"I do appreciate your concern," Dr. Smith said as he accepted the dish from her. "But I'm afraid I have a very sensitive stomach. I have to be extremely careful what I put in it."
Sitting down in the deserted eating area, he took three paper napkins from the dispenser, flattened them one on top of the other, then tucked the triple layer into his collar. With the front of his gray suit thus defended from accident, Smith ate quickly and confidently, tipping the bowl so he could spoon up every last drop of the ruby juice.
After bussing his single dish, Dr. Harold Smith trudged back down Folcroft's well-waxed hallway. He'd been doing the same job, in the same location, for more than three decades. His work had nothing to do with the business of the sanitarium, which existed largely, if not completely, to conceal the nature of his work. From his second-floor office overlooking Long Island Sound, Smith tracked current events both at home and abroad, ever alert for any threat to the republic. His secretary and the mainframe computers deep in the bowels of the brick building were his only company. And that suited him just fine.
Computer science had been his chief passion for better than thirty-five years. At the height of the Cold War, as a midlevel CIA programmer, he had combined the then fledgling field with his innate skill as a forecaster of future events. His predictions were not only based on mind-boggling rows of numbers, reflecting shifts in industrial production, annual rainfall and immigration rates of certain insect pests; they also factored in reports from CIA field operatives on the ambitions and mental states of key political figures. Sometimes it turned out that the critical element in an equation wasn't a dictator's relationship with the Kremlin, but how he got along with his live-in mother-in-law.
The accuracy of young Smith's analyses eventually came to the attention of a visionary new President, who had immediately sensed his patriotism, dedication and moral rectitude. Before his murder in Dallas, that President had done some oracling of his own. He had become convinced that, Cold War appearances to the contrary, internal threats not external ones were the real danger to the nation's survival. The limits of his constitutional powers prevented him from protecting democracy from its true enemies: the criminals eroding it from within. He created CURE as a temporary measure, a stop-gap to steer the country past the bad patch he was certain it faced. CURE was designed around the singular talents of Harold W. Smith. It was a one-man black-ops show with no direct support staff, no money trail leading back to Congress. Smith's task was to deploy his unique abilities to identify and defuse potential disasters. He had the authority to do whatever it took to ensure the survival of the nation, and his secret brief included the power to target selected individuals for assassination. Smith's only overseer was the Commander in Chief himself.
Since that bright late-November day so long ago, he had worked with a succession of Presidents, resolving a succession of do-or-die problems. Some of the Chief Executives had been pleased when they learned of CURE's existence; others had not. Whether they approved or disapproved, it changed nothing. The covert intelligence network Harold W. Smith had built had already acquired a life of its own. As is so often the case, what had been originally intended as temporary, had out of necessity become permanent.
As Smith shut his office door behind him, he decided he felt a little better for having eaten something. It had been a very frustrating day for the director of CURE. Like Chicken Little, he was having trouble convincing anyone of the danger he saw ahead.
The current President, when informed of the situation via CURE's direct line to the White House, had said, "So, let me understand you correctly, Dr. Smith. By taking this hormone drug you're talking about, I can eat all the french fries I want, and in the, process actually get thinner and more physically fit? And you want my okay to put the kibosh on it?"
To the Commander in Chief, the drug known as WHE-Wolverine Hormone Extract-had sounded like a hell of a deal.
To Smith, it sounded like a sign of the times. Painless self-improvement had been a growth industry in the U.S. for more than twenty years. Much of its dogma was based on the assumption that you are what you're thinking. According to its glib promoters, it was possible to restructure any or all parts of your life just by playing a tape loop of thoughts over and over in your head. I am happy. I am sexy. I am rich. Conveniently enough, these positive image-shaping thoughts didn't have to be original, and could be rented from those doing the promoting. In a society devoted to improvement by self-hypnosis, personal growth no longer required actual striving and real hardship. Therefore, change had no down payment, no sacrifices. It was easy and fun, and there were no irreversible dire consequences.
