Briggs stood and put his hand on Nicolora’s shoulder.
“Be careful, old friend. If I recall correctly, it was you yourself who once said: That woman’s lips are hemlock.”
Chapter Six
Prague, Czech Republic
WILL SAT ALONE on a cold stone curb, in a narrow deserted alley, his face buried in his hands. Visions of the two American college students from the youth hostel, writhing with fever and pain, flashed through his mind like snapshots in a grotesque photo album he could not bring himself to close. It was his fault they were dying. Did that make him a murderer?
He did not know whether it was exposure to the contents of the broken vial or contact with him that had infected them. They were exposed to two potential vectors. As far as Miss Sophie was concerned, when Will last saw her, she was not exhibiting signs of infection. That leant credence to the broken vial argument. Of course, that was hours ago. By now, she could be as sick as they were.
When he was a boy, his father told him a bizarre piece of trivia. If you place a frog in a pot of cold water, and slowly heat the water inside to a boil, the frog will linger, incognizant of the danger until it perishes in the heat. But if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, the frog will jump out immediately—scalded, but alive. During his third month of confinement, it occurred to him that he was the frog, and quarantine the pot of water. His captors were turning up the heat gradually, and he had been oblivious to the change. At that moment of epiphany, he began planning his escape:
He started by shifting his sleeping pattern—forcing himself to nap at every opportunity during the day—so he could be alert at night when the staff was at one-quarter strength. He learned the assignments on the watch bill and memorized the times and routes for the roving personnel. He studied the guards and orderlies, noted their idiosyncrasies, and became familiar with their habits. Eventually, he built up the courage to sneak around Level 4 during the break between the hourly security tours after midnight. Systematically, he scoped out the entire floor including: the laundry room, the server room, the sample room, Laboratory 1, Laboratory 2, the hospital rooms housing other patients, and a room with a label in another language, which he could not read. This room, along with the server room, was always locked. Until one night, he found the door shut, but not latched.
The room was cold, dimly lit, and the back wall was lined with rectangular stainless steel refrigeration modules that bore the nameplate Mopec. Two identical modules sat side by side, each housing nine chambers, arranged three rows high by three columns wide. An empty gurney was parked up against the left wall. A chill ran down his spine. He knew what this place was. He turned to leave, but then stopped. He couldn’t help himself; he had to look. To his surprise, the handles were not locked. He took a deep breath and opened one of the rectangular doors in the middle row. The door hissed as he broke the seal and 39 F chilled air tickled the hair on his forearm. He grabbed the lip on the telescoping stainless steel tray inside and pulled. The tray extended smoothly, despite holding the weight of a full-size adult body inside a black zippered body bag. Two yellow Biological Hazard stickers were affixed to the bag, one at the head and one at the foot. He took the zipper in between his thumb and forefinger, held his breath, and pulled. A wave of rank, putrid air that stank of excrement hit him like a punch in the face. He gagged and reflexively took a step back. Then, he saw it—the face of a monster. The cadaver inside looked like he had been bludgeoned to death, but Will knew otherwise. The tip of the nose and fingertips were blackened and gangrenous. A grotesque, purple bubo bulged on the side of the dead man’s neck, and blue-black plague spots covered his trunk and cheeks. The body was fresh and Will was sickened to see that it had yet to be cleaned. Dried blood and pus stained the skin beneath the dead man’s nostrils and trailed from the corner of his left eye. Fighting the urge to vomit, he covered his nose and mouth and reluctantly stepped closer. He recognized this man. He had seen him the week before, languishing in a hospital room five doors down from his own, hacking and spewing phlegm. Like a bug trapped in a spider’s web, the man was hooked up to a tangled mess of tubes and wires, waiting to die. Will zipped the body bag closed and shoved the corpse back inside its refrigerated tomb. He opened the adjacent door and repeated the process. This time the zipper opened to reveal the cadaver’s feet. He noted the toe tag: P-62. He looked down at his wristband and his heart skipped a beat. P-65. Frantically he checked the other cadaver coolers. P-59, P-47, P-61, P-43 . . . P-64. Fear gripped him as the gravity of his situation took hold. In this hospital, regardless of the treatment, the patients died. All of them.
His mind drifted from that fateful night two weeks ago, back to the present. To his surprise, he suddenly found himself contemplating going back. What if he belonged in quarantine? Maybe he really was infected with a deadly disease, just as they claimed. The last thing he wanted was to hurt people. Better to live in a bubble, than to be responsible for filling Mopec chillers with the bodies of innocent men, women, and children. He was certain he could find his way back to the building from which he had escaped. Within seconds of walking into the lobby, the guards would surround him. Angry yellow-suits would converge from every direction and thrust him back into the familiar nightmare of needles and isolation. It would be horrible, but at least he would avoid hurting more innocent people.
Yet despite the mental anguish he was suffering, physically he was feeling better by the hour. Sure, the fire escape plunge had taken a toll on his body; his joints ached and his muscles throbbed. But the symptoms from the last injection were completely gone. His breathing was strong and steady; his head and sinuses were clear. As much as he wanted to be sick, deserved to be sick—sick like Rutgers and Frankie—his body was on the mend.
