TAP DOUBT - Preview
Chapter 1
The Threat
13 Years Ago
Moscow Institute of Chemical Studies
Maria Elena Zelanskaya swallowed bile as she stood before the five men seated in the cramped laboratory. Her heart raced like a thoroughbred in the homestretch as she watched them eyeing her, each a picture of boredom, interest, patience or doubt. That they were all large men and she barely reached 5’ 2 made her hands shake. That they were powerful members of the committee and soldiers had her near tears of self-doubt and worry.
They could make her career if they liked her presentation.
They could break her if they didn’t.
“Gentlemen,” she said, almost stumbling on the word. Nothing about these five conveyed gentleness or warmth or any kind of human feeling. They were killers, all of them, trained in the fields of Afghanistan, veterans of campaigns too horrible for a chemistry student like her to comprehend. They were timber wolves roaming the frozen steppes and she was a lone hare trapped between them, offering them a tempting meal.
Maria Elena couldn’t feel more naked and exposed if she was one of the cheap slut dancing girls on display at the Western-style strip clubs that now flourished in Moscow—the result of the East/West clash insuring the worst of both cultures.
She breathed deeply to calm herself and said, “There is a man in America named Nicholas Kuiper who owns a company called EnviroTech. This company is designed for one purpose: to clean up the most heavily polluted chemical waste sites in their country.”
Several of them stirred at this idea, shaking their heads or rubbing thick calloused hands through full beards in amazement at the concept. Mother Russia was still hiding its own poisonous wastes, burying them like they did at Chernobyl, covering up like a cat in a sand box.
She rushed on. “This company has forty-three highly contaminated sites under contract with the American government in a project they call the Superfund.” She stumbled a bit on the uniquely western word, having no equivalent in Russian. “They devise methods for how to turn their dangerous waste into safe, pure water.”
“So?” Ivan Petrovsky, a hard fat man in a gray coat and beaver hat, made his displeasure known—his body language clearly stating his desire to be somewhere else. “What does this misguided foolishness have to do with us?”
“Let me explain. No, let me show you.” Maria stepped behind a laboratory table and pointed at a large glass bowl filled with a yellow/green liquid. “This compound is the exact equivalent, in chemical composition, to a small lake in Pennsylvania, that EnviroTech is charged with cleaning up.”
Two men sat straighter in the student chairs, making them creak a sound like someone dying, far away, in anguish. Maria Elena rushed on, trying to shake the image from her brain. If they decided she was wasting their time, she might be the next poor soul to make that sound.
She picked up a beaker filled with a sickly rust-colored liquid, the shade of a long abandoned Zil. “And this is a formula I tailored to blend specifically with the chemicals in that lake.”
She paused. There was so much at stake. Her status as a student was in jeopardy due to the latest round of purges and decreasing funding of the university. She had to make them see.
A voice spoke up and she saw Alexander Krakov, a red-bearded bear of a man sitting at ease in the too-small chair, his expression guarded. “How do you know the American chemistry?”
“I...um...I asked for it. The Americans...I asked...”
“You asked for it? What are you saying? Who did you ask?” Expressions turned hard against her and Maria Elena felt like crying in fear and frustration.
“I sent a letter to a friend in America.” An exchange student named Ron Driekman she had met last summer when he was a tourist. A science student, his major was particle physics, they shared a love for the classroom and had written several times to each other, long letters from worlds so far apart.
“My friend asked the American government about the chemical composition and they gave it to him...”
Loud grumbling and sounds of disbelief flowed toward her. “They gave it to him? What nonsense is this?” Oleg Mechel, a skeletal old man with a reputation that made the others fade into insignificance—some say that he once worked directly for Stalin himself when he was young and hungry—snorted. The idea that someone could ask a government for anything and the government would simply hand over the information was so foreign to Russian experience that it sounded like a fairy tale. His derision made her hear that death-shriek again.
