It took all of my will to force myself to breathe regularly and relax my muscles. Fiercely wrestling the terror back into a crawlspace in my mind where I could ignore it for a few moments, I slowly crossed my arms over my chest, crossed my right leg over my left, threw back my head and laughed. Somewhat to my surprise, the sound really did resemble a laugh instead of a shriek. I let it trail off into a low chuckle, then shook my head and said, "Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle. There really is something to this zombie business after all."
Fournier, who had moved a few feet into the room so as to get a better aim at my knee with his gun, looked uncertain. He blinked a few times as he stared into my face, then grunted softly. "You've been described as having great courage, Frederickson. I see that the reports are accurate. I salute you."
Imagining I was just an actor in an ancient movie with my four ghoulish costars, I read the next line in my improvised script in a steely voice. "Stick your reports and your salute up your ass, Professor. Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go, and it looks like I'm outta here. I know when it's over, and I sure as hell don't intend to give you any more satisfaction than you already have. Besides, I think this is kind of a hoot. I assume you know I've been shot, frozen, electrocuted, beaten, stabbed, tortured to the point of death, what have you. Run-of-the-mill stuff. Hey, but being turned into a zombie, or having my heart cut out in a voodoo ceremony? Now that's one hell of a way to end a career. Of course, when my brother finds out about it-and he will, I assure you-he won't be as amused. He'll show you some brand-new voodoo tricks of his own."
Fournier's response was to speak to the men again in Creole. The man with the matching face and suit directly in front of me reached into a pocket and withdrew a small glass vial with a cork stopper. The vial was half filled with a fluffy, yellowish powder flecked with dark green spots that could have been tiny seeds.
"This won't hurt you, Frederickson," the white-haired man said as his helper removed the cork from the vial and started shuffling toward me. I could hear the barely suppressed excitement in his voice. "This is just a little something to make you more … compliant. It will be much easier if you cooperate. Just breathe it in deeply, as if you were taking snuff or cocaine."
Compliant, indeed. I suspected that the main ingredient in the "little something" he wanted me to snuffle was what was reported to be tetradioxin, dried poison from the glands of the puffer fish, and all it would do to me was destroy my mind and put one hell of a dent in my nervous system. I laughed again, then threw back my head, stretched out my arms, and made loud snorting noises. "All right! Go for it! This should be one hell of a trip."
The moment, a millisecond, arrived. As the man with the vial leaned over to put it under my nose, he came into the line of fire between Fournier and me. I snapped my crossed right leg up, burying the toe of my sneaker into the gray-faced man's groin. Zombies apparently retained a certain amount of sensitivity in their testicles, because this one let out a most un-zombielike yowl, grabbed at his crotch with his free hand, and began to sag to the floor. I grabbed the open vial from his other hand and hurled it across the room at the startled professor. He had been about to fire at me, but his eyes went wide at the sight of the vial spewing powder and streaking toward his head, and he quickly ducked away, covering his mouth and nose with his free hand.
Since Fournier was obviously so concerned about not breathing in any of the powder that hung in the air like tinted dust motes, I took it to mean I should be likewise concerned. I sucked in a deep breath and held it. However, I wasn't going to be able to stay in a breath-holding mode for very long at all, considering how my heart was racing, and I had major distractions. The man I had kicked was still out of commission, but from somewhere inside their suits his two colleagues had produced blades that were as big as Bowie knives and curved like scimitars. I ducked as one slashed at my head, and came up and jabbed the stiffened fingers of my right hand into his solar plexus. Two down. I dodged the knife thrust of the third man and, still holding my breath but feeling as if my lungs were about to burst, leapfrogged over a stack of books and headed for the window. I paused just long enough to duck down behind the computer station, eject the diskette I had inserted, and put it between my teeth. Then I dove through the glass, covering my face with both forearms. I didn't hear the cough of the silenced gun behind me, but I did hear the bullets whack into the window frame and glass flying around me, smashing the shards of the pane into even smaller bits.
Circus time. The momentum of my dive carried me clear over the fire escape, but as I sailed through the air I reached out at the last moment as I twisted around and caught the top of the steel railing with my right hand, my breath exploding through my nose and from between my clenched teeth. I swung back and banged hard into the fire escape, which I immediately let go of when Fournier, holding a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, suddenly appeared at the window above me and pointed his Glock at my head. I plummeted as bullets ricocheted off steel and whined over my head, but managed to break my fall by grabbing the railing at the second-floor landing, and then at the first. I landed hard on the ground, absorbing the shock by collapsing my legs and rolling over twice. I came up running. Grabbing the diskette from between my teeth and gasping hoarsely for breath, I sprinted across the campus in the direction of Washington Square Park.
