Biofire, p.8
Biofire, page 8
“By the time Antonina Barikov’s project was shut down in Russia,” he said, “she had a subject who, from a distance of ten feet, could move light objects over a table. Things like cups and plates, toy cars and dolls. But every time he did it, everyone within twenty feet of him became violently ill. There were nosebleeds, heart palpitations, elevated body temperatures, dizzy spells, fainting. One assistant suffered a mild stroke. While the subject’s telekinesis was being carefully controlled and improved upon gradually, this particular side effect was a wild card. Nothing they tried succeeded in stopping or controlling the harmful effects the subject’s telekinesis had on anyone nearby. That was what Barikov stumbled upon. While the subject was moving objects with his mind, he was actually affecting the bodies of the people around him, creating physical changes in them. While they were trying to perfect parlor tricks, they stumbled upon a psychic doomsday weapon. But no matter how hard Barikov tried to convince her government that this was far more important than their deadlocked telekinesis project, they wouldn’t listen. They wanted the parlor tricks. So, we’ve taken Barikov’s work to places they wouldn’t. And so far, Leo…so far, we’ve succeeded. We’ve improved on it. And we’re going to improve on it some more.”
The leather upholstery on Leo’s chair chattered softly as he shifted his position, took the cigar from his mouth so he could take a swallow of scotch, then put the cigar between his teeth again. But he said nothing.
“Right now, Leo, I have a monkey that speaks sign language in one of my labs,” Shaw whispered. “That monkey can do at will what Barikov’s subject did accidentally. We don’t have complete control over it yet, but we will. Soon. And when we do, that’s going to be the deadliest fucking monkey on the face of this earth. It’s gonna make an Ebola monkey look like Curious George.”
Leo stood slowly, walked around his chair, then turned to face Shaw from behind it. “I still don’t understand. This monkey…what can it do?”
Inside, Shaw was overcome with relief. He was not sure until that moment, but now he knew Leo was sold. From his facial expression, tone of voice, body language, he could tell—Leo was his. The relief welled up in him until it came out in a joyous laugh, and without missing a beat, Shaw leaned back and made that laugh work for him.
“Leo! Haven’t you been listening? If that monkey were here right now, it could kill you with a heart attack. An embolism. A stroke. Respiratory failure, for Christ’s sake. Leo, this monkey could have you on the floor dead in a second, and it would be entirely of natural causes.”
Leo said nothing. A strip of perspiration glowed above his upper lip.
Shaw said, “The project head is about to try out an idea of his, see how it works. He’s pretty certain he’s located the part of the brain that controls this ability, and he’s convinced that if he surgically fuses that part of the brain with the, uh…the, uh…” He sighed and shrugged one shoulder. “You’ll have to forgive me, Leo, I’m not a scientist. I just know how to pick ’em, I don’t speak their language.”
Leo looked mildly annoyed. “I didn’t come here for a fucking science lesson. Just give me the gist.”
“My man is convinced he’s close to a breakthrough and will soon have the flaming under control.”
“Flaming?”
“That’s what we call it. The monkey gives you a heart attack, you’re flamed.” Shaw laughed again as he stood, watching Leo carefully, waiting for him to respond with angry disbelief. But he did not, just as Shaw had suspected. He was deep in his own thoughts. Shaw walked over to the liquor cabinet, trailing blue-gray smoke from his cigar, and sloshed some scotch into a glass, then took a sip. He turned to face Leo again. “I’m telling you, Leo, this is the most incredible thing I’ve ever dealt with, the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. Maybe it will make war obsolete. Maybe wars will be fought quietly all around us. I don’t know, Leo, but I know this: before long, we’ll have a person who can do what that monkey can do, and after that…well, it’ll be a whole new ball game. After that, the hit man will be obsolete. The assassin a quaint artifact. No more sharpshooters, no more poisons. Hell, chemical warfare will be old news, and we haven’t really had a chance to use it yet, have we?” He began to walk toward Leo slowly. “And if this were to fall into the hands of one of your competitors…maybe one who would like very much to get you out of the way…that competitor could have you killed, knowing that it could never be traced back to him. And even while you were dying, Leo, you wouldn’t know you were being murdered.” He planted the cigar in his mouth again, stepped up to Leo and put a hand on his shoulder. “And here you are, Leo, being given a chance to get in on the ground floor. But—” He released a long, regretful sigh. “—You’re going to kill me.”
