Germ

by Robert Liparulo

  “I see,” he said thoughtfully. “Well, I don’t see why not. The medical examiner will probably find plenty of others in the body, and the police undoubtedly already have all they need at the crime scene.”

  He took the pan to a sink and ran water into it. He said, “Was the man who was with your partner a cop as well?”

  “No. Did they bring him in? I didn’t—” She hadn’t even thought of Vero. She had assumed, vaguely, in the back of her mind, that he also had been shot and killed, but she hadn’t realized until that moment that she hadn’t seen him come in. If he had died at the scene, they would have kept him there for processing—photographs and such—and then taken him directly to the morgue.

  Parker said, “One of the attendants who brought in Mr. Donnelley said the killer took the other man’s body.”

  “Took it?”

  “A witness said he shot him, flipped the corpse over his shoulder, and walked out the door.”

  A nurse opened the door behind Julia and leaned in. “Dr. Parker?”

  “Yes?” he said without looking.

  “There’s a Detective Fisher on 3 for you.”

  “Thank you.” He carefully drained the water from the pan. He opened and closed cabinets and drawers, selected a white-and-blue box the size of a pack of cards, and removed a pad of gauze from it. He used the gauze to pick up and dry the disk, then dropped the disk into the box.

  “Apparently it was a pretty bizarre scene. Confusing.” He handed the box to Julia. “Excuse me.” He walked to a phone on the other side of the room. He raised the handset and said, “Dr. Parker … Yes.” He looked at his watch. “I have an appointment off-site in forty-five minutes. How long will you be? … I see …”

  While his back was turned, Julia slipped out. She couldn’t see any reason Goody’s admonition to avoid other law enforcement would be any less valid now that he had been killed. In fact, his death may have validated his concerns. She needed to know more about how he died, about who had killed him. The local cops would have plenty of details from the crime scene and any witnesses, but until she had a better grasp of what exactly was happening, she didn’t want to see them. Or anyone else.

  fifteen

  Karl Litt’s son, Joe, ran down the grassy hill, arms flapping like wings, legs moving faster than they could on flat terrain, his face brighter than the sun, laughing, squealing.

  “Come on, son!” Litt called from the bottom of the hill. “She’s gaining!”

  Twenty feet behind the six-year-old boy, his mother scampered, reaching for her prey. She was obviously trying to prevent gravity from hurling her forward too fast, into her son.

  Litt laughed. “You’re almost there, Joe! Right here.” He dropped to his knees, clapped his hands, and opened his arms wide to give the child a target. His son tacked left and ran for him. Joe appeared on the brink of a wipeout, but he stayed on his feet and picked up speed.

  Instead, it was his mother who wiped out. Her feet pulled ahead, and when she tried to get her body lined up again, her arms and head and torso just kept going until she lost it, hitting the grass with her hands, then somersaulting once … twice … She twisted and began tumbling sideways, then backwards.

  Litt’s mouth fell open. He didn’t know whether he should laugh or yell out to her. Then Joe slammed into him, and they both tumbled and rolled. They stopped and Joe was under him, giggling uncontrollably. Litt raised his head, saw Rebecca lying still, and felt his heart skip a beat. She raised an arm and proffered a thumbs-up.

  “Ha-ha!” he laughed to his son. “You did it. You beat the monster.” He pushed himself up and pulled Joe with him. “See?” He pointed at the downed blonde beast.

  Joe ran to his mother and nudged her with his sneaker. He turned back to Litt. “Let’s fix her, Daddy!”

  “Fix her?” Litt picked up his son and flipped him onto his shoulders.

  “Wheeeeee!”

  Litt looked down. His wife was staring at him with one eye, a tight-lipped smile on her lips. He winked at her, and she shimmered and disappeared.

  Bam, bam, bam.

  Litt looked up and around. His son was gone. His fingers touched his shoulder: just a bony old man’s shoulder; no longer a perch for a little boy.

  He was sitting on an unmade bed in a dark room, the only light coming from a black-and-white monitor on a dresser. It showed a man outside his bedroom. Gregor von Papen. While Litt watched, Gregor rapped again.

