Vector

by Robin Cook

  “It will be done tonight,” Yuri said. He visibly relaxed and polished off the last of his drink.

  “Good,” Curt said. He rubbed his hands in a show of eagerness. “Then let’s talk about scheduling. What if you gave up on the toxin and converted the second fermenter to anthrax? Wouldn’t that mean we’d have enough product sooner?”

  “Probably,” Yuri said.

  “What’s the time frame realistically?” Curt asked.

  “By the end of the week or the beginning of the next if all goes well,” Yuri said.

  “That’s music to my ears,” Curt said, forcing himself to smile. He stood up. Steve followed suit.

  “I have a question,” Yuri said. “What’s a medical examiner?”

  “It’s a guy that looks at dead people and figures out why they died,” Steve said.

  “I thought so,” Yuri said. He got to his feet.

  “That’s a curious question,” Curt remarked. “Why do you ask?”

  “When I went back to the rug dealer’s today to find out if he’d died, there was a man there taking cultures who said he was investigating the case.”

  “Wait a sec,” Curt commented. “I thought you said that your ruse of infecting a rug dealer would preclude any investigation by the authorities.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Yuri responded. “I said that the authorities wouldn’t suspect the release of a bioweapon.”

  “But the authorities know anthrax is used as a weapon,” Curt said. “What will keep them from getting suspicious?”

  “Because they’ll have a logical explanation for the episode,” Yuri said. “They’ll be congratulating themselves for figuring it out. That’s the way those people think.”

  “What if they don’t find any source?” Curt asked. “Or did you leave something for them to find on one of the rugs?”

  “No, I didn’t do that,” Yuri admitted.

  “Could that be a problem?” Curt asked.

  “Possibly,” Yuri said. “But I doubt it.”

  “But you can’t be a hundred percent certain,” Curt said.

  “Not a hundred percent but very close to it.”

  Curt let out an exasperated sigh. “Suddenly there seems to be so many loose ends.”

  “It’s not going to be a problem,” Yuri said. “And we had to test the product. There’d be no sense in releasing it if it wasn’t pathogenic.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right,” Curt said in a tired voice. He stood up and started for the door. “We’ll be in touch. Some of the boys will come by late tonight to deliver the pest control truck.”

  “What if I’m not here?” Yuri asked.

  “You’d better be here,” Curt said. “You’re the one making all the ruckus about this goddamn truck.”

  “But I have to take care of Connie,” Yuri said. “I’ll have to call emergency after she’s had her fit. I might be at the hospital.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Curt said.

  “I know what I’ll do,” Yuri said. “When I go out with Connie I’ll leave the garage door unlocked.”

  “Perfect,” Curt said. He waved and went out the door. Steve followed closely behind.

  The two firemen trooped out of Yuri’s house and climbed into the Dodge Ram without talking. Once the doors were closed Curt pounded the steering wheel with a closed fist. “We got ourselves involved with a goddamned fruitcake,” he snarled.

  “I’m not going to say I told you so,” Steve said.

  “Jesus Christ, he’s out to kill civilians, not government people,” Curt complained. “Here we are, patriots, trying to save the country, and we’re forced to deal with a terrorist. What’s this world coming to?”

  “I think his wish for the Soviet Union to get back together involves a lot more than wanting to protect the nukes. I think he’s a Commie.”

  Curt started his truck and pulled out into the lane. It was like a slalom course trying to avoid all the trash cans. “Maybe he is a Commie. But whatever he is, he has no concept of security. It’s too bad, because if the authorities get even a hint of what’s coming, we’ve got to reevaluate the whole operation. When we first started planning this, it seemed like it would be so easy.”

  “What are we going to do about him?” Steve asked.

  “I don’t know. The trouble is we’ve got to play along in order to get our hands on the bioweapon. He made that pretty clear with his threat to sabotage the whole setup, which I suppose means he’d trash the lab.”

  “So we’re going to get him the pest control truck?”

