Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 98, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 588 & 589, October 1991

Dark Conception by Clark Howard

The Lear jet was over Trenton when the co-pilot came out of the cockpit and said, “We’ve just been advised that Linden Airport is shut down, Dr. Faracy. The entire area from Perth Amboy up to Orange has suffered severe flood damage. We’re being diverted to Teterboro Airport, just east of Passaic.”

Curt Faracy looked up from his seat, frowning. “How far is that from the prison?”

“About thirty-five miles, Doctor. But I don’t think you’ll be able to get there tonight. The roads that haven’t been washed out have been closed by the state police. Even the New Jersey Turnpike is closed.”

Faracy looked across the aisle at a grey-aluminum briefcase securely buckled to the opposite seat. His eyebrows pulled together more tightly as his frown deepened. “Get Dr. Bygraves on the radio for me, please.”

What now? he wondered. There would be no problem with the male test subjects, of course. The six convicts at Rahway Prison weren’t going anywhere. As for the six female test subjects, they were safely in a motel near the prison, chaperoned by a dozen Federal marshals. Everything for the experiment at that end was go. The only problem, he thought, looking at the briefcase again, was that.

Turning his head, he tried to look out the bulkhead window. All he could see was blackness, with his own reflection in front of it. Curt Faracy was thirty-six but looked older. Long hours in various laboratories, hunched over endless microscopes, specimens, and formulas, eating meals out of vending machines, drinking black coffee to keep alert, never getting enough sleep, never allowing his mind to slow down and rest, had all served to age him, or at least appear to. On top of it all, he had an ulcer.

“We have Dr. Bygraves, sir,” the co-pilot advised, handing Faracy a telephone handset with an accordion cord extending to the cockpit.

“Dr. Bygraves?”

“Yes, Curt.”

“Are you aware of our problem here?”

“Yes. I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do to help you at the moment, Curt. We’ve checked with Teterboro Airport, and once you land you’ll have to stay down — they won’t be putting anything into the air until the storm’s over. We thought about having a helicopter pick you up, but even low-altitude aircraft are grounded. I’m afraid you’re going to have to hole up somewhere, at least for the night.”

Faracy expelled a silent breath. “I’m not crazy about that idea,” he said, glancing at the briefcase again. “What’s the prognosis on the storm?”

“Clearing in twelve hours,” Bygraves said. “The specimen you’re carrying to Rahway was secured late this afternoon, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. We pulled it out at four-ten P.M.”

“Our laboratory fade rate has been about twenty hours, if I recall. I don’t think I’d want to go with anything past about sixteen hours on this first experiment. What do you think?”

“I agree,” said Faracy. “Anything past sixteen would greatly reduce the chances of a healthy embryo.”

“Getting the specimen in some ice will slow the fade, of course. But even with ice, that puts us under a time limit of ten past eight in the morning. You’d have to be at the prison by, say, seven-thirty.”

“At the latest. And the subjects would have to be ready. We couldn’t have any delay.”

A silence fell between them as they both pondered the exigencies of the situation. This first experiment was crucial — it would be the basis for everything to come in the future. Therefore, it was essential that it be conducted under the most optimum conditions.

Faracy broke the silence with a weary sigh, and said, “I guess there’s no other choice. I’ll find a motel near the airport.”

“I’d rather you went on into New York,” Bygraves said. “The George Washington Bridge is still open to eastbound traffic. Try to get down to midtown Manhattan to the Hilton. We’ll make arrangements from here. I’ll feel a lot better knowing you have twenty-four-hour room service instead of having to depend on a motel ice machine. Order a bottle of champagne — you can put the specimen in the ice bucket.” He laughed. “I’ll even let you drink the champagne.”

“You’re all heart. Okay, the Hilton it is.”

“Give me a ring when you get settled in.”

Faracy heard a click as Bygraves cut off...

Despite almost zero visibility, the Lear touched down at Teterboro without incident and was able to taxi onto a sheltered parking pad. With the aluminum briefcase clutched securely in one hand, his garment bag in the other, Faracy hurried into the little terminal.

“Any transportation available into Manhattan?” he asked the night-operations supervisor.

“Nope,” the supervisor replied. “The local taxis and buses are all out helping evacuate flood victims from Passaic. There’s nothing left around here but airport emergency vehicles.”

Faracy removed a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet. “I really do want to get into Manhattan,” he said.

The supervisor locked eyes with him briefly. Then he palmed the bill and turned to one of his clerks. “Tim, get out the pickup truck. I want you to run this gentleman across the river.”

Interstate 95 was open to eastbound traffic all the way to the George Washington Bridge. The clerk, Tim, drove carefully through the heavy rain, while Faracy, holding the aluminum briefcase on his lap, peered out, trying to see the flood damage. Mostly all he could see were a few stalled cars and the hazy red or yellow lights of emergency vehicles. The nearer they got to the Hudson River, where the land culverts and drainage systems were emptying, the better everything looked. Only the radio, reporting the evacuation of Teaneck, Hackensack, and sections of Paterson, reminded them of the disaster that lay behind them.

Once across the George Washington Bridge, the rest of the trip was easy. Manhattan, draining into the East River as well as the Hudson, had little more than puddle accumulation. Tim drove down the Henry Hudson Parkway. At 57th Street he cut over to the Avenue of the Americas and moments later let Faracy out under the Hilton’s big canopy at 53rd.

Dr. Bygraves’ office had called to arrange a reservation, so all Faracy had to do was sign in at the desk and he was shown directly to his room.

The first thing he did, after placing the briefcase safely in the middle of the bed, was call room service. “This is Dr. Faracy in sixteen-twelve. I’d like dinner sent up, please. A sirloin, medium-well. No potato. Salad with bleu cheese. And a bottle of G. H. Mumm’s Extra Dry.”

While he waited for dinner, he called Bygraves in Washington again.

“All settled in?” the older doctor asked.

“Yes. I’m in sixteen-twelve. I just called down for dinner — and a bottle of Mumm’s. Just for the ice bucket, you understand.”

“Of course.” Bygraves paused as if considering something, then said, “Your lady friend called. Said she had expected to hear from you before now. I told her you’d been diverted and would call her later.” He paused again, then asked, “She doesn’t know anything about the experiment, does she, Curt?”

“Certainly not. I’m surprised you’d even ask, Arnold.” Faracy’s tone had a hint of irritation in it.

“I’m sorry,” Bygraves amended at once. “It’s just that we’re into such delicate and dangerous terrain here. God knows what the press would do if they got hold of it. And you and Miss Goddard have become rather close over the past year.”

“Lila Goddard and I have an understanding about the confidential nature of my work,” Faracy said. “She knows I’ll tell her what I can, when I can. And she’s much too good a television anchorwoman to try and pressure half a story now when she knows she’ll get all of it in good time. Don’t worry about any leaks from this quarter.”

“All right. I’m sorry, Curt. This storm thing has got me on edge. Are you in for the night?”

“Definitely. Already got my shoes off.”

Bygraves sighed heavily. “Well, get some rest then. I’ll call you at four in the morning and we’ll plan from there.”

“Right. Good night.”

The room-service waiter arrived, set up his table, and opened and poured the champagne. Faracy wrote a tip on the check and signed it. As soon as the waiter left, Faracy removed the bottle of Mumm’s from the ice bucket and set it aside. Spreading a towel on the bed, he set the bucket next to the aluminum briefcase. Working a six-digit combination, he unlocked the case and carefully opened it.

The inside of the aluminum case was lined with canvas-covered lightweight lead similar to the protective aprons worn by X-ray technicians. Lying in the bottom of the case, held in place by two elastic bands, was a bag made of the same material. About the size and shape of a newsmagazine, it had a Velcro flap that closed at the top. Next to the bag was an ominous-looking pair of black gloves, also made of the pliable, lightweight, canvas-covered lead.

Faracy put on the gloves and carefully removed and unsealed the black bag. With one gloved hand, he slowly drew out a cylindrical glass container by a three-inch metal rod extending from one end. The object looked for all the world like some space-age popsicle. The rod and both ends of the cylinder were silver metal; between the two ends it was half-inch-thick glass. Inside the cylinder, running its length, was a hollow shaft no larger in circumference than a dime. In the shaft was an aqueous substance of some kind — thick, viscid, glutinous, giving off a faint yellow incandescence. It moved and surged within the tube as if it had life.

Carefully removing the cylinder from the lead bag, Faracy turned it upside down, holding it by the rod, and slowly submerged it in the bucket of ice.

Taking the towel, he spread it on the luggage rack in the corner and set the bucket on it. Later, when the ice melted, he would call down for a fresh bucket.

Very hungry, Faracy sat at the room-service table to eat. Starting his dinner with a long swallow of champagne, he pulled the phone over and called Lila Goddard at her television studio in Washington. She answered after one ring.

“Good evening, Miss,” he said. “This is an obscene phone call.”

“Curt! Where on earth are you?”

“In the New York Hilton, sipping Mumm’s Extra Dry. And how I wish you were here.”

“Me, too. How’d you wind up at the New York Hilton?”

“The storm put us down at a little airport just across the river. I’m going to wait out the weather here and try to make it to my destination in the morning.”

“That mysterious destination you can’t tell me about? I think it’s just a ploy to get away from me for a few days.”

“That’ll be the day.”

“When will you be back?”

“I planned to be back tomorrow night — now it’ll probably be the next.”

“Damn.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

They talked about trivial things for a couple of minutes and then Faracy said, “Listen, honey, I’m going to have to catch a few hours’ sleep. I’ll try to call you tomorrow night.”

“All right,” Lila said.

After a moment she added, “Whatever you’re doing, Curt, please be careful.”

“I will. Goodnight, sweetheart...”

As he ate the rest of his meal, Faracy thought of Lila Goddard and how much he loved her. She was the first woman since his divorce from Margaret eight years earlier that he really felt something for. And the fact that it was Lila Goddard still amazed him.

Like thousands of other Washingtonians and surrounding residents, Faracy had been watching newswoman Lila Goddard for three years, ever since she moved up from Miami to anchor the local evening news. Thickly redheaded and creamily complexioned, she was a slim, long-legged wonder who quickly became a Washington favorite because of her penetrating news sense and an ability to see things in a story that older, more experienced, mostly male newspersons missed. A captivating smile when the story was light, the proper seriousness when it wasn’t, a smashing wardrobe that made Barbara Walters look tacky, a wink for the men, a firm stand on the side of the women, and a seemingly sincere fondness of children (whom she secretly loathed), Lila was the undisputed queen of Washington news. She received more news leads and managed to get more exclusives than any three other locals. Her salary had quadrupled since coming to Washington, and there was a rumor that ABC was seriously considering her to co-anchor a restructured World News Tonight.

Curt Faracy had met Lila when she did a television news special on the DSS, the Department of Scientific Studies, where Faracy worked. Dr. Bygraves, the director, had assigned Faracy to be Lila’s official guide, translator, and door-opener. Faracy, a brilliant summa cum laude biologist, was high on the list to become the next director of DSS when Arnold Bygraves retired.

Lila, who had come to their scientific complex near the Naval Research Laboratory prepared to expose some gross waste of taxpayer dollars on useless experiments, was immediately charmed, then fascinated, then found herself lustfully distracted by Curt Faracy. This somewhat plain, clean-cut, totally frank man was able to translate the most involved scientific studies into simple language that she — and her viewers — could understand.

And he turned out to be the most honest man she had ever met. Faracy candidly admitted that DSS conducted some asinine studies, such as why post-office ballpoint pens always leaked, but he also pointed out that such work was necessary to please certain politicians on certain budget committees, thereby assuring the DSS the necessary funds to continue sustaining more important ongoing studies in genetics, hereditary variations, mechanisms and phenomena of organisms, and other areas of health by which they hoped to prolong and improve human life.

After three days with Curt Faracy, Lila came away with a glowing report that ultimately was aired nationally and introduced the American public to DSS for the first time. The show was an intelligent, very interesting look inside one of the government’s little-known departments, and overnight catapulted DSS into a Capitol Hill favorite. There would be no problem, Director Bygraves was assured from certain quarters, in obtaining future allocation increases. Just keep up the splendid work.

To celebrate the high rating of the show when it aired, Lila invited Curt to dinner. It was her way of thanking him, she said, for all the help he had given her. She asked him to call for her at her Georgetown apartment at nine. They would have a drink, then go for a late supper at Renata’s, her favorite Italian restaurant. Later, if he was interested, she would give him an uncrowded, late-night tour of the television studios where she worked.

The evening didn’t turn out the way Lila planned — but it was perfect nevertheless. Fifteen minutes after Curt arrived at her apartment, before finishing a first drink, they were undressing each other. It had been, they both reflected later, absolute carnal madness.

Now, after a year, it was the same. Not as urgent, but every bit as passionate. They had long since lost count of the suppers they had missed, the social engagements they had failed to show up for, the invitations they had turned down, the concert and theater seats they had left empty. Aside from their jobs, nothing mattered to them except the hours they managed to be together.

In the hotel room now, thinking of her, Faracy wished again that she was with him. He needed to unwind, to shift into neutral and for a little while forget his assignment, the experiment, the metaland-glass vial submerged in the ice bucket. Faracy’s work had taken a heavy toll on him in the six months since serious activity on the current project began. It wasn’t unusual for him to spend fourteen hours a day in the lab, not eating properly, keeping his energy up with pills.

Lila had noticed it after only a month. “You’re not looking so good, Doc,” she told him one night. “What’s with the long hours?”

“Research,” he said vaguely, “in a new area. It always takes more time when the ground is brand-new.”

“I wish you’d lighten up a little.”

“I will,” he’d promised.

But he hadn’t.

Two months later, matters were worse. “Curt, what in the hell is going on?” she finally demanded. “You’re working yourself into an early grave.”

“It’s an important project—” he began, but she wouldn’t let him finish.

“Don’t give me that again! It can’t be more important than your health! Curt, go look at yourself in a mirror. You’re starting to resemble Count Dracula on a sunny afternoon.”

“I know. I know, really,” he placated, “but there’s a time factor involved. We’re dealing with a substance that might have a limited span of usefulness. We have to do the work within a natural time frame dictated by what we’re working with.” He sighed quietly. “It’s very complicated, Lila.”

“Can you tell me what it’s all about?”

Faracy had shaken his head. “I would if I could, but the project is highly confidential. It’s not that I don’t trust you — it simply wouldn’t be ethical to discuss it, nor fair to the others involved who are expected to maintain group integrity. It’s kind of like your own confidential news sources. I wouldn’t ask you to divulge the identity of one of those.”

“Touche,” Lila said. “Okay, my scientific friend. I just hope you don’t work yourself to death.” She had snuggled in his arms. “I wouldn’t want to lose you, Doc.”

“I’ll be all right,” he promised. “As soon as the project’s completed, I’m taking that month’s vacation we talked about. We’ll go away somewhere if you can get time off.”

“I’ll take time off. Where will we go?”

“Antibes. San Remo. Portofino.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

“In the meantime, let me do what’s necessary. Don’t nag me about the long hours. Let’s just enjoy each other when we’re together. You’re the only relief I get from this thing.”

Since that talk, Lila had been the perfect helpmate. Not only did she not nag him, but she took pains to make their evenings, however short they were, perfect for him. Good suppers, which she prepared herself so they wouldn’t have to go out; vitamins, which she insisted he take; relaxing music; massages; slow, gentle sex with her doing most of the ministering; and, above all, no further questions.

