Germ

by Robert Liparulo

“The billionaire?”

  “Have you spoken to him or his people? He would not have hidden behind anybody, not for something this precious to him. He would have enticed you with his fame. Did he contact you?”

  Allen waited to answer, then said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Did he get the chip?”

  Allen did not reply.

  Litt’s voice rose. “Does he know where I am?”

  Allen held on to his deadpan expression. Did Kendrick know? It wasn’t part of Vero’s data, except the few scenes of the air base and the jungle beyond, and to Allen they’d seemed anonymous and ambiguous. If the tracking device was working, Julia and Stephen knew where he was, but did Kendrick?

  Litt said, “I could care less what else he knows. If he’s not already aware of Ebola Kugel, he will be soon. If he’s not already aware of my plan to use it on American soil, he will be soon. All I need to know is: does he know where I am? That’s all. Whatever your answer is, convince me it’s true, and the Ebola virus eating your insides will go away.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does the chip reveal my location?”

  He did not reply.

  Litt stood quickly. He brushed off his lab coat. “Think about it, Dr. Parker. Your pain can end whenever you want.” He rapped on the window panel in the door.

  “Litt,” Allen said.

  The sunglasses rotated toward him.

  “If there’s any chance this Kendrick guy has found out where you are, why don’t you leave?”

  “I need to know, Dr Parker. This is my home, my laboratory, everything to me. You understand?”

  Allen remembered the list from Vero’s data chip, and he finally understood its terrible implications. He wondered if all those people were already infected. Were they only now starting to feel not quite right, or did they feel the pain he did? Were they frightened, as he was? They were husbands, wives, and children. Brothers, sisters, parents. So many people affected. So much grief.

  He said, “I saw your list of names.” He tried to look hard, challenging. He suspected the only thing he conveyed was illness. “Why so many?”

  The door rattled and opened. Litt gripped the edge. “Movies,” he said.

  “Movies?”

  “They’ve desensitized us. One death, ten deaths are no longer interesting. Ten thousand deaths will get their attention.”

  “You’ve never studied Stalin?”

  Litt raised his chin.

  ” ‘When one person dies, it’s a tragedy. When a million people die, it’s a statistic.’”

  “Dr. Parker, I don’t think any parent will think of the death of his or her child as a statistic, do you?”

  After a moment, he gave a satisfied nod and left.

  eighty

  The five-hundred-mile trip from Sao Paulo to Ponta

  Pora took more than six hours, thanks to TAM Transportes Aereos’s scheduled stops in the backwater towns of Mailia, Presenente Prudenti, and Dourados. At each tiny airport, the pilot and one flight attendant would disembark to share a soda and a few apparently hilarious jokes with the ground crew, while the copilot hurled rocks at mangy dogs. A handful of Brazilians, most looking tired or drunk, would shuffle off as their indistinguishable replacements shuffled on. At any given time, the thirty-passenger turboprop boasted a manifest of half that number.

  The sky grew grayer with each stop, and each time the plane was in the air, the attendant would give a dramatic presentation describing the deluge assaulting the western edge of the state, where Ponta Pora lay. Upon leaving Dourados on the last leg of the trip, the weather outside the plane made her warnings superfluous. The plane pitched and rolled like a kite caught in a blustery wind. Two passengers became sick, filling the cabin with the pungent odor of illness. Julia and Stephen closed their eyes, gripped the cracked vinyl armrests and each other’s free hand between them.

  When they finally landed in Ponta Pora, the early afternoon sky was as dark as dusk. Sheets of heavy rain sliced down at an angle, seeming to undulate in the waning light. It beat so fiercely against the metal skin of the plane, Julia knew the engines had stopped only when she saw the propellers winding to a rest and the other passengers standing and gathering their belongings. As the cabin lights came on, Stephen’s reflection appeared behind hers in the Plexiglas window.