  “I don’t see where we have much choice,” Curt said as he pulled out onto Oceanview Avenue. “We’ll get him the truck, but we’ll also keep the pressure on him to come up with the eight or so pounds of anthrax powder as soon as possible. The sooner we can launch Operation Wolverine the better.”

  ______

  SEVEN

  Monday, October 18

  6:45 P.M.

  Jack scooted across First Avenue at Thirtieth Street just before the light turned green for the traffic heading uptown. He coasted to the medical examiner’s office loading dock and nodded to security as he carried his bike into the building. He waved to Marvin Fletcher, the evening mortuary tech, who was busy in the mortuary office getting ready for the evening’s body pickups.

  After locking his bike in its usual spot, Jack got on the elevator and headed up to the second-floor toxicology lab. It was later than he’d planned on getting back to the office. Going through all the Corinthian Rug Company’s records had taken much more time than he’d expected.

  John DeVries, the chief toxicologist, had already left for the day. Jack was reduced to asking a night tech if the deputy chief had called about putting a rush on David Jefferson’s specimens. David Jefferson was the prisoner-in-custody death Calvin was pressuring Jack about. Unfortunately, the night tech had no idea about the case.

  Back in the elevator, Jack went up to the DNA lab on the sixth floor. Ted Lynch, the director, wasn’t available, so Jack left his collection of culture tubes from the Corinthian Rug office with a technician. In the morning he wanted Ted to search for anthrax spores with the PCR.

  Taking the stairs to the fifth floor, Jack ducked into the histology lab in hopes of encouraging Maureen O’Conner, the supervisor, to speed up processing Jefferson’s microscopic sections. Jack had a good working relationship with Maureen, one he didn’t share with John DeVries, but it made no difference. Maureen had also left for the day.

  En route to his own office, Jack looked into Laurie’s, expecting at the very least to find out the “when and where” for the evening’s long-awaited dinner party. But Laurie’s office was dark and deserted. To make matters worse, her door was locked. Jack knew that was incontrovertible evidence that she, too, had gone home.

  “For crissake!” Jack said out loud. Feeling thwarted in all directions, he grumbled under his breath as he walked the rest of the way down the corridor. For a brief moment he entertained the idea of being unavailable for the rest of the evening so that Laurie would not be able to get ahold of him. But he quickly gave up the idea. It wasn’t his style, and besides, he was genuinely curious.

  Jack turned into his own office. At least Chet was still there, busily writing on a yellow legal tablet.

  “Ah, the adventurer has returned,” Chet commented as he caught sight of Jack. He put down his pencil. “I guess I can cancel the missing persons report I filed.”

  “Very funny,” Jack commented as he hung up his bomber jacket.

  “At least you arrived back in one piece,” Chet said. “How was it out there in the field? Any attempts on your life? How many fellow civil service workers did you manage to enrage?”

  “I’m in no mood to be teased,” Jack stated. He plopped himself down heavily in his desk chair as if his legs had suddenly given out from under him.

  “It doesn’t sound like you enjoyed yourself,” Chet remarked.

  “It was a bust,” Jack admitted. “Except for the bike ride.”


  “I’m not surprised,” Chet said. “It was a doomed mission from the start. Did you learn anything at all?”

  “I learned that it takes a long time to go through a company’s records,” Jack said. “Even a small company. And after all the effort, there was no payoff. In a perverted way I was hoping to find that some of the rug company’s latest shipment of Turkish hides had been sent out so I could rub the information in flinty old Clint Abelard’s face. But no soap. The whole shipment is locked up tight in the Queens warehouse.”

  “At least you meant well,” Chet said with a self-satisfied chuckle.

  “If you so much as whisper ‘I told you so.’I’m taking you out of my will,” Jack warned.

  “I wouldn’t stoop so low as to say I told you so.” Chet laughed.

  “Yeah, but I could hear you thinking it,” Jack said.

