The doctor placed a steadying hand on Evelyn’s shoulder, a look of deep and genuine concern on his face. “Ms. Paulson, I’m afraid we have to be prepared for the absolute worst. The next twenty-four hours are critical. While we still have hope for Sarah’s recovery, we also need to be prepared to remove her from the ventilator.”
Evelyn’s quiet sobs turned to a low, keening wail. She buried her face in her hands and doubled over in the chair, grief and pain overtaking her.
The doctor patted Evelyn’s shoulder and left her to suffer alone.
10
Viktor Kohlhaas looked at the antique gold clock on his large mahogany desk. It was a gift from his son. It was bought with family money, of course, but the warm sentiment had been a welcome change, a potential perestroika in their own private cold war of a relationship. Things had subsequently regressed, however, and the clock served more as poignant reminder of dashed hope than anything else.
Kohlhaas couldn’t bear to look at it now, after what had happened. He no longer had the capacity for tears over this particular tragedy, but grief had been replaced by something worse, a hollowness in the center of him that he feared would consume him entirely.
Two o’clock. Kohlhaas was exhausted. He needed whiskey and sleep. Where the hell was the courier? Where the hell was Franklin Barnes with an update on the security breach?
Kohlhaas’ intercom buzzed. “There’s a Jim Firth here to see you, sir,” his secretary said. “He’s with security outside the building. He said you sent for him.”
Finally. Kohlhaas made his way out through the labyrinthine security arrangement that separated Pharma Synergique’s innards from the Paris plebs, and took in the cold, damp February air.
The men exchanged no words, as was their protocol. The visitor took a black backpack from his shoulder and offered it to Kohlhaas. Kohlhaas placed the backpack over his left shoulder and fished a small white envelope from his suit pocket. He palmed the envelope and extended his hand. Jim Firth shook it, and took the envelope. It wasn’t exactly a stealthy pass, but neither was it likely to garner much attention in the largely abandoned warehouse district.
Jim Firth left. Viktor Kohlhaas reentered the Pharma Synergique facility. Moments later, Albert LeBeque, Synergique’s chief scientist, carefully removed the small cooler from inside the backpack, removed the small glass vial from the ice bed within, and placed the blood sample inside a biohazard containment hood.
“How long?” Kohlhaas asked.
“We’ll know before sunrise,” LeBeque said.
Kohlhaas nodded. He wished the test could be run more quickly, but he was thankful that it took hours rather than weeks.
He was also thankful the courier had arrived with the sample intact. Any of a million different things could have gone wrong. Firth had flown via private jet across the Atlantic, but a random customs search could have stopped them dead in their tracks, and Kohlhaas would have to eat the one hundred thousand Euros he’d spent obtaining the sample to poison, and then hopefully to cure, Synergique’s army of lab monkeys.
If the cooler had been breached, they’d have an epidemic on their hands. That wouldn’t necessarily have been a bad thing from Synergique’s perspective, but it was still entirely too early. They had to be certain the drug worked, and they had to be sure it worked against this strain. It was the perfect bug, full of fury and fervor, and its deadliness had already spawned news reports across the globe. If Kohlhaas could have ordered a bespoke bacteria to fit his purposes, he couldn’t have asked for a better one.
As long as the formulation worked.
If it didn’t, there was no way out for Synergique. No two ways about it.
And Kohlhaas was horribly exposed, personally, financially, and professionally. They had proven they could reach out and touch him anywhere, at any time. They had demonstrated that capability over and over, but never with more devastating effect than the day prior. It had been stressful and frightening before, but the manila envelope changed everything. The game had gone from serious to deadly. He was vulnerable, and, as they had made painfully, excruciatingly obvious, so was his family.
But he couldn’t stop. He and his team were tantalizingly close to achieving their goal. It had to be completed. There was no other way.