Finishing his meal and a third glass of champagne, Faracy realized how very tired he was. All he needed, he thought, to guarantee a few hours of restful sleep was a hot, steamy shower. Setting his glass on the room-service table, he went into the bathroom, unbuttoning his shirt on the way. Turning on the water and adjusting the temperature to as hot as he thought he could stand it, he started the shower.

While Faracy was in the shower, there was a soft knock at his room door. He didn’t hear it. When there was no response to the knock, the door was unlocked and the room-service waiter entered. Seeing that the meal he had delivered earlier had been eaten, he folded the tablecloth over the dirty dishes, dropped down the side wings of the table, and pushed it into the hall.

On the way out the door, he picked up the ice bucket.

When he got back down to the kitchen, the room-service waiter stopped just inside the door and set the ice bucket on a corner shelf with a dozen identical buckets not being used. He didn’t empty it, as he was supposed to, but left it three-quarters filled with crushed ice, then continued onto the dishwashing sinks where he parked the portable table and left it for a busboy to strip.

He went back to the room-service station to wait for his next assignment. On the way, he passed a main-dining-room waiter, Ramon Sedillo, coming in from the gourmet restaurant. Sedillo paused at the wine steward’s alcove. “Table twelve wants a bottle of 1976 Pouilly Fouisse,” Sedillo said.

“Okay, set up the ice bucket,” the wine steward instructed.

“Yes, sir.” Sedillo headed toward the corner where the ice buckets were kept. A tall, fairly handsome Puerto Rican who had just passed his thirtieth birthday, he had an easy charm, a quick smile, and was a habitual liar. On the way to the ice buckets, he encountered another waiter named Ordonez and grabbed his arm.

“Hey, man, listen, I need a little favor,” he said. “I got a date at eleven-thirty and the captain just put two guys at one of my tables for late supper. If they stay too long, can you cover for me?”

“Who you got a date with?” Ordonez wanted to know. He squinted at Sedillo through thick eyeglasses. “That little dancer at the Club San Juan?”

“Yeah — Candida.”

“You promised to fix me up with one of the dancers there,” Ordonez complained, “and you never did. I ain’t doing you no favors, man.”

He started to walk away and Ramon grabbed his arm again. “Wait a minute, don’t be like that. I been working on somebody for you,” he said, his mind going automatically into its lying mode. “But it takes time, man — those girls at the Club San Juan are classy foxes, you know?”

Ordonez pulled a sour face. “Classy? They’re topless dancers! What’s classy about that?”

“Ice bucket, Ramon!” the wine steward called.

“Coming up!” Ramon shouted back. Then to Ordonez: “You don’t understand. I know what they do ain’t classy. But the girls themselves, they got class, man. Now you take Candida, for instance. Her old man left her. She’s got a kid to raise, but she wants to better herself so she goes to beautician school in Queens. She dances at the San Juan to pay her way. I mean, she’s trying to improve herself — that’s class.”

Ordonez looked skeptical behind his thick glasses. “Well, what about the one you’re working on for me? What kinda class has she got?”

“I ain’t got time to tell you about her right now,” Ramon said, glancing toward the wine steward’s alcove. “Just gimme a couple more nights and it’ll be all set for you.”

“Couple more nights is all? No bull?”

“Word of honor, bro.”

Ordonez was unconvinced.

“Okay, but you better not be messing me around, Ramon.”

“Never,” Ramon swore. “Listen, I gotta get that ice bucket.”

He hurried over to the corner. There was a bucket in front with ice already in it, so he took that one. Rushing back past the wine steward with it, he smiled and said, “Sorry, sir. I had to wait for the machine to crush some ice.”

He went quickly into the dining room and set the bucket next to table twelve.

“Your wine is coming right up, gentlemen,” he said to the two men at the table. “The wine steward brought up the wrong kind and I had to send it back. It’ll be just a moment.”

Ramon lied as naturally as he breathed. In the space of five minutes, he had lied to his co-worker Ordonez, to the wine steward, and to the two men at table twelve. He went back into the kitchen, smiling, thinking of Candida and the lies he would tell her on their date tonight...

“I don’t know about you,” said one of the men at table twelve, “but for my money one of the best things they showed us this year was that transmission van that relays audio and video signals to distribution networks. I’m really excited about that piece of equipment.”

“I reckon you would be,” his dinner partner replied. “If I had the Los Angeles and Las Vegas regions, with all the closed-circuit shows that originate from out there, I’d be excited, too. But I don’t think poor little old Memphis and the mid-South market is going to impact much business on that sophisticated transmission van. That’s for rich people’s entertainment. Us folks down in Memphis is poor.”

The two men at table twelve wore business suits and had clipped to their breast pockets blue-plastic name badges bearing a lightning-bolt logo and the name NORCOM. They were regional sales managers, in New York for an electronics-communications trade show. Both had been temporarily stranded by the suspension of air traffic in the area brought on by the storm.

“Another thing that I liked,” said the first man, whose name was Rod Prater, “was that video-text system that hooks into a person’s TV set and allows it to pull up local information at the touch of a button. Can you imagine just having to turn on your TV to see what’s playing at the downtown movie houses, or to look at a dinner menu for a particular restaurant, or see what’s on sale at a local department store or supermarket? I think that unit is going to be a real winner.”

“Sure,” said the man from Memphis, whose name was Bill Pete Joiner. “Again, that’s fine for you, out there amongst all those movie stars and gambling millionaires who can afford to buy every new electronic plaything that comes along. But, hell, Rod, that thing won’t sell to the average customer. Charley Bluecollar don’t care what’s playing at the movies or what they’re serving at no restaurant, because he don’t go out no more — alls he does is sit at home with his ESPN 24-hour sports channel on, his fist around a beer can, and whatever kind of supper his old lady puts on the TV tray.”

“I think you’re wrong, B.P.,” said Prater. “I think video-text’ll one day be as common in the average home as cable TV’s already become. It won’t just be an information service — it’ll be an order taker, a bill payer, an appointment maker.”

“Affluent options,” Joiner scoffed. “The average Joe don’t make appointments. He don’t go nowhere but the barber shop, the hardware store, and the gas station.” When Joiner talked, he deliberately used poor English to cast himself as a good old boy. He called it part of his sales persona. In truth, he had an engineering degree from Vanderbilt and could have conversed in perfect English if he wanted to.

“Did you see anything at all this trip that you think would go over well down in poor, impoverished Memphis?” Rod Prater asked drily.

“Just that blonde sales rep from Motorola,” Bill Pete Joiner told him with a leer.

Their waiter, who had introduced himself as Ramon, returned with their Pouilly Fouisse 1976, the label of which he showed to Rod Prater, who had ordered it. “Fine,” said Prater, and Ramon proceeded to open the bottle. He put the cork next to Prater’s plate and poured an ounce for him to sample. Prater, who knew wine as well as he knew electronics, didn’t bother to taste it — he merely sniffed the bouquet, nodded, and again said, “Fine.”

Ramon poured. The two businessmen reached for their glasses and Rod Prater, raising his, said with a smile, “To a year of record sales — even in Memphis.”

“I’ll drink to that, by God,” Bill Pete seconded.

As they simultaneously drank, both noticed Ramon having difficulty putting the open bottle into the ice bucket.

“’Matter, boy, won’t it fit?” Bill Pete asked, winking at his companion.

Ramon, frowning, reached just under the surface of the ice and withdrew an unusual-shaped glass-and-metal object, which was completely frosted over. “What the hell?” he said. Then, “Excuse my language, gentlemen.”

“What is it?” Prater asked, looking at it curiously.

Ramon, holding it by the stem, shrugged.

“Looks like an old-fashioned television tube on a popsicle stick,” said Bill Pete Joiner.

“Let’s see it,” said Prater, reaching across the table.

Ramon handed it to him.

Curt Faracy could feel sweat making the back of his neck clammy. Along with the head chef and the room-service supervisor, he had just finished looking in the dozen or so ice buckets in the corner of the kitchen. They were all empty.

“If it isn’t here,” Faracy said, “where else could it be? Is it possible it was sent up to another room?”

“No, sir,” the room-service supervisor replied. “You were the last one to have wine with a room-service order tonight.”

“Perhaps it’s being washed,” the head chef suggested. “Let’s check the sinks.” He led them deeper into the big kitchen.

Even though the kitchen was very warm, Faracy was beginning to feel chilled from sweating. He was wearing only his trousers, shirt, and shoes. No underwear or socks, no coat. He’d been so shocked to find the ice bucket missing when he came out of the shower that he’d thrown on the minimum clothing necessary, grabbed his room key, and hurried down the hall, hoping to catch the room-service waiter before he left the floor. When he located the service elevator, he saw that it wasn’t in use. The indicator showed the car to be on the first floor. Faracy pushed the Down button and the indicator began to move.

Riding down in the service elevator, he tried to force himself to be calm, but he couldn’t. Normally a very practical man, in an extreme situation he’d first ask himself one question: What’s the worst that can happen? Once he had determined that, and accepted it, he found that he was able to deal with complications much more intelligently and calmly. It was remarkable how many crises were reduced to simple problems in the face of personal composure.

All right, he asked himself now, what’s the worst that can happen? This time it was the wrong thing to do. The enormity of what was known that could happen, along with the terrible dread of what was unknown, actually made him momentarily ill.

The goddamn thing just has to be touched. That’s all. Just touched!

As soon as he stepped out of the service elevator into the kitchen, the head chef came over to him. “Sir, this area is for employees only.”

Faracy had quickly drawn him aside and spoken very confidentially and urgently to him. “I’m a guest in the hotel. Dr. Faracy in sixteen-ten. I design medical equipment. Earlier tonight I was working on a small metal design in my room, something to be used in laboratory work. I put it in one of your ice buckets to cool the metal and I’m afraid the room-service waiter took the bucket away. Could you possibly help me locate it?”

The head chef had summoned the room-service supervisor and the two men had led Faracy to the corner where the ice buckets were kept. The bucket from Faracy’s room wasn’t there — or at least what had been in the bucket wasn’t there.

“What did you say it was again, sir?” the room-service supervisor asked as they walked toward the dishwashing sinks. “A metal sculpture, did you say?”

“Metal-and-glass, actually,” said Faracy. “Just a small piece, about six inches long, as big around as a quarter. I’d been polishing it and wanted to cool it down afterward.”

Faracy was surprised at the facility with which he was telling the lie. He was making up the story with the aptitude of a confidence man.

At the dishwashing sinks, all three men quickly saw that the ice bucket wasn’t there. There were only a few dinner dishes on the sideboard. The room-service supervisor questioned the man at the dishwasher. He said he hadn’t washed an ice bucket all evening.

While they were at the sinks, the maitre d’ came in from the dining room. When he saw Faracy, he asked the head chef what was wrong. The head chef explained the situation.

“Has anyone thought to check out on the floor?” the maitre d’ asked.

No one had.

The maitre d’ led Faracy to the set of doors — one in, one out — that connected the kitchen to the dining room. They stepped through the proper door into a partitioned service area from which they could observe the entire restaurant. “There’s one at table eighteen,” the maitre d’ said, pointing, “and one at table nine, one at table twelve—”

Faracy’s eyes had already locked onto a table at which two men in business suits sat, and at which a waiter stood. One of the men was holding the specimen container and handing it to the other man. Swallowing drily, he brushed past the maitre d’ and headed for the table. As he crossed the room, he watched the second man at the table turn the specimen container over a couple of times, shrug, and pass it back to the first man.

Goddamn! thought Faracy. Should he shout across the room at them, yell for the man holding it to drop it? It wouldn’t do much good, he reasoned at once: both of them had already handled it. Probably the waiter, too. As he was thinking it, the man at the table proved him right by shrugging as his companion had done and handing the container to the waiter. Faracy walked a little faster, wondering why there was no faint yellow glow coming from the container. Then he realized that the glass was probably iced up enough to conceal it.

He got to the table just as the waiter returned the specimen container to the ice bucket and said, “I’ll get you another ice bucket, gentlemen.”

“Excuse me,” said Faracy. “I’m sorry for the intrusion. That odd-looking object you’ve been examining is a piece of metal-and-glass sculpture that belongs to me. I had a bottle of wine with dinner in my room earlier this evening and I used the ice bucket to cool the piece down after I polished it. The waiter removed the bucket while I was in the shower. I hope it hasn’t created a problem for you.”

“Well, it certainly has,” said Bill Pete Joiner, winking at his associate again. “We haven’t been able to keep our wine chilled.”

“I’ll be happy to buy you another bottle,” said Faracy.

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” said Rod Prater, “he’s pulling your leg. Actually, we’re glad you showed up — none of us could figure out what the hell it was.”

Faracy turned to the maitre d’, who had followed him to the table. “Would you mind sending for another ice bucket for these gentlemen and letting me take this one back to my room? If I take the piece out of the ice again, it may harm it.”

“I’ll be happy to, sir.” The maitre d’ nodded at Ramon to act on the request.

Faracy picked the bucket off the stand and turned back to the table. He was still smiling, but behind the smile was being put into gear the ninety-six-point-four-percent memory retention he had developed over the years. “Again, my apology, gentlemen,” he said as his eyes flicked from one name badge to the other, NORCOM, whatever that was. B. P. Joiner. Rod Prater. “Are you certain I can’t buy you a fresh bottle of wine?”

“Forget it,” said Prater. “Glad you found your work of art — or whatever it is.”

Faracy and the maitre d’ returned to the service area, where Ramon was just coming out with a fresh bucket of ice. After he passed, Faracy said, “I’d like to send down a tip for the trouble I caused your waiter. What was his name again?”

“Ramon, sir. Table twelve. That’s very good of you, sir.”

“May I take the service elevator back upstairs? It’s closer.”

“Of course, sir.”

As soon as the elevator door closed and he was alone, Faracy leaned against the wall and expelled a deep breath. “God,” he said, “three of them! Three of them handled the goddamn thing!”

Staring down into the ice bucket he held, he could see the tip of the specimen container’s stem. Looking at it, his eyes turned cold and the line of his mouth tightened.

Goddamn you, what are you? he wondered helplessly.

On sixteen, Faracy hurried back to his room. Using the lead-lined gloves again, he removed the specimen container from the ice and returned it, wet, to its own special bag, which he sealed and secured back inside the aluminum briefcase. Then he rinsed his face with cold water, drank a long swallow of the now-warm Mumm’s, and sat down next to the telephone. Securing an outside line, he dialed the private number of Dr. Bygraves at the DSS center. The night operator answered.

“This is Dr. Faracy. Locate Dr. Bygraves and put me through to him, please.”

It took two minutes to get the call through to Arnold Bygraves at home.

“Yes, Curt,” the senior doctor answered.

“The project’s been compromised,” Faracy said. “Three outsiders have handled the specimen container without protection.”

There was a heavy, ominous silence at the other end of the line. It was as if Bygraves had stopped breathing. Then he said, “Give me the details, Curt.”

The storm ended at three o’clock in the morning. By the time daylight broke over Manhattan, the city was no different than any other spring morning after it had been washed clean by a good rain. Only across the Hudson River and inland into New Jersey did the widespread flood damage become evident. The network news shows, which had been broadcasting on a half-hour-bulletin schedule all night, began showing video footage of the wake of the disaster as soon as there was enough daylight to shoot.

Faracy paid little attention to the news as he quickly shaved and put on the change of clothes he had brought. Dr. Bygraves had called him at four o’clock to tell him that transportation back to Washington had been arranged for him and the specimen. “An Army transport helicopter will pick you up at the World Trade Center heliport at six o’clock. It will bring you directly here.”

