True Evil (43 page)

It doesn't matter,
he told himself. As long as he logged on to EX NIHILO once a day—as Andrew Rusk—the system would not send out its destructive file, and he would remain safe. He could kill Andrew Rusk five minutes from now, and nothing would happen to him.

Eldon laughed. It started as a chuckle, then grew in his chest to a rolling, heaving barrel of laughter. EX NIHILO changed everything. By faxing him those passwords, an out-of-work software engineer named Neville Byrd had cut the thread holding the sword above his head. With those passwords in his possession, Eldon could write Andrew Rusk right out of his plans.
Or,
he thought with a unexpected thrill,
I could rewrite them with a much different ending.

From the beginning, Eldon had demanded his fee in uncut diamonds. Rusk had groused at first, but he soon realized the wisdom of this system of payment. Unlike cash, rough diamonds were immune to both fire and water. They could be buried for years. If they had not been engraved with ID numbers in their source country, they could not be traced. Any cash deposit over $10,000 had to be reported to the IRS, but you could carry $10,000 worth of uncut diamonds in your mouth without detection, and more elsewhere in your body without discomfort. You could hold millions of dollars' worth in a safe-deposit box, but why risk it? You could bury them in your backyard and no one could ever deny you access to them with a judicial writ. Best of all, when it came time to move them, they looked like rocks. A box of rocks!

Eldon laughed again. He'd built up quite a rock collection over the past five years. Rusk had, too, albeit a smaller one. Rusk had taken his early payments in the form of inclusion in the business deals of his wealthy clients. He'd thought this was a brilliant stroke that could keep him on the legitimate side of the IRS. And he was right, to that extent. Rusk paid taxes on the earnings, and that kept the IRS off his back. It did not, however, make what he had done to earn those profits legal. And as the business connections multiplied, so accrued his traceable connections to a list of murders. And that, Eldon was almost sure, was what had brought Special Agent Alex Morse down on their backs.

Rusk had realized the error of his ways after a couple of years. He, too, had started taking his fee in uncut diamonds. Now and then he accepted a business deal as payment, as with the Fennell deal. But he had quite a box of rocks built up by now, as well. The only question was, where did he keep them? If Eldon could learn the answer to that question, he could make the transition to his next life as a much richer man. He would be a fool not to add Rusk's stash to his own if he could.

And I can,
he thought with satisfaction.
Rusk doesn't have the sand to hold out under duress. All that mountain climbing and skydiving and running marathons won't add up to five minutes of guts in the face of true pain.

It was time for drastic measures. It was time to call in his markers—all of them. And that meant Edward Biddle. Eldon hadn't spoken to Biddle in over two years, not since the TransGene man had delivered the gas canisters to him. Biddle seemed to feel that the less he knew, the safer he was. Still, the gas delivery had made one thing clear. Biddle was living up to his promise to "take care of my people." And "his people" were, of course, the former staff members of the VCP. Not everyone, but the dedicated few who had understood the true relationship between technology and life. Every scientific discovery was a two-edged sword. A scalpel could cut out a patient's tumor or slit his carotid artery. Morphine could extinguish pain or extinguish life. A viral infection could deliver lifesaving gene therapy or cause a global holocaust. It was the responsibility of some to discover and develop those potentialities; others would make decisions about how to use them. Eldon had always understood his place in this hierarchy, and Edward Biddle had valued him for that.

He flipped through the Rolodex on his desktop—he still preferred it to a computer-based organizer—and found Biddle's card.
Edward Biddle, Vice President, TransGene Corporation.
And below that:
America Leading the World.
Dr. Tarver loved them for that, for having the balls to put it right on the card in the so-called Age of Globalization. But TransGene could say it and dare anyone to gripe about it. Microbiology was one arena in which America had kept its competitive lead. Look at the Koreans and their cloning scam:
Our cloning works better because we keep human beings in our labs to babysit the cells every night.
Who did they think they were kidding with that warm-and-fuzzy bullshit? Sure enough, the truth had finally come out, as it always did in science. You could bluff for a while, but not forever. And therein lay the cruel beauty of science; there was nothing warm and fuzzy about it. Science was truth. And truth didn't care a fig for morality. Dr. Tarver dialed the number on Edward Biddle's card. It rang twice, and then a clipped voice accustomed to command answered.