Kohlhaas walked wearily back into his office. His eyes were red and squinted, byproduct of too little sleep, too much stress, and a horrific hole that had been torn in the middle of his heart just a day earlier. He was rubbing his eyes as he sat down at his desk, and he didn’t see the mammoth frame of Franklin Barnes seated at the conference table at the far end of the executive suite.
“Hello, boss.”
Barnes’ voice caused Kohlhaas to jump. “Jesus,” Kohlhaas said. “You startled me.”
“You should go home and get some rest.”
Home. That was the last place on the planet that Kohlhaas wanted to go. He’d told his wife by phone about the manila envelope’s contents. She had dropped the phone in rage and anguish, and Kohlhaas had been forced to listen to her heartbroken howls until he could stand it no longer. He had hung up the phone. They hadn’t spoken since.
“Update, please,” Kohlhaas said.
Barnes nodded. He had interviewed Synergique employees through the night. There were just a few left to speak with, the night-shifters who had taken Friday off. They would be back to work that evening, Barnes promised. He needed to interview a few of them again, after some time had passed, in order to chase down a few inconsistencies.
“Inconsistencies imply guilt,” Kohlhaas said.
Barnes shook his head. “Don’t confuse the logic. Every guilty person introduces inconsistencies in his story. But not every inconsistent story comes from a guilty person. Human perception is imperfect, and so is memory. It just takes a little time to get to the bottom of things.”
“There is no time,” Kohlhaas said, anger replacing weariness in his eyes.
“No argument here,” Barnes replied. “But figuring this shit out is like growing a baby. No matter how many women you put on the job, it still takes as long as it takes.”
“You’re aware of what’s at stake.” There was a warning in Kohlhaas’ voice.
“Acutely,” Barnes said. He was one of the very few Synergique employees who wasn’t intimidated by the boss. He treated Kohlhaas far more collegially than anyone else dared, but was rewarded in return for his audacity with Kohlhaas’ respect for his balls and competence. “Given the stakes, I have to advise you again that police involvement is a given, and not a choice that we have the power to exercise. The… event… happened in another city, and the authorities will eventually figure out the connection. Hell, they probably have already. Those cops aren’t in our pockets, and we can’t influence events the way we can here.”
“Precisely why we mustn’t involve them,” Kohlhaas said.
“Wrong,” Barnes challenged. “That’s precisely why we have to involve them. If we don’t get out in front of it, we could all be hauled in.”
Kohlhaas shook his head. “Not yet. We’re too close. It’s a risk, yes, but we’ll hold off contacting the police. At least until we’re sure.”
Barnes took a deep breath. “About that,” he said. “Everyone is on twelve-hour shifts, and we’re working around the clock, but we’re still days away from having the secondary location up and running. We won’t be ‘sure’ for an uncomfortably long time.”
Kohlhaas’ nostrils flared. “You don’t think I’m keenly aware of the timeline? You don’t think it’s at the very fucking top of my worries right at this second?”
“Easy,” Barnes said, hands raised in a conciliatory gesture. “You’ve been through a lot over the past few days. More than most people could bear. The things that you’ve been through, that you’re going through right now, can seriously screw with your head. It’s my job to make sure you understand all the potential ramifications before we make a decision we can’t un-make.”
There was evident anger benea
th Kohlhaas’ controlled visage. “Barnes,” he said, “you are my chief of security. Nothing more.”
Barnes nodded. “That’s right. And nothing less, either. We won’t contact the police yet, but for the record, it’s a huge mistake. And also for the record, you should let me do what you hired me for. I’m damn good at it.”
Kohlhaas’ look softened. He nodded slowly, lips pursed.
Barnes recognized the look. It was as close as Kohlhaas ever came to admitting error or shortcoming. Years of defending himself from ambitious Brutus-type would-be successors had made Kohlhaas accustomed to carefully managing the perceptions people were allowed to gather of him.
But Barnes was good at reading people. Better than most. His life often depended on it. “You asked for outside security consultants to offer their opinions,” he said, changing the subject. “Two are due in tomorrow, a third on Monday, and I haven’t nailed the other two down yet.”
