The Death Strain

I

The jigsaw puzzle of death began on a calm, quiet Sunday in the Cumberland mountains where Kentucky and Virginia rub shoulders. On that afternoon Colonel Thomas MacGowan walked toward the two soldiers standing in front of the doorway to the gray, flat-topped, two-story building.

"Red" MacGowan to his classmates at "the Point," but definitely the Colonel to everyone else, had already passed the outer security checkpoint and the main gate station. The two privates snapped to attention as he came up to the door. He returned their salutes with brisk smartness. Sunday was always a quiet day, in fact a boring day to stand duty, but he was in the rotating pool and this was the Sunday he'd drawn. He carried, the morning paper under his arm, crammed with the usual bulky Sunday sections.

As was his habit, Colonel Thomas MacGowan paused at the door to glance around at the stillness of the compound. He should have been relaxed, as befits a man on a boring tour of duty. Yet for some reason he was on edge, almost jumpy. Mildred had even passed comment on it during breakfast, but he'd chalked it up to a poor night's sleep. The Colonel was a traditional military man and not given to thoughts of extrasensory premonitions.

Beyond the flat, gray, unattractive main building, but within the fenced area of the compound, were the small cottages of the scientific personnel. Almost everyone was away this weekend attending the big seminar in Washington. The main building and the houses in back of it had suddenly appeared in the fastness of the Cumberland mountains one month, almost as if set down there by some giant hand.

He doubted that any of the residents in a fifty-mile area even suspected the building's purpose. Oh, there was talk of secret government work, and it gave spice to gossip during long winter nights. But communication between the scientific people at the compound and the residents was kept at a minimum.

The Colonel went inside the building, into a clean, antiseptically white interior with various corridors branching off from the main foyer and laboratories extending from each corridor. Before going up to his second-floor office, he paused at a steel door marked RESTRICTED-AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He peered through the small glass window. Two soldiers stood inside, rifles in their hands. Beyond them another steel door, this one windowless with a slot across it, stood closed. Sergeant Hanford and Corporal Haynes were the two men on duty. They returned his glance with stone faces, and he knew they didn't like the Sunday detail any more than he did.

He turned, went up the short flight of steps and into his office. General O'Radford was in command of the compound, but the General was away in Washington and Colonel Thomas MacGowan was in charge. Perhaps that was adding to his edgy feeling, he told himself.

Red MacGowan spread the newspaper on the desk and began to read. The caption on the lead-column item leaped out at him at once.

The colonel's smile was a little grim as he read the article.

Red MacGowan's smile broadened at the line about no cause for alarm. They were right. An unauthorized flea couldn't get into the main building, to say nothing of the surrounding compound. He turned to the sports pages.

On the floor below, Sergeant Hanford and Corporal Haynes were peering through the small window at the tall, white-haired, thin-faced man on the other side of the door. They both knew him by sight, and he had to pass three security checks to reach that door, yet they had him hold up his ID pass.

Behind the man with the ascetic face there stood a mountain that walked like a man, some 325 pounds of flesh, Sergeant Hanford guessed, a Japanese, perhaps once a Sumo wrestler. He was flanked by two small, thin, wiry Japanese. The sergeant opened the door for Dr. Joseph Carlsbad and the scientist stepped into the small anteroom. "Thank you, Sergeant," the scientist said. "We want to go into the Repository area. Will you please tell the inside guards to admit us?"

"Have these men restricted clearance, sir?" the sergeant asked. Corporal Haynes stood back, rifle in hand.

"They have visitors' passes and general security clearance." The scientist smiled. At a gesture, the three men produced their passes. Sergeant Hanford picked up the telephone. It rang at once in the windowless second-floor office where Colonel MacGowan had just finished reading the sports section.

"Dr. Carlsbad is here, sir," the sergeant said. "He wants to go into the Repository area and he has three visitors with him." He paused a moment and then went on. "No, sir, they only have general visitors' clearance," he said.

"May I speak to the Colonel," Dr. Carlsbad said. The sergeant handed him the phone.