  “Wouldn’t you know,” she said to his reflection. Before leaving Atlanta they had transferred their belongings— a change of clothes for each, light jackets, toiletries, Julia’s computer gear—into two JanSport daypacks, khaki for him, olive for her. They’d stuffed the remainder of the cash into the padded shoulder straps. That turned out to be an unnecessary caution; customs officials in Sao Paulo were beyond lax. They gave the packs nothing more than a heft, as if they were so attuned to contraband, they could recognize it by weight alone. Julia wished she’d brought her gun.

  Stephen pulled the packs out of the small overhead compartments above their seats and started forward.

  Julia reached for hers. “We’re going to have to pull our own weight. Starting now.”

  “So don’t let me be gentlemanly.” He winked and relinquished his grip.

  The attendant was having a hard time holding a grin as rain blew through the door, soaking her uniform and plastering her bangs to her forehead. She swung a hand toward the open door, hurrying them along. “Adeus. Por favor, va depressa.”

  “Adeus. Obrigado,” Stephen answered. He caught Julia’s bemused stare. “There was a language card in the seat-back pocket.”

  He ducked through the portal and started down a short flight of rolling metal stairs to the water-covered tarmac and was immediately drenched. Blinking rain out of his eyes, he turned back to see how Julia was faring. She skipped the last step, hopping past him, and darted for the airport door—a lighted rectangle in an otherwise black silhouette of a building.

  Inside, she bent at the waist and briskly fanned her fingers through her hair. Big plumes of droplets burst from her head. She said, “Can you believe this?”

  “Can we use it in our favor?” He was appraising the small airport, giving each person a few seconds of scrutiny.

  Julia slapped him on the back. “Now you’re thinking.”

  He handed her a jacket from his pack, slipping an arm into his own. In the high heat of mid-May Atlanta, they hadn’t remembered that it was late fall here. Subtropical though it was, the temperature was in the brisk fifties. The rain made it feel even cooler.

  They pushed through big glass doors and found themselves protected from the rain by a deep portico. At least ten cars were parked at the curb, none of them cabs. Right in front of them, an old Ford station wagon began chirping something melodious from a modified horn. A man behind the wheel leaned toward the passenger-side window and waved them over. He had long black hair and cocoa skin, and appeared more Indian than Latin.

  “Para onde quer ir?”

  Stephen shook his head. “I’m sorry …”

  “Oh, ha-ha! Where to? You need hotel? I know good hotel.”

  “No,” Julia said behind him. “We’d like to eat. Do you know a decent restaurant?”

  “O restaurante? Sure, sure! Come inside.”

  Stephen pulled a ten-dollar bill from his breast pocket. He showed the driver. “American?”

  “Sure, sure!”

  They climbed into the backseat, which was like a carcass, its skin stripped and picked away, and sat on wiry stuffing. Stephen shifted and settled into the least uncomfortable position, with a coiled spring pushing up into his thigh.

  Julia asked, “Can you get us to Pedro Juan Caballero? Is it a problem getting across the border?”

  “PJC. No problem. Open borders. No one cares.” He ground the transmission into gear and swerved away from the curb without checking for oncoming traffic.

  Thinking of the tracking device’s position outside of town, Stephen leaned forward and asked, “Do you know, is there another town or an estate or someth
ing about ten miles northwest?”

  Julia touched his arm. When he looked, she gently shook her head: Don’t talk about it.

  “Northwest?” the driver said.

  “Never mind. It’s okay.”

  “Nothing that way,” the driver said. “Just forest. Trees.”

  “We’ll do our own recon,” Julia whispered.

  “I figured knowing what we’re going into couldn’t hurt.”

  “We don’t know who we can trust.”

  Stephen caught the cabbie scowling in the rearview mirror. South Americans were known for their exceedingly good manners toward strangers. He’d heard that they’d rather suffer an indignity than offend with a retort. But then, they were only human. He supposed the cabbie didn’t appreciate his passengers whispering secrets.

  “I’m sure there are plenty of good restaurants around here,” Stephen said to the driver, trying to make amends by pulling the man into a conversation.

  “Yes,” he replied, curt.

  “Almost there,” Julia said and squeezed Stephen’s hand.

