by John Ringo
“Find out what the really big money is doing, and copy that.”
When Matricardi strolled into Fattore’s, he was effusively greeted by the owner. From the back of the restaurant, Tom Smith noted that the trim Sicilian was wearing what seemed to be the de rigueur uniform: a very traditional dark suit, wing tips and a nice tie. A bright white carnation sat on his lapel. He was accompanied by Tradittore and a third person, a woman. She stole the show all by herself. The black Helmut Lang dress that the brunette wore was styled in anything but a conservative manner. Its form-fitting cut hugged her curves and accentuated all of her body’s subtle movements. Men surreptitiously watched her pass.
She watched everything but them.
The party strode directly to the table where Smith and Rune rose to greet them.
“Mr. Smith, Mr. Rune, please accept my thanks for meeting us today,” Matricardi said, offering a firm handshake. “I believe you are acquainted with Mr. Tradittore.” The suave aide nodded and shook hands with the two bankers.
“I also asked my companion, Ms. Oldryskya Khabayeva, to join us. I hope that you don’t mind.”
“Delighted to meet your associates, Mr. Matricardi.” Tom nodded at the companion. “How do you do, Ms. Khabayeva?”
“Quite well, thank you,” the woman replied coolly.
“Please, everyone sit.” The head of the Cosa Nova waited as the others sat in the chairs helpfully pulled out by the wait staff. “I’m delighted that we can all meet as friends and enjoy this restaurant. It’s one of my favorites.”
As the group seated itself, Matricardi snapped his fingers like a rifle shot. Before the sound had faded, Fattore led a short squad of tray bearers to the table. It rapidly filled with wine, rolls, antipasti, frutti di mare and some very small crescent pastries. Rune saw that his boss hadn’t reached for anything, and copied his example.
“Please, the appetizers are excellent,” Matricardi said, shoveling calamari onto his plate. “Talking goes better with eating, believe me.”
“Perhaps I would be a little more comfortable if you asked your security, who is doing a bad job of ignoring me, to either join us or leave,” Smith said, smiling slightly. “Their watchfulness is ruining my appetite.”
Rune controlled a start. He hadn’t noticed any surveillance. Matricardi smiled thinly and nodded to Tradittore, who tapped on his smartphone. Moments later two pairs of men rose from different tables and quietly exited the restaurant.
Smith reached over and spooned some antipasti onto his plate and added a roll. He nodded to the door.
“Thank you.”
The charcoal-suited businessman shrugged and took a bite of his squid.
“It’s a normal precaution,” he said. “But here, as I said, perhaps we can all be friends.
“This zombie plague is scary stuff,” Matricardi continued. “At first a lot of people left the city, but then nothing happened. Every day some people turn zombie, maybe they bite some people, and then the cops snatch them up. My sources tell me that the hospitals are already nearly full. My sources also tell me that this might be some kind of biological weapon attack. They say that the government, the military, the banks and the biotech companies are all trying to make a cure. I notice that you banks are still running your operations in Manhattan, so maybe things aren’t so bad yet. Am I right?”
He emptied a partial bottle of red into his own glass and motioned for more wine.
“I am, at the heart of the matter, a businessman.” He gestured around the restaurant. “This disease is bad for business. More than that, even though my businesses may be unconventional, they fulfill a need and a purpose. Otherwise, why would I even exist?”
“No argument here,” Smith said with a nod. He took another bite and tucked the bite into his cheek as he talked. “Here’s what I am ready to share now, here. One: the disease is synthetic. We think it’s a weapon, but we don’t know who made it or why. There appears to be no specific motive.”
His audience was rapt.
“Two: even though we are catching and isolating victims, the infection curve is still accelerating. We’ve started to get a feel for the natural resistance rate and it’s not good. Whereas with something like smallpox you’ve got a high enough natural resistance rate that society can continue to function even in a major outbreak, the natural resistance rate to this is low enough…so, very not good. Barring a cure or at least a vaccine, it will eventually reach a take-off point from which there is no recovery.”