He hugged himself against the cold while working to clear his mind and tried not to shiver. He felt like he had a pile of jigsaw puzzle pieces that looked like matches on first inspection, but didn’t quite fit when he tried to snap them together.
Puzzle piece number one: The doctors told him he was infected with a deadly virus. This he could not prove or disprove. Months ago, when he was first placed into quarantine he did not feel sick. He did not feel sick now. The only time he ever felt sick was while he was in quarantine. Still, he knew that empirical observations of his health did not rule out the possibility that he was a carrier of a disease. What if he, like Typhoid Mary in the early 1900s, was spreading a disease for which he exhibited no symptoms?
Puzzle piece number two: The doctors told him they were using experimental treatments to eradicate a virus lurking in his system, but every treatment only made him feel worse. The scenario had always been the same: injection, followed by flu symptoms, then rapid recovery. This was why he stole the sample with the cloudy liquid. His intellect told him the injections were not treatments. Far from it. The vial of cloudy liquid had been the key to understanding this puzzle piece, but now that key was lost.
A hint of a smile crept across his face. Even though the vial of cloudy liquid was destroyed, remnants of the substance were coursing through his veins. What if someone could identify the foreign compound using a sample of his blood? He also still had the vial of the clear liquid, another puzzle piece in need of deciphering. To gain access to such analyses, he would need help from the one person in the world with whom he was not on speaking terms. Julie Ponte was an American molecular biologist working in Vienna and his only hope. The trick would be convincing her to listen. It had been ages since they last communicated, and it was he who had ended the romance between them.
He stood abruptly. His legs itched and tingled from sitting for so long. He rubbed the back of his thighs, trying to get the blood flowing. Then, he started to pace. From his front pants pocket, he retrieved a wad of crumpled bills: thirty-one euros. He had spent seven euros on a hot sandwich and a liter of bottled water at a café, his first real meal since breaking out of quarantine. He had spent another twelve on an inexpensive maroon scarf and grey wool cap from
a second-hand store—not just for warmth, but also to conceal his face. If they were already casing youth hostels, then it was safe to assume they were looking for him in all obvious places where a half-naked man with no money might try to hide. Homeless shelters, park benches, under bridges—anywhere a vagabond might go. He needed to get out of Prague, away from the dragon’s lair, but without a passport, booking a flight or a train ticket was out of the question. Complicating matters, he still had no idea who “they” were. The most logical assumption was that the people looking for him were the security personnel from the lab. The very guards he had outmaneuvered were now the ones trying to bring him in. Other operatives could also be on his trail. Bounty hunters? Government agents? What about the Czech police? Were they looking for him too? He had no idea how deep this conspiracy ran. Paranoia was the only reason he had not marched right up to the U.S. Embassy in Prague, knocked on the door, and said, “Please take me home.”
He had been quarantined, drugged, and smuggled out of the United States, without any intervention or investigation by the various agencies of the Department of Homeland Security. This told him that either the smuggling was sanctioned by DHS, or that the information surrounding his case never reached DHS. Either way, the conclusion was the same. Whoever did this to him had some very powerful people on their payroll.
To avoid capture, he needed to fly under the radar; to solve the puzzle, he needed help. These two goals were not mutually exclusive, but the latter did risk the former. His mind raced. How could he contact Julie covertly? Certainly not from sanctuary of this alley, he thought. Fuck it. He stepped into the daylight onto a crowded intersection in Old Town Prague and scanned both sides of the street for an Internet kiosk, a well-heeled café, or even a modern hotel where he could sneak some computer time. Thirty-one euros would buy him plenty of time online, even if it took hours to reach Julie.
He walked south, past Hlavní nádraží, the largest and busiest railway station in Prague. He crossed Jeruzalemska and Růžová, but neither street had what he needed. When he reached Politickych veznu, he turned northwest on a whim and soon found himself in Wenceslas Square. At 700 meters long and sixty meters wide, Wenceslas was a Square in name only, and he found himself stopping for a moment to take it all in. He felt a charge of energy from the vibrant boulevard; its shops and sidewalks were bustling with life. The abundance of automobiles, asphalt, tourist shops, and window advertisements overwhelmed the Old World charm that flowed from the roofline architecture. He suspected that if one could magically wipe away all the commercialism, Wenceslas might be beautiful. But Wenceslas Square was no more or less beautiful at that moment than it had been more than six hundred years before, when King Charles IV founded the Konskytrh, or “Horse Market,” in a brainstorm of urban planning. It was never a panorama of grand buildings and cathedrals like the Old Town or Prague Castle. The Square was—and always had been—Prague’s central market. It was not the showpiece. It was the hub.
Will looked toward the end of the Square, past the modest gardens dividing the wide tree-lined boulevard, all the way to the imposing National Museum, with its majestic cupola and brightly illuminated Neo-Renaissance facade. Positioned fifty meters in front, stood a statue of a knight atop a horse. Wenceslas immortalized.
