by Alex Irvine
The question was, what were they going to do about it?
Aurelio understood his duty. If the antiviral existed, he had a paramount responsibility to see that it got into the hands of the people who would do the most good with it. To his mind, that meant the government, for all its weaknesses and imperfections. The remaining members of the executive and legislative branches were trying to keep the United States of America alive. Aurelio had pledged himself to that goal as well, and a viable treatment for Amherst’s virus would be a cornerstone of any sustained rebuilding.
Ike Ronson’s masters probably had different ideas if they had suborned his betrayal of the Division.
By any understanding of Directive 51, Aurelio had the right to put a bullet in Ronson’s head right then and there. The problem was, Ronson was a trained Division agent just like Aurelio was, and he was certainly watching Aurelio out of the corner of his eye just like Aurelio was watching him. The outcome of a fight was far from predetermined, and there was also Kelleher’s welfare to consider. Ronson now had the crucial bit of intel that either he had lacked before or he’d needed to confirm. He didn’t need April Kelleher anymore, and that meant Aurelio had to keep her alive whenever Ronson decided to tie up his loose ends and make his decisive move.
So despite his impulse to take Ronson out, Aurelio played it cool. “That’s a hell of a thing to find out,” he said. “How sure are you that this drug really exists?”
“You mean how sure was the guy who told me?” April sat up straighter and rubbed her face. “He thought it was true, but he didn’t have direct confirmation, and he also didn’t have any way to contact the lab here and find out. They’re apparently working in conjunction with the JTF science wing, but they’re not JTF.”
“Then we better find out,” Ike said. Now Aurelio did look at him. He saw a challenge in Ike’s eyes, but also something else. Reading Ike’s expression, Aurelio thought he was making some kind of appeal. To what? Their shared bond as Division agents? Ronson had severed that back on Duane Street.
Telling that final bit of her story seemed to have sapped the last of April’s energy. She stretched out on the wicker couch and said, “We’ll find out tomorrow.” Her eyes closed and she was asleep inside a minute.
A long silence passed before Ronson spoke. “She’s tough, man. Coming all the way from New York by herself.”
Aurelio nodded. “Yeah, it’s a long trip. A lot can go wrong. But you know that.”
Ronson absorbed this and thought it over. He put two more pieces of wood on the fire. Then he pushed his chair back and lay on the deck, looking up into the night sky with his hands behind his head. “I’m going to say two things,” he said. “One. You don’t know everything you think you know about me.”
“Okay,” Aurelio said. “What’s two?”
“I’m going to go to sleep,” Ronson said. He closed his eyes. “You want to punch my ticket, that’s your call. You don’t, wake me up in four hours and I’ll take second watch.”
37
IKE
When Ike woke up it was nearly dawn. He sat up, half expecting to see Diaz and Kelleher gone, but April was still asleep on the couch and Diaz was leaning against the deck railing, looking eastward toward the glow of impending sunrise over the leafy neighborhood to the east of the campus.
Ike stood and stretched. “I meant what I said about waking me up.”
“I got hit in the head three days ago. Haven’t been sleeping well since then anyway.” Diaz didn’t look at him. Ike had an urge to explain himself. He hadn’t meant for those people squatting across from Duane Park to die. It was just an op gone bad. No way he would convince Diaz of that, though. Just like there was no way he would ever be able to convince Diaz that he believed he was doing the right thing by leading Mantis to the antiviral.
He’d made the decision right away. The government was crippled, the JTF barely hanging on. Bringing something that could save the world to people who couldn’t do anything with it would be pretty much the same as pouring it out on the sidewalk.
Glancing back over at April, Ike was struck again by both her courage and her trust. Chasing the dream of the truth six hundred miles, that was something. In a strange way he was proud to have helped her along the way. Whatever was going to happen by the end of the day, she was going to be alive to get her answers because Ike had stepped in at the right moment down in Milan. For a while he had worried that she might not want to tell him why she was going to Ann Arbor. He didn’t want to have to beat it out of her. In fact, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to make himself do it. But in the end he hadn’t had to. He got her talking, and it just happened. Ike had never trained as an interrogator, but he’d read that the best way to get information out of someone wasn’t to beat it out of them, but just to keep them talking, and keep them convinced that you were listening and interested. Build a rapport. Lo and behold, it had worked. And it hadn’t hurt that she was fatigued and grateful.
It was a little after oh six hundred. “I’m gonna take a leak,” he said. Diaz didn’t respond.
Ike went down the alley stairway and strolled along the edge of an unfinished construction project. It looked like this whole part of the city had been in the process of remaking itself from three- and four-story buildings to monumental concrete towers. Not your father’s college town.
As soon as he was out of earshot, he called in to Mantis. Right on schedule, forty-eight hours since their last conversation. But this time he wouldn’t be the one asking questions. “Mantis, Sentinel here.”
She answered right away. “This is Mantis.”
