Bio-Strike pp-4

by Tom Clancy

  Or, as they were broadly categorized in the rule books: Dangerous Goods.

  Its seal wrapped in waterproof tape, the labeled vial had been placed in a tubular plastic container, the spaces around it filled with sufficient wadding to absorb every drop of sera within should an accidental leak or breakage occur in handling. The secondary receptacle was then capped, taped for watertightness, labeled with the name, address, and phone number of the sender at San Jose Mercy, and encased in an outer shipping canister. Besides a duplicate of the sender’s identification and contact information label, this third canister bore the standard tag for biomedical etiologic materials prescribed by the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, highlighted by a bright red biohazard trefoil against a white background and bearing the appropriate phone number for notification of the CDC should the package become damaged.

  These same procedures had been followed for the transport of the sample to Berkeley, as well as for the air shipment of the sample to Atlanta, with additional black-and-white stickers mandated by the International Air Transport Association for containers of dry ice and infectious substances.

  Before putting on his protective attire and bringing the package into the virology lab’s biosafety cabinet, where he planned to spend perhaps an hour or two studying its contents, Eric rang Lieberman to let him know it had reached him safe and sound. He then went out to a nearby fast-food restaurant, ordered a couple of cheeseburgers to go, and ate them drowned in ketchup, trying to imagine it was the tomato sauce he’d so looked forward to enjoying at his canceled dinner.

  He knew he was kidding himself, of course.

  There wasn’t the slightest chance in the world that the burgers would relieve his unfulfilled longing for calamari.

  And given his suspicions about Gordian’s case, there was also virtually no chance he’d be leaving the laboratory for many long hours to come.

  * * *

  “From what I can see here, we got thirty-four employees in the building called in sick over the last three weeks,” Thibodeau said.

  “Seven… no, sorry, make that eight, are currently out,” Megan said.

  “None of them for longer than three days,” said Ricci.

  “The rest of the absences average two days,” Nimec said. “I do notice one person, a Michael Ireland in Legal, who’s been down five and counting….”

  “Mike fractured his leg rock climbing,” Megan said. “He and his fiancée are friends of mine.”

  “Scratch his name off the list,” Scull said and did so on the copy in front of him, drawing a line through it with his pen.

  It was a quarter to seven in the evening, regular work hours long past, Nimec’s office once again having become a strategy room for Sword’s core leadership group… plus one, since Vince Scull was, technically speaking, not a member of the organizational security division. They had pulled up chairs to whatever flat surfaces were available — or reasonably clearable — and were poring over photocopies of the separate computer printouts obtained by Nimec and Thibodeau, verifying, cross-checking, and generally hoping for a lead that might steer them toward a carrier from whom Roger Gordian could have received his infection.

  “Anyone think it’s worth talking to the people on Rollie’s list who took off sick and are already back to work?” Nimec said.

  “My opinion’s that it isn’t, with one possible exception,” said Ricci. “This bug has the boss flat-out kayoed. Somebody’s on his feet after a couple days, he’s not likely to be our contact.”

  “That’s if it hits everyone the same, a big assumption to make,” Scull said. “Certain people could have a natural resistance and be mildly affected. Or not be susceptible at all. Or they could be what are called asymptomatic hosts, intermediaries for the bug to hitch a ride on. Our germ bag might be unaffected but have an acquaintance or relative who’s deathly sick—”

  “Point taken, Vince,” Nimec said. “But I think our hunt has to stay narrow for now, or we’ll find ourselves lost in the woods.”

  Thibodeau nodded. “The direct route gets us nowhere pickin’ up tracks, we widen our range.”

  Megan looked at Ricci. “You mentioned an exception…”

  “Yeah. A James Meisten. His name’s the only one that’s on both lists.” He looked down at the printouts spread side-by-side in front of him. “He was out sick yesterday, back today. Also met with the boss last Friday.”