By the time I found a pay phone that worked I could hear the distant wail of sirens approaching from three directions. I knew where the fire engines were heading-Faul Hall, where the office of Dr. Guy Fournier was undoubtedly ablaze, destroying all his papers, books, and magazines, along with the photographs and any other little treasures that might be hidden there. I called 911 to report on four maniacs, three in gray suits who looked like zombies and the other wearing a pajama top, who were somewhere on the streets of the Village, and I urgently requested that they be picked up and held for questioning. I didn't think it was going to do much good, for Fournier and his zombies were probably already long gone in the van or station wagon that had brought the three members of the voodoo death squad to the campus, but I figured it was worth a try. When I hung up the receiver, I noticed that the pitted black plastic was covered with blood.
I stepped out of the phone booth into the faint, grayish light of the breaking dawn and looked down at my hands and front. I was bleeding from a dozen places, mostly my hands and arms, where the flying shards of glass had nicked me, but there were no bullet holes, and all of the cuts looked to be superficial, if messy. What concerned me more than the cuts was the residue of yellow powder that clung to my clothes and skin like sticky bee pollen. Under the circumstances, I decided that it was just as well I was bleeding, for I didn't want any of the "zombie dust," as I was beginning to think of it, to get into the cuts, and I certainly hoped I hadn't breathed in any of it. I needed a good vacuuming, and I really didn't care to find out how much of the stuff it took, either inhaled or absorbed through an open wound, to turn me into something gray-faced, shuffling, and drooling.
I removed two tiny slivers of glass from my forearm as I considered my next move. I needed to get washed off and patched up. Then what I wanted to do more than anything else was to get after Fournier and his colleagues, without interference or anybody looking over my shoulder. However, I knew I no longer had the luxury of independent action. A very deadly game with enormous consequences was indeed afoot, and I had no idea when the opponents were going to push their pawns out over the board-in two months, a week, a day, ten minutes. Now that they knew I was privy to their strategy, they might radically advance their time schedule. I was going to have to confer with the powers that be, and I was going to have to do it immediately- even before going home. I figured I had used up a good decade's worth of luck in the past hour or so, and I might not have any left. If I even indulged in the simple luxury of going home to get cleaned up, I ran the risk of getting hit by a truck, or squashed by a falling piano, or tripping over a curb and breaking my neck. That wouldn't be good for me, and it could be d
isastrous for the country.
I wanted to unload what I had found out as quickly as possible, but I wanted to do it in friendly territory, where I wouldn't be asked a lot of unnecessary questions or hassled with the observation that I was guilty of breaking and entering and burglary, if copying encrypted data from Fournier's computer was considered theft. I wanted to keep things simple, and I wanted to be on my way as soon as possible. I decided that the best place to go for my debriefing was Midtown North, where most of the cops knew me, and where the precinct commander and I had forged some pretty strong bonds as a result of a rather unusual adventure we'd shared the fall before. I went back into the phone booth to call the FBI, identifying myself and informing them that they should have an agent meet me at the Midtown North precinct station house in a half hour or so. Then I called the office and left a message on Francisco's machine telling him where I would be. I took off my light jacket and draped it over my arms. Still, I knew I wouldn't be picked up by any taxi driver, so I hopped on the subway and headed uptown, ignoring the half dozen or so early straphangers who gaped at the bleeding dwarf with an empty shoulder holster in their midst.
Chapter 9
At the precinct station house a paramedic patched me up while we waited for the FBI to arrive. Somebody found me a clean uniform shirt belonging to some female officer to wear, and I discarded my torn, bloody, and dust-covered T-shirt and jacket in a plastic garbage bag. In the meantime, an APB was issued to pick up one Dr. Guy Fournier and three gray-suited associates who, I assured the dispatcher, would be instantly recognizable. Fournier and his trio of drug-lobotomized killers had almost certainly gone to ground by now, but the APB was part of the drill- and it assured that cops would be on the lookout for Fournier if he surfaced and tried to go to his home or apartment, wherever it might be. Finally three FBI agents, all of whom I had come to know, showed up, along with the chief, Captain Felix MacWhorter, who had been called at home and who had insisted on coming in to hear firsthand what the "crazy neighborhood dwarf" was up to lately.
I told my story-most of it-and then told it again. I didn't mention the computer diskette I was carrying inside my jeans; I thought the excuse that I might be a tad forgetful, considering what I had been through, would be acceptable. If I gave up the diskette to the FBI, it was unlikely I would ever see it again, and I wanted the first run on whatever might be on it. They were going to be pissed, even more resentful than they already were of Garth and me and the Presidential Commission, and what they considered continued and unwarranted intrusion on their turf, but I couldn't have cared less. I also neglected to mention my source for the information about the voodoo altar and Fournier's picture, or Fournier's affectionate mention of William P. Kranes, or the link between Kranes and the mutilated corpse in Central Park that had been Moby Dickens. I assumed both the NYPD and FBI could already have discovered the link themselves, if they'd worked hard enough at it, and I still wanted first crack at the Speaker of the House myself, before he'd been worked- or glossed-over by anybody else. I figured I had earned that prerogative.
