OMEGA

by Patrick Lynch

  The rest was bullshit.

  A wave of scalding humiliation swept through him as he remembered their moments of intimacy, the tenderness, his unquestioning belief in her sincerity. And even now, now that he understood, it was hard to believe the depth of her deceit, her ease and smoothness in manipulating him. Sometimes bad means bad, she had said, and she had meant it, had meant it as a warning—a warning that she knew he, with his lover’s blinded eyes, would never see. Sometimes bad means bad. She had said it looking him in the eye, showing him her naked body, and thinking … Ford clutched the steering wheel, pressing his teeth together until his jaws hurt. He recalled the talk of his healing hands, of his reaching into the bodies of the sick—saw that she had just been having fun, being creative, being good at her job. She had reached into his mind in that way that came so naturally to her; she had reached in and come up with what she knew he would like to hear. The wounded surgeon plies the steel … It was unbearable, but Ford could not stop himself now, remembering everything, remembering the night they had slept in her bed, the intense pleasure of being there, the sleekness of her fragrant body…

  Then there was something else. The beginning of something else—an idea that made him catch his breath.

  He recalled the moment when he had left the bed, had crossed the room to make sure he still had Novak’s entry code. He was making connections now, bringing everything together.

  How had she been able to enter Novak’s building? Without the code, it would have been impossible. He recalled the slamming of the car door, the footsteps on the road. If they were her footsteps, then she had followed almost as soon as he entered the building. She must have made a note of the code from his scrap of paper. And the person who had attacked him from behind … Did you get a look at him?

  A cold feeling of animosity brought his head round so that he was looking up at her window, a taste in his mouth of cheap meat from the burger. Without thinking, he reached across and took out the .38. Then the bullets, feeding them into the clip. He was like someone falling from a building—unable to stop. If it was Helen who had jumped him, then she had been working in concert with the man who had been rifling Novak’s apartment. I think if you wash your eyes with water, it might help.

  Ford brought both hands to his face.

  “Oh, Jesus, Helen.”

  It was unbelievable, unbearable.

  But once you looked at it that way, everything fell into place. She had sought to delay him—At least get cleaned up, take a shower—she had asked him to get cleaned up in order to give her colleague time. Once she had assured herself that the apartment had been stripped of all useful information, all she had wanted to do was get out. All she had wanted to do was get him out.

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  And now she had turned to Griffen, still using her dazzling smile, still in pursuit of her quarry. She had finished with Dr. Ford. She would never smile at him again. He would probably never even see her again, never hold her again, never breathe her rich, waxy perfume. She had used him. He had allowed himself to be used. He pressed back against the seat, drowning, his face distorted by the intensest self-pity.

  He sat like that for a long time, the gun in his hand, unaware of cars going past. A young couple coming out of one of the houses dropped their car keys, went down on their hands and knees to search. There was some drunken laughter and then a cheer. A kid in a baseball cap went past, talking to himself in a low, angry voice. But Ford heard nothing. Saw nothing.

  Just after midnight he checked his wristwatch. There was still no sign of Helen’s car. He allowed himself to imagine her screwing Griffen for information—lying on her back, looking up at the ceiling, doing it for Stern, doing it for the money.

  And then it came to him that if she was screwing Griffen, it was because there was something worth screwing for.

  PART FIVE

  THE CZAR

  1

  SANTA MONICA

  He was woken just after dawn by the sound of breaking glass. A garbage truck was stopped alongside him, grinding down a block’s worth of refuse in its big metal belly. The sun threw bands of yellow light across the empty street. Ford blinked, yawned, then noticed with a jolt that there was a gun pointed directly at his leg. He had fallen asleep with the Sig in his lap, his finger still wrapped around the trigger. He had been sitting outside Helen’s apartment all night, with the barrel of a gun lodged against his femoral artery.

  Stiff and disheveled, Ford climbed out of the car. There was no sign of Helen’s BMW, but it was possible she’d come home in a cab. There was even a chance she’d seen him sitting there, had pretended not to see, and gone inside. He walked up the steps and rang the bell.

  There was no answer. He leaned into the door, listening for the rustle of bedclothes or the slap of bare feet on the stripped pine floor. He could picture the spartan rooms on the other side of the door, the couch he’d sat upon, the herb-smelling kitchen, the bedroom, the bed. He imagined himself there again, imagined her, lying there in the bed where they’d made love. It seemed like a long time ago now, a last taste of something sweet and comforting. And yet it still seemed real. He had to remind himself that it had all been a pretense, just a step in the strategy, a part of the plan. There hadn’t been a relationship; there hadn’t even been an affair, just the empty shell of one, as bare and empty as the apartment itself.

  From the next-door apartment came the yapping of a small dog. Ford punched the bell again, but there was still no answer. It occurred to him that maybe even the house was a front, a temporary address from which she could disappear once her mission was accomplished. Was Helen Wray even her real name?

  “She’s not in.”

  He turned. It was the woman with the dachshund. She was looking at him through her part-opened door, holding the dog under one arm. She was wearing jogging pants and a pastel pink sweatshirt. There was no rebuke in her voice, in spite of the hour.

