The Cradle of Life

by Dave Stern

  All shook their heads.

  Monza snorted. He’d spoken more out of exasperation than anything else, wasn’t really expecting that any of the others had any more advance knowledge than he had of the change of location. He was frustrated, that was all—moving the meeting had upset his schedule, ruined some carefully laid plans of his.

  He glanced forward now, to the curtain that separated the main cabin from the Gulfstream’s forward compartment, said compartment being—presumably—where their host waited to make his appearance. As Monza looked, he thought he saw a shadow pass behind the curtain. He craned his neck, trying to peer around the edge of the fabric, but it was no use. The curtain was drawn too tight.

  Monza snorted, and downed the rest of his wine. When Monza was frustrated, he tended to indulge. It was a fault of his, he knew it, but not one he had any desire to change.

  As he settled back in his chair, one of the serving girls stepped forward to refill his glass. She avoided making eye contact with him—not surprising, really, people—particularly people of the opposite sex—had been treating Edgar Monza that way for his entire life. When he was younger, it was because his physical appearance—his size, the way he carried himself, the way he spoke, and acted—repelled them.

  Now that he had earned himself a reputation—one that had clearly preceded him aboard this plane—it was because they feared him.

  Which Monza far preferred.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you like me?”

  The girl—she and the other server, the blonde, had introduced themselves as he’d boarded the plane, but Monza had forgotten their names immediately—forced herself to smile. Tried to laugh as she finished pouring his wine, but Monza could see through that.

  She was terrified.

  Monza reached for his drink, and deliberately knocked the glass over.

  The girl bit her lip, trying not to show emotion. Monza smiled.

  “Can I have some more. Please?”

  She avoided his eyes, wiped up the spill. Then she picked up his glass and started pouring again.

  Monza put his hand on her bottom, caressed her.

  “I’m sorry, angel, if I seem irritated,” he said. To her credit, she didn’t spill a drop. Monza smiled even more broadly. She had more spunk than he’d given her credit for. He thought about taking her to the back of the plane, indulging some of his other desires with her. He wondered if their host would be annoyed.

  He rather hoped so.

  “I am not patient like my friends,” he continued. “I don’t like it when plans are changed for no reason—”

  “Really, Mister Monza.”

  Monza looked up.

  The curtain at the front of the cabin had been pulled back—

  And Dr. Jonathan Reiss stood in the doorway.

  “I should think you know me better than that.”

  The girl took advantage of Reiss’s appearance to back quickly away. Monza let her go, took a sip from his glass as he studied their host.

  Reiss was immaculately turned out, as always, in a tan suit—probably Italian, obviously custom-made, it hung off him perfectly, made him look like he’d stepped out of the pages of a catalog, his hair perfectly coiffed, matching shoes, tie, and handkerchief completing the ensemble. Monza, who had his suits made by the finest tailors in the world and yet could never quite avoid rumpling them, could never get them to fit properly, thought that another reason to dislike the doctor—as was the grateful smile the serving girl flashed at Reiss as she scurried to her post at the back of the plane.

  “You’ll all accept my apologies, of course,” Reiss said, “but behind every choice I make, one will always find a reason. In this instance, the six of you in one room makes for a tempting target for NATO. Rather than move any of you, I decided to move the room.” Reiss flashed a brief smile. “At six hundred miles per hour.”

  The others nodded understandingly. Mr. San, in the chair just behind Monza, even chuckled.

  Monza was not as amused.

  “That’s not an apology!” he shouted, banging his hand on the table. “It’s our money that pays for the shirt on your back, not to mention this jet! Yet you make us wait like dogs!”

  There was silence after his outburst—a silence born out of tension, and expectation. Everyone—Monza included—waited to see what Reiss would do, how he would react.

  The doctor locked eyes with Monza a moment, then nodded thoughtfully. He smiled.

  “Then I apologize, Mr. Monza.” He looked around the room, including the others in the conversation. “To you, and to everyone. Please—let’s drink to it.”