"Colonel MacGowan," Dr. Carlsbad said, "I have three visiting bacteriologists from Japan with me. They're attending the symposium in Washington. But of course you know about that. I didn't think to get restricted personnel clearance for them but I'll vouch for them. After all, I had to sign their general clearance myself, didn't I?" He laughed, a small, comradely laugh. "I'll assume full responsibility, Colonel. I just didn't think to ask General O'Radford for restricted clearances when I saw him in Washington. I would be terribly embarrassed if my colleagues here came this distance for nothing."

"Naturally, Dr. Carlsbad," the colonel answered. Hell, he told himself, Carlsbad was Scientific Director of the place. He, if anyone, ought to know what he was doing. Besides, there were two more armed guards inside the area.

"Give me the sergeant, please," he said. When the sergeant put down the phone, he turned and called through the slot in the steel door. In a moment it was opened by a soldier wearing sidearms. Dr. Carlsbad and the other men went into the Repository area and the door was shut after them at once.

It turned out the colonel was right about one thing. The good doctor knew very well what he was doing. Casually he took the other men down a corridor lined with rows of small steel boxes, each about the size of a cigar box but tightly latched and made of heavy-gauge steel. Beside each box was a chart listing the contents of the box and the scientific uses for it.

"No one can leave the base with one of these boxes," he explained to the huge Japanese, "without orders countersigned three times by the Commanding Officer, the head of Bacterial Warfare Section Ten and by one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

Dr. Carlsbad pulled one of the steel boxes out of its slot and out of the corner of his eye he saw the two soldiers, one at each end of the corridor, reach for their guns. He smiled and pushed the box back into its slot again. The huge Japanese strolled casually to the far end of the corridor and smiled pleasantly at the soldier while Dr. Carlsbad and the other two men moved to the opposite end of the room. Still smiling, the large man lashed out with one arm and grabbed the soldier's throat with a hand that closed entirely around it. Squeezing at the right spots, the Japanese killed the soldier in less than five seconds.

Meanwhile at the opposite end of the room the two men had casually sauntered over to the guard and, acting as one, plunged two daggers into him. That also took a matter of seconds. Dr. Carlsbad yanked a particular box from its slot; he knew the vial inside the metal box was securely locked in place and protected from breakage and accidental dislodging.

"The window is behind us on the right wall," he said tensely. Later on, Sergeant Hanford was to report that Dr. Carlsbad's usually bright eyes had seemed extremely intense and burning, the eyes of a man on a holy mission.

The windowpane was found later, cut out silently with a plastic-handled, diamond-tipped glass cutter which had gone through the electronic eye at the main gate undetected. It was left behind with a note. The four men were last observed walking casually across the grounds to the rear of the compound where the cottages stood. Private Wendell Holcomb, on sentry duty near the side fence, saw the quartet. He had no reason to question them inside the compound, knowing that they had to have passed all previous checkpoints of the security system. Besides, he recognized Dr. Carlsbad at once.

In his windowless office, Red MacGowan was feeling more restless. He wasn't worried about Dr. Carlsbad, not really, but he had permitted him to take in three people not cleared for restricted area. In twenty years Red MacGowan had never violated a rule, and it ate into him that he'd done so in this instance. He picked up the blue telephone and rang Sergeant Hanford downstairs. When the sergeant told Colonel MacGowan that the doctor hadn't come out yet, MacGowan slammed down the phone and took the short flight of steps three at a time.

Hanford and Haynes still wore their expressionless stone faces, but there was worry in their eyes. It grew when the Colonel didn't get an answer as he called through the slot in the Repository door. Suddenly feeling very cold, MacGowan took out a set of keys and opened the slotted door. The body of the nearest interior security guard half-blocked the door as it swung open. The colonel didn't have to see any more.

"Red Alarm!" he shouted. "Hit that button, dammit!" In three seconds he heard the high-pitched intermittent horn as it echoed from one end of the compound to the other. The colonel and the two soldiers entered the repository. When they saw the empty slot, their eyes met, communicating confused astonishment, anger — and more than a little plain everyday fear.

