Resistant

by Michael Palmer

  Lou was sickened by the thought. He could not imagine ever laying a hand on Emily, let alone burning her.

  “Where’d you go? Did you move in with a relative?”

  Vicki shook her head. “No, I didn’t trust anybody. Not even the police. I worried they wouldn’t believe me and I’d be sent back to live with my parents, so I just ran. For a long time I lived on the streets.”

  Vicki’s story was interrupted when the waitress returned, set their drinks down in front of them, and asked if they wanted to order food. When there was no response from either of them, she pledged to be back and scooted off. Lou had been too occupied with Vicki’s story, and now his drink, to respond. His drunk dream last night was like a Ouija board message, telling him that ten years was quite long enough and that he had earned what he was about to get. He imagined the taste—the wondrous velvety burn of a good bourbon.

  Jim Beam.

  Lou hefted his glass, swirling the amber liquid onto the sides with a movement that came back as easily as starting over on a bicycle. He knew that Vicki was riveted on him. It didn’t matter.

  Get it over, the voice in his head insisted. You’ve earned this. Just get it over. Afterward you can just stop.

  He brought the drink closer to his lips. The aroma drifted up his nostrils like smoke from a French cigarette. His mouth was desert dry.

  Then, with the rim of the glass just an inch from his lips, he hesitated. He could feel the pull—a gravitational force beyond his control.

  Just get it over.… Ten years is enough.… This one drink, then start over.… You’ve earned it, man.… Dammit, you’ve paid your dues.…

  He tilted the glass until the distance between the bourbon and his lips could be measured in millimeters. The white noise of the tavern gave way to a deep silence. This was it. He just had to get it over with. Then, in the moment before he drank, a vivid image of Emily filled his mind. She had been a child the last time he had lied to her—too young to understand his dishonesty or to be ashamed of him. She was not too young now.

  The spell shattered like dropped crystal. Lou pulled the heavy glass away from his mouth and set it down.

  “Not today,” he said, wondering if Vicki could tell he was shaking. “I’ll get to a meeting later tonight.”

  “Good idea. We should go ahead and order something to eat. Then maybe you can go right from here.”

  “The list is online. I’ll check it after you finish your story. I’m okay now, I really am.”

  They ordered burgers, Lou went online as promised, and Vicki exchanged their untouched drinks for Diet Cokes.

  “I’ll give you the short, waiting-for-cheeseburgers version,” she said. “So I was living on the streets of Cincinnati, occasionally sleeping at homeless shelters, but sometimes I just found a bush in the park and slept under it. Cincinnati has beautiful parks.”

  “How long did you do that for?”

  “About a year. Then I was semi-adopted by a couple I’d met at one of the revivals. They didn’t have children of their own, so they took me in. Really nice people. They got me enrolled at an alternative high school and I took my GED exam. Next thing I knew, I was getting a scholarship to Ohio State, and after that my masters in micro. Then I got a part-time job at the CDC and finished my doctorate at Emory, and here I am.”

  “From a GED to a Ph.D. Slightly impressive.”

  “Not your average, everyday fairy tale, I’ll give you that.”

  “And your parents?”

  “My real parents, you mean? I haven’t spoken to them since I ran away from home. Sadly, the couple that took me in died years ago, heart attack for one and cancer for the other.”

  Lou was grimly silent. Cap had no children of his own, but had taken any number of street kids in over the years. Nearly every one of them was the better for the connection.

  “Every day needs to be lived to the fullest,” he said.

  “Every day,” Vicki echoed.

  They talked through dinner about their lives and work. Then Vicki announced that she and a girlfriend were headed to an art lecture, and slid out from the booth.

  “Meeting for you?” she asked.

  “All set. I’ve got the address and there’s a GPS in my rental.”

  Lou would do the meeting, then visit Cap, then meet Humphrey in Subbasement Two for what would probably be their first actual experiments. Easy night, thanks to Emily.

