World Without End

by Chris Mooney

  The time was ripe for their downfall.

  Faust's skin tingled. The glass towers seemed to give off a charge, as if the screams of the dead had been sealed inside the glass. He reached out and ran his gloved hand against the glass. To feel it all, to actually connect to the beauty of Hitler's vision of a sanitized world, Faust would have to touch the glass with his bare hand. The thought made him dizzy with anticipation.

  Two specialized sterilized wipes were inside his jacket pocket one to clean, one to wipe. He could use one to clean the glass and touch it with his bare hand, and then use the other wipe to disinfect. The small bottle of hand sanitizer he carried with him at all times would destroy any lingering germs.

  Faust unwrapped the wipe from its foil container and cleaned off a good section of glass, committing the area to memory, and then carried the infected wipe to the barrel and threw it away. He would burn the gloves later.

  He walked back to the same spot and then removed his glove, the cold air washing across his warm, damp skin. Alone inside the memorial, Faust pressed his palm against the glass, closed his eyes and in his mind saw this street in the vivid, singular vision of his brave new world.

  The winter sky is the color of blood. The sun has started to set; a light snow is falling over the bodies of the dead, hundreds of them, their twisted, mangled corpses line the streets and steps leading up to Government Center. Some have collapsed against the hoods of their cars or against the steering wheels, others are hunched over restaurant tables, sprawled on the street. Some clutch the cell phones they used to call 911 for help. Their faces are the color of eggplant; blood dribbles from their mouths and noses. They have drowned in their own fluid.

  The virus is called Chloe Six, a genetically engineered strain of influenza created in Russia that had, at one point, been designed as a bio weapon against the U.S. It was intended to re-create the 1918 influenza epidemic which, in only a few months, killed more that twenty million people worldwide. Only a few knew of Chloe Six's existence, or its antidote, both of which are stored in the sacred vaults of the Centers for Disease Control.

  Faust knows the CDC's layout quite well. For years, he has been preparing for this moment. He knows the security measures and how to bypass them. When he slips outside the CDC and walks through the darkness, he is invisible to the world. He is wearing the military suit. Stored inside a special pack are the Chloe Six specimens and the world's only antidote.

  Faust walks down the bloody street, smiling as he breathes in the wonderfully cold air, the snow a pleasant tingle on his scalp. He has nothing to fear. Like Gunther, like all the ones Faust has chosen for his brave new world, he is inoculated, safe from the deadly virus. The dead look up at him, their mouths frozen open in horror; some look away, their hollowed-out eyes pointed toward the heavens. The cellphones and pagers clipped to their belts and clutched in their hands and strewn about the street are still alive, glowing with power and waiting for a command. Nothing will come. The old world now lay dead. A new god has emerged, about to rule a new world.

  "JUST SELL THE FUCKING THING!" a man shouted.

  Faust's eyes flew open. His hand still pressed against the glass, he turned around and saw a tall man with slicked-back black hair, pacing around the bronze statue in Curley Memorial Plaza with a cell phone pressed against his ear.

  "Yeah, Alex, I read the fucking P/E report," the man said into his cell phone. The man's other gloved hand held a Starbucks coffee cup; he took a long draw from it and then yanked it away from his mouth, nearly spitting out his coffee.

  "Forget the long-term growth, I'm talking about the here and now, Alex, and I'm telling you I'm not going to take a bath on that stock, so sell the fucking dog before it fucking tanks."

  "Do you mind, sir," Faust said.

  The young man stopped pacing and stared from behind his designer sunglasses, his mouth parted open, insulted and shocked that someone had interrupted him.

  "Show some respect," Faust said.

  "You're in the presence of the dead."

  "Mind your own business," the man snapped and then turned around and went back to his noisy conversation.

  Oh so oblivious. They couldn't see that the center of their world was already falling apart, that the great rough beast had already slouched its way toward Bethlehem to be born and was now lurking in their midst, the darkness about to drop again and unleash the blood-dimmed tide.