That's how it began, the start of a tapestry of terror that was to threaten the world itself.

Exactly one hour later David Hawk, Director and Chief of Operations of AXE, U.S. Special Espionage Agency, heard the phone ring in his living room. He'd just finished pruning the trellised roses around tie small arbor near the door of his modest frame house outside the capital. It was his Sunday afternoon labor of love. Flowers were soothing to him. A little sun and water and they grew. Uncomplicated, and so unlike the rest of his world. He took off his thick gardener s gloves and picked up the phone. It was the President of the United States.

The events of that quiet Sunday afternoon were reaching out for me, too, only I didn't know it then. I was busy doing my own reaching. I'd just finished the third very cold dry martini at the end of a lazy Sunday in an elegant town house in the charming Washington suburb of Georgetown. Across the way from me, also very gracious and elegant, was Sherry Nestor, daughter of the billionaire shipping combine owner, Harry Nestor. Sherry, very tall, very langorous and very passionate, reclined on the couch in an ice-blue hostess gown cut extremely low. Her breasts, rounded and softly curved, peeked out around the edges of the deep V-necked gown. I'd met Sherry when I was on a job for AXE involving a lot of "Daddy's boats" — said boats being a fleet of some fifty oil tankers. Sherry had taken a liking to me, something I never discouraged. It was a happy coincidence that on the weekend Hawk had ordered me to attend the dry symposium on bacteriological warfare, the town house was all Sherry's, except for the servants, of course.

Now Sherry drained her martini and looked at me from under half-drawn eyelids. She spoke slowly. Sherry did everything slowly, until she got in bed. I was still wondering how such a relaxed, slow-moving, almost diffident girl could generate so much energy when it came to sex. Maybe it was just a case of saving up. Anyway, Sherry speared me with her gray-green eyes and her lips pursed, edging out into a half-pout.

"Dinner won't be until eight and Paul and Cynthia Ford are coming," she said. "They're night owls and I'm not waiting that long. I'm hungry now!"

I knew what she meant. We were in her rooms on the top floor, and as I stood up, Sherry ticked off the tiny latch holding the top of the gown together. It fell open and her rounded breasts came out like two pink-tipped buds blossoming in the morning sun. Some girls' breasts thrust out, some point up piquantly. Sherry's breasts were all soft roundness and I found them with my lips, caressing them, reveling in their softness.

"Like last night, Nick," she breathed. "Like last night" It had been the first time for Sherry and me, and I'd promised her more and better. "Oh, God, it couldn't be," she had said in my ear. I was about to show her. I lifted her up and put her down on the bed, and her legs, moving up and down, kicked off the gown and searched for my body. I traced my lips down her body, between her breasts, over her abdomen, down across the curving line of her belly.

I was glad the doors of the old house were thick oak. Sherry screamed in ecstasy, her cries growing louder as I made love to her. With each new sensation she'd gasp long, lingering cries, sometimes ending in a laugh of pure pleasure.

"Oh, God, God," she cried, and her long legs circled my waist as she thrust herself up at me. Faster and faster went the rhythm and suddenly she buried her head against my chest and cried out in the eternal rapturous cry of fulfillment. Her body quivered for a long moment before she fell back and her legs fell limply apart. I stayed with her and she moaned, little sounds of pleasure. I moved to her side. She didn't say anything for a long time, and we lay with bodies touching as I took in the beauty of her figure. Finally she turned her head toward me and opened her eyes.

"Don't you want to go into the shipping business, Nick?"

I grinned at her. "I might someday. Can I think about it?"

"Please do," she murmured. "I'm going to nap till dinner. I want to restore my energies… for later on."

I cradled her against me and we both slept.

We were halfway through dinner when the butler announced that I had a phone call. I took it in the study, knowing damn well who it would be. Hawk was the only one who knew where I was. Leaving word of one's whereabouts was a strict rule for all AXE agents. The tight, strained flatness of Hawk's voice told me there was trouble before he'd said half-a-dozen words.