  “I do have to say you were missed. But not to worry. I covered for you. I used your old quip about that group of nuns you’ve been expecting. I said they’d come to town for a bowling convention, and you’d stepped out to welcome them.”

  “Who was asking for me?”

  “Laurie for one,” Chet said. “In fact, I was just writing you a note.” Chet tore off the top page of his tablet and balled up the paper. Holding the ball between thumb and index finger, he arced it cleanly into the communal wastebasket.

  “What was the message?” Jack demanded.

  “I was to tell you that tonight’s dinner is at Elio’s on Second Avenue at eight-thirty.”

  “Eight-thirty!” Jack commented irritably. “Why so late?”

  “She didn’t say. But eight-thirty doesn’t sound late to me.”

  “It’s later than she likes to eat,” Jack commented. He shook his head. The mystery kept deepening. He remembered her making the comment that morning about whether she’d be still on her feet that evening, suggesting she anticipated being tired. Why then would she make plans to meet late?

  “Well, she didn’t seem at all concerned,” Chet said. “In fact, she was in a rare, spunky mood if you ask me.”

  “Really?” Jack asked.

  “I’d even have to say ebullient.”

  “She was the same way this morning.”

  “She was so ‘up’I mentioned the possible plan for Thursday evening,” Chet said.

  “You mean about the four of us going to the Monet exhibit?”

  Chet nodded. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “What was her response?”

  “She said she was very appreciative of our thinking of her, but she said she already had plans.”

  “She actually used the word ‘appreciative’?”

  “A direct quote,” Chet said. “I questioned it, too. It seemed so uncharacteristically formal.”

  “Who else was looking for me?” Jack asked. He wanted to get away from talking about Laurie. It was making him even more curious—and anxious.

  “Calvin stopped in,” Chet said. “I think he’d been to histology and just stopped in because he was on the floor.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He wanted to remind you that Jefferson’s case has to be signed out by Thursday.”

  Jack made a gesture of dismissal with his hand. “That’s going to be up to the lab, not me.”

  “Well, I’m on my way,” Chet said. He stood up, stretched, and then retrieved his coat from behind the door.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Jack said. “You’ve lived in New York longer than I. What’s the story with yellow cabs vis-a-vis radio calls?”

  “Yellow cabs thrive on people hailing them,” Chet explained. “They generally don’t do radio calls. Among the drivers the expression is, you cruise or you lose. They don’t want to sit around and wait or drive someplace empty. They have to hustle or they lose money.”

  “Why do a lot of them have radios?” Jack asked.

  “They can do radio calls if they want,” Chet said. “But it doesn’t pay. Generally the radios just keep them informed of where there’s the greatest need, like uptown or downtown or out at the airport. And what areas to stay out of because of traffic congestion, that sort of thing.”

  Jack nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Why do you ask?” Chet questioned.

  “A cab driver came by the Corinthian Rug Company to pick up Jason Papparis while I was there,” Jack said with a wry smile.

  Chet laughed. “That’s the first time I’ve heard of a dead man calling for a cab. It makes you wonder from where he placed the call.”

  “Or where he wanted the cab to take him.”

  Chet laughed again in an equally hollow manner.

  “The driver gave me the number of the dispatcher,” Jack said. “I called them to see if Jason was a frequent customer. I thought that if he was, then maybe the cab company might be a source of information about the last time the man went to his Queens warehouse.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They were not helpful,” Jack said. “They wouldn’t even tell me when Jason Papparis had called to set up the pickup. They just said they don’t give out any information on their drivers or their clients.”

  “That’s being nice and helpful,” Chet said. “It could be subpoenaed, I suppose.”

  “I can’t imagine it would be worth it,” Jack said.

  “It’s still curious,” Chet said. “If someone calls for a cab in New York City, it’s generally not a yellow cab that responds.”

  “I’ll tell you something even more curious,” Jack said. “The taxi driver was Russian and he’d grown up in Sverdlovsk.”

  “Sverdlovsk!” Chet exclaimed. “That’s the Soviet town that had the anthrax bioweapons accident you pointed out to me in Harrison’s textbook of medicine!”

