The History Thief: Ten Days Lost (The Sterling Novels) (34 page)

The cab came to a stop. The driver said, “Cidade Universitária” and pointed to the meter.

Michael quickly gave the driver a thick wad of euros, more than what the meter stated. He commanded of the driver, “Stay here. I will be fifteen minutes. Do you understand?”

The driver thumbed the wad of euros. The day had been slow, and he could use the extra money. “Yes, I will wait,” he replied.

Michael nodded and cockily said, “Your English ain’t half-bad.”

The driver smiled and replied with a chuckle, “You should hear my Chinese.”

Opening the cab door, Michael grunted as he exited. He walked with a purpose as he made his way into the hospital. It didn’t matter that he was in a country whose people spoke a language he didn’t know: hospitals are laid out in a nearly identical fashion from one country to another. He had been in enough hospitals, both as a patient and with his wife, to know exactly where he needed to head.

In the sub-floors, he found the research facilities. Although he didn’t know Portuguese, Michael could speak both fluent Spanish and passable Italian: romance languages that shared their roots in Latin, and languages that shared some recognizable cognates with Portuguese.

The halls in the base gleamed bright, showing that they had been freshly waxed. The lab that he needed emerged almost right away: Medicina Especializada em Doenças Femininas—Ginecologia.

Michael pushed open the door to the gynecology research lab. Inside the small room, Michael peered around. In the corner he found what he needed.

The machine looked like a small computer terminal, but at a cost cresting $250,000, the Voluson E8 Expert BT06 ultrasound machine was not meant for spreadsheets and word processing.

He powered it on and within moments a slight hum spilled out from the machine. The nineteen-inch flat-screen monitor brightened. The machine was ready.

Michael scanned the keyboard, thankful that it was intuitive, and then punched a few buttons. A small probe was attached to an articulating arm, which he pulled closer. He shoved it firmly atop his thigh and within moments the spatio-temporal image correlation (STIC) software differentiated between the tissue of his musculature and the borders of his femoral artery. A high resolution, four-dimensional curved array showed the anatomical architecture of his large artery; Michael slowly moved the probe down his thigh until he saw it.

He magnified the image.

Looking like a small bug, the microscopic legs of the injected device were clamped against the wall of his artery, no different than a tick would the back of a deer.

The ultrasound machine came with a sonography-based automated count follicle (SonoAVCfollicle) that helped to study the heart of a fetus. In this case, it was picking up the faint, rhythmic pulse being emitted by the device in his leg.

“Now what the hell does that mean,” said Michael out loud.

“It certainly isn’t the beat of a child’s heart, mate,” answered an unseen, baritone, and clearly Australian voice.

Michael jumped off the table and spun around. He was nearly face-to-face with one of the university’s medical students. Michael quickly sized him up: the white-smock that he wore did little to cover his clearly sturdy frame. The student’s neck was thick and his arms even thicker. Michael wouldn’t be surprised if the student was wearing a rugby jersey underneath the coat. The student’s hand was hanging next to his thick waist; in it was a cell phone.

“What are you doing in here?” asked the student. “I’m calling campus security, don’t move!” he commanded without waiting for a response.

“Wait!” Michael said firmly as he backed up slightly—he needed the necessary room to counter in case the student decided to test his physical prowess. “Just wait, okay? I can explain.”

The student let the phone continue to hang down to his side but said, “I want you to leave! Get out of here now, or I will bloody well show you the way
through
the door!”

“Okay, I will, but first finish your sentence.”

“What’d ya mean? Finish what sentence? Look, mate, I don’t know who you are, but you can’t be down here. You need to leave now!” He moved closer to Michael.

Ignoring him, Michael’s voice rose when he shouted, “When you walked in, you said it wasn’t the beat of a child’s heart. What was it, then?”

The student had first worn a look of confidence when he had walked in, but now that look changed. It was confusion. He scanned Michael’s face carefully; he saw the small shimmering beads of sweat across his forehead; he saw the slightly shallow breaths that he took. He knew something was wrong.

He crept closer toward Michael, dropping the cell phone into his lab coat pocket.

Michael saw this and matched his movements, sidestepping to be at a better angle for the attack he expected was about to come.

The student’s confusion morphed into intensity; he looked ready to spring forward. His jaw tightened and his muscles tensed.

Michael held out his hand as if to plead; the last thing he wanted was to go toe-to-toe with the large man in front of him.

The student moved closer.

Michael lowered his head, stared directly at the young, confident man, and flatly warned, “Do not come any closer. I suggest that you turn around and just walk away. It’s your best choice.”

A cocky grin cut the corner of his mouth. “My best choice, eh, old man?”

“Old man?”

Aw, hell,
thought Michael,
as they say: the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Michael let out a slow breath, readying himself for what would come.

“When the medics pick you off the floor, don’t say I didn’t give you a chance to leave,” barked the student.

It was a mistake by an untrained man.

In an instant, Michael seized the opportunity. He couldn’t leave yet. He needed the student to answer the question. The student’s last sentence took but a moment to utter, but that moment was all that Michael would need. In the fraction of time that the student was not focusing on his opponent, Michael leapt forward, placing his knee in the man’s kidney while simultaneously striking the jaw with the thick, padded part of his palm. It was enough to put him off balance. His meaty hands grasped ineffectively at Michael. Michael shoved the now-reeling student backward and then spun him around. His face was firmly pushed into the padded medical table. Michael had him in a horrific arm lock behind his back and gave it a hard pull upward.