"This is Biddle."

"This is Eldon Tarver, General."

An irony-laced laugh came down the line. "Hello, Doctor. What can I do for you?"

"It's time for me to relocate."

A brief pause. "Do you have a destination in mind?"

"I'd like to remain in-country."

"I see."

"I'm almost certain to require a new identity."

"I understand." Not a moment's hesitation. A good sign. "I know you've been doing research at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. I've been following that, off and on. It's interesting stuff, as far as it goes, but I can't help but feel you're not making full use of your talents there."

It was Tarver's turn to laugh. "The regulations on research are pretty claustrophobic these days. For that reason, I've been carrying out some private studies for some time. Five years, to be exact."

"Interesting. In what area?"

"Very similar to what we were doing at the VCP."

"Is that so?" Deep interest now.

"Yes, sir. You might say I picked up where we left off. Only this time, I had the equipment I needed."

"
Very
interesting."

"Yes, sir. And, ah, these are not in vitro experiments I'm talking about. These are in vivo studies."

"Primate studies?" Biddle asked.

"
Higher
primates, sir. Exclusively."

"I'm very intrigued, Eldon. I have a feeling your work might dovetail nicely with some things our more adventurous people have been doing at TransGene."

"Like-minded colleagues would be a nice change."

"I expect so. What sort of time frame do you have in mind for your relocation?"

"Two or three days, if possible. Maybe sooner."

A brief pause. "That's certainly possible. You and I should speak face-to-face. If I flew down in the next couple of days, could we meet?"

Eldon smiled with satisfaction. Biddle had taken the bait. Now he need only set the hook, and that he would do face-to-face. "Absolutely, sir."

"Good. I'll call you later."

"Thank you, sir."

"You, too, Eldon. It's good to be working with you again."

"You, too."

Dr. Tarver hung up, then logged into his anonymous e-mail account and sent Rusk a copy of their
CHEAP VIAGRA! CHEAP!
spam. In it, below the ad pitch, he inserted the line
Satisfy the youngest CHICKs!
The word
chick
in all caps meant that Rusk should meet him tomorrow at the Chickamauga Hunting Club rather than the Annandale Golf Club. It was Dr. Tarver's version of Reynolds Wrap in a window: his crisis code.

After logging out of the account, he removed Biddle's card from his Rolodex and put it in his pocket. Then he folded the faxed pages that Neville Byrd had sent him and slid them into the same pocket. His whole future in a single pocket. Only one threat to that future existed: Andrew Rusk. Without Rusk, Alex Morse could not connect Eldon Tarver to any crime. And by tomorrow night—if Biddle lived up to Eldon's expectations—Rusk would be dead, and his cache of diamonds would be part of Eldon Tarver's unreported-asset portfolio. Eldon stood and went into the hall, then locked his office and walked down the corridor to see the chief of Oncology.

CHAPTER 37

Alex was alone as she rode the elevator to the fifth floor of the University Medical Center, her excitement at the possibility of John Kaiser's help exploded by Chris's news that he'd probably been injected with something during the night. Since Kaiser was still an hour south of Jackson, and since UMC was practically across the street from the Cabot Lodge, she'd decided to visit her mother.

When the elevator doors opened, she walked down to the adult oncology wing: not a place of gladness, despite the efforts of families and nurses to nurture a hopeful atmosphere. Alex was thankful that the pediatric cases had their own hospital; she might not have been able to endure them in her present emotional state.

She found her mother much as she had left her two days ago. Her liver was larger, her skin yellower, her kidneys deader, her belly more bloated. Her ovarian cancer had proved atypical, invading areas and organs usually spared by that disease—yet still she clung to life. To life, but not to consciousness, thank God.

