Robert W. Walker (8 page)

"You'll what?"

Nathan grabbed the wealthy Gordon by his coat and doubled him over the wet, black limo. "I'll see that your bloody, limey butt is dragged into a civil court and I'll throw everything I can at you. Do you understand me, Englishman?"

Perkins was tearing at Nathan to release the man and finally Nathan did so. Gordon's workers looked on, a sensation of excitement flooding over them, all of them hoping, it seemed, to see Gordon truly crowned.

Perkins retrieved Gordon's hat from the mud and was handing it to him when Nathan shouted for him to come along. Nathan got into his limo and Perkins got in across from him, shaking his head, unable to meet Nathan's eyes. Nathan shouted for the driver to take him to St. Stephen's Hospital.

The limousine parted the press and the crowd that had gathered as it pulled out.

"Have a drink, Commissioner?" asked Perkins, going for the bar inside the limo.

"No, and you aren't either, Lloyd. You're still a cop, whatever else you've become, and you're on duty."

Perkins gripped the bottle in his hand tighter, and then he put it back. "You sure put Gordon in his place, Commissioner."

"And you, Perkins? Where is your place, Lloyd?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means I saw the way you groveled around Gordon. You're on his payroll, too, aren't you?"

"Now, wait a minute, Commissioner."

"Tell you what,
Lloyd,
we'll talk about it at a later time ... maybe when this is all over."

St. Stephen's Hospital was in the heart of Manhattan, and besides its central location, it had the finest in modern equipment, technology and trauma care. It had been immediately selected as headquarters for the Centers for Disease Control when they had sent their representative and her team up to analyze the uncommon and unusual nature of the disease that was now throwing more and more New Yorkers into comas. Dr. Kendra Cline had taken her residence at New York's Bellevue, and no greater proving ground for a doctor existed on the face of the earth. She'd done extensive work in cell biology and
virology,
to the exclusion of anything anyone else might call a social life. At thirty-six, she remained unmarried, had no children and no prospects for either, which disturbed her family and friends far more than it did her. She cared passionately for her work and when she had gotten the position with the CDC in Atlanta, she felt it a dream come true.

She'd been dispatched to many areas to oversee what turned out to be Legionnaires' disease in one case, a virulent new strain of chicken pox in another, and she had done extensive regional studies of the spread of the HIV virus. But this was the first time that she was heading a team, and she was very worried, for what was going on in the city of New York was like nothing she had ever seen in all her experience. She had no idea what her superiors in Atlanta were wondering as they surveyed the daily reports she faxed back to them.

She had sent out blood and serum samples, packed in fail-safe metal containers and loaded on U.S. Air Force jets. She had also readied materials and packing for the first autopsy
samples, certain that
within hours one or more of her patients would succumb to death.

Now she got word that three more patients were on their way, two in coma and one in shock. She learned that it was the party of archeologists who'd braved going to the site of all the trouble, where the unknown disease seemed to originate from. She had herself tried to gain access to the location but had been denied by the authorities. She had been fighting with them ever since. She needed samples from the area badly, and she didn't mind taking risks to get them; and soon, if her wishes were not complied with, she'd take Tom and Mark, her aides, and they'd get in there by dark of night if need be. But for now she was in the midst of readying her team to gather in the new patients. In only the last four hours, many people had been brought to the hospital and to other hospitals across the city. Whatever this virulent bug was, it was taking a great toll in a short amount of time.

"Have you read about this guy, Stroud?" asked her assistant Mark Williams as they rushed the monitors down to meet the incoming victims.

"Some, yeah."

"One for the books, wouldn't you say?"

"Or
National Enquirer
, I suspect."

"Still, took some nerve going in there like that, him and those other two men."

"Looks that way."

They arrived at emergency to the ranting and threats of a patient who had leaped off a table and was wielding a scalpel he had gotten hold of, shouting for all the goddamned demons in the place to get away from him. Kendra guessed the madman to be another addict on PCBs or worse, before recognizing him as one of the men she'd seen earlier on a TV screen. He was an archeologist who had gone down into the pit. He was conscious but babbling, quite out of his head, and dangerous.

She saw Commissioner James Nathan in the thick of trying to calm the man he called Dr.
Wisnewski
. The older man jabbed at Nathan with the scalpel, ripping a long tear in his overcoat, when two uniformed police grabbed
Wisnewski
and wrestled him to the ground.

"Sacrifice me! They sacrificed me to the demon! The bastards! Bastards all! Get away! Get them away! They're all over me!
All over me!"

"Get in here with some goddamned sedation, please!" shouted Nathan.

"No! No sedation!" shouted Kendra. "Get a jacket on him! Render him harmless, but no drugs!"

Mark saw to it, locating and helping fit Dr.
Wisnewski
for a straitjacket as the man spat and attempted to bite countless times.

