Bio-Strike pp-4

by Tom Clancy

  He went to the door and waited. There was no need to announce himself. The biometric scanner that had allowed him into the hallway would have identified him to the office’s occupant, and his approach would have been monitored with hidden cameras.

  A moment later, the door opened, Harlan DeVane standing on the other side, his hand on the polished brass handle, wearing a white shirt, white tie, and custom-tailored black suit of perfect outline that might have been stenciled onto his bony frame.

  “Siegfried, come in,” he said, and motioned him inside with a flick of his pale, thin hand. “You’ll be pleased to hear the news I’ve received about Roger Gordian.”

  * * *

  Back at Salazar’s palatial house by the sea, Lathrop was enjoying himself tremendously.

  Facing Lucio across the room, watching his expression go in stages from astonishment to acceptance to resentful anger, he couldn’t have said whether the greater kick came from a regard for his own expert connivance or the reaction it had instigated.

  Six of one, he thought.

  He sat looking out at the breathtaking view of the sea and waited for Lucio to digest what he’d been told.

  “Okay,” Lucio said at length. “Help me be sure I’ve got this right. A step at a time. Because you threw me for a loop here, and a whole lot depends on me not misunderstanding you.”

  Lathrop nodded.

  “First off, you’re saying absolutely Felix is dead. You’re sure there’s no mixup it’s him they found in that car trunk.”

  “Couldn’t be surer,” Lathrop said, poker-faced.

  “Now, second, you can confirm it was Enrique who killed him—”

  “Ordered him killed,” Lathrop corrected.

  “Ordered his own nephew killed. Because Felix was holding out on the profits from the load he swiped from me.”

  “It’s a little more involved,” Lathrop said. “Everybody tolerates some skimming. But Felix was greedy. Claimed he was the one who did the tunnel boost, took all the risks, and deserved to keep every cent of the earnings. Bragging about it to anybody who could warm a barstool next to him. And that was only the last straw. He was running hustles left and right, and it was common knowledge he was on the pipe. Getting crazier and crazier. Becoming a major embarrassment.”

  Lucio shrugged. “Was me looking to burn the competition, steal their goods, I wouldn’t have trusted the kid with the job. But say I’m Enrique, and I do, and then hear he’s spending my percentage. Being family, I talk to him direct. Let him know he’s making a big mistake and better get on track.”

  “Enrique did that plenty of times. He called Felix in last week to give him one more chance. And instead of apologizing to Enrique, offering him a percentage of the take from the hijack, Felix told him to shove his grievances where the sun doesn’t shine.”

  “Stupid,” Lucio said and shook his head.

  “Yeah.”

  “Took cajones, though.”

  “Yeah. But dumb and ballsy can be a bad combination.”

  Lucio was thoughtful.

  “Let’s get to the next step,” he said, shifting his large frame on his wine-colored sofa cushions. “Enrique decides enough is enough. Sees the kid isn’t afraid of him. Sees he can’t be disciplined. So he’s gotta go. That on the mark?”

  Lathrop nodded.

  “Lousy position,” Salazar said. “Felix being his nephew.”

  “Which is the reason he’s been claiming it was your family that had Felix scrubbed,” Lathrop said. “Like I told you before, Enrique’s story to his sister is that the Magi of Tijuana held a conference across the border about how to handle the problem of the tunnel boost. According to him, you’d already planned the hit to make an example of Felix but wanted a vote of confidence from your brothers before moving ahead.”

  Lucio seemed affronted.

  “That don’t even make sense,” he said. “I want the kid taken out, I’m gonna be damn sure his body disappears permanent. The way Felix was living, it could’ve been weeks before anybody figured he wasn’t off on some fucking jag.”

  Lathrop looked out the window, appreciating the expansive view of the sea without end.

  “Enrique’s head of the family,” he said. “His sister admires him. She believes what he tells her.”

  “But I’d have to be tonto, an idiot, to order a dump job that leaves Felix in a car in his own place of business.”

  “She’s not in the life. She probably doesn’t know how things work. Or if she does, she could be too overcome with grief to think that clearly about it. All I can say is he convinced her you’re responsible, and now she’s demanding that he retaliate.”