Kohlhaas grimaced and shook his head. “We need them here now.”
Barnes smiled indulgently at his boss. “Out here in the real world, things don’t happen at the speed of think.”
“We’ve been breached, Frank,” Kohlhaas said. “It does us no good to move to a more secure facility if we bring the problem with us. And there’s no way we can enter production until we’re certain we have the breach taken care of.”
“I understand all of the forces at play,” Barnes said, his voice calm and soothing. “But trust me. I’ve done this stuff for a long, long time. Slowing down always gets you there faster.”
Kohlhaas clenched his teeth. He wasn’t in the mood for a patient, methodical approach. But he didn’t doubt Barnes’ wisdom on the subject. “Anything else I should know before you get back to work?”
Barnes nodded. “As you know, I make use of some very powerful internet tools. There is something that you should know. It might be of importance.”
Kohlhaas impatiently urged Barnes to elaborate.
“Someone has been using internet search terms that I don’t like,” Barnes continued. “The terms might imply outside knowledge of what was in that envelope.” Barnes nodded toward the manila envelope that had mysteriously appeared on Kohlhaas’ desk the day prior. “I’ve contracted an investigator. We should know more soon.”
11
It was five in the evening in New York. That meant it would be eleven at night in Paris. Alexander Toney watched the news loop with interest. A new pandrug resistant bacteria strain had people up in arms. Prizer Pharmaceuticals had long since abandoned its antibiotic research funding in favor of more lucrative pursuits, but Toney, Prizer’s longtime CEO, smelled opportunity.
He also smelled blood in the water.
He dialed a long telephone number into his company cell phone. Men in his position didn’t sweat the international call charges. In fact, the expense didn’t even occur to him. Why should it? He was putting together something worth billions.
Toney had a solid inkling that the party on the other end of the call was sitting in his office, burning the midnight oil, watching the telephone as it rang, debating whether to pick up.
But Toney wasn’t surprised when the call went to voicemail.
Alexander Toney didn’t bother leaving a message. He didn’t have to. The caller ID would be more than enough to get his message across.
12
Sunday morning greeted Peter Kittredge in much the same fashion that Saturday morning had. But this time, Kittredge was prepared for the four a.m. withdrawal symptoms. He had a fresh liter of vodka at the ready. He nearly vomited up the first gulp, but he managed to keep it down. After years of practice, he knew to wait for the first swallow to hit his system before imbibing more. The first little rush of pleasant warmth in his veins made the subsequent belts go down much more easily.
He recalled the prior day’s events. After his little visit with Polizeikommissar Jürgen Strauss, the rest of Saturday had been a wash. He’d tried in vain to think of a way to reach Nora. He only knew her first name and her place of employment — Kleinmann Holdings, in downtown Cologne — but they were undoubtedly closed on the weekend.
He’d stopped back by the bar where they’d all met two evenings prior. Their mutual consort had been murdered just over thirty-six hours earlier, so there was almost no chance that Nora would be ready for a nostalgic trip to the place where she, Kittredge, and Sergio had partied together. But it was possible that she wanted to get in touch with him, Kittredge figured. She might attempt his apartment, but it was still sealed off with police tape, and the breakfast joint where she and Kittredge had dined the morning after — while Sergio was busy getting his skull crushed — was closed after two p.m. And so, Kittredge guessed, Nora might add two and two and realize that the next-best place to meet would be at the bar.
He was disappointed but not surprised when he couldn’t find her. He stayed long enough to get pleasantly drunk, even drunk enough to be horny again, despite the horrors of the past two days, but he saw no solid prospects. Nobody was throwing any game his way, and his semi-slurred advances were rebuffed by men and women alike. He had retired to the comfort of in-room pornography at his hotel. Three minutes later, give or take two and a half minutes, he fell asleep and started snoring.