  “You’re a good man, Lou Welcome,” Vicki said. “A very good man. If there’s anything I can do for you, just give me a call.” She drew a business card from her wallet, wrote a number on the back, and handed it to him. “That’s my cell. No one gets this except you and the president. At least he will as soon as he asks for it. Call whenever.” This time they did hug. “I’m glad you liked the Diet Coke,” she whispered.

  She kissed him lightly on the ear. Then she was gone.

  He sat down again, breathing in what remained of her. A few seconds later, two men slid in where she had been—directly across from him in the booth. Both wore suits. One of them was a light-skinned African American, young, and athletic looking. The other had a hard face, strong jaw, and close-cropped hair.

  “I’m not leaving just yet,” Lou said, an alarm starting up in his head.

  “Actually, we were counting on that,” the tough-looking man said. He flipped his billfold open. There was an ID on one side and a badge on the other.

  “Special Agent Tim Vaill with the FBI. My partner, Special Agent Charles McCall. Are you Dr. Louis Welcome of Washington, D.C.?”

  Lou gripped the edge of the table and did a prolonged examination of the ID, buying time to will the bass drum throbbing in his chest to slow down.

  “Yeah, that’s me. Why?” he managed.

  Vaill looked pleased. “Well then, doctor,” he said, “if that’s who you are, we’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Our country is under attack by forces far more powerful than those in Central Europe or the Far East.

  —LANCASTER R. HILL, LECTURE TO THE PENNINGTON SCHOOL, JUNE 6, 1939

  Only one way in … and one way out.

  Kazimi was giddy with the significance of Bacon’s huge bodyguard casually emerging from the lab and lumbering past them and across the Great Room. Until that moment, Doug Bacon, the master of Red Cliff, had led him to believe there was only a single passage into that wing of the castle. Leaving the lab as the bodyguard did had to have been a mistake.

  Now he stood in the lab, just inside the closed door through which Costello had come. He was wary that the giant, or Drake, the other huge guard, would open the door at any moment, and even the smallest sound from the other side caused his pulse to skip. Another concern was the security camera mounted close to the ceiling in one corner of the lab. An identical electronic sentry kept watch from a similar spot in the annex. Perhaps the guards would realize the significance of what he was about to try, and would be on their way to stop him as soon as he got started. Kazimi gritted his teeth, then cursed his inability to stay cool. This was a time for action, not apprehension.

  Almost certainly, there was a hidden passage—a secret way out of the wing, and most likely down to the boathouse at the base of the cliff. It was time to find it and to escape.

  Where to start?

  As a scientist, Kazimi prided himself in his ability to work out problems. The X-factor here, of course, was not only figuring out the solution to the puzzle, but doing it without getting caught. Step one, always, observation. From large to small, broad to compact. Stay casual, look busy, and examine every bit of the lab and the annex—the stark animal containment room the guards had taken to calling the “mouse house.”

  Mindful he was probably being watched, Kazimi moved around the perimeter of the spacious lab, doing menial tasks as he scanned the gray mortar and fieldstone walls, as well as the concrete floor, looking for cracks, ill-fitting rocks, or any part of the construction that appeared to have been patched. It took
most of an hour to make several passes, all the while continuing to prepare culture agar and growth medium.

  Nothing.

  His enthusiasm dampened. Sooner or later, someone would be in to check on him. Sooner or later someone would realize the repetition of his actions and speak to Bacon if, in fact, Bacon wasn’t the one currently watching the monitor screens.

  Don’t give up became Kazimi’s mantra. If he got caught, he would deal with it. But he had to keep trying.

  Don’t give up.…

  On his initial tour of the wing that included the Great Room and laboratory, he wondered about the prior use of the lab space and annex. The two rooms, hastily renovated, had almost certainly served as storage areas. There were no windows in either of them, and the mouse house, perhaps fifty feet long by twenty-five wide, included a huge built-in freezer/refrigeration unit, which had certainly been around for a while. The lab, identical in length and larger in width by at least a third, had shelves fixed to the stone wall, nearly all the way around.