But Alexander waved a paw of a hand, quieting them before they got too far out of control. “I want to hear this.”
Maria Elena, grateful for his interest, played the rest of her presentation directly to Alexander, ignoring the crude remarks and guttural barking of the others. Animals, she thought. But such dangerous animals. They reminded her of the massive sea lions in the frozen north.
She said, “Perhaps you should put on the masks in front of you.” Each man had a brightly colored plastic respirator. Gold, purple, red and blue, with green filters on the side, she had gotten them from her professor before staging this meeting.
Holding the beaker clumsily in one hand she picked up a small cage with the other. In it several white mice raced back and forth, whiskers twitching, noses testing the air, sensing danger. She held the cage over the bowl for a full minute before setting it back on the table.
“You see? The chemicals, which the Americans think are so deadly, are only a problem if they make direct contact with the skin. They cannot harm you through the air. However...”
Gesturing like a Gypsy magician she held up the beaker for display. She could see their attention focus as she tipped the rusty brown liquid, letting it pour slowly into the bowl. The colors merged, swirled together in unholy patterns that reminded her of the cancerous cells she’d been forced to study in biology. Sick cells all of them, twisted and foul.
She set down the empty beaker and grasped a long-handled spatula, using it to stir the mixture. With one hand she held a respirator to her own face. She picked up the cage and again held it above the bowl.
This time the result amazed them. The mice began to thrash around in a frenzy, clawing at the cage in a desperate attempt to escape. They slowed, twitched and their bodies curled as the poison they were breathing overwhelmed their lungs. In seconds all of them were dead. Ventilation fans kicked in and removed the remaining gas.
She had the men’s attention now. All of them sat upright, wide-eyed and incredulous.
“A chemical weapon?” asked Oleg, her harshest critic. “You have made a chemical weapon?”
“I have done much more than that,” said Maria Elena, her voice firm now that they’d seen her proof, her eyes glowing with triumph. “I have created forty-three chemical weapons.”
“Explain, please.” This from an intent Alexander Krakov.
“Instead of this small bowl full,” she gestured, “each EnviroTech site contains millions of gallons of waste.
“Imagine,” she told the group of feral men facing her, “What would happen if we captured those pumps that are cleaning these places and pumped in our own chemicals to convert each site into a small factory of death?”
An uproar. Four voices each trying to out-bellow the others. A cacophony of discord and dissent struggling for dominance, all directed at the idea that Maria Elena had proposed.
“Madness!” cried one. “How could it work?” demanded another. “Foolishness,” and “Insane,” and “The Americans would never allow us near these places. How would we deliver the poisons? It isn’t possible.”
Finally, the verdict. “Belongs in an asylum,” said Oleg, followed by angry glares as four men gathered themselves and clumped from the room
Maria Elena felt her shaky scholarship crumble and die, just like the dead lumps of mice lying in the cage. Her eyes stung with tears of failure but when she wiped them away she was surprised to see o
ne man remaining.
Alexander Krakov sat watching her. On his face was an expression Maria Elena could only describe as wonder.
Chapter 2
Let the Battle Begin
The punch flew straight and true into the jaw of Richard Blackwell and sent him flying. He landed on his immaculately tuxedoed backside, slid across the sidewalk and bumped off over the curb to lie limp and motionless in the gutter.
A world-class blow, it started from somewhere way back there, a windmill sweep of the entire body, as classic and elegant as any comic book art, with legs akimbo and grace completely absent. It was Captain America draped in the flag smashing Hitler on the jaw.
The punch was the small fist of every fourth-grader on every playground whose lunch money has been taken once too often by the sixth-grade bully. That it was thrown by a middle-aged out of shape chemist at a forty-five-year-old tycoon did nothing to lessen its importance or its poetry. It was a longing for justice and a scream of rebellion, summed up in one great surge of muscle and bone.
And in the end, it was as futile a gesture as it was fleeting and beautiful; a rose spreading its scent on the boot that crushed it, a butterfly wanting to matter.