  “Can you believe it?” Jack asked. “I mean that’s a coincidence.”

  “Only in New York,” Chet said. “I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, because anything and everything happens here.”

  “This guy even knew about anthrax,” Jack said.

  “No kidding?”

  “Well, he didn’t know much,” Jack added. “He just knew it was a disease mainly of cattle. He mentioned cows and sheep.”

  “I’d venture to guess that’s more than the average New Yorker knows,” Chet said.

  After a bit more small talk about activities over the immediately preceding weekend, Chet said his goodbyes and left. Jack turned to his desk. Without enthusiasm he eyed his ever-burgeoning pile of uncompleted cases lying next to a stack of waiting histology slides. He thought briefly about getting out his microscope until he glanced at his watch. It was after seven. Knowing he had to pedal home, shower and dress, and then pedal back across town all before eight-thirty, Jack decided he didn’t have time for more work.

  The traffic on First Avenue had abated somewhat from a half hour earlier, and Jack ran with it beyond the United Nations building. Taking Forty-ninth Street, he crossed to Madison Avenue and then again turned north. He rarely used the same route home until he got to the Grand Army Plaza at the southeastern corner of Central Park. It was there that he took his nightly turn around the Pulitzer fountain to admire the gilded nude statue of Abundance atop it. Then he entered the park and his favorite part of the trip. Over the years he’d figured out the best and most scenic route and used it most nights.

  With an eye peeled for other cyclists, joggers, and in-line skaters, Jack cranked up his pace. Although the trees still had most of their leaves, a lot had already fallen, and they swirled in his wake and filled him with the unmistakable scent of fall.

  Although Jack immensely enjoyed his rapid transit through the park, it also made him feel edgy. Finding himself paradoxically isolated in the lonely expanse within the confines of the otherwise teeming city never failed to remind him of the night he’d almost been shot and killed here by a hired gang member. There was no doubt danger lurked in the park’s silent shadows.

  Jack burst out of the tranquil darkness onto the bust
ling avenue, Central Park West. It was like returning to civilization. Slowing his speed considerably, he wound his way north among the darting, honking clutch of yellow cabs. At 106th Street he turned west.

  Knowing he didn’t have a lot of time to spare, Jack had fully intended on heading directly to his tenement. Instead, he couldn’t resist the siren song of the basketball court. Even though he was unable to play that evening, he couldn’t pass by without at least stopping to check out the action.

  The court was part of a larger, mostly cement park featuring swings, monkey bars, and sandboxes for the younger children, as well as benches for the doting mothers. Jack loved to play B-ball. He’d played at Amherst, which had never had a very competitive team. Years later, when he’d first moved to New York City, he’d ventured one day onto the court merely to shoot baskets by himself as a diversion, but by chance the locals had had only nine players. So they’d lowered their standards and asked Jack to play. He’d been immediately hooked by the lively and often rough urban games. Now, weather permitting, it was almost a nightly ritual.

  For almost a year, Jack had been the only Caucasian player among the horde of local and considerably younger African-American players. But over the next few years two other white players had ventured into the fray, as well as a number of African-Americans closer to Jack’s age of forty-four.

  As a regular and a fanatic, Jack financed new backboards, new outdoor balls, and mercury vapor lighting. He accomplished this combination philanthropic and self-serving gesture through negotiations with the local community leadership. The final deal stipulated that Jack had to pay to refurbish the other park amenities as well. Jack had not minded in the slightest and considered it a small price to pay to be welcomed into the neighborhood.

  Jack pedaled his bike up to the massive chain-link fence that separated the B-ball court from the sidewalk. Without taking his feet from his toe clips, he grabbed onto the fence to support himself. As he’d expected, there was a game in progress, with the players sweeping up and down the court.

  “Hey, Doc!” a voice called out. “Doc” was Jack’s neighborhood sobriquet. “Where you been? Get your ass out here. You going to run or what?”