  It was easy for him to imagine the rooms filled with pallets of canned food, cleaning supplies, paper goods, and other items needed to operate the fortress. But it made little sense to him that things were carried or wheeled along the winding access tunnel and through the Great Room only to be stored and then brought back into the main building by the same route. But it was certainly possible. If there was a trap door, it would have been kept clear of any major obstruction, and would have to be fairly large. That ruled out the heavy benches in the lab, the incubators, the delicate electron microscope, and the refrigeration unit in the mouse house. On his next pass, Kazimi focused on the floor, squinting to spot any section of stone that was different from the rest.

  Again, nothing. No sign of a secret passage. The space was a prison … a tomb … a mausoleum.

  Only one way in … and one way out.

  A sudden scraping caused Kazimi to freeze—footsteps echoing from the Great Room. A janitor? One of the guards? He strained to pick up the tapping of Bacon’s cane on stone. Drake or Costello. It was most likely one of them. He wondered what their directive was should they catch him trying to flee. A quick snap of his neck, perhaps. It didn’t matter. Ahmed Kazimi was not afraid to die.

  But he did fear Janus.

  The germ’s startling transformation was unlike anything he had ever encountered, and was fraught with terrifying possibilities. He studied his hands and saw at least a half-dozen small cuts, a torn hangnail, and a slight scrape by the knuckle on the index finger of his left hand. They were barely slivers to his eyes, but represented a gaping portal through which Janus could march into his bloodstream and kill him horribly. Doubtless, hospitals were trying to contain the spread. It would be, he felt certain, a futile effort. In time, not much time at that, a handshake would become the equivalent of a gunshot. Although there might be no visible entry wound, the victim’s organs would dissolve from the inside out.

  The government had to be warned. Without a treatment, a pandemic was on the way that would make SARS and bird flu look like a summer cold. The time of an individual hospital using its isolation procedures to deal with Janus was passing quickly. The world was far too interconnected now. Every minute Kazimi stayed locked up inside Red Cliff was a minute too long.

  Don’t give up.

  Kazimi turned his attention to making a more detailed inspection of the mouse house. If he believed in what he saw when Costello crossed the Great Room, and he believed there was nothing to be found in the lab, then the passage had to be in the annex. He passed through the doorway into the secondary structure. The plastic cages were lined up on shelves across one of the end walls and extended along half of one adjacent long wall. About half of the cages were occupied, and as they always did, the mice reacted to his arrival with a prescient step-up in activity. The large, stainless-steel refrigeration units were at the other end of the room.

  Kazimi noted the areas that were almost certainly blind spots to the security camera. He stood in one of them, directly beneath the camera lens, and once again carefully surveyed the room. At first glance he saw nothing unusual. Then, after a minute or so of quiet observation, he did. It wasn’t a defect in the fieldstone or shelving or floor. It was the distance from where he stood to the opposite wall. It looked shorter than the length of the lab next door. Not a lot shorter, but …

  Keeping as far to the left of the camera as possible, Kazimi nonchalantly paced off the distance. Twenty-three strides. At approximately three feet per stride, the room was sixty-nine feet long.

  Swallowing against the dryness of excitement that had materialized in his throat, Kazimi moved back into the lab and, mixing a bowl of liquid agar, casually measured the length of that room. Twenty-six strides, once, then a second time. Seventy-eight feet. The annex, which he initially had thought was identical in length to the lab, was three strides less.

  Nine feet were missing.

  Why would the contractor of the place cut nine feet off a room that, at first glance, looked to be exactly the same dimensions as the room adjacent to it? Perhaps rock on the other side of the wall prohibited going any farther. But that made little sense considering the whole wing—Great Room and storage areas—was hewn out of solid rock.

  He peered across at the door to the Great Room. The footsteps, whoever they belonged to, had vanished. Perhaps a janitor, who had moved to the far side of the vast room.

