Sacrifice

by Dakota Banks

  Hound’s just so happy to be with her. I wish Jake were here, grinning at me like that. I miss him.

  Maliha kissed Glass on the cheek and patted her right hand, which was whole. She noticed that Hound rested his hand on the blanket on Glass’s left arm above the amputation. Because of his service as an Army medic in Vietnam—more of a calling to him than a job—Hound acknowledged traumatic injuries with candor.

  “From the copter,” Glass said, “it looked like the village had been melted. The bodies on the ground, I mean. Then I spotted a survivor and decided to set down. I should have just shot her from the air. Turns out her guts were falling out. She was dissolving right in front of me.” Glass turned toward Hound. “She was just about our daughter’s age.”

  “Hannah’s safe,” Hound said. “She sends her love. She’s staying with your sister Ginny.”

  “I know, you big idiot.” Glass smiled at him, or what passed for a smile with several teeth missing. “Anyway, I figured it might have been some new kind of napalm that dissolved flesh instead of just burning it. I poked some of what was left of the girl into my canteen. You still have that, right?”

  “Sent it off to a lab,” Maliha said.

  Glass nodded slightly. “Good. That’s when I saw the guys in suits. They were burning the bodies with flame-throwers, and they were between the copter and me. I hid in something I think was a big oven. I heard them blow up the copter. I figured I was going to get baked in that oven. What a fucking dumb place to hide.”

  Maliha could see that she was really into her story, reliving it. Glass was breathing deeply and her face was flushed.

  “When it was dark, I came out and started walking. I ran into some Janjaweed who’d rounded up a few people who had escaped. I don’t think they had anything to do with the attack. They were on their way somewhere else. They killed the men. I was lumped in with the women. I think you know the rest.”

  Glass’s voice wavered to a stop and her head dropped back on her pillow.

  “She needs some rest,” Hound said. “Let’s move next door.”

  Next door was officially the room that Hound was supposed to be recuperating in, but he’d changed it around to resemble an office more than a hospital room.

  “If it’s true, this is far worse than a simple Janjaweed attack on a village, as bad as that is. It’s clear that it was a field test of a biological or chemical weapon,” Maliha said.

  “Damn cold-blooded,” Hound said. “They put that killer stuff on those villagers or in them or something, and watched them die. Probably took pictures, made a nice scientific record. We gotta find those motherfuckers and blow their heads off. Are we all infected? Wait—what do you mean ‘if it’s true’?”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Maliha said. “One thing you have to consider is that Glass is fresh out of a traumatic experience and a coma. She could be disoriented about some things. Even if she isn’t, we don’t have any physical proof of her story—yet.”

  “We have that contaminant in the canteen.”

  What a cold way of referring to the deaths of hundreds, contaminant.

  “The unexamined contaminant, at least so far. Let’s think it through. Was there any radio or other contact with the villagers before Glass got there?”

  “Yeah, that was the procedure,” Hound said. “She’d check in the day before to make sure the village was expecting her. She didn’t want to be shot at or anything, and the medical team had to be there to receive the supplies. She wasn’t supposed to leave them just with the villagers. Too much chance the supplies would sprout feet and walk away.”

  “So assuming she made the call, there was no problem the day before she flew in, and a medical team was there,” Maliha said. “I think when she contacted the village, somebody there would have mentioned that they were in the middle of a horrible medical emergency. That means that all the deaths happened after she called, from one day to the next. Very fast acting.”

  “We picked up Glass almost a week ago, and nobody has gotten sick since. We should be all right,” Hound said.

  “I’ll arrange some tests from a specialist to make sure. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Stockholm would be a good source,” Maliha said. “I sent Glass’s possessions to Chicago. Including the sample from the dying girl. If anything’s capable of spreading this ‘Darfur Death,’ that sample is the prime suspect.”

  “What’d you have to do that for? Fly that shit all over the world? Might as well have dropped it out of the plane over New York.” Hound wasn’t happy, whether it was at the thought of the tests Maliha had mentioned or genuine concern about spreading disease, or both.

