Next Victim

by Michael Prescott

  Now let it cut one more.

  He dropped the metal bar, twisted sideways, and grabbed her hand, clamping his gloved fingers on hers.

  "You don’t win," he said.

  He pushed her arm slowly backward, toward the seam joining her helmet to her suit.

  One cut, one gouge or slice, and whether he opened her neck or not, she would be dead just the same. Dead from the same toxins that were speeding into his bloodstream with every pump of his heart.

  She braced her left hand against his arm, fighting to hold him off. Valiant try, but he was stronger. Stronger than she imagined. Stronger than any of them had ever guessed. They had snickered at him, the company man, the supervisor, with his stiff, tidy formality and his spotless eyeglasses and crisp, measured words. He was a martinet and a toady, a politician, not a real agent at all. Capable enough when behind a desk, but helpless in the field.

  That was how they’d seen him—while at night he was Mobius, the dark riddle their best brains couldn’t solve.

  They had always underestimated him. He was not an ordinary man. He was a thing of will.

  And with his last will, he would drive the blade into Tess McCallum’s neck and take her with him into the dark.

  "You’re dead, Tess." He grunted, forcing the knife closer. "Dead like me."

  Her body strained as she grappled with him. The blade touched the folds of neoprene rubber at the base of her helmet.

  He pushed forward with the full weight of his upper body, forcing the knife closer….

  His visor brushed hers. Tess’s face was inches from his own, separated from his by two layers of clear plastic. Her eyes were big with fear and desperation. She couldn’t hold him off, and she knew it.

  He was almost there. Time for one last effort.

  A killing thrust.

  Now.

  He rammed the knife home, hard enough to puncture the thick rubber and the throat behind it—

  But nothing happened.

  His hand, his arm, hadn’t moved.

  Wouldn’t move.

  Tess shoved him back. He couldn’t fight her. He was suddenly weak, his body useless.

  He fell off her like a heap of bedding and lay helpless on the floor.

  A shiver scurried through him, making his teeth clack loudly, and a spasm of pain roared up his lower back. Abruptly he twisted around, bent at an impossible angle by a muscular contraction that just as abruptly released, leaving him limp and dazed, until the muscles of his abdomen clutched tight, compressing him into a fetal ball of pain, a moaning thing inside the loose folds of his suit. New pain galvanized his rib cage, his thighs, his shoulders, whipsawing him from side to side. Something spattered his face mask as he shook his head—mucus, runnels of phlegm escaping from his nose, his mouth—he was leaking, his insides streaming out of him in a river of snot and drool. His glasses were grimed with the stuff, he couldn’t see, he was blind inside his helmet, and all he could hear was the idiot roar of the air blower and a series of guttural noises that seemed to be coming from him.

  New waves of convulsions ravaged him. He was tossed by tides of pain, and then finally the tides receded and left him beached and winded, arms and legs too heavy to move, face coated with a wet, gluey caul, eyes clogged, ears deafened, alone in a void and sinking, sinking into the soapy water of the bathtub.

  When he looked up, he saw his mother standing over him, the gun in her hand.

  He opened his mouth to ask why she’d hurt him, but the question faded away, unasked.

  Tess watched Andrus die.

  He was Andrus again. Not Mobius. Not now.

  He had nearly succeeded in knifing her when the muscle spasms and convulsions started. The VX, invading his system in massive quantities, had manhandled him with ruthless ferocity, and all she could do was drag herself safely away from his thrashing limbs, then watch.

  She knew he was in pain, and part of her was almost sorry about it, but the greater part was sorry for Angie Callahan and Paul Voorhees and Scott Maple and William Hayde and all the others.

  Finally he stopped moving. His faceplate was slimed with nasal secretions, but she could still see his face, pressed against the plastic, big-eyed and agape.

  "Wipe out," Tess whispered, and then she struggled to her feet in the bloated orange suit and made her way out of the room.

