Bio-Strike

THIRTEEN

Roger Gordian awoke Sunday morning convinced he was fending off a bad cold.

To be sure, he’d felt more than a little out of sorts the day before but had attributed that to being wearied from a busier-than-average week at the office, the predictable stresses of running an enterprise that spanned five continents — and, at last count, twenty-seven nations — compounded by Friday’s difficult sales conference. And he’d been keeping a close eye on Tom Ricci’s war games at the New Mexico training camp. Although Ricci had been frustrated with their ultimate resolution, his team’s performance had struck Gordian as mostly exceptional. That they’d stumbled at the end wasn’t as important to him as how they’d performed overall and what lessons they’d learned from their errors. Why hold operational maneuvers but to work out the kinks?

Still, a long, draining week. And with Ashley gone off to storm the checkout counters of Los Angeles, it felt incomplete, as though a seam had been left out of its cuff. The house was less of a home when she was away, too quiet, its rooms emptier and larger. Gordian sometimes couldn’t believe how much time they’d spent apart before he’d drifted from the matrimonial through lanes onto those eye-opening rumble strips a few years back.

Also, he’d admittedly gotten used to having Julia around, despite their frequent tense moments. She seemed delighted with her new place, and he was delighted for her. But a part of him selfishly missed fathering her and being trailed at his heels by her lovably annoying greyhounds.

After turning in early Friday night, Gordian spent most of Saturday with a mystery novel on his lap, unable to muster the energy for much of anything else. When he’d warmed the homemade chili Ashley had left in the fridge and its smell failed to charge his appetite, he’d conclusively diagnosed himself as an exhausted and lonesome bird separated from his flock. Nobody to pay attention to him. No eternally ravenous dogs nosing at his plate. Not even his daughter to give him one of those zinging looks that said he couldn’t do anything right.

Gordian had listlessly eaten half a bowl of the chili and picked up his crime novel again, figuring he’d read the last few chapters, discover who murdered whom and why, shower, and go to bed. But after about ten or fifteen minutes, his eyes had felt tired and grainy, and he decided to cut straight to the shower and bed phases of his second wild night of bacheloring. He’d wanted to start out for Julia’s first thing, anyway, eager to attach the spacers and siding strips to the posts of her dog corral. Though he’d already set the posts, and the strips had been cut to size at the lumber yard, it would be a demanding affair to complete just one side of the basket-weave fence. And he was secretly hoping to start on a second section that afternoon.

Then, as he’d risen from the chair in his study, Gordian had experienced a wave of mild lightheadedness. It was over in seconds, and again all he could think was that he was blown out from a rough week, though perhaps more so than he’d guessed. A few extra hours of shut-eye would do him a world of good.

But his sleep was shallow and fitful. Each time he stirred uneasily to glance at the illuminated face of his bedside clock, he’d find only a short time had passed since he’d last closed his eyes. Twenty minutes, forty, no longer than an hour.

At about two A.M. Gordian roused, chilled and sweating. His throat hurt when he swallowed. There was a dull pain behind his eyes. His arms and back were stiff. Whatever was wrong with him, it didn’t feel like a case of simple exhaustion anymore. He felt damn unwell.

He sat up against his pillow and drew his knees to his chest, trembling in the darkness. His mouth was parched, the stiffness in his muscles had become a throbbing ache, and his stomach was unsettled. After a while, he went into the adjoining bathroom for a drink of water. The sudden brightness of the bathroom light sharpened the pain at the back of his eyeballs, and he had to turn the dimmer control down low before going to fill his glass.

As he stood over the sink, it occurred to Gordian that a couple of aspirins might help him. He reached for the bottle in the medicine chest, shook a couple of tablets into his hand, and gulped them down with his water. Then his eye fell on the thermometer inside the chest. He should take his temperature. If Ashley were home, she would insist on it. But a fever would mean he’d probably have to can his visit to Julia’s, and he had looked forward to seeing her and making progress on that dog pen. Besides, Ash would be meeting him there with her purchase-laden suitcases, each doubtless weighing a ton. She was counting on him to help load them into the trunk of the car and drive her home. All he needed was to be sick and useless to everyone.

Gordian made up his mind to take his temperature if his condition didn’t improve by morning. Well, later in the morning, he thought, remembering the hour.

In fact, he’d slowly begun to feel better on his return to bed. The chills abated, and he found that his muscle cramps were likewise easing. Maybe he’d caught some kind of twenty-four-hour bug, and it had peaked overnight. Or maybe the aspirin had done the trick.

