“Thank you,” Phil said awkwardly, not entirely certain of the appropriate response. “If your daughter-in-law does contact you, I would like to have the opportunity to meet with her.”
“I would have to ask her,” Greg said almost defensively.
Phil held Greg’s gaze as the curiosity that had been tickling his mind grew into an imperative. “May I ask you a question, Detective?”
Greg’s face became suspicious. “Go on,” he finally said.
“Did she do it?”
“She was responsible,” Greg said, staring directly into Rucker’s eyes.
“That left you with a conflict of interest, didn’t it?” Phil had no clear idea why he was indulging his curiosity like this, but suddenly the fact that Amanda was a murderer and Greg a police detective fascinated him. He was in uncharted territory, pursuing an answer to a question that had no impact on him personally, merely because he found it curious.
“You don’t know the whole story,” Greg said so definitively that even the notoriously dense Phillip Rucker picked up on the social cue. “Thank you again, Doctor, but we both must be going.”
Phil watched as Greg Flynn left, wondering more about his own sudden burst of inquisitiveness than Greg’s obvious discomfort. He finally checked his pager and wasn’t surprised to find that Peter Bilsky’s body had at long last arrived. He was surprised by the unnatural silence of his ever-present Monsters.
They shot him! The thought kept revolving through Reisch’s head. The audacity of it! The indignity of being treated like a common criminal. He was more insulted than hurt, although his right shoulder had bled a fair amount before repairing itself. The only good thing to come out of the last two hours was a clarity of thought. Reisch tried never to lie to himself, and a critical appraisal of his behavior the last few weeks was not flattering. Up until now, there had not been a single trace of him in any file or database, but now they had a witness who could identify him. After they searched his hotel room, they would likely have his DNA; and after they found the car he had stolen, they would have a sample of his very special blood. On top of all of that, he was two weeks late for his extraction and still hadn’t finished his assignment.
“All because of a girl,” Vladimir Pushkin mocked from the safety of a plastic couch that faced the office desk where Reisch brooded.
The garage had been the only stroke of luck he had had all day. He drove the BMW south, trying to get out of the city, but then thought better of using a stolen car on nearly empty streets, especially after attacking a police officer. It took him five minutes to find the closed auto repair shop, and even with his damaged mind and body, he was able to break into the empty office with ease. The garage door proved to be a bit trickier. The release mechanism was designed to be used by the uneducated, but all he saw were the constituent parts, not the mechanism as a whole. He randomly pulled and pushed at the fasteners and handles, and after ten frustrating minutes, he finally hit upon the correct combination. The door was weighted well, it rolled up easily, and the stolen BMW disappeared from the street.
“You know better than that,” Klaus answered sullenly.
“Why are you even here?” Pushkin asked.
Reisch finally looked up at his mentor. The Russian rarely asked banal questions, and he never asked metaphysical questions, his mind was stuck somewhere in between. “There’s no sense in having this discussion.”
“I think there is; I think it has a direct bearing on what you should do next. For reasons that you have failed to fully realize you accepted a mission you were never meant to perform. In fact, you didn’t just accept it; you demanded it as the price for your cooperation. It’s clear why; it was clear to the others— that’s why they refused to help you find her. They couldn’t have you distracted, and that is exactly what happened.”
Reisch knew that Pushkin was right; he had been distracted when he should have been focused on the simple task at hand. He just didn’t have the energy to admit it. Still, the conviction that he had to be the one to find Amanda remained strong, even after the debacle of the day. “I accepted the mission and have completed the most important part. The virus has been released.”
“In one small city. You were to spread it across the entire state, simultaneously; instead you created a single hot spot. A place for them to concentrate their resources, to cover it up. You were warned about this very thing, and more importantly, I trained you better than this.” A faint shade of red colored Pushkin’s nearly translucent face. He had died ten years earlier; twenty-five years after first saving Reisch’s life. He was an inconstant visitor now: a product of Reisch’s evolution.
“It will achieve the same result.”
“So you still trust what Avanti told you, despite the fact that you know that at this very minute he is betraying you to the Americans?”
“We all have our own agendas.” Reisch answered.
“Which leads us back to the question of why you are here. What is your agenda?”
Instead of answering, Reisch wondered for an untold time if Pushkin was simply an extension of his own consciousness, or something more. The Russian refused to discuss it, and if pushed would disappear for weeks. “I am compelled to be here,” Reisch finally said.
“Who or what compels you?”
“Do you really think that this is the time or the place for this discussion?”
Pushkin began to float just above the sofa. “I think that this is precisely the time, although I would prefer a more sanitary place.”
“You’ve never agreed or understood before; what makes you think now would be any different?”
“Because now this irrational need has put you at risk; I’m hoping that it is you who will understand.”
“It is only irrational to you,” Reisch answered angrily.
“Because the voices don’t talk to me?” Pushkin mocked.
If this had been anyone else, Reisch would have responded differently; instead he controlled the rage. “There is an underlying natural order to the universe; something in your current state you should be aware of; I am simply trying to live in harmony with it.”
