Cuba (32 page)

appearance as the guard had been. “Drive, damn

it, drive!”

As the van jostled and swayed through the city streets,

they sat in the back staring at each other, waiting for the

disease to hammer them.

Waited, and waited, and waited…

Six hours after William Henry Chance and

Tommy Carmellini walked out of the University of

Havana science building, Dr. Bouchard was on his

way to Washington via Mexico City with two of the

culture samples in his diplomatic pouch.

Three hours later one of the lowest-ranking mission

employees with diplomatic status left on a

plane to Freeport, there to transfer to a

flight to Miami, and then on to Washington. This

employee carried the other two samples in her

diplomatic pouch.

Chance and Carmellini were dropped at their hotel after

changing clothes in the van. “Burn those clothes

immediately, and don’t touch them with your bare handsea”…Chance

told the driver.

At the hotel both men went straight to their rooms,

stripped, and stood in the shower for as long as they could

stand it.

Standing under the shower head Chance waited for the first

symptom to announce its arrival. Every now and then

he shuddered, despite the hot water, as cold

chills ran up and down his spine. He had a raging

headache. When he got out of the shower he toweled himself

dry, got in bed and arranged a wet, cool

washcloth across his forehead.

The lab worker writhing on the floor, the startled

face of the guard the instant before he died^the scenes

played over and over in his mind. The death throes of the

lab worker were bad enough, but the face of the guard, when

he saw the pistol rising, saw the silencer, knew

Chance was going to shoot:

that

face Chance would carry to his grave.

He shouldn’t have had to kill the guard. The truth of the

matter was that he panicked when the lab worker died

horribly; he stood in the air locks thinking he

or Carmellini would be next, any second. He

had wanted out of that building so badly he had thrown

caution to the wind and bolted blindly for the front door.

It was a miracle that there weren’t two or three

guards standing by the main entrance, that they didn’t have

guns out as the two figures from biological hell

stepped out of the elevator.

Ah, the stink of Lady Luck. greater-than

Lying there in the darkness he thought about

microorganisms, wondered what was in the sample

vials, wondered why the lab worker, who must have been

immunized, died such a painful, horrible death.

One thing was certain: The Cubans were well on their

way to having biological weapons. And the only

conceivable target was the United States.

With his head pounding, unable to sleep, he turned on

his small computer and typed an E-mail reporting

the intrusion and his findings. After he encrypted the

message, he used the telephone on the desk

to get on the Web and fire the message

into cyberspace.

Then he went back to bed, and finally

to sleep.

The American stood amid the shards of glass

looking at the body of the lab worker. He wore a

protective garment that covered him head to toe and a

mask that filtered the air he breathed. He looked

at everything, taking his tune, then exited the

laboratory through the air lock.

Alejo Vargas was waiting for him. He said nothing,

merely waited for the American to talk.

“The virus has apparently mutatedea”…the

American said finally. “I thought the strain was stable,

but…”…He gave the tiniest shrug.

“Mutated?”. “Possibly.”

“Come now, Professor. I have not asked for

scientific proof. Tell me what you think.”

“A mutation. A few days with the electron

microscope would give us some clues. We need

to do more cultures to be sure. It would help if I

could dissect the dead man, see how the disease affected

him.”

“Like you did the others?”

“You told me they were killers, condemned men. We

had to

knowl”

“What if the disease gets away from you at

the morgue? What if it spreads to the general

population?”

“With the proper precautions the danger is

minuscule. Man, the advancement of human knowledge

requires”

“Noea”…Vargas said. He gestured to the lab. “If

that gets away from us, for whatever reason, there won’t

be a human left alive on this island.”

“Then don’t ask me for opinionsea”…the professor

snapped. “You can guess as well as I.”

Alejo Vargas’s eyes narrowed to slits. His

voice was cold with fury. “I wanted to use an

anthrax agent, but no, you insisted on

poliomyelitis. Now you tell me it mutated, as

I feared it might.”

The damned fool, the American thought. Of course

he had insisted on a virusfor Christ’s sake,

bis life work was studying viruses, not bacteria.

Vargas continued, pronouncing the sentence: “We

spent all this money, built the warheads, installed

them, and we took huge risks to do it Don’t

talk to me of acceptable

risks.”

The professor was not the type to calmly submit

to lectures from his intellectual

inferiors. “Don’t get wrathy with me, Vargas.

You’re a stupid, ignorant thug. I didn’t

design the universe and I can’t take

responsibility for it. I merely try to understand,

to learn, to increase the store of man’s knowledge.”

The American lost his temper at that point and

splut-

tered, “Biology isn’t engineering, goddammit!

Sometimes two plus two equals five.”

Vargas turned his back on the professor. He

stared into the lab, which appeared cold and stark under the

lights yet was full of poisonous life.

“I don’t understand what happened in thereea”…the

American said. “He didn’t just fall. It

looks like there was a struggle.”

“Someone broke hiea”…Vargas said.

The professor was horrified. “Broke in?

Past the guards? Who would be so foolish?”

“Someone who wanted to see what was in thereea”…Vargas

said, and turned to look at the other man’s face.

A note of satisfaction crept into, his voice

as he added, “Probably Americans, Perhaps

C1A.”

The professor looked startled, as if the

possibility had not crossed his mind.

“Come, come, Professor, don’t tell me you

thought your work here hi Cuba would remain a secret

forever.”

