It made no sense. Why was he so sick?
One of the pouches along his left side twitched and squirmed. Another, on the right side, started to move. And yet another.
They were waking up.
He clearly remembered the rest of the preparation in the veterinarian hospital, watching closely as the vet placed a syringe on top of each cage. Each syringe held such little medicine they looked almost empty. The man waited patiently, until Roman, checking his watch, gave him a nod. The vet put a heavy leather glove on his left hand and opened the first cage.
He gave an injection every five minutes. Then they would squeeze each animal into yet another nylon pantyhose, twisting the material to trap it. The ends were then tied to straps in the vest. In the end, Viktor carried six on each side, each lump no bigger than a computer mouse.
“Good! Good! You look good!” Roman said, once Viktor had put his shirt back on. “Turn around. Good!” Viktor walked around the tiny operating room, experimentally swinging his arms.
“Try not to sweat,” Roman offered.
The vet remained still the entire time, until he spotted movement. It was a tiny bug, venturing out of the sixth cage. The thing was no bigger than the head of the eagle on the old American coins they had given Viktor. The vet squashed it with his thumb and flicked it away.
Viktor could remember the ride to the airport, the perfunctory bribe in customs, a quick toast of ice-cold vodka in the airport bar, then the long walk to the plane. He found his seat, flirted unenthusiastically with one of the ugly attendants, and tried not to think about landing in Chicago.
After that, absolutely nothing.
A sharp rap at the door. “Sir! Sir! We are landing very soon. You must take your seat.”
Viktor tried to respond; his voice came out garbled as if his tongue had forgotten how to create words. It must have worked for a moment because the knocking stopped.
He stared at himself in the mirror again. Just land, get through customs, and then outside, where a van is waiting. He sucked in a deep breath and blew it out through his nose.
Everything was going to be fine.
A thin trickle of blood slid out of his left nostril.
Viktor swore and wiped it away. More blood collected on his upper lip. He realized he could use this to his advantage and wound toilet paper around his fist, then pressed it to his nose. He was now just a passenger with a bloody nose because of the dry air in the cabin. That was all.
Something tickled his stomach.
At first, he thought it was just that maddening phantom itch. But this felt different. Something was moving across his skin. He pulled his shirt up, and there, crawling along the sparse black hairs around his belly button, was a tiny bug. Without hesitation, he pinched it between his thumb and forefinger and felt an insignificant, unsatisfying crunch. Examining his fingertips, he found a faint smear of blood.
The attendant knocked on the door again. Louder this time. “Sir! I insist, sir!”
Viktor wiped the remains of the bug on his new jeans, jammed the blood soaked tissue back to his nose, and opened the door. He glared at the attendant over the tissue. The phantom itch crawled across his scalp.
When the plane finally landed, Viktor was afraid he couldn’t stand. He waited in his seat until nearly all the passengers had disembarked, effectively trapping the older woman next to him. She didn’t make a move to get up, gripping her purse in two tight fists, staring unwaveringly at the perky young starlet skipping through warm surf on the cover of the in-flight magazine stuffed in the pouch on the back of the seat in front.
Viktor didn’t care. He wedged his hands under his thighs, anything to hide the shaking. He couldn’t stop licking his lips. The vibrations in his head threatened to spin out of control and he fought against the seizures that echoed throughout his body. The shaking built. His feet thrummed against his carry-on bag. Drool spilled from quivering lips. A distant burst of his heartbeat.
Abruptly, everything slowed down.
He stopped shaking. Wiped his mouth. The sounds of muttered conversations as the passengers filed past and pulled bags out of the overhead compartments seemed to be coming from underwater.
Viktor took a deep breath. Sweet relief flooded through his body, leaving him dazed and warm. His eyelids slowly slid shut. His breathing slowed.
Now the woman next to him really didn’t know what to do. She thought he was asleep. The last of the passengers filed out. She hit the button for one of the attendants. Down at the front of the plane, the group looked back at her. When they saw Viktor, the attendant who had kicked him out of the lavatory started up the aisle, shaking her head.
She stopped a few seats away. “Sir. Please, sir. You are to leave now.”
Viktor didn’t move. Neither did the woman next to him.
“Sir. Sir.” A little louder.
The attendant looked back at her group and shrugged.
Viktor gasped and jolted awake. The woman next to him flinched and let out a hushed yip.
The pain was back with a vengeance, drilling into the nerve cells in his stomach and behind his eyes, sparking agony as it burrowed deeper. He scrambled to his feet, spun, and almost fell back into the seat.
He licked his lips and grabbed his bag as tremors shook his limbs. Despite the loss of control, he still managed to hang on to the handle in one hand and pull himself along with the other. The attendants backed away as he staggered down the aisle.
Someone at the far end of the tunnel spoke into a phone. Viktor didn’t like that.
When he got within four feet, he bared his teeth and growled at the flight attendant on the phone.
She flinched and dropped it.
He leaned away and stumbled up the ramp, out into the bright lights of customs, and took three hitching breaths. A bewildering labyrinth of lines that looked like they had been laid out by a couple of drunk government employees waited impatiently, all strung together with fake velvet ropes. Thirty or so passengers stood in line, sneaking glances back at him.
Their eyes crawled across his skin.
One of the pouches squirmed against his left hip and just like that, that furtive itch scrabbled across his back and Viktor couldn’t take it anymore. He finally simply surrendered and let the shrieking in his head blot out everything else.
CHAPTER 2
7:24 PM
December 27
“Those flowers really bring out the color of your eyes,” Sam told his partner.
“Damn. Can’t tell you how touched I am that you noticed,” Ed said. “Keeps me up at night sometimes, worrying if I’m handsome enough.”
Sam tried not to smile and sipped his coffee instead. A snowstorm out over the Rockies had delayed Ed’s girlfriend’s flight, and the coffee had gotten cold and bitter while they waited.
It was late, and O’Hare was quiet. Bleary-eyed travellers trickled down the escalators from customs upstairs. Below, in the baggage claim area, most of the benches were empty; a few people sat along the snaking conveyer belts, waiting impatiently for the airlines to track down missing bags.
Sam looked back through the double set of glass doors at their unmarked Crown Vic. Calling it unmarked was a joke. Everybody in Chicago knew damn well that nobody drove Crown Vics except cops and those poor deluded schmucks who bought them used for God knew what reason at police auctions. Sam had left it parked illegally right in front of the doors on the lower level, where arriving passengers spilled out of O’Hare. It had been out there long enough to collect a halfhearted, thin layer of snow from a minor snow earlier. He wasn’t worried about any tickets though; O’Hare’s security, like everybody else, knew enough to leave it alone.