“How is Cap at the moment? Can I call him? I was planning on flying down this weekend.”
“To be frank, Dr. Welcome, you may want to consider coming down sooner. I just came from visiting him. Your friend isn’t very toxic yet, but he is febrile, and there clearly has been a turn. When you get here, you can stop by my office if you wish, or better still, go to the seventh floor of the Baron Building, and have them page Dr. Ivan Puchalsky, the ID consultant handling this case.”
“I’ll do that. I’ll do it as soon as I can. Thank you, Dr. Carter. Thank you for calling.”
Lou ended the call and popped up from his chair as though it had become electrified. He raced out of the cube and was passing Babs Peterbee’s desk, headed to Filstrup’s office, when she held up her hand.
“Dr. Welcome, I wouldn’t go in there. He’s asked me to hold all his calls.”
Lou leaned over and saw that the secretary’s desktop switchboard had no “in use” lights on. The maneuver was one of Filstrup’s favorites.
“Sorry, but that call was from Cap’s hospital. It’s an emergency, Babs.”
Lou knocked twice and opened the door an instant before Filstrup gruffly invited him in.
“Sorry to butt in, boss, but I just got a call from Arbor General in Atlanta. Cap’s getting toxic from a wound infection. His condition has started to deteriorate.”
Seated behind his immaculate desk, Filstrup, wearing his typically wrinkle-free white dress shirt and power-red tie, lowered his glasses and eyed Lou with a chilly look.
“Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yes … Well, they’ve asked me to come down to Atlanta. I’m quite worried.”
“To dash away from your job, you must be very worried,” Filstrup said, sounding not at all worried or even that interested.
“I’m certainly concerned,” Lou said. “As you know, he’s the best friend I have. I give him credit for turning my life around. I’ll take some work with me. Nothing that will violate any confidentiality, of course, but I’ll get stuff done.”
“No need,” Filstrup said.
“There’s a lot to catch up on,” Lou said. “I realize I’m behind, but I’ll make up the time. From what his surgeon said, Cap needs me there.”
“That’s fine,” Filstrup said. “But there’s no need for you to take any work.”
“Excuse me?”
“I think you understand. There’s no need for you to take your work with you because you no longer have a job here.”
“Walter, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying you’re fired, Dr. Welcome. Now, go pack up your desk. I wouldn’t want you to miss your flight back to Atlanta.”
CHAPTER 21
It is not our nature to suffer, and most of those who are offered government handouts in place of effort will take them.
—LANCASTER R. HILL, Climb the Mountain, SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1941, P. II
Kazimi had never seen anything like the Great Room.
While growing up in Kohat City, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, he believed all homes were made from dusty brown clay bricks. The densely clustered buildings of his youth were still etched in his heart and mind. As he grew older, he escaped his daily travails through books, and began to excel in school. Finally, he was accepted as an exchange student in Los Angeles, and from there, off to Stanford.
Kazimi loved America … much of it, at any rate.
The over-the-top opulence of Red Cliff and its whiskey-gulping master were well more than he could take. Doug Bacon, and his dedication to eliminating programs assisting the poor, was an anathema to Kazimi as was One Hundred Neighbors, the extremist organization he embodied. And despite his captor’s self-important attempt to use Kazimi’s religion to enlist his help, the overriding consideration for him was still escape.
For the better part of two days, he had kept to himself, waiting. He ate well, exercised, used the sunlamp in the bathroom for vitamin D, and slept as much as he could manage. He was determined to build his strength. The opportunity to escape might at any minute present itself. When he was not meditating, he prayed to Allah using the prayer rug and beautiful copy of the Koran Bacon had supplied, while at the same time forcing thoughts of escape from his mind.
After his afternoon prayer, and after seeking Allah’s guidance, Kazimi had summoned Harris to his room.
“I want to meet with Bacon,” he said.