"Who's there besides the Nestor girl?" he asked. I told him about Paul and Cynthia Ford and that we were midway through dinner. Usually Hawk didn't care what I was midway through. This time I heard him pause.

"All right, finish dinner," he said. "I don't want you dashing out of there because I called. After dinner, be casual and say that I want to talk to you for a little while and that you'll be back. Tell them it's nothing important. Then excuse yourself and get the hell over here at once."

"To your place?" I asked.

"No, the office. I'm there now."

He hung up and I went back to eat, just as the man had said to do. But during the remainder of dinner my mind was racing, consumed with curiosity. Hawk's insistence on my being unhurriedly casual was a tip-off. It meant that whatever was happening, it was anything but casual. I kept my cool through coffee in the Nestors' antique-gold drawing room and then through some small talk. Finally, glancing at my watch, I excused myself for an hour or so. Sherry went to the door with me, her shrewd gray-green eyes studying me.

"Are you really coming back?" she asked. "Or is this one of your little ploys. I know you, Nickie boy."

I grinned at her and caressed her breast, outlined through the hostess gown. She shivered.

"Damn you. You better come back now," she said.

"If I can come back, I'll come," I said. "And you know it." A fleeting smile in her eyes told me she did.

The lights of the AXE offices on DuPont Circle in the heart of Washington were yellow eyes watching me as I approached. A long, black Lincoln pulled away from the curb just as I reached the front door and I saw the small State Department seal on it. Full security was on, I noted as I showed credentials three times, right up to the pretty little thing in the outside office.

Two men sat there, briefcases beside each of them, looking for all the world like salesmen, Their fast, probing eyes that watched my every move gave them away. I smiled pleasantly at them and grinned inwardly at the effort it took them to nod back.

The girl had put my card through her little computer and a tiny screen beside the desk showed her my picture. It also told her I was AXE Agent N3, rating Killmaster, could pilot a plane, drive Formula 1 racing cars, speak three languages perfectly and four more passably. It also told her I was single, and when she handed me back my card her eyes were full of interest. I made a mental note to get her name. The Chief, for all his New England conservatism, knew how to brighten up the outer office.

He was in his leather chair, spare, lean face controlled as usual, steel-blue eyes alert. Only the way he kept shifting the unlit cigar from side to side told me he was unusually agitated. He always chewed rather than smoked his cigars. It was the speed at which he chewed them that was the tip-off.

"Big visitors at this time of night," I commented, sliding into a chair. He knew at once I was referring to the State Department limousine.

"Big trouble," he said. "That's why I didn't want it spread that you dashed out of tie Nestors' house. We've already got enough newshawks sniffing around."

He sighed, sat back and regarded me with a long stare.

"I only sent you to attend that bacteriological symposium because I wanted you to get up to date on the stuff," he mused aloud. "But sometimes I think I'm psychic."

I didn't debate the point. I'd seen plenty of evidence of it.

"You're aware of the Cumberland Research Operation, of course " he said.

"Only aware of it," I answered. "Our virus factory. The stuff that's been getting such a second look from so many people lately."

Hawk nodded. "In the Cumberland operation there are sixty bacterial strains for which man has no known antidote. Let loose, they could wipe out whole areas and perhaps more than just areas. Of them all, the deadliest strain is one called X–V77, X–Virus seven-seven. Sometime between four-ten and four-twenty this afternoon, X–V77 was removed from the Cumberland Repository."

I let out a low whistle. "It was," Hawk continued, "removed by the Director of Cumberland, Dr. Joseph Carlsbad, and three other men unknown to us. Two guards were killed."

"Carlsbad is the guy who's been making noises of late," I recalled. "Is he some land of kook?"

"That'd be too simple," Hawk said. "He's a brilliant bacteriologist who, as we piece it together, worked along with us so he'd be in a position to influence government thinking. When he found he couldn't really do that, he began planning to take things into his own hands."

"You say planning. That means you feel this wasn't a sudden, impulsive action."

"Hell, no," Hawk said. "This move took a lot of planning. This was left at the scene."

