Christopher Farnsworth - Nathaniel Cade [01]

by Blood Oath: The President's Vampire

The plateglass window, shattering as the big man flew through it.

  The receptionist screamed, but she was late to the party. Cade stood calmly. The big man was an inert lump on the pavement outside. Her wail died away almost comically. There was only the sound of the broken glass falling out of its frame.

  The receptionist huddled against the door.

  “I’ll call the police,” she said, nearly shrieking.

  “That’s not what your master instructed you to do, is it?” Cade said.

  She looked at him, and Zach recognized the panic in her eyes. He’d felt it himself. She was about to start gibbering and crying.

  The intercom on her phone beeped to life. A voice—deep, cultured, very slightly accented—came through the tiny speaker.

  “That’s enough, I think,” it said. “Laura, please show our guests back to my office.”

  Cade looked around, then up. Zach saw what he was looking at: a camera, set into the corner of the ceiling.

  “Hello, Konrad,” Cade said.

  “Good evening, Cade,” the voice on the intercom replied. “You could have called first.”

  THEY LEFT the security man outside. The receptionist led them back into the clinic, casting nervous glances over her shoulder.

  They passed a number of doors to private exam rooms.

  “How did you know he was here?” Zach asked.

  “I could smell him.”

  Ask a stupid question, Zach thought.

  They were at a set of double doors at the end of the hall. The receptionist opened them and hurried out of their way.

  Konrad sat behind a steel slab of a desk with nothing on its surface but a computer that looked like a sculpture.

  Despite snow-white hair, he didn’t look much older than Zach, with handsome features set in a welcoming smile.

  If he was nervous about them being here, he didn’t show it.

  The receptionist, however, danced from foot to foot like she had to go to the bathroom.

  “You can go, Laura,” Konrad said. “Please have someone fix the window. Tonight. Thank you.”

  She rushed out, pulling the doors closed behind her hard enough to slam them.

  Konrad shook his head. “I hope this was necessary. You frightened the poor girl half to death.”

  “I have questions for you, Konrad.”

  The doctor rolled his eyes and smiled at Zach. “He’s always like this. No social graces whatsoever. I am Johann Konrad. A pleasure to meet you.”

  He stepped from behind the desk, hand extended to Zach.

  Zach moved to take it, more reflex than anything else. Cade blocked him.

  “You don’t need to know his name,” he said to Konrad. He turned to Zach. “And you should know the first time we met, Konrad was working for the Nazis, spreading a fatal variant of the flu virus by handshake.”

  Zach put his hands behind his back. Konrad laughed.

  “What can I say? I was young and impressionable.” He looked at Zach. “We all make mistakes.”

  “Oh, sure,” Zach said. “You were just experimenting with Nazism.”

  Konrad’s smile faded.

  “What do you want?” Konrad asked, returning to his seat.

  “Unmenschsoldaten,” Cade said. “Have you been working on them again?”

  Konrad looked genuinely surprised. “What? No, of course not. You know the terms of my agreement. I am forbidden from . . . ‘experimenting’ anymore, as your friend puts it.”

  “You haven’t been approached by anyone for the methods?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “No one has accessed your records here at the clinic, or spoken to you about the process?”

  “I don’t even keep those records anymore. The only place they exist is with your government. And we both know that’s not as secure as it should be. What was the name of that man in 1957? Carlton?”

  “We dealt with him,” Cade said. “Who else has access to your files?”

  Konrad laughed. “Who doesn’t? This is the age of the Internet, Cade. There are no secrets anymore. I have seen all of the Nazi archives displayed on conspiracy sites. It’s only the public’s disbelief that keeps any first-year medical student from reproducing my work.”

  “That’s not true,” Cade said. “Your creations only really work with the Elixir. Which only you know how to create.”

  “We’re going in circles here. I gave the formula to your government as part of our agreement. You know this.”

  “And you still know how to make it.”

