“Pissed off.”
“What now?”
“I wouldn’t loan her the five hundred bucks she wanted.”
“Five…for what?”
“Ticket to LA. She wanted to run away but she didn’t have the cash. Said she wasn’t about to take the bus, which was the only thing she could afford.”
“She was just going to show up and call for a ride from the airport?”
“Not our little princess,” Mary said. “A hundred bucks was for a car service.”
Bob laughed. “That’s not running away. That’s an all-expense-paid vacation.”
“Yeah, she didn’t want to hear that either. When I told her if she wanted to go she’d either have to take the bus or hitchhike, she looked at me like I’d blown a jellyfish out of my nose.”
“How is she other than that?”
“Hard to tell from those grunting noises she makes,” Mary said. “But I don’t think she misses you as much as she hates both of us and our guts now and for the rest of time. Klaus too.”
“Still?”
“You know how stubborn she is.”
“Yeah, I wonder where she gets that.”
“Listen here, Science Boy, why don’t you just run a wad of your DNA through one of those fancy sequencers of yours. I bet it spits out a stubbornness gene the size of golf ball.”
“I’m persistent,” Bob said. “She’s stubborn.”
“Oh,” Mary replied. “You didn’t tell me you were using electron microscopes.”
“To fractionate proteins?”
“To split those tiny hairs.”
Bob had another impure thought. He lowered his voice and said, “I’ll split your tiny hairs.”
“Bob! You dirty little entomologist.”
“You started it. Say something else.”
Mary giggled for a moment before asking a question. Bob turned to Klaus and said, “Mary wants to know if you’re still paranoid about our identities.”
Klaus looked up from what he was doing and removed his bifocals. “Let me speak with her.” He walked over and took the phone. “Mary,” he said. “There is an old saying. Just because a man is paranoid does not mean that people are not after him.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Though unaware of it, Nick Parker grew up in search of a father figure more masculine than the one life had dealt him. His own father was a college professor who believed intellectual strength trumped the physical, that chess was a superior form of competition than any contact sport. And had Nick Parker been reared on the upper east side of Manhattan, that might not have been the worse thing to happen to him. But, as it was, he grew up in central Ohio, where real men liked football and hunting.
His father was the type who was inclined to say things like, “That we live in a region where the notion of ‘real men’ not only has traction but goes unquestioned, tells you all you need to know about the level of sophistication of the local populace.”
Nick Parker never considered any of this a betrayal on his father’s part. Such things weren’t the result of conscious processes. He simply rejected most of his father’s values and found himself seeking a different type of mentor, gravitating toward football coaches and the fathers of friends who would take him into the woods to kill and gut deer.
The one thing Nick Parker did take from his father was a love of books. A voracious reader, he consumed everything from military history to biography to fiction. This gave his father hope. Every time he saw Nick’s nose buried in a book, he dreamed his son would pursue a career in academia or perhaps the law. But after reading G. Gordon Liddy’s autobiography as a gullible high school student, Nick Parker decided to pursue a career, not in the law, but in law enforcement.
At Ohio State, Nick’s blind and youthful exuberance developed into a more nuanced respect for the one-time Watergate bungler. After graduating with a degree in criminology, Nick Parker joined the CIA, where he hoped to bring to his job the same steely willpower that G. Gordon Liddy had brought to his.
But a decade in the trenches removed his blinders. And the five years after that hardened any soft edges that remained. Political reality and access to information forced him to re-evaluate his tenets. With every intelligence failure, the CIA faced another purge and another feckless stab at reform. Agent Parker watched good people get drummed out of service, only to be replaced by political appointees and other hacks. In the course of his career, the intelligence community in general, and the Agency in particular, had become dysfunctional jokes, more adept at undermining one another for political advantage than keeping the nation safe. Vital information went unshared. Directors came and went. Books were written and published. Secrets were revealed for personal gain. And no one was held accountable for any of it.
To Agent Nick Parker, the message was loud and clear. It was every man for himself.
And, while he wasn’t proud that it had come to this, he also wasn’t so naive as to pretend things were otherwise.
So, after visiting Miguel Riviera, Agent Parker returned to Washington and immediately contacted another agent, one of the real estate variety. He wanted to see what five or ten million would buy in the D.C. market. It turned out that kind of money still counted for something, even in Georgetown. After a couple of open houses, Agent Parker knew he had to go through with it, but not without a good plan. This wasn’t tiddlywinks. If he failed, he’d end up in a windowless condo six feet under.
Chapter Twenty-four
The Department of Defense maintains dozens of fully furnished apartments in complexes throughout Los Angeles. Bob and Klaus each had a two-bedroom unit at the Avondale Oaks in Woodland Hills, a corner of the San Fernando Valley that had been transformed from walnut and orange groves into post-war housing and malls. Avondale Oaks was a sprawling, gated apartment community dotted with tennis courts and swimming pools all nestled among towering eucalyptus trees.
