Eupocalypse Box Set
Page 2
DD frowned at her phone; it had three bars, but the little wheel kept spinning and her mail wasn't downloading. Sitting here, sporting her white skin and her relatively new SUV, was just begging for trouble. On the other hand, she had to pee. She’d held it as long as she possibly could. She got out and locked the car door behind her, then skittered to the rear of the station. The door to the single, unisex restroom was unlocked. In fact, to her dismay, she discovered it didn’t lock. She slipped her hand in her pocket and checked the location of her KelTec, a little .32 caliber lightweight half-plastic semiautomatic, perfect for concealment under warm-weather clothing. She entered the bathroom and, on first sight, almost turned around to leave again. But on closer inspection, it was clean, just thoroughly stained by rusty water, and poorly-lit by a single naked bulb. It appeared to have been recently hosed down, in fact. It smelled of bleach, and miracle of miracles, there was a fresh roll of toilet paper. She really had to pee. She pulled the KelTec out of her pocket and squatted over the seat, sighing in relief. As she pulled up her shorts, the little handgun happened to be hidden in a fold of the fabric.
One of the old guys from out back suddenly walked in, then startled when he saw her. He backed out the door quickly, “I'm sorry! I'm sorry!” he repeated over and over as he stepped backwards off the curb outside, leaving the door slightly ajar. She calmly tucked the gun back in her pocket, securing its little clip on the pocket edge. She saw no soap or towels, decided against trying to wash her hands in the stained sink, and walked out. The guy was still there. He apologized again, and she answered, “Not your fault. No big deal.”
She reflected as she got back in her car that he didn't even know how close he'd been to death.
But then, who among us knows how close we are to death? All the time. She fastened her seatbelt and turned out of the crumbling driveway of the gas station. We drive our cars as though it were the most natural thing in the world, but it’s lethally dangerous. For the young, it's the most likely way to die. That kid back home last week, just sitting at a stoplight on his motorcycle, when a TV-van driver rear-ended him at 60 miles an hour. Gone, like that! His parents and friends weeping on the evening news. And how many accidents, assaults, overdoses has Jessica survived? I don’t even know anymore.
It wasn't until she reached Baton Rouge—a huge yellow and purple banner on the side of a building urged, “Geaux Tigers”— that she felt a little safer. Her phone app guided her to the hotel where she was giving her talk. She checked in at the circular front desk. While she was waiting for her key, she looked around. taking in the iridescent purple and green taffeta curtains around the orange and turquoise leather sofas of the central lobby lounge. Pretentious. She wheeled her suitcase, crate of culture plates strapped on top, up the hall to her room and let herself in with her keycard. The room was no less ostentatious than the lobby: niches with impractical-looking vases; a room divider made of futuristic, internally-illuminated glass shelving; a sofa upholstered in nubby fabric patterned in more implausibly bright colors. The bathroom was decorated in floor-to-ceiling fake-fossil tiles. The flow of water in the sink and shower was controlled by peculiarly sculpted glass-and-chrome fixtures of obscure functionality. There was no light switch in the bathroom. Instead, motion detection turned on the lights (and turned them back off after a few minutes). I can imagine stumbling home drunk to this room and being totally confused, unable to figure out how to take a shower and turn off the light to go to bed. The bed was soft but supportive, though, and the pillows were faux down, so she was mollified.
But she was hungry. She took the elevator back down to the lobby, ducked into the table area of the bar-restaurant and accepted a menu from the waiter. Artichoke-spinach dip and arugula chevre salad were on offer, with entrees of duck and salmon grilled, blackened, or sauteed with a variety of sauces, seasonings, and vegetables from every continent. The prices lacked decimals. I enjoy a lavish meal as much as anyone. And it’s work-related, tax deductible. Maybe even expensible; I haven’t figured out how that works yet. She grinned.
She selected white wine, a Pinot Grigio, by the glass. For starters, she ordered a seafood bisque. She wasn't in the mood for anything complicated, so she ordered a straightforward steak, rare. Just as the waiter walked away, a very large woman in a very fuschia business suit slid uninvited into the chair opposite her and stuck out a hand.