At around three-thirty, Gordian again fell asleep and did not reawaken until the alarm buzzed four hours later.

Sunday came on warm and radiantly clear. With his face turned into the golden sunlight flooding his bedroom window, Gordian started to think he might not need that thermometer after all. His lower back was still aching, and his throat hurt a little when he swallowed, but there were no signs of feverishness or nausea.

He got up, went into the kitchen to fill the coffee-maker, then decided tea might be a smarter pick. He carried it to his screened-in veranda and sat looking out at Ashley’s hillside arbor gardens, sipping from his cup, a gentle, rose-scented breeze wafting over him. Perfect weather for working outdoors. He’d finish the tea and then see how he was doing before reaching a conclusion about whether to go on with his plans.

By eight, Gordian felt considerably recuperated from whatever had hit him the previous night. No sense treating himself as nonfunctional. He would push forward on the corral, take it slow and easy, maybe get a bit less of it done than he might like. He’d always believed moderate physical exertion was a better remedy for a cold than lying around the house. Better for him, at any rate.

Gordian went back into the kitchen and rinsed his cup and saucer in the sink, thinking he should have a bite to eat before leaving for Pescadero. Food didn’t tempt him, though. As he turned toward the bathroom for another quick hop under the showerhead, he heard an inner voice argue that skipping breakfast was far from advisable for a person who’d been as sick as he was a few hours ago, and who was looking ahead to a long, active day. But he was sure he’d regain his appetite once he reached Julia’s. He could fix himself some toast, an English muffin, risk incurring her wrath and sneak a morsel or two to Jack and Jill. Like old times.

What he wanted right now was to wash up and hurry into his clothes. He was anxious to get moving with things, and the worst of his illness really did seem to be behind him.

“Megan, I’m wondering if it’s appropriate for us to discuss a matter of Bureau policy under these circumstances.”

“Is my nearness bothering you? Because I can slide over the other way. No offense taken.”

“It isn’t how close you are per se—”

“Then what is it you find questionable? That we’re in a hot tub together? The whole idea of conducting business exclusively in sterile office settings is fossilized, and that isn’t just my opinion. There are a million and one studies that show — empirically prove—relaxed and stimulating environments are the places to confer—”

“Come on, help me out here—”

“I’m trying, Bob. What do you think Bohemian Grove is about except the intersection of government and private af—?”

“Forget Bohemian Grove. We’re both naked, or haven’t you noticed? And I won’t get into the subject of our intersecting the past couple of days.”

That brought a smile to Megan’s face.

“Get into it all you want,” she said.

Her emerald eyes met his gray ones.

Lang looked back at her in speechless silence.

They were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the curved bench of the hot tub, neck deep in 108-degree water, steam rising into the 45-degree Shenandoah Valley air around them in vaporous ribbons and curlicues. Over and beyond the lattice rail screening their room’s rear deck, the redwood hot tub upon the deck, and their nude, soaking bodies in the tub from the eyes of their hosts and fellow weekenders at the Virginia B and B, over and beyond on the forested Allegheny mountainsides across the valley, the hardwoods in autumn foliage were watercolor dashes of cinnamon brown against the sweeping dark green brush strokes of the predominant pine cover.

“Bob?”

“Yes?”

“You seem to have blanked out.”

Lang sighed.

“My problem,” he said, and then paused. “That is, what I believe may be unseemly is that you are making a substantial professional request of me while we’re very busily engaged in an extraprofessional relationship. Asking that, in my capacity as Washington Bureau chief, I seek to waive or broaden existing security classifications to give UpLink International access to privileged investigative files.”

She shrugged. “We were entirely clothed when I made the request. Neither of us had yet seen the other unclothed at the time. Truthfully, I hadn’t begun to entertain the notion that we would, though the fantasy did arise one dark and lonely night.”

He shook his head in consternation.

“Be straight,” he said. “You can see how there might be at least an appearance of impropriety.”

“Sure I can,” she said. “But do you believe I’ve been sleeping with you to cloud your objectivity, compromise your integrity, entice you to violate national security, whichever perception concerns you—?”

“That’s ridiculous—”

“And do you think I’d stop sleeping with you as a consequence of your denying us access, if that proves to be your determination?”

“No, of course not—”

“So why don’t you help me get things straight,” she said. “Give me a rational explanation why the farther along we’ve come in our friendship, the farther away you’ve tilted from opening the databases. Since I know who I am, and you seem to know who you are, I can’t see either one of us violating our principles for a tumble in the sack.”

