Saddler, seeing the angry glint in Velcourt’s eyes, held up a hand. “Sir, O’Neill identified the genetic message in humans that directs that the fetus will become a female. He formed a disease that bonds itself to that message.”
That, Velcourt understood. He nodded.
“Huddersfield confirms that there are no asymptomatic carriers of this plague,” Ruckerman added.
“It infects men and doesn’t kill them, is that what you mean?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you say so?” Velcourt drew in a deep breath to calm himself. Damn these bastards with their gobbledygook! “What’re the symptoms in men?” he asked.
“We’re not sure yet, sir,” Saddler said. “Perhaps no worse than a bad cold.” He emitted a nervous laugh.
“I don’t think this is a subject for humor,” Velcourt said.
“No, sir! No, sir, it isn’t.”
Ruckerman said: “The disease either masks or changes that sex-differentiation pattern in a lethal manner.”
“How could he know it’d do that?” Velcourt asked.
“We don’t know how he tested it. We don’t know a great many things about it, but we’re beginning to define a pattern,” Ruckerman said.
“What pattern and how does it work?”
“I’m talking about the pattern of O’Neill’s research, sir,” Ruckerman said. “We know something about his original laboratory… before he went to Seattle. There were friends who visited him there. We know he had a computer.”
“His chemical techniques must’ve been virtually flawless,” Saddler said. “For example, he would’ve had to use bacterial enzymes derived we know not how, but we are forced to keep reminding ourselves that he had been at his DNA researches for about five years preceding the tragedy in Ireland.”
Velcourt looked from one man to the other. “What kind of rotten fate would put such a unique man in the path of that kind of motivation?”
“The Bechtel people have run an analysis,” Saddler said. “They say it was bound to happen sometime – sooner or later. O’Neill wasn’t all that unique.”
Velcourt was aghast. “You mean anyone could have done this terrible thing?”
“Not just anyone,” Ruckerman said. “But a growing number of people. The increasing spread of knowledge about how it was done, that and the simplification of techniques plus the availability of sophisticated equipment to anyone with the money…” He shrugged. “Inevitable, given the kind of world we live in.”
“Inevitable?”
Ruckerman said: “Consider his original laboratory, especially that computer. He must’ve stored chemical fractions for later use. Any good lab would. And he’d use his computer for cataloguing and analysis. No doubt of it.”
“He had no difficulty getting antibiotics, of course,” Saddler said. “He took them off his own shelves when he sold the pharmacy.”
“The antibiotics to which his plague is immune,” Velcourt said. That part he remembered from earlier briefings when Prescott was still alive.
“Analysis of the equipment he is known to have used,” Ruckerman said, “tells us he employed a delicate play of chemical kinetics to achieve his results.”
“There you go again!” Velcourt snapped.
“Sir,” Ruckerman said, “he used temperature control and enzyme cutting techniques at various stages, heat as a driving energy or lack of it as a brake.”
“He used X-ray, temperature and chemical processes,” Saddler said.
“We have a list of the publications to which he subscribed,” Ruckerman said. “It’s clear he was very familiar with the work of Kendrew and Perutz. He wrote notes in the margin of one publication on the enzymic dissecting techniques of Bergman and Fruton.”
Velcourt recognized none of these names, but he heard the awe in Ruckerman’s voice. There was also something on which a politician could focus.
“You have a publication that he used?”
“Just one. He had loaned it to a student and the student forgot to return it.”
“This O’Neill sounds like a complete laboratory team all in one man,” Velcourt said.
“He was multi-talented, no doubt of that,” Saddler agreed. “Had to be to crack that code all by himself.”
Ruckerman said: “The psychological profile suggests that some of his talents may have lain dormant until released by the driving passion ignited when his family was killed.”
Saddler said: “Milton Dressier is now insisting that O’Neill was at least a latent schizoid and was driven into this genius mode by access to a different personality that lay dormant until that bombing in Ireland.”