Nick Kuiper overbalanced by his own momentum grabbed a wall for support, astounded at what he’d done.
A voice behind him said, “Put ’em up,” and he turned to see James Blackwell, seventy-four and silver haired, standing before him in an old-style pugilist pose, left fist in front and guarding, right hand a trip hammer waiting to strike.
“Jeez,” Nick said, “I don’t want to fight you.”
“You should have thought about that before you decked my son.”
They stood on an empty street outside of the conference hall where the Blackwells had just stolen his company. The time was nearly midnight and a light drizzle gave the scene a Hollywood feel of deep shadows and smeared red and green lights reflecting off the wet pavement.
James Blackwell, in a black tuxedo, looked dignified and important. Only the cauliflower ear and battered nose suggested he was anything but a businessman.
“You’re too old,” Nick said, and a fist he never even saw coming smashed into his nose, breaking it.
“You don’t,” punch, “know much,” punch, “about boxing,” James said, landing a right cross that spun Nick into the ground. “I was Golden Gloves champion two years running, you know. Won forty-four of forty-six bouts.”
Nick shook his head and climbed to his feet. His ears were ringing. He swung a wild one that James blocked and counter-punched with a jab that rocked him back on his heels.
“You swing like that, you never hit anything,” James said, as Nick found his feet again.
“Short quick jabs are the key.” He demonstrated by pounding blows into Nick’s arms and body. “Don’t watch my hands,” punch, “or my eyes,” punch, “watch my shoulders. The shoulders never lie.”
Nick followed his advice and managed to block a punch and land a feeble blow of his own.
“That’s better,” James said with a smile as he bored in.
Nick was on the ground again and didn’t know how he’d gotten there. He felt the scratch of damp concrete and a piece of candy wrapper stuck to his cheek. Stubbornly, he climbed back to his feet. His legs were rubbery but they still held him up.
James moved around him, jabbing at will. “Look boy, I know you’re pissed off at losing your company.” He landed a left hook that dropped Nick in his tracks. “But it’s not our fault; you’re the one who made charitable donations instead of buying back EnviroTech stock.”
Getting up was harder now. Nick used both hands to push against his knee so he could stand, raised his head and his fists and said, “What you do is still wrong.”
James danced in and delivered two quick body shots. Nick’s legs buckled and he landed on his butt.
“I won’t debate morals with you, but what we do is legal. I see to that.”
Nick pulled himself up, somehow, and said, “Law’s wrong.” He spit blood. “And screw you.” He took another feeble swing and James hit him in his mouth, loosening a tooth.
Things got a bit vague after that. He took a fist in his mid-section that knocked his breath out and sent him to his knees. He saw James back off and wait for him to recover and was surprised at the old man’s sense of fair play.
“You should stay down, boy,” James said. “You keep getting up, I might hurt you.”
That made no sense at all to Nick, who hurt absolutely everywhere already. He climbed grimly to his feet and James batted his arms aside and pushed Nick so hard he fell, landing in a puddle with a great splash.
“Dammit! Stay down.”
Nick rolled over and used a parking meter to pull himself up. He staggered away from it and put up his fists. One of his eyes wouldn’t open all the way and the other was a bit blurry.
“Jesus,” James said. “You have guts, boy. No brains at all, but yards of guts.”
Nick saw Richard struggling to his feet, but it didn’t compute.
“I’m going to put you down now,” James said with a touch of regret. “It’s for your own good.”
Nick felt the punch slam into his chin and then he was flat on his back looking up at a too-bright streetlight, blinking rain out of his eyes. His clothes were soaked and his mind clouded. But he knew he’d been knocked down so he had to get up. “Get knocked down six times, get up seven.” Words from his father; words to live by.
He heard footsteps approaching as he rolled onto his side and saw Richard’s shoe coming straight at his head. Richard got in three more vicious kicks before his father pulled him off.
The war had begun.
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