  He looked out at the dark, wet day. “I only pray we’re not too late.”

  The downpour robbed the Siamese-twin towns of Ponta Pora, Brazil, and Pedro Juan Caballero, Paraguay, of any personality they may have possessed. Everything appeared flat and gray. Lights burned in store windows. Empty chairs and benches squatted on the sidewalks. The storefronts were all narrow. The signs above them appeared amateurishly hand-lettered and in several languages, rarely English— except for a profusion of Coca-Cola and Marlboro signs. In the three blocks they watched, the wagon passed four, maybe five drugstores, their busy windows marked with an odd assortment of symbols: the familiar pestle and mortar, the caduceus, large capsules and tablets, test tubes, even skulls and crossbones.

  A steady vibration coming up through the seat and a particular sound told Julia and Stephen what their eyes could not detect: the streets were cobblestone. When tires are on wet pavement, they hiss, like the air is coming out of the world. These tires made a gentle, rhythmic sha-sha-sha—the beat of a snare drum.

  “Are we in Paraguay?” Julia asked.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “How far back was the border?”

  “Minutes. Just minutes. The big street, Avenida Internaconal. Did you see it?” He motioned behind them.

  Stephen remembered a street that was slightly wider than the others, a few blocks back.

  “That was border. Nothing. I told you.”

  “I can’t see the difference,” Julia said.

  “The signs. Guarani and Spanish here, mostly Portuguese there. When no rain, PJC has lots more vendors in the street, no restrictions like Pora.”

  “So really it’s one big town, shared by two countries.”

  “Eh, not so big.”

  They wound through the deserted streets for another few minutes, then the driver pulled over. “Good food here.”

  “Looks like a bar,” Stephen said.

  Julia opened the door. “It’ll do.”

  Stephen handed the driver the ten and slid out with the daypacks.

  The station wagon coasted away, rain making it fuzzy and ethereal. As it began rounding a corner, a gust of wind rippled the rain, and the car vanished.

  Stephen smiled at Julia’s wet-dog look. “We hoofing it somewhere else?” he asked.

  “You got it.”

  “First hotel?”

  “First restaurant, deli, or bar, not counting this one. I really am starving.” She took the pack from him and hoisted a strap over her shoulder.

  He looked one way, then the other. Both directions looked bleak, abandoned. He lowered his head against the driving rain and started walking.

  eighty-one

  The call came in on what Gregor thought of as his “informants’ line.” It was the number he’d given out to airport personnel, cabbies, hoteliers, and restaurateurs in Pedro Juan Caballero and Ponta Pora to report on people asking about Karl, the compound, or missing persons. Most of the calls had been false alarms, the result of overactive imaginations and underfunded bank accounts. He paid a few of these anyway, simply to encourage watchful eyes and loose lips.

  This call was different. He realized it as soon as he heard the description of the man and woman. Steven Parker and Julia Matheson. Here. They’d somehow followed Allen Parker. No doubt it was the Matheson woman’s doing. FBI. CDC. Whatever. Probably a homing device on the plane.

  He thought a moment. “Give me your number.” He entered it into his BlackBerry. The government-run phone system was so undependable, it seemed everybody in the region had a mobile phone. Maybe no pot to pee in, but definitely a flip phone. He told the cabbie to keep an eye on the visitors and promised him a big bonus.

  He hurried down one of the complex’s dim, dank-smelling corridors, passed his face in front of a thermal reader, and entered the laboratory wing. He stood for a moment, letting his eyes acclimate to the area’s bright fluorescents. Karl would have his head. What was Gregor thinking, inviting Atropos to the compound? It had exposed them to discovery by people they didn’t want visiting. The arrival of Matheson and the brother made that clear. If Karl shot him on the spot, he’d deserve it.

  Shoot? Karl wouldn’t shoot him; he’d extract his revenge in a more poetic, nastier way. It didn’t matter that they’d known each other since childhood. Gregor had jeopardized Karl’s life’s work. And for what? To meet Atropos. One of the great hit men of the world. Correction—several of the great hit men of the world.

