The White Plague (11 page)

“We’re doing a genetic typing nationally to see if we can identify correlations with certain diseases and immunities. I’m supposed to use your ID numbers, no names. All I need in addition is whether the sample is from male or female.”

Her voice sounded tired. “Doctor Vicenti, nobody’s told me a thing.” She gestured at the table. “And I’m supposed to process two hundred and sixteen students today, more tomorrow.”

He gritted his teeth. “Damn! That’s their second slip-up in two weeks! Somebody in that office should be fired.”

Nurse Blanquie shook her head in sympathy.

He said: “Well, what can I do to help you? Could we get a student in to handle the paperwork?”

“I’ve already asked for one,” she said. She looked at the table in front of her. “Could you set up here beside me? What kind of samples will you take?”

He opened the kit box, displaying the ranked slides, the swabs and alcohol, lancets, everything neat.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, that shouldn’t delay us much, Doctor. I guess between the two of us we can handle it.” 

When he returned to Ballard that evening, “Doctor Vicenti” had two hundred and eleven blood samples, each with a tiny pinch of skin cells deftly included.

There will be specific differences
, he told himself as he removed his disguise in the bathroom, which still smelled of stale tobacco.
The genetic information for every biological function – including whether the person is male or female. There is a pattern here into which I can lock a virulent destroyer.

The positive intermolding effect of the double helix chains, each side able to reproduce its opposite number, his clues lay in there. In the peptide bonds, perhaps, and in the singular tails that trailed out of the helix.

He took the samples down to his lab. The answers had to be in here, he assured himself. It was in the DNA patterns. Had to be. When a bacterial virus infected a bacterium, it was the virus’s DNA, not its protein, that entered the bacterial cell. Here was the messenger he needed to make John O’Neill’s revenge heard everywhere.

The technique for testing his results already had been worked out. It would be elegant in the extreme. He would require short-lived virus-mediated bacterial forms, bacteria that would induce visible effects in a selected population. The effects would have to be identifiable and visible, not fatal but important enough to cause comment. The test bacilli would have to be self-lethal. They would have to vanish of themselves.

These requirements, which might have daunted a major research center, did not even give him pause. He had a feeling of invincibility. It was only one step in his project. When he had the key to this lock, when he had assured himself of its identity, then he could start shaping the key into its more virulent form.

And
then
the message could be sent.

This is not my table. That’s the real, all-inclusive Western mantra. And look what it got us.

– Fintan Craig Doheny

T
HE
T
EAM
reconvened after lunch that first day with its pattern well set – Beckett in charge, Lepikov simmeringly resentful, Godelinsky weaving intuitively through her maze of questions, Danzas reserved and watchful, Hupp darting like a terrier around every new idea, and Foss sitting there like an aloof goddess.

Hupp was amused that they chose the more intimate lighting for the room when they reconvened. It focused only on the long table, leaving the rest of the space in remote shadows.

The Team clustered loosely near one end of the table with their notes and briefcases around them. The sparring between Danzas and Lepikov had become more subtle – a raised eyebrow, a gentle cough at an inappropriate moment. Danzas took to stacking and restacking his papers while Lepikov spoke. Lepikov’s animosity toward Foss had resolved itself into calflike hurt glances that avoided Foss’s ample breasts. Godelinsky obviously had made the “sisters under the skin” decision to side with Foss, a thing that galled Lepikov, but he came back to the meeting saying he had orders to follow Beckett’s lead.

Preparing himself to speak at length on this, Lepikov pushed himself back in his chair at Beckett’s right and stared across the table where Danzas was leafing through notes with a noisy rustling. A glance at Godelinsky beside him showed her looking down the table where Foss had seated herself slightly apart, separated from Hupp by an empty chair. Before he could speak, though, Godelinsky asked Beckett: “Why do they lock the barn door after the horse is slaughtered?” She reached over and tapped a sheet of yellow paper in front of Beckett.

Hupp appeared agitated by the question. “Yes,” he said. “Why do they impose the severe quarantine at this time?”

“We must do what the Madman says,” Lepikov interrupted.

Beckett nodded. “It’s a mess, all right.”

“The Madman makes his point,” Danzas said.

