“Tomorrow.”
AJ ran his fingers through his sandy brown hair. “Tomorrow? Ahhhh, I can’t just drop everything I’m in the middle of . . .” He then began to ramble. “I’m running a new sample batch, there’s the class I’m teaching, I still have to plan my move, I’m—”
Briggs held up his hand. Stop. The gesture was so abrupt, so deliberate that AJ didn’t realize he’d stopped speaking in mid-sentence. Like a general in the military silencing a subordinate, Briggs had commanded his complete surrender. Briggs reached into his suit jacket pocket and retrieved a business card and ink pen. He scribbled $50,000 on the back of the card and handed it to AJ.
AJ flipped the card over, and he stared at it.
“What is this?”
“That’s my offer.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Do I look like someone who kids?” said Briggs and then added, “Half now, half when the work is done.”
“But you said I would only be working for you temporarily, until I go to Stanford.”
“That’s right.”
“This is . . .” AJ stammered.
“A lot of money?” Briggs interjected.
“Yeah.”
“Obviously, my firm thinks your talent warrants this measure of compensation. And that’s net, by the way. We’ll gross it up to cover the income taxes.”
AJ looked at his advisor and friend for validation.
Tim raised his eyebrows, as if to say: You’re on your own, kid.
AJ flipped the card over in his fingers. He found himself reflecting on the quality of last night’s dinner of ramen noodles mixed with canned tuna. Without warning, the image morphed. Suddenly he was at a five-star restaurant, dining on seared sushi-grade ahi, served on a bed of rice noodles, and topped with a pineapple ginger sauce. He was dressed in Jack Briggs’ suit and wearing Jack Briggs’ Swiss watch. He smiled. He was handing the valet a paper ticket to pull his new BMW . . .
“I’m afraid I need your decision, AJ. The project kickoff meeting is tomorrow,” Briggs pressed. “If your answer is no, then this is goodbye. I have another candidate to interview at Harvard Medical School this afternoon.”
AJ blinked twice. “What if the project runs over, and I have to leave for Stanford before the work is finished? What if I don’t find you the answers in time?”
“Then you keep the upfront money and we depart amicably. That sometimes happens when life and business intersect. We don’t hold grudges,” Briggs said.
AJ rubbed his eyes with the back of his wrists and made a noise that was half sigh, half grunt. “Okay, I’m in.”
“Very good. Meet me at the park bench by the ‘Make Way for Ducklings’ sculpture in the Boston Public Garden tomorrow morning at eight o’clock sharp. We’ll walk to the office together.”
“Okay, I know the spot.”
The two men shook hands, and then AJ looked at Tim.
“I’ll catch up with you later, AJ. Jack and I have some other matters to discuss before he goes,” Tim said.
“Oh, and Archer, don’t be late,” Briggs said.
“Okay. Thank you. I won’t. I mean, I’ll see you at eight,” AJ stammered.
He fought to suppress a giddy grin as he left the room. Fifty-thousand dollars for two months’ work! He couldn’t wait to see the look on his girlfriend’s face when he told her. Her jaw would drop to the floor. A celebration dinner was in order tonight. Five-star, of course.
As he strutted down the hall, he flipped the business card over to look at the front side.
It was a strange business card. No company name. No address. No contact details whatsoever . . . just a name, title, and an image of a bee.
“Recruiter,” he muttered. “Recruiter for what?”
Chapter Four
Prague, Czech Republic
RAUCOUS LAUGHTER WOKE him.
In his dream, he was reliving the escape sequence from quarantine, but in the disturbing stop-motion detail that only exists in dreams. He drank the chilled, purple blood from the glass vials. Then, the megaphone voice boomed, each syllable a hammer blow against his skull. He fled and evil yellow-suits gave chase through never-ending corridors. Magically, the Level Four stairwell appeared in front of him, and the door opened politely without a touch. He laughed. He was going to make it. He jumped, sailing over the railing into the abyss. But this time, as he made the four-story plunge in the stairwell, he realized something was different. He had forgotten the bedsheets. He was free falling without a safety line. Yellow-suits and orderlies lined up along the stairs and balconies, peering over the railings at him. They were laughing. Laughing at stupid Will Foster as he plummeted toward his death.
