The Devil's Vial

by Brumbaugh,Byron

  “Uh, no. They any good?” she answered.

  “They’re old, but world famous. You ever heard bossa nova? There’s newer music coming out of Brazil, too, that’s just excellent! Would you like to go to a concert sometime? Musicians come up here from time to time from Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, other places, because of the large Brazilian community here. We could go out to dinner, a nice rodizio restaurant, listen to some great music and have a good time!” Apparently, this was the opening Armando was hoping for.

  “It sounds lovely, Armando.”

  “There’s this cowboy that’s going to be giving a concert here August seventh, eighth and ninth. You want to go?”

  “I’ll have to check my schedule, I’m not sure when I’m working. I’ll call you and let you know.”

  A smile spread across Armando’s face.

  “Armando, when we drove up here, I saw several buildings. What’s in the others?” asked Alex. Somehow, he was able to keep a note of irritation out of his voice.

  “There’s one where we breed the monkeys, and another that houses security and maintenance.” He shrugged. “That’s about it.”

  Alex let out a sigh of resignation. “Armando, I really appreciate you taking the time to show us around. I think we’ve seen all there is to see. Can you take us back to our car?”

  “Sure thing. Follow me.”

  Alex frowned. There was something here, they just weren’t seeing it…

  . . .

  Ten minutes later, Armando left them in Piccadilly’s parking lot. His grin seemed to be a bit wider as he drove off.

  Emily looked at Alex as she got into the driver’s seat. She wore a scowl. “What the hell were you doing, asking Armando about the Survivors? If he was in on it, we’d be toast!”

  “Instinct. I was pretty sure Armando was okay; now we know. And I’m just so frustrated. If I was wrong about Armando, then I thought asking about the Survivors just might shake something loose and maybe we would get some real information – one way or another. But, he seems to be more ignorant of what’s going on than we are.”

  “Well,” said Emily, “it was a pretty damned dangerous gamble.”

  “I’ll say,” Doug said over the radio.

  Alex shrugged. “I have faith in you guys. You could’ve gotten us out of any trouble it might have caused.”

  “We’re not supermen,” said Doug. “Just do us all a favor, would you? Next time you get an impulse to do something like that, discuss it with us first. Okay? I like a little warning so I can plan for contingencies. You were lucky.”

  “I guess you’re right,” said Alex. “But at least we know Armando, and probably most of the people that work there, aren’t involved in what’s happening.”

  Emily, still frowning, bit her lower lip, then sighed. “Alex, what’s eating you? You’ve been tense since we got here.”

  “Dammit! I know there’s something important here. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know where to look for it, but I know there’s something here.”

  “What do you mean?” said Emily. “Everything looks copacetic to me.”

  Alex thought for a minute. “It’s just such a perfect setup for connecting the dots, you know? A primate lab to test viruses causing serious infection; what better place to hide a research facility designed to develop a virus intended for human infestation? Isolated, sequestered, good, yet understated security, what more could you ask for?”

  “Well, how do you think we should proceed from here?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Alex took a deep breath and stared off into the distance. “Where are you, Doug?”

  “About two minutes away. There’s a Shaw’s Market in downtown Marlborough. Let’s meet in the parking lot there. See you in five minutes.”

  Alex sat back in the seat. He was pretty sure they’d have to return here.

  . . .

  Alex and Emily entered the back of the van and closed the door behind them.

  “Did you pick up anything interesting that we missed?” asked Alex.

  “No. But I got good signal throughout and recorded everything you saw. Maybe if we go over it slowly, we can find something we didn’t notice before.” The computer was on and Doug was watching the images play back.

  “This is so frustrating!” said Alex as he hit the heel of his hand on the side of the van. “I know there’s something there. We just can’t see it!”

  “Maybe because we’re looking in the wrong place,” offered Emily.

  “No, I’m convinced it’s there, someplace. Whatever ‘it’ is. It’s just really well hidden.”

  His attention was suddenly drawn toward the computer screen. “What the hell?”

  On the screen was projected a live scene that was swaying back and forth. Oscar’s voice came over the speaker. “I don’t know anything. Really.” His voice was soft and the words came out strained, like he was in a great deal of pain.

  Another voice came over the speaker. “Tell us where they are, now!”

  “I don’t know!” The scene jerked across the screen and a loud slap could be heard.

  “We will resort to other means, if we have to.” The scene shifted again and a man’s face came into view, wearing a doo-rag. He looked angry.

  “Hey!” said Alex. “That’s the cop from the house!”

  “Yeah, that’s the same blond guy that was following me,” said Doug

  “Oh shit…” said Alex. “They got Oscar. He must have turned on a web cam and microphone and is beaming it over to us on the web. Where’s Richard?”

  “Tell us what we want to know now, or you’re going to start losing pieces,” said a voice off camera. The scene swung over to another part of the now familiar basement room. In a corner, tied to a chair, was Richard. He looked bruised and battered.

  “Uh-oh!” said Alex. “They got Richard too!”

  There was another slap and the screen went blank.

  “Dammit!” said Alex.

  “Well, there goes the ballgame. What’re we going to do now?” asked Emily.