“I never took you for a religious man.”
Pushkin kept pushing Reisch to the edge. “Religion is a human construct, and one of the very things I am trying to destroy,” he said through clenched teeth. “In time we will establish a civilization that has eliminated the need for religion.”
“I liked you better when you were a common sociopath.”
Reisch’s response was cut off by the sound of car wheels crunching through snow and ice. He sensed two minds, as well as two vehicles. A minute passed, and pair of keys and a note were pushed through a slot in the door. Reisch waited for the couple to leave and then collected the keys to a Mercedes SUV that needed an oil change and tire rotation. “This is what I was talking about,” Reisch said triumphantly to Pushkin. “This is the natural order,” he said holding up the keys.
“This is what I call luck,” the Russian answered while fading into the wallpaper.
Twenty minutes later, Reisch was driving west on Highway 24; the GPS told him he was sixteen miles away from a small town called Manitou Springs, where he would turn south. He still had one more task to perform, and then he would drop off everyone’s radar, including the men who had hired him. He would disappear into the jungles of Costa Rica while the mighty United States of America imploded, but hopefully not explosively. The virus he had spread these past six weeks was just a taste of things to come; just enough to get the worlds attention and have them close their collective doors to the U.S., before the real attack began.
No collateral damage, Reisch thought, at least not yet. He smiled, and then with a start quickly searched for the small black satchel that he had kept close for the last two months. It was still in the passenger seat where he had placed it earlier; inside was all he needed to restore balance. Over the course of the seven years that Pushkin had started appearing, Reisch had tried to explain the
concept of universal balance to the Russian, but all he saw was religion in another guise. Even in his corporeal life he had limited vision, interested only in his comfort and the pursuit of pleasure. At the beginning, Reisch could relate to and reveled in such an existence, but over time as Pushkin became more extreme in his pursuits, Reisch became more repulsed by them. Neither of them chose to live within the constraints of society, but to Reisch’s thinking, that didn’t require you to deconstruct your personal identity. To be true to yourself, to follow the path that had been written in your soul was the only way order could be derived from chaos, the only way to peace and contentment. Reisch had followed that path from the moment of his inception in Honnecker’s dark dungeon. Along the way he had occasionally strayed, as he had while sampling Pushkin’s life of excess, or the time of instability after his infection; but in the end he found his way back to the straight path that lead to the universal constant of balance.
“Universal constant of balance,” said Pushkin playing with the black satchel. “How grandiose.”
“So now you’re reading minds,” Reisch answered. It was rare for Pushkin to appear twice in one day.
“It works for you.” He smiled at his protégé. “So, up is balanced by down, a positron is balanced by an electron, which would make you balanced by . . . Amanda? I can see that.”
Reisch was momentarily confused and hazarded a glance at the specter. “No patronizing tone? No obvious flaws in logic? I’m disappointed.”
“I can see your logic, but I didn’t say that there weren’t flaws in it.” Pushkin waited for a response, but Reisch continued driving. ”All right, since you asked, I’ll tell you. There will be survivors of this pandemic who, like the two of you, will evolve, correct?”
“Go on,” Reisch said.
“From these survivors you will create a society that is the embodiment of balance. Everyone will be the same abilities; there will be no lies, nothing hidden, no agendas, no jealousy, no hatred, etc., etc., etc.; a veritable communist utopia. I understand that, but what you fail to realize is that it can never work. Right now your ideal society is composed of two, you and Amanda, and you both are vying for control or planning to kill the other. This isn’t balance, it’s chaos.”
The plane landed with a bone-jarring bounce. Nathan Martin wondered if that had been planned for his benefit, or if it was just another training exercise for the two marines in the back. All his earlier excitement had faded with the realization that a genetically engineered virus was right now infecting untold numbers of Americans, and the military-style touchdown only served to darken his mood even further. He had tried to remember everything he could about Jaime Avanti, but it wasn’t much. Martin stared at the picture of Avanti as the plane taxied. He remembered the hair. Avanti was probably the hairiest man he had ever met. A shock of gray and black hair that would put Albert Einstein to shame was only the beginning. He had a beard that had crept up as far as his eyes and hung as low as his large abdomen. A mat of black fur escaped from below each of his sleeves and completely enveloped the back of Avanti’s hands. Nathan remembered thinking that Avanti was more of a health risk than the viruses he studied. They had met several times over the years, but their last meeting had been many years before Martin was named director of special pathogens at the CDC. When we were both young, he thought. A lifetime ago, they had both been rising stars in the small world of public health, and now Avanti threatened that health.
The only constant in life is change. Someone famous once said that. Now he couldn’t remember whom.
The plane came to an abrupt halt, and Martin was thrown forward against his seat belt. A groan followed by a curse escaped his lips before he could suppress either of them. Simpson was already up and heading to the door, and Captain Winston was right behind, both demonstrating that U.S. Marines were not subject to the laws of gravity or momentum. Martin followed them out of the plane and down the flight of stairs, disappointed that he didn’t get to thank, or hit, the pilot. Two black Suburbans waited at the bottom of the steps, and a large, powerfully built man in full dress uniform was returning the salutes of Simpson and Winston. The three of them talked while Martin cautiously descended the steps.