Bob and Klaus were scheduled to give Treadwell an update in the morning, so they took a couple of beers down to the pool to draw up an outline for the presentation. Bob scooted to the edge of his chair. He peeled off his socks and stuffed them into his shoes. He dropped his feet into the water, opened his beer, and said, “All right, Transgenics one and two are weaponized. Three is still unstable. And we’re making progress on the airborne assassins. So, it seems our main focus for the presentation is on how to control their movements and behavior. And part of that is making sure they hunt humans instead of insects.”
Just out of sight behind some tall shrubs, there was a clang as a metal gate closed behind someone entering the complex. Klaus sat up suddenly, his hand darting under the towel folded on the table beside him. A moment later a neighbor walked by with groceries.
Bob smirked and gestured with his beer can. “See? You did it again.”
Klaus made a show of rolling his shoulders, wincing as if in pain. “No, I was uncomfortable,” he said. “My back hurts.” He leaned back in his seat gingerly.
“Bullshit,” Bob said. “Every time you hear that gate shut, you jump like a squirrel.”
“You are exaggerating.”
“You reach for a gun every time your back hurts?”
Klaus fixed Bob with stern eyes. “Someone needs to be prepared to defend us.”
“Against groceries?” Bob pulled his feet from the water and pressed them onto the warm flagstone, wiggling his toes. “As far as we can tell, nobody knows we’re alive. And even if they did—and assuming your forger is a trustworthy fellow—they don’t know to look for Mr. Javier Martinez and Mr. Juan Flores.” Bob felt a tickle on the bridge of his foot. He reached down and brushed away an Argentine ant (Iridomyrmex humilis), the most common ant in California. “So,” Bob said, “take your hand off the gun, put it on your beer, and relax so we can get this presentation together.�
�
Klaus was reaching for his beer when the automatic pool light clicked on. He knocked the can over as he went for the gun, spilling beer and drowning a couple of ants. He mumbled “shit,” then set the can back on the table and took a deep breath.
“Your back?”
Klaus ignored him. He looked around, the pool light illuminated everything a cool diamond blue. He turned to Bob and said, “Perhaps I am a little tense.” He took a pull on his beer and leaned back, looking up at the light shimmering on the eucalyptus leaves. “But at least one of us should be.”
“You know,” Bob said, wagging his finger at his friend. “I still think you ought to introduce yourself to that fashionista up in four-oh-two. I saw her at the mailbox the other day. She wasn’t wearing a ring or a bra and I gotta tell you…”
Klaus smiled. “Perhaps you are right.”
“Of course I’m right,” Bob said. “You need to get laid.”
Despite his years in the States, Klaus still maintained his old world sensibilities as much as his Austrian accent. Bob’s coarseness caused a stammer, “Yes, well, I, uh…”
Bob gripped the arms of his chair and began to thrust his hips lewdly, the chair scooting forward with each comical lunge. “You gotta get you some, Klaus. Lay a little pipe, you know? Get your ham bone boiled.”
“I get your drift.”
“Spear the bearded clam,” he said.
“Bob?”
“Strike the pink match.”
“Bob, I believe you may be projecting your own needs.”
“Well, thank you, Dr. Freud.” Bob paused, smiled sheepishly, and said, “What do you expect? I haven’t seen Mary in nearly a month!” He reached down to brush away another of the tiny ants, this one tickling his ankle.
“I understand,” Klaus said. “And I sympathize.”
“Thank you.”
“By the way, her name is Audrey.”
Bob looked at Klaus, confused for the moment. Then he pointed and said, “Up in four-oh-two?”
Klaus raised his eyebrows in victory.
“You dog!”
“She is a costume designer. Speaks three languages. Delightful company.”
“I don’t believe it,” Bob said. “So Thursday night isn’t health club night?”
“Well, it is exercise,” Klaus said. “Now, our report.”
“No, I want details.”
“Of course not.” Klaus sipped his beer.
“Please?”
“It would be improper,” Klaus said, shaking his head.
Bob was about to say something else when he felt another tickle on his foot. He looked down at the line of ants going about their business. “Okay, fine” he said. “Back to the bugs.”
Picking up a legal pad of handwritten notes, Klaus flipped a page and said, “We agree that pheromones are the key to controlling their movements and behavior,” Klaus said. “So we must figure out how to control the pheromones.”
Bob nodded. “And part of that is finding how to make the assassins hunt humans instead of insects.”
“I was thinking perhaps a genome from the Sanguisugas could help with that. But the trick will be getting them to distinguish good guys from bad guys, and that is an extremely subtle control issue.”
Bob nodded as he reached down to let a couple of ants climb onto his hand, staring at them as he rooted around his brain for some relevant tidbit. He knew it was in there, somewhere, but where? And what was it?
Klaus talked about the problem of collecting significant amounts of pheromones and the process for determining which compounds did what. “We are making progress on the mandibular gland secretions of the spined ambush assassins,” he said. “But perhaps we should focus on the binding proteins that bring pheromones to receptors in the first place.” Klaus looked up and saw Bob mesmerized by the ants. “Are you listening?”
