister? I’m assuming being used as a drug mule took a toll.’
‘Lottie’s doing well, thank you. She’s still in therapy, but she’s back in school.’
‘And you?’
She forced a stiff smile. ‘I’ll be okay.’ She put the stapled documents down on the desk. ‘John, let’s focus on the problem at hand.’
‘John?’
‘You’d prefer Kovac?’
Kovac should have expected this. The world had given them very different roles. Megan was a billionaire heiress, and not just in name. She would inherit the money, the power, all of it. She would habitually mix with people he only read about. He was the dirty secret, the potential stain on the company’s good name. Sitting here like this, he sensed his own fall from grace. Once, he had been an elite soldier, a SEAL. She had loved that about him. Now he was a killer, a man who dispassionately exchanged lives for money. Even he could tell it didn’t have quite the same ring to it.
‘What was the explosion?’ he asked, changing his mind and deciding to challenge her comment about knuckles right off the bat.
She didn’t flinch. ‘At the soccer stadium you mean? An I.E.D.. It killed seven and injured fifteen, based on what’s being reported so far. And it’s producing some strange symptoms.’
‘Strange symptoms?’
‘Illness – in the survivors.’
‘What sort of illness?’
Megan aligned a sleek but lifeless laptop, so it was square with the table’s edge. ‘Before we discuss anything, Kovac, I need to know if you’re back, if you work for Curzon exclusively?’
‘For you exclusively, you mean?’
‘Yes, I suppose I do. I’m not interested in… well, any kind of time share type arrangement with another employer.’
‘I don’t work for you anymore, Megan – or anyone else. I’m done.’
‘So you’re retired? Is that what you’re telling me?’
Kovac nodded.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘What happened at the stadium? From your perspective.’
‘Bishop tried to bring me in.’
‘And?’
‘He failed – again.’
‘He was looking to help you. And you started a brawl. A journalist I know, she has footage of you entering, exiting. You didn’t pay, apparently. And you didn’t follow instructions from security staff. You even entered a restricted area at one point, and they’re saying you assaulted a man in a restroom and another in the stands?’
‘That sounds about right.’
‘Just before a bomb went off. Just before people start getting sick.’
‘Correct.’
‘Can you see how that might look?’
‘I can.’
‘I can keep your name out of it, John.’
It was all he could do
not to laugh. ‘Are you honestly blackmailing me right now? And quit calling me John. We’re not friends.’
‘You said it yourself, Kovac, you’re not an employee. I need assurances. If you help me, I can squash the story. I can possibly help with police, too.’
Kovac gave her a pained look. ‘There is no journalist, Megan. You have information from the staff at the soccer stadium because you have the security contract.’ He sat forward, rubbing the back of one hand with the other as he considered his wording. ‘So cut the crap. If my identity gets out, I go down, sure. But so will you. You don’t need assurances because we both know this is mutually assured destruction.’
She thought for a moment, then said: ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. In that case, before we get into the hack, I need to brief you on Biogen.’
Chapter 13
Megan said: ‘In the late 1990s, my father bought a company called Biogen, bringing it under the Curzon umbrella. It was a breakthrough treatment for debilitating muscle ailments.’
‘Win-win.’
‘Yes and no. The product contains trace amounts of botulinum toxin Type-A, which can be diverted for weapons production.’
Kovac made the leap. ‘The strange symptoms at the stadium?’
‘That’s my fear, yes. How much do you know about Biogen? Did Bishop tell you any of this in Japan?’
‘No. He was too busy trying to kill me, remember?’
They were silent for a moment. Eventually Megan said: ‘Let’s imagine for a moment that’s true, and that it was a choice between you and Lottie – would you really want us to have played that any other way?’
Kovac said nothing.
Megan studied his eyes, then sighed and returned to Biogen: ‘We worked hard to ensure Biogen only sold to reputable organizations. But Peng compromised one of those organizations, and the shipments found their way into Iran.’
‘And what, Iran offered to weaponize it?’
‘Not quite. That’s what I originally thought, but the reality’s worse.’ Megan opened the laptop. She tapped the space bar. It switched on and lit her face a soft blue. She twisted it around, and Kovac found himself staring at some kind of medical label with the Curzon logo. ‘My father looks for business opportunities, as you well know. Curzon’s the company it is because he’s not afraid to step into new marketplaces. He brings our clout to bear, headhunting the best staff, investing heavily and looking to rapidly establish Curzon as a market disruptor, then leader. He did the same in the BoNT market.’
‘BoNT?’
‘Botulinum neurotoxin. It has endless therapeutic uses, and in 2002 it was approved for cosmetic use – an announcement that didn’t escape my father’s attention.’
‘Botox,’ Kovac said, putting it together.
‘Correct.’
‘You’re saying your father was producing BoNT as a product in and of itself? As a wholesaler?’
‘Is. The regulations for legitimate production are extraordinary. And so they should be. A single molecule of toxin can incapacitate a nerve cell completely. The CDC designates BoNT as a Category A Select Agent, the most deadly category there is. And my father was familiar with all that from Biogen. When he entered the marketplace, there were less than ten legitimate producers. He estimated then that the total amount of BoNT being produced in the world didn’t exceed ten grams per year.’
‘Ten grams? That doesn’t sound like a lot.’
Megan shrugged. ‘Keep in mind, a single one of those ten grams is enough to kill every human on the plant. Hence the regulation. The CDC, the FDA, the USDA, even the FBI.’
‘If it’s so deadly, why doesn’t it kill when you… you know?’ Kovac drew a circle around his mouth with one finger and did his best Kardashian duck face.
