by Robin Cook
“One of the things that happened was quite unexpected,” Laurie continued. “At least for me.”
Laurie took her left hand out from under the table, where she’d kept it discreetly for the entire dinner. It was balled in a fist as she extended it out over the tablecloth. When her arm was fully extended she dramatically opened her hand and spread her fingers.
Both Jack and Lou blinked. They found themselves looking down at a diamond that seemed to be the size of a golf ball on Laurie’s ring finger. It caught all the light from the room and threw it back with blinding intensity.
“You guys are getting married,” Lou said as if he were describing an upcoming cataclysm.
The couple interpreted his tone as one of awe, not dread.
“It seems that way,” Laurie said with a smile. “I haven’t unconditionally agreed yet, but as you can see Paul has convinced me to take the ring. We haven’t even told our parents. You two are the first to know.”
“We’re flattered,” Jack managed to say while his mind churned for an explanation for this unexpected turn of events. He’d thought of Laurie as being much too mature for what he considered adolescent behavior.
“It’s been a whirlwind,” Laurie said. She looked at Paul for confirmation.
“I’d describe it more as a tempest,” Paul said with a lascivious wink.
Laurie and Paul then launched into an animated description of all the romantic things they’d been able to squeeze into the previous month. Jack and Lou found themselves reduced to nodding at appropriate moments while maintaining forced smiles.
When the stories drew to a close, Paul stood and excused himself. Laurie looked after him as he headed toward the rest rooms. Turning back to her two old friends, she sighed.
“He’s really wonderful, isn’t he?” she asked.
Jack and Lou looked at each other, hoping the other would respond.
“Well?” Laurie questioned.
Both Jack and Lou started speaking at the same time then hastily deferred to the other.
“What is this, a comedy routine?” Laurie demanded. Her beatific smile faded. “What’s the matter with you two?”
“This situation has caught us off guard,” Jack finally admitted. “We’d both guessed you’d gotten a job offer and were going to move out on us. We never thought you’d be getting married.”
“And why not!” Laurie demanded. “That’s almost insulting. What am I, too old?”
“I don’t mean it that way,” Jack said meekly.
“How long have you known this man?” Lou asked.
“A couple of months,” Laurie said defensively. “I know that’s not a lot of time, but I don’t think that’s so important. He’s intelligent, warm, generous, confident, and willing and able to make a commitment. And all those are important characteristics as far as I’m concerned. Particularly the confidence and the ability to make a commitment.”
Both Jack and Lou couldn’t help but feel indicted.
“I don’t believe this,” Laurie said. “You two, of all people I know, I thought would be happy for me.”
“What kind of business is he in?” Jack asked.
“What kind of a question is that?” Laurie demanded.
“Just a simple question,” Jack said timidly.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know,” Laurie said. “And I don’t really care. It’s him I’m interested in, not what he does for a living. You men are impossible.”
“Have your parents met him?” Lou asked.
“Of course,” Laurie said. “I met him through my parents.”
“That’s nice,” Lou said.
Laurie let out a mirthless laugh. “This is not how I expected this evening to go.”
Neither Jack nor Lou knew quite what to say. Luckily they were rescued by Paul’s return. He was in an ebullient mood, totally unaware of what had transpired during his brief absence. He started to reclaim his seat, but Laurie stood up.
“I think it’s time we go,” Laurie said.
“No after-dinner drinks at the bar?” Paul asked.
“I think we’ve all had enough,” Laurie said. “And as Jack is wont to say, it is a school night.”
Jack smiled weakly. Sensing that he’d let Laurie down only made him feel worse. He got to his feet. “Congratulations, you guys,” he said with manufactured enthusiasm. “In the spirit of the occasion, Lou and I will take care of the tab.”
“It’s all taken care of already,” Paul said with an air of superiority. “It’s our treat.”
“I’d prefer to pay,” Jack said. “It’s only fair.”