“Or a splash in the tub, I suppose,” Lang said. “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t have a clear and sensible answer for you. But I’ve always kept my personal life separate from my responsibilities to the Bureau. Mixing them is something new to me. It throws the formula out of whack.”

“Would you rather limit your mating prospects to women you meet in bars and nightclubs?”

He looked at her.

“I think you’re being a little unfair.”

Megan was shaking her head now, her face dead serious.

“What isn’t fair is putting boundaries on what we’ve got going because you’re jittery about messing with some artificial formula,” she said. “The workplace is where adults meet. Where they get to know one other, sans hackneyed pickup lines. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Or how our having grown close suddenly makes us Mata Hari and Benedict Arnold.”

He was quiet. They sat there alongside each other, steam billowing around them into the chill air, shimmering in the sunlight.

Megan craned her head back, looking up into the open sky.

“One last time,” she said after a moment, still staring upward. “My feelings for you aren’t predicated on whether UpLink obtains the clearances. But I’ve got my job obligations, too. Gord isn’t about to take no for an answer, and he’s got heavyweight contacts from the president on down. I’d prefer we not have to make an end run around you. And I hope that if we must, you’ll understand and won’t let it pull us apart.” Her voice caught. “That would be a waste. And make me sadder than I can begin to express.”

Silence.

Lang gazed out at the brown-and-green-splashed mountains in the distance.

“Tell Gordian he’ll have my decision by the end of the week,” he said.

Megan nodded without looking down.

He turned to her, studied her upturned face for several seconds.

“It must be hard sometimes being a woman and strong,” he said.

Her eyes lowered. Met his again.

“Sometimes,” she said.

He leaned close and touched his lips to her shoulder. Brushed them along her neck, the line of her chin, the soft flesh below her ear, caressing her face, stroking back her hair with his fingertips, leaving behind traces of white gooseflesh.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered and slid his arm around the bareness of her waist to draw her closer, kissing her on the cheek, on the corner of the mouth. “I’m in for whatever happens.”

She made a low sound in her throat, her lips parting against his.

“Let’s make something happen right now,” she husked, and kissed him, smiling as their mouths and tongues joined. She put her hand on him under the water, closed it around him under the water, moved it with quickening intensity under the water. Lang’s hand slid down over her hip, down over her thigh, lower, finding her, touching her, matching her rhythm, their eyes locked, their bodies pressing together, moving together, swaying, locked…

The two of them losing themselves in each other, making something happen there in the water on the deck beneath the wide and borderless blue sky.

In a sense, Gordian was right about his building of the corral having a therapeutic effect on him. He knew a doctor would not have condoned it. Might have strictly disallowed it. But he felt the warmth of the sun on his back, the smells of mown grass and freshly dug earth, and the robust physical workout helped carry him through most of the day.

Standing in his daughter’s backyard now, Gordian inspected his workmanship and nodded to himself with approval. He’d developed and patented scores of breakthrough technologies, pioneered advances in communications that had transformed governments and economies, but his justifiable pride in those achievements had never topped his pleasure in building something with only wooden boards, a box full of nails or screws, and a handy set of tools.

It was a feeling that was no less keen today than it had been when Gordian was a thirteen-year-old boy pounding together a tree house in Racine, Wisconsin. The ordered routine of readying his tools and construction materials relaxed him and gave him a chance to organize his thoughts. He enjoyed the way a number of careful and methodical steps that followed a proven design would yield visible results within a relatively short time frame. And he enjoyed the direct connection between hands-on effort and outcome, especially when they were for the benefit of someone he loved.

While it was a bit of a damper to realize he was inexplicably getting on that particular someone’s nerves, he’d almost come to accept that as status quo.

Gordian removed his safety goggles, slipped them into his tool belt, and flapped his T-shirt to dry the perspiration on his chest and armpits. Certainly he’d been functioning at well below 100 percent. He was breathing hard, his sore throat bothered him, and a nagging, raspy cough had developed over the last few hours. Every so often he would get a pang between his shoulder blades and down at the base of his spine as a reminder not to push too far. But that sun felt great, and there hadn’t been a recurrence of the vague dizziness and shakes he’d experienced the night before, and he hadn’t looked for trouble by mentioning any of it to Julia. She would surely overreact and push him into a lawn chair, where he’d spend the rest of the afternoon shooing away flies and mosquitos.

No thanks, he thought. He could decide for himself when he’d had enough. Parental privilege.

