Gideon's Corpse

by Douglas Preston

  Gideon said nothing.

  “I’m telling you this because I’m pretty sure you’ll want to join us. After all, you’re one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. You will certainly understand. And…” He paused. “It seems you love my daughter.”

  Gideon flushed again. “Don’t bring her into it.”

  “Oh, but I will…I will.”

  “Blaine, you’re wasting time!” said Dart.

  “We’ve lots of time,” said Blaine calmly, turning back to Gideon with a smile. “What we don’t have time for is an accident. Frankly, Gideon, I don’t think you’re the kind of person who’d be able to smash that on the ground. And kill millions.” He raised an eyebrow inquisitorially.

  “I will if it keeps it out of your hands.”

  “But you haven’t heard yet what we plan to do with it!” This was said in a genial, protesting fashion.

  Gideon said nothing. Blaine wanted to have his say—let him.

  “I was in the British intelligence service known as MI6. Captain Gurulé here is CIA. Dart is not just involved in NEST but has also worked for a black agency at DIA. Because of our mutual background in intelligence, we all know something you don’t, which is this: America is secretly at war. With an enemy that makes the old Soviets look like the Keystone Kops.”

  Gideon waited.

  “The very survival of our country is in the balance.” Blaine paused, took a deep breath, and began again. “Let me tell you about this enemy. They are single-minded. They are sober, extremely hardworking, and highly intelligent. They have the second largest economy in the world and it is growing at five hundred percent the rate of ours. The enemy has an immensely large and powerful military, they have advanced space weapons, and they have the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world.

  “This enemy saves forty percent of what they earn. They have more university graduates than America has people. In the enemy’s country, more people are studying English than there are English speakers in the entire world. They know all about us and we know almost nothing about them. This enemy is ruthless. They operate the last imperial, colonialist power on earth, which occupies and brutalizes many of the formerly independent countries surrounding it.

  “This enemy has brazenly and openly stolen trillions of dollars of our intellectual property. In return, they send us poisoned food and medicine. They don’t play by the rules of international law. They are corrupt. They oppress freedom of speech, oppress the free exercise of religion, and murder and imprison journalists and dissidents on an almost daily basis. They have openly cornered the market in those strategic metals critical to our electronic world. This enemy, having little oil, now dominates the world’s technologies and markets in solar, wind, and nuclear power. As such, they are on track to become the new Saudi Arabia. This enemy has accumulated almost two trillion of our own dollars through unfair currency and trade practices. If dumped on the world market, this sum would be enough to annihilate our currency and wreck our economy in a single day. Basically, they have us by the bollocks.

  “Worst of all: this enemy despises us. They see how we conduct business in Washington, and they’ve concluded that our democratic system is an abject failure. And they think we Americans are weak, lazy, whiny, self-important global has-beens, inflated with a false sense of entitlement. In this, they are probably correct.”

  Blaine’s rolling, mesmerizing speech ceased, leaving him breathing heavily, his face slick with sweat. Gideon felt sick to his stomach, as if the words had been physically bludgeoning him. Still he held the smallpox up.

  “They have the population, the money, the brains, the will, and the guts to beggar us. They have specific plans to do this. And they are in fact doing it. While America just sits on its arse, doing nothing in return. It’s a one-sided war: they’re fighting, we’re surrendering.”

  The novelist leaned forward. “Well, Gideon, not every American is ready to surrender. Those of us in this room, along with a small group of other like-minded individuals, are not going to let this happen. We’re going to save our country.”

  Gideon desperately tried to order his thoughts. Blaine was a powerfully persuasive and charismatic speaker. “And the smallpox? Where does that come in?”

  “Surely you can now guess where that comes in. We’re going to release it in five of the enemy’s cities. The enemy’s great vulnerability is their population density and their dependence on trade. As the virus spreads like wildfire through the virgin human population, the world will impose a quarantine on the infected country—it will have no choice. We know that for a fact: response to a smallpox event is detailed in a highly classified NATO plan.”