Kittredge took another swig of vodka, savoring the burn as it took the edge off of his hangover. He bounced the bottle off of his tooth, wondering vaguely whether he had broken a chip off, either from his tooth or from the glass bottle. No matter either way, he thought vaguely as the familiar burn assaulted his esophagus. He had work to do.
He transferred some of the contents of the vodka bottle into an empty water bottle and made his way to the elevator. Moments later, he took a seat in the computer alcove near the hotel’s reception desk. His task today, he decided, would be to figure out which of the Copenhagen-born Sergios were alive, and which were dead.
“Sergio Antonio Alvarez,” he typed into the search bar. He drank while the slow internet connection took its sweet time. Good thing he had all day. A few clicks later, Kittredge had his first telephone number. He marked it down on his sheet of hotel stationery next to Sergio Alvarez’ name. One down already, and it wasn’t even five a.m. Sixteen to go.
A conversation at the hotel desk caught his attention. “Where is the computer room?” asked a deep male voice with an accent that Kittredge couldn’t place. Kittredge peered around the corner of the alcove just in time to see a well-built man in a blue raincoat walking toward him. Kittredge got a strange feeling that he couldn’t quite put words to, but the man smiled at him and asked in congenial tones whether the second computer was taken. Kittredge shook his head no, and the man sat down.
It was hard for Kittredge to concentrate after that. Was the stranger glancing over at his computer screen? Or was Kittredge just being paranoid? He took another reassuring swallow from his “water” bottle and got back to work. Sergio Bellaforte was next on his list.
After a few moments, the stranger got up and left. As he did so, Kittredge’s uneasy feeling returned. He got the strange feeling that as the man slid his chair back and stood to leave, he took a good, long look at Kittredge’s computer screen. Why had the man done that? Was he just curious and a little bit rude? Or was it something else?
Or had Kittredge imagined it? His nerves had taken a beating over the past couple of days. Not to mention the fact that he’d been hitting the bottle pretty damn hard lately. Still, it was hard to shake the feeling that he had been watched.
The hotel breakfast buffet opened an hour later, and Kittredge availed himself of sugar, starch, animal fat, and coffee. His taste buds had been beaten up by the vodka all morning, and his stomach wasn’t entirely sound, so his breakfast experience wasn’t all it might have been. But he’d staved off starvation for another few hours, he figured.
His mind wandered back to the Sergio predicament. He rallied the mental discipline to replay the events in chronological order, at least as he recollected them, but was instantly frust
rated. Minds were nonlinear things to begin with, and his especially, what with the nearly continuous distilled soaking he’d given it lately, but he recalled enough of what had happened in order to form the beginnings of a new mental gestalt, a new perspective from which to view the whole thing.
It wasn’t a pleasant perspective. It reminded him, for the hundredth time, of Venezuela. Because it felt like there was a pro at work in Kittredge’s life again. It was a horrible, eviscerating feeling, because the last time a group of pros had focused their attentions on his measly little existence, things had gone instantly out of control. They had thoroughly and utterly dominated his world. There was no privacy, no hiding anything, no sanctuary, no move he made that they hadn’t watched, anticipated even. They had crawled so far up his ass that they had to have seen daylight peeking through his teeth.
And that’s what things felt like now. How were there no traces of anyone else in his apartment? How were there no fingerprints on the 40mm Howitzer shell that Kittredge had used as an umbrella stand, and that someone had used to liberate Sergio’s brains? How had Kittredge’s fingerprints not been smudged, even? To swing that damn thing hard enough to crush a man’s skull… Kittredge couldn’t imagine doing that without gripping it tightly enough to at least obscure the existing fingerprints.
Polizeikommissar Strauss had helped him remember that Nora had momentarily borrowed his apartment key to fetch her purse. Could she have left the door unlocked? She swore not. But he hadn’t had a chance to talk to her since before the police had taken them into separate rooms for initial questioning.
Jesus, could she possibly have been involved? Could she have known Sergio better than she let on?
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 91