  Bam, bam, bam.

  Litt stood and shuffled to the door, kicking aside rumpled clothes, a magazine, a plastic cup. He leaned into the door, pressing his palms against it, head-height and shoulder-width apart, as though preparing to be patted down by police.

  “What is it?” he called through the door.

  “I have news,” Gregor said.

  “What is it?”

  Gregor hesitated, then said, “Atropos has succeeded.”

  Litt nodded. “Despesorio is dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “He got the chip?”

  Silence.

  Litt snapped the dead bolt and yanked open the door. Gregor’s face momentarily registered mild shock, and Litt knew he must look particularly awful. He’d done nothing to temper the pallor or scaliness of his skin. His eyes, usually shielded by sunglasses, must have been bloodshot and red-rimmed. Since the accident, his irises had been faded from cobalt to the faintest of blue, almost white. A quick glance would catch only pinprick pupils, which would seem alone in punctuating the eerie-white orbs of his eyes, like periods without sentences. He blinked against the corridor’s light.

  Gregor took a step back.

  “Tell me he retrieved the chip,” Litt said.

  “It wasn’t on the body.”

  “Did he take the body?”

  “Yes, he dissected it. It wasn’t inside Vero, either. He found the tracking device in Vero’s leg. He wondered if that’s what we wanted. I told him no.”

  Litt turned around. The dimness of the room soothed his eyes. He returned to the bed and sat, thinking. He asked, “Was he alone?”

  “Some kind of fed was with him. He’s dead too.”

  Litt nodded, then froze when Gregor said, “Atropos didn’t do it.”

  Litt looked up. “Kendrick?” he whispered.

  “I assume so. Atropos said it was a classic two-man hit team. Civilian clothes.”

  Litt smiled. “Atropos walked into that?” He shook his head in awe. “Worth every penny.” He considered the scene a moment longer, then found his previous train of thought. “Did he check the fed?”

  “He got out of there with seconds to spare. The cops were all over, apparently.”

  “So he didn’t?”

  Gregor shook his head.

  “Well, he must. In all probability, Despesorio turned the chip over to the law enforcement officer.”

  “I’ll let him know.”

  Litt picked up a pair of black sunglasses from a nightstand. Crumpled tissues fell to the floor. He stood and went back to the open door, slipping on the glasses as he did. He ran a palm from his forehead back over his nearly bald skull, flattening several long wisps of white hair.

  “Tell him he must do it before Kendrick thinks of it. Kendrick no doubt believes we have already reclaimed the evidence Despesorio brought with him—if he knows about it at all. But it may occur to him to check the cop’s body and personal effects. Atropos must beat him to it.”

  Gregor nodded and turned to leave.

  “Gregor,” Litt said, “remind him the chip was part of our agreement.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll try to find out what Kendrick knows.”

  “You’ll call him?”

  “It’s been awhile. Time to catch up.”

  Litt scanned him up and down. They were the same age, but where Litt appeared at least eighty, Gregor could have passed for fifty, fifty-five tops. He was trim with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, more pepper than salt. He always wore black SWAT boots la
ced up over his pant legs, a sidearm holstered to a tightly cinched utility belt, and camouflage clothes, a different style and pattern every time Litt saw him, it seemed.

  “You look like a houseplant,” he said.

  Gregor glanced down at himself. “It’s called Fall Forest.”

  “All the rage among heads of security, I presume?”

  Gregor laughed. “I wouldn’t know, but I am practically invisible in the woods.”

  “Good for you.” Litt closed the door.

  sixteen

  His family had been dead almost thirty years. Joe had not seen his seventh birthday. Jessica had not experienced even one. His sweet Rebecca, his wife for twenty years—he had not been able to hold her as she died. He had not been able to say I’m sorry. Kendrick Reynolds had not let him.

