The Delta Factor

by Thomas Locke

  “Down Wanchese way.”

  She nodded. “That is rough territory, from all the reports I’ve heard. I suppose your size served you well.”

  “It was enough to keep me alive and get me out of there,” he agreed.

  A glimmer of approval shone through. “And what are you doing now, may I ask?”

  “Working in the Pharmacon labs.”

  “He’s Deborah’s assistant, Auntie.”

  “Why, of course, Deborah spoke of you the very first night she came by.” She cocked her head to one side. “Yes, I can see how someone might think they had run into some serious trouble meeting you on a dark night. But Deborah spoke very highly of you. She said you are the most capable and intelligent assistant she has ever had.”

  Cochise busied himself by grinding his cigarette into the saucer.

  “Well, I want you to feel free to stop by any time you are down this way.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Cochise mumbled.

  “Blair, dear, are you sure you’re cooking enough eggs for two big men like this?”

  “I’m cooking all we have.”

  “That will have to do, then.” She turned toward Cliff. “And how are you this morning, young man?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “We’ve been seeing quite a bit of you around here lately, haven’t we?”

  “Auntie,” Blair warned.

  “When I was your age, young man, a courtship would reach a point where—”

  The spatula came down on the side of the frying pan with a bang. “All of a sudden the air is getting awfully stuffy in here.”

  “Just going, dear,” she said mildly. Then to Cliff, “You must come by some time for another little chat, young man.”

  Blair gave the scrambled eggs a good working over and muttered something that sounded distinctly like, over my dead body. Cliff made do with a nod and a smile as the old lady patted his shoulder and shuffled from the room.

  * * *

  After breakfast they saw Cochise off to work, then took a walk down by the Edenton Bay. The water sparkled silver and beckoning in the morning sun. The breeze was just strong enough to keep the air from being sultry. The day smelled of water and dew-soaked grass and fresh beginnings.

  “What made you decide to move down from Norfolk?”

  “The job,” Blair said, then stopped herself. “No, that is my automatic reply. It’s true as far as it goes, I suppose. But that was the surface reason, not the reason behind why I started looking for the job in the first place.”

  Cliff felt more than heard the barriers coming down. He responded as best he could, by reaching over and taking her hand. Slender fingers responded with the lightest of pressure.

  “It was too easy for me to lose my dreams in the big city,” Blair said. “I became all wrapped up in things that didn’t mean anything once the day was over.”

  There was such sorrow in her voice, he wanted to reach out, crush her to his chest, tell her it was all right now. All he said was, “I understand.”

  The pressure on his hand increased a fraction. “I suppose Norfolk is like any big city. It breeds a patter so polished it can blind you. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t hold on to my way. I forgot myself. I forgot what was important. All the ideals and all the things that made me who I was.” She hesitated, then finished more quietly, “Or who I wanted to be.”

  They sat down at the end of the pier. Blair looked over the placid waters to where gulls made lazy circles over a pair of fishing boats, and told him, “You were right in what you said the other night. That’s why I flew off the handle. It was hard to stand there and have someone see me so clearly.”

  Cliff said nothing, content to sit and bask in the warmth of a heart that was gradually opening for him.

  She pulled off her shoes and swirled one toe in the cool water. “I left Norfolk because too much of the big city was rubbing off. Maybe a stronger-willed girl could have taken it, but I felt like I was just one step away from getting sucked down the tubes. I woke up one morning and realized I didn’t like myself anymore. I hadn’t been to church in I don’t know how long. I drank too much. I punctuated my sentences with words that would have gotten my mouth washed out with soap when I was a kid. My voice was becoming as hard as my eyes, and I was finding it tougher every day to remember all the reasons for saying no.”

  “You were raised in Norfolk?”