Leo stood behind the chair staring straight ahead at one of the windows behind Shaw’s desk. He did not even acknowledge Shaw’s hand on his shoulder.
Shaw’s heart skipped a beat as he looked closely at Leo’s face in profile. He thought he’d snagged him, but he still saw struggle and uncertainty there. He was convinced he had Leo wrapped around his little finger, but the man clearly was agonizing over his interest in what Shaw had told him. He looked, for a moment, as if he might weep.
It was a mystery to Shaw. What could the man see in Emma? What was it about her that could stand in the way of Leo embracing what he had just heard? After years of marriage to her, Shaw knew Emma was not worth it, and he found himself feeling a bit sorry for the man.
After a long, deadly silence, Leo turned his head slowly until his eyes were on Shaw’s, and said, “And now you’re thinking I won’t kill you because of this, right?”
Shaw puffed on the cigar. “All I’m thinking, Leo, is that it would be a mistake. A big mistake over something so silly.”
Leo took the cigar from his mouth and clenched his teeth hard for a moment, flexing his jaws as his eyes bored hotly into Shaw’s. “It’s not over something so silly, Landon.” Then he bent his head down to glare at Shaw’s hand on his shoulder. He kept staring until Shaw pulled it away, then he turned and began to pace slowly. “Who else knows?”
“I thought you were going to kill me.”
Without looking at him, Leo barked, “Don’t fuck with me, goddammit, who else knows?”
Shaw sat on the arm of the chair. “Maybe nobody. Maybe a lot of people. Look, Leo, what I’m saying is this. If you kill me now, you’ll never know. The project will be finished, the Pentagon will get what they’re paying for, and…maybe someone else will, too.”
Leo stopped pacing and glared hatefully, murderously at Shaw, nostrils flaring. “You’ve already given this to somebody else? You little shit? Is that what you’ve done?”
Shaw smiled. “I guess if you really wanted to find out, you could torture me, but that wouldn’t be very practical, would it, Leo? So, let’s say you kill me. Once Project Biofire’s finished, what would you do then? Who would you talk to? I mean, who else is there here at OdysseyCorp for you to deal with? My secretary? Poor cute little Carmen?” He chuckled. “What would you do, demand that she hand the records over to you? You think that would work? Who would give you want you want if I were gone?”
They stared at one another silently for a moment, Shaw relaxed and smiling, Leo looking as if he wanted to rip Shaw’s throat out with his bare, meaty fingers.
“On the other hand,” Shaw went on quietly, “let’s say I haven’t told anyone. Let’s say the only one who knows is you, okay? You mean to tell me, Leo, that you’d rather kill me than have a chance at this?”
Leo’s face changed suddenly. His head pulled back, eyebrows rose, mouth opened in a bitter smile and he laughed. “A chance? Oh, that’s funny. There’s no chance involved here, Landon. You win. I’m not gonna kill you. Not tonight, anyway. But I’m telling you right now, chance isn’t gonna be involved in this. No auction. You hear me?”
Leo waited silently for an answer, but none came.
“No auction, Landon. I’m not bidding with anybody over this.” His face changed again. The smile remained, but the rest of his face became a mask of murderous hatred and his fleshy cheeks trembled slightly. “None of your usual customers—no towel-headed sand-niggers, no fuckin’ neo-Nazis, no little psycho countries on the come with money to burn. Nobody. Don’t have any doubts, Landon, this is mine. Nobody else even hears about it. And one more thing.”
