Resistant

by Michael Palmer

  Jutting into the sea below, arising from the rocky base of the cliff, was a wooden dock, next to which was a well-maintained boathouse. Several times, he had seen a cigar-shaped motorboat with powerful twin engines bringing in supplies. What he could not figure out was how those supplies were transported up and into the castle. Some of them, at least, had to be destined for his lab. There were no stairs or pathways from the ocean—none that he could see, anyway. There had to be some way to the boathouse that didn’t require scaling a one-hundred-foot cliff.

  But where?

  Kazimi became aware of a shift in the atmosphere of the lounge. He turned to see that Doug Bacon had entered from the corridor and was approaching him. The mogul’s cane snapped against the stone floor like the popper of a bullwhip. Kazimi thought Bacon’s limp seemed more pronounced. Perhaps it was the chill. His face appeared pale and drawn. Stress. Janus was getting to its creator as well as to its pursuer.

  With a subtle nod, Bacon dismissed the huge African American guard he called Drake, who had followed him in. Kazimi’s stomach soured at the thought of being alone with the man. For a moment he contemplated taking Bacon hostage, and using him to barter his way out. Bad idea. He needed the space that trust was giving him. Escape seemed nearly impossible as it was.

  “I came to see how you were doing,” Bacon said.

  “You have the cameras and the screens. How do you think I’m doing?”

  “The latest pass?”

  “The mice are dead. All dead.”

  “Sorry to hear that. You look exhausted. Why don’t you get some rest?”

  “Scientists always believe that the next experiment is going to do it.”

  “I understand,” Bacon said with a tense smile. “That which is attained without conflict or strife is rarely worth attainment at all.”

  “True enough.”

  Kazimi recognized the quote from Lancaster Hill’s manifesto, but kept that fact to himself. He had no desire to share his views on Hill’s misguided thinking with a zealot like Bacon. “Tell me about the situation,” Bacon said.

  “Despite this failure, I believe my theories of competitive inhibition have merit,” he said.

  “I admire your commitment. More mice have arrived. You’re certain you don’t need our scientist?”

  Kazimi had balanced the loss of what little privacy and mobility he had against the possibility that the microbiologists working for Bacon could help him succeed where they had continued to fail.

  “Not yet,” he replied.

  As he continued gazing out at the slate-gray ocean, Kazimi found himself thinking about the mystery man of his task force, Humphrey Miller.

  Of all those on the team he had created, Miller seemed to be the most inventive, and the most outside the box. The irony was that they had never met face-to-face or even spoken to each other. Miller had connected with him some years ago via an Internet forum. After a stream of e-mails and exchanges of information, Kazimi still hardly knew the man at all. Miller had written a number of amazing papers, but had not published any of them as far as he could tell. His name, if indeed it was his name at all, was not associated with any university faculty. Still, his brilliance and creativity were unquestioned.

  The mystery man.

  Over the month or two before he was kidnapped, Kazimi had lost patience with Humphrey Miller persistently blaring the trumpet of his bacteriophage theory. In fact, although his deal with Bacon included the disclosure of his entire online team, he had omitted Miller as not being relevant. Now, as he endured one failure after another, he considered sharing Miller’s offbeat approach to the Janus conundrum with Bacon. The last thing Kazimi wanted was to put Miller, or anyone else, in harm’s way. But the situation was growing desperate. The answer as always would be to pray to Allah for clarity and vision.

  “Okay, then,” Bacon was saying. “Continue as you are. And if there is anything you require, do not hesitate to ask. But I remind you, time is growing short.”

  He turned to leave.

  “Bacon, listen to me,” Kazimi blurted out. “You’ve got to let me and your scientists work with the government. You miscalculated the power of Janus. Now, you rightly say that we’re running out of time. We need more resources.”

  “Then take the scientist I’ve offered you,” Bacon said.

  Kazimi shook his head. “We need a vast, coordinated, combined effort here. The mutation has changed the rules of this game. Even my group of experts wouldn’t be enough.”

