Bio-Strike (2000)

by Clancy, Tom - Power Plays 04

  Kuhl waited. DeVane stared at his finger cage intently, as if to capture his thoughts within it.

  “As the tale goes, the son was abandoned by his great and celestial father to struggle on the hard earth with his mother, and did not learn of his paternal heritage until he was on the verge of manhood,” he said. “And then his claims were ridiculed. The rejection and denial of all that he was, all the potential within him, caused him unbearable humiliation. So he went to his father’s manor. Traveled to the Palace of the Sun to ask the chance to prove his birthright, ride the chariot for a single day.” DeVane paused, his face taut around his cheekbones, his gaze fixed on his interlocked fingers. “The father’s first reaction was to scorn him. Deny his request. We can imagine he disputed his paternity, refused to acknowledge the youth was of his blood. But the son possessed an inbred strength of will and prevailed. Perhaps he used coercion, blackmail, the threat to reveal an affair his father had long kept hidden from his highborn peers. Who knows? The young man did what was necessary to get what he wanted. A chance. And he climbed aboard the chariot with a thousand warnings. Fly too high and the earth will freeze, drop too low and it will burn. Steer too far to the left or right and the monsters of the void will snatch you with their claws, suck you into the great darkness. These attempts to dissuade the youth only made him more eager to seize the reins and take to the heavens.” DeVane returned his eyes to Kuhl, the cold shine of steel in them. “Unfortunately, control of the horses did prove beyond him in the end. They were primal forces, you understand, and he was raised on the soil, dirt under his fingernails. Wherever he passed thundering through the sky, chaos was left in his wake. The countryside was seared with fire. Crops blazed. Ice caps melted to flood great cities. Oceans turned to columns of steam. His whipping, runaway ride shook the world. Chaos. But when, at last, the most powerful of the gods struck him down with a lightning bolt, sent him plunging to the ground in flames, the son went to his death without regret. Because in pursuing his ambition, he’d soared above and beyond the limitations of his origins. Beyond what anyone foresaw for him. Beyond those who’d tried to humble him. He had been audacious, and audacity often has consequences. He’d known it from the beginning. Yet what a run it was, Siegfried. What a hell of a run.”

  DeVane fell silent. He took a deep breath, unlocked his fingers, leaned slowly backward in his chair. When he next spoke, his voice was calm and quiet.

  “Is your curiosity satisfied?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then back to business.” DeVane’s hands were open on the desk. “Is there anything else we should discuss?”

  Kuhl nodded.

  “Our recruit in UpLink. The one who administered the trigger to Gordian,” he said. “He is weak and faithless.”

  DeVane shrugged his shoulders. “A small fry swimming out of his depth and poisoned along with the big fish.”

  “As he must realize by now,” Kuhl said. “I ask myself, what if he tries to bite us in his final thrashings?”

  DeVane’s eyebrows lifted.

  “I see,” he said. “And you suggest . . .”

  “That El Tío have Enrique Quiros put the little creature out of its misery. The sooner the better.”

  DeVane regarded him with his coldly metallic eyes.

  “Your advice is well taken,” he said. “I’ll contact Enrique.”

  Kuhl nodded again and rose from his seat. The large, dark bird had flown off, and there was nothing to be seen past the window panel but the hoofprints in the empty whiteness between the building and the great masts of the trees.

  He turned, strode toward the door.

  “Siegfried.”

  Kuhl looked over his shoulder. DeVane’s eyes were still steady on him.

  “You now know much about me,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “As much as anyone living ever will.”

  “Yes.”

  DeVane looked at him another moment, then nodded.

  Kuhl reached for the doorknob and let himself out of the office.

  Sick.

  He felt so sick.

  Palardy crouched with his head over the john, the bathroom tiles hard against his knees. The taste of acid and nails filled his mouth, and his stomach felt twisted inside out from the repeated vomiting. He’d been at it since Sunday night, losing his half-digested dinner in painful wracking fits. And it had only gotten worse when his stomach was emptied of its solid contents, his spasms going on through the morning, the digestive juices spurting sour and rancid into his throat. And worse still when there was no more bile left in him, when he’d started to dry heave.

