Terrance lowered his tablet. “E Prime is in high spirits. C Prime is beginning to feel some effects. Not long now.”
“I see he’s still spry enough to take advantage of the food.”
All the subjects in the program had signed on to a closed nutritional test hosted by one of Jupiter Global’s many subsidiaries. The supposed test involved rich foods made healthy by imaginary nutritional magic. The patients never questioned the literature.
That morning, C Prime chose the Belgian waffles with Chantilly cream and bacon. E Prime, a bulky man, chose the vegan omelet. Who knew?
Whether waffles or soy, none of the subjects savored their meals. Without fail—and without suspicion—they tore into every bite.
Jupiter fixed his gaze on the microbiologist. “Your assessment, Dr. Kidan?”
“Healthy—” The doctor’s voice caught in his throat. He coughed, and after a hard look from Terrance, he started again. “The patients are healthy enough to represent a normal human reaction. C Prime’s tests, however, show that his health is about to change.”
“So you are ready to proceed?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jupiter waited.
Terrance smacked the biologist on the arm. “So proceed.”
The doctor lifted a miniature tablet from his lab coat pocket and walked to the first false window. “Dr. Xue’s efforts achieved only a quarter of your stated objectives—bubonic to pneumonic crossover, full aerosolization, an increased period of asymptomatic virulence, and sudden symptom onset. She solved the sudden symptom onset issue only, inadvertently creating a bubonic assassination weapon, which your people so ably applied in Rome.”
“I am aware of the objectives. And I am aware of Xue’s failure.”
“Yes. Of course.” Dr. Kidan opened an app with patient stats next to a column of colored buttons. “I only highlight this to show you how far we’ve come since her . . . departure.” He let out a shaky breath. “Right. Here we go.” He pressed the top button.
A green circle appeared on the observation window into E Prime’s room, drawing attention to a ceiling vent. With no more than a whisper, nano-droplets blew in, digitally colored pink so the observers could watch the dispersal pattern. The subject never looked up from his meal, even as the pink cloud surrounded him, drawn in through his mouth and nostrils.
Dr. Kidan referenced his stats. “Male. Early forties. Potential liver issues but otherwise healthy. The bacteria’s Rome variant, known as PB1, could only be applied by injection. We just introduced nano-fine water vapor containing PB2, the new variant. As you can see, we’ve solved the aerosolization problem.”
In the apartment, the subject dabbed his lips and sat back in his chair, letting out a light burp of satisfaction. He showed no signs of distress.
Dr. Kidan gestured at his patient like a man gesturing at a new type of car. “Notice the high bacterial load taken in. Yet E Prime is entirely unaware of his infection, and will remain so for a minimum of ten days, likely more.”
Jupiter’s expression darkened. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”
Dr. Kidan answered with a nervous laugh. “No, sir. No, you won’t. Please, let’s leave this patient to his post-breakfast ablutions and have a look at C Prime.”
The three moved to the next LCD window and watched the man eating his Belgian waffles.
“I’m still waiting,” Jupiter said.
Terrance checked a running clock in the corner of the display. Dr. Kidan had promised a result within ten minutes of 8:15. The clock read 8:23. He could feel heat developing in the air around his boss.
Jupiter let out a sigh that might have been a growl.
“There!” Dr. Kidan’s fingers flashed over his tablet, and the LCD window zoomed in on the patient. C Prime scrunched up his face and scratched his left shoulder. A black boil seemed to appear before their eyes. Dr. Kidan pumped a fist. “Yes!”
When the other two looked at him, he straightened and coughed. “I mean . . . Good. We’ve achieved the expected result.”
Dr. Kidan zoomed the display out again and they watched C Prime stumble to the door. He mashed down on a large red button above the light switch. Nothing happened. He slapped it again and again.
“The button does call a nurse,” Dr. Kidan said. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing we or anyone else can do for him now.”
The black boils now covered C Prime’s arms, neck, and face. He stopped slapping the button and sank to his knees, gasping for breath.
Jupiter turned to the microbiologist. “What about contagion levels?”
