Last Gasp

by Trevor Hoyle

  As the escalator carried him over the final curve and leveled out, there were two things preying on his mind. One was acute anxiety about the fate of Boris and Nina; the other was the excruciating realization that his bladder was bursting.

  Ten yards behind and fifteen feet below, almost halfway up the escalator, Sturges kept his head lowered, just in case Chase should think of glancing back. He didn’t, just stepped straight off.

  Sturges tightened his mouth. He wasn’t used to failure. It made him angry, which was bad. Loss of emotional detachment. He knew that the next time would also be the last time. There was no possibility of following Chase beyond the international departures barrier because a ticket, which he didn’t have, would have to be shown. There was also the small matter of his box of tricks, which would upset the security officials.

  So the next time had to be the last time.

  Keeping his place in line, Sturges waited with icy control for the escalator to take him over the last curve, giving him a view along the length of the terrazzo concourse to the large green lettering—INTERNATIONAL DEPARTURES—sixty or so yards away. A line of people straggled between him and the barrier and Sturges had to stare hard to convince himself that Chase wasn’t among them.

  He stood to one side of the people spilling off the escalator, feet planted apart, eyes slitted under the soft black brim of his hat. His victim had vanished, which logic said was impossible. Chase couldn’t have made it to the barrier in the few seconds he’d been out of sight, even at a sprint.

  A moment later he had the answer as his restless gaze alighted on the nearby men’s room. Swiftly he moved to a window ledge, laid the case flat, raised the hasps, and lifted the lid. From the pouch he took the left glove and slipped it on, then carefully fitted his hand into the right one, his fingers closing around the hypodermic. The camera he had already reloaded, which gave him a choice of two methods: hypo or dart, it was all the same to him.

  The attaché case in his left hand, his other hand splayed and stiff-fingered hanging free and ready by his side, Sturges crossed the terrazzo floor and pushed with his broad shoulder through the toilet door.

  Chase washed his hands at the row of washbasins, shook the moisture off, and shuffled his briefcase to the hot-air dryer in the corner. He hardly felt at ease with it out of his grasp, never mind his sight. None of the other four or five men looked like a criminal, but you could never be sure. Airports bred distrust as moldy cheese did maggots.

  As he held his hands beneath the jets of air and dried them, he looked absently into the mirror in front of him, which in this room of mirrors gave him a kaleidoscope of assorted views from different angles. In one of them a young man with lank black hair to his shoulders and an Asiatic cast to his features, wearing a creased and wrinkled leather jacket, was sidling up, hand outstretched, behind somebody drying his hands at one of the machines. Fascinated, Chase watched this performance. It was only when the young man straightened up, hefting a briefcase that was the spitting image of his own, that the light clicked on in his brain. Stupidly he looked down between his feet to confirm the fact that he’d been robbed.

  Chase spun around. “Stop him, he’s got my briefcase!”

  Heads turned, eyes glazed with surprise and alarm. But nobody moved.

  By then the young Asian had reached the door, his hand clawing for the handle when the door was shouldered open by a big man in a black vinyl hat and a gray suit edged with a thin pink stripe. The two collided with considerable force. Instinctively the big man raised his gloved hand to take the brunt of the collision but was still thrown back by the impact, the door crashing against the wall, and a sharp metallic crack, as the handle smashed into the tiles, reverberated around the mirrored, tiled room.

  Instantly the young Asian recovered and barged past and was gone, leaving Sturges with his back to the open door, momentarily stunned.

  As Chase followed, his face contorted with an almost manic desperation, Sturges saw his chance. This is it, my friend. And as Chase tried to push through he brought up the glove with its stiffened fingers, his own fingers clutching the syringe inside, and jabbed it against the victim’s upper arm in a gesture that to an onlooker must have appeared as nothing more than a defensive reaction. Exerting the full pressure of his thumb on the plunger, Sturges wondered why it wasn’t moving— stuck, or what? Inexplicably the plunger had been rammed home already. He couldn’t believe it. Then he saw the tiny hole in the index finger of the glove where the needle should have been.