“What about the Rahway experiment?” Faracy had asked.

“It’s canceled, Curt. I had no choice. With the specimen handled by three unprotected persons, it might have become tainted, devitalized in some way. With what we know about its osmotic capabilities, it’s most certainly been put at risk. My best judgment was that we better fall back and regroup. The Secretary agreed.”

“The Secretary?” Faracy felt his ulcer begin to burn.

“Yes. He’s coming over for a meeting at ten. You’ll be here by then.” Bygraves added, “We’ve got to deal with the problem of the three men, Curt. And quickly.”

“Of course,” Faracy said. But he frowned. There was something odd in the way Bygraves referred to dealing with the three men.

“See you in a few hours,” Bygraves said.

“Yes, sir.”

Bygraves had also arranged for a car to take Faracy to the World Trade Center. There was a driver and one escort, both young, clean-cut, dressed in business suits. Both of them glanced at the aluminum briefcase, as if making sure Faracy had it. Neither of them said much during the drive, except to comment on the storm and the floods. Faracy was certain they were FBI agents.

On the heliport at the World Trade Center, the Army helicopter didn’t cut its rotor after setting down. An officer debarked, identified Faracy, escorted him aboard, and the ship was airborne again. The officer offered Faracy coffee from a large thermos, which Faracy gratefully accepted.

After that, no one on board spoke to him for the duration of the trip.

Facing Arnold Bygraves that morning was the most humiliating moment Curt Faracy had ever experienced.

“I don’t know what to say to you,” he told the older doctor. “I feel like the biggest goddamn fool that ever drew breath.”

Bygraves leaned forward over his desk and lighted a pipe, puffing clouds of pungent smoke up to the ceiling. He was a square-faced man with thick eyebrows and heavy hands that looked as if they belonged to a brick mason instead of a scientist. “Curt,” he said, “I’m not going to minimize the seriousness of the situation by telling you you haven’t committed a major blunder. And I’m not going to patronize you with assurances that it won’t impede your career. But I am going to point out to you that it’s not the end of the world. You have a long and impressive record with the department. That’s not going to be nullified because you neglected to double-lock your hotel-room door.”

Bygraves removed the pipe from his mouth and looked down at it, reflecting. “I’ve been in scientific service with the government for nearly forty years. I know as well as anyone that in the scientific community we make ten mistakes for everything we do right. If the public knew the details of everything we do behind our laboratory doors, hell, we’d all be called Dr. Frankensteins. And if they knew about our mistakes, well—” His voice trailed off, the point made.

“Scientific errors are one thing,” Faracy said. “They’re expected, they’re allowed for. But plain stupidity — that’s something altogether different. And that’s how the Secretary is going to look at this — I think we both know that.”

The intercom sounded and Dr. Bygraves answered it. “The Secretary is at the main gate, Doctor,” a female voice announced.

“We’re on our way,” Bygraves said. He smiled at Faracy. “Speak of the devil. Listen, you let me handle the Secretary. Of the three of us, I’ll guarantee he’s the most nervous — after all, he’s the one who has to report this thing to the President. Be thankful you don’t have that job.”

When Bygraves and Faracy entered the private, soundproof conference room, Faracy was surprised to see three men already there. Three men he had never seen before. Bygraves stepped forward to greet one of them. “Fred, how are you?” He drew Faracy along with him. “Curt, I want you to meet a man who’s done more than one favor for our department over the years. This is Fred Collins. Fred, Dr. Curt Faracy, one of my associates.”

As Faracy was shaking hands, the other door to the conference room opened and the Secretary and his assistant strode into the room.

“Let’s be seated, gentlemen,” the Secretary said peremptorily, taking the chair at the head of the table. Although not extraordinary in appearance, the Secretary had enormous presence. The others in the room fell silent and sat down at once. “Dr. Faracy,” the Secretary began, “since you don’t know everyone, I’ll introduce you.” He began, pointing. “Fred Collins, deputy director of the FBI. Martin Burke, aide to the President. And John Atlas, founder and head of the Atlas National Private Detective Agency.”

Faracy exchanged nods with each man in turn, keeping his expression as inscrutable as he could. Inside, his stomach began churning. FBI. Presidential aide. Private detective. What in hell was this?

“Everyone has been briefed on the unfortunate occurrence in New York last night,” the Secretary said. “Fred, what do you have for us?” he asked Collins.

The FBI executive opened a folder in front of him. “I’m afraid just preliminary information at this stage, Mr. Secretary. Based on what Dr. Faracy told Dr. Bygraves last night, we’ve determined that the corporate name Norcom, which Dr. Faracy saw on the convention badges of two of the men who were exposed, stands for Norton Communications, Incorporated. It’s a fairly new telecommunications firm, about five years old — one of the new breed of telephone-equipment firms that came into being when the FCC deregulated the telephone industry. Its home office is in Milwaukee and it now employs about twelve hundred people throughout the country.” Collins looked up from his file. “The two men at the table compromised last night are both regional sales managers for Norcom. It’s unfortunate, of course, that two of the three men we might have to remove work for the same firm, but—”

“Excuse me.” Faracy interrupted, “what do you mean, remove?”

Collins glanced at the Secretary and the Secretary glanced at Dr. Bygraves. “Remove from the general public, Curt,” Bygraves said. “Wouldn’t you agree that while these men are ultragametic, we should have them under our control?”

“Yes, sir, I would agree. By ‘remove,’ do we mean hospitalize them?”

“That’s one option, yes.”

“What other—?”

“Continue, Deputy Collins,” the Secretary said before Faracy could finish his question.

Collins did so at once. “As I said, it’s unfortunate that two of them work for the same firm — but lucky for us that they’re field men and in different areas of the country. If we have to cover their absences, it’ll be easier to do with them being so far apart.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand that,” Faracy interrupted again. “Why would we have to cover their absences?”

This time when Collins glanced at the Secretary, the glance was not passed on to Bygraves or anyone else. Instead, the Secretary merely stared at Faracy, as if studying him. After a moment of heavy silence, Collins said, “If either of the men were not cooperative, Doctor, there’s the possibility that we would have to take that person into custody. In that case, we would either have to provide a cover story for his absence or divulge why we had him.”

“The latter, of course, is unthinkable,” the Secretary said firmly. “Does that answer your question, Doctor?” And again before Faracy could respond, the Secretary turned his head and said, “Go on, Fred.”

Collins forced a half smile. He clearly didn’t like being asked questions that were too specific. Vagueness provided a measure of safety. He cleared his throat. “If we did encounter any problem with Norcom, if there was demand for an explanation regarding the coincidence of two of their regional sales managers disappearing at once, I think we could mollify the situation with an unofficial visit by someone — myself, for instance — to point out that a matter of national security was involved.”

“National security!” Faracy exploded. “Now wait a minute—”

“Suppose you wait a minute, Dr. Faracy!” the Secretary said sharply. “Perhaps it would be in the best interest of all of us if you would allow Mr. Collins to finish his presentation and then ask your questions. There is a pad and pencil in front of you if you’d care to jot down the points that confuse you.”

Faracy’s jaw clenched. He wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to as if he were an adolescent. He didn’t like it, even from a man who was directly responsible to the President. His lips parted for a retort, but before he could speak Arnold Bygraves put an allaying hand on his arm. “Patience, Curt, please,” he said quietly.

The FBI executive adjusted his tie and continued. “The point I wanted to make is that the Bureau believes that the corporate officers at Norcom would be inclined to quietly sacrifice the two men in question if we could give them some justifiable reason, however vague, to do so. I suggest that the reason can be national security. It’s broad enough not to really tell them anything and always sounds serious enough to justify most anything.”

Collins turned some pages in his file folder. “Now then, to the men themselves. William P. Joiner of Memphis and Rodney J. Prater of Los Angeles. As I said, I’m afraid at the moment we have only preliminary data pulled from various computers in their respective cities: banks, department stores, vehicle and drivers-license bureaus, voter registration, property records. Joiner is married and Prater is single. Neither have criminal records or credit problems.” He closed the folder. “We’ll have more complete information in a few hours, Mr. Secretary.”

“I believe there was a third man,” the Secretary said.

“Yes, sir. A Puerto Rican waiter named Ramon. However, there are three waiters at the New York Hilton named Ramon. We didn’t want to inquire directly as to which one worked the table where the Norcom men were sitting — we felt to do so might call attention to the incident. So we’re having Immigration conduct what will appear to be a routine check for illegal aliens. They’ll determine who the three Ramons are, pull their employment records, and we can show photos of them to Dr. Faracy later today. Once he’s identified the correct Ramon, the Bureau will take it from there.”

“Good,” said the Secretary. He turned to John Atlas, the private detective. “Mr. Atlas, I’m sure we can count on you and your agency, as usual, to assist us with all the means at your disposal.”

“Of course, Mr. Secretary.”

“Excellent. With such able collaboration, I feel certain we’ll be able to contain this sudden and perplexing crisis with which we’re faced.” The Secretary leaned forward. “Now, then, to the exposure itself. Dr. Bygraves, will you give us your evaluation of the dangers from a scientific viewpoint, please?”

“Certainly.” Arnold Bygraves placed his pipe in a convenient ashtray. “The primary danger, of course, is that all of the three men who actually touched the specimen container without lead protection on their hands are now in an ultragametic state.

“Let me explain that. An ultragametic state is one in which a living body carries a reproductive organism which of itself is capable of recreating — without merging with another organism. Normally, a human male, as you know, carries only half of such an organism — it must mate with a female organism in order to recreate another human. However, exposure to our specimen container has changed the three men under discussion. Their exposure by touching that container was physically similar to a person touching a container of radium: the person’s body is unable to resist absorption of the alpha particles and gamma rays which are emitted by the radium. The same physical process occurred when the men touched our specimen container: the specimen sensed heat from the human hand touching its container and reacted to that heat by issuing its own radiation. That egesta, as it’s called, was immediately absorbed into the hand by a process known as IOT — intercellular osmotic transference. In any case of absorption of this nature, an immediate change takes place in the body. In the case of radium transference, as you know, the encroaching egesta begins destroying red corpuscles in the blood and the marrow in the bones. In the case of our specimen, the egesta enters the blood stream and moves directly to the male’s testis. The testicles absorb the egesta, and there it remains until the man’s next ejaculation. In normal intercourse, when it passes to a female partner, that woman will immediately become pregnant — no matter what her individual condition at the time.”

“Even if she’s using a birth-control pill, Doctor?” asked Martin Burke, the presidential aide. “Or wearing a diaphragm?”

“I repeat,” Dr. Bygraves said carefully, “no matter what her individual condition. The biogenics are far too complex for me to attempt to explain in detail here and now — just let me state unequivocally that the female would become pregnant even if she had undergone a hysterectomy. Even if she had no uterus she could, and would, become pregnant. This egesta is so biologically complex that it’s capable of stimulating the growth of a new uterus for its reproduction — capable of disintegrating an obstacle such as a diaphragm or a condom, capable of offsetting and reversing the chemical action of a birth-control pill. Capable, in fact, gentlemen, of doing anything it has to do to reproduce.”

“And therein lies the crux of our problem,” said the Secretary quietly. “What we have at the moment are three men carrying in their testicles a semen that is capable of recreating by the simple act of ejaculation into a woman. Any woman, in any physical condition.”

“Producing what?” Burke asked. “Another human?”

The Secretary pursed his lips and turned to Bygraves, nodding for the senior doctor to answer.

“Another human in appearance,” Bygraves said. His voice became quieter. “But there would be — well, more to the progeny than simply being human. We’re not prepared at this point to say exactly what. Our studies in that area are inconclusive so far.”

“Naturally, we’re not prepared to risk dealing with something of such unknown origin,” the Secretary added. “That’s why you gentlemen have been summoned this morning. We want immediate measures put into motion to intercept these men before they can have sexual intercourse with any female. If we’re not in time to do that, then we want the woman or women involved to be apprehended and detained.”

“We’re presently in the process of selecting a secure, isolated location to keep them in,” FBI man Collins said, “so very shortly we’ll have a place to take them once they’re in custody.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Secretary,” Faracy said, “but may I ask a question now?”

“What is it, Dr. Faracy?”

“Using words like ‘apprehend’ and ‘custody’ sounds as if we’re discussing criminals. What exactly is going to happen to these people after we ‘detain’ them?”

“That’s not been decided yet, Doctor. Our main concern at the moment is removing them from the general population. And, yes, I’m afraid that until they’re in our control we must look on them somewhat as criminals. You as much as anyone here, Dr. Faracy, must be aware of the menace to our society presently being carried in the testicles of these exposed men. There could be great potential danger here.”

“We’re also dealing with three human beings,” Faracy said. “Three citizens of the government for which we work!”

As Faracy spoke, Bygraves once again put a placating hand on his arm, but this time Curt wouldn’t be dissuaded. “No, I’m sorry, Arnold,” he said, “I’m going to make my point.” Standing, he faced the Secretary. “With all due respect to your office, sir, I’m having a great deal of difficulty believing some of the things I’m hearing at this meeting. This business about approaching the executives of Norcom with some lie about national security in order to remove two of their employees. Having Immigration find out who that Puerto Rican waiter is so that the FBI can deal with him. Removing any women who’ve had sexual intercourse with these men. Developing cover stories for those disappearances and taking people to some isolated place to keep them. Suppose they don’t want to be ‘removed’ and ‘detained’? What would you do, then — eliminate them?”

The Secretary’s expression didn’t change. Faracy glanced across the table at the FBI man, Collins, and at John Atlas, the private detective whose presence he still couldn’t understand. Collins looked as inscrutable as the Secretary, but Atlas had a slight smirk on his lips — a smirk that stopped just short of contempt. Looking at Atlas, Faracy felt a clamminess on the back of his neck. He became aware of a subtle menace in the room.

“You would, wouldn’t you?” he quietly answered his own question. “You would eliminate them.” Looking at Bygraves, his expression became incredulous. “These men are talking murder, do you realize that, Arnold?”

“At this point it’s merely scientific prudence, Curt,” the older man replied. There was a plea in his voice that said: Stop right now, before it’s too late. “We’re talking about a period of surveillance, exercising certain precautions—” Suddenly, Bygraves slammed a hand down on the table. “Goddamn it, man, you know what happened with the laboratory animals!”

“These are not laboratory animals!” Faracy shouted back. “For Christ’s sake, Arnold! These are people!”

The room went silent. Every pair of eyes at the table fixed on Faracy unrelentingly. A heavy feeling of malevolence seemed to surround him. He searched the face of his colleague Bygraves for a sign of empathy. There was none — he was suddenly an outsider among strangers with whom he could not communicate.

“Excuse me,” he said quietly. Turning from the table, he left the room.

As soon as he was gone, the Secretary rose and stepped to a telephone on the wall. “Chief of Security,” he told the operator. “Quickly, please.”

Faracy hurried upstairs to his office. At his desk, he picked up the telephone. Before he could dial, a thought occurred to him, a thought that brought a ripple of fear. Going back to his office door, he locked it and braced a chair under the knob.

At the phone again, he secured an outside line and called the New York Hilton. Recalling the names of the two diners the previous night, he asked for Rod Prater, the one he now knew to be from Los Angeles, who had seemed to be the more level-headed of the two.

“I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Prater checked out,” the hotel operator told him.