  “At least I packed it in an isolation bag.”

  “Well, that certainly saves the day. A zippy bag to the rescue.”

  She was ready with a smart retort, but looked at his aura instead. Hound’s aura was always complex and difficult to sort out, but the clear, vibrant tendrils of fear were unmistakable. He was worried about Glass and the new issue of some kind of toxin. She bit her lip and discarded the retort.

  “My wife is our canary in the mine then. She’s got a couple of days’ jump on us, so we’d have about two days of warning.”

  He said my wife. First time I’ve heard it.

  “Generally that would be true. Whatever happened, it could progress differently in different people, like faster in people with weak immune systems.” Or not at all in me.

  “Do we have to tell the docs?”

  “Definitely. But only the one we can trust.”

  Hound raised his voice. “How do you know who to trust? It was probably some doctor who invented that killer stuff in the first place.”

  A nurse stuck her head in the door. “I heard noise from out in the hall. It’s late and we do have other patients here who need their rest. Any problem in here?”

  “No, nothing’s wrong. We’ll keep the noise down. Would you have Dr. Corvernis join us, please?”

  “He’s not on duty. Visiting hours are over.”

  Maliha decided to ignore the crack about visiting hours. “Call him then, Nurse Stocker.” The woman had an ID badge that omitted her first name. She must like being addressed by her title. “Tell him Marsha Winters needs to see him right away.”

  “He is the head of the clinic. I don’t want to disturb him unnecessarily. I’ll just call the attending on duty.”

  Maliha let her eyes focus on a spot past the nurse. Her aura came into view. Nurse Stocker’s aura was partly green, a healer’s green, but there were strong elements of light brown for insecurity, dull yellow for selfishness, muddy red for anger.

  She’s carrying around a lot of baggage. Problems at home?

  “Call him. Trust me, he’ll come.”

  The nurse left without a word.

  Maliha shrugged. “She must be new around here. The staff is supposed to know that Dr. Corvernis and I have a special arrangement.”

  The nurse returned and said Dr. Corvernis was on his way in and would be joining them in about ten minutes. Her words were professional but the tone was resentful. Not only had her judgment been questioned, she’d no doubt been reprimanded in harsh terms for it.

  “Fine. Would you ask someone to bring us something to drink, Nurse Stocker? I think we’re going to have a long discussion when the doctor arrives. Water’s fine.”

  “Certainly.” Her tone was chilly.

  “That’s one pissed-off woman,” Hound said after the nurse left the room. “Maybe we should have the water checked for poison.”

  Maliha walked over and closed the door. They were broadcasting their business too carelessly.

  “Simmer down. The only one we speak to here is the good doctor. That remark about killer stuff a while ago might have been loud enough for other patients to hear. The nurse certainly did.”

  Conversation came to a halt while Nurse Stocker brought in a tray of glasses and a pitcher of ice water.

  Dr. Corvernis rushed in, a lit
tle red in the face. “You needed me?” He glanced around the room. Normally he spoke to Maliha in private. “Are you ill?”

  “I hope not. That’s what we need to determine. Hold on a second.”

  Maliha went over to the closed door, treading softly. She opened the door suddenly. Nurse Stocker was outside. She’d been standing with her ear close to the door.

  “Can I help you?” Maliha asked.

  “Just…just checking back to see if you needed any more water.”

  “Who’s out there?” Dr. Corvernis said.

  Maliha stepped away from the door, revealing Nurse Stocker.

  “What are you doing? Never mind. You’re dismissed for the night, Mrs. Stocker. Go home. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  She pinched her lips together, turned on her heel and left.

  “I don’t know what got into that woman,” the doctor said. “The staff knows patient confidentiality is guaranteed. We treat celebrities here. Royalty. Heads of state. I’ll bet she’s trying to sell something to the tabloids. ‘World-famous author has hemorrhoids’ or something.”

