“Peter, I don’t know what’s happened to you. I was in Cologne at Anna and Karl’s. Can we please get out of here? I’m getting hypothermic.”
Kittredge felt a snarl come over him. “You didn’t ride in a fucking Peugeot from the Paris train station?” He leaned into her face, hate in his eyes. “And take a fucking envelope from Bill fucking Fredericks?”
“You’re being crazy.” She walked past him toward the freezer door.
There was something in the sight of the back of her head, the way it was beautiful and the way it stirred him. It had a powerful effect on him, as if it were irrefutable evidence of the way she had used her beauty and power over him to destroy his life. It stirred something ancient and animal and completely uncontrolled in the depths of him. He lunged at her. His throat let loose a feral roar. His hands clamped around her throat, thumbs at the back of her neck, fingers digging into her flesh and sinew.
He squeezed.
Nora swung her arm down and back, fist balled, pounding into his hip, missing his balls by inches.
He squeezed tighter, teeth bared, all rage and adrenaline, unaware of the animal growl escaping his mouth.
She thrashed, swinging her opposite elbow violently toward his head, missing wildly, unable to shake his grasp. She made disgusting choking sounds. He felt her neck compress beneath his fingers, heard things grinding and popping inside her throat.
Her thrashing became more desperate, less coordinated. She kicked and punched wildly, connecting occasionally but mostly flailing without effect. His hands only tightened around her throat.
She gave up trying to hurt him. Her hands snapped to her throat, her fingers searching for his, desperate to peel them back from her windpipe, but his grip was too strong.
The demons were back, the ones that had gripped his psyche while he maniacally stabbed the man over and over in Nora’s kitchen. They wrapped themselves again around his consciousness.
Kittredge gave himself over to the madness. He squeezed harder.
The demons had decided. It felt raw, primal, absolutely out of control. It felt good.
He was going to kill her. His face twisted into a lunatic’s mask.
Her thrashing slowed. He gripped her throat so hard that his forearms burned and shook.
In seconds, Nora’s fight left her altogether, and her body fell slack. A moment later, he realized that his grip on her throat was the only thing holding her up. He let go, and Nora’s body crumpled to the freezer floor.
Kittredge stared. Nora’s tongue hung from her mouth. Her eyes were open wide in terror. Her face was blue. She wasn’t breathing.
He began to shake.
He vomited. It splattered on the frigid floor. He stared at the absurd scene, hands on his knees, idly marveling at the utter strangeness of it, a dead girl and puke and a madman in a freezer in downtown Cologne like some sort of bad movie.
He didn’t know how much time passed. He shivered with cold and stale adrenaline and the horror of glimpsing a vile corner of his own soul.
“You must go.” Hands clamped on both of his shoulders. Kittredge hadn’t noticed the big freezer door opening, hadn’t heard Fleischer enter.
Fleischer’s strong hands pulled him upright. Kittredge’s eyes stayed on the floor, on the dead girl whom he might have loved, on her blue, contorted face, regarding for the second time the evidence of his own unadulterated, lunatic evil.
Fleischer’s hand slapped hard across his face. The pain brought him back to the present.
“You must go,” Fleischer said. “Now. I’ve made arrangements already.”
Kittredge looked back to the floor of the freezer, at Nora’s corpse, a question forming, the same kind of question that he had asked himself just before spending an afternoon dismembering a man.
“I will take care of her,” Fleischer said, pushing Kittredge forward out of the freezer.
Kittredge walked numbly. The old man pushed him gently but firmly through the butcher shop. Kittredge’s eyes moved between slabs of dead animal parts arrayed neatly, price tags protruding from the flesh in a final insult, and he thought of the way the dead assassin’s legs and arms had looked, not so different, really, than these other dead things displayed like art.
They approached the front door, and Kittredge saw the bright beige of a waiting Mercedes taxi. “Where…?” he started to ask, but trailed off.
“I have made arrangements,” Fleischer said again, opening the door to the butcher shop and nudging Kittredge toward the waiting cab.
“You will be fine,” the old man said, clapping Kittredge’s back and opening the taxicab door.