The prospect of instant, painless self-reinvention gave Smith cold shivers. To his way of thinking-and he was a man who had worn the same brand and color of suit, tie, shirt, socks and underwear to work for the past thirty-five years-a life without a center point was no life at all.
Historically, the failure rates of these kinds of bogus personal-growth schemes ran close to ninety-six percent, so their impact on society was largely indirect. They were time-wasters, energy sappers. Snake oil. But Dr. Smith saw in their very proliferation a disturbing long-term trend. The American people had somehow convinced themselves that an easy way out had to exist, and they were hell-bent on finding it.
Bottom line-the nation was primed for something like WHE. Unlike heroin, cocaine and methedrine, the drug was not illegal. It was too new for that. WHE produced neither euphoria nor hyperactivity; instead, it altered the basic chemistry of the human body, turning fat to muscle virtually overnight.
Painless self-improvement. The hard-body Holy Grail.
WHE not only made muscles bigger. It made the users more aggressive. More territorial. And, as had been demonstrated on "Friday Night Football," prone to outbursts of unimaginable violence.
Over the past few hours, Smith had run dozens of computer simulations, and the results always came out the same. As long as the drug was refined from its natural source, the endangered wolverine, the distribution and societal effects would be limited. Because of the expense, only the very rich would have access to it. The resulting epidemic of mayhem would be unpleasant, but containable. Once WHE had been successfully synthesized, however, it would be cheaper to produce than aspirin, and in short order, available on every street corner, if not in every corner health-food store. His most optimistic projections showed that within eighteen days of the synthetic variety's first appearance, every major city in the United States would be under martial law. After another eighteen days, society as we know it would have dissolved. Those not taking WHE by day thirty-six would be hunted down and killed by those who were.
Hearing the news, the President had heaved an audible sigh and said, "That bad, huh?"
Indeed it was.
Smith had first learned about the disruptive potential of the experimental drug over a year ago, while conducting a routine survey of academic-research activity. The director of CURE had tried to sink the Purblind University project through the usual channels-and thought he had succeeded by arranging for the suspension of all research funding. Most of Smith's behind-the-scenes manipulation of critical events was in this subtle, nonviolent vein-very promising careers just went belly-up, for no apparent reason. Hired assassins he saved as a last resort; among other things, they were expensive. In this case, Smith had waited too long to call in Remo and Chiun, CURE's enforcement arm. The biochemist in question had vanished with all his research, and set up shop somewhere offshore. So far, Smith hadn't been able to locate him yet.
A bell-like tone made the director swivel around in his chair. It came from a color television set bolted high on the wall. The Emerson was part of CURE's global Intel uplink, and was monitored by sophisticated computer programs that would alert Smith to anything truly newsworthy.
What he was looking at now was a news flash from Los Angeles about a movie star's murder at a chichi Hollywood club. The bulletin cut to dramatic video that showed the actor Chiz Gr
aham carrying his bloodied actress wife, Puma, to a waiting limo. They both had bodies like comic-book superheroes. It was the effect of WHE; of that, Smith had no doubt. As the limo zoomed away down Sunset, the voice-over narration said, "Although she was first believed to be a victim in the brutal attack that has left megastar Vindaloo dead, police now confirm that Puma Lee is a suspect in the bizarre killing."
This is how it begins, Smith thought.
Chapter 7
Bambi Sue Baculum, her blue eyes as big as saucers, gazed at what lay across the palm of her new husband's hand and said, "I knew you were in good shape for your age, darling, but I never expected anything like this."
"Sweetheart, you ain't seen nothing yet," the senator assured her.
Without further fanfare, and for the fourth time in a little over an hour, ninety-something Ludlow Baculum mounted his apple-cheeked bride. They had already made love from one end of the Malibu beach house to another. Their violent coupling had tipped over lamps and end tables. Now they christened the ocean-view living room's sunken conversation pit, rumpling and disarranging the couch cushions in their bliss.