  “Did she say—?”

  “Business trip, I expect. She travels a lot on business, Miss Wray. I’ll tell her you dropped by, if you like.”

  The dog watched him intently, its ears pinned back in expectation.

  “Yes, thank you,” Ford said. “Tell her I was looking for her.”

  “Is it something important?”

  Ford took a couple of steps towards the street, stopped.

  “No, not really,” he said.

  He crossed Wilshire and headed for the freeway. The traffic was just starting to build, the early birds making a quick dash to work ahead of the crush. Standing at a red light, he picked up the phone and punched in Dr. Lee’s number at the Willowbrook, hoping to catch him before he started on his morning rounds. Lee picked up the phone at once.

  “There’s been no improvement, I’m afraid,” he said. “But we do have the tests from the lab.”

  “And?”

  “It’s pretty much as I thought. The antitoxin is effective, but only for as long as it remains in the system. Once it starts to break down, the toxin levels rise again.”

  Ford put the car in drive and accelerated across the junction. He wanted to get down there quickly, if only to hold Sunny’s hand, to stroke her hair, her face. To let her know somehow that he was there.

  “When does it break down? How soon?”

  There was a loud rustling of papers.

  “Er … the half-life is normally around six days, at least.”

  “Normally?”

  “Well, the first treatment seems to have given us a respite, but not for as long as that. I think we got about four days. Then the toxin started to reappear. So it looks like we were right to administer a second dose.”

  “Which should have bought us another four days, right?”

  “Mmm, not necessarily. I don’t know, but there’s a chance the rate of replacement is accelerating.”

  It was what Ford had feared. If the botulinum was able to replicate in the acid conditions of Sunny’s gut, the volume of toxin that would be produced
would grow. That, in turn, would make it necessary to administer more of the equine serum.

  “Are you saying you want to increase the dosage of antitoxin, just in case?”

  Lee took a deep breath. It didn’t sound as steady as Ford would have liked.

  “I … I’ll need to make some consultations about that. Normally the answer would be no. Beyond twenty mils there isn’t usually any point in injecting more. That should be more than enough to cover any level of toxin that isn’t … that isn’t fatal. On the other hand … It all depends on what the bacteria are doing. If they’re breeding fast enough, we may have no option. At this stage I really can’t … The fact is, we’re feeling our way here. I don’t feel comfortable making any assumptions without more information.”

  Ford felt a surge of anger. He felt an impulse to shout. I don’t feel comfortable. Who gave a damn if Lee was comfortable or not?

  He held the phone against his chest and took a couple of breaths. It wasn’t Lee’s fault. The truth was the staph cases had left him feeling just the same way: helpless, cut adrift from the bedrock of experience and knowledge. For the past fifty years medical training had been built on the assumption that microbes were dumb, passive even. In the face of human inventiveness they didn’t stand a chance—because if there was one thing humanity was good at, it was finding ways to kill. But now the foundations were shifting. The concept of routine infection, an accepted accompaniment to a huge range of medical treatments, was beginning to seem dangerously complacent. Now it was the doctors’ turn to adapt, and they were none of them proving very good at it.

  “Listen, Dr. Lee. You said before it might be advisable to get Sunny moved, maybe to someplace where she could get specialist help. Have you—?”

  “I know I did, but the health department says no. They won’t allow these patients to be moved. They’re afraid the problem will spread.”

  “So I heard. I was just thinking—”

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t told about the policy until yesterday. But I’m keeping in daily contact with the CDC. They know as much about botulinum as anybody. All the same, I do think we should sit down sometime and discuss the … the options.”

  Ford closed his eyes. He didn’t want to discuss the options, not yet, not now. He didn’t even want to hear what the options were. He didn’t want to hear what desperate measures Lee had dreamed up or that Sunny might soon slip into an irreversible coma. He still needed to believe—just for a little while longer—that she might be well and whole again.

  “When you come in, I mean,” Lee added. “Maybe later today.”

  “All right, then,” said Ford reluctantly. “I should be there in half an hour.”

  He came to a halt at another red light, waiting to turn onto the Santa Monica Freeway. He couldn’t help thinking about Griffen and Apex and Helen Wray, about how he could get to them. There had to be a way.

  “Dr. Ford?” Lee was still on the line. “I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression yesterday, when I mentioned the idea of moving your daughter. It was just … an idea. I assure you Sunny’s getting the best treatment available right here. No effort is being spared.”

  He was trying to put a brave face on things, trying to give Ford hope. It was a tone of voice Ford had heard a hundred times. Doctors used it when they knew the odds were against the patient surviving, but didn’t think the relatives were ready yet to hear the truth. There had been times when Ford had used it himself.

  “Of course,” Lee went on, “if there is somewhere in particular you’d like to have Sunny moved to, I’ll do my best. But I’m afraid the county’s calling the shots on this thing.”

  “The county,” Ford repeated.

