“Not by a long shot,” Kittredge replied with a shy smile. He couldn’t tell if she viewed his obvious affinity for early morning spirits as evidence of a fun-loving lifestyle, or as betrayal of the slow rot eating outward from the center of him. Two sides of the same coin, he figured, and there was no use in beginning a relationship under false pretenses of any sort. He was far too old for any of that kind of bullshit.
She was pretty. And there was a self-assured coyness to her that pulled at him, drew him inexorably toward her even as it probed a painful wound. In an uncanny way, Nora reminded him of… her.
He shook his head, angry at himself.
“You okay?” Nora asked. “You checked out for a minute.”
Kittredge mumbled an apology, took a healthy swallow of the best Bloody Mary in Cologne, and waited impatiently for the alcohol to seep into his bloodstream. “Local?” he asked her, wondering at once if he sounded to Nora as desperately hopeful as he felt.
“I am,” she said. Her coquettish smile reaffirmed that he had no poker face whatsoever, but that she was charmed by his open hopefulness. “I moved here two summers ago.”
Work, it turned out. She was an economist at Kleinmann Holdings, GmbH. “What does Kleinmann hold?” Kittredge wanted to know. Other people’s businesses, it turned out, and Kleinmann generally held them by the balls while squeezing every last penny out of them. At least, that’s how Nora characterized it.
“Small world,” Kittredge said.
“How so?”
He used to be an economist as well, he told her. He worked for the US State Department. Before… all of that. He really didn’t want to get into it, and he could tell from the concern and admirably disguised sympathy on her face that she wasn’t inclined to press him for details, even though he had brought the subject up. “Anyway, I’ve not yet stumbled upon my Next Big Thing,” he said, clearly intending it as a corner around which he hoped to steer the conversation.
Nora obliged. “Economics is bullshit anyway,” she pronounced with a wave of her hand and a dismissive shake of her head. “You can torture any theory enough to eventually get it to match the past. But as for the future? Nobody has a clue. Especially not us. No theory I’ve met has any predictive power whatsoever.”
Kittredge laughed. He’d arrived at a similar conclusion one time after leading himself in tautological circles while trying to come up with something profound to tell the US Ambassador to Venezuela.
Venezuela.
It wouldn’t leave him the hell alone.
“I almost don’t even bother looking at a company’s books any more,” Nora went on, her eyes studying Kittredge, who had momentarily left the conversation again. “They’re all fake anyway. Mostly, I just want to know which politicians a particular company is bribing, and which regulators are in their pocket. That’s the most accurate measure of a company’s economic potential. How sweaty is the love-knot with the pols. That’s what I really want to know.”
Kittredge chuckled. “You’re not allowed to be jaded until your forties,” he said, finishing his drink just as the waiter arrived with two more.
“I’ve always been precocious,” Nora said, that easy smile tossing salt on the still-open wound in Kittredge’s heart. Damn, this girl could own me without thinking twice, he realized. What a delicious possibility. One for which he wasn’t even close to prepared, but he had lately become more and more accustomed to leaping headlong into precipices of all ilk. What was one more disaster?
They ordered food. Kittredge nibbled, still suffering from food aversion, but downed another eleven-Euro Mary like it was his job. He almost felt normal again, nearly able to face the remainder of the day, which he hoped would include a lot more of Nora.
And maybe of Sergio, as well. “How did you meet Sergio?” Kittredge asked between half-hearted bites of brötchen.
Nora blushed. “Online,” she said. “Is that pathetic, or what?”
“Not at all,” Kittredge said. More than a few of his recent trysts had begun with the aid of an online dating service. Although “dating” might be a misleading term, he reflected. It was mostly about finding people, boys and girls, who were keen to party. “But Sergio seems a little…”
“Gay?” Nora finished.
“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Kittredge said, “but yes. He’s definitely got a lot of gay in him.”
“Maybe I like a man who isn’t afraid to share me,” Nora said, mischief in her eyes. “And maybe I like a man who shares my taste in men.”
Kittredge was sure that he was falling in love. The shallow kind, anyway.