  Quote them Yeats and could they claim the beauty of the poem and grasp its meaning? Not unless it was rapped by an illiterate black street gangsta with a mouth full of gold teeth on MTV Time to flush and begin again. Time for a new world. A world without end. Amen.

  "Mr. Cole?"

  Faust turned around and saw Stephen Conway standing on the venting grid in the second tower of glass, his face mournful.

  Faust smiled. Time for the lesson to begin.

  "Good morning, Stephen," Amon Faust said, "Am I interrupting?" The man's tone was low, his sad eyes moving toward the glass where Faust's hand was still pressed.

  "Of course not. But thank you for asking," Faust said and his hand slid away. The hand wipe was already gripped in his other gloved hand.

  He started scrubbing his bare skin. Stephen watched.

  "One cannot be too careful with viruses. Especially this time of year."

  Stephen nodded. His eyes moved around the prison numbers etched into the glass, his head tilting up into the sky.

  "Staggering, isn't it?" Faust said.

  "It seems almost unbelievable."

  "That's because you're young. The young like to forget. It reminds me of an article I read in Newsweek. A twenty-three-year-old Polish man opened up a nightclub in Oswiecim, one mile down the road from the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The nightclub that hosts topless women wrestling in a pit of Jell-O sits on the same site of an SS-run tannery in which hundreds of Jews lost their lives." Faust's eyes roved across the numbers.

  "All those people trapped in those camps, on their way to the gas chambers, praying for help____________________ God could have stopped it all but didn't.

  Do you think God wept, Stephen?"

  "I'm not religious."

  Faust smiled.

  "All that time at St. Anthony's didn't instill the fear of eternal wrath into you?"

  Conway shoved his hands into his pockets.

  "I see you've read my file."

  "And I see you're avoiding my question."

  "I don't have much use for religion."

  "Why?"

  "It has no practical value here. Especially today. We've become tolerant to corruption."

  "Yes. Society as a whole has moved away from God. Evil lives among us and we're blind to it. The great beast has slouched home and secretly, we're relieved."

  Conway nodded, his eyes shifting over Faust's shoulder, to the Curley Memorial Park where a guy paced back and forth and blabbered on his cell phone.

  "Forgive my diatribe, Stephen. I don't mean to lecture. I'm old, and I don't like the path the world has taken. I find it unsettling. I often wonder what it would be like if the whole planet started over again. Do you ever have those dreams where you're surrounded by people like yourself, people who appreciate you and who you are?"

  "Everyone does."

  "I think it could happen, you know. If the right person came into power, we could have a world whose foundation isn't built on lies and deceit. One without all this needless pain and suffering and death."

  "It's a thought." Stephen was still distracted.

  "Jesus, I wish that guy would shut up."

  Faust put a hand on Stephen's shoulder and ushered him to the last tower, out of hearing distance from the rude gentleman. Steam hissed and rose between them. Faust could smell Stephen's youth, his need for the world to exist in black-and-white, right-and-wrong all of it was still there, it hadn't formed that thick, impenetrable callous across his skin. In time, Stephen could be molded and shaped.

  But first, find a way to get insid
e.

  "Last night when I called you at the wake, I was rather rude. I didn't want to intrude on your mourning," Faust said.

  "I'm so sorry for your loss, Stephen. To lose someone so close to you someone you considered a family member, it must be devastating."

  "Bouchard said Angel Eyes is in town."

  "Yes. He's very close."

  "What's the latest intel?"

  "We're investigating some leads. First, I'd like to know your thoughts on this man Angel Eyes."

  "I'm sure Bouchard filled you in."

  "He did. And now I'd like to hear your thoughts."

  Conway looked out at the traffic for a moment and gathered his thoughts.

  "What's to say?" he said and looked back.

  "He's managed to stay off our radar screen. He's achieved this by using, we think, a number of people he has planted on the inside."

  "Like John McFadden."