  He smiled triumphantly, as if the operation had already taken place. “With a quarantine, that country’s borders will be sealed. Everything will be stopped or blocked: flights, roads, railroads, ports, even trails. The country will remain quarantined as long as the disease is present. Our epidemiologist tells us it might be years before the disease can be recontained. By that time, the enemy’s economy will be back where it was in the fifties. The eighteen fifties.”

  “They’ll lash out with nuclear weapons,” Gideon said.

  “True, but right now they don’t have all that many, and not of high quality. We will take down most of their missiles in flight. A few of our cities might be hit, but then we will massively retaliate. After all, it is war.” He shrugged.

  Gideon stared at him. “You’re crazy. They’re not our enemy. This whole plan is insane.”

  “Really, Gideon, you’re smarter than that.” Blaine held out his hand in a supplicating gesture. “Gideon. Join us, please. Give me the smallpox.”

  Gideon backed toward the door. “I won’t be part of this. I can’t.”

  “Don’t disappoint me. You’re one of the few with the brains to see the truth in my words. I’m trusting you to think about this—really think about what I’ve said. This is a country that only a generation ago murdered thirty million of their own people. They don’t place the same value on human life that we do. They’d do it to us—if they could.”

  “It’s monstrous. You’re talking about murdering millions. I’ve heard enough.”

  “Think of Alida—”

  “Shut up about Alida!” Gideon found his arm trembling, his voice cracking, the soldiers backing away in fear as he waved the puck about.

  “No!” Blaine entreated him. “Wait!”

  “Tell the soldiers to lay down their guns! Now it’s my turn to count to five. One—!”

  “For God’s sake, no!” Blaine cried. “No here, not near Washington. You release that smallpox, you’ll do to America what we were going to do to—”

  “Look into my eyes if you don’t believe it. Tell the soldiers to put down their guns! Two…”

  “Oh my God.” Blaine’s hands shook. “Gideon, I beg you, don’t do it.”

  “Three…”

  “You won’t do it. You won’t.”

  “I said, look into my eyes, Blaine. Four…” He cocked his hand. He really was going to do it. And—finally—Blaine saw that.

  “Lower the guns!” Blaine cried. “Lay them down!”

  “Five!” Gideon screamed.

  “Down! Down!”

  The guns went down with a clatter, the soldiers clearly terrified. Even Dart and the lieutenant threw their weapons down.

  “Hands up!” Gideon demanded.

  All hands went up.

  “You son of a bitch, don’t do this!” Dart yelled.

  Gideon edged around, past the laboratory table, one hand still raised, the other behind his back. He had very little time. He reached the door, pushed it open with his knee. Then he spun around, took a fresh grasp on the puck, and hurled it to the floor with all his might, simultaneously darting out and racing down the hall.

  As he ran, he heard the puck shatter, the broken pieces ricocheting around the ready room—and then an absolute chaos of shouting, scrambling, running, while, rising above it all, ca
me a great and terrible roar from Blaine, like a lion speared through the heart.

  72

  SIMON BLAINE stumbled backward with a cry as the puck struck the floor and split open, spewing its contents with a puff of condensation, the pieces of plastic and glass bouncing off the door frame and skittering across the floor. He could see the crystalline powder melt on contact with the floor.

  With lightning clarity his mind saw the future: the sealing off of Washington and its suburbs, the quarantine, the inexorable spread of the disease, the frantic and useless vaccination efforts, the galloping pandemic, the mobilizing of the National Guard, the riots, the ports closed and borders sealed, curfews, states of emergency, bombing sorties, war along the borders with Canada and Mexico… And of course the total collapse of the US economy. He saw these things with a certainty born of knowledge. These were not speculations: this was exactly how it was going to happen, because he had already seen it happen to the enemy in their computer simulations, over and over again.

  All this flashed through his brain in a few seconds. He knew they were all likely infected already; the disease was as catching as the common cold, and the amount of smallpox in the puck represented a staggering quantity of virus, enough to directly infect almost a hundred million people. With the shattering of the puck, it had been rendered airborne. They were already, all of them, breathing it in. He and the rest of them were dead men.

  He saw all this with a horrific lucidity. And then he became aware of the shouts, the cries of the soldiers, the hollering of Dart.