  Konrad looked frustrated. “But I wouldn’t. That’s my point. I have not broken our deal. I am a man of my word.”

  Cade looked at him for a long moment. Stalemate. Even Zach could see it. They had no way of disproving anything Konrad said.

  “I can hear your heartbeat, you know,” Cade finally said. “It’s pounding like you just ran a marathon. Ever since I walked into the room.”

  Konrad’s face flushed. His urbane demeanor dissolved into a scowl.

  “That’s very impressive, Cade. And I should care . . . why?”

  “Just to let you know I can hear your heart, Konrad. And I could end that sound without too much effort at all.”

  Cade turned and started for the door. Zach guessed they were finished.

  “Cade,” Konrad said. “Whatever else you think of me, you should know I am grateful for my new life. This is the land of second chances, after all.”

  “It wasn’t up to me,” Cade said. “I wanted to kill you.”

  Konrad smiled at Zach, seemingly calm again. “You see what I mean about him having no social graces? Honestly, who says things like that?”

  Cade turned and faced the doctor.

  “I know you,” he said. “I know that whatever else you say, you will never give up playing God. You don’t even want to. Someday, you’re going to overplay your hand. And I will be there.”

  Konrad gave Cade the ugliest look Zach had ever seen.

  “It must be so frustrating for you,” Konrad said. “To always be sent on these little errands. And to know they will never let you touch me.”

  Cade didn’t respond. Zach followed him out the door.

  SEVENTEEN

  1981, LEE FEDERAL PENITENTIARY,

  JONESVILLE, VIRGINIA

  Cade stalked down the corridors of the penitentiary. Ordinarily, the presence of a visitor would have brought shouts, catcalls, even feces and flaming toilet paper from the cells. Not this time. This time, the prisoners simply watched until Cade passed by, and then they breathed a sigh of relief.

  The guards escorting Cade gave him a wide berth as well. There was no outward sign of his anger. But you could feel it, coming off him like heat.

  In the pocket of his coat, orders for a full pardon. Immediate release, citizenship privileges and a sizable check drawn on the U.S. Treasury.

  Everything the prisoner had asked for, in other words.

  A few hours earlier, Cade had watched it happen from a TV screen. He saw the gap in the Secret Service’s line, the perfect angle for the camera. The president used to be an actor. He could never resist a good shot.

  Leaving an opening for the cameras also left him open to a bullet. He never thought it would happen.

  You could see the surprise on his face, captured on video, as the fire-cracker sound of the little handgun snapped away.

  Six shots. At least one direct hit. Out there in broad daylight, where Cade was useless. It was 1963 all over again.

  Before long, the phone rang in the Reliquary. It was still an old-fashioned landline then, directly wired to the Oval Office.

  The president’s chief of staff was on the other end. The bullets were Devastator rounds. Lead azide, designed to explode on impact. The press secretary was standing nearby, and half his head was gone. “One was right next to the president’s heart,” the man said.

  He had an assignment for Cade.

  Cade was flown to Jonesville in a special Air Force transport and
then driven in a limo with specially tinted windows.

  The press had heard the president was in bad shape. The White House got a lock on that, spun a story about the man joking with the surgeons. “I hope you’re all Republicans.”

  In the meantime, Cade retrieved the only man who could repair the damage—who could bring dead tissue back to life.

  Konrad was imprisoned in Jonesville. If he’d been in any other facility, there would have been no hope. No way to get him to the hospital in time.

  Jonesville was no better and no worse than any other high-security federal prison. Rape, drugs, murder. Cade honestly had not thought about it when they deposited Konrad there.

  But when he got to the cell, he saw Konrad had sampled every one of the facility’s offerings.

  His face was scarred. There was a fresh bruise on his temple. Kept from his equipment and his potions, Konrad had even aged—his flawless skin beginning to pucker and warp.