“I am a scientistea”…the American said. “Science

is my life.”

Vargas snorted derisively. “Your lifeff”…he

said softly, contemptuously.

The professor lost it. “Foolff”…he shouted.

“Idiot! You sit in this Third World cesspool and

think this crap matters

fooir

“Perhapsea”…Vargas said coldly. He was used

to Professor Svenson, an unrepentant

intellectual snob, the very worst kind, and

American to boot. “I would like to stay and trade

curses with you today but there is no time. The workers are

waiting outside. You are going to show them how to clean

up the lab, then you will determine exactly what

happened to the viruses. You will write down all that

must be done to check the warheads. You will have the report

handdelivered to me. If you fail to do exactly what

J say, you will go into the crematorium with the lab

worker. Do you understand me, Professor?”

“You can’t threaten me. I’m”

Alejo Vargas flicked his fingers across the

professor’s cheek, merely a sting. He stared

into his eyes. “You suffer from a regrettable

delusion that you are irreplaceablest can cure that. If

you wish, you can go to the crematorium right now. Two

body bags are not much more trouble than one.”

,

When Vargas left, Olaf Svenson sat and hid

his face in his hands.

He had never thought past the scientific problems to the

ones he now faced. Oh, he should have, of course:

he knew that Vargas intended to put the virus

into warheads. He shut his mind to the horrorhe

wanted to see if the mutation could be controlled. No,

he wanted to see if

he

could control the mutation of the viruses. The

scientific challenges consumed him. Vargas had the

money and the facilities Olaf Svenson wanted

to do the research.

He was going to have to get out of Cuba, and as soon as

possible. The university thought he was in

Europethat was where he would go. The CIA

probably had no evidence, or not enough to prosecute

him in an American court. If he went to the

airport and took a plane now they

probably would never get enoughVargas certainly

wasn’t going to be a willing witness.

He waited a few minutes, long enough for Vargas

to clear off upstairs, then stood and took a last

fleeting look at the lab. With a sigh he turned his

back on what might have been and walked to the

elevator. In the lobby he took the time to give

detailed instructions to the workers who would clean up the

lab, answered the foreman’s questions, then watched as they

boarded the elevator. When the elevator door

closed behind the workers, Professor Svenson nodded

to the guards at the entrance of the building, set off

down the street and never looked back.

The P-3 Orion antisubmarine patrol

plane flew over a sparkling- sea. The morning

cumulus clouds would form in the

STEPHEN COONTS

trade winds in a few hours, but right now the sky was

empty except for wisps of high stratus.

The glory of the morning held no interest for the

P-3’s crew, which was examining an old freighter

anchored in the lee of an l-shaped cay. A few

palm trees and some thick brush covered the

backbone of the little island, which had wide, white,

empty beaches on all sides.

“Whaddya think”…”…the pilot asked his copilot and the

TACCO, the tactical coordinator, who was standing

behind the center console.

“Go lower and we’ll get picturesea”…the TACCO

suggested. He passed a video camera to the

copilot.

The pilot retarded the throttles and brought the

plane around in a wide, sweeping turn to pass

down the side of the freighter at an altitude of

about two hundred feet. The copilot kept the

video camera on the freighter, which was fairly

small, about ten thousand tons, with peeling paint and a

rusty waterline. A few sailors could be seen on

deck, but no flags were visible.

“I’ll get on the hornea”…the TACCO told the

pilot, “see if the folks in Norfolk can

identify that ship. But first let’s fly over the

ship, get the planform from directly overhead.”

The TACCO knew that the computer sorted ship

images by silhouettes and planforms, so having both

views would speed up the identification process.

Professor Olaf Svenson was standing in line at

Havana airport to buy a ticket to Mexico

City when he saw Colonel Santana arrive out

front in a chauffeur-driven limousine.

Through the giant windows he could clearly see

Santana get out of the car, see the uniformed

security guards salute, see the plainclothes

security men with Santana move tourists out of the

way.

Svenson turned and rushed away in the other

direction. He dove into the first men’s room he

saw and took refuge in an empty stall.

Was Santana after him?

The acrid smell of a public rest room filled

his nostrils, permeated his clothing, made him feel

unclean. He sat listening to the sounds: the door

opening and closing as men came and went, feet

scraping, water running, piss tinkling into urinals,

muttered comments. Sweat trickled down his neck,

soaking his shirt.

Slam!

Someone aggressively pushed the rest room door

open until it smashed against the wall.

The minutes crawled.

Santana was an animal, Svenson thought, a

sadist, a foul, filthy creature who loved to see

fellow human beings in pain. Svenson had seen it

in his eyes. Even the smallest of bad tidings was

delivered with a malicious gleam. Svenson

suspected that as a boy Santana had enjoyed

torturing pets.

What would Santana do to an overweight,

middle-aged scientist from Colorado who tried

to escape the country?

The door slammed into the wall again, and Svenson

jumped.

Torture? Of course. Santana would want

to inflict pain. Svenson felt his bowels get

watery as he thought about the pain that Santana could

dish out.

Every sound caused him to move, to jump.

He consulted his watch again. Just a few minutes had

passed.

O God, if you really exist, have mercy on me!

Don’t let Santana find me. Please!

Home. He wanted to go home so badly. To his

apartment and cats and flowers in planters. To his

neat, safe little haven, where he could shut out the evil

of the world.