Blood List

by Patrick Freivald

  Emile Frank's direct line rang. The caller ID read "White House." The FBI had been hounding him for days for his source on the nuclear-weapons tip, and he was tired of hiding behind "need to know." Suppressing a sigh, he picked up the phone and put it to his ear. "Doctor Frank."

  "Hi, Emile," said the pleasant male voice on the other end. "This is Trubb. Or is it Palenti? I don't remember which one I am."

  Emile went cold. He kept his voice neutral. "You're on a secure line?"

  "Duh," Paul Renner replied.

  "What can I do for you, Mister Renner?"

  "What you can do is give me every piece of information you have involving your research on heroin addiction."

  "And why would I do that, Mister Renner?"

  "Because if you don't, I'm going to kill you. And call me Paul."

  Emile paused. "You might find that more difficult than you think, Mister Renner."

  "Oh, please," Renner said. "I know where you live, where you work, what you drive, and I have your travel itinerary for the next two months. Do you honestly believe that the extra security you have lurking around your house is going to stop me?"

  Emile closed his eyes. "So my choice is life in prison or you kill me? I think I'll take my chances."

  "I have no interest in ruining you," Renner said. "I don't care what happens to you one way or another."

  "Then why would you want the research?"

  "It doesn't matter." Renner's voice was tense.

  "Yes," Emile said, "it does. It matters a lot. So either you're going to tell me, or this conversation is over."

  Silence. Emile began to sweat.

  "Mister Renner?"

  Paul Renner's voice was flat. "My father was one of your patients."

  Oh, shit. "I see," Emile said.

  "I don't think you do," Renner said. "But I'm going to have to insist. Your research. All of it."

  "And you'll leave me alone? You'll leave my family alone?" Emile hated the desperation in his voice.

  "You give me everything you have, everything, and you can go on living your life as if nothing ever happened. After you do whatever you're going to do to Palomini's team."

  "Where do I drop it?"

  "Get out of your eight-thirty meeting and get your car. After you've retrieved the information from wherever you have it, go home. There's a scrubbed cell phone in the drawer of your nightstand, under the old newspapers where you kept that unlicensed pistol. I'll give you instructions from there."

  I'm going to fire every one of those meat-headed sons of bitches. "All right," Emile said. "I'll have the files in fifteen minutes, but they're going to be heavily encrypted. I'll deliver them to you and will send you the password as soon as I'm safely away. Then you and I are done. Finished. Permanently."

  "You'll call me with the password within twenty minutes of the exchange." The line went dead.

  Emile disengaged the magnetic failsafe on his bottom drawer, opened it, and pulled out an external hard drive. This should have made me rich. He locked the drawer and headed out, an excuse on his lips.

  Doug watched Dr. Frank though his binoculars. "He's heading to his car, alone," he said into the mini-COM that Sam had set up. "A blue Volvo, Virginia tags. Seven-Echo-Three-Zulu-Charlie-One."

  "Roger," Gene replied.

  Doug pulled down the binoculars and put his car in drive. "He's heading south. Stay behind me and out of sight." In his rear-view mirror, Gene's car pulled out from two-hundred yards behind him.

  "Roger again. Just don't lose him, Doug. This might be our last chance at Renner."

  Tell me something I don't know.

  * * *

  February 9th, 9:37 AM EST; Anacostia Park; Washington, D.C.

  Paul watched from a park bench as Frank's cobalt-blue Volvo XC90 pulled into the restaurant parking lot. The air was bright and clean, and the sounds of morning traffic had faded from an insane cacophony into dull background noise. "Okay, I'm here," the doctor's voice said through his phone.

  "I know. Get out of the car and walk into the park, toward the swings." A little girl shrieked with glee behind him as another child chased her across the grass. "Okay, now turn right down the jogging path."

  He let Dr. Frank spot him as he got close. Paul stood and stepped forward. "The data, Emilio?" he said without preamble, his hand outstretched. Frank plucked a small paper bag from his breast pocket. He placed it in Paul's hand and jerked back. Paul chuckled.

  "This is everything, but none of it points back to me. Even if you try to connect the dots."