  “A very different Norfolk. It was three completely different cities then—Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach. Now it’s one giant urban sprawl, just melting into each other, joined by strips of fast-food restaurants and shopping malls. Most of the character I knew in my growing-up years has gone. What’s replaced the traditional charm is certainly faster and glitzier, but an old-fashioned girl just doesn’t have a home there anymore.”

  “Tell me about your family, Blair.”

  “They’re good people. Good people. My older brother runs Pop’s plumbing-supply shop and does a lot of work for the Navy. My baby brother is a guy who’s been in love with machines since before he could walk. He could spend days talking about fixing up that car of yours. He’s a specialist at repairing what they called CNC machines, those computer controlled tools that cost as much as some factories. He pulls in good money. Both my brothers are married and busy raising babies. My folks are in love with being grandparents.”

  “And what do they think of their beautiful girl of the family?”

  She was too honest to deny her attractiveness. Instead she replied in a little-girl voice, “They love me and they hurt for me and they wish I was happy.”

  Blair turned to him, her look tainted with long-held sadness. “Who’d have thought it would be worth looking for lifelong love in a world that’s gone crazy for Madonna?”

  “You know what your problem is?” Cliff said. “You’re too good for what modern times want to offer.”

  “So,” Blair dredged up a smile. “You know any nice old- fashioned guys who’re looking for a great deal on some slightly used goods?”

  He nodded slowly. “Maybe you’ve already found one.”

  “Maybe so,” she conceded, the smile vanishing. “Maybe that’s what keeps me up at night, scared to death of being wrong one more time.”

  13

  Sandra cornered Cliff outside his office just after lunch the next day. “What’s this I hear about you taking more time off?”

  “It was mine to do with as I please,” he replied. After receiving Deborah’s go-ahead, Cliff had taken the samples by the lobbyist’s labs, and was now enormously glad to have them out of his hands.

  “I just better not find out you’ve been down in Edenton again,” she warned. “You come within a hundred miles of that place, and it’ll cost you your job.” She wheeled around and tap-tapped down the hallway.

  Cliff sighed, started for his door, only to be hailed from the hall’s opposite end. He turned to find an extremely nervous Horace Tweedie scurrying toward him. “Do you have a minute?”

  “Sure, Horace, come on in.”

  “No, no, not in there. Let’s just walk for a second, okay?”

  Cliff allowed himself to be led down the corridor. The little man’s forehead was beaded with perspiration. Cliff asked, “So how are things down in files?”

  “Fine, fine.” The little man checked the hall, then asked, “Have you been in contact with anyone strange recently?”

  “Strange?” Cliff locked into gear. He lowered his voice. “Oh, you mean your friend Wendell. Sure, I saw him this morning. Gave him something to test at his labs.”

  Tweedie’s eyes scrunched tighter. “Who?”

  “Wendell Cooper. Head of the Health and Medicine Advisory Council. I think I’ve got that right. Like you said, a weird sort of character, but at least he’s willing to help us.” Cliff dropped his voice even further. “Just do me a favor, will you? Don’t let anyone know around here. It’s not really been approved by the higher-ups.”

  “But I don
’t know any Cooper,” the little man whispered.

  “Yeah, right,” Cliff grinned. “Great idea.”

  “I’m not kidding,” Tweedie hissed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Cliff straightened in alarm. “Then who—”

  “Look,” Tweedie said, his voice hoarse with strain. “I gotta go.”

  Cliff grabbed for him. “No, wait a second, I—”

  “I’ve got to go now.” The little man pulled himself free. “You just watch your back, Devon. That’s all I can tell you.” He was already moving down the hall, picking up speed. “Watch your back.”

  * * *

  Cliff was almost beside himself when he called Deborah that afternoon and announced, “I can’t find him.”

  “Who?”

  “Cooper. I guess that’s his name. Now I don’t even know if that’s real.”

  “The guy at the lab agency? What’s the matter?”

  “I’ve just gotten back from his office. The people there don’t know of any lab. And Tweedie’s never even heard of him.”