Leo lunged forward suddenly and Shaw felt his body stiffen, his heart speed up, and his smile slip off his face like a painting dropping off a wall in an earthquake, because the enormous man was bearing down on him like a truck, suddenly holding his cigar in his hand like a dart ready to throw at a board on the wall, and he shoved the cigar in Shaw’s face, held the glowing red and gray ember so close that Shaw could feel its heat on his face and in his eyes. When Leo spoke again, his voice was a breath and his eyes were deadly weapons.
“You leave Emma alone. You understand me? Alone. You let her go on her way. You let her find some happiness. And if you try to stop her, if I find out you’ve touched her or threatened to touch her, if I think you’ve even thought about so much as plucking a hair off her head, I swear to God, Landon, all bets will be off. You’ll die the slowest, most painful death in the history of human existence. You’ll beg me to kill you.”
As he spoke, Leo moved the hot end of the cigar closer to Shaw’s face, and Shaw began to perspire and clench his teeth as he resisted the urge to pull away.
Leo went on. “I don’t care if I never get your fucking product, that’s what’ll happen to you if I find out you’ve tried to hurt her or keep her from leaving you. Understand, Landon? Have I made myself clear? We either do it this way or I kill you right now.”
Slowly, carefully, Landon nodded.
Without pulling the cigar away, Leo nodded, too. “Okay,” he said, “I’m gonna be watching your wife-beating ass. Real close. Don’t piss me off. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re in control this time, as usual, because you’re not. Don’t fuck up, Landon. I mean it.”
And then, as if he were late for an appointment, Leo pulled the cigar away, smacked his drink down on Shaw’s desk, turned, and stalked out of the office, pulling the door closed hard behind him.
Shaw remained were he stood for a long time, frozen in place. He finally allowed himself to ooze over the leather-upholstered arm and into the chair, exhausted, drained, and trembling.
His success with Leo was no comfort as he recovered from the adrenaline-charged fear he had been hiding so well. He had talked his way through a dangerous situation, but the truth of the matter was that, for all Shaw knew, Project Biofire would never be more than a monkey who could talk to deaf people and kill anyone with its eyes.
All that really mattered, though, was that he, Shaw, was still in his office and not on the sidewalk below. He was still alive to take care of the problems at hand. One of those problems was Emma.
4.
A Change of Plans
* * *
The traffic on Lincoln had slowed to a halt half an hour ago and Emma had been sitting in the car ever since, feeling progressively more anxious, even a bit claustrophobic. She was tempted to get out of the Mercedes, which was the only car her husband would allow her to drive, and abandon it to walk through the rain a block or so and catch a cab.
As soon as it had become apparent that she was going to be there awhile, Emma had called ahead to Shades, the restaurant where she and Leo always met, to leave word that she would be a little late. But that had been thirty minutes ago.
She rolled down the window and leaned her head out into the rain, needing to feel it cold and wet on her face, needing a few gulps of night air, even if it was thick with car exhaust.
On each side of the city’s main thoroughfare, walls of steel and glass swept sharply upward, forming a canyon that gave only a slender view of the black night sky high above. Milky light glowed from many of the windows and formed a kind of pale, ghostly mist in the rain high above the street.
Ever since she had married Landon, Emma had come to hate the city a little more every year until she thought she would go insane if she did not get and stay out of it, away from it. Everything about it reminded her of him. She could not separate the two in her mind.
The city was a great, hunkering beast that breathed black smoke and spat sewage, and like some fairytale monster, it was cruel and oppressive and enslaved every living creature within its reach.
Landon was like that. Sometimes it was difficult to tell which of the two was worse.
But that was going to change soon. At least, she hoped it would. As she looked up into the falling rain, she prayed it would, as soon as possible, so she could breathe again.
Emma pulled her head back in and rolled up the window because her hair was getting wet and she wanted to look nice for Leo. She checked her watch to see that ten more minutes had passed; she considered calling the restaurant again. Leo did not like to be kept waiting, and it would take her another twenty minutes once she had gotten out of the belly of this beast of a city. She was reaching for the phone again when the cars in front of and beside her began to move. Putting the car in gear, she sighed with relief. But her sigh was a hollow sound because she felt no relief at all.
