Mind Virus

by Charles Kowalski

  The screen went black, along with the rest of her world.

  ...

  Fox slumped back in the sofa with a long exhalation, as though trying to expel from his lungs all the air that had been contaminated by contact with the words he had just spoken. He had seen the same attitude many times in subjects who had just broken down and told the interrogator everything they knew. But he had never known, until that moment, how it felt to be on the other side.

  Gottlieb switched off the camera. “Perfect on the first take. Thank you, Mr. Fox. You might have had a successful career in television. As it is, once this video is uploaded to the Internet, all the world will know that the brilliant religion scholar Robin Fox had what I believe is known as…”

  As he spoke, he set down the tablet, and his right hand reached under his blazer.

  “…a deathbed conversion.”

  He drew out an automatic pistol and aimed it at Fox’s head.

  Fox ducked and twisted, as the shot burst out.

  He hurled the contents of the teacup into Gottlieb’s face. Gottlieb cried out in pain and raised a hand to wipe away the scalding liquid.

  The SO15 team came running back into the room. Gottlieb, still wiping tea from his eyes, dived out of his armchair.

  As he did, his finger slipped out from the clip of the oximeter. A long, urgent beep issued from the machine.

  Fox saw Gottlieb seize the remote control from the table, point it at the fireplace, and press a button. The brick firebox slid aside, revealing a passage behind it.

  Gottlieb ducked under the mantel. Once he was through, the firebox started to slide back into place. Fox threw himself into the opening, wedged himself against the frame, and tried to brace it.

  Then, as if a dragon imprisoned under the house had suddenly awoken, flames erupted from the heating grilles set into the floor. In an instant, the living room became a box with four walls of fire.

  The SO15 officers instinctively ducked and covered. A blast of air slammed into the unprotected Fox with the force of a hurricane and the heat of a crematorium. He fell to the side, and the firebox slid back into place, shutting him into the space behind it.

  ...

  Fox was at the foot of a spiral staircase. He heard Gottlieb’s steps ascending. As quickly as he could, while still moving quietly and staying out of sight, he climbed up one flight of stairs, then a second. At each landing was a steel door.

  Above him, the footsteps came to a stop. He heard the sound of a mechanical bolt sliding open. But by the time he reached the top of the stairs, the door had closed and locked again.

  All the doors probably operated by remote control, and Gottlieb carried the controller. But surely there must be a manual switch somewhere, for emergencies? He felt his way around the edges of the door.

  The overhead light flickered. If the power shorted out, what would happen? Was this a “fail-safe” system that would release him, or a “fail-secure” one that would trap him inside? Fox had a terrible feeling that he knew the answer.

  He found a button recessed into the steel door jamb, and pushed it. The bolt slid aside.

  He swung the door open and stepped into a hall, empty except for a credence table displaying an antique vase. The secret door was concealed by a full-length antique mirror on the other side. There was only a faint haze of smoke hovering near the ceiling. This floor was evidently sealed off from the rest of the house, with the secret stairway the only access. This might buy some time, but Fox wondered how much protection it would be against the gases that would slowly be filling the air: carbon monoxide and hydrocyanic gas, a colorless, odorless blend of car exhaust and Auschwitz.

  He saw four doors, one of them standing slightly open. One of the remaining three was locked with an electronic keypad, and had a video monitor next to it. It showed Emily, handcuffed to a bedpost, as Gottlieb stood beside her, pistol in hand.

  Fox cast a frantic glance around him. His eyes fell on the door standing ajar, which opened into a bathroom.

  He ran in and opened the medicine chest. It contained an assortment of antique health-care products that had probably been there ever since the house was first built: amber medicine bottles with yellowing labels in Latin, perfume bottles of all shapes and colors, and for some obscure purpose, a mortar and pestle. But after a moment’s searching, he found what he needed: a bottle of talcum powder and a make-up brush.