“I had a brief session with our Security people before coming in here,” Beckett said. “We’re writing off North Africa from the Atlantic to the Suez. South Africa remains a question mark. Security says it has a report that a Mafia courier contaminated Johannesburg. There are trouble spots in France and an outbreak south of Rome.”

“What of Ireland and England?” Danzas asked.

Beckett shook his head. “England’s still trying to create safe districts for its women. Ireland has apparently given it up. There’s battling in Ireland between the army and the IRA. Belfast… they tried to arrange a truce but it’s already being called ‘the Bloody Amnesty.’  I just don’t understand the Irish.”

“Tell them about Switzerland,” Foss said.

“The Swiss have cut themselves off, blown their bridges and tunnels, shut down their airports. They’ve thrown a military cordon around the country and reportedly are killing and burning with flamethrowers anyone attempting to enter.”

“So much murder,” Godelinsky murmured.

“I heard about Brittany,” Lepikov said. “Is that the trouble you mention in France?”

“There is more,” Danzas said. “Certain prefectures are isolating themselves in the Swiss manner. Units of the military have defected from Central Authority to support the… uhhhhh…”

“Fragmentation,” Hupp said.

“Washington, D.C., did the same thing and so did New York,” Beckett said. “It’s ruthless but it seems to be effective.” He looked at Lepikov. “What’s happening in the Soviet Union?”

“They do not inform us,” Lepikov said. “They ask that we search diligently for the Madman.”

“And what do we do if we find him?” Godelinsky asked.

“I’m sure Sergei refers to the search for the Madman’s persona,” Hupp said, trying to set a new tone of familiarity.

“We must know him as we know ourselves,” Lepikov said.

“Oh, better than that, I hope,” Foss said. Her bosom quivered as she chuckled.

Lepikov forgot himself and stared at her breasts, fascinated.
A magnificent giantess!

In Russian, Foss said: “Sergei Alexandrovich, you presume on my maternal instincts.”

Godelinsky sneezed to cover a laugh.

Beckett, who sensed a return of open animosity between Foss and Lepikov, said: “Knock it off, Ari. We have work to do. I want us to examine the terrorist references in the Madman’s letters. If it’s O’Neill, that’s where we’ll find the most heat.”

“My colleague and I have extracted those references,” Hupp said. “Bill is right. The passages are significant.”

“Let’s hear it, Joe,” Beckett said.

Hupp smiled. This was exactly the tone he wanted. Bill and Joe. It should become Ari, Sergei and Dorena. He glanced at Godelinsky.
Dorie, perhaps?
No, the Godelinsky was not a Dorie, except, perhaps, in bed.

Danzas slipped a blue folder from the stack in front of him. “This is the gist,” he said.

Lepikov raised an eyebrow at the thickness of the folder and murmured: “Gist?”

Danzas ignored him. “We take the original words out of context for the purposes of our analysis.” He cleared his throat, adjusted a pair of glasses to his nose and bent forward to read in a clear voice with just a trace of British accent to betray where he had learned his English.

“Their cowardice is masked in lies and guile.”
Danzas raised his head. “That is from his second letter. We juxtapose a passage from his third letter where he says” – again, Danzas lowered his attention to the page –
“They (the terrorists) seduce the people into belief in violence, then abandon the people to every retaliation that such blind and random action can attract.”

“Accent on cowardice,” Hupp said. “Interesting. Does the Madman think his own revenge cowardly? Does he employ guile and tell us lies? Does he even consider himself a terrorist?”

“I recall a number of places where he refers to cowardice,” Foss said. “Could his own conscience be speaking to us there?”

“Here is another quotation,” Danzas said.
“They (the terrorists) commit only crimes that require no true courage. Terrorists are like bomber pilots who need never look upon their tortured victims, never see the faces of people who pay in anguish. Terrorists are kin to the rack-renting landlords who – “

“What is that?” Godelinsky interrupted. “What is a rack-renting landlord?”

“An interesting bit of Irishness,” Hupp said. “It’s from the early days of English domination there. The choicest lands were given to English landlords, who appointed overseers to squeeze as much rent out of the peasants as possible. Rack-renting.”

“I see,” Godelinsky said. “Excuse the interruption.”