  Paul looked inside the bag, then put it in his pocket. "I told you I don't care. Get out of here. I'll call you in twenty minutes for the password."

  "You'll have it as soon as I—" He was interrupted when a blue sedan jumped the curb, followed by a white SUV. Emergency lights flashed from the dashboards of both vehicles.

  Paul turned blankly back to Dr. Frank. "You set me up."

  Frank cowered. "No, wait!" The bullet hit him square in the forehead. A woman screamed as the body fell. From the two vehicles poured Gene Palomini, Carl Brent, and Doug Goldman.

  As the car slid to a stop, Gene bailed out with his sidearm drawn, shouting orders and using the door for cover. "Drop the weapon and put your hands on your head or we will kill you!"

  "Watch his left hand." Doug clicked in over the COM.

  Renner slowly took his left hand from his pocket as he dropped the pistol with his right. "You can't shoot me, Gene. Me holding this detonator is the only thing stopping the hundred-odd people in the restaurant behind you from being blown to bits."

  Gene hesitated.

  "He's bluffing," Carl said over the COM. "Let me shoot him."

  Gene stood his ground. "Put your hands on your head, turn around slowly, and get on your knees."

  Paul held the object out toward Doug, to give a better view. "It's military," Doug said. "It appears to be activated."

  "He's bluffing," Carl said again. "I'm going to shoot him."

  "Hold," Gene said.

  Renner smiled. "Goodbye, gents. I have a camera in the restaurant and a couple surprises waiting along my way out of here. If you try to follow me or evacuate anyone or I even smell a cop for the next fifteen minutes, they all die." He turned and jogged down the path as Gene stood helpless.

  "He's bluffing, Gene. He's bluffing." Carl's pistol tracked Renner as he disappeared through the trees. "We've got to go get him."

  Gene looked back at the restaurant. The patrons inside rubbernecked at the windows to see what the commotion was all about. "We can't risk it, Carl."

  Thirty minutes later, Gene, Doug, Carl, and Sam were en route to HQ in D.C. The restaurant had been evacuated and the bomb squad sent in. Gene sat in a holding room for two hours before he was told that there was no bomb in the first place.

  * * *

  February 11th, 11:02 AM EST; Fort George G. Meade; Anne Arundel County, Maryland.

  Captain Sara Belonga looked at the caller ID on her desk phone. It read, USAIC, Huachuca, AZ. She picked up the phone on the fourth ring. "DYQ CNC." Anyone who called this number either knew what that meant or had called the wrong number. At the National Security Agency, you didn't give out information you didn't have to. Ever. Besides, only one person ever called her personal line from Fort Huachuca.

  The voice on the other end was softly male, pleasant, and polite, with just a hint of Alabama to it. "Hello, Miss, this is Lieutenant-Colonel Jacob Rostan with the United States Army Intelligence Center. Is Captain Belonga in?" Sara smiled in spite of herself.

  "Jake, you asshole, I mean Lieutenant-Colonel, sir, you know it's me. What's up?" She'd known Jake for two years, since she'd been assigned this post, but only over the phone. He always called her directly when he wanted something and was an insufferable flirt. They'd worked together several times on joint USAIC-NSA code-breaking problems.

  "I've got an encrypted drive I need cracked, and I need it cracked as quickly as possible, then re-routed to me immediately."


  "All right," she said. "Let me take a look at it." It took two minutes for their computers to shake hands, verifying access codes and identities, then another fourteen minutes to upload. They killed time talking about their families, then bad first dates. It never took Jake long to bring it to dating, even though he was, to all appearances, happily married. She was in mid-laugh when the computers finished.

  She snapped back to business. "Okay, I've got it. Let me take a look."

  She clicked on the icon, and a logo popped up–an exploding star surrounded by a halo of binary zeroes and ones.

  "Ouch, Jake. SuPeRnOvA is a hard nut to crack. This could take months."

  He replied, "Yeah, I know, but I need you to task a team with appropriate clearances to it immediately. I don't care what you have to pull people from. This could be huge. I'm sending another file with some possible cribs. It goes without saying that this information goes nowhere except back to me. But I'm saying it anyway."