  “I know him a little,” Megan said. “He was at the Marketing and Promotions conference about the info kiosks.”

  “So we phone him at home tonight even though he’s returned?”

  “I suppose it couldn’t hurt.” She frowned. “Candidates aren’t exactly leaping out at us, are they? And when I weigh what Vince said… it gets so tangled. I can think of so many possibilities off the top of my head. Assuming the carrier is even a human being as opposed to something that flies, creeps, or crawls, he doesn’t have to be a person who actually had a scheduled meeting with Roger. It could be somebody who chatted with him in the hallway or elevator. Or whose office he popped into on the spur of the moment. Or who shook his hand during a thirty-second introduction. And that’s before we even consider people on his appointment schedule from outside the company. Businessmen. Politicians. Social interactions we don’t have the vaguest idea about. He has friends, family members…”

  She let the sentence trail.

  “Thought we were sticking to the straight and narrow,” Ricci said to her. “We’ve got Meisten, which is better than nothing. And, far as it goes for the boss’s unplanned contacts, we should look at Thibodeau’s list, try to pinpoint employees most likely to have crossed his path without an appointment over the course of a normal workday. See if that takes us anywhere.”

  “I’ve already been doing that,” Nimec said. “Only name that stands out as a possible is Donald Palardy.”

  “Palardy heads one of the sweep teams,” Thibodeau said. “Rotated out of Brazil ’round the same time I did.”

  Nimec was nodding. “He called in sick Monday.”

  Ricci looked at him.

  “A day after the boss collapsed.”

  “Yeah. And he’s still on the absentee list.”

  Everyone in the room was momentarily quiet.

  “Don’t see how we can read too much into this,” Scull said. “Sweeps are conducted early, right? Before most of us get to work. We’ve no reason to believe he and Gord have ever been in the same room together.”

  “No reason to think they haven’t, either,” Ricci said.

  “I know for sure Palardy’s been inside the boss’s office,” Thibodeau said. “We got four teams in the building. All of them be assigned permanent sections. An’ his section includes the top executive suites.”

  Ricci exchanged glances with him.

  “No shit,” he said.

  “Non, ” Thibodeau said.

  There was more silence in the room.

  “I think we ought to give him a call,” Ricci said.

  * * *

  Lathrop exited the CNN Web site after finding no updated headlines about Roger Gordian’s condition and then restored the Profiler application to his computer screen.

  Blondie’s luscious face reappeared in front of him, enlarged and enhanced from the digital video he’d taken near the carousel in Balboa Park. None to his surprise, the program still hadn’t made her. The only reason he’d bothered running her image through it again was that he’d procured a handful of new investigative files from one of his infoworms — although for some reason this particular worm wasn’t penetrating very deep inside the apple lately and soon would be worthless as an informant. It was part of the natural order of things, Lathrop thought. The ebb and flow. They rose to grace, they fell. They gained access, they lost it. But he had other sources at his disposal in a lot of different places. And there were always prospects to be cultivated among the greedy and disenchanted.

  Leaving his desktop on, he swiveled around in his comfortable
leather office chair and reclined to watch his coon cat toy with a favorite ball of yarn. She prodded it with her front paws to set it rolling and then crouched in readiness to pounce, her tail flicking back and forth on the floor.

  “Okay, Missus Frakes,” he said in a fond tone. “Let’s see you go for it.”

  The cat cooed at the sound of his voice. Then she sprang upon the wound-up yarn and twisted onto her back, holding the ball against her middle with her forelegs, kicking and raking at it with her sharp rear claws.

  Lathrop smiled a little. She would work the thing till it became unraveled and spread loosely across the carpet. Just as he was working his own ball of yarn. The biggest he’d ever chanced upon.

  He sat thinking about what he actually knew, what further information he’d been able to surmise from it, and what choices and opportunities the sum total presented to him.