  Lucio was shaking his head again.

  “This would be funny, if it wasn’t so incredible,” he said. “Enrique has Felix steal my shit. Kill my people. Then they have a falling out over revenue from the hijack. Enrique does Felix, fingers me to his sister as a scapegoat. She tells him I have to die for whacking her son. Next, I get a phone call from Enrique, who says he wants to meet. Work out our problems. And I agree to it. Figuring maybe he’s realized he made a mistake and wants to offer reparations. But his real purpose is to do me now.” He thumbed his chest. “I’m going about my thing, not stepping on anybody’s toes, and Enrique’s trying to make me a victim twice over.”

  Lathrop looked at him. The yarn was quite a nifty little twister.

  “This isn’t just about Enrique satisfying his sister,” he said as a finishing touch. “You have to remember where and how this started. The tunnel job was a message. He absolutely means to shove you out of California and knows he has El Tío’s fist behind him. Felix was a marionette when he was alive, and now that he’s dead, Enrique’s still using him as a prop for his act.”

  Lucio scowled with contempt.

  “El Tío,” he said. “Everything’s disorder since he’s come into the picture. Fucking disorder.”

  Lathrop said nothing.

  Lucio sat there sucking his front teeth for a while. When he leaned forward on the couch, Lathrop was amused to notice the back of the cushion underneath him lift high off the springs from his ample weight.

  “You got anything else?”

  “That’s it.”

  Lucio sucked his teeth some more.

  “All right, Lathrop. You’re the best. And you can count on this tip being worth a nice bonus,” he said. “As far as how it goes between me and Enrique, we’ll see which of us is the fucking idiot two nights from now at the park.”

  Lathrop nodded.

  It did indeed promise to be an interesting showdown, and he fully looked forward to being ringside.

  “It is interesting how we measure our accomplishments,” DeVane said. “I have many successes behind me, and envision more to come. Widespread ventures that yield abundant rewards. Yet the satisfaction I feel at this moment cannot be reckoned. A single person downed. A problem resolved. I hadn’t realized Roger Gordian had gotten quite that deeply under my skin.”

  Kuhl sat across the desk from him in silence. Behind DeVane, slightly to the left of his chair, was one of the few windows in the entire building, a fixed pane of one-way multilaminate glass able to absorb the impact of a bomb blast or high-powered sniper fire. Perfectly square and soundproof, it somehow imparted a greater sense of separateness from the outlying woodlands than would have been presented by a solid wall. Kuhl saw deer tracks in the snow running toward the white-frocked forest spruces and understood the wild longing of the confined predator to lunge against the glass wall of a zoo or aquarium exhibit, a pull older than anything that could be devised to suppress it. And DeVane didn’t fool him. His mannered behavior was embroidery. A wrap he wore as neatly as his expensive suits, and to deliberate effect. But he, too, knew the impulse to strike and taste blood.

  “Gordian’s condition,” Kuhl said. “Were you told of it?”

  “He remains among the hospital’s general population, which means we can infer that he’s still in the early stage,” DeVane sai
d. “But the symptoms will progress quickly enough.”

  Kuhl was without expression.

  “I propose that our backups be put in full readiness,” he said.

  DeVane smiled, his lips flitting back from his small, white teeth.

  “Your exactitude is always appreciated,” he said. “Yes, I agree, let’s surely be prepared for anything.”

  There was a brief pause. Then DeVane gestured toward the computer station against the wall to his right, its glowing display filled with rows of unopened E-mail messages.

  “Along come the trigger orders, even as we sit here,” he said. “Multiples in some cases. To no surprise, our Sudanese friend has informed me that he’s found a deep well of capital. As have many of his neighbors in the desert. It’s enthralling, the eagerness of my clients. Those in the noisy public arenas. Those in solitude. Those who fear differences of ethnicity and morphology. They want greater prestige, greater wealth, a world re-fashioned under their influence. Or they seek to inflict their internal damage upon mankind, spread the stains of dead loves and passions. Hardly a person to whom I’ve made my offer isn’t groping. And three days from now, they’ll all have the opportunity to chop away at each other.” Another flit of a smile. “We’re in the money, Siegfried. And I have faith that humanity will keep us in it to stay.”