Gordian blotted the sweat from his eyes and forehead with his sleeve, put his cordless power drill into its belt holster, folded his arms across his chest, and continued to look over his handiwork. The fencing’s interwoven board construction required more fuss than, say, an ordinary stockade, but the wider spaces between its boards allowed enough wind filtration to keep it upright during the worst imaginable coastal blow. And gave the greyhounds convenient openings to peep through.

Each side of the square corral was to measure twelve feet by six feet, its horizontal plywood strips sized at a little over four feet long — any longer and they would tend to weaken. Gordian had needed to start off the first side by installing four posts at four-foot intervals. After he’d plotted the corral’s measurements with a tape ruler, twine, and temporary stakes on his last visit, he had dug the first row of postholes, filled their bottoms with gravel for drainage, and then driven the posts into the ground with a heavy mallet, repeatedly checking their vertical line with a carpenter’s level, packing soil into the holes as he went along. It had been vigorous work that left him streaked with dirt and sweat and with a blistered finger or two in spite of the gloves he’d worn. But it wasn’t supposed to be easy, and he hadn’t minded.

This morning, Gordian had resumed where he’d left off, using his power tool to fasten the horizontal strips to alternating sides of the posts, moving from bottom to top and right to left. What he was presently looking at was the open space between the last two posts. Once he got the horizontals up to close that gap, he’d be done with an entire side of the corral, his modified goal for the afternoon. Well, almost done with it, since that would still leave him having to thread the vertical spacers through the strips. But it was a relatively quick and undemanding task, and he could ask Julia to help him with it before leaving for home.

Gordian had another brief spate of coughing and cleared his throat but didn’t bring up any fluid, and he was left a bit winded afterward. It was odd, that dry shortness of breath. He didn’t seem to have any of the accompanying mucus and watery congestion that was usually symptomatic of a cold. Not even a runny nose. It was as if he’d sucked in a handful of plaster dust and couldn’t expel it from his lungs.

He cast a guarded look over at Julia’s back porch, afraid she might have heard his latest hack attack. Fortunately, though, she was busy with the tuna and sword-fish steaks on her gas grill. When Ashley had called to report that she’d been met by her pickup car at the airport, Julia had gotten into an instant rush to prepare dinner. Maybe too great a rush. The drive from San Jose International would take about an hour in light traffic, and on Sundays, Highway 1 ordinarily became crammed with bumper-to-bumper mall-goers. This close to Thanksgiving, you could count on it. Much as he was anxious to see his wife, Gordian estimated they had a good forty minutes before she arrived, and Julia knew the Bay Area traffic situation as well as anyone. Besides, Ashley would want to relax for a while before eating dinner.

Gordian sighed. Call him oversensitive, but he thought Julia’s glued attention to the barbecue seemed an excuse for her utter and deliberate inattention to him. Whatever was bothering his daughter, her emotional state was always best revealed by her attempts to conceal it, to appear calmly preoccupied with her chores and projects, to veer off on her own and peripheralize everything and everyone around her. It was an exasperating quality Gordian found easy to recognize, given that the river from whence it flowed happened to bear his name, first and last.

Unfortunately, recognizing it didn’t mean he had the vaguest idea how to deal with it. On the one hand, he didn’t like being ignored during what he’d hoped would be a chance for some father-daughter bonding, to paraphrase Ashley. On the other, he didn’t want Julia regarding him so closely that she’d detect he was less than the picture of health. Was there no happy medium?

He stood there looking across the yard at the house, and after a few moments became aware that Jack and Jill seemed to be compensating for their mother’s cold-shoulder routine. Nice doggies. Leashed to the porch rail a cautious distance from any edibles, they had fixated on him in their high-strung and illimitably questioning way, their ears cocked in his direction like swivel antennas, their eyes penny brown circles of curiosity. Gordian had once heard somebody refer to the breed as “pushbutton dogs” because of their habit of lying perfectly still and silent for hours on end, comically anxious as they watched their owners tend to their business, only to snap onto all fours with a spring-loaded, running bound when it was time to be fed or walked. And while the term had been used with affection, he’d been distressed to learn this peculiar behavior came from years of being cooped in racetrack kennels that barely allowed them the room to stand or turn, let alone interact with other dogs. As a consequence, they became social miscasts, insecure about their status, never quite able to tell what was expected of them or how to behave. And so they kept their constant watch, waiting for reassurance, all bottled energy.

Sad, Gordian thought. But thanks to the greyhound rescue people and Julia, things had vastly changed for them. And would change even more for those particular greyhounds when their corral was built and they could gallop around outdoors to their hearts’ content.

