"I don't believe it," I said angrily. "Damn it to hell, I covered him like a wetnurse. Nothing could have happened."
Hawk shrugged. "Something did," he said quietly. I did some fast calculating. I'd left him in Rome in the early evening and caught a plane for London. Finding Denny away, I had to stay overnight because I couldn't get a flight out immediately. Then I'd come back here yesterday and this morning arrived at AXE headquarters. Altogether about thirty-six hours had elapsed between now and the time I'd left the scientist. Someone could have gotten to him in those thirty-six hours. I had to go with it. I'd stuck too close to the professor during the meeting itself.
"I'd like to go see for myself," I said, still angry.
"I figured as much," Hawk answered blandly. "I've booked passage for you on the eleven o'clock flight to Rome."
"Damn it," I said, "there's got to be some explanation for this."
Hawk's expression was all I needed. "Okay," I said. "I'll find it. But then this has got to be the weirdest bit or the cleverest one I've seen in a long time."
I stalked out, angry at myself, angry at the world, but mostly angry at the unused-to feeling of having been taken. No one likes to fail, most of all me. But to fail is one thing. To have been taken, right under my nose, that was something else. It was a new experience for me and I fumed and thought about it all the way to Rome. I was sticking with the idea that whatever happened had taken place after I'd left the professor. As I said, I had to stay with it. But I wasn't that sure of it. Hawk had cabled on ahead for the team of medical specialists to meet me at the professor's house. He wanted me to hear what they had to say with my own ears. These were the doctors who had examined each one of the stricken scientists. At the professor's home a maid admitted me and Signora Caldone greeted me with more composure than I'd expected her to have.
My anger turned into something else as I was ushered into the living room where a white-uniformed nurse sat in a straight chair beside the professor. He was seated in a deep, leather chair and suddenly I wasn't so concerned over my own anger, my own feelings. The cherubic face was now a gray, lifeless mask, the twinkling blue eyes now expressionless, staring orbs. His mouth hung slack, a small, continuous line of drool trickling down the corners which the nurse wiped off periodically with a gauze pad. I went over to him and called his name. There was absolutely no response. Every so often his throat would make small, guttural noises, sub-human sounds. I turned away, an icy band wrapping itself around my innards.
"The doctors are in the study waiting for you, Signor Carter," Signora Caldone said quietly. I followed her out into the hall and across the foyer to a book-lined study where four men stood up to greet me, their faces equally grave and tired. The iciness inside me had already crystallized into a deadly anger, a desire to want to tear something or someone apart, to see that justice was done for what I had just witnessed.
"First, gentlemen," I said crisply, "is there any hope for a recovery?"
A tall, graying, distinguished man spoke up, introducing himself as Doctor Van Duetonnze. I'd heard of him. He was an eminent Belgian neurologist.
"None whatever, Mr. Carter," he answered. "The mind is completely gone. Neurological tests we have already conducted show that the brain's organic functioning is beyond repair. In fact, testing Professor Caldone was merely a formality. Our results taken from the other men stricken in this manner were more than sufficient. You see, the brain is a delicate organ and any complete interruption of its physiological functioning results in brain damage beyond our present medical ability to repair."
Another physician spoke up. "We understand that your people are in this to discover what there is of a criminal nature involved."
Hawk, I realized quickly, had given them a half-truth regarding my interest in the case, just enough to carry it over smoothly.
"That's right," I said. "I am going to investigate your suspicions of both the destruction ray and the virus theory I was informed about."
"Yes, though now we have been considering the possibility that perhaps someone in the ISS, someone attending the meetings, could be host-carrier and be himself immune. At the same time, the electrical ray — if indeed it is that — must be applied by a fellow-guest at the meetings. Everything centers around the ISS meetings and the seemingly impeccable people at these science seminars."
I nodded. It all sounded highly logical, the way they had presented it. Someone at the meetings… Yes — but who? And, more importantly, how? But then I supposed that was my job to figure out. I knew about a few things they didn't, about a woman named Maria Doshtavenko, about a little punk with a card with the professor's name on it, about killings designed to keep everybody quiet about something. They could play along with their X-rays' and viruses' theories. I wasn't buying, though I didn't tell them that. I thanked the good doctors and returned to the living room. I heard the hard, anguished sobbing as I approached and when I entered, there was Amoretta standing beside the old man, her cheeks wet and stained with tears. She brushed them dry at once as she saw me. Signora Caldone was beside the girl. Amoretta's eyes turned black with unmistakable hatred and fury as I approached.
"You have come back to see for yourself?" she spit out, her full breasts heaving under a blue blouse. She wore tight jeans and her thighs stretched the sides of them. "You were supposed to protect him!" she added accusingly. "He was fine until you came!"
There was a brightness in her eyes that went beyond the obvious hate in them, a sudden hardness, a look of vengeance. She was angry and unhappy to see me, that was plain. Signora Caldone gave me an apologetic glance and ushered Amoretta out of the room to return in moments.
"I am sorry about the way Amoretta spoke to you," she said simply. "She was terribly fond of her Zio Enrico. We had told her how he was possibly in danger when we were on our way to meet you in Portofino and that you would be there to protect him."
I told Signora Caldone that the girl's upset was certainly understandable. And it was. Hell, in a few short days I'd grown fond of the professor. Her emotions could well explain the hatred in her eyes but then I'd detected something more. Inside me there was ice, the icy hatred of my own. I was still convinced there was nothing wrong with the professor when I left them in Rome.
"Did you have any visitors after I left?" I asked. "That night or the next day?"
"No," the woman said tiredly. "No one. Amoretta was with us through the morning, and then she left for home."
Only Amoretta. I turned the two words over in my mind, hating the thought, hating the meaning of it, yet going on with it. Again I asked myself, what the hell did I really know about the girl, other than that she was a volcano in bed? Signora Caldone of course held her niece above suspicion. Hawk had once said I wouldn't hold my own mother above suspicion if circumstances warranted it, and he was right. Especially when I was feeling as I did now, which was ugly, the angry, ugly feeling I got when I saw something dirty done. I glanced at the glob that had been a man, and it got uglier. Hawk had characterized it so well… the living dead. The nurse was starting to get him to his feet. He slipped from her grasp and I rushed over but he was on his hands and knees, crawling across the floor. "It's all right," she said to me. "I'll take care of him."
I turned to Signora Caldone again. "You called Amoretta to tell her about her uncle," I probed. The woman nodded, keeping her eyes on me, refusing to look at the pitiful form crawling past us.
"Did you tell her I was coming here this evening?"
"Yes," she answered. "I had received the cable from your superior."
"And what did Amoretta say?"