  Still, he stood with as much dignity as he could manage; his dirty hair combed with water from the toilet and swept back. He looked down at Cade, a baron in his mind if nowhere else.

  A day later, the president was back on TV Smiling. Joking. The Devastator rounds failed to explode, the press was told. Collapsed lung, nothing more. An inch from the heart. The president was a lucky man.

  His mind never really recovered from the long period of clinical death, even though his body went on for years after. Toward the end of his second term, he would sit in his bedroom all day, still in his pajamas.

  Cade remembered the look of triumph on Konrad’s face when he arrived at the door of the doctor’s cell. He smiled, revealing several missing teeth. But he looked no less happy.

  “I told you, Cade,” he said. “There will always be someone willing to pay for my services.”

  EIGHTEEN

  There is a long list of individuals who have claimed immortality. It’s easy enough to disprove the boasts of many simply by waiting around 40 or 50 years. However, if we are pressed for time, a search of the historical records will have to do. Leaving aside those who have been granted extremely long and durable lives by supernatural means—like our good friend Mr. Cade—there are at least nine individuals who appear to have been around for centuries, and have been verifiably sighted by different historians, at intervals as great as 500 years apart. Of those nine, several may play a role in U.S. interests. There is the Comte St. Germain, of course, who visited the White House not too long ago. . . . But we have recently been apprised of another one of these blessed (or cursed) beings, who is supposedly also the inspiration for the popular novel written by Mrs. Shelley about a scientist who discovers the secret of life through robbing graves. He’s said to have offered his talents in the service of the German empire.

  —Letter to President Theodore Roosevelt, dated 1903, signed only “HH” (Classified)

  Konrad waited a full five minutes after Cade left, taking the time to get his breathing back under control. Over sixty years, and the hate was still there, rushing back to the surface.

  There were times Konrad simply wanted to talk to Cade. He remembered an absurd burst of joy when he first learned of Cade’s existence. He’d known about vampires before that, of course—he had been acquainted with the Other Side for a long time, because of his studies.

  But with Cade, he thought he might have finally found someone who could understand. Other vampires abandoned the human world almost immediately, except to feed. Cade insisted on dressing and acting and talking like a person. He was still tethered to humanity, as much as Konrad was, but like Konrad, was above it.

  Of course, Cade was much younger. And disappointingly moralistic, even priggish. Konrad had to abandon his fantasy of the two of them sitting down like civilized beings, perhaps over cards or chess, and discussing what they had learned in their long lives.

  Cade hated him. Had from the moment he first saw Konrad. Konrad knew why, of course. He spent enough time with Sigmund, back in Vienna, to make a simple diagnosis. (Sigmund found him distasteful—probably for reasons even the analyst could not explain, or would ever care to plumb. But he was bound by the rules of polite society, of gentility, to converse with a man of Konrad’s wealth and stature.) In Konrad, Cade saw a parasite feeding off the life of others. He despised that.

  It was only a reflection. Konrad was just the surface on which Cade projected his own self-loathing.

  Konrad was forced to conclude that Cade was too sentimental. He did not recognize what he was, how he was greater than the common mass of humanity.

  It also kept him from recognizing Konrad’s position, as far above Cade as Cade was from the common herd. That was why Cade would always fail. He did not know his place, Konrad decided. He was incapable of recognizing his superiors.

  At last, it was time to remedy that.

  He picked up his phone and dialed. It took a moment to connect; the encryption was always a bit slow.

  “It’s me,” he said to the voice that picked up. “The president’s pet bloodhound was just here.”

  A slight pause. “What did he want?”

  “That’s not the right answer,” Konrad said.

  Another pause, longer this time. “We’ll handle it,” the voice replied.

  “Yes. I thought that was what you meant.”

  “There’s no need to be snide, Doctor.” Even through the electronic masking, Konrad could hear the wounded pride. “I simply wondered what you’d done to attract the president’s attention.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes,” Konrad said. “It doesn’t impact our agreement. You don’t need to know.”