His nervous stomach reminded him that he had work to do, and he strode off. Ten minutes later, he spied a small Internet café. A bilingual sign in the window read THREE EUROS PER HOUR in Czech and English. It was a better price than he had dared to hope for. After waiting forty-five minutes for a computer terminal in the back with a view of the entrance, Will took a seat. The room was amply heated, and he wanted desperately to strip off his winter garb. But he left the wool cap untouched upon his head and the maroon scarf wrapped snugly around his nose and mouth to hide his face.
As he logged into his email account, he was taken aback. The date stamp on his last sent message was over five months old. Five months! He felt the color rising in his cheeks as he thought about his imprisonment. No phone calls, no email, no letters, no walks outside, no contact with anyone.
He took a deep breath, calming himself so he could concentrate on the task at hand.
He sorted the email in his inbox by Sender. Hundreds of messages flooded the screen, but not a single one was from Julie. With the way they had left things, she probably didn’t even know he was missing. Maybe no one did. He hadn’t exchanged emails with Julie for over a year. To make matters worse, he couldn’t remember where she worked. He knew she ran her own lab, but the details of her employment had never been a heated topic of conversation between them. Still, he had a starting point; he knew her instant messaging account name. If she had changed that, then he was in serious trouble.
He opened MSN Instant Messenger.
“C’mon Julie,” he said quietly. “Be there.” A blue task window popped up on the screen with a friendly chime:
Hello Will, 0 of your contacts are online.
Shit.
He clicked back over to his email account to compose a message, addressing it to Julie’s personal email address:
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Urgent! Need help.
Julie - I’m in trouble and need your help. I’ll be logged onto IM for the next 24 hours. - W
He hit “send” and sank into his chair. In the past, Julie had checked her personal email periodically throughout the workday, but there was no telling how long he would have to wait today. For the next ninety minutes, he reacquainted himself with the world, scanning news sites for current events and checking his favorite blogs. It was a sobering experience. So much had happened while he had been locked away, and the more he read, the more alone he felt.
As he clicked from site to site, he kept one eye on the front desk and the people around him. It was a diverse crowd, but not a dangerous crowd.
Bing.
The sound seemed unnaturally loud, and Will was momentarily afraid that the computer had somehow betrayed him. He glanced around wildly, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. In fact, he could hear other people’s computers making similar sounds.
It was an Instant Message alert.
Julie:
will? is this a joke?
His breath quickened, and his hands started to shake. He could barely type.
Will:
no joke. i’m in trouble and need your help.
Julie:
why me? what about your girlfriend?
Will:
we broke up
He waited . . . his stomach tied in knots. After what seemed like an eternity, the message window refreshed with new text.
Julie:
I’m pissed at you. you break up with her and don’t bother to tell me? you’re a jerk.
Will:
I am. But something really bad happened to me . . . I couldn’t contact you til now
Julie:
tell me
Will:
I was kidnapped, but I escaped. now, i’m in Prague.
Julie:
kidnapped? WTF are you talking about?
Will:
I was put in quarantine, drugged, smuggled to Prague, and held against my will in some kind of hospital. but not a real hospital, more like research lab. they locked me in a room, did tests on me, injected me with things. the past five months of my life have been a nightmare, but last night I escaped.
Julie:
i don’t have time for this crap
She didn’t believe him! Desperation flooded his mind, and he assaulted the keyboard with a barrage of keystrokes.
Will:
EVERYTHING I’M TELLING YOU IS TRUE! I’m in Prague, with no fucking money, wearing somebody else’s clothes, and the two kids who shared a room with me at a youth hostel last night are infected and are probably dying right now. I’m running out of time. I know this sounds crazy, but I need help and you’re the only person in the world I can trust. PLEASE JUL
IE . . .
Another pregnant pause tormented him until at last she replied.
Julie:
okay, you’ve got my attention.
Julie:
do you have money for a train pass?
Will:
the train is not an option. they’re looking for me and I don’t have a passport
Julie:
ok. vienna is less than 300km from prague. i’ll drive there and pick you up later tonight.
Will:
you are a goddess! when and where should i meet you?
Julie:
2AM at the astronomical clock in the center of town. it’s a famous landmark. ask any local about the “Orloj” and they’ll point you in the right direction.
Will:
okay. I’ll find it. but I need to tell you something else. when I was in quarantine the doctors told me i was infected. i think they were lying, but i don’t know for sure. i might be contagious. i might be a walking biohazard!
Julie:
what are you talking about?
Will:
i’ve been in quarantine for the past five months. u know the kind with men in yellow bubble suits who talk with Darth Vader voices.
Julie:
sounds to me like you have the flu and a very high fever which is making you delusional.
Will:
i’m a basket case, not a mental case. . . . i’m serious about this. i have no idea what they’ve done to me. what if i infect you?
Julie:
how can I help u if I can’t get near u. do you want my help or not?
Will:
yes, but i wanted to warn u first.
Julie:
i’ll try to round up a N95 surgical mask for you to wear. Just try not to bleed on anyone in the meantime. now tell me about your symptoms so i can do a little research before I come.
Calypso Directive Page 4