  Maybe three o’clock in the morning he’d thrown on some clothes, gone down to the twenty-four-hour convenience store for some ginger ale, hoping that might settle him. Twice, three times during the short walk over he’d had to stop, reel toward the curb, and hug a lamppost to keep from losing his feet. But his stomach cramps had been unbearable. And there was the dizziness, the sidewalk seeming to lurch underneath him with every step. It had taken a big piece of forever to get to the store, find the soda, and pay for it, the clerk looking at him like he was a drunkard or a drug addict come to rob the place. Palardy was certain he’d had his hand on something under the counter—an alarm button, a gun, who could tell?—as he’d rung up the sale.

  And then the agonizing return to his apartment building. Another small eternity. He’d sat back on his sofa and drunk the soda warm. Taking small sips, figuring his system could tolerate a little at a time.

  Palardy supposed that was when he’d first noticed his sore throat. Could be it had been developing gradually throughout the night. Maybe he’d have felt it sooner if his stomach hadn’t been in constant throes. But it was pretty inflamed, and he doubted it could have gotten that bad all at once. His tonsils felt as big as thumbs, and he had trouble swallowing. And he’d felt these lumps on either side of his neck; he guessed they were swollen glands.

  Drinking that soda had itself been an ordeal. And ultimately, it was for nothing. The trip to the deli, his slow, careful sipping, for nothing. The ginger ale had jetted from him in a fountain before he could make it to the bathroom, spilling over his hands, onto the upholstery, onto the carpet. Bubbles of soda mixed with spit and phlegm.

  After that, Palardy hadn’t tried to swallow anything, liquid or solid.

  Sick, he was so god-awful sick. A few minutes ago, he’d thought his guts would tear themselves apart, come squeezing out of him in bloody nuggets. Those dry, ratcheting heaves, his whole body hurt from them. His back and sides as much as his stomach. Jesus. And the way his heart was beating right now, slamming against his ribs, rapid and erratic. Jesus Christ, it was horrible.

  Palardy hung over the toilet, gasping, clutching his middle. Waiting to see if his latest attack had really passed or if another round of spasms would sneak up on him.

  After a while, he decided he’d gotten a temporary reprieve and rose to his feet, holding the sink to steady himself. He reached for the tap, splashed cold water on his face, swished some in his mouth, and spat into the basin. The horrid taste didn’t leave him. He hadn’t expected it would.

  Palardy staggered out the bathroom door, his head heavy. He was cold and trembling. In the hallway he got a flannel blanket from the closet and tossed it over his shoulders. Then he made his way back to the living room and dropped onto the couch.

  What was happening? What was the matter with him?

  He sat there wrapped in the blanket, trying to get warm. Wishing he could relax. But a terrible thought kept asserting itself in his mind. If not from the onset of the sickness, then soon after, he’d started to wonder whether it could be connected to what was in that hypodermic case Enrique Quiros had given him, to what had been in the ampule. Only a gullible fool could have neglected to consider the possibility. It had occurred to him the night he’d met Quiros at the harbor that anybody who would risk ordering someone as important as Roger Gordian to be hurt or killed would be capable
of doing whatever it took to cover his tracks. Of doing away with anybody who might increase his chances of being tied to the act. In the car, Quiros had seemed uneasy about his own involvement. Eager to be through with it. Palardy couldn’t remember the exact words he’d used, but they had hinted that he had no personal interest in harming Gordian and was having his strings pulled by someone higher up the line. That he was looking out for himself the same as Palardy.

  It had been a jarring revelation. Palardy never thought of himself as a criminal, couldn’t have felt more different from Quiros. And to realize they had that in common, realize they would go to equal lengths to protect themselves ...

  Jarring as hell.

