by Ted Bell
Ah. It had been glorious. It had been vindication. A bulwark erected against the slights and humiliations he had endured at the hands of his enemies for so very long. A kind of purification. A kind of redemption. He smiled.
Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Prophet.
The wails of his disciples still reverberated within his brain as he stood now, in the shadows of the moonlit palms at the water’s edge, looking up at his beautiful Bambah on the hill.
The pink hotel was quiet now, her public rooms and long dank hallways devoid of ringing echoes, darkened. But not desolate, oh no. The old hotel was humming with restive energy, waiting to be unleashed. A small yellow chin of moon hung in a black sky peppered with silver stars. The gardens were still, save the gentle rustle of the palms. The only other sound Snay could hear was the singsong wish-wash of the surf at his feet.
He fired up a Baghdaddie and listened to the night.
Even Saddam up on the verandah was silent, although Snay knew the wily old dragon was not sleeping. The women had excited him as well. Caressing his snout, looking into those gleaming yellow eyes, Snay had seen something most familiar. There on the verandah, saying good-bye to his aged beast, it came to him just how much alike they were, he and the Komodo.
Ravenous, primitive creatures. Feral. Equipped with sharp claws. Yes, all that and one more trait they shared: they were both poisonous. A light burning on an upper floor winked out.
Sleep, little flowers.
Almost all the hotel’s lights had been extinguished. His fleurs du mal were deep in slumber now. In a few hours they would rise up and begin their epic and final journey. Praise Allah, what joyous havoc this old dog was about to wreak upon this world! He threw his head back and laughed at the sheer outrageousness of it all. For some moments, he cackled and capered about in the soft white sand, a fat white devil in the moonlight.
What was the name they had all called him, friend and foe alike? Tippu Tip had told him one night, many years before. Confessed it in a drunken stupor, the two of them buckled against a piss-stained wall in some dank alley in Africa, roaring over some horrible blood-soaked deed just done.
The Dog. Yes, that was it, the name they all said behind his back. The Dog.
Soon the whole world would learn that this Dog had a very jagged set of canines. He looked at the phosphorescent glow of his watch in the darkness. Almost one. What was keeping Tippu and his all-important passenger? It was late, and there was much to be accomplished before the sun rose over Suva.
At that moment, from up at the top of the drive, the engine of the ancient Daimler reluctantly turned over. He took a deep breath and allowed himself a brief moment of relaxation, perhaps the first in weeks. Months of intense planning were nearly finished. No detail of this stage had escaped him, from the sublimely technical and logistical, to the most ridiculously mundane. He’d had the most fun with the inexpensive western-style female wardrobe (he’d ordered it all online from a Land’s End catalog!) and even choosing the supple leather shoulder bags each woman would carry tomorrow.
Bags to hold the American city maps he’d ordered over the Internet from something called Triple A. Very good maps, indeed! Maps, and, of course, the precious Pigskins.
He’d even designed the New World Travel logo for the bags himself: a blue and green globe enwreathed in olive branches, suspended from the beaks of two doves. Then, he’d written the perfect slogan:
We come in peace.
He watched the Lucas headlamps of the Daimler snake down the drive, the twin yellow beams intermittently streaking through the black trunks of the palms. A moment later, the mammoth black car rolled to a stop beside him, hissing and pinging. He waited for the usual death rattle but Tippu somehow managed to keep the ancient motor at idle. He heard a heavy click and a man seated in the shadows of the rear seat pushed the door open for him.
“Good evening, Snay,” the man said in his peculiar accent. The wiry old Indian had a high-pitched girlish voice and was prone to fits of giggling. “Get in, get in! You are good, I am hoping? Yes?”
“Very good, thank you,” Snay replied settling into the deep leather cushions. The car listed to one side under his weight. He eyed the other man carefully. Snay? The manner was far too casual and he didn’t like it. The doctor was an ugly little bugger. A lank ponytail of greasy grey hair was stuck to the back of his balding head. A pair of thick black spectacles perched on his beaky nose, magnifying two already enormous buglike eyes.
He always kept his fingers laced protectively over his little potbelly, as if it were a pot of gold, a repository of precious coins. No, bin Wazir thought, irritated, there was little to admire here but the brain.