It had begun that morning. A feeling of unrest, an inability to concentrate, a vaguely nagging sense that something was not right. That something was quite wrong.
It had been two days since she had seen Leo, since she had finally heard him ask the question she had been dreaming about for so many months. Two days gave her more than enough time to start worrying, to begin to doubt that it would really happen.
Leo had given her no details. She did not know when or how it would happen, and she did not want to. She wanted to be able to express genuine surprise when she got the news. But, at the same time, she could not stop wondering if it would happen. It seemed too good to be true.
As the traffic picked up its pace, she saw the cause of the delay. At the intersection of Lincoln and Sixth Avenue, what appeared to be two cars were mangled together in a nightmarish sculpture of shattered glass and wrinkled metal. A line of flares shimmered on the wet pavement and police officers directed traffic around the wreckage.
In minutes, she was outside the city and ignoring the speed limit, unable to wait any longer.
For what? she thought
Emma was filled with a dark sense of great anticipation, but she was not sure why. After all, it was just another dinner with Leo, another evening of food and drinks and fondling in their private booth in a back corner of the restaurant, separated from the other patrons by a curtain of deep maroon velvet.
What do I think is going to happen? she asked herself silently.
Then: Quit playing dumb. You’re afraid he’s going to tell you he won’t do it. For one reason or another, he isn’t going to have Landon killed. You’ve become a real pessimist over the years, Emma; things have been so bad for so long, you can’t imagine anything good happening.
She tried to put it out of her mind and think of other things. Anything. She kept an eye out for patrol cars, popped an old Eurhythmics album into the CD player, lit a cigarette. Anything to keep her mind off of…everything.
When she arrived at Shades, Emma parked behind the restaurant in her usual space, hidden from the road and from other patrons parked in front. Leo’s car was nowhere in sight, which was not unusual; most likely he’d had Ollie drop him off with a couple of his bodyguards.
She hurried through the rain, cold in spite of her long, heavy coat because she wore no stockings or underwear. She never did when she met Leo at Shades; that way, he could reach beneath her skirt, stroke her thighs, and reach between them to fondle her as they ate and drank, staring at one another with heat and longing.
Emma went in through the service entrance and followed a winding path through the steamy, busy kitchen, alive with the sounds of voices and cooking, redolent of steaks and seafood and seasonings. Leaving the kitchen, she went down a short hall and ended up behind the maître d’s station.
Everett, the maître d’, turned and smiled when he saw her, reaching into his coat.
“Good evening, Miss,” he said. He never called her anything but Miss, and referred to Leo as “the gentleman” or “Sir.”
Everett removed a small white envelope from inside his coat and proffered it. “The gentleman said I was to give this to you.”
Emma stared at the envelope, her lips parted and drying rapidly as she breathed through her mouth.
“Miss? Is anything wrong?”
“Isn’t…isn’t he here?”
“I’m afraid not. He had another gentleman deliver this to me.”
With effort, she reached out and took the envelope. Her heart was thundering in her chest. Something was wrong, she knew it.
Emma stared down at the blank, sealed envelope as if it were some unidentifiable alien artifact.
“Your table is ready if you’d care to eat,” Everett said.
“Um…just give me a moment.”
“Of course.”
He turned away and left her standing there alone as he tended customers.
The envelope would not open. It was a living creature trying to hide something from her, keep from her a vital piece of information that would have a monumental effect on her life. She clawed at the sealed flap with growing frustration, plucked and scratched and—finally, she ripped the envelope apart and let it fall from her fingers as she unfolded the note. Lines of Leo’s clumsy script crawled across the page in black ink.
Emma dearest—
I’m not much with words. You know that. I’m even worse with the kind of words I need for this. I’m trying to find them.
I want you to know that I love you. I’ve never loved anyone before. Not anyone. I didn’t think I was capable of it. But I am very much in love with you. I’m also in love with a thing. My work. My business. It’s my life. And I’m afraid it still comes first and always will. Which is why I’m no good for you.