  48

  Tess had never been to Andrus’s house.

  That this was true of the house in LA came as no surprise. What seemed odd, when she thought about it, was that in all the time she’d worked with him in Denver, she had never once visited his house there.

  Now she knew why he had invited no one to his home. He kept too many secrets there.

  The media were already outside the house in the predawn darkness. She saw Myron Levine doing a live stand-up in the glare of a portable arc lamp. Levine saw her as she walked up the front steps and tried making eye contact, but she turned quickly away. She had nothing to say to him.

  Her FBI creds got her past the uniformed cop at the door. Inside, forensics experts from the LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division were at work, bagging and tagging. Cops and federal agents stood around everywhere, contaminating the scene. Radios crackled and cell phones chirped. A TV was on, showing one of the newscasts. Levine again—she just couldn’t get away from that guy.

  "Find anything interesting?" she asked the first familiar face, which belonged to Larkin.

  "Oh, it’s all interesting. Hey, are you all right?"

  "I’m fine. They got to me in the air-lock corridor outside ATSAC. Decontaminated my hazmat suit, then made me take the longest shower in history to be sure there was no VX on me."

  "So you’re okay?"

  "The suit held up fine. They checked it for leaks. Not a one."

  "No, I mean—you’re okay?"

  She got it. "Me, the human being? Well, it’s the first time I’ve ever killed a longtime colleague and personal friend."

  "How do you, uh, feel about that?"

  "Pretty good, actually." She smiled at him. "Pretty damn good."

  Larkin shook his head thoughtfully. "You know, I wasted a lot of brownnosing on Andrus."

  "Think of it as practice for the next AD."

  "True. I have honed my skills. So I guess it’s not a total loss."

  She couldn’t tell if he was joking. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  The house was a leased bungalow in Van Nuys, a nondescript district of the San Fernando Valley. The living room and dining area were decorated in such generic good taste that Tess suspected the rental had come fully furnished. But something was missing.

  "A dog," she said.

  Larkin glanced at her.

  "Andrus said he had a dog. A terrier. Always talked about how he had to go home and feed it."

  "He lied. No dog here. No dog food in the pantry, no water dish, no poo-poo in the backyard."

  "Why would he make up a dog?"

  "To sound normal." Larkin shrugged. "You know, domestic. But normal he definitely was not. Come on, I’ll show you."

  Larkin led her past the master bedroom and a small study—rooms like the others, tidy and uncluttered and empty of personality.

  "By the way," he said, "I just got word the mayor wants to meet with you, bestow his thanks for saving his ass—and everybody else’s."

  "The mayor? I should’ve changed."

  "There may be a press conference later. You’re a superstar, Tess."

  "You’ll have to start brownnosing me now."

  "I already am. Didn’t you notice?"

  "I did, actually."

  It looked like this was Black Tiger all over again—only bigger. Maybe she would put her celebrity status to better use this time. She was tired of idling in neutral. She was ready—well, ready to start living again.

  A nice feeling. If only other people hadn’t had to die to make it possible.

  This reminded her of a loose end in the case. "Did you find the body?" she asked as the
y entered a rear hall.

  "What body?"

  "Scott Maple—the grad student from the chemistry lab."

  "We found something better than a body. We found him."

  "Alive?"

  "Luckiest young man in LA."

  Larkin opened a door to a stairwell that descended into a narrow basement.

  "Vegetable cellar or some damn thing," Larkin said. "That’s where Andrus kept him."

  Tess stood at the top of the stairs and beamed her flashlight into the dark. She saw stone walls, a wooden chair, a worktable strewn with coiled wire and batteries and a roll of Mobius’s ubiquitous duct tape.

  "He would’ve killed the kid," Larkin said, "except for something Maple mentioned in the lab. He said he was doing bomb calorimetry. You know what that is?"

  "Put a sample inside a sealed container, then blow it up in a bucket of water. Difference of the water temperature before and after tells you how many calories were released by the blast, which equals the calorie content of the sample."