Velcourt had heard of Dressier – the psychoanalyst in charge of the Profile Team. The President said: “He went nuts, and the nut was the one who was capable of doing this.”
“In a nutshell,” Saddler said.
All three of them joined in a nervous laugh. Saddler and the President stared at each other afterward, abashed.
Velcourt had little time to review the briefing after the men left. Something they said, though, nagged at him. Something about breaking a code.
As the day’s fatigue threatened to overwhelm him, he tried to recapture that elusive something. It was full dark outside by now and the lights of the Capitol bright against a cloudy sky.
I’ll think about it tomorrow, he thought.
Do not cry that I have been unfair, you Irish and English and Libyans. You chose your leaders or tolerated them. The consequences were predictable. You pay now for the failure of reason. You Irish, at least, should have known better. Like a one-crop society, you staked your survival on violence. Is the lesson of the potato blight grown so dim? As you sow, so shall you reap.
– John Roe O’Neill, Letter Three
IT NO longer bothered John that he was forced to leave the vicinity of McCrae’s château without spreading the plague there. He knew now that he was being saved for more important things at the Killaloe Lab. Nemesis remained true. Jock had saved him from a terrible error. Herity was confused. Had John merely been stumbling about blindly in the dark outside the telephone hut?
By his intervention, Jock had also revealed Herity’s purpose. Herity was looking for O’Neill.
This amused John. With Herity nearby, O’Neill-Within would never reveal himself. John Roe O’Neill lay subdued, blocked by a fear-anesthesia. The nightmare screams were temporarily walled off. John O’Donnell could stride along with his three companions, swinging his arms freely. He felt liberated.
Jock Cullen and four armed soldiers escorted them two miles down the hill away from the château before returning their weapons. Herity checked his machine gun carefully, then looped its supporting strap around his neck. John merely slipped the pistol and ammunition into a hip pocket and pulled the yellow sweater over it.
They parted at a crossroads where a signpost still pointed the way to Dublin. Jock gestured to the sign with the rifle: “You know the way. Don’t come back.”
The consequences of disobedience did not have to be spoken. The escort turned and marched back up the hill, leaving John and his companions in the stone-bordered roadway. There were tall pines all around, but meadows could be glimpsed ahead where the road led down off the ridges.
John glanced at Herity. The man was like that Japanese toy, the little dumpling doll with weights glued into its rolling bottom: six times down, seven times up. He would always return to the upright position. John felt amused by the idea of Herity returning to a standing position though dead. Something bitterly tenacious in him. Dangerous, He might be confused, but he would not stop hunting.
“Let’s be going!” Herity said. He waved them ahead and aimed a kick at the boy, which the boy dodged.
In that instant, John recognized the source of Herity’s irritation with the boy. Here was a young lad’s flesh, the shape and form that Herity could identify, but without animation except for that slumbering rage. The flesh was clumsy, like a mechanical t
oy left to run down and with its spring now almost unwound.
“Do something definite!” Herity was saying.
That was why Herity’s anger had been subdued by the boy’s attack at the wash house. Something definite.
Within a mile, they came to a Y-branch in the road, no signpost here. Herity took the right-hand way, but Father Michael stopped, the boy with him.
“Now just a minute, Joseph. That’s the long way by a good many miles.”
Herity didn’t even pause. “We’ve been ordered to deviate via Dublin.”
Father Michael hurried to catch up, but the boy lagged behind with John.
“Why?” Father Michael demanded. “Who said?”
“Jock said. Orders from Dublin.”
Father Michael glanced back at John, then at Herity. “But…”
“Be still, you crazy priest!” There was frustration in Herity’s voice. He quickened his pace, forcing Father Michael almost to trot. Their footsteps sounded muffled on the paving, enclosed by the border of thick trees and rock walls. John sensed a new tension in Herity’s manner – quick glances left and right, the machine gun held ready in his hands.