  Palardy was aware he was the only link between Enrique Quiros and Roger Gordian. Eliminate him, and the trail would be cut. This had come to him right there in the cruise ship terminal parking lot. Before parting ways with Quiros, he’d raised his fears indirectly and asked how he was supposed to know that exposure to the contents of the ampule wouldn’t have some terrible effect on him. And Quiros had spent several minutes explaining that the liquid was harmless in itself, the final ingredient of a biological recipe unique to the individual being dosed. Without every one of the other precise ingredients in your makeup, there was nothing to fear. You could consume a gallon of the stuff, and it wouldn’t have any effect.

  Palardy had no trouble grasping the general concept. He’d followed developments in genetic research in the news, read plenty of magazine articles. Moreover, UpLink International had owned one of the major gene-tech firms until its downsizing maybe a year ago, still retaining a stake in the company, and Palardy had been chummy with some of the people who worked there. So he was knowledgeable enough about their research to understand that Quiros’s reassurances had been worthless. Because the recipe was only as unique as the person brewing it up chose for it to be. Imagine he wanted to get rid of everybody with brown hair, or some other feature shared by an untold number of people. What would that do to the mortality rate of those exposed to his “final ingredient”? Wouldn’t that make it more of a final solution?

  And there was another part of Quiros’s explanation that Palardy had sensed was intentionally misleading. If he wanted to talk about the agent being tailored to a person’s inherited traits, fine. But how was Palardy to be sure Quiros hadn’t had somebody get hold of his genetic diagram for that very purpose? Pluck a few hairs from his comb, some dead skin from his shower floor?

  Sneak into his apartment and contaminate his orange juice, bottled water, or cold cuts with a few millimeters of a trigger formulated especially for the genetic cake mix called Don Palardy? How was he to be sure?

  Palardy sank back against the sofa cushions and listened to the sound of his own labored breathing. This morning, when he’d phoned in sick to work, his intention had been to call the doctor next. But the thoughts swirling around his brain had made him decide against it. Made him petrified of doing it, in fact. If he’d caught an ordinary bug, it would eventually run its course. Yet if his symptoms were being caused by a virus or bacteria invented in a laboratory, some microbe the doctors couldn’t identify, his sole hope of staying alive would be to reveal what he knew about it. And even assuming he could figure out some way to withhold how he knew what he did, when his disease was found to be the same one Roger Gordian had contracted, it would inevitably lead to questions he’d be unable to slip. Then he’d be implicated in a murder, the first of its kind, his name up there somewhere in infamy with Lee Harvey Oswald. And he’d be as dead as Oswald, too.

  His face pale and sweaty, his body aching, Palardy closed his eyes. There had to be something he could arrange. Something he could do to get back at Quiros in case he’d been duped. Used and discarded. Maybe he was getting carried away with himself, and everything would turn out okay. But just in case, just in case, there had to be something ...

  And then, suddenly, it crossed his mind that there was.

  SIXTEEN

  VARIOUS LOCALES NOVEMBER 15, 2001

  WHEN ROGER GORDIAN’S PERSONAL PHYSICIAN, DR. Elliot Lieberman, reviewed his case report Tuesday morning, he was left puzzled and dismayed.

  Gordian was undoubtedly a sick man, but the cause of his illness was a mystery. The flulike symptoms that hospitalized him Sunday afternoon had shown an appreciable improvement soon after his admission, continued along that positive trend throughout Monday, and then had taken a sharp, unexpected downturn over the past several hours. At around midnight he’d called the duty nurse to his room because of renewed difficulty breathing, chills, and a stabbing headache severe enough to have awakened him from sleep. His temperature had spiked to 103°, its highest since his arrival in the ER, and at last reading hadn’t dropped from that elevated mark. And although his respiratory distress was relieved by oxygen given through a face mask, Lieberman had heard a threadiness in his exhalations during a stethoscopic exam he’d performed a couple of hours ago, and he immediately ordered an X-ray series, which showed pulmonary shadows that hadn’t been evident in radiographic images taken the previous day—a typical sign of fluid buildup in the lungs. Lieberman asked for additional pictures at twice-daily intervals and regular updates on Gordian’s condition, thinking that any further decline would likely require his patient be transferred to the intensive care unit. Then he had retreated to his office to examine the charts and laboratory results.