“Oh, he’s contagious, via the pneumonic transfer. Despite being asymptomatic, C Prime has been contaminating his quarters for sixteen days.” Dr. Kidan tapped his tablet, and the LCD window took on an orange hue. Tiny pink circles were everywhere in the room—on the furniture, the breakfast trolley, floating in the air. “You’re looking at a large volume of live PB2, each little bacterium searching for a new host. We can’t even risk recovering the body for an autopsy.”
The patient lay propped against the door, eyes open, unmoving. Dr. Kidan pressed the last button on his tablet screen, and the room burst into flame. He grinned. “PB2 achieved all your objectives, Mr. Jupiter. And we’ve produced a large volume.”
“You’ve mastered the pace of this disease. Well done. But tell me, can you do the same with the less contagious variant—PB1?”
The microbiologist cast him a questioning look, as if wondering why anyone would want to do such a thing, but nodded. “Yes. We can manipulate the bacteria to select a range of timelines for symptom onset.”
“Good. I may have a use for that.” Jupiter pressed a hand against the false window, looking utterly absorbed by the smoke and flame. “You’ve created a masterpiece, Dr. Kidan. I asked for a nation killer, and you delivered.”
39
Duval watched his partner climb from their rented Renault in Zürich and tried to decide if he looked better or worse without the bandages. Calix’s pistol whipping had left Renard with a twisted beak and a face of mottled yellow and purple. Duval had not fared much better. Deep breaths and coughing amplified the pain of his broken ribs, and his head still hurt at night, thanks to the braining he’d taken from the Razny woman.
He pulled himself up from the passenger seat and frowned across the roof at his partner. “You look like a creature from a zombie movie.”
“I don’t find that funny, Capitaine.”
“Don’t growl at me, Sergeant. I didn’t smash your nose.”
“No. Calix did.” Renard touched his face and flinched.
Duval chuckled, plucking the nerve. “Don’t worry. This time he won’t have a gun to club you with.”
They left the rental in a public parking lot between the three facilities that shared the Zürichberg’s wooded hilltop—the zoo, the university sports complex, and the towering headquarters building of FIFA, the International Football Federation. Whoever lured Calix to this place had chosen well. The zoo’s perimeter walls forced him to a single point of entry and exit, and the random bag and wand checks at the gate made bringing a gun inside too risky—for a criminal, at least.
When the young security guard eyed the bulge in Duval’s jacket, he flashed his badge. The kid backed off.
“How do you know he’ll be here?” Renard asked.
“I told you. I have contacts in several intelligence agencies. This tip comes from a source high up in an international agency.”
“What agency?”
“None of your concern. Let your captain have his secrets.”
“Okay, but why doesn’t this secret agency pick him up?”
Duval steered his partner right at a fork in the path, following a sign that read TROPICAL RAINFOREST in four languages. “Because he is ours, eh? Yours and mine.” He swatted the sergeant’s arm with the back of his hand. “What’s wrong? Are you afraid of him?”
“No.” Renard let out a dissatisfied grunt. “Certainly not.”
Shaming the sergeant seemed to work. He quit prodding Duval and put his energy into the path’s steep grade, wheezing audibly through his crushed nasal passages.
The lush trees and foliage, so out of place in the wintry alpine city, parted, and the two walked out into a small square with tables and food carts. Parents sipped lattes and caramel macchiatos while children played on a rubber-padded playground. At the far end, a glass dome rose four stories to become the highest point in the zoo—Zürich’s Masoala Indoor Rainforest. The American’s coordinates had fallen like crosshairs on the structure’s peak.
Renard made for the coffee cart.
Duval caught his elbow and yanked him toward the square’s edge. “Calix knows us by sight. You want to spook him?” He chose an alcove partially blocked by trees and sat Renard down on a bench. “We stay hidden and keep watch.”
“You’re sure he’ll be here?”
“What did I tell you, eh?”
“Yeah, yeah. Your source.”