“Welcome to Bolling Air Force Base, Doctor,” the large man said as Martin drew closer to the three.
“Where the hell are we?” he asked, his head swiveling to find something familiar.
“Washington.” Above his impressive array of ribbons and colorful insignias, the big man wore a nametag with McDaniels stamped across it.
“I take it you are the famous Lieutenant-General McDaniels that Colonel Simpson spoke so highly about.” As Martin was framing his next sarcastic remark, it dawned on him that he had seen McDaniels before, not in person, but on television, and recently. His tone changed markedly. “Aren’t you the General McDaniels that’s . . . what?” Martin couldn’t remember the exact context of his familiarity.
“I have just been confirmed as the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
“I’m honored,” said Martin, and he half meant it. “I’m glad to see that someone in this government is finally taking this threat a little more seriously. This morning, I spent an hour with the secretary of health trying to convince him that this was an urgent problem, and all I got for my trouble was ‘it’s your problem.’” He did a poor imitation of the small and somewhat effeminate secretary.
“The secretary is not involved with this, Doctor. In fact, less than half a dozen people know that you are here, and even fewer know why. It is important that we keep it that way.” He said this in a friendly tone, but his true meaning was clear. “Please come with me, we have a madman to see.” McDaniels turned back to the trailing vehicle and opened the door for Martin. Simpson and Winston climbed into the lead car.
They sped out through a series of gates without once pausing, and within minutes they were rocketing down the Beltway expressway.
“If all this is for my benefit, General, you can order the driver to slow down now, because I am suitably impressed with his driving abilities.”
“Relax, Doctor. You are perfectly safe.”
“I think that’s what the captain of the Titanic was saying just before he rammed an iceberg.” Martin had a death grip on the handhold mounted over his head as the two Suburbans weaved through traffic.
“Actually, I know for a fact that it was ‘Oh, shit!’” Both men laughed. “You don’t remember me, do you?” McDaniels asked, his tone very suddenly becoming serious with a touch of menace.
Martin glanced up at the officer, but aside from the recent press coverage, he would have sworn that he had never seen him before. “We’ve met?”
“It was a long time ago, and we were both very different people then. At least, I hope we are different people now.” McDaniels let the clue dangle between them a little longer.
“No, I still don’t recall us ever meeting before today.”
“January eighth, nineteen-seventy.”
Martin froze as a sea of bad memories flooded back into his head. “That was you?”
“I was the one in the wheelchair. You and your merry band didn’t expect a wounded marine, did you?”
“No, we didn’t, and we didn’t expect the reporter, either.” Martin’s voice was down to a whisper. He had been seventeen and a freshman in college, with all the answers to all the questions anyone would ever need to ask. He and his friends were intellectuals, blessed with an intelligence that others could only dream about. But more than that, they had a singular understanding of the world, and from their lofty perch, they could see all the evils that enslaved man, the worst of which was war. And because they were uniquely in tune with the cosmic force that governs all life, they knew exactly how to exorcise that evil from society. It had been Martin’s idea to meet the returning soldiers at the airport gate wrapped in body bags with the words Baby Killer painted across the front. It had been someone else’s idea to bring along a gallon of pig’s blood. “We wer
e so stupid, so immature,” he said.
“You deserved everything that you got. If I’d been capable, I would have joined in.” McDaniels’s voice was flat and even, which made Martin’s shame all the more sharp.
“I have never regretted anything more than that . . . day, in my life,” he said, his voice a little louder. “I don’t think I ever got to apologize, at least publicly.” Martin had been a minor at the time, and despite having been one of the instigators, he was never prosecuted. He was expelled from college, though. The dean visited him in his hospital room and delivered the official notification personally, along with his scathing opinion of Nathan and his fine friends.
They rode in silence for a while. “I still have the Time magazine cover,” McDaniels said, and Martin wanted to crawl away. “I framed it. It was the first time I had ever been in a national magazine. I don’t remember if you were in it, though.”
“They couldn’t print pictures of me or give my name because I was a minor at the time.” Martin was starting to think that maybe they weren’t driving fast enough.
“That’s right, I remember now. They wouldn’t even let you testify. Whatever happened to the other ones, the ones who were old enough to be held responsible for their actions?”
“Why don’t we talk about Jaime Avanti instead?” Martin was having one of the worst days of his life. First, Amanda had resurfaced and dredged up all his shortcomings as a physician; the virus that he had hoped had disappeared turned up in the brain of a dead man; and now McDaniels appeared to remind him of how thoroughly irresponsible and reckless he had been when he was younger. All that was missing was for an old girlfriend to appear on the nightly news describing in detail every one of his physical inadequacies.
“Life certainly takes some strange twists, doesn’t it, Nathan? Can I call you Nathan? For nearly forty years, I have wanted to confront you, and now here you are, a captive audience, and suddenly I no longer have the desire to tell you what I think of you or your well-bred, well-educated friends. I want to thank you for that.”
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