“Susan Deyle. Do you mind?”
DD found that she actually didn't, despite her introverted nature. Her rubicund sartorial flair notwithstanding, the woman had a charming smile and a pleasant voice. “Not at all, make yourself comfortable. Nice to have company.” She shook her hand. “DD.”
The waiter returned with DD's wine, and Susan said, “Oh, I don’t drink any more.” In the awkward ensuing pause, she guffawed, “but I don’t drink any less, either!” She had red wine. The two women sipped and chatted while awaiting their food.
Susan was a corporate attorney from Des Moines, meeting with a client and a representative from her company's German subsidiary about a series of multimedia instructional-design materials they were publishing.
“Are there international copyright issues with international publishing, like you do?” enquired DD politely, only vaguely interested.
Susan was munching on a truffle-stuffed mushroom appetizer, but she paused, holding half a mushroom on her fork, to respond, “Not as much as you might think, as long as you have someone like me to keep the jurisdictions in mind. There are international treaties and agreements to keep everything clear.”
“I suppose there are international regulations for everything nowadays. I expect Germany is a lot more cooperative than China, for example?”
“I haven't dealt with Chinese regulations much.”
“I don't think most Chinese deal with Chinese regulations much, either,” laughed DD. “Some of the culture shipments we get from them look like they were labeled by kindergartners using crayons.”
“What kind of samples?” Susan inquired politely around a bite of food, only vaguely interested.
“Soil and ocean bacteria mostly. There UN regulations we follow, but they're Category 2. They could theoretically make someone sick, but not likely.”
“Sounds dangerous! Couldn't it start an epidemic?” Susan’s eyes widened.
DD laughed again. “You obviously have the same illusions about microorganisms that most people do. Did you wash your hands before you came to dinner?”
“Of course!”
“Did you get all the bacteria off your hands?”
“I should hope so!” Susan sounded a little indignant.
“Wrong!”
“What?”
“If you used pre-wrapped soap from your hotel room, you probably lowered the number of bacteria per square inch on your hands from several thousand to several hundred. If you used a liquid soap dispenser from the bathroom, you might possibly even have increased the number of bacteria on your hands, depending on how long the soap has been sitting.”
Susan stopped in the act of surreptitiously pushing an escaping mushroom onto the tines of her fork with the side of her thumb and tucked her hand under the table instead.
“The last time your skin was actually sterile,” said DD, “was when you were still in utero.”
“I'd rather not think about that while I'm eating...” Susan was frowning at her food.
“Oh, but it's a good thing!” DD plowed on ahead. After two glasses of wine, she was warming up to her topic with the passion of a true microbiology geek. “Your immune system needs to be constantly challenged! The bacteria on your skin and in your gut and respiratory tract are constantly conducting non-stop drills for your blood cells and antibodies. It helps to keep them sharp. Most of the bacteria growing on, and in, your body are harmless, but when a bad type comes along, your body responds immediately because it's had constant practice.
“The really neat part, though,” she went on, ignoring Susan's lack of interest and her growing express
ion of disgust, “is that the same process is going on in the dirt at your feet, and even in the ocean, at the same time.
“For example, the Gulf of Mexico has oil deposits beneath its surface—”
Susan's eyes showed a spark of familiarity. Something from the news! “Yes, the oil wells, like that big oil spill a few years ago, the corporate oil platform that had all those legal claims for compensation!”
“Right,” agreed DD, “well, those oil deposits are seeping oil all the time. Gobs of it. Nobody's really sure how much, because here's the thing: there are bacteria that live in the ocean and eat the freakin' oil!”
Susan’s brow furrowed. “Wait, but, then, why did they have to spray all those chemicals on the oil spills to dissolve them?”
“Did they?”
“Huh?”