He pushed a note at me and I read it quickly, aloud. "I have stopped talking," it said. 'This is my ultimatum. Unless all bacteriological warfare stockpiles are destroyed, I will destroy those who would destroy mankind. Science cannot be misused for political ends. I shall be in further contact. Unless what I say is done, I will strike a blow for all people everywhere."

Hawk got up, paced the room and gave me a total picture as it had been reconstructed. When he'd finished, the lines in his face were even deeper.

"This has to come on top of the World Leadership Conference scheduled for next week," Hawk muttered. I knew about the Conference, hailed as the first real gathering of the world's leadership to try and solve the problems of this old planet, I didn't know AXE was involved in it, and Hawk grimaced at my question.

"Everybody's involved," he said. "They've got the FBI on internal security, State on operations, the CIA on watching known problem areas. Here, just look at this list of biggies due at the United Nations General Assembly building on the opening day of the Conference."

I scanned the list briefly and saw some one hundred and thirty names. My eyes picked out the chiefs of state of all the major powers, Russia, France, Japan, Italy. I saw that the Queen of England was listed. So was Chairman Mao of the People's Republic of China, his first trip to the UN. The head of the International Council of Churches was on the list as was the Pope, all living past Presidents of the United States, the prime ministers., presidents and kings of every country on the globe. It was to be a first of its kind, all right, a major step in assembling the world's leaders in one place to act, even superficially, as one body. I gave the list back to Hawk.

"Got any leads on Carlsbad, any particular person he might be after?" I asked.

"We gave everything we know about the man to the Chief Psychiatrist at the Pentagon, Dr. Tarlman," Hawk replied. "His conclusion is that Carlsbad's real desire is to injure the United States, probably by infecting one of the world's leaders. Carlsbad's parents and sister were killed at Hiroshima where, as Methodist missionaries, they were interned during World War II. Dr. Tarlbut says Carlsbad's principles may be sincere, but they're abetted by his repressed hatred of those who killed his parents and sister."

"Interesting," I commented. "In any case, it all means that the doctor might do any damn thing with his deadly strain of bacteria. And if we start alerting every prominent person in the world, the cat's out of the bag."

"Exactly," Hawk agreed. "So for now, at least, this is still top-secret security. Our one lead is Carlsbad's niece, Rita Kenmore. She lived with him, and we know be is very devoted to the girl. She's still at his house. I've got men watching it on a twenty-four-hour basis. Tomorrow, I want you to go to her and see what you can find out. I've a feeling that Carlsbad will try to contact her."

"Should I go back to Sherry Nestor tonight?"

"Absolutely," Hawk snapped, and I knew it was hurting him to give me another night of pleasure. Normally he'd have me on some plane within the hour. "I want nothing added to the rumors already starting to fly. Boxly of the Post-Times has wind of something already, and hell have his crew beating the bushes in all directions. In the morning, instead of going to the symposium, you'll go to Carlsbad's home here in Washington. Check with me first, though."

Hawk swiveled and gazed out the window and I knew he was through.

I left with a chill wrapped around me, a feeling of elements outside man's control waiting to descend. The pretty little thing in the outside office smiled at me. It was an effort to smile back, and I forgot to get her name. It didn't seem important anymore. I walked slowly through the night, thinking about what I'd just been told and putting together what few things we knew. Carlsbad had not been alone. He had some kind of organization. A giant Japanese ought to be easy enough to spot.

I had no idea then what land of an organization Carlsbad had put together. I was to find out, however, that it was kind of an elite of the damned.

When I got back to Sherry's, Paul and Cynthia were still there, and I maintained a casual air until they left. It was Sherry who, with her native shrewdness, saw through my façade.

"I know better than to ask what, but something's gone wrong," she said. I grinned at her.

"Not here," I said. "Let's get lost." She nodded and she was naked in my arms in moments and we got lost, the whole damned night, lost in the pleasures of feeling and not thinking, of the body over the mind, of the present over the future. It was a nice way and a nice place in which to get lost, and Sherry was as eager as I was.