  Kazimi prayed to Allah for protection and guidance. Then he took a flashlight and, easing along a line that he hoped was beyond the angle of the camera, made his way across to the shelves of cages filling the far wall. Everything appeared normal until he dropped to his knees and shined the light under the bottom shelf, which was three inches above the floor. At the very base of the wall, there was a gap—a dark space no more than half an inch wide, but it was there, running the full length of the wall.

  It took only seconds for him to reason out the most likely significance of the narrow gap. He stood and, reaching between two cages, pushed with all his strength. Grudgingly, the wall pivoted inward two inches. His heart pounding like a bucking stallion, he inched along the wall and turned off the fluorescent overheads. Then, shielding the flashlight beam, he returned to the spot between the cages and pushed once more. The pivot was precisely at the midpoint of the wall. The small opening expanded to more than a foot. He turned sideways and in an instant, he was behind the wall.

  His mind visualized a single bacteria of the Janus strain, entering a body through a small cut. Like that Doomsday Germ, he was inside his target.

  Now to cause some serious trouble.

  The wall glided closed more smoothly than it had opened. The darkness was impenetrable. Kazimi took in a breath of musty sea air, and switched on his flashlight. A wall switch was just a few feet away. A moment later, the secret space was bathed in dim incandescent light.

  Kazimi’s grin was triumphant. “Don’t give up,” he said out loud as he illuminated a grated metal staircase, descending from the center of the narrow room. “Don’t ever give up.”

  At the base of the first five stairs was a rectangular platform, lit from a sconce. If Red Cliff was an exact, modernized replica of a medieval German castle, then this was the escape route should the master’s soldiers fail to hold the keep.

  Kazimi climbed aboard the sturdy platform, flicked on his light, and peered down through the grate into what appeared to be a crudely cut vertical shaft. Then he noticed the cables … and the pulleys … and finally, the bands of corroding metal that formed a largely open cage.

  He was standing in an ingeniously constructed elevator.

  Sea air filled his lungs. From below, he could hear waves crashing on rock. He pictured the boathouse he had seen jutting out from the base of the cliff. That had to be what lay beneath him now. He was standing in the artery that pumped life-giving supplies up into Red Cliff from the sea.

  Protruding from a strut to his right was a switch box with two unlabeled buttons. With a fina
l glance upward, Kazimi pressed the lower of them, and instantly, the elevator rattled to life.

  CHAPTER 31

  Where blood has been shed for liberty and the freedom to improve one’s lot, the wound from which it spilled will heal in time.

  —LANCASTER R. HILL, Climbing the Mountain, SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1941, P. 97

  There was nothing at all friendly or engaging about the way FBI Special Agent Tim Vaill looked across at Lou, or made small talk as they settled in. The muscles in his chiseled face had not once relaxed. Compared to him, his partner McCall was mellow.

  At times, the two men actually seemed to have completely separate agendas—one of them to put Lou at ease, and the other to tighten the screws that kept his internal organs in place.

  “We were surprised to learn that you had a record, doctor. Wanna tell us what that’s all about?”

  Lou asked more than once if he should be contacting a lawyer, and was assured each time, by both agents, that would not be necessary. Not once did either of them suggest that he could feel free to do so if he wanted, and he found himself wondering what they would say if he insisted.

  Finally breaking his stranglehold eye contact with Lou, Vaill gave McCall a sidelong glance.

  “It’s a bit noisy in here, don’t you think?” he said. He returned to Lou. “What do you say we go outside and walk and talk?”

  Another query from Lou about whether he should contact a lawyer. Another negative response. More of the uneasy feeling that there would be no lawyer until the agents got what they wanted.

  “Before we go anywhere, what do you say you two tell me what this is all about?” Lou risked.

  There was nothing about the encounter that encouraged the smart-ass side of him to leap to the fore, rapier wit at the ready. He worried about aggravating the situation, whatever the situation was, but he was equally concerned with getting back to Humphrey and the lab. It seemed pretty clear that this walk and talk with Vaill and McCall was not an offer he could easily refuse. Vaill leaned across the table, obviously not concerned with invading Lou’s personal space.