A fire roared in the big room, smelling of hot, popping resin. The angry man was fortyish, with a cherub’s pudgy cheeks and body, sloped shoulders, and thick chestnut hair. Black eyes. Soft mouth. Soft hands. Red silk robe. The plainest face in the world. Natural camouflage. Because of this mild appearance he’d been underestimated his whole life. Because of his intelligence, he’d used that to his advantage.
The second voice in his ear was lower, a rumble rising to an opera soprano’s note, earsplitting over the screwed up sound system. “If you would have let me infect him at the beginning, this wouldn’t have happened-d-d-d-d.”
“It’s not my fault… ault…” the first voice whined.
“Nothing ever is.” The second voice remained calm. It was the voice of a professional chewing over a problem. “The quarantine starts in an hour. Whatever we decide, it has to happen now.”
The angry man curbed his rage. He demanded of his listeners, “You understand what’s at stake?”
No answer! Had the satellite spun beyond range? The man was almost apoplectic. Had his communication system failed? No… no… just a delay, a traffic interruption above Earth, where messages whizzed through space; a phone scammer in Mumbai, tricking a retiree in Florida; a Chinese destroyer receiving orders as the ship maneuvered off the Philippines; a diplomat in Tokyo whispering endearments to a lover in Havana.
The first voice was back. “At stake? Many millions.”
“Millions? Billions! We’re on a deadline! You made a promise! You assured me!”
The roaring fire illuminated original oil paintings; American West motif, Remington buffalos, Bierstadt Yosemite, flatboat river men. The desk was Zairian mahogany, the carpet Italian, the rugs from Iran. A wall of leather-bound books featured works on strategy, military, and finance. Beyond open silk curtains, floodlights illuminated a crushed stone driveway, an armored Mercedes, and a private forest of pine and birch, the leaves brittle in October. Down the hall slept the angry man’s twenty-seven-year-old trophy wife… He’d heard older, jealous wives of colleagues whisper that term at last night’s cocktail party in the capital, a ninety-minute drive from here.
Stupid women go dry, lose the urge to have sex at forty and then blame men for getting it elsewhere. Now I understand why Moslem men have five wives.
The second voice — the professional — said, “He’s with his fiancée now, asleep. We hear their breathing. I know the combination of the lock on their door and—”
The first voice cut off the second. “Are you crazy? That would focus everything on what he’s saying. And you’d leave tracks in the snow!”
The angry man tried to ignore electronic interference, earsplitting over the German-made speakers, fucking things were supposed to be the best in the world. Krauts, he thought. They killed my great-grandfather.
He spat out rapid questions.
“You said he shares ideas with the fiancée?”
“Last night he told her what he wants to do next. They both know the idea. He’s figuring it out!”
“That major, Nakamura, does he know, too?”
“He’s been out at the campsite for the last day. He’s not aware of what Rush wants to try. And, sir, once the quarantine starts, it will be much harder to get to him. They’ll be bunking soldiers in all the huts.”
The angry man tried to ignore the hot sensation coursing through him; throat dry, fists clenched, temples throbbing — and he had an idea. “If you can’t reach him, what about her? Is Rush the kind who would lose focus? Fall apart? Or come at things harder?”
“He’s crazy about her. That’s for sure.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I’m not a mind reader, sir.”
“You will stop him or distract him! Do you hear!”
The angry man had grown up on the streets and learned early; when you have an enemy you hit hard, right away, with all you have. You don’t strategize or negotiate. You don’t whine. You don’t allow a modicum of thought in the foe as to the possibility of equality between you. But he’d permitted himself to start slowly in Barrow — and it had come back to haunt him. So he explained what he wanted now and the professional went quiet. The angry man heard: Weeeee. Then the pro said with some delicacy, negotiating, taking advantage, “Sir, once the quarantine begins, I’m stuck here.”
“Double.”
“Stuck with soldiers. No way out.”
“Triple.”
“If I get caught?”
“You’re supposed to be good.”
“Even the best get caught if you wait too long.”
The angry man swallowed the insult. His voice softened considerably. This was a tell. Anyone who knew him understood that you did not want his voice to go mild. It meant he’d left the red zone, where he generally resided, and entered a worse one, purple alert, DEFCON one.
“If you’re caught, I can probably get you out at some point,” he said.
“Even from military prison?”
“I said, at some point. But if you feel like you need to refuse, I understand.”
“I’ll do it,” the professional said quickly, understanding that he had pushed things too far.
The angry man slammed the phone down, stomped down the hall to his dozing wife. Fucking bitch would sleep through a bomb. Action usually made him feel better. He dragged her awake by her long blond hair. She’d not seen this rough side of him yet and she started screaming, which excited him, so he hit her a couple of times, but not in the face. Hell, she wanted money to shop every day? The art galleries? The vacations? Fine. He’d bought her, so to speak, and he’d get what he wanted now.
The nightmare started the usual way but then the faces changed. I was in a tunnel carved into a cave, it’s high ceiling shielded by steel netting strung up top to contain — rock. I stepped forward, hyperaware, carbine in hands. I had trouble drawing in air because of the protective mask over my face and the heat in my ears, in my throat. My Marine squad advanced behind me, down, down, in hell’s direction. Blue smoke curled from air vents in rock. Alarms screeched. The cave exited into a hallway. The hallway had a lab. Inside were medical cabinets. Surgical instruments. Steel manacles fixed to operating tables. No people at first… but then…
Then the child-sized figure charged out of the smoke.
Iraq. In memory. Eddie and I were first lieutenants, dispatched from the main thrust of invasion, patrolling outlying villages, making sure they were clear of ambushers. We found nothing until our Humvees and armored carrier stumbled onto a brand-new highway in the middle of nowhere. It led to a ratty abandoned village, except, when we entered the huts, we found they were mock-ups, a false town, a trick to fool reconnaisance. In one hut we found an iron door set into the rocky side of a mountain. We blew open the iron door. It led down into the cave.
That brought us to Saddam’s hidden lab.
As the child form rushed at me, through dream smoke, I knew what was coming next and I filled with dread. The dream came sporadically. That day changed my life and sent Eddie and me to med school on the Marine dime, made us hunters of different kinds of deadly weapons, the kind you can’t see, that float in air, seep into lungs, take a healthy person and twist them into a shrieking, burnt-up furnace. That rewires evolution and turns ten million years of anatomical progress into a contagious degenerating mush.
The figures that usually burst through the smoke in my dream were monkeys, with pink faces and pink hands, as they’d had on that day in real life. Infected monkeys. But tonight they had human faces. I saw Kelley and Ted, Cathy and Clay, furried bodies, friends’ eyes, and the alarms ringing, as they shrieked like animals, rushing to attack.