  He wished, as he did every day, that they had had children earlier. If they had started growing their family when they were first married, maybe the kids would have been gone, away at college or on a road trip with friends, when Litt’s work escaped the confines of his lab. Instead, they had waited. Litt had put his work first, as Kendrick had wanted. Up to that point, nearly his entire life had been in service to Kendrick. Since then, he had been in service to seeing Kendrick exposed, humiliated, dead.

  Litt flipped a switch, and the room filled with red luminance, a color he found least irritating to his eyes. He sat at a small desk, swept away a pile of papers, and pulled a phone console close. He picked up the handset, punched in an encryption key and then a long string of numbers. He waited, listening to clicks and pops as the signal routed itself through a dozen different networks in as many countries. Finally he heard ringing on the other end. It was a dedicated line and completely untraceable.

  When Kendrick Reynolds answered, Litt said, “I skunked you again.”

  “Good evening, Karl,” Kendrick said, his voice slow and slight. The man was in his nineties. It was a wonder he could even talk, let alone scheme the way he did.

  “Your man defected and got as far as the CDC’s doorstep. You’re getting lax.”

  “But I got to him before you did. That’s all that matters.”

  “Okay, I concede your victory … this time.” Kendrick paused, then said, “You were always competitive. A poor loser and a poor winner. I thought you would outgrow it, but you never did.”

  “And the only person you’ve ever cared about yourself. Once, I thought I’d misjudged you, but I hadn’t.”

  Litt closed his eyes. He did not want to exchange petty insults. Why were they compelled to tread these waters time and again?

  “You mean I made you believe there was more to me? Pray tell, when?”

  Litt pressed his lips tight. “When …” He pulled in a deep breath and let it come out slowly. He imagined his anger leaving with it. He realized his fingers were aching from squeezing the handset and forced them to relax. “When you gave me your blessing to marry Rebecca. But now I know you were only tolerating me, appeasing me, to keep me compliant.”

  “You’ve been reading too much Freud.”

  “You never cared about her. Or Jessica. Or Joe. It must have infuriated you that we named him after my father and not you. I realize now that you had hoped for a way to get my family out of the picture. And you finally found one.”

  “Karl, you’re wrong. You know I always loved—”

  “Just curious,” Litt interrupted, bringing the conversation back in line, “how did Despesorio—my defector—come to your attention? Do you have a keyword tap on the CDC phones?”

  The old man coughed, his mouth obviously turned away from the phone. Ever so polite. Then he said, “And at USAMRID, the World Health Organization, all six of the world’s biosafety level-four labs … everywhere someone with knowledge of you or your operation might show up. It was only a matter of time, Karl.”

  “It’s been thirty years.”

  “The world is getting smaller. Technology is getting better. You can’t hide forever.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Silence.

  “Karl, we can work something out.”

  Litt pressed the handset tighter to his face. “You mean before I expose you, before I shatter whatever legacy you think you’ve built?”

  “I mean before you do something you’ll regret.”

  “The only thing I regret is ever trusting you.”

  “I know you’re close to something, Karl. Word is, you’ve stopped taking orders for bioterrorism products. It’s not because you’ve won the lottery, so I figure you’ve got your crew working on something else, something big enough to forgo cash flow. That tells me you’re confident in whatever it is, and you’re close to rolling it out. One of your scientists defected. I’m guessing he had an attack of conscience. That—and the very nature of the work you do—tells me that what you have in mind is very nasty.”

  He sighed into the phone, a raspy gasp that turned Litt’s stomach.

  “Listen to me. Maybe you’re right, maybe I care only about myself, maybe I’ve always been that way. But that’s not you, Karl. I’ve seen your capacity to love. Has your heart really hardened so much?”

  “Yes.” A cold, solid syllable.

  “I’m trying to tell you: You don’t have to do what you’re planning. We can work something out.”

  “I’ve worked it out, and you’re too late.”

  “What?” Kendrick said. “What have you done?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “If that’s true, why did you hire killers?”

  Litt laughed. “You know as well as I do, for every exposed secret, ten new ones need protecting. Now, more than ever, I need my privacy.”

  “Since you’ve played your hand?”

  “You can say I waited for a royal flush.”