  "Who's now dead."

  "Yes. Very suspicious."

  "We can never get a lock on the guy. The psychological profile defines him as a psychopath."

  "I'm not interested in what computers think. Tell me your thoughts."

  "He steals the technology, and then he kills people. That would place him within the definition of having a psychopathic personality."

  "How do you know he kills all his victims?"

  "They wind up dead or missing."

  "Missing doesn't mean they're dead."

  "Their bodies haven't turned up yet. We know he killed two people:

  Jonathan King and Alex Matthews."

  "Jonathan King," Faust said, frowning.

  "Refresh my memory."

  "Invented a new type of sticky foam the same stuff used on me in the lab. Angel Eyes or one of his henchmen beat him unconscious and poured Drano down his throat. He woke up in the hospital and suffered brain damage and couldn't talk but wrote down the name Angel Eyes. I'm sure Bouchard told you this."

  "Yes. He did. But my question to you, Stephen, is how can you be sure it was Angel Eyes?"

  "He killed Randy Scott. I was inside the lab when it happened. And then there's Alan Matthews."

  "And now your friend John Riley. The one you buried today."

  Conway cleared his throat.

  "You sound like you sympathize with this guy."

  "Man is not one-dimensional. His thinking, his motivations, and his needs, the expanse of his inner world his soul, if you believe in such things cannot be compressed into neat, linear words that you feed into a computer. Man is not a piece of code."

  "You make it sound like you have the inside line on this guy."

  Faust smiled.

  "You might say that."

  "I'm listening."

  "Don't limit the scope of your thinking. If you do, your target becomes elusive. You'll be hunting an apparition that exists only in your head. For example, what if I told you that Alan Matthews was consumed by greed. That if he didn't sell the technology to Angel Eyes, he would have sold it to someone else. Like your friend, Armand."

  "That doesn't mean Matthews deserved to die."

  "Did Armand deserve to die?"

  "He rolled the dice."

  "But did you mourn over his death?"

  "Of course not."

  "Your moral landscape is very black-and-white, isn't it?" Faust said.

  "By your definition, is Angel Eyes evil?"

  "Anyone who kills someone purely for personal gain is, in my book, evil."

  "What if I showed you that all of his efforts were designed for a higher purpose?"

  "That doesn't give him the right to kill people for gain."

  "Isn't that what you and your IWAC team do? Take down people who are threats?"

  "I'll be sure and ask him these questions when we meet."

  "And then you'll kill him."

  "I didn't say that."

  "It's all right to admit it, Stephen. Frankly, I'd want to kill someone who betrayed me."

  Stephen nodded, but his expression didn't change. Faust was pleased.

  The foundation was laid. He would shape the next course of events to reveal Raymond Bouchard's betrayal and Stephen's inner world, the one he had so carefully constructed, would be leveled. He would be ripe for transformation. Faust would take him into the fold and would, over time, mold him. I have so many things to teach you, Stephen.

  Faust said, "The technology that Angel Eyes steals, what do you think he's doing with it?"

  "We know he's not selling the devices. They haven't turned up on the black market. I think he's collecting."

  "Interesting theory. What would he be collecting these items for?"

  "When we catch him, then we'll know what he's up to."

  "Yes. I'm sure some revelation is at hand."

  Conway reached into his pocket and came back with a small card. He handed it to Faust.

  "I found that in a bouquet at the funeral home last night," Conway said.

  "It's signed Winston Smith."

  "It's one of Angel Eyes's aliases. We know that because Matthews left a detailed verbal diary on his dealings with the man. That's how we found out about his next targets: Praxis and Dixon."

  "How does Angel Eyes find out about these targets? Any thoughts?"

  "Given what happened at Praxis and the recent revelations in the papers, I'd say the leak is this guy McFadden."

  Faust stared at the card.

  "Does the name Winston hold any significance?"

  "Winston Smith is the name of the main character from Orwell's 1984."