“I’m going to make this quick.” Ike looked back toward the stairway as he spoke, keeping his voice down. He didn’t see Diaz, and Kelleher would probably sleep until noon if they let her. “Have made contact with April Kelleher. Have learned her objective. She is chasing a rumor that someone in Ann Arbor has created an antiviral drug that will cure Amherst’s virus. The rumor is considered credible by the JTF. Today we are going to the likely location where the drug is being produced.”
“Superb work, Sentinel. We will send a team to capture the product and extract you.”
That might complicate things, Ike thought. He had to make sure he laid eyes on the sample before Mantis flooded the area with commandos. Otherwise he might not end up delivering on the promise, and he wouldn’t get another shot to prove himself.
Also, he had enough of a heart to want to make sure Kelleher—and sure, even Diaz—was out of the way before the shooting started. Ike might have betrayed the Division, but he had his reasons, and he didn’t have any desire to get agents killed. “ETA?” he asked.
“Team will deploy immediately to a staging area near Ann Arbor, and move in once you have confirmed the presence of the product. Send one word: Stampede.”
That solved the problem, Ike thought. “Confirm signal: Stampede.”
“Mantis out.”
Everything was set in motion. All that remained was to find the lab and see if this miracle drug actually existed.
* * *
• • •
When he got back up onto the deck, April was stirring. Diaz hadn’t moved. April sat up and said, “I dreamed about coffee.”
Diaz laughed. “I probably dream about coffee every night. I had an uncle who worked on a coffee plantation in Guatemala. My mom used to roast beans at home. I think I’m made partly of coffee.”
“That where you’re from, Guatemala?” Ike asked. He had never gotten the taste for coffee.
“No, man, I was born in DC. But my parents were from Guatemala. Acatenango Valley, right down the hill from a volcano. They came to the States after it erupted in 1972.”
“Better story than I have,” Ike said. “I’m from New Jersey.”
They broke out food and ate. When they were done, Ike poured water over the fire and stirred the ashes. He’d bee
n a Boy Scout once. A long time ago.
“Big day today,” Diaz said. “Where do we go?”
“North Campus,” April said. “I forget what the building is called, but if we can find Fuller Road it’ll take us right there.”
They found Fuller Road after skirting the edge of the campus and going down a hill past the hospital. It curved to the east, with overgrown soccer fields and a public pool on their left and the hospital looming at the top of the hill on their right. Just past the soccer fields, they crossed the river and saw signs for a VA hospital and North Campus.
A few minutes later, the campus came into view. Several of the buildings were fortified with Jersey barriers and razor wire, and JTF soldiers were visible in firing emplacements at intervals along the secure perimeter. “Well,” Diaz said. “Looks like we found something someone thinks is important, anyway.”
He led the way across a parking lot toward the closest checkpoint. Gesturing back at April and Ike, he said, “Agent Ronson and I have a civilian with some important information. We need to be directed to one of your lead researchers.”
As usual, their Division gear got them answers. “You’re going to want to talk to Dr. Chandrasekhar.” The gate guard pointed at the nearest of five buildings behind the security perimeter. Its front walls were mostly glass, with a trapezoidal awning extending out over the main entrance. Inside the building, Ike could see lights and people moving. “She’s kind of the manager of all the projects, as far as I know,” the guard added.
They went inside and asked around. Their third inquiry led them to an office deeper inside the building, away from the fancy glass entrance. Here the doors and halls were more utilitarian, the windows smaller. Their tight rectangles revealed laboratories and equipment rooms.
Kavita Chandrasekhar was maybe five foot three, her gray hair pulled back in a practical barrette. One pair of glasses rode high on her forehead and another on the bridge of her nose. She was in a small office with diagrams of complex molecules all over the walls and a laptop open on a desk piled with scientific journals. Its single window, half-open to let in the spring breeze, looked out to the east, directly at the Gerald Ford Presidential Library. When Ike, Diaz, and April appeared in her doorway she switched glasses and said, “What can I do for you?”
“We’re sorry to bother you, Professor,” Diaz said. “But we’re hoping to ask you a few questions.” Indicating April, he added, “Actually, she is.”
April extended a hand. “April Kelleher,” she said.
“Oh,” she said, shaking April’s hand. “Until recently I was working on a project with a team in New York, one of whom was also named Kelleher. Is it a common name?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” April said. “But I’m guessing that particular Kelleher was my husband.”
38
APRIL
The more she talked about it, the easier it got.
That had been true the night before, when she started opening up first to Ike and then to Aurelio, too. It was true this morning when Professor Chandrasekhar said, “Really? William Gibson Kelleher? He was your husband?”
April couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard someone say Bill’s full name, which he only used on professional research articles. People often took his first two names as a science fiction fan’s homage to the writer by that name, but Bill had always said his middle name was his father’s tribute, as a lifelong Los Angeles Dodgers fan, to 1988 World Series hero Kirk Gibson.
“Yes,” she said. Then, for the fifth or sixth time since she’d left New York, she told the story.
When she was done, Professor Chandrasekhar looked at Ike and Aurelio. “It’s okay to tell her?”
Ike didn’t say anything. Aurelio said, “Fine by me.”