  Larkin was impressed. "Very good. Anyway, I guess Andrus figured anyone who knew how to assemble a bomb calorimeter—"

  "Could assemble a bomb," she finished. She remembered thinking that Mobius had never demonstrated any knowledge of explosives. "He knew a small bomb was the most efficient way to disperse the VX, but he wasn’t sure he could build one without blowing himself up."

  "So he drafted young Mr. Maple. Forced him out of the chem lab and into the trunk of Andrus’s car at knifepoint. Drove him here and kept him down in the cellar for the past twenty-four hours or so. Padlocked the cellar door whenever he went out. Maple shouted for help, but no one could hear him from outside."

  "How’s he doing now?"

  "He’ll spend some time in the hospital. Dehydration, exhaustion, some contusions and cuts from his run-ins with Andrus—or from beating his fists against the door. But he’ll be okay."

  "Thank God for that." Tess took another long look into the cellar, then switched off her flashlight. "Why do you suppose Andrus kept him alive after the two bombs had been made?"

  Larkin shrugged. "Insurance policy, in case he needed another bomb, maybe."

  "I don’t think so. I think he might have wanted someone left alive who could explain what happened. He wanted his story to be told. He wanted newspaper clippings."

  "Hey," Larkin said, "that reminds me."

  He escorted her to the guest bedroom at the far end of the hall.

  The rest of the house betrayed no hint of individuality. But this room was different. It had been Mobius’s sanctuary.

  One wall was covered with a collage of photos ringing the front page of the Albuquerque Tribune, the same page Tess had seen in the online collection.

  She stared at the yellowed sheet of newspaper, then at the faded photographs. Gerald Beckett at various ages, with his birth parents. Later, with his adoptive parents, Mr. and Mrs. Andrus.

  Her gaze returned to the newspaper headline: "WIPE OUT" IN ALCOMITA HOJO’S.

  "He knew the song might lead to him," she said.

  "What song?" Larkin asked. "‘Bad Moon Rising’?"

  "What?"

  "That was the song on the tape."

  "No. It was a surf rock tune from the early sixties. ‘Wipe Out.’ The same song his mother—Wait a minute. What did you do with the tape after you picked it up from me?"

  "Delivered it—" He stopped.

  "To Andrus," she finished.

  "Shit."

  "He switched tapes. Once he had it in his possession, he substituted another recording—one that couldn’t be linked to his past." She almost smiled. "‘Bad Moon Rising.’ He probably figured Gaines would have a profiling field day with that one. I’m surprised he didn’t pick ‘Helter-Skelter.’"

  "You think it’s funny?"

  "Almost. In a way." Then she remembered Dodge, and her smile left her. "No. It’s not funny. I told him that Dodge and I had heard the tape. We were the only people who knew its actual contents. That’s why he went to Dodge’s house."

  "His personal residence? Cops have unlisted addresses."

  "And Andrus had access to the bureau’s computer system—which includes a database of everybody’s address, listed or unlisted."

  "Point taken. So he, uh, got rid of Dodge."

  "And tried to get rid of me. He wanted me off the case before I could talk to anyone. The leak to the media was just an excuse. He had to get me out of the field office—and back in my motel room."

  "Which was sabotaged."

  "Yes. Although I suspect he did that earlier. He’d brought me to LA just to kill me. He didn’t need any additional incentives."

  Larkin let out a puff of breath. "Let’s face it. He was the boss from hell."

  "Maybe that’s where he is now."

  He gave her a quizzical look. "You believe in that stuff?"

  "It would be nice to think there’s some ultimate justice."

  "He’s dead. Isn’t that justice enough?"

  She thought of Paul, what he had been, what she had lost.

  "No," she said. "Not nearly."

  The mayor was waiting. Tess left Larkin in the room that had been Mobius’s inner sanctum and returned to the front of the house.