Kittredge climbed in, moving like an automaton, his body and mind equally unsteady.
62
Dr. Fred Farnsworth sat across from Alexander Toney in the drab government office on New Hampshire Avenue in Silver Spring, Maryland. Prizer’s CEO had brought with him an entourage of nearly a dozen underlings. Farnsworth was his boss’ underling, and together Farnsworth and the Director were the only CDC representatives at the emergency meeting at the FDA.
The director of the Food and Drug Administration arrived with a grim look on his face and styrofoam cup full of coffee in his hand. “I’m grateful you were able to make it on such short notice,” Johnathan Ahlgrim said with a hint of a smile. He was short, a little dumpy, and his bureaucrat’s physique bore testament to every one of the endless meetings he’d sat through in his decades-long journey to the top of the FDA.
In truth, Prizer and the CDC had asked for the meeting. They were unlikely bedfellows, to say the least, but they were joint supplicants, both subject to the FDA’s decision in what had become a deadly serious matter.
Ahlgrim sat at the head of the table. “The science appears sound,” he said, dropping a small stack of papers on the table. “But then, it always looks pretty on paper.”
Alexander Toney smiled indulgently. “Our drug stops this disease in its tracks.”
Ahlgrim removed his glasses and looked at Toney. “Says you.” His gaze softened a little and his eyes crinkled in a smile. “And, fortunately, so do my friends at the CDC. Which is why I’m even entertaining your request.”
Farnsworth watched the jockeying with annoyance. Kids were dying horrific, painful deaths while these two assholes were busy comparing penis sizes. Farnsworth didn’t suffer fools, and he knew that he had risen higher in the CDC than an apolitical scientist could reasonably hope for. He spoke up. “I’ve personally verified the lab results. The biostatic therapy offered by Prizer stops the bacteria from reproducing.”
“But you don’t know what else the drug may do,” Ahlgrim protested.
Toney opened his mouth to speak, but Farnsworth held his hand up. “You’re right,” Farnsworth said. “There may be side effects, and some of them may be extremely ugly. Deadly, even, in some rare cases. But every second you worry about the demon that might be out there, the real demon is busy killing nine out of ten kids.”
Toney smiled. Farnsworth’s boss eyed Ahlgrim expectantly. Ahlgrim mulled, his hand pressed pensively against his lower lip.
“Volume?” Ahlgrim asked Toney.
“Three thousand doses in DC right now. We’ve just agreed to terms with our new Paris subsidiary, and they are producing a new batch as we speak. They’ll ship in the morning. We’ll have ten thousand more doses by week’s end.”
Ahlgrim’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “Convenient, wouldn’t you say?”
Toney frowned. “I resent the implication, Mr. Ahlgrim.”
“Resent away,” Ahlgrim said. “It’s still uncanny timing.”
The Prizer CEO placed both palms on the table, his signature power move. Those who knew him best also recognized it as the portent of a gargantuan untruth. “Mr. Kohlhaas’ suicide was a shock to everyone in the industry. We were all saddened to hear of it. And as for the drug, our subsidiary was preparing for internal trials,” he said, “prior to seeking EU approval for human testing.”
“Why
Europe?” Ahlgrim asked.
Farnsworth couldn’t help but jump in. “Because the Europeans don’t have their heads up their asses regarding drug-resistant bacteria.” He felt his boss’ hand on his arm, silently urging restraint.
Ahlgrim absorbed the insult, then chuckled. “Relax, everyone,” he finally said. “You have my approval.” A relieved look crossed Alexander Toney’s face, and Farnsworth allowed a small nod of approval.
“On one condition,” Ahlgrim went on, his finger in the air. “We announce this together. If this damn drug starts killing people, I want us all to hang from the same post.”
63
Kittredge didn’t know how far the taxicab had driven. His hands were still shaking, and his mind was still reeling. He had killed his lover with his bare hands. What in God’s name had he become?
“Jesus, Pete. You look great. Alcoholism really suits you.”
Kittredge’s eyes snapped to the taxicab driver. It couldn’t be… Oh, God.