He took her hand on the way back to his apartment after breakfast, eager for more, happy for the insatiable appetite that made him feel connected to himself, vital, alive.
They kissed in the doorway, and he fumbled to find his apartment key, his heart pounding, anxious to get inside and get busy, and anxious to surprise Sergio with another round.
He caressed her backside as she led the way back toward his bedroom, and she paused near the entryway to rub against him. She took his hand and pulled him toward the bed.
She stopped, and her body stiffened.
She screamed, a horrific, ear-splitting, piercing wail that chilled his blood. She turned and buried her face in his shoulder, sobs wracking her body.
Over her dark hair, he saw what she had seen. Sergio’s smooth, athletic body lay in a pool of blood, his face horribly disfigured, bashed beyond recognition, beaten to a pulp in Kittredge’s bed.
2
It was three a.m., but Evelyn Paulson wouldn’t have been able to sleep if she had tried. She wore a space suit. None of her flesh was exposed, and she wore a mask over her entire head, like the kind that hazardous materials response teams wore. Hospital monitors beeped. There was the omnipresent cyclical whooshing of the respirator that breathed life into her nine-year-old daughter, Sarah.
This can’t be happening, Evelyn thought for the thousandth time. Two weeks ago, Sarah had been active, athletic, beautiful. She’d fallen on the playground and broken her ankle. It was an unlucky break, the doctor said, and it required surgery to set the bones properly. Otherwise, if the break wasn’t set right, it would heal wrong and interfere with her growth. She’d walk with a limp.
It had been an easy decision at the time. What parent wants their daughter to walk with a limp? Fears of infections and hospital-borne diseases were the furthest thing from Evelyn’s mind as the orderlies wheeled Sarah away. Her ankle will be good as new in a few months, the doctor said.
Now, Sarah had no ankle. She had no leg below the femur. They had amputated just below her hip in a futile attempt to stop the bacterial infection, a gram negative bacteria, a term which meant nothing to Evelyn two weeks ago, but now meant that her daughter hung to life by the thinnest of threads while a toxic bug multiplied inside her little body.
They’d tried antibiotics, of course. Those were given for everything. Scratch your finger? Antibiotic ointment, coming right up. Can’t risk infection. Persistent cough? Here’s a six-day course of antibiotics. Be sure to take them all.
But antibiotics had done absolutely nothing against the bacteria ravaging Sarah’s body. The infection had spread through her system. It pounded her lungs, and threatened to stop her heart. A machine cleaned and oxygenated her blood, because her little body was no longer fully capable of performing those tasks on its own.
Evelyn recalled the hushed, concerned conversations between doctors, and then the clinical, terse, pained exchanges they’d had with her: we’ve worked our way through nearly every known antibiotic and combination of antibiotics in our arsenal, but the infection just keeps advancing.
For the first week, there was always another drug to try, and Evelyn had felt certain they would find one that worked. But they hadn’t. They’d airlifted Sarah to New York, to the National Institute of Health, the vanguard research hospital in the western medical world. Just ask them, Evelyn thought. They’d be happy to tell you how incredibly good they are
.
And yesterday, after flying in some exotic and highly toxic antibiotic therapy, which hadn’t worked, hadn’t even slowed the infection down an iota, they told her that they were out of options. It was down to Sarah’s innate strength, her will to live.
There had to be something else to try, Evelyn had protested. It’s the twenty-first century, there’s a rover running around on Mars, and people in jungle villages have cell phone service. How can the NIH have run out of antibiotic drugs to give to a little girl? To save her life?
Because in all the world, there isn’t a drug capable of killing this bacteria, the doctors told her. At least, not one that won’t also kill Sarah in the process. We’ve tried every last antibiotic drug in the human medical arsenal, they said. But Sarah’s infection was pandrug resistant. It was completely unfazed by every known pharmaceutical concoction.
It was a superbug, they told her.
Evelyn had asked where it came from, how Sarah could possibly have been exposed to such a horrific disease, and the doctors had exchanged furtive glances with each other. “We can’t say for sure,” Sarah’s lead physician had said.