  “Don’t move,” he said in a commanding voice. “Don’t stir the air. Stop yelling. Shut up.”

  They obeyed him. Instant silence.

  “We need to get the building sealed,” he said, with a strange, sudden calm that surprised even himself. “Now. If we can keep everyone inside, we might just contain it.”

  “But what about us?” Dart asked, his face white.

  “We’re finished,” said Blaine. “Now we need to save our country.”

  A long silence. A soldier suddenly screamed and bolted, leaping over the doorsill and tearing off down the hall. Without hesitation, Blaine drew his weapon, took careful aim, and pulled the trigger. The old Peacemaker kicked with a roar and the soldier went down, screaming and gargling.

  “Fuck this, I’m putting a suit on,” Dart said, his voice breaking, scrabbling at the rack, pulling down suits. “We’ll be safe in the lab!” Several suits fell off the rack with a crash and now the soldiers rushed in, grabbing at suits, shoving one another, all semblance of discipline vanished.

  Multiply that panic by a hundred million, Blaine thought. That’s what the country was facing.

  His eye fell back on the faint, damp patches where the crystallized virus and its substrate had sprayed across the floor and walls. It was unspeakable. He couldn’t believe Gideon had actually done it. Blaine knew he was perfectly willing to give his life for his country—in fact he had expected to—but not like this. Not like this.

  And then he noticed something.

  He bent down. Looked closer. Got on his hands and knees. And then reached out and picked up the broken puck. A small serial number was stamped on the side, along with an identification label in tiny type:

  INFLUENZA A/H9N2 KILLED

  “My God!” he cried. “This isn’t smallpox! We’ve been tricked. Spread out, search the building, find him! This is a different puck. He switched pucks. He’s still got the smallpox! He’s still got the smallpox!”

  73

  GIDEON SPRINTED DOWN the hallway. As he ran, he decided to head for the rear of the building. There might be more soldiers waiting in the lobby. Besides, the back of the building would give him the added advantage of bringing him closer to where he’d parked the Jeep, in the rear lot.

  Which meant he had to find a back exit.

  He raced up a stairwell to the ground floor and headed toward the back of the building, running as fast as he could while still protecting the puck. It was a huge, virtually deserted complex, and he found himself wasting time with unexpected twists and turns, dead ends and locked doors that forced him to backtrack again and again. And all the while, the clock was ticking.

  He had no idea how effectively his ruse would delay their response. He had seen his opportunity and had taken it, his old skills as a magician coming in handy as he’d palmed a random puck from the lab table and substituted it for the smallpox. It had been relatively easy, given that he had worked magic tricks with many objects of precisely that size and sometimes even that shape. What that other puck contained, if anything, he had no idea, but it couldn’t be all that dangerous or it wouldn’t have been stacked on the outside table, unguarded. Maybe it would give them all hives.

  After yet more wrong turns he arrived finally at a long corridor that ended in a glassed-in waiting area with a large exit sign and a crash door at the far end, striped white and red with an Alarm Will Sound label. He ran for the door, only to see a man appear abruptly in the lobby from another approach. It was the captain, Gurulé.

  So they’re on to me already. Shit.

  The captain turned, saw Gideon, began to draw his weapon.

  Gideon charged ahead, ramming into the captain and slamming him back against the crash door, which burst open with a piercing alarm, the pistol flying away. He scrambled for it, acutely aware of the smallpox container in his pocket, shielding it protectively with his body. The captain, sprawled across the threshold but recovering fast, pulled himself up and leapt on Gideon, trying to get a hammerlock around his neck. In doing so he left his face exposed and Gideon punched back fiercely with the palm of one hand; he felt the captain’s nose break under the strike, Gurulé’s grip loosening just enough for Gideon to wrench free, even as the captain landed a vicious punch to his side.

  They faced off, the captain shaking his head, trying to recover his senses and fling away the blood spurting from his nose. The smallpox felt like it was burning a hole in Gideon’s pocket. Whatever happened, he couldn’t let that puck break.