Tradittore laid down his silverware. Khabayeva hadn’t picked hers up.
“Last: in order to have the best chance to find the vaccine and manufacture it in amounts sufficient to dose the entire population, we need the engines of the economy to keep turning.” Matricardi seemed unperturbed while Smith spoke. The mob boss chewed and swallowed and followed that with wine.
“My business is a part of that engine, right?” Matricardi made a little open palmed gesture towards his side of the table.
“Yes,” Smith agreed equably. “Businesses of all kinds preserve the feeling in all people that things are ‘normal,’ for values of the word normal. I understand that you sell a lot of tuna and swordfish.” He sipped some of the wine and nodded in appreciation. “This needs some of that prosciutto.” He forked prosciutto and green honeydew melon onto his plate.
The Sicilian rotated one hand a few times, flipping it first palm up and them palm down.
“Tuna, swordfish, orange roughy, seabass, cod, abalone, lobster…” Matricardi grinned. “Yeah, I import a bit of seafood.”
“Let’s say that you supply something like fifty percent of illegally caught wild seafood on the East Coast,” Smith continued. “Round numbers. Looking at just one sector, let’s pretend you had to stop bringing flash-frozen swordfish into New Bedford, Port Elizabeth and Pompano Beach. That would cut the annual supply by a wholesale value upwards of a hundred million dollars or conservatively, what, thirty percent? There would be places that couldn’t keep it on the menu. Ditto other seasonal items. Ditto a number of other, lets call them consumer goods, including some truly impressive volumes of oxycodone.”
Tradittore involuntarily grimaced. Matricardi’s genial expression didn’t change at all.
“We all know that the price of unleaded changes overnight every time some Saudi prince breaks wind,” Tom said. His tone was light, even if his eyes were hard. “Food prices move almost as fast. If consumer prices for everyday expected goods spike or worse, the products are simply not available, then the man on the street assigns the responsibility for that missing item to the zombie plague. If he reflects on how his ‘normal’ is being changed, then he might be a little more susceptible to fear. He may start thinking about his participation in doing his ‘normal’ job. The absence of an expected good or service can prompt further inventory shortfalls, if you see what I mean.”
While Smith talked, silverware clinked lightly and waiters poured more wine. Matricardi swirled the deep red liquid around in his glass as he listened. Tradittore and Rune ate but Khabayeva still hadn’t touched the food since Smith began sharing details.
“So, you see…” He looked at each person in the party in turn. “…it isn’t just in my interest to keep the bank running…and the financial engine that fuels this city, this country and by derivation the laboratories and scientists searching for a cure to the Pacific flu. It’s in everyone’s interest.”
Rune was attentive, Tradittore was blandly pleasant, but Khabayeva was unsettled. Or unsettling. Smith wasn’t certain. Her slightly tilted violet eyes were cool and intelligent, not appraising like the moll that he had expected.
Something deeper was there.
“Mr. Matricardi’s businesses are considerable.” Oldryskya spoke in clear, if slightly accented English, filling the brief pause. “But they are not comprehensive. Does your information cover the…other businessmen in the area?”
Tradittore shot her a surprised look, almost shocked. One doesn’t expect a pet
, no matter how beautiful, to participate in a meeting. Matricardi held up his hand to forestall an interruption and looked at Smith instead.
Tom addressed her in a Slavic tongue.
“No, not Volograd, farther south actually,” the woman replied. “But your accent is quite good. Still, the question is for you.”
“The real currency in banking isn’t money,” Smith said, smiling a little crookedly. “We deal in information. Mr. Matricardi may not be the largest in all the markets where he…competes. But the Cosa Nova’s interests aren’t so different from Wall Street’s interests.”
Matricardi didn’t quite frown, but his glance appeared to quell Khabayeva from saying more.