  After the brief hindrance of the man at the door—he’d registered only a black-gloved hand and chunky gold jewelry on a hairy wrist— Chase raced for the escalator, scattering a knot of people who got in his way.

  Damn! The bastard was already halfway down. Little wonder—for using the heavy briefcase like a scythe to clear a path he was laying waste to the downward escalator, leaving women screaming, people hanging on to the moving rubber hand support, and bodies sprawled on the serrated metal treads.

  For Chase it was the old nightmare of being hampered and obstructed, unable to make headway, and with it came the sick despair of knowing he was in real and actual danger of losing his notebooks and tapes, two months of expensive, irreplaceable research, all gone because of a single stupid careless moment. Once the Asian reached the lower level he wouldn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of catching him.

  An elderly man who’d received a nasty clout was swaying in the middle of the escalator, waving his hands feebly like someone struck blind. He grabbed hold of Chase’s jacket as he wormed past and Chase lost precious seconds in having to turn and disengage the amazingly strong grip before plunging recklessly on, leaping over bodies.

  Even now the Asian was only strides away from the bottom of the escalator and almost certain escape in the milling crowd.

  In those last few strides, however, something odd happened.

  The Asian seemed to falter and his legs went rubbery as if drunk. He stumbled on, feet climbing an invisible hill in slow motion, his free hand raking the air like a swimmer battling against a fierce current. Then his legs gave way altogether and he fell headfirst with a hollow clunk, carried forward by his own momentum and sliding facedown across the scuffed marble floor of the transit lounge.

  Panting heavily, Chase went for his first priority, the briefcase, which had landed on its side several feet away. He then knelt down by the motionless young man and was about to turn him over when a harsh, commanding voice rang out. “Hold it there! Don’t move!”

  An airport security guard in peaked cap and shiny blue uniform was standing above him, an automatic in his meaty fist. The crowd surged around curiously, agog at the spectacle; this was better than television.

  “My briefcase,” Chase said breathlessly, patting it as if to corroborate his story. “This man stole it.” There was a look in the guard’s eye that made Chase feel as if he were the guilty party.

  “All right, take it easy now.” The guard, a burly fellow in his fifties, crouched down on one knee. When he turned the young Asian over his look became positively suspicious. Sticking out of the Asian’s T-shirt, just below the left collarbone, was the broken end of a hypodermic needle, still seeping pinkish fluid.

  The guard looked at Chase warily. “You made damn sure he didn’t get far. What are you, a doctor or something?” He pressed three fingers to the side of the Asian’s neck, feeling for his pulse.

  Chase blinked. “Wait a minute, that wasn’t me. I only... is he dead?” Chase asked, hollow-eyed, as the guard straightened up. The Asian’s sallow complexion had turned gray. His lips were tinged with blue.

  Watching Chase closely the guard unclipped a transceiver from his breast pocket, thumbed a button, and spoke into the grille. “Control, this is blue nine-three. We have a homicide in the transit lounge.” The barrel of the automatic was pointing at the middle of Chase’s chest. “Suspect apprehended. Get the rush squad here right away.”

  “Officer, you’ve got this all wrong.
You can’t hold me, I’ve got a plane to catch in”—he looked at his watch—“eight minutes. This man is a thief, he stole my briefcase, this bloody thing here!”

  The guard wagged his head. “What kind of score do you think this is, fella—I find you next to a dead man and you just take your flight as if nothing had happened?”

  “It leaves in eight minutes!”

  “Right, it leaves in eight minutes without you. Now just take it easy.” Chase sagged helplessly. What a ludicrous situation to have become embroiled in, and all for the sake of a piss. It was going to take hours to explain and sort out a simple sequence of events. Simple, that was, except for the broken needle protruding from the Asian’s chest. What was he, an addict? Impaled himself on his own hypodermic? No, Chase recalled, that wasn’t how it had happened ... he’d definitely seen the Asian stagger before the fall. Then how ... ? It didn’t make sense. Knowing it was futile, he tried one more time.