  He ran back to the locked door, tapped a measure of powder into his palm, brushed the keypad with it, and gently blew away the excess. The fine white dust clung to the residual skin oil on four keys: 1, 5, 8, 9.

  From ten thousand possible combinations to twenty-four. Much more manageable, but still, working through them by brute force would take minutes, and Emily’s life was being measured in seconds.

  1985? Gottlieb could easily have been born in that year. Fox keyed in the number.

  The light flashed red.

  Maybe his birthday was January 9? Written the British way, that date would be 9/1/85. Fox entered those numbers in sequence.

  The light flashed red again. 1/5/89 and 5/1/89 yielded no better result.

  Theodore Gottlieb. Also known as Chris Warndale and Rashid Renclaw. Both of which are anagrams of Charles Darwin.

  What were Darwin’s dates? Fox struggled to remember what he had seen on the slab at Westminster Abbey that morning. Panic made it hard to concentrate, and he suspected the gases were beginning to muddle his mind as well. Had Darwin died in 1895? No, Fox was fairly sure it had been earlier than that.

  But not before he published The Origin of Species. From Gottlieb’s point of view, that would be the turning point of history, infinitely more significant than the birth of Christ. If he were to become dictator of the world, he would probably create a new calendar and proclaim that as Year Zero. The exact date escaped Fox, but there was only one combination that would yield a year during Darwin’s lifetime.

  He keyed in: 1859.

  The light flashed green.

  Whoever You are, help me now.

  He shoved the door open, seized the vase from the credence table, and hurled it into the room.

  A shot rang out, and the vase shattered. From the direction of the sound, and the shards as they scattered, the shot had come from his left.

  Dive-roll in the direction of the shooter. The second shot will usually go high.

  It was every bit as clumsy a maneuver as would be expected from someone who had been out of the service for so many years. If his drill instructor saw his performance, he would probably let all the other recruits have a good laugh at his expense, and then sentence him to a few dozen push-ups. But when Gottlieb fired again, he did in fact overshoot.

  Fox staggered to his feet. He had closed up most of the distance between himself and Gottlieb, but he was still a good two paces away.

  Gottlieb shifted his aim to Emily. “One more step and she dies.”

  The scene before Fox’s eyes shook as if he were seeing it through a hand-held video camera. The gymnastics had made him dizzy, and the gases were undoubtedly making it worse.

  “If we don’t get out of here,” he replied, “we’ll all die.”

  “Well, I find that far preferable to living out my days in some prison cell. And unlike you, I won’t find death a disappointment. I know exactly what to expect. Nothing to hope for, nothing to fear. Simple oblivion.”

  “But then,” Emily said, “who’s going to tell your story?”

  Gottlieb glanced at her. Fox shifted his weight and moved his foot as far forward as he dared, before Gottlieb’s gaze returned to him. One more step to go, in this deadly game of Red Light, Green Light.

  “You may not care if you die,” Emily went on, “but do you really want your story to die with you? Who’s going to tell it, if you don’t?”

  “MI5 and the American government, that’s who,” Fox said, picking up her theme and running with it. “The two of us will be honored as martyrs. As for you, it won’t be long before your
name is forgotten. If anyone remembers you at all, it will just be as ‘that atheist nut job who burned his own house down.’”

  “But if you come out alive,” Emily went on, “you get to tell the story yourself, in front of the TV cameras, with all the world watching. Imagine how many would rally around your cause. I wouldn’t even be surprised if you got your share of marriage proposals.”

  His gaze dropped down, as he seemed to consider this, but only for a fraction of a second before it snapped up again.

  “A commendable attempt, Ms. Harper.”

  But Fox had seized the moment and taken the final step.

  Step in and sideways, out of the line of fire. Grab the wrist with one hand, and strike the face with the other. Turn the weapon back on the attacker, pry it out of his hand, and kick to control distance.

  Now Gottlieb stood with his back against the wall, and Fox held the pistol.