  He waved the serving girls forward. They poured from new bottles—Monza swallowed what remained of his drink in a single gulp and held out his glass for one of the girls to refill.

  To his surprise, the brunette—the one he’d been amusing himself with—stepped in front of the other server to see to his glass herself. Their eyes met as she poured, and Monza was surprised to see her so cool, so composed.

  Odd, he thought, as she stepped away. Then her eyes went to Reiss, and he understood. Reiss was here, and she felt safe, protected. False security, Monza thought. His plans for today might have changed, but Jonathan Reiss would not be able to offer this delicate flower a safe haven for too much longer.

  “Gentlemen—and lady,” Reiss began, and he turned to the back of the plane a moment, seemed to study something there, though Monza couldn’t tell what, there was only a painting of some kind, a clock, and the toilet of course.

  “There is an expression,” Reiss said, walking forward as he spoke. “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature. And yet, whether it be sarin gas for Mr. San—” he stopped next to San just then, and laid a hand on the other man’s shoulder “—improved typhoid for Mr. Krev to use in the Balkans,” he continued, lifting his hand and nodding toward Krev, “or enhanced cholera for Mr. Duvalier,” and at those words, he and the Frenchman exchanged the briefest of smiles, “or the more exotic work I’ve done for you, Mr. Monza,” Reiss said, and Monza looked up to find the doctor’s eyes focused on him now, “that is precisely what I’ve been doing.”

  Something in the doctor’s gaze unnerved Monza. He turned away, and took another sip of his wine. Different vintage, this, he decided. There was an aftertaste he didn’t care for.

  Reiss turned away, and glanced back at the rear of the plane again. Again, Monza wondered why. As he wondered, the doctor began speaking again.

  “Yet while those weapons served their purpose, there are always limitations; stable diseases aren’t lethal, deadly ones burn out too quickly…Mother Nature can only be fooled so much. So, after years of fighting her, I’ve surrendered. Rather than take a disease and attempt to transform it into a weapon of mass destruction, I’ve gone and found the one such weapon Nature ever gave us. Something meant for more than scaring the public into wearing gloves when they open their mail. This is why I’ve called you all here today—to show you the way that Mother Nature levels nations. And to offer you a chance to possess that power for yourselves.”

  Monza saw the others in the cabin exchange glances; he met Madame Gillespie’s eyes and saw the hunger in there, felt that same hunger from all the others, felt it fill the sudden silence left by the doctor’s words. Reiss had them.

  And that didn’t fit into Monza’s plans at all.

  The big man barked out a laugh.

  “Crap,” Monza said, the word slicing through the silence like a knife. “We’ve come all this way to hear crap. Forgive my crude outburst, doctor,” and he made the title sound like a sneer, an insult, “but for years men like you have promised such a weapon and for years they have failed.”

  The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve never heard the promise from me.”

  Monza laughed again, and felt a tickle in his throat. Some sediment in the wine—something stuck there. He coughed, and the slight tickle turned into a burning sensation farther down. Indigestion, acid reflux—he had them all. Nothing
serious, never serious. He cleared his throat, and met Reiss’s eyes again. Steel on steel—the two men eyed each other warily.

  “Gentlemen—Madame Gillespie,” Reiss said. “Your governments have attacked their enemies. Those enemies fought back. You’ve terrorized their citizens—those citizens rallied around waving flags.”

  Spare us the philosophizing, Monza thought, and opened his mouth to speak again, but instead let loose another cough. Damn.

  He had a glass of water next to him, untouched. He picked it up now and drank.

  “Deploy my weapon,” Reiss continued, “and those same citizens will tremble at the sight of one another. As they begin to die, they’ll blame their own government. Looting will erupt. Rapes, murders—your enemies, however great, will collapse from within like a house of cards. Or like…”

  Reiss stopped, hung over Monza with a strange sickening smile.

  “Like Mister Monza here,” he finished.

  Monza swallowed, and felt the burning in his throat again. Worse this time.

  Looked up at the mocking smile on Reiss’s face.