  “You sound frightened, Doctor.” Now there was a slightly mocking tone.

  Konrad took another moment to compose himself. “Do you really think you’re in a position to push me?”

  Another pause. “I understand.”

  “No, you don’t,” Konrad said. “But you will.”

  NINETEEN

  The subject’s blood itself is filled with previously unidentified hormones, enzymes and antibodies. These compounds, which we continue to study, may explain the subject’s immunity to our test-panel of diseases. Attempts to inoculate the subject with everything from the common cold (Rhinovirus) to AIDS (HIV) failed completely. Within an hour, no trace of any viral or bacterial contaminants could be found in the subject’s blood. Similar efforts with bioweapons (powdered anthrax), nerve agents and gases were also unsuccessful.

  —BRIEFING BOOK: CODENAME: NIGHTMARE PET

  Zach followed Cade to the parking garage attached to the clinic, headed for the sedan.

  “What did you think of him?” Cade asked.

  “Give me some credit,” Zach said. “Guy’s more full of shit than a duck pond.”

  Cade’s mouth twitched at the corner before settling into its usual stony calm.

  Cade opened the trunk, and retrieved a black nylon case. He unzipped it, and revealed an array of electronic gizmos held by Velcro straps.

  Zach grinned. “Sweet. Finally some superspy tech.”

  Cade resisted the urge to sigh. He turned on the small, battery-powered GPS tracker. A signal lit up on his sat-phone.

  Then he found Konrad’s parking space, Zach trailing along behind.

  The doctor’s Ferrari was parked under his RESERVED sign. Cade looked around for cameras and then ducked under the rear wheel. The rare-earth magnet on the tracer stuck to the axle like glue.

  Zach watched, still grinning. “So what do we do now?”

  “Now, you wait here. Konrad has several cars. Tomorrow morning, you do the same thing I just did if he comes to work in a different one.”

  Zach’s face fell. “That’s it?”

  “For the time being, yes.”

  Zach stewed all the way back to the sedan. Cade figured the tantrum would come before they exited the garage. Zach didn’t even make it inside the car.

  “You know, I’m getting
a little bit sick of this,” he said. He stared at Cade over the roof of the sedan. “You’re supposed to take orders from me, remember?”

  It suddenly occurred to Cade why Zach annoyed him. He was completely convinced that he knew the shape of the world, and resisted every attempt to knock him out of that certainty. Cade had not dealt with anyone like that for decades.

  In short, he was young, and he made Cade feel old. That was a human feeling—one he hadn’t had before. Not ever.

  He wasn’t sure what to make of it.

  He knew Zach was frustrated and acting out, trying to assert control over an arguably insane situation.

  It didn’t make him any less irritating, however.

  Cade buried the feelings. “It doesn’t quite work like that.”

  Zach wasn’t going to be put off. “So how does it work? Tell me. What happens if I give an order and you don’t follow it?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Zach rolled his eyes, then reached inside his jacket and came out with a small silver flask.

  “Actually, I do.”

  Cade couldn’t sniff the contents of the flask—it was sealed tight. “What is that?”

  Zach looked inordinately pleased with himself. “About twelve ounces of type O negative, I think.”

  “What? Where did you get that?”

  “I swiped it from the doctor’s fridge, when I told you I was looking for the restroom.”

  Cade stepped back from the car. His hands were shaking, and despite his best efforts, they would not stop.

  “Why would you—why?”

  “Because I want to know, Cade. What kind of vampire doesn’t drink human blood?”

  “I won’t do it.”

  “Sure you will. I’m following the rules. I just gave you a lawful order. And I’m the president’s representative. As far as you’re concerned, that’s the same as coming straight from him.” Zach’s smug look was just about unbearable now. “So drink up.”

  Cade felt his right foot move, as if on its own, back toward the car. The first step to taking the flask and downing it, all in one long, easy gulp . . .