  “Shit!” said Alex. “If they have Richard, they have the vial!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Richard pushed back from his computer screen. His eyes burned, his vision blurred; he had a headache and his mind wandered. For the past week, he sifted through data, catalogued it, sorted it and tried to interpret it. There was a lot of information, and a lot of it was very interesting. But they’d reached a point of diminishing returns. The record showed slow, plodding scientific progress toward a significant understanding of living processes, and some of it was relevant to what the team thought they had in the vial. None of it, however, pointed in a direction that explained why. What was the purpose of the fluid in the damned vial? Why was it so important to its makers that they were eager to kill to get it back? Why were Alex and he targeted simply because they had been so unlucky as to come into its possession? Was it as deadly as they feared?

  Richard rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. Alex, Emily and Doug had been gone for about an hour. Oscar went out for breakfast for the two of them and should be back any minute. Maybe this would be a good time to try to grasp the big picture.

  Grabbing the many notes he took over the past week, he tried reading between the lines; to get a sense of what was not there. He backed his awareness away from the details of what was written and tried to get a feel for it.

  It was bimodal, for sure. On the one hand, people were out to kill them for a vial containing they weren’t sure what. Other people died and it was only by luck Alex and he were still alive. People in high places were involved. If their suspicions were correct, this included some in the FBI, some judges, police, and medical researchers like Todd. The people they knew and suspected of being part of the plot were good people – why in the world would they be involved? Power? Was the vial connected to some kind of power play? The people involved were the least likely perpetrators of something sinister. They were the custodians of the public we
lfare. Todd’s lab was surely involved, and what Todd’s lab did was study viruses, some very dangerous. But there was nothing in anything they found suggesting weapons development, or any other nefarious research. It all pointed to sound medical research for the enrichment of mankind. How could he connect the dots? Even Todd himself was, by public history, the antithesis of an evil genius. His background, what they could find of it, all suggested a well-balanced, intelligent man who dedicated his life to bettering the human condition. How in the hell could Richard reconcile all of it?

  He couldn’t. There was something big missing. Something they hadn’t yet even suspected to exist. The team needed more information, but where could they find it? Was there some way they could confront their nemeses directly, yet safely? Some way they could ask those, like Todd, what the hell was going on?

  There was a distant door slam and creaking footsteps on the floor above. Oscar must be back. Richard could certainly use a break.

  “Medium coffee, black. Plain bagel toasted with veggie cream cheese, right?” asked Oscar as his ponderous bulk thundered down the wooden stairs to the basement.

  “Sounds wonderful, thanks.” Richard reached out and took the paper bag and Styrofoam cup Oscar offered. “What’s the day like out there?”

  “Warm, not hot, sunny, mild breeze. Nice day, if you’re into that kind of thing.”

  “Man, I would really like to get out of here, if only for a moment.” Richard sat back in front of his computer screen, but couldn’t bring himself to focus on its contents. “I’m getting nowhere new with this stuff.”

  “You could always go out on the deck.”

  “Yeah, I know. I just feel like I have to get away, you know? I've spent years locked up in a monastery, I'm used to that. It even feels comfortable. But I haven't spent so much time in intellectual concentration since med school. My brain is fried.”

  “Well, we can tune into Alex and Emily’s video. They should be there by now. That might be entertaining.”

  “Sure, let’s take a look.”

  Oscar tapped a few keys at his computer and the screen opened to a scene inside a car. They seemed to be driving through a forested area.

  “Hey, where’d all the trees come from? I thought they were in Marlborough,” said Richard as he looked over Oscar’s shoulder.

  “It’s really pretty country, isn’t it?”

  Suddenly, an alarm sounded and the scene on the screen changed to large red letters, flashing “INTRUDER ALERT!”

  Richard and Oscar stared at each other for a moment, stunned. Oscar recovered first by turning to his keyboard and tapping hurriedly on its keys. “Richard, get out of here! Now!”

  “But what about you, Oscar. I can’t just leave you!”

  “Yes, you can. I have to dump whatever data we have to somewhere else so it can’t be discovered what we know and what we’ve been doing. I’ve gotta get a message to the other guys somehow too. You have to get out of here, now! I’ll be right behind you.”

  Richard grabbed all the paper lying around and threw it into a hopper that fed a large shredder. Then he took the vial from its hiding place under his computer's keyboard. Earlier, he removed it from the pen and replaced it with the one containing water Emily brought back. The real vial, he now slipped into an unobtrusive pocket sewn into the inseam of his pants just for this eventuality. He felt the inside of his left shirt sleeve. The pen and its water-filled vial were sewn into a pocket hidden there. It was his hope, if caught and given a cursory pat-down search, both the pen and the vial would be missed. If not, the pen, being larger, would be more easily found and might cause the searchers to stop looking before the real vial was found. Maybe. One thing was for sure - he couldn't leave it behind.

  “What are you doing?” shouted Oscar. “Get the hell out of here. We don’t have much time! I’ll take care of everything here.”

  “I’ll see you outside.” Richard gave Oscar one last glance. He was bent over his keyboard, furiously typing.