  “This is for Thom,” he said. “Oh, and Peg says she hopes there really is a Hell for you to go to.”

  He took aim at Gottlieb’s head.

  A gasp came from Emily.

  He automatically glanced in her direction. From the horrified expression on her face, anyone would think he was pointing the pistol at her, rather than the one who had abducted and threatened to kill her. He saw the scene reflected in her eyes: Robin Fox, conscientious objector, teacher of peace, seeker of the universal truths common to all the world’s religions, which included the commandment “Thou shalt not kill”—pointing a pistol at an unarmed man.

  Robin. A voice that sounded like Thom’s echoed in his mind. If you do this, don’t say you’re doing it for me. You know me better than that. And I thought I knew you better than that.

  The hand that held the pistol wavered.

  If I pull the trigger, he thought, I’ll kill two people. Theodore Gottlieb…and the Robin Fox I’ve always tried to be. The one everyone thinks I already am.

  He aimed the gun over Gottlieb’s shoulder, and fired.

  The windowpane shattered. It would release some of the smoke and gases, but even without the bars, it would have offered no way out for them, and no way in for the fire brigade. It faced the enclosed garden behind the house: a sheer drop of three stories, to a flagstone patio treacherously strewn with wrought iron tables and chairs.

  Keeping the gun trained on Gottlieb, Fox backed around the bed, until they stood on opposite sides. Emily raised her hands, and squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation. Fox took his eyes off Gottlieb just long enough to fire a careful shot that broke the handcuff chain.

  But when he swung the gun back in Gottlieb’s direction, there was no one there.

  Before Fox even had time to wonder where he had disappeared to, a hand grabbed his ankle and pulled it out from under him. He fell to the floor and lay on his back. Gottlieb, from his place of concealment under the bed, pinned Fox’s arm to the floor and pried the gun out of his hand.

  As Fox pulled his arm free and got back to his feet, Gottlieb’s head and torso emerged from under the bed. Supporting himself with one arm, he took aim at Fox with the other.

  Emily jumped in between them, and looked Gottlieb in the eye.

  “You don’t believe your mother is watching you, do you?” she asked.

  Gottlieb held the pistol steady, and made no reply.

  “You don’t believe you’ll see her again one day, and have to account for how you lived your life,” she went on. “There’s no such thing as a soul. Everything that made her who she was, was in a gray lump of tissue inside her skull that’s long decomposed. That’s what you believe, isn’t it? There’s no place in the universe where any part of her still lives. Except in here.” She knelt down and touched his head. “In the memories in your brain, and the DNA in your cells. Now let me ask you this: Could she shoot me?”

  Fox and Emily began to take small steps backward. Gottlieb kept the gun trained on them.

  “If you pull that trigger,” she said, “you betray her genes in you. You’ll wipe the last trace of her off the face of the earth. Forever.”

  They backed up, Emily still shielding Fox’s body with hers. Gottlieb kept them in his sights, but made no move to pull the trigger.

  They passed through the door and pulled it shut. Emily pressed a random key on the keypad to slow Gottlieb down.

  The smoke was so thick in the hall that the farthest they could see was the blistering, peeling wallpaper on the walls. Fox and Emily coughed, and struggled to see through tears as the smoke stung their eyes.

  “You know a way out?” Emily asked between coughs.

  Fox shook his head. “The hidden staircase I came up is sealed off at the bottom. We’ll have to find another way.”

  “I got out of the room once, but I couldn’t see any stairs or anything like…”

  The door at the far end of the hall shuddered. The wood around the doorknob splintered, as the blade of an axe poked through. What was left of the door swung open, and a helmeted, gas-masked figure emerged, in the black and yellow turnout gear of the London Fire Brigade.

  “Take her!” Fox said, and gave Emily a push toward the firefighter.

  As she crossed the floor, it groaned under her weight. The firefighter caught her by the arms just as the section she had traversed collapsed behind her, sending a cascade of boards down to feed the fire below. Smoke and flames welled up from the hole.