  "Yes, sir. I won't even read it myself, sir," she replied with no hint of irony. "We'll get right on it and send it to you as soon as it's done. Still, we're talking two to six weeks, absolute bare minimum."

  "Very good," he said. "Do what you can."

  "We'll get on it as soon as we get the official order through chain of command."

  "Under five minutes. Assemble a team."

  "Roger that. Catch you next time, Jake."

  "Bye, darling," he said and hung up the phone.

  A few minutes later Lieutenant-Colonel Rostan had the order dispatched through official military channels. That done, he picked up the phone and dialed another number.

  "Hello?" said the voice on the other end.

  "Done. I'll send everything as soon as it's cracked."

  "I've wired the first hundred grand to your account. You'll get the rest when I have the data."

  "Pleasure doing business with you, Paul."

  "Sure thing, Jake. Keep me posted."

  Jake Rostan hung up the phone.

  Chapter 32

  February 13th, 12:16 PM EST; St. Angelina's Cemetery; Gregory Falls, New York.

  The gravestones were goosebumps of snow on the landscape, white and harsh in the midday sunlight. The priest droned on in the background while the mourners said their goodbyes. Jerri Bates's mother sat stoically in front; her father sobbed in the bitter cold.

  Gene and his team stood in the back, separate from the civilians, the small-town crowd that had grown up with Jerri Bates. Her family, friends, and neighbors mourned the loss of one of their own.

  "No Marty?" Carl asked.

  Gene shook his head without looking up. "Doctor wouldn't clear him to leave. He tried to bust out, against medical advice, but he didn't make it past the nurse's station."

  "He's always had more heart than brains, Gene," Doug said.

  "Runs in the family," Gene said.

  They stood in silence, listening to the priest pray for the living and the dead, and they muttered "Amen." They listened to Jessica Bates ask the Almighty for justice to be done, and they said "Amen." They heard her pray for forgiveness for the man who had taken her sister's life. They said nothing.

  Doug turned and walked away, blazing a path through the snow toward the small parking lot. Sam followed in his wake. Carl looked at Gene, then at the retreating forms of Doug Goldman and Sam Greene. With an apologetic, sad smile, he turned and followed his friends, leaving Gene alone with his thoughts and the family of the girl he had killed.

  * * *

  April 10th, 6:00 PM EST; Gene Palomini's Apartment; Washington, D.C.

  Two months after Jerri Bates' funeral, Gene unlocked his door with a sigh and stepped into the front hallway. His shoes splattered the wall and door with speckles of mud as he kicked them off. April showers…. He hung his jacket on the doorknob, walked over to the fridge, pulled out a Heineken, and popped the tab. A quick swallow quenched his thirst as he unbuckled his pistol and put it on the counter. He set his cell phone and COM ear bead next to it.

  He shuffled into the living room and collapsed on the couch, reached for the remote, and noticed an envelope on the coffee table. Instantly alert, he sat up. Beer spilled down the front of his shirt. He ignored it. "Don't move," Paul Renner said from the bedroom doorway. Gene froze, then settled back down onto the couch.

  "We're going to catch you," Gene said.

  Paul sighed. "If the time comes, and you get close, I'll have to kill you, and I'll regret it. In the meantime you haven't turned up shit, and you're not going to, so there's no reason to go there. I'm not toying with the FBI anymore."

  Gene patted the envelope. "This from you?"

  "Yeah. There's some information there about Emile Frank you might find interesting."

  "Ah. Thank you." Gene didn't feel like thanking him. "Is that all?"

  "Yes."

  Gene reached forward and opened the envelope. Inside was a single, unlabeled USB memory stick.

  "What is it?"

  "The truth. Emile Frank helped engineer the gene-therapy technique. He knew it caused immediate psychosis in about one percent of the chimps. He buried the data and went to Bailey Pharmaceuticals with his 'miracle drug.' The rest you know. Sort of."

  "Sort of?"

  "Over three thousand subjects, Gene, in that clinic alone, between VanEpps and Lefkowitz. But Frank continued his research elsewhere. Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, D.C. One percent went nuts almost instantly, and he killed them with overdoses. The rest are time bombs, waiting to go off."