Red Cliff was vast, and the butler was slow. It had taken ten minutes to reach the Great Room. Most of the trip was down—both straight and spiral staircases. At the head of the first flight, Bacon’s two buffalos met them and took over as Kazimi’s guides. There were no windows along the way, and even had the guards not been there, he had no sense that escape was possible. The stone passageways, lit by gas lanterns, were dank, smelling increasingly of mold and, surprisingly, of the sea.
The sea … Where was this place?
He had been unconscious from the moment Alexander Burke injected him until he awoke in his bedroom prison. Where in Allah’s name was he? How long had it taken to get there? Fortunately, there was some comfort in his resignation to whatever fate was determined for him. Still, he had decided, any action he could take that would return him to his laboratory, he would take. Many times each day he had recited the hadith attributed to Imam Tirmidhi:
If you put your whole trust in Allah, as you ought, He most certainly will satisfy your needs, as He satisfies those of the birds. They come out hungry in the morning, but return full to their nests.
After a long walk, the guards guided him past a pair of French doors through which, for the first time, Kazimi got a glimpse of where he was. Beyond the doors was a narrow gravel path, bordered by a fringe of lawn, and just beyond that, and far below, was the ocean, stretching to the horizon. Before he could ask any questions, the huge men motioned him through an arched opening, and into a cavernous stone room. The scientist’s mouth fell open. To his right was an enormous bank of windows, at least twenty feet high and, in total, perhaps fifty feet across.
Incredible as the windows were in both size and scope, it was the view outside that held Kazimi spellbound. He was gazing out from the edge of a cliff, easily a hundred feet high, at a steel-gray ocean capped this day by frothy waves. No land. His sense told him East Coast and north. The cliff was daunting. The gravel path and strip of grass was all that separated the spectacular windows from the sea. Any attempt to escape from here could well end in a plunge to his death.
“After we talk I’ll take you outside so you can see the waves crashing against the shoreline. It’s truly a marvelous sight.”
Bacon, speaking from behind a huge leather easy chair, was dressed in crisply pressed gray slacks, a double-breasted blue suit, and a white oxford shirt accented by a silk paisley ascot. His right hand was clasped around his lion’s head cane, and his left cradled his ubiquitous half-filled crystal tumbler.
“North Atlantic?” Kazimi offered.
“Maine, actually. I’m glad you’ve requested this meeting. As I have said, time is of the essence, and people are dying.”
“I refuse to succumb to your guilt ploy. Any deaths are your fault, not mine.”
The overcast skies and stone walls kept the room cool, although the blaze in a fieldstone fireplace big enough to park a car took away much of the chill. There were leather armchairs, couches, and marble-topped tables spaced throughout, and a mélange of wondrous oriental rugs.
A castle in Maine.
Bacon led Kazimi to a sitting area for two in front of the windows. The breathtaking view, like the opulence of the place, only strengthened Kazimi’s discomfort. There was either an elevator or a kitchen, because after just a few minutes, Harris appeared, wheeling a cart carrying covered platters of food. The aroma, even with covers in place, was exquisite.
“Goat cooked in desi pickle curry, or perhaps you’d prefer to try the chicken nihari?”
Kazimi glared at Bacon.
/> “My appetite for company may return with my freedom,” he said. “Until then, I prefer to dine alone.”
Bacon took a contemplative sip of his drink.
“Your choice.”
He nodded toward his butler, and Harris bowed, swung the cart around, and wheeled the food away. Kazimi shifted his gaze back to the mesmerizing vista.
“What is this place?” he asked, making no attempt at eye contact.
“My home,” Bacon said.
“I assumed that.”
“Red Cliff is on a hundred and fifty secluded acres on the coast of Maine. It was built in 1890 by an eccentric engineer named Gerhardt, who held more than three hundred patents, many of them quite lucrative. Gerhardt indulged his passion for castles by bringing one over here from Germany, stone by stone. The rebuilding took three years. Gerhardt lived to be more than a hundred. During his waning years, when he became aware of the Society of One Hundred Neighbors, he willed it to us, along with enough money to maintain it in this wonderful condition. As the current head of our society, I have the option of living here—an option I was only too pleased to exercise. Have you ever been to Maine before, Ahmed? Or would you prefer I use your birth name, Nazar.”