Superbug? It was also going to be a super lawsuit, Evelyn had decided in that moment. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure things out. Evelyn wasn’t a biologist, but she was a college graduate, for pete’s sake. Bacteria became drug resistant through evolution. Most of them reproduced at least a dozen times every day. Some bacteria reproduced more than a hundred times a day. Each new generation brought the possibility of genetic variations that made the little bastards resistant to the antibiotics in their environment.
The hospital environment. Evelyn knew it in her bones. The hospital had bred this nightmare bug that had left her daughter’s body in ruins, had left her little angel clinging desperately to life.
Maybe not on purpose, not maliciously, but where else could such a bug possibly evolve? Certainly not on the playground where Sarah had fallen.
The nurses’ attitude had changed after the discovery that Sarah’s disease was pandrug resistant. They were sympathetic, and they were doing their best for Sarah, and they offered more than just good care for her, but anytime Evelyn brought up the possibility that inadequate hospital procedures were responsible for harboring — no, for developing, and then harboring — such a terrible affliction, the nurses clammed up immediately. None of them wanted to say anything that got the hospital sued. None of them wanted to lose their job. Evelyn’s rage grew, festered, rotted her insides just as surely as the superbug was devouring Sarah’s.
The doctors gave Sarah a ten percent chance of surviving.
One in ten. Bile boiled in Evelyn’s gut. She couldn’t stop being outraged, because then the heartbreak would overtake her, and she knew that once it started, it would consume her.
Anger displaced despair and worry, and Evelyn became extremely angry. She had to be. For Sarah’s sake. Sarah needed her to be strong, to be there, a pillar. Evelyn couldn’t let her own emotions overwhelm her.
The infernal beeping continued. Evelyn heard another sound, the now-familiar whoosh of air that announced that someone had opened the outer airlock. There were negative-pressure pumps whirring 24/7 in Sarah’s room, creating a slight vacuum that would prevent any air from escaping, and with it, any airborne bacteria. It was surreal, like Sarah was some sort of biological weapon. Which, Evelyn reflected grimly, she had certainly become. Sarah harbored a disease with a ninety percent mortality rate.
Jesus, this can’t be happening, she thought again.
The inner airlock door opened, and Evelyn twisted her torso to bring the doorway into her field of vision. A large man entered. The baggy white biohazard suit and respirator looked small on his muscular frame. His face looked fit and handsome, at least what she could see of it through the biohazard suit. He carried a cooler. “Good morning, Ms. Paulson,” he said. “I just need to collect a sample. This won’t take long at all.”
Evelyn didn’t recognize the man. Was he a doctor? Nurse? Evelyn thought of asking his name and position, just to be sure, but the security around this wing of the NIH hospital was otherworldly. She wasn’t sure the Crown Jewels were protected so thoroughly. There wasn’t much chance that the guy didn’t belong.
The man poked a syringe into an existing needle that had been in Sarah’s arm since she arrived at NIH several days earlier. Evelyn watched the dark crimson liquid fill the tube in spurts. When he’d collected enough, the man sealed the sample tube, rinsed it under the sink, then sprayed a sterilizer around the outside. Then he wrapped the sample in foam and placed it on the ice inside the cooler he’d brought with him.
“It’s best if you get some rest,” the man said on his way out of Sarah’s room.
Easy for you to say, asshole, Evelyn thought. How could she sleep when her daughter was fighting for her life just inches away?
On the other hand, it was three in the morning, and Evelyn hadn’t left Sarah’s room for the better part of eleven hours.
Three a.m. Why were they taking samples at this time of the morning? They hadn’t done that before. And Evelyn was pretty sure she knew everyone on the hospital staff by now, at least in the infectious diseases wing. But she didn’t recognize that guy.
She shrugged. Doctors kept weird hours. And maybe that particular doctor had been on vacation during Sarah’s first week at NIH, which is why she hadn’t met him before.