He’d pulled Renard out of sight just in time. A man in a brown leather jacket emerged from the tree-covered path and quickstepped toward the dome, head low, shoulders hunched. A hoodie, pulled low over a stocking cap, hid his face, but Duval knew him by his gait—he hoped. He thrust a chin in the newcomer’s direction. “There. You see? Calix.”
Renard moved to stand.
Duval laid a heavy hand on his shoulder to keep him seated. “Easy, boy. Where’s he going to run? Give it a minute, and we’ll move closer. We can pick him up on his way out.” He watched, grinning when Calix used the motion of opening the dome’s door to check over his shoulder. His face looked worn and abused, much like Renard’s, yet still recognizable.
Renard bucked under the weight of his hand. The sight of Calix appeared to have awoken the sergeant’s rage.
Duval nodded. “Yes, my friend. That’s the anger and focus I’ve been waiting for. You don’t need any coffee now, eh?”
“You’re right. I don’t want your source to get him first. That pleasure is ours. I want to see the look of shock in his eyes as I pound my fist into his face.”
“And I’ll make sure you do. You deserve the first punch.” Duval held a straight face as he made the promise, but Calix would be dead before Renard got close enough. “Come on, it’s safe now. Let’s take the bench by the playground.” As they walked, Duval’s hand brushed the bulge in his jacket, the one that had sparked the security guard’s interest. He’d bought a new Springfield .45—excellent range and stopping power. The American wanted him to capture Calix, but Duval could justify a killing in a confrontation gone wrong. Bad things happen in the field.
Sensen’s black motorcycle left the autobahn at the outskirts of Zürich. Clara watched him wind around the exit loop, heading east along the city’s north side. He looked up as he gunned it beneath the overpass. Had he seen her?
She’d found the keys to Sensen’s compact pickup hanging on a cupboard door in the kitchen and thrown whatever she might need into the cab—some clothes, the bread and ham, Otto’s dog food. Nothing went into the pickup’s bed. There were red stains, possibly rust. Clara thought it best not to take the chance.
She broke a dozen laws while speeding south in search of the motorcycle, and at least a dozen more after she picked him up on the A4 between Saarbrücken and Strasbourg.
If Sensen saw her, he gave no indication. No erratic driving. No sudden turns. He zipped past the fields and suburbs like a man out for a fast-but-leisurely Sunday drive. Clara held back, trying to keep two hundred meters between them, until the assassin’s route turned south into the city, forcing her to close the gap.
Where was he going?
She’d overheard Zürich during the late-night conversation, but she’d gained no specifics. “We have to think like an assassin,” she said to Otto, who lay beside her in the truck’s cab.
The dachshund raised his head, as if to look for the motorcycle over the dash, then set his chin on his paws and let out a huff.
“No?” She had to agree. Sensen hadn’t chosen the meeting place. The higher-ups had picked it for him. “So you’re saying we need to think like a spymaster.”
She had no idea how to do that. She’d only just learned to think like a spy.
Each turn brought the anxiety of losing sight of her target. And each straightaway brought the relief of picking him up again, until the inevitable happened. The motorcycle passed through a crosswalk. Before Clara reached the same spot, an elderly woman stepped off the curb.
Clara stomped on the brake pedal, dumping poor Otto onto the floor. Her protective instinct brought her eyes inside the cab. When she looked up again, the motorcycle had vanished.
The old lady paused right in front of her to give her a stern look. Clara ignored it and pulled around her, one tire bumping up onto the sidewalk, listening to angry shouts fading behind.
A hundred meters past the crosswalk, she saw a roundabout. Three roads peeled off from the circle, none running straight ahead and all hidden from view by apartment buildings.
She’d lost him.
Panic followed her through two spins around the circle, squinting up the streets to no avail, until she gathered her wits and focused on the signs. Two bore the names of Zürich subdivisions. Nothing useful. The third sign, pointing south, read ZOO, with the silhouettes of an elephant and a giraffe.
The zoo. Secure gate. No guns.
Otto seemed to decide he’d live longer if he stayed on the floor. Clara glanced down to give him a nod and took the zoo exit. She punched the gas. “Think like a spymaster.”