  “Did you get everything back?”

  He’s fishing, Litt thought. “I’m short one biologist.”

  “Another one?”

  “No, the same one. He was a good man.”

  “Apparently too good for you.”

  “Good-bye, Kendrick.”

  “Karl.”

  Litt hung up. Kendrick was difficult to read. For him, the day’s events could be over … or he was still investigating, seeing what was there to find … or he had the chip. Litt didn’t put much stock in this last possibility. He believed Kendrick would have hinted that the game was over, that after all the battles he’d lost, he’d won the war. More likely, he would continue to poke around, maybe find Despesorio’s trail or something he’d left behind. Litt hoped Atropos was as good as his reputation.

  “Soon it won’t matter,” he said out loud. “Old man, you’re about to find out how just how rock-hard my heart has become.”

  Kendrick disconnected and sat in his wheelchair, staring

  at the phone. One hand picked at the wool blanket covering his legs. His other hand went to his mouth. He snipped off a sliver of fingernail between his teeth and examined the result. God was gazing at him, and he shifted his eyes to gaze back. Nestled in a felt-lined cup holder in the arm of his chair, a God-head pipe cast a disapproving look on Kendrick’s agitation.

  “I know,” he whispered at the face, “but it’s him, not me. What choice do I have?”

  Kendrick had first beheld the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in 1958, when he attended the funeral mass of Pius XII as Eisenhower’s secretary of state. The potency of Michelangelo’s brush had stunned him: the luster of Ezekiel’s garments, evil Haman’s dramatic crucifixion, the rising saints and tortured sinners of The Last Judgment; all of it rendered among intricate columns and arches and pedestals that the artist had painted on the ceiling’s smooth plane. But nothing took his breath away like the visage of God as He was creating Adam. Its combination of strong features and tender expression portrayed the perfect balance of power and compassion, superiority and love.

  Back in the States, he found himself pondering that sweeping beard of Michelangelo’s God, the granite nose and forehead, the purpos
eful eyes. In God’s face, Kendrick discovered the potential of man, the symbol of the way he wanted to live out the rest of his life. He secured the finest raw meerschaum Eskisehir had to offer—this was three years before the Turkish government banned the export of meerschaum block—and sent it to the most renowned Viennese carver. What he received back was a three-inch-tall, three-dimensional carving in white meerschaum clay. It matched the Sistine head of God right down to the bulging vein in His temple, the arch of concentration in His brow, the way His beard rose up the jawline only to the earlobe. It was a masterpiece of a masterpiece.

  It was also a pipe, with an amber stem curving up from the back of the head and a bowl whittled into the crown. Over the years, the meerschaum had absorbed nicotine from countless bowls of tobacco, coloring and highlighting the creases of God’s face in a cinnamon glow. It was aging much more gracefully than Kendrick’s own craggy countenance.

  He was convinced the face on the pipe changed ever so subtly, even if only in his mind’s eye, to help guide him. When he was having doubts, God gave him a look of strength, of encouragement; when he was righteously angry, God scowled at the offender with him. Now God was saying, Take care of this, Kendrick. It’s why I gave you so much strength, so many resources.

  After a long moment he gestured, and a man in Air Force blues stepped over.

  “Sir?”

  “He was trying to find out if we had something on him. And he claims to have set something in motion. Send in another team. We need to locate whatever it is he’s missing.”

  The captain walked away, his heels clicking on the hardwood floor and echoing slightly in the big, antebellum ballroom that Kendrick had converted into his command center. Leaving his home had come to require more energy than he could afford to expend. But he could not retire or die until he had tied up the one loose end that could wipe out everything he had worked for, his country, his name. He had to find Litt and eliminate him forever.

  He considered calling the captain back to remind him that the last team had been sloppy, hardly the surgeon Karl had found. More like surgeons with chain saws. But he decided the method wasn’t his business; he cared only about the outcome. Granted, last time the outcome stank, but he wasn’t in the field. He had learned a long time ago to let the experts do their thing. Give them an objective and get out of their way.