Father Michael hitched his pack higher and fell back slightly. Herity eased his long strides, peering up and around.
John looked up through the trees: a peculiar light in the morning sky, as though everything came through a gray filter. Distances were muzzy in diffusion, everything caught up in a sea-driven mist from the east. The sky directly overhead spread out a dark silver shaded into lighter steel eastward.
Breakfast lay heavy in John’s stomach – fresh beef and boiled nettles with potatoes. The château’s guardians had set aside for their mess a small stone cottage of what had obviously been a substantial farmstead on a ledge cut off from McCrae’s establishment by a long, slanting ridge. The cottage’s interior walls had been crudely knocked out, opening space for a long table and rude benches. The food, cooked on a turf fire, had been served just after dawn, only John’s group and the escort at table.
Herity had arrived last with Jock beside him, the younger Cullen uneasy and trying to avoid conversation. But Herity had been full of questions.
John had eaten quietly, listening. There were things to be learned here. Liam had been called away by his command duties. The other guardians already were posted for their day duty around the château.
The other soldiers at the table, sensing something different in Jock’s manner, kept a quiet watch. Slowly, tensions began to mount in the stone-walled cottage.
Father Michael broke the silence: “God is putting us through a sore test.” The words sounded forced, leaving an even more intense silence behind them.
“Sure, Father, and which plague did you have in mind?” Herity asked. “Was it the plague of the papacy now?” He spoke with unswerving arrogance.
“What’s the use of blame?” Father Michael asked.
“Him asking such a question!” Herity laughed.
“We’ve much to answer for,” Father Michael said. “The British planted a bad seed amongst us, but I ask you now, where was that seed nurtured? Was it not ourselves seeing the fruit and plucking it from the branches?”
“Eve’s apple it is!” Herity said.
“Only we called it the Proves of the IRA,” Jock said. “A beautiful red apple with a bomb in it.”
Herity’s jaw clamped tight. A flush spread over his face. He put both hands on the table. Violence wavered in the air.
“Have done!” Father Michael said. “Are we not all paying the piper now?”
“Let us pay him then and have our little dance,” Jock said. “Will y’ dance wi’ me, Joseph?”
“Enough!” Father Michael thundered. “I’ll curse the first one of you taking to violence!”
Jock swallowed convulsively, then in a low voice: “Mayhap you’re right, Father. Best it were over and the world going on without such mischief.”
Herity glowered at the priest. “I don’t fear your curses, Michael Flannery. But I’ll honor the truth in young Jock. He sees the way of things.”
Father Michael sighed. “Joseph, you were a God-fearing man once. Will you never come back to the Church?”
Herity stared into his cold stew, oddly subdued by the sudden quenching of Jock’s fire. “I’ve lost me faith and that’s what huddles me, true enough.”
“Then, why…”
“Shut your fool mouth, priest! I’ve no more respect for clerics, not after Maynooth. I’d sooner melt their bells for drinking mugs than spend another minute in one of your churches!” He pointed a death’s-head grin at Father Michael. “And if y’ call that blasphemy, I’ll tip y’ into the first well we find.”
Jock had led them down through the fields away from the château, dew drenching their pants. They could see the paved road ahead, a farm lane entering it. There was one last glimpse of the château as the party rounded the barrier ridge. It was a gray castle wall nestled in the trees. Faintly, they heard the sound of children shouting.
Jock looked over his shoulder at the distant sound, pausing by a stile while the others climbed over onto the farm lane. As John passed, Jock looked at him. “It was mostly the girls learned the Irish dances,” he said. “They do their dances of a morning up there.” He pointed toward the château with his chin. “If we lose those girls, we’ve lost it all – all of those beautiful dances. I think I can forgive McCrae anything if we don’t lose that.”
After Jock left them, John’s thoughts kept returning to those words – the half-hopeful sadness in them.
Herity continued to march along at the point, an advance scout with his machine gun at the ready. Father Michael trailed behind him. John and the boy kept pace at the rear.