  Kuhl peered through the thick synthetic glass at a large bird swooping from the conifers.

  “Among the buyers are interests in mortal conflict. They represent titanic polarizing forces,” he said. “The Sleeper triggers will give them a power of mutual destruction that has been unprecedented in history.”

  “This concerns you?”

  “I don’t fear the prospect of harsh change.”

  DeVane looked at him.

  “Ah,” he said. “You’ve wondered about me.”

  Kuhl nodded. Outside the sealed room, he could see the shadow of the bird’s outspread wings create shifting patterns of light and darkness on the rippled carpet of snow.

  DeVane formed a cage with his fingers.

  “There is a story, a very ancient one, about a child of the god who rode the chariot of the sun across the sky,” he said. “It illustrates my way of seeing things.”

  Kuhl waited. DeVane stared at his finger cage intently, as if to capture his thoughts within it.

  “As the tale goes, the son was abandoned by his great and celestial father to struggle on the hard earth with his mother, and did not learn of his paternal heritage until he was on the verge of manhood,” he said. “And then his claims were ridiculed. The rejection and denial of all that he was, all the potential within him, caused him unbearable humiliation. So he went to his father’s manor. Traveled to the Palace of the Sun to ask the chance to prove his birthright, ride the chariot for a single day.” DeVane paused, his face taut around his cheekbones, his gaze fixed on his interlocked fingers. “The father’s first reaction was to scorn him. Deny his request. We can imagine he disputed his paternity, refused to acknowledge the youth was of his blood. But the son possessed an inbred strength of will and prevailed. Perhaps he used coercion, blackmail, the threat to reveal an affair his father had long kept hidden from his highborn peers. Who knows? The young man did what was necessary to get what he wanted. A chance. And he climbed aboard the chariot with a thousand warnings. Fly too high and the earth will freeze, drop too low and it will burn. Steer too far to the left or right and the monsters of the void will snatch you with their claws, suck you into the great darkness. These attempts to dissuade the youth only made him more eager to seize the reins and take to the heavens.” DeVane returned his eyes to Kuhl, the cold shine of steel in them. “Unfortunately, control of the horses did prove beyond him in the end. They were primal forces, you understand, and he was raised on the soil, dirt under his fingernails. Wherever he passed thundering through the sky, chaos was left in his wake. The countryside was seared with fire. Crops blazed. Ice caps melted to flood great cities. Oceans turned to columns of steam. His whipping, runaway ride shook the world. Chaos. But when, at last, the most powerful of the gods struck him down with a lightning bolt, sent him plunging to the ground in flames, the son went to his death without regret. Because in pursuing his ambition, he’d soared above and beyond the limitations of his origins. Beyond what anyone foresaw for him. Beyond those who’d tried to humble him. He had been audacious, and audacity often has consequences. He’d known it from the beginning. Yet what a run it was, Siegfried. What a hell of a run.”

  DeVane fell silent. He took a deep breath, unlocked his fingers, leaned slowly backward in his chair. When he next spoke, his voice was calm and quiet.

  “Is your curiosity satisfied?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then back to business.” DeVane’s hands were open on the desk. “Is there anything else we should discuss?”

  Kuhl nodded.

  “Our recruit in UpLink. The one who administered the trigger to Gordian,” he said. “He is weak and faithless.”

  DeVane shrugged his shoulders. “A small fry swimming out of his depth and poisoned along with the big fish.”

  “As he must realize by now,” Kuhl said. “I ask myself, what if he tries to bite us in his final thrashings?”

  DeVane’s eyebrows lifted.

  “I see,” he said. “And you suggest…”

  “That El Tío have Enrique Quiros put the little creature out of its misery. The sooner the better.”

  DeVane regarded him with his coldly metallic eyes.

  “Your advice is well taken,” he said. “I’ll contact Enrique.”

  Kuhl nodded again and rose from his seat. The large, dark bird had flown off, and there was nothing to be seen past the window panel but the hoofprints in the empty whiteness between the building and the great masts of the trees.

  He turned, strode toward the door.

  “Siegfried.”

  Kuhl looked over his shoulder. DeVane’s eyes were still steady on him.