  And looked down at the glass of water in his hand, the one he’d just drank from, saw red streaks in it, not wine, no, it was—

  He gurgled, and set down the glass of water.

  No. God, no.

  Through the sudden fire in his chest, he was vaguely aware of Duvalier jumping to his feet, backing away from him.

  “What the hell is going on?” Duvalier shouted.

  “What’s going on?” Reiss repeated, his voice sounding eerily calm, sounding to Monza as if it was coming from a million miles away. “He told M-I-Six about our meeting. That’s why I changed the location.”

  The burning in his chest was unbearable now—Monza pulled the napkin from under his glass, and coughed into it. Felt something tear in his throat.

  The napkin came away stained red, and white.

  “Bastard,” Monza whispered. “Bastard.”

  He looked up at Reiss, disbelievingly. The doctor continued to smile.

  Monza knew he was dying—whatever Reiss had given him was sure to be lethal.

  But perhaps—just perhaps—he could take the good doctor with him.

  There was a gun inside his jacket—he had to reach for it without seeming to make a threatening move, disguise it somehow, yes, pretend he was reaching for a handkerchief, pretend—

  A sudden spasm of coughing overtook him, and with it, an equally sudden attack of nausea. Monza felt his whole body wrenching upon itself, his insides twisting and turning themselves inside out and—

  He moaned, and the moan turned into a gurgle, and a viscous stream of grayish matter poured out of his throat.

  Monza stared, disbelieving, at the napkin, coated with what had just come out of him.

  Everyone else in the cabin moved reflexively backward, seeking to put more distance between themselves and Monza. Everyone except Dr. Jonathan Reiss.

  The doctor allowed himself a small shiver of pleasure, and then moved closer. He wanted to enjoy every second of Monza’s death throes.

  “He was going to turn me in, then seek asylum from the West,” Reiss said. He noted sweat breaking out on Monza’s forehead—the disease was progressing as rapidly as Holliday and the others on the team had said it would. Faster, even.

  Monza was trying to get up. Reiss put his hand on the man’s neck and forced him back into his chair.

  “A smart man would have known I was on to him, would never have gotten on this plane. But I knew you would, because you actually thought—” Reiss found Monza’s eyes, and a spark of whatever reasoning consciousness remained in the man, in the face of the unbearable agonies his body was suffering through right now “—you actually thought you could fool me.”

  The doctor shook his head pityingly.

  Monza had another coughing fit, this one the worst yet. Halfway through Reiss heard a loud crack, and shook his head in wonder. That was a rib going, he thought. And there—another crack, another bone.

  Marvelous.

  Reiss had to hold Monza’s neck even tighter to keep the man steady in his chair.

  “These, my friends—” Reiss spoke without taking his eyes away from Monza’s, he wanted to see every ounce of agony reflected there “—are the sounds of a traitor.”

  Then all at once, there were no more sounds.

  The coughing had stopped. So had Monza’s breathing.

  Reiss stood over the fat man, whose head had come to rest against one of the Gulfstream’s windows. Red matter trickled out of both sides of his mouth, and had stained his suit and one of the armrests on his seat.

  There was some on the floor, as well, Reiss saw. And on the windows. The doctor didn’t envy whoever was on cleanup duty after this flight.

  He turned away from the corpse and focused his attention on his other guests.

  “Please forgive that unpleasantness. It was necessary, of course, but—” Reiss shrugged. “I regret you had to see it. In case you were wondering, that was an accelerated form of ebola. It is the deadliest disease known to man. Highly contagious.”

  Duvalier, who still hadn’t sat down (for someone with such an illustrious pedigree, Reiss thought, the man was a bit…well, jumpy), exchanged a nervous glance with first San, and then Krev. Even the normally unflappable Al-Sabah looked tense.

  Reiss nodded sympathetically. “Yes, it is an airborne pathogen—I don’t doubt the cabin is full of the virus. However…”

  He nodded toward the two ladies at the rear of the cabin. They came forward and placed a single black pill in front of each of the other guests.

  “Like all known diseases, there exist stockpiles of antiserum in the West—ready to stifle any outbreak.”