Tippu noisily engaged first gear and they rumbled down into the thick jungle.
The Indian, Dr. Soong, was always in a hurry to get his words out, as if his mind had a constant backlog of bottle-necked sentences.
“I am having no idea you are such a fiery orator, my dear Snay! Such stimulation! All those beauties! Oh my word! Not a dry eye in the house. Or a dry anything else, for that matter, I am suspecting. Hee-hee.”
“You were there? You were not invited, Doctor.”
“I slipped in a side door, you see, and sat at the rear. Look at my jacket! Soaked to the skin. You are having boiler problems, yes? The old place is finally falling down around your ears! You must—”
“And no one stopped you? You just came in and sat down.”
The little man seemed delighted at bin Wazir’s evident irritation.
“Yes, no one. Very aphrodisiacal qualities, your speech produced, Snay,” he said. “Oh, yes. Labial engorgement! I checked a few of them, you see, when I gave them their vaccinations. Don’t worry, said I. It’s all right. I am a doctor! Tee-hee. Most amusing, what?”
“So. All is in readiness?” Snay interrupted.
“In a manner of speaking. Most excellent, your lecture about my little Pigskin bombs. Pity I am having so much trouble with them, you see.”
“Trouble?” Snay sat forward, his pulse rate zooming. If this little shit was—“What kind of trouble?”
“They are not working, you see,” the man giggled. “Not working.”
“Not working.”
“No. Not.”
“Tippu Tip,” Snay said, speaking evenly into the speaking tube, “Pull over when we get to the cage. I want to show the doctor the baby lizards.” Blood pounded at his temples. He stood on the threshold of triumph. Nothing must interfere—
“The dragons? No-no, it’s not necessary, Pasha. I am only trying to tickle you. Tee-hee. No problem, Snay, no problem. Please be—”
“Some minor adjustments, then? The Pigskins?”
“No. Not really minor, no.”
“No? No!” Snay lunged for the man and instantly had his hands around the fellow’s scrawny neck, yanking him sideways, his thumbs already applying sufficient pressure to crush the doctor’s rattling windpipe.
“Stop!” the little man managed to get out.
“You think you can fuck with me?” the enraged Pasha screamed into his left ear. “Who will protect you now? The Americans and British have killed all your Iraqi friends, your playmates Ouday and Qusay! Pulled your glorious benefactor Saddam out of one rathole and tossed him into another! And sent the rest crawling under rocks! The Saudis, the Iranians, even your own countrymen have disowned you. Even the bloody Pakis hate your guts! Now, you tell me that everything is in readiness or I’ll kill you right here!”
“Let me go! I can’t breathe! I will talk!”
Snay hurled him back into his corner like a sack of chicken bones. The little masochist. The problem was, he liked it. It was one of the great secrets of his success and long life. Since you couldn’t hurt the man, you were at his mercy. The threat of the dragons was another matter.
“You’ve got thirty seconds before we arrive at the Komodos, you ugly little wog. Start talking.”
The doctor had his hands at his throat, massaging his cruelly bru
ised flesh.
“Patience? Allow me to finish? My God, you are a madman. You are now a personage of great responsibility. You must learn to control these murderous impulses. Why, the Emir himself was saying to me just the other day that—”
Bin Wazir felt hot beads of perspiration popping out at the corners of his eyes at the mere mention of the Emir. Failure now was unthinkable. Unacceptable. “Tell me what I want to hear. Or I’m feeding you to the dragons.”
“It’s the bombs are the problem. Well. Who would believe it? Not the bombs, but the fissile matter inside. The design is flawless. Feel free to call me a genius, everyone does. But! But, but, but—and here is the problem. There was unfortunately this last-minute problem with the fissile material. It was not the specific grade I paid for and—”
“Fuck! You’re dead. Tippu! Pull over!”
“Wait! Wait! Let me finish! I am not stupid, you know. I had a much better idea, you see! Ready-made. No delays. No problems. Simpler. Keep driving, I beg you, let me explain.”
Tippu braked the big car on the verge opposite the dragon cage, got out and stamped around the side. He opened the doctor’s door, reached in and grabbed his ponytail, lifting him a foot off the seat. The African looked at his master, waiting for instruction. “Ar kill him?”