The road made a sharp left turn up ahead out of the flanking trees. Straight ahead beyond the turn, grass tufted around a jutting mound of pale granite. Herity stopped, motioning the others to stop behind him. John looked past Herity, wondering what had spooked him. All he could see was two sheep on a grassy shelf below the rocks. The sheep stared up at them full of alarm.
“It’s only some sheep,” Father Michael said.
Herity waved a hand for silence. He studied their surroundings, the mounded hillocks below the outcropping, the empty valley beyond – a narrow place with a boggy stream down its middle.
“It’s a wonder it is that you’re not dead long ago, Michael Flannery,” Herity said. “Whatever it is bothers those sheep should bother us.”
“And what might be bothering them?” the priest asked,
“I wonder where Liam went this morning?” Herity asked. “Let us be goin’ back a ways, and silent as the tomb about it.”
Herity backed up the road, keeping his attention on the rock and the sheep. John turned and walked beside him, glancing backward occasionally. Father Michael and the boy went on ahead, not looking back at Herity.
“What is it?” John asked. He felt for the pistol in his hip pocket, but thought better of it and removed his hand empty.
“It’s only men that’s hunting the sheep for their meat nowadays,” Herity said. “Something frightened those creatures before we came along.”
“Probably just some of Liam’s soldiers out foraging,” John said.
“Foraging for what?” Herity asked.
Father Michael stopped ahead of them and turned. “Something passed between you and Liam Cullen,” he said. “What was it?”
“Dublin gave him his orders to let us go safely on our way,” Herity said, glancing once sidelong at John. “It wouldn’t be like Liam to disobey such orders where there’s others to see and inform.”
“You’re not serious!” Father Michael protested.
“Liam and me was wains together,” Herity said. “I knew the child and I know the man. Who’s to question if he does a bit of foraging here in this valley? Answer me that, Priest!”
They had stopped at a place where rocks had been tumbled from the top of the road’s bordering wall on the valley side
. Herity crossed to this place and peered over the wall into the trees. “A trail of sorts,” he said. “I think we’ll be going down this way.”
Father Michael joined him. “You call that a trail?”
“It has a great advantage for us,” Herity said. “You can see by the marks on it that no one’s passed that way today.”
The priest shook his head. “I can’t believe that Liam Cullen would shoot all…”
“Leave off, will you now! Liam’s a soldier. Why is it, y’ think, t’ valley back yonder has no folk in it? Run off or killed by Liam and his boys. And in this valley, too. I know the inside of Liam’s head. There’s no stories to be carried if there’s no one to carry ’em.”
“But we knew about…”
“Knew? Rumors and little bird droppings from them as hears the Council’s deliberations. We knew nothing!”
Herity lifted a foot over the wall and hopped across. Father Michael joined him. John and the boy followed. The trail was a dark hole down through mixed evergreens, the ground pocked by sheep hooves, but no sign of a human footprint. Tufts of wool clung to the low branches like the markers of a paper chase. The way was steep with exposed roots.
With Herity leading, they slid and clambered down, grasping limbs to slow their descent, clinging to roots in the steeper parts. The trail emerged from the trees onto a grassy ledge with man-made steps of rock down to a sloping meadow. A stone cottage with only half a roof sat in tall grass about fifty meters into the meadow. Beyond it, a series of rock-shelved terraces curved away to the right through closely bordering trees. A sunken, weed-filled wagon track ran along the terraces at the bottom. It led at an angle, left to right, through two gates that had been left standing open.
John brushed needles and dirt off him while he looked at the scene. It was like a still life, title: Dreams Abandoned.
“There’s something you never saw in the Irish countryside,” Father Michael said, his voice low. “Gates left open.”
“Hush now!” Herity whispered. He moved down through the meadow to the house, drifting through the tall grass like a deer stalker.
John followed and heard the priest and the boy swishing through the grass behind him.
The White Plague Page 36