Not even in his early teens had Lud felt so magnificently potent. Like the rest of his body, his wedding tackle was totally buffed. It wasn't simply a matter of having the necessary rigidity. The desire was there, too. Overwhelming desire. It burned like a high gas flame under the saucepan of bubbling oatmeal that was his geriatric brain. He suffered no distracting thoughts. His mind did not wander. It was completely focused on the pleasure he was getting and giving. Senator Baculum had never felt so alive.
As had been the case with the previous encounters, it was over very quickly. And as before, satisfaction had left the senator undiminished-no Senor Limp Doodle here. Lud was famished, though. The adhesive patch on his jutting rump itched as he walked naked across to the kitchen counter. With his bare hands, he attacked the remains of a cold prime rib roast, stripping away the rind of dense white fat and gobbling it down. Melted by the heat of his overstuffed mouth, grease ran down his chin and over his massive white-haired pectorals.
From the edge of the conversation pit, Bambi Sue cleared her throat meaningfully. When he looked over at her, she said, "More please, darling..."
"You really like it, don't you?" the senator said.
"I'll never get enough of you," she cooed. "You are a miracle worker. You're Superman." As he climbed back down into the conversation pit beside her, she let out a gasp. "God, I don't believe it!" she said. "Honey, I'm sure it's gotten even bigger."
On an irresistible impulse, Ludlow grabbed his new bride by the neck and started shaking her about. That felt good, too.
HALF AN HOUR LATER, Ludlow Baculum stepped alone and nude out on the beach house's rear deck. In the pale light of the moon high overhead, the splashes of blood drying on the upstanding member of the U.S. Senate looked black. Bambi Sue had finally got enough sex. And so had he.
Lud stuck a fingertip in his mouth and, using the edge of his nail, tried to dislodge a piece of his late wife's neck that was stuck between two of his three remaining natural teeth. Failing to loosen the bit of trapped skin, he turned back for the house, walking through the broken slider door, past the shambles of overturned furniture and the bloody mess he'd left in the conversation pit.
He'd finally located some dental floss when a convoy of flashing red-and-blue lights started down the drive.
He paid them no mind. That's what lawyers were for.
Chapter 8
Carlos Sternovsky stopped for a much needed rest. After eight months in the Far East, he still wasn't used to the combination of high heat and humidity. He whipped out a cotton handkerchief, tipped back the broad-brimmed straw coolie hat he wore and mopped his dripping brow and cheeks. Ahead of him, trudging up the aisle between rows of elevated, shaded steel cages, a freshly drawn jug of wolverine blood in either hand, was a pair of half-naked Taiwanese laborers. They moved cautiously with their cargo; they knew to drop it might cost them their lives. Sternovsky's only burden was a notebook computer, a cybernetic log he used to keep track of which lab animals he had most recently phlebotomized. While he caught his breath, he watched the rag-diapered workers climb the shallow incline to where his electric golf cart sat parked.
All around him, covering the landscape in neat lines, were seventy rows of seventy cages each. The nearly five thousand live wolverines they contained had been imported illegally, and at tremendous expense, from Siberia by Family Fing Pharmaceuticals of Formosa. The cost of housing and maintaining the animals was equally staggering.
But the investment had already begun to bear fruit. Thanks to an ample budget, a large, well-trained laboratory staff and state-of-the-art equipment, Sternovsky had been able to chemically isolate the active neuropeptide agent from wolverine blood. Which made it unnecessary to sacrifice an animal to get the required raw material from its hypothalamus. At this stage of product development, the wolverines had become hormonal dairy cows, and were bled on a rotational basis. Long gone were the salad days of Donny and Marie; like prize Jerseys, the lab animals had code numbers tattooed into their ears.
Sternovsky stuffed his hankie back in his shorts and shuffled up the slope. As he approached the golf cart, the Taiwanese laborers set the rattan-wrapped jugs in the back, alongside a dozen others on a bed of flaked ice. When they turned toward him, he could see the plastic clothespins they wore clamped on their noses; the tips of which were tourniqueted a startling white against the brown of their faces.