“But the Madman knows his Irish history,” Beckett said.

Danzas bent over once more to his pages:
“. . . the rack-renting landlords who never once stared face-to-face into the countenance of a starving peasant.”

“He displays an implicit sympathy for victims of violence,” Foss said. “For our purposes, that is a weakness.”

“It suggests a kind of schizophrenia,” Godelinsky said.

“Either that, or his ideas of an appropriate revenge are being fleshed out in his letters,” Foss said.

“Exactly!” Hupp said.

Danzas said: “Elsewhere, our Madman describes terrorists as having
the guilt of Pilate.”

“Isn’t that where he calls terrorists
adrenalin addicts?”
Beckett asked.

“You remember correctly,” Danzas said. “These are his words:
They create agony, then wash their hands in false patriotism. Their true desire is for personal power and the internal kick of an adrenalin high. They are adrenalin addicts.”

“Does
he
get this kick?” Hupp asked.

“A diatribe,” Foss said. “It’s O’Neill raging against the murderers of his family.”

“The legitimate uses of violence,” Godelinsky murmured.

Lepikov shot a startled look at her. “What?”

“I quote Comrade Lenin,” Godelinsky said. “He approved ‘the legitimate uses of violence.’”

“We are not here to debate ideology,” Lepikov snapped.

“But we are,” Hupp said. “The Madman’s ideology should occupy our every waking moment.”

“Do you suggest Lenin was mad?” Lepikov demanded.

“That’s not at issue,” Hupp said. “But understanding one madman throws light on others. There are no sacred cows in the laboratory.”

“I will not follow the capitalist herring,” Lepikov growled.

Hupp grinned. “The original expression, Sergei, was ‘red herring.’”

“The color of a fish does not make it less fishy,” Lepikov said. “I make myself clear, Joe?” There was no familiarity in Lepikov’s tone.

Hupp chose to enjoy the sally, laughing, then: “You are right, Sergei. Absolutely right.”

“The issue is how does this Madman think of himself,” Beckett said.

Foss agreed: “Does he act with courage and honor? He seems hipped on that.”

“There is a passage worthy of note,” Danzas said. He leafed through his pages, nodded at something he found, then read:

“Terrorists always assault honor, dignity and self-respect. Their own honor is the first to die. You should recognize that the IRA Provos have abandoned Irish honor. Under Erin’s old Brehon Law, you could kill an enemy only in open battle, each equally armed. The better man earned the respect of all. A warrior was generous and fair. Where was the generosity and fairness in the bomb that killed the innocents at Grafton Street?”

“Grafton Street, that is where O’Neill’s wife and children were killed by the bomb,” Godelinsky said. “This is either O’Neill or an extremely clever disguise.”

“Perhaps,” Danzas said. Once more, he bent to his notes and read from a letter:

“These Provisional IRA murderers remind me of the boot-licking lackeys who served Dublin Castle in the worst days of Ireland’s degradation. Their methods are no different. England ruled with torture and deadly violence. The self-serving Provo cowards learned that lesson well. Having learned it, they refuse to learn any other lesson. So I give them a lesson no one will ever forget!”

“These Provisional IRAs, these Provos, they are the ones who set the bomb at Grafton Street?” Foss asked.

“Our Madman singles them out but he apparently makes little distinction between terrorists,” Hupp said. “Regard that he blames Great Britain and Libya equally and he warns the Soviet Union because of alleged complicity with Libya.”

“A lie!” Lepikov said.

“Francois,” Foss said, leaning forward to stare directly at Danzas. And she thought:
He calls me by my given name. How does he take to the same familiarity?

Danzas appeared unoffended. “Yes?”

“Do you and Joe see this as more than a schizoid diatribe?”

Hupp answered: “These are words of outrage wrenched from an agonized human being. It is O’Neill, of that I am sure. The question before us is: How does he view himself?”

“Here are his own words,” Danzas said, returning to his notes.

“Every tyrant in history is marked by indifference to misery. That is a clear way to identify tyranny. Now, I am the tyrant. You must deal with me. You must answer to me. And I am indifferent to your misery. Out of this indifference, I ask you to consider the consequences of your own violent actions and violent inactions.”