“And yes”—Smith looked back to Matricardi—“the economic activity in your, pardon, in these sectors are as much a part of the economic engine as any other.”
“Your information is quite good.” Matricardi thought a moment, then took a final bite of calamari. “I won’t pretend that I don’t know what you are talking about. As for the rest, that’s a lot to think about. This take-off point for the disease. You got a date?”
Smith grimaced, showing his first real emotion of the meeting.
“That’s the million, sorry, trillion dollar question.” He dabbed his mouth with a brilliant white linen napkin. “I’m trying to get the best estimates for designing and mass producing a vaccine to our market modeling analysts. Other teams are working on a therapy for the already infected. A number of factors are driving the infection rate, and we don’t yet know them all. An additional number of factors are complicating the vaccine design, and the best virologists are fighting over the desperately important details, which are not yet all finalized.”
Matricardi gestured impatiently.
“Other countries are not uniformly reporting their infection rate,” Smith continued. “And they aren’t aggressively using measures that we know work such as isolating anyone who has any flu symptoms and screening travelers, as well as protecting critical transportation and security personnel. These factors and more prevent me, with great regret, from having a precise answer.”
“But…?” Matricardi slapped a palm on the table this time.
“Best case?” Smith asked with a shrug. “We find a really cheap way to vaccinate and we make it past Labor Day and reach an equilibrium. We still take a big hit, deaths in the millions. But the general national framework holds mostly together.”
Smith looked around the restaurant, then worked his shoulders and met the gangster’s eyes steadily.
“Worst case: sixty days. Turn the lights out, shut the door, civilization is closed for the night, however long that night be. Very little chance anyone sitting at this table survives. At least with a functioning brain.”
Matricardi grunted and glanced around the table at a very quiet group.
“Two months, eh?” Matricardi said with a grunt. “Two months to doomsday. Just when I was getting the family business back on its feet. Wouldn’t you know?”
He thought about that for a moment, then smiled broadly, revealing very white teeth.
“So…who wants the calzone, eh?” he said, smacking his hands together and rubbing them. “They make it really good here!”
CHAPTER SIX
In the days since Skorpio had wrestled the zombie in front of Bank of the Americas, the legend of his physical prowess had grown among his staff. Even some of the more experienced staff had given him the calm approval that amounted to the best reward that any security specialist could hope for. He had even gotten a “good job, Boss” from two of his key people that were the special hires that Smith had personally brought into the bank. Unlike the traditional former cop or straightforward veteran background that most of the financial services security community shared, these two were…different.
Jim “the Kapman” Kaplan was former Special Forces, former Triple Canopy. His appearance was surprisingly unremarkable, neither especially tall nor particularly muscular. On close observation his wrists and forearms seemed unusually thick, and his hands were heavily scarred, like those of a mechanic. Kaplan wasn’t especially talkative but Skorpio noted that he had a quality that cops labeled “cop sense,” a sort of feeling for things that didn’t belong. After he successfully blocked an Occupy activist’s effort to glitter bomb their chairman by somehow seeming to teleport between the target and the security cordon, Skorpio had asked him how he had known that an attack was coming.
“Just a feeling,” Kaplan said with a shrug. After getting the raised “eyebrow” from the security chief Kaplan provided a better explanation. He clearly didn’t like talking about his “skill set.” Or talking at all for that matter.
“His shoes weren’t right and he was carrying his weight on the balls of his feet. Most of the protesters were wearing Chuck Taylors, sneakers or cheap hiking boots. I even saw a pair of green Crocs. The crowds was either dancing around on their toes in order to see over us, or just standing flat footed and shouting. This guy was wearing Salomons, staying on the balls of his feet, leaning forward and panning his head back and forth. So, I tagged him as a potential. There were seven in the crowd. This one had a bag that never left his left hand. Since most people are right handed, it figures that he was going to need to reach into it in order to do something. If he had pulled a gun or a bomb he would have been a tango.”
