Plague Ship

by Clive Cussler

  Nothing of any great importance had been discussed while the yacht was in port. Most of the men’s afternoon had been taken up by the women Kerikov had provided. But when the Matryoshka slipped out of the harbor and headed into the waters of the Mediterranean, everyone on the Oregon knew the real negotiations were going to take place far from prying eyes.

  With her running lights doused, the Oregon had followed the Matryoshka, staying low over the horizon so that just the tip of her tallest mast peeked above the earth’s curvature. The Russians went out twenty miles before idling the megayacht’s engines. Feeling comfortable that they had the seas to themselves, Kerikov and al-Asim had started talking in earnest over an al fresco dinner on the boat’s back deck.

  Using the Global Positioning System and the ship’s thrusters, Eric had programmed the computer to keep the Oregon dead even in relation to the drifting Matryoshka, while, high atop the tramp freighter’s mast, sophisticated electronics monitored the yacht. Utilizing state-of-the-art parabolic receivers, high-resolution cameras to read lips, and a focused-beam laser that could sense the faint vibration of a conversation taking place on the other side of a window, they were able to eavesdrop on everything.

  “Last I heard, al-Asim and the Russian were talking about SA-7 Grail missiles.”

  “The Grail’s a piece of junk,” Eddie said. “They’d never be able to hit any of our jets with those. Ah, but a civilian aircraft would be vulnerable.”

  “Kerikov made it clear early on he didn’t want to know what al-Asim planned to do with the arms, but the Saudi alluded to hitting airliners.”

  Born in New York’s Chinatown, Eddie was especially enraged by the idea of terrorists targeting commercial aviation. Although he didn’t know anyone killed on 9/11 personally, he knew dozens of people who did.

  “Anything else?” Seng asked.

  “Al-Asim has already asked about nuclear weapons. Kerikov said he didn’t have access but would sell them if he could.”

  “Lovely,” Eddie spat with a grimace.

  “The Russian went on to say he would be willing to deliver something he called Stalin’s Fist, but said there were too many technical challenges to make it practical. When al-Asim tried to pursue it, Kerikov told him to forget he’d mentioned it. That’s when they started talking about the Grails.”

  “Ever heard of anything called Stalin’s Fist?”

  “No. Neither has Mark.”

  “Langston Overholt might know something about it. I’ll ask when we turn over the raw-data intercepts. That’s his problem anyway. Let me know the minute you hear from Juan, or if Thom Severance ever calls us back.”

  “Do you think Max is okay?” Hali asked.

  “For Severance’s sake, he had better hope so.”

  ZELIMIR KOVAC WATCHED the chopper emerge from the leaden sky. It was a bright yellow dot amid the pewter clouds. He showed no outward sign of his anger. He had been unable to find the escaped American, and that failure rankled. He was not a man prone to make excuses, but that was exactly what he was rehearsing in his head as the helicopter flared over the pad, whipping up storm water that had pooled nearby.

  Apart from the pilot, another man was with Thomas Severance. Kovac paid him no heed, focusing his entire attention on his superior, a term he meant quite literally. Thom Severance was superior in every way Kovac thought important, and Kovac’s loyalty to him and his cause knew no bounds. From that devotion sprang Kovac’s self-recrimination, and he hated himself for letting Severance down.

  Severance threw open the chopper’s door, his windbreaker and hair whipping in the maelstrom. He somehow managed to make his movements elegant as he ducked from under the whirling blades. Kovac could not manage to reply to Severance’s dazzling smile, a smile he didn’t deserve. He glanced away, recognizing the second passenger.

  Confusion replaced his anger.

  “Great to see you, Zelimir,” Thom bellowed over the whine of the helicopter’s turbine. He recognized the startled look on his security chief’s face and chuckled. “I bet he’s the last person in the world you ever expected to see with me, eh?”

  Kovac found his voice without moving his eyes away from Dr. Adam Jenner. “Yes, sir.”

  Severance dropped his voice an octave, making his next words a gesture of intimacy and trust. “It’s time you understand everything. Past time.”

  Jenner approached and touched a gloved hand to the bandage where Kovac had pistol-whipped him back in the Rome hotel. “No hard feelings, Mr. Kovac.”

  Ten minutes later, they were in the underground base’s most luxurious suite. It was here that Thom and his wife would wait out the coming chaos. In total, there were facilities here for two hundred of the top members of the Responsivist organization.

  The last time Severance had been here, the four rooms had been nothing but bare concrete walls. He admired the work that had gone into the suite, and, apart from the fact the windows were actually flat-panel televisions, could find no evidence he was fifty feet belowground.

  “This is almost as nice as our new house in Beverly Hills,” he remarked, brushing his fingers against a silk damask wall. “Heidi’s going to love it.”

  He asked a waiting attendant, who was beaming just to be in the presence of their group’s leader, for coffee service and sat in one of the wingback chairs in his office. The flat-panel monitor behind him showed the sea crashing against a rocky coast. The live feed was from a camera mounted not too far from the base’s entrance.

  Jenner lowered himself onto a plush sofa, while Kovac stood at almost rigid attention in front of Severance.