  Fox stepped back from the blaze, shielding his face with his hand, and felt the muzzle of a gun at the back of his neck.

  “Stupid are the merciful!” came the sneering voice from behind him.

  Fox raised his hands, then spun around and seized the gun arm. Both of them fell into coughing spasms, but Fox kept his hold on Gottlieb’s wrist, and Gottlieb kept his hold on the pistol. They circled around as they struggled. Slowly, using the last of his strength, Fox succeeded in turning the gun around so that the muzzle was pointed at Gottlieb.

  “Now that—Ms. Harper—isn’t watching—” Gottlieb squeezed the words out between his paroxysms, “are you going—to kill me?”

  Fox fell into another fit of coughing, using all his will to maintain his grip on Gottlieb’s gun arm, and keep his eyes open despite the sting of the smoke.

  “I’ve never—killed anyone,” he gasped when he could speak again. “And you—don’t deserve the honor —of being the first.”

  He pried the weapon out of Gottlieb’s grip, and tossed it toward the hole in the floor. Gottlieb lunged for it, lost his balance, and toppled over the edge.

  The scream that issued from the inferno below, Fox knew, would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life.

  He collapsed.

  The chandelier above his head became a kaleidoscope. It spun around as its branches multiplied, and its crystals flashed rainbows through the smoke. It was hypnotic. He could go on staring at it until his eyes closed for the last time.

  Whoever You are, he said to the Great Unknowable, into Your hands I commend my spirit.

  20

  BETWEEN THIS WORLD AND THE NEXT

  BETWEEN TIME AND ETERNITY

  Fox had always heard that in your last living moment, your life flashes before your eyes. He had often wondered how that would work. Would it appear all at once, like photographs neatly lined up on a table? Would it be sequential, like a montage from a movie, condensing an entire lifetime into a fraction of a second? Or could it be seen across space and time together, like movies playing on a hundred different screens simultaneously?

  What he saw now was none of those. Not a gallery, nor a movie, but a single frame, filling his entire field of vision. And what it showed was Emily’s face, in such minute detail that he could count her eyelashes.

  It had been a short life, but one full of blessings. And all the most precious memories were moments he had shared with Emily. If the ancient Greeks had it right, and he would have to cross the river Lethe and be cleansed of all memories of this world before his shade could proceed to the next, he would say “No, thanks,�
�� and elect to spend eternity on this side of the riverbank rather than give up a single one of them.

  Of regrets, he also had more than his share. And the uppermost was that he was about to go to his grave without ever having told her, I love you.

  21

  LONDON

  SUNDAY, APRIL 5

  EASTER SUNDAY

  “Robin?”

  Fox opened his eyes. Emily sat by his bedside, in a plush white robe identical to the one he was wearing. She reached out and took his hand.

  “Emily. Thank God.”

  Her self-inflicted haircut had been retouched by a professional stylist, and although he could never have imagined it, the end result suited her remarkably well. But then, he thought, any style would.

  “You look great.”

  She smiled, and patted her hair with her free hand. “Like it? I was thinking of auditioning for Peter Pan.”

  He was lying in a huge bed in an equally huge bedroom, with a wall-mounted television screen big enough for a home cinema. Donovan and Adler sat near the foot of his bed, in brocade-upholstered armchairs not too different from the one the Queen had occupied at Westminster Abbey. He could have been in a five-star hotel, except for the oxygen tube under his nostrils.

  “For a moment there, I thought I was in heaven,” Fox said, “except that you gentlemen aren’t dressed for it.”

  “You’re in the Ambassador Suite at the Cromwell Hospital,” Donovan said. He took an admiring look around. “A long call from the National Health Service hospitals, I must say.”

  “Just so long as they understand that I’m not actually the ambassador. I’m an ordinary American, and our idea of health insurance is a card that says ‘Get well soon.’”