40
A blast of heat washed through Ben the moment he opened the door to the zoo’s rainforest dome. The temperature inside might not have been higher than twenty-one or twenty-two degrees Celsius, a midsummer day in Paris, but compared to the freezing alpine winter of Zürich, it felt like he’d stepped into the Amazon.
Forced air and hanging strips of black vinyl protected the captive ecosystem from the outside environment. Ben pushed through these into a lush forest of bamboo, ebony, and persimmon. The geodesic ceiling rose to a peak more than thirty meters above, and some of the trees were so tall, they threatened to pierce it with their upper boughs.
“Mr. Roy?” A young man of Indian descent, wearing the royal blue polo and gray khakis of a Zürich Zoo guide, called to him from a wooded walkway guarded by a composite chain. “Mr. Jacob Roy?”
Ben swallowed the shock of hearing his old cover name and offered a pleasant smile. “That’s me.”
“This way please.” The guide unclipped the chain and gestured up the walkway, but he seemed to struggle to hold Ben’s eye. His gaze darted everywhere but Ben’s face. A tell. The inability to look someone in the eye could mean a number of things—deceit, irritation, fear. What was his problem?
Your face, you idiot.
Ben remembered his battered and frostbitten features. He removed a wad of tissue he’d picked up on the train from his back pocket and dabbed his nose. The pressure hurt, and it left spots of pus on the white paper.
Great.
The guide was no spy. He just didn’t enjoy looking straight into the eyes of ugly.
Ben solved the young man’s where-do-I-look problem by nodding for him to lead on, and the two headed for a steep spiral stair enclosed within a wire-net shell. Relief colored the guide’s voice. “Your party is waiting in the north tower.”
“My party?” Ben had resigned himself to the strong possibility he’d walked into a trap, but if the Company still wanted to put him down, he’d rather Hale do it alone. “How many are in this party?”
The guide glanced over his shoulder as they rounded the spiral stair’s first turn, catching himself before his eyes reached Ben’s. “A figure of speech. There is only one. Your friend, yes?”
“More like an old coach.”
“Ah. A coach. Good.” The guide stretched a hand toward the FIFA headquarters building, visible through the dome’s upper panels. “Football?”
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“Hunting.”
“Oh.” The man didn’t make another peep for the rest of the climb.
At the top, he drew an umbrella from a mesh pail and used it to point at the other tower, two stories higher and joined to the first by a rope-and-plank bridge that dipped into the forest canopy. “Over there. Your coach is on the upper platform.” He offered Ben the umbrella.
Ben waved it away and shielded his eyes against the sun shining through the glass. “I don’t see him.”
His escort had already started down the stairs.
“Hey,” Ben called after him. “Why would I need an umbrella anyway?”
“The rain.”
Rain? “But we’re inside.”
The guide didn’t answer.
Ben tested his weight on the bridge’s first plank. It seemed sturdy enough. As he crossed, he passed a blue-green chameleon walking the rope railing with slow, rocking steps. A fruit bat hung upside down from an overhanging tree branch and hissed at Ben. He frowned back. “You too, huh?”
The steep angle of the sightline between the bridge and the upper platform prevented Ben from scoping it out. Hale probably planned it that way, leaving him no choice but to trust his former schoolmaster or walk away. Give your enemy no options. Isn’t that what Hale had taught him? He sighed and started up the stairs spiraling around the tree at the platform’s center.
“Couldn’t stay away, could you, kid?” Hale stood from a wooden bench as Ben reached the platform.
“I need answers.”
“I have some. But maybe not the answers you’re looking for.”
Ben thought he sensed concern from the old tyrant. More than concern. Affection. Hale made two long strides and wrapped him in a hug. “You look like death. It hurts me to see you like this.”
Hale had seen Ben suffer before. A lot. In all those cases, in the broad scope of schoolhouse training, there’d been a safety net—well out of Ben’s sight, but present. Hale’s response to his appearance now told him with absolute clarity that all safety nets were gone.
The Paris Betrayal Page 16