He sat up in the narrow bed, hyperventilating and clutching the bedsheet in his fists.
“Whoa, dude!” a shaggy haired boy in a Rutgers T-shirt said. “That must have been one wicked nightmare.”
Will was completely disoriented. He could not remember where he was or how long he had been asleep. His surroundings were strange and unfamiliar. A chocolate brown mural with a cartoon depiction of the Brevnov Monastery and a white tour bus adorned the wall facing him. Then he noticed two other people in the dimly lit room, staring at him.
“Where am I?”
“You’re at Miss Sophie’s, dude.”
“Miss Sophie’s?”
“Yeah, you know, the youth hostel. Miss Sophie said that you’ve been out cold since late last night. You must have been smoking some really good shit, man,” said a jock sporting a New York Mets baseball cap. “I wanna know where you party.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s like, almost ten at night. We just came back from the pub and you were twitching and moaning like crazy. I thought you might be, like, an epileptic or something, but Frankie said you were just having a nightmare,” Rutgers said.
“Yeah, we were dying with laughter. Sorry we woke you up, man,” Frankie said, eyeing Will from under the brim of his Mets cap.
The cobwebs in Will’s mind were beginning to clear and the details of the previous twenty-four hours were coming back to him. The cabbie had driven him to what he had called “a good, safe place.” Will had thought Miss Sophie’s was a budget-priced inn, but now he surmised it was a hostel—the kind of place frequented by backpackers, young adventure seekers, and the university party crowd. A two-minute conversation had taken place between the cabbie and a Czech woman with a kindly face and it ended with a hug. No money had changed hands, so Will suspected the cabbie and Miss Sophie were more than mere acquaintances. The woman had led him to a dorm-style room, sparsely furnished with steel framed beds. After sizing him up, she returned several minutes later with a pair of blue jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of filthy athletic shoes from what he deduced must be the establishment’s equivalent of the lost-and-found bin. He vaguely remembered unwrapping the gauze tape that held the vials to his leg and stuffing them into his jacket pocket, before collapsing from exhaustion onto the bed. If the time was indeed ten o’clock, then he had slept for twenty hours straight.
The vials!
He jumped out of bed, frantic. He needed to confirm that the vials were safe. He scanned the room for the olive-green army jacket, but saw only two large North Face backpacks propped up against the wall. Perhaps Miss Sophie had placed it under his bed with his newly gifted garb. Will knelt on the checkered parquet floor, dragged a white rectangular clothes locker out from under the bed frame, and flipped open the metal-hinged top. Inside were the folded blue jeans, grey T-shirt, and dirty athletic shoes neatly arranged, but no jacket.
Rutgers burst into laughter. “Dude, check out his pajama pants.”
Frankie chortled. “Those are classic. They look like what I wore in the hospital when I was six and had my tonsils out.”
“Yeah, totally.”
“Have you guys seen my jacket? I had it right here under my bed. Now it’s gone.”
“Maybe it’s in that closet,” Rutgers said, pointing to an IKEA birchwood wardrobe
. He walked over to the wardrobe, opened the doors, and tugged Will’s green army jacket off a hanger. “Is this it?”
“Yes. Give it to me.”
“Dude, this is sweet. I’ve been looking for one of these vintage army coats for-eva. Do you mind if I try it on?”
“Actually, I . . .”
It was too late. Rutgers was already shrugging the coat onto his muscular shoulders. “It fits. Tell ya what. I’ll give you thirty euros for it.”
Will shook his head. “Nah. I need that coat. It’s the only one I’ve got.”
Rutgers looked at himself in the mirror and flipped the collar up. He winked at himself and pretended to fire a finger pistol at the guy in the mirror. “Okay, fifty euros and I’ll throw in my old J. Crew barn jacket. But that’s my final offer.”
Will considered. He needed the money. With fifty euros, he could buy food, an international calling card, and maybe even a Eurorail pass. The army jacket was the only thing of value that he had to barter. Certainly, Rutgers had no interest in his blue, polka-dot hospital pants.