  "Well, look who’s here. The hero of the hour."

  The maddening nasal voice could belong to only one person.

  She turned and saw the Nose detach himself from a crowd of agents.

  "Hero of the next fifteen minutes, anyway," she said.

  "Don’t be modest. Use it for all it’s worth."

  "I intend to."

  "You know, McCallum"—for once, Michaelson met her gaze—"I had to help get the brass and the politicos out of that room and through the air lock. But when I saw that you weren’t with us, I was going to come back for you."

  She said nothing. He took her silence as skepticism.

  "Really. I was. But then the goddamn bomb went off, and we had to shut the door and get to ground level because the gas was all over. We had no protective gear." He gave a little laugh. "And you think this is all a line of bullshit, don’t you?"

  "Actually, I don’t. I believe you." She smiled. "I don’t think you respect me enough to lie to me."

  "Oh, I respect you. I just don’t like you. No, on second thought, I guess I don’t respect you, either. But that’ll just be our secret."

  He was about to walk away, but she decided to tell him something. "You know what, Dick?" He hated being called Dick. "For a few minutes, I was almost convinced you were Mobius."

  "Were you?"

  "A lot of things pointed to it. But, of course, I should’ve known I was wrong. I’d seen the artist’s sketches of Mobius in his various disguises. He was a man with bland, totally unmemorable features." She showed him a kindly smile. "And let’s face it, Dick—there are some features you just can’t hide."

  The Nose blinked, then understood. His hand went unconsciously to his proboscis.

  "You’d better hope we never work together again, McCallum," he growled.

  "Believe me," she said, "I do."

  She could have left then, but Levine and the rest of the reporters were still outside, and she felt suddenly too tired to fend them off. She retreated out a side door and leaned against a eucalyptus tree in the yard, screened from the media by a high fence overgrown with oleander.

  The stars were fading. There was a glow in the east. A new day.

  The side door eased open, and Larkin poked his head out.

  "Tess? The mayor…"

  "In a minute."

  He left her alone. She thought about the story in the Tribune, the eight-year-old boy whose mother had gone crazy. She thought about the laboratory in Oregon under government contract to make chemical poison.

  There seemed to be no connection between those two things, yet they had come together like the words and music of a song. An old song, as old as history. Insanity breeding insanity, the stockpiled weapons of war replaced by new and deadlier armam
ents, terror giving birth to new terror. An endless cycle, a loop circling from one generation to the next, returning always to the same point. A Möbius strip.

  Sow the wind, harvest the whirlwind. And no one learned, ever.

  Yet it was morning, and the sun was rising, and it was Easter.

  That had to count for something.

  Tess stood unmoving for a long time and watched the brightening sky.

  Author’s Note

  As always, readers are invited to drop by my Web site at www.michaelprescott.net .

  The characters and plot of Next Victim are purely fictional, but the facilities, agencies, and procedures described are based on fact. The underground ATSAC command center in downtown Los Angeles does exist, but the installation is off-limits and highly secret. My depiction of it is based on the few available details, embellished by my research into similar installations elsewhere.

  VX nerve agent is real, as are the antidote kits used against it and the emergency procedures initiated in the event of a chemical attack. Large stockpiles of VX remain in existence at several military bases, including the Umatilla depot in northeast Oregon. Officially the U.S. government no longer manufactures VX and will have disposed of its remaining inventory by 2005. A secret program to make new reserves of VX is my fictional invention—though perhaps not a wholly implausible one, given the realities of war in the twenty-first century.

  I began writing this book before the terrorist attacks of September 11 and completed it afterward. By the time I finished, the story was more timely and less farfetched than I’d ever wanted it to be. Throughout this process, I received valuable and generous assistance from my editor, Doug Grad, and my agent, Jane Dystel. Special thanks to them—and to everyone else who offered me advice and help, as well as encouragement and reassurance in these difficult times.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8