  Gurulé suddenly turned and unleashed a powerful kick to Gideon’s groin; Gideon twisted to protect the smallpox and the kick slammed into his hip, just missing the puck but knocking him back against the wall. Gideon went into a defensive hunch, still shielding the puck, and the captain took advantage of his defensive hesitation to advance on him, driving a punch straight into the side of his jaw that broke a couple of teeth and sent Gideon to the floor.

  “The smallpox!” Gideon gasped through the blood welling into his mouth, “Don’t—!”

  The captain was too enraged to hear. He punched him again in the chest, then slammed his foot into Gideon’s side, almost flipping him over, the jarring movement sending the puck flying out of his pocket and skittering into a corner. For a brief, terrible moment both men stopped dead, watching as it bounced against the wall—and then rolled back a few feet, unbroken and unharmed.

  Instantly the captain dove for it while Gideon, now free of restraint, let loose a savage roundhouse to the man’s kidneys, laying him on his knees, and following with another kick to his jaw. But the captain, rising, pivoted with lightning speed almost like a breakdancer, lashing out with his legs, knocking Gideon back down just as he was staggering up. With an inarticulate gargle of rage, Gurulé fell on Gideon, sinking his teeth into Gideon’s ear with a crunch of cartilage. Yelling in pain, Gideon slammed his fist into the man’s neck, causing him to release his hold on Gideon’s ear; as he turned to throw a blind punch, which missed, Gideon seized his scalp with both hands and yanked his head back and forth, like a dog shaking a rat, while simultaneously bringing his knee up into the man’s face so hard it almost felt like he had caved it in. The man flipped over backward and Gideon fell on him, seizing his ears and, with them as handles, slamming the back of the captain’s head into the cement floor, once, twice.

  Gideon rolled off the now unconscious man. Their struggle had brought them close to Gurulé’s gun, and Gideon grabbed it just as the
side door to the lobby burst open and two soldiers rushed in. Gideon shot one immediately, throwing him back against the wall; the second dove for cover in a panic, firing wildly, the bullets raking the glass wall behind Gideon and shattering it.

  Gideon dove through the broken glass, then staggered to his feet, bullets snicking past him and ricocheting off the asphalt of the rear parking lot. He reached the closest parked car and fell behind it as a swarm of rounds rammed through the metal. When he returned fire he could see, through the open door of the building, the white puck of smallpox lying against the wall. Even as he stared Blaine appeared, scooped up the puck, and disappeared again into the back hall, with a yell for his men to follow.

  “No!” Gideon cried out.

  He fired again but it was too late; the remaining soldiers vanished into the building with a final, desultory burst of gunfire in his direction.

  They had the smallpox.

  For a moment, Gideon just leaned against the car, head spinning. He’d been badly beaten, he hurt all over, blood was pouring from his injured mouth—but the surge of adrenaline from the fight, and the loss of the smallpox, managed to sustain him.

  Pushing away from the car and sprinting around the corner, he ran along the blank, windowless side wall of the building, which went on seemingly forever. He finally reached the end and tore around the next corner. The front parking lot came into view, and there on the tarmac was Dart’s chopper, a UH-60 Black Hawk, its rotors spinning up. Through the open cabin door he could see Blaine and Dart already seated, with the last of the soldiers just now climbing in. Lying nearby the chopper, in a pool of blood, was a body all too clearly dead.

  Fordyce.

  Gideon felt a sudden nausea, a choking rage that closed down his throat. All was now clear.

  He drew his pistol and sprinted across the grass toward the helicopter. As it began to rise, gunfire erupted from the cabin door. Gideon veered to another parked car and crouched behind it as rounds buried themselves in the vehicle. Half mad with anger and grief, he rose again and—bracing himself on the hood, ignoring the rounds whining past his head—aimed the captain’s 9mm and squeezed off two carefully placed rounds, aiming for the turboshaft engines. One round hit home with a thunk and a spray of paint chips, followed a moment later by a grinding noise. More shots raked the car but Gideon remained in place, easing off a third shot. Now black smoke spurted up from the engines, half obscuring the main rotor blades; the chopper seemed to hesitate as the grinding noise turned into a strident rasp. Then the fuselage began to rotate and tilt, the bird coming back to earth hard, the tail rotor making contact with the ground and shattering, the pieces flying away with a chilling hummm.