“All right, you have a deal.”
Rutgers trotted over to his backpack, unzipped a pocket, and retrieved fifty euros in small bills and the barn jacket from the main compartment. He zipped the bag closed, threw the canvas jacket on Will’s cot, and slapped the cash into Will’s outstretched hand.
“Thanks. I just need to get my things from the pockets,” Will said, taking a step toward Rutgers.
On hearing this, the kid immediately shoved both his hands into the coat pockets; Will heard the glass vials clink together.
“Careful!”
“Dude, what do you have in here?” Rutgers asked as he jerked his hand out of the pocket. The vials were longer than the narrow splayed opening of the pocket, and one of the rubber stoppers snagged on the fabric.
Will watched helplessly, jaw agape, as one of the glass vials slid from the kid’s grip and rotated end over end toward the ground. The vial struck the hardwood floor on the bottom glass curvature and exploded. Glass fragments and liquid rained over everything and everybody.
“Shit, dude. What was that?”
“Don’t touch it!” Will yelled, but it was already too late. Rutgers had stepped away from the point of impact and was wiping his lower legs with his free hand. At the same time, Frankie was on his hands and knees collecting glass shards with his fingers and tossing them into a nearby waste bin.
“Both of you—STOP.” Will ordered. “Don’t touch the glass. I’ll clean it up. Now, please, carefully hand me the other vial. Then go wash yourselves with soap and hot water.”
Rutgers and Frankie gave Will a strange look, but did as instructed. Will inspected the remaining glass tube, checking that the stopper was firmly in place. Next, he read the label: AAV-564: P-65 Transgene Trial 12. That answered that question. The shattered vial was the one containing the cloudy liquid, with the Latin name he could not remember.
• • •
BY EIGHT O’CLOCK the next morning, Rutgers was coughing and sneezing, and Will was frantic. By eleven o’clock, the kid was moaning, spewing phlegm, and splayed out on his cot. Frankie was red faced and vomiting. Both of their foreheads were hot to the touch. Miss Sophie generously tended to them, bringing the boys cold drinks and wet towels, oblivious to the deadly truth. The vial of Yersinia pestis Will had stolen from Chiarek Norse contained a highly virulent strain of the bacteria. Both boys were infected with full-blown pneumonic plague, and their bodies were rapidly losing the war raging inside them. Will kept vigil in the room. What he was witnessing was familiar but made no sense to him. Two strong and healthy college students were suffering more in twelve hours after exposure than Will had suffered during his entire quarantine.
At a quarter past twelve, Miss Sophie hurried into the room with a terrified look on her face. She grabbed Will firmly by the upper arm and whispered to him in heavily accented English. “The taxi driver, Mikiel, warn me this could happen. Right now, men are at the door; they are looking for you. They show me your picture. They say they are police. This is lie. I know how police look. I tell them they can’t come in and I shut the door. But they will come in anyway. It will be bad for me and bad for you if they find you here. You must go now! Follow me.”
Without a word of protest, Will grabbed his new coat and followed her down a flight of stairs to a back door that opened into an alley. She unlocked the door and peeked outside, scanning first left and then right.
“It safe. Go now!”
Loud repetitive pounding from the entry door echoed down the first floor hallway.
He took a step across the threshold, then stopped. He looked her in the eyes, and she read his thoughts immediately.
“I take care of the American boys. You go now.”
He bowed his head to her. “Thank you, for everything,” he said and then sprinted off into the darkness.
Chapter Five
Boston, Massachusetts
BRIGGS CROSSED HIS legs and shifted his weight in a fruitless effort to get comfortable. The chairs in Robért Nicolora’s office were nice enough to look at, but despite their solid walnut construction and crimson leather upholstery, they were abysmally uncomfortable. Nicolora liked it that way. He preferred to keep his office guests distracted while they were in conference with him. “As goes the body, so goes the mind,” he had once told Briggs.
Nicolora’s own chair, while similar in style, was contoured, soft, and supportive.