He then asked for Bill Pete Joiner, the joker from Memphis who had kidded him about the specimen container looking like a fancy dildo. Joiner came on the line.

“Mr. Joiner,” Faracy said, trying to keep his voice calm, “my name is Curt Faracy. I’m the man who came to your table last night looking for that ice bucket. Please listen carefully to what I’m about to say. I lied to you about that object in the ice bucket being a piece of metal sculpture. It was actually a container carrying a specimen of — of a substance that — well, I can’t fully explain what it is. But you and your friend and that waiter have been exposed to a kind of radiation that will affect your sperm and make it very powerful.”

Bill Pete Joiner laughed. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“No, I assure you it’s no joke! Look, I’m a scientist employed by the United States government—”

“Well, that explains it, then,” said Joiner. “You’re crazy. All gub’ment employees are crazy. Who do you work for, the post office or HUD?” He laughed again.

There was a knock at Faracy’s locked office door. The doorknob was turned several times. Then there was an urgent pounding.

“Mr. Joiner, listen to me,” Faracy pleaded. “It’s extremely important that you don’t have sexual intercourse with your wife or any other woman—”

“Hold on, now,” Joiner cut in. “I’m patriotic enough to give up my wife for the gub’ment, but other women is going too damned far!” Again he roared with laughter.

“Mr. Joiner, please! If you have sex with any woman, she may be abducted by government agents. I advise you to put yourself in the protective custody of an attorney at once!”

Suddenly the line went dead.

“Hello? Mr. Joiner? Hello?”

As Curt stared at the handset, someone began chopping down his office door from the outside with a fire axe.

Moments later, Faracy was being dragged off an elevator in the sub-basement of the DSS Building. Dr. Bygraves, the FBI man Collins, and John Atlas were standing at the end of a long concrete hallway.

“Put him in here.” Bygraves pointed to an open door as the security men approached with the struggling Faracy.

“Are you sure this is secure enough?” Collins asked. “You’ll have to hold him here until I can get an unmarked van and some agents to remove him.”

“This is a bunker storeroom,” Bygraves assured him. “Concrete walls and no windows. One door, solid steel, that locks from the outside only.”

“All right,” Collins said. “He’s your responsibility until my agents arrive. Let’s go,” he told Atlas. “We’ve got to get this operation in motion.”

When the two men left, Bygraves stared solemnly at Faracy for a moment. The younger doctor was firmly in the grip of two muscular security men. Bygraves shook his head with regret. “I’m sorry, Curt, but you’ve left us no alternative.”

“You think you can just have me drop out of sight?” Faracy challenged him. “You think you can make me disappear as easily as you can a couple of salesmen and a waiter? You’re mistaken, Arnold — there’ll be a television newswoman looking for me in a few hours!”

“I’ve thought of that. I’m going to call her and say you’ve been sent to South America on an emergency mission. That should allay her suspicions for a day or so. Perhaps by then we’ll have this mess in some kind of order.”

“And if you don’t? What happens then, Arnold? Do I die in the crash of a private plane somewhere?”

“I hope nothing that extreme will be necessary,” Bygraves replied. “But if it is, I’m afraid you’ll have only yourself to blame.” He nodded to the guards. “Lock him in.”

A moment later Faracy was alone in the concrete-walled, windowless, steel-doored storeroom.

When Fred Collins and John Atlas left the DSS Building, they went at once to the ultra-modern Washington headquarters of Atlas National Private Detective Agency, less than half a mile from the FBI Building. On the way, Collins used an FBI cellular line to call his office and order an unmarked van and four agents to transfer Curt Faracy from the DSS Building to a safe house the Bureau had in nearby Virginia.

When they arrived at the detective agency, as Atlas sat down at a white tubular desk in an office almost equally white, Collins asked, “Who are you going to use for this operation, John?”

“I thought Caunt,” said Atlas.

Collins considered that for a moment. Philip Caunt was a slight young man with a very large Adam’s apple that rose and fell when he talked. Collins could never remember seeing him smile. As an adolescent, Caunt had murdered his parents one night for no apparent reason. John Atlas had somehow rescued him from a prison mental ward some years later and Caunt had been singularly loyal to Atlas ever since.

Atlas used his intercom to summon Caunt to the office. While they waited for him, Collins asked, “What code name do you think we should give this operation?”

“Do we really need a code name, Fred? We’ll probably have this thing cleared up in two or three days.”

“The Bureau likes to have code names for everything, John, you know that,” Collins said.

“Well, why don’t you pick one, Fred? You’re very good at it.”

“Okay. What about Operation Eunuch?”

“Eunuch?” Atlas frowned.

“Yes. After all, that’s what we’re trying to do, isn’t it? With these three carriers?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.” Atlas forced a smile. “All right, Fred, Operation Eunuch it is.”

Moron, he thought.

Philip Caunt arrived and the two men briefed him on Bill Pete Joiner and Rod Prater. “Our offices in Los Angeles and Memphis already have local operatives keeping their residences under surveillance, and a computer line has been cleared for exclusive use in the operation — the terminal will have a standby agent on it around the clock. One of our agency jets with two pilots on board has been checked out to you. You can call ahead for local operatives to provide ground transportation wherever you go. I’ll have a safe house established in both Los Angeles and Memphis for interrogation and detention purposes. You must determine every move each of these two men has made since nine o’clock last night in New York. Above all, you must determine whether either of them has had sexual intercourse. If they haven’t, we’ll simply detain them for now. If they have, you must determine with whom they were intimate and detain — or terminate — that person. Clear?”

“Clear, sir,” Philip Caunt replied quietly. His pale-blue eyes registered no emotion.

“Keep us informed every step of the way,” Collins added when Atlas finished the briefing. “We’ll want to cover any disappearances or deaths as quickly as possible.”

Atlas put a paternal arm around Caunt’s narrow shoulders. “Do an especially good job for me on this one, Philip.”

“I will, sir,” replied Caunt, looking at Atlas almost with adoration.

Psychos, thought Fred Collins.

In the basement storeroom where he was held prisoner, Curt Faracy paced like a man awaiting execution. Oblivious to the floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with lab supplies, he silently berated himself. Why in hell hadn’t he remained calm during that meeting? All he had to do was keep his mouth shut and pretend to go along with whatever they said and he could have walked out with no suspicion attached to him. Then he would have been free to help those two salesmen and that waiter. He was certain his interrupted phone call to Bill Pete Joiner had done no good at all — Joiner thought the whole thing was a big joke.

Then suddenly he stopped pacing and stared at a double-doored metal cabinet at the end of the room. On its doors was stenciled in red: CHEMICALS LOCKER — DO NOT LEAVE OPEN.

Chemicals, Faracy thought. Chemicals, for God’s sake!

Trying the cabinet doors, he found them to be locked. Searching the room for some kind of tool to pry the lock, he found a laboratory-size claw hammer. Forcing its curved claws between the doors, he worked for several minutes but the lock was too strong. On impulse, he tried the outer edge of one door near its bottom hinge. To his surprise, he was able to snap the hinge off almost at once. Quickly, he broke the other two, then was able to bend the entire door away from its frame.

Searching through the boxes and bottles of dry and liquid chemicals, he began removing what he needed, muttering as he did, “Fulminic acid — ammonium nitrate — dry nitrocellulose—”

When he had seven chemicals on a small table, he pulled a beaker from a shelf and silently recited thermochemistry formulae and reactions as he mixed, stirred, held the beaker up to the ceiling light to study viscosity, and finally added dry cellulose to the liquid and molded it with his hands into a yellowish, puttylike substance. Taking it over to the single steel door, he packed the pliable mass into and around the lock, pressing it carefully into place and spreading it evenly.

Then, standing back away from the door, he took the claw hammer and threw it violently against the putty. There was a sudden flash and a small explosion, and it blew the fire-door lock completely off.

Rushing into the hall, Faracy called on his seven years’ knowledge of the DSS Building to get from the sub-basement to the underground parking garage and up to street level before the security force fully realized what he had done. By the time the guards found out what had happened, he was outside and had disappeared onto busy South Capitol Street.

Back at the Atlas offices, after Philip Caunt left, Fred Collins brought up the matter of Ramon, the Puerto Rican waiter.

“When Immigration gets photos of the three Ramons, we’ll have no way to identify the right one now that Faracy isn’t on the team. So I’ve decided we should consider them all carriers. And I think we should deal with them all without bothering with detention. What do you think?”

“I think you’re probably right,” John Atlas agreed. “We should keep that part of it as simple as possible. Handled properly, I don’t think we have to anticipate any repercussions.”

The intercom sounded and Atlas answered it. “Priority call for Deputy Director Collins, sir,” his secretary said. “Dr. Bygraves from DSS.”

Reaching across the desk, Collins turned on the speaker phone. “This is Collins.”

“Curt Faracy just got away,” Bygraves told him.

“What?” Collins began to turn red. “Got away how? I thought you said you could hold him until my agents got there!”

“He mixed some chemicals and blew open the steel door.”

“You idiot!” Collins shouted. “How long has he been out?”

“Ten minutes, fifteen at the most. Now see here, Collins, you can’t talk to me like that — I’m not one of your agents, you know.”

“You’re not smart enough to be one of my agents, you imbecile! I’ll deal with you later!” Collins turned off the speaker phone and stood up. “I’ve got to get over to the Bureau and put a net out for this Faracy. John, this thing on the waiter: I’d like you to handle it personally.”

“Me?” Atlas was incredulous. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done any field work, Fred.”

“I know, but I’d feel much more comfortable knowing that at least the New York part of this can of worms was being done right. Can I count on you?”

“Of course, Fred.”

“Good. I’ll be in touch.”

Collins strode from the office and John Atlas sat down heavily and stared at his white-inlaid desktop. Take care of it personally. That was something he hadn’t counted on.

He wondered how it would feel to kill again.

Curt Faracy sat in a phonebooth in Union Station, the receiver to his ear as if engaged in a call, while he watched the Massachusetts Avenue entrance. Lila had said she’d be there within fifteen minutes. According to the big clock in the terminal, twelve had passed.

Lila Goddard had been surprised to hear his voice. “Your boss called a little while ago and said you were on your way to South America.”

“Bygraves lied to you,” Faracy had told her. “Listen, honey, I’m in trouble. Can you meet me for a few minutes?”

Just as the terminal clock passed fourteen minutes, Faracy saw Lila walk briskly in and head toward the bank of baggage lockers as he’d instructed her. After making sure she wasn’t being followed, he left the booth and intercepted her.

“What’s going on, Curt?” she asked.

“Come on,” he said, taking her arm. He guided her to the most isolated table he could find in the self-serve cafeteria, sat her with her back to the rest of the room because she was easily recognizable, and got them both coffee.

“Listen to me, Lila,” he said quietly, leaning toward her. “I don’t have much time — there’s a Metroliner for New York in a few minutes and I have to be on it — but I’ll tell you as much as I can. The secret project I’ve been working on involves a powerful sperm capable of reproducing on its own without mating with another cell. It’s a unique biological phenomenon — it can recreate in anything: plants, animals, humans.”

“My God!”

“It’s something that could change mankind completely. I know that sounds melodramatic, but it’s true. Now here’s the problem: three men have been exposed to the substance and are carrying the sperm in their reproductive glands.”

Faracy told her the whole story, beginning with the removal of the ice bucket from his hotel room the previous night, up to his escape an hour earlier from the DSS Building.

“What are you going to do now?” Lila asked. “Why are you going back to New York?”

“I’ve got to have some way of proving what I just told you,” he explained. “Right now it would only be my word against those of the Secretary, the head of DSS, a deputy FBI director, and God knows how many others. They could say anything to discredit me: I was having a nervous breakdown, or I had been exposed to some chemical that made me delusional — any lie at all. But if I can find that waiter, Ramon — he’d be able to substantiate everything I’ve told you. I’ll bring him to you — we can go on the air with the whole thing!”

Lila’s eyes were charged with excitement. “What do you want me to do?”

“Start digging,” he said. “Look for a connection between the FBI and the Atlas National Detective Agency. See what you can find out about John Atlas himself. Monitor the movements of the Secretary, Bygraves, and Collins. Ask around as discreetly as you can and see if there are any high-level law-enforcement executives not connected with the FBI — maybe somebody from the Attorney General’s office — who doesn’t like Collins and the Bureau.”

Faracy looked out at the clock. “I’ve got to go. I’ll keep in touch by phone.” Leaning over the table, he kissed Lila tenderly on the lips.

In Spanish Harlem, Ramon Sedillo woke up from a sound sleep on the living-room couch of a modest but neat little apartment. As he sat up rubbing his eyes, a pretty young girl of fourteen, Milena Quevas, came out of the bedroom dressed for school, carrying books. Looking at Ramon, she shook her head with a grin. “When are you going to give up?” she asked, stepping into the alcove kitchen and putting her books down.

“Give up what?” Ramon asked sleepily.

“Trying to get Mama to go to bed with you. Every time you bring her home, you end up sleeping on the couch.” Milena poured cereal and milk into a bowl.

“I’m getting closer all the time,” Ramon said confidently. “Used to be I didn’t get past the front door. One of these nights, kid.”

The bedroom door opened again. “One of these nights, what?” asked Milena’s mother, Candida Quevas, a shapely, pretty woman of only thirty. A topless dancer by night and beautician student by day, she bore a striking resemblance to the young Yvonne DeCarlo.

“One of these nights I’ll get you into bed,” said Ramon in answer to her question.

“You won’t enjoy it,” Candida promised.

“No? Why not?”

“Because I’ll be a very old woman. Too old to run or resist.”

“Very funny.” Ramon’s expression turned wretched. “Candida, why do you torture me like this?”

Candida got a spoon and took a bite of cereal from Milena’s bowl. “You torture yourself, hombre. I don’t force you to be miserable.”

Ramon started putting on his shoes. “You’re impossible. I can’t stand this any more, Candida. I’ve made up my mind: I’m going to commit suicide. I’ll leave a note blaming you. The people of the neighborhood will ostracize you. Then what will you do?”

“Move to another neighborhood,” Candida said, shrugging.

“Heartless and cruel,” Ramon said, rising. “This is the end. You’ll never see me alive again.” Head hung, he walked to the door.

“Don’t forget Feleciadad’s birthday party tonight at Consuelo’s house,” Candida reminded him.

“I’ll be dead,” Ramon mumbled.

After Ramon was gone, as Milena finished her cereal and washed the bowl, she asked, “Why do you let him sleep on the couch, Mama? It makes everyone think you’re sleeping with him.”

“And because they think that,” Candida said, “none of the other machos in the neighborhood come sniffing around, comprende?”

Smiling, Milena hugged her mother. “But don’t you ever long for — well, you know? A man to love?”

“Sometimes,” Candida admitted. “But I get a little release with the dancing, you know? And the rest of the time I’m too busy with beautician school and trying to make a halfway decent homelife with you to think about it. You know, criatura, I was only a year older than you are now when I got pregnant with you. I didn’t really have time to be a teenager. I went right from little girl to woman. But I don’t want that to happen to you. I want you to have these teenage years, I want you to finish high school. And I don’t want a lot of sharpies and studs hanging around while you’re growing up. Ramon doesn’t realize it, but he’s the one who keeps the others away. They think I’m taken, you know?”

A glow of pride rose in Milena’s eyes. “You’re something else, Mama.”

Candida whirled her daughter around, slapped her on the rear, and said, “Go on to high school, freshman. Pronto!”