  “UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY ATTEMPT FRONT DOOR” glared lettering on the screen.

  “Get going!” said Oscar. “There’s not much wind out there and the smoke is going to build up fast. You wait much longer and you won’t be able to see what the hell you’re doing.” Oscar built an elaborate security system Richard only vaguely understood. It included the release of smoke to help cover the escape routes Oscar devised.

  Richard turned toward the stairs and ran up them three at a time. At the top, in the kitchen, he rushed toward more stairs going to the second floor. He could hear banging around the corner at the front door. Someone was trying to force their way in. Shit! Oscar’s never going to make it! He considered, for a moment, turning back to help Oscar, then remembered the vial. He couldn’t let it fall into the hands of those other people. What could he do to help Oscar anyway?

  At the second floor, he went out a back door to the deck, climbed up on the railing and grabbed the eave of the roof. The cloud of smoke, promised by Oscar, enveloped the house, obscuring the activity in the front yard. The back was filling up with smoke as well and it covered anything going on there. He heard shouting and banging, but couldn’t see what was going on. This was probably a good thing as it meant he couldn’t be seen either. The smoke had a vague chemical-dissolved-in-water-vapor odor to it, but didn’t bother his eyes.

  Pulling himself up onto the roof, he felt its gritty tiles. The abrasive surface made his footing feel a little more solid. The slope of the roof over the deck was shallow; not so, the roof of the house proper. He swung up onto the roof and immediately felt insecure, as though, if he wasn’t very careful, he would slip and fall to the ground many feet below. He was sure that would hurt.

  Scooting his butt along so as to maximize the surface area he had in contact with the roof, he made his way to the middle. Across a short gap was the neighbor’s house. The smoke didn’t yet cover his part of the roof and he could see a spot just across the gap where a metal pipe stuck out of the top of the other roof; something he could grab a hold of when he landed. He coiled his feet up under him and looked at the ground below. It was obscured by the smoke which made the space seem like a bottomless pit. The gap, seemingly so short when viewed from below, now seemed a long way to jump. What had Oscar been thinking when he planned this? Richard couldn’t wait; the smoke was welling up and soon would make the other roof difficult to see.

  Richard took a deep breath and pushed as hard as he could with his feet. A little too hard. His right foot slipped at the last moment, causing him to spin a little as he soared over to the neighboring roof. He hit hard on his right side, just short of the pipe. Ow! The vial better be as strong as I hope it is! he thought. Fortunately, a large portion of his body was in contact with the roof, which was the only thing that kept him from sliding off. He lay motionless on his side until he was sure he would not slide down the roof.

  In front of him, about two feet above, was the pipe he had been aiming for. He slowly rolled over onto his back, bent his knees so the full surface of the soles of his feet were in contact with the roof and tried lifting his back off the roof with his arms. His arms and feet held. He gingerly pushed himself up the roof and onto his back again. Pulling his feet up into position again, he inched his way up to the pipe. Using the pipe, he pulled himself up to where he could grab a hold of the peak of the roof and scrambled over to the other side.

  Only then did he look behind him to see what he could of their “safe house.” Richard could just barely make out two black sedans parked across the street from the front of the house. There were two men in suits standing by them, looking toward the front door of the house. The house itself, and its yard, front and back, was still enveloped in white smoke. No one seemed to be aware of him. So far, so good.

  It was a good thing Oscar had another route of escape planned. There was no way he could ever navigate his considerable mass across that void between the houses. Richard now understood one of the reasons why Oscar planned more than one w
ay to get away.

  Richard slid down the roof to the eave and again leapt into space. This jump didn’t go much better than the first, except he was able to grab the pipe on the opposite roof. In a moment, he was on the other side of the peak of the second house and looking down into a driveway. He felt some relief at knowing there was no way he would be able to leap over that gap; his jumping was at an end.

  He worked his way along the roof to the back of the house where the slope shallowed over another deck. Swinging his legs over the edge, he lowered himself onto the deck railing, then the deck, and ran down stairs to the ground below. He climbed over the fence in the back and moved quickly to the street beyond. There, he slowed, trying to walk casually. As he walked, he turned his head and looked behind. Nobody followed; he was pretty sure he hadn’t been seen. Soon, he turned a corner and was walking down a main street.

  Richard concentrated on slowing his breathing and pounding heart. He was sweating in the cool morning air. It really was a beautiful day, and he really was into that kind of thing. It felt good to be out of the mildewed basement, although this was not exactly what he had in mind when he thought about it. He hoped Oscar was okay.

  He walked, as casually as he could manage, toward a gas station he saw two blocks away. The plan was to make a land line call from there to a prepaid cell phone. Once at the gas station, he found a phone booth - Oscar told him there'd be one. His spirits improved. He walked into the booth and closed the door. As he did so, a black sedan pulled into the parking lot and two men dressed in dark suits got out. Richard took a deep breath and held it. The men came straight up to the booth, opened the door, and looked at Richard. “Well, well, well. Look who we have here,” one said. “I told you it was him.”

  Richard's heartbeat accelerated and his mouth got dry.