“Hogwash,” Paul said. He reached over and shook Jack’s and Lou’s hand. “I’ve really enjoyed meeting Laurie’s two closest friends. I can’t tell you how highly she talks of you two and how often. It’s enough to make a guy jealous.” He laughed.
“See you tomorrow at the office,” Laurie said. She turned and started across the crowded dining room. Paul gave a final wave and hurried after her.
Jack looked at Lou. “What do you want to do?”
“Go home and shoot myself,” Lou said.
“You want company?” Jack asked.
The two men sank into their chairs. Jack felt shell-shocked. Laurie’s getting married was worse than her going away. Instead of moving to the West Coast, it was more like her going to Venus. The episode startled him into realizing how much he’d been avoiding thoughts about the future. Guilt about his family still made it difficult for him to justify future happiness. That’s why he found making a commitment so difficult.
Lou cradled his head in his hands. He was the picture of dejection. “I’ve worried about Laurie getting married,” he said. “Especially to you.”
“To me?” Jack questioned with surprise. “I actually worried she’d get married to you. I know you two dated before I came on the scene.”
“You shouldn’t have worried,” Lou said. “It wasn’t to be. It never would have worked. During the brief time we went out on a regular basis, I screwed it up. Every time there was the slightest blip, I thought she was breaking up with me, and I acted like an ass. It drove both of us batty, and we ended up having a long talk about it. Tonight when she mentioned about ‘confidence’being an important personality characteristic for her, she was referring to me.”
“The part about the ability to make a commitment was directed at me,” Jack said.
“Was that the problem between you two?” Lou asked. “I never could figure out what happened. You guys seemed natural for each other. You know, similar backgrounds, fancy schools, and all the rest of that bullshit.”
“It was part of it,” Jack said. “But I’m so screwed up I don’t even know all the reasons.”
“It’s a tragedy!” Lou complained. “For you and for me. At least if she tied the knot with you, I could stay friends with both of you. When she marries this twerp, I’m out the door. I mean, I fantasized about Laurie and me staying friends even when she married. But tonight when I saw that rock on her finger, I instantly knew staying the kind of friends I envisioned was out of the question.”
“I guess I was unrealistically hoping the present would never change,” Jack said.
Lou nodded and thought for a moment before asking, “What did you think of this guy?”
“A snake in the grass,” Jack said without hesitation. “But I don’t know how objective I can be. I’m obviously jealous. It bugged me how they kept touching each other.”
“It rubbed me the wrong way as well,” Lou said with another nod. “Like puppy love. It was disgusting. But I question my objectivity, too. Yet it all seems too quick to me, like the guy’s after her money even though she doesn’t have any. Of course that can be the cynical detective talking.”
Jack shook his head dejectedly. “We can sit here and say nasty things about him, but the fact is, he’s a lot more spontaneous than we are, and he’s got a lot more bucks. I mean, going to Paris for the weekend! There’s no way I could do that. Worryi
ng about how much it was costing would drive me bananas, and I’d be miserable to be with.”
“It makes me mad to think that there are people that can do that sort of thing,” Lou said. “What with my alimony payments and raising two kids, I’m lucky to have two nickels to scrape together.”
“Envious might be a better word than mad,” Jack said.
Lou scraped back his chair and stood up. “I got to get home to bed before I get too depressed. I’ve been up for two straight days.”
“I’m with you,” Jack said.
The two men wormed their way out of the restaurant feeling all the more depressed in light of the festive atmosphere.
______
EIGHT
Monday, October 18
10:15 P.M.
After Curt and Steve left, Yuri had gone down to his beloved lab. The first thing he did was repair the damage Connie had caused when she’d pried off the padlocks. To be on the safe side he bolted the hasps to the door rather than replace the screws. With that setup, an intruder would most likely need something more powerful than a crowbar to pull them loose.