Getting off his flight at Memphis International Airport, Bill Pete Joiner stepped up to a payphone and called his wife, Virginia.

“Me,” he said when she answered. “I’m at the airport, fixin’ to get my car and go to the office. Any calls while I was gone?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” said Virginia.

“I was just about to ask how you were, Virginia. You know, you just never give a man a chance. What did the doctor say about your headaches?”

“Tension. He said they were caused by tension.”

Joiner grunted quietly. “Tension, huh? I guess that means me.”

“Dr. Elbert did ask how we get along.”

“And what’d you tell him?”

“I smiled and lied.”

Joiner glanced at the luggage conveyor. The bags had not started coming in yet.

“I’ve got to go,” he said. “My bag just came out. Listen, I’ll be late tonight. First day back and all.”

“No, Bill Pete,” she told him firmly, “not tonight. Tonight you come home on time. You and I have to talk.”

“We’ll talk tomorrow night.”

“We’ll talk tonight.” She paused. “I’ve decided to see a lawyer, Bill Pete.”

Christ Almighty damn, Joiner thought, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling.

“I’m serious,” Virginia declared.

Joiner pictured her in his mind: once tall and slim, she was now skinny, bony. Once alabaster-complexioned, she was now just plain pale. Her once fine auburn hair was thinning, her once firm breasts were sagging, there was a belly where once there had been none. The only thing that hadn’t changed about Virginia was her inheritance of sixty-five thousand a year. For life. Guaranteed.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be home by six.”

Loosening his tie, Joiner made a second call. This one was answered by a musky voice that sounded as if its owner had been sleeping. Which Joiner suspected was true, since it was barely noon there in Memphis.

“April, honey, I can’t make it tonight,” he said. “Business meeting. But I want to see you sometime today.”

“Aw’right, sugar. I’ll be here.”

Joiner pictured April as he had Virginia. April was young and firm, with smooth, milk-chocolate skin. She sweated a lot and always smelled like soil after a light rain. Expensive to keep, she was well worth it to Bill Pete Joiner. “I’ll be over sometime this afternoon, sugar,” he said, and hung up.

While waiting for his suitcase, Joiner remembered the crazy telephone call he received that morning before leaving the hotel. What was it the guy had said about not having sex with anybody? What the hell had that been all about? Government agents, abduction, powerful sperm — he couldn’t recall exactly. But it was probably a joke, he decided — that goddamn Bubba Thornton down in Houston had probably put somebody up to it. I’ll get even with that sum’bitch, he thought, grinning.

When he got his bag, Joiner decided to drop it off at home on his way to the office. And to buy Virginia a box of candy and surprise her. A few minutes of sweet talk, a few new promises, and he’d have all that bullshit about seeing a lawyer out of her head. After all, sixty-five thousand a year was very nice overhead money.

He walked out of the terminal whistling.

When he got off the train at Grand Central Station in New York, Faracy went to a public phone and called the Hilton again. He was going to try one more time to convince Bill Pete Joiner that what he was saying was no joke. But Joiner had checked out shortly after Faracy had called him that morning.

Contacting long-distance directory assistance, he obtained the phone numbers of the Norcom offices in Memphis and Los Angeles. Using his Sprint card, he got through to Joiner’s secretary in Memphis and learned that Joiner was expected back from New York sometime this afternoon. But from Norcom’s Los Angeles office, he found out that Rod Prater was stopping at the company’s headquarters in Milwaukee for a day and wasn’t expected back until the following morning. Faracy got Norcom’s headquarters number in Milwaukee and tried there. Prater had not yet arrived.

Hanging up the receiver, Faracy leaned his head against the phone box for a moment. I’m losing, he thought dully. I won’t be able to reach those two before the men Collins and Atlas send get to them. And even if I did reach them, I probably couldn’t convince either of them I wasn’t crazy. He was sure that’s what Joiner must have thought that morning.

But he could still get to Ramon, the waiter, because they didn’t know which Ramon they were looking for.

Hurrying out of the terminal, he got into a waiting cab. “Hilton Hotel,” he told the driver.

As the cab plied through midtown Manhattan traffic, Faracy leaned his head back and closed his eyes. A heavy weariness settled over him and he realized for the first time that he had a burning stomach ache. He hadn’t eaten since dinner the previous night and his ulcer was letting him know it.

Inside the Hilton, Faracy found the personnel office. Several maids and other employees were in line, signing for and receiving their paychecks.

A clerk came forward to help Faracy and he inquired about the waiter, Ramon.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he was told, “but we have a strict policy against giving out any information about our employees.”

“This is a somewhat urgent matter,” Faracy insisted.

“Sorry, sir. It’s against the rules.”

No matter how much Faracy tried to persuade him and the office manager, they would not give him Ramon’s last name or his address. As he was arguing with them, two unsmiling men in business suits entered the office. Suspecting who they were, Faracy quietly backed off. As he left the office, he heard one of the men say, “We’re from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, making a routine check for illegal alien employees. We’d like to see your personnel files, please.”

In the hall, he leaned against the wall and sighed wearily.

“Hey, man,” a voice said.

Faracy turned to see a Puerto Rican wearing thick eyeglasses. It was Ordonez, the waiter Ramon had cover for him so he could see Candida Quevas the previous night. Ordonez had been in the office getting his paycheck and overheard Faracy inquire about Ramon. “What you want Ramon for?” he asked. “You a bill collector or something?”

“No,” Faracy said, pushing away from the wall. “I’m trying to contact two men who sat at one of Ramon’s tables last night. They were wearing name badges and I thought Ramon might remember their names.” He took some currency from his pocket. “It’s pretty important to me,” he said pointedly.

“How important?” Ordonez asked.

Faracy held out a twenty. “Do you know where he lives?”

“No, but I can tell you somebody who does.” Faracy gave him the twenty. “Go to the Club San Juan,” Ordonez told him. “Lenox Avenue near one thirty-ninth. Ramon’s girl friend works there. Her name’s Candida something.”

“What’s Ramon’s last name?”

“Sedillo.”

“Thanks!” Faracy all but shouted. Excitement surged through him. Maybe this was the breakthrough that would help him end this madness.

Almost running, he left the hotel and got into another taxi.

Lila, with two dozen scribbled notes on her desk at the television studio, was dialing her twentieth outside call of the day when her secretary came in and said, “There’s a Dr. Arnold Bygraves to see you. He doesn’t have an appointment, but he seems to think you’ll see him.”

Lila’s sculpted eyebrows went up and she replaced the receiver. “Show him in.”

As Bygraves entered, Lila regarded him warily. He looked knowingly at her and said, “Let’s don’t waste each other’s time fencing, Miss Goddard. The telephone calls you’ve been making all afternoon are generating discomfort in some very sensitive areas.”

“I’m merely making inquiries, Doctor,” said Lila. “In the public interest. Are you here to try and stop that?”

“Not at all.” Bygraves smiled slightly. “As I said, let’s not fence. I’m here to offer you a proposition — one that can make you a reporter not only of national but of international renown. An exclusive on the most challenging — and threatening — scientific discovery since the harnessing of the atom. Are you interested?”

“I’d be a fool if I wasn’t,” Lila replied. “But what’s this great scoop going to cost me?”

“Help us find Curt Faracy — before he puts all of mankind in jeopardy.”

Lila shook her head. “Not unless you can convince me I should be on your side instead of his, Doctor.” Her expression hardened.

“That might be easier than you think. How much do you know about Curt’s work?”

“Practically nothing,” she lied.

“Then get ready for the most incredible story you’ll probably ever hear. The secret project Curt has been working on involves an alien substance that was accidentally brought back to earth by one of the space flights.

“Do you remember Apollo 13, the flight that had a problem in outer space when one of its fuel lines ruptured? Well, something got into that fuel line. A speck of something no larger than a grain of sand. It survived re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, survived the splashdown, and continued to survive undetected for years afterward. It lay dormant down at Cape Kennedy and at the Houston Space Center while NASA ran thousands of post-flight tests on the ship. Finally the craft was given to the Smithsonian Institute for display. Before it went to the Smithsonian, however, it was sent to us to be cleaned up and sterilized. We did a routine microscopic surface probe of it inside and out. That’s how we found the speck.

“We’ve had it three years now: cultivating it, watching it grow, trying to determine exactly what it is. We still don’t know, nor can we say where it came from. What we do know is that it’s ultragametic and can reproduce by itself whatever it can incubate. Put one of its minuscule cells on a living plant and it will reproduce another plant identical to the first, but much stronger — so strong, in fact, it will strangle and kill the original plant.

“Put its cell into a female laboratory animal and it will duplicate that animal with one with several times the strength and mentality, and will consume — actually eat as food — the animal it came from, as well as others around it. We can only speculate what kind of human variety it will reproduce, but I’m sure you can see the inherent danger. Are you impressed so far?”

“Amazed,” Lila admitted. Curt hadn’t told her nearly this much. Of course, he’d been rushed for time, but still—

“I hope,” Bygraves said, noting her thoughtful expression, “you’ll be amazed enough to help us after you hear the rest of the story.”

When Philip Caunt landed in Memphis, he was met by an Atlas agent who gave him a report on Bill Pete Joiner.

“He got in a little while ago on a Northwest flight from New York, made a couple of calls at a pay phone, then claimed his bag, got his car from the long-term parking lot, and drove home. On the way, he made one stop, at a Godiva Chocolates shop, and bought a box of candy. When he got home, he stayed one hour and eleven minutes, then left again. He’s on his way downtown to his office right now.”

“Can we get to his office before he does?” Caunt asked.

“I think so,” the agent said.

“Let’s go, then,” Caunt ordered.

As they moved in and out of traffic on Elvis Presley Boulevard, the agent, at the wheel, contacted by radio the surveillance team following Joiner. Determining their location, he said, “We’ll make it to Joiner’s office about ten minutes ahead of them, Mr. Caunt.”

“Good. Tell the surveillance agents to move in and conduct a low-profile pickup as soon as he parks his car.”

Caunt and the agent were parked outside the Norcom offices when Bill Pete Joiner pulled into a parking garage next door. The surveillance car followed him in and Caunt’s car followed.

When Joiner got out of his car, he was immediately accosted by the two agents from the surveillance car and forced into the back seat.

“What the hell’s going on?” Joiner asked, good-naturedly nervous. “What you boys up to here?”

“Just keep quiet, please,” one of them said as he got in beside him in the back seat.

“If this is a kidnap,” Bill Pete joked, “my wife’ll probably pay as much as thirty-five dollars for me.”

“No talking, please,” the agent next to him said, putting the muzzle of a pistol against Bill Pete’s ribs.

The driver of the surveillance car called Philip Caunt on the radio. “Where to now, sir?”

“To the safe house,” Caunt told him.

John Atlas, dressed as a Catholic priest, debarked an airport shuttle in Manhattan and took a taxi to Columbia University. During the taxi ride, he studied the personnel files that had been couriered to him by Immigration agents of three Puerto Rican waiters employed at the New York Hilton. All of the addresses in the files were in Spanish Harlem.

At Columbia, Atlas left the taxi and took a subway to the neighborhood of the waiter who lived closest, a man named Ramon Fuentes.

No one bothered Atlas as he walked the streets of Spanish Harlem. His priest’s garb was his pass. He was even greeted cordially by people he passed. At the tenement building at the address on the first file, Atlas walked up three flights to a rear apartment and knocked.

“Yeah, who’s there?” a male voice asked from inside.

“Father John, from the church,” Atlas answered.

The door was opened by a short, muscular man wearing pants and an undershirt. From behind him, Atlas could hear an infant crying and a woman’s voice trying to soothe it.

“Are you Ramon Fuentes?” Atlas asked.

“Yes, Father,” Fuentes replied, frowning. “What’s the matter?”

Atlas pressed his elbow against his side and a four-inch commando knife was sprung from its base on his forearm into his right hand. Without a word, he drove the blade into the side of Fuentes’ neck and pulled it forward far enough to cut his throat. Long an expert in this kind of killing, he knew exactly which way the victim’s blood would spurt, and he deftly moved to avoid it. As the gurgling man fell, Atlas stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

As he started toward the bedroom, a woman came out. She was dark and wore only a slip. Atlas wished he had time to have a little amusement with her, but there were two more calls to make. Clamping a hand over her mouth, he pushed the knife expertly through her sternum directly into her aorta. Lowering her to the floor, he left her there with a bubble of blood spreading across the front of her slip.

In the bedroom, he found only the little brown toddler standing up in a crib, crying in the disconsolate way that hungry babies do. Atlas stared at the child for a moment, then his steel-trap mind remembered a minor detail from the other room. He went back to a hotplate on which there was a pan of boiling water with a baby bottle of milk in it. With a kitchen towel, he turned off the burner, removed the bottle, and returned to the bedroom. Lying the baby down in the crib, he gave it the bottle and the baby immediately stopped crying.

Leaving the apartment door ajar several inches so that someone would find the baby before too long, Atlas walked downstairs and out of the building.

At the safe house, an isolated farm just outside Memphis, Bill Pete Joiner sat at a kitchen table, flanked on each side by the two surveillance agents, as Philip Caunt prepared to question him. Bill Pete kept up his “good old boy” act and tried not to seem nervous. “Why don’t you fellows just tell me what this is all about?” he asked. “Look, if it’s some kind of industrial espionage, just say so. I’ll tell you whatever I know about Norcom’s products.”

“We’re not interested in Norcom,” Caunt said, “we’re interested in you. I want to know everything you did during the seventy-one minutes you were in your home a little while ago. Everything.”

Bill Pete frowned and then shrugged. “Well, I had a Bloody Mary while Virginia unpacked my bag for me. Virginia’s my wife. Then me and Virginia, well, we had a little play time.” He winked conspiratorially. “I’d been gone for three days, and the little woman was—”

“All right, that’s enough,” Caunt interrupted him. Bobbing his chin at the two surveillance agents, he said, “Keep him here.” Then to his driver, “Let’s go.”

Caunt and the agent drove several miles to a manicured golf-course neighborhood where the Joiners resided in a split-level home just off the sixth tee. Parking in the driveway, they approached the house as if they were legitimate businessmen, insurance salesmen perhaps, making a call.

Virginia Joiner answered the bell. She was a slim, not at all unattractive woman.

“Mrs. Joiner,” said Caunt, showing federal-government identification he carried, “we’re with the National Security Agency. Your husband is in our custody. He’s asked that we bring you to him so he can discuss getting an attorney. Will you come with us, please?”

“Why, what on earth—?” Virginia Joiner said.

“I’ll explain the whole thing in the car, Mrs. Joiner,” Caunt assured her.

“Why, all right. My goodness. May I just get my purse?”

In the car, Caunt sat in the back seat with Virginia Joiner. Although she tried, she couldn’t contain her anxiety. “I declare, I can’t imagine what Bill Pete has to do with National Security.”

Caunt glanced at her. She was, in his eyes, sparrowlike and proper — delicate, charming. Much like the mother he had murdered years earlier. But I might as well tell her, he thought: there was no reason not to now that she was in custody. “Your husband has been exposed to a very powerful chemical of some kind,” he said. “He may have transmitted it to you when he had sex with you earlier today.”

Virginia Joiner stared at him aghast. “Sex? With me? Why, that’s ridiculous — Bill Pete and I haven’t had sex in more than a year.”

Caunt’s expression became incredulous. “Are you telling me the truth?” he asked in a deadly quiet voice.

