Calypso Directive (5 page)

Boston, Massachusetts

B
RIGGS CROSSED HIS
legs and shifted his weight in a fruitless effort to get comfortable. The chairs in Robért Nicolora's office were nice enough to look at, but despite their solid walnut construction and crimson leather upholstery, they were abysmally uncomfortable. Nicolora liked it that way. He preferred to keep his office guests distracted while they were in conference with him.
“As goes the body, so goes the mind,”
he had once told Briggs.

Nicolora's own chair, while similar in style, was contoured, soft, and supportive.

Though he was five years Briggs' senior, Nicolora looked at least ten years younger than his longtime friend. His lean frame, olive complexion, and full head of hair belied his fifty-nine years. A naturalized U.S. citizen of twelve years, he had been born in a small town outside of Budapest, Hungary. His linguistic capabilities had always left friends and colleagues awestruck. At the age of thirty, he was fluent in seven languages: Hungarian, Czech, Russian, German, French, Spanish, and English. His current project was Mandarin. He spoke English with a perceptible and yet charming accent that came from a subtle mix of his Eastern European roots and Western European schooling. He could shed the accent when necessary for negotiation purposes, but he preferred the sound of his English to that of native British or American speakers. Most of the women he courted seemed to prefer it as well.

When he was a small child, Nicolora's parents moved his sister and him to Madrid. On his eighteenth birthday, he left home to attend university in Barcelona. In his twenties, Nicolora lived and worked throughout Europe, spending time in Paris, Munich, Amsterdam, and London. It was during his time in London that he met an American named Bradley Wells. Over several months, the two men became close friends, and it was Wells who recruited Nicolora to join an elite think tank that served the U.S. government during the Cold War. Neither a government bureau nor a corporation, the brain trust did not officially exist on any government org-charts. Within the innermost circles of the State Department, however, the group was known as The Think Tank.

To its members, it was simply and affectionately referred to as The Tank.

In 1997, Nicolora was appointed Director. In December 2000, one month before President George W. Bush took office, the Think Tank Project was quietly disbanded and its members scattered to the wind.

In theory, The Tank had ceased to exist.

•     •     •

“
DID HE ACCEPT
?” Nicolora asked, knowing the answer already.

“Yes.”

“Did he make a counteroffer?”

“No.”

“Hmm.” Nicolora rubbed his chin. “Do you think he can handle our type of fieldwork?”

Briggs shrugged. “Fifty-fifty. But McNamara assures me this kid is the real deal. A ‘tenacious technical mind' were his exact words. Besides, you said it yourself, Archer's dissertation practically is the case.”

“What do you have planned for him today?”

“I'm meeting him at eight in the Public Garden. Paperwork, followed by the standard tour.”

Nicolora smiled, expectantly. “Did you give him any location ciphers to figure out where to meet you?”

“No. We don't have time for that bullshit. I can't afford to waste a day picking him up somewhere ridiculous like Iceland.”

Nicolora laughed. “Don't tell me you're still sore about Reykjavik. That was ten years ago.” Briggs grunted.

“I seem to remember your first day being a little rough.” Nicolora winked.

“Not my fault. I was merely following your instructions,” Briggs said. “Your ciphers have always sucked.”

“Not true. You've just never been able to figure them out.” Nicolora reached for a pen on his desk. “Do you want me to write it down? I still remember it.”

“Bastard.” Briggs swiped the pen away and pretended to be angry. He squirmed again in his chair. “And have I mentioned that I hate these goddamn chairs?”

“Not since yesterday.”

The two men stared at each other for a moment like street toughs in rival gangs, then burst into laughter.

After he had caught his breath Briggs asked, “What did our contact in the Czech Ministry of Health have to say? Does the Czech government know anything yet?”

“Nothing. Meredith is keeping it very quiet. She's in lockdown mode, holding
everything
back . . . even from me. But whatever went down, it was big.”

“Containment loss?”

“Not likely, or it would be all over CNN by now. Industrial espionage is my guess.”

“Or it could be a cover-up for a major league screw-up.”

“Always one of my personal favorites,” Nicolora chuckled.

“Has she decided what she wants to do?”

“Not yet.”

Briggs grunted again, this time with real disdain.

“I know you don't like her Jack, and I don't care,” Nicolora said. “If Meredith decides she needs our help, then we're going to help her, damn it.”

“Even if it means taking down the Foundation in the process?”

Nicolora tensed, but quickly regained his composure. “Now you're just being melodramatic.” He stood, walked around the corner of his desk, and stopped in front of the still-seated Briggs. Looking down at him, he added, “If our people do what they're supposed to do—what they're paid to do—then that will never happen. Regardless of the assignment.”

Briggs stood and put his hand on Nicolora's shoulder.

“Be careful, old friend. If I recall correctly, it was you yourself who once said:
That woman's lips are hemlock
.”

Prague, Czech Republic

W
ILL SAT ALONE
on a cold stone curb, in a narrow deserted alley, his face buried in his hands. Visions of the two American college students from the youth hostel, writhing with fever and pain, flashed through his mind like snapshots in a grotesque photo album he could not bring himself to close. It was his fault they were dying. Did that make him a murderer?