‘It does – if you stick a hundred doses of Botox into someone’s face, they die. But it’s used in such tiny quantities in Botox, it shifts to being cosmetic.’
‘I’m guessing a lot of your BoNT ended up in Iran?’
‘Thanks to my brother betraying the company, half a gram, yes. But it didn’t stay in Iran. We tracked it to China. From there, it went underground.’
‘Peng’s old stomping ground.’
‘Before he attacked Curzon in Japan, we know Peng employed a Pakistani microbiologist. We think he set up some kind of production facility, affixing counterfeit labels to vials.’ She pointed to her laptop. ‘Curzon, for example, didn’t make this label. We think Peng had our half gram with our labels, and he was looking to make more.’
‘Counterfeit BoNT?’
‘Exactly.’
Kovac listened to traffic somewhere far below, mulling over everything he had just heard. ‘Are the stadium symptoms consistent with botulinum poisoning?’
Megan shook her head. ‘Not yet. We’re not sure it was BoNT.’
‘Or it was and it failed.’
She cocked her head. ‘It’s bad even if it fails, surely. Orally, we’re talking somewhere between fifty and one-hundred times more toxic than sodium cyanide.’ She paused. ‘But you’re right, it’s hard to weaponize. I’ve been researching it. Weaponizing it means binding the bacteria to powdered materials like silica gel – something fine enough that it’ll allow the material to stay suspended in the air. And then of course you have to disperse it without screwing everything up. I’m not even sure you can do that via an explosion. I’m waiting to hear back on that.’
Kovac eyed her suspiciously. ‘What aren’t you telling me, Megan?’
She took a deep beath, letting it out slowly. She tocked her head from side to side, and then appeared to relent. ‘We have ventilators – a lot of them.’
‘Ventilators?’
She nodded. ‘I’ve been pulling together a supply of ventilators which we can dispatch within 24 hours to just about anywhere in the world. Ventilators are a victim’s best hope. Pretty much their only hope. And even then, they’re facing two to three months for a full recovery. I have to decide whether to distribute them to London hospitals now. If I do, everyone will know we lost track of at least some BoNT. That’s not something we’ve divulged to authorities, at least not in full. And it’s not something we want to divulge if we don’t have to.’
Kovac mulled this over, then decided it wasn’t his problem. Curzon had tried to kill him. They were greedy assholes and he owed them nothing. ‘You need more information. Don’t assume anything until you have it or you’ll make bad decisions.’ He stood. ‘From my point of view, even if they have used it, and even it comes back to you, that’s damage control. And damage control is your department.’ He tapped the table to underline his next point. ‘You’re getting confused, Megan – my interest in all this begins and ends with the hack.’
‘Even if you’re being framed for the bombing?’
‘So far you’re the only person who has hinted they’re interested in doing that – whoever “they” are.’
‘Are you leaving?’
‘Unless you can tell me something more about the hack, yeah. I’ve been here too long already.’
She gestured to the chair. ‘Sit down, Kovac.’
He remained standing.
‘Fine.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘But they’re linked – the attack at the stadium and the hack. Can’t you see that? It’s some kind of coordinated attack on Curzon.’
‘That’s you connecting dots. What did I just tell you about assuming things, Megan?’
She repositioned herself in her chair, and crossed one leg. ‘I have a name, but I’m not ready to hand it over until –’
‘I want freedom to move, freedom to work. You’ve shut down my access to cash, ID and weapons. I’ll need all three. And like I thought we established already, there’s going to need to be trust.’ He paused. ‘Give me the name and anything else you have, and I’ll see what I can find.’
‘Kovac, I can assure you, we’re not working against you.’
‘Then I’d hate to know what it feels like when you are. The name, Megan.’
She stood, suddenly indignant. ‘I assume you’re armed?’
‘What’s that got to do with –’
‘I let you in here, I’m meeting you alone. You want trust, that’s –’ She cut herself short, then changed tack: ‘I’ve read your file, Kovac.’
He saw what she was driving at. He was capable of killing women and she had let him in here with a gun – and a grudge. It was a flimsy argument and she should’ve known better than to waste her time trying to shame him. ‘The women? Think about who I was working for. And believe me, there were reasons for those hits.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘It’s in the file, Megan. If you don’t know, you haven’t been given the whole file.’
She reached down and used three fingertips to effortlessly turn the small laptop, so the screen was still pointing at him. She called up a photo app. ‘I was sent this today. And before you ask, you don’t have to worry about the laptop, it’s not connected to anything.’
On the screen was a photo Kovac immediately recognized. It was a photo of him at the dam with Megan and Daniel. ‘Bishop took that, right?’ he said softly.
‘Right. A long time ago.’
Kovac reached down and gently shut the lid.
Megan nodded. ‘I’m the same. So let’s work together to keep it locked down. I’ll get you up and running again, but you work for me. You report to me. And if I put you on the terror angle, you work that for me, too.’
Kovac knew he had no choice. If he didn’t agree to these terms, he would get no support from Curzon of any kind. He could see Megan would mentally recategorize him as an enemy.
He dropped back down into his seat, impressed. ‘Well you’re all grown up. Wow.’
‘Don’t patronize me. Do we have an agreement? I’ll give you details as I see fit, and I will share. But you work for me.’
Kovac realized he had one condition in return, one non-negotiable of his own. ‘I won’t kill.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You heard me.’
‘A fixer who won’t kill is –’
‘I’m not a fixer anymore. At least, not like that. I told you, I’ve retired.’