“Yeah,” Bob said as he watched the ants scuttling over his hand. “Yeah, you’re right about all that. But I just had an idea about how to get the bugs to hunt humans.”
“Okay. What is it?”
He held his hand out toward Klaus and said, “Siafu.”
Chapter Twenty-five
The man behind the desk at Palace Loans didn’t ask any questions. Wasn’t his business. He just took the ticket and gave Father Paul the duffle bag.
A bus returned him to the rectory, where he set the duffle bag on the floor in a corner of his small office and tried to ignore it. The bag was heavy and its weight made him both curious and frightened. But the fear outweighed the curiosity so he couldn’t bring himself to open the thing. He just stared at it, day in, day out, wondering what to do.
Some days he sat there for hours, fingering the little key, the man’s words echoing in his mind. “You must warn them. Others are coming.”
He wondered, am I morally obliged to open the bag? Does the notion of ought obtain in this situation? Had he wandered into categorical imperative territory? Who came up with that, Kant? Was he Catholic? What was his point? That when conscience dictates action, one is morally obliged to act accordingly? Something along those lines. But what if the conscience dictates evil? Was that dealt with in a footnote? If there were something in the bag that could save lives, ought he use whatever it was to save those lives? Was that church doctrine or just philosophy?
On the one hand, Father Paul wanted to know what was in there. On the other hand, as long as he didn’t know, he wasn’t on the hook for anything. Or was that willful ignorance? Conscious disregard? Was that a sin or just a legal concept? Or both?
On the third hand, if he opened it, well, Pandora’s Box came to mind.
Father Paul was pretty sure there was a sort of necessity imposed on his will to do what was good and avoid what was evil and that his will was, by its own nature, inclined toward the good in general and thus he couldn’t wish for what was evil unless it presented itself to him under the appearance of good. Beyond that, things got blurry.
Father Paul had always been more of a pastoral priest than a philosophical one, more concerned with feeding, clothing, and teaching than in splitting theological hairs. But this heavy bag and the man’s dying words were forcing him to think back on doctrinal lessons long forgotten.
He looked again at the bag. Was this a test?
The dying man’s words continued to echo. “Twenty million dollars.” No, Father Paul thought, those are the wrong words. He had to be concerned with the other words. Was he obliged to warn anyone about anything? Could he do so without violating the seal of the confessional? How could he know if there was any truth to the confession? For that matter, how could he know if there was truth in any confession? He’d never spent time thinking about that. He just offered forgiveness, issued penance, and said “next.”
Lacking, as he did, sufficient confidence in his philosophical grounding, Father Paul turned to his dusty bookshelf. Where would he start? He turned at random to Cardinal Newman’s letter to the Duke of Norfolk hoping it might shed some light. He skimmed the words. Divine law, the rule of ethical truth, sovereign, irreversible, absolute. The Fourth Lateran Council, “Quidquid fit contra conscientiam, aedificat ad gehennam.” The rule and measure of duty is not utility, nor state convenience, nor fitness, order, or beauty. Yes, Father Paul thought, that’s all good and well but do I have an obligation to—
Father Paul almost jumped out of his skin when the phone rang.
He’d been expecting the call. It was inevitable, but he was so immersed in his quandary that the sudden ringing gave him a start. It was the bishop. He said they needed to increase the diocesan assessment to cover expenses incurred by recent lawsuits. Cost of doing business, you know. Effective immediately. “Get the kids on the car washes and the parents on the spaghetti suppers,” the bishop said. “Oh, do some raffles too,
” the bishop said with what might have been construed as contempt. “They love the raffles.”
Father Paul thanked the bishop for his call and hung up. What would Jesus do?
He crossed the room and picked up the duffle bag then set it heavily on his desk. He pulled the key from his pocket. He slipped the key into the lock. He hesitated. It wasn’t too late.
Twenty million dollars. No, not that. Others are coming. You must warn them. That.
He looked at the thick, khaki canvas, brass grommets, the strong, wide zipper. He turned the key and the latch popped. Now the zipper was all that stood between him and God alone knew what.
Warn them. They love the raffles. Others are coming. Twenty million dollars.
Father Paul pinched the zipper between his finger and thumb. He opened the bag and saw the dull reflection of light off gun metal gray. There were weapons and documents and two thousand dollars in twenties. Among the documents were pictures of two men—two killers according to the confession, along with an address in Corvallis, Oregon, and instructions on how to collect the bounty when the job was done.
It was all he needed to save these two men. Or many others.
Chapter Twenty-six
“Siafu?” Joshua Treadwell flipped through the document Bob had given him when he and Klaus arrived to give their report. “I don’t see that in here,” Treadwell said. “Am I missing a page?”
“No, sorry,” Bob said. “That’s not part of the presentation. It’s something we thought of last night.”
“Siafu.”
“Yes,” Klaus said. “It is the Masai name for African driver ants (Formicidae dorylinae), sometimes called army ants. They live in huge colonies, up to twenty million members. With those numbers, they quickly exhaust the food supply wherever they are, so they move to new territory every day or two.”
The Exterminators Page 9