“Well, when a huge, deep spill like that occurs, at first there aren't enough bacteria to consume it all. Even doubling every two to six hours (which is about average), it takes weeks for a big enough bloom to occur for the natural cycloclasticus and colwellia bacteria to make a dent in the oil accumulation. But, by the time enough of the oil plume had made it to the surface for them to be able to spray it with chemical dispersants, the bacteria’d already consumed a huge percentage of the hydrocarbons. In fact, it looks like the dispersants might actually have slowed down the breakdown of the oil instead of speeding it up!
“That's what I'm working on now. There's a variety of bacteria called pseudomonas putida which grows in the soil just about everywhere. It eats oil like nobody's business. And it's used in industrial processes, enough that we have a really good handle on how to breed it to do what we want.” That’s enough. No need to go any further and breach Amrencorp’s nondisclosure. Besides, she’s obviously squeamish.
The waiter took DD's empty soup plate. “Still working on those?” he asked Susan, who waved for him to take the half-eaten plate of stuffed mushrooms away with a distasteful expression.
A moment later, a fine strip steak appeared before DD. Susan's came too; she looked at her pasta, redolent of parmesan and covered with thick, pepper-flecked white sauce, and turned a little grey.
DD took pity on her and changed the subject. “So, what entertainment plans do you all have for your visiting Germans? I hear they love the American South!” She picked up her wine glass and gave a lighthearted grin. Susan rose to the bait, glad to have a new topic, unrelated to contamination and decay, to discuss while she ate. She outlined a weekend of barely business-appropriate Big Easy debauchery, her appetite returning.
The conversation turned to family. “Do you have children?” asked Susan.
DD felt her smile fall off. She plastered a phony one on and said, “One. A girl. She’s gone a lot. How about you?” Susan was off and running, proudly enumerating her three children’s accomplishments while DD died inside by millimeters. I wonder where Jessica is right now? DD changed the subject to movies as soon as she could.
At the end of the meal, chattering gaily, they agreed to keep each others' little secret if they both indulged in the chocolate mousse cake.
IV.
Bohai Platform
That week, a joint law-enforcement project of Interpol, the World Customs Organization, and the Pharmaceutical Security Institute, code-named Operation Jupiter, struck multiple pharmaceutical smuggling and counterfeiting schemes simultaneously throughout Southeast Asia and the China Sea. Unnoticed, in the thousands of tons of hundreds of different drugs seized, was one specific, solitary shipment. This shipment was not, like the others, capsules or tablets packed in plastic-lined bulk containers to travel hundreds of miles for repackaging. It was not, like the others, included in shipments of other, legitimate goods. It wasn’t on a vessel headed for a known transshipping port like Hong Kong or Yangon. It was, in fact, approximately three-quarters of a ton of powdered ceftazidime, a beta-lactam antibiotic, hastily packaged in milk canisters, on a converted fishing boat, intercepted a few miles away from, and on course to, the Sheng Li 6 oil drilling platform in Bohai Bay. Certainly, no one involved in the drug seizure operation knew that Sheng Li 6 had been completely and quietly evacuated, and the well capped, the week before. The evacuation was officially reported to be due to an outbreak of unspecified illness aboard, which had supposedly incapacitated the 100-man crew, ruining the unit’s productivity for that quarter. And when a minor typhoon swept through the bay a week or so later, and the rig collapsed catastrophically and unexpectedly during the storm, no one particularly noticed except those who were directly involved, such as the accountants of the Sinopec corporation.
One of those accountants was Hen Li, who’d been working for Sinopec ever since earning his dual degrees in accounting and international business at Georgetown. Li left his desk, slipped into the courtyard and took a cheap cell phone out of the inner zipped pocket of his backpack. He'd shared his freshman dorm room, and countless bottles of craft beer, with a roommate, his buddy Lee Flatt. Lee was a patriotic American, who later switched from international business to law enforcement with a minor in poli-sci. After graduation, Lee had gone into international intelligence analysis, and Li had returned to China to work for Sinopec. Li had run into Lee at a conference in Geneva a couple of years ago. Lee and Li, the old act together again!