“Please!” the man screeched, “Let me show you, Pasha! In the big suitcase! Open it!”
“What is in the suitcase, you miserable worm?” Snay had assumed the two polished black metal cases contained the doctor’s personal effects for the flight across the Pacific.
“The perfect weapon, dear boy! Genetically altered smallpox,” the doctor cried. “Designed it myself, I did. Impervious to the American vaccine! Nothing can stop it! Let me go and I’ll show you.”
“Bugs. Fucking bugs, I knew it.” Snay said. “Where are the bombs? I want to know now! One hundred million dollars worth of suitcase nuclear bombs, bought and paid for. Now where fucking are they?”
“You have them! They are yours! They are all stored down in your catacombs, Pasha. Inside the Blue Palace! When I return, I will make certain adjustments to make them more stable and—”
Snay could not listen to one more word, such was his fury. He nodded at Tippu and the African whipped the man out of the open door and started through the underbrush toward the cage.
“I paid a hundred million for some fucking bugs?” bin Wazir said, trotting alongside Tippu Tip, leaning down and shouting in Soong’s ear as he was being bounced along like a desperate puppet. His feet were dragging through the grass, clawing for purchase.
“A plague! A pox!” Soong cried out. “An infinite plague. Much, much deadlier than the Pigskin! The bombs, they would only kill a million perhaps. But this—NO!”
They came to the cage. The dragons were hurling themselves against the bars, thrusting glistening tongues through the bars; long and black, darting. Tippu pulled a heavy ring of keys from his robes and handed them to bin Wazir.
“I’m going to open the cage, now, Pundit,” he said, his words barely audible over the voracious roars of the Komodo dragons. They were snapping in anticipation at the steel cage rods with their viciously curved incisors. A few bones were scattered in the dirt, the remains of the British MI6 agent.
“Pasha,” the doctor said in a strangled voice, “If you kill me, you are finished. You must know this! It is over. Everything. The Emir has told me many times that if we fail in this, we both will wish we were dead long before our heads roll. Please. I beg you.”
Snay bin Wazir looked at the wizened little elf in disgust. Finally, realizing the incontrovertible truth of what the man was saying, he told Tippu to release him. As fervently as he wished to rip off this disgusting weasel’s head and toss it into the cage, the fact was, he had no choice at all. In order to make tomorrow’s absolutely critical deadline 35,000 feet above the Pacific, Snay’s newly refurbished 747 had to be wheels up before sunrise. Three hours from now.
Tippu dropped the man into the weeds like a soiled tissue. “Ar don lak this one.” he said, “He stink.”
“Good, good,” the doctor said, gasping for breath, crawling on all fours away from the cage and the enraged Komodos. “Very good.”
“Talk,” bin Wazir said, lowering his great bulk to the ground beside the shaking creature. The man was hugging his knees to his chest and rocking, thrilled to be alive. Snay lit up a Baghdaddie while Tippu hovered, throwing a fistful of betel nuts into his mouth and pulverizing them, the red juice leaking out the corners of his mouth. They waited until the doctor regained his ability to speak.
“So. You know Mr. Kim, naturally? Friend and ally of our most revered Emir?”
“In Pyongang. Yes, yes. Go on.”
“Yes. So, I have been doing some, how do you call it, freelance work for his North Korean government. Division 39, they call it. Top-secret fund. I am helping him to process spent fuel rods from his Yongbyon nuclear complex. We are making plutonium units the size of baseballs! Plus a ballistic missile which will reach the heart of Tokyo! But, sadly, North Korea is under the American microscope, you know. But, ha, good for me because Mr. Kim always has me looking for alternatives to plutonium. Lucky me, I recently found him a very, very good one.”
“Biological.”
“Correct. I have created a genetically altered v-virus,” the doctor said. “Like smallpox, a derivative, only better. There is no prevention. Oh, the Americans have stockpiled something called vaccinia immune globulin, VIG, but it is useless against my hybrid smallpox virus.”
“Smallpox.”
“Yes. The very best bio-terror weapon on earth. It, it is transmitted by expulsion of minute droplets from the nose and mouth from person to person. Through the air. Thoroughly human-tested on political prisoners by Mr. Kim’s Division 39 scientists. One hundred per cent success rate. Cha-ching!”