Evelyn turned to look again at Sarah, willing her to heal, wishing there were some way to lend Sarah some strength, just for a few days, just until she rounded the corner and started to beat back the deadly disease that was eating her alive.
The ventilator continued its inexorable pace. The monitors beeped. Tears formed in Evelyn’s eyes. Exhaustion and fear overcame her, and Evelyn’s shoulders shuddered with her quiet, desperate sobs.
3
Viktor Kohlhaas’ driver shut the rear door to the Mercedes. It closed with a solid chunk, reminding Kohlhaas that the door was twice as heavy as the average car door, on account of its armor and bulletproof glass.
The car was both perk and necessity. In fact, there were several cars, all identical, all taking different routes through the city, all traveling at slightly different times throughout the day. It was like he was a head of state, rather than the CEO of what was, by industry standards, a minuscule concern.
His company was located in the outskirts of Paris. World-class cosmopolitanism notwithstanding, Paris was a backwater in his line of work. Nobody had a plant there, nobody was doing research, and there was no community synergy upon which to draw for inspiration. Perhaps that was the genius of the location. Even if you knew what you were looking for, you’d never think to look in Paris.
But that didn’t mean the security wasn’t necessary. It very much was. Kohlhaas’ life had been threatened on a number of occasions in the past year. Some of the threats had been veiled, while some were more overt, but the message was clear each time: play ball, asshole, or we’re coming after you.
But they hadn’t come after him. At least not seriously, anyway. Not yet. And Kohlhaas’ work had to continue, because it was important work. Which was to say, the work that Kohlhaas’ employees did was meaningful, useful work. He didn’t do much of that kind of thing, and in fact he had very little background in the biochemical sciences. His role was to sit through meetings, allocate resources, and, occasionally, when it couldn’t be avoided, to make a decision.
And his role also apparently included absorbing the threats of grievous bodily injury.
He had been tempted to cave in to them, as any sane man would have been tempted. But, so far, he had persevered, and had done what was necessary.
Viktor Kohlhaas was not a crusader. He wasn’t an idealist, or a starry-eyed dreamer, or a philanthropist. He wasn’t even a particularly nice guy. His family didn’t care much for him, and truth be told, he didn’t much care for them either. Degenerate sons, an aloof china doll of a wife, a daughter wrapped tightly in her own ri
ghteous anger over something Kohlhaas barely remembered, nephews popping out of the woodwork all the time with their hands out; it didn’t make for a terribly satisfying home life, despite the ridiculously elegant flat he and his wife shared in the St. Germain-de-pres, or 7th Arrondissement.
So Kohlhaas worked. Weekends, too. He drove his people hard, but he drove himself even harder. His flight from New York had landed but a few brief hours earlier, and yet there he was, on his way to work on a Friday morning with scarcely more than five hours’ sleep after a whirlwind trip across the Atlantic.
More than anything, Viktor Kohlhaas gravitated toward opportunity. He had an eye for it, could spot it where others passed right by, and pursued it with a ruthless, dogged single-mindedness that left others struck dumb by his intensity and tenacity. It was undoubtedly this element of his personality that had propelled him to the stratospheric ranks of the rock star CEOs.
People were surprised when he had taken his current position. It was a private company, which meant that there were fewer shares of preferred stock with which to pad his compensation package, and fewer options on that stock. But Kohlhaas had nevertheless negotiated a favorable equity position in addition to a very healthy cash signing bonus and monthly paycheck, all of which had left him exposed to very little downside risk, should he fail to guide Pharma Synergique to the exceptionally bright future that the board envisioned. And the equity position left him poised to reap incredible rewards if he succeeded.
Kohlhaas looked out the window, annoyed at the duration of the car ride from his flat into the office. Each day, Kohlhaas selected a driver at random from among the four that showed up at his flat, a bit of subterfuge that would make the US Secret Service proud. And each day, the drivers took a different route to the nondescript warehouse on the southern periphery of Paris, far from the landmarks, romantic cafes, and world-renowned masterpieces of fine art for which the city was famous. Today’s route seemed about thirty percent longer than normal.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 87