  “That’s right. They might be a little heavy-handed, but at least they’re taking the problem seriously.” The car behind Ford honked its horn. The light was green. “Well, I’ll see you shortly then, Dr. Ford.”

  “No,” Ford said. “I have to go talk to someone first, downtown. Do you have the health department’s number there, Dr. Lee?”

  Marshall West stood with his back to the room, looking down on Figueroa Street as it dived beneath Temple and the Four Level Interchange. He hadn’t said anything for several minutes, just stood there with his hands behind his back, taking in the ninth-floor view, his well-built frame masking the sun. Ford had a feeling the silence wasn’t a good sign, but he kept on talking, explaining everything, grateful just to be heard. From the walls a gallery of onetime political celebrities smiled down at him in black and white: Mayor Ed Koch shaking West’s hand, Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail, Senator Hal Burroughs, who’d given West his first job, California congressman Henry Waxman, and Jack Kennedy, adopting a relaxed pose for Irving Penn’s celebrated camera. It was a relief when West himself finally turned to face him again.

  “Marcus, I’m going to have some coffee sent in. How do you take it?”

  Ford blinked. The sun was in his eyes now.

  “Um, white. No sugar. Marshall—”

  “How ‘bout a Danish or something? They’re not bad. We get them in from some Hungarian bakery hereabouts.”

  He reached down and pressed his intercom button.

  “No,” said Ford. “No thanks, I’m—”

  “Sally, could you bring us two coffees and one Danish? Thank you.”

  West released the button and sat down again in his high-back swivel chair. Ford watched him intently, trying to read some reaction in his face. Did West believe any of what he’d just been told? Had he even been listening?

  West sighed, as if trying to decide about something, then rapped the edge of the desk with his index fingers. He yanked open a drawer. It struck Ford how easily his old med-school classmate had slipped into the crisp mannerisms of the fast-track, time-is-money executive.

  “Let you in on a secret,” West said. “I take these sometimes.”

  He put a small bottle of pills down in front of him.

  “What are they?”

  “Tranquilizers. Pretty mild. But when things start getting especially hectic, I find they help. Now, you’re the doctor, but from where I’m sitting you look like—”

  “I know what I look like, Marshall. I look like I slept in a ditch, but—”

  West held up a hand.

  “You look like you haven’t slept for a week. And I’m not surprised, with all you’re going through. I just thought they might help you to … keep it together, that’s all.”

  “I appreciate it, Marshall, but I didn’t come here for a prescription. I need your help to—”

  There was a knock at the door, and West’s secretary appeared carrying the coffee things on a tray. For a few moments the discreet chink and clatter of cups, saucers, and teaspoons was all that broke the silence. Then the secretary left, giving Ford a cozy, hearth-and-home smile.

  “Please, go ahead,” said West, pushing the Danish towards him on its white china plate.

  Ford ignored it.

  “Marshall, I’m certain this drug exists. I’m certain Apex has developed it. I don’t know when exactly—maybe years ago, maybe just recently—but it exists. That’s why I’m here. I need that drug. Sunny needs it.”

  West dragged one of the cups of coffee towards himself. He looked troubled. Ford just hoped the guy didn’t think he was crazy.

  “I can see … I can see from your point of view”—West took a sip from his cup—“why you wouldn’t want to leave any stone unturned. That’s only natural.”

  “It isn’t just my point of view. There are scores, probably hundreds of people at risk right now. And the way things are going, it won’t be long before every major hospital in the county is affected. We could be talking about a lot of lives.”

  West nodded slowly, acknowledging, not agreeing.

  “I know the situation is serious, Marcus. Tragic, in many ways. But I don’t think we should get too alarmist about it.” He spoke softly, reasonably—calm-in-a-crisis, as his reputation said he was. “As I understand it, the s
ituation is being brought under control. Of course, I’m not involved in the daily running of the department—you know that—but the director is confident that if precautions are taken, if incoming patients are screened—”

  “Marshall, you can’t screen trauma patients. Most of them would be dead before you ever got the results. And what about the women in labor, the stroke victims, the heart-attack victims? These aren’t people you can just turn away on suspicion.”

  “Nevertheless—”

  “It’s bullshit, Marshall. You could close every hospital in the county, you could sterilize them all from top to bottom. A week after you reopened, you’d be back to square one; I guarantee it. This strep is all over town. And it’s handing out multiple resistance like candy at Halloween. Until it burns out you’re gonna have hospitals going down all over the state and probably beyond. Just like the Willowbrook.”

  Ford stopped himself there. West had agreed to see him virtually on the spot, even though, as far as the department was concerned, Ford was little better than a troublemaker. Under the circumstances, it was more than he had a right to expect, old classmate or not.

  “What I’m trying to say is, we need a new drug. We need to stop this thing in its tracks. And there’s a chance we can.”

  West was leaning back in his chair, one finger pushed into his cheek.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in magic bullets, Marcus. At the NIH conference, for example, I seem to remember you saying we spent too much time looking for magic bullets, and not enough—”

  “That was different, a … a general point about not squandering vital resources, vital tools. It’s all a question of appropriate use.”