  The bewildering thing was that the early suspicion of influenza had been ruled out, as had its most serious complication, viral pneumonia. A rapid-culture nasal swatch test to detect A and B type flu antigens—molecular components of the viral strains that stimulated defensive reactions by the body—had shown the specimens to be negative. A second type of quick diagnostic on a mucus sample from Gordian’s throat produced identical results within twenty minutes. Both methods were considered 99 percent reliable, an analytical certainty for all intents and purposes.

  Sighing with frustration, Lieberman sat leafing through the papers on his desk for the third time, seeking any clues he might have missed. His grandmother, rest her soul, could have catalogued Gordian’s symptoms with a touch to his forehead and a look down his inflamed, blistered throat with a flashlight, instructing him to open wide in Yiddish. And despite the framed sheepskins and certificates on his office wall, Lieberman’s present insight into his condition went little deeper than that. Examination of Gordian’s blood under a microscope had eliminated the common bacterial pneumonias—primarily pneumococcal, but also staphylococcal, and the even rarer Legionella strains responsible for Legionnaires’ disease. There was no sign of related chlamydial and mycoplasmal organisms. The serological workup had shown a raised level of lymphocytes, the white helper cells in the bloodstream that responded to an attack by foreign microbes. This was basically confirmation of Grandma’s home diagnostic method—clinical evidence that infection was present and the immune system was sending out scent hounds to scout for antigens, just as the swab tests had done. But while the lymphocytes were evidence that a virus was breeding inside Gordian, they would do nothing to establish its identity.

  Lieberman had checked San Jose Mercy’s databases for similar undiagnosed cases reported within the last forty-eight hours and found none. An expansion of his computer search to include the past week, then the past month, also drew blanks. He had next contacted associates at nearby hospitals by phone to see whether they might have recently encountered anything that resembled Gordian’s illness. Again, nothing. However, something had to be done to find out what Gordian was up against. His body was at war with a stealth invader and clearly flagging in its battle. Unless and until its identity was specified, an effective course of medical treatment to aid him would be impossible.

  Lieberman inhaled, exhaled. He ought to know what he was confronting here, and he did not. That alarmed him tremendously. He needed to consult with someone who could provide some guidance and specialized expertise.

  Lieberman lifted the receiver off his phone to get the chai
r of the virology department on the line but then decided that call could wait a bit and hung up without punching in his extension. There was another person he wanted to speak to first. One of his oldest friends and colleagues, Eric Oh was an epidemiologist with the California health department who had performed some of the principal research on molecular methods for the identification of unrecognized and emerging pathogens and been a celebrated virus hunter for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta before marrying a hometown girl who’d insisted he stop fiddling with BL4 pathogens, and move back West to settle down. It was a downright breach of protocol to involve Eric before consulting with a senior departmental head in this hospital. And the criteria that would normally warrant contacting government officials—a cluster of reported cases distinguished by symptoms akin to Gordian’s or data suggesting a full-scale outbreak of an infectious disease in the community—were absent. A single patient with an ailment that had stumped his humble general practitioner for less than forty-eight hours did not constitute a public health hazard, even if that patient was somebody of Roger Gordian’s prominence.

  But Lieberman was getting gut radar signals. The kind you grew to credit more and more with age and experience. And insofar as he was concerned, an informal meeting of the minds with Eric could hardly be considered reproachful professional conduct.

  His lips compressed to a barely visible stitch on his long, careworn face, Lieberman retrieved Eric’s phone number from his pocket organizer and once again reached for the telephone.

  “... can’t believe I was so thoughtless . . . so stupid . . . spent three Sundays in a row building a pen for my dogs . . . all I did . . . give Dad a hard time . . .”

  Julia’s voice penetrating his sleep, Gordian stirred, opened his eyes. She was sitting with Ashley near the foot of his hospital bed, back out of the way of the tubes and electronic monitors connected to him.