  “Officer, there are people up there in the men’s room who saw everything that happened. All you have to do is ask one of them—” He turned and pointed up the escalator and his arm remained frozen in midair. He’d seen, for just a moment, the big man in the black vinyl hat before he’d ducked out of sight.

  A random and unconnected scattering of thoughts coalesced and glowed like neon in Chase’s brain. The Asian had encountered no one except the big man in the black vinyl hat. The big man had a camera around his neck. He was also wearing a heavy gold bracelet on his hairy wrist. A memory stirred, but one he couldn’t place, of gold jewelry on a hairy wrist.

  Chase lowered his arm and waited silently while the crowd flowed around the three participants in the little drama. He stood frowning, trying to make connections, and he was still trying when the other security guards arrived and led him away at the point of a gun.

  It was a table of death’s-heads. Beamed straight down from recessed spotlights in the ceiling, the light bounced off the papers spread across the horseshoe-shaped table, with President Munro at its apex, and lit everyone from above and below.

  Foreheads gleamed like bone, eye sockets were black and cavernous, chins and jowls jutted: a tableau of waxwork effigies.

  Directly in front of the president, through the glass wall, holographic displays hovered ghostlike in the middle of the darkened chamber. Beneath them sat controllers and military personnel at hooded consoles, while officers stood in the shadowy background in small groups.

  Along the table to the president’s left, General Beaver, one of the three Joint Chiefs present, said, “Satellite photoreconnaissance confirms the intelligence picture, sir. Taken together, I should say we have a good probability rating, in the high seventies.”

  “That still leaves a better than twenty percent shortfall, General.”

  “With all respect, sir, it can only be conclusive when the Soviets actually implement the scheme,” General Stafford pointed out.

  August, 9, 1999. The president’s famous vote-winning smile was absent today at this meeting ninety feet underground in the concrete, steel and lead-lined installation known as the Prime Situation Center. Connected to the White House by a two-mile tunnel that ran under the Potomac River, the PSC was located directly beneath Arlington National Cemetery. Another tunnel, also with an electric rail shuttle, linked it to the Pentagon, a mile to the east.

  General Smith, the army chief, voiced the opinion that they were in danger of losing credibility. “If somebody’s going to act, it ought to be us,” he argued. “Our countermeasures are more than adequate and at operational status. Isn’t that so, Colonel Madden?”

  Madden nodded, and for the benefit of the tape added, “That’s correct, General.”

  “Christ, George, this isn’t the old nuclear scenario of a preemptive strike,” said General Stafford. “Nobody comes out of this one looking good and smelling sweet. We all go down the goddam drain together!”

  “Not necessarily all,” said Ralf Zadikov, seated on the president’s left. The secretary of defense was a gaunt figure, pointed chin resting on clasped scarecrow hands.

  General Stafford’s lips tightened. Along the table several people shuffled papers and avoided one another’s eyes. It was bad form to admit, or even mention, the existence of the sealed oxygen-enriched enclosures reserved for high-ranking politicians and military personnel. This was another key element in the ASP master plan, thoughtfully provided by Madden and designed and built by JEG Construction.

  To cover this lapse General Beaver said hurriedly, “Can we see our deployment pattern on display, Colonel Madden?”

  As soon as Madden gave the order over the desk mike a brightly colored azimuthal projection of the globe shimmered in the black air behind the glass. Missile sites were red; tankers in black against the blue ocean. Nine of the missiles and four of the tankers had the Greek letter p, for beta, in silver in the center of each symbol.

  There was silence while everyone contemplated the pleasing design. Then General Smith said, “What’s our present state of readiness, Colonel?”

  “Three hundred, ninety-five missiles payloaded with Blooming-dale’s targeted on key areas of jungle and rain forest on all continents outside North America. We have thirty-eight tankers of two hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand tons capacity of Macy’s constantly on the move in all major oceans. By the end of this year we will have fifty-two tankers. The missiles and tankers designated beta contain a new bacteriological herbicide that is much more powerful and effective than conventional chemical compounds. We’re proceeding as fast as possible to make the conversion to all our missiles and tanker fleet.”

