The Omega Terror

TWO

I was about fifteen minutes late for my appointment with Hawk, and he had chewed three dead cigars down to stubs while he paced the floor waiting for me.

“I’m glad you could make it,” he said sardonically after he admitted me to the rather squalid hotel room.

I suppressed a small grin. Hawk was in one of his moods. “Good to see you again, sir,” I told him, “Sorry about the delay. I had a small problem.”

“The Russians?” he asked.

“I’m not sure.” I told him about the message scrawled on the note.

He grunted. “I know Madrid is not the safest place for you at the moment, but it was convenient for both of us right now, and I had to speak with you quickly.”

He turned and moved to a small, rickety table on which were spread several official-looking papers. He sat down and shuffled the papers absently while I slumped onto a straight chair near him.

“I think you’ve heard me refer to an American defector named Damon Zeno,” Hawk began.

“A research microbiologist,” I said. “You figured he was doing some work for the Russians a while back.”

“That’s right,” Hawk said quietly. “But now he’s on the Chinese payroll. They set up a research lab for him in Morocco, and he’s been doing work on a tropical bug called bilharzia. Are you up on your tropical diseases?”

“It’s a flatworm,” I said. “A parasite that eats away at a man from inside. You pick it up in water, as I recall. Has Dr. Z done something to this bug?”

Hawk stared at the remains of his cigar. “Zeno took the bug apart to see what made it tick. And he found out. Our informant tells us that he’s developed a mutation of the normal flatworm, an almost indestructable strain of bilharzia. He calls it the Omega Mutation. Since Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet, we figure Zeno took the designation from his own last name.

“At any rate, if what we’ve learned is correct, the Omega Mutation is particularly virulent, and it multiplies at an almost unbelievable rate. It resists all known drugs, antidotes, and water purifiers currently in use.”

I uttered a low whistle. “And you think Zeno means to use this bug against the U.S.?”

“He’s admitted as much. America is to be the proving ground for any effective biological weapon he’s developed. A handful of enemy agents could easily infect our lakes and streams. Even after we learned of the bug’s presence, we could do little about it. Within days — not months or weeks— within days of contamination, most of us would have contracted the disease. In another few days, we’d be dead.”

“I guess I go visit Zeno in Morocco,” I said.

Hawk fiddled with the cigar again. “Yes. We believe the L5 man who runs the operation, by the name of Li Yuen, has personal ties with a couple of Moroccan generals who still have aspirations for a leftist coup. He may have made a deal with them; we don’t know yet. In fact, we don’t even know exactly where the lab is located.”

I shook my head. There was no advantage to being AXE’s Number One man except for the pay, and a man had to be a fool to do what I did for any amount of money. “I suppose time is of the essence?”

“As usual. We think Zeno is just about ready to make a final report to Peking. When he does, he will undoubtedly send the results of his experiments along with it. I’ve made reservations for you on a flight to Tangier tomorrow morning. You’ll meet Delacroix, our informant there. If you can bring Zeno back to us, do so. If not….” Hawk paused. “Kill him.”

I grimaced. “I’m glad you haven’t set my goals too high.”

“I promise you a good rest when this one is over, Nick,” Hawk said, moving his thin-lipped month into a small grin. Sitting there across the table from me, he looked more like a Connecticut farmer than a powerful intelligence chief.

“I may get a longer one than I want,” I said, returning the grin.