  "Yes. The man converted by Big Brother. The one who waits for the bullet to enter his brain."

  "Besides King, Alan Matthews was the only witness who has seen Angel Eyes. Now we might have another." Again Conway reached inside his pocket and came back with a card, only this one was slightly bigger. He handed it over and said, "This is from Renee Kaufmann, John Riley's girlfriend. She had it waiting for me at the funeral home last night.

  She was in Amsterdam when Riley was killed."

  "And now she's waiting for you at the Aquarium."

  Conway nodded.

  "We have a witness who's seen Angel Eyes's real face."

  "The note says she has evidence to back it up. What do you think that means?"

  "I don't know. Maybe she recorded something."

  "This is quite a breakthrough."

  "I want to bring her in. I want her protected."

  "I agree. Stephen, do you think Angel Eyes knows about the woman?"

  "I don't know. Right now, I think he's focused on me. He thinks I know the decryption code."

  "Do you?"

  Conway mentioned the last words Randy had spoken to him.

  "They mean something, I'm sure," he said.

  "But what happened inside the lab is still hazy. Any leads on Dixon?"

  "I'm sure he's close to the suit. Stephen, before our visit, you talked with Raymond?"

  "In Austin. He wanted to be updated about what happened in the lab."

  "Walk me through your conversation. I want to make sure Raymond hasn't missed anything."

  Conway did. When he was done, Faust held up the card from Renee Kaufmann and said, "Have you told Raymond about this most recent development?"

  "He told me to go directly through you. He also said you'd give me a new Palm Pilot, a watch, and a phone."

  "Those items aren't ready yet. You're staying at the Copley Fairmont, correct?"

  "Room 602."

  "I'll drop them by later. The next time you talk to Raymond, tell him he should read Spiritus Mundi."

  "What's that?"

  "A medieval text for Christians. It lays out what Christians need to do in order to die in the grace of God."

  "I don't understand."

  "Don't worry. He will." Faust glanced down at his watch. Ten minutes before noon. The Aquarium was a good fifteen-minute walk.

  "You better get going. When you find Ms. Kaufmann, bring her outside.

  I'll be the
re with a van, waiting. I'll keep her safe, Stephen. And you. Remember that. There are not many people you can trust in this world, but you can trust me. I'm a man of my word."

  Conway nodded, turned around, and started a light jog down the path carved through the glass towers. He had reached the end of the last tower when Faust called for him. Conway turned around, his pale face almost white in the sunlight.

  "

  "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity," Faust said.

  "It's a line from Yeats's poem "The Second Coming. Don't underestimate the depths of human cruelty."

  "

  Faust removed his cell phone and hit the speed dial for the programmed number, his eyes tracking Stephen until he disappeared into the mob loitering around Fanueil Hall.

  "It seems that software they downloaded into the suit was encrypted,"

  Faust said. His eyes had settled on the disrespectful young man who was still screaming into his cell phone.

  "They need a decryption code in order to operate it. Otherwise, the suit is useless."

  "And they're keeping Conway alive because they think he knows the code," Gunther said.

  "Yes. Raymond believed that John Riley knew it. Stephen accidentally called him from inside the lab. And it gets better. They're pinning the death of a man named Jonathan King on us."

  "Who's that?"

  "The chemist of some sticky foam. Apparently, he's the one who originated the name Angel Eyes."

  "So Bouchard's been stealing items for a while now."

  "Yes. Where are you?"

  "I'm sitting on a bench, looking directly at the front entrance of the Copley Fairmont."

  "And how is Mr. Cole?"

  "Still under. He won't be coming up for a while. I planted the bugs and transmitters but I didn't find anything useful to get us closer to the suit."

  "And the rest of Mr. Cole's brood?"

  "The guy shadowing Conway and the surveillance team they had covering him have all been taken down. When Cole wakes up and finds out what happened to his men, he'll talk to Bouchard. It won't take them long to figure out we're involved. We're not living in the shadows anymore."