  “Will this be enough to give us herbicidal overkill?” General Smith asked.

  “Yes, sir.” Madden used the electronic indicator, a glowing white dot. “As you’ll have noted, the tankers are grouped in convoys and not scattered at random. These areas”—the white dot danced about—“ the equatorial Pacific, the North Atlantic, the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, and parts of the Indian Ocean near the Madagascar Basin are richest in phytoplankton and therefore contribute most of the global oxygen yield. We estimate that with our present fleet we can eliminate up to eighty-five percent of marine plant life.”

  “Then why upgrade the fleet at all if we already have that capability?” General Stafford wanted to know. As air force chief of staff he could see the need to deploy more missiles, but who the hell wanted more tankers? The defense budget was tight enough without wasteful and unnecessary expenditure.

  Madden read the general’s mind and had his answer ready. “The time factor, sir. With more tankers we can speed up the process.”

  “Why not more missiles and speed it up even more?”

  “Because the forest and jungle targets are less important, General. They contribute only about thirty percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere; the oceans are the major supplier.”

  General Smith seemed mesmerized by the display floating in the darkened chamber. “How long will it take?” he asked in a faraway voice.

  “For elimination of marine plants we estimate six to nine months— with the existing fleet. When our tanker program is complete we can reduce that to between three and six months. Also our new bacteriological herbicide will be far more efficient. These organisms are biologically alive as distinct from chemically dead, so they reproduce themselves and actually increase their effectiveness from the moment of dispersal. The longer they’re in the water the more abundant they become.”

  An army colonel down the wing of the table said, “How soon before there’s an appreciable drop in oxygen content?”

  “We have no idea,” Madden said quite calmly.

  “No idea?” General Beaver said. “None at all?”

  Madden shook his head, unperturbed by this admission. “Scientific opinion is at variance. At one extreme it’s thought that a reduction in atmospheric oxygen will be apparent within five years. At the other, twelve thousand. We simply don’t know.”

  “Can I amplify tha
t?” Farrer put in, raising his hand like a schoolboy asking to leave the room. A civilian member of the scientific liaison team, he was in here in the Prime Situation Center for precisely this purpose.

  “I wish someone damn well would,” General Beaver said icily. Farrer smiled diffidently. “There are two factors that make an accurate forecast extremely difficult if not impossible. The first is the sheer volume of the earth’s atmosphere: fifty-seven hundred million million tons. The second factor is the complexity of the biosphere and the interaction of its various components: oceans, atmosphere, landmass, living organisms, and so on. Interpretation of the figures, as Colonel Madden has mentioned, varies a great deal. Some forecasts have it that oxygen depletion will become noticeable in just a few years—maybe five, ten, twenty. Others say that were photosynthesis to cease altogether, less than one percent of our present oxygen stock would be used up, in which case it would take many thousands of years.”

  “It was my impression, Colonel,” said General Beaver, fixing Madden with a stony eye, “that DELFI had provided us with an accurate prediction—isn’t that so?”

  “Correct, General, up to a point.”

  “What ... point?” General Beaver said ominously.

  “DELFI extrapolates from data we already possess, not from hypothetical factors such as the implementation of DEPARTMENT STORE. Computer weather modeling is still an inexact science and is subject to the same constraints I mentioned a moment ago; that’s to say, a lot depends on individual interpretation.”

  “So where does this leave us in relation to the Soviet threat?” General Smith demanded. “Can anyone answer me that?”

  “Where we’ve always been,” Madden said promptly. “Holding the balance of power.”

  “Explain that to me, Colonel.”

  “Well, sir, the Russians have Project Arrow, we have DEPARTMENT STORE. Neither of us knows what the effects might be should these schemes be implemented, and it’s precisely this uncertainty that each side is seeking to exploit.”