  His surveillances at Balboa and the harbor parking lot combined to tell a pretty amazing story. Whatever her identity might be, it was certain Blondie was a courier for El Tío. And her purpose in meeting Enrique Quiros had been to deliver the jewelry box for the obscure narco distributer and instruct Enrique to pass it along to the guy he’d then arranged to meet harborside. His name was Palardy. A member of the security or countersnoop team at UpLink International whose gambling jones had gotten him in over his head with some serious operators, and who’d paid off a piece of his debt by turning over classified information about the defense systems of UpLink’s manufacturing compound in Brazil. El Tío’s involvement in the terrorist raid on that base was unclear to Lathrop, but it probably didn’t have much importance at this stage, and he hadn’t concerned himself with it.

  The main thing for him was to keep on top of what was happening now. Because events were already moving fast, and he had the sense they were about to kick up to a breathless pace.

  It was interesting how sellout dupes like Palardy could be so utterly blind to the traps being set for them. How they never realized that the type of men who were using them would keep their hooks in until every bit of usefulness was exhausted. At the harbor, Palardy and his current user had talked about genetic blueprints, disease triggers, stuff Lathrop had needed to research afterward. And there was enough he still had to check out. But despite a lingering question mark or two, he’d gotten the gist of their encounter… and stripped to the bone, it all came down to blackmail and murder. Palardy had been given some kind of biological agent, something new under the sun, and been ordered to take out Roger Gordian with it.

  Lathrop tilted a little farther back in his chair, continuing to watch Missus Frakes relentlessly pull apart the yarn with her teeth and claws.

  That’s the way, all right, he thought. Work the bastard.

  In the Safe Car — ha — ha — Palardy had understandably squawked with resistance. Quiros’s errand would bounce him from the role of informant to killer, and he’d never planned for things to escalate that far. But Quiros pushed, bringing up what dirt he had on him, and that made him shut his mouth and agree to cooperate. It was a variation of a theme Lathrop had seen repeated time and again in the territory he chose to prowl, though one notable distinction about the enactment featuring Quiros and Palardy was that neither had been inclined to get mixed up in Gordian’s assassination. That Quiros was himself muscled into it. This had become apparent from his protestations to Blondie and a couple of indirect comments he’d made to Palardy — the latter being moments of commiseration and empathy that hadn’t exactly caused Lathrop’s eyes to mist. But he supposed he was a cynical audience, having maybe seen the basic plot unfold once too often.

  After that night at the harbor, Lathrop had concentrated on the script he’d drafted for Quiros and Lucio Salazar without their knowledge. It had netted him a sweet take, and the blowout climax promised to be refreshing fun. But in another twenty-four hours, it would be time to move beyond it. Turn a bend, head on out toward virgin soil.

  If he’d needed any incentive to urge him along, nothing could have been better than the news reports about Gordian’s hospitalization.

  Lathrop glanced around at the pretty lady on his computer screen and remembered the afternoon he’d followed Enrique to his rendezvous with her. Remembered watching the carousel make its slow rotations with the “Blue Danube” piping in the background, the rowdy, stoned-out teenagers on the lead horses rising from their saddles, stretching their arms to reach for the silver and brass rings above them, only the gleaming brass worth a prize.

  A smile ghosted at the corners of Lathrop’s mouth again.

  The brass ring.

  He’d gotten hold of it. Without ever climbing aboard the platform, stalking the periphery on his ceaseless, solitary hunt, he’d been the one who caught hold. And that left him having to make two major decisions.

  Namely when to claim his prize and how best to trade on its indescribable value.

  * * *

  “Third time I’ve called, and still no answer except from his machine,” Ricci said. “Where the hell is Palardy?”

  “Who knows? Maybe he went out for some groceries.”

  “He’s supposed to be sick.”

  “Doesn’t have to mean he’s bedridden. A person has to eat, no matter how lousy he feels. If there’s no food in the house, you live alone, you go buy some.”