  “Who’s Tweedie?”

  “The guy who introduced us. Supposedly. And now I just missed him.”

  “You’re not making any sense, Junior.”

  “Hey, life isn’t making much sense either.”

  “Slow down,” Deborah intoned. “Take a deep breath.”

  Cliff did as he was told. “Okay.”

  “Are you all right now?”

  “No. Definitely not. Something’s going crazy around here.”

  “So start from the beginning and give it to me slow.”

  Cliff did so, though it cost him. “I called Cooper’s office, and he wasn’t there, and I asked to speak to his chief lab technician, and the receptionist said, the who? That got me going, let me tell you. So I drove out there. Which was a trial and a half, seeing as how the sky has decided to finally cave in.” He looked out his rain-streaked window at a world gone dark and gray. It suited the way he felt to a T.

  “Didn’t you check out his lab?”

  “Sure, I met him and discussed our problem.” Cliff’s free hand dragged continually through his hair. “He showed me around this incredible lab area, but you know, I was there after hours. That was when he set up our appointment. Said it would be easier for me, not drawing attention to myself if I came after work. So nobody was working in the labs. And when I brought the samples, he met me in a coffee shop halfway between here and there—I thought he was doing me a favor, helping me get back to the office as quickly as possible. Anyway, when I went out there this afternoon, it turns out the lab is one of these diagnostics groups that hires their services out, and Cooper’s rented space from them because they have done a lot of work for him in the past. But it’s not his lab, Debs. And they don’t know anything about our samples.”

  There was a moment’s silence, then the grim pronouncement, “We’ve been set up.”

  “Sounds that way to me,” Cliff agreed, misery coalescing into a tight little ball at gut level.

  “Not sounds,” she corrected. “Is.”

  “I’m sorry, Debs.”

  “You and me both,” she said. “I should have come up there and looked this thing over personally. But he sounded one hundred percent professional, knew the right words. He sounded so positive he could get to the bottom of this.” She sighed. “Brother, did we ever get took.”

  “Who’s behind this?”

  “I wish I knew. You check around up there, see if you can find anything out. I’ll do the same at this end.”

  * * *

  Madge had one speed for work—first gear. Cliff did not complain. At least it wasn’t reverse. She was as much a friend to him as she could be, after twenty-seven years of watching them come and watching them go. She did her work well, never needed to have anything explained twice, and never needed to redo. Madge held too much respect for her own time to make mistakes the first time around.

  She was busy at her computer terminal when he walked from his office and announced, “They’re gunning for me, Madge.”

  She did not even blink. “So I heard.”

  He was surprised but knew he shouldn’t be. Madge was connected to the local grapevine at root level. “Yeah? And were you planning on sharing the news with me one of these days?”

  She gave her hefty shoulders a simple shrug. “I didn’t see how it would do you any good, so why bother you when you’re so much in love?”

  Cliff had to smile. “It shows, does it?”

  Madge adjusted her cat’s-eye glasses. “Who’s the lucky lady, anyway.”

  “Somebody I met down in Edenton.”

  “Gotta watch out for those small-town Southern girls,” she warned. “Once they get their hooks in, they don’t let go.”

  “In this case, I wouldn’t mind,” Cliff said. “So who’s holding the weapons, Madge.”

  “Well, Sandra for one.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” Cliff replied.

  “Right. But she’s got some kind of backers from outside the FDA. Somebody over on Capitol Hill, from what I hear.”

  “And Ralph hasn’t said anything to back me up?”

  “Sure he has. That’s why you’ve lasted as long as you have.”

  Cliff felt a rush of relief. He liked Ralph and hoped the feeling was mutual. It helped to know the man had stood up for him.

  “But Ralph is a political appointee,” Madge reminded him. “He can only go so far before sticking his neck on the chopping block beside yours.”

  “How long before the ax falls?”