Garth walked in around 8:45, just as, for the third time, I was getting to the part about the zombie dust. I started all over again, for my brother's benefit, and when I was finished I was told I could go. The FBI agents might have suspected I was holding more than a few things back, because they did not look at all happy; but they hadn't been happy with me for a long time. The Fredericksons and the FBI had history. The FBI was a crack outfit that did their job surpassingly well, when they felt like it and when it didn't conflict with their various agendas, and they weren't a bunch of criminals, but my affection for J. Edgar Hoover's clones was only slightly greater than my affection for the CIA, and considering some of the things they had done to us-or failed to do for us-at critical junctures in the past, I thought they should be grateful I told them anything at all.
"Jesus H. Christ," Garth said, looking at me and shaking his head in disbelief as we walked out of the station house into the morning of what promised to be a very hot and humid day and headed toward the brownstone. "You've got shit for brains."
"Hmmm. Reading between the lines of that characteristically metaphysical and enigmatic statement, I take it to mean you're not pleased about something. Bad drive into the city this morning?"
"You were a fool to pull that stunt last night by yourself, Mongo," Garth said, deadly serious. "I suppose you've come that close to dying a few times before, but right now I can't think of any instances. Fournier would have kept for twenty-four hours, and longer. Then I'd have been with you as backup."
"Okay, so I got impatient. I didn't expect the evening to be that eventful. I was just going to do a little simple breaking and entering to get at his computer and have a look-around."
"There hasn't been anything simple about a single thing we've done in the past six months."
"Hey, Garth, does it sound to you like I'm arguing the point? You're right."
"Don't do anything like that again."
"I managed to make a copy of what was on his computer. Right now the diskette is threatening my manhood."
"Bully for you."
"Ah, you know how I thrive on praise. Incidentally, don't brush up against me. I've still got this yellow shit on my jeans, and I don't recommend coming into contact with it. These pants and sneakers go into a plastic bag when we get home. I'm going to send them over to Frank's lab to have the powder analyzed."
"So, you really think those guys were zombies?"
"A rose is a rose is a rose. What's in a name? I don't care what you call them. I know what I saw, and that was three men who looked worse than dead, moved like Frankenstein, and unquestioningly did whatever Fournier told them. Something made them like that, and from the way Fournier was so eager to get some of that yellow stuff into me, I'd say it's the chemical agent. I have no desire to find out firsthand what it does."
Garth put one of his big hands on my shoulder, gently squeezed it.
"After what you did last night, a little behavior modification in you might be an improvement."
"Damn, there's another one of your knee-slappers. I've always marveled at your keen sense of humor."
"You must be exhausted. We'll get you home and into a shower, and then into bed."
"We'll get me home and into a shower, and then I'll nap on the plane."
"We're going to Washington, I presume?"
"Or Huntsville. Wherever Francisco tells me Kranes is holed up for the day. We've got to stay ahead of the curve on this thing, and I've got a bad feeling that events are going to move very quickly now that Fournier has been blown. It's going to be a sprint, and we've got to haul ass if we expect to be winners at the finish line." "Right."
When we walked into the brownstone we found a temp working Francisco's station and Francisco at the computer workstation in my office. He looked up and grimaced, obviously startled by my police uniform shirt and somewhat battered appearance. "Sir, what happened to you?! Your-"
"Not now, Francisco," I said, holding up my bandaged right hand. "I got voodooed, and I'll tell you all about it another time. Right now we're in a big hurry, and I've got a couple of things for you to do."
"Of course, sir."
"Where's Kranes today?"
"Washington. At five-thirty he's scheduled to fly to-"
"Good," I said curtly, taking the diskette out of my jeans and handing it to him. "Make a copy of this and send it by messenger to Special Agent Mackey at the FBI field office. Enclose a note saying it's from Guy Fournier's computer, and I forgot I had it with me."
"Will do, sir."
"Then call the Slurper. Tell him we need him in here right away, and he should bring his toothbrush, favorite pillow, and teddy bear. He can sleep on the sofa. We'll give him premium pay. There's at least one encrypted file on that diskette, and probably more. I want to know what's in them. The files may be in French, so you might want to have a translator on call. Think speed. You sit close to him with a pad and pencil and t
ake down everything he says, as he says it. I know he mumbles, so if you don't understand something he says, make him repeat it. The Slurper lives in the moment, and he couldn't come up with an intelligible written report after the fact if his life depended on it. His feet are only on the ground when he's in cyberspace."
Francisco ran a frail hand over his slicked-back hair, touched his pencil mustache, then made a face. "I don't think the Slurper uses a toothbrush, sir. Does it have to be him? We have a half dozen other hackers-"
"None as good as the Slurper."
"But he's flatulent, sir."
"There's nobody better at crashing into systems and breaking codes, and that's what's required here. Francisco, I know his personal habits are disgusting, but we need him."
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