  "That…." Gene hesitated. "Covering that up might be sufficient motive for killing a lot of innocent people."

  "Yep. Lefkowitz was doing Frank's dirty work and didn't even know it."

  Gene turned around for the first time. Paul Renner leaned against the doorframe, a compact pistol pointed at the floor. Gene knew he had no chance of taking him down from fifteen feet away. Another man, maybe, but Renner was way too fast. His blood pounded in his ears as he stared at the face of the man who had killed Jerri Bates. Somehow, he kept his voice calm.

  "Does it include names of patients?" Gene asked.

  "Of victims, yeah."

  "How many, Paul?"

  "Over ten thousand." Paul's voice held no emotion.

  "My God. Are they on the disk?"

  Paul shook his head. "Only the dead ones. I'm keeping the rest of the list myself."

  "Why?" Gene asked.

  Paul didn't respond.

  "Why did you come here, Paul?"

  "Can it be cured?" Paul asked back. Something in his voice sounded desperate.

  "We're not sure. People are looking into it. Why?"

  "Not your business, Gene."

  "Why not turn the list over to the FBI?"

  "FBI are scum, Gene. What do you think they'd do to those people?"

  Taken aback, Gene didn't reply at first. "I'm not sure."

  "I am," Paul said.

  "Okay, then, what about the CDC?"

  Renner gave him a sad smile. "I will at some point. There's something I need to take care of first." He frowned at the floor.

  "Who's Kevin Parsons?"

  Paul snarled. "I said it's none of your fucking business."

  Gene cleared the couch in a single leap. Paul flinched and pulled the trigger. The bullet blasted a mound of fluff from the armrest. Gene slammed into him. His full-body check carried them both into the doorframe. Paul gasped for breath as Gene slammed his spine into the wooden molding. The pistol fell from his grip.

  Gene backed up half a step and body-checked Paul into the doorframe again. Paul head-butted Gene in the nose. Gene felt cartilage crush under the force and stumbled back a step, tears in his eyes. If he gets any distance, I'm a dead man. Gene swung with a wild haymaker, forcing Paul to duck and splattering them both with blood from his broken nose. With the killer crouched before him, Gene kneed him in the side of the head. Paul fell backward into the living room, scrambling on all fours to regain his feet. Gene charged after him.


  A swift kick to the knee knocked Gene crashing to the floor. Paul rolled out of the way, flipped to his feet and turned toward the door. Gene grabbed his left foot with both hands and twisted, hard. Paul tumbled to the floor and cracked his head on the coffee table. Gene dove on top of him, grabbed him by the throat, and hammered him in the face with his fist.

  Gene hit him again, and again. Paul's eyes lolled sideways, his bloody mouth open. His eyes snapped into focus as Gene cocked back for another blow. Gene recoiled as knuckles slammed into his throat. He fell back, sucking in air.

  Paul scrambled to his feet and bolted out the door.

  Gene grabbed his gun off the counter, and shoved the COM bead into his ear while he ducked out the door.

  "Sam!" he gasped. "I'm in pursuit of Paul Renner." He took the stairs two at a time. "Backup. Now!"

  "On it," Sam said.

  Bullets ricocheted through the entryway as he reached the bottom of the stairwell. He took cover behind the door, counted to three, and looked out. More shots peppered his position, and he ducked back.

  Tires screeched. Gene rounded the corner, his pistol leading. A blue sedan peeled away. He unloaded his gun, shattering the back window and punching holes in the trunk. The car took a hard left and disappeared from view.

  "Blue sedan headed north on Wisconsin Ave," he said into the COM. He gave the plate number.

  They found the car ten minutes later. There was no sign of Renner.

  * * *

  April 18th, 1:22 PM PST; Motel 6; Reno, Nevada.

  A week later, Paul sat on the edge of the bed, his eyes half closed. His right hand held the list of names from Emile Frank's computer, his left held a pen. Behind him a perky news anchor droned on about the Methadone Psychosis Syndrome scandal and the continued civic unrest it had been causing, a video-feed of a mob scene behind her. Half-listening, he stared at nothing in particular, lost in thought. He heard her say a name he recognized and looked up at the TV, surprised.