  “Does she?” Hound said. He was smiling, the first smile Maliha had seen on his face for a while.

  “No.” Maliha and the doctor answered in unison.

  An hour later, after hashing out procedures, a specialist was on her way from Stockholm. She had agreed to a news blackout, even to her own organization, under very stringent conditions. If there was a problem of any kind, or if she even suspected any problem as soon as she arrived, she was free to call in her organization at any time and get to work.

  Even with a plan of action in place, Maliha didn’t feel reassured enough to fall asleep that night. Her mind raced with plans. What she really wanted was to put all of it behind her and go home. She didn’t like the turn things had taken from a horrid but at least understood Janjaweed raid to something that might be a new terrorist tool for use on a large scale.

  Five tense days later the canary was still alive and the specialist went home. Glass was getting the best of care and Hound was at her side, so there was no reason for Maliha to linger in Switzerland. She was ready to fly back to Chicago. Since her jet had ferried Glass’s possessions to the other side of the Atlantic, she booked first class on a commercial flight.

  All of first class. She liked privacy.

  A couple of Asian businessmen had to be displaced, but were persuaded to move into business class with credits to their accounts after being told that a member of the diplomatic corps required the entire first-class section for security. Maliha allowed them a quick glimpse of her as she boarded, but drew the line at posing for photos.

  I’m on my way home!

  Her heart was light for the first time in days. Analyzing the canteen sample had fallen to a lower priority because Glass, who’d been closest to the material, breathed it, walked through it, had been cleared of disease. Maliha settled into the new style of first-class surround seats, fully reclining with dividers for privacy and even a seat for a visitor.

  At home she could catch up with life in “RandyWorld,” as she’d dubbed the trials of her twenty-something friend’s dating life, and do some writing on her latest Dick Stallion novel, Too Big To Be True.

  There was also something she’d been putting off. She was long overdue for a talk with her boyfriend Jake Stackman, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. She needed to ask some tough questions and kept putting it off, partly because their schedules had pulled them apart.

  Admit it. The main reason is I don’t want to know the answers.

  She summoned the male attendant.

  “Mr. Peeters, was it?” Maliha said in her sweetest voice, the one that melted men into compliant puddles. “I’m in the mood for champagne and chocolate.”

  “Right away, miss. You can call me Jens, if that’s not too familiar.” The handsome attendant returned with a glass of champagne and two delicate truffles on a lace doily, all on a silver tray.

  The champagne and Neuchatel truffles were excellent.

  “Bring me a bottle of champagne, Jens,” she leaned closer to whisper although they had the first-class cabin to themselves, “plus a glass for you and the box of truffles these came from.” Although Maliha rarely drank, there didn’t seem to be any threats around miles up in the air and she felt like relaxing.

  Jens was glad to be of service. “You know, miss, what goes nicely with champagne and chocolate?”

  “No, tell me.”

  “I’d rather show you.”

  He started with a slow, sensuous foot massage. It was a long, pleasant flight.

  Chapter Five

  Mogue considered what the woman had said. So far, he hadn’t gotten rough with her, so he still had her confidence. The twenty thousand euros on the table between them kept her talking.

  Martine Stocker was the type of person who stood out to Mogue’s eyes as though she had a neon sign floating over her head. He could easily pick out such women: needy, poor in a spiritual or material way, weak-willed, with a streak of meanness usually concealed. But not from him.

  Mogue maintained a network of informants in hospitals and clinics around the world that catered to the rich and powerful. Such people were most vulnerable when they were forced to face the prospect of death, because the Grim Reaper is the one thing they can’t bribe, cheat, or cajole. Mogue’s informant at the Clinique des Montagnes was the pilot of the courtesy jet, Edmund Kappel. He was the first to know what prince or sheik or Hollywood star or music diva would be checking in for discreet services.

  Edmund reported that he’d picked up three wounded Americans, one of them severely injured, from a private Khartoum hospital. Mogue put that information together with the report from his cleanup crew about a helicopter at the test site that shouldn’t have been there. The fools had blown the copter up, but Mogue put two and two together and came up with five: there was at least one American witness to his work.