Though he was five years Briggs’ senior, Nicolora looked at least ten years younger than his longtime friend. His lean frame, olive complexion, and full head of hair belied his fifty-nine years. A naturalized U.S. citizen of twelve years, he had been born in a small town outside of Budapest, Hungary. His linguistic capabilities had always left friends and colleagues awestruck. At the age of thirty, he was fluent in seven languages: Hungarian, Czech, Russian, German, French, Spanish, and English. His current project was Mandarin. He spoke English with a perceptible and yet charming accent that came from a subtle mix of his Eastern European roots and Western European schooling. He could shed the accent when necessary for negotiation purposes, but he preferred the sound of his English to that of native British or American speakers. Most of the women he courted seemed to prefer it as well.
When he was a small child, Nicolora’s parents moved his sister and him to Madrid. On his eighteenth birthday, he left home to attend university in Barcelona. In his twenties, Nicolora lived and worked throughout Europe, spending time in Paris, Munich, Amsterdam, and London. It was during his time in London that he met an American named Bradley Wells. Over several months, the two men became close friends, and it was Wells who recruited Nicolora to join an elite think tank that served the U.S. government during the Cold War. Neither a government bureau nor a corporation, the brain trust did not officially exist on any government org-charts. Within the innermost circles of the State Department, however, the group was known as The Think Tank.
To its members, it was simply and affectionately referred to as The Tank.
In 1997, Nicolora was appointed Director. In December 2000, one month before President George W. Bush took office, the Think Tank Project was quietly disbanded and its members scattered to the wind.
In theory, The Tank had ceased to exist.
• • •
“DID HE ACCEPT?” Nicolora asked, knowing the answer already.
“Yes.”
“Did he make a counteroffer?”
“No.”
“Hmm.” Nicolora rubbed his chin. “Do you think he can handle our type of fieldwork?”
Briggs shrugged. “Fifty-fifty. But McNamara assures me this kid is the real deal. A ‘tenacious technical mind’ were his exact words. Besides, you said it yourself, Archer’s dissertation practically is the case.”
“What do you have planned for him today?”
“I’m meeting him at eight in the Public Garden. Paperwork, followed by the standard tour.”
Nicolo
ra smiled, expectantly. “Did you give him any location ciphers to figure out where to meet you?”
“No. We don’t have time for that bullshit. I can’t afford to waste a day picking him up somewhere ridiculous like Iceland.”
Nicolora laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re still sore about Reykjavik. That was ten years ago.” Briggs grunted.
“I seem to remember your first day being a little rough.” Nicolora winked.
“Not my fault. I was merely following your instructions,” Briggs said. “Your ciphers have always sucked.”
“Not true. You’ve just never been able to figure them out.” Nicolora reached for a pen on his desk. “Do you want me to write it down? I still remember it.”
“Bastard.” Briggs swiped the pen away and pretended to be angry. He squirmed again in his chair. “And have I mentioned that I hate these goddamn chairs?”
“Not since yesterday.”
The two men stared at each other for a moment like street toughs in rival gangs, then burst into laughter.
After he had caught his breath Briggs asked, “What did our contact in the Czech Ministry of Health have to say? Does the Czech government know anything yet?”
“Nothing. Meredith is keeping it very quiet. She’s in lockdown mode, holding everything back . . . even from me. But whatever went down, it was big.”
“Containment loss?”
“Not likely, or it would be all over CNN by now. Industrial espionage is my guess.”
“Or it could be a cover-up for a major league screw-up.”
“Always one of my personal favorites,” Nicolora chuckled.
“Has she decided what she wants to do?”
“Not yet.”
Briggs grunted again, this time with real disdain.
“I know you don’t like her Jack, and I don’t care,” Nicolora said. “If Meredith decides she needs our help, then we’re going to help her, damn it.”
“Even if it means taking down the Foundation in the process?”
Nicolora tensed, but quickly regained his composure. “Now you’re just being melodramatic.” He stood, walked around the corner of his desk, and stopped in front of the still-seated Briggs. Looking down at him, he added, “If our people do what they’re supposed to do—what they’re paid to do—then that will never happen. Regardless of the assignment.”
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