Virginia’s lips tightened spitefully and she was no longer attractive. “I haven’t allowed him to touch me since — well, I just don’t, that’s all.”

“That lying clown,” Caunt muttered. “Step on it,” he told the driver.

When the car pulled into the driveway of the isolated farmhouse, Virginia began to get angry. “Just what in the world is this place?” she demanded. “I don’t believe you men are government agents at all!”

“Quiet!” Caunt snapped angrily and dragged her by the arm out of the car.

On the porch, Caunt and the driver tensed. The front door was standing open. Drawing their guns, they peered inside — and saw the two agents they left behind were unconscious. Bill Pete Joiner was nowhere in sight.

“Check out back!” Caunt instructed. He looked around, amazed. “What the hell could have happened here?”

“I’ll tell you what probably happened,” Virginia said. “Your men there fell for Bill Pete’s good-old-boy routine, and when they got careless enough he jumped them. For your information, he happens to be a ninth-degree Black Belt. I’m surprised he even let you bring him here.”

The driver hurried back in. “The other car’s gone.”

“Damn it!” Caunt fumed. “There’s no telling where he is!”

“I’ll tell you where to look for him if you’ll let me go,” Virginia said.

Caunt stared thoughtfully at her. “You sure you two didn’t—”

“I told you — no!”

“All right, I’ll let you go. Where do you say he is?”

“Probably hiding out at the apartment of his mistress. Her name is April something. She lives at the Live Oak Apartments.”

“Thanks,” said Caunt. From his coat pocket he took a silencer and affixed it to the muzzle of his pistol. Calmly, he shot Virginia Joiner twice in the chest.

“Let’s go,” he told the driver. “You heard her. The Live Oak Apartments.”

John Atlas, still dressed as a priest, knocked on the door of a basement apartment. It was opened by an older, slightly stoop-shouldered man with a neat grey moustache. Atlas smiled. “Ramon Arrata?”

“Si, Padre.”

Atlas slugged him in the temple with a leather-covered sap and Arranta dropped to the floor like a wet rope. Stepping past him, Atlas looked around quickly. He was in a small, cluttered kitchen. In the only other room, a tiny alcove sleeping area, he found an elderly woman — Arranta’s mother, perhaps — very shriveled and frail-looking, asleep in bed. Next to the bed was an old-fashioned wooden wheelchair.

Cunning flashed in the hard eyes of John Atlas. Might as well make this one look good.

In the kitchen, he dragged Arranta over next to the stove. From a pan on one burner, he took a spoonful of thick black-bean paste and smeared it on the sole of the unconscious man’s left shoe, putting a little more on the floor. Then he opened the oven door and turned on the gas jet without lighting it. He found some brown bread and put it in the oven. Nice, he thought, surveying his work. Arranta was going to heat up some brown bread. After he turned on the oven, before he could light it, he slipped on some spilled black-bean paste, hit his head on the stove corner, and knocked himself out. He and the poor crippled woman in the next room were asphyxiated.

Leaving the apartment, Atlas started for the address of the last person on his list: Ramon Sedillo...

The Club San Juan was just opening when Faracy walked in. The bartender, used to seeing only Latinos in the club, eyed him suspiciously.

“The girls don’t start dancing for another half hour,” he said in a less than welcoming tone.

“I’m looking for a girl named Candida,” Faracy said.

“I just tol’ you, man, the girls aren’t here yet.”

“Can you give me her address? It’s very important.”

The bartender shook his head emphatically. “We don’t give out no addresses of the dancers. Club rules.” Faracy took some currency out of his pocket, but the bartender shook his head again. “Don’t insult me, man,” he warned. Faracy asked if the bartender knew Candida’s boy friend, Ramon Sedillo. “No,” the bartender said, “I don’t know nobody.”

There was nothing Faracy could do but wait for Candida to come to work. Using a pay phone on the wall, he called Lila collect at her office.

“Curt, where are you?” she asked urgently.

“Would you believe I’m in Spanish Harlem waiting for a go-go dancer to come to work?”

“Are you all right?”

“So far. Have you been able to find out anything? I presume the whole world is looking for me.”

“Yes.” Lila paused, then said, “Dr. Bygraves was here this afternoon. He told me all about the project.”

“He what?”

“Yes. Everything from the time DSS found the substance on the spacecraft until now. He asked me to help them find you.”

“And?”

“I told him you were currently a news source and I was bound by journalistic ethics to protect you. Of course, I didn’t tell him that until after he gave me the whole story about the project. Unfortunately, the story isn’t going to do me any good. I can’t confirm it and Bygraves says he’ll deny it if I broadcast it.”

“You’ll be able to confirm it through me,” Faracy promised, “as soon as I find the man I’m looking for.” He saw two Puerto Rican women come into the club. The bartender spoke to one of them and nodded toward Faracy at the phone. “Listen,” he said quickly, “I think the woman I’m waiting for is here. I’ll call you again later.”

Hanging up, Faracy approached Candida Quevas. “May I speak to you? It’s about Ramon Sedillo.”

At a corner table, he told Candida as much as he thought she could understand, without becoming too technical. Candida, frowning suspiciously, wasn’t sure whether Faracy was crazy or lying. But she was not about to trust him.

“Look, mister, I don’t know who you are,” she told him flatly. “You could be from Immigration, you could be from the income-tax place checking on Ramon’s tips, you could be a bill collector — you could be anybody.”

“Believe me, I’m not any of those,” Faracy said. “Listen, this is extremely important. Will you just call Ramon on the phone for me? Tell him the man who was looking for the ice bucket last night is here. He’ll know what you’re talking about. Ask him to come down here right away. Please.”

Candida finally agreed to make the call. “You wait over at the bar,” she told Faracy. “I’ll see what he says.”

Atlas was just entering Ramon’s building. There was a teenaged Puerto Rican girl in the hallway. “Which apartment does Ramon Sedillo live in, child?” he asked.

“Third floor in the rear, Father.”

Atlas smiled at her. “Does he live there with his wife?”

“Ramon isn’t married, Father. He lives alone.”

“Thank you, dear,” he said.

On the third floor, he knocked on Ramon’s door. “Yeah, who is it?” Ramon asked.

“Father John, from the church,” said Atlas.

Ramon opened the door. “I’m just about to leave for work, Father. You collecting for something?”

“No, I’m here about the girl, my son,” Atlas said. “May I come in?”

“Sure.” Ramon stood aside as he entered. “What girl, Father?” he asked.

“The girl you were with last night.”

Ramon frowned. “Candida? What about her?”

“Did you have carnal knowledge of her last night, Ramon?”

“What? Father, what’s this all about?”

Atlas slapped him hard across the face, shoved him back into the room, and drew a gun. “Lie down on the floor,” he ordered. “Quickly!”

When he had Ramon face down, Atlas knelt next to him and fished his wallet out of Ramon’s pocket. Fingering through it, he found a small address book and scanned it. “Candida Quevas, is that her name? One One twenty-ninth Street? Is that her?” He prodded Ramon with his gun.

“Yeah!”

“Did you and she make it last night?” Atlas got no answer. He prodded again, harder. “Did you?”

“Yeah, sure! I mean, she’s my girl! What’s this all about? You ain’t no priest, man!”

“Shut up and hold still!” Atlas removed a hypodermic needle from a leather folder he took from his inside coat pocket. He plunged it through Ramon’s trousers and into his buttock and emptied it. “Just relax, Ramon,” he said, still holding the gun in place. “You’re about to go on the best and last high of your life. You just overdosed on the purest heroin ever produced.”

In two minutes, Ramon was having spasms. While death was seizing his body, there was a knock at the door. Atlas opened it just far enough to see it was the young girl from downstairs.

“Father, there’s a call for Ramon on the hall phone.”

“Tell them to call back later,” Atlas told her. “Ramon is praying right now.”

At the Club San Juan, Candida hung up the phone and joined Faracy at the bar. “They said to call back later,” she told him. “I’m sorry, but that’s all I can do for you.”

“Look, Miss,” Faracy began to plead again, “I’ve got to get in touch with Ramon now. It’s urgent. He’s in great danger — and you may be, too.”

“I’m not telling you where he lives, and that’s final,” Candida said stubbornly. She turned to leave and Faracy grabbed her by the arm.

“Wait, please try to understand—”

“Let me go!” Candida ordered angrily.

The bartender hurried around and poked a thick wooden nightstick in Faracy’s face. “Turn her loose or I’ll split your head!”

Faracy let go of Candida’s arm and backed off. The bartender pointed the stick toward the door. “Take off, man. You don’t belong here no ways. Move it.”

Faracy left. Out on the sidewalk, he looked around indecisively. What now? he wondered. Where did he go now, what did he do next? He had no answer. All he could do was stand there, shaking his head helplessly. He could feel defeat in his throat. He was losing the battle. As well as the war...

At the Live Oak Apartments in Memphis, April was in the kitchen pouring two beers. Bill Pete Joiner was lying on his stomach in bed, a frown on his face as he thought about everything that had happened. The men who kidnaped him were private detectives — he had looked in their wallets after he karate-chopped them unconscious. A slight smile came over his face as he thought about it. Wimps, trying to act tough with him.

But why had they kidnaped him? And what was all that stuff in the telephone call about not having sex because of something powerful being in his sperm?

The apartment doorbell rang. “There’s our pizza,” April called from the kitchen. She hurried into the living room. “Just a sec!” she told the door as she stopped to get ten dollars from her purse. Then she opened the door and froze, startled by the sight of a slight young man with a large Adam’s apple.

“Is Mr. Joiner here?” he asked.

“Why, ah... who did you say?” April asked.

“You heard me,” Philip Caunt said, reading her expression. Pushing his way in, he closed the door with one hand and drew his gun with the other. The pistol’s silencer was still in place. “Where is he?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous.

Swallowing, April led him to the bedroom. “Bill Pete—”

Rolling over, Joiner looked up and saw Caunt. “You again? Damn it, I’m getting a little tired of this game.” In a fluid movement, he was off the bed and had assumed a karate attack posture. “Put down that gun and fight like a man,” he challenged.

Caunt looked at him and shot him twice in the chest. Joiner’s body slammed back against the dresser and dropped heavily to the floor.

April’s hands went to her throat; she was too terrified to scream.

The doorbell rang again.

“Pizza delivery!” a youthful voice called.

Philip Caunt’s mind went into overdrive. “Just a minute!” he called back. He squeezed the trigger and there was a poump! The slug pitched April onto the bed.

Caunt walked into the living room and opened the door. “Come on in,” he said, concealing the gun behind him. “Just put it there on the coffee table.” A smiling young black man walked in, the boxed pizza in both hands. Before he got to the table, Caunt shot him twice in the back...

Milena Quevas opened the door of her apartment and found a smiling priest standing there.

“Hello, young lady,” he said. “Is Candida Quevas at home?”

“No, Father. She’s working.”

“I see. Well, I must talk to her at once. It’s about her boy friend Ramon. Where does she work?”

Milena blushed, embarrassed. “I’m not sure you want to see her there, Father.”

“Indeed? Why not?”

“Well, Father, it’s a... it’s a—”

“Come, come, child, this is urgent,” Atlas pressed.

“It’s a go-go club, Father,” said Milena, mortified. “The Club San Juan. On Lenox, near a Hundred and Thirty-ninth.”

“Thank you, child.”

Milena shuddered as he hurried away. The priest was not like any other she had ever encountered.

Faracy was back in the Club San Juan. It was busy now — crowded, smoky, noisy. He stood against the back wall, ignoring occasional hostile looks from the regular patrons. On a small circular stage behind the bar, in a spotlight of hazy incandescence, with a floor-to-ceiling mirror behind her, Candida Quevas danced in red bikini briefs and spike heels, moving her body erotically to a vibrant Latin beat.

As Faracy stood there, the front door to the club opened and closed, changing momentarily the shading of light along the back wall. Glancing over, Faracy saw that, incongruously, a priest had entered. Staring at him, Faracy frowned. There was something vaguely familiar about him.

“Candida, I love you!” shouted a slightly drunk man from the audience. The other patrons laughed.

At the sound of Candida’s name, Faracy saw the priest reach under his coat and raise a gun. Then he realized who the man was. John Atlas!

Faracy pushed away from the wall as he saw Atlas steady the pistol and take aim. Bulling past several other patrons also standing in the rear, Faracy lunged at Atlas and knocked him off balance just as he fired. In the wake of the shot, Atlas stumbled backward and was trying to regain his balance when Faracy lunged and brought him down.

The club suddenly became like a zoo in a rainstorm. Everyone was yelling, running, hiding. Candida stood still, her eyes wide, looking out off the stage. Behind her, the floor-to-ceiling mirror had been shattered by the single bullet and glass shards covered the stage. Faracy, seeing Atlas trying to maneuver the pistol for another shot, plunged into the crowd and fought his way to the stage. Seizing the petrified Candida, he hurried her behind the curtain.

“Now will you believe that you and Ramon are in danger?” He looked around. “How the hell can we get out of this place?”

“This way—” The frightened woman mustered some control. She led him toward a rear door, then stopped. “Wait — I can’t go outside like this,” she said, glancing down at her nearly naked body. Dashing to a row of metal lockers on one wall, she threw open the door to one and snatched out a raincoat and her purse. Then she rushed back to Faracy and they hurried outside to the alley. Running down the alley, they stopped just before reaching the street and huddled together in a darkened doorway. Candida’s mind was alert again.

“My apartment’s only two blocks from here. We can go there and try to call Ramon again,” she said.

Faracy vetoed the idea. “The man who shot at you probably knows where you live. He might be heading there right now.”

Candida looked at him in horror. “My God! I’ve got a daughter at home!”

Milena Quevas was sitting on the front stoop talking to a boy named Rodrigo from one of her high-school classes. The front window to her apartment, which looked out on the stoop, was open so that she could hear the phone when it rang. Her mother always called sometime during the evening to see if she was all right.

As they were talking, Milena saw the priest who had been there earlier come around the corner. “That priest came to see my mother a little while ago,” she told Rodrigo. “I don’t know what he wanted, but there’s something funny about him.”

“Come on, Milena,” the young man scoffed.

Just then Milena heard her phone ring. “Back in a minute,” she said and hurried inside.

Her mother’s voice on the line was harsh with urgency. “Milena, has there been a priest there?”

“Yes, Mama, and he’s coming back. I saw him on the street just now.”

“Milena, get out!” Candida all but screamed. “Run! Now! Out the back way!”

Looking out the window, Milena saw the priest crossing the street toward the building. “Where should I go, Mama? The club?”

“No, not the club, don’t go there!” At the pay phone from which she was calling, Candida looked around frantically. “Where should she go?” she asked Faracy, next to her. He quickly glanced up and down the street and pointed. “The Burger Palace, Milena!” Candida said. “Hurry, baby!”

Through the window, Milena saw the priest walk up to the stoop. “Hello, Father,” Rodrigo said respectfully.

“Hello, my boy,” said John Atlas.

Milena hung up the phone and moved stealthily into the hall. She heard the priest ask, “Has Mrs. Quevas come home, do you know?”

“I don’t think so, Father,” Rodrigo replied, “but her daughter is home.”

Thanks a lot, you nerd, Milena thought. I just told you there’s something funny about him and you tell him I’m home.

Easing down the hall, she slipped out the back door and hurried up the alley.

At the Burger Palace, Candida rushed to embrace her daughter. “Thank God you’re safe, baby,” she said, fighting back tears.

“Mama, what’s going on, what’s happening?”