While he worked, he thought about Curt and Steve’s disturbing visit. He was taken aback by their anger, particularly their anger about his stopping by the firehouse. The explanation that he was a security risk because he was a foreigner with a Russian accent didn’t ring true. New York was much too cosmopolitan a city. Every other person had an accent.
Yuri thought there had to be another reason why they didn’t want him seen there. Although he couldn’t think of what it might have been, it made him feel uncomfortable. For the first time Yuri began to question where he stood with Curt and Steve. He knew they were strong on prejudice, so the thought passed through his mind they might be prejudiced against him, and if that was the case they certainly weren’t the friends he imagined.
The other source of their anger—that Connie was black— was equally mysterious. It wasn’t so much the prejudice itself that surprised Yuri. He was well aware of Curt and Steve’s racial bigotry. What got him was the amount of anger involved. It was so out of proportion, and the pseudo-religious explanation Steve had given seemed contrived. Neither Curt nor Steve had ever said anything to suggest they were at all religious.
And finally, there was the issue of the pest control truck and aerosolizer. Yuri couldn’t understand why they’d not obtained it yet. That was an important part of the agreement. Without it, Yuri would not be able to carry out his part of the operation. He needed a sprayer, and he needed it to be mobile. A point source was not anywhere near as effective.
In order to fix the inner door, Yuri suited up in the hazmat suit and opened the valve on the compressed air cylinder. The regulator wasn’t the demand variety used for scuba diving. Instead it kept a constant flow of air into the suit as a means of keeping any particles from the environment from gaining entry.
It was much harder to work in the suit and it was very hot, but Yuri didn’t mind. He knew the risk he’d be taking if he didn’t wear it. But it did slow him down.
After the door was fixed, Yuri turned his attention to the fermenter with the Clostridium botulinum. He tested the bacterial concentration and was again disappointed. He could not figure out why the culture continued to grow so slowly. As far as he knew he’d followed the culture conditions carefully that had been used so successfully in the Soviet Union when he’d worked with the organism a decade previously. The conditions had been determined to produce maximum culture growth and maximum toxin production.
The only thing Yuri could imagine was that air was getting into the fermenter. Clostridium botulinum was a bacteria that grew without oxygen. Consequently, Yuri had used carbon dioxide gas instead of air over the culture. Perhaps there was something wrong with the cylinder of carbon dioxide Curt’s troops had obtained for him. Unfortunately, Yuri didn’t have any way to analyze it, and requesting a new cylinder would take too long.
Yuri stood up from where he’d been bending down to check the internal fermenter temperature. It was a few degrees cooler than optimum, so he adjusted his jury-rigged waterbath thermostat. Having the temperature off certainly didn’t help, but it was not an adequate explanation for the slow growth.
He thought about Curt’s suggestion to switch production in the Clostridium fermenter to anthrax so that both units would be producing the anthrax spores. There was a lot to be said for that idea. It was the only way he’d be able to produce enough material for both laydowns within the time frame they’d discussed. The trouble was that breaking down the fermenter was a big job and at the moment he had another worry: Connie.
Yuri went over to his hood and turned on the fan. Putting his already gloved hands into another pair of heavy rubber gloves secured to the edges of two holes in the hood’s glass front, Yuri carefully picked up the beaker containing his most recently produced botulinum toxin. He poured some of it into a small glass vial.
Yuri had been using the acid precipitation technique in concentrating and purifying his toxin. After resuspending the toxin in an aqueous buffer, he’d reprecipitated it with ammonium sulfate to form a crystalline amalgam of pure toxin combined with a stabilizing protein. This form he’d dried into a powder.
Yuri wasn’t as concerned about his safety when he worked with the botulinum toxin as he was with the anthrax powder. Although he’d been vaccinated against both agents back in the Soviet Union, he was more confident of his immunity to the toxin than he was to anthrax spores.
After sealing the small vial, Yuri washed its exterior before bringing it out from inside the hood. Then he went through the first phase of disinfecting and decontaminating himself with an overhead shower and a plastic container of bleach.