  Bacon turned to him, his eyes glowing like the embers buried deep within the fireplace.

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” he said. “So long as we have the leverage of possessing the means of stopping the Doomsday Germ, we can move even this ponderous government to accede to our demands. We have come too far not to make this happen.”

  “But you don’t possess the means to control what you created. Sooner or later, even if Congress passes the laws you are demanding, even if they agree to change the way our government does business, it will become clear that you cannot deliver on your promise.”

  Bacon slammed the tip of his cane on the stone.

  “And that is precisely why you must succeed, Dr. Kazimi,” he cried out, his voice shrill and unsettling. “You must succeed at all costs.”

  “Tens of thousands, even millions could die.”

  Bacon went apoplectic.

  “Without the sort of change we are demanding, there are hundreds of millions in this country who are at risk! At risk for poverty! At risk for global irrelevance! Hundreds of millions who will be left destitute as this country goes broke. We are not here to save a life, Dr. Kazimi, or even a few hundred lives. We are here to save a country!”

  “You are insane! All of you.”

  The fire in Bacon’s eyes receded, replaced by a disturbing look of vision, determination, and peace.

  “Many people are depending on your success, doctor,” he said evenly. “Don’t disappoint them.”

  Turning his back, Bacon ambled over to the bar where he poured himself a drink. Kazimi stood by the towering windows, his arms dangling at his sides, his head bowed. There was to be no reasoning with the Society of One Hundred Neighbors. Not now, not ever.

  “Come, sit by the fire,” Bacon said. “I’ll get us something to eat.”

  He raised a finger to his behemoth guard, and the man silently vanished into the darkness of the corridor.

  Fifteen minutes later, Harris arrived wheeling in their splendid meal on the usual silver cart. Famished, Kazimi ate. A hunger strike would not do him nor the rest of the world any good. As they dined, he came close several times to bringing up Miller’s name. Each time, though, he resisted. If his next trials failed, if this new batch of mice died, and if he found no escape from Red Cliff, he would have little recourse but to share Miller’s name with Bacon. Then, having witnessed Alexander Burke’s guile, he had little doubt the society would find him.

  After lunch, Kazimi decided to remain in the lab for Asr prayers. In the short corridor connecting the Great Room with his lab, he passed the other of Bacon’s bodyguards—the white, acne-pocked, bull-necked thug named Costello, who was carrying a large carton that had probably contained lab supplies, but now appeared to be empty. Kazimi intentionally averted his gaze. He saw no reason to look the man in the eye.

  “I left the mice and some other stuff in the animal room, doctor,” Costello said, his voice rough as new sandpaper. “I’ll be back after dinner to clean out the cages.”

  “Good enough. Thank you.”

  Kazimi paused to watch as the giant lumbered past him, down the connecting corridor, and into the Great Room.

  But instead of turning back and heading into his lab, he remained transfixed, staring at the Great Room door. Something did not make sense.

  Had Costello gone into the lab while he was having lunch with Bacon? Not possible. The giant would have had to pass right by them. Could Kazimi have fallen asleep by the fire and missed the m
an entering with large cartons and boxes of mice? Again, no way.

  But if Costello had not come through the Great Room to get from the boathouse to the lab, how had he gotten there? Bacon had been clear that there was only one way to get to the lab, and that was via the Great Room.

  It surely wasn’t the first time, and most definitely would not be the last, but the master of Red Cliff had lied.

  CHAPTER 29

  Social insurance puts at risk America’s economic stability and therefore should be viewed not as a path forward, but rather as an assault on our very liberty.

  —LANCASTER R. HILL, ADDRESS TO JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY CONVENTION, MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, SEPTEMBER 21, 1962

  Lou kept to the shade of a maple tree near the entrance to the Antibiotic Resistance Unit and waited for Vicki Banks. Two days had passed since they had agreed to meet, and Lou was surprised at how much of that time she had been on his mind. She was certainly attractive enough in a bookish sort of way, but it was more her calmness and intellect, as well as her perceptiveness in sensing how much he needed someone to talk with. His mood, rooted in the loss of his job, the time away from Emily, and the situation with Cap, was boring in like a deer tick.