Twenty-two acres of nothing but wolverines in sweltering tropical heat created a stench that was an instant emetic for most people. On top of that, a worker couldn't walk down the lines of cages without drawing a volley of musk spray-and the wolverines usually hit what they were aiming at. As Sternovsky got behind the steering wheel of the electric cart, the two laborers used a weak stream of water from a rowside hose bib to rinse the oily, yellow-green gunk off their arms and legs. The drawing of blood had become Sternovsky's job by default. No one else with the technical skill would go anywhere near the "Stink Ranch," as it was called. No one else was immune to the smell.
He putted the cart around the two men and up the hill, past the corrugated silo that held the wolverines' dry-pellet food. Everywhere he looked, he could see half-naked workers lugging buckets, shoveling, pushing wheelbarrows. Feeding, watering and excrement removal went on nonstop, from dawn to dark.
At the top of the low hill, the scientist drove around the trailer where he lived and did most of his work. He took the single-lane road down the other side of the slope. The company road was string straight. It ran along the top of a dike that separated two tracts of marshy scrubland. In the distance a mile ahead, the setting sun lit up the flanks of the main Family Fing Pharmaceutical complex, turning its alabaster walls, immense holding tanks and mazes of pipelines a rosy gold.
The Family Fing fortune had been built on sales of a product line called Imposter Herbalistics, which offered imitation black-bear gall bladder, white-rhino horn and Bengal-tiger pizzle in easily digestible, powdered form. The Fings specialized in making in quantity what nature or man had made scarce. They did this by first isolating the active agent in the folk medicine, then they used specially developed strains of bacteria as microscopic manufacturing plants. These bacteria were genetically tailored to give off the desired chemical compound as part of their ordinary waste. The synthetic end product was guaranteed to be chemically identical to the real thing and so, Family Fing's advertisements claimed, was just as safe and effective.
Imposter Herbalistics were sucked up on a daily basis by millions of Asians who could now afford to treat themselves with the best, and by holistically minded Westerners who were eager to sample the native cures of the Pacific Rim, but unwilling to have the death of a rare critter on their consciences. Of course no one asked where Family Fing got the raw material on which its bacterial magic depended. In point of fact, the company's ongoing experiments with endangered animals had pushe
d more than one species to the brink of extinction.
As Sternovsky and Family Fing well knew, the main difference between the Imposter Herbalistics line and WHE was that the new drug actually worked.
The research biochemist backed the golf cart up to a loading dock, where workers in crisp white jumpsuits and matching fiberglass hard hats were lined up, waiting to carry the blood to the preprocessing area. As the scientist got out of the cart, the foreman of the transfer crew stepped over to him and said, "Papa Fing, he want see you up top. He say you no wait. You go now."
Sternovsky nodded. But before he could enter the plant proper, he had to suit up. Inside a steel Quonset hut beside the front entrance, he kicked off his rope sandals and climbed into a sterilized jumpsuit with built-in booties and gloves. Since he sometimes made five trips between ranch and plant in a day, covering up the wolverine dirt was quicker than an antiseptic shower, and it accomplished the same thing. He traded his coolie hat for a white paper shower cap and headed for the complex's elevator.
The building's air conditioning was pure bliss, even through the plasticized-paper jumpsuit. He got out on the tenth floor. Though no pharmaceuticals were made in this part of the structure, the halls were kept spotlessly clean. The entrance to the office suite of Fillmore Fing, founder and CEO of Family Fing, was in the middle of the corridor and marked by an intricately carved ebony-and-ivory arch.
As he entered the reception area, Sternovsky could hear Fillmore Fing's voice booming from the boardroom. The biochemist understood very little of spoken Chinese, but he recognized these words because he had heard them so many times.
"What have I done to deserve this betrayal?" the elder Fing repeated as his private secretary ushered Sternovsky through the double doors. Dressed in a gray pin-striped suit from Savile Row, the plump drug tycoon stood nose to nose with his number-two son, Fosdick, who was the head research chemist for the family business. Except for the sad state of Papa's hairline, and the clear snot bubble blowing in and out of Fosdick's right nostril, their faces could have been mirror images.
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