  “Hard to say. Seems like things are in a holding pattern for the moment. Can’t tell you why. Want me to check around?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “I’ll do it for you.” Madge stood and shrugged on her coat. She seemed genuinely sad. “You’re a good boy, Cliff. Maybe too good for the rough and tumble of bureaucratic life.”

  Cliff reached over and patted her hand. “You’re not getting sentimental on me, are you?”

  “Not me, honey,” she said, collecting herself. “I’ve been around too long to waste a tear on the ways of this old world.”

  * * *

  Horace Tweedie’s frantic scampering was hampered by the heavy summer thundershower. Every third step or so, a sudden gust tried to wrench the umbrella from his grasp and sent bitter needles rushing against his body.

  He never should have waited.

  He knew it now. He could feel it in his bones. He should have taken the first big payment and scampered. But always the man had offered more. Bigger payouts. More cash. More freedom.

  Now something in Devon’s words left him terrified that the freedom was no more.

  Another gust, fiercer than the others, almost blew him off his feet. Tweedie recovered, but in doing so he stepped off the curb and stumbled in the gutter. Water poured in a steady brown stream, ankle deep and treacherous and burdened by enough silt to form a viscous mud underneath. When Horace Tweedie righted himself, his shoe was sucked off by the mud.

  Horace Tweedie shouted a curse at his fate, squatted, and stuck one arm down into the filthy water. As he fished around, another vicious gust powered through. First it blew his umbrella inside out, then wrenched it from his grasp. Horace let it go. He had to use both hands to free his shoe.

  Water dripped down his glasses, turning them into liquid prisms. Horace pried his foot into the water-logged shoe and fumbled with his shoelaces. Then a gust blew the droplets from his glasses, and pushed his head up and over just far enough to see the car.

  The car was moving far too slowly, even for this weather. And it was dark.

  Horace squinted, wiped his spectacles with fingers that suddenly were shaking spastically, and saw, yes, it was a black Infiniti.

  Thunder boomed around him, drowning out his high-pitched cry. Horace stood and started running, his laces still undone. The shoe sucked on and off and flop-flopped and finally slipped off entirely. This time Horace Tweedie did no
t even notice.

  His glasses were fogged up now, coated with each gasping little breath as well as the rain. Which was why he did not see the car stop nor the aquiline featured man race up the empty sidewalk and seize him fiercely by the neck.

  The iron grip dragged him back toward the waiting car. The man held Horace with one hand strong enough to crush his bones and opened the driver-side door. To Horace it looked like a looming maw of darkness. He struggled as hard as his fear-drenched body would allow.

  “I wrote it all down!” His screams were almost lost to the din of lightning that streaked across the sky. “If I disappear it’s all gonna come out! I got it all hidden safe!”

  The stranger with the delicate aquiline features pushed him inside, then slid in behind him. A pistol with a silencer appeared in one hand as the other shifted the car into gear. “I am sure you will tell me all about it,” he replied silkily. “In time.”

  14

  “Thank you for being so patient, Ms. Walters. Congressman Larson will see you now.”

  Sandra Walters followed the chief secretary back into the congressman’s inner sanctum and reflected that it might actually be happening.

  The congressman had the telephone to his ear when she entered. Still, he bolted to his feet, shook her hand, waved her into a seat. “I’ve got to go now, Harry. Something mighty important just came in.”

  She permitted herself a small smile. Yes, the doors to real power might about be ready to open for her. Finally.

  Congressman Larson set down the phone, swept around from behind his desk, and said, “Ms. Walters. What a wonderful surprise.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you like this, Congressman.” One nervous hand rose to check her hair.

  “Nonsense. Always have time for a beautiful young friend.” He gave her his number one smile, showing off five thousand dollars’ worth of capped teeth. He lowered himself into the chair beside her. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  “I think I might have something of great importance for you,” she said, barely able to keep her voice steady in her excitement. “Do you happen to recall what you said to me at our meeting two weeks ago?”