  His guests all studied their pills for a moment. Then, one by one—Duvalier first of all, and Reiss made a mental note to speak with Sean about the man, he was too jittery today, he would fold under any sort of pressure, Reiss knew that now—they each picked up the capsules and swallowed them.

  Only when they’d all done so did Reiss take his own dose of antiserum. He sipped from his water, and smiled at the others.

  “My friends, there’s no antiserum for what I’m offering to you. No treatment, no protocol, no vaccine, no cure. The modern world has never seen anything like what I’ve uncovered.”

  “Uncovered?” Mr. San asked.

  “Yes,” Reiss nodded. “I branched out. Archaeology.”

  San looked at him questioningly. Madame Gillespie frowned.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “It’s not important that you do,” he told her. “All you need to know is zero-seven-seven-four-four-six-eight-one.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Zero-seven-seven-four-four-six-eight-one. That is the account at the Lardesbank in Bern. Nine-figure deposit—a fair price for what you’re getting. Those of you who pay will see their enemies eliminated. Those of you who don’t—” he looked from her to the others “—I hope for your sakes none of your enemies buy it. You have twenty-four hours.”

  Again, there was silence in the cabin.

  “That’s too soon,” San said. “I’ll need more time to gather that kind of money.”

  Reiss sighed. “Ah. Then I’m sorry for you, Mister San. Because this is, as they say in America, a limited-time offer. And the time limit is twenty-four hours.”

  Just as Reiss finished talking, a soft chime sounded in the cabin. The two serving girls made their way toward the back of the plane.

  “I’ll leave you now,” Reiss said. “But the girls will be serving dinner shortly—after we’ve had a chance to clear the cabin of—” He nodded in the direction of Monza’s body. “That.”

  “Let me prevail on you to stay with us a moment, doctor,” Al-Sabah said. “I would like to discuss exactly what it is you’ve found. Since you’re asking us to take an awful lot on faith.”

  Reiss shook his head slowly. “I cannot believe, sir, that after my demonstration
here—” he nodded again at Monza’s body “—that you doubt my ability to deliver what I promise.”

  Al-Sabah, to his credit, Reiss thought, met his stare.

  “I don’t doubt your abilities—I just don’t like paying that kind of money blindly.”

  “Not blindly, sir,” Reiss said. “I believe you have more than enough information to make a rational decision here. And now, if you’ll excuse me…”

  Without waiting for an answer, Reiss spun on his heel and walked forward to his own cabin.

  The doctor spent the next several hours resting. He preferred plenty of rest—ten hours a day, not necessarily in contiguous time chunks, blocks of an hour at least, though, at a minimum—though he did not use the time solely to sleep. Reiss spent much of it just thinking. The most valuable time he had, and the hardest to find, particularly in a world that seemed determined to supply a sound track—be it music or commercials or what passed for news—for one’s every waking moment. It really was astounding to him, every time he went out in public, how anyone got anything done with the constant din of so-called civilization howling in their ears.

  Among the things he considered now, as he sat in the half-darkness of his cabin, were the implications of Monza’s contact with MI6. He of course knew the British Intelligence organization was on to him—Rankin, and Calloway, and Stevens, all three of them had been tracing his activities surreptitiously, and not-so-surreptitiously over the last several years. But if Monza had given them even a clue as to what he was up to now, that surveillance would turn into active pursuit. Relentless pursuit.

  So what had Monza known? What could he have told them?

  The invitation Reiss had sent to all his guests for today’s meeting had been the same tersely worded message, delivered by fax to their respective offices.

  Something of interest has just become available. Please join me at one P.M., our usual rendezvous point.

  And of course, when Sean had spotted the MI6 operatives at the Harrod’s salon, Reiss had moved the meeting, and Sean had moved to discover who was behind the betrayal. Monza topped his list of suspects from the start—Reiss had a profound distaste for the man, his crass, deliberately revolting manner, his poor hygiene—and a cursory survey of Monza’s cellular calls was all it took to prove his instincts right. Thus, the enhanced ebola.