He turned, ready for his next go at the fence. The pile of forty boards he’d set out for himself this morning had dwindled to a mere ten spread neatly across the grass. Now that today’s section had started to take definite shape, he could scarcely wait to get the rest of them up.

Gordian was stooping to lift an armload of boards when the lightheadedness washed over him again. He flashed hot and cold. His heart fluttered irregularly, then began to pound.

He took several deep breaths. The gritty rattle in his throat wasn’t any comfort, but he soon grew steadier and felt the pounding in his chest subside.

Within seconds, the spell was over. Gordian knelt on the lawn, his head clear again. Still, he couldn’t keep on like this. He would have to get himself checked out. He’d call the doctor tomorrow morning, try to squeeze in an appointment for the same day. He was confident as ever that he wasn’t suffering from anything more serious than a nasty cold. Maybe a touch of the flu. But it couldn’t just be disregarded ad infinitum.

He glanced over at the porch. Julia remained involved with her cuts of fish, shifting and flipping them over the flame with her spatula. She hadn’t noticed his little episode. Good. He’d pretty much recovered and was thinking he could mount the rest of the boards in twenty minutes, tops. Close that space. Then he’d quit. Grab one of those lawn chairs, relax in the sunshine. And wait for Ash.

He gathered half the siding boards on the ground, carried them to the fence posts where he’d be working, and squatted to get the lowermost board in place. Then he took the drill from his holster, checked to see that the screwdriver bit was firmly in the chuck, pulled his goggles over his eyes, and reached into his pouch for a screw.

His power tool slugged the screw into the wood easily, its fat motor startling the birds out of a nearby tree with its racket.

The board went on without a snag. Gordian reached for the next one, positioned it, and was about to squeeze the drill’s trigger switch when he heard Julia calling him: “Dad!”

He looked over his shoulder and saw her approaching across the lawn. She was outfitted in black capri pants, espadrilles, and a sleeveless blue midriff blouse that precisely matched the color of her eyes. And Gordian’s eyes as well, though it was not something he noticed at that moment.

What he was noticing was the tight, controlled expression on her face. The overdone casualness of her stride.

He braced himself as she reached him.

“Time for a break. We’ll be eating soon,” she said in a flat, clipped tone.

“Hey Dad, you’re doing a fantastic job!” Gordian thought. “I couldn’t have expected better from a professional carpenter!”

He raised his goggles and regarded her from his crouch.

“I’m almost finished with this side of the corral,” he said. “Your mother hasn’t even arrived yet…”

She shrugged. “I thought maybe you’d want to wash up before she gets here.”

“You’re the greatest, Dad! I love you! Jack and Jill love you! We all love you like mad! I honestly don’t know what we’d do without you being around!”

Gordian tried not to look set upon. He felt a burr in his throat and cleared it to stave off a cough.

“Her car just left the airport half an hour ago, and you can imagine what the roads are like today,” he said, wondering if his voice sounded as weak and croaky as it seemed. “We should have plenty of time…”

Her gaze flogged him.

“Okay,” she said. “Whatever.”

Baffled, Gordian watched her turn away and walk back toward the house. It struck him to call after her, ask her to help him understand the nature of his current transgression, but he thought it might just provoke an argument. He decided the wisest thing to do was concentrate on his undertaking, keep his distance, and maintain a frail peace until Ashley arrived.

Gordian managed that with considerable success. He attached the rest of the boards he’d carried from the shrinking pile and then brought over the five that were left, all without getting into knots about Julia’s inexplicable attitude.

Then he was on his last board. He aligned it between the posts with a swell of anticipation and squeezed the trigger of the drill. It whined to life in his hand—

And then the dizziness overtook him in a surge that almost spilled Gordian off his feet. He staggered drunkenly, his gorge heaving into his throat, rancid and scalding. His vision went gray around the edges, and then the grayness spread over everything, and he felt his body go loose, the drill jolting in his right hand. He experienced a hot, piercing pain in his opposite hand an instant before releasing his grip on the power tool’s trigger. Just as the gray turned to black, he saw a bright splash of redness gush from the burning spot from the wandering drill bit.

“Dad!”

Julia. Calling him from somewhere at a distance. Her tone of voice so different than it had been only minutes before.

“Dad, Daddy, oh no, oh my God, DADDY—”

Lost in darkness, spinning in a whirlpool of darkness, he felt every part of himself melting away, turning to liquid, rushing into the ground.

It’s all right, hon, please don’t sound so scared, Gordian thought he heard himself say.

In fact, the words never had a chance to leave his mouth.