Kazimi swung around. Generally, Pakistani males were given the first name of Muhammad. The practice of referring to people by their most used name, a second or even third name given at birth, served as a unique identifier. Bacon’s use of Nazar suggested extensive research and comprehensive knowledge. He was both showing off and announcing that One Hundred Neighbors were well armed.
“Yes, we know very well who you are, doctor,” he said. “We also know where you’re from. We know who and where many of your relatives are, as well as the names of your former graduate assistants back at Stanford. We know virtually everything there is to know about you, except for one very important item.”
Kazimi, now seething, glared at Bacon. “I presume this one item is the reason you’ve taken me hostage. What is it you want? What do you intend to do with me?”
Bacon leaned back in his chair, appraising his captive with his sharp eyes.
The man was a psychological predator, Kazimi thought—a stalker, always on the hunt for any angle to exploit, be it a word, an inflection, or even some subtle bit of body language. In spite of himself, Kazimi felt naked and exposed in his presence.
“To be perfectly forthcoming,” Bacon said, “we need you to complete your work on the antibacterial treatment for the Janus strain. That’s the name we have given to the bacteria we have developed.”
Bacon’s accent, a countrified twang really, registered stronger to Kazimi’s ears than it previously had. Perhaps it was the drink, exposing the Southern gentleman for who he really was—a man not born into great wealth, but someone who had acquired it without ever forgoing his roots.
Kazimi’s jaws clenched. The situation, as presented, was dire. Bacon wins, and countless people living in poverty become disenfranchised and ignored while countless others are refused hospital care for conditions that might be easily treatable. Bacon loses, and countless people die from an infection as horrible as the worst of the plague.
“Janus,” Kazimi mused aloud, “the two-faced god of contradictions. Gram positive … Gram negative. Very appropriate choice.”
“I’m not surprised you made the connection so quickly. There are few who would have. As our research has disclosed, you are certainly a highly intelligent man.”
“Maybe not that intelligent, Mr. Bacon. I cannot figure out why you would kidnap me to continue my work and not kill me to stop it.…” Realization of the answer to the conundrum took just a few seconds. Kazimi laughed sardonically. “Your germ has bested you, hasn’t it. Like Frankenstein, you have created a monster, and now you have no way of stopping it. Your scientists should have known, sir. They should have known that sooner or later this would happen. Now you are in danger of losing your leverage.”
Bacon calmly took another sip from his tumbler, but there was no slyness in his expression. No playfulness.
“We created our hammer for a singular purpose,” he said finally, “and that purpose is working. However, for our plan to be a total success, the government has to believe without a doubt that we can contain the Janus strain—turn it on and off at our will. But as you suspect, the geometry of the spread of infection has deviated from our precise statistical modeling. An anomaly if you will. It appears the bacteria has mutated into something even more potent then what we had designed. It is beginning to spread and is appearing in people we did not infect. The treatment our scientists developed, which has worked perfectly for several years, and which we are prepared to make available to you, is no longer effective.”
“Your scientists are mad to have thought they could contain it for any length of time. The lessons of antibiotic history have always been available to them.”
“We have means at our disposable you cannot begin to imagine. We will resolve this bump in the road one way or another, with your help, or without. We are here to orchestrate change. Massive change. It is in our charter as it has been since our inception.”
“Yes, the twisted charter of One Hundred Neighbors,” Kazimi said.
“I’m sure your employers have given you a distorted view of our mission and our methods,” Bacon responded acidly.
“Your man Burke has given me all the view that I will ever need. I believe the government’s portrayal of you is accurate, Mr. Bacon, just as is their portrayal of the Oklahoma City bomber, and the Unabomber, and the master of Waco, and all the other deranged killers who follow your tenets, whether they are members of your precious society or not.”