He did not know whether it was exposure to the contents of the broken vial or contact with him that had infected them. They were exposed to two potential vectors. As far as Miss Sophie was concerned, when Will last saw her, she was not exhibiting signs of infection. That leant credence to the broken vial argument. Of course, that was hours ago. By now, she could be as sick as they were.

When he was a boy, his father told him a bizarre piece of trivia. If you place a frog in a pot of cold water, and slowly heat the water inside to a boil, the frog will linger, incognizant of the danger until it perishes in the heat. But if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, the frog will jump out immediately—scalded, but alive. During his third month of confinement, it occurred to him that he was the frog, and quarantine the pot of water. His captors were turning up the heat gradually, and he had been oblivious to the change. At that moment of epiphany, he began planning his escape:

He started by shifting his sleeping pattern—forcing himself to nap at every opportunity during the day—so he could be alert at night when the staff was at one-quarter strength. He learned the assignments on the watch bill and memorized the times and routes for the roving personnel. He studied the guards and orderlies, noted their idiosyncrasies, and became familiar with their habits. Eventually, he built up the courage to sneak around Level 4 during the break between the hourly security tours after midnight. Systematically, he scoped out the entire floor including: the laundry room, the server room, the sample room, Laboratory 1, Laboratory 2, the hospital rooms housing other patients, and a room with a label in another language, which he could not read. This room, along with the server room, was always locked. Until one night, he found the door shut, but not latched.

The room was cold, dimly lit, and the back wall was lined with rectangular stainless steel refrigeration modules that bore the nameplate Mopec. Two identical modules sat side by side, each housing nine chambers, arranged three rows high by three columns wide. An empty gurney was parked up against the left wall. A chill ran down his spine. He knew what this place was. He turned to leave, but then stopped. He couldn't help himself; he had to look. To his surprise, the handles were not locked. He took a deep breath and opened one of the rectangular doors in the middle row. The door hissed as he broke the seal and 39
F chilled air tickled the hair on his forearm. He grabbed the lip on the telescoping stainless steel tray inside and pulled. The tray extended smoothly, despite holding the weight of a full-size adult body inside a black zippered body bag. Two yellow Biological Hazard stickers were affixed to the bag, one at the head and one at the foot. He took the zipper in between his thumb and forefinger, held his breath, and pulled. A wave of rank, putrid air that stank of excrement hit him like a punch in the face. He gagged and reflexively took a step back. Then, he saw it—the face of a monster. The cadaver inside looked like he had been bludgeoned to death, but Will knew otherwise. The tip of the nose and fingertips were blackened and gangrenous. A grotesque, purple bubo bulged on the side of the dead man's neck, and blue-black plague spots covered his trunk and cheeks. The body was fresh and Will was sickened to see that it had yet to be cleaned. Dried blood and pus stained the skin beneath the dead man's nostrils and trailed from the corner of his left eye. Fighting the urge to vomit, he covered his nose and mouth and reluctantly stepped closer. He recognized this man. He had seen him the week before, languishing in a hospital room five doors down from his own, hacking and spewing phlegm. Like a bug trapped in a spider's web, the man was hooked up to a tangled mess of tubes and wires, waiting to die. Will zipped the body bag closed and shoved the corpse back inside its refrigerated tomb. He opened the adjacent door and repeated the process. This time the zipper opened to reveal the cadaver's feet. He noted the toe tag: P-62. He looked down at his wristband and his heart skipped a beat. P-65. Frantically he checked the other cadaver coolers. P-59, P-47, P-61, P-43 . . . P-64. Fear gripped him as the gravity of his situation took hold. In this hospital, regardless of the treatment, the patients died. All of them.

His mind drifted from that fateful night two weeks ago, back to the present. To his surprise, he suddenly found himself contemplating going back. What if he belonged in quarantine? Maybe he really was infected with a deadly disease, just as they claimed. The last thing he wanted was to hurt people. Better to live in a bubble, than to be responsible for filling Mopec chillers with the bodies of innocent men, women, and children. He was certain he could find his way back to the building from which he had escaped. Within seconds of walking into the lobby, the guards would surround him. Angry yellow-suits would converge from every direction and thrust him back into the familiar nightmare of needles and isolation. It would be horrible, but at least he would avoid hurting more innocent people.

Yet despite the mental anguish he was suffering,
physically
he was feeling better by the hour. Sure, the fire escape plunge had taken a toll on his body; his joints ached and his muscles throbbed. But the symptoms from the last injection were completely gone. His breathing was strong and steady; his head and sinuses were clear. As much as he wanted to be sick, deserved to be sick—sick like Rutgers and Frankie—his body was on the mend.

He hugged himself against the cold while working to clear his mind and tried not to shiver. He felt like he had a pile of jigsaw puzzle pieces that looked like matches on first inspection, but didn't quite fit when he tried to snap them together.

Puzzle piece number one: The doctors told him he was infected with a deadly virus. This he could not prove or disprove. Months ago, when he was first placed into quarantine he did not feel sick. He did not feel sick now. The only time he ever felt sick was while he was in quarantine. Still, he knew that empirical observations of his health did not rule out the possibility that he was a
carrier
of a disease. What if he, like Typhoid Mary in the early 1900s, was spreading a disease for which he exhibited no symptoms?