The student wailed out at the pain.

Michael growled into the student’s ear, “Like I said, I am not here to give you any trouble, and I don’t want to hurt you. I just need you to answer the question: what was the sound you heard?”

The student groaned somewhat, and Michael released some of the pressure he had put on his arm. He painfully bleated back, “It’s a countdown, a diminishing algorithm!”

“A what? How do you know?” spat out Michael.

“Diminish…diminishing algorithm: a loop of calculations in an array. Ah! Please, you’re hurting me!”

Michael released the pressure slightly and shouted, “Now finish!”

The student grunted. “Each calculation ends with a result, and the next one starts with that result; it will continue until it reaches its global target.”

“Global target?” Michael was confused. “Explain.”

“It’s the final calculation—the target is always zero,” he answered with some difficulty. “I’ve studied it! The algorithm is a simple one; a repeating cycle represented by a series of monotones. Each cycle will get repetitively faster until the space between the repeating tones is eliminated.”

The student paused, and Michael gave his arm a yank to remind him to finish.

“Please!” he groaned loudly. “Let me go—my arm, I think it’s going to break! Please!”

“Then what!” shouted Michael, “What happens?”

“I, I don’t know, the tone should just continue as a constant and without a break! The algorithm has finished. It will have reached zero!”

“That’s it?” shouted Michael as he gave the arm a tug. “It’s finished? Nothing more?”

“Yes, yes! That’s it. Please, mate, let me go! I beg of you! I don’t know what else it could mean—maybe it just stops working—I don’t know! Please…”

Michael thought for a moment about what he had just said:
maybe it just stops working.

Or maybe it self-destructs
, Michael realized. He knew if that happened, a hole would be torn into his femoral artery. It wouldn’t take much force; arterial walls are relatively thin. Such a tear would cause him to bleed to death within minutes.

He shuddered at the thought.

“Listen to me,” said Michael. “Like I said to you, I’m not here to give anyone trouble, I just needed to use some of the equipment. I am going to let you go, and then I am going to leave. Do not move until I am gone, do you understand?”

The student nodded vigorously with his face still pressed onto the table.

Michael released him slowly and backed away. The student slumped across the table. As Michael neared the laboratory’s door, he heard the student’s feet moving quickly across the floor.

Shit,
Michael thought,
he didn’t understand.

Quickly he spun around to counter the attacking student.

A thick arm was coming down like a sledgehammer at Michael. Reaching up, he blocked the arm with both hands, but the student was strong, really strong.

Michael put a knee into the visibly angry and newly confident young man’s midsection, but if it had any measurable effect, the student didn’t show it. There was a fire in the young man’s eyes that burned into Michael’s own.

Something was gripped firmly in the thick fist of his attacker.

Protruding from the student’s hand was a syringe, and he was forcing it down toward Michael’s chest. A small drop of the toxin in the needle glistened at its tip.

It inched excruciatingly closer.

Michael tried to push back, but the man was just too strong. The student pushed harder; the needle was piercing the outer edge of Michael’s jacket. Michael couldn’t win this battle. The principles of physics always applied, the stronger force prevailed. He felt it poke through his skin. He winced.

The student placed the thick flesh of the tip of his thumb onto the hypodermic’s plunger.

Michael did the only thing that he could think of: he opened his mouth wide and clamped down on the man’s hand. He bit as hard as he could.

The man screamed out; Michael could feel some of his strength give way. Blood poured from his hand. At that moment, Michael grabbed the man’s thumb and forced it into an unnatural angle. He felt it snap. Spinning to his right, Michael kicked out the student’s leg, sending him hard to the floor. Falling on top of him, Michael threw a crushing blow into the man’s temple, knocking him out.

And then Michael felt the world spin.

He fell to one knee. Ventricular arrhythmia and respiratory depression—side effects of the drug—were coming quick.

Some of the drug had made its way into his system.

Michael groaned fiercely, his heart beating erratically. His breaths were shallow and fast, and his body was going cold.

He tried to stand, but staggered. Catching himself, he looked frantically around the laboratory.

It didn’t take long to see the needle. Michael shuffled to it and snatched it from the floor. He read the name printed on its side: Embutramide.

Fuck me and modern medicine,
thought Michael.

It was a drug with a number of purposes, one of which was to euthanize animals.

He needed to move fast. He hoped that he could get to his safe house in time. He hoped the cab was still there.

In the basement hall of the building, a security officer shouted out for Michael to stop; in his hand and held close to his mouth was a radio. He was speaking into it.

Michael put both hands to his side as if to say
I give up
. Time was running out, and reinforcements would certainly be on the way.

Michael couldn’t wait for the right moment. He had to act now.

The security officer peered into the research lab and saw the unconscious student sprawled across the tile floor. He spun to Michael while reaching for his gun. This was his mistake.

Michael was close enough. His arm felt heavy when he lifted it, but his blow was spot on: the security guard slumped immediately to the floor.

Pulling the officer’s forty-five caliber handgun from his hand, Michael released the clip and emptied the bullet from the chamber into his hand. He tossed both down the hallway.

Michael staggered outside; the sunlight slapped him in his face. His already dilated pupils were no match for the newly intense light of day. Raising his hand to cover his eyes, he looked straight ahead, then left, and then right.

He froze.

The cab was gone.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

DEATH IS INEVITABLE
LISBON, PORTUGAL