  “You now know much about me,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “As much as anyone living ever will.”

  “Yes.”

  DeVane looked at him another moment, then nodded.

  Kuhl reached for the doorknob and let himself out of the office.

  * * *

  Sick.

  He felt so sick.

  Palardy crouched with his head over the john, the bathroom tiles hard against his knees. The taste of acid and nails filled his mouth, and his stomach felt twisted inside out from the repeated vomiting. He’d been at it since Sunday night, losing his half-digested dinner in painful wracking fits. And it had only gotten worse when his stomach was emptied of its solid contents, his spasms going on through the morning, the digestive juices spurting sour and rancid into his throat. And worse still when there was no more bile left in him, when he’d started to dry heave.

  Maybe three o’clock in the morning he’d thrown on some clothes, gone down to the twenty-four-hour convenience store for some ginger ale, hoping that might settle him. Twice, three times during the short walk over he’d had to stop, reel toward the curb, and hug a lamppost to keep from losing his feet. But his stomach cramps had been unbearable. And there was the dizziness, the sidewalk seeming to lurch underneath him with every step. It had taken a big piece of forever to get to the store, find the soda, and pay for it, the clerk looking at him like he was a drunkard or a drug addict come to rob the place. Palardy was certain he’d had his hand on something under the counter — an alarm button, a gun, who could tell? — as he’d rung up the sale.

  And then the agonizing return to his apartment building. Another small eternity. He’d sat back on his sofa and drunk the soda warm. Taking small sips, figuring his system could tolerate a little at a time.

  Palardy supposed that was when he’d first noticed his sore throat. Could be it had been developing gradually throughout the night. Maybe he’d have felt it sooner if his stomach hadn’t been in constant throes. But it was pretty inflamed,
and he doubted it could have gotten that bad all at once. His tonsils felt as big as thumbs, and he had trouble swallowing. And he’d felt these lumps on either side of his neck; he guessed they were swollen glands.

  Drinking that soda had itself been an ordeal. And ultimately, it was for nothing. The trip to the deli, his slow, careful sipping, for nothing. The ginger ale had jetted from him in a fountain before he could make it to the bathroom, spilling over his hands, onto the upholstery, onto the carpet. Bubbles of soda mixed with spit and phlegm.

  After that, Palardy hadn’t tried to swallow anything, liquid or solid.

  Sick, he was so god-awful sick. A few minutes ago, he’d thought his guts would tear themselves apart, come squeezing out of him in bloody nuggets. Those dry, ratcheting heaves, his whole body hurt from them. His back and sides as much as his stomach. Jesus. And the way his heart was beating right now, slamming against his ribs, rapid and erratic. Jesus Christ, it was horrible.

  Palardy hung over the toilet, gasping, clutching his middle. Waiting to see if his latest attack had really passed or if another round of spasms would sneak up on him.

  After a while, he decided he’d gotten a temporary reprieve and rose to his feet, holding the sink to steady himself. He reached for the tap, splashed cold water on his face, swished some in his mouth, and spat into the basin. The horrid taste didn’t leave him. He hadn’t expected it would.

  Palardy staggered out the bathroom door, his head heavy. He was cold and trembling. In the hallway he got a flannel blanket from the closet and tossed it over his shoulders. Then he made his way back to the living room and dropped onto the couch.

  What was happening? What was the matter with him?

  He sat there wrapped in the blanket, trying to get warm. Wishing he could relax. But a terrible thought kept asserting itself in his mind. If not from the onset of the sickness, then soon after, he’d started to wonder whether it could be connected to what was in that hypodermic case Enrique Quiros had given him, to what had been in the ampule. Only a gullible fool could have neglected to consider the possibility. It had occurred to him the night he’d met Quiros at the harbor that anybody who would risk ordering someone as important as Roger Gordian to be hurt or killed would be capable of doing whatever it took to cover his tracks. Of doing away with anybody who might increase his chances of being tied to the act. In the car, Quiros had seemed uneasy about his own involvement. Eager to be through with it. Palardy couldn’t remember the exact words he’d used, but they had hinted that he had no personal interest in harming Gordian and was having his strings pulled by someone higher up the line. That he was looking out for himself the same as Palardy.