  “Third time in an hour, Pete. If I’m under the weather and need orange juice or something, I might run over to the corner deli. But I wouldn’t make a whole shopping excursion out of—”

  “Whoa,” Megan said, putting up her hand. “I think you two are getting way ahead of yourselves.”

  They looked at her from their chairs in Nimec’s office.

  “How so?” Nimec said.

  “It could be that he’s turned off the ringer on his phone to get some sleep, or doesn’t hear it, or just doesn’t want to answer.”

  “Or maybe he was feeling better and went out for fresh air,” Scull said. “For all we know, the guy had a stomach bug and is already back to normal.”

  “If that’s the case, why wasn’t he at work today?”

  Scull shrugged. “He might not have felt normal till earlier tonight. I’m only agreeing with Meg that—”

  “You see me phone his section chief ten minutes ago? You remember our conversation?”

  “Sure I do—”

  “What he told me, this section chief, was that the last time anybody heard from Palardy was when he phoned in yesterday, and that the guy sounded sick as a dog, and he was supposed to call back today to report how he was doing. And never did.”

  “I said I remembered—”

  “The section chief, his name’s Hernandez, also said he thought it was very odd that Palardy didn’t call. In fact, I’m pretty sure he started to use the word irresponsible, too, but checked himself.”

  “Probably didn’t want to get him in hot water with us,” Thibodeau said.

  “I agree. But that doesn’t change anything,” Nimec said. “The sweeps aren’t a haphazard affair. If they become disorganized, we start to have countersurveillance lapses.”

  “Exactly,” Ricci said. “Guys on these teams show up for duty at five-thirty, six o’clock in the morning. And unless it happens that one of them wakes up feeling too sick to come in, like Palardy did Monday—”

  “Or a last-minute emergency comes up… car breaks down on the highway, kid’s got a fever—”

  “Which wasn’t the case—”

  “Then Hernandez has got to have his people give him notice the day before,” Thibodeau said, finishing Ricci’s sentence. “Arrange to pull a replacement off another team. Be sure every area in the building due for a sweep is covered.”

  Ricci nodded.

  “Especially when it’s a team leader who’s going to be out,” he said. “Hernandez is sticking with his man until he learns the score, and I’d do the same. But Palardy being MIA is a bigger deal than he wanted us to think.”

  Megan shook her head. “I’m still not sure I unders
tand what the three of you are saying—”

  “What I’m saying is Palardy might be too sick to call. Might’ve passed out same as the boss.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

  “You’ve made quite a huge leap,” she said. “It’s possible we’ve hit on a disciplinary problem rather than anything having to do with Gord.”

  “Meg’s right,” Scull said. “Don Palardy appears for work tomorrow morning, fit as a fiddle, your whole discussion’s moot. Like I said before, I can’t see reading a whole lot into his absence. Not at this stage.”

  Ricci looked at him.

  “Maybe not,” he said. “But I tell you something, Scull. He doesn’t show bright and early, I want to know his home address. Because wherever he lives, I’m heading over there to see what’s up.”

  * * *

  Dr. Eric Oh thought they resembled water lilies.

  Clusters of beautiful, perfectly formed lilies floating on the surface of a quiet pond.

  This quality of simple structural perfection was the essence of the virus’s enduring success as a life form. It was also what made them ideally suited for comparison study with an electron microscope. Every virion of a type was identical. An intact specimen of a virus from the blood of a patient in Mozambique would be the mirror image of a specimen of the same family, genus, and strain grown in culture at a California research laboratory, assuming it was likewise undamaged. To an experienced researcher it would look as though they had been manufactured at a single factory, on a single, orderly assembly line. You saw one, you’d seen them all.

  At three o’clock in the morning, Eric was still at the Stanford lab, examining the photographs he’d snapped with its state-of-the-art Hitachi instrument beside those he’d called up on his computer from the vast database of EM pictures compiled and shared by medical and biological research facilities around the globe.