Nathan backed off and said to Dr. Cline, "Not the
Wisnewski
we've come to know and love. This is awful ... tried to kill Stroud at the site with a pickax to the chest ... Fortunately--"

"This is Stroud?" she asked, looking over the huge frame of Abraham Stroud which lay as still as a cadaver on a gurney alongside Dr. Leonard, who was equally silent and ominous. "Not sure I wouldn't prefer to see these other two in
Wisnewski's
condition, rather than as they are.
Getting very tired of seeing strong, healthy men turned to vegetables by this thing."

"Well, Wiz ...
Wisnewski
is no vegetable, that's for sure."

"I'll want to get an EKG and a CAT scan on
Wisnewski
, the blood, urine and serum tests, try to ID what it is that's kept him going."

"You got a test for bullheadedness?"

"Afraid not."

"Then you'll probably come up zip."

She frowned, rubbing the back of her neck, exhausted. "You have any idea how our isolation ward is swelling! There's been
an acceleration
in the number of cases! We've got to check everything, try every avenue--which brings me back to my need for soil, air and water samples from the site. Did you have anyone test for these?"

"Yes, just prior to their going in deep. My aide's taken them upstairs to your people."

"Good. Now perhaps we can begin to find some answers."

"You'd better. Damned few out on the street. As for
Wisnewski
, he's dangerous, criminally dangerous, attempting to kill Stroud and now me. Acts as if he's seeing things--"

"I noticed the delirium, yes."

"Soon as you're through running your tests, he's out of here to a maximum-security, padded room at Bellevue. I will see that the arrangements are made."

"All right ... if that's how it must be. And thanks for ordering those tests for me."

"That was the easiest thing I've had to do all day."

"Yeah, I saw some of your debate with Gordon on the tube in the lounge."

"Great ... just great.
Mayor
Leamy'll
love me for that."

"Well, again, thanks, and I'll take it from here." She began shouting orders to her people to get the comatose patients in tents and hooked to machines. This done, they began disappearing with Stroud and Leonard down the corridor. Nathan watched Kendra Cline go, thinking the dark-haired woman had a lot of grit, a lot of substance and a lot of beauty. She continued to shout along the corridor, "No time to lose! Up to isolation immediately! And use every precaution, people!
Move, move!"

Nathan had a thousand questions for the silent Stroud and Leonard, a thousand questions for the raving
Wisnewski
... none of which would be answered, he assumed.

He turned and went back outside to the waiting limousine. Alone, he had that drink, Jack Daniel's neat. He then picked up the phone and punched the code for the mayor's office. Perkins arrived just at that moment and James Nathan kicked out at him as he tried to get in, shouting, "Outside, Lloyd! This is confidential!"

He'd have to take the heat for this one all alone.

"I suppose you've heard the news?" he asked Mayor Bill Leamy.

Leamy, an Irishman and an instinctive politician, was cagey. He asked, "What's the word from the CDC people?
Anything?"

"Working as hard as they can, Bill."

"I have to tell you, Jim, from where I sit, you and your archeology friends looked a little like Rocky and Bullwinkle out there today."

"Thanks for that insight, Bill. I'll treasure those remarks till they put me under."

"Why'd you have to get into it with Gordon on camera, Jimmy? That sort of thing only makes it worse."

"Mayor ... Bill,
Wisnewski's
out of his head with madness, Leonard and Abe Stroud are both gone comatose. How is street dancing with Gordon going to make it any worse?"

"Gordon's got a lot of pull in this town, Jimmy. I've told you that before."

"Lot of pull, Mr. Mayor?
Enough to bump me off the playing field?"

"
Dammit
, Jim, this isn't a game of soccer."

"No, more like Monopoly, isn't it ... sir?"

There was a silence at the mayor's end. "We've got to get Gordon's people back to work. It's a lot of jobs we're talking about here, Jimmy boy."

"Things keep going the way they are, Bill, and for every Gordon employee there'll be a man like Stroud and Leonard vegetating in our goddamned hospitals."

"Please, Jim, you know a comatose man can't vote."

"If anyone can find a way to get him to..."

The mayor laughed heartily at the joke. "Yes, well, Jim, come down here to see me. Gordon's on his way and I've gotten the City Council together for emergency session and my advisers will be here. We'll hash this thing about some more."

"Hash it about some more ... sure."

"Now, don't be taking that attitude, Jim. I don't like
Gordan
a whit
more'n
you do, believe me, but Jim, you know how elections are lost over trivial matters like the trains running on time, dire weather that we can't control, and this ... this spreading epidemic is just such an uncontrollable wild card--"

"And it's an election year, I know."

"I go out, Jim, so will you. So, please, spare me the 'high and mighty' routine."

"Yes, sir."

"Bring along Perkins, too."

James Nathan forced himself into silent restraint before replying, "We'll be right along, your honor."

"Aha. That's my boy, Jim ... See you in chambers."