The driver affected a gigantic, toothy smile. He removed his sunglasses and leaned over the backseat. Kittredge shrank away in horror at the sight of the man’s feral, wolf-like eyes. His neck was as thick as a tree trunk, and his jaw appeared chiseled from stone, even hidden behind a graying beard.
Please, God, not this.
Quinn.
“Hiya, Pete!”
“Sonuvabitch!” Kittredge screamed. “Sonuvabitchsonuvabitch!” He lunged for the door of the cab, and was horrified to discover there were no door handles.
Quinn laughed that barking, derisive laugh of his, the one that Kittredge remembered so well from their first evening together in Alexandria, when Quinn had gleefully inflicted an ungodly amount of pain on Kittredge’s body. “Damn good to see you, Pete!”
“Sonuvabitch!” he yelled again, irrational with fear and rage. “Goddammit!” His hands shook.
“I know, right?” Quinn said. “I mean, what are the odds? Us meeting again like this. All the way over here in Naziland, no less.” Another derisive bark.
Kittredge’s mind reeled. How the hell had they found him?
It was obvious, of course. He had trusted the wrong person. Again. “Fleischer,” Kittredge said, shaking his head with disgust.
Quinn laughed. “Of course it was Fleischer.” He leaned forward to view Kittredge in the mirror. “You didn’t think that crazy old bastard freelanced his way through the Cold War, do you, Pete?”
Kittredge shook his head again. Did the Agency own everyone on the planet? How did he not see this coming?
The big assassin wheeled the cab around the corner, ducking into a narrow alleyway filled with trash cans. He brought the cab to a halt with a slight screech of the tires. “Someone else wanted to say hi,” Quinn said.
A large belly emerged from around a corner, followed a long time later by the rest of the man, a disgusting abomination of a human being, adorned by the world’s most hideous comb-over.
Bill Fredericks opened the door and slid in next to Kittredge. The car listed under his ponderous weight. A big, fat hand clamped on Kittredge’s thigh. “As I live and breathe,” Fredericks said with mock surprise, an artificially large smile on his face. “My old friend Pete.”
Kittredge shook his head again, speechless. His mind raced to put the pieces together.
“I think of you as kind of my own little gay prodigal son,” Fredericks said.
Kittredge’s jaw clenched. This can’t be happening.
“That was quite a walkabout you went on, Pete,” Fredericks said, squeezing Kittredge’s leg.
“It’s Peter,” Kittredge said through clenched teeth. How many times had he corrected Quinn and Fredericks during the Venezuela nightmare? After everything, they could at least show him the respect of getting his name right.
“Right,” Fredericks said. “Peter. I remember that about you now. You’re a pain in the ass.” Quinn barked another derisive laugh from the front seat.
“Anyway, Peter,” Fredericks said, his voice artificially cheery in a way that grated on Kittredge’s jangled nerves. “Don’t worry about hiking up your skirt and running away like that. Guys take vacations all the time. Don’t they, Quinn?”
“Two weeks every month for me,” Quinn said. “But I’m higher up in the food chain these days.”
Kittredge looked between the two of them, Quinn the giant, sadistic bastard of an assassin, and Fredericks, the bloated sack of shit case officer, a question on his lips. “You’re not going to…?”
“Kill you?” Fredericks completed the sentence. He laughed out loud. “Dear God, why on earth would we do that?” He looked at Quinn. “Have you ever known anyone more thoroughly owned than our man Peter?” Fredericks asked the hit man.
Quinn shook his head and chuckled, then leaned forward to look at Kittredge in the mirror. “You’re pretty well packaged up, little buddy.”
“What are you talking about?” Kittredge thought he knew the answer, but couldn’t help asking. He needed to be sure.
Fredericks smiled. “Let’s see. I think we started out with espionage. That little agreement of ours is still in force, by the way. But recently, you’ve done us the favor of stabbing and dismembering a man. And didn’t you just choke the life right out of a poor, cute little daddy’s girl? Man, jurors get really upset about that kind of stuff.” He laughed, meanness in his voice, and clapped Kittredge’s thigh again. “Do you know what all of that makes you?”
Kittredge shook his head, a forlorn, defeated look on his face.