  “Zelimir, sit, please.”

  The Serb took a chair but in no way relaxed.

  “You know the old expression ‘keep your friends close but your enemies closer’?” Severance asked once the valet had poured coffee. He didn’t wait for Kovac to answer. “Our greatest enemies aren’t only those who ridicule our beliefs without fully understanding them. They are those that once believed but have lost their faith. They do us the greatest harm because they are privy to secrets we would never share with outsiders. Lydell Cooper and I talked about this at great length.”

  At the mention of the Responsivist founder, Kovac nodded and shot a glance at Jenner, as if to say Jenner didn’t deserve to be in the same room when that name was uttered. The psychiatrist looked back at him with a fond, almost paternal smile.

  “We decided to create an expert on Responsivism, a man who families would turn to if they felt they had lost control of their loved ones. He could also approach those who left on their own, in order to determine their intentions. He could then report back to us so, ah, appropriate actions could be taken.”

  There was a trace of respect on Kovac’s face when he looked at Dr. Jenner. “I had no idea.”

  “You don’t know the best part,” Severance went on. “There was really only one person we believed could do a credible job.”

  “Who?” Kovac asked.

  “Why, me, my dear boy,” Jenner said. “Only, with the plastic surgery to my face, the contact lenses, and the passage of almost twenty years, you don’t recognize me.”

  Kovac stared hard at Jenner, as if the intensity of his gaze could see through the disguise. “I don’t . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “I am Lydell Cooper, Mr. Kovac.”

  “But you’re dead,” Kovac blurted without thinking.

  “Surely a man of your background knows that no one is truly dead until their body is found. I have sailed for most of my life. The storm that supposedly killed me was nothing compared to some of the weather I’ve been through.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Severance spoke up, “Lydell had laid the foundation of Responsivism with his writings, giving us our basic tenets, the core of what we all believe.”

  “But I am no organizer,” Cooper said. “That is where Thom and my daughter, Heidi, outshone me. I detest public speaking, holding meetings, or any of the mundane day-to-day details. So
as they grew the movement, I took on a different role, that of protector. By acting like our biggest detractor, I was able to keep watch over everyone trying to harm us.”

  Kovac finally found his voice. “All those people you turned against us, you reprogrammed?”

  “Would have left anyway,” Dr. Cooper replied airily. “What I did was minimize their criticism of us. They had left the fold, so to speak, but for the most part none of them revealed much about us.”

  “What about what happened in Rome?”

  “That was a close thing,” Cooper admitted. “We had no idea Kyle Hanley’s father had the resources to hire a rescue team. I called Thom as soon as I knew they were taking him for the initial deprogramming in Rome, so you could be in position, and then later called in with the name of the hotel and number of the room so you could snatch him back. We weren’t sure how much the boy knew or what he told his father.”

  “By the way, how are you coming on that front?” Thom Severance asked.

  Kovac dropped his eyes. As bad as it was to admit his failure to Severance, he couldn’t speak of it in front of the great Dr. Lydell Cooper, the man whose philosophy gave purpose to his life.

  “Zelimir?”

  “He escaped, Mr. Severance. I don’t know how, but he got out of his cell and made his way to the surface. He killed one mechanic and injured two others.”

  “Is he still on the island?”

  “He stole an ATV last night. The storm was severe, and visibility was only a couple of meters. He must not have seen the cliff. A search party found the machine when the tide went out this morning. There was no sign of the body.”

  “No one is dead until you see their remains,” Lydell Cooper intoned.

  “Sir, you have my greatest respect and admiration,” Kovac said, “but it’s much more likely that this man Hanley had an accident during a storm. He was in very poor condition when he escaped, and I seriously doubt that he could have survived a night out in the elements.”

  He said nothing about the bioelectric implant he’d found and the implications behind it, because he didn’t want to sow seeds of doubt. The search teams were still combing the Responsivists’ private Aegean island, and if they found the fugitive they knew to report it directly to him. Kovac would get the information they needed and dispose of Hanley before any more damage could be done to his reputation. He did add, “Of course, we will keep up the search.”

  “Of course,” Cooper said.

  Kovac turned his full attention to Cooper. “Sir, may I tell you what a privilege it has been to work for you for the past few years? Your teachings have fundamentally changed my life in ways I never knew existed. It would be my greatest honor if I could shake your hand.”

  “Thank you, Zelimir, but, alas, I cannot. Despite my youthful appearance, I am almost eighty-three years old. When I was still doing genetic research, I developed an antirejection drug tailor-made to my DNA so I have been able to receive a new heart, lungs, kidneys, and eyes from enterprising sources, and cosmetic surgery keeps me looking younger than I should. I have artificial hips, knees, and discs in my back. I eat a balanced diet, drink only occasionally, and have never smoked. I expect I should be able to enjoy a full and vigorous life well past one hundred and twenty years old.” He held up his gloved hands. The fingers were bent and twisted like the limbs of an ancient tree. “However, arthritis runs in my family, and I have been unable to arrest its crippling effects. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to shake your hand in recognition of your kind words and excellent service, but I am simply unable.”