After an evening of alcohol-steeped reminiscence, Lee had offered Li the phone. “We need to keep abreast of what’s happening in China, on the ground. I know you’re not in on anything top-secret, but sometimes people notice changes in patterns that can tell us more than all the government press releases and hacked communications we can get ahold of. Just a quick call; it’s not traceable, I promise.” Li had hesitantly accepted the phone and promised, for old times' sake, with a thrill at the chance of getting caught (and against his better judgment) to call Lee if he noticed anything odd. And this was certainly odd.
V. Not the Avon Lady
DD awakened in fright. Unsure where she was for a tick, she also didn't know what had woken her. Her eyes focused automatically on the only light in the room, the line of light from the hall (Hall. Hotel. Hotel room, right.), where it came in under the door, interrupted by shadows. Someone was moving in the hall; whoever it was pounded on the door. DD realized, then, that this was the second time for the pounding; it was what woke her. She turned the clock on the nightstand towards her: 5:15 a.m. She wasn't expecting anyone. She was suddenly fully awake.
She opened the nightstand drawer and took the KelTec out. There was a round in the chamber; she'd racked it before going to sleep. She was wearing a long, loose, knit nightshirt. Sitting up on the bed, the gun on her lap, finger outside the trigger guard, she shouted, “Who is it?”
Her mystery visitor shouted back, “Dr. Davis?” She recognized his voice from somewhere, even muffled by the door. Deep voice. Accent...Midwest. Where?
Oh! The recruiter Tim had brushed off. What the Hell is he doing here? At this hour?
“Who is it?”
“My name is Ronald Fleck. I need to speak with you. It's urgent.”
“Mr. Fleck, I am not prepared to speak with anyone right now.” Be a bitch. “You'd better get away from my door or I will call the police.” As if the police would be any use! By the time they got here, he'd either have broken down the door, or be long gone.
“Dr. Davis, you really want to talk to me.” Odd phrasing. Vaguely threatening.
“No. I really don't. For the last time, leave me alone!” She put as much authority into her voice as she could, trying not to slur with a tongue still thick with sleep.
He didn't answer. He didn't budge either. She could still see the shadow of his feet beneath the door. He rattled the knob. She walked to the coffee table, picked up the room’s cordless phone with her left hand, and pressed zero with her thumb. The front desk clerk answered.
“There’s a man at my room door to who won't go away. I’m alone in the room. I need security.”
“I'll send them right up.” The desk clerk sounded bored, like this
wasn’t the first time he’d dealt with this situation.
“Thank you.” DD hung up by pressing the button on the phone.
Fleck tapped on the door with one knuckle. DD was standing a few feet away, the KelTec in her right hand and the phone receiver in her left. The metal loop latch on the door was closed, but the door frame was just wood, and the screws would give way if he used enough force. How big is he? I’ve never even seen him, just heard his voice! She wanted to see what he looked like, but she didn’t want to get too close to the door, in case he actually did kick it in.
“Dr. Davis,” Fleck said, “I will wait for you down in the lobby. I urgently need to talk to you,” Fleck said.
“Please. Leave.” She outright snarled through a dry throat. Can't be any clearer.
He paused a few moments more. She put her finger on the trigger, raised the gun. Mercifully, the shadow of his feet moved across the doorframe in the direction of the elevators. She quickly closed the distance to the door, dropping the phone receiver on the sofa, and pressed her eye against the peephole. She saw nothing but the opposite wall of the hallway.
She realized her heart was hammering. She put the phone back in its cradle. Any hope of falling back asleep was gone. Breathing deeply, she decided to go ahead and begin her day. She attended nature's call, brushed her teeth and hair, and splashed her face in the sink.
She was patting her face with a towel when a firm knock came at the door. “Security,” a voice said. Lot of good you are.
She pressed her eye to the peephole again and saw a uniformed rent-a-cop who didn't look old enough to drive. She opened the door halfway to speak with him. His uniform pocket and patch said Thurston Security.
“Somebody tried to get in your room, ma'am?” The kid’s eyes darted around the room behind her awkwardly. He finally settled on looking at her face.