  The days had been a stressful amalgam of hours at Cap’s bedside, and even more hours under Humphrey’s excited, watchful eye, slicing open boxes and setting up his lab. One thing the man was right about—so long as they looked as if they knew what they were doing, going up and down in the freight elevator, moving through the bowels of the hospital, no one seemed in the least interested in them.

  The clinical situation with Cap was deteriorating, albeit slower than Lou had anticipated—credit to the boxer’s spirit and incredible conditioning, and perhaps to the antibiotic combinations being put in play by Ivan Puchalsky. Still, as Sam Scupman had so tactfully put it, time was not a commodity Cap possessed in any great abundance. The leg was hour-to-hour. His physicians met frequently to decide whether or not the infection needed to be opened up, drained, and irrigated. It was still too early to make the larger, more frightening decisions, but if the infection spread to another limb that process would have to be sped up considerably.

  Vicki emerged from the building, glanced around, and waved cheerfully when she spotted Lou. Her vibrant smile, appealing shoulder-length hair, white jeans, and turquoise blouse instantly dashed his vision of a constrained academic. Her figure, trim and sensual, had hardly been well presented beneath her knee-length lab coat. To complete the transformation, her thick-lensed, black-framed glasses were gone, replaced either by contacts or near-blindness. They shook hands, but her expression suggested they could have just as easily exchanged a quick embrace. Immediately, Lou’s battered spirits felt somewhat buoyed.

  “Hey, there. How are you holding up?” she asked.

  “I’m okay,” he replied with less conviction than he had hoped. “However, I’m not sure I’ll be such a great conversationalist.”

  Vicki gave him an understanding look.

  “Don’t worry. Sometimes it’s good just to have company. Are you up for a little walk? The place I was thinking we could go is a couple of blocks from the main entrance.”

  Lou had parked his rental in the lot by the museum, but the late-afternoon sun was still warm and the lush air, sweetened with the scents of spring, begged for a walk. Initially, they made their way in a comfortable silence along the walkway that snaked through the vast research complex.

  “So how was your day?” Vicki asked finally.

  “It was hardly one of my best. I spent it mostly with my friend Cap.”

  “The reports we’ve gotten from Arbor General aren’t so good.”

  Lou grimaced.

  “The reports are right, I’m afraid. He talks when he has the strength to carry on a conversation, but mostly he sleeps. He’s a rock-hard, vibrant man, and it’s terrible to see him like this.”

  “He’s lucky to have a friend like you.”

  She took his arm in a totally natural, empathetic way.

  Lou decided not to tell her about Cap’s nurse finally caving in and allowing him to help change his dressing. The two of them had begun by unwrapping several layers of putrid, drainage-soaked gauze, and tossing them into a red biocontainment bag. The stench was nothing Lou hadn’t encountered before, but the fact that it was a man he knew so well made it hard to take. At one point, he actually felt his blood pressure dip and had to block his nose off with the base of his tongue.

  “The hardest part for me has been dealing with all the what-ifs,” he said. “What if we had turned left instead of right where the trail forked? What if I had been just a foot farther over?”

  “You know it wasn’t your fault.”

  Lou felt the heaviness in his chest recur.

  “I know. And it’s not like me to snivel. But this has been one of the worst stretches of my life. I’ve lost my job at Physician Wellness for insisting on coming back down here. Even before this all happened, my significant other decided that she had enough problems in her own life without trying to deal with anyone else’s. Then, last night, I had the first drunk dream I’d had in months.”

  “You’re in recovery?”

  “You know about that stuff?”

  “I have my own issues,” she said, “but alcohol and drugs aren’t among them. You go to meetings?”

  “Not many since all this happened.”

  “Well, you can’t put this infection on yourself, Lou. Sadly, nosocomial infections are a common occurrence—close to three hundred thousand reported annually in the United States alone.”