  Enter Martine Stocker, a nurse with a perfect vantage point for information gathering and a serious weakness for jewelry she couldn’t afford. Not that she had anywhere fancy to wear the jewels. Either she wanted the gems for their intrinsic beauty or she hoped to have a place to wear them in the future. Mogue didn’t care about her reasons. He never did.

  “The woman who was injured the most was Alexandra Trent, but everybody called her Glass. I guess that Trent name could be fake because the whole thing was so odd. Another woman, Marsha Winters, has been to the clinic before, and she has some kind of secret arrangement with Dr. Corvernis. It got even stranger. They made some remark about killer drugs or something, and they flew in some woman from Sweden who started doing tests and ordering everybody around. What a bitch she was.”

  Mogue took in everything with no visible reaction. He could see that his silence made her nervous, which is exactly what he wanted. Nervous people want to fill a silence with more words. Mogue got some of his most useful information without asking questions.

  “So is that enough? I can get my money now?” Her eyes dipped again to the stack of money on the table. Lying next to it was the partial recording she’d been able to make before being discovered. The recording device, as he’d instructed, had been hidden behind her ear. He’d frowned when she’d described how she’d been caught—with her head leaning toward the door!

  Stupid woman. So obvious. All they had to do was a quick search and the device would have been found, and that would have led to questions. Questioning Stocker was like squeezing a cupcake.

  She’d agreed to meet him in the kitchen of a restaurant closed for the night, and never questioned the location. She was inexperienced at selling information or she would have thought the location, surrounded by knives, cleavers, frying vats, and food grinders, was an unusual place for their underhanded business.

  “Yes, you’ve been very helpful. Go ahead and take the money.”

  When she reached across the table, Mogue reached too. He’d been holding a lovely titanium boning knife,
borrowed from the restaurant’s ample supply, in his lap. He jammed the knife through her hand and into the wooden table.

  Her eyes widened in pain and surprise. She yanked her hand back, but the solid little knife held and tore her flesh. She didn’t scream, but she made an anguished moan. Tears began to run down her cheeks.

  Mogue watched objectively, trying to decide if the tears were from pain or from the realization that she wasn’t going to leave alive. An experiment was in order. From his pocket he took a delicate pair of pliers. Clamping the jaws on one of her fingernails, he twisted his wrist quickly and pulled out the nail.

  That got a scream out of her. The tears were probably from pain, then, not the anticipation of death.

  Lack of imagination. Even now she is unable to see what lies ahead.

  Chapter Six

  When she got into O’Hare International, Maliha called the lab where Ty and Claire Rainier worked. No one answered. She called each of their cell-phone numbers and left messages.

  Calling a few contacts at the university, she learned that both of them had been away attending conferences, and had intended to take a few days of vacation after that. Recalling her phone message to the Rainiers from the clinic, Maliha hadn’t indicated any real urgency about examining the canteen specimen, so they’d probably continued with their plans.

  The Rainiers were a brilliant and eccentric couple. She prized their out-of-the-box thinking and the independence with which they worked. That very independence made them a little prickly to deal with. If she seemed to be pestering them, they’d do the exact opposite of hurrying.

  Maliha arrived home late on an unusually warm November afternoon. She loved having Chicago as her home base. For a woman who’d traveled so much in her life, and lived in all the cosmopolitan cities of the world, it was nice to claim a place as her personal backyard. At least, during this cycle.

  As people aged around her and Maliha didn’t keep up, she had to reinvent herself every twenty or thirty years, and that usually meant pulling up stakes. She would have to dispose of her temporary identity—Marsha Winters—and emerge somewhere else in the world with a new name and a new background. She kept access to her fabulous wealth by a variety of techniques. It was a lonely existence, but now Maliha had friends who would carry over from one cycle to the next. A complication, but a rewarding one.