“Tell me, Dr. Kazimi, have you ever read 100 Neighbors?”
“I am more than a little familiar with Lancaster Hill’s manifesto,” Kazimi replied, startled by the vehemence in his own tone. Control your emotions, he warned himself. Your freedom depends on clear thinking. He took a moment to compose himself and then added, “Published by Sawyer River Books in 1939, and immediately decried as subversive. Hill, a congressman from Virginia, resigned from office soon after its publication. He made it his mission to undermine the national rebirth brought about by President Franklin Roosevelt. But soon, the impact of 100 Neighbors faded from the public eye, forgotten like the madman, himself.”
“Not forgotten,” Bacon corrected. “Hidden in plain sight. And as you now well know, Hill was more than a little successful in his endeavors. He assembled his society of patriots in secret. As he divined, the organization consisted of people from every walk of life, people who look perfectly unremarkable on the outside, and often hold positions of influence in one of the six essential disciplines.”
“Military, scientific, policy, finance, communications, and intelligence,” Kazimi recited, his tone mocking. Now it was his turn to show off.
Bacon ignored him.
“Our vision of America is the purest reflection of the Constitution by which we must all abide, even immigrants, such as yourself.”
The way Bacon spit out the word “immigrants” lifted a cloak on his deep-seated racism. Kazimi heard in his tone a xenophobic fear, bordering on paranoia. And for that, his dislike for the man and his cause approached hatred.
“I really don’t need to hear any more of this,” Kazimi said.
Bacon continued without pausing.
“Our accomplishments are more impressive than those of almost any organization dedicated to social change. We have blocked congressional appointments and forced politicians to resign. The list of legislation passed into law through our influence would be a lobbyist’s dream, as would those bills we have blocked. We began as one hundred, and we have kept the society to that exact number because, as Lancaster Hill predicted, it works.”
“One man can dream, a handful can plan, thousands can strike, but a hundred can reshape the world,” Kazimi said in a singsong voice.
“So you are intimately familiar with Lancaster Hill’s work. I’m impressed.”
/>
“I’m not. My parents brought me up to have only loathing for extremists, madmen, and murderers.”
Bacon’s expression darkened, in concert it seemed with a bank of storm clouds gathering in the east.
“You will help us, Ahmed, Nazar, or whatever you wish to be called. You will see to it that we reestablish an antibacterial treatment for the Janus strain.”
“So you can continue to use it for leverage?”
“What we do with the treatment is of no concern of yours. What should be of concern is that you will be saving countless lives.” Another sip of Scotch. “The deal is this, dear doctor. We are immediately prepared to provide you with the lab space and all the equipment you require to complete your work. In addition, we will bring in the developer of the Janus strain and treatment so that you two can collaborate. In exchange, we wish to know the names of all the microbiologists you have been working with, and what their contributions have been to your research. I think you’ll agree it is a simple trade, and one that gives us the best chance of quick success.”
“What do I get in return?” Kazimi asked.
Bacon’s smile reminded him of a shark.
“You will get your life,” Bacon said. “In addition to the lives of those already infected with the bacteria that the press is calling the Doomsday Germ. Oh, yes, in addition, you will be saving the lives of every single person you hold dear. I promise you that. They will die and you will be spared until last so you can watch it happen.”
CHAPTER 22
In the years to come, citizens will wonder with dismay why a fertile America has turned fallow, when they themselves have sucked all the nutrients from the soil.
—LANCASTER R. HILL, MEMOIRS (UNPUBLISHED), 1937–41
For Lou, the final hour of the flight to Atlanta was an emotional one—not unlike returning to the scene of the crime. The glide path to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport might have passed directly over the Chattahoochee forest—directly over the lodge … and the trail … and the cliff; directly over Floyd and Rebecca Weems’s cabin, and their field. The images were as indelible as they were painful.
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