  “Not a reassuring statistic.”

  “Sorry. That wasn’t very sensitive of me. Sam and I discussed this some more after our meeting with you. He is impressed that this is a very unusual microbe. But when I told him you and I were getting together, he apologized for talking about how powerful it was and asked me to tell you not to give up hope. Saying anything derogatory against his precious bacteria is not like Sam.”

  “I’ve never met anyone quite like him. At certain times he seems seriously in love with the little beasties.”

  “Sam is definitely unique,” Vicki said. “I’ve been working with him for four years and that’s the way he’s always been.”

  “Well, I wish he had as much faith in the power of science as he does in the power of microbes. His enthusiasm for the germ that’s eating my closest friend is certainly testing my sobriety like few things ever have.”

  “How long since you’ve had a drink?” she asked.

  Ironically, at that moment, they turned a corner and were standing in front of the Blue Ox Tavern.

  “Ten years give or take,” Lou answered, holding the door for her.

  The tavern was beamed and dimly lit, with dark paneling throughout. The bar was impressively stocked, and there were no empty stools. His kind of place. The whole scene was too familiar, and immediately started tapes running in his head.

  “It’s always crowded here this time of day,” Vicki said, speaking loudly enough to be heard above the din. “Between the CDC and area hospitals, the owner is probably a millionaire many times over.”

  “Judging by all those steins, I might say that what Sam Scupman is to bacteria, this guy is to beer. Only a beer obsession pays better.”

  Vicki returned a serious look.

  “You don’t do my job for the money,” she said. “Sam and I at least have that much in common.”

  At Lou’s request, a hostess led them to a booth in the dining area away from the noisy bar. They slid in across from each other and scanned the laminated menus. Bob Seger’s mildly depressing “Turn the Page” was playing on the jukebox.

  Here I am on the road again.…

  “I’ve told you a lot about me,” Lou said, setting his menu aside, “but I hardly know anything about you.”

  Vicki appraised him thoughtfully.

  “I usually don’t talk much about myself,” she explained.

  “Up to you, but I could sure use
the distraction.”

  Before she could respond, the waitress, young and perky and in her early twenties, came over.

  “Something to drink?” she asked.

  Vicki looked across at Lou for permission, and he shrugged and nodded that it was okay.

  He also subconsciously ran his tongue across his lips.

  “Jim Beam and water,” she said. “A little bit of extra ice.”

  “A bourbon girl. A lady after my old heart.”

  “I’m not a fan of fruity cocktails, and beer makes me feel like a tub.”

  “I’ll have the same,” Lou heard his detached voice say. “Neat.”

  Vicki’s eyes narrowed. Even though he’d been engaged by her, thoughts of Cap and the grotesque infection ravaging his leg hung in his mind like a Cape Cod fog. Partial amputation … reamputation … sepsis … weakness … death. For years he had fought to stay in the moment—to vigorously avoid projecting outcomes into the future. Now, he was solidly planted in possibilities. No matter what Vicki or anybody else said, he felt responsible for what happened to his sponsor. It was his fault. And dammit, this was the moment—he wanted a drink.

  “You sure?” Vicki asked.

  The waitress stood by patiently.

  “Yeah,” Lou said finally. “I’m sure.”

  The girl smiled, nodded, and promised to be right back.

  “I’m not your babysitter, Lou,” she said. “You’re a big boy and you can make your own decisions.”

  “Okay, then. I’m deciding I want to know more about you.”

  Her expression darkened.

  “It’s not the happiest of stories,” she said.

  “In that case, clearly you’ve come a long way.”

  “Well, let’s see. I became damaged goods very early in life. I was an only child and my parents were both very abusive to me.”

  Lou cringed. “Physically?”

  “And mentally, but mostly physically. They were religious fundamentalists, who believed in the importance of discipline. I’m not talking a spanking now and again. I have the scars to prove it was a whole lot more than that. After my father put out his cigarette on my backside when I had just turned fourteen, I decided it was time to leave home for good.”