Vargas turned his back on the professor. He stared into the lab, which appeared cold and stark under the lights yet was full of poisonous life.
“I don’t understand what happened in there,” the American said. “He didn’t just fall. It looks like there was a struggle.”
“Someone broke in,” Vargas said.
The professor was horrified. “Broke in? Past the guards? Who would be so foolish?”
“Someone who wanted to see what was in there,” Vargas said, and turned to look at the other man’s face. A note of satisfaction crept into his voice as he added, “Probably Americans. Perhaps CIA.”
The professor looked startled, as if the possibility had not crossed his mind.
“Come, come, Professor, don’t tell me you thought your work here in Cuba would remain a secret forever.”
“I am a scientist,” the American said. “Science is my life.”
Vargas snorted derisively. “Your life!” he said softly, contemptuously.
The professor lost it. “Fool!” he shouted. “Idiot! You sit in this Third World cesspool and think this crap matters—fool!”
“Perhaps,” Vargas said coldly. He was used to Professor Svenson, an unrepentant intellectual snob, the very worst kind, and American to boot. “I would like to stay and trade curses with you today but there is no time. The workers are waiting outside. You are going to show them how to clean up the lab, then you will determine exactly what happened to the viruses. You will write down all that must be done to check the warheads. You will have the report hand-delivered to me. If you fail to do exactly what I say, you will go into the crematorium with the lab worker. Do you understand me, Professor?”
“You can’t threaten me. I’m—”
Alejo Vargas flicked his fingers across the professor’s cheek, merely a sting. He stared into his eyes. “You suffer from a regrettable delusion that you are irreplaceable—I can cure that. If you wish, you can go to the crematorium right now. Two body bags are not much more trouble than one.”
When Vargas left, Olaf Svenson sat and hid his face in his hands.
He had never thought past the scientific problems to the ones he now faced. Oh, he should have, of course: he knew that Vargas intended to put the virus into warheads. He shut his mind to the horror — he wanted to see if the mutation could be controlled. No, he wanted to see if he could control the mutation of the viruses. The scientific challenges consumed him. Vargas had the money and the facilities — Olaf Svenson wanted to do the research.
He was going to have to get out of Cuba, and as soon as possible. The university thought he was in Europe — that was where he would go. The CIA probably had no evidence, or not enough to prosecute him in an American court. If he went to the airport and took a plane now they probably would never get enough — Vargas certainly wasn’t going to be a willing witness.
He waited a few minutes, long enough for Vargas to clear off upstairs, then stood and took a last fleeting look at the lab. With a sigh he turned his back on what might have been and walked to the elevator. In the lobby he took the time to give detailed instructions to the workers who would clean up the lab, answered the foreman’s questions, then watched as they boarded the elevator. When the elevator door closed behind the workers, Professor Svenson nodded to the guards at the entrance of the building, set off down the street and never looked back.
The P-3 Orion antisubmarine patrol plane flew over a sparkling sea. The morning cumulus clouds would form in the trade winds in a few hours, but right now the sky was empty except for wisps of high stratus.
The glory of the morning held no interest for the P-3’s crew, which was examining an old freighter anchored in the lee of an L-shaped cay. A few palm trees and some thick brush covered the backbone of the little island, which had wide, white, empty beaches on all sides.
“Whaddya think?” the pilot asked his copilot and the TACCO, the tactical coordinator, who was standing behind the center console.
“Go lower and we’ll get pictures,” the TACCO suggested. He passed a video camera to the copilot.
The pilot retarded the throttles and brought the plane around in a wide, sweeping turn to pass down the side of the freighter at an altitude of about two hundred feet. The copilot kept the video camera on the freighter, which was fairly small, about ten thousand tons, with peeling paint and a rusty waterline. A few sailors could be seen on deck, but no flags were visible.
“I’ll get on the horn,” the TACCO told the pilot, “see if the folks in Norfolk can identify that ship. But first let’s fly over the ship, get the planform from directly overhead.”
The TACCO knew that the computer sorted ship images by silhouettes and planforms, so having both views would speed up the identification process.
Professor Olaf Svenson was standing in line at Havana airport to buy a ticket to Mexico City when he saw Colonel Santana arrive out front in a chauffeur-driven limousine. Through the giant windows he could clearly see Santana get out of the car, see the uniformed security guards salute, see the plainclothes security men with Santana move tourists out of the way.
Svenson turned and rushed away in the other direction. He dove into the first men’s room he saw and took refuge in an empty stall.
Was Santana after him?
The acrid smell of a public rest room filled his nostrils, permeated his clothing, made him feel unclean. He sat listening to the sounds: the door opening and closing as men came and went, feet scraping, water running, piss tinkling into urinals, muttered comments. Sweat trickled down his neck, soaking his shirt.
Slam! Someone aggressively pushed the rest room door open until it smashed against the wall.
The minutes crawled.
Santana was an animal, Svenson thought, a sadist, a foul, filthy creature who loved to see fellow human beings in pain. Svenson had seen it in his eyes. Even the smallest of bad tidings was delivered with a malicious gleam. Svenson suspected that as a boy Santana had enjoyed torturing pets.
What would Santana do to an overweight, middle-aged scientist from Colorado who tried to escape the country?
The door slammed into the wall again, and Svenson jumped.
Torture? Of course. Santana would want to inflict pain. Svenson felt his bowels get watery as he thought about the pain that Santana could dish out.
Every sound caused him to move, to jump.
He consulted his watch again. Just a few minutes had passed.
0 God, if you really exist, have mercy on me! Don’t let Santana find me. Please!
Home. He wanted to go home so badly. To his apartment and cats and flowers in planters. To his neat, safe little haven, where he could shut out the evil of the world.
Someone slapped the side of the stall, said something unintelligible in Spanish. Probably wanted him to hurry up, to get out and let the next man in.
Svenson made a retching sound. And almost lost his breakfast.
He tried retching audibly again, less forcefully.
The person standing beside the stall walked away, the door to the rest room opened and closed.
Where was Santana?
Maybe he wasn’t coming. Surely by now if he were searching the terminal he would have looked into this restroom.
Could it be?
Or perhaps Santana was standing outside, waiting for him to come out, for the sheer joy of dashing his hopes when he thought the coast was clear. Santana would do a thing like that, Svenson told himself now.
He felt so dirty, so wretched. He wiped at the sheen of sweat on his face, wiped his hands on his trousers.