“Well,” Professor Chandrasekhar said. “When the virus began to spread and it was clear we had a pandemic on our hands, authorities here took steps to protect this laboratory and some others nearby. The JTF, when it was formed, stepped in, and we have had the aid of several Division agents as well. All so we could continue to have the power and facilities to do our work. In New York, of course, the original samples of the virus were easiest to obtain. It was already mutating by the time it began to spread here and elsewhere in the country. So we followed closely the work of Dr. Kandel and others there, and offered our own insights as they occurred. At several points during the course of these experiments we referred to the work of Bill Kelleher. As well as many other scientists. Communications began to fail very soon after Black Friday, and I had no idea Bill Kelleher had been killed. I am very sorry to hear it. We never corresponded, or met, but reading his work I felt I knew him a little.”
Koopman was right, April thought. And I was right to come here. Maybe it was crazy to set out on this trek all by myself, but it was also right. A tangle of feelings left her speechless for a long moment: sadness, regret, satisfaction, pride in both Bill and herself.
“It’s good to know that he helped,” April said. “But I wish I knew more about why he was killed.”
Across the room, she heard Ike say, “Stampede.”
Professor Chandrasekhar looked over at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s going to be a stampede whenever this drug gets produced and people figure out where,” Ike said. “Listen, if there’s a sample of it, we should get it somewhere safe. Like, Fort Knox safe.”
“Oh, there is a sample,” Professor Chandrasekhar said. “An entire batch, twenty-four doses. We did all the sequencing and splicing right here, made it in another lab a few hundred yards away, and sent it out a week ago to Washington, DC. A scientific adviser to President Ellis should have the samples by now. A year or so from now, it should be widely available.” She smiled at the thought.
“Wait,” Ike said. “It’s not here?”
That was the first time April had heard him sound ruffled by anything. To her, it was enough to know that the BSAV existed, and that Bill had played a role in its creation. He had done good work and died for it. She had done her own good work.
“No,” Professor Chandrasekhar said. “President Ellis’s adviser requested specifically that we send all synthesized antiviral serum to him for secure handling in Washington, DC. We will continue to research and develop variations of it here, but the first broad-spectrum antiviral treatment for Amherst’s virus is complete and . . . well, it should be in the hands of government officials in Washington.” Ike’s concern registered with her and she added, “Should we be concerned that something has gone wrong?”
“Like you said, communication lines have been tricky lately,” Aurelio said. “And none of us has been to DC in a while. I live there, and I haven’t seen it since February.”
“I should follow up with the officials I have been talking to.” Professor Chandrasekhar scribbled a note on a legal pad by her laptop. “Now, as I have been saying, there is more work to do. If I can help you with anything else . . . ?”
“Just one more question,” April said. “A man named Koopman, I don’t know if you know him? He’s in New York, too?” Chandrasekhar shook her head. “Okay. He said that a number of scientists working in this field were killed right after Black Friday, when the virus was released. He speculated that this was because Amherst had to release the virus sooner than he wanted, maybe because he feared being discovered. So he hadn’t had time to perfect certain parts of it, specifically its defenses against antiviral drugs.”
“I see where you are going,” Chandrasekhar said. “So Amherst had people killed who were working in those fields, to delay research that would eventually combat his virus.”
“Either Amherst or other people who had learned of his project and wanted to use it for their own ends,” April said. “That’s the wrinkle Koopman added.”
“I hate to think there are such people,” Chandrasekhar said. “But I know they do in fact exist.”
; April noticed neither Ike nor Aurelio had anything to say. She glanced in Aurelio’s direction again and saw his watch face light up. He looked down at it, then stepped out into the hall.
“Listen, if the drug’s not here, we should get moving,” Ike said. “Aurelio and I, we’ve got things we could be doing. April, you planning to stay here now that you walked all this way, or what are you going to do?”
“Hold on,” she said. This was going to be her one chance to get a complete picture of the forces that had combined to produce the men in black suits who had killed her husband. She wasn’t going to miss it. “Professor. How do you know there are other people trying to use the virus?”
“Facilities like this one are very rare right now,” she said. “Many were destroyed and looted; others are abandoned. We had some foresight to try to protect this lab, but we also had some luck to be successful. So we are occasionally contacted by groups who wish us to synthesize something for them. We refuse, naturally. On occasion the JTF and sometimes the Division are required to emphasize that refusal, if you take my meaning.”
This fit with what Koopman had said, at least in broad strokes. If those groups had already been active when the virus was released, what did that mean? Had they known in advance about Amherst’s insane project, and started to make plans about how they could turn it to their advantage? What kind of lunatic would do that?
The kind who valued power, was the answer. All of them would have a rationale, but the truth was, those rationales existed only to excuse the pursuit of power. People like that had no problem killing to serve their vision.
So those were the people who had murdered Bill, she thought. Because through his work, whether he knew it or not, he had helped make possible a future where a single lunatic could not end millions of lives and devastate millions more. They did not want that future. They wanted another one, where they alone controlled who lived or died.