And wouldn’t that have gone over well if his detail killed an ordinary protester? However, Kaplan had been right and exercised good judgement. No one was shot, and if the glitter bomber had accumulated a painful collection of bruises and abrasions when Kaplan plowed him into the cement, well then fuck him if he couldn’t take a joke.
On that much, Skorpio could agree.
About the same time that Kaplan had been hired, Smith had found another former special operations veteran. Smith had handled this particular hire personally, and apart from a functionally detailed resume that included not one named employer, Skorpio didn’t know much about the second new guy. Usually, bank background checks were more comprehensive than military Top Secret clearances.
Dave “Gravy” Durante’s background came down to “REDACTED. REDACTED. REDACTED…” He graduated from high school in Ohio. No drugs, no priors, lettered in soccer, president of the school computer club. Joined the Army as a communications and computer specialist. Ten years later he was suddenly available for hire. Nothing in between.
Durante was a physically intimidating presence, as tall and broad as Smith, but with unusually long arms, sandy blond hair and a perpetual calm smile. The “new hire” was a physical security specialist. What he didn’t know about breaking and entering a building, including the electronic defenses thereof, wasn’t worth knowing. For all that he was phlegmatic, he also was a surprisingly good writer. The drafts of the Bank’s Physical Security plan were auditable items and Durante’s rough draft had been good enough to pass on the initial round of review—the first time that had happened with any Security and Emergency Response governance documents since Skorpio had been working.
Even though he wasn’t particularly tight with most of the Executive Protection detail, Durante was more than good enough for Skorpio, who made him his deputy for all details in New York.
This morning Skorpio woke up a mild sore throat and a runny nose. By the time he had his second coffee, he was powering through Nasonex in order to keep his sinuses open. A few ibuprofen dealt with his joint aches, because let’s face it, getting old sucks. Visine for the eyes—gotta keep those peepers bright.
After he cleared the morning e-mail it was time for the department head meeting with Smith. The walk to the conference room was blurry. He paused and grabbed a double espresso from the coffee station outside the boardroom and dropped into his seat in one of the bank’s secure conference rooms.
The meeting started and he methodically scribbled some notes, absentmindedly itching his arm.
Damn psoriasis.
* * *
As he prepared to kick off the brief, Smi
th noticed that a faint, buttery movie theater smell hung about the bank’s virologist.
“Dr. Curry has just delivered an urgent report to the CEO.” Tom wrinkled his nose at the stale odor. “I should note that while Mr. Bateman is aware there is now some source of vaccine, he is…too busy trying to keep everything running to worry about the details.”
Tom looked at the group carefully, waiting for them to process what he’d just said. He’d officially distanced the CEO and the Board from the following discussion. Since it was about how they were going to start murdering people en masse, it was at best a fig leaf but it was a legal fig leaf.
“The basic information is going to be covered here so that the team is clear on our operational situation. I’ll summarize the basics. We understand how the virus is creating two different sets of symptoms, and we have plan to produce a vaccine. Dr. Curry, go ahead.”
Smith motioned to the lab-coated virologist, who stood. Clearing his throat, Curry launched into his remarks.
“There are two salient points that I have to cover right away.” He cleared his throat again. “The first thing is that we have a better understanding of why the disease symptoms presents in two ways.
“The disease, which now has its own classification code, is called H7D3. The H refers to a key protein on the surface of the virus called hemagglutinin. Recall when I described how the virus ignored antvirals such as Tamiflu? This is because those antivirals are designed to block the receptor sites on a cell’s surface and deny the virus any way to access the interior of the cell and then reproduce. The hemagglutinin protein in H7D3 has been engineered with a different geometric configuration. An antiviral designed for the old configuration literally can’t bond to its target. The next piece is the D in the name. It stands for Dual Expression. Well, when H7D3 does access a cell and compromises the synthesis process, it does something utterly new.”