Leaving the lab, Yuri went through a second decon phase with more bleach and another shower. Only then did he slip out of his hazmat suit, turn off the compressed-air tank, and hang them up on their respective pegs. Then he carefully carried the vial up to the kitchen and hid it behind the overcounter dish cabinet.
Steeling himself against the inevitable abuse, Yuri went to Connie’s door and opened it. As usual, his wife was propped up on the bed watching the television even though the mattress and box spring were now sitting on the floor.
“What do you want?” Connie grumbled. She was holding an ice pack to her swollen left eye.
“I’m going to get some pizza,” Yuri said. “I thought maybe you might be hungry.”
Connie lifted the ice pack away from her face and regarded her husband curiously. “What’s the matter with you?” she questioned sarcastically. “You’ve never cared if I was hungry before.”
“I was feeling guilty about hitting you,” Yuri said, trying to sound sincere. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry, my ass,” Connie shot back. “If you’re saying this to get your TV back, it’s not going to work.”
“I don’t want my TV back,” Yuri said. “And I’m sorry I broke yours. I was out of my mind.”
“So what else is new?”
“You don’t understand,” Yuri said, trying to sound contrite as well as sincere. “That lab downstairs is important to me.”
“As if I couldn’t guess with the amount of time you spend down there.”
“It’s my ticket out of this mess,” Yuri said. “I mean our ticket.”
Connie turned the sound down on the television and pushed herself up on one elbow. “What are you saying to me?”
“I’m trying to get back into microbiology,” Yuri explained. “I need to practice and to prove I know what I’m doing. Then maybe I can get a decent job. I don’t want to drive a cab the rest of my life.”
“What kind of job are you talking about?”
“Anything in microbiology,” Yuri said. “Those men who were here tonight have been helping me, but they’re worried. It’s against the law to have a lab like that in a private house, and if I get into trouble, they’ll get into trouble.”
“I thought you had to go back to school if you wanted to wor
k with bacteria.”
“Not if I can do something that proves I’m qualified,” Yuri said. “And if I do, and I get a good job, then we can start a new life. You know, go out like we used to do.”
“Yeah sure, when hell freezes over.”
“It’ll happen,” Yuri promised. “But for now, you want some pizza?”
“Okay, why not,” Connie said. “Pepperoni and anchovy. And have them bring over a pint of butter pecan ice cream.”
“Right,” Yuri said. He forced a smile and then closed the door. One thing was certain: nothing seemed to spoil that woman’s appetite. But he wasn’t complaining about the addition of the ice cream. As far as he was concerned, he thought it would be a better medium for the botulinum toxin, especially since he’d be sure she’d eat the whole tub.
Yuri used the wall phone in the kitchen to call the local pizza place. He ordered for Connie, then, for himself, he ordered a regular pizza with mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil. Just before he hung up he added a small tossed salad and a coffee to the order. He realized it might be a long night.
Yuri paced the apartment. As time passed he became progressively more nervous. Although he’d acted sure of himself when he’d been talking with Curt, he didn’t know for certain what was going to happen after Connie ingested the toxin. One of the problems was that Yuri had no way of intelligently guessing how much to use. He would just have to sprinkle some into the ice cream and hope for the best. All he knew was that he had to err on the side of using too much. If Connie just got sick, and botulism was suspected, he’d be caught red-handed with the lab in his basement.
The sound of knocking on the door made Yuri jump. Half expecting trouble, he glanced out through the venetian blinds and was relieved to see the pizza delivery boy. Yuri opened the door, paid the kid, and took the packages. The two pizzas had been in an insulated carrier and were still hot to the touch.
Yuri pushed away the fast-food wrappings Connie had left earlier on the table, and put down the pizza boxes and the bag with the salad, coffee, and ice cream. He was most interested in the ice cream. He took it out of the bag and put it on the counter. The container was slightly soft. Unlike the pizzas, it hadn’t been put in an insulated bag.