“I don’t know — it’s confusing. It has something to do with Ramon — someone’s trying to kill him, and me, too.” Candida led her daughter to a rear booth that couldn’t be seen from the street and continued trying to explain, as best she could, what had happened since Faracy first approached her earlier that evening at the club.

Faracy himself was several blocks away, cautiously approaching the building where Candida told him Ramon Sedillo lived. His eyes scanning the street, sidewalk, and doorways for any sign of John Atlas, his heart beat nervously and his ulcer burned. He couldn’t be certain that Atlas wasn’t watching him at that very moment, waiting for him to come into range to be shot, but Faracy had to keep going — he had to know whether Ramon was still alive or if Atlas had already found him.

From a darkened stoop directly across the street from Ramon’s building, Faracy watched for several moments, then decided he had to make a move. Waiting too long had its dangers, too. Drawing up his courage, he stepped from the shadows and walked briskly over to Ramon’s building, up the stairs of the stoop, and quickly inside. Third floor rear, Candida had told him. He climbed the stairs two at a time.

At Ramon’s apartment, he wiped his face with his sleeve and listened at the door for a moment. Hearing nothing, he carefully turned the doorknob. The door wasn’t locked. His heart going wild now, Faracy eased into Ramon’s apartment.

At the desk in the study of his Washington home, FBI deputy director Fred Collins heard a soft telephone tone coming from a bottom drawer. Unlocking and opening the drawer, he picked up the receiver of his most private line. “Yes?”

“Philip Caunt, sir,” said the caller. “I’m unable to reach Mr. A. My instructions for such an eventuality were to contact you.”

“All right. Give me a status report.”

“Subject number one,” said Caunt, referring to Bill Pete Joiner, “has been canceled. It was also necessary to cancel his wife and a mistress he kept. There was one witness, a delivery man, who also had to be neutralized. But the situation at this location is now under control.”

“All right, Philip, I want you to proceed now to subject number two,” said Collins, referring to Rod Prater in Los Angeles.

“Yes, sir.” Caunt paused, then asked, “May I know the whereabouts of Mr. A? It’s very unusual for me not to be able to reach him.”

“Nothing to worry about,” Collins said. “He decided to attend to subject number three himself, so he’s in the field. By the time you finish with number two, I’m sure he’ll be back. Anything else?”

“No, sir.”

“Goodbye, then.”

Collins hung up. Psycho son of a bitch, he thought. He’s sent out to apprehend one person and he kills four. Surely there must have been a better way to handle it. And Atlas was in Spanish Harlem to do three others. That would make seven! How many more bodies would there be to account for before this mess was cleared up?

All because that egghead scientist had failed to take the simple precaution of double-locking his hotel-room door!

In the back booth of the Burger Palace, Candida and Milena were in each other’s arms, crying softly. Faracy had just returned and told them Ramon was dead. “There was no sign of violence of any kind,” he told them quietly. “He was probably injected with something.”

“It’s my fault,” Candida said tearfully. “I should have listened to you earlier.”

“I don’t think it would have mattered,” Faracy said, patting her shoulder. “I think he was dead before then.” It was a lie to try and relieve some of her grief. Ramon, he knew, had only been dead a short time. To Milena he said, “You and your mother stay here. I’ve got to make a call.”

There was a pay phone on the wall nearby and Faracy used it to place a collect call to Lila. The evening news hour was over, so he tried her apartment first. She answered at once.

“Curt!” she said when she heard his voice. “Where are you?”

“Still in New York,” he said. “They got to the Puerto Rican waiter before I did. He’s dead. That means I’ve got to try and reach one of those salesmen. But first I’ve got another problem.”

“What is it?” Lila asked.

“The waiter had a girl friend — the go-go dancer I was waiting to see earlier. They probably slept together last night, so she may now be carrying the specimen herself. Also, she’s got a teenaged daughter. John Atlas is after both of them. They need a safe place to hide. Will you let me bring them there?”

“Of course I will, Curt,” she said. “How will you get here?”

“I’ll use the train again. There’s a Metroliner from here every hour.”

“What time will you be here?”

“I’m not sure. Sometime tonight. Let me give you the phone numbers of Joiner and Prater, the two Norcom men. See if you can contact either one of them. If you can, find out where I can reach one or both of them for the rest of the night. Stress how important it is.”

“I know how to handle it, Curt,” she assured him. “You just get here as quickly as you can with the woman and her daughter. Curt, are you all right?”

“I’m running down,” he admitted. “But I can’t stop now. If these people catch me before I can prove what’s happened, they’ll either kill me or convince everyone that I’m crazy and lock me in an asylum for the rest of my life. Listen, I’ve got to get going. I’ll call you from a train phone enroute so you can meet us.”

“All right, Curt.”

Faracy hung up and went back to Candida and Milena.

In her Washington apartment, Lila hung up the phone in the bedroom and walked out to her living room. Arnold Bygraves was just hanging up the extension next to the couch where he sat.

By the time the Amtrak Metroliner passed through Trenton, Milena was stretched out in a recliner seat fast asleep. Her mother and Faracy sat across the aisle from her, drinking coffee out of disposable cups and talking in low tones. Curt had been trying to explain to Candida why she, Ramon, and the others had suddenly become targets of government agents and professional assassins.

“It’s because they know so little about the specimen that it frightens them. They’re afraid that whatever it is might cause them to lose their superiority as a species.”

“I still don’t see what it has to do with me,” Candida said. “I didn’t touch the stupid specimen.”

“They think you may have been impregnated by Ramon when you had sex with him.”

“But I never had sex with Ramon!” she declared. “I’ve never been to bed with him!”

Faracy stared at her in the dimly lit passenger car, unsure whether to believe her or not. “They must have thought you did,” he said.

“Well, they’re wrong,” she stated unequivocally. She swore briefly in Spanish, then said in English, “I’ll bet Ramon shot his mouth off, telling people he made it with me.” Which, she reminded herself, was exactly what she wanted in order to keep the wolves from her door. So she supposed she probably was at least partially responsible for his death. She shook her head in misery. “Why didn’t I listen to you earlier?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Faracy lied to her again. He took her hand. “Try not to think about it. Get some rest. We’ll be in Washington soon and you’ll have a safe place to stay.”

At Union Station in Washington, Faracy, Candida, and Milena walked down the platform with other arriving passengers toward the terminal. Unnoticed by them, two men in porter uniforms fell in a short distance behind them. Two other men dressed like platform workers did the same.

As soon as they were inside the terminal, Faracy looked around for Lila, and found her almost at once. She was on the mezzanine, looking down at them. When their eyes met, Faracy waved briefly. “There’s the lady you’ll be staying with,” he told Candida. He started to say something else, but then he noticed, on another part of the mezzanine, a television cameraman aiming a video camera at him. “Hold it!” he said, reaching out to stop his companions. His eyes began scanning. On the opposite side of the mezzanine he spotted another cameraman doing the same thing, this one with a zoom lens that was fully extended. Faracy looked back at Lila for a second, incredulous. Was it possible that she—?

Then he saw another familiar face and knew it wasn’t only possible but certain. Fred Collins, four FBI agents in his wake, was walking briskly toward them from one direction and Arnold Bygraves and four other agents from another.

“Back to the platform,” Faracy said urgently, taking Candida and Milena by the arm and retreating. He hurried them past the exit doors onto the wide platform where their Metroliner was parked. As they started down the platform, the two men dressed as porters blocked their way and the two dressed as platform workers moved to flank them. Faracy stopped, holding Candida and Milena back with him. Desperately he looked around, but there was noplace to go.

“Curt!” shouted Dr. Bygraves. “Stop — you can’t get away!” He and Collins and their agents edged cautiously closer. “It’s over, Curt! You know the Puerto Rican waiter is dead. The man in Memphis is, too. You and the woman and the girl come along quietly with us, I guarantee you won’t be harmed.”

Fred Collins took a pair of handcuffs from one of his agents and stepped toward Faracy.

“No!” From her purse, Candida suddenly produced a .25-caliber automatic, one of the “Saturday night specials” women in Spanish Harlem and other risky areas carried to protect themselves. In a surprising move, she darted to Fred Collins and put the gun to his head. “Tell your men to get away from us or I’ll shoot you!” she ordered.

“Young woman, I’m a federal agent with the FBI,” Collins said threateningly.

“You gonna be a dead federal agent if you don’t do what I say!” Candida warned him.

“Better listen to her, Collins,” Faracy said. “This is Ramon’s girl friend — and she knows you had Ramon killed.”

“I did nothing of the kind.”

“You were part of it,” Faracy asserted. “Call off your men — now!”

“Go to hell, Faracy.”

“Then shoot him, Candida,” Faracy said.

“All right, all right!” Collins quickly conceded. “All agents back off!” he ordered.

“Send them back into the terminal.”

“Go back into the terminal, all of you!” Collins ordered.

As the agents and Bygraves moved away from them and back through the exit doors, Faracy disarmed Fred Collins and turned the FBI man’s own gun on him. With Candida and Milena at his side, he guided Collins down the long platform until they reached the end of the Metroliner. There they went down several wooden steps to track level and worked their way across several sets of tracks, all with trains standing on them.

“This isn’t going to work, Faracy,” said Collins. “You’re only making things worse for yourself.”

“Shut up. Keep moving.” Curt jabbed the gun roughly in the FBI man’s ribs.

They crossed more tracks, Faracy pausing to look far down each platform to see if the agents were spreading out to stop them. Seeing no one, he continued prodding his captive along, Candida and Milena hurrying behind them, until presently they reached a platform where a train was getting ready to depart. A loudspeaker on the platform announced, “Last call for passengers to board the Virginia Limited for Alexandria, Fredericksburg, Richmond, and Norfolk! Now ready for departure from Platform Twenty-two! All aboard, please!”

Faracy pushed Collins up against a platform pillar. “This is as far as you go,” he said coldly, and struck him smartly in the back of the head with the gun. Collins dropped unconscious to the tracks and Faracy quickly rolled him under the platform. Then he stuck the gun in his belt and grabbed Candida and her daughter by the arm again. They hurried up the steps to platform level and got aboard the first passenger car of the Virginia Limited that they came to.

Fred Collins was just coming to when one of his agents found him and helped him to the terminal first-aid station. With an ice compress on his head, and after a whiff of ammonium carbonate, the FBI man’s alertness returned and he asked, “Do we know where he is?”

“Not yet, sir,” his second-in-command replied. “We have agents searching the entire terminal and we’re wiring ahead for agents to board three trains that departed while we were searching for you.”

A terminal security guard stuck his head in the door and asked, “Either one of you Collins?”

“I am,” the deputy director replied.

“Call being conferenced in for you from FBI headquarters,” the guard told him, pointing to a phone on the nurse’s desk. The agent handed it to Collins.

“Yes? This is Collins.”

“John here, Fred. Is this line secure?”

“No.”

“Well, you know where I am,” Atlas said. “The primary subject here has been attended to. But there’s a secondary subject, a woman—”

“I know about her,” Collins said. “She’s traveling with the doctor. They were just here but unfortunately we lost them.” The FBI man pursed his lips for a moment, then said, “The doctor knows there’s just one primary subject left: the one in Los Angeles. He’s almost certain to try and get to him. I’ve already dispatched your young man there, but you’d better go out and take over. Any problem with that?”

“No problem,” said Atlas. “In fact, it will be my pleasure.”

“Keep in touch,” Collins said.

“Right.”

At the Port Authority terminal in Manhattan, where he was calling from, John Atlas made another call, to his own headquarters.

“I want an agency plane to pick me up at the Flushing airport. I’ll be there in an hour. As soon as the pilot lands, have him fuel up and file a flight plan to Burbank, California.”

Faracy bought their tickets from the conductor on the Virginia Limited. Then, because he was by now actually weak from hunger, the three of them went into the dinette car and ordered sandwiches. As Faracy ate, he told Candida what he planned to do next.

“I’ve got to get out to California and try to catch the last of the three exposed men who is still alive. What we’ll do is get off the train at Alexandria and find a bank with a teller machine. I’ll get as much cash as I can and give it to you and Milena. The two of you wait in Alexandria for the next train to Miami, and go down there. There’s a very big Puerto Rican community there — it shouldn’t be hard for you to lose yourselves.”

“No, we’ll stay with you,” Candida said decisively.

Taken aback, Faracy said, “You can’t stay with me. It’s too dangerous. Anyway, I haven’t got time to look after you.”

“Ha!” Candida exclaimed. “It was me looking after you back in that train depot. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be in their hands now.” She shook her head emphatically. “Milena and I will stay with you.”

“But that’s crazy,” he tried to reason with her. “Staying with me can only get you in more trouble.”

“I think the one way we’ll get out of trouble is to stay with you. Poor Ramon is dead back in New York and Milena and I have disappeared. How does that look to the police? You’re the only one who can prove to them what happened with that fake priest and all. We’ll stay with you.”

Faracy continued to try to get her to see it his way, but Candida stubbornly stuck to the position she had taken, Milena nodding her head in agreement with everything her mother said and shaking her head negatively whenever Faracy argued back. Finally Faracy gave in.

“All right, I’ll take you with me to Los Angeles, but as soon as we get there you’ll have to check into a motel somewhere and wait for me. You can’t come with me when I try to find this man.”

“Okay,” Candida said, “you’re the boss.”

Faracy gave her a pained look. Milena smiled at her mother. Mama knew how to handle men, all right.

When the train was approaching Alexandria, Faracy said, “There may be police or FBI agents waiting to check the train. We won’t get off right away. Come on—”

He led them from the dinette back to the domed observation car and they waited by the platform door there as the train slowed to a crawl at the Alexandria depot. No passengers were debarking from the dome-car door, but Faracy could see people getting off farther up the train. He also saw four men in business suits standing at various points on the platform, watching passengers get off. Finally, when no more people were getting off and all boarding passengers had gotten on, one of the men nodded as a signal and all four of them boarded separate passenger cars.

The train started its slow creep forward to leave the station. As it did, Faracy opened the dome-car door, stepped off, and in turn helped Milena and then Candida swing off. Quickly they crossed the platform out of sight around the depot building.

“That was fun!” Milena said excitedly.

Her mother smiled back. “Yeah, we make pretty good fugitives.”

Crazy, Faracy thought. These two were completely crazy.

They made their way by taxi from Alexandria to a bus stop on the Mt. Vernon Memorial Highway, and from there traveled by airport-shuttle bus back up to Washington National Airport.

“They shouldn’t be looking for us at the airport,” Faracy reasoned to Candida and Milena, “if they think we got out of town on a train.”

Even so, they separated and entered the departure terminal by two different doors and sat in different airline sections, observing the activity around them. When Faracy decided it was safe, he went to one of the gift shops and bought a small canvas suitcase and a dozen odd souvenir T-shirts. In a men’s-room stall, he wrapped Candida’s automatic and the pistol he had taken from Fred Collins in the shirts and put them in the suitcase. Then he went to the American Express dispenser machine and used his card to get fifteen hundred dollars, the limit, in travelers checks. At the Delta counter, he bought three coach tickets on their redeye flight to Los Angeles and checked the canvas bag.

Candida and Milena had never flown before. Candida’s journey from Puerto Rico had been with her parents by boat to Miami, and from there to New York by bus. Both she and Milena were nervous about the plane and clung to Faracy, one on each arm, like frightened children. The flight was only about half full, mostly with tired, rumpled businessmen, so it was easy for them to get three seats across. Candida insisted Faracy take the middle seat so that she and Milena could both draw courage by hanging onto him. When the plane took off, they closed their eyes and braced themselves for the inevitable crash. Only after they were airborne did they begin to relax. Landing had not yet entered their minds.