“You know, don’t you, Quinn?” Fredericks asked.
Quinn nodded. “It makes you a goddamned patriot, Pete. A goddamned true believer in Truth and Justice.”
“As defined by yours truly, of course,” Fredericks said in a conspiratorial tone with a sideways smile.
Kittredge felt the air escaping his body, felt the atmosphere crushing down on him, wondered if he could ever fully fill his lungs again, wondered how many days he could draw breath as a CIA asset under the control of Bill Fredericks.
The cab drove on in silence for a few moments. Kittredge wondered whether they were just playing with him, whether they were going to slit his throat and dump him in a ditch on the side of the autobahn.
“Why Sergio?” Kittredge finally asked.
Fredericks shrugged. “He was a little too sloppy for long-term use.”
“Were you playing me the whole time?” Kittredge asked.
Quinn chuckled in the front seat. Fredericks smiled. “It was the damnedest thing,” the fat case officer said. “We didn’t even know it was you until Fleischer called us. He wanted to make sure Nora was actually on the job, and not just having a little fun on her own time. But he called us right away when he pieced it together. Really, when you pieced it together. It was my handsome face in those pictures, wasn’t it?”
Kittredge flushed. “You’re full of shit! You sent a guy to kill me. Twice!”
Fredericks chuckled. “Yeah, sorry about that. I didn’t send him after you, per se.” He looked absently out the window. “I just sent him to kill whoever kept searching for Sergio and Copenhagen.” He turned to look at Kittredge again. “Turned out to be you! How funny is that?” He cackled.
“But it was my apartment…”
Quinn laughed. “I thought I recognized the scent of your faggy cologne.”
“How did you get in?”
Fredericks elbowed him in the ribs. “Come on, Pete! Use your head. And thanks for tying up that loose end, too. I was going to keep her on the payroll, just so Quinn could have his way with her some more, but your way works fine, too.”
“Jesus,” Kittredge said, shaking his head. “I don’t believe this.” He looked at Quinn. “How did you kill him without leaving any fingerprints?”
Quinn beamed at Kittredge in the mirror. “Clever, no?” He returned his eyes to the road and guided the car to the airport exit. “Easy, actually. I just put my hand inside the damn artillery shell and swung away.” He made a downward mo
tion with his hand and arm. “Crunch. Crunch. Voila. Dead fag.” That loud bark of a laugh erupted again, and it made Kittredge’s skin crawl.
“So why did you kill Mathias Kohlhaas?” Kittredge asked.
Fredericks patted Kittredge’s thigh again. “To protect and further American interests, my good man.”
“Don’t let him fool you,” Quinn said. “Fredericks owns stock in that pharma company.”
“Which company?”
Fredericks looked at Kittredge incredulously. “You don’t watch the news?”
“When would I have time for that?”
“Watch the news,” Fredericks said. “Epidemic disease. Miracle drug. Miracle stock prices. Fuckin’ A, baby.”
Kittredge frowned. “That company is French,” he said. “The one that Kohlhaas’ father runs.”
“Ran,” Fredericks corrected, making his hand into a gun and pointing it at his temple. “Stress must’ve gotten to him.”
“Jesus,” Kittredge said again, shaking his head in disbelief. What kind of animals were these two?
“Anyway, they’re no longer French. They’re now a wholly owned subsidiary of a company headquartered in the good ol’ US of A.”
“Truth and justice win again,” Quinn deadpanned from the front of the cab.
“You’re fucking animals,” Kittredge said.
Fredericks smiled. “We, Pete. We are fucking animals.” He looked at Quinn. “How many dead bodies did you slice up this week?”
Quinn held up a hand in the shape of a zero. “Goose egg, boss. Maybe next week.”
“And how many times did our little protégé stab that guy?” Fredericks asked.
Quinn looked at Kittredge in the mirror. “Twenty-seven times,” he said, a smile of admiration on his face.
Fredericks slapped his hand against Kittredge’s thigh. “You win hands down for psycho of the week.” He cackled again.
“I can’t do this,” Kittredge said. “I can’t be part of this.”
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 112