  Despite the dire situation, Gregor smiled. What a revelation. To be one of a handful of people who knew Atropos’s secret. No wonder he was so prolific, so omniscient. Atropos was not one man but four.

  Three now, Gregor thought. The three brothers had asked to be taken to the compound’s morgue. Before Gregor had left, he witnessed the opening of the body bag the first Atropos had brought. Inside was another Atropos, grotesquely wounded.

  Their grief had been great and wretched.

  He understood now how Matheson and the Parker brothers had hurt them … him. They referred to themselves in the singular, as though, like their name and appearance, they shared one mind, one personality, one soul. If giving them the same name and treating them as one had been their father’s way of making the world think one person was as powerful as four, he had succeeded; but in so doing, he had also made his sons completely dependent on one another, like one person split into four.

  They wanted revenge. They wanted to see Allen Parker suffer and beg for death, a torture Karl’s germ provided in spades.

  And now the other two responsible for Atropos’s loss were within striking distance.

  Why did Karl even have to know they had arrived? That was a can of worms he didn’t want to open. And Atropos would gladly remedy this problem.

  They were back out at the planes, waiting for Allen to manifest the virus, waiting to torment him as he died. Gregor would tell them he had arranged for the arrival of their brother’s other two killers. His gift to them.

  He showed his face to the black tile next to the door, which opened. As he stepped though, heading for the stairs that would take him topside, he marveled at his skill at turning complications into advantages.

  Karl’s microscopic bugs may be the future of assassination, he thought. But I’ve got today’s model right here, right now. Times three.

  eighty-two

  Julia and Stephen stepped out of Aka Haruja-—the Pig’s Eye Tavern, the owner/waiter/barkeep had told them. Their bellies were full, and a mug of homemade beer had taken the edge off Julia’s nerves. From their table near the front window, they had watched the rain abate and then ramp up again as they paid the check.

  The streets were still empty. The sky was still black, a swirling cauldron of low clouds.

  Julia nudged him. She was looking at a station wagon on a side street a block away. It was parked, its headlamps and cabin dark.

  “Is that the cab?” Stephen asked.
r />   While they watched, the tailpipe burped out a puff of exhaust. The downpour muffled the engine noise. The headlights came on, dim cones of light catching the drops passing through them. The vehicle rolled forward and turned onto their street, heading for them.

  Stephen angled his arm across Julia, gently pushing her back an inch.

  “It is,” she said.

  He looked back at the tavern’s door. He could grab Julia and be through it in three seconds.

  The station wagon approached slowly. Its right front tire dropped into a pothole, splashing out muddy water. Stephen sensed the headlamps illuminating his legs, then his chest, then his face, growing brighter. He took a step back, forcing Julia to do the same.

  “Let’s see what he wants,” she said.

  “How could this be good?”

  “We’re not going to get anywhere if we don’t take chances.”

  “Didn’t you say we can’t trust anyone?”

  “He already knows our business. Maybe he’s thought about it and wants to sell us some information.”

  Stephen expected the car to make a roaring lunge at them, but it simply coasted alongside and stopped. He could see the cabbie’s smile as he leaned to roll down the window.

  “Hey!” the cabbie said. “Other place food no good?” Acting natural.

  Julia leaned around Stephen. “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Get in. Rain no good.”

  “Come on,” Stephen said and took a step toward the tavern.

  “I have news,” the cabbie called. “Good news for you.”

  “Like what?” Julia said.

  The driver’s smile faltered. “My mind came back. You asked about place in the northwest, yes? There is something.”

  “What?”

  “Get in.” He read their expressions. “Is okay. Look, I have nothing.”

  Stephen leaned closer. On the passenger side of the bench seat were loose papers, a tattered magazine, and a mobile phone, a brick-sized thing from a decade ago.

  Julia stepped past him and tugged on his shirt. She opened the back door and climbed in. Stephen followed. The heater was blasting out scalding air; it smelled like burning plastic.

  The car started moving.