As the plane flew smoothly through a calm sky, Milena grew sleepy again and Faracy moved himself and Candida to another row so that he could fold back the armrests and let the girl lie down with a pillow and a blanket. The cabin lights were off, the only illumination an individual seatlight here and there. Faracy and Candida ordered drinks from the cabin attendant and sat talking quietly in the darkened row behind Milena. Faracy spoke bitterly of Lila and how she had betrayed him.

“Maybe she had to do it,” Candida suggested. “Maybe she was forced in some way. You shouldn’t judge her until you know for sure.”

From time to time, she leaned over the seat to check on her daughter, but after a while she relaxed and began to tell Faracy a little about herself.

“When I was a child,” she said, “I shared a dream with my parents about one day coming to the U.S. and finding a better life. It’s the old story, you know: everybody who comes here thinks that things will automatically get better for them. Most of the time it is not so. All it did for my parents and me was take us from the poor life of a little village to the poor life of a big city. My father and mother worked very hard at whatever jobs they could get, but they never made more than just enough for us to get by.

“And I was no help to them at all,” she admitted sadly. “I was so disappointed by the life we found here that I guess I just gave up dreaming. I started running around and smoking dope. And I got exactly what most little sluts get: I got pregnant. It broke my father’s heart.

“He disowned me. He took my mother back to Puerto Rico and wouldn’t let me go with them. I ended up in a charity ward to have Milena. The social workers almost took her away from me, too — I had to beg and plead to keep her. They gave me a chance, thank God, and I straightened up. I went to work in a laundry while my baby was at a day-care center. I slaved like a dog trying to get a little something ahead to make things better for us. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t save a dime. Finally, I went to work dancing topless and then I was able to pay my way to beautician school. As soon as I get my beautician’s license, I’m going to quit the club and go to work for a nice salon somewhere. Maybe someday I’ll even open a shop of my own.”

Faracy reached over and took her hand. “I hope you get everything you want out of life,” he said.

Candida put her other hand over his and they sat that way for a while, turned partly toward each other.

Their faces were very close because they had been whispering. Faracy could feel her breath on his face — warm and soft, with a smell that reminded him of something sweet that had slightly burned. Before long, her head was leaning against him, her cheek on his chest, and he raised the armrest between them so that their bodies wouldn’t be separated.

“You are very nice,” Candida whispered. “I have never known anyone like you, anyone as nice as you...”

John Atlas arrived in Burbank an hour after the California sun came up. After his private jet set down, rather than use the plane’s radio he went into the terminal and found a public telephone to call his Los Angeles office. He had the night-duty switchboard operator patch him through to Philip Caunt in the field.

“Where are you, Philip?” he asked.

“Watching the Prater apartment in Westwood from a surveillance van, sir,” Caunt told him. “There’s been no sign of him since I got here at daybreak.”

“I know where he is,” said Atlas. “There was an in-flight message from Collins. His people found out that Prater visited Norcom’s corporate headquarters yesterday and stayed overnight in Milwaukee. They put him under surveillance there. He left Milwaukee early this morning on a United flight and is due into LAX at nine-twenty. Philip, I want you to breach his apartment. I’ll be there as soon as I can and we’ll wait for Mr. Prater together.”

“Yes, sir.”

We’ll wait for Faracy, too, Atlas thought coldly as he hung up.

As Caunt went up to Rod Prater’s second-floor apartment, he passed a handsome young man in a red windbreaker coming down the stairs, smiling and humming. There’s someone who enjoys going to work as much as I do, Caunt thought. How very lucky he was that John Atlas took such good care of him. He felt sorry for people who had no one that cared about them.

He waited until the young man was well on his way before continuing on to Prater’s apartment. With a lock-picking tool, he had the door open and was inside within seconds. After making sure no one was in the apartment, he went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk. Back in the living room, he sat on the couch, put his feet up on the coffee table, and sipped the milk as he waited for Atlas to arrive.

The Delta redeye from Washington arrived at LAX and while Faracy went to claim the bag with the guns in it, Candida and Milena freshened up in the ladies room.

“You like him, don’t you, Mama?” Milena asked.

Candida sighed quietly. “Yes. Very much.”

“So do I,” Milena said with a happy smile.

Candida looked a little sadly at her. “Nothing will come of it, baby. There’s too much difference between us.”

She and her daughter embraced. They knew they had each other, no matter what.

Faracy, leaving the luggage carousel with the small bag, went at once to a pay phone and tried to call Rod Prater. There was no answer. In a telephone directory, he looked up Prater’s name and wrote down his address. Going to the Avis counter, he rented a car and obtained a street map which the counter attendant marked with directions to Westwood.

“I’m going to find a motel for you,” Faracy said when they were all in the rental car.

“You should let us go with you,” Candida said.

“No. And don’t argue.”

“I won’t argue. But suppose this man Prater doesn’t believe you? No one else has, you know. If we were with you, maybe that would help convince him.”

Faracy had to admit she had a point. So far he hadn’t been able to convince anyone that his story wasn’t a big joke or a big mistake. Maybe the presence of Candida, who could verify being shot at, would make a difference. “All right, you can come with me,” he said. “But you must do exactly as I say at all times, is that understood?”

“Of course. You are the man, you are the boss,” Candida replied with a straight face.

“If I’m the boss,” Faracy asked her, “how is it you always get your way?”

When they arrived at Prater’s apartment building, Faracy drove past and parked a block away.

“I want you and Milena to wait in the car,” he told Candida as he took Fred Collins’ gun from the bag. “I’m going to check with the building manager to see if they know when Prater’s expected back.”

Walking warily toward the building, he was on the alert for any agents, either FBI or from the Atlas Agency, who might be there ahead of him. He saw no one suspicious. When he reached the building without incident, he decided on impulse to try Prater’s apartment first.

Ringing the bell to Prater’s door, he waited. Philip Caunt opened the door.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for Rod Prater,” said Faracy.

“He’s not in right now,” said Caunt with a smile. “What did you want?”

Faracy put a hand into his coat pocket and closed it around the gun. “Let’s talk inside,” he said. “I’ve got a gun pointed at you in my pocket. Do exactly as I say or I’ll shoot you.” Pushing Caunt back inside, he stepped in and closed the door.

Searching Caunt, he found the silencer-equipped gun and disarmed him. In Caunt’s wallet, he found an identification card from Atlas International Detective Agency. “I thought so,” he said. He pushed Caunt up against a wall. “Where’s Rod Prater?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Caunt said, hands over his head. “You can see I’m waiting for him myself.”

Just then, the telephone rang. Backing over to it, Faracy picked up the receiver. “Yes?”

“Hello, Dr. Faracy. This is John Atlas. I was just driving up when you left your car several minutes ago. Since you’re answering the phone, I presume you’ve somehow gotten the advantage over my man in there. That being the case, I’m sure you’ll be interested in knowing that I have the advantage over Mrs. Quevas and her daughter out here. I have a gun on them. We’re at a pay phone directly across the street — you can see us if you look out the window.”

The phone still to his ear, Faracy stepped to a window and looked out. Atlas was telling the truth.

“Disarm yourself and put my man on the phone,” Atlas ordered. “If you don’t, I’ll kill these two where they stand. I think you know I’m not bluffing, Faracy.”

Faracy swallowed drily. “All right. Whatever you say. Don’t hurt them.” He put down the gun and surrendered to Philip Caunt.

“Okay, I’ve got him,” Caunt told Atlas over the phone.

Moments later, Atlas was at the door with Candida and Milena. “Well now, isn’t this cozy,” he said malevolently when they were all inside. His lips curled hatefully at Faracy. “I believe I owe you something, Doctor.”

Atlas smashed the barrel of his gun against Faracy’s face, splitting his cheek. Faracy dropped to the floor, unconscious.

When he came to minutes later, he was still on the floor. Candida was holding an ice-filled towel to his bloody face. When his eyes focused, Faracy saw Atlas sitting in a nearby chair, still holding a gun. Milena was in a forced kneeling position beside the chair, Atlas holding her firmly by the wrist.

Caunt, watching out the apartment window, suddenly said, “I think he’s coming!” He stepped behind the door, gun drawn and ready.

The apartment door opened and two men entered. Faracy recognized one as Rod Prater. The other was the handsome young man in the red windbreaker Caunt passed on the stairs earlier. Just inside the door, before they noticed the intruders in the apartment, Prater set down his suitcase and the two men embraced.

“I missed you terribly,” Prater said.

Caunt kicked the door shut and leveled his gun at them. Atlas stared at the two men incredulously. On the floor, Faracy began to laugh. “You should have done a little more checking, Atlas,” he said. “You could have eliminated this one at the beginning. The egesta reproduces only in bodies capable of incubating it. Female bodies. If it enters a male body, it dies. It looks like you went to a lot of trouble for nothing.”

“Not necessarily,” Atlas retorted, rising, pulling Milena up with him. “I’ve still got you, Doctor. And the woman. And—” he leered at Milena “—this little bonus here.”

Milena pulled away and thrust her forearm into Atlas’s windpipe with all her might. He turned white and fell to his knees and Faracy made a scrambled dive for his gun. Caunt turned from the two men he was covering, arcing his own gun around, and fired at Faracy. But Faracy was moving too fast and the bullet slammed into the wall. While the shot was still resounding in the room, Faracy emptied Atlas’s gun into Caunt. Caunt’s Adam’s apple bobbed as each bullet hit him and he fell dead.

Faracy snatched up Caunt’s gun. He guided Candida and Milena to the apartment door. “Wait in the car, I’ll be right there!” As they left, Faracy turned to Rod Prater and his friend. “In there,” he said, waving the gun toward the bedroom.

He went in with them and disconnected the extension phone. “Just wait quietly in here and you won’t get hurt,” he told them. “Some FBI agents will arrive soon to explain everything.” Taking the extension phone with him, he left the two men in the bedroom and closed the door.

John Atlas was still on the floor, clutching his throat. Faracy stepped over to him. “I wish there was some way to destroy you legally, Atlas,” he said. “But I’ve seen enough in the last two days to know that it isn’t possible. You’re too powerful; you have too many friends in high places. There’s only one way to destroy a germ like you.” Aiming the gun, he executed John Atlas with a single bullet in the head.

Using the living-room phone, Faracy called FBI Headquarters in Washington and was put through to Fred Collins.

“Well, Doctor, what a surprise,” said Collins when he picked up.

“I’ve got some other surprises for you,” Faracy told him. “John Atlas is dead. So is that young killer who worked for him. And Rod Prater, the last exposed man, is gay, so your problem with his uncontrolled egesta is solved — it’ll kill itself. You’ll find the bodies I just mentioned at Prater’s address, along with Prater and a friend who don’t know what the hell’s going on. You’d better get some of your local agents here as quickly as possible with a good cover story.”

“Exactly what are your plans now, Doctor?” asked Collins.

“I’m going to go somewhere and put this all down on paper,” Faracy said. “Then I’m going to leave it in a sealed envelope with some reliable member of the scientific community, someone who has no connection at all with the government, someone who’ll do something with it if I should disappear or die under odd circumstances.”

“What is it you want, Faracy?”

“I’ll discuss that tomorrow — with Arnold Bygraves,” Faracy said.

In a motel suite on the ocean in Santa Barbara, Curt Faracy sat down at the desk and direct-dialed the private number of Arnold Bygraves at the Department of Scientific Studies in Washington. As he waited for the connection to be made, Faracy glanced at himself in a mirror next to the desk. The left side of his face, under a large bandage, was swollen grotesquely. At an emergency room in the San Fernando Valley the previous day, a young resident doctor had taken eighteen stitches to close the gash put in Faracy’s face by John Atlas. Faracy had told the doctor that a gallon can of paint had fallen off a shelf and hit him. He wasn’t sure the doctor believed his story, but it didn’t matter. Faracy had left the hospital without incident, and in the rented car had driven with Candida and Milena up the Pacific coast to Santa Barbara.

From the desk, as he waited for his call to go through, Faracy looked out an open patio door and saw Candida and Milena, in newly purchased swimsuits, frolicking in the surf of the ocean. He had awakened that morning to the smell of fresh coffee. The women had been out for groceries and were cooking an aromatic breakfast they hoped he would be able to eat.

The look on his face as he watched them on the beach disappeared when he heard the voice of Arnold Bygraves come on the line.

“Good morning, Curt,” the DSS director said easily. “Fred Collins told me I’d be hearing from you.”

“I presume he also told you about the written account I was going to prepare and put in the hands of a reliable colleague. I’ve done that, Arnold. It’s already in the mail.”

“What is it you want, Curt?” the older doctor asked.

“You told me at the depot in Washington that this thing was all over,” Faracy reminded him. “It wasn’t then, but it can be now. I want it to really be over, Arnold. For me, for Candida Quevas and her daughter, for everybody.”

“I suppose you’ve decided how you want that accomplished?”

“I have,” Faracy confirmed. “I want a funeral, Arnold.”

The next day, Faracy, Candida, and Milena drove onto the parking lot of a mausoleum in San Francisco. Fred Collins was already there, waiting for them.

“This way,” Collins said.

They followed him around behind the mausoleum to a crematorium. Inside, Arnold Bygraves and Lila Goddard waited next to a conveyor which tracked on rollers into a furnace. Lila’s eyes fixed on Faracy the moment he entered, studying his swollen, bandaged face, seeking a glance, a nod, some kind of recognition from him. Faracy did not oblige. Instead, he stared at Arnold Bygraves until Bygraves opened an aluminum suitcase and, with lead gloves on his hands, removed a sealed, thick-glass laboratory container. In the container was the same viscid, glutinous yellow substance that had contaminated Rod Prater, Bill Pete Joiner, and Ramon Sedillo.

“You’ll want to check the quantity, I suppose,” Bygraves said.

Without answering, Faracy leaned over to see the quantity gauge markings on the side of the container. He knew exactly how much specimen there should be, to the milliliter. Seeing that the amount was accurate, he nodded to Bygraves to proceed. Bygraves placed the container on the conveyor and signaled a crematorium technician at a nearby console. As the technician began to press console keys, the furnace doors opened to reveal a blazing fire inside it and the conveyor belt began to move. When it felt the heat, the specimen in the container surged wildly as if it knew and dreaded what was about to happen. The container was moved directly into the engulfing flames and the doors of the furnace closed. Seconds later there was a loud noise, like a firecracker, as the container exploded and its contents were vaporized.

In the surgical scrub room of a Memphis hospital, a doctor was talking to two colleagues after surgery.

“Weirdest damned thing I ever saw,” he said. “Bullet made a path downward through the right trapezius, pierced the rhomboideus muscle, and headed directly for the left atrium of the heart. Sure death. Then for no apparent reason, without deflecting on anything, the damned slug curved downward through the lesser momentum and literally dropped into the stomach. When I got in there, that damned bullet was just lying there as pretty as you please, like it had been swallowed. I’ve seen a lot of gunshot wounds in my day, but never one that started out so badly and ended up so good.”

As he stripped off his bloody scrubs, the surgeon stepped to a oneway window that looked out into the hallway leading to the recovery room. They were just wheeling his patient past. “She’s a lucky young woman,” he said, shaking his head.

On the gurney, still anesthetized, a young black woman named April was dreaming she was pregnant.