  “I understand.” Kovac saw no irony in a man espousing a smaller world population while artificially lengthening his own life span.

  “And, don’t worry,” Cooper added, “there isn’t much that Kyle Hanley could have deduced during his brief stay on Greece. And even if his father gets that information to the proper authorities, there isn’t time for them to react. Interrogating the father is just a minor detail, the mere tying of a loose thread, as it were. Don’t trouble yourself about it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kovac said automatically.

  “On to other business,” Severance said. “We are pushing up our timetable.”

  “Because of Kyle Hanley’s rescue?”

  “Partially. And Gil Martell’s, er, suicide. We had no trouble from the local Greek authorities, but the government in Athens has started showing an interest in our affairs. Lydell and I thought it best if we sent out the trainees now. There is nothing more that they need to know, so there really isn’t any reason to delay. Naturally, we paid a premium for the tickets on such short notice.” Severance gave a wry chuckle, “Of course, we can afford it.”

  “You’re sending out all fifty teams?”

  “Yes. Well, forty-nine. There’s already a team on the Golden Sky for the final test of the transmitter. So fifty teams and fifty cruise ships. It will take three or four days to get everyone in position. Some of the ships are at sea while others are on the other side of the globe. Our people will carry the virus that Lydell perfected and we manufactured in the Philippines. How long will it take to initialize a test?”

  Kovac thought for a moment. “Perhaps by this afternoon. We need to run up the other engines to fully charge the batteries, as well as stabilize power distribution in order to protect the antenna.”

  “The test virus we gave the people on the Golden Sky is a simple, fast-acting rhinovirus, so we will know within twelve hours if the receiver got the signal. As long as we send it no later than tonight, we should be fine. Of course, there’s a second team aboard her that is planting our principal virus.”

  “This is a great moment, gentlemen,” Lydell Cooper said. “The culmination of everything I have worked for. Soon, there will be a new beginning, a fresh dawn, where humanity will shine like it was meant to. Gone will be the burdensome multitudes that tax our natural resources and return nothing but more mouths to feed. In one generation, with half of the world unable to bear children the population will return to a sustainable level. There will be no more want or need. We will abolish poverty, hunger, even the threat of global warming.

  “Politicians all over the world give lip service to these problems by offering short-term plans that make their constituents think something is being done. We know it is all lies. One just has to read a newspaper or watch the news to see that nothing is going to change. In fact, it is getting worse. Struggles for land and water rights are already sparking conflicts. And how many have already died to protect dwindling oil supplies?

  “They tell us we can fix everything if humans changed their habits—drove less, bought smaller houses, used different light-bulbs. What a joke. No one is willing to take a step back from their luxuries. It goes against our deepest instincts. No, the solution isn’t to call for minor sacrifices that in reality don’t address the crux of the problem. The answer is to change the playing field. Rather than have more and more vying for less and less, just reduce the population.

  “They all know this is the only way, only they don’t have the courage to say it, so the world spins closer and closer to chaos. As I have written, we are breeding ourselves to death. The desire for offspring is perhaps the strongest force in the universe. It cannot be denied. But nature has natural mechanisms to regulate it. There are predators to cull the population of prey animals, forest fires to renew the soil, and cycles of flood and drought. But man, with his large brain, has continuously found ways to sidestep nature’s efforts to contain him. We killed off any animal that sees us as prey so that there are only a handful left in nature and the rest are caged in zoos. That left the lowly microbe to thin our ranks with disease, so we created vaccines and immunizations, all the while breeding as if we still expected to lose two out of every three children before their first birthday.

  “Only one country has had the courage to admit their numbers were growing too fast, but even they failed to slow population growth. China tried to legislate population with its one-child policy, an
d there are two hundred million more of them now than there were twenty-five years ago. If one of the most dictatorial countries in the world can’t stop it, no one can.

  “People simply can’t change, not in any fundamental way. That’s why it is up to us. Of course, we are not madmen. I could have engineered our virus to kill indiscriminately, but I would never consider the outright murder of billions of people. So what was the solution? The original hemorrhagic influenza virus I started with had the side effect of leaving its victims barren but also had a mortality rate near fifty percent. After I gave up medical research, I worked with the virus over tens of thousands of generations and mutations, coaxing out its lethality while maintaining the one trait I desired. When we release it on those fifty ships, it will infect nearly one hundred thousand people. It sounds like a large number, but it is just a drop in the bucket. The passengers and crews aboard the ships come from every part of the world and from every socioeconomic background. On a cruise ship, one finds a microcosm of society, from the titan of industry to the lowly deckhand. I wanted to be entirely democratic. No one will be spared. When they return to their suburban homes in Michigan, their villages in Eastern Europe, or their slums in Bangladesh, they will carry the virus with them.

  “It will remain symptomless within its host for months, as it is spread from person to person. And then the first sign of infection will come. It will seem like every person in the world has come down with mild influenza and a high fever. The mortality rate should be less than one percent, a tragic but unavoidable cost to those with weakened immune systems. Only later, when people seek out answers to why they aren’t having children, will they learn that one half of the world’s population has become barren.