Alex sat beside her, holding the limp and sweaty hand, trying to fight off waves of despair. At times like this, it seemed there was no happiness in the world. If there was, it was unknowing: the happiness of children who had not yet learned what lay behind the masks of the adults they saw each day and night. The people Alex knew seemed bent on destroying whatever happiness they might have found, as though unable to tolerate the hell of living with what they'd once thought they wanted. She wondered if human beings had ever been meant to attain the things they desired. Of course, that question presupposed some divine intent inherent in the world, whereas most of the evidence she had seen contradicted this idea. She hoped that if the day ever came that she found a man who loved her as she dreamed of being loved, she would be content to love him in return. She believed she would, if only because she had lost so much, and so young. Unlike most people she'd encountered, Alex knew in her bones that existence was terribly fragile, a flickering flame that could be extinguished at any moment without cause or justice.

She checked her watch. Chris would arrive soon, and Kaiser not long after. She squeezed her mother's hand, then wrote a brief note for the nurses to read to her later.
Dear Mom, I was here. I love you. I hope it doesn't hurt too much. I'm close by, and I'll be back soon. I love you. Alexandra.

"Alexandra," she said, getting up and walking into the hall. Never in her life had she felt like an Alexandra, yet Margaret Morse had spent most of her life trying to force her daughter to become one. Girlie outfits, pink hair ribbons, debutante balls, sorority recommendations…
Christ.

Alex stepped aside for a group of white-coated doctors walking together. Most looked five years younger than she was.
Interns.
A couple of the women were staring at her face. They were curious about the scars, and they were probably wondering how they would deal with something like that. They saw people with infirmities and afflictions every day, but most of that they shut out by force of will, aided by the separation implicit in a wide age difference. But when they saw
her,
a woman like them—even prettier than they were—disfigured by fate, it scared them.

When Alex reached the elevator, she found a man already waiting in front of it. She stood behind his big white coat, waiting for the car to come. Hospital smells permeated the air: alcohol, harsh disinfectant, God knew what else. There were highly resistant bacteria on every surface in this place, waiting to find some portal into a warm, wet body so that they could multiply into the millions, then billions, until they had wiped out the host that nourished them for their brief stay on earth—

A bell dinged softly.

Alex walked into the elevator behind the white-coated man. Another white coat was waiting inside, both members of the same exclusive club, the world within the world of the hospital, inhuman humans with faces whose smiles never quite reached their eyes, who dealt each day with death and thus denied it with twice the fervor of average citizens. The man already on board the elevator backed away from the larger newcomer and stood in the car's right rear corner. The big man took the left corner. By unwritten law, Alex took one of the remaining corners—right front, near the buttons—and stood facing the door.

The elevator smelled new, and its doors were polished until reflective. In the blurred reflection, Alex saw that the big man had a beard, and also a flaming birthmark above it.
It must be bad,
she thought,
to show even in the dim reflection.

The elevator stopped on the third floor, and the man directly behind her walked out. As the doors closed, Alex backed into the spot that he'd occupied. The man with the birthmark looked over and nodded, but instead of looking away afterward, he continued to study her. This broke one of the unwritten laws, but Alex figured that her scars had drawn his attention—his
professional
attention.

"Shotgun?" asked the man, touching his own cheek.

She colored deeply. He was the first one to guess right. Some doctors knew that her particular kind of scarring was caused by gunshot, but since so much of the mess had been made by flying glass, most guessed wrong. Maybe he was a trauma surgeon.

"Yes," she said.

"I don't mean to make you uncomfortable. I can relate to having people stare at your face."

Alex stared back. The big, bearded man was about sixty, with a deep voice that had probably reassured ten thousand patients over the years. "Is that a birthmark?"

He smiled. "Not technically. It's an arteriovenous anomaly. It's not bad when you're born, but when you hit puberty, it suddenly explodes into this."

Alex started to ask a question, but as though reading her mind, the stranger said, "Surgery often makes it worse. I don't want to risk that."