“Go on.”
“So you see? We’re ready to go! No delays. Unlike the Pigskin bombs, my I-Virus, the Koreans are nicely calling it the I-Virus in my honor, it has no radioactive half-life. Once the carriers are infected—”
“Carriers? What fucking carriers?”
“Ah. The Barbie Doll terrorists, who else? Tee-hee. Four hundred perfect walking time bombs.” The doctor had recovered rapidly. He saw he once again had bin Wazir where he liked to keep him, wholly dependent. Harmless.
“You mean—”
“Yes, yes! Your lovelies will all be infected with the I-Virus during the flight over the Pacific! The first dosage they got when I ‘vaccinated’ them at the hotel. Ease your mind! They’re not being infectious until the second massive exposure they will receive once airborne. I will explain it all at the hangar, Pasha. May we remove ourselves from these beasts? I cannot possibly hear myself think.”
Thwarted, the two ravenous lizards were now visiting their frustration upon each other. And what little was left of Owen Nash.
Soong smiled quietly to himself. He’d already been paid handsomely by the North Korean dictator. The second, smaller, suitcase on the floor was full to bursting with dollars. Now, it appeared, he’d live long enough to also dine extravagantly at the Emir’s bottomless trough.
The Daimler exploded fitfully into life. Resuming the short trip to the airstrip, Dr. Soong carefully explained why the I-Virus concealed in titanium canisters inside his black case was vastly more lethal than even one hundred small nuclear devices.
“Think exponentially, my dear Snay,” he said, rapping the case with his bony knuckles. “Do you understand what I am saying?” Bin Wazir nodded sagely, still having only a vague idea what he was talking about, keeping the man alive only out of sheer desperation.
“Exponential,” he repeated in a hollow voice. He was at this juncture, he knew, leaning on a slender reed.
“Yes! The transcendental number e, you see. The base of all natural logarithms, raised to an exponent. Confused? I mean simply that the I-Virus will expand extremely rapidly through the population, becoming ever greater in size, Pasha. Sp
in out of control right under the American noses! Under their noses! You get it? You understand now why this is perfect? It cannot possibly be stopped! Ha!”
“I kill with knives, not bugs. Explain.”
“Pleasure. Why is smallpox the perfect weapon? Good question. Why, because the symptoms of smallpox are never apparent until twelve to fourteen days after infection. During that time, the carriers are all extremely infectious to anyone with whom they come in contact. But, during this period, to all appearances, they appear perfectly healthy.”
“They have no visible symptoms?”
“None! For at least two whole weeks! So the virus is spreading exponentially and yet completely undetected. Tee-hee. It’s the difference between a true global plague and a little isolated head cold like SARS or monkey pox. You see?”
Snay leaned his head back and allowed himself a glimmer of hope that it was not all lost after all. He stared at the doctor, a kind of desperate hope in his eyes. He said, “The Americans can’t catch it in time to stop it.” Bin Wazir grinned slyly.
“By the time they catch it, they’ve already caught it!”
“The entire country.”
“Yes!”
“I’m beginning to like this.”
“The Emir underestimates you. But I do not.”
“Projections, Doctor. How many will die?”
“Perhaps ten million. A few more, a few less. At any rate, catastrophic results. The American infrastructure will overload. National, state, and local governments will come apart at the seams. Loss of electrical power, communications, septic systems, water filtration. Widespread panic, total chaos, rampant disease, virulent septesis. Mob rule followed by anarchy. Vigilantism. Fundamental meltdown.”
“Meltdown.”
“Basically, the end of the America we all know and hate, Pasha.”
“Keep talking, Doctor.”
“The basic plan remains the same. No deviation from your schedule. After the airplane arrives at its destination, the highly infectious army will disgorge and fan out across America. They will travel to your designated hundred most populous cities. All that you have prearranged remains precisely as planned. But, once in place, instead of detonating my beloved Pigskins, your lovely agents are mingling with the infidel masses within those hundred cities. Going to movies, train stations, amusement parks, zoos. Making boyfriends and girlfriends, you see? Then newly infected masses of American carriers, undetected, mingle and travel and create exponentially new armies of infected carriers.”